The Big Book of Reel Murders: Stories that Inspired Great Crime

The Best of Everything STANLEY ELLIN

Original publication: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1952; first collected in Mystery Stories (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1956)

One of the greatest achievements for a mystery writer is to be named a Grand Master for lifetime achievement by the Mystery Writers of America, and the Brooklyn-born Stanley Bernard Ellin (1916–1986) was given that honor in 1981. Although he is one of America’s most distinguished crime writers, a huge favorite of Jonathan Lethem, he has always been and remains underappreciated by the reading public, if not by his peers.

Upon his return to civilian life after serving in the Army during World War II, his wife agreed to support him for a year (they had a small chicken farm) while he tried to make a career as a writer. Just before the deadline, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine accepted his short story, “The Specialty of the House” (1948), which went on to become a relentlessly anthologized classic of crime fiction and was adapted for an episode of the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Many more of his stories were adapted for TV by Hitchcock and for other series. Six of his stories were nominated for Edgars, two of which won: “The House Party” (1954) and “The Blessington Method” (1956); his superb novel, The Eighth Circle (1958), also won an Edgar. In addition to having work adapted for television, many have been produced as feature films.

Dreadful Summit (1948), his first novel, was filmed by Joseph Losey as The Big Night (1951), starring John Drew Barrymore, Preston Foster, and Joan Lorring. Leda (1959), a French film directed by Claude Chabrol and starring Madeleine Robinson and Jean-Paul Belmondo, was based on his second novel, The Key to Nicholas Street (1952). House of Cards (1967) was filmed with the same title in 1968, directed by John Guillermin and starring George Peppard, Inger Stevens, and Orson Welles. The abysmal Sunburn (1979), starring Farrah Fawcett, Charles Grodin, and Art Carney, was based so loosely on The Bind (1970) that Ellin asked his name to be removed from the credits. And, of course, his short story, “The Best of Everything” (1952) became Nothing But the Best (1964) on the big screen.

Title: Nothing But the Best, 1964

Studio: Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors (UK); Royal Films International (USA)

Director: Clive Donner

Screenwriter: Frederic Raphael

Producer: David Deutsch

• Alan Bates (Jimmy Brewster)

• Denholm Elliott (Charlie Prince)

• Harry Andrews (Mr. Horton)

• Millicent Martin (Ann Horton)

This excellent adaptation of Ellin’s story, inevitably fleshed out for the screen but with all the elements in place, will remind readers and viewers of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley series, especially The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955; released in France as Purple Noon, 1960), although the story preceded her novel by three years.

Jimmy Brewster is an aggressively ambitious young man from the lower class who meets the profligate Charlie Prince, scion of a wealthy family but a black sheep who has been shunned by his father and is now an impoverished wastrel. Jimmy offers Charlie money and a place to live in exchange for teaching him the ways of the aristocracy: how to speak, how to dress, how to behave. Jimmy is an excellent student and finds success in the company he works for, as well as in his quest to marry the boss’s daughter — Charlie’s sister. Then Charlie wins a gigantic wager and, now flush, decides he doesn’t need Jimmy anymore. Afraid that all his dreams will come crashing down and that he’ll be exposed for the fraud he is, Jimmy kills Charlie.

Nothing But the Best was nominated for several awards, winning the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for Best British Comedy Screenplay.

THE BEST OF EVERYTHING Stanley Ellin

In Arthur’s eyes, they were all seemingly cut from one pattern. They were uniformly tall and well built. They had regular features set into nicely tanned faces and capped by crewcuts. Their clothing was expensively staid; their manners were impeccable. They came from impressive Families and impressive Schools, and they regarded these things casually. Among the bees that swarmed through the midtown hive, through Gothic piles redolent with the pleasant scent of gilt-edged securities, through glass pinnacles like futuristic fish bowls, they were not the most obtrusive, yet they were not lost.

To their jobs they brought the qualifications of Family and School and the capacity for looking politely eager when a superior addressed them. Actually, they were as casual about their jobs as they were about everything else, because they were cushioned with money. And for all this Arthur hated them, and would have sold his soul to be one of them.

Physically, he might have passed muster. He was a tall, extremely good-looking young man — when he walked by, few women could resist giving him that quick little sidelong glance which means they are interested, even if unavailable — and he had a sober poise which was largely the product of shrewd observation and good self-control. But he came from no impressive Family, no impressive School — and he had no money outside of his moderate salary. His parents were dead (their legacy had barely paid their funeral expenses), he had left high school before graduation to go to work, and uneasily shifted jobs until he had recently come to port in Horton & Son, and he could, at any moment he was asked, have stated his net worth to the penny: the total of bank account, wallet, and change pocket. Obviously, he could not afford to be casual, as a fine young man should.

That phrase, “fine young man,” crystallized his hatred of the type. He had been standing outside Mr. Horton’s door one morning when the two sons of a client had been ushered out. Their eyes flicked over Arthur in the fraction of a second, instantly marked that he was not one of them, and turned blankly indifferent. Nothing was said, nothing done, but he was put neatly in his place in that moment and left to stand there with the hate and anger boiling in him. And he couldn’t hit back, that was the worst of it; there was no way of touching them. Their homes, their clubs, their lives were inaccessible.

When the elevator door closed behind them, Mr. Horton seemed to notice Arthur for the first time. “Fine young men,” he observed, almost wistfully, gesturing toward the elevator door, and the phrase had been planted. Not only planted, but fertilized on the spot by Mr. Horton’s tone, which, to Arthur’s inflamed mind, appeared to add: They belong to my world, but you do not.

And to make it worse, of course, there was Ann. Ann Horton.

It is the traditional right of every enterprising young man to apply himself as diligently to romance as to business, and to combine the highest degree of success in both by marrying the boss’s daughter. And if the daughter happened to be as beautiful and desirable and, to use the admiring expression of those who knew her, unspoiled as Ann Horton, so much the better.

But what Arthur knew instinctively was that there are different degrees of being unspoiled. Thus, if a girl who desperately yearns for a forty-foot cabin cruiser and finally settles for a twenty-foot speedboat is unspoiled, Ann Horton was unspoiled. It is not quite sufficient to approach someone like this bringing only a burning passion and an eagerness to slay dragons. It is also necessary to come riding in golden armor, mounted on a blooded horse, and bearing orchestra seats to the best musical comedy in town. And, if the suitor is to make his point explicit, not on rare occasions, but frequently.

All this and more Arthur brooded over as he lay on his bed in Mrs. Marsh’s rooming house night after night, and studied the ceiling. His thoughts were maddening, whirling around on themselves like the apocryphal snake seizing its own tail and then devouring itself. Ann Horton had looked at him more than once the way all women looked at him. If he could only meet her, offer her the image of himself that she required, was marriage out of the question? But to meet her on her terms took money, and, ironically, the only chance he ever had of getting money was to marry her! Good Lord, he thought, if he ever could do that he’d have enough money to throw into the face of every fine young man he’d ever hated.

So the thoughts slowly reshaped themselves, and without his quite knowing it Ann Horton became the means, not the end. The end would be the glory that comes to those who, without counting their money, can afford the best of everything. The best of everything, Arthur would say dreamily to himself, and his eyes would see beautiful, expensive pictures like clouds moving across the ceiling.

Charlie Prince was a young man who obviously had known the best of everything. He made his entrance into Arthur’s life one lunch hour as Arthur sat finishing his coffee, his eyes on a Horton & Son prospectus spread on the table before him, his thoughts on a twenty-foot speedboat with Ann Horton.

“Hope you don’t mind my asking,” said Charlie Prince, “but do you work for old Horton?”

The voice was the voice of someone from a Family and a School; even the use of the word “old” was a natural part of it, since the word was now in vogue among them, and could be applied to anything, no matter what its age might be.

Arthur looked up from shoes, to suit, to shirt, to necktie, to hat, his mind mechanically tabbing them Oliver Moore, Brooks, Sulka, Bronzini, Cavanaugh, and then stopped short at the face. True, it was tanned, marked by regular features, and capped by the inevitable crew haircut, but there was something else about it. Some small lines about the eyes, some twist of the lips.

“That’s right,” Arthur said warily, “I work for Horton’s.”

“Is it all right if I sit down here? My name’s Charlie Prince.”

It turned out that Charlie Prince had seen the prospectus on the table, had once worked for Horton’s himself, and couldn’t resist stopping to ask how the old place was coming along.

“Well enough, I suppose,” said Arthur, and then remarked, “I don’t remember seeing you around.”

“Oh, that was before your time, I suppose, and I’m sure the office is hardly encouraged to talk about me. You see, I’m sort of a blot on its escutcheon. I left under rather a cloud, if you get what I mean.”

“Oh,” said Arthur, and felt a quick, bitter envy for anyone who could afford to be incompetent, insubordinate even, and could leave a firm like Horton’s so casually.

Charlie Prince, it appeared, read his thoughts quite accurately. “No,” he said, “it doesn’t have anything to do with my not being able to hold down the job, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was a bit of dishonesty, really. Some checks I forged — stuff like that.”

Arthur’s jaw dropped.

“I know,” observed Charlie Prince cheerfully. “You figure that when someone gets caught in a business like that he ought to be all tears and remorse, all sackcloth and ashes, and such. But I’m not. Oh, of course I was all remorse at getting caught by that idiot, meddling accountant, but you can hardly blame me for that.”

“But why did you do it?”

Charlie Prince frowned. “I don’t look like one of those silly psychopaths who just steals to get a thrill from it, do I? It was for money, of course. It’s always for money.”

“Always?”

“Oh, I worked in other places besides Horton’s, and I was always leaving under a cloud. Matter of fact, it wasn’t until I was in Horton’s that I learned the biggest lesson of my life.” He leaned forward and tapped his forefinger on the table significantly. “That business of tracing someone’s signature is the bunk. Absolute bunk. If you’re going to forge a name you just have to practice writing it free-hand, and keep on practicing until you can set it down slap dash, like that. It’s the only way.”

“But you got caught there, too.”

“That was carelessness. I was cashing the checks, but I didn’t bother to make entries about them in the books. And you know what an accountant can be if his books don’t balance.”

Arthur found himself fascinated, but also found himself unable to frame the question he wanted to ask and yet remain within the bounds of politeness. “Then what happened? Did they — did you—?”

“You mean, arrested, sent to jail, stuff like that?” Charlie Prince looked at Arthur pityingly. “Of course not. You know how those companies are about publicity like that, and when my father made the money good that’s all there was to it.”

“And nothing at all happened to you?” Arthur said, awestruck.

“Well,” Charlie Prince admitted, “something had to happen, of course, especially after that last performance when my father boiled up like an old steam kettle about it. But it wasn’t too bad, really. It was just that I became a sort of local remittance man.”

“A what?” said Arthur blankly.

“A sort of local remittance man. You know how those old families in England would ship their black-sheep offspring off to Australia or somewhere just to keep them off the scene, then send them an allowance and tell them it would show up regularly as long as sonny stayed out of sight? Well, that’s what happened to me. At first the old man was just going to heave me out into the cold and darkness without even a penny, but the women in my family have soft hearts and he was convinced otherwise. I would get a monthly allowance — about half of what I needed to live on, as it turned out — but for the rest of my life I had to steer clear of my family and its whole circle. And I can tell you, it’s a mighty big circle.”

“Then you’re not supposed to be in New York, are you?”

“I said I was a local remittance man. Meaning I can be anywhere I please as long as I’m not heard or seen by any of my family or its three million acquaintances. In which case I merely drop a note to the family lawyer stating my address, and on the first of each month I receive my allowance.”

“Well,” said Arthur, “considering everything, I’d say your father was being very decent about it.”

Charlie Prince sighed. “Truth to tell, he’s not a bad old sort at all. But he’s cursed by a morbid yearning toward a certain kind of holy young prig which I am not. You know what I mean. The sort of young squirt who’s all bland exterior, blank interior, and not a spark anywhere. If I had turned out like that, everything would have been just dandy. But I didn’t. So here I am, a veritable Ishmael, two weeks before allowance comes due, locked out of his hotel room.”

Arthur felt an inexplicable stirring of excitement. “Locked out?”

“That’s what happens when you can’t pay your rent. It’s a law or a code or something. Anyhow, it’s damn thoughtless, whatever it is, and what I’m leading up to is to ask if, in return for the story of my life, such as it is, you might see your way clear to making a loan. Not too small a one, either; a sort of medium-sized loan. I’ll guarantee to pay you back the first of the month and with fair interest.”

Charlie Prince’s voice now had an openly pleading note. “I’ll admit that I have my dishonest side, but I’ve never welshed on a debt in my whole life. Matter of fact,” he explained, “the only reason I got myself into trouble was because I was so anxious to pay my debts.”

Arthur looked at Charlie Prince’s perfect clothes; he saw Charlie Prince’s easy poise; he heard Charlie Prince’s well modulated voice sounding pleasantly in his ears, and the stirring of excitement suddenly took meaning.

“Look,” he said, “where do you live now?”

“Nowhere, of course — not as long as I’m locked out. But I’ll meet you here the first of the month on the minute. I can swear you don’t have to worry about getting the money back. The way I’ve been talking about things ought to prove I’m on the dead level with you.”

“I don’t mean that,” said Arthur. “I mean, would you want to share a room with me? If I lent you enough money to clear up your hotel bill and get your things out of there, would you move in with me? I’ve got a nice room; it’s in an old house but very well kept. Mrs. Marsh — that is, the landlady — is the talky kind and very fussy about things, but you can see she’s the sort to keep a place nice. And it’s very cheap; it would save you a lot of money.”

He stopped short then, with the realization that this was turning into a vehement sales talk and that Charlie Prince was regarding him quizzically.

“What is it?” said Charlie Prince. “Are you broke, too?”

“No, it has nothing to do with money. I have the money to lend you, don’t I?”

“Then why the fever to share the room? Especially with me, that is.”

Arthur took his courage in both hands. “All right, I’ll tell you. You have something I want.”

Charlie Prince blinked. “I do?”

“Listen to me,” Arthur said. “I never had any of the things you had, and it shows. Somehow, it shows. I know it does, because you wouldn’t ever talk to any of those young men, the sort your father likes, the way you talk to me. But I don’t care about that. What I care about is finding out exactly what makes you like that, what makes them all like that. It’s some kind of polish that a good family and money can rub on you so that it never comes off. And that’s what I want.”

Charlie Prince looked at him wonderingly. “And you think that if we share a room some of this mysterious polish, this whatever-it-is, will rub off on you?”

“You let me worry about that,” said Arthur. He drew out his checkbook and a pen, and laid them on the table before him. “Well?” he said.

Charlie Prince studied the checkbook thoughtfully. “I’ll admit I haven’t any idea of what I’m selling,” he said, “but it’s a sale.”

As it turned out, they made excellent roommates. There is no greater compatibility than that between a good talker and a good listener, and since Charlie Prince liked nothing better than to pump amiably from a bottomless well of anecdote and reminiscence, and Arthur made an almost feverishly interested audience, life in the second-floor front at Mrs. Marsh’s rooming house was idyllic.

There were some very small flies in the ointment, of course. At times, Charlie Prince might have had cause to reflect that he had found too good a listener in Arthur, considering Arthur’s insatiable appetite for detail. It can be quite disconcerting for a raconteur embarked on the story of a yachting experience to find that he must describe the dimensions of the yacht, its structure, its method of operation, and then enter into a lecture on the comparative merits of various small boats before he can get to the point of the story itself. Or to draw full value from the narrative of an intriguing little episode concerning a young woman met in a certain restaurant when one is also required to add footnotes on the subjects of what to say to a maitre d’, how to order, how to tip, how to dress for every occasion, and so on, ad infinitum.

It might also have distressed Charlie Prince, who had commendable powers of observation, to note that Arthur was becoming subtly cast in his own image. The inflection of voice, the choice of words and their usage, the manner of sitting, walking, standing, the gestures of hands, the very shades of expression which Arthur came to adopt, all had the rather uncomfortable quality of showing Charlie Prince to himself in a living mirror.

For Arthur’s part, the one thing that really shocked him in the relationship was the discovery of the childishness of Charlie Prince and his small world. From all he could gather, Arthur decided somberly, Charlie Prince and his like emerged from childhood into adolescence and stopped short there. Physically, they might grow still larger and more impressive, but mentally and emotionally, they were all they would ever be. They would learn adult catchwords and mannerisms, but underneath? Of course, it was nothing that Arthur ever chose to mention aloud.

His feeling on the subject was heightened by the matter of Charlie Prince’s allowance. On the first of each month, Mrs. Marsh would smilingly enter the room bearing an envelope addressed to Charlie Prince. It was an expensive-looking envelope, and if one held it up to the light reflectively, as Charlie always did before opening it, it was possible to make out the outlines of an expensive-looking slip of paper. A check for five hundred dollars signed by James Llewellyn. “The family’s personal lawyer,” Charlie had once explained, and added with some bitterness, “It wasn’t hard enough having one father like mine, so old Llewellyn’s been playing second father since I was a kid.”

To Charlie Prince, the amount was a pittance. To Arthur it was the key. The key to the enchanted garden just outside Arthur’s reach; the key to Bluebeard’s chamber which you were forbidden to use; the key to Ann Horton. It would not pay for what you wanted, but it would open the door.

Even more tantalizing to Arthur was the fact that for a few hours each month it was all his. Charlie Prince would endorse it, and then Arthur would obligingly stop in at the bank where he had his own small account and cash it there. On his return, he would carefully deduct the amount of Charlie’s share of the rent, the amount that Charlie had borrowed from him the last week or two of the preceding month, and then turn the rest over to his roommate. It was at Charlie’s insistence that he did this. “If you want to make sure that I’m square with my rent and whatever I owe you,” he had explained, “this is the best way. Besides, you can cash it easily, and I seem to have a lot of trouble that way.”

Thus, for a few hours each month, Arthur was another man. Charlie Prince was generous about lending his wardrobe, and Arthur made it a point, on check-cashing day especially, to wear one of those wondrously cut and textured suits which looked as if it had been tailored for him. And in the breast pocket of that suit was a wallet containing five hundred dollars in crisp new bills. It was no wonder that it happened to be one of those days on which he made the impression he had dreamed of making.

He entered his employer’s office, and Ann Horton was seated on a corner of the desk there, talking to her father. She glanced at Arthur as he stood there, and then stopped short in what she was saying to look him up and down with open admiration.

“Well,” she said to her father, “I’ve seen this young man here and there in the office several times. Don’t you think it’s about time you had the manners to introduce us?”

Her manner of address startled Arthur, who had somehow always visualized Mr. Horton as a forbidding figure poised on a mountaintop fingering a thunderbolt. But it was even more startling when Mr. Horton, after what seemed to be a moment of uncertain recognition, made the introduction in terms that sounded like music to Arthur’s ears. Arthur, he said warmly, was a fine young man. It would be a pleasure to introduce him.

That was Arthur’s golden opportunity — and he flubbed it. Flubbed it miserably. What he said was pointless; the way he said it made it sound even more mawkish and clumsy than seemed possible. And even while he was watching the glow fade from Ann Horton’s face he knew what the trouble was, and cursed himself and the whole world for it.

The money wasn’t his, that was the thing. If it were, he could be seeing her that evening, and the next, and the one after that. But it wasn’t. It was a meaningless bulge in his wallet that could take him this far, and no farther. And that knowledge made everything else meaningless: the clothes, the manner, everything he had made himself into. Without the money, it was all nonsense. With it—

With it! He had been looking merely ill at ease; now he looked physically ill under the impact of the thought that struck him. An instant concern showed in Ann Horton’s lovely eyes. Apparently she was a girl with strong maternal instinct.

“You’re not well,” she said.

The idea, the glorious realization, was a flame roaring through him now. He rose from it like a phoenix.

“No, I don’t feel very well,” he answered, and could hardly recognize his own voice as he spoke, “but it’s nothing serious. Really, it isn’t.”

“Well, you ought to go home right now,” she said firmly. “I have the car downstairs, and it won’t be any trouble at all.”

Arthur mentally struck himself on the forehead with his fist. He had thrown away one opportunity — did he have to throw this one away as well? Yet Mrs. Marsh’s rooming house had never appeared as wretched as it did just then; it was impossible to have her drive him there.

Inspiration put the words into his mouth, the proper words to impress father and daughter. “There’s so much work to be done,” said Arthur, wistfully courageous, “that I can’t possibly leave it.” And then he added with as much ease as if he had practiced the lines for hours, “But I do want to see you again. Do you think if I called tomorrow evening—?”

After that, he told himself grimly whenever the fire inside him threatened to flicker uncertainly, he had no choice. And Charlie Prince, of course, was not even offered a choice. At exactly seven minutes before midnight, after considerable choked protest and thrashing around, Charlie Prince lay dead on his bed. Entirely dead, although Arthur’s fingers remained clasped around his throat for another long minute just to make sure.

It has been remarked that the man with the likeliest chance of getting away with murder is the man who faces his victim in a crowd, fires a bullet into him, and then walks off — which is a way of saying that it is the devious and overly ingenious method of murder that will hang the murderer. To that extent, Arthur had committed his murder wisely, although not out of any wisdom.

The fact is that from the moment he had left Ann Horton to the moment he finally released his fingers from Charlie Prince’s throat he had lived in a sort of blind fever of knowing what had to be done without a thought of how it was to be done. And when at last he stood looking down at the body before him, with the full horror of what had happened bursting in his mind, he was at a complete loss. The soul had departed, no question about that. But the body remained, and what in the Lord’s name was one to do with it?

He could bundle it into the closet, get it out of sight at least, but what would be the point of that? Mrs. Marsh came in every morning to make up the room and empty the wastebaskets. Since there was no lock on the closet door, there was no way of keeping her out of it.

Or take Charlie Prince’s trunk standing there in the corner. He could deposit the body in it and ship it somewhere. Ship it where? He put his mind to the question desperately, but was finally forced to the conclusion that there was no place in the world to which you could ship a trunk with a body in it and rest assured that murder wouldn’t out.

But he was on the right track with that trunk, and when the solution came at last he recognized it instantly and eagerly. The storage room in Mrs. Marsh’s was a dank cavern in the depths of the house, barred by a heavy door, which, though never locked, made it a desolate and chilly place no matter what the season. Since there was no traffic in that room, a body could molder there for years without anyone being the wiser. Eventually, it could be disposed of with no difficulty. The object now was to get it into the trunk and down to the storage room.

To Arthur’s annoyance, he discovered that even though the trunk was a large one it made a tight fit, and it was a messy business getting everything arranged neatly. But at last he had it bolted tightly and out into the hallway. It was when he was midway down the stairs that the accident happened. He felt the trunk slipping down his back, gave it a violent heave to right it, and the next instant saw it go sliding over his head to crash down the rest of the distance to the floor with a thunder that shook the house. He was after it in an instant, saw that it remained firmly bolted, and then realized that he was standing eye to eye with Mrs. Marsh.

She was poised there like a frightened apparition, clad in a white flannel nightgown that fell to her ankles, her fingers to her lips, her eyes wide.

“Dear me,” she said, “dear me, you should be more careful!”

Arthur flung himself in front of the trunk as if she had vision that could penetrate its walls. “I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t mean to make any noise, but somehow it slipped.”

She shook her head with gentle severity. “You might have scratched the walls. Or hurt yourself.”

“No,” he assured her hastily, “there’s no damage done. None.”

She peered around him at the trunk. “Why, that’s that nice Mr. Prince’s trunk, isn’t it? Wherever can you be taking it at this hour?”

Arthur felt the perspiration start on his forehead. “Nowhere,” he said hoarsely, and then when she knit her brows in wonder at this he quickly added, “That is, to the storage room. You see, Charlie — Mr. Prince — was supposed to give me a hand with it, but when he didn’t show up I decided to try it myself.”

“But it must be so heavy.”

Her warmly sympathetic tone served nicely to steady his nerves. His thoughts started to move now with the smooth precision of the second hand on a good watch. “I suppose it is,” he said, and laughed deprecatingly, “but it seemed better to do it myself than keep waiting for Mr. Prince to help. He’s very unreliable, you know. Just takes off when he wants to, and you never know how long he’ll be gone.”

“I think it’s a shame,” said Mrs. Marsh firmly.

“No, no, he’s a bit eccentric, but really very nice when you get to know him.” Arthur took a grip on the trunk. “I’ll get it down the rest of the way easily enough,” he said.

A thought struck Mrs. Marsh. “Oh, dear me,” she chirped, “perhaps everything did happen for the best. I mean, your making a noise and bringing me out and all. You see, there’s a lock on the storage room now and you’d never have got in. I’ll just slip on a robe and take care of that.”

She went ahead of him down the creaking cellar steps and waited in the storage room until he trundled the trunk into it. A dim light burned there, and, as he had remembered, dust lay thick over everything in sight. Mrs. Marsh shook her head over it.

“It’s dreadful,” she said, “but there’s really no point in trying to do anything about it. Why, I don’t believe anyone uses this room from one year to the next! The only reason I put the lock on the door was because the insurance company wanted it there.”

Arthur shifted from one foot to the other. His mission completed, he was willing — in fact, anxious — to leave, but Mrs. Marsh seemed oblivious to this. “I don’t encourage transients,” she said. “What I like is a nice steady gentleman boarder who’s no fuss and bother. Now, take that trunk there—” she pointed a bony forefinger at what appeared to be a mound of ashes, but which proved on a second look to be a trunk buried under years of dust — “when that gentleman moved in—”

Arthur found himself swaying on his feet while the gentle chirping went on and on. In this fashion he learned about the gentleman in the first-floor rear, the gentleman in the second-floor rear, and the gentleman in the third-floor front. It was as though her conversational stream had been dammed up so long that now it was released there was no containing it. And through it all he sustained himself with one thought. He had got away with murder — really and literally got away with murder. When the door to the storage room closed behind him, Charlie Prince could rot away without a soul in the world being the wiser. The checks would come every month, five hundred dollars each and every month, and there was Ann Horton and the world of glory ahead. The best of everything, Arthur thought in and around Mrs. Marsh’s unwearying voice, and he knew then what it felt like to be an emperor incognito.

The monologue had to come to an end sometime, the heavy door was locked and stayed locked, and Arthur entered his new station with the confidence that is supposed to be the lot of the righteous but which may also come to those who have got away with murder and know it beyond the shadow of a doubt. And even the tiniest fragment of unease could not possibly remain after he met Mrs. Marsh in the hallway one evening a few weeks later.

“You were right,” she said, pursing her lips sympathetically. “Mr. Prince is eccentric, isn’t he?”

“He is?” said Arthur uncertainly.

“Oh, yes. Like practicing writing his name on every piece of paper he can get his hands on. Just one sheet of paper after another with nothing on it but his name!”

Arthur abruptly remembered his wastebasket, and then thought with a glow of undeserved self-admiration how everything, even unforgivable carelessness, worked for him.

“I’m sure,” observed Mrs. Marsh, “that a grown man can find better things to do with his time than that. It just goes to show you.”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “it certainly does.”

So, serenity reigned over Mrs. Marsh’s. It reigned elsewhere, too, since Arthur had no difficulty at all in properly endorsing those precious checks, and even less trouble in spending the money. Using Charlie Prince’s wardrobe as his starting point, he built his into a thing of quiet splendor. Drawing from Charlie Prince’s narratives, he went to the places where one should be seen, and behaved as one should behave. His employer beamed on him with a kindly eye which became almost affectionate when Arthur mentioned the income a generous aunt had provided for him, and his acquaintance with Ann Horton, who had seemed strangely drawn to him from the first evening they spent together, soon blossomed into romance.

He found Ann Horton everything he had ever imagined — passionate, charming, devoted. Of course, she had her queer little reticences — dark little places in her own background that she chose not to touch upon — but, as he reminded himself, who was he to cast stones? So he behaved himself flawlessly up to the point where they had to discuss the wedding, and then they had their first quarrel.

There was no question about the wedding itself. It was to take place in June, the month of brides; it was to be followed by a luxurious honeymoon, after which Arthur would enter into a position of importance in the affairs of Horton & Son at a salary commensurate with that position. No, there was no question about the wedding — the envy in the eyes of every fine young man who had ever courted Ann Horton attested to that — but there was a grave question about the ceremony.

“But why do you insist on a big ceremony?” she demanded. “I think they’re dreadful things. All those people and all that fuss. It’s like a Roman circus.”

He couldn’t explain to her, and that complicated matters. After all, there is no easy way of explaining to any girl that her wedding is not only to be a nuptial, but also a sweet measure of revenge. It would be all over the papers; the whole world of fine young men would be on hand to witness it. They had to be there or it would be tasteless in the mouth.

“And why do you insist on a skimpy little private affair?” he asked in turn. “I should think a girl’s wedding would be the most important thing in the world to her. That she’d want to do it up proud. Standing there in the living room with your father and aunt doesn’t seem like any ceremony at all.”

“But you’ll be there, too,” she said. “That’s what makes it a ceremony.”

He was not to be put off by any such feminine wit, however, and he let her know it. In the end, she burst into tears and fled, leaving him as firm in his convictions as ever. If it cost him his neck, he told himself angrily, he was not going to have any hit-and-run affair fobbed off on him as the real thing. He’d have the biggest cathedral in town, the most important people — the best of everything.

When they met again she was in a properly chastened mood, so he was properly magnanimous. “Darling,” she said, “did you think I was very foolish carrying on the way I did?”

“Of course not, Ann. Don’t you think I understand how high-strung you are, and how seriously you take this?”

“You are a darling, Arthur,” she said, “really you are. And perhaps, in a way, your insistence on a big ceremony has done more for us than you’ll ever understand.”

“In what way?” he asked.

“I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you that I haven’t been as happy in years as I’m going to be if things work out.”

“What things?” he asked, completely at sea in the face of this feminine ambiguity.

“Before I can even talk about it there’s one question you must answer, Arthur. And, please, promise you’ll answer truthfully.”

“Of course I will.”

“Then you can find it in your heart to forgive someone who’s done a great wrong? Someone who’s done wrong, but suffered for it?”

He grimaced inwardly. “Of course I can. I don’t care what wrong anyone’s done, it’s my nature to forgive him.” He almost said her but caught himself in time. After all, if that was the way she wanted to build up to a maidenly confession, why spoil it? But there seemed to be no confession forthcoming. She said nothing more about the subject — instead, spent the rest of the evening in such a giddy discussion of plans and arrangements that by the time he left her the matter was entirely forgotten.

He was called into Mr. Horton’s office late the next afternoon, and when he entered the room he saw Ann there. From her expression and from her father’s, he could guess what they had been discussing, and he felt a pleasant triumph in that knowledge.

“Arthur,” said Mr. Horton, “please sit down.” Arthur sat down, crossed his legs, and smiled at Ann. “Arthur,” said Mr. Horton, “I have something serious to discuss with you.”

“Yes, sir,” said Arthur, and waited patiently for Mr. Horton to finish arranging three pencils, a pen, a letter opener, a memorandum pad, and a telephone before him on the desk.

“Arthur,” Mr. Horton said at last, “what I’m going to tell you is something few people know, and I hope you will follow their example and never discuss it with anyone else.”

“Yes, sir,” said Arthur.

“Ann has told me that you insist on a big ceremony with all the trimmings, and that’s what makes the problem. A private ceremony would have left things as they were, and no harm done. Do you follow me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Arthur, lying valiantly. He looked furtively at Ann, but no clue was to be found there. “Of course, sir,” he said.

“Then, since I’m a man who likes to get to the point quickly, I will tell you that I have a son. You’re very much like him — in fact, Ann and I were both struck by that resemblance some time ago — but unfortunately my son happens to be a thoroughgoing scoundrel, and after one trick too many he was simply bundled off to fend for himself on an allowance I provided. I haven’t heard from him since — my lawyer takes care of the details — but if there is to be a big ceremony with everyone on hand to ask questions, he must be there. You understand that, of course.”

The room seemed to be closing in around Arthur, and Mr. Horton’s face was suddenly a diabolic mask floating against the wall.

“Yes, sir,” Arthur whispered.

“That means I must do something now that Ann’s been after me to do for years. I have the boy’s address; we’re all going over right now to meet him, to talk to him and see if he can’t get off to a fresh start with your example before him.”

“Prince Charlie,” said Ann fondly. “That’s what we all used to call him, he was so charming.”

The walls were very close now, the walls of a black chamber, and Ann’s face floating alongside her father’s. And, strangely enough, there was the face of Mrs. Marsh. The kindly, garrulous face of Mrs. Marsh growing so much bigger than the others.

And a trunk, waiting.

Animal Rescue DENNIS LEHANE

Original publication: Boston Noir, edited by Dennis Lehane (New York, Akashic, 2009); revised and published as The Drop (New York, William Morrow, 2014)

As one of the most distinguished writers of mystery fiction — no, change that — of literature, working today, Dennis Lehane (born 1965) has produced fourteen books that have developed an enthusiastic popular and critical following. He began by writing a series of Boston-based private detective novels featuring the team of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Genarro, beginning with A Drink Before the War (1994). Four additional books in the series quickly followed, plus another more than a decade later, one of which, Gone, Baby, Gone (1998), was adapted for a 2007 film of the same title. Directed by Ben Affleck, it starred Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan as Kenzie and Gennaro. Lehane, who has gone to work in Hollywood, did not write the screenplay. He said that he never wanted to write the screenplays for films based on his own books because he has “no desire to operate on my own child.”

Lehane’s first nonseries book was Mystic River (2001), which inspired an outstanding film of the same name in 2003, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon. His next book, Shutter Island (2003), also inspired another successful film with the same title as its source. Directed by Martin Scorsese, the 2010 film starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo. After writing episodes of the highly acclaimed television series The Wire and Boardwalk Empire, Lehane did “operate on his own child” when he adapted “Animal Rescue” for the film The Drop.

The short story features Bob Saginowski, a sad, lonely man who hears a dog whimpering in a trash can and, with the help of a young woman, saves and nurtures it. The original owner, who had starved and beaten it, shows up and demands its return unless Bob gives him $10,000, easily obtainable from the bar where Bob works that is used by a Chechen mob as a drop for large amounts of money.

“Animal Rescue” was selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2010. After writing the screenplay for the film based on it, Lehane revised and expanded the story and it was released as a book titled The Drop in 2014.

Title: The Drop, 2014

Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Director: Michaël R. Roskam

Screenwriter: Dennis Lehane

Producers: Blair Breard, Peter Chernin, Dylan Clark

• Tom Hardy (Bob Saginowski)

• Noomi Rapace (Nadia Dunn)

• James Gandolfini (Marvin “Cousin Marv” Stipler)

• Mattias Schoenaerts (Eric Deeds)

Lehane’s “operation” was a success. The film closely follows the story line of his short story, expanding the elements involving the Chechen gangsters who use the bar where Bob works, which is owned by his cousin, Marv.

Although it is a crime film with its share of violence, The Drop is also a touching, poignant character study of loneliness, experienced by both Bob and Nadia, who have something to offer each other.

The British actor Tom Hardy quickly became successful after his debut in Black Hawk Down (2001), appearing in numerous motion pictures, television shows, and theatrical productions. Coincidentally, he had two rescued dogs (one of which died in 2017).

The Swedish actress Noomi Rapace had been working for several years but achieved fame with her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in the 2009 Swedish film adaptations of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. In 2011, she was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

James Gandolfini was best known for his role as Tony Soprano, the Italian-American crime boss in HBO’s television series The Sopranos. He was universally acclaimed for his performance, winning three Emmy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and one Golden Globe Award. His role as “Cousin Marv” in The Drop was his last, as a month after the film wrapped he suddenly died at the age of fifty-one while in Rome.

During the filming, Hardy and Rapace went to an animal-rescue center to prepare for their roles and Hardy adopted a pit bull puppy, which he brought to the set.

ANIMAL RESCUE Dennis Lehane

Bob found the dog in the trash.

It was just after Thanksgiving, the neighborhood gone quiet, hungover. After bartending at Cousin Marv’s, Bob sometimes walked the streets. He was big and lumpy and hair had been growing in unlikely places all over his body since his teens. In his twenties, he’d fought against the hair, carrying small clippers in his coat pocket and shaving twice a day. He’d also fought the weight, but during all those years of fighting, no girl who wasn’t being paid for it ever showed any interest in him. After a time, he gave up the fight. He lived alone in the house he grew up in, and when it seemed likely to swallow him with its smells and memories and dark couches, the attempts he’d made to escape it — through church socials, lodge picnics, and one horrific mixer thrown by a dating service — had only opened the wound further, left him patching it back up for weeks, cursing himself for hoping.

So he took these walks of his and, if he was lucky, sometimes he forgot people lived any other way. That night, he paused on the sidewalk, feeling the ink sky above him and the cold in his fingers, and he closed his eyes against the evening.

He was used to it. He was used to it. It was okay.

You could make a friend of it, as long as you didn’t fight it.

With his eyes closed, he heard it — a worn-out keening accompanied by distant scratching and a sharper, metallic rattling. He opened his eyes. Fifteen feet down the sidewalk, a large metal barrel with a heavy lid shook slightly under the yellow glare of the streetlight, its bottom scraping the sidewalk. He stood over it and heard that keening again, the sound of a creature that was one breath away from deciding it was too hard to take the next, and he pulled off the lid.

He had to remove some things to get to it — a toaster and five thick Yellow Pages, the oldest dating back to 2000. The dog — either a very small one or else a puppy — was down at the bottom, and it scrunched its head into its midsection when the light hit it. It exhaled a soft chug of a whimper and tightened its body even more, its eyes closed to slits. A scrawny thing. Bob could see its ribs. He could see a big crust of dried blood by its ear. No collar. It was brown with a white snout and paws that seemed far too big for its body.

It let out a sharper whimper when Bob reached down, sank his fingers into the nape of its neck, and lifted it out of its own excrement. Bob didn’t know dogs too well, but there was no mistaking this one for anything but a boxer. And definitely a puppy, the wide brown eyes opening and looking into his as he held it up before him.

Somewhere, he was sure, two people made love. A man and a woman. Entwined. Behind one of those shades, oranged with light, that looked down on the street. Bob could feel them in there, naked and blessed. And he stood out here in the cold with a near-dead dog staring back at him. The icy sidewalk glinted like new marble, and the wind was dark and gray as slush.

“What do you got there?”

Bob turned, looked up and down the sidewalk.

“I’m up here. And you’re in my trash.”

She stood on the front porch of the three-decker nearest him. She’d turned the porch light on and stood there shivering, her feet bare. She reached into the pocket of her hoodie and came back with a pack of cigarettes. She watched him as she got one going.

“I found a dog,” Bob held it up.

“A what?”

“A dog. A puppy. A boxer, I think.”

She coughed out some smoke. “Who puts a dog in a barrel?”

“Right?” he said. “It’s bleeding.” He took a step toward her stairs and she backed up.

“Who do you know that I would know?” A city girl, not about to just drop her guard around a stranger.

“I don’t know,” Bob said. “How about Francie Hedges?”

She shook her head. “You know the Sullivans?”

That wouldn’t narrow it down. Not around here. You shook a tree, a Sullivan fell out. Followed by a six-pack most times. “I know a bunch.”

This was going nowhere, the puppy looking at him, shaking worse than the girl.

“Hey,” she said, “you live in this parish?”

“Next one over. St. Theresa’s.”

“Go to church?”

“Most Sundays.”

“So you know Father Pete?”

“Pete Regan,” he said, “sure.”

She produced a cell phone. “What’s your name?”

“Bob,” he said. “Bob Saginowski.”

Bob waited as she stepped back from the light, phone to one ear, finger pressed into the other. He stared at the puppy. The puppy stared back, like, How did I get here? Bob touched its nose with his index finger. The puppy blinked its huge eyes. For a moment, Bob couldn’t recall his sins.

“Nadia,” the girl said and stepped back into the light. “Bring him up here, Bob. Pete says hi.”

They washed it in Nadia’s sink, dried it off, and brought it to her kitchen table.

Nadia was small. A bumpy red rope of a scar ran across the base of her throat like the smile of a drunk circus clown. She had a tiny moon of a face, savaged by pockmarks, and small, heart-pendant eyes. Shoulders that didn’t cut so much as dissolve at the arms. Elbows like flattened beer cans. A yellow bob of hair curled on either side of her face. “It’s not a boxer.” Her eyes glanced off Bob’s face before dropping the puppy back onto her kitchen table. “It’s an American Staffordshire terrier.”

Bob knew he was supposed to understand something in her tone, but he didn’t know what that thing was so he remained silent.

She glanced back up at him after the quiet lasted too long. “A pit bull.”

“That’s a pit bull?”

She nodded and swabbed the puppy’s head wound again. Someone had pummeled it, she told Bob. Probably knocked it unconscious, assumed it was dead, and dumped it.

“Why?” Bob said.

She looked at him, her round eyes getting rounder, wider. “Just because.” She shrugged, went back to examining the dog. “I worked at Animal Rescue once. You know the place on Shawmut? As a vet tech. Before I decided it wasn’t my thing. They’re so hard, this breed...”

“What?”

“To adopt out,” she said. “It’s very hard to find them a home.”

“I don’t know about dogs. I never had a dog. I live alone. I was just walking by the barrel.” Bob found himself beset by a desperate need to explain himself, explain his life. “I’m just not...” He could hear the wind outside, black and rattling. Rain or bits of hail spit against the windows.

Nadia lifted the puppy’s back left paw — the other three paws were brown, but this one was white with peach spots. Then she dropped the paw as if it were contagious. She went back to the head wound, took a closer look at the right ear, a piece missing from the tip that Bob hadn’t noticed until now.

“Well,” she said, “he’ll live. You’re gonna need a crate and food and all sorts of stuff.”

“No,” Bob said. “You don’t understand.”

She cocked her head, gave him a look that said she understood perfectly.

“I can’t. I just found him. I was gonna give him back.”

“To whoever beat him, left him for dead?”

“No, no, like, the authorities.”

“That would be Animal Rescue,” she said. “After they give the owner seven days to reclaim him, they’ll—”

“The guy who beat him? He gets a second chance?”

She gave him a half-frown and a nod. “If he doesn’t take it,” she lifted the puppy’s ear, peered in, “chances are this little fella’ll be put up for adoption. But it’s hard. To find them a home. Pit bulls. More often than not?” She looked at Bob. “More often than not, they’re put down.”

Bob felt a wave of sadness roll out from her that immediately shamed him. He didn’t know how, but he’d caused pain. He’d put some out into the world. He’d let this girl down. “I...” he started. “It’s just...”

She glanced up at him. “I’m sorry?”

Bob looked at the puppy. Its eyes were droopy from a long day in the barrel and whoever gave it that wound. It had stopped shivering, though.

“You can take it,” Bob said. “You used to work there, like you said. You—”

She shook her head. “My father lives with me. He gets home Sunday night from Foxwoods. He finds a dog in his house? An animal he’s allergic to?” She jerked her thumb. “Puppy goes back in the barrel.”

“Can you give me till Sunday morning?” Bob wasn’t sure how it was the words left his mouth, since he couldn’t remember formulating them or even thinking them.

The girl eyed him carefully. “You’re not just saying it? ’Cause, I shit you not, he ain’t picked up by Sunday noon, he’s back out that door.”

“Sunday, then.” Bob said the words with a conviction he actually felt. “Sunday, definitely.”

“Yeah?” She smiled, and it was a spectacular smile, and Bob saw that the face behind the pockmarks was as spectacular as the smile. Wanting only to be seen. She touched the puppy’s nose with her index finger.

“Yeah.” Bob felt crazed. He felt light as a communion wafer. “Yeah.”

At Cousin Marv’s, where he tended bar twelve to ten, Wednesday through Sunday, he told Marv all about it. Most people called Marv Cousin Marv out of habit, something that went back to grade school though no one could remember how, but Marv actually was Bob’s cousin. On his mother’s side.

Cousin Marv had run a crew in the late ’80s and early ’90s. It had been primarily comprised of guys with interests in the loaning and subsequent debt-repayal side of things, though Marv never turned his nose down at any paying proposition because he believed, to the core of his soul, that those who failed to diversify were always the first to collapse when the wind turned. Like the dinosaurs, he’d say to Bob, when the cavemen came along and invented arrows. Picture the cavemen, he’d say, firing away, and the tyrannosauruses all gucked up in the oil puddles. A tragedy so easily averted.

Marv’s crew hadn’t been the toughest crew or the smartest or the most successful operating in the neighborhood — not even close — but for a while they got by. Other crews kept nipping at their heels, though, and except for one glaring exception, they’d never been ones to favor violence. Pretty soon, they had to make the decision to yield to crews a lot meaner than they were or duke it out. They took Door Number One.

Marv’s income derived from running his bar as a drop. In the new world order — a loose collective of Chechen, Italian, and Irish hard guys — no one wanted to get caught with enough merch or enough money for a case to go Federal. So they kept it out of their offices and out of their homes and they kept it on the move. About every two-three weeks, drops were made at Cousin Marv’s, among other establishments. You sat on the drop for a night, two at the most, before some beer-truck driver showed up with the weekend’s password and hauled everything back out on a dolly like it was a stack of empty kegs, took it away in a refrigerated semi. The rest of Marv’s income derived from being a fence, one of the best in the city, but being a fence in their world (or a drop bar operator for that matter) was like being a mailroom clerk in the straight world — if you were still doing it after thirty, it was all you’d ever do. For Bob, it was a relief — he liked being a bartender and he’d hated that one time they’d had to come heavy. Marv, though, Marv still waited for the golden train to arrive on the golden tracks, take him away from all this. Most times, he pretended to be happy. But Bob knew that the things that haunted Marv were the same things that haunted Bob — the shitty things you did to get ahead. Those things laughed at you if your ambitions failed to amount to much; a successful man could hide his past; an unsuccessful man sat in his.

That morning, Marv was looking a hair on the mournful side, lighting one Camel while the previous one still smoldered, so Bob tried to cheer him up by telling him about his adventure with the dog. Marv didn’t seem too interested, and Bob found himself saying “You had to be there” so much, he eventually shut up about it.

Marv said, “Rumor is we’re getting the Super Bowl drop.”

“No shit?”

If true (an enormous if), this was huge. They worked on commission — one half of one percent of the drop. A Super Bowl drop? It would be like one half of one percent of Exxon.

Natalie’s scar flashed in Bob’s brain, the redness of it, the thick, ropey texture. “They send extra guys to protect it, you think?”

Marv rolled his eyes. “Why, ’cause people are just lining up to steal from coked-up Chechnyans.”

“Chechens,” Bob said.

“But they’re from Chechnya.”

Bob shrugged. “I think it’s like how you don’t call people from Ireland Irelandians.”

Marv scowled. “Whatever. It means all this hard work we’ve been doing? It’s paid off. Like how Toyota did it, making friends and influencing people.”

Bob kept quiet. If they ended up being the drop for the Super Bowl, it was because someone figured out no Feds deemed them important enough to be watched. But in Marv’s fantasies, the crew (long since dispersed to straight jobs, jail, or, worse, Connecticut) could regain its glory days, even though those days had lasted about as long as a Swatch. It never occurred to Marv that one day they’d come take everything he had — the fence, the money, and merch he kept in the safe in back, hell, the bar probably — just because they were sick of him hanging around, looking at them with needy expectation. It had gotten so every time he talked about the “people he knew,” the dreams he had, Bob had to resist the urge to reach for the 9mm they kept beneath the bar and blow his own brains out. Not really — but close sometimes. Man, Marv could wear you out.

A guy stuck his head in the bar, late twenties but with white hair, a white goatee, a silver stud in his ear. He dressed like most kids these days — like shit: pre-ripped jeans, slovenly T-shirt under a faded hoodie under a wrinkled wool topcoat. He didn’t cross the threshold, just craned his head in, the cold day pouring in off the sidewalk behind him.

“Help you?” Bob asked.

The guy shook his head, kept staring at the gloomy bar like it was a crystal ball.

“Mind shutting the door?” Marv didn’t look up. “Cold out there.”

“You serve Zima?” The guy’s eyes flew around the bar, up and down, left to right.

Marv looked up now. “Who the fuck would we serve it to — Moesha?”

The guy raised an apologetic hand. “My bad.” He left, and the warmth returned with the closing of the door.

Marv said, “You know that kid?”

Bob shook his head. “Mighta seen him around but I can’t place him.”

“He’s a fucking nutbag. Lives in the next parish, probably why you don’t know him. You’re old school that way, Bob — somebody didn’t go to parochial school with you, it’s like they don’t exist.”

Bob couldn’t argue. When he’d been a kid, your parish was your country. Everything you needed and needed to know was contained within it. Now that the archdiocese had shuttered half the parishes to pay for the crimes of the kid-diddler priests, Bob couldn’t escape the fact that those days of parish dominion, long dwindling, were gone. He was a certain type of guy, of a certain half-generation, an almost generation, and while there were still plenty of them left, they were older, grayer, they had smokers’ coughs, they went in for checkups and never checked back out.

“That kid?” Marv gave Bob a bump of his eyebrows. “They say he killed Richie Whelan back in the day.”

“They say?”

“They do.”

“Well, then...”

They sat in silence for a bit. Snow-dust blew past the window in the high-pitched breeze. The street signs and window panes rattled, and Bob thought how winter lost any meaning the day you last rode a sled. Any meaning but gray. He looked into the unlit sections of the barroom. The shadows became hospital beds, stooped old widowers shopping for sympathy cards, empty wheelchairs. The wind howled a little sharper.

“This puppy, right?” Bob said. “He’s got paws the size of his head. Three are brown but one’s white with these little peach-colored spots over the white. And—”

“This thing cook?” Marv said. “Clean the house? I mean, it’s a fucking dog.”

“Yeah, but it was—” Bob dropped his hands. He didn’t know how to explain. “You know that feeling you get sometimes on a really great day? Like, like, the Pats dominate and you took the ‘over,’ or they cook your steak just right up the Blarney, or, or you just feel good? Like...” Bob found himself waving his hands again “...good?”

Marv gave him a nod and a tight smile. Went back to his racing sheet.

On Sunday morning, Nadia brought the puppy to his car as he idled in front of her house. She handed it through the window and gave them both a little wave.

He looked at the puppy sitting on his seat and fear washed over him. What does it eat? When does it eat? Housebreaking. How do you do that? How long does it take? He’d had days to consider these questions — why were they only occurring to him now?

He hit the brakes and reversed the car a few feet. Nadia, one foot on her bottom step, turned back. He rolled down the passenger window, craned his body across the seat until he was peering up at her.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I don’t know anything.”

At a supermarket for pets, Nadia picked out several chew toys, told Bob he’d need them if he wanted to keep his couch. Shoes, she told him, keep your shoes hidden from now on, up on a high shelf. They bought vitamins — for a dog! — and a bag of puppy food she recommended, telling him the most important thing was to stick with that brand from now on. Change a dog’s diet, she warned, you’ll get piles of diarrhea on your floor.

They got a crate to put him in when Bob was at work. They got a water bottle for the crate and a book on dog training written by monks who were on the cover looking hardy and not real monkish, big smiles. As the cashier rang it all up, Bob felt a quake rumble through his body, a momentary disruption as he reached for his wallet. His throat flushed with heat. His head felt fizzy. And only as the quake went away and his throat cooled and his head cleared and he handed over his credit card to the cashier did he realize, in the sudden disappearance of the feeling, what the feeling had been: for a moment — maybe even a succession of moments, and none sharp enough to point to as the cause — he’d been happy.

“So, thank you,” she said when he pulled up in front of her house.

“What? No. Thank you. Please. Really. It... Thank you.”

She said, “This little guy, he’s a good guy. He’s going to make you proud, Bob.”

He looked down at the puppy, sleeping on her lap now, snoring slightly. “Do they do that? Sleep all the time?”

“Pretty much. Then they run around like loonies for about twenty minutes. Then they sleep some more. And poop. Bob, man, you got to remember that — they poop and pee like crazy. Don’t get mad. They don’t know any better. Read the monk book. It takes time, but they figure out soon enough not to do it in the house.”

“What’s soon enough?”

“Two months?” She cocked her head. “Maybe three. Be patient, Bob.”

“Be patient,” he repeated.

“And you too,” she said to the puppy as she lifted it off her lap. He came awake, sniffing, snorting. He didn’t want her to go. “You both take care.” She let herself out and gave Bob a wave as she walked up her steps, then went inside.

The puppy was on its haunches, staring up at the window like Nadia might reappear there. It looked back over his shoulder at Bob. Bob could feel its abandonment. He could feel his own. He was certain they’d make a mess of it, him and this throwaway dog. He was sure the world was too strong.

“What’s your name?” he asked the puppy. “What are we going to call you?”

The puppy turned his head away, like, Bring the girl back.

First thing it did was take a shit in the dining room.

Bob didn’t even realize what it was doing at first. It started sniffing, nose scraping the rug, and then it looked up at Bob with an air of embarrassment. And Bob said, “What?” and the dog dumped all over the corner of the rug.

Bob scrambled forward, as if he could stop it, push it back in, and the puppy bolted, left droplets on the hardwood as it scurried into the kitchen.

Bob said, “No, no. It’s okay.” Although it wasn’t. Most everything in the house had been his mother’s, largely unchanged since she’d purchased it in the ’50s. That was shit. Excrement. In his mother’s house. On her rug, her floor.

In the seconds it took him to reach the kitchen, the puppy’d left a piss puddle on the linoleum. Bob almost slipped in it. The puppy was sitting against the fridge, looking at him, tensing for a blow, trying not to shake.

And it stopped Bob. It stopped him even as he knew the longer he left the shit on the rug, the harder it would be to get out.

Bob got down on all fours. He felt the sudden return of what he’d felt when he first picked it out of the trash, something he’d assumed had left with Nadia. Connection. He suspected they might have been brought together by something other than chance.

He said, “Hey.” Barely above a whisper. “Hey, it’s all right.” So, so slowly, he extended his hand, and the puppy pressed itself harder against the fridge. But Bob kept the hand coming, and gently lay his palm on the side of the animal’s face. He made soothing sounds. He smiled at it. “It’s okay,” he repeated, over and over.

He named it Cassius because he’d mistaken it for a boxer and he liked the sound of the word. It made him think of Roman legions, proud jaws, honor.

Nadia called him Cash. She came around after work sometimes and she and Bob took it on walks. He knew something was a little off about Nadia — the dog being found so close to her house and her lack of surprise or interest in that fact was not lost on Bob — but was there anyone, anywhere on this planet, who wasn’t a little off? More than a little most times. Nadia came by to help with the dog and Bob, who hadn’t known much friendship in his life, took what he could get.

They taught Cassius to sit and lie down and paw and roll over. Bob read the entire monk book and followed its instructions. The puppy had his rabies shot and was cleared of any cartilage damage to his ear. Just a bruise, the vet said, just a deep bruise. He grew fast.

Weeks passed without Cassius having an accident, but Bob still couldn’t be sure whether that was luck or not, and then on Super Bowl Sunday, Cassius used one paw on the back door. Bob let him out and then tore through the house to call Nadia. He was so proud he felt like yodeling, and he almost mistook the doorbell for something else. A kettle, he thought, still reaching for the phone.

The guy on the doorstep was thin. Not weak-thin. Hard-thin. As if whatever burned inside of him burned too hot for fat to survive. He had blue eyes so pale they were almost gray. His silver hair was cropped tight to his skull, as was the goatee that clung to his lips and chin. It took Bob a second to recognize him — the kid who’d stuck his head in the bar five-six weeks back, asked if they served Zima.

The kid smiled and extended his hand. “Mr. Saginowski?”

Bob shook the hand. “Yes?”

“Bob Saginowski?” The man shook Bob’s large hand with his small one, and there was a lot of power in the grip.

“Yeah?”

“Eric Deeds, Bob.” The kid let go of his hand. “I believe you have my dog.”

In the kitchen, Eric Deeds said, “Hey, there he is.” He said, “That’s my guy.” He said, “He got big.” He said, “The size of him.”

Cassius slinked over to him, even climbed up on his lap when Eric, unbidden, took a seat at Bob’s kitchen table and patted his inner thigh twice. Bob couldn’t even say how it was Eric Deeds talked his way into the house; he was just one of those people had a way about him, like cops and Teamsters — he wanted in, he was coming in.

“Bob,” Eric Deeds said, “I’m going to need him back.” He had Cassius in his lap and was rubbing his belly. Bob felt a prick of envy as Cassius kicked his left leg, even though a constant shiver — almost a palsy — ran through his fur. Eric Deeds scratched under Cassius’s chin. The dog kept his ears and tail pressed flat to his body. He looked ashamed, his eyes staring down into their sockets.

“Um...” Bob reached out and lifted Cassius off Eric’s lap, plopped him down on his own, scratched behind his ears. “Cash is mine.”

The act was between them now — Bob lifting the puppy off Eric’s lap without any warning, Eric looking at him for just a second, like, The fuck was that all about? His forehead narrowed and it gave his eyes a surprised cast, as if they’d never expected to find themselves on his face. In that moment, he looked cruel, the kind of guy, if he was feeling sorry for himself, took a shit on the whole world.

“Cash?” he said.

Bob nodded as Cassius’s ears unfurled from his head and he licked Bob’s wrist. “Short for Cassius. That’s his name. What did you call him?”

“Called him Dog mostly. Sometimes Hound.”

Eric Deeds glanced around the kitchen, up at the old circular fluorescent in the ceiling, something going back to Bob’s mother, hell, Bob’s father just before the first stroke, around the time the old man had become obsessed with paneling — paneled the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, would’ve paneled the toilet if he could’ve figured out how.

Bob said, “You beat him.”

Eric reached into his shirt pocket. He pulled out a cigarette and popped it in his mouth. He lit it, shook out the match, tossed it on Bob’s kitchen table.

“You can’t smoke in here.”

Eric considered Bob with a level gaze and kept smoking. “I beat him?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh, so what?” Eric flicked some ash on the floor. “I’m taking the dog, Bob.”

Bob stood to his full height. He held tight to Cassius, who squirmed a bit in his arms and nipped at the flat of his hand. If it came to it, Bob decided, he’d drop all six feet three inches and two hundred ninety pounds of himself on Eric Deeds, who couldn’t weigh more than a buck-seventy. Not now, not just standing there, but if Eric reached for Cassius, well then...

Eric Deeds blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. “I saw you that night. I was feeling bad, you know, about my temper? So I went back to see if the hound was really dead or not and I watched you pluck him out of the trash.”

“I really think you should go.” Bob pulled his cell from his pocket and flipped it open. “I’m calling 911.”

Eric nodded. “I’ve been in prison, Bob, mental hospitals. I’ve been a lotta places. I’ll go again, don’t mean a thing to me, though I doubt they’d prosecute even me for fucking up a dog. I mean, sooner or later, you gotta go to work or get some sleep.”

“What is wrong with you?”

Eric held out his hands. “Pretty much everything. And you took my dog.”

“You tried to kill it.”

Eric said, “Nah.” Shook his head like he believed it.

“You can’t have the dog.”

“I need the dog.”

“No.”

“I love that dog.”

“No.”

“Ten thousand.”

“What?”

Eric nodded. “I need ten grand. By tonight. That’s the price.”

Bob gave it a nervous chuckle. “Who has ten thousand dollars?”

“You could find it.”

“How could I poss—”

“Say, that safe in Cousin Marv’s office. You’re a drop bar, Bob. You don’t think half the neighborhood knows? So that might be a place to start.”

Bob shook his head. “Can’t be done. Any money we get during the day? Goes through a slot at the bar. Ends up in the office safe, yeah, but that’s on a time—”

“—lock, I know.” Eric turned on the couch, one arm stretched along the back of it. “Goes off at two A.M. in case they decide they need a last-minute payout for something who the fuck knows, but big. And you have ninety seconds to open and close it or it triggers two silent alarms, neither of which goes off in a police station or a security company. Fancy that.” Eric took a hit off his cigarette. “I’m not greedy, Bob. I just need stake money for something. I don’t want everything in the safe, just ten grand. You give me ten grand, I’ll disappear.”

“This is ludicrous.”

“So, it’s ludicrous.”

“You don’t just walk into someone’s life and—”

“That is life: someone like me coming along when you’re not looking.”

Bob put Cassius on the floor but made sure he didn’t wander over to the other side of the table. He needn’t have worried — Cassius didn’t move an inch, sat there like a cement post, eyes on Bob.

Eric Deeds said, “You’re racing through all your options, but they’re options for normal people in normal circumstances. I need my ten grand tonight. If you don’t get it for me, I’ll take your dog. I licensed him. You didn’t, because you couldn’t. Then I’ll forget to feed him for a while. One day, when he gets all yappy about it, I’ll beat his head in with a rock or something. Look in my eyes and tell me which part I’m lying about, Bob.”

After he left, Bob went to his basement. He avoided it whenever he could, though the floor was white, as white as he’d been able to make it, whiter than it had ever been through most of its existence. He unlocked a cupboard over the old wash sink his father had often used after one of his adventures in paneling, and removed a yellow and brown Chock full o’Nuts can from the shelf. He pulled fifteen thousand from it. He put ten in his pocket and five back in the can. He looked around again at the white floor, at the black oil tank against the wall, at the bare bulbs.

Upstairs he gave Cassius a bunch of treats. He rubbed his ears and his belly. He assured the animal that he was worth ten thousand dollars.

Bob, three deep at the bar for a solid hour between eleven and midnight, looked through a sudden gap in the crowd and saw Eric sitting at the wobbly table under the Narragansett mirror. The Super Bowl was an hour over, but the crowd, drunk as shit, hung around. Eric had one arm stretched across the table and Bob followed it, saw that it connected to something. An arm. Nadia’s arm. Nadia’s face stared back at Eric, unreadable. Was she terrified? Or something else?

Bob, filling a glass with ice, felt like he was shoveling the cubes into his own chest, pouring them into his stomach and against the base of his spine. What did he know about Nadia, after all? He knew that he’d found a near-dead dog in the trash outside her house. He knew that Eric Deeds only came into his life after Bob had met her. He knew that her middle name, thus far, could be Lies of Omission.

When he was twenty-eight, Bob had come into his mother’s bedroom to wake her for Sunday Mass. He’d given her a shake and she hadn’t batted at his hand as she normally did. So he rolled her toward him and her face was scrunched tight, her eyes too, and her skin was curbstone-gray. Sometime in the night, after Matlock and the ten o’clock news, she’d gone to bed and woke to God’s fist clenched around her heart. Probably hadn’t been enough air left in her lungs to cry out. Alone in the dark, clutching the sheets, that fist clenching, her face clenching, her eyes scrunching, the terrible knowledge dawning that, even for you, it all ends. And right now.

Standing over her that morning, imagining the last tick of her heart, the last lonely wish her brain had been able to form, Bob felt a loss unlike any he’d ever known or expected to know again.

Until tonight. Until now. Until he learned what that look on Nadia’s face meant.

By 1:50, the crowd was gone, just Eric and Nadia and an old, stringent, functioning alcoholic named Millie who’d amble off to the assisted living place up on Pearl Street at 1:55 on the dot.

Eric, who had been coming to the bar for shots of Powers for the last hour, pushed back from the table and pulled Nadia across the floor with him. He sat her on a stool and Bob got a good look in her face finally, saw something he still couldn’t fully identify — but it definitely wasn’t excitement or smugness or the bitter smile of a victor. Maybe something worse than all of that — despair.

Eric gave him an all-teeth smile and spoke through it, softly. “When’s the old biddie pack it in?”

“A couple minutes.”

“Where’s Marv?”

“I didn’t call him in.”

“Why not?”

“Someone’s gonna take the blame for this, I figured it might as well be me.”

“How noble of—”

“How do you know her?”

Eric looked over at Nadia hunched on the stool beside him. He leaned into the bar. “We grew up on the same block.”

“He give you that scar?”

Nadia stared at him.

“Did he?”

“She gave herself the scar,” Eric Deeds said.

“You did?” Bob asked her.

Nadia looked at the bar top. “I was pretty high.”

“Bob,” Eric said, “if you fuck with me — even in the slightest — it doesn’t matter how long it takes me, I’ll come back for her. And if you got any plans, like Eric-doesn’t-walk-back-out-of-here plans? Not that you’re that type of guy, but Marv might be? You got any ideas in that vein, Bob, my partner on the Richie Whalen hit, he’ll take care of you both.”

Eric sat back as mean old Millie left the same tip she’d been leaving since Sputnik — a quarter — and slid off her stool. She gave Bob a rasp that was ten percent vocal chords and ninety percent Virginia Slims Ultra Light 100s. “Yeah, I’m off.”

“You take care, Millie.”

She waved it away with a “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and pushed open the door.

Bob locked it behind her and came back behind the bar. He wiped down the bar top. When he reached Eric’s elbows, he said, “Excuse me.”

“Go around.”

Bob wiped the rag in a half-circle around Eric’s elbows.

“Who’s your partner?” Bob said.

“Wouldn’t be much of a threat if you knew who he was, would he, Bob?”

“But he helped you kill Richie Whalen?”

Eric said, “That’s the rumor, Bob.”

“More than a rumor.” Bob wiped in front of Nadia, saw red marks on her wrists where Eric had yanked them. He wondered if there were other marks he couldn’t see.

“Well then it’s more than a rumor, Bob. So there you go.”

“There you go what?”

“There you go,” Eric scowled. “What time is it, Bob?”

Bob placed ten thousand dollars on the bar. “You don’t have to call me by my name all the time.”

“I will see what I can do about that, Bob.” Eric thumbed the bills. “What’s this?”

“It’s the ten grand you wanted for Cash.”

Eric pursed his lips. “All the same, let’s look in the safe.”

“You sure?” Bob said. “I’m happy to buy him from you for ten grand.”

“How much for Nadia, though?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

Bob thought about that new wrinkle for a bit and poured himself a closing-time shot of vodka. He raised it to Eric Deeds and then drank it down. “You know, Marv used to have a problem with blow about ten years ago?”

“I did not know that, Bob.”

Bob shrugged, poured them all a shot of vodka. “Yeah, Marv liked the coke too much but it didn’t like him back.”

Eric drank Nadia’s shot. “Getting close to two here, Bob.”

“He was more of a loan shark then. I mean, he did some fence, but mostly he was a shark. There was this kid? Into Marv for a shitload of money. Real hopeless case when it came to the dogs and basketball. Kinda kid could never pay back all he owed.”

Eric drank his own shot. “One fifty-seven, Bob.”

“The thing, though? This kid, he actually hit on a slot at Mohegan. Hit for twenty-two grand. Which is just a little more than he owed Marv.”

“And he didn’t pay Marv back, so you and Marv got all hard on him and I’m supposed to learn—”

“No, no. He paid Marv. Paid him every cent. What the kid didn’t know, though, was that Marv had been skimming. Because of the coke habit? And this kid’s money was like manna from heaven as long as no one knew it was from this kid. See what I’m saying?”

“Bob, it’s fucking one minute to two.” Sweat on Eric’s lip.

“Do you see what I’m saying?” Bob asked. “Do you understand the story?”

Eric looked to the door to make sure it was locked. “Fine, yeah. This kid, he had to be ripped off.”

“He had to be killed.”

Out of the side of his eye, a quick glance. “Okay, killed.”

Bob could feel Nadia’s eyes lock on him suddenly, her head cock a bit. “That way, he couldn’t ever say he paid off Marv and no one else could either. Marv uses the money to cover all the holes, he cleans up his act, it’s like it never happened. So that’s what we did.”

“You did...” Eric barely in the conversation, but some warning in his head starting to sound, his head turning from the clock toward Bob.

“Killed him in my basement,” Bob said. “Know what his name was?”

“I wouldn’t know, Bob.”

“Sure you would. Richie Whelan.”

Bob reached under the bar and pulled out the 9mm. He didn’t notice the safety was on, so when he pulled the trigger nothing happened. Eric jerked his head and pushed back from the bar rail, but Bob thumbed off the safety and shot Eric just below the throat. The gunshot sounded like aluminum siding being torn off a house. Nadia screamed. Not a long scream, but sharp with shock. Eric made a racket falling back off his stool, and by the time Bob came around the bar, Eric was already going, if not quite gone. The overhead fan cast thin slices of shadow over his face. His cheeks puffed in and out like he was trying to catch his breath and kiss somebody at the same time.

“I’m sorry, but you kids,” Bob said. “You know? You go out of the house dressed like you’re still in your living room. You say terrible things about women. You hurt harmless dogs. I’m tired of you, man.”

Eric stared up at him. Winced like he had heartburn. He looked pissed off. Frustrated. The expression froze on his face like it was sewn there, and then he wasn’t in his body anymore. Just gone. Just, shit, dead.

Bob dragged him into the cooler.

When he came back, pushing the mop and bucket ahead of him, Nadia still sat on her stool. Her mouth was a bit wider than usual and she couldn’t take her eyes off the floor where the blood was, but otherwise she seemed perfectly normal.

“He would have just kept coming,” Bob said. “Once someone takes something from you and you let them? They don’t feel gratitude, they just feel like you owe them more.” He soaked the mop in the bucket, wrung it out a bit, and slopped it over the main blood spot. “Makes no sense, right? But that’s how they feel. Entitled. And you can never change their minds after that.”

She said, “He... You just fucking shot him. You just... I mean, you know?”

Bob swirled the mop over the spot. “He beat my dog.”

The Chechens took care of the body after a discussion with the Italians and the Micks. Bob was told his money was no good at several restaurants for the next couple of months, and they gave him four tickets to a Celtics game. Not floor seats, but pretty good ones.

Bob never mentioned Nadia. Just said Eric showed up at the end of the evening, waved a gun around, said to take him to the office safe. Bob let him do his ranting, do his waving, found an opportunity, and shot him. And that was it. End of Eric, end of story.

Nadia came to him a few days later. Bob opened the door and she stood there on his stoop with a bright winter day turning everything sharp and clear behind her. She held up a bag of dog treats.

“Peanut butter,” she said, her smile bright, her eyes just a little wet. “With a hint of molasses.”

Bob opened the door wide and stepped back to let her in.

“I’ve gotta believe,” Nadia said, “there’s a purpose. And even if it’s that you kill me as soon as I close my eyes—”

“Me? What? No,” Bob said. “Oh, no.”

“—then that’s okay. Because I just can’t go through any more of this alone. Not another day.”

“Me too.” He closed his eyes. “Me too.”

They didn’t speak for a long time. He opened his eyes, peered at the ceiling of his bedroom. “Why?”

“Hmm?”

“This. You. Why are you with me?”

She ran a hand over his chest and it gave him a shiver. In his whole life, he never would have expected to feel a touch like that on his bare skin.

“Because I like you. Because you’re nice to Cassius.”

“And because you’re scared of me?”

“I dunno. Maybe. But more the other reason.”

He couldn’t tell if she was lying. Who could tell when anyone was? Really. Every day, you ran into people and half of them, if not more, could be lying to you. Why?

Why not?

You couldn’t tell who was true and who was not. If you could, lie detectors would never have been invented. Someone stared in your face and said, I’m telling the truth. They said, I promise. They said, I love you.

And you were going to say what to that? Prove it?

“He needs a walk.”

“Huh?”

“Cassius. He hasn’t been out all day.”

“I’ll get the leash.”

In the park, the February sky hung above them like a canvas tarp. The weather had been almost mild for a few days. The ice had broken on the river but small chunks of it clung to the dark banks.

He didn’t know what he believed. Cassius walked ahead of them, pulling on the leash a bit, so proud, so pleased, unrecognizable from the quivering hunk of fur Bob had pulled from a barrel just two and a half months ago.

Two and a half months! Wow. Things sure could change in a hurry. You rolled over one morning, and it was a whole new world. It turned itself toward the sun, stretched and yawned. It turned itself toward the night. A few more hours, turned itself toward the sun again. A new world, every day.

When they reached the center of the park, he unhooked the leash from Cassius’s collar and reached into his coat for a tennis ball. Cassius reared his head. He snorted loud. He pawed the earth. Bob threw the ball and the dog took off after it. Bob envisioned the ball taking a bad bounce into the road. The screech of tires, the thump of metal against dog. Or what would happen if Cassius, suddenly free, just kept running.

But what could you do?

You couldn’t control things.

Madman’s Holiday FREDRIC BROWN

Original publication: Street and Smith’s Story Magazine, July 1943; first collected in Madman’s Holiday (Volcano, HI, McMillan, 1985)

A prolific writer of short stories and novels, Fredric William Brown (1906–1972) claimed that he wrote mysteries for the money, but science fiction for the fun; he is equally revered in both genres. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, he attended the University of Cincinnati at night and then spent a year at Hanover College, Indiana. He was an office worker for a dozen years before becoming a proofreader for the Milwaukee Journal for a decade. He was not able to devote full time to writing fiction until 1949, although he had for several years been producing short stories; he was a master of the form for which he is much loved today, the difficult-to-write short-short story, generally one to three pages.

Never financially secure, Brown was forced to write at a prodigious pace, yet he seemed to be enjoying himself in spite of the workload. Many of his stories and novels are imbued with humor, including a devotion to puns and wordplay. A “writer’s writer,” he was highly regarded by his colleagues, including Mickey Spillane, who called him his favorite writer of all time; Robert Heinlein, who made him a dedicatee of Stranger in a Strange Land (1961); and Ayn Rand, who in The Romantic Manifesto (1969) regarded him as ingenious. After more than three hundred short stories, he wrote his first novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947), for which he won an Edgar. His best-known work is The Screaming Mimi (1949), which served as the basis for the 1958 Columbia Pictures film of the same title that starred Anita Ekberg, Philip Carey, and Gypsy Rose Lee.

In “Madman’s Holiday,” an American scientist is working on the development of new explosives and realizes his life is in danger. Written during the early days of America’s involvement in World War II, the story warns of the German menace and is one of thousands of similar tales that appeared in both the pulps and the slick magazines.

Title: Crack-Up, 1946

Studio: RKO Radio Pictures

Director: Irving Reis

Screenwriter: John Paxton, Ben Bengal, Ray Spencer

Producer: Jack J. Gross

• Pat O’Brien (George Steele)

• Claire Trevor (Terry Cordell)

• Herbert Marshall (Traybin)

Any resemblance between the film and the story on which it was allegedly based is so microscopic that Sherlock Holmes could not have unearthed it.

Brown’s story is a thriller about a scientist and explosives; the film features forged artworks, thefts, and murder to cover up the scheme.

The excellent acting of the three stars salvaged a somewhat muddled screenplay in which the principal character, George Steele, believes he has been in a train accident but is unable to recall many details other than he saw an oncoming train about to crash into his. The police have some trouble believing his story and he is threatened with being sent to Bellevue, New York’s hospital famous for its psychiatric ward.

Lux Radio Theater broadcast a sixty-minute radio adaptation of the movie on December 30, 1946, with Pat O’Brien reprising his film role in the same year in which the movie was released.

MADMAN’S HOLIDAY Fredric Brown

I felt swell. Somebody said, “He’s coming around,” and I wondered vaguely who was coming around what, but it didn’t matter. It was perfect, just to be lying here asleep, or almost asleep. Let people talk all they darn pleased, just so I could sleep. For weeks now, since I’d started those TNA reaction tests, I’d been going on three or four hours’ sleep a night.

And now it was all over with, and I was on the way to turn in my report, and although I was sorry the report was negative — well, that was that, and I was going to take a few days off before I bit off another round with old man HE.

There was a gruff voice. It said, “Look, doc, this is important. He had papers on him that — Well, never mind. Can’t you bring him out of it?”

“It’s a very mild concussion. But it’s better if he—”

I wished they’d shut up. It’s hard enough to sleep on a train, without your neighbors jabbering all night. With light hitting your eyelids and sitting in an uncomfortable—

Hell, I wasn’t sitting up. I was lying down flat, and there wasn’t any click of train wheels or any train motion.

And then I remembered — the wreck! The awfulness of that last moment of consciousness I’d known until now: that sound of tearing steel, and the screams. The sudden darkness and the terribly nauseated feeling, like going down in a fast elevator, but a million times worse, when the front end of the car stops and the back end can’t stop, but goes up and over—

My eyes jerked open, but the glare of white light forced them shut. I opened them again, more cautiously, and the light was tolerable. I seemed to be in a private room in a hospital. Near the bed stood a man in white and a man in gray tweeds with a dead cigar in his mouth. A nurse was just leaving and left the door ajar behind her.

The man in white said, “You’re all right, Mr. Remmers. Just a mild concussion.” It seemed almost impossible to believe him; it was incredible that I’d been through that wreck without broken bones. The Washington Flyer had been doing at least eighty.

The man in gray tweeds growled something under his breath that I didn’t quite catch, but the doctor nodded again. He stepped closer with the business end of a stethoscope in his hand. He said, “Lie down, please,” and listened to me tick for a minute and peered closely at the pupils of my eyes.

He said, “Normal,” to nobody in particular. Then to me, “This gentleman is from the FBI. Wants to talk to you. Talk all you want, but stay in bed.”

He left, closing the door behind him, and the man in tweeds looked at me for a full minute without speaking at all. His face was as expressionless as a cue ball. He took the dead cigar out of his mouth, walked over and threw it out the window, and then came back.

Then he asked, “What happened to the papers?”

They hadn’t found them, then.

“They were in my briefcase,” I told him. “The case was on the seat with me, wedged in between me and the arm of the seat, next to the window. I had my hand on the handle of the briefcase when we hit.”

He grunted noncommittally.

“Don’t worry about them,” I said. “It was all negative. There wasn’t a fact or formula in that briefcase that couldn’t have been mailed in duplicate to Berlin and Tokyo. What I had in mind to do with the TNA was a flat washout. But Major Lorne wanted me to bring in a report, so I was on my way.”

“Just what were you trying to do with it?”

I studied his face a minute while I was trying to make up my mind about answering, and he must have figured what I was thinking. He took a wallet from his pocket, and an identification card from the wallet and handed it to me.

I’d seen them before, and it was the McCoy. It had his photo and his prints, and his name was Frank Garland.

I handed back the card. “What do you know about HE?”

“Not much except that it stands for high explosive. TNT.”

“TNT,” I told him, “is just one form of high explosive. There are others that pack more wallop, but they aren’t stable. Cast, it can be stored indefinitely. You can drop it, kick it around, and hammer nails with it. You got to use a fulminate of mercury fuse to make it say ‘uncle.’ ”

“In a loud voice,” said Garland.

“In a loud voice,” I agreed. “But not as loud as TNA. That’s tetranitroaniline, and it’s got better than forty percent more kick than TNT. It’s about the most powerful of the solid explosives. But it’s got temperament. Goes off, maybe, when you don’t want it to.”

“And you were trying to stabilize it?”

“Exactly. But we didn’t, so don’t worry about the papers. If they were lost, I’ve got other copies and they’re of no military value. But those were only the first tests — the first series, I mean. After I rest up, I’m going to try — well, some other angles.”

And not even to an FBI man was I going to talk about what those other angles might be.

Apparently, he wasn’t interested. He said, “You talked to Major Lorne, long distance, at four o’clock this afternoon. I imagine that neither of you talked very freely over the phone. But he suggested that you go to Washington to see him. Right?”

“Right,” I said, wondering where this line of questioning was going to lead.

“Starting then, at four o’clock, please tell me your movements. Everything you did.”

“Went right home and—”

“You took the test reports with you?”

“No. I gathered them up and put them in the briefcase and put the briefcase in the safe. Then I went down—”

“Lock the safe?”

I shook my head. “I told Peter Carr — he’s my assistant — to lock it when he left. Then I went home, had a bath and a shave and supper and left in time to catch the Washington Flyer, going to the station by way of the lab and picking up the briefcase. Carr had left by then, and I let myself in with my own key. Bought a round-trip ticket at the station and—”

“What’d you do with the other half?”

“Huh?” It was such a screwy question that I stared at him blankly until he repeated it.

“Why, in my wallet. Why?”

“Skip it. And then? After you bought the ticket, I mean.”

“Got on the train and—” I broke off, staring at him. “Say, what is this? Am I suspected of having stolen those papers from myself, or of engineering the train wreck, or what?”

He shook his head slowly. I couldn’t tell from his face whether he meant a negative answer, or merely that he wasn’t going to tell me.

He said, “Maybe you shouldn’t talk too much, at first. I’m going to give you a rest. And — listen, you still say there was nothing important in that briefcase?”

“Sure. I told Major Lorne over the phone that results were ixnay. If they hadn’t been, I’d have told him to send around a battalion of you boy scouts to escort me there with it. Stabilizing TNA, if it can be done, is big stuff. I wouldn’t risk carrying something like that, without protection. I’m not crazy.”

He said, “No?” and I didn’t like the way he said it. But he turned and headed for the door. As he went out, I caught a glimpse of blue uniforms in the corridor outside.

After a moment, the door opened again. It was the nurse who’d been in the room when I’d first awakened. She handed me a newspaper and said, “Mr. Garland thought you might like to see the morning paper.”

She left, and I unfolded the paper. It was a Philadelphia Post-Gazette, the late city edition. The war news was good. I read it slowly.

And then, quite suddenly, it struck me that there was something wrong with that front page. It failed to mention the train wreck.

A local story, sure, but a big one. That train had been only an hour out of Philadelphia. And it must have been a bad wreck—

No, the date was right. And this edition wouldn’t have gone to press before four in the morning and it was broad daylight now. With a cold chill growing along my spine, I tried page two, and then leafed through the paper from stem to stern. No train wreck story.

I threw back the covers and got out of bed. My legs felt rubbery, but I got to the door and opened it a crack. There were two policemen, and they both turned around as I opened the door.

One of them nodded when I asked if he’d send Garland in to talk to me again. I got back into bed.

Garland came in. This time he pulled up a chair and sat down.

He said, “I thought you’d want to see me when you’d read that paper. Now what’s this gag about a train wreck?”

I spoke slowly and carefully. “I boarded the Washington Flyer yesterday evening. To the best of my knowledge, an hour out of town, it was wrecked. Wasn’t it? I mean, didn’t anything happen to it?”

“Not a thing. Nobody even pulled the bell cord. It went through on schedule.”

“If you’d told me that without showing me this paper — Say, how did I get here, and when? And, for that matter, damn it, where am I?”

“You’re in St. Vincent’s Hospital, in Philadelphia. You were found by a squad car at two o’clock this morning, and brought here. They found you lying in Burgoyne Street, with your head against a lamp-post. You’d been drinking, and you were out cold.”

“They brought me here?”

“They took you to police emergency as a drunk. Then, going through your pockets, they found out who you were, and found some correspondence with Major Lorne. They got in touch with him, and he got in touch with us and told us to find out what happened.”

“I hadn’t been robbed?”

“There was a hundred and twenty dollars in your wallet. But no train ticket, incidentally. And you had a suitcase with you. Not a briefcase.”

I closed my eyes and found that the headache and the thumping in my skull was coming back. “What kind of suitcase?” I asked.

“Black Gladstone. Pebbled leather. Had clothes in it that seemed to be yours.”

I said, “I kept a bag like that, already packed, at the laboratory, in case I had to make a rush trip. But I didn’t take it last night, because I was coming back the next day and figured I wouldn’t need it. And the briefcase — It was gone?”

“You didn’t have it with you, if that’s what you mean. But it’s still on your desk at the laboratory. With papers in it — and your assistant, Carr, says they’re the ones you were going to take to Washington.”

“Then I didn’t — I mean, you think I didn’t take the briefcase at all, but—”

“We haven’t traced yet what you did between the time you left your house — that was at half-past six — and the time you were found in Burgoyne Street at two in the morning. You must have gone to the laboratory, but taken the Gladstone instead of the briefcase. After that, we don’t know. How much money did you have when you left home?”

“A hundred and thirty-five, and some change.”

“And there was one-twenty in your wallet. You spent fifteen dollars, somehow. We’re going to find out what you did, if we have to take this town apart. And Major Lorne’s coming down tomorrow.”

He looked at me speculatively, coldly. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

I nodded, and he turned to go.

It got lighter outside, but inside my head it didn’t. My ideas, if you could call them that, went around and around and came out nowhere. If I were sane, then somebody was crazy. Because if I’d been the victim of a frame-up engineered by someone or something other than my own disordered imagination, nothing had been accomplished.

The briefcase hadn’t even been stolen. It would have been of no value, other than as a good ten-dollar briefcase, if it had.

But, damn it, there had been a wreck. I’d been there. I’d heard the screams and the ripping sound of metal, and I’d felt the train seat rise up under me and—

Breakfast came, but I wasn’t hungry. I drank all the coffee there was, but didn’t touch the rest of it.

Major Lorne came in at about nine o’clock. He sat down in the chair beside the bed and looked very austere and military. He asked first what hours I’d been working.

I told him, and he shook his head. “Too much, Remmers. A breakdown was bound to happen.”

“You think, then, that I went haywire — that I’m crazy?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way, at all. I think you worked too hard and had a mental breakdown. I talked to Garland before I came up here, and it doesn’t make sense any other way. Does it?”

“Unless somebody thought I’d accomplished something with TNA, major. They might have—” I broke off, because it didn’t make sense that they’d have done it that way. They’d have killed me and taken the papers, and there was no reason for all the razzle-dazzle. And how would it have been done, anyway? Hypnotism? I didn’t believe that any hypnotist could have impressed on my mind the recollections of something that didn’t happen.

Lorne asked, “Did you give anyone cause to think that you might have discovered something important?”

I shook my head slowly. “I haven’t talked about what Carr and I have been doing to many people. And to none of them have I intimated that I had even an important lead. Matter of fact, I haven’t had.”

“You did all right on classifying that ammonium picric.”

“That’s a dead duck. I gave you what you wanted on that a month ago, and haven’t worked on it since. And last week I gave out the story to Andrews, as you told me to. Read his write-up on it?”

Lorne nodded. “Good job. He’s here now, by the way, to see you. I told him no publicity on this... er... misadventure. You’ve got another guest, too. Peter Carr.” He cleared his throat. “Remmers, you’ve got to take a rest cure. There’s a sanitarium near town run by Doc Wheeler. Ever heard of him?”

“No, but I’m not going to any—”

“You’ll be in good company. Several important officials are staying there right now. Worked too hard, like you. Doc Wheeler is sort of semiofficial psychiatrist to the—”

“Nuts,” I said. “I’m not crazy and I’m not going to a private loony bin. I’ll rest up a few days at home, but the work’s got to go on.”

Lorne stood up. He said, “Sorry, but you’re wrong. We can’t force you to go to Wheeler’s place, but you can choose between that and staying here. And Wheeler’s will help you the most, of the two.”

“But I don’t need a sanitarium, damn it.” But even as I said it, I wondered if I were wrong, and just being stubborn. So I said, “Well, all right, but just for a few days. What about work at the lab? Want Peter Carr to carry on?”

“I’ve talked it over with him,” said Lorne. “He wants to talk to you about it. Seems there are some loose odds and ends he can clean up. Take him about three days, and then he’ll rest up, too.”

When Lorne left, the doctor came in again. He checked me with the stethoscope as before, and asked how my head felt.

“There are two people still waiting to see you,” he said. “But you may see them for only a few minutes each. After that, you’d better rest up for your trip.”

Carr came in first. Good old Peter. But likeable as Carr always was, there was a quiet dignity about him that forbade intimacy. He’d worked for me for three years, and yet I knew little about him other than that he was an efficient laboratory technician. I’d had him investigated, of course, when I first hired him, and the report on him was probably filed away somewhere, but it was amazing how few of the details of his life I remembered from the report, or had learned since. It was as though he hid from life behind a pair of thick shell-rimmed glasses.

He smiled at me a bit uncertainly now and ran spatulate fingers through his thick shock of blond hair. He said, “I can’t tell you, Mr. Remmers, how sorry I am that you—” He paused as though embarrassed, not knowing how to continue the sentence.

“I’ll be all right, Peter,” I told him. “Couple weeks and I’ll be back. There isn’t much for you to do meanwhile, and I want you to rest up, too. Finish the check on that 14-series and get the decks cleared for action on something new.”

“Yes, Mr. Remmers. That’s only about two days’ work. Even if I rest, I’ll have time for more. Remember I told you I wanted to try ammonium nitrate and powdered aluminum in the tetranitroaniline 13-series? Mind if I go ahead and try that while I’m free?”

“How long will it take you?”

“Not over three days for rough tests. If anything likely develops and I go into detail on it, it’ll take longer.”

“Hm-m-m,” I said. “That’s what I’m afraid of. You might get interested and keep on working night and day, as we have been. Look, this is an order. You’re to take at least a week off out of the next two weeks. And to work only normal hours the rest of the time. Within that limitation, try anything you want. O. K.?”

“Fine, Mr. Remmers. Is there... uh... anything I can do? For you, I mean?”

“Not a thing, Peter. Thanks.”

He went out quickly, as though glad to escape.

Armin Andrews came in breezily. He pulled up the chair with its back toward the bed, and sat down astraddle of it, leaning his chin on his arms.

“What happened, Hank?” he demanded.

“What do you mean, what happened? I countered. “Didn’t you ever hear of a guy working too hard and having a—”

“Nuts,” he said. “This is off the record. I want a story, sure. But you know I wouldn’t turn it in without your O. K. And the War Department’s, too, for that matter. But don’t give me that breakdown routine. What really happened?”

I stared at him curiously, wondering whether I’d be able to make anything — except hallucinations — of my remembrance of what had happened. Armin Andrews was a brilliant reporter, all right. His name had been on one of the biggest stories of the years just past — the running down of the spy ring headed by Dr. Gerhard Wendell. He had been ahead of the FBI on several angles of the case according to what I’d heard from Major Lorne. He’d provided the lead that took them to Wendell himself, and he’d been in on the kill. He had a bullet hole in his thigh to show for it, too.

Andrews stood ace-high with Major Lorne. That was why, when a write-up of my lab, with pix, was picked for the army ordnance journal, he’d assigned Andrews to the job. He’d done an excellent piece of work on it, and we’d become well acquainted during the process.

“How’d you get in on this, Armin? Did the major tell you?”

He shook his head. “This is on my own. I was at the police station when they brought you into emergency, downstairs. The looie on duty down here knew I was talking to Cap Krasno. He decided from the papers and the money on you, you might be somebody, so he came up to ask me if I knew of a Henry Remmers. It was a lucky break.”

“Lucky for which of us?” I asked.

“For me. I smelled a story, and I still smell it. But it was a break for you, too, maybe. I told ’em to phone Major Lorne right away. That’s how the FBI got on it so quick. He notified them.”

I shrugged. “Well, the FBI’s off it now, I guess. They put it in the pink-elephant file, and I go to a sanitarium to rest up.”

“Was it pink elephants?”

I considered a moment before I answered. Lorne and Garland had both known that Andrews was waiting to see me, and certainly they knew he’d want to know the details of my experience. Neither had even suggested that I refrain from talking about it, so there was no reason why I shouldn’t tell him.

So I did. I gave him the whole story, starting with my phone call to Washington. And in the telling of it, I learned something.

I learned that I was a long way from being convinced that what had happened was a figment of my imagination. Damn it, I remembered taking the briefcase from the laboratory. I remembered buying a ticket. I even remembered buying cigarettes while I was waiting for the train.

I remembered riding on that train.

The wreck! It was one of the most vivid memories of my life.

After I’d finished, I lay back, worn out merely from telling about it. I shuddered and closed my eyes. In half a minute, I opened them.

Andrews was staring at me, his eyes narrowed in deep thought.

He said, “Damned if I know, Hank. Sounds impossible, but — Mind answering a few questions? Feel well enough, I mean?”

“Shoot,” I said.

“When did the train leave?”

“Seven-forty, or a minute or two after that.”

“Did you know there was a train leaving then? Before you went to the station, I mean? Does it prove anything, if there was?”

I thought it over, and shook my head. “No, I knew beforehand that was when the Washington Flyer left.”

“No reservation?”

“No. I went by coach. Ticket was eight eighty, round-trip.”

“Know that before you bought your ticket?”

“I... I might have remembered it. I’ve made the trip before.”

“Remember the number of your car, or anything about it?”

“Just that it was a coach and the seats were blue plush.” I saw clearly what Armin was driving at now, and tried to cooperate. I said, “Let me think,” and tried to remember details that could be checked on. But after a minute I shook my head.

“The conductor?”

“He was short and heavy-set. Maybe about fifty, with thin gray hair. I think I’d know him if I saw him again. In his uniform, anyway.”

“Would he remember you, do you think?”

“N-no. Hardly looked at me. I noticed him while he was trying to get a ticket from a drunk in the seat ahead.”

Andrews snapped his fingers. He said, “Now we’re getting somewhere, maybe. What was his argument with the drunk?”

“No argument, really. The drunk was asleep and the conductor shook him, but couldn’t wake him. The guy mumbled, but stayed asleep. He had two friends with him; they were possibly sober. One of them shook him several times and he finally woke up enough to hand over his ticket.”

Andrews looked disappointed. “What did they look like?”

“I didn’t see the drunk, except for a glimpse of his profile when he woke up for a minute. He was youngish and dark and — yes, he wore shell-rimmed dark glasses and a black felt hat. The men with him — guess I’d recognize them if I saw them again — they were both about forty, fairly well-dressed. One of them was short and chunky, but you can’t judge a man’s height when he’s sitting — Wait, he was stocky; I remember now he got up and went to the back of the car where the lavatory was.”

“Remember any other incident that might be checked on?”

“Hm-m-m. I’m afraid not. There were only about a dozen passengers in the car, and it was third or fourth car from the end of the train.”

Andrews nodded slowly. “Not much, but — hell, if you check on all those points, it would be past coincidence to think you imagined being on the train. I mean, if there were a coach with blue plush seats third or fourth from last, with only a dozen passengers, with the conductor you described, and a drunk who wouldn’t wake up—”

“But all you’ll do,” I pointed out, “is shove ahead the borderline between what happened and what didn’t. I remember all that, but, damn it, I remember the train being wrecked. And it wasn’t. I must have—”

The door opened, and the nurse came in with a thermometer. She said to Andrews, “Sorry, sir, but—”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Hank,” Armin said. “At the sanitarium.”

An intern from St. Vincent’s sat on one side of me, and Frank Garland on the other, in the back seat. The driver was a policeman in uniform. I wondered about that. I didn’t like it.

None of us talked much until we were almost out of town. Then Garland cleared his throat.

He said, “Aren’t those experiments with HE dangerous, Mr. Remmers?”

“Yes and no,” I told him. “We make them up in very small quantities, using every precaution possible in handling them. Of course, if something should go off while we were mixing it, it would be dangerous for the person handling it. But it wouldn’t wreck the lab, or anything like that.”

“Just how severe would be the explosion of the average quantity you work with?”

“About as... as severe as the explosion of a rifle cartridge. And about as loud, and as dangerous. Which means it could kill you or not harm you in the least, depending on the direction of the force of the explosion, what it was in at the time and — oh, a lot of details.”

“Like dropping a cartridge into a fire and standing around until the heat explodes it, huh? I mean, the shell will kick off one way and the bullet the other, and one of them might hit you, or might not.”

“Something like that, except the charge isn’t confined until we put it in the testing chamber. From then on, there’s no danger because we work from behind a shield in the testing.”

“Can’t you work from behind a shield in mixing it?”

I shook my head. “Too much trouble, and too little chance of an explosion, anyway. When I say an explosive is unstable, I mean relatively unstable. After all, we know what we’re doing and we don’t just toss things together blindly. We start with a basic known formula and then work gradual variations in it, and in general we test each one for possibilities before we try the next. Say we’re working with trinitrocresol, for instance. We add a minute percentage of sodium nitrate, and when we test it we find it’s a fraction less stable than the original. So we don’t add more sodium nitrate and try again. We know that won’t get us anywhere. We try other variations and don’t increase the dosage, as it were, unless it shows promise.”

Garland took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and handed me one. He said, “I’d like to see your lab some time. Personally, I mean. When you’re back at work in it.”

“Any time,” I told him. “The lab itself is no military secret; it’s been written up in the ordnance journal, and other places. I’ll show you around everything except the records. Not that it would matter if you saw them, too.”

“Why not?”

I grinned wryly. “They’re strictly in the no-dice class. We’ve got a big backlog of negative information thus far. I know four thousand-odd ways of varying the formula for TNA which do not help stabilize it. We did do a few minor things with propellants for special types of guns, but the records on them have been turned over. We don’t keep copies. It’d make me jittery to have anything valuable around.”

“Because it might be stolen?”

“There’s always that possibility. Of course, we take plenty of precautions just the same, but—”

“Why, if there’s nothing valuable there?”

I laughed. “Somebody interested might not know that. And I have equipment there that set me back over fifty thousand. Precision stuff — it’s got to be precision to get accurate checks on such small quantities. You don’t measure out picrates in a beaker, not for the kind of work we do.”

“How does your head feel?”

“Tender, that’s all. The ache’s gone. But I’d just as soon not hit any bad bumps.”

“We’re almost there. Another mile.”

The last mile, I thought, and tried to laugh at myself for feeling uneasy at the comparison. A two-weeks’ rest, that’s all this trip was taking me to. And maybe I could cut down the time if I got plenty of sleep and kept my mind off—

“How do you test the stuff?” Garland asked.

“Any number of ways,” I said. “Deterioration — we can speed that up artificially in a Mersing chamber; rate of detonation — we can check that up to twenty thousand meters a second. Heat reaction test, which is nothing more than a heating chamber. But the main thing, for our purpose, is the stability test. We use a fulminate of mercury fuse for that.”

“And vary the quantity of... er... fulminate of mercury to see how big a charge is needed to set off whatever you’re trying out?”

“It’s easier than that. We use a standard fuse and vary the distance between the fuse and the charge we’re testing. If we find that the fuse, at X distance, does not detonate the charge, but at Y distance does detonate it, then we know it’s satisfactory for stability, and we go ahead with the other tests.”

“If you keep trying that all day, the lab must be a pretty noisy place, isn’t it?”

“No noisier than a shooting gallery. And you can’t hear the explosions outside the building, unless you’re listening for them, and there’s no traffic going by.”

“The neighbors ever — Skip it; here we are.”

The sedan was turning into a driveway, and it came to a stop before a big iron gate in a high brick wall. A watchman looked out through the gate, but didn’t open it until Garland got out of the car and showed him a paper.

Then, while Garland got back into the car, the watchman went back into a sentry booth beside the gate and stayed inside for a minute or two. Then he came out and swung open the gate.

As we drove through, I asked Garland why the man had gone back in the booth before letting us in.

“He phoned the building and had them throw the switch to open the gate.”

“Why don’t they just give him a key?” I wanted to know.

Garland shrugged. “Playing safe, that’s all. If somebody wanted to escape, they might overcome him and take away the key. It’d be tougher, wouldn’t it, if they had to phone the main building and give a password?”

I whistled softly. “You mean they have dangerous... er... patients here? I thought Major Lorne told me—”

But the car was stopping now in front of a brightly lighted doorway. Garland got out hastily, as though trying to avoid my question. He said, “Come on.”

I hesitated, on the verge of protesting and saying that I’d changed my mind about agreeing to Lorne’s suggestion for a place to rest up. But — Oh, hell, I might as well go through with it now. If Dr. Wheeler was half the psychiatrist Major Lorne said he was, it wouldn’t take him long to decide I was perfectly sane.

Besides, I was coming here voluntarily. I wasn’t being committed.

Or was I? What was that paper Garland had shown the guard at the gate?

But I was outside the car now, and almost to the door. Garland was on one side of me and the intern on the other, the policeman who’d driven the car bringing up the rear. Resistance, either physical or verbal, would prejudice my case. I had an uneasy hunch I’d be taken in there just the same, and with a black mark on my dossier that might take longer than two weeks to eradicate. Considerably longer.

I went in.

An attendant in a white uniform led us to an office. The policeman and the intern waited in the hallway, and Garland took me in to meet Dr. Wheeler.

Wheeler stood up behind his desk as we went in. He was a small man, bald as an egg, and he wore thick-lensed pince-nez glasses on a wide black ribbon. The lenses made his eyes look enormous.

They turned on me, and studied me, and I felt transparent.

“Mr. Henry Remmers, doctor,” Garland said. “The man Major Lorne talked to you about. Here are the papers — the reports from St. Vincent’s and so on.” He tossed an envelope down on the desk.

I cleared my throat. It seemed suddenly important that I make my voice sound natural and say the natural thing. The words came out all right, but it sounded to me as though somebody else were talking.

I said, “Good evening, doctor. Major Lorne suggested this as the ideal place for a rest cure for a week or two. I’m coming here voluntarily, of course. I mean that I’m not... er—” I bogged down, realizing that it would have been better if I’d said nothing at all.

“Of course, of course,” Dr. Wheeler smiled and nodded. “We want you to feel that you are a guest here, Mr. Remmers. You’re tired, of course, after your trip?”

“Not particularly. I—”

“But rest will be the best thing for you, right now. It will be much better if I... ah... talk with you in the morning, will it not? I’ll have you shown to your room.”

He pressed a button on his desk.

I realized the futility of protest, and I was a bit tired, after all. A good night’s sleep, and everything might look different in the sunlight of tomorrow.

Maybe it was all to the good that, feeling as I did right now, I didn’t have to undergo a lengthy examination and more cross-questioning.

I nodded, and said, “I guess you’re right, doctor. Er... goodbye, Mr.—”

I turned, but Garland wasn’t there. I hadn’t heard him leave the office, but he was gone.

The door opened, and an attendant came in. Not the one who’d shown us to the office, but another — a husky man with a nose twisted a little to one side. He looked like a fugitive from the fight rings.

“This is Mr. Remmers, Wilbur,” Dr. Wheeler said. “You will take him to Room 212. It’s been prepared for him.”

He turned back to me. “Tomorrow, Mr. Remmers, we’ll show you around the place. The grounds here are beautiful at this time of year. But tonight, sleep well.”

Again his eyes seemed to look right through me. Possibly it was the effect of the thick lenses, or it may have been a trick of focusing. I wondered if Dr. Wheeler used mesmerism on his patients. With eyes like his, very little verbal suggestion would be needed.

Then he sat down abruptly and turned to papers on his desk, and I followed Wilbur out of the office.

I followed him up a flight of stairs and along a corridor. He opened the third door from the end, reached inside and flicked a light switch.

He said, “There’s a button in the door frame here. Push it if you need anything.”

I said, “Thanks,” and stepped inside, and the door closed behind me.

It was a small, but comfortable room. There was a window, open a few inches at the top, and I was glad to see that there were no bars across it. There was a desk and a chair, and a shelf with a few books on it.

There was a single bed with a pair of pajamas lying across it. The pajamas looked familiar. I picked them up to make sure, and they were mine all right.

Then I saw that my black Gladstone bag had been pushed back under the bed, and I remembered that these pajamas had been the ones I kept in the bag. Probably Major Lorne had brought the bag out during the afternoon when he’d talked to Wheeler about me. I was certain that it hadn’t been in the car in which I’d been brought here.

I pulled it out and opened it, to refresh my memory on what its contents had been. There were shirts, socks and underwear enough to last me for several days. And there was a toothbrush and comb. But my razor was gone.

Someone in a nearby room started singing in a high, cracked voice. No tune, just a continuous high monotone. I couldn’t make out the words.

Well, I thought to myself, you’re here to relax. Damn it, relax.

I bent over to scan the titles of the books on the shelf. There were half a dozen of them. I read the titles: “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Ivanhoe,” “Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come,” “Heidi,” and “Ben Hur.”

All the latest best sellers! Leisurely literature for lulling lunatics. Well, there’d be an evening paper somewhere around the joint. I’d stick my head out into the hall and ask the attendant on duty to bring me one.

I turned and reached for the door-knob.

There wasn’t any. The door didn’t open, from my side.

I stood for quite a while looking at that door, and especially at the place where the knob should have been and wasn’t.

I got myself calmed down before I pressed the button for the attendant. No use raising hell with him. I’d have to put up with being locked in until I had a chance to talk to Dr. Wheeler.

On principle, I didn’t like it. But it wouldn’t hurt me, for one night.

The door opened, and it was Wilbur. He said, “Yeah?”

“Is there a copy of the evening paper around?” I asked him. “Any evening paper.”

“Sorry, mister. Against the rules.”

“Huh? Why?”

He shrugged. “Patients aren’t supposed to worry about what goes on outside.”

“But, look,” I said, “I’m not— Oh, skip it.”

He closed the door.

I sat down on the bed and glowered at nothing in particular. Darn Major Lorne for getting me into a place like this. Next time I saw him, I’d tell him he was badly mistaken about the character of Dr. Wheeler’s private little rest haven.

No newspapers! In times like these, the surest way to work up a good worry is not to know what’s going on. What’s happening tonight in Tunisia? If I knew, I could forget it.

After a while, I got up and went to the window. It was so dark out that I couldn’t see anything in the glass but my own reflection. I tried to raise the sash and it wouldn’t lift. The top part went down six inches and that was all. No more.

No, there weren’t any bars, but the panes were set in metal frames and I had a pretty good idea that the glass was bulletproof, once I got the significance of the frames and the fact that the window wouldn’t open wide enough for anyone to escape.

Well, there wasn’t anything I could do about it tonight.

I took another look at that shelf of books, and picked out “Ivanhoe.” It wasn’t bad, after the first couple of chapters. By the time events got to Sherwood, I was deeply interested.

Then, suddenly, and without warning, the lights went out.

I put the book down in annoyance and groped for the doorway. By the time I got there, I could see well enough to find the button and push it. There was, once my eyes were used to the comparative darkness, a faint blue illumination in the room.

It came from a dim bulb set in the ceiling, behind blue glass.

Wilbur opened the door and said, “Yeah?”

“The light went off,” I said. “Was it an accident or—”

“All room lights go off at ten sharp.” He slammed the door, and since there was nothing else to do, I undressed and went to bed.

I couldn’t sleep. And I didn’t want to think, but there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t want to think until things had simmered down, and I’d had my talk with Dr. Wheeler and—

Then I began to hear the voice. It was a strangely hoarse, whispering voice, and it didn’t come from any ascertainable direction. It filled the room, as the blue radiance filled it, dimly.

“You’re new here?” it demanded. “You’re new here? You’re new here?”

I sat up in bed and looked around. Was I really going crazy?

“The register,” said the voice. “I’m talking from the next room.”

I looked around until I spotted it. A small metal grille in the wall near the desk. I went over to it and bent down. “Yes. I’m new—”

“Sh-sh, just whisper. I can hear you, if you whisper.” His own voice was lower now. “If they hear, they’ll shut off the registers. They murdered the man in that room before you, like they’ll murder you.”

He was crazy, of course. I said, “Thanks; I’ll watch out. My name’s Remmers. What’s yours?”

“George Zehnder. They’ll kill me, too. I was in censorship; and I found out too much. Look, when did you see a paper last?”

“This morning,” I told him. “We’re doing well in the Solomons and the Russians are pushing the Nazis back steadily. Things are deadlocked in Tunisia. The Germans have lost—”

“You believe all that?”

“Believe it? Why, sure. Even the Axis radio—”

“There isn’t any Axis radio. There isn’t any Axis: Those stations are our own. The Russians control Europe. That’s what I found out. That’s why I’m here. You got to tell people, if you can escape. And I know how you can. I can’t.”

It sounds funny, here and now, but it wasn’t, then. Not in that luminous-blue room, locked in, with my wardens apparently thinking I was as crazy as the man I was listening to. It put shivers down my spine and for reasons I couldn’t explain.

Maybe because it settled once and for all the character of the place I was in and the fact that I was in a jam. That was a logical reason for those shivers.

There was a lesser one, and I didn’t like to think about it. People today had been listening to my story with just about the same feeling with which I’d been listening to that of George Zehnder in the next room — the next cell.

“It’s a plot, Remmers,” the voice whispered. “The whole administration, Washington, and the Russians. They control Europe. There isn’t any war, but they’re sending all the men out of this country and landing them on islands out of the way, so they can take over and make this part of the Comintern. That’s why you’re here, too. You found out something. What was it?”

I couldn’t very well refuse to tell him why I was here; I put it into as few words as I could.

“See?” he whispered. “Things like that are going on all over. Train wrecks that they keep secret. Factories blown up. Everybody else on that train was killed, but you survived, and they had to tell you there wasn’t any wreck and put you here. Now they’ll kill you, so you can’t tell.”

I said, “That’s — Maybe you’re right. But I’d better get some sleep, so I can be on my guard tomorrow.”

“Good,” came the whisper through the register. “You’ve got to be on your guard tomorrow all right. Sleep.”

I went back to the bed, a little shakily. Someone across the corridor started laughing hysterically and couldn’t stop, until a door opened and closed. Then silence. Finally, I slept.

Then I was dreaming, for things were confused and unreal, in the manner of dreams. A train conductor was telling me that Dr. Wheeler had told him that the war was all a plot, and shouldn’t I ask Major Lorne about it before I went on working with explosives, and I laughed out loud and told him that Wheeler was a paranoiac because his eyes were as big as grapefruit. And then things went swish and I was in the laboratory.

Good old Peter Carr was stuffing reports into my briefcase and saying, “These are all you need, Hank. In case you get cold, I mean, up in Iceland. You can start a fire with them, and they won’t explode because the stability factor of paper is ninety-nine and a half.”

I grabbed the briefcase and then Armin Andrews was there asking me for an interview about my trip to Iceland and I took him back to the testing rack and said, “See, it doesn’t make any more noise than a rifle shot. You can stand right there behind the shield and I’ll go throw the switch from over there and it goes bang.”

And it went bang, and I joined him again and moved the shield and said, “Stable, see? But no power. Now take the hexanitrodiphenylamine—” And he said, “Not me, I’ll take vanilla.” And then I took him back to the office and I sat down, only I was sitting on a train again, and my attorney, John Weatherby, was with me instead of Armin.

Then there was a rap on the window of the train, and I opened it and a stranger stuck his head in the window and said, “Here it comes!”

He disappeared, and there it was again! Sudden darkness. The long, drawn-out sound of ripping steel and wood, shrieks and screams of terror from all about me. And the seat going up and over into darkness. And then nausea and pain. Shrieks and screams and tearing steel in darkness.

Then a locomotive headlight—

Somebody was shaking me, and the light wasn’t a locomotive. It was a flashlight playing in my face, blinding me, and I was back in bed at the sanitarium. Wilbur, the attendant, was shaking me.

“Wake up, cut it out,” his voice growled.

The wreck terror was still with me, and my forehead was clammy.

Wilbur said, “Lay off the screaming. We won’t let it get you.”

“I’m all right,” I said. “I... I just had a nightmare.”

He grunted and went out. But I knew one thing now. That wreck really had happened. It hadn’t been a dream, the first time. Last night—

The voice from the register whispered, “Remmers, are you all right? Did they kill you?”

I didn’t dare answer, because if I listened to that mug, pretty soon I’d be believing him. I’d be crazy, too. Or was I already?

I faked a snore, to avoid answering Zehnder. And then I must have slept again. For I woke up to the sound of my own screams.

There were two of them this time, Wilbur and another. Wilbur was slapping my face. “Wake up, buddy, cut it out. Come on; what you need is a nice long soak in hot water.”

And then the two of them were leading, half carrying me out of the blue room into the yellow-lighted hallway. They handled me firmly, but not roughly.

The other attendant was as big as Wilbur, but dumber-looking. He had a swarthy, brutal face and a curiously gentle voice.

He asked; not of me, “Hadn’t we better call the boss?”

“Naw,” said Wilbur. “Not unless he has another, anyway. If he does, we’ll put him in a special.”

Then the white tile room, and they stripped my pajamas off me and the warm water in the sunken tub felt good. It was hot at first to my cold-sweated skin. Then pleasantly, languorously warm, and I relaxed. I didn’t think. I was past thinking, just then.

The rest of the night was quieter, though I didn’t sleep again. I felt, somehow, that I’d never again trust myself to sleep.

After they took me back to my room, I watched dawn come up. Watched it out of the bulletproof-glass window that wouldn’t open wide enough for a man to squeeze through.

It was a beautiful fried-egg sunrise along the tops of the trees beyond the distant high wall. A riot of red and yellow above the green.

Breakfast was brought to me and I ate, a little.

Then I watched the sun climb higher, and thought of it shining into the windows of my home out in Glen Olden. I wondered if I’d ever live there again.

The sun was almost overhead when they took me downstairs to Dr. Wheeler’s office. The day attendant who took me there remained in the office, standing with his back against the door.

Dr. Wheeler motioned me to a seat facing him. He studied a file of papers for a while, looking up at me occasionally as he read.

I sat quietly, waiting.

He cleared his throat, finally. “I understand you had an... ah... unquiet night last night, Mr. Remmers.”

I nodded. “Nightmares. Or rather, the same one twice.”

“The attendants should have called me. Upon first awakening from... ah... delirium, your answers to certain questions might have been quite revealing. I understand from this dossier that you have never suffered before from mental disorder. How has your general physical condition been?”

“In the pink,” I told him. “But I guess I pushed myself too far, recently, on working hours.”

“I understand you are doing research for the government. In explosives. Do you ever feel fear, uneasiness, in the handling of such dangerous substances?”

“Hm-m-m,” I said, “a little, occasionally. It wouldn’t be normal, not to. But it hasn’t worried me.”

“You work directly under Major Lorne’s orders?”

“Yes, and no, doctor. I do what he tells me to do, and report to him. But I’m not on the government payroll at all. The laboratory is my own and—”

“You have independent means?”

“Yes. After college, an inheritance let me set up a small laboratory of my own, purely as a gamble. I had the luck to make an important discovery in plastics and sold the process for a sizable sum plus royalties for fifteen years. So I’m financially independent. I’d worked with explosives a bit, and when the war started, I thought my services in that line would be most valuable. The War Department put me in touch with Major Lorne, and I’ve been working at whatever he’s suggested ever since.”

“Paying for your own materials and equipment?”

“Of course. I can afford it, and Major Lorne agreed that since I didn’t need a government salary, it would cut a lot of red tape if I remained technically independent. He takes care of priorities on everything I need, and, of course, anything I discover is automatically the property of the government.”

“An excellent arrangement.” He smiled. “We’ll do our best to send you back to your laboratory as soon as possible, Mr. Remmers. For the moment, the most important prophylaxis for you is complete rest and freedom from worry. Don’t think about the war, about your laboratory, about... ah... your experience of night before last. And about those nightmares—”

“Yes, doctor?”

“Possibly they will not recur. If they do, we’ll try to get at the cause of them. You’ll have the freedom of the grounds, of course, and I suggest some brisk walking this afternoon to induce normal fatigue. And I’ll have a mild sedative sent to you just before you retire.”

He nodded toward the man at the door, as though the interview were over.

I stood up, but I said, “Just a minute, doctor. There are one or two questions I want to ask.”

“Yes?” There was an edge of impatience in his voice.

“About newspapers. I’m sure knowing what’s going on outside won’t, in my case, cause any—”

“Sorry, Remmers, no. You’ll have to let me be judge of what will be best in your case. And no visitors, either, for a while. Visiting day is Sunday, but this first Sunday — no, not in your case. Insulation from outside contacts is the best—”

I interrupted, “But that’s preposterous. I’m here voluntarily, for a rest cure. I—”

His voice was crisp and final. “Mr. Remmers, if you are interested in an ultimate cure, you won’t question my rulings. And as for your being here voluntarily, temporary commitment papers have been signed, by Drs. Rurick and Ulhausen of St. Vincent’s, with the concurrence of your lawyer and Major Lorne. This institution has your best interests at heart, however, and you’ll do well to cooperate with us. That is all.”

All the resistance went out of me, suddenly. Meekly, I allowed myself to be led back to my room. Lunch was brought to me there.

I roused myself enough to ask a few questions of the attendant. Yes, patients could send and receive mail, provided the subject matter was approved by the staff. Letters were distributed every morning after breakfast. Patients had freedom of the grounds from one o’clock in the afternoon until five. Yes, there was a general dining hall, but patients were served meals in their rooms for the first few days, until they became adjusted to sanitarium routine.

At one o’clock the attendant returned and opened my door.

The grounds were extensive, and probably quite beautiful, if I’d been in a mood to appreciate them.

But walking was welcome relief after confinement in that tiny room. It hadn’t seemed so small when I’d first entered it, but every hour there had diminished its size. A room into which you’re locked can shrink to the size of a coffin.

Most of the other patients had remained on the stretch of lawn in front of the building. There were chairs and tables on the lawn, and card games starting at some of the tables. There was a shuffleboard court marked out on the cement driveway, and a row of stakes for pitching rubber horseshoes.

But I didn’t want companionship. Not that kind of companionship, anyway.

I walked, alone.

There were a few others who, like myself, went farther afield. Occasionally, I passed one of them, but they, too, wanted solitude, for none of them spoke to me.

Not directly, at any rate. There was the man who stood on the stump, speaking to no one in a voice that rolled like thunder. A mighty voice, deep and impressive. “—and the birds of Armageddon shall fly the shrieking skies and their droppings upon the quaking face of earth shall be fire and destruction and holocaust—”

He was a tall, dignified looking man with silver hair. He looked familiar; I thought I’d seen his picture somewhere, at some time. I walked faster until I was beyond range of that vibrant voice.

At two or three points I went close to the wall. It was twelve feet high, and there was a wire along the top of it. Not a barbed wire. Undoubtedly, it contained electric current, possibly not in lethal quantity, but enough to stun. Or possibly, it merely set off an alarm if shorted by the touch of an escaping patient. There were no trees within a dozen feet of the wall.

And then it was evening, and my cell again. I finished “Ivanhoe” and bribed Wilbur with a five-dollar bill to find me another assortment of books to take the place of the ones I had. The ones he brought weren’t bad; they included “Huckleberry Finn,” “Pickwick Papers,” and others I’d read long ago, but which were worth rereading.

I was halfway through “Pickwick” when the lights went out.

I undressed slowly, uneasily, wondering if I were in for another bad night. I wished there were some way I could break or put out that blue night light. Blue is supposed to be a quieting, soothing color.

Supposed to be!

It isn’t; not in a room like that, under circumstances like those. Not at night in a madhouse. A weird, blue radiance.

Physically, I was so tired that I must have gone to sleep the moment I lay down.

Then I was sitting up in bed, yelling my head off, and my pajamas were soaked with cold perspiration.

Yes, I’d lived through that wreck again. Or, maybe died in it. That horrible wreck that never had happened. Or had it?

Wilbur was there, and Dr. Wheeler, and I kept my eyes closed while Wheeler asked me a million questions so that, while I answered, I wouldn’t have to look into those eyes of his. I don’t remember what the questions were, but he didn’t seem to be satisfied with the answers. Some of the same questions were repeated over and over. It was almost like going through another nightmare.

And there was warm water again and I must have gone to sleep in the sunken tub and not awakened while they took me back to my room. At any rate, I woke up in bed and my last recollection was the water.

I lay there quietly for a while, getting enough courage to get up and dress. Then the attendant came with breakfast, and a letter from Armin Andrews.

There were two sheets of paper in it, but the sheets weren’t the same size. Scissor marks showed that the bottom of the first page and the top of the second had been sheared off. The paper seemed to have been ordinary size, and, therefore, almost half the message was gone. It read:

For a minute after I got the significance of those scissor cuts, I was so mad I couldn’t see straight. Wheeler had scissored out of that letter the very thing I wanted to know. Had to know.

Those missing words would have told me whether I’d really been on the Flyer. Whether I was mad or sane.

Just then, I was mad all right, in one sense of the word. I forgot the bell and hammered on the door until an attendant opened it.

Before he could ask what I wanted, I started a tirade that would have blistered the hide of an alligator. But it petered out as I saw he was merely bored and resigned. As though he’d heard worse, from crazier people.

He said, “You mean you got a complaint because the office cut something out of a letter? Look, mister, they did it for your own good, if they did. And it won’t do no good to squawk.”

“Maybe,” I said grimly. “But just the same I demand to see Dr. Wheeler at once and—”

“Dr. Wheeler ain’t here. Left on a vacation early this morning. Dr. Gottleib’s in charge. You can complain to him if you want, but it won’t do no good, mister.”

“Take me to him, anyway.”

“Not now. Evenings between six and seven. That’s the only time you can—”

I slammed the door, and stood there, trembling with anger. If I’d left the door open a minute longer, I’d have struck the attendant. And it wasn’t his fault. Besides, it would be another proof to them of how crazy I was.

Maybe I was crazy. Maybe that’s what had been in the missing part of that note from Andrews — the fact that there hadn’t been any such conductor on the train I remember taking. That there hadn’t been a coach third or fourth from last, and that all the cars were crowded. In other words, that the whole thing was haywire. That I was haywire.

Or had he told me that the conductor had verified my story; that all details, except the wreck, checked.

Was I crazy? Damn it, I was going to go crazy wondering.

Then something struck me so damn funny that I laughed out loud, bitterly. This was to be a place of quiet and rest to overcome a breakdown. This place, where I was locked in a tiny room under a blue light all night, where I had nightmares that would drive me crazy, if I weren’t already.

And they kept from me the one thing, the only thing, that could help my mind to adjust itself — the truth. If I only knew beyond all doubt what had happened night before last, if I only knew that my mind had slipped a cog, then maybe I could adjust myself, and work toward recovery.

But uncertainty was intolerable. I had to know.

Not knowing, this place was hell.

I had to get out of here — to escape. Right away.

And once I realized that, I became calmer. I had something constructive to think about now — how to get out of here.

It would have to be during the afternoon, of course, when I had the freedom of the grounds. But how to surmount a twelve-foot wall with a wire running along the top of it which I mustn’t touch. Not knowing this country, I’d need a good long start before they missed me.

Then I remembered something the patient in the next room had said, during our whispered conference. If only it weren’t of a piece with the rest of what he’d said—

I put my mouth down to the register and whispered, “Mr. Zehnder.”

The answering “Yes?” came almost immediately.

I whispered, “Night before last you said you knew a way I could escape. Why haven’t you used it?”

“I can’t. They’re waiting outside to get me if I do. I’m safe only as long as I stay here and pretend I’m mad. But maybe they don’t know you, and you could get through them. If you do, you’ll tell everybody what I told you about—”

“Of course. How can I get over the fence? And what’s the wire on top of it?”

“An alarm. I heard it set off once. Listen, you walk due west from the west side of the building, until you come to the wall. Then turn north and follow it about a hundred yards and you’ll see a birch tree—”

He went on with it, and it made sense. If the tree were there as he described it, and the other tree at the outside of the wall, the idea would work.

I reached the tree within ten minutes of the time I was let out of the building, at one o’clock. Even from the ground, I could see that it would work. It took me a while to find a sapling small enough so that I could break it, yet strong enough for its purpose.

The hardest part was shinning up the bole of the birch, carrying with me the six-foot staff I’d made out of the sapling. The ticklish part was going hand-over-hand along that staff from one tree to the other, after I’d set it as a bridge across the five-foot gap between the fork in a heavy branch of the birch and the fork in the bole of the maple beyond the fence.

It was ticklish, and there was a twenty-foot drop if anything went wrong. But nothing did. Climbing down the maple was easy, and I cut across a fallow field to a dirt road beyond.

Two miles of walking brought me to a highway.

Luck was with me. An interurban bus came along, and stopped to pick me up when I hailed it. It was headed for Marcus Hook, and Marcus Hook is only a matter of minutes from Philadelphia by fast train.

I was free. Until they caught up with me, I was free.

In Marcus Hook, I learned that the next train for Philadelphia was due in twenty-five minutes. I sat down on a bench to wait, and realized for the first time how utterly weary I was.

My head ached, too. I closed my eyes and tried to relax, not to think about anything until I’d talked to Andrews. Time enough to think things through after I knew what he’d learned.

I must have fallen asleep as soon as my eyes closed.

I opened them to look at the clock to see how long I still had to wait, and the clock said half past six. I’d slept for three hours, sitting there.

The lights were on in the station, and it was twilight through the windows.

And an hour and a half ago, back at the sanitarium, I’d have been missed. By now the alarm was out for me, and the search would be on. They’d be watching my home, probably, and the laboratory. Maybe even Andrews’s flat.

But — Well, there was nothing to do now but to go on, and to avoid capture as long as I could — at least until I’d talked to Andrews.

A train for Philadelphia pulled into the station and I boarded it, cursing my stupidity in losing the brief time that would have been mine to utilize as a free man and not as a fugitive.

There was no cause for hurry now, and plenty of reason for caution. In Philadelphia, I made myself as inconspicuous as possible in leaving the station, and I phoned Andrews’s flat from a nearby drugstore. There was no answer.

I tried his paper next, on the off-chance that he’d be working late. I was told that Andrews was taking a vacation of a few days and wouldn’t be back until Monday.

I ate something and then took a room in an inexpensive and inconspicuous hotel in Bremen Street. I used an assumed name, of course.

It felt great to be free, but I couldn’t see that it was getting me anywhere as yet. There were two people I wanted to see — Armin and Peter Carr. I thought I could trust both of them, but there was an excellent chance that Peter’s house and the laboratory would be watched. And I knew no way of getting Armin — except by calling occasionally, on the chance that he would return early.

Yes, the authorities would be watching for me closely. Looking at it from their point of view, I was a lunatic at large — and an expert on explosives. An explosive maker with a mental quirk that concerned train wrecks. Looking at it that way, they’d think it a matter of considerable urgency to catch me again.

Then I remembered Gene Larkin, and started toward his cab stand. I’d gone to high school with Gene. I had a hunch that I could trust him, and, anyway, it was unlikely that he’d have heard this soon that I was a fugitive.

His cab was there, all right, and Gene in it.

He said, “Hi, there, Hank,” when I walked up and from the casualness of his tone I knew he hadn’t heard anything. I got in.

“Gene,” I said, “you free all evening?”

He grinned, “I wouldn’t call it free with the meter ticking. But I got the night ahead of me.” Then, as he looked at me closer, he stopped smiling, “Something wrong, Hank? You in a jam?”

I said, “A hell of a jam. Drive around a while — with the meter going, of course — and I’ll tell you.”

I told him the whole works, and he didn’t say anything for a full minute after I finished. Then he pulled up to the curb. He said, “Better get out here.”

I didn’t believe it. I said, “Damn it, Gene, you mean that even you think that I—”

He turned and looked at me and I knew I’d been wrong. He said, “Hell, no. But we’re near your house. I’m just going by to see if it’s being watched and you’d better not be along. Wait in the shadow of those trees and I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

He was back in ten. “It’s bad. There are two carloads of cops, maybe more in back. I made the mistake of slowing down to see if they were coppers, and they stopped me and looked in back. Good thing I left you here. Listen, I’ll drive by the laboratory next. If Peter Carr’s working late, there’ll be a light on. You keep on waiting here.”

I nodded. “You’re a godsend, Gene.” I looked at his snub-nosed, freckled face and damn near broke down. “Lord, in over three days you’re the first person I’ve talked to who hasn’t thought I was nuts.”

Gene snorted. “You’re not crazy. You been framed.”

There was assurance in his voice. But, better than that, there was sudden assurance inside me. Now, away from the atmosphere of the sanitarium, I knew damned well that I was sane.

The how, and for that matter, even the why, of what had happened to me were still obscure. But I’d been in a hell of uncertainty and now I was out of it again, in the light.

I wasn’t crazy, and they weren’t going to take me back there alive. Sure, it would be foolhardy to resist arrest and hide out, but that was my personal brand of craziness and I wasn’t afraid of that. Right now, I wasn’t even afraid of the nightmares; I knew I wasn’t going to have them any more. Somehow, I was going to wreck that train wreck before it wrecked me.

Gene said, “It’s nine-thirty. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Back in the shadow of the trees, I watched the cab drive off, and I waited.

Half an hour passed. Then another, and another. I waited two hours and then I walked to the corner of the boulevard and saw a cab coming. It wasn’t Gene’s, but I hailed it. I gave an address about six blocks from the laboratory.

This, I thought, as I got out of the cab and paid off the driver, was the route Gene would have taken. I’d gone as close as I dared, in the cab. Maybe Gene would have parked nearby for some reason, and I could walk close enough to see his cab.

And this was the route Peter Carr would take going home, if he’d been working late. These six blocks, and then one block west to the car line.

I looked around the corner and down Hale Street, and there was a man halfway down the block walking toward the car-line street. A man about Peter’s size and build.

Well, there was no hurry in my walking toward the lab, and that might be Peter. I started after him, walking briskly. I’d caught halfway up to him — a quarter of a block away, perhaps — when he reached the corner.

Then I heard the rumble of an approaching streetcar, and realized that he’d board it before I got there. I broke into a run and — yes, it was Pete Carr. I recognized that long, brown topcoat of his and the disreputable felt hat pulled down over his eyes.

I yelled, “Hey, Peter!”

He heard me and turned. Then he whirled back and ran toward the tracks. The streetcar stopped and he boarded it while I was still fifty paces away.

He must have recognized me — my voice, at any rate. Lord, if even Peter Carr thought me a dangerous lunatic, to be run away from, I’d get little help from other people, I knew.

I was out of breath and panting. I’d passed a tavern while I was running toward Peter, and I returned and went into it. I’d rest a minute and have a drink, and then walk toward the laboratory to see if I could spot Gene’s cab.

I ordered a beer, and while the bartender was drawing it, I called Andrews’s number again. No, he hadn’t been or phoned home and they didn’t know where he was.

Drinking the beer, I wondered about Peter. Could he have missed recognizing me? True, he was a timid cuss, in some ways. Seeing a man running toward him, yelling something he didn’t understand, he might have reacted that way. But—

“Nice night,” said the bartender.

“Yeah,” I lied. It was a hell of a night, now. Everything was going wrong. Probably Gene — on sober second thought — had decided it was too dangerous to help me, and had gone back downtown. Not that I blamed him.

The beer was good, and I had another. Damn Peter, I thought.

Well, there wasn’t any hurry, now. It was twelve fifteen by the clock behind the bar. I might as well catch the streetcar into town and turn in. Tomorrow—

I’d kept an eye out the window and no squad cars had gone by outside, so I felt fairly certain Peter hadn’t phoned the police. Anyway, the tavern keeper was getting ready to close up.

I strolled up to the car stop on the corner, and only when I got there did I remember that there wouldn’t be another car along until two. I’d missed the one at twelve — the one Peter had taken, and the only owl cars on the line after midnight were at two and at three-thirty.

I leaned against the building a moment, and then decided I’d rather walk than stand there. True, on the car-line street here, there was a chance of flagging an inbound cab, but I thought I’d rather kill time until two o’clock by taking another look at the laboratory.

Even if they were watching it all night, I could surely get within a block of it without being seen. Maybe — oh, I don’t know why I wanted to go that way, but I did. Maybe it was just a hunch.

I walked back the way I had come, to the corner a block back where I’d gotten out of the cab. Down the six straight blocks that led to the lab, I could see two or three cars parked without lights. But in this outlying district, all-night parking was permissible. It was unlikely that any of them harbored detectives, for none of them was closer than a block to the lab.

Anyway, I could get closer—

The first car, a block up, was an old jalopy I’d seen parked there often before. The next — was it a taxi?

Yes, it was. A cab parked without lights. There was a driver in the front seat, but no one in back. Looked like Gene’s cab, but why would he still be parked here? For that matter, why would he have parked here at all? It was too far away from the lab, and on the same side of the street. He couldn’t even see it from here.

I was closer now, and I could see that the driver was slumped forward across the wheel. Was it Gene, asleep?

It was Gene, all right. I opened the door of the cab, called his name, and put a hand on his shoulder to awaken him. The tips of my fingers touched the flesh of his neck, and the flesh was cold.

Something inside me turned cold, too, at that moment. It wasn’t fear, thank God, it was anger.

Up to now, I’d been worried stiff, and I’d been acting defensively, trying to clear myself of the implied charge against me of insanity. Now it was different.

Gene had been the first person really to be on my side, the first to accept my version of what had happened. And now Gene was dead. Murdered. Even before I turned on the dome light of the taxi to see how he had been killed, it didn’t occur to me to doubt that his death had been by violence.

And it had. The lower part of the back of his head was crushed in. A cowardly blow from behind; it could have been dealt with the butt of a heavy revolver.

Yes, now everything was different!

Now, as though Gene’s being killed weren’t enough, this was proof. Proof that whatever machinations of evil had taken place four nights ago had not been figments of a disordered imagination. Now I could go to the authorities and demand— No, I couldn’t, of course. From their point of view, I was an escaped maniac. I’d been with Gene. Unless the time of his death could be set with unlikely exactitude and should coincide with my ride in the other cab, I had no alibi.

And it wouldn’t coincide, of course. Gene had been killed before then, or he would have been back to pick me up. He’d been killed while I waited for him back there in the shadows.

But by whom — and why?

I flicked off the light switch and sat down in the back seat to think things through as far as I could.

Whoever had killed Gene had been in the cab with him, sitting here where I was sitting now. And the cab had been parked here; with Gene slumped forward over the wheel that way, it couldn’t have been brought in to the curb here after his death.

Let’s see — he left me to drive past the laboratory, to see if there was a light on there. He wouldn’t have picked up a casual fare with me waiting for him back there. There were only two possibilities then. A policeman or detective might have stopped his cab in front of the laboratory, ordered him to drive a few blocks on and — no, that was unlikely. If the place were being watched, there’d be a pair of detectives. So the other would know—

But Gene knew Peter Carr, by sight. He knew that I wanted to talk to Peter. If Peter had left the laboratory while Gene was driving past, or if Gene had passed him on the street, while Peter was walking to the car line — right here, maybe — Gene would have pulled in to the curb, told Peter I’d sent him, and asked him to get in.

And then— Had Peter Carr murdered Gene?

But why? Impossible as it was to think of Peter Carr as a murderer, it was even more fantastic to name any motive for his killing Gene. He could have refused to get into the cab, if he were afraid of me. Or, if already in the cab, he could have refused to accompany Gene and got out again. The cab hadn’t started.

The more I tried to think it out, the dizzier became the circles in which my thoughts revolved. Somehow, this apparently motiveless murder was madder than anything that had happened yet.

Was I, framed somehow to appear insane, the victim of a madman’s plotting? Gene had nothing to do with whatever was going on; who but a madman would want to kill him?

Well, my first step was obvious. Regardless of risk, regardless of his attitude toward me, I was going to look up Peter Carr. Tonight. Now. When I’d heard his story, even if I had to sit on him to keep him from running away from me while we talked, then maybe things would begin to make sense.

I got out of the cab. There was nothing I could do for Gene now, except get his murderer. Then I remembered that Peter Carr had moved recently and I didn’t have his new address. He was living alone — I recalled him telling me — in a sort of bungalow along the river.

But there was only one way I could get that address tonight, and that was from the records at the lab. But if the lab were watched—

Well, there was one way that they might not have covered. I started walking toward the lab, four blocks away. Slowly, so I could think out what my best chances were of getting in unobserved.

A block and a half away, I cut into an alley, and from there on, I avoided the street on which the lab faced. I cut through yards to the back door of a four-story apartment building half a block away, and went in and up to the fourth floor.

The hallway window there would give me a bird’s-eye view of things, for the few other buildings in the next block were low ones. My laboratory was a one-story concrete garage building I’d had remodeled for my purpose.

Yes, there were two parked cars, one in the alley behind and a little beyond the lab, the other, across the street from the front of it. If there were no watchers other than those I presumed were in the cars there, I could make it unseen to a side window.

I went downstairs again, crossed the side street, and cut across lots and yards and over fences.

The window was locked, of course, but I got it open. I’d purchased a razor and blades when I’d left the hotel, and one of the thin steel blades now stood me in good stead. I pushed it up through the space between the sashes and pushed the catch. I’d often thought of putting better safeguards on those windows, but I’d never had anything really worth stealing in the place.

Inside, I tiptoed over to the file cabinet. It made a noise when I opened it, and I stopped and listened intently. It was quite possible that they had a man planted somewhere inside the building. But there was no sound save the ticking of a clock.

I had to risk a match to find Peter’s address, but if the only watchers were in the two parked cars, they wouldn’t be able to see a faint flicker of light here in the office.

Then I crossed over to the safe and struck another match while I worked the combination. There was about three hundred dollars cash in the safe, kept for making various cash purchases. I didn’t know how much longer I’d be a fugitive nor what unexpected expenses I might have, so I’d take advantage of the opportunity by taking that three hundred with me.

I swung open the safe, and struck another match. The tin box that held money was there, but the safe was strangely empty otherwise. The two bigger compartments, which held the condensed records of all our experiments and tests, were empty. Strange. Had Major Lorne taken them? Peter had the combination of the safe, and he’d have turned those papers over if Lorne had demanded them. But why would Lorne have wanted them? He had the originals of most of them; these were merely our copies. And in general, they were valuable only in a negative way, in that they might save time for other research men.

And Peter? He’d have had no cause for taking them. For a moment I pondered the idea that Peter might have discovered something about which I knew nothing. But that wasn’t likely, for it was I who did all the testing. And if he had discovered something important on the side and wanted to take personal advantage of it, he would never have incorporated it in those records, and, therefore, had no reason to steal them.

I took out the tin box and opened it. The money — the paper money — was gone, too. There were a few dollars’ worth of silver, but whoever had rifled the safe hadn’t bothered with it.

I didn’t bother with it, either. I left the safe ajar and started back for the window. After all, I had Peter’s address, and that was what I’d come for.

At the window, I paused to listen for sounds outside. A locomotive whistled mournfully far away. But that was all, except for the nearby ticking of that clock.

I had a leg over the window sill, before a thought came to me that stopped me from going the rest of the way.

I didn’t have a clock that ticked, here in the laboratory. There was an electric clock out in the shop, and a small chronometer back in the testing room, but—

I pulled my foot back into the room, and headed for the direction from which that ticking seemed to come. I found myself standing in front of my own desk and the ticking sound came from under it. I lighted a match and bent down.

It was a clock, all right, but the clock was fastened to a simple mechanism that would detonate a fuse. And the fuse was embedded in a box of what looked like granulated TNT.

Thirty or forty pounds of it. Enough to make a shambles of the whole laboratory, if not actually to blow it apart.

Quickly, I reached out and pushed the button that would shut off the alarm. Then I tiptoed out into the laboratory and groped through a drawer until I found a stub of candle. By its light, back in the office, I carefully dismantled the detonating mechanism.

I found that my forehead was dripping wet when I finished. I have a good, healthy respect for explosives. That’s why I’d been able to work with them so long and still retain the requisite number of arms, legs and fingers. But I’d never before messed with it in forty-pound quantities.

There was sufficient toluene and nitrates right here in the lab to have made that much TNT. Twice that much, in fact.

Again I went out to the laboratory and from there into the stock room. The toluene was all gone. If it had all been used for making TNT, then there was another forty pounds or so of it kicking around somewhere.

But that worried me less at the moment than the problem of who had trinitrated that toluene. Because there was only one answer, and that was one that didn’t make sense. Only Peter Carr had sufficient access to the laboratory to have made that quantity of TNT. With all our equipment designed for handling minute quantities, it would have taken a lot of time to make eighty pounds of HE. It couldn’t have been done in a stolen hour or two late at night.

But was Peter Carr a homicidal maniac? That fitted the murder of Gene Larkin, and insanity might account for the time bomb I’d just dismantled. But it couldn’t account for whatever frame-up had been pulled on me four nights ago. Peter Carr couldn’t have done that.

At any rate, I had his address. That was what I’d come here for, and my coming had incidentally saved quite a few thousand dollars’ worth of equipment from being scattered about the landscape.

Now to talk to Peter Carr.

I left as I had come, without attracting the attention of the detectives in the two automobiles.

Safely away, three blocks from the lab, I glanced at my watch. It was ten minutes to two o’clock. I could still make that two A.M. owl car. And it would take me within walking distance of Peter Carr’s place.

I was the only passenger on that car, and the ride seemed interminable. My mind was so confused that I actually tried to avoid thinking, until after I had talked to Peter.

It was two-thirty when I walked down Grove Street to the river.

There are cottages, many of them mere one-room shacks, all along the river at this point. Some of them are fixed for year-round occupancy, the others are uninsulated frame buildings habitable only during the clement months of the year.

Peter’s would be the third or fourth south of Grove Street. Yes, there was his name on a mailbox at the edge of the road. A path led down the slope into darkness.

A cool breeze blew in off the river. In it, a smell of coming rain.

I glanced up at the sky, and the rain clouds were still quite distant in the west. Overhead were white, fleecy cumulus clouds, a round area of them made radiantly golden by the moon behind them. Those clouds were moving east, out of the path of the coming storm, and I saw that within a few minutes the moon would be out in the open, and that I’d have much better light for picking my way down that path.

So I leaned against the mailbox, and waited. The breeze was pleasant in my face, and I took off my hat to let it ruffle my hair.

About me was utter silence and peace as I looked up again at the sky to see if the moon were nearing the open stretch of sky.

Then the night exploded.

I was lying on my back in the road. My ears were numbed by a sound so loud that I cannot really say I heard it. The flash had been so bright that it was seconds before I could see.

But I didn’t seem to be injured, otherwise, nor could I have lost consciousness for a measurable interval, for debris from the explosion was still falling.

A bit shakily, I got up and walked to the edge of the road to look down. Peter Carr’s shack just wasn’t there any more. Some of the scattered fragments that had been the shack were still burning, and there was enough light to see by — only there wasn’t anything there to see except the place where the shack had been.

There wasn’t any use in my going down the path. If anyone had been in that shack — well, he wasn’t there now. Somewhere in the distance I heard the wail of a siren and then another. Squad cars and fire engines would be converging on this spot, and they’d be here within minutes. I had to get away from here, and quickly.

I turned and sprinted back across the road toward the railroad tracks on the other side. Far in the distance I could see the headlight of a freight locomotive coming slowly as it cut speed to enter the yards a mile away.

It seemed to take hours to get there, but it beat the squad cars and the fire engines, at that. I ran alongside the first box car back of the tender, caught the rungs and swung aboard. I made myself as inconspicuous as possible between two of the cars until the train, now down to a crawl, reached the Covina Street crossing, just south of the yards. I dropped off there.

Somewhere a clock struck three. I’d escaped from the sanitarium about fourteen hours ago; it didn’t seem possible in so short a time, unless, in some way I couldn’t understand, my escape had precipitated those events.

And now, damn it, I was worse off than before, because I didn’t even know whether Peter Carr was alive or dead. Well, I couldn’t go back and ask, under the circumstances. I’d have to wait until tomorrow morning’s newspapers to find out whether or not the firemen had found a body — or parts of a body — in the wreckage. And whether positive identification had been made.

Under the first street light, I brushed myself off as well as I could, and smoothed down my hair. My hat was gone, but it was too late to do anything about that.

Then I walked, almost staggering from weariness and reaction, down Covina Street toward town. About ten blocks — it seemed like ten miles — farther on, I found an all-night drugstore and phoned for a taxi.

At four o’clock I fell into bed in my room at the hotel. I slept as though I had been drugged.

I slept for twelve hours and a half, and felt more groggy than refreshed when I finally awakened.

But after a bath and a shave, I felt nearly human enough to phone down to the desk for an afternoon paper, and I read it while I dressed.

Read it, that is, after I got over the shock of seeing my own picture staring at me from the first page. I’ll skip the wording of the caption and the headlines; I don’t like to think about them. And they were more or less what I’d expected and feared.

What interested me were the details in the minion type. It seemed that Henry Remmers, an escaped lunatic who was an expert in explosives, had had a busy night. He’d taken a taxi to the neighborhood of his own laboratory, and had murdered the taxi driver. Then, with explosives obtained from the laboratory which he had entered through a window — the report, I noticed, did not mention that the laboratory had been under observation of detectives — he had partly constructed a time bomb.

Apparently something had frightened him away before he completed the detonating mechanism, but he must have taken a quantity of high explosives with him. With this, he went to the bungalow of his former assistant, Peter Carr, and there had overpowered Carr — it was presumed — and tied him up. Then he had made another bomb, this time finishing the job. Yes, I’d expected all that.

The detail that interested me most was that the body of Peter Carr, despite its condition, had been definitely and conclusively identified. Carr’s dentist had identified his own handiwork, and one arm that had been found almost intact had a prominent scar which was listed as an identifying mark in Carr’s selective service registration. Marks on the wrist indicated he’d been tied up with rope.

My hat had been found, with my initials, near Carr’s mailbox.

They’d tied me in with Gene Larkin’s murder, too. A newsboy near Gene’s cab stand had seen me get into the cab.

A nice case. Everything but motive, and why does a madman need motive? Luck was with me in one little detail; the photograph they had of me was an old one. It showed me with a self-satisfied smirk I hadn’t been wearing of late.

I studied it and my face in the mirror. Lot of difference, now. Just the same; I’d have to be extra careful from now on.

I went out through the lobby of the hotel cautiously, but the clerk didn’t even look up from the paper he was reading.

But he was looking at my picture, even then. It would be only a matter of time, if he were normally intelligent, before it occurred to him that it vaguely resembled one of his guests—

There was a hat store only three doors from the hotel. I went in and bought a black felt with a wide flexible brim. With the brim down over my eyes, it gave me a sinister look. I wished I could feel as sinister as it made me seem.

Two blocks farther on, I bought a cheap ready-made suit, as different in cut and color as possible from the suit I was wearing. I wore it out of the store and left my old suit to be called for later.

There seemed to be only one angle still open for me to investigate. Even that was risky and I’d have to be careful.

The Washington Flyer. I could go to the station tonight on the chance that the same conductor might be on the train. I couldn’t inquire in advance about that, of course. But I could buy a ticket and board the train. I could pretend to be a newspaper reporter.

Armin Andrews would already have broken the ice by questioning him; if he didn’t recognize me as his passenger of that night, I could learn as much as Armin had learned.

After that — well, unless I got a lead, I was probably stymied. I might as well give myself up, but not to the police. I’d go right to Major Lorne and try, however vainly, to get him to listen seriously to my side of the thing. Maybe I couldn’t talk myself out of going back to an asylum, but I just might succeed in planting some doubt in his mind, so he’d go ahead and investigate.

It was five-forty now, two hours before train time.

I had an hour and a half to kill before I could start for the station, and I couldn’t sit here in the restaurant that long without attracting attention.

The darkness of a movie would probably be the safest place. I remembered now having passed one just a few doors before the restaurant.

The picture was a Western. I sat through it and never did find out what it was all about or why the actors shot at one another at frequent intervals. My eyes were on the luminous dial of my wrist watch fully as much as they were on the screen.

At seven-twenty I left the theater and walked to the railroad station.

No use looking around for detectives. If they were here and spotted me, that was that. It would be worse than useless to resist arrest. If they’d anticipated my coming here, then there wasn’t a single angle of the case I could investigate independently, anyway. If there were detectives, and I got away from them, I’d have Hobson’s choice between hanging around Philadelphia until they caught me, or running away and becoming a fugitive for the rest of my life.

So I strode confidently across the lobby and up to the ticket window. I pushed a bill under the bars and said, “Wilmington, round trip.”

A familiar voice, over my shoulder, said, “Make it two.”

I whirled around, and it was Armin Andrews. He looked friendly. He said under his breath, “Careful, Hank. Keep it casuallike.”

I nodded, picked up my ticket and change, and waited until he’d bought his. Then as we walked away from the window, I asked, “What did you mean about the ‘careful’? Are they watching for me here?”

“No, but there’s a regular on duty here all the time. If you’d run, or done anything to call his attention to you, he might have recognized you from that photo.”

“And you’re not going to turn me in?”

He shook his head slowly. “Not till I hear your side of it, anyway. I’m still not convinced that you’re... uh—”

“Crazy,” I said. “I’m not afraid of the word, but I’m not crazy. And plenty happened last night. I’ll tell you all right, but first, what did you find out from the conductor on—”

“We’ve plenty of time to talk on the train. Meanwhile, you look like hell, Hank. A drink’ll do you good. We got time for a quick one in the bar over there.”

“You mean we’re really going to ride to Wilmington and back? Why, if you’ve seen the conductor?”

“Why not? We’ve got tickets, and can you think of a better or safer place to talk?”

We had the drink, and it put a pleasant warm spot in me and made me forget just a fraction of the trouble I was in. And I had plenty to ask him, and he had lots to ask me, but we waited until we’d found a seat on the Flyer and it was pulling out of the station.

Then Armin said, “All right, I got less to tell so I’ll talk first. I saw your conductor. He didn’t remember you, but he remembered the drunk he had trouble getting the ticket from.”

“Any details? Did he remember how the guy looked, or anything?”

“Not much. Said he wore a gray suit and a black felt hat with a wide brim — like the one you’ve got on now. And dark glasses. But he didn’t notice his features much, and isn’t sure he’d know him if he saw him again. But he remembered he had two fellows with him who were sober, or comparatively sober.”

Here, then, was confirmation of the fact that I had boarded the Flyer that night. A sleepy drunk could have been a coincidence, but not the two companions, the black hat, the glasses. I’d seen the rims of the glasses from the side, although I hadn’t fully caught his face.

It should have excited me, but it didn’t. It was nice to find confirmation of at least the start of my story, but damn it I’d known ever since last night that it had really happened.

A conductor was coming down the aisle now. It wasn’t the same one. Armin said, “He might be on a different car. We’ll look later; there’s no hurry. Now what happened last night?”

I told him, and he listened but I couldn’t tell from his face whether he believed me or not.

He whistled softly when I finished. He said, “Boy, you sure put your foot into it. Two murders, and you were on the spot for both of them. Two bombs, and you were just too soon for one and too late for the other.”

“Do you think there’s a chance, any chance that the police will believe the truth?”

“I doubt it, Hank. Even if you can prove it, you might have trouble getting them to listen to your proof. You see, they know what happened, or they think they know and that’s just as bad. To them, you’re an escaped maniac. They won’t even want to ask you questions, because they’ve got that preconception.”

I nodded gloomily, knowing that he was right. It wasn’t going to do me any good merely to find out what was what. I was going to have to be able to prove it, and in words of one syllable.

I asked him, “Armin, have you got any ideas? I mean, assume for the sake of argument at least, that I’m sane and that I’ve told you the truth. Then somebody’s up to something. What have they got to gain by it?”

“I’ve wondered about that. Are you sure — completely sure — that you didn’t make any discovery in the lab that would be of... of military value? Even of commercial value?”

“Positive. I’ve thought about that very angle, and the more I think the surer I get, Armin. I ran the tests myself on every variation we tried. I checked every sample for stability, rate of expansion, the works. Look, if Peter had found anything that had better-than-average properties along any of those lines, he wouldn’t have known it. He didn’t run the tests himself.”

“Not ever?”

“Not alone. He knew how, of course, and when I talked to him last, while I was in St. Vincent’s, I told him he could go ahead and finish the tests on one line he was working on.”

“Could he have found something important in the last few days?”

“He could,” I said, “but he couldn’t have known about it in advance. It could account for—”

“For what?”

“For the runaround I got five nights ago. The night of the train wreck.”

Armin grimaced. “That damn train wreck. If we could only dope out what really happened on that train— Are you subject to hypnosis?”

I shook my head. “It couldn’t have been that, I’m sure. But however it was done, I’m beginning to see why.”

Andrews looked interested. “Give, pal.”

“It’s tied in with the laboratory, of course. Somebody needed me out of the way for a while, to get at something in the lab. Something that would take a bit of time and couldn’t be done — or obtained — in an ordinary burglary. They couldn’t murder me, but they did manage to frame me into talking myself into a nuthouse, about a train wreck that wasn’t.”

“Why couldn’t they have murdered you?”

“Major Lorne — and the FBI. If there’d been any murdering done, the FBI would have been on that lab like a swarm of locusts. They’d have turned that lab inside out, and guarded it with their lives. Even Peter probably couldn’t have got in, alone.”

“Makes sense,” Andrews said judiciously. “Carry on.”

He nodded toward the window. “We’re going through Chester. Do you remember Chester? I mean whether your wreck was before or after here?”

“After,” I said. “Yes, I remember seeing the station. And after the outskirts of Chester, the conductor came through. Then there was Marcus Hook. I don’t remember going through any station after Marcus Hook. I’d say it was about five minutes out of there that the... the wreck—”

“Would have happened, if it did happen. Look, maybe I ought to leave you alone to concentrate for the next ten minutes or so. I’ll take a stroll up toward the front of the train and see if our favorite conductor is on duty in one of the other cars.”

He left, and I turned to stare out the window.

I tried not to think, but to remember. To recapture every little detail, however slight, that had preceded whatever had happened.

Yes, just like this — I’d been sitting here when the conductor came through. I’d handed him my ticket without looking up.

Then, at the seat ahead, he’d said, “Ticket please,” and there hadn’t been any answer. He’d said it again, more sharply, and then was when I’d looked and seen the back of the head of the man who was asleep there.

He was sitting on the outside and another man was sitting next to him. I got a view of his profile as he turned to look at the conductor and said, “I’ll wake him up.” And then he shook the drunk and said, “Wake up, Bob.”

And the third man, who was sitting on the seat facing the others, riding backward, took an interest, and helped try to wake up the drunk.

One of them asked, “What pocket’d he put it in, Walter?” And the other said, “I dunno... I don’t like to— Shake him again.”

And the head wearing the black felt hat had waggled back and forth under the shaking and the drunken one murmured something inarticulate and must have reached into his pocket, for I saw his hand, holding a ticket, go up toward the conductor.

The conductor had punched the ticket and put it under the clip with the other two, over by the window. They’d been yellow slips of cardboard; mine, a through ticket to Washington, had been red.

Then the conductor had gone on.

I turned back to the window. Marcus Hook had gone by outside, as it was going by now. I remembered glancing at the drunk, and his head had lolled forward again.

The man who had been riding backward, facing the others, had got up. I remember now that he’d said, “Back in a minute, Walter.” He’d gone down the aisle toward the back of the car.

I’d turned toward the window again, and a little time, maybe five minutes, must have elapsed.

And then— The wreck. Damn it, I remembered—

“Wait a minute, Hank,” I said to myself, “just what do you remember? Let’s analyze it, let’s take it apart to see what makes it tick.”

And I closed my eyes and thought hard, and a little light began to enter the darkness. A possibility.

I tried to remember what seat I’d sat in that night. It had been third — no, second from last. There hadn’t been anybody sitting behind me, I was almost sure.

Darkness and pain and the screams of people being killed or injured, and the sound of rending steel and the—

I opened my eyes and looked up, and Armin was coming back from the front of the train. He slid into the seat beside me and said, “He isn’t on duty tonight, Hank. I asked one of the other conductors.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I told him.

“Well, no, I questioned him pretty thoroughly but—”

“I didn’t mean that. I mean — I know now what happened last Wednesday night.”

Armin said, “The hell!” and his eyes widened. “I thought — Well, never mind that. What happened?”

“Three men,” I told him, “boarded this train with a carefully worked-out plan for getting me. A plan so... so preposterous that it worked perfectly. So smooth that I didn’t know I’d been shanghaied, and neither did the conductor or the other passengers. They—”

“But what about the wreck, Hank? Are you forgetting that?”

“There wasn’t any wreck. And when I got right down to it, Armin, I don’t remember a wreck. I remember certain things, mostly sounds, that added up in my mind to the impression of a wreck. I see now how it could have been done, I think. But let’s take the kidnapping first.

“Those three men had a plan, and one of them playing drunk was part of it. They wanted to stamp on the conductor’s mind that he was practically unconscious. And they never let the conductor get a good look at his face, really. He had that wide-brimmed hat and he didn’t look up when he finally did hand over the ticket.”

“You mean so the conductor couldn’t identify him later?”

“More than that. Listen how simple it was. One of the last things I remember was one of the other men getting up and walking to the back of the car. The reason I don’t remember much after that was that on his way back he slugged me with a blackjack. That’s when the lights went out — for me.

“Then look how simple it was. He sat down beside me, and his companion moved back, too. The one who’d played drunk took the seat behind. They switched tickets in the clips by the windows, and the drunken one traded hats with me and put on me the dark glasses he’d been wearing. We were at the back of the car, practically, and all of that could have been done without attracting much attention.”

Armin said, “I think I get it. When the conductor went through again, there were still the same number of people, sitting in the same relative positions and their tickets checked. One of them had been unconscious before, and he was unconscious then.”

I nodded. “And at Wilmington, the two men who were sober helped their drunken companion off the train — practically carrying him between them. Only it was me instead, and the one who’d changed places with me probably rode on to Washington on my ticket. It all checks out, see? Three off at Wilmington, and one through to Washington. And it had already been planted in the conductor’s mind that the one in the black hat was too drunk to walk alone, so—”

“I get it,” said Armin. “But why Wilmington? How do you know they... you... got off there?”

“Wilmington and Baltimore are the only stops the Flyer makes after Philadelphia. The conductors use red cardboard seat checks for through to Washington, yellow for Wilmington, and probably some other color for Baltimore. They had yellow checks, I remember, like ours are tonight.”

Armin whistled softly. He said, “It would have worked. It would have worked. So they got you off the train that way, unconscious. And they took you somewhere, you think, and staged a phony wreck while you were coming out of it and then dropped you where you were found?”

“There wasn’t any need for a phony wreck. Just sound effects, damn it. Look, my impression of that wreck is the sum of four things — sudden darkness and pain, sounds, and the seat rising under me. Look how easy that is.

“Maybe they took me somewhere in Wilmington for the runaround, or maybe they drove back to Philadelphia first. Come to think of it, Philadelphia’s more likely.

“So when I’m coming out of it a little, in a dark room, or maybe only blindfolded, they give me those sound effects. Recorded, and probably through a set of headphones. I remember now something that I didn’t think of before — a sense of pressure on my ears while this... er... wreck was going on.”

Armin nodded. “It could be, Hank, it could be. You had the sudden darkness and the pain already, and you slowly come out of it to those sound effects, and maybe they’ve got you sitting on a sofa and lifting it a bit — or maybe that sense of motion was just nausea. And I think that would account for something else — your nightmares back in the sanitarium.”

“How?”

“If you were unconscious, you’d have had no sense of time. That’s why all those things came together in your mind; the darkness, the pain, the sounds. But they wouldn’t have taken a chance on your hearing those sound effects only once. Maybe you wouldn’t have remembered them. You may have had those earphones on for half an hour or longer, hearing those sounds over and over. You’d have had no impression of lapse of time, but the repetition would have made that impression so vivid it would have haunted your dreams.”

And it had haunted them, all right. I shuddered a bit at the memory of those nightmares in a madhouse.

We were silent a moment, and then Armin said, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“What’s your next step? I think you’re right on Wednesday night. It adds up. And your suggestion for a reason is sound; somebody wanted you out of the way without attracting attention to the lab by murdering you. And the thing was so elaborately done, I think we can say it wasn’t any casual robbery. Those three men must have been German agents. Do you suppose they got what they wanted?”

I said, “I still can’t imagine what it was. Maybe they heard a false rumor about my lab, or got their wires crossed somehow. But they got what they wanted, if it was there, because they took my papers before they set that time bomb. I doubt if they’ll be able to translate ’em, though. I make notes in a sort of chemical shorthand of my own.”

“Want me to go to Major Lorne for you, Hank? I imagine if I tell him all this, it will certainly open his mind and he’ll start the investigation in the right direction. If you like, you can stay under cover until you’re cleared.”

“Would you talk to him? We can go right on through to Washington on this train and—”

“He’s in Philadelphia,” Armin interrupted. “We’ll have to switch back at Wilmington, but I’ll see him tonight, when we get back. We’re almost to Wilmington now.”

At Wilmington, we had to wait forty-five minutes for a train back. We got back to Philadelphia at half past nine.

In the station, I suggested, “Let’s have a drink to celebrate this. Where’s Lorne staying?”

Armin named the hotel, and I said, “You can phone to see if he’s in, while I order for us. Come on.”

In the bar, I ordered two ryes and by the time the bartender had brought them, Armin was back from the phone booth.

“Out,” he said. “Left word at the desk he wouldn’t be back until around eleven.” He picked up his drink. “Mud in your eye.”

“And tetranitronaphthalene in yours,” I told him. “But what do we do until twelve? I’d feel safer under cover, in a movie or somewhere. In a place like this, there’s always the chance someone who knows me will walk in.”

He nodded. “It would weaken your case to be picked up now, before I get in licks with the major. I’d talk to Garland instead, but I think he’s back in Washington — or maybe, by this time, somewhere else on another case. They consider this one closed, except for finding you.”

“Shall we try a movie then? Or, if it would bore you, I can go alone and meet you afterward.”

Armin said, “Maybe we can do something constructive. I’ve been thinking about that sound-effects angle. Maybe we can get a lead on it, since we’ve got two hours to kill.”

“Swell. What’s the angle?”

“Canned sound effects — unusual ones like train wreck noises and multiple screams — aren’t any too common. Every big radio station’s got a library of them, of course. But if recordings like those have been borrowed or stolen from any Philadelphia station recently — well, it might give us a lead. And there must be a pretty limited number of people who’d have free access to them.”

“But that would take a canvass of the studios,” I said. “We wouldn’t have time in two hours.”

“We won’t go to the studios. Not first, anyway. I know a fellow who’s salesman for the Metropolitan Specialty Co. They sell stuff like that, to the studios. We can find out from him who might have ordered recordings of that kind recently. If it’s a studio, we can figure the ones in their library were stolen, and if we can tell Major Lorne that recordings like that were stolen, it’ll be a big boost to your story. If some private party bought them direct — hell, it’s not only a boost for your story; it’s a straight lead to the gang we’re after.”

“That idea,” I said, “calls for another drink. Champagne, if you want it!”

He grinned. “I’ll stick to rye. You can order while I find out if we can see him tonight.”

The ryes were waiting on the bar when he came back, and I could tell from his face that he’d been successful. He nodded, and said, “I phoned for a cab, too. The less walking you do, the better.”

He raised his glass. “Here’s — what was it you said, in my eye?”

“Tetranitronaphthalene. But that was in your right eye. How’s about hexanitrodiphenalymene in your left?”

We drank, and it tasted like nectar. I felt swell, better than I’d felt since last Wednesday night. I felt almost free, already.

But it wouldn’t be over until I’d helped get the men who’d killed Gene Larkin and Peter Carr.

The cab came, and Armin gave an address on Oakland Avenue. It was only a short ride. We went up the steps of the house, and Armin pressed the bell button and stepped back.

The door opened at once, as though someone had been waiting behind it. I looked at the man who was standing there, and he was one of the three men who had been on the train Wednesday evening, the one who had walked back to the lavatory, just before my private blackout.

But there was something else about him almost as startling. It was his resemblance to Peter Carr. I hadn’t noticed it that night, but now it was glaringly obvious. Maybe because he had on a hat then and didn’t have one now, and he had the same thick shock of blond hair Peter had, cut exactly the same. With the addition of a little filling out of his cheeks and a pair of shell-rimmed glasses like Peter wore, he’d have been a dead ringer.

Involuntarily, I took a step backward. Then I stopped dead, because I’d run into something that felt like a gun, in the middle of my spine.

Behind me, Armin Andrews’s voice said, “Go on in, Hank. The party’s for you!”

Armin Andrews — if that were his right name — was being very polite and considerate, damn him. His tone of voice didn’t differ from the one he’d always used, and he didn’t look a bit more sinister than usual.

He said, “Awfully sorry we had to tie you up, Hank, but I know that temper of yours, and I don’t want you to do anything foolish. It has turned out we need you, I’m sorry to say. Otherwise, I’d simply have turned you over to the police when I first met you tonight instead of bringing you here for the party.”

I said something I won’t put in writing and Armin said, “Now, now. We can gag you if necessary, but I’d rather talk with you than merely to you. But let me remind you that Walter is standing behind you with a blackjack. You may yell once, if you wish, but not twice. And one yell won’t bring any help. You must have noticed that the nearest house is twenty yards away, and your ears will tell you we have a rather loud program on the radio downstairs.”

“Why did you kill Peter Carr?” I demanded.

“I’ll tell you all that,” he said. “I want your cooperation and I’m going to offer you terms. I’m going to have to tell you part of it so you’ll know what we want, so you might as well hear it all. Have a cigarette? I’ll have to hold it to your lips, of course.”

I started to tell him where he could put the cigarette, but let it go and merely shook my head. I did want to hear what this was all about. If I ever got out of this, it would be important for me to know. It could be important to my country, to winning the war, for me to know.

“Very well,” he said, and lighted a cigarette for himself. “First, it must be obvious to you that I am what you would call an enemy agent. And that look on your face reminds me to tell you that I’m proud of it.”

His eyes darkened. “Damn you, you’d be proud if your government had planted you in my country long before the war, and you’d called yourself Herman Schwartz, or something, and pretended to be a German. And if you’d had brains enough to work yourself up to a top spot in the reporting game and get yourself trusted by important officials and been on the inside of stuff other reporters couldn’t touch.”

“By exposing your fellow spies, wasn’t it?”

“Wendell? I acted under orders. He was washed up. But you remember how Lorne let me write up your lab for that ordnance journal?”

I nodded, and he went on: “What I fell into there was blind luck. Listen, you think of HE in terms of what it does to steel and brick and stone. There’s something more important. Remember that experiment they made last year, with the goats?”

Yes, I remembered. It was a widely publicized fiasco. They’d tethered goats at varying distances around a bomb to test an inventor’s claim about its concussion. The bomb had gone off, but not a goat fainted.

I said, “That was liquid air and carbon black. All right in theory except for the evaporation rate of liquid air. By the time they exploded it, it was as powerful as a firecracker. It was screwy.”

“The idea was screwy, but what they hoped to glean from it wasn’t — the disruptive effect on living tissue. You know how an ordinary bomb acts. The blast from it kills for only a short distance, unless men are struck by fragments or flying debris.”

I nodded, beginning to get what he was driving at. And it began to scare me, too, because it could be so important.

Flesh is resilient; construction materials are not. An explosive which has a high disruptive effect upon living tissue would be a discovery of the first magnitude, although it could be used only for special purposes. But think of a bomb which when dropped on a warship would kill or stun the entire crew; the ship could be taken over almost intact.

I asked, “But what makes you think that I had a lead toward anything like that?”

His face was grimly serious. “Because I felt it, that’s why. Remember when you were showing me how the tests were run? You were back at the detonating switch, and I was standing up by the panel to watch the needles jump on the dials. You were ten feet from that explosion, but I was only four.”

“You mean it... it jarred you?”

“Just a little. But for that quantity of HE — half a thimbleful! What series were you testing that day?”

I said, “I don’t remember.”

He shrugged. “You can think back and figure out. If you’d only dated those damn records of yours— Well, let’s skip that.

“You see now why we wanted you away from the lab, without doing anything that would put the FBI wise to the fact that we were doing it. A nice little hallucination on your part—

“And I guess you’ve got the answer about Peter Carr by now. Walter here, with a bit of make-up, passed as Carr — close enough that the neighborhood out there and the copper on the beat didn’t notice the difference. He couldn’t have fooled you, of course; you knew Carr too intimately.”

I said, “That was Peter who came to see me at St. Vincent’s. You must have kidnaped him just after that, and held him while your... your confederate used Peter’s keys and his identity to get into the lab every day while I was in the sanitarium. And then I escaped—”

He nodded. “We’d found by then that we couldn’t get it by ourselves — from the screwy way you kept records. So we got rid of Carr, and we were going to get rid of the lab, too, and let you take the blame for both of them. It would keep you from going to the police. And we couldn’t let Carr go anyway, after we’d held him. As for the taxi driver, he put his oar in last night when Walter was leaving the lab, dressed as Carr. Got Walter into the cab and said he was going to take him to see you. So Walter had to kill him.”

Well, I had all the answers now and a fat lot of good it would do me, probably — or them, either. I’d let them kill me before I’d talk and tell them what they wanted to know.

Not that I was feeling heroic, at all. I was sweating plenty. But just the same I knew this thing was so much bigger and more important than I was, that I knew I wouldn’t break, no matter what they did.

Armin said, “So here’s our proposition. Help us willingly, and your worries are over. You’ll have a position of honor in—”

I let go, then. The cool insolence of that offer got me, and got my temper. All the pent-up anger that I’d held in check long enough to find out what had happened, burst into invective.

Armin looked up over my head and nodded, and Walter, standing behind me, thrust a gag into my mouth and tied a cloth around tightly to hold it in.

Armin said, “I was afraid you’d feel that way. But maybe a little pain will make you feel different. Or a lot of pain will. We’ve got a man who’s an expert at that — I don’t like it myself. You think it over while I go get him.”

He bent down and looked at the knots in the ropes that tied me to the chair. He said, “Nice job, Walter. He won’t get out of that. I’ll be back in less than an hour.”

Walter said, “O.K. I’ll take Otto for a game of rummy.”

They went downstairs and a few minutes later I heard a garage door open and a car drive away.

The ropes were cutting into my wrists and ankles and my arms had been tied around back of the chair and crossed there so my fingers couldn’t even touch a rope anywhere, much less a knot. But I struggled until I felt my wrists getting numb, and from lack of circulation, my fingers would barely move.

Armin was right: I wasn’t going to get out of those ropes. Not in days, let alone in an hour or less. The man who’d put them on knew his stuff.

Deliberately, I made myself relax and think. Hank, I thought, quit trying to tear your wrists off and use your brains instead.

I looked around, and there was the telephone. It was on the desk six feet away. Could I possibly move my chair toward it without making enough sound to attract the attention of Walter and Otto playing cards downstairs?

My ankles were tied, one to each of the front legs of the chair. The knots were probably as tight as the others, but there was a trifle leeway in the ropes. I worked and twisted until I had about an inch of play with each foot. And then, taking as much of my weight as possible off the chair and putting it on to my toes, I began to work the chair across the carpet toward the desk.

It seemed to take hours, for I had to fight for every inch.

But it didn’t make much noise, and my real battle was against time. Pretty soon Armin would be back.

It must, actually, have taken me over half an hour to move that chair the six feet to the desk. But I made it, finally, and luck was with me in that the phone was standing near the edge.

First, I used the mouthpiece of the transmitter as an edge against which to work down the cloth that had been tied over my mouth. Very gently, so I wouldn’t push the phone back or knock it over. Then, I was able to push out the gag with my tongue.

The hardest part was getting hold of the cord of the receiver with my teeth and lifting it off the hook. I bent forward as far as I possibly could and let it fall onto the desk blotter on which the phone stood. A bit of noise, but not much. And maybe, even if they’d heard it downstairs, I’d get my call through in time.

With the receiver lying there on the desk, I could hear the operator’s voice, if not her words. I gave the number of the hotel Armin had mentioned when he’d phoned Lorne from the station.

Then I kept my ears strained until I heard another voice coming from the receiver. That would be the hotel switchboard. I said, “Major Lorne, please. Quickly. It’s important.”

There was the buzzing sound that denotes a number being rung, and then there was a masculine voice from the receiver. I said, “Major Lorne, this is Hank Remmers. I want to give myself up. I’m at 50–16 Oakland. Hurry.”

Just that, because I didn’t want to complicate things and waste time explaining. I heard his voice sputtering questions, but I cut in and repeated what I’d said before, word for word.

There was a click in the receiver, and after a while a crisp feminine voice again. Probably the operator asking why I hadn’t hung up. I told her to trace the call and send the police. I didn’t want to count entirely on Major Lorne, and besides I wasn’t positive I had the address on Oakland right.

That was all I could do, then, and worn to a frazzle by the awful muscular effort of moving that chair to the desk, I leaned back to take the strain off my wrists.

The telephone started clicking at me after a while, in futile signal to have the receiver replaced. And after a while, I heard the clock outside strike eleven. Another ten minutes or so, and a car stopped in front of the house. A car door slammed.

I could hear two men coming up the walk, and I could hear Armin’s voice, as the steps changed from cement to the wood of the porch.

Then there was the sound of other cars, two of them I thought, swinging in to the curb. Again the slam of doors, and I heard Major Lorne’s voice call out, “Armin, wait.”

I must have passed out for a while, then. When I came to, my wrists had been untied. Frank Garland, the FBI man, was untying the knots at my ankles. The room seemed crowded. Besides Lorne and Armin, Walter and Otto were there, and two strangers who might have been either police detectives or FBI men. And another man with a brutal, coarse face who must have been the one Armin had brought for the torture job.

Armin was talking glibly. “It’s all my fault, Major. Don’t blame my friends here. I caught Hank tonight and I just couldn’t resist trying to get an exclusive story out of him before I turned him over.”

Lorne said, “Damn it, you can’t—”

“I know, major. I was wrong. But after all, I had caught him and thought I deserved a scoop on it. I wanted to know why he killed Carr and the cab driver. Sure, he’s crazy, but there must have been some method in his madness, and I wanted the whole story.” His voice was a nice blend of apology and defiance. It was beautiful acting.

Lorne was glaring at Armin, but there was annoyance and not suspicion in his look. I knew that anything I said would be discounted in advance, because I was crazy. Whatever I said, it had to be good and it had to be quick. And then I knew there was only one subject on which I could get Lorne’s serious attention.

“Major,” I said, “have my records from the laboratory been found?”

He turned to look at me then. I knew that would get him. He’d want those papers, whether he thought I was sane or crazy.

“Here,” I said, and watched both his face and Armin’s, because I was guessing. “Here in this house.” And when I saw Armin’s quickly concealed reaction to that, I went further. “Here, in this room.”

Armin cut in smoothly. “That’s absurd, major. He couldn’t have hidden them here, because I just brought him here an hour or so ago. He didn’t have them with him and he’s never been in this house before. It belongs to my friend, Walter Landlahr—”

“Who’s been impersonating Peter Carr,” I interrupted. “Take a look at him, major.”

Lorne stared at Walter, and frowned. He couldn’t help noticing the resemblance. Armin spoke up quickly. “I’ll vouch for Walter, major. I’ve known him for years. I’m afraid Hank’s—”

But Lorne said, “Pipe down, Armin.” He was still staring at Walter. He asked, “Are you a relative of Peter Carr’s, Landlahr?”

I said, “Never mind that, major. If you want those records, they’re in this room.”

I had his attention again. He said, “Where?”

“Look for them,” I told him. Lorne stared at me uncertainly, and I didn’t crowd my luck by saying anything more. Even a touch of uncertainty was a gain for me.

Lorne said to Garland, “Damn it, I do want those papers. Maybe you’d better take a look, just on the chance—”

Garland nodded and turned toward the desk.

Armin sighed. “Well, major, sorry I tried to pull one on you and I hope there’s no hard feeling. Guess I’d better run down to the paper and write this up — without Remmers’s story.”

Very casually he picked up a briefcase and sauntered toward the door. But I saw Walter Landlahr tense a trifle and try not to look at Armin.

“Major,” I said quickly, “the papers are in that briefcase!”

Garland turned from the desk and looked at Armin, who kept on moving. Maybe he’d have got away with it, if Walter Landlahr hadn’t been too jumpy. He stepped in between Armin and the rest of us, and a gun materialized in his hand; I didn’t even see what pocket he got it from. His eyes were blazing, and his voice hoarse.

“Stay back, you—”

And then Garland dived at him and the gun went off. The other man, Otto, threw himself against the door as it slammed shut behind Armin. He had a gun, too.

There was a fusillade of shots, for the two plainclothesmen were firing, too. The man who’d just come in with Armin was down. Garland had taken a bullet, but he’d knocked down Walter, and Lorne’s foot caught Walter’s gun and kicked it out of his hand across the room.

Armin’s footsteps could be heard as he ran down the stairs. Otto was down, but his body blocked the closed door, which opened inward and one of the two detectives was trying to drag him out of the way. By the time he reached the stairs, Armin would be out of the house.

There was only one way of stopping him, and the others hadn’t seen it, nor was there time to tell them.

I’d stood up the minute the trouble started, and now I ran to the front window. Armin would go out the front way, of course, regardless of the risk of being shot at from up here, for his car was parked in front and he’d need it for a getaway.

There wasn’t any time to raise the sash. I doubled my arms over my head and butted right through the glass, stepping out onto the porch roof just as the front door downstairs opened.

I didn’t even try to gain my balance on the sloping roof. I just kept going because the sound of the door and the footsteps on the porch told me my timing would be about right.

And it was. I landed on top of him, and — fortunately for me — the momentum of my fall carried us off the cement walk onto the lawn. Even so, it knocked the wind out of me.

Lorne, with a gun in his hand, was leaning out the window. He yelled, “Hank, are you all right?”

I thought I was, but couldn’t make any more answer than a grunt.

By the time the cavalcade came downstairs, I’d managed to get to my feet and found out that my legs still worked. I seemed to be bruised, but nothing worse.

Lorne grabbed the briefcase and bent over Armin. He cried, “You’ve killed the guy! His neck’s busted.”

“That’s great,” I said, and I meant it.

Lorne stood up slowly, hanging onto the briefcase as though it were part of his arm. He stared at me. “Hank, what the hell’s this all about?”

“Let’s go some place where I can sit down,” I said. “It’ll take a while, and I can’t stand up that long right now.”

He nodded. “Guess you’ve been through plenty. We’ll take you to a hospital for a nice quiet rest and then—”

“The hell you will,” I told him. “Tomorrow morning I start work at the lab. Four days ago you scheduled me for a nice quiet rest, and I couldn’t live through another one for all the coffee in Brazil!”

Lady Killer! G. T. FLEMING-ROBERTS

Original publication: Detective Tales, July 1945

“Lady Killer!” is one of the more than three hundred stories written for the pulps by G. T. Fleming-Roberts (1910–1968), who was born George Thomas Roberts but changed his name when an agent convinced him that he needed something more colorful. Born in Indiana, Roberts lived there most of his life, graduating from Purdue University, where he had studied veterinary medicine.

His prolific pulp career began in 1933 with “A Devil’s Highball” in Ten Detective Aces and flourished under several pseudonyms, including Brant House, C. K. M. Scanlon, Ray P. Shotwell, Ralph Powers, Rexton Archer, and Frank Rawlings, creating or writing new adventures for such popular pulp heroes as “The Ghost” (sometimes “The Green Ghost”), “Secret Agent X,” “The Black Hood,” “Diamondstone,” “Captain Zero,” “Jeffrey Wren,” “Pat Oberron,” and “Dan Fowler,” specializing in stories about magicians.

In “Lady Killer!” Dorian Westmore, a sweet young woman shopping in a department store, decides to write a letter to her fiancé and sits opposite Inez Marie Polk, a big beautiful blonde who also is writing a letter but a very different kind — it is a blackmail note demanding an increased monthly payment.

When Dorian complains of a headache, Inez offers her an aspirin. Dorian remembers her mother’s words about never taking candy from a stranger and puts the aspirin in her purse. Later, she gives it to her wealthy uncle, who dies after taking it. Inez reads the story in the paper and realizes that the blackmail victim had tried to poison her.

Dorian is arrested and convicted of murdering her uncle but her fiancé, Peter Kane, knows she could not have done it and follows clues while racing against the clock before the execution is scheduled.

Title: Lady Chaser, 1946

Studio: Producers Releasing Corporation

Director: Sam Newfield

Screenwriter: Fred Myton

Producer: Sigmund Neufeld

• Robert Lowery (Peter Kane)

• Ann Savage (Inez Marie Polk/Palmer)

• Inez Cooper (Dorian Westmore)

• Frank Ferguson (J. T. Vickers)

• William Haade (Bill Redding)

A peculiarity between the original story and the motion picture made from it is that the latter very closely follows the story line of the former but utterly changes its tone. Whereas the Fleming-Roberts story is dark, violent, and suspenseful, the film has been reset as a light comedy, making blackmail and murder and their investigation into a fun-filled romp, though it still has its share of violence. It does have less suspense than one might have expected as the murderer is identified relatively early.

The working title during filming, not surprisingly, was Lady Killer.

Robert Lowery appeared in more than seventy films, most notably in such action pictures as The Mark of Zorro (1940), The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), and Dangerous Passage (1944). He also was the second actor to play Batman, starring in the 1949 serial Batman and Robin.

Ann Savage had a prolific career, almost exclusively in the 1940s, mainly in B pictures, most famously as the villain Vera in Detour (1945). In 2007, Time magazine rated her role one of the “Top 10 Movie Villains,” while ranking Detour as one of the hundred best movies in spite of its low budget and B movie status.

In addition to “Lady Killer!” Fleming-Roberts’s crime story “Blackmail with Feathers,” published in the August 1942 issue of Detective Novels, also served as the basis for a movie, the 1943 Warner Brothers film, Find the Blackmailer, starring Jerome Cowan and Faye Emerson.

LADY KILLER! G. T. Fleming-Roberts

Tip on a Dead Jockey IRWIN SHAW

Original publication: The New Yorker, March 6, 1954; first collected in Tip on a Dead Jockey and Other Stories by Irwin Shaw (New York, Random House, 1957)

Although less often read today than at the peak of his popularity, Irwin Shaw (1913–1984) produced several works that are an essential part of the American literary pantheon, notably his short story, “Girls in Their Summer Dresses” (first published in the February 4, 1939, issue of the New Yorker) and The Young Lions (1948), his hugely successful first novel that tells the stories of three soldiers — two American and one German — whose destinies cross on the battlefields of World War II. It is famously grouped with Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1948) and James Jones’s From Here to Eternity (1951) as the three great American novels about World War II; it was released in 1958 with Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando.

Born in the South Bronx as Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he changed his name to Irwin Shaw when he entered Brooklyn College, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1934. When the United States entered World War II, he joined the Army in July of 1942 and adapted some of his wartime experiences for The Young Lions.

A prolific playwright, his greatest stage success was Bury the Dead, which was produced on Broadway in 1936. His novel Rich Man, Poor Man (1969) was made into a highly rated television miniseries of six two-hour episodes shown from February 1 to March 15, 1976, starring Peter Strauss, Nick Nolte, and Susan Blakely; it was nominated for twenty-three Emmys, winning four of those, as well as four Golden Globes.

Shaw’s books sold more than fourteen million copies in the United States alone and were translated into twenty-five languages. Among his numerous literary awards were the O. Henry Prize in 1944 and again in 1945 and a National Institute of Arts and Letters Grant in 1946. In an interview, he said, “Well, you have to get something for working so hard for so many years.”

In “Tip on a Dead Jockey,” American Lloyd Barber, a nearly broke former pilot, is living in Paris after World War II. He is being pressured by Bert Smith, an international figure who earns his living in highly questionable ways, to fly a shipment of English money between France and Egypt. Although offered a small fortune ($25,000) to make the trip, he sees a jockey killed at a racetrack and takes it as a bad omen and turns down the offer. His friend Jimmy Richardson, also an ex-pilot, agrees to make the flight, which appears to have serious complications.

Title: Tip on a Dead Jockey, 1957

Studio: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Director: Richard Thorpe

Screenwriter: Charles Lederer

Producer: Edwin H. Knopf

• Robert Taylor (Lloyd Tredman)

• Dorothy Malone (Phyllis Tredman)

• Marcel Dalio (Toto del Aro)

• Martin Gabel (Bert Smith)

• Gia Scala (Paquita Heldon)

• Jack Lord (Jimmy Heldon)

The plotline in the film is significantly more complicated and should have been much more exciting. The locale has been moved to Madrid and it is now the 1950s. Lloyd Tredman (Lloyd Barber in the story), deeply depressed after his Korean War experiences, is a drunk and a gambler who has written to his wife asking for a divorce because he’s not the man she married. She comes to find him in Madrid.

He has agreed to fly a load of cash from Egypt to France. He knows that the flight entails smuggling contraband currency but the big payday is enticing. He bets his last $1,000 on a horse race, stating that if he wins he won’t have to make the flight. The jockey riding the horse on which he bet is killed in a fall.

Convinced that there was foul play, engineered by Bert Smith, a smarmy international smuggler, Lloyd refuses to fly the plane, so his friend and fellow pilot Jimmy Heldon agrees to replace him. He takes off and the plane goes missing for a while. Jimmy returns safely, but Lloyd is convinced something will go wrong so he knocks out his friend and takes to the cockpit himself. Interpol becomes aware of the airplane and chases it. Lloyd lands and tries to hide the money and discovers that the cargo also includes heroin.

Curiously, though it is probably the seminal event in the movie, no explanation for the jockey’s death ever is provided.

Orson Welles had originally been scheduled to direct Tip on a Dead Jockey but the job eventually went to Richard Thorpe, who worked with Robert Taylor on eight films, including Taylor’s best-known chivalric swashbucklers, Ivanhoe (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1953). Welles had worked on the script with Charles Lederer but the version he favored was not used in the filming.

The working title during filming was The 32nd Day.

Shaw’s story had originally been optioned by Alfred Hitchcock but he became immersed instead in two other films, The Wrong Man (1956) and Vertigo (1958), and let the option expire.

TIP ON A DEAD JOCKEY Irwin Shaw

Lloyd Barber was lying on his bed reading France-Soir when the phone rang. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon, but it was raining for the fifth consecutive day and he had no place to go anyway. He was reading about the relative standing of the teams in the Rugby leagues. He never went to Rugby games and he had no interest in the relative standings of Lille and Pau and Bordeaux, but he had finished everything else in the paper. It was cold in the small, dark room, because there was no heat provided between ten in the morning and six in the evening, and he lay on the lumpy double bed, his shoes off, covered with his overcoat.

He picked up the phone, and the man at the desk downstairs said, “There is a lady waiting for you here, M. Barber.”

Barber squinted at himself in the mirror above the bureau across from the bed. He wished he was better-looking. “Did she give her name?” he asked.

“No, Monsieur. Should I demand it?”

“Never mind,” Barber said. “I’ll be right down.”

He hung up the phone and put on his shoes. He always put the left one on first, for luck. He buttoned his collar and pulled his tie into place, noticing that it was frayed at the knot. He got into his jacket and patted his pockets to see if he had cigarettes. He had no cigarettes. He shrugged, and left the light on vindictively, because the manager was being unpleasant about the bill, and went downstairs.

Maureen Richardson was sitting in the little room off the lobby, in one of those age-colored plush chairs that fourth-rate Parisian hotels furnish their clientele to discourage excessive conviviality on the ground floor. None of the lamps was lit, and a dark, dead, greenish light filtered in through the dusty curtains from the rainy street outside. Maureen had been a young, pretty girl with bright, credulous blue eyes when Barber first met her, during the war, just before she married Jimmy Richardson. But she had had two children since then and Richardson hadn’t done so well, and now she was wearing a worn cloth coat that was soaked, and her complexion had gone, and in the greenish lobby light she seemed bone-colored and her eyes were pale.

“Hello, Beauty,” Barber said. Richardson always called her that, and while it had amused his friends in the squadron, he had loyally stuck to it, and finally everyone had picked it up.

Maureen turned around quickly, almost as though he had frightened her. “Lloyd,” she said. “I’m so glad I found you in.”

They shook hands, and Barber asked if she wanted to go someplace for a coffee.

“I’d rather not,” Maureen said. “I left the kids with a friend for lunch and I promised I’d collect them at two-thirty and I don’t have much time.”

“Sure,” Barber said. “How’s Jimmy?”

“Oh, Lloyd...” Maureen pulled at her fingers, and Barber noticed that they were reddened and the nails were uneven. “Have you seen him?”

“What?” Barber peered through the gloom at her, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Have you seen him?” Maureen persisted. Her voice was thin and frightened.

“Not for a month or so,” Barber said. “Why?” He asked it, but he almost knew why.

“He’s gone, Lloyd,” Maureen said. “He’s been gone thirty-two days. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Where did he go?” Barber asked.

“I don’t know.” Maureen took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. She was too distracted to offer the pack to Barber. “He didn’t tell me.” She smoked the cigarette avidly but absently. “I’m so worried. I thought maybe he’d said something to you — or that you’d bumped into him.”

“No,” Barber said carefully. “He didn’t say anything.”

“It’s the queerest thing. We’ve been married over ten years and he never did anything like this before,” Maureen said, trying to control her voice. “He just came to me one night and he said he’d got leave of absence from his job for a month and that he’d be back inside of thirty days and he’d tell me all about it when he got back, and he begged me not to ask any questions.”

“And you didn’t ask any questions?”

“He was acting so strangely,” Maureen said. “I’d never seen him like that before. All hopped up. Excited. You might even say happy, except that he kept going in all night to look at the kids. And he’s never given me anything to worry about in the — the girl department,” Maureen said primly. “Not like some of the other boys we know. And if there was one thing about Jimmy, it was that you could trust him. So I helped him pack.”

“What did he take?”

“Just one Valpak,” Maureen said. “With light clothes. As though he was going off on a summer vacation. He even took a tennis racket.”

“A tennis racket,” Barber nodded, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for husbands to take tennis rackets along when disappearing. “Did you hear from him at all?”

“No,” Maureen said. “He told me he wouldn’t write. Did you ever hear of anything like that?” Even in her anguish, she permitted herself a tone of wifely grievance. “I knew we shouldn’t have come to Europe. It’s different for you. You’re not married and you were always kind of wild anyway, not like Jimmy—”

“Did you call his office?” Barber asked, interrupting. He didn’t want to hear how wild people thought he was, or how unmarried.

“I had a friend call,” Maureen said. “It would look too fishy — his wife calling to ask where he was.”

“What did they say?”

“They said that they had expected him two days ago but he hadn’t come in yet.”

Barber took one of Maureen’s cigarettes and lit it. It was the first one in four hours and it tasted wonderful. He had a little selfish twinge of gratitude that Maureen had come to his hotel.

“Lloyd, do you know anything?” Maureen asked, worn and shabby in her damp, thin coat in the foggy green light.

Barber hesitated. “No,” he said. “But I’ll put in a couple of calls and I’ll telephone you tomorrow.”

They both stood up. Maureen pulled on gloves over her reddened hands. The gloves were worn and greenish black. Looking at them, Barber suddenly remembered how neat and shining Maureen had been when they first met, in Louisiana, so many years before, and how healthy and well-dressed he and Jimmy and the others had been in their lieutenants’ uniforms with the new wings on their breasts.

“Listen, Beauty,” Barber said. “How are you fixed for dough?”

“I didn’t come over for that,” Maureen said firmly.

Barber took out his wallet and peered judiciously into it. It wasn’t necessary. He knew exactly what was there. He took out a five-thousand-franc note. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “Try this on for size.”

Maureen made a motion as though to give it back to him. “I really don’t think I should...” she began.

“Sh-h-h, Beauty,” Barber said. “There isn’t an American girl in Paris who couldn’t use five mille on a day like this.”

Maureen sighed and put the bill in her pocketbook. “I feel terrible about taking your money, Lloyd.”

Barber kissed her forehead. “In memory of the wild blue yonder,” he said, pocketing the wallet, with its remaining fifteen thousand francs, which, as far as he knew, would have to last him for the rest of his life. “Jimmy’ll give it back to me.”

“Do you think he’s all right?” Maureen asked, standing close to him.

“Of course,” Lloyd said lightly and falsely. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll call you tomorrow. He’ll probably be there, answering the phone, getting sore at me for sucking around his wife when he’s out of town.”

“I bet.” Maureen smiled miserably. She went through the cavelike murk of the lobby, out into the rainy street, on her way to pick up the two children, who had been sent out to lunch at the home of a friend.

Barber went to his room and picked up the phone and waited for the old man downstairs to plug in. There were two suitcases standing open on the floor, with shirts piled in them, because there wasn’t enough drawer space in the tiny bureau supplied by the hotel. On top of the bureau there were: a bill, marked overdue, from a tailor; a letter from his ex-wife, in New York, saying she had found an Army pistol of his in the bottom of a trunk and asking him what he wanted her to do with it, because she was afraid of the Sullivan Law; a letter from his mother, telling him to stop being a damn fool and come home and get a regular job; a letter from a woman in whom he was not interested, inviting him to come and stay with her in her villa near Eze, where it was beautiful and warm, she said, and where she needed a man around the house; a letter from a boy who had flown as his waist-gunner during the war and who insisted that Barber had saved his life when he was hit in the stomach over Palermo, and who, surprisingly, had written a book since then. Now he sent long, rather literary letters at least once a month to Barber. He was an odd, intense boy, who had been an excitable gunner, and he was constantly examining himself to find out whether he and the people he loved, among whom he rather embarrassingly included Barber, mostly because of the eight minutes over Palermo, were living up to their promise. “Our generation is in danger,” the boy had typed in the letter on the bureau, “the danger of diminution. We have had our adventures too early. Our love has turned to affection, our hate to distaste, our despair to melancholy, our passion to preference. We have settled for the life of obedient dwarfs in a small but fatal sideshow.”

The letter had depressed Barber and he hadn’t answered it. You got enough of that sort of thing from the French. He wished the ex-waist-gunner would stop writing him, or at least write on different subjects. Barber hadn’t answered his ex-wife, either, because he had come to Europe to try to forget her. He hadn’t answered his mother, because he was afraid she was right. And he hadn’t gone down to Eze, because no matter how broke he was, he wasn’t selling that particular commodity yet.

Stuck into the mirror above the bureau was a photograph of himself and Jimmy Richardson, taken on the beach at Deauville the summer before. The Richardsons had taken a cottage there, and Barber had spent a couple of weekends with them. Jimmy Richardson was another one who had attached himself to Barber during the war. Somehow, Barber was always being presented with the devotion of people whose devotion he didn’t want. “People hang on to you,” a girl who was angry at him once told him, “because you’re an automatic hypocrite. As soon as somebody comes into the room, you become gay and confident.”

Jimmy and he had been in bathing trunks when the picture was snapped, and Barber was tall and blessed with a blond, California kind of good looks next to Jimmy, who seemed like a fat, incompetent infant, standing there with the sunny sea behind him.

Barber peered at the photograph. Jimmy didn’t look like the sort of man who would ever be missing from anywhere for thirty-two days. As for himself, Barber thought wryly, he looked automatically gay and confident.

He leaned over and took the picture down and threw it into a drawer. Then, holding the phone loosely, he stared around him with distaste. In the glare of the unshaded lamp, the dark woodwork looked gloomy and termite-ridden, and the bed, with its mottled velours spread, the color of spoiled pears, looked as though it had been wallowed on by countless hundreds of obscenely shaped men and women who had rented the room for an hour at a time. For a second, he was piercingly homesick for all the rooms of all the Hotel Statlers he had slept in and all the roomettes on trains between New York and Chicago, and St. Louis and Los Angeles.

There was a whistling, static-like sound in the phone, and he shook himself and gave the number of the George V. When he got the George V, he asked for M. Smith, M. Bert Smith. After a while, the girl said M. Smith was no longer at the hotel. Barber asked hurriedly, before the girl could cut him off, whether M. Smith was expected to return shortly or if he had left a forwarding address. No, the girl said after a long wait, he was not expected to return and there was no forwarding address.

Barber hung up. He was not surprised about Bert Smith. He was a man who wandered mysteriously from hotel to hotel, and he might have used a half-dozen names besides Smith since Barber had spoken to him last.

With a conscious effort, Barber tried not to think about Jimmy Richardson or his wife, who was called, as a friendly squadron joke, Beauty, or about Jimmy Richardson’s two small sons.

Scowling, Barber went over to the window. The winter rain of Paris was seeping down into the narrow street, blurring it with the unproductive malice of city rain, chipping colorlessly at the buildings opposite, making it impossible to imagine what they had looked like when they were new. A workman was unloading cases of wine from a truck, looking persecuted by the weather, the Paris sound of clinking bottles muted and made hollow and mournful by the flow of gray water from the skies and from window ledges and signs and rolled awnings. It was not a day for a husband to be missing, for a friend to be missing. It was not a day to be alone or to have only fifteen thousand francs in your pocket or to be in a narrow hotel room where the heat was off from ten in the morning till six at night. It was not a day to be without a job or cigarettes or lunch. It was not a day on which to examine yourself and realize that no matter how many excuses you gave yourself, you were going to wind up knowing that, finally, you were responsible.

Barber shook himself again. There was no sense in just staying in the room all day. If he was going to do any good, he would have to find Bert Smith. He looked at his watch. It was nearly two-thirty. He tried to remember all the places he had ever seen Bert Smith at two-thirty in the afternoon. The fancy restaurant near the Rond-Point, where the movie people and the French newspaper owners and the rich tourists ate; the bistro on the Boulevard Latour-Maubourg, on the Left Bank; the restaurants at Auteuil and Longchamp and St. Cloud. Barber looked at the newspaper. They were running at Auteuil today.

If he was not at the races and if he was still in Paris, Bert Smith was likely to be in one art gallery or another in the middle of the afternoon. Bert Smith was an art lover, or at least he bought pictures, shrewdly and knowingly. Since Smith lived in hotel rooms, which were unlikely places for a collection, it was probable that he bought paintings on speculation or as an agent or, when they were important ones that the government did not wish to have leave the country, to be smuggled out of France.

Barber had also seen Smith late in the afternoons in the steam room at Claridge’s, a small, round man with surprisingly well-shaped legs, sitting in the vapor, wrapped in a sheet, growing pinker and pinker, smiling luxuriously in the steam, sweating off the fat that he had accumulated in many years of eating in the best restaurants in Europe.

He had also seen Smith several times around six o’clock in the evening in the barbershop at the George V getting shaved, and after that in the bar upstairs, and in the bar at the Relais Plaza and the English bar downstairs at the Plaza-Athénée. And late at night he had seen him at various night clubs — L’Eléphant Blanc, Carroll’s, La Rose Rouge...

Barber thought unhappily of the last fifteen thousand francs in his wallet. It was going to be a long, wet, hard, expensive day. He put on his hat and coat and went out. It was still raining, and he hailed a taxi and gave the driver the address of the restaurant near the Rond-Point.

It had started about two months before, in the stand at Auteuil just before the sixth race. The day was misty and there weren’t many spectators, and Barber had not been doing very well, but he had got a tip on the sixth race, on an eight-to-one shot. He put five thousand down on the nose and climbed high up in the stand to get a good view of the race.

There was only one other spectator near him in the stand, a small, round man wearing an expensive-looking velours hat, and carrying a pair of binoculars and a rolled umbrella, like an Englishman. He smiled at Barber and nodded. As Barber smiled back politely, he realized that he had seen the man many times before, or his brother, or a half-dozen other men who looked like him, in restaurants and in bars and on the street, usually with tall girls who might have been lower-class mannequins or upper-class tarts.

The man with the umbrella moved over to him along the damp concrete row of seats. He had little, dapper feet and a bright necktie, and he had a well-cared-for, international kind of face, with large, pretty dark eyes, fringed by thick black lashes. He had what Barber had come to call an import-export face. It was a face that was at the same time bland, cynical, self-assured, sensual, hopeless, and daring, and its owner might be Turkish or Hungarian or Greek or he might have been born in Basra. It was a face you might see in Paris or Rome or Brussels or Tangier, always in the best places, always doing business. It was a face, you felt somehow, that was occasionally of interest to the police.

“Good afternoon,” the man said, in English, tipping his hat. “Are you having a lucky day?” He had an accent, but it was difficult to place it. It was as though as a child he had gone to school everywhere and had had ten nurses of ten different nationalities.

“Not bad,” Barber said carefully.

“Which do you like in this one?” The man pointed with his umbrella at the track, where the horses were gingerly going up to the distant starting line on the muddied grass.

“Number Three,” Barber said.

“Number Three.” The man shrugged, as though he pitied Barber but was restrained by his good breeding from saying so. “How is the movie business these days?” the man asked.

“The movie business went home a month ago,” Barber said, slightly surprised that the man knew anything about it. An American company had been making a picture about the war, and Barber had had four lucky, well-paid months as a technical expert, buckling leading men into parachutes and explaining the difference between a P-47 and a B-25 to the director.

“And the blond star?” the man asked, taking his glasses away from his eyes. “With the exquisite behind?”

“Also home.”

The man moved his eyebrows and shook his head gently, indicating his regret that his new acquaintance and the city of Paris were now deprived of the exquisite behind. “Well,” he said, “at least it leaves you free in the afternoon to come to the races.” He peered out across the track through the glasses. “There they go.”

No. 3 led all the way until the stretch. In the stretch, he was passed rapidly by four other horses.

“Every race in this country,” Barber said as the horses crossed the finish line, “is a hundred metres too long.” He took out his tickets and tore them once and dropped them on the wet concrete.

He watched with surprise as the man with the umbrella took out some tickets and tore them up, too. They were on No. 3, and Barber could see that they were big ones. The man with the umbrella dropped the tickets with a resigned, half-amused expression on his face, as though all his life he had been used to tearing up things that had suddenly become of no value.

“Are you staying for the last race?” the man with the umbrella asked as they started to descend through the empty stands.

“I don’t think so,” Barber said. “This day has been glorious enough already.”

“Why don’t you stay?” the man said. “I may have something.”

Barber thought for a moment, listening to their footsteps on the concrete.

“I have a car,” the man said. “I could give you a lift into town, Mr. Barber.”

“Oh,” Barber said, surprised, “you know my name.”

“Of course,” the man said, smiling. “Why don’t you wait for me at the bar? I have to go and cash some tickets.”

“I thought you lost,” Barber said suspiciously.

“On Number Three,” the man said. From another pocket he took out some more tickets and waved them gently. “But there is always the insurance. One must always think of the insurance,” he said. “Will I see you at the bar?”

“O.K.,” Barber said, not because he hoped for anything in the way of information on the next race from the man with the umbrella but because of the ride home. “I’ll be there. Oh — by the way, what’s your name?”

“Smith,” the man said. “Bert Smith.”

Barber went to the bar and ordered a coffee, then changed it to a brandy, because coffee wasn’t enough after a race like that. He stood there, hunched over the bar, reflecting sourly that he was one of the category of people who never think of the insurance. Smith, he thought, Bert Smith. More insurance. On how many other names, Barber wondered, had the man lost before he picked that one?

Smith came to the bar softly, on his dapper feet, smiling, and laid a hand lightly on Barber’s arm. “Mr. Barber,” he said, “there is a rumor for the seventh race. Number Six.”

“I never win on Number Six,” Barber said.

“It is a lovely little rumor,” Smith said. “At present, a twenty-two-to-one rumor.”

Barber looked at the man doubtfully. He wondered briefly what there was in it for Smith. “What the hell,” he said, moving toward the seller’s window. “What have I got to lose?”

He put five thousand francs on No. 6 and superstitiously remained at the bar during the race, drinking brandy. No. 6 won, all out, by half a length, and, although the odds had dropped somewhat, paid eighteen to one.

Barber walked through the damp twilight, across the discarded newspapers and the scarred grass, with its farm-like smell, patting his inside pocket with the ninety thousand francs in a comforting bulge there, pleased with the little man trotting beside him.

Bert Smith had a Citroën, and he drove swiftly and well and objectionably, cutting in on other cars and swinging wide into the outside lane to gain advantage at lights.

“Do you bet often on the races, Mr. Barber?” he was saying as they passed a traffic policeman, forlorn in his white cape on the gleaming street.

“Too often,” Barber said, enjoying the warmth of the car and the effects of the last brandy and the bulge in his pocket.

“You like to gamble?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“There are many who do not like to gamble,” Smith said, nearly scraping a truck. “I pity them.”

“Pity them?” Barber looked over at Smith, a little surprised at the word. “Why?”

“Because,” Smith said softly, smiling, “in this age there comes a time when everyone finds that he is forced to gamble — and not only for money, and not only at the seller’s window. And when that time comes, and you are not in the habit, and it does not amuse you, you are most likely to lose.”

They rode in silence for a while. From time to time, Barber peered across at the soft, self-assured face above the wheel, lit by the dashboard glow. I would like to get a look at his passport, Barber thought — at all the passports he’s carried for the last twenty years.

“For example,” Smith said, “during the war...”

“Yes?”

“When you were in your plane,” Smith said, “on a mission. Weren’t there times when you had to decide suddenly to try something, to depend on your luck for one split second, and if you hesitated, if you balked at the act of gambling — sssszt!” Smith took one hand from the wheel and made a gliding, falling motion, with his thumb down. He smiled across at Barber. “I suppose you are one of the young men who were nearly killed a dozen times,” he said.

“I suppose so,” Barber said.

“I prefer that in Americans,” Smith said. “It makes them more like Europeans.”

“How did you know I was in the war?” Barber said. For the first time, he began to wonder if it was only a coincidence that Smith had been near him in the stand before the sixth race.

Smith chuckled. “You have been in Paris how long?” he said. “A year and a half?”

“Sixteen months,” Barber said, wondering how the man knew that.

“Nothing very mysterious about it,” Smith said. “People talk at bars, at dinner parties. One girl tells another girl. Paris is a small city. Where shall I drop you?”

Barber looked out the window to see where they were. “Not far from here,” he said. “My hotel is just off the Avenue Victor Hugo. You can’t get in there with a car.”

“Oh, yes,” Smith said, as though he knew about all hotels. “If it doesn’t seem too inquisitive,” he said, “do you intend to stay long in Europe?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“On luck.” Barber grinned.

“Did you have a good job in America?” Smith asked, keeping his eyes on the traffic ahead of him.

“In thirty years, working ten hours a day, I would have been the third biggest man in the company,” Barber said.

Smith smiled. “Calamitous,” he said. “Have you found more interesting things to do here?”

“Occasionally,” Barber said, beginning to be conscious that he was being quizzed.

“After a war it is difficult to remain interested,” Smith said. “While it is on, a war is absolutely boring. But then when it is over, you discover peace is even more boring. It is the worst result of wars. Do you still fly?”

“Once in a while.”

Smith nodded. “Do you maintain your license?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, that’s wise,” Smith said.

He pulled the car sharply in to the curb and stopped, and Barber got out.

“Here you are,” Smith said. He put out his hand, smiling, and Barber shook it. Smith’s hand was softly fleshed, but there was a feeling of stone beneath it.

“Thanks for everything,” Barber said.

“Thank you, Mr. Barber, for your company,” Smith said. He held Barber’s hand for a moment, looking across the seat at him. “This has been very pleasant,” he said. “I hope we can see each other again soon. Maybe we are lucky for each other.”

“Sure,” Barber said, grinning. “I’m always at home to people who can pick eighteen-to-one shots.”

Smith smiled, relinquishing Barber’s hand. “Maybe one of these days we’ll have something even better than an eighteen-to-one shot,” he said.

He waved a little and Barber closed the car door. Smith spurted out into the traffic, nearly causing two quatre chevaux to pile up behind him.

It had taken two weeks for Smith to declare himself. From the beginning, Barber had known that something was coming, but he had waited patiently, curious and amused, lunching with Smith in the fine restaurants Smith patronized, going to galleries with him and listening to Smith on the subject of the Impressionists, going out to the race tracks with him and winning more often than not on the information Smith picked up from tight-lipped men around the paddocks. Barber pretended to enjoy the little, clever man more than he actually did, and Smith, on his part, Barber knew, was pretending to like him more than he actually did. It was a kind of veiled and cynical wooing, in which neither party had yet committed himself. Only, unlike more ordinary wooings, Barber for the first two weeks was not sure in just which direction his desirability, as far as Smith was concerned, might lie.

Then, late one night, after a large dinner and a desultory tour of the night clubs, during which Smith had seemed unusually silent and abstracted, they were standing in front of Smith’s hotel and he made his move. It was a cold night, and the street was deserted except for a prostitute with a dog, who looked at them without hope as she passed them on the way to the Champs-Elysées.

“Are you going to be in your hotel tomorrow morning, Lloyd?” Smith asked.

“Yes,” Barber said. “Why?”

“Why?” Smith repeated absently, staring after the chilled-looking girl and her poodle walking despairingly down the empty, dark street. “Why?” He chuckled irrelevantly. “I have something I would like to show you,” he said.

“I’ll be in all morning,” Barber said.

“Tell me, my friend,” Smith said, touching Barber’s sleeve lightly with his gloved hand. “Do you have any idea why I have been calling you so often for the last two weeks, and buying you so many good meals and so much good whiskey?”

“Because I am charming and interesting and full of fun,” Barber said, grinning. “And because you want something from me.”

Smith chuckled, louder this time, and caressed Barber’s sleeve. “You are not absolutely stupid, my friend, are you?”

“Not absolutely,” said Barber.

“Tell me, my friend,” Smith said, almost in a whisper. “How would you like to make twenty-five thousand dollars?”

“What?” Barber asked, certain that he had not heard correctly.

“Sh-h-h,” Smith said. He smiled, suddenly gay. “Think about it. I’ll see you in the morning. Thank you for walking me home.” He dropped Barber’s arm and started into the hotel.

“Smith!” Barber called.

“Sh-h-h.” Smith put his finger playfully to his mouth. “Sleep well. See you in the morning.”

Barber watched him go through the glass revolving doors into the huge, brightly lit, empty lobby of the hotel. Barber took a step toward the doors to follow him in, then stopped and shrugged and put his collar up, and walked slowly in the direction of his own hotel. I’ve waited this long, he thought, I can wait till morning.

Barber was still in bed the next morning when the door opened and Smith came in. The room was dark, with the curtains drawn, and Barber was lying there, half asleep, thinking drowsily, Twenty-five thousand, twenty-five thousand. He opened his eyes when he heard the door open. There was a short, bulky silhouette framed in the doorway against the pallid light of the corridor.

“Who’s that?” Barber asked, without sitting up.

“Lloyd. I’m sorry,” Smith said. “Go back to sleep. I’ll see you later.”

Barber sat up abruptly. “Smith,” he said. “Come in.”

“I don’t want to disturb—”

“Come in, come in.” Barber got out of bed and, barefooted, went over to the window and threw back the curtains. He looked out at the street. “By God, what do you know?” he said, shivering and closing the window. “The sun is shining. Shut the door.”

Smith closed the door. He was wearing a loose gray tweed overcoat, very British, and a soft Italian felt hat, and he was carrying a large manila envelope. He looked newly bathed and shaved, and wide awake.

Barber, blinking in the sudden sunshine, put on a robe and a pair of moccasins and lit a cigarette. “Excuse me,” he said. “I want to wash.” He went behind the screen that separated the washbasin and the bidet from the rest of the room. As he washed, scrubbing his face and soaking his hair with cold water, he heard Smith go over to the window. Smith was humming, in a soft, true, melodious tenor voice, a passage from an opera that Barber knew he had heard but could not remember. Aside from everything else, Barber thought, combing his hair roughly, I bet the bastard knows fifty operas.

Feeling fresher and less at a disadvantage with his teeth washed and his hair combed, Barber stepped out from behind the screen.

“Paris,” Smith said, at the window, looking out. “What a satisfactory city. What a farce.” He turned around, smiling. “Ah,” he said, “how lucky you are. You can afford to put water on your head.” He touched his thin, well-brushed hair sadly. “Every time I wash my hair, it falls like the leaves. How old did you say you are?”

“Thirty,” Barber said, knowing that Smith remembered it.

“What an age.” Smith sighed. “The wonderful moment of balance. Old enough to know what you want, still young enough to be ready for anything.” He came back and sat down and propped the manila envelope on the floor next to the chair. “Anything.” He looked up at Barber, almost coquettishly. “You recall our conversation, I trust,” he said.

“I recall a man said something about twenty-five thousand dollars,” Barber said.

“Ah — you do remember,” Smith said gaily. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Well, do you want to make it?”

“I’m listening,” Barber said.

Smith rubbed his soft hands together gently in front of his face, his fingers rigid, making a slight, dry, sliding sound. “A little proposition has come up,” he said. “An interesting little proposition.”

“What do I have to do for my twenty-five thousand dollars?” Barber asked.

“What do you have to do for your twenty-five thousand dollars?” Smith repeated softly. “You have to do a little flying. You have flown for considerably less, from time to time, haven’t you?” He chuckled.

“I sure have,” Barber said. “What else do I have to do?”

“Nothing else,” Smith said, sounding surprised. “Just fly. Are you still interested?”

“Go on,” said Barber.

“A friend of mine has just bought a brand-new single-engine plane. A Beechcraft, single engine. A perfect, pleasant, comfortable, one-hundred-per-cent dependable aircraft,” Smith said, describing the perfect little plane with pleasure in its newness and its dependability. “He himself does not fly, of course. He needs a private pilot, who will be on tap at all times.”

“For how long?” Barber asked, watching Smith closely.

“For thirty days. Not more.” Smith smiled up at him. “The pay is not bad, is it?”

“I can’t tell yet,” Barber said. “Go on. Where does he want to fly to?”

“He happens to be an Egyptian,” Smith said, a little deprecatingly, as though being an Egyptian were a slight private misfortune, which one did not mention except among friends, and then in lowered tones. “He is a wealthy Egyptian who likes to travel. Especially back and forth to France. To the South of France. He is in love with the South of France. He goes there at every opportunity.”

“Yes?”

“He would like to make two round trips from Egypt to the vicinity of Cannes within the next month,” Smith said, peering steadily at Barber, “in his private new plane. Then, on the third trip, he will find that he is in a hurry and he will take the commercial plane and his pilot will follow two days later, alone.”

“Alone?” Barber asked, trying to keep all the facts straight.

“Alone, that is,” Smith said, “except for a small box.”

“Ah,” Barber said, grinning. “Finally the small box.”

“Finally.” Smith smiled up at him delightedly. “It has already been calculated. The small box will weigh two hundred and fifty pounds. A comfortable margin of safety for this particular aircraft for each leg of the journey.”

“And what will there be in the small two-hundred-and-fifty-pound box?” Barber asked, cool and relieved now that he saw what was being offered to him.

“Is it absolutely necessary to know?”

“What do I tell the customs people when they ask me what’s in the box?” Barber said. “ ‘Go ask Bert Smith’?”

“You have nothing to do with customs people,” Smith said. “I assure you. When you take off from the airport in Cairo, the box is not on board. And when you land at the airport at Cannes, the box is not on board. Isn’t that enough?”

Barber took a last pull at his cigarette and doused it. He peered thoughtfully at Smith, sitting easily on the straight-backed chair in the rumpled room, looking too neat and too well dressed for such a place at such an hour. Drugs, Barber thought, and he can stuff them...

“No, Bertie boy,” Barber said roughly. “It is not enough. Come on. Tell.”

Smith sighed. “Are you interested up to now?”

“I am interested up to now,” Barber said.

“All right,” Smith said regretfully. “This is how it will be done. You will have established a pattern. You will have been in and out of the Cairo airport several times. Your papers always impeccable. They will know you. You will have become a part of the legitimate routine of the field. Then, on the trip when you will be taking off alone, everything will be perfectly legitimate. You will have only a small bag with you of your personal effects. Your flight plan will show that your destination is Cannes and that you will come down at Malta and Rome for refuelling only. You will take off from Cairo. You will go off course by only a few miles. Some distance from the coast, you will be over the desert. You will come down on an old R.A.F. landing strip that hasn’t been used since 1943. There will be several men there... Are you listening?”

“I’m listening.” Barber had walked to the window and was standing there, looking out at the sunny street below, his back to Smith.

“They will put the box on board. The whole thing will not take more than ten minutes,” Smith said. “At Malta, nobody will ask you anything, because you will be in transit and you will not leave the plane and you will stay only long enough to refuel. The same thing at Rome. You will arrive over the south coast of France in the evening, before the moon is up. Once more,” Smith said, speaking as though he was savoring his words, “you will be just a little off course. You will fly low over the hills between Cannes and Grasse. At a certain point, you will see an arrangement of lights. You will throttle down, open the door, and push the box out, from a height of a hundred feet. Then you will close the door and turn toward the sea and land at the Cannes airport. Your papers will be perfectly in order. There will have been no deviations from your flight plan. You will have nothing to declare. You will walk away from the airplane once and for all, and we will pay you the twenty-five thousand dollars I have spoken of. Isn’t it lovely?”

“Lovely,” Barber said. “It’s just a delicious little old plan, Bertie boy.” He turned away from the window. “Now tell me what will be in the box.”

Smith chuckled delightedly, as though what he was going to say was too funny to keep to himself. “Money,” he said. “Just money.”

“How much money?”

“Two hundred and fifty pounds of money,” Smith said, his eyes crinkled with amusement. “Two hundred and fifty pounds of tightly packed English notes in a nice, strong, lightweight metal box. Five-pound notes.”

At that moment, it occurred to Barber that he was speaking to a lunatic. But Smith was sitting there, matter-of-fact and healthy, obviously a man who had never for a minute in all his life had a single doubt about his sanity.

“When would I get paid?” Barber asked.

“When the box was delivered,” Smith said.

“Bertie boy...” Barber shook his head reprovingly.

Smith chuckled. “I have warned myself that you were not stupid,” he said. “All right. We will deposit twelve thousand five hundred dollars in your name in a Swiss bank before you start for the first time to Egypt.”

“You trust me for that?”

Fleetingly the smile left Smith’s face. “We’ll trust you for that,” he said. Then the smile reappeared. “And immediately after the delivery is made, we will deposit the rest. A lovely deal. Hard currency. No income tax. You will be a rich man. Semi-rich.” He chuckled at his joke. “Just for a little plane ride. Just to help an Egyptian who is fond of the South of France and who is naturally a little disturbed by the insecurity of his own country.”

“When will I meet this Egyptian?” Barber asked.

“When you go to the airfield to take off for your first flight,” Smith said. “He’ll be there. Don’t you worry. He’ll be there. Do you hesitate?” he asked anxiously.

“I’m thinking,” Barber said.

“It’s not as though you were involved in your own country,” Smith said piously. “I wouldn’t ask a man to do that, a man who had fought for his country in the war. It isn’t even as though it had anything to do with the English, for whom it is possible you have a certain affection. But the Egyptians...” He shrugged and bent over and picked up the manila envelope and opened it. “I have all the maps here,” he said, “if you would like to study them. The route is all marked out, but, of course, it would be finally in your hands, since it would be you who was doing the flying.”

Barber took the thick packet of maps. He opened one at random. All it showed was the sea approaches to Malta and the location of the landing strips there. Barber thought of twenty-five thousand dollars and the map shook a little in his hands.

“It is ridiculously easy,” Smith said, watching Barber intently. “Foolproof.”

Barber put the map down. “If it’s so easy, what are you paying twenty-five thousand bucks for?” he said.

Smith laughed. “I admit,” he said, “there may be certain little risks. It is improbable, but one never knows. We pay you for the improbability, if you want to put it that way.” He shrugged. “After all, after a whole war you must be somewhat hardened to risks.”

“When do you have to know?” Barber asked.

“Tonight,” Smith said. “If you say no, naturally we have to make other plans. And my Egyptian friend is impatient.”

“Who is we?” Barber asked.

“Naturally,” Smith said, “I have certain colleagues.”

“Who are they?”

Smith made a small regretful gesture. “I am terribly sorry,” he said, “but I cannot tell you.”

“I’ll call you tonight,” said Barber.

“Good.” Smith stood up and buttoned his coat and carefully put the soft Italian felt hat on his head, at a conservative angle. He played gently and appreciatively with the brim. “This afternoon, I will be at the track. Maybe you would like to join me there.”

“Where’re they running today?”

“Auteuil,” Smith said. “Jumping today.”

“Have you heard anything?”

“Perhaps,” Smith said. “There is a mare who is doing the jumps for the first time. I have spoken to the jockey and I have been told the mare has responded in training, but I’ll hear more at three o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good,” Smith said enthusiastically. “Although it is against my interests, of course, to make you too rich in advance.” He chuckled. “However, for the sake of friendship... Should I leave the maps?”

“Yes,” said Barber.

“Until three o’clock,” Smith said as Barber opened the door. They shook hands, and Smith went out into the corridor, a rich, tweedy, perfumed figure in the impoverished light of the pallid hotel lamps.

Barber locked the door behind him and picked up the packet of maps and spread them on the bed, over the rumpled sheets and blankets. He hadn’t looked at aerial maps for a long time. Northern Egypt. The Mediterranean. The island of Malta. Sicily and the Italian coast. The Gulf of Genoa. The Alpes-Maritimes. He stared at the maps. The Mediterranean looked very wide. He didn’t like to fly over open water in a single-engined plane. In fact, he didn’t like to fly. Since the war, he had flown as little as possible. He hadn’t made any explanations to himself, but when he had had to travel, he had gone by car or train or boat whenever he could.

Twenty-five thousand dollars, he thought.

He folded the maps neatly and put them back into the envelope. At this point, the maps weren’t going to help.

He lay down on the bed again, propped against the pillows, with his hands clasped behind his head. Open water, he thought. Five times. Even that wouldn’t be too bad. But what about the Egyptians? He had been in Cairo briefly during the war. He remembered that at night the policemen walked in pairs, carrying carbines. He didn’t like places where the policemen carried carbines. And Egyptian prisons...

He moved uneasily on the bed.

Who knew how many people were in on a scheme like this? And it would only take one to cook you. One dissatisfied servant or accomplice, one greedy or timid partner... He closed his eyes and almost saw the fat, dark uniformed men with their carbines walking up to the shiny, new little plane.

Or suppose you blew a tire or crumpled a wheel on the landing strip? Who knew what the strip was like, abandoned in the desert since 1943?

Twenty-five thousand dollars.

Or you would think you were making it. The box would be on the seat beside you and the coast of Egypt would be falling off behind you and the sea stretching blue below and ahead and the engine running like a watch — and then the first sign of the patrol. The shimmering dot growing into... What did the Egyptian Air Force fly? Spitfires, left over from the war, he supposed. Coming up swiftly, going twice as fast as you, signalling you to turn around... He lit a cigarette. Two hundred and fifty pounds. Say the box alone — it would have to be really solid — weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. How much did a five-pound note weigh? Would there be a thousand to a pound? Five thousand multiplied by a hundred, with the pound at two-eighty. Close to a million and a half dollars.

His mouth felt dry, and he got up and drank two glasses of water. Then he made himself sit down on the chair, keeping his hands still. If there was an accident, if for any reason you failed to come through with it... If the money was lost, but you were saved. Smith didn’t look like a murderer, although who knew what murderers looked like these days? And who knew what other people he was involved with? My colleagues, as Smith called them, who would then be your colleagues. The wealthy Egyptian, the several men at the old R.A.F. landing strip in the desert, the people who were to set out the lights in the certain arrangement in the hills behind Cannes — How many others, sliding across frontiers, going secretly and illegally from one country to another with guns and gold in their suitcases, the survivors of war, prison, denunciation — How many others whom you didn’t know, whom you would see briefly in the glare of the African sun, as a running figure on a dark French hillside, whom you couldn’t judge or assess and on whom your life depended, who were risking prison, deportation, police bullets for their share of a box full of money...

He jumped up and put on his clothes and went out, locking the door. He didn’t want to sit in the cold, disordered room, staring at the maps.

He walked around the city aimlessly for the rest of the morning, looking blindly into shopwindows and thinking of the things he would buy if he had money. Turning away from a window, he saw a policeman watching him incuriously. Barber looked speculatively at the policeman, who was small, with a mean face and a thin mustache. Looking at the policeman, Barber remembered some of the stories about what they did to suspects when they questioned them in the back rooms of the local prefectures. An American passport wouldn’t do much good if they picked you up with five hundred thousand English pounds under your arm.

This is the first time in my life, Barber thought curiously, walking slowly on the crowded street, that I have contemplated moving over to the other side of the law. He was surprised that he was considering it so calmly. He wondered why that was. Perhaps the movies and the newspapers, he thought. You get so familiar with crime it becomes humanized and accessible. You don’t think about it, but then, suddenly, when it enters your life, you realize that subconsciously you have been accepting the idea of crime as an almost normal accompaniment of everyday life. Policemen must know that, he thought, all at once seeing things from the other side. They must look at all the shut, ordinary faces going past them and they must know how close to theft, murder, and defaulting everyone is, and it must drive them crazy. They must want to arrest everybody.

While Barber was watching the horses move in their stiff-legged, trembling walk around the paddock before the sixth race, he felt a light tap on his shoulder.

“Bertie boy,” he said, without turning around.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Smith said, coming up to the paddock rail beside Barber. “Were you afraid I wouldn’t come?”

“What’s the word from the jock?” Barber asked.

Smith looked around him suspiciously. Then he smiled. “The jockey is confident,” Smith said. “He is betting himself.”

“Which one is it?”

“Number Five.”

Barber looked at No. 5. It was a light-boned chestnut mare with a delicate, gentle head. Her tail and mane were braided, and she walked alertly but not too nervously, well-mannered and with a glistening coat. Her jockey was a man of about forty, with a long, scooped French nose. He was an ugly man, and when he opened his mouth, you saw that most of his front teeth were missing. He wore a maroon cap, with his ears tucked in, and a white silk shirt dotted with maroon stars.

Barber, looking at him, thought, It’s too bad such ugly men get to ride such beautiful animals.

“O.K., Bertie boy,” he said. “Lead me to the window.”

Barber bet ten thousand francs on the nose. The odds were a comfortable seven to one. Smith bet twenty-five thousand francs. They walked side by side to the stands and climbed up together as the horses came out on the track. The crowd was small and there were only a few other spectators that high up.

“Well, Lloyd?” Smith said. “Did you look at the maps?”

“I looked at the maps,” Barber said.

“What did you think?”

“They’re very nice maps.”

Smith looked at him sharply. Then he decided to chuckle. “You want to make me fish, eh?” he said. “You know what I mean. Did you decide?”

“I...” Barber began, staring down at the cantering horses. He took a deep breath. “I’ll tell you after the race,” he said.

“Lloyd!” The voice came from below, to the right, and Barber turned in that direction. Toiling up the steps was Jimmy Richardson. He had always been rather round and baby-plump, and Parisian food had done nothing to slim him down, and he was panting, his coat flapping open, disclosing a checkered vest, as he hurried toward Barber.

“How are you?” he said breathlessly as he reached their level. He clapped Barber on the back. “I saw you up here and I thought maybe you had something for this race. I can’t figure this one and they’ve been murdering me all day. I’m lousy on the jumps.”

“Hello, Jimmy,” Barber said. “Mr. Richardson. Mr. Smith.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Richardson said. “How do you spell it?” He laughed loudly at his joke. “Say, really, Lloyd, do you know anything? Maureen’ll murder me if I go home and tell her I went into the hole for the afternoon.”

Barber looked across at Smith, who was watching Richardson benignly. “Well,” he said, “Bertie boy, here, thinks he heard something.”

“Bertie boy,” Richardson said, “please...”

Smith smiled thinly. “Number Five looks very good,” he said. “But you’d better hurry. They’re going to start in a minute.”

“Number Five,” Richardson said. “Roger. I’ll be right back.” He went galloping down the steps, his coat flying behind him.

“He’s a trusting soul, isn’t he?” Smith said.

“He was an only child,” Barber said, “and he never got over it.”

Smith smiled politely. “Where do you know him from?”

“He was in my squadron.”

“In your squadron.” Smith nodded, looking after Richardson’s hurrying, diminishing figure on the way to the seller’s window. “Pilot?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good?”

Barber shrugged. “Better ones got killed and worse ones won every medal in the collection.”

“What is he doing in Paris?”

“He works for a drug company,” Barber said.

The bell rang and the horses raced toward the first jump.

“Your friend was too late, I’m afraid,” Smith said, putting his binoculars to his eyes.

“Yep,” Barber said, watching the bunched horses.

No. 5 fell on the fourth jump. She went over with two other horses, and suddenly she was down and rolling. The pack passed around her. The fourth jump was far off down the track, and it was hard to see what, exactly, was happening until, a moment later, the mare struggled to her feet and cantered after the pack, her reins broken and trailing. Then Barber saw that the jockey was lying there motionless, crumpled up clumsily on his face, with his head turned in under his shoulder.

“We’ve lost our money,” Smith said calmly. He took his binoculars from his eyes and pulled out his tickets and tore them and dropped them.

“May I have those, please?” Barber reached over for the binoculars. Smith lifted the strap over his head, and Barber trained the glasses on the distant jump where the jockey was lying. Two men were running out to him and turning him over.

Barber adjusted the binoculars, and the figures of the two men working on the motionless figure in the maroon-starred shirt came out of the blur into focus. Even in the glasses, there was something terribly urgent and despairing in the movements of the distant men. They picked the jockey up between them and started running clumsily off with him.

“Damn it!” It was Richardson, who had climbed up beside them again. “The window closed just as I—”

“Do not complain, Mr. Richardson,” Smith said. “We fell at the fourth jump.”

Richardson grinned. “That’s the first bit of luck I had all day.”

Down below, in front of the stands, the riderless mare was swerving and trotting off down the track to avoid a groom who was trying to grab the torn reins.

Barber kept the glasses on the two men who were carrying the jockey. Suddenly, they put him down on the grass, and one of the men bent down and put his ear against the white silk racing shirt. After a while, he stood up. Then the two men started to carry the jockey again, only now they walked slowly, as though there was no sense in hurrying.

Barber gave the glasses back to Smith. “I’m going home,” he said. “I’ve had enough of the sport for one day.”

Smith glanced at him sharply. He put the glasses to his eyes and stared at the men carrying the jockey. Then he put the glasses into their case and hung the case by its strap over his shoulder. “They kill at least one a year,” he said in a low voice. “It is to be expected in a sport like this. I’ll take you home.”

“Say,” Richardson said. “Is that fellow dead?”

“He was getting too old,” Smith said. “He kept at it too long.”

“Holy man!” Richardson said, staring down the track. “And I was sore because I came too late to bet on him. That was some tip.” He made a babyish grimace. “A tip on a dead jock.”

Barber started down toward the exit.

“I’ll come with you,” Richardson said. “This isn’t my lucky day.”

The three men went down under the stands without speaking. People were standing in little groups, and there was a queer rising, hissing sound of whispering all over the place, now that the news was spreading.

When they reached the car, Barber got into the back, allowing Richardson to sit next to Smith, on the front seat. He wanted to be at least that much alone for the time being.

Smith drove slowly and in silence. Even Richardson spoke only once. “What a way to get it,” he said as they drove between the bare, high trees. “In a lousy, three-hundred-thousand-franc claiming race.”

Barber sat in the corner, his eyes half closed, not looking out. He kept remembering the second time the two men had picked up the jockey. Smith’s selection for the afternoon, Barber thought. He closed his eyes altogether and saw the maps spread out on the bed in his room. The Mediterranean. The wide reaches of open water. He remembered the smell of burning. The worst smell. The smell of your dreams during the war. The smell of hot metal, smoldering rubber. Smith’s tip.

“Here we are,” Smith was saying.

Barber opened his eyes. They were stopped at the corner of the dead-end street down which was the entrance to his hotel. He got out.

“Wait a minute, Bertie boy,” Barber said. “I have something I want to give you.”

Smith looked at him inquiringly. “Can’t it wait, Lloyd?” he asked.

“No. I’ll just be a minute.” Barber went into his hotel and up to his room. The maps were folded in a pile on the bureau, except for one, which was lying open beside the others. The approaches to Malta. He folded it quickly and put all the maps into the manila envelope and went back to the car. Smith was standing beside the car, smoking, nervously holding on to his hat, because a wind had come up and dead leaves were skittering along the pavement.

“Here you are, Bertie boy,” Barber said, holding out the envelope.

Smith didn’t take it. “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?” he said.

“I’m sure.”

Smith still didn’t take the maps. “I’m in no hurry,” he said softly. “Why don’t you hold on to them another day?”

“Thanks, no.”

Smith looked at him silently for a moment. The fluorescent street lamps had just gone on, hard white-blue light, and Smith’s smooth face looked powdery in the shadows under his expensive hat, and his pretty eyes were dark and flat under the curled lashes.

“Just because a jockey falls at a jump—” Smith began.

“Take them,” Barber said, “or I’ll throw them in the gutter.”

Smith shrugged. He put out his hand and took the envelope. “You’ll never have a chance like this again,” he said, running his finger caressingly over the envelope edge.

“Good night, Jimmy.” Barber leaned over the car and spoke to Richardson, who was sitting there watching them, puzzled. “Give my love to Maureen.”

“Say, Lloyd,” Richardson said, starting to get out. “I thought maybe we could have a couple of drinks. Maureen doesn’t expect me home for another hour yet and I thought maybe we could cut up some old touches and—”

“Sorry,” Barber said, because he wanted, more than anything else, to be alone. “I have a date. Some other time.”

Smith turned and looked thoughtfully at Richardson. “He always has a date, your friend,” Smith said. “He’s a very popular boy. I feel like a drink myself, Mr. Richardson. I would be honored if you’d join me.”

“Well,” Richardson said uncertainly, “I live way down near the Hôtel de Ville and—”

“It’s on my way,” Smith said, smiling warmly.

Richardson settled back in his seat, and Smith started to get into the car. He stopped and looked up at Barber. “I made a mistake about you, didn’t I, Lloyd?” he said contemptuously.

“Yes,” Barber said. “I’m getting too old. I don’t want to keep at it too long.”

Smith chuckled and got into the car. They didn’t shake hands. He slammed the door, and Barber watched him pull sharply away from the curb, making a taxi-driver behind him jam on his brakes to avoid hitting him.

Barber watched the big black car weave swiftly down the street, under the hard white-blue lights. Then he went back to the hotel and up to his room and lay down, because an afternoon at the races always exhausted him.

An hour later, he got up. He splashed cold water on his face to wake himself, but even so he felt listless and empty. He wasn’t hungry and he wasn’t thirsty and he kept thinking about the dead jockey in his soiled silks. There was no one he wanted to see. He put on his coat and went out, hating the room as he closed the door behind him.

He walked slowly toward the Etoile. It was a raw night and a fog was moving in from the river, and the streets were almost empty, because everybody was inside eating dinner. He didn’t look at any of the lighted windows, because he wasn’t going to buy anything for a long time. He passed several movie houses, neon in the drifting fog. In the movies, he thought, the hero would have been on his way to Africa by now. He would nearly be caught several times in Egypt, and he would fight his way out of a trap on the desert, killing several dark men just in time on the airstrip. And he would develop engine trouble over the Mediterranean and just pull out, with the water lapping at the wing tips, and he would undoubtedly crash, without doing too much damage to himself, probably just a photogenic cut on the forehead, and would drag the box out just in time. And he would turn out to be a Treasury agent or a member of British Intelligence and he would never doubt his luck and his nerve would never fail him and he would not end the picture with only a few thousand francs in his pocket. Or, if it was an artistic picture, there would be a heavy ground mist over the hills and the plane would drone on and on, desperate and lost, and then, finally, with the fuel tanks empty, the hero would crash in flames. Battered and staggering as he was, he would try to get the box out, but he wouldn’t be able to move it, and finally the flames would drive him back and he would stand against a tree, laughing crazily, his face blackened with smoke, watching the plane and the money burn, to show the vanity of human aspiration and greed.

Barber grinned bleakly, rehearsing the scenarios in front of the giant posters outside the theatres. The movies do it better, he thought. They have their adventures happen to adventurers. He turned off the Champs-Elysées, walking slowly and aimlessly, trying to decide whether to eat now or have a drink first. Almost automatically, he walked toward the Plaza-Athénée. In the two weeks that he had been wooed by Smith, they had met in the English bar of the Plaza-Athénée almost every evening.

He went into the hotel and downstairs to the English bar. As he came into the room, he saw, in the corner, Smith and Jimmy Richardson.

Barber smiled. Bertie boy, he thought, are you whatever wasting your time. He stood at the bar and ordered a whiskey.

“...fifty missions,” he heard Richardson say. Richardson had a loud, empty voice that carried anywhere. “Africa, Sicily, Italy, Yugo—”

Then Smith saw him. He nodded coolly, with no hint of invitation. Richardson swivelled in his chair then, too. He smiled uncomfortably at Barber, getting red in the face, like a man who has been caught by a friend with his friend’s girl.

Barber waved to them. For a moment, he wondered if he ought to go over and sit down and try to get Richardson out of there. He watched the two men, trying to figure out what they thought of each other. Or, more accurately, what Smith thought of Richardson. You didn’t have to speculate about Jimmy. If you bought Jimmy a drink, he was your friend for life. For all that he had been through — war and marriage and being a father and living in a foreign country — it had still never occurred to Jimmy that people might not like him or might try to do him harm. When you were enjoying Jimmy, you called it trustfulness. When he was boring you, you called it stupidity.

Barber watched Smith’s face carefully. By now, he knew Smith well enough to be able to tell a great deal of what was going on behind the pretty eyes and the pale, powdered face. Right now, Barber could tell that Smith was bored and that he wanted to get away from Jimmy Richardson.

Barber turned back to his drink, smiling to himself. It took Bertie boy just about an hour, he thought, an hour of looking at that good-natured empty face, an hour of listening to that booming, vacant voice, to decide that this was no man to fly a small box of five-pound notes from Cairo to Cannes.

Barber finished his drink quickly and went out of the bar before Smith and Richardson got up from the table. He had nothing to do for the evening, but he didn’t want to get stuck with Jimmy and Maureen Richardson for dinner.

And now it was almost two months later and nobody had heard from Jimmy Richardson for thirty-two days.

In the whole afternoon of searching, Barber had not come upon any trace of Bert Smith. He had not been at the restaurants or the track or the art galleries, the barbershop, the steam bath, the bars. And no one had seen him for weeks.

It was nearly eight o’clock when Barber arrived at the English bar of the Plaza-Athénée. He was wet from walking in the day’s rain, and tired, and his shoes were soggy and he felt a cold coming on. He looked around the room, but it was almost empty. Indulging himself, thinking unhappily of all the taxi fares he had paid that day, he ordered a whiskey.

Barber sipped his whiskey in the quiet room, thinking circularly, I should have said something. But what could I have said? And Jimmy wouldn’t have listened. But I should have said something. The omens are bad, Jimmy, go on home... I saw a plane crashing at the fourth jump, I saw a corpse being carried across dead grass by Egyptians, Jimmy, I saw silks and maps stained by blood.

I had to be so damned superior, Barber thought bitterly. I had to be so damned sure that Jimmy Richardson was too stupid to be offered that much money. I had to be so damned sure that Bert Smith was too clever to hire him.

He hadn’t said any of the things he should have said, and it had all wound up with a frantic, husbandless, penniless girl pleading for help that could only be too late now. Penniless. Jimmy Richardson had been too stupid even to get any of the money in advance.

He remembered what Jimmy and Maureen had looked like, smiling and embarrassed and youthfully important, standing next to Colonel Sumners, the Group Commander, at their wedding in Shreveport. He remembered Jimmy’s plane just off his wing over Sicily; he remembered Jimmy’s face when he landed at Foggia with an engine on fire; he remembered Jimmy’s voice singing drunkenly in a bar in Naples; he remembered Jimmy the day after he arrived in Paris, saying, “Kid, this is the town for me, I got Europe in my blood.”

He finished his drink and paid and went upstairs slowly. He went into a phone booth and called his hotel to see if there were any messages for him.

“Mme. Richardson has been calling you all day,” the old man at the switchboard said. “Ever since four o’clock. She wanted you to call her back.”

“All right,” Barber said. “Thank you.” He started to hang up.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” the old man said irritably. “She called an hour ago to say she was going out. She said that if you came in before nine o’clock, she would like you to join her at the bar of the Hotel Bellman.”

“Thanks, Henri,” Barber said. “If she happens to call again, tell her I’m on my way.” He went out of the hotel. The Bellman was nearby, and he walked toward it slowly, even though it was still raining. He was in no hurry to see Maureen Richardson.

When he reached the Bellman, he hesitated before going in, feeling too tired for this, wishing Maureen could be put off at least until the next day. He sighed, and pushed the door open.

The bar was a small one, but it was crowded with large, well-dressed men who were taking their time over drinks before going out to dinner. Then he saw Maureen. She was sitting in a corner, half turned away from the room, her shabby, thin coat thrown back over her chair. She was sitting alone and there was a bottle of champagne in a bucket in a stand beside her.

Barber went over to her, irritated by the sight of the champagne. Is that what she’s doing with my five thousand francs, he thought, annoyed. Women are going crazy, too, these days.

He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. She jumped nervously, then smiled when she saw who it was. “Oh, Lloyd,” she said, in a funny kind of whisper. She jumped up and kissed him, holding him hard against her. There was a big smell of champagne on her breath and he wondered if she was drunk. “Lloyd Lloyd...” she said. She pushed him away a little, holding on to both his hands. Her eyes were smeary with tears and her mouth kept trembling.

“I came as soon as I got your message,” Lloyd said, trying to sound practical, afraid Maureen was going to break down in front of all the people in the bar. She kept standing there, her mouth working, her hands gripping his avidly. He looked down, embarrassed, at her hands. They were still reddened and the nails were still uneven, but there was an enormous ring glittering, white and blue, on her finger. It hadn’t been there when she came to his hotel, and he knew he had never seen her with a ring like that before. He looked up, almost frightened, thinking, What the hell has she started? What has she got herself into?

Then he saw Jimmy. Jimmy was making his way among the tables toward him. He was smiling broadly and he had lost some weight and he was dark brown and he looked as though he had just come from a month’s vacation on a southern beach.

“Hi, kid,” Jimmy said, his voice booming across the tables, across the barroom murmur of conversation. “I was just calling you again.”

“He came home,” Maureen said. “He came home at four o’clock this afternoon, Lloyd.” She sank suddenly into her chair. Whatever else had happened that afternoon, it was plain that she had had access to a bottle. She sat in her chair, still holding on to one of Barber’s hands, looking up, with a shimmering, half-dazed expression on her face, at her husband.

Jimmy clapped Barber on the back and shook hands fiercely. “Lloyd,” he said. “Good old Lloyd. Garçon!” he shouted, his voice reverberating through the whole room. “Another glass. Take your coat off. Sit down. Sit down.”

Lloyd took his coat off and sat down slowly.

“Welcome home,” he said quietly. He blew his nose. The cold had arrived.

“First,” Jimmy said, “I have something for you.” Ceremoniously he dug his hand into his pocket and brought out a roll of ten-thousand-franc notes. The roll was three inches thick. He took off one of the notes. “Maureen told me,” he said seriously. “You were a damn good friend, Lloyd. Have you got change of ten?”

“I don’t think so,” Barber said. “No.”

“Garçon,” Jimmy said to the waiter, who was putting down a third glass, “get me two fives for this, please.” When he spoke French, Jimmy had an accent that made even Americans wince.

Jimmy filled the three glasses carefully. He lifted his glass and clinked it first against Barber’s and then against Maureen’s. Maureen kept looking at him as though she had just seen him for the first time and never hoped to see anything as wonderful again in her whole life.

“To crime,” Jimmy said. He winked. He made a complicated face when he winked, like a baby who has trouble with a movement of such subtlety and has to use the whole side of its face and its forehead to effect it.

Maureen giggled.

They drank. It was very good champagne.

“You’re having dinner with us,” Jimmy said. “Just the three of us. The victory dinner. Just Beauty and me and you, because if it hadn’t been for you...” Suddenly solemn, he put his hand on Barber’s shoulder.

“Yes,” said Barber. His feet were icy and his trousers hung soddenly around his wet socks and he had to blow his nose again.

“Did Beauty show you her ring?” Jimmy asked.

“Yes,” Barber said.

“She’s only had it since six o’clock,” Jimmy said.

Maureen held her hand up and stared at her ring. She giggled again.

“I know a place,” Jimmy said, “where you can get pheasant and the best bottle of wine in Paris and...”

The waiter came back and gave Jimmy the two five-thousand-franc notes. Dimly, Barber wondered how much they weighed.

“If ever you’re in a hole,” Jimmy said, giving him one of the notes, “you know where to come, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Barber said. He put the note in his pocket.

He started to sneeze then, and ten minutes later he said he was sorry but he didn’t think he could last the evening with a cold like that. Both Jimmy and Maureen tried to get him to stay, but he could tell that they were going to be happier without him.

He finished a second glass of champagne, and said he’d keep in touch, and went out of the bar, feeling his toes squish in his wet shoes. He was hungry and he was very fond of pheasant and actually the cold wasn’t so bad, even if his nose kept running all the time. But he knew he couldn’t bear to sit between Maureen and Jimmy Richardson all night and watch the way they kept looking at each other.

He walked back to his hotel, because he was through with taxis, and went up and sat on the edge of his bed in his room, in the dark, without taking his coat off. I better get out of here, he thought, rubbing the wet off the end of his nose with the back of his hand. This continent is not for me.

Criminal’s Mark JOHN HAWKINS & WARD HAWKINS

Original publication: The Saturday Evening Post, April 8, 1950

John Hawkins (1910–1978) wrote western and crime novels with his brother, Ward Hawkins (1912–1990), including such collaborations as We Will Meet Again (1940), Pilebuck (1943), Broken River (1944), Devil on His Trail (1944), The Floods of Fear (1954), and Violent City (1957).

The brothers began their writing careers by writing for the pulps but almost immediately had their stories accepted by the most important (and best-paying) “slick” magazines (so-called to distinguish their paper from the cheaper pulps), notably the Saturday Evening Post but also Collier’s and Cosmopolitan, as well as their share of pulps and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

They did, however, sometimes write individually when they turned to the short form, though most of their work was still collaborative. It was common for them to write novels that were serialized in magazines but that never found their way into hardcover book publications.

On his own, Ward Hawkins wrote works of fantasy and science fiction, beginning with “Men Must Die” which appeared in the April 1939 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories, a pulp. Even after he and his brother had enjoyed successful television writing and producing careers, Ward wrote fantasy novels, notably the popular Borg and Guss series, humorous adventure tales featuring Harry Borg and his sidekick Guss, the lizard-man, set in an alternate universe. The novels, all published by the prestigious alternative fiction house Ballantine/Del Rey, were Red Flame Burning (1985), Sword of Fire (1985), Blaze of Wrath (1986), and Torch of Fear (1987).

In “Criminal’s Mark,” an ex-con is attempting to go straight but a criminal with whom he worked in the past comes to his home, asking to stay a short time but soon making it clear that he intends to stay as long as he likes. Hiding a fugitive puts him at risk with the police, but he and his wife are at even greater risk from the hoodlum.

Title: Crime Wave, 1954

Studio: Warner Brothers

Director: André De Toth

Screenwriter: Crane Wilbur

Producer: Bryan Foy

• Sterling Hayden (Detective-Lieutenant Sims)

• Gene Nelson (Steve Lacey)

• Phyllis Kirk (Ellen Lacey)

• Ted de Corsia (“Doc” Penny)

• Charles Buchinsky (Ben Hastings)

• Jay Novello (Dr. Otto Hessler)

Although filming was concluded in 1952, and most references describe Crime Wave as a 1953 motion picture, it actually was not released until January 12, 1954, in the United States.

As with the film version of The Killer Is Loose, the dramatization of “Criminal’s Mark” was fortunate to have a close adaptation with Crime Wave, though it dramatically increases the action with an exciting bank robbery scene that does not appear in the story.

One of the thuggish characters, Ben Hastings, was played by Charles Buchinsky, the first film in which he had a credit. He became far better known as Charles Bronson, for many years one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

Jack Warner had wanted Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner as the stars for this motion picture, but director André De Toth, famous for his skill at casting roles perfectly, was adamant about having Sterling Hayden as the tough cop. Warner and De Toth battled for weeks before the director got his way. He even cast Gene Nelson as the tough ex-con, though his major fame in the movie business was as a song-and-dance man in light musicals; he starred with Doris Day in four films.

A couple of years ago, Paste selected Crime Wave as number thirty-three on its list of The 100 Best Film Noirs of All Time, and crime writer James Ellroy named it as one of his favorite films.

The Hawkins brothers were able to create story lines that, intentionally or not, were highly cinematic. In addition to Crime Wave, they wrote the books and stories for the following movies: Secret Command (1944), based on their novel Pilebuck (1943); The Killer Is Loose (1956), based on their short story of the same name (1953);The Shadow on the Window (1957), based on their original story; Hidden Fear (1957), based on John Hawkins’s original story; and The Floods of Fear (1958), based on their 1954 novel of the same title.

The 1985 Coen brothers film titled Crimewave, directed by Sam Raimi, is a comedy with no connection to the 1953 noir classic or to the 1985 John Pailz film titled Crime Wave.

CRIMINAL’S MARK John Hawkins & Ward Hawkins

The thing was a carbon copy — that’s what got him. It was an echo, not exact, but so close it made your hair stand up. The same room, the same chair, the same time of night. Over there by the radio, the guy with the squeeze. Doc Pennypacker this time — full of butter, full of the old oil, “Trouble, boy? I wouldn’t get you in trouble for the world...” Holding his voice down so Ella, asleep in the bedroom, wouldn’t hear what he had to say.

A week ago, Pat Simms had been in the chair by the radio. A fat guy with shiny eyes and a beard four shaves a day couldn’t whip. Two of them, just a week apart, building their fences, setting their traps.

“An old friend like me,” Pennypacker said. “Stevie, boy, you couldn’t refuse an old friend like me a blanket and a meal or two.”

Steve Lacy said, “I’ll spot you hotel money. I’ll give you that.”

“Generous,” Pennypacker said. “That’s what I told Devers, no more than a month ago. Stevie’ll go all the way for a friend — that’s what I said.” He cocked his head and looked at his shoes, admiring them. “Devers will be on the street in another six weeks.”

“I didn’t know,” Steve said.

Pennypacker smiled. “Now you do.”

Devers was part of the squeeze. Two hundred pounds of trained ape — muddy eyes and a knife where his heart ought to be. Six weeks and he’d be outside the walls, walking the streets like any other man. Devers was Doc Pennypacker’s insurance, Doc’s way of saying, “Hold still, Stevie. Do like I say, or Devers’ll be around to see you.”

And that was the way it worked. There was always somebody coming out. It was Devers, but it could’ve been Jackson or Morgan or Benny Hastle. Devers was wrong, but that Benny Hastle was really dirt.

“I’ll stake you to hotel money,” Steve said. “An’ some besides.”

“Just a blanket. The use of the davenport. A couple of meals.”

Pennypacker admired his shoes. After seven years of seeing his feet in state clodhoppers, a pair of shoes like Doc’s were something to admire — brown wingtips, made-to-order, thirty bucks the copy. His suit was tailor-made and his tie was a ten-dollar job. He sat there rubbing his nose — that Doc had plenty of nose to rub — smiling like a cat in an ocean of cream. His eyes had lights in them, hot little lights. Things were popping inside that narrow head, under that gray hair.

“I’m clean,” Steve Lacy said. “I want to stay that way.”

Pennypacker said, “I know what you mean, Stevie. You got a little home, a nice little wife, a job. Maybe not a good job, but one that puts beans on the table. A nice setup for a guy without any muscle, for a man gone soft. I can understand you’d turn an old friend away.”

“I offered to pay for your hotel.”

“So you did,” Pennypacker said. “But this isn’t a big town — not as big as some. Hotels got guys with buzzers. They got badges and notions about pushing people around. I don’t want to be pushed. I just want a blanket and a couple of meals and the use of the davenport.”

“For how long?” Steve asked.

“A day,” Doc said. “Maybe two. What’s the difference?”

He sat there and smiled at his shoes — a man of fifty, gray hair and a narrow skull. Blue eyes, pale as smoke. He smiled and the squeeze clamped down.

Steve Lacy’s chest got tight and the hair crawled on the back of his neck. Pat Simms had been bad enough — stubble on his sweating face — but Simms had come right out with it: “Do what I tell you, Lacy, unless you want to go back.” Doc Pennypacker was cat-and-mouse. He’d say please before he put a knife in you, before he had Devers put a knife in you. Maybe he got his kicks that way, roping a man who could break his back, doing it with names. “Devers’ll be around to see you.” Letting that soak in while he sat there and smiled. While he said things with his eyes. “You can’t shake us, Steve. Not ever. You did a double fin with the rest of us. Ten years down there with the rest of us. You wore the coat, Stevie. Like burlap, that coat, with a number stenciled on the back. You’re one of the boys, Stevie. You knew what was coming as soon as you heard me trailing along behind you.”

“Tonight only,” Steve Lacy said. “In the morning you’re gone.”

Pennypacker said, “How do you like my shoes?”

Steve Lacy left his chair. His head hurt. His hair felt like wire. He wanted to take Doc Pennypacker by the throat. Instead, he knelt by the cedar chest and piled his arms full of company bedding. Ella’s best for a guy like Doc. Pennypacker watched Steve make a bed on the davenport.

“Clean sheets,” he said. “Nothing’s too good for a friend of yours.”

He got out of his coat and folded it carefully. He took his shoulders off when he got out of that coat. His shirt was beautiful. Movie actors wore shirts like that. He loosened the knot of his tie.

“You look tired,” he said. “Good night, Stevie.”

“In the morning, Doc. You’re gone in the morning. Remember that.”

Steve Lacy turned off the lights, all but one. He went into the hall and closed the door. In the bathroom he peeled off his shirt — war surplus, two for a buck, a grease rag with a collar. He soaped his hands and arms. His hands were big, scarred in a dozen places. Like rocks. Four years in a state quarry with a sledge and a single jack; six years of mauling castings in a foundry. He could slug a wall and not hurt those hands. He could cock one and throw it at Doc, right on the end of that big nose. He could spread Doc’s nose all over his face, and then Devers would be around. That’s the way it worked. Doc was only one of them. Behind Doc there was Devers and all the rest of them.

“In the morning,” Steve said, “he’ll be gone.”

He watched his mouth say that in the mirror. His face looked back at him — a face to frighten kids. Bent nose, heavy jaw, heavy beard. You look like that and people don’t want to meet you in an alley. A tough face — a false front for the shakes. Right now he was hollow inside, trembling inside, just thinking what trouble with Devers could mean to him and Ella. But none of that showed in his face. Faces didn’t tell what went on inside. Take that Doc Pennypacker. Big nose and all, he looked as nice as a preacher. A skinny preacher with gray hair and a soft smile. Harder than tool steel, harder than diamonds, and still he looked like one of the uptown citizens and an all-right guy.

“One night,” Steve said. “I can take it for that long.”

He went into the bedroom on tiptoe. He didn’t want to wake Ella. He was careful not to bump the corner of the dressing table. He didn’t drop his shoes. She was curled in the center of the bed, warm as a kitten. She turned to make room for him. He could feel her breath against his shoulder.

“You must’ve had a lot to talk about,” she said. “It’s late.”

“Old times, Ella. You know — places we been, people we knew.”

“He didn’t leave, did he? I didn’t hear him go.”

“Like you said, it’s late.” Steve wet his lips. “The buses aren’t running. I made him a bed on the davenport.”

She kissed his shoulder. “Good night, Steve.”

He lay on his side, staring into the dark. He could hear Doc out in the living room. Doc bubbled in his sleep. Something about the bone in that beak of his. A thousand guys in the cell block, you could pick Doc Pennypacker every time. A thousand guys muttering and turning and groaning in their sleep. And that Doc, bubbling all night long.

He lay there in the dark, Ella’s breath warm on his shoulder. The window was a dim square in the wall. No bars on that window, but Steve could almost see them there. All the remembered sounds were coming back, filling the room: the mutter and groan and turn of the men in the cell blocks, the tramping of the walkers — the wall guards, the block guards — going about their rounds.

He’d done his time. He’d done it all, every day of it. Four years in the quarry, swinging a twelve-pound sledge; six years on the foundry floor. No breaks. But he’d kept his nose clean and his mouth shut — never a scramble, never a beef — and one day they’d opened the gate and let him out. “A free man,” they’d said. “Lacy, you’ve got a new suit. New shoes. A new life. You’re as free as a bird.” And he’d believed them. He’d stood on the corner and watched the shining cars go by, and he’d ached to get his hands inside one. After ten years his hands were hungry for tools and motors.

“A free man.”

The suit was cheesecloth. The shoes fell apart the first time it rained. And the freedom had a string on it — that freedom had more strings on it than a harp. He’d learned about those; one by one they’d yanked him up. “A little thing,” they’d said the day he left the pen. “Nothing much,” they’d said. “Just report to O’Keefe once a month and tell him how it is with Lacy.” Daniel O’Keefe, state probation officer, second floor, Woodlawn Building. Once a month Steve had climbed the stairs, thirty-six times he’d climbed the stairs. “Mr. O’Keefe, sir,” he’d said. “Steve Lacy reporting.”

And he’d stood there with his hat in his sweating hands while O’Keefe looked at him. A dusty man, O’Keefe, glasses, timid eyes and a pencil he tapped against his teeth. Once a month he hauled on the string. “Your appearance is against you, Lacy.” Thirty-six times he’d mentioned that. “Above all, we don’t want you to go back. You’ll have to be very careful, Lacy. Avoid trouble like a well man avoids the plague.”

That freedom fell apart faster than the cardboard shoes. They let you out, but they didn’t let go. O’Keefe, once a month, and O’Keefe was only the beginning. Simms had a string on him. Pat Simms, plain-clothes. A hog of a man. Shiny eyes and a toothpick and a beard like barbed wire. He’d known Steve Lacy when. He knew too much. The string in his fat hand went back a lot of years — back to the Apex Garage and Johnny Dianco.

Simms had come into the Apex plenty of times after the city had gone to sleep, walking light and easy, that toothpick in the corner of his mouth. He stood around. He leaned against the wall and watched Steve Lacy build his car. Steve Lacy, nineteen then, night floorman, six to six, twenty-three bucks a week. A big kid off the farm, smart with motors and dumb with people, building himself a car after the grease racks had been cleaned and the floors swept. A bolt at a time, from the floor up, from nothing. Parts from a dozen wrecks; frame from one, wheels from another, fenders from still another. And that motor — three weeks’ pay and six months’ work went into that big, beautiful motor before he had it right. Simms was there the night he turned it fine — let it idle, let it roar — then cut the switch and put his tools away.

“Funny,” Simms said. “A kid like you — a big hayshaker — comin’ up with a thing like that. How fast’ll it go?”

“I figure a hundred and ten,” Steve said. “Maybe better.”

“But not on the streets.” Simms’s shiny eyes lost interest in the car. “You work here,” he said. “That Johnny Dianco, would you know what time of night he puts that crate of his away?”

“Different times,” Steve said. “Different nights.”

“Don’t cover,” Simms said. “Stick to your motors, kid.” That toothpick went from right to left. “Don’t get in any trouble, kid. With that ugly face of yours, don’t ever get in trouble, kid. They’ll throw the bench at you.”

He went away. He dropped his toothpick on the floor and went away. Steve stood there wondering why he hadn’t opened up for Simms. He knew when Dianco’s bright, red job came and went; he had it all written down on the check sheet in the floorman’s stall. And he knew Dianco was a racket guy. Even a hayshacker off the farm couldn’t be so dumb he wouldn’t know Dianco was a racket guy. His clothes, his car, the place he lived; all that money when everybody else was broke. He tipped a buck; twice every day he tipped a buck. But it wasn’t the money. Steve hadn’t kept his mouth shut because of the tips. You don’t blow the whistle on a friend, and Johnny Dianco was a friend. A big shot, but he always had time to stop and talk. “How’s our car? When’re you goin’ to take me for a ride?” Johnny wasn’t afraid of Simms. He laughed when Steve told him Simms had been nosing around.

“The barrel that walks like a man,” he said. “That guy.”

Steve said, “He wanted to know what time you checked in nights.”

“Thanks, kid.” Johnny took some money out of his pocket; bills folded and clipped with a gold thing in the shape of a dollar sign. “No,” he said. “No tip tonight, kid. Some things you can’t pay for.”

“I’ll tell you if he comes around again.”

“Do that.” Dianco put his money away. He made a fist and hit Steve lightly in the belly. “Take care of me, kid, and I’ll take care of you. They don’t come too big for Johnny Dianco.”

“Fat,” Steve said. “But not too big.”

“Like a barrel, kid, but not too big.” Johnny Dianco grinned. “That car of yours, kid? How’s the car comin’?”

“All finished. Ready to roll.”

“I’ll be around for that ride,” Johnny said.

Steve Lacy lay in the dark, remembering. The alarm clock whirred on the bedside table; an electric job with a motor gone haywire. Ella murmured and turned.

“Steve,” she said. “What’s the matter? Why can’t you sleep?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” he said. “Not a thing.”

“You should be asleep. Count sheep, Steve. Maybe that’ll help.”

“I’ll count,” he replied. “You go back to sleep, Ella.”

“You didn’t kiss me when you came to bed.”

“A face like a busted plate,” he said. “If I kiss you I’ll give you nightmares, honey.”

“Steve,” she said. “Steve. You’re the one I married, remember? I love that face just the way it is. If I have nightmares it’ll be because you didn’t kiss me, Steve.”

“A beat-up nose and a tin ear.”

“And a smile that’s really swell.”

Her finger tips found his chin, his cheek. “Strong,” she said. “And kind — that’s my Steve.” He turned his head and kissed her. “Good night,” she said, and curled against his side.

She slept again, and he lay there remembering. He could not stop remembering. Johnny Dianco, the pretty man, walked through his thoughts. Johnny, the racket boy, with his pockets full of money and his big, white smile. Johnny with his little gun tucked inside his waistband. Steve thought of the car he’d built long, long ago, and heard Johnny Dianco say, “That ride, kid. I come around to get my ride.”

Johnny was gone now. They’d cut him down when he’d tried to run; with a chopper they’d cut him down. But his voice was in Steve Lacy’s head. “A little ride, kid. I’m going to collect some dough. They know my car, see? That red boiler of mine, they know it well.” Johnny’s voice was tight and raw and his eyes had a funny look. “You stay at the curb and I’ll go in. A short thing, kid. A quick in and out.”

“Count sheep,” Steve Lacy told himself.

But the thought he’d had that day came back to him. “How come he’s got a gun if it’s just a collection stop? How come he’s so wound up?” And all of it was happening again. The car was rolling through the streets while Johnny talked. “I’ll surprise the hell out of them. And they’ll give; they’ll really shower down. A quick thing, kid. And nobody hurt.” The car was easing to a halt, the motor running. “Don’t shut her off, kid. I won’t be gone a minute.” Johnny Dianco was on his way toward the big glass door. And then all of it went wrong again. Steve heard the guns. He heard the guns and saw Johnny try to run.

Johnny Dianco, the pretty man, was dead and gone. “Nobody hurt,” he’d said. “A quick thing,” Johnny’d said. For him it had been quick. But not for Steve Lacy, the kid who drove the car. He’d switched the motor off and sat there, stiff and scared until a white-faced cop came up on the driver’s side and slugged him with the barrel of his gun.

Later, Simms had come to stand outside his cell. “I told you, kid,” he’d said. “Stick to motors, that’s what I told you. But you had to cover. You had to get in trouble, kid. They’re goin’ to throw the bench at you.”

“Count sheep,” Steve Lacy told himself.

He counted the years instead. Ten years, even after they subtracted the good-behavior time. He counted the trips he’d made to the Woodlawn Building to stand with his hat in his sweating hands while O’Keefe hauled on the string. “This girl — this Miss Peterson you want to marry? Does she know your history, Lacy?” All the bars weren’t down there at the pen. They built bars around you on the outside too. They had walkers on the outside too. Two sets of walkers — guys like Doc; guys like Simms — tramping up behind you, tramping up out of your past and up your back. A man never got away.

That Simms. He’d come trudging out of the dark between the bus stop and the house, a week ago. Shiny eyes in a fat face smudged with beard. A toothpick in the corner of his mouth. “I been around before,” he’d said. “Check calls. I didn’t need you then; I had other wires. But things happen, Lacy. Things change. It’s different now. Tonight we’re goin’ to talk.”

“Let me alone,” Steve’d said. “That’s all — just get off my back.”

“I said we’re going to talk,” Simms’d said. “We’re going to talk.”

“My wife—”

“Tell her I’m a friend. Tell her we got business. Private business.”

Ella was asleep, tired after eight hours on her feet in a store downtown. Brown hair on the pillow and a smiling mouth. She was smiling in her sleep. Dreaming, maybe, of how it’d be when they could buy the service station and be together all day long. Steve Lacy closed the door and went back to talk to the fat man who sat in the chair by the radio.

“You’re my pigeon,” Simms said. “You’re goin’ to do what I say.”

Steve said, “I’m clean. That’s all I want to be.”

“You’re an ex-con. You’re a wire — my wire. The other boys come around to see you when they hit town. They put the bite on you for a little change, or they want this, or they want that. This is my business, Lacy; I know how it works.”

“How about the cops? If this isn’t a bite, you tell me what it is.”

“Three years I let you alone,” Simms said. “What do you want? Christmas every day? I let you alone because I didn’t need you. Now I do.”

“Plenty of times you come nosing around. That’s letting me alone.”

“You’re on the outside, aren’t you? You’re walking around.”

“With you on my back,” Steve said.

“Lacy, look.” Simms pointed the toothpick at Steve. “You do what I say, or you go back. With your face and your record, there are ways and ways. Plenty of guys go back.” He rubbed his hand over his wire beard. “People come to you. Cons goin’ through town. You hear things. You’re one of the boys. From now on, Lacy, I hear what you hear.”

“No!” Lacy said.

“You want to leave your wife?” Simms asked. “You want to go back?”

“I want to be let alone. That’s all — just let me alone.”

Simms said, “Later, Lacy. Right now I need a wire.”

He had gone away. Simms had set up his squeeze and gone away. Then nothing for a week — not a word, not a whisper. Until tonight. Steve had left the bus stop and started home and he’d heard the walker, a different walker, coming along behind. Doc Pennypacker in his thirty-dollar shoes, coming along behind. Staying just out of sight, stopping when Steve stopped, walking up out of the past, walking up Steve’s back, catching Steve just as he unlocked the door.

“Stevie,” he’d said. “A nice little place you got here — but lonely. No street lights. No neighbors.” And then he’d smiled. “You’re going to ask me in, Stevie. I’m sure you’re going to ask me in.”

“Doc,” Steve had said, “go the hell away. Go away.”

He said it again now in the dark, with Ella warm at his side. He could hear Doc bubbling out there on the davenport. “Go away.” He said it silently, like a prayer. And then he saw Doc Pennypacker standing at the head of an endless file of men. Behind Doc, there was Devers. Behind Devers, there was Benny Hastle — Benny, the big, good-looking guy who was really dirt. He turned his back on them, running in his mind, and ran right into Simms, the hog of a man with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

Ella was gone when he awoke. She’d left a note on her pillow. “Darling: I didn’t want to waken you or your friend. I’ll eat downtown.” And there was a smudge of lipstick on the paper in the shape of her mouth, in the shape of a kiss. After two years of being married, they still did things like that.

Outside, the sun was shining. The clock on the bedside table said it was almost eleven — and Doc was still in the house. Steve took a shower and shaved, not thinking, not even trying to think. He put the coffee on and then went into the living room.

“Doc,” he said.

Doc Pennypacker started up. He seemed to jump without moving — the jump was all inside the man, under his skin. Then he yawned and threw the blankets back.

“I don’t know how it is with you,” he said. “But me, Stevie, I wake up thinking I’m back in the pen. For just a minute, I think I’m back up there.”

“Coffee’s about ready, Doc. How do you like your eggs?”

“Raw. In a glass of milk. Nice of you to ask.”

“Doc,” Steve said, “in an hour I’ve got to go to work.”

Doc Pennypacker looked at his watch. “At noon you go to work, at midnight you come home. Even horses don’t work that long.”

“I work overtime. I get paid for it.”

“But not enough,” Doc said. “They don’t print it fast enough to pay for that kind of hours.” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “I’ll catch a wash. I’ll borrow your razor and shave and be right with you.”

Steve went back into the kitchen and closed the door. He had to close the door so Doc couldn’t see his face.

He had finished packing his lunch when Doc Pennypacker joined him, fully dressed and freshly shaved. His beautiful shirt was faintly soiled. That was Doc — faintly soiled. Two eggs in a glass of milk — that was Doc too. After all those years in the pen his stomach didn’t like solid food.

“Stevie,” Doc said, “you got a garage out there.”

“Yeah,” Steve said.

“I suppose you got a car — a mechanic like you?”

“A heap,” Steve said. “It isn’t much.”

“I’ll bet it runs good.” Doc sipped his milk. “A nice little place, a car, a garden. Out in the country. No neighbors close. A fine setup, Stevie.”

“It’s what I want,” Steve said.

He took his breakfast dishes to the sink; washed and rinsed them and left them to dry. He got his jacket from a hook in the hall. He put his lunch bucket and his jacket under his arm.

“I usually take the bus,” he said. “But I can drive you in.”

“Impatient,” Doc said. “Like I told Devers, Stevie’s an impatient guy. A friend all day long, but impatient.”

Steve put his lunch bucket back on the drainboard. He turned his back on Doc, his hands busy with the jacket, his fists hidden by it. “How much?” he said. “How much do you want to get the hell away and let me alone?”

“I asked for a bed and a meal or two.”

“Eight hundred,” Steve said. “That’s what we’ve got in the bank. We’ve both worked, both saved, so we could make a down payment on a service station. The eight hundred’s all we’ve got.”

“Eleven hundred and thirty-five,” Doc said. “I looked around after you went to bed. Your bank book’s in the desk.” He peered into his glass, smiling. “I don’t want your money. Just a bed and a meal and a quiet place to rest. You’re in a rush because you have to go to work. You run along, Steve. I found my way out here. I can find my way back.”

“I can drive you down.”

“Don’t push,” Doc said. “I’ve got time to waste. Better here than on a street corner. You go to work and I’ll take care of me.” He smiled again. “I haven’t had my coffee yet.”

“It’s not me that’s pushing,” Steve said. “I did what you asked. I even offered you money. But you won’t budge. You’re trying to scare me with Devers. Don’t count too much on that. If I have to, I can handle Devers.”

“Say you do,” Doc said. “It’s still a beef. It’s still trouble and you know what happens to an ex-con that gets in trouble. Bingo — no parole. Next thing you’re getting measured for that burlap coat again.” His smile was wide. “You’re taking this too big, Stevie. It’s just a friendly visit. For a day or two.”

“You had a meal and a bed. It’s time you left.”

“But not so early,” Doc said. “Later, after you’ve gone to work.”

“Is that a promise?” Steve asked.

“Stevie,” Doc said, “would I lie to you?”

“Did you ever do anything else?” Steve said.

The shop floor was crowded. Great Western Trucking — Pacific Terminal. A dozen of the big rigs were in for service, for pump checks, for tuning. Steve drew an old tractor. “A complete overhaul,” the foreman said. “More overtime for Lacy.” Steve rolled his wheeled tool chest up alongside the fender and went to work. His hands knew their job. His hands did the work, and he had time to think.

He’d punched a hole in Doc’s squeeze. Devers was tough — sure. But that part hadn’t scared Steve much. It was what would come afterward. A pair of ex-cons going for each other — one with a knife. Parole-board trouble. But not for just one; and Steve had finally realized that. If Lacy went back, Devers would go back too. So Doc’s threat was so much wind, and Doc must have known that all along. He’d probably stopped in just for kicks, just for the pleasure of playing cat-and-mouse. He’d get tired of sitting out there alone. He’d put on his hat and go away.

“Lacy,” a voice said. “Come here a minute.”

Pat Simms was standing beside the front wheel of the tractor, his hat on the back of his head, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his vest. Panic leaped inside Steve; a socket wrench got away from his hand to clatter on the floor. Simms, then Doc, now Simms again. Steve climbed down. He wiped his tools and put them on the swinging shelf of his toolbox.

“Quite a gadget,” Simms said. “Like the shelf a dentist uses.”

“I made it,” Steve said. “It works fine.”

He couldn’t read Simms’s face. The fat man’s thoughts were hidden behind his shiny eyes. Simms thumbed a toothpick from the pocket of his vest.

“I been waiting for you to call,” he said. “After that talk of ours, I figured you’d check in by phone.”

Steve said, “I’m not going to work for you. I told you that.”

“It’s not what a man wants, Lacy. It’s what he has to do.” Simms pointed the toothpick at Steve. “Take me. I love cigars, but I can’t have ’em. I got to do something, so I chew toothpicks, by the ton. It’s not what I want; it’s what I got to do. I’ve got ulcers, so I have to do what the doctors say. You’re on parole; you’ve got to do what I say. A man on parole’s in no position to be tough, Lacy.”

“Look,” Steve said. “All I’m asking is stay off my back.”

“Just call and tell me what you hear. What’s hard about that?”

“It’s rotten,” Steve said. “It’s dirty rotten work.” He scrubbed his hands with a rag. “I made a mistake — sure. I was a dumb kid. I’m still dumb. I thought a guy was God, the wrong guy. I thought a wrong guy was God and it cost me ten years.”

“Because a girl was shot,” Simms said. “That’s why.”

“I didn’t run,” Steve said. “I didn’t try to duck. I turned the motor off and sat right there till I got slugged. One mistake and I got the works. Now I want to be let alone. Mister, that’s all I want. Just get off my back.”

Simms took the shredded toothpick from between his lips. “You’ll call me,” he said. “If you’re smart, you’ll call me at headquarters and tell me what you hear.”

He walked away — a fat man whose feet made little sound on the concrete floor. Work for him and you were really in the grease. One call and you’d be his pet rat for the rest of your life, walking the gutter, listening to the whispers, reporting everything you heard. And for what? Would he go to bat for you? Would he lift a hand to help if you got jammed up? Like hell he would. You were a stool pigeon if you worked for him, lower than dirt. Those toothpicks he threw away meant more to him than any ex-con who ever breathed.

Steve climbed back on the fender of the tractor and went to work again. The things that happened to a man. Simms, then Doc, then Simms again. But Doc would be gone by now. Steve put his weight on the handle of a wrench; the socket slipped and he tore the skin of his knuckles. He sat there looking at the blood on the back of his hand, a new thought cold in his mind. Doc Pennypacker had turned his back on money. Doc, who couldn’t have so much he wouldn’t reach for more, hadn’t grabbed for the money. His squeeze had come unstuck — sure. But it wasn’t like Doc to let the money get away.

He chased that around and around in his head. Doc was an angle boy, shifty as smoke. A knuckle-buster couldn’t outthink a guy like Doc. Kick one squeeze apart and he’d come up with another, twice as nasty. If it was important to him, he could. Steve sucked the bruised flesh of his knuckles, that much clear in his mind. If Doc had dropped in for kicks — for the fun of playing cat-and-mouse — then he’d be on his way by now. But if it was bigger, if he had something special planned, he’d be there, smiling at his shoes, when Steve got home. He’d have something brand-new ready and waiting.

He was there. He was playing gin rummy with Ella. The two of them were in the living room, at a card table Ella had set up in front of Steve’s chair. Pennypacker was in Steve’s chair. He wore a clean shirt and a different suit. A loud shirt and a suit with shoulders. Where had he gotten those? He leaned back in the chair — a sharp-faced man with a big nose and a thin mouth. He gave Steve a hello smile.

“Stevie,” he said, “how’d it go?”

“It went,” Steve said.

He looked at Ella. His chest was tight and there was sweat on his back. Ella had been alone with Doc from six till midnight — the best in the world playing cards with a heel like Doc. And Ella was smiling. Her eyes were bright and laughing. Steve drew a deep breath.

“I won three dollars,” she said.

“Good girl,” Steve said.

From Doc Pennypacker she had won three dollars. That was one for the book. Doc Pennypacker had given her three dollars, letting her win, making her happy. But he had an angle; he had a knife for Steve’s ribs. His look said that. And Steve couldn’t do anything. Not yet. Not until he knew what Doc had come up with this time. Steve put his jacket in the closet and took his lunch bucket to the kitchen. The table was set for his midnight meal. Ella came into the kitchen after him.

“I’ll have the soup hot in a jiffy,” she said.

He put his big hands on her shoulders. Her face came up, a laughing face and he kissed her. He kissed her hard. She tipped her head back to look at him.

“Well!” she said. “That was something. I think I’ll have another one of those.” She had another one. “Good, good,” she said. “Now clean up. The soup will be ready when you are.”

Steve Lacy went into the living room. Doc Pennypacker was lighting a cigarette. His eyes flickered over the match flame. He smiled again.

“Lipstick,” he said. “A great girl, your wife.”

Steve wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, staring at Doc Pennypacker. He took a deep breath and let it go. Easy, now. He had to hold it down so Ella wouldn’t know how wrong things were. “Doc,” he said. His voice was all right. “I thought maybe you’d figured we had a lousy town and hit the road.”

“It’s a good town, Stevie,” Pennypacker said. “A fine town.”

“Quiet,” Steve said. “Nothing doing here.”

“Quiet I don’t mind,” Doc said. “I tell myself Stevie invited me for home cooking. A couple of days, for old times, for sitting around batting the breeze. I couldn’t tell the boys I left Stevie’s the first day. They wouldn’t believe it. They’d want to know why.”

From the kitchen, Ella said, “Get a move on, Steve.”

“Right away,” Steve said.

He went toward the hallway, still looking at Doc Pennypacker, Pennypacker looked back at him. That was all. No words. But the way Doc looked said plenty. His eyes flicked toward the kitchen, flicked back. “Careful,” Doc’s eyes said. “Your wife’s out there, Stevie. You don’t want to worry your wife.” Steve Lacy looked at Doc Pennypacker’s thin throat. His hands and arms ached.

He said “One minute, baby. That’s all I need.”

He went down the hall to the bathroom. The bathroom door would not open all the way. Doc Pennypacker’s bag was behind the door. He had gone out and got his bag and moved in. He’d moved in on Steve Lacy and his wife. Like that. And what was Lacy going to do about it? He looked at this guy, Lacy, in the mirror. A face with murder in it.

“Not till you know what he’s got in mind,” he told the guy. “Even then, think twice, think hard. One scramble, one spot of trouble and you’re back in the pen.”

He washed his hands and face and scrubbed them dry on a towel. He looked down at the bag. New and expensive and locked. Heavy. Guns were heavy. Steve Lacy felt a cold wind around his head. Who did he think he was kidding? Doc Pennypacker was not here for a bed and a free meal. Any dope would know that. One dope did know it. Finally. Steve put the bag down and went out into the kitchen.

Pennypacker and Ella were there. They had coffee steaming in front of them. Ella smiled. “I thought we’d have coffee with you, Steve.”

“Good,” Steve said.

“A coffee drinker, your wife,” Doc said. “We drank about a gallon during the gin game.” He smiled. “That’s how she does it. She gets me looped on coffee and takes my money away from me. A smart little girl, your wife.”

No girl was smart enough to win from Doc Pennypacker.

“An angel,” Steve said.

“I’ll buy that,” Doc said. He was being a great guy, one of the family. “I look at her and I remember Benny — Benny Hastle. You remember Benny. That dream girl he used to talk about? It comes to me, Stevie. This wife of yours is a perfect fit for Benny’s dream girl. Fresh. Sweet. A looker with class. Including the coffee. Benny always said, ‘Give me a girl that likes coffee.’ ” He looked at Steve Lacy. “Remember, Stevie?”

This was the knife in the ribs. This was Doc’s angle.

“I remember,” Steve said. His food tasted like mud.

“This Benny,” Pennypacker said to Ella. “A really swell joe. Big and handsome. A friendly guy. You’d like Benny Hastle.”

They all liked Benny — at first. That was his stock in trade.

Steve said, “You look tired, hon.”

“I am,” she said. “I’ll leave you two.”

She went out of the kitchen. Steve looked at Doc Pennypacker. One swing, one bat with the back of his hand and he could turn that long nose of Doc’s into a pulp. And it would be fine. It would be real fine.

“You moved in,” he said. “Move out again.”

Doc’s face was pained. “A couple of days, Stevie. Is that too much to ask a friend?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re kidding.” Doc’s cold eyes said he knew Steve wasn’t kidding. “You’re giving me the old dig. And that’s okay. But now we talk sense. You got a nice town here.”

Steve pushed his plate away, still full. He locked his big hands in front of him on the table, one holding the other.

“A quiet town,” he said. “No good for you, Doc.”

“Just right for me,” Doc Pennypacker said. “I been here before. You know? I looked around. There’s a thing here I like. I thought about it the last seven years. I looked today. It’s still here. I still like it.”

Now it was coming.

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Steve said.

“A soft touch? Don’t give me that.”

“Any kind of a touch,” Steve said. “Get it through your head. Now. Don’t go any farther with it.”

Doc Pennypacker leaned back to light a cigarette.

Steve Lacy was sweating. He could hear Pat Simms saying, “What you hear I hear.” Saying that, and opening the steel gate. “Or else, Lacy.” He hadn’t heard anything yet. If he didn’t hear anything he’d be all right.

“Listen to me, Doc.”

“I got you figured for a piece, Steve.”

A piece? A piece of the rap. Ten like the last ten. The hair crawled on Steve’s neck.

“You’ve got it figured wrong, Doc,” he said. “I don’t want a piece of anything you’ve got. Get it in your head. I don’t want any. I’m clean and I’m going to stay clean. All I want is a chance to work.”

“Work’s for horses.”

“For me. I don’t want anything else.”

“What you want—” Doc shrugged. “I need a man I can trust.”

“Not me.”

Pennypacker’s thin lips smiled. “I thought I’d made it all clear. But maybe not. So I’ll go through it again. There was Devers, Benny, and me. I’m going out. They got a few months left. We need a roll. I tell them about this town, this thing I remember here. It looks good. Who do we know in this town? Steve Lacy. Will he play ball with us? Sure. Steve’s a great guy. Besides, I hear he’s got a sweet girl for a wife. This Steve’s in love with his wife. Word gets around, Stevie. You know how we hear things down there.”

Steve knew.

“So it figures. Benny says I’m to tell you hello for him. Devers too. I tell ’em they’re all wrong; we won’t need anything like that. Stevie will play ball with his friends. They want me to tell you anyway. Especially Benny. The way it is — if something goes wrong, if somebody sings, they’ll collect. We have to collect. One guy sings and gets away with it, they’ll all sing. We got to stick together, Stevie. You know that.”

“No,” Steve said. “I don’t want any.”

“What I got in mind is easy, Steve. All you do is drive a car. I do the work, you drive. For that you get a twenty-five cut. It’s easy money, Stevie.”

Sweat stood on Steve’s face.

“I drove a car,” he said. “For that I did an easy ten years.”

“A punk, that Dianco. This is Doc Pennypacker talking. It makes a difference. I don’t miss.”

“You don’t miss? Where you been the last seven years?”

“Okay. A guy helped me, didn’t he? A no-good. A woman yelled and he came apart. You won’t come apart, Steve.”

“I keep telling you, I’m not in it.”

“You’re in it. I say so. Devers and Benny say so.”

Steve Lacy put his forehead on his hands. He did that to stop looking at Doc Pennypacker. He would take Doc by the throat if he kept on looking at him.

Doc said, “It’s the Zenner plant. A setup. Wholesale diamonds. We take it Thursday noon.”

And there it was.

Steve Lacy waited for something to happen inside him. A blowup. Something that would drive him out of his chair to collar Doc Pennypacker. Nothing happened. He thought of Ella in bed asleep and nothing happened. He got up slowly and began to clear the table. His full plate he emptied carefully in the garbage can so Ella wouldn’t know he hadn’t eaten. What good was a head on your shoulders if it wouldn’t work? His head wouldn’t work.

Doc Pennypacker said, “What d’you say, Steve? It’s big.”

“It’s lousy,” Steve said.

He ran water in the dishpan. Now his head began to work. Talk Doc out of it. Scare him out. If it looked too tough, Doc would go somewhere else. And it was tough.

“At noon!” he said. “For God’s sake, are you nuts?”

“That’s the trick,” Doc said. “Who’d figure it for noon? Me, and nobody else. Not them — not the Zenners. Too many people around. Okay, that’s what I like. I pick somebody, one of the customers. I put a gun in his back. I tell them they empty the box or the guy gets a hole in his back. They empty the box. Why? How would they look letting a customer get a hole just to keep their ice? When they got insurance. No, Stevie. They’ll give. And with you outside in that car. That fast car, Stevie. We get away clean.”

It was crazy. A hop dream. But Pennypacker would go for a crazy dream like that. The pen was full of guys like Pennypacker who went for dreams like that.

“Clean with what?” Steve said. “What have you got?”

“Twenty, thirty grand. Unmounted stones.”

“You think that’s something?”

“It ain’t tin.”

“Listen. Say it’s thirty grand. You’ve got to peddle those rocks. A fence pays you ten grand if you’re lucky. You split me a twenty-five cut. Say two for me, eight for you. Devers and Benny want in. More splits. If you come out of it with four grand, I’ll eat it.” He looked at Doc Pennypacker and found Doc grinning at him, shaking his head. “You think I’m wrong?” Steve said. “Okay. Double everything. What have you got? I can still make that much dough in a year with no gun in my hand and no rap waiting for me.”

“But you got to pay taxes, Stevie, boy.”

Doc Pennypacker was laughing at him.

This was the damnedest thing under the sun. The way these guys figured. Steve had heard them plenty, in the pen. Talking, talking, talking. How they were right and the rest of the world was wrong. The rest of the world was full of square-johns, guys dumb enough to work for a living, dopes. How come the smart guys were inside and the dopes outside? Ah, there’d been a little slip-up. But the next one. The next one would pay fine, a big haul.

Never mind trying to tell them about right and wrong. Break it down for them, like he had for Doc. Dollars earned against time spent in the pen. Not one in ten could show a dollar a day wages. But they couldn’t see it. They had a blind spot in their heads. They’d laugh at you, like Doc was laughing at him. They’d tell you you were the one with the crack in your head. While they were sitting their lives away behind the bars, they’d tell you that.

“This is a little piece of work,” Doc said. “A place to start. To pay expenses. The big jobs take time and money and organization. We’ll get to those, Stevie. Don’t worry. We’ll work up fast.”

“Maybe Fort Knox, eh?” Steve said.

Doc laughed at him. Doc wouldn’t be talked out of it. He wouldn’t scare. Steve looked down at his hands in the dishwater. Big hands, built for tools and engines, for washing dishes, for changing a baby. Not for guns. He couldn’t see a gun in those hands, ever. But he couldn’t see a way out of it.

“What do yah say, Steve?” Doc asked.

“I got to think,” Steve said.

“Sure,” Doc said. “If you got a brain behind that homely pan of yours go ahead and use it. Think about me and Devers and Hastle. Think about that lovely wife of yours, Stevie. You don’t want to make any mistakes. Sleep on it, Stevie. Think about it good.”

Ella was asleep. The tired clock on the bedside table groaned and whirred. Steve listened to the clock and tried not to hear Doc Pennypacker bubbling out on the davenport. He thought of Benny Hastle, the guy who was really dirt. Good-looking, eyelashes long enough to braid; but full of tricks. Women were Benny’s business — women and guns and dope, but women first. A girl worked for Benny two days, she had a job for life. Two days with Benny and they never went back; they couldn’t go back. And that coffee. Drink coffee with Benny and you were done. The coffee was Doc’s angle, his squeeze. The biggest squeeze of all. Doc’s way of saying, “Don’t cross us, Stevie. Don’t try to cross us, or we’ll get to Ella. One way or another, Stevie, we’ll get to that wife of yours.” Steve swore and turned, and Ella’s breathing changed. Ella was awake.

“Steve,” she said. “Can I ask you to do a favor?”

“Anything, Ella. You name it.”

“Take me out to the lake,” she said. “On a picnic. Just the two of us. I’ll do my shopping Thursday morning. I’ll get the groceries for the week. If you take the day off we can have all afternoon together at the lake.”

Thursday was her day off. He had forgotten that.

“Sure,” he said. “Whatever you say.”

“We’ll rent a canoe. We’ll go out to the island.”

“That island,” he said. “I love that island.”

“You think I don’t, Steve? The trouble I had with you. I thought you’d never ask me to marry you.”

“I had to tell you what you were getting into.”

“Then I told you,” she said. “You weren’t what they said, Steve. They put you in a cage, but they were wrong. They took ten years away from you and we had to hurry so we wouldn’t be too old to dance at our golden wedding.” Her hand found his. “I’m worried about you, Steve. You’re not sleeping the way you should.”

“I sleep all right,” he said.

“You will take me out to the lake. Promise, Steve.”

“Thursday afternoon,” he said. “I promise.”

She made a wordless sound of content and fell asleep again. That lake. He’d take her out there — he would if they didn’t have him in the cage again. He closed his eyes. No matter how his thoughts twisted and turned, there were barriers inside his head — Doc and Devers and Hastle in one direction; Pat Simms in another — barriers he couldn’t climb or get around no matter how he tried.

He closed his eyes and it was Wednesday. The clock on the bedside table yelled at him. His head still ached. The night hadn’t helped; he hadn’t found a way out yet. And Doc had used his razor again. It lay on the washbowl, still wet. Steve changed the blade and shaved. He showered and dressed and went out into the kitchen. Doc was sitting at the table with the morning paper and a glass of milk.

“What hit you, Stevie?” he said. “You look sick.”

“I’m sick of you,” Steve said.

“Just nerves. You’ll get over it.” Doc turned his attention to the paper. “The Clipper hits a homer yesterday,” he said. “The Yanks win again.”

“Doc,” Steve said, “that car of mine—”

“Save your breath,” Doc said. “I looked at it yesterday. I had coffee with your wife this morning. She told me how you worked on that car. How fast it is. The body’s beat up, but the motor’s fine. She says it’ll do a hundred. Maybe better.”

“This stick-up won’t work, Doc. It’s crazy.”

“It’ll work,” Doc said. “You’ll see.”

Wednesday, and the hours were like sand spilling through his fingers. He finished tearing the tractor motor down. He made a list of the parts he needed, and the supply room sent it back. “You’ve got one part down here three times,” the shop foreman said. “Three generators. You’re getting fuzzy. You need a day off.”

Steve said, “How about tomorrow?”

The foreman nodded. “Sure. It’ll do you good.”

It was the lunch hour then. Steve sat on the floor with his back against the wall, eating sandwiches he couldn’t taste. He kept his eyes on the floor and a pair of legs walked into his range of vision. Steve didn’t have to raise his eyes. He knew those heavy legs, those lightly moving feet.

“I asked you nice,” he said. “Simms, get off my back.”

“I was out of the station,” Simms said. “I thought maybe you’d called while I was gone. I thought I better check.”

“I told you I wouldn’t call. I’ve got nothing to say.”

Simms cleared his throat. A stub of toothpick fell on the floor between Steve’s feet — the wood Simms chewed, the cigar he couldn’t have. “Remember,” he said, “it’s not what a man wants; it’s what he has to do.”

“Let me alone,” Steve said.

The heavy legs went away. And Steve could hear the crash of a steel door closing. An ordinary guy — Joe Citizen, taxpayer — could have yelled for help. But not Steve Lacy. Lacy was an ex-con with a big ten on the book against him. With a cop like Simms, ex-cons weren’t human. They were things to be kicked around and used, stool pigeons and nothing else. And an ex-con’s wife — less than that. Less than the toothpick Simms had dropped on the floor. Lacy stared at the shredded bit of wood. No picnic at the lake — not tomorrow. He wondered if Ella would cry. No. Ella, baby, don’t waste your tears.

Thursday morning and the clock was yelling again. Sunshine fell through the bedroom window. There was a note on Ella’s pillow. “Darling. I’m taking the car so I can shop and get back early. We’ve got a date today... remember.” Lipstick in the shape of a kiss.

Steve sat on the edge of the bed, holding Ella’s note in his scarred hands. He felt old and heavy and very tired. All night in his dreams he’d tried to run while Doc Pennypacker and Pat Simms had laughed at him. He looked about the bedroom now, at the closet, the dressing table. Ella’s scuffed blue slippers were beside the dressing-table bench — one upright, one on its side. He could feel her presence in the room.

The taste of regret was bitter in his mouth. They let you out, but they didn’t let go. You took the place with you when you went down the road: the cell blocks, the yard, the foundry, the walls. You had it up there on your back, every stinking brick and bolt and bar of it, when you went down the road.

“Time you were getting up.” Doc Pennypacker stood in the doorway. “Your wife’s gone. We got some talking to do before she gets back.”

“No,” Steve said. “We’re all through talking.”

Doc’s blue eyes were cold. “You haven’t forgot Benny, Stevie.”

“No,” Steve said. “I’m going along. I’ll drive for you. But that’s all I’m going to do. Win or lose, Doc, that’s every damned bit all.”

“Good boy,” Doc said. “I love you, Stevie.”

Steve said, “Get out. I want to dress.”

Doc was waiting in the kitchen. He spread a map of the city on the breakfast table. “We got extra license plates,” he said. “I got ’em yesterday. After your wife gets back, you keep her busy and I’ll put ’em on with wire so we can yank ’em in a hurry.” His voice was tight and raw and he could not control the twitching in his hand. “Everything else is marked on the map, Stevie. We got one light to jump, and then we’re down the alley to the Drive. Then we roll. We hit the Drive and we roll and we’re in the clear. It’s a good plan, Stevie.”

A good plan — if the cops all dropped dead and the radio quit.

“You got it, Stevie? You know the route?”

“It’s my town,” Steve said. “I got it, Doc.”

“We leave here at eleven-thirty.”

“We leave at ten and then come back,” Steve said. “I got an errand to do. You can ride with me or you can wait.”

Doc said, “Errand. I don’t like this errand stuff.”

“Go away,” Steve said. “You spoil my breakfast.”

Doc Pennypacker folded the map and put it in his pocket. He took the sports page and sat on a stool by the stove. He rattled the paper, but he didn’t read. He was jumpy — as jumpy as Johnny Dianco’d been, and where was Johnny now?

“Your wife,” Doc said. “She just drove in.”

“I’ll help her unload the car,” Steve said.

He carried the groceries in — two boxes, two trips. Then he put his hips against the drainboard, leaning there, while Ella heaped her packages on the table. “I splurged,” she said. “Beer, and that cheese you like. We’re going to have a swell lunch, a swell picnic. There’s no wind. It’ll be warm on the island.”

“Sure,” Steve said. “It’ll be warm today.”

Doc Pennypacker said, “Stevie, it’s almost ten.”

He went out the back way and down the steps. Steve waited until he heard the car door close. “I’ve got an errand,” he said. “We’ll be right back.”

“I’ll pack the lunch while you’re gone.”

“After you kiss me, you will,” Steve said.

The shopping center was a mile from the house. The bank — Bay Road Branch — was open when Steve parked at the curb. Doc was at Steve’s side when he went through the door and up to the counter. Steve gave the girl the number of his safe-deposit box and signed the slip. Doc stayed at the counter, grinning, while Steve took the box into the booth and dumped its contents on the shelf. Steve endorsed the bonds — the thin sheaf of bonds — and that did not take long. He closed the box and took it back and went out through the counter gate.

“All done,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Doc said, “Quit worrying, Stevie. This’ll be a cinch.”

“So was the last one,” Steve said. “Get in the car.”

“That Dianco was a punk,” Doc said.

The car moved toward the city limits. Steve watched the road. The bonds were in Ella’s name now. The checking account was hers. He’d done what he could. The loose ends were all caught up — all but one.

“You had me sweating,” Doc said. “I’ll admit it now. You had me guessing, Stevie. I had a notion you might try to blow the whistle — even with Devers and Benny coming out. A crazy thing, but you were acting crazy. That errand of yours — that thing at the bank. A man wouldn’t do a thing like that if he was going to holler cop.”

“I said I’d drive,” Steve said. “I will.”

Doc said, “I know that now.”

Steve put the car in the garage and left Doc there to wire the extra plates in place while he went in the house. The lunch was packed, ready to go. Ella was doing the dishes, humming at her work. Steve got a tea towel from the rack.

“Doc’s leaving,” he said. “I’ll have to take him into town.”

“Can’t we drop him on the way?”

“No,” Steve said. “I’ll take him and then come back.”

“I’ll be waiting on the porch,” she said.

Doc came in and got his suitcase and took it out to the car. The clock on the kitchen wall said eleven-ten. Steve dried the coffee cups and put them carefully in the cupboard. Ella would be waiting on the porch. With her hat on and the lunch in a cardboard box, she’d be waiting on the porch.

“Ella, baby,” he said. “I love you. I want you to know that.”

She smiled at him. “I’m glad, Steve.”

The minutes ran away. Eleven-twenty. Eleven-twenty-five. Doc was kicking gravel in the drive. His suitcase was in the car. He’d opened and closed it there. The guns probably were on the front seat of the car. Or maybe Doc’s was tucked in the top of his pants under his coat.

“Steve,” Ella said. “What’s the matter?”

“I was just thinkin’,” he said, “of a guy I used to know.”

Doc was at the back door. “Stevie, I got a train to catch.”

Steve kissed the top of Ella’s head. He went out the door and down the stairs. Doc was already in the car when he reached the garage. Steve saw the shine of gun metal on the seat. He started the motor and let it run.

“What’s eatin’ you?” Doc said. “Why the funny look?”

“I’m goin’ back,” Steve said. “I’m going to kiss my wife good-by.”

“You did that once.”

“With you watching me, Doc. With you breathing on my neck.” Steve made a fist and rubbed it in an open palm. “Like you said, it happens that I love my wife. I’m going to say good-by to her alone or I don’t drive you. I do or I don’t play, Doc. That’s the way it is.”

“Chump,” Doc said. “You’ll see her in a day or two.”

Steve looked at Doc, but did not speak. He could not speak.

“Go ahead,” Doc said. “But make it short.”

The kitchen was empty. Ella was in the bedroom, singing there. She was cleaning up, making the bed. Steve went into the hall. He stood in the bedroom door. The telephone was on the wall of the hall, within the reach of his hand. He caught up the book, flipping through the yellow pages as Ella turned.

“Put your fingers in your ears,” he said. “This one I don’t want you to hear. I’m going to call my blonde.” He couldn’t keep the roughness from his voice. “Better yet,” he said, “put your head under a pillow. I don’t want you to know her name.”

“You’re going to take her on the picnic, Steve?”

There was laughter in her voice — laughter and trust.

“Get under the pillow,” he said. “I don’t want you to know.”

He had found the number he wanted. He was dialing now.

“You’re the boss,” Ella said. “You’re the man I love.”

She smoothed the bedspread, smiling still. She lay on the bed, face down, and pulled a pillow over her head. “Like this?” she said, and her laughing voice was faint. “Like this, while you date a blonde?”

“Just like that,” he said.

“Zenner Brothers,” a crisp voice said. “Wholesale diamonds.”

“Listen.” Steve spoke into the hand he’d cupped around the instrument. “Get this and get it straight. It’s eleven-thirty now. You’re going to be held up at noon. I mean that, man. At noon — straight up. Get cops. Get plenty of cops.”

“Held up?” the voice said. “Who is this?”

Steve said, “A friend of yours. A guy who knows.”

He put the receiver back on the hook, cutting the crisp voice short.

“I can’t hear a word,” Ella said. “Tell me when you’re through.”

He walked into the bedroom. He spatted her where she sat down, just hard enough to sting. She yelped and pushed the pillow away. He drew her to her feet. He kissed her hair and then he kissed her lips.

“The hell with the blonde,” he said. “She can’t compare with you.”

Ella smiled. “Say that again, Steve.”

The horn called him. Doc Pennypacker was on the horn.

“You’re the only one,” he said.

“Please,” Ella said. “Please hurry back.”

Steve got behind the wheel and started the motor again. He idled the motor until the oil pressure came up. He checked the ammeter. He could drive for Doc, but he couldn’t mistreat that motor. A sackful of kittens, a sweet and beautiful thing. He was going to hate being without that motor.

“You kissed her good-by?” Doc asked.

“Yeah.”

“A real girl,” Doc said. “You send her a wire in a couple of days and she’ll come running. She’ll stick, Stevie, thick or thin. You got nothing to worry about where that girl is concerned. Take it from old Doc.”

Steve got the car rolling.

So Doc didn’t know. That’s what came of being a muscle-head. You said you wanted to go back and kiss your wife and Doc bought it. It was the kind of dumb thing a guy with a face like his would do. Figure an angle — no! He couldn’t think his way out of a wet paper bag. Take this. Some answer he’d got for this. Maybe a little more time and he’d have found a way through. But now — one long slide, coming up.

“Plenty of time,” Doc said. “But don’t waste it.”

Steve drove a little faster.

Doc was quiet now. Outside. Inside he was keyed up, singing like piano wire. Little things came through. He pulled a cigarette in two trying to get it out of the pack. Not shaky; too strong. He breathed funny through that bugle nose. Doc was wire-tight. A man like that, what would he do when the trap sprung? Anything. You couldn’t tell. He might fall in a pile, he might fly to bits like a busted clock, he might start shooting. That gun in the customer’s back. A nervous jerk of that finger and they were gone. Steve’s big fingers crawled on the wheel, gripping it. You drive for a guy on a job and somebody gets killed, you split the gas chambers with him. That’s what happens.

“You know the way out?” Doc asked. “You’re sure?”

“It’s my town,” Steve said.

Doc swore. “Your town. What the hell, your town. I want to know. Give me the way out. What streets?”

Steve gave it to him.

“Okay,” Doc said. “Keep it solid in that thick head of yours. I don’t want any mistakes, see?”

It was a mistake that Doc had ever been born. He was a thickhead, sure; but that Doc had a crack in his. A mile wide. Why’d they ever let guys like Doc out of the pen? They ought to be able to tell. Steve Lacy could tell. He could take them through the pen, and point the right ones out. “This guy and this guy and that one. What they did was wrong and they know it. These others, they think what they did was right. Keep those.” That easy, you could tell.

Doc said, “Watch where you’re going, damn it!”

Steve had eased up to a stop street behind a truck, stopping close up to the truck. Not too close; the way he always did it. But Doc was wire-tight and jumpy. It scared Doc. A man like that with a gun. Lord, Lord!

He passed the truck. Two blocks, turn left. He was a guy in a dream. He could see and feel, he could taste the sweat on his lips, but it wasn’t real. It wasn’t Steve Lacy doing this. Not the kid who’d died a million times doing ten big ones in the pen. Vomiting, it was so tough. How long was a day in the pen? Somebody ought to measure that, the way a con measured it. How long was a night? You couldn’t measure a night. Take three-sixty-five of those and multiply by ten. But the second rap was longer. Multiply three-sixty-five by twenty-five. There wasn’t that much time in the world.

“See that sign?” Doc Pennypacker said. “That’s it, Stevie, boy. That’s our little baby.” He was sitting up, rubbing his hands fast on his legs. “Once around the block, Stevie. Just for size. We’ll give it a look.”

“Zenner Brothers,” the sign said. “Jewelry, Wholesale & Retail.”

A box of a store in the middle of the block. Glass brick for a front. Big windows. Plenty of stuff in the windows. A woman going in. A man with a cane coming out. An empty loading zone right in front of the place.

Cops? No cops.

“That’s our baby,” Doc Pennypacker said. “We’ll take the candy right offa that baby. How about that, Steve? Forty grand, easy. Maybe more. A place like that, a cinch.”

Where were the cops?

Steve turned at the corner. On this street, a street-car track. Trucks unloading. A narrow, tough street to drive. No cops. Another corner and Steve turned again. He saw a cop. A beat cop, fifty-five if he was a day. With a belly. A block and a half from the store. He could run that distance in a half a day. Some cop to have around when you needed one.

Another corner. This was a wider street, smooth and easygoing. Who was wire-tight, now? The hair on the back of Steve’s neck was so tight it hurt. Steve rubbed the back of his neck hard with the palm of his hand. No shakes, but how tight. One more corner.

Doc Pennypacker said, “One more pass, Stevie. One more ride by so I can get a look inside.”

And still no cops. Empty cars lined the street along the curbs. Characters ambling up and down. Nobody in particular. Just people doing whatever they’d done all their lives. Ordinary characters, but no cops. What did they think — that call was a joke? He would have had cops lining the street like an army.

“Fine,” Doc Pennypacker said. “Real fine.”

Steve could see through the big window. Three people inside now. One behind the counter, two in front. A man and a woman, buying a ring, maybe. A wedding ring, sure. That guy behind the counter. That pantywaist. He would be a big help. He’d faint dead away. The box, the big box, where they kept the good ice, was down at the end with the door open. They could close that door and not go far wrong.

The narrow street again, the streetcar tracks. A corner. The fat cop, talking to a little kid. He was a kid’s kind of cop, that’s what he was. Another corner, the wide street. Doc Pennypacker was fooling with his gun. A good piece of machinery — fitted and polished and oiled. An ex-con could never own a gun. Tough for a man who liked finely worked metal.

“You’re doing all right, Steve,” Doc Pennypacker said. “Steady and cool. That’s what I like about you, boy. You’re just right for the job. A guy with brains gets nervous, sitting and waiting. Guys like that get pictures in their heads. They get scared.”

“I’m scared,” Steve said.

“Sure, sure.” Doc laughed.

It was a funny kind of laugh, a whinny like a horse. His bugle was really whistling now. In and out, in and out, fast. The guy was strung tight.

Another corner.

“This time put it in the slot, Stevie,” Doc said. “This time we go.”

Steve held the car close to the parked cars, not fast, not slow. Just right. Nobody new around, nobody different. No cops, not a single cop. You could talk your head off and nobody listened. A great big lousy stinking world, it was.

“Easy does it,” Doc said.

Steve nosed the car into the loading zone, swung it out again going up abreast of the car parked ahead. He turned the wheels and backed smoothly in, exactly in. No two passes, no cutting back and forth. Perfect the first time, the rear wheels rubbing the curb light and easy, the front wheels cramped for a smooth go-away.

“On the nose,” Doc said. “For that I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Right now, I could use a drink,” Steve said.

“Atta kid,” Doc said. “I’m on my way.”

He got out of the car. He was on his way. They were both on their way. Like this you cut a piece right out of your life. Twenty-five. A big piece. For money? God, no! Not for all the dough in the world. Doc Pennypacker closed the car door to the latch and no farther. Easy to open. He crossed the sidewalk in no great hurry. Steve could see through the window. Still the guy and the girl, buying the ring. Getting all set, those two. No twenty-fives out of their lives. No walkers like Doc Pennypacker tramping up out of their pasts. And no Benny slugging her coffee.

Doc Pennypacker opened the glass door. Nothing happened. He was inside. He was walking funny, like a guy on ice. Anybody could see what was coming, anybody with sense. But not the pantywaist. He gave Pennypacker a look and went on selling the guy and the girl.

Pennypacker picked the girl. He would do that, that louse of a Pennypacker. He went up behind her, close, and put the gun in her back. Nobody moved. The clerk didn’t faint. Nobody fainted, nobody yelled, nobody screamed. Nothing happened. But plenty was happening inside Steve Lacy. He could feel his insides jumping up and down, going crazy. You do your damnedest and nobody believes you.

The clerk went to the big box. He came back with a tray. Envelopes were on it, lots of them, and little wrapped packages. They spilled out on the counter. They went into Doc Pennypacker’s pockets.

Maybe they would believe that.

Doc Pennypacker came away from the girl, backing up. Across the floor, backward, his gun on the three of them to the door. He got to the door. His left hand went behind him to open it. He turned his head a little bit. A little bit he turned his head and that was it.

Those cops. There was one somewhere in the back of the store, a sharpshooter, that cop. He put one in Doc Pennypacker’s shoulder, a big one that spun him around and knocked him through the door. The girl disappeared. The clerk and the guy in front of the counter had guns on Doc Pennypacker. And two more had come out of nowhere on the sidewalk to land on Doc Pennypacker. And that was it.

Steve Lacy cut the switch and killed the motor. Like before. That other time it was just like this. Now he had it ahead of him again — twenty-five long ones. He put his hands over his face. Mother of God, those long years.

But no slugged coffee for Ella. Doc, Hastle, and Devers would know it was a loused-up job. The cops waiting. But he was going with Doc, wasn’t he? A twenty-five for him too. So it couldn’t be him that’d spilled. They’d leave Ella alone. “Those damn cops,” they’d say. “Those damn cops got lucky.” Ella, baby. A hell of a thing, but don’t waste your tears. A dumb guy. An ex-con. A stacked deck, a rigged deal. Right from the start, a loused-up thing.

Ella baby.

“You slob,” Pat Simms said that. “You soft-headed slob,” Pat Simms, the cop, was yanking at the handle of the rear door. He was in the back seat. “Start the motor, Lacy.”

Steve leaned forward to reach the switch. The motor caught — velvet and kittens, that motor. Steve put his hands on the wheel. Simms was going to make him drive to the station. He’d do that. If he was going to hang you he’d make you bring your own rope. He was sitting in the corner of the back seat. Steve could see his cheek, an ear, a slice of hat brim in the mirror.

“Down Fourth,” Simms said. “To Washington.”

Steve cramped the wheel. He put out his hand and pulled away from the curb. He was going up. They were going to hit him with the book and he put out his hand so he wouldn’t get a ticket. He moved with the traffic flow. His head was numb. He couldn’t think. He stopped for a red light, moved on again.

“You slob,” Simms said.

Steve didn’t answer that. Simms didn’t want an answer. His whole face was in the rear-view mirror now; a stub of toothpick bobbing in the corner of his mouth. A fat man, a hog with ulcers, chewing a toothpick because he couldn’t have a cigar.

“This’s a nice buggy,” Simms said. “Motor sounds good.”

“The hell with you,” Steve said.

Simms said, “Turn right at the corner.”

“I know where the station is.”

Simms said, “Turn right, Lacy.”

Steve put out his hand again. West on Washington. Across the bridge. They weren’t going to the Central Station. Harbor Precinct or the West Side Station then. Where they could put you on ice. Where they could work on you for a week before they wrote your name on a blotter.

“You’re an ugly guy,” Simms said. “You got scrambled eggs for brains. Take a wrench out of your hand and you can’t find your way across the street.”

The hair crawled on Steve’s neck. Ella, baby.

“Some guys learn,” Simms said. “Some don’t. Repeaters, plenty of them. Once isn’t enough. How many times has Pennypacker been up? The smart boys write it all down in a book. Percentages and numbers. The hell with percentages. What good is a table of numbers for a cop? You want to find out if a guy is wrong — lean on him, that’s how you find out. Ride him, ride the hell out of him. If he’s wrong he cracks. If he’s rotten it shows up.”

Not Harbor Precinct. Harbor was behind them. West Side Station then. Out in the sticks where they could take their time. Where you could fall downstairs before they wrote your name on the blotter.

“Three years I let you alone,” Simms said. “You got a job, a wife, a bank account. You’re a good mechanic. Your foreman says you’re a good hand.” Simms spat the shredded toothpick from his lips. “Then I come around. After three years of letting you alone. You think that’s an accident? You got mush in your head. Where do these guys come from — the fast hustle boys, the boys with the guns? Out of the pen — that’s where they come from. We’ve got wires in the pen. We hear all the whispers. One of the fast boys goes to spit, we know about it.”

The cops had known it was coming. They’d known it all the time.

“Doc talks too much,” Simms said. “We knew where he was going and what he was going to do before he ever walked out of the gate. ‘He’s going to see Lacy; Lacy’s going to drive for him.’ That’s what the whispers said. So I start riding you. If you’re wrong I want to know it.”

The car ran on. Sunshine in the streets. Stores. People walking on the sidewalks. A kid with a quart of milk. A beer sign. Ella had beer in a cardboard box. Ella was waiting on the porch.

“It’s eleven-thirty,” Simms said. “You’re going to be held up at noon. At noon — straight up. And who’s this talking? A friend of yours. A guy who knows.” There was a fresh toothpick in Simms’s mouth. “You slob,” he said. “You think we didn’t know Doc was staying with you? Your phone’s been tapped for two weeks. We’ve been reading your mail.”

Steve rubbed his neck. Sweat stung his eyes.

“Straight ahead,” Simms said. “Drive on.”

Bay Road. The big freeway that cut the city like a knife.

“You didn’t crack,” Simms said. “I rode the hell out of you and you didn’t crack. You used the phone. You cut it thin, but you used the phone. We had time to have it rigged for Doc.” Simms rubbed his face. His beard was sandpaper under his hand. “Stop here,” he said. “Pull over and stop.”

Steve stopped. This was no place. This was a curb alongside a vacant lot. The West Side Station was a mile away. Bay Road ran straight ahead.

“Next time call me,” Simms said. “A cop’s job is to protect the citizens, the taxpayers. You want help, you got trouble, call me. You’ll have to call, Lacy. I won’t be around unless you do.”

That Simms — that beautiful man. Old and tired. His face was tired. He put his hand on the door latch. He let the door swing open, but he didn’t get out. He flipped the toothpick through the door and fumbled in his vest.

“You won’t have any trouble,” he said. “No matter what they told you; no matter what the whispers say. No trouble, Lacy. Nothing you can’t handle. But if you need me — call.”

“I’ll call,” Steve said. “Like a taxpayer should. I’ll call.”

“The hell with the ulcers.” Simms had a cigar in his hand. He lit a match. He was a long time lighting his cigar. He rolled the smoke around his mouth tasting it. “Good,” he said. “Tomorrow the ulcer’ll be kicking up, but I figured today was the day for a cigar.” He smiled a little. “As ugly as you are,” he said, “I don’t know how anybody could love that face. But your wife loves it. Go on home, Lacy. And sleep easy.”

“Today we’re going on a picnic,” Steve said.

A couple of kids started playing catch in the vacant lot. A woman went by with a sack of groceries. An inbound bus appeared far down Bay Road. Simms got out of the car and closed the door.

“Have fun,” he said. “Tell your wife hello.”

He went across the street to catch the bus.

On the Make DASHIELL HAMMETT

Original publication: The Hunter and Other Stories (New York, Mysterious Press, 2013)

During the late 1920s, Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961), having had tremendous success writing for Black Mask magazine, the greatest of the mystery pulp magazines, saw his serialized novels published to great acclaim and movie money came along soon after. Having priced himself out of the pulp market, he wrote for such “slick” magazines as Collier’s, Redbook, and Liberty and then inevitably found himself in Hollywood, working for Howard Hughes’s Caddo Productions, Warner Brothers, Universal Studios, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, among others.

One of the original screen stories he wrote was “On the Make,” which was filmed as Mr. Dynamite (1935). The story is a lengthy scenario, complete with dialogue, carefully described characters, and a richly complex plot. It was never published in his lifetime, making it into print for the first time in 2013.

“On the Make” begins as the type of story one would expect from Hammett, with a totally broke Gene Richmond placing an advertisement for a secretary to assist in his new private detective agency. He has to pay five dollars to the man who painted the sign on his door with three single dollar bills and loose pocket change — and even tips him a quarter.

The young woman who applies for the job is nervous when she hands the reference letters he asks to see because, as he quickly ascertains, they are forgeries. She has spent the past five years in prison, assisting her boss to embezzle. She suspects Richmond is not entirely on the up-and-up but takes the job out of desperation in spite of her fear that she’ll wind up in jail again, once more being involved with someone on the wrong side of the law.

Her fears are well-founded as Richmond is not like Hammett’s other private detectives who may not always adhere to the law but have a code of honor.

Richmond takes on several cases with no intention of working on them, instead taking retainers and calling the police, figuring they’re better at recovering stolen antiques and finding missing teenagers than he is. After billing for hours, nonexistent assistants, and expenses, he returns a small portion of the advances when the mysteries are solved.

On what he believes will be his biggest score, he connives to extract a big payoff from a multimillionaire whose beautiful daughter has fallen in love with him. When he is found out, he realizes he has lost out on marrying into the ultrawealthy family.

Title: Mr. Dynamite, 1935

Studio: Universal Pictures

Director: Alan Crosland

Screenwriters: Doris Malloy, Harry Clork

Producer: E. M. Asher

• Edmund Lowe (T. N. Thompson/Mr. Dynamite)

• Jean Dixon (Lynn Marlo)

• Victor Varconi (Jarl Dvorjak)

• Esther Ralston (Charmian Dvorjak)

The promotion, advertising, and lobby posters gave extraordinary credit to Hammett, with his name on the posters the same size as the title, identifying the film as Dashiell Hammett’s Mr. Dynamite.

While it was unusual to see an author’s name displayed more prominently than the title and the star actor, this attention was remarkable on two counts. First, Hammett had written the scenario for Warner Brothers and they turned it down. Darryl Zanuck had commissioned the story as a follow-up to The Maltese Falcon (1931), also featuring Sam Spade. Zanuck claimed that “the finished story [had] none of the qualifications of The Maltese Falcon.” Hammett recovered the rights to his story, changed the detective’s name to Gene Richmond, and after some rewriting sold the treatment to Universal, with yet another name change. Although Hammett’s name apparently was the main attraction, he did not even write the screenplay.

Second, and even more extraordinary, the film has nothing to do with Hammett’s story.

Mr. Dynamite begins with concert pianist Jarl Dvorjak inviting an attractive young woman to his house to hear him play while his wife is away. He then goes to a casino owned by the young woman’s father, where he meets a young man who has won handsomely. They exchange heated words and when he is murdered just outside the casino, Dvorjak denies that he has ever met him.

When the police close down the casino, private detective T. N. Thompson (nicknamed Mr. Dynamite because of his initials) is hired to solve the murder, vowing to do it before the San Francisco Police Department can do it. There are more bodies, including Dvorjak, who is shot to death while playing the organ for the young woman.

While Hammett’s private eyes have many laudatory traits, they could not be considered warm and lovable, but Thompson can most generously be described as unpleasant. His animosity toward the police is evident in his sneering, insulting tone, and he even steals evidence at crime scenes to frustrate them or to enable him to solve the crimes before they do. He also has no compunctions about buying expensive jewelry and furs for his girlfriend and charging the cost to his clients as expenses.

Edmund Lowe made his debut in silent films but moved seamlessly into sound pictures, starring in more than a hundred films before becoming a supporting actor. He did a good job as T. N. Thompson in Mr. Dynamite but his sarcastic remarks were seldom as amusing as those made by Jean Dixon, who played his wisecracking secretary.

ON THE MAKE Dashiell Hammett

Close-up of a railroad station newsstand. Gene Richmond, his back to the camera, is leaning over the counter talking to the girl in charge. His voice is blotted out by the combined sounds of hurrying feet, puffing locomotives, rattling trucks, clanging gates, distant cries of newsboys and taxi-drivers, and a loudspeaker announcing unintelligibly the names of cities for which a train is about to leave.

Widen shot to show two burly men standing on either side of Richmond a little behind him. They are typical police detectives. One looks at his watch, then taps Richmond’s shoulder. “Come on, Richmond,” he says, “your go-away’s leaving.”

Richmond straightens and turns putting a couple of packages of cigarettes in his pocket. He smiles mockingly at the police detectives and says: “Boys, this is breaking my heart.” He picks up his Gladstone bag.

One of them growls somewhat bitterly: “It’d’ve broke your heart a lot more if you hadn’t had dough enough to fix it so you could leave town this way instead of going up the river with cuffs on you.”

The other one says impatiently: “Come on. What are you trying to do? Miss the train so you can give the twist” — he jerks his head a little toward the girl behind the counter — “a play?”

Richmond chuckles. “That might be nice, too,” he says. He turns his head over his shoulder to say, “By-by, baby,” to the girl, then walks away from the newsstand between the two police detectives.

At the gate, Richmond produces his ticket, one of the detectives shows his badge, and they go through with him, the gateman looking curiously after them. They walk down the platform beside a train, past Pullman cars where porters are already swinging aboard. A few passengers are hurrying down past them. Train-hands are shouting, “All aboard.” Richmond seems in no hurry and undisturbed by his companion’s scowls.

Finally they reach the day coaches. One of the detectives jerks his thumb at the entrance to the first coach and growls: “And don’t forget — the orders are ‘out of town and stay out!’ ”

Richmond puts a foot on the bottom step as the train slowly starts to move and, holding on with one hand, his bag swinging in the other, smiles at the detective and replies: “I won’t forget. And any time you bums are fired off the force for getting brains, look me up. I’ll be running an agency somewhere — with ex-coppers working for me. Ta-ta! Give my love to the Chief.” He climbs aboard.

The two police detectives stare after the departing train. One of them sighs as if relieved and says: “That’s a good day’s work. One crooked private dick like him can make more trouble than a hundred out-and-out thugs.”

The other rubs a hand across his chin and shakes his head a little. “It’s plenty of bad news for some other city,” he says.

The first one shrugs. “That ain’t our grief,” he says.

They turn back toward the gates.

Close-up of a glazed office door on which a hand is lettering:

Enlarge to show painter starting to work on V, then inside to an unoccupied but furnished outer office (wooden railing fencing off space for visitors, three wooden chairs for them; one desk facing railing, another desk at other end of room, filing cabinet, wastebaskets, telephones, etc., all somewhat worn) and to a wooden door marked PRIVATE, and through this to a room where Gene Richmond is sitting at a desk, a cigarette in his mouth, looking narrow-eyed through smoke at a mannish looking woman of about thirty in mannish clothes who is seated in a chair beside the desk.

She is saying: “...and, as I wrote you when I answered your advertisement, I’ve had experience in bookkeeping and general office work as well as stenography.”

Richmond nods slowly, still looking narrow-eyed at her, and asks: “References?”

“Yes,” she says quickly and begins to fumble with nervously clumsy fingers at her handbag.

Richmond looks interestedly at her fumbling fingers.

She brings out two letters of recommendation of the typical to-whom-it-may-concern sort, one on the letterhead of Wheeler & Nicholson, Chemicals, the other The Tidewater Manufacturing Corp., and gives them to Richmond.

He does not read the letters, but leans forward to snap on his desk lamp, lays the letters on the desk so the signatures are close together, and bends over them to scrutinize the signatures closely. The signatures are John G. Hart and Lewis Melville.

The girl looks at him with frightened eyes.

After studying the signatures briefly Richmond turns to her, smiling sardonically, tapping the letters contemptuously with the back of one hand.

She tries to banish the fear from her face.

“A pair of phoneys,” he says. “You signed them yourself and made a bum job of it.”

“Why, Mr. Richmond,” she exclaims with all the indignation she can assume, “that—”

He interrupts her carelessly. “Come here and I’ll show you, Miss Crane — so you can do it better next time.”

Divided between the indignation she thinks it policy to assume and curiosity as to how he discovered what she had done, she slowly rises and moves nearer.

Richmond picks up a pencil and bends over the letters again. His manner is that of an expert good-naturedly pointing out the mistakes of a novice. “First,” he says, touching the Hart signature with the point of his pencil, “this is written with a fine point, the letters slant forward, and the end letters” — he touches points A and B on the insert — “end with an upward stroke. This” — he indicates the Melville signature — “written with a heavy point, the letters slant backwards, and the final letters” — touching points C and D on the insert — “end bluntly. See what I mean? Everything just opposite. Another funny thing — none of the letters in the Hart signature appear in the Melville signature — the sort of thing you’d do if you weren’t sure you could make the same letter different enough in each.” He leans back in his chair and grins at her. “An amateur job — all those things too decidedly different.”

He returns his attention to the signatures, saying: “Now let me show you something else.” His pencil touches points E and F. “See those spaces. They’re exactly the same as this,” touching point G. “See the end of this W and the I” — touching point H — “and the end of the v and the i” — touching point I — “well, if you forget the dots they make r’s that are exactly like this one” — touching point J — “except they are written backhand instead of sloping forward.”

He drops his pencil on the letters and rocks back in his chair, turning his derisive grin on her again. “Now isn’t that funny? All the things an amateur would be likely to think about are different. All the others are alike.”

She stares at him as if trying to make up her mind what attitude to take. He watches her amusedly for a moment, then asks: “Well, shall I call up the Messrs. Hart and Melville and ask them about it?”

She bites her lip, then lowers her head, her shoulders droop a little, and she says in a defeated tone: “There isn’t any Hart, any Melville.”

“You surprise me,” he says with good-natured mockery. He regards her lowered face for a moment, then, indicating the letters, asks curtly: “Why these, sister? Too lousy a stenographer to get real ones?”

She raises her head indignantly, but immediately becomes spiritless again. “No,” she says in a dull, hopeless voice, but speaking very deliberately, “but the only real ones I could give for the last five years would be no good. I’ve been in prison.”

Richmond blows out cigarette smoke and nods slowly in the manner of one whose guess has been confirmed. “I thought I recognized the prison look,” he says. Then he chuckles. “What’d you do? Stick up the Mint singlehanded? Anybody in your fix with nerve enough to walk into a detective’s office—”

She interrupts him fiercely: “Nerve? It wasn’t nerve, it was desperation. I’d try any—”

Now he interrupts her, and his smile is a sneer: “I know! I know, sister! Trying to go straight — your record against you — hounded by the police — I’ve heard it all before.”

She, still fiercely: “Go straight? I’m reaching a point where I don’t care what I do so I do something, don’t care whether I go straight or—” Her voice is becoming shrill with hysteria.

He flutters fingers at her and interrupts her once more, in a half-serious soothing manner: “Sh-h-h! You’ll wake up the office boy next door.” Then his face and voice become altogether serious. “Sit down,” he says, “and let’s talk reasonably.”

She sits down slowly, face and manner lifeless again.

He rocks comfortably back in his chair and asks in a friendly tone: “What’d they send you over for?”

She replies: “I was working for the president of an investment trust named Queeble. He was using the trust funds for his own speculations. I was his secretary and knew what he was doing, helped him. Both of us thought he was smart enough to get away with it. Well, he wasn’t, and when he got fifteen years I got what I got. Maybe you remember it. My name was Helen Crewe then. It’s Helen Crane now.” She recites all this with no emotion at all except some weariness, and when she has finished she sits looking expressionlessly at Richmond, as if expecting nothing, fearing nothing.

Richmond lights a fresh cigarette, leans back in his chair, and smokes and stares thoughtfully at the ceiling for a considerable while. Then he faces the girl again and says casually: “You can take your hat and coat off and go to work.”

Her eyes widen. She stares at him in uncomprehending surprise.

He says: “I can use a secretary whose record shows she can do what she’s told and keep her mouth shut. You say you want a job. Want this one?”

She rises eagerly. “Yes, sir! I don’t know how to—”

He cuts her thanks short by handing her the two letters of recommendation and saying: “Bury these and make yourself at home in the outer office.”

She takes the letters as if dazed and goes out.

Richmond watches her until she has shut the door, then makes a brief nod of satisfaction at the door, picks up a newspaper from his desk, squirms a little more comfortably into his chair, and begins to read. He looks up when Helen — without hat or coat now — opens the door.

“The man has finished lettering the door,” she says. “He says it’s five dollars.”

He says carelessly: “Tell him we’ll mail him a check.”

“Yes, sir,” she says and goes out, but returns almost immediately to say: “He says he wants it now, Mr. Richmond.”

Richmond starts to frown, clears his face, and replies: “Oh, all right, send him in.”

He puts his hand in his right-hand trouser pocket and brings out three crumpled paper bills and some silver, counting it surreptitiously in the shelter of the desk. When he has counted out five dollars there are only a few pieces of silver left. He shrugs philosophically and puts them back in his pocket.

The sign-painter comes in.

Richmond says cheerfully: “Five dollars? Here it is,” and hands the man the three bills and some silver. Then, as the man says, “Thank you, sir,” and turns away, Richmond says, “Wait — buy yourself a cigar,” and gives the man a coin from the scanty remainder in his pocket.

The man grins, says, “Thank you, sir,” again, touches his cap, and goes out, shutting the door behind him.

Richmond takes his few remaining coins from his pocket, looks ruefully at them, takes a deep breath, returns them to the pocket, and with a determined movement picks up the newspaper again. He turns briskly to the Personal column, runs his gaze down it, pausing momentarily at a couple of items having to do with missing persons, and then turns back to the news section of the paper. He skips all out-of-town items, reading only those having to do with local divorces, suits, crimes, scandals, etc. These he reads carefully, and spends a moment in thought after each before going on to the next.

He comes to one very small item tucked away in a lower corner of the page.

Richmond stares thoughtfully at this item, pursing his lips, then his face lights up, he rises from his chair, thrusts his hands in his pockets, and walks twice up and down the floor, swiftly, smiling to himself. Then he snaps his fingers as if the idea he wanted had come to him, sits down again, and reaches for the telephone book. He finds Bachman’s number and calls it.

“I should like to speak to Mr. Bachman,” he says into the phone after a little pause. “It is about the Chinese snuff-bottle... Thanks.” He drums cheerfully on the desk with his fingers while waiting for Bachman. Then: “Hello. Mr. Bachman?”

The other end of the wire. An extremely tall and bony old man with a tremendously bushy growth of white whiskers and no hair at all on his head. “Yes,” he says excitedly. What is it? What is it?”

Richmond, very suavely: “This is Gene Richmond speaking. You probably know my detective agency by reputation — possibly we’ve—”

Bachman, impatiently: “Yes, yes! But what is it about the bottle? Have you found it?”

Richmond smiles at the preposterous. “Yes-yeses” and continues in the same tone as before: “Certain information that may lead to its recovery has come into my possession during the course of certain other investigations we are making, and I—”

Bachman: “Yes, yes! Where is it?”

Richmond: “I’m sorry I can’t tell you that, Mr. Bachman, and even the information I have may be worthless, but if I can see you I’ll be only too glad to give it to you. I can’t very well tell you over the phone. Shall I come out to your house?”

Bachman: “Yes, by all means, but what—?”

Richmond: “I’ll be there in half an hour.” He hangs up, pushes the phone aside, and rises. He puts on his hat and goes into the outer office.

Helen is standing looking out a window. She turns toward him.

He takes off his hat and makes a courtly bow. “Our first client,” he says, “is a gentleman named Bachman, Sidney F., who’s lost a bottle of snuff. You may open an account for him whilst I’m out gathering the sordid details.” He bows again and goes out, leaving her staring after him.

He goes downstairs in an elevator and out to the street. A taxicab is standing a little distance from the office building entrance. He starts toward it briskly, puts a hand to the pocket his few coins are in, makes a rueful grimace, and runs for a passing street-car.

The front of a pretentious suburban home. Richmond goes up the steps and rings the doorbell. The door is opened by a stout manservant.

Richmond says: “Mr. Richmond. Mr. Bachman is expecting me.”

The servant bows and stands aside for him to enter.

A room in Bachman’s house. Richmond is seated. Bachman is standing in front of him, close, his bony shoulders high, his bearded face thrust down toward Richmond, his body bent into a question mark. He is demanding excitedly: “But what, exactly, is it you have learned?”

Richmond looks steadily into the tall man’s eyes for a moment, then gravely replies: “Mr. Bachman, before I speak I must have your promise that you will divulge nothing of what I tell you to the police until I give you permission.”

“But why?”

“I have my clients’ interests to protect,” Richmond explains smoothly. “As I told you, this information came to me while working on another matter. To have the police rush in with their usual clumsiness might spoil this other matter for my client. I cannot risk that.”

Bachman becomes apoplectic with rage. “I am to suffer for your client!” he shouts. “I am to lose my most valued possession forever so some other man’s — what was it? — interests are protected! What about my interests? I won’t do it. I don’t know your other man! I don’t care about him! I want my bottle! You’ll tell me or I’ll call the police now and have them with their usual clumsiness force you to tell.”

Richmond, who has been calmly looking at the angry man from under raised eyebrows, says coolly: “Go ahead — and then you and the police can try to guess whether what I tell is true or phoney.”

An alarmed look comes into Bachman’s face. “No, no,” he says hastily, “I didn’t mean that, Mr. Richmond. I was excited. I—”

“That’s all right,” Richmond says carelessly. “Now how about that promise?”

“How long — how long will it be before I can tell the police?” the collector asks in a wheedling voice.

Richmond’s shoulders move in a little shrug. “I don’t know. It depends on—” He breaks off with an impatient gesture. “Here’s what happened, Mr. Bachman. I have an operative in — in an eastern city trying to locate some stolen property. It too is decidedly valuable. In the course of his investigation he had traced it to — a buyer of rarities, we’ll say, but it developed that what had been offered to this buyer was not our article. My man, of course, paid little attention to the other article then — all he learned was that it was small, old, and Chinese.”

“That is it!” Bachman cries. “That is certainly it! Who is this buyer?”

Richmond raises a protesting hand and shakes his head slowly. “As I told you, Mr. Bachman, I can’t jeopardize my own client’s interests by allowing the police or anyone else to come charging in, stirring things up, frightening—”

Bachman: “But you said this man hadn’t bought your client’s property. What difference does it make then?”

Richmond: “I said the thing we traced to him wasn’t my client’s. Because a false trail led to him doesn’t necessarily mean that the true one won’t.”

Bachman, despairingly: “But, Mr. Richmond, you can’t make me wait and wait and risk—” He breaks off as a thought comes to him. He holds out his hands in a pleading gesture and begs: “Suppose I too become your client. Suppose I engage you to recover it. Then you can handle it in your own way without fear of spoiling your other client’s—”

Richmond, staring levelly at the collector: “I didn’t come here to sell you my services. I came to give you what information I had.”

Bachman, wheedling: “But you will handle it for me, Mr. Richmond? I’ll pay you well. I’ll—”

Richmond: “Besides, we’ve no assurance that the Chinese thing offered was your snuff-bottle; no assurance that we can find it anyhow. I don’t know whether this person I mentioned actually bought it or not.”

Bachman: “But you can find out. Will you, Mr. Richmond?”

Richmond, a bit reluctantly: “Well, if you wish.”

Bachman grasps one of Richmond’s hands and shakes it warmly: “Thank you, sir,” he says. “You won’t regret it.”

Richmond, politely: “Oh, that’s all right. Let’s see, you’d better give me a check for, say, two hundred and fifty dollars to cover initial expenses.”

Bachman eagerly: “Splendid! Come downstairs and I’ll make it out now.”

Richmond rises. They leave the room together, one of the collector’s long thin arms affectionately across the detective’s shoulders.

Richmond’s outer office. Helen Crane is sewing the seam of a glove. She puts it down as Richmond comes in from the corridor. He is all smiling cheerfulness.

“Did you open Mr. Bachman’s account?” he asks.

Looking curiously at him, she replies: “There are no books to open it in.”

“Tut, tut!” he says humorously. “We must get you huge stacks of books. Is there a piece of paper to jot things down on?”

“Yes, sir.” She finds a sheet of paper and a pencil.

“Credit him with two hundred and fifty dollars on account,” he dictates as she writes, “and charge him first with my taxi fare to his house and back, say a dollar thirty-five each way; then a telegram to New York, say three dollars and twenty cents — it should be a long one; and then a wire from New York, say a dollar thirty; and fifteen dollars a day from now on for the salary of an operative in New York. I’ll let you know from day to day what the operative’s expenses are.” He starts toward his private office.

She clears her throat and says: “There’s no typewriter, Mr. Richmond.”

He halts and turns. “Tut, tut!” he says again. “We must get you one for each hand. Rent one this afternoon and we’ll get what books you need and stationery and things.” He goes into his office and shuts the door.

She stares thoughtfully after him.

Richmond’s private office two months later. It is expensively furnished now, with thick carpet on the floor, pictures on the walls, etc. He, at an immense shiny mahogany desk, is writing a letter:

He stops and looks up as the door opens. It is Helen Crane with a newspaper in her hand. “Did you see this?” she asks, advancing to his desk.

He turns the letter to Babe face-down on his desk and looks at the portion of the paper she indicates with a finger. The headlines are:

Richmond smiles ruefully. “Too bad,” he says. “He was good for another five hundred or so anyhow.” He shrugs philosophically. “Oh, well, we didn’t do so badly, at that.” He runs a hand slowly over his hair. “Write him a letter of congratulations and enclose him a check for his unused balance of” — he pauses — “make it some odd amount like thirty-six dollars and forty cents.” He grins. “We can give him that much back to make things look right. Fix up a statement of his account to show how it happened.”

The girl is regarding him with worried eyes.

He pats one of her hands lightly. “This is a racket, my dear,” he says lightly, “but you can get out of it any time you want.”

She bites her lip, turns to leave his office.

He says: “I think I’ll run over to Palm Springs for a couple of days’ rest. You understand all the jobs we’ve on hand well enough to take care of the reports, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she says, “I... I hope you have a good time.”

“Thanks.” He returns to his letter as she goes out.

The sound of heavy surf in utter darkness. The darkness pales enough to let the white lines of breakers and the wet sand of a beach become barely visible. A motor boat is dimly seen coming through the breakers. Shadowy figures of men go over the sides of the boat and run it up on the beach.

From the complete blackness of the higher beach, the long white beam of a flashlight suddenly comes, to settle on the prow of the boat, on its painted name, Carrie Nation. The shadowy figures of men sink swiftly into the lower shadows of the boat’s sides. From the side nearer the camera comes the report of a pistol and a small brief streak of light pointing at the flashlight.

The flashlight is tossed high in the air, spinning, its beam making slow eccentric patterns in the darkness. It falls to the ground and lies there, throwing a long thin triangle of light across the sand. Just beyond the light a man’s body lies face-down, motionless, on the sand. There is the sound of men’s feet running away.

Next day. A middle-aged stout man, indignation written on his perspiring face, hurrying down the corridor of an office building. He stops at a door labeled Gene Richmond, Private Detective, wipes his face with a handkerchief, takes a deep breath, opens the door, and goes in.

The outer office is arranged as before, but it also is now furnished expensively. Inside the railing at the desk facing it, an office-boy of fifteen — freckled, his hair somewhat rumpled — sits facing the door, but his elbows are on the desk, his head is between his hands, and he is immersed in a book that lies on the desk. His eyes are wide and he is chewing gum rapidly.

Helen Crane is at her desk using a typewriter, but looks around immediately at the stout man. Then she speaks to the boy: “Tommy!”

The boy looks up at the man without taking his head from between his hands and says: “Yes, sir.”

The stout man clears his throat. “I want to see Mr. Richmond.”

The boy, automatically, as if speaking from habit: “Have you an appointment?”

“No.” The man takes a card from his pocket and puts it on the boy’s desk. “Is he in?”

The boy looks at the card. It reads: “Milton Fields, President, Star Portland Cement Corp. The boy says: “I’ll see. Have a seat.” He turns his book face-down on the desk — its title is “The Backgammon Murder,” and goes into Richmond’s private office.

Richmond is smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper. Tommy looks at him with obvious admiration. Richmond takes Fields’s card, glances at it, tosses it on his desk, and, returning his attention to the newspaper, says: “Bring him in, Tommy.” He puts the newspaper aside slowly when Fields is ushered in, smiles, says, “How do you do, Mr. Fields,” and nods at a chair.

Fields sits down as Tommy, going out, shuts the door.

Fields says: “Mr. Richmond, three times in succession in the last few months we have been underbid on large contracts by another company — the same company — the Dartmouth Portland Cement Company.”

Richmond nods attentively.

Fields continues, impressively: “I have reason to believe that one of my employees is supplying the Dartmouth Portland Cement Company with copies of our bids.”

Richmond nods again, saying: “You want us to find out which of your employees?”

Fields shakes his head. “I know. I want you to get me proof. It is a young fellow named Kennedy, a clerk. I pay him thirty-five dollars a week, and I am told it is common knowledge in the office that he spends his week-ends in Caliente, is out every night gambling, running around with fast women.”

Richmond begins: “Sounds likely, but maybe we’d better—”

Fields interrupts him: “He’s the one all right. I want you to get me the proof.”

Richmond looks thoughtfully at Fields, then says: “O.K. We ought to put two men on it. One to shadow him, one to get acquainted with him and pump him.” He looks thoughtfully for another moment at Fields, who says nothing, and goes on: “They’ll cost you ten dollars apiece — and expenses.”

Fields says: “Very well, but I must have action — quick.”

Richmond nods carelessly and presses a button on his desk.

Helen Crane opens the door and comes in, stenographic notebook and pencil in her hands.

Richmond addresses her: “Miss Crane, Mr. Fields will give you the name, address, description, and so on of a man he wants investigated.” He rises slowly. His movements — like his words — are very deliberate, as if carefully thought out beforehand. He has the manner of a man too sure of himself to feel the need of trying to impress anybody. As he walks toward the outer office door he adds, casually, over his shoulder: “He’ll also give you a check for say two hundred and fifty dollars to start with.” He passes into the outer office, shutting the door behind him.

Tommy, looking around, tries to cram his book out of sight in a desk drawer.

Richmond smiles at the boy with good-natured mockery and asks: “Still keeping posted on how really good detectives work?”

The boy grins in embarrassment, then, in a burst of enthusiasm blurts out: “You’d make all these guys in the books look like a bunch of bums, Mr. Richmond.” He drops his eyes, they look searchingly up at Richmond, his voice and countenance become ingratiating, and he begs: “Aw, gee, Mr. Richmond, I wish you’d give me a chance to—”

Richmond holds up a hand, palm out. “Stop it,” he orders wearily, as if answering a familiar plea. “Stick around till you’re grown and I’ll send you up against all the thugs you want. Till then — see if you can get the result of the third race.”

Tommy, crestfallen, reaches for the telephone.

Richmond goes over to Miss Crane’s desk, lights a cigarette, picks up a small stack of unopened mail, and glances idly through it.

Tommy: “Not in yet, sir.”

Richmond nods, drops the unopened mail on the desk again, and strolls back into his private office.

Tommy watches the door until it is shut, then draws his book out of the drawer, puts a fresh stick of gum into his mouth, and resumes his reading and chewing.

The inner office. Richmond is seated at his desk. Fields, standing, is handing a check to Miss Crane. She takes it, thanks him, and goes into the outer office. Fields picks up his hat from a chair. Richmond rises, holds out his hand to Fields, and, as they shake, says: “I’ll keep in touch with you.” He ushers him out through a door opening on the corridor, then returns to his chair and newspaper.

His telephone bell rings. Still reading the paper, he puts out a hand, picks up the phone, and says: “Gene Richmond speaking.”

The other end of the wire, a luxuriously furnished library. A very dapper elderly man — rather prim-faced, white hair carefully trimmed and brushed, wearing nose-glasses with a black ribbon draped from them — is seated at a table, holding a telephone to his ear.

Standing close to him, head bent a little, watching and listening with a strained, frightened expression on a face meant by nature to be genial, is a man of forty-five. He is a little plump, a well-fed, well-groomed man, with a normally rather good-looking frank countenance. The hand in which he holds a cigar within six inches of his mouth is trembling, and his breathing is audible.

The elderly man speaks into the telephone: “Mr. Richmond, this is Ward Kavanaugh, of the law firm of Kavanaugh, Baker, and Kavanaugh. Can you meet me in my office at ten o’clock this evening?”

Richmond, his eyes still on his newspaper: “I can come over right now if you wish, Mr. Kavanaugh.”

Kavanaugh: “No, I won’t be back in the city until ten o’clock.”

Richmond puts down his newspaper carefully. He purses his lips a little, but there is no other change in his face. He says: “Just a moment. I’ll see if I’m free then.” He puts down the telephone, goes to the outer office door, opens it, and says, in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone: “Have this call traced, Miss Crane.”

He shuts the door again, puts his hands in his trouser pockets, strolls idly about his private office for a little while, then returns to the telephone. “Yes, Mr. Kavanaugh,” he says, “I can make it.”

Kavanaugh: “Thank you. At ten, then.” He puts down the phone and turns his face toward the man standing beside him.

The man sighs, as if with relief, and puts his cigar between his teeth, but his face does not lose its strained, frightened look.

Richmond’s office. He is reading the newspaper again.

Miss Crane comes in, halting just inside the door. “The call came from Herbert Pomeroy’s residence at Green Lake,” she says.

Richmond nods thoughtfully. “That’s the stockbroker, isn’t it?” he asks in the manner of one already knowing the answer. “That would be his country house.”

Miss Crane: “Yes, sir.”

Richmond: “See what you can dig up on him.”

As she turns toward the door it opens and in comes a blonde girl of twenty-three pretty in a somewhat showy way, smartly dressed, carrying a small traveling bag. She has a breezy manner, an immense store of vitality.

Richmond rises, smiling delightedly, calling: “Hello, Babe.”

As Helen Crane goes out, shutting the door behind her, Babe drops her bag, runs across the office to Richmond, throws her arm around him, and they kiss. She wriggles ecstatically in his arms, rumples his hair, pulls his head back by his ears to look at his face. “Gee, it’s good to see you again, you no-good darling!” she says. She pulls his head down again, rubs her cheek against his and begins scolding him happily: “What was the idea of leaving me to roost up there alone for two months before sending for me? Some other gal, huh? You two-timing scoundrel, and you waited till you were tired of her.” She squeezes him tightly in her arms trying to shake him.

Richmond chuckles, frees himself, picks her up and sets her on his desk. “Don’t be such a rowdy,” he says. He sticks a cigarette in her smiling mouth, puts one in his own, smoothes his hair, straightens his tie while she holds a match to his cigarette and her own.

In the outer office Helen Crane is looking thoughtfully at the connecting door.

The inner office again. Babe crosses her legs, knocks ashes on the floor, and looks admiringly around the office. She is never still; a hand, a shoulder, a leg, her head — one is always in motion. “A nice flash you got here, Gene,” she says. “In the money again, huh?”

He looks complacently at the expensive furnishings. “Not bad.” He grins at her. “There’s a penny to be picked up here and there in this town.”

She laughs. “There always will be in any town for you,” she says, “and a gal.” She waves her cigarette at the connecting door. “But not that curio that went out as I came in?” she asks, and then, before he can speak, says: “No, I can’t see you going for that. That’s a novelty — you having a gal in the office that you wouldn’t want to take home with you.” She looks sharply at him and demands with mock severity: “You haven’t reformed, have you, Gene?”

He shakes his head good-naturedly. “Lay off Miss Crane,” he says. “She’s a find.” He touches Babe’s uppermost knee with a forefinger. “I’ve got a job for you tonight, honey.”

She pouts at him. “You mean you’re going to put me to work right away, we’re not even going to have this first evening together?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, coming closer to put his hands on her shoulders, “but I’ve got to toil too. You know how things break in this racket. I want you to pick up a kid named Kennedy whose boss thinks is selling him out — make him — see what you can work out of him. Miss Crane will give you the dope.”

Babe squirms petulantly under his hands, still pouting.

He pats her cheek lightly and reaches over to press the button on his desk.

Helen Crane, notebook in hand, enters.

Richmond addresses her: “Miss Crane, this is Miss Holliday, who will be working with us.”

The two women acknowledge the introduction politely while sharply sizing each other up.

Richmond continues: “Miss Holiday’s first assignment will be on the Fields job. Will you give her the particulars? She will...”

That night. Richmond at the wheel of a Cord roadster. As he parks near the entrance of an office building he looks at the clock in the dashboard. It is 9:55. He leaves the automobile, goes into the office building, looks at the lobby directory until he sees Kavanaugh, Baker, & Kavanaugh, 730, rides in an elevator to the seventh floor, and walks down the dimly lighted corridor to the lawyer’s door. There is nothing in his manner to show he is on a serious errand.

He knocks on the door lightly, opens it without waiting for an answer, and goes into a reception room lighted only by one desk lamp. Ward Kavanaugh appears in a doorway across the room, saying precisely, “Ah, good evening, Mr. Richmond. It was good of you to come,” coming forward with quick short steps to shake hands.

They go into Kavanaugh’s office. Richmond takes off hat, overcoat, and gloves, and puts them on a chair, sitting in another large leather chair that Kavanaugh has pushed a little forward for him.

Kavanaugh sits at his desk, erect, adjusts his nose-glasses, then puts his fingertips together in front of his body, and, in his precise voice, says: “This matter upon which I wish to — ah — consult you, Mr. Richmond, is one of the — ah — greatest delicacy.” He takes off his glasses and, holding them in one hand, looks sharply at Richmond. He is obviously somewhat flustered.

Richmond says nothing.

Kavanaugh puts his glasses on again, clears his throat, goes on: “One of my clients has unfortunately — or, rather, injudiciously — allowed himself to become involved — legally if not morally — in a somewhat — a decidedly — serious affair” — he jerks his head a little sharply at Richmond and concludes his speech quickly — “a crime, in fact.”

Richmond is lighting a cigarette. His eyes are focused attentively on Kavanaugh’s. He says nothing.

Kavanaugh takes off his glasses again and taps the thumbnail of his left hand with them, nervously. He says: “He — my client — is a man of the highest standing, socially and in the business world.” He puts his glasses on his nose again. “Several days ago his bootlegger’s — ah — salesman came to him and said he was going into business for himself, but had not a great deal of capital. He suggested that my client advance him a thousand dollars, in exchange for which he would supply my client — out of the first shipment — with — ah — merchandise worth much more than that at current prices.” He takes his glasses off again. “My client is a man who lives well, entertains extensively. He had dealt with this man several years, satisfactorily. He agreed.” He takes out a handkerchief, polishes his glasses and returns them to his nose.

Richmond smokes in silence.

Kavanaugh continues: “Unfortunately, in landing the first shipment from the rum-running ship — there was a — a serious accident. The bootlegger is now a fugitive from justice and threatens — if my client does not assist him — to — ah — involve my client.” He takes off his glasses again.

Richmond asks casually: “How serious was the accident?”

Kavanaugh: “Very serious.”

Richmond, still casually: “Murder?”

Kavanaugh hesitates, makes a nervous gesture with his fingers, says reluctantly: “A man was — was killed.”

Richmond tilts his head back a little to look at a plume of smoke he is blowing at the ceiling. He says thoughtfully, unemotionally: “Your client is legally guilty, then, of first degree murder?”

Kavanaugh, startled, begins a protest: “No, that’s—”

Richmond quietly interrupts him, speaking as before: “The thousand to help finance the bootlegger makes your man an associate of the bootlegger’s in the rum-running enterprise, maybe even makes him the principal and the bootlegger only his agent. Either way, rum-running’s a felony and any killing done while committing a felony is first degree murder and everybody involved in the felony — whether they have anything to do with the actual killing or not — is equally guilty. It’s a tough spot for your man.”

Kavanaugh puts his glasses on, and begins, unconvincingly: “It is, as I said, a very serious matter, but I think you — ah — exaggerate the—”

Richmond shrugs carelessly, and in his quiet, deliberate voice says: “Take him into court then.”

Kavanaugh makes no reply to this. He puts his fingertips together again and looks at them with worried eyes. Then he raises his head, looks at Richmond, and asks: “Mr. Richmond, do you think that we — that you could extricate my client from this — ah — affair?”

Richmond, casually: “Why not? It’ll cost money, though. I wouldn’t touch it under twenty-five thousand down, and maybe it’ll cost you a couple of hundred thousand before you’re through.”

Kavanaugh protests: “But that’s exorbitant!”

Richmond makes a careless gesture with the hand holding his cigarette. “It’s not so much” — he smiles gently — “for Pomeroy.”

Kavanaugh’s body jerks stiffly erect in his chair, his mouth and eyes open, his glasses fall off his nose. “What? How?” he stammers.

“I detect things,” Richmond says drily. “I’m a detective. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” He puts his cigarette in a tray beside his chair and uncrosses his legs as if about to rise. “Well,” he asks quietly, “do I go to work for you or don’t I?”

Kavanaugh evades his gaze. “I’ll have to — ah — discuss your — ah — terms with Mr. Po — with my client,” he says in confusion.

Richmond rises, says politely: “Right. Let me know as soon as you can. The sooner we get going, the better.” He holds out his hand.

Kavanaugh rises to take it spluttering: “Of course you understand this is all in the strictest confidence.”

“Certainly,” Richmond says easily, “if Pomeroy hires me.”

Kavanaugh goggles at him in consternation, stammering: “You mean—?” He is unable to finish the sentence.

Richmond smiles coolly at the lawyer and tells him: “I’m a businessman. Like Pomeroy or any other businessman I use information that comes to me in my line for profit. I’d rather get my profit out of Pomeroy, and I can promise him good value for his money, but if he doesn’t want to play along with me—” He finishes with a shrug.

Kavanaugh draws himself stiffly erect. “That is blackmail, sir,” he says in a somewhat pompously accusing voice.

Richmond laughs. “You’ve been reading the dictionary,” he says with derisive mildness. His face and voice become hard and cold: “Pomeroy’s in a sweet jam. I can help him or I can hurt him. Make up your mind.” He turns and walks out.

That same night. The dashboard clock shows 11:30 as Richmond parks his car in a quiet street and gets out. He goes up the front steps of a large dark house set a little apart from its neighbors and rings the bell.

The door is opened by a plump youngish man in dinner clothes who says, “Good evening, Mr. Richmond,” politely, and steps aside to admit the detective.

Richmond passes down the hallway to a room where there is a bar. He halts in the doorway to look casually at the occupants of the room, nods to a couple of them who greet him, exchanges a “Hello” with one of the bartenders, and goes on to another room, where there is a crap-game. He speaks to a couple of the players, watches the game for a moment, and then goes upstairs, through rooms where various games are in progress, repeating the same performance. Then he returns to the bar, has a drink, and leaves the house.

The dashboard clock shows 2:10 as he parks the car again in a shabby street of small stores, cheap hotels, etc.

He enters a small cigar store, says, “Evening, Mack,” to the man in dirty shirtsleeves behind the counter, lifts a hinged section of the counter, and passes through an inner door set in one corner of the store behind the counter. He mounts a flight of stairs to another door, and goes through it into a large room where there is a bar, booths, tables, etc. Forty or fifty people are there, eating and drinking at tables and bar. They are a tougher lot than those in the other establishment.

He strolls casually almost the length of the room — speaking to an acquaintance or two — and sits down at a small table with a slack-jawed, sharp-faced man of thirty in cheap, showy clothes. “Hello, Barney,” he says without warmth. “Been looking for you.”

Barney’s eyes move from side to side uneasily. “This is a hell of a place to get chummy with me,” he mutters.

Richmond’s shoulders move in an indifferent shrug. “This is a swell place,” he says. “Nobody’ll think you’re a stool-pigeon with me meeting you in the open like this. Nobody can hear us. Make the right kind of faces while we talk and they’ll think I’m trying to get something out of you and you’re not giving me any.” He leans forward, making his face sterner than his voice: “Which of the rum-running boys is in trouble?”

Barney’s eyes move uneasily again. He mumbles: “I don’t know what you mean?”

Richmond: “Scowl at me, you sap. Shake your head no while you give me the answer. Who’s having to hide out?”

Barney obeys orders, while mumbling: “I don’t know — there’s three or four of ’em.”

Richmond: “Which one that just went in business for himself?”

Barney, sneering contemptuously to carry out their play, though his eyes are still uneasy: “You mean Cheaters Neely?”

Richmond: “Who’s he?”

Barney, shaking his head again from side to side: “Used to be with Big Frank Barnes. He—” He breaks off as a waiter comes up, blusters: “I don’t know nothing, wouldn’t tell you nothing if I did.”

Richmond, to the waiter: “Scotch — some of that Dunbar’s Extra.”

Barney says: “Same.”

The waiter goes away.

Richmond, making an ostentatiously threatening gesture with a forefinger, asks softly: “What kind of jam is this Cheaters in?”

Barney raises his voice angrily: “Go to hell!” Then, keeping the same angry expression on his face, he leans forward and says in a low rapid voice: “I only know what I heard third-hand. He’s supposed to’ve had to blip a guy down the beach — undercover man for the narcotic squad, the way I hear it.”

Richmond makes his ostentatious threatening gesture again. “Was he running dope too?”

Barney, sneering: “Must’ve had some with him.”

Richmond scowls at Barney as if in disgust. One of his hands has brought a crumpled piece of paper money out of his pocket. He passes it to Barney under the table, then leaning forward as if uttering a final threat, says: “See what else you can dig up on it. Break away now.”

Barney pushes his chair back and rises, swaggering. “Go jump in the ocean, you small-time dick,” he says truculently in a fairly loud voice. “And don’t come fooling around me until you got something on me. Nuts to you!” He puts on his hat and swaggers out.

Richmond, his face a mask, picks up the drink the waiter sets in front of him. Men at tables around him grin covertly.

The following morning. Babe Holliday is sitting in Richmond’s chair, smoking and playing solitaire on his desk, when he arrives.

“Morning, beautiful,” she says cheerfully.

He hangs up his coat and hat and turns toward her asking: “How’d you make out?”

She pushes the cards up together and laughs. “What a guy!” she says. “He took me to a movie and bought me a soda afterwards. Anybody thinks that kid ever saw any Caliente or any fast life is screwy.”

Richmond looks quizzically at her. “You wouldn’t let him fool you, would you?”

She laughs again. “You ought to spend an evening with him — for your sins.”

Richmond sits on the side of his desk and takes out a cigarette. “What’s the answer then?” he says.

She rocks back in the chair, and says: “Easy. He’s been bragging down at the office, trying to make out he’s a devil with the women and an all around man of the world. All kids do it some.”

Richmond looks up from his cigarette. “Sure?”

Babe: “Yep. He did it to me in a mild way, but a couple of minutes of talking was enough to let me know he’d never been down to Caliente, or much of any place else. And it’s a cinch he’s got no dough. It’s a bust, Gene.”

Richmond nods. “Sounds like it. We’d better play safe by looking him up a little. Don’t put in more than three or four hours on it.”

“Oke,” Babe says, rising. “My expenses last night were two and half for dinner and three dollars and eighty cents’ worth of taxicabs.”

Richmond smiles at her. “This isn’t that kind of a job,” he says. “Your expenses were two bucks for dinner and twenty cent street-car fare. Get it from Miss Crane as you go out.”

“You cheap so-and-so,” she says without ill-feeling, kisses him and goes out.

He sits down to his morning mail.

Presently Miss Crane comes in. “The Andrews divorce comes up this morning, Mr. Richmond,” she says.

Richmond looks up from his mail. “She pay us the rest of the money she owes us?” he asks.

“Not yet. She still says she thinks the expenses ran too high, but she’ll pay it as soon as she gets a settlement from her husband.”

Richmond returns his attention to his mail. “She’ll have to try to get her divorce without my testimony, then,” he says with quiet finality. “I’m not in this racket for fun.”

Miss Crane says, “All right,” and turns toward the door.

Richmond looks up from his mail again. “We’re supposed to have two men working on that Kennedy kid job for Fields. We’ll fake up their reports after I’m through with the mail. Better keep their expenses down around — say — eight or ten dollars a day a piece — at first.”

Miss Crane nods and goes out.

Richmond’s telephone bell rings. “Gene Richmond speaking,” he says into the instrument.

The other end of the wire. Barney in a telephone booth. He says: “This is Barney, Gene. Happy Jones and Dis-and-Dat Kid were with Cheaters that night, and a mugg I don’t know anything about called Buck. I don’t know if that was all of ’em.”

Richmond: “Where are they now?”

Barney: “I don’t know where they’re hiding out.”

Richmond: “Find out. How about the guy who was killed?”

Barney: “I guess he was an undercover man for the narcotic people, all right, Gene, but I don’t know nothing about him. The newspapers just said an unidentified man. They left their booze there, but if they had any dope they took it with them when they scrammed.”

Richmond: “Right. Let me know as soon as you pick up anything else.” He puts aside the phone.

Two men are walking in sunlight across a broad, carefully trimmed lawn. One is Ward Kavanaugh, in a business suit. The other, in tennis clothes, is the man who stood beside Kavanaugh during his phone conversation with Richmond — Herbert Pomeroy. Behind them a large house — a mansion — is seen, with a broad driveway leading up to it, and beyond the house part of a lake is visible, with a couple of sailboats and a motorboat cutting across it.

The two men cross the lawn slowly, both looking down with worried eyes at the grass.

“But how did he find out I was your client?” Pomeroy asks.

The lawyer shakes his head. “I don’t know, Herbert, but I dare say they have ways of keeping in touch with much that happens.”

Pomeroy frowns and works his lips together. “If it weren’t for Ann,” he mutters. Then: “You still think I shouldn’t give myself up and stand trial?”

Kavanaugh, gently: “That’s for you to decide, Herbert. I still am afraid that a prison sentence is the best you could hope for.”

They walk a little further in silence. Then Pomeroy: “And there’s no other way out except to engage this Richmond?”

Kavanaugh: “I’m afraid not.”

Pomeroy: “But if I do, will he get me out of the mess, or will he simply bleed me?”

Before Kavanaugh can reply a Packard Sedan squeals to an abrupt halt halfway up the drive behind them. Both men turn around quickly.

A man gets out of the sedan, waves his hand cheerfully at Pomeroy and Kavanaugh, and starts across the lawn toward them.

“Oh, Lord!” Pomeroy gasps. “It’s Neely!”

Cheaters Neely is a full-fleshed man of medium height, about thirty-seven, carelessly dressed in moderately priced clothes topped by a Derby hat. He wears horn-rimmed spectacles, has a jovial hail-fellow manner, and might be mistaken for a third-rate salesman. Three more men get out of the sedan and follow him. The first is Happy Jones, a lanky man of forty with a mournfully lined thin face and dark clothes that seem mournful because, needing pressing, they sag close to his thin frame. The second is Buck, a big beetle-browed, hard-jawed man of thirty with deep-set smoldering eyes. He wears a grey suit not quite large enough for him and a grey cap. The third is the Dis-and-Dat Kid, a hatchet-faced boy of twenty-two in markedly collegiate clothes. A cigarette hangs from a corner of his mouth. He has no eyebrows. His eyes and his fingers are in constant fidgeting motion.

Neely, having reached the two men who stand waiting for him grasps Pomeroy’s hand and shakes it warmly, as if sure of his welcome. “How are you, Pomeroy?” he asks heartily.

Pomeroy, dazed, allows his hand to be shaken, but says nothing.

Holding Pomeroy’s hand, Neely turns to make with his other hand a wide gesture at his three followers. “I want you to meet my friends.” He indicates each with a motion of his hand. “Mr. Black, Mr. White, and Mr. Brown. Boys, this is Mr. Pomeroy.” He drops the stockbroker’s hand and looks at Kavanaugh. “This your father?” he asks.

Pomeroy says stiffly: “This is Mr. Kavanaugh, my attorney.”

Neely grabs the lawyer’s hand and shakes it. “Pleased to meet you, sir,” he says heartily. He turns to his followers. “Boys, this is Mr. Kavanaugh.”

The boys look at Mr. Kavanaugh with blank eyes and say nothing.

Neely claps Pomeroy lightly on the shoulder, “Well, now that everybody knows everybody, what’s new?”

Pomeroy winces, clears his throat, asks weakly: “Why did you come up here?”

Neely raises his eyebrows a little and his face takes on an affably questioning look. He jerks his head slightly toward Kavanaugh.

Pomeroy says: “Mr. Kavanaugh knows about it.”

Neely beams on Pomeroy and on Kavanaugh. “That’s fine,” he says. He turns his head to beam on his followers. “Ain’t that fine, boys?” he asks. “Mr. Kavanaugh knows all about it.”

The boys do not say anything.

Neely returns his attention to Pomeroy.

Pomeroy repeats his question: “Why did you come up here?”

Neely pushes his Derby a little back on his head, hooks thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, and says amiably: “Well, I’ll tell you, Pommy. You know we were in a little trouble. Well, it got worse, and I said to the boys: ‘Boys, Mr. Pomeroy is our friend and he’s a respectable millionaire, and respectable millionaires don’t ever get into any trouble except over women, so we’ll go up and visit with him and get him to show us how he keeps out of it.’ ”

Pomeroy wets his lips with his tongue. “I... I can’t help you,” he says.

Neely claps him on the shoulder again. “Sure you can,” he says jovially. “Don’t worry. There’s no hurry about it. We’ll stay here and visit with you two or three days while you figure something out. The boys like your place.” He turns his head over his shoulder to ask: “Don’t you boys?”

The boys do not say anything.

Pomeroy looks despairingly at Kavanaugh. The dapper elderly attorney is rigid with anger and seems on the point of bursting into speech, but when he sees the three “boys” regarding him with coldly curious eyes, he coughs a little and subsides.

“Well,” Neely says with good-natured decisiveness. “That’s settled. How about putting on the feed-bag? We ain’t had lunch yet.” He puts an arm across Pomeroy’s back and starts him toward the house, “A shot of steam wouldn’t do us any harm, either.”

Pomeroy allows himself to be guided back to the house. Kavanaugh hesitates, looks at the three “boys” who are looking at him, and trots along behind Neely and Pomeroy. The three bring up the rear.

At the house, Pomeroy opens the door and steps aside to let the others enter. Kavanaugh halts beside him. Neely and his three followers go in. Pomeroy puts his mouth to Kavanaugh’s ear. “Get Richmond,” he says.

Kavanaugh nods. He and Pomeroy go indoors.

Richmond’s office. He is seated at his desk. Babe Holliday is rocking vigorously back and forth in another chair.

“There’s nothing to it, Gene,” she is saying. “The kid hasn’t been away over a weekend for six months, and then only to his cousin’s in San Francisco. And you can count the nights he’s been out after midnight on the toes of your left foot. He goes to the movies and he reads, and that lets him out. I talked to—”

The telephone bell interrupts her.

Richmond speaks into the phone: “Gene Richmond speaking.”

The other end of the wire. Kavanaugh crouched somewhat furtively over the telephone. His eyes dart toward the closed door. He speaks into the instrument in a low voice: “This is Ward Kavanaugh, Mr. Richmond. You may consider your terms accepted.”

Richmond, quietly business-like: “Thanks. Where’s Pomeroy? How soon can I see him?”

Kavanaugh: “He’s here at Green Lake, but—”

Richmond: “I’ll be up this evening.”

Kavanaugh, looking fearfully at the door again, splutters: “But they are here too, Mr. Richmond!”

Richmond: “Swell! We can all gather around the fireplace and pop corn and tell ghost stories. I’m leaving right away.”

Kavanaugh: “Are you sure you ought to—”

Richmond, reassuringly: “Just leave it to me.” He puts down the telephone, stares thoughtfully at it for a moment, lips pursed, eyes dreamy and narrow; then his face clears again and he turns in his swivel chair to face Babe Holliday.

A formal garden beside Pomeroy’s house at Green Lake. Cheaters Neely, Buck, the Dis-and-Dat Kid, and Happy Jones are walking in pairs down a path, looking around with manifest approval.

A girl of twenty-one comes up the path toward them. She is dressed in white and carries a tennis racket. She is lithe, beautiful, somewhat haughty. As she approaches the four men she holds her head high and regards them with disapproving eyes.

They halt, blocking the path. The Dis-and-Dat Kid’s fidgety eyes look her up and down, ogle her, and he runs the tip of his tongue over his lips. Buck stares somberly at her. Happy Jones turns his back to her and pretends interest in the shrubbery. Neely grins amiably at her.

As they make no move to clear the path for her, she halts in front of them, regarding them haughtily.

Neely points a finger at the tennis racket and says, familiarly: “Hello, sister. How’s the racket?” Then he laughs merrily at his joke.

The girl starts to speak, then bites her lip angrily, puts her chin higher in the air, steps out of the path, walks around them, and goes on toward the house.

The four men turn in unison to watch her.

“That’s a pain in the neck,” Buck growls.

The Dis-and-Dat Kid leers at the girl’s back. “I’ll take it,” he says.

Happy Jones whines: “I like a woman with some meat on her.”

Buck looks at Happy’s thin frame. “You got a lot to give her,” he says.

They retrace their steps to the house, going leisurely around to the back and entering through the kitchen, where the cook, a buxom middle-aged woman in white, is directing the activities of two assistants. She looks around indignantly as they come in.

They stroll through the kitchen in single file, looking around curiously. The Dis-and-Dat Kid spies a chicken on a platter. He picks up a knife, slashes off a drumstick and bites into it.

The cook, hands on hips, advances angrily, “Here! What are you up to? Clear out of here!”

Buck scowls at her. “Aw, go poach your kidneys,” he growls. He leans over, tears the other drumstick from the chicken and stuffs half of it into his mouth.

They leave the kitchen through a doorway opposite the one by which they entered. Happy Jones pauses in the doorway to look back, amorously, at the angry cook.

The Dis-and-Dat Kid nudges Buck, points his drumstick at the sad-faced man in the doorway, sniggers, and says: “Ain’t dat somepin’?”

They go through the pantry and dining room into a hallway, strolling idly, the Kid and Buck gnawing their drumsticks. In the hallway they see the girl in white again. Her eyes darken with anger when she sees them. She goes haughtily up the stairs. They stand and watch her mount the stairs. They keep their hats on.

She goes into a room on the second floor. Pomeroy and Kavanaugh are seated there. The room is furnished with elaborately carved, stamped, and brass-studded Spanish office furniture. There is a stock-ticker in one corner. Through an open door part of Pomeroy’s bedroom can be seen.

Kavanaugh rises and bows as the girl enters. Pomeroy says: “Hello, Ann. How’d the game go?”

Both men have put their best attempts at smiling unconcern on their faces for her.

She is still angry. “Father, who are those horrible men?” she asks.

He glances apprehensively at Kavanaugh, then smiles as carelessly as he can at his daughter and asks: “You mean those—” He finishes the sentence with aimless motion of his hands.

“Those four horrible, horrible men!” she says.

He smiles paternally at her. “They won’t bother you, honey,” he says. “And they’ll only be here a couple of days at most. It’s necessary that—”

She takes a step toward him. “A couple of days!” she exclaims. “They can’t stay here, Father! We’ve people coming down tomorrow for the weekend — the Robinsons and the Laurens and — you can’t have them here. They’re horrible!”

Pomeroy puts out a hand to pat one of hers. “There, there!” he says smoothingly. “Papa’ll see what he can do. Perhaps it’ll only be necessary to keep them here overnight.” He looks at Kavanaugh for support, asking: “Perhaps, hm-m-m?”

“But why do you have to keep them here overnight?” Ann demands. “Why are they here at all?”

Pomeroy shakes a playful finger at her. “No prying into Papa’s affairs, young lady,” he says.

She screws her eyes up at him, wrinkles her forehead, asks, “Are they detectives or guards or something? Are you in some kind of danger?” She seems suddenly frightened.

“Sh-h-h,” he says. “There’s not a thing for you to worry about — word of honor.”

She bends down to kiss him on the forehead. “And you will get rid of them?” she asks as she straightens up.

“Cross my heart,” he promises.

She flashes a smile at Kavanaugh and goes out.

Kavanaugh sinks down in his chair again. The light goes out of Pomeroy’s face. They stare at each other hopelessly.

A bedroom in Pomeroy’s house. Happy Jones is lying on his back on the bed, hands clasped at the nape of his neck, staring mournfully at the ceiling. The Dis-and-Dat Kid is sitting on a window sill, looking boredly out at the grounds. Smoke drifts up from a cigarette in a corner of his mouth. Buck is straddling a chair, holding a glass of whiskey in one hand. Neely is tilted back in another chair with his feet on the bed. He is wearing his Derby; the others are bareheaded.

Neely is saying: “...and then I look at him again and I’m a son-of-a-gun if it ain’t my brother.”

Buck puts his head back and laughs heartily.

The Dis-and-Dat Kid turns his face from the window to grin crookedly. Then he leaves the sill, drops his cigarette on the floor, puts his foot on it and asks: “What are we waiting for, Cheaters? For Happy to get bed sores?”

Neely pulls a watch from his pocket, looks at it, and sticks it back in. “I’m comfortable,” he says amiably, “but if you guys are itching, all right.”

Buck hurls his drink into his mouth without touching his lips with the glass, smacks his lips, and rises, saying: “I’m ready.”

Happy gets up slowly from the bed, finds his hat on the floor, and puts it on. Buck puts on his cap, the Dis-and-Dat Kid his hat. They leave the room and go downstairs to the second floor in single file, Neely first, then Buck, the Kid, and Happy.

As Neely reaches the second floor landing, he meets one of the maids. She looks at him and the others nervously and keeps as close to the far wall as she can on her way to another part of the floor.

Neely raises a hand. “Where’s the boss?” he asks.

She pauses long enough to say hurriedly, “Mr. Pomeroy is in his office,” and hurries away.

Happy looks sadly after her and shakes his head. “She ain’t got the meat on her,” he whines.

They go down to the room where Pomeroy and Kavanaugh are, Neely opens the door without knocking, and the others file in after him.

Pomeroy has been standing at a window, Kavanaugh is seated. Both try to conceal their alarm as they look around at the four men entering.

Neely, all smiles, says, “Howdy, gents,” while Happy, the last one in, is shutting the door and leaning his back against it.

Buck strolls deliberately across the room and out of sight through the open bedroom door. The Dis-and-Dat Kid, fingers and eyes fidgeting, moves around the other side of the room, keeping himself turned slightly sidewise toward the stockbroker and his attorney.

Pomeroy and Kavanaugh exchange nervous glances. Pomeroy clears his throat and says: “Kavanaugh and I are still unable to see how we can be of any assistance to you — in—”

Neely stops him with an up-raised palm. “Don’t you and Kavvy worry about that,” he says amiably, smiling as if at a couple of younger brothers. “Us boys figured it all out. Didn’t we, boys?”

The boys do not say anything. Kavanaugh and Pomeroy glance apprehensively at each other. Kavanaugh takes off his glasses and begins to polish them.

Neely says: “Stake us to get-away dough and we’ll amscray.”

Kavanaugh and Pomeroy stare uncomprehendingly at him.

Neely laughs. “Money,” he explains, “and we’ll go to read and write — powder out — blow — leave the country.”

Pomeroy glances at Kavanaugh again, then asks hesitantly: “Ah — how much money would be necessary?”

Neely puts his thumbs in his vest armholes and rocks back on his heels, screwing his eyes up at the ceiling in good-natured calculation. “Well,” he begins, “we’d have to...”

Gene Richmond in his Cord roadster burning the road along the edge of Green Lake. Across the water the sun is going down. He turns off the road into Pomeroy’s driveway, stops in front of the house, and gets out.

A man servant opens the door for him. “Mr. Pomeroy is expecting me,” he says, “Mr. Richmond.”

The servant takes his hat and coat, bows him into a reception room off the hall, and goes upstairs.

Richmond waits placidly until the servant has disappeared at the top of the stairs, then goes briskly up after him, reaching the top in time to see the servant entering Pomeroy’s office. Then he moderates his pace and walks down the second-story hallway, arriving at the door just as the servant comes out. He says: “Thanks,” politely to the man and goes in. The servant goggles at him.

The six men in the room — Buck is standing in the bedroom doorway now — stare at him.

He bows to Kavanaugh — “Good evening” — and then to the stockbroker, saying suavely: “Mr. Pomeroy, I suppose?”

Pomeroy returns the bow uncomfortably. He is sitting at the Spanish desk, the fingers of one hand on an open checkbook, the other hand holding a pen.

Richmond surveys the others meditatively, one by one, speaking as if to himself. “Cheaters Neely, of course,” making a circle around one of his own eyes to indicate the spectacles; “and Happy Jones — that’s easy,” looking at the mournful man; “and Buck and I are old friends — remember the time I pulled you out of the sewer pipe up north? So you must be the Dis-and-Dat Kid.”

Neely smiles pleasantly at Richmond and says: “You seem to know more people than know you, brother.”

By then Happy has slipped behind Richmond to stand with his back against the hall door again. His right hand is in his coat pocket. Buck glowers at Richmond. The Kid’s eyes fidget from Richmond to Neely.

Kavanaugh, speaking hastily, as if to forestall further conversation between Neely and the detective, says: “Ah — Mr. Richmond, we have just reached an — ah — amicable settlement.” He adjusts his glasses to his nose with an air of relief.

Richmond looks with mild amusement from Kavanaugh to Pomeroy. The broker abruptly leans over and begins to sign the check.

Richmond takes two deliberate steps to the desk and bends to look at the check, and then, just as deliberately, puts out a forefinger and rubs it slowly across Pomeroy’s incompleted signature, making an undecipherable dark smear of it.

Pomeroy rocks back in his chair in surprise.

The Dis-and-Dat Kid puts a hand to his right hip and takes a step toward Richmond’s back. Neely catches the Kid’s eye, smiles, and shakes his head. The Kid halts indecisively.

Richmond addresses Pomeroy carelessly: “That’s a sucker play. Giving him money is what got you into this. You’ll never get out that way.”

Pomeroy starts to speak, but is interrupted by the Dis-and-Dat Kid snarling: “Who is dis mugg?”

Richmond slowly turns to face the Kid, smiles mockingly at him, and says: “Dis mugg is the only one that’s going to be paid off on this job. The name’s Gene Richmond, employed by Mr. Kavanaugh and Mr. Pomeroy” — with the semblance of a bow vaguely directed toward them — “to shake you boys loose.”

From the bedroom doorway Buck addresses Neely earnestly: “That’s the truth he’s telling, Cheaters. I knew him up north. There ain’t no chance of anybody else turning a honest dollar with him around. Let’s knock him off right now.”

Richmond chuckles and turns to face Buck while Neely is replying good-naturedly: “We can always knock him off. Let’s watch him do his stuff a while first.”

Richmond turns to Neely: “Why don’t you boys go out and pick some flowers and give us a chance to talk this over?”

“Sure,” Neely says agreeably. “Talk your heads off, and maybe when you’re through, Pommy’ll write another check and maybe he’ll make it bigger than that one.” He turns toward the door. “Coming, boys?”

The boys follow him out, glowering at Richmond.

Neely puts his head into the room again. “We won’t be far off if you want us,” he says, “or if you don’t.” He shuts the door again.

Richmond lights a cigarette and addresses Kavanaugh gravely, deliberately: “Mr. Kavanaugh, you called me a blackmailer last night. Perhaps there was some justification for it. My,” — he smiles faintly — “sales methods are somewhat high-pressure at times, but believe me when I tell you that I know I can straighten this thing out, and that I will if you and Mr. Pomeroy will simply let me handle it in my own way. It may not be a nice way, but this isn’t a nice situation. But it isn’t the first time a thing of this sort has ever happened. I’ve handled them before. It’s chiefly a matter of deciding which of several possible methods happens to fit this particular case.”

A large portion of their distrust has gone out of the two older men’s faces while Richmond has been talking, and Pomeroy’s face has become almost hopeful. But now he frowns hopelessly again and complains: “But I’ve got to get rid of them at once. There are people — guests — coming tomorrow. I can’t have these men here.”

Richmond laughs. “You’d rather go to San Quentin than spoil a weekend party?”

Pomeroy winces.

Richmond puts his hands in his trouser pockets and walks to the window and back to a chair and sits down. His manner is curt, businesslike. “First,” he says, “I’d like you to go over the whole thing from beginning to end, with every...”

Richmond, leaving Pomeroy’s room, shuts the door, grins cynically at it, and starts down the hall. Buck steps out of another door and says: “Howdy, tin-star. Make out all right with the plutocrats?”

Richmond, with mock disgust: “They’re a couple of sissies! I had a terrible time persuading them to let me have you boys killed resisting arrest. Where’s Cheaters?”

Buck points a forefinger at the ceiling. They walk side-by-side to the stairs and go up to the bedroom where Happy is lying as before on the bed and Neely and the Kid are arguing hotly. All three turn toward the door — Happy rolling over on an elbow — when Buck, saying, “We got distinguished company,” ushers Richmond in and shuts the door.

Richmond comes to the point at once, in an unruffled, matter-of-fact voice, addressing Neely: “What do you boys want to do? Do you want to crowd Pomeroy to the point where he lets me have you knocked off? Or where he goes into court with a lot of perjury and matches his reputation against yours — calling that thousand-dollar check a forgery?”

Neely chuckles. “You’re full of cute tricks, ain’t you? No, Richy, all we want is a get-away stake. That’s little enough, ain’t it?” he goes on persuasively. “Pomeroy’ll never miss the dough, we’ll get out of the country, and everything’ll be all hotsy-totsy.”

Richmond moves his shoulders a little and asks: “But what’s in that for me?”

Neely stares at Richmond in surprise. The Kid says: “Well—”

“I’ll be—” Buck growls fiercely: “See! What’d I tell you? Let this mugg hang around and we’ll be lucky to get away from here without owing money!”

Neely recovers his voice. “What do you want?” he asks sarcastically. “A commission?”

Richmond discusses that suggestion with a wave of his hand. “We can talk about that later,” he says airily. “What I want just now is for you boys to stick around here, keeping out of people’s way, not making any trouble for anybody, not riding Pomeroy, and I’ll promise to take care of you.”

They stare at each other in surprise.

Richmond steps back to the door. “And no matter what happens,” he says, “don’t let it frighten you into bolting.”

He steps through the doorway and shuts the door. They all begin talking at once.

Night. Richmond is leaning on the back of a drawing-room chair, holding a partly filled cocktail glass in his hand. Pomeroy is seated beside a table on which there are glasses and a cocktail shaker. Kavanaugh is helping himself to an hors d’oeuvre from a tray a man servant is holding. There is no conversation; Pomeroy and Kavanaugh seem ill at ease.

Ann Pomeroy comes in, smiles at Kavanaugh, leans over to kiss her father’s head, asking: “Am I terribly late again?”

Pomeroy rises to say: “Ann, this is Mr. Richmond. Mr. Richmond, my spoiled daughter.”

Ann, smiling, goes to meet Richmond with her hand outstretched. He bows over it. She says, “I suppose they’ve been pretending they’re starved waiting for me,” takes Richmond’s arm, and guides him toward the dining-room.

He smiles politely, but says nothing. His eyes gravely study her profile when she is not looking at him. Kavanaugh and Pomeroy follow them.

After dinner. Richmond and Ann come out of the house. He is bare-headed, smoking a cigarette. She has a shawl over her dinner dress. As they step down into a path leading to the formal garden, she takes his arm again and says gaily: “I know you. You’re Gene Richmond. You’re a detective. You found out who murdered Laura Gordon’s Aunt Minnie in Portland. She told me about you.”

He chuckles. “I remember,” he says. “It was a janitor.”

Ann: “That was years and years ago. I was in school.”

Richmond: “That’s right, I’m a doddering old man.”

She laughs up at him.

Neely and his cohorts in the bedroom. They are playing stud poker on a card table. Neely, who is dealing, has most of the chips in front of him. Two cards have been dealt. Neely, looking at the cards he has dealt, says, “The king bets.” Happy, who has the king showing, pushes out a chip. The Kid and Neely each push out a chip. Buck, the last man, says, “Folding a trey,” turns his three of diamonds face-down on his hole card.

He rises, yawns, stretches, and goes to the window. A tiny point of light shows through shrubbery down on the grounds, and then Richmond and Ann, walking slowly arm in arm become visible as they pass through an open space. Richmond’s cigarette glows again.

Buck turns his head over his shoulder to tell his companions: “Sherlock’s got the dame out in the bushes.”

Neely pushes four chips into the center of the table: “Up a couple.”

Happy pushes out four: “And a couple more.”

The Kid turns his cards face-down. “Ain’t worth it,” he says. He stands up, takes his coat from the back of his chair, puts it on. “Deal me out awhile,” he says. He gets his hat and leaves the room, moving silently, unhurriedly. When the door shuts behind him, Buck grins at it. The others do not look up from their cards.

The garden. Richmond and Ann are seated on a bench some distance away. The Dis-and-Dat Kid moves silently toward them, going swiftly from shadow of tree to bush to hedge until he is close behind their bench. As he crouches there, ready to hear what they are saying, they rise and move on slowly. He follows, stalking them from shadow to shadow.

Ann is saying: “But what are you doing here if Father is not in danger?” She raises her voice a little, tensely. “He is. I know it. I can feel it. It’s those four horrible men. I’ve felt it ever since they’ve been here.”

Richmond smiles at her earnestness. “I can understand your not liking them,” he says.

“Liking them?” she repeats, and shudders. Then, both hands on his arm, peering up at his face, she asks: “You are here on their account, aren’t you?”

“Part of my business here is with them,” he admits, “but your father is not in danger, there is nothing for you to be afraid of. Believe me.”

The Kid, moving into the shadow of a tree, startles a cat, which goes hastily up the tree, its claws rasping against the bark.

Ann clings to Richmond, her terrified face twisted around toward the noise, gasping: “What is that?”

Richmond, his arms around her, looking down at her, paying no attention to the noise: “Nothing to be afraid of. You’re trembling.” He strokes her upper arm with a soothing hand.

The Kid is flat against the tree, out of their sight. His eyes shift from side to side. He is breathing silently through his mouth.

The girl slowly extricates herself from Richmond’s arms, though she continues to hold one of them. She looks around uneasily, “Let’s go back to the house,” she says.

Richmond nods. They go back, arm in arm, the girl now and then glancing apprehensively around. The Kid follows them back — from shadow to shadow.

In the library they find Pomeroy, alone; Ann kisses him, says, “Good night, Father,” then holds out her hand to Richmond. “Good night, Mr. Richmond.”

He bows and says, “Good night,” as she leaves the room. Pomeroy, impressed by his daughter’s ready acceptance of Richmond, smiles at him more cordially than heretofore and says: “Smoke a cigar with me.” He opens a box on the table beside him.

Richmond says: “Thanks. Where’s Kavanaugh?”

Pomeroy: “Gone to bed. He wants to catch the early train back to the city.”

Richmond: “Swell.” He goes over and shuts the door, then takes a seat facing Pomeroy. “It’s just as well to keep him out of it as much as we can.”

Pomeroy draws his brows together a little. “I don’t understand you,” he says a bit coldly. “Mr. Kavanaugh was my father’s best friend, has been almost a second father to me. He is, in my opinion, the best lawyer in—”

“I know,” Richmond agrees evenly, “but like a lot of top-notch lawyers he’s probably never been in a criminal court in his life. All he knows about civil and corporation and this and that kind of law’s not going to help you here, Pomeroy — not even criminal law. We don’t need law, we need tricks. And maybe we’ll be doing Kavanaugh a favor by sparing his conscience knowledge of some of the tricks we’ll have to use. If we need legal advice, I’ve got the man for you — he hasn’t looked into a law book for twenty years, but juries don’t hang his clients.”

Pomeroy winces at the word “hang,” then nods doubtfully, partly convinced.

Richmond rises. “I think I’ll get some sleep.” He looks down at Pomeroy. “Kavanaugh told you I wanted twenty-five thousand dollars down, of course. Will you phone your office in the morning and have them send the check over to my office?”

Pomeroy nods again.

Richmond says, “Thanks. Good night,” and goes out.

A corridor. The Dis-and-Dat Kid steps swiftly through a doorway and shuts the door. Richmond comes into sight, passes the door behind which the Kid is standing, opens another door farther down, and goes into his bedroom.

The Kid comes out, looks up and down the corridor, and goes quietly to another door, putting the side of his face to it, listening while his eyes and fingers fidget.

Inside the room, Ann Pomeroy, in night clothes, is brushing her hair, humming, smiling as if pleased with her thoughts.

The Kid listens for a while, then takes a deep breath, exhales it, grins crookedly, licks his lips, and goes away.

Richmond, beginning to undress in his bedroom, takes a typewritten piece of paper from his pocket and looks thoughtfully at it, pursing his lips.

It reads:

Richmond’s finger, traveling down this list, hesitates longest at the fourth item and the last.

He returns the list to his pocket and continues undressing.

The next morning. Richmond’s roadster is standing in front of the house. He comes out of the house just as Ann rounds the corner.

She looks at the car and at him and asks, somewhat dismayed: “You’re not going away?”

“Just to the city for a few hours,” he assures her. “I’ll be back this evening.”

Her face brightens. She gives him her hand, saying: “Be sure you are.”

“It’s a promise,” he says as he gets into the car.

She waves at him from the steps as he rides swiftly away.

An unclean, shabbily furnished housekeeping room. The bed is not made. There are dirty dishes, an empty gin bottle, glasses, cigarette butts on an unclothed deal table. In one end of the room a bedraggled youngish woman in a shabby soiled kimono is frying eggs on a small gas stove on the drain-board beside a sink. Barney, in pants, undershirt, and stocking feet, is sitting on the side of the bed.

“Aw, stop bellyaching,” he says irritably. “I told you I got a trick up my sleeve that’ll have us sweating against silk when I pull it off, but I need two-three days more to get set. I—”

The woman turns around, snarls at him: “I heard that before. You ain’t got anything up your sleeve but a dirty arm. I’m sick and tired of having to bring in all the dough while you lay around and—”

There is a knock at the door.

They look at one another. Barney rises from the side of the bed, glances swiftly around the room as if to see that nothing is visible that should not be, and goes to the door. “Who is it?”

“Richmond.”

“All right.” Barney opens the door.

Richmond comes in saying: “Hello, Barney. Hello, May.”

The woman nods without saying anything and turns around to her eggs.

Barney shuts and locks the door, saying: “Set down.”

Richmond remains standing. He has not taken off his hat. “What’s new?” he asks.

Barney’s eyes move sidewise to focus sullenly on May’s back. Then he steps closer to Richmond and mutters: “They had the junk all right — ten pounds of C. They delivered it to Rags Davis.” He puts a hand to the lapel of Richmond’s coat, “Keep me covered on this, Gene,” he begs. “I wouldn’t last an hour if—”

With a gloved hand, Richmond removes Barney’s hand from his lapel.

“I’ll keep you covered, Barney,” he promises. “Where’s Rags’s hang out now?”

“Sutherland Hotel — five eleven.”

Richmond nods, asks: “Got anything else? Find out who the guy they killed was?”

Barney shakes his head, then says: “But he was a narcotic undercover man, all right.”

Richmond: “State, city, or federal?”

Barney: “I don’t know.”

Richmond says: “Stick around. I may want to get in touch with you today or tomorrow.” He turns toward the door.

Barney touches his elbow. “Slip me a piece of change, Gene? I’m kind of on the nut right now.”

Richmond takes two bills from his pocket, gives them to Barney, says, “Don’t forget to earn it,” drily, and goes out.

The woman at the stove turns around, looks contemptuously at Barney, spits noisily on the floor between them and says: “That’s all you’re good for — ratting!”

Barney has finished locking the door. He takes a step toward her, snarls viciously: “Shut up! I’ll pop a tooth out of your face!”

The woman, frightened, begins to scoop the eggs out on plates.

Richmond goes to his office. Tommy jumps up from his book to open the gate for him, saying: “Good afternoon, Mr. Richmond.”

Richmond says, “Hello, Tommy,” leans over to look at Tommy’s book, says humorously, “The Murder in the Telephone Booth — good Lord, what next?” rumples the boy’s hair, nods to Miss Crane, saying, “Will you come in for a moment,” and passes into his private office.

He hangs up his hat and coat and sits down at his desk.

Miss Crane comes in with some papers in her hand, also her notebook and pencil. She seems nervous, her face strained.

He is looking through his mail. “Anything new?” he asks without looking up.

“No,” she says. Her voice is a trifle hoarse. “Here are the reports of the two men we’re supposed to have working on the Fields job.”

He takes the papers from her, runs his gaze over them rapidly. “Swell,” he says as he hands them back to her, “but if you make the one that’s supposed to be shadowing Kennedy — what do you call him? Harper? — watch his house until after the street cars stop running we can add taxi fare to his expenses.”

She says, “All right,” and goes out with the reports.

He picks up the telephone, says: “Get me Joe King, Narcotic Agents’ Office in the Federal Building.”

He reads his mail until the telephone rings. Then, into the instrument, still looking through his mail: “Hello, Joe, this is Gene Richmond.”

The other end of the wire — a grey-haired man with a strong-featured, keen-eyed, clean-cut face. “Yes, Gene?”

Richmond: “I want to swap some information with you.”

King: “Yes?”

Richmond: “Was the fellow they killed down the beach the other night one of your men?”

King’s eyes narrow. He says: “I thought you wanted to swap. I didn’t know you just wanted to get information.”

Richmond: “Well, if he wasn’t, say so, because then nothing I can say will be any good to you.”

King, after a moment of thinking, replies: “All right — suppose we talk as if he were.”

Richmond pushes his mail aside and gives all his attention to the telephone: “Fair enough. Know who killed him?”

King, softly: “Yes.”

Richmond draws his brows together a little in disappointment. Before he speaks King is saying: “I’m hoping what you can tell me is where they are now.”

Richmond’s face clears. A faint smile lifts the corners of his mouth. “I’ll be able to, Joe,” he says, “inside of three days.”

Joe King says: “That’ll be—”

Richmond: “Have you got enough on them to swing them for the job?”

King: “I’ve got enough to hold them on while I get the rest.”

Richmond: “Would it help to know the dealer they delivered the junk to, and what they delivered?”

King, keeping his interest from showing in his voice, but not in his face: “It wouldn’t hurt any.”

Richmond: “Ten pounds of cocaine to Rags Davis. He’s living at the Sutherland Hotel, room five eleven.”

King: “Thanks, Gene.”

Richmond: “Have I held up my side of the swap?”

King: “You have.”

Richmond: “Good. Now I want to ask a favor.”

King, cautiously: “What is it?”

Richmond: “If you pinch Davis, just tell the papers he’s being held as a dealer — keep the killing angle out of it until we’ve got the others.”

King: “That’s no favor — we’re playing it that way ourselves. We haven’t gone in for any publicity on the murder.” He pauses, looking sharply at the ’phone, then asks casually: “How do you get in on this, Gene?”

Richmond, easily: “Oh, it’s just an off-shoot of another job I’ve been working on. Let me know how you make out with Rags, will you?”

King: “Yes. You’re sure of him, are you?”

Richmond: “Absolutely.”

King: “Right. Thanks.”

Richmond: “O.K.”

They hang up.

King scowls thoughtfully at his telephone as he pushes it back, then picks up another phone and says: “Come in will you, Pete.”

A hard-mouthed man of forty in quiet clothes comes in.

King addresses him: “Gene Richmond’s got a finger in this Neely business somewhere.”

Pete makes a mouth, rubs his chin with a thumb, says: “That’s un-nice.”

King: “He just ’phoned, promised to turn Neely and his mob up inside of three days, said they had ten pounds of coke that night and delivered it to Rags Davis.”

Pete scowls, says: “There’s a lot of things I’d rather have than Richmond messing around. What do you suppose his angle is?”

King shakes his head. “Too hard for me. Might be anything that’s got money in it. Better send somebody out to try to keep tabs on him. You and I’ll go up against Rags.”

“Try is right,” Pete says glumly as he moves toward the door.

Gene Richmond’s private office. He is standing shaking hands with a small middle-aged man dressed in neat, conservative clothes, and is saying: “We’ll find him. Don’t worry about it. Things seldom happen to youngsters of that age.”

The man says, “Thank you, Mr. Richmond, thank you, sir,” as if very much relieved. Richmond smiles and ushers him out through the corridor door.

Richmond returns to his desk and pushes the button. Helen Crane comes in.

“This man who was just in — Wood — wants us to find his fifteen-year-old kid — ran away yesterday. There’s no occasion for secrecy. The police can do more than we can. Get in touch with them; they’ll do their usual routine broadcasting, telegraphing, and so on.” He picks up a piece of paper. “Here’s the kid’s description and the rest of the dope.” He picks up a check. “I took fifty dollars from him. Charge him with one man’s time till the police find the boy or he comes home.”

Helen Crane takes the paper and check with a trembling hand. He glances curiously at her, but goes on in the same business-like tone: “This Pomeroy job is getting a little ticklish. I could wind it up now, but I think I can swing a big-money angle by holding off a day or two. But I’d better tell you that Neely and his crew are up there — at Green Lake — so in case — Let’s see. I’ll either phone you or be here twice a day. If I don’t — you’d better turn in the alarm — to Joe King and the sheriff’s office up there. It’s best to—”

Her agitation has increased to such an extent that he cannot ignore it. “What’s the matter, Helen?” he asks.

Her lips are quivering. “I don’t want to go to prison again,” she wails.

He rises, puts an arm around her, attempts to soothe her. “Sh-h-h. Nobody’s going to prison. I know what I’m doing and—”

“That’s what Mr. Queeble used to say,” she moans, clinging to his lapels, “and both of us went to prison.” Tears are running down her cheeks now.

The door opens and Babe Holliday halts in the doorway, her eyes large. Neither of them see her.

Richmond is stroking Helen Crane’s shoulder and back, speaking softly to her: “There’s nothing to be afraid of, but if you’re that frightened, why don’t you quit. You’re all right and—”

Babe, who has recovered from her astonishment by now, advances swiftly into the room, saying angrily to Richmond: “Let her alone! She’s not your kind!” She puts her arms around Helen, leading her toward the door, murmuring: “There, there, don’t cry. He’s not worth it.”

Helen moans: “It’s not his f-fault. I’m just a silly fool.”

Richmond stares at them. Bewilderment and amusement are mixed in his face.

Babe, having deposited the weeping girl in the outer office returns and shuts the door.

“Aren’t you a pip!” she says angrily. “Can’t you let anything in dresses alone?” Suddenly her face and voice change, and she goes into peals of laughter that is merry and without rancor. “Good old On-the-make Gene,” she laughs. “He takes his fun where he finds it, no matter how queer they are.” She affectionately takes his face between her hands and kisses him on the mouth.

The telephone rings. Richmond, grinning half-shamefacedly at Babe, wipes his face with a handkerchief, goes to the ’phone, and says: “Gene Richmond speaking.”

The other end of the wire. King in a hotel lobby phone booth. He says: “This is King, Gene. You sure Rags is our baby?”

Richmond: “I was there at the birth.”

King: “Well, we’ve been pushing him around for an hour and a half and haven’t been able to crack him.”

Richmond: “Search his place?”

King: “Frisked it from floor to ceiling, found nothing.”

Richmond’s eyes narrow. He purses his lips, then says: “Bring him over here. I’ll take him apart for you.”

King, somewhat skeptically: “Thank you, kind sir. I’ll bring him.”

They hang up.

Richmond addresses Babe: “You’ll have to scram, sister; company’s coming.”

“Oke,” she says. “What are you doing tonight?”

Richmond: “I’ve got to go back to Green Lake.”

Babe nods: “Pomeroy’s got a daughter — two to one.”

Richmond: “So has old man Holliday.”

Babe nods again: “But old man Pomeroy’s is newer to you.”

Richmond chuckles, rises, kisses her, and says: “We’ll go to dinner tomorrow night. How are you making out with the ancient Johnston? Got nearly enough on him for his wife’s divorce yet?”

She dangles the end of a string of beads at him, saying gaily: “I’ve got this.”

He scowls at her half-seriously. “That’s not what you’re being paid for. What good’s Mrs. Johnston’s divorce going to be to her if you leave him nothing to pay alimony with?”

“I couldn’t guess,” she replies, kisses him again, says, “dinner tomorrow,” and goes out.

He puts his hands in his trouser pants, rattles change, walks slowly to the outer-office door, opens it, puts his head through, and addresses Tommy: “Get Barney on the ’phone — tell him to come over right away. Show him in as soon as he comes.”

Tommy says, “Yes, sir.”

Richmond withdraws his head and shuts the door, looks doubtfully at the floor for a moment, shrugs a little, says in an undertone, “That’s his hard luck,” and goes back to his desk.

Joe King rides in an elevator to the fifth floor of a better class hotel, goes to room 511, takes a key from his pocket, unlocks the door, and enters.

Pete is sitting tilted back against the wall in a chair close to the door. A dandified slim man of medium height, perhaps thirty years old, is sprawled, cross legs straight out, in an arm-chair smoking a cigarette. The room shows signs of the narcotic agents’ intensive searching. Both men look at King with calmly inquisitive eyes.

King speaks to the dandified man with the cigarette: “Come on, Rags, we’re going visiting.”

Rags smiles mockingly, says, “Don’t care if I do,” gets up, takes his hat from the bed.

Pete brings his chair down on all fours and gets up. He leaves the room first, then Rags, then King. They walk toward the elevator with Rags between the two narcotic agents. Neither of them touches him.

Richmond’s private office. He is seated at his desk. Rags sits as before in a wooden arm-chair. King is half sitting on, half leaning against Richmond’s desk, facing Rags. Pete is lounging against the wall beside the outer-office door.

Rags, gesturing lazily with a cigarette, is saying: “I’ve been nice to you boys, but you can’t expect me to sit around like this forever. What are we waiting for; what are we going to do?”

King says: “You’re more comfortable here than in a cell, aren’t you?”

Rags: “Uh-huh — only my lawyer and a bond-broker can get me out of a cell before I begin to get tired of it. If that’s where we’re going, let’s go.”

King looks at Richmond. Richmond looks at his watch, opens his mouth to speak, but stops when Tommy opens the outer-office door for Barney.

Barney takes a step inside the office, sees Rags, blanches, and starts to turn back. Pete puts his left hand on Barney’s left forearm, steps behind him, and pushes him a little farther into the room. Tommy, wide-eyed, shuts the door slowly, staring through the narrowing opening.

Barney turns his terror-stricken face from Rags to Richmond and begins to babble despairingly: “You promised you’d keep me covered, Gene! You told me you’d—”

Rags laughs mockingly. “Ever know a copper that’d give his stool-pigeons anything but the worst of it?” he asks Barney. His voice, like his face, is calm, but when he glances down at his hands he sees they are tightly gripping the arms of his chair, and the backs of his hands are dotted with sweat. Casually, to avoid the attention of the others, he forces his hands to relax and moves them slowly to his thighs, turning them backs-down so his trousers mop up the moisture.

Richmond, coldly: “Sorry, Barney. You’ll have to talk. We’ll protect you.”

Barney: “But you promised you’d—”

Richmond: “I know, but it can’t be helped. Tell these gentlemen how you know Neely took the stuff to Rags.”

Barney puts both hands out pleadingly to Richmond and seems about to fall on his knees. “I don’t know nothing, Gene,” he cries. “Honest to God, I don’t! I was just guessing!” His voice rises in a wail: “He’ll kill me! He’ll kill me, Gene! You can’t make me—”

Rags smiles evilly and says: “It doesn’t look like you’re going to live forever, and that’s a fact.”

Barney cringes.

King addresses Rags curtly: “Shut up!” He leaves the desk, takes Barney by the lapels, pulls him close, and growls: “Come through. He’s not going to be anywhere where he can hurt you — if you talk enough to let us put him and keep him out of your way.”

Richmond: “You’ve got to go through with it now, Barney. He knows you’ve squealed. Make a clean job of it and we’ll give you all the protection you need. If you don’t — we’ll have to turn Rags loose. You know what kind of a spot you’ll be in then.”

Barney stares past King at Richmond for a long moment, then at King, at Pete. The last trace of hopefulness goes out of his face, leaving it dumbly defeated. His body becomes limp. “All right,” he says lifelessly, “he’s got another room on the same floor of his hotel under another name where he keeps the stuff — in sample trunks. He’s...”

Pete has moved around behind Rags’s chair, watching the dealer sharply. Richmond and King listen attentively to Barney.

Half an hour later. Barney, standing in the center of the floor, has just finished answering the last question. Rags, sitting as before, is staring thoughtfully at his feet. Pete is leaning on the back of Rags’s chair. King is half sitting on, half leaning against the desk again. Richmond is smoking a cigarette.

King and Richmond look at each other. The narcotic agent says: “That does it, doesn’t it?” His voice is faintly tinged with satisfaction.

Richmond nods gravely.

King, jerking a thumb at Barney, addresses Pete: “Take him down and book him as a witness.”

Pete leaves the back of the chair, taps Barney on the arm, and says: “Come on.”

Barney looks pleadingly at King and Richmond, begins: “You’ll take care of me? You won’t let—”

King nods curtly. “We’ll take care of you. Go ahead.”

Pete takes Barney out.

King turns to Rags, asking quietly: “How do you like it now?”

Rags raises his gaze from his feet, smiles bitterly, replies in a voice just as quiet, though rueful: “It’s not so hot.” He stops smiling. “Well, you’ve got it all. What are you waiting for?”

King: “Got any suggestions?”

Rags looks thoughtfully at King, at his feet, then up at King again, and asks evenly: “You don’t think I had anything to do with bumping off that guy at the beach, do you?”

King leans forward a little and says persuasively: “Maybe we won’t think so if you don’t fight us too much.”

Rags grins ruefully: “I’m pleading guilty to the rest of it,” he says. “You got me cold.”

“That’s sensible,” King says, rising. “Let’s go.”

King and Rags go out.

Downstairs, in the office building lobby, an inconspicuous looking man is loitering. He and King exchange significant glances as King and his prisoner pass.

The inconspicuous looking man is still in the lobby when Richmond leaves the building a few minutes later, and follows Richmond out.

Richmond gets into his roadster. The man following him gets into a black coupe farther down the street, and follows the roadster.

Richmond turns two corners, runs through a parking lot from one street to another, tilting the car’s mirror to watch the coupe following him, drives half a dozen blocks and then down into the rear entrance of a garage under a large apartment house, out the front, through an alley, and away swiftly up a broad boulevard.

The man in the coupe waits awhile in the rear of the apartment building, then goes into the garage, looks around, questions one of the attendants, makes a gesture of chagrin, and goes away.

The dining room in the house at Green Lake. The Pomeroys and their guests are rising from the table. There are seven guests besides Kavanaugh — three men and four women — all young and gay and fashionably dressed. As they leave the dining-room, laughing and talking, the sound of an automobile comes from out of doors. It is dark outdoors.

Ann Pomeroy makes vague, somewhat incoherent excuses and goes to the front door. Richmond is getting out of his roadster. She runs down the steps to him. “Oh, I’m glad you’re back!” she says impulsively.

He looks curiously at her, asks: “Why? Has anything happened?”

She is suddenly embarrassed. “N-no,” she stammers. Then she puts a hand on his arms, says earnestly: “I am glad you’re back. Father — I made Father tell me the — everything. You can help him, can’t you?”

He pats her hand. “Certainly,” he says. “There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing’s happened today?”

Ann: “No — except the youngest one of those four horrible men — wherever I go I either see him or have the feeling that he’s watching me.” She shivers, moves close to Richmond. “I’m not — I don’t think I’m very brave. I’m afraid, Gene!”

Richmond puts an arm around her. “Sh-h-h,” he says soothingly, “it’s coming out all right. I wish your father hadn’t told you.”

“I made him,” she says. “Are you sure it’s going to come out all right?”

“Absolutely,” he replies as they ascend the stairs.

The Kid steps out from behind a bush and scowls sullenly at their backs.

The bedroom where Neely and the others were seen before. Happy is lying in his usual position on the bed. Neely is sitting on the foot of the bed, wearing his hat. Buck is at the table, pouring himself a drink.

The Kid comes in, shuts the door, and says: “Richmond’s back.”

Buck suddenly slams his full glass into a corner of the room and wheels on Neely. Happy swings his legs over the side of the bed and sits bending tensely forward, a hand behind him: his face remains as usual. The Kid crouches with his back to the door, his right hand swinging near his hip.

Buck is speaking in a hoarse, strained voice: “Listen, Cheaters, I got enough of this hanging around waiting for somebody to pull the ground from under our feet. What I say is let’s go down and put a rod against this Pomeroy’s belly and either collect or leave him looking at the ceiling. And I say let’s do it right now.”

Richmond opens the door, but does not enter the room. He looks mockingly from one to another of them. They maintain their positions, turning only their heads toward him. While selecting a cigarette from a package in his hand, he tells them casually: “There’ll be news for you in the morning paper. Don’t let it excite you too much. Just sit tight and Uncle Gene will pull you through.”

He shuts the door and goes down to the room where the Pomeroys and their guests are. All except Ann and a slim dark-haired boy in dinner clothes are playing bridge at two tables. The boy and Ann are sitting on a sofa by the fireplace. When she sees Richmond she makes a place for him beside her, patting it and smiling at him. He goes over to her and sits down. The dark-haired boy’s smile is polite rather than cordial. The three of them laugh and talk, though nothing they say can be heard above the chatter at the tables. Gradually, as they talk, Ann turns on the sofa to face Richmond more directly, until her back is almost squarely turned on the dark-haired boy, and by then he has almost been excluded from the conversation, neither Ann nor Richmond seeming to remember he is there. He pouts, then gets up somewhat angrily, and moves off to watch one of the bridge games. They do not seem to notice his going. Several of the card-players look at them with politely moderated curiosity.

A closer shot of them as she stops laughing, glances around to see they cannot be overheard, and says very seriously: “You weren’t just trying to keep me from worrying when you said everything would come out all right?”

Richmond: “I honestly wasn’t, Miss Pomeroy. I—” He stops, looking questioningly at her, as she frowns. “I called you Gene out there,” she says severely.

He smiles apologetically, says: “I wasn’t just trying to keep you from worrying, Ann.”

She laughs.

He continues, seriously now: “A lot happened in town today — in our favor. It—”

“What happened?” she asks.

He smiles and shakes his head. “Nothing I can tell you. This is nasty business. I’m having to do things I don’t like to talk about — especially not to you.”

She puts a hand on one of his, says softly, earnestly: “You’re doing them for me — for Father and me. I ought to be forced to hear what you’re having to do.”

He says drily: “I’m getting paid for it. I’m a hired man doing his job.”

She puts both hands on his and corrects him tenderly: “You are a friend — savior.”

He looks around in embarrassment, sees that the bridge games have broken up and some of the players are coming toward them. He rises with evident relief.

Later that night. The guests are saying goodnight and going up to their rooms. Pomeroy and Ann are left alone in the room. He sits on the sofa facing the fireplace and stares at the fire while finishing his cigar. Ann goes over to him and sits on the arm of the sofa beside him, putting an arm around him, leaning her cheek on his head.

Presently she asks: “Do you like Gene Richmond, Father?”

Pomeroy takes the cigar from his mouth, frowning a little, and says slowly: “I don’t know, honey. I don’t think I do.”

Ann: “Why?”

Pomeroy, still speaking thoughtfully: “I’ve a feeling that he’s not too scrupulous, that perhaps some of the things he does in his work are—”

Ann, quickly: “But he’s doing them for us, Father!”

Pomeroy turns his head and looks at her. “Yes, that’s so,” he says slowly.

As he continues to look at her, her face flushes and she averts her eyes.

He asks: “Do you like Gene Richmond, Ann?”

She looks at him and says: “Yes.”

Outside. Richmond, smoking a cigarette, is strolling along a dark path toward the house. On the grass beside the path, twenty feet behind, the Kid is following him silently. The Kid’s right hand is in his bulging jacket pocket. As they approach a part of the path made especially dark by sheltering bushes, the Kid quickens his pace, closing in, and when Richmond reaches the dark spot, the Kid jumps him. Nothing can be seen but two indistinguishable moving figures in the light of Richmond’s cigarette. There is a distinct sound of a fist hitting flesh, once — then footsteps running away. Richmond’s face can be seen as his cigarette burns brighter with an inhalation, and he resumes his stroll toward the house. He opens the front door, light flooding him, turns to look at the dark grounds, snaps the butt of his cigarette into the darkness in a long arc, glances at the knuckles of his right hand with a faint smile, and goes indoors, shutting the door.

The Dis-and-Dat Kid leaves a sheltering tree, scowling toward the door, putting a hand tenderly to a side of his jaw. Then he looks around. A lighted kitchen window catches his eye. He goes down and looks in. Happy is seated at a table eating a piece of pie, drinking milk. Across the table, the buxom cook is seated, her face broad and smiling, talking coquettishly, though the Kid cannot hear what she is saying.

He starts to grin crookedly, stops grinning and puts his hand to his face again, and leaves the window, vanishing in the darkness.

A cheaply furnished, but very clean and orderly, bedroom. Helen Crane is sitting at a dressing-table mirror brushing her hair. Her eyes are wide, moist, and frightened. Her lips are moving. She is saying: “I don’t want to go to prison again,” over and over to her reflection in the glass as she brushes her hair.

Pomeroy’s house. Richmond is standing with his back to the fire talking to Pomeroy and Ann, who sits as before. He is addressing Pomeroy: “It’s better for you not to know what I’m doing. As I told Miss Pomeroy—”

“Ann,” Ann says.

Richmond chuckles. “As I told Ann,” he goes on, “a lot I’ve had to do hasn’t been nice, wouldn’t be nice to listen to. You can take my word for it that things are shaping up much better than I expected. A few more should see you in the clear. But it’s enough for me to have the dirty details on my conscience — that’s my job — without having you worried with them.”

Pomeroy: “You really feel you’re making satisfactory progress?”

Richmond: “Oh, yes.”

Pomeroy looks at his daughter. She snuggles closer to him and says impulsively: “I’m sure Gene’s right — about our leaving everything to him — trusting him.” She looks up somewhat proudly at the detective, then asks: “You don’t have to go to the city again tomorrow, do you?”

He nods. “Yes — it all centers there.”

She makes a face at him.

He speaks to Pomeroy: “I’ll need some money, cash, five thousand. A man who gave us some valuable information will have to be shipped abroad. His life isn’t worth a cigarette if he stays here, and his killing might drag the whole story out in the open. Will you have your office send the money over to mine in the morning?”

Pomeroy says: “Yes. Is there anything else?”

Richmond says: “No.”

Pomeroy rises, says, “Well, I’m off to bed, then” — kisses his daughter, says — “Good night, Richmond,” and goes out, leaving Richmond and Ann together.

The corridor outside the girl’s bedroom door. The Kid stands with his ear against the door, listening. A clock somewhere in the house strikes four faintly. The Kid opens the door, goes in, shuts the door, crosses to the bed, looks down at the sleeping girl, moves cautiously around the room, looking into bathroom and dressing room, then goes out.

Next morning. Richmond alone at table eating breakfast. He rises hastily as Ann comes in. They exchange good-mornings, sit down, and she asks earnestly: “Must you go to the city today?”

He smiles, says: “Must.”

She does not smile. She leans toward him and says in a low, strained voice: “I’m afraid, Gene. I’m afraid — awfully. Don’t go.”

He tries to soothe her: “I don’t think there’s anything you really need to be afraid of here. It—”

She: “I’m not afraid when you’re here, but when you’re gone it’s awful. Even if there are a lot of people here — if you’re not here I’m afraid.”

“Go with me,” he suggests.

“I can’t — not with these people here.”

“Swim, play tennis, keep on the jump,” he advises her. “Don’t let yourself stop and think. You’ll be all right.”

“I’m afraid,” she repeats.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he assures her, smiling cheerfully. “Your father shouldn’t’ve told you anything.” He continues jestingly, trying to laugh her out of her fears: “And I’ll bring you a bag of gumdrops and a doll and a new ribbon when I come back this—”

She is not to be turned from her point. She comes quickly around the table, puts her hands on his shoulders and whispers desperately: “Don’t go. Don’t leave me — dear.”

He rises, upsetting his chair, takes her in his arms and kisses her, but when she looks questioningly at him afterward, he shakes his head and says earnestly: “I’ve got to.” His eyes brighten as he thinks of an unanswerable reason. “You were there when I told you about the man we’d have to get out of the country or at least as far away as we can.”

Ann: “Yes.”

Richmond: “Well, it may be a matter of life or death for him — my going to the city today.”

Ann, impulsively: “It was selfish of me. You must go, of course.”

She comes into his arms again.

Richmond in his roadster riding toward the city, whistling happily.

Neely holding a spread newspaper in his hands. His cohorts hanging over his shoulders as they read a news item headed:

They breathe heavily, and when they have finished they look at one another in consternation.

Richmond enters his outer office, acknowledges Tommy’s and Miss Crane’s meetings, and asks: “Did Pomeroy’s office send anything over for me?”

Miss Crane says: “Yes, sir,” and hands him a thick envelope. She is obviously holding herself tightly in hand.

He tears it open, takes out a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills and asks: “Anything else turn up?”

Miss Crane: “Barney’s been phoning every hour or two since late yesterday. He seems very excited.”

Richmond nods. “Get him on the phone for me.” He goes into his private office, hangs up hat and coat, sits down at his desk, counts off ten of the hundred-dollar bills, folds them, and puts them in a vest pocket. The balance of the bills he stuffs into his wallet.

The telephone rings. He picks it up, says: “Gene Richmond speaking.”

The other end of the wire. Barney at a wall phone in the hall of his rooming house, his eyes looking fearfully around as he speaks in a harsh whisper over the wire: “For God’s sake, Gene, do something for me — get me away from here before they croak me! They’re after me, Gene! I got to blow! They’ll croak me sure! Give me some dough — enough to get away with — Gene! You got to! You got me into this! You got to get me out! You got to, Gene! Please! Please! For God’s sake!”

Richmond: “If you’ll turn off the monologue long enough to listen, I’ll tell you I’ve got a thousand bucks for you.”

Barney, hysterically relieved: “Have you, Gene? Will you—”

Richmond: “Where are you?”

Barney: “Home.”

Richmond: “All right. I’m on my way over with it.” He hangs up the receiver in the midst of Barney’s profuse hysterical thanks.

Richmond puts on his hat and coat, says, “I’ll be back in a little while,” as he goes through the outer office, rides down in an elevator and leaves the office building, going afoot. He walks along without any especial signs of haste, stopping once or twice to look in a shop-window, enters Barney’s rooming-house and goes up to his room. When he knocks on the door it swings open. Barney is lying on the floor, face up. There is a dark spot on his coat over his heart. He is dead.

Richmond, scowling thoughtfully, touches his chin with fingers and thumb, then kneels beside the dead man, feels his hand and wrist, rises, looks around the room, goes out to the telephone in the hall, drops in a coin, and says: “The police. This is an emergency call.” Then: “A man is dead in room two sixteen at thirteen hundred and nine South Whitfield Street. Yes — murdered.”

He goes back to the dead man’s room, goes in, and shuts the door. Standing there, looking at the dead man, waiting for the police, he slowly takes the ten hundred-dollar bills from his vest pocket, straightens them out, and stuffs them into his wallet with the others.

Joe King’s office in the Federal Building. He, Pete, and Richmond are there. They silently wait until two men bring in Rags Davis.

Rags smiles at them, saying: “Afternoon, gents.”

King nods at a comfortable chair. “Sit down, Rags,” he says.

Rags sits down.

King asks: “Got cigarettes?”

Rags, amused: “Yes, thanks.” He takes out a package of cigarettes and puts one in his mouth, feeling in his pockets for matches. One of the men who brought him in holds a light to the cigarette. Rags blows smoke out, says: “Thanks.”

King smiles at Rags, says in a friendly voice: “Tell us who killed Barney, Rags.”

Rags laughs. “Somebody finally cut that rat down? That’s just swell!”

King, in the same friendly voice: “Who did it, Rags?”

Rags: “I wish I knew, King. I’d like to send him a little present.”

Pete takes a slow step toward Rags, says good-naturedly: “Aw, stop kidding. Who did it?”

Richmond hunches his chair a little nearer Rags...

The clock on the wall moves from four o’clock to nine o’clock.

Rags is now sitting under a strong electric light. His collar is loosened, his necktie askew, and there is perspiration on his face. His faint grin has more weariness than mockery in it. He shakes his head wearily from side to side.

“That’s a lie!” King says hoarsely. He wipes his neck and cheeks with a damp handkerchief. “There’s a dozen ways you could get word out.”

Pete, in shirt sleeves, puts out a hand and raises Rags’s face roughly. “You got word to Slim and he turned the trick.” His voice is as hoarse as King’s.

Rags: “No.”

All the men in the room except Richmond are disheveled, but he seems as tired as the others. One of the other men begins firing questions at Rags.

King looks questioningly at Richmond, who looks significantly at the clock and makes a hopeless gesture with his hands.

King interrupts the questioning. “Take him away,” he orders.

Two men take Rags out. The others clump wearily in their chairs. Nobody speaks.

Richmond in his bathroom, shaving while carrying on a conversation with Babe Holliday, who is sitting crosswise in an easy chair in his living room, leaning against one arm, legs dangling over the other. She is asking: “And is this Ann Pomeroy really as beautiful as she looks in her pictures?”

He goes to the bathroom door, razor in hand, and looks at Babe under wrinkled forehead. “You been looking her up?” he asks incredulously.

She swings her legs and laughs. “Yep — back-number newspaper society pages. I’m a gal that does things about her curiosity. Is she that good-looking?”

He shrugs and goes back to his shaving. “She’s not bad to look at,” he says after he has removed most of the lather from his chin. He scrapes the other side of his face and then goes to the door again. “Can you keep a secret?” he asks, and then without waiting for her to answer, “I think she’s the big one.”

Babe laughs. “It’s probably her old man’s dough that’s the big one.”

He grins good-naturedly, says: “Maybe — but I find myself forgetting that sometimes.”

She pretends amazement. “Then it is serious!” She looks at her watch. “Are we going to dinner or breakfast? It’s after ten o’clock.”

As she starts back toward the bathroom the telephone bell rings. He answers it: “Gene Richmond speaking.”

The other end of the wire. Kavanaugh, disheveled, frantic, crying: “They’ve taken Ann with them! We didn’t know she was gone till we found the note! They left an hour ago, but we didn’t know they had her. We thought—”

Richmond drops his razor: “Shut up and answer questions! Did they go in their car?”

Kavanaugh: “Yes!”

Richmond: “What did the note say?”

Kavanaugh: “That since Pomeroy wouldn’t give them money— They had made a final demand just—”

Richmond: “Shut up! Took her as a hostage?”

Kavanaugh: “Yes, they—”

Richmond: “Which way did they go?”

Kavanaugh: “Toward the city. We—”

Richmond: “Did you phone sheriffs along the way?”

Kavanaugh: “Yes, and Pomeroy and the others have gone after them. They may—”

Richmond: “They got away about an hour ago?”

Kavanaugh: “Around nine o’clock, I’d say. We saw—”

Richmond: “Anything else I ought to know?”

Kavanaugh: “No, except maybe—”

Richmond slams the receiver on the hook, whirls into his bedroom and begins getting into the rest of his clothes while shouting, “Come here,” to Babe.

She is already there.

“Get pencil and paper,” he snaps.

She gets them. While putting on his clothes he dictates a description of the three men and the girl, and a description and the license number of the Packard car. “Phone King of the Federal narcotic department, the police — they abducted her — left Green Lake around nine o’clock — headed this way,” and he dashes out, leaving the door open behind him.

He goes downstairs half a flight to a leap to the basement garage, gets into his car, heedlessly bangs fenders of other cars getting out of the garage, and roars up the street with pedestrians and other cars hurriedly getting out of his way.

Various shots of him leaving the city, dashing madly along country roads.

Then he rounds a bend and comes upon half a dozen cars standing in the road, blocking it, with men moving among their lights. He slams on his brakes barely in time to keep from running into the nearest car, and is out of his roadster before it has quite come to a halt.

In the light of one of the cars Ann is standing with her father. She leaves him immediately to run to Richmond, panting: “Oh, it was horrible! I thought you’d never come.” She clings to him, weeping softly.

Richmond soothes her with his hands while looking around.

Neely, the Kid, Buck, and Happy are standing in a row, guarded by half a dozen hard-faced deputy sheriffs.

King and Peters are standing together, looking speculatively at Richmond, but before he can express his surprise at finding them there ahead of him, Pomeroy comes up and says: “I’m going to make a clean breast of it, Richmond, and take the consequences. When I think of the danger my cowardice put Ann in” — he swallows, puts his lips hard together, then says — “I’d rather be tried for a dozen murders.”

“Sh-h-h,” Richmond says pleasantly. “You’re in the clear on that now.”

King and Pete quietly move nearer, listening to Richmond.

Richmond is explaining to Pomeroy: “The man they killed was a narcotic agent. They were running dope. You hadn’t anything to do with dope — no jury could be convinced you had and the killing is tied up with that end — not with the liquor end. You’re all right.”

Ann raises a suddenly happy face to him, crying: “Oh, Gene,” kissing him and then going to kiss her father.

King nudges Pete and they approach Richmond. He says: “Hello! How’d you boys get here ahead of me?”

King, drily: “We were on our way to Green Lake and happened to run into this party. A crazy dame that says she works for you came in right after you left tonight and told us the boys were up at Pomeroy’s. She told us a lot of interesting things in between telling us she didn’t want to go to prison again. That got to be kind of tiresome, but the rest of it was all right — about you knowing all along Pomeroy was in the clear and just stringing him along getting all the money you could. She said some things about some of your other jobs, too, and as soon as the doctors get her mind cleared a little we’re going to have—”

Ann, her eyes cold, her head high and imperious, steps between King and Richmond, facing Richmond. He looks levelly at her.

“You did that?” she demands in a pitifully strained voice. “You left us at the mercy of those men for days; you kept Father in fear of disgrace, prison, the gallows; you let this” — shuddering — “happen to me — all so you could get more money out of him?”

Richmond’s eyes fall. “I wasn’t sure enough,” he begins to mumble. Then he raises his head again and his voice becomes coldly composed. “I’m in business for money,” he says evenly, “just as your father is and—”

She turns and walks away from him. He looks at Pomeroy, who stares back at him with bleak contemptuous eyes. He looks at King.

King shakes his head with an assumption of regret. “Always on the make, aren’t you, Gene?”

Richmond has recovered all his composure. He grins cynically and replies: “Maybe you boys like working for your lousy little salaries. I’m in the game for money. Sure, I’m always on the make.”

King shrugs. “Lousy little salaries is what we get, but we can sleep at night.”

Richmond chuckles. “I lie awake a lot with my conscience,” he says mockingly. He looks around. “Well, there doesn’t seem to be anything for me to do here. Night.” He turns toward his roadster.

King touches his shoulder, says, “Uh-uh, Gene. We’ve got to take you in and book you. You know — there are formalities to go through with.”

Richmond, unruffled, nods. “You’ll let me stop at a phone on the way in and get hold of my lawyer, so he’ll have bail arranged by the time we get there?”

King: “Sure — we’re not being rough with you.” He looks around. “Let’s go. Pete and I’ll ride with you.” He raises his voice to call to one of the men over by the prisoners: “Harry, we’re going in with Richmond.”

A voice answers: “Right.”

They crowd into the roadster, Richmond turns it around, and they ride toward town until they come to a cross-roads drug-store. They go into the store together. Richmond enters a glass telephone booth, while the two narcotic agents loiter in sight, but some distance away, at the cigar counter.

Richmond calls a number, asks for Mr. Schwartz, and when he gets him says: “Schwartz, this is Gene Richmond... Yes... I’m in a jam and I want bail arranged... I don’t know exactly, better arrange for plenty... Right, in about an hour... Thanks.”

He calls another number and asks for Mr. Keough. The other end of the wire — a newspaper office. Richmond says to Keough: “Hello, Keough — this is Gene Richmond. I’ve got a story for you. We’ve just picked up four men on charges of rum-running, dope-smuggling, murder, and abduction of Ann Pomeroy. Is that news?... Right... No, I didn’t make the arrests myself, but they were made by narcotic agents and local deputies on information supplied by my office, so give me a good break on it... Right... Now here are the details...”

The next morning. In Richmond’s outer office Tommy, alone, is wide-eyed over the front page of a newspaper wherein Richmond’s feat is described in glowing terms. Tommy looks admiringly up at Richmond as he comes in and says, “Good morning.”

Richmond glances at the headlines in passing with a faint smile.

“Gee, you’re smart, Mr. Richmond,” Tommy blurts out.

Richmond rumples the boy’s hair and goes into his private office. He shuts the door behind him and leans back against it wearily. His smile is gone. He pushes his hat back and mutters: “Gee, I’m smart! I got thirty thousand dollars and will probably have to go to jail or at least blow town, where I could have had ten million and the one woman that’s ever really meant anything to me — maybe.” He touches his forehead with the back of his hand and repeats, “Gee, I’m smart!”

The telephone-bell rings. He goes to it. “Gene Richmond speaking,” he says with mechanical suavity. “Oh, good morning, Mr. Fields. No, nothing yet...” He looks thoughtfully at the phone, then: “It might be wise to place another man in the Dartmouth Cement Company’s offices and see what we can get from the inside... Yes, I’d advise it... All right, I’ll do that.”

He hangs up and presses the button on his desk. Tommy opens the door, says, “Miss Crane hasn’t showed up yet.”

Richmond blinks, then laughs. “That’s right,” he says. “That’ll be all.”

Tommy shuts the door.

The Road to Carmichael’s RICHARD WORMSER

Original publication: The Saturday Evening Post, September 19, 1942

Very early in his career, soon after graduating from Princeton, Richard Edward Wormser (1908–1977) took a job at the giant pulp magazine publishing company Street & Smith with the assignment of attempting to create a news magazine, which was not in the strike zone of the house and quickly failed. He then began to submit stories to its hugely successful pulp publication, The Shadow. Although Wormser wasn’t writing the full-length Shadow novels (all written in those days by Walter B. Gibson), the magazine filled out its page count with additional short stories.

The publisher liked his stories so much that he was given the opportunity to write the lead novels in its new pulp title, Nick Carter Magazine, producing nearly twenty of them between 1933 and 1936. It did not turn out to be the hit that Street & Smith had envisioned, and Wormser moved on quickly to continue writing with fewer restrictions. His first two books, The Man with the Wax Face (1934) and The Communist’s Corpse (1935), illustrated his style as a pulp writer, with short, crisp dialogue, lots of action, some purple prose, and chapters frequently ending with a cliff-hanger.

A prolific writing career — he estimated that he wrote about three hundred short stories, two hundred novelettes, more than two dozen novels, and a large number of screenplays — saw his talents somewhat refined as he wrote more and more, sometimes using the pen names Ed Friend and Conrad Gerson. He won an Edgar for best paperback original for The Invader (1972).

As early as 1937, he began to have screenplays produced, beginning with 1937’s Let Them Live! with Bruce Manning and Lionel Houser, followed by Start Cheering (1938), written with Eugene Solow and Philip Rapp, and Fugitives for a Night (1938) with Dalton Trumbo. Although he also wrote other types of film, he specialized in writing westerns, including Plainsman and the Lady (1946), Powder River Rustlers (1949), The Half-Breed (1952), and The Outcast (1954).

Wormser also wrote teleplays for such shows as Lassie, Zane Grey Theater, 77 Sunset Strip, and Cheyenne.

In “The Road to Carmichael’s,” an official in the US Treasury Department has been accused of a theft and heads across the border into Mexico to chase the real culprit, frequently just missing him but staying close on his tail. He attempts to get help from a Mexican colonel but quickly faces numerous challenges.

Title: The Big Steal, 1949

Studio: RKO Pictures

Director: Don Siegel

Screenwriters: Gerald Drayson Adams, Daniel Mainwaring

Producer: Jack J. Gross, Sid Rogell

• Robert Mitchum (Lt. Duke Halliday)

• Jane Greer (Joan Graham)

• William Bendix (Captain Vincent Blake)

• Patric Knowles (Jim Fiske)

• Ramon Navarro (Inspector General Ortega)

The birth of the film saw numerous changes and some unusual problems. Columbia Pictures had originally bought rights to “The Road to Carmichael’s” for George Raft but, when RKO bought the rights from Columbia in 1947, he was replaced by Robert Mitchum.

Mitchum had recently been arrested for possession of marijuana and was sentenced to sixty days in jail. The studio asked the judge for a postponement until after filming of The Big Steal was completed but the judge forced Mitchum to serve his sentence, though he later reduced the sentence and the actor was released ten days early for good behavior.

RKO had negotiated with Hal Wallis to use Lizabeth Scott, who was under contract to Wallis, to play Joan Graham. Scott withdrew from the film, claiming illness, but it was later revealed that she didn’t want to be in the film because of Mitchum’s criminal record, fearing that it would hurt her reputation and career. Jane Greer took the role while she was in the early stages of pregnancy.

In an amusing side note, Greer was taking medication to lessen the effects of morning sickness. William Bendix saw her taking the pills and asked what they were for. She told him it was to combat “Montezuma’s Revenge” and he asked for some. He later thanked her because he had not contracted any of the debilitating sickness.

Production delays because of Mitchum’s incarceration created havoc with the final film. Exterior filming was spotty because the seasons had changed, Greer was becoming more obviously pregnant, and Mitchum lost weight in jail and looked more gaunt than when he went away.

In spite of production delays, some reshooting and attendant costs, the film grossed $1.6 million, double its production cost.

THE ROAD TO CARMICHAEL’S Richard Wormser

Jim Howard introduced himself to the Mexican officials at Ensenada as a United States detective named Johnson. He had Johnson’s shield to back it up. He figured it would take Johnson a day or two to explain himself when he got to Ensenada. He’d probably have to wire Washington and get a reply before he persuaded these people that he was the real Johnson. Jim knew his only chance was to keep ahead of Johnson.

The Mexican officials were polite. They said they recognized the extradition treaty, of course. Plainly, this Howard, whom Señor Johnson sought, was a criminal. They would be glad to turn him over to the United States authorities, if they found him. But in a matter of so great importance, did not Señor Johnson wish to see the chief?

Jim said he would be delighted.

Colonel Ortega was dark, handsome, and sad. Jim sat opposite him and reminded himself again how a tough cop named Johnson would talk.

“It’s like this, chief,” Jim said: “This guy Howard holds an important job in the department. We think he double-crossed us in a little matter of counterfeit ten-dollar bills. He picked them up — a hundred thousand dollars’ worth — as evidence. And then” — Jim paused for effect — “he lost them.”

Colonel Ortega’s dark eyes regarded Jim with interest.

“Could happen,” Jim said. “But then he seems to have used one of those lost ten-dollar bills in a café.”

“Ah!” Colonel Ortega said. “I understand.”

“I was ordered to bring him in. He got away from me. He is the only man who ever did get away from me. So I must find him.”

Colonel Ortega nodded. “A matter of honor.”

“It’s my job to find him. Actually I can’t apply for extradition until there’s an indictment. So far, you see, we’ve kept it inside the department.”

“I quite understand,” Colonel Ortega said. “It’s a matter of discretion. I am in sympathy. We officials should stick together.”

Jim sat back. The real issue was whether he could go south or not. Colonel Ortega knew it, but so far he had made no offer. He was sympathetic, but he was not helpful. Jim switched to Spanish.

“We know that Howard crossed the border and took the road this way. He must have come through here; there is no other way to go.”

“It is conceivable,” Colonel Ortega said. “We take much pains, but we are not infallible.”

“You understand why it is necessary for me to go south?”

“You speak good Spanish, Señor Johnson. To a Mexican ear there is a slight Castilian lisp. But it is excellent.”

“I took Spanish for three years in prep school,” Jim said. “Since then I have spent a lot of time in Latin America.”

“I also went to prep school in your country. To a place in Connecticut called Harkness. You perhaps have heard of it?”

“Heard of it? That’s where I went.”

Jim studied the chief a little anxiously. There had been a number of Latin Americans at school, though he wouldn’t remember any of them now.

This Ortega was older than he — old enough to have graduated before Jim entered.

Colonel Ortega was smiling a friendly smile. “As one Harkness man to another, Señor Johnson, I will lend you two of my men. I will lend you a squad if you like. Next June — or maybe even in May.”

“But this is September.”

Colonel Ortega nodded. “I know. The country to the south will be impassable till spring.”

“It is not impassable now.”

Colonel Ortega leaned forward. “Man, I am going to talk truth to you. In the meantime, have a beer. We Mexicans are proud of our beer.”

“Sure, chief.”

The colonel pressed a button. An Indian boy in a clean white suit stuck his head in.

“Two beers,” the colonel said, and turned to Jim. “Listen to me,” he said in English. “I am not kidding now. This Howard is a bad man — a menace to good government. As you say, he will head south. They will tell him the road is no good, but he will pay no attention. It is impossible for a citizen of the United States to believe roads could be as bad as they are south of here. He will get to Carmichael’s ranch. But, my friend, once south of there, he will do well to make twenty miles a day. A horse is faster than a car and a man may be faster than either. I don’t know. I’m from Sonora myself. This country is new to me.”

The Indian boy came back with the beer. The colonel poured the beer carefully and handed Jim his glass. “Here’s to Harkness,” he said. “Here’s to old Baldy Putnam.”

“He isn’t headmaster any more. He retired.”

“I know,” Colonel Ortega said.

Jim started all over again. “Colonel, I appreciate your kindness.”

Colonel Ortega smiled. “We are both cops, both Harkness men. I was going to have a little fun with you. After all, you gringos amuse me, coming down here in such a hurry, wanting to make us hurry. Your affairs are always so important, so very pressing. But you are a Harkness man. I’ll forget my fun. You want to find Howard. What do you think is going to happen to him?”

Jim waited for the chief to go on.

“Within a month he’ll be a skeleton in the brush. The buzzards will have picked him clean. In the spring you come back. We’ll take a couple of shotguns and a plane. We’ll fly south until we find that skeleton. Then we’ll fly back to Carmichael’s for a little shooting. Nature will have done your work for you.”

“Colonel Ortega,” Jim said, “are you forbidding me to go south?”

The chief shook his head, with a gesture of displeasure. “Do you have to be official?”

“What does that mean?”

Colonel Ortega frowned. “If you insist, I will tell you. My government wishes to remain friendly with the United States. I would not forbid an American Federal officer access to the south, or authority to carry his gun and shield.”

“I may go?”

“I am asking you to be reasonable. Surely you have heard what the country to the south is like.”

“I have heard that the country to the south is not altogether the desert it is supposed to be.”

“True,” Colonel Ortega said. “There is gold and silver and copper and tungsten and mercury and antimony. There are virgin forests of pine and incense cedar and fir. There may be much more — who knows? Half of it has never been truly mapped.”

“How about La Paz? It’s down there, isn’t it? A big city?”

“Not a big city. An old city. One of the oldest cities of white men on this continent. But what of it? La Paz is more than eight hundred miles from here, and even if there were a road all the way, there are no gas stations.”

“When I run out of gas I will buy a horse.”

Colonel Ortega’s sad eyes grew sadder. “It is true that a horse does not require gasoline. But he requires to eat. And the same is true of you, my friend. There are no hot-dog stands between here and La Paz.”

“The Mexicans are always kind to strangers.”

“You may travel for days in that country without seeing a Mexican.” Colonel Ortega leaned forward. “Why not go over to Al Masoni’s bar and fill yourself with good liquor and blow your brains out? It is a more agreeable way to die.”

“But you will give me permission to go south?”

Colonel Ortega shrugged wearily. “I am not refusing. You will have to sign a paper saying you recognize the risk; that I have warned you.”

Jim nodded. “Draw up your paper.”

The chief rang for a stenographer and began dictating. “Don’t bother about a pistol,” he said, interrupting himself. “Take a shotgun — to eat by.”

Jim Howard took the paper and shook hands with Colonel Ortega, concealing his satisfaction.

“Go with God,” the chief said.

“Thank you,” Jim said, and hurried out.

But he paused in the anteroom in spite of himself. The blonde girl who sat there waiting looked cool in a beige cotton sports dress with a narrow leather belt. And the stare she gave him as she glanced up from under her rather wide-brimmed straw hat was cool also — as if she did not see him.

He turned to look back when he got to the outer door. She was walking into Colonel Ortega’s office and he noticed, without reason, that the seams of her stockings were straight as a movie star’s. He found himself picturing her and remembering her eyes and the pale gold tan of her skin and wondering why she was there — as if he hadn’t important things to think about.

He had to find Fitz Jordan. He had no idea where to look. He had only his belief that an American traveling south would leave a trail. Every Mexican who saw Fitz would remember him. The real problem was to keep ahead of Solid Man Johnson. If Johnson caught up with him he would never have a chance to catch up with Fitz.

The Fiore di Alpini is a dingy restaurant, Italian, except for an American jukebox. But genius goes into the food. To eat lobster at the Fiore di Alpini is to eat the Pacific-coast crayfish at its best; and the wine, from Santo Tomás, is good.

Jim Howard ordered dinner there. He told the anxious little waiter to have it ready in fifteen minutes, and went into the bar.

He saw five men, all but one dressed in the breeches and high-laced boots of engineers. Four of them were Mexicans. The fifth, the one in uniform, was a bright blond man who didn’t look Latin at first glance, but was. They were celebrating something. Jim ordered a Martini and leaned on the bar, knowing for the first time how tired he was. It was wearing to be trailed by Johnson. Almost as broad as he was tall and completely without the glamour they liked over at the Justice Department, Johnson was just a secret-service man with a shield, a gun, a pair of handcuffs and two flat feet — just a guy who put those two flat feet ahead of each other until he found the man he was after. It was less than two days since Jim had got away from Johnson. Since then he had driven a hundred miles up into the mountains and exchanged his big car for a four-cylinder roadster of the kind Johnson always used, explaining that he had to go into the tough country south of the border, where a light car was so much better. He had driven then from somewhere north and east of Los Angeles to San Diego and on to Ensenada, seventy miles into Baja California. He hadn’t had much sleep.

The Martini came and he drank it quickly and shoved the glass back at the barman for another. The drink exploded gently within him and the warmth spread to his head.

The blond man said in Spanish, “Another round, Lazaro. To our return!”

One of the other Mexicans said loudly, “To our return to Mexico!”

The barman set Jim’s second drink in front of him and said, “They do not annoy, señor? They are celebrating.”

“It’s all right,” Jim said.

But the Mexican next him had overheard. “You will have a drink with us, señor? Tomorrow we go home to Mexico and we are celebrating.”

“And where are you now?” Jim asked.

“Ah,” the blond one said, “we have been in the Sahara, in Mongolia, in Tibet. This Baja!” He spat. “They tell me you gringos want to buy it. I, El Tigre, I give it to you.”

Jim could feel his smile getting a little thin. The man who called himself The Tiger was not trying to be pleasant. He looked tough, too, with his thick neck and his heavy shoulders.

“We thank you, señor,” Jim said.

“It is perfect for gringos, this Baja,” El Tigre said. “It is hell. I give it to you.”

“My Tiger, you are perhaps a little drunk,” the Mexican next to Jim said.

“There’s the waiter. Now we shall eat.”

The polite little waiter had come in. He said to Jim, “The dinner awaits you, señor.”

The man who called himself The Tiger turned. “But the gringo is still sober. We must make him drunk.”

“Sí, señor.” If nothing else had warned him, the waiter’s manner was enough to tell Jim that this Tiger was a known bully.

“I thank you, señor, for your kindness,” Jim said, “but I must eat.”

“Liquor for men,” El Tigre said, “food for women — and gringos.”

Jim felt himself tense, like a dog about to fight, and tried to relax. He wasn’t here to fight in barrooms. He managed a smile and turned toward the dining room. El Tigre put out his hand and caught Jim’s shoulder. Without turning, Jim threw the hand off and walked on, his spine as stiff as a wire drawn down his back and pulled taut. Then it came.

El Tigre’s hand fell harshly on his shoulder, biting through the cloth, insistent, challenging. El Tigre spoke one of the few real insults known to the good-natured Mexican tongue.

Jim turned and let him have it, a straight left to the jaw and a right to the belly.

To his astonishment, the blond Mexican ducked the left, took the right on his hip, and came boring in. His left was like a whip. Jim ducked enough to catch it on top of his head and knew it did El Tigre’s hand no good. He crossed with his right as El Tigre swung, and caught him on the point of the jaw as he came in, with the luckiest punch he had even thrown in his life — perfectly timed, in exactly the right place. The Tiger went down as if he’d been hit with a baseball bat and lay there, glassy-eyed.

Jim straightened up. He took three quick steps to the partition between the bar and the dining room and got his back against it. Then he looked from El Tigre to the four men at the bar. Two of them stared at their drinks; one of them looked at Jim and shook his head; the fourth raised his glass and nodded, as though toasting Jim. Jim Howard grinned and went into the dining room.

The little waiter was solicitous. He insisted on dipping his napkin in a glass of ice water and bathing Jim’s right hand. Bending over the swelling knuckles, he said under his breath, “You should not have done that, señor. El Tigre is a dangerous man.”

“Is he?”

“He is no good. But he is very strong, very quick. It is not without reason that he calls himself El Tigre. He has been a fighter for prizes.”

“I see,” Jim said. He had been ever luckier than he knew with that right to the jaw.

“There, señor, your hand will get better. I will bring your crab-meat cocktail. I have fixed it myself very delicate. The thing is, señor, this being a fighter for prizes is not so fortunate for El Tigre. He goes to New York, announcing he will kill every fighter of his weight in the United States. But it appears they do not fear tigers in New York. Some yanqui fighter is too good for him. He knocks out El Tigre.”

“So El Tigre doesn’t like gringos.”

“But naturally,” the waiter said. “I get the crab meat. You will enjoy it.”

Jim saw a little khaki-clad soldier lounging on his rifle in the doorway to the street. If El Tigre wanted more trouble, the police would take care of him. The thing for Jim Howard to do was to eat his dinner in peace. Then he could start south and find Fitz Jordan. Fitz had been too clever for him once. He would never be too clever again.

The waiter was bringing the lobster when the soldier in the doorway moved aside to let someone in. Jim half rose out of his chair. If El Tigre was coming back, he preferred to be on his feet. But it was not El Tigre. It was the girl he had seen half an hour before in the anteroom of Colonel Ortega’s office.

She came straight down the room to Jim’s table, smiling as she came. Jim stood up.

“Hello,” she said, as if he were an old friend with whom she had a date. Under her breath she added, “Act as if you knew me.”

“Darling,” he said, “I was so hungry I ordered my dinner. You really are late, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, as she sat down in the chair he held for her. “I couldn’t help it. I’m hungry too.”

She laid her purse, a large envelope of soft brown leather, on the table and with the gesture of a woman who knows the man opposite her well enough to feel quite at home, she took off her hat and put it on a chair. Jim saw that she had a head of blonde curls, much too good to be the work of a hairdresser. Her eyes were a deep blue against the golden tan of her face.

She leaned toward him and said in a low voice, “My name is Hope Graham. You’re Mr. Johnson, of the Treasury Department, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“Please don’t mind putting on this act with me,” she said. “I don’t want anybody to know that we’re strangers.”

He saw that she wasn’t as much at home as she was pretending to be. She was trembling.

“Take it easy,” he said.

He ordered a cocktail for her and told the waiter to serve the lobster for two and to have another one broiled. The girl picked up her purse, glanced at the chair that held her hat, decided against it. Then she sat on the purse. Jim guessed it held something she was afraid of losing.

“How did you come out with the chief?” she asked.

“All right.”

“You are going south?”

Jim nodded.

The girl took a deep breath. “I have a great favor to ask of you,” she said.

“Doing favors for pretty girls is my specialty.”

She made a little gesture of distaste. Her eyes looked coldly into his. “Don’t think because I’m putting on this act I mean it,” she said.

“Drink your cocktail,” Jim said. “You need it. And don’t forget your act. You’re being stared at.”

The girl raised her glass and smiled at him over the rim. When she smiled she was ever so charming and desirable. But he knew the smile was for the benefit of the other people in the café and not for him.

“Colonel Ortega refused me permission. He said it was absolutely impossible for a woman to go south alone.”

Jim smiled. She was an American girl, without fear, who had been brought up to believe she could go anywhere and do anything. Colonel Ortega must have thought her mad.

“I can imagine,” Jim said.

“He told me that he had given you permission to go, against his better judgment, because you insisted. He said he had no right to refuse an American official. So I told him that you were an old friend of mine; that we went to high school in Los Angeles together.”

“That was not so good,” Jim said. “I told him that I went to Harkness, which is a school in Connecticut, three thousand miles from Los Angeles.”

“Ouch!” she said.

“Eat your lobster. You will feel better when you have eaten.”

She began obediently to eat. But presently she paused and looked up at him.

“You’ll take me with you?” she said.

Jim told himself that he could not take this girl with him. He was tempted. If he didn’t take her with him he might never see her again. Under other circumstances he would thank his stars at finding her. But he could not handicap himself with a girl, no matter how much he liked her. He’d have to kid her out of it. If he made a couple of passes she’d be afraid to go with him.

“It would be a pleasure to take you anywhere,” he said.

She gave again that gesture of impatience and distaste.

“You’re an American. Please act like one. Colonel Ortega wouldn’t understand my asking to go with you, but you do. You know I’m not asking you because I like your eyes — or anything else about you. I am asking you because I have to go south and you are my only chance. It is business and nothing else.”

“You know how men are.”

Her eyes looked straight into his and they were colder than before. “Couldn’t you skip it? I have a job to do. Otherwise I shouldn’t have spoken to you. I have to go to a place between Carmichael’s ranch and Rosario. You can drop me off there and forget about me. I will pay half the expenses and a hundred dollars.”

The waiter brought the second lobster and proceeded to serve it. She was plainly as hungry as Jim was. For a few minutes they ate in silence. Then she looked up at him.

“You’re going to take a chance,” she said.

“An officer of the Treasury Department can’t take a girl with him when he’s hunting a criminal.”

“No,” she said, “not ordinarily. But this is different. We are not in the United States. We are south of the border. You can trust me. I shan’t interfere with you in any way. And your superior will never hear that you did a favor for a stranger.”

“How do I know that your errand is legitimate; that I wouldn’t be getting mixed up in something?”

“Oh,” she said, “you needn’t worry. It’s perfectly all right. My boss came down here last week about a mine up in the Sierra. He wrote me from San Diego to bring him some papers.”

“He asked you to come down into this country alone?”

“Why not? He knows I can take care of myself. I’ve been as far as Ensenada before. He has often driven two or three hundred miles farther south. He says it isn’t too bad. You have to be satisfied with averaging ten miles an hour. You have to know how to handle a car in bad going. But then, I do. I began driving around my father’s ranch when I was twelve.”

“You can’t drive a car into the Sierra.”

“No,” she said. “I may have to get a horse for the last twenty or thirty miles. There’s nothing but a pack trail to the mine.”

“How do you expect to find your way?”

“I have a map.”

“Let’s see your map.”

She smiles. “Would you mind if I don’t? After all, it’s a mine no one else knows about. I’m not supposed to tell anyone where it is.”

“I see,” Jim said, though he didn’t. Under the new Mexican laws, a mine was little good to the man who discovered it, especially if he was not a Mexican citizen.

“All you have to do is drop me off when we get to Carmichael’s. I’ll do the rest.”

“What if you have to camp out overnight?”

“I’ve brought a tarp and a blanket. I know how to build a fire. I’ve camped out before.”

“Alone?”

“No. But what is there to be afraid of?”

She made it seem reasonable. He’d been in California long enough to know that many Western girls thought little of doing things that would terrify most city women. And yet he couldn’t believe that a businessman would ask his private secretary to take such a trip as this girl planned unless he was desperate.

“Who is your boss?” he asked.

“His name is Fitz Jordan.”

Jim held himself rigid, trying not to show his excitement. He knew he’d succeeded in concealing his feelings from her, when she went right on. She didn’t suspect how much the information she had given him meant to him.

“If you know Los Angeles you’ve probably heard of him. He’s a well-known mining man.”

“I’ve heard the name,” Jim said.

“He’s a grand guy — the kind of man everybody likes.”

Jim knew that this was true. Fitz Jordan was a big man, and fine looking, with the kind of smile that made you like him. Jim had liked him. He’d liked Fitz Jordan so much that he’d been slow to suspect him.

The door into the bar opened. El Tigre lounged in and put a nickel in the juke box. He stood beside the machine, snapping his fingers in time to the tango the machine poured out. After a moment, he came toward Jim’s table. Jim now saw the marks of the prize fighter on him. His nose had been broken and he had old scars over both eyes.

El Tigre bowed to Hope Graham. “Will you dance?” he asked.

The girl looked at him in surprise.

Jim got up. All the hate he felt for Fitz Jordan was in him. It would be a pleasure to punch somebody’s face, and El Tigre had asked for it.

“You were going somewhere, were you not?” Jim said.

“You want to hear something?” El Tigre asked.

“The dying man’s last words?”

The Tiger leaned forward and his voice was soft. “I have a good memory, gringo.”

Something was happening at the street door. The little soldier was no longer slouching over his rifle. He stood at attention, his rifle rigid in front of him.

Colonel Ortega came in. He had changed from his uniform to crisp white linens, with a coco-straw hat from Cuba. His sad, intelligent face was turned toward Jim’s table. His eyes focused on El Tigre, and he made a slow slight gesture with his head. El Tigre went back into the bar.

Ortega sat down at a table. The waiter went running. Ortega smiled at Jim and then his chin lifted, an unmistakable command to join him. Jim got up and went across the room and sat down opposite him as a poker player sits down at a cutthroat game — without taking his eyes off those of the dealer.

Ortega ordered a vermouth for each of them.

“You have a way with you, señor,” he said, when the waiter had gone. “You have the manner of an honest man and the manners of a gentleman.”

“Thank you, colonel. But you did not come here tonight to discuss either my manner or my manners.”

“But I did. I fancied this afternoon that I found in you something that belongs to Harkness, something I learned to admire when I was there. I am incurably sentimental. It is a failing in a chief of police, perhaps. But I suffer from it.”

“So?”

“I was not always happy at school in the States. I was a foreigner and it was often lonesome for me. But I see it now as the happy time of my life. I do not forget Harkness.”

Jim nodded.

“After you had gone this afternoon, my feeling overcame me. I had to look again at the Alumni Register. I found no mention of any Johnson in the service of the United States Treasury.”

“No? Well, I, señor, have been careless. I have neglected to keep the alumni secretary informed of my activities.”

Colonel Ortega smiled, but his eyes were sad. “I knew you would have an answer, señor. I am sorry to tell you it is not satisfying to me. You see, there is a James Howard listed in the Alumni Register as a member of the Treasury Department.”

“Yes, of course,” Jim said. “I’ve heard of him.”

“I’m sure you have, señor,” Colonel Ortega said. “I have been examining his photograph in an old yearbook. Señor, do your old schoolmates call you Jim or Jimmy?”

“To my friends I am Jim.”

“Then, for the time being, at least, Jim.”

“And you, colonel?”

“Guillermo.” He gave it the full Mexican accent so it sounded like “Geel-yermo.” He smiled. “At Harkness, however, that was too difficult for the Yankees. They called me Bill.”

“Then Bill — for the time being, at least.”

“Let it be so,” Colonel Ortega said. “I am, as I have said, a sentimental man — or should I say a sensitive man? The two words have a different meaning, have they not?”

“You are both,” Jim said. “You are a man of feeling, who will never forget what he has loved. You are, moreover, a man of pride.”

“I am also a politico, and that is a word which does not translate well into English. A politico, is not the same as a politician.”

“No,” Jim said. “It is not the same.”

“Very well, Jim. As a policeman and as a politico I must know why you — an important person in your Treasury Department — present me with the credentials of an underling — a mere detective.”

Jim tried to think of something that would sound all right.

“To travel — it is a pleasure. Mexico is a beautiful land.”

“Mexico! This is not Mexico. This is Baja, a desert in the summer and worse in the winter. I stay here only because, if I am a good chief, I will go back to Mexico.” He sipped his vermouth. “Why don’t you tell me what you want, why you came here, Jim? I might be able to help you.”

Jim thought hard. He did not dare tell Colonel Ortega that he had come to find Fitz Jordan. Fitz was the kind of man who made himself agreeable wherever he went. He had a gift for making people like him. He had spent so much time in Baja that he would have many Mexican friends. The chances were that Colonel Ortega knew of him as a man of standing and would not believe he was a crook.

“I can’t do it, Bill,” Jim said. “I can’t tell you what my orders are.”

Colonel Ortega shrugged his shoulders. He took another sip of vermouth and looked at the ceiling.

“You have noticed this blond one who calls himself El Tigre.”

“I have observed him,” Jim said.

“He is a maker of trouble, but he is also a distant cousin of mine. His father has influence. It is not in order that I throw him out. His father wishes him to remain here. I was on my way to tell him that he does not return to Mexico.”

“He has been celebrating his return.”

“I have been informed,” Colonel Ortega said. He looked sadly at Jim. “I hear he does not like you.”

“I have a hunch he doesn’t,” Jim said.

“He is a headache. So are you. You are traveling as someone you are not. I do not intend to report it. I prefer to do nothing official. But if you do not use your head, I may have to send El Tigre after you. Unofficially, of course. Thus one of my headaches will take care of the other.”

“You have a logical mind, colonel.”

“I am a policeman,” Colonel Ortega said. “It is the rule of my profession never to do anything directly that may be done indirectly. It is my responsibility to know everything and to seem to know nothing.” He paused and looked Jim in the eye. “What about the charming young woman with whom you are dining?”

“An old acquaintance — a chance meeting.”

“She is annoyed with me,” Colonel Ortega said. “She wishes to go south. She has papers for one of your compatriots — Fitz Jordan. She feels she must deliver them. Fitz Jordan has friends in Mexico. I do not wish to anger him. I told the lady that I would have two of my men deliver her papers for her. But she refused. What can I do? Fitz Jordan should know better than to ask a girl to bring him messages in the south country. It is not country for a woman to travel alone.”

“I quite agree with you,” Jim Howard said.

Colonel Ortega finished his vermouth and paid the little waiter. “Then we understand each other,” he said.

“It is so.”

“Tomorrow is another day.”

“It is true.”

“Adiós, Jim,” Colonel Ortega said.

Jim Howard went back to his table and sat down opposite Hope Graham.

“Well?” she said.

“The chief is a wiser man than you know. He has given me something to think about.”

“Really?”

“Why did you refuse his offer to send two of his men with your papers into the Sierra and deliver them to your boss?”

“Because the boss wants me to deliver them in person.”

“They are that kind of papers?”

“I imagine,” she said.

They drank their coffee in silence. He stole glances at her. He wondered how much she knew about Fitz Jordan. He couldn’t believe that Fitz Jordan had asked her to make the trip unless he was desperate. She was bringing him something that he had to have and that he did not dare try to get in any other way. She must know this. She must know a great deal more than she was telling. And yet he felt she was all right. He was going to take her with him because she knew where to find Jordan. He wondered what he would be doing if he hadn’t that excuse.

She finished her coffee. “When do we start?” she asked.

“Can you be ready in ten minutes?”

“I’m ready now.”

“In those clothes?”

“I have slacks in my car. I’ll change on the way.”

“Where is your car?”

“Half a block down the street, right behind your car.”

“Give me the key.”

She got the key out of her purse and Jim called the waiter and gave it to him and asked him to take care of the señorita’s car.

“Sí, señor,” the little waiter said, pocketing the bill Jim gave him. “It will be done.”

Jim Howard walked down the street with Hope Graham, and held the door of his car for her. He got her bags and the tarp and the blanket. He had some difficulty finding room for her things in the luggage compartment. He had a lot of stuff in there — two five-gallon cans of gas and the things he’d figured he’d need if he had to camp out. It took him five minutes to rearrange it. He got in behind the wheel and started the motor.

“You don’t know what you’re in for,” he said.

“No,” she said. “But I think you’re a decent guy. And if not, I have a gun.”

The streets and the plaza were deserted; luck was with him. A gas station, its familiar American trademark looking strange with the name of the company in Spanish over it, stood beside a grocery store. But both were dark.

They rolled on through the town, toward the hotel that had been the scene of big gambling until Cárdenas stopped it. The road seemed to go straight to the hotel, looming dark and abandoned in the fog. But at the gate to the wide gardens, a track cut off to the right. A California Automobile Club sign said: SANTO TOMÁS, 30 MILES, CARMICHAEL’S RANCH, 110 MILES. Some vandal had peppered the sign with bird shot; rust, starting from the holes, was eating the sign away.

Jim swung down the hard-packed dirt road. The fog was breaking into mist. It would be clear for a moment, then a cloud would form and blow softly in front of them. Suddenly the air cleared, the stars came out, and a dew began to fall, so heavy that he had to use the windshield wiper. Water streamed down the windshield as their bodies warmed the inside of the car and condensed the moisture out of the overburdened air. But through the open window the moon was brilliant on Todos Santos Bay.

“If you’ll stop here,” Hope Graham said, “I’ll change.”

He got the bag she asked for out of the luggage compartment and went back to his place at the wheel. She stood behind the car. In two minutes she asked him to put the bag back. She had changed to a slack suit, but she still held the wide-brimmed straw hat she’d been wearing.

“I can’t pack it without ruining it,” she said. “Will it go on the shelf behind the seat?”

It did.

Jim drove on. The road turned sharply. He was going twenty miles an hour when he hit a patch of clay that had been corduroyed by the wind. They both bounced so hard their heads hit the canvas top of the roadster. In trying to control the car, he stalled it.

Before he could start again, four soldiers appeared out of the dimness, their bayonets fixed on their rifles. They stared at him impassively, brown faces under big brown hats. The moonlight picked up spots of brass and silver on their uniforms.

The corporal said in Spanish, “It is not permitted to go south, señor.”

“What?” Jim said, trying to bluff. “What did you say? I don’t speak Spanish.”

The corporal was not to be bluffed.

“You are Señor ’Ovard,” he said in Spanish. “The chief said you might pretend not to understand Spanish. But you speak excellent Spanish, señor. If you do not turn your car and go back north, I have orders to put a bullet in your gas tank.”

“I don’t get it, mister,” Jim said in English. “You want to see my papers? My name is Johnson.”

“It was foretold,” the corporal said, “that you might claim to speak no Spanish and that you carried the papers of Johnson.”

Jim waited.

“Meestair ’Ovard,” the corporal said in what he tried to make English, “you go al norte, please. Viva los Estados Unidos.”

“You win,” Jim said. “May I be permitted to congratulate you, corporal, on your tact and your devotion to duty?” He reached in his pocket as though for cigarettes and took out his wallet. He displayed a five-dollar bill casually and smiled, and found his cigarettes. Each soldier accepted a cigarette, with grave thanks.

“Señor,” the corporal said, as he motioned his soldiers back, “I am sorry. I am a patriot. Also I do not defy Chief Ortega, my colonel. You will proceed back to Ensenada?”

Jim saw that the privates were too far away to hear. “Ten dollars?”

“Ten dollars buys for you two bullets in the gas tank, señor.”

Jim gave up. He started the car and turned it around under the bright beady gaze of the soldiers and headed slowly back toward town. Once around the curve, he was in sight of the sea. The breakers were oily and long in the moonlight. If he knew weather, it was going to be a clear hot day tomorrow.

He turned abruptly into the hotel grounds. There might be a trail through. He found an old service road that went south. But he hadn’t gone far when he came to a high woven-wire fence. He got out to look at it in the light of the head lamps. It was an American fence, on heavy pipe posts set in concrete, and no doubt guaranteed for twenty years. He got back into the car and considered charging the fence in the hope of knocking it down.

“What are you going to do now, Meestair ’Ovard?” Hope Graham asked.

“I am thinking,” he said.

“Why don’t you think up your real name?”

“What difference does it make to you?”

“It would be so nice to know what to call you.”

“Call me Jim.”

“Okay, Jim. If you will let me drive, I think I can find a way out of this. I told you I had been to Ensenada before.”

Jim got out of the car and walked around it. She slid over behind the wheel and he took her place. She backed the car around and started toward the hotel. At the corner of the building she cut across what had been a lawn, dropped into first gear as she went through a neglected flower bed. She swung again at the next corner of the building, and there was Todos Santos Bay, shining in the moonlight, with the long oily seas rolling in all the way from Japan. They bounced over a terrace and struck the hard sand of the beach. She swung the car south, turned off the headlights and drove close to the water. Every fourth or fifth wave came higher than the rest, the creamy crest of it running in on the beach, until the wheels of the car were inches deep in sea water. But the speedometer said twenty miles an hour. They were making time.

“The bay curves in,” she said. “We ought to find the road south two or three miles below where those soldiers stopped us.”

Jim had scarcely slept for two nights. He couldn’t hold his eyes open any longer. He shut them for a moment and was awakened by the violent skidding of the car and the sound of something brushing against it.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

Hope Graham turned the headlights on. The car stood in a patch of tule, higher than the top.

“The brakes are wet,” she said. “I couldn’t stop.”

“Can you back out?”

She tried, feeding the gas slowly, letting the clutch in delicately. On the third try, the rear wheels caught. She made it back to the hard sand of the beach. Jim got his flashlight from the dash compartment and walked ahead.

The ground where the tules grew was wet. Clouds of mosquitoes descended on him. He pushed on until he saw open water ten yards wide with more tule on the other side.

He went back to the car. “It’s no soap. There’s a creek ahead. Maybe when the tide goes out we can cross it.”

“I’ll turn around and go back,” she said. “We might find a place where we can get up the bank.”

Jim walked along the upper edge of the beach, looking with his flash for some way to higher ground. But the bank was too steep.

“We’ll have to wait for daylight,” he said. “We might as well get some sleep.”

He got the tarps and blankets and spread them beside the car. Then he drew the short-barreled, heavy-caliber belly gun he carried in a holster inside the waistband of his trousers. It was the kind of revolver he preferred to any automatic pistol. The front sight had been rounded and the hammer spur ground off, so neither would catch on the holster in the act of drawing quickly. The front of the trigger guard had been cut away, so it could not interfere with the trigger finger. He cocked the gun now by pulling on the trigger until the hammer rose high enough to be caught by his thumb. He lowered the hammer gently and swung the cylinder out, in order to make sure that every chamber was loaded. He looked up to see that Hope Graham was watching him.

“Tough guy,” she said, and made it sound ironical.

“It’s just something you do before you go to bed and again when you wake up in the morning,” he said.

He put the gun down near the top of his blanket and took off his jacket and folded it for a pillow and put it on top of the gun.

Hope Graham opened the envelope purse she carried and took out a flat automatic pistol. She pulled the slide back far enough to make sure there was a cartridge in the chamber. Then she put the pistol down on her blanket and took off her jacket and folded it for a pillow and put it on top of the gun.

Jim had to smile at this performance, so close an imitation of his own.

“Good night, Meestair ’Ovard,” she said, when she had rolled up in her blanket.

“Good night,” he said.

He wished, lying there and listening to the hiss of the waves running up the beach, that he knew what she was taking to Fitz Jordan and whether she was his accomplice as well as his private secretary. He felt sure she had never heard anything about Jim Howard from Fitz. But she couldn’t be so innocent as she pretended to be...

He was waked up by a pull on his blanket, and for a second he thought he was in a sleeping car and the porter was routing him out. He sat up quickly and saw the girl. He gave himself a minute to come fully awake. She had built a little fire of driftwood. It was still night. The moon, pale now, was way out over the ocean. The girl had got the folding wire grid and the two-quart aluminum pail from his camp stuff. He smelled coffee.

“It’s time to get up,” she said. “It’s near daylight.”

“Where did you get water for coffee?”

“From the creek. The tide’s running out, so it isn’t salty. And it’s been boiled. You needn’t worry.”

She went over to the fire and took the pail off. He thought, as he watched her, that she was one of the few girls he’d ever known who could afford to wear slacks. And that head of blonde curls was as perfect as ever. She didn’t have to do much about it. Perhaps she had run her hands through it when she woke up.

She came back with a tin cup of coffee in each hand. She gave him one and sat down cross-legged on her blanket with the other. For five minutes they sat silent, sipping hot coffee.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Last night at dinner you were Mr. Johnson, of the United States Secret Service, a man Colonel Ortega could not refuse permission to go south. An hour later you became Meestair ’Ovard and a person Colonel Ortega’s soldiers had orders to send back to Ensenada.”

“I’ve been thinking too,” Jim said. “Last night at dinner you came up to my table and asked me to pretend that we were old friends. You were private secretary to a respectable Los Angeles businessman. You were taking mysteriously important papers to him in the remote Sierra of Baja for which you had a secret map. What are you this morning?”

“So you didn’t believe me.”

“I did last night. I’d had a couple of drinks and the dinner was good and you were a hell of a pretty girl. Now that I see you in this light, without your make-up, wearing clothes you’ve slept in, with your hair uncombed, I have more sales resistance.”

“You should see yourself,” she said. “At least I’ve washed my face. You need a shave. You look like a tramp.”

She put down her coffee cup and reached for her purse. He smiled to himself when she took out a mirror and a lipstick and a comb.

“You know what you can do if you don’t like the idea of spending another couple of days with me,” he said.

“You know what I told you last night was true,” she said. “You know I wouldn’t be here if I had any choice.”

“Neither would I,” he said.

He picked up his gun and checked it as he had the night before, and put it back in its holster. He got a canvas bucket out of the car and walked up the beach to the creek. It was light enough now so he didn’t need the flash. When he got back to the car, Hope Graham had folded up the blankets and put the two tin cups in the little aluminum pail. She kicked the grid off the fire so it would cool.

“It’s light enough to start,” she said. “Let’s go.”

He didn’t say anything. Instead, he rummaged in the luggage compartment for his suitcase. He found it and took out a small rectangular box of leather.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Getting ready to shave,” he said.

“Don’t be a fool. We haven’t time. Ortega will be sending his soldiers after us.”

“I cannot go unshaven after what you have said.”

“Oh,” she said, “forget it.”

“I am not accustomed to being high-hatted by the girls I camp out with,” he said.

He put a small mirror on the running board of the car and sat on his heels in front of it and shaved while she watched him. When he had washed the lather off his face, he combed his hair and tied his necktie carefully.

“Now,” he said, “I’ll have a look for the best way to get out of here.”

He climbed the bank. But as far as he could see, it was too steep for a car to climb. He went back to the tules. It was only a little after dawn, but the morning mist had given way to the hot bright sun of the desert. Sweat ran down his face. He took off his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. As he reached to part the reeds, a pair of long-legged birds flew up. He stood for a moment staring up at them. They wheeled overhead, their blue bodies catching the sun, their long legs straight out behind them.

He waded into the tules. The mosquitoes sang around his head and the deer flies struck happily at the back of his neck. He walked on in, testing the ground. The reeds closed over him. From some place above him the birds cried angrily. He went on, his heels leaving little puddles. He thought the ground was fairly solid. He could make it by pushing the tules down and using them as a mat. But there was no way of crossing the stream. He went to work on the tules along the bank. In a few minutes his shirt was wet with sweat. Hope Graham joined him, working as fast and hard as he did.

“We’ve got a chance,” he said after an hour.

He put the car in low, went into the tules and turned left along the course he had laid out. The motor labored, the wheels spun, but the car went ahead. They came to a little marsh where the stream had once been wide and had silted itself in. The car bumped over it a little faster. But at the uphill edge he had to stop. The smooth reedy delta of the stream was behind them. Ahead were rocks and bare gravel and uprooted trees, litter of a winter flood.

Jim got out and walked ahead to pick a path for the car. He used the broken branch of a tree to pry up rocks and fill two or three of the worst holes. He cut his hand enough so he had to wrap his handkerchief around it to stop the bleeding. He made a path for twenty yards and went back to the car.

He drove in, made the twenty yards and kept on. The limbs of fallen trees scraped the sides of the car, threatened to take the top off. But he went on, making quick decisions as to whether he’d straddle a rock or put it under a wheel, and presently they were in a brush country of greasewood and sage that the car broke off with ease. He shifted into second and was making ten miles an hour when they saw the single wire of the telephone line and knew that they had reached the road south. It was eight o’clock and he guessed that they were six or seven miles south of Ensenada.

The two ruts in the brush turned abruptly into a new highway, two cars wide, with iron pegs carrying bits of red cloth to mark the sides. He guessed this was the road the rubio and his friends had been working on.

They hit the town of Santo Tomás toward eleven o’clock. Here the road branched. One trail struck back toward the sea, the other turned inland.

“There’s a grocery store,” Jim said. “Let’s eat.”

A fat Indian woman sat behind the counter. She smiled when she saw them. “How do you do?” she said. “Iss nice day, no?”

“A lovely day on which to go south,” Jim said in Spanish. “Which road?”

“The left,” she said.

“And can one here purchase food?”

The Indian woman replied in what she must have thought was English.

“For surely, so, yes. Of the beans, are good.”

“We will have of the beans,” Jim said.

The Indian woman waddled through a bead curtain to the back of the store and came back with two bowls of beans. She set the crockery down in front of them and leaned comfortably on her side of the counter, resting her weight on her glistening arms, to watch the gringos eat her frijoles.

The beans were so hot with chile that Jim’s mouth felt as if it were on fire. He saw that Hope wasn’t any happier than he was.

“I bring you two good damn beers,” the Indian woman said.

She fished the bottles out of an olla hanging in the doorway, sweat beading their sides, and ripped off the soft Mexican caps. Jim took a quick drink, to put out the fire in his mouth.

“The mister has had trouble from out the car, no?” the Indian woman said. She pointed at Jim’s gashed hand and his muddy clothes.

“Flat tire,” Jim said.

“So. You want to buy this?” She produced a kit for mending tubes from under the counter.

“Sure,” Jim said.

“Señora,” Hope said, “have you a first-aid kit for men?”

“That I do not comprehend.”

“The Red Cross,” Jim said.

“Sí, sí, señor.”

She brought out a tin first-aid kit with the familiar red cross. Jim looked at Hope. They both smiled.

Jim finished his beer and his beans, and took out his wallet. He pretended to hunt for small bills, and put a twenty on the counter.

“Can you change that, señora?”

“Sí, sí.”

The Indian woman took a chamois pouch from the bodice of her black dress. She emptied the pouch on the counter, spilling Mexican and United States coins. She poked among them until she had set aside the right change from a dollar. Then she probed in the pouch and brought out a roll of worn United States one-dollar bills of the old, large size. “I make the change Americano very good,” she said, putting three ones beside the silver, and then a worn old five-dollar bill.

She reached into the pouch again and brought out a crisp new ten-dollar bill and laid it on top of the pile. “So iss hokay,” she said. “You count. You find all right.”

Jim took the change. He had hopes of that new ten. But there was no way to be sure with the naked eye. He looked at it as if doubtful.

“Iss hokay?” the woman asked.

“Sure,” Jim said. “But where did you get one so new?”

“Since four days,” the woman said.

“From a gringo?”

“Sí, sí,” the woman said.

Hope turned to the Indian woman and asked for water and pointed to Jim’s hand.

“Sí, sí, señora,” the woman said and disappeared through the bead curtain.

She came back with a bowl of water. Hope washed the dried blood off Jim’s hand and got a bandage with a backing of adhesive tape out of the first-aid tin she’d asked for, and put it over the cut.

“There,” she said.

They got into the car and went south, passing the winery on their left. A quarter of a mile out of town Jim stopped the car. He took a magnifying glass out of his pocket and went over the ten-dollar bill the Indian woman had given him. The counterfeit was so good that bank tellers would take it without question. But it had a flaw. The two branches of a conventionalized olive tree met in the original Treasury engraving. There was a gap, too small to be seen with the naked eye, in the counterfeit. He found the telltale gap. Fitz Jordan had passed that way and he had been so hard up that he’d run the risk of using one of his counterfeit tens.

“What are you doing?” Hope asked.

“Proving to myself that I’m on the right trail,” he said. He put the bill back in his wallet.

“You mean that’s a counterfeit.”

He nodded, and started the car again.

“Are you trying to make me think you really are somebody official?”

“No,” he said. “Just playing games.”

He saw that she wasn’t worried about his discovery of the counterfeit. That probably meant she didn’t know the real reason behind what Fitz Jordan was doing here. He hoped she didn’t. They drove downhill, following the ruts toward a clump of trees that looked like live oaks.

“You don’t suppose that sound behind us could be a plane, do you?” Hope asked.

“Look,” he said, and stepped on the gas to make the shelter of the trees.

Hope Graham turned and looked back. “It is,” she said.

He pulled up under a tree and they got out of the car. The plane was coming very low. As it got nearer, Jim saw that it was a Mexican army ship. He guessed it wasn’t more than a thousand feet up. The foliage was so thick that they couldn’t see the plane when it passed, chuttering, overhead.

“They didn’t see us,” Hope said.

“I don’t believe they could have,” Jim said. “But if they’re looking for us, they’ll be back. We’d better wait and see...”

They’d been sitting in the shade for five minutes when they heard a car coming from the south. There was no way to hide from a car. Jim stood up and looked down the road. He could see only a hundred yards, to the top of a small rise.

A truck came over the hill with two men in the front seat. As it came nearer, he saw that the man beside the driver was a Chinaman.

The driver blew his horn as he caught sight of Jim and waved his sombrero in greeting. He pulled up his truck in the shade and hopped out, a plump, middle-aged, smiling man who looked as if he might be an American.

“You want some beer?” he asked.

“Sure. We could use some,” Jim said.

The truck driver called to his Chinese helper, “Hola, chino! Three beers...! I am the peddler,” he said to Jim. “This is my last trip of the year. I sold my flour, my cloth and my shoes at San Quintin. At Carmichael’s I sold my oil and my gasoline. I am sold out. I start for home. And then I find this dumb Chinese has three bottles of beer he forgot. Now everything is fine. You buy two bottles. I drink the third. My stock is all gone.”

The Chinaman, in blue denim levis and a cowboy hat, waddled over with the three bottles of beer. The peddler uncapped a bottle, keeping an expert thumb over the mouth to prevent the warm beer from foaming out, and handed it to Hope. He did the same thing for Jim, and finally for himself.

“I would treat you,” he said, “but I am a businessman. That will be forty cents American.”

“Fair enough,” Jim said, and gave him the money.

“Here’s to your good health,” the peddler said.

The Chinaman had gone back to the truck. He must have cached a bottle for himself. At any rate, he had one.

“You talk like an American,” Hope said.

The peddler grinned. “A businessman must talk everything in this country. I talk Swedish with the old man at Johnson’s. I talk English with the Americans who stay at Carmichael’s. I talk Mexican, Indian, and a little Chinese.”

Jim wanted to keep him talking, so his questions would seem casual.

“Are you Mexican?”

“My mother was French and my father was Armenian. I was born in Port Said, grew up in Fall River and came to Baja to look for gold when finders was keepers. What does that make me?” He laughed at his own humor and finished his beer. “You folks going to Carmichael’s for the hunting?”

“Yes,” Jim said.

“Take my advice and don’t stay too long. You won’t be driving your car back after it starts to rain. This dobe soil makes a mud you can hardly get through with a horse. And the planes no longer go to Carmichael’s.”

“We saw a plane go over a little while ago,” Jim said.

“That was a Mexican army plane on patrol,” the peddler said. “The army doesn’t take passengers.”

The peddler picked up the three empty beer bottles. “I gotta shove off,” he said. “I want to make Ensenada tonight, and you know what the road is like.”

“Wait a minute,” Jim said. “Can you change a twenty-dollar bill?”

The peddler looked at him shrewdly. “I can if it’s good.”

Jim took a twenty out of his wallet and handed it over. The peddler studied the bill and took a leather bag with a drawstring out of his back pocket. He untied the string and brought out a roll of bills with a rubber band around them. He counted out ten ones and two fives. They were all worn old bills.

“You haven’t got a brand-new ten-dollar bill, have you?” Jim asked.

“Yes,” the peddler said, “just one.”

He riffled through the roll and drew out a crisp ten. “That’s the first one I’ve seen in a long time. I got that from the boss at Carmichael’s when I sold my gas this morning.”

Jim took the two old fives and the new ten and put them in his wallet. The peddler got aboard his truck, tooted his horn and waved his hand as he drove off. Jim got out his magnifying glass and the new ten. He found the telltale gap where one olive branch failed to join the other.

“Well?” Hope Graham said.

“The trail is hot,” Jim said.

“Are you really looking for a man who has been passing bad ten-dollar bills?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“The Indian woman at Santo Tomás remembered the man she got her ten-dollar bill from. She could have told you what he looked like. But you didn’t ask her.”

“Why should I?”

“So you’d know what he looks like.”

“I know what he looks like,” Jim said.

“Oh,” she said, “one of your own gang.”

“Let’s get going. I want to get to Carmichael’s before midnight.”

He wondered, as he drove on, how far behind him Johnson was. Knowing Johnson, he was afraid it wasn’t more than a day or two. It might be less. Johnson never traveled fast. But then, he never stopped.

It got hotter, minute by minute, and Jim could not drive fast enough to make a breeze. His hands were sweaty on the jerking wheel, his eyes were nearly shut against the glare of the sun, and he could think of nothing but water — water to drink, water to swim in — cool, wet water.

He struck a stretch of badlands, the alkali crunching under the wheels and rising in clouds to dry their lips and sting their eyes. He stole a glance at Hope. She was using one hand to shield her eyes from the sun; the other hand held the corner of the purse that lay in her lap. She was powdered with alkali dust.

He ran out of the alkali into soft sand. He had to drop into first, in order to pull through it at five miles an hour. The sand seemed endless. He had driven through a mile of it when a rear tire blew with a sound like a pistol shot.

He got wearily out. He had used the jack at dawn that morning after they’d got out of the tules, so it was on top of everything else in the luggage compartment. But he couldn’t find the lug wrench. He began throwing everything out of the compartment. He had tossed all the stuff out on the sand except the two cans of gas when he found the wrench.

“Can I help?” Hope asked.

“No!”

He realized, as he hunted for a stone to put under the jack, that he had yelled the word at her in anger, as if it were her fault that the tire had blown. His shoes were full of sand when he found a proper stone and went back to the car.

He jacked up the offending rear wheel. He got it high enough and the foot of the jack slipped off the stone into the soft sand. He centered the jack on the stone and tried again. The car stayed up until he tried to get the spare wheel off. The spare was stuck. He put his foot against the car and yanked. The car fell off the jack. He was too hot and tired to swear.

He got the spare on finally and knelt in the sand to tighten the nuts on the studs. He had to rest before he’d finished. He sat down and wiped his sweating forehead with a sand-encrusted arm.

Hope came around the car with an open can of tomatoes and a tin cup.

“Try this,” she said.

She poured the cup full and gave it to him.

He drank the liquid and ate the tomatoes and remembered that it was an old desert trick to carry tinned tomatoes where there was no water. He’d been stupid not to have thought of the tomatoes sooner. He had bought them and the other tinned stuff in San Diego on his way to Baja. He got up on his knees again and tightened the nuts methodically and put the hub cap back on with a blow from the heel of his hand.

Hope climbed into the compartment and he handed her the things he had thrown out and she fitted them neatly into place. She put the aluminum pail in which she’d made coffee that morning into the larger pail, with the cups nestled inside. She took the canned stuff out of the wooden box it was in and arranged it on the floor. She gave him the box.

“It’s good for kindling,” she said. “If you break it up it’ll pack better.”

He jumped on the empty box and smashed it and pulled it apart and gave the pieces back to her. Then he passed up the blankets rolled in the tarps.

“How about letting me drive awhile?” she asked when she had finished.

“If you like,” he said. She got in behind the wheel and tucked her purse under her. He found dry matches in the pocket of the jacket he’d laid back of the seat and lit a cigarette as she drove. He saw that she knew how to drive in that country. She wasn’t taking it as hard as he had. But she didn’t have Solid Man Johnson on her mind. She didn’t know that Johnson was somewhere back yonder, plugging along.

Toward sundown they came to a watercourse that wasn’t quite dry.

Hope stopped the car. “Can we take time to eat?” she asked.

“If we hurry it up,” he said.

She ran the car off the road under a tree. Without another word, they went down to the nearest pool and washed their faces and hands and arms.

“If you’ll open tins,” she said, “I’ll make coffee.”

They ate canned salmon and biscuits and tomatoes. The coffee was too hot to drink quickly.

“Come on,” Jim said.

“Why are you in such a hurry?” Hope asked, taking a sip of coffee.

“I’m trying to catch up with a guy,” he said.

“You’re sure it isn’t the other way around?” she said, and got in another sip of coffee.

“Have it your own way,” he said.

“I thought you were pretty thick with Colonel Ortega, even if he did tell his men to stop you.”

“The colonel is friendly. We went to the same prep school. He may have felt he had to go through the motions of stopping me. But he must have known there was a back way. He knows who I am.”

“That’s more than I know, Meestair ’Ovard.”

“My name is Jim Howard, and ’Ovard is just a Mexican mispronunciation.”

Hope finished her coffee and stood up. “Just the same,” she said, “men run faster when there’s somebody after them.”

They threw stuff into the car and started on again.

“So you think I’m a fugitive from justice,” Jim said.

“I think you probably are. You act like it. It doesn’t matter, does it? You drop me off when I ask you to and I’ll pay you the hundred dollars I promised you. It’s not my affair what you are.”

“It’s not my affair what you are either,” Jim said. “But just the same, I’d like to know.”

“I told you.”

“But your story wasn’t good enough. No American who knows anything about Mexico would bother with a mine in Baja. No matter how good a prospect it is, he can’t make money out of it under the present laws. So I don’t believe your boss has gone into the Sierra San Pedro Mártir about a mine.”

“Did I say anything about the San Pedro Mártir?”

“I don’t remember that you did. But that’s the name of the range that’s thirty or forty miles inland from here.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “The name isn’t on my map.”

Jim watched her face when he spoke again. He could only see it in profile.

“I don’t believe you’ve got papers for Fitz Jordan in that purse you’re so careful of.”

“What do you think I’ve got?” she asked, without turning her head.

“Money,” Jim said. “Probably stolen money.”

Her face didn’t change. “You’re a romantic guy, aren’t you, Jim?” she said.

The sun went down. The dark came on so fast that it was as if someone had put a lid over the earth.

Neither of them spoke for two hours and then Hope leaned over and looked at the speedometer.

“We’ve come a hundred and ten miles,” she said. “We should be there.”

Jim drove on for another two miles and came suddenly to an open space. On the right was a graveled drive. He turned into it and they saw a long low adobe building without a light showing. The drive led to an open gate in a wall. Jim went on through the gate and they were in a big patio. He could smell the sea, and when he stopped the motor he heard the sound of surf on a beach beyond the building ahead of him.

Hope got out of the car. “I see lights,” she said, and pointed.

“I’ll get your bags out,” he said.

He found her bags and his own suitcase and set them down.

“I’ll carry them in as soon as I’ve found a place to put the car,” he said. “I think that’s a shed over there.”

He started the car again and turned toward the open shed. As he drove closer he saw a car parked in one corner, gray with alkali dust. He drove in behind it and put his ignition keys in his pocket, but left the lights on. He got out to look at that car and make sure. It was the long low black coupé that Fitz Jordan drove. It had his initials in small gold letters on the door. Jim put his car in gear and turned out the lights and locked the doors.

Fitz Jordan couldn’t get his car out of there — not unless he broke a hole in the adobe wall of the shed big enough to drive through.

Hope was a dim figure in the moonlight, standing beside their luggage. He walked toward her, and as he did so he made sure the belly gun was easy in its holster. If Fitz Jordan was in this place, he’d come across or die.

Jim picked up Hope’s bags and his own and they walked toward the lighted windows. She opened the door for him and they went into a large low ceiled room, lighted with oil lamps. A plump young Mexican in a white jacket sat behind a counter in an alcove near the door, intent on the colored comic section of an American Sunday newspaper.

“I’m Miss Graham,” Hope said.

“Sí, señorita,” the young Mexican said. “We expect you. Your room is waiting for you.”

“Is Mr. Jordan here?”

“No, señorita. Señor Jordan rode into the Sierra this afternoon. But he left a letter for you.”

He reached under the counter and found the letter. Hope tore it open, read it in one long look, and crumpled it in her hand. Jim heard someone coming down the corridor and his hand moved closer to the belly gun, as he turned. He faced Colonel Ortega. A sergeant with a .45 automatic pistol on his hip was right behind the colonel.

“Señor Howard,” Colonel Ortega said, “you have let me down. You have presumed on my friendship and abused my confidence. Consider yourself under arrest.” He turned to Hope Graham. “And you also, señorita. You both go back to Ensenada with me on my plane tomorrow.”

“But, Colonel Ortega,” Jim said, “let me tell you—”

Colonel Ortega turned to his sergeant and spoke in Spanish. “Take this man’s gun and the key to his car.”

Jim could only hand over the belly gun and the key.

“Colonel Ortega,” Jim said, “can’t we sit down and talk about this?”

“What good will it do?” Colonel Ortega asked. “You are under arrest.”

“I don’t mind being arrested. I will gladly go back to Ensenada with you if only you will let me do something else first. Can’t I talk to you alone?”

“No,” Colonel Ortega said. “Not alone. Bring the señorita.”

He led the way to a table near a big fireplace and held a chair for Hope Graham. As she sat down, she tossed the crumpled letter she had in her hand on a red ember in the fireplace. It flared up quickly and turned into a pale blue-gray wisp and floated up the chimney.

“Señorita,” Colonel Ortega said, “you are making trouble for yourself.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was nothing.”

Jim took a chair facing the door, so he could see anyone who came in. The sergeant had taken his place near the door. The Mexican in the white jacket came quickly.

“Juan,” Colonel Ortega said, “bring us some of the Kentucky whisky we make in Juárez. I think we all need it.”

“I’m sorry you feel this way, colonel,” Jim said when Juan had gone.

“How else could I feel? First you told me that you were a United States detective named Johnson, looking for a counterfeiter named Howard. You wanted to go south to hunt for him. I warned you of the difficulties. But you still wanted to go. I liked you. I discovered that you were an old Harkness boy. That was enough for me. I gave you permission. Then I learned that you were not Johnson, but Howard. You didn’t deny it. I let it pass. You were still an old Harkness boy. I told you I would see you in the morning.”

“I didn’t understand that,” Jim said.

“I said, ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ What else could I mean? You and the señorita were occupied with each other. Who am I to stand between an old Harkness boy and a pretty girl?”

“Really, Colonel Ortega,” Hope said, “you assume a great deal.”

“I assumed that Señor Howard and I understood each other. Naturally, I told my men not to let him go south. But I didn’t think he would try it. I thought he was more interested in you than in going south. I expected him to call on me in the morning.”

“I didn’t get it,” Jim said.

Colonel Ortega turned to Hope.

“Señorita, you yourself told me that you had known Mr. Johnson for years; that you went to high school with him.”

“You didn’t believe it,” Hope said.

“I knew it wasn’t true.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But the nature of your acquaintance did not concern me. It seemed to be progressing when I saw you at the Fiore di Alpini. And why not? I am a policeman and not a censor of morals.”

Juan came back to their table with the whisky and a siphon.

Colonel Ortega raised his glass to Hope and then to Jim. “If I take the trouble to explain to you, señor, it is only because you are an old Harkness boy. I hope I shall never have to arrest another from my alma mater.”

“Here’s to Harkness,” Jim said.

Colonel Ortega shook his head. “I think our alma mater would prefer to forget you.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve annoyed you,” Jim said. “I thought we were friends.”

“What did you think when my men told you to go back to Ensenada?”

“I thought that was your official act. But if I could get around it — well, we were friends.”

“That is what I thought — that we were friends. I began to learn this morning. The real Johnson arrived in Ensenada. He is not an amiable man, this Johnson. He told me that you were a fugitive from justice, escaping with large sums of counterfeit money. I stuck my neck out, as we used to say at Harkness. I told him you were an old Harkness boy, who did not look like a criminal to me. He laughed at me. He said you had made a sucker of me. I do not like being made a sucker.

“Señor Johnson insisted on searching Ensenada for you, señor. I told him that if any searching was necessary, my men would do it. He could go along if he wished to identify you. Even so, this Johnson made trouble. When he found a bad ten-dollar bill at the Fiore di Alpini, he demanded it. I had again to remind him that he was not in the United States, but in Mexico. If he wanted the bad bill he could give a good one in return.

“Of course, señor, we did not find you in this searching. I knew we would not. My men had already reported to me that you had got away along the beach behind the hotel and through the tules. Señor Johnson demanded the privilege of going south to arrest you. I explained to him that he could remain in Ensenada until you were brought there to await extradition.”

Colonel Ortega finished his whisky and nodded to the sergeant at the door. The sergeant came to the table with his pistol in his hand.

“Sergeant Gomez,” Colonel Ortega said, “go look through the señor’s car and report to me.”

The sergeant marched off.

“Colonel Ortega,” Jim said, “would you listen to my story?”

“Why not? I have listened to several of your stories. Perhaps the newest one will be interesting.”

“All right,” Jim said, “I’ll tell you the whole story. I am an official of the Treasury Department. I live in a small flat in Los Angeles. Late one night Johnson came to see me. He and several other detectives had raided a counterfeiter’s hideaway. Johnson made his report to me and left with me a package a foot square of counterfeit bills — a hundred thousand dollars — that he had picked up in the raid. When I woke up the next morning the package was gone. I reported that to the department. I thought some member of the gang who hadn’t been caught in the raid had followed Johnson to my place and robbed me. The department agreed with me and reprimanded me and Johnson for not taking the package to a safer place. That night I had dinner with a friend of mine in a Hollywood restaurant. I paid the check with a ten-dollar bill. Somebody must have reported to the department that my bill was one of the counterfeits. My bill was good. But the café had one of the bad ones.”

Colonel Ortega raised his eyebrows.

“How could that be?”

“Sleight of hand, perhaps,” Jim said. “I knew nothing about it until late that night. Johnson woke me up. He searched the place. He found four thousand dollars in bad ten-dollar bills under my living-room rug. He said he’d have to take me in. I wanted time to think. He agreed to wait till morning. When he went to sleep, I left.”

“With his shield and papers,” Colonel Ortega said.

“Yes,” Jim said.

“What you tell me is not so different from what Johnson told me,” Colonel Ortega said.

“The evidence against me is strong,” Jim said.

Colonel Ortega nodded. “Conclusive.”

“So strong that my only chance was to find the man who has the rest of the bad bills, and find him quickly. When Johnson came to arrest me I had no idea who had robbed me. I didn’t know about the bad bills under the rug. I didn’t even know about the bad bill in the café. I had no suspicion of anybody. But when I began to put two and two together, I knew the man I wanted. I drove to his ranch in the hills. He was gone. I got a break in Ensenada — I learned he had gone south. This noon I found one of the bills I was looking for at the grocery store kept by the Indian woman at Santo Tomás. Later I met a peddler. He also had one of the bad bills. He told me he got it here at Carmichael’s when he sold gasoline.”

Jim took the bad bills out of his pocket, and the magnifying glass. “If you know what to look for, you will find it.”

Colonel Ortega took one of the bills and the magnifying glass.

“Look at the olive branch,” Jim said. “You will see there is a gap where one branch joins the other.”

Colonel Ortega nodded. “It is the same as the one Johnson found at the Fiore di Alpini. Who is this man you are hunting?”

Jim saw that Hope was excited, leaning forward, her lips slightly parted, her breath coming fast.

“His name,” Jim said, watching Hope, “is Fitz Jordan.”

Hope half rose out of her chair. “It isn’t true,” she said. “Colonel Ortega, I have been Fitz Jordan’s private secretary for four years. I know all about his business. He is one of the finest men I ever knew. It’s inconceivable that he would have anything to do with counterfeit money.”

“I know him by reputation,” Colonel Ortega said. “He is a man of standing.”

“Of course,” Hope said.

“Señor,” Colonel Ortega said to Jim, “I do not believe your story.”

“But, Colonel Ortega,” Jim said, “how could I have found that bad bill there on the table at Santo Tomás if it hadn’t been there before I left Ensenada?”

“I have only your story that you did find it in Santo Tomás,” Colonel Ortega said.

“Hope,” Jim said, “you know where I got that bill.”

“I will question the señorita,” Colonel Ortega said. “I am curious about her part in all this.” He turned to Hope. “Señorita, what are you doing here?”

“I told you yesterday why I wanted to go south,” Hope said.

Sergeant Gomez appeared in the doorway. Colonel Ortega nodded to him. He came forward and saluted.

“Mi coronel, there is nothing in the señor’s car but a camp outfit, food in tins, and two cans of gasoline.”

“Very well, sergeant; search the lady’s bags and the señor’s suitcase.”

Colonel Ortega turned to Hope.

“You said yesterday that you had papers for Fitz Jordan which he had asked you to deliver in person. I offered to have them delivered for you. But no, that would not do. What do you say now?”

“Just what I said then.” Her voice was steady, but Jim could see that she was scared.

“Let’s see the papers you are delivering to Mr. Jordan.”

“Colonel Ortega,” Hope said, “you are asking me for the private papers of an American businessman.”

“Yes, señorita, I am. I don’t expect to be kept waiting.”

Hope slowly pushed her purse across the table to him.

Colonel Ortega opened it and dumped the contents on the table. Jim expected the automatic pistol to come bouncing out, but it didn’t. Colonel Ortega pushed aside the lipstick and the rouge and a toothbrush in a transparent case and picked up a thick envelope of heavy paper with a patent string fastening. He opened the envelope and took out two packets of bills, each wrapped with a strip of gummed paper such as banks use. Jim saw that one packet was of hundred dollar bills and the other of twenty-dollar bills. He guessed there was five thousand dollars in the two packets.

Colonel Ortega looked up from the bills at Hope Graham. “So, señorita, you do not tell the truth either.”

Hope said nothing.

“Where did you get all this money?” Colonel Ortega asked.

Hope pointed to a small envelope with the address of a San Diego hotel in the corner.

“By following the instructions in that letter,” she said.

Colonel Ortega took the letter out of the envelope and read it.

“I see nothing wrong about this,” he said. “Mr. Jordan instructs you to take bonds out of his safe and use them as security for a loan at his bank and bring the money to him at Carmichael’s.”

“Then why should you arrest me?” Hope asked.

“The company you keep is bad, señorita. You go to Ensenada with me in the morning.”

Hope Graham began to put things back into her purse. “You are going to prevent Mr. Jordan from getting his money?” she said.

Colonel Ortega smiled. “Not at all. The proprietor of Carmichael’s is a responsible man. You may leave the money for Mr. Jordan in his care.”

Jim saw that Hope wasn’t too pleased with this answer, though he couldn’t guess why. He had his own trouble. He had to make Colonel Ortega see what he was doing.

“Colonel Ortega, do you know what will happen to me if you take me to Ensenada tomorrow morning to await extradition?”

“I am afraid that you will go to jail, señor,” Colonel Ortega said.

“Although innocent,” Jim said.

Colonel Ortega shrugged his shoulders. “That is not for me to decide.”

“But you are deciding it, colonel. I am absolutely certain that Fitz Jordan robbed me and framed me. He had an apartment in the same building with me. He used it when he had to stay late in town. That’s how I happened to know him. He was the man I went to dinner with. No one else had a chance to slip the waiter a bad bill in place of the one I gave him.”

“Señor,” Colonel Ortega said, “your only evidence against this man is in your own mind.”

“I have no evidence until I find him with the bad bills,” Jim said. “That is what I am asking you to give me, colonel — a little time.”

Colonel Ortega shook his head.

“You can tell your story to the authorities in the United States, señor, when you have been extradited. It is not my affair.”

“And while I am trying to persuade them to go after Fitz Jordan, he will have come here and got his five thousand dollars in good money. He will cross the Sierra to the gulf and hire a fisherman to take him to La Paz or Mazatlan. Six months from now the department will hear of bad bills in Mexico City or Havana or Buenos Aires. In ordinary times, with ordinary luck, the department would catch up with him in six months or a year. But these are not ordinary times. Half the world is at war. We may be in it ourselves in a few weeks. The department may never catch up with him if you persist in giving him a head start. And I will be in Atlanta serving a sentence of ten or twenty years.”

“Where is this Fitz Jordan?” Colonel Ortega asked.

“He was here today, colonel. He has been gone only a few hours. He can’t be far away.”

“Baja is a haystack and he is a needle,” Colonel Ortega said. “It might take weeks to find him. I cannot wait.”

The sergeant came back to report to Colonel Ortega.

“Mi coronel,” he said, “I find nothing but clothes in the luggage, except this.”

He handed Colonel Ortega a small cotton bag. The Colonel opened the bag and poured out a dozen revolver cartridges.

“Señor,” he said to Jim, “I see you like a heavy gun. These are forty-four caliber. And the bullets are the man-stopping kind.”

“I am an officer of the law,” Jim said.

Colonel Ortega handed the cartridges back to the sergeant and told him to put them with Jim’s gun.

“You were an officer of the law, señor,” he said to Jim. “I received word over the telephone this morning from your superiors that you are now under suspension, pending trial.”

“Colonel,” Jim said, “why not give me a day — just one day — in which to find Fitz Jordan? One day can make no difference to you.”

Colonel Ortega stood up, looking very much the soldier in his uniform.

“You made a monkey of me once, señor. You will not do it again. You made it possible for this Johnson to say over the telephone to his office in Los Angeles, ‘You know how these Mexicans are — always tomorrow.’ I am going to show him how we Mexicans are. It is long after midnight. I am going to bed. Breakfast will be at eight o’clock. The plane leaves at nine. You will be in my office at Ensenada at ten — before this Johnson knows that I have gone south.”

“Colonel Ortega,” Hope said, “we have had nothing to eat since this afternoon. May we—”

“I beg your pardon, señorita,” Colonel Ortega said. He snapped his fingers and Juan came running. “Give these people anything they want,” he said. “When they have eaten, show them to their rooms.” He turned to Jim. “I trust to your good sense, señor. You are not foolish enough to try to get away on foot, without a gun.”

“No, colonel, I am not that foolish.”

“I have your word, señor?”

“You have my word. I will see you at eight o’clock for breakfast.”

“Then good night, señor.” He bowed to Hope. “Good night, señorita.”

When Colonel Ortega had gone, Jim asked Juan what he could give him to eat.

“There is always chile, señor,” Juan said. “I can also cook ham and eggs.”

Jim looked at Hope.

“Ham and eggs,” she said.

“Sí, señorita,” Juan said, and hurried off.

“You get a good enough break,” Jim said to Hope. “You satisfy your boss by leaving the money here. And they won’t hold you at Ensenada. Johnson doesn’t want you — except, perhaps, as a witness at my trial a month from now.”

She nodded, but he wasn’t sure she heard what he said. She looked as if she were thinking about something else. He could see how tired she was. He knew how tired he was. They’d had three or four hours’ sleep on the beach of Todos Santos Bay before dawn. They’d been going ever since. All the glow had gone out of her. Even her blonde curls had lost their life.

“You don’t seem happy about it,” he said.

“I’m not.”

“You want to see him. You’re fond of him.”

“No,” she said. “Not in the way I suppose you mean.”

“Are you going to tell me what he said in that letter you burned up?”

She drew her shoulders together as if she were cold. “Please put wood on the fire,” she said.

He took wood from the pile beside the fireplace and got the fire going and sat down again at the table beside her.

“He said he was going hunting and he’d be back here in a couple of days.”

“So I lose by two days.”

Hope took her mirror and her lipstick out of her purse. When she had repaired her makeup she got up and stood with her back to the fire and ran her fingers through those blonde curls of hers until her head was a halo of curls.

“You look marvelous,” Jim said, “except for the alkali dust.”

She looked down at her slacks. They were gray with alkali.

Juan came back with ham and eggs and homemade American bread and coffee.

They sat down before the fire and ate. They ate all the ham and eggs and all the bread and butter.

“Jim,” she said, “I’ve been thinking.”

He waited, watching her. Some of the glow had come back into her. She had lowered her eyes until the lashes almost touched her cheek. Now she looked up at him.

“About those bonds I took to the bank,” she said. “They were in an envelope marked Parmenter. And Parmenter had been Fitz Jordan’s partner in several things. I didn’t worry about it at the time. Fitz Jordan was always honest. It never occurred to me to question his instructions. But now — after what you’ve said — I can’t help wondering.”

“You’re beginning to believe me.”

She looked at him gravely. “Yes,” she said. “I believe you.”

“That means a lot to me,” Jim said.

“In the morning I’m going to tell Colonel Ortega that he’s making a mistake. I’m going to remind him that you found two of the bad bills on your way down here. I’m going to tell him I won’t leave the money here for Fitz Jordan, because I’m afraid it’s stolen money.”

“Do you think it will do any good?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid it won’t. His pride has been hurt. He’s bound to put Johnson in his place, and the only way he can think of is to get you to Ensenada before lunch.”

“I know,” Jim said. “I wish I’d had sense enough to tell him last night what I was coming down here for. He offered to help me, and if I’d told him the whole truth I think he would have.”

“You were a perfect fool,” Hope said.

“I know it. I should have let Johnson take me in that night he came to arrest me. I had a good record. I could have persuaded them to go after Fitz.”

“You wanted to do it all yourself.”

“I couldn’t stand the idea that I’d been made a fool of.”

She smiled. “You and Colonel Ortega.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I still can’t believe Fitz Jordan is a crook,” she said.

“I couldn’t either, until I had to.”

“He was such a free, happy, open-handed sort of guy,” Hope said.

“If he’d had five thousand dollars in real money he’d never have been tempted by counterfeit money. Not if he’d had five hundred. He had turned a shoestring into a bank roll often enough. He must have been worse than broke. He must have taken things he couldn’t make good, before the Parmenter bonds.”

She shook her head. “I just don’t know,” she said. “I never saw anything wrong in his office.”

They finished their coffee and walked down the room. Juan was asleep, his head in his arms on the counter. And then they both stopped suddenly.

“What was that?” Hope asked.

“A car coming into the patio.”

Jim went to the door and listened. The car had stopped. He couldn’t hear anything at all. And then the door opened and El Tigre stuck his head in.

“He’s here,” El Tigre said to somebody behind him, and lunged forward.

Jim caught him with a straight left on the nose. El Tigre shook his head and rushed, throwing punches with both hands. Jim gave ground to get more room. He ducked a right swing and got in close. El Tigre grabbed his arms and Jim broke away. El Tigre rushed again. Jim stabbed him with a left. But El Tigre came on. Jim backed into a table with chairs around it and almost fell and caught himself. He saw the heavy figure of Solid Man Johnson circling with a gun in his hand. Juan was awake and yelling. And then Jim saw Hope behind Johnson. She had something in her hand.

El Tigre caught him with a right high on his head that staggered him. He crouched and went in. He ducked El Tigre’s left and drove his right into the middle. El Tigre staggered back, and then something landed on his forehead and he was down. He rolled over and got his elbow under him, and there was Colonel Ortega in white pajamas with his pistol poised. And then Jim had to wipe the blood out of his eyes.

“This will be all,” Colonel Ortega said.

Jim saw that Johnson was down too. He was holding his head as if it hurt. Colonel Ortega turned and called out, “Gomez! Bring your rifle!” The sergeant came running. He was only half dressed, but he had his rifle. “Fix your bayonet,” Colonel Ortega said.

The sound of metal on metal was clear and sharp as the sergeant fixed his bayonet.

“Señor Johnson,” Colonel Ortega said, “what does this mean? Why is Señor Howard bleeding?”

“He was resisting arrest, colonel,” Johnson said.

“Ah!” Colonel Ortega said. “And who are you to arrest a man on Mexican soil? By what right do you appear here, in a country of which you are not a citizen, in which you have no standing, except what I give you as a courtesy, seeking to arrest a man who is a prisoner of mine?”

“Colonel,” Johnson protested, “I didn’t know you were here. I thought—”

“I know what you thought, Señor Johnson. I have heard what you think of Mexicans. I remember what you said over the telephone. ‘You know how Mexicans are.’ You thought I was careless of my duties and you would do them for me.” Colonel Ortega turned to his sergeant. “Disarm this fool.”

The sergeant advanced on Johnson and took his gun.

“Colonel,” Johnson protested, “I brought one of your men with me.”

Colonel Ortega turned on El Tigre.

“You,” he said. “You dared to show this gringo the way here.”

“Mi coronel,” El Tigre said, “I did not know you were here. And this Johnson asked me—”

“If you ever were a policeman, you are one no longer,” Colonel Ortega said... “Gomez, see if this Johnson has handcuffs.”

The sergeant bent over Johnson and came up with a pair of handcuffs.

“Good,” Colonel Ortega said. “Handcuff El Tigre and Señor Johnson together.”

“Colonel,” Johnson said, “this is not the treatment the United States expects from Mexico.”

Colonel Ortega walked slowly over to Johnson. “And what treatment do you think Mexico expects from the United States, señor? What do you think your superiors will say when I report your conduct?”

Johnson got to his feet. He was a tough egg, short and powerful, with a big jaw, a big nose, and a grim mouth. But he was licked, and he knew it.

“Colonel,” he said, and Jim could see him swallow hard, “I... I made a mistake.”

“It seems so, señor,” Colonel Ortega said. “Where did you get that lump on your head?”

“That girl hit me with something.”

“Señorita, is it true that you struck this man down?”

Hope pointed to a cast-iron disk with a sort of handle that lay on the floor. “I hit him with the paperweight,” she said.

Colonel Ortega bowed to her and turned to Johnson. “In view of your great wounds, Señor Johnson, I will forget the handcuffs and permit you to go to bed. In the morning you will write an apology to my government... Gomez, find a room for Señor Johnson and El Tigre out of here — anywhere.” Colonel Ortega bent over Jim. “You have a bad cut over your eyes, señor. It needs attention.”

“I have a bandage and adhesive tape,” Hope said. “I’ll fix him up.”

Jim got to his feet. The sergeant was marching Johnson and El Tigre out, the point of his bayonet close to El Tigre’s back.

“Juan, show the way,” Colonel Ortega said. “If the señorita wants warm water, get it for her.”

Jim followed Juan down a corridor with rooms on both sides. Juan opened a door and lit an oil lamp on a table beside a bed.

“Your room is across the hall, señorita,” Juan said. “I will light the lamp.”

“Lie down,” Hope said to Jim.

Jim lay down on the bed. He was so tired he almost went off to sleep while Hope washed the blood off his face and brought the edges of the cut together with adhesive tape.

“What hit me?” he asked.

“Johnson hit you with the barrel of his gun,” she said. “I was too late with the paperweight.”

She finished the job. She stood poised in the doorway.

“Good night, Jim,” she said.

“Good night, Hope,” he said. He wanted to say a lot more, but he couldn’t say it then.

He was drifting off to sleep when he caught himself. He swung his feet out of bed and found a cigarette to keep himself awake. He couldn’t sleep. He had to get Fitz. No matter how long the chance was, he had to take it. He had till eight o’clock and no longer. He meant to keep his promise to Colonel Ortega.

He remembered that Fitz Jordan had left in the middle of the afternoon. He’d left word for Hope that he’d gone hunting and he’d be back in a couple of days. He couldn’t have gone far in one afternoon if he was hunting. He’d want to camp before dark.

Jim got up and went to the window. His room was on the patio. All the lights were out, but the moonlight was still bright. He opened the window carefully and stepped out. If he kept in the shadow and moved slowly, no one would see him. He crept along the wall until he found the gate.

At the main road he turned south. The moon was fading fast. He guessed it was nearly daylight.

He came, after half a mile, to a trail that led along a stream bed toward the Sierra. He stood there thinking it out. Fitz wouldn’t have taken the road south. He would have headed for the Sierra. And this was the only trail there was. He looked at his watch and guessed that he could do nearly four miles in an hour. He had nearly three hours before breakfast.

He found the fresh tracks of a shod horse and went on faster. Then he remembered that Fitz would have gone to sleep at dark. That meant he’d be awake at sunrise. He’d build a fire to make coffee, and there’d be smoke. He’d have to watch for smoke.

He guessed he’d done about four miles when he saw a pool of water. He stopped to drink and wash his face and arms in the cool water. He saw trees ahead as he went on. Fitz would camp where there were trees and water and grass, if he could. He stopped and watched, and saw a faint gray wisp rising almost straight up in the windless air. Someone had a cooking fire.

He turned into the brush and went on, trying to keep his eye on the smoke.

He heard a thud and stopped, every muscle tense. He heard it again. It could be only one sound in the world — the sound of a horse stamping.

He got down on his hands and knees and crawled through the chaparral. He wondered if the horse would smell him and whinny. He didn’t know whether horses whinnied only when they smelled other horses. Presently he saw the horse grazing at the end of a picket line. The horse raised his head and cocked his ears forward as he looked in Jim’s direction. But presently he began to graze again, as if he’d decided everything was all right.

Jim wriggled on. He raised his head to get a better look ahead, and saw a man fifty yards away, sitting on his blankets, drinking coffee. His broad back was turned so Jim couldn’t see his face. Jim stood up, and as he did so the man turned his head, and Jim saw that he was Fitz Jordan. And then he remembered that if he could see Fitz, Fitz could see him. He squatted on his heels and studied the ground.

He saw Fitz’s saddle to one side of his fire, with a duffel bag thrown across it and a shotgun leaning on it. Jim saw that he had a revolver in a holster on his belt. Jim guessed that meant he was afraid. Quail hunters didn’t burden themselves with heavy revolvers. Jim figured his only chance was to rush Fitz. He’d have to get his hands on Fitz before he could pull that revolver or reach the shotgun. He waited until Fitz sat down again. He was pouring something out of a bottle into his coffee cup.

Jim started slowly toward Fitz, all set to run the moment Fitz saw him. He was within thirty yards when Fitz turned his head. Jim ran at him.

Fitz was on his feet and yanking at the gun in his holster. He got it out when Jim was still ten feet away, and fired. Something burned Jim’s side, and then he dived at Fitz like a football player making a tackle, and they went down together.

Jim grabbed for the cylinder of Fitz’s gun, the way he’d learned to do. The hammer came down and the pin bit through the web between his thumb and forefinger. But the pin was cushioned by flesh, so it failed to fire.

Fitz smashed his left into Jim’s face as they rolled over. Jim got Fitz’s wrist in his right hand and tried to use his body against Fitz for leverage. But Fitz was bigger than he was. He got his left arm around Jim’s neck, shutting off his wind. Jim threw himself desperately and they rolled over again and his weight came down on Fitz’s elbow. Fitz screamed with pain. The hand that held the revolver relaxed, and then the arm around Jim’s neck.

Jim got up and pulled the hammer out of the web of his left hand. Fitz lay there, holding his broken arm. Jim held the revolver on him while he backed toward the saddle. He got the shotgun, found that it was loaded, and put the revolver in his pocket.

“You lie there, Fitz,” he said. “If you move, I’ll blow your head off.”

He held the shotgun poised with one hand while he reached into the duffel bag with the other. He brought out a packet of the kind he remembered. The counterfeit bills had been put up in packages of ten thousand dollars each. He found another packet, and another, and another. He counted nine packets and there was one more broken one.

He stood watching Fitz and figuring how he’d get him to Carmichael’s.

“Sit up,” he said.

Fitz rolled into a sitting position.

“Can you get on a horse by yourself?”

“I don’t think so,” Fitz said.

“Then you’ll walk to Carmichael’s.”

“It’s four miles — maybe five. I couldn’t make it.”

“All right, Fitz,” Jim said. “You sit there.”

He picked up the lariat and pulled the picket pin and brought the horse up beside the saddle. He laid the shotgun down at his feet while he got the bridle on. He didn’t know whether Fitz was pretending to be worse off than he was. But he couldn’t do much with a broken right arm. Jim got the saddle on the horse. He put the packets of counterfeit money in the duffel bag and tied the drawstring and lashed the bag to the cantle of the saddle.

“You’re going to Carmichael’s,” he said to Fitz. “Do you ride or do you walk?”

“I’ll try to get on the horse,” Fitz said.

Fitz put a foot in a stirrup and caught the pommel of the stock saddle with his left hand and pulled himself up. He gasped with pain as he got himself in the saddle.

“All right,” he said. “Give me the reins.”

“I’m going to lead the horse,” Jim said. “But I’d like to get your tarp and blankets.”

“Forget them,” Fitz said. “Somebody’ll come and get them. All I want is what’s left of that bottle of tequila.”

“If I knew something to do about your arm, I would,” Jim said.

“There isn’t anything but the tequila,” Fitz said.

Jim gave him the bottle and Fitz drank.

“It wasn’t that I had it in for you, Jim,” Fitz said. “I thought I had to frame somebody and there wasn’t anybody else.”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“You don’t know how I got the stuff?”

“No,” Jim said.

“I used to live in the apartment you’ve got,” Fitz said. “I still have the key for it. They never bothered to change the locks. I came in late and was stopping to see you and have a drink, and when I stopped at the door I heard you and somebody else talking about the raid, so I waited.”

“That made it pretty simple.”

“Yes,” Fitz said, “that made it too simple.”

Jim thought there must have been something wrong with Fitz all the time — or else he’d have said something about having lived in that apartment. He’d have turned in the key.

Jim looked at his watch as he turned into the drive at Carmichael’s. It was eight o’clock, and he didn’t know whether he could make the last fifty yards or not. He led the horse through the gate and into the patio. He saw Sergeant Gomez at the door. It was only a few yards farther.

“Señor,” the sergeant said, “the colonel is looking for you.”

“If you will help this man off his horse, I will see the colonel,” Jim said.

“Sí, señor,” the sergeant said.

Jim staggered into the big low-ceiled room. He saw Hope sitting at a table with Colonel Ortega. He went toward them. Hope jumped up.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

“Not much,” he said, “I’m just tired.” He turned to Colonel Ortega. “Am I a minute late?”

“Two minutes,” Colonel Ortega said. “Where have you been?”

“I had a job to do, colonel, and I did it. I brought Fitz Jordan in.”

Colonel Ortega jumped up.

“Where is he?”

“With your sergeant, colonel.”

“And the bad money?”

“The money is there.”

Colonel Ortega turned and called out, “Señor Johnson.”

Jim saw the solid man at the other end of the room. He got up from his table and came forward with the rolling gait of a big-bodied man with short legs. “Come with me, señor,” Colonel Ortega said to Johnson.

Hope picked up a cup of coffee and put it in Jim’s hands. “Drink it,” she said.

He drank the coffee and they walked out to the patio.

Fitz Jordan was sitting on a bench.

“Good morning, Mr. Jordan,” Hope said.

Jim had to smile, because her manner was so exactly that of a private secretary to her boss.

“Hello, Hope,” Fitz said, and made a gallant effort to smile his old smile.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Jordan,” she said.

She came back and stood close beside Jim, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes.

“Where is the money?” Colonel Ortega asked.

“In the duffel bag behind the saddle,” Jim said.

“Señor Johnson,” Colonel Ortega said, “who has Jim Howard made a sucker of now?”

The solid man unlashed the duffel bag and pulled it off the horse and began to drag packets out of it. When he had counted them, he stuffed them back in the bag and straightened up.

Jim saw him brace himself. But he was game.

“He has made a sucker out of me, Colonel Ortega,” Johnson said.

“Forget it, señor,” Colonel Ortega said. “We all make mistakes.” He turned to Jim Howard. “Even I make mistakes, do I not, Jim?”

“The boys in the department will feel pretty good about this,” Johnson said. “They all like Jim Howard.”

“Mr. Johnson,” Hope said, “you’re so nice about it you make me feel sorry for the paperweight.”

“Forget it, lady,” Johnson said. “I’ve been conked so often I don’t think much about it.”

They took Fitz Jordan inside to give him breakfast. Jim sat at a table with Hope.

“You’ve got to go to bed and sleep,” she said. “You’re dead.”

“You’re wearing the dress you wore when you came into the Fiore di Alpini, years and years ago,” Jim said.

Colonel Ortega stopped to speak to them. “We are taking Fitz Jordan to Ensenada,” he said. “I’ll come back for you two whenever you like — or would you rather drive your car back?”

“I’d like to drive back,” Jim said. “If the señorita doesn’t mind.”

“I’d like to drive,” Hope said, “if you aren’t in such a hurry as you were coming down.”

“There is no hurry, señorita,” Colonel Ortega said. “I ask only that you two dine with me when you get back to Ensenada.”

“We will be delighted,” Hope said.

Colonel Ortega held out his hand to Jim. “Maybe I am not sentimental about Harkness, Jim. Maybe it is all true.”

Jim went out across the patio to the landing field with Hope to watch the plane leave.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going out after Fitz?” she asked.

“I was afraid you might think it was a bad idea. And the slightest thing would have stopped me.”

“I wouldn’t have tried to stop you if you’d let me go with you,” Hope said. “I can’t help feeling sorry for him, but I wanted you to get him.”

They saw Fitz Jordan go aboard the plane with Johnson following close behind him.

“I know,” Jim said. “He’s got it coming to him. But I wish he didn’t.”

The plane taxied across the field, rose, circled and turned north. They watched it until it was out of sight and then they turned to each other and he took her in his arms.

The Interruption W. W. JACOBS

Original publication: The Strand Magazine, November 1925; first collected in Sea Whispers by W. W. Jacobs (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1926)

Although known as a master of the ghost story, William Wymark Jacobs (1863–1943) gained his fame and fortune as a writer of humorous tales, sketches, and plays. Born in Wapping, London, he lived close to the sea, where his father was the manager of a wharf in South Devon, helping to explain why so many of his stories were about sailors and others connected to the shipping world.

A famously quiet, self-effacing man, Jacobs took a job as a civil servant and, in his spare time, began in 1885 to write humorous sketches for Blackfriar’s, Punch, and The Strand. They were popular enough to be collected in Many Cargoes in 1896, quickly followed by The Skipper’s Wooing (1897) and Sea Urchins (1898). With the success of his books easing his financial burdens, he married the suffragette Agnes Eleanor Williams in 1900. Although a prolific writer of humor, supernatural, and crime stories for two decades, the last book that Jacobs wrote with substantial new material appeared in 1914 (Night Watches); subsequent titles were largely collections of previously published stories. His focus had moved to writing plays based on his short stories, though they do not appear to have had much success.

His story “The Monkey’s Paw” (1902) is one of the most frequently anthologized stories of all time, as well as one of the most bone-chilling. It has been adapted relentlessly: for radio, for three operas, as a 1907 play, as motion pictures (several silent films as well as a 1933 talkie and a 1948 remake), and for television as episodes of Suspense (May 17, 1949, and again on October 3, 1950), Great Ghost Tales (July 20, 1961), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (April 19, 1965), and Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries (November 10, 1973).

Less well-known but equally acclaimed critically is his mystery, “The Interruption.” It is a tale of quiet malevolence in which a housekeeper lets it be known to the master of the house that she is in control now that his wife has died.

Title: Footsteps in the Fog, 1955

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Director: Arthur Lubin

Screenwriters: Lenore J. Coffee, Dorothy Davenport, Arthur Pierson

Producers: M. J. Frankovich, Maxwell Setton

• Stewart Granger (Stephen Lowry)

• Jean Simmons (Lily Watkins)

• Bill Travers (David Macdonald)

• Belinda Lee (Elizabeth Travers)

• Ronald Squire (Alfred Travers)

• Finlay Currie (Inspector Peters)

The screen version of this taut suspense story has been dramatically embellished. Whereas the housekeeper in the story was happy merely to keep her comfortable position and make more money, in the film she wants to replace the dead woman as Lowry’s wife. He realizes the situation is untenable and plans another murder but, sometimes, plans go awry.

At various stages during the filming, the working title of Footsteps in the Fog was Interruption, then Rebound, and also Deadlock, none of which carried the sense of gothic suspense as the final title.

The director, Arthur Lubin, described his problems with Stewart Granger, who would complain to the producer, Michael Frankovich. “Mike,” he told him, “if Lubin doesn’t stop annoying me I’m going to be sick tomorrow.” However, Lubin continued, “miraculously, the picture turned out to be a good one.” Lubin was mainly known for directing the Francis the Talking Mule series, which horrified Granger and Simmons, both serious stage actors, but Footsteps in the Fog was going to be produced in their native England and it gave them an opportunity to go home. They didn’t love the script and Granger claimed that he rewrote it with the veteran Hollywood screenwriter Lenore Coffee on their daily trip from their hotel to Shepperton Studios.

Set during the Edwardian era, it had a fairly good-sized budget and was filmed in the expensive process of Cinemascope.

Granger and the exquisitely beautiful Jean Simmons were married when the film was made, and their on-screen chemistry is unmistakable. Some critics regarded their work in this motion picture as their best performances of all time.

THE INTERRUPTION W. W. Jacobs

The last of the funeral guests had gone and Spencer Goddard, in decent black, sat alone in his small, well-furnished study. There was a queer sense of freedom in the house since the coffin had left it, the coffin which was now hidden in its solitary grave beneath the yellow earth. The air, which for the last three days had seemed stale and contaminated, now smelt fresh and clean. He went to the open window and, looking into the fading light of the autumn day, took a deep breath.

He closed the window, and, stooping down, put a match to the fire, and, dropping into his easy chair, sat listening to the cheery crackle of the wood. At the age of thirty-eight he had turned over a fresh page. Life, free and unencumbered, was before him. His dead wife’s money was at last his, to spend as he pleased instead of being doled out in reluctant driblets.

He turned at a step at the door and his face assumed the appearance of gravity and sadness it had worn for the last four days. The cook, with the same air of decorous grief, entered the room quietly and, crossing to the mantelpiece placed upon it a photograph.

“I thought you’d like to have it, sir,” she said, in a low voice, “to remind you.”

Goddard thanked her, and, rising, took it in his hand and stood regarding it. He noticed with satisfaction that his hand was absolutely steady.

“It is a very good likeness — till she was taken ill,” continued the woman. “I never saw anybody change so sudden.”

“The nature of her disease, Hannah,” said her master.

The woman nodded, and, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief, stood regarding him.

“Is there anything you want?” he inquired, after a time.

She shook her head. “I can’t believe she’s gone,” she said, in a low voice. “Every now and then I have a queer feeling that she’s still here—”

“It’s your nerves,” said her master sharply.

“—and wanting to tell me something.”

By a great effort Goddard refrained from looking at her.

“Nerves,” he said again. “Perhaps you ought to have a little holiday. It has been a great strain upon you.”

“You, too, sir,” said the woman respectfully. “Waiting on her hand and foot as you have done, I can’t think how you stood it. If you’d only had a nurse—”

“I preferred to do it myself, Hannah,” said her master. “If I had had a nurse it would have alarmed her.”

The woman assented. “And they are always peeking and prying into what doesn’t concern them,” she added. “Always think they know more than the doctors do.”

Goddard turned a slow look upon her. The tall, angular figure was standing in an attitude of respectful attention; the cold slate-brown eyes were cast down, the sullen face expressionless.

“She couldn’t have had a better doctor,” he said, looking at the fire again. “No man could have done more for her.”

“And nobody could have done more for her than you did, sir,” was the reply. “There’s few husbands that would have done what you did.”

Goddard stiffened in his chair. “That will do, Hannah,” he said curtly.

“Or done it so well,” said the woman, with measured slowness.

With a strange, sinking sensation, her master paused to regain his control. Then he turned and eyed her steadily. “Thank you,” he said, slowly; “you mean well, but at present I cannot discuss it.”

For some time after the door had closed behind her he sat in deep thought. The feeling of well-being of a few minutes before had vanished, leaving in its place an apprehension which he refused to consider, but which would not be allayed. He thought over his actions of the last few weeks, carefully, and could remember no flaw. His wife’s illness, the doctor’s diagnosis, his own solicitous care, were all in keeping with the ordinary. He tried to remember the woman’s exact words — her manner. Something had shown him Fear. What?

He could have laughed at his fears next morning. The dining room was full of sunshine and the fragrance of coffee and bacon was in the air. Better still, a worried and commonplace Hannah. Worried over two eggs with false birth-certificates, over the vendor of which she became almost lyrical.

“The bacon is excellent,” said her smiling master, “So is the coffee; but your coffee always is.”

Hannah smiled in return, and, taking fresh eggs from a rosy-cheeked maid, put them before him.

A pipe, followed by a brisk walk, cheered him still further. He came home glowing with exercise and again possessed with that sense of freedom and freshness. He went into the garden — now his own — and planned alterations.

After lunch he went over the house. The windows of his wife’s bedroom were open and the room neat and airy. His glance wandered from the made-up bed to the brightly polished furniture. Then he went to the dressing-table and opened the drawers, searching each in turn. With the exception of a few odds and ends they were empty. He went out on to the landing and called for Hannah.

“Do you know whether your mistress locked up any of her things?” he inquired.

“What things?” said the woman.

“Well her jewelry mostly.”

“Oh!” Hannah smiled. “She gave it all to me,” she said, quietly.

Goddard checked an exclamation. His heart was beating nervously, but he spoke sternly.

“When?”

“Just before she died — of gastroenteritis,” said the woman.

There was a long silence. He turned and with great care mechanically closed the drawers of the dressing table. The tilted glass showed him the pallor of his face, and he spoke without turning around.

“That is all right, then,” he said, huskily. “I only wanted to know what had become of it. I thought, perhaps, Milly—”

Hannah shook her head. “Milly’s all right,” she said, with a strange smile. “She’s as honest as we are. Is there anything more you want, sir?”

She closed the door behind her with the quietness of the well-trained servant; Goddard, steadying himself with his hand on the rail of the bed, stood looking into the future.

The days passed monotonously, as they pass with a man in prison. Gone was the sense of freedom and the idea of a wider life. Instead of a cell, a house with ten rooms — but Hannah, the jailer guarding each one. Respectful and attentive, the model servant, he saw in every word a threat against his liberty — his life. In the sullen face and cold eyes he saw her knowledge of power; in her solicitude for his comfort and approval, a sardonic jest. It was the master playing at being the servant. The years of unwilling servitude were over, but she felt her way carefully with infinite zest in the game. Warped and bitter, with a cleverness which had never before had scope, she had entered into her kingdom. She took it little by little, savouring every morsel.

“I hope I’ve done right, sir,” she said one morning. “I have given Milly notice.”

Goddard looked up from his paper. “Isn’t she satisfactory?” he inquired.

“Not to my thinking, sir,” said the woman. “And she says she is coming to see you about it. I told her that would be no good.”

“I had better see her and hear what she has to say,” said her master.

“Of course, if you wish to,” said Hannah; “only, after giving her notice, if she doesn’t go I shall. I should be sorry to go — I’ve been very comfortable here — but it’s either her or me.”

“I should be sorry to lose you,” said Goddard in a hopeless voice.

“Thank you, sir,” said Hannah. “I’m sure I’ve tried to do my best. I’ve been with you some time now — and I know all your little ways. I expect I understand you better than anybody else would. I do all I can to make you comfortable.”

“Very well, I will leave it to you,” said Goddard in a voice which strove to be brisk and commanding. “You have my permission to dismiss her.”

“There’s another thing I wanted to see you about,” said Hannah; “my wages. I was going to ask for a rise, seeing that I’m really housekeeper here now.”

“Certainly,” said her master, considering, “that only seems fair. Let me see — what are you getting?”

“Thirty-six.”

Goddard reflected for a moment and then turned with a benevolent smile. “Very well,” he said, cordially, “I’ll make it forty-two. That’s ten shillings a month more.”

“I was thinking of a hundred,” said Hannah dryly.

The significance of the demand appalled him. “Rather a big jump,” he said at last. “I really don’t know that I—”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Hannah. “I thought I was worth it — to you — that’s all. You know best. Some people might think I was worth two hundred. That’s a bigger jump, but after all a big jump is better than—”

She broke off and tittered. Goddard eyed her.

“—than a big drop,” she concluded.

Her master’s face set. The lips almost disappeared and something came into the pale eyes that was revolting. Still eyeing her, he rose and approached her. She stood her ground and met him eye to eye.

“You are jocular,” he said at last.

“Short life and a merry one,” said the woman.

“Mine or yours?”

“Both, perhaps,” was the reply.

“If — if I give you a hundred,” said Goddard, moistening his lips, “that ought to make your life merrier, at any rate.”

Hannah nodded. “Merry and long, perhaps,” she said slowly. “I’m careful, you know — very careful.”

“I am sure you are,” said Goddard, his face relaxing.

“Careful what I eat and drink, I mean,” said the woman, eyeing him steadily.

“This is wise,” he said slowly. “I am myself — that is why I am paying a good cook a large salary. But don’t overdo things, Hannah; don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

“I am not likely to do that,” she said coldly. “Live and let live; that is my motto. Some people have different ones. But I’m careful; nobody won’t catch me napping. I’ve left a letter with my sister, in case.”

Goddard turned slowly and in a casual fashion put the flowers straight in a bowl on the table, and, wandering to the window, looked out. His face was white again and his hands trembled.

“To be opened after my death,” continued Hannah. “I don’t believe in doctors — not after what I’ve seen of them — I don’t think they know enough; so if I die I shall be examined. I’ve given good reasons.”

“And suppose,” said Goddard, coming from the window, “suppose she is curious, and opens it before you die?”

“We must chance that,” said Hannah, shrugging her shoulders; “but I don’t think she will. I sealed it up with sealing-wax, with a mark on it.”

“She might open it and say nothing about it,” persisted her master.

An unwholesome grin spread slowly over Hannah’s features. “I should know it soon enough,” she declared boisterously, “and so would other people. Lord there would be an upset! Chidham would have something to talk about for once. We should be in the papers — both of us.”

Goddard forced a smile. “Dear me!” he said gently. “Your pen seems to be a dangerous weapon, Hannah, but I hope that the need to open it will not happen for another fifty years. You look well and strong.”

The woman nodded. “I don’t take up my troubles before they come,” she said, with a satisfied air; “but there’s no harm in trying to prevent them coming. Prevention is better than cure.”

“Exactly,” said her master; “and, by the way, there’s no need for this little financial arrangement to be known by anybody else. I might become unpopular with my neighbours for setting a bad example. Of course, I am giving you this sum because I really think you are worth it.”

“I’m sure you do,” said Hannah. “I’m not sure I ain’t worth more, but this’ll do to go on with. I shall get a girl for less than we are paying Milly, and that’ll be another little bit extra for me.”

“Certainly,” said Goddard, and smiled again.

“Come to think of it,” said Hannah pausing at the door, “I ain’t sure I shall get anybody else; then there’ll be more than ever for me. If I do the work I might as well have the money.”

Her master nodded, and, left to himself, sat down to think out a position which was as intolerable as it was dangerous. At a great risk he had escaped from the dominion of one woman only to fall, bound and helpless, into the hands of another. However vague and unconvincing the suspicions of Hannah might be, they would be sufficient. Evidence could be unearthed. Cold with fear one moment, and hot with fury the next, he sought in vain for some avenue of escape. It was his brain against that of a cunning, illiterate fool; a fool whose malicious stupidity only added to his danger. And she drank. With largely increased wages she would drink more and his very life might depend upon a hiccuped boast. It was clear that she was enjoying her supremacy; later on her vanity would urge her to display it before others. He might have to obey the crack of her whip before witnesses, and that would cut off all possibility of escape.

He sat with his head in his hands. There must be a way out and he must find it. Soon. He must find it before gossip began; before the changed position of master and servant lent colour to her story when that story became known. Shaking with fury, he thought of her lean, ugly throat and the joy of choking her life out with his fingers. He started suddenly, and took a quick breath. No, not fingers — a rope.

Bright and cheerful outside and with his friends, in the house he was quiet and submissive. Milly had gone, and, if the service was poorer and the rooms neglected, he gave no sign. If a bell remained unanswered he made no complaint, and to studied insolence turned the other cheek of politeness. When at this tribute to her power the woman smiled, he smiled in return, a smile which, for all its disarming softness, left her vaguely uneasy.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said once, with a menacing air.

“I hope not,” said Goddard in a slightly surprised voice.

“Some people might be, but I’m not,” she declared. “If anything happened to me—”

“Nothing could happen to such a careful woman as you are,” he said, smiling again. “You ought to live to ninety — with luck.”

It was clear to him that the situation was getting on his nerves. Unremembered but terrible dreams haunted his sleep. Dreams in which some great, inevitable disaster was always pressing upon him, although he could never discover what it was. Each morning he awoke unrefreshed to face another day of torment. He could not meet the woman’s eyes for fear of revealing the threat that was in his own.

Delay was dangerous and foolish. He had thought out every move in that contest of wits which was to remove the shadow of the rope from his own neck and place it about that of the woman. There was a little risk, but the stake was a big one. He had but to set the ball rolling and others would keep it on its course. It was time to act.

He came in a little jaded from his afternoon walk, and left his tea untouched. He ate but little dinner, and, sitting hunched up over the fire, told the woman that he had taken a slight chill. Her concern, he felt grimly, might have been greater if she had known the cause.

He was no better next day, and after lunch called in to consult his doctor. He left with a clean bill of health except for a slight digestive derangement, the remedy for which he took away with him in a bottle. For two days he swallowed one tablespoonful three times a day in water, without result, then he took to his bed.

“A day or two in bed won’t hurt you,” said the doctor. “Show me that tongue of yours again.”

“But what is the matter with me, Roberts?” inquired the patient.

The doctor pondered. “Nothing to trouble about — nerves a bit wrong — digestion a little bit impaired. You’ll be all right in a day or two.”

Goddard nodded. So far, so good; Roberts had not outlived his usefulness. He smiled grimly after the doctor had left at the surprise he was preparing for him. A little rough on Roberts and his professional reputation, perhaps, but these things could not be avoided.

He lay back and visualised the program. A day or two longer, getting gradually worse, then a little sickness. After that a nervous, somewhat shamefaced patient hinting at things. His food had a queer taste — he felt worse after taking it; he knew it was ridiculous, still — there was some of his beef-tea he had put aside, perhaps the doctor would like to examine it? and the medicine? Secretions, too; perhaps he would like to see those?

Propped on his elbow, he stared fixedly at the wall. There would be a trace — a faint trace — of arsenic in the secretions. There would be more than a trace in the other things. An attempt to poison him would be clearly indicated, and — his wife’s symptoms had resembled his own — let Hannah get out of the web he was spinning if she could. As for the letter she had threatened him with, let her produce it; it could only recoil upon herself. Fifty letters could not save her from the doom he was preparing for her. It was her life or his, and he would show no mercy. For three days he doctored himself with sedulous care, watching himself anxiously the while. His nerve was going and he knew it. Before him was the strain of the discovery, the arrest, and the trial. The gruesome business of his wife’s death. A long business. He would wait no longer, and he would open the proceedings with dramatic suddenness.

It was between nine and ten o’clock at night when he rang his bell, and it was not until he had rung four times that he heard the heavy steps of Hannah mounting the stairs.

“What d’you want?” she demanded, standing in the doorway.

“I’m very ill,” he said, gasping. “Run for the doctor. Quick!”

The woman stared at him in genuine amazement. “What, at this time o’night?” she exclaimed. “Not likely.”

“I’m dying!” said Goddard in a broken voice.

“Not you,” she said, roughly. “You’ll be better in the morning.”

“I’m dying,” he repeated. “Go — for — the — doctor.”

The woman hesitated. The rain beat in heavy squalls against the window, and the doctor’s house was a mile distant on the lonely road. She glanced at the figure on the bed.

“I should catch my death o’cold,” she grumbled.

She stood sullenly regarding him. He certainly looked very ill, and his death would by no means benefit her. She listened, scowling, to the wind and the rain.

“All right,” she said at last, and went noisily from the room.

His face set in a mirthless smile, he heard her bustling about below. The front-door slammed violently and he was alone.

He waited for a few moments and then, getting out of bed, put on his dressing-gown and set about his preparations. With a steady hand he added a little white powder to the remains of his beef-tea and to the contents of his bottle of medicine. He stood listening a moment at some faint sound from below, and, having satisfied himself, lit a candle and made his way to Hannah’s room. For a space he stood irresolute, looking about him. Then he opened one of the drawers and, placing the broken packet of powder under a pile of clothing at the back, made his way back to bed.

He was disturbed to find that he was trembling with excitement and nervousness. He longed for tobacco, but that was impossible. To reassure himself he began to rehearse his conversation with the doctor, and again he thought over every possible complication. The scene with the woman would be terrible; he would have to be too ill to take any part in it. The less he said the better. Others would do all that was necessary.

He lay for a long time listening to the sound of the wind and the rain. Inside, the house seemed unusually quiet, and with an odd sensation he suddenly realised that it was the first time he had been alone in it since his wife’s death. He remembered that she would have to be disturbed. The thought was unwelcome. He did not want her to be disturbed. Let the dead sleep.

He sat up in bed and drew his watch from beneath the pillow. Hannah ought to have been back before; in any case she could not be long now. At any moment he might hear her key in the lock. He lay down again and reminded himself that things were shaping well. He had shaped them, and some of the satisfaction of the artist was his.

The silence was oppressive. The house seemed to be listening, waiting. He looked at his watch again and wondered, with a curse, what had happened to the woman. It was clear that the doctor must be out, but that was no reason for her delay. It was close on midnight, and the atmosphere of the house seemed in some strange fashion to be brooding and hostile.

In a lull in the wind he thought he heard footsteps outside, and his face cleared as he sat up listening for the sound of the key in the door below. In another moment the woman would be in the house and the fears engendered by a disordered fancy would have flown. The sound of the steps had ceased, but he could hear no sound of entrance. Until all hope had gone, he sat listening. He was certain he had heard footsteps. Whose?

Trembling and haggard he sat waiting, assailed by a crowd of murmuring fears. One whispered that he had failed and would have to pay the penalty of failing; that he had gambled with Death and lost.

By a strong effort he fought down these fancies and, closing his eyes, tried to compose himself to rest. It was evident now that the doctor was out and that Hannah was waiting to return with him in his car. He was frightening himself for nothing. At any moment he might hear the sound of their arrival.

He heard something else, and, sitting up, suddenly, tried to think what it was and what had caused it. It was a very faint sound — stealthy. Holding his breath he waited for it to be repeated. He heard it again, the mere ghost of a sound — a whisper of a sound, but significant as most whispers are.

He wiped his brow with his sleeve and told himself firmly that it was nerves, and nothing but nerves; but, against his will, he still listened. He fancied now that the sound came from his wife’s room, the other side of the landing. It increased in loudness and became more insistent, but with his eyes fixed on the door of his room he still kept himself in hand, and tried to listen instead to the wind and the rain.

For a time he heard nothing but that. Then there came a scraping, scurrying noise from his wife’s room, and a sudden, terrific crash.

With a loud scream his nerve broke, and springing from the bed he sped downstairs and, flinging open the front-door, dashed into the night. The door, caught by the wind, slammed behind him.

With his hand holding the garden gate open ready for further flight, he stood sobbing for breath. His bare feet were bruised and the rain was very cold, but he took no heed. Then he ran a little way along the road and stood for some time, hoping and listening.

He came back slowly. The wind was bitter and he was soaked to the skin. The garden was black and forbidding, and unspeakable horror might be lurking in the bushes. He went up the road again, trembling with cold. Then, in desperation, he passed through the terrors of the garden to the house, only to find the door closed. The porch gave a little protection from the icy rain, but none from the wind, and, shaking in every limb, he leaned in abject misery against the door. He pulled himself together after a time and stumbled round to the back door. Locked! And all the lower windows were shuttered. He made his way back to the porch and, crouching there in hopeless misery, waited for the woman to return.

He had a dim memory when he awoke of somebody questioning him, and then of being half-pushed, half-carried upstairs to bed. There was something wrong with his head and his chest and he was trembling violently, and very cold. Somebody was speaking.

“You must have taken leave of your senses,” said the voice of Hannah. “I thought you were dead.”

He forced his eyes to open. “Doctor,” he muttered, “doctor.”

“Out on a bad case,” said Hannah. “I waited till I was tired of waiting, and then came along. Good thing for you I did. He’ll be round first thing this morning. He ought to be here now.”

She bustled about, tidying up the room, his leaden eyes following her as she collected the beef-tea and other things on a tray and carried them out.

“Nice thing I did yesterday,” she remarked, as she came back. “Left the missus’s bedroom window open. When I opened the door this morning I found that beautiful Chippendale glass of hers had blown off the table and smashed to pieces. Did you hear it?”

Goddard made no reply. In a confused fashion he was trying to think. Accident or not, the fall of the glass had served its purpose. Were there such things as accidents? Or was Life a puzzle — a puzzle into which every piece was made to fit? Fear and the wind... no: conscience and the wind... had saved the woman. He must get the powder back from her drawer... before she discovered it and denounced him. The medicine... he must remember not to take it...

He was very ill, seriously ill. He must have taken a chill owing to that panic flight into the garden. Why didn’t the doctor come? He had come... at last... he was doing something to his chest... it was cold.

Again... the doctor... there was something he wanted to tell him... Hannah and a powder... what was it?

Later on he remembered, together with other things that he had hoped to forget. He lay watching an endless procession of memories, broken at times by a glance at the doctor, the nurse, and Hannah, who were all standing near the bed regarding him. They had been there a long time and they were all very quiet. The last time he looked at Hannah was the first time for months that he had looked at her without loathing and hatred. Then he knew that he was dying.

Gentlemen and Players E. W. HORNUNG

Original publication: Cassell’s Magazine, August 1898; first collected in The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Hornung (London, Methuen, 1899)

A. J. Raffles towers over the rogues of the Victorian and Edwardian era, becoming the most popular character in mystery fiction after Arthur Conan Doyle threw Sherlock Holmes into the Reichenbach Falls. The gentleman jewel thief’s name has become part of the English language, serving as a euphemism for a clever, gentlemanly thief.

Ironically, Ernest William Hornung (1866–1921), the creator of Raffles, was the brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the Holmes stories, and dedicated the first Raffles book to him: “To A. C. D. This form of flattery.” Doyle was flattered but not amused. He wrote:

“I think I may claim that his famous character Raffles was a kind of inversion of Sherlock Holmes, Bunny playing Watson. He admits as much in his kindly dedication. I think there are few finer examples of short-story writing in our language than these, though I confess I think they are rather dangerous in their suggestion. I told him so before he put pen to paper, and the result has, I fear, borne me out. You must not make the criminal a hero.”

Raffles was an internationally famous cricket player who found himself penniless and, in desperation, decided to steal. He had intended the robbery to be a singular adventure but, once he had “tasted blood,” he found that he loved it and continued his nighttime exploits when he returned to London. “Why settle down to some humdrum, uncongenial billet,” he once mused, “when excitement, romance, danger, and a decent living were all going begging together? Of course, it’s very wrong, but we can’t all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is very wrong to begin with.”

The stories are told in first person by Bunny Manders, the devoted companion of the charming and handsome amateur cracksman who lives in luxury at the Albany. Bunny had served as Raffles’s fag, or personal servant, as an underclassman when they were in public (i.e., private) school.

Hornung wrote three short story collections about the notorious jewel thief. The first, The Amateur Cracksman (1899), was selected for Queen’s Quorum; it was followed by The Black Mask, (1901; U.S. title: Raffles: Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman), and A Thief in the Night (1905). By the time of Mr. Justice Raffles (1909), Hornung’s only novel about the character, Raffles had become a detective.

Philip Atkey, using the pseudonym Barry Perowne, began to write about Raffles in 1933 (Raffles After Dark) and produced nine books and numerous short stories.

Other writers have also written parodies and pastiches about Raffles, the most famous being Graham Greene’s comic play, The Return of A. J. Raffles, produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, which opened in London in December 1975.

“Gentlemen and Players” refers to professional versus amateur cricket players, and it is his skill as a cricketer that opens the door for Raffles to be invited to the homes of the aristocracy and the fabulously wealthy. He has had his eye on the famous Melrose necklace for years when he is invited to a dinner party at the owner’s house. Warned that thieves would make an attempt on the valuable jewels, the police have been called to protect them. A gang, led by the notorious Crawshay, has a plan — but they had not counted on Raffles.

Title: Raffles, 1939

Studio: United Artists

Director: Sam Wood

Screenwriters: John Van Druten, Sidney Howard

Producer: Samuel Goldwyn

• David Niven (A. J. Raffles)

• Olivia de Havilland (Gwen Manders)

• Dame May Whitty (Lady Melrose)

• Dudley Digges (Inspector Mackenzie)

• Douglas Walton (Bunny Manders)

The David Niven vehicle was the most elaborate film made about Raffles and had the biggest budget, but its screenplay was very close to several versions that preceded it — none of which had much semblance to the story on which it was very loosely based, though it did adopt many elements of Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman, a 1903 stage play that Hornung cowrote with Eugene Presbrey. Among the major alterations was the introduction of Bunny’s sister, Gwen, with whom Raffles had once been in love and now, seeing her again, falls in love with her again. There is no sister in any of Hornung’s stories.

The first cinematic representation of A. J. Raffles was Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman, a 1905 silent starring J. Barney Sherry that appears to be lost. It was followed by The Van Nostrand Tiara, an American 1913 silent film produced by the Biograph Company. It was directed by Anthony O’Sullivan with a screenplay by Clarence A. Frambers, starring James Cooley (Raffles), Claire McDowell (Kate), Harry Carey (“Society Detective”), and Hattie Delaro (Mrs. Van Nostrand). Raffles and Kate (a newly hired maid) have a perfect scheme to steal Mrs. Van Nostrand’s famous tiara but they are caught by the “Society Detective.”

The third Raffles film was also an American silent, Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman, produced by Hyclass Producing Company in 1917. It was directed by George Irving with a screenplay by Anthony P. Kelly, starring John Barrymore (Raffles), Evelyn Brent (Ethel), Frank Morgan (Bunny Manders), and Mike Donlin (Crawshay). The action begins aboard a ship with Raffles stealing a pearl and diving overboard to elude capture. He is spotted and a woman attempts to blackmail him when she later recognizes him.

Two more silent films followed: Mr. Justice Raffles (1921), the first British production, starring Gerald Ames, which was based on Hornung’s 1909 novel of the same title, though the script is almost unrecognizable. House Peters starred in a 1925 American silent in which Raffles is caught but escapes with the help of a young woman so they can run away to marry.

Ronald Colman was the suave Raffles in the first sound version, Raffles, released in 1930. Sidney Howard wrote the screenplay, which he then slightly rewrote with John Van Druten for the 1939 version. In the 1930 version, Kay Francis plays Lady Gwen, the introduced love interest. The film was extremely successful and Markham, a British production company, made a lightly connected sequel in 1932 titled The Return of Raffles starring George Barraud as Raffles and Claud Allister as Bunny.

GENTLEMEN AND PLAYERS E. W. Hornung

Old Raffles may or may not have been an exceptional criminal, but as a cricketer I dare swear he was unique. Himself a dangerous bat, a brilliant field, and perhaps the very finest slow bowler of his decade, he took incredibly little interest in the game at large. He never went up to Lord’s without his cricket-bag, or showed the slightest interest in the result of a match in which he was not himself engaged. Nor was this mere hateful egotism on his part. He professed to have lost all enthusiasm for the game, and to keep it up only from the very lowest motives.

“Cricket,” said Raffles, “like everything else, is good enough sport until you discover a better. As a source of excitement it isn’t in it with other things you wot of, Bunny, and the involuntary comparison becomes a bore. What’s the satisfaction of taking a man’s wicket when you want his spoons? Still, if you can bowl a bit your low cunning won’t get rusty, and always looking for the weak spot’s just the kind of mental exercise one wants. Yes, perhaps there’s some affinity between the two things after all. But I’d chuck up cricket to-morrow, Bunny, if it wasn’t for the glorious protection it affords a person of my proclivities.”

“How so?” said I. “It brings you before the public, I should have thought, far more than is either safe or wise.”

“My dear Bunny, that’s exactly where you make a mistake. To follow Crime with reasonable impunity you simply must have a parallel, ostensible career — the more public the better. The principle is obvious. Mr. Peace, of pious memory, disarmed suspicion by acquiring a local reputation for playing the fiddle and taming animals, and it’s my profound conviction that Jack the Ripper was a really eminent public man, whose speeches were very likely reported alongside his atrocities. Fill the bill in some prominent part, and you’ll never be suspected of doubling it with another of equal prominence. That’s why I want you to cultivate journalism, my boy, and sign all you can. And it’s the one and only reason why I don’t burn my bats for firewood.”

Nevertheless, when he did play there was no keener performer on the field, nor one more anxious to do well for his side. I remember how he went to the nets, before the first match of the season, with his pocket full of sovereigns, which he put on the stumps instead of bails. It was a sight to see the professionals bowling like demons for the hard cash, for whenever a stump was hit a pound was tossed to the bowler and another balanced in its stead, while one man took £3 with a ball that spreadeagled the wicket. Raffles’s practice cost him either eight or nine sovereigns; but he had absolutely first-class bowling all the time; and he made fifty-seven runs next day.

It became my pleasure to accompany him to all his matches, to watch every ball he bowled, or played, or fielded, and to sit chatting with him in the pavilion when he was doing none of these three things. You might have seen us there, side by side, during the greater part of the Gentlemen’s first innings against the Players (who had lost the toss) on the second Monday in July. We were to be seen, but not heard, for Raffles had failed to score, and was uncommonly cross for a player who cared so little for the game. Merely taciturn with me, he was positively rude to more than one member who wanted to know how it had happened, or who ventured to commiserate him on his luck; there he sat, with a straw hat tilted over his nose and a cigarette stuck between lips that curled disagreeably at every advance. I was therefore much surprised when a young fellow of the exquisite type came and squeezed himself in between us, and met with a perfectly civil reception despite the liberty. I did not know the boy by sight, nor did Raffles introduce us; but their conversation proclaimed at once a slightness of acquaintanceship and a license on the lad’s part which combined to puzzle me. Mystification reached its height when Raffles was informed that the other’s father was anxious to meet him, and he instantly consented to gratify that whim.

“He’s in the Ladies’ Enclosure. Will you come round now?”

“With pleasure,” says Raffles. “Keep a place for me, Bunny.”

And they were gone.

“Young Crowley,” said some voice further back. “Last year’s Harrow Eleven.”

“I remember him. Worst man in the team.”

“Keen cricketer, however. Stopped till he was twenty to get his colors. Governor made him. Keen breed. Oh, pretty, sir! Very pretty!”

The game was boring me. I only came to see old Raffles perform. Soon I was looking wistfully for his return, and at length I saw him beckoning me from the palings to the right.

“Want to introduce you to old Amersteth,” he whispered, when I joined him. “They’ve a cricket week next month, when this boy Crowley comes of age, and we’ve both got to go down and play.”

“Both!” I echoed. “But I’m no cricketer!”

“Shut up,” says Raffles. “Leave that to me. I’ve been lying for all I’m worth,” he added sepulchrally as we reached the bottom of the steps. “I trust to you not to give the show away.”

There was a gleam in his eye that I knew well enough elsewhere, but was unprepared for in those healthy, sane surroundings; and it was with very definite misgivings and surmises that I followed the Zingari blazer through the vast flower-bed of hats and bonnets that bloomed beneath the ladies’ awning.

Lord Amersteth was a fine-looking man with a short mustache and a double chin. He received me with much dry courtesy, through which, however, it was not difficult to read a less flattering tale. I was accepted as the inevitable appendage of the invaluable Raffles, with whom I felt deeply incensed as I made my bow.

“I have been bold enough,” said Lord Amersteth, “to ask one of the Gentlemen of England to come down and play some rustic cricket for us next month. He is kind enough to say that he would have liked nothing better, but for this little fishing expedition of yours, Mr. — , Mr. — ,” and Lord Amersteth succeeded in remembering my name.

It was, of course, the first I had ever heard of that fishing expedition, but I made haste to say that it could easily, and should certainly, be put off. Raffles gleamed approval through his eyelashes. Lord Amersteth bowed and shrugged.

“You’re very good, I’m sure,” said he. “But I understand you’re a cricketer yourself?”

“He was one at school,” said Raffles, with infamous readiness.

“Not a real cricketer,” I was stammering meanwhile.

“In the eleven?” said Lord Amersteth.

“I’m afraid not,” said I.

“But only just out of it,” declared Raffles, to my horror.

“Well, well, we can’t all play for the Gentlemen,” said Lord Amersteth slyly. “My son Crowley only just scraped into the eleven at Harrow, and he’s going to play. I may even come in myself at a pinch; so you won’t be the only duffer, if you are one, and I shall be very glad if you will come down and help us too. You shall flog a stream before breakfast and after dinner, if you like.”

“I should be very proud,” I was beginning, as the mere prelude to resolute excuses; but the eye of Raffles opened wide upon me; and I hesitated weakly, to be duly lost.

“Then that’s settled,” said Lord Amersteth, with the slightest suspicion of grimness. “It’s to be a little week, you know, when my son comes of age. We play the Free Foresters, the Dorsetshire Gentlemen, and probably some local lot as well. But Mr. Raffles will tell you all about it, and Crowley shall write. Another wicket! By Jove, they’re all out! Then I rely on you both.” And, with a little nod, Lord Amersteth rose and sidled to the gangway.

Raffles rose also, but I caught the sleeve of his blazer.

“What are you thinking of?” I whispered savagely. “I was nowhere near the eleven. I’m no sort of cricketer. I shall have to get out of this!”

“Not you,” he whispered back. “You needn’t play, but come you must. If you wait for me after half-past six I’ll tell you why.”

But I could guess the reason; and I am ashamed to say that it revolted me much less than did the notion of making a public fool of myself on a cricket-field. My gorge rose at this as it no longer rose at crime, and it was in no tranquil humor that I strolled about the ground while Raffles disappeared in the pavilion. Nor was my annoyance lessened by a little meeting I witnessed between young Crowley and his father, who shrugged as he stopped and stooped to convey some information which made the young man look a little blank. It may have been pure self-consciousness on my part, but I could have sworn that the trouble was their inability to secure the great Raffles without his insignificant friend.

Then the bell rang, and I climbed to the top of the pavilion to watch Raffles bowl. No subleties are lost up there; and if ever a bowler was full of them, it was A. J. Raffles on this day, as, indeed, all the cricket world remembers. One had not to be a cricketer oneself to appreciate his perfect command of pitch and break, his beautifully easy action, which never varied with the varying pace, his great ball on the leg-stump — his dropping head-ball — in a word, the infinite ingenuity of that versatile attack. It was no mere exhibition of athletic prowess, it was an intellectual treat, and one with a special significance in my eyes. I saw the “affinity between the two things,” saw it in that afternoon’s tireless warfare against the flower of professional cricket. It was not that Raffles took many wickets for few runs; he was too fine a bowler to mind being hit; and time was short, and the wicket good. What I admired, and what I remember, was the combination of resource and cunning, of patience and precision, of head-work and handiwork, which made every over an artistic whole. It was all so characteristic of that other Raffles whom I alone knew!

“I felt like bowling this afternoon,” he told me later in the hansom. “With a pitch to help me, I’d have done something big; as it is, three for forty-one, out of the four that fell, isn’t so bad for a slow bowler on a plumb wicket against those fellows. But I felt venomous! Nothing riles me more than being asked about for my cricket as though I were a pro. myself.”

“Then why on earth go?”

“To punish them, and — because we shall be jolly hard up, Bunny, before the season’s over!”

“Ah!” said I. “I thought it was that.”

“Of course, it was! It seems they’re going to have the very devil of a week of it — balls — dinner parties — swagger house-party — general junketings — and obviously a houseful of diamonds as well. Diamonds galore! As a general rule nothing would induce me to abuse my position as a guest. I’ve never done it, Bunny. But in this case we’re engaged like the waiters and the band, and by heaven we’ll take our toll! Let’s have a quiet dinner somewhere and talk it over.”

“It seems rather a vulgar sort of theft,” I could not help saying; and to this, my single protest, Raffles instantly assented.

“It is a vulgar sort,” said he; “but I can’t help that. We’re getting vulgarly hard up again, and there’s an end on ’t. Besides, these people deserve it, and can afford it. And don’t you run away with the idea that all will be plain sailing; nothing will be easier than getting some stuff, and nothing harder than avoiding all suspicion, as, of course, we must. We may come away with no more than a good working plan of the premises. Who knows? In any case there’s weeks of thinking in it for you and me.”

But with those weeks I will not weary you further than by remarking that the “thinking,” was done entirely by Raffles, who did not always trouble to communicate his thoughts to me. His reticence, however, was no longer an irritant. I began to accept it as a necessary convention of these little enterprises. And, after our last adventure of the kind, more especially after its dénouement, my trust in Raffles was much too solid to be shaken by a want of trust in me, which I still believe to have been more the instinct of the criminal than the judgment of the man.

It was on Monday, the tenth of August, that we were due at Milchester Abbey, Dorset; and the beginning of the month found us cruising about that very county, with fly-rods actually in our hands. The idea was that we should acquire at once a local reputation as decent fishermen, and some knowledge of the countryside, with a view to further and more deliberate operations in the event of an unprofitable week. There was another idea which Raffles kept to himself until he had got me down there. Then one day he produced a cricket-ball in a meadow we were crossing, and threw me catches for an hour together. More hours he spent in bowling to me on the nearest green; and, if I was never a cricketer, at least I came nearer to being one, by the end of that week, than ever before or since.

Incident began early on the Monday. We had sallied forth from a desolate little junction within quite a few miles of Milchester, had been caught in a shower, had run for shelter to a wayside inn. A florid, overdressed man was drinking in the parlor, and I could have sworn it was at the sight of him that Raffles recoiled on the threshold, and afterwards insisted on returning to the station through the rain. He assured me, however, that the odor of stale ale had almost knocked him down. And I had to make what I could of his speculative, downcast eyes and knitted brows.

Milchester Abbey is a gray, quadrangular pile, deep-set in rich woody country, and twinkling with triple rows of quaint windows, every one of which seemed alight as we drove up just in time to dress for dinner. The carriage had whirled us under I know not how many triumphal arches in process of construction, and past the tents and flag-poles of a juicy-looking cricket-field, on which Raffles undertook to bowl up to his reputation. But the chief signs of festival were within, where we found an enormous house-party assembled, including more persons of pomp, majesty, and dominion than I had ever encountered in one room before. I confess I felt overpowered. Our errand and my own pretences combined to rob me of an address upon which I have sometimes plumbed myself; and I have a grim recollection of my nervous relief when dinner was at last announced. I little knew what an ordeal it was to prove.

I had taken in a much less formidable young lady than might have fallen to my lot. Indeed I began by blessing my good fortune in this respect. Miss Melhuish was merely the rector’s daughter, and she had only been asked to make an even number. She informed me of both facts before the soup reached us, and her subsequent conversation was characterized by the same engaging candor. It exposed what was little short of a mania for imparting information. I had simply to listen, to nod, and to be thankful. When I confessed to knowing very few of those present, even by sight, my entertaining companion proceeded to tell me who everybody was, beginning on my left and working conscientiously round to her right. This lasted quite a long time, and really interested me; but a great deal that followed did not, and, obviously to recapture my unworthy attention, Miss Melhuish suddenly asked me, in a sensational whisper, whether I could keep a secret.

I said I thought I might, whereupon another question followed, in still lower and more thrilling accents:

“Are you afraid of burglars?”

Burglars! I was roused at last. The word stabbed me. I repeated it in horrified query.

“So I’ve found something to interest you at last!” said Miss Melhuish, in naïve triumph. “Yes — burglars! But don’t speak so loud. It’s supposed to be kept a great secret. I really oughtn’t to tell you at all!”

“But what is there to tell?” I whispered with satisfactory impatience.

“You promise not to speak of it?”

“Of course!”

“Well, then, there are burglars in the neighborhood.”

“Have they committed any robberies?”

“Not yet.”

“Then how do you know?”

“They’ve been seen. In the district. Two well-known London thieves!”

Two! I looked at Raffles. I had done so often during the evening, envying him his high spirits, his iron nerve, his buoyant wit, his perfect ease and self-possession. But now I pitied him; through all my own terror and consternation, I pitied him as he sat eating and drinking, and laughing and talking, without a cloud of fear or of embarrassment on his handsome, taking, daredevil face. I caught up my champagne and emptied the glass.

“Who has seen them?” I then asked calmly.

“A detective. They were traced down from town a few days ago. They are believed to have designs on the Abbey!”

“But why aren’t they run in?”

“Exactly what I asked papa on the way here this evening; he says there is no warrant out against the men at present, and all that can be done is to watch their movements.”

“Oh! so they are being watched?”

“Yes, by a detective who is down here on purpose. And I heard Lord Amersteth tell papa that they had been seen this afternoon at Warbeck Junction!”

The very place where Raffles and I had been caught in the rain! Our stampede from the inn was now explained; on the other hand, I was no longer to be taken by surprise by anything that my companion might have to tell me; and I succeeded in looking her in the face with a smile.

“This is really quite exciting, Miss Melhuish,” said I. “May I ask how you come to know so much about it?”

“It’s papa,” was the confidential reply. “Lord Amersteth consulted him, and he consulted me. But for goodness’s sake don’t let it get about! I can’t think what tempted me to tell you!”

“You may trust me, Miss Melhuish. But — aren’t you frightened?”

Miss Melhuish giggled.

“Not a bit! They won’t come to the rectory. There’s nothing for them there. But look round the table: look at the diamonds: look at old Lady Melrose’s necklace alone!”

The Dowager Marchioness of Melrose was one of the few persons whom it had been unnecessary to point out to me. She sat on Lord Amersteth’s right, flourishing her ear-trumpet, and drinking champagne with her usual notorious freedom, as dissipated and kindly a dame as the world has ever seen. It was a necklace of diamonds and sapphires that rose and fell about her ample neck.

“They say it’s worth five thousand pounds at least,” continued my companion. “Lady Margaret told me so this morning (that’s Lady Margaret next your Mr. Raffles, you know); and the old dear will wear them every night. Think what a haul they would be! No; we don’t feel in immediate danger at the rectory.”

When the ladies rose, Miss Melhuish bound me to fresh vows of secrecy; and left me, I should think, with some remorse for her indiscretion, but more satisfaction at the importance which it had undoubtedly given her in my eyes. The opinion may smack of vanity, though, in reality, the very springs of conversation reside in that same human, universal itch to thrill the auditor. The peculiarity of Miss Melhuish was that she must be thrilling at all costs. And thrilling she had surely been.

I spare you my feelings of the next two hours. I tried hard to get a word with Raffles, but again and again I failed. In the dining-room he and Crowley lit their cigarettes with the same match, and had their heads together all the time. In the drawing-room I had the mortification of hearing him talk interminable nonsense into the ear-trumpet of Lady Melrose, whom he knew in town. Lastly, in the billiard-room, they had a great and lengthy pool, while I sat aloof and chafed more than ever in the company of a very serious Scotchman, who had arrived since dinner, and who would talk of nothing but the recent improvements in instantaneous photography. He had not come to play in the matches (he told me), but to obtain for Lord Amersteth such a series of cricket photographs as had never been taken before; whether as an amateur or a professional photographer I was unable to determine. I remember, however, seeking distraction in little bursts of resolute attention to the conversation of this bore. And so at last the long ordeal ended; glasses were emptied, men said good-night, and I followed Raffles to his room.

“It’s all up!” I gasped, as he turned up the gas and I shut the door. “We’re being watched. We’ve been followed down from town. There’s a detective here on the spot!”

“How do you know?” asked Raffles, turning upon me quite sharply, but without the least dismay. And I told him how I knew.

“Of course,” I added, “it was the fellow we saw in the inn this afternoon.”

“The detective?” said Raffles. “Do you mean to say you don’t know a detective when you see one, Bunny?”

“If that wasn’t the fellow, which is?”

Raffles shook his head.

“To think that you’ve been talking to him for the last hour in the billiard-room and couldn’t spot what he was!”

“The Scotch photographer—”

I paused aghast.

“Scotch he is,” said Raffles, “and photographer he may be. He is also Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland Yard — the very man I sent the message to that night last April. And you couldn’t spot who he was in a whole hour! O Bunny, Bunny, you were never built for crime!”

“But,” said I, “if that was Mackenzie, who was the fellow you bolted from at Warbeck?”

“The man he’s watching.”

“But he’s watching us!”

Raffles looked at me with a pitying eye, and shook his head again before handing me his open cigarette-case.

“I don’t know whether smoking’s forbidden in one’s bedroom, but you’d better take one of these and stand tight, Bunny, because I’m going to say something offensive.”

I helped myself with a laugh.

“Say what you like, my dear fellow, if it really isn’t you and I that Mackenzie’s after.”

“Well, then, it isn’t, and it couldn’t be, and nobody but a born Bunny would suppose for a moment that it was! Do you seriously think he would sit there and knowingly watch his man playing pool under his nose? Well, he might; he’s a cool hand, Mackenzie; but I’m not cool enough to win a pool under such conditions. At least I don’t think I am; it would be interesting to see. The situation wasn’t free from strain as it was, though I knew he wasn’t thinking of us. Crowley told me all about it after dinner, you see, and then I’d seen one of the men for myself this afternoon. You thought it was a detective who made me turn tail at that inn. I really don’t know why I didn’t tell you at the time, but it was just the opposite. That loud, red-faced brute is one of the cleverest thieves in London, and I once had a drink with him and our mutual fence. I was an Eastender from tongue to toe at the moment, but you will understand that I don’t run unnecessary risks of recognition by a brute like that.”

“He’s not alone, I hear.”

“By no means; there’s at least one other man with him; and it’s suggested that there may be an accomplice here in the house.”

“Did Lord Crowley tell you so?”

“Crowley and the champagne between them. In confidence, of course, just as your girl told you; but even in confidence he never let on about Mackenzie. He told me there was a detective in the background, but that was all. Putting him up as a guest is evidently their big secret, to be kept from the other guests because it might offend them, but more particularly from the servants whom he’s here to watch. That’s my reading of the situation, Bunny, and you will agree with me that it’s infinitely more interesting than we could have imagined it would prove.”

“But infinitely more difficult for us,” said I, with a sigh of pusillanimous relief. “Our hands are tied for this week, at all events.”

“Not necessarily, my dear Bunny, though I admit that the chances are against us. Yet I’m not so sure of that either. There are all sorts of possibilities in these three-cornered combinations. Set A to watch B, and he won’t have an eye left for C. That’s the obvious theory, but then Mackenzie’s a very big A. I should be sorry to have any boodle about me with that man in the house. Yet it would be great to nip in between A and B and score off them both at once! It would be worth a risk, Bunny, to do that; it would be worth risking something merely to take on old hands like B and his men at their own old game! Eh, Bunny? That would be something like a match. Gentlemen and Players at single wicket, by Jove!”

His eyes were brighter than I had known them for many a day. They shone with the perverted enthusiasm which was roused in him only by the contemplation of some new audacity. He kicked off his shoes and began pacing his room with noiseless rapidity; not since the night of the Old Bohemian dinner to Reuben Rosenthall had Raffles exhibited such excitement in my presence; and I was not sorry at the moment to be reminded of the fiasco to which that banquet had been the prelude.

“My dear A. J.,” said I in his very own tone, “you’re far too fond of the uphill game; you will eventually fall a victim to the sporting spirit and nothing else. Take a lesson from our last escape, and fly lower as you value our skins. Study the house as much as you like, but do — not — go and shove your head into Mackenzie’s mouth!”

My wealth of metaphor brought him to a standstill, with his cigarette between his fingers and a grin beneath his shining eyes.

“You’re quite right, Bunny. I won’t. I really won’t. Yet — you saw old Lady Melrose’s necklace? I’ve been wanting it for years! But I’m not going to play the fool; honor bright, I’m not; yet — by Jove! — to get to windward of the professors and Mackenzie too! It would be a great game, Bunny, it would be a great game!”

“Well, you mustn’t play it this week.”

“No, no, I won’t. But I wonder how the professors think of going to work? That’s what one wants to know. I wonder if they’ve really got an accomplice in the house? How I wish I knew their game! But it’s all right, Bunny; don’t you be jealous; it shall be as you wish.”

And with that assurance I went off to my own room, and so to bed with an incredibly light heart. I had still enough of the honest man in me to welcome the postponement of our actual felonies, to dread their performance, to deplore their necessity: which is merely another way of stating the too patent fact that I was an incomparably weaker man than Raffles, while every whit as wicked. I had, however, one rather strong point. I possessed the gift of dismissing unpleasant considerations, not intimately connected with the passing moment, entirely from my mind. Through the exercise of this faculty I had lately been living my frivolous life in town with as much ignoble enjoyment as I had derived from it the year before; and similarly, here at Milchester, in the long-dreaded cricket-week, I had after all a quite excellent time.

It is true that there were other factors in this pleasing disappointment. In the first place, mirabile dictu, there were one or two even greater duffers than I on the Abbey cricket-field. Indeed, quite early in the week, when it was of most value to me, I gained considerable kudos for a lucky catch; a ball, of which I had merely heard the hum, stuck fast in my hand, which Lord Amersteth himself grasped in public congratulation. This happy accident was not to be undone even by me, and, as nothing succeeds like success, and the constant encouragement of the one great cricketer on the field was in itself an immense stimulus, I actually made a run or two in my very next innings. Miss Melhuish said pretty things to me that night at the great ball in honor of Viscount Crowley’s majority; she also told me that was the night on which the robbers would assuredly make their raid, and was full of arch tremors when we sat out in the garden, though the entire premises were illuminated all night long. Meanwhile the quiet Scotchman took countless photographs by day, which he developed by night in a dark room admirably situated in the servants’ part of the house; and it is my firm belief that only two of his fellow-guests knew Mr. Clephane of Dundee for Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland Yard.

The week was to end with a trumpery match on the Saturday, which two or three of us intended abandoning early in order to return to town that night. The match, however, was never played. In the small hours of the Saturday morning a tragedy took place at Milchester Abbey.

Let me tell of the thing as I saw and heard it. My room opened upon the central gallery, and was not even on the same floor as that on which Raffles — and I think all the other men — were quartered. I had been put, in fact, into the dressing-room of one of the grand suites, and my too near neighbors were old Lady Melrose and my host and hostess. Now, by the Friday evening the actual festivities were at an end, and, for the first time that week, I must have been sound asleep since midnight, when all at once I found myself sitting up breathless. A heavy thud had come against my door, and now I heard hard breathing and the dull stamp of muffled feet.

“I’ve got ye,” muttered a voice. “It’s no use struggling.”

It was the Scotch detective, and a new fear turned me cold. There was no reply, but the hard breathing grew harder still, and the muffled feet beat the floor to a quicker measure. In sudden panic I sprang out of bed and flung open my door. A light burnt low on the landing, and by it I could see Mackenzie swaying and staggering in a silent tussle with some powerful adversary.

“Hold this man!” he cried, as I appeared. “Hold the rascal!”

But I stood like a fool until the pair of them backed into me, when, with a deep breath I flung myself on the fellow, whose face I had seen at last. He was one of the footmen who waited at table; and no sooner had I pinned him than the detective loosed his hold.

“Hang on to him,” he cried. “There’s more of ’em below.”

And he went leaping down the stairs, as other doors opened and Lord Amersteth and his son appeared simultaneously in their pyjamas. At that my man ceased struggling; but I was still holding him when Crowley turned up the gas.

“What the devil’s all this?” asked Lord Amersteth, blinking. “Who was that ran downstairs?”

“Mac — Clephane!” said I hastily.

“Aha!” said he, turning to the footman. “So you’re the scoundrel, are you? Well done! Well done! Where was he caught?”

I had no idea.

“Here’s Lady Melrose’s door open,” said Crowley. “Lady Melrose! Lady Melrose!”

“You forget she’s deaf,” said Lord Amersteth. “Ah! that’ll be her maid.”

An inner door had opened; next instant there was a little shriek, and a white figure gesticulated on the threshold.

“Où donc est l’écrin de Madame la Marquise? La fenêtre est ouverte. Il a disparu!”

“Window open and jewel-case gone, by Jove!” exclaimed Lord Amersteth. “Mais comment est Madame la Marquise? Estelle bien?”

“Oui, milor. Elle dort.”

“Sleeps through it all,” said my lord. “She’s the only one, then!”

“What made Mackenzie — Clephane — bolt?” young Crowley asked me.

“Said there were more of them below.”

“Why the devil couldn’t you tell us so before?” he cried, and went leaping downstairs in his turn.

He was followed by nearly all the cricketers, who now burst upon the scene in a body, only to desert it for the chase. Raffles was one of them, and I would gladly have been another, had not the footman chosen this moment to hurl me from him, and to make a dash in the direction from which they had come. Lord Amersteth had him in an instant; but the fellow fought desperately, and it took the two of us to drag him downstairs, amid a terrified chorus from half-open doors. Eventually we handed him over to two other footmen who appeared with their nightshirts tucked into their trousers, and my host was good enough to compliment me as he led the way outside.

“I thought I heard a shot,” he added. “Didn’t you?”

“I thought I heard three.”

And out we dashed into the darkness.

I remember how the gravel pricked my feet, how the wet grass numbed them as we made for the sound of voices on an outlying lawn. So dark was the night that we were in the cricketers’ midst before we saw the shimmer of their pyjamas; and then Lord Amersteth almost trod on Mackenzie as he lay prostrate in the dew.

“Who’s this?” he cried. “What on earth’s happened?”

“It’s Clephane,” said a man who knelt over him. “He’s got a bullet in him somewhere.”

“Is he alive?”

“Barely.”

“Good God! Where’s Crowley?”

“Here I am,” called a breathless voice. “It’s no good, you fellows. There’s nothing to show which way they’ve gone. Here’s Raffles; he’s chucked it, too.” And they ran up panting.

“Well, we’ve got one of them, at all events,” muttered Lord Amersteth. “The next thing is to get this poor fellow indoors. Take his shoulders, somebody. Now his middle. Join hands under him. All together, now; that’s the way. Poor fellow! Poor fellow! His name isn’t Clephane at all. He’s a Scotland Yard detective, down here for these very villains!”

Raffles was the first to express surprise; but he had also been the first to raise the wounded man. Nor had any of them a stronger or more tender hand in the slow procession to the house. In a little we had the senseless man stretched on a sofa in the library. And there, with ice on his wound and brandy in his throat, his eyes opened and his lips moved.

Lord Amersteth bent down to catch the words.

“Yes, yes,” said he; “we’ve got one of them safe and sound. The brute you collared upstairs.” Lord Amersteth bent lower. “By Jove! Lowered the jewel-case out of the window, did he? And they’ve got clean away with it! Well, well! I only hope we’ll be able to pull this good fellow through. He’s off again.”

An hour passed: the sun was rising.

It found a dozen young fellows on the settees in the billiard-room, drinking whiskey and soda-water in their overcoats and pyjamas, and still talking excitedly in one breath. A time-table was being passed from hand to hand: the doctor was still in the library. At last the door opened, and Lord Amersteth put in his head.

“It isn’t hopeless,” said he, “but it’s bad enough. There’ll be no cricket to-day.”

Another hour, and most of us were on our way to catch the early train; between us we filled a compartment almost to suffocation. And still we talked all together of the night’s event; and still I was a little hero in my way, for having kept my hold of the one ruffian who had been taken; and my gratification was subtle and intense. Raffles watched me under lowered lids. Not a word had we had together; not a word did we have until we had left the others at Paddington, and were skimming through the streets in a hansom with noiseless tires and a tinkling bell.

“Well, Bunny,” said Raffles, “so the professors have it, eh?”

“Yes,” said I. “And I’m jolly glad!”

“That poor Mackenzie has a ball in his chest?”

“That you and I have been on the decent side for once.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“You’re hopeless, Bunny, quite hopeless! I take it you wouldn’t have refused your share if the boodle had fallen to us? Yet you positively enjoy coming off second best — for the second time running! I confess, however, that the professors’ methods were full of interest to me. I, for one, have probably gained as much in experience as I have lost in other things. That lowering the jewel-case out of the window was a very simple and effective expedient; two of them had been waiting below for it for hours.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I saw them from my own window, which was just above the dear old lady’s. I was fretting for that necklace in particular, when I went up to turn in for our last night — and I happened to look out of my window. In point of fact, I wanted to see whether the one below was open, and whether there was the slightest chance of working the oracle with my sheet for a rope. Of course I took the precaution of turning my light off first, and it was a lucky thing I did. I saw the pros. right down below, and they never saw me. I saw a little tiny luminous disk just for an instant, and then again for an instant a few minutes later. Of course I knew what it was, for I have my own watch-dial daubed with luminous paint; it makes a lantern of sorts when you can get no better. But these fellows were not using theirs as a lantern. They were under the old lady’s window. They were watching the time. The whole thing was arranged with their accomplice inside. Set a thief to catch a thief: in a minute I had guessed what the whole thing proved to be.”

“And you did nothing!” I exclaimed.

“On the contrary, I went downstairs and straight into Lady Melrose’s room—”

“You did?”

“Without a moment’s hesitation. To save her jewels. And I was prepared to yell as much into her ear-trumpet for all the house to hear. But the dear lady is too deaf and too fond of her dinner to wake easily.”

“Well?”

“She didn’t stir.”

“And yet you allowed the professors, as you call them, to take her jewels, case and all!”

“All but this,” said Raffles, thrusting his fist into my lap. “I would have shown it you before, but really, old fellow, your face all day has been worth a fortune to the firm!”

And he opened his fist, to shut it next instant on the bunch of diamonds and of sapphires that I had last seen encircling the neck of Lady Melrose.

The Blind Spot BARRY PEROWNE

Original publication: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 1945

The greatest criminal character in literature is A. J. Raffles, the gentleman jewel thief created by E. W. Hornung at the end of the Victorian era, his first book appearance being in The Amateur Cracksman (1899). A few years after the author’s death in 1921, the popularity of the character remained at such a high level that British magazine The Thriller asked Barry Perowne, already a regular contributor, to continue the rogue’s adventures. After making arrangements with the estate of Hornung, Perowne produced many more stories about Raffles than his creator had, as well as several novels.

Philip Atkey (1908–1985), using the pseudonym Barry Perowne, wrote hundreds of stories and more than twenty novels, many featuring the suave safecracker and his sidekick, Bunny Manders, including The Return of Raffles (1933), Raffles in Pursuit (1934), Raffles Under Sentence (1936), and Raffles Revisited (1974), a short story collection.

The exceptionally versatile and prolific Atkey also produced numerous thirty-thousand-word paperback original novellas about Dick Turpin, the notorious highwayman, and Red Jim, the first air detective.

“The Blind Spot” is quite different from much of his work, which tended to be plot-driven and fast-paced. In this ingenuous story, character and nuance is preeminent, along with a stunning, original plot that will leave readers wanting to throttle the author.

Title: Blind Spot, 1947

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Director: Robert Gordon

Screenwriter: Martin Goldsmith

Producer: Ted Richmond

• Chester Morris (Jeffrey Andrews)

• Constance Dowling (Evelyn Green)

• Steven Geray (Lloyd Harrison)

One can only wonder why anyone bothered to buy the rights to Barry Perowne’s story since the screenplay bears as much similarity to it as it does to Gone with the Wind.

The entire point of the short story is that a playwright has come up with the perfect solution to an impossible crime, inventing a credible method by which a person can be stabbed to death in a locked room. He tells the story to a fellow drinker at a bar, then drunkenly steps in front of a taxi, knocking his brilliant solution out of his mind.

In the film, there is a locked-room murder, but certainly no brilliant solution. If I told you the denouement, you would not believe me. It is a standard detective story of an innocent man being accused of murder, too drunk to remember whether he actually committed the crime, followed by his efforts to prove that he didn’t. Have you ever heard this plot before? It appears that Martin Goldsmith, a very good screenwriter, was more interested in turning the story into an over-the top noir film — with dialogue to match (“a .45 caliber toothache”; “the heat sapped my vitality like ten thousand blood-thirsty dwarves”).

Chester Morris had built a career in B movies, most notably the Boston Blackie series, and few would have described him as the next John Barrymore. His long scene as a drunk is among the most boring and irritating in the history of cinema. In his biography, he revealed that his friend, Roland West, had given him a deathbed confession that he had murdered the actress Thelma Todd.

Constance Dowling had been a model, singer, and dancer before going to Hollywood to be a film actress. A Veronica Lake type, she had a long affair with married director Elia Kazan in New York but he wouldn’t leave his wife and the affair ended when Dowling went west. She was later involved with Italian poet/novelist Cesare Pavese, who committed suicide in 1950 after being rejected by Dowling.

The working titles of Blind Spot during filming were Inside Story and Trapped.

THE BLIND SPOT Barry Perowne

Annixter loved the little man like a brother. He put an arm around the little man’s shoulders, partly from affection and partly to prevent himself from falling. He had been drinking earnestly since seven o’clock the previous evening. It was now nudging midnight, and things were a bit hazy. The lobby was full of the thump of hot music; down two steps, there were a lot of tables, a lot of people, a lot of noise. Annixter had no idea what this place was called, or how he had got there, or when. He had been in so many places since seven o’clock the previous evening.

“In a nutshell,” confided Annixter, leaning heavily on the little man, “a woman fetched you a kick in the face, or fate fetches you a kick in the face. Same thing, really — a woman and fate. So what? So you think it’s the finish, an’ you go out and get plastered. You get good an’ plastered,” said Annixter, “an’ you brood.

“You sit there an’ you drink an’ you brood — an’ in the end you find you’ve brooded up just about the best idea you ever had in your life! ’At’s the way it goes,” said Annixter, “an’ ’at’s my philosophy — the harder you kick a playwright, the better he works.”

He gestured with such vehemence that he would have collapsed if the little man hadn’t steadied him. The little man was poker-backed, his grip was firm. His mouth was firm, too — a straight line, almost colourless. He wore hexagonal rimless spectacles, a black hard-felt hat, a neat pepper-and-salt suit. He looked pale and prim beside the flushed, rumpled Annixter.

From her counter, the hat-check girl watched them indifferently.

“Don’t you think,” the little man said to Annixter, “you ought to go home now? I’ve been honoured you should tell me the scenario of your play, but—”

“I had to tell someone,” said Annixter, “or blow my top! Oh, boy, what a play, what a play! What a murder, eh? That climax—”

The full, dazzling perfection of it struck him again. He stood frowning, considering, swaying a little — then nodded abruptly, groped for the little man’s hand, warmly pumphandled it.

“Sorry I can’t stick around,” said Annixter, “I got work to do.”

He crammed his hat on shapelessly, headed on a slightly elliptical course across the lobby, thrust the double doors open with both hands, lurched out into the night.

It was, to his inflamed imagination, full of lights, winking and tilting across the dark. Sealed Room by James Annixter. No. Room Reserved by James— No, no Blue Room. Room Blue by James Annixter—

He stepped, oblivious, off the curb, and a taxi, swinging in toward the place he had just left, skidded with suddenly locked, squealing wheels on the wet road.

Something hit Annixter violently in the chest, and all the lights he had been seeing exploded in his face.

Then there weren’t any lights.

The lobby of the Casa Havana was full of the thump of music; down two steps there were a lot of tables, a lot of people, a lot of noise. The hat-check girl looked wonderingly at Annixter — at the plaster on his forehead, the black sling which supported his left arm.

“My,” said the hat-check girl, “I certainly didn’t expect to see you again so soon!”

“You remember me, then?” said Annixter, smiling.

“I ought to,” said the hat-check girl. “You cost me a night’s sleep! I heard those brakes squeal after you went out the door that night — and there was a sort of thud!” She shuddered. “I kept hearing it all night long. I can still hear it now — a week after! Horrible!”

“You’re sensitive,” said Annixter.

“I got too much imagination,” the hat-check girl admitted. “F’instance, I just knew it was you even before I run to the door and see you lying there. That man you was with was standing just outside. ‘My heavens,’ I say to him, ‘it’s your friend!’ ”

“What did he say?” Annixter asked.

“He says, ‘He’s not my friend. He’s just someone I met.’ Funny, eh?”

Annixter moistened his lips.

“How d’you mean,” he said carefully, “funny? I was just someone he’d met.”

“Yes, but — man you been drinking with,” said the hat-check girl, “killed before your eyes. Because he must have seen it; he went out right after you. You’d think he’d ’a’ been interested, at least. But when the taxi driver starts shouting for witnesses, it wasn’t his fault, I looks around for that man — an’ he’s gone!”

Annixter exchanged a glance with Ransome, his producer, who was with him. It was a slightly puzzled, slightly anxious glance. But he smiled, then, at the hat-check girl.

“Not quite ‘killed before his eyes,’ ” said Annixter. “Just shaken up a bit, that’s all.”

There was no need to explain to her how curious, how eccentric, had been the effect of that “shaking up” upon his mind.

“If you could ’a’ seen yourself lying there with the taxi’s lights shining on you—”

“Ah, there’s that imagination of yours!” said Annixter.

He hesitated for just an instant, then asked the question he had come to ask — the question which had assumed so profound an importance for him.

He asked, “That man I was with — who was he?”

The hat-check girl looked from one to the other. She shook her head.

“I never saw him before,” she said, “and I haven’t seen him since.”

Annixter felt as though she had struck him in the face. He had hoped, hoped desperately, for a different answer; he had counted on it.

Ransome put a hand on his arm, restrainingly.

“Anyway,” said Ransome, “as we’re here, let’s have a drink.”

They went down the two steps into the room where the band thumped. A waiter led them to a table, and Ransome gave him an order.

“There was no point in pressing that girl,” Ransome said to Annixter. “She doesn’t know the man, and that’s that. My advice to you, James, is: Don’t worry. Get your mind on something else. Give yourself a chance. After all, it’s barely a week since—”

“A week!” Annixter said. “Hell, look what I’ve done in that week! The whole of the first two acts, and the third act right up to that crucial point — the climax of the whole thing: the solution: the scene that the play stands or falls on! It would have been done, Bill — the whole play, the best thing I ever did in my life — it would have been finished two days ago if it hadn’t been for this—” he knuckled his forehead — “this extraordinary blind spot, this damnable little trick of memory!”

“You had a very rough shaking up—”

“That?” Annixter said contemptuously. He glanced down at the sling on his arm. “I never even felt it; it didn’t bother me. I woke up in the ambulance with my play as vivid in my mind as the moment the taxi hit me — more so, maybe, because I was stone cold sober then, and knew what I had. A winner — a thing that just couldn’t miss!”

“If you’d rested,” Ransome said, “as the doc told you, instead of sitting up in bed there scribbling night and day—”

“I had to get it on paper. Rest?” said Annixter, and laughed harshly. “You don’t get rest when you’ve got a thing like that. That’s what you live for — if you’re a playwright. That is living! I’ve lived eight whole lifetimes, in those eight characters, during the past five days. I’ve lived so utterly in them, Bill, that it wasn’t till I actually came to write that last scene that I realized what I’d lost! Only my whole play, that’s all! How was Cynthia stabbed in that windowless room into which she had locked and bolted herself? How did the killer get to her? How was it done?

“Hell,” Annixter said, “scores of writers, better men than I am, have tried to put that sealed room murder over — and never quite done it convincingly: never quite got away with it: been overelaborate, phoney! I had it — heaven help me, I had it! Simple, perfect, glaringly obvious when you’ve once seen it! And it’s my whole play — the curtain rises on that sealed room and falls on it! That was my revelation — how it was done! That was what I got, by the way of playwright’s compensation, because a woman I thought I loved kicked me in the face — I brooded up the answer to the sealed room! And a taxi knocked it out of my head!”

He drew a long breath.

“I’ve spent two days and two nights, Bill, trying to get that idea back — how it was done! It won’t come. I’m a competent playwright; I know my job; I could finish my play, but it’d be like all those others — not quite right, phoney! It wouldn’t be my play! But there’s a little man walking around this city somewhere — a little man with hexagonal glasses — who’s got my idea in his head! He’s got it because I told it to him. I’m going to find that little man, and get back what belongs to me! I’ve got to! Don’t you see that, Bill? I’ve got to!”

A little man who had said, “He’s not my friend. He’s just someone I met—”

A little man who’d seen an accident but hadn’t waited to give evidence—

The hat-check girl had been right. There was something a little queer about that.

A little queer?

During the next few days, when the advertisements he’d inserted failed to bring any reply, it began to seem to Annixter very queer indeed.

His arm was out of its sling now, but he couldn’t work. Time and again, he sat down before his almost completed manuscript, read it through with close, grim attention, thinking, “It’s bound to come back this time!” — only to find himself up against that blind spot again, that blank wall, that maddening hiatus in his memory.

He left his work and prowled the streets; he haunted bars and saloons; he rode for miles on buses and subways, especially at the rush hours. He saw a million faces, but the face of the little man with hexagonal glasses he did not see.

The thought of him obsessed Annixter. It was infuriating, it was unjust, it was torture to think that a little, ordinary, chance-met citizen was walking blandly around somewhere with the last link of his, the celebrated James Annixter’s, play — the best thing he’d ever done — locked away in his head. And with no idea of what he had: without the imagination, probably, to appreciate what he had! And certainly with no idea of what it meant to Annixter!

Or had he some idea? Was he, perhaps, not quite so ordinary as he’d seemed? Had he seen those advertisements, drawn from them tortuous inferences of his own? Was he holding back with some scheme for shaking Annixter down for a packet?

The more Annixter thought about it, the more he felt that the hat-check girl had been right, that there was something very queer indeed about the way the little man had behaved after the accident.

Annixter’s imagination played around the man he was seeking, tried to probe into his mind, conceived reasons for his fading away after the accident, for his failure to reply to the advertisements.

Annixter’s was an active and dramatic imagination. The little man who had seemed so ordinary began to take on a sinister shape in Annixter’s mind—

But the moment he actually saw the little man again, he realized how absurd it was. It was so absurd that it was laughable. The little man was so respectable; his shoulders were so straight; his pepper-and-salt suit was so neat; his black hard-felt hat was set so squarely on his head—

The doors of the subway train were just closing when Annixter saw him, standing on the platform with a briefcase in one hand, a folded evening paper under his other arm. Light from the train shone on his prim, pale face; his hexagonal spectacles flashed. He turned toward the exit as Annixter lunged for the closing doors of the train, squeezed between them onto the platform.

Craning his head to see above the crowd, Annixter elbowed his way through, ran up the stairs two at a time, put a hand on the little man’s shoulder.

“Just a minute,” Annixter said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

The little man checked instantly, at the touch of Annixter’s hand. Then he turned his head and looked at Annixter. His eyes were pale behind the hexagonal, rimless glasses — a pale grey. His mouth was a straight line, almost colourless.

Annixter loved the little man like a brother. Merely finding the little man was a relief so great that it was like the lifting of a black cloud from his spirits. He patted the little man’s shoulder affectionately.

“I’ve got to talk to you,” said Annixter. “It won’t take a minute. Let’s go somewhere.”

The little man said, “I can’t imagine what you want to talk to me about.”

He moved slightly to one side, to let a woman pass. The crowd from the train had thinned, but there were still people going up and down the stairs. The little man looked, politely inquiring, at Annixter.

Annixter said, “Of course you can’t, it’s so damned silly! But it’s about that play—”

“Play?”

Annixter felt a faint anxiety.

“Look,” he said, “I was drunk that night — I was very, very drunk! But looking back, my impression is that you were dead sober. You were, weren’t you?”

“I’ve never been drunk in my life.”

“Thank heaven for that!” said Annixter. “Then you won’t have any difficulty in remembering the little point I want you to remember.” He grinned, shook his head. “You had me going there, for a minute, I thought—”

“I don’t know what you thought,” the little man said. “But I’m quite sure you’re mistaking me for somebody else. I haven’t any idea what you’re talking about. I never saw you before in my life. I’m sorry. Good night.”

He turned and started up the stairs. Annixter stared after him. He couldn’t believe his ears. He stared blankly after the little man for an instant, then a rush of anger and suspicion swept away his bewilderment. He raced up the stairs, caught the little man by the arm.

“Just a minute,” said Annixter. “I may have been drunk, but—”

“That,” the little man said, “seems evident. Do you mind taking your hand off me?”

Annixter controlled himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Let me get this right, though. You say you’ve never seen me before. Then you weren’t at the Casa Havana on the 27th — somewhere between ten o’clock and midnight? You didn’t have a drink or two with me, and listen to an idea for a play that had just come into my mind?”

The little man looked steadily at Annixter.

“I’ve told you,” the little man said. “I’ve never set eyes on you before.”

“You didn’t see me get hit by a taxi?” Annixter pursued, tensely. “You didn’t say to the hat-check girl, ‘He’s not my friend. He’s just someone I met’?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the little man said sharply.

He made to turn away, but Annixter gripped his arm again.

“I don’t know,” Annixter said, between his teeth, “anything about your private affairs, and I don’t want to. You may have had some good reason for wanting to duck giving evidence as a witness of that taxi accident. You may have some good reason for this act you’re pulling on me, now. I don’t know and I don’t care. But it is an act. You are the man I told my play to!

“I want you to tell that story back to me as I told it to you; I have my reasons — personal reasons, of concern to me and me only. I want you to tell the story back to me — that’s all I want! I don’t want to know who you are, or anything about you, I just want you to tell me that story!”

“You ask,” the little man said, “an impossibility, since I never heard it.”

Annixter kept an iron hold on himself.

He said, “Is it money? Is this some sort of a hold-up? Tell me what you want; I’ll give it to you. Lord help me, I’d go so far as to give you a share in the play! That’ll mean real money. I know, because I know my business. And maybe — maybe,” said Annixter, struck by a sudden thought, “you know it, too! Eh?”

“You’re insane or drunk!” the little man said.

With a sudden movement, he jerked his arm free, raced up the stairs. A train was rumbling in, below. People were hurrying down. He weaved and dodged among them with extraordinary celerity.

He was a small man, light, and Annixter was heavy. By the time he reached the street, there was no sign of the little man. He was gone.

Was the idea, Annixter wondered, to steal his play? By some wild chance did the little man nurture a fantastic ambition to be a dramatist? Had he, perhaps, peddled his precious manuscripts in vain, for years, around the managements? Had Annixter’s play appeared to him as a blinding flash of hope in the gathering darkness of frustration and failure: something he had imagined he could safely steal because it had seemed to him the random inspiration of a drunkard who by morning would have forgotten he had ever given birth to anything but a hangover?

That, Annixter thought, would be a laugh! That would be irony—

He took another drink. It was his fifteenth since the little man with the hexagonal glasses had given him the slip, and Annixter was beginning to reach the stage where he lost count of how many places he had had drinks in tonight. It was also the stage, though, where he was beginning to feel better, where his mind was beginning to work.

He could imagine just how the little man must have felt as the quality of the play he was being told, with hiccups, gradually had dawned upon him.

“This is mine!” the little man would have thought. “I’ve got to have this. He’s drunk, he’s soused, he’s bottled — he’ll have forgotten every word of it by the morning! Go on! Go on, mister! Keep talking!”

That was a laugh, too — the idea that Annixter would have forgotten his play by the morning. Other things Annixter forgot, unimportant things; but never in his life had he forgotten the minutest detail that was to his purpose as a playwright. Never! Except once, because a taxi had knocked him down.

Annixter took another drink. He needed it. He was on his own now. There wasn’t any little man with hexagonal glasses to fill that blind spot for him. The little man was gone. He was gone as though he’d never been. To hell with him! Annixter had to fill in that blind spot himself. He had to do it — somehow!

He had another drink. He had quite a lot more drinks. The bar was crowded and noisy, but he didn’t notice the noise — till someone came up and slapped him on the shoulder. It was Ransome.

Annixter stood up, leaning with his knuckles on the table.

“Look, Bill,” Annixter said, “how about this? Man forgets an idea, see? He wants to get it back — gotta get it back! Idea comes from inside, works back inward. How’s that?”

He swayed, peering at Ransome.

“Better have a little drink,” said Ransome. “I’d need to think that out.”

“I,” said Annixter, “have thought it out!” He crammed his hat shapelessly on to his head. “Be seeing you, Bill. I got work to do!”

He started, on a slightly tacking course, for the door — and his apartment.

It was Joseph, his “man,” who opened the door of his apartment to him, some twenty minutes later. Joseph opened the door while Annixter’s latchkey was still describing vexed circles around the lock.

“Good evening, sir,” said Joseph.

Annixter stared at him. “I didn’t tell you to stay the night.”

“I hadn’t any reason for going out, sir,” Joseph explained. He helped Annixter off with his coat. “I rather enjoy a quiet evening in, once in a while.”

“You got to get out of here,” said Annixter.

“Thank you, sir,” said Joseph. “I’ll go and throw a few things into a bag.”

Annixter went into his big living-room-study, poured himself a drink.

The manuscript of his play lay on the desk. Annixter, swaying a little, glass in hand, stood frowning down at the untidy slack of yellow paper, but he didn’t begin to read. He waited until he heard the outer door click shut behind Joseph, then he gathered up his manuscript, the decanter and a glass, and the cigarette box. Thus laden, he went into the hall, walked across it to the door of Joseph’s room.

There was a bolt on the inside of this door and the room was the only one in the apartment which had no window — both facts which made the room the only one suitable to Annixter’s purpose.

With his free hand, he switched on the light.

It was a plain little room, but Annixter noticed, with a faint grin, that the bedspread and the cushion in the worn basket-chair were both blue. Appropriate, he thought — a good omen. Room Blue by James Annixter—

Joseph had evidently been lying on the bed, reading the evening paper; the paper lay on the rumpled quilt, and the pillow was dented. Beside the head of the bed, opposite the door, was a small table littered with shoe-brushes and dusters.

Annixter swept this paraphernalia on to the floor. He put his stack of manuscript, the decanter and glass and cigarette box on the table, and went across and bolted the door. He pulled the basket-chair up to the table and sat down, lighted a cigarette.

He leaned back in the chair, smoking, letting his mind ease into the atmosphere he wanted — the mental atmosphere of Cynthia, the woman in his play, the woman who was afraid, so afraid that she had locked and bolted herself into a windowless room, a sealed room.

“This is how she sat,” Annixter told himself, “just as I’m sitting now: in a room with no windows, the door locked and bolted. Yet he got at her. He got at her with a knife — in a room with no windows, the door remaining locked and bolted on the inside. How was it done?”

There was a way in which it could be done. He, Annixter, had thought of that way: he had conceived it, invented it — and forgotten it. His idea had produced the circumstances. Now, deliberately, he had reproduced the circumstances, that he might think back to the idea. He had put his person in the position of the victim, that his mind might grapple with the problem of the murderer.

It was very quiet: not a sound in the room, the whole apartment.

For a long time, Annixter sat unmoving. He sat unmoving until the intensity of his concentration began to waver. Then he relaxed. He pressed the palms of his hands to his forehead for a moment, then reached for the decanter. He splashed himself a strong drink. He had almost recovered what he sought; he had felt it close, had been on the very verge of it.

“Easy,” he warned himself, “take it easy. Rest. Relax. Try again in a minute.”

He looked around for something to divert his mind, picked up the paper from Joseph’s bed.

At the first words that caught his eye, his heart stopped.

Twelve to fourteen days—

Annixter read back over the remainder of the story; then let the paper fall to the floor. The pulse was heavy in his head. His face was grey. Twelve to fourteen days? He could put it closer than that. It was exactly thirteen nights ago that he had sat in the Casa Havana and told a little man with hexagonal glasses how to kill a woman in a sealed room!

Annixter sat very still for a minute. Then he poured himself a drink. It was a big one, and he needed it. He felt a strange sense of wonder, of awe.

They had been in the same boat, he and the little man — thirteen nights ago. They had both been kicked in the face by a woman. One, as a result, had conceived a murder play. The other had made the play reality!

“And I actually, tonight, offered him a share!” Annixter thought. “I talked about ‘real’ money!”

That was a laugh. All the money in the universe wouldn’t have made that little man admit that he had seen Annixter before — that Annixter had told him the plot of a play about how to kill a woman in a sealed room! Why, he, Annixter, was the one person in the world who could denounce that little man! Even if he couldn’t tell them, because he had forgotten, just how he had told the little man the murder was to be committed, he could still put the police on the little man’s track. He could describe him, so that they could trace him. And once on his track, the police would ferret out links, almost inevitably, with the dead woman.

A queer thought — that he, Annixter, was probably the only menace, the only danger, to the little prim, pale man with the hexagonal spectacles. The only menace — as, of course, the little man must know very well.

He must have been very frightened when he had read that the playwright who had been knocked down outside the Casa Havana had only received “superficial injuries.” He must have been still more frightened when Annixter’s advertisements had begun to appear. What must he have felt tonight, when Annixter’s hand had fallen on his shoulder?

A curious idea occurred, now, to Annixter. It was from tonight, precisely from tonight, that he was a danger to that little man. He was, because of the inferences the little man must infallibly draw, a deadly danger as from the moment the discovery of the murder in the sealed room was published. The discovery had been published tonight and the little man had a paper under his arm—

Annixter’s was a lively and resourceful imagination.

It was, of course, just in the cards that, when he’d lost the little man’s trail at the subway station, the little man might have turned back, picked up his, Annixter’s trail.

And Annixter had sent Joseph out. He was, it dawned slowly upon Annixter, alone in the apartment — alone in a windowless room, with the door locked and bolted on the inside, at his back.

Annixter felt a sudden, icy and wild panic.

He half rose, but it was too late.

It was too late, because at that moment the knife slid, thin and keen and delicate, into his back, fatally, between the ribs.

Annixter’s head bowed slowly forward until his cheek rested on the manuscript of his play. He made only one sound — a queer sound, indistinct, yet identifiable as a kind of laughter.

The fact was, Annixter had just remembered.

The Trial of John Nobody A. H. Z. CARR

Original publication: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 1950; first published in book form in The Queen’s Awards, Fifth Series (Boston, Little, Brown, 1950)

American economist and mystery writer Albert H. Zolatkoff Carr (1902–1971) was born in Chicago and graduated with a BA degree from the University of Chicago. He received an MA degree from Columbia University and also studied at the London School of Economics. Following a business career, he entered government service during World War II, working as assistant to the chairman of the War Productions Board. Later, he was an economic advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt and a special consultant to Harry S. Truman.

His writing career was a varied one. During the Great Depression of the 1930s he wrote romantic fiction for such popular magazines as Harper’s, The Saturday Evening Post, and Reader’s Digest to supplement his income. He also wrote about politics and economics, and his inspirational book, How to Attract Good Luck (1952), had numerous printings in the United States and was translated into several languages.

Carr once averred that he turned to writing mysteries to preserve his sanity. His short stories were perennial award winners in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine contests, winning first prize in 1956 for “The Black Kitten,” a symbolic story of race relations.

Carr’s Finding Maubee (1971; the British title is The Calypso Murders) posthumously won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel. It is the story of a black policeman searching for a murder suspect on a fictional island in the Caribbean. Filmed by MGM in 1989 as The Mighty Quinn, it was directed by Carl Schenkel and starred Denzel Washington, Robert Townsend, and James Fox.

Few mystery stories offer as confounding and tantalizing a situation as “The Trial of John Nobody,” in which a man is on trial for murder but no one wants to see him convicted.

Title: Johnny Nobody, 1961

Studio: Eros Films (UK)

Director: Nigel Patrick

Screenwriter: Patrick Kirwan

Producer: John R. Sloan

• Nigel Patrick (Father Carey)

• Yvonne Mitchell (Miss Floyd)

• William Bendix (James Ronald Mulcahy)

• Aldo Ray (Johnny Nobody)

The essence of the film follows closely A. H. Z. Carr’s short story, in which a man loudly, confidently, and obnoxiously stands in front of a church and dares God to kill him. His wish is granted when a man, a total stranger, emerges from the angry crowd and shoots him dead. The murder victim, James Ronald Mulcahy, was an Irish-American author who retired to an Irish village, outraging his neighbors by drunkenly proclaiming his atheism. Immediately after shooting Mulcahy, the killer claims amnesia. He turns for guidance to Father Carey, the local priest, who names him “Johnny Nobody” since he is unknown in the area and claims to have forgotten his name.

After Johnny is taken into custody and goes to trial, Father Carey begins to investigate and learns that a woman appears to be involved in some way. Known as Miss Floyd and claiming to be a reporter, Carey learns her secret and her connection to the case.

Much of the film was shot in the picturesque Irish village of Enniskerry in County Wicklow, which remarkably was also used as a location for such other films as Flight of the Doves (1971), Into the West (1992), P.S. I Love You (2007), and Leap Year (2010).

One of the executive producers was Albert R. Broccoli, who went on to produce the first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962), and many more — the most successful film series in history.

Nigel Patrick, the star of the film and its director, was named one of the top ten British box office draws in 1952 and 1953 in a poll of operators of British movie houses. (Bob Hope was number one.)

THE TRIAL OF JOHN NOBODY A. H. Z. Carr

The train was late, and the conductor harassed. When, on a hasty passage through the coaches, he was stopped by a clergyman who had already questioned him twice, he suppressed his annoyance only out of deference to the collar. Yes, he admitted coldly, they had lost more time. They would not reach Wicheka much before three o’clock. The acute concern manifested by the clergyman at this news caused the conductor to look at him attentively. Suddenly he found something familiar in the tall figure, the baldish, gray-fringed head, and the bony, lined, worried face. His eyes widened, and he said:

“Say, you’re Dr. Millard, aren’t you?”

The clergyman glanced quickly around him with a touch of apprehension, and winced as he saw eyes turn toward him from seats within hearing distance. “Yes,” he murmured. Instantly a chain of whispers was audible in the car: “Dr. Millard.” “Where?” “Over there, talking with the conductor.” “Dr. Millard.” “Over there.”

“Well, well,” said the conductor, mingling respect with satisfaction, “I’d like to shake your hand, Reverend.”

“Why — certainly,” the clergyman replied, extending a thin reluctant hand to the other’s eager grasp.

The conductor was no longer in a hurry. “Right from the first I felt about this thing the way you do. I told my wife, ‘You mark my words, this is a real miracle.’ The way I look at it, this John Nobody is kind of a Joan of Arc. Those voices. We’ve been going to church a lot more regular since this happened, Reverend. And we’ve got you to thank for it.”

Dr. Millard said slowly, “I... I’m glad.”

“Say,” the conductor exclaimed, as if struck by understanding. “The trial! That’s why you’re so — I get it. I’m sure sorry we’re late, Reverend. But you’ll make it all right. You don’t have a thing to worry about. There’s no jury in this country would find John Nobody guilty. When he killed Durgeon, he was performing the service of God! That’s what I’ve said all along.”

With an air of challenge the conductor looked around the car, and relaxed when he saw nothing but approval in the faces of the listening passengers. “Well, good luck, Reverend,” he said, and pursued his way up the aisle.

At once a throng gathered around Dr. Millard; a little girl who wanted an autograph, a sailor who wanted to shake his hand, an old woman, content only to touch his hand, a man who wanted to ask questions, and others, many others; until in desperation he arose and, with apologies, made his way through the admiring crowd to the platform of the car. There for the rest of the journey he stood breathing deeply of the cold air, and looking out at the gray, wintry landscape.

When the train reached Wicheka, Dr. Millard hastily secured his suitcase and joined the crowd jostling for taxi-cabs outside the station. A taxi-driver recognized him, and indifferent to competitive claims, proudly ushered Dr. Millard into his car and drove away.

“Thank you,” said Dr. Millard. “I did not like to take advantage, but this is something of an emergency. Will you drive to the Municipal Courthouse, please?”

“Yes, sir,” the driver answered, putting on speed. “I bet you’re anxious to get there.”

“Yes, I am.”

“They’ve had a lot of stuff on the air about it all day. Every hour. I’ve been listening. Looks like it will be a short trial.”

Absorbed in his own thoughts, Dr. Millard did not reply. After a moment the driver switched on his radio and picked up a news broadcast. Presently the sound of his own name cut through Dr. Millard’s reflections and captured his attention.

“—Dr. Millard’s absence continues to puzzle everyone present. In all other respects, however, the trial has followed expectations. In his brief opening address, District Attorney Parnall did not at any time refer to the conviction held by many people that John Nobody was divinely inspired when he killed Elmo Durgeon. Mr. Parnall stuck entirely to the legal facts. He reminded the jury of seven men and five women that John Nobody is the confessed killer of Durgeon. Psychiatrists who have examined him agree that Nobody is perfectly sane. Although he claims to have lost his memory prior to the slaying, he shows none of the usual signs of amnesia. I want to read you a passage from Mr. Parnall’s address — and now I am quoting Mr. Parnall: “ ‘The defense does not contend that the man who calls himself John Nobody is of unsound mind. And so far as anyone has been able to establish, he never heard of Durgeon, or had any contact with him. How, then, does the defense dare to enter a plea of justifiable homicide? What justification can there be for killing a man you have not even heard of? In the eyes of the law Durgeon’s death is murder — wanton murder — plain, brutal, wanton murder.

“ ‘John Nobody says that voices told him to kill Durgeon. Now the law is tolerant, but if we once started to let people get away with crimes just because they say they heard voices, there would soon be anarchy in this country. John Nobody may sincerely think he heard voices, or he may not, but those voices cannot be evidence in his defense.’ End of quote.

“That is the essence of District Attorney Parnall’s case. He did not try to suggest a motive for the killing. He is staking his case on legal logic. Whether that will satisfy the jury remains to be seen. At the end of his address he demanded that John Nobody pay for the slaying of Elmo Durgeon with his life — the full penalty of the law. The few witnesses whom he called merely confirmed the details of the killing which everyone now knows. Then Mr. Parnall rested the prosecution’s case.”

“Pretty smart, hey?” said the taxi-driver, grinning over his shoulder. “The D.A. hasn’t got a chance and he knows it. He isn’t even trying hard, for fear he’ll get everybody sore at him.”

“—counsel for the defense,” the radio continued. “Most of us who were in the press section of the courtroom felt that the jury were far more responsive to Mr. Levatt than they had been to Mr. Parnall. When I left the courtroom to make this broadcast, Mr. Levatt had not yet finished his opening address. He began by referring to his anxiety over the absence of Dr. Millard, his chief witness. He even hinted that the prosecution may have contrived to keep Dr. Millard away from the trial. This brought an indignant objection from Mr. Parnall. After the courtroom quieted down, Mr. Levatt began his impassioned speech to the jury with great stress on the religious aspects of the case.

“He asked if the prosecution dared deny that Joan of Arc had heard voices. He quoted the Bible, and cited the records of prophets, saints, and holy men throughout the ages who heard voices from above. Then he went on to tell the story of John Nobody as the world has now learned it — a man whom no one ever remembers having seen before — a man who seems to remember nothing of his past, not even his real name or his place of origin — a man whose clothing at the time of arrest bore no marks of identification and who says he does not know how or when the rifle which shot Durgeon came into his hands.

“Mr. Levatt was extremely effective on the subject of the rifle. He said — and I quote — ‘The prosecution has placed this rifle in evidence. Look at it closely, I beg you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, for there is something strange and awesome in that instrument of death. What mysterious hand held it before it came to John Nobody? What fiery fingers erased from its metal and wood every numeral and mark that might have identified the rifle? You may say, if you are a materialistic cynic — as I know you are not — that John Nobody did it. But is it likely that John Nobody walked out of nowhere, without any other possession than a rifle from which he had deliberately eliminated every mark, just so as to prepare it to kill a man he had never met, and never heard of? Oh, ladies and gentlemen, this is a very strange theory that the prosecution has advanced. For my own part—’ and I am still quoting Mr. Levatt — ‘I do not claim to know how that rifle came into the possession of John Nobody, or how the marks were removed from it. But this much I say — if John Nobody, in his previous incarnation, whoever he was, whatever his name was — if John Nobody did remove the marks from that rifle, then the forces which prompted him to do it were the same mysterious forces which directed him to the balcony of the Civic Auditorium on November 14th — which helped him to aim the rifle unerringly at its despicable target — and which helped him to pull the trigger.’ End of quote.

“This speech of Mr. Levatt’s undoubtedly made a great impression on the jury. Remember that Mr. Levatt had questioned all the jurymen before the trial to make sure that they were people of strong religious beliefs. The defense attorney also made a sensation when he claimed that only heavenly inspiration could account for John Nobody’s action, since he had no other possible motive and is not insane. Now my time is up, and I shall return to the courtroom. At four o’clock, I will be back with further reports on this trial of John Nobody, which has already become one of the most widely discussed cases in America’s legal history. Now I return you to—”

The driver switched off the radio, and was about to speak, when in his rear-view mirror he caught a glimpse of Dr. Millard’s eyes. Sensing the dark and inward nature of the minister’s thoughts, he swallowed his words and drove in silence until they reached the courthouse. As he took his fare, he could not resist saying, “Thanks, Doctor. I want to tell you, you’ve done a great thing for this town. Business has been booming ever since this—”

With a little gesture of protest Dr. Millard picked up his worn suitcase and hastened up the steps of the Municipal Courthouse. His entry into the courtroom made an enormous stir. Reporters left their seats and rushed for telephones in the corridor. A photographer took a flashlight picture of him, and was reprimanded by the court. Uniformed guards deferentially relieved him of his suitcase, and escorted him to the front of the court.

Mr. Levatt, the short, stout chief counsel for the defense, was about to question a witness then on the stand; but on seeing Dr. Millard he uttered an exclamation of satisfaction and rushed to him with outstretched hands.

“As timely as an angel!” he exclaimed, and added in a low voice, “Where have you been? You’ve had us practically crazy.”

“I must talk to you,” said Dr. Millard.

“No time now,” Mr. Levatt answered, dropping his voice still further. “We’ve got to get your testimony in this afternoon. Just look at that jury. We can fix their minds today so that nothing Parnall or the judge can say will ever change them. You’re all we need.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned confidently to the judge, a burly, impassive man, and declared, “Your Honor, Dr. Millard’s providential arrival makes it possible for me to save the court’s time. With your permission I shall dismiss the present witness and ask Dr. Millard to take the stand.”

The worry and indecision written on Dr. Millard’s face did not escape the judge’s eyes, but after a moment he nodded to Mr. Levatt, who took the minister’s arm and with an air of veneration escorted him to the now vacant witness chair. The clerk of the court rattled off the oath, and Mr. Levatt, his voice gentle and respectful, disposed of the routine questions — name, address, occupation.

“Now, Dr. Millard, you were present in the Civic Auditorium on the afternoon of November 14th, were you not?”

“Yes.”

“Will you describe to the jury, please, in your own words, what took place in the auditorium that memorable afternoon — as you observed it?”

A profound stillness descended on the courtroom, and Dr. Millard lifted his eyes and looked around him for the first time. He saw Mr. Levatt’s clever, eager face, the judge’s attentive gaze, the district attorney’s watchful interest, the rapt concentration of the jury; he saw the wide-eyed excitement of the spectators, including some members of his own congregation, from whom emanated almost palpable waves of encouragement and sympathy. Finally, his head turned to the small, silent man sitting in the prisoner’s box. Their eyes met in a long glance which struck the observant as having in it something mysterious and secret, as if a message had passed between them. The man known as John Nobody looked away first, and his hand made a curious fumbling gesture below his thin, pale, not unattractive face.

With an effort Dr. Millard brought his attention back to the waiting attorney. “The events of that afternoon.” A flood of vivid recollection swept into his mind.

Except for the cultivated, ironic voice of the lone, lanky figure on the stage the auditorium was still with the concentrated silence of homage. Observing the fascinated eyes around him, Dr. Millard thought of a flock of birds, mesmerized by a serpent. And indeed — he carried the reflection further — the words of Elmo Durgeon were the words of the Serpent.

“People have accused me of encouraging sin. That is nonsense. They might as well accuse me of encouraging volcanoes. Like the volcano, sin is nature’s way of letting off steam. It becomes dangerous only when it is bottled up too long. Let me tell you, sin is one of our most misunderstood institutions. It is not sin, but excess, whether of sin or anything else, that produces trouble for us. Real evil is more likely to flow out of attempts to be excessively virtuous, than from normal, moderate sinfulness. If I had to select a single piece of practical advice to give to young people today, it would be, ‘Go forth, my son, and sin intelligently, in moderation.’ Let me tell you a story—”

When Durgeon had first walked out on the stage and leaned over the little table with its inevitable carafe of water, the applause had been weak; most of the uplifted faces stern with disapproval. Nearly every woman in the afternoon audience — and it was composed mainly of women, with a scattering of reluctant husbands — had felt obliged to censure his notorious atheism, however delightedly they had read his prize-winning, best-selling novels, and however zestfully they had rushed to hear his famous, or infamous, lecture, Defense of Sin. Forty minutes of contact with his incandescent personality had rubbed away the masks of propriety. Ruefully, Dr. Millard considered that he never saw such captivated expressions at his sermons.

“—what it would be like to live in a sinless world? Can you imagine anything duller than a life of unbroken virtue? Sin is the essential pigment of life, providing the color of existence. What would we talk about without the sins of our friends and neighbors? What would we find to remember in our old age if it were not for the delightful sins of our youth? For each of us the secret story of his own heart is the best story of all, and what would it be without its scarlet passages?”

A murmur of half-shocked amusement swept the audience, and Dr. Millard shook his head. The theme, he told himself, was as old as Eden, but there was a vibrant force about the man himself that gave a certain plausibility to anything he said. It was not Durgeon’s words that made him dangerous, so much as the personal magic that reached out from him to his audience, concealing the hollowness of his sophistries. Every churchman of experience knew that the only way sin could be kept “in moderation” was to fight it relentlessly. Given encouragement, such as Durgeon was giving, sin could swiftly expand, like an exploding gas, into disaster for the individual spirit and for society as a whole. Across Dr. Millard’s mind flitted an ancient text: “An ungodly man diggeth up evil, and in his lips is a burning fire.” Burning fire. Yes; Durgeon’s words had a cool sound, but a searing quality, like dripping acid.

“My friends, what we call our sins are no more than the normal, emotional responses of healthy human beings to a difficult life. Consider lust, for example. Let’s talk about lust for a moment. Let’s talk about it sensibly, like the intelligent people we are — and of course you’re intelligent, otherwise you would not be here. Let’s not raise our hands in pious horror, but regard lust for what it is — proof that nature wants us to reproduce and continue the species more than it wants anything else from us. Why else are we constructed the way we are? My friends, the man who would have you cease to lust, at least while you are young, would destroy the essential humanity of you, would take away your emotional life and leave you dry and sterile.”

Dr. Millard regretted, now, his decision to attend the lecture. He had yielded to ladies of his congregation, who had pressed him to hear Durgeon in order to prepare a reply from the pulpit. It occurred to him now that by persuading him to go, they had provided themselves with an excuse. He could understand their curiosity. The publicity for the lecture had been relentless and effective. Durgeon’s publishers and the bookstores of the city had advertised the author’s books and his impending visit for weeks past. He was a fashionable subject at every woman’s club and sewing circle. The newspapers had carried flamboyant accounts of his stormy lecture tour across the country, and only that morning a first page story had been headed, Famed Author Will Defy Heavenly Wrath.

“Isn’t it a joke, friends, that people should still crowd into church on Sundays, to hear sin denounced by some dear, good man who knows nothing about it? The only people qualified to give advice about sin are the sinners — like myself. When your clergyman talks to you about sin, if he really is a holy man, he can only give you secondhand opinions. If, however, he has led a sinful life, if he knows about sin from personal experience, then he has no right to be up there in the pulpit, scolding you. Why, I once knew a minister — a sweet old soul — whose children were juvenile delinquents practically from the cradle, but he never—”

Dr. Millard had an impulse to get up and leave, but he considered that to do so would make him unpleasantly conspicuous, and doubtless add grist to Durgeon’s sardonic mill. He wondered how effective his reply to Durgeon next Sunday would be for the patently enthralled women in the audience? So far as charm and magnetism went, there could be no contest. He smiled wryly as he confessed to his heart that between a primrose path described by Durgeon, and a strait-and-narrow path described by Millard, the primroses would probably win, petals down.

“According to the dear, good men who talk to you on Sundays, I have been uttering blasphemies. On the basis of what I have said to you this afternoon, God — if there is a God — ought to have no hesitation at all about destroying me. It would be a great thing for religion if He were to send down a well-aimed thunderbolt about now, and put an end to me. Don’t you think so? In fact, if He fails to hurl a bolt or two, I think it will be decided negligence on His part, don’t you? Let’s see if we can’t persuade Him.”

A quiver of anticipation made the audience seem for an instant to be physically responding to the satirical voice, as if this was the moment they had been waiting for. Dreamily, Dr. Millard thought, how wonderful it would be if a miracle did now occur — a flaming hand — a voice of thunder. He thrust the fantasy aside, as unworthy of his calling. The aware mind needed no spectacular proofs of God’s existence. His attention returned to the stage. Cheap and hackneyed through Durgeon’s performance was in its conception — and, after all, publicity-seeking atheists had been using the same trick for generations — yet the author managed to invest it with a certain dramatic suspense. With devastating mockery he was addressing the roof of the auditorium.

“All right, God, I invite You to destroy me. I urge You to do it. I ask You to send down Your lightning as proof that You really exist. I’m quite willing to be the sacrifice. Why permit a voice like mine to go on challenging Your existence? Here are all these good people, sitting here expectantly. Don’t disappoint them, God. I’m putting my watch out here on the table. How long does it take to work up a good thunderbolt and hurl it? Five minutes ought to be plenty of time. Now, while the audience sits quietly waiting, God, give proof, if You can, that You are up there, listening.”

There were a few boos from the audience, but they died away. Some of the faces which Dr. Millard could see wore frowns; others were amused, but all were entirely interested. Rumpling his hair and cocking one eyebrow in a deliberately Satanic twist, Durgeon began to pantomime his role — stifling a yawn, taking a drink of water, sitting on the corner of the table, glancing at his watch.

“One minute has gone by, friends, God still has four minutes to make Himself heard. Don’t give up hope.”

He had barely finished the sentence, when the dull crack of a gunshot filled the auditorium. Shocked and staring, the audience saw Durgeon clutch his chest with an expression of surprise. A strange noise, resembling the word, “No,” escaped him, and he slid slowly to the floor, carrying the carafe of water with him in a wet heap.

Through a sense of horror, as he looked at the trickle of red blood which appeared on Durgeon’s white shirt, Dr. Millard became aware of a feeling of elation, as if suddenly his whole life had been vindicated. Instantly he was contrite at harboring so callous an emotion, but it was there, deep in him. A phrase from the Psalmist came unbidden to his lips: “Yea, He did swoop down upon the wings of the wind.” In the same moment he realized that all around him elation and awe and guilt and terror were rampant in the breasts of people who had been challenging or encouraging Durgeon in their secret thoughts. Some were pale and silent, others cried out inarticulately. A man muttered, “God has spoken.” Several women fainted, creating little eddies of movement in the mounting confusion. Bewildered voices asked what had happened, and other voices demanded, contrapuntally, “Who did it?” “Who shot him?”

Dr. Millard dismissed from his mind a feeble notion that Durgeon might be faking, to lend excitement to his act; there was a hideous and convincing realism about the limp posture of the body on the stage. Men rushed from the wings to where the author lay, and above the strident babble a voice roared from the balcony, “I’ve got him!” Another yelled, “Get his gun!” Muted shrieks rose from the audience, died away and rose again. As in a violent and oppressive dream Dr. Millard watched the efforts of the management to keep order, the arrival of a doctor on the stage, a subsequent invasion of police, ambulance interns, newspaper reporters, and photographers, and the removal of Durgeon’s body. Presently a police officer announced that Durgeon was dead, that the man who had fired the shot had been apprehended in the balcony, and was giving no trouble; the audience would please leave quietly. On the way out Dr. Millard caught a glimpse of the prisoner being led quietly away by police — a small, ragged man, with sunken eyes in a heavily unshaven face of waxlike pallor, and a scarred and twisted jaw.

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Mr. Levatt. “I know that this excellent jury felt the essential truth in every word you have spoken.”

The lawyer noted the tense whiteness of Dr. Millard’s face, and the tight grip of his hands on the arms of the chair in which he was sitting. Automatically, he expressed his concern in a way calculated to win yet greater sympathy for his witness from the jury.

“You look tired, Doctor,” he said in an audible murmur. “I know this must be a great strain for you. You’re sure you feel well enough to go on?”

“Yes, I’m all right. Let’s proceed,” Dr. Millard replied, with a touch of impatience.

“Well, then, Doctor, after witnessing the remarkable scene you have described, you became interested in the arrested man, John Nobody?”

“Yes.”

“I think it will save time if you describe for the court in your own way just how that happened, and just what your relation to John Nobody has been.”

Again Dr. Millard glanced at the prisoner, who was watching him with almost breathless intensity; and he brought to his mind the circumstances under which they had first met, face to face...

It was a newspaper reporter who first called the nameless slayer “John Nobody,” and the name had caught on. From the first, he was the darling of the press. All except two of the numerous psychiatrists who examined him refused to credit his protestations of lost memory; but it was the two exceptions whom the press preferred to quote, and the public to believe. The prevailing opinion was that the amnesia was genuine, but of “some unknown type.”

Certainly John Nobody never wavered in denying knowledge of who he was, and where he came from. To all questions about his past, he replied with a slow, regretful, “I cannot remember.” Photographs of his face and fingerprints circulated by the police and press all over the country brought no identification. People close to Durgeon — family, friends, publisher, agent, manager — were sure they had never seen John Nobody, sure that Durgeon had not known him.

As the only clergyman who had witnessed the slaying, Dr. Millard was promptly besieged by newsmen. Did he consider Durgeon’s death an act of God? Was John Nobody an agent of divine wrath? Publicly he refused to make a statement; privately he wrestled with his own feelings. He had always preferred to keep his religious concepts on a high and rather abstract plane, and had never encouraged belief in the intervention of the Deity in personal affairs. He was not a credulous man, superstitious, or inclined to easy belief in miracles. But his vivid memory of his own emotions in the auditorium made him unwilling to regard the slaying of Durgeon as mere mundane murder. Besides, no motive had been found for murder.

Meanwhile, from the press, from other clergymen, from his congregation, from the public, increasing pressure came on him to speak out. Finally, the president of a Wicheka businessmen’s club, conscious of economic aspects of the case which had never occurred to Dr. Millard, made an inspired suggestion: would the minister, esteemed by everyone in the city, head a public Committee of Investigation? Not without misgivings, Dr. Millard consented, and a committee of six was organized, consisting of reputable citizens with church affiliations, three of them women.

On orders from the Mayor, the police permitted the committee to have a private interview with the prisoner. John Nobody was brought into the room where the committee awaited him, and having been given a chair, quietly submitted to their scrutiny and questions.

Studying him carefully, Dr. Millard saw a face of sharply formed, firm features, with small but intelligent brown eyes. The heavy scar which deformed the lower jaw gave an odd, stern twist to the mouth; but the face could not be called mean, or humorless. John Nobody, the minister estimated, was well over forty years old. His dark hair, heavily peppered with gray, was thin at temples and crown. Most noticeable was his complexion, of a dead pallor that could not be accounted for by his short stay in prison, and his breathing, which was somewhat labored. The man was obviously under a strain, but his manner was composed. His only pronounced sign of nervousness was an occasional curious gesture of his hand around the collar of his shirt — a fluttering of the fingers, which he repeated unconsciously from time to time in the hour that followed.

His slow speech was direct and grammatical, and his voice too suggested a better-than-average education. Dr. Millard found he could not give his accent a regional origin; it could have passed without notice almost anywhere in the United States.

Replying to the committee’s questions, John Nobody said, in deliberate sentences, and with a direct gaze, that he had tried hard to remember who he was, but that nothing came to him. Perhaps he sensed a certain good will in the attitude of his inquisitors, for he spoke with more freedom and fluency than in his responses to the police. Particularly, he seemed drawn to Dr. Millard, at whom he looked continually when speaking, and to whom, some members of the committee felt, he was making an unspoken plea.

“The first thing I remember,” John Nobody said, “was sitting on a stone fence, alongside a country road just outside Wicheka. I had on an old suit and an old overcoat that I never saw before, so far as I know. My head ached a lot. I was cold, particularly my feet, and for a little while I felt kind of sick. Then I noticed that I had this gun on my lap. A .30–30 repeating rifle it was. I knew that. I must have known something about guns. I pulled back the breech and saw that the gun was loaded. But I didn’t have any idea how I got it. That was when I found I didn’t know my name — or anything about myself.”

“And then?” asked Dr. Millard.

“I sat there, for a while, trying to think. Then it seemed to me I heard someone speak, and I looked around. There wasn’t anybody. It was kind of windy, and raw, and I couldn’t see a soul any place. Then I heard somebody speak again. It wasn’t exactly a voice. It was more a kind of a whisper, a rustling sound. It said, ‘You have been chosen. You have been chosen.’ Over and over. I thought I was crazy. Then the wind blew a piece of newspaper along. It caught on a bush near me, and I reached over and got it.

“The first thing I saw was the name of this Durgeon. I couldn’t remember ever having heard of him before, but somehow I knew right away that he was important to me. I read about how he was going to speak. Then I heard the voice again. And it said, ‘A faithless generation looks for a sign.’ ”

The man called John Nobody paused, and sat frowning, his eyes obscure, like a man trying to understand something that puzzled him endlessly.

“Do you have any recollection at all of having attended church in the past?” a woman committee member asked gently.

He shook his head. “No, I can’t remember anything like that.” He took a deep breath, and resumed his narrative. “I was sitting on that fence, telling myself I was crazy, but I knew right then this wasn’t my imagination. I just — knew. I knew I had to do this thing right away. I read the newspaper again, and put the sheet in my pocket. The police have it now. It told where this man Durgeon was speaking.”

“Did you have any feeling about Durgeon? Did you hate him — or anything?” the same woman inquired.

“Nothing like that. I didn’t feel anything about Durgeon. But I knew what I had to do. There just wasn’t any doubt about it in my mind. I started to walk along the road. It was a long way, but I never even knew it. All the time my head was kind of buzzing. I remember I carried the rifle under my overcoat, and it was awkward. Maybe you’ll think I’m making this up, like the police did, but I knew in advance just where I was going and what was going to happen, and yet everything was new to me.”

He paused again, and presently went on, in his slow pensive manner, “I didn’t seem to hear the voice again until I reached the auditorium. Then the voice said, ‘Enter and obey.’ I heard it as plain as I can hear you, only it was kind of a whisper. I felt in my pocket and found I had money there — just about enough for a ticket in the balcony. So I got the ticket and went in. I just sat there listening. I didn’t get mad or anything. I just listened. Then I heard the voice say, ‘Now, my son.’ So I stood up and went to the rear of the balcony, and knelt down and rested the rifle on the back of a seat, and I shot him. I don’t remember having aimed or anything, but I suppose I did. I knew I would kill him with one shot. Then I just stood there, and the ushers came and grabbed me and took the gun away.”

After questioning him at considerable length, the committee went away to confer. Dr. Millard was searching within himself for the essential conviction that he felt was needed, but the rest of the committee plunged without delay into argument. Two of its members — a woman and a man — were certain of John Nobody’s sincerity and took the position that regardless of who he was or what his past, he had been in fact the agent of the Lord. One woman wondered if Nobody might not have been hypnotized, or might not have hypnotized himself. The third woman said she thought the prisoner crazy, but sincere. The only out-and-out skeptic was a physician, who said flatly, “He looks like a sick man, but he’s not sick in mind. He’s just a fake.” Unable to agree, they finally appealed to Dr. Millard for his opinion.

With some hesitation he said, “I am unwilling to believe this is a fake. I am not able to judge what is a miracle and what is not, but what this man did certainly appeared to be the answer of the Lord to a blasphemer. At least we cannot say with assurance that John Nobody was not divinely inspired.”

Starting from this qualified position, as the discussion went on, he found himself gradually becoming more definite in his stand. In the end he and the entire committee approved a public statement which concluded: “The committee, with a single exception, agrees that the law should give every consideration to the fact that ‘John Nobody’ believed himself divinely inspired when he killed Elmo Durgeon, and may have been so inspired.”

This statement made a profound impression not only in Wicheka, but in the nation as a whole. Newspapers, radio, newsreels, magazines — every agency of publicity blazoned it forth to the people. Overnight Dr. Millard, to his astonishment, found himself a national celebrity, hero of the devout, target of the skeptical. Although he refused all offers of personal advantage — radio appearances, magazine articles, and the like — he could not avoid occasional statements, which were oversimplified into such headlines as, Divine Wrath Killed Blasphemer, Says Millard.

His church became a magnet, not only for Wichekans of his own denomination, but for religious folk of all faiths and places, until he had to consent to deliver sermons to special meetings, as well as to his adoring congregation. A wave of religious sentiment in the country was attributed directly to his influence, and John Nobody’s. Locally, it required a hardy spirit to challenge the committee’s findings. The dissenting physician found his practice endangered by public resentment, and the District Attorney was embarrassed by the unpopularity of his prosecutor’s role. He and the police were inclined to postpone court action until they could learn more about their prisoner, but public pressure forced them to set an early date for the trial.

A Committee of Defense was formed, and Dr. Millard was pressed into the chairmanship. Religious people everywhere contributed funds. Into Dr. Millard’s home and into the jail poured envelopes containing checks and currency from all over the United States, and even from abroad. Enough money was received to enable the committee to retain the most successful lawyer in the state, Hector Levatt, for the defense. Dr. Millard felt uplifted by the thought of the good people who were renewing their faith through John Nobody. And his own faith was strengthened and enlarged by theirs.

Not only the generality of God-fearing folk, but the businessmen and politicians of Wicheka threw their support to the defense. For one thing, the fame which the case was giving to their city and the large number of visitors arriving daily had a practical value that could not be ignored. The eyes of an awed and reverent world were on John Nobody and Dr. Millard; and the pocketbooks followed the eyes.

Concealing under a grave demeanor his sense of impending triumph, Mr. Levatt permitted a little pause to follow Dr. Millard’s quiet and factual statement of his interest in the case. When the courtroom was still and expectant, the lawyer said, “Then, Dr. Millard, is it correct to say that your opinion about John Nobody is based on prolonged personal investigation of the facts?”

“That is correct.”

“Now, Dr. Millard, am I correct in stating that having made this personal and unbiased investigation, with all the sincerity and humility for which the world admires you — having made this investigation, you came to the conclusion that the prisoner may, in fact, be considered as acting under a conviction of divine inspiration, and so in that sense, be the agent of divine anger, addressed to the destruction of a blasphemer, as a sign to an unregenerate world?”

Everyone in the court was aware that this was the real climax of the trial. It was a deliberately long and tortuous and leading question, designed to achieve a powerful effect. Mr. Levatt was taking advantage of the fact that the state could not challenge his examination of his revered witness without irritating the jury.

Dr. Millard did not reply at once, and the courtroom waited one second, two seconds, three seconds, until a wave of uneasiness began to rise among the spectators. Then, as if summoning up reserves of strength, the minister lifted his head, and looking directly at Mr. Levatt, said, “I did at one time hold such an opinion, but I no longer hold it.”

Mr. Levatt fell back as if he had been struck a physical blow, and gaped at his witness incredulously. All over the courtroom amazement was visible and audible: on the faces of the staring prisoner, of the jury, even of the District Attorney; and in a rising murmur from the spectators. The judge rapped sharply with his gavel, and Mr. Levatt attempted a chuckle. “Evidently,” he said, “I failed to make my question clear. Did you understand the question, Doctor?” and he muttered under his breath, “Say no!”

But Dr. Millard said, “Yes, I understood your question. It is the deepest sorrow of my life that I must give you this answer. I do not now believe that the prisoner was divinely inspired.”

Bedlam broke out in the courtroom as reporters dashed for the door, and unbelieving voices rose everywhere. The judge pounded for order without avail, while the prisoner was seen to sink back in his chair, breathing heavily, his face twisted in an expression of pain. District Attorney Parnall was on his feet, tense with new hope, ready to challenge any move that Mr. Levatt might make.

The defense lawyer looked coldly at Dr. Millard, and then said, “That is an astonishing statement to come from you, Doctor. I feel certain there is some misunderstanding which can easily be cleared up. In the meantime, if it please the court, since this witness’s testimony will obviously take longer than expected, and the hour is growing late, I ask for an adjournment—”

The District Attorney objected strongly, and the judge refused the adjournment. Mr. Levatt, his face deeply flushed with anger, turned to his witness again, and rasped, “I must ask you, Dr. Millard, to tell the court and jury — and to tell me — what influences have been brought to bear to make you change your expressed convictions at the last minute.”

“Objection!” shouted Mr. Parnall.

There was a brief legal clash, the question was reworded to eliminate its ugly implications, and Dr. Millard answered in a strained voice, “I had my first doubts some days ago.”

“Days ago! If you had doubts why didn’t you mention them before?”

“I was not sure. I could not speak before I was sure.”

“Of course.” Mr. Levatt was heavily sarcastic. “You kept these so-called doubts to yourself, you waited until the last moment, so as to be sure of getting all the publicity—”

The prosecution objected, and argument followed. Dr. Millard did not hear it. His eyes had turned again, with infinite sadness, to the prisoner, and his thoughts to the first dreadful moment of suspicion.

He and Levatt and John Nobody had been in the warden’s office at the jail, and had been examining mail addressed to the prisoner from all over the nation. Most of it, offers of money, prayer, or marriage, had been assorted and classified by the warden’s staff; a few letters of unusual character were held apart. Running through these, Dr. Millard found an odd, brief missive that differed from all the others. Printed on plain cheap paper, in sprawling black letters, was the single word, HELP!

He studied the sheet curiously, and glanced at the envelope attached to it. The address was also printed: John Nobody, Wicheka, and the letter had been mailed in Cottersville, a town in the southern part of the state. Tossing it to John Nobody, he said, “This is odd.”

John Nobody glanced up with a smile that he always had for Dr. Millard, a smile which seemed to suggest that they were linked by invisible bonds of mutual faith and understanding, to the exclusion of others. But as he glanced at the letter, Dr. Millard saw a sudden cloud pass over his face, and heard the stertorous breathing that always betokened emotion on the prisoner’s part. Instantly he mastered himself, shrugged, commented, “Just a crank, I guess,” and put the letter in a pile of others. Nothing more was said. But Dr. Millard had an unpleasant impression that the letter had given John Nobody a shock, and held some hidden significance for him.

The doubt, as it met the wall of his determined faith, ebbed away. Probably he had been wrong, he told himself. The prison doctor had said that John Nobody’s health was bad; it was easy to misread the expression of a sick man’s face. Thus repressed, the incident might have dropped out of Dr. Millard’s memory had it not been for something that occurred a few days later, when he and Levatt were questioning John Nobody about certain details of his story. At the end of their talk the prisoner arose and stood, facing the door, his face partially turned from them, awaiting the guard who would take him back to his cell. Levatt chose this moment to remark to Dr. Millard in a low voice, “I don’t think we’ll have to put him on the stand. Looks to me like an open and shut proposition, just with your testimony.”

Glancing at John Nobody, Dr. Millard saw that he was close enough to hear, and was startled at an expression of exultation on his profile. It was gone quickly, but it stayed in the minister’s mind. He was certainly not disposed to judge any man by a fleeting change of countenance, and it seemed absurd to magnify anything so trivial by speaking of it. Nevertheless, the incongruity between the John Nobody he had glimpsed then and the John Nobody he had helped to present to the world was a challenge and a disturbance.

Something else had been working obscurely in his brain, during his weeks of reflection about the prisoner — John Nobody’s curious mannerism in moments of strain — that movement of his fingers in the air, just at the level of his collar. It had struck Dr. Millard that the gesture was not unfamiliar, yet for the life of him he had been unable to identify it. Not until a night just before the opening of the trial did an explanation come to him. He was trying to fall asleep at the time, and the flash of realization brought him bolt upright in bed.

The gesture was that which bearded men habitually make when they stroke their beards.

The implications of his discovery startled him. If John Nobody had worn a beard, that might account for the failure to identify the published photographs showing him clean-shaven; for the police had promptly shaved off the heavy stubble he had worn when arrested.

Dr. Millard told himself that he was assuming too much. He might be wrong about the beard; or even if he were right, it was possible that John Nobody had forgotten in his amnesia that he had once worn a beard, while retaining the mannerism. Nevertheless a terrible suspicion stayed with Dr. Millard. The prisoner’s constrained response to the enigmatic letter; the sudden revelation of his eyes when he heard Levatt speak of certain victory; the possibility that a bearded man came beardless to Wicheka — all this suggested something untold and perhaps sinister in John Nobody’s background.

Early the next morning he went to the jail and saw John Nobody alone. Sitting face to face with the prisoner, Dr. Millard said abruptly, “John, did you ever wear a beard?”

The hand started toward the chin, and stopped in mid-motion; the rhythm of the heavy breathing broke; but when John Nobody spoke he said calmly, “I don’t think so, Doctor. I don’t remember ever wearing a beard.”

Dr. Millard reflected, and said, “John, I think you know I am your friend. I have believed in you. I want you to realize something. You are no longer just an individual. You are a symbol of hope and faith for millions of good and kind people all over the world. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do, Doctor.”

“You would not betray all those people, would you? No matter what it cost you? You would not lie to me?”

The small brown eyes met Dr. Millard’s gaze steadily. “No, sir. I wouldn’t do that, Doctor.”

“Tell me — do you remember that letter — the little note that said, HELP?”

“Note?”

“Yes, it was in the mail, last Wednesday, I think. I showed it to you.”

“Wednesday. No, I don’t seem to remember it, Doctor. There has been so much mail.”

When Dr. Millard left the jail, he found that he could not shake himself free from gnawing doubt. He tried to tell himself it was too late to do more than pray that the Lord’s will be done. For even if John Nobody knew something more than he had told, would it not be better to let it remain hidden, rather than risk shaking the faith of the devout men and women who were giving the prisoner their spiritual and financial support? But the trouble worked ceaselessly in the minister’s mind. Early the next morning, without explaining his purpose to anyone, he left the city on a southbound train.

Cottersville was a small and sullen town in a backward rural area. Dr. Millard promptly sought out a fellow minister, a young man named Kinter, to whom he said, “I should not like to have it known that I am here. My mission is rather curious and delicate, and I cannot as yet reveal much about it. May I ask you to take me on faith, and give me your co-operation?”

The young minister, a little overwhelmed at the presence of the celebrated Dr. Millard in his house, freely offered his services, and voluntarily pledged himself to secrecy.

“In brief,” explained Dr. Millard, “I should like to know whether you can tell me of any bearded man in this vicinity who has not been seen for the past two months.”

The Reverend Kinter looked at him with surprise, but staunchly repressed his curiosity. “No,” he said reflectively, “I can’t think of anyone like that. Beards aren’t very common in these parts. But I’m not the best person to ask. The man who really knows everybody around here is Charlie Gifford, the Town Clerk. Would you like me to take you over to him?”

If Dr. Millard’s question had surprised the Reverend Kinter, it had also sounded grotesque to the Doctor himself. He was glad of the negative answer, more than willing that his quest prove fruitless and that his suspicions be revealed as the products of a fatigued mind. Now that he was in Cottersville, the motive for his coming was no longer as clear to him as it had been. Surely the association of a postmark with a presumptive beard was a tenuous piece of reasoning. He sighed as he reflected that he was getting old and foolish. However, now that he had gone so far, he would do what he could to make peace with his own unworthy mind.

The Town Clerk, whom they found in his barren office, turned out to be an ancient, wrinkled, but keen, long-memoried and garrulous man. To the request made of him for information and secrecy, Mr. Gifford eagerly assented, after which Mr. Kinter somewhat reluctantly left them. When Gifford heard Dr. Millard’s question, he looked up sharply, and at that shrewd glance all the minister’s senses sprang to attention.

“Funny you should ask that,” said Mr. Gifford. “Only a couple of days ago I was out Mills Point way. That’s in this township, about seven miles from here. I had some other business there, so I thought I’d drop in and see these people named Cullen. They got a little house out there. Matter of taxes they haven’t paid. Thought I’d better ask ’em about it before I had to sick the law on ’em.”

He cocked his head humorously. “Maybe I was a little curious, too. They tell me I’m a gossip. About all I got to live for is what other people do, ’cause I can’t do much myself.” He chuckled heartily. “Well, these Cullens. I been wondering about ’em. They keep to themselves. Don’t think I’ve seen Cullen more’n a couple of times since he’s been here. Funny, hey? Don’t come into town much except for shopping, and the wife does that. Drives in about once a week in their little jalopy. Or did until the grocer and butcher stopped giving her credit.”

Scratching his head reflectively, he added, “Cullen’s got a beard. Big and heavy. Hair all over his face.”

Dr. Millard said tensely, “Has he left Cottersville?”

“That’s what I’m saying. When I called, there wasn’t only Mrs. Cullen. I asked her where he was, and she said he was away — abrupt. ‘Been away long?’ I asked her, ’cause I hadn’t heard about it, and she says to me, ‘What do you want?’ Hard, like that. She ain’t a bad-looking woman, so I figured maybe she thought I was getting fresh” — he cackled — “so I told her quick I was just calling about the taxes. She said her husband’d pay the taxes soon. I told her to remind him ’cause he was bad overdue, and I had to let it go at that.”

A sense of impending revelation was in Dr. Millard’s heart as he asked, “What does Cullen look like?”

“A little bigger’n me. Brownish hair and beard. Shaggy eyebrows. Don’t remember the color of his eyes.”

“Do you think you could recognize him without his beard?”

Mr. Gifford looked up quickly, a glint of comprehension in his eye. “Might.”

Dr. Millard took a photograph of John Nobody from his pocket, and Mr. Gifford studied it attentively. “Plenty of these in the papers lately,” he said. “Never noticed any resemblance before. Don’t look much like Cullen. But now, wait. In a way it does, too. Never saw the scar, but that would be on account of the beard. Hair looks the same, and forehead. But the eyebrows are different, and the lashes look smaller.” He hesitated. “Hold on, though. I remember Cullen had long lashes, the kind women like. Suppose he trimmed those, his eyes might look different. Same with the eyebrows. Then take away the beard, and yep, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“You’re not sure?”

“Well, not to swear to.”

“Can you tell me anything about Cullen — the kind of man he is?”

“Maybe. I hear things about people. Best part of this job,” said Mr. Gifford cheerfully. “Cullen. Let’s see. They came down here about six months ago. I met him when he took title to that little place of theirs. Not country folk. He talked real glib. Said he was writing a book, but didn’t say about what. Didn’t strike me as a book writer. More like the kind you see at county fairs, selling stuff. Never got any mail, postman tells me. Couple of times I wondered if they wasn’t hiding out. But I don’t go around making trouble — plenty of that as it is.”

“What did they do for a living?”

“Never could make out. Had a little bank account, but I hear it shrunk away to nothing back a while. Must have been living off capital. Fool thing to do. Cullen told people he’d had a heart attack and had to rest quiet. Looked like it, too. Neighbors tell me about all the exercise he took was when he’d go into the woods and shoot birds. With a rifle, too. That’s dumb. But,” Mr. Gifford added significantly, “I hear he can shoot real good.”

Dr. Millard’s face was haggard. “What sort of woman is Mrs. Cullen?” he asked slowly.

“Looks to me like she might have been a chorus girl back a ways. Not bad looking, but hard. Maybe you’d like to talk to her, Reverend? I’ll be glad to drive you out there.”

Mr. Gifford’s modest car took them over a bumpy road to an area of squalid farms and shabby houses outside the town. They turned in at a small, isolated, and unkempt dwelling, surrounded by a few acres of overgrown land. A big woman, in whom vestiges of blonde beauty showed through untidy hair and slatternly dress, came to the door. At the sight of Dr. Millard she stood suddenly still, her hand at her throat.

“Perhaps,” Dr. Millard murmured apologetically to his companion, “it would be best for me to speak to her alone.”

Mr. Gifford looked disappointed, but he said, “Sure. I’ll wait.”

Dr. Millard approached the motionless woman, in whose face surprise had given way to calculation. “Mrs. Cullen?” he said formally. “My name is Millard. May I talk to you alone, please?”

Silently she stood aside to let him enter.

Mr. Levatt, playing for time, and unwilling to relinquish his witness for cross-examination, was asking Dr. Millard questions designed to embarrass him, rather than to reveal information. In particular, he challenged the minister’s memory of the exact words used by Mr. Gifford. Finally the judge intervened.

“If you care to make a statement using your own words, Dr. Millard, of the information Mrs. Cullen gave you, the court will hear you.”

He waved away Mr. Levatt’s irate protest, and turned his full attention to Dr. Millard.

A radio was chattering as they entered the dingy parlor, and Mrs. Cullen snapped it off. “Have a chair, Reverend,” she said, and cleared a litter of magazines and newspapers from an armchair, ousting a gray cat, which minced out of the room with an indignant mew. Dr. Millard noticed that the woman’s high voice was throaty and blurred, and simultaneously he caught a smell of liquor in the room. She followed his glance to an open whiskey bottle and partially filled glass on a table.

Shrugging, she said, “Like a drink, Reverend? No? Well, you won’t mind if I finish mine.”

“I shall come to the point, Mrs. Cullen,” he said, handing her the photograph of John Nobody. “I have reason to believe that this man is your husband.”

Her blue eyes stared at him stonily. “You’ve got it wrong, Reverend. My husband is away on a trip. I’ve seen this John Nobody’s picture before, and he’s nothing like my husband.”

He frowned. “You have a choice between talking to me or to the police. If they add a beard and heavy eyebrows to the photograph, would you know him then?”

She licked her lips, pretended to look at the picture more closely, and muttered, “You didn’t say anything about a beard. I’m not sure. How can anybody be sure?”

“His name, Mr. Gifford tells me, is Ambrose Cullen.”

“That’s my husband’s name.”

“Mrs. Cullen, you can’t conceal the truth long, and you will be wise to speak it to me. Surely you know I have been a friend to your husband.”

She glanced at him appraisingly. “You mean you’re here to help him? You’re still on his side?”

“I am on the side of the truth,” he said sternly.

She looked dissatisfied. “Suppose it is Amby,” she said carefully, “and mind you, I’m not saying it is. But even if you can prove it’s him, that doesn’t mean he isn’t divinely inspired.”

He was genuinely startled. “But surely it is plain that the shaving off of his beard showed premeditation.”

“The voices might have told him to do that too.”

The last atoms of illusion vanished from his leaden heart. “Do you seriously expect anyone to believe that?”

“Why not? The jury will, anyway. Worst that could happen is that they’ll disagree. They’ll never convict him.” She eyed Dr. Millard defiantly. “Besides, you can’t prove anything.”

“I can telephone to Wicheka and say that I have discovered new evidence,” he said quietly. “Then, the police—”

“The police can’t make a wife give testimony against her husband,” she flashed out. “I know the law. Who you trying to kid? I thought you said you were his friend. You don’t act like it.” She tossed off the remainder of her drink, and raised the bottle, only to find it empty. “And that’s the last one!” she said disgustedly. “What a life. Nothing to drink, only canned stuff to eat, nobody to talk to. I’ll go nuts!” She seemed struck by an idea. “Say, Reverend, since you’re so interested in Amby, how about lending me a little money? I’ll pay it back when, well, soon.”

“I’m sorry,” he said uncertainly.

Her expression became cunning, her voice wheedling. “Now look,” she said. “Maybe we can make a deal. You want to ask me questions. O.K. I’ll answer them — at a price. Say a hundred — no, you preachers don’t have much — fifty bucks. Worth it, isn’t it?”

“Do I understand,” Dr. Millard said thoughtfully, “that you will give truthful answers to my questions for fifty dollars?”

“Why not?” She giggled. “What have I got to lose? My word is as good as yours. You couldn’t prove a thing. Amby saw to that. He’s smart, my Amby. This thing is foolproof. Besides, after what you’ve been saying, Reverend, if you try to turn against him now, you’ll only make yourself a laughingstock. I can’t figure you out, but you’re not that much of a dope. How about the fifty? Cash down.”

Dr. Millard made up his mind. Examining his thin wallet, he replied, “I haven’t that much with me. I can spare twenty-five.”

She pursed her lips. “Nothing doing.” Suddenly her eyes widened and glistened, and she smiled at him. “I tell you what. You can give me a check for the other twenty-five.”

“How can I be sure,” he asked doubtfully, “that you will tell me the truth?”

“Don’t you trust me?” She giggled. “Give me the check now. Then ask ahead. When I’ve answered, you’ll know I’ve told you the truth, and you give me the other twenty-five in cash. O.K.?”

Dr. Millard nodded, and taking a blank check from his wallet, uncapped his fountain pen and wrote. She seized the check and scrutinized it eagerly. “All right, Reverend, shoot. Wait a minute, though, let me ask you something. What made you come here?”

“The letter you sent to the jail.”

Her face darkened. “I was afraid of that. He told me not to. I shouldn’t have done it.” Anger melted her caution, and the words came out in a torrent. “What could I do? I was broke, and the dirty tightwads in town wouldn’t let me have credit. And the taxes overdue. I wouldn’t put it beyond that Gifford to toss me out on the road.”

It seemed to Dr. Millard that she was asking absolution for having disobeyed her husband. She went on, “I couldn’t think of anything else to do. He wanted me to stay here. The radio said a lot of people were sending him money at the jail, and I figured he might find a way to get a little of it to me. I didn’t know how, but he’s clever. I knew he’d guess what I meant. For a second when you came along I thought maybe he sent you. I still don’t get how you found out. With all the mail he was getting, how could anybody figure anything out from just one word?”

She checked herself, and scowled. “Even if they can prove I sent it, that still wouldn’t mean he knew anything about it. Listen, I’m talking pretty free to you. I don’t know what your game is, but you better not try anything funny. See this check?” A contemptuous smile flickered on her mouth. “One squawk out of you, Reverend, and you know what I’ll say? I’ll say you came here, inquiring about Amby, and when you found I was alone, you started to get gay. I’ll say you knew I was broke, so you offered me the check for my fair white body. Get it? Maybe not everybody will believe me, but plenty will, and you can bet the papers will like it. That would finish you, Mr. Minister. So be smart, and keep your trap shut.”

The genuine horror in his face made her laugh. The cat mewed loudly in the next room, and she called, “Here, pussy, pussy.” It came running to her, sprang into her lap, and began to purr as she caressed it. Relaxing, she continued. “Now that we understand each other, Reverend, I’ll earn that other twenty-five, because I don’t want to part with this check. So ask your questions.”

Grimly, he said, “Why did your husband kill Durgeon?”

“I don’t think he intended to kill him. Just wound him, was the way he had it figured.”

“But why?”

“We were broke, that’s all.”

“But how could shooting Durgeon—”

“You are a dumb bunny, Reverend. But no dumber than the rest. Why, after the trial, they’ll pay him a fortune for newspaper articles, and lectures, and maybe even movies. It can’t miss, the way Amby figured it. We’ll be rich. And nobody could ever prove that’s why he did it. Don’t you get it?”

There was a silence as Dr. Millard considered the enormity of her statement, and the more terrible enormity of her satisfaction. “Surely,” he said at last, “he was taking a great risk.”

“Not so great. Durgeon was a perfect setup, with those lectures of his. People around here are suckers for a stunt like that. Amby said the worst thing that could happen was that they’d call him crazy and put him away for a while. And that wouldn’t be any worse than living in this hole with his bad heart and asthma and nothing to do while we ate up our money. Most women wouldn’t have stood for it.” Tears of self-pity welled up in her eyes. “But I love the little guy.”

“But couldn’t he have made money in some other way, honestly, without murder?”

At the word, her scowl returned. “There were reasons why he didn’t want to — that’s none of your business. Anyway, he had to take it easy. Durgeon deserved to be shot — everybody knows that. Blaspheming God the way he did. Amby’ll be a kind of saint — you wait and see. Once this thing is over, he’ll be rich and famous. We won’t have to worry about the future, or the past either.” She nodded emphatically.

“Wasn’t he afraid of being recognized?”

She sneered: “When he shaved off his beard, and I fixed his eyebrows and eyelashes, I didn’t know him myself. He’s worn different kinds of beards for twenty years, ever since he got that scar, and he never had his fingerprints taken. Nobody saw him going up to Wicheka, either. I drove him myself, at night. Nobody would have recognized him if you hadn’t poked your nose in.”

“When did he first plan to kill Durgeon?”

“Started when he read about Durgeon’s lectures, and said what a joke it would be if he did drop dead while he was defying God. Then he started to think. He said he would be a public benefactor if he killed Durgeon. He’s smart, my Amby. He planned it all out, like a movie — just what people would do, and what he would do. What he would say to the police. Even the tone of voice. I always tell him, he should have been an actor.”

Her tongue and pride were thickening together. “He had everything figured out. How he wouldn’t remember anything, but otherwise be perfectly normal. That way the doctors might say he was faking, but they couldn’t call him crazy. He knew the public would be on his side and get him off. He’s smart. Listen, Rev, when you see him, tell him I’m waiting, will you? Tell him I’m going nuts, but I’m waiting.” With an irritable gesture she brushed the cat from her lap and rose to her feet, staggering a little.

Dr. Millard said, “May God forgive you.”

“Oh, can that stuff!” she flared out. “And don’t think you can walk off without leaving the twenty-five bucks.”

As he handed her the money, she said with a touch of uneasiness, “So now you know all about it, and what good will it do you? You can’t prove anything. If you talk, you’ll only ruin yourself. And don’t forget this.” She waved the check in his face. “If you try to make trouble for Amby, your name will be mud. Dirty mud.” She laughed at him. “Amby will be proud of me.”

Numb in spirit, Dr. Millard heard her out, and went back to the car, where he was joined by Mr. Gifford. As they drove off, the Town Clerk glanced at Dr. Millard’s unhappy profile, and said, “Don’t look so worried, Reverend.” He chuckled. “She might be able to say that one of us was a liar, but not both.”

As his meaning sank in, Dr. Millard turned to him unbelievingly. “You heard her?”

“Well, sure. I wasn’t going to miss out on a juicy thing like that. I would have died of curiosity, sitting in the car. So I just went around the house, and sneaked in the back door. Heard it all. Thought that blamed cat was going to give me away, once, but my luck held.” Mr. Gifford laughed loudly. “She’ll sure be surprised. Makes her a kind of accessory, I guess. My idea is this Cullen must have swindled somebody, and decided to hide out in a quiet place until things cooled off. Something like that, I bet. Well, Reverend, you can just catch Number Sixteen to Wicheka if we step on the gas. You’ll have to stall ’em off at the trial until I get there. I guess this is going to be tough on you, no matter how it goes. But it’ll be jam for me. Yep.” He grinned in anticipation. “I’ll have to pack a bag and tell the wife I’m going, and I’ll be up on the next train.”

Dr. Millard could sense the seething antagonism of the courtroom as he completed his statement. A feeling that they had been duped and cheated rankled in the minds of jury and spectators alike. Resentful eyes turned from the prisoner, his pallid face working endlessly, to the grim witness, and back again. A reporter in the press benches said audibly, “He’s through.” A harsh voice replied, “They’re both through. Millard gave the people a miracle and now he’s taking it away. They won’t stand for that.”

Mr. Levatt, with a shrug of resignation, relinquished Dr. Millard to the prosecution. The District Attorney said promptly, “Your Honor, I intend to move for an adjournment, pending the arrival of this new witness, Mr. Gifford. But first I should like to say this to you, Dr. Millard, that the state rejects the insinuations of the defense that you have been serving any personal end at any time in this case. If there is anything else you care to add, Doctor, I’m sure the court will be interested in hearing it.”

“Thank you,” replied Dr. Millard, constrainedly. His face looked old and tired. “I must confess that when I came into the courtroom I hoped that there might be some way of avoiding this shock to all the people who sincerely believed, as I believed, in John Nobody. But it was too late. And perhaps it is for the best that the truth comes out in this way.”

“I am sure,” the judge interposed, “that no one can blame you for your part in the case.”

For the first time the emotion within him showed in Dr. Millard’s voice as he said, “Whether they blame me is not important. It is the injury to the faith that matters. To the millions of good men and women in whom bitterness and cynicism will grow when they hear the truth about John Nobody.” He paused, and shook his head. “I have seen much wickedness in my life, but this is the wickedest thing of all. Durgeon, at least, fought religion frankly and openly. Atheist though he was, he spoke out like a man. The evil he did to men’s souls was nothing compared to the evil his murderer has done by practicing upon the desire of men to believe.”

In the prisoner’s box there was sudden tumult, as Ambrose Cullen, alias John Nobody, leaped to his feet and screamed, “Shut up, you meddling old fool! Shut up!” As a guard forced him back, his wax-like face became suffused with blood, and he rattled off a string of obscenities that put the courtroom in an uproar before the guard could silence him with a heavy hand upon his mouth.

Dr. Millard rose, and long-suppressed anger had its way with him. He stood tall, erect, and formidable, and his eyes blazed with forgotten fire. At that instant all compassion was gone out of him; he wanted to hurt and to frighten the impious man opposite him. He stretched out his long arm and pointed an accusing finger at the prisoner; his voice took on sonorous depths, quieting the noisy courtroom; and he spoke old, prophetic words which sounded like the clanging of great bells: “ ‘Behold, the whirlwind of the Lord goeth forth with fury, a continuing whirlwind: it shall fall with pain upon the head of the wicked.’ ”

He stood there for an instant, full of wrath. Then, with an effort, he mastered himself and stepped down from the witness stand. As he did so, excited voices rose in the neighborhood of the prisoner’s box.

“What’s the matter with him?” someone cried.

A guard answered, “Looks like he’s passed out.”

A woman cried, “He’s dead!” And another: “John Nobody is dead!”

Above the torrent of sound, defying the judge’s gavel, a voice screamed “—died when he pointed his finger!” Someone else shouted, “It’s a real miracle, this time!” “He put the curse of God on him!”

“No!” answered Dr. Millard, suddenly and loudly. “No! The man had a bad heart!”

No one listened to his words. Men were staring at him with awe. Several women openly began to pray. One of them burst through the guards, fell on her knees before him, and had to be bodily lifted and dragged away.

Dr. Millard stood completely still before the witness stand. Some who observed him thought he was filled with sublime exaltation. It was not so. Within him was a sense of terror, of painful humility, and of ignorance. He felt unsure, and weary. He did not raise his eyes, but presently his lips moved a little, as out of his remembered store of prayer there came to him a saying that struck him as appropriate to his need:

“Give therefore Thy servant an understanding heart,” he murmured earnestly, “to judge Thy people, that I may distinguish between good and evil.”

Gun Crazy MACKINLAY KANTOR

Original publication: The Saturday Evening Post, February 13, 1940; first collected in Author’s Choice by MacKinlay Kantor (New York, Coward-McCann, 1944)

Mackinlay Kantor (1904–1977) was born in Webster City, Iowa, became a journalist at seventeen, and soon after began selling hard-boiled mystery stories to various pulp magazines. He also wrote several novels in the genre, such as Diversey (1928), about Chicago gangsters, and Signal Thirty-Two (1950), an excellent police procedural, given verisimilitude by virtue of Kantor having received permission from the acting police commissioner of New York to accompany the police on their activities to gather background information. His most famous crime novel is Midnight Lace (1948), the suspenseful take on a young woman terrorized by an anonymous telephone caller; it was filmed two years later, starring Doris Day and Rex Harrison.

Kantor is better known for his mainstream novels, such as the sentimental dog story, The Voice of Bugle Ann (1935), film release the following year; the long narrative poem Glory for Me (1945), which was filmed as The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture; and the outstanding Civil War novel about the notorious Confederate prisoner of war camp, Andersonville (1955), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.

Curiously, “Gun Crazy” has seldom been reprinted, even though it served as the basis for the famous noir cult film of the same title, for which Kantor wrote the screenplay.

Title: Gun Crazy, 1950

Studio: United Artists, 1950

Director: Joseph H. Lewis

Screenwriters: MacKinlay Kantor, Millard Kaufman (front for Dalton Trumbo)

Producers: Frank King, Maurice King

• Peggy Cummins (Annie Laurie Starr)

• John Dall (Barton Tare)

• Berry Kroeger (Packett)

Directed by Joseph H. Lewis, the film was an excellent though more violent expansion of the short story. It features a clean-cut young man, Bart (Nelly in the story), who has always been obsessed with guns and is a crack shot, though he has never been violent. At a carnival he meets a beautiful sharpshooter, Annie Laurie Starr (Antoinette McReady in the story) and they rush off in a near sexual frenzy to get married. She convinces him to rob a store and he reluctantly follows her on a spree of bank robberies and shootings as she depravedly shoots people without conscience.

Gun Crazy was originally titled Deadly Is the Female but was never released with that title. The 1992 movie titled Guncrazy is unconnected to the Kantor short story or the film inspired by it.

GUN CRAZY MacKinlay Kantor

I first met Nelson Tare when he was around five or six years old, and I was around the same. I had watched his family moving into the creek house on a cold, snowless morning in early winter.

Two lumber wagons went by, with iron beds and old kitchen chairs and mattresses tied all over them. They rumbled down the hill past Mr. Boston’s barn and stopped in front of the creek house. I could see men and girls working, carrying the stuff inside.

In midafternoon I was outdoors again, and I coasted to the corner in my little wagon to see whether the moving-in activities were still going on.

Then Nelson Tare appeared. He had climbed the hill by himself; probably he was looking for guns, although I couldn’t know that at the time. He was a gaunt little child with bright blue beads for eyes, and a sharp-pointed nose.

He said, “Hello, kid. Want to pway?”

Nelson was only about a month younger than I, it turned out, but he still talked a lot of baby talk. I think kids are apt to do that more when their parents don’t talk to them much.

I told him that I did want to play, and asked him what he wanted to do.

He asked, “Have you got any guns?” What he actually said was, “Dot any duns?” and for a while I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then, when I understood, I coasted back to the house in my wagon, with Nelson walking beside me. We went into the living room.

I had three guns: a popgun with the pop gone, and a glass pistol that used to have candy inside — but now the candy was all eaten up — and a cap gun and holster.

The cap gun was the best. It was nickel-plated, and the holster was made of black patent leather. It was the shape and possibly half the size of an ordinary .32-caliber revolver.

Nelson Tare’s eyes pushed out a little when he saw it. He made a grab, and belted it on before I had time to protest and tell him that I wanted to play with the cap gun and he could play with the glass pistol or the broken pop rifle. He went swaggering around with the gun on, and it kind of scared me the way he did it — all of a sudden he’d snatch the revolver out of its holster and aim it at me.

I took the glass pistol and tried to imitate him. But the glass pistol couldn’t click, and at least the hammer of the cap gun would come down with a resounding click. Nelson, or Nelly, as I came to know him, fairly shot the daylights out of me. I began to protest, and he kept on advancing and kind of wrangling and threatening me, until he had me backed up in a corner.

He hadn’t taken off his little red coat with its yellow horn buttons, and he was perspiring inside it. I still recollect how he smelled when he got close enough to wool me around; I had never smelled a smell like that before. I remember his face, too, when he came close — the tiny, expressionless turquoise eyes, the receding chin and baby mouth still marked with the tag ends of his dinner; and in between them, that inhuman nose whittled out to a point.

I tried to push him away as he kept battling me and shooting me, and I guess I began to cry.

Nelson said that it wasn’t a real gun.

“It might go off!”

He said that it couldn’t go off; that it wasn’t “weal.”

“ ’Course it isn’t real!” I cried. “I guess there isn’t any boy in the world got a real gun!”

Well, he said that he had one, and when I was still disbelieving he said that he would go home and fetch it. His coat had come unbuttoned in our scufflings, and I remember how he looked as I watched through the window and saw him flapping down the last length of concrete sidewalk past the big maple tree.

My mother came from upstairs while I waited at the window. She said that she had heard voices. “Did you have company?” she asked.

“It was a new boy.”

“What new boy?”

“He moved into the creek house down there.”

My mother said doubtfully, “Oh, yes. I heard there was a ditcher’s family moving in down there.”

Well, I wanted to know what a ditcher was, and while mother was explaining to me about drainage ditches out on the prairie and how the tile was laid in them, here came Nelly hustling up the road as fast as he could leg it. He had something big and heavy that he had to carry in both hands. When he got into the yard we could see that he did have a revolver, and it looked like a real one.

Mother exclaimed, and went to open the door for him. He ducked inside, bareheaded and cold, with his dirty, thin, straw-colored hair sticking every which way, and the old red coat still dangling loose.

“I dot my dun,” he said.

It was a large revolver — probably about a .44. It had a yellow handle, but the metal parts were a mass of rust. The cylinder and hammer were rusted tight and couldn’t be moved.

“Why, little boy,” mother exclaimed in horror, “where on earth did you get this?”

He said that he got it at home.

Mother lured it out of his hands, but only after she had praised it extravagantly. She got him to put the revolver on the library table, and then she took us both out to the kitchen, where we had milk and molasses cookies.

My father came home from his newspaper office before Nelly had gone. We showed father the gun, and he lighted the lamp on the library table and examined the revolver thoroughly.

“My goodness, Ethel,” he said to my mother, “it’s got cartridges in it!”

“Cartridges?”

“Yes, it sure has. They’re here in the cylinder, all rusted in tight. Good thing the rest of it is just as rusty.”

He put on his coat again and said that he’d take Nelson home. It was growing dark and was almost suppertime, and he was afraid the boy might be lost there in the new surroundings of Elm City. Nelson wanted his gun, but my father said no and put it in his own overcoat pocket. I was allowed to go along with them.

When we got to the creek house, father rapped on the door and Nelly’s mother opened it. She was a scrawny, pale-faced woman, very round-shouldered, in a calico dress. Nelly’s father wasn’t there; he had gone to take one of the teams back. There were several girls — Nelly’s sisters — strung out all the way from little kids to a big, bony creature as tall as her mother.

Father brought out the gun and said that it wasn’t wise to let little kids go carrying things like that around.

“You little devil!” said Nelly’s mother to Nelly, and she laughed when she said it. “What on earth were you doing with that?”

The girls crowded close and looked. “Why, it’s Jay’s gun!” said the eldest one.

Father wanted to know who Jay was. They laughed a lot while they were telling him, although they were remarkably close-lipped about it at the same time. All that Father could get out of them was the fact that they used to live in Oklahoma, and Jay was somebody who used to stay at their house. He had left that gun there once, and they still kept it — as a kind of memorial for Jay, it would seem.

“I swear Nelly must have taken it out of the bureau drawer,” said Mrs. Tare, still smiling. “You little devil, you got to behave yourself, you got to!” And she gave him a kind of spat with her hand, but not as if she were mad. They all seemed to think it was cute, for him to sneak off with that gun.

Father said goodbye and we went home. It was dark now, and all the way up the hill and past Mr. Boston’s farmyard, I kept wondering about this new little boy and the rusty revolver. I kept breathing hard, trying to breathe that strange oily smell out of my nose. It was the odor of their house and of themselves — the same odor I had noticed when Nelly tussled with me.

My father said quite calmly that he supposed Jay was an Oklahoma outlaw. Unintentionally, he thus gave Nelson Tare a fantastic importance in my eyes. I did not dream then that Jay, instead of old Barton Tare with his sloppy mustache, might have been Nelly’s own father. Perhaps it is a dream, even as I write the words now. But I think not.

When Nelly grew older, he possessed a great many physical virtues. He was remarkably agile in the use of his hands and arms. He had no fear of height; he would climb any windmill within reach and he could stump any boy in that end of town when it came to Stump-the-Leader. But Nelly Tare liked guns better than he did games.

At the air-rifle stage of our development, Nelly could shoot rings around any of us. He and I used to go up in our barn and lie on the moldy, abandoned hay of the old mow. There were rats that sometimes came into the chicken run next door, to eat the chickens’ food. I never did shoot a rat with my BB gun, and for some reason Nelly never did either. That was funny, because he was such a good shot. We used to amuse ourselves, while waiting for rats, by trying to peck away at the chickens’ water pan. It was a good healthy distance, and I’d usually miss. But the side of the pan which faced our way had the enamel all spotted off by Nelly’s accurate fire.

He owned an air-pump gun of his own, but not for long. He traded it to somebody for an old .22, and after that there was little peace in the neighborhood. He was always shooting at tin cans or bottles on the roadside dump. He was always hitting too.

In the winter of 1914, Nelly and I went hunting with Clyde Boston. Clyde was a huge, ruddy-faced young man at least ten years older than Nelly and I. He lived with his parents across from our corner.

One day there was deep snow, and Nelly and I were out exploring. He had his .22, and every now and then he’d bang away at a knot on a fence post. At last we wandered into Boston’s barnyard, and found Clyde in the barn, filling his pockets with shotgun shells.

He had a shotgun too — a fine repeater, gleaming blue steel — and Nelly wanted to know what Clyde was doing. “Going hunting?”

“Come on, Clyde,” I said, “let us go! Nelly’s got his gun.”

Clyde took the little rifle and examined it critically. “This won’t do for hunting around here,” he said. “I’m going out after rabbits, and you got to have a shotgun for that. Rifle bullets are apt to carry too far and hit somebody, or maybe hit a pig or something. Anyway, you couldn’t hit a cottontail on the run with that.”

“Hell I couldn’t,” said Nelly.

I said, “Clyde, you let us go with you and we’ll beat up the game. We’ll scare the rabbits out of the weeds, because you haven’t got any dog. Then you can shoot them when they run out. Maybe you’ll let us have one shot each, huh, Clyde — maybe?”

Clyde said that he would see, and he made Nelly leave his rifle at the barn. We went quartering off through the truck garden on the hillside.

The snow had fallen freshly, but already there was a mass of rabbit tracks everywhere. You could see where the cottontails had run into the thickest, weediest coverts to feed upon dry seeds.

Clyde walked in the middle, with his face apple-colored with the cold and his breath blowing out. Nelly and I spread wide, to scare up the game. We used sticks and snowballs to alarm the thickets, and we worked hard at it. The big twelve-gauge gun began to bang every once in a while. Clyde had three cottontails hanging furry from his belt before we got to the bend in the creek opposite the Catholic cemetery. Then finally he passed the gun over to me and told me I could have the next chance.

It came pretty soon. We saw a cottontail in his set — a gray little mound among the vervain stalks. I lifted the muzzle, but Clyde said that it wasn’t fair to shoot rabbits in the set, and made Nelly throw a snowball. The cottontail romped out of there in a hurry, and I whaled away with the shotgun and managed to wound the rabbit and slow him down. I fired again and missed, and Clyde caught up with the rabbit after a few strides. He put the poor peeping thing out of its misery by rapping it on the head.

I tied the rabbit to the belt of my mackinaw, and Clyde passed the shotgun over to Nelly.

Nelly’s face was pale.

“Watch your step,” said Clyde. “Remember to keep the safety on until you see something to shoot.”

“Sure,” said Nelly Tare.

We crossed the creek without starting any more rabbits, and came down the opposite side of the stream. Then a long-legged jack jumped up out of a deep furrow where there had been some fall plowing, and ran like a mule ahead of us.

“Look at those black ears!” Clyde sang out. “It’s a jack! Get him, Nelly — get him!”

Well, Nelson had the gun at his shoulder; at first I thought he had neglected to touch the safety — I thought he couldn’t pull the trigger because the safety was on. He kept swinging the muzzle of the gun, following the jackrabbit in its erratic course, until the rabbit slowed up a little.

The jack bobbed around behind a tree stump, and then came out on the other side. It squatted down on top of the snow and sat looking at us. It hopped a few feet farther and then sat up again to watch.

“For gosh sakes,” said Clyde Boston, “what’s the matter with you, kid? There he is, looking at you.”

Nelson Tare just stood like a snow man, or rather like a snow boy. He kept the rabbit covered; his dirty blue finger didn’t move. The trigger waited, the shell in the barrel waited, and so did we.

Nelly’s face was deathly white under the dirt that streaked it. The eyes were blank little marbles, as always; even his nose seemed pointed like the sights of a gun. And yet he did not shoot.

Clyde said, half under his breath, “I guess that’s what they call buck fever. You got the buck, Nelly.” He hurried over to take the shotgun.

Blood from the last-killed rabbit made little dots on the snow around my feet, though the animal was freezing fast.

“Can’t you see him, Nelly?”

Nelson said, “Yes. I—”

Clyde lost all patience. “Oh, for gosh sake!” he exclaimed, and grabbed the gun. But our combined motions startled the jackrabbit, and he vanished into the creek gorge beyond.

Something had happened there in the snow; none of us knew exactly what had happened. But whatever it was, it took the edge off our sport. We tramped along a cattle path next to the stream, with Clyde carrying the shotgun. We boys didn’t scare up any more game. Nelly kept looking at the rabbits, which bounced and rubbed their frozen red against Clyde Boston’s overalls.

Clyde teased him, all the way back to the Boston barnyard. He’d say, “Nelly, I thought you were supposed to be the Daniel Boone of the neighborhood. Gosh, Nelly, I thought you could shoot. I thought you were just gun crazy!”

We walked through the fresh warm mire behind the Boston barn. Clyde said that he didn’t need three rabbits; that his mother could use only two, and would Nelly want the other one?

“No,” said Nelson. We went into the barn, and Nelly picked up his .22 rifle.

“Look out while you’re on the way home,” said Clyde, red-faced and jovial as ever. “Look out you don’t meet a bear. Maybe he wouldn’t set around and wait like that jackrabbit did.”

Nelson Tare sucked in his breath. “You said I couldn’t shoot, didn’t you, Mister Clyde?”

“You had your chance. Look at Dave there. He’s got a rabbit to take home that he shot himself, even though he didn’t kill it first crack.”

“I can shoot,” said Nelly. He worked a cartridge into the breech of his rifle. “Dave,” he said to me, “you throw up a snowball.”

“Can’t anybody hit a snowball with a twenty-two,” said big Clyde Boston.

Nelly said, “Throw a snowball, Dave.”

I stepped down from the sill of the barn door and made a ball about the size of a Duchess apple. I threw it high toward the telephone wires across the road. Nelly Tare pinked it apart with his .22 before the ball ever got to the wires. Then he went down the road to the creek house, with Clyde Boston and me looking after him. Clyde was scratching his head, but I just looked.

Nelly began to get into trouble when he was around fourteen. His first trouble that anyone knew about happened in the cloakroom of the eighth grade at school. Miss Cora Petersen was a great believer in corporal punishment, and when Nelly was guilty of some infraction of rules, Miss Petersen prepared to thrash him with a little piece of white rubber hose. Teachers used to be allowed to do that.

But if the pupil did not permit it to be done to him, but instead drew a loaded revolver from inside his shirt and threatened to kill his teacher, that was a different story. It was a story in which the superintendent of schools and the local chief of police and hard-faced old Mr. Tare were all mixed together in the climax.

There was some talk about the reform school, too, but the reform school did not materialize until a year later.

That was after Meisner’s Hardware and Harness Store had been robbed. The thief or thieves had a peculiar taste in robbery; the cash drawer was untouched, but five revolvers and a lot of ammunition were taken away. A mile and a quarter away, to be exact. They were hidden beneath planks and straw in Mr. Barton Tare’s wagon shed, and Chief of Police Kelcy found them after the simplest kind of detective work.

This time the story had to be put in the paper, no matter how much my father regretted it. This time it was the reform school for sure.

We boys in the south end of town sat solemnly on our new concrete curbstone and talked of Nelly Tare in hushed voices. The judge had believed, sternly and simply, that Nelly was better off at Eldora than at home. He gave him two years. Nelly didn’t serve all of that time. He got several months off for good behavior, which must have come as a surprise to many people in Elm City.

He emerged from the Eldora reformatory in the spring of 1918. His parents were out of the picture by this time. His mother was dead; his father had moved to South Dakota with the two youngest girls, and the other girls had married or drifted away.

Nelly may have been under age, but when he expressed a preference for the cavalry, and when he flourished a good report sheet from the reformatory superintendent, no one cared to say him nay. Once he came home on furlough from a camp in New Mexico. I remember how he looked, standing in front of Frank Wanda’s Recreation Pool Hall, with the flashing badge of a pistol expert pinned upon his left breast, and all the little kids grouped around to admire the polish on his half-leather putts.

He never got a chance to use any guns against the Germans. He wasn’t sent to France, and came back to Elm City in the spring of 1919. It was reasonable for him to come there. Elm City was the only real hometown he had, and one of his sisters was married to Ira Flagler, a garage mechanic who lived out on West Water Street. Nelly went to live with the Flaglers.

He began working at Frank Wanda’s pool hall. I have spoken about his skill with his hands; he employed that skill to good advantage in the pool hall. He had developed into a remarkable player during his year in the Army. He also ran the cigar counter and soft drinks for Frank Wanda, who was getting old and couldn’t stand on his feet very long at a time.

It used to be that in every pool hall there was somebody who played for the house, if people came along and really wanted to bet anything. Nelly would play on his own, too, taking money away from farm boys or from some out-of-towner who thought he was good. He was soon making real money, but he didn’t spend it in the usual channels. He spent it on guns.

All sorts. Sometimes he’d have an especially good revolver down there in the billiard parlor with him, and he’d show it to me when I dropped in for cigarettes. He had a kind of private place out along the Burlington tracks where he used to practice shooting on Sundays. And in 1923 a carnival came to town.

Miss Antoinette McReady, the Outstanding Six-Gun Artiste of Two Nations, was supposed to come from Canada. Maybe she did. They built up a phony Royal Canadian Mounted Police atmosphere for her act. A fellow in a shabby red coat and yellow-striped breeches sold tickets out in front. An extra girl in the same kind of comic uniform assisted the artiste with her fancy shooting. They had a steel backstop at the rear of the enclosure to stop the bullets. I went to the carnival on the first night, and dropped in to see the shooting act.

The girl was pretty good. Her lady assistant put on a kind of crown with white chalks sticking up in it, and Miss McReady shot the chalks out of the crown quite accurately, missing only one or two shots and not killing the lady assistant at all. She did mirror shooting and upside-down-leaning-backward shooting; she balanced on a chair and shot. She was a very pretty redhead, though necessarily painted.

Then the Royal Canadian Mounted manager made a speech. He said that frequently during her extensive travels, Miss McReady had been challenged by local pistol-artists, but that she was so confident of her ability that she had a standing offer of one hundred dollars to anybody who could outshoot her.

The only condition was that the challenging local artist should agree to award Miss McReady an honorarium of twenty dollars, provided she outshot him.

Nelly Tare climbed up on the platform; he showed the color of his money and the bet was on.

Miss Antoinette McReady shot first, shooting at the tiny target gong with great deliberation; she rang the gong five out of six times. Nelly took her gun, aimed, and snapped it a few times before ejecting the empty shells, to acquaint himself with the trigger pull. Then he loaded up, with the whole audience standing to watch him. He fired his six rounds, rapid fire, and everyone yipped when he rang the gong with every shot.

Miss Antoinette McReady smiled and bowed as if she had done the shooting instead of Nelly; she went over to congratulate him. They got ready for the next competition. The girl assistant started to put on the crown thing with its chalks sticking out of the sockets. Nelly talked to her a minute in a low voice; he took the crown and put it on his own head.

He stood against the backstop. His face was very red, but he stood there stiff at Army attention, with his hands against his sides.

“Go ahead, sister,” he told Miss McReady.

Well, they made him sign a waiver first, in case of accident. You could have heard an ant sneeze in that place when Miss McReady stood up to do her shooting. She fired six times and broke four of the chalks. The people in the audience proceeded to wake up babies two blocks away, and Miss Antoinette McReady went over to Nelly with those little dancing, running steps that circus and vaudeville folks use. She made him come down to the front and take applause with her. Then she said she’d wear the crown for Nelly, and this time there was no waiver signed.

Nelly broke all six chalks in six steady shots, and Miss Antoinette McReady kissed him, and Frank Wanda had to get a new fellow for the pool hall when Nelly left town with the show after the last performance on Saturday night.

It was six months later when I heard my father exclaim, while he was taking press dispatches over the out-of-town wire. He often did that when some news came through which particularly interested or excited him. I left my desk and went to look over his shoulder, while his fat old fingers pushed out the story on the typewriter.

HAMPTON, COLORADO, April 2. — Two desperate trick-shot artists gave Hampton residents an unscheduled exhibition today. When the smoke had cleared away the Hampton County Savings Bank discovered it had paid more than $7,000 to watch the show.

Shortly after the bank opened this morning, a young man and a young woman, identified by witnesses as “Cowboy” Nelson Tare and Miss Antoinette McReady, walked into the bank and commanded tellers and customers to lie down on the floor. They scooped up $7,150 in small bills, and were backing toward an exit, when Vice-President O. E. Simms tried to reach for a telephone.

The trick-shot bandits promptly shot the telephone off the desk. They pulverized chandeliers, interior glass, and window lights in a rapid fusillade which covered their retreat to their car.

Within a few minutes a posse was in hot pursuit, but lost the trail near Elwin, ten miles south of this place. A stolen car, identified as the one used by the bandits, was found abandoned this noon near Hastings City. State and county officers immediately spread a dragnet on surrounding highways.

Nelson Tare and his female companion were easily recognized as stunt shooters with a traveling carnival which became stranded in Elwin a week ago. A full description of the hard-shooting pair has been broadcast to officials of five nearby states.

All the time I was reading it, I kept thinking of Nelly Tare, half-pint size in a dirty red coat, asking me, “Dot any duns?”

They were captured in Oklahoma that summer, after another robbery. Antoinette McReady, whose real name turned out to be Ruth Riley, was sent to a women’s penal institution; Nelly Tare went to McAlester Prison. He managed his escape during the winter two years later, and started off on a long series of holdups which carried him south into Texas, over to Arkansas, and north into Missouri.

Those were the days of frequent and daring bank robberies throughout that region. There were a lot of other bad boys around, and Nelly was only one of the herd. Still, he began to appear in the news dispatches with increasing regularity, and when some enterprising reporter called him Nice Nelly, the name stuck and spread. It was a good news name, like Baby Face or Pretty Boy.

They recaptured him in Sedalia; the story of his escape from the Jefferson City Penitentiary in 1933 was front-page stuff all over the nation. It was always the same — he was always just as hard to catch up with. He was always just as able to puncture the tires of pursuing cars, to blast the headlights that tried to pick him out through the midnight dust.

Federal men didn’t enter the picture until the next January, when Nelly kidnapped a bank cashier in Hiawatha, Kansas, and carried him nearly to Lincoln, Nebraska. That little state line made all the difference in the world. The so-called Lindbergh Law had come into existence, and Nice Nelly Tare became a public enemy on an elaborate scale.

It is not astonishing that some people of Elm City basked in this reflected notoriety.

Reporters from big-city papers, photographers from national magazines, came poking around all the time. They interviewed Nelly’s sister, poor Mrs. Ira Flagler, until she was black in the face — until she was afraid to let her children play in the yard.

They took pictures of Frank Wanda’s pool hall, and they would have taken pictures of Frank if he hadn’t been dead. They managed to shake Miss Cora Petersen, late of Elm City’s eighth grade, from asthmatic retirement. Her homely double-chinned face appeared in a fine-screen cut, in ugly halftones — a million different impressions of it. READ TEACHER’S STORY OF HOW NICE NELLY, BABY BANDIT, DREW HIS FIRST BEAD ON HER. OTHER PICTURES ON PAGE SEVEN.

Clyde Boston and I used to talk about it, over in Clyde’s office in the courthouse. Clyde Boston had been sheriff for two terms; he was just as apple-cheeked and good-natured as ever, though most of his hair was gone. He would shake his head when we talked about Nelly Tare, which we did often.

“You know,” he’d say, “a lot of people probably doubt those stories about Nelly’s fancy shooting — people who haven’t seen him shoot. But I still remember that time he had you throw a snowball for him to break with a rifle. He certainly is gun crazy.”

It was during the late summer of 1934 — the bad drought year — when Nelly held up a bank at Northfield, Minnesota, and was promptly dubbed the Modern Jesse James.

Officers picked up Nelly’s trail in Sioux Falls, and that was a relief to us in Elm City, because people had always feared that Nelly might be struck with a desire to revisit his boyhood haunts and stage a little shooting right there in the lobby of the Farmers’ National Bank. Nelly’s trail was lost again, and for two weeks he slid out of the news.

Then came the big story. Federal men very nearly recaptured him in Council Bluffs, though he got away from them even there. Then silence again.

About two o’clock of the following Thursday afternoon, I went up to the courthouse on printing business. I had stopped in at Sheriff Clyde Boston’s office and was chewing the rag with Clyde, when his telephone rang.

Clyde picked up the phone. He said, “Yes... Yes, Barney... He did?... Yes... Glad you called me.” He hung up the receiver and sat drumming his fingers against a desk blotter.

“Funny thing,” he said. “That was young Barney Meisner, down at the hardware store.”

“What did he have to say?”

“He said that one of the Flagler kids was in there a while ago and bought two boxes of forty-five shells. Funny, isn’t it?”

We looked at each other. “Maybe Ira Flagler’s decided to emulate his wife’s folks,” I said, “and take up trick shooting on the side.”

Clyde Boston squeezed out a smile. “Guess I’ll ride up to their house and ask about it.”

So I went along with him, and when we got to the green-and-white Flagler house on West Water Street, we saw a coupe parked in the drive. Clyde breathed rapidly for a moment; I saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel, until he could read the license number of the car. Clyde relaxed. It was a Vera Cruz County number; it was one of our own local cars; I remembered that I had seen Ira Flagler driving that car sometimes.

Clyde parked across the street, although down a little way. He got out on the driver’s side and I got out on the other side. When I walked around the rear of the car and looked up at the Flagler house, Nelly Tare was standing on the porch with a revolver in his hand.

I guess neither Clyde nor I could have said anything if we had been paid. Clyde didn’t have his own gun on; sheriffs didn’t habitually carry guns in our county anymore. There was Nelly on the porch, covering us and looking just about the same as ever, except that his shoulders had sagged and his chin seemed to have receded a good deal more.

He said, “Lay down on the ground. That’s right — both of you. Lay down. That’s right — keep your hands up.”

When we were on the ground, or rather on the asphalt pavement which formed the last block of Water Street, Nelly fired four shots. He put them all into the hood and engine of the car, and then we heard his feet running on the ground. I didn’t look for a minute, but Clyde had more nerve than I, and got up on his haunches immediately.

By that time Nelly was in the Flagler coupe. He drove it right across their vegetable garden, across Lou Miller’s yard, and out onto the pavement of Prospect Street. Prospect Street connected with a wide gravel road that went south toward the Rivermouth country and the town of Liberty beyond. Nelly put his foot on the gas; dust went high.

Those four bullets had made hash out of the motor. The starter was dead when Clyde got his foot on it; gas and water were leaking out underneath. Mrs. Ira Flagler stumbled out upon the porch with one of her children; they were both crying hysterically.

She said, “Oh, thank God he didn’t shoot you, Mr. Boston!”

Later she told her story. Nelly had showed up there via boxcar early that morning, but Ira was working on a hurry-up job at the garage and didn’t know about it. Nelly had made his sister and the children stay in the house all day. Finally he persuaded the youngest boy that it would be great fun and a joke on everybody if he would go downtown and buy him two boxes of .45 shells.

But all this revelation came later, for Clyde Boston was well occupied at the telephone. He called the courthouse and sent a carload of vigilantes after Nelly on Primary No. 37. He called the telephone office and had them notify authorities in Liberty, Prairie Flower, Mannville, and Fort Hood. Then he called the state capital and talked to federal authorities himself. Government men started arriving by auto and airplane within two hours.

About suppertime Nelly showed up at a farmhouse owned by Larry Larsen, fourteen miles southwest of Elm City. He had been circling around all afternoon, trying to break through the cordon. They had heavy trucks across all the roads; late-summer cornfields don’t make for good auto travel, even when there has been a drought.

He took Larsen’s sedan and made the farmer fill it with gas out of his tractor tank. Nelly had cut the telephone wires; he forced the farmer’s family to tie one another up, and then he tied the last one himself. Nelly saw to it that the tying was well done; it was after eight o’clock before one of the kids got loose and they shouted forth their story over a neighbor’s telephone.

Things were wild enough down at the Chronicle office that evening. But I had a reliable staff, and at eight-thirty I thought it was safe to take a run up to the courthouse.

“I kind of expected you’d be up, Dave,” said Clyde Boston.

I told him that I thought he’d be out on the road somewhere.

“Been out for the last four hours.” He took his feet down off the desk, and then put them up again. “If I can get loose from all these state and national efficiency experts, how’d you like to take a little drive with me in your car? Mine’s kind of out of order.”

Well, I told him that I’d be glad to drive him anywhere he said, but I didn’t want to come back with bullet holes in the cowling. So he got loose from the efficiency experts, and he made me strike out south of town and then east, on Primary No. 6.

Clyde didn’t talk. Usually it was his way to talk a lot, in a blissful, middle-aged, baldheaded fashion. We passed two gangs of guards and identified ourselves each time, and finally Clyde had me stop at a farm where some cousins of his lived. He borrowed a log chain — a good big one with heavy links. This rusty mass Clyde dumped down into my clean back seat, and then he directed me to drive south again.

The katydids exclaimed in every grove.

“You know,” said Clyde, “I used to do a lot of rabbit hunting and prairie-chicken hunting down this way, when I was younger. And you used to do a lot of hiking around down here with the boys. Fact is, only boys who were raised in these parts would know this country completely. Isn’t that a fact? Outside officers wouldn’t know it.”

Well, I agreed that they wouldn’t, and then Clyde began to talk about Nelly Tare. He said that Nelly’s one chance to get out of those several hundred square miles that he was surrounded in was to ride out on a railroad train. He wouldn’t be likely to try it on foot, not unless he was crazy, and Clyde Boston didn’t think he was crazy. Except gun crazy, as always.

“Now, the railroads all cross up here in this end of the county, up north of the river. Don’t they?”

“That’s right.”

“So to get from where Nelly was at suppertime to where he’d like to be, he’d have to go diagonally from southwest to northeast. Now, the river timber runs diagonally from southwest to northeast—”

I began to see a little light. “You’re talking about the old Rivermouth road.” And Clyde said that he was.

He said that he had picnicked there with his family in recent years. The ancient timber road was still passable by car, if a driver proceeded slowly and cautiously enough. It meant fording several creeks; it couldn’t be managed when the creeks were up.

“It comes out on the prairie just below the old Bemis farm,” said Clyde. “You go down between pastures on a branch-off lane, and then you’re right in the woods. That’s where I think maybe he’ll come out.”

When he got to the Bemis place we turned off on the side lane and drove to the edge of the timber. The forest road emerged — a wandering sluice with yellow leaves carpeting it. We left my car parked at the roadside, and Clyde dragged the log chain down the timber road until he found a good place.

Cottonwoods and thin saplings made a wall along either side, where the road twisted out of the gully. A driver couldn’t tell that the road was blocked until he had climbed the last curve in low gear.

Clyde wrapped the log chain around two cottonwoods. It sagged, stiff and heavy, across the path.

I said, “He’ll kill you, Clyde. Don’t expect me to help you try to grab him and get killed at the same time.”

“There won’t be any killing.” Clyde settled himself in the darkness. “I’m going to take Nelly Tare back to Elm City. Alive.”

Old logs and gullies are thick in the Rivermouth country; hazel brush fairly blocks the forgotten road in a hundred places. It was long before Nelly’s headlights came sneaking through the trees. The katydids spoke a welcome; the dull parking lights went in and out, twisting, exploring, poking through the brush; they came on, with the motor growling in low.

Nelly made quite a spurt and went into second for a moment as the car swung up out of the gorge; sleek leaves flew from under his rear wheels; little rocks pattered back into the shrubbery.

Then Nelly saw the log chain. He jammed his brakes and the car slewed around until it was broadside. Nelly turned off the motor and lights in half a second; the car door swung; he was out on the log-chain side, and he had a gun in his hand.

“Don’t shoot, Nelly,” said Clyde Boston, stepping in front of the trees and turning on his flashlight.

I didn’t want to be killed, so I stood behind a tree and watched them. The flashlight thrust out a long, strong beam; Clyde stood fifteen feet away from the car’s radiator, but the shaft of his lamp was like whitewash on Nelly Tare.

“It’s Clyde,” the sheriff said. “Clyde Boston. You remember me? I was up at your sister’s place today.”

Nelly cried, “Turn off that light!”

“No,” Clyde said. “And I’m warning you not to shoot the light out, because I’m holding it right in front of my stomach. My stomach’s a big target. You wouldn’t want to shoot my stomach, would you, Nelly?”

Nelson Tare’s hair was too long, and he needed a shave. He looked like some wild thing that had been dug out of the woods. “Clyde! I’m telling you for the last time! Turn it off!”

Clyde’s voice was a smooth rumble. “Remember one time when we went hunting rabbits?” He edged forward a little. “You and Dave and me. Remember? A big jack sat down, waiting for you to kill him. And you couldn’t pull the trigger. You couldn’t kill him.”

Nelly had his face screwed into a wad, and his teeth showed between his lips.

“Never shot anything or anybody, did you, Nelly?” There was a snapping sound, and I jumped. It was only a stick breaking under Clyde’s foot as he moved nearer to the car. “You never shot a soul. Not a jackrabbit or anything. You couldn’t.”

He was only ten feet away from Nelly and Nelly’s gun.

“You just pretended you could. But the guards in Oklahoma and Missouri didn’t know you the way I do. They hadn’t ever gone hunting with you, had they?”

He took another step forward. Another. Nelly was something out of a waxworks in a sideshow, watching him come. Then a vague suffusion of light began to show around them; a carload of deputies had spotted my car at the head of the lane; their headlamps came hurtling toward us.

“You shot telephones off of desks,” Clyde purred to Nelly, “and tires off of cars. You’ve been around and you’ve done a lot of shooting. But you never shot things that the blood ran out of... Now, you drop your gun, Nelly. Drop it on the ground. Gosh, I was crazy this afternoon. I shouldn’t have laid down when you told me to. I should have just stood there.”

Maybe he was right and maybe he was wrong, I don’t know. The car stopped and I heard men yell, “Look out, Sheriff!” They were ready with their machine guns, trying to hustle themselves into some position where they could spatter the daylights out of Nelly Tare without shooting Clyde Boston too. Clyde didn’t give them a chance to do it. He dove forward; he flung his arms around Nelly and crushed him to the ground.

Nelly cried, and I don’t like to think about it; sometimes I wake up in the night and think I hear him crying. My memory goes back to our haymow days and to the rats in the chicken pen — the rats that Nelly couldn’t shoot — and I remember the bloody cottontails dangling from Clyde’s belt.

Nelly cried, but not solely because he was captured and would never be free again. He wept because the world realized something he had tried to keep hidden, even from himself. When he was taken back into prison, he wore an expression of tragic perplexity. It must have been hideous for him to know that he, who had loved guns his whole life long, should at last be betrayed by them.

Cyclists’ Raid FRANK ROONEY

Original publication: Harper’s, January 1951

Frank Rooney (1913–?), born in Kansas City, Missouri, was an actor as well as an author of short stories and novels, performing with Maurice Evans in Hamlet at the Hanna Theatre in Cleveland in 1946 after serving in the army during World War II.

He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1956 for his fiction. Among his novels were The Courts of Memory (1954), The Heel of Spring (1956), McGinnis Speaks (1960), and Shadow of God (1967), in which a young nun in the Far East is captured by Communists and must choose between death and sexual violation.

Although his novels were generally well-reviewed, it is Rooney’s short story, “Cyclists’ Raid,” for which he is most remembered today.

The July 21, 1947, issue of Life magazine ran an article, with photographs, of what it called a “Cyclist’s Holiday.” It was, in fact, a three-day nightmare for the peaceful little town of Hollister, California, best-known for growing garlic, when it was invaded by an estimated four thousand motorcyclists for a rally over the Independence Day weekend.

This is how Life described the event: “Racing their vehicles down the main street and through traffic lights, they rammed into restaurants and bars, breaking furniture and mirrors. Some rested awhile by the curb. Others hardly paused. Police arrested many for drunkenness and indecent exposure but could not restore order. Finally, after two days, the cyclists left with a brazen explanation. ‘We like to show off. It’s just a lot of fun.’ ”

There is evidence that the article probably exaggerated the level of violence, as Hollister later invited motorcyclists back for a fiftieth anniversary celebration of the infamous weekend.

The article struck a chord with Rooney, inspiring his outstanding short story, which was selected for The Best American Short Stories in 1952. It did not take long for Stanley Kramer to recognize its cinematic appeal and the American classic film The Wild One was released in 1953.

Title: The Wild One, 1953

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Director: Laslo Benedek

Screenwriters: John Paxton, Ben Maddow

Producer: Stanley Kramer

• Marlon Brando (Johnny Strabler)

• Mary Murphy (Kathie Bleeker)

• Robert Keith (Sheriff Harry Bleeker)

• Lee Marvin (Chino)

• Jay C. Flippen (Sheriff Stew Singer)

Rooney’s short story re-creates the magazine article but raises the level of violence. The film adds a rivalry between two motorcycle gangs that results in violence between the gangs until the police order them out of town. They leave for a different town and largely spare the civilians who are enjoying the benefits of the cyclists’ spending spree — especially at the bar. The law is represented by a single sheriff, who is quickly recognized as being weak and ineffectual, encouraging the gang to become more and more rowdy and violent.

The Beetles, headed by Chino, and the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club, led by Johnny Strabler, are bitter rivals, exacerbated when a member of the Black Rebels steals a trophy won by the Beetles, and fights ensue. Strabler, a cop-hating biker, is attracted to Kathie Bleeker, an innocent young waitress at the bar, who finds herself intrigued by the handsome, brooding young man.

Trouble escalates when gang members throw the sheriff into his own jail cell and then go after Kathie, his daughter, but Johnny rescues her. When he takes her for a drive, she decides that she would like to go away with him but he turns her down. Shocked and hurt, she cries and runs away with Johnny in pursuit. A group of tough town vigilantes misinterpret the scene, chase Johnny down, and beat him furiously.

The film does not include the major violent event in the short story, which did not occur in the real-life episode that inspired it. Instead, in spite of the violent activity displayed in the film, it tended to glamorize the bikers, who had never previously been seen in such a positive light. Instead of being seen merely as criminal thugs, they — particularly the charismatic character played by Marlon Brando — were portrayed as rebels. When Kathie asks Johnny what he is rebelling against, he replies, “Whaddaya got?”

Although now regarded as a great film, it was banned in Great Britain until 1968 because of its romanticizing of the violent motorcycle gangs.

The role of Chino originally had been given to Keenan Wynn, who spent weeks on the film during preproduction, but he was under contract to MGM, which refused to release him. He was replaced by Lee Marvin, who was often drunk during filming, both on- and offscreen. The animosity between him and Brando in the film’s scenario carried over to their private lives. When he was cast as Chino, Marvin did not know how to ride a motorcycle but he had no intention of being one-upped by Brando, so quickly learned, eventually becoming an enthusiastic racer.

The working titles of The Wild One during production were The Cyclists’ Raid and Hot Blood.

CYCLISTS’ RAID Frank Rooney

Joel Bleeker, owner and operator of the Pendleton Hotel, was adjusting the old redwood clock in the lobby when he heard the sound of the motors. At first he thought it might be one of those four-engine planes on the flights from Los Angeles to San Francisco which occasionally got far enough off course to be heard in the valley. And for a moment, braced against the steadily approaching vibrations of the sound, he had the fantastic notion that the plane was going to strike the hotel. He even glanced at his daughter, Cathy, standing a few feet to his right and staring curiously at the street.

Then, with his fingers still on the hour hand of the clock, he realized that the sound was not something coming down from the air but the high, sputtering racket of many vehicles moving along the ground. Cathy and Bret Timmons, who owned one of the two drugstores in the town, went out onto the veranda, but Bleeker stayed by the clock, consulting the railroad watch he pulled from his vest pocket and moving the hour hand on the clock forward a minute and a half. He stepped back deliberately, shut the glass case, and looked at the huge brass numbers and the two ornate brass pointers. It was eight minutes after seven, approximately twenty-two minutes until sundown. He put the railroad watch back in his pocket and walked slowly and incuriously through the open doors of the lobby. He was methodical and orderly, and the small things he did every day — like setting the clock — were important to him. He was not to be hurried — especially by something as elusively irritating as a sound, however unusual.

There were only three people on the veranda when Bleeker came out of the lobby — his daughter Cathy, Timmons, and Francis LaSalle, co-owner of LaSalle and Fleet, Hardware. They stood together quietly, looking, without appearing to stare, at a long stern column of red motorcycles coming from the south, filling the single main street of the town with the noise of a multitude of pistons and the crackling of exhaust pipes. They could see now that the column was led by a single white motorcycle which, when it came abreast of the hotel, turned abruptly right and stopped. They saw, too, that the column, without seeming to slow down or to execute any elaborate movement, had divided itself into two single files. At the approximate second, having received a signal from their leader, they also turned right and stopped.

The whole flanking action, singularly neat and quite like the various vehicular formations he remembered in the army, was distasteful to Bleeker. It recalled a little too readily his tenure as a lieutenant colonel overseas in England, France, and finally Germany.

“Mr. Bleeker?”

Bleeker realized the whole troop — no one in the town either then or after that night was ever agreed on the exact number of men in the troop — had dismounted and that the leader was addressing him.

“I’m Bleeker,” Although he hadn’t intended to, he stepped forward when he spoke, much as he had stepped forward in the years when he commanded a battalion.

“I’m Gar Simpson and this is Troop B of the Angeleno Motorcycle Club,” the leader said. He was a tall, spare man, and his voice was coldly courteous to the point of mockery. “We expect to bivouac outside your town tonight and we wondered if we might use the facilities of your hotel. Of course, sir, we’ll pay.”

“There’s a washroom downstairs. If you can put up with that—”

“That will be fine, sir. Is the dining room still open?”

“It is.”

“Could you take care of twenty men?”

“What about the others?”

“They can be accommodated elsewhere, sir.”

Simpson saluted casually and, turning to the men assembled stiffly in front of the hotel, issued a few quiet orders. Quickly and efficiently, the men in the troop parked their motorcycles at the curb. About a third of the group detached itself and came deferentially but steadily up the hotel steps. They passed Bleeker who found himself maneuvered aside and went into the lobby. As they passed him, Bleeker could see the slight converted movement of their faces — though not their eyes, which were covered by large green goggles — toward his daughter Cathy. Bleeker frowned after them but before he could think of anything to say, Simpson, standing at his left, touched his arm.

“I’ve divided the others into two groups,” he said quietly. “One group will eat at the diner and the other at the Desert Hotel.”

“Very good,” Bleeker said. “You evidently know the town like a book. The people, too. Have you ever been here before?”

“We have a map of all the towns in this part of California, sir. And of course we know the names of all the principal hotels and their proprietors. Personally, I could use a drink. Would you join me?”

“After you,” Bleeker said.

He stood watching Simpson stride into the lobby and without any hesitation go directly to the bar. Then he turned to Cathy, seeing Timmons and LaSalle lounging on the railing behind her, their faces already indistinct in the plummeting California twilight.

“You go help in the kitchen, Cathy,” Bleeker said. “I think it’d be better if you didn’t wait on tables.”

“I wonder what they look like behind those goggles,” Cathy said.

“Like anybody else,” Timmons said. He was about thirty, somewhat coarse and intolerant and a little embarrassed at being in love with a girl as young as Cathy. “Where did you think they came from? Mars?”

“What did they say the name of their club was?” Cathy said.

“Angeleno,” LaSalle said.

“They must be from Los Angeles. Heigh-ho. Shall I wear my very best gingham, citizen colonel?”

“Remember now — you stay in the kitchen,” Bleeker said.

He watched her walk into the lobby, a tall slender girl of seventeen, pretty and enigmatic, with something of the brittle independence of her mother. Bleeker remembered suddenly, although he tried not to, the way her mother had walked away from him that frosty January morning two years ago saying, “I’m going for a ride.” And then the two-day search in the mountains after the horse had come back alone and the finding of her body — the neck broken — in the stream at the foot of the cliff. During the war he had never really believed that he would live to get back to Cathy’s mother, and after the war he hadn’t really believed he would be separated from her — not again — not twice in so short a time.

Shaking his head — as if by that motion he could shed his memories as easily as a dog sheds water — Bleeker went in to join Gar Simpson who was sitting at a table in the barroom. Simpson stood politely when Bleeker took the opposite chair.

“How long do you fellows plan to stay?” Bleeker asked. He took the first sip of his drink, looked up, and stared at Simpson.

“Tonight and tomorrow morning,” Simpson said.

Like all the others, he was dressed in a brown windbreaker, khaki shirt, khaki pants, and, as Bleeker had previously observed, wore dark calf-length boots. A cloth and leather helmet lay on the table beside Simpson’s drink, but he hadn’t removed his flat green goggles, an accouterment giving him and the men in his troop the appearance of some tropical tribe with enormous semiprecious eyes, lidless and immovable. That was Bleeker’s first impression and, absurd as it was, it didn’t seem an exaggeration of fancy but of truth.

“Where do you go after this?”

“North.” Simpson took a rolled map from a binocular case slung over his shoulder and spread it on the table. “Roughly we’re following the arc of an ellipse with its southern tip based on Los Angeles and its northern end touching Fresno.”

“Pretty ambitious for a motorcycle club.”

“We have a month,” Simpson said. “This is our first week, but we’re in no hurry and we’re out to see plenty of country.”

“What are you interested in mainly?”

“Roads. Naturally, being a motorcycle club — you’d be surprised at the rate we’re expanding — we’d like to have as much of California as possible opened up to us.”

“I see.”

“Keeps the boys fit, too. The youth of America. Our hope for the future.” Simpson pulled sternly at his drink, and Bleeker had the impression that Simpson was repressing, openly, and with pride, a vast sparkling ecstasy.

Bleeker sat and watched the young men in the troop file upstairs from the public washroom and stroll casually but nevertheless with discipline into the dining room. They had removed their helmets and strapped them to their belts, each helmet in a prescribed position to the left of the belt-buckle, but — like Simpson — they had retained their goggles. Bleeker wondered if they ever removed the goggles long enough to wash under them and, if they did, what the flesh under them looked like.

“I think I’d better help out at the tables,” Bleeker said. He stood up, and Simpson stood with him. “You say you’re from Troop B? Is that right?”

“Correct. We’re forming Troop G now. Someday—”

“You’ll be up to Z,” Bleeker said.

“And not only in California.”

“Where else for instance?”

“Nevada — Arizona — Colorado — Wyoming.”

Simpson smiled, and Bleeker, turning away from him abruptly, went into the dining room where he began to help the two waitresses at the tables. He filled water glasses, set out extra forks, and brought steins of beer from the bar. As he served the troop, their polite thank you’s ornate and insecure, irritated him. It reminded him of tricks taught to animals, the animals only being allowed to perform under certain obvious conditions of security. And he didn’t like the cool way they stared at the two waitresses, both older women and fixtures in the town, and then leaned their heads together as if every individual thought had to be pooled and divided equally among them. He admitted, after some covert study, that the twenty men were really only variations of one, the variations, with few exceptions, being too subtle for him to recognize and differentiate. It was the goggles, he decided, covering that part of the face which is most noteworthy and most needful for identification — the eyes and the mask around the eyes.

Bleeker went into the kitchen, pretending to help but really to be near Cathy. The protective father, he thought ironically, watching his daughter cut pie and lay the various colored wedges on the white blue-bordered plates.

“Well, Daddy, what’s the verdict?” Cathy looked extremely grave, but he could see that she was amused.

“They’re a fine body of men.”

“Uh-huh. Have you called the police yet?”

He laughed. “It’s a good thing you don’t play poker.”

“Child’s play.” She slid the last piece of blueberry pie on a plate. “I saw you through the door. You looked like you were ready to crack the Siegfried line — singlehanded.”

“That man Simpson.”

“What about him?”

“Why don’t you go upstairs and read a book or something?”

“Now, Daddy — you’re the only professional here. They’re just acting like little tin soldiers out on a spree.”

“I wish to God they were made of tin.”

“All right. I’ll keep away from them. I promise.” She made a gesture of crossing her throat with the thin edge of a knife. He leaned over and kissed her forehead, his hand feeling awkward and stern on her back.

After dinner the troop went into the bar, moving with a strange co-ordinated fluency that was both casual and military, and sat jealously together in one corner of the room. Bleeker served them pitchers of beer, and for the most part they talked quietly together, Simpson at their center, their voices guarded and urgent as if they possessed information which couldn’t be disseminated safely among the public.

Bleeker left them after a while and went upstairs to his daughter’s room. He wasn’t used to being severe with Cathy and he was a little embarrassed by what he had said to her in the kitchen. She was turning the collars of some of his old shirts, using a portable sewing machine he had bought her as a present on her last birthday. As he came in, she held one of the shirts comically to the floor lamp, and he could see how thin and transparent the material was. Her mother’s economy in small things, almost absurd when compared to her limitless generosity in matters of importance, had been one of the family jokes. It gave him an extraordinary sense of pleasure, so pure it was like a sudden inhalation of oxygen, to see that his daughter had not only inherited this tradition but had considered it meaningful enough to carry on. He went down the hall to his own room without saying anything further to her. Cathy was what he himself was in terms which could mean absolutely nothing to anyone else.

He had been in his room for perhaps an hour, working on the hotel accounts and thinking obliquely of the man Simpson, when he heard, faintly and apparently coming from no one direction, the sound of singing. He got up and walked to the windows overlooking the street. Standing there, he thought he could fix the sound farther up the block toward Cunningham’s bar. Except for something harsh and mature in the voices, it was the kind of singing that might be heard around a Boy Scout campfire, more rhythmic than melodic and more stirring than tuneful. And then he could hear it almost under his feet, coming out of the hotel lobby and making three or four people on the street turn and smile foolishly toward the doors of the veranda.

Oppressed by something sternly joyous in the voices, Bleeker went downstairs to the bar, hearing, as he approached, the singing became louder and fuller. Outside of Simpson and the twenty men in the troop there were only three townsmen — including LaSalle — in the bar. Simpson, seeing Bleeker in the door, got up and walked over to him, moving him out into the lobby where they could talk.

“I hope the boys aren’t disturbing you,” he said.

“It’s early,” Bleeker said.

“In an organization as large and selective as ours it’s absolutely necessary to insist on a measure of discipline. And it’s equally necessary to allow a certain amount of relaxation.”

“The key word is selective, I suppose.”

“We have our standards,” Simpson said primly.

“May I ask you what the hell your standards are?”

Simpson smiled. “I don’t quite understand your irritation, Mr. Bleeker.”

“This is an all-year-round thing, isn’t it? This club of yours?”

“Yes.”

“And you have an all-year-round job with the club?”

“Of course.”

“That’s my objection, Simpson. Briefly and simply stated, what you’re running is a private army.” Bleeker tapped the case slung over Simpson’s shoulder. “Complete with maps, all sorts of local information, and of course a lobby in Sacramento.”

“For a man who has traveled as widely as you have, Mr. Bleeker, you display an uncommon talent for exaggeration.”

“As long as you behave yourselves I don’t care what you do. This is a small town and we don’t have many means of entertainment. We go to bed at a decent hour and I suggest you take that into consideration. However, have your fun. Nobody here has any objections to that.”

“And of course we spend our money.”

“Yes,” Bleeker said. “You spend your money.”

He walked away from Simpson and went out onto the veranda. The singing was now both in front and in back of him. Bleeker stood for a moment on the top steps of the veranda looking at the moon, hung like a slightly soiled but luminous pennant in the sky. He was embarrassed by his outburst to Simpson and he couldn’t think why he had said such things. Private army. Perhaps, as Simpson had said, he was exaggerating. He was a small-town man and he had always hated the way men surrendered their individuality to attain perfection as a unit. It had been necessary during the war but it wasn’t necessary now. Kid stuff — with an element of growing pains.

He walked down the steps and went up the sidewalk toward Cunningham’s bar. They were singing there, too, and he stood outside the big plate-glass window peering in at them and listening to the harsh, pounding voices colored here and there with the sentimentalism of strong beer. Without thinking further he went into the bar. It was dim and cool and alien to his eyes, and at first he didn’t notice the boy sitting by himself in a booth near the front. When he did, he was surprised — more than surprised, shocked — to see that the boy wasn’t wearing his goggles but had placed them on the table by a bottle of Coca-Cola. Impulsively, he walked over to the booth and sat across from the boy.

“This seat taken?”

He had to shout over the noise of the singing. The boy leaned forward over the table and smiled.

“Hope we’re not disturbing you.”

Bleeker caught the word “disturbing” and shook his head negatively. He pointed to his mouth, then to the boy and to the rest of the group. The boy, too, shook his head. Bleeker could see that he was young, possibly twenty-five, and that he had dark straight hair cut short and parted neatly at the side. The face was square but delicate, the nose short, the mouth wide. The best thing about the boy, Bleeker decided, were his eyes, brown, perhaps, or dark gray, set in two distorted ovals of white flesh which contrasted sharply with the heavily tanned skin on the cheeks, forehead and jaws. With his goggles on he would have looked like the rest. Without them he was a pleasant young man, altogether human and approachable.

Bleeker pointed to the Coca-Cola bottle. “You’re not drinking.”

“Beer makes me sick.”

Bleeker got the word “beer” and the humorous ulping motion the boy made. They sat exchanging words and sometimes phrases, illustrated always with a series of clumsy, groping gestures until the singing became less coherent and spirited and ended finally in a few isolated coughs. The men in the troop were moving about individually now, some leaning over the bar and talking in hoarse whispers to the bartender, others walking unsteadily from group to group and detaching themselves immediately to go over to another group, the groups, usually two or three men, constantly edging away from themselves and colliding with and being held briefly by others. Some simply stood in the center of the room and brayed dolorously at the ceiling.

Several of the troop walked out of the bar, and Bleeker could see them standing on the wide sidewalk looking up and down the street — as contemptuous of one another’s company as they had been glad of it earlier. Or not so much contemptuous as unwilling to be coerced too easily by any authority outside themselves. Bleeker smiled as he thought of Simpson and the man’s talk of discipline.

“They’re looking for women,” the boy said.

Bleeker had forgotten the boy temporarily, and the sudden words spoken in a normal voice startled and confused him. He thought quickly of Cathy — but then Cathy was safe in her room — probably in bed. He took the watch from his vest pocket and looked at it carefully.

“Five minutes after ten,” he said.

“Why do they do that?” the boy demanded. “Why do they have to be so damned indecent about things like that? They haven’t got the nerve to do anything but stare at waitresses. And then they get a few beers in them and go around pinching and slapping — they—”

Bleeker shivered with embarrassment. He was looking directly into the boy’s eyes and seeing the color run under the tears and the jerky pinching movement of the lids as against something injurious and baleful. It was an emotion too rawly infantile to be seen without being hurt by it, and he felt both pity and contempt for a man who would allow himself to display such a feeling — without any provocation — so nakedly to a stranger.

“Sorry,” the boy said.

He picked up the green goggles and fitted them awkwardly over his eyes. Bleeker stood up and looked toward the center of the room. Several of the men turned their eyes and then moved their heads away without seeming to notice the boy in the booth. Bleeker understood them. This was the one who could be approached. The reason for that was clear, too. He didn’t belong. Why and wherefore he would probably never know.

He walked out of the bar and started down the street toward the hotel. The night was clear and cool and smelled faintly of the desert, of sand, of heated rock, of the sweetly-sour plants growing without water and even of the sun which burned itself into the earth and never completely withdrew. There were only a few townsmen on the sidewalk wandering up and down, lured by the presence of something unusual in the town and masking, Bleeker thought, a ruthless and menacing curiosity behind a tolerant grin. He shrugged his shoulders distastefully. He was like a cat staring into a shadow the shape of its fears.

He was no more than a hundred feet from the hotel when he heard — or thought he heard — the sound of automatic firing. It was a well-remembered sound but always new and frightening.

Then he saw the motorcycle moving down the middle of the street, the exhaust sputtering loudly against the human resonance of laughter, catcalls, and epithets. He exhaled gently, the pain in his lungs subsiding with his breath. Another motorcycle speeded after the first, and he could see four of five machines being wheeled out and the figures of their riders leaping into the air and bringing their weight down on the starting pedals. He was aware, too, that the lead motorcycles, having traversed the length of the street, had turned and were speeding back to the hotel. He had the sensation of moving — even when he stood still — in the relation to the objects heading toward each other. He heard the high unendurable sound of metal squeezing metal and saw the front wheel of a motorcycle twist and wobble and its rider roll along the asphalt toward the gutter where he sat up finally and moved his goggled head feebly from side to side.

As Bleeker looked around him, he saw the third group of men which had divided earlier from the other two coming out of the bar across the street from Cunningham’s, waving their arms in recognizable motions of cheering. The boy who had been thrown from the motorcycle vomited quietly into the gutter. Bleeker walked very fast toward the hotel. When he reached the top step of the veranda, he was caught and jostled by some five or six cyclists running out of the lobby, one of whom fell and was kicked rudely down the steps. Bleeker staggered against one of the pillars and broke a fingernail catching it. He stood there for a moment, fighting his temper, and then went into the lobby.

A table had been overthrown and lay on its top, and wooden legs stiffly and foolishly exposed, its magazines scattered around it, some with their pages spread face down so that the bindings rose along the back. He stepped on glass and realized one of the panels in the lobby door had been smashed. One of the troop walked stupidly out of the bar, his body sagging against the impetus propelling him forward until without actually falling he lay stretched on the floor, beer gushing from his mouth and nose and making a green and yellow pool before it sank into the carpet.

As Bleeker walked toward the bar, thinking of Simpson and of what he could say to him, he saw two men going up the stairs toward the second floor. He ran over to intercept them. Recognizing the authority in his voice, they came obediently down the stairs and walked across the lobby to the veranda, one of them saying over his shoulder, “Okay, Pop, okay — keep your lid on.” The smiles they exchanged enraged him. After they were out of sight, he ran swiftly up the stairs, panting a little, and along the hall to his daughter’s room.

It was quiet and there was no strip of light beneath the door. He stood listening for a moment with his ear to the panels and then turned back toward the stairs.

A man or boy, any of twenty or forty or sixty identical figures, goggled and in khaki, came around the corner of the second-floor corridor and put his hand on the knob of the door nearest the stairs. He squeezed the knob gently and then moved on to the next door, apparently unaware of Bleeker. Bleeker, remembering not to run or shout or knock the man down, walked over to him, took his arm and led him down the stairs, the arm unresisting, even flaccid, in his grip.

Bleeker stood indecisively at the foot of the stairs, watching the man walk automatically away from him. He thought he should go back upstairs and search the hall. And he thought, too, he had to reach Simpson. Over the noise of the motorcycles moving rapidly up and down the street, he heard a crash in the bar, a series of drunken elongated curses, ending abruptly in a small sound like a man’s hand laid flatly and sharply on a table.

His head was beginning to ache badly and his stomach to sour under the impact of a slow and steady anger. He walked into the bar and stood staring at Francis LaSalle — LaSalle and Fleet, Hardware — who lay sprawled on the floor, his shoulders touching the brass rail under the bar and his head turned so that his cheek rubbed the black polished wood above the rail. The bartender had his hands below the top of the bar and he was watching Simpson and a half a dozen men arranged in a loose semicircle above and beyond LaSalle.

Bleeker lifted LaSalle, who was a little dazed but not really hurt, and set him on a chair. After he was sure LaSalle was all right, he walked up to Simpson.

“Get your men together,” he said. “And get them out of here.”

Simpson took a long yellow wallet folded like a book and laid some money on the bar.

“That should take care of the damages,” he said. His tongue was a little thick, and his mouth didn’t quite shut after the words were spoken, but Bleeker didn’t think he was drunk. Bleeker saw, too — or thought he saw — the little cold eyes behind the glasses as bright and as sterile as a painted floor. Bleeker raised his arm slightly and lifted his heels off the floor, but Simpson turned abruptly and walked away from him, the men in the troop swaying at his heels like a pack of lolling hounds. Bleeker stood looking foolishly after them. He had expected a fight, and his body was still poised for one. He grunted heavily.

“Who hit him?” Bleeker motioned toward LaSalle.

“Damned if I know,” the bartender said. “They all look alike to me.”

That was true, of course. He went back into the lobby, hearing LaSalle say, weakly and tearfully, “Goddamn them — the bastards.” He met Campbell, the deputy sheriff, a tall man with the arms and shoulders of a child beneath a foggy, bloated face.

“Can you do anything?” Bleeker asked. The motorcycles were racing up and down the street, alternately whining and backfiring, and one had jumped the curb and was cruising on the sidewalk.

“What do you want me to do?” Campbell demanded. “Put ’em all in jail?”

The motorcycle on the sidewalk speeded up and skidded obliquely into a plate-glass window, the front wheel bucking and climbing the brick base beneath the window. A single large section of glass slipped edge-down to the sidewalk and fell slowly toward the cyclist who, with his feet spread and kicking at the cement, backed clumsily away from it. Bleeker could feel the crash in his teeth.

Now there were other motorcycles on the sidewalk. One of them hit a parked car at the edge of the walk. The rider standing astride his machine beat the window out of the car with his gloved fists. Campbell started down the steps toward him but was driven back by a motorcycle coming from his left. Bleeker could hear the squeal of the tires against the wooden riser at the base of the steps. Campbell’s hand was on his gun when Bleeker reached him.

“That’s no good,” he yelled. “Get the state police. Ask for a half dozen squad cars.”

Campbell, angry but somewhat relieved, went up the steps and into the lobby. Bleeker couldn’t know how long he stood on the veranda watching the mounting devastation on the street — the cyclist racing past store windows and hurling, presumably, beer bottles at the glass fronts; the two, working as a team, knocking down weighing machines and the signs in front of the motion-picture theater; the innumerable mounted men running the angry townspeople, alerted and aroused by the awful sounds of damage to their property, back into their suddenly lighted homes again or up the steps of his hotel or into niches along the main street, into doorways, and occasionally into the ledges and bays of glassless windows.

He saw Simpson — or rather a figure on the white motorcycle, helmeted and goggled — stationed calmly in the middle of the street under a hanging lamp. Presumably, he had been there for some time but Bleeker hadn’t seen him, the many rapid movements on the street making any static object unimportant and even, in a sense, invisible. Bleeker saw him now and he felt again that spasm of anger which was like another life inside his body. He could have strangled Simpson then, slowly and with infinite pride. He knew without any effort of reason that Simpson was making no attempt to control his men but waiting rather for that moment when their minds, subdued but never actually helpless, would again take possession of their bodies.

Bleeker turned suddenly and went back into the lobby as if by that gesture of moving away he could pin his thoughts to Simpson, who, hereafter, would be responsible for them. He walked over the desk where Timmons and Campbell, the deputy, were talking.

“You’ve got the authority,” Timmons was saying angrily. “Fire over their heads. And if that doesn’t stop them—”

Campbell looked uneasily at Bleeker. “Maybe if we could get their leader—”

“Did you get the police?” Bleeker asked.

“They’re on their way,” Campbell said. He avoided looking at Timmons and continued to stare hopefully and miserably at Bleeker.

“You’ve had your say,” Timmons said abruptly. “Now I’ll have mine.”

He started for the lobby doors, but Campbell, suddenly incensed, grabbed his arm.

“You leave this to me,” he said. “You start firing a gun—”

Campbell’s mouth dropped, and Bleeker, turning his head, saw the two motorcycles coming through the lobby doors. They circled leisurely around for a moment and then one of them shot suddenly toward them, the goggled rider looming enormously above the wide handlebars. They scattered, Bleeker diving behind a pillar, and Campbell and Timmons jumping behind the desk. The noise of the two machines assaulted them with as much effect as the sight of the speeding metal itself.

Bleeker didn’t know why, in course of watching the two riders, he looked into the hall toward the foot of the stairway. Nor did it seem at all unreasonable that when he looked he should see Cathy standing there. Deeply, underneath the outward preoccupation of his mind, he must have been thinking of her. Now there she was. She wore the familiar green robe, belted and pulled in at the waist, and beneath its hem he could see the white slippers and the pink edge of her nightgown. Her hair was down, and he had the impression her eyes were not quite open, although, obviously, they were. She looked, he thought, as if she had waked, frowned at the clock, and come downstairs to scold him for staying up too late. He had no idea what time it was.

He saw — and of course Cathy saw — the motorcycle speeding toward her. He was aware that he screamed at her, too. She did take a slight backward step and raise her arms in a pathetic warding gesture toward the inhuman figure on the motorcycle, but neither could have changed — in that dwarfed period of time and in that short, unmaneuverable space — the course of their actions.

She lay finally across the lower steps, her body clinging to and equally arching away from the base of the newel post. And there was the sudden, shocking exposure of her flesh, the robe and gown torn away from the leg as if pushed aside by the blood welling from her thigh. When he reached her, there was blood in her hair, too, and someone — not Cathy — was screaming into his ears.

After a while the doctor came, and Cathy, her head bandaged and her legs in splints, could be carried into his office and laid on the couch. Bleeker sat on the edge of the couch, his hand over Cathy’s, watching the still white face whose eyes were closed and would not, he knew, open again. The doctor, after his first examination, had looked up quickly, and since Bleeker, too, had been bent over Cathy, their heads had been very close together for a moment. The doctor had assumed, almost immediately, his expression of professional austerity, but Bleeker had seen him in that moment when he had been thinking as a man, fortified of course by a doctor’s knowledge, and Bleeker had known then that Cathy would die but that there would be also this interval of time.

Bleeker turned from watching Cathy and saw Timmons standing across the room. The man was — or had been — crying, but his face wasn’t set for it, and the tears, points of colorless, sparkling water on his jaws, were unexpectedly delicate against the coarse texture of his skin. Timmons waved a bandaged hand awkwardly, and Bleeker remembered, abruptly and jarringly, seeing Timmons diving for the motorcycle which had reversed itself, along with the other, and raced out of the lobby.

There was no sound now either from the street or the lobby. It was incredible, thinking of the racket a moment ago, that there should be this utter quietude, not only the lack of noise but the lack of vibration of movement. The doctor came and went, coming to bend over Cathy and then going away again. Timmons stayed. Beyond shifting his feet occasionally, he didn’t move at all but stood patiently across the room, his face toward Cathy and Bleeker but not, Bleeker thought once when he looked up, actually seeing them.

“The police,” Bleeker said sometime later.

“They’re gone,” Timmons said in a hoarse whisper. And then after a while, “They’ll get ’em — don’t worry.”

Bleeker saw that the man blushed helplessly and looked away from him. The police were no good. They would catch Simpson. Simpson would pay damages. And that would be the end of it. Who could identify Cathy’s assailant? Not himself, certainly — not Timmons nor Campbell. They were all alike. They were standardized figurines, seeking in each other a willful loss of identity, dividing themselves equally among one another until there was only a single mythical figure, unspeakably sterile and furnishing the norm for hundreds of others. He could not accuse something which didn’t actually exist.

He wasn’t sure of the exact moment when Cathy died. It might have been when he heard the motorcycle, unbelievably solitary in the quiet night, approaching the town. He knew only that the doctor came for the last time and that there was now a coarse, heavy blanket laid mercifully over Cathy. He stood looking down at the blanket for a moment, whatever he was feeling repressed and delayed inside him, and then went back to the lobby and out onto the veranda. There were a dozen men standing there looking up the street toward the sound of the motorcycle, steadily but slowly coming nearer. He saw that when they glanced at each other their faces were hard and angry but when they looked at him they were respectful and a little abashed.

Bleeker could see from the veranda a number of people moving among the smashed store-fronts, moving, stopping, bending over and then straightening up to move somewhere else, all dressed somewhat extemporaneously and therefore seeming without purpose. What they picked up they put down. What they put down they stared at grimly and then picked up again. They were like a dispossessed minority brutally but lawfully discriminated against. When the motorcycle appeared at the north end of the street, they looked at it and then looked away again, dully and seemingly without resentment.

It was only after some moments that they looked up again, this time purposefully, and began to move slowly toward the hotel where the motorcycle had now stopped, the rider standing on the sidewalk, his face raised to the veranda.

No one on the veranda moved until Bleeker, after a visible effort, walked down the steps and stood facing the rider. It was the boy Bleeker had talked to in the bar. The goggles and helmet were hanging at his belt.

“I couldn’t stand it any longer,” the boy said. “I had to come back.”

He looked at Bleeker as if he didn’t dare look anywhere else. His face was adolescently shiny and damp, the marks, Bleeker thought, of a proud and articulate fear. He should have been heroic in his willingness to come back to the town after what had been done to it, but to Bleeker he was only a dirty little boy returning to a back fence his friends had defaced with pornographic writing and calling attention to the fact that he was afraid to erase the writing but was determined nevertheless to do it. Bleeker was revolted. He hated the boy far more than he could have hated Simpson for bringing this to his attention when he did not want to think of anything or anyone but Cathy.

“I wasn’t one of them,” the boy said. “You remember, Mr. Bleeker. I wasn’t drinking.”

This declaration of innocence — this willingness to take blame for acts which he hadn’t committed — enraged Bleeker.

“You were one of them,” he said.

“Yes. But after tonight—”

“Why didn’t you stop them?” Bleeker demanded loudly. He felt the murmur of the townspeople at his back and someone breathed harshly on his neck. “You were one of them. You could have done something. Why in God’s name didn’t you do it?”

“What could I do?” the boy said. He spread his hands and stepped back as if to appeal to the men beyond Bleeker.

Bleeker couldn’t remember, either shortly after or much later, exactly what he did then. If the boy hadn’t stepped back like that — if he hadn’t raised his hand... Bleeker was in the middle of a group of bodies and he was striking with his fists and being struck. And then he was kneeling on the sidewalk, holding the boy’s head in his lap and trying to protect him from the heavy shoes of the men around him. He was crying out, protesting, exhorting, and after a time the men moved away from him and someone helped him carry the boy up the steps and lay him on the veranda. When he looked up finally, only Timmons and the doctor were there. Up and down the street there were now only shadows and the diminishing sounds of invisible bodies. The night was still again as abruptly as it had been confounded with noise.

Some time later Timmons and the doctor carried the boy, alive but terribly hurt, into the hotel. Bleeker sat on the top step of the veranda, staring at the moon which had shifted in the sky and was now nearer the mountains in the west. It was not in any sense romantic or inflamed but coldly clear and sane. And the light it sent was cold and sane and lit in himself what he could have liked to hide.

He could have said that having lost Cathy he was not afraid any longer of losing himself. No one would blame him. Cathy’s death was his excuse for striking the boy, hammering him to the sidewalk, and stamping on him as he had never believed he could have stamped on any living thing. No one would say he should have lost Cathy lightly — without anger and without that appalling desire to avenge her. It was utterly natural — as natural as a man drinking a few beers and riding a motorcycle insanely through a town like this. Bleeker shuddered. It might have been all right for a man like Timmons who was and would always be incapable of thinking what he — Joel Bleeker — was thinking. It was not — and would never be — all right for him.

Bleeker got up and stood for a moment on the top step of the veranda. He wanted, abruptly and madly, to scream his agony into the night with no more restraint than that of an animal seeing his guts beneath him on the ground. He wanted to smash something — anything — glass, wood, stone — his own body. He could feel his fists going into the boy’s flesh. And there was that bloody but living thing on the sidewalk and himself stooping over to shield it.

After a while, aware that he was leaning against one of the wooden pillars supporting the porch and aware, too, that his flesh was numb from being pressed against it, he straightened up slowly and turned to go back into the hotel.

There would always be time to make his peace with the dead. There was little if any time to make his peace with the living.

Murder on the Waterfront BUDD SCHULBERG

Original publication: Collier’s, October 1, 1954

Trying to distinguish among the most outstanding achievements of Seymour “Budd” Wilson Schulberg (1914–2009) is a serious challenge.

His 1941 novel What Makes Sammy Run? was an exposé of a corrupt Hollywood that made him a pariah in his own city and the industry in which he had labored since his teenage years. Though born in New York City, his father, B. P. Schulberg, moved the family to Hollywood when Budd was eight. B. P. Schulberg wrote film scenarios but quickly became a successful producer, partnering with Louis Mayer, so his son grew up in the environment of the movie business. He worked in the Paramount publicity department at the age of seventeen, writing phony biographies of the studio’s actors. After graduating from Dartmouth, he returned to Hollywood to work on screenplays.

Schulberg lamented that his novel What Makes Sammy Run? became a kind of handbook for ambitious young businessmen, embracing the notion of success without conscience of its principal character, Sammy Glick, whose name has entered the language. “Going through life with a conscience,” he says, “is like driving your car with your brakes on.”

An exposé of a different arena in American life was featured in The Harder They Fall (1947), a hard-hitting boxing novel that was later filmed with Humphrey Bogart. Schulberg later became the first boxing editor of Sports Illustrated. He also wrote the screenplay for A Face in the Crowd (1957), based on his own short story.

After “Murder on the Waterfront” was published in a magazine in 1954, Schulberg rewrote it as a full-length novel, published in 1955 as Waterfront, by which time it had already become a successful motion picture. The 1954 film won eight Academy Awards, including those for Schulberg’s screenplay and Elia Kazan’s award as best director.

Schulberg and Kazan, both members of the Communist Party in the late 1930s, had been called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951, where they named seventeen members of the party.

“It’s not a pleasant thing,” Schulberg said of naming names. “My own feeling was that while I didn’t like the committee being so right-wing, I didn’t think it was healthy having a secret organization trying to control the Writers Guild. I felt it was wrong and undermining democracy.” He said that he welcomed the opportunity to denounce the Communist Party, even though it had caused him to be ostracized by much of the Hollywood community.

The iconic motion picture, and the story on which it was based, is an exposé of the corrupt unions that dominated New York City’s dockworkers. Terry Malloy, an ex-prizefighter, watches union thugs kill a man but stays silent until he meets the dead man’s sister and, guided by a fearless priest, begins to revolt against the mobsters.

Title: On the Waterfront, 1954

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Director: Elia Kazan

Screenwriter: Budd Schulberg

Producer: Sam Spiegel

• Marlon Brando (Terry Malloy)

• Karl Malden (Father Barry)

• Lee J. Cobb (Johnny Friendly)

• Rod Steiger (Charley Malloy)

• Eva Marie Saint (Edie Doyle)

On the Waterfront remains one of the greatest films in the history of American cinema. Schulberg’s exposé of the corruption on the docks resulted in the AFL–CIO expelling the East Coast Longshoreman’s Union because of its ties to organized crime. Every major element of its crusade against corruption and its courageous whistle-blower emanates from Schulberg’s original story.

Many of the characters were based on real-life people: Terry Malloy on Anthony DeVincenzo, longshoreman and the defiant leader of the revolt, as well as a witness in the trial against the union leaders; Father Barry on waterfront priest John M. Corridan; and Johnny Friendly, an amalgam of union leader Michael Clemente and notorious mobster Albert Anastasia. They had been profiled in a series of twenty-four articles by Malcolm Johnson for the New York Sun, winning him a Pulitzer Prize. Schulberg was fascinated by the story and researched the longshoremen and their mobster-dominated union for years.

The trial in which Terry Malloy testifies against the mob has been identified as a parallel to Kazan and Schulberg’s testimony at HUAC’s investigation of Communist influence in Hollywood. Kazan agrees that it was but Schulberg denied it, pointing out that he had written the first version of On the Waterfront years before he was called before the committee.

Certainly, the film had important social protest elements, but it also achieved greatness with its portrayals of individuals. In one of its most memorable scenes, Terry Malloy talks to his brother, Charley. “You don’t understand,” he says to the man who let him down. “I could’ve had class. I could’ve been a contender; I could’ve been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am.”

Named one of the greatest films of all time on virtually every survey conducted, On the Waterfront’s eight Oscars tied Gone with the Wind (1939) and From Here to Eternity (1953) for the most awards at the time.

MURDER ON THE WATERFRONT Budd Schulberg

The alarm was about to ring when Matt Gillis reached out his bearlike, heavy-muscled arm and shut it off. Habit. Half-past six. Summer with the light streaming in around the patched window shades, and winter when half-past six was black as midnight. Matt stretched his heavyweight, muscular body and groaned. Habit woke you up at half-past six every morning, but habit didn’t make you like it — not on these raw winter mornings when the wind blew in from the sea, whipping along the waterfront with an intensity it seemed to reserve for longshoremen. He shivered in anticipation.

Matt listened to the wind howling through the narrow canyon of Eleventh Street and thought to himself: Another day, another icy-fingered, stinking day. He pushed one foot from under the covers to test the temperature, and then quickly withdrew it into the warmth of the double bed again. Cold. Damn that janitor, Lacey — the one they all called Rudolph because of his perpetually red nose. Never enough heat in the place. Well, the landlord was probably saying, what do they expect for twenty-five a month?

Matt rolled over heavily, ready for the move into his work clothes. “Matt?” his wife, Franny, murmured, feeling for him drowsily in the dark. “I’ll get up; fix you some coffee.”

“It’s all right.” His buxom Fran. Matt patted her. Her plump-pretty Irish face was still swollen with sleep. For a moment he remembered her as she had been fifteen years ago: the prettiest kid in the neighborhood — bright, flirty, sky-blue eyes and a pug nose, a little bit of a girl smothered in Matt’s big arms, a child in the arms of a grizzly. Now she was plump all over, something like him on a smaller, softer scale, as if she had had to grow along his lines to keep him company.

“Matt, you don’t mind me gettin’ fat?” she had whispered to him one night in the wide, metal-frame bed after the kids finally had fallen asleep.

“Naw, you’re still the best-lookin’ woman in the neighborhood,” Matt had said gallantly.

“At least you can always find me in the dark,” Fran had giggled. They had got to laughing then, until Fran had to stop him because everything Matt did, he did big — laugh, fight, eat, drink, tell off the mob in the union. Even when he thought he was talking normally, he shouted, he bellowed, so when he had chuckled there in the bed, the children — Tom and Mickey and Kate and Johnny and Peggy, the five they had had so far — had stirred in their beds and Fran had said, “Shhh, if the baby wakes up you’ll be walkin’ the floor with her.”

Matt swung his long legs out of the bed and felt the cold touch of the linoleum. He sat there a moment in his long underwear, thinking — he wasn’t sure of what; the day ahead, the days of his youth, the time his old man came home from the pier with three fingers off his right hand (copper sheeting — cut off at the knuckle nice and clean), and all those years the old man battled for his compensation. It was all the old man could talk about, finally, and got to be a joke — never to Pop, but to Matt and his brothers when they were big enough to support him.

Big Matt sat there on the edge of the bed rubbing sleep out of his eyes, thinking, thinking, while his wife, warm and sweet and full in her nightgown, half rose behind him and whispered, “Coffee? Let me get up and make you a cup of coffee.” She wanted to say more; she wanted to say, “Look, Matt honey, I know what it is to go down there to the shape-up when the sun is still climbing up the backs of the buildings. I know what it is for you to stand there with three-four hundred other men and have the hiring boss, Fisheye Moran, look you over like you was so much meat in a butcher shop. I know what it is for you to go to work every morning like you had a job — only you haven’t got a job unless Fisheye, the three-time loser put there by the Village mob, hands you a brass check.” She wanted to say, “Yes, and I know what it is for you to be left standing in the street; I know what you feel when the hiring boss looks through you with those pale blue fisheyes that give him his name.” That’s all today, come back tomorra.

Matt was on his feet now, a burly bear in his long underwear, stretching and groaning to push himself awake. Fran started to get up, but he put his big hand on her shoulder and pushed her back into the warm bed. Well, all right. She was glad to give in. When could a body rest except these precious few minutes in the early morning? “You be careful now, Matt. You be careful. Don’t get in no trouble.”

Fran knew her Matt, the Irish-thick rebel of Local 474, one of the lionhearted — or foolhardy — handful who dared speak up against the Lippy Keegan mob, which had the longshore local in their pocket, and the loading racket, the lunch-hour gambling, and all the other side lines that bring in a quick dollar on the docks. Lippy and his goons ran the neighborhood like storm troopers, and longshoremen who knew what was good for them went along with Keegan’s boys and took what they could get. Matt was always trying to get others to back him up, but the fear was too deep. “Matt, I got me wife and kids to think about; leave me alone,” they’d say, and push their thirty cents across the bar for another whiskey.

Matt tried to make as little noise as possible as he went down the creaky stairway. He closed the tenement door behind him and stood a moment in the clammy morning, feeling the weather. He zipped up his windbreaker and pulled his old cap down on his forehead. Then he drew his head down into the heavy collar, threw out his chest, and turned his face into the wind. It was a big, strong-boned, beefy face, with a heavy jaw and a broken nose, a face that had taken plenty. Over the years the Keegan boys had developed a begrudging respect for Matt. They had hit him with everything and he still kept coming on. The gift of getting up — that’s what they called it on the waterfront.

Matt ducked into the Longdock Bar & Grill on the corner across the street from the pier. It was full of longshoremen grabbing a cup of coffee and maybe some ham and eggs before drifting over to the shape-up. There were men of all sizes and ages, with weatherbeaten faces like Matt’s, many of them with flattened noses, trophies of battles on the docks and in the barrooms; here and there were ex-pugs with big-time memories: the cheers of friends and five hundred dollars for an eight-rounder. Threading through the dock workers was a busy little man whose name was Billy Morgan, though everybody called him “J.P.” because he was the money-lender for the mob. If you didn’t work, J.P. was happy to lend you a deuce or half a bill, at ten per cent a week. If you fell too far behind, J.P. whispered to Fisheye, and Fisheye threw you a couple of days work until the loan was paid off. They had you coming and going, the mob. Matt looked at J.P. and turned away.

Over in the corner were a couple of Lippy’s pistols, Specs Sinclair, a mild-looking, pasty-skinned man who didn’t look like an enforcer but had maybe a dozen stiffs to his credit, and Feets McKenna, a squat muscle man who could rough-and-tumble with the best. Feets was sergeant-at-arms for the local. Specs, for whom signing his name was a lot of writing, was recording secretary. Matt looked straight at them to show he wasn’t backing away, ever. Union officials. Only three-time losers need apply.

Matt pushed his way into the group at the short-order counter. They were men dressed like himself, in old trousers and flannel shirts, with old caps worn slightly askew in the old-country way. They all knew Matt and respected the way he stood up; but a stand-up guy, as they called him, was nobody you wanted to get close to. Not if you wanted to work and stay in one piece in Lippy Keegan’s sector of the harbor.

Matt was waiting for his coffee when he felt a fist smash painfully into his side. He winced and started an automatic counter at whoever it was, and then he looked down and grinned. He should have known. It was Runt Nolan, whose hundred ring battles and twenty five years of brawling on the docks were stamped into his flattened face. But a life of beatings had failed to deaden the twinkle in his eyes. Runt Nolan was always seeing the funny side, even when he was looking down the business end of a triggerboy’s .38. Where other longshoremen turned away in fear from Lippy’s pistoleros, Runt always seemed to take a perverse delight in baiting them. Sometimes they laughed him off and sometimes, if he went on provoking them — and longshoremen were watching to see if Runt could get away with it — they would oblige him with a blackjack or a piece of pipe. Runt had a head like a rock and more lives than a pair of cats, and the stories of his miraculous recoveries from these beatings had become a riverfront legend.

Once they had left him around the corner in the alley lying face down in his own blood, after enough blows on the noggin to crack the skull of a horse; and an hour later, when everyone figured he was on his way to the morgue, damned if he didn’t stagger back into the Longdock and pound the bar for whiskey. “I should worry what they do to me, I’m on borried time,” Runt Nolan liked to say.

Runt grinned when he saw Matt rub his side with mock resentment. “Mornin’, Matt me lad, just wanted t’ see if you was in condition.”

“Don’t be worryin’ about my condition. One more like that and I’ll stand you right on your head.”

“Come on, you big blowhard, I’m ready for you.” Runt fell into a fierce boxing stance and jabbed his small knuckle-broken left fist into Matt’s face.

Matt got his coffee and a sinker and sat down at one of the small tables with Runt. Runt was rarely caught eating. He seemed to consider the need for solid food something of a disgrace, a sign of weakness. Whiskey and beer and maybe once a day a corned-beef sandwich — that was Runt’s diet, and in the face of medical science it had kept him wiry and resilient at fifty-five.

“What kind of a boat we got today?” Matt asked. Runt lived in a two-dollar hotel above the Longdock Bar and he was usually up on his shipping news.

“Bananas,” Runt said, drawing out the middle vowel in disgust.

“Bananas!” Matt groaned. Bananas meant plenty of shoulder work, toting the heavy stalks out the hold. A banana carrier was nothing less than a human pack mule. There was only one good thing about bananas: the men who worked steady could afford to lay off bananas, and so there was always a need for extra hands. The docker who had no in with the hiring boss, and even the fellow who was on the outs with the Keegan mob, stood a chance of picking up a day on bananas.

By the time Matt and Runt reached the pier, ten minutes before the seven-thirty whistle, there were already a couple of hundred men on hand, warming themselves around fires in metal barrels and shifting their feet to keep the numbness away. Some of them were hard-working men with families, professional longshoremen whose Ireland-born fathers had moved cargo before them. And some of them were only a peg above the bum, casuals who drifted in for a day now and then to keep themselves in drinking money. Some of them were big men with powerful chests, large, raw-faced men who looked like throwbacks to the days of bare-knuckle fights-to-a-finish. Some of them were surprisingly slight, wizen-faced men in castoff clothing, the human flotsam of the waterfront.

Fisheye came out of the pier, flanked by a couple of the boys, “Flash” Gordon and “Blackie” McCook. There were about three hundred longshoremen waiting for jobs now. Obediently they formed themselves into a large horseshoe so Fisheye could look them over. Meat in a butcher shop. The men Fisheye wanted were the ones who worked. You kicked back part of your day’s pay to Fisheye or did favors for Lippy if you wanted to work regular. You didn’t have to have a record, but a couple of years in a respectable pen didn’t do you any harm.

“I need two hundred banana carriers.” Fisheye’s hoarse voice seemed to take its pitch from the foghorns that barked along the Hudson. Jobs for two hundred men at a coveted $2.27 an hour. The three, maybe four hundred men eyed one another in listless rivalry. “You — and — you — Pete — okay, Slim...” Fisheye was screening the men with a cold, hard look. Nearly twenty years ago a broken-down dock worker had gone across the street from the shape-up. “No work?” the bartender had said, perfunctorily, and the old man had answered, “Nah, he just looked right through me with those blasted fisheyes of his.” Fisheye — it had made the bartender laugh, and the name had stuck.

Anger felt cold and uncomfortable in Matt’s stomach as he watched Fisheye pass out those precious tabs. He didn’t mind seeing the older men go in, the ones he had shaped with for years, especially family men like himself. What gave him that hateful, icy feeling in his belly was seeing the young kids go in ahead of him, new-generation hoodlums like the fresh-faced Skelly kid who boasted of the little muscle jobs he did for Lippy and the boys as his way of paying off for steady work. Young Skelly had big ideas, they said around the bar. One of these days he might be crowding Lippy himself. That’s how it went down here. “Peaches” Maloney had been Number One — until Lippy dumped him into the gutter outside the Longdock. Matt had seen them come and go. And all the time he had stood up proud and hard while lesser men got the work tabs and the gravy.

Fisheye almost had his two hundred men now. He put his hand on Runt Nolan’s shoulder. “All right, you little sawed-off rat, go on in. But remember I’m doin’ ya a favor. One word out of line and I’ll bounce ya off the ship.”

Runt tightened his hands into fists, wanting to stand up and speak his mind. But a day was a day and he hadn’t worked steady enough lately to keep himself in beers. He looked over at Matt with a helpless defiance and went on into the pier.

Matt waited, thinking about Fran and the kids. And he waited, thinking at Fisheye: It ain’t right, it ain’t right, a bum like you havin’ all this power. He couldn’t keep it out of his face. Fisheye flushed and glared back at him and picked men all around Matt to round out his two hundred. He shoved Matt’s face in it by coming toward him as if he were going to pick him and then reaching over his shoulder for Will Murphy, a toothless old sauce hound whom Matt could outwork five for one. There never had been enough caution in Matt, and now he felt himself trembling with anger. He was grabbing Fisheye before he had time to think it out, holding the startled boss by the thick lapels of his windbreaker.

“Listen to me, you fathead bum. If you don’t put me on today I’ll break you in two. I got kids to feed. You hear me, Fisheye?”

Fisheye pulled himself away and looked around for help. Blackie and young Skelly moved in.

“Okay, boys,” Fisheye said, when he saw they were there. “I c’n handle this myself. This bigmouth is dumb, but he’s not so dumb he wants to wind up in the river. Am I right, Matt me lad?”

In the river. A senseless body kicked off the stringpiece into the black and secretive river, while the city looked the other way. Cause of death: accidental drowning. Dozens and dozens of good men had been splashed into the dark river like so much garbage. Matt knew some of the widows who had stories to tell, if only someone would listen. In the river. Matt drew away from Fisheye. What was the use? Outnumbered and outgunned. But one of these days — went the dream — he and Runt would get some action in the local, some following; they’d call a real election and—

Behind Matt a big truck blasted its horn, ready to drive into the pier. Fisheye thumbed Matt to one side. “All right, get moving, you’re blocking traffic, we got a ship to turn around.” Matt spat into the gutter and walked away.

Back across the street in the Longdock, Matt sat with a beer in front of him, automatically watching the morning television: some good-looking, fast-talking dame selling something — yatta-ta yatta-ta yatta-ta. In the old days, at least you had peace and quiet in the Longdock until the boys with the work tabs came in for lunch. Matt walked up the riverfront to another gin mill and sat with another beer. Now and then a fellow like himself would drift in, on the outs with Lippy and open to Matt’s arguments about getting up a petition to call an honest union election: about time we got the mob’s foot off’n our necks; sure, they’re tough, but if there’s enough of us... it was the old dream of standing up like honest-to-God Americans instead of like oxen with rings in their noses.

Matt thought he was talking quiet but even his whisper had volume, and farther down the bar Feets and Specs were taking it in. They weren’t frowning or threatening, but just looking, quietly drinking and taking it all in.

When Matt finished his beer and said see-ya-later, Specs and Feets rose dutifully and followed him out. A liner going downriver let out a blast that swallowed up all the other sounds in the harbor. Matt didn’t hear them approach until Feets had a hand on his shoulder. Feets was built something like Matt, round and hard. Specs was slight and not much to look at. He wore very thick glasses. He had shot the wrong fellow once. Lippy had told him to go out and buy a new pair of glasses and warned him not to slip up that way again.

“What d’ya say, Matt?” Feets asked, and from his tone no one could have thought them anything but friends.

“Hello, Feets, Specs,” Matt said.

“Listen, Matt, we’d like to talk to you a minute,” Feets said.

“Then talk,” Matt said. “As long as it’s only talk, go ahead.”

“Why do you want to give us so much trouble?” Specs said — any defiance of power mystified him. “You should straighten yourself out, Matt. You’d be working three-four days a week if you just learned to keep that big yap of yours shut.”

“I didn’t know you were so worried about whether I worked or not.”

“Matt, don’t be such a thickheaded mick,” Feets argued. “Why be agitatin’ alla time? You ain’t gonna get anywheres, that’s for sure. All ya do is louse yourself up with Lippy.”

Matt said something short and harsh about Lippy. Feets and Specs looked pained, as if Matt were acting in bad taste.

“I wish you wouldn’t say stuff like that,” Specs said. His face got very white when he was ready for action. On the waterfront he had a reputation for enjoying the trigger squeezing. “You keep saying that stuff and we’ll have to do something about it. You know how Lippy is.”

Matt thought a moment about the danger of saying what he wanted to say: Fran and the kids home waiting for money he’d have to borrow from the moneylender. Why look for trouble? Why buck for the bottom of the river? Was it fair to Fran? Why couldn’t he be like so many other longshoremen — like Flanagan, who had no love for Lippy Keegan but went along to keep food on the table? Lippy ran the piers just like he owned them. You didn’t have to like Lippy, but it sure made life simpler if he liked you.

Matt thought about all this, but he couldn’t help himself. He was a self-respecting man, and it galled him that a pushy racketeer — a graduate of the old Arsenal Mob — and a couple of punks could call themselves a union. I shouldn’t say this. Matt was thinking, and he was already saying it:

“Yeah, I know how Lippy is. Lippy is gonna get the surprise of his stinkin’ life one of these days. Lippy is gonna find himself—”

“You dumb harp.” Feets said. “You must like to get hit in the head.”

“There’s lots I like better,” Matt admitted. “But I sure as hell won’t back away from it.”

Feets and Specs looked at each other and the glance said clearly: What are you going to do with a thickhead like this? They shrugged and walked away from Matt, back to their places at the bar. Later in the day they would give Lippy a full account and find out the next move. This Matt Gillis was giving their boss a hard time. Everything would be lovely down here if it wasn’t for this handful of talk-back guys. They leaned on the bar with a reassuring sense that they were on the side of peace and stability, that Matt Gillis was asking for trouble.

Matt met Runt in the Longdock around five-thirty. Runt was buying because he had the potatoes in his pocket. They talked about this petition they were getting up to call a regular meeting. Runt had been talking to a couple of old-timers in his hatch gang who were half scared to death and half ready to go along. And there were maybe half a dozen young fellows who had young ideas and no use for the old ways of buying jobs from Fisheye and coming on the double whenever Lippy whistled. Another round or two and it was suppertime.

“Have another ball, Matt. The money’s burnin’ a hole in me pocket.”

“Thanks, Runt, but I gotta get home. The wife’ll be hittin’ me with a mop.” This was a familiar, joking threat in the Gillis domain.

Matt wiped his mouth with his sleeve and rubbed his knuckles on Runt’s head. “Now don’t get in no arguments. You watch yourself now.” It was bad business, Matt knew, bucking the mob and hitting the bottle at the same time. They could push you into the drink some night and who was to say you weren’t dead drunk, just another “death by accidental drowning.”

Matt was worried about Runt as he walked up the dark side street to his tenement. Runt took too many chances. Runt liked to say, “I had me fun and I drunk me fill. What’ve I got to lose?”

I better keep my eye on the little fella now that we’re pushin’ so hard for this up-and-up election, Matt was thinking, when he felt something solid whop him just behind the ear. The blow had force enough to drop a horse but Matt half turned, made a club of his right hand and was ready to wield it when the something solid whopped him again at the back of his head. He thought it was the kid, the Skelly punk, there with Feets, but he wasn’t sure. It was dark and his head was coming apart. In a bad dream something was swinging at him on the ground — hobnailed shoes, the finishing touch. Feets, they called him. The darkness closed in over him like a black tarpaulin...

—

Everybody was talking at once and — was it time for him to get up and shape? — he was sprawled on the bed in his room. Go ’way, lemme sleep.

“Matt, listen, this is Doc Wolff.” The small, lean-faced physician was being pushed and breathed on. “The rest of you go on, get out of here.”

Half the tenement population was crowded into the Gillises’ narrow flat. Mrs. Geraghty, who was always like that, took the kids up to eat at her place. Doc Wolff washed out the ugly wounds in Matt’s scalp. Half the people in the neighborhood owed him money he would never see — or ask for. Some of the old-timers still owed his father, who insisted on practicing at seventy-five. Father and son had patched up plenty of wounds like these. They were specialists on blackjack, steel-pipe and gun-butt contusions. Jews in an Irish district, they never took sides, verbally, in the endless guerrilla war between the dock mob and the “insoigents.” All they could do, when a longshoreman got himself in a fix like this, was to overlook the bill. The Wolffs were still poor from too much overlooking.

“Is it serious, Doctor?”

“We’d better X-ray, to make sure it isn’t a skull fracture. I’d like to keep him in St. Vincent’s a couple of days.”

It was no fracture, just a couple of six-inch gashes and a concussion — a neat professional job performed according to instructions. “Don’t knock him out of the box for good. Just leave him so he’ll have something to think about for a week or two.”

On the second day Runt came up with a quart and the good news that the men on the dock were signing the petition. The topping of Matt had steamed them up, where Lippy had figured it would scare them off. Runt said he thought they had enough men, maybe a couple of dozen, to call a rank-and-file meeting.

Father Conley, a waterfront priest with savvy and guts, had offered the rectory library as a haven.

But that night Fran sat at the side of Matt’s bed in the ward for a long talk-to. She had a plan. It had been on her mind for a long time. This was her moment to push it through. Her sister’s husband worked for a storage company. The pay was good, the work was regular, and best of all there weren’t any Lippy Keegans muscling you if you didn’t play it their way. This brother-in-law said there was an opening for Matt. He could come in on a temporary basis and maybe work his way into regular union membership if he liked it. The brother-in-law had a little pull in that direction.

“Please, Matt. Please.” It was Fran’s domestic logic against his bulldog gift of fighting back. If he was a loner like Runt Nolan, he could stand up to Lippy and Specs and Feets and young Skelly and the rest of that trash all he wanted. But was it fair to Fran and the kids to pass up a sure seventy-five dollars a week in order to go hungry and bloody on the piers?

“Why does it always have to be you that sticks his neck out? Next time it’ll be worse. They’ll...”

Yes, Matt knew. The river: Lippy Keegan’s silent partner, the old North River, waiting for him in the dark.

“Okay, Franny,” Matt was saying under his bandages. “Okay. Tell Denny” — that was the brother-in-law — “I’ll take the job.”

In the storage vaults it was nice and quiet. The men came right to work from their homes. There was none of that stopping in at the corner and shooting the breeze about ships coming in and where the jobs might be — no hit or miss. The men were different too: good steady workers who had been there for years, not looking for any excitement. It seemed funny to Matt not to be looking behind him to see if any of Lippy’s boys were on his tail, funny to have money in his pockets without having to worry how he was going to pay it back to the loan sharks.

When Matt had been there three weeks, Fran went out and bought herself a new dress — the first new one in almost two years. And the following Sunday they went up to the park and had lunch at the cafeteria near the zoo — their first visit to a restaurant in Lord knows when. Fran put her hand in Matt’s and said, “Oh, Matt, isn’t this better? Isn’t this how people are supposed to live?”

Matt said yeah, he guessed so. It was good to see Fran happy and relaxed, no longer worried about food on the table for the kids, or whether he’d get home in one piece. Only — he couldn’t put it into words, but when he got back to work on the fifth floor of the huge storage building, he knew what was going to come over him.

And next day it did, stronger than at any time since he started. He wondered what Runt was doing, and Jocko and Bagles and Timmy and the rest of the gang in the Longdock. He hadn’t been in since the first week he started at the storage. The fellows had all asked him how he was feeling and how he liked the new job, but he felt something funny about them, as if they were saying, “Well, you finally let Lippy run you off the docks, huh, Matt?” “All that big talk about cleaning up the union and then you fold like an accordion, huh, Matt?” It was in their eyes — even Runt’s.

“Well, I’m glad to see you got smart and put your hook away,” Runt actually said. “Me, I’d do the same if I was a family man. But I always run too fast for the goils to catch me.” Runt laughed and poked Matt lightly, but there was something about it wasn’t the same.

Matt ran into Runt on the street a week or so later and asked him how everything was going. He had heard the neighborhood scuttlebutt about a new meeting coming up in the parish house. A government labor man was going to talk to them on how to get their rights. Father Conley had pulled in a trade-union lawyer for them and it all seemed to be moving ahead.

But Runt was secretive with Matt. Matt felt the brush; he was an outsider now. Runt had never said a word in criticism of Matt’s withdrawal from the waterfront — just occasional cracks about fellows like himself who were too dumb to do anything else but stand their ground and fight it out. But it got under Matt’s skin. He had the face of a bruiser, and inlanders would think of him as “tough-looking.” But actually Matt was thinskinned, emotional, hypersensitive. Runt wouldn’t even tell him the date of the secret meeting, just asked him how he liked the storage job.

“It’s a real good deal,” Matt said. No seven-thirty shape-up. No muscle men masquerading as shop stewards. The same check every week. What more could he want?

What more than stacking cardboard containers in a long tunnel-like room illuminated by neon tubing? Matt wondered what there was about the waterfront. Why did men humiliate themselves by standing like cattle in the shape-up? What was so good about swinging a cargo hook — hoisting cement, copper ore, coffee, noxious cargoes that tickled your throat and maybe were slowly poisoning you?

But that didn’t tell the whole story, Matt was thinking as he handled the storage containers automatically. There was the salt air; there were the ships coming in from Spain, from South America, Greece, all over the world. There was the way the river sparkled on a bright day. And there was the busy movement of the harbor: the sound of the ferries, the tugs, the barges, the freighters, and the great luxury ladies with their autocratic noses in the air. There were the different kinds of cargoes to handle — furs, perfume, sardines, cognac — and who was to blame them if they got away with a bottle or two; it wasn’t pilferage on the waterfront until you trucked it away. There was the teamwork of a good gang working the cargo from the hatch and over the deck to the pier: the winch men, the deck men, the hatch boss, the high-low drivers, everybody moving together to an unstated but strongly felt rhythm that could be thrown off if just one man in a twenty-three-man gang didn’t know his job. And then there were the breaks for lunch — not cold sandwiches in a metal container, but a cut of hot roast beef in the bar across the street, with a cold beer to wash it down. And there was the talk of last night’s fight or today’s ball game or the latest cute trick pulled off by the longshore racketeers.

The waterfront: the violent, vivid, restless, corrupted, “we’re-doin’-lovely” waterfront.

Matt felt that way for days and said nothing about it. He’d sit in the front room with his shoes off, drinking beer, reading the tabloids, and wondering until it ached him what Runt and the boys were up to.

One evening when he came home, Flanagan and Bennett and some of the other neighbors were busy talking on the steps. Matt heard. “Maybe he’s just on one of his periodicals and he’s sleeping it off somewheres.” And, “He coulda shipped out somewhere. He used to be an A. B. and he is just ornery enough to do it.” And Matt heard, “When he gets his load on, anything c’n happen. He could walk off the end of the pier into the river and think he was home in bed.”

Runt Nolan! No hide nor hair of him in three days, Flanagan said. Matt ran upstairs to tell Fran. She saw the look in his eyes when he talked about Runt, who always said he was “on borried time.” “Now, Matt, no use getting yourself excited. Wait and see. Now, Matt.” She saw the look in his eyes was the old look, before he settled for the cozy inland job with the storage company.

He paced up and down, but the children got on his nerves and he went over to talk to Father Conley. The father was just as worried as Matt. Specs had been warning Runt not to hold any more meetings in the rectory. Specs had told Runt to take it easy for his own good.

Matt went home after a while but he couldn’t sleep. At one-thirty in the morning he put his clothes back on and went down to the Longdock. What’s the story, and news of Runt?

Nine days later there was news of Runt. The police department had made contact with Runt, by means of a grappling hook probing the soft, rotten bottom of the river. Runt wasn’t “on borried time” any more. He had paid back every minute of it. Cause of death: accidental drowning. On the night of his disappearance, Runt had been seen wandering the gin mills in a state of inebriation. In other words, bagged. There were no marks of violence on Runt. How could anyone prove he hadn’t slipped. The good old North River, Lippy’s silent partner, had done it again.

It was a good funeral. Everybody in the neighborhood was there — even Lippy Keegan, and Specs and Skelly and the rest of the boys. After the Mass, Father Conley came out on the sidewalk, and Matt and some of the others who were closest to Runt gathered around to hear what the father had to say.

They had seen the father steamed before but never like this. “Accident my eye,” he said. “If they think we’re going to take this lying down, they’re dumber than I think they are.”

“What can we do, Father?”

Everybody looked around. It was Flanagan, who had come up behind Matt; Flanagan, who always played it very cozy with the Keegans. But like most of the others, he had liked having Runt around — that cocky little bantam. The Longdock wouldn’t be the same without him. It looked like Runt, at the bottom of the river, had done more damage to Lippy than when he was around the docks shooting off his mouth.

Father Conley said, “We’re going to keep this case alive. We’ll question every single person who talked to Runt the day they hit him in the head. We’ll keep needling the police for action. Keegan hasn’t heard the end of Runt Nolan.”

“Now’s the time to put somebody up to run for president against Lippy,” the Bennett kid said.

Everybody looked at Matt. Matt looked down at his uncomfortable black shoes. He would have given anything to have been with Runt the night Keegan’s cowboys caught up with the little guy.

“That’s right, keep pressing them,” Father Conley said. “Maybe they don’t know it yet, but times are changing. One of these days you’re going to knock them out of the box for good.” He looked at Matt and said, “I can help you. But I can’t do it for you. It takes leadership.”

Matt looked down at the sidewalk. He always felt strange in his dark blue suit. He looked over at Fran, talking with some of the other wives. In his mind, Fran and the storage company and the welfare of the kids were all churning around with Runt and what Father Conley was saying and the faces of these dock workers looking at him and waiting for him...

The morning after the funeral Matt’s alarm clock split the silence at six-thirty. Matt swung his legs over the side of the bed. Fran stirred behind him. “I’ll get up make you some coffee.” She sat up and they looked at each other.

“I’m sorry, Fran, I—”

“Don’t be,” she said.

Even before what happened to Runt, she had felt it coming. And on the way home from church he had said, “All the fellers liked Runt. There’ll be hell to pay. Now’s the time to get ’em movin’ in the right direction.”

Fran, sitting up in bed behind him, said, “Don’t get in no more trouble than you can help, Matt.”

Matt stood up and stretched, groaned, and reached for his pants. “Don’t worry, I’m gonna watch myself, I ain’t gonna take no crazy chances like Runt, Lord-’ve-mercy-on-’im.”

She wasn’t even disappointed about the storage job. A storage man is a storage man, a longshoreman is a longshoreman. In the deepest part of her mind she had known that all along.

“I’ll get up make you some coffee,” she said again, as she had a thousand times before, as she would — if he was lucky — a thousand times again.

For a moment he roughed her up affectionately. “You’re gettin’ fat, honey.” Then he was pulling his wool checkerboard shirt on over his long underwear. If there was enough work, Fisheye was liable to pick him, just to make it look good in case there was an investigation.

The cargo hook felt good in his belt. He zipped up his windbreaker, told Fran not to worry, set his cap at the old-country angle, and tried not to make too much noise on the creaky stairway as he made his way down through the sleeping tenement.

Flanagan was coming out of his door as Matt reached the bottom landing. The old docker was yawning and rubbing sleep out of his eyes but he grinned when he saw who it was.

“Matt me lad, we’ll be needin’ ya, that’s for sure.”

We. It had taken Flanagan a long time to get his mouth around that we. There wasn’t any we over at the storage company. Matt nodded to Flanagan, a little embarrassed, and fussed with his cap like a pitcher.

“Once a stand-up guy, always a stand-up guy, huh, Matt?”

Matt grunted. He didn’t want them to make too much of a deal out of it. Matt felt better when he got outside and the wind came blowing into his face. It felt good — like the cargo hook on his hip, familiar and good.

As they reached the corner, facing the elevated railroad tracks that ran along the river, two figures came up from a basement — Specs Sinclair and young Skelly. Specs had a bad cold. He was a sinus sufferer in the winter-time. He wished he was down in Miami scoring on the horses.

“So you want more?” he said to Matt, daubing his nose with a damp handkerchief. “We run you out of here once but you ain’t satisfied. What’s a matter, you lookin’ to wear cement shoes?”

Matt gazed at him and felt pleased and excited that he was back with this old hoodlum Sinclair and this punk Skelly. They were like old friends in reverse.

“Quit racing your motor,” Matt said. “It ain’t gonna be so easy this time. None of us is gonna go wanderin’ around alone half gassed like Runt Nolan. We’re stickin’ together now. And Father Conley’s got the newspapers watchin’. You hit me in the head and next thing you know they’ll hit you with ten thousand volts.”

Specs looked at Skelly. Everything was getting a little out of hand, there was no doubt about it. In the old days you could knock off an old bum like Nolan and that was the end of it. This Matt Gillis, why didn’t he stay in cold storage? For the first time in his life Specs worried whether Lippy Keegan would know the next move.

Matt crossed the street and pushed open the door of the Longdock. Everybody knew he was back. Everybody was going to be watching him. He wished Runt would come over and stick him in the side with a left hand. He knew it wasn’t very likely, but it made him feel better to wonder if that scrappy little son-of-a-biscuit-eater was going to be watching too.