The Paul Cain Omnibus

Sockdolager[27]

I’m Finn; thirty-three, white, unmarried, and a professional gambler. By professional I mean up until six or seven years age I was an amateur and turned over most of the money I made — which was plenty — to the bookmakers. That got to be pretty monotonous. I finally broke the monotony by the simple expedient of becoming a bookmaker.

Late last Fall I came out to California — Los Angeles. It was my first trip but it was just like coming home because practically all my friends were here. I took a big apartment in the Strip on the edge of Hollywood — the Strip is where the speakeasys and class nightclubs used to be when there was still reason to speak easily and when you could tell the difference between a class club and a honkytonk — and listened to propositions. I had a bankroll as big as your thigh.

I finally picked the proposition that looked best and it turned out to be — to put it modestly — a pip. Fritz Kiernan and I went into partnership and inside of six weeks we had the juiciest play on the Coast. We had two spots, one in the center of Hollywood and one for ladies only in a house in Beverly Hills.

That Number Two spot was an inspiration. The Santa Anita track had just opened and all Southern California had gone nag-nutty. We got the cream in Number Two; at two o’clock of any afternoon in the week you could stand in the middle of the main room and poke your finger in the eye of anywhere from ten to two dozen picture stars, wives of stars, “cousins” of producers, and just plain rich women. If you think men are natural gamblers you ought to see a lot of gals who can afford it in a bunch. A two grand parlay was chickenfeed.

We got most of the she class play that didn’t go to the track, and after the track closed for the season about a million new horse players had been made and we had wire service to all the eastern tracks and kept on getting it. Our Number One place was holding its head up, too. The proverbially flourishing green bay tree was a stunted sapling alongside of us; we were rolling in dough.

Then one night a couple months ago — it was a Friday because I’d been to the regular Friday night fights at the American Legion Stadium — I was sitting in the Brown Derby with two or three of the boys and a waiter brought a phone over and plugged it in and piped: “Mister Kiernan wants to talk to you.”

I nodded at the girl at the switchboard, said: “Hello.”

Kiernan’s voice was a shade and a half above a whisper: “Listen, Sean...”

He was one of the even half-dozen people who pronounce my name the way it should be pronounced: Shane.

I listened.

“I’m out at the house — my house...”

I said: “You sound like you were in a coal mine. Stop whispering.”

There was a meaningless jumble of sound and then: “Somebody took a shot at me...”

His voice faded away. I yelled “Fritz” but there wasn’t any answer. The phone hadn’t clicked off so I didn’t waste time trying to call him back. I was out of the Derby in nothing flat, roaring out Sunset Boulevard.

He lived to hell and gone out in Bel-Air. I took all the shortcuts I could remember and made sixteen cylinders do even better than the salesman had promised but it took the best part of half an hour.

The house was all by itself on a private road about a quarter of a mile off the main highway. I pulled up and snapped off my headlights and took the front steps in one jump. The front door was partway open. There was a big tanned athletic looking gent in a light camel’s hair coat lying on his back just inside; his eyes were wide open and one of his legs was sticking out through the doorway. There was a bullet hole in the middle of his chest, high. I’d never seen him before. I stepped over him and went across to Fritz.

He was lying near the big table in the middle of the room with one arm hooked over a chair and the other twisted under him. One of his legs was twisted under him, too. It looked like three or four heavyweights had worked him over for an hour or so; I’ve seen quite a few badly beaten up men at one time or another but never anything like that. He was very dead.

The phone was on the floor a little ways beyond his body. I picked it up and wiggled the receiver a couple times and it buzzed; I called the police station in LA — I didn’t know anybody in the Beverly Hills or Hollywood Divisions and I wasn’t in the mood for a lot of trick questions from strange coppers. I finally got a detective lieutenant named Moore, whom I’d met through Fritz, on the wire and told him about it.

Then I went over as far away from Fritz as I could and sat down and thought I was going to be sick. I’m not exactly a nance when it comes to carnage but he looked like he’d been stepped on by an elephant. I sat there trying to adjust myself to the idea of him being dead — I liked him as well as any man I’d ever known and it was no cinch — and then I heard a noise behind me and damn near dislocated my neck turning around.

It was the Norwegian woman who cooked and kept house for the Kiernans. She was wearing a white kimono with yellow and green and purple chrysanthemums on it. She looked from one body to the other and then at me and then back at Fritz. I thought her eyes were going to fall out on her cheeks.

I asked: “See anybody here tonight?”

She shook her head slowly without taking her eyes off Fritz. “No, sir — only Mister Kiernan.”

“Hear anything?”

“I heard three shots...”

“All at once?” She turned to me. “No — there were two, and then after several minutes there was another.”

“What’d you do?”

She hesitated a moment, said slowly: “I locked my door and stayed in my room.”

“Where’s Mrs Kiernan?”

“Went to Palm Springs this morning.” She was about winded.

I said: “You’d better get dressed — the police will be here in a few minutes.”

She clucked mournfully a couple times and hurried away. I caught her in the doorway with one more question: “Did Mister Kiernan mention that he was having visitors tonight or anything like that?”

She shook her head. “No, sir — nothing at all. I cooked his dinner and he ate by himself and then came in here. I went to bed at nine o’clock.” She clucked some more and disappeared.

In about a minute I heard a car pull up and stop out in front and I got up and went out on the porch. It was pretty dark but when my eyes got used to it I saw a coupé parked down the driveway about forty feet. It didn’t look like a police car and no one got out so I stalled, waiting for whoever was in the car to play. They didn’t. I finally strolled over and stuck my puss in. Myra Reid was sitting hunched down back of the wheel, her face green-white in the glow of the dashlight.

Myra was a kind of perennial “baby star”; she never seemed to get very far in pictures and she never seemed to be hungry. I think it all began when some contest judge dubbed her “Miss Most Beautiful Legs in Minneapolis.” Minneapolis lost a fair stenographer and Hollywood got the legs. She had a “long term” contract at one of those collapsible studios on Gower Street and made enough money to have a nice address in Toluca Lake and a flash car for front so she could run up bills.

Every so often a bunch of self-appointed talent sharks would get together and vote her and a couple dozen of her pals the “most promising young actresses of the coming year.” She’d been “promising” for about five years.

With my customary flair for the unique and penetrating question, I asked: “What are you doing here?”

She stuttered something about having a date with Fritz.

Fritz wasn’t a chaser. I knew that Myra was on our books for about four grand and figured it might have something to do with that.

She was ahead of me, went on: “I wanted to talk to him about the money I owe you; I called him up after dinner and he said he’d be home all evening. Didn’t he tell you?”

I shook my head and reached in and turned the nickel cap on the dashlight so I could see her face better. She was pretty shaky.

I said: “Well — why don’t you go in?”

She managed to smile. “I was just getting out of the car when you came out on the porch. I didn’t know who it was so I waited.”

I nodded and opened the door of the car and waited for her to get out. She put one foot out on the running board, hesitated, chirped: “Fritz is all right, isn’t he?...”

“Sure — Fritz is fine. Why?”

She laughed self-consciously. “I just wondered...”

I said: “Fritz is dead.”

She stared at me a few seconds without saying anything. Then she put her hands up to her mouth and moaned something that sounded like “Oh my God!...”

I waited. It was a good hunch. If I’d started asking questions she’d probably have closed up like a clam but instead she went entirely screwy and started babbling about “Mel” and “her career” and “poor Fritz” and a couple dozen other things. Pieced together it went something like this:

She’d made the date with Fritz at his house because she wanted to have a heart to heart talk about paying off a little at a time, and he was always so busy at the club.

My own guess was that she’d figured she might go into her baby star routine for him and he’d break down and tear up her markers or take it out in trade, or something. Maybe not.

Anyway, she was all set to leave for Bel-Air when in walks Mel, her current chump — fiancé was her word — and says: “Where are you going, my pretty maid?”

“I’m going to Fritz Kiernan’s on business,” says she — honest lass.

“Business my eye!” says he, or words to that effect, and the battle was on.

Mel, I gathered, was a lovely boy, but given to jealous rages in which he completely blew his noodle. This had been one of his best, and after building it for about an hour he’d stamped out with the loudly proclaimed intention of wiping such scum as Fritz Kiernan off the face of the earth, or some equally lousy curtain line. It seems he’d missed the point that Myra had made the date and that it was business, and a few inconsequential details like that.

She beat him to her front door and stood there with her arms spread out, yelping “No, no — not that!” or whatever seemed appropriate and he clipped her on the button and she went bye-bye. Nice fella.

I asked her what Mel looked like and she managed to tell me, with sob effects; I knew who the husky lying in the doorway was. All of which got me exactly nowhere in trying to figure out what’d happened. It was a cinch Mel hadn’t beaten Fritz to death; no one man could’ve done that without a sledgehammer. And if Fritz shot Mel where was the gun? And how could he shoot anybody if he was dead? And what did he say, “Somebody took a shot at me,” on the phone for? Mel didn’t sound like the type to take a shot at anyone; he’d be a bare-hander. None of it made sense.

I asked Myra if Mel ever carried a gun, just to be sure, and she shook her head.

Then I tried to lay out the little I knew about it in chronological order in my mind and kept on getting nowhere, fast. The only thing I was sure of, or thought I was sure of, was that Myra was telling the truth and was in a fair way of being smack in the middle of the worst jam a gal like her can draw. She believed in her career whether anyone else did or not and a scandal like that would put her on the shelf for good, even if they didn’t stick her as an accomplice or accessory or what-have-you.

So impulsive, big-hearted Finn bleated: “Listen, Myra — the Law will be here in a minute. You duck, and duck quick. And if they tie you up with this in any way keep your mouth shut until I get in touch with you. Got it?”

She stopped sobbing long enough to bob her head up and down.

“Under any circumstances don’t crack about coming here tonight, or seeing me. And don’t try to reach Mel — he won’t be home tonight.”

She looked at me big-eyed, nodded again.

I didn’t tell her any more about Mel; she’d find out about that soon enough. I watched her out of sight and went back into the house.

The whole piece of business with Myra was the kind of thing I’d call anybody else a sap for doing. It got me into plenty of trouble but I’d probably do it again the same way. I guess everybody has to be a sucker one way or another.

The cook had put on her best bib and tucker in honor of the occasion. A couple patrolmen in a radio car got to the house a little before Moore and got difficult with her and I objected and they got difficult with me; Moore got there just in time to save one of the cops and probably me from a good sock on the nose.

Moore was pretty new on the homicide squad — I think he’d been in the narcotic division or something like that — but he had an Italian named Amante with him who was as efficient as any half-dozen dicks I’ve ever seen.

He was a short gray-haired gent with wide-set intelligent eyes and a nice smile. Inside of half an hour he’d heard all I had to say and all the cook had to say. He’d found the spot on the porch where Fritz had been standing when whoever it was took the first shot at him. He’d decided that that first shot missed and he’d found the slug buried in the side of the house near the door. The second shot had creased Fritz’s leg and smacked into the house alongside of the other and there was a thin trail of blood from the porch into the house.

That, according to Eagle Eye Amante, was when Fritz had called me. Then the “party or parties unknown” which meant Mel and somebody else according to Amante’s theory, had followed him into the house and dragged him away from the phone and proceeded to systematically beat him to death.

That being accomplished some slight difference of opinion had arisen and he or she or they had let Mel have it. And to top it Amante found the revolver, lacking three slugs, that both Fritz and Mel had been shot with under the table near Fritz’s body. They’d have to dig the lead out of the house and out of Mel before they could be sure, of course, but it looked like a cinch.

It was swell reasoning as far as it went. And when Amante found a lot of stuff on Mel that identified him as Melville Raymond, including a wire thanking him for some flowers, signed Myra, I almost broke down and told all, but her story was still with me and I believed it and Amante’s version didn’t jibe with it at all. Call it a hunch, call it anything you like; I kept my trap closed and followed Amante’s leads in my best “Marvelous, Mister Holmes” manner.

One thing that worried me was how Mel had come out to Bel-Air. If he’d been by himself what had happened to his car? If he’d come in a cab I figured the driver would report it as soon as the story broke and that would complicate Amante’s theory a little.

The coroner and his outfit finally got there and checked perfectly with Amante. Fritz had been beaten to death — the leg wound was superficial — and Mel had died from a slug from the same gun high in the chest, shattering the breastbone and lodging in the spine.

I didn’t get home until about two-thirty. I still had to call Barbara Kiernan at Palm Springs and tell her the bad news. I hated that job because I knew she’d take it big — tear her hair and wring her hands and whatnot. She was that kind of gal, a hair tearer. I decided to put off calling till morning, and then after I got into bed I thought what the hell, I might just as well get it over with.

The cook had given me Maude Foley’s number in Palm Springs. Maude was Barbara’s sidekick and had a house down there where Barbara spent most of her weekends. I called long distance and finally got a sleepy “Hello” from Maude. That was a break — her answering instead of Barbara. I told her what had happened in as few words as possible and told her to tell it to Barbara any way she thought best. I got to sleep a little after three.

Amante called me at eleven-thirty in the morning and asked if I could stop by the station about one. Next to grave-yards and hospitals I like police stations least so I suggested we meet at the Biltmore and have lunch and he said okay.

Maude Foley called a little later and said she and Barbara were out at the house and that Barbara was pretty badly broken up. I promised to stop by later in the afternoon.

I drove out to Number Two in Beverly and told the housemen to soft pedal talking about Fritz’s murder; the morning papers were full of the case and there’d be plenty of talk without our own men joining the chorus. Then I stopped by the place in Hollywood on the way downtown and suggested the same thing to the boys there.

I was about ten minutes late at the Biltmore and found Amante in the grill with a long skinny shiny-haired guy who he introduced as Arthur Delavan of the Department of Justice.

Amante wanted to know all about Fritz — what he’d done back east, who his enemies were and why, that kind of thing. I gave him all I could, which wasn’t much. Fritz had hustled a string of books in New York and Boston, same as Hollywood, only on a smaller scale. As far as I knew he didn’t have an enemy in the world. And so on.

Delavan didn’t have much to say. I finally asked how come he was interested in a case that was so strictly local and he said he wasn’t particularly interested, he’d just come along for the ride, or words to that effect. I said “Oh, I see” out loud, but to myself I said “Nuts, baby — you’re plenty interested.”

Amante said he had several men working on Mel Raymond and he wouldn’t be surprised if something important turned up during the afternoon. They hadn’t been able to get a line on the gun because the numbers had been filed off and there weren’t any fingerprints.

He finally got around to the most important piece of evidence that had turned up so far: Mrs Bergliot, the Kiernan cook, had admitted that she thought she’d heard a woman’s voice in the living room after she’d gone to bed. That was all they could get out of her. She didn’t recognize the voice and she said she might have been dreaming. I wondered why she hadn’t told me about it.

Amante watched me very closely while he was telling me about Mrs Bergliot and so did Delavan. I began to feel pretty uncomfortable but I don’t think I showed it.

After lunch we left each other with a hey nonny-nonny and assurances of mutual cooperation and I drove out Wilshire doing a lot of wondering. I’d about decided to call up Myra and tell her to sail her own boat, to go down and tell Amante her story and see if he believed it, when I turned off Wilshire on Crescent Heights Boulevard to cut over to the apartment. There’s very little traffic on Crescent Heights that far south and it saves a lot of time.

In the second block a dark blue roadster came up from behind and passed and when it was a few feet ahead somebody opened up on me with an automatic. I think it was an automatic — I only had a split second flash of it. The first shot made a neat hole in the windwing and thudded into the seat near my shoulder. I jerked the wheel as hard as I could and heard two more shots bite into the side of the car as it bounced up over the curb, across a lawn, and stopped within inches of the front door of a pink stucco house.

I leaned out and watched the roadster go north like a bat out of hell. Then I got out and looked at the holes in the side of the car. The people who lived in the pink house were evidently not at home; a couple neighbors strolled over to watch me maneuver the car back on to the street. I guess they thought I was drunk and that the car had backfired when it went out of control; they didn’t crack about any shooting.

Outside of the damage to the car it’d accomplished one thing very definitely: I’d decided what to do about Myra. Fritz murdered and somebody trying to murder me meant an entirely new angle — one that certainly didn’t have anything to do with the Mel-Myra combination.

I drove a few blocks and stopped at a drug store and called and told Myra Amante was working on Mel and would probably get to her before long and for her to sit tight. She said she’d been trying to get me at home: her colored maid knew Mel had been at her house Friday night and had probably overheard some of the battle. She wanted to know whether she should give the maid a couple month’s salary, or what.

I told her that if she did she’d be paying off blackmail when she had a long gray beard, and if they picked her up to play dumb — which shouldn’t be hard — because no one would believe her story and it would only get her jammed up so tight that no one could get her out of it.

Then I called Amante. After talking to about half a dozen assorted assistants I finally got him and said: “Somebody tried to shoot me on Crescent Heights Boulevard about ten minutes ago — three slugs in my new car. Who do I charge it to?”

He said: “That’s very interesting.”

I told him it was not only interesting, it was assault with intent to do great bodily harm and I didn’t like it. I asked if it changed his theory any and he said it didn’t. I gave him a description of the roadster and that was that.

Then I stopped at the place in Hollywood and picked up Harry Gaige. He’d been a sort of protection-man for Fritz for a long time, had the reputation of being fast and accurate with anything from a water-pistol to an elephant-gun. I figured if strangers were taking potshots it would be a good idea for him to travel around with me for a while. I told him about it on the way out to the Kiernan house.

Maude Foley let us in. She said she’d loaded Barbara with bromides and she’d quieted down; she was upstairs trying to sleep. I told Maude all there was to tell, except about Myra, and tried to get angles from her but she didn’t have any. I wanted something — anything — to work on; I knew I’d get some kind of a lead sooner or later but I wanted it to be sooner.

We had a few drinks and tried to figure out who would want to knock off both Fritz and me, and why, but we didn’t get very far. When we left it was about a quarter of five. The newsboys were yelling their heads off at the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevard; we bought a paper and there it was in three-inch headlines: ACTRESS ARRESTED IN KIERNAN MURDER.

They’d picked up Myra and her maid, and the maid had evidently talked enough to last any five ordinary women the rest of their lives. They were holding Myra incommunicado charged with practically everything in the book.

Amante got a great spread as the hero of the occasion, the man who had solved the great Bel-Air Murder Mystery; the story was a little lean on exactly what his “solution” was, exactly what had happened, but it said he “broadly hinted” a complete case with all the details and “sensational developments” within a few hours.

Harry read the story to me as we rolled on down Wilshire — I was driving as fast as I could without taking chances on a pinch — and after he’d finished he was quiet for a minute and then he croaked: “That guy Amante hates publicity, don’t he?”

Amante wasn’t in his office; I located Moore and he said he guessed Amante was still working on the Reid woman. I said I wanted to help him work on her and Moore said it couldn’t be done but when I indicated in a few well chosen words how invaluable my services would be he had a sudden attack of smartness and got me a pass.

I told Harry to wait. He looked around at all the Law and asked wistfully if I minded if he waited in the pool hall across the street and I said it was all right and went up to the jail.

Myra’s face lit up like a Christmas tree when she looked up and saw me grinning at her through the bars. The grin was about ninety percent phoney but she didn’t know that. The maid’s story made it impossible for her to keep up the clam act — she’d have to talk.

Amante didn’t act so gay about the interruption at first but when the screw unlocked the cell door and I went in and sat down on the cot beside Myra and said, “Okay, baby — Now that we’re all here you can tell Mister Amante what really happened,” he entered into the spirit of the thing and got just as happy as a lark. I guess he’d been giving her the works without getting a word out of her; he didn’t ask how or why or how many, it was enough for him that somebody could make her open up.

I said: “First, before Miss Reid begins — I told her not to talk if she was picked up because I’m convinced she had nothing to do with the murders and I want her to get a break.”

Amante and the big copper with him glanced at each other but didn’t say anything.

I smiled at Myra, went on to Amante: “Are you willing to forget your theory for a minute and listen to her side of it and give her all you can?”

The big fella grunted something about “obstructing justice” — I don’t think he was very fond of me — but Amante grinned and whinnied: “Sure... sure...”

I leaned forward, smiled my sweetest smile and finished like a Dutch Uncle: “Fritz Kiernan was my partner and one of my best friends. I intend to find out who really killed him. This kid,” I nodded at Myra, “is gummed up enough without hanging a rap that won’t stand up on her because it fits in with a theory. Give me a little time and I’ll hand over the parties that killed Fritz, and Raymond, and tried to kill me this afternoon.”

Amante said, “Sure — sure,” again.

I gave Myra the office and she went into her version of Friday night. She told it just about the way she’d told it to me. It didn’t sound quite so good with Amante and the big lug giving her the fishy eye all the time but it still sounded like the truth — to me.

When she got to the part about coming out to the Kiernan house after she came to, and about me telling her to duck, Amante looked at me as if I’d betrayed him and all his family and then finished by stealing his rollerskates.

He gurgled in a voice practically trembling with heartbreak: “What did you want to do that to me for?”

I kept from laughing in his face by a hair, shook my head. “I didn’t want to do anything to you — I wanted to give an innocent girl the only chance she had to avoid getting tied up with this.”

Myra went on with her story and when she finished, Amante sat staring at her with a dead pan for a minute or two and then got up and he and his boyfriend and I went back down to his office. I winked at Myra and patted her shoulder and she gave me a big smile before we left.

There were five or six reporters in the corridor outside the office. They ganged around Amante when we got out of the elevator and he said he’d have something for them in a few minutes.

He mumbled, “Sit down, Mister Finn,” when we went into the office and waved at a chair, and he sat down at his desk and rifled through some papers and scribbled a few notes. Then he looked up at the big copper and said, “Let those boys in.”

The reporters draped themselves around the room and Amante leaned back and smiled at them like an alderman the night before election.

“Well, boys,” he cooed tenderly, “here it is... The Reid woman owed Kiernan and Finn nearly four thousand dollars and couldn’t pay off. She liked Kiernan pretty well so she figured she might as well combine business and pleasure and last night she called him to make a date. His wife had gone out of town so he told her to come on out to the house...”

Amante leaned forward and opened a drawer and took a thick yellow cigar out of a box. He stuck it in the corner of his mouth and squinted across the end of it at me for a fraction of a second, went on:

“She was all set to leave for Kiernan’s around nine-thirty when Raymond, who’s been running around with her for several months, dropped in unexpectedly. She’s been up to the neck with Raymond for some time — they’ve battled practically every time he’s been at the house for the past two weeks. Her maid will testify to that.”

He glanced at me again and slid the cigar to the other corner of his mouth.

“She told Raymond where she was going and he objected and she got mad and they went round and round. They were still at it at twenty after ten when the maid left to go home. Finally Raymond, crazy with jealousy, ran out of the house and jumped in his car and started for Kiernan’s. She followed him in her car. He had a big Duesenberg — we found it this afternoon parked on the highway below Kiernan’s house — and he beat her there by a few minutes...”

Amante stopped to light his cigar. He didn’t look at me any more but went on to the reporters:

“Kiernan was out on the porch taking the air, or maybe Raymond called him out. Raymond stood in the driveway and shot at Kiernan twice; the first shot missed and the second nicked his leg. Kiernan ran into the house and called Mister Finn” — he waved his hand airily in my general direction — “and said, ‘Somebody took a shot at me.’ About that time Miss Reid arrived and Raymond had to make good; or maybe she got there after he’d followed Kiernan into the house. Anyway, Raymond dragged Kiernan away from the phone and beat him with the butt of the gun and then threw the gun down and finished by kicking his skull in. Miss Reid probably tried to stop him — I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt — and then she saw the gun and picked it up, and when Raymond started to go she shot him...”

Amante had turned to me again with an expression like a cat practically bloated with canaries.

“But before she shot him she told him a few unprintable details about his ancestry and so forth, and...” — he paused to give it the proper melodramatic touch, finished slowly — “Mrs Bergliot, the housekeeper, overheard her... This afternoon Mrs Bergliot positively identified her voice!”

He let that sink in, then built up to his clincher in a hurry:

“After she shot Raymond she tossed the gun under the table — she was wearing gloves so there weren’t any prints — and beat it quick. She drove around for a few minutes and finally parked on the highway near the entrance to the private road to figure out what to do. She knew it was too late to frame an alibi and she knew Raymond would be traced to her and the maid would spill her guts... And then Mister Finn showed up, like an angel from heaven. She recognized his car — a blind man could spot that sixteen cylinder calliope of his — and she thought to herself: ‘If I drive back up there and make Finn believe I just got here, that Raymond socked me at my house and I just came to, then I’ll have Finn on my side and as Kiernan’s partner he’ll carry a lot of weight.’ She’s a bright girl...”

He was leaning forward with his arms spread out on the desk, giving me the cat-full-of-canaries business for all it was worth.

“It appealed to her instincts as an actress,” he went on, “and it worked out even better than she’d planned. Mister Finn not only went for her story hook, line, and sinker; he got so absolutely lousy with chivalry that he told her to go on home and go to bed and forget about the nasty old murders and he’d take care of everything!”

He leaned back and folded his arms. “If I didn’t believe Mister Finn acted in good faith — that he actually believed in Miss Reid’s innocence — there’d be a charge of withholding evidence, possibly even a charge of being accessory after the fact against him. However it has all worked out satisfactorily and I shall let these matters rest.”

One of the reporters snickered. The big copper was sitting on the corner of the desk grinning merrily and Amante’s sneer was the kind people probably wear just before they get their throat cut by the sneeree.

I sat and calculated my chances of suddenly diverting everyone’s attention by staring out the window or yelling “Fire!” or something and then hurdling the desk and pushing that sneer back where it came from, but they were too long; I couldn’t even have got past the big baboon. I sat still and wondered if it could get any worse.

Amante snapped: “That’s all, boys.”

The reporters dived for the door as a man. Amante wiggled his head at the baboon and he, after a last long withering look at me, followed them out and closed the door.

I said: “That was capital fun.”

He looked at me very seriously. “I’ve got to look out for my job,” he bellowed. “If you hadn’t sent Reid away last night I’d’ve had the whole case on ice this morning. I don’t intend to be head of a homicide squad all my life — I’m going places, and quick indictments and quick convictions are going to take me there—”

I interrupted: “Do you mean you actually believe last night happened the way you told it?”

“Absolutely.” He nodded slowly, was silent a moment, went on: “The newspapers are for me and that’s the way I want them. You acted out of turn and you’ve got to take the rap for it — with the newspapers.”

I uh-huhd and got up and walked over to the window, stood there a minute; then I went over to the desk and said: “I thought you were an intelligent guy and you’ve turned out to be just as nutty as a bedbug.”

He grinned with one side of his face.

“And I’m going to show you how nutty,” I went on, warming up. “I’m going to make you acknowledge publicly — in your beloved newspapers — that you’re all wet on the Kiernan case. Christ knows I’ve got plenty of reasons to. Number one: I happen to want to know who really killed Kiernan — and Raymond — and tried to give me the business this afternoon — a fact which you seem to have left entirely out of your calculations. Number two: I promised my dying great-aunt that I’d never stand by and see somebody rail-roaded...”

I stopped for breath and to think up a few more reasons. Amante sat grinning through a cloud of smoke, chewing his cigar happily.

“Number three,” I went on — “you’ve made me look like a prize sucker for the edification of a lot of yokels. And last but not least — you called my new car a calliope...”

We both laughed; he because he thought it was funny, and I because I thought it wasn’t.

Then, having delivered myself of all that horrah about what I was going to do, and why, I walked out of the office wondering where the hell I was going to begin.

I found Harry in the pool hall across the street and told him what had happened while we drove out Third Street. We got home a little before seven and I called Gene Curley and said I had a job for him and his brother and for them to come over to the apartment.

The Curley boys used to have a two-by-four detective agency in Philadelphia; they’d been on the Coast several years working at whatever turned up. Gene had been a bouncer in a downtown crap joint until it was conclusively knocked over and Frank had alternated between an occasional job of divorce sleuthing and extra work in pictures.

When they arrived I gave them a couple slugs of Scotch and began with Gene. I told him who Mrs Bergliot was and said I wanted him to tail her and keep a detailed report of everywhere she went, everything she did and everyone she saw.

Then I told Frank he was on the payroll too, but I didn’t have anything better for him to do for a while than ride around and see how many dark blue Buick roadsters with cream-colored canvas tops and spare tire covers he could find, to check licenses and stolen car lists and things like that. I knew it was a million to one shot that he’d turn anything up but I figured I’d have more important work for him pretty soon.

I gave them a century advance, sent them on their way rejoicing and called the desk for late editions of the evening papers. The Kiernan case stories were simply fine. They played me up as the smart young man from Broadway who turned out to be the great granddaddy chump — the one all the other chumps try to imitate. They made Amante’s struggle and triumph against the overwhelming odds of my stupidity look like St George giving the finger to the Dragon. When I tell you the subtlest crack they made was to call me “Sir Galahad Finn” it’ll give you a rough idea of what it was like when they really let themselves go.

I took a shower and shaved — I cut myself an even half-dozen times thinking about what a swell time Amante must be having reading the papers — and Harry and I went over to the Trocadero for dinner. I was pretty low and confined myself to a hearty meal of Scotch and soda. The place was packed and our table was smack in the center of the room on the edge of the dance floor. It didn’t particularly help my state of mind to have friends of mine stop at the table and give me the double talk “Hello,” and know what they were thinking.

Charley Hollberg was giving a big dinner directly across the dance floor from us and I knew practically everyone in the party. Hollberg was the local slot machine magnate; his monthly rake-off was supposed to be around ninety grand. Between dances I got enough raised eyebrows to make a nice fright wig from that table alone.

There was a tall good-looking Spick sitting next to Charley who looked over and nodded brightly a couple times. I couldn’t peg him until Harry reminded me that he’d been down to our Number One place a few times and I remembered he was the guy who’d made several big bets and had got chummy and asked Fritz and me a lot of questions about our take and running-nut and things like that. Fritz had told me something about him coming down one afternoon when I wasn’t there and saying he’d decided to locate in California and open a book and asking Fritz if we’d consider selling out. Fritz laughed it off.

Monte Keith and his ex-wife were in Charley’s party, too; they sat down at our table after a dance and Monte was about to fall under the table and insisted on buying wine. Then I bought some wine and then Monte bought wine and it went on like that for some time. I got home around three-thirty and got to sleep as soon as the bed stopped going round like a merry-go-round and started rocking like a cradle.

I got up about eleven. Harry was a pretty good cook and whipped up a swell breakfast. The late editions of the Sunday morning papers treated me a little better; there were only a couple dozen references to the “chivalrous Mr. Finn.”

Then I called up Barbara to give her the inside on Amante and the piece of business with Myra Reid and got a delightful surprise. Maude answered the phone and put on the chill for me. When I said I wanted to talk to Barbara she said she didn’t think Barbara wanted to talk to anyone who would try to cover up for Fritz’s murderers, and she didn’t think she wanted to talk to me either and hung up.

Harry said: “What’s the matter? — you in the doghouse there, too?”

I nodded and sat and thought about it a while and got sorer and sorer; when I got to the stage where I was about to pop Harry in the eye, just for luck, I dressed and we went out to the Kiernan house.

No one answered the bell. We took turns pounding on the door and Barbara finally opened it and stood there glaring at us. She was a very beautiful woman — a natural blonde with big blue eyes and a lot of curves — but the last twenty-four hours had played hell with her; her eyes were dull and sunken and she looked like she’d been crying for a couple months.

I was all set to read the riot act but when I saw her I calmed down and said: “Listen, Barbara — you and I have never been what you might call buddies, but you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers. The Reid girl didn’t have anything to do with it. Amante is making a grandstand play and I’m going to wrap it around his neck; I’m going to find out who really killed Fritz if it takes—”

She interrupted: “I don’t care what you’re going to do.” Her voice was like little chunks of lead falling into a rain-barrel. “Please go away.”

I said: “Barbara. I—”

“Please go away.” She was standing very straight and tall and looking at a place about two feet back of my neck. “And I wish you wouldn’t come here anymore; I’ve asked Mister Gottler to get in touch with you about purchasing your share of the business. You’ll hear from him.”

She stepped back and closed the door.

One time when I was about six my mother spanked me in front of company and as I remember the way I felt it was about the same as I felt standing there on the Kiernan porch looking at the door. I looked at Harry and I think if he’d made the wrong crack or smiled it would have been the end; I would have strangled him, or tried to, and then committed hari-kiri with the foot scraper.

But Harry looked properly indignant and asked who the hell Gottler was; I told him he was Fritz’s attorney and we went down and got in the car. Gene Curley was sitting in his heap a couple hundred feet from the entrance to the private road with his eye peeled for Bergliot. He waved. Instead of going back through Beverly I drove on out to the beach and up the beach road towards Malibu.

Harry snorted: “What does she want the business for? — and who does she think she’s going to get to run it who won’t steal everything including the light bulbs and linoleum in a week?”

I said I didn’t know.

“If she don’t want to go on with the partnership,” he insisted, “why doesn’t she sell out to you?”

I said I still didn’t know. Barbara cracking about buying me out was the last thing I’d expected. It didn’t make sense any way I looked at it. She could have the business but what would she do with it? She didn’t know a filly from a furlong; and the cash I’d give her for her end would buy an awful lot of something — anything — she could understand.

The more I thought about it the trickier it looked, but thinking about it gave me an idea. I asked Harry the name of the Spick in Charley Hollberg’s party at the Trocadero. He’d wanted to buy the business, too, and thinking about him made me suddenly realize that he’d been in the back of my mind all day; I remembered him from somewhere besides Hollywood.

Harry didn’t know his name. We turned around and went back to the apartment and Harry got on the phone and called a few people. He got a little here and a little there; finally he hung up and turned away from the phone, said:

“Name’s Axiotes — he’s a Greek. Used to be an acrobat. Then he was a ten-twenty-thirty chiseler around Brooklyn — got mixed up in the Kroll-Schmalz beer war — served three years and has been living on the fat of the land ever since he got out in ’32. You probably saw his picture in the tabloids when he was indicted with Kroll. Been out here about two months — lives at the Alton Apartments on Kenmore.”

I got on the phone and got Frank Curley, first try, at the Hollywood Plaza and told him to forget about blue Buicks for a while and start keeping tabs on Axiotes. I don’t know exactly why I was so interested in him but his face kept playing pussy-in-the-corner in the back of my mind and I wanted to know more about him.

We went out to Number Two about four-thirty and I worked with the bookkeeper a couple hours. Then Harry and I had dinner at Musso-Franks and went to a picture show. We got home at eleven.

Gene Curley had left a twenty-four hour report on Mrs Bergliot at the desk. It didn’t amount to much. She hadn’t been out of the house Saturday night. Late Sunday afternoon a woman who looked like she might be her sister had picked her up in an old Chevrolet at the backdoor and they’d gone to a house on Larchmont a little ways off Melrose. There was a sign in front of the house: CORA HAVILAND: SPIRITUAL SCIENCE. They’d been there about an hour and then the woman had dropped Bergliot back at the Kiernan house. That was all.

Harry and I played a couple games of cooncan and went to bed. Monday was just

Monday except for one development that I could’ve got along just as well without. Amante called up around noon and after a lot of ap-cray about the weather and “How’s everything” and all that, he said he thought I might like to know that Myra Reid was the sole beneficiary in Raymond’s will and it amounted to about a hundred and seventy-five grand. They’d found the will and a lot of bonds and stuff in a safety deposit box he had under an assumed name.

I told Amante I was glad to hear it and thanked him and asked if Myra was still incommunicado. He said she wasn’t and he expected she’d be very happy to see me. Then he chuckled — one of the dirtiest chuckles I’ve ever heard — and hung up.

I barged downtown and up to the can to see Myra. She said she didn’t know anything about the will and, so help me God, I still believed her. Her lawyer was there — a funny little guy with a snub nose and a fringe of red hair who looked capable. I tried to cheer Myra up, which was no cinch because I didn’t know what to say. The best I could do was say I was working on it and it was pretty much in the dark but I expected something to break any minute.

There was nothing important from the Curleys on Bergliot or Axiotes when I got home. Bergliot had been to the Place on Larchmont again but that was all.

Tuesday started to be just Tuesday but it ended like the Fourth of July and Christmas, mixed.

The funeral was at one o’clock at an undertaker’s on Sunset Boulevard. There was a pretty big crowd. Barbara looked awful. I think she’d hoisted a few tall ones to get her through the afternoon — she’d always been a good two-fisted drinker — and that helped a little but she still looked like she’d been pulled through a wringer.

She wasn’t so heavy on me as I’d expected; she nodded and almost smiled. I stood pretty close to her during the services, and afterwards we talked a little in a strained self-conscious way. She said she and Maude were sailing for Honolulu Wednesday afternoon and I told her I thought it was a swell idea to get away from it all for a while. I started to tell her I hadn’t heard from Gottler yet but decided to let it lie.

On the way out of the chapel I ran into Delavan, the FBI man Amante had introduced me to. He was wearing glasses and I couldn’t place him for a minute but he grinned and stuck out his hand and piped “H’ are ya” and I said “Fancy meeting you here” or something original like that.

He looked vague and said he was just looking around and then he asked if he could buy me a drink. I called Harry and the three of us went over to the Derby.

I stalled for a while waiting for Delavan to open up but he didn’t and I finally asked: “Well — what’s it all about? You didn’t come to the funeral just to smell the flowers.”

He smiled, gargled a little of his highball and opened up: “Would it surprise you to know that I think Amante is wrong?”

I shook my head. “No. Anybody with anything above the ears ought to know he’s wrong.” But it sounded good to hear somebody say it.

He took off his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief. “Has anyone made any more passes at you since Saturday?”

“No.”

“Funny,” he said, “that they made that one attempt and then let you alone.”

I agreed that it was funny. We didn’t say any more for a little while and then Delavan leaned back and looked up at the ceiling and spoke as if he was talking to himself: “Has it occurred to you that since Repeal, gambling has become a major industry?”

I nodded. “Sure. That’s one of the reasons I’m in it.”

“A lot of men,” he went on, “were left holding the bag — men with organizations, money, power, that they didn’t have any use for any more. Some of them called it a day and took up golf or bought a string of yachts, but some of them didn’t want to call it a day. The Government had taken the big profits out of alcohol so they had to find something else with big profits...”

He put his glasses back on and sucked up some more of his drink. “The yearly turnover on slot machines alone is estimated at fifty or sixty million dollars; lotteries yield another seventy. In the last year horse racing has been legalized in eleven states and the rake-off promises to amount to all the rest put together in a year or so.”

I called the waiter and ordered another round. My ears were cocked for the point Delavan was driving at and I felt it coming.

He leaned forward and squinted through his glasses, went on: “Suppose that a big undercover organization — maybe the biggest ever — was in process of formation and that it was determined to get a stranglehold on all important gambling in every community in the country. It’d buy up the little fellows, or scare them out; it’d buy the in-betweens, or if the in-betweens were too big to buy it’d dispose of them in whatever way seemed best...”

Harry asked: “What about the biggies — men like Grant in Chicago, or McElroy?”

“Grant left for England a week ago, under pressure I think.” Delavan smiled slightly. “I don’t know about McElroy.”

He waited a minute for it to sink in and then he said slowly: “Eight top bookmakers with big six-figure plays have sold out or turned up missing in the last month. I happen to know that three of them have been murdered — two in New Orleans and one in Detroit. That’s the reason I flew down here from Frisco when I heard about Kiernan.”

I finished my first highball and got a good start on the second; I was getting into the spirit of the thing and felt like I had five or six new leases on life.

Harry barked: “Does Amante know about this?”

Delavan bobbed his head up and down. “Uh-huh. But he thinks it’s a lot of baloney.”

The three of us sat grinning at each other for a minute like three kids planning to tip over Farmer Brown’s privy on Halloween.

Then Delavan looked at his watch and said he had to get back to his hotel and we paid the check and left. Outside, while we were waiting for the boys to bring our cars from the parking station, I cracked casually:

“Ever hear of a fella named Axiotes?”

Delavan nodded and his pan was just as dead as a buckwheat cake.

I said: “Oh yeah — one other thing: Mrs Bergliot, who identified Myra Reid’s voice, is a Spiritual Scientist — hangs out at Cora Haviland’s on Larchmont.”

Delavan got into his car, chirped: “Thanks. I’ll give you a ring later on tonight or in the morning.”

We drove over to Number One and I played Hearts with Connie Hurlburt and a couple boys from San Diego for a while but my skull wasn’t in it. Delavan had me all hopped up on the new slant and I wanted action, but he hadn’t suggested anything and he certainly acted like he knew what he was doing.

We went home about six-thirty and caught up with our drinking. Harry finagled with the radio and I sat and made a light luncheon of my fingernails and waited for Delavan to call. He didn’t, but Frank Curley called and said Axiotes was out, that he’d been out all day. Frank had followed him as far as Crenshaw and Wilshire and lost him in traffic and gone back to wait.

Then he said a woman who had been in and out with Axiotes twice in two days had driven up to his place in her own car about five o’clock and he’d got a peep at her license after she went into the apartment. Her name was Maude Foley and she had another gal with her who was pie-eyed.

I tried to get Delavan at his hotel, but no go.

Then Charley Hollberg called up and said he had to see me right away and asked if I could come over to his bungalow at the Ambassador. I told him I was busy but he kept insisting that it was very important and he couldn’t tell me about it over the phone and I finally said I’d come, figuring that maybe it really was important.

I left word at the desk that if Delavan called to tell him I’d be back in an hour or call in for a message.

Hollberg had a swell set of jitters. He gave us a quick drink and waved his eyebrows around mysteriously and said he couldn’t talk in the house and we went out and started walking across the lawn towards the hotel. It was pretty dark.

Hollberg said: “I’m sorry to inconvenience you like this, Finn, but—”

There was sudden crashing sound and a long spurt of blue fire from the darkness of the arbor near the bungalow. Something burnt its way into my shoulder and I fell down on my face.

I twisted on to my side and pulled my knees up. Harry was squatting a few feet away and Hollberg was lying on his back between us with his arms and legs spread out. The sound and the blue fire had stopped. There were several figures running towards us from the far side of the lawn, beyond Harry, and suddenly the sound and fire began again. I set myself for a slug, and then Delavan was kneeling beside me.

He asked: “How is it, Finn?”

I sat up. “Shoulder... just a little one.” It wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d figured when it hit — just a crease across the muscle.

The men with Delavan had gone on towards the arbor, there were several more scattered shots.

Harry said: “Hollberg got it in the belly.”

I got up and took off my coat. Harry ripped off my shirt-sleeve and folded it and tied it around my shoulder. There wasn’t very much blood.

One of Delavan’s men came running back from the arbor, wheezed: “They had a car on the other side.”

Delavan was bending over Hollberg, snapped, “See if you can head ’em off at Seventh Street,” without looking up.

The man galloped back into the darkness.

Delavan straightened up, spoke to Harry: “Take care of Hollberg.” He turned to me. “I’m going to Axiotes’... You’d better get to a doctor.”

I told him I was okay and I’d come along. He shrugged, said, “Suit yourself” — we ran across the lawn to Wilshire where his car was parked. There was a man standing beside it and Delavan told him to go back and give Harry a hand.

Axiotes’ apartment was only a few blocks away. As we swung into Kenmore, Delavan said: “I got to your place a few minutes after you left; the telephone girl told me about Hollberg calling and I took a chance on you being there.”

I told him it was the best chance I’d heard about for a long time.

Frank Curley spotted us when we pulled up in front of the apartment. He said Axiotes hadn’t come back and so far as he knew, no one had been in or out of the place since he’d talked to me. We told him to give us two buzzes on the downstairs bell if Axiotes or anybody he recognized started up. Delavan took a big blue automatic out of the side pocket of the car and handed it to me and we went in and got into the elevator.

On the way up I said: “You’ve got a pretty good idea who we’re going to find here, haven’t you?”

He smiled a little, nodded. “Fair. I’ve had Foley followed for two days...” He was silent a moment, went on: “Axiotes’ brother was her first husband.”

There was a small door a little ways down the hall from Apartment M that looked like it might be the kitchen entrance. Delavan rang the front doorbell and I stood flat against the wall near the small door; it opened at the second ring and one of the biggest, broadest guys I’ve ever seen stuck his knob out and peeked down the hall at Delavan.

I shoved the muzzle of the automatic against the back of his neck and told him to take it easy. Delavan came down and the three of us went into the kitchen.

The big fella belonged in a sideshow; he stood about six-six and was almost as wide. The best part was his head though — it looked like it had been made for him when he was a baby and he’d never got around to having it changed. He looked at us reproachfully as if he was pretty hurt at the dirty trick we’d played on him, and he kept his hands up and went ahead of us into the living room.

Maude Foley was standing in the middle of the room; she stared at the giant and then she moved her blank eyes to Delavan and then to me. Her face was as expressionless as a mop.

As I went towards her the giant moved a little to one side and as I passed he shifted suddenly and aimed a haymaker at me that would probably have caved my skull in. Delavan tapped him as pretty a tap as I’ve ever seen behind the ear with the butt of the gun and he went down like a dynamited chimney.

I went past Maude to the bedroom door; Barbara Kiernan was stretched out on the bed snoring peacefully.

Maude said dully: “I guess it’s all over but the shouting.” Her voice was surprisingly even, unemotional. She went over to a wide divan and sat down.

The bell rang sharply, twice.

Delavan crossed and flattened himself against the wall so the door would cover him when it sprung open. He bobbed his head at me and I snapped off the bedroom lights and stood in the darkness just inside the doorway.

In a little less than a minute a key clicked in the lock and the door opened. Axiotes stood a split second staring at the giant who was curled up comfortably on the floor. There was a man behind him, in the hall, carrying a violin case. Axiotes’ eyes jerked to Maude and in the same instant his hand flashed upward across his chest.

Delavan said: “Easy does it, George.”

He stepped around the door and jammed his gun against Axiotes’ side. The man in the hall half-turned as I went into the light with the big automatic; he saw me and stopped and the two of them came in and Delavan closed the door. Then he took their guns and motioned for them to sit down.

Axiotes crossed and sank into a big chair near the bedroom door and the other man — a thin, tubercular looking youngster — sat on the opposite side of the divan from Maude.

Delavan called his headquarters and told them to send another car and a couple of men; then he sat down facing Axiotes, purred: “Want to tell us all about it now, or are you too tired?”

Axiotes grinned with his mouth but his eyes were sombre; he didn’t say anything. Maude spoke suddenly: “I want to tell about it, and I’ll be goddamned glad to get it off my chest!...”

Axiotes looked at her but his expression didn’t change.

Delavan mumbled, “That’ll be fine,” softly.

Maude stood up and went to a cabinet against the wall and poured herself a stiff drink. She tossed off most of it, turned and leaned against the cabinet, said:

“Axiotes is my brother-in-law. We always got along pretty well and when he came out from New York seven or eight weeks ago I invited him down to my place at Palm Springs.”

She spoke of Axiotes as if he wasn’t there. She finished her drink and put the glass down, went on: “He met Barbara there and started romancing her. She liked him and they got pretty chummy...”

She glanced at me swiftly. “Barbara and Fritz’d been married eight years but they hadn’t worked at it the last two or three.”

Axiotes was staring at Maude with the same mechanical grin. His hands were tight on the arms of the chair and he didn’t move, just sat and grinned at her unpleasantly.

“The first I knew about that — that happening to Fritz,” she went on, “was about two-thirty Saturday morning. I’d been expecting Barbara all day and was worried. She and George and that big ape” — she pointed at the giant — “came in together. Barbara was hysterical. I put her to bed and tried to find out what had happened but she passed out, and then you called and told me Fritz had been murdered.”

She was silent a moment, staring at the floor; then she poured another drink and went back and sat down on the divan.

“Barbara was almost crazy when she woke up in a couple of hours but I finally got it out of her. She and George were coming down to my place together but they stopped here and started drinking and kept it up all afternoon. Barbara got paralyzed. She remembered it in flashes after that; she remembered George telling her they were going out and force Fritz to give her a divorce so he could marry her and then they picked up the ape someplace, and the next she remembered they were in front of the house and Fritz came out on the porch and George shot at him, twice...”

Delavan turned and smiled at me a little. He put his gun on his lap and took out a cigarette and lighted it, settled back in the chair.

Maude sipped her drink, glanced swiftly at all of us, went on: “The next thing she knew they were all in the house and the ape was kicking the life out of Fritz and she was screaming her head off. A man she didn’t know — that was Raymond — appeared in the doorway suddenly and George shot him. Then she fainted, and when she came to they were halfway to Palm Springs. George and the ape brought her to my house and left.”

Someone knocked at the door and Delavan got up and opened it. The men he’d sent for were there and he told them to wait and closed the door and went back and sat down.

“We drove into town early and called George and he came out to the house.” Maude was speaking swiftly now, staring dully at Axiotes. “He gave us a long song and dance about not meaning to kill Fritz — that he was so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing, that sort of thing. Barbara fell for it — she’s crazy about him, anyway, and he worked on her sympathy and told her how much he loved her and how jealous he’d been of Fritz... But I didn’t fall for it, and before he left we had a session by ourselves, downstairs. He got mad and spit out the whole thing...”

Axiotes leaned forward slowly and put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Maude since she’d been talking.

She watched him dully. “He’d come out here to buy out Fritz and Finn and McLennon and a few more gamblers with big clienteles — or run them out, or get control of their business in any way he could. He didn’t say who he was acting for but intimated that it was someone big in the East. Fritz wouldn’t sell and when George met Barbara he made a big play for her thinking he’d be able to reach Fritz that way. When he found out Fritz and Barbara hadn’t been getting along for a long time he changed his plans and it worked out” — she gestured vaguely with her hands — “this way.”

She glanced swiftly at Delavan, then turned again to Axiotes.

“He told me the police were working on the theory that Raymond was the key to the whole business and that that was a great break for us. Us! — he talked about us all the time as if we were just as guilty as he! And he said if I didn’t play ball with him he’d see that Barbara was stuck as the instigator of the whole thing...”

Maude laughed a little hysterically. “He’s a great convincer. He laid it on thick and I was scared. I told him Mrs Bergliot had hinted to me that she’d recognized Barbara’s voice and he said he’d take care of her with some money. I told him she wasn’t the kind of woman you could take care of that way and he wanted to know all about her and I said she was mixed up with some spiritualist cult on Larchmont. He took down the address and said he’d see what he could do about it...”

Delavan said: “We picked up Cora Haviland, the leader of that outfit this evening. Axiotes gave her two thousand dollars to go into a trance and tell Bergliot the voice she’d heard was Myra Reid’s.”

Maude smiled faintly, went on: “Then he said you” — she nodded at me — “were the only other person he was worried about; that he thought you knew more than you were telling and he was having you followed. I guess when you went to see Amante he thought he’d better get rid of you quickly and they tried it when you were driving home. Barbara was asleep when George left and when she woke up I gave her a lot of Luminol and she slept through the afternoon and night. When she woke up Sunday morning I told her what George had said and she was scared to death, too. I wanted to tell you about it but she vetoed that. I think that in her heart she’s still in love with George...”

Her eyes moved to Axiotes and the two of them stared silently, expressionlessly at each other for a moment. Then she turned back to me, went on swiftly, almost breathlessly:

“He called Sunday morning and said he was coming out, we were expecting him when you came in the afternoon; that’s the reason Barbara worked the gag about you shielding Myra Reid so hard — she was afraid George would come while you were there. He called later and said he couldn’t make it and she started drinking and she’s been at it ever since; I sobered her up enough to get to the funeral, but she started again as soon as it was over and insisted on coming here. And here we are.”

Maude finished her drink and put the glass down on the floor. “I guess that’s about all...”

It was entirely quiet for a few moments. All of us were looking at Maude. Then the giant groaned and rolled over on his stomach and I heard something behind me and turned around. Barbara was standing in the bedroom doorway. She held a nickled revolver loosely in her right hand.

She said, “No — that isn’t all,” thickly.

She swayed suddenly and put her free hand up to steady herself and then her other hand tightened on the revolver and it roared five times with the tick-tock regularity of clockwork. I whirled and saw Axiotes half rise out of the chair and his body jerk as the last two slugs went into it; then he sank slowly back and his surprised face went loose and soft and his head sank forward to his chest.

Delavan was standing with his gun focused on Barbara but as I watched he lowered it, and maybe I imagined it but I thought he smiled a very little. Maude sat staring dumbly at Barbara, and the other man — the t.b. — had jumped up and backed against the wall.

Someone pounded on the door.

Barbara went down suddenly; the revolver dropped from her hand and her knees gave way and she slumped down in the doorway, sobbing.

The giant groaned again and rolled over and sat up groggily.

Delavan crossed to the door and opened it, said: “Come in, boys.”

The doctor tightened the last stitch and snipped off the ends of the gut.

Delavan said: “Hollberg’s been under Axiotes’ thumb for a month; he was afraid to do anything without an okay. Axiotes made him call you tonight and ask you over to the bungalow. Hollberg thought he was putting the finger on you but Axiotes figured he’d kill two birds with one automatic rifle.”

The doctor finished and helped me put my coat on and Delavan and I went out to his car. We drove out Sunset a little ways and then I said:

“The only thing that doesn’t fit in is the business on Crescent Heights Boulevard when they tried to get me. How could Axiotes be so sure I smelled a rat that early in the game? I’d already been to see Amante and it seems to me Axiotes would figure I’d already spilled whatever I knew and could be counted out.”

Delavan didn’t answer. In a few minutes we pulled up in front of my place and I got out and asked him to come up for a drink.

He grinned at me silently for a moment and then he asked: “Have you ever taken a good look at my car?”

I shook my head and stepped back a couple steps and looked at it. It was a dark blue Buick roadster with a cream-colored top and cream-colored tire covers.

Delavan was watching me and suddenly he threw his head back and laughed until I thought he was going to bust a lung. He finally quieted down enough to sputter:

“I was sure you knew a lot more than you gave out when you and Amante and I had lunch; one of my men picked me up afterwards and we followed you.”

I leaned against the door of the car and said: “Oh.” There wasn’t anything else to say.

Delavan had calmed down to a broad smile.

“We hadn’t gone more than five or six blocks before we knew we weren’t alone,” he went on — “there was another car following you and pretty soon they spotted us and ducked up a side street. They disappeared while I was deciding which one to follow and, anyway, they had us pegged so we kept on after you. I was sure you had some kind of an inside but I was afraid you’d lay down on it, and it suddenly occurred to me that if I threw a scare into you or made you mad you wouldn’t lay down — you’d give us some action...”

He chuckled some more and pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

“The fella with me was Ormiston, who is one of the best shots in our outfit, so I changed seats with him and when you turned off on Crescent Heights I told him to let you have it close enough to look good without mussing up the car too much.”

I said, “Oh,” again.

“Then a couple blocks further along Ormiston jumped out and hailed a cab, and when you came along he tailed you to the drug store and went into the next booth and heard you call Myra Reid and Amante. I’ve been following your leads ever since — that’s all I had to go by. I’ve had men tailing your men — the two you’ve had on Bergliot and Axiotes—”

I cleared my throat and tried to look intelligent, interrupted: “And me?”

He nodded. “Uh-huh — and you.”

I felt like two cents but there wasn’t anything I could do about it but laugh with him. I said: “The least you can do, under the circumstances, is come up and have a drink.”

Harry was waiting. He yelped: “Hollberg has a fifty-fifty chance.” He turned to Delavan. “Your boys lost ’em.”

We told him we’d found ’em and I sketched the business at Axiotes’ for him.

The three of us had quite a few drinks. Delavan called up his headquarters and said he was cleaning up some very important evidence in the Kiernan case and he didn’t leave till about one-thirty.

Harry and I had a nightcap and talked it all over and then I went to bed and had a beautiful dream. It was mostly about the expression on Amante’s face when he heard the news.