The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Theodore A. Tinsley (1894–1979) was a third-generation New Yorker who, after serving in World War I, began a prolific career writing for most of the major pulp magazines, including Black Mask, Munsey’s, Black Aces, Detective Book, All Detective, Action, and several ghostwritten novels for The Shadow and Crime Busters, for which he created Carrie Cashin, the most successful female character in the pulps. A gorgeous and sexy private eye, she was the senior partner in the Cash and Carry Detective Agency in a series that ran for more than three dozen stories. She made her debut in the first issue of Crime Busters (November 1937); when the magazine changed its name to Mystery Magazine with the November 1939 issue, Carrie continued her adventures until nearly the end of the pulp; her last appearance was in the November 1942 issue. Tinsley’s other successful series included Major John Tattersall, who formed Amusement Inc. to fight crime with equally stalwart companions, and Jerry Tracy, the likable, Walter Winchell — type gossip columnist for the Manhattan tabloid the Daily Planet. Three of the twenty-six Tracy stories that ran in Black Mask served as the basis for movies: Alibi for Murder (1936) starred William Gargan,

Marguerite Churchill, and Gene Morgan, and was based on “Body Snatcher” (February 1936); Manhattan Shakedown (1937), with John Gallaudet and Rosalind Keith, was based on “Manhattan Whirligig” (April 1937). Murder Is News (1937) was based on an unidentified Tinsley story and also starred Gallaudet.

Jerry Tracy tries to switch a murder tag.

The shabby suburban bus jolted to a teethjarring halt and the driver growled with patient boredom: “Locust Avenue!”

Jerry Tracy fell over a couple of legs and swung off the bus, conscious that his lips were wreathed in a faint, somewhat silly grin. If the boys at Times Square could see the Daily Planet’s famous little columnist out here in the sticks, could guess what was inside the two paper-wrapped parcels he was carrying, a jeering laugh would go up that would stop the hands on the Paramount clock! Wise guy Jerry, the lad with the case-hardened front — pulling a sentimental pilgrimage to a has-been, because no one else in roaring Manhattan would remember that today was her birthday.

Ordinarily, on a trip out of town, Jerry traveled in his very dodgy Lincoln, with Butch behind the wheel making delighted horn sounds like the Normandie going down the bay. But today the Daily Planet’s columnist had dived inconspicuously into the subway, ridden out to the end of the line and taken a bus the rest of the way. The big package under his left arm was a birthday cake with a pink, gooey trail on top from a baker’s cornucopia that said: “Hey, hey, Sweetie!” The flat, oblong package had come from a five-and-dime; fluted pink candles with tin shields to catch the grease and pins to stick ’em in the cake.

Sweetie Malloy had once been a name to adorn the most famous of the Victor Herbert operettas! Beauty, brains and a velvet soprano voice gone at last — turned out to a forgotten pasturage in a punk suburb. It angered Jerry to think that a woman like Sweetie Malloy should be permitted by fate to settle down in a one-horse, out-of-the-way dump like this.

Chilly raindrops spattered on Jerry’s face. He stared at the gray sky and knew with a wry dismay that it was going to be one of those sullen all-night soakers. By the time he had rung Sweetie’s bell, the dark pavement of the walk was a dull, glistening black.

The sight of Sweetie’s face in the half-open door made Tracy’s throat catch, as it always would at each new sight of her. The singer was gone but the woman remained. The pale yellow entry light fluffed her soft hair, was kind to the threads of gray. Time had padded the once taut line of her throat, had put wrinkles around the clear, amber eyes without disturbing their serenity or their fine courage.

“Jerry!” she gasped, with a quick, frightened inflection.

“How about letting a little guy in out of the rain?”

“Why... yes... Of course! Come... come in...”

There was something in the manner with which she closed the door that put Tracy instantly on the alert, made him study the woman. She was scared to a sickish gray pallor. Stealth! That’s what the careful click of the closing door had meant.

“Anything wrong, Sweetie?” he asked her, with a level stare.

“Wrong? Why, what a question! With you here?” Her voice steadied. “Everything is right, my friend. Come, let me take your coat and... and bundles. Gracious, what huge packages! Don’t tell me they’re for... for me?”

“Happy birthday,” Tracy said gravely. “We’ll open ’em later.” He put his hands on both her shoulders as she turned tremulously. “Listen, keed. Do we have to put on an act — you and me? I’m not Ole Olesen or Jake Kazinsky. I’m Jerry Tracy. I came all the way out here tonight because... well, just because... I’m asking you as an old friend, is anything wrong?”

Rain, drumming at the closed window, made a softly sinister sound.

“Everything is very, very right, my friend!” Her laugh quivered. “As — as right as rain.”

He let the subject drop for the moment. “The big package is a cake,” he said. “Biggest damn’ cake in the local cakery. Candles in the smaller bundle. Later on we’re gonna let you inflate the lovely bosom — and Lord help you if you don’t blow ’em all out with one big foooof! I thought that after dinner—”

“Dinner? Of... of course.”

“Corned beef.” Tracy grinned. “Same as it’s always been, same as it always will be. Cooked à la Sweetie Malloy, with gobs of hot English mustard—”

“And... and chopped cabbage with plenty of salt and pepper, lots of b-butter—”

Her voice stopped quite suddenly. Her mouth twisted, began making queer, choking sounds. She turned away towards the couch. Tracy didn’t move an inch from where he stood. The sound of her harsh weeping made his heart ache, but he let her alone, let her have the thing out by herself. After a while her fingers stopped bunching the covering on the couch’s arm.

“Jerry, will you do something for me — if I beg you as an old friend?”

The look in her eyes made him wary at once. He didn’t reply.

“I want you to leave this house immediately and go back to New York.”

“No.”

“You don’t understand. For your own sake, Jerry, you’ve got to go! Just forget that you were here.”

“No.”

He winced at the sound of her tragic laugh. “In that case, you will have to be convinced. You see, you’re not the only one with a surprise this evening. I... I have one for you.”

Her cold fingers touched his and held on. She walked silently towards the stairs, and Tracy with her. Upstairs in silence, past the bathroom, down a short, incredibly ugly hallway to a closed door which, being opened, disclosed a curtained bedroom where twin boudoir lamps burned softly atop a dresser.

Tracy stared at the room’s quiet charm, doubly quiet by reason of the lash of the rain against the shade-drawn windows.

“So what?” he said in a puzzled voice. “Where’s the surprise come in?”

“It’s — on the other side of the bed.”

“It better be a good one, because — Oh!”

He stopped short. His voice sounded like dried peas rattling in a tin pan. “How did this happen?”

“It... it happened.”

“Who killed him?”

“I did.”

Tracy said very softly: “I knew a guy once who used to lie the same way you do. The more he lied, the more truthful he looked. He never could fool me worth a damn.”

Jerry Tracy bent downward above the sprawled body and surveyed it with narrowed eyes. The man had taken a small-calibered bullet almost exactly through the navel. The corpse was on his back, with his legs together, one arm trailing stiffly towards the dresser. The sleeve of the extended arm, Tracy noted, was quite rumpled. Black, silky hair, a little thin on top; a small black mustache that accented the curve of petulant lips. Eyelids shut tightly. Ears without lobes.

Tracy straightened. “You killed this fellow, Sweetie?”

“Yes.”

“Right here?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“For... for reasons I’d rather not discuss, Jerry.”

“We’ll skip the reasons. You killed him about a half hour ago, eh?”

“No,” Sweetie Malloy said calmly. “I killed him early this afternoon.”

Tracy’s chuckle held no amusement. “Smart woman refuses to be tripped by cunning columnist.” He shook his head. “It’s no use lying, Sweetie. Too many other things to explain away. Corpse bled like a pig when he took the slug in the belly — but your rug’s nice and clean. The gun on the rug could have done it — maybe did do it — but not here, Sweetie. And you should never try to bend an arm after rigor mortis has set in; it makes a lot too many wrinkles in the sleeve and sets the mind of a bright little guy galloping with the proper answers.”

“Nevertheless, I killed him here in my bedroom,” she said, stonily.

“What were you planning to do if I hadn’t butted in?”

“I was going to call the police and confess.”

“Mmmm... Going to, eh? Since this morning?”

Composure fled from her. “My God, Jerry — stop grinning at me like a... a hyena! Did you ever murder anyone... and... and try to decide what to do? Did you ever stare all day at a dead man and think... and think... till you almost went mad with terror and despair? And then, just when you had nerved yourself to take what you deserved — to have the doorbell ring and... and be tortured by a well-meaning friend who—”

Tracy strode grimly forward as her voice mounted shrilly. With deliberate brutality he shook the hysteria from her.

“Stop yelling. Do you want to get me into trouble, too?”

“No, no!” she gasped. “Please go — please, Jerry! I... I brought you up here to show you how dangerous, how suicidal it would be for you to remain until—”

“Save your breath. I won’t budge an inch. Who you trying to shield?”

Sweetie didn’t reply.

“Who’s the lad on the floor?”

“A... a man named Phil Clement. He was a — lover of mine. If you’re familiar with the movies we were — living in sin.” The hard desperation went out of her voice suddenly. “Jerry, you must believe me! Phil Clement found out something that I couldn’t bear to have exposed, and he... he tried to blackmail me.”

“I happen to know,” Tracy reminded her, “that the income you live on, Sweetie, wouldn’t attract a grasshopper.”

“For your own sake, leave before I call the police.”

“I’m staying here until I find out the truth.”

There was a telephone on the low night table and Sweetie sprang towards it. Jerry wrenched the receiver out of her hand before she could utter a word. He slammed it back on the prong and held the sobbing woman motionless for an instant. Something in the wild stare of her eyes gave him a sudden idea.

“If I promise to leave here in ten minutes, will you have one drink with me as a... a substitute for the birthday cake and the... the candles?”

Sweetie Malloy nodded haggardly.

“Where do you keep the liquor?”

“Downstairs. Kitchen. There’s a bottle of Scotch in the little closet off the dinette.”

She had sunk into a chair, her eyes closed. He closed the bedroom door softly, his mind grimly on the bathroom and the medicine cabinet. A sedative! There must be a sedative there! He was betting shrewdly on the habit that must have been a part of Sweetie Malloy at the height of her Broadway glamour. He had never known a celebrity yet who wasn’t an insomniac. Jerry was one himself. Late hours and the constant whirl of excitement made a sedative as familiar as breakfast food. And where would it be but in the medicine cabinet?

He found a bottle of veronal on the lowest shelf. Soundlessly he tiptoed down the carpeted stairs, hurried to the kitchen. He made two stiff highballs. Into the glass with a slight nick at its edge he put a double dose of veronal. He placed both glasses on a tray and went back upstairs.

Sweetie Malloy reached out listlessly as he touched her shoulder and presented the tray. She took the glass without the nick.

“Whoa!” Tracy said humorously and plucked it from her fingers.

“What’s the matter?”

“Ginger ale in the other one. Did you think I wouldn’t remember?”

“Oh — thanks.”

She took the one with the cracked rim and drank deeply. Finished it with a second long gulp. Tracy emptied his, too.

“Bum Scotch,” she said faintly. “It’s the best I can afford.”

“That’s all right, Sweetie.”

She sat there holding the empty glass. Gradually the tense lines were smoothing out in her face. “You’re the best friend I have in the world,” she said dreamily. “I wouldn’t drag you into a mess like this for a million dollars. On my birthday — that’s funny, isn’t it?”

“Pretty funny,” Tracy agreed.

Rain drummed with insistent sound on the windowpanes. The overhang of the bedclothes hid the corpse from view. Tracy’s lowered gaze watched the relaxing fingers on the empty glass. Sweetie clutched sluggishly as the glass dropped into her lap. It bounced off to the floor and she regarded it for an instant with a blurred grimace. Suddenly her eyes widened, knowledge brightening them.

“Jerry... What... what—”

“Take it easy, keed.”

She swayed unsteadily to her feet, her eyes struggling to retain their fleeting look of tragic accusation.

“You’ve... you’ve doped—”

“Sure,” Tracy said softly.

He caught her weight as she pitched forward. Holding her limp body in his extended arms, the Daily Planet’s wise little columnist stared down at one of the few really fine women he had known in his life. Sweetie Malloy harboring a blackmailing lover? Sweetie Malloy killing a man — for any reason whatsoever? The idea was preposterous, sheer lunacy.

Sweetie wasn’t that kind. She had had no furtive lovers — and only one marriage. It wasn’t her fault that Jack Malloy was a rotter and a total loss. He didn’t even have dough! But she loved him, married him, stuck with him till the hour he died. She had saved enough from her own savings to purchase this cheap house in the suburbs and provide her with a meager income. Finished with the stage, forgotten by the blatant Broadway crowd, she had moved gallantly into obscurity. And this was the woman who was trying to assume the guilt for a sordid murder, who would have leaped into black, scandalous headlines but for Jerry’s providential arrival in the rainy dusk.

He carried her sagging weight across to the bed and dropped her with a soft grunt. He had turned back towards the murdered man when he heard the peculiar sounds Sweetie Malloy was making. The high-necked dress was cutting into her throat, purpling her unconscious face. For an instant Tracy hunted unsuccessfully for hooks or buttons; then with a sibilant oath he whipped out his penknife and slashed the neck of the dress open.

The tiny gold links of a locket chain were rising and falling with her labored breathing. Tracy frowned, reluctant to pry into her personal possessions. But the thought of the corpse on the rug swept away his sympathetic instincts. He drew the locket gently upward from the white cleft of her bosom.

He snapped the flat case open and stared at the scrap of photograph inside.

Sweetie herself. Taken evidently when she was a child of about fourteen. Self-possessed, mature-looking, very lovely.

He was clicking the locket shut when a peculiar thought stayed his hand. The eyes — they weren’t Sweetie’s eyes. Even in the child’s face, they were harder, clearer, devoid entirely of that shy reticence that had always been Sweetie Malloy’s chief charm. He saw now that the hairdressing was too modern; the scrap of dress that showed in the photo was a fairly recent style that was not more than five or six years outmoded. Sweetie’s own childhood belonged way back in the early nineties; it couldn’t possibly be her. Then who was this clear-eyed, defiant little beauty? Tracy’s memory told him he had seen this kid somewhere, was dimly familiar with the contour of the face, especially the reckless flame of the eyes. She’d be about twenty now. A grown woman.

He pried out the picture with the point of his penknife and his breath caught as he read the rounded, childish handwriting on the back of the photo: “To Mother from Lois.”

Lois... He knew the face now! His imagination filled out the promise of beauty in the face, matured and hardened the lovely mouth, added a nude body misted to a milky radiance under the glow of diffused lights... Señorita Lois; she used no other name. Poised in the perfumed darkness of the Club Español, dancing like a flitting white moonbeam behind the iridescent translucence of an enormous floating bubble.

Tracy closed the locket, replaced it gently around the neck of Sweetie Malloy. Poor, desperate, gray-haired Sweetie! Pleading guilty to murder, secretly conveying a dead body to her own home and bedroom — to save this same reckless-eyed child? It was only a guess, but to Tracy it seemed a guess perilously close to certainty.

A grim hatred for the charming Señorita Lois grew in Jerry’s mind. Without Lois there was no need at all for Sweetie’s desperate sacrifice. A childless Sweetie had no sane reason for attempting to frame herself to burn in the electric chair. But if she had a daughter... If her daughter had killed a man, had begged Sweetie in hysterical terror to save her... save her...

Jerry’s lean jaw hardened. All Lois had to do, apparently, was to lock her damned crimsoned lips and let her unsuspecting mother take the rap. Sweetie would never disclose the secret. Tracy himself, friend of years as he was, had never once dreamed that Sweetie’s marriage with drunken Jack Malloy had produced this pampered and sinuous darling of the Club Español. A damned, cowardly murderess, if his hunch was correct. A gal whom Jerry Tracy was going to pay a grim visit before this tragic night was over.

He reexamined the corpse on the floor. Except for tailor marks the clothes were empty of clues. But Tracy was patient with his searching and his patience was rewarded by a stiff, oblong pressure in the lining of the man’s coat. He found the hole in the inner pocket, ripped it wide with his forefinger, felt down through the lining and drew up the pasteboard. There were only two lines of print:

Rain still slogged viciously behind the drawn shades on the window. Tracy shuddered slightly at the sound; he knew what he had to do tonight before he called on Sweetie’s unnatural and cowardly daughter. He’d get rid of the body, plant it somewhere else for the police to find. With the police short of all clues that might show where and under what circumstances the man had been murdered, Tracy himself would be free for at least one night to go to work on Lois, uncover the whole slimy truth. Sweetie would keep quiet as long as Lois’ name remained a secret. Besides, if she stepped forward now and tried to re-assume the guilt, it would drag Tracy himself into a criminal mess — and Sweetie, God bless her, wasn’t built that way!

Tracy strode to the telephone on the night table and called his penthouse. To his disgust McNulty, his ancient Chinese butler, answered the call instead of Butch. In a steady voice Jerry assured the Chink that he was perfectly dry and in the best of health, that he wouldn’t be home for dinner — and please put Butch on, like a first-class and intelligent Chinaman!

“You got him laincoat an’ lubbers?”

“Sure, sure. I’m all right, keed. Honest!”

Then Butch’s adenoidal bellow came over the wire. “Hello, Boss. Jeeze, what a night, huh?”

“Where’s the Chink?”

“Gone back in the kitchen.”

“Swell. I want you to phone my garage and get the car. The Chrysler, not the Lincoln. Don’t tell the Chink where you’re going.”

“How kin I?” Butch asked in a puzzled voice, “When I dunno meself?”

Tracy gave him the address. “Drive out here right away. You can’t miss the cottage. It’s three from the corner of Locust. Pull into the drive and park at the back of the cottage. Keep your mug covered up as much as you can. I don’t want anyone recognizing you on the drive through Manhattan.”

“Oke.”

“And tell Felix over at the garage to keep his trap shut about the Chrysler going out. If anyone asks later on, both my cars were there all night.”

“Oke.”

Tracy hung up with a nervous click. He prowled swiftly about the shaded bedroom, pocketed the gun from the rug, tidied the grim evidence of struggle that Sweetie had so pathetically counterfeited, made the room normal and neat except for the huddled corpse. Sweetie was still breathing with drugged regularity; she’d be asleep for hours yet.

The Daily Planet’s pint-sized columnist went downstairs to the kitchen and made himself a hasty sandwich with some Swiss and rye he found. He was as hungry as hell; and besides, it gave him something to do while he waited for Butch. Inaction always got on his nerves, made them raw and jumpy.

He had finished the sandwich and was hunting for a bottle of beer when the bell rang at the rear door.

Jerry Tracy stiffened. He knew that the prompt caller at the kitchen couldn’t possibly be Butch. Then who was it? And should he answer the ring or let the guy get tired and go away? Again the bell rang. The guy outside knew that the lights were on in the cottage, that someone was at home. Jerry would have to answer or arouse suspicion that something was wrong.

A plan formed instantly in his mind. He sprang noiselessly towards the gas range, turned on one of the burners. He grabbed an empty kettle from the table, filled it with water, stood it over the blue flame. Then he walked noisily towards the rear door, flung it open.

To his surprise the caller was a woman. Rain slanted against the columnist’s bare head. He stared at the woman, trying to get a glimpse of her dripping face.

“Mrs. Malloy is quite ill,” he said curtly. “What did you want?”

“Ill? I’m... I’m sorry.”

Her beady eyes stared suspiciously, peered past him through the half-opened door. “I’m... I’m Mrs. Malloy’s next-door neighbor. I came to borrow a cup of sugar. You see, we’re having a little party and—”

Tracy leaned forward, glanced alternately to right and left. Both adjoining houses were dark from cellar to garret.

“I’m Doctor Rolfe,” he told the woman with a cool smile. “We mustn’t disturb Mrs. Malloy — but come in, by all means! And... er... get your cup of sugar.”

His firm hand drew her unwillingly across the threshold. He took a good look at her in the light. She was fully dressed for the street: hat, coat, high-heeled shoes, gloves. Soaked with rain. Obviously out in the storm longer than it would take to run from an adjoining doorway. Pale angular face. Might be a Swede. Watching the suave stranger that she had not expected to run into with a puzzled, scared expression in her bovine eyes. That lump in the sagging pocket of her long coat was a gun bulge, or Jerry was crazy!

He lifted the lid of his kettle and peered professionally.

“Mrs. Malloy had a bad heart attack this afternoon. She’s upstairs in bed, barely conscious. I’m heating hot water now for a... ahem... parallelogram treatment.”

He smiled faintly.

“You no doubt know where she keeps the sugar. Help yourself.”

The woman’s eyes swept the cupboard helplessly. “I... I guess I won’t bother, Doctor. Thank you; I... I won’t stay.”

“Shall I tell Mrs. Malloy who called?”

“No, no. Don’t annoy her.”

She backed towards the kitchen door, swung it open and ducked out into the drumming rain. The minute the door closed Tracy ran noiselessly into the front room. With his eye carefully glued to a corner of the shifted shade, he saw the woman hurrying from the driveway to the sidewalk. She melted into the darkness towards Locust Avenue. A liar and a faker. As bad an egg as Tracy had ever smelled. Who was she? Did she know about the corpse upstairs? Could she be — his jaw tightened — an emissary of Señorita Lois?

He went back to the kitchen and turned out the gas flame under the kettle. He heard the pulsing hum of a motorcar with a thrill of satisfaction. The car turned slowly into the driveway from the street. It braked behind the cottage and a moment later the bell rang briefly. It was Butch.

Tracy yanked the startled big fellow into the kitchen and snapped an eager question at him. “See any sign of a woman walking along Locust Avenue?”

“Naw.” Butch snorted with derision. “On a night like this they ain’t nobody walkin’. Street’s as empty as a... a motorman’s glove. I mean,” he added hastily, with a silly grin, “a motorman without no hand.”

“Did you see a car parked anywhere along Locust?”

“Oh, sure. About four blocks down. Parked without lights. You tol’ me not to show me mug much, so I didn’t give it no gander.” He grinned. “Jeeze, let ’em park — I was young meself once!”

Jerry wiped the romantic grin off Butch’s thick lips with a curt sentence or two.

“Huh?” Butch gasped. “Moider? Right here? An’... an’ we’re gonna snatch the body?”

“Right. And I don’t want any mistakes.”

Less than ten minutes after Butch had arrived, the body of Phil Clement was carried discreetly out the back door of the cottage and stowed away in the rumble of the Chrysler. He made a tight fit — but he fitted. The adjoining houses were still dark. Tracy smeared the license plates with a handful of wet earth. He was climbing in alongside of Butch when he suddenly remembered his two bundles — the birthday cake and the candles! Swearing grimly, he hurried back into the cottage and got them.

Butch swung the car through the driveway and out to the rain-pelted street.

As they turned into Locust Avenue, Jerry’s eyes peered ahead through the slanting sliver of headlight-illuminated rain.

“Is that the parked car you saw?”

“Yeah.”

“Slow down a trifle when we go by. Don’t let ’em see your face. Cut in close and go right by ’em.”

“Okey.”

Butch ducked his head low over the wheel. Tracy, hunched beside him, gave the stalled car a lightning scrutiny from under the wet brim of his hat. Two of ’em — a man and a woman. The man’s back was turned; all Tracy could see was a very sporty, extremely gray topcoat — almost a white-gray. The woman was the dame who had called at Sweetie Malloy’s kitchen to borrow a cup of sugar.

Butch, who had glanced casually into the rear-vision mirror, gave a faint yelp. “Hey! They’re follerin’ us, Boss!”

“I know. Show ’em how fast you can go with a special engine job that cost me plenty of jack.”

Butch crooned with delight. “Fast as I like?”

“Sure. Lose ’em.”

Butch lost them in a straightaway mile of hair-raising speed along water-slippery concrete. He made doubly sure by two sneaking turns through the bumping darkness that brought the Chrysler to a parallel highway.

“We’re going to Brooklyn,” Tracy said. “We’re going to dump the body in a vacant lot at the corner of Pike and Pacific.”

The place registered instantly with Butch. “I getcha. The spot where the cops found Snipe Moretto last week.” His smile bathed Tracy with fond admiration. “Jeeze, you sure got brains in that little nut o’ yours. The cops’ll think it’s a gang killin’. They’ll think Snipe Moretto’s boys got hunk with the Peewee gang.”

The flitting Chrysler roared smoothly through the Bronx, crossed into Manhattan, went all the way down to Canal and across the Manhattan bridge into Brooklyn. It was barely nine o’clock, but the steady torrential rain had swept the streets clear of all but a driblet of traffic. No signs of pedestrians at all.

At Pike and Pacific, Butch braked the car to a stop and got out with a hand-jack. Unmindful of the soaking rain he jacked up the rear axle and pretended to go to work on a tire. Tracy drifted unobtrusively to a gap in the rickety fence and peered into the vacant lot. He came back and rested one hand negligently on the closed rumble. An occasional automobile rocketed by, throwing water flying in a soggy splash.

“When I say ready — out with him!” Jerry whispered.

More cars. Tracy straightened nervously as the last one swerved out of sight around a corner. As far as he could see, the street was empty for the moment except for the sullen hiss of the October rain.

“Ready!”

Up went the lid of the rumble. Arms plunged and caught at the wedged-in corpse. In a moment Tracy and Butch had staggered across the deserted sidewalk and vanished through the gap in the fence. They were gone less than sixty seconds. Butch let down the jack and tossed it into the open rumble. Jerry closed the lid with a bang.

The Chrysler was in motion almost before the columnist could close his door. Butch’s hands, he noticed, were shaking on the circumference of the wheel. His own were tremulous, too. The car took an erratic slide and straightened out.

“That’s that, Boss.”

“Yeah. That’s that.”

A vivid picture was still uppermost in both their minds: a dead man lying in a grotesque huddle in the rainy darkness of a vacant lot. Cold and inanimate, in a sordid welter of tin cans, mud and busted bed-springs... Tracy felt a little sick at the necessity of heaving even a dead man to a rest like that.

Jerry had a grim hunch that if he didn’t make a quick job of this case, the gal who asked for a cup of sugar and the guy in the gray-white topcoat might do something damned nasty to a pint-sized columnist who had developed such an uncanny habit of minding other people’s business — when they broke the law. Whoever they were, those two were in the thing up to their ears, along with the bubble dancer.

“Drop me off at Nevins Street,” he told Butch in a low tone. “I’ll grab the subway back. Remember to tell Felix that the car wasn’t out of the garage tonight. Get rid of those two packages of mine somewhere. Be sure no one sees you do it. Better smash ’em both up and stick ’em in one of the garage trash cans.”

He watched the crimson tail-light of the Chrysler vanish in the rain and descended frowningly into the Nevins Street station. He rode a Seventh Avenue express to Times Square, caught a cab, rode quietly with set jaw to the Club Español.

Tracy was soaked and soggy, a bit squishy at the heels, but the Español’s doorman recognized him with a respectful grin.

“Bad night, Mr. Tracy.”

Jerry said, “Yeah,” and made quick puddles towards the cloak room. Suddenly he stopped short in the center of the foyer. He was staring at a familiar white-gray topcoat. The coat was being handed across to Nita, the checkroom girl, by a thickset, muscular man of medium height, with bushy black hair and a neck almost as big as Butch’s.

Tracy began backing quietly towards a convenient Spanish arch, but Nita’s face had lifted and her pert red lips were smiling at the columnist.

“Hey, hey, Jerry mío! Lousy night, no?”

The muscular man whirled like a cat. His dark eyes focused on Tracy. Jerry advanced smilingly, fumbling casually for his cigarette case, taking in the guy’s details with one slant-eyed flash. Didn’t know the mug from Adam. The fleshy cheeks, blunt nose, shaggy black eyebrows made a brand-new tintype for Tracy’s mental rogues’ gallery. But the topcoat was an old friend!

The stranger grabbed the coat from Nita with a brusque snatch. “Forgot something,” he muttered, and with his face averted from Tracy, barged through the lobby and butted out into the rain.

Tracy waited for ten hesitant seconds. The hard-boiled bubble dancer could wait, he decided. This was a guy to check on in a hurry.

There was no sign of him on the gleaming black lacquer of the rain-drenched sidewalk. A taxi was moving from the curb and Jerry said swiftly to the doorman: “A guy just came out. Did he take that cab?”

“Was he a sorta short, heavy mug in a light coat?”

“Yeah.”

“He walked. Pretty fast, too. Went around the corner.”

“Thanks.”

Jerry caromed off a bobbing umbrella and made it to the corner without delay. His eyes narrowed with elation. That car parked at the curb down the street looked a hell of a lot like Light Coat’s tin wheelbarrow. Might swish by and give it a look.

A hand clutched him as he passed a pitch-dark doorway. The clutch lifted Jerry off his feet, yanked him headlong into the narrow entry.

His fist swung instinctively and skidded off a wet ear. The force of his hasty blow threw him off balance but it saved him a fractured skull. A pistol butt hit Jerry’s falling shoulder and laced it with numbing pain. Before it could hit again Jerry’s left hand closed desperately on a thick ankle and toppled his antagonist.

Neither of them made a sound. The hiss of the rain on the black sidewalk and the scuffling of their entangled legs on the tiled pavement of the doorway was the only noise audible.

The clubbed gun swung backward for a bone-smashing blow.

Jerry butted his head against the man’s nose. He bit his way through the hand that crushed his mouth and chin. The killer yelped shrilly and they rolled apart for an instant. Tracy staggered to his feet, slipped, went down jarringly on hands and knees. He managed to throw one arm upward and he took the savage gun smash on the wincing tendons of his forearm.

His assailant turned, chin and mouth crimson from his butted nose, and ran head-downward through the rain. He darted along the sidewalk and slammed headlong into his parked car. As the gears meshed Jerry leaped to the running-board, clutched at the wheel, tried to throw the automobile towards the sidewalk.

A straight-arm blow to the mouth tore him loose and sent him reeling backward. The pavement came up dizzily and socked the back of his skull with a force that bounced his teeth together. It took him a dazed minute to remember where he was and to sway dizzily upward from the cold puddle he was blotting with his aching back.

The car was in high, roaring towards Sixth Avenue. Its stop light flared crimson; the car skidded around the corner and vanished.

Tracy sat down on the uncomfortable spiked top of a hydrant and tried to pull himself together. His head still felt like an overstuffed chair. A man with a dripping umbrella came down from Seventh, stopped hesitantly.

“S’matter, buddy? Sick?”

“Nope. I’m all right.”

Except for an arm that felt like boiled spaghetti and a lump on the back of his head where he had kissed the sidewalk, Jerry was beginning to feel normal. The man with the umbrella handed the columnist his hat and walked off. Didn’t even look back.

“If I’d been jumped like this in Peoria,” Tracy reflected grimly, “there’d have been six cops with notebooks, a hook and ladder company, and a thousand nosy gazabos. Get half killed in Manhattan and a lone guy with an umbrella hands you back your hat — and goes right on to the drug-store to buy his aspirin!”

The thought made him grin cheerfully. He went back to the Club Español with almost a jaunty stride.

He asked for an inconspicuous table and got it. Garcia, the swarthy and affable headwaiter, bubbled with friendliness for the Daily Planet’s expensive little hireling. Tracy had helped many a good show, had rescued many a lousy one, by a good-humored boost salted away in a pert paragraph.

Garcia rubbed swarthy hands together. “Señorita Lois goes on in about wan hour. You weel like her, I’m sure.”

“I can’t wait an hour. I want to see her now.”

Garcia’s chuckle seemed a bit strained. “Ah, no, no... Why not wait, have a few dreenks — see for yourself thees glorious dance she makes with thees glorious body, no?”

“You mean she doesn’t want to talk to me?”

“Tonight she is a leetle bit upset.”

“Sick, eh?” Tracy’s tone was sharp.

“No, no. Worried, per’aps. Maybe a leetle temperament. Ha, ha! She snarl and she snap. She weel talk weeth no one.”

“Tell her Jerry Tracy wants to see her.”

Garcia shrugged, scowled, departed. When he returned his message was brief.

“She say—” He gulped. “She say how you lak to go to hell in a tin bucket?”

“I see. Got an envelope and a small hunk of paper?”

“But surely.”

Tracy cupped the paper behind his left hand, scrawled a brief sentence, sealed the envelope. “Take her this.”

In three minutes Garcia was back. There was incredulity in his black eyes, a faint overlay of perspiration on his olive forehead.

“You are indeed a magician, Señor Tracy. She see you. Come weeth me.”

Tracy threaded his way past crowded tables, paid no attention to the whispered buzz of comment his presence excited. He crossed a shining expanse of open floor, ducked under a curtain of heavy brocaded material and climbed a flight of wooden stairs to a closed door.

“Beat it,” he told Garcia.

He opened the door without knocking, clicked it shut behind him.

“Hello, Toots.”

His note was still in her hand. She had thrown a light robe over her shoulders but the thing gaped candidly and Tracy, in spite of the hard anger that gripped him, was forced to admit to himself that this kid was strictly the goods.

It was hard to say which was uppermost in her swimming dark eyes: rage, or a bright, overmastering fear.

“Listen, you wise little newspaper heel! If you’re trying one of your celebrated snoop acts, pulling a cheap bluff—”

“Shut up!” He was not an awful lot taller than the dancer, but he seemed to loom a foot higher as he tramped slowly towards her. “As far as I’m concerned, Toots, you’re a two-bit strip act — and I’m doing you a favor to sneeze at you. I never fool and I never bluff. I asked you how you’d like to push a bubble around in a death cell. Think it over, Miss Malloy.”

“You — damn you... Who said my name’s Malloy?”

She sprang at him without warning, caught both his shoulders in a nail-digging frenzy. Her flimsy robe trailed but neither of them was aware of anything but their locked double glare. Tracy kept his lips compressed, gave no indication whatever that the pointed nails of the dancer were hurting him like hell.

He flung her backward a step.

“If you don’t talk — and talk plenty, Toots! — I’m gonna nail that kalsomined shape of yours to the cross. I’m calling you Malloy because you’re Sweetie Malloy’s daughter.”

He heard the sharp hissing of her breath. There was a moment of utter silence in the room.

“Well? So what if I am?”

“I want to know why you’re so damned scared tonight. Are you waiting to hear the newspaper extras that your mother has been pinched for murder?”

Her rouged face was as white as the notepaper that fluttered to the floor at her bare feet. “You’re nuts. You’re absolutely insane.”

“Am I?” He stopped and placed the paper in his pocket. “If I’m insane, let out a scream and have me pinched for annoying you. I’d love to tell the cops why Sweetie Malloy could not have killed Phil Clement, your manager.”

“Is Phil — dead?”

“You know damn’ well he is... You’re the one that killed him. How about going straight back to your apartment and talking this over?” His glance was like the flick of a whip. “Well?”

“Let’s go,” she gasped.

She clutched at his hand, wrenched the door open. Barefooted, panting, she sprang down the wooden staircase, her left hand dragging the startled columnist. A chorus girl, ascending the narrow stairs, flattened herself against the banister as the almost nude dancer and the columnist swept on past her.

“Well, for Gawd’s sake...”

“Hey, wait a minute!” Tracy growled. He pulled the fluttering robe tight, knotted the silken cord securely. “Where’s your shoes? You can’t go out barefooted, dope!”

There was almost an insane blaze in Lois’ eyes. She jerked him forward, pattered through a darkened corridor, swung open a door. There was a paved alley outside and a parked limousine.

“Yours?” Tracy snapped.

“Yes.”

“Swell.” He swung her up in his arms with a sudden heave and carried her through the rain. A sleepy chauffeur in a plum-colored uniform flung open the automobile’s door, gaping stupidly.

Tracy bounced Lois in on the cushioned seat, crawled in beside her. “Tell this lad it’s okey. Tell him home, James.”

The chauffeur had recovered his scattered wits. He had the door open again, a wrench hefted menacingly in his gauntleted hand.

“It’s... it’s all right, Peter,” Lois whispered fiercely. “I’m... I’m not feeling well. Drive us home.”

“And toss that overcoat of yours back here!” Tracy snapped at him.

Lois Malloy jerked the speaking tube to her tremulous lips. “I won’t need you any more tonight after we get there, Peter. You can put up the car and go home.”

“Yes, Miss.”

The apartment building was a swanky stone hive that went up and up through the rain like the side of a terra-cotta cliff. It had a canopy, a doorman, a rubber carpet to the curb and an umbrella ready to be snicked open for milady.

Tracy shoved all the hubbub away with a sweep of his arm. He grinned at the startled doorman. He was just beginning to realize that he was bareheaded and coatless himself. And the bubble dancer’s appearance was enough to make any respectable doorman gulp.

Jerry carried Lois Malloy to the silver and onyx elevator. She wriggled loose and slid to her feet as the car ascended. Jerry didn’t mind that a bit; it had been quite a trick to carry her with that numb left arm of his. Her eyes, he saw, were free of terror; they were colder now, wary, self-possessed.

“I haven’t my key with me,” she told the stolid elevator man. “Will you get a duplicate, please?”

“Yes, Miss.”

She padded barefooted to her penthouse door and waited with Tracy while the elevator man descended.

“Maid out tonight?” Tracy suggested.

“Yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“Does it matter?”

“I think so.”

“Her name’s Selma.”

“Selma what?”

She whirled at him suddenly. “How the hell do I know? Just plain Selma!”

The doorman appeared, inserted a key, opened the door, vanished. They went into a gorgeous living-room and Tracy said mildly: “Nice dump you’ve got.”

Lois’ bare feet made quick, meaty sounds on the floor. She jerked out a cabinet drawer, slammed viciously about with a gun in her hand.

“Listen, you! Stand right where you are. What do you know about my... my mother? And what do you know about Phil Clement?”

“I know why Clement was killed — and where,” Tracy bluffed.

“Yes?” Her voice grated. “He was killed because my mother was dumb enough to take him on as a lover. And if you think you can drag me into her mess, you’ve got another think coming.”

Tracy nodded a little. “I’ve seen and touched a lot of lice in New York,” he said in a slow whisper, “but you’re the first dame I’ve run into who tried to dodge a murder rap by jamming her own mother into the electric chair.”

The gun in the dancer’s hand was as steady as a rock. Her crimson lips jeered. “Sweetie Malloy gunned Clement in her own house. The body’s on her own bedroom floor. She’s surrendering to the cops — if she hasn’t done so already.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Because she phoned me and confessed.”

“And you’re letting her take the rap?”

“Why not? She killed the guy, didn’t she?”

Jerry stared contemptuously until the hard eyes flickered and turned away. He said, quietly: “Your mother was here in this penthouse today.”

“What of it? I had some sewing stuff for her. She... she sews things for me.”

“I see. Sews things for you. And won’t tell the cops she’s your mother. But you don’t mind if she burns for murder... God, you get better all the time.”

“What you think about me doesn’t worry me,” Lois said sullenly.

“Is your maid coming back here tonight?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where does this Selma live?”

“I don’t know.”

“What does she look like?”

Lois’ lovely lips curled contemptuously. “What does any Swede look like?”

“A Swede, eh? Thanks.”

He leaned towards her, smiling, and with a sudden gesture wrenched the gun from her hand and shoved her into a chair. She landed with a force that made her bounce.

“I’m taking a quick look about this arty dump, just for the fun of it,” Tracy growled.

He disappeared into another room. She could hear him moving about, but her rigid pose never changed. She was still sitting there, barefooted, creamy-bosomed where the coat gaped, when Tracy returned.

He snapped her eyes awake with a sharp question:

“Do you happen to know a guy who likes to wear very sporty gray topcoats?”

He could see the dancer freeze up inside.

“Well? Do you?” he repeated.

“Get out!”

“Sure,” Tracy said unevenly. He threw her gun into her lap. “Do me a favor, Toots. Empty that thing into your rotten little skull. I’d do it myself if I had an exterminator’s license.”

“What’s your angle on this thing, Tracy?”

He eyed her steadily. “I’m working for the lad in the gray topcoat.”

Lois’ breath sizzled briefly. “Do... do you know anything about architecture, Mr. Tracy?”

“Not a thing.”

“This apartment is completely soundproof.”

“So what?” he asked.

“So — this!” The gun he had tossed contemptuously into her lap streaked upward like a flash of light. Her finger pressed the trigger six times.

The six harmless clicks sounded almost like one. It was nearly twenty seconds before the knowledge that the gun was empty seeped into her rigid eyes.

Tracy gave her a scornful, sandpaper chuckle. “I emptied that toy while I was strolling through the apartment. Wanted to see what you’d do. Here — take ’em back! They stink in my pocket.”

He threw the handful of loose cartridges at her. They bounded off her body, rolled helter-skelter across the rug. Lois didn’t utter a sound. She was sitting there, watching him like a stone carving, when he slammed the apartment door.

He shivered a little while he waited for the elevator, blinked once or twice to get rid of the image of that baleful face.

The opening door of the elevator found him debonair and cheerful.

“Were any of you boys on duty this afternoon?” he asked on the way down.

“No, sir... That is, come to think of it — Roy was.” This little bareheaded guy had eyes that seemed to dig right into a fella. “Roy was... was home sick one day this week, so he hadda take a double stretch to make up for it.”

“I get it.” The elevator stopped and the doors slid apart. “Which one is Roy? Call him over.”

Roy was a tall, gangling youth with pale, good-natured eyes in a weak, taffy-colored face. The shrewd Daily Planet columnist tabbed his type instantly: a two-dollar racehorse sport, a policy ticket sucker, a sweepstake boob, an eager patron of small craps games. There were a dozen kids just like him in the Daily Planet building. A cinch for a bribe.

“Come here, son. I wanna talk to you.”

He went with Roy down a short corridor off the lobby and halted in front of the service elevator. His fingers opened and left a crumpled ten-dollar bill in Roy’s moist palm.

“All you’ve got to do is answer a couple of harmless questions.”

Tracy’s grin had never been more warmly appealing. His wink was a humorous, good-natured, man-to-man affair. Roy grinned back.

Once the kid had started, he spilled like a broken faucet. Tracy’s respectful nods were subtle flattery to egg him on.

The señorita had gone out a little before two o’clock that same afternoon. Said she couldn’t wait for the sewing woman, and to send her up for the stuff when she came. The old dame came a little after two. Went up. About a half hour later the service buzzer rang. The sewing woman and the maid met Roy in the kitchen doorway. They both looked scared and sorta funny, he thought. He didn’t pay no particular attention; people were always looking funny in a big house like this.

“What did they want?” Tracy asked.

Well, they wanted a trunk up out of the storage room in the cellar. He brought it up. After a while — must have been around three o’clock then — he got another buzz. Went up. Took the sewing woman down and the trunk, too. Got it out to a cab and the old lady drove off with it.

“Did she say what was in it?”

“Yeah. She did. I didn’t ask her, but she told me anyway. Old dresses of the señorita’s. Felt as heavy as hell.” He grinned weakly. “Maybe that was because the old sewing woman forgot to gimme a tip.”

“Let’s fix that right now.” Tracy shot him another ten-spot. “What about the maid?”

Well, Roy thought, that was sorta funny, too. Selma, the maid, came down in the passenger elevator about twenty minutes later. With a heavy suitcase. Gave up her apartment key. Said she was called away suddenly and to give it to the señorita when she came back. The señorita got back around four or so, Roy thought. He gave her Selma’s key and she looked pretty angry and pretty puzzled.

“Not scared?”

“No, sir. Just wonderin’, sorta. She said okey and rode upstairs. And I guess that’s all.”

“Do you know Mr. Clement?”

“Oh, sure. Her manager, you mean?”

“Yes. Did he call on her any time today?”

“No, sir.”

“How about a short, heavy-set man in a light gray topcoat?”

“Dunno him. There wasn’t any visitors except the old sewing woman.”

“Thanks, Roy. You’ve been a big help.”

His pale eyes goggled. “You a detective, mister?”

Tracy grinned, leaned closer. “Say, ever hear of a guy named Jerry Tracy?”

“Jeeze, yes...”

Jerry tapped his chest briefly. “Me.”

“No kiddin’. I... I always thought you was a much bigger guy. I’ll be darned.”

“Keep your eyes and ears open — and your mouth shut. Any time you run across a hot bit of dirt, gimme a ring at the Planet office.”

“I sure will, Mister Tracy. Jeeze, thanks...”

Tracy went back to the lobby and out to the street. The rain had stopped but the gutter still raced with water. The doorman’s shrill whistle brought a cab splashing east from the dark avenue.

Tracy murmured his own address, relaxed with a tired grunt — and immediately leaned forward again. “Change that! Take me to the Club Español.”

No sense riding home like a shivering, bareheaded dope! His topcoat and hat were still in the checkroom; Nita would be wondering what the hell was wrong.

The Club Español was still wide-open. Nita grinned perkily at Tracy. “Hey, hey, muchacho! Where you been?”

He saw that she was looking at him with a peculiar stare.

“You sure gummed the works here tonight,” she said tonelessly. “Garcia’s still tearing his hair. I hear you pulled the señorita out in her B.V.D.s — and damned little of them. The customers raised Cain when they heard her late show was off. I dunno what Garcia told ’em.” Nita grinned cynically. “Maybe he told ’em the señorita busted her bubble. Anyhow, there was a lot of arguing, one drunken brawl that was a honey; and half the customers scrammed out to the opposish down the avenoo. First time I ever saw Garcia cry. Tears like big round hunks of putty. I’m not foolin’.”

“Yeah?” Tracy said inattentively and turned away. Nita’s hand on his wrist pulled him around, restrained him.

“Remember when you first came in tonight, Jerry? There was a mug in a very light-gray topcoat. He scrammed the minute he saw you — and you ups and outs right after him. I wondered.”

“Don’t tell me you tabbed him!” Tracy’s glare was so intent that she pulled back a little, her hand still on his.

“I didn’t tab him the first time — but I did later.”

“He came back here?”

“Yowsuh. I mean, por supuesto, ciertamente,” Nita kidded nervously. “Brought a dame along.”

“A Swede?” Jerry whispered. “A big horse-faced number? Sorta pale and angular?”

“Right. She had on a street coat over a very punkerino and secondhandish evening rag. They both checked their coats. Didn’t stay long; beat it the moment they heard the señorita wasn’t gonna bounce through that ‘Me and My Bubble’ number.”

“Did you dip their pockets, honey?”

“Sure did. Nothing in the dame’s coat but a soiled handkerchief and a few hairpins. In the guy’s pocket — this.”

The slip of paper switched hands with deft invisibility. Tracy cupped it for an instant, read the penciled memo. Two lines: Selma Borquist, 932 West 10th.

Something in the way he crawled into his coat and popped the snap-brim hat askew on his rumpled hair brought a solicitous frown to Nita’s dark eyes.

“You’re not going down there tonight, for Gawd’s sake?”

“I dunno yet.”

“Listen, Jerry. You’re dead on your feet right now. There’s a lump on the back of your dome like a hen’s egg, and that left arm of yours looks like it might hurt like hell. G’wan home to bed. The Swede’ll keep till tomorrow.”

“You’re a sweet kid, Nita.”

“It’s the mother in me.” She grinned, and wondered why the words should make Tracy look so suddenly queer, as though she had said the wrong thing.

“I feel all in,” he admitted. “I think I’ll head straight for home, a stiff drink and a swan dive into the hay. S’long...”

He lurched out to the street and Nita, watching the tired drag of his feet, thought angrily: “He’ll kill himself one of these days with his damned running around. About as big as a bag of popcorn — and more pep to him than a Mack truck... Crazy little runt...”

When Jerry awoke the sun was shining. He picked up his fresh copy of the Daily Planet and saw the expected headline on the front page. There was a photograph of the body, with a squat white arrow above it to help dumb tabloid readers pick it out from the tin cans and debris. No identification yet. Jerry, having carefully cut out all the labels from Clement’s clothing, wasn’t surprised. Twenty-four hours, he thought grimly. After that — Inspector Fitzgerald and the cops.

Butch was behind the wheel of the Lincoln when Jerry appeared on the sidewalk. Off like oiled lightning, down to Times Square.

Butch tossed his plaid cap at a peg and squatted in the outer office with a copy of Variety and the Daily Planet funnies. Jerry sat down at his desk and hooked the dictating machine closer with a tug of his patent-leather toe.

But before he dived into the column he reached for the phone and called Garbo, the very snooty chief operator on the Daily Planet switchboard. He gave her Sweetie Malloy’s suburban number.

“When you get it, say anything you like. I want to know how the woman sounds when she answers. Keep my line in. Verstehen Sie?”

“If you mean do I understand,” Garbo said icily, “the answer is yes, Mr. Tracy, I do.”

He hung on and listened with narrowed eyes to the brief two-way misunderstanding between Garbo and Sweetie Malloy. Garbo lingered a second after she broke the connection. “Satisfactory, Mr. Tracy?”

“Quite.” He grinned. “Hey, Garbo — listen. Why don’tcha like me, keed? You mad because I call you Garbo?”

She sniffed audibly and clicked off. But Tracy was satisfied. The sleeping draught he had slipped Sweetie hadn’t done her any harm. She sounded tired and listless — but she was out of the shadow of the electric chair, and there wasn’t a way she could frame herself again. Call in the cops now, and they’d laugh at her!

He tackled the column with vim. At noon Butch appeared with a mound of Swiss cheese on rye and a pitcher of draught ale. Tracy took the stuff in his stride. When he got busy on an overdue column he was like the Twentieth Century singing along steel rails. At four-thirty a messenger arrived and took the cylinders away. Tracy stretched gratefully. He was done. McCurdy always edited the stuff and trimmed the edges. Nice guy, McCurdy. His youngest brat was named Jerry. On purpose.

Tracy went down to the sidewalk and thought things over, while a steady stream of pedestrians buzzed and bumped past him. Sam, his favorite hackman, was parked at the curb. He gave the Daily Planet’s columnist a wrinkled grin and gestured briefly towards his tin flag; but Jerry shook his head. The subway seemed a better bet for a well-known little guy on an anonymous mission. The small-calibered gun that he had picked up from the bedroom floor in Sweetie Malloy’s suburban cottage was a sagging weight in his pocket.

The dump Jerry was hunting was west, between the gaunt Ninth Avenue El and the river. A mean, red-brick hovel, tucked away in a welter of dust and decay. An incredibly filthy fish store on one side, a secondhand plumbing shop on the other.

Tracy hesitated, rubbed his chin uneasily. “Whoa!” he thought. “You’re galloping too fast, keed!” After all, he was a Broadway columnist, not a policeman. If he didn’t tip the cops — and tip ’em right now — he might get his wise little nose so deep into trouble that it would take him eleven years to convince Headquarters that he was acting not to cover up crime but to expose it!

He stepped into a telephone booth in a cigar store near the corner and called Police Headquarters in a low voice. After a short wait he heard the welcome sound of Inspector Fitzgerald’s deep voice.

“Fitz? Listen—”

“Jerry?” Fitz’ heavy rumble exploded into a pleasant chuckle. “Haven’t seen you in ages. Where have you been keeping yourself, you little bozo?”

“Don’t talk!” Jerry snapped. “Listen!” He uttered a sentence or two with curt speed.

Fitz’ voice changed instantly. “Right! I getcha.” A smart cop, Fitz. Never wasted a second asking how or why. He knew Jerry Tracy well enough from past experience to wait until later for complete explanations. Jerry had a habit of handing him a crisis and a solution all in the same breath.

“You and Sergeant Killan get down here as soon as you can,” Tracy said. “In the meantime I’m gonna have a try at the Swedish maid. She might beat it if I waited for you.”

“Watch your step, Jerry!”

“You sound like a subway guard,” Jerry kidded lightly; but there was a hard line to his lips as he hung up. He was aware that he had reached the point where a single misstep might lower his dapper little body into a graveyard for keeps. He had never thought much about the next world, but he knew he liked Broadway!

He went back to the red-brick tenement and sauntered inconspicuously into the shabby, dirt-littered vestibule.

Jerry glanced at the scraps of paper stuck askew under a row of bell buttons. Most of the name-plates were empty. Borquist was under the last button. Top floor.

He climbed the stairs through pitch darkness, except for the faint flicker of light on the first and third landings. He could barely see the gun in his hand when he rang the bell, after a long, careful listen.

There was no answer to his ring. He waited for thirty seconds, then banged noisily on the wood with a clenched fist.

“Gas man! Gas man, lady!”

The door opened a mere crack, but Jerry was all set. He recognized the scared face of Selma. His foot blocked the door; his shoulder sent it flying open.

Selma backed into the frowsy living-room and Jerry closed the door and held the woman motionless with his gun.

“Up with the pretty arms, keed!”

“What... what’s the idea?”

“I came to borrow a cup of sugar,” he told her pleasantly.

There was no sound except the rickety roar of an El train slogging past in the growing darkness. Tracy forced the woman ahead of him. He searched every inch of the apartment — bedroom, kitchen, closets. There was no sign of any lurking boy friend. Smiling coldly, Jerry marched Lois Malloy’s ex-maid back to the living-room. Selma’s knees were knocking with fright.

“Why did you kill Phil Clement?”

“I didn’t. I swear I didn’t!”

“Who did?”

“Lois killed him. All I did, Mister, was to try and help that little devil of a dancer cover up. Her old lady butted in and gummed the works. She said she’d smear me with the murder if I didn’t help her. So we packed the stiff in a trunk and the old dame took it out. That’s all I did, I swear!”

“How much blackmail did you ask when you called up the dancer yesterday afternoon?”

No answer.

“Who suggested putting the bee on Lois? Your boy friend?”

“I... I got no boy friend.”

“What’s the use of lying to me?” Tracy snapped. “The guy was in the car with you out on Locust Avenue. You both beat it out there to stop Sweetie Malloy from crabbing your blackmail act. But you were late getting there — and I got there first. Good old Doctor Rolfe!”

“I dunno what you’re talking about.” She faltered.

“No?” Tracy’s smile was knifelike. “I gave you a break by stealing the corpse myself. You tried to hijack me and get hold of the stiff again, but my Chrysler was too fast for that lousy can you were driving. So the boyfriend hunts me up at the Club Español and does his best to rub me out of the racket. He brought you back to the club later to proposition Lois for quick dough, but I foxed him again by kidnaping her in her cellophane panties... For a virgin with no male acquaintances, you sure manage to get around, Selma.”

Her bony face got suddenly triumphant.

“Drop that rod!” a voice rasped behind the columnist.

Tracy became very still. He let the gun fall to the floor.

“Take it easy, Emil!” Selma croaked, her eyes glassy with fear. “Don’t shoot the guy in my flat, for God’s sake!”

“Turn around, stupid,” the voice ordered.

Tracy turned. Death was shining at him out of Emil’s fishy eyes. Greed, ruthlessness, murder... No mistaking the gloating satisfaction in those eyes.

“You killed Phil Clement,” Jerry breathed. “Not Selma. Not Lois. You.”

“Sure I killed him. So what?”

“Shut up, you damn’ fool!” Selma hissed.

Emil’s chuckle was not pleasant. “This guy is so close to bein’ dead that it don’t matter much what I say. I killed Clement, and I’m gonna kill you. How d’yuh like that, Mr. Jerry Tracy? The smart guy! The wise little cluck from Broadway! Too smart to look in the dumbwaiter shaft before shootin’ off his rat mouth!”

Tracy forced himself to smile. “I guess you’re a pretty smart guy at that, Emil,” he said in a slow, persuasive voice.

“You’re damned right I am.”

“How did you work the murder job? You sure made a monkey out of me. Fooled me completely.”

Emil kept the gun steadily aimed, but he smirked with pleased vanity.

“A cinch,” he sneered. “Brains done it. Selma fixed up a fake love note that got Clement into the dancer’s apartment. He fell for it like a sap. He was nuts about the señorita.”

“Be careful, Emil,” the maid said faintly. “This guy is smart. He’s trying to pump you.”

“This guy is gonna be dead in about two minutes.” His grin widened. “All right, smart guy. I was in the apartment and fixed him and got out again. What more do you want?”

“Yeah — but why kill the guy?”

“Plenty reasons to do it, kid,” Emil said cockily, “and if you want more, the stunt was for Selma to accuse this dizzy dancer of the murder the minute she saw the body in her bedroom and yell for the cops.”

“But the old lady gummed that scheme,” Tracy suggested tonelessly.

“Yeah. The old lady was too tough for Selma to handle. She stuck the body in a trunk and scrammed with it. Can you imagine that?”

“I can’t imagine it,” Tracy said faintly. He eyed the killer and allowed his tensed muscles to relax. A leap forward to wrest the gun from the watchful Emil would be sheer suicide. His own gun was on the floor. Sweat gathered in tiny beads on Tracy’s pale forehead. He knew Fitz could never make it in time. He felt a sick horror at the pit of his stomach.

Emil’s smile hardened. He gestured briefly towards his pale girlfriend. “C’mere, Selma.”

She moved stiffly. She looked uneasy, frightened.

“Take this rod and—” His hand swung suddenly sidewise and the weapon crashed with horrible impact against Selma’s skull. She crumpled to the floor without a sound.

“What’s the idea of that?” Jerry whispered thickly.

“The idea, stupid, is to git rid of people I don’t need no more. You first and then Selma. Nice?”

“You can’t get away with it.”

“No? Git moving! Through that hall. Into the kitchen... Right! Now git over by the window. Sit down on the sill.”

The window sash was already raised. Tracy, obeying the menace of the leveled gun, sat down. He snaked his eyes outward and downward for an instant — and knew he was doomed. The window faced a narrow, five-story airshaft. There was a blank brick wall opposite. There were windows all the way down below the kitchen; but Tracy, remembering the empty name-plates in the vestibule, felt a sick shudder.

“Tough, ain’t it?” Emil said. “We gotta wait for an El train to settle you — but Selma’ll be easy. She’ll go down like a bag of laundry.” He grinned with ghastly humor. “You kin hold on to the window-sill if you like, while you’re waitin’.”

The dusk outside had deepened to chilly darkness. Away off in the darkness Jerry could hear a faint rumbling. It grew rapidly to the metallic clatter of a speeding El train.

“So long, stupid,” Emil said.

As the roar of the passing train became a clamor that shook the ancient tenement, the killer’s fingers tightened.

A woman screamed shrilly. A bullet whizzed past Emil and shattered the glass above Tracy’s bent head.

A wave of hot, incredulous joy swept through the columnist’s body as he recognized the face of the woman with the gun. He dived headlong from the sill as the startled murderer whirled. For an instant all three of them were inextricably tangled on the kitchen floor: Tracy, Emil — and Lois Malloy.

A kick from Emil sent Lois bouncing against the wall in a moaning huddle. The man whirled to fire into Tracy’s face, but the columnist’s fist was already whizzing. It caught Emil on the Adam’s apple and paralyzed his throat with pain. He dropped his gun, sprang frantically to recover it. Tracy’s foot kicked it spinning towards the wall, where it rebounded towards Lois.

The dancer was hurt and badly rattled. Swaying there on her knees, she scooped up the gun with her left hand, but to Tracy’s horror, instead of firing at the plunging Emil, she threw the weapon out the open window — and her own after it!

The two men tripped over her and went down in a flailing fury of fists and feet. Tracy fought like a silent, tight-lipped demon, his mind ablaze with a single thought: his own gun! Lying on the living-room floor where he had dropped it!

A smash on the jaw rocked him groggily, but he managed to dig his face desperately against Emil’s neck and get the hold he wanted. He let Emil’s own weight do the trick. A slight bend of the knees, the sudden instant of leverage he had learned on the gym mat from Artie McGovern himself — and the snarling murderer flew over Jerry’s head and landed on the floor with a jarring impact.

Jerry dived out of the kitchen like a lean arrow, but Emil beat him to it.

Emil had ducked back, picked up Tracy’s gun. He fired as Jerry appeared. A long sliver of wood jerked outward from the casing of the doorway. The panting columnist tripped over the unconscious body of Selma and fell in an awkward heap on his hands and knees. He was up in an instant, rigid with fear, his heart pounding inside his dry throat.

He saw Emil leering at him.

Emil was standing quite still, legs planted apart, barely five feet away. Tracy could see the black muzzle of the gun, the tautness of Emil’s knuckles, the pressure of his bent forefinger on the trigger.

In that split second of eternity all fear whipped away from the mind of the doomed columnist. He thought with a kind of hypnotized clarity: “I’m gonna die... He’s gonna kill me...” There was no horror in the thought; only a puzzled incredulity. Not someone else! Jerry Tracy!

The gun exploded. Tracy heard the racketing roar. He was still standing there, glassy-eyed — and unhurt! Maybe it didn’t hurt when you got killed... Then he realized that Emil’s bullet had slanted astonishingly upward, not straight into his own stiffened flesh. There was a ragged hole in the plaster ceiling and Emil was falling limply forward. He landed on his face and lay there, full length on the floor.

Tracy could see the blood gushing sluggishly from Emil’s back. A pair of legs seemed to be walking towards the columnist out of a dream. They were queer legs — blue serge pants that seemed to end in fuzzy nothingness at the hips — until a brisk palm slapped Tracy’s face with stinging emphasis and brought him back to sanity.

He was gaping stupidly at Inspector Fitzgerald. There was a big blue gun in Fitz’ paw and a faint haze of smoke at the muzzle.

“Hey — wake up!” Fitz barked. “You all right?”

“Yeah... I... I guess so.”

“I shot him right through the kidney. Another second, Jerry, and you’d have been cold meat. Why didn’t you duck when I yelled?”

“I didn’t hear you.”

Fitz grinned shakily. “Lord, I let out a yelp like a steamboat whistle! And you just stood there!”

“How... how did you get in?”

“Fire escape. Same way the girl did. We were right behind her, the sergeant and myself. Afraid she’d spoil the whole business. Killan tried to grab her, but she’s as quick as an antelope. Up and in before we could do a thing. Damned glad it worked out that way. Otherwise you’d be deader than hell. I’m not kidding.”

Tracy drew a long, shuddering breath. He still felt very woozy as he turned his head. Lois Malloy was in the living-room doorway, white-lipped, rigid. He saw her gazing fearfully at the body of Emil and the senseless huddle of Selma. The sight of this slim, courageous girl brought reason back to the fuddled columnist. Lois had saved his life! She wasn’t a rotten little coward! He’d been completely wrong about her from the very start!

He walked slowly towards her, laid a hand on her smooth arm.

“Beat it, babe,” he told her gently. “You can’t afford to show in this mess. Leave it for me to handle.”

She shook her head. Her dark eyes never left his for an instant. They were deep, unsmiling, very lovely. “How about you, Jerry? You’re in this thing yourself.”

“I’m okey. Fitz knows about most of it already. Thank God it was Fitz’ bullet that finished Emil. I’m in the clear. So are you, if you beat it right away — before a lot of reporters come smelling around like a pack of hungry hyenas.”

“There’s a fire escape in the rear,” Inspector Fitzgerald suggested dryly. “If you both want to do a quick fade, it’s all right with me. I can use all the credit this case is worth. I’ll tell the news-hounds I broke this case on an anonymous tip... You’ve got about two minutes if you two want to dodge headlines.”

“Thanks, Fitz,” Tracy muttered. “You’re a prince.”

He seized the dancer’s arm, hurried her to the rear of the apartment. The window was still open. He swung her slim weight up in his arms and helped her to the fire-escape platform. In the darkness there was nothing visible except the blank brick wall opposite and the shadowy dimness of a backyard far below.

They stood there for an instant in the darkness — a couple of clear-eyed square shooters. Human to the core, both of them.

“Why did you pretend to be such a rotten little tramp, Lois? You deliberately made me think you were out to frame your own mother.”

She nodded ruefully. “The mule in me, Jerry. I was playing it close for a showdown; letting whoever was in it think it was running all their way. I was trying desperately for a lead, but I was almost ready to call a copper when you barged in. You made me damned mad for one thing. You called me dirt right off the bat. Remember? I won’t take that from anyone.

“For another thing, what you did gave me more time. And I was hurt enough and stubborn enough to want to go on playing it my way without you. Of course I was wrong and rotten. I knew it all the time. Well, that’s me.”

Lois Malloy drew a deep breath.

“It was really Sweetie’s own idea for me to live alone. She wanted me to prove myself — alone. She was always ready to step in, if I... I seemed to be failing.”

“Failing?” Jerry whispered huskily. “I never want to meet anyone finer than you, Lois. You and Sweetie make a grand pair of thoroughbreds.”

He swung her impulsively towards him. His voice was suddenly eager, boyish. “How would you like to drive out to the suburbs — right now? Is it a go? We’ll pick up a birthday cake—”

“And some birthday candles—”

“And we’ll give Sweetie the best damned—”

“Oh, Jerry... Come on — hurry!”