The Mammoth Book of Pulp Action

Best Man Thomas Walsh

Carver, plain-clothesman on homicide, left the elevator at the fourth floor, and stepped out to a wide marble corridor flanked by glass-panelled doors on either side. “To your right,” the operator said. Carver nodded and turned.

It was a very long corridor, running the length of the Gresham Building. There was a stairway at the side farthest from him, and as he turned around a short man in a camel’s hair coat was going down this. He wasn’t hurrying; Carver, reading the labels on the office doors, didn’t pay him much attention.

The fourth door he came to was marked Tammany and Sutorius, Attorneys At Law. He was reaching for the knob when a bald fat man with mildly puzzled eyes stepped out into the corridor from an office on the opposite side.

The fat man looked curious. “You hear anything?” he asked. When Carver shook his head he stopped a little uncertainly, peered up and down, grunted: “Well,” and drew back into his room. Carver stared after him a moment, pinching his nose thoughtfully.

The door of Tammany and Sutorius was locked. Carver rattled it once to make sure, then rapped his knuckles heavily against the frosted glass panel.

He waited perhaps sixty seconds before rapping again. Inside a man’s voice was speaking shrilly, rapidly. At Carver’s second knock it choked off, a phone hook was banged down; footsteps inside hobbled across a hard wood floor, and the voice of Abel J. Sutorius, high and a little hysterical, came thinly to him:

“Who... who is it? You’ll have to smash the door.” He stopped; Carver heard his loud gasping, saw the feeble shadow of his hands beating at the glass. Then his whimper: “My God! My God!”

Carver got his broad knuckles under the knob, lifted it, and crashed his shoulder against the door’s wooden edge. Metal splintered and snapped, and the door swung in unevenly. He saw Sutorius kneeling on the floor of the small office, above another man whose body was prone, whose light brown coat was stained with blood.

Sutorius turned to him, his face very white. He babbled: “The man! The one that just left— Did you see him, Carver?”

Coming fast across the rug, Carver didn’t answer him. The prone man’s eyes were closed, but he was still breathing, with a rapid, liquid sound; he had a long thin face, narrow lips, a small black moustache. There was blood on his checked tie and on the white breast of his shirt.

Sutorius wrung his hands together, gasped as Carver reached for the phone: “I called the police — the ambulance. My God, Carver, do something! Perhaps he’s still downstairs. He was wearing a camel’s hair coat, a dark hat. I couldn’t see his face — he had a handkerchief over it — but he was short and pretty broad. He came in while I was talking to De Villier; he didn’t say anything. Just shot and ran out—” He wiped his face.

“You gave him two minutes’ start,” Carver said gravely. He looked up sidewise at the crippled attorney. “This building has three exists and a subway station in the cellar. He could have used any of them in sixty seconds.”

Sutorius breathed heavily, looking down at the wounded man. He shuddered again. “It was horrible, Carver. That fellow came in just after Frenchy got here. He closed the door to the hall and fired twice without speaking at all, before I could get out of my chair. Then he went out and locked it after him. It didn’t seem to take a moment. I phoned for help first, of course. Then I heard you knocking—”

The fat, bald man stood in the doorway, with other faces crowded over him. He was staring at De Villier, and there wasn’t much colour in his pudgy cheeks. He said to someone behind him: “I got the office just across the hall. Yeah, I heard the shots but I thought maybe they were backfires. I asked that man—” Carver pushed him out tiredly with one hand on his fat stomach and closed the door. His light eyes were cold, expressionless, and not sorry. He said: “Don’t throw a convulsion, Sutorius. Frenchy got it the way he gave it — in the back. It was way past due.”

The lawyer got up, groaning as his weight went on to his withered leg. “It’s horrible,” he repeated faintly. “It means my practice will be ruined. Shot down in my office—”

Carver said: “Think of that the next time before you play with crook trade!”

In the street under him a siren screamed, and as it died an ambulance bell jangled tinnily on the avenue. A minute later the room was filled with people; two stretcher bearers, an interne in white, two blue coated patrolmen and a detective in plain-clothes who looked surprised and said: “Hello, Joe,” when he saw Carver there.

Carver nodded to him, pushed out through the crowd at the door and went downstairs to the lobby. He bought some cigarettes at the stand there, then went up again slowly, using the stairs, after the stretcher was brought down. The plain-clothesman was questioning Sutorius in the office.

The lawyer’s voice was calmer now, but his narrow mouth was still white and nervous. He made aimless little gestures as he spoke, wiped his cheeks twice with a linen handkerchief.

When he had finished Carver said: “I saw this bird in the camel’s hair coat go downstairs, Barnes. Only I didn’t know what was wrong until I got in the room here. If Sutorius had hollered through the door when I knocked first I could have got him.”

Sutorius wiped his lips again. “But, Carver, in a position like that you don’t do logical things. My first thought, of course, was to phone the police. I was doing that when you came.”

Carver grunted and got up. He took the elevator down with Barnes and got in the police car with him. After two blocks he said: “I don’t like coincidences. I don’t like Sutorius. The whole thing smells, Barnes. Sutorius called me an hour ago and said he wanted to see me about something very important. When I get up here I’m just in time to see this bird leave. Sutorius doesn’t holler to me what’s wrong; he just lets out a few squeals and runs back. When I find out what it is, camel’s hair has two minutes’ start. Too late to catch him.”

Barnes shrugged. “Open and shut to me, Joe.”

“Too much,” Carver growled. “That’s the point. Me, I have to back up that shyster’s story. It looks like a plant, and I don’t like plants. Not even when they smell nice. This one doesn’t.”

He stared plaintively out at Park Avenue traffic, worrying at his lips.

Al Tammany, his partner Sutorius, Carver and a broad-shouldered young man, whom Carver didn’t know, were in the hospital reception room waiting for news of the wounded man.

Al Tammany stopped being genial when the door behind him opened. His head turned quickly on its beefy neck, and his heavy jowls, his small merry eyes, took on concern in the instant that he waited. Watching him, Carver thought that his eyes were like a pig’s — a happy, plump pig that was trying unsuccessfully to look sad.

He asked: “What’s the news, doctor?”

The doctor was a lean-jawed, very clean man in surgical white. He closed the door behind him and made twin black arches with his brows across a narrow, grave face. “Unfortunate,” he said, spreading his hands. “De Villier died on the operating table. I don’t see how he lasted an hour with his right lung blown apart.”

Abel J. Sutorius let out a long breath without much sound to it. Tammany said: “Poor Frenchy,” and shook his head dolefully. The young man in the corner whom Carver didn’t know looked briefly at the doctor with steady and cold black eyes. His hair was dark, brushed back like a cap of smooth enamel, and he was dressed quietly and very well in grey tweeds. His face, too, was dark and oval, handsome, but the eyes and the strong chin took away weakness from it. Carver eyed him narrowly. Pretty enough, this lad, but not just that. Hard, too. Who the hell was he?

The doctor said: “Sorry, gentlemen,” and went out. A strong reek of antiseptic swept in around them from the whitewashed hospital corridor as he left. Carver wrinkled his nose against it, got up, and smoothed out his overcoat with the palm of one hand.

Sutorius sighed, hobbled forward to the desk, took his hat. The dark young man rose after him and crossed to the door, closed it quietly, without turning.

Carver stared after him. “Who’s the Valentino, Abel?”

“Jack Miller?” The cripple looked surprised. “I thought you knew him. Everybody does. He was Frenchy’s collection man in the racket before repeal.”

Carver prodded a front tooth thoughtfully. “What’s he in now?”

“A fine thing to ask me,” Sutorius cackled. “How would I know? He’s quite a dancer; Frenchy told me once he intended to quit the game and work at that. I think he was at Harry Caddis’s place for a while, doing tangoes.”

“Let’s go,” Tammany growled. His little eyes seemed uneasy, moving away from Carver’s. “I got that brief to prepare yet, Al.”

Carver frowned at them faintly and followed them out. His coolness seemed to annoy Tammany; his red face swung back once across his shoulder, but he did not say anything.

They went along the hall and through the glass doors at the end that led to the street. It was very cold outside; a late afternoon snow fell softly, and sounds from the avenue beyond came through it muted and dull. Sutorius limped down the steps first and got into the only taxi in line. Tammany crouched and entered after him, and as the door swung shut Carver grabbed the knob and drew it out again.

“You don’t mind dropping me uptown?” he said.

Tammany grunted, settling back. Little Sutorius pulled in his wizened cheeks, smiled. “Honoured,” he said. He turned abruptly to his partner. “We can drop you at the office first, Al.”

Carver lit a cigarette without offering them around. Smoke from it spiralled up slowly in the dim interior, and clung in small thick swirls to the icy windows. When they were stopped by a traffic light on Broadway, Tammany roused himself and looked at Carver.

“Now, don’t get me wrong on this,” he growled. “Whatever you police had against Frenchy he was a good client of ours and I liked him. I hate like hell to see some yellow rat plug him and get off scot-free. You have any line on his killer?”

“Sure,” Carver said. “We got a perfect description from Abel J. He had a camel’s hair coat and a dark hat. We figure to pick him up any minute on that. Maybe he’ll turn out to have two eyes and a nose too.”

Tammany said ha, ha, very loudly, disgustedly. “That’s funny as hell, Carver.” He didn’t speak again until the cab swung up on the Grand Central ramp, crossed it, turned into a side street and stopped. Then he barked: “See you later, Abel,” and slammed the door after him.

The cab started again. Sutorius leaned forward and lit a slim brown panatella. He murmured, blowing out smoke: “I might like you if you weren’t so clever, Carver. But really you annoy people — people who might be able to help you.” His large, greenish eyes slid to Carver, with a bright glitter of something undefined far down in their depths. The something seemed to amuse him hugely. “And that, of course, makes them decide not to. You’re left out in the cold when you might be warming yourself at a nice log fire. I may say—”

Carver shrugged. “I get along.”

Sutorius nodded gravely. “You do,” he said. He looked through the window and puffed on his panatella; he didn’t speak again. When the cab turned off Park and rolled the short block to Lexington, Carver stepped on his cigarette and got out.

With the door half closed behind him he stopped it with his hand, put his head back in. “That something important, Sutorius, you wanted to see me about this morning. It still on your mind?”

Sutorius stroked his narrow chin with yellow fingers, smiled above them. “You get along,” he said.

Carver shrugged again and closed the door. He had taken three steps across the pavement when it opened and Sutorius peered out. He said: “Merely in the interests of justice, Carver. Jack Miller, the man you saw at the hospital, has a bungalow on Gibson’s Island, in the Sound. I went up there with Frenchy three days ago, after I freed him on those income tax charges.” He smirked, preened himself. “Which was really a nice piece of work, if I may say so.”

“Not bad,” Carver said. “How many jurymen have you fixed?”

“Tut, tut.” Sutorius waved his hand easily. He leaned forward and clasped skinny fingers around one wrist, smiled up at Carver with dry, very bright eyes. “I proved to the satisfaction of a court of law that my client had made no money in the past five years.”

Carver said: “Abel J. Sutorius, of the Legal Aid Society. Big hearted Abe. What’d he pay you with? Empty bottles?”

“That,” Sutorius pronounced, smiling, “is beside the point. You asked me what Miller was doing. I wondered myself, when I found him on that island in midwinter. There’s nobody else there from October until May. He had a charming girl with him — I caught a glimpse of her in the bedroom. She looked uncommonly like Mary Flood Harrington.” The lean smile darted up once more at Carver; then Sutorius bowed, waved, closed the door. The cab rolled away. Carver stared after it until snow got on his brows and began to melt down over his cheeks.

He got a paper on the way to a restaurant, read it as he was finishing his coffee. De Villier’s picture was on the front page under headlines that screamed blackly across its breadth, but Carver didn’t pay much attention to that. There was a photo on an inner page, with a thinner black caption under it — a photo of a very beautiful young girl with large eyes, apparently a blonde. The leader under it was: Harrington Girl Feared Kidnapped; Father Still Silent. Then, in smaller letters: Parent Refuses to interview Police; Believed Fearing for Girl’s Safety.

Carver read this through to the end, then stared for some moments, thoughtfully, at the ceiling. Later he paid his bill, walked over to a garage on Third Avenue, and took out his roadster.

His headlights picked out the sign fifty yards ahead. He slowed as he came to it, swinging the nose of his car slightly in. It said: ‘A. Johnson — Boats for Hire — 75c an Hr’.

At the far end of the long, low building set back from the road a rectangular line of window shone yellow. Carver turned his roadster in on the faint markings of the gravel and parked it before the stoop. It was bitterly cold, though without wind; snow still fell, heavy and soft, and under the flakes he could smell the salt strong freshness of the Sound.

In a room just off the porch a big yellow haired Swede sat at the centre table, reading a paper. He asked: “Yah?” in a heavy, surprised tone when he saw Carver, took the pipe slowly out of his mouth and lowered his shoes from the table edge.

Carver knocked the snow off his coat before speaking. Then he said: “You know where Gibson’s Island is?” A. Johnson nodded, watching him with great, candid blue eyes. Carver took a five-dollar bill from his wallet and tossed it to him. “They told me at the Point that the ferry doesn’t run there after October. One of the men said you could take me over. The five’s yours if you do.”

A. Johnson got up, his face puzzled. He said earnestly, and his voice was almost a roar: “But t’ere iss nobody t’ere now, in vinter. You know t’at? T’e island iss what t’ey call a summer resort. In vinter t’ere iss—”

“Nobody there,” Carver said. “I got good ears, Axel.”

A. Johnson smiled. “It iss Adolph,” he said. “T’ere iss no axles in a boathouse, yah?” He rumbled laughter. “But I tak’ you if you wantta go.”

Carver grinned sourly, crossed with him to a door in the rear. There was a long damp shed off this, that smelled heavily of wet wood, with tiers of rowboats lined on either side, and the varnished sides of canoes glinting in the light. From somewhere below came the faint slap-slap of water.

At the end the shed lay open to the Sound, and they walked from it to a narrow descending gangplank that ran to a floating dock. Carver stepped into a long hooded black motorboat at the side, while A. Johnson busied himself with ropes.

Presently the motor purred and they slid away from the dock; behind them on the black bosom of the water a wake of foam whiter than the snow stretched out from the stern in a fantastic V. Soon the lights on shore vanished under the soft, endless flakes; they sliced ahead faster, and spray stung Carver’s cheek. He shivered closer into his coat, dug his hands deep into his pockets.

The Swede spun the wheel, and they veered. Carver could see nothing but the whiteness of snow, the blackness of water. The breeze here came fresher, icier, and they rolled slightly in long, gentle swells. After ten minutes something dark and shapeless loomed up on their right, and the Swede slowed, circled in with a soft grunt. In a moment the white bones of a pier jutted out before them, and, barely moving, they slid up to it.

After the boat was fast Carver got out and stamped his feet on the planks. He could see a vague shoulder of land beyond, with the faded green and yellow of summer bungalows bulking up on it like a stage scene backdropped to the snow.

“Yah,” A. Johnson said, nodding his head. “Like I told you, mister. Vinter, t’en t’e people all go.”

Carver grunted. “How big is it around?”

A. Johnson thought, stroking his chin. He said at last: “It might be two miles. T’ere is a road round from t’e pier. It goes past all t’e bungalows.”

“I might be an hour,” Carver answered. “Take it easy.”

The Swede’s face grew pleading, anxious. His heavy voice chased Carver down the planks. “That Sue faller, mister — Ed Vine — he talks on t’e radio tonight. Ay want to hear him. You coom back by t’en, eh?” He stared up from the boat like a huge child.

Carver growled: “Wait, squarehead,” and went down the pier.

At its end he struck off to the left along the faint depression of a path. Bungalows were lined closely here along the water’s edge, but he could see no lights, hear no sounds. He came to a blank space which in summer might have been the beach; the ground before him was even, white, unmarked, and on the farther side tree branches were laced blackly against the low solidity of the sky.

He plunged across this, shoes crunching through the hard surface of the snow. Past the trees on the far side he came out to another clump of houses, with the black sheet of the Sound below them, on the left. He had passed the first of these when he heard gun shots a distance ahead: three, perhaps four, the reports hammering over each other so fast that they were almost simultaneous.

Carver began to run. His shoe soles struck against the polished white sheen of ice and he lunged forwards through the air, burying his shoulder in dry, cold particles of snow. Some of it sifted through his pocket flap to fingers numbed on the steel butt of his automatic. He cursed and got up, went forward more cautiously.

A second clump of bungalows swam up around him. But their windows were dark, and he could hear nothing. He passed the dirty, unlit window of a store and stopped suddenly on the ridge of a plank path. Sound came from somewhere, faint, fast, harmonised.

There was a small grey building on his left, isolated from the others. Its windows were dark as the rest. Carver crossed to it carefully and saw the reason. Steel shutters were locked over the panes, a dark shade pulled down across the glass panel of the front door. But the rhythm was plainer now: a saxophone’s soft complaint, the muted syncopation of cornets. He put his hand on the knob and pushed, found it smoothly turning, silent, and unlocked.

The room inside was warm, brightly lit, but there was nobody in it. From the console cabinet of a radio in the far corner dance music swirled out drowsily. There were many floor lamps around, and a gas flame glowed in the brick fireplace. It was very well furnished. Cigarette smoke was thin in the air.

Carver closed the door softly and remained a moment careful and rigid against it. The room ran from side to side of the bungalow; there were two doors at the back, ten feet apart. Both of these were closed.

He took the automatic out of his pocket and walked across a deep rug on the balls of his feet, choosing first the door on the left. It opened to darkness and a stale smell of fried steak; before him the metal hood of an electric range glittered whitely. He closed it, crossed to the other, listened with his ear against the wood, heard nothing and jerked it out with a twist of his hand.

On a big bed in the centre of the room a pyjamaed girl was sprawled face-down. She didn’t seem to hear the sound of the door; she was making a funny noise deep in her throat, and there was blood on the cloth twined roughly around her right arm. Carver walked lightfooted to the side of the bed and looked at her with uncertain eyes. He was bending down when a voice behind him said: “Don’t move, Carver.”

Carver let his body drop across the girl, seeing in the bureau mirror the man who stood in the doorway. In the narrow space at the footboard Carver turned, waving his automatic through the bars.

“Check!” he said.

The man was Jack Miller, whom Carver had seen in the hospital reception room. Miller made a tired movement with his shoulders as he came fully into the room. There was a roll of cotton draped over his left arm and a white basin in his right hand. His eyes were cold and luminous against the olive face.

He said: “You shouldn’t have done that, Carver. Been stupid if I’d had a gun.”

“Sure,” Carver said. “Only I could see you in the bureau mirror. I don’t scare yet at basins.”

Miller lowered his head slightly and looked at the mirror, at Carver. He shrugged again.

“Sit down,” Carver said. From the bed the girl stared at him wide eyed. He kept watching Miller and backed around to her, bent one leg and squatted down. “How’s the wound? Bad?”

She said it wasn’t. Her voice, underneath a surface steadiness, struggled for balance. It ran up in little ripples of shrill sound that bordered on hysteria. “But you mustn’t think that — that he shot me.” Her gaze flicked to Miller, away. “It came from outside, through the window. We—”

Even before the report it seemed to Carver that something like the blow of an iron bar smashed against his shoulder, numbing it, knocking him to the floor. The girl screamed, and Miller flung himself to the light switch on the wall. Then Carver whirled, sprawling his body out flat as darkness snapped over the room, while from the window in back orange spurts of flame stabbed viciously through a deafening ricochet of sound that bounced against his eardrums like the beat of hollow metal hammers.

Carver fired rapidly, wildly, as his body rolled over and over out of direct range. Crouched by the bureau and protected by it, a narrow streak of grey showed him the unshuttered half of the window. It was empty now; silent. He did not fire again.

After a minute Miller said: “I guess he’s gone. That’s what happened just before you came. The shutter hinges must have been sliced through so he could pull it loose.”

There wasn’t much strength in Carver’s arm. He believed a shoulder bone had been touched. The numbness was wearing off and his whole arm was beginning to ache. When he spoke it was an effort to keep his voice steady. “Don’t put on the light. Any way out here, from the back?”

“Through the kitchen,” Miller answered. The door behind him, pushed in, revealed the fainter darkness of the passage.

Carver said: “The girl better get out of this room,” and waited until he heard the creaking of the bed springs. In the blackness he crawled after the dim coloured splotch of her pyjamas through the small lobby that connected, through another door, with the kitchen and bath.

Sheltered in this, he got up and felt his shoulder with the fingers of his left hand. It was still throbbing, but he could detect no blood. As he moved something wobbled under it — the thick leather holster he carried at his armpit. He prodded a forefinger through the hole in the side where the bullet had been deflected, grunted. The damned thing felt like it had smashed his shoulder. He asked Miller: “Where’s the door?”

Huddled behind the stove, the girl watched them as they went out. He kept Miller before him as they rounded the house, and still ahead as they followed footprints on the snow a hundred yards in the woods. The prints were wide apart and deep, as if the man was running. Carver stopped, heard nothing, and turned back.

The girl was waiting in the kitchen for them when they got back to the house. They went in together and Carver said: “You can put on the lights. What’s the story, Miller?”

“I told you,” the other man said. His black eyes were grim, worried; he was watching the girl. “Five minutes before you came someone fired through the living-room window. They shot Mary — the girl — in the arm. I ran outside but I couldn’t see anyone. I was too excited to notice if the shutters in the bedroom were safe. Then I went in again and started to fix her arm, and when I came out of the bathroom you were there.”

Carver said: “Where does Sutorius fit in?”

Miller’s face got careful, vacant. “I didn’t think he did.”

Carver turned to the girl. “You’re Mary Flood Harrington?”

She didn’t answer him. She looked at Miller, terror in her face and something else that Carver couldn’t fathom. After a while she said: “Yes,” with difficulty. Carver closed the outer door and followed them through to the living-room. There he looked at her wound and tightened the rough bandages that Miller had put on.

“That’ll do till we get you to a doctor. Now get dressed, in the bathroom. We’ll wait here.”

She was gone five minutes. Jack Miller sat in a chair and put his elbows on his knees, his face between his hands. Once he looked up at Carver and started to speak. He was haggard now and not so handsome with the black gloss of his hair rumpled and the narrow mouth set deeply. He was very nervous; he kept rubbing the side of his cheek with one hand, pulling his lips in and out with the other.

“Give me a break on this, copper. I—”

“It’s late,” Carver said. “I’m cold. Speak your piece at the house.”

Miller’s mouth widened and turned down. He said very emphatically: “To hell with you.” He lit a cigarette.

Music still droned from the radio in the far corner and Carver hummed the words until the girl came out again. As Miller took a coat from the closet Carver fixed cold eyes on it.

“Camel’s hair,” he said, pointing the gun. “That makes it bad. Frenchy De Villier’s killer was dressed in one. You wouldn’t have a revolver in one of the pockets?”

Miller shrugged, held up his arms to be searched. After a moment Carver stepped away from him and grunted: “All right. We’re getting out of here. You first, Miller.”

He followed them through the front door and turned off the light switch as he passed. Out on the path he put the automatic in his pocket, and kept his hand on the butt. Three paces behind Miller, he hummed a little going along; none of them spoke.

But when they came to the white ridge of the pier Carver cursed. The Swede was gone; the boat was gone. He looked out at the narrow stretch of Sound visible and let his lips droop ferociously. “Where in the hell—”

It was nine-thirty by his watch. When he saw that he whistled a long note, nodding his head. Ed Wynn, of course; he came on at nine-thirty and stayed until ten. And the lousy squarehead wanted to—

“Let’s get back,” he said irritably, without explaining. “My ferry won’t come back until after ten. It’s too cold to wait here.”

They returned along the path, following their own tracks. Snow got inside Carver’s shoes and began to melt coldly on his socks. He thought a good deal about Adolph Johnson, not nice thoughts.

As they turned off the path up from Miller’s bungalow the girl stopped suddenly. Following her gaze, Carver saw a yellow streak of light staring out from the sagged shutter of the bedroom.

Miller turned, faced Carver. “The pop-pop boy,” he said. “He probably saw us go.”

Carver nodded, his lips thin. They crossed the porch, the girl behind them, and Carver tried the front door, opened it softly. He saw Abel J. Sutorius standing in the centre of the room, his bad leg favoured slightly, his long fingers caressing the sharp small angle of his chin. He was smiling, and at Carver’s approach he didn’t lose the smile.

“Ah,” he said, eyes darting to Miller. “Delightful, really, to see you here. I wasn’t sure whether my hint—”

Carver didn’t return the smile. He pulled the lawyer around to him and ran his fingers over the man’s slight form, down to the steel brace that held up his withered right leg.

Sutorius raised his brows. He murmured: “Forgive me if I don’t quite understand. You seem—”

Carver moved his eyes up at him. “I don’t get it,” he said, “and I don’t like things I don’t get, weasel. You gave me a tip this afternoon that the Harrington girl was here. Well, she was. Only I can’t figure why you spilled it. It didn’t mean money in your pocket.”

The lawyer’s thin smile, the mild gesture of his hand, were bland, self deprecating. “Perhaps it is too simple for your — shall we say unduly suspicious? — mind. I am, after all, a man of warm emotions, Carver; I am quite capable of doing the little in my power to assist a grieving parent. This morning I phoned you, intending to tell what I knew, but unfortunately before you came De Villier—” He looked sad, spreading his hands.

Carver said nothing. He swung the automatic slightly on his index finger, pinching his nose, watching Sutorius with narrowed, puzzled eyes.

Sutorius began again: “And I can assure you—”

Carver growled: “Don’t bother. I wouldn’t believe you anyway. Someone slammed off at me with a .45 a half hour ago. He came damn’ near blowing me apart. I think you are kind of lucky you aren’t carrying a gun.”

“Violence!” Sutorius protested, in a very loud voice. He moved closer to the window as he spoke, looking horrified. “My poor young friend, your delusions run away with you if you seriously imagine that I would have anything to do with that.” He stopped, gave an exclamation of pitying wonder, then added: “There is a limit, I remind you, to what a respectable professional man will endure at your hands.”

His voice was rising higher, though his eyes were without anger; for an instant Carver was puzzled by that.

He went on: “There is a question, also, of your method of handling this case. When you keep this poor young girl away from her parent instead of restoring her to him as soon as humanly possible—” His shrug was nasty, a shade too elaborate, too careless; under cover of it his eyes darted to the clock.

Carver read it then. He cut in, sharp toned: “Get back from the window. Keep quiet. Sit in that chair facing the door and don’t move until I tell you you can.”

Sutorius’s face got dark. He began: “I don’t intend to—” Something in Carver’s stare stopped his words; he wet his lips with his tongue, sat down.

Carver kept watching him. He told Miller: “You and the girl get back here, by me. Where anyone that comes in won’t see you.”

They stood by the wall, to the left of the door. The pleasant sheen was gone from the cripple’s face. It was naked and savage, the lips twisting silently. He started once to rise, then changed his mind, sat back. His hands were gripped very hard on the arms of the chair.

Three minutes went by — quietly, save for the quick, high breathing of the girl. At her side Carver began to worry at his lips. Sutorius expected someone, of course — someone he wanted to warn. Thus the loud voice, the stand near the window, where he had a better chance of being heard outside, the glance at the clock. If that someone had already heard...

Even as he thought it a sliding, crisp sound came from outside, materialised into the brisk patter of steps on the porch. The door came back fast and hit Carver’s shoulder; a big man shot past its end.

“Abel,” he said, panting. “I got lost in those damned woods. I was afraid to follow them too close and I missed the path. But the boat was gone when I got to the pier. So they must have—”

The cripple’s frozen face stopped him. He stuttered: “What... what—” and turned his head. Carver saw the beefy red face of Al Tammany glaring at him.

He waved his automatic gently. “Don’t let me stop you,” he said.

Tammany swore, whirled about at Miller and the girl. He looked back to Sutorius and heavy bluster came into his voice and his eyes.

“What the hell’s the matter with you? Point your gun at that thug and not at me. By God, Carver, you’ve acted the wise boy long enough. I’ll have your badge off you by morning. I’ll—”

Some of the redness went out of his cheeks when Carver stepped up to him, and he went a pace backwards, against the wall, wriggled there as if only that stopped him from retreating further. Carver prodded the automatic into his belly and smiled; it wasn’t a nice smile. When he took a .45 out of Tammany’s coat pocket the smile died on his lips and left them narrow and white.

Tammany put his hands before him and pushed at the air. He said: “Don’t... don’t look that way, man. I—”

Carver lifted the gun and smelled it, watching him from under his brows. His lower jaw came out a little and he brought his own automatic up to Tammany’s chin, breaking the flesh. The fat man wiped dazedly at the blood.

Carver said in a soft voice without moving his lips much: “You fired through the window at me a half hour ago. I want to know why, Tammany. Now.”

Tammany didn’t seem to feel the pain. His eyes, veering to Miller, were bewildered. “I thought it was—”

Sutorius snarled, came halfway out of his chair. Carver put one hand against his chest and flung him back.

“There’s a part of it missing,” he said. “You told me today that the girl was here, Sutorius. You knew it for three days but didn’t spill until De Villier was dead. Then you tell me. Why? So I’d come up and get her and Miller, take them away. Then you decide maybe Miller knows too much about this missing piece; you figure it will be better to have him shut up too. He might spoil your act. So Tammany tries twice to get him but he has lousy eyes. The first time he wings the girl, the second time he mistakes me for Miller. You couldn’t do the shooting yourself; with your game leg you couldn’t get away fast enough.”

Sutorius’s eyes glittered like green glass. He snarled: “You’re insane. This girl was kidnapped — there’s her abductor. He was holding her here for ransom. And instead of taking them in you stand here questioning my partner and myself. I—”

“I’ll take them in,” Carver said. “I’ll do it right now if you tell me what you came here for. That’s the part that’s missing. What the hell are you here for?”

Sutorius smiled viciously. He said: “Maybe the country air. This island isn’t private. As a matter of fact, I came to see if it really was the Harrington girl, I thought perhaps you hadn’t taken me seriously and I wanted to do what I could to help if it really was she.”

Carver didn’t seem to hear him. His brows were wrinkled in a thoughtful, cold frown.

“You wanted the place left empty, Sutorius; that’s it,” he said, “and the first gag you thought up was for me to take Miller and the girl away. I guess you were afraid to tackle him alone. Then you decided to kill him, but Tammany spoiled that. He even messed things up when you sent him after us to make sure we left the island. When he saw us go off he was supposed to come back here and tell you. Then you’d hunt for the thing that’s here — the thing you wanted so much you’d kill for it.”

Tammany’s glance, in panic, moved from Sutorius to Carver, to his partner again.

“Wait a minute. You’re not getting it straight. Abel and I naturally wanted to free the girl, but we were afraid to speak while Frenchy was alive. I thought he was in on the snatch with Miller. Then—”

“Shut up,” Carver said. He used the gun again on Tammany’s chin, lightly but effectively. “So now I want to know what that thing was, Sutorius. You’re going to tell me.”

“You don’t need me,” the cripple sneered. “You’re smart. You’re Joe Carver.”

Miller came out from the wall, frowning.

“The whole thing’s a joke, Carver. There’s nothing here. I used it because—” He glanced at the girl; very pale, she was watching him, her hands clasped together. He repeated: “There’s nothing here. We had no visitors until tonight. De Villier came three days ago, but he only stayed an hour. He left me—” He stopped suddenly.

Sutorius looked up at him with nothing human in his eyes.

Carver asked: “What’d he leave?”

“Two bags.” Miller’s voice was slow, queer. He was turning slowly, facing Sutorius, his dark face like stone. “I didn’t look in them; I don’t know what’s inside. They’re in the closet. I’ll get them now.”

“Uh-huh,” Carver said. “Miss Harrington gets them. You stay here.”

Miller stopped, shrugged. The girl went across to the bedroom and vanished inside. When she came out she had a small travelling bag in each hand. Sutorius’s breathing was heavy.

“All right,” Carver said. “I guess we’ll start. You first, Sutorius. Tammany carries the bags.”

The cripple ran a hand over his withered leg, winced. “I presume I may adjust my brace,” he said nastily. Under Carver’s eyes he bent and gripped his pants leg.

Tammany’s lips wobbled with a queer sound; there was perspiration on his forehead but he didn’t seem to mind it. He kept watching Carver and there was terror in his face. Carver was amused. He said: “Take a good look at the bogey man, Al. When they open the bags at Headquarters I’ll have you and Abel J.—”

The girl saw it first. She screamed. Whirling, Carver had no more warning than the split second glitter of steel as Sutorius’s hand swept out from the brace.

Then he felt a shock, a hot flash streak across his left side like the burn of a steel rod at white heat. A moment later he opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor, but he hadn’t remembered falling. His left side was powerless, and gunpowder smelled acrid in the room. Tammany, with his frightened face, was bending for the automatic Carver had taken from him and Carver’s own gun, and Sutorius was by the wall, speaking to the others in a queer whine that didn’t make words for Carver.

The room blurred in, ran together in Carver’s mind like a dissolve shot in a film. It was very hard for him to think. He came unsteadily to his feet under Sutorius’s gun, but his mind was queerly hazy.

He knew that when they left the house they turned left, away from the pier where the Swede would be waiting; he tried to tell Miller that but his voice only made mumbling noises. Later he fell — it seemed a long, long way — and his face touched snow; then he was walking again, and Miller’s arm was holding him up.

It had stopped snowing, and the air was thin, cold, biting. Between grey clouds there were stars, small and bright. Presently his head grew clearer, though he felt very weak, and the pain from his side seemed unendurable. They were walking through woods that thinned gradually to an open space of beach, and on the left the Sound lay huge, black and silent.

They crossed the beach, and Miller helped Carver up to a thin row of boards that led out across the water. The girl went first, they followed, and behind them came the sounds of Tammany’s heavy tread, the uneven clip clop of the cripple, Sutorius. Then they stood huddled by one side, the girl and he, with Sutorius and Miller before them, and Tammany jumping down, crouched, from the dock’s edge.

By the tip of the pier a big launch was moored, with a glassed cabin running forward. But Tammany had not gone to this; he had dropped down further back, and there came to Carver heavy sounds like the beating of a mallet on wood. Later Tammany crawled back to the planks, his eyes veering swiftly to Carver and the girl.

“Hell, Abel!” he said. “You can’t do it. Not to the girl.”

Sutorius cursed him, waved the gun. He said: “Be very careful, Miller. You’re getting a chance. When I tell you, cut the rope.”

Miller nodded. Sutorius watched him narrowly, holding the automatic. “The girl first,” he said. Miller lowered her to the boat, and then he and Tammany helped Carver forwards, lifted him in after her.

They were in a small rowboat, layered by dirty snow. But as Carver looked down the snow turned colourless, and specks of it floated around. The launch motor purred and they slid out from the dock, a rope from their bow stretched taut to the rail of the big craft.

The girl was holding Carver’s arm, peering into his face. She breathed: “What are you going to do? They’re not—”

Carver didn’t answer her. He tried to drag himself forwards to the rope that connected with the launch. As he crawled water swept coldly about his ankles, filled the bottom of their boat almost to the seats. The nose of it wobbled unsteadily from side to side.

When he got to the rope there was no strength in his left arm, not enough in his right.

He tried twice to pull them up to the launch hand over hand, but his fingers slipped and his head jerked down against the gunwale. He lay there, panting. Behind them the dark spread of water grew wider, the shore line sank lower and lower into the grey sky. For a moment Sutorius smiled down at him from the launch, then turned and hobbled away.

Carver pulled again at the rope. It was like iron. Their boat was very deep in the water now; the tip of a wave slapped in over the wobbling side. Jack Miller came to the rail and bent from it, something that glittered extended in his hand. Carver’s mouth twitched a little; he watched him, panting.

But Miller didn’t use the knife. His body heaved once and their craft slid up to the launch. Then he bent and his arms went over Carver to the girl; her weight bore Carver down as she crept forwards, and under the pressure water swirled up coldly to his armpits. He was struggling weakly, trying to grip the rail, when Miller caught him by the collar, drew him up and over, into the launch as easily as a child.

On a raised space before the cabin Tammany stood at the wheel, his back to them. Beside him Sutorius talked, pointing one hand forward. Tammany nodded and Sutorius stepped down to the deck, started to turn. He called: “All right, Miller. We’re out far enough. Now you—”

He stopped very quietly, in the middle of a stride, staring at the girl; he didn’t seem to see Carver behind Miller. In the faint light his narrow white face became wax. He said to Miller: “You fool,” without much viciousness, without any force. “There’s more than enough for you — for me, for Tammany. You can’t hope to save her for ransom again. She knows too much. She dies with Carver.”

Miller’s body bent slightly, faced Sutorius, balanced and light on spread feet. He said softly — a kind of dreadful softness: “I told you back there it was a joke. It is, Sutorius. I didn’t kidnap her. She’s my wife.”

Sutorius made a long sound with his lips. His face remained motionless and pale in the half light, the green surfaces of his eyes steady and depthless, but after the pause his arm rippled in to his body smooth and effortless and fast. Yet Miller’s movement was faster; he stepped in and his lean shoulders pivoted once, hard.

Carver heard the blow. Sutorius groaned, not loud. He fired once but he fired at the deck, as if he couldn’t bring the gun up. Then Miller struck again; the tall slight body staggered back, balanced across the rail. It wobbled a little there, and after an instant, very gently, almost silently, slid out to the black water. Miller didn’t try to catch him.

Tammany, at the wheel, made frightened sounds, words to which no one paid attention. Miller had picked up Sutorius’s gun and covered the fat man.

Miller took over the wheel, throttled down to little more than drifting and told the others to get under shelter and fix up Carver.

In the cabin, after Carver’s side had been bound up, Tammany talked freely enough. He was crying, his fat face distorted, like a baby’s; he kept pulling at Carver’s arm with pleading fingers.

“Sutorius got me into it,” he said. “I didn’t know he was going to kill De Villier until I got out in the hall and heard the shots; then I was in so deep that I couldn’t back out. Later he said you’d seen me on the stairs, and that he’d tell you who it was if I didn’t do what he said.”

Carver nodded, tired. “I was a plant. I figured that. But how did he time things so nice?”

“He was a clever devil,” Tammany shuddered. “He phoned you at the precinct just before De Villier came; then he told me to watch from the window, that you’d come straight across Fiftieth Street. When I saw you coming I nodded to him, and he told me to go over to the court house for some papers. I still didn’t know what he meant to do — De Villier had just got there and they were talking about the tax case.

“Then, when I got halfway down the hall I heard the shots — I knew then what they meant, why he asked me to lock the door as I left. I didn’t dare go back, but I should have. I just walked downstairs and out of the building on the Forty-ninth Street side. When he told me that you’d seen me leaving, and that you’d probably recognise my coat if he told you who it was, I was afraid to say anything; I had to do everything he wanted. God knows I didn’t want to shoot Miller or the girl or you; but that devil—” He shuddered again.

Carver grunted. “He pulled it smart. With the door locked and the key gone, no one would figure he’d shot De Villier — it didn’t occur to me that he might have had someone lock it for him. That was the angle of the story that didn’t fit. He kept the gun in his brace, of course, like he did here; nobody would look there and he had a perfect story.”

There was a bottle of Scotch on the table and Carver took a long drink. Then his glance moved down to the two travelling bags at his feet, packed with neat stacks of currency row on row. “How’d he know De Villier had all this money?”

“We defended Frenchy on those income tax charges,” Tammany answered. “He’d been our client for years, and Sutorius had been warning him not to keep books or bank his earnings. He said the government would get after the boys on tax charges sooner or later. That was the reason he gave why Frenchy should keep all his earnings in cash, on him; maybe he had this plan in his mind all the time.

“After the case fell through — since nobody could prove where Frenchy’s assets were — he told De Villier that the Federal men were watching him, and that he’d better put the cash some place where they wouldn’t search. He went with Frenchy while he took the bags to Miller’s place. Then things started.”

The girl nodded. “They came up to us three days ago. I didn’t want anyone to see me, so I kept in the bedroom, but he must have had a glimpse of me some way. But Jack closed the door quick and I suppose with all the paper talk he thought that I’d been kidnapped.”

“Who didn’t?” Carver growled. “Your father know you’re married?”

“Yes.” Her chin came up; her eyes flamed. “I met Jack three months ago when he was dancing at Harry Caddis’s club. I think I fell in love with him the first moment. Last week we got married. I knew father would raise an awful row so I didn’t tell him until it was done. Then father told me I’d disgraced the family, things like that. I told him that he needn’t worry, that nobody would ever know we were married. It was foolish, of course, but he made me terribly angry. So I didn’t tell any of my friends, and Jack kept it quiet, too. We came up here where we could be alone, where there’d be no one to bother us.”

Carver grinned up at her. “You should be spanked,” he said. “Happy?”

“Terribly,” she smiled. “Jack never had a chance — I’m going to see that he gets one now. Oh, he isn’t bad, Mr Carver; it was only that money was so easy to make in bootlegging, and so hard to get other ways. But he had broken with Frenchy even before I met him; he didn’t want to take the bags from him that day he came up to the bungalow until Frenchy almost begged him. He said he was in terrible trouble.”

Carver sighed. “You gave me enough of that when your father wouldn’t say where you’d gone or deny what some smart reporter doped out that you’d been kidnapped and that he was negotiating privately with the ransom gang. We were all suckers enough to believe it, even Sutorius.”

He took another drink of the Scotch and went on: “It was lucky for us that he did. He thought things out smart all through but he slipped on that and he was afraid to put Miller in the boat with us because he had only one gun, and he figured if the two of us rushed him and Tammany one of us might get to him. He didn’t, of course, have to be afraid of Miller squealing, since he figured Jack would have to keep quiet to save his own hide. The plan was to cut the rope when we were out far enough, and let us sink. If our bodies were ever found it would look like we’d swamped escaping from the kidnappers. That would let him out clear.”

Mary Miller got up, smiling at him. “Jack wanted to tell you about us back there, but I think he decided to wait — and then things happened. When they put us in the boat I was a little afraid, but I knew Jack would help us the first chance he got. Then when the water got so high—” She shivered slightly.

“It got higher for Sutorius,” Carver said. He pulled a minute, reflectively, on his long nose. “Things work out funny. A big dumb Swede he never heard of wanted to listen to Ed Wynn. That was the only thing he didn’t figure.”

Mary Miller smiled. She held out her finger and Carver saw the wedding ring.

“That too,” he said, grinning back at her.