The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Wyatt (Rainey) Blassingame (1909–1985) was born in Demopolis, Alabama, and graduated from the University of Alabama. Eager to travel, he hit the road and was given the nickname “Hobo.” He got a job with a newspaper but lost it within a year because of the Depression. He eventually found his way to New York City in 1933, where his brother Lurton, a literary agent, showed the young writer a stack of pulp magazines and told him to take them home and study them, as they were buying stories. Six weeks later, Wyatt, who had never even heard of the pulps, sold his first story. Although he was a slower writer than many of his contemporaries, he still sold four hundred stories to the pulps before serving as an officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and about six hundred throughout his career. The service gave him background for several books, and he graduated to the better-paying slick magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, American, and Redbook. When the fiction markets began to dry up, he turned to writing nonfiction articles, mainly on travel, and juveniles, mostly about animals and American history. His only book of mystery fiction was a short-story collection, John Smith Hears Death Walking (1944). Perhaps his best-known mystery character was Joe Gee (a short name he liked because he could type it quickly but which still counted as two words), who couldn’t sleep while he was on a case. He also wrote many pulp stories under the pseudonym William B. Rainey.

“Murder Is Bad Luck” was published in the March 1940 issue.

It started at a New Orleans racetrack, that chain of strange events of which the links were murder and mystery.

For me this man McCracken was bad luck. Like a black cat or the number thirteen for some people. He didn’t want to be bad luck any more than a cat does. He just was.

To start with, he lost me my chance at the daily double. It was New Year’s Day, and the Fair Grounds was jammed with people. Christmas week had made a cut in my paycheck and I was trying to get well with ten bucks on the double, which my old agent, who is still around chiseling the boys out of their fees, had put down for me. I’m a track cop and not supposed to bet. Extra Trouble had taken the first one all right, and now if Doomsday came through, the payoff would be $22.40 for each two-buck ticket.

I hadn’t gone to the paddock, so I didn’t see Doomsday until the horses were on the track. And when I saw him I leaned over to Dud Harris, who is a rat-faced private detective and a louse and happened to be standing beside me.

“He’s got a needleful,” I said.

“So it would seem indeed,” Dud said.

Doomsday was wet with sweat, with foam white along his neck and around his mouth, and he was tiptoeing along, chiefly on his hind legs. He made a couple of breaks toward the infield and he took a nip at the number four horse’s rump. The boy on him, an apprentice who’d been riding about three months, was so scared you could tell it by looking at him. As they paraded past — I was standing at the rail near the finish line — I yelled to Johnny on the lead pony and he turned around, meaning to get a hand on Doomsday’s reins.

And then some damn fool threw a New Year’s firecracker right over on the track!

The guy who threw it was standing a few yards from me, and I saw his hand go up in the air, the sparks sizzling off the fuse. A man close to him — later I learned it was this man McCracken, who at the time I had never seen — yelled, “Hey!” and grabbed the thrower’s wrist, and the firecracker, instead of sailing up the track, went straight out between Doomsday’s feet.

It and the horse exploded together. Doomsday made two corkscrew turns, and, on the second one, the jockey took off like a pebble out of a slingshot. Then the horse came straight at the rail, fear-crazy, and jumped it. The crowd was so thick that persons against the rail didn’t have a chance. The fall broke Doomsday’s right foreleg and his neck, or only God knows what would have happened; but he had already done damage enough. There was one man killed, another with a dislocated shoulder, a woman with a bloody nose, and my ten bucks gone to hell. The drunk who’d thrown the firecracker wasn’t hurt.

The man with the dislocated shoulder was this McCracken. David McCracken, he said his name was, and he said the dead man was a friend of his named Andrews. Doomsday had come right down on top of this Andrews, crushed his skull and broken his neck. I was told to go along to the hospital with the injured man and learn just how bad the lawsuit was going to be.

When I finally got to talk with McCracken he turned out to be a pretty nice fellow; an average-sized blond man with an average face. He said he realized the track wasn’t to blame — and the drunk who’d thrown the firecracker didn’t have money enough to be sued. All McCracken asked for was money for his doctor’s bill and a pass to the track.

He couldn’t tell me very much about the dead man, a fellow named Arthur Andrews, except that Andrews had been a small-time commercial artist and writer. “Told me he did articles on outdoor life and illustrated them himself,” McCracken said. “He’s got a wife somewhere in New York City. I can probably find her address for you.”

It seemed this McCracken was a bachelor who lived on a comfortable but fairly moderate income and spent his time wandering around the world. He had met Andrews two weeks before at a little fishing camp near the mouth of the Mississippi; they’d got to be friends and had come to New Orleans together for New Year’s.

The police checked this as a matter of routine and proved it was true. To everybody’s surprise Andrews’ wife didn’t sue the track for a dime. She just had her husband’s body sent to New York and buried it. The only person who sued was the woman who’d got a bloody nose. She said her beauty had been ruined forever and she sued for a hundred thousand dollars. I said I was going to sue because my ten bucks had been on Doomsday, but the stewards reminded me they couldn’t have been because a track cop isn’t allowed to bet.

So that, we thought, was that. But it wasn’t.

I saw McCracken a few times. Twice he asked me up to his hotel to poker games, and both times I lost. For me he was plain bad luck.

It was about two weeks later that the girl turned up at my apartment and asked if I could find David McCracken. “He’s my uncle,” she said, “and I’ve got to find him, and he seems to have disappeared all of a sudden.”

I looked the girl over and decided maybe McCracken wasn’t such bad luck after all. She wasn’t more than five feet tall, with black hair cut in a long bob, and she was cute and sleek as a two-year-old. I like small women because I’m little myself. I’m too heavy to ride anymore, though I rated with the best for three years, and I brought home Morning Glory in the Derby; but I still don’t reach over five feet six without jumping... and this girl was small, but oh my!

“The clerk at Uncle’s hotel told me to come to you, Mr. Rice,” she said. “He said you knew my uncle personally and that you were a detective and could find him, if anybody could.”

“Maybe he’s left town,” I said.

“He was here three days ago when I arrived and telephoned him. He said he would come over to my hotel to see me — and he never got there. No one has seen him since, but his hotel says he has phoned several times to ask if he had any mail. And he’s still registered there.” She looked me squarely in the eyes. “If you could find him, it might be worth money to both of us. He’ll be getting six months’ income in a few days, and I want to make a touch. I’ll pay you ten percent of what I wiggle out of him.”

I’d had a sure thing in the fourth that afternoon and consequently was wondering what I would use for money the rest of the month, so pay on the side sounded good. And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway — and you’d understand that if you’d seen the girl. I have my weaknesses.

“I was just going to dinner,” I said. “Come along and you can explain in detail.”

I went by and nicked my old agent for thirty, and the girl and I went to a place in the Quarter where they boil shrimp the way I like them. I said we should have a drink before eating and she said she’d drink a martini. I took a pousse l’amour. I ate there fairly often so the waiter didn’t even blink, but the girl did when she saw the drink.

“What’s in there?” she asked.

“Nothing but maraschino, the yolk of an egg, vanilla cordial, and brandy.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s all?”

“That’s all. Now tell me about this missing uncle of yours.”

“I’m his only niece; in fact, I’m the only relative he has.” She smiled. Her lips were full, the lower one puckering down a little, the way I like them. They were bright red and her teeth were white. She was a honey. “My name’s Mary Swanson and I’m a junior in medical school.”

“What?” I said. “Huh?”

She laughed. “Everybody looks that way when I say I’m studying medicine, but I am. I won’t be much longer, though, if I don’t find Uncle David and put the bee on him. He wasn’t very definite in his last letter, so I decided I’d come down — from St. Louis — and try to talk him out of a thousand dollars. After all, I’m his only living relative, and I happen to know that he gets half his income every year about the first of February. But I’ve got to be back at school in a couple of days, and I haven’t been able to find him.”

“He’s hiding out on you.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He’s always been generous with me. I’ve never had to ask him for money before. But he did sound strange when I talked to him over the phone — kind of frightened. I’m afraid something has happened to him.”

She took another martini and I had a brandy scaffa, which is made of raspberry syrup, maraschino, green chartreuse, and brandy, the liquors kept in separate layers. She said it was pretty, but that she didn’t want to sample it. Which was probably my loss.

I asked why she hadn’t gone to the police about her uncle.

She sipped at her drink and then looked up, half serious and half grinning. “I’m afraid my uncle’s got himself mixed up in some kind of personal affair. Nothing bad, but... well, I have my reasons.”

I said that I could understand, and that Sandy Rice was to be relied on to be discreet in matters of this kind. And she said, “I’m sure you are, Mr. Rice.”

And I said, “Call me Sandy.”

So we ate dinner, and afterwards she drank cognac and I took a brandy sangaree, which is a mild concoction of sugar and water and brandy and port wine with nutmeg sprinkled on top.

It was cold when we went outside. The wind whipped down Conti Street, and Mary — she was Mary by now and I didn’t even remember her last name — put her hand in my elbow. “Let’s go over to your uncle’s hotel,” I said. “If we don’t learn anything, we can take in the first show at the Blue Room without getting out in the cold again.”

Sam, the night clerk at the hotel, said, “McCracken phoned a couple of times to know if he had any mail, but I haven’t seen him the last three nights. I told the girl you were the guy to help her.” Mary was standing several yards behind me. Sam said, “Nice, huh?” and leered out of one corner of his eye like a cop who has caught you speeding but doesn’t want to write a ticket. “One good turn deserves another, Sandy.”

I said, “There is some rumor that Old Cactus will take the fourth tomorrow, but I wouldn’t put more than two bucks on it.”

“Thanks.”

It was my inning now.

“How about giving me the key to McCracken’s room and letting me go up and look around?”

“I like this job,” Sam said. “I don’t want to lose it.”

“Is it still the same room?”

“Yes. Five twelve.”

I said, “If the odds go below five to one, tomorrow might not be Old Cactus’ day after all.”

“You are a hell of a detective,” Sam said. “You protect the people’s interests, don’t you?”

“I work for the track. I investigate what they tell me to. I can’t help rumors.”

I told Mary to wait for me in the lobby. I rode up to the fifth floor and went up to five twelve, the first door around the bend in the hall. There are quite a few keys on my key ring and they will open a lot of doors, but none of them opened this one. Wondering why, I tried the knob. The door was already unlocked. I stepped inside and closed the door again.

It was dark in the room, just a little gray haze coming through the windows. I moved to the left, feeling for the light switch, and my foot touched something big and heavy and rubbery. My hand touched the switch at the same time and I clicked it on. I looked down at the thing at my feet.

It was a man. He lay on his back with one arm flung back. The coat was messy with blood and the knife was still there under his left shoulder blade. Blood was bubbling slowly around it, but he was dead, plenty. And they tell me that when a corpse is still bleeding, then it hasn’t been a corpse more than a few minutes.

I looked at the dead man’s face, and I had never seen him before. Then I looked up and saw that the door to the adjoining room was open.

It was very still and very quiet; that kind of quiet stillness that comes just before a big race when there is actually some movement and sound all around you but you don’t hear it or see it anymore. It was the kind of stiff quietness that you feel.

When McCracken and Arthur Andrews — the man who had been killed in the accident at the track — had come here they had taken adjoining rooms, and after Andrews’ death, McCracken had kept both rooms. The one beyond the open door was dark except for the yellow rectangle of light on the floor.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have a gun and I didn’t have any business here — though Sam, the desk clerk, knew damn well I had come up — and I didn’t know if there was anybody in that dark room beyond the door. But there wasn’t much time to think and I did a fool thing... maybe Mary and I shouldn’t have stopped in that bar on the way to the hotel where I put down an East India cocktail of raspberry syrup, caroni bitters, red curaçao, maraschino, and a double brandy. Anyway, I reached down and took the knife out of the dead man’s back — it was really stuck in there. I had to pull hard to get it loose. Then I circled the bed and went through that open door into the room beyond.

I could see the outline of the room, but nothing else. I turned on the light to make sure. The room was empty.

I tried the door opening into the hall. It was unlocked.

When I looked down, I saw that several drops of blood had dripped from the knife blade onto the floor. The palm of my hand was sticky, and all at once I felt a little sick at the pit of my stomach. I realized I had been so scared the backs of my knees were aching.

I returned to the room where the dead man lay. Somebody knocked on the door, two sharp raps, and then the door opened and a man came in. He said, “Ah, David, if you won’t answer my letters, I—” Then he stumbled over the dead man.

He was a tall, thin, hawk-nosed man and he looked as if he was accustomed to having his own way. He certainly had control of himself. He took a half step back from the corpse and his mouth, which wasn’t much more than a white slit in his face to start with, got tighter and whiter. He reached in the inside pocket of his expensive gray topcoat and took out a .25 automatic. The gun was about as big as a pack of cigarettes, but it was big enough. With his left hand he reached back of him and closed the door into the hall.

“Drop that knife,” he said. And when I did, “Where’s David McCracken?”

I just stood there. There wasn’t much else I could do. “I don’t know,” I said.

The newcomer stared hard at me.

“This is his room, isn’t it? Where is he?”

“It’s his room all right, but he’s not here. I don’t know where he is.”

“Was he here when you killed this man?” His eyes flickered down to the body and back at me again, hard and black. “That’s impossible. This man hasn’t been dead more than ten minutes.” He had a deep voice but it was sharp and hard and very distinct. Except for one of these Boston accents, he would have made a swell race announcer. He said, “What are you doing in McCracken’s room?”

“I was looking for him.”

“And this man?” He gestured at the corpse without taking his eyes off me. That fishy stare was getting me.

“I found him here.”

“Who is he? What is his connection with Mr. McCracken? And who are you?”

I was getting over the shock of looking into the gun muzzle and felt sure the man wasn’t going to shoot. I said, “I’m a detective, of sorts. The guy on the floor I don’t know. Do you?”

We faced one another for about four seconds, the tall man trying to make up his mind about something. I had already made up my mind; I wished to God I had never heard of David McCracken.

The man said, his mind made up, “Back over to that phone in the corner and tell whoever answers that you have killed a man in room five-twelve and to send the police.”

“Wait a minute!” I said. “You’re jumping the bell. I didn’t kill him. I never saw the guy before.”

He said, “Phone,” and meant it.

The switchboard girl answered and I said, “Put Sam on the line.”

The tall man snapped, “You can talk to whoever answers!”

“To hell with you.” I was certain now he wasn’t going to shoot. I said, “Sam, I’m up in McCracken’s room. The door was unlocked; that’s how I got in. And there was somebody ahead of me. A guy with a knife stuck in his back.”

Sam made muffled moaning sounds like a man who has bet next week’s pay on the favorite and watched him run last.

“And now there’s somebody else up here, some nut with a gun who thinks I did the killing... No, I never saw either of ’em before. You better phone Lieutenant Murphy.”

I hung up and the tall man and I stood there looking at one another. With his left hand he reached in his pocket and got out an ivory-tipped cigarette and a gold lighter and lit up. He never took his eyes off me and he never moved the gun.

Someone knocked on the door. I thought it was the house dick. The tall man said, “Come in,” but the door was already opening, a woman coming through, saying, “Art, darling, I’ve—” and then she stumbled over the body.

She screamed. It wasn’t a loud cry. It was choked, like a man trying to yell after a horse has kicked him in the belly. Her eyes got too big for their sockets and I thought they were going to spill over. Her face got so white the make-up looked like smeared blood. She staggered back against the wall.

The tall man snapped at her, “Whom were you looking for?” You could be certain he said “whom” because that’s the way he pronounced words.

The woman didn’t say anything. She just stared at the corpse as though she was going to be sick.

“You were looking for Mr. McCracken?”

She looked up at him, and then at me. She was breathing hard. She was still frightened, but her face wasn’t so twisted with fear anymore and I began to notice that she was good-looking, very good-looking indeed, if you like redheads, and I do. Blondes, brunettes, and redheads. She was a little tall for me, slender, but full where she should be. She had a kind of bright, show-off beauty, and my guess was she’d been a chorus girl.

“Yes,” she said after a while. “David McCracken.”

“You’re lying!” the tall man snapped. He sounded damn sure of himself.

And about that time the house dick came in, and a few minutes later Lieutenant Murphy and a whole flock of boys from Headquarters.

Now the fun would begin. Fun for everyone but me.

The tall man pointed at me and told them, “I knocked on the door and entered and found this man with the bloody knife in his hand.”

Murphy is a big man with pink cheeks and pale, heavy-lidded eyes, and a brother-in-law who is a politician, or else he never would have got on the force, no less be a lieutenant. When he looked at me I knew he was still remembering a sure thing I had given him a couple of weeks back. The sure thing had run fourth. (That’s the hell of being connected with the track; persons keep after you to put them onto something, and if you don’t they hate you for a cheapskate, and if you do — and it comes in — they forget you; and if it doesn’t come home, they say you touted them wrong intentionally. Hell, if I could find one really sure thing a season, I wouldn’t be working for a living.)

I said, “Now look, Pete. I never saw this guy on the floor before in my life. I didn’t kill him. Why don’t you ask this tall bird what he’s doing here and what he’s carrying a gun for?”

The tall man said his name was Linden Blumberry and he was from Boston. “I am Mr. David McCracken’s lawyer and the administrator of his estate. For several weeks I have been trying to persuade Mr. McCracken to come to Boston to complete the sale of some bonds of his for which I have obtained an offer. For some strange reason he has refused to come there. So I came to him.”

“Carrying a gun?” I said.

He looked down a thin nose at me before he decided to answer. “And a certified check for five thousand dollars to complete the sale. Of course I carried a gun.”

I told Murphy about McCracken’s niece, and how I had come up to his room and knocked on the door, which was ajar, I said, and which swung open when I knocked; and from there I went on with the exact truth.

Murphy snorted and the fingerprint man said, from the next room, “Only one set of prints on this knife, I think, Lieutenant. I can make sure after I get it down to Headquarters.” And that set would be mine!

The M.E. said the dead man had been killed sometime within the last forty minutes, and Murphy looked at me and nodded his head.

The redheaded girl said her name was Nell Parker, and she had known McCracken in New York, had written to him occasionally. She had come south for the winter, arriving in New Orleans that very day, and had called on McCracken.

Both she and Mr. Linden Blumberry said they had never seen the dead man before.

Murphy had the hotel manager and Sam, the night clerk, in the room by now. Sam looked worried. “I didn’t give anybody the key to Mr. McCracken’s room,” he kept saying. “I don’t know how the door could have been opened.”

“You didn’t have any idea that Sandy Rice was coming up here?” Murphy asked.

“No, sir. There’ve been lots of persons phoning and asking about Mr. McCracken lately, but I just told them he wasn’t in. I would have told this gentleman,” he nodded toward Linden Blumberry, “when he asked for Mr. McCracken’s room number, but he walked off before I could explain.”

“What did you think Sandy Rice wanted with McCracken?”

“Well, Sandy used to play poker up here sometimes, I think. I—” Sam began to stammer; and Murphy started looking at me with his mouth grinning and his pale eyes cold.

“Gambling,” he said. He had it all worked out now. Somehow the gambling would furnish a motive; and I’d practically been caught in the act of murder. They’d make a cinch case out of it. I’d have a chance like a three-legged mule in a match race with Johnstown.

“Damn it!” I said. “Let’s get Mary up here and she’ll tell you—”

“Mary?” Murphy asked.

“McCracken’s niece, you idiot. She’s downstairs in the lobby. She’ll tell you what I was doing.”

He told the other cops to keep their eyes on Blumberry and the redheaded girl and the corpse, and we would be right back. We rode down on the elevator. Pete said, “I lost twenty bucks on that pig you touted me on. I hope to Gawd you try something cute.”

There wasn’t any need to argue with him. He wasn’t much better than a half-wit anyway.

We started across the lobby. I couldn’t see Mary anywhere. “Where is she?” Pete said.

A man and woman in evening clothes passed us. The woman wore one of these dresses without any shoulder straps at all — the kind that looks like it has already started to fall off and is halfway gone. Pete said, “My Gawd! Look at that!” and turned to watch.

It was then I saw another couple going out the street door at the far end of the lobby. Mary and David McCracken! I started to run after them.

Halfway across the lobby, I heard Pete bellow, just a roar of sound at first, changing into, “Hey! Hey, you!” and of all things, “Halt!”

Mary and Dave McCracken were already out of sight, but I wasn’t going to lose them. I kept going.

I was running, five yards from the door, the Negro doorman staring at me and at Pete, who was following across the lobby. All at once the Negro’s face went a sort of ash gray and he went straight up and came down running. At the same time a hole popped in the door — and then I heard the shot. I hadn’t thought that idiot Pete would shoot, but now I was going too fast to stop. The second bullet whined at my ear as I plunged down the steps.

A quarter block down the lighted street I saw McCracken helping Mary into an automobile. She had stopped, half in and half out, and was staring back toward the sound of the shots. I yelled, “Hey! Wait!”

McCracken shoved her. He shoved her so hard she must have bounced against the other side of the car. He dived after her.

I saw I couldn’t catch him on foot, so I angled for one of the cabs lined up in front of the hotel. Behind me there was a crash as Pete Murphy came through the hotel door, waving his gun. The driver of the cab I was going for took one look and went out the other side and I jumped under the wheel. I got the taxi going just as that half-witted cop let go with another bullet. I heard it smack into the rear of the car.

There was only one car between McCracken and me. I figured I’d catch him easy enough. By this time I was mad as hell, getting shoved around and accused of murder and shot at. I put my foot down hard on the gas.

The streetlight was green, and McCracken went straight across Canal into Dauphine Street. I knew I had him. He was going the wrong way on a one-way street. The first block was almost empty of traffic, but if he turned, he’d have to slow down; and if he went straight, he’d jam up in traffic.

And then my motor gave a couple of sputs and died. Pete Murphy had shot a hole in the gas tank. My luck with McCracken was holding steady. Less than a block behind me cops were blowing whistles and running and waving guns and people were yelling.

I left the taxi where it stopped. In fact, I left it before it stopped.

The joint I picked was called The Purple Door. I had never been there but once, and nobody knew me, and they had closed booths along the rear wall. I went past the bar, across what they called a dance floor where a three-piece Negro orchestra was blowing its lungs out, and into a booth. I sat down and one of the house girls sat down opposite me.

“Run along,” I said. “I got trouble.”

“You waiting for one of the other girls?”

“I’m waiting for a drink.”

“Well, you want to buy me one, don’t you?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t. I just want to sit here and do some deep thinking.”

A waiter stuck his head in the booth and the girl said, “Hey, Doug, this guy don’t want to buy me a drink.”

“What’s he want?” Doug demanded. “Hold his own hand? You can do that outside, squirt.”

I was deciding that with the cops looking for me I would be less conspicuous in the French Quarter with a girl than without one, so I said, “All right, I’ll buy her a drink. What you want, baby?”

“I know what she wants,” Doug said. “What about you?”

“A Roman punch.”

“A what?”

“If the bartender don’t know how to make it, tell him to look it up. He can read, can’t he?”

Doug spat out of one corner of his mouth. “What difference’s it to you? You ain’t big enough to complain.”

He went off and the girl said, “It’s a cold night, ain’t it?” and I didn’t say anything. I had a lot of hard thinking to do. I had a murder charge hanging over me and I was guilty of stealing a taxi. I had run away from the scene of the crime and Pete Murphy would be sure I was guilty; once he got me in jail, that would be the end of it. From there to the hot seat would be shorter than the road from the betting ring to the poorhouse. Once they got me in jail it would all be over — so I had to keep out of jail and learn who had murdered the man in the hotel room — and I didn’t even know who the murdered man was!

The waiter brought our drinks. He looked at my Roman punch and at me and shook his head and went away again. The girl said, “My Lord! What’s in there beside a fruit salad?”

“A mixture. Raspberry syrup, lemon juice, orange juice, curaçao, rum, and brandy. I like the brandy.”

“I been working in this joint for six months,” she said, “and this is the first time I ever thought I got the best of it by drinking this colored water they serve us girls.”

I said, “Uh,” and went back to figuring what I had ahead of me. I couldn’t go home, because the cops would be watching the place, and I couldn’t go to the track tomorrow because they’d be there too. I tried to think of Mary’s last name and I couldn’t remember it — and she hadn’t told me which hotel she was staying in. But obviously the thing to do was find her and McCracken, because I felt sure McCracken would at least know the corpse in his hotel room. But how to find McCracken?

The waiter stuck his head in the door. “You ready for a drink, buddy? That ain’t a park bench you’re setting on.”

The girl said, “I’ll take another one.”

“A brandy flip,” I said.

The waiter brought it and when I took a sip the girl said, “You’re drunker than I thought you were; you wouldn’t drink that thing sober.”

“I like it. There’s nothing in it but hot ale and egg and sugar and nutmeg and brandy.”

“Oh,” she said. “You’re one of these straight whiskey drinkers, huh?”

I said, “I love to buy you whiskey, or that colored water they serve you girls for whiskey. But I’d love it better if you kept quiet. I got some thinking to do.”

“It’s oke with me. I get paid by the drink.”

“It’s a wonder that pink water don’t rot your stomach out,” I said, and then went back to my thinking. I tried to remember everything that had ever happened to me which had any connection with David McCracken. It was a dismal list, all bad. I tried to remember everything that had happened tonight from the time Mary rang my doorbell and asked if I could find her uncle. I thought about this a while and said to the girl:

“Excuse me, baby, but I got to make a phone call. Just wait for me.”

The Negro orchestra was blowing so loud it shook the phone booth, but I finally got Sam, the hotel clerk. He was an inquisitive cuss, and I figured that by this time he would know everything the police did. I asked him if the cops had identified the corpse.

“Sure,” he said. “Where are you?”

“You just answer questions and one of these days I’ll give you a winner.”

He said the stiff was identified as a Roscoe Jancey, a member of a New York brokerage firm.

“How much money did he have on him?” I asked.

“Fourteen bucks and twenty cents. But at the St. Charles — that’s where he was staying — he’d put five hundred in the safe.”

“Did he have any big certified checks on him, or in the safe?”

“There’s none listed,” Sam said. “What’s your idea?”

“That lanky Boston lawyer, Linden Blumberry, brought down a big check for McCracken. And you said the dead man was a broker. I thought maybe he’d brought one too.”

Sam was quiet a moment before he said, “He didn’t bring the one Mr. Blumberry had. That was on a Boston firm and had to be countersigned by Blumberry himself.”

“Not that one,” I said. “But there may be some damn fool who wanted to steal the one he did bring.” And I hung up and went back to the booth and finished my brandy flip.

The waiter stuck his head in and looked at the empty glass, and then at me with some new respect. He said, “Little man, what now?”

“A metropolitan cocktail.”

The girl said, “When you make mine this time, use the big eyedropper to put the liquor in my water. I got to have something to help me stand up under this guy’s conversation. I swear to Gawd he’s about to talk my ear off.”

Doug brought the drinks back and put mine gently on the table. “I’ll bring the lilies with the next one,” he said. The guy underestimated me.

“You don’t have to worry as long as I stick to straight brandy,” I said. “I always stick to brandy when I’m drinking fairly steady.”

“Oh,” the girl said. “So that’s straight brandy?”

“With gum syrup, caroni bitters, and French vermouth thrown in,” the waiter said. “The bartender’s sprained his back looking under the shelf for bottles that ain’t had the dust off ’em since he bought this place.” He closed the booth door and went away.

The girl said, “How’d you ever learn the names of all them drinks? You read ’em in a book somewhere? Or’d you used to be a bartender?”

“I used to be a jockey,” I said. “I was raised around horses; I never had more than two bits at a time until I was sixteen and started riding; and all at once I was in the big money. Of course, after three years I was too heavy and out of the money again, but when I had it, I had plenty. I had to train most of the time, but on Saturday nights I’d go out with the other jockeys and, because we didn’t know any better, we’d order whatever looked the fanciest and cost the most. I got to where I liked the things.”

She said, “I been drinking this pink water a long time, but I ain’t got to like it yet.”

“Won’t they let you drink anything else?”

“Yeah, if the customer’ll buy it. But this is almost all profit and I get a bigger cut off one of these than off something costs more. Besides, you can drink these all night.”

That reminded me that I couldn’t sit here gossiping all night, so I started figuring on my problem again. But I didn’t get anywhere. I wanted to find McCracken and I didn’t know how to go about it... until about fifteen minutes later, when I got my first break. The door of the booth opened and there was the rat-faced private detective named Dud Harris, the same guy who’d been beside me at the track the first time I ever saw McCracken.

He grinned and showed his rat teeth and said, “I am a very smart detective, Sandy. I am indeed the smartest detective in Lousiana. I find you in ten minutes when all the cops in New Orleans are sitting around waiting for you in other places. I am very smart indeed.” He was very pleased with himself.

“If you’re so damn smart,” I said, “why can’t you see I’ve got company?” There wasn’t any sense in spreading the news that the cops were looking for me.

“Do not worry about her. My car is outside, so let us depart. I have news for you.” I’m not lying; that’s the way he talked. In Omaha once I saw an amateur play where the characters talked the way Dud Harris did, but, in addition, Dud always had his pointed teeth sticking down below his narrow, mustached lip. He was one of these people you want to sock without knowing why. But he was smart, and if he said he had news, it was probably worthwhile. Anything right then was worth trying.

We drove down St. Louis to Canal and out toward Lake Pontchartrain. I asked how he’d found me.

“I have been talking with our mutual friend, the night clerk, Sam. He told me you had phoned.”

“I didn’t tell him where I was.”

“No. But Sam is a very observing young man, though not smart. He said you were calling from an establishment which had a very loud and raucous band. I concluded it would not be any of the places you frequent, because you feared the police would be looking for you there. And yet I thought you would be in the Quarter. I found you in the third dive I investigated.”

“Why were you looking for me?”

“I thought perhaps you were interested in locating Mr. David McCracken.”

I turned around on the seat and looked at him. He was whistling softly through his teeth, staring straight ahead at the street and seeming very pleased with himself.

“Do you know where McCracken is?”

“I do,” he said. “Indeed I do.”

“Where?”

“That is a long story, Sandy. I was hired two days ago, by a Mr. Roscoe Jancey, of New York City, to locate Mr. David McCracken. Tonight, having accomplished the job with my usual ease, I was embittered to learn that Mr. Roscoe Jancey is now a corpse who will never pay my fee. But it occurred to me, after hearing the story, that you might be willing to take Mr. Jancey’s place. It occurred to me that locating Mr. McCracken might help you to prove you had not murdered Mr. Jancey.”

“How do you know I didn’t?”

“I am a student of human nature,” Dud said. “You are not capable of cold-blooded murder.”

I promised that I would borrow a hundred bucks in the morning and pay him — that was the price he insisted on, and I wasn’t in any spot to argue. He gave me an address which was only a couple of blocks from the point we were passing, and at the next corner he stopped and let me out.

I watched the red tail-light of his car as he drove away. The idea that Dud Harris was mixed up in this was something new. Maybe he was right that I couldn’t commit a cold-blooded murder, but I’d bet that Dud could stab a man in the back any time he needed to.

The house McCracken was supposed to be in was between City Park and Canal, a small place with shrubs growing in the yard. The blinds were pulled, so that at first I thought there were no lights inside; then I saw a narrow yellow thread under the front door. It was cold and the wind flapped my top coat against my knees as I started up the walk.

I wished suddenly I had a gun. I had a creepy feeling that I was going to need one. But I didn’t have one with me, and I couldn’t go home to get one because the cops would be watching my apartment house.

I went up the steps quietly and tried the knob without knocking. The door swung open.

I stood in the doorway looking in.

David McCracken was walking across the floor with a half-filled glass of whiskey and soda in his hand, walking like a man who has been at it a long time, back and forth. He looked worried and frightened. He spun around as I entered, turning so fast some of the liquor spilled from his glass. “What — What...” His mouth hung open.

I let him have it. I said, “I want to know why you killed that man in your hotel room.”

He’d been frightened before, but now he looked as though he was going to faint. His face got green and he just stammered without making any sense. He didn’t seem able to say anything but, “What? What? What?”

“The dead man in your hotel room,” I said. “A Roscoe Jancey. Why did you kill him?”

The whiskey glass slid out of his hand and broke on the floor. He didn’t notice it. His mouth was working with froth coming out of it like he was a horse who’d run the mile and a quarter in mud. Finally he said, “I didn’t kill anybody. I haven’t been in that room in three days.” He swallowed hard. “Who’d you say was killed?”

“Roscoe Jancey, of New York.”

“I never heard of him.”

I was watching him when he said it, and I would have sworn he was telling the truth. It gave me an empty feeling in the stomach, because I’d counted on something here that would help. This made the whole mess crazier than ever.

And then the door on the far side of the room opened and Mary came in, looking as pretty and cute as a puppy. She was smiling with her mouth, but her eyes were a little worried. Her black hair waved smooth down to her shoulders and she must have just finished putting on fresh make-up. “I thought I heard your voice,” she said. “What was all the excitement in front of the hotel just as Mr. Smith and I were leaving?”

“You didn’t want to see.”

“I wanted to. But Mr. Smith said that if I wanted to find Uncle Dave I’d have to hurry.”

I stared at her, trying to make sense out of her words. “Who said what?”

“Mr. Smith said he’d take me to Uncle Dave, but there wasn’t any time to waste. I knew you’d understand.”

“I don’t. Isn’t Dave McCracken your uncle?”

It was her turn to stare.

“Why, of course.”

I was really confused now.

“Then you mean this man here isn’t McCracken?”

“Certainly not. But he said he knew where Uncle Dave—”

McCracken jumped. I never saw anybody move so fast. I was spinning sideways but he got his left hand on my coat, and held on. He was bigger than I was and the top coat handicapped me. I hit him twice in the face with all I had, but he still held on. And then he had the gun out of his hip pocket and slammed me over the head with it.

The room began to spin around in easy circles, but I could tell I was on hands and knees, and I could feel the blood running down my forehead from the cut the gun had made. I heard somebody screaming, away off, it seemed; and then I knew it was right there in the room with me. It was Mary. She was backed into a corner and McCracken was going for her.

I tried to get up and I stumbled and fell. My head hit the arm of a chair. I went down flat — and cold.

I came to on the floor where I had fallen. My wrists and ankles were tied and I was gagged and my head hurt like hell. There was dried blood in my eyes and I couldn’t see very clearly.

I blinked a few times and twisted around and there was Mary on the floor across the room from me. She was tied up the same way I was and her hair wasn’t in smooth waves anymore; but she was conscious and she didn’t seem to be hurt. She tried to grin at me, which is quite a job when you have a lemon in your mouth with a handkerchief tied outside to keep it there.

My head hurt worse than a homebrew hangover, but I started wiggling around, trying to get loose. McCracken had been hurried and frightened and he’d done a lousy job of tying me up with some neckties. In five minutes I knew I was going to make it. It took about fifteen minutes altogether. Then I untied Mary.

“Well, well,” she said, “fancy meeting you here.” She began to laugh. She was scared almost sick, but she was fighting against it. That girl had what it takes.

“Where’d McCracken go?” I asked.

“Who?”

“McCracken. At least, he’s the fellow I knew as David McCracken. You called him Smith.”

“That’s what he told me his name was. The one thing I’m certain of; he’s not my uncle.”

“Where’d he go?”

“I don’t know. But don’t you think we better leave here before he comes back? He might,” she swallowed, “might do worse next time.”

“Wait a minute. Maybe I can find a gun.” I searched the house and the only thing of interest was a small batch of drawings done in pencil. They were pretty good. One of them showed a horse and jockey and under the picture was written: Sandy Rice on Morning Glory.

I said, “Well, I’ll be damned!” But I didn’t find a gun.

Mary and I walked two blocks before we located an all-night drug store and I phoned for a cab. My watch showed ten minutes after four. It was cold, that wet kind of New Orleans cold that soaks through you so you feel as cold in the middle of your stomach as outside.

Mary was explaining, “I was waiting for you in the lobby. You must have been gone nearly a half hour. And the clerk who’d been at the desk—”

“Sam?”

“I think that’s the one. He’d left the desk a few minutes before. Then this Mr. Smith, or whatever his real name is, came up and asked for my uncle’s mail. I heard him and so I asked him if he knew where Uncle Dave was. He looked frightened, and then he said yes, he knew where Uncle Dave was, and he’d take me to him. As we were getting in his car we heard the shooting and I saw you run out; but Mr. Smith shoved me into the car. He said Uncle Dave was already in trouble and couldn’t afford any more. He brought me to that house, and he said for me to wait until Uncle Dave came. After two or three hours you came in.”

We were waiting for the cab, drinking black scalding coffee at the soda fountain. I asked, “After he bopped me, what?”

“He tied me up; he didn’t hurt me once I quit fighting. Then he tied you and walked up and down the room like he didn’t know what to do next, until finally he turned around and said he would be back later, and went dashing out the door.”

It looked to me as though I had part of this crazy matter worked out; but I still couldn’t be sure. I told Mary about the murder and she said she had never heard of a Roscoe Jancey; as far as I could tell the world wasn’t going to miss Roscoe Jancey very much. Nobody seemed to have heard of him. He was a hell of a man to get sent to the electric chair about.

“What about a Mr. Linden Blumberry?” I asked.

“I know him. He had charge of Uncle David’s estate. And by the way, when I was waiting for you in the lobby I thought I saw him coming down the stairs, but then somebody got in the way and, when I looked again, I decided I was wrong.”

“He was there.” The cab was blowing outside and we went out to it. It was cold in the taxi and we sat close together. “Downtown,” I told the driver. And then I asked Mary, “What about this Blumberry?”

“I always had an idea he’d be crooked if he needed to.”

“Well, he’s a lawyer, isn’t he?”

She laughed and said I must not like lawyers and I started to tell her about the time I got sued for breach of promise by a girl I had never seen but once in my life — that was when I was riding and in the money — but I skipped it. I asked her if she had ever heard of a Nell Parker, a good-looking redhead.

Mary looked up at me, frowning a little. “No... Why?”

“The redhead who came rushing into your uncle’s hotel room tonight said that was her name.”

Mary was quiet a moment. “When you asked me why I didn’t go to the police about my uncle,” she said, “I didn’t tell you the exact truth — at least not all of it. Maybe I should.”

“It’s about time.”

“When I telephoned Uncle David the day I got to New Orleans, the first thing he said when he heard my voice was: ‘Nell, darling!’ He said it in a way Uncle David has assured me he never spoke to women. He was pretty much of a Puritan. When he didn’t turn up, I thought perhaps this Nell was mixed up in it somewhere, and if I went to the police and they found him — and her — he might not be in the humor for lending me money. I thought it was better to find him privately.”

“I think it’s time we found her,” I said.

“Do you believe Uncle David’s with her?”

I looked at her squarely. “I believe your Uncle David is dead. I believe he has been dead for a month.”

The morning papers were on the street by now. I read that I was wanted on suspicion of murder. From what Lieutenant Pete Murphy had told the reporters, there didn’t seem to be much suspicion; Pete was sure. Cops were ordered to shoot if necessary. It gave me a sort of weak feeling in the stomach.

The paper also listed the names and addresses of everybody mixed in the affair. Nell Parker was staying in a small apartment hotel in the French Quarter. We went there.

It was one of these old places with a courtyard. Fog was coming in from the river and you could smell the river and once or twice hear a ship’s horn moaning. There was a kind of gray light mixed in with the fog, but you still had to feel your way along. Inside the house it was almost as bad; a hall down each floor that was almost as wide as the rooms on either side and just a small globe at the end. The whole building had a damp cold smell.

“How’ll you know which room is hers?” Mary was whispering, though I had told her not to.

“I’m guessing there’ll be somebody awake in her room, and talking.” So I went from door to door, listening. It was on the second floor at the back I heard the voices.

A man was saying, “—never meant to let myself in for murder! They’ll pin it on me sure! We’ve got to get away from here!”

A woman said something I couldn’t understand.

Then the man said, “We’ve got enough. We’ve got insurance.”

I didn’t know what to do. If I went for the cops and this man and woman got away, I was a sure thing for the electric chair. And once the cops got their hands on me, they weren’t likely to look farther; it would take a long time to convince them, probably too long. But I didn’t have a gun.

I decided to take the chance this fellow wouldn’t shoot. I motioned to Mary to stand back, raised my hand, and knocked on the door.

The voices in the room stopped as though I had hit them with a hammer. There wasn’t a sound at all. Way down the river somewhere a foghorn tooted.

I knocked on the door again.

There was about ten seconds of quiet and I thought, “Maybe they are taking it on the lam out the window,” then I heard the clacking sound a woman’s mules make and the door was unlocked and opened. The redhead from the hotel stood there, wearing a negligée. I moved with the door as it opened and got inside before she could stop me.

Except for the redhead, the room seemed empty. But on the far side there was a closed French window onto a balcony. I thought I saw something move there, a little gleam of light on metal. I kept wondering if the man was going to shoot, and I had the weak sensation you get as you start down the highest drop on a roller coaster.

The redhead said, “What the devil do you want?”

“I’m looking for your husband.”

She took a long breath. It made her breasts stand tight against the silk negligée. “For who?”

Arthur Andrews supposedly had been killed at the race track the time I first saw McCracken. But I felt sure now he was alive. I looked at the window.

“For Mr. Arthur Andrews,” I said. The light glint outside moved and I said quick, loud: “I know he didn’t kill that man at the hotel. I just want him to help me prove it.”

Her face got very pale, but set. She had green eyes like those of a cat. “Didn’t you kill him?”

“No,” I said.

“Then who did?”

I’ll admit it was part guess work, but I had to give her and Andrews something because I needed them. The whole thing had to come clean before the cops would believe me. And I didn’t know who was on the balcony. I knew part of it but not all. I didn’t know I was practically trying to commit suicide.

I said, “The real McCracken’s lawyer killed him. That Mr. Linden Blumberry.”

On the balcony the light beam moved fast. A man yelled and I dived sideways. There was a hole in the glass window with lines spider-webbing out from it and the sound of the gun came smashing through.

I was rolling sideways, trying to get out of range, when the second shot blasted. The bullet ripped into the floor by my face. Then I got both hands on a straight chair and flung it. It was a big chair, but when you’re scared as I was, you’re stronger than you think.

The window went out with a crash. And there was another sound that wasn’t part of the window breaking; that kind of screeching noise a nail makes when it’s pulled out of wood, and the crackle of iron.

A man screamed. He really screamed. Then there was a kind of soggy bump and the scream stopped with it.

I stood up and was surprised my knees would hold me, and even more surprised that my stomach didn’t give way and let my shoulders settle down on my knees. But somehow I got over to the balcony. There was a man standing there looking down where the rail was gone. As I came up the man turned around. It was David McCracken. At least, he was the fellow I had thought was McCracken; the fellow who told Mary his name was Smith. His name actually was Arthur Andrews.

I looked down to where there was something dark in the courtyard. “Who’s that?”

“I don’t know. When you knocked, I ducked out here and he was here. I’d never seen him before. When he tried to shoot you I grabbed him. We were wrestling and... and...” He swallowed.

We went down and looked at him. It was Linden Blumberry, the lawyer. He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t going to get up soon. His back was broken.

Mary was ready to go back to medical school and I had said I would take her to the train. We started a couple of hours early so as to have time for a drink or two. Mary was sipping a martini and I was drinking gin with her, a Kinney fifty-fifty, which is a smooth mixture of rum, grapefruit juice, the white of an egg, and gin.

Mary said, “Now tell me how you knew that Mr. Blumberry, Uncle Dave’s lawyer, had killed that man.”

I said I hated to admit it, but it was part guess work. “But I did have some things to go on. When he found me in the room with the corpse, he said the man hadn’t been dead more than ten minutes. But he hadn’t even touched the body, except to stumble against it. He’d hardly glanced at it — and it had stopped bleeding. In that light he couldn’t even tell if the blood was dry or not. I wondered from the first how he could be so sure.”

“And you guessed from that?”

“With what you told me. You said you saw Blumberry coming down the hotel stairway. In other words, he had already been upstairs, and was walking down again. Yet he claimed to have come up only once, in the elevator. All I needed was a motive. The cops have got that straight now.”

“Explain it,” she said.

“It was some kind of South American government bond which had been defaulted years ago and was considered worthless. I don’t understand much about these things, but it seems this government was trying to get some fresh American cash and, to make a good impression, they were going to redeem those old bonds. Your uncle had nearly a hundred thousand dollars in them. The redemption had been kept under cover and Blumberry was trying to buy them from your uncle for five thousand, buying them under another name and selling your uncle on the idea he’d found a sucker. The trouble was, your uncle was supposed to go to Boston to close the deal. And he couldn’t go because he was dead. And Andrews couldn’t go because he’d be recognized as a fake.”

“You mean that when the accident happened at the track, Mr. Smith, or Andrews, or whatever his name was, told the police that Uncle Dave, the dead man, was named Andrews, while he pretended to be Uncle Dave?”

“That’s it. Andrews and your uncle had actually met in that fishing camp, just as Andrews told me. They got to be friends and came to New Orleans together. Your uncle had told Andrews enough about his affairs for Andrews to know your uncle lived on an income, and that a good part of it was soon due. Andrews himself was in a tough hole financially. When the accident happened he saw his chance. He and your uncle were about the same size, both blond. They didn’t look particularly alike, but they looked enough alike for a vague description to fit either one of them. And nobody knew them.

“Everybody took Andrews’ word for it that he was McCracken. He wrote his wife in New York, and when your uncle’s body arrived, Mrs. Andrews buried it just as if it were her husband, and collected his insurance. The insurance company didn’t investigate. They had the word of the New Orleans authorities that Andrews had been killed in an accident. Andrews was waiting for your uncle’s checks to arrive. He had some old signatures of your uncle’s which he could trace as endorsement — and that would be that. Then he could leave, change his name again, and your uncle would vanish. Or with good luck he could just keep on living on your uncle’s income.”

“And then?”

“Then this matter of the bonds turned up. Andrews wouldn’t go to Boston, so Blumberry came here. I think he came intending to kill your uncle, but he swears no. With your stubborn uncle out of the way it would have been easy to persuade you, the heir, to sign over the bonds. Unless he meant to kill your uncle, there wasn’t any need for having those skeleton keys that would open his hotel room, for walking up the stairs so he wouldn’t be seen, for having the knife ready.

“What Blumberry didn’t know was that you had come to New Orleans two days before and phoned and frightened Andrews so bad he was hiding, but still trying to collect the mail with the checks in it. So Blumberry went up and waited in your uncle’s room for him to come. It was this Roscoe Jancey who came instead.”

“What was he doing?”

“He was a member of a New York firm that was interested in the bonds. For two days he’d been trying to locate McCracken, or the man he thought was McCracken. He’d hired a private detective. Finally he got the idea the desk clerk was lying and that McCracken was in his room all the time. So he went up and turned the doorknob and went in.

“Blumberry says they argued and learned they were there on the same business and finally fought. Personally I think Blumberry was standing by the door and let him have it as he came in, thinking Jancey was your uncle, and not seeing his mistake until too late. Anyway, he killed him.

“He must have just been slipping down the stairs as I came and he saw me. He was sure you saw him as he started across the lobby, and realizing that would break his story of not having been there, he marched up to the desk, asked for McCracken’s room number, and headed for the elevator. He knew I would probably still be in the room, and he might be able to make me a fall guy for the killing.”

“But what was he doing on Andrews’ balcony later?”

“He had begun to guess the truth after the redhead came in asking for Art. I’d forgotten about her saying, ‘Art, darling,’ until I found the drawings in that house near City Park. Then I remembered that Arthur Andrews had been a small-time artist.

“Anyway, Blumberry figured if he was right, and if somebody was pretending to be McCracken but wasn’t, and if he could turn that fellow over to the police, all would be swell. He would have the real McCracken dead and he would have somebody convicted of Roscoe Jancey’s death — because it would look as if Jancey had recognized Andrews as a fake and Andrews had killed him.

“Blumberry traced Andrews the same way I did, by his wife’s address in the paper. She’d given the cops her maiden name, but she’d had to give them her right address. Blumberry crawled up to the balcony to get a look; about that time I scared Andrews into hiding on the balcony, and there they were together, both listening to what I told the redhead.”

Mary asked what they were going to do to Andrews.

“I don’t know. A mild jail term. I’ll do what I can to help, because he came through for me on the balcony. He wasn’t a killer, not even when he had you and didn’t know what to do with you. He was afraid you’d find out he was pretending to be McCracken. Even after I arrived and we both knew he was a fake, he didn’t kill us.”

Mary and I both got to thinking about how we felt when we thought he was going to kill us, and we polished off our drinks in a hurry.

I felt better, then, and warmed up.

“I think we’ll have another,” I said. “To McCracken.”

“You mean Smith.”

“Another one for Smith,” I said. “And then one for Andrews, so we’ll have him right under whatever name he prefers.”