Stewart Sterling

The Galloping Corpses

Chapter I

Danger — High Voltage

The waitress leaned close. “Dessert, Mister Madden?”

He stared up, startled. All the waitresses in their jockey costumes here at the Stirrup and Saddle were worth looking at, but the one who’d brought Madden his sirloin was something extra — small-boned, suggestively plump, with a pert elfin face under the long-billed jockey cap. Very cute indeed, in her scarlet satin blouse and shiny black riding boots. Under other circumstances, he might have patted the white, skin-tight breeches where they fitted most snugly.

“I’ll have apple pie,” he said. “Did I meet you somewhere?”

She inspected him nervously, but didn’t move away. “You really are a fast operator, aren’t you!”

Keene shook his head. “I’m just asking where we met before, ’s all.”

“I never saw you until tonight, Mister Madden.”

“How did you know my name?”

She glanced across the dance floor toward a smartly dressed young couple at a ringside table that must have set somebody back a tenspot to the head waiter. “One of the other girls heard Mister Larmin say things would begin to pop here at Saratoga now that they’d called you in.”

“He said that, did he?” The expression on Keene's long, lean-jawed, weather-leathered features was merely one of mild curiosity. There was nothing in his voice to suggest his angry astonishment.

He’d been in Saratoga Springs less than an hour. It was his first visit to the sleepy old racing town. Only one person had known he was coming. As far as Keene could recall, he’d never run into any of the crowd he saw here at Stirrup and Saddle — certainly not at the West Coast tracks. Yet he’d been spotted before he’d even had a chance to look over the ground. It could be bad.

“Piece of cheese with the pie, sir?” She pretended to scribble on her pad. “Mister Larmin said you were here to put the chill on those sure-thing fixers.”

“No sich animal as a sure thing.” Crinkles deepened around his watchful gray eyes.

“That’s what you think! Wait’ll you see what goes on at the track here!” She bit her lip as if she’d said more than she meant to, and hurried away.

Keene twisted in his chair, including the couple at the ringside table in his leisurely glance. He could have placed Clay Larmin without the waitress’ remark. There was enough likeness to the famous portrait of General Larmin which hung in the august Jockey Club. The youth in the white dinner jacket had the same abnormally long, sharp nose with the slightly upturned tip, the same bulging forehead above wide-set protruding eyes. But in the son’s face there was something else — a petulance of the small, pursey mouth — which robbed his features of the character which showed so plainly in the portrait of the man who had been Mister Racing up to a decade ago.

The girl opposite Clay Larmin seemed to be annoyed with her companion. She sat stiffly erect with the high-bosomed carriage of a horsewoman. A frown puckered the warm tan of her boyish face. The agreeably wide mouth was tight-lipped. Even with the dim lighting of the Spa’s smartest night spot, her smooth bob glistened like new copper wire as she bent forward to put her hand over the top of Clay Larmin’s highball glass, shook her head pleadingly.

The waitress set a thick wedge of deep-dish apple pie in front of Keene.

“I think I’m going to like Saratoga.” He gave her the slow up and down.

“It’s a nice town—” she bent over so her lips were close to his ear as she set down his coffee up — “if you keep away from dark alleys.”

“Oh.” He smiled as if she’d just told him she’d cleaned up on a long shot. “Really?”

“I'm only kidding.” She fiddled worriedly with sugarbowl and cream pitcher. “Will there be anything else, sir?”

“Some more dope.” He used the cream. “If you have any...?”

She bent her head, adding figures.

“Do you know anything definite?” he asked. She must have had a reason for letting him know she was aware of his identity. She hadn’t been fooling about those dark alleys, either.

“I might.” She put the check face-down on the table. “If it was worth something to me.”

“When are you through?”

“One o’clock.” She kept her voice low. “But I couldn’t—”

Keene laid a bill on the table. When he took his hand away there was a small key on the greenback.

“Gray Buick. California plates. Far side of parking oval. See you there around one.”

“No, no,” she whispered, in a panic. “Not tonight. I couldn’t possibly.”

He moved sway from the table. “Any trouble getting into there?” He pointed toward the ceiling.

She held the tip of her tongue between her teeth for a second. “I don’t think so, sir. Through the men’s room. But you’d better—”

“The change is yours,” He sauntered on.

Twenty feet away he paused to light a cigarette, looked back. Money and key were both gone. The girl was going toward the cashier’s wicket.

He headed for twin doors marked Colts and Fillies, pushed open the first one, went down a long hall, turned a corner. A short, squat-shouldered, bull-necked man in a bus boy’s white coat was tossing silverware into racks. He eyed Keene stonily.

“Wash room’s back there, bud,” he said.

“Yeah. I’m a collector.”

“Huh?” The man’s eyes narrowed. He dropped his handful of knives and forks quickly.

“Of antiques,” Keene said. “I’m interested in old spinning wheels.”

“Ho!” The guard relaxed. “Spinning wheels, huh?”

“They tell me there are some fine specimens, upstairs.” Keene held out a door bill folded lengthwise.

“That’s right.” The guard shoved the tip into his pants pocket. “They might be too expensive for you, though, mister.”

Keene said solemnly, “I’ll give ’em the once over.”

The guard pointed to a door with a brass Yale lock and painted red letters: Fuse Boxes. Keep Out.

“Maybe you’ll find something that suits you up there, at that.”

Keene opened the door and went upstairs.

Two wheels were in play, besides the crap table, a black-jack layout and a couple of chuck-a-luck cages. The biggest crowd was around one roulette table where everyone seemed to be riding on the swallowtails of a distinguished-looking individual, with a grizzled spade beard and shaggy eyebrows, who wore oxford glasses complete with black ribbon.

All the other white ties, doggy tweeds and strapless evening gowns waited for the bearded man to place his chips before making their bets. Most of the money went on the numbers where he dropped his chips. The description long-distanced to Keene had been surprisingly accurate.

“Who’s the joe who looks like an ambassador?” he asked a chuck-a-luck girl.

“Calls himself Towbee.” She was curt.

Keene watched the man haul in a stack of yellow ten-dollar counters. “He own a piece of the joint?”

The girl squinted at him suspiciously. “No, he doesn’t. He’s just having a run of luck. And the wheels aren’t gimmicked, here. The blackjack dealer doesn’t know how to second card. And you can test the dice in a glass of water before every pass, if you feel like it.”

“Nice to know these things.” He put a couple of greenies on the Low. The bird cage spun. The dice dropped High. He wandered over toward Towbee.

It would be difficult, he decided, to decipher the features hidden beneath that foreign-looking beard. The man might not have a criminal record, anyhow. All Keene knew about him was that Towbee wasn’t known at any of the Eastern tracks. He’d come out of the blue and started to hit winners on the nose ever since the August meeting began here at Saratoga. His luck had been fabulous enough to make even the uppercrusters superstitious about his selections.

Of course horse-players did sometimes have winning streaks which defied all the mathematical laws of chance. But from the curious information in that urgent transcontinental call, which had brought Keene hurrying from Santa Anita, this Towbee wasn’t even a regular follower of the bangtails. Nobody knew anything about him except that, from his familiarity with cards, dice and numbered wheels, he must be a professional gambler. In Keene’s experience, professional gamblers didn’t have streaks of anything — except larceny — in their systems.

There was a little space around Towbee at the table. Apparently, no one wanted to crowd him. No one spoke directly to him, either, though there were frequent exclamations when other players won, following his lead.

Keene bought chips, ran a few bets on the black, doubling until he collected. Nobody paid any attention to him. Towbee gazed blandly at him, past him. Didn’t even look at him a second time. After ten minutes, Clay Larmin and the copper-haired girl came upstairs:

The crowd paid plenty of attention to the heir of the Claybrook Stables:

“Rotten break in the fifth, Mister Larmin.”... “Some days y’ can’t win a buck, boy.”... “Better put Hy-wide up for claiming, Clay.”

Larmin took it sourly, gave short answers. He bought a stack for the girl. She broke what was evidently a table custom by not waiting for Towbee to place his chips. She dropped a yellow on number 31, another on 5, one on 2. Her hand bumped Towbee’s as she reached across the table.

Towbee smiled pleasantly, showing white, even teeth. “Pardon.” He had the faint trace of an accent. Keene couldn’t be sure whether it was phony or not.

The girl laughed uneasily. “Just trying to rub off some of your luck, Mister Towbee.”

Young Larmin scowled at her, caught her arm.

Towbee shrugged, amused. “At roulette, I am not so fortunate. One cannot tell from the condition of the ball, how fast it will run or where it will stop, as with horses.” He ignored Larmin.

The croupier called the spin, the ball rattled around the rim, stopped. Towbee won. The girl lost.

“Damn.” She swore without vehemence. “I guess I'd do better to follow your lead, Mister Towbee.”

Larmin glowered, was about to pull her away from the table, when the chuck-a-luck girl who'd answered Keene’s question came up, touched the youth on the sleeve. He bent his head to catch the message, turned to stare disagreeably at Keene for an instant, then muttered something to his copper-haired companion. She made a face, cashed her remaining chips.

“Don’t take it all,” she called to Towbee agreeably. “Leave some for me.”

The gambler waved a delicately manicured hand. She let Larmin escort her downstairs. Keene looked at his watch. It was five to one.

He’d better be at his Buick on the dot, or that waitress might get cold feet. She’d been scared to meet him at all. That could only mean she was afraid somebody’d be watching every step Keene Madden took. But nobody seemed to have any interest in his departure.

The guard downstairs merely grinned. “See anything you liked?”

“I made a down payment,” Keene said, nodding.

The dining room was closed. There were no waitresses around. Neither Larmin nor the girl was at the checkroom when he went out.

However, there were still plenty of cars in the parking oval.

He couldn’t see into his Buick until he got close to it. The girl was already in the back seat, keeping out of the glare from the neons spelling out Stirrup & Saddle. He opened the door, saw the reflection of the neons on the rear fender dim momentarily as something cut off the light behind him.

He pivoted, throwing up an arm, lunging toward the back seat. He had a split-second glimpse of a bulky-shouldered figure — a rum-reddened nose beneath a low-pulled cap — before the length of pipe paralyzed his arm, exploded against his head.

He fell half into the car. His left foot caught the attacker six inches below the belt buckle. There was weight behind the boot, too. The man grunted, hit Keene again with the pipe across the knee-cap.

Keene tried to roll on his side to get at his hip pocket. The heavy-shouldered man smashed him across the mouth with the iron. Twisting further into the car, doubling his knees to get them free of the door, Keene reached up, grabbed the handle, jerked the door. There was an agonized yelp as the slamming metal caught the big man’s fingers.

Keene snatched at the door handle again. From the darkness behind him, a bomb burst back of his ear. It was the last thing he remembered.

Chapter II

The Uninvited Corpse

A taste of blood in his mouth. Teeth aching hideously. The top of his skull seemed to be alternately expanding and contracting. He had trouble focusing his eyes. It was the same nauseating sensation he’d experienced that time eight years ago, when his jumper had fallen at the hedge in the steeplechase.

Slowly, at the expense of dizzying pain, he pulled himself up off the floor of the car. His shoulders had been wedged between the back of the driver’s seat and the front of the rear seat. His knees were doubled up, protecting his midsection. It must have been the only thing that had prevented his attackers from inflicting permanent injury.

Except for a light pickup truck and a station wagon with Stirrup & Saddle lettered on its door, the parking space was empty. He looked at his wrist-watch. That first smashing blow from the pipe had cracked the crystal, mashed in the works. The clock on the dash said ten past two.

He cursed himself for a stupe — letting himself be suckered into a trap like that. Yet if they'd only meant to wreck him within an inch of his life — to frighten him from Saratoga — how would they have dared use the waitress as a come-on girl?

Perhaps she would claim Keene had offered to drive her home after she’d finished working, then made a pass at her in his car — whereupon some club attendant had come to the rescue, beaten up her molester. If that kind of a story got into the papers, it wouldn’t do Keene, or his chance of doing his job, any good whatever.

He got out of the car. The knee screamed at him. He gulped the cool night air to keep from being sick.

The Stirrup & Saddle was dark, upstairs and down. The neon sign was out. He tried to remember what car had been parked next to his. It didn't seem possible that anyone could have come as close to the Buick as the driver of the adjoining sedan must have, without noticing something was wrong. Still, he had been jammed down on the floor boards, pretty well hidden.

He slid in behind his own wheel. The rear-view mirror showed him a face masked with a smear of dried blood, puffy lips, a dilly of a shiner over his right eye. At that, he felt worse than he looked.

He found the flask in the glove compartment, soaked his handkerchief in bourbon, swabbed the blood off. The liquor stung his mouth. But he decided it might make his insides feel a little less shaky, and so he gave the flask a couple of good belts.

He rolled the Buick out onto the concrete, headed north toward Union. It took all his powers of concentration to handle the car, but jumbled questions kept doing nipups in his brain: Who had spotted him so swiftly? Why had somebody decided to discourage him before his investigation had even got under way? What was all that byplay up in the casino between Towbee and Clay Larmin's girl?

A red eye blinked in his rear-view mirror. He became aware of a siren. A cop! He slowed to twenty-five.

The motorcycle pulled alongside, waved him over. He braked to a stop. The state trooper came up to the window.

“Where’s your tail-lights, Mac?”

“They out?” Keen’s lips felt swollen up like a pair of frankfurters.

The trooper bent forward, sniffing. “Not so far from out yourself, are you?”

Keene opened the door, got out stiffly. From the whisky on his breath and the thickness of his speech, it wasn’t surprising the officer thought Keene might have had more than he could handle.

“Couple of slugs too many, back at the Stirrup and Saddle.” He touched his mouth “But from a fist. Not a bottle. I’m oke.”

“Yeah?” The trooper peered at him, narrowly. “Let's see your license.”

Keene fished out his wallet, held it open.

“Goin' far tonight?”

“Hotel. In town. Staying there.”

“Better get those tail-lights fixed before you drive any more.”

Keene stalked back into the glare of the motorcycle's headlight, banged one tail-light with the heel of his hand.

“Sure.” Something red and shiny glinted on the white cement. As he stared at it, another drop fell from the rim of the trunk compartment. He put his shoe over it, quickly, as the trooper came around beside him. “First I knew of it.”

The trooper stood spraddle-legged, fists on hips, head cocked on one side as if listening for something. “You wouldn’t of been in a smackup, Mister — uh — Madden?”

“Only with that poke in the puss.” Keene pounded at the tail-light as if to jar apart a shorted connection, kept it up until the headlights of an approaching car were in the trooper’s eyes. “But it’s nothing a cold shower won’t cure. I’ll take it easy, to the hotel.”

He took his time about getting back to the driver’s seat. He started the Buick just as the oncoming car rushed past. He could see the trooper still standing there, eyeing him, as he gained speed, swung into Union Avenue. He lost the Cyclops headlight at the turn, waited for it to reappear as he circled Congress Park. It didn’t.

When he reached Broadway he swung right. His hotel was off to the left. He wasn’t familiar with the streets of Saratoga Springs, but the farther he got from the center of town, for a while, the better it suited him.

He drove for five minutes, found a dark side road, cut in, parked and switched off his lights. When he opened the trunk compartment, he was pretty sure what he’d find, even before he put his flashlight on it.

The waitress was lying face down, with her head on a spare tube, her knees curled up at her side, as if she’d just crawled in there to take a nap. She was wearing a white skirit and a dark red sweater instead of the jockey costume.

The back of her head looked like something that had just oozed out of a meat chopper.

He made silent apology. I had you wrong, babe. For them to cross you off the list, you must have really known something.

The strap of her handbag was clenched tight in her fingers. The murderer hadn’t bothered to remove it when he’d tossed her body in the trunk compartment.

Keene went through the bag while he tried to figure his next move.

It was a nice, tight frameup. After he’d been knocked senseless, somebody had fished the luggage compartment key out of his pants, unlocked the rear, put the dead girl in there and locked it up again. The wiring to the tail-lights must have been queered at the same time — with the expectation of having the cops stop him.

Unwittingly, Keene had put himself in an even worse predicament by swigging that whiskey, and informing a state trooper that there’d been “a little fracas” at the Stirrup & Saddle. Nothing to make a fuss about! Oh, no!

What he ought to do now was dear enough. He ought to drive straight to the Saratoga police station, report a corpse in the back of his car, and say he didn’t know who’d put it there. Then they'd check up. Nobody at the night spot would know anything, except that Keene had been seen chumming up to the waitress. The trooper would testify Keene had been drinking. There’d be plenty of evidence of a struggle in the back seat.

They’d have to hold him for the Grand Jury. They’d release him on bail, on his record and character references. But his chances of finding out who’d beaten him up and killed the girl, would be gone. Even if the grand jurors failed to indict him, his usefulness as an investigator would be slightly less than nothing.

Put it the other way, he told himself, grimly. If you don’t report the girl’s murder, and if anything happens later to tie you in with her death, then where’ll you be?

The best he could expect would be a guilty plea on “accessory after the fact.” Supposing he were lucky enough to draw a suspended sentence — still, the Protective Bureau couldn’t afford to keep a convicted man on its payroll...

The handbag contained the usual clutter: A purse with enough money to nullify any suggestion of murder for robbery, compact, lipstick, mirror, comb, matches, bobby pins, pencils, cigarettes, keys. In the zipper compartment at the side two envelopes addressed to Miss Lola Gretsch, 917 Lake Avenue and a couple of snapshots.

The envelopes contained one electric light bill, and one circular from a Saratoga store advertising an August fur sale. The snapshots were of a small, white frame cottage behind a picket fence. One showed the little waitress sitting on the doorstep looking demurely pretty in a polka-dot dress. The other had been taken in the winter. Snow was on the ground, with frosting on the eaves and on the long hood of a shiny Cadillac in the foreground.

He put the keys and photographs in his pocket, returned the rest of the stuff to the handbag. Then he used his flashlight until he found where the tail-light wiring had been cut. He made a temporary splice.

Coming out Broadway, he’d passed a Lake Avenue sign. He couldn’t tell which way the numbers ran, or in how crowded a section 917 might be. When he got to the corner, he turned left, followed the numbers out a mile and a half. The houses became smaller, farther apart.

The darkened cottage he recognized from the snapshot was a good hundred yards from its closest neighbor. There was a big hip-roofed house diagonally across the road. No lights showed there, either.

He drove past without slowing, kept on for another mile before swinging around, coming back again. Nobody had tailed him. The nearest street light was at least a quarter of a mile from the cottage. The elm-arched avenue cut down that faint illumination almost to zero. There were no cars parked within sight. He drove fifty feet past the picket fence, pulled over to the side, cut his lights and sat motionless in the gloom for the length of one cigarette, watching the cottage behind him.

One car sped past, heading for Schuylerville. He could see its headlights half a mile before it reached him. When it had gone, he took off his shoes, pulled on his driving gloves and went around back.

He opened the rear, picked up the body gently and then shut the trunk compartment.

Locating a gap in a hedge of lilacs, that almost sickened him with their sweetness, he stepped gingerly over a flower bed and swore softly as his stocking-feet found thorns from a rosebush. It was cloudy. Behind the cottage it was black as the bottom of a well. He didn’t dare use his flashlight until he had to. He laid the corpse down beside a clump of hydrangeas.

There was no back porch — just a tiny stoop with three steps. He told himself that if there was anyone in the cottage they’d hear the pounding of his heart, before he knocked. His knuckles on the paneling sounded terrifyingly loud. At least, if there was anybody inside they’d be likely to challenge him before taking a pot shot at him.

But nothing happened.

He used the keys. The second one did it. The door squeaked when it opened, but the kitchen was silent and inky black. His palm over the lens of the flashlight let enough illumination leak out to show him past a refrigerator, a gas stove and a table — to a door. Sufficient light filtered in through curtained windows at the front of the cottage to show he was in the living room. Crossing to a door that evidently led into the front hall, he heard a board creak. He froze.

After a minute of holding his breath, hearing nothing except the hammering of his own pulse, he decided the creaking had been caused by the shifting of his weight on the floor. He listened at the door of the room on the opposite side of the hall. There was absolute quiet. It turned out to be a bedroom. With a double bed, neatly made up, empty.

There was a queer odor, something unpleasant. He couldn’t give it a name, but it reminded him of New Guinea where he’d spent those dreary months at the remount station. Or maybe it was the darkness and being keyed way up to there, that recalled the bad days to him.

He went out to the hydrangeas, brought the body in and put it on the rug beside the bed. The glimmer of light escaping from the lens in his palm reflected from a bureau mirror, glinted on a silver frame.

He moved past the dead girl, let a trickle of light fall on the photograph in the frame.

The prominent, bulging eyes of Clay Larmin stared arrogantly at him in the semi-darkness.

Down in the corner of the photograph was a scrawl: To Lola, with memories — Clay.

Keene whistled softly. Had it been that way? The only son and heir to the Larmin millions and the Larmin racing traditions — and a waitress in a none-too-respectable hot spot? That suggested a lot of possibilities — none pleasant...

He was still mulling over its possible significance as he picked his way back across the hall to the living room, out to the kitchen. The kitchen door was closed!

He knew he’d left it open. He’d had his hands too full, when he came in with the body, to do anything else. He hadn’t heard the door close, either — so the night wind couldn’t have slammed it. There wasn’t enough breeze to rustle a leaf, anyway.

That creaking! There’d been somebody in there with? him then — somebody who’d be able to identify him. Unless, of course, it had been the murderer himself.

There was also the chance the closed door was a decoy.

The unseen doorshutter might still be in there.

Keene felt his way along the wall in total darkness as he went back, let himself out the front door. He was cautious when he opened that, too. But he saw no one, heard nothing. The car was where he’d left it.

He took off his gloves, put on his shoes, drove back to the hotel.

Chapter III

Funny Business

The sun had just begun to gild the spires of the old Victorian cupolas on the grandstand as Keene crossed the clubhouse terrace. A light fog drifted lazily across the lake in the infield which losers called the Show Pool. The famous blue canoe tied to the bank swung slowly in the breeze.

A thin, harassed-looking man of about fifty, with a thick mustache dyed too black to match the iron-gray of his hair, detached himself from the little group of trainers and dockers watching the down gallops.

“Goshsake, Madden!” He opened his eyes very wide. “You have an accident, driving in?” He was Wesley Ottover, secretary of the local Racing Association.

“No.” Keene shook hands with him. “What happened to me was strictly intentional.”

Ottover studied the greenish eye, the criss-crossing of surgeon’s adhesive at the corner of Keene’s mouth.

“Somebody,” Keene said, “sent a reception committee to greet me. At the Stirrup and Saddle.”

The racing secretary made an O with his mouth. “Towbee?”

“Not in person. But he was around. I tried to reach you on the phone before I stopped in at his hangout. Young Larmin was there. He knew who I was. Whether Towbee did or not, I can’t say.” Keene didn’t bother to add that Wes Ottover was the only person who was supposed to have known the Protective Bureau man had been due to arrive last night.

The secretary took Keene’s arm. “If you haven’t had breakfast—”

“I’ll have coffee,” Keene said. “It’s all I want. My face feels as if one of the Claybrook stallions had stamped on it. What I need is briefing.”

Ottover picked a table near the rail; where they could appear to be watching the workouts. A waiter brought a white tablecloth, menus.

Ottover said, “Somebody must be getting worried, to give you a going-over like that. In a way, I’m glad, though I'm sorry you had to be on the receiving end. I was afraid they had things sewed up so tight nothing could bother them.”

“Who do you mean?” Keene watched a colt breezing handily along the back-stretch under an exercise boy.

“Towbee. And whoever’s in the fix-ring with him.”

“Young Larmin?”

“Lord, no!” Ottover was vehement. “He’d be the last person. Towbee’s big coups have all been against Claybrook entries. Odds-on favorites, at that. That’s the queer thing. All the mischief involves Larmin horses. I think Clay’s been losing scads, betting on his own starters. I know the failure of the Claybrook silks to finish anywhere near their normal form is causing a lot of ugly talk.”

“Jockey collusion?” Keene could see Earl Yolock — riding monkey-on-a-stick, high on his mount’s withers — coming into the stretch, hand-riding a big black gelding. “Skit” Yolock was Claybrook’s contract rider.

The secretary groaned. “Wish I could say. I can’t put a finger on it, Madden. On the surface, Skit’s as bothered about it as anyone. Frank Wayne, the Claybrook trainer, he’s as near to a nervous collapse as a man of his disposition can get. Clay himself is jumpy as a water-bug — hardly civil to his own mother. She, by the way, is the only one connected with Claybrook who doesn’t seem to be concerned about these cockeyed form-reversals.”

The waiter said, “Eggs, sir?”

Keene shook his head. “Coffee’s all.” His teeth ached enough, without chewing. “Mrs. Larmin, now. She’s hardly ever decent to anyone she doesn’t consider her social equal, is she? And seldom meets up with anyone she admits to that classification?”

Ottover smiled, politely. “She can’t help that high-toned lah-de-dah. It’s bred in. her. But under that crusty surface, she’s a grand horsewoman, Madden. Up to this year, she’s always been active in the management of the stables. She really ran them herself after the General died. Now she’s beginning to turn over the controls to young Clay. He’s duty bound to carry on the Larmin tradition, you know — the first family of Saratoga — at least as far as racing goes. But he doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job of it. Though I must say he doesn’t interfere with Wayne, the trainer, much.”

“And the mother? She doesn’t interfere with Wayne?”

Ottover waved at a trainer who wandered past. “Not as far as the horses are concerned,” he said carefully. “Apparently it doesn’t trouble her at all when some Claybrook entry that’s been made a two-to-one favorite loses by six lengths to some fugitive from a merry-go-round. It’s ridiculous!”

“Yeah.” Keene couldn’t recall anything ridiculous about the way the back of the dead girl’s head had looked. “What you find out about Towbee?”

“Next to nothing. Plenty of cash. No background we can discover. Lives alone at the Grand Union. Doesn’t have any close friends. Spends his time here at the track from noon on — at the Stirrup and Saddle after the mutuel windows close. He must have taken close to a hundred thousand out of the tote pools — betting against Claybrook horses that were favorites in the morning line. Nowadays, no entry is a favorite unless he has some tickets on it.”

“Pinkertons who police your track can’t get anything on him?”

“No. Or anyone else. No point tracing his phone calls, of course. The operators at the hotel switchboard have been notified to keep their ears open, but they claim he doesn’t get any tips via long distance. On the face of it, he’s just a lucky larry with a fistful of dough who hits the jackpot once or twice a day. But—” Ottover gestured with his coffee cup — “he always make that big killing against a Claybrook horse. It's beginning to smell, Madden.”

“What’s the trainer say?” Keene noticed Skit Yolock’s impatience with the mount he’d been exercising. The big gelding seemed logy, spiritless.

“Frank Wayne? He has plenty to say. He claims the horses that have beaten Claybrook entries in stake races must have been stimulated.”

“Were they?”

“Our vet, Bill Sutterfield, says positively not. He and his assistants have been extra careful about samples. None of the tests have shown any narcotics.”

Keene finished his coffee. “How’ve the Claybrook horses raced, compared with their time trials?”

Ottover held his napkin to his mouth, coughed into it. “I haven’t the figures here.”

Keene waited.

The secretary fidgeted with salt and pepper shakers. “I don’t want to go on record about it. You understand — my position—”

“I understand I had my face practically beaten off within two hours of hitting this town,” Keene said quietly. “Don't nice-nelly around. What’s the story?”

“The truth is, I believe the actual race times of Wayne's starters have been a second or two slower than the best workouts, in most of the — um — suspected races.”

Keene stood up. “Let’s look at those figures.”

Ottover sighed. “They're in my office.”

They walked across the dew of the paddock to the secretary’s bungalow.

“I’m in an extremely difficult position, Madden.”

“So was I. Last night.”

“More precarious than mine, to be sure. But in my case — it’s a question of my job. The Larmins are immensely powerful. I might say, they’re in a controlling position in racing circles here. They can — uh — make you or break you.”

Keene tried to walk without limping. The sore knee-cap made it difficult. “Maybe it was a Larmin who tried to break me.”

“I’m not suggesting anything of the sort,” Ottover exclaimed quickly. “It's only that we want to be extremely careful to have our facts, before we make any — actual accusations.”

“I’m always careful, especially after I’ve had a bust in the jaw.” Keene followed Ottover into the bungalow, stopped cold as a stenographer marched briskly out of the secretary’s private office. The last time he’d seen that copper hair was against Clay Larmin’s shoulder at the Stirrup & Saddle.

She halted abruptly at sight of Keene.

“Oh, hello, Mister Madden.” She smiled, coolly. “I didn’t imagine you’d be up this early, after seeing you at the Stirrup last night.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he answered. “Up all night. With a toothache.”

She followed him with her luminous green eyes as he went into the inner office and closed the door.

Keene took the chair by the side of the secretary’s desk. The knee hurt worse when he was standing.

“Better fire that stenog, fella.”

Ottover looked up from the file drawer where he was pulling out folders. “What? Jane? Goshsake, why?”

“Talks too much. She heard you long-distancing me and tipped off young Larmin about me, last night.” It wasn’t clear to Keene how she’d recognized him. There wouldn’t be any photos of him in Saratoga. Maybe Ottover would have the answer to that one.

Ottover said, “You mean she recognized you?”

“Yep.” It occurred to Keene that if somebody’d spotted the California license plates on his Buick, in the Stirrup & Saddle parking lot, a shrewd guess could have substituted for actual recognition. “I don’t mind that. But I do mind her blabbing track business all over a night club. That’s nokay.”

Ottover agreed. “She didn’t mean anything by it, I’m sure. She probably supposed Clay Larmin already knew you were coming. In any case,” the official rubbed his forehead dejectedly, “I can’t let her go.”

“Why not?”

“What kind of a spot would I be in if I gave the bounce to the future Mrs. Clay Larmin now? I ask you!”

“No kidding?” Keene looked at the door, wondered if the girl was listening on the other side. “Has it been announced?”

Ottover wriggled uncomfortably. “Only by Clay.” He spread his palms helplessly. “You see my predicament. Mrs. Kay Larmin is furious about the — affair. She’s inclined to blame me for helping it along. Nonsense, naturally. I didn’t know anything about it until Clay started dropping in here two or three times a day to see Miss Arklett.”

“How long you known her? She a local girl?”

“Couple of years. Yes. Frank Wayne recommended her. Her family lives out near his summer place. Good solid farm people, but—”

“Not up in the bucks?”

“No. Or in the Social Register, either.”

“Tough. Terrible handicap.” Keene felt like adding that young Larmin hadn’t been in the habit of checking the Blue Book when he picked his female acquaintances.

“Absurd, in this day and age, of course. Trouble was, the Dowager — that’s what everyone calls her, here at the Spa — didn’t mind her son’s taking up with Jane at first. Only objection is to his marrying her.”

“Okay for him to sow his wild oats. But not to raise a hybrid crop. Nice, sweet old lady, hah?”

“A darn fine woman, if you can overlook her — um — aristocratic prejudices, Madden.” Ottover hesitated. “I’ll have to admit I’ve wondered whether Jane will be a good influence on the boy, myself. I don’t think it's any secret that he hasn’t all of his father’s — ah — integrity. All this — this fuss about Claybrook horses not running true to form, that’s just cropped up since Clay took over the reins.”

A buzzer sounded. Ottover picked up the phone.

“Oh!” he said. Then, after another exclamation, “Ask him to step in.”

He racked the receiver, visibly upset. “It’s Wayne. He’s raising the roof. He’s going over Clay’s head—”

The door banged open. A heavy-set man with a face the color of raw steak and china blue eyes that blazed with resentment, filled the doorway.

Chapter IV

More Trouble

The man wore a crumpled seersucker suit and a yellowed straw hat. The stub of a cigar jutted from the corner of his bulldog jaw like the boom of a sailing vessel.

He didn't remove it when he growled, “I’m scratching Callie M., Ruy Bias and Friskaway, Wes.”

Ottover said, “Frank, meet Keene Madden. Frank Wayne, Keene.”

The Claybrook trainer held out his hand disinterestedly. “It’s a pleasure.” He turned to Ottover. “We won’t start any entries today” He turned abruptly back to Keene. “Are you Madden? Of the Bureau?”

“That’s right,” Keene said. “What’s wrong with your horses, Mister Wayne?”

“Don’t know.” Wayne was gruff. “Not certain anything is. But I’m darn well sure something will be, before the day’s over, if we start ’em.”

Ottover looked ready to burst into tears. “Now, Frank! You can’t let us down, like this! We’d be all right in the third, with nine other starters. But there’ll be only four, without yours, in the Adirondack Stakes. Show and place pools will be out. You know how that cuts down the Association’s take!”

“Can’t help it, Wes. I won’t be a party to this rooking racket any longer. You know as well as I do that if the Stakes were to be run on the up and up, Skit would bring Friskaway down in front. But I just learned the word’s been passed around Hubba Dub’s fixed to come in first. I’ve had my name tied in to enough queer-looking races in the last couple of weeks. I — will — not — permit — Frisky — to — start! That’s final.”

Keene stuck a cigarette between his battered lips. “Who passed the word around, Mister Wayne?”

The trainer waggled the cigar stub from one side of his jaw to the other. “You ought to know better than to ask me that.”

“Who else would I ask?” Keene tilted his chair on its hind legs. “You made the crack. Where’d you hear it?”

Wayne spat out a shred of tobacco. He glowered as if he wanted to tell the representative of the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau where he could go and what he could do when he got there. But the trainer changed his mind.

“My contract rider, Skit Yolock, told me. He picked it up in the steam room at the jockey house.”

Keene let the chair come down on its front legs. “Where’s Yolock now?”

“At the barns.”

“Before we hop over to see him—” Keene stood up — “you might want to cancel the request for scratching the Claybrook entries.”

“The devil I will!”

“You might. In the first place, the stewards probably wouldn’t find you had sufficient reason—”

“Nobody can make me start a horse I don’t think is in condition!” Wayne spat, without the excuse of a tobacco shred.

“In the second place, you’d expose yourself to suspicion you wanted to balk any investigation of fixing at this track.” Keene opened the door suddenly. At her typewriter desk, Jane Arklett looked up, quizzically. “Let your entries start. We’ll try to see they get a fair break. If they don’t, we’ll nail the party who keeps them from getting it.”

Wayne grunted. “You must be a magician, then.”

Keene touched the brim of his felt. “I pull something out of the hat every now and then.”

The stenographer smiled sweetly. “See you later, Mister Madden?”

“Yeah,” he looked at her steadily. “I expect so.”

Driving to Horse Haven in Keene’s Buick, Wayne sat grumpily beside the man from the Bureau. Ottover stayed at his office.

“Do you know Miss Arklett well?” Keene asked.

“Since she wore rompers.” The trainer wasn’t inclined to be chatty.

“Seems like a nice kid. Makes friends easily.”

Wayne uttered an unintelligible gargle.

Keene Madden used the needle again. “She burned her boy-friend, being friendly-like with somebody else at that chi-chi joint out by the Lake last night.”

“You talking about my employer, Madden?” Wayne’s tone was definitely disagreeable.

“I’m talking about Clay Larmin. Yeah. Arklett girl started to get cozy with a gambler. Fellow with a beard, name of Towbee. Have you heard of him?”

Wayne swore like a seven-year Marine.

“Yeah,” Keene said. “That’s a good description of him. Young Larmin didn’t care for her new acquaintance much, either.”

“Jane's a fathead, speaking to that crumb at all. Towbee has cost the Larmins a sizeable fortune in the last three weeks. My personal opinion is, he’s responsible for most of the monkey business that’s been going on at this meeting. I can’t understand Jane’s attitude.”

“Maybe she was just ribbing Larmin. Anything that Larmin loses will be her loss in the long run, won’t it? She’s going to marry him, isn’t she?”

“ 'Fraid she is. She’s too good for—” Wayne made a quick switch, glancing quickly at Keene to see if he noticed it — “for most any of that horsy set. She wasn’t brought up on a bottle, not the way most of them seem to have been.”

“When are those wedding bells supposed to ring?”

“Ask her. Or him. I’m no yellow-sheet columnist!” Wayne meant it to sound rude.

Keene wondered why the trainer was so touchy about the subject.

At the barns, the smell of horses was sharp in the morning damp. The familiar stampings and nickerings were soothing to Keene’s still-aching head. It was the slack hour after the colts had been cooled out. There wasn’t much activity around the Claybrook stalls. There were a couple of grooms working with brushes and combs. No one about was small enough to be a jockey.

A short, blond man with a balding forehead and a lifeguard’s tan waved greeting to Wayne. He wore a tee-shirt and faded levis tucked into rubber boots.

“I didn't find anything of any importance, Mister Wayne,” he told the trainer. His voice had a trace of Texas. “That Ruy Blas might be getting a touch of coronitis in the right foreleg. It seems a mite sensitive. But it won’t hurt him to get a race in him. The others look to be ready.”

“Ready to get rooked out of a win purse!” Wayne retorted. “Thanks, anyhow, Bill. I just wanted somebody’s opinion besides my own. I don't trust my own judgment any more. Shake hands with Mister Madden, from the Protective Bureau. Bill Sutterfield’s our track’s chief veterinary, Madden.”

The vet scrutinized Keene slowly. “Glad to know you. I guess Frank told you we could use a little help around here.”

“I’ll need some, myself,” Keene said, “if I’m to get to the bottom of this business. You got any ideas?”

“None I can back up.” Sutterfield looked uncomfortable. “Frank thinks we’ve got an epidemic of stimulation.”

“What do you think?” Keene asked.

“I have to go entirely by the records.” The chief vet picked his words carefully. “Those records are our own saliva and urine tests, which are certified by chemists who don’t know the identity of the horses from which the numbered samples were taken.”

“No positives?”

“None at all. Of course, we only check horses that finish in the money, but they’re the ones that’ve been driving Frank and Wes Ottover out of their minds.” The vet stooped to pick a piece of straw from a stall, chewed on it morosely. “More important, to me, are those cockeyed time records. The horses that’ve been beating Claybrook entries never run more’n a half-second or so better than their best clocked trials. That cancels out the hop-up possibility, y’see. There’s no point stimulating a horse unless you can get more speed out of him.”

Wayne used his Marine vocabulary again. “That’s a fact. The bitter truth is, our entries do worse than their speed trials show they should. Half a second, or even second slower. That’s enough to lose any stake race, if the handicapper’s on his job.”

“Maybe,” Keene suggested, “a bunch of the jocks have been holding pep rallies the night before a race to decide who deserves to ride into the winner’s circle.”

“Not Skit Yolock,” Wayne snapped. “I know that boy as well as if I was his father. He’d rather cut off a hand than use it to pull a mount.”

Sutterfield looked down at his boots. “I thought some of the poor showings might have been due to screwy shoeing. But Frank’s had all his entries shod out at the Larmin place, the last week — and that hasn’t improved matters.”

“Yolock around?” Keene asked.

The straw between the vet’s teeth stopped wiggling, but he said only, “I think he’s gone.”

One of the grooms called, “Mist’ Yolock say he goin’ home to take his nap.”

“Why would he take a nap,” a high, thin voice retorted shrilly, “when he isn’t accepting any mounts this afternoon?” It was Clay Larmin.

Wayne grumbled, “Mister Madden insists — you met Mister Madden, Clay? — he insists we go right ahead and run all three horses.”

The young man’s small mouth twisted nastily. “Who’s giving orders for Claybrook, Frank?”

Keene Madden pointed to the middle button of his coat. “I am, for the time being, if there are no objections, Mister Larmin.”

“Darn right, there are?” Little splotches of red mottled Larmin’s face.

“In that case,” Keene shrugged, “I’ll have to issue a statement that you’re blocking an investigation into the—”

He didn’t finish. A trio of men came into the cool gloom of the barn from the sunlight of the exercise paddocks. Two were in blue uniforms. The third had the stolid wariness of the police plain-clothesman.

“Now what?” Wayne muttered.

Keene said to himself: Here it comes, brother.

The man in plainclothes touched the brim of his felt, respectfully. “Mister Larmin?”

Clay Larmin seemed to shrink within his neatly crisp white linens. “What’s on your mind?”

“Would you mind coming over to the station with us, sir?” The detective was deferential. “It’s probably something that can be straightened out right away.”

The owner of the Claybrook Stables stiffened. “What needs straightening, officer?”

The detective cleared his throat. “It’s the matter of a young woman, sir. A Miss Lola Gretsch. They found her dead this morning. Our information is that you used to be on pretty good terms with her.”

“Lola?” Larmin gasped. And he sagged limply onto the litter of the barn floor.

Chapter V

Escape — By Suicide

Bill Sutterfield lounged against the bench in the saddling shed. The veterinary was watching the horses in the paddock moving in slow circles around the well-worn paths ringing the great elms. The sunlight dappled the glossy chestnut and the glistening ebony of the colts’ flanks as they moved daintily under the guidance of the grooms.

“That messy business about the girl,” Sutterfield said. “That might clear up a lot of things, Madden.”

“For instance?” Keene watched a nervous filly dancing away from Yolock. The way Friskaway was acting up, the jockey might have trouble with Claybrook’s entry in the Stakes.

The vet held out his hand, palm up. “Say Larmin wanted to get married to this kid in Ottover’s office. There’s been a lot of gabble about that. Suppose this other girl — someone he’d been playing around with before — wanted to hold him up for some kind of payoff.”

“All right. Suppose that. Then what?” Keene Madden noted Wayne in what seemed, at a distance, to be an angry altercation with the jockey who was in the emerald-hooped blouse of the Claybrook Stables.

“Oh, I’m just shooting the breeze.” Sutterfield waggled his head. “But if she had some kind of a hold on him — like maybe a secret wedding or even a kid nobody knew anything about — she might have been able to get him to handicap his own horses by having them over-exercised, or underfed or letting them drink before races. Like at one track where I worked, when an owner felt like betting on some other guy’s entry when his own horse ought to be an easy winner, he’d load the horse in a van and have him driven around all night before the race so the animal wouldn’t get any sleep and could hardly get around to the eighth pole without going wobble-legged.”

The bugle gave out with Boots and Saddles. Keene watched trainer Wayne give Skit Yolock a hand up on Friskaway.

“Nobody could fool Wayne on a thing like that, Doc” Keene said. “It would have to be worked some other way than by mistreating the horse. If the races have been rigged, that dead girl might have been tangled up in the rigging. But it couldn’t have been that simple.”

“Maybe not.” Sutterfield’s eyes lighted up as the horses fell into file behind the red-coated lead rider on their way to post. “Whatever it was, though, I hope we’ve seen the last of it. Ruy Bias in the third was the first winner Frank Wayne’s saddled in a fortnight.”

“The fix will be in the Stakes. If any,” Keene said, moving away. “Watch those samples. See you.”

He trailed the crowd streaming toward the grandstand and clubhouse. Old, young, thin, fat — open-necked polo shirts, low-cut print dresses, doggy sport coats with clubhouse tags dangling from lapels, bare midriff play-suits with binocular straps over naked shoulders. There were the two-buck Tims and Terrys whom Keene Madden was paid to protect. People who wouldn’t know a mule from a hunter, who thought the race track was a mile-long slot machine with a nag coming up every spin, instead of a pear or a lemon.

He didn’t go to the stands. The loudspeaker would give him the race, post by post. Right now the metallic voice was announcing, “The horses are at the post.”

He pushed through the crowd milling to get out of the betting ring. The Selling windows were closed. The floor beside the pipe railings was cluttered with torn-up tickets, programs, copies of the Telegraph and Racing Form.

The odds board showed Friskaway at 3–2. But the filly, Keene knew, on the basis of her last three times out should be 1–2 against the other entries lined up in the starting gate now! Somebody had been pouring it in on Hubba Dub, Number 2, now at even money.

A gray-uniformed Pink saluted Keene, let him in through the unmarked door at the side of the $5 °Cashier windows. Behind the wickets, the boys were filling in totals on their check sheets, smoking, listening to the race-caster:

“They’re off — and Popova breaks in the lead, My Hon, Friskaway, Can Doo, Hubba Dub—”

Keene went into the totalisator room. Four shirtsleeved men in green eyeshades were working the accounting machines at top speed, on the double check. A white-haired man with thick gold-rimmed spectacles and chubby cheeks saw Keene and said hello.

“Anything big?” the race track detective asked.

“Same as per usual, only more so. Gent with the trick beard and upstage specs put twenty thou on Number Two five minutes before we shut the windows.”

“Coming into the backstretch—” the hollow voice of the announcer was higher-pitched — “it's Friskaway by a length, My Hon, a head, Popova, half a length, Hubba Dub—”

“Twenty thousand fish?” Keene’s eyebrows went up. “He’s really trying for a score, isn’t he?”

“I’d hate to have that much of mine on any animal’s nose,” the head cashier said. “I got a weak ticker. The goat could bust a leg. Throw his rider. Get disqualified. I couldn’t stand it. Still, if you like that sort of thing, I guess it’s good, clean fun.”

“Not so clean.” Keene looked up at the Win Pool total. $88,612. What was it Lola Gretsch had said: “If there’s something in it for me.” There’d be plenty in it for Vince Towbee if #2 won. Quite a payoff.

“Coming around the far turn, Friskaway out in front by a length and a half. My Hon half a length. Hubba Dub, a head.”

For a second, Keene wished he’d gone out to watch the finish. This was the moment that always gave him the big kick — the furlong before the head of the stretch. He’d never be able to get that out of his blood — the surging excitement from the thoroughbreds, the riders “hoo-hooing” to their mounts as they thundered around that last turn.

He went out, gave instructions to the Pinkerton captain by the clubhouse stile.

“Into the stretch, and Friskaway’s fading. — My Hon coming through on the rail, Hubba Dub making his bid on the outside. — My Hon is neck and neck. — He’s leading. — No! No! Hubba Dub’s closing with a rush. — He’s up there. — It’s going to be close — very close. A toss-up between Hubba Dub and My Hon. — It looks like a dead heat. — I can’t call that one for you, folks. — It’ll be— Yes, there goes the Photo up on the board—”

When the red Photo light went out and the Official went on, Hubba Dub was first, My Hon second and the Claybrook filly third.

“That Friskaway!” the Pinkerton captain muttered. “What a dog!”

Keene said nothing, waited patiently while disgruntled losers and exultant winners streamed through into the betting enclosure.

Towbee was one of the first at the $50 window. The bearded gambler beamed affably at the cashier who counted out the fat stack of bills, was still beaming when the Pinkertons asked him politely to step into the manager’s private office for a moment.

“What for?” There was no trace of an accent, then, that Keene could detect.

“Mister Madden will explain.” The captain crowded Towbee ahead.

The gambler offered no resistance. “Am I to understand this is an arrest?”

“You’re being held on suspicion.” Keene followed him into the office, closed the door.

“Of what?”

“We’ll start with ‘conspiracy to defraud’ and work up to the real charges later. I imagine the one you’ll have the most trouble with will be ‘murder.’ ”

Towbee showed his fine, even set of teeth. “You can’t panic me, sir.”

“We’re not trying to panic you. We’re trying to convict you. I’ll give you six, two and even right now that we do.”

The gambler’s smile was a little less confident. “I know nothing of any violence, sir.”

“Before we get through, you may.”

Keene moved in on him.

The horses for the sixth were already being walked around the paddock when Keene got there. All he was interested in, at the moment, were the three horses being cooled out by their grooms under the watchful eyes of Bill Sutterfield, Wes Ottover and a trio of husky Pinkertons.

Sutterfield said, “I waited till you got here to take the samples.”

“Oke,” Keene told the vet. “Take ’em.”

“Haven’t checked on My Hon.” Ottover, the Racing Association secretary, waved toward the colt, that’d placed, its glossy black chest still heaving, its polished jet flanks steaming, “but I’d guess we won’t find any positive in Hubba Dub’s secretions. The colt won in three-tenths of a second slower than his last work.”

Keene ignored the big, rangy Hubba Dub — a bay with a long, bony head. “Friskaway’s the one was dored.”

Frank Wayne, striding across the lawn between the small-boy figure of Skit Yolock and the majestic bulk of a statuesque woman Keene recognized from her photographs as Mrs. Kay Larmin, heard the remark.

“You just exercising your mouth, Madden?” the trainer asked. “Or are you filing charges?”

Keene said, “No to the first. Yes to the second.”

The Dowager stared down her nose. “May I ask against whom you intend to make this accusation, Mister— ah—”

Ottover mumbled a hasty introduction. Keene took off his hat.

“I’m not permitted to make charges public, Mrs. Larmin,” the race track detective told her.

“I’m not asking you to.” She was brusque. “I’m certainly entitled to know if any Claybrook personnel is involved.”

The man from the Protective Bureau turned to Yolock. The jockey glared defiantly.

“I’ll put it up to you, Skit,” Keene said. “Couldn’t you tell that Friskaway wasn’t right?”

The rider spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Funny thing. I ride fifteen hundred races a year, an’ I never yet been able to get a mount to tell me when it feels like doin’ its best. Maybe if I had one of them Protective Bureau badges, the gee-gees’d open up an’ tell all.”

Wayne growled, “Don’t duck, Skit! Answer him!”

“Ah—” the jockey shrugged — “the filly wilted pretty sudden, head of the stretch, but—”

Keene said, “Know how it feels to be up on an entry that’s been given a depressant?”

Yolock began an obscenity, cut it short.

“A depressant?” Bill Sutterfield swiveled to peer at Friskaway. “You mean phenobarbital?”

“Or something else,” Keene nodded. “Your chemists would have analyses for that. But maybe something new has been added. Something they haven’t found a twenty-four hour test for.” He moved across to the filly, touched her forelegs. “There’s no quivering, as there’d be if your entry had been raced into the ground, Mrs. Larmin.”

The Dowager touched her trainer’s sleeve. “How about it, Frank?”

Frank Wayne squatted, ran his hands over the filly’s hocks. “He’s sweating properly. It could be. But—”

“Who?” The old lady thrust out her chin at Keene.

Keene put his hand on Wayne’s shoulder. “I expect your trainer has a notion about that.”

“Damn it!” Wayne’s face grew flaming red. “Don’t put me in the middle, you—”

“Check,” Keene said promptly. “You’re right. You’ve been in the middle long enough. You didn’t know for sure and you couldn’t talk.”

The Dowager’s lips became a thin, straight line. “Stop shilly-shallying! Frank could talk to me about anything or anyone.”

Frank Wayne held out his hands. “Take it easy, Kay—”

She ignored him. “You must mean Clay, Mister Madden. You can tell me that much. You have to tell me. Do you suspect Clay?”

“I think your son has known what’s been going on, Mrs. Larmin.” Keene wondered how much she’d heard about Lola Gretsch.

“I will not believe it.” She was vehement. “There aren’t many things I’d put past that boy, but manipulating horse races is one of them. He thinks more of the stables than he does of me.”

Ottover chimed in, “I can’t credit that, at all, Madden. I know for a fact the boy has been a very heavy loser, these last two weeks, betting on his own entries. Surely, if he’d known somebody was taking the edge off them, he wouldn’t have put his money on Claybrook silks.”

Somebody cried, “Wes! Wes!”

They all turned. Jane Arklett was running from the office bungalow — cutting heedlessly across flower beds, bumping into people, her coppery hair jouncing at the nape of her neck with every long-legged stride. She ran with her head thrown back, like a miler who is at the last gasp.

Wayne held Friskaway’s nose, bending to examine the filly’s eyeballs. “This is a hell of a time to come up with a charge like that against Clay, Madden. Kay — Mrs. Larmin — is worried stiff about him in connection with that other matter.”

“Indeed I am,” the Dowager said stonily. “But I have complete confidence in my boy. You’re the second person today to make what I consider preposterous statements about him.”

“It's easy to settle,” Keene said. “Ask him.”

Jane came to a panting halt. She glanced wildly around the group circling the filly.

“Clay? Nobody’s going to ask him anything!” Her voice was flat. “He killed himself in the police station ten minutes ago. Slashed his wrists with a knife. Bled to—”

She held herself rigidly for a second, then burst into tears, flung her arms around the Dowager’s neck, buried her head on the ample bosom, whimpering.

Ottover rushed to her. Wayne caught Mrs. Larmin’s arm to support her. But the old lady put her hands up, disengaged Jane’s grasp, pushed her away. The Dowager made no outcry whatever. Only the spasmodic contraction of the tired facial muscles showed the extent of her shock.

“At least,” she pointed her chin at Madden, “there will be no further mention of the unsavory matter which you brought up, sir. And—” she blinked wretchedly at Jane — “I will not be subject to further humiliation on your account.”

“Don’t be so sure, Mrs. Kay Larmin!” the girl flared at her. She poured venom over every syllable. “You might be subject to a good deal on account of your son’s widow! Yes — I'm Mrs. Larmin, too!”

Chapter VI

One More Victim

Sitting on the Gay Nineties bed in the high-ceilinged hotel room, his stiff knee stretched out on the spread, Keene worked the portable in his lap. He clattered the keys at top speed, pulled out the sheet of paper, extracted the carbon, read the original, put it on the bed-table, signed it, stuck it in an envelope already stamped.

In the bureau mirror he examined his bunged-up features, gave his crew-cut a lick and a promise. He slipped on his Beverly Hills suede, went downstairs, found an empty old-fashioned phone booth as big as three of the 1949 models, standing in solitary grandeur near the taproom.

He called Information and was put through to a bored male voice.

“Who’s handling the Gretsch thing?” he asked.

“Lieutenant Asmussen. Why?”

“Just wanted to know.” He hung up, addressed the envelope against the glass of the phone booth, found a mail chute in the lobby, dropped it in.

He felt better, putting what he knew down on paper. If anything should happen to him in the next few hours — and all the signs indicated such a possibility — at least the record would be straight, for what belated good it might do Clay Larmin’s reputation.

After a few years of professional investigation, you got so your conscience was covered with calluses, Keene reflected moodily. You got so all you considered was the job in hand and to the devil with the consequences as they affected other people. They’d affected young Larmin, all right.

Not that anything Keene might have reported would necessarily have absolved the Claybrook heir of involvement in the Gretsch girl’s murder. But if Larmin should have had a rock-ribbed alibi for the time between one and two ayem — and if the police had known that was when the waitress had been bludgeoned to death — maybe Clay wouldn’t have tried to short-cut himself out of his troubles.

The carbon copy in the pocket of the suede jacket set it all down, ABC. What had happened at the Stirrup & Saddle, the pussy-footing out at the Lake Avenue cottage, the stuff about the use of the depressant to kill the chances of odds-on winners, the results of that “closed session” with Towbee. If Keene wasn’t able to walk around to the police station in the morning, the cops could take it from there.

Going out, he crossed Broadway and followed the street that backed up against Congress Park. The red brick of the Casino glowed warmly in the late afternoon sun. Quite a change at the Spa since Canfield’s day. Keene wondered what the old-time gambler would have thought of the establishment down the street, there.

From the sidewalk it was just a second-hand store. The sign above the door merely said: AUCTION TODAY. The window was a hodgepodge of shabby clothing, worn rubber boots, cracked crockery and battered stew-pans. A hum, like the buzzing of a bee swarm, came from inside. Keene pushed open the door.

Forty or fifty people — mostly men — were milling around in a smoke-hazy room, two sides of which were lined with blackboards bearing chalked-in headings: Jamaica, Rockingham, Saratoga, Bowie, Washington Pk., Churchill Downs. A third side was boarded up to within a foot of the ceiling. The partition had a row of small, steel-barred wickets spread about five feet apart, with a door at the far end.

A tinny public-address system announced: “Off time in the third at Churchill: four oh seven, Eastern Daylight. Fancy Gal, four-forty, three-twenty, two-sixty.” It croaked on.

Only a few horseplayers were putting their money on the line at the moment. Keene waited until they began to crowd up to the wickets again to get down on the fourth. Then he strolled down the line of peep-hole wickets.

The openings were set just a little more than waist-high. They were only about six inches square, the steel grille coming down to within an inch of the horizontal sill on which the money and tickets were slid in and out. The hands of the men behind the peep-holes were visible, but unless a person stopped, put his chin right on the sill, it would be impossible to see their faces. Keene watched the hands.

At the fourth wicket he saw what he was after. The seller behind the opening was dealing out slips of paper clumsily, with a big bandage on his right flipper.

Keene went to the door in the partition, rattled the knob. Nobody opened. A short, hard-eyed man with a blue jowl and a mean expression sidled over. He’d been studying a Racing Form, a moment before.

“Trouble, pal?”

“No trouble,” Keene said. “I just want to speak to a joe in there.” He pointed.

“Speak to him through the window, why don’tcha?”

“Have to be sure he’s the right joe.” Keene reached for his inside jacket pocket. The man crowded against him, threateningly.

Keene pulled out the fat sheaf of banknotes he’d borrowed from Towbee. “I don’t want to turn this bunch of lettuce over to the wrong grocer.”

The hard eyes inspected the bankroll. “Y’got somep’n there, chum. Maybe we oughta let you in, if you got that kinda admission jack.” He produced a key, fitted it into the lock, swung the door.

The alley behind the partition was no more than four feet wide — just room for cash drawers, high bar stools, ticket racks and a small safe. All the men on the stools looked up from beneath green eyeshades, their expressions blank.

The man with the bandaged hand only stared for an instant, then continued scribbling on slips. He had huge, muscle-bound shoulders, a bulge around his belt-line, a nose that could have been used as a night advertisement for a bar.

“Hey, Plumnose.” The hard-eyed man was genial. “Pal here has a jarful o’ cookies for yuh.”

The red nose turned in Keen’s direction. “Huh?”

Keene tossed the elastic-bound packet of bills up, caught them. “You Vince Towbee’s partner?”

Plumnose got down off his stool, flattened himself against the back wall. “Never heard of the guy.”

The hard-eyed man eased in behind Keene. The Bureau detective got the odor of garlic from his breath.

“He said a joe with a banged-up duke. From getting it mashed in a car door.”

The eyes beneath Plumnose’s eyeshade were small and bright. The voice was low and ugly.

“I got this—” he held up the bandaged fingers — “movin’ that damn safe, lettin’ it drop. I don’t know no Towbee. Nobody owes me that much moola. So—”

“I shaved off Santos’ beard,” Keene said slowly.

One of the other sellers laughed. “The car’s off its trolley, Plumnose.”

“Out, Buster!” the mean-eyed man said.

Keene stood still. The man grabbed his elbows from behind.

Plumnose took off his eyeshade. “This ginzo sounds like he’s lost some of his marbles, Charley. Maybe I better go along with him. Just to humor him.”

He took a Panama from a rack over his window.

Cold sweat was running down Keene’s spine before they got out of the horse parlor. The mean-eyed man didn’t want to let Plumnose go. He smelled a possible raid and a closing up of his place of business. But he didn’t start anything.

Plumnose went out onto the street ahead of Keene. When he got to the sidewalk, he said, “How much you want?”

“Not much. Just a little leveling.”

The scuffler was disappointed. “If you’d care t’ listen to the nice, cracklin’ noise of a few hunnerd dollar bills, now—”

“No dice,” Keene said. “Just the plain, unvarnished truth. Which one of you finished the Gretsch girl?”

“I got no idea what your git-gat-giddle’s all ’bout, pal.”

“There’ll be a dozen of your prints on the door of my Buick, Plumnose.”

“One’ll get you fifty if you find any.” The man smirked.

Keene steered him toward the brighter illumination of the main stem. “Look. I’ll put it plain. I’ve got Santos. Once I got that Towbee beard and those glasses off him — saw that scar on his throat — he was a cinch. Guess where that leaves you.”

“Maybe I been breakin’ some local ord’nances, in the course of earnin’ my livin’. But I ain’t done a thing.”

“You near ruined me. You beat the Gretsch dame's brains out, or helped.”

Plumnose seemed to stumble. His hand rested on Keene’s shoulder as if to steady himself. He shoved the Bureau detective off the sidewalk into the path of a speeding bus.

Keene grabbed at the scuffler’s bandaged hand to save himself. Plumnose howled, jerked away, fell off the curb, lost his footing, lurched between the oncoming bus and a parked taxi.

The screech of brakes and tires was no louder than that from the mangled mess of flesh and broken bones which collapsed to the pavement as the bus backed away.

A dozen people popped up from nowhere. Another score erupted from the bus. Police whistles shrilled. Cries for a doctor, an ambulance, smothered the mangled bookie’s moans.

Keene shivered. The man wouldn’t live to reach the emergency ward, or if he did, wouldn’t be able to do any talking.

A bluecoat bustled up. “One side, now. Keep movin’—”

Keene did. He moved to the nearest cafe, had a double slug of Kentucky catnip-juice, then used the phone book. But not the phone. Arklett, Jane, res. was listed at 9 Kimberly Court.

He inquired of the bartender. Kimberly Court was three blocks up the street.

“Right next the police station.” The bartender grimaced.

“Handy, huh?” Maybe he ought to drop in on his way over, Keene thought. Keep the boys up to date on the score. One murdered waitress. One suicided millionaire. One dying bookie. Plus a few assorted items of mayhem. “A nice town if you keep away from dark alleys.” Yes, indeed!

Chapter VII

Here Comes A Bullet!

Kimberly court was a new, smart, concrete and round-the-corner-windows building. Very snappy for a stenographer.

Keene Madden didn’t honestly expect the girl to be at her apartment. But when he pushed the button beneath the Arklett mail box, the clicking of the door latch came immediately. It was a walkup. She was on the second.

The door was open when he came up the stairs. She was dressed the same as she had been at the track, but she looked different. It took him a moment to figure out that she’d cried all her makeup off, hadn’t bothered to put any more on.

“Mister Madden.” She seemed surprised, but so dejected that it made no difference. “I thought it was that lieutenant. He said he’d be over.”

“What about?” Keene followed her into a homelike living room.

There was a comfortable sofa in front of the stone fireplace, unpretentious easy chairs, one with a footstool and a smoking stand beside it. Keene wondered how many evenings Clay Larmin had sat with his feet on that stool and let her make a fuss over him.

“My mother-in-law demanded that Clay’s body be taken to her house before going—” she made an effort to keep her voice steady — “to the mortuary. If that happens, she’ll have all the say about his funeral, where he’s buried, everything. I think I have some rights to my husband after his death. I didn’t have many while he lived.”

“What’s the lieutenant say?”

“He doesn’t know what to do. He’s probably coming over to argue me out of interfering with the old — old biddy! As if she’d ever done anything but interfere between me and Clay.”

“You think that might have something to do with his ending his life?” Keene stood by the mantel. A charcoal sketch of Clay hung over it, evidently the girl’s work. Not bad, either.

“I know it did. He was so miserable. He didn’t even dare tell her we were married!”

“That mess about the Gretsch girl. That didn’t have anything to do with — what he did?”

“It couldn’t have.” She sat on the arm of a chair and poked at the dead ashes in the fireplace. “Clay couldn’t possibly have been in any trouble because of that. I was with him all last night. He used to go around with her. But that was all over. He... he was never out to her place after he proposed to me.”

The smell which had brought back those New Guinea memories was strong in Keene’s nostrils again. It made the hair on the back of his neck bristle.

“How do you account for his suicide, then?”

She tossed the poker on the hearth with a clatter. “I guess you know some of it, anyway, from what Wes Ottover said about you. But I’ll tell you what I know.”

“I might simplify matters.” It would have simplified, them a devil of a lot more if you’d done your talking this morning, sister, he said silently.

Was that familiar odor suddenly stronger? Or was he just getting more fidgety? He sat down on the sofa.

“Shoot when ready,” he said.

If it hadn’t been for the ringing ache between his ears and the lancing barb that slashed at his knee, he would have enjoyed sitting there, listening to her — in spite of that depressing stench...

He relaxed for almost the first time in twenty-four hours. The chair was soft. She was good to look at with the sunset spilling rose wine and honey gold across her face and throat. She was easy to listen to, as well.

“A lot of people thought Clay was a weak edition of his father,” she began. “Maybe he wasn’t as much of a man as the General, but he was a pretty swell guy, all the same. The trouble was, his mother.

“You saw what happened last night, at the Stirrup. His mother’d telephoned to find out if he was there with me. Of course he tipped the attendants to lie for him, but still he was scared silly she’d learn we’d been there together, so we had to beat it. Simply because she’d forbidden him to go out with me! Forbidden, mind you! Naturally she didn’t know we’d been married in Miami last March. He’d rather have cut his arm off, than tell her.”

“So—?” Keene said.

Jane nodded, sniffling a little. “I’m telling you, so you’ll understand the rest of it. We ran into a man named Morrison, in Miami. A cheap tout — fellow who made his living selling those crummy tip sheets. He learned we were married, and when he saw how rattled Clay was about that, he began to put the bite on my husband, threatening to spill the news to Mrs. Kay. She wouldn't have minded if she’d thought Clay was just having an affair with me — but marriage! Horrible!”

“Yeah. This Morrison. Gent with a booze beezer?”

“That’s right.” She scowled. “Nickname’s Plumnose. You know everything, don’t you!”

“I’m learning all the time.”

Jane got up, walked to the door of a bedroom, stood leaning against the jamb, her forehead turned toward the wall. “That heel followed us up here from Florida. Clay was his meal ticket, his pension. Sometime between the time Clay took over the management of the stables and the opening of the meet, Morrison schemed up this fixing so he could tap the till more heavily without Clay’s having to explain to mother where the money was going.”

“Where’d Towbee fit into it?”

“I never did know. I suppose he was someone Plumnose brought in, because he looked more respectable — or maybe because the Pinkertons had run Plumnose out of Tropical Park a couple times and he was afraid they’d do it again up here.”

“Might have.”

“Clay hated the finagling with his beautiful horses. He was as proud of them as if he’d trained them himself, instead of Frank Wayne’s doing all the work. But he used the stuff Morrison got for him, and he kept betting on Claybrook entries so the stewards wouldn’t get suspicious. Though Wes Ottover did anyway.”

“Was the waitress in on the deal?”

Jane pushed herself away from the wall. “She tried to cut herself in. She played around with Vince Towbee — got wise from something he let slip. That was just a day or so ago. Then she was going to the track authorities and spill the beans — unless. Clay wanted to pay her off, but I guess Morrison figured it would be cheaper to bump her off.”

Jane began to sob, quietly. Keene stood up, went to the mantel, examined the charcoal sketch.

“This yours?”

“Yes.”

“You’re quite an artist. Not only with charcoal.”

She stopped crying abruptly.

“That was a real work of art, that recital.” Keene was sympathetic. “Fits most of the facts, in a general way. Two or three things wrong with it, but—”

“What?” she wanted to know.

“Dead people. Clay. Plumnose. Gretsch. Everything you said points the finger at folks who aren’t able to talk back. Your husband was a horse-doper and a bribe-payer. Plumnose was an extortionist and a murderer. Lola Gretsch was a tramp and a blackmailer. None of ’em can deny any of it.”

Jane said crossly, “You can’t, either! It’s all true. It might not be the whole truth. But it’s all I know...” She came close to him.

“Uh, uh.” He managed to back away a little without making it too apparent. “Clay wasn’t in on the dirty work. He found out you were in it, though. I wouldn’t know whether he guessed how you were tipping off Towbee. I admit I didn't catch wise to those roulette chips you put on numbers five and two, until I remembered Hubba Dub was the Number Two horse in the fifth this peeyem. But of course you wouldn’t have had to go through all those shenanigans to get the info across to Towbee, if Clay’d been in on the fix.”

The pupils of her eyes contracted like a cat’s. “You really do know everything!”

He grabbed her shoulder. He wasn’t gentle about it. His nails dug into her flesh. He lowered his head, bull-like.

“Sure. Sure. I’ve got it all. Except a few little, unimportant items. Like — who tried to ready me for a hospital cot in that parking lot last night? Who beat out Lola’s brains? Who—”

Bill Sutterfield came out of the bedroom with a forty-five that seemed to Keene to have a muzzle a foot wide.

“Who... who... who—” the vet mocked. “You sound like a noisy owl, Madden.”

“Yeah,” Keene Madden said. “It had to be you, Doc.”

“Yeh. You certainly resemble one of those hoot-birds. You sound wise. But you’re not.”

“Want to bet?” the Bureau man said. “Or do you only bet on sure things?”

Keene knew there was no sense bracing himself against the blast of a forty-five, but he braced himself just the same...

Chapter VIII

Come And Get It!

Thoughts streaked through Keene’s mind faster than memories through a drowning man’s. Probably he only stood there for ten seconds waiting for Sutterfield to pull the trigger, but it was long enough for the turf detective to review every mistake he’d made.

One big mistake was how he had failed to identify that evil odor so closely tied in with his recollections of the remount station at New Guinea — that was a toughie. It was horse medication — for body sores. Who but a vet would have carried a stink like that to the Lake Avenue cottage?

Sutterfield must have gone out there to make sure the waitress hadn’t left any memoranda that might incriminate him. He’d been in the bedroom when Keene got there, and had slipped out while the Bureau man was looking at Clay’s photograph.

The vet strolled toward Keene. “Came up to Jane’s place to make advances to her, huh, Madden? Unwelcome advances, huh? Yeh, I know it’s corny, but after they find out what happened to another girl in your Buick last night — and I’ll see to it they do — it’ll sound pretty plausible.”

There was a way, Keene Madden reminded himself, to take a gun away from a man who walked smack up to you and stuck the muzzle in your middle. He’d seen it in movies, knew how it was supposed to be done, theoretically. The difference between theory and practice, now would be a couple of ounces of lead and some tons of dirt.

Yet there wasn’t going to be any other way out. One look at Sutterfield’s eyes verified that. The vet wasn’t insane or hyped up with drugs. He was stone cold sober and set on shooting a tunnel through Keene simply as a precautionary measure.

You were supposed to be able to tell from a killer’s eyes just when he was about to blast. If the vet’s eyes said anything, they said the time had come. Sutterfield was still a couple of steps away. Too far for the hundred-to-one chance Keene would have to take.

“It may make you feel better to gun me,” Keene said. “But it won’t help you.”

Sutterfield smiled dryly. “It's not goin’ to do you a whole lot of good.”

“No. And what’s in my pocket isn’t going to set you off into gales of laughter.” Keene retreated a half step.

The vet did what Keene expected. He moved still closer. “What you got up your sleeve, owl?”

“Carbon of a statement to the authorities. Original’s on its way to the police right now.”

“K. Madden, Esquire. His last will and testament.” The vet jeered. “Must be a fascinating document.”

“It makes right interesting reacting.” Out of the comer of his eye Keene caught the girl’s casual edging over toward the fireplace. Maybe if he couldn’t dent Sutterfield’s cast iron confidence, he could work on her. “It tells why a couple of thugs tried to put the blocks to me within a couple hours after I hit this town.”

The vet came another step nearer. “Why, owl?”

Keene forced himself to keep from looking at the automatic. If Sutterfield had any idea he was going to make a play, it would really be fatal.

“Only reason that made sense was, somebody was seared I’d recognize him — and by doing that, get wise to the whole setup. Only person who wasn’t vouched for by two or three other people was Towbee. Once I put the pinch on him, taped him in a chair in my office, used a pair of shears and a razor.”

“This here owl—” Sutterfield spoke to Jane, but didn’t turn his head to look at her — “his hoot is beginnin’ to get on my nerves. Bring me a pillah, honey.”

“Don’t, please, Bill!” She was half-stooping to reach for the poker. “Not here! Not now!”

“All right,” the vet didn’t alter his tone in any way, “if you don't bring me a pillah, it’ll be louder.”

She got her fingers on the poker. Keene spoke rapidly to cover any scraping sound.

“Towbee turned out to be Carlos Santos — a West Coast no-good who got six months in Mexico for organizing jockey connivance at Hippodrome del Tia Juana. Later on, according to the flyer in my file, he was convicted of using ephedrine as a seasoning for bran mash, down at the Fair Grounds. He worked with a crooked veterinarian there. Someone named—”

He jabbed with the heel of his hand at the muzzle of the automatic. It was only eight inches away. He’d done what he could, not to give himself away by any telltale flicker of the eyes.

If he could sock that muzzle hard enough, fast enough, jam it back in Sutterfield’s fist, the backward movement of the gun would loosen the vet’s trigger finger for an eye-wink, delay the pull just long enough for the barrel to be deflected downward.

If he couldn’t—

Keene never knew the answer. Jane swung the poker at the precise instant when he jabbed at the automatic’s muzzle.

The gun flared. The slug tore a hole as big as a quarter in the hundred dollar suede jacket. The poker caught Sutterfield where he parted his hair. He folded like a camp stool.

Keene stuck the final inch of adhesive around Sutterfield’s wrists, spoke softly to the unconscious man.

“It had to be you, brother. It couldn’t be anyone else. Only Claybrook horses were acting up. That eliminated any jockey hocus-pocus except maybe on Skit’s part, and he wouldn’t have been dumb enough to keep pulling mounts. Anyhow, he couldn’t be sure, ahead of time, that trainer Frank Wayne wouldn’t yank him and put a new boy up on his entry.”

“Bill claimed it was fool-proof,” Jane said, dully. “He was the only person around the track who could get away with keeping drugs on him all the time.”

“That’s right. Nobody but a licensed veterinarian.” Keene gave the man’s pockets a look-see. “Important thing was, nobody else would be able to get at those saliva and urine tests, to learn what he’d been giving Claybrook horses on those morning inspection trips through the barns. He could substitute samples from other horses, and nobody’d be any wiser. He’d been working that deal down in Florida when they caught him before.”

“That’s where I met him. In Miami.” Jane wandered around the living room restlessly. “I got burned up about Clay's being afraid to call his soul his own, on his mother’s account.”

“Must have been kind of rough, not being able to tell people you were man and wife.”

The girl nodded. “That’s how Bill came to get the idea he could — cozy up to me. Just to goad Clay into doing something about cutting loose from those darned apron-strings, I began to act as if we weren’t married.”

“Do tell!” Keene murmured. “Then Sutterfield thought he had a hold over you, hah?”

“Yes. He followed us north. Kept coming to see me, those nights when Clay had to be at ‘dear Mama’s’.” She flung her hair back from her forehead in a gesture of utter weariness. “I tried to break it up, more than once. Honestly, I did. But Bill had it all schemed out.”

Keene sighed, stood up, straddled the veterinary's limp figure. “You wouldn’t tell all that to the police lieutenant, when he gets here?”

She put her thumbs to her temples as if her head was about to burst. “I won’t have to, now, will I? As long as you don’t say anything.”

“I will, though. I’ll have to There’s a lot of gore to be accounted for. A lot of cash, too.” He felt of the packet he’d taken from Santos-Towbee, wondered how thirsty the man locked up in his office would be.

Jane said, “I can't do anything about the money. I didn’t get any of it. I didn’t want any of it.”

“That's the first thing you’ve said that I completely believe.”

She pretended not to understand.

He put it plainly. “Girl from a nice, respectable middle-class family falls for a boy whose parents have laundry blueing in their aristocratic veins. Boy’s mother balks at taking commoner into royal family. Girl, naturally, gets sore as the devil.”

She came over behind him, put one arm around his shoulders. “I believe you actually do know everything!”

“Have to be a guesser in my line of work. I’d guess she was mad enough to make mamma-in-law pay through the nose, after she did finally rope her blue-blooded mate into a ceremony. Might even have had some wacky notion she could slice enough off the Larmin fortune to cut her husband’s mother down to size. Or at least bring her to terms.”

She leaned her cheek against the back of Keene’s coat. Her hair tickled his neck. “I didn’t figure it that far. I simply wanted to hurt her. Instead, I hurt Clay.”

“Hell!” He turned, so he had to step away from her. “You hurt everyone you touch. You’d have watched Sutterfield plug me a few minutes ago, without a squawk — only you were afraid I really sent in that report.”

Tears streamed down her face. She didn’t weep audibly.

“I had sent it in, too,” he said. “You can read the copy if you want to. It puts the whole thing in your lap, Mrs. Larmin. Right' from the beginning. Clay knew it. The Gretsch girl knew it. He wouldn’t tell on you. He cared too much. But the girl who’d been in love with Clay before you got to him, she couldn't see him suffer without trying to correct it. What she wanted to tell me, there at the Stirrup and Saddle, was how you’d engineered the entire business.”

She began to blubber.

“Don’t bother with it,” he said harshly. “Save all that salt water for the jury. Maybe you can soften them up, make them think you were the injured party.” He touched his own scalp. “Me, I don’t feel that way. I was an injured party once, myself.”

There was a tap at the hall door. He raised his voice.

“Come and get it, Lieutenant.”

Content

Stewart Sterling
The Galloping Corpses

Chapter I Danger — High Voltage

Chapter II The Uninvited Corpse

Chapter III Funny Business

Chapter IV More Trouble

Chapter V Escape — By Suicide

Chapter VI One More Victim

Chapter VII Here Comes A Bullet!

Chapter VIII Come And Get It!