Talmage Powell

Blood on Her Hands

Chapter I

“I Wanted to Kill You!”

Rain had come with darkness. Now, at nine o’clock, Jared Avenue was slick black asphalt devoid of life or light save for an occasional passing car and the blob of yellow that spilled from a bar halfway down the block, and the light on the corner.

A tall, thin man, hatless and in shirtsleeves, his hair plastered to his head by the cold rain, came in a staggering run out of the shadows. He stood swaying drunkenly under the corner street light. His rasping breath mingled with the patter of raindrops. His body was twisted, bent His hands clutched his stomach. Blood dripped through his fingers, splashing on the dark rivulets of water at his feet.

He turned, his eyes searching the darkness behind him. This was a neighborhood of cheap rooming houses, and in an unkempt yard the thin man saw a flicker of movement He sobbed.

Tires made a sucking sound in the night as a car turned the corner. “Help me!” the thin man yelled hoarsely, almost incoherently. “He’s murdering me!”

The car slowed, a creature of hesitation.

“Put it to bed, you lush!” a voice said.

The car shot ahead. Blood dripped through the thin man’s fingers. He cursed chokingly.

The drifting shadow behind the tall man came closer. The tall man watched; his mouth worked.

“As long as I’m here in the light,” he thought, “he won’t bother me. He hasn’t a gun, only a knife. He won’t come close to the light.”

The tall man was bleeding too much to stand in the shelter of the light all night. Sometime he would have to make a break for the bar ahead, where there were people. He was weak. It would be a race to see if he could beat the drifting shadow to the bar.

Seconds ticked away. The tall man licked his lips. Abruptly, he gathered himself, plunged toward the bar like a twisting broken-field runner. There was light there, people, warmth.

Behind him, footsteps pounded, two to the thin man’s one. The tall man began screaming without pause. The thudding feet behind him pounded in his head, filled his skull. Nearer and nearer. He was halfway to the bar when he stumbled, fell.

Still screaming, he crawled forward, the footsteps behind him rushing upon him. Then the thunder of the footsteps stopped, retreated softly. Voices came to the tall man on the ground.

“I ain’t had that many drinks, Joe. I tell you I heard a guy screaming. Like bloody murder.”

Three men hesitated in the doorway of the bar, scanning the street.

“There he is!” one of them cried, and they tumbled out of the bar.

One of them knelt over the tall man. Hands turned the thin man and rain beat in his face. Distantly, he heard a startled gasp:

“Look at his stomach! It’s slashed open!”

“Yeah,” another voice quavered, as the man who spoke became suddenly sick, “he couldn’t have done a better job if he’d been trying to commit hara-kiri...”

In the white corridor of the hospital, the mutter of rain outside was distant, lulling. Paula Sloan neared the stairwell, her white nurse’s uniform rustling softly. She almost bumped into a large man with a heavy face and glistening bald head who stepped out of the stairwell.

“Excuse me, Doctor Broughton,” she said.

Dr. Carl Broughton, looking like an English country gentleman in rough tweeds, stepped aside.

“You’re excused, my dear.” He smiled, and added, “Your young doctor performed a miracle of surgery tonight, you know.”

“I didn’t know. I just came on duty.” She smiled also. “My doctor?”

His eyes were searching. “Isn’t that the way you feel about Doctor Scott?”

She said nothing. He moved his great bulk closer.

“I know that isn’t a thing a doctor should say, Paula,” he said softly. “But I have said it, and I’m not sorry.”

“Please, Doctor!”

His eyes clouded. “Must it always be ‘Doctor’?” he asked. “You must know how I feel about you, Paula.”

“I’m sorry, but I—”

He forced a laugh that boomed in the corridor.

“Larry Scott — he’s a very lucky man,” he said. “I would give you anything, my dear, but Larry Scott— Suppose we just say that I am not the sort of man to impress the ladies. My ugly face, my bald head, are naturally not impressive.”

“You’ve always impressed me, Doctor,” Paula said.

“As a doctor, yes.” He laid his hand gently on her shoulder. “I’m an old fool, I suppose. Don’t let the things I’ve said make you feel badly.”

She relaxed as footsteps approached. Then they saw Dr. James Craddock.

“That was a fine piece of work you and Larry Scott did in surgery tonight, Jim,” Broughton said.

Craddock nodded a perfunctory greeting to Paula and Dr. Broughton. He was a tall man, slightly stooped. On his long, sharply-featured face spread a wry smile.

“You’ll have to give Larry credit for that,” he said. “I only assisted him. But it was a pleasure, watching him put the fellow on the operating table back in one piece. I think I’d have hobbled that job.”

“It sounds serious,” Paula said. “What was the operation?”

Carl Broughton nodded.

“It was serious,” he assured. “They brought a man in with his stomach slashed open. Three men in a bar on Jared Avenue heard screams, found the man unconscious on the sidewalk. As soon as they got him to the hospital Larry and Jim went right to work on him. They’ve brought the man down now. I suspect, my dear, that Doctor Scott will want you to attend his patient tonight.”

“The superintendent asked me to see Larry,” Paula said. “Who is the patient?”

Dr. Craddock ran long, lean fingers through his sandy hair.

“Some cheap gunman. He’s down in Four-o-three. I think you’ll find Scott there. Our patient is still under ether, Paula, but drop in on him often tonight. Larry and I did a lot of hard work on the fellow.”

“I will,” Paula promised, and moved away from them.

She felt Dr. Broughton’s eyes, hurt and patient, on her. The big, jolly-faced man had been kind to her, carrying his heart in his hands. She valued his friendship, but some men, Paula thought, are not satisfied with friendship alone. She went softly down the corridor on her rubber-soled shoes.

Paula opened the door of Room 403. A slim man was bending over the narrow, white bed. He turned, his white smock rustling. His lean, rather long face flashed in a smile as Paula closed the door and came toward him. Laughter crinkles almost buried his warm, brown eyes.

“Hello, darling.” He gripped her arms, his lips brushing hers.

“I’m on duty, Doctor,” she reminded primly.

“Then I’ll have to see you at breakfast,” he told her.

“Should you, Larry? It’s late. You won’t get much sleep.”

“How can I sleep anyway?” he asked. “Thinking of a slim nurse with golden lights in her eyes and hair?”

“Your words are wonderful, Doctor,” she laughed. “But I’m still on duty.”

He dropped his hands to his sides in mock hopelessness. He still stood faintly crooked, from the shrapnel wound he had received not many months before when a shell had played hob with the receiving station where he had been stationed in France. His color was not yet as good as it once had been, and his face was a trifle too lean, his jaw too sharp.

Yesterday, he had said to Paula:

“What I need is a woman’s good cooking for a while.”

Now she turned from him, a catch in her throat. Larry had been through a lot over there, but she still couldn’t convince herself that it would be fair for her to saddle him, a rising but still financially insecure young doctor, with her aged, invalid mother.

Larry was saying something about the patient’s chart. But Paula didn’t hear, for her eyes had fallen full on the man on the narrow bed. His face was white, his eyes closed, but she would have known him anywhere. Lou Blane! Who had caused her more anguish than anyone else in the world. And Lou Blane had not changed one iota since she had seen him last, which was five years ago.

The room suddenly became unreal. Old, bitter memories stirred like licking flames in Paula’s mind. Paula Sloan had considered murder once in her life, had considered killing this man in a mad moment of deep hurt five years ago, when everything that was right in her had cried out for justice.

The moment of madness had passed, though, and she had forced herself to forget. Now, five years later, Lou Blane, the man she had vainly tried to make herself murder, was lying, ether-drugged, in a hospital bed under her hands.

Larry’s voice came to her as out of a void.

“Paula! You’re trembling.”

She forced herself to meet his gaze.

“If you’re not feeling well,” he said quickly, “I can have another nurse assigned.”

“I’m all right,” she assured him.

The frown left his clean brow slowly.

“Sure, you’re okay. It’s just my nerves. Everything’s been magnified since I came back. Don’t forget breakfast.”

“I won’t, Larry.”

She watched him leave the room. She waited a moment, then turned and looked again at Lou Blane, at his narrow rat face.

The years rolled back in Paula Sloan’s mind. She was remembering Sis. Sis had been young, too young to have suffered as she had. Sis had had her values all mixed up. Paula thought of the night Sis had faced her defiantly, a half-packed suitcase on the bed. “I’m going away, Paula!” she had said. “It’ll be a lot better if you don’t try to stop me!”

“You don’t know what you’re doing, Sis!” Paula had pleaded. “You’re too young to know. You think flashy dresses and a fur coat are the best things in life. Parties and cars don’t make up life, either.”

“They’re a lot more than I’ll ever get around here!” Sis had declared.

“No, Sis.” Paula had taken a hard breath. “I know who you’ve been seeing these last few nights. Lou Blane is no good, Sis. I haven’t been asleep every night you’ve crept in at three or four in the morning.”

Sis had crammed a dress in her bag.

“Always spying! That’s one thing I want to get away from. You and Mom with your old-fashioned ideas. I’m going, and you can’t stop me. Lou Blane may not be your idea of a man, but he can give me the things I want. He loves me — he told me so.”

The door had slammed behind Sis. Paula had stood unmoving, the pathetic words echoing in her ears — “He loves me — he told me so.”

“You poor, foolish Sis!” Paula had whispered. “Men like Lou Blane never love anybody.”

The house had been very silent. Sis was gone.

The next piece of the mad montage had come months later. The day had been sunny. Spring was in the air. It was not a day for dying. Yet a group of people, silent and shuffling awkwardly, were knotted about the broken body of the young girl lying on the sidewalk below the rotting brick wall of the Victor Hotel. Sis had jumped from the sixth floor.

Paula Sloan had thought of murder then. Each clod of earth falling into Sis’s grave had whispered to her to kill, but she hadn’t, and grass had grown green and thick over the mound of earth.

Stiffly, Paula turned again to look at Lou Blane. He was so still, so unresisting in the narrow hospital bed. One rightly placed blow, hard and swift, and all the meticulous work Dr. Larry Scott had done would be undone.

Paula sat down, buried her face in her hands. She was dedicated to cure, not to kill. And Sis had been dead a long time.

Chapter II

Shroud of Darkness

A laugh from the doorway jerked Paula’s head up.

“Did he turn out to be a wolf in doctor’s clothing?” Miss Raynes asked.

Miss Raynes was on the switchboard here on the fourth floor. Her white uniform made her look almost plump. She was a blonde who had been called down by Miss Hastings, the superintendent, for chewing gum on duty and sneaking long phone calls with boy friends.

“What do you want?” Paula asked.

“Somebody to see you, downstairs in the reception room.” Miss Raynes’ wide blue eyes rolled. “I think it’s a gent. You look a little white about the edges, honey. Now if this gent downstairs,” she suggested. “Well, may-me if you made Larry Scott jealous, it’d wake him up.”

Paula forced a wry smile.

“The old technique.”

“Sure thing.” Miss Raynes fell in step beside her as they started down the corridor.

The heavy man in the waiting room just inside the huge front doors of the hospital laid aside a magazine and rose from a leather chair as Paula entered. There was no one else in the room.

The heavy man didn’t speak. Paula flinched under his gaze. She had a feeling that his hard, black eyes were photographing her, detail by detail, so that he would know her, even in the dark. It tightened her throat. She had never seen the man before. Them was no reason he should be filing every detail of her features in his mind, through the medium of those flicking black eyes.

“You wished to see me?” she asked.

He stepped closer, his eyes drilling into her, looming in her vision.

“You’re Paula Sloan?”

She nodded.

There was a silence. Not a muscle in his face worked; only his eyes.

“I’m sorry I put you to the trouble of running down here for nothing,” he said finally.

“But I don’t understand,” she said.

He stopped beneath the arched doorway, his searching eyes on her once more.

“You’re the wrong Paula Sloan,” he said. “I was looking for someone else.” His expression made his words mocking. She knew he was lying.

He pulled open one of the metal and glass doors. Gusty rain lanced in from outside. The door closed behind him. Paula watched him turn up his trench-coat collar. He looked at her once more through the glass door, his eyes laughing without mirth. Then he turned and went down the wide stone steps that led to the sidewalk.

Paula stifled an urge to run after him, demand his reason for being here. But she knew he would make her look silly, shrug her words aside with a hard laugh.

“Maybe,” she thought, “I’m imagining things, after the shock of seeing Lou Blane and all. Maybe the man was really looking for another Paula Sloan.”

But she couldn’t forget the way the heavy man had fixed her image on his mind with his eyes. Her forehead was hot, but the thin clamminess on it was like ice.

By the time she rode the self-service elevator back to the fourth floor, Paula was wishing she was off duty tonight. A cup of hot coffee with Larry, his voice filling a room — that was what she wanted. From the moment she had seen Lou Blane lying in the white bed, the hospital had become a different place, growing cold, strange.

She slipped inside Room 403, closed the door. She checked Lou Blane’s pulse. It was strong enough, steady and even. As she raised her eyes from her watch, she saw his lips move, his mouth twitch. The barely-breathed sounds that came from his mouth were at first an incoherent jumble. Then they strengthened, and she heard: “Vi — Violet knows. Violet knows!”

She knew he was dreaming under ether. Then she stiffened. Was Lou Blane reliving the nightmare he had experienced a few short hours ago? Had some Violet been a witness to the attempted murder of Blane?

Paula stood stock-still, watching Lou Blane’s lips. Then she heard the faint whisper of sound behind her. She whirled, her heart smothering her as she glimpsed the heavy shadow on the far wall. The bed screen had been pushed over in the corner, making an excellent hiding place.

She sensed the blow falling, threw up her arms to shield her head. The blow crashed through her guarding wrists. A gun barrel splashed fire over her vision. She never knew when she crumpled to the floor...

Vaguely Paula realized that she was struggling out of a bad dream. She forced open her eyes, looked around. The room was the same dimly-lighted place. Rain continued to patter outside the black square of window. But now the patter was louder, mingling with the throbbing in Paula’s head.

She got to her feet, giddy. The window was open, and a few fine raindrops had found their way in on her face, bringing her back to her senses. Her glance wavered to the watch on her wrist. She had been unconscious a little over five minutes.

She looked at the bed — and strangled a scream with the back of her hand. She had been right — one quick, hard blow and all Dr. Larry Scott’s careful surgery on Lou Blane was as nothing!

She turned her face away. She had seen death many times, but not like this, a man twisted in a bed gory with his blood. She fought for control, staggered to the bed, pulled the sheet, which had been ripped away, up about Lou Blane’s chin, hiding the blood.

She stumbled to the window. In a little while the cool air cleared her head. Her mind began to function.

The drop below the window was sheer — a fifty-foot drop. It would have been hard for the killer to have gone out there, but the only other way out of this room was through the door and down the corridor leading through the depths of the hospital.

She clenched her hands, fought for control. She listened for some outcry in the hospital. There was none. What would she tell them? That a shadow had struck her down, murdered Lou Blane and vanished from a window fifty feet above black, wet, glistening asphalt?

Knuckles rapped softly on the door. It was like an electric shock. She was suddenly marooned in an alien world, alone with a dead man, strength seeming to leave her knees.

She forced herself to the door, opened it a crack. A strange face met her gaze — the rocky, flat face of a barrel-like man. The man held up his palm. A bit of metal gleamed there. It was a policeman’s badge.

A feeling of cold caution swept over Paula.

“Yes?” she asked easily.

“We’re checking Lou Blane, lady.”

“Homicide?” The word slipped out.

The cop looked at her queerly.

“No, lady. Not Homicide. I wanted to question Lou Blane. The rat deserved whatever he got, but I’m supposed to find out who cut him.”

“He... he’s still under ether,” she said.

Would this policeman believe the wild story of the murdering shadow? She knew it wouldn’t take the police long to find out about Sis and Lou Blane, five years back. They would say that she, Paula Sloan, hadn’t been able to pass the opportunity tonight of revenging Sis.

They would laugh off the shadow tale, claim that she had been alone in the hospital room with Lou Blane. That would be so much simpler, less messy. Why chase a shadow when there was the sure-fire conviction of Paula Sloan to work on?

“The superintendent told me Blane was still asleep,” the cop said. “But she said I was to come on up, if I wanted to.” He shrugged his beefy shoulders under his slick raincoat. “It’s a rotten night. I’ll hang around awhile. Maybe Blane will wake up.” He started to shoulder his way in.

“But Mr. Blane has had a serious operation,” Paula said. “You’d better ask his doctor if you can come in.”

“I phoned Doc Scott,” the cop said, watching her narrowly. “He said I could question Blane if I didn’t get him excited. I’ll hang around.”

He strolled into the room. Paula struggled to keep her breathing even as she closed the door.

The cop looked down at Lou Blane.

“He looks pretty peaked.”

“Yes,” she said, “pretty peaked.”

Now there were three of them in the room. Paula Sloan, a crime she had wanted to commit five years ago, and retribution in the blocky form of the bluecoat. And only the thin layers of bed linens hiding Lou Blane’s blood from the man’s roving eyes.

She went weak as a new thought struck her. Would the blood that had not coagulated seep to the surface of the sheet, a widening crimson stain coming into being before the eyes of the policeman?

She walked toward the bed.

“Do you have any idea of who cut Blane?”

The cop shook his head.

“Blane lived at a Mrs. Flaherty’s rooming house at Four-thirty-three Jared Avenue. Mrs. Flaherty is old, not able to do much work, and has chased off most of her roomers and closed most of her house up. There was only her and an old geezer on the top floor in the house tonight, besides Blane and whoever was mad at him. Mrs. Flaherty didn’t hear nothing and the old geezer was sleeping off his gin.”

Paula looked from the policeman to the bed. There was a spot of blood at the edge of the sheet, the size of a dime. Her pulse hammered in her throat, but she put a smile on her stiff lips.

“Why don’t you take the chair there?” she invited.

He sighed.

“Thanks, lady. My feet are hurting, at that”

She moved slowly along the bed, inching toward the blood spot

“Have you decided how Mr. Blane was attacked?” she asked, as she caught the cop’s eyes. “Don’t you usually reconstruct crimes like this?”

“Yeah.”

He fished through his pockets, hunting cigarettes. Paula’s fingers trailed along the edge of the bed. The spot of blood was only inches away.

“The way I put it together is like this,” the policeman said. “Lou Blane had a visitor in his room. Him and the visitor got to arguing. The visitor grabbed a hunting knife Lou had laying on the dresser — we found the knife case. The visitor whacked Blane across the stomach. Maybe Blane hit him back, stunned the guy.

“Blind with pain, Blane managed to get out of the house. He made it to the corner. Maybe the visitor was hot on his heels. I guess Blane had been hurting so bad he hadn’t thought of yelling until he got to the corner. He started yelling then. Some guys in a bar heard him, found him on the sidewalk. Of course they didn’t have no idea someone was right behind Blane, and when the knifer saw the men coming out of the bar he faded into an alley and got away. Nobody seen him.”

With a grunt, the cop found cigarettes. He scraped a match, drew it toward his mouth. He applied the match to the cigarette, eyes on his hands. Paula’s fingers flicked the edge of the sheet over the blood spot.

She moved away from the bed. Covering the spot of blood had been a task that left her wanting to crumple to the floor and rest. She was aware of the police officer’s hard, suddenly questioning gaze on her face. Maybe he was reading it all in her eyes, in the set of her white lips. Any moment now he would be looking back at Lou Blane. It wouldn’t take him all night to catch on to the fact that Blane was not breathing.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said to him. “I have to step down to the dispensary for a moment.”

She turned, started from the room, each step a mile long. She closed the door behind her, turned down the corridor.

Chapter III

Escape

Paula had no plan, no real hope, only the driving desire to get away from the thin sheet that hid the secret of Lou Blane’s murder. Any moment the policeman in that room might pull the sheet back.

After that, they would question her under a bright light, never giving her pause or rest until she was broken, disheveled, saying anything. Saying that she had killed Lou Blane for what he had done to her sister five years ago. She could imagine a stenographer writing it all down, could almost see the pen thrust in her shaking hand to sign it. The confession would be delivered and the district attorney would nod, satisfied.

A low whimper escaped her lips. “Miss Sloan!” a voice said.

She whirled, trying to compose her features.

Dr. James Craddock was coming down the corridor behind her. His long, sharp face wore a frown.

“Are you ill?” he asked.

“Ill? Why, no. I... I was just humming under my breath.”

He paused beside her.

“Silly of me. I thought I heard you sob. How is the patient?”

“Still sleeping,” she said.

“He’ll be under ether for some time yet, I guess,” Dr. Craddock said. “Larry asked me to look in on him before I went home. I was just going down to his room.”

“No!”

“What, Miss Sloan?”

“I mean, I— He’s resting all right, Doctor Craddock. Excuse me, please.”

She started on down the corridor. She listened for his footsteps, heard nothing. That meant he was still standing there staring after her.

“If he calls me,” she thought, “I’ll pretend I don’t hear. I’ve got to get out of here!”

She went around the turn in the corridor, neared the door with the small light over it that indicated the stairs. A heavy bellow suddenly filled the corridor behind her. A door slammed. The acid voice of Miss Larson, head nurse on this floor, rose.

“See here, sir!” she was saying. “This is a hospital. You can’t shout like that here.”

“Where’s that nurse?” the cop Paula had just left shouted. “Lou Blane ain’t never going to wake up! Get that nurse!”

Paula tore down the stairs. Two factors, she thought desperately, were in her favor — the policeman’s being unfamiliar with the layout of the hospital would cause him to hesitate, and Miss Larson and Dr. Craddock would run first to Lou Blane’s room.

Paula reached the ground floor, slammed shut the stairs doorway, cutting off the pounding of the officer’s feet somewhere above her. In short moments, she knew, the hospital would hum. Every doctor and nurse would have their eyes peeled for her. A swift phone call to Headquarters and squad cars would surround the place.

The nurse on duty at the switchboard here on the main floor evidently was in the process of getting a call from Miss Larson on the fourth floor. Her face was white. She glimpsed Paula.

“Paula!” she shrilled. “Paula Sloan! She’s running out the back, Miss Larson!”

Paula almost bowled over a young intern as she raced toward the double doors at the end of the corridor. He shouted something as she jerked the doors open.

The night was thick, black, wet. Shivering, she ran down the short flight of stone steps. Behind her in the hospital she heard rising voices.

Here was the parking grounds, a dark plateau, with no place of concealment. In her white uniform, she would be plainly seen against the black of the night.

The rain stabbed icy needles in her face as she ran. Across the broad expanse of parking lot were shrubs, bushes, if she could reach them. The shouting voice of the young intern she had passed cut her thoughts off.

“That way! She ran that way!”

Paula dropped low, sprang between two cars parked at her left. At the edge of the parking lot the policeman’s flashlight fingered the night. In seconds he would be abreast of Paula, playing his light over the cars.

Teeth chattering, she tried the door at her right. It was locked. The policeman’s footsteps crunched on wet gravel, nearing.

Paula closed her fingers over the handle of the door at her left. It opened with a faint creak that shrilled in her ears. Crouched like a shivering, trapped animal, she eased the door wide enough to slip in.

Her hand groped, touched the seat. She felt a man’s leg. She jerked her fingers back as though she had touched a hot piece of metal.

“It’s quite all right, my dear,” Dr. Carl Broughton said softly. “Get in the car. I was just getting ready to drive away.”

Dr. Broughton touched her cold hand.

“You’d better hurry, Paula,” he whispered. “I can hear the gentleman yelling for you to surrender. He isn’t twenty-five feet away.”

She slipped in the car, crouched below the level of the window. Dr. Broughton started the motor with a roar.

“Hold it!” the cop yelled.

Heavy feet pounded to a halt beside the car. The cop’s light speared through the window. Paula pressed herself against the floor. The light splashed in Dr. Broughton’s eyes. He blinked, drew back.

“What the devil is the idea?” he demanded.

“A girl just committed murder in there!” the policeman barked, his tone matching that of Broughton.

Broughton’s heavy jaw sagged.

“Murder! Why, I didn’t see anyone. I... I’m Doctor Carl Broughton. I just came out of the hospital.”

“I’ve seen your name and picture in the paper.” The bluecoat’s voice now was tinged with respect. “You say the girl didn’t duck between these cars here?”

Broughton mopped his face.

“I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t see her duck in. How am I to know what a girl might have done?”

“Yeah, I guess not. It sure was a brutal murder, Doctor. Huh! I can see the tabloid headlines and pictures already! If you see her, yell.”

“You bet!” Broughton ground the starter again. “If the girl’s around on the parking lot any place you’d better get going and see if you can find her.”

“I’ll find her,” the policeman promised grimly. The roar of Broughton’s motor cut off anything further he might have said.

Paula felt the car bounce slightly as Dr. Broughton tooled it from the drive that led from the parking lot to the street. He leaned toward her.

“You can get up now,” he said.

She rose, sat beside him. Her hair was moist, her uniform stained. The windshield wipers beat a racing cadence to Broughton’s voice as he said: “You want to tell me about it, my dear?”

She stared ahead.

“Lou Blane’s murderer finally managed to do the job.” She turned to look at her companion’s rugged, hairless profile. “You’ve put your neck out for me, Doctor.”

“We’ll skip that. You know how I feel about you, Paula. Why did you run?”

“I was a little crazy, I guess, with shock,” she said at last.

She told him details of the attack on her, and the murder of Lou Blane. “Few people know it, Doctor,” she finished, “but I had reason enough to want Blane dead.”

“But you didn’t kill him.” It was not a question.

“No,” she said frankly. “But can you see how I felt? Nothing but a shadow, that’s all I saw. In the eyes of the law I was alone in that room with Lou Blane. I had no one to back my testimony. They would claim I’d committed murder, struck myself on the crown of my head, and told a wild tale in an attempt to escape. You know,” she said quietly, “what they would have done with me.”

His powerful jaw muscles ridged in the dashboard light.

“Pinning a murder on a shadow would have been a tough job,” he conceded. “Especially when they had the real murderess — to all appearances — under their thumb to wring a confession from. With the facts, they’d have been duty bound to do everything in their power to convict you of murder. I can see how you felt.” He added that gently.

She leaned back, closed her eyes.

“Where are you taking me, Doctor Broughton?”

“Wherever you want to go.”

They were driving down a dark, deserted street. On the corner glowed the light of an all-night drug store.

“Then I’ll get out here,” she said, her mind suddenly made up.

“I can’t let you do that,” he said tightly. “I can’t leave you here, alone and hounded by the police.”

“Please, Doctor Broughton!” she pleaded.

“But your clothes!” he protested.

“I couldn’t chance going to my apartment now. I’ll manage. But I won’t let you put your neck in a noose.”

Reluctantly, he slowed.

“But where can I get in touch with you? How can I help you?”

How could anyone?

“I’ll phone you, Doctor, if I need you,” she said.

His fingers closed almost harshly over her wrist.

“That’s a promise?”

“Yes. I’ll get out now. It’s for the best. They’ll be after you. That policeman knew only one car had left the lot and it won’t take him all night to suspect I couldn’t have got off the parking lot any other way. I’ll leave it to you to figure out a story.” She forced a smile. “If you want to help me, you don’t want to get yourself in jail as an accomplice.”

He opened the door for her. She stepped out on the damp sidewalk. She watched until the tail-light of his car had disappeared. Then she turned toward the drug store.

There was no one inside but a rawboned, elderly man. She slipped inside. The old man yawned, squinted at her, shuffled forward.

“I want to use your phone,” Paula said.

He jerked his gnarled thumb toward the phone booth in back.

“But I—” She twisted her hands — “I mean your business phone. I don’t have any money with me. I— There’s been an accident. I want to call a doctor.”

His tired, gimlet eyes took in her spotted uniform, the moisture on her clothes, her blond hair. His eyes half-closed, he searched her face. He fished in his watch pocket, pulled out three nickels, laid them on the counter. Then deliberately, he turned his back on her, missing her quick look of gratitude before she hurried to the phone.

The phone rang four times before Larry said a sleepy “Hello.”

“Larry! Thank heavens! I was beginning to think you weren’t going to answer. I... I’m in trouble, Larry.”

Sleep vanished from his voice. “Where are you, Paula?”

“In a little drug store at the corner of Fourth and Wildwood. Be careful, Larry. It’s serious. It’s murder.”

“Murder?” he breathed. “Who?”

“Lou Blane.”

“I’ll be right down.”

“Larry!”

“Yes?”

“Bring me a coat of some kind. I look a sight, and this uniform can be spotted a block away.”

Paula hung up, choked with relief.

Chapter IV

A Dead Man Is Hard to Find

The policeman who had come up to Lou Blane’s room in the hospital had said that Blane had lived with a Mrs. Flaherty at Four-thirty-three Jared Avenue. Paula looked at the two remaining nickels the old man had given her, which lay on the small shelf beside the phone.

She opened the phone book, found Mrs. Flaherty’s number.

“Hello!” a shrill voice, sharp with annoyance, finally answered.

“Mrs. Flaherty?” Paula asked hurriedly. “I hate to bother you this late, but it’s important.”

“Eh? It’d better be! I’m an old woman. I chased off most of my roomers to keep from being bothered at all hours like this. After what happened to Lou Blane early tonight, getting cut up and all like he did, I should have chased ’em all off!”

Paula ignored the vinegar in the cracked voice.

“I’m trying to locate someone named Violet, Mrs. Flaherty,” she said. “A Violet who knew Lou Blane.”

“Violet’s here.”

Paula couldn’t speak for a moment. In his ether dream in the hospital, Lou Blane had said, “Violet knows — Violet knows.” Paula couldn’t quite dare believe that this was salvation dropped in her lap.

“Could I speak to Violet?” she asked shakily.

“Are you crazy?” Mrs. Flaherty demanded. “Violet’s out in the garage. And a devil of a time the policeman had getting her there, out of Lou Blane’s room. Personally I didn’t try to get Violet out of the room before the police arrived. Regular little spitfire, Violet is. Raises sand every time a stranger comes around her, and everybody was a stranger but Lou Blane.”

“I... I don’t understand,” quavered Paula. “Violet in the garage?”

“Lord give me patience, young woman! Violet belongs in the garage, I say. She’s nothing but a dog, and a darned ornery little fox terrier at that.”

A dog. Violet knows. Why can’t a dog speak? This was the tearing of the fragile straw from the hands of a drowning person.

“Well, are you still there, young woman?” Mrs. Flaherty demanded.

Paula half sobbed. “I’m still here.”

“I wonder if you’ve been drinking, young woman, calling up at this hour to ask about a dog! As if I wasn’t bothered enough when he brought the dog home. Said the dog’d taken such a shine to him that he’d bought her. Lou Blane was dropped on his head when he was a baby, I bet. I always suspected he was a regular killer. Hard, you know, but he liked pets. Had a cat once. I’ve read stuff about these killer persons having unmatching character traits like that. One feller had a yen for flowers—”

Paula put the receiver on its hook.

The lanky old man watched her come from the phone booth.

“Cup of coffee, lady?” he asked.

“No, I—”

“On the house.” He showed he hadn’t any teeth when he grinned. “I’m sorta lonesome anyhow.” He drew coffee into a thick mug from a dented urn. “Some say I’m an ornery old cuss, lady.” He put the coffee before her. “My daughter — just about your age. Good girl, with a face like yours.” His eyes were rheumy. “You believe in faces, lady?”

“Why, I don’t know.”

“I always say a person’s soul is in his face. Especially in the eyes. I like the straight way you look at folks, lady, even when you’re in bad trouble.”

She took a faltering step back from the counter.

“Don’t spill your coffee, lady,” he said. “But there’s a car parked across the street, drew up while you were in the phone booth. If you look, easy-like, you can see the man who got out of the car. He seems to be waiting for you.”

She clutched the coffee mug with her hands. The man was standing in a doorway across the street. The shadows about him didn’t cut off the light from the street lamp entirely. He was heavy, dark. She had seen him once before in her life — tonight, just before the murder of Lou Blane. He was the strange man who had been in the waiting room in the hospital, who had told her she was not the Paula Sloan for whom he was looking. The man who had fixed her likeness so thoroughly in his mind with his hard, black eyes.

Coffee splashed over the rim of the cup, scalding, but bringing no sensation. She was in the vortex of a swirling nightmare that had begun with the murder of Lou Blane, the first night Sis lay under the cold earth.

“Easy, lady,” murmured the old man.

“What’ll I do?” she choked.

“You can’t call the police, can you?”

She shook her head.

“Even if you could, lady, what would you tell them? We know that man is waiting for you, but he’d laugh it off to the police, say he was waiting for a lady friend from one of the flats around here.”

“I’ll wait,” she whispered. “When he sees Larry drive up and come in, the man will go away.”

“Or do something to Larry, whoever he is,” the old man remanded.

Paula shivered. The old man stood with a hesitant air, drumming his big-knuckled fingers on the counter.

“All right, so I am a meddlesome old fool,” he muttered. He looked at Paula. “Lady, I don’t know you, just things an observant old feller would know by looking at you, watching you. But after a couple minutes, you go back to the phone booth again.”

The old man walked toward the back of the store.

Over the rim of the coffee cup, Paula eased her gaze back to the man across the street. He hadn’t moved. Silent, mocking, so sure of getting her. She choked on the coffee.

The old man came back behind the counter.

“You look in the phone booth now,” he said. “Maybe our pal across the street will think you’re making another call. There’s a back door out of the place beside the booth.”

Paula stumbled to the rear of the store, opened the door of the booth, eased inside. A worn, rough tweed coat hung on the mouthpiece of the telephone. A coat belonging to the old man’s daughter, Paula guessed. She slipped into it.

The old man gave her no chance to thank him when she came out of the booth, but nodded her frantically toward the door beside the phone booth.

The door opened into a narrow corridor, dimly-lighted. Paula ran between cardboard cartons, empty jugs. Rain swept over her face when she opened the door at the end of the corridor. Clinging to shadows, she plunged down the sidewalk.

She was on a dark street perpendicular to the one on which the heavy man had been standing. Once she reached the corner ahead, she could turn, double back.

She was halfway to the corner when headlights flared behind her. The heavy man, she realized sickeningly, was a fast thinker.

The lights were blinding, growing. They pinned her against the brick wall of a building, her arms outflung, fingers digging in the rough stone. She heard the rolling thunder of a gun, whimpered as brick chips stung her cheek. She flung herself down on the wet sidewalk, making her body as small as possible.

A second shot rang out, heavier than the first. Paula opened her eyes. The car swerved and another of the duller, heavier shots crashed. The old man had left his drug store. He was down at the corner, beside the store, a heavy pistol in his hand. The car hesitated. Then the heavy man gave it full throttle, taking the corner ahead with the growl of rubber on wet concrete.

The old man ran up as Paula staggered to her feet.

“I’m all right!” she gasped.

“You better get moving then, lady, and fast. Our pal in the car knew the shots would attract the cop on the beat. I’ll tell Hannrihan a tall tale about a burglar in my store to account for the shots, but being a cop, Hannrihan better not find you here.”

She panted for breath.

“When Larry comes to your store, he’ll ask about me, describe me to you. Will you tell him I’ve gone to Four-thirty-three Jared Avenue?”

“I’ll tell him.”

Paula paused at the edge of the sidewalk.

“I can’t ever thank you for this,” she said gratefully.

“You don’t need to.” The old man’s voice almost broke. “You look enough like my own daughter for me to do what I can. She died a week ago, lady,” he growled. “Now get! That man in the car is playing for keeps, and he thinks on his feet.”

The vestibule of Four-thirty-three Jared Avenue was a dusty mouth yawning before the black throat of the hallway that led to the musty depths of the house. A light clicked in the hallway, reluctantly dispelling a small portion of the darkness. A thin woman in a patched robe stood under the light, squinting through gold-rimmed spectacles.

“What do you want?” Her voice was like her face, sharp, used by the years, terminating in a point.

Wet and shivering, Paula moved into the wan light.

“Mrs. Flaherty, I’m Lou Blane’s sister.”

“Well, what do you want me to do about it? This is the second time I been woke up tonight. Your voice sounds like — Say, do you happen to be the one who called about Violet?”

“No,” Paula lied.

“Well, I wish somebody would get that dog away from here. Lou let her sleep under his bed all the time. Just laughed at me when I raised Cain about it.”

“Mrs. Flaherty,” Paula said, “Lou is dead.”

Mrs. Flaherty’s face softened faintly, as if the effort were a costly one.

“Oh,” was all she said.

“I’d like to look at his things, if you don’t mind,” Paula said. “Maybe I can get some ideas — a better idea than the police — about who hated him so.”

“Well, all right,” Mrs. Flaherty gave in, after a moment. “My night’s sleep is ruined anyhow. I... well, I’m sorry your brother is dead, Miss Blane. You come on up to his room. It’s just like the police left it.”

It was a large, rambling room with a bay window. Paula first looked through the bureau. There wasn’t much. A few shirts, some socks. In the second drawer was a bundle of letters which had already been gone over by the police. Lying loose in the third drawer were several newspaper clippings.

Paula read the first one:

BANK BANDIT, WOUNDED BY POLICE, MAKES GETAWAY

Brud Rankin, notorious hood, was sorely wounded today by members of the Police Department when he attempted to hold up the First Trust Bank. A statement made by Inspector P. J. Reilly predicted the early capture of Rankin. Brud Rankin, Reilly asserted, cannot travel far in his present, serious condition.

The next clipping was captioned:

HIJACKERS, SHOT IN RUNNING GUNFIGHT, DISAPPEAR

Three more clippings followed the same vein, telling of wounded crooks on the lam. Then Paula found a three-column picture that had been torn from a paper. It was captioned:

BRUD RANKIN DEAD?

The prediction that Brud Rankin, hood who escaped the police almost two weeks ago, would be captured has failed to materialize. Is Rankin dead from police-inflicted wounds in some hole in which he hoped to elude capture?

Paula knew “Brud” Rankin was not dead. Now that she had seen this picture she knew she had seen him three times tonight. Once in the waiting room in the hospital, again in the shadows across the street from the drug store. The third time she had glimpsed his face behind headlights, an indistinct blur, when he had tried to shoot her.

Nothing seemed to make sense. She was on a mad merry-go-round of murder, the music shrilling, clashing in her ears.

Mrs. Flaherty’s yawning grunt was not subtle, but was a broad invitation for Paula to leave. Paula turned from the bureau. There was nothing more here. If there had been, the police would probably have it.

The doorbell rattled downstairs.

“People!” Mrs. Flaherty said. “Some day I’m going to move to the South Pole.”

Paula followed Mrs. Flaherty down the stairs. In the downstairs hall she eased back in the shadows as Mrs. Flaherty went toward the front door.

The landlady opened the door. It was not Brud Rankin reappearing. Paula let out her breath as Larry’s voice came to her.

“A man in the drug store on the corner of Fourth and Wildwood told me I’d find—”

“Here I am, Larry!”

Paula ran forward. He caught her arm, looked at the landlady, but held his questions. Mrs. Flaherty slammed the front door as they went through it.

On the sidewalk, Larry turned Paula to face him.

“You didn’t say much over the phone.” He stopped, staring at her face. She was looking over his shoulder.

“That car parked there!” she breathed.

She went rigid as a voice came out of the shadows:

“Yeah, babe, my car. You didn’t really think I’d give up when I turned the corner after the nosy old geezer in the drug store shot at me, did you? It was easy enough to cruise back in the neighborhood of the drug store, spot you as you passed under a light, then follow you. I could have picked you off a dozen times, babe, but I was curious to see where you were coming. Now since the boy friend’s happened along, I’m glad I waited.”

Brud Rankin stepped out of the shadows, a gun in his hand pointed at Larry. And Rankin looked as if he was an expert in the use of a gun.

Chapter V

“You Bet Your Life, Babe!”

Larry pushed Paula behind him. Rankin laughed.

“Think that’ll do you any good, bud?” he growled. “Right now it ain’t the girl I want.”

Larry stepped forward. Rankin jerked the gun up.

“It’s you, bud, you!”

Rankin was fast. The lighting was poor. The crunch of the gun on bone strangled a scream in Paula’s throat.

Momentarily, the thin rivulets of dirty water snaking across the sidewalk were disturbed. Then they were smooth again, flowing around Larry’s limp fingers.

Paula sprang at Brud Rankin. His laugh was thin as he slapped her across the face with his open hand. She reeled back.

“Just listen, babe. That’s all. When I tried to shoot you before the old geezer in the drug store cut himself a hand in the deal, I planned to pick up your body, then let it be found by the police. Suicide, you know. It would look as if you killed Lou Blane and couldn’t live with your conscience any longer. But I’m a lad who can change his plans on the spur of the moment. Your boy friend is out cold. I’m going to load him in my car. If you ever want to see him again you’ll march straight to the nearest cop. You’ll tap him on the shoulder and say, Mr. Policeman, put me in a cell. I murdered a man tonight. His name was Lou Blane. You understand, babe?”

“No,” Paula choked, “I don’t understand. Why are you doing this to me? I never saw you before tonight. I’ve never done anything to you.”

“It’s strictly a business proposition with me, babe. You die, I collect. Simple enough? The mug paying me ain’t stingy, so I guess I collect, babe.” He bent, clutched Larry’s collar, his gun on Paula unwaveringly. “Think of your boy friend. You’re gambling your life, babe. Against his.”

Rankin handled Larry like a sack of meal. Rankin’s car door slammed, the motor roared. Then Brud Rankin and Larry were gone.

The wetness of the night pressed down upon Paula. Then she thought of Larry’s car, ran to it, jerked the door open. He had taken the keys from the ignition. There was no way to follow Brud Rankin’s black coupe. No way out, except to gamble her life for Larry’s.

She didn’t know how long she sprawled in the seat of Larry’s car. Neither did she realize exactly when the idea came to her, but as the full import of it hit her, she knew there was a way to make Violet, the speechless dog, name the person behind the nightmare!

Feeling her way, Paula crept across the yard, around the side of the house. The back yard was small, littered with refuse that smelled rank in the rain. Mrs. Flaherty had said that Violet had been taken to the garage, evidently the sagging hulk at Paula’s left.

She made her way across the yard, opened the garage door. The place was silent, empty. The moon rode free of clouds for a moment and Paula could see the short length of rope on the hasp of the garage door to which Violet had been tied.

She turned away, saw the hulking shadow of a man.

“You had your chance, babe,” Brud Rankin said. “You should have taken it. It’ll be a lot more messy this way.” He advanced a step. “You didn’t think I’d drive off and just leave you be, did you? I only had to turn the corner, tap your boy friend with the gun again to make sure he don’t go no place, and come back and see if you were being sensible and heading for the nearest cop.”

“You got the dog,” Paula said.

“Earlier tonight. But nobody’ll think anything of it — but you. Violet was a frisky thing. They’ll figure she gnawed the rope in two and ran away, if they bother to think of her at all.

“See, babe, it had to be you all the time, from the minute Lou Blane got away from my boss in Mrs. Flaherty’s house and got carried to the hospital. My boss can’t take a devil of a lot of investigating, babe. Too much might come out. Still he had to get rid of Blane. That meant you, a perfect fall gal, an airtight case against you, leaving the cops satisfied.

“The boss used to be great friends with Blane, even to the point that he sold Blane one of his dogs. So the boss knew, from Blane, all about the way your sister went. Blane used to brag about the way a woman had killed herself for him. That gave you plenty of motive. You had complete access to Blane’s room in the hospital, were supposed to be alone in the room with Blane when he was murdered. Not only that, but you knew of the importance of the dog after you heard Blane mumbling about Violet.”

“Yes,” Paula said heavily. “I finally realized. Violet hated strangers, but Violet raised no outcry when the murderer came to Blane’s room in Mrs. Flaherty’s house. That meant the murderer was no stranger to the dog, but her former owner. Since Blane had had the dog only a week I knew the dog tag for Violet had probably been purchased prior to that.”

Brud Rankin will never relax, she thought hopelessly. He’ll keep backing me up at the point of his gun. Now there is no way out.

She forced words.

“I knew that if I could get the dog tag, trace its purchaser, I’d have Violet’s former owner, the murderer.”

“Smart enough, babe. But a little late. We’ve been one jump ahead of you from the beginning. We think ahead, and think on our feet. Even knowing about Violet would have done you no good. Think the police would have listened to a wild tale like that with a nice confession from you in their hands? But we couldn’t let you run around loose, investigating the dog on your own. You might have got a stronger lead. We couldn’t take that chance.

“You might have realized, for example, that I first came to the hospital tonight and had you called down to the reception room not only because I wanted a good look at you. I wanted to be sure I’d recognize you again in case you happened to make a getaway out of the hospital and I had to take a hand. I also called you down to give the boss a chance to get in Blane’s hospital room and hide behind the bed screen. We didn’t miss a trick, babe. You asked for a murderer. You got one. Let’s go.”

“I won’t go!” Paula was pressed against the grimy wall of the garage. Her fingers searched for a weapon, felt only splinter-filled wood. “I won’t go! You’ll kill me anyway!”

Brud Rankin made a harsh sound in his throat, moved in close. Paula’s last thought before she sank into blackness was that Rankin enjoyed striking people with that gun barrel.

Familiar odors bit Paula’s nostrils when she regain consciousness — the smell of antiseptic, the faint, hovering sweetness of chloroform.

She felt the leather arms of a chair under her fingers. Brud Rankin’s face swirled in focus before her. She turned her head. She was in a surgery, glistening, white, small but efficient-looking. Larry was sprawled at the base of a table stacked with lab equipment, silent, white. Three drops of blood from the cut on his temple had marred the spotless floor. She wondered numbly if he were dead.

“Too bad it had to be this, my dear,” a familiar voice said.

She heard his laugh, his step nearing.

“What are you going to do with us now, Doctor James Craddock?” she demanded.

Craddock stood over her.

“Kill you, of course, both you and Larry. It will look like a double suicide, knowing you’d get caught sooner or later with Lou Blane’s blood on your hands. I couldn’t under any circumstances, let you out of here now, Paula. You’re in a section of the basement of my home. Anyone who sees this surgery has to be a person who’ll keep his mouth shut. I make certain of that, and those who come here pay plenty.”

“Criminals,” Paula said. She almost choked on the word as she noticed Larry stir.

“Yes, criminals,” Craddock said. “I’ve never been the sort of doctor I used to dream about being when I was a young fool with ideals in my eyes. I’ve never stood very high at the hospital, and I never would have made a decent living out of private practise. But the boys who get police slugs in them think I’m tops. And I never have to worry about collecting my bills. There’s always the chance of another police slug, a moment when the boy will need a good doctor desperately.”

“Brud Rankin was one,” Paula said.

“Sure.” Brud nodded. “The dumb cops thought I’d die in some hole somewhere.”

Paula looked from Rankin to James Craddock. “Lou Blane was another.”

“That’s right.” Craddock slipped his hands in his pockets, smiled wryly. “I might as well admit that Blane fooled me, all the way. I trusted him, thought he was a friend, even sold him Violet. Blane was a rat who liked pets and had a terrific knack of blinding people to his true intentions. People such as your sister, Paula, and me.

“I think I still regarded Lou Blane as a friend when he called me to Mrs. Flaherty’s house tonight, showed me evidence he had gathered — and which I managed to get away — and gave me the choice of paying through the nose or having the police learn of my surgery here, the men I’d doctored.

“I had no intention of paying. It was too bad for Lou. I’d have finished Lou off on the operating table tonight, but Larry Scott did the surgery and saved Blane — for a while. Even at that, I made all the bobbles I could, bobbles which Larry covered and chalked up to nerves.”

Behind Craddock and Rankin, Larry was rising to his feet. Swaying, he bumped the table of lab equipment. A rack of test tubes tilted, fell to the floor with a crash.

Brud Rankin spun, his gun jumping into his hand. Paula screamed, struggled out of the chair. A gun blasted, like the explosion of a buzz bomb in the confines of the surgery. Blood began spilling out of Brud Rankin’s neck. He was dead before he hit the floor.

Craddock sprang for Rankin’s unfired gun, his head jerking toward the stairway and the beefy man who was standing there.

Dr. Carl Broughton fired again from the stairway, missed. Craddock raised his gun deliberately.

Larry Scott’s fingers found a heavy mortar and pestle on the table of equipment. He ignored the pestle, threw the mortar. The heavy stone left Craddock’s face a mask of blood. It seemed to Paula that Craddock fell very slowly.

She was in Larry’s arms when Dr. Broughton crossed the surgery to them.

“I made a mistake tonight,” Broughton said, “a bad one. When I left you, Paula, at the all-night drug store, I foolishly phoned Craddock, let it slip where you were. Later I realized what I might have done to you, that Craddock would trap you in the drug store or send someone there. I hope this makes up for that mistake.”

“More than makes up for it, Doctor,” Paula said. Broughton looked down at Craddock’s unconscious form and went on.

“I arrived at the right answers, though by a different route. The more I thought of Lou Blane’s murder, the more I was positive that someone connected with the hospital had killed him. The only way out of that room was through the door, and a stranger would have had a hard time coming out that door, down the corridor, down four floors, and out of the hospital without being seen.

“I questioned the nurses, found that no stranger had come out of that room, or off that floor. But I did find out from two of the nurses who had been on duty in surgery, that Craddock had been very much a hindrance while Larry operated on Lou Blane. Then I went back to the drug store on the corner of Fourth and Wildwood, learned from the old man that someone had tried to shoot you, Paula.

“I knew that Craddock and myself were the only ones who knew I had left you there, since I’d foolishly phoned. And I knew darn well I hadn’t sent anyone there to shoot you. I always thought James Craddock was too poor a doctor to make the money he evidently had.” Broughton shrugged his bulky shoulders. “Craddock’s butler is upstairs now. I had to lock him in a closet, after tickling him with my gun barrel to get a key to the surgery here. Maybe they’ll want him as a witness.”

Broughton looked from Paula to Larry, smiled wanly.

“I’m a fool for bettering a rival,” he said, “but I haven’t a chance with this nurse anyway. Larry, I think in just a few days I’ll be needing an assistant.” He turned to Paula. “That takes care of your last objection to marrying him, doesn’t it? He’ll be making money enough so that your mother couldn’t possibly be a burden.”

Paula’s eyes were misty. “Thank you, Doctor,” Larry said.

“If you hadn’t earned it you wouldn’t be getting it, Larry. The surgery you did on Lou Blane was enough to convince me.” Carl Broughton turned toward the stairs. “I’ll call the police.”

He climbed the stairs heavily. The surgery of Craddock’s was silent.

“You heard what he said, didn’t you, Nurse?” Larry said.

“I did, Doctor. But you’ll have to promise me to make it a strange wedding.”

“I don’t know if I like that.”

“You will. A wedding with two men to give the bride away. Doctor Carl Broughton and,” — she touched the rough tweed coat she had taken from a phone booth — “an old geezer who runs a dusty all-night drug store on the corner of Fourth and Wildwood.”

Content

Talmage Powell
Blood on Her Hands

Chapter I “I Wanted to Kill You!”

Chapter II Shroud of Darkness

Chapter III Escape

Chapter IV A Dead Man Is Hard to Find

Chapter V “You Bet Your Life, Babe!”