A gripping story of Washington, where the cost of living is the highest of any city in the nation, and the cost of dying is often at bargain rates.

The door to the big hall opened again and Terry Black came into the room. He was a slender man of medium height with lean jaws, high cheekbones and large eyes set deep. He was wearing a blue serge suit that was shiny from much pressing. He had a taxi driver’s cap in one gnarled hand and a creased envelope in the other. He bobbed his head rather awkwardly.

“How do you do, Senator. I... I got over as soon as I could.”

The senator half rose to extend a limp hand. “How are you, Black? Quite well, I hope. You are prepared to pick up your note, I presume?”

Terry Black swallowed hard. “Yes, sir. I didn’t have much warning. You told me, you know, that any time I had the money.”

Bradford Weller cleared his throat noisily. “That was two years ago, Black. I haven’t pressed you.”

“I know.” There was a strange expression in the taxi driver’s deep eyes. He laid the envelope on the senator’s desk. “It’s there,” he said hoarsely, “but, Senator...”

“Yes. What?”

“I’d appreciate it if you could wait a while. I had to get it from a loan shark. They never let go, those fellows. The interest—”

The senator waved his hand. “Quite impossible, Black. I need the money. I made it easy for you. Cut the note in half.”

He reached out one hand and drew the envelope to him. Terry Black watched it across the desk top and Greg Cooper watched Terry Black. There was perspiration heavy on Greg Cooper’s forehead again. He was, he knew, looking at an honorable man who met his debts when they were called; whatever the price to himself. The taxi driver’s shoulders slumped.

“All right, sir,” he said. “Thank you.”

He turned to go and his eyes rested on Greg Cooper’s desk and on the box beside it; the desk that was stacked with currency and the box that was filled with it. His slightly stooped figure became rigid. He stared hard and then his eyes swung back to the senator. Bradford Weller was counting the money that he had taken from the envelope and he did not look up. Terry Black swore under his breath, put his cap on his head and stalked from the room. Greg Cooper looked after him.

“He was an honorable man when he came in,” he thought. “What was he when he went out?”

Something had risen out of that greed-polluted room and entered the soul of Terry Black. Greg Cooper had seen it happen. He passed the handkerchief across his forehead and looked toward the senator. Bradford Weller tossed the currency-stuffed envelope from one desk to the other.

“Two hundred and fifty more, Cooper,” he said. “Make a record of it.”

Greg Cooper made no comment. There were times when the words at his command were inadequate to express his thoughts or his feelings. He had no awe of the senator. He had written speeches for Bradford Weller that Weller could never have written himself. He had written diplomatic letters to irate constituents and he had ferreted out the hidden hands behind important bills so that the senator could line up on the right side. He had no more illusions about statesmanship and he knew the senator for what he was. Yet strangely, he had an affection of a kind for the man; the affection of a foster parent for a spoiled and detestable brat which has, nevertheless, a helpless appeal. Bradford Weller couldn’t walk alone in a world of politics but he thought that he could and he was quite vain. Cooper granted him his vanity and watched over him. It was all part of a good political secretary’s job.

The room was quiet again. Cooper made the pencil entry on a long sheet and the ink entry in a ledger. He checked through the thin sheaf of tens and twenties for which Terry Black had entered the slave ranks of a loan shark, then tossed the bills into the box with the rest.

The door at the end of the room opened. Hito was bowing to the senator again.

“Misser George Arlington. You see him, yess?”

At sound of the name, Cooper raised his head sharply. The senator came out of his reverie. “Yes. Yes. Of course, I’ll see him.”

He was squaring away behind his desk like a man of affairs rather than like the idle dreamer of a long afternoon. He made a gesture toward Cooper.

“You might drop the lid on that box,” he said.

Cooper had acted ahead of the command. The box was closed and he was stacking the last of the unchecked bills in a desk drawer when the latest visitor came in.

Greg Cooper tried to hold his face in a poker mold. He had drawn conclusions of his own when Mildred Harney was invited to the Weller estate in the absence of Emily Weller, but the senator had loved them and left them before. He wasn’t the marrying type.

“The senator loves his money more than he will ever love any woman,” he said.

Vivian tapped her foot. “But suppose he doesn’t think that the money is his while he stays here? That he has no control over it? That would make a difference, wouldn’t it?”

Greg Cooper met her eyes. “It would,” he said.

“Then that’s the answer. He wants to take his money away where no one else has any say about it except himself. He’s going to take this woman with him. Greg, he mustn’t do it. He mustn’t. Aunt Emily has given him too much. He would leave her penniless.”

She was beating with her small fists against Greg Cooper’s chest and she seemed unaware of what she was doing. She hadn’t mentioned the senator’s name and reputation as a chip in the game — and Greg Cooper did not consider it a very big chip himself. The voters would never send Bradford Weller back into the senate. His political career was done. Political expediency no longer anchored him.

With over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash and a decorative blonde companion, Bradford Weller would be as free as a bird in any country on the globe. In France or England, no scandal would follow or touch him. His money would be his passport.

Vivian Dawson had been looking up into Cooper’s face and he never held a poker expression long when she was around. Sensing the fact that she had scored a point with him, she moved to the other side of the room.

“You’ve got to do something about it, Greg,” she said. “You’re the only one who can.”

Cooper frowned. He wasn’t sure that it was any of his business, past a certain point, to interfere in what might be a family matter of the senator’s. He took a step toward the girl.

“Why worry about it, Vi?” he said huskily. “You’ve never been happy here. I’ve been playing with the offer of a job in Cuba. I’ll take it like a shot if—”

The girl was standing motionless. “You’re asking me to run away from responsibility, Greg?”

He dropped his eyes. “It isn’t your responsibility.”

He felt that he should argue the point with her and prove to her that she was not concerned in what the senator did; but he found that the words wouldn’t come. He wanted to take Vi Dawson out of here and give her a home of her own — his home. But the senator and his piles of currency could not be dismissed with a gesture and a word. There was drama building up in this old house on Mount Vernon Boulevard, drama and, perhaps, tragedy. Vi Dawson was still looking at him.

“Aunt Emily would stop him from running away with a blonde actress and losing his money,” she said, “but we can’t worry her while she is in the hospital. We’ve got to do something ourselves.”

“It’s his life, Vi — and his money.”

“It isn’t. A man can’t take all his money and run out on his wife, can he? Well, Aunt Emily has managed his house for him better than most wives would. She hasn’t any money of her own. He would leave her penniless.”

The girl was becoming angry. Angry girls become unreasonable if they aren’t headed off. Greg Cooper mopped his forehead. He was more at home in a man’s world and he knew how to argue with people like the senator. He was conscious, too, of an inherent handicap — he was by nature reasonable. He could see both sides of an argument so clearly that he couldn’t become steamed up over either side.

“You’ve got to think of the senator himself, too,” she said. “No flashy young woman like Mildred Harney is really in love with an old man like Uncle Bradford. She’ll get all his money and she’ll ruin his reputation and—”

Greg Cooper grinned wryly. “And his friends won’t speak to him and the post office won’t deliver his mail and—” He became suddenly grave and gripped the girl’s shoulders with strong fingers. “I’m not a meddler, Vi. If this girl is going to marry him, I’ve got to stay out. If it is a swindle, I’m going to stay in.”

“And you’ll stop him from running away until you’re sure?”

“That’s a big order.”

“If you don’t, I’ll find some way to do it.”

“How?”

“Some way. He’s my dead mother’s brother. I haven’t any other family left.”

Her voice was breaking. Greg Cooper gripped her by the elbows, lifted her off the floor and kissed her squarely on the mouth before she had time to turn her head. He was a little bit shaken as he set her down and his voice was husky.

“Sit tight, Vi,” he said. “I don’t know what’s up, but whatever it is, I’ll find a way to block it until we know.”

He was thinking of George Arlington more than he was of the glamorous Mildred Harney. Vi Dawson held the tips of her fingers against her lips.

“That’s a promise?” she said.

Cooper nodded solemnly. “It’s a promise.”

The years had not been kind to Bridwell. He was undersized and stoop-shouldered and he entered a door with a kind of furtive duck that brought him in sidewise. His pasty white face was covered with dirty gray stubble. His eyes rolled uneasily under bushy eyebrows that were already gray.

“You got something for me, Mr. Cooper?” he croaked. “Hannigan says you were askin’.”

“That’s right, Beau. Have a beer.”

Cooper gave the order for the beer which would keep Hannigan from butting in for a few minutes. He was measuring Bridwell thoughtfully. It was hard to believe that this shabby little down-and-outer had once been an aristocrat of the underworld; a master hand at the art of opening safes.

“I’ve got a box to be opened, Beau,” he said.

The little man jerked convulsively. His lips worked. “Nix. I’m all washed up. One more rap would finish me. I’m running straight, Mr. Cooper.”

“This is straight, Beau. I’ll take the responsibility. I am Senator Weller’s secretary. I’ll let you into his house and you open the box. You do not steal anything and you won’t have to run from cops or worry about burglar alarms.”

The little man stopped the nervous jerking of his features. He lived in a world of sharp dealing, of chiseling, of games and rackets that played along the fringe of the law. His eyes stopped rolling and concentrated shrewdly on Cooper’s face. He saw an angle and he was wondering how far he could play along in safety.

“You ain’t risking a swell job and a rep to glom some of the senator’s marbles,” he said finally. “I guess maybe I can work for you.”

“Okay.” Cooper was relieved. “Can you still open a safe by listening for the tumblers to fall?”

Beau Bridwell wet his lips. “If the box is 1910 or before that, yes. After that, maybe. One o’ them new boxes, no.”

“It’s pretty old.”

“That’s swell.”

The little man took a deep draught of the beer. He wiped his lips with his fingers. “If you wasn’t a friend o’ mine when you was on the papers, I wouldn’t touch it,” he said. “But friend or no friend, I gotta have a bit o’ money for my work. I gotta have it now.”

“How much?”

Bridwell’s eyes narrowed. “A hundred bucks, Cooper.”

“I haven’t got that much money on me, Beau.”

“I’ll take a check. I ain’t scared o’ rubber in your paper.”

The little man had thrown off his air of frightened humility. Cooper had come to him and Cooper had hired him for a job that no one else could do. The thought gave him dignity. He had a certain grim stubbornness under the dignity, too. Measuring him, Cooper knew that the man would stand on the demand for a hundred dollars and not a cent less. Cooper laid his check flat on the sticky table top and wrote.

“One hundred dollars, Beau. You won’t get drunk on me?”

“This beer is my last. I don’t drink when I’ve got a job to do.”

“That’s the spirit. Get out to the senator’s house on Mount Vernon Highway at three a.m. The back door will be unlocked and I’ll be waiting for you. Better hire a car and leave it alongside the highway.”

“Okay.” Beau Bridwell took one look at the check and folded it away swiftly. There was a tightening in the man’s slack lips, a gleam in his eye. Cooper rose slowly. He could read in the man’s face the reason for the swift acceptance of the check idea, the fixing of the amount above what a man might be expected to carry in his pocket.

That check was Beau Bridwell’s insurance against a frame-up or a slip. It was his proof of employment by Greg Cooper. Cooper’s lips twisted in a wry grin.

He stepped out of the booth and stopped short with surprise. Terry Black, the taxi driver, was sitting on a stool at the bar with a straight whiskey in his hand and his eyes fixed on the booth. When he saw Cooper’s eyes on him, he turned his back and huddled over the whiskey glass. Greg Cooper’s eyes narrowed.

He strode out to his car. He had taken a long step. If everything went all right tonight, he would take a hundred and fifty odd thousands of dollars from the senator’s safe. Provided that he was not interrupted, he would take that money and hide it in a panel that he had discovered years ago in the parlor mantel. There would be hell to pay in the morning but until the senator found his money, he would not be able to lose any of it to blondes, confidence men or second story workers.

It was not stealing money, he told himself; it was removing it from the control of its owner during a period of danger. “I know the senator better than he knows himself,” he thought. “He isn’t smart enough to go up against professional talent and win. By shifting the stakes out of the way, I’ve got a chance of confusing the players and of finding out what the senator is up against.”

But he was not entirely reassured. Whatever the moral issue might be, there would be a period of time between the safe and the mantel panel when he would be, in the eyes of the law, a burglar.

Dinner was over; a meal so smoothly and effortlessly served by the faultless Hito that one was not aware of service at all. The senator looked around the table.

“I would like to see you all in my study within the next ten minutes,” he said.

He rose and Mildred Harney was beside him. Her hand rested lightly, caressingly, on his arm. He looked down into her eyes and was conscious of a wave of excitement. Her eyes were ice blue and yet, in the depths, he saw a warm glowing spark. He laid his hand over hers and liked the softness of the contact.

The others were taking his “ten minutes” provision literally, so he walked on to the study with the girl. The grim-visaged Mike Deshler was on guard before the door. The senator nodded to him.

“Come in after the others do,” he said. “I will want you.”

Mike Deshler touched his forehead with two fingers in a rough salute. The senator unlocked the study door and clicked the switch which controlled the wall bracket lights. They were soft lights and did not emphasize the mark of the years upon his face. He could see himself in the mirror over the mantel and in tailcoat and white tie, he looked taller than his five feet ten. His wig had cost him a thousand dollars in Paris and not even an expert could tell that it was not his own hair. He had been careful, too, about his teeth. When his upper plate was made, he had had the dentist put gold crowns on two of the teeth and fillings in three of the others. His own teeth had not looked more real.

He squared his shoulders and turned to the girl. “You still believe in me, Mildred?” he said softly.

Her fingers tightened on his forearm and her face lifted to his. “You know I do, Bradford,” she said. “In everything.”

He squeezed her fingers and released her. “Give me your support tonight,” he said. “After that...”

There was a promise in his voice and she smiled back at him. He looked at his old-fashioned safe in the corner of the room and then at the two boxes beside Cooper’s desk. A chuckle rose in his throat. He rubbed his hands together and went behind his desk. Mildred Harney sat down and stretched her legs straight out before her.

The door opened and Tim Weller came in. Tim was a six-footer, a bony-faced man with sunken eyes that glowed as cleanly as the eyes of a young man. He had never had much to do with dentists and the few teeth that he had left were discolored. He was biting a cigar with them now and looking at his brother from under bushy gray brows. Bradford Weller did not meet that questing regard.

Greg Cooper and Vi Dawson had stopped outside the dining room door.

“I’m a silly person, Greg, and bad company and hard to get along with and—”

“And a nail biter, a fireplug parker, an eater of hot dogs with soda pop and—”

“Stop! I’m serious. I know when I’m dreadful. But Greg, I’m worried and scared and I can’t help myself. All of that money in the house means trouble and Uncle Brad isn’t himself. You won’t let me down, Greg. You won’t let him be swindled or—”

“I gave you a promise, Vi.”

“I know.”

They went down the hall together. The senator watched them come in with a cynical smile on his lips. It was a newly developed theory of his that the young neither felt nor understood the true meaning of love. Young emotions, he felt, were essentially shallow, subject to too many future stresses which they probably would not survive. Only rich maturity could know the full flower of love. He looked at Mildred Harney and his shoulders unconsciously squared. Mike Deshler and Hito had come in. He had his full audience.

Bradford Weller looked at the fire. “Scatter the ashes well, Hito,” he said. “People have been known to obtain treasury redemptions on burned currency.”

He took an envelope from his pocket. “Your pay, Deshler,” he said. “I doubled the regular rate to take care of the overtime.”

“Thank you, sir. You won’t need me any more?”

“There’s nothing left to guard.”

“Good night, sir.”

Mike Deshler walked out like a punch drunk fighter. Bradford Weller grinned after him. Mike Deshler would open that envelope and find twenty dollars — and Mike Deshler would remember that he had seen nearly a hundred and sixty thousand dollars go up in smoke. Mike Deshler would probably get drunk.

Mildred Harney swung her leg down from the edge of the desk. She gripped the lapels of the senator’s dinner coat and raised her face to his.

“I think you’re wonderful,” she said. “That was the bravest thing that I have ever seen anyone do.”

He put his arm around her and, oblivious to the presence of Hito in the room, he kissed her hard on the mouth. He held her then at arm’s length.

“And you don’t mind if I am practically broke?”

“Not a bit. You have ability. I believe in you.”

He patted her shoulders. “You are a wonderful girl.”

She kissed him, then, swiftly — and, wheeling, ran from the room. He looked after her and he could feel the rush of his own blood. She was his. He would take her with him when he left. He would take her to New York. After that? There was excitement in his brain but he had held winning cards before in his lifetime. He would collect the winnings of the hand that he held before he started to worry about the next hand. That would be his life from now on.

He had made no definite promises to the girl and a girl so obviously crazy about him might not insist upon marriage.

He watched Hito as the Japanese completed his dispersement of the ashes, then he took a decanter from his desk and poured himself a brandy.

“A big night, Hito?” he said.

“Yess, Sar.”

The Japanese waited. Bradford Weller waved one thin hand. “That will be all, Hito.”

“Yess, Sar.”

The door closed and Bradford Weller was alone. He finished his brandy, looked around the room triumphantly and realized suddenly that he was tired. It had been a strain and he had acquitted himself well under circumstances far from easy.

“I’ll go to bed,” he said.

He went out into a hall that was silent and deserted. Mildred, he supposed, had retired. His eyes gleamed at the thought of her. The others! Well, there was little to keep them up. He found amusement in the thought of Cooper. He had scored on Cooper more heavily even than he had hoped.

Cooper had been shocked and surprised into complete helplessness. He hadn’t even had one of his customary wisecracks. To cap it all, Cooper was in bad with Vivian for not doing something heroic. The senator chuckled. “It’s no time for her to be acting uppity and independent,” he said. “She hasn’t got a dime.”

He was feeling like a minor god again. He had stretched out his hand and he had scrambled lives around with it. Every person in that room would date time from this night. He had changed the course of every life with the possible exception of Deshler’s. Even little Hito would find things different. He would probably have to hunt another job when Emily came back and found her meal ticket gone.

“They made me, eh? Well, let them make themselves.”

He was in his room with the door closed and he was very tired. His head ached a little and he was glad to remove the wig. He climbed slowly out of his evening clothes. He had never been able to abide a valet but there were times when he wished that he had one. He lacked even the energy for a shower. He filled a glass of water, put his teeth into it and got into his pajamas. He turned out the light, then, and threw himself gratefully upon the bed.

Staring up into the darkness, he imagined that he could see the leaping flames again; flames that danced on stacks of currency — a danse macabre for the hopes of those who had planned to inherit. Freedom had come to him from those flames — and he was not through yet. He had another surprise in store. He chuckled.

He did not hear the door open. A figure glided across the room and he was not aware of the intruder until he sensed a presence by his bed. He blinked to clear the vision of the flames from his eyes and he saw the flash of the knife coming down...

Already he could feel the tomblike silence settling upon the old house. It would be no cinch to stay awake, even with all that he had to think about. He smoked a cigarette and heard Hito putting out lights in the big study.

Cooper gave the man fifteen minutes to clean up whatever odd chores he might have to do in the rear of the house, then rose and went back through the kitchen. There was no sign of Hito and the rear door was locked. Cooper was on the point of unlocking it, but he stopped with his hand on the catch, withdrew it and snapped his fingers. “It will be time enough to do that when I come down at three o’clock.”

He went back through the house, turned out the light in the little study and ascended the stairs. His room was in the rear of the house, just across the hall from Tim Weller’s. The doors of all the rooms were closed but there was a line of light under Vivian’s door and he stopped. He was about to knock softly when he became aware of the fact that Vivian was speaking to someone. He stopped with his hand raised and then the other voice answered.

He could not distinguish words but the second voice was the voice of the blonde, Mildred Harney.

He let his hand drop arid went slowly up the hall. It was natural enough that two girls who occupied connecting rooms should be having a goodnight conversation, but he wasn’t quite happy about it. Under present circumstances, Mildred Harney would not be talking to Vi out of any feeling of affection. She was the kind of a person who had axes to grind. And she was likely to be in a mood for knifing Greg Cooper in the back with a great deal of enthusiasm.

“And I can’t help that.” He went into his room and snapped on the light. A shower would, he reflected, be a help. He slipped out of the dinner clothes. He could not, however, dismiss from his mind the thought of Vivian Dawson.

“If she had only talked to me instead of the blonde,” he thought.

There was a little man crouched in front of the safe, his fingers pressing the dial lightly. At the sound of the opening door, he leaped to his feet. There was terror in his white face as he turned, and Cooper swore.

“Bridwell!”

The man behind Cooper relaxed. He evidently hadn’t recognized Cooper in the darkness. Beau Bridwell was leaning against the safe for support.

“You scared me, Mr. Cooper. I... I—”

“You thought you’d try a double-cross?”

“Oh, no. No, sir.”

“Baloney. Who’s this wolf?”

Cooper turned. The man with the gun was holding it like a man in evening clothes holding a greasy tire iron. He no longer looked formidable, merely disconcerted. Cooper jerked the loosely strung handkerchief from his face and stared at him in astonishment.

The man with the gun was Terry Black of the taxicab. He flushed under Cooper’s hard stare, but his mouth was sullen. There was a raw odor of liquor about him.

“I ain’t interested in anything but what’s mine,” he growled.

“You mean the two hundred and fifty dollars?”

“You bet.”

“It wasn’t yours. You owed it.”

“Maybe. I was willing to admit that I did. If the senator needed the dough, it was his, see? But when I saw all that money stacked up—”

“Okay. It still isn’t your money.”

Cooper turned back to Bridwell, his jaw hard. “And you, you doublecrossing chiseler, I suppose you just got here early and went to work, eh?”

“Yes, sir. That’s how it was. My watch only cost a buck in the first place and—”

“And you’re a liar. You gave me the doublecross. You had my check if anything went wrong and you were going to glom off that money for yourself.”

“No. You got me wrong on that.”

There was white fear in Beau Bridwell’s face; the fear of a man who has served too many years behind gray walls and who knows that he will never come out if he goes in again. Cooper stood with his hands on his hips. His eyes shifted from one man to the other. Terry Black showed less fear but he was trembling with nervousness. Beau Bridwell kept moistening his lips.

Two men to one and with a gun in the hand of one of them, they had the advantage over Cooper and they seemed unmindful of it. If they wanted the contents of the safe enough to pull a doublecross to get it, they could still carry out their original intention. With his check in Beau Bridwell’s pocket, Greg Cooper was in no position to call for help. The thought, however, did not alarm him. He felt there was no need of help.

He was dealing with a broken yeggman who had dropped into the ranks of petty thievery and with a desperate taxi driver who had turned crooked only because he had learned bitterness and had washed his bitterness down with too much liquor. Small time crooks were always frightened by the size of a big job. Their imaginations were not equal to it. They would steal a hundred or two — and maybe slap a man like Cooper out of the way to get it; but a safe holding thousands was frightening. They let fright paralyze them. Cooper shoved his jaw forward aggressively.

“Put that gun on the table, Black!” he growled.

The taxi driver stopped trembling. For a second his eyes were hot with defiance; then he shrugged and laid the gun down. “You got most of it wrong,” he said. “This ain’t a double-cross. It’s a different deal, that’s all. I was going to bring Beau out here even if you hadn’t got to him first. I got desperate thinking of all the money I saw out here and how much that two fifty meant to me. I was going to take it back, that’s all.”

Cooper looked at him searchingly and believed him. He turned toward Bridwell. “And what were you going to get?”

Bridwell passed his tongue over his lips. “Just a little stake for myself, Guv’ner. I was just going to take maybe a thousand.”

There was a clicking sound from the direction of the door and Cooper turned. Tim Weller stood framed in the doorway; a tall, spare figure in a faded blue bathrobe, striped pajamas and loose house slippers. He blinked at the light and ran one thin hand through his disheveled gray hair.

“Bradford,” he said huskily. “Dead, isn’t he?”

He continued to blink into the glare of the room. He did not have his cane but he gripped the door frame for support. Cooper nodded.

“Yes,” he said gently. “He’s been dead for hours, I imagine. His body is rigid.”

Tim Weller continued to stare at the body. “He was mad,” he said. “Insane.”

“I don’t think so.” Cooper had started for the telephone but he turned back. “You’d better go to your room, Judge. It’s pretty tough.”

He never called Tim Weller “Judge” except on special occasions. The old man shook his head. “My place is here.”

“I’m going to call the police.”

“It’s the thing to do. Call Alexandria Police station.” Tim Weller crossed the room to the chair farthest from the bed and sat down. “You know,” he said, “I made Bradford. Started him in law. Made a politician out of him.”

“I know.” Cooper picked up the phone. He swore softly. There was no buzz in the receiver. The old man looked up. Cooper put the phone back on the stand. “The wire is cut,” he said.

He was frowning again. There was a cold-blooded, professional touch about cutting the phone wires. He looked casually along the line. He couldn’t see the break and because he couldn’t, he found the wire-cutting more baffling. A phone in a bedroom would naturally be an extension phone. To isolate a house without phone service, the line would have to be cut downstairs.

“An amateur would never have thought of that,” he said aloud.

Tim Weller blinked at him. “What?” he said.

Cooper shrugged. “Somebody figured that he needed a head start.”

He moved away from the phone and looked at the body on the bed. Despite his newspaper experience, he felt that queer sense of helplessness that sweeps a person in the face of violent death. He would have to go after help now, and he had a strong disinclination to go. The murderer might want just that.

But he couldn’t figure out any reason why the murderer would want him out of the house — except that the safe had been empty when he had Beau Bridwell open it. If the safe had held a small fortune in money earlier in the evening — as he suspected — then its present emptiness provided a possible motive for murder and a good reason for the murderer to want a head start or time to hide the money after the money was considered. Cooper swung around.

“Did you come downstairs tonight, Judge, after once you went to bed?”

Tim Weller blinked. “Downstairs? No.”

“Somebody did.” Cooper ground his palms together thoughtfully. Tim Weller lifted his head.

“How do you know?”

Cooper did not answer. He was remembering what Beau Bridwell and Terry Black had told him. They delayed their attack on the safe because there had been someone in the senator’s study. Cooper’s eyes passed over the lean body of Tim Weller. It was easier to believe the Judge than to disbelieve him. It would take a strong motive to make Tim Weller negotiate stairs that he didn’t have to climb.

He looked at the corpse. The senator hadn’t been down there. He had been dead for hours before Beau Bridwell arrived at the house. Who was left? The girls? Yes. Either one of them might have been in the study. He didn’t believe that either one had. Hito? Well, he would have to check up on that. The thought of Hito gave him an idea.

He didn’t have to go for the police. He had someone to send.

“I’ll have to consider the possibility that Bridwell and Black lied,” he thought grimly. “Bridwell may have been closing that safe instead of trying to open it when I came in.”

He still believed in his theory of little crooks being afraid of big money, but this had been an extraordinary night — and he was not unmindful of his own position. There was a man with a criminal record who had one of Greg Cooper’s checks that had been drawn on the day his employer was murdered.

Greg Cooper had had the opportunity personally — and any one of several motives that would look good to the police — for murdering Bradford Weller.

He was aware of Tim Weller’s blinking eyes fixed upon him. He didn’t know how long the old man had been studying him, but Tim Weller was shrewd. He might be Greg Cooper’s worst witness before a grand jury if it came to that. His report on Cooper’s unusual actions in the death room would carry weight. The old man was nodding his head slowly.

“It is no disgrace for a crazy man to kill himself,” he said huskily. “His mind broke. He didn’t know. But you better go for the police.”

Greg Cooper stared at him. “You think that he killed himself?”

Tim Weller blinked. “Obviously,” he said. He waved his hand toward the corpse with its stiff fingers resting on the stiletto hilt.

For a long minute Greg Cooper stood where he was and some perverse and cowardly thing inside of him said, “Why not?” He could send Hito to tell the police that the senator had committed suicide. They would come prepared to find a suicide, and the dignified grief of Tim Weller, who apologized for the disgrace of suicide by pleading his brother’s insanity, would convince them.

It was a temptation but he set his jaw against it. “I’m sorry, Judge,” he said, “but it isn’t that simple. He didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered.”

“Murdered?” Tim Weller raised his head, his eyes widening and, for the moment, ceasing to blink.

“That’s right. And I’m going to send Hito for the cops.”

Greg Cooper was heading for the door as he spoke. He had taken only two steps out into the hall when a gun boomed outside the house. There was a hushed beat of time and then another shot from a gun of lighter caliber. Somebody shouted and on the highway the brakes of a car squealed.

Cooper rose to his feet. One of the cops threw a flashlight beam at him and he knew that there was a gun pointed down the beam. He raised his hands high.

“There’s a man shot here,” he said.

“There’s one shot here, too.”

“We’ll have to get them into the house.”

“Yeah. Who are you?”

“Cooper. I belong here.”

The policeman walked up to meet Cooper. He was a young cop with broad, blocky shoulders and a rolling walk. He was wearing the uniform of the District Park Police that limited his jurisdiction to the Mount Vernon Highway, but he had the aggressive manner of a man who, having blundered into something, intends to see it through.

“What’s it all about?” he said. Cooper shrugged.

“I don’t know yet myself. Our Japanese servant shot someone running away. He got shot himself doing it.”

There was another car pulling into the driveway. Three men piled out and entered into conversation with the policemen down on the grounds. They were Scoutmasters visiting Washington for the Boy Scout Jamboree and while one of their number stood guard to keep curious persons off the grounds, the other two helped Cooper and the two policemen to get the wounded men into the house.

The second wounded man was George Arlington, master con man.

He smiled grimly with pain-taut lips when he recognized Cooper. “I thought we said ‘No hard feeling,’ Cooper.”

“That’s right. But I didn’t shoot you. And the senator hadn’t been murdered then.”

“Murdered?” Arlington’s small eyes opened wide. Cooper stared hard at him. The blocky policeman straightened from his examination of Hito’s wound. He was the senior cop of the patrol and his name was Brennan.

“What’s this about a senator being murdered?” he said.

“Bradford Weller. He was stabbed in his bed,” Cooper said grimly. “By a person or persons unknown.”

“And this guy was running away?” The policeman jerked his thumb at Arlington.

There was a commotion at the door and Mildred Harney broke away from Vi Dawson and Tim Weller. She threw herself down on her knees beside Arlington and would have put her arms around him if the second policeman, a lean youngster with red hair, hadn’t gripped her shoulder.

“He didn’t do it,” she said. “He didn’t do it.”

Brennan turned to the Scoutmasters. “We need some authority here,” he said. “Be good guys and get us a couple of medicos and some law from Alexandria.”

The Scoutmasters saluted and went out on the double. Brennan ran his hand through his hair. “How do you know that he didn’t do it?” he said.

Mildred Harney looked up defiantly. “Because he didn’t have any reason to do it. And he was in my room all night. That’s why he ran away.”

She was like a tigress at bay, her eyes flashing. Brennan looked embarrassed. He looked to his partner for suggestions but the red-haired youth didn’t know what to do, either. Tim Weller sank into a chair, his eyes on Mildred Harney’s face. He looked very old and tired.

“You had promised to marry my brother,” he said accusingly.

She looked at him and laughed bitterly. “I didn’t,” she said. “Your brother was careful about that. He didn’t make any offers that he didn’t have to make.”

“But you would have married him.”

“I couldn’t. I’m married to George.” Her voice caught in a sob and the fight went out of her. She tried to put her arms around the injured con man again. “Are you hurt badly, darling?” she said.

The red-haired policeman kept her back. “He’s just nicked, Miss. Thigh and shoulder. He’ll be okay.”

The mob had shifted a little so that there was a cleared space about a foot wide. I squeezed in, ordered a rye. Somebody grabbed my elbow as I picked up the drink and I thought it was Luigi again and pulled the old Olsen & Johnson gag. The one that goes: “Get away from me, boys, you bother me.” It turned out to be my wife instead of Luigi and she didn’t think the gag was as funny as Olsen & Johnson did.

She said, “So I bother you, do I?” She was a little tight and her lip rouge was smeared. I wondered who’d been kissing her now. She gave me a baby-faced stare. “Okay, so I bother you. Well, for fifty bucks I won’t bother you any more. Not tonight, anyway.” She smiled then, a mean smile.

The guy next to me said, “Hello, sugar. If your boy friend ain’t got the fifty, see me. See li’l ol’ Georgie.”

No, I didn’t hit him. I’d practically worn out my right fist on other guys’ jaws trying to put an end to cracks like that. It just wasn’t any use. Maybe I was a little tight too; maybe I was just seeing her for the first time. Really seeing her, I mean. Seeing behind her big violet eyes and her cornsilk hair and all the rest of her; seeing the thing that made cracks like this mug’s possible. For a while I’d thought she was just a fool, but now I knew different.

I reached down in the leather bag and got out ten rolls of nickels. Twenty bucks. “Here’s twenty,” I said. “All I’ve got in the world. I wish it was twenty grand and you’d use it to buy a one way ticket.”

She looked at the loaded bag. “What’s the matter, Terry — afraid of Big Ed?”

“No,” I said. My lips felt tight across my teeth. “No, Ed wouldn’t care if I gave you the whole works, only I won’t.” I dumped the ten rolls of nickels in her hands. “Now scram.”

Her voice got shrill. “You heel! What am I going to do with four hundred nickels?”

I said I didn’t care what she did with them. I didn’t, either. All I wanted was to get away from her before I killed somebody. I tossed a quarter on the bar, started toward the front door. Her voice topped the slam of the music against my ears. She was calling the bartender names because he wouldn’t change the nickels into bills.

It was raining again; not hard, just a sort of discouraged drizzle. I stood there on the sidewalk for a minute, letting the rain hit my face. It felt good. A couple of guys came out, looked at me, giggled as they went by. I knew they were laughing at me and I faded back into the shadows. Cora came out. She was laughing too. She was with the guy that had made the crack. I went back inside and hoisted a couple of quick ones.

The bartender looked at me as though he’d never seen me before; the crowd was working hard at having its fun again. Not even a ripple, I thought. Something can happen to you right in plain sight of a couple of hundred people; something that tears the heart out of you and makes you want to get your hands on somebody’s throat and squeeze and squeeze — I looked around to see if I was wrong; see if somebody in that mob wasn’t reading my mind. And then I got the shakes. Read my mind? Was I actually planning on doing it? No, I thought; no, it isn’t me, it’s the liquor. And then I got more scared than ever. If I kept on like this I might get cocked some time and...

The bartender came back with a fresh bottle. He set it down in front of me, started away. I said, “Hey, wait a minute! I want you to see my latest trick.” He looked bored, but waited, leaning his elbows on the bar and watching me. I poured a stiff drink as if it were a very difficult feat. It wasn’t so easy at that. My hands were shaking so that some of the rye slopped over on the bar. I lifted the glass and held it to the light; then, very deliberately, I inverted it and dumped the lousy stuff into a gobboon. I gave him a tight grin. “That,” I said, “is the trick. It’s supposed to be the picture of a guy’s last drink. Pretty good, huh?”

He looked doubtful. He said, “Well, if you pay for it I guess I can’t stop you doin’ what you want with it.” He took the bottle away with him, though. Somebody touched my shoulder and I whirled nervously. It was Slats McKenna.

McKenna said, “I heard that, Jerry. Sounded okay to me.”

Slats McKenna was a dick; a hell of a good one, according to the papers. I wasn’t thinking of him as a dick, though; not even after the tap on the shoulder, exactly the way I’d been expecting it for quite a while now. You see, Slats and I and Big Ed Harmon had all grown up together south of the tracks. Just the three of us for a while. Then big-eyed, skinny-legged Fran had moved into our block. She was Mrs. Ed Harmon now. Funny how things turn out, huh? Big Ed had shouldered his way to the top of the rackets, picking up Frances on the way. Slats McKenna was a dick. And what was I? Well, you’ve got me there. Just a bum, I guess.

McKenna said, “Let’s go outside, Jerry. I want to talk to you. Seeing you dump that slug of rye makes it easier.” He was a tall rangy guy with a pronounced stoop and a dark serious face. He hadn’t changed much in the last ten years. Marriage and a couple of kids on a cop’s pay had given him the stoop, I guessed. The serious look had always been there.

The door opened and the two gorillas came in. I took my hand away from my gun. Yep, for a second I’d seen the well-known red. I’d been on the point of letting him have it. Sick, actually sick at my stomach, I stumbled toward the door. Ed’s voice halted me. “Better lay off the liquor, keed. It’s bad for you.”

“I know,” I said dully. “You’re about the fifth guy that’s told me tonight.” I went out and got in an elevator and dropped to the lobby. A guy looking at the building directory turned and gave me a screwy stare. “Did you speak to me?”

I guess I must have been mumbling out loud. I said, “It was two other guys, mister,” and pushed out to the street. In the car I reached for the bottle in the door pocket before I remembered that it wasn’t there any more. There didn’t seem to be anything to do except stop somewhere and get tanked to the eyes, only I couldn’t think of any place where there wouldn’t be somebody else too and I didn’t want to see even a bartender for a while. I went home hoping Cora hadn’t found that last pint. She had, though. I flopped on the davenport in the living room, too tired to even undress. After a while I went to sleep.

The ringing of the front door bell woke me. I didn’t identify it as the front door hell right off the bat. I’d been dreaming I was in a broadcast station control room, trying to get an S.O.S. through on account of an earthquake was rapidly making kindling out of our fair city. It was pretty real. I mean, I could feel the building tottering under my feet. But the most vivid of all was Big Ed Harmon holding a gun on me and telling me to lay off; that he didn’t want anybody to know there was an earthquake. I kept thinking, “They’ve gotta know. I’ve gotta tell ’em,” and then I remembered the little alarm button recessed in the floor. I put my foot on this and a dozen alarms started singing so loud it woke me up. The dozen alarms turned out to be the apartment bell. Maybe I should have been relieved at that, but I wasn’t. I just lay there for a minute, shivering, wondering if maybe Big Ed hadn’t changed his mind about me. Not about letting me go, but about making the parting permanent. Maybe I’d worried him, almost pulling my rod like that. Maybe he’d sent a couple of the boys over to see that it didn’t happen again. The bell kept ringing.

Finally I couldn’t stand the suspense any more and got up and went over to the door. Maybe, I thought, it’s just Cora. She might’ve forgotten her key. I jerked my gun out of the clip, twisted the knob and leaped back. I was so surprised I couldn’t shut my own mouth. It wasn’t Cora standing there. It wasn’t the couple of hoods I’d imagined. It was Fran. Yep, that’s right: Frances Harmon, Big Ed’s wife. She was as scared as I was. Her big eyes looked enormous in the dead white of her face, and her dark hair was all mussed up and wet from the rain. She didn’t have any coat on and her gown was sopping, what there was left of it. Somebody had been playing rough.

I grabbed her, yanked her inside before some of the other tenants could see her in case they got curious.

She started sobbing then; not noisily, but as if she’d run her heart out. I put my two arms around her, held her close for a minute, trying to kid her out of it. “It’s okay, Fran. I’m here and you know how I’ve always felt about you. Take a brace, keed. Tell papa.”

She put her hands on my chest, pushed me away a little, so that she could look up into my ugly mug. “Oh, Jerry, I’m sorry if I’m putting you on a spot. I... I just couldn’t seem to think of anybody else to go to, and I didn’t have any money, or clothes or—” She broke off and her eyes sort of rolled up in her head. “Oh, Jerry, I’m scared!”

“That makes two of us,” I said. J picked her up and carried her over to the couch. “Come on, Fran, tell me what happened and then I’ll see about getting you some dry clothes.”

We were about half way down the first block when I happened to look in the rear vision mirror. A car without lights had just pulled up in front of the apartment. A couple of guys got out, started inside. Then one of them half turned, looked down the street and spotted my tail-light. Anyway, I guess that’s what made him wave his arm in my direction. The car without lights got under way. That’s all I waited to see. I romped on the accelerator till the Chewy thought it was a super-charged vibrator. We raced around the first corner on two wheels, straightened out from a skid that almost smashed us against the curb, reversed at the next turn and did it all over again. We were probably making about fifty but it seemed like ninety.

Fran was on her knees, looking out the rear window and cheering me on like it was a race of high school kids at three in the afternoon. There was a little pinggg and a slug cut through the window and smashed the mirror. All right, I thought, you’re asking for it. I yelled at Fran: “Get down on the floor, nit-wit! We’re gonna play games too.”

The scenery, consisting mostly of darkened store-fronts, was going by us a mile a minute; the street was still as wet as the bottom of the ocean, only slicker. Fran was down on the floor now, saying little prayers, and I hoped the Chevvy’s body was as good as the ads said. I didn’t slam on the brakes. I was afraid to on that greasy pavement. It wasn’t necessary, anyway. From the tail of my eye I saw the emblem on the other car’s nose creep up, then part of the hood. All I did was take my foot off the throttle. You’d think we had stopped dead. I put two quick slugs in an open window as the other job leaped ahead, not knowing how many guys were inside, not caring. The big car was a full length up on us before it went into a kind of tail spin. It skidded the width of the street, bounced back to the center, started whirling. Round and round it went and I knew its brakes were locked. I was half around in a U turn by this time. Somebody in the spinning car took a shot at us, missed, then the machine he was in suddenly quit acting like a dizzy ballet dancer and went flying off at a tangent. The last I saw of it was when it crashed a light pole.

I straightened out in the opposite direction and began fanning the air in earnest. The main reason was a prowl car’s siren. I didn’t want to meet any cops till I’d had time to stash Frances in a safe place. Maybe not even then. What with Big Ed being on familiar terms with State Senators and one thing and another, I had no assurance I’d be any safer in jail. This guy Ames had me kind of worried too. I mean, I thought his name had a familiar sound to it, but I couldn’t seem to place it. Fran had said he’d cursed Ed. Anybody big enough to curse Ed must be no small potatoes. Maybe he’s lieutenant-governor or something, I thought. Anyway, between the two of them, they were pretty sure to swing a mean drag politically; enough to see that a punk named Jerry Cassidy didn’t talk to the wrong cops...

I left the car in an alley and Fran and I walked the two blocks to the Hotel Mercer. It was a good middle-class house, not too gaudy, not too cheap. The clerk lifted an eyebrow at our lack of baggage.

“Fire,” I explained. “Practically ruined our flat, and what the fire missed the smoke-eaters took care of. We left it as is for the adjusters to worry over.”

He accepted that at face value. I thought it was pretty good myself. I peeled a twenty off Cora’s roll, asked for a suite, or at least two rooms with connecting bath. We got the two rooms, registering as John Jones and Frances Jones, brother and sister. Not that I expected Big Ed or Cora to ever use the register in a divorce action.

A hop took us up to the third, opened all the windows in both rooms, put them down again when I yelled at him, finally went away with a dollar and a request for some cigarettes. I gave Fran the old grin.

“Well, kid, here we are. Not so bad, huh?”

She nodded. “Pretty swell, Jerry. You, I mean.”

I said, “Nuts. You want something to eat? Drink?”

She said she didn’t. She took off her hat and the suit coat. “Mind if I stay in here with you for a while, Jerry?”

I saw she was getting the jeebies all over again. Well, who wouldn’t? I wasn’t feeling any too good myself. But it wasn’t sympathy that made me say, “Baby, you can stay with me the rest of our lives if you want to.”

Her nice mouth quirked a little at that. “The rest of our lives,” she said. “That may not be very long, Jerry.” I let that ride because there was no use kidding her. After a while she said, “Jerry, would you mind kissing me? Just once?”

It wasn’t any chore. I kissed her, then straightened and stood looking down at her. “Why did you want me to do that?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just thought it might be a good idea.” She got up, took her — or rather Cora’s — hat and coat and went to the connecting door. “I’m going to lie down for a while, Jerry.”

“But look,” I said, “hey, you just claimed you wanted to stay in here with me!”

“I know,” she nodded. And then, “We gals are funny, Jerry. You’ll find that out some day.” The door closed behind her.

I just stood there.

This Hutchins guy was the first to notice I was awake. He said, “Get rid of these — these men.” Meaning Percy and Hatchet-face. Ed told them to get the hell out. I got the impression that they didn’t really know what it was all about. All they’d been told was to get me and the gal that was with me. The short wave had given Ed the general locality of where I might have holed up and he’d sent out a couple of cars to patrol the neighborhood. Even the cops didn’t know the gal was Big Ed’s wife, though.

He got up as soon as the two mugs were gone, came around the desk and held a glass to my lips. I drank. The room stopped going round and round. Ed sat on the edge of the desk, one foot on the floor, the other swinging. I remember he was wearing spats.

“Where is she, Jerry?”

I gave him a grin. “In China, I hope.”

He reached down, quite casually, got hold of my broken arm and twisted it. You could hear the bones grating. I went off my nut for a minute, tried to kick him. It was then I discovered that my ankles were tied to the front legs of the chair I was in. “Where is she, Jerry?”

I screamed then. I couldn’t help it. But screaming or not I stuck to my story. “She’s in China!” I yelled. “In China, China, China, you hear?”

Hutchins said, “Stop it, Harmon! I can’t stand it!” As if Big Ed had hold of his arm. I wanted to laugh at that, but somehow all I could do was sob. And here I’d been thinking I was a tough guy.

Ed let go my arm, held the glass to my mouth again. I slobbered all over it. Then I remembered I had two arms and tried to paste him one with the right. He just pushed it down as if I was a baby. “Did you tell Slats McKenna anything?”

So he knew about Slats being there too. I choked on the last swallow. “Sure,” I gasped. “Fran and I told him the whole works. He oughta be along most any minute now.”

Mr. Hutchins said, “Great Scott!”

Ed just laughed at him. “Imagine me working for you all these years. Why, you’re a weak sister, Ames, and I thought you were a big shot. I might have guessed when you went haywire and shot Delgardo. Well, we’ll have a show-down after we get this thing straightened out. Maybe you’ll be working for me.”

Mr. Hutchins groaned.

Ed said, “Don’t worry, the punk didn’t tell McKenna anything. He bopped the dick and lammed. All we’ve got to do is find Frances and then we can wash the whole thing up.”

The telephone rang. Ed swung around, answered it. “Okay,” he said, “bring her right up.” I almost passed out. Something told me the “her” they were bringing up was Frances. Desperately I got the kinks out of my neck and really looked around. We were in the living room of the Beverly Hills penthouse. I hadn’t known it before.

The door opened and two guys carried Frances in. They must have brought her up in the freight elevator. Even the dumbest clerk on earth wouldn’t have passed them like that. Her feet and hands were taped very neatly and there were two strips of adhesive crossed over her lips. X marking the spot, I thought. The spot where Ed will kick her teeth in. He didn’t do it right away, though. He just jerked his big, good-looking head toward a fireside divan and the two lugs dumped her on it. Her eyes met mine with a sort of horrified surprise. I guess I didn’t make a very pretty picture. I could feel the smear of dried blood on my cheek where the guy had operated on my ear.

The two guys looked kind of like the ones that had got out of the car, there in front of the Mercer. I couldn’t be sure because it had been pretty dark in the street at the time and I’d had one or two other things on my mind. I couldn’t see that it made much difference anyway. Neither Frances nor I were going to do any identifying.

Ed said quietly, “You have any trouble?”

“A little,” one guy admitted. “She’d already gotten a cab and was on her way by the time we found out all the angles. We had to wait for the cab to come back. Then it was duck soup. The Palais is a nice dump,” he added.

“I’ll make a note of that,” Ed said, and Mr. Hutchins, over by the windows, cursed him irritably. “Let’s get this over with, Harmon!”

Ed said, “Sure, Ames, sure. You want to take care of it personally?”

Mr. Hutchins turned green and looked like he was going to be sick. “Hell, man, no! How can you be so callous?”

“Well,” Ed said, “after all, it wasn’t I who killed—” He broke off as Mr. Hutchins lifted a shaking hand. Then, smiling a little as at some secret joke, he said, “Excuse it, please,” and told the two mugs to scram. They went out. That left only him and Mr. Hutchins and Fran and me.

Cyrus Hatch finds plenty of evidence but all it proves is that everyone is innocent of murder.

Cyrus Hatch, son of New York Police Commissioner Mark Hatch, becomes involved in a murder when he enters the Club Grotto with his bodyguard, Danny Delevan, and finds “Joan Doe” sitting at his table. Later, she leaves the club with a mysterious stranger; four shots sound quickly outside and a man staggers into the club and dies. The murdered man is Mr. Seligman, a crooked attorney.

Rushing to the sidewalk, Cyrus and Danny see Joan Doe, a gun in her hand, being hustled into a car. Cyrus, against the wishes of his father, decides to work on the case, believing that Joan Doe is innocent.

Also involved are Howard Westcott, who Cyrus saw following Joan Doe; his wife Lois, who was in the night club the night of the murder; and her sister, Terry Alexander, who later calls at Cyrus Hatch’s apartment to discuss the case. When she enters his apartment, she finds Sam Flack, law partner of Seligman, murdered, and Hatch’s secretary unconscious. When Cyrus arrives, accompanied by two detectives, and discovers the murder, they see Terry Alexander running from the house. Refusing to reveal her identity, Cyrus is arrested by his father, but he and Danny escape.

In the meantime, Cyrus discovers that Joan Doe is really Rhoda Quinn, an artists’ model, who had hired Seligman to find her husband who has been missing for several years. Cyrus suspects that Howard Westcott is the missing Timothy Quinn and Westcott later admits that this is true. Cyrus promises to keep his secret unless it is necessary to reveal it in order to clear Rhoda Quinn of the murder charge.

Cyrus and Danny follow Rhoda Quinn and overhear her talking to Lloyd Daly, a magician who is in love with her, and learn that she is aware that Westcott is Timothy Quinn. She says that she is going to his house to demand money.

Cyrus and Danny start for Westcott’s home to warn him when someone holds them up. It is Sanders, the man who had been in the night club with Rhoda Quinn, and for whom they have been searching as the key to the mystery.

The cab ground off and turned eastward. Rain swished against the windows. Hatch closed the glass panel of the driver’s compartment.

“You’d like to keep clear of the police, wouldn’t you, Sanders?” Hatch asked.

“That’s what I must explain,” Sanders said with an effort. “It will go blinking hard with me if they catch me.”

“Naturally,” Hatch said. “Behave yourself, and you’ll have a chance to talk.”

Sanders strained forward. “I say, that’s damned decent of you, Hatch. You see, I had nothing to do with it. That is, with killing Seligman and Flack. I swear I had nothing whatever—”

Hatch gestured toward the driver. “Your room will be safer,” he advised.

Sanders sank back, eying Hatch entreatingly, wincing under the pressure of Delevan’s automatic.

The cab stopped at a bright marquee. Sanders entered the Hotel Commonwealth between Hatch and Delevan. An elevator lifted them to the fifteenth floor. Sanders took a tagged key from his pocket and opened Room 1521. Following him in, Hatch and Delevan closed the door.

“You’re registered under an assumed name, of course,” Hatch said.

“Yes. I haven’t dared go back to my apartment,” Sanders said. “Millie and Gloria are away. If you’ll believe me, Hatch, I had nothing to do—”

“Sit down, Sanders,” Hatch said. “Danny, keep him covered.”

With his gun, Delevan pushed Sanders into a chair. Sanders’ eyes clung to Hatch as Hatch took up the telephone and gave the hotel operator the number of Howard Westcott’s apartment.

The maid’s voice answered, “the Alexander residence.”

“This is Mr. Hatch calling again. Has either Mrs. Westcott or Miss Alexander come in?”

“They are still out.”

“Then I’ll have to speak with Mr. Westcott.”

“Mr. Westcott say I must not disturb him for any reason,” the maid protested.

“All right,” Hatch said. “Has a young woman called and asked for him?”

“No one has come.”

“Thank heaven for that,” Hatch said.

He broke the connection, consulted the directory, and asked for the number of the Hotel Trafalgar.

“This is the Morning Mirror calling,” Hatch said. “Give me the manager.”

A girl’s voice said, “Mr. Lucas’ office.”

“This in the Mirror calling,” Hatch said. “Let me speak with Mr. Lucas.”

A man’s voice said curtly, “Yes yes, what is it?”

“Carson of the Mirror, Mr. Lucas,” Hatch said. “What are you doing about your magician, Lloyd Daly?”

“His contract has been canceled.”

“Has he a room in the hotel?”

“Entertainers are usually given rooms,” Lucas answered, “but Mr. Daly will not remain in the hotel.”

“Thanks.” Hatch said.

He disconnected, then again called the number of the Trafalgar.

“Mr. Lloyd Daly’s room, please,” he requested.

The line purred several times before a man’s voice answered. “Hello?”

“Mr. Daly?” Hatch asked. “Speaking.”

“You don’t sound like Daly,” Hatch said.

“I’ve got a cold,” the voice said. “Who’s calling?”

“You’re a poor liar,” Hatch said. “This is Mallet, the Commissioner’s secretary.”

“That’s different. This is Sergeant Martin talking.”

“The Commissioner’s calling,” Hatch said. “Hold on.” He lowered his tone, imitating his father’s. “Commissioner Hatch, Sergeant.”

“Yes, Commissioner.”

“Daly will probably show up soon. Watch for him. You have your orders?”

“Yes sir. We’re not to take him to the precinct station, but bring him straight down to Headquarters.”

“That’s right, Martin. That’s all.”

Hatch opened his fists and closed them again. “Be damned careful you don’t give me an excuse to get rough,” he warned. “You were coming out of the Club Grotto with Rhoda Quinn last night when you met Seligman. Seligman said something that scared the pants off you, and then you disappeared. Where the hell did you go?”

“I... I simply left,” Sanders said.

“Sanders, you be careful,” Hatch warned him again. “You had Rhoda Quinn’s gun. You hid behind the hedge, and just as Seligman was going into the club, you shot him.”

“I didn’t!” Sanders blurted.

“This morning you and Sam Flack had a hell of an argument in my apartment. While my secretary was gone, you killed Flack. She came back just as you were sneaking out, and you knocked her unconscious, you rat.”

“I swear I didn’t kill Flack. I didn’t kill either of them,” Sanders insisted.

“I’m going to break your neck,” Hatch said.

“I swear it!”

Hatch shrugged and turned away. “Got anything to drink in this place?”

“There’s a bottle of Scotch in the dresser,” Sanders said.

Hatch found the bottle. It was three-quarters full. He brought a glass from the bath, poured Scotch into it, handed it to Sanders and kept the bottle.

“Want any water in that?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” Sanders said. “The man who made it knew how much water to put in it.”

“Like hell he did,” Hatch said, sitting on the bed. “They always put too damned much.” He drank from the bottle, rolled the liquor around his tongue, swallowed it and sighed. “Go ahead,” he said.

Sanders took a long drink. “Let me tell you in my own way. Let me explain everything from the very beginning.”

“Don’t try to put anything over on me,” Hatch said. “I feel like beating hell out of somebody, and it might as well be you.”

Sanders strained forward in his chair. “I began working in Seligman’s office four or five months ago.”

“You forged your law degree,” Hatch said.

“I say!” Sanders took another mouthful of Scotch. “Very well, I admit that. In London I was a clerk in a barrister’s office. I knew law, but I hadn’t a degree. I needed a good job here in America. Flack thought I was a bit of all right. He thought an Englishman would give his office class. The trouble began when Seligman put me to work on the Quinn case.”

“Doing what?”

“Tracing Timothy Quinn. Rhoda Quinn had told Seligman a great deal about her husband, and Seligman had taken a great many notes. I studied them and began investigating. Before long I’d found Timothy Quinn.”

“Through the bloody birds,” Hatch said.

“That’s right,” Sanders said. “Timothy Quinn had kept a loft of homing pigeons in Chicago. I knew that racing pigeons are registered. I looked into the files of the American Racing Pigeon Union and the International Federation of Homing Pigeon Fanciers. Most of Timothy Quinn’s pigeons were still registered in his name, though his wife had gotten rid of them — she’d said she poisoned them after her husband left her — but a few had been transferred to another name. To Howard Westcott, of New York.”

“As simple as that,” Hatch said.

Sanders nodded.

“Timothy Quinn had taken a few of his best birds with him when he’d left home. In order to race the birds here, he’d transferred the registration to his assumed name. I felt sure Howard Westcott and Timothy Quinn were the same man, because Westcott answered Quinn’s description.”

“Today Rhoda Quinn took the hint you dropped and traced him in exactly the same way,” Hatch said.

“I say!” Sanders blurted. Then he went on, “I turned my information over to Seligman. He warned me to keep it strictly confidential. Then the bloody crook began playing Westcott and Rhoda Quinn against each other.”

“Seligman had you forge a letter. He took it to Westcott, and Westcott thought it was from Rhoda Quinn.”

Sanders stared and said, “That’s right.”

“Seligman told Rhoda Quinn he hadn’t found her husband, and kept getting money from her,” Hatch said. “At the same time he blackmailed Howard Westcott.”

“That’s not the half of it,” Sanders said.

“No?” Hatch said. “What’s the rest?”

“Seligman found out my law degree was forged. He’d checked up on me. But he didn’t tell Flack about it, and he told me I could stay on at the office, if I’d follow his orders and keep my mouth shut. He said if I didn’t do as he ordered, he’d send me to gaol.”

“What has that to do with Rhoda Quinn and Howard Westcott?”

“Seligman made use of what he’d learned about me. He had me prepare a death certificate,” Sanders explained. “I forged a set of papers showing that Timothy Quinn had died and been buried in the Potter’s Field three years ago.”

“What was the idea behind that?” Hatch asked.

“Seligman showed a copy of the papers to Rhode Quinn. He told her that was the end of her search. Several weeks later, Rhoda Quinn married Lloyd Daly.”

He placed two aspirin tablets on his tongue and washed them down with a highball.

“What the hell do you want to talk to me about, Hatch?” Kerrigan asked.

“Kerrigan,” Hatch said, “the trouble with these murders is that nobody committed them.”

“If nobody committed these murders, then Seligman and Flack and Rhoda Quinn are making damned fools of themselves,” Kerrigan said.

“Nobody did it,” Hatch insisted. “Nobody could have done it. It’s the only logical explanation.”

“Listen, Hatch,” Kerrigan protested. “I’m near enough to going screwy as it is.”

Hatch drained his cup and refilled it with black coffee. “I will concede a point,” he said. “I’ll grant you that these murders were committed. I’ll go even further and say that — assuming that somebody committed them — all three murders were committed by the same person.”

“They weren’t all necessarily committed by the same person,” Kerrigan said.

“How many murderers do you want, anyway?” Hatch asked. “One is enough for me.”

“There might be one murderer, or two, or three,” Kerrigan said, “or more. What do you care?”

“Why shouldn’t I care?” Hatch asked. “Do you mind if I care?” Kerrigan shrugged.

“You and I both wanted to clear Rhoda Quinn. There’s no point in trying to clear her now.”

“We don’t even need to try any more,” Hatch said. “She cleared herself by getting murdered.”

“Then you can drop out of the case and forget the whole thing,” Kerrigan said.

“It’s not that damned simple,” Hatch said. “The only way I can extricate myself from this case is to collar a murderer.”

“The hell with that,” Kerrigan said. “I’m not interested in catching any murderer. I don’t care a damn who the murderer is. You know why I’m in this case. My job is to keep certain parties out of it.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Hatch said. “Everybody I know is trying to keep out of it. The whole cockeyed world is trying to keep out of it, except me. I’ve outdone myself trying to stay in it. I’m in it, all right. Kerrigan, I got the Commissioner into a jam and now I’ve got to get him out of it. I’ve got to vindicate myself.”

“Go ahead and vindicate yourself to your heart’s content,” Kerrigan said, “but I’m damned if I’ll let you do anything that might incriminate my clients. I’ll see you in hell first.”

Hatch nodded, then shook his head. “I haven’t one little inkling of who the murderer may be.”

“What about your handcuffed friend here?” Kerrigan asked.

Sanders winced.

“Maybe he killed Seligman, and maybe he killed Flack,” Hatch said, “but I’m sure he didn’t kill Rhoda Quinn.”

Sanders gripped the arms of his chair.

Kerrigan asked, “Why not?”

“I saw Rhoda alive late this afternoon,” Hatch explained. “Sanders has been with me, or with Danny, every minute of the time since then. If all three murders were committed by the same person, that lets Sanders out.”

“All three murders were not necessarily committed by the same person,” Kerrigan reminded him.

“I think they were.”

“Why?”

“Because of that gun of Rhoda Quinn’s. Somebody confiscated it. Not for the purpose of framing Rhoda. though. If anybody had wanted to get rid of her, it would have been a hell of a lot simpler to kill her. Anyway, nobody had a reason for getting her into trouble. Just the opposite. It was to the advantage of everybody concerned to keep her quiet.”

“All right,” Kerrigan said impatiently.

“Whoever took Rhoda’s gun did it for one of two reasons. First, he didn’t dare use a weapon of his own for fear it would be traced back to him; or second, he simply didn’t have one of his own to use.”

“All right.”

“So following the Seligman murder, the murderer was without a usable weapon. He probably didn’t expect to do any more murdering right away, but he had to anyway. Twice he found himself in an emergency without a weapon, and he had to use his hands. Flack was strangled. So was Rhoda Quinn. So I say, all three murders are the work of one murderer.”

“All right,” Kerrigan said, “and I still don’t give a damn.”