Wilson Tucker

The Chinese Doll

FOR

BOBBY AND JUDY

Chapter 1

Boone, Ill.

Tuesday, P.M.

My Dearest Louise:

Louise, the damndest thing happened here about an hour ago.

I was killing time here in the office trying to keep warm; was pushed back in the old swivel chair with my feet on the desk as a matter of fact, when this husky stranger eased in.

For several minutes I had been trying to decide where to go for lunch, unable to choose between chasing across the street to Thompson’s or going over to Milkshake Mike’s on the other side of the Courthouse square.

But now I can’t eat anything.

When this big stranger walked in I stared at him in a professional, disinterested sort of way and was reminded of your Uncle Jeff living out in Utah. This man looked a good deal like your uncle except that he was barrel-chested and powerful where Uncle Jeff was a run-down, weazened little squirt. It would require two and a half Uncle Jeffs to fill the man’s shoes and there would still be enough left over to make a caricature.

You know the type; you undoubtedly meet men like him in your business. He was large in girth and latent power, large in pocketbook potential, perhaps, and large in ideas of how he wanted the world to revolve about him. If you or any other newspaper reporter met him you’d label him a capitalist, or maybe a powerful lobbyist-something like that. But I didn’t think so.

He made my office seem small by merely standing there in the doorway. In that first, cursory glance at him I noticed that, and took my feet off the desk. And then I looked again.

He had weight, visible and invisible. He was used to swinging that weight around, visible and invisible. Not that he seemed a professional politician — he didn’t. But he wore his hat, his expensive suit, and his quiet assurance of hidden power each with the same degree of confidence; he knew that each fitted him.

Yes, I removed my feet from the desk and sat up.

By this time the stranger had closed the office door behind him, but he hadn’t advanced into the room. Instead, and almost imperceptibly, he had moved sideways from the door so that the pane of frosted glass was no longer at his back. I couldn’t fail to notice that: it told me things about him. Exhaling slowly, he leaned against the paint-chipped wall and examined the office with calculating eyes.

As usual, the place was a wreck.

I had been doing some typing on my book on Lost Atlantis; seven chapters are finished and they were spread in seven separate stacks in a semicircle on the floor. The typewriter was before me and a blank sheet of paper rolled halfway in — I was just starting a letter to you. A dictionary, a thesaurus, and a couple of reference books on Atlantis I had borrowed from the library were piled beside the typewriter.

The morning’s mail, all unopened except for your latest letter, was atop the books. Your violin case was on the floor where you walked out and forgot it three years ago. I keep it there for sentimental reasons; there is no violin in it, of course, but I file your letters there. Those two individual parts of you go well together.

Everything in the office was as I had left it the night before-meaning the janitor hadn’t touched the room. I blew pipe ashes off the desk and looked at the stranger again.

“You’re Horne, aren’t you?” he asked. “Charles Horne?”

Of course I was Charles Home. I knew it and he knew it; he didn’t have to ask to make sure. That kind of a man always tried to make sure, beforehand. He was stalling for time, time to size me up and permit his breathing to return to normal. I’m on the second floor you know, the stairs may have winded him.

I didn’t believe he and I had ever met before and that was to be wondered at in a low-bracket city like Boone. I had supposed that in my five or six years in business here I had come to know everybody, including the editors of the labor paper that are changed every month. I was familiar with all of the City Hall crowd, knew every clerk and deputy in the Courthouse, and he didn’t belong in either place.

“My name is Evans,” he offered finally without putting out his hand. “Harry W. Evans. I’m from out of town.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said. There was a chair a few feet from where he stood against the wall. “I haven’t seen you around. Sit down.”

He shook his head, slowly. “I’ll stand.” And he did. He also kept his hat and coat on.

“I’ve only a few minutes.” He studied me intently. “Some of the boys tell me you can be relied upon. They said you were straight. Honest.” He also thought I was a skinny, dumb-looking creature who might pass for a private detective in a custard-pie comedy, but he didn’t say so with his lips.

“Tell the boys thanks,” I returned. “And I am, mostly. What boys?”

He hesitated a moment and breathed more evenly again. Finally he said, “Croyden.”

I nodded, not very surprised. Croyden is maybe forty, forty-five miles away. There are two railroads and a new bus line connecting Boone with Croyden and no little traffic of various and interesting 6orts plies back and forth. A lot of good stuff comes in here directly from the Croyden distilleries without benefit of a middleman. Like the cigarettes in North Carolina, I suppose. We also used to have a visiting delegation of girls each weekend until the Civic Pride League broke out their tomahawks and forced the police to close the district.

As one of the sidelines I’ve developed since you lit out for Capitol City and the political newsbeats again, I now handle investigations of policy applicants and sometimes accident claims for an insurance company over there.

I said to Evans, “I know Rothman and Liebscher, and a couple of other boys there.”

It was his turn to nod knowingly. “The boys said you were the man for the job.”

“What job?”

Swiftly then he reached into an inner pocket and brought out a handsome leather wallet. He could just as easily have pulled the gun I glimpsed under his armpit. The wallet was dark brown, not too new, and had some gold-leaf lettering on the interior flap. Above the lettering was a single symbol of some kind, also imprinted in gold leaf, but the whole movement was too fast to enable me to identify the symbol or whatever it was.

The wallet was bulging with long, green leaves.

He extracted five of them without counting, and advancing to the desk, tossed the bills in front of me. They made a lovely heap.

“Tomorrow,” he growled bitterly, “tomorrow, or the next day, I’m going to be in jail. It may be the day after that. I don’t really know. You get me out — if you can.”

“What’ll you be in jail for?” I’m naturally curious, as you well know, Louise. Maybe I have the makings of a reporter, too.

“I don’t know,” he replied frankly, almost musingly. He sounded as though he were patiently awaiting an expected surprise. “Actually, I don’t know.”

“Perhaps for carrying a gun?” I pointed out.

He nodded again, his eyes searching me. “I have a permit, of course, but that can conveniently become lost or stolen. It may be for spitting on the sidewalk.”

“Or perhaps for crossing the street against the light?” I suggested, beginning to grin.

He was in quick agreement. “Or parking in a safety zone. Or shoplifting. Or resisting an officer.”

I stood up. “You talk like a frame job.”

“Exactly!” he bit out explosively. “That is precisely what I am implying. That is why I don’t know the reason for my arrest. Sometime during the next few days I’ll do something I shouldn’t have done, according to some unheard-of ordinance, and I’ll be jailed.”

I put my thumb to my chin and found I hadn’t shaved.

That was a funny one, Louise. You are fairly familiar with Boone; it hasn’t changed so much in the last three years. The mayor is a decent old codger even though he has been a politician all his life. And he has the chief of police in the palm of his hand because the chief’s job is an appointive one. Topping that, one of the members of the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners is now the publisher of the Boone Democrat, a civic-pride and God-bless-our-green-little-city guy. The police chief isn’t any too well liked but that publisher certainly wouldn’t stand for monkey business in the police department, providing the mayor and the chief had so far forgotten themselves in the first place.

You know the mayor; old top-hat Yancey is still in office. With the exception of one term he’s been there ever since the First World War. The chief, a man by name of Tanner, used to be the sheriff of some downstate county before he drifted into Boone.

So I said to Evans dubiously, “I’ll have to take your word for that.” He glared at me.

“Do that!” he commanded. “I happen to know what I’m talking about. I’m not throwing this around” — pushed the heaped-up stack of hundred dollar bills nearer me — “for nothing! I will be arrested. Don’t ever doubt it.”

And the way he said it convinced me. If he had declared in the next moment that little men from Mars were perched in the snow out on my window sill, I would have turned to look, and they would have been there.

“All right. You will be. What do I do then?”

He handed me a little card from the wallet. On it was printed in fine English script the name and address of an attorney in Croyden. I had never heard of the attorney. The man’s telephone number was down in one corner.

“Get in touch with the party immediately. At once. Do you understand? Before you do anything else, call this number. If he isn’t in, the girl at the switchboard will find him for you when you mention my name.

“Tell him what has happened. Also tell him that I have retained you. But this is important: don’t tell him why I have retained you — what instructions I have given you. Merely let him know that I have been arrested and you know it. Is that clear?”

“It is. You’re in durance vile, shall we say. I’m wise to the game but I don’t know a thing if he tries to pump me.”

“Excellent. The boys said you were reliable.”

“And then...?” I inquired.

“And then come down and bail me out. If you can.”

“Now hold on a minute! They can’t hold you in jail for spitting on the sidewalk. Everybody does it.”

“No? Perhaps not. But they can for shoplifting. Or resisting an officer and attempting to commit bodily harm. Son, you should know cops, you’re in the business.”

“I do know cops. In this town I know them like you know the buttons on your shirt. And that’s why I don’t understand this. But go on, if it happens, what next?”

“If you can bail me out, do so. And stay right with me. That is also important. Don’t allow me to ‘commit’ a second offense; get a taxi and go with me to the railroad station. Put me on the first train for Croyden and stay with me until the train pulls out.

“Whatever you do, don’t leave me alone until I’m out of town. Do you fully understand those instructions? If I should ask you, or order you to do anything else, stay with me. Put me on that train!”

“Mister, I’ll stick to you like sap to a tree. But if I can’t bail you out?”

Evans smiled and I felt a kick in the teeth coming.

“In that event, Horne, you are to walk down the steps in front of the City Hall and spit on the sidewalk — or whatever it is. You are to do the same thing for which I was arrested. Do it before an officer and insist on being arrested.”

“Our city jail has but one cell,” I said in bemused reflection. That would put the two of us together. “Misery loves company.”

“I’ll need company! Son, I’m being framed; I want you in jail for the very same offense. I want to happen to you whatever happens to me. I want a witness.”

I could just picture that. I could see me spitting on the sidewalk, or dashing across the street in the face of a red light, or swiping bobby pins from the five-and-ten. Yes: it made a delightful, unbelievable picture.

“And that?” With a pointed forefinger I indicated the money on the desk.

“That,” he replied without emotion, “is yours. If you are forced to use it for bail, I’ll replace it. Have you any contacts in the City Hall? Trustworthy contacts that don’t wear blue?”

I said yes, there was the colored porter whom I remembered on his birthday and Christmas.

“All right.” He sounded as final as the act of getting up from a chair. “I’m staying at the Hotel Warth. I’m going there now. Keep your eyes open and don’t fail me. It may be at any time.” He reached behind him and pulled open the door.

His exit was as quiet as his entrance.

“Hey—!” I shouted after his vanishing figure. “Hey — aren’t you going to tell me what’s behind...”

The office door slammed in a sudden gust of wind and several sheets of paper from my stacks of manuscript skittered across the floor. I glowered at them darkly and listened to his barely heard footfalls descending the last few steps to the street. A remaining draft of cold, biting winter air swept across the office and played around my ankles. I walked to the window and put one foot up on the ledge, out of the draft.

There he went, Harry W. Evans, the gent who thoroughly believed our innocent gendarmery was an unscrupulous pack of rascals after his hide. That’s what big-city living does to a man. You distrust your neighbor, art a stranger to the man in the next block, and hate the cop on the corner. And he probably hates you because he has to look at you every day. Standing there, on one foot, I made a mental note to tell Yancey about Evans. Yancey likes jokes, old, new or incredible. Yancey is in Florida now for his annual winter vacation.

Harry Evans came out of my building and walked directly to the curb. Swift snowflakes pelted down on his hat and shoulders. They clung to his overcoat like a soft mantle and he would be well covered by the time he walked a few blocks to his hotel.

He stepped off the curb in front of the building and started across the street. The Studebaker sedan got him before he had taken half a dozen steps.

The snow was falling fast, already beginning to cover the tire tracks; twin, treaded tracks that showed no frantic skidding in an effort to stop. The sedan kept on going after knocking over Harry W. Evans.

Knocking him over and killing him deader than hell.

(“...I’ll do something I shouldn’t have done, according to some unheard-of ordinance...” He did. Boone has an ordinance prohibiting jaywalking.)

I called the attorney in Croyden a short while after that. In spite of the instructions (and after all, this hadn’t been covered in them) I first went downstairs to watch his body being put in the wagon.

The wallet had fallen from Evans’ inner pocket. I saw his name and the little golden symbol but it was so much Greek to me. It was not a fraternal emblem.

I walked across the street to Thompson’s for a cup of coffee. A little knot of gawkers stood in the window, watching the crowd in the street. The coffee tasted flat and lifeless; I said as much to Judy across the counter. She dismissed the complaint without batting a heavy eyelash.

“Same coffee we always have, dollink.”

Some of the people standing at the window began looking my way with silly questions written on their faces. I got out of there and went back to the office.

After a delay of several minutes the attorney came on the wire.

“It’s snowing here,” I said into the broken mouthpiece of the telephone after I had introduced myself by name and profession. In one brusque growl the attorney indicated he had never heard of me.

He snapped, “Are you spending money to tell me that? What of it? It’s also snowing here.”

“I’m not spending my money,” I informed him. “I’m spending yours. Didn’t the girl tell you I reversed the charges? Well, it’s snowing pretty hard here, but not enough to block vision. Not hard enough and fast enough to cover up the tire tracks before I saw them.”

“Are you crazy?” He was somewhat annoyed. “What tire tracks? What are you gibbering about?”

I pushed back in the chair and let him have it.

“I’m talking about the tracks of the tires of the car that killed Harry Evans a short while ago.”

That stopped his protestations like an abutment stops an automobile. I heard him suck in his breath and hold it, as a man does when he gets an unexpected blow around the belt.

When he spoke to me again it was in a vastly changed, curiously stark voice. He was frightened. Shocked, too, but frightened.

“Tell me about those tire tracks,” he said.

I did. “It’s snowing here,” I repeated for the effect and because he was paying the toll charges. “Evans left my office and started across the street in the middle of the block. It isn’t such a busy street, although it’s downtown. I think he was on his way back to the hotel.

“He didn’t get there. He had taken maybe five or six steps from the curb when this sedan smacked him down. A Studebaker sedan with a supercharger attachment on the hood. The sedan was traveling pretty fast for a snowy, downtown street. It didn’t try to stop before it hit him; it didn’t stop after it hit him.”

The attorney let out his breath. “Like that, eh?”

“Like that. After the car struck the body and had passed partly over it, the driver began to apply the brakes. Just began to apply them. A barest hesitation. And then the sedan picked up speed and disappeared. The tire marks told the story but the story isn’t there any more; it’s still snowing.”

“Do you think that... think that...?”

“Why not? It’s a reasonable guess. I’m sure.”

“You — are?”

“Yeah. Didn’t he tell you why he came to see me?”

“He did not. I didn’t know he had need of a detective. I knew only that he was there on business. I wondered how you knew to call me.”

“What is — I mean, what was his business?”

The attorney hesitated. Finally he said, “Stock and bonds, grains. He was an investment broker.”

“No doubt,” I shot back dryly. “And he gave me five hundred dollars to bail him out of jail because he was anticipating a market crash. What was his business?”

At first my only answer was a lengthy silence from the other end of the wire. I listened to see if the attorney was calling someone else, or had his hand over the mouthpiece, but he was still there, breathing into my ear. Finally I could hear him drumming on his desk, impatiently.

He said curtly, “I’m not at liberty to tell you.”

“All right. I’ll find out here.”

“Tell me,” he asked in an eager voice, “why did he hire you?”

I drummed on my desk and after a short pause said: “I’m not at liberty to tell you.” I wished I could have been watching his face, and at the same time I wondered if I had made a mistake in mentioning the bail and jail business.

He punctured the mutual silence with a, “Well?”

“Look, mister, I’ve got five hundred dollars I never had a chance to earn. It belongs to Evans. Do you want me to send it to you?”

“No.”

“I’m happy. Give me the word.”

“The word?”

“The go-ahead, certainly. You are his lawyer, aren’t you? You don’t want this glossed over and forgotten as just another hit-and-run case, do you? You do want me to look into it, don’t you?” High pressure salesmanship. I wanted to keep that five hundred.

“Oh... yes, yes. Certainly. By all means.” He ran the words together in a babbling effect. I wondered if he was hysterical. “Get right on it. Find out who did it. Find out—”

I cut in on him.

“Take it easy. I’ve already found out something. There was a little delay in getting through to you, so I checked with City Hall while I was waiting. The only thing they have so far is that it was a Studebaker sedan, driven by a girl.”

“A girl?”

“Girl. Female. Woman. The so-called weaker sex. You have one there in the office. It ties in, you see. Men often run away from accidents. Women, seldom if ever. They haven’t got the guts to run away from accidents. Ask your secretary what she would do if she ran a man down. She’d faint. This woman didn’t faint — she hit Evans and got the hell out of sight.”

He said slowly, “And that indicates—?”

“—that it was premeditated,” I finished for him. “It’s a murder, if the driver can be found and a confession obtained or satisfactory proof constructed. The inquest is tomorrow afternoon.”

Suddenly he was all businessman. “Attend that inquest. Notify me of further developments. I can advance more money should you need it.”

“I have enough to keep me,” I said aloud, and under my breath added, “for a while.”

“Call me back late tomorrow afternoon.”

“I can tell you now what the results will be, just in case you want to make a little bet. Death was caused by an automobile driven by a person or persons unknown—”

He cut me off, “Call me tomorrow.” And hung up.

I waited until the operator plugged into the line and gave her another Croyden number.

Pretty soon a voice said, “Hello, chum. It’s your nickel.”

“Hello, Liebscher. I was hoping to talk to Rothman. And it’s not my nickel, it’s my forty cents if I can complete this in three minutes. Where’s the boss?”

“Ah — it’s Charlie. How are you, chum?”

“Dammit, I’m wasting forty cents. I want Rothman. Look, Liebscher, give me a quick line on Harry W. Evans.”

“Evans? He was in here looking for a Daniel Boone. Get it? Boone. Good, huh? We gave him your name.”

“I know you did, and he dropped in on me. But give me a line on him.”

“Ain’t much to give, chum. He’s married but she’s fat, they tell me. You know how that is — guys don’t take fat wives out to have fun except to the opera and that ain’t fun and anyway Croyden ain’t got no opera. No children. You ain’t after the fat wife, are you chum?”

“To hell with you, Liebscher. Listen, Evans is dead. What? No, I said dead. Yeah — that’s right. Hit-and-run. Less than an hour ago. But meanwhile he hired me for a little job. I want everything you might have on him.”

“Seriously, Charlie, there isn’t a thing on him that I know of. He’s got an office here; stocks and bonds and that sort of stuff. I’ve never seen him actually work. And he never jilted a widow in his life, that I know of. He’s the slightly sentimental kind. If she’s pretty, he’ll give her her last five dollars back rather than keep it all.”

“How about a private love life?”

“Could be. Fat wife, you know. Want me to check into it?”

“Yes. If you find anything on him, wire it over. Now — what do you know about... about...” I had already forgotten the name of the attorney, and quickly searched my pockets for the card.

“About who, chum?” Liebscher prompted.

I found the card. “Ashley. An attorney named August Ashley.”

Liebscher didn’t answer but I heard him rapidly thumbing the pages of a book. Finally he offered, “He’s located in the same building as Evans.”

“That’s convenient. What else?”

“Nothing, chum. Don’t know him.”

“Liebscher, you’re slipping. Tell Rothman I called. I want to talk to him next time; he’s intelligent. If either of you pick up anything on Evans, wire it. Same goes for Ashley if it’s tied to Evans. So long, now.”

“So long, chum.” Liebscher rang off.

And that, Louise, is how I happen to have five hundred dollars in my desk drawer at the moment. Can you guess what I’d like to do with it? I’d like to take you to Florida or someplace and court you all over again. I wish you weren’t so stubborn. We’re over the hump — three of the five years have passed and I’ve demonstrated often that I can make a first-class husband and provider. Do we have to finish out the full five years? Can’t we bring this experiment to an end right now? We can have a lot of fun on that five hundred dollars.

You’ll get the brief facts of the hit-and-run over the wires in your city room, but I couldn’t resist adding what I know. Besides, the news story won’t mention my name. This town has maybe 35,000 inhabitants. And probably two thousand of them own automobiles. I wonder how many of those two thousand drive a Studebaker sedan with a supercharger attachment?

I intend to find out.

Chapter 2

Boone, Ill.

Wednesday, very A.M.

Dear Louise:

Last night, at dusk: it was a fairly new Studebaker and it carried a supercharger attachment on the hood. But it wasn’t a sedan. It was a coupe — I looked twice for assurance.

The young woman driving it pulled up to the traffic light on the corner where I was standing, threw open the door nearest me, and motioned with her hand in an unmistakable gesture.

I suppose I gaped at her like a damned fool, Louise, but I couldn’t help it. The spectacle caught me completely off guard.

It was just dusk. I had gone into Milkshake Mike’s for my supper and to pass a few words with Mike. You’ve never met him. Mike is a rotund, jovial Greek and his real name is Thaddeus something-or-other.

He hadn’t heard of the day’s occurrence nor did the dead man’s name mean anything to him. Mike has a wealth of unusual information at his fingertips if you can pry it out of him. Sometimes I can.

After eating, I had gone outside and walked the short distance to the corner of Main and Lincoln, stopping there to watch the red and green neon lights playing on the snow. I remembered you once telling me that the green wasn’t neon but some other gas, although I’ve already forgotten the name of it. Light snow was falling and the air was getting colder.

Then, out of the snow and the silence of my thoughts, this coupe had slid up to the red light and the door was pushed open.

The woman behind the wheel waved to me again.

“Please hurry!” Her voice came through the gathering darkness, elfin and insistent. “Quickly, before the lights change.”

Put it down as foolishness, or even curiosity. The woman and her gesture had startled me; her Studebaker and its supercharger aroused something else. I trotted off the curb and climbed into the coupe just as the red light changed to amber and the driver shifted gears. She turned the corner onto Main Street and shot the car forward while I pulled the door closed, wrapped my overcoat about me, and tried to find room for my legs down around the heater. It was then that I looked at her.

A Chinese picture.

With the exception of that dancing troupe you and I once saw in Chicago (the trip we intended for a honeymoon, remember?), my driver was the prettiest Chinese girl I have ever had the good fortune to see. And I’m eliminating the showgirls because their faces were artificial, whereas this one was natural. There was a bit of make-up, just a bit. Only enough to accent the natural beauty of the girl.

She looked to be little more than a kid, possibly fifteen or sixteen years old, but I realized that to be a patently false impression; not only because Chinese girls’ appearances are usually deceptive as to age, but because she had to be older than that to get a driver’s license. She was probably twenty, possibly more. And she was a honey.

The coupe nimbly skirted a red-white-and-blue painted streetcar and roared west on Main Street. She hadn’t spoken a word to me beyond the invitational demand at the traffic signal.

“You’re new here,” I opened the conversation, meaning that I hadn’t seen her around town before. It struck me that I was meeting a lot of strangers in Boone.

“Yes sir.” She didn’t remove her eyes from the street. “My second trip.”

Some other things were on the tip of my tongue, idle things to break the ice and pry a measure of information from her. Instead, I shut my mouth with a snap and thought about that queer answer. And no matter which way I turned it, it remained uncooked on all sides. I simply couldn’t read sense into it.

To make matters worse she offered no amplification whatever. The best I could grasp was that I was supposed to know where we were going, who (or at least what) she was, and why. A flash of white caught my eye in the rear vision mirror. It was a prowl car crossing an intersection behind us, traveling south. She had seen it, too.

Frankly, Louise, I hadn’t time to become worried about what I had stepped into. I felt that I could hold my own with this doll, and somehow, this didn’t have the feel of a ride — if you know what I mean. Not that I’m an authority on rides. But all this was too... too gentle, so taken-for-granted.

I was pretty certain I could and would come back on my feet; but where the hell was I going, and why? And how did I expect to tie in Evans’ death with another car that had a supercharger? Don’t ask me, I don’t know. I didn’t then and I don’t now.

“Bad driving?” I asked, after the slick snow threw the rear wheels around a trifle.

“No sir.” The pretty face remained in fixed position.

“Have you been driving long?”

“Yes sir.”

“This heater is getting damned hot on my legs. Mind if I turn it off?”

“No sir.”

She refused to bite on anything. Wouldn’t even nibble at the hook. The coupe jounced suddenly and I peered out the window.

We were crossing the Illinois Central tracks and would soon be leaving the city behind. After that there would be maybe a half-mile of frame houses and ramshackle buildings and then the wide open spaces. I tried to remember what lay out this way.

To the best of my knowledge there were only some truck farms, one or two second-rate roadhouses, an occupied red brick building which people called “the long distance office,” and a small lake. Adjoining the lake there were a bath house, an open-air dance pavilion, a postage-stamp size picnic park, and a bandstand. All these latter establishments had long ago shut down for the winter, and their utility services turned off. For a higher tax rate, Boone furnishes them with electricity, drinking water and fire protection.

And I had heard vague rumors that somebody was running a gambling den out here, and that there was — or would be in the very near future — a girly house, in defiance of the ladies armed with tomahawks who had previously run them out of town.

I turned and shot a look at the Chinese doll.

No.

She no more looked the part of an inmate than you do, Louise. But I had a hunch in another direction and fired a trial rocket.

“Is there ice on the lake yet?”

“Oh — yes sir.”

She hesitated over the three words and I watched her reserve crumble. She reflected upon herself for some minutes and then added the first real bit of conversation.

“Perhaps by tomorrow it will be safe enough for skating, sir.”

That was a good opening. I followed up with, “Do you like to skate, too?”

She turned her eyes on me, rather shy and warm eyes that cause men to manufacture dreams. There were little fires burning in them, small glowing coals a man delights to look into across the breakfast table.

“I skate as often as I may,” she told me. “I would have liked to skate tonight, but—”

“But what?” I prompted patiently.

“It is too thin,” she finished lamely. The girl was obviously lying; it embarrassed her to know that I realized it. She hadn’t intended to say that at all. Even her voice refused to underwrite the answer. She recovered herself and directed attention away from the lie by a direct question.

“Do you, sir?”

“Roller skating,” I backed out hastily. “I have to have wheels under me; I’ve never been on ice skates in my life. Perhaps I could learn?” But she didn’t accept the suggestion.

“The ice is wonderful. You’d like it.” And with that her attention went back to her driving and stayed there. She seemed to feel somewhat guilty about it.

I tried to say: “My name is—” but she cut it off.

“Don’t. It’s better I didn’t know, sir.”

“Excuse me,” I protested. “I’m not getting smart. I only wanted to get acquainted with you.”

She smiled softly as though she were pleased. The smile would wear well, too, across a breakfast table.

“Perhaps I’ll be driving again some night soon, sir.”

“Perhaps.”

I had been thinking for some minutes that I was already skating, and on very thin ice. The Chinese doll supposed I had been ‘there’ before, and that I would return again. I realized then I would have to maintain that illusion, not only for her but for whatever might follow. Which could be difficult, at best. The doll’s particular job was plain enough: she was operating a regular and scheduled commuting service from some unknown point to some equally unknown point.

Well — in all fairness, perhaps neither point was wholly unknown. I had climbed in the car at one point, and I was beginning to entertain suspicions as to the second point. If my suspicions proved true, I was going to be awfully disappointed in my judgment and the doll.

We were leaving the houses behind and passing a few boarded-up gas stations. I was peering out the window again when the girl abruptly whipped the car around in a tight twist to enter a narrow, rutted lane. The sudden movement threw me against the side of the car.

She spoke briefly, “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Okay,” I returned. “Should have remembered it.”

She accepted it as a right answer. Reaching out with one hand, she snapped off the headlights. The coupe continued to bounce slowly along, partly guided by the ruts. Outside my window I caught an astonishingly near glimpse of the lake. The lake was just beyond the fender tips.

“You’re a damned good driver,” I said admiringly.

“Thank you, sir.” And then she added, “You’re a good sport, sir.”

“Meaning what?”

There was a minute silence. Finally, “Usually men start something when we turn out the lights here.”

It was my turn to be embarrassed, and I used a non-committal throat-clearing to cover my reaction to the information she had just given me. “Usually men...” and “when we turn out the lights...” Especially the use of “We.”

Much to my relief we left the lake behind, passed the snow-covered bandstand and picnic tables, and headed towards an old, unpainted barn standing gloomily in the far corner of the field. A fisherman’s cabin stood in darkness off to the right, near the lake’s edge. It was much too dark to look for previous tire marks but the Chinese doll was supremely sure of herself.

The gun holster under my armpit began to itch and I had the first faint qualms over the foolhardiness of my act. I mentally apologized to the girl for my half-formed suspicions.

She drove the coupe up to one corner of the barn.

There was a small, shack-like structure adjoining it on the side nearest us. This was the end of the line, the second point on the commuting schedule and every passing second found me more and more convinced the barn did not house the girls from Croyden.

Partly pushing open the door of the car, I turned to the girl and slid my hand into my trouser pocket.

“I’d like to—”

“No sir,” she cut me off quickly and politely, all the friendliness of a few minutes ago vanished into the darkness around us. “I cannot accept money, sir.”

What was I to do? I did it. I got out, said “Thank you,” and “Good night,” and closed the car door. She drove off at once, retracing the lakeside route we had just traveled. I stood there and watched the dark blotch of the coupe until she again switched on the lights as she neared the highway.

At that moment the little guy who sits behind my eyes and watches over me said, “Do something, Charles Home. Somebody is looking at you.”

A lot could depend on what I did next. I was an outsider, unaware and unprepared for the next step — or what was expected of the next step.

The Chinese doll had left me there because she believed I knew what to do. The somebody who was watching me was waiting for me to do it. There was only the barn, which was the lock, the key and the riddle. I knew from experience it was smarter to force the key for any lock to come to me. Much smarter than to display my ignorance by fussing with the lock. And safer. Like the old stall of escaping undue attention by inviting ordinary attention.

I put my hands in my pocket, turned towards the barn and took a single step, scraping the snow off a patch of ground with my shoe. At the same time I pulled one hand out of my pocket and deliberately dropped my keyring on the ground. The keys made a pleasing jangle as they struck the hard-packed earth. I swore at them softly and sincerely.

A door gently creaked and the lock began to open.

Dropping swiftly to one knee I pulled out a packet of matches and lit one, cupping my hands over the flame to hide the flare from my face and direct the light towards the ground.

Instantly a voice hissed from the shack doorway.

“Put out that light, Jack!”

I did, and could have gratefully kissed the owner of the voice.

I complained to it, “I’ve dropped my keys.”

“Wait a minute, Jack. Wait.”

This time the voice was milder, more natural. I waited. Someone was kneeling beside me. The someone flashed and just as carefully shielded from his face a narrow-beamed pen light onto the snow. He kept his other hand out of sight. It would be in his coat pocket, clutching something nasty.

“Where?” he asked me.

“Over here. Move your foot. There... there they are.” I snatched them up and the flashlight blacked out. We got up and he followed me into the shack. I stopped just inside the door while he closed it behind us and snapped on an overhead light.

The shack was light-tight and several degrees warmer. There was another door leading into the barn but it wasn’t open yet.

The man facing me, searching my face and my clothes, was a kindly appearing middle-aged gent with slowly silvering hair. He wore crinkles around pale blue eyes, the kind of crinkles you find on people who have lived in California or Florida; sun crinkles. A smile played just behind his lips. He was cleanly shaven and nicely dressed. He reminded me of the fatherly, benevolent characters you see playing judges and senators in the movies.

The nice old gentleman examined me all over. The smile hiding behind his lips deepened and almost showed itself. I wanted to grin back at him.

“Jack, Jack—” He shook his dignified head slowly and in a sad, reproving manner. “You know you can’t take that gun in there with you.”

He was good, that fellow. Tell that to a dozen people who might be carrying guns and ten of them will admit that they are, swallowing the accusation whole. This man wasn’t merely firing arrows into the air on the off-chance he might hit a duck. He knew where the duck was hiding. He was looking at my shoulder, looking through my overcoat.

“Sure thing, Judge,” I covered up with a ready grin. “But I couldn’t leave it at home, now could I? Want to give me a hat check?” I unbuttoned the coat and handed him the gun.

His blue eyes sparkled. He hefted it, examined it, balanced it, squinted along the barrel and turned an admiring eye on me.

“That’s a mighty fine item, Jack, a mighty fine item.”

“I take it you like guns.”

“Own a beautiful collection of them, Jack, beautiful. One of my items once belonged to William Bonny.”

“Bonny? Who’s he?”

“Billy the Kid, Jack. The Kid himself. I don’t believe Pat Garrett ever caught up with him, Jack. The biographer didn’t do the boy justice.” He balanced the gun again with a skilled hand. “A mighty fine item. Made in Sweden.”

“And a Christmas present,” I informed him.

“It’ll be here when you’re ready to go back downtown, Jack. I won’t forget you.”

“As you say, Judge.” I took off my overcoat and draped it over my arm. Acting on the following thought, I reached in and unbuckled the holster and handed that to him, too. The small bulge in the suit was gone.

The Judge gave out with a full smile and pushed open the inner door for me. I stepped into a well-lit, tastefully decorated gambling room about one-third filled with men. And completely apologized to the doll for my thoughts.

No one paid any attention to me.

The ceiling held great clusters of blue-white lights, while smaller and purely decorative lamps were placed about the walls. There was only the one big room occupying the full length and width of the barn. The moderately high ceiling, with probably another large room above, was laid across heavy beams ten or twelve feet above my head. Without having to ask I knew the barn was sound and light-proof.

Numbered wooden pegs for hats and coats ran along three sides of the room. A small bar, sparingly patronized, and a slim staircase occupied the fourth wall. Over everything was a pleasant drone of concentrated conversation.

I hung my hat and coat on a peg numbered 63 and looked around for a poker table.

There were several of them at the end opposite the bar. No one was using chips or silver money: all bills. The poker table nearest me had three players and two empty chairs. I stopped behind one of the chairs.

“Room for one more?”

The house man was a friendly-faced young guy dressed in a neat gray business suit and nothing to suggest the professional gambler. He glanced up at me and smiled a welcome.

“Sit in, sir. Always welcome. A dollar is the limit here. If you want to go higher, try the other tables.”

“A dollar is good enough.” I pulled out a chair and sat down. The green cloth covering on the table was smooth under my fingers. “Break a twenty?”

He counted out the singles while I was giving the two other players casual glances. They were both unknown to me although I might have seen them here or there downtown. Strictly local talent and a good deal of chump in their make-up. Their interest in me went as far as a glance into my face and into my wallet.

The house man was dealing when I sat in. He gave me a pair of sixes and three unrelated stinkers. I tossed the stinkers away, followed the opener’s example by putting a dollar into the pot, and called for three cards. This time I drew a pair of nines and a trey. I said nuts, but hung on.

It cost me four dollars more to discover one of the local chumps held a full house, and I wondered who was the chump. A half hour later I was still wondering, but in a different direction. The game wasn’t proceeding in the expected direction.

For some reason the house man wasn’t plying his trade. By that I mean he apparently had no policy, or the establishment was one hundred percent on the level — which wasn’t believable. Some of these places let you win until you have a sizeable stack in front of you plus a devil-may-care, “hell, I’m winning!” attitude in your thick skull, and then they promptly and efficiently take you to the cleaners before you can realize your mistake and get out.

The other breed prefer to play it easy, winning a hand and losing a hand, but in the course of an evening always managing to win twice for every loss. You never know what a chump you are until the night is over and your bankroll has dwindled to the point where you have just enough money left to ride a streetcar home — maybe.

This easygoing young man was practicing neither. He stayed right along with us; if anyone had an edge it was the yokel who had won the first pot. I sat on the front of my chair waiting for the tide to turn in favor of the house but it never did. And after three hours I quit, five dollars the richer. The house man said good-bye and invited me to drop back whenever I felt like it.

I said thanks.

After that I wandered around the room, just looking. I had one drink at the bar; they served good rum but asked a fancy price. The place was nearly full and a few women had appeared, mostly middle-aged and jaded creatures who had money to throw away and did it for the hell of things.

By and by I tumbled to the fact that a character was behind me. I suddenly recalled that he had been behind me for a long time but I hadn’t so pointedly noticed him.

The easiest way out was to confront him.

“Want to see me?” I asked him pleasantly.

He took it in his stride without so much as moving a facial muscle. Not that his face was any too pleasant to look it. It wasn’t; it had a knife scar from ear to lips. There was no hint of a threat and he kept his hands out of his pockets. He stood, however, between me and the door where I had parked my “item.”

“Will you step upstairs with me, sir?”

“Upstairs?”

“Yes sir. The manager’s office.”

“Trouble?”

“Oh no, sir. The manager is merely — curious.”

There was nothing to do but go up. Some doubt existed in my mind as to my being able to go anywhere else. Here and there a house man was “disinterestedly” watching us. I turned for the stairs and he followed along behind. The door at the top was standing open when we reached it. I walked through it but the knife-scarred character remained outside, pulling the door shut behind me.

A tall, robustly-built and devilishly handsome gent attired in an impeccable tuxedo arose from behind a polished, ornate desk. The desk seemed a mile wide. The devilish gentleman was all smiles and cheerfulness and actually put out a hand to shake mine.

I thought I recognized him, was certain I had seen him somewhere before. Put him in an office building downtown and he could pass for a prosperous doctor, lawyer or insurance salesman.

“Nice evening?” he asked when we were seated.

I said that it was, and mentioned the five dollars.

“That’s fine,” he agreed. “We like our guests to enjoy themselves. We want them to come back.”

“Indeed?” I put faint irony into it.

“Yes, yes indeed.” He chose to ignore the irony. “We have many regular guests here, ladies and gentlemen who come in several evenings a week.”

“That’s most interesting. And profitable.” I wondered when he was going to pop the question. He was merely prefacing now.

“Oh, very. We like to take the best of care of these customers, sir. A businesslike administration, you know. We like to treat them as our guests because they wish to feel that they are our guests. Mutual protection, you understand. We’ve even assigned our regular guests numbers by which they are known. Naturally, no names are ever mentioned. Each guest has his own number, his own peg. You follow me?”

I was away ahead of him. He had popped.

“Yes, indeed,” I said. “I can appreciate such thoughtfulness. It protects your regular customers from... uh, possible uncouth strangers, interlopers.”

“I perceive you anticipate my very thought, yes sir, my very thought. You can easily understand our position, of course. Why, only this evening one of our regular guests complained to me. It seems that someone very thoughtlessly used his clothing peg. Number 63. He was perturbed.”

I grinned but it was a totally mirthless grin.

“Yes — I can understand the poor man’s chagrin. I’m afraid I used his peg. I have none of my own.”

The doctor-lawyer-insurance salesman leaned over his mighty desk and smiled coolly at me.

“That, Charles Horne, is the distressing point in question.”

Chapter 3

There was about this man, Louise, a certain chilly deadliness that banished the possibility of continued nonchalance, real or pretended. I couldn’t hold up my end of it. He both repelled and fascinated me.

The latent menace of him was overpoweringly impressive. The sheer deadliness seemed to hang in the air about him, around his chair, reach across the polished desk to me. I could feel it as distinctly as I could feel a cold wind biting the back of my neck.

He was fairly easy to classify, mentally. Here was the type of man whose stark malevolence was both cloaked and betrayed by his very quietness. Whose inner thoughts spun and grew for hours on end in absolute, unemotional silence and then, coming at last to an irrevocable conclusion, suddenly lashed out with the unexpected finality of lightning.

I was afraid of him and we both knew it.

I fumbled around in a coat pocket but couldn’t find my pipe. He anticipated me, as usual.

Still smiling frostily, he pushed across the desk a glistening, copper-plated humidor filled with expensive cigars. I took two, and put the other one in my lapel pocket.

“For after a while,” I explained.

He nodded, smoothed out a nonexistent wrinkle in his tuxedo, and almost as an afterthought handed me a long bullet casing mounted on a plastic base. It was about the size used in the army’s machine guns. The green enameled top lifted off to reveal the lighter. It worked on the first spin.

I didn’t want his continued silence, feeling myself much safer if he were talking.

“I can explain my being here,” I started the ball rolling. “It was a kind of an accident.”

“Very much of an accident,” he assured me with grim, subtle intonations. “I have investigated it thoroughly. The driver made a regrettable mistake in stopping for you. It was her initial trip but that does not excuse the error. She carried certain precise instructions. They were not followed to the letter.”

“You shouldn’t hold it against the kid,” I objected. “Anyone in the same place could have made the same mistake. I was loafing on the corner and she thought I was a regular. She talked as if I were.”

He snatched that one up quick. His fingers had been playing with his tie. Now they flew to the edge of the desk.

“You talked with her?”

He had picked it up so quick I realized I was getting the babe into trouble. Here was something the tuxedo hadn’t known.

“Huh! Talked at her is nearer the truth. Getting a worthwhile answer was something else again. It was yes-sir, this, or no-sir that, and she was sorry but she couldn’t take my tip.”

“I see.” But he only partially relaxed. His sensitive fingers left the edge of the desk. There would be a push button under there. “However,” he went on, “it is an error that must not be repeated. And of course we shall cease using that particular corner.”

I grinned at him but there wasn’t much mirth in it.

“Hell, mister. You needn’t worry about me shooting off my mouth. I’m not in the habit of letting it hang open.”

He swung his chair around in a smooth half-arc so that he was no longer facing me. He could watch my movements from the corner of his eye. I pulled on the cigar. His voice dropped to a slightly mocking banter.

“I have absolutely no fear of your speaking out of turn, sir. None at all. If you will forgive me for trespassing upon your privacy, I must inform you that I have taken the liberty of checking on you. You understand, surely. When I was informed that you were downstairs it became necessary to know all about you. You realize that, of course.”

“Of course,” I echoed dryly.

“Good. I felt sure you wouldn’t mind. I know who you are, what you are, and to what exact degree you may be trusted. Knowing this, I repeat, I am securely confident you will say nothing of tonight’s lamentable misunderstanding, nor of your subsequent journey outside the city limits.”

“You should be in my business.”

“Thank you.” And he meant it. He swung around to me again. “However, I still believe it wise to abandon that particular corner. And I must ask you to give me your word you will not attempt to enter this establishment again.”

The request implied I was to be turned loose, which made me feel much better, so I supplemented, “Unless I’m invited.”

His smile was icy, his manner superior and sure. “You won’t be.” And then he struck off at a tangent.

“I must admit to no small curiosity concerning your unexpected presence here. A detective on these premises is a rare thing. I don’t recall it ever happening before. May I inquire if you are at work?”

“You may, and I’m not. The doll surprised me with the pick-up job. I came along for the ride,” I lied, “because she was nice looking.”

“There exists,” he insisted, edging forward, “not the slightest possibility your being here isn’t an accident?”

“None whatsoever,” I stated flatly. “I didn’t know the joint existed until the Judge opened the door.”

“Ah, yes.” He relaxed with a satisfied suavity. “Still another error. That two such could happen in one evening almost pushes the incident beyond the bounds of chance, does it not? The Judge isn’t in the habit of making mistakes. He was a trifle taken aback when I told him.”

I began to have the feeling that there was more here than met my eye, but couldn’t identify the hunch.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” I countered. “That’s what keeps me going in my business. You told him what?”

“What a gullible chap he had been. But I am inclined to forgive him this once. Yours was a subtle deception.”

“There wasn’t much else he could do,” I offered in the old boy’s defense. “He certainly didn’t want me lighting matches out there all night.”

“That is correct.”

“I suppose he’s sore about it. I would be in his place. And he’d probably like to take a poke at me.”

“That too is correct.”

I grinned. “I’ll make it a point to stay out of his way after this. I wouldn’t want to tangle with him on the street.”

“Such a meeting isn’t likely to occur.”

Turning that one over the cooking fire for a second or two, I decided to show the tuxedo what a gullible chap he had been.

“I said a moment ago that everybody makes mistakes and the mistakes keep me going in business. Will you be mad if I point out the one you’ve just made?”

“I?” Incredulously.

“You. In your conversation.”

“Not at all,” he said in a curious manner. “Tell me.”

“You’ve just told me that the Judge doesn’t go downtown. Now everybody goes to town, some town. They want to see the bright lights on Saturday night. They want to buy things they don’t need in the stores. They want a place to keep their women. Therefore, the Judge and probably the rest of your crowd, hang around some other town. A large town.”

I thought it significant that he didn’t say that too was correct. Instead he settled back in his chair, apparently having no more to say.

But I did.

“Well, that brings us to the meat of the matter. What are you going to do with me?”

He stared at me, silently, for a long time. Not just minutes but a long time. There was a small electric clock on his desk, an expensive timepiece set in dark walnut that matched the furniture of the room. It made a soft whirring noise as the second hand sped around and around. He wanted me to be uncomfortable. I was. I fidgeted.

“What do you suggest I do with you?” he asked at last.

I knocked the fine white ash of the cigar into my trouser cuff. “You might drive me back to town. Or if that doesn’t appeal to you, I’ll go down to the road and thumb a ride.”

The swiftly moving sweep hand spun around the circle of the clock face several times before he answered me. I couldn’t tell whether he was still needling me, or was actually considering my proposal. It did seem unlikely that he hadn’t yet made up his mind.

“I’ll have someone drive you in, sir.”

Get that “sir” on the end. It revealed a lot. I said thanks and stood up.

The shadow who had been waiting outside the office door came in instantly. My host across the desk had neither signaled nor called. He spoke to the shadow character.

“This gentleman is returning to the city. You will drive.”

The character said, “Yes sir.”

Tuxedo turned to me. “Any place in particular you wish to go?”

“I want to go to the City Hall,” I stated.

Their eyebrows shot up in perfect unison.

“Believe it or not,” I continued, “my detective license expires at midnight. Tonight. It suddenly came to me. I want to have it renewed of course.”

“Of course.” The insurance agent or whatever he was came from behind the desk. “To the City Hall.”

We didn’t leave by way of the gambling room downstairs. The tuxedo-clad gentleman opened a paneled door I hadn’t seen until now to reveal an enclosed landing, with still another door and a swift flight of steps to the ground. It was on the offside of the barn from the shack by which I had entered. The character handed me my hat and coat.

I couldn’t resist the temptation to wave good-bye to the chilly personage standing in the office. He returned it without a trace of humor.

“By the way—” I called back through the partly closed inner door, “I didn’t get your name.”

The door closed. Doors were forever closing on answers I wanted.

The self-attached bodyguard followed me down the steps. There was a car waiting at the bottom. In the darkness I thought it was an Olds but I couldn’t be sure. The overcast sky was breaking in spots and a cold, brilliant moon was trying to get through. Now and then a vagrant flurry of snow swept down out of nowhere. I climbed into the front seat without a word. It was an Olds.

The car was warm; the heater hot against my legs. The key was in the ignition and the silent driver twisted it, pushing on the starter at the same time. The motor caught instantly. We drove to the highway without lights.

The moon broke through then, lighting up a large patch of white snow and black lake.

Someone on ice skates cut across the lake in a long slow glide. The someone wasn’t doing very well. It looked like a girl but I couldn’t be sure at that distance.

The skater was small and slim. She handled her footing in a feminine way and seemed to be wearing slacks or pants, fastened tightly at the ankles, as girls often do. But she wobbled.

If this was my Chinese doll of early evening she was not the skater she had let on to be. The figure behaved on the ice about the way I do on roller skates, which wasn’t anything to inspire confidence in the other skaters. The girl careened across the ice and disappeared in blackness as the moon vanished again. It was like skating into an opaque curtain.

Our car turned onto the Main street road and the driver snapped on the lights. We didn’t speak to each other all the way down to the City Hall. Downtown, most of the neon lights were blinking off for the night. The street sweeping machine had been at work, piling up loose snow along the curbs. The weather held cold.

I said goodnight when the bodyguard let me out in front of the City Hall steps. He drove away without answering. I stood there and watched the twin taillights recede in the distance, knowing that he was watching me in the rearview mirror.

Inside, the redheaded patrolman seated at the sergeant’s desk looked at me entirely without interest.

“Hello, Wiedenbeck.”

“Hullo.”

He’s a quaint character you must meet sometime, Louise. His name is Philip Wiedenbeck, and he’s afraid of women. He’s also an accomplished artist and he substitutes that for the real thing. He likes to draw pictures of girls, half-clad girls who are knockouts until you look at — their faces. Every face is a thing of evil. That’s his inner nature coming out, his revenge on them because he’s afraid.

Wiedenbeck changed his disinterested attitude when I opened my wallet and pushed it across the desk to him. It was open to the identification leaves. He bent over them eagerly.

“Oh, shoot!” he exclaimed in the next second. “I thought you had joined the FBI, or something.”

“Not yet,” I returned pleasantly. “They’ve got their eye on me though.” The department was empty but for the two of us. “Where’s the sergeant?”

He scratched his head. “Gone home. His wife’s expecting. I’m in charge. What do you want?”

“I want this license renewed. It expires at midnight.” To emphasize that I tapped the date with my finger.

“Your nails are dirty,” he responded without interest. “Nothing I can do about it. I can’t sign the thing.”

“You can forge the chief’s name, can’t you?”

“And get ten years for it? Oh, no!”

“Wiedenbeck, you’re no good. You’d rather see a guy starve than forge an old name. What will my kids think when I tell them about you? What will they say?”

“You ain’t got no kids. You live by yourself.”

I changed tactics. “What’s come in on that hit-and-run case?”

“What hit-and-run case?”

“The one that happened in front of my office today, hot-shot. A girl was driving a Studebaker sedan with a supercharger on the hood. That ought to be easy.”

“We ain’t found her.”

“That’s not news. Look here—” I dug around in my wallet and produced a long pink and gray slip of paper. There were some pictures on it, scenes of soldiers riding horses into battle. Wiedenbeck stared down at it.

I continued, “This is a Confederate ten-dollar bill. I’ll bet you this ten bucks some sheriff’s office around the state will find that car. Ten bucks against your signature on my renewal. Some sheriff will find that Studebaker in a ditch somewhere, maybe wrecked, and somebody else will pop in and claim it was stolen in Croyden or someplace.”

The red-haired policeman searched my face.

“How did you know that?” he demanded suspiciously.

“Know what?” But I felt another kick in the teeth coming my way.

“About that sedan being stolen in Croyden. It was ditched just inside our county line. Sheriff’s deputy found it an hour or so ago. How’d you know?”

I stared at him in disgust. That wasn’t what I was waiting for: the belly-blow was coming in low and fast. Finally I asked him, “Who did it belong to?”

“Some big shot over there by the name of — hell.”

This was it.

He frowned, pushed aside some sketches and ran a bony finger down the page of his record book. Then he looked up at me, or rather at a spot in space some feet over my head.

“Can you imagine that?” he asked me, awed. “Maybe I’d better phone the sergeant.”

“Damn you, give it!” I yelled at him.

“The sedan belonged to the bumpee — you know, this guy Harry Evans. Imagine being run down and knocked off with your own car! I think I had better phone the sergeant.”

I whirled and walked to the door. Before reaching it I paused long enough to say over my shoulder, “Don’t forget I was in here before midnight about that license.”

He was still contemplating the ceiling with an open mouth. I hoped something would fall in it.

The wind hit me when I reached the bottom of the steps. I grabbed my flopping overcoat and buttoned it. There was something missing, something that should have pressured me but didn’t.

I had left my gun and holster at the barn.

The office is cold, the heat in the building is turned off early in the evening. I wanted to get this off to you before going home to bed, Louise. I’ve discovered that if I mail a letter in the post office slot by one A.M. it is put on the southbound train a couple of hours later and will reach you in the first mail delivery the same morning. Some seven or eight hours from now.

A good many surprising things have happened since I wrote you about Evans’ death yesterday afternoon, but the most surprising is the discovery of myself.

I’ve just realized what a damned fool I am.

Chapter 4

Boone, Ill.

Wednesday, P.M.

Hello, Darling:

It’s another day and another dollar, so some fool once said before he joined the union. For me it’s the very nice sum of five hundred Washington rubles.

I awoke bright and early this morning and thought of me without gun or license. Otherwise the day was brilliant — in the beginning. Mother Hubbard had frozen strawberries for breakfast. Every now and then she makes it a point to ask about you and me; I think she’s as impatient as I am. Sometimes I let her read these letters, or those from you.

It had stopped snowing. The sky was clear, a brisk and delightful blue with summer-looking clouds. The early morning sun was so bright on the snow I had to shut my eyes against the glare, walking downtown. The weather remained so cold that snow crunched underfoot with every step. People in overcoats and mufflers were scooping it off the walks.

When I reached the office I had the fun of discovering the money — or rediscovering it, rather — that Evans had given me as a retainer. It was still lying in the upper drawer of the desk where I had left it yesterday. The sight of it did give me a little jolt. I thought I had put it away. My seven piles of manuscript were still on the floor, the top pages slipping off the stacks. The janitor still hadn’t swept.

The only piece of mail was a postcard teaser from a Chicago insurance company. Insure yourself and all your loved ones (yes, the old folks too!) for a dollar a month — no medical examinations. A very-small-type and restricted clause company. Die somewhere, any old where, and you’ll discover the insurance isn’t collectable because you didn’t die between clean sheets with a hot water bottle at each foot and a featherless pillow under your head. So sorry.

These insurance policies are straight sounding but tricky if you didn’t bother to read them. Take that accidental death stuff. Face value will be doubled if the policy holder dies an accidental death. Few people know what an accidental death is. Harry Evans’ death wasn’t. Premeditated or not, the driver of that sedan saw him and ran him down. Evans’ wife will never collect double on his policy.

First thing off the bat I went downstairs again and paid the girl in the real estate office a month’s rent on the cubbyhole I occupy. The sign on the window read:

Boone Real Estate Co.

“Boost Our City”

The letter “s” in Boost was partly chipped away; no doubt the handiwork of a gentle critic.

I complained to the girl about the great lack of heat in my office.

She gave me a receipt, said thanks chum, and yak, yak, don’t you know there’s a coal shortage? We must conserve heat.

I answered you’re welcome, and yak, yak, according to Scheinfeld there’s a man shortage. Don’t you know you should conserve me? She didn’t get it.

That made me feel good so I walked across the street to deposit four hundred and a half in the big bank. That made me feel better. I kept the remaining thirty in my pocket. That made me feel wonderful.

Considering.

I thought about all the things that had happened since the big stranger walked into my office yesterday, over some hot coffee in Thompson’s. Judy was working the counter. She hasn’t yet learned how to make good coffee; she makes it hot and stops.

About the gun: Louise, I can’t name one worthwhile reason why I should carry a gun. I’ve never fired it in my life except to make a little extra noise on Fourths of July; and I never expect to fire it for any other reason. If the police department had ever asked me why a private detective needed to carry a gun, I couldn’t have answered them.

Those movie sleuths like to pretend to be awfully slick characters, dashing around town arresting culprits and getting tangled up in flaming gun battles — but that’s sham. Pure boloney. You’d be surprised at the number of people who don’t know the truth. A private cop can’t arrest anyone; he has no more authority than a junior G-man. The movie pinkertons get away with murder.

For that matter what does the license do for me? It permits me to hang up a sign saying I’m a licensed investigator.

It doesn’t allow me to do anything an ordinary citizen can’t do, except flash a badge on some befuddled guy and tell him to come across or else. Any man with a little weight to throw around can pry into anything I can.

Just the same I’m going back out to the barn and get my gun. Dammit, Louise, you gave me that gun for Christmas and I want it back.

And then there is Harry Evans and his Studebaker sedan. On the face of it, it looks as if Evans’ girl friend got sick and tired of him and relieved him of the necessity of dying of old age. The ironic touch was the use of his car.

But I think the face is false. A clever girl could think of too many ways to get rid of Harry without running him down herself. There was too much risk involved. That great risk, in view of what actually happened, may prove to be the best key to the puzzle. Maybe one out of a hundred hit-and-run cases safely get away with it. That driver couldn’t (and wouldn’t) have counted on being the one. She probably did count on some other safety device — or was told she could. For it was planned from beginning to Evans’ end. That much is apparent.

My only fear is that the locals will accept it for what it seems to be on the surface: bad girl runs over nice man and ditches the car; case written off (if she is not found) as manslaughter. If she is found it is still manslaughter — only she was naughty to become frightened and drive away. Where did she steal the car?

But don’t you believe it Louise. Reread my letters of yesterday. They, whoever they are, simply waited until they found him crossing a street.

The girl in the car might have been following him all morning at a discreet distance, waiting for a favorable moment to catch him in the street. On the other hand she may never have seen him until he left my office. And bang.

Harry Evans retained me yesterday for a definite purpose: protection. He thought he would need it from the police, which implies that he was engaged in questionable activities of some sort. I don’t understand why he thought that any more than I could understand a frame job upon the part of the police. Not in Boone. But that isn’t the point.

The point is that he was expecting trouble, and trouble found him. That it was not the precise kind of trouble he expected doesn’t alter my suspicions.

People seldom believe they are going to die, despite all the Biblical evidence to the contrary that only two men in recorded history escaped death. Evans found himself in a spot and his reasoning told him someone was framing him. His reasoning failed him in that it did not warn him the spot might be a fatal one. The girl in the sedan. That girl has to turn up somewhere, sometime, but when she does, it will be as tough as hell to pin anything on her.

They — the other people behind Evans’ fears — will have seen to that.

I telephoned the Groyden attorney.

His receptionist accepted my reversed charges without hesitation, so I was still on the right side of the ledger. I had decided to repeat one of yesterday’s questions and listen to the man deny knowledge of the answer.

“Good morning,” he greeted me gravely.

“Hello. What was Evans’ occupation?”

“I think I’ve told you.” There had been the barest hesitation. I was hoping he would trip up.

“All right, let me put it another way. What was his hobby?”

“Hobby? Oh, he had several. Collecting first editions of fantasy literature, dabbling in table-top photography, publishing a paper in some amateur journalism society.”

I cut in on him.

“Aw, now look” and had to fumble for his name. It was forgotten again. The little card was still in my pocket, “—now look, Ashley. You know damned well what I mean!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why stall around? You’re supposed to be his lawyer. I want to know the particular pie which felt the prodding finger of Harry W. Evans. How do you expect me to find who did it, and why? I have to know the motives. I have to know why he expected to be arrested.”

“I’m quite sure I couldn’t tell you,” he said in polite coolness.

That brought me to a full stop. His tone as well as his words betrayed him. I was talking to a changed man this morning, a man who had not only recovered from the shock of Evans’ death, but had in some manner erased the fear that had followed the shock.

What could have happened overnight?

I gave up trying to talk to him and hung up.

What could have happened overnight?

The attorney, in his fear, could have immediately telephoned someone else after talking with me yesterday. That someone held sufficient authority or respect to ease the fears of Ashley, to calm him down and give him that cool, so-what? attitude he had just displayed to me. The attorney, therefore, was a man to keep an eye on.

You have to play all the angles in this game, Louise, but hell, I should tell you. You’re a reporter and a clever one. You know how one shred of evidence or suspicion of evidence leads to the next. I’m suspicious of Ashley, now.

Look at the shreds: they’re tattered, I admit, but consider them. First, a man from Croyden who wants protection from somebody or something and fails to get it — from me. And a girl with a Studebaker sedan having a supercharger attachment. The victim’s own sedan. And then later on, another girl with a Studebaker — a coupe-having a similar attachment. Both cars geared for speed. And a gambler. And an attorney.

My telephone rang.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked the mouthpiece.

“Hello, Horne.” It was the voice of the day sergeant on the police desk. “Heard you were in about your license?”

“That’s right. And before midnight.”

“You shouldn’t have waited so long.”

“I forgot it, honest. I’m coming down for it.”

“Don’t bother yourself, Horne. It ain’t being renewed.”

“What!”

“I can’t make it any plainer, I don’t talk Esperanto. Tough luck, Horne. This is between you and me, see? We get along; I like you Horne. But the Chief said no. Somebody made a squawk. You got enemies Horne. The Chief said to hold it up thirty days for investigation. The squawk will fall apart Home, but thirty days is thirty days— Aw, now Home, wait a minute. Don’t say things like that over the phone. Somebody might be listening. Anyway, you come down and ask for a renewal today.”

“You’re damned right I’ll come down! And when I net there I’m going to talk to that fatheaded yes-man!”

“You can’t Horne. He left town about half an hour ago for St. Louis. The FBI school you know.”

“How that dimwitted s-o-b ever got out of grammar school is a mystery to me!”

But there it was. He would be in St. Louis for several days. Old Yancey was playing around with the bathing beauties in Florida. The acting mayor was the senior alderman, a halfwit from the third ward and totally impossible. All of which left me in a hell of a fix. And a short while ago I was asking myself what a license did for me.

“All right fellah,” I told the desk sergeant. “I give in. I’m lucky my gun permit doesn’t expire for several months yet. Somebody I think I can name would try to queer that too. He’d probably say I fired it outside his bedroom window every morning at five-thirty and woke up his dog. Hell.

“By the way — how’d that baby business turn out last night?”

“A seven pound girl. They named her Marie.” His voice faded from the phone. “Keep your eyes open, Horne. So long.”

“Hey! Hold on a minute. Do you know who made the gripe?”

“Nope, Chief didn’t say. So long, Horne.” He rang off.

I immediately thought of something else and called him back. The line was busy; I waited two or three minutes and he came on. “You again?”

“Me again. Listen sergeant, has anybody in this town ever been pinched for spitting on the sidewalk?”

“Not since I’ve been on the force. Want to try it?”

“But somebody could be, couldn’t they?”

“If they was a complaint signed, yeah I guess so. And there’d have to be an eyewitness. But it wouldn’t go very far in the J.P. court. It’s kinda silly, come to think of it; I probably do it every day myself.”

“All right. How about cross against a red light?”

“Horne, have you shot your bolt? If you wanna get in jail go out and beat up somebody, kick some nice old grandmother’s face in. ’Sault and battery is always good for a coupla months. So long Horne.”

“Hold it — I’m not finished.”

“Maybe you are but you don’t know it yet.”

“Who else have gun permits? Besides mine? And skip the night watchmen, I know them.”

“Not many. Two or three maybe.”

“Name them.”

“Well, there’s that gas station fellah out on the highway who’s always getting jacked; and a truck driver for Ackerman’s fur store; lessee — yeah, and a dentist. Yours makes four.”

“A dentist? Who? And why?”

“The guv’s name is Sehnert. He’s got an office in the little bank building. Held up once and some gold stuff taken. Personally I think he’s a blamed fool. He’ll get shot as sure as hell if he tries to use a gun the next time it happens. So long Horne. I mean it this time.” And he did.

I was already on the stairs leading to the street.

The girl in the real estate office grinned at me and said yak, yak, how’s the heat now big boy?

I answered yak, yak, it’s getting warmer toots and loan me your city directory. She did, and I looked up the dentist.

He had one line, same as everyone else. Sehnert, Forrest, DDS., had two kids and a wife named Myrtle. A fine guy to be toting a gun. A little bell symbol indicated they had a phone and a small o in parenthesis meant they owned their home.

The office girl was watching me.

“What do you know about a dentist named Sehnert, Forrest?” I asked her.

She grimaced. “He’s high, big boy.”

“Good looking?”

She repeated the grimace. “Fat and forty. His tummy pushes against you when he leans over to yank a tooth. He should wear a girdle.”

So Sehnert, Forrest, wasn’t the man in the tuxedo.

“Did you see the accident yesterday?”

“I sure did, big boy. Gruesome, wasn’t it?”

“Oh well, women are bumping guys off all the time. They’re old hands at the game.”

“Sometimes they have good reason!” she snapped.

“Yeah, sometimes. Maybe this one was worried about the price of eggs and couldn’t bother to stop.”

“Oh, they’ll find her,” little talkie declared. “Them snappy cars ain’t so thick in Boone.”

“They’ve already found the car, ditched. It was from Croyden. Did you get a good look at the driver?”

“Sure. Saw her as plain as day. She didn’t look like so much; not good enough to rate a car like that one.”

“The sedan belonged to the man she ran down.”

“You don’t say!” She paused and chewed on it. “Jilted huh?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t asked her yet.”

“Funny boy. The coppers said I was smart.”

“They would. They don’t know you like I do. When did they say so?”

“When they asked me to describe her — but you know, I’m not so sure she had red hair after all. I told them it was kinda auburn. But it seems to me now she was a brownette.”

“You’re a good girl. I’m sure you helped them.” And I beat it back upstairs to the office.

My next phone call was to the public library. I asked the librarian if she kept files of the papers published by the amateur journalism society.

She said they did not — but which society in particular did I have reference to? She thought perhaps she could find some information on it. I admitted that I didn’t know there was more than one. She said, oh my yes, there were at least three to her knowledge: three large national and international organizations, and there were probably other, smaller societies.

I then asked her if anybody in town had papers published in them. She replied no one did to her knowledge, but she was sure there were members in both Chicago and St. Louis. So I asked her if she could give me a line on the general slant of these amateur magazines — what did they write about and so forth.

She was very patient and informative, that librarian. For the better part of twenty minutes she explained to me in some detail how the amateurs, men and women and kids, put out the papers just for the sheer hell of publishing them. Some of them, she said, were little pamphlets and mimeographed pages stapled together; while others were large professional-appearing magazines. There was one common denominator: the owners loved to write, type, edit and print the things by hand and give them away free for the privilege of receiving still other papers.

I asked if any of them were concerned with table-top photography. She replied no. although they sometimes included photographs in the contents. She said the two largest organizations were almost solely concerned with producing beautiful typography and formats, vying with each other in bringing out the best-looking magazines and papers. The third outfit, the smallest of the three but the only one having international membership, specialized in fantasy and weird books.

“That’s it!” I yelled over the wire. She must have jumped. I apologized. “I’m sorry. That’s the outfit I’ve been searching for. Can you put me in touch with any of the members?”

She asked me to call her back in half an hour. She believed that The Saturday Review had printed some names and addresses of the fantasy fans in an issue of several months ago, and that she would check her files. I thanked her.

Librarians are wonderful people. They should be in the detective business.

Chapter 5

There is usually an idle cab or two parked in front of Milkshake Mike’s place, but this time I had to wait for one.

Maybe the heavy snow and the cold weather were responsible. Alike himself was nowhere in sight, so to kill time I first went to the City Hall and filed an application for the renewal of my license, and then walked over to the library to see what the woman had found.

She had a south-side Chicago address for me, the name of the recruiting chairman of the Fantasy Amateur Journalism Society. I thanked her again and hit her up for a penny postcard. The expression on her face told me she expected a penny for it.

On the card I scribbled a short note to the recruiter, telling him I had recently acquired an interest in amateur journalism, that I expected to be in Chicago the next day, and that I wanted very much to drop in on him. I used my office as the return address but didn’t mention my line of business. The bloke at the General Delivery window in the postoffice said it would go out on the afternoon train and be delivered in Chicago tomorrow morning.

Then I walked back to Mike’s for a cab. A checkered one was just pulling into one of the two parking spaces reserved for them. The driver, a weazened, runtish man in a black cap and glasses whom I knew only slightly as “the Sultan,” was out of his cab and half way across the sidewalk before I could stop him.

“Sure bud, be gladda run you, but not’ll I have a cuppa coffee see?”

I hadda cuppa with him. He paid both our checks and left the waitress a nickel tip but he didn’t fool me: I’d pay it all back when he counted up the fare.

“Wheretobud?”

I described the old barn standing out behind the lake. He squinted up at me.

“Joint’s closed up untildarkbud,” he counseled.

“Someone will be in the office.”

I sat in the front seat with him. It was warmer there. We followed the same route the Chinese babe had driven the night before. The Sultan had no more to say.

When we reached the park he pulled the cab around in an easy curve into the rutty path I had traversed last night in the darkness. In broad daylight the Sultan was less sure of himself than the babe had been. The fender tips flirted with the edge of the frozen lake.

Down at the far end of the lake a sluggish knot of men were cutting ice. They were using a team of horses and as I watched the team hauled a huge slab up out of the water and pulled it to the shore line. We drove on past the lake to the barn and stopped on the shack side.

I got out and told the Sultan to wait. I tried the little shack first but five minutes of insistent pounding brought no response. Around on the other side of the barn I found a push button at the bottom of the railing that ran down alongside the steps. Five minutes of that brought nothing.

Feeling damned uncertain and uncomfortable, I climbed the stairs and banged on the outside door. They let me wait for several more minutes. Finally it opened.

The character with the knife scar peered out at me. He didn’t seem pleased at my appearance.

“You said you wouldn’t come back,” he pointed out.

“—unless I was invited,” I reminded him.

“You haven’t been.” The voice was flat, unfriendly.

“And I have no intention of coming in. You have something of mine.”

He raised his eyebrows mutely. It made him resemble a “wanted-dead-or-alive” picture I had seen in the postoffice.

“My gun. The Judge has it. He said he would return it to me when I left last night. He didn’t.”

The character glared at me and abruptly shut the door in my face. I waited. When it opened again the gun and holster were in his hand. He seemed as happy as a dead fish. Undoubtedly he was wishing I was anywhere on earth but at the top of those stairs, in his company.

“Thanks,” I said, and pulled the gun from the holster to examine it. The chamber was empty.

I tried to make my voice flat, “Well?”

He dropped a half a dozen cartridges in my outstretched hand. I put them in my pocket, pushed the gun down in the holster and turned to go. On the second step I thought of something and turned back.

“Tell the boss I also want to thank him for that other favor he did me. He’ll know what I mean.”

He closed the doors without a sound.

The Sultan watched rather curiously while I slipped the cartridges into the chamber. The motor was still running.

“Downtown bud?”

“Right. We — wait a minute.” I pointed across the lake. “What the hell’s going on over there?”

The ice-cutting operations had ceased. One of the men stood on the bank to one side, holding the team of now skittish horses.

A commercial ambulance, one belonging to Boone’s leading undertaking establishment, was pulling away from the lake edge. A motionless knot of men stood staring after it. The ambulance picked its way leisurely across the park, reached the rutted lane and finally the highway. It turned towards town, still taking its time. At the intersection where the lane met the highway two cars had pulled up in mute deference to it, but as it continued its slow pace they soon picked up speed and passed it.

“The poor guy’ll croak before that wagongetsthere,” the Sultan complained half aloud.

“The poor guy is already dead,” I contradicted him. “There’s no reason to hurry — now. Come on, let’s go.”

We trailed the ambulance as far as the first drugstore and a pay phone. I got out to call the sergeant.

“I know,” he complained, “it’s you again. Are you trying to make the phone company rich?”

“Sergeant, the wagon just passed me, coming in from the lake. Who was it?”

His answer took all the wind out of me.

It was a long time before I could mumble, “What’s the coroner’s verdict? How’d it happen?” But I knew the answers to both questions.

“You sound sort of funny, Horne. How should I know? The Doc is probably coming in with the wagon. Some kids found the body in a hole in the ice. They’re sick.”

So was I.

I hung up and walked back to the cab. My little Chinese doll would never, ever smile across the breakfast table at anyone. Not any more.

The Sultan looked at me: “Sick atyourstummick?”

“Yeah. And sick at heart. Shut up and drive.”

The doctor-coroner straightened up from the operating table, tugged feebly at his bow tie, and said to nobody in particular, “There’s very little water here.”

I grunted. “Huh?”

He stared at me as if I were an intruder. Which I was. His tired, constantly overworked eyes burned into mine. With the load he carried, I’d be snappish, too.

The desk sergeant, no doubt deeply touched over the loss of my license, with a word and a wave of his hand had provided me with a front seat ticket to the autopsy of the drowned girl. Not that these things are unduly private.

I remembered the coroner’s sarcastic words when I had walked in. His name is Burbee; everybody calls him just “Doc.” He is addicted to gaily colored bow ties of large dimensions and is forever nagging them as though they were tight around his neck.

In this county we usually elect a doctor to the Coroner’s office. Maybe we save money this way or maybe the medical profession is in solid with the political machine, I don’t know. Burbee is a good doctor and had been in the office for two or three terms running.

When I walked into the basement room Burbee had silently watched me look at the girl — it was an identification I had to make for myself — and bit out, “This is by far the most popular autopsy I’ve yet conducted. How many more are there behind you? I might charge admissions.”

My grin was hollow and I looked to see who had preceded me. There was only one other visitor, the young State’s Attorney named Donny Thompson. He had, I thought then, little spine and less crime to prosecute.

And there was an attractive woman in that basement room, a live one, a nurse, I suspected, although she wore no uniform. She turned gray eyes and a warm smile on me to take the sting from the doctor’s words. I returned the smile and looked to see what she was doing there.

She was seated at a workbench near the foot of the operating table; the bench held a rack and the rack held small vials of plain and colored liquids. It was her job to make various chemical tests on certain parts of the body. She also had a notebook with the uppermost page partly filled, and a long, yellow pencil parked in her hair.

This was my first autopsy; perhaps it would have been wiser to have stayed away. I knew in a general way what went on at these affairs — or rather, what must go on to produce the results announced later — but somehow I didn’t expect it to be as cold-blooded as this.

The larger cities of course have their own morgues, usually attached to the police department. Small towns in stick counties like this one use a hospital, or an undertaker’s spare room, or sometimes the victim’s bedroom. It all depends upon the circumstances and how the guy died. This basement room was the undertaker’s business department. The long stone slab having the shallow crevices running the length and breadth of it wasn’t there for artistic purposes.

The room itself suggested something unhealthy to an outsider like me. I saw that it affected Thompson too. The floor was a dull gray painted cement with rubber strips here and there, and sewer drains spotting it. The walls were whitewashed brick, having small ventilating windows high up, just about the outside ground level. Huge and powerful lights hung from the ceiling.

The doll’s body lay under the lights.

“Very little water in the lungs,” the probing doctor repeated with a glare at me. The nurse jotted something down and went on with her vials.

“Enough to drown her?” the State’s Attorney asked.

He was nervous, and watching him with some amusement helped me to overcome my feelings. He carefully kept his back turned to the table. Thompson seldom attended these things.

Doc straightened up again and gave the bow tie another brief tug. He stared at the Attorney’s back.

“One can drown in a teacup of water.”

“If you’re a midget,” I added.

That turned him on me again. The tie suffered another hitch to port. “Pour a cupful up your nose, son,” he advised. His voice was quiet and humorless. “I’d enjoy working on you.”

“Thanks,” and I was securely put in my place. I shut up and glanced at the nurse. She was bending over the notebook. The liquid in a vial she held was slowly turning color.

Doc returned to the body and I looked at my feet while Thompson counted whitewashed bricks.

Pretty soon Burbee began a sentence that was really an afterthought of a previous one.

“But I don’t think this one did,” he stated.

Thompson whirled around, found himself looking at something upsetting and just as quickly whirled away again.

“No?” he asked in a strangled whisper.

“No,” Burbee echoed. “Tell you more about it in a moment.”

He worked on the girl’s throat and chest for several moments, the scalpel glimmering in the brilliant overhead lights. Some of those moments I watched him in fascination and some I held my teeth tightly clenched and stared at my feet.

Finally he said, “No. Definitely.”

The nurse looked up, interested. She held the pencil poised over the notebook, expectant. I squinted at the body, found I could take it, and opened both eyes.

I watched the doctor insert a small pair of tweezers into the throat and come up with a burnt match. He laid it in a shallow dish on the workbench. We bent to inspect it.

There were indentations made by the tweezers near the blackened head, and just below that another, single dent probably made by a sharp thumb nail as the spent match was being flicked away. That was all. Some of these paper matches carry a minute-sized printed line to indicate their origin; this one was gray and soggy and blank.

“Strangulation,” Doc Burbee said to the nurse. “Paper match, used. Inhaled through the mouth while under water. Lodged in windpipe. Moisture in lungs secondary.”

To Donny Thompson he continued in the same breath, “Take your choice son, either would have been fatal.”

That worthy replied abstractedly, “We ought to make them clean that lake.”

“By all means!” The old sting had come back into Burbee’s voice. “She probably would have lived a couple of heartbeats longer if it hadn’t been for that match.”

“Is this sort of thing usual in drowning cases?” I asked.

He shook his head and hefted his tie in a new direction.

“I once heard of a small fish being found in the mouth, but it did not contribute to the death. This is my first experience with such an occurrence.” He stepped back a pace and wiped his hands.

The State’s Attorney stamped out another cigarette. “I ought to be getting along,” he murmured, but he stayed right where he was, counting bricks.

I wondered what the coroner would do next and looked to find him doing it. He was running deft, examining fingers lightly up and down one nude leg. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he got a buzz out of that, but I thought better of it.

He placed his hand under the arch of the foot.

“Well developed,” he commented. “Strong muscles.”

“Lousy skater,” I offered for no reason.

“That right?” He lifted the girl’s right leg shoulder high and beginning at the heel, fingered it up to the body. “I’d have thought differently. Muscles indicate constant use.”

“Maybe she rode a bicycle.”

He shook his head and would have grabbed his tie if he had a third hand. “Lungs don’t indicate such. That makes for lung power.”

It was then that I opened my mouth once too often.

“She wasn’t doing so well when I saw her last night.”

All three of them stared at me in varying degrees of interest. I was probably staring at myself in consternation.

The State’s Attorney ripped out, “When did you see her?” But he meant when, where, why and how I saw her.

So I inserted a lie between two truths. You are probably familiar with that dodge of mine, Louise.

“I came past the lake on my way into town. I had a few drinks, sure, but I wasn’t seeing dragons. She was skating around the lake and doing a pretty bad job of it. I could have done better.”

“At what time last night?” came the next lash.

“I don’t know. I was downtown by midnight.”

“Alone?” still sharp.

“Who? Me or her?”

“Her. She, the skater.”

“Sure. At least, no one else was in sight. And say, you can’t count too heavily on what I saw. I wasn’t close enough to be sure it was this girl.”

“It was. We’ve already established the time of the accident as between midnight and three A.M.”

“Well... it does fit.”

And the subject seemed to be closed.

Doc Burbee turned back to the corpse to lay the flat of his hand on the abdomen. He picked up the scalpel and tapped the blade against one rubber-encased finger. Donny Thompson whirled back to his bricks; I turned my attention to the voiceless wonder seated at the workbench.

The nurse had just completed a test of some sort with a pair of vials and was thoughtfully staring at the contents of one of them.

Some time later Burbee broke the silence, “Bit of water in the stomach. Small ulcer, too.”

The nurse wrote it down, but not like that. She accepted the brusque words and phrases and transformed them into neat, precise and formal statements on paper. Something involving the correct medical terminology. I couldn’t read it from where I was sitting but she put down more than nine words.

The coroner added in a conversational tone, “Also pregnant.”

The nurse smiled at the vial she had been studying and wrote down a single word.

But the State’s Attorney jumped. “The hell you say!”

“Yes, the hell I say.”

“How much?... I mean, how long?”

Several seconds later, “Oh, nine to twelve weeks.” The nurse jotted that down.

“Suicide?” I suggested.

“I doubt it. There is the knot on the head.”

“Meaning...?”

“Indicating she fell in head first, striking her head on the broken ice, rather than jumping in feet first.”

“Yeah,” Thompson added, “the water is only three feet deep around that hole. If she had jumped in the skates would have been driven into the mud on the bottom; her head would have remained above water — or ice.”

“So she tumbled in head first. But maybe she was unconscious from the bump on the head?”

“No,” Burbee objected. “Don’t forget the burnt match. That was sucked in while she was under water — through the mouth. She lacked the remaining strength to spit it out.”

I studied the match in the dish.

“Damn funny place for a match.”

“I know a man who lost his upper plate in that lake,” the State’s Attorney offered.

I got out of there.

I’m too damned sentimental. I know that and you know it, Louise. It hits me the wrong way. And two hours of sitting here in the office, doing nothing but moping and batting this letter off to you hasn’t pulled me out of the blue dumps.

Let me hear from you — fast. Please, I feel awful.

Chapter 6

Boone, Ill.

Early Thursday A.M.

Dear Louise:

Baby, I’ve been places and had my eyes opened!

As you can easily guess from that, things are beginning to pop. I’ve been to Chicago and back, I’ve just paid a very informative visit to our county jail, I’ve been picked up by another girl in a coupe—

But wait a moment; if I keep on like this I shall succeed in only confusing you. For clarity’s sake, perhaps I had better start yesterday afternoon before I caught the Chicago train. Bear with me, this might be rather long-winded.

The inquest into the death of Harry W. Evans had gone as I’d predicted and the pronouncement meant nothing at all. I immediately called the Croyden attorney to point out my honors as a prophet, but he had commented nothing at all. A second telephone call to the boys’ agency in Croyden had found Rothman in, but he knew nothing at all. He promised to wire if anything turned up; he said Liebscher was out scouting around.

By midaftemoon Boone was giving me a gorgeous case of the jitters. And over nothing at all. That’s what rankled: there was nothing stirring. I had been in and out of Thompson’s so often Judy was giving me the suspicious eye. The colored porter audibly made remarks about my tracking in the snow.

The upshot of it was a clean shirt and a pair of sox stuffed into my traveling bag and a quick trip to the railroad station. The station was jammed. The Illinois Central man behind the ticket agent’s window was wearing a pained expression even before I asked about getting a ticket. He pointed out in rather helpless tones that apparently everyone in Boone and their grandmother was trying to get to Chicago that afternoon, and what in the hell was going on, anyway?

I paid for that ride! The train was a local, one of those milk-and-mail casuals that stopped at every wayside station it happened across; if none were to be found the engineer imagined he saw one and stopped anyway. If I didn’t know better, I’d be willing to swear the train crew often climbed down and helped the farmers with the milking.

I never succeeded in getting a seat, but a woman with five children — the lot of them occupying two adjoining seats — allowed me to sit on the arm of the seat which held three of the kids. All of the kids were sucking noisily on large chocolate suckers. My suit is going to the dry cleaners as soon as I can get out of it.

It required four hours and forty-five minutes for that train to reach Chicago, which is a record the road may be proud of: Boone being only a hundred and sixty-odd miles south of it.

In the LaSalle Street station I sought out the Travelers’ Aid booth and told the girl the address I wanted to find. She dug out from racks beneath the counter a huge map of Chicago and turned it around to me. She read it upside down.

“Go right outside and take the elevated,” she rattled rapidly. “Out that door. Get a Loomis train and ask for a transfer. Ride all the way to the end of the line. A half-block north, get a 63rd streetcar going west. Watch for Sacramento, it’s just past the third traffic signal. Two or three miles, maybe four.”

And she folded up the map and put it away, mildly surprised to find me still standing there.

I said thanks and walked out “that door.”

I made my escape from the streetcar two blocks after passing Sacramento; she hadn’t told me they stop only every other block. It was colder in Chicago and so were the people. I walked back the two blocks.

On the corner of Sacramento and 63rd a sprinkling of citizens were loosely gathered around a drugstore window. Being somewhat the curious type I joined them.

In the window, stomping mechanically to and fro, meanwhile moving his hands and arms in small, jerking movements, was a zombie-like something in striped trousers and frock coat billed as

ROBOTO — THE ELECTRIC MAN!

IS HE HUMAN OR IS HE MONSTER?

A thick and too obvious electric cable snaked across the floor from an electric outlet and vanished into the bottom opening of his trouser leg. It constantly got in his way as he moved. In one white-gloved hand Roboto carried an illuminated 25-watt bulb that had no visible socket.

The “Is He Human or Is He Monster” moved back and forth from one end of the long window to the other, putting across his commercials by suddenly stopping every so many steps to bend stiffly and mechanically from the middle and pick up a small sign from the floor. The upper half of the body would remain suspended at an unbalanced angle for long seconds, giving the impression counterweights hidden somewhere inside him prevented his toppling over.

Then he would continue the movement to the floor, or back upright, the sign clutched in his fingers.

I studied the faces around me. They were going for it, hook, line, sinker and pole. In a scientific age, anything went. They obediently read each sign he held up.

The sign usually implored the good citizens looking on to rush inside this minute and purchase large quantities of this and that, or anti-something, while the limited supply lasted. It was guaranteed of course on the money-back principle.

I watched the guy with open admiration. For all the human qualities Roboto displayed he might as well have been glass and gears inside instead of flesh and blood. No muscle twitched, no eye winked. Roboto reached over and picked up a card directly in front of me. As he or it straightened, he or it chose to pause at an extremely difficult angle and ogle me. I ogled back. After all, he could find something strange in me, too.

I formed a silent sentence with my lips, “Hot in there, eh bud?”

Roboto’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly and he held the stance some seconds longer before standing upright to dangle the card at me. The card informed me of a tremendous sale in hair oils now going on, and suggested I dash in.

One citizen dashed in, the others dashed for an east-bound streetcar, and I found myself alone with a good-humored young fellow in his early twenties. We looked at each other in silent, mutual agreement.

Finally he broke the silence, “People are suckers.”

“People are,” I agreed, because basically people are people. You can’t get around good, solid logic like that.

“Roboto is good,” the young man said.

“I can see that. He’s put a hell of a lot of practice into that act. I wonder if he sells any hair oil?”

“I imagine he does. I’ve stopped to watch him every day this week. There is always a crowd around.”

“And nine out of ten think he’s a robot?”

“Make it nine-and-a-half out of ten. That last man is only half sure he isn’t. They don’t stop to think. A real robot wouldn’t be wasted in a drugstore window selling hair oil.”

“Yeah. Say, maybe you can help me. I’m looking for 6636½ south Sacramento.”

He grinned at me. “Four blocks down, next to the last house in the block, this side of the street.”

“You sound as if you’d been there.”

“I live there.”

“The hell you say. Then you know Joquel Kennedy?”

“I’m Joquel Kennedy.”

I pretended I wasn’t surprised and introduced myself.

“I wrote you a card this afternoon, wanted to let you know I was coming to Chicago, but changed my mind and came up a day earlier. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you. Are you a fap?”

“A... what?”

“Excuse me. I see by your answer that you aren’t. A fap. That’s a slang term to designate a member of the fantasy amateur press fans. I’m an amateur publisher.”

“So I found out. That’s why I’m here to see you.”

“Do you publish?”

“No.” I paused and then told him, “I’m a detective.”

He scratched the smooth underside of his chin but his face never changed.

“You don’t look like one.”

“That’s a compliment. Thanks. But I’m a private detective. I live in Boone.”

“I’ve been through there.” He nodded. “Well, you might as well tell me. I knew something like this was coming. I have flashes.”

“Flashes?”

“Prescience. The ability to see something that is going to happen before it happens. I dreamed of policemen last night.”

“Like that, eh? Well, I wanted some information on this amateur publishing. Particularly on a man in Croyden named Evans.”

He looked at me quickly. “Is Evans in trouble?”

“Not trouble.” The kid looked like he could take it. “Evans is dead.”

He could and did take it, but not without a reaction. He seemed instantly dazed, as if I had slapped his face.

“Dead?”

I nodded slowly. “Yesterday afternoon. Car hit him. The driver got away. I’m checking on his background. When you’re hunting for somebody or something you check the background. The clues can be found there.”

“A hit-and-run? Evans?” He couldn’t snap out of the daze. “Why... why, he was a good friend of mine.”

I said nothing.

Kennedy went on, “You mean he’s really dead?”

“He’s dead all right. I saw the body.”

“Harry dead...”

Absently he moved away from the drug store window. I followed him but not without one backward glance at Roboto. He was human all right. He stood staring after us, some what shocked. He had been reading our lips. I waved good-bye and he so far forgot himself as to wave back.

“Damn it to hell!” Kennedy exclaimed. “I liked the man.”

“You knew him well?”

“Yes, certainly. But not the way...” He stopped and looked around him. “I don’t want to talk here. Let’s go down home.”

“Wait a bit. I haven’t eaten. Is there a good restaurant in the neighborhood?”

Kennedy waved his hand vaguely. “A couple of blocks. Place where I eat. A good place.”

“Have dinner with me?”

“No, thank you. But I’d like a bottle of beer.”

“It’s on me. Lead on. You were saying—?”

“That I knew him well. But I’ve never met him in my life if that’s what you mean. We had an extensive correspondence, swapped a few books and things like that. Each of us always said we were going to run over and see the other, but we never got around to it.”

“How long have you known him?”

Again that vague wave. “Perhaps three years. We joined the amateur journalism society at about the same time. Newcomers are placed on a six months probation period during which time their work is judged by the other members.

“Naturally, Evans and I wanted to gain full membership so we helped each other with our magazines.” He fell silent for a block. Then, “He put out a mighty neat magazine.”

He led me into the restaurant. It was a long, narrow job with indirect lighting, and thick, red leather on the booth seats. The news I had brought continued to depress him. He went at the beer slowly like a good beer drinker. My steak was called a “Green Mill Special” and it didn’t remind you of something that ran in the Kentucky Derby last year.

I ate in silence; he stared at each bare spot on my plate uncovered by the vanishing steak. His beer was followed by two more but he never noticed it.

After awhile he snapped partly out of it. I was having a second cup of coffee, letting him find his own way.

“Well — I’ll be glad to help you in any way I can.”

“That’s appreciated. Do you have a file of his magazines?”

“Yes, complete.”

“Good. I want to read them. There may be something in them that will tie into something else. That’s the way this business works.”

“I can’t imagine what.” Kennedy turned the glass around and around on the table top. “He printed a lot of book reviews, a few amateur scientific studies, poetry.”

“Poetry. What kind of poetry?”

“Free verse.”

“No — I mean poetry about what?”

“Love.”

Maybe the man had been frustrated.

I offered in amplification, “The car that hit him was driven by a woman.”

“That’s ironic. He loved women. By that I mean he idolized them; women as a class, not any particular person. He often said that a woman was the most beautiful thing in the world. Quite frequently he printed poems dedicated to his daughter.”

Evans had no daughter. “What’s her name?” I asked the young man.

“Eleanor, I believe.”

I got back to, “The car was his own machine.”

“It was? How do you account for that?”

“Stolen — or loaned to the driver. Apparently a woman friend of his. And something went wrong between them, something serious. So she ran him down.”

“You seem so positive it was deliberate.”

“I am, and it was. I was an eyewitness, luckily. I could read the tire tracks left in the snow. And later on the car was abandoned, ditched. Familiar pattern.”

“It seems incredible, doesn’t it? I don’t mean that he would have women friends. I knew he was married; neither of us are prudes, although he never paraded his morals — or lack of them — in print. But it seems so incredible that a friend of his would actually murder him.”

“It may sound incredible, son, but people do it all the time. It happens among friends, in families... I want some more coffee.”

The waitress caught my glance and interpreted it.

Kennedy was gazing off into space.

“What else,” I interrupted his thoughts, “did Evans publish in this magazine?”

“Nothing else that I can remember offhand. Oh yes — he was running discussions on the languages of the various peoples of the world. It was becoming a rather bitter debate. Something to the effect that one universal language would eliminate the mistrust between nations. But I don’t believe that would help you.”

“I don’t think so, either. I’ve met Evans, and I’m learning things about him I never dreamed existed. That old adage about appearances often deceiving is hitting the nail on the head. Let’s get back to this poetry. I still can’t picture him writing poetry.”

“That is an advantage I have over you. Never having met him, I was forced to construct my image of him from his letters and his magazine. They impressed me favorably. And poetry seemed a part of him. It was as natural as... as...”

He broke off and stood up. I left a tip, picked up the check and paid it. Kennedy and the cashier exchanged a few pleasant words and we left. The poetry angle continued to stick in my craw.

Picture that man, Louise. Picture him standing there in my office that first day, his back to the wall, away from the glass door. Picture him figuring his way out of a frame-up. Or maybe landing in jail and being pushed around a bit.

And then picture the same man writing poetry.

Outside the restaurant the wind hit us. The wind is a devil of a lot colder in Chicago, too. We tramped in silence to Sacramento and turned south. A huge brick school building loomed up on the left.

Kennedy’s earlier remark about his prescience came back to me as we strode along in the wind. Scientists are careful not to admit any such thing exists, but that doesn’t prove anything. On the other hand, there are probably thousands of occultists and just plain people who would claim it did exist. Like Kennedy.

Did Evans share the gift? Or was it actually a gift?

It could be a galling saddle and Evans might have been saddled with it. At least it might explain his coming into my office with that crazy-sounding story. It might explain his belief that he would be arrested. And like Kennedy, what he foresaw in his “flash” could have been sufficiently different from what was to actually happen that he failed to recognize the real danger.

I asked Kennedy, “Did Evans mention prescience?”

“What—?” He had been several miles away from me.

“This prescience; did Evans have it, too?”

“I don’t know. I don’t recall him saying so, although he took part in the discussions concerning it. Most of us are pretty frank in our discussions, you see. We know we have a limited, sympathetic audience.”

“People laugh at you, eh?”

“Outsiders? Yes. So our society is limited to a membership of one hundred and the primary rule is that you be interested in our subjects or membership is denied. We print only enough copies for the membership; except of course a copy for the museum. There is a museum in Philadelphia which collects amateur publications.”

We walked another block in silence. He broke it the next time.

“Do you know,” he asked me as though I was as well acquainted with his publishing world as a full-fledged member, “I believe the most beautiful poem Evans ever printed was a love lyric he dedicated to a Chinese girl.”

Chapter 7

“Well I’ll be damned!”

Joquel Kennedy flashed me a pleased grin. He held open the door and stood aside to give me a better view.

“You like my studio?”

Did I like it? Louise, I was confounded. It was a second-floor back bedroom at 6636½, converted into what he was pleased to call his studio. To me it looked like bedlam.

Directly before my eyes hung something from the ceiling that resembled a round, full moon. It was. Complete with painted-in craters, dead-sea shadings and meteor pits. There was even a long, straight wall standing out on a plain that I remembered from school. A perfect imitation of the moon as one would see it through a telescope on a clear night.

Scattered elsewhere across the ceiling at various levels were eight planets and their attending satellites. Some were large, some small. Some were brilliantly painted and some dull. Foil rings circled one large globe.

It was a replica of the solar system.

“Okay, mister,” I said, getting my wind. “I’m ready. Do they explode, spin, light up and bingo, or what?”

Kennedy flipped a wall switch. The moon glowed with an inner illumination, bringing into sharp relief the crevices and craters. It seemed realistic enough. Some of the planets took on a dull glow but I couldn’t determine whether or not it was reflected from the center moon.

“Ninety per cent scientifically correct,” Kennedy explained. “Just imagine that you are outside on a summer night. Providing your eyesight was equal to the task, you would see in the skies almost this exact scene. It required the better part of last winter to complete this much. This winter I’m going to add the ninth planet and try to find a way to cause the rings of Saturn to revolve. They do, you know.”

“They do what?”

“Revolve.”

“Who does?”

“Saturn’s rings.”

“In clockwise,” I inquired gently, “or counter-clockwise motion?”

He didn’t mind. “You’re pulling my leg. Come on in and sit down.”

I did. At least I tried to. I walked across the studio, ducked under the low-hanging moon and pulled up the most comfortable looking chair. Kennedy jumped at me.

“Look out!”

It was my turn to jump. “What’s the matter?”

“You almost sat on my szopelka.” He rescued it from the chair seat. The thing looked like an oboe to me. Kennedy and his studio and his szopelka began to arouse the smallest suspicion in me. Eccentricity has reasonable limits.

I sat down and stared at the opposite wall. There was a funny picture there, staring at me. A colossal hand was holding aloft a frightened, kicking woman. Gross, brutal fingers of gigantic size were wrapped about her slim waist. The tiny woman seemed to be looking into my eyes, pleading for help.

“What is that?”

“An artist’s original. The picture illustrates a story I sold to an adventure magazine. It concerned giants. I knew the artist and he made me a present of it. As well as this one.” He turned to point to a large watercolor hanging on my left.

The watercolor was astounding, Louise. Something vaguely resembling the creatures people are supposed to see when they’ve had too much to drink. And I don’t mean pink elephants.

“Did you write that one, too?”

“Oh, no. I meant that the same artist gave it to me.”

“It must have some explanation behind it!”

“It’s a man from Mars.”

“How do you know?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“How do you know what a man from Mars is like?”

Kennedy pulled up a chair and sat down beside me. “That is a hypothetical man from Mars. It is based on all known scientific facts about the planet. The probable temperature, gravity, age, air and water conditions, flora and fauna, and the like. You undoubtedly know that the FBI men can construct a reasonably accurate facsimile of a criminal when they have nothing more to work on than a footprint, and perhaps the imprint of his teeth in an apple?”

“I heard of them doing it.”

“We don’t have that much, so to speak. All we have is a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the conditions on the surface of the planet. Assuming that life does exist there, in a form similar to man, this is his most probable appearance. The huge chest, the oversize feet and elephantine ears are all necessary to exist on Mars. Every detail of his appearance checks with scientific fact.”

The more I studied the alien gentleman the more it was brought home to me that I was losing time.

“Look, Kennedy, these magazines that Evans published. I want to see them. I want to have a look at that Chinese poem.”

He caught that one quick, “Does that fit into the background you mentioned?”

“I’m beginning to think so. If I can tie a still-missing something else into it.”

He got up and walked over to a high, narrow bookcase lined with four rows of identical black, ring, bookbinders. Each binder had a name inked in white on the spine.

He selected four of the binders and piled them in my lap. I picked up the first one and read the title Le Zombie on the spine.

“That’s my magazine,” Kennedy stated. “These belong to Harry.” He indicated the two binders on the bottom bearing the name Rosebud. “That’s the name of a sled in an Orson Welles picture, you may remember. Harry was struck by it. The term also has a slangy connotation among the membership.”

I didn’t dare ask what the connotation was for fear he would tell me. He possessed a wonderful ability to wander away from the subject I most wanted to discuss.

Flipping open the cover and a buffer sheet, I found a stack of nicely mimeographed magazines punched and fastened to the rings. I also found something looking up at me from the cover of the top magazine.

A copy of the odd symbol I had seen imprinted on Evans’ wallet; the symbol that I knew wasn’t a lodge emblem.

I called Kennedy’s attention to it.

“That was Harry’s trade-mark, you might say. You’ll find it on the cover of every magazine.”

I flipped through them. “But what is it?”

“I believe it’s a Chinese word — at least, I think it’s a word. It means ‘Fidelity and Friendship.’ ”

“Any particular reason why he used it?”

“I believe he once said he greatly admired the mental attitudes of the Chinese. As I understand it, they have a memory comparable to that old saw about the elephant.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Harry said they never forget a friend, never forgive a hurt. If they like you, you’re in solid — if you will pardon the slang. On the other hand...”

“If they don’t like you, stay away from them?”

“Yes. Something like that.”

I ran my eyes down the printed page. A title said: “A Refutation of the Escape-velocity Theory as Applied to Initial Thrust.” It was followed by six or eight pages of practically solid type broken only by some mathematical equations that couldn’t be made on a typewriter. I asked, “What’s this?”

“An essay.”

“No, I mean this escape-velocity. Escape from what?”

“The earth. It concerns a long held theory, now outdated due to war rockets and the discovery of atomic power, that rocket projectiles must start out with a speed of seven miles per second to escape the gravitational pull of the earth. The essay points out that the projectile may begin at a comparably slower speed enroute to interplanetary space.”

“You think rockets can do that?”

“German war rockets have done that. Our own army experiments will prove it within a few years.”

“I didn’t see anything about it in the papers.”

He told me about censorship and the wartime “thou shall not” order. I’d heard the rumor before.

All of which was interesting no end to a scientist and a newspaper editor. I was looking for poetry, and said as much. He removed the binders from my lap, leafed through one without success and was perhaps three-quarters through the second one when he found it. He passed the binder to me.

Louise: you probably remember the time you had occasion to state your opinions concerning my taste and judgment of poetry. I’ve grown no better with the years. Unless it’s something simple like “Hiawatha,” it leaves me cold. In spite of my disinterest in the stuff, I found myself liking what I was reading.

Kennedy later told me it was good poetry. I could quite believe him.

Harry Evans had called it: “For Leonore — A China Doll.” It was sentimental, and that’s an understatement.

I turned to Kennedy. “I thought you said Evans had a daughter named Eleanor?”

“I did. I’ve never met her of course, but he spoke of an Eleanor in one or two letters, and I assumed it was his daughter.” He looked over my shoulder. “That is Leonore.”

“Take the e off the end and put it in front, and it’s about the same thing.”

He smiled. “Do all detectives suspect every thing they see?”

I didn’t answer him. I was remembering a china doll. Not so very many hours ago I had looked into her eyes and dreamed of them across a breakfast table. And later I had looked into the same eyes, now glassy, on an undertaker’s table.

I wound up later by modestly mentioning a subject very close to my heart.

“I’m writing a book on Lost Atlantis.” And for the first time that night I was properly thankful for his slight touch of eccentricity. He displayed keen interest.

“You are!”

“Well — I only have seven chapters done. I expect to finish it someday.”

“Will you do me a favor?”

“Gladly. If I can. You’ve done me a big one.”

“Will you let me read the seven chapters?”

“Now you’re pulling my leg.”

“I’m not. I want to read it. If it is worthwhile I’d like to publish it. I’m running some work on ancient Egypt now, written by a young Egyptotogist in Los Angeles. I’d like very much to publish your book. A chapter at a time.”

“Well, I sort of wanted it in book form.”

“Oh, my publishing it in serial form won’t prevent that. You are protected by common law right, you know. Our organization has limited membership. None of our magazines are sold. Your material is absolutely your own until it is distributed through commercial or non-organizational channels. Then, of course, a regular copyright protects it. Will you do me that favor?”

I have an ego. I gave in with very little coaxing. I promised to send him the chapters in a day or so.

Kennedy walked with me to the 63rd Street car line. Our friend the robot had knocked off for the night and the drugstore was dark.

The amateur publisher asked if I were returning to Boone that night and I said I was. I mentioned that a train left the Twelfth Street station at around 2:20. He first extracted a promise from me that I keep him up to date on any developments in Evans’ death, and then gave me the fastest route to the station. I stood on the rear platform of the streetcar and watched him wave me out of sight.

Kennedy is a pretty good egg.

I had been hanging around the station for about ten minutes when a couple of slick gents closed up on each side of me. They gave me a turn until I recognized the professional touch.

One of them said, “Got a good reason for carrying that rod mister?” In the rush of packing and getting to the station I had forgotten to take off the gun. They were plainclothes men.

We all had a laugh over it — that is, after I showed them my badge but not the outdated license. The guy who had tackled me bought a round of coffee and we shot the breeze until my train time. I spent most of the trip sleeping.

There were early editions of some of the Chicago papers in the car, and one of the papers carried an AP story on the body found in the lake. The caption writer had suggested suicide because the girl “was believed to be pregnant.”

Boone hadn’t changed much in the twelve hours I had been gone.

The wind was sharper, or maybe it was just the magnified memory of the Chicago winds. Snow had piled up deeply in those places where it was necessary to walk. Only a few dim street lights and a couple of outside station lights were lit; the town goes to bed well before midnight, just after the last popular radio show has left the air, and anyone found roaming the streets after that hour is a rounder or a suspicious character.

Up near the front of the train a mail truck had backed up to the open door of the mail and baggage car and the dirty gray sacks were flying. Someone in coveralls wielding a long-snouted oilcan was fussing around the locomotive. The station agent had already darkened the interior of the station and was preparing to lock up.

I saw a blacked-out coupe sitting at the far end of the parking lot but there were no cabs waiting. It was roughly a mile across town to the rooming house; my feet were tired.

As I turned away and started towards the street someone sitting in the coupe tooted the horn twice.

The interior of the car was too dark to reveal the someone and the station lights didn’t penetrate that far. Behind me on the platform there were only a young couple standing by the steps of a coach. They paid no heed to the horn. Neither did I.

The wooden platform ended abruptly and I stepped down into the street, sinking up to my ankles in drifted snow. The middle of the street made the best walking. I didn’t hear the coupe start up nor see it until it slid alongside of me, matching my pace.

After leaving the parking lot it had had to swing around behind the station, cross a little-used spur track and emerge into the street. I was surprised it had made the swing so quickly.

I kept walking, my right hand swinging free.

Suddenly the door nearest me was impatiently pushed open and a girl sitting behind the wheel called out, beckoning with a gloved hand. I had started to swing sideways, but stopped the movement.

Instead, I answered despairingly, “Please — not that again!”

The coupe stopped, throwing snow with the rear wheels.

A bare head popped out the door and the wind caught up the brown hair to whip it around. It was the nurse I had seen in the undertaker’s basement room.

“Don’t be silly!” she half screamed at me. “Get in here; it’s cold out there.”

I said yes mam and got in. It was warmer inside. She started up.

“Hello,” I offered feebly by way of opening a conversation the proper way.

“What did you mean by what you just said?” she countered.

“ ‘Not again?’ Lady, I’ve stopped trusting strange women who invite me into their automobiles.”

“I’m not strange. Call me Beth.”

“My name is—”

She cut it off. “I know. Mr. Thompson told me. But what do they call you? Your friends I mean?”

“Chuck. Or Horny. I prefer Chuck. What were you doing at the train?”

She neatly ignored the question by asking one.

“All right, Chuck. What’s what in Chicago?”

“And who mentioned Chicago?”

“That train makes no stops between Chicago and Boone. I suspect you’re nosing into something.”

“I am?” And a repeat of the question, “Why were you at the train?”

“You am.” And a repeated ignoring of the question. “Your interest in the autopsy yesterday wasn’t as casual as you pretended. Want to tell me?”

“Sorry. Professional confidence and stuff.”

“Bunko, Chuck. We’re a couple of professionals.”

“Nurses don’t count. At least, not until you take an office and go into business.”

“I have an office, smarty. Just across the hall from yours. I spoke to the rental agency this afternoon. And I’m not a nurse.”

“That office? That’s an old doctor’s office.”

“The new doctor is moving in.”

“You—?” My voice changed in the middle of the word.

“And why not? What did you suppose I was doing at the autopsy?”

“I thought you were... a nurse, or something.”

She laughed, a gleeful, silvery sound. It was like soft organ music playing bells at a far distance. Soft bells.

“Dr. Elizabeth Saari,” she introduced herself, “at your call. Have a card. They’re in my purse on the seat.”

I just sat there.

“Why don’t you say something? Make conversation?”

“Wait until I get my breath. I don’t like surprises. But I seem to be getting them all the time.”

She suggested artfully, “You’re still evading my question. Why the sudden Chicago trip?”

I turned so that I could look at her face, barely illuminated now by the light of the dash. It was quite pleasing to look upon. She hung onto the wheel and kept her eyes on the street. The loaded mail truck overtook us and passed in a cloud of churned-up snow.

And she was accusing me of evading the question!

“You may be a doctor,” I replied, “but first you’re a woman.”

“Why, Chuck! This is an odd place to launch a proposal. But then I’ve been proposed to in odder places. You can imagine a medical school. Oh — perhaps you aren’t proposing?”

It was good needlework. “I am not proposing!” Searching for something with a sting to hurl back at her, the best I could find was, “I’m accusing you of being nosey.”

“Like you, Chuck,” she snapped back. “There was the autopsy yesterday. And now — Chicago?”

I gave in. I’ve run into many a woman like that before, Louise, including you. They won’t let you win.

“I was in Chicago,” I told her as patiently as was possible, “looking for a link between that Chinese girl and Harry W. Evans.”

“O...h.” But she didn’t say it quite like that. It was more of a long drawn out, speculative “oh.” The kind where you try to fill in the gaps yourself as you are saying it. She added, “I’m not up on the Evans business. Only the newspaper story.”

“The hit-and-run driver was a woman.”

“I know that. And the automobile has been found.”

“And so has the driver.”

She jerked her head around to study my face.

“O...h.” It required a longer time to fill in the gaps. She was silent for several moments. And then, “Proof?”

“Practically none. That’s the stumbling block. Evans had a hobby — publishing an amateur magazine for a hobby society. For that magazine he wrote poetry, sentimental poetry. About his love for a girl named Leonore. He called it ‘For Leonore — A China Doll.’ ”

“And you think...?”

“I suspect his china doll and my china doll are the one and the same.”

“That’s pretty thin suspecting.”

“A thousand thin slices make a fat inch. That’s the only way to get anywhere in this business.”

“I take it you have other slices?” She put the coupe around a corner and we were headed downtown.

“I have. The hit-and-run was premeditated. The driver was a girl. A Chinese girl turns up dead, and in an interesting condition. I’ve been told most Chinese love and hate the hard way. It appears that Evans had a Chinese sweetheart. The automobile was ditched because it was too hot. There is one other slice that fits perfectly but I can’t tell you about it — it does involve a confidence.” I was thinking about the last time a girl had picked me up on the street and taken me for a ride. “Now what do you think?”

Dr. Saari drove the coupe into a parking space near Milkshake Mike’s place and shut off the motor. We sat there, unmoving. She was thinking hard about something and I was wondering if she’d come up with the outstanding fact I had neglected to mention. One that she knew.

She did. “The Chinese girl couldn’t have left the automobile in the ditch that far away, come back, and jumped into the lake.”

I grinned in admiration. “Doctor, you should be in my business. It’s obvious that she didn’t.”

“Then there’s someone else...?”

“There is. Someone who ditched the car for her.”

She pulled the keys from the ignition and shoved her knees toward me. “Hop out, Sherlock. Let’s eat.”

“As you suggest, Watson.”

She caught the unintended humor of that before I realized it myself.

When we walked into Mike’s place there was Mike with a cheerful smile on his face, standing over the waffle irons. A night patrolman was sitting at the counter, waiting for the waffles.

“Ah — Charlee!” Mike shouted. “How’s t’ings in the beeg city, Charlee?”

Elizabeth threw me a satisfied smirk over her shoulder. “You see! Everyone in Boone knows about you, Chuck.”

I growled. “Put on two more, Mike.”

Chapter 8

Dr. Elizabeth Saari was halfway through her waffle. I had finished mine and Mike was pouring a second on the iron. The night patrolman had finished eating and left us.

At the rear of the restaurant a neon beer sign buzzed fitfully and threatened itself with extinction. It had been buzzing fitfully and threatening itself with extinction for the better part of a year. Even the flies that had established a home under the first E ignored the disturbances and had settled down to raise a family.

We three humans and the flies were alone in the place.

Dr. Saari sat across the booth table from me with an ill-concealed smile playing about her lips. It made me distinctly uncomfortable; I knew she was amused with me.

Without warning or preamble she accused, “You were fibbing to Mr. Thompson yesterday.”

“Everybody fibs to Mr. Thompson.”

She tossed a wealth of brown hair impatiently. “I’m referring to your statement about ‘seeing’ the ice skater as you ‘passed the lake.’ ”

“I did see her,” I defended myself. “Of course, I didn’t run over and shake her by the hand.”

“I don’t doubt that you saw her. You must have seen her; your appearance at the autopsy proves that. You saw her either on the lake or somewhere else. But you were fibbing to Mr. Thompson about something. I read it on your face.”

“You weren’t looking at my face.”

“Oh—? I recall that you had a stubble — you hadn’t shaved that day. And that you were on the verge of being sick several times. And that you wanted to make a few wisecracks but thought the better of it. All of that was on your face.”

“My landlady won’t let me have the hot water.”

“Let’s talk about the fibbing.”

“Why should I babble everything to you?” I complained. “You haven’t unlimbered your tongue as yet.”

“You haven’t asked.”

“I haven’t — Doctor, listen carefully and tell me where you’ve heard this before: what were you doing at the train?”

“O...h. You’ve been wondering about that? But that’s so easily explained. I was waiting for my mother; she’s coming down from Chicago to live with me. I had expected her to be on that train.”

I was apparently supposed to believe that.

To needle her I asked, “How old are you?”

“None of your business!”

Which was the answer I expected. Mike brought my second waffle to the booth. We waited in silence until he had gone. Pouring twice the necessary amount of syrup on the waffle, I looked up suddenly to catch her studying me. It was easy to return the stare. Presently she fidgeted.

“I’m twenty-seven,” she offered.

“Your chances of grabbing a man are about fifty-fifty. Twenty-seven, unmarried, attractive — but fresh, nosey and somewhat stubborn. Say a fifty-fifty chance.”

“I don’t want to grab a man,” she returned heatedly. “I’m going to be an old maid.”

“That’s what they all say. Some of them are eventually surprised to find they are just that — and then it’s too late.”

She flared contritely, “I certainly don’t want to marry a detective.” I presume you can appreciate the irony in those words for me, Louise? The unintended paraphrasing of your own words were so nearly accurate, they stung. She must have been looking at my face again; she caught something.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized.

“Doctor,” I stated, “when it comes to a detective, your fifty-fifty chance of getting married becomes unbalanced. The odds are stacked heavily against you.”

“What’s her name?” she asked me.

I told her.

“Is she nice?”

Which is something of a foolish question to ask a man in love. I’m prejudiced. And I’d rather not repeat to you, Louise, my description of you. You probably wouldn’t agree with half the lavish natural gifts I heaped upon you, and I would refuse to take a single one of them back. Let’s leave it at that. If you don’t know by this time that I think you’re the most wonderful woman that ever walked the earth, you haven’t been listening for the last several years.

She suggested, “Let’s change the subject.”

I agreed. “Were you around when the Chinese girl’s belongings were itemized?”

“Yes. I signed as a witness.”

“What was in the handbag?”

“She had none.”

“No handbag? Not even a compact or something? Wasn’t anything found on the lake bank?”

“Not even a something, Chuck. Nothing.”

“Then how was she identified?”

“She wasn’t.” Elizabeth glanced at her wristwatch. “Or at least, she hadn’t been up until about eleven o’clock.”

“Nothing at all. Are you sure?”

“Do you doubt me, Chuck? There wasn’t a single thing except the identification bracelet on her wrist.”

“But you said—”

“The bracelet carried no identification. Mr. Thompson had pinned his hopes on that, too.”

“Blank?”

“Practically.” She wiped her lips with a paper napkin and a smudge of lipstick came off. “Except for a good luck token engraved on it.”

“Good luck!” I echoed bitterly. “She had precious little of that. First there was the — Elizabeth!”

She jumped. I half rose from my scat.

“Elizabeth, that good luck token, what was it like?”

“I don’t recall. Just a token.”

“Was it a Chinese token? A Chinese symbol?”

“What else? She was Chinese.”

Her words so elated me I impulsively leaned across the table and kissed her. She sat back, startled. I slid out of the seat, leaving the partly-eaten remains of the second waffle on the plate. I grabbed my hat and coat with one hand and her nearest arm with the other. The yank nearly pulled her to the floor. She made a wild grab for her purse.

“If you’re always like this,” she complained crossly, “you can take back your proposal. If that kiss was a proposal.” She got to her feet.

Still holding her arm, I sped up the aisle between the booths. She was struggling to button her coat and still hold onto the purse. I didn’t bother to put my hat and coat on.

Mike emerged from the kitchen in time to catch her last words. He watched the exodus, shouting advice.

“He’s always like that, lady. You betta’ not propose.”

“Never mind the offstage noises, Mike. We’re going to the county jail.” And I pulled Elizabeth out the door.

She dug her heels into the snow and dragged me to a full stop. “You’re inhuman,” she cried breathlessly. “Here are the keys.”

“Never mind the keys. We’ll walk. Only a few blocks.”

“But why the jail? The body is at the undertaker’s.” I had already started walking and she struggled to keep up with me.

“I don’t want to see the body. I want to see that bracelet. And unless someone has claimed the body, she’s a county liability. She’ll be buried in potter’s field and her possessions — that bracelet — will be on file at the jail.”

“But maybe someone has claimed the body?”

“And opened themselves to police questioning? In view of the fact that sooner or later some smart cop will tie the Chinese girl to the abandoned car? Oh, no!”

“But there’s no harm in that!”

“There is when you must be one of the parties who figured in a premeditated murder. Accessory before the fact. No one will claim that body — you can count on it!”

Just outside the jail entrance I stopped the girl.

“You’ll have to front for me, Elizabeth. My license ran out yesterday. I don’t expect them to do anything nasty, but if they do, you’re the one who wants to see the bracelet. Understand?”

“Just leave it all to me, Chuck.” And then she added bluntly, “I like you, Chuck.”

“Sure. Let’s go in.”

Leaving the cold, clean air of a biting winter dawn and walking into a jail is like... well, walking into a jail. The place smelled like a jail. It had the overpowering suggestion of a dirty, unsanitary, nostril-offending jail. Lysol did nothing to dispel the odor. No one but a jailkeeper would live there by choice.

The jailkeeper turned off a small radio when we entered and arose from a creaky rocking chair.

“Why, hello, Doc.” He grinned a toothy welcome at Dr. Saari, exhibiting teeth stained yellow with tobacco. “What can I do for you, Doc?”

“I would like to see the bracelet found on the body of that Chinese girl, if I may?” She backed up the request with a contrasty, white smile.

“Sure thing, Doc. It’s around here somewheres.” He turned his back on us to rustle through a stack of junk on his desk. “Here it is. We ain’t never identified her yet, Doc.”

Elizabeth removed the bracelet from the large manila envelope and turned the underside up. Engraved on the smooth undercurve of the bracelet was the “good luck” symbol. I nudged the doctor and she replaced it in the envelope.

“Thank you very much.”

“That’s all right, Doc. Drop in any time.”

We got out of there in a rush. I stopped outside on the steps to suck in a deep lungful of air. She was doing the same.

“Promise me something?” she asked between gulps.

“Anything, doctor. Anything. Well, almost anything.”

“Don’t ever call me ‘Doc.’ Call me anything you wish, anything at all, but never ‘Doc.’ ”

“It’s a promise. And thank you very kindly.”

“For what?” We had started back up the street.

“For what you just did. Come on — I’m hungry, now. Let’s go back and have another waffle.”

She grabbed my arm savagely and spun me around.

“What’s the matter?”

“Charles Horne, up to a certain point you are a very nice young man to know. You have just reached that point! Don’t go over it: give — or else!”

“The bracelet, you mean?”

“The bracelet, I mean! That meant something to you.”

“I’ll say it did. In Chinese, I’m told, that symbol means Fidelity and Friendship.”

“O...h?”

“Oh. And the last two places I saw Fidelity and Friendship, other than on that bracelet, was on the cover of Harry Evans’ amateur magazine and stamped in gold on the inside of Harry Evans’ wallet.”

“O...h.”

Good morning, Louise. And thank you for the letters.

Chapter 9

Boone, Ill.

Thursday, P.M.

My Dearest Louise:

Louise, I feel that I must apologize for what I’ve just done, without first taking the time to consult you. It affects some property jointly owned by us. There wasn’t sufficient time to ask your permission, really, because the funeral was this noon.

The funeral of the Chinese girl; Leonore, or Eleanor, or whatever her correct name might be. (Evans’ body has been returned to his widow in Croyden.)

Coming downtown this morning after writing you, I ran across Don Thompson. He mentioned in passing that the Chinese girl was to be buried this afternoon in potter’s field. That reminded me of what I had developed on her identity and I told him what little I knew, requesting that he pass it along to the police department. He appreciated that — he’s the only officeholder in the county of the opposite political party, and enjoys trumping them.

I’ve been doing a lot of moping about the Chinese doll. Perhaps it’s lack of sleep or perhaps it was the way she appealed to me the night she drove me out to the barn; it might even be my conscience dwelling on Harry Evans’ retainer of five hundred dollars. I’m unprepared to say.

But I telephoned the undertaker, determined the cost of a funeral, drew enough money out of the bank, and buried the girl. In the cemetery plot you and I own.

I hope you won’t object, darling. In your letter yesterday you said I was doing right in wanting to do something to earn that retainer, even though I could probably do nothing to help Evans. I think this was helping him. I think he had an especial interest in the Chinese girl, and I believe that what I did was giving him his money’s worth. I’m not sorry that I did. I hope you will feel the same way.

After climbing the stairs again to my office this afternoon, I found Dr. Elizabeth Saari standing in the corridor, superintending the installation of her office equipment. She was wearing a white smock over her dress and there were goose pimples on her bare arms. It was chilly in the corridor.

“Hello, Chuck,” she greeted me lightly. “Wipe off that face. You act as if you had been to a funeral.”

“I have.”

Instantly her behavior sobered and she seemed embarrassed.

“I am sorry,” she said sincerely. “An example of my misplaced humor. A relative, perhaps?”

“The doll.”

“Doll?”

“The Chinese girl. Fidelity and Friendship.”

“But Dr. Burbee said she was to be buried sometime this afternoon.”

“I changed that.”

“You changed...” She folded her arms and studied me. The examination made me uncomfortable; she has the damndest knack of causing that. Her eyes were half-shut and seemed to be saying “Softy!”

But the lips said, “You couldn’t afford that.”

“How do you know what I can afford?”

“I’ve spent the last hour in your office, waiting for my furniture to arrive. Pardon me, my friend, but that office doesn’t give the impression of belonging to a moneyed man.”

“It really wasn’t my money. It was Evans’ fee. Can you think of a better way to spend it?”

She rubbed the back of her neck with a smudged hand. A locket on a chain tinkled under her dress. Abruptly she turned on her heel and vanished into her office.

I pushed open the door and entered mine.

She had cleaned it up. The desk had been swept clean of the clutter and dusted, the typewriter was covered for the first time in years. My books were stacked in two neat piles and the mail laid beside them.

The seven separate stacks of manuscript were now one stack, held down by a paperweight. Each of the seven pages that had been atop the stacks bore dusty finger smudges; she had read the manuscript. She had also swept the floor. I remembered seeing the broom outside in the corridor. The janitor was never as ambitious as all that.

Going around behind the desk, I found your violin case (and now my letter file) and her purse lying in the swivel chair. She must have forgotten the purse. It was then that I noticed her card.

It was perched between two rows of typewriter keys, just peeping from beneath the dust cover, and it read:

Elizabeth Saari, M.D.

Two of her cigarette stubs bearing lipstick were in the ash tray.

While I was looking at them I heard the furniture men leave her office and clump down the stairs. They said something funny to someone else at the foot of the stairs, someone who was banging on the wall with a hammer. A carpenter, hanging her shingle. Everybody laughed.

I sat down in the swivel chair and did nothing for half an hour; at first I even tried to stop thinking, without notable success.

After a while her office door opened and shut, and her footsteps came across the corridor to my door. Her image showed fuzzy and green on the frosted glass. She walked in. She had removed the smock and was wearing a light green business suit that befitted a lovely woman more than a doctor.

I suppose my face said as much; she smiled self-consciously. I discovered I was holding her purse, and passed it across the desk to her. She took a chair opposite me.

“All ready for my first patient!” she exclaimed brightly. “I wonder who it will be?”

“Haven’t you been practicing? In Chicago?”

“No. Laboratory work ever since I graduated. I got tired of it. And you must admit there is still a doctor shortage. Especially here. That’s why I chose Boone. I like small towns.”

“It isn’t so small.”

“I’m from Chicago, remember?”

I shrugged. Not being a chamber of commerce booster I didn’t really give a damn what she thought of it. I knew what my trouble was. I was beginning to like Elizabeth Saari and yet I knew too little about her. Sitting there for half an hour, doing nothing but thinking, turning a thousand points over in my mind, I wound up with a disquieting mental attitude. It was like a witch’s spell cast over me. I didn’t want to break it by conversation; yet I hardly cared to be ridden by it the rest of the day.

In short, I was feeling low-down and mean.

She didn’t help a bit, “So you paid for the funeral?”

I nodded wearily. So we were back to that again. If she continued along that line I’d begin to wish I hadn’t, just to be perverse about it.

“Why?” she insisted.

“Maybe I have a humble heart,” I said with heavy sarcasm.

“You’re not being civil, Chuck. Won’t you give me a worthwhile explanation?”

Sourly, “Why the hell should I?”

She instantly changed inside. “I’m sorry to have asked,” she retorted stiffly, and made as if to leave. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

I jumped to my feet. “Please, Elizabeth...”

She paused, still not looking at me.

“Please sit down. I apologize; let’s not fight about it.” She turned back to the chair and I rushed on. “I’m feeling rotten, that’s all. My morale has just about hit bottom. I didn’t think any girl could upset me like this.”

She sat down and fumbled in her purse for a package of cigarettes. Lighting two, she held one across the desk to me, smiling gravely. I mumbled thanks.

“I should make the apologies,” she contradicted. “I realize, now, that I’ve been prying into things that don’t concern me. From your point of view, that is. My curiosity overcame my manners. As I mentioned last night, I think you’re a nice boy. I know you are capable of doing a lot of nice things for people; but I couldn’t quite understand this.”

“You’ve nothing on me; I can’t either. Softness, I guess. For no logical reason, I wanted to do something for that doll. I did the only thing I could find to do.”

“Do you mind if... I talk about it? Just a little bit?”

I said no, go right ahead.

“It may be softness, Chuck, and then again it may not. I don’t think you are a push-over for a pretty face. You saw a girl on ice skates, you liked her appearance, and when you found her on the undertaking table the next day it did something to you, inside. That’s understandable. Furthermore, when you discovered she was to be buried...”

Elizabeth suddenly stopped like a gramophone needle taken off the record. Or like someone who had suddenly fallen over a new and startling idea and didn’t know what to do next. Her brown eyes grew very large and round. They searched a face I was careful to keep blank. I knew the idea she had stumbled over.

“Chuck,” she queried softly, “you had met that girl before the ice-skating episode, hadn’t you?”

I merely nodded. She possessed the good manners not to ask where and how and under what circumstances I had met her. Those large eyes were thoughtful and far-away. She was mentally skipping along over my back trail at a great rate. But she couldn’t find anything; she knew too little.

“A sort of a friend,” I said by way of explanation and let it go at that.

She put her hands across the desk and grasped one of mine. Her cigarette was burning uselessly in the ash tray.

“Please forgive me for this, Chuck, but do you need money?”

I laughed. “No. Thanks, anyway. The expenses weren’t large. Harry Evans paid for it.”

“You’ve already mentioned that. May I ask... the connection between you and Evans, and Evans and the girl, and the girl and you isn’t quite clear.”

“It wasn’t clear to me, until last night. I think it stacks up like this: the girl — let’s call her Leonore — was Evans’ lady friend. Mistress, if we want to be frank about it. The poetry and the Chinese symbol and another fact tend to show that.”

“Yes. And you said Evans retained you?”

“As a sort of local bodyguard. He knew he was heading for some kind of trouble, exact nature of which unknown. Meanwhile, I had met Leonore in quite another way. Now the three of us are tied together in a sort of triangle.”

“That much I can follow. And I understand your interest in the autopsy.”

“Yeah.” Her cigarette died unnoticed in the ash tray. She was still holding onto my hand. “Remember those ‘slices’ I mentioned last night in your car? Evans and Leonore were having a pretty deep love affair. Something happened to that love affair, something startling, something unexpected? Do you follow that?”

She recalled the unexpected but quite natural results of a certain chemical test, and said yes. “A baby.”

“Keep that in mind. And then Evans came in to my office for protection. He doesn’t really know what is going to happen to him, but he thinks the police will frame him.”

“That doesn’t sound like Boone.”

I shook my head. “It isn’t Boone. I’ve come to believe the chief of police is a rat; he denied me my license renewal because someone who has reason to dislike me applied pressure. But I don’t think he could or would go so far as to frame a man of Evans’ standing.

“To get back to the point: Evans walked out of this office and was killed by his mistress. They loved one another very much. What do you think of that?”

“Nothing at all. It is confusing.”

“That’s it, Elizabeth. The apparent contradiction is the fine point upon which the whole thing revolves. That contradiction has no business being there. But it exists. Find out why it exists and you’ll probably find out the answer to everything.”

“Sorry, Chuck. I’m not that bright.”

“Neither am I. I wish I was. If they loved each other as deeply as evidence suggests, he would never, never run out on her. Baby or no, he’d stick by her. Having no reason to kill him then, she promptly kills him. And shortly afterwards the death car is found, ditched. And she falls in the lake.”

“It sounds like murder for revenge, and then desperate suicide. I’m sorry, Chuck, I’m only a doctor. I’m lost.”

“I’m as good as lost. Logic tells me there is a third party mixed in somewhere. That third party can explain the contradiction of a mistress murdering her lover whom she’ll need very shortly; he can also explain why Evans expected to be framed.”

“Oh, yes,” Elizabeth suggested, “and how she left the car in one place and was ice skating in another a short while later. It’s a crying shame she decided to go ice skating that night. She could have told us...”

She stopped talking. We eyed each other.

“Yes,” I echoed, “it is a shame, isn’t it? I wondered how long it would take you to suspect something.”

Her eyes were narrow with speculation. The hands holding mine tightened around my fingers.

“Yes,” she said again, ever so softly. “It is a crying shame.”

I could see what she was thinking. Her thoughts were practically echoing my own. But Louise, what I couldn’t tell her was this: since last night when I had seen the Chinese symbol on that identification bracelet, I had known (or thought I knew) the missing third party.

Leonore was driving for the gambler. The gambler had told me it was Leonore’s first trip between downtown and the lake; but Leonore had told me it was her second. She had made her first trip after running down Harry Evans. Foolhardy as it may seem, she had gone straight to the lake.

Remember also how the gambler lost his poise when I mentioned talking to the doll? That was my mistake, Louise, for I realized, during that long half-hour wait before Beth came in, that I had said something he didn’t like.

And Leonore fell in the lake and drowned.

That gambling gentleman is probably our third party. But don’t ask me how or why Leonore killed her lover; don’t ask me why Evans expected trouble from the police; don’t ask me how the gambler fits into the picture. I don’t know.

“Beth — was there any trace of dope in the body?”

“None whatsoever. We would have found it. Why?”

“Remember my saying she was giving a lousy skating performance? She acted sort of funny on the ice. Not too sure of herself. I thought maybe she had been doped and sent out there.”

“No, it wasn’t that. Something else must have contributed to the poor skating.”

“Yeah. And that something else, whatever it was, pushed her into the lake, too.”

She didn’t have an answer to that one, and swung her gaze out the window.

I reached in the desk drawer for the telephone and put in a call for Rothman in Croyden. In a few minutes the operator informed me that Mr. Rothman couldn’t be reached at that number, but that a Mr. Liebscher of the same firm would talk to me if I so desired. Did I?

I did.

Liebscher greeted me, “It’s your nickel, chum.”

“Doesn’t Rothman ever work? And can’t you think of a new way to open a conversation?”

“Ah — it’s Charley-boy. How are you, chum?”

“Never mind my health. Look: I’m mailing you a clipping about a Chinese girl who drowned... what?”

“I said, skip it. We’ve got newspapers, too.”

“All right, here’s the story: remember what I told you earlier about Evans? That’s right. It turns out that this Chinese girl is connected with him. Or was, rather. His mistress. No — never mind how I found out. I want you to dig up some details for me, fast. I’m coming over there late this afternoon. Don’t hang up — there’s more.”

Beth had swung back from the window to watch me, a troubled expression in her eyes. I ignored the eyes.

“Liebscher: I think that lawyer — yeah, Ashley — is in on this, too. Take a quick look into his private affairs. Try to find out who some of his clients are; we might work through them. Anything that’ll give us a line on him.

“That isn’t all. I’ll want information on the big-time gambling outfits over there. Can you do it? Fine. I’ll see you sometime this afternoon. So long, now.”

I hung up.

The troubled expression in Elizabeth’s eyes had changed to worried concern and flooded over into her face.

“Chuck — do you think you ought to do that?”

“Do what?”

“Pry into this thing? It might be dangerous for you. After all, you’ve done as much as you can.”

“Elizabeth, you say you’re a doctor. Would you run out on a patient because he was dying of a disease that might kill you, too? After you had done everything humanly possible there was to do for him?”

“N...o.”

“Well, I’m not a doctor. I like to think I’m a detective. I swore no oath and I don’t have to go through with it if I don’t want to. But I won’t run out on a case just because there might be some danger in it.”

“Chuck, it isn’t a question of might be, it is. A man and a woman have been brutally murdered because of something you don’t fully understand. And yet you blindly insist upon putting your head into the bag to see if you can understand what’s inside.”

“Thank you for your interest, Elizabeth.”

She stood up and reached for her purse. “I expected something better than this, Chuck.”

“Sorry, Elizabeth.”

She opened my office door and paused on the threshold, waiting for me to say something more. I said nothing.

Finally she half turned and said slowly, “I hope you never regret the rejecting of my advice, Charles.”

The door closed and she was gone.

What the hell — was that a threat?

Chapter 10

WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM

LOUISE HORNE

FEDERATED PRESS BLDG

CAPITOL CITY ILLINOIS

THANKS FOR FLOWERS DARLING STOP EXPECT RELEASE FROM HOSPITAL TOMORROW STOP LETTER FOLLOWING STOP

CHARLES

Chapter 11

Boone, Ill.

Friday, noon

Dear Louise:

I have a very nice nurse named Hazel; she’s competent, starched, and more than a little cynical. She provided me with a tilting-top table, some stationery, and loaned me her pen.

I hope the telegram didn’t frighten you. Hazel telephoned it in for me. They were very nice roses, and thank you again.

It all happened, Louise, because I didn’t have enough sense to take Dr. Saari’s advice. It’s all somewhat hectic, and rough, and more than a little puzzling. It went like this:

Liebscher rammed his thin, sharp elbow into my unprotected ribs and pointed a blunt finger through the dirty windshield.

“That’s her, chum,” he said casually.

I looked first at her attractive, long legs mounted on spiked heels and the handsome, expensive fur coat she was wearing as she moved swiftly towards our car along the snow-blown sidewalk. And then I looked up, up the legs and fur coat, into the face of the Chinese doll. The newspaper fell from my fingers.

Croyden is a murky, grey vestpocket edition of Chicago. The smoke begins at the river’s edge, belching from a score of chimneys, and sweeps west across the waterfront and up the hill to Adams Street. The air is sooty and discouraging and clings to the skin like an unhealthy blanket. My handkerchief was soiled from several swipes across my face, and my throat tasted as if the smoke had seeped into my mouth.

It didn’t seem to bother the local citizenry; they ate it and apparently liked it.

Liebscher had met me at the station in his rattling excuse for an automobile, with an excuse for Rothman’s absence, some scribbled notes in his pocket, and a hundred lousy jokes on his lips. Liebscher and Joe Miller have much in common: stale and musty corn.

Immediately upon arriving in Croyden I had paid an anonymous visit to Ashley, the attorney. Giving him a phony name and address, I pretended to consult him on a slander charge that was being threatened against me by some equally fictitious neighbors. He consumed a half hour of my time and ten dollars of my money cautiously advising me how thin a slander action was. The secretary gave me a receipt on the way out.

I left his office wondering if I had gained ten dollars’ worth of Ashley. It didn’t require the full half hour for me to realize the attorney could be guilty of anything from counterfeiting to murder-providing he had some other stronger person to lean on. Ashley was a remarkable follower, even a co-leader; I remember the afternoon when he was frightened out of his wits by my description of Evans’ death.

And the next day he was no longer afraid. Overnight his silent partner had stiffened his spine. Ashley wasn’t the man I wanted. The silent partner was the man to go after.

After leaving Ashley’s office, Liebscher had driven me south along Adams Street, pointing out various addresses he knew or frequented. Finally he turned around, heading back towards town, and parked half a block north of a small theatre.

“The gal lives in the south apartment over the theatre,” he explained. “Did I ever tell you the one about—”

I cut him off. “What gal?”

“What gal? Chum, you said pry into the lawyer’s love life; I did. The gal goes to see him. She lives there, upstairs over the movie. A Chinese gal.”

“Chinese? Are you certain?”

“I’ve seen her, haven’t I? Some relation to your dead one. She came out of the office building while you were upstairs seeing Ashley.”

“Ashley’s office building?”

“What else am I talking about?”

I didn’t know.

He had no more than shut off the motor and slumped down behind the wheel when the girl in question alighted from a streetcar and came towards us. It was then that Liebscher had pointed and said “That’s her, chum.”

I stared at her.

She was a dead ringer for Leonore; she might have been her sister. She probably was her sister. They looked to be about the same age, the same height. The eyes and hair were similar. She was as pretty as Leonore but at the same time her face suggested she knew her way around a bit more. Older sister, in all probability.

I twisted around in the seat as she went by and watched her enter a doorway leading to the apartments above the movie house. Her skirts were just trim enough to show the back of her knees.

“That reminds me,” Liebscher said, staring. “Did you hear the one about the parrot with strings tied to each leg?”

“I’m going up there,” I said to him.

“Upstairs? Suppose papa comes home?”

“You come galloping to the rescue.”

“Okay, chum. Stay alive until I get there. Don’t you want to hear about the parrot?”

“No.”

I waited perhaps two minutes longer for her to get inside and climbed the stairs. There were two apartments, the one on the north had a For Rent sign tacked to the door. I knocked on hers. I had heard no voices inside.

The Chinese girl promptly opened it. There was not so much as a flicker of recognition on her face. She was wearing a thin, white blouse and a gray skirt which fitted snugly around her hips. I decided to play dazed.

I said, “Hello, Leonore.”

Her eyes widened. There was no other visible reaction. It convinced me this was Leonore’s sister but that I had better pretend and call her Leonore. She had not answered my greeting.

“I’d like to come in and talk to you, Leonore.”

“No.”

I pretended confusion and bewilderment. “What’s the matter, Leonore? What have I done to make you act like this?”

She tumbled then and thought she understood.

“I’m not Leonore. Leonore is dead. I am her sister.”

“I know—! But I thought — I mean, of course... I’m confused... Excuse me. My name is Charles Horne. I’m from Boone.”

I watched for a reaction to that and was fully rewarded. She had heard of Mr. Horne all right; her lips and eyes said so in no uncertain terms.

“You can’t come in,” she answered tonelessly.

“Look, Le... miss: I have something for you. No, not with me, but I can get it for you.” My next statement was another trial rocket that worked. “You are... Leonore’s nearest relative. All she left were her clothes and a bracelet. I think you should have them.”

She swayed against the door with her eyes shut tight, and when she opened them again they were filled with sudden tears.

“Please,” she choked, “I...”

“I only want to talk to you for a few minutes,” I wheedled gently. “Forgive me for confusing you with Leonore. You resemble her greatly.”

I took off my hat and made a hesitant step forward. She made no move to prevent my entrance, and when I was in she softly closed the door behind me.

The apartment was in excellent taste and had obviously cost someone a lot of money. Maybe that someone got his money’s worth, I don’t know. I looked at the weeping girl and didn’t attempt a valuation.

The place was decorated in green, several shades of it. The davenport was unusual, it must have been all of seven feet in length. I envied the guy that; my feet always stuck over the end of mine. There was an ash tray at every conceivable place a man would want to sit down and all of them were spotlessly clean. Chinese prints were on the walls.

I had to begin talking sometime.

“Nice place you have here.” That was lame.

“It isn’t mine. It’s... Leonore’s.”

“May I ask your name.”

“Eleanor.”

“Call me Chuck if you like.”

“What do you want?”

She sank onto the long davenport, drying her eyes. She was pretty against the green wall. I took a chair across from her. What did I want?

What didn’t I want! I wanted everything I could possibly pump from her. I wanted the full story of all that was going on about me which I couldn’t understand. Slim chance of getting that much from Eleanor. Looking across the room at her, at her set face, her curvacious but stiffly held body, I realized it would be necessary to hand her a couple of stiff jolts to get anything from her. I wanted her confidence and why should she give that to a stranger? I thought I had a way of getting it. It might or might not be a lousy trick — but I had buried her sister, and she didn’t know where.

I’ve sunk to a new depth, Louise. Or shall we say I am once again floating at my accustomed level? I was fully prepared to trade a body for information.

What did I want?

“I’d like some information about Leonore.”

“You are a detective.” She spat that out as an accusation, not as a question.

“Yes,” I admitted cheerfully. “But that shouldn’t frighten you. It isn’t my intention to pry into your affairs. I’m interested only in Leonore.”

Lie, Mr. Horne, big fat lie.

“You are a detective,” she repeated bitterly.

“I’d particularly like to know about Leonore and Harry Evans,” I went on. She knew I was watching her but she failed to hide the tightening of her lips.

“It’s like this,” I continued in a frank, warm manner, “Evans dropped in on me in Boone and hired me for a few days. Before I could... well, you probably know he was killed?”

She nodded quickly, too quickly. Her lips said nothing; but her eyes and her actions shouted a great clamor. Her eyes were vindictive, inhumanly satisfied. Eleanor had shared Leonore’s secret. Shared her revenge.

“The cops over there,” I said, “are still hunting for a hit-and-run driver. They don’t know — yet — that that driver is... (I almost said dead and buried)... is out of their reach.”

I paused. Eleanor said, “And?”

“And I was looking for her until I met you a moment ago. After all, I was in Evans’ pay and my loyalty, if you want to call it that, was to him. At least until I found I could do no more for him. I’m well enough acquainted with Leonore to know you are telling the truth when you say you are her sister. I should have seen that right away.”

“And?” she repeated in the same old rut.

“Of course, I have no actual proof she was the driver of the car. No proof at all, nothing but little bits gathered here and there to convince me. It wouldn’t convince the police so there is no use taking it to them. There is no use going to them at all, now.”

She was going to say “And?” again but I beat her to it.

“And nothing much. My case for Evans is wound up. I had met Leonore previous to the finding of the... previous to her death. I counted myself as a sort of friend. She was nice to me.”

Eleanor glanced at me sharply, her brows drawn close. I smiled the suspicion away.

“No. Don’t take me wrong. She did me a small favor, no more. I liked her for it. I rather think she liked me in the short time we knew each other. We talked about skating, and things.” That was stretching it mighty thin but then Eleanor couldn’t know everything about her sister.

“At any rate, there the matter hangs.” I thought it about time for teasing. “I’m washed up with the Evans business. But because of our friendship I would like to do something for Leonore. I’d like to clear up in my mind the connection between her and Evans. I mean, in view of what she did.”

“Why should I tell you anything?” she countered. She seemed to take my knowledge of the hit-and-run thing calmly.

“Because I want to help her,” I emphasized. “I want this information for myself, not the police. Can’t you understand I’m doing this because I liked the girl? I’m not trying to get any money out of it.”

Eleanor leaned against the back of the davenport and folded her arms. Her head rested on the cool, green covering. She bit out five annoyed words.

“What are you talking about?”

I let her have it the hard way.

“Why — I think she was murdered. Don’t you?”

She took it the hard way. The davenport was seven feet long. I picked her up off the floor and laid her on it; there was two feet of space to spare.

Stretched out that way she didn’t seem nearly so tall as before. I took off her shoes and loosened her blouse about the neck, and then went in search of the bathroom and a wash cloth.

It was between two bedrooms and it was a shock to me. The room was entirely out of keeping with the immaculate tidiness of the rest of the apartment. His shaving supplies were scattered aimlessly over the shelf-like rear section of the sink. I looked at his safety razor, at two rusty razor blades, a partly used tube of brushless shaving cream, a bottle of lotion, a stiptic pencil, some red mouth wash, and a cellophane-wrapped toothbrush.

On a glass shelf hanging just above the bathtub was a small can of false teeth powder, a dirty hair brush and comb, an extra roll of tissue, two thin slabs that were once bars of soap, a package of bath salts for men, and a scattering of large safety pins.

The tub itself had two successive rings five and six inches high and had also been used for an ash tray. The guy smoked cork-tipped cigarettes. Dirty towels were kicked into one corner of the room and the bath mat was a crumpled mess. Another heavy deposit of cigarette ashes and a thumbed copy of a wild west magazine were on the floor near the stool.

I found a cloth in a small cabinet beneath the basin and wet it with cold water. On the way back to Eleanor I walked through to the two bedrooms and made a circling route by way of the kitchen. Only the bathroom was mussed up. Neither bed had been slept in recently and nothing in the kitchen indicated current usage.

She came out of the faint slowly but quietly. I massaged her temples with my fingertips. She liked the effect of that and lay there for several minutes without moving.

“Why did you say that?” she asked weakly. Her breasts rose and fell evenly.

“I’m sorry, Eleanor. I should have been more tactful.”

“But why did you say it?”

“Because I think it is a fact.”

“But why, why?”

“That’s what I’m hoping you will tell me. That’s why I need the information I asked you for. You know so much more about her movements, her friends, than I could ever hope to find out. You know why she drove that car.”

Eleanor opened her eyes and looked up into my face. I kept on talking.

“By that I mean you know the real reason. The coroner discovered a part of it, and told the newspaper. But you and I both know she didn’t commit suicide; you and I both know she and Evans were in love, passionately so. I found plenty of paper evidence of that. Poems he had written to her.”

“Yes — she showed me those magazines.”

“What you know and I don’t is why she drove that car — in the face of that love and that other thing.”

Eleanor closed her eyes beneath my fingers and said very, very softly, “Because he deserted her.”

“Oh, no. Evans loved her.”

Eleanor shook her head gently. “He deserted her.”

“I can’t understand that.” And I truly couldn’t. Evans wasn’t that kind of a man. “I can’t believe a man can twist off his love so suddenly. Were... were you there when he told her?”

“He didn’t tell her. He wouldn’t face her. He sent his message through someone else.”

I said “Eleanor!” so sharply she jumped.

“What’s the matter?” Her eyes were wide, frightened.

“Eleanor, how do you know he sent such a message? How do you know he refused to face her himself?”

“He sent a note. Leonore told me it was in his handwriting. She couldn’t believe it herself. He asked for the return of the bracelet.”

“Was that all?”

“No. Leonore went to see... a mutual friend. A man who knew Evans well. This man confirmed it. He said that Evans had told him about... Leonore’s condition, had asked him to break off the affair for him. The man refused. He said he told Evans he would have to stand on his own feet. Until Leonore came to him he didn’t know Evans had sent the note instead.”

“And the car?”

“Leonore had a duplicate key. After... afterwards she was frightened and went back to this friend. He put her to bed and did something with the car. Leonore didn’t stay in bed. That evening she... she...”

“Went ice skating,” I finished for her. She nodded miserably and closed her eyes. Tears crept from beneath the lids.

“And now you say...”

“And now I say I think she was murdered. Eleanor, this mutual friend can be only one of two persons. I’ve met them both. He is either Ashley, the attorney...”

I paused to watch her. She held her lips tight and kept her eyes closed. After a moment she relaxed and said “No.”

“...or he is the other gentleman who sits behind a desk in a barn. No need to mention his name.”

This time she said nothing. She had not the courage to say yes, or the desire to lie to me.

“Eleanor, can’t you see it? For some reason the big boy wanted Evans out of the way. Remember my telling you that Evans hired me as a bodyguard? He told me he expected trouble in Boone and I was to stick around to keep him out of it. In some manner he got wise to what was going on, expected the big shot to pull something pretty. Evans probably had bodyguards here in Croyden as well.

“Well, the big shot did pull a pretty one. He convinced Leonore that Evans was ditching her. That note I can’t explain. But it is the only hitch. He convinced Leonore and left the thing up to her temper. Afterwards she came to him and he put her to bed. No — I take back one thing. The note isn’t the only hitch. A doctor told me there was no trace of dope in Leonore. So why did she get out of bed and fall in the lake?”

“I think you’re wrong, wrong.”

“I don’t think so. Some of the pieces are missing, but I don’t think so. She didn’t fall in the lake. She was pushed in because she was on too hot a spot for his comfort.”

“No, no,” Eleanor objected.

“How can you say no? Doesn’t it make sense to you?”

“But he... the man... was here. With me. The papers said Leonore drowned between midnight and three o’clock. He was with me then.”

My house fell in. If that particular gentleman was in Croyden at midnight, and he could have been had he left the barn immediately after I did, he was here for the purpose of establishing an alibi. An alibi for a crime he couldn’t have committed. Oh hell, it was as mixed up as before.

“I quit, Eleanor. I can’t think straight any more. I’m going back home. I still think it was — that man. You see, he found out I had been talking with Leonore. He didn’t like it a damned bit. He was probably afraid she might have said something that I could follow up. He knows how easily I can get information out of nothing. He did something... something to cause her to fall in the lake. Leonore was the only person who could put him on a spot in regard to Evans’ death. Your evidence, my evidence, nothing but hearsay. Leonore told you this, Leonore told me that. What Leonore told you, in court, isn’t worth a damn. No one but Leonore could harm him. He hasn’t touched you, nor me, but she is dead.”

“No,” Eleanor cried bitterly, “Mr. Swisher wouldn’t do that!”

Mr. Swisher.

I got my hat and helped her off the couch. She went with me to the door.

“Eleanor,” I turned back just outside her door, “for your own safety I wouldn’t mention my visit. Not to Ashley or the big boy or anyone. Whether he was responsible or not, he didn’t like my talking to Leonore. He’ll never learn from me that I’ve been here. I suggest you keep quiet about it.”

She nodded silently. Outside in the street an auto horn beat out a shave-and-haircut tattoo.

“And one more thing. I wasn’t lying to you when I said Leonore was my friend. Did anyone tell you where she is buried?”

She shook her head, as silently.

“I ordered her funeral. I own a piece in the Boone City Cemetery. Lot 260. If you like, you can have the deed to the piece.”

“You paid for it...?”

“I did. I—” behind me the street door opened. Eleanor looked past my shoulder and her face pinched in fear.

“Quick,” I whispered. “Wipe off the tears.” She did. I listened to the footsteps coming up the stairs behind me.

“Do you folks,” I asked in a changed voice, “have the rent of this apartment? How much is it?” I pointed at the For Rent sign with a finger. She followed the finger, and fought hard to control the fear rising up in her.

“No sir,” she said gamely. “You’ll have to see the manager in the theatre, downstairs.”

“What’s it like in there?” I asked garrulously.

“I believe the door is open sir,” she told me.

I walked over to it and turned the knob. It was. I pushed it open and stepped into the empty apartment.

I said over my shoulder without turning my head, “Thanks, lady,” and partly closed the door behind me.

She waited in her door for the man coming up the steps. I walked to the center of the first empty room and stamped on the floor, testing it. Then I knuckled the plastered walls and said “ummmm” when no fine powder fell away beneath my hand.

I was well into the apartment and out of the line of sight when the newcomer reached Eleanor’s door. I heard him pat her familiarly, and they went into the apartment together, closing the door behind them. I continued my inspection of the vacant apartment without hearing a word from the other side of her door. Finally I went out and clumped down the stairs.

Liebscher met me at the street door. He was tugging at something in his pocket and the jokes were absent from his lips. When he saw me he exploded a pent-up breath.

“Brother,” he confided, “I thought you was a goner!”

Passersby turned to watch us as we sprinted for his car.

Chapter 12

Liebscher got the car out of the parking space, jockeyed around a stalled streetcar and shot towards town as fast as he dared, speed laws considering. The ramshackle appearance of his jitney belied the power under the hood.

Long ago Liebscher had developed the nervous habit of watching the street ahead with one eye while the other remained glued to the rear-vision mirror. It wasn’t a habit that made for sane driving because it was only a figure of speech; both eyes must move in unison. But under the present circumstances I was the last man in the world to complain of the habit.

We were both extremely happy to leave the neighborhood of the theatre.

“You sure put yourself in some of the damndest spots, chum,” he confided after a while. The tension had left him.

I said, “I wonder who that man was?”

“Didn’t you meet him? I saw only the back of his pants as he entered the doorway.”

“Heard him coming. Ducked into the empty.”

Traffic was better organized downtown and he swung the old car into line. After a while he suggested, “Rothman will be back in the office by now, let’s pick up some beer.”

He put the car in a twenty-five cent parking lot, told an attendant named Ollie to put it on the cuff, and we walked to the street. There was a tavern on our left. We stopped in for the beer which Liebscher paid for, and he led the way to their office, just around the corner from the tavern and up a flight of stairs.

“Convenient,” I mentioned to him.

He grinned, and because his arms were loaded, kicked the office door open.

Rothman was in. Rothman looked like a bona fide movie sleuth. He owns a derby hat he once snitched from the body of a minor gunman, and he constantly wears it, indoors and out, winter and summer. He had it on now. His theory was that the hat had brought death to its rightful owner and that therefore its mission in life was fulfilled; he could wear it with a kind of superstitious safety.

Rothman was sitting on the edge of his desk, swinging one leg. There was a limp, cold cigar in his hand.

He started the cigar to his mouth, stopped, looked at the sack Liebscher was carrying, and said, “Beer.”

“I hope so,” Liebscher retorted.

“Hello, Horne.”

“Hello. How’s the wife?”

“She talks too much.” He put the cigar in his mouth.

“Wait,” Liebscher chimed in, “until he starts talking.” Meaning me, of course. “He almost put his foot in it.” Liebscher produced a bottle opener from the desk drawer and began opening bottles.

Rothman said curiously, “Well?”

“Well what?”

“What did Evans want with you?”

“Nothing much — just bail him out of jail.”

“After what, for what?”

“After he got himself arrested for shoplifting— Now wait! Don’t throw that; I’m telling it straight.”

Rothman set the bottle down slowly.

I gave it to them, the whole story as I knew it. I told them what happened, or what I supposed had happened, in neat chronological order. Not the jumbled way the mess had at first appeared to me (for I had gotten into it in the middle of the picture), but from the beginning, from the very first reel up until the present moment.

“That sounds phony,” Liebscher cut in at one point. “Evans has a square rep around this town.” Rothman shushed him and opened another bottle of beer.

The both eyed me intently when I told them about my unexpected interview with the gambler in his office, and of driving by the lake later, and seeing the girl skating on the ice. I pointed out that I had believed Leonore when she said she was a good skater, and I will believed it. But the girl on the lake was doing a bad job of it.

Their interest changed when I mentioned Dr. Saari.

Later on, I stopped and asked Liebscher a question. “How did you know where Eleanor lived?”

“Easy. I know my way around that neighborhood. The Chinese colony — or parts of it — hangs out there. I’d previously seen this Eleanor coming out of that apartment, so I knew her when I saw her emerge from Ashley’s office building while you were upstairs talking to Ashley. I guessed she’d go home.”

“We’re running out of beer,” Rothman complained.

“My guess,” I continued, ignoring him, “is that Eleanor and her boyfriend — the man I almost met on the stairs — moved into the apartment when Evans and Leonore were no longer around to use it. There’s probably a lease, or the rent is paid well in advance, something like that.”

“We can damned soon find out. How about some more beer?” He looked at Liebscher but held out his hand to me. I put a dollar into it and Liebscher gathered up the bottles.

“No more dirt until I get back,” he warned. “Don’t want to miss nothing.” He dropped a bottle at the head of the stairs and it bounced without breaking all the way down to the street.

“That’ll remind him of a corny story,” I said.

Rothman just sat there sucking his thumb and trying to puff on the unlit cigar. From where I sat neither of them looked appetizing. Finally he broke the silence.

“There are some big holes in the story.”

“Don’t I know it! But name some — maybe they haven’t occurred to me.”

“For one thing,” he objected, sticking up a finger, “I don’t see Evans breaking off a happy love affair just because an accident occurred.”

“I’ve thought of that.”

“And two, I don’t see him writing a note or asking for the return of the bracelet. Especially the bracelet with that gimcrack engraved on it. That’s what is known as kicking a girl in the teeth after she is down.”

“Check, again. Eleanor didn’t see the note but she said it was in Evans’ handwriting.”

“Hell, it could have been forged. And three, I think Evans looked in on you for some other reason, real or imagined. He asked me for a reliable man in Boone. If he was afraid of a bastardy charge it would have been filed in Croyden; not in your town. And that wouldn’t have aroused his fear of a frame-up; that was too real. No — Leonore’s condition had nothing to do with his anxiety. His trouble was something he thought was about to happen in Boone — hence, you.”

“Yeah, but what?” My throat was dry and I wondered what was keeping Liebscher.

“I dunno,” Rothman shrugged. “And I can’t see, right now, where this Ashley fits in. Why should you phone him about Evans’ jailing? If Evans trusted him there would have been no need of those careful instructions he gave you. If he didn’t trust the attorney, why have you phone him at all?”

I stood up and walked to the window. Liebscher was coming along the sidewalk below me with another armload of beer.

“Let’s say Evans and Ashley were in some kind of business with the mutual friend,” Rothman rambled on. “The gambler friend of yours. Now suppose Evans decided to get out? Here’s this unexpected event showing up at home — I mean at Leonore’s — and he thinks the time has come to go straight; to get the hell out of his racket partnership and take care of Leonore and the kid right. But hell — where do your police fit into it? Do you have crooked cops?”

“Nope. The only man on the force I don’t trust is the chief. He swiped my license when it expired.”

“Why don’t you inquire into his background? It may be a useless pastime, but if you can find anything on him at all, you can force him to renew your license.”

Liebscher had reached the doorway to the stairs. He carefully set down his load on the bottom step and bent over to tie a shoelace.

“It strikes me,” I said over my shoulder, and idly wondering why Liebscher was wasting time with a shoelace, “that if Evans wanted to get out of something, or if the gambler wanted to get Evans out, it could be done in a friendly little family way. What’s the sense in tossing Evans into jail on a trumped-up charge? Why couldn’t — what the hell is the matter with you!”

Rothman had jumped off the desk and hurled his prized derby to the ceiling. It fell unheeded on the floor.

He was staring at me, open-mouthed.

Liebscher pushed through the door, staring at me with a queer expression on his face.

Rothman whirled on him, pointing a finger at me.

“You should have heard what this guy said,” he exclaimed. “What he just said—”

“Never mind that,” Liebscher interrupted briskly. “You should see what this guy has just done to us!”

We were all on our feet.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Take a look down into the street. In the doorway of that bakery across the street. We’ve got a shadow.”

Louise: Hazel just walked in with the lunch tray and asked for her pen back. She’s promised to let me have it a while again this afternoon.

Chapter 13

Boone, Ill.

Friday, P.M.

Dearest Louise:

Please excuse the interruption; I couldn’t help it. It seems they have regular and rigid rules around here as to when patients eat their meals and when they have rest periods. Hazel is a good nurse, but she is also damned infuriating.

To get back to Rothman and Liebscher:

Rothman said to me: “You don’t know what you’ve said? Don’t be stupid! You mentioned the one thing we’ve been trying to put our fingers on. Look, the gambler did handle the affair in a friendly, family way. Doesn’t that phrase make things click in your head?”

“There should be something—” I began doubtfully.

He kept on, “The gambler wanted to get rid of Evans. Because, maybe, Evans asked to be let out and that wouldn’t do. Not in their business, whatever it was and whatever else it embraced. The business was the kind where you simply don’t walk out. So Evans had to be taken out — safely. See?”

“No.”

“Don’t be dense, Horne. When you are mixed up in dirty things like that you simply can’t get bored and step out. You stay in until you go out the hard way... or to jail. This is a big-time gambling outfit. Suddenly Evans wanted to quit it. Probably because of Leonore. But you see, he knew all the ins and outs of the outfit. That don’t make for a long life.

“On the other hand, Evans may not have wanted to get out. He was making a good slice of dough out of it, why should he want to quit? But suppose the gambler wanted him out? Suppose they had fallen out of sorts a long time ago and the gambler was only waiting on an opportunity.

“So what? So one day he discovers that Leonore was — you know. A perfect, tailor-made opportunity.

“Build it this way: the night before the hit-and-run business this gambler got hold of Evans and pumped him full of stuff, pure stuff. He sold Evans some cock and bull story to the general effect that they were in for trouble in Boone. It doesn’t matter what it was. It could have been anything that sounded sincere, anything that sounded as though the cops were framing a rap on one or the both of them in order to hit at the gambling joint in the barn.”

“Keep going.” It sounded fairly good.

“The yarn was sincere enough to keep Evans over there all night with his ‘friend.’ Plotting all sorts of ways to beat the rap, who knows? Who cares? Point is, Evans was kept separated from Leonore.

“Meanwhile the friend sent Leonore a forged note and gave her the brush-off. He mentioned the bracelet not only because it would be the added insult to injury, but because it was the clincher. It made the note sound authentic. I have a hunch Evans gave that bracelet to Leonore as a sort of wedding ring. Now put yourself in her place. What would you do if the louse suddenly dropped you cold and demanded his ‘wedding ring’ back?”

“I’d shoot the stinker.”

“Damned right you would. You’d put a gun in your pocket, get in the car and start hunting for the guy. And if you found him in a nice position while you were behind the wheel of the car, you wouldn’t bother with the gun. Nor would you stop to ask ‘Darling, why did you do this to me?’ You’d do just what Leonore did. And you’d play right into the gambler’s hands. As Leonore did.

“She runs to him. And that evening he puts her to driving the taxi. Risky business sure, but it’s dark, and the customers probably expect to be picked up by a woman. Perhaps this sister, Eleanor, had been doing the driving but he also wanted to keep the two of them apart. So when Leonore comes to him he tells Eleanor to stay in Croyden. Leonore drives; she picks you up by mistake, and you, damned fool that you are, let the guy know she talked to you.”

I said very slowly: “That’s something that was beginning to seep in.” And I didn’t like the thought behind it.

“Don’t take it too hard, Chuck. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“How did you mean it?”

“You didn’t kill her by talking out of turn. You helped, because he couldn’t know what she had said to you, but you didn’t kill her. Look: she was a dead pigeon the minute she drove Evans’ car out to this barn, after running down Evans.

“See that? See how she upset his careful applecart? He had supposed she would come back to Croyden afterwards; or run away; or just disappear somewhere. He didn’t expect her to come running to him for a second time.”

“But if she had run away somewhere?”

“Then that would have been the last of it until if and when she was caught. Of course he would have come forth with a lawyer — Ashley, probably — and put up a beautiful, anonymous legal battle for her. Anything to sell her the idea he was on her side. Out of loyalty she would have kept her mouth shut. And no one would ever know Evans hadn’t sent the note, and that would be the end of the unpleasant business. All very slick.”

“How about the guy who actually carried the note?”

“He was told it came from Evans. After all, Evans was probably at the barn all night.

“But as it happened, things didn’t go exactly as the gambler had planned. Instead, Leonore makes the fatal mistake of going to him for help once more. She drove Evans’ car, in broad daylight, to Evans’ partner and asks him to do something. Presto, she was a dead pigeon.

“The friend helped her. He puts her to bed. He has to. He can’t turn her over to the police as the hit-and-run driver because all she has to do is open her red mouth and his house of cards comes tumbling down.

“He can’t give her a roll of bills and say, ‘Get the devil out of here, you little fool,’ because that not only would make him an accessory after the fact when she was caught, it would also tell her he, too, had turned against her. His giving her get-away money would be the only tie to bind him to Evans’ death. And out of his sight and sound, she could be made to talk.

“No, Horne, when she came running to him that second time he had to protect her to protect himself. For the time being. Which, of course, meant silencing her. And then you come stumbling along. You may or may not have advanced the time of Leonore’s death; I personally doubt it. But that night she ‘drowned.’ ”

After a long five minutes Liebscher broke the silence that held the office.

“I think he’s right, chum.”

“I think so too, now,” I seconded. “It covers just about all the exposed points.”

“I’m willing to bet money on it,” Rothman rumbled.

Liebscher turned to me, “What are we going to do with your shadow?”

The man was still lounging in the doorway across the street. He watched the doorway where Liebscher tied his laces.

“My shadow!”

“Why not? He didn’t want to follow me when I went out. Rothman and me, we live here. You’re the stranger in town. And you have been busy — not us.”

I asked if either of them recognized the man. They said they did not.

Rothman wanted to know who knew I was in Croyden.

“Only Eleanor,” I replied. “And it’s a cinch she kept her mouth shut.”

“Agreed. It wouldn’t be healthy to admit she talked to you.” Rothman had picked his hat up from the floor and set it on his head. He speared me with a frown. “Home: who knows you’re here?”

I repeated, no one but Eleanor. And Ashley, of course, had never seen me before, so he didn’t count.

Rothman shook his head, dissatisfied. “Think again. Who did you tell you were coming over here? Who, in Boone?”

“Nobody. That is... nobody...”

“Go on,” he urged curiously. “Except who?”

“The... lady doctor I mentioned. Dr. Saari. You don’t think—? Aw, that’s a crazy notion.”

“How long have you known her?”

He certainly had me there. I said, “Two or three days.” And their silence was eloquent.

Liebscher asked, “Do you know anything about her, chum? Anything that doesn’t jibe?”

Did I know anything about Elizabeth Saari that didn’t jibe? Well, yes. She was waiting for me at the train when it pulled in from Chicago; she knew I had been to Chicago. She had shown more interest in my interest in the Chinese girl than is normally expected from a doctor who helped perform the autopsy.

And Elizabeth Saari had been rather pointed in her suggestion that I stay away from Croyden. And she had had ample opportunity to frisk my office; practically admitted as much. The looked-for “mother” from Chicago hadn’t appeared.

I told them those things. To boost my crumbling defenses, I said, “Maybe the shadow came from Eleanor after all.”

Liebscher said no. “We weren’t followed, chum.” And remembering his eye habit when driving, I had to agree.

“Are you sure Ashley doesn’t know you?”

“We never set eyes on each other before in our lives. And it’s difficult to recognize a voice you’ve heard only over a long distance telephone wire.”

Rothman turned to me. “Horne, if I were you, I’d watch my step. You’re in something and you don’t know who your friends are. I’d be particularly careful about this doctor. I’d watch for any funny moves on her part.”

“She’s turned up once where I hadn’t expected her.”

“I’d see to it that she doesn’t do it again. If she does... well, I’d ask for explanations if I were you. Check up on her, anyway. She new in town?”

“Yeah. Just moved in from Chicago. Took an office across the hall from mine.”

The two detectives stared at each other across my shoulders. They were beginning to feel sorry for my lack of brightness and weren’t too careful in concealing it. Rothman jotted down her name and address on a scratch pad.

“We’ll check on her. All the way back to her school days, if necessary. And you keep your eyes open!”

“She’s a doctor,” Liebscher said idly, “and Leonore was going to have a baby.” He picked up the Croyden telephone book and leafed through it. Finally he said, “No, not here.”

“It occurs to me,” Rothman put in, “that pitting a man against his mistress, lover against lover, over a delicate thing like an unborn baby is a woman’s trick. It’s not something a gambling man would think of.”

“What’s her line of attack?” Liebscher inquired.

I could feel the burn beginning down inside my collar. It must have been higher than my collar. They saw it.

“Don’t answer that one, chum. You don’t have to.”

Rothman asked me, “Does she know about Louise?”

I said yes. Liebscher said, who’s Louise? I told him. Then he said, oh, one of those experiments, huh? Rothman suggested he shut up.

I changed the subject. “Ashley keeps bothering me. I can’t fit him into the picture.”

“Silent partner. Another one.” Rothman finally lit the chewed cigar. “You said he was scared one day and sitting pretty the next. He was scared because he suspected something like that might happen. He was sitting pretty the next day because the gambler assured him everything was taken care of. Say... just who the hell is this gambler, this mutual friend? Don’t you know his name?”

“Yeah; Eleanor told me. Didn’t I mention it? She said he is a Mr. Swisher.”

Liebscher had seated himself in a swivel chair. The chair suddenly went over backwards.

Rothman walked over to me, the cigar working furiously. He put up a brawny hand, index finger outstretched, and jammed it into my chest.

“Look, Horne, get out of this mess while the getting’s good. You’ve got your retainer fee. Now forget the business!”

“Why?” I asked in sweet innocence. “Who’s Swisher?”

Rothman pulled the cigar from his mouth and threw it on the floor. “I’m not kidding, Chuck. Get out of it!”

“But who is he?”

“Tell the dope,” Liebscher advised. “Maybe it’ll scare some sense into his skull.” He turned worriedly to the window to watch the shadow across the street.

Rothman did. Swisher was the man who “owned” Croyden. The upstairs poker rooms, the dice games, the bootleg liquor trade, the numbers and lottery rackets, the pony bookies, certain night clubs, the telegraph tickers direct from all race tracks, and the red light district.

“Yeah, chum, and some other places to boot. He’s probably starting in on Boone, right now. The gambling house first, the girl-houses later, and so on. That license of yours — that’s his warning to you. Keep your nose clean.”

“This town is his, bag and baggage, Home. You can’t buck him. Why, do you know he is the only lad ever to beat the federals?”

“How?”

Rothman shrugged. “Protection upstairs, mostly. And smart business management. It was an income tax rap. When they can’t pin anything else on a rat, they try the income tax approach. Swisher beat it. Now what do you think?”

“I think,” I thought slowly, out loud, “that I had better get to hell back to Boone and wait for another insurance case.”

“Smart boy! I think so, too. And we’re taking you to the station. Come on.”

Before we left the office, Rothman picked up the scratch sheet bearing Elizabeth Saari’s name, studied it a moment, and put a match to it. We watched it burn.

“Don’t want that on me,” he said without explanation.

“How does this Swisher get away with it?” I objected on the way down the stairs. “What holds the organization in one piece, safe from the police in Croyden and elsewhere?”

“Politics,” Rothman grunted. “How the hell do you think one party stayed in office for fifteen years? Ballotbox stuffing. And what is given in exchange for the stuffing? Protection. Some people say he runs the party, instead of the party running him. I dunno. It doesn’t make a lot of difference. He gives them the vote, they give him the city or the state on a platter.”

“I begin to see why I lost my license. And I thought the chief didn’t dare step out of line.”

“Mistake. Nobody’s okay until you look them over.”

“I also begin to see why the Boone police didn’t do everything they should have done about Evans’ death. Do you suppose the whole department...?”

“Maybe,” he grunted, “maybe not. I doubt it. Too many noses in the know isn’t a good policy. One, sometimes two men at the top can handle everything in good order. Watch the chief, don’t trust the mayor. But above all, drop this and stay clear of the matter.”

I would have, too, Louise, if I’d been given time.

The shadow left us at the railroad station. Rothman and Liebscher stayed with me until I climbed the coach steps.

“It looks good, Horne. It looks as though they wanted to see what you were up to, here. Now that you are leaving, they might be satisfied and forget it. And Home, keep clear of that woman doctor.”

My train pulled out.

There were only a few people in the coach. I flipped over the back rest of the seat in front of me and put my feet up on the opposite seat. A several days’ old newspaper was stuck between the seat and the wall. I tore out the crossword puzzle, put it in my pocket, and tried to read the daily short story.

It was called “Point of View” and told about a pair of monkeys sitting on a limb, in their cage, watching the crowd. They are watching the people and wondering what people are thinking about, while the people are wondering what they are thinking of. The author had something there.

I wondered what the conductor was thinking about as he punched tickets, and what the people were thinking as they handed him the tickets to be punched.

I wondered what Leonore had been thinking about when she got the note supposedly from Evans? Other than hatred and anger of course. What had she thought when she read the demand to return the bracelet that meant so much to her?

What was she thinking about that night on the lake, skating? What torturing thoughts had so completely blinded her that she had not seen the looming danger of the hole?

Hold on a minute. Louise, I’m not so sure that was Leonore on the lake that night.

The person I saw on the lake appeared to be a girl. The girl appeared to be a very poor skater. She might have been doped. And Leonore was not doped if I could believe Dr. Elizabeth Saari. On this particular point I could believe Dr. Elizabeth Saari because the complete autopsy report was down in black and white if I cared to read it. Therefore, the person on the ice was a poor skater, and, therefore, it was not Leonore.

Leonore may have been under the ice at that moment.

The guy who had driven me back to town had steered rather slowly along that rutted lake road. I had thought at the time he was being careful. But now, as I mentioned to Rothman earlier, I think it was because he wanted me to see the skater. He was coolly manufacturing a witness who could testify later to having seen a girl skating on the lake at midnight. When the body of Leonore turns up, the witness will naturally jump to the conclusion it had been Leonore skating.

Very clever. On another man it would have worked. On me it almost worked. Swisher’s error was that he didn’t know Leonore had previously convinced me she could skate.

What kind of a stinking rat must this Swisher be to manipulate a nasty thing like that? What kind of a man can deliberately use an unborn child as a wedge to force a couple apart, force the woman to murder the man she loves, and then casually eliminate the woman when she comes to him for help?

After a while the train stopped with a series of jerks at some way-side station. I watched a bearded old man dressed in faded overalls push a little cart alongside the train, heading for the mail car up ahead. Pretty soon he came back with one limp, dirty sack and a bundle of tightly wrapped newspapers in the cart. A few people climbed on and the train started up with a repetition of the jerks and wheezes. I went back to my newspaper.

Somebody standing in the aisle nudged my feet and said, “Give the lady the seat, fella.”

I said sure and put my feet on the floor. The man who had spoken sat down beside me. When I looked up at him he smiled in a greasy way and rammed something hard into my side, just above the hip bone.

It wasn’t hard to guess what the hard thing might be. He continued to smile and spoke in a very low voice.

“We’re getting off at the next stop, fella.”

“You’ve got the wrong man,” was my answer.

He wagged his head ever so gently.

“No we haven’t. We’re getting off at the next stop.”

The gun was in his pocket. He casually kept both hands in his pockets. Anyone sitting across the aisle couldn’t see a thing. But I could feel it. He pushed it into my side so far it actually hurt.

He had said, “Give the lady your seat, fella.”

I looked across at the lady.

Eleanor sat there, cold, hard eyes boring into mine.

I wasn’t given time to get out of the mess, Louise.

Chapter 14

The train rattled on, whistling mournfully for every crossroad. Little patches of frost clung to the edges of the dirty windows; the day was beginning to grow gray with the approach of evening.

I studied Eleanor for a long time.

There wasn’t anything readable in her face. Her eyes, other than for their calculating hardness, were just blank pieces of glistening glass set in the dark skin. She was bareheaded and wore her jet-black hair pulled tight at the nape of her neck. Sitting there so distant and aloof she reminded me very much of Leonore.

But Leonore had been warm and capable of pleasure, almost friendly to me. Leonore had the stuff to inspire dreams. In men other than me, for a fact.

At the moment and in the watchful presence of the greasy man, at least, Eleanor was no friend of mine. That observation brought a small measure of comfort. Apparently no one knew of my recent visit with her and accordingly she was under no suspicion, was still safe.

I continued to hunt for something in her eyes.

The greasy gunman turned to me.

“Y’see that brake cord up there?” He pointed to the wooden handle on the end of a rope, protruding from the forward wall of the coach.

I glanced up at it and said yeah.

Then he said, “Y’see that car out there?” And pointed to a large black sedan on the highway, pacing the train.

I turned to take it in. There wasn’t much more of a description I could give it, other than it was a large black sedan. It looked like a Cadillac and it was undoubtedly a damned fast car. There was one man in it, driving. I repeated my yeah.

Greasy continued, “Y’know we can stop this can and get th’hell outta here in a hurry?”

“Yeah.”

“And y’know I don’t givva damn whether I bump ya or not?”

“I guess so.” I shot a side look at Eleanor. She was watching the black sedan without expression.

“Okay fella. You’re wise. Na’don’t try anything funny. Be a good egg and we’ll get off at the next stop. Be stupid and we get off now — but you don’t. Get me?”

“I get you all right.”

“Y’got a ciggie, fella?”

I had to grin at the abrupt change. He was one of those trustworthy badmen who followed orders to the letter — trustworthy from his employer’s standpoint — and his imagination didn’t go much farther than the brisk, cold words that made up the orders.

I gave him a cigarette and offered the pack to Eleanor. She declined with a short jerk of her head. Greasy lit his and then held the match for me. He glanced around, noticed the little sign at the front of the car reading:

NO SMOKING IN THIS CAR

and dropped the match in his trouser cuff. We puffed in silence. I folded the newspaper and laid it in my lap. The minutes dragged by and still the sedan paced us, remaining about level with our coach.

After several miles and twice that many minutes had passed a small five- or six-year-old girl began running up and down the aisle, clutching a crinkled paper cup. About the third time she went by I noticed that Eleanor followed her with her eyes. There was almost an expression in the eyes.

Uncountable trips later the little girl suddenly stopped at our seats. She inspected the three of us and finally smiled up into Eleanor’s face, offering a timid, “Hello.”

Eleanor unbent to return the smile. “Hello.”

The child asked, “Are you going home with us?”

Eleanor replied that we were not; that we were getting off pretty soon now. On the “we” business the kid resumed her inspection of us, Greasy and me. She decided that I was all right and gave me the flashing smile. My seat companion got no more than a careful, disapproving scrutiny — not that it bothered him any. He continued to smoke, flicking off the hot ashes in the palm of his hand.

The kid noticed that and stared at him once more, round-eyed. Then she turned to Eleanor.

“I’m going home to see my daddy. Is he your daddy?”

Eleanor said no, we were just friends. I thought she stressed the “friends” ever so slightly for my benefit, but I couldn’t be sure.

The girl asked, “Why don’t he put the ashes down?”

“He doesn’t want to get the floor dirty.”

“Well what’s he going to do with them then?”

Eleanor suggested, “Show her, Paul.”

Paul obligingly tipped his hand and emptied the ashes into the cuff of his trousers. The little girl studied the cuff and abruptly sped off down the aisle. I thought that would be the last of her, but she was back in less than a minute with another paper cup.

“He can put them in this.” She handed the cup to Eleanor who passed it to greasy Paul. Paul dumped the ashes out of his cuff into the cup, fingered around for the match a moment, and threw that in too. I wondered if greasy Paul was always so thoughtful of the floor. Any floor. If he was, he certainly wasn’t the sloppy gent who had messed up Eleanor’s bathroom.

Eleanor thanked the child and she sped off down the aisle. She passed back and forth several times after that but she didn’t stop. Eleanor watched her, smiling and amused.

The train began to slow its speed. The conductor opened the door behind us to shout the meaningless name of a town ending in “—field. This way out.”

I stamped cut my cigarette and glanced at Eleanor. She was inspecting her face in a small mirror.

Paul nudged my liver with the pocketed gun.

“This is th’place, fella.”

He stood up and stepped out into the aisle. Eleanor followed him. The newspaper fell from my lap as I stood up and I kicked it under the seat. The man and woman stood about two feet apart, waiting. I was supposed to get in between them.

Paul ordered, “Follow her.”

I did. He brought up a close rear, crowding me forward against Eleanor.

The engine began its reliable jerking routine, preparing to stop. The first jerk caught Eleanor off guard and threw her back against me. She fell against my chest and I put up my hands to steady her. Her body seemed tense and she quivered to my touch. She grabbed the seat handles on either side and regained her balance. I followed to the end of the car.

The child and her mother were occupying an end seat. As we went past the kid looked at Eleanor and said goodbye. Eleanor returned it. On an impulse, I did too. The kid waved. We went through the door and down the metal steps. The cold wind smacked me in the face.

According to the dingy, painted sign over the small station this whistle-stop was Pleasantfield. East of the Mississippi people live in pleasant-sounding places. West of the river however they are more honest.

The sedan had pulled up behind the station. If it were not for the snow and the cold there would have been a handful of Pleasantfield loafers on hand to watch the train go by. And so see me get in the sedan. I wondered if the little girl was watching us through the train window.

I also wondered if it would be a hole in the ice for me. I was no skater, either. At least I would find out how it had been done — the hole in the ice business I mean. Was it a tap on the side of the head, a dazed moment while the skates were fastened on, and the plunge into the water? It would be a light tap — I had to stay alive to swallow water. For a few minutes.

The Chinese girl settled herself in the front seat beside the driver and threw back her coat. It was warm in the car. Paul put himself in the rear seat with me, sitting back in one corner, half-turned, facing me. The gun was out of his pocket. It was a blue Colt automatic. He handled it in a curious way: he let it lie in the flat of his hand and he held his hand sideways, palm and gun up. I saw that his index finger was missing, he used his long finger on the trigger.

The moment the sedan pulled away from the station I sensed a change in attitudes. No one said anything; no one had to. It was in all our thoughts. We no longer were the traveling companions we had been for the benefit of the train passengers. There was no one else around to see, no need to keep up a pretense. I was definitely and openly on the short end of the stick.

The man behind the wheel drove back to the highway and turned west. We rapidly overtook the train and in minutes it was far behind. The driver pulled a wrinkled pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and gave them to Eleanor with an unintelligible grunt. She put three between her lips and lit them, after which she placed one in the driver’s mouth, handed one to Paul and kept the last for herself. Then she put the pack in the coat pocket. I gazed out the window and watched the snow banks zip by.

We drove perhaps ten to twelve miles without a word being said. Abruptly the driver glanced at Eleanor and grunted, “Now.”

She held out her hand to Greasy and he gave her the Colt automatic. She handled it the right way, with a bead on the bridge of my nose. The eyes behind the gun were cold and hard once more. I sat without moving.

Paul said to me, “C’mere,” and yanked a long white scarf from a side pocket of the car. He wrapped the scarf tightly around my head and face, covering my eyes and nose. When he finished I had to breathe through my mouth if I wanted to breathe at all. And I did. It wasn’t easy.

The driver grunted a question. Paul struck a match. I felt myself growing panicky and gulped in a great mouthful of air. The heat of the match was near my lips. There was a moment’s silence.

Then Paul answered, “Okay.”

The sedan whirled sharply and sped down a gravel road, the tires throwing up tiny rocks against the underside of the car. I had fallen over against the greasy gunman and he pushed me upright.

The road curved several times in long easy glides; at other times the driver would make sharp turns around the square corners common to country crossroads. He was robbing me of my sense of direction and doing a good job of it. The pace was kept up for the better part of ten or fifteen minutes and then the sedan straightened out and leaped ahead. After that there was only the natural, slow curves of the roads.

Someone in the front seat, and I guessed it was Eleanor, turned on the car radio. It was set at a Croyden station which came in strong. She listened to some dance music interspersed with inane commercials until the end of the fifteen minute program and then just played around over the dial to see what could be found. Her choice finally settled on some soft chamber music out of Chicago.

The car dipped down a shallow incline and the radio completely blanked out for a few seconds. It came in again as we sped up the other side of the incline.

I puzzled over that.

Suddenly I remembered the obvious answer. We had passed under a solid bridge. There is a huge, cement railroad bridge just outside Boone that knocks out automobile radios like that. A two-lane highway dips underneath while a couple of railroads pass overhead. Radio waves don’t follow the cars under the bridge.

The one we had just passed under was not the one on the outskirts of Boone. I didn’t know where it was but it could be found again in a hurry, if need be, by simply following the railroad lines between Boone and Croyden. With Pleasantfield not too far in the background.

It was funny to think of their elaborate safety precautions being tossed to the winds by a little quirk like that.

The car slowed to a crawl, turned sharply to the left, and the gravel road was behind us. Outside a barking dog bounded alongside the sedan. In short minutes we stopped.

Paul took my arm, “C’mon.”

I stumbled out into the snow; the dog sniffed at my feet. Eleanor took my other arm to guide me along a brick wall, digging strong fingers into my wrist that might have been a message of some kind. The dog stayed close to my heels.

Paul instructed, “Four steps up.”

We went up. A door opened, let us through, and closed again behind us. A spring lock snapped.

Eleanor said, “Pull the blinds.”

Somebody answered, “Aw, the shutters are closed.”

“Pull the blinds!” she snapped.

They were pulled, three of them. The white scarf was unwound from around my head and the first thing I did was to suck in great gobs of air — through my nose. It was like coming out from under a blanket.

I was in a room. That’s all, an ordinary room with old wallpaper. There was an enameled-top table, plain chairs, an old fashioned cook stove such as advertised in mail-order catalogues, a tall cabinet, and a white pail of water.

Eleanor and three men stood around me: Paul, the driver, and a stranger. The stranger examined me.

“He don’t look so tough,” was his opinion.

Eleanor told him, “You go back with the car.”

The guy squinted at her in disbelief. The farmhouse kitchen was quiet; we were all waiting to see if the man would do as Eleanor ordered. Outside the locked door I heard the dog sniffing at the crack.

The man stared at me and turned to Eleanor.

“No kiddin’? Don’t I get to stay and—?”

Negative waggle from Eleanor. “You go back.”

That disappointed him no end. I could read easily enough what was on his mind. He wanted to stay and play with me. He stood there a moment, not in hesitation but in open frustration, and then walked into the next room. When he returned he was dressed for outdoors. Without anything more, he and the driver walked out to the car, clicking the lock behind them. We listened to the big car fade away in the distance, accompanied by the excited barking of the dog. Afterwards the dog came back.

Paul asked, “D’ya hear that dog?”

I said my usual yeah.

He showed me the Colt. “D’ya see this?”

Again yeah.

“Stay wise, fella. Y’been okay so far.”

I got a drink of water from the pail and sat down to prop my feet on the rungs of another chair. I let my overcoat fall over the back of the chair, and kept my hat on.

Eleanor went into the other room, removed her coat, and came back to hold the gun while Paul stepped outside. He returned with an armload of wood. The woodbox was behind the stove. He tossed his clothes into the next room and looked at Eleanor.

“I’m hungry.”

She nodded and moved to the cabinet. There were dishes as well as groceries in it. I set the table while she fixed supper. Paul watched me in open amazement. I stole a glance at Eleanor. She was grinning.

She made good griddle cakes, fried bacon and eggs, and filled an oversized coffee pot nearly full. I discovered a quart jar of home-canned peaches in the bottom of the cabinet and suggested we have them for dessert. Eleanor was a swell cook.

At first they decided that one of them should watch me while the other ate — Paul eating first, of course. I laughed at them and assured them it was a damn fool idea; I was hungry too and intended to eat. Just eat. I sat down and started in on the cakes. They watched me in hesitation for a few minutes and gave up. Paul kept the gun by his plate. He ate as though my touching the dishes had poisoned them.

For a long time after supper nothing happened. They seemed to be waiting for something or somebody.

I helped Eleanor with the dishes while the greasy gunman sat across the kitchen and sneered. I think it embarrassed him to see me doing that. He was beginning to have vague ideas as to what constituted courtesy, or just plain helpfulness, and didn’t quite know what to do about it.

Later on the three of us played poker with kitchen matches because Eleanor had no money with her. At first it had been a two-handed game but the natural gambler in Paul could stand only so much temptation, and he joined in.

“Y’seem to be taking this easy,” he commented.

“Why not?” I shrugged. “I can’t help it.”

“Y’coulda kept your nose clean.”

Eleanor flashed him a warning glance.

He couldn’t resist a parting lick, “The chair yu’sittin’ on ain’t so damned cold!”

Eleanor frowned openly. Paul subsided with a grimace that said he knew better. We played poker.

About nine o’clock I wanted to go outside and put on my coat. Paul followed me without his. The dog sat on the porch and glared at me. I said, Hi, pooch, and pooch growled.

The countryside was beautiful at night with untracked snow stretching across the fields, reflecting the moon. To me it was just another farm. A row of gently moving evergreens framed what must have been the north side of the house. Not too far off was a red barn looking black under the moonlight, a corncrib, and a tool shed. There were no cattle and but for us, the place seemed deserted.

“C’mon,” Paul insisted. “I’m gettin’ cold.”

We went back up the brick walk. As we climbed the steps a telephone jangled inside. Paul shoved me through the door in his eagerness to get inside. Eleanor was out of sight.

She came back into the kitchen and looked at us strangely.

“Well?” Paul demanded.

Eleanor shook her head. “I don’t quite understand.”

“C’mon, give! Do we or don’t we?”

“No, Paul. The boss said no.”

“No?” He was incredulous. “What th’hell do we do?”

Eleanor indicated me, “Just once over lightly.”

The boss had said no. The meaning was clear.

Paul was still behind me. His knotted fist caught me across the side of my head. I went to my knees under the staggering blow, a thick darkness struggling to erase my eyesight. I hadn’t expected him to move so quick or to strike from behind. He did both. The words were hardly out of her mouth. I tried to spin away from him, using my knees as pivots. He waited until I was broadside to him, and a blunt, powerful kick in the ribs knocked me to the linoleum floor.

I rolled to the wall away from the stove and tried to claw my way upright. His next blow came in the back of the legs and knocked me down again. He was close. I went over backwards from my half-standing position, my head knocking him in the stomach he was so close. He jumped back as I fell, one hand clutched to his stomach.

Eleanor had reached for the kitchen table and was pulling it across the room, out of the way. She held the gun. My bosom buddy, Eleanor. For me she would gladly hold my coat.

I tried to get out of my overcoat and stopped in midthought. It would be added protection from the rib blows. They could stand only so much. Paul was coming in again, swinging his foot.

I reached up with both hands, caught it and twisted it savagely. He went to the floor, howling and cursing me as he fell. His body was heavy and solid and the old house shook when he hit. I held on to the foot and tried to twist it the other way when his fall straightened it out again. Too late I remembered he had a second foot. It caught me full in the face, the hard heel smashing against my mouth.

Outside the dog was howling madly.

Paul wriggled free and tried to get to his feet. I braced myself on my hands, found blood on the floor beneath them, and as he stood upright, threw myself at his legs. He went over backwards.

Paul’s head struck the kitchen wall. His clubbed fists were swinging in long arcs, trying to reach me. I fell on top of him and began pounding his face.

Eleanor let me get in two licks. Exactly two.

I had forgotten Eleanor, forgotten that she held a gun. Until its handle whacked me on the back of my head, just above the hairline. There was blood in my mouth, blood and shirt buttons. I couldn’t account for the buttons.

And then there was nothing.

I’ll write again, tomorrow, Louise. Now I’m supposed to go to sleep.

Chapter 15

Boone, Ill.

Saturday, A.M.

Dear Louise:

My second day in the hospital. I tried to get out of here last night with very little luck.

About midnight I had crawled out of bed, found my clothes in the closet, and put them on. I tiptoed downstairs with the intention of leaving by the doctor’s entrance. But I reckoned without the night-owlish tendencies of a headnurse.

“May I ask where you’re going?” She stood between me and the door.

“Out to catch a streetcar,” I snapped at her. “My wife has decided not to have the baby tonight. So I may as well go home.”

“I think not, Mr. Horne. There is no Mrs. Horne in the maternity ward at the present time, nor are there any unwed mothers. Are you returning to your room now?”

“Yes, mam,” I said. The price of fame, I suppose.

I’m a wiser man this morning. I know a safe and sure way to get out, tonight.

Eleanor had hit me with that gun butt, damn her soul. And then there had been nothing.

For a long time there was nothing. Nothing, like the stark, empty blackness of night skies on a barren planet; nothing, like the confining hollowness of a covered grave.

The first thing that came out of the empty nothingness was a painful buzzing. A buzzing by a solitary fly trapped in that coffin in a covered grave. The fly wanted out and couldn’t get out — ever.

The buzzing changed; it didn’t stop, but it changed pitch with a suddenly cold and refreshing wetness. I pushed myself up on one weak arm and looked down at the white light playing on the snow I was lying in. I realized only that it was a light, and it was snow, and fell face forward again. It was wet and cold and good on my face.

Above the buzzing a woman’s voice spoke to someone.

“Get up.”

She wasn’t talking to me, she couldn’t be talking to me. I didn’t want to get up; couldn’t she see that? I wanted to lie there and push my face deeper and deeper into the good, cold snow. It was wet and came up between my lips.

The voice spoke again.

“Please — get up!”

Who was she talking to?

“Please, Chuck! Get up from there.”

I don’t want to get up I said to the woman’s voice, I don’t want to get up, I don’t want to get up.

The woman picked up my arm and twisted it. The pain shot to my finger-tips and the buzzing changed pitch again. Damn you Eleanor, I don’t want to get up. Let me alone.

My arm was warm against the cold snow; the buzzing stopped, the pain stopped.

They were replaced by a smell. The smell was good and it was bad. It smelled like something I knew. A jail. It smelled like a jail — no, not quite. It was a different smell from a jail, a different kind of lysol. It didn’t smell like lysol at all now, now that I had thought of lysol. It smelled like ether. Ether and flowers.

The flowers were roses, a big bunch of them, and they were very pink roses placed in a very white vase. Beyond them was a window with snow on the sill and on either side of the window was a very pale green wall. All of the colors seemed rich and smooth and quiet as if they had been put there for me to look at when I opened my eyes. The very pink roses contrasted with the very pale green wall.

And on the left side of the bed was a small white table, a dresser, two chairs and a door. The door was standing open a few inches and through the opening came the clack-clack of fast heels on the marble floor of the corridor. Clacking heels accompanied by flashing glimpses of white. And everything smelled like ether and roses.

I looked back to the little table standing beside the bed. There was a water glass on it, upside down, a pitcher, a folded towel, and a small white card propped against the glass. The card was too far away to reveal the printing on it, but it seemed familiar. I reached for it but my left arm wouldn’t move.

I looked down to see why and saw the plaster cast. It began just below the elbow and ended just past the wrist, leaving a part of my palm and the fingers free. I wiggled them. Fractured or broken wrist, I guessed. So I reached for the card with my other hand.

It was a duplicate of the card I had found propped up between the typewriter keys. On the back Elizabeth Saari had written in brown ink:

“Send for me immediately, Chuck.”

I put the card back where I had found it and lay down to think.

Mother Hubbard came to mind first. Mother Hubbard would have worried about me when I didn’t get home last night. You know how she fusses around, Louise. An old hen with one chick. I’m the chick. She’d like for you to give up your job and come back to town so there’d be two chicks. I wondered which would worry her the less: to call her and tell her where I was, or not to do anything and let her think I was out chasing around somewhere.

There and then is when I tried to scratch my head. It was wrapped up. My friend, Eleanor.

Eleanor’s name brought other things to mind. There had been a fuzzy something about wet snow, and a buzzing fly, and Eleanor telling me to get up.

The buzzing fly must have been my buzzing skull and my imagination. Wet snow, and a stinging arm. The plaster cast explained the arm. I suppose I fell on it, or twisted it when I fell. In wet snow. I must have stumbled out of the farm house and fallen in the snow. Or was pushed.

But the dog? He would have been on me if I had gotten out of the house. He wouldn’t have just bitten my wrist and walked away; the dog would have gone for my throat.

So I was pushed, and not from the farmhouse porch. I was pushed from a car after I had been carried away from the farm. Packed in the Cadillac, hauled off a long distance down the road, and dumped out. Why? Why was I still around to think about it?

Because Eleanor had received a telephone call and the message hadn’t been the one for which she and Paul were waiting. That was only too apparent. Instead of being killed outright — as they were expecting — the message had ordered a “once over lightly.” Afterwards, I was dumped in a ditch.

And then Eleanor had said—

But Eleanor couldn’t have said anything. Eleanor couldn’t be there, in the ditch. She had either remained at the farmhouse or gone on with the car. She wouldn’t have gotten out to stay there with me, begging me to get up.

I turned to look at the card propped against the water glass. Dr. Saari’s card.

There was a flash of starched white at my door. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the heels. The flash of white came in and gave me the conventional hospital smile from an attractive face. The starch in the white camouflaged the probably attractive figure that belonged to the face.

“Good morning,” she said cheerily. “How do you feel?”

“With my fingers. What’s your name?”

“Bartlett. Do you feel better now?”

“Bartlett what? I’m doing all right. When do I get out of here?”

“Hazel Bartlett. I’m glad to hear it. We’ll have to ask the doctor.” She puttered around with the bedclothes, doing nothing constructive. Then she asked me, “Do you want anything from the closet?”

“No. Unless there’s a drink hidden there.”

She hadn’t of course but she pretended it was a very funny thing for me to say. And she zipped away. I followed her heels down the corridor until they stopped. I heard her give a number and call Dr. Saari by name. Her voice dropped. Then she hung up and the heels faded away altogether.

Pretty soon she was back with a large shot glass of colored liquid. She smiled a genuine smile and held it out to me.

“The doctor says you may have this.”

“What is it?”

“Taste it and see.”

I sniffed it first. It was bourbon. I drank it. It was fine bourbon.

“You’re a good girl, Hazel. I want you for my nurse the next time I check in here.”

“You and a thousand others. The doctor asked me if you had requested anything.”

“The doctor is good to me in my old age. Now I’d like to make another request.”

She studied me carefully before answering. “What is it?”

“See who sent those roses.”

I couldn’t be sure but I think I disappointed her. She walked around the bed and over to the vase to glance at the little tag that had accompanied the flowers.

The tag read “Louise.” Thank you, baby, again.

The doctor arrived about half an hour later. When she came in her cheeks were still pink from the wintry air; her bedside manner gave me the impression that the visit was partly professional and partly personal. She made no attempt to disguise her delight in finding me looking so well.

“Well, hello,” she laughed. “How’s the slick sleuth this morning?”

“If that’s irony, it’s lost.”

“Chuck—” She pulled up a chair and sat down very close to the bed. Her forefinger traced a vague pattern on the blanket. “Chuck, what happened?”

“You don’t know?” I watched her face.

“Oh, I don’t mean this.” The forefinger pointed to the bandage on my head and the cast on my lower arm. “But what happened to you?”

I had to admit it, “I didn’t take good advice. When I finally realized what excellent advice it was, it was too late.”

“I found you, you know,” she said.

“No. I didn’t know, but I had guessed. I rather thought it would be you. Rather convenient, eh?” She either missed the point or pretended to.

“It most certainly was. Your car was perhaps half, or three-quarters of a mile ahead of mine. I saw them stop and toss something into the ditch. I have to admit to my curiosity, Chuck; I’m from Chicago, remember. The newspapers make you aware of such things. When I reached the spot I turned my spotlight on the something — it was you.”

“And then?”

“I got out of my car and ran to you. I tried to make you get up, but you were a dead weight. Your head was bleeding. I took your arm to help you up and you screamed. That made me suspect a fracture. I returned to my car, got my bag, and made an injection. In a few minutes you were peacefully asleep.”

How much of her story could be accepted at face value? How could I know someone else hadn’t helped her put me in her car, after she put me to sleep?

I said, “I must have been heavy.”

“I didn’t think I was ever going to get you into the car. It required a long time.”

“And my wrist is fractured?”

“Yes. You fell on it.”

“Tough luck. That’s my gun hand.”

She thought a moment. “I saw you writing with your right hand.”

I nodded. “I’m ambidextrous. I learned to use a gun with my left at a time when my right arm was in a sling. I’ve never changed.”

“You’re not going to use it for a while. Several weeks, anyway.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. Damned unfortunate it had to be my left I fell on.” I changed the subject back to something that interested me more, and watched for a reaction. “What were you doing on that road?”

There was no hesitation. “I was on my way back to town. I’d made a call on a patient. Lucky for you the woman lived on that same road.”

“Yeah, wasn’t it. I might have bled to death.”

She shook her head. “The blood was already beginning to congeal. You would have frozen to death. That gash on your head looked like the well-known blunt instrument.”

“A gun butt.”

Her eyes widened. She said nothing for several seconds but she was thinking of the advice she had given me not to go to Croyden, and obviously wishing I had heeded her. Then she saw the roses.

She didn’t get up and walk over to inspect them, not then. Instead, she asked, “Chuck, who is Eleanor?”

I frowned. “Eleanor?” Stalling for time. I still didn’t want to betray Eleanor, despite her dirty work.

“Yes, Eleanor. You called me Eleanor when I picked you up.”

“Oh, Eleanor is the... a girl I know.”

“Eleanor is the what?”

“Is the perfect type of American beauty.”

Annoyed, she arose from the chair and sauntered over to the vase of roses. She read the tag.

“That reminds me: there is some mail in your office from the lady. Shall I bring it out this afternoon?”

“I’d appreciate it.” So she was still hanging around my office. Dr. Saari stood there by the roses, absently. Her long fingers pressed a flower gently to her cheek.

“Chuck—” and she walked back to stand beside the bed, “are you going to be a good boy and stop playing with fire?”

“Who,” I asked, startled, “Louise?”

“No, silly. I’m speaking of this nasty business.”

“I don’t know,” I replied warily. “Sometimes I’m in the mood to forget the whole affair and settle down to raise chickens for a living. And then again, something like this happens and I get mad all over again.”

“And you are angry now?”

“Would you let anyone do this to you?”

“N...o.”

“Then I’m mad.”

“I see. Well, Chuck, I’ve warned you twice.”

Yes, she had. Once in my office, and again just now.

Dr. Saari fiddled around for some useless minutes and made ready to leave. I asked her to send in the nurse as she went by the desk. Her good-bye was ineffective.

Hazel bubbled in with the same old hospital smile and started for the closet without a word. I stopped her.

“Not that. I want to send a couple of telegrams. You phone them in for me.”

She searched in the drawers of the dresser for paper and waited. I dictated that wire to you, and a second one to Rothman. I told Rothman where I was, but that I was doing okay, and to keep his eye on Eleanor.

Hazel asked eagerly, “You’re the detective, aren’t you?”

“The detective?”

“Boone has only one. The girls have been talking about you. I’m sorry, Mr. Horne, but you’ll have to pay for these in advance. Hospital rules.”

I paid for them. And questioned her.

“How old are you, Hazel?”

“Mr. Home!”

“No, I mean it. Are you old enough to vote?”

“I certainly am. I voted in the last elections.”

“Have you heard of a man named Don Thompson?”

“Oh, yes! He’s handsome. I voted for him. I had to scratch my ballot, but I wanted to, for him.”

“That’s what I thought, but I wanted to make sure.” A lot of people in Boone County scratched their ballots and put Thompson into office. That’s the kind of a man he was; his personality and ability outweighed the opposite machine. “Will you phone him for me, Hazel?”

“I’d love to. What shall I say?”

“Tell him what you know about the circumstances of my being here. Tell him that I want to talk to him, this afternoon, if he can make it.”

She smiled in obvious pleasure and clacked out.

Rothman should have my message in an hour or less. In a matter of minutes if the wires were clear. I hoped they were. I hoped my telegram would reach him before Elizabeth Saari could reach someone else in Croyden.

I was plenty sore at Eleanor for the part she had played in putting me in the hospital, but not so sore and so callous as to sit idly by and see her murdered. Because I had made the mistake of calling her by name while lying in that ditch.

The State’s Attorney came in late yesterday afternoon, just as somebody’s radio across the corridor was about to drive me nuts with the ninth or tenth consecutive hillbilly program.

Donny Thompson stopped in the doorway in some surprise and checked me carefully from head to foot. Or what he could see of me above the covers. He held himself straight and tall, causing his suit to fit him as his tailor had intended. And then he casually closed the door behind him and pulled a chair close to the bed. When he sat down he kept his upright bearing. His expression wasn’t anything to make a patient happy.

“Just what was it you finally decided to tell me?”

“You know something,” I accused him.

“You’re damned right I know something. I would have been here sooner if I hadn’t been out of town. Horne, I’m not the blamed fool most people in this city take me for.

“I know which side my bread is buttered on. I know how I got into office and I know how I’ll get in next time unless I rub someone the wrong way — make them want to keep me out. But I’m not altogether a damned fool. And I’m peculiar enough to want to obey my oath of office.”

I started in cautiously, “Well, I got a few things I’d like to talk over with you. But I can’t tell you everything I’d like to tell you — it involves confidences.”

Thompson stared at me without moving.

“You think I’m a fool, too, don’t you? Don’t deny it. You can’t play poker. Your face gives you away.”

“But I tell you there are some professional confidences involved. I’m not in the habit of breaking promises.”

“Let it be for a moment. Let me tell you something first. Something that may help you to see your way clear to help me.

“Horne, despite what that crowd in the sheriff’s office may appear to believe, I don’t regard it as simply an ironic coincidence that Evans was killed by his own car.”

“You don’t?”

“Nor do I regard it as simply an ironic coincidence that a girl drove the car, and that Evans was known to have a mistress who now is missing.”

“Go on.”

“Nor do I regard it as simply an ironic coincidence that a dead Chinese girl is pulled out of the lake, and that a private detective attends the autopsy, and that the said private detective was temporarily in the employ of the late Harry Evans.”

“Mister,” I cut in, “you are getting warm.”

“I am warmer than that. I know that a certain gambler uses a supposedly abandoned bam on the outskirts of town as a place of amusement. I know that he is protected, and by whom. I know that I can’t and don’t dare touch him unless I have enough to explode his protection as well.”

“Do you... have enough, I mean?”

“No. Not quite enough. Not yet.”

“I haven’t either. I’m sorry I can’t help you, but that’s the truth.”

“I can wait.” He had the patience to wait a long time. “But there is more: I know that this gambler has been transporting his patrons to and from the place of amusement via private taxi system which, up until a couple of nights ago, was operated by one or more Chinese drivers. Girls.”

I cut in. “There were only two of them, I think. Sisters. And one sister — the one in the lake — was brand new at the job. It may have been her first or second trip.”

There was something behind his eyes that said he knew I had been keeping something from him, but he went on.

“I also know that since the body was found in the lake, the other Chinese girl (or girls, if there were more than one) has disappeared from the taxis.

“I know that a private detective has thoroughly checked into the pasts of his late employer, Harry W. Evans; of his late employer’s late mistress, a girl named Leonore; and his late employer’s very much present partner, a colorful gambler who calls himself Raymond A. Swisher.

“I know that the private detective has been rather indiscreet in his relations with someone in a position to do him harm, and as a result has lost his license for thirty days.”

“You know a lot,” I told him admiringly.

“I daresay,” he answered pointedly, “the private detective has found other interesting things of which I know nothing. I am hoping he’ll tell me.”

Well, why not, Louise? He had me squarely on the nailhead and he could bang down the hammer any time he chose. And he darned near knew as much about the whole business as I did. Probably more. It quickly occurred to me that the State’s Attorney was a good poker player. He hadn’t told me everything yet — he was holding the kicker until I laid down my hand.

I had an aching desire to find out what that kicker would be. So I began at the beginning, from the moment Harry Evans walked into my office looking like the uncle in Utah, and repeated the whole story. The whole and complete story, holding back nothing, and bringing him up to date as of the moment. I seem to be telling that story pretty often these past few days.

As I unfolded it to him I watched his face, hoping to see behind the poker mask. The mask failed to reveal how much of it was new to his ears. He just sat there, unmoving, not revealing anything until I had finished. And then he sighed.

“So you’re the man who cost Uncle Jack his job.” Uncle Jack was the colored porter at the City Hall, the man I used as a contact. “My one trustworthy man in the City Hall.”

“What! I didn’t know Uncle Jack was out.” I tried to sit up but he pushed me back.

Thompson nodded. “This morning. Somebody found liquor in his broom closet. He was fired for drinking on the job.”

“Uncle Jack doesn’t drink,” I said indignantly.

“I know that.” He raised his eyes to stare out the window. “But someone found out that you and I had been using him.”

“Of all the raw deals! I’ll get him another job.”

“I already have. It may have been my fault, not yours.” He lapsed into silence. I saw no reason to break it, and waited for the kicker I knew was coming.

After a while it came.

“What you’ve found out and what I’ve found out pretty well coincide. I merely duplicated your trail. Except of course for this or that little detail the other didn’t think of. I, for instance, didn’t think of the hobby angle. The Chicago kid who prints magazines.”

“You leading up to something?” I challenged him.

“Yes. Such as the water content in the dead girl’s stomach.”

I shot upright. My head spun and little colored specks swam before my eyes. Here was the kicker coming out of his sleeve.

“I had the contents analyzed,” he continued tonelessly. “She didn’t drown in the lake.”

“No?”

“No. It was chemically treated water such as comes from city taps. From Boone’s purification system.”

More later, Louise.

Chapter 16

Boone, Ill.

Sunday, A.M.

Louise, Dearest:

As I told you, Thompson spent a couple of hours with me Friday afternoon, and returned to the hospital again yesterday morning. Friday afternoon he was full of ideas and wanted to test them on someone. I had a few of my own and he promised to look into them.

His ace-in-the-hole had knocked the breath out of me. I fell back in bed, banging my head as I did so. If Leonore hadn’t drowned in the lake... then where?

I asked Thompson, “Say, just who do you trust around here?”

He held up one hand with five fingers spread.

“My wife,” he said. “She’s also my secretary. There is no one else around I can safely leave in charge of the office. Two, there’s Uncle Jack. Three, Mayor Yancey — he’s the opposition but he’s a good scout. Four, Doc Burbee, the coroner. He gets into office the same way I do. And...”

He paused. I fidgeted.

He finally added, “I guess you make the fifth.”

“Thanks.”

Hazel the starched nurse clattered in on her usual swift heels. She held a yellow envelope in her hand and paused to smile shyly at Thompson before giving it to me. I introduced them and demanded the telegram.

It was from Rothman and contained bad news.

It told me that Eleanor had vanished without a trace; but that the Croyden police and Coast Guard detachment were dragging the river for a woman’s body reported sighted by a fisherman. And it gave me hell for getting into trouble.

I gave it to Thompson to read. He did, stood up, took a quick turn about the room, sat down and read it again. And then he swore. Hazel stared at him in surprise. Prudently, she left the room.

“I believe,” Thompson stated flatly, “that in view of what you’ve told me, I had better investigate Dr. Saari.” I agreed with him in a halfhearted manner. He continued, “But I don’t understand why Eleanor wasn’t touched until today! Why not yesterday, after you had talked to her? Why not last night, at the farmhouse? She was still in their good graces.”

“Elizabeth Saari,” I reminded him, “didn’t know I knew Eleanor until I spoke her name, there in the ditch.”

“That’s right. I wonder if we can find that farmhouse? Your description of the ride ought to help.”

“Find out who rented their telephone.”

“Easy. It will be a completely mythical character named Jackson Bristol. He doesn’t exist. They use that name for a phone in the barn, to lease that part of the lake grounds, and a phone in the cottage. But Bristol doesn’t exist.”

“Just somebody who hangs around there during the day to keep an eye on the place?”

“That’s right. I daresay several thousand dollars’ worth of gambling equipment and liquor is housed in that barn. They need a watchman. It gives me such a feeling of utter futility to know all this, and yet not be able to close up the place. Or to hang something on Swisher that would stick.”

“If we could find Leonore’s fingerprints someplace—”

“I’ve thought of that. Such as in the caretaker’s cottage. Circumstantial evidence would prove she met her death there and was carried to the lake. It could have happened there as easily as any place else. But first, upon what pretext could I gain entrance? And second, are they foolish enough to leave fingerprints lying around?”

I said, “I don’t think so. But I could get in where you couldn’t. I don’t need a warrant.”

Thompson looked at me. “That would be breaking and entering.”

“Yes, wouldn’t it,” I agreed. “If I was caught I’d probably lose my license... the one I’ve already lost.”

“Think again, Horne. You’d lose more than that.”

“You mean my neck?”

He meant just that. To be found there would put me much, much too close to Swisher for comfort. Nevertheless I decided to go out there as soon as I could. I said nothing to Thompson about my decision.

That was late Friday afternoon. That night I tried to make a graceful exit from the hospital and was foiled. Saturday morning Don Thompson came back again.

He began on me by thinking out loud:

“Our trouble is this: you know and I know who’s behind it. We are pretty sure we know how everything was engineered, and why. I can add one more thing I picked up during the night. Harry Evans and Swisher were definitely on the outs. I learned that Evans entertained ideas of taking over the reins from Swisher, who, of course, resented it. It wasn’t what you thought at all: Evans wasn’t trying to get out, he was trying to get more deeply in.”

“Too deep for comfort.”

“Yes. I believe that Evans made the mistake of confiding his plans to the attorney, Ashley, in the belief that Ashley would side with him. Ashley promptly ratted on him. And the wheels began to move towards the elimination of Evans.”

I said, “Keep going.”

“Had those wheels not been revolving so elaborately, in so complicated a manner, they would have probably worked without a hitch. A simple gunshot and that was the end. The police would have nothing but the bullet which killed him. The perfect crimes are those that are exceedingly simple. But no, it had to be complicated. I’d like to study the intelligence which compounded such a scheme.”

“Cheer up. Maybe we can smoke him into the open.”

“Name something — go on — name something.”

I couldn’t.

His gaze went back to the snow on the window sill and his words were bitter, tired.

“Leonore is dead, deliberate murder. Who can it be pinned on? Eleanor said Swisher was their friend. We know better. But can we pin it on Swisher? We can not. Eleanor herself is his alibi. He was with her at the time of Leonore’s death; which means that a hireling did it. But who? And how shall we find him?

“Evans is dead, murdered by Leonore. And who can we pin that on? We don’t have the note — which undoubtedly was a clever forgery. And we probably no longer have Eleanor, whose testimony I would never go into court with. It is the weakest kind of circumstantial evidence. No — this whole plan may be fantastically complicated, but see how beautifully it ends at zero? Despite your meddling and my — meddling, they are getting away with it.”

“Unless they make one more mistake.”

“You’re thinking of Eleanor?”

“Yeah. Supposing city water turns up in her stomach?”

“We would have a clearly premeditated murder. As in Leonore’s case. Who would we arrest? I’m willing to bet that every one of those men you saw with her Thursday night have gone into hiding. Leaving you the last man to see her alive, as far as the public is concerned.”

Which ordinarily might prove embarrassing to me — if it wasn’t for the fact that they had had a perfect opportunity to erase my name from the slate forever, and had passed it by. That unexplainable “once over lightly” order, instead of a curt, rub him out. I must admit I had a glimmering of the truth; something Elizabeth Saari had said kept repeating itself to me. Sooner or later I knew things would make sense.

“You understand our position clearly?” Thompson asked. “We know much, and suspect more, but until we can prove it — beyond a shadow of a doubt — we may as well forget the whole thing. Don’t ever forget that Swisher beat the Feds.” He stood up. “I’ve got to get back to my office.”

As a parting shot, I flung at him, “I have no intentions of forgetting anything. And don’t forget to look into those things I mentioned.”

For the first time, he smiled. “My memory is pretty good, too. But remember, I warned you about breaking and entering.”

I said yes sir. And as he left I asked him to look into the legality of hillbilly music flooding the air. He must have mentioned my complaint to Hazel for presently the radio across the corridor was tuned down. I was glad she had voted for Thompson.

Last evening I asked for Dr. Saari. Hazel reported back that the doctor wasn’t in her office, but that she would keep trying. I wanted to make at least one appeal to be let out the front doors.

She was as good as her word, she did keep trying, but she never got the doctor. She said she could hear Dr. Saari’s office phone ringing but no one answered it. Shortly after supper Hazel went off duty and presumably forgot the whole business.

She hadn’t been gone very long before the night nurse came into the room. I hadn’t seen this one before and wasn’t particularly concerned about ever seeing her again. She asked me if I wanted anything.

I said no, not a thing.

Then she suggested I be a good boy and go to bed early because she didn’t want me galloping around the halls tonight. She put careful emphasis on the tonight. Which told me my jolly little adventure of last night was common property among the staff. I told her I would go to sleep early if that radio across the corridor didn’t keep me awake.

She answered that it wouldn’t, she would see to it, and that she had something for me.

I asked what. She gave me a telegram. I masked my anger at her keeping it so long and asked her to wait a moment as I might want to answer it. She waited.

The wire was from Rothman, reading: BODY IN RIVER NOT ELEANOR. ADVISE.

So by way of the night nurse I advised him to keep watch on the South Adams Street apartment and to grab Eleanor before she could walk into trouble.

The nurse left, and there were no further interruptions of my solitude.

Around midnight last night I got the hell out of there.

I hadn’t undressed, but stayed under the covers in the event the nurse should walk in. The hospital corridor was L-shaped and the nurse’s desk was at the corner of the L, not far from my door. My room was on the short end of the L, and the entrances for the public and the doctors were at the long end. I was on the second floor and there would be a fire escape at each end of the L.

I waited until I heard the tiny clicking noise that is the signal patients use to summon the nurse. They push a button under their pillow, a light goes on outside their door, and the little click comes from a device above the desk. The night nurse heard the click, looked along both arms of the L, and saw a light somewhere along the long arm. Her footsteps faded from my hearing.

I grabbed my hat and overcoat from the closet, peered out the door and found the corridor clear, and sped for the nearest windows. They were locked but that slowed me only a second. Outside the fire escape held the unbroken snow of the past few days. In very short order the snow was tracked. My tracks. They would give me away, but what the hell.

I wanted to go out and see that caretaker’s cottage. If I waited until daylight the caretaker would certainly be there, and I might be seen by others. At night, however, it just might be deserted because people would be playing in the bam. And I wouldn’t be seen. I would first have to go downtown to the office and get my gun.

I did, and I had to walk all the way.

To play safe I circled around a bit and stopped a few blocks from the office building, waiting in a doorway. The entire building was dark. There were only a few people on the streets, all hurrying to get somewhere. It was still uncomfortably cold. The only car in sight was a white police car parked in front of Thompson’s restaurant. There was no one in the car.

I eased along the sidewalks towards the office, keeping in the shadows next to the buildings and stopping in every doorway that offered a hiding place to look the scene over once more. There wasn’t a thing to arouse my suspicions. When I finally reached the door to my own stairway even the stragglers had vanished from the streets. Across the street I could see two cops eating and someone else playing the juke box. Just those three and the counter girl.

I stood in my own doorway, hidden in deep shadow, feeling the warmth creeping down the stairs at my back, and watching the street I had left. No one or nothing came after me. Turning, I softly went up the stairs.

All the offices on the second floor were dark and apparently empty. I paused at Elizabeth Saari’s doorway to listen and was rewarded with nothing at all. Moving across the hall in the dark to my own door, I felt for the knob, silently turned it, and shoved the door violently open. I had already ducked back out of the door and was waiting, flattened against the wall beside the door.

Nothing at all happened.

It may have been silly to someone watching, but I entered my office on hands and knees, putting my left hand down easily to prevent the plaster cast from bumping the floor. No one would think of shooting that low if he were inside waiting for me. No one shot at all, high or low.

I got up, walked over to the desk, opened the lower drawer where I kept the gun, struck a match and carefully cupped the flame from reflecting on the windows. The flare of the shielded match showed gun and holster in the drawer where I had left them, showed several stacks of Atlantis manuscript lying on the floor as I had left them, and showed some brownish spots of blood on the typed pages. As I had not left them.

I snapped out the match and reached for the gun. Holding it in my right hand, which was awkward, I put out my left hand and touched the blood spots with a forefinger. They were dry. So I simply squatted there for many minutes, wondering what to do next.

While I waited, the dull and throbbing headache started in again. The exertion probably caused it. I loosened my hat to see if it helped any. It didn’t. But with the headache came sudden awareness that all wasn’t what it should have been. Sudden awareness that something indefinable I had been expecting failed to show. Nothing spectacular, only an insignificant, probably subconscious something that should have happened, but hadn’t.

I glanced around the darkened room.

The office door. If it had had eyes, they would have stared back at me. It had failed to hit the wall with the usual thud. I had given it a hearty inward shove and jumped back out of the opening, just in case there were visitors. There were no visitors, but the door hadn’t banged against the wall.

Again on hands and knees, no easy feat when one hand is partly cased in a plaster cast and the other is curled around the butt of a gun, I crawled over to the door and partly around it. The gently prodding barrel of the gun melted into something soft and yielding, something that gave out a whimper.

On my knees, I put out my left hand and followed the pointing barrel. And found a body. There was another response, more moan than whimper. My searching fingers discovered a heavy coat, and beneath the coat a dress and a woman’s breast. I fingered upwards towards the face, followed the soft undercurve of the chin and at the back of her neck found a tight knot of hair.

Eleanor.

The light of a second match showed her to me. She was lying on her back, her attractive, Oriental face now a pasty white. A slug had ripped away the padded shoulder of the coat she was wearing, biting through her shoulder and spilling a great deal of blood. The torn dress and coat were clogged with dried rivulets.

Eleanor rolled her head and cried out feverishly.

I doused the match, pocketed the gun and put my lips to her ear.

“Eleanor... Eleanor... come out of it.” A couple of gentle slaps in the face brought movement to her body. “Eleanor... do you hear me?”

“Please... don’t!” She tried to roll away.

“Eleanor — snap out of it!”

“Who... is it?”

“This is Chuck, Eleanor. Charles Horne.”

In ten minutes I had her sitting upright, in five more her eyes opened and she tried to see me in the dark.

I said, “I’m Chuck, remember?”

She nodded weakly. Frightened, ill, she clung to me. I slipped a clean handkerchief over the wound and pulled her coat about her shoulders.

“Don’t try to talk, Eleanor. I’ll call a doctor.”

“Oh, no...!” She tried to scream, pitifully.

“Take it easy, kid. I’m getting a good doctor. He’s okay; he can be trusted. Can you sit there alone? Now don’t fall over again. I’ll get a cab.”

I phoned Milkshake Mike and asked him if there was a cab in front of his place. He replied that there was, and that the Sultan was now enjoying a cup of coffee not ten feet from him as he spoke. I gave instructions to get the Sultan to my office in a rush. He informed me the Sultan said he would be delighted, after he finished his cuppacoffee.

We had to wait two or three minutes. It seemed like ten or fifteen.

I helped Eleanor to her feet and we waited just inside the doorway at the foot of the stairs for the cab. The cops and their white car had gone.

The cab pulled up to the curb and the Sultan stuck out his head to stare at us.

“Come here and help me,” I called across the sidewalk. To Eleanor I whispered, “Pretend you’re drunk.” She dropped her head on my shoulder, her hair concealing the tom coat.

The Sultan advanced across the sidewalk.

“Dames is always doing that,” he summed up.

“Take a look to see if anyone’s around,” I cautioned. “Don’t want to give the girl a bad name.”

He gave the street a sweeping, comprehensive glance in all directions without seeming to be looking at anything, and reported all clear. Between us we got Eleanor into the cab.

“Wheretobud?”

“Doc Burbee... the coroner. Do you know his place?”

The Sultan whirled around in the seat. “Hellsfire. She ain’t dead already?”

“Of course not. She lives there.”

“Okay. Do it in fiveorsix minutes.”

Chapter 17

Boone, Ill.

Sunday, P.M.

My Dearest Louise:

You undoubtedly already know the final results, Louise. I suppose every news ticker and every radio commentator in the midwest has had a field day. Especially those in Illinois. But all the little details, the somewhat dry step-by-step coverage they ignore, go like this:

Eleanor was sleeping. Doc Burbee had undressed her and put her to bed while I was raiding his ice box.

He stood beside her bed, alternately looking down on the girl and then at me. His fingers fumbled at the collar of his dressing gown for a bow tie that wasn’t there.

“I’ll have to report this, you know. Gun wound.”

“Yeah, I know. Are you particular who you report it to?”

“The police, of course!” he snapped.

“I can make a better suggestion.”

He waited for the better suggestion, glowering.

“Report it to Thompson. Ask him to pass it along to the City Hall.”

Still the doctor waited, trying again to tug at a tie.

“Look, Doc, you know something about this business. Thompson and me, we’re in it together — now. He came out to the hospital to see me about it. This girl is a part of it; as the other one was. Oh, hell! Where’s the telephone? I’ll call him myself.”

He showed me, and hung around to listen.

The State’s Attorney was in bed and said so. I guessed that. He had picked up his phone, put it back on the cradle, and picked it up again. Or maybe he had hit the cut-off button with his hand. Anyway, there were two clicks.

“Now wait a minute, please...” I tried to placate him after identifying myself. “This is important.”

“So is my sleep!” Mr. Thompson was somewhat annoyed. “I thought you were in the hospital?”

“So does the hospital... or maybe they know better by this time. Now hold on! Don’t shout at me like that. I haven’t broken and entered anything, yet. This is about another matter we were discussing.”

“I’m listening,” he reminded me impatiently.

“Not over the phone, ninny.”

There was considerable silence on his end while he thought that over. I heard heavy breathing. Finally he asked, “Something we discussed at the hospital?”

“That’s right.”

“Something that worried us considerably?”

“Right again.”

“And you have the answer?”

“I have the one answer you wouldn’t be foolish enough to go to court with.”

Silence. Then, “I think I understand. Where are you?”

“Remember your five fingers?”

“Uh? Oh yes, certainly.”

“Then think, you have one there with you, one is out of reach, one has a new job. The fourth and fifth are here.”

I could hear his feet hit the floor. “I’m on my way,” he snapped at me and dropped the phone into the cradle. Then someone else dropped another phone into another cradle. When I hung up it made the third click.

The listener was an amateur. Always wait until both parties hang up before you hang up yourself.

Burbee was standing beside me. He motioned to the phone.

“I heard two clicks on the other end.”

I nodded. “You’re beginning to get the idea.”

We walked back into the bedroom. Eleanor hadn’t moved. Her face seemed calm and less pale under the shaded light.

Burbee commented, “She bears a remarkable resemblance to that other girl. The one in the lake.”

“Sisters.”

He pursed his tongue in his cheek and studied me. “I wonder how much you know?”

“Me? The works. Thompson told me about the water in the stomach, if that’s what you mean. It’s funny how you guys keep overlooking that match; me, I can’t forget it.”

“Where did you find this... this...”

“Her name is Eleanor. Behind the door in my office. God knows how long she lay there. I’ve been in the hospital for a couple of days. Is she bad off?”

“No. She’ll get over it. Slight wound. Shock, and loss of blood mostly. Also hunger. I’ll wager she was behind that door for from fifteen to twenty hours, probably longer.”

I whistled, and recalled the dried blood spots.

Fifteen to twenty hours. That meant from about the time I had tried to get out of the hospital Friday night and had been stopped by the owlish nurse. Maybe longer.

The State’s Attorney arrived in almost no time with his wife chasing after him. Neither of them had taken time to dress. He wore a pair of trousers and an old sweater over his pajamas. His wife, whom he introduced as “Trudy,” kept her coat on. Maybe she didn’t have an old sweater. Trudy had a stenographer’s notebook and a couple of pencils.

“Where is she?” Thompson demanded anxiously. “Is she hurt?”

Doc Burbee answered both questions with a minimum of words, and asked him if he knew his phone was tapped. By the expression on Thompson’s face, I’d hazard a guess that he didn’t know it. He bent to inspect the sleeping girl and then turned to me for the story.

I gave it to him. While I was doing it, Eleanor heard me talking and opened her eyes.

They widened with alarm as they saw past me and discovered Bur-bee and Thompson standing there. She apparently didn’t remember Burbee from a short while ago. Before she could become alarmed I sat down on the edge of the bed and held one of her cold, unresisting hands.

In turn I introduced Burbee, Thompson, and Trudy.

“These people are okay, Eleanor. They’re on our side. If you trust me, you can trust them.” Her eyes told me she knew Thompson, at least by name.

He and Burbee fired the same question at her. Her fist tightened in my hand.

She answered, falteringly, “His name is Burton Dunkles.”

Thompson frowned. “Dunkles? Never heard of him.”

“They call him ‘The Judge,’ ” Eleanor explained.

Our faces lit up. “He collects guns,” I said for no reason whatever.

Eleanor shuddered. “He walked into the kitchen. I was ironing. He had a gun in his hand, a big, long one. I didn’t know what he was going to do; his face was a mask. I’ve seen him like that before — when he was angry.”

“He was living with you, wasn’t he?” I prodded. “He was the man who came up the stairs that day I visited you?”

She said yes. “We moved into Leonore’s apartment after... after...”

“Sure,” I eased it over. “I should have known it was the Judge. I found western magazines in the bathroom.”

Eleanor tried to apologize, “The lease is paid up for a year. It was a much nicer place than our own. Burton said—”

I cut in.

“You don’t have to explain that, kid. What happened — when the Judge walked into the kitchen while you were ironing?”

“I was frightened. I don’t remember what he said, or what I said. His face was terrible. He had just talked to someone on the telephone. Then he came into the kitchen with the gun in his hand. I remember screaming, and then I threw the hot iron at him. I think it struck his head. He cried out when it hit him and fell on the floor. I ran into the bedroom and got my coat. I don’t know why, but I wanted to go out the back way. I ran through the kitchen. He was struggling on the floor. He raised up and fired just as I was closing the door.”

Burbee jumped in and cautioned her to go easy. He said she was exciting herself.

“Eleanor, you say he talked to someone on the phone. Did he call out, or did someone call him?”

She hesitated only an instant. “Someone called him. I was going to answer it, but he said never mind, he would.”

Thompson and I exchanged glances.

“Notice the curious time lapse?” he pointed out.

I said yeah. Burbee asked, what time lapse?

Thompson explained that I had been to see Eleanor the day before, but that punishment had taken nearly twenty-four hours to catch up with her. He also mentioned that the City Hall janitor had been fired long after I had revealed that I had been using him. And that a shadow in Croyden had been several hours late in getting on my tail.

I asked Eleanor how she had gotten away.

“I drove his car. After I left Croyden and crossed the river I realized the car could be traced. It was so flashy. So I left it in some small town and waited for a bus.”

“You went straight to my office?”

She nodded. “I was afraid to take a taxi. That might be traced. So I walked. I must have been weaker than I realized. I could hardly climb the stairs.”

“No one else around?”

“I didn’t see anyone. I was afraid someone might come in. I sat down behind the door. You might be late getting back. You see...” Her voice trailed away.

“Yeah,” I used some sarcasm. “I see. I was lying in the ditch where your friends had left me.”

“Oh, no. We saw that other car pick you up. We followed the other car as far as the hospital.”

“You... you did that? Why?”

“Our instructions were to make sure you were found.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. Why?”

She didn’t know. They were only obeying orders. She regretted having hit me on the head with the gun butt, but it had become necessary. I was beginning to win the fight. They had to follow orders. I was dumped in the ditch and shadowed to the hospital. And then their chore was finished.

“And then you returned to Croyden, and then, after this phone call, Dunkles shot you? Is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

I bogged down. Thompson knew what was in my mind and knew why I wasn’t asking the next logical question.

He asked it for me. “Eleanor. Did a woman issue those orders? Did a woman call you that night at the farmhouse?”

“No sir.”

“No? Has a woman ever issued orders to you? Or to your knowledge, to the Judge?”

She was plainly puzzled. “No, sir.”

“Well then, who did?”

“The chief, Mr. Swisher.”

Thompson wasn’t satisfied. He thrust in another question, “Do you know a woman named Elizabeth Saari? Doctor Elizabeth Saari?”

Eleanor said no and she obviously wasn’t lying.

I started in again. “Eleanor, all this should convince you that you’re on a spot. The same hot spot I’m on. Remember that phone call to the Judge. That time he was instructed to eliminate you.” I stopped and let it sink in. “Now, Eleanor, Thompson wants to bust up this mess. You can help him if you want to. Do you?”

She lay very quiet and unmoving.

“Thompson has dug up a lot of stuff on Swisher and his outfit. He knows enough to hang them, but he can’t prove it. Not without your help. The Judge has shown you that Swisher no longer wants you around. There’s no reason why you should hang back — not now. You’ve got to help us.”

Abruptly, violently, she shuddered and hid her face. She was crying.

“Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? Don’t you credit me with any sense at all? You don’t have to rub it in.”

I got up from the bed and turned to Trudy Thompson, making a finger motion as if I were scribbling with a pencil. She nodded, and I pushed Thompson into my place. Very, very gently he began plying her with questions. And slowly, very slowly, he began getting answers. Trudy took them down.

I went out into the kitchen and raided the icebox again. When Doc Burbee’s cook came in in the morning she was going to be a chagrined old girl. I could follow the mumbling undertone of voices but couldn’t distinguish the words. I seated myself at the kitchen table, eating cheese sandwiches, drinking from a milk bottle, and adding up my sums. And I must admit that each time I arrived at an answer I grew more excited with the correctness of it. And more than somewhat depressed. If ever a guy was pulling his house down on top of him, I was.

I wondered if the hospital had discovered my absence, and if they had notified Dr. Saari. And I wondered what the good doctor would think, or say aloud, when they notified her. In spite of it all, I hoped she wouldn’t be too mad at me. I had warned her I wouldn’t run out on a client.

With that I went back into the bedroom. Eleanor was finishing up. Thompson seemed extremely dissatisfied.

“What’s the matter?”

“We’re no farther along than we were before.”

“Hasn’t she told you what you want to know?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“Then what’s eating on you?”

“Read that!” He pointed at his wife’s shorthand notebook. “Or, no, you can’t read shorthand. It wouldn’t do you much good if you could, there’s nothing there.”

“Maybe you’d better explain it in little words.”

“Damn it all, Horne, there’s nothing there we don’t already know. She’s told me everything she can but she hasn’t added one word we haven’t already found out, or surmised. She simply doesn’t know enough about the inner circle. Well—” he flung his hands in the air, “she would still make a first class state’s witness... if we had a case.”

That was my cue.

“I might provide that. If you’ll keep one eye shut.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Remember the caretaker’s cottage? Eleanor said it was empty at night, when the barn is running wide open...”

“And—?”

“And it won’t be breaking and entering.” I walked over to Eleanor and held out my hand. She looked at it, uncomprehending.

I said, “The key, baby.”

She shook her head. “I don’t have it.”

“Who does?”

“No one. They keep it in a mailbox beside the door.”

Burbee and I burst out laughing. Thompson didn’t see anything funny in her statement.

“There’s no mailbox delivery out that way.”

“No. But there is a mailbox, and a key in it.” Eleanor stuck to her statement.

I asked Eleanor if she felt strong enough for a ride. She almost jumped at the suggestion, and Burbee jumped for me. I overrode his protests. I pointed out that I realized she had been shot, that she was weak and all that, but that for a very good reason she should go along with us. Thompson wanted to know the reason.

I said, well, there’s really more than one. In the first place, if Eleanor unlocked the door and asked us in, it wouldn’t be breaking and entering. That if there was anything at all incriminating in the house, she would know where to look for it. And lastly, I had once tried to prove to her without success that her sister had been murdered. If she went along now, I believed I could prove it beyond doubt.

Thompson silently turned over in his head the close juxtaposition of the cottage to the lake, and said, yes, if there is running water in the cottage, you may be right.

I said that wasn’t all. I said that, if no one else, I at least wanted to prove to myself the reasons behind the curious lapses of time between any act of mine and the subsequent reaction. I believed that proving one thing to Eleanor would prove the other to me. And to him, if he was interested. He was. Very much so.

I began wrapping blankets around Eleanor.

“Now wait a minute,” Burbee interposed. “If you insist on taking her along, she may as well get dressed. If we... uh, have to leave in a hurry, those blankets will impede her progress somewhat.” He fidgeted with his collar.

He had a point there. We left the room while Trudy helped Eleanor to dress. I asked them if they had guns. Doc Burbee said yes, there was an old horse pistol around the house. I said, get it. Thompson said he always carried one in the dash compartment of the car.

I put Eleanor in the front seat with me and told Burbee, Thompson and his wife to ride in back,

“Why?” Thompson wanted to know.

“Because when we get there, you three are going to lie on the floor and pretend you’re not there.”

“Why?”

“Remember your tapped wire? Someone out there is waiting for us. For me, I mean. They’ll figure Eleanor is either with me or has skipped the country. She’s been missing for twenty-four hours you know. If she’s with me, they know I’ll turn up at that cottage sooner or later.”

Burbee began to wonder audibly if that was safe. I put the car in gear and shot ahead before he could convince Thompson. He tried, all the way out, but rather uselessly. When we reached the point on the highway many minutes later where the lane ran alongside the lake, I kept on going. I didn’t want to drive down that lane.

Burbee shut up then, curious as to what I was doing. He soon found out. About a mile past the lake we turned left on a graveled country road and killed the lights. We ambled along slowly, watching the fence line, when a gate suddenly appeared. A gate opening into a pasture.

I put the car through the gate and we bumped across the pasture to still another fence, keeping in a general direction leading back to the lake. There was no gate in the second fence. It was ordinary wire, not barbed, so I made a gate. Thompson groaned. On the other side were the remains of last season’s corn crop and a narrow lane running alongside it where the farmer had driven his plow and team. We followed this lane to the end, left the old cornfield through still another rickety gate, and were on the very edge of the vast plot of snow-covered park land. The lake was some distance away, near the center of the park. Far back from the lake loomed the dark bulk of the barn, and near us, still black but not so large, was the caretaker’s cottage. It had probably once been a fisherman’s cottage and was fairly close to the water.

I stopped the car and peered ahead over the snowy ground. There was no moon, but the sky was bright. As I watched, a car turned in from the highway, doused its lights, and began the slow journey to the barn.

“See that car?” I said to Trudy over my shoulder. “If we have to get out of here in a hurry, we’ll use that road. You’ll be driving. Think you can make it?”

She probably grinned behind my back. “You bet!”

We remained there at the cornfield gate until the car had discharged a couple of passengers and started back to town. Eleanor followed it with her eyes.

“That’s probably Doris,” she commented.

I asked, “Does Swisher always use women for that?”

“Yes sir.”

“The psychological effect upon the suckers, I presume,” Thompson commented dryly.

“Could be. Where does he get all the girls, Eleanor?”

Her answer was vague and evasive. I thought I knew; knew in her case, at least. I threw a shot in the dark.

“You came by way of Mexico, didn’t you?”

The shot told. She jumped and wanted to know how I knew. I said that I had guessed. I asked her how long she and Leonore had been in the country. She said since they were children. She didn’t know how many years. The United States has revoked some of the restrictions formerly imposed on Chinese immigration, but that doesn’t mean the Chinese who entered the country illegally were free to stay.

Thompson seized that one. “You realize, don’t you, that this admission will mean deportation?”

She shrugged and said she wasn’t worried about anything like that... not now.

That should have tipped me off as to what was in her mind, but I missed the boat again, Louise. I didn’t give it another thought at the time.

After the other car had reached the highway and gone towards town, I started the car, fed it a rich burst, and shut off the motor, hoping to coast all the way to the cottage. We stopped several yards away. I was afraid to use the motor again. There was nothing stirring, anywhere.

Thompson was nervous. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Damned sure. Do you?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so.”

“All right. Keep your lip stiff. Stay hidden back there until Eleanor and I get inside. Put Trudy in the front seat. At the first sign of trouble, signal us and we’ll be out so fast you’ll wish you started the motor first.

“If there isn’t any trouble, follow us in after maybe five or ten minutes. I’m banking on someone being in there. If I get the drop on him, I’ll signal you. If he gets the drop on me, wait around a few minutes and come in behind him. Got it?”

“I’m away ahead of you.” But he still didn’t like it.

I eased Eleanor out of the car and asked her if she was scared. She didn’t answer, but when I took her arm it was quivering. So was mine. We slipped across the snow to the house, slowly, because Eleanor was having difficulty in walking. I was holding my gun in my right hand and supporting her with my left arm.

I led her to the side of the house nearest the front door, propped her against the wall, and told her to wait there a minute. Circling the house flat against the wall, ducking under the windows, I came to the telephone wires fastened to the side of the house. They led from the barn, to a pole, to the house, down its side and into the basement. With as little noise as possible I ripped them loose. Then I went back to Eleanor.

Silently she pointed to the unused mailbox. The key was inside. Damn funny place for a key, I thought. People should have better sense.

After crossing the porch on hands and knees, I fitted the key into the lock and turned it. Then I went back for Eleanor. I placed her to one side of the door, back against the house where a tearing bullet from within couldn’t touch her, and then twisted the knob. Nothing happened. The house was in darkness.

Stale air mingled with cigarette smoke met my nostrils. Fresh cigarette smoke.

The smoker would be sitting across the room, facing me, waiting for me to come in. He wouldn’t fire while I stood there because the sound would carry in the night air. He would wait until I had entered and closed the door behind me.

I whispered to Eleanor, “Stay here. I’ll be back after you.”

Dropping to my knees I went through the door at a crawl. I was across the sill and feeling about for a chair when Eleanor did the damndest thing.

She walked upright through the opening behind me, fumbled for a light switch, clicked it on, and said, “I’ve just got to sit down!”

Chapter 18

I sat down, too, right where I was on the floor.

Eleanor slumped into the chair I had been feeling around for. She reached out with one wan hand and pushed the door shut. Then she seemed to just collapse.

The Judge was sitting across the room in the spot where I had imagined he would be. He was smoking, smiling, playing with a gun. His eyes twinkled.

He said to Eleanor, “Take the gentleman’s item, baby.”

Eleanor reached over with obvious effort and took it out of my hand. I was too dumbfounded to resist her.

The Judge reminded her, “He has a shoulder holster, baby. Look in that.”

She complied, but it was empty.

From my position at her feet I stared up into her pale face. A flood of unpleasant bits of newborn knowledge rushed into my half-baked skull, sweeping in with the awful rush of backwater across a bottom-land. Hindsight is a wonderful, futile thing!

Consider for instance Eleanor’s amazing story of her escape. How we had swallowed it, hook, line, sinker and pole.

The Judge was such a rotten shot that he had only nicked her shoulder. We had swallowed it. She had escaped down the back stairway, driven part way to Boone, transferred to a bus, walked from the bus terminal to my office, all that in broad daylight with a fresh wound. We had swallowed it. She had practically jumped at the suggestion to bring her along with us, in spite of her weakened condition, in spite of the certain danger had she been on the level. We swallowed it without a suspicion.

And only a few minutes ago, in the car, she had said she wasn’t worried about deportation... not now.

I turned on her, bitterly. “You damned little cheat. You were shot, weren’t you? You couldn’t fake that.”

The Judge answered for her. He showed no trace of anxiety at her condition, no worry at her being twenty-four hours late. He didn’t seem to care a damn.

“She was shot. That was necessary. Eleanor understands that. Eleanor is going to be repaid for her trouble.”

He shouldn’t have said that. But he did. And no sooner was it out of his mouth than something sharp connected in that just mentioned half-baked skull I own. If there had been a maze of wires and relays in me, like a mechanical man, the Judge would have heard a relay click all the way across the room. At his words the relay clicked, a circuit closed, and all the electrical knowledge in that mythical maze of wires focused down to a fine point. The fine point was behind the bridge of my nose, and my nose itched.

Eleanor was marked for death.

She wasn’t keen enough to realize it, to see ahead and discover where her part in the plan was leading her. A long-range plan of clever duplicity, equaled only by that earlier duplicity that had erased Harry Evans by remote control.

Eleanor’s eyes were glassy.

“You stupid, damn fool!” I bit out at her. “If you had the brains of a brass monkey you’d realize what you’ve done. You’re going to be repaid, all right. Yes indeed, paid the same way Leonore was paid when her usefulness was ended.”

The Judge butted in. “You’re annoying the lady, son.” Not his words, but the quiet undertone conveyed the warning; a warning Eleanor didn’t catch.

She just stared at me. I looked again. She wasn’t staring. Her eyes had turned completely glassy and the pupils were vanishing. I got to my knees.

Eleanor gritted between tight teeth: “I’m going to be sick...”

The Judge ordered sharply, “Go in the bathroom.”

She tried to get up. She put out a hand on the chair arm for a prop, but couldn’t make it. I got to my feet and moved towards her.

“Easy, son!” Dunkles snarled at me. He was on his feet, gun pointing at my midriff.

“Easy yourself. Can’t you see she’s sick!”

I don’t know why I felt sympathy for her. I should be hating her guts and hoping she fell out of the chair and banged her punkinhead on the floor. But I didn’t feel that way at all. I guess I’m chicken-hearted about women.

“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked the Judge.

I put an arm under Eleanor’s good shoulder and got her to her feet. Dunkles followed us to the bathroom. Once there, I didn’t know what to do for her. I sat her down, gave her my handkerchief to hold over her mouth, and turned to the medicine cabinet. Dunkles was watching me in the mirror.

Eleanor gulped once, took her hand away from her mouth long enough to say there were “three more out in the car” and that two of them would be in after me before long.

I growled, “Damn you, sister, get wise.”

It seemed to upset the kindly faced gentleman. He sat down on the narrow, white rim of the bathtub, near the doorway, where he could watch me and the front door.

He said again, “Stop annoying the lady, son.” And to Eleanor, “Who else is out there, baby?”

She told him. He pursed his lips and whistled.

Then he instructed, “Eleanor, baby, when you are feeling better, step over to the telephone and tell him what you have just told me.”

She nodded and said in a few minutes.

The medicine cabinet held a few things that could be used as an emetic, and a couple of bottles of advertised stuff supposed to settle the stomach and calm the nerves. I decided on that, and dropped a wafer in a glass of water. Tap water.

We watched it sizzle. I told myself happily that a couple of people were due for a surprise when Eleanor tried to phone the barn. There began to appear a dim ray of hope along the horizon. Unless — someone at the barn had tried to call the cottage and found the phone not working.

The wafer fizzled out and I handed the glass to the girl. She drank it slowly, making a face.

The Judge fumbled in his coat for a cigarette, put it in his mouth, and lit a match, all with one hand. I put my left hand, the one encased in the plaster cast, up on the wall, sort of leaning it against the side of the medicine cabinet. Swinging down from that distance would give it an added punch.

Eleanor finished the water and handed the glass to me. I put it in the little wire jigger fastened to the washstand, pushed the cabinet door to a position where I could see the Judge more clearly in the mirror, and watched. I wanted very much to see what he did with that paper match.

He flipped it into the tub behind him.

I must have yelled “Eureka!” or something. They both jumped and stared at me.

“Eleanor,” I burst out excitedly, “Eleanor, I’ve told you twice I was going to prove something to you! Remember?”

She said, yes, faintly.

“Eleanor, I’m going to show you how your sister was murdered. You wouldn’t believe me before; you’ve got to, now. I can prove it to you, here, now, this minute...”

The Judge cut in with an, easy son! but I ignored him.

“Eleanor — do you know how your sister died?”

“Why... of course. They said—” She glanced at the Judge. “The papers said she drowned.”

“Yes and no.” I was watching the Judge, too. He was bunching up his leg muscles. “The State’s Attorney told me she was drowned in purified water. That means city water, from a tap like this one. Such as you just drank. Not lake water. But Eleanor... she didn’t exactly drown.”

That one even stopped the Judge. It took him by sheer surprise, caused him to drop the preparations he was making to jump me. I watched him in the mirror.

“What!” he and Eleanor demanded, in unison.

“No. Ask Doc Burbee, out in the car. He performed the autopsy. Your sister was strangled to death, Eleanor. Strangled on a paper match thrown into a bathtub.”

Dunkles leaped, leaped without taking time to gather his wits or his muscles for the blow.

I didn’t make the same mistake, nor the one of turning around to face him. I saw him coming and whipped the plaster cast down and around in a fast cutting arc, putting all the strength into it I could muster. It contacted the jut of his jaw. The gun dropped from his hand. He sprawled backwards and slipped over the rim into the bathtub.

Eleanor had scrambled to her feet in panic, trying to get past us to the door. I pushed her back down on the seat and said, “I hope you believe me now, sister.”

A small noise came from the front door. It was pushed open a crack. Thompson’s gun appeared in the opening followed by Thompson, and then by Burbee and his pistol. I motioned to them to come into the bathroom.

Thompson peered at the unconscious man in the tub.

“It’s the Judge,” he informed me gravely. “What happened to him?”

“I’ve met him,” I said dryly. “He met my fist.”

Burbee saw Eleanor. “She’s ill.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to mention that she would be a damned sight sicker when I got through with her, but I let it slide. She had had enough grief and more was on the way.

I suggested to Thompson, “Lift that guy’s leg.”

He did, and saw the paper match lying in the tub. I couldn’t resist an “I told you so,” reminding them that they had all neglected the match business. Burbee looked down at it and as an afterthought turned the tap at the end of the tub. Water squirted out briefly and he shut it off.

I turned to the girl. “Does he make a habit of using bathtubs for ash trays, Eleanor?”

She nodded. “Chuck... is it true? Did he...?”

“Ask the Doc, here.”

She did, and Burbee told her. He eliminated the last doubts in her mind, providing there were any left. The girl was crying before he finished. More for Thompson’s benefit than Eleanor’s, the doctor demonstrated how Leonore had been drowned. Head down in a tub of water. Burbee was an excellent actor.

Thompson asked, “Do you suppose Dunkles will talk?”

I just laughed at him.

Dunkles was showing signs of reviving. I threw a glass of water in his face. He sputtered and struggled to a sitting position, glaring at Eleanor and then around to the newcomers. I sat down on the rim of the tub, just above him.

“Judge, permit me to introduce the State’s Attorney and the county coroner. One of them is itching to bring you to trial and the other is hoping you’ll try something — he’s a whiz at postmortems.”

Thompson demanded, “What about this girl, Leonore?”

Dunkles glared at him and distinctly told him to go to hell. He shot another glance at Eleanor and fidgeted uncomfortably when he found her eyes boring into his.

Eleanor said in a low voice, “Chuck...”

“Yeah?”

“Please come here a moment.”

I went to her. She wanted to whisper in my ear. What she said startled me. She was serious — I read it in her eyes. Well — we had gone this far; Dunkles must be made to talk. So why not? I said, all right, wait a minute. Thompson wanted to know where I was going. I told him, out to the car, and I would be right back. I said that Eleanor could make him talk; we were going to leave the Judge to her for a few minutes.

I asked Burbee to use the adhesive tape from the medicine cabinet and bind the Judge securely. Thompson wanted to know what the hell was going on. I said Eleanor knew a magic incantation that hypnotized people into talking.

In the car I found a pair of pliers and slipped them into my coat pocket. Trudy Thompson wanted to know what was going on. I told her everything was under control, and that we were about to wring a confession from the murderer. I cautioned her to keep her eyes peeled, that someone from the barn might come up to find out why the telephone was dead. She said okay.

In the bathroom Burbee had taped the hands and feet of the man in the tub. He couldn’t move anything except his mouth, and he was moving that plenty. Very bad words.

Eleanor walked to the tub and looked down at him. He shriveled under her steady gaze. Maybe he had an idea of what was coming. Taking Thompson and Burbee by the elbows, I piloted them out of the bathroom. At the door, I pulled the pliers out of my pocket and slipped them to Eleanor. She took them, slid her hand into my coat pocket, fished around for a moment, and came up with a packet of matches.

I’ll never forget the expression on Dunkles’ face when he saw the pliers.

It was probably five minutes before we heard him scream.

There hadn’t been a sound from the closed door. Thompson was worried. “Are they giving us the slip?”

I shook my head. “Not this time. She’s cured.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The bathroom window is too small. They couldn’t get out.” I said nothing about Eleanor’s earlier treachery.

“I wonder what she’s doing?”

It was then that Dunkles screamed. Just once. The State’s Attorney jumped from his chair and ran for the bathroom. I was there ahead of him, cutting him off.

Louise, I don’t know what Eleanor did to him. I don’t want to know, ever. But whatever it was, it was effective. Eleanor opened the door behind me and slipped a pair of pliers into my coat pocket. They were hot. She held onto my arm for support.

“He’ll talk to you, Mr. Thompson.”

She was perspiring. I guess we all were. We’d been in that cottage an awful long time and it was getting on our nerves. Thompson and Burbee edged past us into the bathroom to look down at Dunkles. He opened his mouth, and for once shocking language didn’t issue therefrom.

I put an arm around Eleanor and half carried her to a chair near the front door. I pulled the chair around so that it faced the door, and handed her my gun.

“Take this. You know what to do if we have any visitors.”

She nodded.

“You won’t pull any more funny stuff on us?”

“No, Chuck. Not now. My eyes are open.”

Good, I said. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the pliers. They were slowly losing their heat. She watched me.

“Baby, you’re a very bad girl. I’d hate like hell to have you go to work on me.”

She smiled ever so softly. “I’d hate to have to work on you, Chuck. And Chuck—”

“Yeah?”

“I’m very sorry for the other night. I tried not to hit you too hard. Come here a moment.”

I did. She reached up, took hold of my ears gently and pulled my head down. Then she kissed me on the bump on the back of my head. Startled, I stared into her face.

“Leonore used to do that for me,” she said softly, “whenever I got hurt.”

“Oh, sure. Yeah.” It embarrassed me. “It’s okay, kid. Keep your eyes on that door. Don’t hesitate to shoot.”

I wanted to get back to the bathroom to hear what Dunkles was saying. Eleanor murmured something more as I left her. I didn’t catch what it was, not then, but later the words came to me with startling clearness.

Burbee had removed the tape and put handcuffs on the Judge. Dunkles was a whipped man; there was no spirit remaining in him. Thompson seemed disturbed, but vaguely satisfied. He was wishing he knew what Eleanor had done, and yet hoping he never found out. Curiously enough, Dunkles wouldn’t tell. I suspected the old boy still had his vanity.

His story pretty well tallied with what we had patched together. Harry Evans had entertained ideas of taking over the gambling syndicate, so the grapevine had said, and had seemingly convinced Ashley to go along with him. Instead, Ashley prattled to Swisher. Swisher had eliminated Evans in a manner directed by someone big, someone higher up who was affording protection to Swisher and his rotten empire.

Swisher had objected to the roundabout, fantastic method of eliminating Evans and was all for the old reliable popgun. The brains said no. There was to be no outward appearance of murder. Leonore would make it a hit-and-run accident.

When Leonore ran to Swisher after killing Evans, the plan was upset. He had put her to bed, telephoned for help, and later in the evening got her out of bed and put her to driving a taxi. For a purpose. Sometime during the evening she would pick up a supposedly regular customer on a downtown street corner and start for the lake. She would never get there. The supposedly regular customer would see to that.

But that plan, too, had gone astray. By mistake she had picked me up. I had talked with her. I had been consulted by Evans earlier in the day. I had phoned Ashley and hinted I knew a few things. If Leonore died under mysterious circumstances after having talked with me, I was the nosey type that would begin putting two and two together. Therefore, there must be another “accidental” death. At that time, Evans’ death was being accepted as just that — an accident.

No one guessed that a paper match would upset this plan.

Meanwhile, I had been watched because I was considered the dangerous fly in the pudding. No, Dunkles didn’t know who my shadow was or how it had been done. He only knew that my every move was known. He said he had picked up the impression that it had something to do with a girl, but he didn’t know.

When I went to Croyden, Ashley had recognized me from a photograph previously furnished him; it being a foregone conclusion I would visit him sometime soon. As soon as I had left he contacted Swisher and Swisher put a shadow on my tail. The shadow found me at Rothman’s office. No one knew, then, that I had seen Eleanor. They didn’t know that until the next day, after I was in the hospital.

But they suspected I was getting too close, in view of the fact that I had visited Ashley without disclosing my identity, and that I surely knew Leonore’s identity and her connection with Evans by that time.

The Judge had handled the mauling detail, too, from a distance. For some reason not understandable to him, I was taken off the train and to the farmhouse for a purpose. The purpose never materialized. He supposed I was to be bumped off; instead orders were given to muss me up and turn me loose, making sure that I was picked up and taken to the hospital.

“Why?” I demanded.

“I don’t know. I only follow orders.”

“Does only Swisher give the orders?”

“Yes. But he has to follow them, too. From the man he’s getting protection from.”

“Who is that man?”

He didn’t know.

After the phone call to the Judge in the Croyden apartment, the Judge confronted Eleanor with the facts. They then knew she had talked with me.

It was the end for Eleanor, she had betrayed them — unless — well, there was just one chance for Eleanor to redeem herself; did she want that chance? Frightened, she jumped at the chance. And so she had been shot in the shoulder and the elaborate double-cross rigged up. It was her responsibility to get me to the caretaker’s cottage or back to the apartment in Croyden. In either place, someone would be waiting for us.

Us. It would have been curtains for both Eleanor and me, real curtains this time. The “once over lightly” attitude was gone. Events had changed too fast, and for the worse, to tolerate me any longer. That didn’t make a lot of sense to Thompson, but it did to me. It wasn’t that things had become worse since that night at the farmhouse. Oh no, I became the real danger before that night. But they didn’t know how real until the following day or two.

Therefore, curtains, for keeps. Eleanor had never tumbled to the fact that she was slated for it, too.

Meanwhile, Thompson’s wire had been tapped. If he had discovered anything incriminating he had been careful not to mention it on the phone. They were marking time until he made a slip.

Thompson said, “Where’s Eleanor?”

“In there in the—” But she wasn’t. The chair was empty. A cold breeze swept through the front door and struck our faces. With the coldness came the words Eleanor had half-whispered to me a few minutes ago.

She had said, “So long, boy.”

Somebody was running across the porch. Trudy Thompson appeared in the open door, her face excited.

“Someone’s coming,” she gasped. “Coming from the barn.”

Over her words came the sound of Thompson’s car starting. The motor revved furiously.

“Where’s Eleanor?” Thompson shouted, running.

“In the car. She said you needed me here. She said—”

Whatever else she said I didn’t find out. Thompson’s wife was nearly bowled over in our concerted rush out the door. Eleanor saw us coming across the porch. The car was moving. She flicked on the lights and gave it a rich burst of gas. The back wheels spun, caught, and the car leaped forward.

Running up from the barn, a gun in his hand, was Swisher. The lights picked him up, reflected on the weapon.

I realized what was going to happen, and was powerless to stop it. I think we all realized it about the same time. Swisher did, too. He saw his own trap closing on him. He hesitated in the glare of lights, suddenly turned and ran.

The damned fool ran towards the lake.

Eleanor whipped the car around in a tight curve, the wheels skidding on the snow. The lights found Swisher again. He stopped running, turned around, raised an arm and threw a shot at the car. Glass tinkled and one headlight went out.

That shot cost him precious time, cost him his life. He might have made it to some kind of safety if he hadn’t stopped. It had been foolish to run towards the lake. There were no trees there to protect him.

Eleanor caught him. Hard.

His breaking body whipped back over the hood of the car, pinned there by the stunning force of the blow. His hands groped desperately for a hold, found none, and fell loosely over the hood as the life force drained from them. Eleanor was at the lake’s edge.

She kept right on going.

The car shot off the bank into the air two or three feet above the ice. It hung there for a tick, suspended in the sky. And then it dropped. Smashing down on the ice, the tires let go with four simultaneous, muffled explosions. The ice cracked and parted.

When we reached the bank only the top of Thompson’s car appeared above the swirling water and broken ice.

Trudy Thompson said numbly, “That girl’s in there.”

I looked down at the roof of the car and whispered, because I didn’t want to be overheard.

“Good-bye, Eleanor.”

Climbing wearily up the stairs to my office, I found a light behind the door marked ELIZABETH SAARI, M.D. I pushed in on her without knocking. Elizabeth Saari glanced up from the desk, saw me, and quickly hung up the telephone she was using. On the floor beside the desk were two stuffed suitcases.

I guess I wasn’t any too pretty to look at.

She demanded, “Where have you been?”

“Why?” I wanted to know.

“Do you know the police are looking for you?”

“The police — what the hell for?”

“The hospital called me when they discovered your absence. I called the police. And I’ve just talked with Mother Hubbard.”

“What has she got to do with it?”

“I wanted to know if you had returned home.”

“Say — how come you know Mother Hubbard?”

She grinned at me in open amusement. “I’ve found out a lot of things about you, Charles Home. Most of it from Mother Hubbard. You see, I’ve learned a few of the principles of detection, too.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.”

“And now, where have you been? You look a sight.”

“To put it brutally, I’ve been helping to haul a car and a couple of bodies out of the lake.”

Her eyes widened. She waited a moment and then asked, “A couple of bodies?”

“A man named Swisher and a girl I know only as Eleanor. Do they mean anything to you?”

“Eleanor? You said Eleanor was—”

“Leonore’s sister,” I supplied. “Another Chinese doll.”

“Then... you’ve... caught up with them?”

I nodded. “Don Thompson, Doc Burbee and myself wound things up a few hours ago. All but the small fry who’ll be arrested whenever and wherever they turn up.” I paused. “And, of course, with the exception of the remaining silent partner.”

“And that will be...?”

“That will be the party who has never openly become involved in the case,” I said flatly. “The presumably unknown, silent partner who stayed behind the scenes, managed operations and issued the orders through either Swisher or Ashley, and most important, arranged for the protection with the right sources. Protection in exchange for guaranteed elections.”

She asked thoughtfully, slowly, “You said ‘presumably unknown, silent partner.’ That implies that you and Thompson know this person’s identity?”

“I know it,” I pointed out. “Thompson doesn’t — yet.”

My phone began to ring across the hall. I remained in her doorway, watching her.

She said impatiently, “That’s your phone.”

“I know it.”

“Aren’t you going to answer it?”

“No. Not now.”

“But... why not?”

“Because I know who it is and what he wants.”

“O...h?”

“That’s Thompson. Wanting to know the identity of the unknown partner. Earlier in the night I promised to explain two things to him: who killed Leonore and how, and the curious lapse of time that has been bothering us. I’ve had time to explain only the first; in the excitement he has forgotten the second, until now.”

“And you don’t want to tell him? Not right away?”

“That’s right.”

“I think,” she said slowly, “that I understand.”

“I’m sure you do. But to put it in word: I want to give someone a break; I want to repay a debt. I want to give someone time to get out of town.”

She got up from behind the desk and walked around it. “Please go on,” she murmured.

“Someone gave me a break, was nice to me when they could have been otherwise. Last Thursday night I was taken off a train by one of Swisher’s hoodlums — on orders of either Swisher or Ashley — and transported to a farmhouse somewhere. Swisher or Ashley, whoever gave that order, did it with the intention of eliminating me; rubbing me out of the picture. I had gotten in their hair. But, as I say, I was given a break — this unknown third party learned what had happened and countermanded the order — by telephone.”

“That surprised you?”

“It did; and neither the hoodlum, nor Eleanor, nor myself could understand it at the time. When the order was countermanded, another was given. The phrase used was ‘once over lightly.’ The second order directed that I be left alive, in a ditch, and at some spot where it was likely that I would be found. You found me. The hoodlum’s car followed yours all the way to the hospital to make sure I would receive good care. The party who gave that second order was interested in my health and well-being.

“That’s why I’m repaying a favor. I want to give that person the same break they gave me. Time to get out of town before I tell Thompson what he wants to know.”

She had been staring down at the suitcases. Suddenly she looked up into my face

“But Charles... isn’t that aiding a criminal to escape justice?”

I didn’t answer that. Instead, I said good night to Dr. Elizabeth Saari and walked out. I entered my own office, turned on the overhead light, and closed the door.

A telegram was lying on my desk.

The telephone was still ringing, impatiently. I dropped my hat over it and ignored the instrument.

Chapter 19

Sunday night

Louise:

The time has come for you and me to settle something; you and me and Elizabeth Saari.

I think the world of you, Louise, you know that. Despite what may have crept into my letters concerning Dr. Saari and despite everything that has happened the last few days, it’s you I love. Don’t ever forget that.

I believe you still hold for me some of that old affection. That you continue to love me as fully as you once did, I doubt. Your infrequent letters of the past week have revealed a new, growing something that was only a subtle undertone all the previous weeks.

Because I love you so much, and because you still hold for me a small measure of affection, I want to repay my debt to you.

Louise, you shouldn’t have sent me those roses.

Not during my very first morning in the hospital, not before I had time to write you, telling you where I was.

I’m sure you see that mistake now, darling. When I regained consciousness I had been in the hospital perhaps four or five hours. And yet, there were those flowers from you. Later on that day I sent you a telegram, mentioning the flowers and that I expected to be released the following day. Had your roses not been there I still would have wired you, giving you the news. My telegram should have been your first inkling of where I was and what had happened to me.

But you already knew it.

It was sometime after that, when Thompson and I were talking, that the significance of those flowers struck me. Dr. Saari helped, too. Quite innocently she asked me when I was going to cease playing with fire. My first impression was that she was referring to you; whereas she was speaking of the mess I had become involved in. Later, I realized the misimpression I gained from her words was nearer the truth.

Frankly, I started holding back on you. I suggested to Thompson that he trace the movements of our chief of police, who was supposedly in St. Louis attending the FBI school. I suggested that when he located the farmhouse, he trace the long distance calls made on that phone. I suggested he trace the long distance calls made to the caretaker’s cottage.

But I couldn’t put that information in my letters to you.

Thompson has already discovered the chief never arrived in St. Louis. Today, or tomorrow at the latest, he’s going to find the chief went directly to you. And he’s going to trace a large number of the long distance calls to your Capitol City phone. He’s going to discover the answers all lead to a political reporter in the state capitol.

To a reporter, who, two or three years ago and in some manner as yet unknown to me, found and seized the opportunity to slice herself a piece of very rich cake. It’s one of those things that happens almost every day, somewhere in the world. I am forced to compliment the clever reporter on her astute handling of the reins. If she hadn’t once been in love with a nosey, second-rate detective named Charles Horne she might still be in the driver’s seat.

It was pointed out to me that the smashing of the honest-to-God love between Leonore and Harry Evans, over a delicate thing like an unborn child, could only have been a woman’s trick. A man would have been more direct, would have used a simple and sure method, a bullet. I had mistakenly credited Elizabeth Saari for that womanly trick.

It was also pointed out to me that someone was aware of every move I made. I credit Dr. Saari for that observation.

Uncle Jack, the City Hall porter, lost his job after I mentioned in my letter to you that I used him as a contact man. My visit to Eleanor in the Croyden apartment was known only after I told you about it. Eleanor, you see, was in no personal danger that night at the farmhouse because you hadn’t yet received my letter in which she figured. But the next day she was shot in the shoulder and that elaborate double-cross set up.

And there is the matter of Ashley having my photograph. There are but two recent pictures of me in existence. Mother Hubbard has one on her mantelpiece. Where is the one I gave you, Louise?

Thompson is trying to reach me on the phone as I write this, wanting me to explain those time lapses. I’m not going to answer it now, not tonight. I don’t want to tell him tonight that I’ve been writing you letters, enabling you to keep up with my every move, but from six to twenty-four hours behind me.

If, that night at the farmhouse, you had known that I had talked to Eleanor the same afternoon, you might not have stopped the hoodlum from killing me. I don’t know. Perhaps the following day when you received my letter telling about it, you regretted countermanding the order. But you did spare me even though I was a danger to you. And I want to repay you for that.

If you are a clever girl, Louise, you will have never received these final letters. You will have packed and vanished when they first hinted the game was in its last stages.

If you aren’t as smart as I’ve believed, then this is all I can do for you. This will be put on the southbound train an hour or so from now, it will be a special delivery. If you are still in Capitol City you’ll be reading these lines shortly after sunrise. And I promise you, Louise, that Don Thompson won’t find me — anywhere — until noon, at least.

I owe you that much.

I owe it to you because you are my wife, and I love you. It does no good to say we should have tried harder to make a success of our marriage; and it’s equally useless for me to remind you that I never liked this experiment of five years’ separation to determine whether we should live together again, or call it quits and divorce. I’m only sorry that we were separated for those three years that can never be recaptured.

So long, darling. I offer you my apologies for being the man who pulled your house of cards down around you. We’ve had a lot of good times together.

And Louise... I hope they never catch you.

Chapter 20

Dr. Elizabeth Saari pushed open the door without knocking and stood on his threshold.

“Chuck,” she asked him, “will you carry the suitcases down to the car for me? Mother stuffed everything she won’t need for the next two months into them. She just called me at this hour of the night! She wants me to bring them over to the hotel.”

He stood up, pulled a sheet of paper from the typewriter, scribbled his signature on it, and placed it in an envelope.

“That I will,” he answered wearily, “if you’ll do me a favor in return.”

“Name it.”

“Drive me down to the train. I want this to go out tonight.”

“Gladly. Oh, Chuck — hadn’t you better open that telegram? It might be important.”

He shook his head. “It isn’t, now. It’s from Rothman, the detective in Croyden. It will tell me that he has checked on you all the way back to your kindergarten days, and has found you perfectly wonderful.”

Content

Wilson Tucker
The Chinese Doll

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20