The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Richard Deming (1915–1983) was born in Des Moines, Iowa, and received his B.A. from Washington University, St. Louis, and his M.A. from the University of Iowa. Soon after, he served as a captain in the army during World War II, then worked for the American Red Cross in Dunkirk, New York, from 1945 to 1950, after which he became a full-time freelance writer.

It was an understood verity of the pulp-writing community that practitioners had to be prolific in order to survive financially, and Deming was one of the most prolific of the later toilers of the craft. He came to the field as it was dying and moved to the new markets for such professionals, including the digest magazines, such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Manhunt, and paperback originals, of which he wrote more than sixty under his own name, as Max Franklin, and as a ghostwriter for Ellery Queen’s Tim Corrigan series. He wrote novelizations of popular crime shows of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, including Starsky and Hutch and Charlie’s Angels under the Franklin byline and, as Deming, Dragnet and The Mod Squad. His short-fiction output exceeded two hundred titles, and he provided stories for several television series, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, Suspicion, and the Gruen Guild Playhouse. His novel The Careful Man (1962) was filmed as Arrivederci, Baby! (1966, written, produced, and directed by Ken Hughes, starring Tony Curtis).

“The Man Who Chose the Devil” was published in the May 1948 issue.

’Twas mighty odd for my satanic fat friend Longstreet to be swearing oaths on a sacred locket — oaths which would surely send him straight to hell. But perhaps that was the idea.

Chapter One

When i thought about it afterward, it seemed the fat man must have been puzzled that I paid no attention to his standing on my foot. But I was actually unaware of it until I tried to slide off the bar stool and found one foot pinned to the floor.

Of course, he didn’t realize there was no feeling in my right limb, that instead of flesh it was an intricate contrivance of cork and aluminum strapped to a stump below my knee. The government paid me $180.00 a month for not having a right leg. They were also going to buy me a brand-new car — when they got around to it.

Just before I tried to leave my stool, I caught a glimpse of Anton Strowlski in the bar mirror. The dapper gunman approached with one hand negligently carried in the pocket of his tailored suitcoat. Since I had never rubbed against Anton, I knew he wasn’t looking for me, but I automatically grow observant when gunmen, even friendly gunmen, get behind me with their hands in their pockets.

Anton’s expression was casual, his eyes on no one in particular. But something in the face of the fat man standing next to me, as it was reflected in the bar mirror, caused me to shift my glance from the gunman to him. The fat man’s face was expressionless, but his eyes unwinkingly followed the image of Anton Strowlski.

It was then I decided to move from my stool. Not that I expected anything to happen in as public a place as the Jefferson Lounge, but some inbred caution prompted me to want a large section of the Jefferson’s air-conditioned atmosphere wedged between myself and the fat man. And I found myself stuck to the floor.

The fat man stood half-faced away from me, his left elbow propped on the bar and his left foot solidly crushing the full weight of his two hundred forty pounds on my right shoe. With one eye still on Anton, I tapped his arm.

The gesture caught Anton’s attention and he flashed me a quick glance, nodded in recognition and made an abrupt right wheel toward the far end of the bar.

Without moving his body, the fat man turned at me a florid face which would have meant a fortune to a burlesque comedian. High-domed, round-cheeked and pug-nosed, and with bright, heavy-lidded eyes over which satanic eyebrows arched upward at the ends, instead of down, it was the face of a rollicking satyr.

I pointed at the floor. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take my foot with me.”

His lips drew back over dazzling mail-order teeth, and a chuckle worked its way up from his gargantuan paunch, coming out baritone and amused. Without moving his foot, he turned his back.

I began to get sore, but not enough to slug him. The Jefferson Lounge frowns on commotion. It even frowns if you drop your money on the bar instead of laying it down noiselessly. It features organ music and quietness, apparently ashamed of being a saloon and trying to disguise the truth under a church-like atmosphere. I tapped my fat drinking mate again.

“Your foot is on mine,” I explained clearly.

“I know.” He turned his back again.

“Move it,” I said to his back, without raising my voice.

His big head swiveled at me for the third time. Satanic brows quirked upward and his ready-made incisors sparkled again.

“You move it.”

His bright eyes glinted mischievously, completely lacking the contentiousness of a stew picking a fight. I saw he was dead sober, yet for some reason, which I vaguely linked with the presence of Anton Strowlski, was deliberately trying to start a scene. So I gave him one.

Sliding my stool to the left, I let the side of my chest drop across it, grasping the seat with both hands for support. Rapidly crossing my left leg over my right until the sole of my foot rested against the inside of his far knee, I pushed.

His right leg buckled, throwing him off balance, and he grabbed at the bar with both hands. At the same time he involuntarily moved the foot imprisoning mine a step backward. Snapping erect, I smashed the heel of my released right foot into the underside of his left knee. He sat down with a crash that shook the room and stopped the organist in the middle of a bar.

With surprising agility for a fat man, he bounced to his feet and swung a roundhouse at my head. In a brawl, I watch a man’s eyes. His showed no anger, only an increased mischievous joy. My knees bent and his fist whistled a foot over my hair.

He was easy. One short jab in that soft stomach jackknifed him forward with his jaw conveniently out-thrust. When he hit the floor this time, he stayed there and slept.

I looked up from his sprawled body just in time to see Anton Strowlski let the street door swing closed behind him.

You simply did not brawl in the Jefferson Lounge. Fatso was hardly asleep before a cop had me by either arm. I think management keeps cops under the bar, along with ice-cubes and lemons.

When they finally got Fatso awake, they put us both in a prowl car. The Jefferson’s manager stood at the curb wringing his hands and looking horrified.

“No charges, Officer,” he kept saying. “Just take them away.”

The older of the two cops said testily: “All right. All right,” and the manager moved away.

The Jefferson Lounge is situated in one corner of the elaborate Jefferson Hotel. As the Lounge manager passed back into the dispensary, I noticed Anton Strowlski a few yards up the street under the hotel marquee. With his back against the brick wall near the main entrance, he watched us broodingly. I recognized our driver, a stocky, middle-aged cop, without being able to recall his name. I know most men on the force, at least by sight. The other cop was young and unfamiliar, probably a rookie.

The driver twisted in his seat to look us over. Fatso was shaking his head and working his jaw back and forth with one hand.

“You’re Manny Moon, aren’t you?” the driver said to me.

“Yeah.”

“Who are you?” he asked my sparring partner.

“Willard Longstreet.” The fat man turned to me. “Manville Moon, are you? The private dick?”

I nodded shortly.

“What you hit me with?”

“With great enjoyment, you big ape.”

He grinned his satyr grin and mischievous brightness returned to his eyes. He fixed them on the driver.

“What are your plans, cop?”

The policeman frowned. “They were to let you go, if you promise to behave. But I don’t like ‘cop.’ ”

“I want Moon booked for assault and battery,” Longstreet said calmly. “Drive along.”

“Why you...!” I started to say, then stopped and relaxed. “Go along,” I told the driver.

Shrugging, the cop faced forward and started the motor. I glanced over at Anton once more, saw him frown at us worriedly, and on a spur-of-the-moment impulse decided to make the party complete.

“Hold it!” I told the driver.

Gears clashed as the driver, starting to release the clutch, suddenly braked and slipped back into neutral. Locking the emergency, he peered at me in the rear-view mirror.

“Now what?”

I said: “The guy standing under the hotel marquee is Anton Strowlski. Know him?”

Both cops glanced that way and both shook their heads.

“Chicago boy. Even money you’ll find a gun if you shake him down.”

Anton, noting our eyes on him, began to move away slowly. Swinging open his door, the younger cop bounced from the car.

“You!” he called.

Pretending not to hear, Anton increased his pace. The cop legged after him, drawing his service revolver as he ran.

“Halt, or I’ll shoot!”

The command improved Anton’s hearing and he stopped dead in his tracks and turned. The cop gestured toward the building with his gun and Anton, familiar with the routine through much previous experience, faced the wall with his hands elevated about to shoulder height.

Deftly running his free hand over the gunman’s body, the policeman relieved him of a dainty, snub-nosed automatic. He found it in the same pocket Anton’s hand had occupied when I first glimpsed him in the mirror.

Reholstering his revolver, the cop let Anton precede him back to the car. Without a word the gunman took his place in the rear seat between Longstreet and me.

As we made our second start, I said: “Who you working for these days, Strowlski?”

Eyes brittle as broken glass swung to my face. He ignored my question. “You finger me, Moon?”

“Mister Moon,” I said.

His lips quirked upward, lacking mirth. “I’ve heard that gag about you. I don’t mister nobody.”

Without moving my body or changing expression, I drove my right elbow into his chin. His smirk was absorbed by a vacuous look and he slumped heavily against the shoulder of Longstreet, who flashed me a startled glance and pushed the gunman away. Anton’s head slumped forward, hiding his vacant expression, and his body, wedged between us, remained erect.

Neither of the cops suspected anything wrong. Traffic sounds had drowned the slap of my elbow against Anton’s jaw, and the younger cop, periodically turning to look us over, apparently assumed the gunman’s bowed head was the result of bashfulness.

Anton was still resting when we arrived at the station. I got out one side of the car, Longstreet got out the other and Anton rolled slowly forward on his face.

Before either cop could open his mouth I said: “What’s the matter with him?” threw a suspicious look at Longstreet and asked, “You do something to him in the car?”

Longstreet’s outraged expression faded into one of amusement. “He was all right a minute ago.”

“Looks like he fainted,” said the younger cop.

The middle-aged cop glanced at Longstreet suspiciously, then said to his colleague: “Well, drag him out and slap him awake.”

Without waiting to see his instructions carried out, he waved us ahead of him and followed us up the steps grunting audibly.

Chapter Two Murder by Magic

Sergeant Danny Blake was working the desk at headquarters. When he saw me, he flashed his gold front tooth and asked hopefully: “What’s the charge? Homicide?”

“Assault and battery,” said our chauffeur. He pointed his thumb first at Longstreet and then at me. “On him, by him.”

“The old man will be disappointed,” Blake said, enjoying himself. “Only assault and battery.”

I said: “Fill out your forms, clown, or it will be homicide. Only someone else will have to enter the charge.”

Throwing open his log book, Blake entered my name and other identifying information, put down Longstreet as complainant, then, pen poised, looked inquiringly up at the arresting officer.

“Jefferson Lounge,” the policeman said. “About a half hour ago.” He glanced up at the clock on the wall. “That’d make it 2:30 p.m. It was about 50–50, according to the manager. They both swung, only Moon connected.”

Blake looked at me. “You filing counter-charges?”

Ever since we left the Jefferson, I had been thinking that over. I turned toward Longstreet and caught the same mischievous laughter deep in his eyes. I didn’t understand him. I didn’t understand anything, except that up till now I seemed to be reacting exactly as he wanted. I decided to change that.

“No counter-charge,” I said, and the lights went out of Longstreet’s eyes as though someone had thrown a switch.

He watched me thoughtfully as I posted $250.00 bond, which left my checking account at five figures: a one, a two, a six, a decimal point and two zeros.

“It’ll help my civil suit if you’re convicted in police court,” he remarked pleasantly. “I’m going to sue you, of course.”

“Do that.” I took my receipt and turned to leave.

“Wait a minute,” Longstreet called.

I looked back at him, waiting.

“I withdraw all charges,” he said to Blake.

Sergeant Blake’s face reddened and he rose to his feet. “Lissen...” he started to say, but that was as far as he got.

“Don’t raise your voice at me!” Longstreet interrupted. And, leaning across the rail, he planted his fist squarely in the sergeant’s nose.

Two things happened rapidly. Sergeant Blake sat on the floor, and the cop who brought us in twisted Longstreet’s arm up behind his back until the fat man stood on his toes.

“Lock him up!” Blake roared, using his desk to pull himself erect. Blood trickled across his mouth from each nostril.

Still cramping Longstreet’s arm behind his back, our cop dogtrotted him toward the corridor leading to the pokey. As they passed through the door, the fat man twisted his head over his shoulder to grin at me. The familiar mischievous laughter was back in his eyes.

“He had a devil of a time getting arrested,” I said to Blake.

But the sergeant was too busy holding a handkerchief to his nose to care what I said or did. I picked my check off his desk, dropped the receipt and left.

As I went down the steps, Anton Strowlski, partially supported by the rookie cop, groggily stumbled up. The look he threw me tried to be venomous, but it came out more punchy than baneful.

I returned it with a grin.

The phone blared me out of a sound sleep at four in the morning. I let it ring while I strapped on my leg and slipped into a robe, being in no rush to end the wait of anyone who phoned at that hour.

“Moon,” I said, when I finally got to the phone.

“About time,” a familiar voice rapped in my ear.

It was Inspector Warren Day, Chief of Homicide, who for years had been trying to decide whether he hated my guts or loved me like a brother.

“Go to bed,” I said.

“Get your clothes on. Hannegan is on his way over to pick you up.”

“Yeah? What’s the charge?”

“No charge. Want to see you.”

I was silent for a minute. Then I said: “You’ve seen me lots of times. Go home and sober up.”

Day’s voice sank to its normal growl. “Listen, Moon. I’m in no mood for your sass. You come with Hannegan, or I’ll send him back with a warrant. You’re a material witness in a murder.”

“Nuts. I haven’t seen a murder since the last time I unraveled one you’d fouled up.”

“Get your clothes on,” Day repeated, and hung up.

I brushed my teeth, felt the rubble on my cheeks and wondered if a shave would bring me awake. Deciding against it, I jolted myself alive with a shot of rye instead. I was dressed when Lieutenant Hannegan arrived.

His expression was wary when he came in, a result of past experience with my resistance to Inspector Day’s arbitrary orders.

“You ready?” he asked uneasily.

“All set.”

He looked relieved and a little surprised. I followed him outside to the squad car, and asked no questions until he got it in motion.

Then I asked: “What’s the deal?”

“Corpse named Carmichael. And the guy who did it, couldn’t have.”

“Come again?”

“The guy who did it was in jail when it happened. That’s where you come in. Fellow named Longstreet.”

“Oh,” I said softly. “A faint light glimmers.”

Inspector Warren Day paced back and forth in his office, chewing his eternal dead cigar and periodically ducking his skinny bald head to peer at one or another of us over his glasses.

Willard Longstreet sat on a straight-backed chair in the center of the room, his fat seat protruding beyond both edges. His clothes hung in perspiration-soaked wrinkles and his round face sagged with fatigue from hours of answering questions. But a faint mocking light still glimmered in the back of his eyes.

Hannegan sat alongside Day’s desk, and I relaxed in a chair tilted against the wall.

“You can’t get away with it,” Day snarled at Longstreet for the twenty-seventh time. “At 3:30 p.m. you had a phone argument with Carmichael. Your joint secretary recognized your voice. At 5:00 p.m. you phoned again and told Carmichael you’d be there in ten minutes. Your secretary swears it was your voice. When she left for home, Carmichael was in his office waiting for you. At 5:30 a shot was heard and the medics confirm that as the time of death. Your gun was found on the office floor too far away for it to be suicide. Your prints, and nobody else’s, are on it. You got plenty of motive. You did it. How?”

“Anyone could have stolen my gun,” Longstreet said patiently, also for the twenty-seventh time. “I live in a hotel and passkeys are easy to get. Besides, I was in a locked cell from 3:00 p.m. on.”

“Locked cell! Locked cell!” Day screeched. “Shut up about locked cells! You got out and back in some way.” He turned on Hannegan. “Get him out of my sight! Chain him to the wall. And post a guard in sight of him, so he doesn’t get out and murder the whole police department. He’s got Houdini beat!”

Hannegan got to his feet and motioned the prisoner erect. Longstreet rose slowly, his shoulders drooping with tiredness.

“Would you like to earn ten thousand dollars, Moon?” he asked me casually.

“Mister Moon,” I said.

“Mr. Moon, then,” he said agreeably. “Would you like to earn ten thousand?”

“Depends on the method.”

A mischievous twinkle pushed past the fatigue in his eyes. “Break this case. I don’t think the cops can.”

I looked him over thoughtfully. “If I prove you did it, where do I collect? From your estate?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t do it.”

I said: “I’ll drop down to your cell later on.”

When Hannegan and Longstreet were gone, Warren Day threw himself into his desk chair, traded his cigar butt for one just like it in his ashtray, carefully dusted it off and stuck it in his mouth.

“What do you think, Manny?” he asked dispiritedly.

“I think four in the morning is a hell of a time to wake me up when the murder was discovered ten hours earlier.”

“How’d I know you’d been brought in with Longstreet? A different man was on the desk at six, and I didn’t hear about you till just before I called.” He ran a hand over the place his hair had been. “What you think about all this?”

I said: “You’re sitting on dynamite.”

“I know I am.”

“Wait till the papers learn you’ve charged a guy with committing a murder that happened while he was locked in one of your escape-proof cells.”

“He’s not charged with murder. We’re holding him for assaulting a cop.”

“What’s bond?”

“Five hundred.”

“Five hundred!” I said. “Longstreet only cost me two-fifty. Cops aren’t worth twice as much as people.”

Day wiggled his thin nose and studied his cigar. “He hasn’t inquired about bond. Seems in no hurry to get out.”

“But he can, whenever he wants. Then what do you do? Charge him with murder?”

The inspector rubbed the side of his nose. “I’d get laughed out of town. Jeepers creepers, Manny, you got any ideas at all about this?”

I felt sorry for him. Normally he would cut off his head before he would ask my opinion about the weather. But he was stopped so cold by this that he hadn’t even cursed me once. And it was the first time in our eight-year acquaintance that we had met without trading profanity and a few mild threats.

I said: “Only what I told you. I’m as sure as I sit here that Longstreet deliberately got himself arrested. That was his sole purpose in picking a scrap at the Jefferson. And when he couldn’t needle me into filing counter-charges, he slugged Blake. You have to conclude he was building an alibi. Why else would he try to get in jail?”

“No reason else,” he agreed reluctantly. He looked at his watch. “Six forty-five. Nearly ten hours I questioned that guy.”

“Learn anything at all?”

He shook his head. “Only that he’s got a motive. The best there is. Money.”

Reswapping his cigar butt for the one he had originally, he struck a match, then shook it out without lighting up and dropped the dead stick on the floor. “Ninety percent of the stock in Rex Amusement Corporation was owned by three guys. Willard Longstreet, George Carmichael and Marden Swope. Ostensibly Swope is president, but actually they were equal partners. They had some kind of a business contract leaving their stock to the surviving partners. So Longstreet inherits half Carmichael’s interest in the business. On top of that Carmichael carried a fifty-thousand-dollar insurance policy with Willard Longstreet as beneficiary.”

“How much of a business is it?”

“Tremendous, according to Longstreet. They handle coin machines, juke boxes, cigarette vendors, pinball games and one-armed bandits.”

I raised my eyebrows. “One-armed bandits, eh? Illegal, aren’t they?”

“Not for private clubs. There’re a hundred and fifty private clubs in town, according to Longstreet. About a hundred own their own machines, and Rex Amusement Corporation supplies the others for forty percent of the take. The clubs average about twelve machines and take in about fifteen hundred a month each. I did some arithmetic and the company’s share comes out to over a quarter million dollars a year. On top of that they service the machines owned by clubs for fifty dollars a month per club. Just that part brings in sixty thousand dollars a year, and two men can handle the servicing. And all this is only one phase of the business.”

He stopped and stared bitterly at his dead cigar, probably thinking about an inspector’s salary. “No wonder Longstreet can say ten thousand dollars like you or I would say ten cents.”

I rose. “You through with me?”

“Yeah. Go on home to bed.”

At the corridor fountain I mouthed a swig of water to clear the fuzz from my tongue before going back to Longstreet’s cell. There, in the center of the hall, I found a uniformed cop seated on a chair facing the cell door.

The sun had risen, and light streaming through a small, barred window set high in the wall showed me Longstreet stretched flat on a drop-down bunk, his right wrist and right ankle cuffed to the wall as Warren Day had ordered.

“Allowed to go in there?” I asked the cop.

“Sorry,” he said. “Lieutenant Hannegan’s orders.”

“Can I talk to him?”

The cop scratched his head. “The lieutenant didn’t say anything about talking through the bars.”

Longstreet turned his head in my direction. “That you, Moon?”

“Mister Moon.”

“O.K... Mr. Moon. Why the formality?”

“I like to keep murderers in their place.”

His tufted eyebrows rose. “That doesn’t include me.”

“We’ll still keep it ‘Mister.’ I’ll apologize if you turn out innocent.”

He pursed his lips in an expression of grudging acceptance. “Taking my proposition, Mr. Moon?”

“Maybe. What is it?”

“Simple enough. Solve Carmichael’s murder within twenty-four hours and I’ll pay ten thousand dollars.”

“Why twenty-four hours?”

“I want it solved before I leave here.”

I considered this answer from all sides without growing any wiser. My prospective client was a man hard to understand and, I suspected, not anxious to be understood.

“Why don’t you leave now?” I asked. “All you have to do is post bond.”

Gazing up at me blandly, he handed me one of the screwiest answers I have ever gotten from a client. “Want to catch up on my sleep.”

For a moment I watched him speculatively, forming new questions in my mind. But having a hunch that even a thousand well-phrased questions would get nothing more from him about why he stayed in jail, I changed tack.

I said: “Suppose I take the case and you turn out to be the murderer?”

“Would I hire you if I were?” he asked. “I could get out of here in ten minutes by posting bond. And with my alibi I could bust Warren Day right out of a job if he booked me for murder. He knows it, too.”

I thought this over and saw the logic of it. “All right. I’ll go along. But I can’t work in the dark. I want better answers than you gave the inspector.”

He glanced at the guard. “Not with a cop listening in.”

I turned to the cop, who was silently taking down everything we said in shorthand.

“Oh, a spy!” I said. “Run down the hall where you can watch without hearing. I want a confidential talk with my client.”

His head moved back and forth sidewise. “The lieutenant said keep my eyes on him.”

“Gonna make me get a lawyer?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I told Longstreet.

Warren Day was still in his office, morosely puffing on an actually lighted cigar.

“Thought you went home,” he said.

“Been talking to Longstreet. He’s willing to tell me things if you move the big-eared cop from in front of his cell.”

“Yeah?” His eyes narrowed. “You take his ten-thousand-dollar proposition?”

“Depends on what he has to say,” I evaded.

“If I move the guard, will you tell me what he spills?”

I shrugged. “That’s up to him. He has the right of confidence as my client, if I listen to him.”

Day shook his head. “No sale. Go home and go to bed.”

I took out my check book. “You said five hundred, didn’t you?”

The Inspector’s nose, which was the barometer of his blood pressure, whitened at the tip, indicating that he was irked. When the whole organ paled, it meant he was boiling.

“You post bond,” he said, “and I’ll charge him with murder!”

Spreading the check book on his desk, I reached for his desk pen. He slapped aside my hand.

“Put it up, damn you! I’ll give you five minutes.”

He slammed back his chair and made for the door. By the time we reached Longstreet’s cell, the inspector’s nose was dead white.

“You!” Day growled at the guard. “Post yourself at the end of the hall and keep your eye on this excuse for a private detective. He gets five minutes. If he passes anything through the bars, shoot him. Kill him and I’ll make you a sergeant.”

He wheeled and marched back to his den.

“You certainly get your way around here,” Longstreet said admiringly. “How’d you swing that?”

“Stow the blarney,” I said. “We’ve got five minutes. Spill it fast.”

With his free hand he fumbled at his shirt front and drew out a locket on a chain.

“See this?”

I nodded.

“A girl gave me this when I was seventeen. Twenty-seven years ago. It’s the only thing in the world I got any sentiment about.”

“Your wife?”

“I’m a bachelor.” He paused to peer down at the locket as it lay on his chest. “This locket got me a local reputation. Ask my partners... or the one who’s left, Marden Swope. Ask our secretary, Marie Kincaid. Ask anybody knows me well. They’ll all tell you when I swear on this locket, it’s God’s own truth. I’d cut off my nose before I’d tell a lie on this locket.”

“All right,” I said. “Get to the point.”

He put his hand over the locket. “On the memory of her who gave it to me, I swear I didn’t kill Carmichael.”

“I’m deeply impressed,” I said. “We have three minutes left.”

“Ask anything you want.” He pushed the locket back in his shirt.

“Leave it out,” I suggested.

His brows went up. “You’ll get the truth. I don’t necessarily lie when I’m not holding the locket.”

I glanced at my watch. “Why was Anton Strowlski after you?”

“Anton who?”

“The rod man brought in with us,” I said impatiently. “The only reason you started that brawl was because you saw Anton in the mirror and wanted cops on the scene fast.”

He shook his head. “Never saw him before.”

I looked through the bars at him in vexation, and he gazed back at me blandly. “Why’d you deliberately get yourself thrown in jail?” I asked finally.

He blew out his lips, there was a sound of released suction, and he used a thumb to push his plate back in place. “What makes you think I did that?”

Apparently my bothering to have the cop moved to the end of the hall had been wasted effort. I said: “If you won’t answer questions, I can’t help much.”

He raised tufted eyebrows. “Believe me, if I could tell you a single thing about Carmichael’s murder, I would. But I can’t. If the answer was in me, would I pay you to dig it out?”

From the corner of my eye I saw the guard start toward us. Longstreet looked up at me without a sign of mischievousness in his suddenly serious face.

“Believe me, Mr. Moon, my being in jail has nothing to do with Carmichael’s murder. You still with me?”

“Time’s up,” the guard broke in behind me.

I said: “I’ll play along for a while,” and left him to catch up on his sleep.

When I reached the front desk, Sergeant Danny Blake was just coming on duty. His nose looked like a blue turnip.

“How’s the nose?” I asked.

He grunted something unintelligible.

I said: “What happened to the guy brought in with us? Anton Strowlski.”

Danny thumbed through his log book. “Released on bond at 7:30. I was off then. Go off at 5:00.”

Chapter Three The Golden Locket

The night before I had gotten to bed at one in the morning and been routed out at four. I felt like falling in bed for a week, but clues have a habit of disappearing unless you follow a murder trail while it is still hot. From the desk sergeant’s directory I learned the Rex Amusement Corporation was in the Bland Building, and took a cab there.

The corporation was on the first floor. It had its own entrance, separate from that to the offices on higher floors. The entrance was centered in a long loading ramp for trucks, presumably used for loading and unloading various types of coin machines. An empty, driverless truck was backed against one end of the ramp.

I found the door unlocked and walked into a huge storage room filled with hundreds of coin devices. Juke boxes, cigarette vendors, pinball games and slot machines stood in orderly rows, arranged so each type was easily accessible. At the far end of the warehouse I saw a door labeled OFFICE.

Pushing open this door, I found myself in a large, but simply furnished reception room containing only an office switchboard, a typing desk, two file cabinets and a few odd chairs. Centering one wall of the room was a glass-paned door bearing the title M. SWOPE, PRESIDENT. Two similar doors, respectively labeled G. W. CARMICHAEL, CUSTOMER SERVICE and W. H. LONGSTREET, SALES MANAGER, opened in the opposite wall. The wall directly across from the reception room entrance was full of windows.

A sleek, brown-eyed blonde with nice accessories was beating the typewriter. She gave me a cool smile which meant: “State your business, please. I’m very busy.”

I came right to the point by flashing the identity card which states I am a private dick and am bonded to twenty thousand dollars.

“We don’t need a private detective,” she said. “The police are doing fine.”

I said: “Maybe you don’t, but you’ve got one. One of your bosses hired me.”

She raised carefully molded eyebrows. “Mr. Swope?”

“Longstreet.” I took the chair she hadn’t offered and stretched out my legs. “What’s your name?”

She thought me over before she finally decided to answer. “Marie Kincaid.”

“You the whole office force?”

“All that works in. We have ten service men and a crew of salesmen.”

“Where are they all?”

“We don’t open till eight.” She raised her eyes to the wall clock and I followed suit. It was ten till.

I asked: “You been here long?”

“About five minutes.”

“I mean have you worked here long?”

“Four years.”

“Know about a locket Longstreet wears?”

She glanced at me quickly, then laughed a tinkly, indulgent laugh. “The swearing locket? That’s what we call it behind his back. He’s a nut on the subject.”

“Is he serious about it, or is it just a gag?”

“Oh, he’s serious. I wouldn’t believe his oath on a Bible, but anything he swears to on the locket is pure truth.”

I got to my feet. “I’ll take a look at the room. It been cleaned up?”

“Not yet,” she said.

Opening the door which bore Carmichael’s name, I went in and looked around. Except for a spot of dried blood on the carpet beneath the desk, there was little to see. I wandered around looking at the floor, the desk top, the window sills and the bookcase without finding any cigarette butts of queer oriental brand, any Egyptian scarabs or any of the other highly informative clues detectives are always running into.

Marie Kincaid came to the door and looked in at me.

“Know where they found the gun?” I asked.

She pointed to the floor near her feet. “Right there.”

“How’d you know?”

She raised her nose. “I saw it. The police brought me over here from home before anything had been moved.”

I estimated the distance from the desk to the gun as about twelve feet, which ruled out suicide, as Inspector Day had said.

“Let’s go over the story you told the cops,” I said. “I understand Longstreet phoned here twice yesterday.”

“That’s right.”

“When did the calls come?”

“The first was at 3:30, for Mr. Carmichael. I plugged him in and they had a terrible argument.”

“You listen in?”

Her nose went up again. “I did not! Mr. Carmichael’s door was open.”

“What was the argument about?”

“I don’t know. But Mr. Carmichael swore something awful.”

“Where was Swope at the time?”

“In his office.” She pointed at his door across the reception room.

“Hmm. How about the second call?”

She said: “That came just at five. I had my hat on ready to leave when the phone rang. It was Mr. Longstreet again, for Mr. Carmichael. I plugged Mr. Carmichael in and, through the open door, heard him say: ‘All right. Wait ten minutes and come on over. I’ll be here.’ ”

“Then what?”

“I went home. An hour later the police came after me.”

I asked: “How do you account for Longstreet being able to phone when he was locked in a cell from three o’clock on?”

Her nose went up a third time. “I don’t. You’re the detective. You account for it.”

“How do you know it was Longstreet phoning?”

“She said it was.”

“What?”

“She said it was.”

“Who?”

“The switchboard operator. She said: ‘Mr. Longstreet calling Mr. Carmichael.’ ”

I thought this over while I wandered around the room some more. Finally I said: “You told the cops you recognized his voice.”

“I thought I heard it in the background,” she said quickly.

I shook my head. “You told the cops Longstreet himself phoned. You didn’t mention any woman.”

“The woman wasn’t phoning,” she defended. “She was just a switchboard operator somewhere.”

“Where?”

“How would I know? Wherever Mr. Longstreet phoned from.”

I said: “Did you actually hear Longstreet’s voice at all?”

“Well” — she hesitated — “I thought I heard it in the background asking the operator to hurry up.”

I asked bluntly: “Who paid you to change your story?”

Color warmed the coolness of her cheeks and her brown eyes threw flame at me. “Just what do you mean by that?”

“I read your sworn statement. You told the cops you definitely recognized Longstreet’s voice, and when your questioner remarked that imitation is easy, you said: ‘After four years, an imitation wouldn’t fool me.’ ”

“It was the way the police asked questions,” she insisted. “They put words in your mouth. I am sure it was Mr. Longstreet phoning. I’d be sure even without the voice, because when I plugged in Mr. Carmichael, I told him Mr. Longstreet was phoning.” She ended triumphantly: “If it had been anyone else, Mr. Carmichael would have bawled me out afterward!”

I switched to another subject. “What kind of guy was Carmichael?”

She examined me so appraisingly before answering, I expected some sort of startling disclosure.

But all she said was: “All right. If you like wolves.”

“Married?” I asked.

“No. Bachelor.”

“What’d he look like?”

Her brow puckered thoughtfully. “Tall and lanky. Slightly stooped. Gray hair. Nothing very individual, except the wolf gleam in his eye.”

“How old was he?”

“Forty, forty-five. Somewhere in there.”

“Have any enemies?”

She shook her head. “None I know of.”

“Any arguments recently?”

“Only the one over the phone with Mr. Longstreet.” Some inner thought brought her up short. “Except...” She shook her head in self-impatience. “That wouldn’t count.”

“What wouldn’t?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing to do with the murder.”

I let my eyes harden over. “Listen, sister. If you know something, loosen up fast.”

“It’s nothing,” she insisted. “It would only start gossip.”

I said: “I don’t spread gossip. Let’s have it.”

Reluctantly, she said: “It’s Mrs. Swope. I think she and Carmichael were carrying on.” She paused, then rushed on, apparently wanting to unload it fast once she had started. “The other night I forgot my purse and came back for it after closing. They were in Mr. Carmichael’s office and didn’t hear me come in. I heard him say: ‘It’s got to stop, Isobel. Suppose Marden found out?’ Mrs. Swope said, ‘Suppose he does? I really think he’d be glad.’ Then after a while Mr. Carmichael said: ‘I won’t be party to breaking up a home. Especially that of my own partner. It’s got to stop.’ I heard Mrs. Swope begin to cry, and she said: ‘You’re tired of me, that’s all.’ I left then and didn’t hear any more.”

I said thoughtfully: “The spurned-mistress motive, eh? Worth checking.” Then I had an inspiration. “That switchboard operator you mentioned. Remember her voice?”

The secretary looked doubtful. “You mean could I identify it?”

“I mean do you remember it? How it sounded? Whether you’d ever heard it before?”

Her head moved back and forth slowly. “You don’t remember switchboard operators’ voices. It was just a voice.”

“Could it have been Mrs. Swope?”

Her eyes went wide. “Mrs. Swope! Why ever would she pretend to be a switchboard operator?”

“Maybe she had a code arrangement with Carmichael,” I said. “With her husband in the same office, she’d hardly phone and give her own name.”

She looked doubtful. “But suppose Mr. Longstreet had been here when she called? She’d have felt kind of silly.”

“Who knew Longstreet was gone?” I asked.

She looked less doubtful. “Everyone. He’d been talking about going up to his summer camp for weeks. Mrs. Swope would have known that he left at noon yesterday.” She looked down at the tiny watch on her wrist. “Eight o’clock. Time I got back to work.”

She turned and went back to her desk. I moved back into the reception room just as the outer door opened and Marty O’Brien came in. Marty had been a muscle man back in the days of the now defunct extortion ring, but I hadn’t seen him around in recent years. Probably he had been in jail.

He said: “Hi, Marie. Boss in yet?” And then he saw me.

He didn’t say anything. Just looked.

“Hello, Marty,” I said.

He nodded.

Marie said: “You’re the first one here,” and went on with her typing.

Marty threw me another deadpan look and drifted out again.

“That one of your salesmen?” I asked Marie.

She said: “Our best.”

The door opened again and a smooth-cheeked, middle-aged man entered. In a sleek, pointed-nose and thin-lipped sort of way he was handsome. He wore expensive clothes and rimless eyeglasses with an air of needing both.

His face was all set in a big smile for Marie, but it faded when he saw she had company.

“Good morning, Mr. Swope,” Marie said in a prim, secretarial voice.

Swope doled her out an adulterated version of the original smile and gave me an inquiring glance.

“Manville Moon,” I said, showing him my license card. “Retained by Longstreet.”

His brows knit. “I see.”

He failed to offer his hand, but stood chewing his lip while he thought me over. Finally he seemed to come to a decision.

“Come in,” he said, and preceded me to his office.

When we were seated and he had offered me a cigar, which I politely refused after noting the brand, he leaned back and crossed hands over his stomach.

“I’ve told the police everything I know about this terrible affair,” he said. “But of course I’ll be glad to give any further help I can.”

“Fine. Will you just run over what you told the police?”

He raised his shoulders and let them fall again. “It wasn’t much, I’m afraid. I knew nothing about the two phone calls until Marie told of them when the police were here. I left at four-thirty yesterday, and didn’t know anything had happened until a policeman came to my home about six.”

“Know what Carmichael and Longstreet could have been arguing about over the phone? That is, if it was Longstreet.”

He shook his head. “They always got along. We all did. Why, we grew up together, the three of us. We were playmates in grammar school.” A reminiscent smile spread across his face. “We even chased the same girl. In high school Mrs. Swope went with all three of us before she finally settled on me.”

“Could your wife have been the cause of the argument?”

He frowned. “Of course not! They sometimes joked about both remaining bachelors because of Mrs. Swope, but purely in fun. She hadn’t gone with either of them for five years before our marriage. And we’ve been married twenty-two years.”

I said: “Do you think it actually was Longstreet who phoned yesterday?”

He looked uncomfortable. “Marie is sure of it. And I can think of no reason she would lie.”

“How do you account for his being able to phone at three-thirty and again at five, when he was locked in a cell from three on?”

He shrugged. “I make no attempt to account for it. The police are paid to unravel such questions.” His fingers drummed on the desk top. “I don’t understand how he got in jail in the first place. When he left at noon yesterday, he was intending to drive up for a week at his camp on the river. He’d planned it for weeks, and I know he intended to start at one o’clock. By two-thirty he should have been there, so what was he doing in a bar in town?”

Suddenly an expression of amazed inspiration crossed his face. “I just thought of a possible explanation!”

“Yeah?”

“I haven’t been down to the jail yet. How do we know the man in jail is Longstreet?”

That jolted me. Thinking back, I couldn’t remember anyone identifying Longstreet, and no one who knew him had looked over the prisoner.

I said: “About two-forty pounds, grizzled hair, false teeth, hairy eyebrows that curve upward like horns, and an expression like a kid getting ready to heave a snowball at a high hat.”

The enthusiasm faded from Swope’s face. “That’s Willard to a T.”

“It’s still a straw,” I said. “How about dropping down and looking him over?”

He glanced at his watch. “Can’t this morning. Be glad to this afternoon. Is that all you want of me?” He glanced at his watch again.

“Not quite. Assuming Longstreet did commit the murder, what motive could he have?”

His lips curled in a faint smile. “We have a business contract leaving our stock to the surviving partners. Half of Carmichael’s interest in this business is motive enough. And in addition, Longstreet is primary beneficiary to a fifty-thousand-dollar insurance policy on Carmichael.”

“How’d Carmichael happen to carry a policy like that?” I asked.

“We all did. If I died, the money went to Carmichael, with Longstreet as secondary beneficiary. Longstreet’s policy named me, with Carmichael as secondary beneficiary. I was secondary on Carmichael’s policy. It’s not an unusual business arrangement. Quite common in partnerships.”

I said: “How did the murderer get in and out of here without being seen? Don’t you have a watchman?”

“No. We have adequate locks, a burglar alarm system and are protected by Burns.”

“About Carmichael,” I said. “What kind of guy was he?”

He frowned down at his hand, which beat a swift march on the desk top. “George was a good businessman and an excellent partner.” The sentence ended on a slightly raised note, as though an unspoken phrase beginning with “but” should have been attached to it.

I said: “But what?”

He glanced at me, startled. “What are you? A mind reader?”

“Just a guesser. What was wrong?”

His expression was reluctant, as one unwilling to speak ill of the dead. “I suppose it was more virtue than fault. He was too strait-laced.”

After Marie Kincaid’s evaluation of Carmichael as a wolf, the answer amused me. Fleetingly a quotation passed through my mind. Something like: “Women and men see friends through different eyes.”

I said: “About women?”

“No. He was human enough, I suppose. Perhaps strait-laced isn’t the right word. Unforgiving would be better. He gave absolute loyalty to his friends and demanded the same of them.”

“Hardly sounds like a fault.”

“Perhaps not,” he admitted. “Except he carried it too far. As an example, we used to retain a lawyer named Howard Tattersall. He’s an excellent lawyer and has saved the firm considerable money in lawsuits. He also happens to be a minor stockholder in the company, owns about five per cent of the common stock. About a month ago we were preparing to offer a few new shares for sale on the open market to help finance opening a branch in another city. Tattersall, of course, had advance information and a few hours before our release, he dumped his entire holdings on the market. The sudden dumping of such a large block caused a temporary drop in price, and before it could recover, Tattersall rebought his own stock plus part of the new issue without it costing him a cent. His total gain was about twenty thousand dollars, and George was furious. He insisted that Tattersall be kicked off the payroll immediately.”

I said: “I think I’d agree with him about that.”

Swope shook his head impatiently. “You misunderstand. What I gave was merely the bare outline of the transaction, and actually there were several ramifications. One was that a speculating broker took a flyer and bore the brunt of the loss. It didn’t cost our firm a cent. But George remained adamant, so we switched lawyers, thereby losing the best corporate legal advice in town.” He studied his tapping fingers glumly, still vexed by his late partner’s stubbornness.

“Was Tattersall sore?” I asked.

He looked up again. “Naturally. We’re a fat account.”

I kept my tone casual. “Sore enough to do anything about it?”

“Do anything?” He frowned. “You mean like shoot Carmichael?”

“Yeah?”

For a minute he brooded over the question, not liking it too much. “I haven’t the slightest idea,” he said finally. “My only relations with Tattersall were business ones and I don’t know what kind of person he is otherwise.”

Chapter Four Gang-Up

Then the door began to open slowly, as though the person on the other side were hesitant to disturb us. Swope watched it expectantly; then his expression soured to a frown as the door finally swung fully open. Our interruptor was a short woman, this side of forty-five and beginning to spread. Probably she had once been beautiful, but corsets and cosmetics no longer could hide middle age. She wore expensive clothes that looked altogether much too young for her.

Swope said: “Didn’t Miss Kincaid say I was busy, Isobel?”

I guessed that this was Mrs. Swope, and didn’t miss that while Swope familiarly referred to the secretary as “Marie” in conversation, she was “Miss Kincaid” to his wife.

Isobel said: “I’m sorry. I have to see you. Will you be long?” Her tone was a curious mixture of embarrassed apology and determination.

Swope looked at his watch. “We’re nearly finished. You may as well stay, now you’re here.” He performed belated introductions. “This is Mr. Moon, Isobel. Mr. Moon, my wife.”

I asked her how she did and offered the chair I had left when she entered.

She said: “No. Keep it,” and took another in the corner.

I said: “I was just leaving, Mrs. Swope.” Then to her husband: “One more question and I won’t bother you any more. Are you familiar with a locket Longstreet has?”

The color drained from Mrs. Swope’s face, leaving it stark white behind its oversupply of rouge.

Swope said: “I’ve seen it. Why?”

“Know the story connected with it?”

He knit his brows thoughtfully. “Some silly sentimental thing, as I remember. Left to him by his mother or someone. He takes oaths on it. I always thought he was a little hipped on the subject. What about it?”

“Nothing. Just curious.”

I was watching Mrs. Swope. Her color began to come back, but she was still obviously shaken. With a sudden flash of inspiration I combined Longstreet’s mention of the locket as a gift from a girl when he was seventeen, with Swope’s casual reference to his wife’s high school romances, coming out with the interesting answer that Mrs. Swope could be the locket’s donor.

I said: “I’ve got to go. Glad to have met you, Mrs. Swope.”

She dipped her head in my direction without meeting my eyes.

Three men had come into the reception room while I was closeted with Swope. Two I recognized as compatriots of Marty O’Brien in bygone extortion ring days, but could not recall their names. The third was Tiny Sartt, a flat-headed, bow-legged killer with a criminal record longer than MacArthur’s war record.

I said: “Hello, Tiny. You a star salesman here, too?”

His constantly darting eyes touched my face and moved away. “Hello, Moon.”

“Hello, what?”

“Mister Moon,” he corrected. His eyes darted back at me and down again.

I said to Marie: “What’s the name of the outfit over you?”

“Riverside Seed Company.”

“How do you get there?”

“You have to go outside and use the main building entrance.”

A visit to the Riverside Seed Company got me nothing that I hadn’t already learned from Warren Day. The Rex Amusement Corporation closed at five, but the seed company stayed open an hour later. At about five-thirty the whole office force had been startled by what my informant described as a “terrific blam,” and one of the clerks said: “That’s a shot!”

Nearly everyone in the office, about twelve people, had gone to investigate. They found the entrance to the place downstairs unlocked, entered in a group and found the body. No one had seen the murderer leave.

The Drake Hotel is as expensive as the Jefferson, but in a quieter, more snobbish way. While not exclusively an apartment hotel, it caters to permanent residents and makes no effort to attract the tourist trade through decorative cocktail lounges and elaborate dance floors. The only entertainment facility offered its guests is a small, clean dining room which closes at eight nightly.

At the desk I asked for Howard Tattersall’s room number.

“Suite four-seventeen,” the room clerk said. “I’ll ring to see if he’s in.”

I said: “Never mind. He’s expecting me.”

The elevator surged upward like the smooth stroke of a piston and eased to a cushioned halt. Silent doors parted in the middle, disappearing into the walls, and when I stepped out into the deeply carpeted hall, they slid soundlessly together again.

The silence was almost reverent. As I started down the hall the leather straps of my false leg squeaked and I felt guiltily self-conscious — as though violating the sanctity of a cathedral.

The man who answered my knock at the door of suite four-seventeen was of medium height and beginning to put on weight. Dark hair, parted in the middle, was brushed straight back from a wide, short forehead. Heavy black brows surmounted a strong nose and hard but wide lips clamped around a short briar. He wore a lounging robe.

“Mr. Tattersall?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I’m Manville Moon. Your office told me I’d find you home today.”

Removing his pipe from his mouth with his right hand, which conveniently prevented him from offering a handshake, he said: “If it’s business, I’m sorry, but this is my day off.”

“It’s business about a murder,” I said. “May I come in?”

“Are you police?” he asked sharply.

“Private.” I watched his face for a minute, saw no invitation there, and said: “I’m coming in.”

He stepped back, swung the door wide and let me go past him into the room. It was a large room, much better furnished than my walkup parlor. Doors on either side of it leading to other rooms made it at least a three-unit apartment. I wondered how many hundred more a month he paid than I did for my three-room flat.

I tried an easy chair, liked it and settled back with a cigar in my mouth. The lawyer remained standing, frowning down at me while I applied flame to the cigar end.

“You’ve heard of George Carmichael’s death,” I said finally, making it a statement instead of a question.

“On the radio,” he said shortly. “I don’t get a morning paper.”

“Used to work for him, didn’t you?”

He looked displeased and faintly insulted. “I was retained by his firm as legal counsel. They weren’t my only account.”

“Why’d they drop you?”

“I don’t see that it’s any of your business,” he said testily. “Mind telling me what you want?”

“Not at all. Know Willard Longstreet?”

“Of course. One of the company directors. Sales manager, I believe he calls himself. He also happens to be a neighbor of mine. Lives down the hall.”

“Yes, I know. Longstreet retained me to solve the crime. You wouldn’t have heard it on the radio, but he’s the prime suspect. Matter of fact, he’s in jail.”

His eyes showed mild surprise, but no particular concern. “So?”

“His gun was found at the murder scene. Longstreet claims it was kidnapped from his room.”

“So?”

“So you and Carmichael had a falling-out. So you live within crawling distance of Longstreet’s door. So where were you yesterday about five-thirty in the afternoon?”

His eyes narrowed. “Pardon me a moment.”

Abruptly he did an about-face and passed through one of the doors into another room. I heard the click of a phone being raised, got out of my chair quietly and circled toward the door. As I reached it and got my ear near the jamb, I heard him say, “Right away,” and drop the phone back in its cradle.

Circling back to my chair, I settled in it again and was drawing slowly on my cigar when he reentered the room. I looked up and got a surprise.

A sardonic smile lifting the edges of his wide mouth, he leaned in the doorway and accurately pointed an army automatic at my cigar.

I removed the cigar, but the muzzle failed to follow it, which led me to believe my head was the actual target. I waited for him to speak, but he seemed perfectly content to continue leaning and pointing.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked finally. “Raise my arms, bark like a dog, or just go home?”

“Just sit,” he said. “And keep your mouth shut.”

So for twenty minutes I sat and kept my mouth shut. When my cigar became a stub, I set it carefully on the ash stand next to my chair, moving my hand slowly because I could see the automatic’s hammer was back and the safety off. At the end of twenty minutes a key turned in the outer door’s lock.

Anton Strowlski came through the door, nodded to Tattersall and turned his brittle eyes on me.

“Mister Moon, isn’t it?” he asked with heavy sarcasm, deeply underlining the “Mister.”

I didn’t feel called on to reply.

“Stand up,” he said.

I rose slowly, turned my back and raised my arms without waiting for the order. Anton’s hand snaked under my armpit from behind, removed my P-38, then carefully patted my pockets.

“Turn around,” he commanded.

Facing my host again, I dropped my arms. Anton drew a short, dainty automatic from his side pocket, a twin of the one he had lost to the police, removed his smart snap-brim hat and dropped it over the gun.

“Only a .32,” he said pleasantly. “But I use dum-dums. It makes a hole like a saucer.” The mock-pleasantness left his voice and his lips drew thin. “We’re going out now, and if you make a move I don’t like, you get it.”

He waved me toward the door, then followed, keeping a pace distance between us. Tattersall stayed home, presumably not caring to participate in murder on his day off, but just before the door shut behind us he said: “It’s been very pleasant, Mr. Moon. Do come again.”

I said: “If I can’t make it, drop in on me. I’ll be in the river.” It wasn’t good, but it was the best I could do with that hat-covered little gun aimed at my back.

Our trip down was uneventful. Just two well-dressed men, one of the modern school who wears his hat in elevators, the other with his politely draped over his fist. It stayed there even after we left the elevator, clear across the lobby, down the steps and into the waiting Buick coach at the curb.

Anton and I shared the roomy back seat. Our bullet-headed chauffeur was a stranger. Getting in, I caught a quick glimpse of his knuckle-bent profile and knew I had never seen him before. As we pulled away, I started to memorize the back of his head, on the remote chance that I’d ever get an opportunity to look for it.

It was an interesting head. The neck was a weal of creased muscle that bulged out beyond the flattened rear of his skull, and the ears were mere blobs of broken gristle bunched into shapelessness.

Without instruction he wheeled the car through traffic toward the south edge of town. He kept the speed moderate until we reached the river road, then opened up and we rolled along at highway speed.

Anton spoke only once during the trip, when we reached a long, straight stretch and bullet-head pressed his foot to the floor.

“Cut the horses,” Anton said curtly.

Our speed immediately dropped to a sedate fifty-five.

A few miles later we slowed and turned onto a dirt road. We passed a farmhouse, went on about two miles without seeing another and the road began to grow rougher. Now entirely away from public view, Anton uncovered his gun and put his hat back on his head. I glanced down at the gun and got my second shocking surprise of the day. Only this one was pleasant.

They say that every criminal eventually makes some stupid mistake which ends his career. Anton Strowlski had just made his and it exceeded the criminal’s prerogative of stupidity. His neat and deadly little automatic had the safety tightly on.

Selfishly I kept the secret to myself. My right hand slashed sidewise and the hard edge of my palm caught him directly between the eyes. I had learned that blow with the Rangers, and twice used it on German sentries. It worked just as effectively on Polish-American gunmen. I felt the bone crunch and he was dead before his automatic dropped to the seat between us.

Quietly easing him back in the far corner, I picked up the gun, flipped off the safety catch and settled back to enjoy the rest of the ride.

The road grew rougher and rougher, finally becoming nothing but two weed-choked ruts. Bullet-head halted the car alongside a dense growth of bushes.

“This O.K.?” he asked, peering out at the tangled cluster of undergrowth.

“Just fine,” I said.

Startled, he spun in his seat and gaped at me and my lifeless seat-mate. Then his hand dove toward a shoulder holster. I let him bring his gun as far as the top of the front seat.

Anton had told the truth. It made a hole like a saucer.

The doorman at the Drake Hotel gave me a more courteous greeting than I deserved after parking a Buick containing two dead men at his curb. The elevator operator remembered my previous visit too, and shot to the fourth floor without waiting for instructions.

I had recovered my P-38 from one of Anton’s pockets and found his key to four-seventeen in another. Approaching Tattersall’s door with the former in my right hand and the latter in my left, I unlocked the door, kicked it open and charged in.

My dramatics were unnecessary. Howard Tattersall sat in the same chair I had occupied while enjoying my cigar. But he wasn’t smoking, because a bullet had left too little of his mouth to hold a cigar.

He slumped sidewise with one arm hanging over the edge of the chair so that fingertips just touched the floor. The other hand lay in his lap, gripping the Army automatic.

Kneeling next to the body, I sniffed the gun muzzle. It had been fired.

Rising, I entered the room from which Tattersall had phoned and found the telephone standing on a desk by the window. I dialed Homicide and asked for Inspector Day.

“Moon,” I said, when he finally came to the phone. “I’m at suite four-seventeen in the Drake Hotel. Dead lawyer here named Tattersall.”

Day asked: “Murder?”

“Can’t say. Either suicide or framed to look like it. Unless you want an unscientific opinion.”

“Give it,” the inspector said.

“Murder, then. No evidence. Just a hunch.”

Day was silent for a minute; then he said: “I’ll send Hannegan. Got to take a nap before I drop dead.”

As though bringing up an afterthought, I said casually: “There are also two bodies in a Buick parked in front of the hotel. License 207–309.”

“What!” Day yelped. “What you got there? A massacre?”

“Just a rough party.” I gave him a quick sketch of what had happened.

When I finished the résumé he asked: “Think Tattersall bumped Carmichael?”

“Possibly.”

“Wish you hadn’t eliminated all the witnesses,” he complained. “Complicates things.”

“If they were still alive, I wouldn’t be.”

“That’s not a bad idea either,” he growled, and hung up.

Glancing at my watch, I was surprised to discover it was only a quarter of eleven.

Beginning to feel the effect of only three hours’ sleep, I found a sidestreet barroom and took on a rye and water. I was the only customer at that time of day, and as I dawdled over my second drink, the bartender dropped a coin in the record machine to play a Phil Harris number. When it played out, I picked a nickel from my change on the bar and started over to play another. Then I noticed a pinball game against the wall. Right next to it stood a cigarette vendor.

I changed my mind and went back to my stool. Three coin machines in this small, neighborhood bar had started a train of thought. I began visualizing various stores I had been in recently, trying to remember whether or not they were equipped with coin machines. The drugstore near my flat had one pinball game. The confectionery next to it had one. I thought of two filling stations and a barbershop where I had noticed them, and suddenly the tremendous size of the business registered on me. I could not think of a single tavern, restaurant, drugstore, grocery, filling station or barbershop I had been in during recent months which was not equipped with one or more coin devices. I motioned to the barkeep.

“You own this place?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he admitted.

“Where you rent your coin machines?”

He rubbed his chin. “Why?”

“Because I want to know.”

“You a cop?”

“No.”

“What are you?”

I said: “I’m the guy just asked you a question. Get up an answer before I kick your teeth in.”

He widened his eyes at me, sucked in his breath and said: “Fellow named Sartt.”

“Tiny?”

“That’s the guy.”

I said: “Next time he’s in, tell him to take ’em out. My company’s taking over this territory.”

The bartender paled. “Listen, mister. I can’t tell Sartt that. I’d end up in the gutter.”

“You’ll end up in the gutter if you don’t.”

He ran a hand over his forehead. “Geez, mister. I’m just trying to make a living. I don’t want any damn machines in here at all. But I want trouble less than I don’t want machines. If you guys start squeezing me between you, I lose no matter which way I jump. Why don’t you talk to Sartt, and I’ll take whichever machines the both of you say.”

I grinned at him. “Relax and have a drink. I was just fishing for information. Now I’ve got it.”

Some of his color came back, but now he looked worried. “You are a cop, ain’t you?”

I shook my head. “Just a guy who doesn’t like Tiny Sartt. Forget it. You won’t get in trouble.”

I had the final segment of the puzzle.

Chapter Five Close-In

I went home and shaved, ate a quick breakfast and took a cab to police headquarters. I found Warren Day asleep on the cot in his office. I shook him awake.

“Go away,” he said.

“Get up. I’ve got your case solved for you.”

He sat up and rubbed his eyes, groped over to the desk and found his glasses. “What time is it?”

“About noon.”

Sinking into his chair, he took a pint bottle from a bottom drawer, swished a slug around in his mouth, swallowed and started to put it back.

I said: “Do I drink alone when you come to my house?”

Grumpily he reopened the drawer, examined the bottle’s liquor level over the top of his glasses and handed it to me. He watched suspiciously as I raised it to my lips and said: “O.K. That’s enough,” before I even downed the first swallow. I handed it back after the second.

“If you’re going to get me up at four in the morning to break your cases,” I said, “you’ve got to keep me awake.”

He fumbled a dead cigar from his ashtray, dusted it off and popped it in his mouth. “O.K. Spill your story.”

“Not yet. I’ve got it figured out, but we have to prove it. I’ve no urge to be sued.”

“Oh,” he said. “You got a theory.”

“Sure. What have you got?”

“Nothing,” he admitted. “I’m listening.”

“This is what I want. You have Marden Swope, Mrs. Swope and Marie Kincaid picked up separately and brought here. Keep them apart and I’ll talk to them one at a time.”

He eyed me fixedly over his glasses. “What do I pick them up on?”

I waved that aside impatiently. “That’s your problem. If you’re leary of warrants, lure them down. Tell ’em the jail’s on fire and you need a bucket brigade. Tell them anything.” Then I remembered something. “Swope was coming in anyway, to identify Longstreet. He suggested your prisoner might be someone else.”

Day snapped erect. “He what!”

“Don’t get excited. Just a screwy idea he had. It’s Longstreet, all right.”

He leaned back in his chair again. “And when all these people get here?”

“I’ll talk to them.”

He scratched his head. “Knowing how you like to grandstand, I don’t suppose you’d outline your case first?”

“Don’t suppose I would.”

“O.K.,” he said wearily. “What can I lose? I haven’t got a case anyway.”

He picked up his phone, gave the necessary orders and we sat back to wait.

Inspector Day sent out for sandwiches and coffee after pointedly informing me that my share of the bill would be thirty-five cents, and collecting it before he ordered. We had just finished our uninspiring lunch when Hannegan stuck his head in the door.

“They’re all here,” he said.

“Separate?” I asked.

“None of them even know the others are here.”

“Send in Mrs. Swope,” I ordered.

Hannegan looked at Day, his eyebrows raised.

“I’m just a figurehead around here,” the inspector said bitterly. “Don’t pay any attention to me.”

The lieutenant shrugged, started to smile and wiped it off fast when Day roared: “Get a move on!”

“Yes sir,” he said, and backed out hurriedly.

“See what happens when I let you give orders?” Day asked aggrievedly. “Discipline shot to hell!” He rubbed his bald spot and mumbled: “Impertinent pup.”

“He didn’t say a word,” I said in Hannegan’s defense.

The inspector snapped, “I know what he was thinking!”

A knock sounded. Day growled, “Come in,” and Hannegan opened the door nervously.

He stepped aside to let in Mrs. Swope, then asked the space between Day and me if we wanted him to remain. It was impossible to determine which of us he was addressing.

I nodded imperceptibly and Day said: “You can stay if you keep your mouth shut.”

Mrs. Swope waited uncertainly, kneading her hands together and looking frightened. I introduced her to the inspector and asked her to have a chair. She looked around hesitantly, finally deciding on the one farthest from Warren Day’s desk. I walked over and looked down at her.

“Ever hear of truth serum, Mrs. Swope?” I asked.

She looked puzzled, then nodded doubtfully.

“We gave it to Longstreet, and his locket couldn’t help. He told us all about it.”

I might have told her that the world would end in five minutes. She turned paper white and clutched at her throat. “No,” she whispered. “No.”

“Don’t hold it against him, Mrs. Swope. He meant to keep his oath, but you can’t fight truth serum. He had to tell.” I made my voice sympathetic.

She asked in a dead voice: “Everything?”

I played the hunch on which my whole case was based, holding my breath as I played it, because if I were wrong, Mrs. Swope would know my whole attack was bluff.

I said: “Even that you were the girl who gave him the locket twenty-seven years ago.”

It worked. The shock of it, superimposed on the shock of Longstreet breaking his oath, nearly heaped her on the floor in a faint. She managed to retain consciousness, but all resistance was knocked out of her. The hopeless eyes she turned up at me were utterly convinced I knew everything.

“What do you want of me?” she asked.

“We just want you to clear up a point or two. How you learned of the plot, for example.”

She was too far gone for suspicion, but she said in dull surprise: “Didn’t Willard tell that?”

“We didn’t ask him,” I said easily. “It’s not an important point. We know you warned him, after making him swear on the locket he’d never tell. We know why you warned him... That you couldn’t bear to see an old sweetheart framed, even though your husband was the framer...”

“Framed?” she asked wonderingly. “I didn’t know it was a frame-up when I told Willard.”

“I was merely using a figure of speech,” I rapidly backtracked. “You see, we know enough of the story so that we have already arrested your husband. He’s beyond all possible help, so you have nothing to lose by telling us how you learned the plot.”

Her head drooped and she gazed helplessly down at her hands. “I overheard them in Marden’s office.”

“Overheard who?”

“Marden and Miss Kincaid. It was a week ago. I dropped in to see Marden, and Miss Kincaid was in his office. The door was open a crack and I stopped to listen. I don’t know why, because I’m not a suspicious woman. After listening, I thought it best Marden not suspect I had heard, so I left without going in.”

“What did you hear?”

“I heard Miss Kincaid say: ‘Suppose at the last minute Longstreet changes his mind about going to the camp?’ Marden said: ‘I thought of that. Anton will tail him when he leaves the office at noon. If he looks like changing his mind, Anton has orders to stick a gun in his ribs and make sure he’s at camp by four at the latest.’ ”

I suddenly understood a lot of things which had not previously been clear. “How’d you know what they were talking about?” I asked.

“I didn’t,” Mrs. Swope said dully. “If I’d had any idea...” Her voice faded away for a minute, then went on: “I’d have spoken to Marden. I’d...” She looked up at me helplessly. “I don’t know what I’d have done. I didn’t know what it all meant, and I kept brooding about it until I was nearly sick, and it got closer and closer to the time, and finally the actual morning arrived without my doing anything about it, and I couldn’t stand it any more so I went to the office and told Willard just before he left at noon.”

She began to cry, making no sound, but with her shoulders jiggling up and down in jerky rhythm as tears slid across her face.

I said to Hannegan: “Got all that?”

He looked up from the notebook in which he had been unobtrusively writing during the entire interview. “Yeah. Got it all.”

“Have someone type it up in the form of a statement for Mrs. Swope to sign. And while it’s being typed, bring in Marden Swope. Get Longstreet from his cell too.”

He said: “Check,” rose from his chair and escorted Mrs. Swope from the room.

As the door closed behind them, Warren Day burst out: “What in hell’s going on? All that nonsense about truth serum!”

I grinned at him. “Worked, didn’t it?”

“Is Marden Swope the killer?” he demanded.

“I doubt it,” I said, enjoying myself. “Can’t tell yet.”

He peered at me sourly over his glasses. “Damn grandstander,” he muttered.

A knock sounded and Day said: “Come in.”

It was Marden Swope, followed by Hannegan.

I said to Swope: “You’ve met Inspector Day, haven’t you?”

“Yes. Yesterday.”

Day grunted something unintelligible, then said begrudgingly: “Have a chair.”

Another knock sounded and Day said: “Come in.”

It was Willard Longstreet, flanked by two bluecoats. He looked the group over without speaking, then moved over and took a chair next to me. Apparently he had gotten some sleep, for he looked rested. But his clothes were in terrible shape and he needed a shave.

In a self-conscious voice Marden Swope said: “Hello, Willard.”

Longstreet nodded at his partner gravely, no sign of humor in his eyes.

“Swope suggested you might be an impostor,” I told Longstreet. “We brought him down to identify you.”

A mischievous twinkle replaced the serious expression in Longstreet’s eyes. “What made you think that, Marden?”

Marden Swope said embarrassedly: “It’s Willard, all right, Mr. Moon.”

“What made you think I wasn’t?” Longstreet asked.

Swope remained silent, so I said: “He couldn’t understand how you got in jail. Weren’t you supposed to be up at your camp yesterday?”

“Planned to be. Changed my mind.”

“Why?”

Longstreet eyed me quizzically. “No law against it, is there?”

“None I know of. Especially since you had a good idea of what awaited you at the camp.”

Swope asked: “You through with me now?”

“Not quite,” I said. I turned back to Longstreet. “I have the case solved.”

There was a sharp click as Longstreet’s upper plate dropped and was snapped back in place by his tongue. Swope licked his lips and watched me curiously.

“Funny thing about this case,” I said to Warren Day. “Longstreet hired me to find out something he already knew. That probably sounds silly, and it was in a way. But Longstreet couldn’t figure any other way to handle the impossible situation he found himself in.”

I paused to let tension build up in the room. The only reason I occasionally grandstand is because Day hates me for it. He was glaring at me now.

“Another peculiar thing about the case,” I went on, “was that all of the evidence was false. So to solve the case, you had to ignore the evidence and depend on pure reason. That’s why the police fell down.”

Glancing sidewise at Day, I noted his nose now shone pure white against the inflamed background of his face.

I said: “The first premise I worked on was that Longstreet here couldn’t possibly have committed the murder. The police should have decided that at once also, but they preferred to play around with weird theories about his pulling a Houdini jail break and then breaking back in again. My second premise was that Longstreet deliberately got himself jailed.

“Combining these two facts, you immediately get some inevitable conclusions. First, Longstreet knew someone was after him, and the forces involved were too much for him to fight. So he chose jail as the only safe place to be. Second, he had been framed for Carmichael’s murder. Luckily for Longstreet, his being in jail not only made him temporarily safe, but gave him an iron-clad alibi and upset the framer’s applecart.

“The third inescapable conclusion is that the testimony of Marie Kincaid was a lie from beginning to end. There never were any phone calls. Her story was prepared in advance of the crime. If I hadn’t, out of pure cussedness, pointed out a gunman named Anton Strowlski to a cop, which prevented him from phoning Marie and telling her the plot had gone sour, she never would have told the story she did. And after finally learning too late that Longstreet had been safely in jail all the time, she tried to wriggle out of her sworn statement by inventing another story which never happened.

“And the last obvious conclusion is that from the moment Longstreet learned Carmichael had been murdered, he was able to figure out exactly what had happened.”

Marden Swope was gazing at me in wide-eyed amazement. Longstreet’s face, directed at his partner, contained an expression of unholy glee. Warren Day had half risen, and glared at Longstreet.

“If you knew the answer all along,” he rapped, “why’d you keep quiet?”

“That’s the silly part of the whole affair,” I answered for Longstreet. “He has a sacred locket he takes oaths on. Before Mrs. Swope warned him he was on the spot, she made him swear on the locket that he’d never repeat a word. That left him in the peculiar position of being framed for a murder and unable to say anything in his own defense. He was literally between the devil and the deep blue sea. So he hired me to expose what he already knew.”

Day said: “He chose the devil,” guffawed ferociously and suddenly stopped when no one else smiled.

Ignoring the inspector, I went on: “In a desperate effort to keep his oath, he gave me twenty-four hours to solve the case. If I hadn’t made it, I suspect he would have talked anyway. Keeping the oath was worth ten thousand dollars to him, but I doubt that he wanted to gamble his life on it.” I looked at Longstreet. “Right?”

He merely grinned without answering.

Swope, suddenly coming to life, rose from his chair. “What was that about my wife?” he demanded.

I said: “Shut up and sit down.”

He looked at me whitely, his eyes narrowed to slits. Hannegan crossed the room, put his hand on Swope’s chest and pushed him back in his chair.

Warren Day snarled at me: “If you’re through grandstanding now, spill the works. Is this guy the killer?”

I took him out of his misery. “No. It was a good old-fashioned gang killing. Swope ordered it and Marie Kincaid was an accessory. If Longstreet had received the warning earlier, he’d probably have skipped town. But when he got it, Anton Strowlski was already on his tail. And when he couldn’t shake Anton, he got himself arrested.

“What gave me the first steer was that even after his alibi was established, Longstreet insisted on staying in jail until the case was solved. The only reason I could see for that was that he was afraid of something, and I learned what he was afraid of by a visit to the Rex Amusement Corporation and a conversation with a bartender. The corporation’s salesmen are the finest bunch of professional extortionists and killers you ever saw. They’ve spread coin machines all over town by delivering them and telling proprietors to keep them. You can pass that to the rackets squad.

“So it was all of them Longstreet was afraid of. He’d been put on the spot in typical gangster fashion. Swope here was tired of splitting three ways, so he had Carmichael killed and framed Longstreet. Howard Tattersall, who had access to Longstreet’s room, obtained the gun, probably on Swope’s promise that he’d be made a partner. But Swope wasn’t splitting with anyone. After Tattersall served his purpose, he conveniently committed suicide.

“Swope picked a time he knew Longstreet would be at his river camp alone and without an alibi. Undoubtedly one of Swope’s killers was waiting at the camp to arrange Longstreet’s suicide in remorse for having slain his partner.

“Marie was merely a tool. She’s probably Swope’s mistress.”

Swope said: “I want a lawyer.”

Paying no attention to him, Warren Day said: “So after all this circus, we still don’t know the name of the actual killer. I’m going to find out right now!”

It turned out to be Tiny Sartt. The state rewarded him with a free trip to another world. Swope got life, Marie five years, Longstreet my apology and permission to call me “Moon,” and I got ten thousand dollars for eleven hours’ work, which is nine thousand, nine hundred and seventy-five more than my standard day rate.