Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 3, February 1961

The stranger was the soul of good fellowship. How was a dedicated young jazz player to know that he cast a dark and terrible shadow!

I

It was a night for crime. Greenwich Village, like the rest of the great, sprawling city of which it is a part, sweltered in a warm drizzle, compounded with fog and lingering, acrid smoke. It was a night for the store-breaker, the house-breaker, the car-thief, the mugger. It was a night for the rapist, the kidnapper, and the twisted perpetrator of those monstrous violations that drive tabloid newspaper rewrite man to use six-syllable words in an effort to cushion, for public consumption, the ultimate horrors of human depravity.

It was a night for crime. And criminals, seeking to avail themselves of its added obscurity, were everywhere astir, like restless insects emerging from their diurnal nests. Among them, a man, still unknown to the overworked police, whose bloody fulfillments in the past four months had caused daily papers, radio and television news reporters to employ such grisly, well-remembered phrases as Jack-the-Ripper, sex-fiend and Bluebeard. Five times he had struck and vanished.

It was a night for crime.

Inside Pete Bellardi’s Cote d’Azure, Joe Chance was considering crime in a peculiarly personal application. He had been considering it with increasing urgency and frequency for weeks.

Joe was a clarinet player who wasn’t going anywhere, one of those dedicated young jazz men who drift forever into Manhattan, precisely as do equally dedicated young actresses in search of a hearing. He wrapped up the final chorus of Muskrat Ramble and began breaking down a clarinet as moist from sweat and atmospheric condensation as the gaudy sports-shirt that covered his bony, un-muscular torso.

The clock over the bar, just visible from his post by the battered white yacht piano, read nine minutes of eleven. Disappointment lay as heavy beneath his diaphragm as the breaded veal cutlet and french-fries Pete’s chef in the kitchen had given him for dinner.

The deadline he had set for himself, the thin line that separated the struggling young citizen-artist from the non-citizen thief, had come. Mary had let him down. She had promised to be in the saloon with one of the jazz greats, a man who could — perhaps — see to it that he got the opportunity that had eluded him for so long.

It was almost eleven — and another disappointment, another rebuff. He closed the clarinet-case with finality, knowing this was it. From now on, he was not a musician. He was a thief.

Al Wilson, the burr-headed pianist, reeled off his concluding chords and Rafe Norton, the pale brown Harlem youth who provided the trio’s rhythm, gave his upended suitcase a final lick with the whiskbrooms. There was neither applause nor comment from the sparse audience.

Rafe said, “Hey, Joe, I thought your girl told you tonight was the night Pee Wee was coming in to hear us.”

Al Wilson chimed in with, “Yeah, ten o’clock, wasn’t it? It’s eleven now.” He had a habit of blinking his eyes when he spoke.

Joe said, “What the hell, guys. I didn’t set it up. Maybe Pee Wee got sidetracked.”

Wilson said, half-angrily, “I’m beginning to feel like the sparrow that followed the automobile. You can’t live forever on promises. Especially when they’re nothing but wind.”

Joe closed his clarinet case, stuck it under his arm and went out front to the bar. He didn’t have the heart to put up an argument. Why blame Al for getting sore? For that matter, why blame Pee Wee Rousell for not showing up to hear them play on such a night?

Pete Bellardi joined Joe Chance at the bar. He noted the packed clarinet and said, “You ain’t going home now, Joe? The evening’s still a beagle pup. You and the boys sounded cool back there — real mysterious.”

Pete was a genial chunk of ex-racketeer who liked to feature jazz in his place, as long as he didn’t have to pay union prices for it. He used all the hip phrases lavishly.

Joe sipped a gin buck, his first of the night, and said, “Pete, stop kidding yourself. Nobody’s coming to hear us tonight. I’m going home and try to get some sleep.”

“You never know,” said Pete. “Better stick around awhile.”

“Pee Wee was due at ten,” Joe reminded him.

“So he’s late,” said Pete. “So what? As long as he hears you, what difference does the time make?”

“Maybe none,” said Joe. “But I’m beat to my shoes.”

Pete wandered away and Joe stood alone at the bar, letting the fear and excitement build up inside him. It was deadline time for him. He had promised himself that, if Mary failed this time to get anyone musically important to listen to him, he was going to abandon the shabby, scuffed-around thing his dream had become.

That was what usually happened to dreams. You had one and it was beautiful and you kept it nice and sharp in technicolor, to carry you through all the bad times you had to outlast. But when the bad times kept on and on, something happened to your dream. The bright colors faded and the edges got crumpled and cigarettes burned holes in it and drinks got spilled on it and left white-rimmed stains.

Finally, you had to throw your dream away and put something you could concretely realize in its place,

Joe’s dream had been born five years earlier, when he had found he could make a clarinet behave, back in the small town where he was born and raised. He hadn’t insisted on becoming a Benny Goodman or an Artie Shaw, for Joe was modest, even in his dream. But he had felt that he could do enough with the horn to make a good life for himself.

It had taken fourteen months of New York to destroy it. Fourteen months of part-time jobs, of a meagre, furnished-room existence, of playing for cakes at Pete’s. No one wanted to hear Joe Chance, no one wanted to hire him. He hadn’t even been able to get himself a card at Local 802.

It was time to drop the dream and pick up something in its place — even though the substitute had nightmare edges. You couldn’t hear the guys talking all the time of making a score here, or getting a rakeoff there, or living it up on minor rackets in the underpoliced city. You couldn’t hear these things day after day, night after night, without getting ideas.

Joe finished his drink and fingered the money in his pocket. He didn’t have to look at it to know how much was there. One damp, sticky, crumpled dollar bill, a quarter, three dimes and a nickel. Sure, Pete would slip him a five, maybe a ten, if he asked for it. But small change wasn’t the answer. Not anymore — not after fourteen months of bitter frustration.

With his clarinet-case still under his arm, Joe walked out into the fog, its gray mugginess no bleaker than his thoughts.

II

The soles of Joe Chance’s loafers went slap, slap, on the damp sidewalk as he approached the house he meant to rob. He knew the block like the back of his hand. He ought to — he’d been walking it, casing it, ever since the story in the paper, a week before, about the she-recluse who lived alone in the condemned Kipp Houses.

Her name was Marianne Carlin, and she had been an actress with society connections before the car-accident had messed up her face so badly no plastic surgeon could put it together again. So, ten years ago, she had moved into the house at the end of the row — her grandmother had been a Kipp — and had never come out, according to the paper, sleeping alone on the top floor of a three-story house packed with all the valuable junk a rich family could collect in New York in a hundred years.

The paper had run the story because the Kipp houses were to be torn down. But Marianne Carlin refused to move and, since she had owner’s rights, no one had been able to move her. There she sat, fair prey for anyone who wanted to rob her. Joe had been half-hoping someone else would beat him to it. But, so far, no one had.

Even if he made it — and he figured, with the fog, the odds were nine to one his way — Mary would be driven frantic when she found out what he’d done. And she was almost bound to find out in time. But she was too loyal to spill to the cops and, once he was a thief, she’d be better off without him. Her Aunt Alice, with whom she lived in an apartment just north of Washington Square, would say, “See — didn’t I tell you Joe was no good all along?”

It wouldn’t be the first time Aunt Alice was right.

The Kipp Houses loomed up ahead of him, their daytime raffishness cloaked in glamour and mystery by the smoggy drizzle. They were set back from the sidewalk, an unbroken brick row fronted by a triple tier of wrought-iron balconies. Five sets of steps led down from the long front porch, and five eroded front walks led to five gates in the iron fence out front. What had once been trim flowerbeds between the walks now grew waist-high in a welter of weeds.

Save for Marianne Carlin’s house at the far end, they were ghost-town stuff. But in the dim effulgence of the one mid-block lamp across the street, they looked to Joe Chance like a bit of old New Orleans, where Jelly Roll and the King and Louis and Bunk and all the other jazz saints once marched and played. Perhaps, Joe thought, he’d go to New Orleans if he managed to make a decent score.

Stop goofing off! he told himself sternly. He took a deep breath, then marched past the cobbled alley that sloped ramplike to the long areaway behind the houses. He walked along the front of the houses, reached the footway just beyond them, and looked quickly around. He saw the block was empty save for himself.

Sweating a little, Joe tiptoed down a flight of nine steps, turned right and was in the alley behind the houses. Here battered wooden porches sheltered the back doors and a cat darted angrily away from the garbage pail it was pilfering.

From his preliminary surveys, Joe knew the back door was securely locked. But alongside it was a window so rickety that it was an open invitation. He moved around a tattered glider-hammock, opened a pocket-knife and went to work on it.

It proved unexpectedly tough. He could insert the point of his blade all around the edges, but he couldn’t get enough purchase to work the catch loose. Perspiration rolled into his eyes, stinging, and trickled down his spine under his already damp shirt. Quivering, he stepped back, wondering shakily if he was going to have to break a pane.

Just then somebody threw a bottle from a window of one of the apartments that backed up on the far side of the alley. The crash of glass on the cobbles paralyzed Joe for an instant. Then he realized it was to his advantage. After such a crash, no one would notice the mere tinkle of a shattered window. He went around the end of the glider to pick up a soggy old cushion. With this, he could push through the glass without risking cutting his hand.

Thus, he was directly in front of the door when it was flung open without warning. Its sweep caught Joe from behind, knocking him down in the narrow space between the inner end of the glider and the wall, directly under the window he was about to break. Thinking himself assaulted, Joe lay there helpless, waiting for another blow.

But no blow came. Instead, something heavy was slid out onto the porch, holding the door open and cutting off Joe’s field of vision, already inhibited by the bottom of the glider. There was another heavy gliding sound and he heard a man grunt with effort as he moved the first object and kicked the door shut. Peering beneath the glider, Joe could see shoes, a pair of trousers, the bottom of a raincoat. The man had stooped to pick up a pair of suitcases that looked uncommonly large in the near-darkness.

There was another grunt of effort, followed by a whispered curse, as the man carried both bags from porch to alley. He set them down on the cobbles and, still invisible from the waist up, walked rapidly away toward the far end of the alley.

Joe thought, The so-and-so beat me to it! All at once, his fears and self-doubt were merged in anger. Somebody had got there first and was walking away with the loot. In a flood of frustration, he realized he wasn’t even good enough to be a successful thief.

Holding his clarinet-case clamped tightly under an arm, he scrambled to his feet, prepared to get out of there fast. It was an odds-on bet the successful robber was armed.

On his feet, Joe stopped short. The suitcases were standing right in front of him, where the man had put them down.

Convulsively, Joe grabbed their handles and lifted. He felt his clarinet-case slip, put the loot down, pushed the horn back into place. He was only going to be able to get away with one of the bags — and that with an effort. Wondering what it contained to make it weigh so much, he managed to get it safely into the footway and up the steps to the sidewalk, without being observed.

Joe heard the sounds of a car being backed into the far end of the alley as he left it behind him.

“Hey, you! Where do you think you’re going!” Joe didn’t need the corroboration of a furtive glance over his shoulder to know the voice was that of a cop. The twin rows of buttons on his jacket gleamed like silver beads in the diffused light of the lamp across the street, back by the other end of the Kipp houses.

It was thirty-five or forty feet to the corner, and Joe kept moving, half-expecting a bullet between the shoulder-blades. He knew he hadn’t a chance, but he kept on going, panting and terrified.

“Stop, or I’ll—”

The cop’s warning cry was cut off by the sudden roar of a car, evidently the one Joe had heard backing around into the alley moments before. Now he heard it come barreling out of the cobbled ramp behind him, heard the cop’s shout of alarm as it slammed past him. Then a scream of breaks, a grind of gears, and a quick-growing and diminishing roar as its driver made his turn and high-tailed it toward the Hudson River five blocks away.

By then Joe was around the corner. There was no one on the sop-ping-wet avenue, and he gasped in relief as he turned the next corner with no sound of renewed pursuit. His breath came in wheezing gasps as he staggered to the front steps of the brownstone, where he had a room in the basement. All he could think of at the moment was that he hadn’t been caught after all. He was a thief! He’d gotten away with it.

Then a shadow detached itself from the darkness of the under-the-steps doorway and a familiar voice said, “Joe — thank heavens! I didn’t know where to look for you!”

It was Mary Mannis — the girl, his girl, the girl who had inexplicably chosen to ally her slender fortune to his even slimmer one. He stepped into the dark shelter of the entryway beside her, put down the suitcase with a sigh of relief.

Mary put her hands on his shoulders and pushed her soft body against his and said, “I’m sorry we were late, but you shouldn’t have taken off. There’s still time, darling. Pee Wee said he’d wait for me to bring you back to Pete’s. He’ll introduce you to some of the right people after he hears you go.”

Joe felt as if a pitfall, yawning beneath him, had suddenly sealed itself as he was about to tumble into its depths. So he’d stolen a suitcase. But he hadn’t been caught, mercifully, and the other man, the real thief, had drawn police attention elsewhere. And now his dream was back, awaiting him in the person of Pee Wee Roussell at Pete’s. He was actually going to be heard by someone who could do him and the dream some good!

He gave Mary a quick kiss, said, “Sorry I ran out, hon, but I didn’t think you could swing it. And when you were late...”

“I told you my boss is a friend of Pee Wee’s wife,” said the girl. “I wish you’d believed in me, Joe. But it’s all right now.”

“You’ve been crying!” he said with mock severity. And, when she shook her head violently, “Wait till I stash this bag and we’ll take off for Pete’s. Thanks, hon — thanks six million.”

She noticed the suitcase for the first time as he wrestled it up from the floor. “What is it, Joe?” she asked. “Where’d you get it?”

There was a wide-eyed, shining honesty to Mary, even in the darkness. Joe had never been able to lie to her, was unable to now. He said, weakly, tritely, “That’s a good question, honey.”

“Joe,” she said softly. “Where’d you get it?”

“Aw, it’s nothing,” he said. “Tell you later — after I play.”

“Tell me now, Joe,” she said. Joe blurted it out — the whole story.

When he had finished, Mary clung to him. She said huskily, “Joe, how horrible! Why, Joe — why couldn’t you have waited at Pete’s just a few minutes longer? I got paid today. I’ve got the money with me. All you had to do was ask.”

He shook his head, feeling miserable. He said, “That’s no good now, Mary. I guess everything just piled up on me, and when you and Pee Wee didn’t get there... Oh, to hell with it! Let me stash this damned bag and let’s get going. Pee Wee won’t wait forever.”

“First you’re going to take it back, Joe.” Once again her tone was quiet, once again there was no opposing her.

“For God’s sake, what if I get caught?” he countered.

“You risked stealing it,” she said. “I’ll go with you, Joe.” She paused, hugged him, then added, “Don’t you see you’ve got to take it back? Otherwise...” She left the rest unsaid.

They walked back to the corner beyond which the Kipp Houses stood in their shabby grandeur. Joe said, “Wait here, hon. I don’t want you messed up in this. I’ll be right back.”

Joe turned the corner and found himself on the fringe of a small crowd. The block was no longer deserted. It was full of police and the curious. There were lights on everywhere in the houses across the street. From one window, leaned an enormously fat woman in a loose nightgown, her bright red hair accentuated by the illumination at her back.

From another, Joe saw the naked torso of an old man with a luxurious white beard. Lights from cars, from windows, from doorways, sliced through the drizzle and mist in all directions.

There was no question of Joe’s returning the bag, not while the neighborhood swarmed with cops. For a moment, he thought of setting it down and walking away. But a tall, cigar-chewing man at his right elbow was looking at him.

Joe mustered his courage and said, “What gives? Somebody break a tooth or something?”

The man shook his head — slowly. Then, out of the corner of his mouth, “That sex-slayer that’s been in the papers has killed another victim. You know, the creep that’s been carving up dames like Christmas turkeys. He sliced the hermit lady right in two. The cops found half of her in an old suitcase back of the house.”

His glance surveyed Joe, dropped to the heavy bag in his right hand. “Musta looked something like that trunk you’re lugging. You ain’t got the other half of her, have you, kid?”

Joe gulped and managed to shake his head. “Did they get the killer?” he asked, his voice far from steady.

“Naw!” was the reply. “He nearly peeled off a cop’s tail feathers with his car when he made his getaway.”

“Thanks,” said Joe. “Thanks a lot. See you later.”

He got back around the corner to where Mary was waiting. The bag was pinching the skin of his fingers again. He had forgotten how heavy it was while he was talking to the stranger. No wonder it was heavy, he thought, with half a body in it.

Half a body! Joe barely mastered an overwhelming impulse to drop the suitcase right there and run away as fast as his legs would carry him. As if his eyes had developed X-ray qualities, he seemed able to look right into it, to envision the grisly cargo it held. Half a body...

What if it were dripping blood? It wasn’t — the dim street lights told him that. The killer, whoever he was, must have wrapped it up — like a butcher double-wrapping a cut of beef. Joe’s stomach rebelled and, for a moment, he could hardly see.

An arm slipped around him, steadying him, and Mary’s voice said anxiously, “Joe, what’s wrong? What is it, darling? You’re as white as a sheet.”

He didn’t tell her. He couldn’t tell her. For once, in sheer desperation, he managed to lie to her. He said, “I don’t know what’s in here unless it’s a hydrogen bomb. They’ve got half the cops in New York back there.”

“I don’t understand it.” Mary’s usually smooth forehead was wrinkled in perplexity. “Why should they—”

“I don’t get it either,” said Joe. He hoped his voice wouldn’t betray him.

“What shall we do?” the girl asked.

“You go on to Pete’s and keep Pee Wee there,” said Joe. “I’ll get rid of this thing somewhere and join you later.”

It was the only way. He was going to have to drop it and disappear. He couldn’t ask Mary to get mixed up in a mess as ghastly as this. Nobody had the right to ask that of a nice girl like Mary. A sex-killer — half a body! It was a nightmare predicament.

Mary was stubborn. She said, “Joe, I’m not letting you get into any more trouble. What we need is some place where there are a lot of people with suitcases — like a railroad station or a bus terminal. You can put it down and we’ll let someone else find it.”

“Unh-unh.” He shook his head hopelessly. “I can’t lug this damned thing that far. It weighs too much. It’s half-killing me now. And we can’t risk a cab or a bus or the subway. Have you taken a good look at this thing, hon? It looks like something Phineas Fogg might have had when he went around the world in eighty days. Nobody else has used anything like it in fifty years.”

Mary studied the bag in the diffused glow of a street light, and Joe shuddered lest she somehow guess what it held. She said, “It’s all bound together with wire, too.”

They plodded on silently, aimlessly, and then she said, “Joe, how would this do? There’s a bus-stop on Seventh Avenue South, near the Holland Tunnel. It’s not a big stop, but there’s bound to be people there now — commuters going home to Jersey late. We could walk there and leave it on the platform and take a bus to Jersey City and then come back.”

“You go to Pete’s,” he said. “I’ll do it. It’s a good idea, hon.” She didn’t have to know that once he got rid of her, he’d drop it in a doorway and keep right on going.

But Mary refused to be shaken off. “Not a chance,” she said firmly. “The only times you get in trouble are when you’re out of my sight.” She hugged his left arm. “I’m sticking till we’re out of it.”

“You don’t know what could happen to you if we’re caught,” he said despairingly. That was the worst of it. She didn’t know and he couldn’t tell her. He just couldn’t bring himself to.

When they had gone a half dozen blocks south, she said, “Joe, dear, you’re killing yourself. Put it down and take a rest.”

“Not a chance, hon.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “Let’s get it over with before anything else happens.”

III

Somehow, they made the bus-stop, which consisted of a raised concrete platform, shaped like a pear-cut diamond, and a ticket booth. There were perhaps fifteen people of assorted sizes, shapes and sexes there, some of them with luggage. Not many, but enough, he thought, putting the big suitcase down, far back against the platform wall.

He stood in front of it while Mary bought tickets to Jersey City. Then they stood close together, screening the bag, while they waited for their bus. At any moment, Joe expected the snarl of sirens to announce the police were coming to pick them up. He began to wonder if the bus would ever come.

Miraculously, minutes later, it pulled up, looking like a sanctuary on wheels. They stumbled inside and sank onto a seat and Joe, for the moment, could not quite believe in their good luck. He turned to Mary and managed a smile, drinking in reassurance from the fresh young comeliness of her, the wide-set blue eyes, the tender generous mouth, the smoothly combed brown hair.

He wondered what was the matter with women, and why a girl like Mary should bother with a jerk like Joe Chance. He wasn’t even aware they were in the tunnel until the bus stopped on the Jersey side and Mary tugged at his sleeve, saying, “Joe, dear, we get off here.”

Involuntarily, he looked for the suitcase, the Phineas Fogg bag with its wrap-around wire and built in half-body. It didn’t seem possible that he was rid of the horror. The dampness of the night air restored him a little, and he gripped his clarinet-case tightly and made a silent vow that never, never again, would he steal as much as a penful of ink from a post-office desk.

Mary looked up at him and said, “Joe, dear, you look half-dead. How about a cup of coffee? We’ve got twenty minutes before the bus comes back.”

“Okay,” he said. Then, “I’m sorry as hell I fouled up your deal with Pee Wee. Trust me to make a hash of things!”

She hugged his arm again and said, “This is a lot more important Joe, believe me. You’ll never do it again, will you?”

“I won’t even tilt a pinball machine, so help me!”

The bar-grill was hot and stuffy and reeked with a blend of old onions, older beer and raw whiskey. In back, a jukebox was blasting an idiotic rattle-and-roll number. But Joe wasn’t bothered by any of it till he caught a glimpse of himself in the back-bar mirror. He was white as the proverbial sheet. He looked sick.

All at once, now that he thought of it, he felt sick. The heat, the noise, the smells — they all closed in on him. He gulped and said, “Sorry, hon, I need air.” Feeling unsteady on his feet and all torn up inside, he slid off his stool and moved toward the door, with its promise of fresh air and relative quiet outside.

When Joe stepped onto the sidewalk, he stopped short. He felt his mouth open and a scream rise in his throat, only to have his larynx too constricted with sudden terror to permit any sound at all. He lurched back against the wall of the building, closed his eyes, forced himself to take a deep breath. Not until he heard Mary’s gasp did he know he had not suffered a hallucination.

There, in a rectangle of light cast through the glass upper portion of the bar-grill door onto the sidewalk, was the bag — oversized, of worn saddle leather, with straps, elaborate handle, bound with wire — just as it had looked when they left it in the bus-stop on the other side of the Hudson. It couldn’t happen, but it had. The suitcase had followed them, like some legless bloodhound, under the river.

He heard Mary say softly, “Oh my God!”

He wondered what she’d have said had she known what the battered old bag contained. And then, overwhelmingly, he realized that the suitcase could not have traveled by itself. Someone must have brought it through the tunnel. But who — and where?

As if in answer to Joe’s unuttered question, a man moved out of the night shadows into the rectangle of light. For a moment, either through a trick of position or through Joe’s own horrified suggestibility, he looked like Mephistopheles, with acquiline nose, bottomless pools for eyes, tufted brows, a cruelly curving mouth.

Then, as suddenly, he was merely a man in a seersucker suit, a stranger wearing an expression of amused concern, saying in medium-deep, well-bred accents, “I saw you youngsters forget this at the bus-stop in Manhattan.” A nod toward the bag. “I chased you all the way over here in my car, to return it to you. You wouldn’t have wanted to lose it, would you?”

Somehow, from the depths of the sickness that held him in its grip, Joe managed to mutter, “We’re very grateful to you. We must have forgotten all about it. Thanks a lot.”

He stood in front of them, across the suitcase, smiling, studying them. He was not much taller than Joe, but his shoulders were heavier. He said, just before the tension became unbearable, “You two youngsters must be very much in love. Right?”

Only it wasn’t a question. This man, this stranger, this busybody, was telling them, not asking them. Joe saw Mary nod, nodded himself. He couldn’t just stand there, like an idiot.

“Of course you are.” The stranger looked vaguely pleased. “Persons like me — who spend much of their lives alone in crowds — become sensitive to emotion in others. You two are bathed in love, you radiate it, you warm my heart with it.” Another pause, then, “Come on inside. You won’t mind my buying you a drink.”

He carried the suitcase into the bar-grill ahead of them. Helplessly, Joe and Mary followed. His sickness increased as he became aware of the extent of their disaster. This man, this stranger, this busybody — could not only identify them. He could chain them to the bag and the horror it held.

Mary murmured something about their bus being due and Joe could have wrung her neck. They’d look great to this unwanted helper, he thought, taking a bus back to New York now.

“Forget your bus,” said the stranger. “I’ve got my car outside. I’ll be glad to drive you wherever you wish. After all, I’ve come this far on your behalf.” There was a brief interruption, while they ordered drinks. Then he said, “I hope I’m not intruding. I merely want to help if I can. My name is Hornung — Arthur Hornung. My friends call me Art.”

There was something odd about him, some quality Joe couldn’t reach out and touch, something that made him feel like a bug pinned to a card. He tried to tell himself that, under the circumstances, he would be suspicious of John the Baptist. But when he downed his drink, quick and neat, he shuddered. And it was not alcohol alone that sent a chill racing up his spine.

He tried to catch Mary’s eye, to read in it what she was feeling, what she was thinking. But she was talking to the stranger, saying, “I’m Mary Mannis and this is Joe Chance.”

Added panic went pounding through Joe’s nerve-channels at the girl’s admission. But then he thought, So What? We’re dead ducks anyway. All we can do is play out the string. Poor Mary!

Hornung nodded and said, “Hello Mary — Joe. Let’s see if I’m reading you right. You are running away together, aren’t you?” Again, it was statement, not question.

“You could call it that,” said Joe cautiously.

“Since you’re not married, you must be running away from something.” He paused, then added, “Something like parents, an uncle — perhaps an aunt.”

It was Mary’s turn. “Something like that,” she said.

The smile again — Hornung could turn it on and off like a neon sign. “And you haven’t much money, or Joe wouldn’t be taking his clarinet along.”

Joe could sense that he and Mary were being pushed and chivvied, under the guise of friendship, as this stranger wished. Yet they could do nothing about it — nothing at all. Not while the suitcase was still in close proximity to them.

Hornung paid for the drinks from a well-filled wallet. He said, “Joe, unless I’m wrong as can be, what you and Mary need is a place to be together, to get yourselves organized. You’re nice kids and I like you, so I’m going to offer you a haven. As it happens, I’m having my house rebuilt into rentable apartments. It’s not yet finished, but there’s plenty of room for all of us in my apartment. Don’t worry, I’m not doing this merely because I love humanity. Actually, I don’t. But I like both of you, and I’d enjoy having you as my first tenants.”

He paused, smiled again, and added, “Who knows? Since you’re in love, having you as my first tenants might bring luck to the entire house.”

Mary said faintly, “You’re very kind, but I don’t think — I mean, after all, we’re not married.”

“Oh, come, child!” There was gentle mockery in his tone, reproof in the look he gave her. “After all, this is the twentieth century, is it not? And after all, couldn’t I be your chaperon?”

Joe could sense the laughter beneath Hornung’s question. He caught Mary’s pleading look and hesitated. The man was taking them for some sort of a ride. But he couldn’t do them any harm — not as long as he didn’t open the suitcase.

Hornung chose that moment to pick the suitcase up. He said, almost petulantly, in the voice of a man accustomed to being obeyed since childhood, “Come along, children. We’re a long way from home.”

Mary gripped Joe’s arm tightly, “Darling,” she whispered, “tell him we can’t go. There’s something about him...”

“I know,” said Joe. “He’s a take-charge character.” He saw Hornung, still holding the suitcase, pause in the doorway and look back.

Mary said, “It’s not just that — there’s something else about him, something queer. He seems to be inwardly laughing at us.”

Joe nodded toward the suitcase. “We don’t seem to have much choice, hon,” he said. He picked up his clarinet-case from the bar.

As they got into the front seat of Hornung’s hard-top, the older man said, “By the way, Joe, what sort of music do you play?”

Joe shrugged. “I’m just a jazz guy,” he said. “Dixieland.”

“How interesting!” Hornung got the motor started. “I’ve got quite a record collection at my house — including some of the rarer oldies you don’t hear often.”

“Swell,” said Joe with what enthusiasm he could muster under the circumstances.

“By the way, Mr. Hornung,” Mary asked, “where is your house?”

“Please — not Mr. Hornung. Art,” said the older man with infinite pain in his voice. “My house? Oh, it’s in Greenwich Village, a few blocks south of the Square.”

Joe felt as if a fighter had punched him in the stomach. Greenwich Village. They were going right back where they’d come from. And with the suitcase and its ghastly load.

IV

Something was wrong with the amplification system of Hornung’s costly high-fidelity sound equipment. When the volume was on full, there was a death rattle in its throat. Hornung had merely spread his long-fingered hands, smiled ruefully and said, “You see? Something like this always happens when I try to show off.”

Joe could not decide whether the older man was mocking them or himself. His whole manner seemed tinged with mockery, blanketing whatever might lie beneath. Since Joe had taken a brief course in television and electronic repair late the previous year, he had volunteered to take a look at the set and see if he could find the trouble and repair it.

Hornung’s apartment occupied the entire second floor of what had, long ago, been a Manhattan red-brick mansion. The rest of the house was a welter of paint pots, lumber, floorboards, stepladders, and other tools of reconstruction, through which they had picked their way upon their arrival a half hour earlier.

The living room took up the front half of the floor. It was a large, unexpectedly luxurious room with low, modem furniture, gleaming parquet floor, grotesque African lamps and a baby grand piano. Two thirds of the way back, it was almost partitioned by a well-stocked bookcase that rose almost to the ceiling. The rear of the bookcase, which was really a double one, held the hi-fi equipment and a vast stock of records, in albums or loose, that seemed to span all music, from early Montiverdi to late Duke Ellington.

At Joe’s back was a comfortable kitchen, with a door to the hall that ran the length of the floor on the north side. Behind it, he guessed, were the bath and bedrooms. These he had not yet seen. He had had little trouble in locating the loose connection that was causing the unwanted noise. But was finding it a slow business to rehook the wiring without proper tools.

In front, on the other side of the bookcase-partition, Hornung was reading aloud to Mary from a morning paper he had picked up on their drive back from Jersey City. His deep, rather mannered voice had droned on, and Joe was no longer listening.

Suddenly, however, as he finished the repair job, he came to full attention. Hornung was reading about the murder — the murder — in the Kipp Houses that evening. It might have been self-suggestion, but to Joe it seemed the older man’s voice took on richer, more significant tones.

“What a horror!” he exclaimed. “Listen, Mary, this must have happened a mere matter of hours ago. The sex murderer struck again, and not far from here. You may know the place — those picturesque old wrecks called the Kipp Houses. Think of it! The sixth time in less than four months. He seems to strike every three weeks.”

“You say the Kipp Houses?” asked Mary. “Why, that’s—”

“Just a few blocks from here, my dear,” said Hornung. “Hmm — something seems to have gone wrong. They found half a woman’s body in an old-fashioned suitcase behind the murder house. You read about that pathetic actress lady who lived there alone. She must have been mad to let the newspapers write her up.”

“Half a body in a suitcase?” Mary sounded ill.

“Yes, my dear,” Hornung went on. “It seems the police almost caught him. Some patrolman blundered onto him, right after the murder. But they couldn’t stop him from making a getaway.”

“What sort of a suitcase?” Mary asked, her face very pale.

“My dear,” said Hornung, “the description sounds a little like that bag I rescued for you and Joe. If the two of you weren’t together, I might be suspicious.” He chuckled, and Joe, paralyzed, could picture his eyes fixing themselves on the stolen bag, which was currently resting on the parquet floor of the living room, just inside the hall door.

Hornung went on. “There isn’t much information in the paper. I suppose it’s too early yet. But I can just visualize the excitement in the block after they found the body. All those horrible little people feeling important merely because one of their neighbors was murdered. Imagine it. I can see them leaning out their windows in the fog, watching and listening and chattering amongst themselves. Fat, redheaded women in nightgowns, white-bearded old men, all the morbid and gruesome jetsam of the city. Can’t you see them, too?”

This was getting too close for comfort. Joe forced himself out of the stasis that held him in its grip. “Art!” he called. “Come here a moment, will you? I think I’ve got it fixed.”

Hornung appeared, checked what Joe had done, looked pleased. “Anything special you’d like to hear?” he asked. “I’ve got them all — Bigard, Benny, Artie Shaw, Jimmy Noone, Pee Wee Roussell, Johnny Dodds.”

“They’re all great,” said Joe.

“Good!” Hornung didn’t actually rub his hands but he looked as if he were doing so. “I’ll set up a concert with all of them — a real Clarinet Marmalade.”

“Great!” said Joe. He walked around the bookcase and almost let out a yell.

Mary, apparently spurred by Hornung’s reading from the paper, had crossed the living room and was squatted in front of the suitcase, her fingers busy undoing the heavy wire that was wound around it.

He wanted to call to her, tell her to get away from the horror, to let it alone. But he couldn’t call without giving the whole game away to Hornung. He took a quick step toward the girl, then another. If she did open it and the horror inside was revealed—

Without warning, the room was flooded with a blast of sound as the opening chorus of Duke Ellington’s ancient Tiger Rag came pounding on full volume. Through the blare of brasses and the drive of the rhythm section, which sounded as if they were right in the room, Joe saw, rather than heard, Mary give a quick little scream of fright and turn until her eyes met his.

They looked at him unblinkingly, almost without recognition. Then, slowly, she rose and walked across the room to the curved, sectional sofa. Her gaze never left his own. It was deep with accusation and — yes — fear.

At that moment, Hornung reduced the volume of sound and emerged around the bookcase, saying, “Nice job, Joe — she’s as good as new.” He looked from him to Mary and said, “Do you think Mary will be safe if I leave you while I get us some drinks?”

Hornung didn’t wait for an answer.

Joe and Mary were alone — for the first time since Hornung had picked them up in Jersey City. Joe stood over Mary, who was sitting on the sofa, looking up at him as if he were something strange and horrible. She said, her voice very low, “Joe, you knew what was in the suitcase. You knew all the time.”

“Not all the time,” he said, with a desperate, pleading urgency in his voice. “I didn’t find out till I went back there to return the bag. Somebody told me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me then?” she asked. “Why, Joe?”

“Why didn’t I...? Because I couldn’t,” he replied desperately. “I was too sick myself. I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you mixed up in it. I tried to make you go away, but you wouldn’t.” And, when she still said nothing, “Honest, hon, it wasn’t me. You don’t think I go round sawing women in half for kicks!”

“I don’t know,” she said and her little hands became clenched fists as they rested on her thighs. “I don’t know anything, I guess.”

He couldn’t bare the unhappiness in her face, the fear — the fear of him. He said, “Hon, it wasn’t me. I never even got into the house, I swear it. I didn’t have time. You can check easily enough.”

“Who was it then?”

Joe ran a hand through his hair. He longed to pick her up, draw her to him, kiss away the terror and suspicion in her eyes. But he couldn’t — not while she looked up at him like that, like some trusting animal betrayed by its master.

“It was the guy with the car,” he said. “The guy that nearly ran down the cop. I swear it!”

Some of the suspicion, some of the hopelessness, left her face — not all of it but a little. She said, “The man with the car. I’d forgotten. But Joe dear, you should have told me anyway.”

“I couldn’t,” he said. “I was too sick, too shocked. I... well, I couldn’t, that’s all.”

“Joe!” she said, and she wasn’t back with him yet. “Joe, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he told her honestly, hopelessly. “What can we do?”

V

They were still staring at one another when Hornung came back with a drink-laden tray. With his return, Joe became aware that there was still music around them, one of Jimmy Noone’s old clarinet records. Briefly, he had forgotten everything but Mary and the suitcase.

Hornung put the tray on the low, round table in front of the curved sofa. “Help yourselves, kids,” he said. “This is liberty hall.”

Mary sipped at her drink, then set it down. She smiled at Hornung brightly — too brightly, Joe thought. She said, “Art, I don’t want to spoil the party, but I’ve had a long night. If I could lie down for a little while...”

Hornung was all solicitation, hovering over her like a Disney vulture in dove’s clothing. He said, “Of course, my dear, of course. You’ll find the bedroom in back, beyond the bathroom. Make yourself comfortable. But don’t sleep too long. We’ll miss you, won’t we, Joe?”

“Sure, hon,” said Joe. “But take it easy.” He knew what Mary wanted. She wanted to be alone, to think, to try and figure things out. He wished, longed to go with her. But that was impossible. Somebody had to stay with Hornung.

A half hour later, he and Joe were still sitting there alone, across the round table, listening to records again. There was something funny about the way Hornung listened to jazz, Joe thought, just as there was something funny about everything he did or said. Once again, Joe had the feeling that something obvious was eluding him, something he should have sensed much earlier.

Hornung didn’t clap his hands or weave his body or even tap his feet — for all of which Joe was grateful. The older man was much too mature for any such juvenile behavior. Yet he reminded Joe of a teen-ager by his very immobility, by the almost feverish raptness with which he listened, his head cocked a trifle toward the machine.

A man his age had no business taking it that seriously. It looked like an act. Yet somehow Joe knew it wasn’t an act, and that made it all the more wrong.

There was a moment of silence, while the changer operated, and Hornung took advantage of it to say, “They come and they go. Thirty years ago, your top clarinet men were Jimmy Lytell, Jimmy Dorsey, Pee Wee Roussell — with maybe a few of the negro players like Bigard, Noone and Buster Bailey.”

“You sure know your jazz,” said Joe, wondering how long this concert in hell was to go on.

Hornung stopped listening, a moment, said, “What was that?”

Joe lifted his range of hearing above the music. Mary was calling him. He glanced at Hornung, who nodded, and Joe went to the hall door, wondering how this man had established such control over him that he had to ask permission before doing anything. It wasn’t just the suitcase, he thought. There was something else — an odd, elusive sort of power that chilled him.

Mary called, “Joe, will you bring me my bag? I left it on the table. I want to freshen up.”

“Coming, hon,” said Joe. He went back and got the bag, a neat, inexpensive white plastic affair with gilt trimmings.

Hornung smiled and nodded and said, “Take your time, Joe. It’s all right with me.”

So what, Joe thought. So what if it wasn’t all right with him? But he knew he was whistling in the dark.

Mary was waiting for him, just inside the bedroom door. It was a big room, almost as big as the living room, with big furniture — a huge bureau, an immense wardrobe, a vast Hollywood bed. The prints on the walls were not actually pornographic, but they suggested odd, unpleasantly distorted eroticism — Watteau with a Kafka twist.

Mary’s blue eyes were alight with excitement as she pulled Joe inside and shut the door quickly, quietly, behind him. “Look!” she said. “Look at these, Joe.”

She was holding a mess of women’s garments, which she turned and dropped on the big bed — dresses, nightgowns, underthings.

Joe looked at them, poked at them, frowned, said, “So Hornung has girl friends. So what? He’s not a bad looking character, and with a setup like this—” He looked at the room around them.

“Joe!” Mary was actually shaking him. “Look at them. Here’s a bra that must be a forty-eight — and here’s a size twelve skirt. And this nightgown — those look like bloodstains to me!”

“Good God!” said Joe. His liver turned over again and he had to sit down on the bed as the meaning of Mary’s discovery got through to him.

“They belong to five different women,” Mary told him, frowning with desperate earnestness. “According to that story he read me, this sex-killer is supposed to have murdered five other women besides the one in the...” Her voice trailed off.

“Where’d you find them?” said Joe, shaken.

She nodded toward a large cedar chest on the far side of the bed. He got up, told her, “Better put them back for now. After all, they don’t prove anything. I’m afraid the whole thing’s impossible.”

“What do you mean — impossible?” she demanded, dropping the lid of the chest on the suspicious garments.

“Just that,” he told her. “It’s a nice theory but it just won’t wash. Suppose he is the sex-killer. How in hell did he manage to trace the suitcase to where we left it. How did he manage to trace us? It just can’t be, hon.”

Mary scowled out a rear window at a backyard vista already touched with the grey of early summer dawn. She said, “But it could have happened if he followed us. He has a car. He could have done just as he said.”

“But where could he pick us up?” Joe asked helplessly.

“I heard him take off from the murder scene in his car.”

“Suppose he circled, parked the car and went back to make sure he was safe,” said Mary. “He might have seen you when you tried to return the bag. Surely, if he was there, he’d have spotted it like a shot.”

“Wait a minute, hon.” Joe sank on the bed, pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids. Then, looking up at her, he said, “You remember when he was describing the scene on the block to you just before I interrupted him?”

“Yes.” Now Mary was dubious. “But he was just making that up.”

“But he wasn’t!” Joe was on his feet, holding her arms tightly. “That’s just it — he wasn’t. I saw the red-headed fat woman in the nightgown leaning out her window, and the man with the white beard. He couldn’t have made them up. He must have been there.”

“Joe!” Mary’s voice was a whisper. “But if he is — if he did — why has he brought us here? What’s he planning to do with us?” Her face crumpled with fright.

“I don’t know, hon,” he said. “I don’t know. All we can do is play it cosy until he tips his hand.”

“Why don’t we just get out of here?” Mary asked. “We can’t stay here and let him — let him do whatever he’s planning.”

“We can’t leave now,” Joe told her fiercely. “He’s got us in a cleft stick. Remember, the cop saw me. If Hornung goes to the police and tells them about the suitcase, and about us, we’re dead. At least I am, and you’re in a mess that will ruin your life. He’s got us just where he wants us.”

Mary shuddered and Joe held her close a moment. “Aunt Alice will go to the police,” she said. “She always worries when I’m late getting home. Especially since yesterday was payday. But she won’t know where to tell them to look.”

“She’ll have the police on my tail,” he said grimly. “You can lay odds on that.” He released her, scowled, ran a hand through his short hair. “What have they got to go on? Just the suitcase? Remember, they’ve got its mate. And it’s individual enough. It’s the only thing they can be looking for. And it’s the only thing we can use to bring them here. With those things you found in the chest, we might be able to pin it on him.”

Mary grabbed him fiercely. “Joe!” she said. “Joe, don’t do anything foolish. If he finds out we’re onto him, we’re as good as dead.”

He managed a smile. “I’ll be careful,” he said. “You root around some more and see if you can turn up anything else. If we do get out of this, we’ll need everything we can get. Remember, he can make out quite a case against me — and you’ll be caught in it with me, no matter how it comes out.”

“Don’t worry, darling — we’re going to be all right!” she said and kissed him.

VI

Joe Chance sat in the living room with Hornung, wondering what he could do, wondering what Mary was doing, watching his host and trying not to show it, knowing that Hornung was watching him. Fingers of daylight poked their way through the slats of the Venetian blinds, but the terror of night lingered in the dimly lit room. It was a sealed crate, an artificial satellite shut off from the world.

And the suitcase still stood against the wall beside the hall door. Sooner or later, Joe thought, it would begin to smell in this heat. Sooner or later, Hornung would drop the masquerade of geniality. Meanwhile, the music kept on, relentlessly pounding its beat through Joe’s skull until he was ready to cry out in agony.

Jack Teagarden’s big horn, Krupa’s driving drums, Bubber Miley’s growling trumpet, Coleman Hawkins’ thick-toned tenor sax, Harry James, George Wettling, Benny Goodman — each of them distinct in Joe’s mind and memory and inner ear, as different from one another as Scotch and rum, became blurred and fused like a kaleidoscope twirled too rapidly to be followed by the eye.

Terror stalked the room when Hornung spoke, when he moved, when he stayed still. Yet, if Joe hadn’t known he was sitting with a madman who pulled women apart as readily as a schoolboy tears the wings from a fly, he might have sensed nothing wrong.

True, there was a trace of strangeness in his talk — in the way he touched on love, on hate, on death, on the futility of all things, that might have sounded mad. But, as Joe well knew, Greenwich Village is full of mad talkers and beatniks, who would shudder at the thought of drowning a kitten.

“...love is more than a biological trap, set by nature to put man to genetic use,” Hornung said while the music was briefly soft. “It destroys man’s very soul.” He smiled oddly, distantly, then put down his glass and rose, adding, “Speaking of nature... You’ll excuse me, I hope?”

Joe nodded. What a ridiculous mockery of the conventions! He watched Hornung leave the room and his eyes fell to the suitcase. He studied it, half-consciously, while his brain raced through a rat maze of dead-end passages. What to do? How could he put it to use? He could feel the sweat on his forehead, mopped it off with a crumpled handkerchief.

And then he heard the answer, as if sent by some capricious Providence that had, till now, delighted in twisting him ever deeper in the toils of terror that had closed around him since he left the safety of the Cote d’Azure. It came from somewhere down the street, somewhere in the middle distance, the clatter of metal canisters, the sounds of men’s voices, the growl of a heavy, slow-moving vehicle.

The city garbage disposal truck was making its rounds!

Quickly, silently, Joe moved to the window, pulled up the blinds, looked out onto the slum street, deserted in the dawn, its broken sidewalks lined with cans and cartons, drawn up like opposing armies that would never meet in battle. Three blocks away to the southward, he could see the monstrous bulk of the great silvery truck. Through the open window, the crash and clatter of cans sounded louder, sharper, than it had inside. The truck was moving his way!

Joe darted to the suitcase, picked it up, grunted anew at its heaviness. And he recalled unhappily the comparative ease with which Hornung had carried it in from the car. Two of them had been too much for him, back at the Kipp Houses. But he was strong enough to handle a single heavy bag a lot more easily than Joe ever could.

Joe hoisted the bag onto the window sill with a tremendous effort. He tilted it there briefly, slid it slowly out, watched it fall end over end, almost in slow motion, till it struck the sidewalk with a thud and rolled over. For one terrified instant, Joe thought it was going to burst open and spatter its ghastly contents all over the street. But the locks held firm.

He was still looking out, blocking the window, when a hand fell on his shoulder, making him gasp and start with fright. Hornung’s voice said, “I wouldn’t put too much weight on that coping, Joe. The wood’s very old and it might give way and throw you out. It’s a nasty drop — enough to kill a man.”

Joe moved back quickly, dropped the blind. Had Hornung seen him push the bag out, had he seen it lying there on the sidewalk?

Hornung said, “It’s better to keep the blinds down, Joe. That way, the heat stays outside. And if we keep the lights on in here, we can pretend it’s night and not realize how tired we are.”

He went back behind the bookcase, said, “How about some of the old Trumbauer and Bix things, Joe? We haven’t played any yet, and I’ve got some of the rare ones — Three Blind Mice, Krazy Kat, Apple Blossoms. Tram plays a bassoon in Apple Blossoms, believe it or not.”

“Sounds great,” said Joe. “Put them on, Art”

The garbage truck was only a block away now. Soon they would be directly beneath, and it would hardly do for Hornung to hear any remarks the men might make about the bag. The music would keep his interest diverted.

Joe sat there, trying to look interested in the music, while his hopes, his soul, his entire attention was focused on the unseen sidewalk beneath. Salvation — or catastrophe — might lie within the next few minutes. He looked at his watch, saw it was after eight o’clock.

Frankie Trumbauer’s slick, sweet, C-melody sax tones came on in Three Blind Mice, and Hornung murmured, “He had something, that fellow — something rich and real. A pity he became a pilot instead.”

But Joe barely heard him. The disposal truck was directly under the front windows. He heard a crash as an empty can was dropped to the sidewalk. Then a voice, a hoarse male voice, saying, “No, Tony, not that old bag! You wanna rip the teeth right out of the unit?”

“Okay, but it’s just junk.” This from a higher-pitched voice.

“So let somebody else take care of it,” said the first voice. “You don’t want to damage the unit. Leave it lay.”

The truck moved slowly on, and Joe felt palsied with reaction, with fear, with a sense of utter and total helplessness. He looked at Hornung and wondered if he and Mary, out of their own desperation, had not created a fantasy about their host. Sitting there, absorbed in the music, a half-empty glass in his hand, he did not look the part of a sex fiend. But then, Joe wondered, how exactly did one look?

He thought of something then. The man he had seen emerge from the murder house with the two suitcases had worn a raincoat. When Hornung picked them up, he had been wearing none. Then he discarded this idea — the weather was hot and, in the shelter of his car, the older man might have dropped the garment in the back of the car somewhere.

As for the clothing Mary had found in the bedroom chest, they might merely have been relics of romantic evenings in this apartment. The brown stains might not have been blood at all — or, if they were blood, their source might not have been criminal.

Even the fact Hornung must have been on the scene of the crime shortly afterward was not necessarily damning. His purpose in following them, in returning the suitcase, in bringing them here, might not have been sinister. Often lonely men seem sinister to those more gregarious than themselves.

VII

Mary wandered in from the bedroom, looking fresh and lovely with her hair combed, her makeup renewed.

Hornung sighed, shook his head and said to Joe, “You know, you’re a lucky guy.”

“Think so?” said Joe. He got up, put his arm around the girl, gave her a quick hug, whispered, “Find anything else?”

She shook her head faintly. “I’m starved. Is there anything here for breakfast?”

“Just about everything,” said Hornung rising and leading the way to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator, said, “Eggs, bacon, sausages, butter, milk, frozen fruit.” Then flinging open a high cupboard, “Canned hash, beans, chili, Vienna sausage, kippers. You name it, we’ve got it.”

“I’m dying for some coffee,” said Mary. She tested the faucets, said, “Oh-oh, no hot water.”

“That damned heater!” said Hornung. “I’ll go downstairs and get it going. It won’t take long. This weather, and with the house in a mess, it’s hard to remember everything.”

“I could heat some water on the stove,” said Mary, but he was already gone.

“Joe!” she said tensely. “Joe, what happened to the suitcase? When I looked just now, it was gone.”

He told her what he had done, what had happened, what he was beginning to feel about Hornung. She said, “I hope you’re right — oh, how I hope you’re right! If you are, then we can simply walk out of here. Oh no” — dismay spread over her face — “the suitcase. Even if he isn’t — even if he isn’t what we thought, he knows we had it.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have flung it out the window,” said Joe.

“If anything does happen,” said Mary, “and Mr. Hornung is all right, the only thing we can do is level with him. Maybe that’s what he’s waiting for.”

“He’s going to have to wait a while longer then,” Joe said grimly, his castle of hope toppled by Mary’s logic. “I must have been crazy to kick that suitcase out. But I couldn’t keep it here.”

“I’m going to look,” said Mary, darting from the kitchen toward the front of the house. Following her more slowly, Joe watched her pull the blind, saw her peer out the window, draw back, drop the blind, turn to face him.

“Joe!” she half-whispered. “Joe, it’s gone!”

“Let me see.” He took a quick look himself. Save for the empty ashcans the track had left behind, the sidewalk below the house was quite empty. He pulled back inside hurriedly.

“Quick, Joe!” Mary said. “He’s coming back.”

They darted back to the kitchen. They heard Hornung’s footsteps on the stairs, heard him enter the apartment, move past the kitchen down the hall. “Just checking thermostat in the back closet,” he explained. “Why in hell they had to put it there I’ll never know.”

Then he was with them in the kitchen. He said, stiffling a yawn, “It will take about half an hour. I’d better put some more records on. You kids need anything, just holler.”

Joe stared after him. At the moment, he didn’t know whether he wanted Hornung to be the fiend or just an interfering bystander. Either way, he and Mary were in grave danger. He wished he’d forced Mary to leave him alone with the suitcase right after he’d learned what was in it. He wished that he had—

But it was a little late for wishing.

While he was daydreaming, Mary had darted into the hall. A moment later, she reappeared, her face drained of color, her legs unsteady.

“Joe!” she said. “Joe, the hall closet. It was locked before.” Her voice was more a croak than a whisper. But it was urgent, terrified.

Joe slipped past her into the hall. The closet door was ajar. His eyes noted the thermostat gauge on the wall just inside the door. Then he looked down.

There it was, as if he had never left it at the bus stop, as if he had never pushed it out the window and watched it land on the sidewalk beneath. There it was, the bag, the suitcase, the carryall for half a dismembered corpse, the cause of all his trouble!

From somewhere in the distance, somewhere ridiculously far away, he half-heard the driving introduction to That’s A Plenty, the big Eddie Condon record with Bill Davison’s hard, brilliant trumpet. And with the sound, with sight of the suitcase, the baseless, optimistic theory he had built about Arthur Hornung’s innocence shattered to fragments.

No wonder the suitcase was gone from the sidewalk. Hornung had seen it there, over Joe’s shoulder. He had waited until the garbage-men were gone, biding his time, playing with them like a very unhungry cat, toying with a pair of mice for which it had no immediate appetite.

No wonder Hornung was in no hurry, Joe thought. After all, he had made his last kill only a few hours earlier. And according to the schedule of his past murders, he needed a body only once every three weeks.

But Hornung wouldn’t wait three weeks this time. He couldn’t. His retrieving the suitcase meant just one thing — he knew the two of them were aware of his real nature, his real identity. He would have to put them out of the way quickly, before they could get to the police.

But they couldn’t go to the police without risking Hornung’s framing them for the crimes he himself had committed. They couldn’t go to the police — because Hornung couldn’t afford to let them. He could not even frame them safely until they were dead.

Mary was in the kitchen, with nothing to protect her from a man who had already slaughtered six women to satisfy his mad impulse to kill. Even at this moment...

Joe Chance raced back to the kitchen. Mary was there, alone, unharmed, waiting for him. The music buried their voices.

“You saw it — the suitcase?” she asked.

He nodded. “Honey,” he said, “he’ll be coming in here any minute.” He looked around for a weapon, anything, that would serve as a weapon.

Mary handed him an old-fashioned rolling pin. “I found it back of the breadbox,” she whispered.

“Got breakfast started?” Hornung’s voice sounded just as it had sounded all night. Although Joe could not hear his footsteps above the jazz, he knew Hornung was coming. He gripped the rolling pin, gave Mary a push toward the hall door.

“Run!” he said. “I’ll stop him, slow him down with this.” He looked at the improvised weapon in his hand. “You saw the back door — open it, get out, run for help. It’s our only chance.”

“Oh, Joe!” she said.

But Mary went, darting around the corner out of sight just as Hornung appeared in the other door. He said, “You’re awfully quiet out here. I was wondering if you—”

Joe hit him with the rolling pin, just as hard as he could, right on the top of his head. Hornung made a funny noise and half-turned toward Joe, lifting his arms to ward off another blow. But he was too slow. Joe hit him again and then ran, leaving him sprawled on the kitchen linoleum.

Mary was still at the back door, sobbing a little as she wrestled with the lock. “I can’t get it open!” she gasped.

“Here!” Joe pushed her aside, found the spring catch under the old-fashioned lock, turned the bolt, swung the door open. “Out you go!” he cried, giving her a shove.

She moved only a few inches.

The doorway had been boarded up from the outside! And the music went driving on, louder and louder, building toward its climax.

Joe grabbed Mary, turned her around. If he had hit Hornung hard enough, they’d have time to make a break for it through the front door. Surely they could get the police back before Hornung could-destroy the evidence of the stained woman’s clothing, the suitcase, what was in it.

“Come on!” he urged, half-dragging her along with him. “Come on, hon!”

But Joe had not hit hard enough — or perhaps he had not placed his blows to do the most damage. Hornung stepped out of the kitchen in front of them, blocking their passage.

The mask of amiability had fallen, to be replaced by a cold, implacable fury from which the madman’s eyes blazed like the eyes of an angry great cat. He said something softly, inaudible above the hot, climactic chorus from the living room, but there was no mistaking the intent with which he lifted the heavy cleaver in his right hand.

At that moment, the music stopped — and Mary screamed. The sound gathered echoes of terror as it reverberated through the apartment.

As if in answer to her cry, there came a thunderous rap on the door. A gruff voice shouted. “Open up in there — police!”

Hornung took a step toward them, his blazing attention focussed on Joe. Then Mary screamed again. She broke and ran for the bedroom, sobbing. There was a shot from beyond the door, a second shot and the crackle of stout wood splintering under the impact of a bullet.

The door slammed open and Hornung leapt, with a welling redness on his chest, to face this new assault, his cleaver still uplifted to strike. The third shot crashed through the hallway and into him before his feet touched the floor.

During a long, slow, endless moment, Hornung stood there, a statue. Then, gently, he lowered the cleaver and seemed to squat as he laid it neatly on the hall carpet beside him. He said, “It’s still raining,” in a matter-of-fact voice. Then he collapsed and lay motionless, dead as mutton.

From the living room came the opening blasts of Muggsie Spanier playing Royal Garden Blues. Somebody shouted, “Turn that damned thing off!” — and the hall was full of uniforms and then, again, there was silence, except for heavy police footfalls and conversation.

A plainclothesman buttonholed Joe against the wall and said, “Do you happen to be Joe Chance?” And, when Joe nodded dumbly, “Where’s the girl? Is she okay?”

Joe pointed toward the bedroom. Then he asked, “How’d you know about us?”

“The girl’s aunt has been raising hell at the Charles Street Station all morning,” was the reply. Then, “Were you the one who tossed the suitcase out of the window? If you were, you done a good thing, boy.”

“Yeah, I did it,” said Joe, his eyes bewildered. Then, with mounting bewilderment, “But how could you have found it? He” — with a nod toward Arthur Hornung’s crumpled body — “brought it back. It’s in the closet there.”

“The garbage-men remembered it — they couldn’t get it in their disposal truck — and told us about it. Said they believed it looked exactly like the suitcase that had been found near the scene of the crime — with the hermit lady’s half a body in it.” The detective was all business. He moved quickly to the closet, brought out the suitcase, said to no one in particular, “I had a feeling the other bag would turn up — if we kept at it.”

He opened it, gingerly. The lid fell back and the interior was revealed. For a long moment the detective stared at the horror in the suitcase. Then a convulsive shudder seized him and he closed the lid hastily.

He looked at Joe and said, “You better go back there and see if you can quiet the girl. We’ll be wanting to ask you both some questions.”

“Sure,” said Joe. Now that the detective had mentioned the fact, he could hear Mary having hysterics. His mind was very busy with the story he would tell the cops.

He was quite sure that if he kept it simple he’d be off the hook. He and Mary had encountered the murderer accidentally, without suspecting any part of the truth at first, and the rest had followed as night follows day. There was nothing to tie him to the nightmare, now that Arthur Hornung was dead — and he had every right to keep what he knew about the affair all to himself.

A guy could be a good actor when he was putting on a performance for the only girl in the world — to keep her safe and secure and protected until they were both too old to dream.

He headed for the living room.

“It’s the other way,” said the detective.

“I know,” said Joe. “I just want to get my clarinet first.”