The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

H(erbert) H. Stinson (1896–1969) lived in California, where he worked as a journalist and police reporter. While working as a newspaperman, he also wrote fiction for the pulps, selling a Western to Top Notch in 1928. He also wrote plays, including Ace Is Trumped, a one-act published in Hollywood Plays (1930). His career as a pulp writer lasted about two decades, with contributions to most of the major magazines of the era, including Argosy, Dime Detective, Dime Mystery, Detective Fiction Weekly, and Black Mask. His best-known series character, Ken O’Hara, appeared in fourteen Black Mask stories, beginning with “Give the Man Rope” in the April 1933 issue. Joseph T. Shaw, when he compiled The Hard-Boiled Omnibus (1946), his important anthology of Black Mask stories, selected this story for inclusion, but his editor at Simon & Schuster thought it weaker than the other stories and dropped it, along with several others. The tales about O’Hara, a gritty, two-fisted reporter for the Los Angeles Tribune, featured an authentic newspaper background based on Stinson’s own career. He also wrote a series about another tough detective, Pete Rousseau, for Dime Detective in the post — World War II years. In all, Stinson wrote more than sixty mysteries for the pulps, as well as other genre stories for both the pulps and such slicks as Liberty. Only one Stinson novel made it into book form: Fingerprints (1925), which was published under the pseudonym Hunter (his mother’s maiden name) Stinson.

“Three Apes from the East” was published in the March 1938 issue.

“Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil” — but a killer forgets to do no evil.

Tim Harper, Los Angeles manager for International, likes to keep his office as unadorned as a gun turret, his desk as bare as the Mojave desert. He doesn’t believe in doodads, mementoes, bric-a-brac. So I was surprised to see what he had in front of him when he called me in late in the afternoon.

A third of the desk top was occupied by three apes in brass. Everyone knows the three monkeys I mean — one has his paws over his mouth, the second has them over his eyes and the third is holding his ears. I guess every family in the country has acquired one of the things some time or other and the gag that goes with the knick-knack is: “Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil.”

“That,” I said, “is a swell mascot for a detective agency.”

The boss said without a smile, “The way our office has been producing lately, you and two other ops must have sat for it.”

Somebody in a chair off to the side of the boss’ office giggled. I looked over and it was Sue Jordan, small and blond and as dumb-looking in her very lovely way as ever. Behind that ga-ga beauty-winner’s map, though, is a combination of plenty gray matter, no nerves and a heart that could double, most of the time, for the business section of an electric icebox. Sue is the ace-in-skirts op of International and they shoot her around the map wherever necessary. She admits she’s good and usually proves it.

I said, “Hi, mug. I thought you were annoying the boys in the Chicago office.”

“I was, Kerry,” she cooed, “but they decided you boys out here needed the help of an expert, and here I am.”

“Cut the so-called comedy, you two,” Harper growled. His eyes jetted away from me toward the good-looking lad beside Sue.

The lad was in his thirties, as sleek as an oiled seal. There was a dark sharpness to his eyes, a leanness about his olive-skinned face. He had on snappy clothes, just saved from being too snappy by their sober color.

Tim Harper said, “Mr. Kirkwood, this is Mr. Thorne, one of our better operatives in his serious moments. Between Thorne and Miss Jordan, I believe we can wind up your case.”

Kirkwood looked at me with an impersonal and very country-club stare but didn’t bother to say hello. I got the idea without much trouble that, so far as he was concerned, I ranked a lot below guys like caddies and locker-room attendants. He probably spoke to them. It was either that or else he was putting on the swank front to cover up a bad case of the jitters. Some lads are like that.

Apparently they had talked the case pretty well out before I was called in. Kirkwood said curtly to the boss: “You understand that you’re to use only the threat of publicity but that the papers must not get a whisper of it. If you think you’re apt to bungle it...”

The boss starched his voice a little, said, “International knows how to handle a case, Mr. Kirkwood. There isn’t a press agent in the organization.”

“Very well,” Kirkwood said in his down-the-nose manner. “And Miss... er, Jordan is to report to me what has happened immediately afterward.”

He spared the boss half a nod as a good-by, didn’t include Sue or me and beat it.

I said, “He’ll have to take four hot showers to get himself clean after associating with us.”

“I think he’s too handsome for words,” Sue purred.

“Not for some words,” I said.

Tim Harper rumbled, “You don’t have to fall in love with him. All you have to do is work for him. So get going — or are both of you waiting for wheelchairs?”

“Am I supposed to guess what this is all about, boss?”

“Sue can tell you. Beat it — and take this triple atrocity with you.”

I gathered he meant the three apes so I picked them up. They weighed about six pounds. I said, “What’ll I do with ’em?”

“Think something up.”

In the outer office, I told Sue: “I know I don’t catch on very quick but to date this all seems very screwy to me.”

“Never mind, darling,” she said. “Just leave the brain work to me.”

When I put the three apes down on a desk, they tumbled over and the credit line underneath said, “Made in Japan.” I said, “That reminds me. I’ve got an aunt in Japan.”

“The Japanese branch of the family?”

“Have your fun. This is Aunt Frieda and she’s on one of those world tours. She sends me a carved elephant from every place she hits. The score now is sixteen and I never did like elephants. What’s this all about?”

“I’m so hungry, Kerry. I could talk better if you’d take me to dinner.”

“Sure,” I said. “And we’ll make it Dutch.”

Over wienerschnitzel at the Bauerhoff, Sue told me. It seemed Kirkwood was married to the daughter of an old dame, named Helen K. Woodring. I knew about her vaguely: a widow with money, more or less social position, and a yen for chasing around with guys half her age. The daughter was blind, Sue told me.

“A break for her,” I said. “She doesn’t have to look at that smooth slug she’s married to.”

“Perhaps some of us girls like ’em smooth, you old rough diamond, you,” said Sue, surrounding wienerschnitzel in her stride. “Anyway, she married this Paul Kirkwood about five years ago. He came out from the east and nobody knew much about him except that he could make a golf course sit up and beg. He’s a broker now but I gather he still golfs better than he brokes.”

“Even if he was open champ, I still wouldn’t like him.”

“He’s probably all right, I think. But the point is that the Woodring lady has the protégé complex, provided the protégés are young and good-looking. Two years ago she was backing a candidate for Clark Gable’s niche; next it was a young second Caruso and now it’s the founder of a cult, the cult of Man’s Triumph Over Evil.”

“It’ll be a flop. The name’s too long for headlines.”

“I gather it hasn’t cost her much in the shape of money yet,” Sue said, inspecting her beer stein carefully on the theory, maybe, that there was a trap-door in the bottom and she’d find more beer under that. “But I suppose Kirkwood is afraid the cult will operate too heavily on her purse and he’s beating trouble to the punch. Anyway, he hired us to find out about this grand lama of the three apes.”

“That’s where the monkeys came from?”

“They’re the symbol of the cult. I bought the monstrosity when I joined up, so I brought it to the office as evidence for my expense account. How about more Pilsener, Kerry?”

“You can have all you can pay for, sweetheart.”

We had more and Sue drew the rest of the picture. A lady op had been indicated so Harper had requisitioned Sue and she had dropped out to the cult headquarters in a big, old house on top of Mount Washington where you could see all over the city. The grand lama operated under the name of Doctor Sivaja but his real name was Eddie Levy and he was a disbarred lawyer from St. Louis who had done a rap in Atlanta for abusing the mails. Sue had got his prints by dropping her vanity case practically between his ankles so he had to pick it up and the F.B.I. had done the rest.

That evening we were to see him, put the cards under his nose and tell him we’d wise the newspapers to his real identity if he didn’t fold his turban, steal away in the night and lay off gullible old gals like Mrs. Woodring. Only it had to be all bluff because we couldn’t wise the papers and maybe let Mrs. Woodring in for a lot of kidding publicity.

“But I have a hunch,” Sue said. “I’ve a hunch it won’t be as easy as that.”

“Nuts,” I said. “No guy on the make can stand up under the threat of publicity.”

“You haven’t seen him, Kerry. He’s different than the usual faker. He acts as though he really had something.”

“So the great Jordan is beaten before she starts.”

Sue gave me her poor-chap-you’re-so-dumb smile. “No, little man. I merely said it wouldn’t be quite as easy as you, in your naïve fashion, expect. I know something about psychology.”

Sue can get under my skin more easily than any other dame in the world. I said, “You and your psychology. Five bucks says he’ll be traveling inside of forty-eight hours.”

“You’ve made a bet.” Sue grinned.

The waiter brought two checks like I’d told him. I picked mine up and Sue took hers, began to fumble in her purse. Her face got apologetic.

She said, “Kerry, you can’t guess what I’ve done.”

“Yes, I can. You’ve left all your money in your other pants. O.K., give me the check.”

Walking out beside me, she cooed: “Thank you, Kerry, for the lovely dinner.”

“Thank you,” I said, “for the lovely buggy ride.”

Doctor Sivaja — or Eddie Levy — was a dark-faced, young-looking bird, who wore a black turban and conventional tuxedo. He did a nice, quiet, convincing talk that was half religion, half modern psychology. He talked from a dais in what had been the living-room of the old house while a circle of about thirty women and five men, who looked sheepish, as though their wives had dragged them there, listened piously. The symbol of the three apes was everywhere — worked into the hangings, the decorations, the upholstery of the furniture.

After the talk the doc did a little bow and disappeared through black curtains at one side of the room. The audience came out of its trance and began to straggle from the room.

“He draws a nice house,” I told Sue. “The woman in gray is president of a woman’s club, the one behind her knocks out two grand a week writing movies and I think the dame with the long nose and jaw is a socialite from the polo set.”

“Are you sure of her,” Sue wanted to know, “or are you just making that guess because she looks like a horse?”

“Where was la Woodring tonight?”

“Kirkwood promised to keep her home tonight.”

We were the only ones left in the room when a girl who looked like Jane College from Bryn Vassar — flat-heeled shoes, horn-rimmed specs and black hair as straight as violin strings — put an eye on us.

Sue said under her breath: “Miss Frake, the doctor’s secretary.” To the girl as she came over to us, Sue explained that we’d like to consult with the doctor.

Jane College looked doubtful but finally said she’d see and went through the black curtains. She came back in a minute, said: “Doctor Sivaja will see you, but only for a few minutes. He is very tired tonight.”

We followed her through the curtains and after a moment came into a long room, a book-lined room. Sivaja — or Eddie Levy — sat in a big chair at a big desk the length of the room away from us. The three apes were everywhere in this room, too, including a big figure on the desk. It was a nice room, a quiet room, and the only thing out of place was a big packing case, opened, at one side.

The doc said, sort of gently, “Thank you, Miss Frake.”

Jane College went out and the doc said, “Sit down, Miss Jordan. And you, too, Mister — ah—”

“The name, Eddie,” I said, “is Thorne. Kerry Thorne.”

I’d expected my approach to get a rise out of him. It didn’t — much. He looked sort of interested, not at all upset. He said, pleasantly enough: “I noticed you in the audience, and I had you spotted for a private dick. When I put that together with Miss Jordan’s vanity-case stunt to get my prints the other night, I was sure of it. Sit down and get your errand off your mind.”

I had to admit he’d thrown the first punch and for a moment it had me backing up. We sat down and I looked at Sue. She was looking at me. The doc smiled.

He said, “Maybe I can help you get started. You’re being paid by Paul Kirkwood. Is that correct, Miss Jordan?”

Sue nodded.

“And you’ve found out that my real name is Levy and that I’m an ex-convict. That’s correct, also?”

I said, “You know the answers, Eddie.”

He seemed not so indifferent as he was unworried. He said, “And what comes after that?”

Sue pulled out the sympathetic stop in her voice. She said, “Perhaps we’re doing you an injustice, Doctor. Or should I say Mr. Levy? I have a feeling that you’re not up to any particular mischief, that possibly your meetings are doing these people some good. But by faking your identity, you’ve put yourself in a spot. Mr. Kirkwood means to expose you unless you agree to leave the city and not communicate with Mrs. Woodring any longer.”

The guy didn’t say anything for a little while. He wasn’t looking at me at all and the eyes he kept on Sue weren’t panicky, weren’t even unfriendly. His right hand kept tossing a small replica of the three apes into the air, catching it as it came down again.

Finally he said, dryly: “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Miss Jordan. Just tell Mr. Kirkwood for me that I’m not worried. In the first place, I have reasons to believe he won’t expose me. In the second place, if he does, it can’t really harm me.”

For the first time some feeling showed on his dark face. He put down the figure of the three apes, spread his hands and said, “Has it occurred to the pair of you that I may be quite sincere in my philosophy of Man’s Triumph Over Evil? I’m quite frank in saying that in the past I’ve been an evil man. I’ll even admit that in the beginning I founded my school of thought with something evil — the lust for money — in my mind. But I discovered I had stumbled onto the truth, and in convincing others I have convinced myself. If I don’t relish having my pupils know that I am an ex-convict, it is only because it will handicap me in importing my philosophy to them, not because of any fear for myself. For I know that if I refuse to recognize the existence of evil, then no evil can really harm me. Do I make myself clear?” He really sounded as though he meant what he said.

Sue said gravely, “Doctor, I believe you’re sincere. But Mr. Kirkwood is just as determined as you are sincere. Why can’t a compromise be worked out? I’m sure he’d be satisfied if you merely went on a nice vacation — six months or so. By the time you got back, his mother-in-law would have another enthusiasm and everyone would be happy.”

The doc shook his head. “That’s quite ridiculous, Miss Jordan. After all, while Mrs. Woodring is a charming woman and one of the most prominent members of my little circle, she is only one of quite a number to whom I am bringing my message. I have no intention of giving up my work and Mr. Kirkwood had better think carefully before he exposes me. You can tell him for me that even a good man isn’t entirely helpless against an evil man and that he who speaks evil often brings evil upon himself.”

I said, “Listen, Eddie, we’re using a lot of dollar words here. Can you put that in ordinary English?”

He smiled. “Kirkwood will understand. And I’m like the first of my three little monkeys here: I’d rather speak no evil.”

“I still think you’re shadow-boxing,” I said.

He bowed as though he didn’t care what I thought. The conference seemed to be over and I tracked Sue through the curtains, feeling clumsy-footed compared to his quiet sureness. Jane College met us outside the study, flat-heeled ahead of us to the front door.

Under her breath, Sue said, “At least I win five bucks.”

“It was an act,” I said. “Wait forty-eight hours and see.”

We were half-way through the front door when things started to go boom-boom back in the study. There was one shot before I could get around, another while I was turning and a third by the time I got my feet going. Sue was behind me and I had a vague impression that Jane College was under way in our wake.

I got through the black curtains and the picture smacked me in the face. The doc was on his knees by the desk, clawing at the top, trying to pull himself up. He didn’t have a chance of making it and while I was still a dozen feet away, he caved and went down in a heap. His clawing hand pulled objects off the desk onto him, among them the large figure of the apes. The phone was already on the floor, receiver off. The three small monkeys, the ones he’d been playing with a few minutes before, lay on the rug beside the phone.

He coughed, retched and the brightness of blood jumped across his chin. And he died while I was easing him into a less tortured position. No wounds showed in front and I figured he’d been shot in the back, while he was sitting at the desk.

Beside me, Sue said, “The poor guy!”

“Anyway,” I said, getting up, “he was right on one angle. He’ll speak no evil from now on, not even about the guy that gunned him.”

Behind us, Jane College was tuning up with hysterics. She had her hands over her eyes and her mouth open, making lots of noise. I thought what a swell thing it would be if she weren’t around, for more reasons than one, and I got ideas. Between her screams, I tried to find out from her if there was another phone in the house. She paid no attention until I grabbed her shoulders, shook her.

“Is there another phone in the house, another outside wire?” I said.

“W-what?”

I said it over and she told me, still looking half-witted from fright, that there was a phone upstairs in the doctor’s bedroom.

“Then get on it and call the cops,” I said. “We can’t use this one. We can’t touch anything in here until the cops arrive.”

She looked as though she finally understood and I let go of her. She streaked out through the curtains.

I gave Sue a shove, said, “Out there with her. Keep her away from this room as long as you can.”

Sue didn’t argue. She went. I snapped on more lights, cased the room with my eyes in a hurry. Down the room a door was open, a door that hadn’t been open before. I looked through the doorway, saw the room was a small, bare one, furnished only with a big chair, a couple of straight-backed chairs, as though the doc had used it as a sort of confessional for folks who didn’t like talking in a big room. The thing that interested me was that the room opened to a patio and the patio door swung gently in the night wind. The picture was clear. Somebody — perhaps they’d been in this small room while we were talking — had opened the door to the study, shot the doc through the back and beat it through the patio.

As I say, that was interesting, but what I had on my mind were letters, papers, anything that could hook up Mrs. Woodring with the doc. After all, International was being paid to keep her clear. I went through the doc’s big desk fast and found nothing I wanted. One of the pictures on the wall looked a little cockeyed and on a hunch I lifted it away. Behind it was a wall safe and I began to believe in luck. The outer door was ajar and keys dangled in the inside door.

Inside I found cash, a sheaf of A-1 bonds and a thick package of letters held together with a rubber band. I got the rubber band off and leafed through the letters. He’d had ’em from socialites, top-flight picture people, even from big-shot business guys. I found five on the stationery of Helen K. Woodring, slid those in my pocket and stuck the others back in the safe. I knew the newspapers would have a lot of fun with those letters and their senders but la Woodring was my only lookout.

When I had the picture back in place, I eased up a little. There might be other stuff around that would tie in the Woodring dame but I’d have needed hours to prowl the entire layout and I had to gamble on the letters being all there was. Just out of curiosity I got down on my knees and put my ear to the phone receiver. If the doc had merely unhooked the receiver by knocking the phone off the desk, I’d have got the dial tone. I didn’t. That meant he had been starting to dial a number when he was shot.

While I was down on my knees, the small replica of the monkeys caught my eye. Light shone on the flat, solid bottom of the figures, showed me scratches that looked like letters. I picked the thing up, held it closer to the light. The scratches were letters and numbers reading: HI-M-N-3-7-S13. Underneath that in raised letters was the mold mark: MADE IN JAPAN. I didn’t have time to think about whether the letters and numbers might mean something or nothing because just then I began hearing siren noise. But, on the chance they might connect with Mrs. Woodring, I popped the three monkeys into my pocket.

I was looking wise and doing nothing when two cops came busting into the study like a rash. Jane College was looking a lot more collected than before but as though she could still have the weeps if someone would give her the right signal. Sue was her usual composed self.

A big, red-nosed cop, in the lead, saw the body and started on us. “What’s happened here? Who’re you people? What’re you doing here?”

I recognized the second cop, said, “Hello, Haggarty.”

“Hi, Thorne,” said Haggarty. He was a thin, mouse-haired guy with uneven, yellow teeth and I’d met him a couple of times out fishing on the live-bait boats. He looked at the doc’s body, said, “Suicide or murder?”

“Murder,” I said.

“Better call Homicide, Oscar,” said Haggarty. His partner went out in tow of Jane College and Haggarty said, without bothering to fuss with the body, “What’s it all about, Thorne?”

I gave him a few fragments, not mentioning the letters and the apes that I had in my pocket.

“Umm,” Haggarty said. “Well, we’ll wait until the Homicide boys arrive. No sense in a dumb flatfoot doing any detecting and getting stuck for a week in court. Done any fishing lately, Thorne?”

Haggarty and I cut up a lot of bait and made a tentative date to go after yellowtail in a couple of weeks. While we were doing it, Oscar came back and started to prowl the room, heavy-footed.

He wound up at the packing case and I saw him fish around in it. He said, “Jeez, a zoo.”

We all took a look inside and the case was full of small figures of the three monkeys, matching the one I had in my pocket. Apparently that had come out of the case because there was one missing from the top layer. I did some quick counting of the top layer and some estimating. There must have been at least six gross of the things in the case.

“Jeez,” said Oscar, “what would a guy be wanting with all them monkeys? He musta been up to monkey business.”

It was a pretty weak effort but nobody topped it so we let it lie.

It wasn’t long before Captain Fisher of the Homicide squad, fat and gimlet-eyed and sloppy in a blue suit that hadn’t been pressed for a week, arrived with two dicks named Ahearn and Kirk.

The minute Fisher saw me, he said, “Why’d you do it, Thorne?”

I grinned. “Who’s been informing on me, skipper?”

“Nobody. You’ve just got a naturally guilty look. What’re you doing around here?”

That was something that had been on my mind from the moment I knew the situation called for cops. I couldn’t say that Sue and I had been putting the pressure on the doc in order to get him out of Mrs. Woodring’s pocketbook; the papers would get it and have a holiday with it.

I said, “The dead man was the founder of a new religion, a cult. And the little lady here, Miss Jordan, was one of his followers. She wanted me to meet him and hear one of his lectures. You know how I am about the ladies, skipper, so I humored her even though I did think it was screwy.”

Sue gave me a sweet glance and managed to look ga-ga, although I knew she wanted to tie me up by the thumbs. She said in a coy, wounded fashion, “Why, Kerry, I thought you were really sincere.”

Fisher looked as though he believed the act but I wasn’t too sure of it. He’s a long ways from being dumb. But all he said was, “I see. And what happened?”

I gave him the bare physical facts, how we’d talked to the doc and been at the front door with the secretary when the blasting began. Fisher scouted around a little, looked into the small room, came back. He said, “That door was closed when you were in here first?”

I said it had been.

“All right,” Fisher said. “You and Miss Jordan and the other lady wait out in the next room. I’ll want to talk to all of you later.”

Out in the lecture room I stalled until Jane College had picked a chair near the dais and then I ambled Sue down to the other end of the room. Oscar, the red-nosed cop, stood in the doorway and kept an important eye on us.

“So I’m cult-screwy, am I?” said Sue. She had her voice low so Oscar couldn’t hear what she said, but not low enough to seem suspicious. “You’ll pay for that crack, Kerry. And, also, how about paying off on that bet?”

“Me pay off? Listen, I bet the doc would be out of town inside of forty-eight hours. He is, isn’t he?”

“So you’re going to quibble. I’ll remember that. Did you find anything in there while I was phoning the cops?”

“You phoned?”

“Miss Frake was too occupied with her jitters to do it. Did you find anything?”

“Some of Woodring’s letters.”

She smiled. “And three apes on the floor?”

I said, “Damn clever, these Jordans.”

“I saw the thing on the floor before I went to the phone. It was gone when I got back.”

“It probably didn’t have any bearing,” I said, “but I didn’t know. The way I looked at it, the doc might have been more stirred up about being exposed than he seemed on the surface. We know he pulled that crack about Kirkwood regretting it and I know he’d started to dial a phone number when somebody let him have it. That call might have been about Kirkwood, and the chicken tracks on the figure of the apes might have counted in some fashion. A lot of ‘mights’ but I grabbed the apes on the strength of them.”

“What chicken tracks?”

I told Sue about the numbers and figures that had been scratched on the bottom of the monkeys. She made me repeat them slowly. I said, “You got any inkling?”

“None. Who do you think killed him?”

“I’m not thinking. That’s the Homicide Squad’s headache. We’ll turn these letters over to Kirkwood and then we’re out of the case.”

“How about the apes you have in your pocket?”

“On those we’ll wait. If it seems the cops should have them, the cops’ll get them. Where were you to reach Kirkwood tonight?”

“At Mrs. Woodring’s home.”

“Oke. As soon as Fisher turns us loose, we’ll go out there and turn over the letters.”

She looked at me sort of queerly, said, “Suppose we pretend. Suppose we pretend Kirkwood had a lot to do with this killing. It will look swell for International to be playing on his side against the cops.”

I chewed over that one. “What makes you think he might have?”

“Nothing. But possibilities are possibilities. We’ll have to watch our step, Kerry.”

There was some kind of a disturbance at the front door and then Haggarty came through the lecture room, towing a tall, young, blond guy. The blond saw me and nodded, said, “Hello, Thorne.”

For a moment I didn’t place him. Then I did. I said hello and Haggarty took him on into the study.

“Who?” said Sue.

“His name is Fred Manners. He’s a kid who angled himself a private license some time ago. I ran into him on the fringes of a case a year ago and then never saw him again until now. I thought he’d probably faded into something that was more his speed.”

A few minutes later one of the dicks came to the curtains and beckoned to Jane College. She went to the study with him and we waited. We waited some more and then we kept on waiting. It was pretty close to an hour before Fisher came out of the study. He didn’t look unhappy when he sat down beside me.

I said, “Don’t tell me, skipper, that you’ve already got it all untangled.”

“Not exactly,” he said, “but we’ve got a pretty nice lead. Did you know this guy, Sivaja, was really an ex-con named Eddie Levy?”

“What?” I said. Then I looked reproachfully at Sue. “A nice spot you led me into, Miss Jordan — associating with ex-cons.”

Sue choked but she managed to mutter something about she hadn’t known and she was sorry.

“Yeah,” said Fisher. “An ex-con. We got that out of this secretary gal and the private dick that showed up a while ago. It seems this guy went up for mail fraud from St. Louis after taking some old Dutchman there for his life’s savings. The kraut never got over it and he located this Eddie Levy here six months back and took a shot at him. Levy kept it quiet but he hired this shamus, Manners, as a body-guard. The Dutchman hasn’t shown around here since then but he’s written Levy a lot of threatening letters. We found those in a wall safe in the study. So tonight Manners takes the night off and it looks to me like the kraut took the opportunity to get square. Anyway, we’re putting out a teletype on him.”

“Here’s luck,” I said. “And now how’s about letting Miss Jordan and me go places and get some drinks? I need two or three or seven.”

“Sure,” Fisher agreed. “I can reach you at the agency. And what’s your address, Miss Jordan?”

Sue gave him the name of her hotel and we got under way.

As I pulled my roadster around the corner from the side street into North Figueroa, I said, “When we get out to the Woodring place, Sue, we will go—”

“Not ‘we,’ Kerry.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you can handle it from here. Why should I lose sleep?”

“Oh,” I said. “Lone wolfess stuff.”

She said sweetly, “Why, Kerry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Listen, babe, I know all about you and the way you like to show us pants-wearing ops up. You think you’ve figured out a hot angle on this and you want to work it all by yourself and grab all the credit.”

“I’m hurt, Kerry.”

“Yeah,” I jeered. “Nothing short of a solid crack in the jaw would hurt you. But if you want to make it a contest, we’ll make it that way.”

“Make what a contest?”

“I don’t know but you probably do.” I’d been watching the lights of a car in my mirror. When the car behind jogged through the radiance of a streetlight, I saw it was a squad car. I said, “Some cops are tailing us. I guess Fisher didn’t believe everything I told him. Now my feelings are hurt.”

I took the next dark cross street, unlatched the door on my side and told Sue to get ready to slide under the wheel. Around another corner, I made the street and let the impetus of my jump carry me across the curb and into some shrubbery. The roadster slowed for an instant and then spurted. The police car tagged along, and as soon as it was out of sight I walked back to Figueroa, found a drug-store and got on the phone.

I had Sue Jordan on my mind nearly as much as the phone call I was going to make. She had an angle on the fire. I felt pretty sure of that and I wasn’t too pleased. She’s a nice gal but she has a way of wandering off by herself and “stumbling” onto some hot lead in a case, thereby making the guy who’s working with her look and feel like a first-class jackass. Not that she ever hogs the credit with the bosses; but no guy likes to feel he’s a jackass.

It took a while but finally a low British voice at the other end of the wire admitted that I was connected with the home of Mrs. Woodring. I told the voice I wanted to speak to Kirkwood.

“That,” said the voice, “will be impossible. Mr. Kirkwood cannot come to the phone at the moment. What is it about, sir?”

I asked who was talking.

“This is Osgood, Mrs. Woodring’s butler.”

“O.K., Osgood,” I said. “Just tell Mr. Kirkwood a detective by the name of Thorne has something he’ll be interested in and that this same guy named Thorne will be ringing the front doorbell in about twenty minutes.”

Another phone call landed me a cab...

The Woodring place was no less than an estate. It stood in an acre of lawns and semi-tropical shrubs out on West Washington, the whole of it surrounded by a high, balustraded wall that had cost as much dough as the average guy’s entire home. There were bronze gates in the wall but they weren’t closed and between them a graveled drive headed up toward a huge, white blur of house.

A block past the place, I paid the cab off and walked back to the gates. West Washington was fresh out of pedestrians at that hour but a streetcar clanked along noisily three blocks away and automobiles whirred by at wide intervals, going fast and sucking at the macadam with drawn-out, whining sounds.

Inside the gates I got off the gravel, walked on the grass. Streetlights were cut off by the wall, trees and distance, and it was dark, almost completely black. That, I guess, was the only thing that saved me from stopping a nice hunk of lead.

A clump of bushes half-way to the house swayed a little just as I came abreast of them, although there wasn’t any breeze. I hadn’t been expecting any rough stuff and if I ducked my head and shifted my feet fast, it was due entirely to the involuntary nerve reflexes of being damn good and scared. The clump of bushes snapped a flat, jarring explosion at me, along with a burst of blue and orange flame. The clanking streetcar was going by at that exact moment, so the shot didn’t seem very loud. But it seemed plenty in earnest.

My feet, doing a rhumba as I tried to get around to face the clump of bushes and drag out my gun at the same time, tangled with the head of a lawn-sprinkler system. I went into the air, spread-eagled, and made a one-point landing on my chin. At least, I think it was my chin because I was picking blue grass out of my teeth for two days afterward.

My face was still nestling in the center of a divot when I began to remember things again. I remembered groggily for a moment and then very clearly and I didn’t know whether to be sore at myself or get a laugh out of it.

“At least,” I mumbled as I got my feet under me, “I’m probably the first shamus in the history of International that could knock himself out with one dive to the chin.”

But when I started to pat my pockets, there wasn’t anything to laugh about. Everything I’d had on me had been lifted — wallet, watch, keys, gun, a pocketful of change. And the Woodring letters and the three brass apes.

It was pretty. And to make things complete, I took three steps in the darkness and put my hoof down on top of my new hat, for which I’d laid out seven bucks just the day before. I swore for a while but there wasn’t any satisfaction in it.

“Go on up to the house and take your medicine,” I told myself, “you long-eared dope.”

I got the wreck of my hat on and headed for the house. It turned into something definite as I got nearer, a big and very white affair of Norman architecture with a long stretch of two stories of blank windows.

Faint light inched through venetian blinds at a lower window and I leaned on the bell-push. After a minute or so, a light went on over the door. The door opened three inches on a chain and a long, white nose and eyes that had all the genial expression of marbles looked out at me.

A mouth under the long nose said, “Yes? Are you the detective person? The detective person who phoned?”

“You weren’t expecting any detective persons who didn’t phone, were you?”

Osgood couldn’t seem to think offhand of the answer to that one but he didn’t take the chain off the door.

I said, “Yes, Osgood, I am the detective chappie, the one that phoned. And I’m here to see Mr. Kirkwood. How about it?”

He finally collected himself enough to get the door unchained and I went in. When I got in, I took a good look at Osgood and he squirmed around a bit under it. In fact, he seemed to be in somewhat of a dither about something. He looked a lot like a fish but a husky fish with good shoulders and big hands that had plenty of bone and muscle to them. He wore a woolly bathrobe but trousers showed below the bathrobe and he had shoes on, not slippers. The shoes were damp around the soles, the toes.

“Lot of dew on the grass tonight, Osgood,” I said.

“Dew? I don’t understand, I’m sure,” he said. But his eyes couldn’t help darting down toward his shoes and then back at me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Or did you get your shoes wet running around on these Chinese rugs?”

He licked his lips and tried to go English butler on me. He said, “I went outside a short while ago, it so happens, sir. I thought I had heard a shot somewhere on the grounds and I made a brief investigation.” His eyes fastened themselves on my skinned-up face, my wreck of a hat. “I found nothing but it occurs to me that perhaps you might know quite a lot about it.”

“Maybe I do,” I said. “How about Mr. Kirkwood?”

“Please wait in there.”

He showed me a small reception room off the hall and left me there with a reluctant look on his face, as though he didn’t quite trust me not to walk off with the bric-a-brac.

The room was furnished with Louie-or-something furniture, all very elegant, and the one thing out of place was a big, bronze figure of the three apes on a small table. They made me remember the yarn I was going to have to tell Kirkwood and I felt like asking them to move over and make room for a fourth and the biggest monkey of all.

But it wasn’t Kirkwood that showed up. It was two women. One of them I knew must be Mrs. Woodring and the other, the younger one, her daughter. The Woodring dame gave me the impression of a dowager queen, aching to go on the loose. Her hair was brassy yellow and, even at this hour, put up in curls and ringlets and waves. Her negligee was a generation too young for her and gave the world a load of a not-so-small bosom. She had wrinkles in her cheeks and a roll of fat between her shoulders and eyes that had a yen in them. She looked like October playing at being April and it made you sorry for her and disgusted with her at the same time.

The daughter, Mrs. Kirkwood, was another order. She had a tall, lithe body and blue eyes that would have been beautiful if they hadn’t had the blank, expressionless look of the blind. Her face was pale and strong and stopped just short of being pretty. She came into the room, holding on to her mother’s arm, but she had so much more to her that she almost gave the impression of leading the older woman.

Mrs. Woodring’s voice sounded scared and patronizing and coy, all at the same time. She said, “You wished to see me, young man?”

I said, “No, ma’am. I want to see Mr. Kirkwood.”

She arched her bosom a little farther out of the negligee. “Young man, this is my home. You can tell me whatever you have—”

The girl said in a low voice, “Mother, please. Paul will take care of this.”

“Nonsense, Anne,” la Woodring said. “There are a lot of very queer things going on around here this evening and—”

The girl protested again, “Mother, please—”

“I say there is something mysterious going on. Why was Paul so insistent that I stay home tonight? Why is this young man here at this hour? I insist on knowing what it’s about.”

But she didn’t have a chance to shoot any questions at me because just then the draperies at the door parted and Kirkwood was there. He was immaculate and sleek and casual on the surface but he was breathing a little fast, as though he had just stopped being in a hurry as he got to the door of the room.

He slapped a look of pure venom at me and then shifted gears with his face so fast that by the time Mrs. Woodring had her eyes around to him, he was wearing a smile for her that damn near had a caress in it.

She looked back at him the same way, and I thought it just as well that Anne Kirkwood was blind.

La Woodring said, “Paul, what is it that’s going on tonight? You’re all acting so queerly and what’s this man here for?”

“Now, Mother,” Kirkwood said, “don’t you bother your head about this man. Osgood should have told me at once that he was here instead of disturbing you.”

“But, Paul—”

Kirkwood kept on smiling, patted the old lady on the shoulder. The way he did it was sensuous. The old dame beamed horribly.

He said, “You’re just imagining things, Mother. This man is here to give me a report on a business investigation. Now you and Anne trot along upstairs and I’ll join you there as soon as I’ve finished with him.”

Mrs. Woodring didn’t argue. She said, “Very well, Paul, dear,” as meek as oatmeal, and the two women turned to go. It was pretty apparent that Kirkwood called the shots around that household and no wonder he didn’t want Sivaja chiseling in on his territory.

When the women were gone, Kirkwood turned on me and there wasn’t any smile in his eyes. He said savagely, “You fool, I told you and that woman detective merely to get in touch with me. The last thing I wanted was for you to show up here. I’ll see that your agency hears about this in the morning.”

I let it pass. I said, “Have you heard about Sivaja?”

He didn’t say anything right away. His eyes bored at me and then he said, more quietly, “What should I have heard?”

“He’s dead,” I said. “Murdered.”

Kirkwood didn’t look shocked but he did look surprised. I couldn’t tell whether the surprise was real or not and I wished I hadn’t led up to it quite in that way, that I had socked him with the information without any preliminaries. Then, maybe, I could have told whether he was actually surprised or putting on an act.

He found a cigarette and lit it very carefully, his face dark and taut with thought. Finally he said, “That changes things. Or, rather, it accomplishes what I wanted accomplished, although in a different way. Have your agency send its bill to my office.”

“You’re not interested in who killed him or why?”

“There’s no reason why I should be, is there?”

“When I’ve finished,” I told him, “you can figure that out for yourself.” I gave him the scenario from the moment we’d walked into Sivaja’s study until the time I’d picked my chin out of the blue grass, minus all my belongings, including the letters and the three brass apes.

As I wound up, Kirkwood was looking faintly worried and also pretty sore and not a little contemptuous. He said nastily, “You call yourself a private detective and come to me with a story like that?”

“That’s my story,” I said, “and I’m stuck with it. The point is, are those letters important enough to you so that you want ’em back?”

Kirkwood said, still nasty, “After a performance like this, you think you should get them back?”

“They won’t shoot a guy for trying,” he said, “except sometimes. Now if it was the letters that someone was after in particular, it spells blackmail. With Sivaja dead, have you any idea who would have blackmail notions in connection with Mrs. Woodring?”

Kirkwood said he didn’t. But he looked thoughtful.

I said, “How about the butler?”

“Osgood? That’s ridiculous. He’s been with Mrs. Woodring for ten years. If that’s a sample of your thinking—”

“Maybe it isn’t as lousy thinking as it seems,” I said. I was getting a little fed up with his down-the-nose attitude. “It so happens that outside of Miss Jordan, Osgood was the only person I’d informed that I was going to show up here when I did. And it’s sort of plain that whoever took the pot shot at me was waiting for me and that he knew who he was waiting for. Also, Ossie has been prowling around outside just this evening. Of course, he might have passed the word to someone else after I’d talked to him on the phone.”

Kirkwood said, “Ridiculous,” again but he wasn’t so sure of it this time.

I stood up, said, “Whoever got the letters, you want them back. That’s the main idea.”

“And how do you propose to get them back?”

“Whoever has them will want money for them. In order to get money, they have to ask for it. Just as soon as you or Mrs. Woodring receive any communication about them, let me know. We’ll go on from that point.”

Kirkwood agreed to let me know but I wasn’t too certain whether he meant it or was just “yessing” me to get me on my way. He let me out without benefit of butler and I started a six-block hike to Western and Washington, where I figured I could find a cab.

I tried to do a bit of thinking while I hiked but, after all, a guy has to have a few facts to build his guesses on. I didn’t even feel too sure of my guess about Osgood. If he had been with the Woodring dame for ten years, he must have had plenty of chances in that time to blackmail her if he was that kind of a guy. Maybe, at that, it hadn’t been the letters that were wanted when someone let fly the slug at me; maybe it had been the three apes.

Those apes were certainly running through the whole thing, even to the extent of finding counterparts among the people involved. Sivaja had bragged that he spoke no evil and he undoubtedly wouldn’t speak any from now on. And Anne Kirkwood, poor woman, didn’t have to hold her hands over her eyes like the second ape because those blind eyes couldn’t see evil right in front of them.

That was stretching the comparison a little, because very probably neither Kirkwood nor la Woodring were what you could call evil. My guess was that Kirkwood was a gigolo who had married himself into a dough-heavy family; and Mrs. Woodring’s tired coyness was sickening rather than nasty. But, even so, I wouldn’t have wanted either of them before my eyes long at a time.

As for the third ape, the one that couldn’t hear any evil, I felt as though I could match that one, myself. If I’d been holding my fingers in my ears all night, I couldn’t have known any less about what was really going on. That wouldn’t have bothered me too much if I hadn’t been working with Sue Jordan. I knew that sooner or later I’d probably find out what it was all about but when I got to that point, I had a hunch, I’d probably discover Sue sitting there and waiting for me.

At Western I found a Yellow and gave the hacker my address. When we got to the apartment where I park my extra shirt, I said, “Listen, cap, I haven’t got any money on me.”

The hacker stuck a steamboat-jawed face through the door at me and growled, “You’re the second ginzo that’s pulled that one on me tonight. What do I look like, Santa Claus?”

“No,” I said, “although a beard would improve you. But what I’m trying to tell you is that if you’ll come upstairs with me, I’ll find some dough.”

He looked happier and we went inside the lobby. It was dark except for a floor lamp in a corner. Somebody sitting in a chair in another corner got up and started for me. My hand began to go for my gun before I realized I didn’t have any gun and then I started backward, getting tangled up with the cabdriver.

The guy coming toward me said, “Hello, Thorne. I’ve been waiting to see you.”

He came farther into the light and I saw it was Fred Manners. I said, “For cat’s sake, don’t do things to me like that. How do you know I haven’t got a weak ticker? Have you got a buck?”

“Huh?” Manners said. He had a friendly, kiddish-looking face and it was puzzled.

“What I said was, have you got a buck?”

He still seemed as though he was trying to add things up and make sense but he said, “Oh, sure,” and fished a dollar bill out of his pocket. I passed the bill to the cabdriver.

Up in my apartment I found some Teacher’s Highland after knocking over a couple of Aunt Frieda’s elephants that I’d parked wherever I could find room. I cussed the elephants, picked them up and poured a couple of drinks. After I had them poured, Manners said he didn’t use it, so I slid mine down and held the other one ready to follow when reinforcements were needed.

He scratched one pale eyebrow and grinned uncertainly. He said, “I’ll bet you wonder why I showed up here at this hour.”

“If you could find anyone to lay the bet with, you’d win.”

“Well, it’s this way. This little thing tonight does me out of my job as the doc’s body-guard.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But that doesn’t make me the WPA.”

“Sure, I know. I just thought — well, I’ve had some experience and I thought maybe International might have something.”

I said, “It’s a lot too late for kidding. Or do you really expect me to believe you stayed up all night just so you could make out an employment application? What’s on your mind?”

“That’s really it,” he said. He spread his knees, put a hand on each knee and looked at me straight. “At least, that’s mostly it. I knew that in order to get a job with International, you have to have something more than just a wild desire to please. Well, I’ve got something more and it’s too hot to let lie around forever. Your agency would like to solve tonight’s killing, wouldn’t it?”

“Not particularly,” I said. “That’s the police department’s worry. What made you think we’d be interested?”

He laughed at me, said, “Now you’re trying some kidding. After all, you’re working for Kirkwood, aren’t you?”

“What would you know about that?”

“Pal-enty, Thorne, pal-enty. Do you want to hear what I’ve got to tell?”

“Sure,” I said. “I like to hear anything. Go ahead.”

He shook his head. “I’ve always wanted a job with a top agency. If this is good — and it will be — do I connect with International?”

I was watching his face and there was youthful confidence plastered all over it; he knew he had something hot. I said, “Tim Harper does the hiring. All I can do is put in a good word for you.”

“Fair enough. I’ve heard your word carries weight there. So here it is. Maybe I’d better start about six months back when the doctor hired me.”

“I’ve been wondering how you happened to hook up with him.”

He told me, “Through Gerda.”

When I looked blank, he said, “Gerda Frake, who was secretary for Levy. She’s my fiancée. I met her when we were both working for the Hunter Medical Lab. That was before I decided I’d have more fun starving as a private dick than as a stock clerk. The lab let her out and she got this job with Levy. So when this Dutchman from St. Louis tried to kill Levy, Gerda recommended me as a body-guard.”

“What about this Dutchman?” I said.

“Do you mean, did he kill Levy? It’s possible. He certainly hated Levy’s guts. It’s a funny thing, too — Levy wanted to pay back everything the guy had lost but we couldn’t locate him. You see, Levy was really on the level about this Doctor Sivaja stuff of his. He’d got so he believed the ‘no evil’ stuff he was dishing out and he was trying to live up to it. However, I sort of doubt this Dutchman did it. From all I’ve heard, he was one of these guys that has to shoot off his mouth for five minutes before he does something and Levy, so the cops say, was knocked off fast and quiet.”

“Go ahead. You’re just getting a good start.”

“That’s right,” he said. His eyes were pale gray under the pale eyebrows and very sharp but not hard. “Have you given a thought to Paul Kirkwood as a possibility?”

“No,” I said, sounding surprised. “Why should I?”

“Because he’s a swell possibility. Maybe you work for him but I’ll lay odds I know more about him than you do. It so happens he started to put pressure on Levy three months ago to leave the Woodring dame alone. Levy wasn’t a sap, even though he had fallen for his own line, and he put me to work checking on Kirkwood.

“It took me a while but I finally got a line and, to cut it short, I found out Kirkwood wasn’t any lily, himself. He left New York six years ago just one train ahead of an indictment for embezzlement from a stock firm he was working for. About a year after he married the blind Woodring girl, the indictment was quashed. I suppose he settled up with dough he’d found in the family treasury.”

“Did Kirkwood know that Levy had this information?”

“No. Levy wasn’t going to use it unless Kirkwood forced him to. Like I told you, Levy was really trying to be a good boy.”

“Then,” I said, “it doesn’t add up. Kirkwood wouldn’t have any reason to do it.”

“Maybe I ought to say that Kirkwood didn’t know anything about it until just before the meeting tonight. Levy was tipped off during the day from St. Louis that somebody was checking his record there. He figured Kirkwood must be behind it and he phoned Kirkwood about six o’clock and asked him to come over after the meeting. I didn’t hear the conversation but I’m betting Kirkwood got a hint that he wasn’t sitting so pretty, himself.”

That reminded me that when I’d called the Woodring house, the butler had told me I couldn’t talk to Kirkwood. And that when he had come into the reception room later, I’d had the feeling he’d just arrived from some place.

Manners went on: “However, that’s just background. I don’t think Kirkwood pulled it because I’ve got two much better candidates. How do you think Levy got himself set up in this cult racket? It took dough.”

“I wouldn’t know. Maybe he had some.”

“He didn’t have two nickels to bounce together when he got out of Atlanta. All he had was a swell idea and a couple of pals that were willing to stake him while he put the idea over. Levy never broke down and told me all this, I just picked it up a little here and a little there, and put it together. The idea was that a lot of rich screwballs, particularly women, fall for cult stuff and will let their hair down in private to the high yogi. Levy was supposed to get the dirt, pass it on to his pals and they’d put the squeeze on the saps.”

For the first time I felt as though I was getting warm on the case. I said, “Who were these pals?”

“Two cons that Levy met at Atlanta. One is Skip Morris, a racket guy who went up from Chicago for income tax stuff, and the other is Harry Lake, a hot number from New York. I don’t know what he was in the can for. As a matter of fact, I never saw the pair except once when I body-guarded Levy over to the Roosevelt and he talked to them there. But I know they were the reason the last couple of months why Levy kept me on.”

“How do they fit into last night’s caper?” I said, killing my Teacher’s. I thought I could guess that but I was willing to let him tell me. I figured also that I knew just about where the Woodring letters had gone, although I couldn’t dope out how anyone had managed to be waiting for me outside the old gal’s house.

“Levy’s idea was a swell idea,” Manners said, “except that Levy went holy on these guys. He got plenty of dirt on a lot of suckers but he wouldn’t pass it on to Lake and Morris. He paid them back the dough they’d staked him to but they still figured he was double-crossing them. They as much as told him last week they were going to give him the business.” He grimaced, wagged his head a little. “And last night they didn’t do anything else.”

“Why didn’t you tell the cops all this?”

“That’s easy. I don’t want a job on the cops, I want a job with International.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Incidentally, you didn’t happen to knock Levy off, yourself, did you?”

For a moment Manners looked startled. He said, “You serious?”

“No,” I said. “That was just to keep conversation going.”

“Oh.” He dripped sarcasm and I couldn’t blame him. “Well, on that basis, sure. I polished him off so Gerda could lose her job at forty a week and I could lose mine at seventy-five bucks. You see, I figured I’d blackmail Kirkwood, so the first thing I did was blab all I knew to the dick that was working for him. It was kind of hard for me because I put in the whole evening lifting beer at the Lotsatime Café until fifteen minutes or so before I got back to the house. But I managed to shoot him from the café, using mirrors.”

“Oh, well,” I said. “I was just keeping the record clear. If I wanted to locate Morris and Lake, what kind of guys would I look for and where would I look?”

He described the pair, said, “I don’t know where they hang out but maybe I can find out for you. Now how about that job?”

I told him I’d put in a word with Tim Harper and he got up to go. I was amused at this kid craving to be a dick.

At the door, I said, “There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about. Levy had a packing case full of the three apes. What was he doing, starting a curio shop?”

Manners grinned. “Levy was as nutty about his cult as any of his suckers. He was going to pass the monkeys out the way Rockefeller did dimes. It might have been a good publicity stunt, at that.”

That sounded nutty to me but no nuttier than the rest of the case so I forgot the apes. What I wanted was the letters and I had a notion that if I could locate Skip Morris and Harry Lake, I’d be locating the letters. When I got the letters, I’d toss the mugs to the cops and ease out of the picture.

So I phoned a little redhead who works the cocktail bars on Figueroa and on West Seventh.

She said she knew Skip Morris but she didn’t know the other guy. “If I can find out where Morris lives,” she said, “I’ll call you, Kerry.”

I said that would make her fifty bucks better off...

When the phone rang, I’d been asleep for two hours. The redhead said in my ear, “Try the York apartments, Kerry,” and hung up without saying anything more.

At ten the next morning I got Harper on the phone at the office. He sounded grouchy and what I had to tell him didn’t make him feel any better and he let me know about it. I said, “Well, maybe things won’t come out so badly. I’m going out to the York apartments and prowl around. Incidentally, have you heard anything from Sue?”

“No,” Harper said. “And if she hasn’t anything better to tell me than you have, I hope I don’t hear from her.”

The York apartments were four stories of dingy red brick out on Santa Monica Boulevard. There were brass plates on the hallway wall that held the cards of tenants. None of the cards showed me the names of Morris and Lake; not that I had expected it. I pressed the button under the card that said, “Manager.”

A woman in a purple wrapper came to the head of the stairs. She was about fifty and very thick through the body and she had a lumpy face, a whiskey-veined nose and blue eyes as hard as agates. When I got up to her I had a card out. The card said that I was Jasper Q. Pahl of the Western Collection Agency.

I gave her the card and said, “Good morning, madam. I’m looking for a man named Morris and another man named Lake.”

She backed her thick body away from me and into the open door of an apartment just off the stairway. She looked at the card and back at me and said, “Nobody here by that name.”

She started to shut the door and I stopped it with my foot. I said, “They wouldn’t be using those names. They skipped with a mortgaged car and it’d be worth ten bucks to locate them.”

The pressure came off the door and the woman said, “What do they look like?”

“Morris is tall and about forty with a black mustache and black hair. He’s sort of bald on top.” I remembered Manners’ description.

I hadn’t heard feet coming up the stairs until I’d gone on with: “Lake is smaller. His nose has a hump where it was broken and he has one gold tooth.”

The woman said hurriedly, “I told you there wasn’t anybody named Lake or Morris in this building,” and backed away and slammed the door quickly.

Behind me, about the level of my knees, a man’s voice said, “You looking for a fellow named Lake, buddy?”

I turned around and a tall mug, who had a black mustache and black hair where it showed below a gray Homburg, was just taking the last step upward to the hallway. He was also just taking his hand out from beneath his coat and it was holding a blue-black automatic.

The tall man, who was undoubtedly Morris, said, “Come on, buddy. I’ll take you to this guy named Lake.”

When I didn’t find anything to say, he grinned and said chidingly, “Hell, can’t you even say thanks?”

We went up two more flights of stairs to the top floor, where there were only two doors along the hallway. Morris knocked on one of them with his left hand while he held the gun on me with his right. He had to knock again before the door opened and a man in his shirt-sleeves looked out at us. The shirt-sleeved man had very square, muscular shoulders and ropy forearms. He had small eyes like shiny licorice drops and the eyes twinkled at me. His nose had a hump and he had a gold tooth.

Morris said, “This guy wants to see you, Harry.”

Lake said in a husky baritone, “Bring him in, Skip. We got quite a party now.”

We went in single-file, with me between Morris and Lake, into a big living-room. There were two men already in the room. One of them, who was Fred Manners, sat in the exact middle of a big divan. His mouth was bloody and one of his pale eyebrows was torn. He was holding his hands tightly across his stomach and moaning and he didn’t look up when we came in.

The other man was Paul Kirkwood. His skin was malaria yellow and he looked scared and a little sick to the stomach. He jerked his head like a startled horse when he saw me and his mouth opened and closed a couple of times but didn’t say anything.

Morris said, “Where did Blondy come from?”

“Don’t you remember him?” Lake said. “He’s the guy Levy had body-guarding him. When I was coming back here with Kirkwood, I saw the guy just getting out of his car in front, so I brought him upstairs to find out why he was gum-shoeing around.”

“Has he told you?” Morris asked, interested.

“He talks but he don’t make sense.” Lake walked over to the kid with a swing to his walk like a boxer, straightened him up with a light left to his face and then sank his right four inches into Manners’ belly. Manners’ retching noise was loud in the room and he doubled over again, holding his stomach muscles.

Lake walked back to me and twinkled his shiny eyes at me. He said, “From that nosy look you got, brother, you look like a dick to me.”

“You ought to know,” I said. “You don’t have to put on an act for me.”

Lake whipped the right at me without telegraphing it. It smacked me high on the cheek and shoved me off balance. I hit the wall and bounced back with my fists coming up. Morris wiggled his gun at me and I put my fists down.

“I’ll learn you,” Lake said, “to give me funny answers.”

Skip Morris said soberly, “We’re not getting any place this way, Harry. Let these guys alone and we’ll get our business with Kirkwood over and get going.”

“We’ve got penty of time,” Lake said. “It always gives me the creeps when guys follow me around and I don’t know just who they are or why. I’ll work on ’em awhile.”

Morris shook his head. “You’re nothing but a damn sadist, Harry. You like to beat guys up.”

“Yeah,” Lake said. “And this blond kid is perfect for it — not too soft, not too hard.”

He stalked Manners again but even the light tap of Lake’s left didn’t straighten him up this time. Lake licked his lips and then he reached down and got a fistful of Manners’ vest and hauled him upright. The kid fell forward and sideways and Lake pulled him erect again, the ropy muscles in his forearm standing out. He let him go and instantly threw his right from the level of his shoulder. The fist hit Manners’ jaw with the sharp impact of a whip being snapped.

Manners’ knees didn’t even buckle. He went over backward, straight and stiff like a piece of wood. There was a table in the way and the back of his head hit the carved edge of it, making a dull, mushy sound. The table fell over, throwing its legs and its top around Manners’ body on three sides like a fence.

Manners didn’t move. Not a muscle twitched and if there was any motion in his chest, I couldn’t see it. His mouth sagged wide open and saliva drooled from it; his eyes were wide open, too, but only the whites showed.

Morris made an angry, bitter sound in his throat. He said, “You damned fool, you’ve killed him. You’ve fixed us up fine.” But he wasn’t upset enough to take his rod off me.

Lake stooped and felt Manners’ wrist. After a few seconds, he dropped it and stood looking down at him. He said sheepishly, “Hell, how could I guess the guy was a softy?”

Skip Morris began to storm at him and Lake’s eyes got cold and small. They didn’t twinkle anymore. He said in a soft, nasty way, “Shut up. I’m thinking.”

I noticed that Morris shut up. He kept the gun pointing my way but his eyes were half on me, half on Lake, and they were worried. After a little Lake turned around and went out of the living-room. He came back right away and he had a wet bath towel in his hands, wringing water out of it as he walked. The drops fell on the carpet, making a damp trail.

“What’s the idea?” Morris demanded. His voice was anxious.

“Don’t you worry what I’m going to do,” Lake said. He got a gun out from under his armpit and began wrapping it in the wet towel. “There’s only one guy here that would do any talking about what just happened, Skip.”

He looked at me and then at Kirkwood. He said, “You wouldn’t do any talking, would you, handsome?”

The malaria yellow of Kirkwood’s face was turning to green. He didn’t try to speak, merely let his head waggle from side to side. Then he turned around and went wooden-kneed toward a window. He stood there with his back to us.

“See?” Lake said. “Handsome won’t talk. He doesn’t even want to see things.” He had the gun wrapped in the wet towel now and he looked at me. There were orange lights behind the shiny blackness of his eyes and he looked as though he was enjoying something hugely. Nerves crawled in my stomach and my mouth was suddenly dry and my tongue was stiff. He said, “I’ll bet you won’t talk either, shamus.”

The towel-shrouded gun was beginning to come up when out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement on the floor by the overturned table. I said loudly, hurriedly, “For cripes sake, hold it! The kid isn’t dead.”

Manners was moving his hands, his legs with little jerks as though he were receiving a series of electric shocks. His chest moved convulsively and a long sigh hissed through his mashed lips. Lake started to unwrap the gun, looking disappointed about something.

He said reflectively, “I don’t know; maybe the guy might die yet.”

He got the gun unwrapped, wiped off dampness from its barrel and put it away in his shoulder holster.

Figured damask draperies divided the living-room from the small foyer through which we had come and the draperies moved a bit now. Skip Morris and Lake weren’t looking that way so they didn’t see Sue Jordan step into sight between the hangings. She had her pearl-handled .32 in her hand and if she had worn wings, she couldn’t have looked any more like an angel.

She waited until Lake had brought his hand away empty from the shoulder holster and then she said, “That’s much better.”

Lake and Morris began to jerk around and Sue’s voice was like a whip-lash. “Don’t move, gentlemen.”

Lake froze but Skip Morris got his head around over his shoulder and stared at Sue and her gun with amazed fascination.

She said, “Take their guns, Kerry.”

I did just that in a hurry, saying, “If you had a uniform, Sue, you could double for the Marines at this moment.”

She grinned. “I talked to the boss on the phone right after you’d told him you were coming out here. These two playboys fitted right in with what I was looking for, so I beat it out here, too. And when the manager downstairs found out I was looking for you, she got the shakes and finally told me you were up here. I talked her out of a key and here I am.”

On the floor Manners was breathing a lot better.

I said, “Can you hold these guys a minute or two, Sue?”

She looked scornful. “Do you think I’m a sissy?”

I got water from the bathroom, slopped some in Manners’ face. He opened his eyes. I looked at Kirkwood for the first time in minutes. He’d turned around from the window and was watching me with his eyes sunk deep in his head.

There was a bedroom off the living-room. I started through the room like a northeast gale but I didn’t have to go far. The Woodring letters and my gun were in a suit-case under the bed. I stuck the gun in my pocket and, with the other two guns loading me down, I felt like an armory. I went back into the living-room and handed the letters to Kirkwood.

I said, “How much were they asking for them?”

He put the letters in his pocket without looking at them, said dully, “Thanks, but they — This isn’t all; there’s something else they know.”

I got it. “You wouldn’t be meaning something like a New York indictment?”

He didn’t answer but he didn’t have to. I looked at Morris and Harry Lake. I said, “Where did you guys get that information?”

Lake’s licorice-drop eyes sparkled hatred at me. He snarled, “You dicks aren’t the only guys that find out things.”

“Keep your mouth shut,” Morris said swiftly. “They haven’t got a damn thing on us if you’ll just keep that big mouth shut.”

“Just like that,” I said. “I suppose I didn’t have some letters and a gun swiped from me last night and I suppose I didn’t just find ’em here?”

Morris’ eyes were opaque and crafty. He said stubbornly, “I don’t know anything about any letters or any gun.”

“You’ll remember about them,” I said, “when we turn you over to the cops and lay everything in their laps.”

There was a little laugh. It was Sue. She said, “You’re not really that dumb, are you, Kerry? International is being paid to keep Kirkwood and Mrs. Woodring out of a scandal, not shove them in. We’d be earning our money in a big way, telling the cops about letters and indictments and so on.”

She was right. I said, “Yeah,” and scowled at Lake and Skip Morris. “But,” I said, “murder is murder, after all. We can’t turn these guys loose.”

“We don’t have to,” Sue said quietly. “All that’s necessary is to show that they had another reason and a lot better one than blackmail to have killed Levy. The blackmail was just pin money.”

Maybe I sounded skeptical. “And I suppose you can show that?”

“I think so. Unless I’m very wrong. We’ll know soon, as soon as it will take to get all our friends here out to Doctor Sivaja’s — or Levy’s — cult place.”

Kirkwood was looking very unhappy. He said, “But, Miss Jordan, I’d better not. If this gets into the papers—”

“I think you’d better,” Sue said firmly. “Just in case. And don’t worry, there’ll be no reporters there.”

Manners had been on his feet for a couple of minutes. He was leaning against a shiny walnut radio cabinet, looking pretty shaky. Now he stood away from the radio and took three steps in the direction of Harry Lake. His right moved fast and slammed Lake in the face. The punch didn’t seem to have been thrown very hard but there was a sound of bone snapping and cartilage smashing and Lake went down as though he had been tapped with a mallet. His broken nose was broken all over again and covered half his face.

Manners slipped brass knuckles off his right hand and dropped them in his pocket. He grinned with his battered face and said, “That makes me feel a lot better.”

Kirkwood had a big, expensive car downstairs and we all piled into it. Skip Morris and Harry Lake didn’t make any fuss about coming with us but maybe that was because Manners and I were holding guns on them.

Kirkwood slid through traffic at fifty as though he was anxious to get the whole thing over with. I was busy clearing up some angles that had had me winging. Kirkwood admitted he hadn’t been at Mrs. Woodring’s place when I called; he’d gone over to see Sivaja but he hadn’t got there until after the murder, he said, and all the police cars had scared him away. Lake had phoned early that morning, given him a blackmail hint and set a meet for a certain corner. That’s how he’d got lured to the York apartment. He admitted he hadn’t tried to get me the way he’d agreed; he’d been willing to pay off and forget it all and I couldn’t blame him too much for that.

Manners had put out some feelers and had located the York apartment spot the way I had.

“And we both stuck out our chins,” he said. “Lake came along with Kirkwood and caught me just getting out of my car in front. He made me right away as Levy’s body-guard and the fireworks started.” He shook his head, remembering some of those fireworks. “Say, how about that job now?”

I told him I hadn’t had a chance to speak to Tim Harper.

Morris and Lake sneered at us largely but they were carefully not having any of the conversation.

And neither was Sue. Whatever she had up her sleeve, she was keeping there. Personally, I didn’t think she had very much; the blackmail angle still looked plenty good to me.

In daylight the House of No Evil looked like just what it was: a tired, old-fashioned place that had started out life in good society forty years before and had dropped out of the parade long ago. We went in, Manners and I keeping a peeled eye on Skip Morris and Harry Lake. They were meek as lambs.

Inside the lecture room Cap Fisher was sitting on a chair only half big enough for him, talking to Jane College or Gerda Frake, Manners had said her name was when he told me he was engaged to her.

A Homicide dick, named Malloy, was lounging with his hands in his pockets and there was another guy there that I didn’t know.

Jane College looked around and saw Manners and her face went white and anxious. She jumped up, said, “Freddie, what’s happened? Oh, what have they done to you?”

The way she looked at him, it was easy to tell they sort of liked each other.

Manners grinned, said, “I’m O.K., Gerda. I just slipped and skinned my face on a knuckle.”

“I’m a little late,” Sue said. “I’m sorry, Captain.”

Fisher said, “It’s O.K. Us Homicide men aren’t supposed to get any sleep. Anyway, I wanted to go over some things here with Miss Frake.” He smiled, said, “I think I’ve got your drift, Miss Jordan. It sort of puzzled me when you phoned last night and said not to lose track of that packing case full of monkeys but when this lad” — he gestured at the guy I didn’t know — “showed up this morning, I began to figure things out. What made you think of it?”

“It was just a hunch,” Sue said. “I couldn’t imagine why Sivaja — or Levy — would want six gross of the little figures. Then on the bottom of one of the figures was scratched a sort of a cipher, HI-M-N-3-7-S13.”

She didn’t say what had become of that particular figure and, fortunately, Fisher was too interested in what was coming to ask.

Sue continued, “I kept wondering and finally it occurred to me that maybe Sivaja hadn’t wanted the monkeys but he had wanted something the monkeys brought in with them from Japan — narcotics.”

Fisher said admiringly, “You’re a smart girl.”

“Thanks,” said Sue. “This morning I called the Customs at the harbor and found Sivaja had received two other similar shipments in the last few months, one of them aboard the Hideyoshi Maru from Nagasaki. That cleared up the letters HI, M and N, scratched on the one figure, and the clerk at the Customs said the rest was probably a date, Jap fashion. They date their year, it seems, from the coronation of the living Emperor, which made it read March 7 of Showa Thirteen, or March 7 of this year. And the clerk said the Hideyoshi Maru would be sailing from Nagasaki for Los Angeles about that date. Which indicates another shipment of apes is due to arrive here on that voyage of the Hideyoshi Maru.”

The guy I didn’t know said, “I want to congratulate you, Miss Jordan, on an exceedingly clever piece of work. I sawed one of the figures open and found it contained approximately three ounces of heroin. If all the rest of the figures contain the same amount, it will be one of the largest seizures made by the Government Narcotic Bureau on this coast in a long time. Your agency has a nice amount of money coming by way of reward.”

He showed a mutilated figure of the three apes and a little bottle full of snowy powder. A chunk had been sawed out of the ape that had its hands over its ears and there were traces of powder inside.

Captain Fisher said, “Swell, but where do I come in? I still got a murder on my hands.”

“We even thought of that, Captain,” Sue said. “We rounded up some lovely suspects for you. Introduce them, Kerry.”

“Huh?” I said, looking up from the three apes. “Oh, yeah, skipper, meet Skip Morris and Harry Lake, ex-cons and pals of Doc Sivaja. They set him up in this racket here so I guess they can tell you plenty you want to know.”

“Well, well,” said the skipper, putting a hard and happy eye on the two of them. “They’re the sort of lads I like to meet.”

Harry Lake snarled through his busted nose but Morris was smooth, nonchalant. He said quietly, “We don’t know a thing about this, Captain. We’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“There’s one thing you won’t have to worry about, boys,” the skipper told them, heavily humorous. “And that’s the dope-smuggling charge. After we run you through the gas chamber for murder, the Feds won’t be interested in you any longer.”

Skip Morris still looked unworried. He had a very nice front. He said, “You’ll need a bit of proof, won’t you, before you can convict even two ex-cons of murder?”

Fisher looked at Sue, at me. He said, “How about it? You got any proof these guys pulled the killing?”

“Well,” I said, “all I know is they’d threatened to get him because he’d used their dough to set up the cult racket and then double-crossed them by believing his own stuff and turning holy on them. My guess is he’d turned so holy he was even going to tip off the law on the dope smuggling and they had to shut his mouth.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said the skipper, “but that’s guesses. Can’t you give me a tighter case than that against them?”

Sue grinned. She said, “Am I to understand, Captain, that you want International to do all the Homicide Squad’s work?”

Fisher reddened but he managed a grin, too. “I guess we can find out a few things ourselves from these boys.”

He turned on Morris and Lake as though he meant to reach down their throats and drag the truth up.

I listened for a little and looked at the three apes in my hand for a while and thought I had never run into a screwier case. Three apes that could speak or see or hear no evil — and look what they’d accomplished along that line. I looked at them and again saw Levy lying dead on the floor of his study; I felt a slug of lead fanning my face in the darkness outside the Woodring home; I saw a blind girl and her man-crazy mother and her money-mad husband; I saw young Manners on the floor with his face battered to a pulp. The three apes had worked out swell for everybody — three apes that could speak no evil, could see no evil, could hear no evil. It was all very screwy.

But presently I began to wonder if it really had been so screwy. I got up, caught Sue’s eyes and said, “Come here, sweetheart.”

I walked her down the length of the room away from the rest of them.

“Listen,” I said under my breath as we walked slowly toward the hall, “you were pretty smart. You figured this whole thing out all by your little self. Jordan the Magnificent!”

“Don’t be sore,” Sue said. “I knew you could handle Kirkwood’s case without even drawing a deep breath. When I realized I probably had a big narcotic reward for International by the tail, I had to stay with it. I’d have tipped you off, Kerry, before it was all wound up. Honest!”

“Skip it,” I said. “I’m not sore. But I’ve got to have my fun. I’ll give you ten to five I can pull one out of the hat right now that you never even thought of.”

Sue said, “You’ve made a bet.”

We had come to the archway between the lecture room and the hall. I said, “O.K. Stand right where you are. Don’t turn around.”

She didn’t turn but I did. Facing her, I could see the group down at the other end of the lecture room. I could see Kirkwood watching us out of the corner of his eye and Gerda Frake talking to Manners and Cap Fisher shaking his fist in Skip Morris’ face and the Homicide dick helping him and the Narcotic man watching us in a bored fashion.

I merely wagged my chin and twisted my lips around at Sue for about thirty seconds and Sue said, “You make beautiful faces, Kerry, but so what?”

“Wait and see,” I muttered, and dodged past her and walked down the room fast. I got half-way down the room before the break came.

Gerda Frake said something to Fred Manners and then she screamed on a high, sustained note that rippled my spine. Manners spun like an open-field runner, caromed off the Narcotic man and knocked him down. The Narcotic man fell into Gerda Frake, who was running toward the study doorway, and she fell flat on her face.

Manners was already in the doorway. I have to give the kid credit; he could still have made his getaway alone because everyone but myself was paralyzed with surprise. But he wasn’t going to leave Jane College.

He stopped in the doorway, his gun out and swinging, and he shouted, “Gerda,” and waited.

I made the mistake of continuing to come at him and his gun blasted in the room, the bullet shaving hair off my head just above my left ear. I ducked and the room boomed to another shot and when I looked up, Manners was just beginning to fall forward. He fell on his face beside Jane College but by the time I got there, he had squirmed over on his back.

Fisher stuck his gun, still smoking, back into his holster and looked down at Manners. He said in an amazed voice: “For cripes sake!”

The skipper’s slug had slammed through Manners’ belly. I could see a little blood oozing out, staining his shirt front. I said, “I’m sorry, Manners.”

“Yeah,” Manners said, making heavy weather of it. “I’m sorry too, Thorne. Now... now I... don’t get that International job. And, hell, I wanted to be a shamus — with a good — agency. But no job — now, eh?”

One hour later a deputy jailer let me out of the prison ward at the receiving hospital. On the street I caught a cab and lit a cigarette as the cab started rolling. The cigarette didn’t taste good but that was because I didn’t feel so good. I never did like seeing guys die.

When I got to the office, I walked to Tim Harper’s office, stuck my head in. Tim was there, looking not so sour now, and Sue was there, too.

She said, “Well?”

“As well as you could expect,” I said. “Manners died but they got a yarn out of him before he kicked off.” I sat down and put my feet on Harper’s desk. He was too interested to bawl me out about it. “Manners was the guy who thought up the gag of getting heroin in by ordering the apes, supposedly for the cult, and loading them with dope. Sivaja found out about it when he overheard Manners making a phone call from the house a couple of days ago about the shipment that was due.

“Sivaja beat Manners to the shipment at the Customs and told him he was going to turn him in to the Narcotic folks. So Manners had to shut his mouth. He told us plenty more, too. He was the guy that took a shot at me outside Mrs. Woodring’s house. He wanted to get the figure of the apes away from me and he took everything else off me to cover up that it was just the apes he wanted. He told us how he knew I had the figure and that I was heading for the Woodring place.”

“I’ve guessed that all by my little self, now,” Sue said. “Gerda Frake is deaf. She reads lips and I remember that she was in the room with us after the murder when we were talking about the letters and the figure of the apes.”

“Exactly,” I said. “She told Manners and he beat me to the Woodring place. Then, having the letters and knowing about Morris and Lake, he thought up a fast one. His smuggling game was washed up and he really did have a yen to be an op for a good agency, so he figured he’d plant the letters and my gun in their place, tip me off and cinch a job with us. Also, as he doped it out, if the cops had them to play with, it would divert suspicion from him. So he beat it to their place, watched them leave, got in and planted the stuff. Lake caught him outside by his car but made the mistake of thinking Manners had just climbed out of the car instead of being about to get in. But that made the planted letters and gun just as good as though Lake hadn’t caught Manners. And he was willing to take a beating to let it stay that way.”

“You didn’t have this under your hat all the time,” said Sue.

I admitted I hadn’t. “I pulled it out of the air just about thirty seconds before I walked you down that room. I wasn’t satisfied with the thing as we had it. Morris and Lake were taking it too easy, there were too many loose ends. Why were they wasting time on a shakedown when they should have been worrying about a hundred grand worth of heroin? While I was wondering about that, I kept looking at the three apes who couldn’t speak evil or see evil or hear evil. And suddenly the thing popped out of the blue. We’d had a guy that wouldn’t speak evil, a girl who couldn’t see evil. So why couldn’t we have somebody who couldn’t hear evil — a deaf person?

“Some deaf folks can read lips so well that you’d never suspect they were deaf. If that hunch was on the level, I knew I had something. Kirkwood and the Woodring household certainly wouldn’t be in on the dope setup but they were the only ones, outside of you, that I’d told about heading for there.

“Then I began to figure who had seen me talking to you about it and that pointed the finger right at the Frake girl. I started remembering things. She and Manners had worked for a medical laboratory and that put them on the fringes of the drug racket. And Manners had as an alibi only his claim that he was at the Lotsatime Café when the shooting took place and in a crowded joint like that, who’s to say just what minute a guy leaves?”

Nobody answered me. I went on:

“Also I recalled how the Frake girl hadn’t seemed to hear me when I told her to call the cops, not until I shook her out of her hysterics and made her look at me. Even then she had finagled it so you did the calling because she probably can’t hear well on the phone. So I decided to pull my little gag on them and it worked!”

Sue said, “You certainly made the nastiest faces. What were you saying?”

“I didn’t say anything but I made my lips work as though I was saying: ‘We’ve let this thing go far enough. I’m going to put the finger on Manners and the girl and get cuffs on them before they know what it’s all about.’ I knew she was watching me, and I figured if my hunch was right, she couldn’t help slipping Manners a warning and he’d be so startled that he’d do something to give himself away. You know the rest.”

Sue got a five-dollar bill out of her purse and handed it to me. She said, “Gee, Kerry, but you’re wonderful.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” I said. “You’re wonderful, too.”

Tim Harper had been listening, not saying anything. He growled at us now but he did it with a twist to his mouth. He said, “Wonderful, my eye. All the detective work you both did on this could be put on the end of a sharp needle. Scram and make out your reports.”

Sue and I got to the outside office and the office boy lugged a big package toward me and slammed it on a desk. Mailed in the Orient by my aunt.

Sue said, “Ah, another elephant from Aunt Frieda.”

“If it is,” I said, starting to unwrap the thing, “I’ll go nuts. I’ve already got Aunt Frieda’s elephants strung around my apartment like a circus parade. So help me, I’ll go nuts.”

I got the thing unwrapped and reached in and pulled out three big brass monkeys, holding mouth, eyes, ears.

Sue laughed and laughed. She said, “You lucky, lucky boy! It isn’t an elephant, after all. In case you don’t know what it is, it’s three apes from the East.”

“Pardon me,” I said, “while I go nuts anyway.”

“I’ll help you,” Sue offered.