The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

John D(ann) MacDonald (1916–1986) was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, moved to Utica, New York, received a B.S. from Syracuse University, then an M.B.A. from Harvard. He worked as a businessman without much success, then joined the army, serving from 1940 to 1946, achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel in the OSS. When he returned to the United States, he began to write full-time, selling sports, adventure, fantasy, science fiction, and mystery stories to pulp magazines and such slicks as Liberty, Cosmopolitan, and Collier’s. His 1949 move to Florida gave him access to the water and boating, which served as the background for many of his novels, notably those about Travis McGee, who lives on a houseboat named The Busted Flush, which he won in a poker game. One of the great characters of mystery fiction, McGee is a combination private detective and thief who makes his living by recovering stolen property and, while living outside the law, victimizes only criminals. He is not a private eye in the Raymond Chandler sense of being a knight, though he fills that role more often than not as an avenger, coming to the aid of (invariably) beautiful women who fall for the rugged outdoorsman. There are nineteen McGee novels, mostly paperback originals, beginning with The Deep Blue Good-by (1964). His suspense novel The Executioners (1958) was filmed twice as Cape Fear (in 1962, with Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, and Polly Bergen, and in 1991, with Nick Nolte, Robert De Niro, Jessica Lange, and Juliette Lewis).

“Murder in One Syllable” was published in the May 1949 issue.

Bullets for breakfast were on the menu for thrill-hungry Cynthia Darrold — when she picked up the right guy in the wrong tavern.

Chapter One Paul January

In childhood there had been a sentence, a trick sentence, to punctuate. That that is is that that is not is not that that is. “That that is, is.” The sodden handkerchief, growing crusty furthest from the wound, was an actuality. It was wedged under his belt, just above the watch pocket of his gunmetal gabardine slacks.

Nor could the existence of a small bit of lead be denied, though its presence within him was more the result of circumstantial reasoning. There was a hole for entrance, yet no discernable hole of exit.

Though conscious of the absurdity of his reasoning, he tried to tell himself that the handkerchief was where it belonged, crisp and fresh, in the left-hand pocket of his rayon cord jacket. Not tucked under his belt at all.

And that, of course, meant corollary reasoning. The bullet was still in the gun. Possibly the gun was still in a pawnshop. It had looked to be that sort of a gun.

And it also meant that the girl was somewhere other than on her back in the cerise and white kitchen where he had left her, with a bullet in her head.

He swallowed hard and wondered whether his nausea came from the memory of the girl, or from his own weakness.

The sun was very warm and it was remarkably difficult to walk, as though there was no hole in the taut belly muscles just over the watch pocket, no sticky handkerchief balled and wedged under the gray and white belt against the white mesh fabric of the shirt.

It was easier to think that the handkerchief was in his pocket, the bullet still in the gun, the girl out riding in a convertible, the wind in her hair, her eyes half shut, a warm and secret smile on her lips.

Try as he might, it was almost impossible to swing his right arm gracefully and naturally. He kept wanting to press the inside of his arm against the lump of the handkerchief.

He realized he was heading toward a rather shoddy section of the strange city, but wisdom dictated that he continue. It would be rather suspicious to be looking around to see if he were followed. To stop and retrace his steps would court suspicion.

A candy store was directly ahead of him. The buildings all reached to the edge of the rather narrow sidewalk. Two narrow-faced little children came whooping out of the candy store, sucking on ice cream sticks. They stopped dead and stared at him.

“Whacha walkin’ like that for, mister?”

Apparently I am not walking properly. Straighten up, Paul, old man.

He gave them a peaceful smile, wondering if it looked more like a grimace. The effort required to straighten up was surprisingly great. He felt as though his flesh and bone had been doubled over, crimped or stapled in place, felt as though it tore him to straighten up.

The children solemnly sucked the ice cream and regarded him coldly. He went on and did not look back.

His feet had begun to feel as though they dangled inches above the hot pavement, as though by no effort could he stretch them down to an intimate contact with reality. He walked over and got into a parked cab.

As they neared the station he gave the driver a wise smile and said, “Look, old man, there’s a woman waiting in there for me and I want to avoid her. Here’s my check for two suitcases. Would you mind awfully?”

The driver winked at him. “I know how it is, mac.

Ten minutes later the taxi driver let him off at the bus station. He overtipped the man. The sun was getting low. His suitcases made long solid shadows on the dusty sidewalk. He knew it was going to be one of the most difficult things he had ever attempted. As he lifted the two bags, the sweat jumped out on his forehead and the world darkened around him. His shoulder struck the doorframe and he knew his mouth was drawn down in an absurd grimace. After he had sat on the hard bench for a few moments, his breathing quieted and he could see clearly once more.

Paul January went to the ticket counter.

Behind the ticketseller was a map of the bus lines marked heavily in red. He squinted at it and picked out a name.

“One-way to Rockwarren, please.”

“That’ll be two eighty-five, sir. Next bus leaves in twenty minutes out that side door over there.”

Paul held himself very straight as he went back to his bench.

An old man sat beside him, lean jaw stubbled with white, shapeless gray cap, reddened eyes, roving in constant wariness. The old man jerked a pint bottle out of his side pocket, took long swallows, his seamed throat convulsing. He lowered the bottle, wiped his mouth on his hand, gagged and slid the bottle back in his pocket.

Paul January separated two dollars from the wadded bills in his pocket. “I’ll give you two dollars for the rest of that bottle,” he said.

The wary old eyes regarded him. “You look like you need it, friend.”

He slid the bottle over, pocketed the two dollars. Paul January, ignoring the baleful eye of a matron on his right, tilted it up and finished it without once taking it from his lips.

The liquor hit his stomach, radiated warmth and strength in all directions.

The driver put the suitcases in the side compartment. Paul January went to the third seat behind the driver, inched in close to the window. He pulled his cocoanut straw hat low over his eyes. He was asleep by the time the bus started.

Chapter Two Olive Morgantine

She was a muscular and angular woman in her late fifties with teeth as white, as carefully tended and as artificial as the low white picket fence surrounding her tiny footage and white cottage. Though Henry Morgantine had died eighteen years before, Olive still talked about him in a manner which had sensitive guests on the verge of glancing quickly over their shoulders.

Her living room, a twelve-by-twelve cube, was jammed. In solitary and muscular splendor, Mrs. Olive Morgantine moved carefully among her possessions, dusting, oiling, polishing.

Her most startling variation from type was an addiction to very gay and quite youthful clothes, horridly embellished by whole areas of clattering, clanking costume jewelry.

During the past six months Olive Morgantine had been kept in a state of outrage. It was all due to the “development.” She failed to see why the empty lot near her cottage, adjoining it, in fact, had been shrewdly split into two tiny lots, and a white house erected on each.

As if that were not enough, the couple who purchased the house nearest to hers had been of “a very low type, my dear. The things I could tell you!”

The facts were a silver thread running through her fabric of woe. A couple had bought the house next door. He was some sort of a salesman. She was a coarse-looking young woman, pretty in a rather vulgar way, blatant in her dress and her habits.

Olive Morgantine did not mind the shrill quarrels when the husband was home. Nor did she mind the lateness of their parties. She could have adjusted to those factors. The one thing she could not stand was the fact that Mrs. Darrold “stands out on that stupid little back porch and hurls, just hurls, mind you, all of the empty bottles and cans down to the foot of the yard. You have no idea what it is doing to the neighborhood. I suppose when their yard is full they’ll start hurling them into my begonias!”

Cynthia Darrold’s habits were just sufficiently regular to react on Mrs. Morgantine in the same way as the ancient torture of the slow dripping of water.

With her husband away, Cynthia Darrold apparently arose around eleven. She made her breakfast and loafed until late afternoon. At that time she would make herself some cocktails, quite a number, in fact, and later have a can of soup before going out.

Thus, every day, somewhere between four and six, a bottle or a can would be hurled out into the yard. No matter how Mrs. Morgantine tried to avoid hearing the noise, she would always hear it.

There was another factor in Cynthia Darrold’s life that bothered Mrs. Morgantine a great deal. She was always asleep when Cynthia came home. And, rather too often, sometime during the following day, a strange young man, usually a different one, would walk from the Darrold house and disappear down the street headed toward the nearest bus stop.

Never did Cynthia stir herself to climb behind the wheel of the powerful red roadster and take the young man back to wherever he belonged.

It was four o’clock and Mrs. Morgantine was beginning to get her daily case of nerves over the routine of the tin can or the bottle. She stood well back from her windows and watched the Darrold house. At noon a tall young man had walked away from the Darrold house. He had been rather a good-looking young man, wearing gray slacks and one of those cotton sports coats. Of course, she could not say but what he had arrived just before she saw him leave, as she had been rather busy in her bedroom, sorting her jewelry.

Surely any minute now she would see signs of Cynthia’s moving about in the kitchen. And then, indolent and sloppily dressed, Cynthia would shuffle out onto her porch, brace herself and throw a can or bottle down the yard.

Mrs. Morgantine made herself some tea, drank it, paced restlessly about, looked at her watch. A little after five. And still no crash and clatter in the back yard. Yes, the red car was still parked beside the house.

Five-thirty... quarter to six... six... five after six.

Mrs. Morgantine stood up. She had been sitting by her beautifully polished dining room table, drumming on it with businesslike fingernails.

Mrs. Darrold had never been this late.

She went to the phone. “Information, please. Do you have a phone listed for a Mr. Gaylord Darrold on Hillside Drive? Thank you very much.”

She dialed the number they had given her. She cocked her head on one side and listened. Yes, she could hear the distant ringing of the Darrold phone. She counted the rings. After it rang twenty-four times, she hung up, began to tap on her front teeth with the back of her thumbnail.

Cynthia Darrold surely could not be sleeping that soundly!

Mrs. Morgantine paced back and forth through the little house. She made her decision. Of course, if Cynthia came to the door, it would be a very neighborly thing to have done, and might mean that the Darrold woman would be in her hair until she could successfully freeze her out again.

Mrs. Morgantine emptied a small sugar bowl back into the big sugar tin. She put a wide, shallow smile on her knobbed face, walked briskly down to her garden gate, stepped delicately over the maze of cans and bottles and climbed the warped steps to the Darrold back door. The buzzer inside was startingly loud.

After giving the buzzer seven long rings, she thumped heartily on the door with a capable fist. No answer. She half turned, then, lips compressed, snatched the doorknob and turned it. The door opened readily.

She tiptoed into the back hall. A big refrigerator hummed. A distant clock ticked. Sunlight fell in a fading pattern on the rather grubby linoleum.

Holding her breath and clutching the sugar bowl, Mrs. Morgantine tiptoed her way into the kitchen.

The blue sugar bowl slipped from her fingers and smashed on the floor. The first three screams were high and thin. She stood staring down at the dead woman and screamed again and again until her voice itself was almost gone and had become a hoarse bellow.

It was then that she realized that with the as yet unoccupied house on one side and with her own empty house on the other, and with no houses across the street, screaming was a singularly empty procedure.

She moved sideways to the sink, turned on the cold water, cupped her hand and liberally spattered her face. It felt very good.

Mrs. Morgantine’s appetite for the mystery story was almost insatiable. She began to think in terms of “murder weapon” and “motive” and “suspects” and “scene of the crime.”

She found the weapon, a disappointingly inoffensive-appearing automatic, on the far side of the kitchen, almost under the kitchen table. She knew enough not to touch it. She regretted touching the faucet.

She backed out of the kitchen, scurried down the steps and began to run down toward her garden gate.

She was standing impatiently in front of the Darrold house when the white police sedan appeared five minutes later. She gave them no chance to ask questions. As she followed them up to the front door of the Darrold house, both policeman had begun to walk with their knees bent, as men who brace themselves against a storm.

Chapter Three Doris Logan

She wrinkled her nose at the ripe stink of alcohol as she took her seat beside the sleeping man. She half stood, lurching as the bus started, but there were no other vacant seats. Well, if he kept sleeping, he’d be no trouble.

She wondered vaguely why she was always getting entangled with amorous drunks. Doris Logan was remarkably devoid of pride or pretense. When she thought of herself, which was seldom, she thought of a girl who was too tall, with a mouth that was too wide, hair of a strange red color, eyes that were an odd greeny-pale. She did not know that it all added up to a striking attractiveness.

She thought of herself as a husky and capable nurse. Which she was. Though vaguely conscious of missing some important and integral part of life, she found that men bored her, almost without exception. A kiss was a remarkably unsanitary gyration.

But, on the bus trip, she had no time to think of vague matters. Her problems were more specific. For three years she had been the surgical assistant to a very fine doctor. She had followed him in so many operations that she could anticipate his every move.

A week before, the doctor she worked for explained that the hospital administration was requesting him to return to the system whereby he took on internes as surgical assistants, thus complicating his own operations, but furthering their education.

He gave her a month off with pay, and she had spent one week at a rented cabin at Lake Morris near Rockwarren. She had thought of offering her services to another surgeon whom she knew, and had left her car at the bus station in Rockwarren, had taken the bus down to the city. She found that the other surgeon had the same problem.

After the three years of acting as surgical assistant, she doubted whether she could force herself to return to a nursing routine.

So Doris Logan was worrying about her future. Unless she could find the means and the opportunity to go to medical school, further progress in the field was denied her. In fact, they wanted her to retrogress. To an individual of her spirit, this was very irksome indeed. She thought of her mind as one of the little white mice she had seen once in a laboratory maze. It ran back and forth, bewildered, its pink nose twitching. The bus was getting well out into the country. The sun had gone below the horizon and the after-work traffic had lessened. Neon was flashing up in front of the juke spots on the highway, and some gas stations were already floodlighted. The driver clicked on the inside lights in the bus.

Her seat companion stirred restlessly and his hat rolled off his head, blundered down into her lap. She picked it up with distaste, glanced at him, half stood and put it on the overhead rack.

She looked at him for a time. Silly man to get so drunk. Yet rather a nice-looking man. Sensitivity in that face. And intelligence. The eyes were set well in the face, and the mouth, though slack in sleep, had a certain firmness and character. She suddenly felt a warmth that surprised her.

Doris, my girl, if you start feeling mushy about drunks in buses, you are really in a sad, bad way.

There were spots of color in the man’s cheek. His breathing was a shade too rapid. Professional interest immediately swallowed personal interest. She watched him narrowly.

If she took his wrist to find the pulse, he might awaken. She moved her head to where she could watch a pulse in his throat. Her watch, of course, had a sweep second hand. She counted.

One hundred and twelve! Not good at all. Ever so lightly, she touched the back of her hand to his dry forehead. It was alarmingly hot.

The slight pressure disturbed him. His right arm moved up and the inside of the forearm pressed against his side just at his waistline.

His hand slowly slid back to the seat. She looked at the place where he had pressed. There seemed to be a slight bulge there. She wondered what it was. She carefully grasped the edge of the rayon cord jacket, lifted it until she could see his gray and white belt. She caught her underlip between her teeth. Even under weak artificial light in a moving bus, she could tell dried blood when she saw it.

It led to a very direct line of reasoning. The man was hurt. There were doctors in the city. He was leaving the city. Thus the wound would be either a knife wound or a bullet wound. She wondered which. She did not doubt for one moment the correctness of her reasoning.

She remembered a ticket stub inside the gray hatband. She stood up and glanced at it. Rockwarren. At Rockwarren she would turn him over to the police. He would probably be wanted.

But ten miles from Rockwarren, he moaned. He opened his eyes and looked at her with the glaze of partial delirium. She saw his teeth shut hard, saw him slowly pull himself together.

He sat up and said weakly, “Could you tell me how far it is to Rockwarren?”

She liked his voice and she liked his eyes. “Another fifteen minutes.” She leaned toward him and said, in that trained voice that doesn’t carry as far as a whisper, “How far do you expect to walk with that wound?”

His hand lifted to his side, then slowly dropped. Surprisingly, he smiled. “You got me, pal,” he said.

“Can you make it about fifty yards?”

“By myself, yes. But not carrying two suitcases.”

He sank into the seat of the small coupe with a heartfelt sigh. She got behind the wheel and drove back to the bus station. He waited and she came out in a moment carrying his bags. In the center of the small village she went into a drugstore.

When she came out she saw that he was either asleep or had fainted. She got behind the wheel, stowed her package in back, considered a moment, and then lowered him so that his head rested in her lap. She threw his hat in back.

Five miles from Rockwarren she turned off the county road onto a dirt track with grass growing high in the middle. It brushed the underside of the car. Her lights made a bright tunnel through the darkness of the woods. The road went down a steep pitch.

She steadied him with her right hand on his shoulder. At the foot of the incline she turned sharply left, her lights brushing across a split-log cabin.

Beyond the cabin was the lakeshore. She left him in the car, went up onto the porch, went into the spare bedroom and turned on the lights. Deftly she made up the bed with her extra sheets.

She could not rouse him when she returned to the car.

With her hands in his armpits, she dragged him out, his heels hitting the ground. She rested when she got him to the steps. She rested again when she got him to the top of the steps. After dragging him across the small living room and into the bedroom, she made one final effort and managed to get him up onto the bed.

She saw that the dragging had opened the wound again, if indeed it had ever been entirely closed. She boiled the probe and scalpel on the kitchen stove, put the sulpha powder, gauze and adhesive on the nightstand.

In five minutes she knew that she would not have to drive back to the village for the doctor as she had planned. The slug had hit at an angle, had followed all the way around his side, not far under the skin, and had lodged within an inch of his backbone. She felt the lump with her fingers.

Deftly she made the short incision, popped the ugly-looking chunk of lead out by pressing delicately with her thumbs on either side of it. She washed both wounds, packed them with the sulpha powder, bandaged them expertly.

His fever was just under a hundred and two. She gave him sulpha tablets which, in his unconscious state, he choked on. She then injected penicillin into him, covered him up, clicked out the bright light and left the room. At the doorway she paused, intending to go back and take his wallet and look for identification.

But she couldn’t do it. She could not bring herself to snoop among his papers.

After she had quietly closed his door, she realized how tired she was. She went out onto the screened porch and looked at the moon pattern across the water. She tried to bring her mind back to the problem of her future. But somehow she could not work up a sufficient amount of interest. She smoked two cigarettes and, when she began to yawn, she went to her bedroom. Then she realized that he might wake up and leave. With a determined stride she went back to his room, collected both suitcases, took them back to her room and shot the bolt.

Chapter Four Gaylord Darrold

He sat on the kitchen table and could not keep his eyes off the heavily chalked outline on the floor. The outline of Cynthia. There were two men in the kitchen with him. The big, dull-looking one who leaned against the sink was a Lieutenant Krobey. He had a flat tanned face and blue eyes that looked like marbles freshly spray-painted in watery blue.

The other one was a fat and asthmatic man with a cherub face, a shining bald skull and a deep, somehow sickening, dimple in his forehead. His name was Sergeant Love. He had been an exceedingly doleful and lugubrious man until one day a hopped-up seventeen-year-old had shot Sergeant Love square in the forehead with a twenty-two pistol. The tiny slug had gone an inch deep into the gray tissue of Sergeant Love’s frontal lobe and had turned him into a jolly and optimistic man who told his wife every day of her life that he was living on borrowed time.

“Give it to me slow again,” Krobey said.

“Our marriage had turned into something pretty dull some time ago. She lived her life. I lived mine. When I was home she cooked for me and kept my clothes in shape. When I was away I didn’t care what she did, just so long as she didn’t spend too much money.”

“You buy her the car?”

“She had some money of her own.”

“You got any idea who she might have quarreled with?”

“No,” Gaylord Darrold said.

The gleaming young man from the district attorney’s office came back into the kitchen. He gave each of the three men an identical nod. Mr. Gaylord Darrold had arrived home at ten-fifteen in the morning, exactly sixteen hours after the discovery of the body of his wife by Mrs. Morgantine.

The burnished young man from the district attorney’s office was named Haggard. De Wolfe Haggard. He had been in and out of the kitchen five times.

Gaylord Darrold was the sort of lean-headed man, the type who, in his twenties, is called “wise,” in his thirties is called “sophisticated,” in his forties is called “dissipated” and in his fifties is called “well preserved.” Darrold was edging from sophistication into dissipation.

He glanced mildly at Haggard, brushed some invisible lint off his sharply creased trousers.

Krobey said heavily, “I just want leads. People kill people and we like to know who.” Krobey seemed intent on making sense.

The phone rang. Gaylord Darrold slid easily from the table, walked into the hall and took the call. He turned and handed the phone to Krobey.

Krobey grunted into the phone a few times and then hung up. He said to Sergeant Love, “That’s the Rockwarren lead. A guy answering the description that old lady give us took the bus about six last night to Rockwarren. But we can’t track him from there. Anybody we can’t track is a good bet.”

“You think he’s got a hole in him?” Love asked.

Krobey shrugged. “No screens on the house. That window over there was open. A slug goes out the window, we never find it if it’s angled up a little. If he has a hole in him, it isn’t important.”

De Wolfe Haggard struck a pose in the middle of the kitchen. He rested his chin on his fist and glared at the floor.

“This is my reconstruction, gentlemen,” he said soberly. “Mrs. Darrold went out the night before last. She struck up an acquaintanceship with this Mr. X. He carried a gun. Lieutenant Krobey has explained to us that since it is rather an old gun, a Browning patent manufactured in Belgium, we will probably never trace it. The young man came here with Mrs. Darrold. She had been dead five hours when she was found. That puts the time at one o’clock.

“For some reason they quarreled. He wrapped the gun in that towel, and fired twice at her. The towel muffled the sound of the shots. He missed her once and the bullet went out that window. She was running from him in terror. The second shot struck her in the back of the head. He wiped the gun on the towel, tossed both the gun and the towel on the floor. Then he calmly walked out. Mrs. Morgantine saw him. It matches with the time of death. All we need to do, gentlemen, is inquire around at those places where it is likely that Mrs. Darrold and Mr. X may have met.”

He looked around the kitchen, said to Gaylord Darrold, “Where did they go?”

“They left some time ago.”

“Oh.” For a moment De Wolfe Haggard looked very young and very vulnerable. He swallowed hard, and in what was obviously a gesture to gain face, marched two paces closer to Darrold, leveled a finger at him and said, “This alibi of yours will stand up, you believe?”

Gaylord Darrold selected a cigarette from a battered leather case. He lit it, flicked the match away. The match bounced off the polished toe of Haggard’s right shoe.

Darrold said flatly, “Don’t raise your voice at me, junior. And don’t pick words like alibi to use on me. Somebody killed my wife. You’ve been boring me off and on all afternoon. Now why don’t you go finger a brief or something and let the cops work on this. They know how.”

The burnished young man coughed, touched his fingertips to a dark blue Windsor knot and fled from the kitchen.

Darrold stared at the chalked outline on the floor. His eyes narrowed and he sucked the smoke far down into his lungs.

The phone rang again. Love came from the front of the house to answer it. He listened for a long time, said, “Okay, Joe,” and hung up.

He walked out into the kitchen and smiled at Darrold. “Okay, so you’re clear, Mister Darrold. We got you located at Barnston, fifty miles east of here, at noon yesterday, and that Mr. Walker, the bookkeeper guy, reported that he put you on the Empire City at just five minutes of twelve, headed east. That train makes its first stop two hours later, at two in the afternoon, a hundred and seventy miles east of here. And I guess nobody jumps off that Empire City, hey?”

“Hardly.”

“Then in Richfield, a hundred and seventy miles away, you called on customers, checked in at the Richfield House after dinner, left your room early this morning, checked out, picked up your car from the Wilson Brothers Garage and drove back here.”

Darrold smiled tightly. “You people really follow it up, don’t you?”

“Brother, we have to. With characters like De Wolfe Haggard running around, we can’t have any holes in our cases.”

“Probably a good thing from my point of view.”

“Sure, figure what happens if we catch the guy and some jury lets him go. You don’t want any suspicion on you. It’s better we check it all the way.”

“Thanks,” Darrold said dryly. He yawned. “Look, Sergeant. All this has been pretty rough. I’m sort of shot. Okay with you people if I take a nap?”

“Go ahead. We’ll know where you are if we want you.”

“If there’s any way I can help...”

Sergeant Love clapped him on the shoulder. “Turn in, fella. You do look sort of shot.”

Chapter Five Paul January

It was a bit like waking up on the morning of final exams, knowing that there was a horrible day ahead, without being able to remember the reason. At first he thought it was a hangover, but aside from a dull roaring in his ears and a tiny pulse somewhere behind his forehead, he felt fine.

The mattress had obviously been stuffed with old tire irons and petrified bits of cabbage. It rustled and jabbed him when he moved. He wondered why he had taken a bed with such a foul mattress.

The ceiling was of tired-looking plywood.

Suddenly the picture flashed into his mind of a girl on a kitchen floor.

He was wide awake in a fraction of a second. Awake, tense and afraid. The window was unbarred. Clean sheets. He touched his side, felt the comforting firmness of a professional bandage. There was a new area of pain also. He rolled up onto his side, explored the new place, found a second bandage.

An orifice of exit, no doubt. The slug was no longer with him.

He frowned. There was a girl on a bus. Quite a nice girl, in fact. A small car. Headlights.

He stood up with determination, wavered for balance, managed to remain standing. Something clattered. A kitchen sound.

Three steps took him to the bedroom door. He opened it. Same girl. Her back was to him. Red slacks and a halter.

She spun around. “You shouldn’t be up!”

“I feel fine. Just fine.”

She came over to him, took his arm and led him to a deep wicker chair. He sank gratefully into it.

He smiled up at her and said, “In words of one syllable, lady. Please.”

“Certainly. I sat next to you on the bus. I’m a nurse. My name is Doris Logan. I rent this cottage. The noise out there is Lake Morris slapping the dock. I saw you were hurt. I brought you here, extracted one small bullet which you will find over there on the mantel, and gave you some items to knock off the infection which had started. I don’t know why I did it. Who did you kill? How would you like your eggs?”

“My name is Paul January and I didn’t kill anybody and scrambled soft, please.”

She went back to the stove, cut down the flame under the percolator and began making housewife motions over the eggs.

Once she turned and said, “Of course, you’d say that anyway.”

He thought it over. “Yes, I guess I would. Not the killer type, though. I even hate to watch bugs after they get a jolt of DDT.”

In a few moments she pushed the table over to his chair, brought over his plate and cup, sat opposite him.

“I still don’t know why I did it,” she said softly.

He bent busily over the eggs. This was indeed a remarkable young woman. She seemed to have a little transparent sheet over her emotions.

“They’ll be coming after you, you know,” she said. “That is, unless you were a good deal cleverer in getting to the bus than you were after you were on it.”

“They won’t be coming after me,” he said with decision.

“Oh, then you were clever?”

“Not at all. They won’t come after me, because I will go to them, Miss Logan. I don’t know why I ran in the first place. Shock, I guess. The whole thing is still pretty foggy in my mind. I just wanted to get away from there. Anywhere. Just away.”

“Away from where?”

“Suppose I think over the whole thing while I drink the coffee and then tell you later.”

They sat on the screened porch. It was a placid morning, slightly overcast. The lake had a steel-gray sheen. The morning held, for Paul January, a peculiar and haunting unreality. No other camp was visible from the porch. On the far side of the lake silent pines cast deep aqua shadows.

He liked the way she did not press him for explanations, but was content to sit quietly and wait for him to tell her in his own good time.

“This makes me sound like seven kinds of fool,” he said. “And probably I am. I had just arrived in the city. I had never been there before. I checked my luggage in the station rather than cart it around with me while looking for a place to stay. I’m an unsuccessful architect — one of those visionary guys who build marble palaces and forget the plumbing. My idea was to hit the new Planning Commission for a job. I’ve got a letter to the chairman of the commission.

“I arrived in the late afternoon, and after trying three hotels and getting nowhere, I went into a sort of steakhouse place to eat. I had a couple of drinks. It was a paneled place, with an orange glow to the lights and a lot of glitter on the backbar and oversized prices on the drinks and food. But I was too lazy to look for another spot.

“Sitting at the bar was a woman. This probably sounds completely screwy to you, but I never did find out all of her name. Just Cynthia. Long black hair curled in at the ends and when she bent her head over the bar a long strand of it would swing around in front and she’d push it back with an impatient gesture. Maybe you can guess how a man alone will watch a woman who is alone. It’s sort of a speculative procedure. But the milquetoast type, such as myself, never gets past the speculation stage.

“She had rather coarse lines about her face. Heavy lips, wide across the cheekbones, snub nose, dense black eyebrows. She sat at the bar and from my table I could see her face reflected in the backbar. She had what I call princess eyes. It’s a silly term. They were nice eyes. Straight and true and sensitive. I played a mental game of trying to figure her out.

“I felt vaguely disturbed when the man moved in on her. Conservative pinstripe, immaculate hands and an air of extreme extroversion. I guessed at once that he’d call all waiters ‘Charlie’ and make a practice of sending food back to the kitchen.

“When he nuzzled up beside the girl and began to make small talk, I got a look at her eyes. All they seemed to hold was an incalculable weariness and resignation. My chops came and I kept an eye on them as I ate.

“The man made the mistake of being too big a shot in the drink department. He bought too many rounds. With more conservatism, she might have remained agreeable. But the liquor broke through the crust of self-disgust, and suddenly she began to snarl at him. I saw the anger on his face. He grabbed her arm and she shook him off. He sulked like a little boy. His fingers had made red spots on her arm.

“She chased him away, but he had a certain grim look that spelled trouble. I had finished eating, and I should have gone off to look for a room, but some hunch made me stay. She should have eaten, but instead she had more to drink. When she walked out, I paid my check and followed her.

“She walked an invisible tightrope to the door and went out onto the street. The man appeared out of the shadows and they argued. I could only hear the tone of voice. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and tried to wrestle her toward a waiting cab. I turned hero and shoved in on him.

“He was too easy. I stabbed him in the middle with my fingertips and backhanded him across the mouth when he bent over. Cynthia crowed with laughter. He blundered into the cab and was whirled away. Cynthia wavered toward a red roadster. She was too far gone to drive. I got behind the wheel and she directed me to a small white house on Hillside Street.

“Halfway to the back door, she collapsed. I got her inside, found the lights, made coffee for her. The house was deserted. After she had the coffee, she locked herself in the bathroom and took a long shower. Then she joined me in the kitchen and we drank coffee and talked. It was a strange talk. We covered psychological and philosophical concepts that were way over our heads. We were impersonal with each other, if you can believe that.”

“I can believe it,” Doris Logan said quietly.

“In the small hours of the morning she went to bed. I slept on a couch in the front room, with her permission. It was all very platonic. In the morning she was going to drive me down to the center of the city and I would find a hotel, clean up and make my appointment.

“She was worn out, I guess. She slept very late and I didn’t want to disturb her. I was up about nine and I debated leaving quietly. I guess I should have. But, I liked Cynthia, and I wanted to say goodby to her properly.

“It must have been close to noon when she got up. She came out in a coral housecoat, and she looked years younger than she had the night before. We kidded around about the rejuvenating aspects of turning over a new leaf. I asked her while we were eating breakfast whether she would find a job. She said that she had enough money to keep herself for some time, and that most of all she wanted to go to some quiet place.

“After we ate, I helped her carry the few dishes to the kitchen sink and she washed them. I was on the far side of the kitchen.

“There was a sound, and I thought that she had pushed a book off the kitchen shelf and that it had fallen flat on the linoleum. It was that sort of sound. I looked over at her and she was bending over the sink, her face almost touching the faucets. I thought that very strange. There was a funny smell of fireworks in the air.

“As I watched her, her knees bent and she slid down, falling over onto her back. My mind was working slowly, but when I saw her face and her eyes, I knew she was dead. There was a faint sound off to my right. I turned quickly and something hot and small and hard hit me just over the watch pocket. I staggered back and my heel caught in a throw rug and I fell heavily. Something clattered on the floor.

“The thing which had hit me gave me cramps. Gasping, I got to my feet. I was bleeding. I looked at the small ugly hole in myself and balled my handkerchief and wedged it under my belt against the hole. The thing which had clattered was a gun. It was nearly under the kitchen table. I walked to the window. The curtains blew in the breeze. There was no one outside.

“I draw a blank for the next few moments. I was walking toward the city. I can remember funny little snatches. Kids sucking on ice cream. An old guy with a pint bottle. Telling a lie to a cabdriver. I bought a bus ticket to some place called Rockwarren. Now I know that I was silly to run. If you’ll drive me into town...”

Doris Logan’s wide and generous mouth had a set look about it. “Wait a minute, Paul. This is an illogical world which feels itself to be supremely logical. Let’s play cop for a little while. Man goes home with Cynthia. Cynthia dies. Man leaves. Just for a moment let us assume that there are no prints on the gun, that the gun is not traceable. Also assume that whoever killed the fair Cynthia has a very solid alibi. The newspapers will try you before the court does. It won’t be pretty. And the average person would find it a bit hard to think of you and Cynthia having a good old-fashioned bull session, all very palsy.”

Paul January felt all the comfort drain out of the morning. He listened to his own story from the viewpoint of a policeman — and found it thin indeed. Thin and more than a bit ridiculous. He saw for the first time that even had he remained at Cynthia’s house and phoned the police, he would have come in for more than a trace of suspicion. And having run away made it far, far worse.

He glanced at Doris. Her capable hands were resting on the arms of the porch chair, but they were not relaxed. The knuckles were white.

She got up suddenly and went into the cabin. “Right back,” she said.

He waited. The morning was quiet. He heard a gasp of pain from inside the cabin. He stood up and went in.

Doris Logan stood by the kitchen sink, her face pale. Blood ran down her arm from a deep gash just above her elbow.

“What happened!” he cried.

She managed to smile. “It was a shade deeper than I wanted to cut,” she said. “Stop jittering for a minute and help me. Pick up that gauze pad by the corner and put it lengthwise along the cut. Fine. Now tear off an adhesive strip three inches long. Right across here. Now another. Three ought to hold it.”

With the cut bandaged, she cleaned the blood from her forearm.

Before he could ask her, she said, “Look here, Paul. I left the bus station and went to a drugstore. I bought a few things. If they traced you to the bus, they might connect the two of us. And that means I need a reason for the purchases I made. Infected arm. See?” She grinned and held out the bandaged arm.

He took her by the shoulders and shook her gently. Her odd red hair fell across her eyes and she blew it out of the way with a protruding underlip.

“Fine!” he said. “The boss takes charge. You decide that I’m going to keep right on running. Wouldn’t it have been nice to let me know?”

Anger faded as he grew conscious of the warmth of her bare shoulders under his hands. He was suddenly impressed with her unusual loveliness. He pulled her close and kissed her.

He released her, feeling extremely shy. She did not meet his glance. Awkwardness was between them, like the faltering lines in a poor play.

She broke the tension by saying, “Pretty rigorous stuff for the walking wounded, Mr. J.”

He reached for her again. She put her hands against his chest and pushed. Firmly. “Don’t let my self-mutilation go for nothing. We are going to make you a woodsy nest. You and your suitcases. Off in the brush. And then I am going into town and find out the current status.”

Chapter Six De Wolfe Haggard

When he thought of himself, which was frequently and with delight, he became the lean, suave and sober district attorney who not only shows the humble police the error of their ways, but concocts a courtroom boomerang that fells the mighty. The big trouble was that the police, notably that vulgar Lieutenant Krobey, insisted on treating him as though he were a frail substitute trying to make the first team.

Whenever De Wolfe thought of Krobey, he flexed his muscles and imagined a series of violent gestures ending in Krobey falling backward across a table to lie huddled and silent on the floor. It was too bad that there was no way to prove Krobey guilty of a crime. Also it was too bad that Krobey was so — muscular.

Take the way Krobey had acted with that beautiful Doris Logan. Anyone could see that she was not, of all things, a liar. What if someone had seen her talking to the suspect on the bus? Was Doris Logan the type to make a cheap pickup the way Cynthia Darrold did? Of course not!

It was infuriatingly stupid the way Krobey had made her repeat her story over and over again. When De Wolfe shut his eyes he could still see her intent face.

“Yes, Lieutenant, I spoke to him on the bus. He asked me how long it would take to get to Rockwarren. He was quite drunk. No, his face was shadowed. I really couldn’t tell you what he looked like. He was young and I think his face was plump and his hair was blond.”

“But Mrs. Morgantine said the man had a lean face and dark hair.”

Doris Logan had smiled. “Possibly we are talking about two different people.”

“How about the person who swears they saw the young man getting into your car, Miss Logan?”

“I can’t explain that. But the gas station man told you that when I passed his station I was alone in the car. The young man tried to follow me in the darkness when I went back to get into my car. And then he disappeared. I don’t know where he went.”

“How about those purchases you made?”

“I wanted to treat my own infected arm, Lieutenant. Is there a law against that? After all, Lieutenant! You people searched my camp and found no trace of any man being there. This whole inquisition is getting a bit ridiculous, isn’t it? The murder was committed the day before yesterday. The murderer must be a thousand miles away by now. And you waste good police time asking me silly questions. I’ve told you all I know.”

De Wolfe scowled as he thought of how Krobey had reacted. The stupid man should have at least apologized. Instead he had smiled placidly at Miss Logan and had said, “We’ll be talking some more. If we want you, we’ll send a sedan up to the camp and bring you back.”

“I may stay in town for a few days. You have my apartment address.”

De Wolfe Haggard picked up a fresh yellow pencil, tested the needle point with a pink thumb. He sat at his desk in the outer office and stared at the blank sheet of white paper in front of him. The blank sheet became a movie screen. A drama was being enacted.

De Wolfe Haggard, district attorney, stood in the crowded courtroom and pointed to the defendant who had taken the stand. The defendant was Doris Logan. De Wolfe Haggard, with voice of booming bronze, pointed a dramatic finger at the defendant and said, “Would you believe this fair and innocent creature to be capable of the foulness imputed to her by my learned...”

No, that wasn’t right. He would have to be the prosecutor...

He glanced toward the doorway. He shook his head to remove the mirage standing in the doorway in a green dress. The mirage stayed, came walking toward him.

He got up so eagerly that he tipped his chair over. He picked it up, moved another chair eagerly into position and said, “Do sit down, Miss Logan. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about the... indignity of the questions you were asked.”

Doris Logan sat and gave him a warm smile. “I knew you felt that way, Mr. Haggard. It’s so nice to feel that someone is on your side. That — that horrible attitude of suspicion.”

“I know. I know,” he said soothingly. “How can I help you?”

“I may seem to you, Mr. Haggard, like a very foolish girl. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been mixed up in this sort of thing. I don’t believe I’ve ever had my picture in the papers before. As a nurse, the notoriety isn’t good for me. Surely you realize that.”

De Wolfe nodded sagely.

“I wondered if there is any way I could help the authorities. If I could take an active interest, then possibly that horrid Lieutenant Krobey wouldn’t...”

Her voice trailed off. De Wolfe stared at the yellow pencil. He felt very alive and very reckless. He lowered his voice. “Actually, Miss Logan, I should discourage you. But you seem to be a person of high intelligence. Suppose you assist me in this case.”

“How exciting!” Doris said.

“If we could meet outside the office we can go over my case notes on this whole affair. Say about four? The cocktail lounge at the Hotel Rogers?”

She stood up, held out a cool hand. “Thank you so much, Mr. Haggard. I’ll be there.”

“Could you call me De Wolfe?”

“And you must call me Doris.” She held his hand tightly. “After all, we are working together, aren’t we?”

As soon as the outer door had closed behind her, De Wolfe Haggard walked twice around his desk, smacking his fist into his palm and saying jubilantly, “Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy...”

He felt the sere and aged eye of the chief female clerk upon him. He gave her a frosty and metallic look and sat down. He stared at the sheet of white paper and slowly another courtroom scene began to materialize. Krobey was the accused. Doris Logan was a juror. He leaned over the jurybox railing and talked directly to her. Her lips were parted and her warm admiring eyes were on him...

She sat at his side, so close to him that, if he moved another inch, their shoulders would touch. He moved a half inch. When the drinks were before them, he took out his notebook and placed it on the table. Together they leaned over it.

“You see,” he said proudly, “one of my methods is to put the name of each person concerned at the top of a sheet and put under that name all the facts we have. Here are five names of men who have been seen with Mrs. Darrold. The police have cleared each one of them. Mr. Darrold has been cleared also. Thus our Mr. X is obviously the man.”

“How do you go about ‘clearing’ someone? Take Mr. Darrold, for example.”

“Wait a moment. I can barely read my own writing. Ah yes. The home offices of the company he works for are in Barnston, fifty miles or so east of here. A Mr. Daniel Walker, bookkeeper at the home office, put Mr. Darrold on the Empire City headed east from Barnston at noon the day of the murder. Mr. Darrold could not possibly have returned here to kill his wife in the time allowed.”

“And I suppose they checked at the other end of his trip?”

“Oh, yes. Mr. Darrold was in Richfield that same evening, all right. No doubt about it.”

Chapter Seven Mayla Baran

Really, she thought, Dan is getting to be a horrid bore. She lay on her side on the wide windowseat, her head cradled on her arm, a glass on the floor just under her hand. The windowseat was padded in white leather, with red cording. Mayla liked white and red. She was a small girl with very white skin. She had a petulant mouth, eyes set into her head at a roguish tip-tilt, hair the color of the heaviest cream.

She had a predatory quickness of movement, thin, greedy little fingers, and a trick of slowly widening her eyes whenever she looked at a man. Her tiny body was superbly fashioned, and she never sat, walked, stood or reclined without a definite attempt to display its most pleasing lines.

Yes, Dan was becoming definitely a bore. She watched him as he paced. He walked from the white fireplace over to the far red couch and back again. There was a disgusting stubble of beard on his jaw, and discolored pouches under his eyes. The hair, which usually was carefully combed to cover the maximum area of a balding head, was in disarray, and a lank lock fell almost to his cheekbone.

“For heaven’s sake, sit down!” she snapped, in her high, childish voice.

“Shut up, Angel,” he growled.

She pouted. There was one good way to take Dan’s mind off his troubles. She said, “Today I’m going to order the terrace furniture.”

He whirled on her. “Angel! What furniture? How much?”

“About three hundred dollars. That terrace stuff is battered, Dan. Horribly battered.”

He stood over her. His eyes were strange. He frightened her a little, as in the old days before she had found that he would obey a gesture or a whistle, like a well-trained dog.

“Angel,” he said. “Remember what I asked you last night?”

“That silly idea of yours?”

“It’s not so silly. Let’s sell all this stuff. Let’s get out of here. Let’s get out of this stinking town of Barnston and go places. Mexico, maybe. Guatemala.”

She narrowed her tilted eyes and her mouth turned hard. “Not the way you want it, brother. Not in the tourist court class. I’m not a hamburger and soda-pop gal. Don’t you know that by now?”

“I... I can raise some fast money.”

“Out of your savings account?”

“Sure. Sure. Out of my savings.”

She looked him over, head to heels. She felt as though inside her head there was a little machine of shining gears, oiled efficiency, bathed in white light. Dan was absorbed into the little machine and came out neatly added up into plus and minus factors. As she had suspected for over a month, the minus factors outweighed the plus. Today was kiss-off day.

She swung her tiny feet off the windowseat, sat up and yawned in his face. She stood up and pushed by him, walking slowly across the room.

“You’ll do it?” he asked eagerly.

She smiled at him. “I’m about to pack. But just your things, not mine.”

His mouth sagged open. “Huh?” he said stupidly.

“You bore me, Dan. Sure, a trip is in order. For you. You can go anywhere you want to go.”

The reaction was as expected. He caught her in two strides, turned her around, his fingers biting into her shoulders, his eyes wild. “You don’t mean it! I bought you all this stuff. You can’t mean it, Angel! I love you. I took the money out of my — savings.”

Kiss-off day. She yawned in his face. “Danny boy, you never had a savings account in your life. I’ll pack you up and you run far and fast or I’ll call the cops.”

For a moment she thought the little machine in her mind had given her the wrong balance. His right hand slipped off her shoulder and chill, damp fingers closed on her throat. She stood very straight, looking up into his eyes. His fingers almost closed her throat, turning her voice into a tiny rasp as she said, “You can’t even kill, Danny.”

When his hand slipped away from her throat, she doubled a small white fist and struck him in the mouth. She left him standing there and went into the bedroom.

She hummed softly to herself as she packed his things. When she came out, struggling under the load in the suitcase, he was sitting on the windowseat, his face in his hands. She dropped the suitcase over by the door, handed him his jacket.

“Rise and shine,” she said.

He didn’t move. Humming again, she walked to the phone, dialed a number, leaned against the wall, holding the phone, watching him.

He lifted a tortured face and looked at her with frightened eyes. She cooed into the phone, “Joe, darling! That’s right. Honey, there’s a stupid man here annoying me and I can’t get rid of him. Um-hmmm. He wouldn’t give you much of a battle, Joe. About five minutes? Hold the line a moment.”

She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece. Dan stood up. He held his jacket over his arm. With no expression on his face he walked to the door, picked up the suitcase and left. He slammed the door behind him.

She listened to the phone. Somebody was saying, “Hey, lady! Who is this Joe? You got maybe the wrong number. Lady! You still on there?”

She hung up, banging the phone down onto the cradle with unnecessary force.

She walked slowly into the bedroom, delaying the pleasure. In the second drawer of the bureau, far in the back, was the savings account book, her bank’s name stamped in gold on the cover. She stretched out on the bed on her back, her silky hair a pool under her head. She looked and marveled at the neat, precise, miraculous little numbers the tellers had written into her book. Rustle of bills. Slap of the date stamp against the book. Scratch of pen. “Thank you, Miss Baran.”

And Dan thought he had been so clever about the money. The pout was always useful. “But, Dan, honey, see how sheer these are? They cost four dollars.” Actually they had cost a dollar eighty-three. Two seventeen for the little leather box which, when it held enough, was emptied for the bank deposit.

“Danny boy, this dress is an original. Two hundred and seventy-five. Yes, I know it’s cotton, but look at the lines, Dan. Look at the lines!” The dress cost twenty-nine ninety-eight.

And thus the neat little figures added up to a respectable total. It was funny to think of the term “respectable” and then remember how Dan had obtained the money.

It was time to back out. His nerves were shot. Much worse during the past four days. Unaccountably worse. He’d crack, and if a girl had booted him out before he cracked, then that girl wouldn’t be implicated in what might turn out to be a most unwholesome mess.

She tucked the little book tenderly away.

Within minutes the hot water was steaming the inside of the glass door to the coral and ivory shower stall. The water drummed on her small body, on her firm flesh.

She stood, her face uplifted, and in that moment she could have posed for a calendar presentation of an angel. There was a dedication about her, a look of silvery, hallowed beauty.

It was kiss-off day for Mayla Baran... Angel, to her friends... At the moment Mayla stepped out of her shower, Paul January crushed a mosquito against his cheek and suddenly tensed as he heard the crashing in the brush.

The moon of early evening had drifted under a cloud. He listened and the furtive noise stopped, continued with more caution. Paul frowned. Police would be carrying lights. He wondered if it were someone lost near the lakeshore.

The sudden silence was ominous. He listened, heard the night noises of the insects, the baying of a distant dog, the rustle and chuff of a faraway train, hooting its sorrow at the stars.

“Paul?” The voice was close, strained, cautious and very dear.

He spoke and then she was beside him. He could not see her. With his arms around her he could feel her tremble, the convulsive gasps of her breathing, the race and hammer of her heart.

“Oh, Paul,” she said softly. “They — they have been following me. A man named Krobey made them follow me. But I got away. I took the other road. The car is parked across the lake. I didn’t dare come here through Rockwarren. My darling, you’ve got to come back with me. It’s dangerous for you here. The newspapers have given it such a big play. Some policeman might find you here and shoot you before you could...”

“Before I could strangle him?”

“Come on with me. Bring the blanket. I know where you can stay in the city. It will be safer there. And I have a lot to tell you on the way.”

“Do we walk across the water?”

“Silly! I took a boat. I... I borrowed it.”

“Aha! Thief consorts with murderer. Now I can blackmail you, my proud beauty.”

“It’s really a safe place. Can I carry the little suitcase? It’s the home of the doctor I worked for. His wife and children are away for a few weeks. He trusts me. He didn’t ask any questions. He has a vacant room you can use.”

Together they blundered down to the lakeshore, had a moment of panic before they found the rowboat. She sat in the stern and he rowed, favoring his bandaged side. Halfway across the lake the moon came out from under the large cloud. Her face shone in the moonlight. Her lips were parted. She smiled at him and said, “This is silly. I’ve got so much to tell you. But you’ll have to stop looking at me or I won’t be able to say it right. Listen, Paul...”

Chapter Eight Doris Logan

She stood in the upper hall of the desolate rooming house until she was weary of standing. There was an old newspaper on a radiator. She unfolded it, placed it on the floor and sat, her feet on the top stair, her chin on her hands. The gnarled little man who smelled of stale sweat and who called himself the superintendent had been very talkative, never once looking at her face.

“Yeah, he’s been living here two years. Year ago he sort of moved out but kept the room. Slept here every once in a while. Got his mail here. Come in drunk last night, case you’re interested. Slept most of the day. Didn’t go to work, far as I could see. He took off late this afternoon. Guess you missed him by an hour or better. I guess he’ll be back alright tonight, but I couldn’t guarantee nothing.”

She felt like a woman in a scene from a cheap melodrama. And she had dressed for the part. A dress of the wrong color, too tight a fit, a foolish buy of several months ago. Earrings longer than she liked. Too much lipstick, smeared heavily to give her mouth a square look, a ripe hardness.

Early in the evening there had been much traffic, many pedestrians. But the night had grown more still. Far down the street a juke blasted the cool night air. The heavy rhythm came through, pretending to be a faster heartbeat.

She leaned against the railing post and near her right foot was a neat array of the four cigarettes she had butted against the dry-rotted wood.

The screen door slammed and she straightened. The man moved slowly toward the stairs, walking with the wooden method of the very drunk. He was partially bald, the skin of his scalp glowing under the hanging bulb with a sick pallor.

He kept his eyes on the stairs. She was directly in his way. She didn’t move. At last he saw her feet, stopped and stood very still. Slowly he lifted his eyes to her face, full of an unbearable expectation.

The look faded into dullness. “Thought it was her,” he muttered.

“Dan Walker?” she asked.

He walked carefully around her, went to the door on which she had knocked, reaching for his key. It fell onto the floor. She bent and picked it up.

He looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. “I’m Walker.” He said his own name with an odd mixture of contempt and disgust.

Unlocking the door for him, she pushed it open. The room was dark. It smelled sour and dusty.

With the lights on, it became one of those impersonal rooms such as are seen in fourth-rate hotels. A bed, chair, table, bureau, rug, radiator and window. The sheets on the unmade bed were gray and twisted.

She shut the door behind her. He turned and stared at her, puzzled. “What do you want?” he demanded.

Before she could answer he said, “You’re another of them.”

He reached clumsily for her. She evaded him easily. Blundering against the door, he turned around, scowled and said, “Who the hell are you, anyway? How did you get in my room? Did I bring you here?”

“Darrold sent me.”

Once again he froze the way he had on the stairs. She couldn’t read his face. He sat on the bed. “Go on,” he said huskily. He seemed suddenly to be more sober.

“He couldn’t come, himself. You know how it is, Mr. Walker. He has to stick around and answer questions, and besides, it would look funny if he came here.”

“Go on.”

“Mr. Darrold asked me to come over to see you and tell you that you’d better stick to your story.”

“What story?”

“About putting him on the train. He says it’s important.”

Walker laughed. It was a yelp without humor. “He thinks it’s important. What do you know? Darrold, the man of distinction. Wouldn’t that hand you a laugh, though?”

“Why should I laugh?”

Walker stood up, walked to the bureau, steadied himself against it and looked at his face in the mirror. He took a comb from the top of the bureau and carefully combed his hair to cover his baldness.

To his reflection in the mirror he said, “I don’t like it and you can tell Darrold that I don’t like it. Where the hell does he get off bringing in women on the deal? How much did he tell you?”

It was the critical point. Doris Logan managed a smirk. “How much did he tell me about you? You and the money?”

Dan Walker cursed. He took a bottle from the top drawer of the bureau, drank deeply, corked it and replaced it. Turning on Doris, he said, “It isn’t half as important as Darrold thinks it is. You understand that? Not half as important. It was important yesterday. Right up until the minute Angel...”

He sat down on the bed again and cried. There was no dignity in his tears. Small-boy tears, with contorted mouth, gasping sobs and squinted eyes.

He looked at her through the tears, and suddenly stopped crying. “I’ve seen you,” he said. “I’ve seen you before!”

“Sure. Right out there on the stairs.”

“Some other place.”

“Was I with Darrold?”

“No, you weren’t with Darrold.” He imitated her tone of voice.

What was the name he had said? She wondered if she should take a chance. “I think I saw you with Angel,” she said.

“Never again. Never any more.” Once more he began to cry.

She sat down. When he looked at her, she shrugged and said, “Friend Darrold gets all the breaks. He’ll go free, and from what he told me, I wouldn’t be surprised if he hooked up with Angel.”

It couldn’t have been more effective if she had stabbed him with a hot poker. He jumped up, his eyes wide. “What did he say?”

“It wasn’t important.”

His fingers hurt her shoulder. “Tell me!”

With her head tilted to one side she said, “Oh, he just said that Angel had more brains than she needed to see through a punk like you.”

Walker paced the room, with much better coordination. “Oh, he did, did he? A punk like me, hey?”

It was the moment to test the guess that she and Paul January had made. She said casually, “Of course, if a man happened to be in a little jam, and if he could put the finger on a man who was in a much bigger jam, it might go a lot easier with him.”

The anger went out of him. He sat on the bed for a moment, then with blank face walked to the door, opened it and went down the hall. She heard another door slam. Suddenly she had a horrid suspicion. She ran after him, her heels skidding on the bare hall floor.

He had stretched out in the tub to do it. And he hadn’t done it very well. She had time to find the gaping artery, pinch it shut between finger and thumb. She sat on her heels, holding his life fast, and began to scream with all the force of her young lungs.

Chapter Nine Gaylord Darrold

The hammering at the front door and the ringing of the bell awakened him. He waited for a time to see if they would go away. They didn’t. He sat on the edge of the bed, nodded politely to the empty bed beside his and said, “Good morning, Cynthia, my dear.”

After he had scuffed into slippers, belted the robe around him, he padded down the stairs. He pulled the front door wide open, smiled at them and said, “Quite a committee for so early in the morning!”

“It’s a little after eleven,” Lieutenant Krobey said. With Krobey was the burnished De Wolfe Haggard, the jovial little Sergeant Love, a tall and lovely redhead and a quiet-looking young man.

“This here is the murderer, Mr. Darrold,” Krobey said. Darrold saw that the young man was manacled to Sergeant Love.

Darrold felt an enormous tension within him relax. A spring suddenly broken. He cursed deep in his throat and jumped at the quiet young man. He felt the jolt from his knuckles all the way up to his shoulder. The young man sagged and Love supported him.

Krobey grabbed Darrold and said, “Hey! None of that, now. We know how you feel, but none of that. Just settle down. We want to re-enact the murder. This killer is named Paul January. This young lady will play the part of your wife. First we want Mrs. Morgantine to get a look at this guy. Then, if you want, you can watch our little play.”

Mrs. Morgantine, shrill, positive and exultant, had been hurried off. The group adjourned to the kitchen.

The kitchen was exactly as it had been the day of the murder. In fact, a few traces of the chalk outline on the linoleum remained.

Sergeant Love unlocked January’s wrist. “No breaks, fella, or we shoot,” Love said severely.

January rubbed his wrist and then fingered the lump on his jaw. Darrold thought that January had a proper hangdog look.

Krobey took charge. “Okay, Miss Logan. You stand over there. Where was she, January?”

“Closer to the sink.”

“Like this?” Doris asked.

“That’s fine,” January said, swallowing hard. Darrold leaned against the far wall.

“I was right here,” January said, “and Mrs. Darrold was over by the sink.”

There was the sudden, surprising crash of a shot. Doris Logan sagged over the sink, toppled back onto the floor. Darrold watched her, intensely amazed. He was confused. He turned and stared out the open window.

He stared and stared. Then he looked back at Krobey and Love. They were both moving toward him.

“Hey!” he said weakly. A patrolman in uniform appeared in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Them blanks are loud, hey?” the patrolman said.

“Are you men crazy?” Darrold demanded.

“Like foxes,” Krobey said. “All you got to do is tell us why you looked out that window, Darrold.”

“Well, I... well, nobody had a gun and... well, it seemed the logical...”

“But, Mr. Darrold,” Krobey said sweetly, “you didn’t look around at us to see if we had fired a gun. You looked from the girl to the window. Why?”

Darrold’s lips felt like dry pork fat as he stretched them in a smile. “Don’t be absurd,” he said in a thin voice. “There’s your man!”

But January wasn’t where he pointed. He looked. January was over by the sink. He had helped the redhead to her feet. And hadn’t let go of her.

“Could it be you fired through that window and killed your wife, Darrold?” Krobey asked.

“Do you have to lean over me and breathe in my face?”

Darrold had moved back until he touched the wall and still Krobey’s face was inches from his. “Damn it!” Darrold yelled. “January is your man. They quarreled. Cynthia shot him and...”

Krobey underlined it for him by asking, “Who said anything about January being shot, Darrold?”

Out of the fear that enveloped him, Darrold made one last effort. “Nonsense, Krobey! When she was killed I was on a train a long way from here. You people proved that.”

“Oh, you mean Dan Walker, the bookkeeper? Yeah, his books were checked this morning. You were pretty clever to find the way he was rigging the books. And then, to make him play ball with you, you told him you’d squeal on him unless he swore he put you on the Empire City.”

Darrold looked from one face to the other. Suddenly it felt good to be leaning against the wall. “Unwritten law,” he said. “Deserved to die. Sure, I killed her. I borrowed Walker’s car, drove over here, parked on the high road, came down through the brush to the new house next door. The window was always open. I killed her. When he started toward the window, I had to give him one. I drove back to Barnston and took a later train, made a few of my appointments in Richfield, stayed overnight and drove back here the next morning.”

“Unwritten law? What unwritten law, Darrold?” Krobey asked.

“She drove me crazy,” Darrold said, his mind racing for escape.

“And so you killed her?”

“Yes. I bought the gun nine months ago.”

Love snapped the handcuff onto Darrold’s wrist, yanking heartily.

As Love walked out with Darrold trudging along behind him, Krobey looked at January and the redhead.

Krobey said, “That Walker guy cut his throat and died last night without opening his mouth to confess.”

Krobey watched them for a moment, sighed heavily and walked over to the open window, put his elbows on the sill and looked out.