The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Bruno Fischer (1908–1992) was born in Berlin, Germany, and emigrated to the United States at the age of five, his family settling in New York City. He was educated at the Rand School of Social Sciences, which had been established by the Socialist Party in 1906 and closed in 1956 during Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist reign. Fischer became a sportswriter for the Long Island Daily Press (1929), then worked for the Socialist newsletter Labor Voice (1931–1932) before becoming the editor of the Socialist Call (1934–1936), the official weekly magazine of the Socialist Party. He went on to run for the New York State Senate on the Socialist Party ticket and retained his dedication to Jewish causes and socialism until the end of his life, spending his final summers at a socialist cooperative in Putnam County, New York.

As was true of most of the pulp writers whose names remain even slightly familiar more than a half century after the last pulp died, Fischer was a prodigiously prolific writer for numerous pulps, though many of them were not the first tier, with only a few sales to Black Mask and The Shadow, but numerous stories sold to Dime Mystery, 10-Story Detective, and Strange Detective Mysteries. In addition to his hundreds of stories, both under his own name and as Russell Gray, he wrote more than two dozen novels, several of which featured his brainy detective Ben Helm, said to have been modeled after Norman Thomas, the three-time Socialist presidential candidate.

“Middleman for Murder” was published in the November 1947 issue.

Poor Perry Pike! My old pal sure looked seedy — his hat battered, shoes scuffed, suit shabby. All Perry had was seventy grand in cold cash — too cold to touch!

Perry Pike wasn’t glad to see me. He was wearing his hat and topcoat when he answered my knock, and he just stood there and scowled. He had a good face for scowling. It was pinched at the cheeks and his thin mouth turned down easily when he was displeased about something.

“Now this,” I said, “is a fine welcome home.”

“Home?” Perry said, and gulped. “You’re back for good?”

“That depends on business prospects.” Over his shoulder I looked into the living room. There wasn’t anything in sight to make him bar my way, though from where I stood I couldn’t see into the bedroom.

“You going to keep standing in the door?” I demanded.

“Oh,” he said, and stepped back so that I could get into the apartment.

The place looked pretty good after eight months of west coast rooming houses. A decent-sized living room, an adequate bedroom, a tiled bathroom, a kitchen you could practically turn around in. The furniture was mostly bleached oak except for the daybed and the brown leather chair.

A couple of years ago I’d bought that furniture after I’d picked up some change by selling half a dozen letters to a married banker which he’d written to a woman who wasn’t his wife. The lady didn’t give me the letters. I sort of borrowed them without her knowing it, and prevented her from using them dishonestly by returning them to the author for only five grand. A couple of days later I dropped the money in a crap game at Lou’s, less what I’d paid for the furniture I’d bought meanwhile. If I hadn’t made that purchase, I would have dropped that part of the money too, so I always figured I’d got the furniture for free.

“Where are you going to stay?” Perry Pike asked gloomily.

“Here in my apartment,” I told him.

I put down my bag and looked in the other rooms. Nobody else was in the apartment, hiding or otherwise. I returned to the living room.

Perry was sitting on the daybed, with his hands dangling forlornly between his bony knees. “Maybe you’ll be more comfortable in a hotel,” he suggested.

“Listen, pal,” I said, getting sore. “We rented this apartment together. The furniture is mine. I’ve come home, and I’m staying here even if I could afford a flophouse, which I can’t at the moment.”

“Broke, eh?”

“Flatter than the treasury of a European country,” I said. “Last month I hiked a couple of checks, but on the way home to New York I dropped the dough in a crap game.”

“You and your crap games,” Perry said disgustedly. He lifted his head. “You’re not hot, Willie?”

“Me hot!” I laughed. “The California bulls are looking for a small, dark foreigner around sixty years old.”

I was a big guy. I was blond. I could trace my family back to the Revolution. I hadn’t seen thirty-five yet.

“I’m kind of broke myself,” Perry said unhappily.

Well, I was home, so I decided to make myself at home. I took off my coat and went to the closet to hang it up. I’d glanced in there a few minutes ago to see why Perry Pike wasn’t giving me a rousing reception, but now as I searched for a hanger I had a good look at what hung there. The hanger rod was crowded with a couple of overcoats, a couple of topcoats beside the one Perry was wearing and seven suits. There were four hats on the shelf. Everything was expensive and his size.

I turned to him in surprise. “What’d you do, rob a bank?”

He got pale around the mouth. “Those clothes?” he said. “A fella gave them to me.”

Perry Pike could lie as smoothly as a diplomat, but he’d lost his touch. Or maybe he hadn’t had time to prepare a convincing story. But that wasn’t all of it. The topcoat he was wearing wasn’t fit for a rummage sale. His hat was battered. His shoes were scuffed and needed new soles. His suit had been old a couple of years ago.

Yet there in the closet were all those new suits and coats and hats.

“How’s about telling Papa?” I said.

He shoved his arms deeper between his knees. “Tell what?”

The best cops in New York hadn’t been able to make him talk on the two or three occasions they’d tried, so what chance had I? I went into the bathroom to wash up.

When I came out, Perry was still sitting dejectedly on the daybed in his hat and coat.

“Don’t let me keep you from going anywhere,” I said.

He seemed to wake up. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, and stood up, removed his hat and coat and sat down.

I sat in the brown leather chair and looked at him.

After a while Perry said: “There’s no food in the house. Aren’t you going out to eat?”

“You going with me?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Neither am I,” I said, though I was. “Think I’ll hit the hay.”

Perry jumped up. “You take the bedroom. I’ll sleep here on the daybed.”

He was too generous. “The way I barged in on you,” I said graciously, “I wouldn’t think of taking the bed.”

He didn’t argue. I opened the daybed, fetched sheets and blankets, got into pajamas, stretched out. It was only nine p.m., the beginning of the evening, but Perry didn’t leave the apartment, though he’d been all set to a few minutes ago. He hung around the living room for a while and then went into the bedroom.

Time passed. A radio next door was turned on to the Giants game, and I lay listening to it. After the game, soft music came through the wall.

It wasn’t until an hour or two later that I heard Perry snore. I slipped out of the daybed.

Enough light came in from the street lamp five floors below the window to show me what I was doing. There wasn’t anything in the mattress or among the springs. The frame of the daybed was upholstered. I moved my fingers over the material.

When I straightened up to go to the other end of the daybed, my head turned, and Perry Pike in faded blue pajamas was standing in the bedroom doorway.

For a moment we just looked at each other. Then I said with a very small laugh: “I was hunting for bugs.”

“There aren’t any,” Perry said woodenly.

“That’s good.” I climbed back into the bed. “Good-night, pal,” I said.

Without a word he returned to the bedroom. A couple of minutes later I was fast asleep.

I awoke with the sun in my eyes. The moment I stirred Perry Pike came into the room. By the looks of him he hadn’t slept a wink all night.

“Fine morning,” I said heartily.

“Yeah,” he said glumly, and sat down in his pajamas.

He sat while I shaved, showered, dressed.

“Anything in the kitchen to make breakfast?” I asked him, though I knew the answer. I’d looked and found a bulging refrigerator.

“Not a thing,” he said. “I’ve been having all my meals out.”

“So dress and let’s go down for breakfast.”

He wriggled his bare toes. “I’m not hungry. I guess I’m not feeling so good.”

It would have been fun keeping up the torment, but I was getting almost as impatient as he was. I put on my hat, said, “I’ll be back in an hour,” and went.

I went as far as the self-service elevator. When it came up to my floor, I sent it down without me; then I returned up the hall, walking on my rubber heels. I listened through the door. In the apartment there was a heavy, scraping, dragging sound, like furniture being moved — the daybed, no doubt. Then a minute of silence, then a thinly harsh sound, not at all loud.

After listening to that for a while, I decided that a floorboard was being ripped up. But I couldn’t quite believe it. I couldn’t see a hiding place under a tongue-and-groove hardwood varnished floor in a modern apartment.

Silence returned to the apartment. I waited a full minute by my watch. He had, of course, locked the door, but I still had my key. I unlocked the door and entered.

He had moved the daybed to the middle of the room. Where it had been, he sat on the floor, a skinny little man in faded blue pajamas.

“So it wasn’t the daybed, Perry,” I said cheerfully. “It was behind the daybed.”

His eyes blinked and his lips quivered. I half-expected him to burst into tears. He didn’t say anything.

I walked over to where he sat on the floor and squatted beside him. It hadn’t been one of the floorboards I had heard him pry up; it was the eight-inch molding that ran along the base of the wall. The screwdriver he had used was still in his hand. There was an empty space behind the molding; probably he’d gouged it out of the plaster himself. I could see small rectangular bundles wrapped in newspaper in the hole. He had taken three of them out.

“I knew it,” Perry said bitterly. “I fooled the coppers, but the minute you walked into the apartment I knew I wouldn’t be able to fool you.”

“The way you acted, one would’ve got you ten it was in the daybed,” I told him.

“But you’d look and look till you found it,” he said, trying to break the screwdriver in two with his bare hands. “The coppers had a look, but living here in the apartment you would’ve done better, so I knew I had to get the stuff out of here quick.” He sighed. “You were always smarter than me, Willie.”

“Sure,” I agreed.

I unwrapped one of the bundles. The shape had told me what was in it, but when I saw that I was right, I was too experienced to give way to ecstasy.

“Queer money?” I asked him.

“See for yourself.”

I picked off the top bill — a fifty. I looked at it in the light, I crumpled it, I felt it. Beyond doubt Uncle Sam’s mint had manufactured it.

I shuffled through the rest of the money in that pile. The bills were in larger denominations, but not so large that you couldn’t cash them at a bank without arousing suspicion. I made a quick count. Six thousand bucks, about.

“How many bundles in all?” I asked him.

“Ten.”

I whistled. “Sixty grand!”

“Seventy grand,” Perry said miserably. “But the dough’s no good.”

“Hot, eh?” I said. “The banks have the numbers. The coppers will nab you as soon as you start passing them. That it, Perry?”

He shook his head. “This is strictly legitimate dough. No serial numbers on file. Only I can’t spend it.”

“Why not?”

Perry stood up and went to the daybed and sat down. “I know you, Willie,” he said. “You’ll ask questions all over town and find out what the coppers think they have on me and figure out the answers, so I might as well tell you myself.”

I settled myself on the floor, with my back to the hole in the base of the wall. It looked like merely an accident that I was between Perry Pike and the seventy grand.

“A guy named Norval Avery was in the white goods business,” Perry said. “He was a legitimate character, manufacturing white shirts and men’s underwear. Had a small shop off Seventh Avenue and maybe half a dozen workers. Lived in Queens with the missus and two kids in one of those attached brick houses where you can walk blocks and blocks and not tell one house from another. He wasn’t poor and he wasn’t in the dough — till the war came and the OPA and the white goods shortage.”

“You’re telling me,” I commented. “I used to pay twelve bucks for a white shirt worth no more than two.”

Perry nodded. “And a large slice of the difference went into Norval Avery’s own pocket. So there was Norval Avery suddenly rich out of the black market, living high, sending his wife and kids to Florida every winter all winter long, buying everything he’d always hankered for. Of course he paid for everything in cash on account of all that black market dough he got was in cash. Then the war ended and a year later white goods started coming back into the stores and business went back to normal or worse, and Norval Avery found himself with better than one hundred grand in cash.”

“Very nice,” I said.

“Think so?” Perry said. “Wait and see. Of course this Norval Avery didn’t pay income tax on this black market dough. Even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t on account of his tax would be so high, the OPA would start asking him how come he made so much in just a small shop. But he also had the Treasury boys to worry about. And Norval Avery was a guy who worried plenty. Like when he had all that cash in a bank safety deposit box and then read in the papers that maybe Congress would pass a law to open all safety deposit boxes for a look, he grabbed the dough out and then didn’t know what to do with it.”

“Spend it,” I suggested.

“Sure, he spent it here and there, but not too much. Like when he visited his missus and kids in Florida and started plunging at the racetracks and then heard how Treasury agents were hanging around the tracks to get a line on heavy bettors who hadn’t paid heavy income taxes. So after that he was scared to buy even a two-dollar ticket. Then, just before the OPA was kicked out by Congress, they nabbed some guys who were in the white goods black market and they sang plenty. One of the lads they sang about was Norval Avery. And so the OPA boys asked him this and that, such as how come he was richer than he should be. But they didn’t know the half of it on account of all the transactions had been in cash and they hadn’t any idea about the pile of it he had socked away. But they couldn’t do anything to him. That got the Treasury boys on his tail, and even after the OPA was no more, Norval Avery had the unpaid income tax to worry about. All they had to do was know about all that cash and they’d have him good.”

“Cute,” I said. “That’s what happens with legitimate lads having illegitimate dough. Now if I had it...”

“Yeah?” Perry ran the back of a hand over his mouth. “So there he was with all that cash and scared to spend more than a few bucks of it now and then. Scared to invest it, buy a house, play the horses with it. And he had another headache — where to hide it. Once he buried it in his backyard, but he started thinking that one of the neighbors might’ve seen him, so next night he dug it up again. He hid it in his mattress, and then thought he was cooked when the cleaning woman cleaned the room and made the bed. He hid it in the cellar, but next week a plumber came to repair something down there, and he was sure the plumber would find it. He nearly died waiting for him to leave. Every couple of days he hid it somewhere else.”

“But he didn’t hide it where you couldn’t get it,” I observed.

Perry Pike was silent for a long minute. We both listened to the music coming through the wall. The radio in the apartment next door hadn’t been turned off for a moment since last night.

“Last month I was playing poker in Norval Avery’s house,” Perry went on. “It wasn’t the first time. The way I figured it, he had an idea that if he went in for heavy poker, he could say he’d won the dough. Only the trouble was he was a hunch player, and he never won even once. This night I’m talking about he played like he didn’t care if he took a pot or not, like he was just going through the motions of playing on account of a week before he’d made the date for that game. I wasn’t doing so good myself, but that’s got nothing to do with the story. After a while it so happened that I left the game for a few minutes to go upstairs to the bathroom. I happened to look into a room that was fixed up like a study, and I happened to go in.”

“To see if anything valuable wasn’t nailed down,” I said.

Perry didn’t care for the interruption. He scowled darkly at me. “There was a letter face down on the desk,” he told me. “I turned it over and saw it was addressed to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, so I read it. He’d written them the story I’ve just told you, a confession, and at the end he said he was going nuts worrying over that dough and was ready to pay the tax and fines and hoped they wouldn’t start criminal action against him on account of he was telling all. After I read the letter, I went back to the poker game.”

“How’d you find it?” I asked.

“The dough?” He practically smiled. “You’re not the only smart cookie, Willie. After the game broke up, I hung around the house. Norval Avery’s missus and kids were in Florida and he was alone in the house. I waited an hour after all the lights went out and then slipped into the house. The first place I looked was the right place. There was one of those artificial fireplaces, but with real bricks in it, and I knew that sooner or later he’d hide the dough there because sooner or later anybody would. And sure enough there was a loose brick. When I pulled it out there was the dough. While I was counting it, the light went on and I looked around and Norval Avery was in the room.”

I ran my tongue over my lips. I had a pretty good idea what was coming.

“What could I do?” Perry complained shrilly. “I grabbed a book-end from a table and socked him with it before he could yell. It wasn’t such a hard sock, but the book-end was iron or something, and he... ” Perry stopped.

“So you killed him,” I said softly.

“I just wanted to keep him quiet for a few minutes.”

“Murder,” I said softly.

“I guess so.” He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his pajamas. “Well, I was almost out of the house with the dough when I remembered that letter upstairs he’d written to the Bureau of Internal Revenue. So I went back for the letter and took it with me.”

I stood up and stuck my hands in my pockets and leaned against the wall. “I can finish it,” I said. “When the body was found, the coppers pulled in everybody who was at that poker game for questioning. But they had to let them all go, including you, because they couldn’t prove anything, especially no motive.”

“That’s what you think,” Perry said. “That letter to the Bureau of Internal Revenue was a copy he’d made for his own lawyer. The other copy he’d mailed out that afternoon. So then they knew that Norval Avery had had more than seventy grand in cash in the house and that it was gone. Then they had the motive for his being knocked off.”

My toes nudged one of the bundles on the floor. “I see,” I said. “When you got your hands on that dough, you couldn’t wait. You started splurging. You went out and bought yourself a lot of clothes. The coppers were shadowing all the suspects to see which one had become suddenly rich. You were the lad.”

Perry nodded unhappily. “They piled on me. Wanted to know where I’d got the dough for all those clothes and why I’d bought so many suits at a time. I said I’d picked up a little in poker, a little on the ponies. You see, I hadn’t spent enough yet for them to prove it wasn’t so. They got a warrant and searched this apartment, but they didn’t rip off the molding. But they’re still watching me. Every time I buy a pack of cigarettes I got a feeling somebody’s watching how much I’m spending.”

“Poor Perry,” I said sympathetically. “The local coppers aren’t bad enough. You got the Federals sniffing at you, too, because tax wasn’t paid on that dough.”

“That’s just about it.” His arms hung dejectedly between his knees. “Now I know what Norval Avery went through with all that dough begging to be spent and him scared to spend it. As soon as I start spending heavy, the coppers will be sure enough to pull me in for murder and go to work on me. I’m not such a brave guy, Willie. I’m not sure I can stand up to their third degree. And the Federals will bring in their lie detectors, and I hear that intelligent, sensitive guys like me are pushovers for those machines. So like Norval Avery I’m being driven nuts by that dough which is no use to me.”

“You don’t have to hang around New York,” I pointed out.

“The Federals are all over the country,” Perry said bitterly. “They never let up on dough they haven’t collected tax on. And if they catch up with me on that, they’ll turn me over to the New York coppers to burn me. Maybe I can jump to South America, but they’ll be watching me if I try to take the dough onto a boat. Anyway, New York is the one place where I’d enjoy spending it. Only I can’t.”

“Which is,” I said, “where I come in.”

“That’s right,” Perry said. “You’re always talking about your brain. It’ll be worth ten per cent — seven grand — if you figure out how I can remain in New York and spend the dough and not have the coppers down on my neck.”

“My brain,” I told him reflectively, “tells me that you’re going to give me the whole seventy grand.”

His head snapped up. “You’re nuts!”

“No, you won’t give it to me,” I corrected myself. “What I’ll have to do is gather up these ten bundles and walk out of here. I don’t think you’ll go yelling to the coppers that I relieved you of seventy grand.”

Perry Pike looked at me and shivered. He was a little guy and I was a big guy. I could take him with one hand.

He stood up. I watched him, but all he did was go as far as the bleached oak desk and lean against it. He looked sick. I felt a little sorry for him. He wasn’t a bad sort of lad.

But there was work to be done. I stooped and came up with a bundle of money in each hand — and looked into the muzzle of a compact .38 automatic pistol.

The gun was in Perry’s hand. “I think you’ll leave that dough where it is, Willie,” he said hoarsely.

I stared at him in surprise. Perry wasn’t a firearms lad any more than I was. I wasn’t even sure that he knew how to use one. His hand wasn’t steady, but he was close enough to hit anything he shot at and too far away for me to take him.

“Perry,” I said pleasantly, “there’s no point getting sore at your closest pal. Didn’t you just trust me enough to confide in me?”

“Yeah, I confided in you,” he said grimly, “on account of you would’ve gone to the library and dug into newspapers and read how last month a guy named Norval Avery was knocked off in Queens and seventy grand missing, and you’d have added it up to me. Now beat it.”

“Perry,” I said, “let’s sit down and talk. For a fifty-fifty split—”

“Beat it,” he said.

I didn’t care for the look in his eyes or the way the gun was pointed right at my heart. I beat it.

I sat in a restaurant eating breakfast and wondering where Perry Pike would stash the dough next. New York was the hardest place in the world to hide anything which had bulk. Especially if you wanted it where you could get your hands on it now and then, you were limited to the tiny area in which you lived hemmed in by dozens or hundreds of other people.

No wonder Norval Avery had given up, and Perry was in the first stages of going nuts with worrying. The fact that he’d got himself a gun proved it.

I gave him about an hour to cool off before I returned to the apartment. For a lad who lived by his brains, I’d been in too much of a hurry to grab off the whole seventy grand. Now I’d have to work at getting Perry’s confidence back, at convincing him that I was his one pal in a cold and hostile world.

When I let myself into the apartment, I saw that Perry had straightened up the living room. The molding was on the wall and the daybed pushed back to where it belonged.

“Perry?” I called.

No answer. I started to feel sick. He’d beat it after all with the dough which had practically been mine, and I’d never again see him or, what was more to the point, it.

I glanced into the kitchen, then into the bathroom, then opened the bedroom door.

I saw something and heard something at the same time. What I saw was Perry lying motionless on the floor between the bed and the dresser. What I heard was a small sound at the side of the door. I was turning toward the sound when the ceiling fell on me.

My knees buckled. A cloud whipped over my eyes, and through it I saw something move. It didn’t have form or substance, but in a vague way I knew that it was a human being and that he’d just conked me over the head with a blunt object.

My shoulder hit the floor. The cloud thinned a little and I could see legs. Legs wearing pants, and they were moving toward me. Dully the thought ran through my aching head that he was going to hit me again, and this time he’d make sure to bash my skull in.

I didn’t want my skull bashed in. I waved a hand at the legs. Above me there was a panicky yelp. The legs vanished from my line of vision. I heard them run out of the bedroom, across the living room. I heard the hall door open and slam.

I lay back on the floor and closed my eyes. The door slammed again. He’s coming back to finish me, I thought, and twisted on my hip toward the door. I could see part of the living room; nobody was in there. I didn’t hear anybody.

I pushed myself up to my feet and wobbled out of the bedroom. Nobody was in the apartment except Perry and myself. I must have dreamed hearing that door slam twice.

I returned to the bedroom. Perry Pike hadn’t moved. He would never move under his own power. There was too much blood on his shirt and on the floor. And his eyes were open, staring up at me without seeing me.

A knife had done it to him. An ordinary steak knife. The handle was still sticking out of one of the half dozen wounds in his chest.

I felt very bad. I’d known a lot worse lads than Perry. While we hadn’t trusted each other in the matter of seventy grand, who would have? He’d still been a good pal.

My eyes moved about the room. A weekend bag stood on the dresser. I opened it and found ten rectangular bundles. Seventy grand.

Where Perry had intended to go with the dough nobody would ever know. He had dressed and then put it in the bag and then somebody had come into the apartment. Somebody whose nerves had made him strike again and again with the knife and then run in panic when I’d waved my hands at him.

Sure, somebody. Why wouldn’t the cops be convinced that I was that somebody? Motive, opportunity, everything pointed to me. Willie, I thought, you’re in a spot. Start thinking.

I didn’t touch the money. I went into the bathroom and soaked my head. Then I sat in a living room chair which didn’t face the bedroom and lit a cigarette. Through the wall the radio which was never turned off sent soft music. It was too soft. It sounded to me like a funeral dirge — to my own funeral.

Seventy grand in a bag in the bedroom.

I could beat it with the dough. Then when the body was found, the police would check and find that last night I’d come back to live in the apartment with Perry. They were already pretty sure that he was in possession of Norval Avery’s seventy grand. Added up, my disappearance would mean that I’d knocked Perry off for the dough. Result: I’d be seventy grand richer, but I would have as good as confessed to a murder I hadn’t done. I’d be a fugitive for life. My fingerprints were on record, and any time I was picked up for anything anywhere, I’d be shipped back to New York to burn in the chair.

There had to be a better way.

Say I walked out of here with the dough and hid it somewhere. Just where I’d hide it I didn’t know yet, but I could work that out later. Then tonight I’d come back here and pretend I’d just found Perry murdered and I’d call the coppers myself.

So what? They’d still wonder what had happened to the seventy grand. And they’d come to the same answer: I’d knocked Perry off for it.

Only they wouldn’t be able to prove it. They’d take me to headquarters and sweat me, but eventually they’d have to let me go because merely knowing was not legal evidence. And I’d be free with seventy grand in small bills.

And then? Then wherever I went, the coppers and the Federal agents would be sniffing at my tail, and if I was found with that money anywhere it would be all the evidence they’d need. Like Norval Avery and Perry Pike, I’d get heart failure every time I spent an extra nickel.

Whatever you do, Willie, I told myself, you’re not going to be any too comfortable. Make with the brains.

The music coming from the radio next door cut out and a man started to enthuse about furniture polish. Instead of thinking, I sat listening to that voice and idly wondering about two doors slamming.

Two doors, I said to myself suddenly. Not one door, but first one and then another.

I stood up and hunted for Perry’s gun. It was on the dresser behind the bag. I checked the clip. Fully loaded.

I looked at the bag and sighed. I looked down at Perry and said aloud: “I’ll see what I can do for you, pal, and incidentally for myself.” Then I went out to the hall.

Softly I turned the doorknob of the apartment next door. It was locked, of course. It so happened that a couple of years ago I’d borrowed the building superintendent’s passkey without him knowing it. I’d had a duplicate made and then put the original where the superintendent would find it and think he’d dropped it.

I used that passkey now. I turned it in the lock and kicked the door open and plunged through behind Perry’s gun.

I heard and then saw the radio — a small table model against the wall. The lad who liked to listen to the radio day and night wasn’t in the living room, but I heard him in the bedroom.

“Who’s there?” he yelped frantically.

I rushed into the bedroom. The man cowering against the bed was somebody I’d never seen before; he must have moved in recently. He was tall and thin. He needed a shave and had bloodshot eyes, possibly from listening to the radio instead of sleeping. His shirt and pants were on the floor. He’d taken them off because there was blood on them — blood that had spurted out of Perry’s wounds.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “A door slamming twice. My door slamming when you ran out of my apartment, and your door slamming when you ran into yours.”

He straightened his scrawny, half-naked body a bit. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“I’ll draw you a picture,” I said. “These walls are thin as paper. If I could hear the radio turned down very low in your apartment, you could hear us talking in my apartment. You heard Perry tell me the tale of the seventy grand. You waited till you heard me leave; then you grabbed up a knife and went next door and knocked. Perry figured you were a delivery boy or something like that and opened the door. When you didn’t seem to have any special business, Perry got leery and dashed into the bedroom for his gun. You went after him and stopped him with your knife.”

“You’re crazy,” he said in a thin, small voice.

“What’s that on your pants and shirt — red paint?”

He looked down at his bloody shirt and pants and then up at my gun, and, except that he was breathing, he looked about as dead as Perry.

“You must be an honest citizen,” I said. “No experience in crime and murder. You had to kill Perry because he knew your face, but you were too frantic and got blood all over yourself. After you conked me, I was more or less helpless, but when I waved a hand at you, you fled like a scared rabbit.” I shook my head disapprovingly. “Very sloppy work, mister. I bet that steak knife in Perry’s chest matches others just like it in your kitchen. The coppers ought to return their pay for solving this one.”

What I’d said about the steak knives must have been true because he broke completely. He buried his face in his hands and rocked from side to side.

“I was such a fool!” he moaned. “But seventy thousand dollars—”

I nodded. “I know just how it is, mister.”

His hands flopped away from his face. A remote hope came into his eyes. “Listen,” he said tightly. “The money’s still there. You take it and let me go.”

I smiled. “Wouldn’t you like that? Because the lad who has the seventy grand will be burned as the killer.” I stroked the barrel of the gun and added reflectively: “For my part, that bag could be full of rattlesnakes instead of currency of the realm and it would be the same thing.”

He didn’t say anything.

I looked at him for a moment and then asked: “What’s your name, mister?”

“Thomas K. Allenby,” he muttered.

“Think of that,” I said, and I backed into the living room and, keeping him covered with the gun, reached for the phone...

It was an experience having coppers shake my hand.

“That solves two murders at one shot,” Detective-Lieutenant Goldblatt told me. “Finding that seventy grand on Perry Pike proves that he was the one knocked off Norval Avery in Queens last month, and you handed us Pike’s murder all wrapped up and sealed. That was an honest and courageous thing you did, Mr. Turner.”

Nuts, I thought. But I didn’t say it out loud. I smiled with becoming modesty. I shook hands with cops and posed for newspaper cameramen. Then I went to a restaurant to catch up on my eating. It wasn’t much of a dinner because my financial status couldn’t afford better.

But the bean soup and corned beef hash tasted better than I’d eaten in even the best of jails. And when I washed it down with coffee and lit a cigarette, I felt pretty good.

Willie, I told myself, you’ve got your freedom and your health, which is a lot more than Norval Avery and Perry Pike and Thomas K. Allenby have. Willie, I said to myself, who the hell wants seventy grand anyway?