The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Norbert Davis (1909–1949) was born in Morrison, Illinois, and moved with his family when he was a teenager to California, where he earned a law degree at Stanford University. By the time he had graduated, however, he had already established himself as a successful pulp writer and, having always desired the writer’s life, never bothered to take the bar exam.

While he is most remembered today for his detective fiction (and rightly so), he also wrote other pulp fiction, including Westerns, romances, and adventure stories, as well as humor for the top slick magazines. He joined a group called the Fictioneers, Southern Californian fiction writers who met regularly to discuss writing and marketing tips; Raymond Chandler was an occasional participant. Davis’s best-known characters are the private-eye team of Doan and Carstairs — the latter being a giant Great Dane, who, after closely reading their five cases, has proven to be the smarter half of the team. They appeared in two short stories — “Cry Murder” and “Holocaust House” — and three novels: The Mouse in the Mountain (1943), Sally’s in the Alley (1943), and Oh, Murderer Mine (1946). The Doan and Carstairs stories are notable for being among the funniest of the “hard-boiled” genre of their time. Toward the end of his career, Davis abandoned the pulps, and then the slick magazines began to reject his stories. He split up with his wife, his agent died, and he was diagnosed with cancer. It was all too much, and at the age of forty he committed suicide.

“Don’t You Cry for Me,” one of Davis’s thirteen Black Mask stories, was published in May 1942.

The brawny piano-player had had his run-ins with the ghoulish Gestapo in the beer halls of Europe, but when he promised Myra Martin’s mother to find the girl in the Mecca of the movie-struck, he ran afoul of a plot as fantastic as any Hitler pipe-dream.

John Collins Was playing the Beale Street Blues and playing it soft and sad because that was the way he felt. The notes dripped through the dingy dimness of the room like molasses and provided an appropriate accompaniment to his thoughts. He had a hangover.

He was short and squat and immensely wide. He looked a little bit like a frog — a friendly one. His hair was blond and as softly fuzzy as a baby’s on top, and he had a scar on his right cheek.

The door-bell trilled faintly through the music. Collins stopped playing and sighed. He didn’t really feel in the mood for company, but he got up and went across the rumpled living-room into the little entry-hall and opened the front door.

“Yes?” he said.

“You’re Mr. John Collins, aren’t you?”

The soft California dusk had gathered shadows against the front of the bungalow, and the woman was part of them, small and faintly rustling, dressed in black. Her voice was breathless and high, shaking slightly.

“Yes,” said Collins.

“May I... see you for a moment?”

“Certainly. Come in.”

Collins went back into the living-room and turned on the lamp with the pink shade. There were three empty highball glasses and an overflowing ashtray on the coffee table in front of the chesterfield, and he said: “The place is in a mess. Excuse it, please.”

“You’re — not married?”

“No,” said Collins.

She sat erect and prim on the edge of the chesterfield just outside the throw of light from the pink lamp, and she was like a faded portrait painting against the cheap garishness of the room. She wore white silk gloves and a white scarf fastened with a cameo brooch and a black bonnet of a hat with a black half-veil. There were lines in her cheeks, and her hair glinted silvery-white. Collins caught the faintly old-fashioned odor of lilac toilet water through the smell of stale tobacco and old gin that hung in the room like a shroud.

“I’m Mrs. Della Martin,” she said. “From Brill Falls, South Dakota.”

“Oh?” said Collins blankly.

“I’m Myra Martin’s mother.”

“Is that so?” Collins asked, mentally running through the list of his feminine associates. He couldn’t locate any Myras.

“She wrote me about you.”

“That was nice of her,” Collins said, wondering if it was.

“She said you were a detective.”

“A what?” Collins inquired, startled.

“She said you knew how to locate people. She said you’d done a lot of that work in Prague and in Warsaw and in Berlin — finding people for their relatives over here. That is, before we declared war, of course.”

“Oh, that was just amateur stuff,” Collins said. “I happened to be playing in beer halls and cafes, and I did some investigation for friends in my spare time.”

“Myra said it was very dangerous work.”

Collins fingered the scar on his cheek. “I did have a run-in or two with the Gestapo. Nothing much.”

“Would you — could you locate someone here in Hollywood? Will you find Myra for me, Mr. Collins?”

Collins stared at her. “What?”

Mrs. Martin twisted her slim gloved hands together. “Myra left Brill Falls a year ago to come to Hollywood to get into the motion pictures. She’s very beautiful, and she’s always been interested in theatricals. And then she won a Most-Beautiful-Back contest and got her name and picture in the papers, and several agencies and acting schools wrote her.”

“Yes,” said Collins. “Oh, yes.”

“I have a little dressmaking shop, and I couldn’t come with her, but I wanted her to have her chance. We saved the money for the trip, and she came alone. She was only going to stay two months if she didn’t find some sort of picture work, but after the two months were up she said things looked so encouraging—”

Collins nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“She stayed on and on, and I sent her what money I could. Then six weeks ago, she wrote me that she had her big chance at last, but that it was all a big secret yet, and she couldn’t tell me anything about it. She didn’t write me any more, Mr. Collins.”

“Six weeks—” Collins said.

“She had always written me twice a week before. And then — just nothing. I wrote and telegraphed, and the letters came back, and the telegrams couldn’t be delivered because they couldn’t find her. I... couldn’t stand it, and so I sold my business and came here. I went to the Central Casting Office and the studios. They had Myra’s name on their lists, but they hadn’t heard anything of her for months. I went to the place where she had been living, and there was a horrible foreign man in a fez who owned the place, and he wouldn’t tell me anything except that she had moved out six weeks before and hadn’t left any address.”

“Have you seen the police?” Collins asked.

“No,” said Mrs. Martin.

“Why not?”

Mrs. Martin looked down at her hands. “Perhaps Myra doesn’t want — to be found.”

“Oh,” said Collins.

“I don’t want to bother Myra,” Mrs. Martin said in a low strained voice. “If she doesn’t want me... If I just knew she was safe and all right, if I just knew... Will you help me, Mr. Collins?”

“Yes,” said Collins. “Of course. I’ll try. I’ll do all I can.”

Mrs. Martin opened a shiny black purse. “I can pay you something now—”

“No,” said Collins. “Never mind that. I have lots of money.” He actually had five dollars and seventy-three cents, and the rent was two weeks overdue. “Where is this place that Myra had been living?”

“At 1271 Sales Street. It’s a boarding house.”

“Yes. And where are you staying?”

“At the Fortmount Hotel.”

“All right, Mrs. Martin. You go back there and wait. Don’t worry more than you can help. You’ll hear from me soon.”

“Thank you,” she said. She got up, breathing a little unevenly. “Thank you very much. I didn’t know where to turn. If I can just be sure Myra is all right, but I’ve had such a terrible empty feeling...”

“Yes,” said Collins absently.

He showed her to the door and came back and sat down at the piano and stared at the worn keyboard. With one finger he began to plunk out a little tune to the words “Myra Martin.” He couldn’t remember the name at all, but then he met a great many people in a great many places, and he never paid very much attention to people’s names.

He noticed suddenly that his one-finger tune was the first bar of a funeral march. He stopped playing it and shivered. It was cold in the apartment and dark in the corners where the light didn’t reach. Mrs. Martin’s drear, sad little story had left an ugly and chill echo behind it. It was nothing you could touch, nothing you could see, but it was there. It was black and twisted and wickedly mirthful, and John Collins didn’t like even the thought of it.

He unearthed a half-empty bottle of gin from under the chesterfield, took a big swig, and then got his hat and went out of the bungalow.

Sales Street was like quite a few others you can find in the back-washes of Hollywood if you care to look. It didn’t have any tinsel or glitter or rackety-rax. It was dark and narrow and a little bit crooked, and the tree branches over it moved in the wind and threw sharply jagged shadows that danced dangerously back and forth across the bumpy sidewalk.

Number 1271 was a big brown house with a bulging bay-window and a discouraged sag in its roof. The front steps creaked under John Collins’ feet, and the floor-boards of the porch moaned in protest as he crossed to the door and punched a bell under the feeble night light.

There was a discouraged jangle somewhere inside, and then slippers flip-flopped on bare boards, coming closer, and the door opened.

“Vell?”

Collins stepped back to take a good look. The man in the doorway was over six feet tall and as thin as a pencil. He stooped forward a little, as though the weight of his mustache was pulling him off-balance. It could have easily. It was a wonderful mustache. It ran as straight across his face as a ruler and turned up in sharp points at either end. Behind it, the rest of the man’s face was dingy and nondescript. He was wearing a conical fez with a tassel on it, sharp-pointed red leather slippers, and a red sash.

“Going to a costume party?” Collins asked.

“Vet you vent?”

Collins said: “I’ve played in joints in Istanbul and Port Said and Cairo, but I’ve never heard a Turkish accent like that. Where’d you pick it up?”

“In books,” said the man in an injured tone. “What’s the matter with it?”

“Let’s step inside,” Collins suggested. He put a thick finger in the center of the man’s chest and pushed him back into a narrow dimly lighted hall that smelled faintly of fried onions and cheap perfume. At the foot of the stairs there was a rickety little table that served as a desk, and there was a telephone on the wall above it.

“What’s the matter with my accent?” asked the tall man again. “And say, who are you pushing, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” said Collins. “What do you call yourself these days?”

“Ali Singh Teke.”

“Now, now,” said Collins.

The tall man wiggled his mustache. “Well, all right. That’s my picture name. That’s the way I’m listed at Central Casting. My real name’s Alfred Peters. I play Turkish parts in the movies. I got to keep in practice, don’t I? What’s the matter with my accent?”

“I couldn’t begin to tell you. Where’s Myra Martin?”

Something dark and sullenly secretive closed over Alfred Peters’ face. “She ain’t here no longer.”

“I didn’t ask you where she ain’t. I want to know where she is. Give.”

“She moved out without givin’ no address.”

“Did you throw her out?”

“What?” said Alfred Peters, startled. “Why, I never! It’s a lie! Whoever told you that? Say, who are you, anyway?”

“Never mind. Let’s talk about Myra Martin. She just walked out one morning and didn’t come back, is that it?”

“Yes,” said Alfred Peters.

“No.”

Alfred Peters’ mustache wiggled again. “Huh?”

“I said, no.” Collins took his right hand out of his pocket and opened it to reveal the coin lying on his broad palm. “Know what that is?”

“Sure. It’s a half-dollar.”

Collins spun it on the bare scarred top of the desk. “Does it look all right to you?”

“Why, yes,” said Alfred Peters, puzzled.

“Watch.” Collins picked the half-dollar up and closed it in his fist. The big cords in his wrist bulged out thickly, and the blood drained from his knuckles until they looked like bulging white knobs. He opened his hand again and dropped the half-dollar back on the table. It didn’t spin now. It rocked rapidly back and forth in the same spot, glittering. It was bent nearly double.

Alfred Peters stared at it in unbelieving fascination.

“Now,” said Collins. “Let’s start all over again. Where’s Myra Martin?”

“Say, I never saw anybody do that—” Alfred Peters raised his eyes slowly to Collins’ face. “I told you she didn’t leave no address when she moved out. I don’t know where she is. You doubtin’ my word?”

Collins nodded slowly. “That’s right.”

Alfred Peters puffed himself up. “Where do you get comin’ in my house...”

Collins picked up the bent half-dollar and flipped it up in the air and caught it again.

Alfred Peters swallowed. “You can’t come in my house and get tough! You get out of here now, or... or—”

“What?” Collins asked.

“Well... well, you ain’t got any right... Anyway, I told you the truth. She didn’t leave no forwardin’ address. She just up and went. Only it wasn’t in the mornin’ like you said. It was at night. It was real late at night. She pounded on my door and woke me up and said good-bye.”

“She was carrying her trunk on her shoulder at the time, I suppose?”

“No, she wasn’t. She didn’t have no trunk. Just a couple of big suitcases and an overnight bag.”

“Did she have those on her shoulder?”

“No. I guess the fella carried ’em for her.”

“Ah, yes,” said Collins. “The fella. What was his name again?”

“I dunno. And I dunno what he looks like, neither! I never saw him! I don’t know nothin’ about him!”

Collins reached out and took hold of the spiked ends of Alfred Peters’ mustache. “Find out something. And make it fast.”

“You leggo— Ow! I don’t want no trouble! I got a business here! I got to live—”

Collins’ face was close to his. “Got to live? No, friend. Not necessarily.”

“Aaah!” said Alfred Peters in a horrified gasp. “You wouldn’t— Ow! Ow-ow! All right, all right! Leggo! I’ll tell you—”

Collins stepped back. “Go ahead.”

Alfred Peters tugged at his mustache tenderly. “You ain’t got any right at all... All right! I’m gonna tell you! It was just like I said. Now, wait! Only I heard a couple things when she was talkin’ on the telephone. I wouldn’t listen when any of my guests is talkin’, but the telephone is right there by the desk—”

“Sure,” said Collins.

“Well, it is. And she was always talkin’, to this fella over it. She never spoke his name. She was always awful careful about that. At least, when I was around. But she sure put out a lot of love talk. She acted like she was dippy about this bird, what I mean. And it was all of a sudden, too. She never made no calls or got any before, and then she was on the phone all the time.”

“Did the guy come around to see her?”

“I think so, but I never saw him. Honest! She’d get all dressed up, and then she’d wait here in the hall until just two minutes to seven. Then she’d go out and walk over toward Sunset.”

“And then?”

Alfred Peters shrugged his skinny shoulders. “I dunno.”

“Yes, you do. You followed her.”

“Well, once,” Alfred Peters admitted. “I was lookin’ out for her own best interests. And what did I get for it? I got a slap in the face, that’s what! She waited for me in a dark place down the street and stepped right out and slapped me in the face and told me to mind my own damned business.”

“So you didn’t. What did you try next?”

“Well, I got a pencil and a little pad there below the telephone for the convenience of my guests, and one time when she was talking she wrote a number down and tore off the page she wrote it on.”

“But that didn’t stop you, did it?”

“No,” said Alfred Peters. “I took off the next page and blew some lead pencil scrapings across it, and then I could see the number she wrote.”

“Which was?”

“Blakely 7-6222.”

“Right on the tip of your tongue, eh?” Collins remarked. “Whose is it?”

Alfred Peters sighed mournfully. “I called it, and a fella answered and said: ‘This is Derek Van Diesten’s house.’ ”

“Who is he?”

Alfred Peters stared with his mouth open. “Don’t you know? He’s the big hot-shot Dutch director from Rotterdam. Hitler chased him out, and he come over here a year ago. He’s one of the biggest guns in Hollywood. I sure figured on keepin’ that under my hat. I figured on callin’ him up someday and tellin’ him who I was and all the experience in pictures I’ve had. Then I figured I’d say, just sort of casual, ‘How’s Myra?’ ”

“And then what?” Collins asked persistently.

Alfred Peters looked pained at such stupidity. “Why, he’d give me a job, of course. Lots of ’em.”

“Why would he?”

“Well, he wouldn’t want no scandal. Of course, I wouldn’t tell anybody, but he wouldn’t want to take no chances that I’d blab what happened.”

“What did?”

“Huh!” said Alfred Peters. “It’s easy for a smart guy to figure out, all right!” He looked around and then lowered his voice. “Why, Myra went away to live with him, that’s what! She’s livin’ with him right now someplace under some other name! Sure! I know I’m right! You can’t fool me!”

“You know,” Collins said slowly, “I don’t believe I’d call him up and say anything to him, if I were you.”

“Why not?”

Collins took a long sudden step closer to him. “Because he might send somebody like me around to shut your big blabber mouth — permanently.”

“Aaah!” Alfred Peters moaned, and his face was a queer greenish color. He made little noises in his throat, and his eyes bulged wider and wider, and then words mumbled out of his stiff lips. “Wait, wait, wait! I never — I didn’t — I was jokin’! I wouldn’t — I don’t know nothin’! Honest, honest! I was just — Aaah!”

The telephone rang, and he jumped as though he had been stabbed through the heart.

“Answer it,” Collins ordered. “If they want someone else, tell them the party isn’t here. If they want you, tell them you’re sick. You probably will be, pretty quick.”

Alfred Peters fumbled the receiver off the hook with a shaking hand. “Huh-hello?... Wh-what did you say?... A big, wide, ugly fella that plays the piano? I dunno who—”

Collins slapped him to one side and jerked the receiver out of his hand.

“Who is this?” he demanded.

“Hello.” The voice was low and muffled and hard to understand. “Hello, John Collins. I’m a friend of yours. I just wanted to give you a word of warning. Don’t look any further for Myra Martin.”

“Why not?” Collins said.

“Because if you do, you might find her. I don’t think you’d like it where she is. It’s cold and rather damp and very dark. You’d better stick to piano playing. Good-bye, John Collins.”

There was a soft click, and then the line hummed emptily. Collins slammed the receiver back on its hook, spun around and grabbed Alfred Peters by the front of his soiled shirt.

“Where’s the nearest public telephone? Where is it? Quick!”

“Wh-why, over a block west on Sunset there’s a little d-drugstore—”

Collins let go of him and ran out of the hall and across the front porch and vaulted over the rickety railing.

The drugstore was narrow and dingy and cluttered, heavy with the suggestive smell of patent medicines. The clerk was a little bald man in a blue smock, and he was hunched down with his chin resting on his hands, staring wearily at the smeared black headlines of the newspaper that was spread out on the prescription counter.

“What?” he said, looking up in a timidly surprised way. “Oh. Good evening, sir. I didn’t hear you come in.”

Collins indicated the telephone booth against the wall. “Did somebody just use that?”

“The telephone? Yes, sir. A man just put in a call.”

“What did he look like?”

“Look like?” the clerk repeated vaguely. “Just — just sort of like anybody else, I think. I didn’t pay much attention.”

“How tall was he?”

“I don’t know — about medium.”

“Was he cross-eyed and did he have a green beard?” Collins asked patiently.

“Green beard? Oh, no. He didn’t have any beard. He might have been cross-eyed, though. He was wearing dark glasses.”

There was a sudden whip-like crack outside. In the same split-second a fat brown bottle on the shelf in back of the clerk burst like a bomb and threw shredded glass splinters in a glistening spray.

Collins dropped instantly into a crouch, below the level of the counter. In the street a motor blasted and then wound itself up into a high fading scream in second gear. The sound died away, and Collins straightened up slowly in time to see the clerk coming up in reluctant jerks on the other side of the counter. The clerk’s face was as white as paper.

Collins smiled at him. “A friend of mine. Very amusing fellow. He plays practical jokes.”

The clerk stared at the remains of the brown bottle and then turned his head slowly to look at the starred round hole in the drugstore’s front window.

“Oh, no!” he said shakily. “No, sir! That wasn’t any joke! That was a bullet—” He dodged around the counter and pelted for the front door, shouting: “Police! Help! Police!” in a thin falsetto wail.

Collins went quietly through the back room and out the door into an alley.

Collins arrived on Hollywood Boulevard a half-hour later after a series of zig-zagging detours through dark side streets and darker alleys. The Boulevard was crowded thickly with its usual pack of idly chattering, aimless strollers, and Collins drifted slowly along with them.

He was an expert at this. He had the trick of blending into a throng of people and becoming as hard to keep track of as an individual wave in the ocean.

After three blocks of sauntering and stopping to window-shop and sauntering again, he knew that he wasn’t being followed, and he cut out of the crowd and entered another drugstore. This one was big and busy and brilliantly lighted. Collins located a row of phone booths and shut himself up in one of them.

A consultation with the directory informed him that Blakely was a Brentwood exchange, and he invested fifteen cents in a call to 7-6222. The telephone at the other end rang three times, and then the line clicked, and a precisely courteous voice said: “Yes?”

Collins reflected that they were no longer giving away information as freely as they had when Alfred Peters had called, and then he said casually: “I’d like to speak to Mr. Van Diesten, please. This is Mr. Fulham from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It’s urgent.”

“Yes, sir!” said the precise voice. “Just one moment, sir! I’ll call him at once!”

Collins waited, whistling softly to himself. There was another click on the line, and a hoarse baritone voice said: “Yes? Hello, hello? This is Van Diesten. Who is calling from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, please?”

“I’d like to speak to Myra Martin,” Collins said.

“What? What is it?”

“I’d like to speak to Myra Martin.”

The hoarse voice vibrated with anger. “You are not from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer! I will report you!”

“I’d like to speak to Myra Martin, please.”

“I do not know her! I do not know anybody by that name! You will stop calling and annoying me! You must be crazy!”

The receiver cracked in Collins’ ear, and then the line was dead. Collins sat still for a moment, whistling softly and thoughtfully to himself. He was frowning a little, and he no longer looked friendly. He opened the door of the booth and went out of the drugstore and headed west on Hollywood Boulevard.

The Fortmount Hotel was tucked away on a side street off Vine. It had been all modern and shiny and Spanish once upon a time, but it was a little tired now. The shrubbery in the patio entrance was more ragged than luxuriant, and the lobby was as depressingly gloomy as a nightclub on Sunday morning. There were a few people sitting around and looking as though they wished they had somewhere else to go.

Collins crossed to the desk in the arched setback beside the elevators and spoke to the clerk.

“Will you call Mrs. Martin’s room and tell her that John Collins is here?”

The clerk had shiny hair and a shiny round face. He put one pale hand up to his lips and coughed sharply. His eyes were blank with malicious little flickers of interest deep back in them.

“Did you hear me?” Collins asked impatiently.

“Yeah,” said a voice in his ear. “So did we.”

There were two of them — heavy-shouldered men with a solidly official weight behind their movements. They crowded close against Collins, pinning him against the desk, and one took him by each arm.

“Just take it easy,” said the one who had first spoken. “This is a pinch, and you’re it. Don’t start a beef.” He was taller than his companion, and he had a mangled cigar in the corner of his mouth. His eyes were the same color as the cigar.

The second one felt Collins’ pockets with rapid patting hands. “He’s clean.” He had a sagging, surly face and black eyebrows that met in a bar above his eyes.

“Come along,” said the tall one. “Nice and quiet now. Just like we’re pals.”

They still each had one of Collins’ arms, and the three of them turned in unison, like a drill team, and started toward the elevator.

“Hey!” said a voice behind them. “Hey, wait a minute, guys!”

The detectives kept right on going with Collins between them, but the man darted around ahead of them and faced them excitedly, arms spread wide, as though he were trying to shoo some refractory chickens. He was thin and blond and a little hungry-looking. His eyes glinted eagerly behind horn-rimmed glasses.

“Hey, guy!” he said to Collins. “You! What’s your name?”

“Scram,” said the tall detective.

The little man waved his arms. “Aw, have a heart! Come on, let him tell me his name! Give me a break!”

“Beat it,” said the tall detective.

The little man ignored him. “Listen, guy. I’m a reporter, see? Give me your name, and I’ll—”

The surly detective stepped forward and put his meaty hand in the middle of the little man’s face and shoved hard. “One side, louse!”

The little man went flapping backwards like a damp rag. He hit a chair and went over it with a clattering thud, and the last Collins saw as the detectives pushed him into the elevator were his two feet waving helplessly over the top of the tipped chair.

“That was mighty brave of you,” said Collins conversationally. “I guess you’re a couple of pretty hard guys.”

“Shut up,” said the tall detective.

The elevator was a self-operated one, and the door clanged shut as he pressed the button for the third floor. The elevator rose wearily and stopped with a sudden jump.

“Right down the hall,” said the surly detective.

One on either side, still holding his arms, they marched Collins the length of the dingy hallway and stopped at the end door. The tall one rapped on it.

“Come on in,” a voice ordered.

The surly one opened the door, and they boosted Collins through it and stopped him short just inside.

There was one man standing all by himself in the center of the room, scowling. “Well?” he said. He was short, and he had a paunch and the beginnings of a double chin. He was wearing a green polo shirt and a yellow straw hat with a wide green-and-red band on it. Also, for contrast, he was wearing a brown sport jacket and brown checked slacks. His nose was flat, and his eyes were shot with reddish veins.

“This guy,” said the tall detective. “He give the name of John Collins. He was askin’ for the old lady.”

“That true?” asked the man in the yellow hat.

Collins nodded. “Yes. Would you like me to show you something funny?”

“Sure,” said the man in the yellow hat.

Collins suddenly spread both of his legs wide and then bent forward and brought his arms violently together in front of him. The two detectives couldn’t have done it more neatly if they had rehearsed. They were jerked forward, off-balance, and they each tripped over a different one of Collins’ legs. They hit the floor with a jar that jingled the chandelier.

“Yeah,” said the man in the yellow hat, not at all startled. “That was funny. Grimes! Craig! Quit that! Get up off the floor and get the hell out of here! Go on out in the hall and wait there. You two clowns give me the pip.”

The two detectives picked themselves up, red-faced and panting. They stumbled out of the room and closed the door very quickly and quietly behind them.

“Am I arrested?” Collins asked.

“Hell, no,” said the man in the yellow hat, resuming his scowling survey of the room. “You wanta go home? All right. Good-bye.”

“I think I’ll stay.”

“Suit yourself. My name is Tilwitz. I’m a lieutenant of detectives — Homicide.”

“Has there been a murder?”

“How do I know?”

Collins said: “Well, are you going to talk to me, or are you going to stand there and sulk?”

“I got a headache,” said Tilwitz glumly. “I got two headaches — both of them out there in the hall. What do you want to talk about, as if I cared?”

“About Mrs. Della Martin. Is this her room?”

“That’s what they tell me, but people are liable to tell a cop almost anything.”

“Where is she?”

Tilwitz sighed and went over to the bed and sat down on it. “You got a cigarette?” He took one out of the pack Collins extended and accepted a light. “I don’t know where she is, but if you gave me a guess, I’d say she was dead.”

“What happened?”

Tilwitz blew smoke in a long plume. “What kind of cigarettes are these? I don’t like ’em. Well, about an hour ago the people on this floor heard a scream and then a shot. So they called up the clerk and told him he’d better scout around a bit. So he came up here with one of the bellboys and knocked on a few doors. Results: zero.”

“Then what?” Collins asked.

“Crash of glass from inside this room. Thump-thump-thump — mysterious noises. So the clerk raps a while and calls a while and finally gets up nerve enough to unlock the door with the passkey.”

“What did he find?”

Tilwitz pointed to the window. “That — upper pane broken.” He pointed to the rug in front of the bathroom door. “That — bloodstain on the rug. That’s all.”

“Nothing else?” Collins said incredulously.

Tilwitz took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it distastefully. “These are awful. No. Nothing else. No body, no burglars, no Mrs. Martin — and no clothes.”

“What?” Collins said.

Tilwitz nodded. “It’s nuts, or I am. There wasn’t — and isn’t — one sign of Mrs. Martin in this room. She had a traveling bag and a suitcase when she came in. They’re gone, and everything that was in ’em is gone. Barring a couple of dirty towels and sheets, this room is exactly the way it was when it was rented to her three days ago. Nothing in the wastepaper basket. Nothing in the bureau drawers or closet. Just plain damned nothing.”

“What do you think happened?”

“If I could think, I wouldn’t be a detective. But it looks to me as if somebody doubled a rope around that radiator — it’s out of line about six inches — and let the rope out the window — there’s a scoured place on the sill — and lowered Mrs. Martin and all her baggage down into the alley. Whoever it was broke the window in the process of getting in or out or something.”

“What are you going to do about it?” asked Collins.

“Do?” said Tilwitz sourly. “Not a damned thing, son. There’s no law that says people have to keep their luggage in a hotel room and no law that says they can’t use the window to go out of it. It’s not a crime to have a nose bleed or even bust a window, if it’s an accident. So there you are.”

“You said you thought Mrs. Martin was dead.”

“That was my unofficial opinion. Don’t quote me. Have you got another cigarette?”

“I thought you said you didn’t like them?”

“They’re better than nothing,” Tilwitz said. “Not much better — but some. Thanks. That was a nice little juggling act you pulled on Grimes and Craig. You’re not supposed to be a detective unless you can read and write and count up to ten, but those two slipped through some way.”

“Yes,” said Collins absently.

“If I’m boring you, you can leave any time now. I’ll have Grimes and Craig follow you, but that shouldn’t cramp your style much. Just make faces at them if they should bother you too much. They’ll run.”

Collins looked up. “Did you know that Mrs. Martin had a daughter here in Hollywood?”

“Sure,” Tilwitz answered. “She made a lot of inquiries and calls — talked about it to other people at the hotel.”

“She asked me to find her daughter.”

“Go ahead,” Tilwitz invited. “Who’s stopping you?”

“You’re not going to do anything else about this?”

“Not now. I should run my legs off and have the old lady pop up and give me the bird and maybe sue me for invasion of her privacy. There’s been no complaint filed by anybody — there’s no concrete evidence that any crime has been committed. I haven’t got any right to go prying around — even if I had the ambition.”

“Do you mind if I do?”

“Me?” said Tilwitz blandly. “Mind? Hell, no. Fly right at it.”

“I’ll tell you if I find anything.”

“Don’t bother,” Tilwitz advised. “Just keep it a deep dark secret.”

“Do you want my address?”

“If I want you,” said Tilwitz, “I’ll find you.”

Collins watched him thoughtfully. “No use giving your two stooges sore feet. I’m just going home now.”

“What’re you going to do when you get there?”

“Play the piano.”

“That’ll be nice. Play real pretty.”

Collins smiled a little. “Good-bye.”

Tilwitz nodded solemnly. “So long. I won’t have the two dopes follow you. Tell ’em to come in here.”

Collins went out into the hall. The two detectives were leaning against the wall, side by side, opposite the door. They glowered at Collins in grim silence.

Collins jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Your master is calling.”

“We won’t forget that little stunt you pulled,” the tall one promised. “We’ll be seeing you again, baby. Don’t think we won’t.”

Collins grinned. “Any time at all.”

The shabby little man with the horn-rimmed glasses was waiting for him down in the lobby.

“Hey, guy,” said the little man. “Wait a minute — please. Look, I’m a reporter. Name’s Rick Preston. I used to work for U.P., but I got boiled and got a couple of press dispatches mixed up, and they canned me. I can get back on again if I have a story to bring in with me. How about a break, guy?”

Collins shrugged. “I haven’t got any story.”

“There’s one around here,” Preston insisted. “I can smell ’em. What’s Tilwitz doing upstairs?”

“Tilwitz is here because an old lady by the name of Mrs. Della Martin disappeared under rather mysterious circumstances.”

“I know that,” Rick Preston said. “What about the daughter she was looking for?”

“I don’t know,” said Collins.

“Aw, come on,” said Preston. “Give me a break. What’s your name?”

“John Collins. I can’t give you a break, because I don’t know anything to tell you. Mrs. Martin’s daughter stopped writing, and Mrs. Martin was worried. She came around to see me because she’d heard I met a lot of people here and there. I told her I’d look for her daughter. I didn’t find her.”

“Daughter disappears,” Preston muttered. “Then the old lady disappears. But, hell, there’s nothing you can put your finger on!”

“No,” said Collins. “Well, I’ll give you a ring if I hear anything.”

Collins came in the back door of his bungalow without making a sound. For a long time, he stood in the darkness of the cluttered kitchen, listening.

When he was sure there was no one but himself in the bungalow, he went on into the front room and closed the curtains and turned on the pink lamp.

Even now, very faintly, he could detect the odor of lilac toilet water that Mrs. Martin had brought with her, like a wistful old-fashioned memory of her own prim person. He sat down in front of the little piano and stayed there, hunched over, grave and motionless, frowning a little.

He had no illusions about his own position. He was involved in a train of events that coiled through the backstreets of Hollywood, touched the studios and the gaudy movie-rich mansions beyond them, and looped back to that ugly, empty little room in the Fortmount Hotel where Tilwitz sat and waited like a spider to see what would fall into his web. Tilwitz could be casual and disarmingly cynical, but he didn’t deceive Collins any. Let something happen — anything to give him a start — and Tilwitz would pounce.

Collins began to play absently, and the tune tinkled through the room with a neat plaintive swing. There was something that prodded deep back in Collins’ mind — something that had to do with secret cynical laughter and Mrs. Della Martin — something...

The telephone rang and jerked him back to reality. He got up and went across to the stand beside the door and lifted the instrument from its cradle.

“Yes?”

“Is this Mr. John Collins?” It was a feminine voice — low and throaty and theatrical — and unmistakably young.

“Yes,” said Collins slowly.

“This is Myra Martin, Mr. Collins.”

“What?” said Collins. “Who?”

“Myra Martin. I want to talk to you — tonight. Can you come to the old Regent Studios at once?”

“Are you—”

“Please come. Now.”

The line hummed emptily, and Collins put the telephone back on its stand. He swept up his hat and started for the back of the house, and then he stopped suddenly and stared at the battered little piano. Now he remembered the tune he had been playing when the telephone rang.

It was “Oh, Susanna.” And now he knew the meaning of the secret little doubt that had pried at his mind, and he knew why Mrs. Della Martin had disappeared and where, and he knew what had happened to Myra Martin and why.

Hollywood had gone away and left the Regent Studios. They were forlorn and alone in a residential area of small houses and small stores north of Santa Monica Boulevard. They dated back before sound — ancient history — and the tall stucco wall that surrounded them was crumbling and streaked with rain mold.

There was one small light, wan and dim, burning over the massive iron gates of the main entrance.

Collins shoved at one of the gates experimentally, and it moved back at once, slick and oiled and quiet.

The sets extended in long rows outward from the hub of the entrance, crumbling and sagging and tattered, holding within themselves the memories of epics long forgotten.

Collins picked one of the streets and walked along it, passing from London to Hong Kong to a Zulu village and back to Deadwood Gulch, Arizona, all in the length of a hundred paces, and then he stopped short and waited while a light flicked once brightly over to his left, flicked again, and then was gone.

Collins moved into the shadow of a tipsy balcony. He moved again, after a moment, slipping between rough-edged boards into the blackness back of the set. He moved without making any noise at all. The grass brushed clammily at his legs, and then he reached another street and drifted quietly across it in the shadow of a medieval tower.

The light flicked once more, very close now, glittering behind the doors of a building that was like an enormous white tombstone. Collins approached very slowly, watching his path for obstructions, and stopped before steps that had probably looked like marble once but were now boards scarcely covered with a rotted remnant of oil cloth.

The big double doors of the building were warped. They hadn’t quite closed. Collins tested one of the board steps, finally rested his weight on it, and tested the next.

He reached the broad, dim stretch of the porch. He could hear the dull mumble of voices. He took two long quick steps and flattened against the wall beside the door.

“...think I’m fooling?” said a voice that was thin and savagely tense.

“You are mad,” answered Derek Van Diesten’s hoarse, slightly accented baritone. “I think you must be insane.”

“Yeah?” The light flicked. “Look over there.”

“Ah!” said Van Diesten in a horrified gasp. “She is... she is—”

“She’s dead,” said the thin voice. “And they’ll prove you killed her, and they’ll hang you. I’ve fixed that. I’ve laid a trail — oh, a very careful one — that’ll bring it home right to your door.”

“You could not— They would not believe—”

“Oh, yes, they will. They’ll find her — where do you think? In your car, and the car will be wrecked. You killed her, and you were fleeing somewhere to hide the body when you skidded and went off the road. You ran away. You won’t be able to prove you didn’t, because I’ll leave you here all night. You’ll have no alibi. And that won’t be all. Oh, no. You see, I’ve prepared them for that find.”

“Those telephone calls,” Van Diesten said numbly. “Those calls to me about her...”

“Yes,” said the thin voice. “Those were from people who think you were living with her.”

“That is not true! I do not even know—”

“But they think you do, and they’ll testify you do. I planted clues that point to you at her boarding house.” The thin voice chuckled in an ugly way. “At a hotel, too. And other places, and with other people. Oh, they’ll find you easy enough, and when they do you’ll be finished.”

Van Diesten’s voice was shaky. “What... what do you want from me?”

“That’s nice,” the thin voice complimented. “I was afraid I was going to have to argue with you. I don’t want anything much — nothing at all from you. I want you to get me a job at a thousand dollars a week at the Mar Grande Studios.”

“I cannot—”

“Yes, you can. You work there, and you’ve got influence. I’ll be a technical expert of some kind or other working in an advisory capacity. It won’t cost you a cent, and you won’t ever hear anything more about murder or Myra Martin.”

There was no sound but Van Diesten’s hoarse breathing, until Collins kicked his heel gently back against the wall. Instantly the light flicked out.

“What?” Van Diesten said in the darkness. “What is—”

“Shut up!” the thin voice snapped. “There’s somebody outside! If you brought someone with you—”

“No, no!” Van Diesten denied. “I didn’t—”

“Stand still! This gun’s against your back, and it’s cocked! If you move — if anybody comes near us—”

After a long time, Van Diesten said in a half-whisper: “There is nobody...”

“Shut up. Don’t move... The door’s open! There’s somebody in this room!”

Collins dived at the sound. His shoulder smashed hard at the beefiness that was Van Diesten, and his fingers clawed and caught a thin wiry body beyond, and then the whole rickety structure swayed and groaned to the crash of their falling bodies.

He still had his grip on the wiry figure. The revolver blazed almost in his face, and the report was like a handclap against his ear drums. And then he got hold of the hand, felt the cramped rigidity of the fingers gripping the revolver butt, and twisted back and down.

The second report was a dull bump, muffled against cloth. The wiry body pulled back with crazed, insensate strength and then went limp and strangely heavy.

Collins said: “Van Diesten, are you all right?”

Van Diesten was choking for breath. “Yuh-yes.”

“Find the light. Shine it down here.”

The flashlight moved its beam down through the torn stretch of flooring. On the ground, crumpled in a limp pile, lay Rick Preston. His glasses were broken and glistening beside him, and his thin, hungry face was twisted into a frozen snarl. He still had the revolver clutched in his right hand, and his coatfront was sodden with blood.

“That one,” said Van Diesten in numbed amazement. “That is the reporter that came only tonight to my home to ask me about this Myra Martin.”

“He’s dead,” said Collins, climbing up on the floor again. “Where’s the girl?”

The light moved away and circled across the floor toward the dark secretiveness of a corner. There was Myra Martin, at last. She was sitting up and smiling a little with her dead lips, and there was a red hole in her forehead and a trickle of blood that scarcely marred her still white prettiness.

“Poor little dummy,” said Collins.

“What is it, please?” said Van Diesten. “This... all this... I do not understand.”

Collins said slowly: “Myra Martin was a foolish little girl who wanted desperately to get into the movies. She couldn’t in the ordinary way, because she didn’t have enough talent or training, but of course she didn’t believe that. She’d gotten quite a little fame out of some publicity she got from winning a beauty contest, and she thought the same thing might work out here. She was going to use you as a stooge.”

“Me?” said Van Diesten. “But why?”

“You’re a famous director. She disappeared, leaving a lot of clues that would, by inference, point to you. Then her mother appeared, searching for her. She inquired everywhere — drawing attention to herself with her pathetic little story about her lost daughter and her lost business. Then she, too, disappeared just as her daughter had.”

“But why?” Van Diesten repeated blankly.

“To draw attention to Myra’s disappearance. As soon as either of those disappearances were investigated at all, all the planted clues and hints would point right at you. There’d be inquiries made and publicity.”

“And tonight?” Van Diesten asked.

“Tonight you were to have a mysterious interview with Myra. When questions were asked, you’d testify to that. Then Mrs. Martin would reappear, and you’d meet her. They’d bounce you back and forth between them, and you’d have to play along because you’d be more and more under suspicion of trying some dirty work. But right here, another party cut in. That was Rick Preston — very clever, very unscrupulous. He saw what Myra was up to — saw it quicker than I did. He wasn’t interested in two-for-a-penny publicity. He wanted money and a lot of it, and he realized instantly that Myra’s scheme was an ideal one for blackmailing you. If he changed that setup a little, you’d be right behind the eight-ball. You’d be accused of complicity in the disappearance of Myra and Mrs. Martin, and even if you could prove in court you had nothing to do with either, you’d be ruined in pictures. They won’t take a scandal like that.”

“No,” said Van Diesten. “That was why I was so afraid. Why I came here when she called and told me to. And then, I am trying to become a citizen — for my two boys and my little girl as well as myself. If I was implicated in any crime, then they would not let me.”

Collins nodded. “They figured on that. Mrs. Martin came to me, thinking I would go to the police after she disappeared. Myra was still after publicity. But Preston didn’t want it — not through me. He tried to scare me off. He was already in touch with Myra. He found her at the Fortmount Hotel and got in with her by telling her he was a reporter. He played along with her until tonight, pretending to help her, and then he told her what he really meant to do — he wasn’t going to get publicity for her. He was going to get money from you. She refused, and she made a scene. She was a little fool, and she didn’t realize how dangerous... Preston didn’t think he could lose by killing her. She had planned her own disappearance too well, and it gave him another weapon to use against you — a real one, not a fake.”

“But... but what is this publicity she was going to get?”

Collins said: “Myra was going to prove what a wonderful actress she was. Prove it by fooling an expert — you.”

“How could she do that?”

“There is no Mrs. Della Martin. Myra and her mother are the same person. Myra played the part of her mother. That was her little scheme. If she could fool you — doing that — it would prove how clever she was.”

“Same person...” Van Diesten repeated.

“Then, she planned, she would have suddenly faced you and proved to you that she had been playing two parts and playing them so well she had fooled you, and you’d have given her a job, in self-defense if for no other reason.”

“How did... how did you know?”

“When she came to see me as Mrs. Della Martin, she didn’t cry. She told a very sad story. She nearly made me cry. She should have at least shed a tear or two. But she couldn’t. If she had, she’d have spoiled her make-up.”

There was a long silence, and then Van Diesten fumbled uncertainly over words: “You did all this, and you do not even know me...”

“Well, to tell the truth,” Collins said, “I think I brought it on myself. The only way I can figure that Myra would know anything about me is that I must have gotten crocked at a party somewhere and talked too much about my experiences in Europe. She either heard me or someone she knew did. If I’d have kept my big mouth shut, I’d never have gotten in this in the first place.”

“That does not make any difference. You have done so much, and I want to show you how I feel...”

Collins chuckled. “Never mind. I don’t even want a job. I’ve got a better one than you could give me coming up.”

“Better?” Van Diesten said.

“Yes. The Army. I’m just sitting around and loafing while I’m waiting to be inducted. You run along home now. I’ll report this, and I won’t even mention your name. There’s a detective by the name of Tilwitz who is going to come steaming around here in a little while. He won’t believe me no matter what I say, so I’ll dream up something real fancy for him.” Collins’ voice sobered suddenly. “This is Myra’s last chance, and I’m going to give her as big a part to play as I can.”