The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Thomas (Francis Morgan) Walsh (1908–1984) was born in New York City and received his BA from Columbia University in 1933, the same year in which he sold his first short story, “Double Check,” to Black Mask. He sold several additional stories to Black Mask, one of which was honored by Joseph T. Shaw when he selected “Best Man” (October 1934) for his groundbreaking anthology The Hard-Boiled Omnibus (1946), which he regarded as the best work produced during his tenure as editor of Black Mask. Walsh went on to sell numerous stories to Collier’s, The Saturday Evening Post, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, one of which, “Chance after Chance,” won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1978. The first of his eleven New York police novels, Nightmare in Manhattan (1950), had previously won the Edgar for Best First Novel. It was filmed in the same year by Paramount as Union Station, starring William Holden, Nancy Olson, and Barry Fitzgerald. The exciting screenplay, for which Sydney Boehm was nominated for an Edgar, remained extremely faithful to the novel, although the locale was changed from New York’s Grand Central Station to Chicago’s titular crossroads, and the kidnapping victim was a blind teenage girl instead of a young boy. Walsh’s The Night Watch (1952) also served as the partial basis, with Bill S. Ballinger’s Rafferty, for the Columbia film noir Pushover (1954), which starred Fred MacMurray as a good cop gone bad, and Kim Novak in her first major role.

“Diamonds Mean Death,” Walsh’s last Black Mask story, was published in March 1936.

There is a trick even to the trade of murder.

In the yellow cone of light thrown down by the lamp behind her, the girl’s dark face looked lovely and eager, a pale, glowing cameo sharp cut against the shadows at her back.

The two men seated across the table watched her with varying emotions — Major Geoffrey Russell with very clear, slightly amused blue eyes, a smile faint on his lips, a cigarette graceful in his long fingers. Joe Keenan was not smiling; he sat at the end of the table, sharp face watchful, gray eyes shining coldly, with small glints of color, as if the diamonds heaped carelessly on the cloth before the girl were reflected there in pinpoints of ice.

None of the three spoke. There was a slight clicking sound as the girl’s fingers flashed through the stones, selecting one, holding it to the light for an instant, then passing on to the next.

In the corners of the room shadows held steady, cut in sharp patterns by the yellow glow of the lamp. Thick drapes concealed the windows at the far side, and occasionally Joe Keenan’s restless gaze flicked to them. Heavily lifeless, they hung there without motion, and through them only a few night sounds, mournful with distance, pierced in from the woods outside.

Joe Keenan’s eyes had kept steadily attentive on those drapes for the past twenty minutes, even when he had apparently been looking elsewhere. But there had been no movement from them, and no sound, and gradually his right hand had relaxed on his thigh, six inches from the automatic in his topcoat pocket.

Bending forward into the light as he lit another cigarette, Major Russell smiled at him, offered him his case. He was a bulky, muscular man of forty, rather tall, with skin tanned to a deep leathery tinge, and a short, square-cut beard of flaming auburn, through which his teeth showed very white when he smiled. Keenan took a cork-tipped cigarette from the extended case and nodded thanks; he was lighting it when a sharp breath of admiration from the girl drew his eyes.

In her hands, almost reverently, she cupped a tawny yellow diamond that seemed to Keenan as large as a hazelnut. “It’s real,” she said, turning to him with shining eyes. “They’re all genuine, Joe. I can’t really believe it.”

“Genuine?” Major Russell laughed shortly; the blue eyes twinkled. “You may be sure I made quite certain of that, my dear. They’re genuine, right enough.”

He smiled again, reminiscently, spun the tawny diamond in the air, caught it with one hand and tossed it to the heap of others by the girl. “And if you care to buy them the lot will cost you just thirty-five thousand dollars. May I add that I think it is a very reasonable and fair price, Miss Bridges?”

“Fair?” Ellen Bridges’ dark glance came up and studied him thoughtfully. “More than fair — much more, Major. It is that” — she smiled faintly in turn — “which makes one think. In open market your stones would bring close to eighty thousand dollars.”

Joe Keenan’s gray eyes narrowed on the Englishman. He said, “That’s the queer part. You claim they’re straight and yet you won’t peddle them yourself. So by selling them to Miss Bridges here you’re taking a loss of forty-five thousand dollars. There are two answers to that — you’re crazy or you’re crooked. Me, I don’t think you’re crazy. Those stones are hot.”

“Hot?” The bearded man frowned as if puzzled.

“Stolen,” Ellen Bridges explained, with a faint smile. “You mustn’t mind Joe Keenan; he has a bad habit of saying just what he thinks.”

Major Russell smiled slightly. “Perfectly all right. Naturally I did not expect you to buy until I satisfied you as to the legal ownership. It is unfortunate that, strictly speaking, there is none — none that could be proved before a court of law.”

His voice was clipped, British, decisive; but his eyes kept friendly enough. “The information I am about to give you is, of course, confidential. Having Mr. Keenan present is something I had not anticipated — I had preferred you came alone.”

“Mr. Keenan’s an old family friend,” Ellen Bridges said. “And he’s also an excellent private detective. My father employed him often when he was alive. I asked him to come with me tonight, Major, so if there is a fault it’s mine.”

“All right,” the Englishman said heartily. “Perfectly all right, my dear. I must apologize for my nerves tonight. They’re a bit jumpy. But to begin—” He knocked ash from his cigarette, drew on it thoughtfully, was silent a moment. “You see, I’ve knocked about the world a good bit in my time — never was one for standing still. A new place always called me on somehow. India, Brazil, the Sahara — I’ve seen them all. No regrets. A year ago this June it was Africa.

“I was knocking around the interior with no very definite object in view, just a small commission or two to keep me busy — trapping animals for zoos, that sort of thing. A living in it with luck but not much else. I was working my way over by easy stages to the coast, fed up with the existence, and anxious to see some white faces for a change.

“There were four black boys with me — four filthy, thieving devils I could cheerfully have murdered. No other human soul within miles. It was depressing country, rocky, practically waterless, damnably hot and pretty well deserted. Then one afternoon, as we pushed through a narrow cut in the side of a hill, one of my black boys stumbled on the body of a man — a white man.”

He paused to blow a long stream of smoke towards the ceiling. “He’d been there for years, I suppose, so there wasn’t much left of the poor chap then. A few bones, one or two rags of clothing, and a leather pouch that the sun had caked as dry as a rock.” Somberly he nodded towards the diamonds. “And they were in that pouch. I found nothing else around to give me the slightest clue to his identity.

“Anyone not entirely new to Africa could read part of the story easily. We were about a hundred miles distant from the diamond fields, in a district rather sparsely traversed, due mostly to its lack of water; and in view of the fact that it was so little traveled it seemed evident to me that our man had been trying to reach one of the northern ports secretly. The laws on I.D.B.s — illicit diamond buyers — are very strict in British Africa. This poor devil had somehow gained possession of the stones — how we do not know — and gambled his life on getting away with them.” The Englishman nodded soberly. “He lost, and I’m afraid it wasn’t a pleasant death.”

Ellen Bridges shivered. “Dreadful.”

Major Russell looked at her gravely. “All this, you understand, is pure conjecture on my part. After we reached the coast I made inquiries — judicious ones — but learned nothing at all about who the man might have been, or where he could have found the diamonds. Perhaps my moral code is twisted, but I couldn’t see handing the stones over to the government as a gift. No one knew about them, I thought; certainly no one could prove ownership; and so, in the end, I held on to them myself.

“The night before I left Jo’burg my room was ransacked — trunks turned inside out, clothes tumbled around, pictures taken from the walls. One of my black boys must have had a glimpse of what the pouch contained and sold his information to some rascal in Jo’burg, perhaps with a thought of sharing the proceeds. Fortunately, however, I happened to be carrying the stones with me that night, and on the boat I had no trouble.

“Eventually I came to America to dispose of them. The morning after I landed a man came to my hotel. He’d got wind of what I was about, perhaps from the fellow who went through my room in Johannesburg. He told me coolly what I was carrying, and offered ten thousand for the lot. I refused; and on that he threatened to tell the British authorities the whole story. I threw him out and left the hotel immediately, taking this cottage as a quiet place where no one would find me. Well” — he crushed out his cigarette and looked up with a faint smile — “that’s the story. If it isn’t very convincing the fault is mine as narrator. The details, I assure you, are true.”

Keenan’s gray eyes studied him a moment. “And you never found out who this man was that came to your hotel in New York?”

“Later I did.” The major pursed his lips. “Not an estimable character. A disposer of stolen goods — I believe the term is fence over here. His name was Peale. Perhaps you know him.”

“Jerome Peale?” Keenan nodded. “A little. Not anyone to fool with. Bad.”

“I gathered that,” the major said, looking at his watch and then up at Ellen Bridges. “That is why I left the hotel. Even in Africa we have heard of your one-way rides.” White teeth flashed inside the beard. “But he doesn’t concern us now. Shall we consider the bargain settled?”

The girl nodded. “You’ll want cash, of course. I can have it here by noon tomorrow. Will that do?”

“Excellently,” the bearded man said, rising. “You see, I have neither the time nor the connections to dispose of the stones singly. It seemed best to get in touch with someone running a legitimate jewelry business — that is why I got in touch with you, Miss Bridges. Naturally you are very welcome to any profit you may make over the purchase price.” He smiled, bowed. “Until tomorrow at twelve then?”

Joe Keenan rose after him, his hard gray eyes puzzled. The major’s story seemed plausible enough — it might be a shade too plausible. Was that the catch, the warning, that jerked uneasily at his mind?

As he followed the girl towards the door he was frowning, unsatisfied — something in all this didn’t ring true. A man would not throw forty thousand dollars to a stranger because he had no time. A man—

Somebody behind him said: “Hold it.”

It was a quiet voice with a low snarling edge to it. Before Keenan the major stopped suddenly, with an instant’s stiffness, so that one of his hands, halfway to the knob, froze in the air, the fingers spread, the thumb straight up. Keenan did not move; the girl gave a soft cry.

“You’ll turn,” the voice said. “All of you with your hands up. Over your head. And slow.”

There was a closet set flush against the wall of the room they had just left. Its door was open now and a man stood there — a gaunt man with a long dark face and a mouth that twitched unpleasantly.

“Peale,” Major Russell said, in an incredulous voice.

“Peale,” the gaunt man repeated nastily. “Everything fine, huh? Or it was until I dug up the van that moved your trunks.” His eyes widened, narrowed swiftly as Joe Keenan turned around. “Keenan — what are you doing here?” His glance swept over the girl without recognition, and the first touch of surprise in his features changed to an expression of bitter mirth. “Joe Keenan! Don’t tell me the boy friend here got—”

Major Russell interrupted him in a cold voice. “You shouldn’t have tried to do anything like this, Peale. I don’t see what—”

“Maybe you don’t,” Jerome Peale snarled, dark flame spouting up in his eyes. “Maybe pretty soon you won’t see anything at all. Dead men are funny that way.”

Standing at the girl’s right, Major Russell’s blue eyes remained calm, steady, unafraid. “Killing me won’t help, you know. There’s—”

“Shut up!” Peale raised the automatic; his eyes blackened with hate. After a moment the Englishman shrugged, subsided. Turning slightly to Keenan, Peale went on in the same low snarl: “I had you pegged for a square guy, Joe. You have that name and everyone knows it. If the skirt’s with you there’s a chance for you to blow now. I’ll figure you were like me; dumb enough to—”

At Keenan’s left there was a flicker of motion, a blur of silver that crossed the corner of his eye too swiftly to be defined. Before him Peale swung around his automatic, with his mouth open above it twisted down and sidewise in the gaunt face. His eyes glittered, black and venomous with rage, but in the split second that it took him to bring the gun up terror spread swiftly in them, transfixing the irises, widening the lids.

There was a sharp, distinct crack, like wood snapping. It was gone in an instant, without echo. Peale stared ahead stupidly, with the terror fixed in his eyes and an irregular brown smear high up in his forehead, just under the hair. Then he swung forward stiffly, with all his body rigid, and crashed face down to the floor.

“A mad dog,” Russell said, breathing softly. “He would have killed me.” In his right hand there was a small pistol not as large as Keenan’s palm, with a wisp of smoke drifting up from the barrel. It looked like a top, a child’s cap pistol. But at five feet it could kill a man. It had, Joe Keenan thought grimly, as he gripped Peale’s shoulder and turned him on his back.

The gaunt man must have died instantly. His eyes were still open, staring, his mouth open too, in surprise, in terror.

“He’s dead?” Ellen Bridges whispered shakily.

Keenan rose, nodding. Through the glass upper half of the front door he could see a deserted stretch of road, with trees nodding in the night wind, quietly, on the far side. Probably the shot had not been audible outside; even if it had, there was no one there to hear it. A cottage on a lonely road on Staten Island, two miles from the nearest village, was a safe place for killing. Keenan twisted his lips sourly as the thought struck his mind that that idea had come to him earlier in the evening. A swell place for murder!

Major Russell put the small pistol in the pocket of his jacket. His voice, his actions, were calm and unexcited. “Self-defense,” he said quietly. “The man was going to kill me — you both heard him say that. If you want to call the police there’s a phone here.”

Staring down at the dead man, Keenan shrugged his shoulders after a moment. “Peale asked for what he got. I’m not hopped up about hick cops nosing around and asking Miss Bridges a lot of questions. And they can’t do him any good now.”

“I had hoped you’d see it that way,” Major Russell said. “I had no choice. After you leave I’ll get him in my car and drop him off in some lonely stretch of woodland. Then there won’t be any trouble, any questions. That way, I believe, will be wisest for ourselves and our business.”

Ellen Bridges shuddered, keeping her glance away from the fixed black stare of the dead man. “Do anything,” she said, gripping Keenan’s arm. “But let’s get out of here immediately, Joe.”

The bearded man nodded, gravely calm. He held the outer door open for them, said good night quietly, and closed it without sound after they had passed through. That guy, Joe Keenan decided, had plenty of guts; through his obscure sense of dislike for the man he felt something like admiration.

In the front seat of the roadster Ellen trembled against him. She whispered: “Oh, it’s horrible, death like that! One minute he was alive talking to us; and then the next—”

“Don’t let it get you,” Keenan told her. “Jerome Peale wasn’t a kid. He had it coming that way for a long while.”

“I suppose so.” She was silent a few seconds while the needle of the speedometer flickered up to fifty-five and steadied there. Then she said in a small voice: “I’m afraid I got you in this jam, Joe. I know you didn’t want to come over here tonight; you only agreed to because you were afraid something might happen to me.”

“Forget that,” Keenan grunted. “Your father was a mighty good friend of mine.”

“Is it just because of my father?” she asked softly, looking up at him. “Don’t I count at all, Joe?”

Keenan shifted in his seat, looked down at her quizzically.

“You’re a fresh kid that ought to be whaled. If you’re asking for advice, I’ll tell you not to touch those diamonds with a ten-foot pole. They smell bad even with the story we got.”

“You’re suspicious of everybody,” the girl told him petulantly.

“After all, they don’t really belong to anyone. So why shouldn’t I buy them as well as someone else? If there were a legal owner, it would be different. But as it is—”

“As it is,” Joe Keenan said irritably, “you won’t take advice. This seems like adventure and fun, so you’re going through with it. You’re still young enough to think a British accent is wonderful.”

“Major Russell’s a gentleman,” she flashed. “Of course I believe his story.”

“I don’t,” Keenan said. “And you’re still sure you know it all. I wish you luck.”

“You’re... you’re detestable,” the girl blazed. Sullenly she turned away and looked through the window, refusing to speak even on the thirty-minute ferry ride to Manhattan.

Letting her out in front of her apartment, Keenan said, “Good night.” But he was not answered, and his lean face frowned after her. Women were queer people. And when the one you had to take care of was an obstinate, silly kid like that... He sighed. Well, it was a tough job. Joe Keenan wouldn’t have touched it for money; but his friendship for her dead father was something that could not be written off or canceled. And if she wasn’t so willful, she might even be a nice kid. Then Joe Keenan caught his thoughts there with an irritated grunt, and slammed in his gear.

Twenty minutes later he reached his own place. It was an old private house in the quiet upper seventies, remodeled into apartments, with a tall stoop in front and a light showing at the top behind glass vestibule doors. On the second landing he inserted a key in the lock on the left, turned it, and went in.

When he snapped on the button of the light-switch, lamps sprang instantly to life in three corners of the inner room. The light was soft, subdued, but quite clear, and the man sitting in the easy chair that faced the door, faced Joe Keenan, blinked at it once.

He was a short man, fat, wearing a derby hat steeply slanted over one ear and a blue overcoat below that. There was an automatic in his right hand that rested negligently on one arm of the chair. Keenan’s steady gray eyes went over him without nervousness, without haste.

The fat man said: “Sit down. Just keep your hands away from your pockets and act sensible. We’re friends, Joe — I even been sampling your Scotch. It’s good.”

“Next time take rye,” Keenan grunted. “The Scotch is for friends. I don’t lay out four bucks a fifth for punks.”

The fat man said, “Okey,” good-naturedly. But when he rose and backed to the window his eyes were small and watchful, and they did not shift while he felt behind him with his free hand, grabbed the shade cord and pulled it down to the bottom, then released it with a snap that sent it spinning to the top. Coming back, he held his gun close in to his side, where it could not be seen from outside.

“Look,” he said. “Nobody’s slippin’ you the works unless you ask for it. Do what you’re told and everything will be fine. There ain’t anything to this unless you’re dumb enough to make a break now.”

In the street a car motor roared briefly and then throttled down. The front door below opened and closed, and light fast steps pattered on the stairs. In a moment the door behind Keenan opened; a young man, hard faced, dapperly dressed, came in and shut it after him.

“Frisking job,” the fat man said. “From behind and careful. Don’t miss anything.”

In back of Keenan the second man opened his coat, ran swift fingers over him. He removed the automatic and then probed the empty shoulder-holster, patted trouser legs with a practiced deftness.

“Okey,” he said, when he straightened. “Nothing on him, Feeney.”

Feeney grunted. “Then get back to the car. When the street’s clear honk twice and we’ll go down.”

Keenan took a cigarette from a box on the table, snapped a lighter against it. The fat man’s pudgy face grew ugly at the action.

“Ask the next time,” he growled.

“This isn’t a ride?” Keenan asked.

“Uh-huh.” Feeney nodded. He chuckled suddenly. “But not the kind you’re thinkin’. We got nothin’ against you. Keep on actin’ nice and in a day or two you’re turned out all rested up. Nothin’ to get fretted about, Joe.”

Keenan’s black brows drew together. “Why?”

Feeney took a bottle of Scotch from a table drawer, put it in his overcoat pocket, and patted the flap down gently. “Company, Joe. Don’t worry about why. If we wanted to jolt you it could be done here, easy and nice, with a rope around your neck and no squawk. Since we ain’t doin’ that you oughta see we don’t want to crate you. Not unless you get tough and ask for it.”

Outside a car horn honked twice. Feeney straightened the derby with his left hand and motioned with the automatic gently towards the door. They went down the steps in single file, and descended the outer stoop in the same order, meeting no one. There was a small sedan purring at the curb, with the back door open.

“In,” Feeney grunted, the automatic close against Keenan’s back, where the shine of it was hidden. Keenan bent and entered, with the fat man right after him; from the front seat the driver leaned back and pulled the door shut.

They drew away from the curb, swung south on Lexington Avenue, and began to slip smoothly by dark, empty streets. On Sixtieth they turned east, slipping under the black shadow of the elevated structure on Second Avenue to the ramp of the Queensboro Bridge.

Feeney was half facing him, with the gun against his side, low, hidden by both their bodies. The dark span of the bridge unrolled before them under the long line of lights; moving very fast, they flashed off the Long Island side and threaded out Queens Boulevard. It was after one, store fronts dark, pavements empty.

Joe Keenan’s mind tried to consider it all calmly, without fuss. It was possible that Feeney and his friend might be Jerome Peale’s men. If they were, how had they heard about his death so soon? And if he was to be killed in reprisal for Peale, why hadn’t they murdered him back in his apartment, where, as Feeney had said, it could have been done quietly, safely? Thinking it over, Keenan decided they weren’t Peale’s men; at least it didn’t seem likely. And if they weren’t, what did they want him for; what were they going to do?

He couldn’t hit on any answers. In the front seat, keeping the speedometer gyrating uneasily at fifty-five, the hard-faced man swung left from the Boulevard to one of the Parkways, and they raced away from monotonous rows of two-family houses to dark open stretches of woodland. An hour went by; the road lost its wide smoothness, narrowed to a single lane affair with trees crowded close on either side. Joe Keenan’s sharp face tightened; his light-colored irises seemed to draw in and compact. In a day or two he’d be freed, Feeney had said. What was going to happen during that time? What was so important that he must be kept out of the way?

His mind flashed to Ellen Bridges, to Major Russell. Were Feeney and his friend after the diamonds — and the thirty-five thousand in cash the girl was to bring to the Englishman tomorrow at twelve? For if Peale had known where the Englishman was hiding out mightn’t others know too? And if they knew, if they planned — A small lump of muscle formed along his jawbone. Ellen Bridges, alone, helpless — murdered, probably, as soon as they took the money from her.

The thought roused him to a cold rush of anger, and in the wake of that, desperately and almost without hope, an insane determination. Under Feeney’s careful eyes he got a cigarette from his pocket, then fumbled for a match.

Before them the road swung up the hill in a sharp S curve, indicated by a sign that flashed past his eyes. In the front seat the hard-faced man had not yet circled the wheel for the first turn; he was bent slightly forward, the base of his skull showing under close-cropped hair. Striking the match, Keenan saw it, and his plan clicked into place in his brain. Desperate, insane maybe — but a chance.

Feeney watched him, wary, alert, as the tiny match flame speared up through the darkness. Holding the match cupped, his left hand concealing the right, Keenan got his middle finger under the sliver of wood and rested it there. When the man in front slowed for the turn—

He slowed. Keenan lifted his face from his cupped hands, leaving the match still burning, and blew a thin funnel of smoke casually upward. The wariness in Feeney’s eyes relaxed — and at that instant Joe Keenan’s middle finger flipped the burning match straight between his eyes. With the same movement his left hand swung out and down with the weight of his body behind it to crash solidly against the base of the driver’s skull.

Blinded by the match, the fat man fired twice. But Keenan’s lean body had flung itself forward and down the instant before the shots, to its knees against the front seat. Feeling the breath of the shots on his neck he whirled and brought his right fist up slashing, from the floor to the point of the fat man’s chin. It was a terrific blow that almost lifted Feeney completely out of his seat; his eyes lost focus, lost consciousness, as he slumped limply back.

It all happened in a moment, in a blur of motion, as the car yawed across the road. Keenan spun to the wheel, knocking the sprawled out form of the driver from it as the concrete guarding wall on the left side of the road shot into view. They crashed with a grating scream of sound from the front fender as it crumpled like paper against the solid barrier. Keenan was slammed forward, bruising his chest on the front seat; glass fell in a showery tinkle as one of the headlights smashed. Then he yanked back the brake, and they stopped.

A car topped the hill and raced down towards them as he clambered out to the running-board. Ten feet off it slowed, and a startled white face looked out at Keenan, at the automatic he picked from the floor, where the fat man had dropped it. Then the car was past, racing on again with an accelerated roar of sound.

The fat man, Feeney, was moaning, rolling his head loosely from side to side as Keenan pulled him out. The driver was still out cold, and Keenan laid them flat on the grass, by each other, and went back to the car. When he slipped behind the wheel the motor responded readily enough, and he put it in reverse, circled it in the road, and left it facing back the way they had come.

As he got out of the car again, Feeney was sitting dazedly up, propped by his arms. He cursed sullenly, indistinctly, as he rubbed his jaw. The coldness in Keenan’s gray eyes hardened and became more evident; looking up, Feeney saw that coldness and stopped suddenly.

Keenan said in a quiet voice: “That’s fine. Be nice, fellow. Who wanted me snatched? Who hired you and your friend for the job?”

“Go to hell,” the fat man snarled, with an attempt at bravado. He tried to hold Keenan’s stare and failed; after a moment his own flinched uneasily away. He began to lick his lips.

Holding the grip of the automatic, Keenan weighed the barrel in his free hand. He went on in his quiet tone: “Maybe you’ve never been pistol whipped. It isn’t nice. Me, I’d talk. Who hired you?”

Feeney did not answer. Joe Keenan’s eyes glittered and grew small. He asked again, curiously soft: “Who hired you?”

“Listen,” the fat man wheezed, his eyes pathetically earnest. “I never had a thing against you, Keenan. I told you that. We weren’t going to hurt you. Honest to—”

Down the road there was a faint motor sound that grew rapidly louder. As Keenan turned two motorcycles whined around the curve of the hill and squealed to a stop opposite the parked car. A big state trooper swung off one and crossed the road cautiously, his partner coming at the car from the side.

“Drop your gun,” he told Keenan. “What’s going on here?”

Keenan obeyed, gave his story briefly. The auto that had raced by five minutes before would have reported them in the next town, of course. And if he had had only five minutes longer with the fat man — Feeney would have talked; he’d have been glad to. And now nothing had been cleared up; the motive behind it all remained as vague, as apparently pointless as ever.

In the troopers’ barracks Keenan gave his story again, presented credentials. But it was five o’clock before he was free to go, and the fat man and his friend had been led away to cells. They both kept obdurately silent; they knew nothing, could tell nothing.

In the chilly station, where he had to wait two hours for the earliest commuters’ train, Keenan went over it again in his mind. And presently it began to hang cloudily together. It was robbery, of course; get him out of the way and in the morning they could have picked up Ellen Bridges easily enough, after she had drawn the money from the bank.

But who besides Russell knew of that? Of course, there was no surety that Peale had come to the house alone; perhaps some of his accomplices had been there, staying in hiding until he and the girl had gone. They could have murdered Russell last night and taken the stones; they could even be waiting there at the cottage for the girl to come.

On the train he dismissed it tiredly. The vital part, the thing that would have made it jell, was missing. And, without that, it was useless racking his brains. At his own apartment he showered quickly, shaved, and changed his clothes. Then he got out his roadster and met Ellen Bridges at her store on upper Fifth Avenue.

She greeted him coolly, and said she did not need his help. Without answering her, Joe Keenan grasped her arm and drew her out to his roadster. He drove to the bank and went inside with her, studied the street outside carefully before allowing her to emerge again, for that disturbing sense of uneasiness still clung to him. But nothing untoward happened; they wound their way downtown and caught the eleven-o’clock ferry. On the ride across Keenan told her the events of the previous night, and before he was half through her coolness vanished in a swift rush of solicitude.

“They might have killed you, Joe. You shouldn’t have—”

“But they didn’t,” he pointed out. “And I’ve got a hunch that I’ve figured the lay all wrong. I’m going to drop you on the other side, Ellen. If they’ve killed Russell and are waiting there—”

She said, firmly, “I’m going with you. And it’s not going to do you the slightest bit of good to argue about it.”

It didn’t. Three-quarters of an hour later, when he stopped the car before Major Russell’s bungalow, she was still sitting determinedly by his side. In a moment the major himself appeared in the doorway, younger, more somber, against the morning sunlight. He bowed to Ellen, gave Keenan a quick, hard grip. Leading a way to an inner room he took a chamois bag from a wall safe and upended it on the table. “The stones are there, my dear. If everything else is ready—”

The girl nodded. “I have the cash. We were afraid something had happened to you, Major. I was nervous all the way down.”

“To me?” White teeth flashed in a smile. “Why should it? No doubt that unpleasantness last night worked on your mind. Now if you would like to examine the stones—” He pushed them across the table to her.

Keenan watched him, the uneasiness, the sense of mistrust, moving in his mind again. When the girl began: “That’s hardly—” he cut in emotionlessly: “Examine them.”

“By all means.” The major’s voice was hearty. “We must be businesslike, my dear.” His hand flung out, tossed over the huge tawny diamond Keenan had seen the night before. “Begin on that beauty.”

Looking at Keenan, the girl flushed angrily. “Of course I know, Major, that—”

“Examine them,” Joe Keenan said.

She gave him a cold, annoyed glance. Major Russell bowed, his blue eyes amused. “Perfectly all right, my dear. Mr. Keenan is merely being a good business man. Please do as he suggests.”

Her head bent for a long moment; when she raised it again and put away her glass her tone was apologetic. “Of course it’s the one I saw last night.” From the leather portmanteau at her side she drew neatly rectangular folds of bills. “And here is your money. Count it if you wish.”

The major bowed gallantly. “I never doubt a lady, my dear. Perhaps” — his eyes dwelt with a thin trace of mockery on Keenan — “I am not what you call a smart guy over here.” Carelessly he riffled fingers through the heap of diamonds, and Keenan, his gaze lowered, watched them, fascinated by their flickering swiftness. “You may get in touch with me this week at the Savoy. I’ll do all I can to help in case of any difficulty.”

Ellen Bridges flashed him a smile, but Joe Keenan’s sharp face was set in an ugly scowl. Smart guy! Last night Jerome Peale had said something like that. What was it? He had figured Joe Keenan was like him, dumb enough to — Russell had shot him there, before he could finish. Dumb enough to what?

The major was smiling at him, offering his hand. Joe Keenan ignored it. He asked out of straight lips: “You’re a good shot, Major?”

Russell smiled faintly, his eyes puzzled. “Tolerable. I’ve won a match here and there. Nothing spectacular.”

“Yeah.” Keenan nodded slowly. “You’re a good shot, maybe a swell shot. Last night you killed Peale, although a good shot wouldn’t have had to do that. He could have shot Peale’s arm, his side.”

“Forgive me,” Russell said coldly, “if I don’t see the point.”

“You’ll see it,” Keenan said grimly. “You killed Peale because he was going to talk. He was saying he figured I had been dumb enough to — then you shot him. If he’d finished I think he’d have said dumb enough to let you fool me the way you did him. And you killed Peale to shut his mouth, not to protect yourself. Winging him in the arm would have done that.”

Gravely, without surprise, the Englishman faced him, a big man, tanned and quiet, calm, steady eyed. “So you see a catch,” he said. “Are you sure there is one?”

Keenan growled: “It was there from the start. You’re pretty fast with your hands. I’ve seen worse sleight of hand men on the stage. Maybe you were in that racket at one time but this paid you better. Every time you pulled it off it meant thirty or forty grand. I never figured out how you could get a gun out so fast while Peale was swinging his around; but say it was in your sleeve — it was plenty small enough to fit there — and a decent magician could flick it out faster than light.

“And a decent magician,” he went on, “could let Miss Bridges look at the big diamond now, the genuine one, and then switch it with a fake that looked exactly like it when you took it away from her to replace it in the pile. Satisfy us that one was good and you knew we wouldn’t bother to look at the rest.”

There was a pause. Ellen Bridges’ dark eyes flickered from Keenan to the bearded man, to the stones. She reached out to the tawny one and silence lasted for three breaths. Then she cried: “Oh, it isn’t the same. It’s paste!”

Keenan’s smile was grim. “A swell racket, Russell. You had two ways to work it. The first was to get rid of me and slug the girl when she came here alone with the money. The other was to switch the stuff, and when your punks missed up on me last night you had to work it this way to get the money. You fooled Peale and lots of others. When he started to squawk last night, kidding me for being a smart guy before he gave the inside, probably, on how you had switched the stuff on him too, you fed him a steel slug to shut his mouth.”

Russell said: “Yes,” in a clipped, hard sound. His eyes had lost all depth, become pinpoints of blued metal. His right arm was before him, raised slightly, the sleeve hanging loose. “You are right. I’m fast with my hands, Keenan — fast enough to kill you before you can wink an eye. That’s why you and the girl will get up very carefully and back into the closet. That’s why you’ll keep your hands over your head.”

Russell was standing close against the other side of the table. Keenan sat directly across from him, carelessly slouched in his chair, long legs doubled.

“Get up,” Russell said softly. “You and the girl. Don’t move your hands.”

“Please,” Ellen Bridges whispered. “Do what he says, Joe. The money isn’t—”

Joe Keenan remained still. One of his hands was on the table — the other, the right, was hooked by a thumb in the top pocket of his coat. His gray eyes, narrowed and hard, watched Russell’s face. He did not answer him.

There was a silence with only the sound of the girl’s breathing in it. There was something impassive but alert and poised in the stiff erectness of Russell’s body; he looked at Keenan for a long moment, expressionlessly. He said: “You’re a fool,” and his lips drew back slightly, tautly, into the lean brown cheeks.

Keenan saw the flicker in his eyes that preceded motion. Keenan made a little sidewise shrug as if about to get out of the chair. Watching Russell, his long legs, beneath the table, straightened, spread a little. Then, suddenly, he shot his body, feet first, beneath the table.

Keenan’s toes hooked around Russell’s ankles. He jerked inward, and the Englishman slammed over backward on to the floor.

Keenan scrambled upward, pushing with his left hand, the table before him as lead smacked lightly into the wood. Keenan flashed a glance around the table edge. Russell, on his back, the tiny pistol in his right hand, swung it for a second shot, and again the lead smacked without weight into the table. Keenan flipped his hand out and the big automatic spouted flame.

The blue eyes emptied suddenly of light, of life — for an instant they looked back at Keenan with a blank, dead glitter. Then he collapsed fast, limply, and did not move at all.

Keenan’s lean dark face stared down at him. He put his automatic back and got up and crossed to the phone in one corner.

“Police headquarters,” he said, into the mouthpiece, winking solemnly at Ellen Bridges’ white face over it.

It was late afternoon when he got into the roadster with the girl, reversed it around the police car parked outside it, and swung out to the road. Shaking a little, she pressed into his arm.

“You... you’re a fool,” she whispered, looking up at him. “He might have shot you — killed you. I’m still shivering inside. Why did you do it?”

“Why?” Keenan moved his shoulders slightly. “Maybe just because I didn’t like the guy. There was a contraption inside his sleeve that held the small pistol — all he had to do was jerk his elbow and a spring snapped the gun down into his hand faster than you could watch it. An outfit like that is part of the equipment of a sleight of hand man, only usually guns aren’t in them. Close enough a toy like that could kill any man the way it killed Peale.”

“It could have killed you,” Ellen Bridges said softly. “And the money wouldn’t have meant that much to me, Joe.”

Keenan said: “It wasn’t the money. With an outfit like that, a man didn’t have a chance. Major Russell was a rat. There’s just one thing to do with a rat, Kitten. I figured that staring him down like that would knock him off balance, make him panicky. When Russell was on the short end of a hundred to one chance he was cool; and a heel like him had had it all in his favor so long that he’d forgotten what it was like to play it even up.”

Shivering, Ellen Bridges came close into his shoulder, put her hand over his on the steering wheel.

“And it wasn’t me?” she asked, after a while. “Not even a little bit?”

Keenan looked down at her, his gray eyes amused.

He said: “That’s one you have to figure out, Kitten.”