The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

C(yril) M(ichael) Kornbluth (1923–1958) was born in New York City and attended the University of Chicago, graduating after his service in World War II, where he received a Bronze Star for his action at the Battle of the Bulge. Although not known as a writer of mystery fiction, he is regarded as a giant in the world of science fiction in spite of his death of a heart attack at the age of only thirty-four. He was a member of the Futurians, an organization of left-wing, occasionally communist, activist figures of the SF fan community, many of whom went on to become successful writers and editors, including Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Frederik Pohl, and Donald A. Wollheim.

Kornbluth began writing science fiction at the age of fifteen, selling his first work before his eighteenth birthday. His most famous short story, “The Little Black Bag,” in which a doctor who has become an alcoholic derelict finds a bag containing advanced medical technology from the future which he uses to benefit mankind, was filmed by the BBC for its Out of the Unknown television series in 1969, and in the following year by Rod Serling for Night Gallery. Kornbluth used numerous pseudonyms in his career, mostly for short stories; many of his novels were coauthored with Judith Merril (Outpost Mars, 1952, and Gunner Cade, 1952) and Frederik Pohl (The Space Merchants, 1952, and Search the Sky, 1954), and many stories were completed after his death.

“Beer-Bottle Polka,” one of his two Black Mask stories, ran in the September 1946 issue.

A private eye is supposed to be in the know. That was where the blow came to Tim Skeat’s pride — he was supposed to be, but that was all. A carved-up corpse, a punk with a gun, and a mob at his heels for a secret he didn’t have — tough-guy Skeat took and gave a lot of punishment before the ugly picture began to make sense. And he was almost sorry when it did.

My phone rang.

“T. Skeat, private investigations, Skeat speaking,” I said.

“This is Angonides, Skeat. I’m at 3609 Columbus Avenue. Get down here right away.”

“What about?”

“I said, get down here right away. It’s a killing.” He hung up. I locked the office, put on an overcoat and caught the first taxi I could get.

It was a crummy address, in the heart of the brownstone-furnished-room neighborhood. There were cops in front of the place. They sent me up to the third floor.

Detective Lieutenant Angonides was waiting for me in the corridor. He handed me a dirty bit of paste-board.

“This your business card?” he asked.

I looked it over. “Of course it is. How’s it figure?”

“We found it in the hatband of the guy in there. Go on in.” The big Greek gave me a push that I didn’t like.

The little hall bedroom was full of people. An M.E. was mumbling to himself as he filled out his forms. Two photographers were yapping to each other about film grain. A fingerprint man was swearing at a uniform cop who had sat in his powder.

One of the people in the room wasn’t making any noise. He was lying naked on the bed. He was tied down with clothesline.

Somebody had tied him down, gagged him with paper toweling and slowly, nastily and completely had shredded him with the broken base of a beer-bottle. Blood soaked the dirty, rumpled blanket and pillow; blood stained the floor. It looked black and unreal under the photographers’ lights.

“Do you know him?” asked Angonides.

“Can you wipe the blood off his face?”

He looked at the photographers and they nodded. He wiped, standing at arm’s length.

“I know him,” I said.

“Name?” asked Angonides, taking out his note-book.

“I don’t know that. He’s just a nut who stumbled into my office last Tuesday. He said he had a secret to sell me for five hundred. I told him what he could do with his secret and he stumbled out again. That’s all.”

The big Greek closed his note-book with a snap and shoved it into his pocket. He began to bully me in a tired sort of way: “What the hell are you trying to tell me, Skeat? You got a client and didn’t even take his name?”

“I don’t take the brush-man’s name when he calls. This guy wasn’t even a brush-man. He was just a nut.”

“How about the card he had?”

“My cards are all over the city. That doesn’t mean a damned thing and you know it.”

“Maybe I do,” he said, and his head swiveled around to the stiff. He picked up the beer-bottle and hefted it.

The slashes on the body were none of them very deep and not one was in a vital place. He had died of shock and blood-loss. Some of the cuts were in exquisitely painful places — the inside thigh, soles of the feet and others — but I couldn’t guess whether those were part of the random pattern or intentional.

“The killer changed hands at least once,” said Angonides. “And he worked from both sides of the bed.” He studied the cuts, his brows wrinkled.

“What the hell,” I said, “you’ll trace him by his papers and then you’ll get his buddies and one of them’ll be the killer.”

“He didn’t have any papers except your card,” said the detective. “He was a skip.”

“How do you know?”

“He tried to lose himself. Five laundry-marks on his clothes, different one each week. Different restaurant every day. This is the third rooming-house we’ve traced him to. His trail’s so completely doubled back on and loused up that he’s been dropped from the books.”

“Then you’ll get a flimsy from some M.P.B. in Idaho or Maine and you’ll be on his tail.”

“If he’s a fugitive from justice. If he’s just on the lam from a mob — well, this means the mob caught up with him.”

The M.E. mumbled to himself and the photographers yapped at each other about photometers. The fingerprint man whistled “Annie Laurie” as he packed his kit. I felt sick. The blood on the stiff and the blanket and the pillow and floor stank hotly.

“Come down to Center Street with us,” said Angonides.

“That a request?”

“Yes,” he said, slowly and unwillingly. “You’re the one and only lead, Skeat. If you’re holding something out we’re going to get it, one way or another.”

“Don’t muscle me, George. You’ll be sorry if you do.”

“I’ve got to be sure,” he said, staring at me.

We rode down to Center Street in a squad car. In one of the old-fashioned paneled offices I filled out an affirmation repeating my story. Then Angonides and his boys politely and coldly ushered me into a basement room.

“This the place?” I asked, looking around. The walls were stone, the ceiling was low and ominous. There were no windows. In one corner stood a big, heavy chair screwed to the floor with angle-irons. There weren’t straps nailed to it; that wouldn’t have looked good.

One of the boys held me by each arm and Angonides went to a wall switch. The ceiling light clicked out and a photo-flood in a kid’s magic lantern went on. The detective lieutenant lowered it so it glared into my eyes. I closed them and the light went right through.

“You’ll never get away with this, George,” I said.

“Maybe not, but I’m going to try.”

“In the funny papers I’d get to sit down,” I said, wiping my eyes.

“This isn’t the funny papers,” said Angonides flatly.

I took out a pack of cigarettes and somebody’s hand held my wrist while another hand took the pack out of my fingers.

“You don’t smoke when you’re being sweated,” said Angonides from the darkness. “Didn’t you know that?” I heard a match explode on somebody’s finger-nail and smelled the sulfur, then the reek of a cheap cigar. The smoke drifted into the cylinder of light.

I brought my watch up to my eyes. “Another day shot to hell,” I said. “How long do you keep this up, George?”

“How long do you, Skeat?” he asked.

“I’ll tell it again,” I said. “Turn off the damned light.”

“Nope.”

“Then I’ll tell it anyway. The character came into my office on Tuesday—” I finished the story. “Now turn off your damned light.” My eyes were streaming. When I wiped them they just got sorer.

“Nope. Not good enough.” He whispered something in the darkness and the two boys holding my arms held them tighter. Angonides’ face came between me and the light. He had a curious, thoughtful look — a couple of short, vertical wrinkles between the eyes. He was slowly wrapping a towel around his right hand.

“George, for God’s sake!” I yelled at him, sweating.

“Tell it again,” he said, drawing the towel tight and smooth, not leaving a wrinkle in it, tucking the end under.

I told it again, almost babbling.

He hit me just under my bottom rib, on the left side. It was a pile-driver. It jarred my guts and shot up and down my backbone like chain lightning.

He pounded me again. And again. And again. He wasn’t standing like a boxer but like a big-league batter, very square and steady. His right hand pumped forward and back at his hip level. There was silence in the room except for my breathing and his.

He stopped and said: “I can keep this up all night, Skeat. Can you?”

I tried to talk and found that I couldn’t. But I didn’t have anything to say that he hadn’t heard. So I nodded my head to say, Yes, I can keep this up all night, you brainy detective lieutenant.

He sighed and began again. He pounded me slowly and methodically and with all the steam he had, six times, twelve times, eighteen times, always in the same place, as if he were trying to chop down a tree with his fists. The tissues of the spot just under my bottom rib began to whimper, then to shriek at every blow. Finally the spot felt soft and ice-cold and hurt just as much between blows as when he landed.

Eighteen. Twenty. Twenty-five. He stopped.

“It’s seven-thirty, Skeat. How about some dinner?” he asked flatly. “You’re tying up some good men in this crummy basement. Open up and let’s all go home.”

I retched and shook my head for “no.”

Angonides felt the spot he’d been pounding and then wordlessly fired his fist into a new part of my hide, six inches to the right. He took his stance again and pounded, I don’t know how long. My body felt swollen and waves of pain swept over it. Between the waves the light seemed to dim. Then I slipped and began to speed down the longest, slickest, steepest toboggan slide in the world. The photo-flood bulb in the kid’s magic lantern went out.

The detective was shaking me. I tasted cheap whiskey on my tongue and felt it burn my lips. When my eyes opened things were blurred, but I saw Angonides’ big, serious face staring into mine.

“Skeat,” he said, “you won’t get anywhere if you try to put through a complaint. You understand that?”

“So what?” I asked thickly. “What happened?”

“You got tired and went to sleep. But you didn’t talk. The hell with you.”

“You shouldn’t have muscled me, George,” I said. He left his face blank. His boys silently led me out.

I found myself on the sidewalk outside 32 Center, rocky as a drunk at the end of a three-week bender. I walked to a subway trying not to swing my shoulders. They hurt. I hurt from the waist up — and down.

At the Russian Baths on Second Avenue I bought a cot for the night and went into the steam room. I sat on the top tier where it’s thickest and hottest. My skin became pink all over and then two pinker blotches appeared just under my bottom ribs. That was all. Angonides knew his stuff.

I told the rubber to take it easy. He was a big, gray man with knowing hands and an Eastern Europe accent. He touched the two faint bruises once and asked: “Mugs or cops?”

“Prunes,” I said. “That happens whenever I eat too many prunes.”

He grinned and shut up. A little later he began to talk about the Cossacks of the tsar and what they used to do to nihilists and liberals.

I asked him if the Cossacks ever used to shred liberals with beer-bottles. He left off the massaging and showed me page three of the Mirror: “SUSPECT HELD IN BOTTLE DEATH.” The story said a little less than nothing. My name wasn’t mentioned, though I suppose I was the suspect.

“Never heard of it.” I yawned. I was so sleepy he had to lead me to the cot.

“ ’Night, mister,” he said. “Lay off them prunes.”

The next morning I woke with ice-picks under my ribs, but in pretty good shape, considering. I had a barbershop shave and some coffee and wheat-cakes in a cafeteria. I went uptown to my office. It was only nine-thirty, but I had a visitor already in the little waiting-room I keep unlocked for the drop-in trade.

He was young and trained-looking. He was dressed in gray and had hot, dark eyes that wrinkled at the corners.

“ ’Morning,” I said. “I’m Tim Skeat. Is there anything—” I was unlocking the office door when I saw that he had a little gun out.

I locked my office door again and put the key in my inside breast pocket. “What’s the caper?” I asked.

He jerked the gun toward the office door. It was a short-barrel .32 revolver. He held it right, with his thumb horizontal along the frame.

One word came from his lips, in a gray, chilly monotone: “Open.”

“Not for you, punk.”

The cold monotone said again: “Open or I’ll shoot your guts out.” But his hand didn’t tighten on the gun.

“Nope. You aren’t coked up, so you won’t shoot. If you want the keys, come and get them. Only I don’t think you’re man enough.”

He didn’t waste words; he took two steps toward me, like a boxer — exactly like a boxer. He shuffled forward his left foot and didn’t bring the right up until it was planted. His left hand was out, the gun was in his right hand at waist level. If I grabbed for it his body would be in the way of my grab. If he fired my body would be in the way of his bullet.

He dipped the left hand into my jacket. His hot, dark eyes didn’t leave my left shoulder. That was the hand I’d have to grab with, and my shoulder would telegraph the grab.

His hand closed around the key-ring in the pocket.

“Your safety’s on,” I said, looking down.

His eyes flicked down.

My left hand went out, the thumb slipping under the hammer, the fingers clamping on the cylinder. The cylinder twitched but didn’t turn as he jerked the trigger and the hammer slammed my thumb-nail. As he yanked his hand out of my jacket pocket the ulnar surface of my right landed in his wind-pipe and then crunched on his right wrist. He dropped the gun and squared off like a manly little Golden Glover.

I back-handed him with my right and he jabbed me nicely in the nose. I apologized hastily to the Marquess of Queensbury and caught his wrist as his hand bounced back to the guard.

The Ito Soji doesn’t often work unless you practice daily, but this time it didn’t let me down. He went spinning through the air and fetched the office partition an awful smack.

Moe Baumgart, the insurance agent next door, yelled: “Skeat, for God’s sake!”

“Sorry, Moe!” I bellowed back through the partition. I rolled back Junior’s eyelid. He was faking. I picked him up by the collar, pocketed his gun and opened my office door. Suddenly he was writhing like a crazy wildcat in my grip, clawing for my eyes, my throat, my hair. I threw my right arm around his throat from behind in a stranglehold and coldly put the pressure on, and then I held it.

His eyes popped and he made faint, gargling noises. His face went blue. I let him drop and booted him through the door. I locked it and went to the phone.

“I want a young, intelligent policeman,” I said to the operator. “Room 917, Greenleaf Building, Broadway at Fifty-first Street. There’s no great hurry about it.”

She repeated the address and thanked me, I don’t know why.

“Get into a chair,” I said to the kid. He glared at me from the floor. I picked him up and dumped him into the client’s seat. He wasn’t going to talk, he was saying over and over to himself. I grinned at him.

“They’ll trace you through the A.A.U. welterweight division,” I said.

His eyes widened for a moment; then he looked away from me. He wasn’t going to talk.

He didn’t have to.

“Lots of form,” I said. “Lots of form and no guts.”

“The hell with you,” he said. The movie-gangster chill was gone from his voice.

“They shouldn’t have sent you,” I said. “They should have sent a man.”

He grinned wolfishly. I was glad I had the gun.

“Being a detective is hard on the stomach,” I said. “Every time I meet a punk like you it makes me want to throw up. And you don’t know how many punks like you there are, in the new suits with the new guns they don’t know how to use. ‘Your safety’s on, Junior — take your safety off before you shoot the man!’ And you fell for it!”

He grinned his animal grin again and said slowly: “Someday I’m going to meet you again, buddy—” The words trailed off.

“Merry hell you will. You’re headed up the river right now. And when you get out you won’t be able to fight those good, clean amateur fights for thirty-dollar suits and fifty-dollar watches. The mob won’t even hire you back after the way you fluffed this job.”

“The hell I won’t meet you, buddy.” He grinned tightly. “And the hell I won’t get hired.”

He was beginning to talk, and then the law had to pound on the door.

“Hey!” yelled the law. Bang, bang, bang on the door with the nightstick. “You want a cop in here?”

I unlocked the door. “Hello, Benelli. I asked for a young, intelligent policeman and they send you. What’s the force coming to?”

Benelli grinned. “Is that the emergency?” He indicated Junior and hung his nightstick on his badge.

“Yep. Assault with a deadly weapon. Maybe assault with intent to kill. Here’s his gun.”

Benelli pocketed it and flipped a chain come-along on the kid’s wrist. He twisted it once and the kid shot out of the chair with a yelp.

“Comfortable?” asked Benelli solicitously. He twisted it again and the kid bit his lip.

“Don’t be brutal,” I said.

He didn’t grin. “I know these punks, Timmy. I don’t like them worth a damn. Let’s all go to the precinct.”

I looked at my watch. The kid started and his eyes twitched to my desk. I looked at him and he stared out the window. He wouldn’t meet my eye.

Half a hunch is better than none.

“It’s nine-thirty,” I said to Benelli. “I have a big-deal phone-call coming up. I’ll be there at eleven.”

Benelli took him away.

I sat by the phone and smoked a chain of cigarettes until ten sharp. The phone rang.

I picked up the speaker and said, in the kid’s movie-gangster rasp: “It’s O.K.”

“Did you cool him?” asked a woman’s voice excitedly.

“Between the eyes,” I hissed.

“Maxie’ll be there in five minutes.”

“O.K.,” I rasped, sweating.

“Morgan’s tonight?”

“Uh, sure.”

“See ya.” She hung up and I scrambled for my safe to get out the .38 before mysterious Maxie arrived. I locked the door again. It would be locked.

At ten-five there was a knock.

“Maxie?” I hissed.

“That’s me,” said a pale, thin voice.

I opened the door and Maxie came in. His jaw dropped when he saw himself covered by all that caliber.

“I’m O.K., kid,” he said, surprised. “I’m here for the box.”

He didn’t know me!

“Where’s the, er, stiff?” he asked nervously.

“There—” I waved the gun at the lavatory door and put it away. Maxie could be handled without a gun — he wasn’t much of a man except for his hands. They were big, muscular and manicured. I found out why in a moment. He made a bee-line for my office safe and squatted before it.

I didn’t understand half the things he did — maybe some of it was mumbo-jumbo. Every crook dramatizes himself. But in three minutes the door swung open.

He practically dove in, ignoring me. I keep a little cash in my safe, a small set of burglar tools, my gun and cartridges, and all my case reports. Maxie set the cash aside, whistled over the tools, ignored the bullets and spread the reports on the floor.

While he pawed them I took time out to wonder what the hell was going on, but I couldn’t seem to get anywhere.

Maxie gave up the reports, puzzled. “Have I got it straight, kid?” he asked. “The guy’s name was Anson Charles English and he hired Skeat last Tuesday. He could’ve used a phony name, but Skeat didn’t open any files on Tuesday at all.”

“Who was that dame on the phone?” I asked. “Who is Anson Charles English? Why was Skeat supposed to be killed? Where is Morgan’s?” I took out the pistol again. His jaw dropped again.

“I’m Skeat,” I said. “Your gunsel didn’t keep his left up. You look silly with your mouth open.”

He closed it and gulped faintly.

I said: “You look silly with it closed, too.”

“I won’t talk to you,” he said.

“I’ll bet you want to see your lawyer.”

He looked at the door.

“It’s locked,” I said.

He went over and tried it.

“See?” I told him. “Just you and me.”

“I want to see my lawyer.” He gulped.

“No law here, Maxie. I’m getting sick of cops. They punch you around and then they say the hell with you. You get your suspect talking and they bust in and take him to the precinct. Here’s one I learned from a cop.” I belted him just below the bottom rib on the left side.

He quacked like a duck and his face went gray. He was a little man.

I pounded him in the same spot until his face was like putty and his breath crowed from his throat.

“Lay off — agh!” he said.

“Sure,” I said. “Lay off. Where’s the stiff. Oh, the stiff’s in there. Guy named Skeat. Lay off, Skeat. See what I mean?”

“A-a-agh!” He retched as my fist sunk in again.

By ten-thirty I was sweating from both armpits. Don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t hard work to bounce even a little man like a handball.

By ten-forty he was talking. I slammed him whenever he stopped, and he’d begin again like a turned-on radio.

He said Morgan’s was a gambling house in the Village.

He said English was a petty blackmailer who’d put the screws on Morgan for something. He said also that English was the corpse which had been shredded with the beer-bottle.

“Where the hell do I figure?” I asked.

He said a Mirror reporter had told somebody that I was a key-figure in the case and it had got to Morgan.

“Who’s the dame?”

He said she was just Morgan’s steno.

“What did English have on Morgan?”

Maxie shivered. “Mister, I don’t know. I’m very damned glad I don’t know. What English knew got him killed. You were supposed to have got the story from English, so you were supposed to be killed. I got sent here to see if you had the story on paper and if you did, to burn it.

“If I found a file on English in your safe I would have burned it without looking inside, as soon as I read his name on the folder. I’m — I’m glad I don’t know any more than I do about it.”

He couldn’t walk, or thought he couldn’t. I hoisted him and booted him into the corridor. He got up and made it to the elevator.

Moe Baumgart came out of his office next door and coldly asked whether I’d been holding a three-ring circus all morning. I apologized nicely and went in again to lock up.

I went to the precinct to file charges against the kid.

The part I hated was that there wasn’t any money in it for me. Maybe keeping alive’s more important than money. If it is, why does anybody get into the detective business? But I had something to do with it. They were sure as hell going to shoot my tail off unless I got the drop on them. I could call the cops and tell them the whole story, but what was the story?

A punk who wouldn’t talk. A phone-call that only I knew anything about. A little peterman who could sue me for assault and collect. Another gambling house. A nasty kind of murder still unsolved.

The cops would laugh.

But I wasn’t laughing.

I was going to see Mr. Morgan and tell him that I didn’t know him from Adam.

How was I going to find Mr. Morgan without getting chopped down? Ah-hah, that’s the catch. Maybe I was going to get chopped down. Wouldn’t that be funny as hell? To be killed so I wouldn’t spill a secret I didn’t know?

I went out and rented a dress suit.

“Got a wedding job?” Sol asked, and I said yes. After the deposit was paid I got the quakes. I felt somehow that the ten dollars changing hands had committed me. There was no turning back now.

In my hotel room I tried on the dress suit and it looked lousy. I pressed it myself, and it didn’t fit any better but it lost that off-the-shelf look. I filled the pockets with a set of cheap, flashy accessories — cigarette case, lighter, wallet, pen, memo pad, silk handkerchief. They were all monogrammed C. McC.

In my top left bureau drawer I keep a tiny Belgian .25 automatic. It’s a slim, dainty woman’s gun, no bigger than a pack of cigarettes and not as thick. I hefted it for a long minute and pondered. I slipped it into the little pocket half-way down the left tail of the dress-coat. It didn’t bulge. The tail swung a little too heavily when I tried the jacket on and walked. That was all.

I got into the gray suit again and took the subway for Washington Square. That’s Greenwich Village, where the suckers go, and I felt like the biggest sucker who ever drew breath.

Morgan’s was a brownstone front three stories high, with curtained windows. I walked past it a couple of times — it looked like three stories of absolutely nothing.

By six I was back at my hotel. The manager got three hundred dollars of my money from the safe and I stowed it in the C. McC. wallet. It was probably going to be gone before the evening was over. I might not be alive to miss it.

I shaved myself clean again and took off my sideburns. From that top bureau drawer on the left I took a sissy-looking pair of horn-rim glasses and put them on. I parted my hair and plastered it down. Usually I comb it back with water and the hell with dandruff. I polished a pair of dancing-pumps — old-fashioned, but they and the hair would take more than an inch from my height.

By eight I was dressed and staring dubiously at myself in the mirror. Nuts. I put on a chesterfield and the rented opera hat and called the desk for a taxi.

The taxi took me to a clip-joint nightclub six doors from Morgan’s. The place was the last water-hole, and some gambling parties were sure to stop there. The rest was up to me.

The clip-joint loved me. Only half a dozen parties were in dinner-jackets, and my tailcoat was almost too good to be true. The captain scraped and gave me a ringside table. I ordered a club sandwich, to the dismay of the waiter, and a side-car.

By the time I’d finished that side-car and another the nine-o’clock floor show had begun. There was a soapy little emcee who told three fairy jokes and then brought on the unrivaled, unparalleled, lavish and magnificent chorus of five retired scrubwomen. They listlessly hipped their way through a Hawaiian number and then the emcee was back.

He told three fairy jokes and brought on that brilliant tip-top tapper, favorite of Broadway, star of stage, screen and radio, Joe Nobody. Joe pretended to work up a sweat doing a steal of Bill Robinson’s staircase dance, milked a little applause by keeping up a double-shuffle for a full minute, and pranced off to the thunderous clapping of the waiters, bus-boys and the hat-check girl.

The emcee dashed on again. While he was telling three fairy jokes I ordered another side-car and looked over a party of six who’d just come in. They were in evening clothes and looked like money. They got a good table, three away from me, and ordered bonded whiskey highballs. They drank them, ordered more and stayed through the scrubwomen’s high-hat-cane-1931-Broadway-rhythm-hotcha number. They tittered hysterically at the emcee’s three fairy jokes that followed. They drank up and left in the middle of a blue-lit fan dance by the lumpiest of the scrubwomen.

Two men came in, one of them badly plastered. They were both dressed, but had a cheap look about them. They had a couple at the bar, then decided to sit for a while. They got the table next to mine. The sober one ordered coffee for the drunk one and a highball for himself. The drunk babbled that he din’ wan’ coffee and the manager began to flutter nervously in the vicinity.

The emcee was on again. When the coffee arrived the drunk threw it on the floor and bellowed: “I don’ wan’ any coffee!”

The emcee thought he would make like Eddie Davis and quell the heckler with a witty, biting gag.

“Ya know, buddy,” he said, pointing, “theh’s on’y two kines a animals ’at make a noise like ’at. One’s a—”

The drunk realized he was being talked about, took two steps onto the floor and bashed the emcee in the mouth.

“I sai’ I din’ wan’ any coffee!” he challenged the whole clip-joint and its customers.

Waiters began to flow toward him. The drunk’s friend and I each took an elbow and led him off the floor. The drunk started to apologize to the manager, who grinned and said: “That was a nice poke you gave him. The damned loudmouth needed it. I got to throw you out now. One check?”

“Sure,” I said. “Let me have it.” We got our coats and went out together. “Where to?”

The drunk said: “Le’s go Morgan’s. I gotta blackjack sys’em works ev’ time. Le’s go Morgan’s.”

“You know Morgan’s?” asked the other one.

I shrugged. “They don’t know me.”

“I’ll get ya in. They took enough from me by now ta let a friend of mine in.”

We got into the anteroom just by knocking. There was a little doubt about me there. A cauliflowered bruiser in a beautiful dinner-jacket politely refused to let me in until Hellman, wounded in the pride, swore he’d known me for seven years and that I was Square Joe from Rightville. That did it. That more than did it. The bruiser wrote me out a card — just like speakeasy days! — and I was a member. We went on in.

The whole first floor had been opened; all partitioning walls were down. There was a big chandelier with hundred-watters in it. There were plenty of hundred-watters in wall brackets. It was bright — hard on women customers and their complexions, hard on the dirty walls, but you could see what went on when the dice bounced and the cards flipped.

There were three blackjack tables, a chuck-a-luck layout, two wheels and a battery of big slot-machines.

“Craps and poker on the second floor,” said Hellman.

“I gotta blackjack sys’em works ev’ time,” said his friend, starting for the tables. Hellman hurried after him and I let him hurry.

There were about thirty women there and about twenty men. I could tell the two house men circulating gently around the room. They were big and looked darkly southern. They were watching the dealers and stickmen as closely as they watched the customers.

I left my coat and hat at the check stand, which was operated by the big bruiser who doubled as receptionist. He tripled as cashier, too, slapping down a stack of silver dollars on the counter.

“Twenty for a starter, Mr. McCowan?” he suggested.

“Forty,” I said. He doubled the stack and took my two bills. The cartwheels made an awful bulge in my pocket. After ten minutes at the roulette wheel the bulge wasn’t there anymore. I bought forty again and ran them up to forty-two in an hour at the chuck-a-luck cage.

I started upstairs to the crap games. A bulky, dark man drifted from nowhere to murmur: “Sorry, sir, no silver used on the second floor. Please change your money if you wish to go up.”

Upstairs not even a stab had been made at decorating. There were three poker tables, three craps layouts and shoulder-high screens between them. There was a twin-tube fluorescent fixture hanging over each stand.

A dark little man standing at the head of the stairs said: “Sir?”

“Craps,” I said. “High table.”

I watched the roll until I got the gun, then shot twenty and made it with a four-three.

I let it ride and rolled a five, a nine, another nine, a six and a five.

I took off thirty, rolled and crapped out with a two. The gun moved left, my fifty said he wouldn’t. He didn’t. I took off fifty, bet wrong again and collected again. I bet a hundred right on the next gunner and lost, fifty wrong on the next and won.

I got the gun and shot the hundred. I eighted the hard way and made it with a six-two on the second roll. I shot the two hundred and rolled six-five.

Shoot the four, something told me.

“Shoot the four,” I said.

The stickman didn’t flick the dice at me.

“I thought this was the high table!”

“Let him shoot the four,” said a little, dark man who had joined us.

“Yes, Mr. Morgan,” said the stickman. The dice rolled into my cupped hand.

“Nice place you have, Mr. Morgan,” I said, cackling the dice.

“We like it,” said Morgan. Only his name wasn’t Morgan, or hadn’t been long. Morgan’s a Welsh name, and Welshmen aren’t olive-skinned little men with small hands and white teeth. Welshmen don’t use perfume either.

There was something about Mr. Morgan, something just outside my reach—

“Four hundred!” I breathed, and rolled. It was a four-three again. Everybody at the table sighed.

Morgan — what was there about that guy? — counted out four C-notes and said: “Good for you, Mr. McCowan. Try again?”

“Shoot twenty,” I said. I rolled a six, a three, a nine and sevened out.

Somebody else came up from the first floor and started to the third. It was Maxie, the little peterman. I turned my back, but he recognized me. The house man at the head of the stairs saw that something was up, though Maxie had started climbing again, looking innocent and virtuous. He started after him and I heard them talk in an undertone, his voice gentle and Maxie’s nervous. I slipped down the stairs, left unguarded. I heard a buzzer somewhere.

When I turned at the landing I saw the two house men of the first floor and another I hadn’t spotted standing there at the foot of the stairs.

I stopped. The second-floor man came down the steps and frisked me lightly. He took out the flashy cigarette case, looked in it and put it back.

“Will you come upstairs, sir?” he asked.

“You bet I will,” I said.

We went up to the third floor. I was politely ushered through a door that clicked behind me. It was a nice little waiting room with three chairs. Maxie was sitting in one of them as if it were the hot seat.

“How’s the gut?” I asked him politely. It was a very courteous place.

He stared at me. “What did you come here for?”

“Why didn’t you blow town after you bungled the job?”

“I was going to bluff. After Morgan paid me I was going to blow.”

“Looks like you’re going to get paid,” I said.

I pointed to a door where one of the house men was silently standing. He beckoned to Maxie. Maxie went with him. There was a look of doom on his face.

The door opened again after a couple of minutes. The man beckoned to me. I went with him.

I wondered what my face looked like then.

I wondered what it would look like in a couple of hours.

The man took me through a corridor to the back of the house. He knocked on a door and opened it. I went through and he followed me.

There was a table, four chairs, a couple of pictures. Morgan was sitting behind the table.

“Sit down, Skeat,” he said. “Maxie told me you were here. I want to know what happened.”

I flipped the tails of my coat into my lap. “You have a secret, Mr. Morgan.”

“That’s right,” he agreed, smiling. I stared at the smile until he relaxed and waited. What was there about this little guy?

I went on: “A grifter named English found out what it was. He tried to peddle it to me. I didn’t want it, but you didn’t know that. You had English killed and you sent a boy to kill me. After I was killed Maxie was supposed to show up, open my safe and destroy the secret if I had it in writing. But I got the drop on your boy and I beat hell out of Maxie until I got the story.”

“Does Maxie know my — secret?” he asked, his face growing wintry.

“No. He’s scared of it. I’m scared of it too. I didn’t know it and I didn’t want to know it. I came here to look over your layout, maybe say hello and tell you I didn’t know what you’re covering up.”

Something clicked.

I said slowly and carefully: “Only now that I take a good, long look at you, I do know what you’re covering up.”

“You’re crazy to tell me that, Skeat. It means you die.”

I grinned, sweating. “Send your men away or I’ll yell what I know so loud they’ll all hear it. Can you kill them all?”

Morgan waved at the house man in a tired way. “Leave him to me,” he said. “I don’t want anybody else on this floor for a half hour.”

The man left silently.

Morgan leaned earnestly over the table and nodded at me. “It must sound crazy to you,” he said.

“People over here don’t kill for that,” I said.

“I’m from over there...” His eyes clouded and he nodded his little nod. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he said. “All you crazy-rich Americans — the garbage you throw away after dinner would feed two of our families all day.

“It is because we have so little — a handful of stony soil, a few saucepans, a leaking little hut and the rags we wear. We have nothing, Skeat, nothing except our families to love and protect.

“My brother and I were orphaned when we were six and eight. Our father died with the bends — he was a sponge-diver. Very hard life. Our mother died because she could not live any longer. An uncle in America sent for us and raised us. We went two different ways. I’ve been crooked as hell since I was sixteen. He’s been straight as a die all his life.

“Years ago I realized that I was doing my brother terrible harm by being what I was, so I changed my name. English found out my true name, so he died. Now nobody knows except you, who recognized my brother’s features in mine.

“If my true name were known my brother’s career would be at an end. He would drift back into obscurity and heartbreak. That is why you must die — because over there we are so poor and have nothing to love but our families.”

He reached in the drawer of the table. I reached in the left tail pocket of my dress-coat. The little Belgian .25 automatic flicked out as Morgan lifted a big revolver.

I fired at his hand a split-second before he could drag back the ponderous action of the .44. My tiny bullet burned him and his hand wavered as he fired. My second shot landed in his chest. So did my third, fourth and fifth. My ears rang with the roar of his big gun. My shoulder felt cold as ice, then began to tingle.

“Skeat,” I said drunkenly, “you’re shot.” I swayed to my feet and clawed my way to the table and the phone that stood on it.

I called a man and told him something. “And bring a doctor,” I added.

In the movies there’s a trick called “iris out.” It’s what you see when blackness creeps over the screen until there’s just a little circle of light left in the center and then the light winks out. That’s what happened to me then.

The little circle of light appeared again. It expanded and was the chest of somebody in hospital white. There was a low, heart-sick wailing somewhere, and lots of people.

The man in white said: “He’s coming to.”

“Did you phone that tip in?” asked somebody.

“Hell, yes,” I said. I could still hear the wailing.

“Good guy! We made a beautiful haul.”

My shoulder smelled of alcohol and had a bulky dressing on it. I looked around.

There was Angonides crouched by the corpse of his brother, wailing: “O Demetrios! O, delph’ Demetrios!”

“He shouldn’t have muscled me,” I said sleepily. “But we’re all square now.”

I felt very tired and contented.