The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories

Homicide, Inc.

Originally published in F.B.I. Detective Stories, October 1949.

MacDonald Sprague sat sidewise at the bar, frankly admiring the grave-faced blonde who sat with an escort a few feet away. But the admiration was entirely a surface veneer covering his cold loathing for the woman.

She looks more like a kitten than a murderess, he thought, studying the grave oval face with its slightly upslanting eyes. It was a face that seemed constantly to hold the promise of a smile which never materialized, a poker face, concealing all that lay behind it, yet somehow suggesting that if the mask were lifted, only laughter and innocence would be revealed.

It was hard to imagine those soft lips tensed in a cruel line and that tiny hand deliberately pumping bullets into a man. So hard that a strange reluctance mixed with the loathing in Mac’s mind for the women he believed had killed his brother.

With his hat tilted back at a jaunty angle and with a glint of satanic humor in his eyes, no one would have suspected MacDonald Sprague’s thoughts were composed of anything but admiration. He had rehearsed his part until everything about him was carelessly jaunty: his dress, his speech, his expression — even the way he moved in sudden controlled bounces. In physical appearance he only faintly resembled the deceased killer whose name he had assumed, but his personality was an almost exact copy.

The girl, though obviously aware of his scrutiny, seemed neither offended nor gratified, apparently accepting male admiration as a matter of course. But the man seated beside her did not share her indifference. Repeatedly he scowled at Mac, and once made as though to rise, but was stopped by the girl’s small hand touching his arm. Though it was the merest touch, he subsided immediately.

The movement re-emphasized to Mac that he was playing a game so dangerous, the slightest slip would make it fatal. For the girl’s scowling escort was Thomas Cougar, sometimes referred to as “The Strangler” because of his rumored proficiency with his pale, powerful hands.

Thomas Cougar was a tall, raw-boned man with an oddly narrow face with gray skin stretched so tightly it gave him a mummified appearance, an effect heightened by sparse, nearly colorless hair and eyebrows. Momentarily the mocking smile on Mac’s lips died as his eyes unconsciously dropped to the man’s enormously long and narrow fingers, which played with the stem of a cocktail glass. A mental image of those hands reaching for his throat caused Mac to shift his gaze hurriedly back to the girl.

The Town House was one of those glittering cocktail lounges of chrome and artificial leather, new but cheap, and already beginning to tarnish on the edges. It was the kind of place where the fringe of the underworld gathered — not actual criminals, but grifters and racetrack touts and petty gamblers. A forty-foot bar ran along one wall, and facing it along the opposite wall ran a forty-foot leatherette-upholstered bench before which, at spaced intervals, were set tiny cocktail tables. The blonde and her escort sat behind one of these a dozen feet closer to the door than Mac.

At this hour of the afternoon there were few customers, Mac was gratified to note, for the scene scheduled to occur at any minute was designed solely for the lovely blonde murderess. The fewer interested spectators, the better. At the moment, aside from Mac and the couple, two men seated at the bar near the door were the only customers.

George Doud slammed open the street door and stalked in exactly on schedule. Without glancing at him, Mac drained his beer, set down the glass and slid from his stool, as though preparing to leave.

Purposefully, George stalked the length of the bar, his wide, flat face set in the belligerent stare of the slightly drunk, and his massive arms swinging at his sides. As he neared the table at which the blonde and her companion sat, he leered sidewise at her, slightly changed direction, and still looking, crashed heavily into Mac.

The smaller man bounced away like a tennis ball, automatically raised both hands to sparring position, then dropped them back to his sides.

“Stick out your hand when you make a turn, mister,” he advised mildly.

George stared him up and down contemptuously. “Smart apple!” he said thickly, and lashed out with a fist the size of a grapefruit.

Mac’s knees bent, lowering his head a foot, so that the blow merely swept off his hat. His left stabbed into the big fellow’s stomach, his right immediately followed to the heart; then the heel of his left palm shoved against the other’s blue-black jaw and smashed the man into the leatherette bench next to Thomas Cougar.

For a moment George remained seated, his expression dazed and his arms spread wide for support on either side. Then he whipped his arms toward each other. His right hand darted at his left sleeve, and a six-inch blade suddenly glittered.

Shifting his back toward the barkeep and the two customers near the door, Mac’s fingers twinkled under his coat and out again. He held the automatic close to his body, so that only George, the blonde and Cougar could see it, but the muzzle centered unwaveringly between George Doud’s eyes.

George let his mouth drop open, and the knife slipped from his fingers to the floor.

“Kick it over here,” Mac said softly.

Obediently George toed the knife toward Mac. The smaller man stooped with a sudden spring-like motion, and when he straightened with the knife in his left hand, the gun had disappeared.

Thomas Cougar made a furtive movement toward his shoulder.

“Don’t touch it,” Mac advised, “I can beat you with my back turned.”

To prove it, he swung his back on all three, scooped his hat from the floor and started to move toward the entrance — a gesture not so heroic as it seemed, since in addition to the probability that Cougar’s motion toward his gun had been instinctive rather than overt, Mac knew George Doud would drop all of his 220 pounds on the gunman if Cougar even looked like he intended to draw.

“Wait, please,” a soft voice called behind him.

Instantly Mac stopped. She took the bait, he thought with savage elation, but his expression was merely quizzical as he eyed her over his shoulder. When her lip corners lifted in the faintest hint of a smile, he turned around. Tossing George’s knife on the bar, he said to the bartender, “Souvenir,” and walked back to the table.

His eyes hard and his face expressionless, he said to George, “Scram.”

George eyed the smaller man warily, licked his lips, rose to his feet and sidled widely around Mac. Like a frightened bear he lumbered toward the door and was gone.

With his face still expressionless, but with the light in his eyes turned from cold to mocking, Mac said to the girl, “Yes?”

“Sit down,” she suggested, “and have a drink.”

Mac shrugged, took a seat next to the girl and dropped his hat on the leather bench beside him.

“My name is Nan Tracy,” she said. “And this is Thomas Cougar.”

“Larry MacDowell,” Mac said. “Generally called Mac.” It was pure coincidence that he and the deceased gunman whose identity he had assumed answered to the same nickname, a coincidence which gave him the slight advantage of not having to learn to respond without thinking when his name was mentioned.

Mac nodded briefly at Cougar and received an equally brief nod in return. Hostility and suspicion seeped from the tall man’s eyes, and his pale fingers caressed his glass stem as though he wished it were Mac’s throat. For a wild moment Mac thought the man had detected the farce with George Doud, and he shifted his gaze to Nan Tracy in order to hide the uneasiness in his eyes.

The blonde was easier to look at anyway. Again he experienced a feeling almost of unbelief that her mask of innocence concealed a coldness and cupidity rare even in criminals — a mind that deliberately planned murder for profit.

“Your best contact is Nan Tracy,” Mac’s chief had said, “because Bart’s last report was on her.”

The chief had paused uncomfortably after mentioning Bart’s name, and Mac felt the bitterness rise in him again. Young Bart, only a year out of law school, already advancing in the bureau and engaged to be married. The kid had the world by the tail, but suddenly the bright future was snuffed out by a senseless bullet.

Mac had said harshly, “All right. What about her?”

“She seems to be the recruiter of professional killers for the organization,” the chief went on. “Possibly she even heads the whole setup. We’re almost certain it was she who killed Bart when they suspected he was an FBI agent. At least we’re sure it was a woman, and as far as we know, she’s the only woman actively connected with Homicide, Incorporated.”

“Nice name they picked for themselves,” Mac commented.

“Describes the organization perfectly,” the chief said grimly. “It’s pure murder for hire, organized down to a T. For a fee they’ll kill anyone, anywhere, anytime. Already they’ve operated in seven states that we know of, and no telling how many we don’t know about.”

“How the devil do they get customers?” Mac asked.

“Mainly through tie-ins with underworld gangs who hire them to do their dirty work. But they also seem to have a plant in at least one insurance company, because they seem to be able to find out what wives have heavily insured their husbands and vice versa, and then they quietly move in and offer to make the insurance payable for a fifty percent cut.

“Drake found out that much, which is why he began to work cooperatively with the insurance investigator from Argus Mutual. But when he and the Argus man both disappeared, we suspected the leak was at Argus, so Bart was instructed to contact no one but local police. Since his death, we don’t trust anyone, and you’re going in on your own. I’m giving you George Doud as an assistant, but aside from you two, myself and the big chief, no one at all will know you’re a bureau man. If you slip up, it’s your own fault, and not because of a leak.”

At the time this information had been reassuring, but now that Mac was actually confronted by his adversaries, a chill skittered along his spine. He knew that at the slightest suspicion that he was a federal agent, he would follow the same road as Drake and Bart Sprague.

Nan Tracy said, “What will you drink?”

“I’ve had it,” Mac said. “I came back for the proposition, not the drink.”

Her eyes widened innocently. “Proposition?”

“I’m a direct guy,” Mac said. “For a half-hour I give you the eye from the bar, and you don’t even know I’m alive. Then I draw a gun faster than you’ve ever seen one pulled, and right away you get chummy. Your pal has ‘mug’ written all over him and a heater under his arm. I can add. You’ve got a proposition for my gun. So spill it.”

Cougar growled, “I don’t like the way you talk, buster.”

“Then lump it,” Mac said indifferently.

The Strangler stiffened and the stem of his glass snapped between powerful fingers. The girl touched his arm, which kept him in his seat, but his eyes turned icily cruel.

“You are direct,” the girl said. “Where you from, Mac?”

“Out of town,” Mac said shortly.

“Hot?”

Mac shook his head. “I leave places before I get hot. The only thing any cop could pin on me is carrying a gun without a license.”

Nan Tracy’s eyes half closed and she regarded him contemplatively through the slits. She asked slowly, “What would you be willing to do with your gun for five hundred dollars a week?”

Mac looked at her expressionlessly for a long time before answering. “Depends,” he said finally. “In a safe setup — anything. In a risky one I didn’t like — nothing. And by risky, I mean gunning the law. I’ll go up against other guns, if the chance of a rap is slim enough.”

“Suppose we go up to my place and talk it over,” the girl suggested.

“What can I lose but my time,” Mac suggested.

Nan’s “place” turned out to be an apartment on the seventh floor of the exclusive Plaza Towers. Nan opened the door with a key, stepped in and then turned to face Mac with her hand out.

“I’ll take your hat,” she said, her face as still as usual, but her eyes smiling.

As Mac handed it to her, he heard the door click shut behind him and started to glance casually over his shoulder at Cougar, who had entered last. He stopped with his head half-turned when he felt hard metal press against his spine.

“Just don’t move,” said the girl, her eyes still smiling.

Mac stood motionless as her hand slid under his coat and removed his automatic. Efficiently she patted his pockets and hips for other weapons, then backed away, dropped Mac’s hat on an end table and seated herself in a soft chair.

She pointed Mac’s gun at him and said softly, “All right, Thomas. You may put it away, now.”

The pressure disappeared from Mac’s back and the Strangler carefully circled toward a sofa so that he did not pass between Mac and the automatic.

“What’s the pitch?” Mac growled.

“Sit down,” the girl suggested, motioning toward an easy chair directly opposite her own.

Mac sank into the chair, stretched his legs with an aplomb he did not feel and repeated, “What’s the pitch?”

“Just being careful,” Nan said. “Now tell me all about yourself.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Cougar put in sulkily, “I’ll test my grip on your throat if you don’t.”

Mac glanced at the man’s mummified face, let his eyes drop to the long narrow fingers which were gently massaging each other, and hastily looked back at the girl.

“What do you want to know?”

Nan Tracy looked him over thoughtfully before replying. Her lovely face was strictly business. She said, “You can start by telling us your real name.”

“MacDowell,” Mac said. “Larry MacDowell. I told you I wasn’t hot, so why should I use a fake name?”

Nan glanced inquiringly over at Cougar, who said grudgingly:

“Sounds faintly familiar, but I can’t place where I heard it. A guy as fancy with a rod as this Joe, I ought to have heard of. I keep my ear pretty close to the grapevine. But he don’t ring a bell.”

Dissatisfaction showed in his expression and his tone became almost querulous. “You jumped at him too fast. Suppose he turns out to be a cop, or maybe a Fed? Now he knows something’s up, and you can’t just kick him out. So we got a body on our hands.”

Mac quirked his lips in what was meant to be an insolent grin, but which he feared more resembled a sickly one.

Nan’s voice developed an edge of ice. “Since you were let in on my next higher contact, you’ve begun to cultivate a bad habit, Thomas. I still do your thinking for you, and if you get too big for your boots, the boss may order you buried in them.”

Cougar’s already pale face turned even paler and he muttered something about only trying to be helpful. Mac’s mind sifted over the words, Next higher contact, and came to the tentative conclusion that more than one link in the organization of Homicide, Inc., existed above Nan. At the same time he experienced mild surprise that the emotionless Cougar exhibited such fear at mention of the boss. He mentally filed the knowledge for future reference.

Nan turned her attention back to Mac. “Who have you been connected with, Mac? Give us some references. Something we can check.”

Her eyes still seemed to be smiling, but her lips were a hard straight line. Mac felt a flood of thankfulness that he had briefed himself for just such an emergency, “John Hagen in New Orleans,” he said. “Jimmy Dow in L. A.”

“Hagen—” Cougar started to say, then stopped and looked at Nan apologetically.

“Go on, Thomas,” she said.

Encouraged, he swung his gaze back to Mac, and suspicion mixed in his eyes with the hostility already there. “Hagen’s dead and Dow’s at Alcatraz,” he said coldly.

Mac shrugged. “Barrel-Head Morgan in St. Louis.”

Nan’s expression showed interest. “We did some work for him once,” she said to Cougar. “Put in a call.”

The Strangler went into the hallway and they could hear him giving a St. Louis number to the operator. Five minutes passed while the girl’s grave eyes examined Mac without expression.

Mac employed the time to glance around the room, noting two of the doors leading off it seemed to lead to bedrooms.

Cougar came back and spat, “Morgan’s on a Mediterranean cruise. How many more guys who aren’t available can you dream up?” His expression had changed from suspicion to open disbelief.

Mac glanced at Nan’s face, noting something new there which was not exactly suspicion, but a kind of alertness. A bead of cold sweat trickled down his side, but he managed to say unconcernedly, “Those boys were before my time. Try my last boss, Dude Emory in Philly. He was alive and present a month ago.”

Cougar started to turn toward the hall again, but Nan said, “Wait, Thomas. I’ll call him myself.”

She waited while Cougar drew a revolver from beneath his arm and covered Mac, then lowered her own gun and went into the hall.

Again Mac sat quietly while the call went through, but this time his muscles were bunched to throw himself at Cougar at the first intimation that his masquerade had failed. For Dude Emory was his hole card, and unless he spoke the proper words, Mac knew he was as good as dead.

Only two weeks before, the FBI fingerprint department had identified as Larry MacDowell an unclaimed accident victim lying in a Brooklyn morgue. No news release had been made for the specific purpose of letting Mac use his name.

Their physical descriptions roughly tallied, but Mac was counting more on the psychology of his acting than on physical resemblance. Most persons in describing someone do not say something like, “A man weighing 240 pounds, light brown hair, gray eyes, freckles, a hook nose and a dimple in his chin.” Instead they say, “A big fellow with horn-rimmed glasses, who is always pursing his lips and talks about nothing but baseball.”

Mac hoped that Emory’s description would be something like, “A stocky guy of average height who sort of bounces when he moves. Wears his hat on the back of his head and always has a mocking grin, like he doesn’t give a damn about anything.”

There was a good possibility the stunt would work, but there was also a double risk. Possibly Larry MacDowell’s death had been gangland vengeance, rather than the accident it seemed, in which case Dude Emory undoubtedly would be aware of it through the underworld grapevine. And also Emory might mention the cheek scar MacDowell bore, which MacDonald Sprague lacked. Mac found himself wishing Cougar had made the call instead of Nan for the alert light in her eyes warned him she would not be too easily fooled.

When Nan finally returned, Mac forced his gaze to meet hers, and immediately he knew he had won, for there was a faint touch of respect in her eyes.

“Dude Emory seems to think you’re the devil on wheels with a gun, Mac.” She handed back his automatic butt first. “Sorry for the inconvenience, but we don’t take any chances.”

“That’s all right,” Mac said agreeably, concealing his flood of relief. “I prefer working for an outfit that doesn’t.”

He slipped the automatic back in its holster and stared pointedly at the revolver still in Cougar’s hand. Slowly the Strangler replaced it beneath his arm, but none of the hostility disappeared from his eyes, and very little of the suspicion, This guy is going to watch me, Mac told himself, and I better watch him if I want to stay alive.

Nan had returned to her chair and was eying Mac speculatively. “How would you like to work for Homicide, Incorporated?” she asked abruptly.

Mac sat up straight and forced a look of surprise on to his face. “Homicide, Inc.! I’ve heard of that, and it’s bigger than any of the guys I mentioned. Don’t tell me that outfit is run by a woman!”

“I won’t tell you anything,” she said in a suddenly cold voice. “Who runs it is none of your business. You’ll get your orders and your salary from me. Who I get them from is something you don’t have to know, and if you try to find out, Thomas will discourage the attempt by squeezing your throat until you stop breathing — permanently.”

“All right,” Mac said agreeably. “I won’t pry. Just so I get paid regularly, and know I’ll be taken care of if I get in a jam.”

“You’ll get five hundred a week, and if you get in a pinch, the best legal talent in the country will be retained to defend you.”

“You’ve got a new employee,” Mac said.

For the first time Nan almost smiled; but instead of being reassured, coldness crept along Mac’s spine.

She turned to Cougar and said, “You better run along now, Thomas. I want to talk to Mac for a while.”

The already tight skin seemed to tighten even more across the Strangler’s narrow face, and his eyes shot open hatred at Mac. But he rose obediently, muttered a good night and left.

As soon as the door closed behind Cougar, Nan’s brittle mask seemed to melt away. For a moment she stood staring at the door with a kind of uneasy relief, looking more like a bewildered young girl than a lieutenant in a murder organization. Again Mac experienced a sense of shock at the combination of sympathy and revulsion her two faceted character aroused in him.

“I hate him!” she said in a low voice. “I’ve wished him dead a thousand times!”

Mac looked at her with his mouth open, unable to correlate her obvious fear and detestation of Cougar with the cold and domineering manner in which she ordered him around. If she really wished the man dead, she was certainly in a position to get him that way. He wondered if for some obscure reason she was putting on an act, and resolved to guard his reactions carefully.

She shook herself like a kitten throwing off water, moved over to Mac’s chair, took his hand and led him to the sofa. Puzzledly he sat beside her while she continued to hold his hand tightly.

“I’m afraid,” she said simply. “I needed you badly.”

On guard, he examined her face, noting the wild excitement deep in her eyes. For a moment he thought the excitement was amorous, and wondered how he could duck such a squeamish situation, for he had no desire to make love to his brother’s murderess. But immediately he sensed it was something else — an uncertainty and something closely allied to terror.

She released his hand suddenly, clasped both of hers in her lap and looked up at him with a strange mixture of hope and wariness in her expression.

“I’m glad you’ve come in with me, Mac,” she said, then added quickly, “With us, I mean.”

A theory began to form in Mac’s mind, a theory that explained her dialogue with Cougar as well as her present action, which he half suspected was a deliberate act. The theory was that Nan was the real head of Homicide, Inc., and her talk of a “next higher contact” plus her present act was deliberate red herring.

At the same time she looked so frightened, so small and so defenseless, he automatically dropped a protective arm across her shoulders, one part of his mind half believing she really needed masculine protection, and the other part regarding himself with amazed disgust. Her head tilted upward, and in spite of his resolution, he kissed her. For a second he completely forgot himself.

Her lips clung to his coolly. For a moment he completely forgot she was a murderess, forgot his mission, forgot everything but the soft outline of her mouth. Then recollection sent a wave of revulsion over him and he jerked back so suddenly, Nan’s eyes widened in surprise.

At the same moment the door opened quietly and a woman entered from the hall.

She was a slim, shy-appearing brunette of about twenty-eight, pretty in a delicate-featured, subdued sort of way, but the type that instinctively huddle in the background and are therefore overlooked.

She gave an embarrassed cough, and stood twisting the strap of her bag uncertainly.

“Why, Claire,” Nan said in a surprised voice. “Is it after five?”

“Five-thirty,” Claire said apologetically.

Mac rose and Nan said, “This is Mr. MacDowell, Claire. Claire D’Arcy, Mac. She shares the apartment with me.”

Nan’s air of defenselessness had vanished, and her eyes were again brittle and mocking. “Claire is a working girl. Chief file clerk for Argus Mutual. She toils from eight to five while I flit from cafe to cocktail lounge, and secretly she disapproves of me.”

“Why, I do no such thing!” Claire said, coloring.

Mac lowered his lids to conceal the flash of interest inspired by the name, Argus Mutual. But he made no attempt to slow his racing mind.

The leak at Argus was immediately obvious, yet so simple it was no wonder it worked. One look at Claire D’Arcy was enough to indicate that her company would regard her as above suspicion, as she probably was. Even if they knew of Nan, it would never occur to Argus that the attractive apartment-mate of their chief file clerk was part of Homicide, Inc. Nor would it occur to the shy girl, who undoubtedly was glad of a sympathetic audience to listen to her story of the day’s work, never suspecting she was furnishing information to the most ruthless murder gang in the country.

The simplicity and audacity of the plan almost shocked Mac into letting jubilation show on his face. Instead, he greeted the girl civilly and mumbled something about having to run along.

“Come take me to dinner tomorrow night,” Nan told him at the door. “Be here at six and I’ll make you a cocktail first.” She added in a lower voice, “We can’t talk in front of Claire.”

As Mac’s taxi pulled away from the Plaza Towers, Mac saw by a glance through the rear window that another cab a quarter block back pulled out a moment later.

“Union Hotel,” he told the driver. “And don’t bother trying to lose our tail.”

Startled, the cabbie glanced at his rear-view mirror, then shrugged and kept silent.

The other taxi went on by when Mac’s driver stopped in front of the Union Hotel’s main entrance. Without glancing at it, Mac paid off his driver and entered the hotel. From the corner of his eye he saw the second taxi park fifty yards down the street.

At the desk he got his key, then entered the elevator with several other passengers.

“Two,” he said to the operator.

Getting out at the second floor, he walked quickly to the stairs, descended a half-flight and peered over the banister into the lobby. Thomas Cougar and a gangling, freckle-faced man who seemed to be with him were talking to the desk clerk.

Something passed from Cougar’s hand to that of the clerk who glanced at it, grinned delightedly and began bobbing his head in eager subservience.

Mac drew back out of sight, mounted stairs to the third floor and let himself into his room. It was only six o’clock, and he stretched himself on the bed until it got dark.

When it had grown quite dark, he went into the bathroom, turned on the light and wrote a detailed report of the day’s events. Then without turning on the room light, he crossed his bedroom to the window, noiselessly raised it and carefully scanned the street below.

A window stick used for opening and closing the upper part of the window hung from a bracket on the wall. Mac rapped its brass head sharply against the ceiling three times. A moment later a tin can suspended from a string descended from the window above him and gently settled on the outer ledge. Mac stuffed his report into the can, and it immediately rose again.

Silently closing the window again, Mac slipped on his coat to go downstairs for dinner. As he pulled shut his door, he glanced along the hall casually, and saw what he expected to see. Diagonally across the hall from his room a door stood open about an inch, and the room beyond was dark. Apparently Thomas Cougar’s suspicions were far from allayed by the phone call to Dude Emory, and he intended to have every move Mac made watched.

Without glancing at the slightly ajar door again, Mac made straight for the elevator. A half hour later, when he came up again, his room had been expertly searched. So expertly that even though he had expected it, he himself had to look for ten minutes before he found evidence of the search in the form of a pair of socks replaced in an order different from the way he had memorized it.

At exactly six the next evening Mac rang the buzzer of Nan’s apartment. But instead of Nan answering the door, it was opened by Claire D’Arcy, who wore a simple blue house dress.

“Oh. Mr. MacDowell,” Claire said. “Nan would have called, but she didn’t know where you were staying. She was suddenly called out of town and had to catch a plane.”

“Oh.” Mac said, and waited blankly.

“Nan said to tell you she was sorry, and if you’d leave your number, she’d phone you tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m supposed to give you the cocktail she promised.” She stepped back and held the door wide. “Won’t you come in?”

“Thanks,” Mac said, following her into the living room. It occurred to him that perhaps Nan’s sudden trip was a stroke of luck, for he might never find another opportunity to sound out her apartment mate alone, and on impulse he said:

“If you haven’t had dinner, maybe you’d substitute for Nan — unless you mind being second choice. I planned to take her to the Blue Penguin.”

“I’m afraid I’ve already started cooking dinner,” Claire said. “And besides, I’m not dressed for dining out.” Hesitantly she added, “If you like, you may eat here. I always cook three times too much.”

“I wouldn’t want to put you to any bother.”

“No bother at all,” she assured him, and her eyes lighted with a shy eagerness that almost startled him, for he did not regard himself as the type of man maidens yearn for. He wrote it off as a symptom of loneliness, which might make her glad of any male company.

“Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes,” she said, taking it for granted he would stay. “Please mix yourself a drink while you’re waiting. You’ll find everything on the side board.”

“Thanks, but I’d prefer a bottle of beer, if you have one.” Actually he preferred a cocktail, but Larry MacDowell’s drink had been beer, so now it was Mac’s.

“In the refrigerator,” she said. “You can drink it at the kitchen table and watch me cook, if you like.”

“That’s my speed,” Mac grinned at her. “I feel more at home in the kitchen.”

They ate at the kitchen table, and afterward Mac helped her with the dishes. Accustomed to dining almost exclusively in restaurants, the domesticity of the situation had a curious effect on Mac. He found himself enjoying the evening more than he ever enjoyed the glitter of cafes and night clubs. Under the influence of his obvious enjoyment, Claire’s shyness evaporated. Beneath the shyness Mac found a quiet intelligence and a nice sense of humor.

By the time the dishes were finished, they had become old friends, and Claire was laughing and chattering like a complete extrovert. Almost automatically their hands clasped together as she led him back into the front room.

When they sat together on the same sofa where Mac had been caught in the act of kissing Nan, Claire snuggled against his shoulder without a trace of her former shyness and looked up at him in almost open invitation.

With an effort Mac recalled that his purpose in staying to dinner was not pleasure, but business.

He made a face at her and asked casually, “How long have you lived here with Nan?”

“About six months. But I don’t live with her. She lives with me. It was my apartment originally. I met Nan at a party.” She moved away slightly. “Are you very fond of Nan?”

Mac dropped his arm across her shoulder and drew her back in place. “I barely know her. Seems like a nice girl, though.”

“Nicer than I?”

Mac frowned, not being particularly fond of coyness; then turned the frown into a grin. “You’ve got one big advantage over her. You’re here.”

“Rat!” she said, and started to twist out of his arms.

He pulled her back and kissed her. And suddenly her arms were about his neck and her lips were pressed against his so fiercely, he was startled. Compared to Nan’s cool lips, Claire’s were like fire. Mac experienced the combined sensation of wrestling with a leopard and holding one finger in a live wall socket.

When eventually he forcibly, broke the kiss to prevent suffocation, she snuggled against him with her head pressed to his chest and her soft hair tickling his chin.

“You shouldn’t kiss me like that,” she said in a muffled voice.

Mac gazed down at her bent head in amazement. “Does seem a waste of time,” he said sarcastically. “I can get the same effect by falling down a flight of stairs.”

“Who are you, Mac?” she asked in the same muffled voice.

“MacDowell. Larry MacDowell. Remember?”

“I mean, what do you do?”

“I’m a C.P.A.,” he said truthfully, though the only accounting work he had done since school was checking books for evidence on FBI cases.

“What’s your business with Nan?”

He frowned down at the top of her head. “What business with Nan?”

Suddenly she straightened and moved a safe two feet away from him. “Why do so many men come to see Nan who don’t seem to be men friends, but appear to have some business arrangements with her? All types men, like that awful Thomas Cougar. Who are they, and what do they want?”

“How should I know?” Mac evaded. “I just met the girl, and don’t know a thing about her. Maybe they’re business friends.” He paused, as though the thought had just occurred to him. “What is her business, anyway? She must have some kind of income to keep up her half of this place.”

“When she suggested we share the apartment, she said some money had been left her. She hasn’t any kind of job, and doesn’t do much of anything but move around socially. But lately I’ve gotten the impression these men who call on her have something to do with her income, and that she never inherited any money. I can’t explain it. It’s just a feeling, and it bothers me because I like Nan.” She looked at Mac in sudden suspicion. “Maybe you’re one of them, and know all about it.”

“You’re imagining things.” Mac said, and reached for her again.

Feeling he had obtained what little information Claire had, and that further questions might cause her to suspect he was pumping her and make her mention it to Nan, Mac decided to devote the rest of the evening to pleasure. But he discovered he could not dislodge the subject from Claire’s thoughts. Time and again she returned to her suspicion that Mac was one of the men somehow tied to Nan, sometimes bluntly accusing him of it, sometimes cajoling him to tell her what Nan was involved in, and never entirely accepting his protest that he had no idea what she was talking about.

In the middle of a kiss she would return to the subject, and finally Mac began to wonder — who was the pumper and who the pumpee. Her probing alarmed him for her own safety, for if curiosity led her to the point of questioning Nan, her questions might lead her to the bottom of the river.

He turned over in his mind the thought of warning her, but discarded it as too dangerous to his own position in case Nan ever learned of the warning. There was nothing to do but persist in his denials, and eventually he succeeded in smothering her questions by keeping her lips occupied.

When he left the apartment at midnight, his suit was rumpled, his collar covered with lipstick and his head was spinning like a gyroscope. So far out of his mind had Claire D’Arcy succeeded in knocking Homicide, Inc., he almost forgot to bother to check if he was still being tailed.

It was only when his eyes fell on the door of the room diagonally across from his own and noted it was still ajar that he came back to the present.

Inwardly he grinned, wondering if the spy beyond the door had noticed the red smear on his collar and would report to Cougar that his throat seemed to be cut.

At noon the next day the room phone awakened Mac. It was Nan Tracy.

“I’m sorry about last night,” she said in a tight, unnatural voice.

“That’s all right. What’s the matter?”

“Got a business deal on.” She seemed to be under terrific excitement, for her tone was so forced, her voice nearly cracked. “If you haven’t had lunch, get some, because you won’t have another opportunity. I’ll pick you up in an hour.”

“I’ll be waiting in the lobby,” he said quietly.

So he was to be given an assignment, he thought. Probably, the result of her plane trip last night. He hoped it was a one-man assignment. Managing to fail to murder his designated victim would be easier without a witness.

But apparently it was a big mission, for Thomas Cougar and another man were with Nan when she arrived. Mac rose from the lobby sofa where he had been waiting when the three entered, and Nan introduced the second man as Arnold Link. He was a squat, broadly powerful man with “gorilla” written all over him.

Cougar said, “You three wait here a minute,” and his tone made it almost an order.

Mac stared after him puzzledly as the pale killer crossed to the desk and employed the house phone, which could be used only to phone rooms. In a moment Cougar returned and all of them stood waiting, as though expecting someone to join them.

“What’s up?” Mac asked tentatively.

Nan and Cougar stared at him fixedly, as though they had not heard the question.

Squat Arnold Link said in a toneless monotone, “You’ll find out when we get there. We do not blab in hotel lobbies.”

A man who apparently had gotten off one of the elevators suddenly joined the group. Without surprise Mac noted he was the same man he had seen in the lobby with Cougar the night he peered over the banister.

“Benny Chisholm,” Cougar said briefly, “Mac MacDowell.”

Benny was a tall, gangling fellow with a large nose and freckles. His wide, yokel-like eyes were blandly innocent, but the effect was spoiled by a mouth which was nothing but a cruel, lipless gash. He nodded without offering his hand.

My friend across the hall, Mac thought, and glanced at Nan. With a shock he realized she was actually smiling, but her smile did not come up to the promise at which her usual grave expression hinted. It was fixed and brittle, and her eyes glittered as though she were under intense strain.

The smile made the hair on the back of his neck rise, and something about the flat look with which the three men regarded him warned him of danger. It suddenly occurred to him that he somehow might have been found out, and the gathering might not be a mission at all, but a one-way ride for MacDonald Sprague.

“I forgot to leave my key at the desk,” he said abruptly, and before anyone else could speak, turned on his heel and walked rapidly across the lobby.

Tossing his key on the desk, he said to the clerk in a quick but low voice, “Phone room 418 for me and tell Mr. Crowell I can’t meet him for lunch.”

Instead of immediately returning to the group, he cut diagonally across to the tobacco counter and bought a package of cigarettes. As he paid for them, he saw from the corner of his eye that the clerk was just setting down the phone. Now it was necessary to stall at least a moment in order to allow George Doud time to act on the code message.

Turning toward the group, he called, “Be right with you,” then deliberately opened the cigarette pack, removed one and lit it at the tobacco counter’s gas lighter.

All five of them crowded into a long black sedan which was parked in front of the hotel. Squat Arnold Link drove, Nan sat next to him in the front seat, and Mac found himself between the Strangler and the freckled Benny Chisholm.

“What’s the deal, now that we’re out of the lobby?” Mac asked as they pulled away.

“It’ll keep a while,” Cougar said shortly. The thick-shouldered chauffeur drove smoothly, obeying all traffic rules in town, and when they left the city, limits, pushed up to a sedate fifty miles an hour and kept it there.

At the end of the hour, about thirty-five miles from town, the driver said, “Taxi tailing us.”

Mac started to twist his head rearward, but Cougar said sharply, “Keep your face front.” To Link he said, “Pull over and park.”

Immediately the sedan slowed, pulled onto the shoulder and stopped. In a few moments a cab went by without slowing.

“Got butterflies in your stomach, Link?” Cougar asked contemptuously. “Just because a taxi travels the same speed we do, doesn’t mean we’re being tailed.”

When the sedan pulled away again, the taxi was a quarter of a mile ahead. Link dropped his speed to forty, and soon it could not be seen at all. A mile farther on, they turned to one side on a dirt road.

Twenty minutes later they turned into a private lane, drove another five-hundred yards and stopped before a large, one-story log hunting cabin. Everyone got out. As they approached the door, Nan linked her left arm through Mac’s right.

Behind them Cougar said, “Thanks, Nan,” and his gun pressed into Mac’s back. “Now just remove that automatic from under his arm.”

Mac stood very still as Nan, still holding his right arm, reached under his coat with her free hand and slipped the automatic from its clip holster.

As she stepped away from him, he said, “This is getting to be a habit. What’s the pitch this time?”

“Get moving, copper!” Cougar snarled at his back, and emphasized the command by jabbing his spine with the gun muzzle.

At the word “copper” Mac’s hopes sank. He walked forward stiffly, prodded by the Strangler’s gun, and entered the cabin. Inside Mac found a long beam-ceilinged room running the entire width of the front. It was furnished with rustic furniture and had a fireplace at each end. Directly across from the entrance a drape-covered doorway led to another room in back.

When he reached the center of the room, Mac stopped and looked inquiringly over his shoulder. Cougar had paused just inside the door, and Nan stood with the two other men at the side, as though all three were merely interested observers.

“All right, copper,” Cougar said. “Start explaining who you are.”

Mac looked at Nan. “I thought you gave the orders around here. How come Ugly is tossing his weight around now?”

Cougar’s face darkened, but before he could speak, Nan said viciously, “Thomas is the fair-haired boy now. He brought the teacher an apple and got promoted to honor student.” Her answer was to Mac’s question, but she spoke directly to Cougar and the vicious tone was meant for him.

So there actually was someone higher than Nan in the organization, Mac thought. Hoping to create a diversion, he asked, “Got demoted, did you, Nan? What was the apple?”

Nan’s eyes swung at him. “You were. Smarty-pants Thomas phoned Dude Emory again and asked more detailed questions. When he found out Larry MacDowell had a cheek scar, he went running to teacher instead of to me, and got marked A for effort.”

“Is that all the fuss is about?” Mac asked indifferently. “Ever hear of plastic surgery?”

“Sure,” Cougar said. “I thought of that, which is why I asked the color of his eyes. Explain how you changed your eyes from blue to brown, and We’ll let you go.”

“Shoe polish,” Mac said seriously.

Benny Chisholm said, “What we waiting for? Let’s get this over with.”

“The boss wants her to do it personal,” Cougar said, nodding at Nan. “To sort of make up for her boner.”

He slipped a second gun, a vest pocket automatic, from his coat pocket and held it butt first toward Nan.

“Take him in there,” he said, pointing his own gun toward the drape-covered door.

Nan’s eyes brightened, almost as though she were glad of the opportunity to kill. “All right, Mac, darling,” she said. “Forward march.”

Tickles of cold sweat ran down Mac’s sides beneath his shirt, but he managed to keep both his expression and his tone mocking. “Murder gets to be habit forming, doesn’t it, Nan? You’re becoming almost the official executioner for Homicide, Incorporated.”

“What do you mean by that?” she said suspiciously.

“I won’t be the first suspected cop you killed, will I? About the fourth now, isn’t it?”

Cougar emitted a single hoarse guffaw, which was half laugh and half snarl.

Nan’s eyes burned at the Strangler and she spat, “Don’t throw so much weight around that you get in the boss’ hair. You don’t know how close you have come to the river before, when you got over-ambitious.”

His pale features lost what little color they had, and he seemed to shrink within himself. Nan tossed her head in: triumph at having at least temporarily put him in his place, then jabbed her little gun at Mac.

“I said move. Or do you want it right here?”

Abruptly Mac turned toward the doorway and pushed through the drapes, Nan following with the gun almost touching his back. The second room proved to be sleeping quarters and contained nothing but two double bunks, two heavy dressers and what seemed to be a closet, for at one side of the room was a second drape-covered door.

“Turn around,” Nan commanded in a loud voice.

Slowly Mac turned to face her, his body tensed against the expected jolt of a bullet. Nan’s face was dead white and her eyes held a gleam of unnatural excitement.

In a voice so low he could barely hear it, she said, “I haven’t time to explain, but take this gun and go out shooting.”

Mac’s jaw hung wide as she suddenly reversed the pistol and thrust the butt into his palm.

“Now hit me,” she said tensely. “Quick, so I’ll have an out! Make it look like you got the gun by force.

But Mac merely stared at her. “Quick!” she said fiercely. “Hit me! Hard!”

Recovering his mental balance, he clenched his left fist, slowly and almost reluctantly raised it chest high, then suddenly lashed out and caught Nan square on the chin. Her eyes crossed and she dropped flat on her back.

The drapes parted as Cougar pushed through, his revolver half-raised. Centering the little automatic on the Strangler’s vest, Mac squeezed the trigger and stepped back.

There was nothing but a sharp click. Cougar grinned wolfishly, and as Mac stared blankly down at the empty gun, a soft chuckle came from the side of the room. Mac glanced sidewise just as Claire D’Arcy stepped from the closet, a man-sized .45 automatic clenched in her small hand.

“An interesting show, and just what I expected,” Claire said.

Nan sat up and dazedly felt of her chin.

“Thanks for the demonstration, Nan,” Claire said sardonically. “Did you really think we’d trust you with a loaded gun after planting a cop in our midst?”

Nan worked her lower jaw tentatively and remained both seated and silent.

“When Dude Emory told Thomas over the phone that he had informed you of Larry MacDowell’s cheek scar and blue eyes, there were only two explanations possible for your not branding Mac here a cop right then and there, and taking necessary action,” Claire said. “Either you are awfully stupid, or you’re a cop yourself. I rigged up this little act so I could listen in and learn which.” She smiled, and there was an unpleasant glitter in her eyes. “Now we can have a double funeral.”

The whole picture clicked together in Mac’s mind, and at the same time his mind wildly searched for a way out of the situation. Seemingly of its own accord there popped into his remembrance the Strangler’s craven fear of the “boss,” and Nan’s constant needling of him about the “boss” dislike of his over-ambition. With the remembrance a wild idea occurred to him.

“You mean a triple funeral, don’t you, Claire?” Mac asked insinuatingly.

She looked at him suspiciously. “What do you mean by that crack?”

“Just what I said.” Mac made his voice confident. “Three people in this room are going to die.”

Both Claire and Cougar frowned at him intently, and a faint uncertainly appeared in Cougar’s eyes.

“I suppose you told Cougar I didn’t know you were head of Homicide, Incorporated, and had been completely taken in by Nan acting as your front,” Mac continued blandly. “But you see, Cougar knows you deliberately sent Nan out of town yesterday so you could talk to me alone in order to satisfy yourself I was safe. He also knows I spent six hours in your apartment, because he was having me tailed.”

“So what?” Cougar asked roughly.

“So she never even suspected I was a cop then,” Mac shot at him. “She didn’t suspect it until you told her today. Last night she thought I was just a newly hired gun, and she gave me an assignment.” His next words he spaced slowly and distinctly. “She said you were getting too big for your boots, Cougar. And she told me to kill you. That’s the third funeral. She’ll get you before you get out of this room.”

The uncertainty in the gunman’s eyes had turned to fear and suspicion. Like a trapped animal he swung his eyes from Mac to Claire and back again. Claire’s expression was merely one of indulgent amusement. Apparently she did not realize the profound impression Mac was making on Cougar.

“Nice try anyway, Mac,” she said, and her .45 centered on his stomach.

Cougar’s’ eyes were still on Mac, as Mac shouted; “Look out, Cougar!”

The muzzle of the Strangler’s revolver jerked toward Claire and suddenly spat flame. At the same moment Mac hurled his empty automatic straight at Cougar’s narrow face. It caught the man square in the left eye, Cougar staggered backward.

Mac hit him in a headlong tackle, and the revolver skittered along the floor to a far corner. As they grappled, Cougar’s elbow caught Mac under the chin.

At the moment a regular fusillade of shots came from the next room, but Mac was too busy to concern himself with anything but the Strangler, who had managed to twist on top of him and get his powerful hands on his throat.

Desperately Mac tried to claw the hands loose, but they held with the grip of a vise. The pale, mummy-like face was inches from his, and the man’s teeth were bared in a sadistic smile. With his lungs bursting and waves of darkness pressing against him. Mac’s struggles became weaker and weaker.

His distended eyes were nearly popping from his head when the Strangler’s cruel smile suddenly faded into a vacuous grin. His grip relaxed and he collapsed.

For a moment Mac could do nothing but suck great gobs of air into his lungs. Then, as his sight cleared, he was conscious of Nan peering down at him anxiously, Cougar’s revolver held in her hand like a club.

“Drop it, lady,” said a flat voice.

Nan’s gun clattered to the floor and her hands slowly rose at sight of the gun muzzle threatening her from the doorway. Mac pushed Cougar off and sat up.

“I thought that was probably you, giving them fits out there,” he said to George Doud. “Never mind Nan. She’s on our side.” He looked at her wryly. “What are you anyway, Nan? A detective for Argus Mutual?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t warn you today because Thomas and Claire were with me when I phoned. They never let me out of their sight for a minute.”

Mac climbed to his feet and glanced over at what had been Claire D’Arcy. Cougar’s bullet had caught her in the forehead, and she had died instantly.

“How about out there?” Mac asked George, nodding toward the other room.

“Both dead,” George said shortly. “Neither one had their guns out when both decided to take a chance, but only the freckled-faced guy managed to clear his holster. But he didn’t get in a shot.”

“That finishes Homicide, Incorporated, then,” Nan said. “You’re FBI, aren’t you?”

Mac nodded.

“I began to suspect it when all your references were so conveniently unavailable. That’s why I took the last phone call myself. After Dude’s description, I was almost sure, and was trying to work up to telling you who I was when Claire walked in and caught us — ah — talking.”

“Was it Claire who killed Bart Sprague?” Mac asked.

“Who?”

“The FBI man who was shot a month ago. He was my kid brother.”

“Oh,” Nan said. “I’m sorry. I was too late to stop that. I didn’t even realize he was an FBI man until it was all over. Yes, Claire handled that personally, just as she intended to handle you.”

Mac glanced over at the dead woman once more and smiled a dead smile lacking the bitter satisfaction he had expected to find with revenge. Then he looked down at Nan’s white face.

“You’ve got a lot of guts for a woman,” he said. “With all those bullets and all this blood, most women would faint.”

“You have to be tough to work for Argus Mutual,” Nan said.

Then she fainted.