Solomon's Vineyard

“Nothing.” I got a fifty-dollar bill out of my wallet. “Get a hammer and some nails.” He hesitated and I shoved the fifty at him. His eyes bulged out. He got the hammer and the nails. “Be fixing something,” I said. He looked around the room. “What'll I fix?” I picked up a chair and jerked the back off it. “Here.” He began to work on it, pounding hard. I hid the pistol under a towel, and then I sat on the rubbing table and began to talk. “There they were with sixty seconds to play,” I said, “and Duke leading three to nothing, and me with one hundred smackers on California. So what do I do? I say to Fritz: 'I'll pay the bet off fifty cents on the dollar.' And Fritz says 'Okay'.”

I looked up, very surprised, as the room clerk and a uniformed cop came running into the room. They stopped when they saw the Finn hammering at the chair. “What's this?” I said.

The clerk turned to me. “Oh, Mr. Craven.” He giggled. “The awfullest thing. I thought I heard shots down here.”

“We didn't hear 'em,” I said, looking at the Finn. “I guess he's been making too much noise.”

The Finn pounded in a nail. The clerk giggled. The policeman snorted and said: “And me eating my lunch.” They went out. I slid off the table and went into the steam room.

I had been scared to death he was going to come to while the cop was around, but I needn't have worried. He was still out, lying on the stone floor just where I left him. I went over and looked down at him. At first I didn't recognize him, and then I did. It was the punk who had brought me the message from Carmel. The one who'd sat at the coffee-shop counter with me. His face was white and “pinched-looking. I didn't know if the steam made him look that way, or the knock on the head. I hauled him out of the steam room. The Finn took off his clothes and I stuck him under a cold shower. That brought him around. He spluttered and gasped, trying to get his breath. He was a little guy, not over a hundred and thirty pounds, and very thin. I could see his ribs. I tossed him a towel. “Now, what's the great idea?” I asked. The punk looked scared, but he said: “There isn't any.”

“You took those shots at me just for the hell of it?”

“No.”

“Well, then; why?”

The punk didn't answer, just stood by the shower with the towel draped around him. I saw this wasn't getting me very far.

“What makes you think your sister's dead?” I asked. He wouldn't say.

“Look,” I said. “I wouldn't kill her. She was a friend. I liked her.”

He stared at me for a minute, still angry, and then he began to cry. “She was all I had,” he gasped between sobs. I thought, well, for God's sake! I called to the Finn and told him to get us a couple of drinks. The punk cried, leaning against the wall, holding the towel around him, until the drinks came. The Finn had gotten rye with ginger ale. I made the punk drink his. After a while he stopped crying.

“Now tell me about it,” I said.

It took quite a while to get him talking. I showed him a card that said I was a special investigator for the Treasury Department, but what really did it was my not being sore because he'd tried to kill me. He said he guessed he had been mistaken. He said he was sorry.

“What makes you think your sister's dead?” I asked again.

“I know.” He began to breathe hard. “I saw her body.”

“The hell!” I yelled for the Finn. “Bring the bottle this time,” I told him.

The Finn went for the rye. “Where'd you see her?” I asked the kid.

“She's-her body's-at an undertaker's in 'Valley.”

I remembered something I'd seen in the paper. I went into the steam room and brought out the paper. It was wet, but the print hadn't smeared. I found the story I was thinking about on page six.

Valley, Aug to.-The nearly nude body of a young woman, presumably beaten to death, was found early today in a ditch by the Daniel Boone Pike. A pretty brunette about twenty-five years old, she had no marks of identification on her. She was clad only in silk stockings and underclothes. It is believed she was thrown from a passing car.

Valley was a village about sixty miles towards St Louis from Paulton. It was a couple of counties away. I showed the item to the punk.

“Yes.”

“What a bad break,” I said.

I thought it was a bad break. She had been a nice little whore, and she had helped me. She had helped me! I began to feel creepy.

“How did you link me with her?” I asked. “They told me at the house you were looking for her yesterday... pretty sore about something.” The punk was crying. “So I added two and two.”

“And got six,” I said.

“Maybe.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I'm doing a job of work here.” I flashed the Treasury card at him again. “I wasn't sore at her. I was sore because they wouldn't tell me where she was.”

“The Negro girl wouldn't?”

“Nobody would. So I got sore. You see the wreckage?”

The punk nodded.

“Well,” I said, “I finally found she'd gone out with... somebody.”

He'd stopped crying. “Who?”

“First you do some talking.”

“All right.”

The Finn came with the bottle of rye. I poured a good slug in the punk's glass. “Drink.” He gulped it down.

“How'd you find she was in Valley?” I asked. He shook his head, and I asked: “Do you want me to turn you in?”

“I don't care.”

“Attempted murder's a tough rap. Come on. Who told you?”

“Ginger,” he said. “She called me up. Yesterday afternoon. I wouldn't believe her. But she said to go to Valley. 'Just go,' she said. So I did.”

“Did Ginger mention me?”

“No.” He shook his head, thinking. “But when I told them at the house they said it must have been you.”

“They would say that. But why did you think I'd killed Carmel?”

“I don't know.”

“Did Ginger say how she knew where she was?”

“No.”

I poured us both some rye. I drank mine and filled the glass again. “At the house,” I said, “they told me she'd gone with Chief Piper.”

“So that's...” the kid began.

“Wait a second. Ginger's a friend of Pug Banta's. And so's the chief. But Ginger isn't a friend of the chief. Can you add that up?”

“No.”

“It's not so tough.” I took a drink of the rye. “Pug thought Carmel had spilled some dope to me. And he knew she wouldn't come out to meet him.”

He nodded his head. “That's right.”

“So he got Chief Piper to call her. And when she came, Pug took her.”

“Yeah?” He was a little doubtful.

“Sure. And after he killed her, he gave it away to Ginger. Maybe by accident. And she called you, being sorry for your sister.”

I took a shower while he thought this over. The sweat from the steam room had begun to get sticky. I decided to forget the rub down. I wanted to go where I could do some heavy thinking. It seemed to me things were a little out of control. The poor goddam whore! At that, maybe she was better off dead. When I came out, the punk was putting on his clothes.

“Where're you going?”

“To find Pug.”

“That's no good. Pug's too tough. Besides, we don't know for sure if he did it.”

“I know.”

“Just a little while ago you thought it was me.”

That stopped him.

“Have you claimed her yet?”

“No.”

“Do that first. Give me some time to look around. I'll work out something. Where do you want to have her buried?”

“At home, I guess.”

“Where's that?”

“Temple.”

Temple was another little town about a hundred miles the other way from Valley. “You got the dough?” I asked.

“I don't know.”

“Here.” I got a couple of hundreds out of my wallet. “This will help. Let me know what you do.”

“Well, thanks....”

“Forget it,” I said.

I took a cab down to the red-brick County Building and went up to the second floor where the records were kept. Half drawn blue blinds made the record room gloomy. An old clerk with thin white hair and the palsy got me the records I wanted. It looked as though McGee had told me the truth. Tony's was owned by Thomas McGee. So was the Arkady Hotel. And the Silver Grove, a dance hall. And the Ship, Paulton's only cabaret.

“One more.” I told the old clerk. “Five hundred and sixty-nine Green Street.”

That was the whorehouse. He brought me the papers. The owner was Thomas McGee.

At the hotel there was a message from Western Union. They had the money order. I went down and identified myself and the girl gave me a cheque for a thousand. I had her call the bank, and then I went around and cashed the cheque. That gave me more than five thousand in cash. I felt like getting drunk.

Instead I went to a jewellery store just off Main Street. “Something nice for a lady,” I told the salesman.

“What sort of a present?” he asked. “A bracelet?”

“Sure,” I said.

He pulled out a tray of bracelets and put it on the glass counter. They looked cheap. There was a lot of gold and coloured glass and fake diamonds. “How much?”

“They range from five to twenty-five.”

“Oh, hell! Something fancier than that.”

He brought out another tray. The stuff didn't look much better. The clerk was fat, and sweat ran off his face. It made me hot to look at him. I wiped my face with a handkerchief.

“Now this one is nice,” he said, holding up one with big gold links. “Solid gold.”

In another part of the showcase I saw a honey. It was wide, and it was made of what looked like diamonds and square-cut sapphires. I pointed at it.

“How much?”

“Seventy-five. It's a very fine imitation.”

“Wrap it up.”

I counted out the money. Then I got a card and wrote: “Baby, why be sore at me?”

I took the parcel and went back to the hotel. I gave the parcel to the giggly desk clerk.

“Give this to Ginger.”

“I certainly will, Mr. Craven,” he said. “The very minute she comes in.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

IN THE LOBBY I found the card on which I'd written the name of Oke Johnson's friend. Carter Jeliff. I looked him up in the phone book. He was a butcher, and he lived at 987 Oak Street. I thought Carter Jeliff was a flossy name for a butcher.

I got a cab and rode out to Oak Street. It was hot outdoors, but big trees shaded the street. There were cool places under the trees. I wondered about Jeliff. Oke Johnson was a sour bastard; he didn't make friends with anybody unless there was something in it for him. I didn't see why he'd be fooling around with a butcher.

^ I told the driver to wait. Mrs. Jeliff came to the door. “He's in the garden,” she said.

Jeliff looked the way all butchers should look. He was big, almost as big as me, but not so tall, and he had a face like a ham. He was a blond. He was watering some tomato vines. I told him my name and said I was a friend of Oke Johnson's. He said he was glad to see me, and wasn't it too bad about poor Oke? I said it was.

He turned off the water and asked me if I'd like a beer. I said sure. We went down in the cellar. It was dark and cool. He got two quart bottles of beer out of a washtub and opened them.

“This is where I spend Sunday,” he said.

There were at least two dozen quarts of beer in the tub, and a cake of ice. I wondered if he drank them all himself. He said Prosit! and we drank, sitting in a couple of wicker chairs.

He didn't look like a guy you could buy information from; he looked honest. I told him I was a private detective. I told him I was interested in Oke Johnson's death. Was there anything he knew about it?

He grinned at me. “Do you think I did it?”

“Hell, no. I just found out he was friendly with you. That's all.”

He said that relieved him. He chuckled a little at his joke. Then he got serious. He said he'd noticed one thing. “Oke was nervous about something.”

“What?”

“He never told me. But I knew. He was afraid of strangers, and one night he said he thought he was being followed.”

“Was he?”

“I don't know.”

“Did he ever tell you what he was doing?”

“No.”

This didn't seem to be going anywhere. We had two more bottles of beer while I tried more questions. I began to feel fine; the beer and the cellar were so cool.

“Look,” I said. “Oke wasn't a very friendly guy.”

“He seemed friendly enough to me.”

“Maybe because he wanted to get something out of you.”

He thought that over. “That's a blow,” he said, grinning.

“Did he ever question you about anything?”

“Only about the butcher business.”

The hell! I thought. The butcher business. That had a lot to do with a murder case. I kept on, though.

“In what way?” I asked.

“Well!” He thought for a minute. “He seemed to be interested in the meat I sell the Vineyard.”

“You supply them?”

“No. I just sell 'em left-overs. Anything I can't use. They pay a good price, too.”

I began to get excited. “Who pays you for 'em?”

“Brother Joseph.”

That was why Oke had been friendly with Jeliff. Meat for the Vineyard. I had hit on something. I felt good until I had another thought: Why was Oke interested in the meat?

Jeliff didn't know the answer. All he knew was he delivered meat to Brother Joseph at the Elder's house once a week. It didn't matter how badly spoiled it was; Brother Joseph paid for it just the same.

“If they're crazy out there,” he asked, “should I care?”

I finished the beer and thanked him and said goodbye. It felt twice as hot outside after being in the cellar. I got in the cab. All the way back to the hotel I tried to figure why Oke had been interested in the meat delivered to the Vineyard. I didn't get the answer.

I had a four-pound steak for lunch. I couldn't seem to get enough meat. My system craved it all the time. Rare meat. I had it served in my room. For some reason I didn't feel comfortable outside. I ate the steak lying down.

When the waiter took away the table, I stayed on the bed and read Black Mask. My belly was full of meat. A hot wind blew in the window and I began to sweat. I felt tired again. I thought back and figured I'd had seven hours' sleep in the last three days. I decided a bath and a nap would do me good. I got up and undressed. I found myself ducking every time I passed the windows. I peeked out. They looked down on Main Street, and there were no tall buildings near. No guy would shoot at me from Main Street. Just the same I pulled the curtains.

I filled the tub with cold water and lay in it for a long time. I thought it was funny I should be spooky. Maybe it was the kid trying to shoot me. I'd never feel good in a steam room again. I tried to think about the Vineyard's meat. Slightly decayed meat. What the hell would anybody want that for?

I thought about the Princess. Maybe she could tell me about the meat. I was to see her again tonight. It was to be a regular nightly custom. Well, it was a great experience. I wondered how long I could stand up under it. Maybe some night I...

I heard somebody in the room; feet and the sound of the door closing; I turned my neck, but I couldn't see into the room. The bathroom door was nearly shut. I wished I'd bought another revolver. If I got through this, I would.

“Who's there?” I called.

The feet came towards the bathroom. The door opened a little and I got ready to jump out of the tub. Ginger stuck her head through the opening, smiling.

“Hello,” she said.

She looked nice with her white skin and red hair. I pulled a towel off the rack and put it over me like an apron. “What the hell!” I said. “I'm taking a bath.”

“I've seen naked men before,” Ginger said.

“Not like me.”

“Maybe,” she admitted. She came in the bathroom and sat on a shower stool.

I had to laugh. “Why don't you take off your clothes and get in with me?”

“There wouldn't be room.”

“I'll make room.”

“I bet.”

“Then come on.”

“No, thanks.” Her face got serious. “I came to talk about the bracelet.”

“Oh. How'd you like it?”

“It's beautiful. How much did it cost?”

“Plenty.”

“You're not a bad guy.” She twisted the bracelet on her arm. It looked fine with the black long-sleeved dress she had on. The fake diamonds gleamed in the bathroom light.

“Listen, you shouldn't have given it to me. Pug Banta's got it in for you, anyway.”

“Yeah?”

“He found out Carmel gave you the dope on him.

“Yeah. From Carmel... before he killed her.”

Her eyes got wide. “How'd you know she was dead?”

“Her brother told me.”

“The poor gal.” She shook her head at me. “And you're probably next.”

“Not me. He knows killing me'll get him in trouble with the Vineyard.”

“He's getting so he doesn't care,” Ginger said. She leaned over the tub. “Look. Why don't you beat it? He doesn't know where you live. He'd never find you. And you won't have to pay for a coffin then.”

“Did he send you here to tell me that?”

“Why, you fool!” Her green eyes got hard. She took a breath. “If you aren't the most conceited bastard! Pug isn't scared of anyone.”

“That's what you think.”

“I suppose he's scared of you.”

“He's not smart enough to be,” I said. “But ask him about the Princess sometime.”

That made her mad. I could see it in her eyes. “I'm sick and tired of hearing about the Princess.”

“What's the matter,” I said, “can't you compete with her?”

She got off the stool. “I'll slug you!” She pulled off the bracelet. “Here!” She threw the bracelet in the tub. “You know where you can stick that, you louse!”

“Thanks.”'

“And, brother, don't say I didn't warn you when Pug gets you.”

She started for the door. I fished around in the tub for the bracelet. “Don't go away mad,” I said.

“I'm not mad. I never get mad.”

I heard her close the door. I got another towel and dried off the bracelet. I threw the wet towel on the tile floor. Water oozed out of it. I felt better. Seeing Ginger had made me feel better. I got a drink and lay naked on the bed. I thought about Ginger, and then I thought about the Princess. It was three o'clock. I had four hours before I was due at the Vineyard. I already had that funny feeling in my stomach. I took a big drink of rye and cold water and then lay on the bed. The Princess was the best for one thing I'd ever had. She was as good as any whore in the world, and her heart and soul were in her work. She had a beautiful body, steel and silk and marble and rubber nil rolled in one. I felt the excitement grow. I took another drink, and then I got in the shower. I let the cold water run over me. I soaked a sheet in the water and got in bed without drying myself and pulled the wet sheet over me. It was cooler that way. I got up and locked the door. I went back to bed and in a little while I fell asleep. I was really sore when the clerk woke me by telephone at six-thirty, but another shower and a drink cleared my head. I wondered what the Princess would have for dinner.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I WOKE with a start, my heart up where my Adam's apple should have been. I found I was having trouble breathing. Moonlight blinded my eyes. I smelled a woman, but I didn't know who it was. I didn't even know where I was. For a minute I thought I was hack with the first woman I'd ever slept in bed with, the physical ed teacher at Lincoln High while I was a junior there. It was confusing to think that.

When my eyes got used to the light I saw a woman by the bed. She was staring down at me. I saw her body through her silk nightie, and I remembered everything. It was the Princess. She had been watching me while I was asleep. I sat up, feeling spooked, and stared back at her. Her skin looked milky in the moonlight. The pupils of her eyes were dark and uneven, like splotches of ink. Her face was strange.

She whispered: “How much guts have you, honey?”

Everything seemed unreal. I felt as though I was dreaming. The moonlight had changed the look of the room, made things stand out I'd never noticed before. An open closet door threw a tall shadow on the wall. The foot of the bed looked like a picket fence. There was a second moon in a mirror. I still had trouble breathing.

She whispered again: “Honey, how much?”

“God damn you,” I said. “Did you wake me up just to ask me that?”

She put her hand on my bare chest. Her skin was hot. “How would you like fifty grand?”

I was awake now. “Where is it?”

“In the temple.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, leaving her hand on my chest. There was a vault in the temple, she said; in the basement. In it were the gifts people had made to the Vineyard for years; jewellery, ornaments, gold and silver... and money.

“They don't keep any records,” she said. “Nobody knows how much is there. What we take won't be missed.”

“Why haven't you taken it long ago?”

“I needed help,” she said. “There was nobody I could trust.”

“What makes you think you can trust me?”

“I can as long as Pug Banta's alive.”

I thought that over. She was right. I would be finished if she turned me up to Pug. He wanted to get me bad enough, but so far she had stood in the way.

She said: “Are you coming?”

“This way? Naked?”

She went to the dresser and got out one of the Vineyard's costumes. There was a white silk blouse and black trousers. I put them on. The trousers were tight around the waist. She put on a red robe. While she was fastening it, I found the brandy decanter and had a drink.

“What's the routine?” I asked.

“Not so loud.” She came close to me. “There's one guard at the door,” she whispered. “We get rid of him, and then everything's jake.”

“Isn't the door locked?”

“I've got a duplicate key.”

“It doesn't sound bad,” I said. “Only how will we get rid of the guard?”

“You'll have to kill him.”

She said this as though she was saying I should have another drink. I stared at her. The moonlight showed no expression at all on her face. She was pale and calm. Her eyes were like black pools of water, the pupils were so big. I began to get that feeling of being in a dream again.

“Listen,” I said. “We're not killing anybody.”

“We'll make it look like an accident.”

“No,” I said.

She saw I meant it. “All right. We can get him out of the way. I can.”

“You're not fooling?”

“I do think it's safer to kill him.”

“I won't go for murder, and that's final.”

“Come on, then.” Her voice was scornful. She pushed me towards the door.

“Don't we wear shoes?”

She gave me another push. We went out the hall and through the back door and around the women's building, all the time walking in the shadows. The grass was wet with dew. It felt cool underfoot. From the look of the moon I figured it was about two o'clock. The buildings were all dark. Everybody was asleep. We walked back of some bushes towards the temple. I padded along silently in my bare feet.

The temple was white in the moonlight, its shape smooth and round like a cake. It looked very big. I saw lights flickering behind one of the stained-glass windows. There was a woman on the window, the Virgin, I guess; and the lights made her look as though she was shaking her head at us. It gave me a hell of a start. I pointed the lights out to the Princess.

“Candles,” she whispered. “They burn all the time.”

We went around to the back of the temple. A bat flew a couple of times at my white shirt. I stumbled over a sprinkler. The Princess came to a door and halted. She listened at the door, then turned to me.

“You'll have to tie up the guard,” she whispered.

“What with?”

She handed me some silk cord; the kind she wore around her waist to keep her robe together. I tried to break it but I couldn't. “Okay,” I said.

She opened the door. At the far end of a long room I saw light faintly reflected. I couldn't see what made the light. She closed the door and we went down five stone steps. The stone was cold on my feet. We walked along a stone floor towards the light, moving slowly. I smelled an odour of decay, not strong, but very plain. It reminded me of the stink around the Kansas City stockyards. I thought it was probably old Solomon upstairs, turning over in his coffin.

At the end of the room was another door. This one was open. I saw now the reflected light was flickering a little. It came from a candle. The Princess looked around the door, and then touched my hand. Her fingers felt feverish. I moved forward. I saw a man in a costume like mine sitting by a padlocked door. There was a candle burning on the stone floor by his chair, the yellow flame looking thin in all the darkness. The man was asleep, his chin resting on his chest. He had bushy black hair. The Princess nudged me forward.

I got about half way to the man when he woke up. He blinked his eyes at me, still half asleep. “Who is it?”

I walked slowly so as not to scare him. He looked at me, trying to see who I was. He had a big round face and heavy eyebrows. He didn't get alarmed until he noticed I hadn't any shoes. Then he stood up, and I jumped him. We went down together, splintering the chair under us. He fought hard, but I was stronger. I got my hands on his throat and began to choke him, pushing my thumbs into the muscles under his jaw. He kicked in agony and the candle went out. I held him down with my weight, feeling his breath rattle under my palms. Suddenly he went limp and I let go of his throat.

“Are you all right, honey?” the Princess whispered.

“Yes.”

I went through the man's pockets and found a packet of matches. I lit the candle. The light showed the Princess standing by the man, staring down at him. “Did you kill him?”

“Hell, no!”

She looked at me as though she'd never seen me before. She watched me tie his hands and feet and gag him with his undershirt. Her eyes were strange, as though she was in a trance. She gave me a key. “For the padlock.”

I left her looking down at him and went to the door. The key wasn't a very good fit. It turned hard, but I got it around. The lock came open. I took it off the hasp and shoved open the door.

Inside it looked like a junk shop. There were chests and tables and piles of paintings and vases and books and statues, and God knows what else, all jumbled together on the floor. Near the door I saw a silver candelabra with two candles. I lit the candles and went into the room.

It looked more like a junk shop than ever. There were hundreds of things in the room. The candlelight shone off a silver tea-set and some silver platters in a corner. Next to these was a small gold-framed picture of a woman's head. She had her hair parted in the middle and hung in two braids over her shoulders. On a red Chinese chest were some gold salt shakers. I almost stepped on some kind of a tapestry showing men hunting a boar in a forest. There was a sword with a jewelled hilt leaning against a bronze statue of a naked boy. I saw the name Scott engraved on the sword. Under a table was a whole set of hand-painted china, including a couple of huge platters, and on the table was a clock with the four seasons, the sun and the moon and the hours all on separate dials. I saw a hand-carved model of a frigate, a big pipe with a silver bowl, a spinning-wheel, an Oriental rug, an engraved silver bit for a horse, an inkwell made from jade.

This wasn't a fiftieth part of the junk. I was still staring at the things when the Princess came into the room. She was breathing so hard I turned around to look at her. Her face was calm; only her chest moved with her quick breaths. Her eyes went around the room.

“Has he come to yet?” I asked.

“No.” Her voice sounded flat and lifeless.

“He'll be all right,” I said.

She nodded, but I don't think she paid any attention to what I said. She was looking at the room.

“Where'd all this come from?” I asked.

“The Brothers and Daughters,” she said. “They have to take vows of personal poverty when they enter the Vineyard. They turn everything over to the Elders.”

I stared at the mess of stuff. “God, what junk!”

“You don't think it's any good?”

“Do you?”

She opened one of the chests. “Look.” I held the candelabra over the chest. It was full of watches: gold watches, silver watches, men's watches, women's watches, watches with jewels on the covers, engraved watches. “My God!” There were probably five or six hundred watches there.

She opened another chest. Tins was full of necklaces and bracelets. The stones gleamed in the light. A lot of them were cheap-looking, but some looked wonderful. I saw one, a kind of collar, that must have had a hundred diamonds in it. The next chest was filled with rings and cameos. Another was full of loose jewels. They were mostly semiprecious stones, but I saw diamonds sparkling in the heap. I put my hand in this chest and felt the stones. They were slick and cold.

“Pick out some of the diamonds.”

I put the candelabra down and got a couple of dozen fairly good-sized diamonds out of the chest. One was about five carats, and none was under two. They glittered in the soft light.

The Princess closed the chest. She took the diamonds away from me. “Now for the dough,” she said.

She went to a small table at the back of the room, the one with the fancy clock on it, and opened the drawer. Brother, my eyes fairly popped out of my head! The drawer was full of paper money. There were hundreds of bills, many of the old size. These looked strange, bigger than I'd remembered them. She put her hands in the bills, feeling with her fingers for something. She brought her hands out filled with gold pieces. Their colour was a dull yellow in the light of the candles. They made a soft clinking noise. I took one from her and felt it. It was heavy. It was like finding a mine. I picked up a handful of paper money. I had hold of twenties, and fifties, and hundred-dollar bills, and three one-thousand-dollar bills. I had four or five thousand dollars, and it hadn't made a hole in the drawer.

“They turn their cash into big bills,” the Princess said, “and give it up along with everything else when they come in.”

She began to sort out bills worth a hundred dollars or more. I helped her, digging my hands deep down in the money. There was a lot of gold there, but we didn't touch it. The bills crackled as we sorted them. We worked for a long time. Once I thought I heard a noise. Our shadows seemed to shiver as we listened.

“You're just spooked,” the Princess said scornfully.

We counted what we'd taken. There were twenty-five thousand-dollar bills, thirty six-hundred-dollar bills, twenty-four two-hundred-dollar bills, and sixty-three one-hundred dollar bills.

“How much?”

I said it came to fifty-four thousand, one hundred dollars. The Princess started to pick up the money.

“Wait a minute.”

“I'll just carry it.”

“No, you won't,” I said.

I gave her twenty-seven thousand and tossed the extra hundred back in the drawer. I put the rest in my pocket. It made quite a wad of money. “Let's get the hell out of here,” I said.

“All right.”

We went out the door. The guard was still lying on the floor. I could just see him by the broken chair. I blew out the two candles on the candelabra, and put it in the vault. Then I fastened the padlock. I turned around, and suddenly I noticed something queer about the guard. He was lying in a strange sprawled-out way. I went over to him. There was blood all around his head, and a deep wound on his temple. Something had almost crushed his head in, a stone or an iron bar. Something heavy.

The Princess stared at me.

“He's dead!” I said.

“Is he?”

“I don't sec ... did you kill him?”

“Oh, no.”

I held the candle over my head. In a corner of the room I saw a pile of bricks. There were twenty or thirty bricks, left over from building the temple. I went over and found one with blood on it.

“You lousy bitch,” I said.

“All right,” she said.

“You'll get us hung for this.”

“Don't be dumb.”'

“You may like hanging,” I said.

“Nobody's going to hang,” she said.

I was scared as hell. “We've got to get out of here.” I started for the outside door.

“Wait.” She grabbed my arm. “We can make it look like an accident.”

“Don't be a damn fool. The cops'll see through anything we can do.”

“There aren't going to be any cops.”

She began to talk fast, in a low voice that was almost a whisper: “You fool, the Vineyard will never call the cops. Not even if the Elders think it was murder. They don't like cops.”

I thought this over. “How are we going to make it look like an accident?”

She took the candle from me and held it high above her head. I saw the brick walls, with no plaster on them, and the unfinished ceiling. “See those bricks?”

“Yes.”

“Suppose some of them fell on him while he was sitting there?”

“They'd bust him good, all right.”

“Well...?”

I said: “But the bricks are still in the wall.”

“We have to make them fall.”

“It'll take a pick.”

“Come on.”

I knew I was a fool to follow her, but I was stuck. I was an accessory before the fact. That would carry a first-degree rap. I might as well be one after the fact, too. I couldn't do any worse.

She blew out the candle at the door. I felt surprised everything was so peaceful outside. The moonlight was still bright, and there was a breeze blowing from the east. We went from the shadow of the temple to a line of thick bushes. We went past a small pool with water lilies growing in it. The moon was like a smear of silver on the water and some of the lilies were open. They were white. I heard a mousy squeak and saw a couple of bats above the pool. The bats were feeding on night insects.

I followed the Princess up a hill and into a clump of trees. The grass was as soft and thick as a bathmat here, and it was dry. I guess the trees had kept it from the dew. It was very dark under the trees. I banged a toe against something hard and looked down and saw I'd hit a tombstone. We were walking in a graveyard! I saw other tombstones, and felt with my feet the raised sod over the graves. The Princess went to the left, to an open grave. It had been freshly dug, and the shovels and the picks of the gravediggers were still by the side. The Princess picked up one of the picks and gave it to me.

I took it, looking at the open grave. There was something funny about it. Suddenly I knew what it was. It already had a stone. That was strange. I never heard of them putting up the stone until afterwards. I bent over and read the inscription by the light of the moon. It said:

PENELOPE GRAYSON

(1917-1940)

Her Soul Rests With the Lord It was a little bit like seeing your own name on a tombstone. It was also a hell of a lot like a very bad nightmare. I blinked at the stone, and then I dropped the pick and grabbed the Princess's arm.

“Is she dead?”

“What do you care?”

“I asked you if she was dead?”

“Not so loud.”

“Answer me, or I'll break your goddam neck.”

She tried to get loose, and I shook her. She cried out with pain. I shook her again.

“She's not dead,” she said.

“Then what's this for?”

“Let me go.”

I shook her, my fingers digging into the muscles of her arm. She said: “It's for her after the Ceremony of the Bride.”

“They die?”

“Yes.” She slipped out of my hands and pointed at some graves by the open one. “Look.”

I looked at the stones. Anette Nordstrom (1911-1939); Grace Robins (1913-1938); Tabitha Peck (1920-1937), and Mary Jane Bronson (1910-1936). All young, and all dying in order: 1936, '37, '38, '39, and now '40. I looked again at Tabitha Peck. The poor kid was only seventeen. That was a funny name, Tabitha.

“Now you know all about it,” the Princess said. “Come on.

I got the pick. We went back to the temple. She lit the candle. He was lying just where we'd left him. I started to work on the wall, making as little noise as possible. The bricks came out easily.

I'd made quite a hole in the wall and the ceiling by the time my hands began to hurt. I rested for a minute. I was sweating hard. I wiped my face on the sleeve of my blouse. The Princess was standing by the vault door, holding the candle.

“Don't you think that's enough?” she asked. “We got to make a big pile,” I said.

I rested a while, and then I picked up the pick. It felt slippery in my hands. The Princess held up the candle. I saw something glitter in the corner. I went over and picked it up. It was some kind of a metal disk.

“What are you doing?”

“I thought I saw something.”

“What?”

“A coin or something.” I put the disk in my pocket. “It was just a piece of chipped brick.”

“Oh.”

I went to work on the wall again.

From the door I looked back at him. I'd brought down so much stuff he was hardly visible. All I could see was a shoe. He was lying on the wrecked chair, just as if he'd been sitting there when the wall fell. There were bricks and plaster all over him, and all over that side of the cellar. It looked as though there'd been an earthquake. It wouldn't fool anyone with any sense, I thought, but it might fool the Brothers. Particularly if they wanted to be fooled. I thought they would be, since the door of the treasure vault was still closed, apparently just as it had always been.

The Princess was standing by the body, holding the candle for me to get to the door. The light made her hair look like spun gold, as they say. I lit a match and she put out the candle and threw it by the body, like we agreed. She walked towards me, coming straight for the burning match. I smelled her when she got to the door, and I began to feel excited. We went outside.

I took the pick back to the hill with the graves, wiped the handle with my blouse, and dropped it by one of the shovels. The open grave looked black and mysterious. The moonlight was coming at such an angle the light didn't reach the bottom. It could have been twenty feet deep. The Princess waited for me at the corner of the temple. We walked back to the women's building, keeping in the shadows.

The moonlight was still pouring into her bedroom, making the bed look big and white. I washed my hands and found the bottle of brandy and had a long drink. It was funny, but I could hardly feel the stuff. I waited a minute, and then I had another drink. My throat felt numb.

She had taken off her robe and got in bed. I sat in a chair and had another drink. I felt her watching me. I had been sweating, and I kept on sweating. I wasn't used to working with a pick. I sat for a long time, drinking and sweating. I took off my blouse. The air felt good on my bare skin.

“Honey,” she whispered; “what's the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Come over here with me.”

“No.”

I had another drink. Then she said: “I'm sorry I killed him.”

“This is a hell of a time to be sorry.”

“I got frightened, thinking what would happen when he told the Elders. They'd have caught us sure.”

“Maybe.”

“Oh, yes. We're really better off with him dead.”

Her voice was throaty like she had a cold. It made me feel queer. I could see her body under the silk sheet. She hadn't put anything on. I saw the mound her breasts made under the silk, and her hair on the pillow, yellow even in the moonlight.

She whispered: “Honey.”

“What?”

“Are you afraid of me?”

“No.”

“Then come over. You have to sleep.”

I went over, but we didn't sleep.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

IN THE MORNING I caught a street-car into town. The motor-A man stared at me, but he didn't say anything. It was nine o clock and the sun was high in a blue sky. I got off at the square and walked to the Arkady. I had the blouse and pants I'd used during the night wrapped in paper, and in the clothes was the dough.

I went up to my room and dumped the money out on the bed. It made quite a heap. Twenty-seven grand! That was more dough than I'd ever seen at one time in my life. I got my knife and made a slit in the under side of the mattress on the spare bed. It was a lousy hiding-place, but it would do for a while. I stuffed twenty thousand dollars through the slit and smoothed out the bed. The rest I put in my pants for pin money.

I pulled the disk I'd found in the temple out of my pocket. It was an American Legion identification tag. It said Post 23, St Louis. Below that was a number, 8,834. I wrote out a wire to Legion headquarters in St Louis, asking for the name and address of the Legionnaire with that number. I gave the wire to Charles, the Negro, to send. He rolled his eyes when I told him to keep the change from a ten-dollar bill. Jesus! I felt rich.

At the same time I was plenty scared. I sat on the bed and thought what a jam I was in. It was bad from every angle. I stood at the head of the line for a murder rap, to say nothing of grand larceny, and housebreaking. There were a few other things, too. A very tough gangster was trying to make up his mind whether or not to kill me. My partner had been murdered and I wasn't doing anything about it. I had taken six grand from a client without a chance in hell of doing what I had told him I would do.

I did have to get that girl out of the Vineyard. Even if it was only long enough for her to miss the ceremony that was due in two nights now. I thought; it all must be phony. It was a human sacrifice; the kind of thing you read about happening in Africa and didn't believe. And here it was in a dopey town almost in the centre of the United States. Things like that didn't happen! Like hell, they didn't! I thought of the Halls-Mills case, the Wyncoop case in Chicago, the case of the two women tourists murdered on the Arizona desert. They happened.

I wondered how the Brides were killed, and who killed them. I wondered if they were slaughtered on Solomon's casket. One of them had been named Tabitha. That was a funny name. The poor kid! Only seventeen!

I looked at my watch. It was ten o'clock. I had a lot to do, only I was pooped. I lay back on the bed and pushed off my shoes. I thought I would nap for an hour.

At one o'clock the phone rang. It was Carmel's brother. He said she was going to be buried at eleven o'clock the next morning at Temple. He seemed to take it for granted I would be there.

“Ginger said she'd come, too.”

“Fine,” I said. “Have you got a minister?”

“Not yet.”

“Get one. I'll pay for him.”

“Thanks, Mr. Craven.”

I hung up, and then I called down for Charles. I wrapped the bracelet in a newspaper and gave it to him. I told him to take it to Ginger.

“Ask her if she'd like to drive me to a funeral tomorrow.”

He thought that was a joke.

“No,” I said. “Ask her.”

It didn't seem like I'd slept at all, so I lay back on the bed again.

The phone rang at three-fifteen. “Western Union,” a man said. “For Karl Craven.”

“Okay, Western Union.”

“Legionnaire 8,834, is Oscar K. Johnson, 4582 Waverly Street, St Louis. Do you want me to repeat it?”

“No, I got it.”

When the phone rang again it was six o'clock. McGee's nasal voice came over the wire. “I want to see you, Craven.”

“I'm in bed.”

“You'll have to get up. It's very important.”

“All right. Are you at your office?”

“Yes. I'll wait for you.”

There was a click at the other end. I wondered what had happened. I went to the bathroom and washed my face, and then I got dressed. The phone rang again.

The Princess said: “Hello, honey.”

“Hello,” I said.

“Dear, I can't see you tonight.”

“No?”

“Are you terribly disappointed?”

“Of course.”

“I have to go to the Festival.”

I was scared. “My God, is this the night they...?”

“No. Tomorrow night.”

“Oh.”

“You're not still thinking of getting her out, are you, honey?”

“No,” I lied.

“That's a good boy.” There was a pause. “What have you done with what we got?”

“It's in a safe place.”

“I think it'll be safer together.”

“I don't know.”

“Yes. Bring it out tomorrow afternoon.”

This was a command. “Okay,” I said.

“Don't forget, honey; around two tomorrow afternoon.”

“I won't.”

I hung up. She'd probably decided I was getting too big a cut. I found the bottle of rye and poured myself half a tumblerful. I got my hat and went down the hall to the elevator. When the elevator came I heard a door open up the hall towards my room.

It was hot out on the street. I walked towards town. Near the big movie theatre I stopped in a lunch-counter joint and had three hamburgers, a whole dill pickle and two bottles of beer. Then I had some fresh peach pie. Strange Cargo was playing at the movie. A sign said: cool inside. About a block further down the street I got an idea a man was following me. I looked back and saw a big man in a black suit. I went by McGee's office building and around the block. The man tagged along. I went into the office building. McGee was sitting at the desk in his private office. He made washing motions with his hands when he saw me. “You seem to be in trouble, Craven,” he said.

“What kind of trouble?”

His eyes watched me out the triangles of flesh. “There has been a robbery at the Vineyard.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. A man was killed and it is believed a sum of money was taken.”

“I didn't know they kept any money out there,” I said. “How much?”

“The exact sum is not known.” He leaned over the desk. “But the point is: they suspect you of having taken it.”

“Me?”

“One of the Brothers reported you struck him the other day.”

“I did,” I said. “But that was so I could talk with the Grayson gal.”

He nodded. “I know.” He washed his hands again. “But there are other things. You were seen at the Vineyard with me.”

I shrugged my shoulders and looked at him. He went on:

“And most important, you were seen leaving the Vineyard early this morning.”

“Who saw me?”

“The same Brother.”

I wished I had hit his head a little harder, so it had split. “That doesn't look so good,” I admitted.

He tapped his fingers on the desk. “Did you take the money?”

“Hell, no.”

“You did not kill the guard?”

“I don't know anything about it.”

“You're-ah-quite sure?”

“Christ, yes!” I said. “I ought to know who I kill, hadn't I?”

“What were you doing out there last night?”

“Early this morning's more like it,” I said. “I wanted to take a look around. I've been thinking I might have to kidnap the Grayson girl, after all.”

My story didn't get over so good. “I thought,” he said “we agreed that we wouldn't do that?”

“Well, nothing else seemed to do any good.”

“That's true. Quite true.” He looked down at his hands “It is too bad.”

“I don't know,” I said.

“I don't believe you follow me, Craven. It is too bad it will be necessary for you to leave town.”

“Me leave town? Don't make me laugh.”

“I am not trying to be funny, Craven. You say you did not steal the money. I believe you.”

“That's white of you.”

lie went right along. “Hut the Brothers do not. They are very dangerous when aroused. It is not safe for you here.”

“I've got to stay.”

“I will explain to Mr. Grayson,” McGee said. “He will not want you to risk your life.”

“It's my life.”

“They may be after you even now.”

“To hell with them.”

He stood up. “Well, Craven, I must say I admire your spirit. I hope you will not have to regret your decision.”

“Thanks.”

“I felt it my duty to warn you.”

“Sure.”

“If you should change your mind, let me know.”

“All right.”

He tapped his yellow teeth with a fingernail. “I'd rather you didn't phone me... because of the position you're now in. You understand?”

I nodded.

“If it's at night, come to my residence. I read until one in my library. It is in the rear of the house. You can tap at the french doors.”

“Okay,” I said. “The french doors. But don't count on me coming around.”

I went out and after half a block, the guy in the dark suit picked me up again. I began to get creepy. Nobody likes to be followed, especially when it might be somebody with murder in his mind. I thought I'd better find out about the dark suit.

I walked to a place where there was one cab waiting. I got in and said loudly: “To the Arkady.” When I got there I went upstairs to my room, slammed the hall door and then opened it a crack. Pretty soon the elevator stopped at the third floor and the guy came out and went into the room next to mine. I waited a minute, and then I knocked on his door.

“Who is it?”

“The room clerk.”

The door came open a foot. I put my shoulder against it and shoved my way into the room. The guy in the dark suit had a pistol pointed at my stomach. I closed the door. The guy looked scared.

“What do you want?”

“That's what I came to ask you.”

“I don't want anything.”

“You've been tailing me,” I said. “Why?” The hand holding the pistol was kind of shaky. “You're wrong, buddy; I haven't followed anybody.”

“Nuts,” I said.

I saw the guy was cock-eyed. One eye was looking at the door and the other was looking at me. “If you don't get out, I'll call the operator.”

“You're sure you haven't been following me?”

“Of course I'm sure. You must be crazy. I don't even know who you are.”

I pretended to be convinced. “I'm sorry, mister. Somebody has been following me. I thought he came in here.”

“You thought wrong.” The guy was getting cocky. He waved the pistol at me. “You're lucky I didn't plug you, buddy, when you pushed into here.”

“I guess I was.” I turned to go. There was a Bible on the dresser. I picked it up and threw it. He ducked, and I had the gun before he knew what had happened. I hit him with it, and he went down. I let him sit up, and then I kicked his face. The kick stunned him. I pulled a sheet from the bed, tore off a piece and gagged him. I pulled him up on the bed. After a while he came to.

“Now let's have the story, brother,” I said. He made a noise through the gag, but I didn't want to take it off for fear he'd shout. I got a pencil and a sheet of writing-paper from the desk. When I came back he kicked my stomach with both feet. I lit hard on the floor, most of the breath out of me. He slid across the bed towards the telephone. I caught at his legs, but his hands knocked the phone off the table. It crashed on the floor. He tried to kick me again, but: I had his legs. I brought him off the bed to his knees. His fists beat against my head. I punched him in the gut and he doubled up, still on his knees. I could hear a voice saying 'Hello' on the phone. I let him have one on the side of the jaw. It cooled him. I crawled to the phone..

“Hello,” the clerk was saying. “Hello.”

“Hello,” I said. “Can you tell me the right time?”

“Why, yes. It's twenty past seven.”

“Thank you.”

I hung up. I got a towel and wet it and wiped the blood off the guy's face. The water brought him around. He lay on the floor, on his back, trying to get air through the gag. His gasping sounded awful. I wondered if he was going to die.

He got better in a few minutes. The sound of his screaming died away. He looked up at me from the floor, his eyes wet with pain.

“Sit up.”

He sat up, I found the pencil and paper and gave them to him. I asked: “Who hired you to tail me?”

He wrote: “The police.” I hit him, and said: “You better come clean, brother.” Blood began to seep through the gag.

He wrote: “McGee.”

I blinked at that. “McGee, eh! Why did he want me tailed?”

He shook his head. I hit him. He wrote: “McGee wanted to frighten you out of town.”

“How much did he pay you to do it?”

He wrote: “$200.”

“You're earning it,” I said. “Get up on the bed.”

He crawled up on the bed. I got a hundred-dollar bill out of my pocket. “Where'd you come from?”

“Kansas City.”

I tore the bill. “Listen. I'll give you half of this now, and I'll send half to Kansas City, care of Paul Smith, General Delivery, if you telephone me from there in the morning.”

He reached for half the bill. “And if you're still in Paulton tomorrow, I'll kill you, so help me,” I said. His eyes got big and I stuck the bill in his hand and went to my room. I locked the door and pulled the shades down and undressed. I looked at his pistol. It was loaded. I took it to bed with me.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE COUPE slid along the cement at a smooth sixty, heading for a bank of heavy clouds that steadily got higher on the horizon. The country was flat and dry-looking, and when the coupe got near the edge of the road dust swirled up. It was hot, but the air smelled of rain. We came to a sign saying: Temple-one mile.

Ginger was driving. “If Pug ever hears I took you,” she said, “he'll bump me.”

There wasn't much I could say to that, so I didn't say anything. Ginger let up on the gas. I heard a rumble of thunder. The black clouds covered half the sky. We went by a long field of corn, and then we came to a row of elms. There was a farmhouse and a white fence, and on the lawn two kids were playing with a collie. Temple had two garages, a general store, a drug store, five service stations, a movie with a sign saying: Next Saturday-Clark Gable in San Francisco, and a combination restaurant and pool hall. There were about thirty frame houses in the town.

Ginger said: “Now where?”

The dashboard clock said eleven-ten. “The cemetery, I guess.”

“Where's that?”

Two old men were sitting on the porch of the general store. I leaned out the window and asked one of 'em: “Dad where's the cemetery?”

One of the old men had a drooping moustache. He spat through it at a post. “Which one?”

Ginger said: “Jesus! have you got two?”

“How's that?”

I told the old man we wanted the Pendis funeral. He knew about it. It was at Rock Creek Cemetery. He told us how to get there. It was about a mile from town, along a dirt road.

We could see tombstones in the grass on the side of a hill. There was a winding path into the graveyard, and on it were parked five cars. Ahead, and a little off the path, was a hearse. A sudden breeze made yellow flowers nod in the grass, then died away. Apple trees grew in the graveyard.

,”The funeral's drawing good,” I said.

“She was always a popular girl,” Ginger said.

I looked at her, but there was no particular expression on her face. She drove in back of the other cars. People were standing by the hearse. We got out and went over to them. The punk saw me. He had on a blue suit that was too big for him. “Thanks for coming,” he said. He gave me back sixty-five from the two hundred I'd given him. “And thanks for the dough.”

“It's okay,” I said.

A wind came again, and with it thunder. The preacher started over to where the coffin was by an open grave. I got the wreath out of the rear of the coupe. Ginger walked on with the punk, and all the others followed the preacher, too. When I caught up I saw there were a bunch of young girls in the crowd. They shied away from me, their faces frightened. I thought, what the hell! Then I saw an older woman with them, and I knew the reason. It was the madam and the babes from the whorehouse.

While the preacher was saying what he had to say, it began to rain. The drops of water felt queer. They were warm. They didn't cool anything at all. I looked around the crowd and saw the punk. His face was white and he was crying. He looked as though he was going to be sick. I guess he had loved her. The preacher's voice died away and some yokels began to lower the coffin in the grave. The whores were weeping, all but the madam. She stared at me, her face sullen. She was probably thinking of her radio-phonograph combination.

The coffin reached the bottom of the grave and the men slipped off the ropes. All the women in the crowd were crying now, and some of the men. It made me feel a little tight at the throat. The preacher said a few words more, standing bent over so the warm rain wouldn't hit his face. He finished and some of the people threw flowers in the grave. They began to move away. I took a peek into the grave. Flowers had almost covered the coffin. I thought: there goes $135. It was the first time I'd ever spent that much on a doll without getting something in return.

Ginger grabbed my arm. I followed her eyes back to the cars. Through the rain I saw Pug Banta coming towards us, his arms full of roses. Back of him were a couple of his boys. They came right through the mourners, bumping men and women out of their way. I felt Ginger tremble.

“Dear God!” she said.

Pug came up to the grave and dumped the roses on the other flowers. It was raining hard. He walked over to us, looking like some kind of a monkey with his long arms and short legs. His club foot made him limp.

“Come on,” he snarled at us. “You're going with me.”

We didn't move. His boys stood looking at us from the grave. Carmel's brother left the preacher by the cars and came towards us.

“Come on,” Pug said. “Or I'll bump you right here.”

Ginger started to go with him. I pulled her back. “Start shooting,” I said. “You got a swell audience.”

The crowd was beginning to leave. I heard the noise of the motors being started. I saw the punk over Pug's shoulder. I grabbed Pug and threw him down just as the punk fired. I heard the bullet whine. Pug caught me and pulled me down. We wrestled on the ground. I hit Pug and broke away. One of Pug's men jumped the punk and took away the pistol. He slapped the punk's face. I got oil the ground. “Leave him alone,” I said to the hoodlum. He pointed the pistol at my stomach. “Don't get tough.” The people by the hearse had heard the shot. They were looking back at us. Pug got oil the ground and began to brush the dirt of! his coat. I helped him. The people thought he had fallen and turned away. “Bring the kid here,” Pug said.

They brought him. He cried and struggled with the men. “Damn you,” he said. “What's the idea, kid?” Pug asked. I said: “He thinks you killed his sister.” Pug went to the punk. “You got me wrong,” he said. “Carmel was a swell doll. Would I be bringing her roses if I'd killed her?”

I said to the punk: “You better pay the minister. We'll have a talk later.” I gave him a twenty. He threw it on the ground.

“Why did you pull him down?”

I picked the bill up and gave it to him again. “Go pay the minister.”

Ginger said: “Come on.”

They started to go away, the punk looking bewildered, but the hoodlum with the pistol stopped them. “How about it, Pug?”

“Let 'em go.”

They went towards the hearse. Pug scowled at me. “I don't get it, pal.”

“The punk thinks you killed his sister.”

“No. Why didn't you let him plug me?”

“I'm your friend.”

Pug said: “That's a laugh.” He scowled at me. “I want to talk to you.”

He moved his head towards some graves further up the hill. I followed him. The two bodyguards stayed by Carmel's grave. The rain was nearly over. It was raining under a blue sky now. We stopped by a tombstone with an angel cut on it. I saw green apples on a tree below us.

Pug said: “Anyway, thanks for what you did.”

“Forget it.”

“Yeah? If I do can you think of any other reason why I shouldn't bump you oil?”

“The Princess.”

“The hell with her,” Pug said. “She's trying to muscle me out.”

“No,” I said. “You got her wrong.”

“Don't give me that.”

“She couldn't muscle you or anybody out. She doesn't run the Vineyard.”

“Who does, then?”

“McGee.” Pug looked blank, and I added: “The lawyer.”

Pug said: “Crap.”

“Okay. Don't believe me. But McGee's got it in for you. He didn't like the shooting at Papas's. And killin' Carmel.”

“Who told you this?”

“I used to work for McGee ... up to yesterday.”

“Either you're a liar or you...”

“Do you want me to prove McGee runs the Vineyard?”

Pug scowled. Then he said: “If you can.”

“All right. First I'll show you he owns Tony's place. And The Ship. And the house where Carmel worked. And the Silver Grove. And the Arkady.”

“The Vineyard owns them,” Pug said.

“You wouldn't bet on that, would you?”

Pug squinted at me doubtfully. “Why'd you quit McGee if he's Mr. Big?”

“I'll show you that, too.”

We rode back with Ginger. Pug drove and Ginger sat in the middle. The bodyguards followed in the other car. We made the hundred miles in an hour and twenty minutes. We killed two chickens, a road-runner, a chipmunk and a black-and-white dog. I didn't think Pug was going to be able to stop the coupe in Paulton, we went so fast, but he did, right in front of the County Building.

“Where are those records?”

“Second floor.”

“You wait here, baby,” Pug said to Ginger.

She didn't know what was going on. I winked at her, but she looked scared. We went up the stone steps and into the building. The old clerk got out the papers for us. Pug scowled when he saw McGee listed as the owner of all the places I asked for. He named some more: the Savoy Ballroom, the Beachcombers, The Hut, Cecil's Grill. McGee owned them, too.

At the Arkady I had Pug come in with inc. “Any calls for me?” I asked the clerk.

The clerk saw Pug, and for once he didn't giggle. “There's a long-distance call from Kansas City, Mr. Craven.”

While we waited for the call, I told Pug about the guy McGee had hired to tail me. The clerk put the call on an extension in the manager's office. I picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

“Well, I've done what you told me, Mr. Craven.”

“Listen, Kansas City,” I said; “there's a fella here I want you to tell what you told me last night. Who paid you, and what he wanted you to do. Wait a second.”

I gave the phone to Pug. He listened, asked a couple of questions and then turned to me. “Anything you want to say?”

“Tell him I'm mailing the other half of the bill.”

Pug told him and hung up.

“Now you get the idea,” I said.

Pug said: “You were trying to muscle in on McGee, weren't you?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe hell, fatty. Why else would he try to run you out of town?”

“All right,” I said. “But remember he's going to do the same to you.”

“Oh, no, he's not.”

“I'll tell you one thing,” I said. “McGee has a library with french windows. It's in the back of his house.”

Pug scowled at me.

“If anybody should want to ... see him, he works there every night until one.”

Pug gave me a deadpan stare and then went out of the hotel and got in Ginger's car and drove away. I said to the clerk: “If there're any more calls, I'll be back in half an hour.”

Chief of Police Piper was drumming on his oak desk with my card. “Sit down,” he said. He didn't look up. His round face was tired, and most of the red had gone out of the skin. There were purple veins on his cheeks. I sat down.

He hit the table with my card again, then stared at it. “We don't like private dicks in Paulton,” he said, raising his eyes. He blinked at me. He was thinking he'd seen me before. “No.”

“No.” He watched me. “What can I do for you?” He said it like he wanted to know so he could refuse. I said: “It's more what I can do for you, chief.”

“One of those smart ones, eh?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, go ahead.” He was still curious about my face, but he was tired. “What can you do for me?”

“A couple of things,” I said. “How would you like to have another high-class murder in town?” His mouth came open. “What do you mean?”

“It'd be your bucket, wouldn't it?”

“Now look here...”

“You're in a jam,” I said. “They're after you because Waterman was killed. Isn't that so?” His face began to get red.

“And if there's another big killing, you'll be out.” I let this sink in, and then said: “And some people will be asking if Pug Banta was really in jail the night of the Papas shooting.”

“Pug was in jail.” The chief made a pretty feeble attempt to roar. “Anybody who says different...”

“All right. He was. But some people are saying...”

“I can prove it.”

“So long as you're chief of police, you can.”

He thought this over.

“Somebody's going to try to bump off McGee,” I said.

“The lawyer?”

“Either tonight, or some night soon.” I told him about the library, and how McGee worked in it late at night. I told him that I'd overheard a couple of men talking about it while I was in the can at Jazzland. I figured I was overworking the gag about hearing things in the can, but I couldn't think of a better story. I said I didn't know who the men were, and that I didn't hear why they wanted to kill him.

“We'll have to warn McGee,” the chief said.

“I wouldn't.”

“Why?”

“McGee'll give it away. Then you'd never catch the guys. Look, here's the best way. Put a couple of good men in the yard. Then, when they try for McGee, you can grab 'em red-handed.”

The idea appealed to him, but he still thought he'd better warn McGee. He hadn't any right to take a chance with him that way, he said. Better to let the killers go than have McGee in danger.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You got a friend named Carmel?”

He nodded before he thought.

“You mean to say,” I said, “you had a friend.”

“Why? What's...?”

“Day before yesterday Pug Banta said he wanted to see her, didn't he?”

The chief began to look scared. “You know a hell of a lot, don't you?”

“Pug had you call her,” I went on. “Then he met her for you.”

I paused. The chief didn't say anything.

“They buried her this morning,” I said.

“My God, no!”

I kept letting him have it. “Her body was found outside a town called Valley. She'd been beaten to death.”

All the colour had gone out of his face. The veins on his jowls looked green. His eyes were half closed.

I said: “One more thing about McGee.”

He looked at me.

“Pug Banta's going to kill him.” I got out of the chair. “And if anyone's interested in getting rid of Pug, the place to do it would be McGee's back yard.”

He sat at the desk, watched me walk to the door. At the last second he jumped up and trotted after me. He caught my sleeve. “Was she really beaten?”

“Her jaw was shattered, both arms were broken...”

“Oh, God! The poor kid!” He tugged my sleeve again. “Say! How do you know this?”

“Her brother called me,” I said. “We're old friends. He had to have some dough to bury her.”

“Oh, God!” he said.

“Well, so long, chief.”

He didn't answer. When I reached the stairs I looked back. He was still standing in the door. I went out of the station into the street. I felt good. Now I had things moving.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

NEWSBOYS SELLING an extra in the street outside the hotel woke me up the next morning. I looked at my watch. It was nine o'clock. I telephoned down for breakfast and a bottle of rye.

“Send along one of those extras, too,” I told the clerk.

Charles, the Negro, brought the stuff up. I took a shower, drank half a glass of whisky neat and then looked at the extra. Brother, did I get a rear! The headline said: THOMAS McGEE MURDERED. And a subhead said Pug Banta was being held for the job. I sat down on the bed and read the story.

It seemed, the story said, one of Chief Piper's squads had noticed a man lurking around McGee's house. The squad had followed the man (Pug Banta) around to the back, but before they could grab him he shot and killed McGee through one of the french windows in McGee's library. McGee never knew what hit him. The cops then jumped Banta before he had time to move and dragged him off to the station. So far he had refused to say why he'd done the job.

I poured and drank another half glass of whisky. My plan had sort of back-fired, but I didn't know. Maybe it was just as good this way. At least McGee and Pug were out of the road. I lifted the napkin oil the breakfast tray and then I got the phone.

“Goddam it,” I told the clerk; “I ordered six double lamb chops, not those lousy single ones.”

He said he would send up six more right away.

About one o'clock a telegram came. It said:

Arrive Paulton four p.m. Will cut your heart out if you haven't got Penelope.

Grayson.

I had four neat whiskies and a rare steak for lunch, and then I rode out to the Vineyard on the street-car. I sat next to a fat lady with a basket of staples from the A & P, and continued with my thinking. I had a funny feeling that I was close to something, but I was damned if I could tell what it was. I wondered if I had been right about McGee. He had tried to scare me out of town. And he'd known there'll been a robbery at the Vineyard. Yeah, I'd been right. I wondered if he had killed Oke.

“Pardon me.”

“Huh?”

“This is where I get off.”

“Oh.” I let the fat lady and the basket by.

What I'd been hired for, though, was to get Penelope Grayson out. The telegram had reminded me of that. Just thinking about her gave me a sick-empty feeling in my belly. Those damned graves! And that kid Tabith.nl And this was the night of the Ceremony of the Bride. I thought again, what a phony idea; the Ceremony of the Bride. Hut there was nothing phony about those graves. Jesus! I thought, if only there was an honest DA in the county. I wondered what I would say to Grayson. I wondered why I was so worried. I thought at heart I must be a pretty honest bastard.

I went into the Vineyard by the back way. I rolled my knuckles on the door, and the Princess let me in. She looked cool and pretty.

“Honey, did you bring the money?”

“Yes.”

“Hand it over.”

“I don't know as I ought to.”

“Yes, you had, honey. You're in trouble. They got an idea you broke into the vault.”

“So McGee told me.”

She held out a hand. “Do you want to be caught with the money on you?”

“What about you?”

“They don't suspect me, honey.”

I went over and had a drink of the brandy. Then I sat on the divan. “How'd McGee find out?”

“I told him.”

“What the hell!”

She sat down beside me and put her hand on my knee. “I had to ... he knew it anyway.”

“How?”

“Well,” she said, “one time we discussed breaking into the vault.”

“You and McGee?”

She smiled at me. I thought, well, I was right about McGee. I said: “So you worked with him?”

“I still do,” she said.

Then I got it. She didn't know he was dead! I wondered why nobody had told her. I decided to stall her.

“Are you in love with him?”

“Oh, no, honey. It's a business arrangement.”

“How much does he want?”

“Half. And you got to leave town.”

“I'm the fall guy, eh?”

“If the cops come in. But McGee will see they don't.”

“How?”

“They're in his pocket, honey. He's the business manager for the Vineyard.” She laughed. “You're not such a smart detective.”

“I guess not.”

“All you have to do is disappear. Later, when everything's quiet, I'll join you. You'll like that, won't you, dear?”

I said “Yes.”

“Now where's the money?”

I pulled the roll out of my pants pocket. She counted it. “Where's the other seven thousand?”

“In my wallet.”

“Keep it.” She put her arms around my neck and kissed me. “Oh, honey, it's not my fault. I love you, honest. McGee's just too smart, that's all.”

I tried to kiss her lips, but she wouldn't let me. I wrestled with her for a minute, and then I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.

Afterwards I lay beside her on the bed. Now I knew everything that had happened. The Elders had told McGee of the robbery and he'd known the Princess was involved because he'd talked over just that kind of a job with her. When he accused her she told him everything, putting me on the spot. Then they made their little plan. I would disappear, and they would blame the robbery on me. And the murder! Brother, that was what worried me: the murder! It would be better for them if I never got caught, but nobody would believe my story if I did. They'd have an alibi.

The goddamdest thing was I still couldn't do anything about it, even with McGee gone. The Princess still had the whip. I'd have to take the rap! Or do a bunk. I figured I had about ten grand. That wouldn't last a murder fugitive very long.

“What are you thinking about, honey?”

“About how nice it'll be when we're together.”

“We'll have fun.”

We'll have fun like hell! I thought. “When do you want me to leave?”

“Right away.”

“I can't. Grayson's coming this afternoon. If I'm not around, he'll make a lot of trouble.”

She thought about that. “All right, honey. Stay until tonight. And come out here before you go.”

“That'll be nice.” I scowled at her. “Only I won't like thinking about the Grayson gal.”

“Don't think about her then.”

“Just tell me one thing,” I said. “Who kills her?”

“I don't know.”

I touched the soft skin on her shoulder. “You must have heard something.”

“All I know is the Elders have a kind of a ceremony in a room next to the one where Solomon lies. That's at midnight. Then they take the Bride into the big room and leave her by the coffin.”

“Yeah?”

“And when they come for her in the morning she's dead.”

I slid off the bed and got a bottle of brandy and two glasses. We drank.

“Dead how?”

“A knife in the heart. Solomon's knife.”

She sat with her eyes half closed, sipping the drink. “It's crazy,” she said, “but they believe Solomon comes back and does it. It's his way of keeping in contact with the earth.”

“It's spooky,” I said. “Do you believe it?”

“A guy that's been dead five years coming back and knocking off someone? Don't make me laugh.”

“Well, who does it?”

“You asked me that,” she said. “Honey, let's talk about something else.” She rubbed my thigh. “You haven't been dead five years, have you?”

I got back to the Arkady just before four. On my way through the lobby the clerk gave me a note. It said:

Me for the peaceful life. Goodbye.

Ginger.

The clerk said she'd checked out at noon. I felt sorry until I remembered she hadn't returned the bracelet. The bitch! I went up to my room, but I hadn't more than poured myself a drink of rye when the phone rang.

“A Mr. Grayson to see you.”

I went down to the lobby. Grayson was a heavy-set man, almost as big as me, with a large head. He had grey hair. He was wearing a tan Palm Beach suit. We shook hands.

“God, what heat!” he said.

“It's been like this all week.”

“Where's the girl?”

I said: “Let's go where we can talk, Mr. Grayson.”

We went into the bar. Grayson had a glass of milk. I had a rye highball. “Well,” he said. “Where is she?”

“I'll have her tonight.”

“You'd damn well better.” He glared at me. “I've paid you ten thousand dollars. You produce or I'll throw you in jail.”

“Like hell you will,” I said.

That made him angry, but he kept it down. “The hell I won't,” he said. “But that's tomorrow. We're friends until then.”

“Sure,” I said.

“How're you going to get her tonight?”

I told him we were taking the chief of police to the Vineyard in the evening. “We'll crack the place wide open.”

“Why haven't you done it before?”

“It's a long story.”

“I've got lots of time.”

“All right,” I said. I told him some of the story, mostly about Oke Johnson, McGee and Banta, but I didn't mention the Princess or the Ceremony of the Bride.

“Then McGee is the man who killed Johnson.”

“No,” I said.

“Then who?”

“If I'm right it'll be a goddam surprise to a lot of people.”

“You'd better tell me,” Grayson said.

“Later.”

His face got red, but he took it. He was plenty worried about the girl. I wondered how he'd gotten such a red face from drinking milk.

“The chief'll pick you up here at eleven-thirty, Mr. Gray-soh,” I said.

His eyes were flat and hard. “You'd better come through.

I got up. “I always come through.”

I left him to pay for the drinks. It never does to buy anything for a client.

I went upstairs and called the chief. “I was just going to call you,” he said.

“What for?”

“Pug wants to see you.”

I told him I'd be right over. I finished the rye and then I went down to the station. The chief was in his office.

“Listen,” I said. “Before I see Pug I want to tell you about a job we got to do tonight.”

I told him to get a dozen or so men around eleven-thirty and pick up Grayson and go to the Vineyard. There he was to surround the temple and wait for me to tell him what to do.

The chief's face was worried. “I don't know as I ought to fool around the Vineyard. Not without a warrant.”

“You'd better,” I said; “unless you want me to ask the Governor for some state troopers.”

He said, don't get sore. He said, hadn't we played ball before? I said: “Then you'll have Grayson and the men there around midnight?” He said he would.

“Okay,” I said. “Now where's Pug Banta?”

The jail smelled of unwashed toilets, and it was damp, like a cellar. A bulb burned in the corridor between the cells, making deep shadows. A cockroach as big as a half-dollar ran on the cement in front of us. I kicked at him and missed.

The chief said in an aggrieved voice: “I don't know why in hell he wants to see you.”

The turnkey clanged the metal gate behind us. I said: “Why didn't you bump him off?”

The chief swore so much I could hardly understand him. I gathered his men had double-crossed him. Instead of shooting Pug, they had grabbed him. I wanted to ask him why he hadn't been there, but I didn't. I knew the answer. “Well, he'll fry,” I said.

“I don't know,” the chief said mournfully. “I wish he was in some other jail.”

We came to a steel door, our shoes making a hollow sound on the cement. A couple of guys in a cell begged for cigarettes. In another cell a woman was weeping. “A drunk,” the chief said. The turnkey opened the door and we went into a room with two cells. One of the cells was empty and Pug Banta was in the other. “If it ain't my fat pal,” he said.

They hadn't touched him. I guess he was too important for them to beat up, even with a murder rap hanging over him. I knew the chief would have liked to, because of Carmel. If anybody needed a beating, Pug did.

Pug said: “You guys scram. I want to talk to fatso, my pal.”

Chief Piper glanced at me. “Go ahead,” I said. “I'll tell you if he says anything you ought to know.”

The chief went out with the turnkey. They locked the steel door behind them.

“So you double-crossed me?” I said: “What else did you expect?”

Pug stood with his hands over his head, holding to the bar. He looked like pictures of a gorilla. There was that same over-development of arms and shoulders and chest. All he needed was more hair.

“I got a couple of things to tell you,” he said. “Co ahead.”

“One of 'em is I'm going to get you when I'm sprung.” His voice was so deep in his throat I had to move closer to hear him. “I'll get you if it's the last thing I do.”

“The only trouble,” I said; “is you'll never get sprung.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Now the other thing...” He reached out of the bars with his long arms, caught my coat and jerked me forward. As my face hit the bars he held the coat with his left hand, put his right arm around my neck and then grabbed a bar. He had me in kind of a vice and when he jerked back I thought my neck had broken.

“Now wise guy...” Pug snarled. The hand holding the bar kept me from pulling back. I braced with both hands, but it didn't do any good. I couldn't get far enough back to breathe. I felt a terrible pressure behind my eyeballs. I tried to shout, but I couldn't make a sound. My head was bursting. I reached out with my right hand and hit up at Pug's stomach. He couldn't move away without letting go with his right hand. I drove my fist into his groin. He groaned and let go the bar and jerked free.

I got my breath back and said: “Come on and fight, you bastard.”

Pug moved in, snarling, and hit me through the bars. I felt my teeth give and tasted salty blood. He tried to hit me again, but I caught his arm and jerked him as hard as I could against the bars. His head hit the steel with a thwack. I reached both hands through the opening in the bars and clasped them behind his neck. I pulled forward, but the bars were a little too narrow for his head to go through. I pulled, bracing hard with my feet. He tried to claw me, but I kept my legs closed. I gave a big jerk and his head came through the bars, leaving skin behind. One side of his face was a mass of blood. I let go his neck and he tried to pull back, but couldn't. His head was still too big. I stepped closer and punched his face, using both hands. It was like a work-out with a punching-bag. I beat his face to a pulp. At last he slid down on the cement, his head still sticking out the bars. Blood began to pool under one cheek.

I kicked his head a few times; but it wasn't worth while. He was out cold. I wiped the blood from my face with a handkerchief and pounded at the steel door. The turnkey opened it. Chief Piper stared at my face.

“What happened?”

“I bumped my head.”

The chief said: “I was afraid Pug might try something.” He did,” I said. “But it didn't work.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I LOOKED AT my watch by the arc light over the street-car stop. It was ten minutes past eleven. Fifty minutes and the Ceremony would start. I felt empty. I wanted a drink. I looked to see if I had the flashlight and the pistol I'd taken from the punk. Then I walked slowly down the road to the lane that led into the Vineyard, thinking about what I had to do. Heat lightning flickered in the sky.

The Princess had on black silk lounging pyjamas and Chinese red slippers. The black silk made her skin look very white.

“Hello, honey.”

I said “Hello,” and got a drink of brandy. I sat on the big divan and drank the brandy. I could feel it grab my stomach. The Princess stood looking down at me. She made me nervous.

“Have a drink, baby,” I said. “A farewell toast.”

“Did you know McGee had been killed?” she asked.

“Yeah, I read. Too bad.”

“Did you know about it this afternoon?”

“No.”

Her eyes were a glassy blue. “You didn't frame him, did you?”

“How could I do that?”

“Well, it's damn funny.” Her eyes narrowed with thinking. “Both Pug and McGee were after you, and now one's dead and the other's in jail.”

“Sure,” I said. “I fixed it. They call me Superman.”

“God damn it!” she said. “I liked McGee. He had brains.”

“Listen,” I said. “I didn't frame McGee. And if that's a lie, God strike me dead.”

I waited, but nothing happened. Her face got softer looking and she poured herself a drink. Then she came and sat by me on the divan. I could smell her.

“I guess you'll have to take his place,” she said.

“Me? You're nuts. I'm leaving tonight.”

“You were leaving, honey. But now you're business manager of the Vineyard.”

“I don't want any part of the Vineyard.”

“Don't you?” Her voice was as sweet as if she was talking to a baby. “Suppose the police heard about the robbery? And the murder? And found your fingerprints in the vault?”

“I'd be in a hell of a fix.”

“Well, nobody will tell them, honey, as long as you stick around and run things.”

“I get it.”

“I knew you would.” She stared at me, and then she unbuttoned my shirt and ran her hand over my chest. “You're not sore, are you?”

“I don't know.”

“A girl likes to have a hold over the man she loves. Can't you understand that, dear?”

“Give me another drink.”

She got the bottle of brandy and filled both glasses. I asked: “How long does this last?”

“From now on. Won't that be nice, the two of us together.”

“What about your wanting to wear pretty clothes and dance and see shows and go to night clubs?”

“That was just talk, honey. I'm very happy here... with you.” She leaned towards me. “Honey, you love me, don't you?”

I said: “Sure.” I looked at a clock on the table. It said half past eleven. Thirty minutes. The Princess's eyes went to the clock, too.

“Honey, I'm sorry about that girl.”

“Not as sorry as I am.”

“You couldn't help it.”

“I guess not.”

She ran her hand under my shirt again. “She wanted to join the Vineyard. She even wanted to be the Bride.”

“Yeah,” I said; “after she'd been doped a little.”

“Don't think about it.” She drank her brandy, and then bit my neck. I tried to kiss her lips, but she wouldn't let me. I still didn't understand it. I saw the clock over her shoulder. Twenty-six minutes to go. She lay with her weight on me. “Darling,” she whispered. I ran my hand under the pyjama top. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

Now the clock said ten minutes to twelve. She lay naked on the divan, her breasts soft, the nipples flat, looking like all the whores in the world. Her eyes were closed and her pink lips smiled a little. Her skin was pale against the black satin divan.

I poured a glass of brandy and drank it. Then I filled it again. She opened her eyes and looked at me. “Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Give me a drink.”

I gave her the glass of brandy. She sat up and drank a little. I sat beside her on the divan. She leaned over and kissed my neck. Her lips were wet and cool and soft.

“Honey,” she said. “We are going to have a nice time.”

“Yes.”

I kissed her. It was the first time on the lips. It was wonderful. I wondered why she hadn't let me before. I could feel her lips tighten under mine. They were getting warm. It felt like I had kissed an electric battery. I let her go and got up and poured myself another drink. I felt shaky. The clock said eight minutes to twelve.

“You're not going yet?” she asked.

“Pretty soon.”

“Not yet, honey.” She got off the divan and came over to me. “Not yet.” She stood close to me and drank from my glass. She smiled at me. “Karl, do you love me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You don't say that as though you meant it.”

“I do.”

“Say 'I love you'.”

“I love you,” I said.

She put her arms around me. The glass fell out of my hand. Her body pressed against mine. Her skin was warm. She kissed my lips. There was that shock again. Her arms around my neck were choking me. I tried to push her away. She held me. I pushed harder.

“That's right,” she said.

I got away from her. Her eyes were excited. “Now hit me,” she said. “Hit me.”

I hit her, really hit her. She went flat on the floor. I bent over her and touched her eyes, but there was no reaction. She was cold. I looked at the clock. Six minutes.

I went into her bedroom and searched for the forty-seven grand. I looked everywhere. I looked in the dresser, in both closets, under the beds, even under the rug. In a chest I found the key to the storeroom and I put it in my pocket. Then I searched the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet, in a paper box of Epsom salts, I found the diamonds. They sparkled in the bathroom light. I put them in my pocket. The Epsom salts gave me an idea. I went through the other medicine. No luck. I jerked the can paper roll. Wound around under the paper were twenty one-thousand dollar bills. That was better than nothing. I wondered if McGee had got the rest.

I went into the living-room. She was still on the floor, but she had come to. She looked at me, her eyes dazed. I got the brandy bottle and tapped her on the head with it. She went out again. I looked to see if there was any blood. There wasn't because of her hair. The clock said two minutes past twelve.

I got a blouse and a skirt from the bedroom and put them on her. Then I dressed myself. I picked her up. She was heavy. I went out the door with her and across the damp grass to the temple. She made a snoring noise breathing. Her hair gleamed in the moonlight. The heat lightning lit up the horizon, but there was no thunder. I carried her in the basement door of the temple. I put her down and lit my flashlight and picked her up again. I carried her past where she had killed the guard to the door to the stairs. I could hear my heart beating, and hers. I carried her up the stairs and put her down. Under the door at the top I could see a dim light. I put out the flashlight and opened the door a crack. Candles made a smear of light at the end of a long room, lighting a black cross and the kneeling figures of twelve men. The men were in white and I figured they were the Elders. I smelled incense. A mumble of words came from the men; they were praying. They knelt in a half circle around the cross, their backs towards me. I wondered where Penelope Grayson was.

After a while the men stopped praying and stood up. I got ready to carry the Princess away, but they went single file through a door near the cross. They were loaded down with food and bottles of wine and flowers. A current of air from the open door made the candles flicker, distorted the shadow of the cross on the wall. I heard chanting from the next room, and then I noticed something below the cross. It was a kind of a litter, but with short legs; and on it was a woman. A white cloth covered all her body except her head and her long blonde hair. I walked through the darkness to her. It was Penelope Grayson. Her eyes were wide open, but the pupils were as big as horehound drops. Her face was peaceful. When I put my hand over her eyes she didn't blink. She was full of dope.

They were still chanting in the next room. The voices of the Elders were deep. I tiptoed back and got the Princess. She muttered something and I hit her with the flashlight. I put her down by the litter and jerked off the white cloth. Penelope didn't have such a bad figure. Maybe a little thin, but it had possibilities. There was rouge on her face and breasts. I stripped the Princess and took Penelope off the litter and put the Princess in her place. I pulled some pins out of the Princess's hair so it hung down the way Penelope's had. The chanting stopped, and suddenly I got spooked. I threw the cloth over the Princess and picked up Penelope and the clothes and ran to the stairs. The girl didn't weigh anything at all, and under my palms her skin was cold. She didn't struggle. Maybe she thought it was part of the Ceremony. Outside the door, at the head of the stairs, I put the blouse and skirt on her. They were too big for her. Then I looked in the room.

The Elders were just coming back. They filed in, chanting again, and picked up the litter. They stood under the cross with the litter on their shoulders. Now one of them was singing along. I caught some of the words:

She is the choice one of her that bore her.

The daughters saw her, and called her blessed;

Yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.

I didn't know what the hell that meant. The Elders walked slowly with the litter into the other room. I pulled out my watch and turned the flashlight on it. It was quarter past twelve. Grayson and the chief should be outside by now, but I didn't go after them. Instead I crawled past the cross to the far door and looked through. I saw the big room where McGee and I had looked at Solomon's casket. Four candelabra burned on the gold-leaf altar, and the Elders had set the litter down in front of them. I could see the gleam of the Princess's blonde hair. The Elders were chanting:

If she be a wall,

We will build upon her a turret of silver:

And if she be a door,

We will enclose her with boards of cedar.

Then an Elder with a clear tenor voice sang:

I am a wall, and my breasts like the towers thereof:

Then was I in his eyes as one that found peace.

They turned and walked in pairs down the aisle to the big front door of the temple. The one with the clear tenor voice sang:

Make haste, my beloved,

And be thou like to a roe or to a young hart

Upon the mountains of spices.

Then the last two turned and swung the big door shut. I couldn't hear them any more. I went a little further into the room and got that stink of decaying flesh. It was like the smell of a too-long-dead mule. I stepped to one side of the door, so the candles by the cross wouldn't shine on my back, and waited.

All at once I felt hair rise on the back of my neck. I couldn't see anything but candles burning in the big candelabra and the light sliding off the Princess's hair, but I was plenty scared. Then I saw it, and I was more scared even though I knew what was coming. The glass top of the coffin opened and a man sat up. He had on a white robe and above it his face looked blue-white, like fish skin. He got up and stepped out of the coffin. He was very tall; I guess six and a half feet, and very thin. He went to the altar and prayed, kneeling in front of the candles. Wind came through the room, making the candles waver, and he looked around. I crouched in the shadow made by the door. He prayed again and then he took a long knife with a gold hilt off the altar. He went over to the litter, holding the knife against his chest. He pulled off the white cloth and raised the knife high above his head. I could see the golden colour of the Princess's skin by his knees.

I turned and crawled through the door. Behind me I heard a sound, as though somebody had slapped a wall with a wet towel, and then a moan, but, brother, I never once looked back. I got up and ran past the black cross and got Penelope Grayson and carried her down the stairs. She struggled a little; I guess she knew something was wrong. I propped her against the wall in the basement and shuffled through the dark towards the outside door. Suddenly something, almost like a big hand against my chest, stopped me, and I knew then what I had to do before I got the others. I guess I had been going to do it all the time or I wouldn't have taken the key to the storeroom. I unlocked the padlock and lit a match and put the diamonds and the twenty-seven grand of the Vineyard's money back where they had come from. I thought about the rest of the money, but I couldn't do anything about it, and by the time I'd got the padlock closed again I was feeling a little better. I was never cut out for a thief, I guess.

I crossed the basement and went outside. When my eyes got used to the moonlight I saw them. They were waiting by a tree in back of the temple. I recognized Chief Piper and Grayson. About five detectives were there, too.

“We thought you weren't coming,” the chief said.

Grayson asked: “Where's Penelope?”

“She's safe.”

“Where?” he growled.

I spoke to the chief. “You got the place covered?”

“Yeah. There's a dozen men around.”

“Good.”

I led them to the temple's basement door. I saw a man standing by the front of the temple; one of the chief's men. We left one of our detectives at the back door.

“Grab anybody that tries to come in,” I told him.

“Okay.”

We went into the basement. I punched on the flashlight. We went across to the other door. I nudged Grayson. “Here she is,” I whispered. I flashed the light on the spot where I'd left her. All I could see was the brick wall and the cement floor. Brother, my heart stood still, as the song says.

Grayson said: “What the hell is this?”

I swung the flashlight around the basement. On the other side I caught a movement. I went that way. She was moving with her face to the brick wall, feeling it with her hand; looking, I guess, for a place to get out.

“Penelope!” Grayson called.

“Shut up,” I said.

We went over to her. Grayson took her arm rind turned her around. Her eyes didn't look quite so bad. There was a trace of surprise in them. “Where...?” she began.

Grayson said “Penelope, don't you know me?”

We left a detective with her. I led the chief and Grayson and the three other dicks to the inside door and up the stairs. I opened the upper door. The first room looked just as I'd left it, candles still burning in front of the cross.

“Come on,” I whispered.

We tiptoed across the room to the door. The Princess was lying on the litter in front of the altar, the white cloth in a pile at her feet. I couldn't see the tall man. We went over to the a tar. I heard Grayson's breath rush through his nose, the Princess's left breast was smeared with blood. “That's where Penelope would have been,” I told Grayson.

I looked for the gold dagger, but it wasn't on the altar. The others were staring down at the Princess. “God! What a babe!” one of the detectives whispered. I saw bloody handprints on her thighs.

A deep voice said: “Who desecrates my temple?”

The tall man was coming towards the altar from a corner of the room. He had the dagger in his hand and his eyes were a bright blue, almost as though they were lit up from the inside. He came slowly, his long legs stiff, as though he wasn't used to walking. His face, below the wild eyes, was grim.

“Jesus God!” Chief Piper said. “It's Solomon!”

The man kept on coming. He raised the dagger, holding it in his clenched fist. I saw blood on the blade. Chief Piper screamed, the way a rabbit does when it's being killed, and turned and ran. I felt like running, too. Solomon took two more slow steps and then four of us cut loose at him. The flash of powder blinded me; the reports echoed crazily, hurt my cars. Solomon staggered, as though someone had pushed him, and then, hunched over, ran towards his coffin. We all fired at him, making a noise like a tommy-gun going full blast, but he reached the coffin and fell headlong inside. I guess that was where he wanted to be. We stood with our guns, looking at the coffin.

Chief Piper came back from where he had run to, his face chalk white, his eyes too big for his head. He asked: “Is he dead, boys?”

We walked over to the coffin, keeping the pistols in our hands. Solomon lay on his side. Blood made the robe red in a dozen places, and there was a mess of blood where the lower part of his jaw had been shot away. The gold knife was still in his fist.

I said: “Dead as a mackerel.”

The stink was terrible. I looked around the coffin, but I couldn't see where it was coming from. It reminded me again of the Kansas City stockyards.

“What the hell was his idea?” the chief said. “Living in a temple for five years. In a coffin.”

One of the detectives began to nose around the altar. I got the white cloth and threw it over the Princess. Grayson went downstairs to Penelope. There was a sound of voices outside the temple, and I went to the door and peeked out. About thirty Elders and Brothers had gathered by the steps, but the chief's men were keeping them back. I suppose they had heard the shooting. The cop by the altar called me, and I went back.

“What is it?”

He put his shoulder against the wall back of the altar and a door swung open. I went in behind him and the chief. Our flashlights showed a small room with a couple of tiny windows near the ceiling. There was a bed, a chair, a bookcase with some books and a dresser. In the dresser the detective found some black robes, sandals, and a rifle with a silencer.

“Remember a guy named Johnson?” I asked the chief.

“The one who was murdered?”

I nodded. “There's the gun that killed him.”

We went out into the big room again, the cop carrying the silenced rifle. The chief said: “I think you got some explaining to do.”

“Not here,” I said. “Bodies always give me goose pimples.”

After we'd left Penelope at St Ann's Hospital, we went to an all-night bar. Over a whisky and a steak sandwich I made things as clear as I thought I ought. I told Grayson and the chief I'd found from the records that McGee was the Vineyard's business manager. Pug Banta had killed him, I said, because McGee was trying to get rid of him. I showed them the Legion button I'd found in the temple basement.

“I figured Oke Johnson was killed,” I said, “by someone who didn't like him nosing around the temple.”

And when I found from Jeliff, the butcher, that he was sending old meat to the Vineyard, I said, I had a pretty good idea Solomon was still alive. “What else would they want decayed meat for but to make a stink?” And if Solomon was alive he'd want to keep it a secret, even if he had to kill Johnson.

“Then old Solomon was still behind everything?” the chief asked.

“Sure.”

“How the hell did he get his food?”

“I suppose a couple of Elders fed him. They probably didn't know whether he was really dead or alive.”

“He was sure crazy,” the chief said. While Grayson told the chief how he'd happened to hire me and Oke Johnson and then went on to some of the things I'd told him at the Arkady, I ate steak and drought about what I'd done. Usually Justice was supposed to be a tall dame in a white robe, but in Paulton, I decided, if the citizens ever stuck a statue of Justice on the courthouse steps, it would have to be a fat, red-faced guy with a scar on his belly.

That was a laugh, but a funny thing: I'd always played on the Justice team. Even now. Nobody could deny that Banta, the Princess and even McGee had it coming. I felt sorry for Caryle Waterman, but it was his own fault. And I had saved Penelope Grayson. I tried to think how I might have got her out in some other way, but I couldn't. It was a case, as the saying goes, of fighting fire with fire.

Grayson turned to me from the chief and asked: “Would Penelope actually have been the Bride if that poor woman hadn't...?”

I said: “Yeah.”

Chief Piper scowled at me. “That brings up the one thing I don't understand.”

I drank the rest of my whisky. “What?”

“Why'd the Princess take Miss Grayson's place?”

They both stared at me. “Oh,” I said; “she just... just wanted to help out.”

“Didn't she know Solomon ... uh ... and killed the Bride?”

“Neither of us knew that,” I said earnestly. “Otherwise she'd never done it.” I took a bite of steak. “I'd never have let her. The Princess... well, I went for her in a big way.”

Grayson said: “You don't seem exactly stricken with grief.”

“Well,” I said, “being a detective toughens a fellow up, Mr. Grayson.”