John D. MacDonald

Refund for Murder

After she had been out of the hospital for a week, Beth Talbott was able walk out in the garden behind her sister’s house. At first she had to lean heavily on Marian, but after a few days she could manage alone, walking slowly, easing herself into the striped deck chair, tucking the blanket around her legs.

Harry Palmer, Marian’s husband, enjoyed working in his garden. He had been able to create privacy by planting some high cedar hedges and, at the foot of the garden slope, had dug and cemented a wading pool for the neighborhood children, surrounding it with slightly formal flower beds. The red maples were beginning to be quite respectable trees. It was May, and the days were getting warmer.

It was enough merely to sit and become slowly stronger. She had always read a great deal. Now she had no desire to read. She watched the change of the flowers, watched the tree shadows.

She had suffered a depressed skull fracture, a coma close to death, intravenous feedings of glucose, hours of the most delicate brain surgery. It was odd, she thought, to imagine strangers’ hands doing precise and incomprehensible things to your gray brain cells. The bone wall had been broached, and the hands touched that part of you that was you, that part that made you Beth Talbott, an individual who thought and felt in a certain way.

The hospital days and nights had been scrambled in a crazy way, with time something that either leaped ahead of you, or dawdled behind like a sulky child. They had shaved her head completely, and as the bandages grew smaller, she could touch the horrid spikiness. But days passed, and the bristly hair grew longer, softened. It was still only an inch long, and she wore a turban fashioned from a scarf.

They finally let Marian tell her about Roger. It was anticlimax, because the nurses’ and doctors’ lies had been too transparent. She had become so certain of her suspicion she had thought that when at last she was told there would be no reaction. Yet she had held Marian’s hand, and Marian had cried out with the pain of the nails driven deep, and the nurse had deftly disinfected the tiny wounds.

It is odd to be told in late April that your husband died in February, that he has been buried for long weeks, that all the flowers are wilted and gone. She did not cry until night came, and then it was as if some other woman cried for a man Beth had never known.

With Roger gone she would no longer sense the whispers that had followed her as she walked with him. “Poor Beth,” the whispers said. “Poor Beth.”

Beth had a visitor on a warm Tuesday afternoon. Marian brought him out into the garden, introduced him as Mr. Crees. Marian went back into the house, and Mr. Crees pulled a chair up near Beth’s. He was an oddly square-bodied man, tall, with an office complexion. Beth thought the office pallor was subtly wrong, that the heavy features should be sun-weathered, the eyes filled with the look of distance seamen have.

His words were low, soft, carefully enunciated.

“Mrs. Talbott, I waited until I could be sure you were well enough to answer questions.”

“Is it about — the accident, Mr. Crees?”

He balanced a brief case on his knees, his large-knuckled white hands holding it firmly. There was a sudden look of primness and distaste about his mouth. “These days I have a peculiar reluctance to state my business. I’m with the Bureau of Internal Revenue, Mrs. Talbott. But not, I assure you, an appointee.” In that moment she was aware of rigid honesty carried to the point of fanaticism.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand why you’d want to talk to me.”

“You could call me a trouble shooter, Mrs. Talbott. I specialize in a particular sort of case. Right now I’m working out of the district office. I have here the joint returns you and your husband filed over the past three years.” He took out the three returns and held them out. “This is your signature, Mrs. Talbott?”

“Of course. There never was much income to report, you know.”

He looked down toward the wading pool, pursing his lips. “Improper returns fall into three general categories, Mrs. Talbott. First there is the unintentional mistake, either an error in arithmetic or in interpreting the instructions. Secondly, there is the matter of being too liberal with deductions. That borders on fraud, but as a general rule we merely collect the additional tax due plus the interest, without penalties. The third instance is the one in which income is not reported in full and the discrepancy is so great that it can be termed fraud. A discrepancy so great no one can make the assumption that it was an oversight.”

“If there was any income we didn’t report, it certainly couldn’t have been much, Mr. Crees. We lost our home last year because we couldn’t meet the mortgage payments. I have — I would have been married to Roger three years next month. During that period, he was often unemployed.”

Crees opened a small notebook. “Your husband held jobs as an insurance salesman, bill collector, door-to-door appliance salesman, salesman for a landscape architect, summons server, used-car salesman. Six jobs in all since you were married.”

“That’s correct, Mr. Crees.”

“Perhaps you fail to understand the amount of leeway I’ve been given, Mrs. Talbott. I’m prepared to compromise. If you care to state the true income during the period covered by these returns, I will see that the penalties are the minimum prescribed by law.”

“I guess I can find our copies in Roger’s files and go over my accounts. I paid our bills, when we could pay them. But if all the income wasn’t reported, I don’t see how it could amount to enough to be worth your time.”

“If you don’t see fit to state the true family income, Mrs. Talbott, I shall have no patience with you. At this time the bureau cannot afford to treat any fraud case lightly. I shall turn my findings over to the legal branch with the recommendation that you be prosecuted. Due to the — unsavory nature of this case, I think it is highly possible that you might spend some time in a federal prison. You see, when you signed these returns, Mrs. Talbott, you left yourself without a leg to stand on.”

It seemed to Beth to be some absurdly complicated practical joke. Yet she had always been aware, highly aware, of the attitude of others toward her. And though this man was soft-spoken and polite, she sensed he had contempt for her, that he despised her. She knew her dazed smile was vacant, idiotic.

“I just don’t understand,” she said.

“Please think over what I’ve said. I’ll visit you tomorrow, Mrs. Talbott.”

After he had gone, the sunshine seemed less warm. Marian came out. Beth told her about the interview, and in the telling she tried to make a joke of it.

Marian said, “Those gentlemen have no sense of humor, Sis. And I don’t think they make stupid mistakes. Could Roger have been getting money somehow?”

“And still let the bank take the house away from us? He’d never have done a thing like that!”

“Tomorrow get Mr. Crees to tell you more, Sis. Get him to tell you what he’s driving at.”

The next afternoon the sun had a brassy look, and the thunder in the distance was an almost continuous roll. Beth was in the living room when Marian let Crees in.

He stood tall and square in the doorway and nodded briefly. “I expected to meet your attorney, Mrs. Talbott.”

“Could my sister stay with me?”

“I’d prefer to talk to you alone.”

Marian gave an audible sniff and left the room. Crees sat by the windows, balancing the brief case on his knees. “What have you decided?” he asked.

“You’re going to have to tell me what you are driving at, Mr. Crees. I don’t understand. I told you that yesterday.”

The contempt in his voice was apparent. “Here we have an odd case. A man who can’t seem to hold a job. Do you know why?”

“He was restless, Mr. Crees. He couldn’t seem to stick to anything. He couldn’t stand being shut up in an office. He tried to sell things, but without much luck. I don’t understand that part. He could be very persuasive, very likable. We never had enough money. I’d saved a little, but it all went. We didn’t have accident insurance or hospitalization. I owe my sister and brother-in-law over two thousand dollars. I haven’t any idea of how I’m going to repay them.”

He looked at her with remote, cool admiration. “You’re a remarkably plausible woman, Mrs. Talbott.”

“I’m not lying. You can check with his employers. All of them.”

“I have. This habit of his of disappearing for days at a time didn’t help him in his work.”

Beth looked down at her hands. “He wasn’t faithful to me,” she said flatly.

“You believe he went off with other women?” There was a chiding note in his voice.

“That was the only possible explanation. He’d never tell me.”

Crees gave a patient sigh. “Let’s talk about the night of the accident, then.”

“What has this got to do with income tax?”

“I believe you may know how it ties in, Mrs. Talbott.”

“I don’t see how. He’d been away for three days. I’d given up phoning police and hospitals when he disappeared. It just made me look ridiculous. There wasn’t any money in the house. I borrowed ten dollars from my sister to tide me over. Our credit was no good at the stores.” Crees made a sound suspiciously like a snort. Beth looked up at him sharply, and then went on. “He drove up at night in a borrowed car. He seemed very excited. In good spirits, I guess. He’d been drinking. He said he had a new job, and I was to pack and come along on a trip with him. I told him I’d decided to leave him. He told me everything was going to be all right. I guess — I wanted things to be all right again. I can remember going out to the car with my suitcase. It was raining hard. He said we had one stop to make. And I can’t remember anything else. I can’t even remember getting into the car.”

“That’s convenient, Mrs. Talbott.”

“I don’t like your tone of voice. I’m not a criminal or a liar, Mr. Crees. You can ask the doctors. They’ll tell you that a skull fracture can wipe out all memory of the hours preceding the accident. With some people it wipes out months and years. They say it may come back slowly, or all at once, or never. They call it ‘traumatic shock.’ ”

He leaned back in the chair, put the tips of his thick white fingers together. “And the rain had begun to freeze on the pavement. Roger Talbott lost control of the car on the Valley Turnpike and struck a tree, killing himself instantly. Now you are the survivor. The long-suffering wife who had lived in respectable poverty, borrowing money, trying to make ends meet.”

“Don’t talk to me that way!”

Crees leaned forward. “I suppose you don’t know a thing about that car? You don’t know Roger Talbott purchased it for forty-three hundred dollars in cash in Boston last year, using the name of Horace Taylor. You don’t know he got new plates for it this year. You don’t know he was keeping it here in Thrace, in an out-of-the-way garage, using it for his periodic trips. Please don’t tell me you know nothing about that automobile, Mrs. Talbott.” His words struck her like small sharp stones.

“It... was a borrowed car,” she said, her voice trembling.

Crees sighed again. He took a small notebook out of his pocket, slapped it softly against the back of his hand. “I want you to understand, Mrs. Talbott, that your position is untenable. To maintain it, you will have to convince the court that you did not know your husband was making over a hundred thousand dollars a year. You will have to deny that you knew why he took those misleading jobs that permitted him to move around the city freely. You will have to convince the court that the pair of you weren’t running for cover when you had that — poorly timed accident.”

“Running for cover? Like criminals?”

“That is the word I would use. But the bureau isn’t interested in the legality or illegality of the source of income. It is only interested in complete and proper tax returns.”

“I can’t seem to talk to you, Mr. Crees. Could some other man come here? Someone who would listen to me?”

“This has been assigned to me,” he said. “Mrs. Talbott, let me give you some well-meant advice. You can be sent to prison. You’re young, but it would be a mistake to think you could serve time and then come out and retrieve your savings. Serving a sentence does not cancel out the monies owed. You’d find it impossible ever to spend that money. I’ll be lenient with you. The bureau will settle for a sum of two hundred and thirty-one thousand dollars. I have reasonably accurate figures on the total income and outlay, and that should leave you a nest egg of twenty-odd thousand.”

The figures were so monstrous as to be almost meaningless. Beth repeated the total blankly. She began to laugh, felt a rising wave of hysteria, and clamped her hand over her mouth quickly.

Crees looked steadily at her. “Please don’t think, Mrs. Talbott, that this is something that can be delayed indefinitely. We’re ready to move — and we intend to move quickly.”

“Please, please,” Beth said, trying to break through that wall of formal officialdom. “Stop hammering at me!”

“We’ve contacted your doctor, Mrs. Talbott. He says that another ten days to two weeks should see you fit enough to answer a summons. If you intend to stick to your present attitude, you’ll no doubt wish to employ the best legal talent available.” He permitted himself a small, quick smile. “And you’ll need talent, Mrs. Talbott. Good day.”

After he had gone, Beth, feeling trembly and exhausted, repeated as much of the conversation as she could remember to Marian. Marian sat on the couch beside her and gasped at the proper moments.

Until the accident there had not been much warmth between the sisters. Beth had always felt that Marian somehow envied her, in spite of the worry of being married to Roger. When Beth had been desperately in need of a small loan, Marian had seemed to take an oddly twisted pleasure in granting it, as though it helped ease that curious envy. Even as children they had not been close. Marian — gay, pretty, extroverted — had managed to evade most of the work around the household.

But this accident had apparently brought out in. Marian all the warmth hitherto concealed. Their relationship was better than ever before.

While Beth recounted what Crees had said, she saw the avidity with which Marian listened and found herself wondering whether Marian had found the capacity to be generous not out of love, but rather out of the satisfaction of seeing Beth humiliated. She rejected the thought immediately and felt ashamed at having even considered it. After all, she knew she would do the same for Marian were their roles reversed, and do it gladly.

“It’s insane!” Marian said.

“But if they are right about that car, if they can prove it, where on earth would Roger have got the money for it? Money for that sort of car was as impossible for Roger to get as the huge sum Mr. Crees spoke of.”

Marian lit a cigarette, frowning. “So, being logical, if he could have got the car, he could have got the rest of the money.”

Beth struck her knee with her fist in an angry, impatient gesture. “He’s supposed to have bought the car last year. We lost our home last year. He would have been able to save it.”

“For heaven’s sake, we’re talking nonsense. We all know Roger was just a big, good-natured good-for-nothing — I’m sorry, honey.”

“That’s all right. It doesn’t hurt anymore. I was going to leave him, you know.”

“I don’t like this business of a summons, Sis. Aren’t you scared?”

“Not yet. Just numb. But I’m going to be. I’m going to be terrified. Do you think Roger was a — thief?”

Marian shook her head slowly. “I hardly think so. When they get that sort of money back, I think it goes to the people it was stolen from. The tax people wouldn’t take it.” She giggled a little too harshly. “Imagine the tax return. Occupation: Burglar.”

“If Mr. Crees is right, it answers one thing, Marian. I never could understand why Roger couldn’t hold a job. He was really bright, you know. And had a good personality. I used to cry every time he was fired because it seemed like such a terrible waste.”

“Harry and I were just as wrong as you were, Sis. We thought he’d make a wonderful husband.”

“I guess I stayed in love with him right up to when I realized there were other women. That killed something, Marian. I couldn’t stand that. Then I stayed because I told myself he needed me. I’m terribly frightened, Marian.”

“I’ll have Harry get a lawyer.”

“They cost money.”

“Please stop worrying about money. Harry’s still making it. When you’re on your feet, you’ll pay it back.”

“Out of the forty dollars a week I was making before I married Roger?”

“Harry will get you a lawyer. Don’t fuss at me, Sis. This is serious, you know. If Roger was making that much money, who on earth is going to believe you didn’t know about it?”

“But he would have — shared.”

Marian shrugged her comfortably plump shoulders. “Or maybe kidded himself along, Sis, telling himself that he’d keep you in the dark until it was time to run away with the bank roll.”

Beth finally agreed to see a lawyer. That night when Harry came home, they told him the second installment of the Crees story. He was incredulous, and yet obviously nervous about it. “A lot of these Government people,” he said, “get an idea in their head and can’t admit they’re wrong. And with the kicking around the Internal Revenue people have taken lately, they aren’t exactly easy to get along with. But I guess they never were.”

Beth said, “I hate to cause more expense, Harry.”

He patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Can’t have you in a jam like this without doing something about it, Beth. I’ll have my lawyer stop around tomorrow evening. Good man. Name’s J. Kane Thompson. Lots of tax experience.”

That night Beth lay awake for hours. Her thoughts kept revolving in a slow circle from which there seemed no escape. She had always taken stern pride in making her own way. During the lean periods with Roger, borrowing money had seemed to be the ultimate humility. She tried to remember how he had acted when they had been without money. Never worried, certainly. Always childishly confident that things would come out all right. Had he been too confident?

Now she was in debt, both financially and emotionally, to her sister and to Harry. Harry made, at best, a comfortable living. She knew this drain must worry them, no matter how much they pretended it didn’t.

If Roger had made all that money, where was it?

Harry brought J. Kane Thompson home with him. Beth had hoped he would be firm, confident, optimistic. He turned out to be a portly man, short of breath, with sleepy eyes and cigar ashes on his vest. He asked questions with an air of vast indifference. When she had told him everything, he sat blinking in a tired way, a cigar pinched between thumb and middle finger.

“Mr. Thompson,” she asked, “what if Roger did make all that money, over a hundred thousand dollars a year? Since I didn’t know about it, can they do anything to me?”

“Depends. You signed the returns. Have to prove absolutely no knowledge of the extra income, plus no knowledge of where the money is. Another thing, too. Sounds like they were ready to grab your husband. He died. I don’t want to accuse anybody of being vindictive, but you’re available and he isn’t. See what I mean?”

“Yes, but to be punished for something I didn’t know anything—”

Thompson waved his cigar. “Please, Mrs. Talbott. I’m an attorney. Every one of us has seen the guilty go free, seen the innocent punished. After a while you get used to it. The law isn’t infallible. It catches most of the guilty, lets most of the innocent go free. Maybe that’s all you can expect. A good average. We’ll try to get you out of this. Being sick is handy. We can wangle postponements until we can get it before a judge we like the looks of.”

“I don’t want this hanging over me,” she said tensely.

He inspected his cigar, tapped it on the glass ashtray beside him. “If you had the money, we could dicker.”

“But I don’t have the money. I don’t know anything about any money.”

“If you did, it would be smart to tell me, Mrs. Talbott.”

“Now you sound like Mr. Crees.”

He studied her for a few moments. “Well, I’ll give you a ring tomorrow. I’ll see what I can find out.”

Thompson telephoned Beth just before noon the following day. He said, “Mrs. Talbott, I couldn’t find out much. Howard Crees is a good man. A worker and a digger. The local police have nothing on your husband.”

“What do I do now?”

“We’ve got to find out what they know. They won’t talk. So we’ll have to do some digging on our own. I’m sending you a good man. A licensed investigator. Good reputation. Very shrewd. His name is Brock Ellison. Be frank with him. I took the liberty of telling him to call on you at three this afternoon. Is that all right with you?”

“That will be fine.”

As the clock moved slowly toward three, Beth built up an image of Brock Ellison, compounded of equal parts of Dashiell Hammett and B movies. She was nervous about talking to him. Employing an investigator seemed unnecessarily melodramatic.

She watched the gray rain slant through the maples and wished she had told Mr. Thompson she didn’t want an investigator. Yet she had a great eagerness to learn what they thought Roger had done, or what he actually had done. Mostly, and this she knew to be slightly absurd, she wanted to know about that expensive car. There had to be some perfectly sane and ordinary reason.

Brock Ellison arrived promptly at three. She waited in the living room as Marian took his coat and hat, and she heard a mild, pleasant voice saying something about web-footed weather.

He came into the living room, smiling and at ease, utterly destroying her preconceived picture of him. He looked about thirty, a man with a lean, alert face and quick gray eyes. He wore quiet clothes well, and seemed rather like a young doctor or lawyer. He came toward her, smiling, and took her hand, saying, “You’re the lady in a jam? I’m Brock Ellison.”

There was something neatly compact about the way he moved; his control was almost feline, yet not distasteful. He brought into the room that air of assurance she had expected from Thompson, and had missed so keenly. There was something both amiable and mocking about him, and she felt as if she had been admitted to a small, select circle that believed the world to be a sad and comical place.

“They tell me I’m in a jam, Mr. Ellison.”

He turned toward the doorway and smiled at Marian. “Come in and help answer all the rude questions, Mrs. Palmer.”

Marian showed her pleasure at the invitation. Brock said, “If you ladies will permit, I’ll tromp around while I ask questions. I can think of more this way. The correspondence course said to start at the beginning. I’ve heard J. Kane’s version of the Crees visit. So let’s go way back. Where did you meet Roger Talbott?”

“It was years ago. We were both at Thrace Academy at the same time, but I was a freshman when he was a senior. I didn’t know him at all well. Later on, after two years of working his way through college, he was drafted. He was in the Army for six years, and when he came back I met him again. His mother had died while he was overseas. He got a job selling insurance out of the office where I was working as a secretary. Except for my sister and her husband, I was alone, too. We were married six weeks after he got the job. I helped with the down payment on the house. We lost it later on. I guess I should have gone back to work. I kept thinking that maybe if he had the responsibility for me, it might straighten him out.”

“Straighten him out?”

“Well, at first he didn’t sell much insurance, but they don’t expect new men to. I remember my boss telling me that Roger had everything it takes to be a success in that line. Likable and quick with figures.”

“But it didn’t work out that way?”

“No. He made calls all the time, but he couldn’t seem to make real sales. Just little ones.”

“As far as you knew, he was working hard?”

“Oh, yes. It seemed that way. I kept waiting for the tide to turn. I was — proud of him, you know.”

Ellison put one foot up on a hassock, leaned on his knee. He smiled at her. “When I get carried away by my own curiosity, Mrs. Talbott, please let me know. He wasn’t doing well, you say. Did he brood about it? Did you quarrel about it? How did he act at home?”

“Losing jobs and being short of money just didn’t seem to make much of a dent on him. He seemed irresponsible, like a child. And whenever we were absolutely broke, he’d manage to borrow ten or twenty. I couldn’t seem to wake him up about money, to give him any ambition. He just didn’t seem to care. He kept saying that everything would turn out all right.”

“How about his disappearances?”

“When he came back and I tried to question him, he’d always get annoyed and irritated, and then turn ugly. He’d tell me it was none of my damn business. I’d tell him he was my husband, and it was my business.”

“How often did he go away?”

“Maybe three times the first year, and then six or seven times the second year. Quite often this last year. Each time I would think he was never coming back. He should have been fired oftener, but he could talk his way out of it for a long time.”

“I’m trying to get a picture of the guy. What he was like. His reaction to things. What did he believe in?”

“Himself, I guess. That everything would come out all right in the end. You couldn’t ever talk really seriously to him. He was always joking. Maybe, if it hadn’t been for his going away, I could have been happy with him, even living the way we did. But once there was lipstick on his shirt. And another time a handkerchief with perfume on it. I couldn’t take that. I couldn’t share him. I was going to leave him.”

“Do you have a picture of him?”

Marian went upstairs and came back down with a picture. Brock Ellison took it. Beth watched him stare at the familiar face, that broad, open-looking face with its blunt features, its merry eyes. A laughing picture that, even during the worst periods of their marriage, had still touched Beth’s heart.

“Nice-looking guy,” Brock said. “Mind if I keep it for a time? Good, I’ll just slip it out of the frame. How about high-school days? What was he like?”

“Popular with everybody. He worked at a soda fountain after school. They voted him most likely to succeed. His marks were good.”

“He never goofed off?”

“Oh, never! He was a worker. That’s why I could never get used to the way he couldn’t hold a job.”

“What was your reaction to Crees’s accusation?”

“Complete disbelief, Mr. Ellison.”

“You’ve had a chance to think it over. What’s your impression now?”

“I’m — a little frightened. Because, when I look back, it seems to fit. But if he was doing something illegal, why couldn’t he have brought home more money?”

“Maybe he would have had to explain where he’d got it, and maybe you would have left him when you found out.”

“I wanted him to go back to school on the GI Bill when we were married. I said I’d work while he finished. He just laughed. Laughed and rumpled my hair and called me a slave driver and told me he’d had all the education he wanted. He said he was sick of anything to do with the Army. He wouldn’t even use his rights when we bought the house. We had to make a bigger down payment and pay five-and-a-half-per-cent interest on the mortgage. He didn’t talk much about it, but he was sort of bitter about the Army. Bitter about six years he had lost.”

“He didn’t get out until 1948? Where was he stationed?”

“In Japan. With the occupation forces.”

“What was his rank?”

“Second lieutenant.”

Ellison walked over to the windows and stood looking out at the rain. “I can’t get the guy straight in my mind. Sounds like a decent citizen, in many respects.” He turned abruptly. “Mrs. Talbott, I heard what J. Kane Thompson had to say. I know that Crees is a good man. Frankly, Mrs. Talbott, I’ve been spending as much time here trying to figure you out, as trying to get a clear picture of your husband. I came here with a strong hunch that you might be making the mistake of trying to conceal the money. On the surface, it looks that way. Now my hunch is getting a little shaky.”

Beth said, with slow anger, “I’m getting terribly tired of—”

He smiled. “You can get as angry at me as you want to. But look at it as though you read it somewhere. A young husband leads a double life and makes over a quarter of a million dollars on the side, and his loyal wife knows absolutely nothing about it. Would you find that easy to believe?”

“No,” she said, after a pause. “I see what you mean. One way I’m very devious. The other way I’m just plain stupid.”

“Stupidity is usually in inverse ratio to someone else’s cleverness, Mrs. Talbott. So let’s assume Roger Talbott was an extremely clever young man.”

“And assume he made the money?”

“Yes. And if he had it, he kept it somewhere. You lived in an apartment?”

Marian said, “While she was in the hospital I packed up their things and put them in storage. I brought some personal things here for Beth. There wasn’t any money in the apartment, Mr. Ellison.”

“Did he have a safe-deposit box?”

“Not that I know of. We had no use for one.”

He sighed. “This looks like work. I’m naturally as energetic as a three-toed sloth. I’ll have to dig into the past of one Roger Talbott. Thanks for being patient. I’ll probably be back with questions.”

They said good-by, and Marian saw him out. Beth, at the window, watched him swing down the walk, belting his raincoat. He slid behind the wheel of a small gray coupe and drove off.

Marian came slowly back into the room. Her expression seemed remote, withdrawn, somehow discontented. It struck Beth that perhaps Brock Ellison’s visit had given Marian an awareness of her narrow horizons. When they were children it was always Marian who yearned for the far wild places and Beth who dreamed of closeness and warmth. It seemed as though fate had tricked them in some wry way, giving Marian a pronounced matronly look, giving her a security that was, perhaps, unwanted. And Beth, who had wanted security, was plunged into a world of investigators, gross sums of money, threats of prison.

“I like him,” Beth said.

Marian gave her a look that was slightly arch. “He does seem competent.”

“And he looks expensive,” Beth said.

“Please don’t start that again, Sis.”

“I can’t help thinking about it. Do you know what he’s costing?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t worry you with it, hon.”

Beth knew it was useless to insist. She knew Ellison was expensive. He had that look. And Marian’s attitude bothered her a little. Almost as though Marian had decided to play a part — that of the generous and loving sister — and was now finding the part a bit difficult to maintain in the face of these new complications. Once again the thought that Marian, in some secret compartment of her mind, was enjoying the disasters that had befallen her sister came to Beth, but she discarded it resolutely.

Two days dragged by — days in which she heard nothing. There was no rain, but the skies were a flat gray, a water-color wash. Each day she could walk with more strength.

Yet even the return of health was a trap. It merely brought closer the day when she would have to face a court.

On the third evening Marian and Harry went out right after dinner, saying they would probably be very late and not to wait up. Beth did the dinner dishes, read for a time, and then went to bed, falling asleep almost at once.

Nightmare came to her. A sick, sweetish nightmare, full of slow, heavy things, full of a dank shifting. She tried to fight her way up out of it, telling herself she was asleep, she was dreaming. But each time she felt she was about to emerge into reality, she fell back into the sweet sickliness where nausea and nightmare were strangely mixed.

Then something out of the nightmare grabbed her and started shaking her. Her head bobbed weakly, and she was aware of being supported, of being walked endlessly. Coffee scalded her mouth, and again she was walked. Whenever she forced heavy eyes open, she caught glimpses of uniformed figures, of a woman in white, and as she walked she could hear strange voices.

At last they let her go to sleep again.

In the morning, had she not found a nurse sitting beside her bed she would have believed it had been a nightmare.

“What happened?” she asked weakly.

“I’m afraid you had visitors last night.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s a Mr. Ellison waiting to see you. I promised him I’d let him tell you. Shall I tell him to come up before you have your breakfast?”

“Please. Could I have that scarf on the bureau, though? And the lipstick?”

Brock came in just after she hastily set the mirror aside. He pulled a chair over beside the bed. His mouth had a different set to it this time.

“The nurse said you’d tell me, Mr. Ellison.”

“It’s a dandy little story. Very pretty. Evidently the house was being watched. They came in when they were certain you’d be alone. They came in quietly, knocked you out with chloroform, then a morphine injection. Then they took the house apart. When your sister and her husband got in and saw the shambles, they came to your room at once. You were asleep on the floor, and the mattress was pretty well shredded. Insurance will cover about half the damage. Can’t you remember anything about it?”

“A nightmare, sort of. As if I were smothering.”

“Do you know why they came here?”

“No. I—”

“Crees thinks your husband had a pretty chunk of cash. Now he thinks you have it. Evidently so does somebody else. Maybe some associate of your husband’s. Hijacking for stakes like that is popular sport. I’m sore at myself.”

“Why should you be?”

“I should have anticipated it. Could have, if I’d used my head. I’ve been digging around. Your sister packed up your things and moved them out of that apartment. Not long afterward the apartment was torn up. Vandalism, the police called it. Somebody was looking for something. The storage people will be getting in touch with you soon. Somebody messed up your furniture. Even the car — and it was a total wreck — was gone over pretty carefully in the junk lot one night not long ago. Slashed what upholstery was left. Pried off door panels. So they could have been expected to come here. This, as far as we know, was the last place to look. And the riskiest.”

“But there couldn’t be anything here.”

“I know that. And I don’t think they found anything.”

“How is Marian taking it?”

“She’s a little sick at heart. That’s understandable.” Brock stood up. “You take it easy, Mrs. Talbott. I’ll have more news for you when you feel a little better. I’m going to Boston. I’m looking for a man who called himself Horace Taylor.”

Ellison went downstairs and looked once again at the smashed and shattered living room. It looked as though twenty husky chimpanzees had been left alone in there with sledge hammers and saws and knives. He clucked and shook his head. It was taking entirely too long to get a decent line on Roger Talbott.

Getting the line on Talbott’s Army career had been a help. The trouble was it didn’t lead anywhere. And Beth Talbott wasn’t in shape to listen to it yet. Fear was working on her. He could see that. She could still smile, but there were ghosts in her eyes. Damn Crees, anyway. Wouldn’t pay any attention to an appeal to hold off for a while — a personal appeal. Maybe Boston would have some answers.

May had awakened Boston. The lunch hour brought thousands of stenographers and clerks out onto the curving walks of the Common. Pigeons strutted, and the grass was the pale, clear green of spring. Brock took Roger Talbott’s picture out of his pocket. He sat on a bench and studied the blunt, laughing face.

The two hours spent bribing a lethargic clerk at the motor-vehicle bureau had been disappointing. Ellison had matched the plates and the make of car to the right Horace Taylor, had got a look at both applications for plates. A different address was given on each. Both hotels. And both with a record of Horace Taylor’s having been registered there at the right times.

He had checked with the phone company, with the retail-credit bureau. This was the sort of work he liked least, and yet it had a certain fascination. The odds were so grievously against you.

He sighed and stood up, pocketing the picture. After a quick lunch he tried the power company. The girl who helped him was brisk and efficient. She disappeared into the files and came back in five minutes with a card.

“We had a service request from a Mr. Horace Taylor almost a year ago, sir. He paid a deposit. Our records show he moved out owing us for one month’s service. We applied a portion of his deposit against the bill, and he still has a credit balance with us.”

“Can you give me the address of the place he moved out of?”

She smiled prettily. “I guess that isn’t against the rules. Twenty-fourteen Memorial Drive, Cambridge.”

On the way to Cambridge Brock stilled his flutter of excitement by telling himself that it would turn out to be the wrong Horace Taylor.

Twenty-fourteen was a large brick apartment building facing the river. It had a look of sober respectability. Brock went into the shallow foyer, pressed the mailbox button labeled ‘Superintendent.’ Through the glass of the locked door he saw a smallish man come out of an apartment, stare down toward the door, then walk toward him with a quick, mincing stride.

He pushed the door open and said, with a cool smile, “If you are inquiring about vacancies, I’m afraid—”

“This is something else. I’d like to talk to you. I won’t take much of your time.”

“All our buying is done through a central office.”

“Do you recognize this man?” Brock asked, holding out the picture.

The superintendent glanced at the picture, then gave Brock an interested look. His eyes were unexpectedly shrewd.

“That’s Mr. Taylor. Do you know where he can be contacted?”

Brock smiled. “I might.”

“Come in, please.”

Brock followed him down the carpeted hallway into a small, cluttered apartment. The man sat behind a desk and waved toward a chair. Brock sat down.

“Where can I find Mr. Taylor?” the man asked sharply.

“I think we’d better trade information, Mr.—”

“Sillkirk.”

“My name is Ellison. Mr. Taylor took this apartment almost a year ago. Is that correct?”

“Yes, they moved in at that time. Mr. Taylor gave me the full year’s rental in advance. They were in Eighteen C. I’m most anxious to get in touch with Mr. Taylor.”

“Mr. Taylor is dead, Mr. Sillkirk.”

The small man bit his lip. “That’s unfortunate. I’ve been in this place a long time, Mr. Ellison. I seldom misjudge people. Frankly, I liked Mr. Taylor. He was a most pleasant man. It shows you how wrong you can be.”

“What happened?”

“He was a traveling man. Of course, you know that. They were a quiet, well-behaved couple. I was aware, of course, that Mrs. Taylor had a — friend who visited her often while Mr. Taylor was away. That sort of thing is none of my business so long as they don’t disturb or annoy the other tenants. In February, I was visited by the police. They asked a lot of questions about the Taylors. I was not aware that Mrs. Taylor was gone. They had a court order, and I had to unlock Eighteen C for them. They searched it carefully and left that fingerprint powder all over everything.”

“Did they tell you anything?”

“That was the infuriating part. They completely ignored me. All they would tell me was that I could consider the apartment available to rent again. I felt sure Mr. Taylor would return and give me a reasonable explanation. He didn’t return. At last, about ten days after the police had searched it, I unlocked it. I’ve never had such a shock in my life.”

“What do you mean?”

“The damages amount to twelve hundred dollars. The apartment was wrecked. Completely wrecked. And, because it was wrecked while the Taylors were still legally in possession, they are financially responsible. The owners of this building are very anxious to locate them.”

“Did you report this to the police?”

“Of course. And they came back again and went through the same procedure. That sort of thing is very distressing.” “Of course. Could you describe Mrs. Taylor for me?”

“A tall woman. I believe her hair, a very pale blonde, was bleached. She had a slightly hard look around the mouth. Not what I would call a suitable wife for Mr. Taylor. She dressed in a rather flashy way. But as I said, she was quiet and well-behaved. Now, I’ve given you quite a bit of information, and you’ve given me none at all. I hope you won’t take the same attitude as those policemen.”

“Frankly, Mr. Sillkirk, I can’t tell you very much. I’ll tell you this. His name wasn’t Taylor, and she wasn’t his wife. He had a very legal wife in another city. He and his legal wife were in an automobile accident in February. Taylor was killed and his wife was badly injured. Taylor was engaged in some sort of criminal activity. I don’t know yet what it was.”

“This legal wife who was injured — do you think she could be held responsible for the damage here?”

“I doubt it. And even if she could, she hasn’t a dime.”

“That’s odd. Mr. Taylor paid a year in advance, and he had a very expensive automobile.”

“Sorry I can’t give you any more information. I just don’t know any more.”

“Maybe the police will help.”

“That’s what I’m hoping.”

Sillkirk walked him to the door. He seemed embarrassed. He said finally, “This is a quiet place, Mr. Ellison. Things like this seldom happen. If you find out what is going on, I hope you’ll tell me. Just idle curiosity, of course.”

Brock smiled. “I’ll give you a ring if I can,” he promised.

It took Brock a full day and a half to break through the conspiracy of official silence. He was shunted from one enigmatic official to another, and spent hours in dusty oak waiting rooms.

At last he was sent to an obscure, ancient office building, to a fourth-floor office where the only indication that this was a federal agency feared and respected in certain illicit circles was the cryptic initials on the pebbled glass of the door. A gaunt, vague young man admitted him to an inner private office and closed the door, leaving Brock alone with a fleshy gentleman who looked half asleep. But his eyes were sharp, and his mouth had the look of a trap.

“You’re persistent, Ellison. Sit down.”

Brock sat, facing him across the desk. “I have to be. I’m paid for it.”

“Because you’re retained by Mrs. Roger Talbott, I’ve been tempted to keep on giving you the run-around, Ellison. On the other hand, we did some checking. You’re a trustworthy citizen of good character, and your record shows that you’ve performed a few services for the federal Government.”

“Why check on me?”

“In our business, Ellison, things are not always what they seem. Why didn’t you get the story from Mrs. Talbott?”

“She doesn’t know a thing.”

The man shrugged. “Perhaps. At least I know you believe that. I don’t think you’d still be on the case if you didn’t.”

“Care to give me a fill-in?”

“Narcotics control is strictly a discouraging operation. Too many ports of entry. Not enough men. Netting the ones who push the stuff isn’t the answer. They’re too far from the import syndicates, too far down the ladder. We like tips. We got one. Phone call. Male voice. Pay station. Go to such and such a tavern at such and such a time and pick up a big shipment. Two ship’s officers are turning it over to a tall blonde wearing a white blouse, green-wool suit. We knew sizable shipments were coming in here. It looked like a break. It was.”

“The blonde was Mrs. Taylor?”

“Right. On our books as an addict named Muriel Bard. The syndicates are safe when the pushers are addicts. But it isn’t smart to use an addict as a courier. Three days off the stuff, and she was falling all over herself to tell us what she knew. Three years ago a man known to her only as Johnny arranged a contact between her and this Horace Taylor. He would come to town at intervals, contact her, give her a sealed envelope, tell her where to take it and who to give it to. She would meet seamen, pursers, oilers, so on. They’d be off ships from the Orient, South America, Italy. The bulk heroin she would take back to Taylor. The operation got bigger as time went on. She thinks she handled forty to fifty pounds during the period. And that, Ellison, represents a fortune in any man’s money. While Taylor was in town she lived with him as man and wife. The apartment was a more recent development. In return for her services she had the use of the apartment, a hundred a week, and her habitual supply of drugs. We got her, got the two ship’s officers, and also several other greedy gentlemen who had brought the stuff in the past. We picked up the large shipment the tipster mentioned. We moved in as soon as the transfer was made. Oddly enough, the sealed envelope contained newspaper cut to money size. We went to the apartment. Someone had gone over it carefully, removing all traces of one Horace Taylor. That made the picture clear, both to us and to Muriel.”

“What do you mean?”

“It meant that Horace Taylor was our tipster.”

“But you seem to know that Taylor was Roger Talbott. Did Muriel Bard know that?”

“She knew him only as Taylor. It could have been a dead end. But removing all prints from a place is something more than difficult. We found a few that weren’t Muriel’s and didn’t belong to her addict boyfriend either. Found them on the back of the medicine-cabinet door, on a light bulb in a ceiling fixture, on the underside of the soap dish in the shower. We built a set and had them run through the central files of the FBI. Back they came with the name of Roger Talbott, one-time guest of the Government at Leavenworth, home address Thrace. A few days had gone by, of course. I flew men up there right away. Roger Talbott was dead in a car smash. Wife still unconscious. My men worked in Thrace until they had to admit it was a dead end. Talbott was out of reach. And no basis for charges against his legal wife.”

“Enter the Bureau of Internal Revenue?”

“Why not? We could tell them how much stuff Talbott got his hands on, what he had to pay for it, and what the retail value was. That profit transaction didn’t appear on his tax returns. His wife signed them, too. When we can’t jail them on a narcotics charge, we like to be able to think of something else. At least, it’s nice to remove all the profit from it.”

Brock thought in silence for long moments. “Then Mr. Crees is taking the retail valuation of the estimated shipments and deducting what those boys usually pay at shipside, and calling the answer Talbott’s net?”

“Something like that.”

“You see the flaw, don’t you?”

The flabby man smiled, almost sadly. “Of course. The narcotics business is too highly organized for a man like Talbott to be in business for himself. We concentrate men in New York, and it comes through Galveston or New Orleans. We shift men down there, and it comes through Boston. It’s an international set-up. I’d say Talbott was an employee, and as an educated guess, I’d say Talbott crossed his employers.”

“Then why is Crees directing his case as though Talbott were in business for himself?”

“He’s the only one with the legal right to put pressure on Mrs. Talbott. We can’t, because we have nothing on her. We cooperate, you know. He’ll push her so hard she’ll crack. Then she’ll name Talbott’s business connections in Thrace.”

“What if she knows nothing?”

The man closed his eyes for a moment. “Put it this way. If she acts like she knows nothing, I’d say she was being smart. It’s one way to stay healthy.”

“You’ve told me a lot. I appreciate it.”

The man stared at him. For a moment something harsh, almost vicious, showed in his expression. “Better bow out of it, Ellison. Even if she was nine times removed from direct peddling of the stuff, if she has guilty knowledge you couldn’t get her soul clean with laundry soap and a wire brush. Let them take her over the jumps. You can’t help her.”

“You don’t think much of her.”

The man smiled. “I’ve seen them steer school kids onto it, Ellison. It isn’t easy to forget.”

On the quick plane trip back to Thrace, Ellison kept thinking of Beth Talbott. Her face was good. Humor and serenity in the mouth. A level decency in her eyes. Yet he had seen a boy once with the face of an angel — his voice low and sweet and clear as he told how he had disposed of the gun.

Though her face was lovely and had a look of strength, it could well conceal the determination to outsmart all of them. He told himself he was just a bit too old to tie milady’s colors to his lance. He wondered if his desire to be with her was born of pure curiosity, or whether there was a personal and emotional angle. Very few women made you think, inanely, of marriage.

Beth was sickened by the damage that had been done to the house. And, as soon as she was up and about again, she sensed the change in Marian’s attitude. There was hostility, watchfulness.

Beth tried to say she was sorry about what had happened to the house. It seemed a pointless apology. Slow days went by with no word from Ellison. Harry was remote, uncommunicative.

Harry came home one night, took Marian into their bedroom, and closed the door. Beth could hear their low voices. She busied herself in the kitchen, wondering what was happening. She knew she was gaining strength rapidly. Another eight to ten pounds, and she would be up where she belonged. In her bath she saw the slatlike leanness fading into the long familiar curves. Her hair was growing with a pleasing rapidity, though she knew she still looked ridiculously boyish.

At dinner Harry talked heavily and with false joviality about his day at the office. Marian prattled in an artificial voice. Both of them were very solicitous about passing things to Beth.

Over coffee Harry cleared his throat and said, “Beth, I’m afraid we’re going to have to have a serious talk.”

“Of course, Harry.”

“I talked with Marian before dinner, and she agrees. You understand that this isn’t a — pleasant or an easy thing to do.”

“None of this has been either pleasant or easy,” Beth said softly.

“I talked to my accountant today, and also to J. Kane Thompson. Up until Mr. Crees came into the picture, we’d spent about two thousand dollars. I had to pay Thompson a retainer. This Ellison fellow costs forty dollars a day and expenses. Insurance will cover only about half the damage to the house here. My accountant tells me that in order to go ahead, I’ll have to liquidate some of the stock holdings I bought as a reserve for our old age. Frankly, Beth, I just can’t see my way clear to going ahead this way.”

“I... I know how ridiculous it is to promise to repay you within a reasonable time, Harry. But I certainly will pay back every penny of it eventually.”

“We know that. Today I took the liberty of telling Mr. Thompson to pay Ellison up to date and let him go.”

Both of them were looking at her with odd expressions. She said, “I understand perfectly. That’s quite all right.”

Beth saw Harry give Marian a helpless look. Marian said, “Go on, Harry. Say it.”

Harry looked miserable. “Your sister and I, Beth, we thought that if you could lay your hands on some money—”

“I could sell my clothes and what furniture we had, but that wouldn’t bring in anywhere near enough. I haven’t any jewelry. That all went a long time ago.”

“We don’t mean that, dear,” Marian said.

Beth stared at her and began to understand. “You mean,” she said faintly, “that you think I might have — some of that money—”

Marian leaned forward. Her face looked puffy with anger, quite ugly. “Somebody thinks so. Somebody thinks so strongly enough to come in here and ruin my home.”

“Marian!”

“I can’t help what I think. How do I know you aren’t—”

“Please, baby,” Harry said heavily. “Let her alone.”

“Please excuse me,” Beth said. “I’m going up and lie down! I... I don’t feel well.”

Beth closed the door and sat in the single chair. The window was a rectangle of dusk. She sat alone, thinking of how everything was being taken from her, one thing at a time. Now Brock Ellison, and Marian. And no objection was possible. They’d done all that could be expected. More. They had a right to the security they had earned. She would convince Marian, all over again, that she knew nothing about the money, and yet something had gone out of the relationship that could never be replaced. She had a grotesque picture of what would happen if she were cleared by the court. Good old Beth. Just like when they were kids. Marian constantly gold-bricking while Beth was always stuck with the housework. Good old Beth, working to pay back all that money her kind sister had loaned her, retiring to her room in the evening after the dishes were done. Yes, my sister lives with us. She’s a widow, you know, poor thing. Husband died in a horrible automobile accident. We just had to take her in. But she’s really very understanding. Stays in her room when the work is all done.

She sensed how dangerously close she had come to those tears of self-pity. She lifted her chin. They’d purchased her services. They would get full value.

When they were kids, Marian had been the pretty one, and Beth had been strange and awkward. But during the last few years Roger had begun to call Beth handsome. He had said that “pretty” was a weak, tired word. “Lambie, there’s nothing pretty about those cheekbones and that nice curve along your jaw.”

She could almost hear his voice in the room. She was thinking of him when she heard the voices in the downstairs hall, heard Marian come up and tap on her door, saying in a sugary tone, “Sis? Mr. Ellison is here. Do you feel well enough to come down? He wants you to go out with him, but I told him you weren’t feeling very good.”

“Please tell him I’ll be down in a few moments, Marian.”

She went down the hall to the bathroom and sponged her face with cold water until her color was better. There had been so pitifully few new clothes during the short years of marriage. But the few things she had were good, and she had given them care and attention. The night was cool. She put on a green knit dress, a yellow scarf as a turban, a short oyster-white corduroy coat. She went down the stairs with her head high.

“Not you,” Brock Ellison said. “I want that sick Mrs. Talbott.”

Marian stared at her petulantly. “I guess you must be feeling better.”

“I am, thank you.”

She went out with Brock, and he helped her into the gray coupe. He drove two blocks, turned down a narrow street, and parked beside the curb where maples made black shadows.

“Cigarette?” he asked.

“Please.”

He lit hers and his own, shook out the match. “I suppose you know I’ve been called off.”

“My brother-in-law told me.”

He slouched in the seat. “It happened today. I told myself I ought to be relieved. This is a nasty, unpleasant, unsatisfactory bit of work. I told myself I was well out of it. But it isn’t that easy. I’d like to go on with it.”

“I can’t pay you.”

“I assumed as much. You can owe me, if you want to.”

“It will be a long time before I can ever pay you.”

“That’s all right. It doesn’t matter.”

“Mr. Ellison, I don’t want charity. I’m tired of it, frankly.”

“And I’m tired of wondering why I don’t want to quit this case. I never work for free. Here is as close as I can come. I like your looks. I think you’re in a bad jam. Maybe chivalry is raising its ugly head.”

“Forty-dollar-a-day chivalry?”

“Okay. A forty-dollar-a-day mad infatuation. Or softness of the brain. I just know I want to complete the job.”

“What have you found out?”

“I only talk to clients. Are you a client?”

Her voice thickened. “Don’t tease me, Mr. Ellison. I can’t — seem—”

“Hey, now,” he said softly. “What goes here, Beth? What’s happened?”

She could no longer hold back the ugly sobs. “Both of them. They think I know where the money is. Everybody thinks that. I think they stopped helping me to see if maybe I’d go and get the money. Nobody trusts—”

She felt his arm across her shoulders, pulling her gently toward him. She resisted, and he forced her head down against his shoulder. “Get it over with,” he whispered.

She let the tears come. All of them. She had cried since regaining consciousness, but nothing like this. His arm around her and the harshness of the tweed against her face seemed to enable her to dig down to the very source of tears and find them all. She cried for all the lost years and hopeless dreams.

When at last the sobs became fewer and began to sound ridiculously like hiccups, she sat up and dug in her purse for a tissue. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose.

“Darn silly performance, Brock,” she said sternly. “Feel your shoulder. Did I get you sopping wet? I bet I did.”

“Felt good though, didn’t it?”

“Yes, darn it.”

“Made me feel masterful to have a woman crying on my shoulder.”

She laughed in a choked way. He said, “That’s the first laugh I’ve heard out of you, Beth. You know, there’s a look of humor in your face. How long since you’ve laughed?”

“Don’t make me feel sorry for myself again, or I’ll start all over.”

“Are you a client?”

“I... I guess I am.”

“Then I’ll tell you a story. A sad little story, Beth. All about Roger Talbott. You were right about him, in the beginning, back in the high-school days. A sober, industrious guy. They drafted him, and he looked like officer material. They sent him to OCS after he got out of basic. He was good with men. They gave him his little gold bar and sent him to India.”

“He was assigned to the Air Corps.”

“After he got to India. Right. He became the assistant to a Major Fineel with the Air Transport Command stationed in Calcutta. Fineel had something to do with the direction of aircraft maintenance. Fineel knew the East. He knew how easy it was to make money. That big, cheerful, gullible second lieutenant was a godsend to Fineel. I’m guessing some of this. I dug out the rest. Fineel kept sending Roger, on travel orders, up to China. Each time Roger went he carried a small box of what Fineel called ‘critical aircraft parts.’ Roger turned them over to a captain at the Fourteenth Air Force headquarters building near the Kunming airstrip. One day some CIC boys were waiting for him in Kunming. They took the box of aircraft parts away from him. Roger didn’t know what was up. He was arrested.”

“That doesn’t make sense!”

“It didn’t to Roger, either. Fineel was smuggling gold to a confederate in China, using Roger as an unwitting courier. There was a fat profit in smuggling those little gold bars from India to China. The Chinese Nationalists were upset about the gold smuggling. They put the heat on headquarters. Nobody was in any mood to listen to Roger, particularly after Fineel planted just enough currency in Roger’s quarters to make his lies that Roger had guilty knowledge of what he was doing look better. Fineel figured that the more people he could rope in, the smaller the sentences would be. It was done in a hurry. Within ten days Roger was on his way back, along with the others, under guard. He drew five years in Leavenworth and served almost four.”

“That’s hideous!” Beth said.

“Roger turned sour and bitter. He had one break. His conviction never hit the home-town papers. He was lucky this city is as big as it is. His mother was dead. He had no reason to write to anybody. He served his time. You see, society had given him the name. He decided to get out and have the game as well. Now I start really guessing. He made contacts in Leavenworth. Somebody, perhaps, needed a man with a respectable front. He got his orders. Go back to the home town. Get a job. Marry a girl. Sit tight. We’ll use you.”

“I... I can see how it fits, Brock. He was so bitter about the war and about the Army. He refused to use his rights under the GI Bill.”

“He didn’t have any rights. Not with a dishonorable discharge.”

“If I’d only known! If he’d told me, maybe I could have helped.”

“He didn’t want your help. He was helping himself.”

“How? What was he doing?”

“This is going to hurt. A lot, maybe.”

“Don’t you see I’ve got to know?”

He told her, omitting no detail. She did not interrupt. She sat with her hands clenched tightly. He finished the story, and she did not speak.

“Are you all right?”

“Just numb, I guess. Dope. A blonde ‘wife’ in Boston. Seamen and sealed envelopes. It’s a crazy sort of thing. I can’t make it apply to me.”

“If he’d lived, they would have jailed him. That girl would have made a positive identification. He was running, Beth. Running for cover.”

“Maybe he got tired of all the filthiness.”

“I don’t know if we’ll ever find out.”

“I must think he was sorry, that he was getting over a — a kind of sickness. I have to think he was ashamed.”

“Perhaps he would have been, if he’d lived, and if they’d caught him.—”

“Now, there is absolutely no evidence with which to jail you on a narcotics charge. The next best bet is to hammer you with the tax angle. If they hammer hard enough, the end result is the same. The business of the newspaper in the envelope indicates to me that Roger was double-crossing someone. You told me of his nervousness that night. It sounds as though he was in a running mood, and with good reason.”

“That might have been it, Brock. I think I can remember asking him how long we’d be away, what I should pack, and him saying it didn’t matter. That could mean that we were never coming back, and there was really nothing in the apartment worth taking along.”

“You said that he wanted to make one stop before you left town.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you make that stop?”

“I can’t remember. I can’t even remember leaving the driveway. I walked toward the car and walked — right into darkness.”

“The accident happened on the Valley Turnpike, just over the city line, with the car headed west. Nobody saw the accident happen. Most through traffic takes the new highway. A trucker phoned the state police from a gas station a quarter of a mile from the wreck at five minutes of one. Can you remember what time you left the house?”

“Let me see. I’ll have to sort of reconstruct. It was after ten, and I was going to go to bed when Roger arrived.”

“How much after ten?”

“Quarter after, maybe. He wanted me to pack. We argued. Then I packed, and he kept standing over me, smoking and walking around and telling me to speed it up. I think I must have been in the house not more than twenty minutes after he came.”

“Call it twenty to eleven when you left. The wreck must have been seen within fifteen minutes of when it happened. Then it could have happened no earlier than twenty to one. That leaves two hours to account for. Driving time from your apartment to the scene of the wreck would be, at the most, twenty minutes. If he went back into the center of the city and then out to the Valley Turnpike, it would have taken an hour in that freezing rain. That gives us a one-hour stop in the center of town. And you can’t remember what happened?”

“I can’t remember any part of it.”

She had turned in the seat so her back was against the door. When he drew on the cigarette, the red glow touched the alert, fine-drawn features. She was aware of the hard power of concentration that made him, in his own way, as impressive as Crees had been.

“Have you done this sort of work long, Brock?”

“Huh? Oh, several years now. I was a lawyer. Got a little weary of writs and torts and precedents. I had to get a license to do a job for one client. Word got around that I did adequate work. The law business started shrinking, and this started growing. Plenty of it is dull. Sticky-fingered cashiers, and pilferage in manufacturing plants, and easing respectable citizens out of badger traps and the like. That’s why this one is fun. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s hardly fun for you, is it?”

“Not if people want to put me in a cell, or something.”

“We’ll see that they don’t, Beth.”

It gave her a warm confidence to hear the tone he used. He started the car up. “How about a drink in wanton surroundings, Beth? Just for morale.”

“Love it.”

He took her to a south-side place where the bar was very noisy and the adjoining lounge was quiet and dimly lighted. By unspoken agreement the talk was of shoes and sealing wax. Beth found that she was having a very good time indeed. She tried to remember the last time she had been on this sort of a date, if you could call it that. Long before Roger. Roger had chipped away at her morale, destroyed her confidence.

On the way home he brought up the case again. “Beth, this may sound silly to you, but I don’t want you to take any walks alone, or get into any strange cars, or be alone in the house with the doors unlocked. We have an unknown factor in this. An X. X has been making a serious effort to find the money. We can assume a lack of success. Suppose X feels as Crees does, that you know where it is. X might wish to ask you direct, unpleasant questions. X might not believe that a skull fracture can destroy memory of the hours preceding the injury. And I think that stop was made, and I think if you could remember it, we could put our hands on the money.”

“But Roger didn’t stop to pick it up, did he? It would have been in the car, wouldn’t it?”

“He came from Boston with the money that should have been in that envelope and wasn’t. He added it to what he already had. And that stop was made, I’m almost positive, to put that money in a safe place. Perhaps he stopped at the railroad station and mailed it ahead. Or checked it through on a ticket. If you could only recall.”

“I’ve tried and tried and it’s all a blank.”

“But be careful, please.”

“I will, Brock.”

He parked in front of the house, walked up to the porch steps with her, and turned and left when she was safely inside. Harry had gone to bed. Marian was sitting in the front room in a robe, reading.

“Had quite an evening, dear?”

“It was pleasant.”

“Is Mr. Ellison still working for you?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Seems odd that he’d work for free, doesn’t it?”

“It certainly does. Maybe it’s a charity case.”

“Like a doctor going to a clinic one day a month, Sis?”

“Marian, do we have to be hateful to each other? We fought when we were kids. Aren’t we grown up now?”

“You were a strange kid, Beth. You kept things to yourself.”

“I haven’t got the money, Marian.”

“Oh, I know that. Did it sound as though I were implying you have it hidden away? I’m sorry.”

Beth looked into her sister’s unfriendly eyes for a long second, then said good night and went up to her room. After she was in bed she found herself thinking of the way his mouth looked when he laughed, those level eyes when he was serious. She told herself not to be a fool. Circumstances had made her dangerously vulnerable to any person who believed in her. And it seemed that he was the only one.

After he dropped Beth off at her sister’s house, Brock drove aimlessly, busy with confused thoughts and impressions. He knew he would never doubt her again. The feel of her head against his shoulder had performed some strange alchemy within him. Of late years he had begun to think of himself as definitely the bachelor type. His apartment was comfortable. He had sufficient resources within himself so that his own company never bored him. Now, oddly, the solitary life seemed less satisfying.

He thought of the problem that had presented itself and of how best to attack it.

At last he drove to the home of his good friend, huge Tom Blaskell — he of the restless energy, skeptical eye, detective-lieutenant rating. It took some time to root Tom out of bed, appease his surliness, and get him interested in the problem at hand.

Tom thought at length. “I think I know the guy we can use. A mealy little character named Lipe. Four-time loser and very, very cautious. He’s a peddler, but we’ve never nailed him with anything on him. Does it have to be tonight?”

“It has to be.”

“People like you I have to know. Take me three minutes to dress.”

Lipe lived over a hardware store. The staircase smelled of paint and cabbage. Tom hammered on the door, and they stood and waited. The door was opened cautiously. Brock saw a small man, the light behind him.

“Hello, Lipe,” Tom said heavily. “Stand still while I hold a light on you.”

“What’s the beef, Lieutenant?”

“Shut up. He the man, Mr. Ellison?”

Brock looked at the wary, twitching features, at the face the color of suet. “That’s right, Lieutenant. I saw him distinctly when he ran out of my office.”

“What office?” Lipe demanded querulously. “I never, see this guy before! What are you trying to hang on me, Lieutenant?”

Tom held his gun on Lipe and said, “Patties out front, Lipe. Nice and easy. Don’t move fast. You four-time losers make me nervous.” He said to Brock, “He’ll go up for the rest of his natural life, so what’s he got to lose?”

Lipe licked his lips and put his hands out. The cuffs made two sharp metallic clicks as Blaskell fastened them. “Come on, Lipe,” he said.

Back in the darkness of the apartment a woman began to cry, gutturally, helplessly. Brock felt as though he were pulling the wings off a fly.

Lipe came down the stairs meekly enough. He said, “It’s a no-good rap, Lieutenant, and you know it.”

“Lipe, Mr. Ellison here is going to swear it was you because he saw you. How tight does it have to fit?”

They shoved him into Brock’s car, with Tom at the wheel, Lipe between them. Tom drove steadily, silently toward police headquarters. Lipe took it in silence for half the distance and then began to make small chittering sounds.

“You won’t do it to me, Lieutenant!”

“They always think it can’t happen to them, Mr. Ellison.”

When they parked in front of headquarters Lipe really came apart. He could hardly be understood.

Tom did it well. He turned to Brock and said, “Now, look, Mr. Ellison. I know you got robbed. We’ll try to get your stuff back. But this Lipe, he’s small fry. Would you drop it, Mr. Ellison?”

“Why should I?” Brock demanded. “What kind of law and order—”

“Okay, okay. It was just a thought. We’ve been looking for some information. I thought Lipe could supply it. You know. A trade. He tells us what we want to know, and he gets off.”

“I’m no stool,” Lipe said uncertainly.

“It would be a big help to us, Mr. Ellison.”

“He doesn’t sound as if he’d tell you anything, anyway.”

“Can I give it a try?”

Brock acted grumpy. “All right.”

When Blaskell had dragged Lipe out of the car and hauled him halfway to the front steps of headquarters, the little man decided he would talk.

Tom brought him back to the car.

“Just answer the questions,” Tom said heavily. “Who’s this man?” He held the picture of Roger Talbott where Lipe could see it in the glow of the street lamp.

Lipe licked his lips. “Collection and drop-off for the wholesaler.”

“Know his name?”

“Not till I saw it in the paper when he got it. His picture was in the paper.”

“Did he contact you? How?”

“I’d get the word. I’d meet him on a city bus.”

“Who did he work for, Lipe?”

“He could be working for lots of people. Maybe Sal Lorrio.”

“Was it Sal Lorrio?”

“I didn’t say so. If I said it was, and it got back, I’m dead.”

“This collector, the guy in the picture — he crossed Lorrio?”

“He crossed somebody. The word was out to finger him quick, calling this certain phone number. He made a fast delivery to a lot of the boys, they said. Took money for a lot of powdered sugar. Nobody checked until the junks yelped they weren’t getting no ride out of it. So he crossed somebody, and they got to him.”

“Where did the money go?”

“I hear that’s a problem. Some babe has it, maybe.”

Tom said, “Mr. Ellison, he’s earned a break.”

“Suit yourself,” Brock said angrily. They drove Lipe home. Tom unlocked the cuffs, and Lipe trotted across the sidewalk and dove into the doorway without looking back.

Tom drove away. “A good act, Brock. But — Lorrio! He got the big money. Roger got peanuts. How can you touch a guy like that? Ex-mobster turned respectable. Clubman. Owns garages and restaurants and apartment houses. Heavy money to the Community Chest. Kids in private schools. Plays golf with judges.”

“Tom, he talked as if Roger were killed.”

“No trick to it. Icy roads. Pick the spot and bunt him off the highway.”

“I can see that. Maybe I’m naive, but why should Lorrio try so hard to get the money Roger took? It couldn’t have been much from Lorrio’s point of view.”

“They have a code. A cross is the unforgivable sin. You have to get your own back, so nobody else will try it. Talbott can’t profit, and neither can his widow.”

Tom parked in front of his house, yawned mightily. He said, “Just an angle you might check, Brock. Sal Lorrio’s kid brother, Jimmy. He did some time in Leavenworth. Two Thrace boys might get together.”

“Thanks for that, Tom. And thanks for tonight.”

“Don’t mention it. I got something out of it, too. But trying to do something with it is a horse with another collar. ’Night, son.”

After Brock got back to his small, comfortable apartment, he made himself a drink and sat at the kitchen table, fitting the bits and pieces together. Sal Lorrio wasn’t the sort of windmill you could tip over with a lance. It would be next to impossible to prove any contact between Lorrio and Roger Talbott. Yet there had to be some point at which to insert a wedge and pry more information loose. Nearly everything accumulated so far was hearsay evidence, not admissible in defense of Beth Talbott in court.

Each time he went over the case he found he kept returning to the ride that Beth could not remember. Roger had told her of a stop he had to make. Roger had known he was dealing with quick, ruthless people. Beth had said he seemed nervous that night. With good reason, Brock thought grimly.

Brock phoned at noon, and Beth spent the rest of the afternoon feeling as though she were two women. One felt a welcome glow of warm anticipation. But the other was afraid. There could be little time left. Somehow it would have been easier if Crees had named a definite deadline. He had merely said that time was short. The woman who was afraid had begun to listen for the phone, for a stranger’s knock at the door.

The afternoon was endless and breathlessly hot. The air was thick, and thunder rumbled in the distance. The tension of a coming storm turned Marian bleak and surly. It was very much like those nearly forgotten afternoons of childhood when they were both being punished by being made to stay indoors. She remembered that always, even when Marian had brought down the punishment on their heads, she had contrived to make Beth feel it was all her fault.

Brock picked her up at seven. She borrowed Marian’s raincoat because the storm was closer, lighting the horizon at somber intervals.

As soon as she was with Brock some of the fear went away. He told her of what he had learned. Roger seemed far away, sad, pathetic.

At dinner, he cautioned her to speak softly. She said, “Lorrio! I’ve seen his picture in the papers, Brock. He’s wealthy, isn’t he? Why would he—”

Brock’s mouth had a bitter look. “I think that to call it greed is an oversimplification. It’s more twisted than that. I know a little about him. He was an underprivileged kid. He wormed his way to the top. Lies and deceit and violence. Maybe he couldn’t stop outsmarting society. He had to keep doing it, to make himself feel like a big strong man.”

“He has so much to lose.”

“That makes it a gamble. And if you don’t put stakes on the table, you aren’t gambling. Of course, there is another answer, too. Maybe in the past he put himself in the bag with the syndicate. So he has to follow orders or be turned in for something he did long ago. Leave us stop thinking about Lorrio before it ruins my dinner. How about you? Better topic? Tonight we’re going to see if we can make you remember the accident.”

“Brock, I... I can’t...”

“We’ll see. It might not be pleasant. But I want you to do this for me. We’re going to go back and start where you started that night, start where your memory stops.”

“Don’t you think I’ve tried to remember? If you want to lift something, or move something, you have a place to put your hands, and you know how to use your strength. But remembering isn’t like that. I don’t know which way to push, or how to lift.”

“We’ll use a lever. The duplication of the circumstances, Beth.”

As they left the restaurant, the first fat drops splattered down on pavement still warm from the sun of the day. Thunder was a continuous bombardment, louder than the city’s roar. The sky was lit green by lightning as they hurried to the car.

Thunder was raucous most of the way out to the down-at-the-heel neighborhood where Beth had lived. By the time they arrived, the rain was coming down in hard sheets, muffling the electric display, drowning the windshield wipers. The headlights peered only a short distance into the gray curtain, and Brock had to drive slowly.

“There’s the drive,” she said. He turned in. It was an old house that had been cut into four apartments. Lights showed in one downstairs apartment.

“Did he park about here?”

“Yes.”

“Did he walk out behind you?”

“No-o-o. I remember I. had to lock the apartment door. He’d already gone out to the car. He was standing by my side with the door open.”

Reaching around into the back of the coupe, Brock took out a small suitcase. “Now I’m a prop man,” he said. “Take this up to the door and then turn around and come back across the yard with it. I’ll stand outside the car the way he did.”

She carried the suitcase up to the door. She turned and walked back to the car. He put the bag behind the seat, closed the door after her, went around and got behind the wheel. She told herself Roger was beside her, that they were starting off on a trip, that the clock had been turned back. It wasn’t any good. Brock backed out into the street, turned toward town. He came to the Culver Road intersection.

“Turn left here?”

“I... don’t know. I can’t feel anything. I’m trying to imagine how it was, and I can’t.”

“I’m Roger. This is a borrowed car. I’m nervous and excited. You’re asking me where we’re going.”

“No. I can’t do it.”

He drove around the block, back up Shennatry Street to the apartment drive. He parked in the same place, reached into the back again, and brought out a pint bottle of whisky. As he peeled off the plastic and twisted the cork loose, he said, “This is going to be a little warm and nasty, so don’t take it too fast.”

“I don’t want any.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, in this bottle is a substance noted for busting down walls between the conscious and subconscious mind. You’re tensed up. Trying too hard. So take some of Dr. Ellison’s Elixir, Beth.”

He handed her the bottle. She tilted it up. It was warm and nasty. She took two swallows before her throat seemed to clog. She shuddered. “Ugh!”

“Take some deep breaths and repeat the dosage.”

Beth choked down two more swallows.

“Now, take a break. I don’t want it going down so fast you get sick. Here’s a cigarette for a chaser.”

Beth leaned back in the seat. The liquor seemed to hit her stomach and expand, sending fingers of warmth out through her arms and legs.

“Leading you into paths of sin,” he said. “Got any symptoms?”

“My lips feel numb and rubbery.”

“That could be called one of the classic symptoms. Knock it again.”

“Phoo,” she said, but she swallowed again. This time she managed three deep swallows before the gag reflex closed her throat. He took the bottle from her, held it up, silhouetted against a street light, then recapped it and put it in the glove compartment.

“That should do it. Any more and you’ll develop an insane craving for the stuff.”

She stretched. Her hands looked far away. She bit her lips, said, “Umm.”

“Umm?”

“You know, I like you, Ellison.”

“That, too, is a classic symptom.”

“I mean it, darn it. You’re kinda sweet. Nobody else believes me. Nobody else truss me. Trusts me. But I don’t want any rebound. Got a wife and kiddies, Ellison?”

“Had a wife once, Beth. She died about five years ago.”

“Funny about people dying. Going away from you. No chance to say the things you should have said. Gone. Taking away pieces of you. Don’t want any rebound, Ellison. Listen to me, Brock. Throwing myself at your head. Brock. Funny name. Sounds like hitting a couple boards together.” She giggled. “Gee, I’m getting crocked, Brock. Crock-Brock.”

“Now take the little bag and try your walk again, Beth.”

The rain against her face steadied her a little. The world was a warm, swarmy place, with street lights soft-swaying, and tippy wet grass underfoot.

She stumbled as she got into the car and giggled again. He backed the car out. Got to try, she thought. Got to try to do what he wants me to do. She closed her eyes, and then snapped them open quickly as the car seemed to tip over.

It’s that night again. And Roger. What was the car like? Green dash lights. That’s something, anyway. Something I didn’t have before. Couldn’t remember being in the car before. Where does he want to go on this trip? Why take a trip in the middle of the night in this kind of weather? Cold. Rain icing the windshield. Heater blowing against her ankles.

“Left,” she said in a faraway voice as he reached the intersection. Left, toward town, by the haloed street lights, with wetness funny against the asphalt like when you squint your eyes and look at the moon.

“Just a trip,” Roger said. “Get away for a while. Don’t have to get heated up about it, Beth.”

“Did you steal this car? Did you?”

“You think I’m a crook? What gives you that idea?”

“I don’t know what you are anymore, Rog.”

She rode in Brock’s car and she could hear the thin, faraway voices of that acid conversation. There is no spite and no hopelessness like that which shows through the words of the unhappily married, she thought.

“Things will be fine this time.”

“Like every other time.”

“This is different. You’ll see.”

“Let me out. I’ll get a bus to Marian’s house. I was silly to let you talk me into this. There’s something wrong with it.”

She lifted her eyes to the road ahead and said to Brock, “We stopped for a light here. The car skidded a little. I tried to open the door and get out. He wouldn’t let me. He hurt my arm.”

Brock drove on. She had the feeling of wrongness. She waited and then said, “We didn’t come this way. We turned.”

“How far back?”

“I don’t know.”

Her arm had hurt. Brock went back a dozen blocks, made a U turn and went on again. She had been rubbing the arm. Roger had taken the turn too fast for the ice, and it had thrown her against the door. That would mean a left turn.

“He turned left. I don’t know where.”

“I’ll try Somerset first.”

The neon of beer joints winked red and blue and green in the rain.

“What’s this stop you have to make, Rog?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there. I want you to do something for me.”

“You’ve made me real anxious to do things for you, haven’t you?”

A joint’s sign flickered red. SANDY’S SANDY’S SANDY’S

And she thought of tears then, and of salt like sand crusted on the stains of old tears.

“This is the right street,” she said.

They went on. She gave a sudden start.

“What is it?” Brock demanded.

“He... he made me watch out the back window. And he started going around a lot of turns. He acted frightened. More than at any other time. He wouldn’t tell me what he was afraid of. Then we parked on a dark street for a while, with the lights out. I could never remember all those turns.”

“You’re doing wonderfully, Beth.”

“But I don’t know what happened next.”

He pulled into a narrow street and parked. He said, “Okay, think it over.”

She leaned back and closed her eyes. Cluttered impressions. Senseless things.

“Talk while you’re thinking, Beth. Say it out loud.”

“I had to walk. It was dark and icy. He gave me something, and I was carrying it. There was noise, and a big place and... I don’t know.”

“Positive?”

“Brock... I can’t...”

“So we try a hunch.” He started the car up and drove swiftly through the back streets, turning so that he entered the downtown section beyond the river, in the area of missions and empty buildings with broken windows. He drove across the overhead and parked by the gloomy railroad station.

He gave her the bag and told her to walk in alone, that he would follow.

She walked, feeling far away from all the world. Her heels echoed sharply on the tile floor of the station.

She stopped and turned and waited for Brock. “I came in the other door.”

“What were you carrying?”

“String, cutting my hand through the glove. A package. He was waiting a long way off. Two blocks. Through dark streets. I had to do just what he said and then go back to him.”

He walked her over to the other door, told her to walk on into the station. She turned directly toward the ticket windows. She stopped, uncertain of what to do.

“You bought a ticket, then.”

“I must have.”

“And checked through the package on the ticket. What happened to the baggage check?”

“He gave me an envelope. I put the baggage check in the envelope and mailed it in that wall box over there.”

“Where was the ticket to?”

“I don’t know.”

He asked the ticket sellers. He went to the baggage room. No one remembered her.

She stood, drugged by fatigue and by the liquor. He gave her a smile and took the small suitcase from her and said, “Well, this is a dead end. What you need is sleep. We’ll start here tomorrow night, and see if we can pry it open a little further. You must have looked at the address on the envelope. And you’ll be able, sooner or later, to remember where you bought the ticket to. Come on, honey. I’ll take you home.”

“I won’t ever remember.”

“Yes, you will. We’ve started the process now. It will come along by itself.”

They walked out of the station. The rain had dwindled to something more mist than rain. The air had a washed smell. They walked toward the car.

She slowed her pace, stopped, stood frowning. “What is it?” he asked.

“I think I remember the ticket now. I tore it up in little pieces as I walked back to the car. He told me to do that.”

“The rest of it, all of it, will come back the same way, Beth. A little at a time. We’ve started the process. That’s what counts.”

She yawned violently. “I’ve never been so tired. Ever.”

They reached the car. He set the small suitcase down on the damp pavement, bent over to fit the key in the lock. She stood aside, barely able to keep her eyes open. The wet empty sidewalks were black-shiny, mirroring the haloed street lamps. Far away a stop light clicked from red to green, controlling the nonexistent traffic with idiotic efficiency. She caught a bit of movement from the corner of her eye, heard a muted scrape of leather on wet pavement, and some ancient reflex warned her, brought her rigid out of the lethargy of weariness.

She tried to turn toward the movement, toward the shadow. It moved faster, sliding behind her before she could see it. And her wrist was caught by a coldness that seemed part of the night. It was twisted quickly and brutally up and back.

Brock turned with an exclamation. The station lights, half a block away, made a thin and wicked high light on the metal that pointed at him. For a moment both Brock and the smallish man, with collar high, hatbrim down, were caught there in time. Brock would die now, and in her fear for him she forgot pain, tried to move toward him.

The one with the gun took a half step back, hooked a cautious foot forward, and pulled the small suitcase toward him. The metal caps on its corners rasped on the sidewalk.

A taxi, dome light glowing, came down the street. The shadow behind Beth turned her a bit toward the cab. The man facing Brock pulled the gun back a bit, his elbow tight against the dark coat. The taxi slowed, then leaped ahead as the driver stepped hard on the gas.

“Pick it up,” the shadow whispered.

The man with the gun bent his knees, groping for the suitcase handle, his eyes never moving from Brock. “Very cute, doc,” the man with the gun said softly. “Checked it, did he? Cute as bugs.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brock said. Beth sensed Brock was trying to keep his voice casual.

“Just get it done,” the shadow behind her whispered.

She tried to cry out, tried to say a hundred things, but there was no time. The metal glint flickered and came up in a short, brutal arc. The viciousness of it sickened her. Brock tried to block it, but the metal made a crisp sound against the angle of his jaw. As Brock sagged against the car, the man facing him kicked him in the stomach.

The man who held her spun her around to face him. As she staggered, off balance, he followed her. His small, hard palm ripped back and forth across her face, across her mouth, dazing and bewildering her, exploding flashes of light across the darkness. She fell to her knees and was picked up by the front of the raincoat, dimly aware that it had ripped and that Marian would be furious. The flat-handed blows continued, and now they came to her through a numbness, without pain. She lay with her cheek against wet cement, knowing only that she was being left alone. Someone whispered, “Okay.” And then she was on hands and knees, sobbing silently and with an odd shame through broken lips, hearing the neat cadence of their heel taps as the two men walked away into the night. She went over to Brock on her hands and knees. His jaw sagged at a crazy angle. There was blood at the corner of his mouth. The keys were in the car door. She unlocked the door, climbed into the car, and leaned on the horn ring. The hard, continuous blasting of the horn began to fill the night. She was in a half faint, and only barely aware when someone moved her, shifted her away from the horn ring.

They let her see Brock the next afternoon. He was sitting up in bed, his jaw heavily bandaged, his teeth wired to hold the jaw in place. He stared at her and said, his words distorted by the wire, “Aren’t we the pretty pair? Did you run into a swinging door, Beth?”

“Does — it hurt?”

“It isn’t exactly a caress, but I’m not going to break into tears. We got even with them, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m glad I put a little weight in that suitcase to make it more convincing to you. Can’t you imagine their faces, or Sal Lorrio’s, when they brought it in proudly, opened it up, found a mess of newspapers and magazines? By the way, smart work on that horn business. Tom told me about it.”

“I’m so sorry this happened, Brock.”

“Don’t be. A good lesson for me. I was a sap to let them take me so easily.” She sat on the chair by the side of his bed. She didn’t look at him. She said, “It came back, like you told me it would. All of it. Part of it is horrible. That car gaining on us, and Roger cursing, and the way it cut in on us. At the last minute, he shoved me down onto the floor. Then the whole world exploded.”

“How about that letter?”

“Mr. H. Taylor. General Delivery. Chicago. And the ticket was to Chicago.”

Brock nodded. “I see. He thought they might be suspicious, that they might have got word of the Boston tip and added two and two. And if he was stopped and searched, he didn’t want to be caught with the money, or with any evidence of where to find the money. That would have been fatal. But they’d added two and two and got six and wanted him dead, very quickly, without ever a chance to say he was just taking a little innocent trip with his wife.”

“It must have been that way. Brock, the police have been questioning me about those men. I couldn’t tell them anything. What will I do?”

“They’ve been here. I got word to Tom Blaskell. You didn’t make an official complaint, did you?”

“No.”

“Good. Now, let me handle this. Just sit tight. I’ll be out of here tomorrow. Phone my office and tell the girl to get me a noon plane reservation to Chicago. I don’t know how long they keep unclaimed baggage shipped through on tickets.”

“You aren’t well enough!”

“By tomorrow I’ll be able to get around.”

She stood up, twisting at the catch on her purse, avoiding his eyes. “You made me drink that whisky. I think I said some silly things.”

“Stop looking like a spanked kid. What silly things? Say them over.”

“Please, Brock.”

He reached out suddenly and caught her hand. “When I was a little kid, Beth, they made me go to dancing school. It was brutal. But one day, in the hall, I kissed a little girl who was wearing about two pounds of braces on her teeth. Remarkable experience.” He pulled at her hand.

“No, Brock. You don’t want—”

“Let me figure out what I want.”

She kissed the corner of his mouth cautiously, lightly, and fled, hearing his quiet laugh as she turned down the corridor.

It was a conference room. Beth sat in the corner, her lips dry. Brock had guided her to that chair, told her not to speak unless he, and only he, asked her to. Crees sat with his brief case on the table in front of him. In the hallway Brock had introduced her to Tom Blaskell. She had liked him at once — a big, shaggy man with an oddly shy smile. There were other men present. She did not know them. They had a harried, official look, and an air of expectancy. There was smoke and low conversation.

“All right,” Crees said. “Who’s going to run this?”

Blaskell was standing by the windows. He said, “I know a lot of the angles.”

“Go ahead, Tom,” Brock said.

“This isn’t a hearing,” Blaskell said. “It isn’t even as formal as a conference. You men represent a lot of agencies and departments. I think before we decide on any course of action, we ought to hear from Brock Ellison.”

A heavy man said, “Can the lady wait outside?”

“She stays,” Brock said firmly. “You all have some groundwork on the Talbott case. My client had no idea her husband was engaged in any illicit undertaking. You all know that she and her husband lived in a very meager way. She had no idea that he had an outside source of income. Mr. Crees, do you still intend to charge her with fraud on those tax returns?”

Crees fiddled with a buckle on the brief case. “Put it this way. Unless you can prove what you just said, we intend to go ahead.”

“Talbott worked for somebody else. All you gentlemen realize that. There are no lone wolves in the highly organized narcotics business. Talbott was crossing the organization and making his escape the night he was killed. Mrs. Talbott has recovered her memory of that night. I have here a statement from her doctors explaining that this is not an unusual phenomenon with a skull fracture or concussion. What she remembered gave me a clue to the location of the money that Talbott hid. I recovered it in Chicago the day before yesterday. It is here in this brief case. Fifty-three thousand odd dollars. This money, I would judge, can be considered a part of the estate of the deceased.”

“Just a moment,” Crees said. “Unless you can prove your assertion, Ellison, that Talbott was acting as an agent, as an employee, we’ll have to stick to our original computation of his total income.”

“What happens if I can prove not only that Talbott was an agent, but that his wife had no knowledge of his — sub rosa activities?”

“That’s a big ‘if.’ I expect we would consider that money as additional income not reported, prorate it over the three-year period, and figure the tax plus interest, without penalties. And then we would take an inheritance tax on the balance. The state income and inheritance taxes would also figure in. There would be something left. Not much, of course.”

“I don’t want any of it,” Beth said.

They all turned and looked at her. Brock said quickly, “I don’t think anybody could blame her for not wanting this sort of money. She just found out recently what Roger Talbott was doing.”

“This is all pretty suppositional,” Crees said.

“Let me ask one more question, Mr. Crees, and then we’ll get down to business. Suppose, Mr. Crees, that my client can give you information showing who got the lion’s share of the profits. You’d go after them for back taxes. Would my client get the usual percentage of money collected for giving such information?”

Crees gave a bland smile. “Let’s not contradict ourselves. You build up a picture of the innocence of Mrs. Talbott, and then tell us she can inform on the kingpin in this picture.”

Brock grinned. “Sorry. This money is part of the estate. So is the document recovered with the money. I believe Talbott wrote it as a form of insurance. You can see that it’s a lengthy document. It gives a detailed record of his operations under the indirect guidance of one Salvatore Lorrio.”

Beth felt the sudden stillness.

Brock said quietly, “Times, dates, places, names, methods, routes, pay rolls. Talbott had an orderly mind. Now let me read one passage of special interest to my client. Here it is. On page eleven. ‘Jimmy Lorrio warned me again today that I must be careful never to let my wife know or suspect what I am doing. I told him she did not know. He said to keep it that way because if she did know I was making money like his brother was paying me, plus the bonuses on delivery, she would want to spend some of it, and it would spoil my cover to start living high. He told me I could be a big shot around Boston, but around here I have to keep on being a guy who can’t quite make a decent living. He said he didn’t want revenue boys checking on me on that account, or the police either.’ ”

“May I see that page?” Crees asked.

“How about giving me a look at any part of it?” a thin, nervous man at the end of the table asked eagerly.

Brock handed out some sheets, saying, “There’s no doubt that Talbott wrote it. To try to call it decent evidence is something else again.”

The heavy man looked up from the sheets on the table with a broad grin. “Let’s just call it a treasure map, boys. It tells you where to dig.”

Tom Blaskell leaned on the table and said, “Can I depend on you federal people really to go to town on this and get enough dope to keep me in the clear if I take a chance?”

“What kind of a chance?” the thin, nervous man asked.

“I’ve got a couple of squads waiting. I’ve been through that report and picked out some of the more interesting names. I want to tell my boys to go ahead and pick them up fast before they can start covering up their tracks. The Lorrios have friends. But if you don’t back me up with charges that will hold water before Lorrio’s lawyers can get everybody out on writs, I’m going to be out of the police business.”

Brock said, “Here. I had photostats made. Each one of you men can take one.” He placed the pile on the table.

They read in silence and then the heavy man said, “It looks safe enough to me. What about it, Ed? Davis? You, DeMorra?”

“Everybody seems to agree. Take it away, Lieutenant.”

Blaskell clapped his big hands once, and headed for the door, grinning.

Brock said, “Do any of you gentlemen have any objection to my leaving with my client? You, Mr. Crees?”

“We can have a talk in the next office,” Crees said.

The three of them went in. Crees said, “I can’t make a decision. I’ll have to make a report and recommendations.”

“What will you recommend?” Brock asked.

“That the case against Mrs. Talbott be dropped.”

“I’m sending Mrs. Talbott to a good accounting firm. You’ll have revised returns in at the local office as soon as the probate court confirms Mrs. Talbott’s ownership of the money I recovered.”

“That will be satisfactory, I believe.”

“Don’t you say anything else?” Beth demanded, hearing her voice go shrill. “Don’t you say you’re sorry about frightening me, and accusing me of lying to you, and—”

“Easy, Beth,” Brock said softly, his words just a bit distorted by the wire that held his jaw immovable.

“If you feel an apology is in order, Mrs. Talbott, I’m willing to apologize.”

She turned, quite blindly, toward the door. Brock went out with her, left her in the car while he performed the other errands. He came back and drove slowly across the city. The rains had washed the air clean. Summer was on the way.

“You’ll recover enough to pay back your sister and start from scratch, Beth,” he said.

“How about your fees?”

“I think we’d better have discussions about that. A lot of discussions. Every free evening we ought to get together and discuss that problem.”

She didn’t answer his smile. She looked at him gravely. “Brock, I’m on the rebound from a lot of things. From Roger, mostly, I guess. I’ve liked being with you. I guess you’ve sensed that.”

“It took some tepid drinks to find out.”

“That was the drinks talking.”

“And how about being kissed in the hospital?”

“Pure sympathy and — gratitude.”

“How can I make a proper pitch with my mouth full of wire?”

“Brock, you don’t mean any of this. It’s just proximity, and a sort of protective instinct. Let’s be rational. We don’t want to start anything. The case is finished, Brock. It’s over. You’ve got me out of terrible trouble. I’ll never forget it.”

He parked on a quiet street. He leaned back, with a beatific smile. “You know that little girl I mentioned? With braces? I’ve never forgotten her, either. And never felt exactly the same until you came along.”

“You’re just being silly!”

“Yep.” He reached for her, and she slid as far away from him as she could get. He put his arm around her shoulders.

“Brock!” she said. She reached for the door handle, and as she grasped it, she remembered that you had to push it down to open the door. Something within her had come alive again at the touch of his arm, his hand. She pushed up on the door handle, pushed up with all her strength. After all, if the darn- door wouldn’t open, there certainly wasn’t anything she could do about it.

“Silly darn thing,” she heard herself saying, and her voice was too soft. Maybe he didn’t even hear it.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Refund for Murder