Goons were busting out all over, making Mr. Moon regret — that he’d cracked a safe, kissed a blonde, and toppled a gambling czar’s throne!

I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself. It isn’t every day that a private detective gets to nip a crooked politician’s career in the bud by exposing his crookedness. Nor every day that he makes a hundred dollars for three hours work.

But mostly I was feeling satisfied because my name wouldn’t enter into it. My fat client, Raymond Margrove, would take all the credit — and also any of the gangland vengeance that was handed out. Normally in a case as big as the expose of Gerald Ketterer, I would have welcomed newspaper publicity, for it is equivalent to free advertising. But when the exposed crook heads a city-wide gambling syndicate reinforced by numerous goons who carry guns, I would just as soon remain incognito. Free advertising won’t plug up a hole in your head when a mugg goes to work on you.

The story broke in an extra edition of the Morning Blade at midnight. Hailing a newsboy from a front room window of my apartment, I tossed him a coin. He folded a paper into a compact envelope and tossed to me in turn. Without a care in the world, I settled in an easy chair to read the account from start to finish.

Two inch headlines on the front page announced: REFORM MAYORALTY CANDIDATE EXPOSED AS GAMBLING HEAD. The story rated two columns plus a front page editorial. I read the news story first:

I stopped there to do a double take. And that is where I began to develop cares. Before finishing the item, I went into the bedroom, cleaned and loaded my P-38 and laid it on my bedside stand. Then I cursed the mental image of Raymond Margrove and returned to the paper.

The rest of the story was a biography of Gerald Ketterer.

The front-page editorial was one of those “We are deeply shocked to discover a viper in our bosom” things. I gathered that while the Morning Blade had innocently supported Gerald Ketterer for mayor, it was big enough to admit a mistake, and now wanted no part of him.

Reading it made me sleepy, so after checking the locks on both doors and making sure my P-38 had a shell in the chamber, I went to bed.

I was awakened at ten a.m. by another newsboy shouting, “Extra!”

Irritably I thought the Blade was certainly dragging its extra out, since the regular morning edition must have hit the street three hours before.

Rolling out of bed, I hopped to the bathroom on my left foot, my right leg consisting of a cork and aluminum contraption I don’t bother to wear when asleep. After a shave and shower, I hopped back into the bedroom again, fished my leg from beneath the bed and strapped it on.

While waiting for coffee water to come to a boil on the stove, I switched on the shelf-model radio in my kitchen. A musical program ended and the news came on.

“This is George Gross with the up-to-the-minute news,” said the commentator. “At eight o’clock this morning mayoralty candidate Gerald Ketterer was discovered to have committed suicide as a result of the sensational disclosures made by the Morning Blade last night. The body was discovered by Miss Antoinette DeKalb, the dead man’s secretary.

“Miss DeKalb had waited until the Rand Building, in which Ketterer maintained his office, opened at seven a.m.; then had obtained an extra key to Ketterer’s apartment from her employer’s desk, and arrived at the apartment about eight. The dead man was discovered in the bathroom, where he had slashed both wrists with a razor and bled to death.”

The rest of the report was a rehash of the exposé made by the Blade.

I was stirring my second cup of coffee when the phone rang. Carrying my cup with me, I went into the bedroom to answer it. It was Raymond Margrove.

“Hear the news?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “Just now on the radio.” Then in a sour tone I added, “Thanks for the newspaper plug.”

Apparently he caught the sour note. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Good publicity, wasn’t it?”

“Sure. Every gambler in town will love me.”

For a moment he was silent. “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” he said finally. “I thought I was doing you a favor.”

“Don’t do me any more like that,” I said shortly. “That crowd moves fast and plays rough. You didn’t swallow that suicide story, did you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why should Ketterer commit suicide?” I asked. “And don’t tell me because he couldn’t become mayor and his racket was busted wide open. The most he could have gotten on a gambling rap is a five-hundred-dollar fine, and the guy had a fortune to pay it with. The syndicate rubbed him out for spilling the works.”

The first time I saw Raymond Margrove, the guy who got me in all this trouble, I didn’t believe him possible.

I don’t rent an office, since the only office work I do is interviewing clients, and renting space for that would be presumptuous for a private investigator with the few clients I get. I was sitting in my apartment listening to my bank account dwindle when he called.

He didn’t bother to knock, possibly because it would have required so much energy to lift his fat arm above the door knob. The door just opened and a stomach came into the room.

It wasn’t the biggest stomach I had ever seen, for once I saw a pregnant hippopotamus. But it was the biggest stomach I had ever seen outside of a tank of water.

“Have a seat,” I invited, gesturing toward the other easy chair, then changing my mind and pointing at the sofa.

The sofa was a better fit. He sat in the exact center, entirely covering the middle cushion and using up part of the one on either side. He must have weighed four-hundred pounds.

For a few moments he simply sat and wheezed, his multiple chins quivering and his huge stomach shaking with each breath. I waited for him to recover from the stupendous exertion of having climbed eight steps to my flat.

“Pardon my not knocking,” the fat man said when he had regained his strength. “Hope I’m in the right apartment. You’re Manville Moon?”

I admitted the charge.

“You know who I am, of course.”

I knew who he was. He was Raymond Margrove, the town Boy Scout. Specialist in good deeds. Every time a charity drive came along, Margrove’s picture appeared in the paper as fun chairman. He was also president of the Chamber of Commerce, secretary of a service club, and a director of the Business Men’s Association for Honest Government. In his spare time he eked out a living as president of the Margrove Business Equipment Company, Incorporated, which manufactured office safes and cash registers. He probably wasn’t worth a cent over a million dollars. I knew who he was, but didn’t particularly care for his assumption that I should.

“Never saw you before,” I said.

He looked completely surprised and slightly nettled. “I am Raymond Margrove.”

He waited expectantly until I said, “Never heard of you.”

This time his expression was amazed. But slowly the amazement died to be replaced by a faint smile.

“You’re putting me in my place, of course, Mr. Moon. I was warned you delight in deflating pomposity. And just yesterday my niece told me I had become a pompous old fool.” Heavy lips lifted to change the faint smile into a grin.

I said, “Now I like you better. Have a drink?”

“Thanks. Plain water, please.”

I moved to the sideboard, mixed two water highballs and handed him one. Then I lifted the lid of my cigar humidor and raised one eyebrow.

“No thanks,” he said. “Doctor’s orders.” He hefted his glass slightly. “Peculiarly enough, he says a little of this occasionally is good for my heart.”

As I set fire to my cigar, he dipped his hand in a side pocket, popped two chocolate creams into his mouth, munched them enjoyably and washed them down with a slug of his highball.

“Piece of candy?” he asked.

When I shook my head, he finally got around to his business.

“You are aware of the local mayoralty election coming up, I presume, Mr. Moon?”

I nodded.

“And the deliberate slander being circulated about the incumbent, Mayor John Cash.”

I elevated another eyebrow. “Slander?”

“The newspaper innuendos that His Honor is somehow connected with the gambling rackets — or at best neglects his duty by permitting them to flourish.”

“Is that slander?” I asked. “If you have time for a tour of the city, I’ll show you five-hundred wide-open bookshops, fifty dice and card games, and a one-armed bandit in every tavern.”

The fat man frowned, which pushed down the mass of fat beneath his jaw and produced another chin. “I am aware that the city is rife with gambling. However, I have reason to believe John Cash has no connection with it.”

I shrugged. “The police here are square. You couldn’t buy Chief George Chester with a million dollars. If the mayor gave orders, the cops would stop gambling in twenty-four hours. The only answer is, he hasn’t given orders. Personally, I intend to vote for Gerald Ketterer.”

He nodded agreeably, causing all his chins to quiver again. “Most people seem to favor the Reform Party candidate — and for the same reason you do. Until last night I intended to vote for Ketterer myself. In fact I have been instrumental in swinging him considerable support through the various civic organizations to which I belong. But last night I discovered there is a possibility that I and the rest of the public have been cleverly flim-flammed, and that Gerald Ketterer is an out-and-out criminal.”

He pursed his thick lips, and I waited with both eyebrows raised.

“Last night,” he went on, “Mayor Cash visited me secretly. He picked me because he felt I had sufficient influence to help him, if anyone could. After hearing his story, I decided influence was useless in a case such as this, and what we needed was an honest and discreet private investigator.”

“That’s me,” I said modestly.

Refusing my fat client’s offer of a ride in his chauffeur-driven car, I separated from him at the curb and walked to the public garage up the street where I kept the car the government had given me in exchange for my leg. It was an automatic drive specially equipped for left-legged driving, having the brake pedal left of the steering column instead of right.

I was nearly to the Plaza Apartments when I developed an intuitive feeling that I was being tailed. While waiting for a light to change, I glanced in the rearview mirror and caught sight of a blue coupe two cars back. I had not been watching for a tail, but subconsciously I was aware of having seen the same coupe in the mirror every time I looked.

When I drove into the Plaza’s parking lot, the coupe went on by and I got a look at the driver. He had the square scrubbed-looking face and crew haircut of a college athlete, and looked to be about college age. I wondered why I was becoming jittery and imagining college boys were tailing me.

Since it was after four, I had no intention of trying to enter Ketterer’s apartment that day and taking a chance he might knock off work early. I merely wanted to case the place. I rode a self-service elevator to the sixth floor, located suite 620 and rode the elevator down again.

From a drug store across from the parking lot, I phoned Jackie Morgan at the bed-bug haven he called home.

My association with Jackie originated years before in a saloon brawl. Two drunken heavyweights had been using his hundred and twenty pound frame for a punching bag, and I reduced the odds by banging their heads together. My motive in interfering had been interest in fair play rather than concern for his welfare, for at the time I didn’t even know him. But he never forgot it, and still considered his debt unpaid.

At sixty Jackie Morgan was a retired safe-cracker who had paid his debt to society with ten years of his life and now lived on an annuity left by a deceased brother. No police anywhere wanted him, but he got some kind of a kick out of maintaining contact with the underworld, and lived in a criminals’ hideout, where he seemed to be accepted as a harmless eccentric. I frequently called on his diversified talents, the most valuable of which was an almost supernatural ability with locks.

I told him to bring his kit and meet me at the magazine rack of the drug store in the Rand Building.

I couldn’t find a parking place near the Rand Building, and finally left my car on a public lot two blocks away. As I walked past the drug store where I had told Jackie Morgan to meet me, I glanced through the window and saw he had not yet arrived. But I did see another familiar figure.

Coming out of a phone booth was the same square-headed college boy I had imagined was tailing me. As I watched, he left the store, climbed into the blue coupe parked at the curb and drove away. If he was tailing me, he would have stuck around, I reasoned, and decided it was coincidence.

Across from the main entrance of the Rand Building I found a post to lean against from which I could both watch for Jackie to arrive and for Gerald Ketterer to leave. I had never met Ketterer, but since he had entered the mayoralty race his picture had been plastered on political posters all over town, and I felt sure I could spot him.

I started my vigil at twenty-five after four. At a quarter of five a taxi dropped three men at the entrance of the Rand Building. I knew all three casually, and if Gerald Ketterer really was king-pin of the gambling racket, these three must have been calling on him for a meeting of some kind, for they were the three biggest gamblers in town.

Dan Ironbaltz, the biggest of the three, both in size and underworld importance, ostensibly ran a high-class eatery called the Penguin Club. There was nothing on the police blotter about him, for I had had occasion to check, but it was common knowledge in the underworld that the Penguin Club was an expensive and profitless front, and the income which kept him in cars and champagne came from his job as straw-boss of the bookshops. He was a huge, ugly man with coarse features and heavy eyebrows which met over his nose to form one solid line. His arms were long and hairy, and hung motionless in front of him when he walked in his slightly thrust-forward position, so that he resembled nothing so much as a gorilla in hand-tailored clothes.

James Goodrich was the smallest of the three physically, but probably second in criminal importance. It was rumored that if you owned a tavern and wanted some extra revenue to help pay the rent, Goodrich could arrange to have a slot-machine installed if you guaranteed him half the take. It was also rumored that if you installed a machine on your own hook, without Jimmy Goodrich’s permission, cops called and took it away the first night. He was a little thin-faced man with a beak nose and an expression like a weasel with a stomach-ache.

Art Depledge was an average of both the other two. Of medium height and stocky build, he had the round, pleasant face of a grocery clerk — the sort of face you would instinctively trust. That is, unless you knew he was one of the sharpest card and dice men in town, and had accumulated a fortune through having people instinctively trust him. I had always thought he gambled strictly on his own, and had heard nothing to tie him to the numerous professional games spotting the town. But seeing him in the company of the other two straw-bosses, it didn’t require genius to hazard the guess that he straw-bossed the dice and card games held at the local night clubs.

From the drug store where I had met Jackie Morgan, I phoned Raymond Margrove. An oriental servant who pronounced his “r”s like “l”s and wasn’t at all sure his employer was home answered the phone, and we went through a long argument in pidgin English before I finally got to talk to my fat client. Then before I could say anything, Margrove began issuing instructions.

“I’ve been trying to reach you at your apartment,” he said aggrievedly, apparently resentful that I wasn’t on hand to pop out of the wall whenever he pushed a button. “I’d like you to drop over right away.”

“That was my idea,” I told him. “I just phoned to make sure you were in.”

Outside the drug store I parted with Jackie, who accepted the twenty I thrust on him only after I assured him it would go on my client’s expense account. Although his small annuity was his total income, Jackie refused to accept pay for his unique services if he thought it was coming out of my own pocket.

Raymond Margrove lived in the most expensive section along Lindell Boulevard, and his house was one of the city’s show places. It was of the modern school of architecture — eighteen rooms all on one floor, built mainly of plate glass and steel, so that it resembled a huge outdoor aquarium.

The oriental servant, who turned out to be a round-headed butler about five feet tall, but built like a wrestler, let me in. I followed him through a sitting room furnished with glittering tubular furniture and whose entire front wall was a sheet of heavy glass looking out on the front patio, through a game room containing a bar but no windows, the ceiling of this one being glass, and into a study with two glass walls and a skylight.

The butler said something that sounded like, “Mlistel Mlanville Mloon,” bowed formally and removed himself by backing out of sight into the game room.

Raymond Margrove sat with a book in his lap in an easy chair twice the size of an ordinary chair. It was geometrically set to bisect the right angle formed by the two glass walls, its back to the corner in order to catch the best light. The fat man’s slippered feet were on a footstool, and on an end table next to his chair was a nearly empty box of chocolates.

I glanced around the room, noted the two walls not glass were lined with hooks which looked well-handled, but the built-in desk in the center of one wall had the display-window appearance of never having been used. I had my choice of two chrome and hard leather straight chairs, or the cushioned swivel chair which went with the desk, and was also specially designed for my client’s bulk. I chose the latter.

“Will you have a drink?” Margrove asked.

“No thanks,” I said, surprising myself, for it was perhaps the third drink I had ever refused. I laid it to the feeling of unease all the glittering modernism engendered in me.

“Piece of candy?”

I shook my head and watched while he popped two fat chocolates in his mouth at once.

“I called you over because I may be able to make your task easier,” Margrove said. “It didn’t occur to me this afternoon, but my company manufactured the safe Gerald Ketterer has in his office. I have the combination for you.”

I said, “I won’t need it,” walked over and tossed the notebook in his lap.

He spent five minutes examining it, then raised his head and looked at me in amazement. “How... how the deuce did you get it out of the safe?”

“Who said it was in a safe?”

He thought about this, then admitted, “No one. Knowing he had a burglar-proof safe, I just assumed he’d keep important matters in it. Where did you find it?”

“In a gutter,” I said, and when he just stared at me blankly, added, “Even though Ketterer isn’t likely to complain to the police, I don’t make a practice of going around admitting felonies. And if I did, you’d become an accessory. I found it in a gutter at Fourth and Walnut. Right next to the pictures the mayor wanted.”

“I see,” he said agreeably. “Then you have the pictures too?”

I nodded. “I’ll drop them at the mayor’s house when I leave here. You might phone and tell him to expect me.”

He pressed a button set in the arm of his chair, and almost immediately the butler appeared.

“Phone His Honor, Mayor Cash,” Margrove instructed. “Tell him to expect Manville Moon with that material he wanted in twenty minutes.”

As the butler backed out, Margrove began to study the notebook in more detail. Ten minutes passed in silence, after which he snapped it shut and grinned at me happily.

“This is really much better than I expected, Mr. Moon. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Try it with money,” I suggested. “There was an expense item of twenty dollars.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”

I shook my head. “You’ll have to take my word for it. Again if I told you, you’d become an accessory.”

Huge shoulders moving in a ponderous shrug, he grunted and strained for his wallet. Somehow he managed to find a twenty among the half-inch sheath of fifties and hundreds, and extended it to me. Apparently there was to be no bonus for rapid service.

“Thanks very much.” I said politely, and bid him good night.

Unless I have a client paying for my time, ordinarily I don’t make a practice of poking my nose into police matters. But since the police apparently accepted Ketterer’s death as suicide, and refused to see any connection between it and the attempt on me, I was forced to take some action in self-defense.

In my own mind I was sure Ketterer had been murdered by his three lieutenants, or at least on their order, and I decided my best defense would be to prove it and get them behind bars before they could get me.

Curiously, none of the three had been mentioned in Ketterer’s confession, and actually there was no evidence aside from underworld talk that Dan Ironbaltz was overseer of the bookshops, Jimmy Goodrich managed the slot-machine racket, and Art Depledge ran the house-games.

And since all over town slot-machines and gambling equipment had disappeared the minute the Morning Blade expose hit the streets, leaving the cops who began raiding a few hours later nothing to examine but empty rooms and slot-machineless taverns, there was little chance that any real evidence connecting the three with gambling could now be uncovered. I hardly blamed Warren Day for refusing to waste time questioning the trio.

But with me it was a matter of wanting to stay alive.

As soon as I got some food into myself, I looked up Antoinette DeKalb’s address in the newspaper account of Ketterer’s confession, and drove to 324 Center Street. It proved to be a four-family apartment in a middle-class neighborhood. According to her mailbox, Ketterer’s secretary occupied the lower right flat.

I rang three times before the door opened a crack and the blonde secretary’s voice inquired, “Are you a reporter?”

I said, “No. I’m a suitor.”

The door opened another inch and a suspicious eye looked me over. The suspicion turned to a mixture of surprise and what I hoped was welcome. Apparently it was, for the door opened wide. She wore a green housecoat, carried a towel, and damp blonde hair was twisted in a loose knot above her ears, which made her look about sixteen.

“You’re the man who hit me with a door,” she accused. “How did you find where I live?”

“Love will find a way,” I said noncommittally. “May I come in?”

She stepped aside long enough for me to pass, then shut the door and leaned her back against it. “You caught me in the shower.”

“A good thing, too,” I told her. “Probably saved me from jail.”

She frowned. “How’s that?”

“With your grown-up makeup washed off, I can tell your real age. They put you in jail for playing with kids under eighteen.”

“I’m twenty-four!” she said indignantly, but the indignation was all in her voice. Her eyes said she was pleased at the compliment. For a moment she examined me appraisingly, then she said, “I’m not sure I should have let you in. I don’t even know you.”

“Manny Moon,” I said, bowing formally.

She grinned and dropped a mock curtsey. “Antoinette DeKalb. Toni for short. Sit down while I get some clothes on.”

She moved past me and disappeared into a bedroom. I made a circuit of the living room, examining a set of prints on the wall, and was just preparing to sink into a soft chair when the bedroom door flew open again. Not two minutes had passed, and though she now wore a form-fitting green dress in place of the housecoat, her hair was still pinned up and her face free of makeup.

“Did you say Moon?” she demanded. “Manny Moon?”

“Yes,” I said, abandoning plans to sit.

“Is that the same as Manville Moon?”

“That’s my full name,” I admitted.

Her full skirt swished as she strode over to me, planted a fist on each hip and thrust out a round jaw. The top of her head just came even with my chin, I noticed.

“You’re the man in the newspaper!” she snapped. “The private detective who found that notebook!”

“Right,” I snapped back, placing fists on my own hips and shoving my jaw out just as far as hers.

Thrusting her head upward until her nose was an inch from my own, she said bitterly, “You didn’t come to see me. You came to ask questions, just like the reporters.”

“Not entirely,” I said, imitating her bitter voice.

“Then what do you want?” she yelled.

“This,” I said, dipping my face one inch and kissing her square on the lips.

By the assured way Dan held his gun, and by the faintly eager look still in his eyes, I knew it was hopeless to try anything such as I had pulled on young Hank. No one said a word while we drove across town to the waterfront, turned down an alley and pulled into the basement garage of a warehouse.

Jimmy got out of the car and Dan prodded me after him. All three of us waited while Art Depledge pulled shut the garage doors, then Dan motioned toward an open door at the rear of the garage, and emphasized the gesture by prodding me in the ribs with his pistol. The door opened onto a set of cement stairs leading downward.

Again Jimmy went first, I followed, and Dan and Depledge brought up the rear. The stairs ended in a low, vault-like room with stone walls and no windows. The floor was concrete except for a circular section of iron about three feet wide in the center of the room, which on second examination proved to be an oversized manhole cover. Illumination was furnished by a lone bulb hanging from the ceiling.

The room was bare of furniture. Against one wall stood two galvanized scrub pails without handles, a larger bucket with the end of a long coil of rope tied to its handle, two wooden stakes and an overturned soap box on which lay a large bag labeled: Plaster of Paris — 100 lbs.

“Stand over there,” Dan ordered, pointing at the wall opposite this interesting equipment.

I leaned against the wall indicated, and watched as Jimmy and Art heaved open the manhole cover. Through the open hole came the murmur of sluggishly moving water just beneath.

Sweat was beginning to stand out on my brow, but I managed to keep my voice steady. “That the river?” I asked politely.

All three glanced at me, but no one said anything.

Art Depledge crossed to the large bucket attached to the rope, carried it to the hole and dropped it in. It disappeared with a gurgle, and he played out the coil of rope for what seemed an interminable length of time, but probably was only seconds. When it finally stopped sinking, he glanced at the remaining dozen feet of rope and said, “About twenty feet, I’d guess.”

“Can’t you remember the depth between killings?” I asked in a voice that surprised me by not cracking.

Again all three glanced at me.

“It changes,” Depledge explained kindly. “Silt sifts in and out. I’ve seen it thirty feet, and I’ve seen it nearly to the cover. We’d look silly dropping you in two feet of water, wouldn’t we?”

“I think two feet is a nice depth.” I said. This time there was a slight crack in my voice.

Hand-over-hand, Art pulled the bucket up again. When it stood brim-full next to the hole, Jimmy brought over the two pails without handles, and carefully poured half the muddy water into each. Then together the two of them heaved the hundred-pound sack of plaster of Paris over to the pails, ripped it open and poured half into each. They used the wooden stakes to stir it into a thick solution, tossing both the stakes and the empty bag through the hole when they finished.

Art Depledge said, “You see, we leave no evidence at all. Must have been twenty or more go through this hole over the years. They are all buried under silt now.”

“You talk too much,” Dan Ironbaltz said in his bell-like tenor. Then to me, “Over here please, Mr. Moon.”

I walked over to the hole and looked down. The water drifted by a scant two feet below it.

“Stand in the buckets,” Dan said.

I looked at him in amazement. “Why should I do a silly thing like that?”

“Because I’ll blow your head off if you don’t.” His voice was still polite.

I shrugged, but I doubt that my indifferent expression fooled anyone, for my face was beaded with sweat. “Blow away. What’s the difference?”

“The difference is you live fifteen minutes longer while the stuff sets. Either way your feet go in it.”

He began to raise the revolver, and I said, “All right. I’ll take the fifteen minutes.”

The darling of the airwaves was the glamorous platter-chatter blonde — until someone tried to rig her into a fast sign-off.

Kay Winters walked up to the microphone as if she were afraid of it, deathly afraid. The engineer, all but hidden behind a panel of flashing red-and-green-colored lights, suddenly stopped playing with a couple of dozen little knobs and dials and held up three stiff fingers.

“Three minutes, Kay,” he warned and pointed at the clock high on the wall of the lounge.

She nodded as if she weren’t sure and glanced nervously at its neon-lighted face, her strangely-dilated eyes almost revealing the all-consuming fear that she felt sweep over her.

For two years she’d been doing this. Every night at midnight for two years she had sat behind that same microphone in the Shell-Aire Cocktail Lounge, and every night when the man at the controls said “Three minutes, Kay,” she’d felt those same cruel little pinchings of fright gnawing viciously at her insides.

Usually she’d swallow hard and try to make the muscles of her stomach good and tight, and then when she heard her familiar theme music on the turntable and the engineer opened up her mike, she’d say:

“Happy midnight, everybody. This is Kay Winters, your girl disc-jockey...”

That’s when the mike fright always went away. But tonight she knew it wouldn’t. Because tonight it wasn’t mike fright. The cold fear that was stabbing deep into her quivering insides was murder — cold, calculated, murder. And Kay Winters knew that she was to be its victim...

Charlie Walp, the program producer, leaned down from the platform and took her small hands in his.

“Easy does it, doll,” droned his smooth voice oiled by the years on Broadway.

As she went up the two steep steps that were the difference between performer and audience, Charlie’s fingers touched the soft fur of his reddish-brown mustache and there was a surprised look on his tired face.

“Like ice, your hands. What’s it, doll? You got that mike fright again?”

“Still,” she said, and she tried a nervous little laugh that didn’t quite come off. “I’ll be all right, Charlie.”

“Sure, sure.” he patted the soft whiteness of her bare shoulder, his palm moist and spongy; then he turned and walked away.

Kay shivered. He mustn’t know; nobody must know about her fear.

She slid in behind the microphone and sat down at the hideous gold thing that was Nat Peters’ idea of a “classy” desk. Nat was the owner of the Shell-Aire and he’d had the gilded monstrosity especially made for her opening. Kay had wanted to throw it out the first time she’d seen it, but it was a present from Nat and she couldn’t hurt his feelings that way, so she kept it and hated it. For two years she had hated it.

The engineer adjusted the headphones on his ears, touched a button, and the turntable started to spin with the sound of her recorded theme music. As a soft white spotlight hit her, the nervous jabbering at the tables on the floor slowed down and came to a halt. Then there was just the clinking of glasses and her theme. By the time Charlie threw her the On Air cue with his finger, they were listening intently and watching expectantly. The waiters stopped what they were doing and watched. Everybody watched.

In the rear of the room a white-jacketed bartender, his mouth partly open, leaned his portly middle against the black and gold wood of the bar. He paused momentarily, the filled shaker he held stiffly reflecting hundreds of bright facets of light from its frosted chromium surface.

“Happy midnight, everybody,” Kay’s warm vibrant voice said into the mike and they all smiled at her. “This is Kay Winters, your girl disc-jockey, speaking to you from the beautiful lounge of the Shell-Aire Restaurant.”

They were looking at her now down on the floor, looking at her, staring at her. She searched their faces frantically. Who was it? Who was it?

She could make out Sue sitting there smiling at her reassuringly. Good old Sue. Not every gal was lucky enough to have a manager like Sue Grinnell!

Nat Peters leaned against the black and gold wood of the bar and watched. He stood there with a vague feeling that perhaps he should count the house, the dozens of heads in front of him, around him, all straining to catch a glimpse of the blonde disc-jockey. But Nat was used to the crowds now. After two years he was used to the nightly swarm of Kay Winters’ admirers. He smiled appraisingly and there was a nice warm feeling inside of him.

A voice behind him said, “What a mob!”

“Yeah,” he agreed happily as he glanced over his shoulder at the portly bartender.

“Like New Year’s Eve, Mr. Peters. Every night like New Year’s Eve.”

Big Nat laughed in a pleased way. “That’s good, Ed. New Year’s Eve, huh?” He said it slowly as if he were tasting it, and he laughed again like a man well satisfied with himself and his accomplishments.

Ed, the bartender, leaned closer. “Can I fix you something, Mr. Peters?”

“Naw, I got troubles here.” He patted his round middle tenderly with a fat right paw.

Ed nodded his bald head and thrust his lower lip out knowingly.

“I see what you mean, Mr. Peters,” he said.

“You can fix me something, Ed,” chimed in another voice, moving next to the fat restaurateur. “There’s nothing wrong with my innards.”

“Sure. What do you drink, mister?”

Nat looked at the tall man with the broad shoulders, clear eyes and dark, wavy hair.

“That ain’t just ‘mister’, Ed,” he corrected. “That’s Mr. Don Davis, the D.A.’s brightest young assistant.”

“Thanks for the build-up, Nat.”

“Give him bourbon, Ed — the good bourbon.”

The bartender snapped his fingers in the air and went to work.

Nat nodded toward Kay Winters up on the platform.

“That’s a gal, huh, that’s a real gal.” There was a big wide grin on his chubby face, but his lids were slits through which the hard gun-barrels of his eyes glistened.

Don turned with his back to the spotlighted platform and picked up the shot glass as fast as the bartender set it down. He swallowed noiselessly and then touched his lips with the back of his forefinger.

“Good bourbon, Nat,” he said but he was thinking about Kay.

These days he was always thinking about Kay. Why the hell did the D.A. send him to Shell-Aire? Of all places, Shell-Aire!

He spun the glass to the white-aproned Ed and tapped Peters on the arm.

“Let’s go somewhere, Nat. I want to talk to you.”

Nat turned slowly as though it were an effort, and there was worry peeking from behind his even smile.

“What’s the matter, kid? Is it Kay again? You still got the romance troubles? Well, I ain’t no cupid, kid.”

Don punched the bar and bit his lip. “This is business, Nat — your kind of business.”

“And yours?” It was like a red light flashing.

“Yeah,” Don gritted, his teeth showing white. “My business, too.” He crooked his fingers around Peters’ elbow. “Yours and mine, Nat.”

The restaurant man’s eyes were opaque pools of surprise.

“You mean it’s official — D.A. stuff?” There was disbelief in his manner and a seared twist to his mouth.

Don nodded at him. “D.A. stuff,” he said. “Coming?”

Nat Peters started to laugh but somehow it had the flat sound of a cracked dish. “C’mon,” he muttered jerkily. “We go to the office, okay?”

It was just like always, the people sitting there in the subdued informal light from the many table lamps, watching the blonde disc-jockey doing her nightly stint as if she weren’t going to die. As if she didn’t know she was going to die...

She kept looking at Don Davis; she couldn’t take her eyes off him. There was something almost hypnotic in the way he sat there alone, a small silver cigarette case twirling nervously in his hands, the gaze of his clear brown eyes doing something to the pit of her stomach. Why was he staring like that?

Her chit-chat into the mike was a mechanical thing. She hardly knew what she was saying. Suddenly, she looked down, her eyes tired. Where had the people gone? Where had everybody gone?

She half started to her feet. There was a dull throbbing pain in her head. She saw Don then, saw only Don. Don looking at her, staring at her... She knew suddenly that there was something she should remember.

We’re meant for each other, he had told her once. You and me, Kay. There will never he anybody else for you, never. I won’t let there be...

She stood up slowly, her long limbs fledgling things, untried, the marrow oozing out in a steady stream. Not Don — not him! Don’t let it be him!

She took two steps toward the edge of the platform, her hands fluttering like a bird with a broken wing. A roar of sibilant sounds came at her from below. They were whispering, everybody was whispering. Then she heard a sharp voice at her shoulder. It belonged to Charlie Walp, the program producer.

“What’s wrong, doll? You don’t look so good.”

“Play some records,” she managed to say. “Please, please, I feel sick.”

He started to protest but her white face cut him short.

“Sure, baby. Take it easy for a while, huh?”

She saw him signal something over his shoulder as he moved away. He helped her down those two steps, and there were many anxious faces. See, they loved her, they all loved her. All of them — except one.

Nat Peters was jabbering at her and so was Sue, but it was Don’s strong arm around her waist. The way he was looking at her, she was sure he couldn’t hurt her. He just couldn’t!

“What is it, hon?” said her manager. “What’s the matter? Tell Sue.”

She buzzed around, her red mouth tumbling out words and her white hands stroking nervously at Kay’s pale face.

“Get her to the dressing room,” said Sue, pointing to the rear of the lounge. “I’ve got something to do.” And then she was gone, making furious signs at Charlie Walp up on the platform.

Nat Peters went back to the table and sat down. There was a curious smile on his lips and a row of confused lines around his deep-set eyes. He hardly noticed Don Davis, his arm still tightly around Kay’s soft waist, helping her through the door in the rear of the lounge that was reserved for Kay’s own private dressing room.

Sue didn’t notice either. She was too busy talking earnestly with young Jack Cummings, radio’s newest crooning sensation. Of course he would fill in for Kay. Why not? Didn’t she plug his records?

That accomplished, Sue stood for a moment listening to the singer explain into the mike that it was a pleasure to take over a while for the beautiful blonde disc-jockey. Sue thought of everything.

She kept glancing over her shoulder; there was no sign of Don and it annoyed her. Why hadn’t he come out? She got up and hurried across the lounge. When she opened the door and walked in, Don still had his arm around Kay and he was kissing her. There was tender happiness in her lovely face.

“Excuse me!” There was deep sarcasm in Sue’s brittle voice. “Don’t tell me you fluffed off just for that!”

“Sue!” Kay sounded shocked.

“How do you feel, now?” the redheaded manager asked, and it was only with an effort that she kept her tone even.

“Sue, darling,” Kay breathed. “We’re going to be married. At last, we’re going to be married!”

Don grinned and hugged her to him. “Yeah, you’ll have to find yourself someone else to manage, Sue. Kay is quitting.”

Vince Patello had stepped from behind the closet and now stood between them and the closed door. His steel-gray suit matched the color of his cold eyes, and the knifelike crease pressed in his trousers was as sharp as the thin line that served as his mouth.

“Which one of you dames has the big yapper?”

“Take it easy, Vince,” said Nat.

“Shut up, fat boy,” he growled.

Nat Peters shut up and Kay got up, and that left just Sue sitting there staring into space.

“Where are you going, doll-face?” Patello shot through his teeth.

Kay ignored him and walked toward the door until Patello reached out. Grabbing her by the arm, he manhandled her to the chair she’d just vacated. She sat down heavily as the flat of his hand shoved roughly into her.

She grunted and Peters said again, “Take it easy, Vince.”

The gambling czar whirled on him. “Take it easy? Take it easy? Are you nuts?” He was sweating profusely all over his furrowed brow. “If these dames talk, I’m done, get it? Done!” He walked toward Kay, his fists doubled up like mallets.

“Tell them, Kay,” screamed Sue, her voice breaking wide open in fright. “Tell them you won’t say anything!”

There was a blank look on the disc-jockey’s face.

“I don’t understand. What do you mean, Sue?”

Vince Patello laughed, only it didn’t sound very pleasant. “Is this dame kidding?”

There was a wise look on Peters’ face. “Wait a minute, Vince, hold it.”

“For how long?”

“Listen, Kay,” said the restaurant owner. “That time you walked in and saw Vince and me closeted with Judge Manson — remember?”

“Sure, she remembers,” broke in the racketeer.

Kay nodded. “I remember. But your business is yours and mine is mine. I told Sue to tell you that then.”

“What?”

“You’ve done a lot for me, Mr. Peters. I owed you something.”

“Then why did you tell Don?” blurted out Sue in a high-pitched voice.

Kay looked surprised. “But I didn’t. You know that, Sue. Why would I tell Don?”

“Yeah!” It was a suspicious grunt that Vince Patello emitted from his open mouth.

“She’s going to marry him,” screamed Sue. “That’s why, that’s why!”

“Sue! What are you saying?”

The gangster went over and slapped Kay hard across the face. She staggered backward, her shaking hand fingering her stinging cheek.

“So that’s it. That’s good enough for me.” He slapped her again and she sank down to her knees, her shaking hands covering her face.

Sue was mumbling, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it.”

“Wait a minute,” barked Nat Peters. “This thing ain’t right, Vince. There’s a stink in this somewhere.”

“Yeah,” snarled the racketeer, “but not for long.”

“Look,” reasoned Peters, “why would a gal throw away five hundred a week? Five hundred a week for eight months to shut her mouth; then all of a sudden—” He was thinking furiously.

Kay was looking at her red-headed manager as if she were seeing her for the first time.

“You couldn’t, Sue,” she cried. “Sue, you couldn’t — you didn’t!”

It was their last chance to go home, that six o’clock bus — which gave the small-town boy and girl just four short hours... to wriggle off a homicide hook.

She happened to look down there, at the sidewalk in front of her rooming house, and he was still hanging around, that young fellow who had brought her home. As though he didn’t know where to go, was afraid to go back to wherever it was he belonged.

It got her sore. She thought maybe it was on her account he was hanging around like that. She threw open the window and called down: “Why don’t you go home? What’re you waiting for?”

He looked up at her and didn’t seem to know what to say. Then suddenly a white-roofed patrol car slithered around the corner down at the lower end of the street and started up that way. It wasn’t going anywhere in particular, just cruising; you could tell by its lackadaisical gait. He gave that nervous start again, as he had when coming home with her before, as he had when he’d ducked into her own doorway and taken cover.

First she was going to hail the patrol car and have them investigate and tell him to move on. Afterwards, she was glad she didn’t. All her life she was glad she didn’t. It coasted by, and its occupants didn’t even glance over at the house. Then it turned the upper corner and disappeared again.

She stood there in the open window, waiting for him to come out again. He didn’t. He stayed out of sight inside there some place. Well, he wasn’t going to get away with that. She wasn’t going to have him lurking in the hall down there all night. She crossed the room, threw open the door, went out to the head of the dimly lit stairs and peered down the well.

She saw him down there. He was sitting disconsolately on the stairs, halfway between the ground floor and the first landing. She saw him run his fingers through his hair a couple of times, as though some deep-seated predicament was gnawing at him.

They came down the rickety stairs one behind the other, he in the lead with her battered, latched valise in his hand. It didn’t weigh much. It had hardly anything in it — just busted hopes. They came out into the slumbering early-morning street and started hurriedly toward the nearest corner, huddled close together, footsteps echoing hollowly in the before-dawn stillness.

“Good-by, Manhattan,” he heard her whisper.

At the corner he stopped, put down the valise a second. “You better go down and wait for me at the bus terminal, while I go over alone about — the other thing.”

She tightened her grip on his arm, as if afraid of losing him. “No, if we separate we’re licked. The city’ll get its dirty work in. I’ll think: ‘Can I trust him?’ You’ll think: ‘Can I trust her?’ We’re staying together. I’m going right over there with you. I’ll wait outside while you go in.”

“Suppose he’s gotten home by now? You’re likely to be picked up for complicity.”

“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. We’re taking it together. Catch a cab; the longer we wait to get it back in that safe, the riskier it gets.”

“On your money?”

She smiled benevolently. “This reformation is on me.”

They sat side by side in the taxi, streaking cross-town through the park, and he squeezed her hand. “Gee, I’m glad I met you tonight, Carol.”

They got out two blocks from their destination, in order not to reveal it to the driver. They covered the remaining distance on foot, one of his long strides to two of hers, turned into East Seventieth from Fifth Avenue, came to a stop again in the sheltering shadows just beyond the corner.

“It’s on this side, just past the second street light down there,” he said guardedly, looking all around to make sure they weren’t observed. “Don’t come any nearer than this, just in case. Wait here with your valise. I’ll be back in no time.”

“Don’t take any chances. If you see any lights, if it looks like he’s gotten back already, don’t go all the way in — just drop the money inside the door. Let him pick it up in the morning.”

He gave his hat brim a tug, moved away from her down the silent street. She watched him go. It was an old-fashioned residence with a high stoop. She saw him glance cautiously around, then turn aside, go up the steps to the entrance. He opened the outer glass doors and went in.

As soon as he had, she picked up her valise and moved after him. She wanted to stay as near him as she could. When she had reached the house, she continued on past it, in order not to draw attention by loitering in front of it.

The vestibule behind the glassed doors showed empty by the reflected street light as she glanced in on her way by. He’d gone in. But suppose the one member of the family who had stayed behind was asleep in there right now? Suppose he woke up, discovered Frank?

She was trying her best to be calm, but her heart was beating unavoidably faster as she sauntered along the sidewalk so slowly, so aimlessly. It was still breaking and entering, even to return the money. Maybe Frank should have mailed it back, instead of coming back in person with it. They hadn’t thought of that; she wished they had, now.

The misappropriated key shook a little as he fitted it into the door for the third time that night. They went in. The door receded behind them into a blurred grayish square that was the glass panel set into it.

“He’s in the back, on the floor above,” he whispered. “I don’t want to light any lights in the front. They might be seen from outside.”

She could sense rather than see him reaching toward his pocket for something. “No, don’t light any matches, either,” she cautioned. “You lead the way. I’ll follow with my hand on your sleeve.”

She set down the valise close against the baseboard of the wall, where she could find it again readily. They toiled forward in a sort of swimming darkness that was almost liquid, it was so dense. “Step,” he whispered.

She raised her foot, pawed, found the foremost step with it. The rest of the stairs, followed in automatic succession, were no trouble at all. The stairs creaked once or twice under them in the stealthy silence. She wondered if anyone else was in the house, anyone still alive. For all they knew, someone might be. Many a nocturnal murder isn’t discovered until the following day.

“Turn,” he whispered.

His arm swung away, to the left. She kept contact, wheeled her body after it. The stairs had flattened out into a landing. She felt his sleeve go up again, after the brief level space. She found the new flight of steps. Finally they, too, had leveled off. They were in the upstairs hall now.

“Turn,” he breathed.

She felt herself go over a wooden door sill, slightly raised. His sleeve stopped. She stopped beside it. He reached behind her and did something, and she felt a slight current of air as a door closed in back of them.

“Get your eyes ready, here go the lights,” he warned.

She squinted protectively. They flashed on with unbearable brilliance after the long pilgrimage in the dark.

The dead man was the most conspicuous thing in the room.

It was a sort of library or den, by the looks of it. One doorway led into a bedroom, the other, at a spaced distance from it, into a bath. Frank left her to go into the former and draw the heavy, sheltering drapes together over the windows, to keep the light from showing through at the rear of the house.

He didn’t bother with the bath, so it evidently had no outside window. She stood there staring down in grim fascination until he’d rejoined her. She’d never seen anyone dead before.

The hotel, when she had finally located it, had every earmark of one of those shady places catering to card sharps, confidence men, and other fly-by-nights. It held no terrors for her, though; she had met its type of denizen on the dance floor nearly every night for years past. She went up to the desk with the assurance of one who doesn’t expect to be turned away, asked breezily: “What room is Rose in? You know, Rose Beacon?”

The drink-sodden clerk regarded her doubtfully. “Is she expecting you?”

She flung the back of her hand at him familiarly. “Never mind the company manners. She only just left me a little while ago. I dropped by to tell her something I just remembered I forgot to tell her. What’s the matter, is it a secret?”

He grinned, relaxed. “Four-oh-nine, sugar.”

A Cleveland-administration elevator took her up four floors. The sleepy boy wanted to wait, evidently to see if she was admitted or not at this ungodly hour.

“That’s all right,” she assured him breezily as she stepped off the car, “I’ll be there quite some time.”

The power of suggestion is a great thing. Just because she had said so, he closed the door and took the car down again.

She didn’t feel breezy as she walked along the dusty, poorly lighted corridor. Her thoughts were churning while her feet carried her toward the imminent showdown.

“How am I going to get in? Even if I do, how am I going to know; how am I going to find out if she did it? And if she did, how am I going to get her back there, all the way up to East Seventieth, without causing a big commotion, dragging the police into it, involving Frank worse than he is already, getting the two of us held on suspicion for days and weeks on end?”

She didn’t know any of those things. She only knew she was going ahead.

The door numbers were stepping up on her — 07, 08, 09. This was it, facing the corridor at right angles, forming a dead end. It looked so harmless, so impersonal — and yet behind it lurked her whole future destiny, in a shape unseen.

Suddenly, just as she came to a stop, a voice spoke on the other side of it. A woman’s voice.

“He says my girl-friend’s on her way up.” The treacherous clerk must have phoned up, anyway, after she’d left the desk. “There’s no friends of mine in town. I ain’t even told nobody where I’m stopping. I’m gonna see what this is.”

The door swept open before Carol had time to do anything, or even to think what to do, and they stood looking at each other eye to eye, this unknown woman and she. She got a snapshot of a hard, enameled face, a breath of alcohol on the lips, hostile wariness in the remorseless eyes. The wariness became a challenge.

“Wait a minute, who are you? Did you tell them you know me, downstairs? What’s the angle?”

She must have taken a puff of a cigarette just before she opened the door, and had been holding it until now. Smoke suddenly appeared in two malevolent columns. She looked like Satan. She looked like some one it was good to stay away from. She was still willing to have it that way herself — so far. Her arm flexed, to swing the door closed in the girl’s face.

That was the last thing she saw. She closed her eyes as she turned back to face the winged steel death. Gadsby was lying over to her left. Joe was standing midway between her and the unlighted bedroom door, with his back to it. Rose was crouched somewhere behind her, still in quest of the errant hotel bill, looking under tables and behind chairs. Carol closed her eyes and waited.

The roar of the gun, when it came, was louder than she’d thought it would be. The pain was less — there wasn’t any. Her eyelids sprang open, and the gun, still tracing a smoky line through the air, was zig-zagging crazily upward in Joe’s hand. Another hand had his collared by the wrist, was hoisting it from behind. And the crook of an arm was wrapped around his neck, elbow pointing toward her.

Joe’s face was contorted, suffused with red, in the throes of the struggle. And another face behind his, glimpsed briefly over his shoulder, was equally contorted, equally blood-darkened. But not too much so as to be recognizable. The boy next door, fighting for the two of them — the way the boy next door should.

Rose flashed by her from the rear, an andiron she’d snatched from before the fireplace upraised high above her head. But a small-town girl can be as quick as a city girl. Carol’s hands were tied; she couldn’t reach out and grab her. She slithered one leg out until it was almost calf-low to the floor, deftly spoked it between the two scampering feet.

Rose went down face-first in a rocking-horse fall, and the andiron went looping harmlessly through the air. Carol flung herself down across her, knelt on her with both knees at once, pinning her flat. Every time Rose tried to squirm free and throw her off, Carol brought up one knee and slammed it down again with redoubled force.

Meanwhile the two men had toppled over to the floor. Joe was on top, but facing the wrong way. Frank still had the half-nelson around his neck from underneath, and was still choking off the gun-hand at the wrist. They suddenly rolled over. Frank let go the half-nelson, drew back that arm, shot it forward again against the side of his head. He had to do it a second time, and then he stood up and brought the gun up with him.

“I’ll be right with you, Carol,” he said. He stood watchfully over Joe for a second. Joe twitched a little, raised a dazed hand to the side of his head, but stayed flat.

Frank picked up something from Gadsby’s desk, came around behind her, sawed her hands free. Both of them were still breathing too fast to talk.

“I saw them bringing you in, from one of the front windows on this floor. Something about the way you were walking told me they had a gun on you. I backed up into the bedroom and laid low.”

She wasn’t wasting any time; she was already taking her own severed bonds, reknitting them and fastening Rose’s wrists with them.

“Do that to him, too,” she suggested.