Seven Slayers

One, Two, Three

I’d been in Los Angeles waiting for this Healey to show for nearly a week. According to my steer, he’d taken a railroad company in Quebec for somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifty grand on a swarm of juggled options or something. That’s a nice neighborhood.

My information said further that he was headed west and that he dearly loved to play cards. I do, too.

I’ll take three off the top, please.

I missed him by about two hours in Chicago and spent the day going around to all the ticket offices, getting chummy with agents, finally found out Healey had bought a ticket to L A, so I fanned on out there and cooled.

Pass.

Sunday afternoon I ran into an op for Eastern Investigators, Inc., named Card, in the lobby of the Roosevelt. We had a couple drinks and talked about this and that. He was on the Coast looking for a gent named Healey. He was cagey about who the client was, but Eastern handles mostly missing persons, divorces, stuff like that.

Monday morning Card called me and said the Salt Lake branch of his outfit had located Healey in Caliente, Nevada. He said he thought I might like to know. I told him I wasn’t interested and thanked him and then I rented a car in a U Drive place and drove up to Caliente.

I got there about four in the afternoon and spotted Healey in the second joint I went into. He was sitting in a stud game with five of the home boys and if they were a fair sample of local talent I figured I had plenty of time.

Healey was a big man with a round cheery face, smooth pink skin. His mouth was loose and wet and his eyes were light blue. I think his eyes were the smallest I’ve ever seen. They were set very wide apart.

He won and lost pretty evenly, but the game wasn’t worth a nickel. The home boys were old-timers and played close to their vests and Healey’s luck was the only thing that kept him even. He finally scared two of them out of a seventy- or eighty-dollar pot and that made him feel so good that he got up and came over to the bar and ordered drinks for the boys at the table. He ordered lemonade for himself.

I said: “Excuse me, but haven’t I seen you around Lonnie Thompson’s in Detroit?” Lonnie makes a book and I had most of my dope on Healey from him.

He smiled and said: “Maybe,” and asked me what I drank.

I ordered whiskey.

He asked me if I’d been in town long and I said I’d just driven up from L A to look things over and that things didn’t look so hot and that I would probably drive back to L A that night or the next morning.

I bought him another lemonade and had another whiskey and we talked about Detroit. In a little while he went back to the table and sat down.

That was enough for a beginning. I had registered myself with him as one of the boys. I went out and drove a couple of blocks to the Pine Hotel and took a room. The Pine was practically the only hotel in town, but I flipped the register back a day or so and found Healey’s name to make sure. Then I went up and washed and lay down to smoke a cigarette and figure out the details.

According to Lonnie Thompson, Healey was a cash boy-carried his dough in paper and traveler’s cheques. I couldn’t be sure of that but it was enough. The point was to get him to L A and in to one or two or three places where I could work on him.

I guess I must have slept almost an hour because it was dark when I woke up. Somebody was knocking at the door and I got up and stumbled over and switched on the light and opened the door. I was too sleepy to take Healey big — I mumbled something about coming in and sitting down, and I went over to the basin and put some cold water on my face.

When I turned around he was sitting on the bed looking scared. I offered him a cigarette and he took it and his hand was shaking.

He said: “Sorry I woke you up like that.”

I said: “That’s all right,” and then he leaned forward and spoke in a very low voice:

“I’ve got to get out of here right away. I want to know how much it’s worth to you to take me down to Los Angeles.”

I almost fell off the chair. My first impulse was to yell, “Sure,” and drag him down to the car; but he was scared of something and when a man’s scared is a swell time to find out what it’s all about.

I stalled. I said: “Oh, that’s all right,” sort of hesitantly.

He said: “Listen... I got here Saturday morning. I was going to stay here long enough to establish residence and then apply for one of those quick divorces, under the Nevada law.

“My wife has been on my tail six weeks with a blackmail gag,” he went on. “She’s here. When I got back to the hotel a little while ago she came into my room and put on an act.”

I thought then I knew who Card’s client was.

“She came in this afternoon. She’s got the room next to mine.”

He was silent so long that I laughed a little and said: “So what?”

“I’ve got to duck, quick,” he went on. “She’s a bad actor. She came into my room and put on an act. She’s got a guy with her that’s supposed to be her brother and he’s a bad actor, too. You said you were going to drive back to L A. I saw your name on the register when I came in and I thought you might take me along. I can’t rent a car here and there isn’t a train till midnight.”

He pulled the biggest roll I ever saw out of his pocket and skimmed off a couple notes. “If it’s a question of money...”

I shook my head with what I hoped was a suggestion of dignity. I said: “I’d decided to go back myself tonight. It will be a pleasure to take you, Mister Healey,” and I got up and put on my coat. “How about your stuff?”

He looked blank until I said: “Luggage,” and then he said: “That’s all right — I’ll leave it.” He smiled again. “I travel light.”

At the top of the stairs he whispered: “This is sure a big lift.” Then he remembered that he had to sneak up to his room to get something and said he’d meet me at the car. I told him where it was. He said he’d paid his hotel bill.

I went on downstairs and checked out.

My car was wedged in between a Ford truck and a light-blue Chrysler roadster. There was plenty of room ahead of the roadster, so I went up and snapped off the hand-brake and pushed it ahead about eight feet. Then I got into my car and leaned back and waited.

The whole layout looked pretty bad, what with him scared to death of a deal he admitted was blackmail and all. He said he didn’t want his luggage and then, right on top of it, he had to go up to his room to get something. That would be taking a chance on running into the wife again. I wondered if she was his wife.

I couldn’t figure out how a wife could blackmail a husband while she was jumping from state to state with a man who was “supposed” to be her brother; but then almost anything is possible in Nevada.

After about five minutes I began to get nervous. I opened the door of the car and stepped out on the sidewalk, and as I closed the door there were five shots close together some place upstairs in the hotel.

I can take trouble or leave it alone; only I always take it. Like a sap, I went into the hotel.

The clerk was a big blond kid with glasses. He came out from behind the counter as I went in the door; we went upstairs together, two or three at a time.

There was a man in long woolly underwear standing in the corridor on the third floor and he pointed to a door and we went in. Healey was lying flat on his face in the middle of the room, and beyond him, close to the wall, was the body of a woman, also face downward.

The clerk turned a beautiful shade of green; he stood there staring at Healey. I went over and rolled the woman over on her back. She couldn’t have been much over twenty-two or three; little, gray-eyed, blonde. There was a knife in her side, under the arm. There was a .38 automatic near her outstretched hand. She was very dead.

The man in the woolly underwear peeked in and then hurried across the hall and into another room. I could hear him yelling the news to somebody there.

I went over and tapped the clerk on the shoulder and pointed at the girl. The clerk swallowed a couple of times, said: “Miss Mackay,” and looked back at Healey. He was hypnotized by the way Healey’s back looked. Hamburger.

Then about two dozen people came into the room all at once.

The sheriff had been in the pool-hall across the street. He rolled Healey over and said: “This is Mister Healey,” as if he’d made a great discovery.

I said: “Uh-huh. He’s been shot.”

I guess the sheriff didn’t like the way I said it very well. He glanced at the clerk and then asked me who I was. I told him my name and the clerk nodded and the sheriff scratched his head and went over and looked at the girl. I wanted to say that she’d been knifed, but I restrained myself.

Shaggy underwear was back with his pants on. He said he hadn’t heard anything except somebody swearing and then, suddenly, the shots.

I asked him how long after the shots it had been when he came into the corridor and he said he wasn’t sure, but it was somewhere around half a minute.

The first interesting thing that turned up was that it wasn’t Healey’s room — it was Miss Mackay’s room. His was next door. That probably meant that Healey had deliberately gone into her room; that she hadn’t surprised him in his room while he was getting something he’d forgotten.

Number two was that the knife was Healey’s. Half a dozen people had seen him with it. It was an oversize jack-knife with a seven-inch blade — one of the kind that snaps open when you press a spring. Somebody said Healey had a habit of playing mumblety-peg with it when he was trying to out-sit a raise or scare somebody into splitting a pot.

Number three was the topper. The dough was gone. The sheriff and a couple of deputies searched Healey and went through both rooms with a fine-tooth comb. They weren’t looking for big money because they didn’t know about it; they were looking for evidence.

All they found on Healey were four hundred-dollar bills tucked into his watch pocket, and the usual keys, cigarettes, whatnot. There were no letters or papers of any kind. There was one big suitcase in his room and it was full of dirty clothes. The roll he’d flashed on me was gone.

In the next half-hour I found out a lot of things. The girl had come to the hotel alone. No one else had checked in that day, except myself. The door to the girl’s room was about twenty feet from the top of the back stairs and there was a side-door to the hotel that they didn’t lock until ten o’clock.

It looked like a cinch for the man Healey had told me about, the one who was supposed to be Miss Mackay’s brother.

Healey had probably gone upstairs to take care of the girl. I knew that his being scared of her was on the level because I know bona-fide fear when I see it. She evidently had plenty on him. He’d arranged his getaway with me and then gone up to carve the girl, shut her up forever.

The alleged brother had come in the side-door and had walked in on the knife act and opened up Healey’s back with the automatic at about six feet.

Then he’d grabbed the roll and whatever else Healey had in his pocket that was of any value — maybe a book of traveler’s cheques — had tossed the gun on the floor and screwed back down the back stairway and out the side-door. Something like that. It wasn’t entirely plausible, but it was all I could figure right then.

By the time I’d figured that much out the sheriff had it all settled that Healey had knifed the girl and then she’d plugged him five times, in a ten-inch square in his back. With about three inches of steel in her heart.

That was what the sheriff said so I let it go. They didn’t know about the brother and I didn’t want to complicate their case for them. And I did want a chance to look for that roll without interference.

When I got out to the car the blue Chrysler was gone. That wasn’t important except that I wondered who had been going away from the hotel when it looked like everybody in town was there or on the way there.

I didn’t get much information at the station. The agent said he’d just come on duty; the telegraph operator had been there all afternoon but he was out to supper. I found him in a lunch-room across the street and he said there’d been a half-dozen or so people get off the afternoon train from Salt Lake; but the girl had been alone and he wasn’t sure who the other people had been except three of four home-towners. That was no good.

I tried to find somebody else who had been in the station when the train came in but didn’t have any luck. They couldn’t remember.

I went back to the car and that made me think about the blue Chrysler again. It was just possible that the Mackay girl had come down from Salt Lake by rail, and the boy-friend or brother or whatever he was had driven down. It didn’t look particularly sensible but it was an idea. Maybe they didn’t want to appear to be traveling together or something.

I stopped at all the garages and gas-stations I could find but I couldn’t get a line on the Chrysler. I went back to the hotel and looked at the register and found out that Miss Mackay had put down Chicago as her home, and I finagled around for a half hour and talked to the sheriff and the clerk and everybody who looked like they wanted to talk but I didn’t get any more angles.

The sheriff said he’d wired Chicago because it looked like Healey and Miss Mackay were both from Chicago, and that he’d found a letter in one of Healey’s old coats from a Chicago attorney. The letter was about a divorce, and the sheriff had a hunch that Miss Mackay was Mrs. Healey.

I had a sandwich and a piece of pie in the hotel restaurant and bundled up and went out and got in the car and started for L A.

I didn’t get up till around eleven o’clock Tuesday morning. I had breakfast in my room and wired a connection in Chi to send me all he could get on Miss Mackay and her brother. I called the desk and got the number of Card’s room and on the way down stopped in to see him.

He was sitting in his nightshirt by the window, reading the morning papers. I sat down and asked him how he was enjoying his vacation and he said swell, and then he said: “I see by the papers that our friend Healey had an accident.”

I nodded.

Card chuckled: “Tch, tch, tch. His wife will sure be cut up.”

I smiled a little and said, “Uh-huh,” and Card looked up and said: “What the hell are you grinning about and what do you mean: Uh-huh?”

I told him that according to my paper Mrs. Healey was the lady who had rubbed Healey — the lady who was on her way back East in a box.

Card shook his head intelligently and said: “Wrong. That one was an extra. Mrs. Healey is alive and kicking and one of the sweetest dishes God ever made.”

I could see that he was going to get romantic so I waited and he told me that Mrs. Healey had been the agency’s client in the East and that she’d come in from Chicago Monday morning by plane and that he’d met her in the agency office, and then he went on for five or ten minutes about the color of her eyes and the way she wore her hair, and everything.

Card was pretty much of a ladies’ man. He told it with gestures.

Along with the poetry he worked in the information that Mrs. Healey, as he figured it, had had some trouble with Healey and that they’d split up and that she wanted to straighten it all out. That was the reason she’d wired the Salt Lake office of his agency to locate Healey. And almost as soon as they’d found Healey he’d shoved off for L A and the agency had wired her in Chicago to that effect. She’d arrived the morning Healey had been spotted in Caliente and had decided to wait in L A for him.

Card said he had helped her find an apartment. He supposed the agency had called her up and told her the bad news about Healey. He acted like he was thinking a little while and then asked me if I didn’t think he ought to go over and see if he could help her in any way. “Comfort her in her bereavement,” was the way he put it.

I said: “Sure — we’ll both go.”

Card didn’t go for that very big, but I told him that my having been such a pal of Healey’s made it all right.

We went.

Mrs. Healey turned out a great deal better than I had expected from Card’s glowing description. As a matter of fact she was swell. She was very dark, with dark blue eyes and blue-black hair; her clothes were very well done and her voice was cultivated, deep. When she acknowledged Card’s half-stammered introduction, inclined her head towards me and asked us to sit down, I saw that she had been crying.

Card had done pretty well in the way of helping her find an apartment. It was a big luxurious duplex in the Garden Court on Kenmore.

She smiled at Card. “It’s very nice of you gentlemen to call,” she said.

I said we wanted her to know how sorry we were about it all and that I had known Healey in Detroit, and if there was anything we could do — that sort of thing.

There wasn’t much else to say. There wasn’t much else said.

She asked Card to forgive her for bothering him so much the previous evening with her calls, but that she’d been nervous and worried and kept thinking that maybe Healey had arrived in L A after the agency was closed and that she hadn’t been notified. They’d been watching the trains of course.

Card said that was all right and got red and stammered some more. He was stunned by the lady. So was I. She was a pip.

She said she thought she’d stay in California and she told us delicately that she’d made arrangements for Healey’s body to be shipped to his folks in Detroit.

Finally I said we’d better go and Card nodded and we got up. She thanked us again for corning and a maid helped us with our coats and we left.

Card said he had to go downtown so I took a cab and went back to the hotel. There was a wire from Chicago:

I got the number of Raines’ real estate office from the telephone book and took a cab and went down and looked it over. I didn’t go in. Then I told the driver to take me to the Selwyn Apartments on Beverly Boulevard. That was the place the telephone book had listed as Raines’ residence.

It took a half-hour of jabbering about spark plugs with the Bohunk in the Selwyn garage to find out that Mister Raines had gone out about ten o’clock with another gentleman, and what Mister Raines looked like and what kind of a car he drove. The gentleman who had been with him was tailor maybe he was short. Or maybe it had been a lady. The Bohunk wasn’t sure.

I jockeyed the cab around to a good spot in the cross street and went into the drug-store on the opposite corner and drank Coca-Colas. Along about the fifth Coca-Cola the car I was looking for pulled up in front of the Selwyn. A medium-sized middle-aged man who I figured to be the brother got out of the driver’s seat and went into the apartment house. The other man in the car moved over into the driver’s seat and started west on Beverly. By that time I was back in the cab and after him.

Of course I couldn’t he sure it was Raines. It looked like a little man. I had to take that chance.

We followed the car out Beverly to Western, up Western. I wondered what had become of the blue Chrysler. Then we drew up close behind Raines’ car at an intersection and I nearly fell out the window. The man in the car ahead turned around and looked back; we looked smack at one another for five seconds.

I’d seen him before! I’d seen him the night before in Miss Mackay’s room at the Pine Hotel in Caliente! He’d been one of the raft of people who’d busted in with the Sheriff and stood around ah-ing and oh-ing. The man had guts. He’d come in while Healey and the girl were still warm to see what a neat job he’d done.

The traffic bell rang and I knew he’d recognized me, too. He went across that intersection like a bat out of hell, up Western to Fountain.

He lost us on Fountain. I talked to my driver like a father. I got down on my knees and begged him to keep that car in sight. I called him all the Portuguese pet-names I could think of and made up a few new ones, but Raines ran away from us on Fountain.

On the way back to the hotel I stopped at the Hollywood Branch of the Automobile Club and had a friend of mine look up the license number of the car. Of course it was the brother’s car, in the brother’s name. That didn’t get me anywhere. I was pretty sure Raines wouldn’t go back to his brother’s place now that he knew I’d spotted him; and it was a cinch he wouldn’t use that car very long.

He didn’t know what I wanted. He might figure me for a dick and scram out of L A — out of the country. I sat in my room at the hotel and thought soft thoughts about what a chump I’d been not to go to him directly when he’d stopped with his brother in front of the Selwyn, and the speed of taxi-cabs as compared to automobiles — things like that. It looked like the Healey case was all washed up as far as I was concerned.

I went out about five o’clock and walked. I walked down one side of Hollywood Boulevard to Bronson and back up the other side to Vine and went into the U Drive joint and rented the car again. I was nervous and jumpy and disgusted, and the best way for me to get over feeling that way is to drive it off.

I drove out through Cahuenga Pass a ways and then I had an idea and drove back to the Selwyn Apartments. The idea wasn’t any good. William Raines told the clerk to send me up and he asked me what he could do for me and smiled and offered me a drink.

I said I wanted to get in touch with his brother on a deal that would do us both a lot of good. He said his brother was in Chicago and that he hadn’t seen him for two years. I didn’t tell him he was a liar. It wouldn’t have done any good. I thanked him and went back down to the car.

I drove down to L A and had dinner in a Chinese place. Then I went back by the Santa Fe and found out about trains — I figured on going back to New York the next day.

On the way back to Hollywood I drove by the Garden Court. Not for any particular reason — I thought about Mrs. Healey and it wasn’t much out of the way.

The blue Chrysler was sitting squarely across the street from the entrance.

I parked up the street a little way and got out and went back to be sure. I lit a match and looked at the card on the steering column; the car was registered to another U Drive place, downtown, on South Hope.

I went across the street and walked by the desk with my nose in the air. The Spick elevator boy didn’t even look at the folded bill I slipped him; he grinned self-consciously and said that a little red-haired man had gone up to four just a couple minutes ago. Mrs. Healey was on four and there were only three apartments on a floor.

I listened at the door but could only hear a confused buzz that sounded like fast conversation. I turned the knob very slowly and put a little weight against the door. It was locked. I went down to the end of the hall and went out as quietly as possible through a double door to a fire-escape platform. By standing outside the railing and holding on with one hand and leaning far out I could see into the dining-room of Mrs. Healey’s apartment, could see a couple inches of the door that led, as well as I could remember, into the drawing-room. It was closed.

There is nothing that makes you feel quite so simple as hanging on a fire-escape, trying to look into a window. Particularly when you can’t see anything through the window. After a few minutes I gave it up and climbed back over the railing.

I half sat on the railing and tried to figure things out. What business would the guy who shot Healey have with Mrs. Healey? Did the blackmail angle that Raines and Mackay had hold over Healey cover Mrs. Healey, too? Was Raines milking his lowdown for all it was worth? It was too deep for me.

I went back into the hall and listened at the door again. They were a little louder but not loud enough to do me any good. I went around a bend in the hall to what I figured to be the kitchen-door and gave it the slow turn and it opened. I mentally kicked myself for wasting time on the fire-escape, tiptoed into the dark kitchen and closed the door.

It suddenly occurred to me that I was in a quaint spot if somebody should come in. What the hell business did I have there! I fixed that, to myself, with some kind of vague slant about protecting Mrs. Healey and edged over to the door, through to the room I’d been looking into from the fire-escape.

The door into the drawing-room was one of those pasteboard arrangements that might just as well not be there. The first thing I heard was a small, suppressed scream like somebody had smacked a hand over somebody else’s mouth, and then something like a piece of furniture being tipped over. It was a cinch someone was fighting in there, quietly — or as quietly as possible.

There wasn’t much time to think about whether I was doing the right thing or not. If I’d thought about it I’d probably have been wrong, anyway. I turned the knob, swung the door open.

Mrs. Healey was standing against the far wall. She was standing flat against the wall with one hand up to her mouth. Her eyes were very wide.

There were two men locked together on the floor near the central table and as I came in they rolled over a turn or so and one broke away and scrambled to his feet. It was Raines. He dived after a nickel-plated revolver that was lying on the floor on the far side of the table, and the other man, who had risen to his knees, dived after it, too. The other man was Card.

He beat Raines by a hair but Raines was on his feet; he kicked the gun out of Card’s hand, halfway across the room. Card grabbed his leg and pulled him down and they went round and round again. They fought very quietly; all you could hear was the sound of heavy breathing and an occasional bump.

I went over and picked up the gun and stooped over the mess of arms and legs and picked out Raines’ red head and took hold of the barrel of the gun. I took dead aim and let Raines have it back of the ear. He relaxed.

Card got up slowly. He ran his fingers through his hair and jiggled his shoulders around to straighten his coat and grinned foolishly.

I said: “Fancy, meeting you here.”

I turned around and looked at Mrs. Healey. She was still standing against the wall with her hand across her mouth. Then the ceiling fell down on top of my head and everything got dark very suddenly.

Darkness was around me when I opened my eyes, but I could see the outlines of a window and I could hear someone breathing somewhere near me. I don’t know how long I was out. I sat up and my head felt like it was going to explode; Flay down again and closed my eyes.

After a while I tried it again and it was a little better. I crawled towards what I figured to be a door and ran into the wall and I got up on my feet and felt along the wall until I found the light switch.

Raines was lying in the same place I’d smacked him, but his hands and feet were tied with a length of clothes-line and there was a red, white and blue silk handkerchief jammed into his mouth. His eyes were open and he looked at me with an expression that I can only describe as bitter amusement.

Card was lying belly-down on the floor near the door into the dining-room. He was the hard breather I’d heard in the darkness. He was still out.

I ungagged Raines and sat down. I kept having the feeling that my head was going to blow up. It was a very unpleasant feeling.

In a little while Raines got his jaws limbered up and started talking. The first thing he said was: “What a bright boy you turned out to be!” I was too sick to know very much about what that meant — or care.

He went on like that for some time, talking in a high, squeaky voice, and the idea gradually filtered through the large balloon-shaped ache that my head had turned into.

It seems that Raines and the Mackay gal had juggled Healey into a swell spot. One of their angles was that Healey, in an expansive moment, had entirely forgotten about Mrs. Healey and married Miss Mackay. They had a lot of material besides; everything from the Mann Act to mayhem. When he’d made the hundred and fifty grand lick in Quebec they’d jumped him in Chicago.

Healey had ducked out of Chi and they’d tailed him, first to Salt Lake, then to Caliente. Monday night, Raines had helped Mackay put on the act in the hotel that Healey had told me about.

Raines hadn’t got off the train with her or checked into the hotel with her because they didn’t want to be seen together in case anything went wrong, but he ducked up that handy back stairway and they’d given Healey the act, showing him exactly the color and size of the spot they had him on.

Then, when Healey came down to my room, Raines had gone down and planted across the street in case Healey tried to powder.

Raines hadn’t been there five minutes before Mrs. Healey and a man rolled up in the blue Chrysler. Raines recognized Mrs. Healey because she’d spotted Healey with Miss Mackay and Raines in a cabaret in Chicago once and crowned Miss Mackay with a beer bottle. It seems Mrs. Healey was a nice quiet girl.

They parked in front of the hotel and the man went in a minute, probably to buy a cigar and get a peek at the register. Then he came out and talked to Mrs. Healey a little while and went back in the little alleyway that led to the side door. He was only there a minute; he probably found out that it was practical to go into the hotel that way and came back and told her.

Along about that time in Raines’ yarn I woke up to the fact that he was referring to the man who was with Mrs. Healey as “this guy.” I opened my eyes and looked at him and he was looking at Card.

Card had stayed in the car while Mrs. Healey went back through the alleyway and into the hotel. After a couple minutes he got nervous and got out and walked up the street a little ways, and Raines went across the street and went upstairs to find out what it was all about. That must have been about the time I was checking out.

Card must have been coming back down the other side of the street and he saw me come out and finagle with his car and get into mine, and he stayed away until hell started popping upstairs and I went into the hotel.

Raines stopped a minute. I got up and went over and rolled Card over on his back. He groaned and opened his eyes and blinked up at me and then he sat up slowly and leaned against the wall.

Raines said Mrs. Healey must have tried Healey’s door and then waited till Healey came up the front stairway after he left me, and she ducked around a corner and watched Healey go into Mackay’s room. By that time Raines was at the top of the back stairway and he watched Mrs. Healey take a gun out of her bag and go down and listen at Miss Mackay’s door. When Healey opened the door after whittling Mackay, she backed him into the room and closed the door. Raines said she probably told him a few pertinent truths about himself and relieved him of what was left of the hundred and fifty and then opened him up with the .38.

It was a swell spot for her, with the Mackay gal there with a knife in her heart. Raines said he figured she’d intended to rub Healey from the start, before he could divorce her — Healey had said she’d sworn to kill him, before he left Chicago. A nice quiet girl — Mrs. Healey. A lady.

She’d dodged Raines on the stairs and he’d chased her down to the car, but by that time Card was back in the car with the engine running and they’d shoved off fast. Then Raines had come back up with the sheriff and his gang to look things over. That’s where I’d seen him.

He’d taken the midnight train for L A and it had taken him all day Tuesday to locate Mrs. Healey. He’d been putting the screws on her and Card for a split of the important money and Card had gone into a wrestling number with him just before I arrived.

By the time Raines had got all that out of his system Card was sitting up straight with his mouth open and his hands moving around fast and that dumb, thoughtful look on his face as if he wanted to say something. When Raines stopped to breathe, Card said that the lady had talked him into driving her up to Caliente because she said she was too nervous to wait for Healey in L A — she said she had to see Healey and try to make their scrap up right away, or she’d have a nervous breakdown or something and Card — the big chump — fell for it.

He said he was the most surprised man in the world when the shooting started, and that when she came galloping down and they scrammed for L A she’d told him that she’d walked in on Mackay ventilating Healey, just like the sheriff said, and that Mackay had shot at her as she ran away. Card had fallen for that, too. She had the poor sap hypnotized.

Card knew I’d been up at Caliente, of course — he’d seen me; so when I walked into his place in the morning he’d figured I had some kind of slant on what it was all about and he’d taken me over to her place so they could put on their “comfort her in her bereavement” turn for my benefit. Then, Tuesday night, when I’d walked in on the shakedown and knocked Raines out, Card, who had had a load of what Raines had to say to Mrs. Healey and who half believed it, calculated that his best play was to take the air with her. He was too much-mixed up in it to beat an accessory rap anyway, so he’d sapped me with a bookend and they’d tied Raines, who was coming to, and he’d helped her pack her things. They were going to light out for New Zealand or some quiet place like that; only she’d sneaked up behind him and smacked him down at the last minute. A lovely lady.

We all stopped talking about that time — Raines and Card and me — and looked at one another.

Card laughed. He squinted at me and said: “You looked silly when I clipped you with the bookend!”

Raines said: “You didn’t look particularly intelligent when our girl-friend let you have it.”

Card snickered on the wrong side of his face and got up and went out into the kitchen for a drink of water. He found a bottle out there — almost a full fifth of White Horse. He brought it in, I untied Raines and we all had a snort.

I was thinking about what suckers we’d been. I’d popped Raines and Card had popped me and Mrs. Healey had popped Card — all of us. One, two, three. Tinker to Evers to Chance — only more so.

I think we were all pretty washed up with La Belle Healey. It was a cinch Card wouldn’t want any more of her. I don’t know about Raines, but I know I didn’t.

We finished the bottle and Raines snooped around and found a full one and we did a little business with that.

I didn’t find out I had a concussion till next morning. I was a week and two days in the hospital at twenty dollars a day, and the doctor nicked me two-fifty. He’ll get the rest of it when he catches me.

The whole Healey play, what with one thing and another, cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a grand. I got a lame skull and about two-bits’ worth of fun out of it. I pass.