The Kiss-and-Kill Murders

A Novel by STEWART STERLING

"Produce or else!" the store president told Detective Don Marko.
And so far, he had produced—the corpses of two girls!

Chapter I

THE car's headlights probed beyond the curve of the highway to the massed darkness of close-ranked hemlocks. From the safety fence guarding the curve where it crossed the brook a shadowy grotesqueness rose, flapping and floundering into the path of the Cadillac. The man at the wheel braked, cursed.

The girl beside him made a frightened movement to shield her face from the expected impact, but the great bird rose clumsily in time to escape more than a touch by the car.

"For God's sake," she murmured, "what was that?"

"Turkey buzzard." The driver swung back to his proper lane. "Carrion buzzard."

"Ugh!" She shuddered. In the dim, reflected glow from the instrument board her delicate features seemed suddenly pinched with terror. "It looked like a fugitive from a bad dream. Do they have many of those things down here on the Eastern Shore?"

"They're common as chickens." He allowed himself a tight, thin-lipped smile. "Matter of fact, they live on chickens. Dead ones the broiler farms throw out. That's all they eat—dead things."

"Brrr. They give me the heebies. This whole country does. Sooner we get out of here, the better it'll suit me." She pushed in the cigarette lighter. "How much further is it, to this God-forsaken place?"

"Few miles." He swung off the through route onto a dirt road. "Don't worry. I don't intend to stay long."

"I don't see why we had to come down here at all."

"So you won't make any dumb mistakes if somebody starts to ask questions about your Maryland estate, the way you did when that salesgirl jumped you about the farm up in Connecticut."

The girl shifted her position uneasily. "How could I have guessed she had been born right there in Whilton?"

"You couldn't. But you could have kept your head instead of getting panicky and telling her you'd been living there only a short time when your family was supposed to have owned the place since the Civil War." He slowed the car at massive brick gateposts, turned in between them to a winding lane guarded by high hedges of box. "Only thing that saved us was that the salesgirl was dumb, too. She thought you were a phony but she wasn't bright enough to follow through on her suspicion and notify one of the store detectives."

"You're always blaming me." she retorted bitterly. "Whatever goes wrong is always my fault."

HE BROUGHT the car to a stop before the low brick porch of a white-pillared Colonial mansion.

"No. It was my error. I don't intend to make the same mistake a second time. That's why I brought you down here to look over the ground."

She opened the car door on her side. In the wedge of brightness from the headlights red eyes glared from the shrubbery at the side of the porch. "Oh! Look!"

"Rabbit," he said. "Thick as fleas this time of year."

"I don't want to stay here! I'll bet there are a million snakes—"

He came around the hood of the car, swinging something that glinted a metallic blue-black. "There aren't any. But this'll take care of anything that shows up." He took her arm.

"No!" she cried. "I'm scared! I don't want to go any further!" She bit hard on the knuckle of her left index finger. "Please don't make me go where it's dark! I can see enough from here!"

He pushed her toward the porch. "Suppose you run up against someone who asks you if you've had the lovely old staircase fixed up? Don't be silly. Come on inside. Here, take the flashlight."

"There'll be rats!"

"Probably. They won't hurt you."

He used a huge, brass key. The white-paneled front door swung open to disclose a hallway full of shrouded chairs, a hooded grandfather's clock, cloth-covered paintings.

She hung back. "No, please, darling! You wouldn't make me go in there if you cared the least bit for me!"

He slid an arm around her waist. "Stop worrying, baby. I'm right here with you."

She stepped inside the musty-smelling hallway. The beam of her flashlight traveled around the hall, poked into a living room where a white and frightened face stared back at her from an enormous pier-glass—her own face.

The sound of the door closing behind her made her whirl, gasping.

"The wind." He smiled with his mouth; his eyes regarded her with somber calculation.

She found herself unable to do more than whisper, "There isn't any wind."

"Go on. Upstairs." The gun-barrel pointed.

"No!" she managed, stiff-lipped. "I'm not going up there. I—I'm not going to stay in this house one more minute. I—"

"Yes." The smile remained fixed, unreal. "You're staying."

She retreated from him, backing into the living room. "That's why you brought me here!"

He followed her, unhurried.

She screamed. "No, no! Don't! For God's sake! Wait!"

The gun roared, and she moaned. The flashlight wavered, fell to the floor, went out.

He waited until he heard her fall, until the labored panting ceased. Then he flicked on his cigarette lighter, found the flashlight.

It was an effort to lift the body, sling it over his shoulder. The difficulty of carrying it up the winding staircase to the second floor, up the straight, steep steps to the third floor, finally up the short, vertical ladder to the trap-door in the roof, left him with hammering heart and throbbing temples.

Once out on the square, railing-enclosed roof from which some pioneer builder of the mansion had once watched for sails inbound toward his creek, the man lit a cigar before stripping the clothing from the dead girl. He removed her rings, her wrist-watch.

Then he used the butt of the gun to disfigure the face, to smash the dental work in her mouth.

"Okay," he muttered after a long time. "Okay, you rats." He looked out across the wide lawn toward the locust trees and the fringing hemlocks. "Come and get it."

Chapter II

THE Chief of Store Protection scowled down on the umbrella-carrying throngs of New York and the turtling taxis of Fifth Avenue, inching along between red lights and around the high- backed green beetles of the busses. Rain slashed across the avenue in gusty swirls, driving against the third-floor windows of his office in "Nimbletts, The Great Store," puddling the pavements and sloshing small torrents into the gutters. The March morning suited his mood, which was unpleasantly glum.

The harassed frustration of vehicles and pedestrians down on the cram-jammed avenue was duplicated by the confused futility of his own mental processes. He transferred his brooding glance from the scene below to the curt memorandum on his desk blotter. The signature at the bottom was the same friendly scrawl that had terminated all the brief instructions from the general manager's office. But the tone was brusque and bleak.

Don:

The Board will meet at three tomorrow to take up the Deshla matter. I have notified them that you will have a report to make on it at that time. You will appreciate the urgency of the situation. We would not like to face the necessity of taking the investigation out of your hands.

Bob

That was plain and to the point. "Taking the investigation out of your hands" meant "Get to the bottom of the business within twenty-four hours or get a new job."

The trouble with that was that any other job, at least in the line of store protection, would be a comedown. Just as a demoted four-star general would find it hard to get command of an army, Don Marko would find it tough to try for a position at one of the city's lesser stores, after four years as head of the detective staff at Nimbletts.

Yet he understood the G.M.'s dilemma. The Deshla business had shaken the confidence of the front office, had put the whole top brass of the big store on edge.

When some crew of slickers could walk in and make off with seventeen thousand dollars' worth of merchandise, apparently without anyone knowing just what had happened to the stuff, then the petty thefts of shoplifters seemed insignificant. To make it worse, until the tangle could be unraveled, the same trick might be pulled over again—for an even larger amount—and the store protection sleuths wouldn't be able to prevent it.

He ran his fingers distractedly through his thick goose-feather-white hair. As of now, three days after the theft had accidentally come to light, all he could honestly report was that somebody must be lying like a trooper, because the thing simply couldn't have happened the way everybody insisted it had. What the Board of Directors would say to any such unsatisfactory report was obvious.

He'd done what he could to plug any possible holes in the store's defenses. But since he couldn't figure out just how the trick had been pulled, he was shooting absolutely blind.

There were a couple of Board members who always had been skeptical of him because they thought he was too young to handle Nimbletts' thirty floor detectives. Only his prematurely white hair, his close-cropped mustache and ascetic cast of features had convinced them that he looked old enough. Well, another twenty-four hours of this sort of pressure would age him, all right.

His phone rang.

"Mr. Marko? Miss Ennis, Draperies. Miss Bayard asked me to tell you she's bringing someone up to see you."

"Thank you, Miss Ennis."

That was store talk for "She's pinched a shoplifter and is on her way to your office with her prisoner." In his present puzzled frame of mind, he'd be inclined toward leniency to any of the light-fingered brotherhood or sisterhood who'd tried to get away with a five-dollar pen off the leather goods counter or a lighter from the giftwares section.

The red glass button on his intercom set glowed. He touched the switch. "Yes?"

"Miss Bayard, Mr. Marko."

"Come on in."

Mary Bayard was a gaunt, drab, horsy-faced woman with mild gray eyes which peered out from behind gold-rimmed spectacles with an expression of surprised bewilderment. In fact, she was seldom surprised at anything and never bewildered.

THE girl who preceded her into the office was in striking contrast to the plainclothes woman. She was in her early twenties and remarkably pretty in a thin, pinched fashion. A dainty face; it might have been puritanical except for the petulant fullness of her lips.

Her coat was the finest Shetland; the suit beneath it expensive hand-loomed homespun. If she had bought those shoes at Nimbletts, she'd paid around thirty-seven-fifty for them. She wore no jewelry, but her figure was enough to obtain for her the attention which some females try to attract by the display of precious stones.

Mary Bayard held out a flat bronze disc. "She claims her name is Betterson, Mr. Marko. Mrs. Clark F. Betterson. She ordered nearly twelve hundred dollars worth of upholstery fabrics, Brocaded damasks, cut velours, fancy materials. Wanted the section manager to have them shipped to the Betterson place in Old Westbury. Gave the salesgirl this token."

The girl cried indignantly, "You have no right to treat me like a criminal! I haven't taken one single thing out of your old store. You can't say I've stolen anything!"

Don thought there was an undertone of desperation in the soft voice. "Sit down, young lady. If there's been any mistake on Nimbletts' part, you can be sure we'll straighten it out to your satisfaction." He looked at the token. It was a genuine Nimbletts charge coin, beyond doubt. "Are you Mrs. Betterson?"

The girl hesitated, biting her upper lip. "No." She lifted her chin defiantly. "I found that coin in the lobby of a hotel and thought it would be fun to see how it felt to pretend I was rich, for once in my life."

Don tossed the charge token up and caught it on his palm. "Kind of expensive fun for us, wasn't it? Shipping all that merchandise out to somebody who didn't want it? So we'd have to bring it all back to the store?"

"I wasn't going through with it," she said sullenly. "I'd have told the clerk it was just a joke before I left. Only, this—person—" she gestured irritably toward Miss Bayard— "raised a rumpus before I had a chance to explain."

Don had heard that one so many times he didn't even trouble to smile at her lack of ingenuity. "What is your name?"

"I won't tell you." The chin went up again. "I don't have to tell you."

"If you don't tell me"—Don shrugged— "you'll have to tell the judge in court."

"You can't arrest me. I haven't done anything."

"Sure. It's a misdemeanor to try to obtain goods by using another person's name. Your case, it's a felony, because of the value of the stuff you tried to get away with."

"I didn't, I tell you! It was just a gag." She didn't act as if she expected him to believe it.

"Well, you can try to sell that to the judge, too." Don took a card out of his side drawer. "But I might point out that if you're anxious to avoid getting your real name in the newspapers, it might be easier to talk to me. Once they book you at the police station, I can't help you at all."

She flung out her hands in appeal. "If I do tell you—who I am—will you let me go?"

"I'll have to know a little more than your name."

Don began to fill in the descriptive blanks on the card. "White—Female—Blonde—Blue—"

"What, besides my name?"

"We can't have any Tom, Dick or Harriet coming in the store and ordering a thousand dollars' worth of merchandise charged to somebody else." He scribbled "5'5 ... and "125" on the card. "You claim you found Mrs. Betterson's token. But you didn't find her Old Westbury address on the coin."

"Oh"—she fluttered the fingers of one hand— "I knew where she lived, I've seen her out there at the polo matches—" She stopped as if fearful of having said more than she intended.

"How did you know the Bettersons were home?"

She stared at him, the color draining from her face. "I never thought about it, one way or the other. I meant it just for a practical joke. I don't see what difference it makes."

Don leaned over to speak to the intercom. "Phone the Clark Betterson estate out in Old Westbury, Long Island. I want to talk to Mrs. Betterson, if she's home."

"Yes, Mr. Marko."

DON tapped the identification card on the desk. "How'd you happen to hit on the drapery department for your practical joke? Why not have the fun of ordering clothes, the way most girls would have if it was all in the spirit of good, clean fun?"

The girl said, "I just like pretty fabrics, that's all."

Mary Bayard said quietly, "You put the section manager to a great deal of trouble, getting out special patterns and matching colors with those slips in your handbag."

The girl said nothing. Don reached for the handbag.

She snatched it to her breast, held it with her forearms crossed over it protectively. "If you try to touch one single thing, I'll—"

The intercom said, "The traffic supervisor at Central in Old Westbury says the Betterson phone has been disconnected for the last four weeks, Mr. Marko. Says they can't say for certain, but they understand the place is closed up and that the Bettersons are vacationing on the French Riviera."

Don said, "Thanks a lot." He studied the girl for a moment. "Not such a big joke, now."

She licked her lips. "I didn't know."

He said, "You'll have to make up your mind. Do you want to talk to us or to the police?"

She frowned. "If you'd let me talk to you, alone." She glanced sideward at Miss Bayard. "There are some things I—I simply couldn't tell to any woman."

Mary Bayard's mouth twisted in a dry smile. Don said, "All right, Mary. You want to wait outside a few minutes?"

Miss Bayard opened the door. "Yes, Mr. Marko." But her expression said she had a pretty good idea what the girl wanted to say without benefit of female audience.

Chapter III

GLANCING over her shoulder quickly as the door closed behind Mary Bayard, the girl came close to the desk, pointing at the intercom box. "If you're going to keep that thing turned on so somebody can listen to everything I say—"

Don cut the switch. "It's off. Try it yourself."

"I wouldn't know whether you're foxing me or not, so I'll have to trust you."

"Guess you will." He waited.

She perched on the corner of the desk, careless of the exposure of a nyloned knee. "I can't tell you why it's so important for me to keep my identity secret, except that if my—my family found out I'd been arrested, I might as well kill myself."

"Married?" Don recognized her perfume as one of the more expensive French imports carried by Nimbletts.

"No." She squirmed so her skirt pulled up to show a bit of ivory thigh. "If you'll just take my word it was all meant as a bit of silly ribbing. I'll do anything you want me to." She leaned over, put out a hand to touch his caressingly. "Anything," she repeated. "I'll give you my address and you can come up to my apartment tonight, so we can talk it over."

He smiled. "That's a most entertaining idea— but I'm afraid this has gone a bit beyond my personal inclinations. Anyhow, how could I be sure you aren't just kidding me along, to get out of trouble?"

She made a pretense of pulling her skirt down a little. "You could come home with me right now if you want to."

"You make it sound interesting." He reached for her handbag. "If you're willing to go that far, there's no reason why you shouldn't tell me your name."

She had misunderstood his movement, apparently thinking he had intended to put his hand on her knee. As soon as his fingers closed on the handle of the bag, she seized it with both hands and slid off the desk to her feet.

"I'm Sally Collins," she said swiftly. "I live at Sixty-eight East Seventy-ninth. Apartment Five. Regent 2-0917. Please don't tear my bag!"

He kept his grip on the alligator-leather contraption, stood up and stepped around the desk toward her.

"Look," he said, "We might be able to arrive at some deal to keep you out of court. But in order to do that we'll have to know all about you. To protect ourselves against any repetition of this charge coin use."

"I swear by everything I hold dear I'll never do it again!"

She wrestled for the bag, brushing close against him. Her mouth was provocatively near, her lime-green eyes wide with anticipation.

He pried her fingers loose from the handle. "Let's have a look at those color swatches you were matching those fabrics with."

He opened the bag. She lunged, slapped at the bag, knocked its contents to the floor.

Don held out a hand to keep her off, bent down to retrieve the scattered conglomeration— comb, compact, billfold, keys, coin purse, checkbook.

She raced to the door, yanked it open, rushed through the outer office.

He straightened up in time to see Mary Bayard seize the fleeing girl as she reached the door to the corridor. It wouldn't be the first time Mary had blocked an escape in just that fashion. She had proved herself so often, in that connection, that cute little Cora Session, Don's secretary at her desk out there, didn't feel it necessary to leave her typewriter to help.

The girl wrenched open the corridor door, struggling wildly as the muscular Miss Bayard tussled with her. They lurched through the doorway to the corridor. The girl screamed.

Don saw Mary Bayard fling up her hands, reel sideways against the door frame and crumple to the floor beyond his line of vision.

Cora cried sharply, "Mr. Marko—quick!"

He ran through the outer office as the corridor door slammed. He shoved at it, but something outside was preventing it from opening. It took a good shoulder heave to push the obstruction back.

Mary Bayard was sprawled unconscious on the floor of the corridor. It had been her dead weight that had held the door. The girl had vanished.

FIFTEEN feet further along, where the corridor made an L turn by the stair-well one of Nimbletts's middle-aged executives knelt; huddled against the wall. He held both hands to his mouth. Blood gushed from his nose, ribboning down over his hands, his chin, his shirt front. He goggled in fright at Don Marko, took one hand away from his mouth long enough to mumble, "He went downstairs!"

Don reached the stair door, tugged it open, leaned over to peer down. There was no one in sight, but the girl could have kept close to the wall going down. Yet there was no sound of clip- clopping Cuban heels.

He ran back to Mary Bayard. Cora was squatting beside the plainclothes woman. "She's breathing, Mr. Marko."

Don stooped, saw the lump on the back of Mary Bayard's head just above the tightly coiled bun of dark hair. "Knocked out! Call the hospital. Tell one of our nurses to hop down here fast. Don't move Miss Bayard till the nurse gets here."

The middle-aged man stumbled to his feet. "Did he kill her?" he muttered through a blood- stained handkerchief.

"Knocked her out, Ralph."

Don had known the mousy little man since he'd first come to Nimbletts. Ralph Eddrop, assistant credit manager, hadn't aged or changed a particle in all the intervening years. He was short, inclined to be pudgy, pale, and colorless of speech and manner as well as of complexion. He'd always been the punctual and painstaking, shy and shrinking timid-soul type, but Nimbletts thought a great deal of Ralph's judgement as to charge accounts and delinquent balances.

Ralph took the handkerchief away from his mouth and examined it with horrified astonishment. "He tried his best to knock me out, too. But I thought it was only a newspaper he had in his hand, so when I saw him attack Miss Bayard, I tried to grab him. He hit me with a perfectly terrific blow right in the mouth." The credit man felt of his teeth. "It felt like a mule kick."

Don saw a rolled newspaper lying against the wall halfway to the turn of the corridor. "Why'd you say 'he'? It was a girl, wasn't it?" The newspaper had been rolled around a footlong piece of heavy iron pipe.

Ralph's forehead crinkled into a puzzled scowl. "There was a girl, but I thought that man was about to strike her, too, Don. She ran right past me before I tried to grab the big brute."

"What'd he look like?"

Ralph snuffled blood back into his nose. "Like a butcher. Big fellow, face like ground hamburger. Six feet, heavy-shouldered. Had on one of those Army trench coats. Couldn't see what he was wearing. But I could spot him out of a thousand. Had little rolls of fat under his eyes— like pouches that'd bloated out. Did he get away from you?"

Don said, "I never saw him, Ralph. The girl got away from me."

"What the devil was he doing up here on the executive floor? How'd he get up here?"

"Might have come up to see what we were going to do about the girl."

Ralph groaned, touching his swollen upper lip. "Was just coming back from the washroom and heard a girl scream. When I poked my head around the corner there I saw this big lunk flailing away at Miss Bayard. He had his back to me so I couldn't see his face, and for a minute I thought possibly he was one of your men having trouble helping Miss Bayard with a shoplifter. So I didn't holler for help. Then he spun around and came right for me like a crazy man. Good Lord, I hope he didn't hurt Miss Bayard seriously."

A starchy-uniformed nurse hurried along the corridor.

Don was on the telephone to his main entrance guard when Cora touched his arm.

"The nurse says it looks like a fractured skull and might be critical. She wants to get Mary to a hospital right away."

DON'S eyes clouded. "You go in the ambulance with her, Cora. I'II ring Doc Towbin at the clinic and see to it everything's ready soon's she gets there."

He thought a lot of Mary Bayard. If things went wrong up there on the operating table at the clinic, he would be partly to blame. Because he'd thought he might talk that blond into making a confession, and hadn't considered the possibility she might have an accomplice here with her.

He'd had his fingers on something important and had let it get away from him!

Perhaps not entirely away, though. He picked up the rest of the stuff that had tumbled out of the girl's bag, arranged it on his blotter.

The last thing he recovered from beneath his desk, where it had fluttered, was a newspaper clipping with large black type flaunting the name Deshla.

Chapter IV

DATED the ninth of March, twelve days past, the clipping read:

CORPSE FOUND ON ROOF
OF BURNED MANOR

Famous Deshla House Razed By Fire
After Lightning Strikes Body of
Mystery Woman Discovered by
Volunteer Fireman on Watch Roof

Georgetown, Md. AP: Volunteer firemen from the Sassafras River V.F.D discovered a body in the blackened wreckage of the old Deshla mansion, destroyed by fire following a severe electrical storm here today. Coroner Joseph G. Ashford stated that the remains were those of a young woman, but could give no estimate of the time of death since buzzards or rodents had stripped the bones of flesh. The skeleton was not noticed by members of the Volunteer Fire Brigade until the square portion of the roof collapsed and fell through the burned-out floors to the ground. Police have so far been unable to find anyone who could identify the woman or suggest how she had obtained entrance to the historic old homestead which had been unoccupied by the Deshla family for several months.

Don lifted his blotter, took from beneath it the furniture section's report on the Deshla mess. He knew it pretty well by heart, but he wanted to verify the dates.

On the fifth of March a young woman representing herself to be Mrs. Cephas Deshla of Georgetown, Maryland, ordered and had charged to the Deshla account furniture and floor coverings to the amount of $17,822.94. She had presented a credit token stamped with Mrs. Deshla's name and had submitted a list of items prepared for her by the firm of Yates & Gordon. Interior Decorators of Chestertown, Maryland. The furniture section had been unable to locate any such concern.

He juggled the Betterson credit coin on his palm gloomily. The girl in the Deshla fraud couldn't have been the blonde who had just escaped. The furniture buyer had described the other woman as being tall, statuesque, patrician in appearance and manner. But the points of similarity in the gyp scheme were too noticeable to leave any doubt that Mary Bayard had managed to nip another tricky theft in the bud—and might pay for it with her life.

Don Marko examined the Betterson credit coin with a magnifying glass. It bore every mark of being genuine, including the small speck of darker metal on the reverse side, put there to confound possible counterfeiters. Every Nimbletts section manager and assistant had been trained to watch for that apparent defect on the coin. If some clever duplicator was at work turning out imitations of the Nimbletts charge coin he had been well posted by someone on the store's staff.

The things that had dropped out of the blonde's handbag were such as might be found in the possession of any girl of the upper brackets. The compact was studded with a scroll pattern in chip diamonds. The key case was engraved "S.C." Maybe her name really was Sally Collins.

The phone book, however, listed no S. Collins at the East Seventy-ninth Street address. He dialed the Regent number, got a "What numbah are you calling, puhlease?" in answer. A query to Information brought the reply that no Sally or Sarah Collins was listed in the Manhattan, Bronx, Queens or Richmond directories, or in any of the exchanges in those boroughs.

He thumbed through the stubs of the girl's pocket checkbook. It bore the imprint of the Traders Exchange Bank and most of the scribbled entries on the stubs were for small sums:

$27.50—to Dabney's, shoes
$31.00—Martha Lewis, lingerie
$14.65—Chez Moisson, n'tgown

Only one entry was for more than fifty dollars—$200—C. He thought about that for a while, got up, pulled on his topcoat.

He called up Maxie, his pickpocket specialist covering the escalator at the second floor.

"Sit in for me here, couple hours, Maxie. Get Chet to double for your spot. I'm going out. Just keep things nice and quiet."

The main building of the Traders Exchange Bank was ten blocks north, but there were branches all over town. It might be a tough job to run down one blonde by means of a few stubs on a relatively small account. Yet it seemed the best chance. The G.M. had been vehement about not calling in the police on any of this credit coin fraud, lest word get around and other confidence operators be tempted to use the same method.

ONE of the vice-presidents at the bank had been sympathetic but not too helpful. He had showed the stubs to his paying tellers and given them Don's description of the good-looking blonde, but no one seemed to recognize the writing or the description. All Don got was a list of the thirty-one branches.

He called the clinic, got Cora, and asked about Mary Bayard.

"She's just come out of the operating room, Mr. Marko," Cora told him. "They think she'll pull through but it was a mighty close thing. They said if it hadn't been for her hair-bun deflecting the blow, she'd have been dead by now."

"He tried to kill her, all right. Stay with her, Cora. Maxie's on the desk. You might call him every hour or so. He'll be like a cat on a hot stove if he gets any tough ones to handle, standing in for me."

"What are you up to?"

"That blonde told me to come to her house, she'd give me everything. I'm going to try and keep the date."

"Watch out you don't land on a hospital cot instead of a studio couch, Mr. Marko. I'm scared of that she-cat and the wild man who tried to murder Mary."

He soothed her. "I'm just gumshoeing around. If there's any strong-arming to do, I'll holler cop, don't worry."

"I will too, worry."

"Okay. Worry about Mary." He hung up, reached for the telephone directory.

Dabney's was on Broadway at Sixtieth. Chez Moisson was on Columbus at Seventy-first. It seemed reasonable that "S.C." would do her shopping in the neighborhood where she banked.

The nearest branch of the Traders Exchange was at Seventy-fourth and Broadway. He used his Nimbletts identification card, mentioned the vice- president at the main bank. An assistant cashier was impressed.

"If you'd ask the teller in your A to M window to come here a minute," Don suggested, "it might save some time."

The paying teller was summoned.

Don described the girl, produced the checkbook stubs. "I'd guess her initials were S.C., though that may be a mile off the mark. Anyhow, you'd remember her if she's been in here much. She looks like important people, real upper crust."

The teller looked like a dried-up winter apple with a bad taste in his mouth. Nevertheless he knew his stuff.

"I hesitate to say definitely," he murmured. "but I'm inclined to think this is Miss Collinson's writing."

"Bingo." Don said. "She told us it was Collins. Sally Collins."

"Miss Collinson's name, I believe, is Suzanne." the teller replied diffidently. "And as you put it, she does look like important people."

"Where's she live?"

"I'll get her ledger card for you, sir." The card read:

Collinson, Suzanne,
619 West 74th St.,
Lorraine 8-6217.

Don said, "Thanks a million."

He rang the store, got Maxie. "I'm on the track of that conniving blonde who tried to put over a fast one on the drapery section," he said, and gave Maxie the address. "Just in case I run into something like Mary did."

Maxie said, "Watch ya step, Chief. Hell is busting loose in a great big way."

"Something new has been added?"

"Floor Coverings comes up with a charge of 7,800 bucks for Orientals, shipped to some guy over in Red Bank—he ain't even been in the country for six months."

"Same setup? Credit coin? Snappy dame?"

"Yep. A redhead that would make General Sherman get down off his horse, Floor Coverings claims. The G.M. has been bellowing his brains out for you, too."

"Tell him I'm not at Toots Shor's lapping up liquor, will you? I'll check back, soon's I have something."

"I'll keep my fingers crossed for ya, Chief."

THE house on West Seventy-fourth was a former residence that had been converted into four apartments. The name "S. Collinson" was on the card beneath the bell for Apartment Three.

He rang the bell. No answer.

The third key in her keytainer opened the front door. He climbed stairs into musty gloom, listened at the door of Apartment 3. Again, silence.

The first key opened the door. The little foyer was dark: the shades in the apartment were drawn. An odor of onions came up the stair-well. The sound of driving rain against the windows was depressing.

He went in, groping for the light switch. He touched it, clicked it on. There was no responsive blaze of lights.

From a shadowy doorway at his left a cheerful voice said, "That's a dud switch. The one that works is up higher. Yeah, put your hands up higher. That's right. Just keep'em up there, that's the ticket."

Don's eyes became sufficiently accustomed to the gloom to make out the glinting twin-barrels of a shotgun, the muzzle a yard from his belt buckle. The steadiness with which it was held and pointed decided him to do what the man who held it said.

Chapter V

CROSSLY, Don said, "What's the sense getting nasty about it? I was invited to come here, you know."

The man chuckled. "Just the trouble. I never did like to get two-timed. Face the wall there. Keep the claws up. Look at the ceiling. That's the ticket."

The thick muzzle prodded Don in the small of the back. It felt like the corner of a coffin poking him.

"Guess you've got Suzanne wrong," Don said. "She and I had a little business to talk over, that's all."

The man sniggered. "Yeah, yeah. I know the kind of business you'd have with her. Not that I blame you. March along into the next room there. I'll give you a little light so you won't break your neck. Bulbs glowed suddenly behind butter-yellow sconces on the walls of a long studio. "I wouldn't want anything to happen to you until she gets here. Keep the chin high, bud."

The rug beneath Don's shoes felt like inch- thick moss. What he could see of the room was magnificently furnished. At the far end of the room a high Norman fireplace of stone with a wide slate mantel gave the impression of an altar before which were arranged twin semicircular sofas done in white leather. A coffee table of black and white marble carved to represent an artist's palette stood between the sofas and the delicate black tracery of wrought-iron fire dogs.

Tables and heavy iron chairs of the Norman persuasion were mixed in with a few modern pieces—a low sofa, bookcases. The walls were decorated with dozens of water colors, charcoal sketches, a few oils in bleached wood frames. Some of the charcoals were nudes. Don thought one of them was an excellent, if somewhat obscene likeness of the blonde.

"Over there," the man growled. "On that couch. Beside the bookcase there. That's it. Lie down on it. On your belly. Turn your head toward the wall. That's the ticket. Just stay that way. Don't try to look around. Then maybe you won't get hurt."

Don gauged his chances of making a break. They didn't seem so good with that muzzle at his spine.

He wondered, is it possible this guy doesn't know why I'm here? Could be I simply crashed in on a jealous boy friend who thinks she'd planned to give him the crisscross. Well, she had done that, in a way. But if this is jealous business, I'd better get the snafu cleared up fast—before that shotgun begins to smoke.

Aloud he said, "You don't think I'd be fathead enough to come up here without notifying my office, do you?"

"Ho!" The man laughed derisively. "Now you're going to come up with that oldie about being an F.B.I. or a T-man. Go on, build it up. It'll be strictly for laughs, but I don't mind. We got to do something until Sue gets here."

"Wallet in my hip pocket," Don answered sourly. "Look in there. Cards'll tell you who I am."

"Don't give a damn who you are. You sneak into my apartment. You claim you had an invitation from my girl. You're going to stay here until she shows up. Until I find out what kind of kadoodling she had in mind when she asked you here."

"Your girl got nabbed in an attempt to get away with twelve hundred dollars worth of merchandise from the store I work for. Then she staged a getaway." Don found it hard to talk with his head twisted at right angles to his body. "There'll be descriptions of her on every police teletype from here to Philadelphia by now. If the cops get her before I have a chance to talk to her, she'll really have her tail in a crack with the door slamming. If I can talk to her, I might make a deal with her. The police won't."

"Hell, in that case"—the man chuckled—"I might turn her in myself, if there's any reward. I wouldn't want sentiment to stand in the way of making an easy dollar."

Don heard the key in the lock.

The man heard it, too, but he waited until the hall door had opened before he called, "Come on in, honey. Got a li'l surprise for you.

Heels clicked hastily across the foyer, then their sound was smothered by the thick carpeting.

"For heaven's sake, Clem! Who's that? What you doing with that shotgun!" It was the blonde's voice. She sounded rattled.

THE man answered pleasantly enough, "Getting ready to give an exhibition of fancy pigeon- nicking, Sue. One'll get you ten if you think it'll be the first time a pigeon's had all its feathers stripped off without being blown to ribbons."

"What kind of double-talk is that!" Suzanne sounded frightened. "You know who that fellow on the couch is?"

Don said, "I told him. He doesn't buy it. He thinks I came up here to pile in bed with you." He made a movement to turn his head.

"Don't try it," Clem warned him agreeably. "I'd have to scrape your brains off that period wallpaper. Let's put it this way. You're here, mister. And she's here. Neither of you figured on my being here. That's about the size of it. Now, far be it from me to play the spoil-sport. You're going to go right ahead as if I weren't here at all."

Suzanne caught her breath sharply. "Clem! What's the matter with you? This man Marko knows all about the Betterson order. He might find out about the others, too, and—

"Less talk," Clem cut her off curtly. "More action. Get those feathers off, my pigeon."

"Wha-a-at?" She was clearly stunned with terror.

"Take your clothes off, my beautiful." Clem was less affable. "Get ready to give the fella what you promised him."

Her voice shook. "You must be off your rocker!"

"Undress. Strip. Now." All the banter was gone from Clem's tone. The words had a whip's lash. "Don't stall. Don't argue. Take your clothes off! Or I'll shoot 'em off!"

"Clem!" she pleaded. "Clem, I don't even know the man! I told you—"

"I'll count to ten." The whip-crack words were harsher. "If you don't have your skirt off by then...."

She moaned, and Don heard her coat drop to the floor, heard the zipper on her skirt come open. He found his face wet with sudden sweat. The guy must be nuts!

The hooks unsnapped on her blouse. Would it be his turn next, Don wondered, to satisfy this lunatic's peculiar jealousy? Or was it something more sinister than jealousy?

Don heard the snap of the elastic. A prickly sensation crawled around the back of his neck.

"Okay, Sue." Clem said. "Now get over there. Lie down. Beside him."

"No! I will not!" The fear had gone from her voice. In its place was a dull hopelessness.

Don slid his right palm against the wall, bracing himself to shove the couch away from the wall and get leverage enough to roll out of the way of the shotgun blast if it came.

"Listen, you." he said angrily, "I don't know how far you think you can carry this gag, but I'll tell you! Not a damn bit further as far as I'm—"

He gave a mighty heave. The couch slid away from the wall only six inches or so but he got enough purchase to roll and hit the floor on hands and knees as the gun roared. He had a smoke- blurred glimpse of the girl's nakedness, a snapshot glimpse of a tall, slim figure swinging up the shiny barrels. A face masked with a red triangle of bandanna. Slitted eye-holes, short-cropped, carroty hair.

He dived for the man's knees, one hand flung out and up to seize the shotgun. His ears rang thunderously, exploded. A tremendous concussion knocked him sideways. The red mask and the ivory-and-blonde nakedness dissolved beneath blinding waves of unbearable brilliance.

Chapter VI

HE WAS living through one of the nerve- shattering nightmares of his flight training days—coming in to the field too low on his solo, trying to zoom her up too quickly, going into one of those sickening spins, whirling helplessly, faster and faster, tautening his muscles for the crash that would mash him into a shapeless pulp.

He thrust forward on the stick in one last spasm of effort to pull out of the spin. The controls were rigid, immovable. He forced himself to open his eyes. The "stick" was the double-barreled shotgun. He lay face down, with long blonde hair beneath his mouth.

The fireplace revolved dizzily. The sketches and paintings tilted away from him nauseatingly, swung back over him like the side of a wallowing ship. The noise of the prop wash continued— deafening, paralyzing in its intensity.

Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself up to hands and knees. The naked girl lay face down on the oyster-white carpet beside him, one knee drawn up beneath her, both hands under her stomach. The only visible sign of a wound was the glistening red ribbon circling her right forearm where her body rested against it.

Her forehead touched the thick carpeting so her neck seemed to be arched up. There was a twitching at her throat.

She was alive! She was trying to say something!

Don thought it would be futile to try to hear anything other than the thunderous roaring within his own head, but he put his ear down close to her mouth.

"What?" He was startled at the far-away sound of his own voice. "Say it again!"

"Benny." The voice was surprisingly strong. "Yes? What about him?"

Sue's shoulders quivered. "Tell Benny—pay off—Clem for this." The shoulders sagged.

Don stumbled to his feet, steadying himself against the bookcase. He could focus his eyes only by squinting. It was some seconds before he was even able to spot the telephone, yards away on a small table in the foyer.

He couldn't have seen the numbers on the dial clearly enough to ring a particular number, but he felt for the last hole on the disc, twirled it.

"Police emergency!" he said when the operator answered.

"Who is this calling?"

"Collinson." He made a mighty effort of concentration. "Lorraine 8-6217. Hurry it up, will you?"

When the bored voice of the desk sergeant announced, "Headquarters," Don rattled off:

"Can you get an ambulance over to 619 West Seventy-fourth in a rush? Been an accident."

"What's the trouble, there, mister?"

"Been shot—bleeding to death. Hurry, or it'll be too late!"

Don slammed down the receiver in numbed disbelief. Looking down at the phone, he'd noticed his bare legs. His pants had been taken off! He looked at his arms. All he wore was his shorts and socks!

That murdering maniac in the bandanna mask had stripped Don of his raincoat, coat, vest, trousers, shirt, undershirt and shoes.

Other things beside the objects in the studio began to come into focus now. The killer had planned the whole setup neatly, getting the girl to undress, shooting her, knocking Don for a loop and then peeling him to his underwear so the police would find them as if there had been what the French called "a crime of passion!"

Wouldn't that make a nice, stinking trap! Don had told Cora this poor kid on the carpet had invited him up to her place, and he'd told her he was going up to accept the invitation. Of course it had been kidding on his part, and Cora had known it, but it would sound lousy if a prosecutor should force her to repeat it on the witness stand.

Then there would be plenty of nasty talk about the odd way this Suzanne had managed to escape from his office. It wouldn't be too hard to get a jury to believe he'd let her get away on purpose.

He pulled his pants on, shoved his feet into his shoes. His fingers wouldn't coordinate enough to tie the laces.

HE REELED unsteadily into the kitchen-dinette. On top of the ice box were two liquor bottles, one of Fundador, the other a Rhine wine. He grabbed the brandy, pulled the cork with his teeth, gulped half a tumblerful straight from the bottle. It stung and choked him, but it cleared his brain a little.

He took the brandy back to the living room. The girl's neck was no longer arched. Her mouth was pressed flat against the carpet. Beside the arm with the glistening circlet a creeping crimson stained the oyster-white of the carpet from her shoulder to her slender waist.

She was gone; there wouldn't be anything more he could do to help her here. If he didn't get out of here in a few minutes, he'd probably get himself in an ugly jam, too. That sadist wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of staging what would have appeared to be a lovers' quarrel without notifying the authorities himself. There'd be a squad car around before the ambulance got here, in all probability.

He shouldered into his raincoat, slapped on his wet hat, gathered coat, vest, shirt and tie into a bundle. He wiped the barrel of the shotgun with his undershirt. The bending over made him retchingly ill. He might need another slug of that brandy, he decided, and stuffed the bottle in his pocket.

He looked down at Suzanne. "I'll try to pass on your message to Benny, kid. If I can find him."

He used the undershirt on the knob of the hall door, inside and out, and tucked the bundle of clothes under his coat as he went down the stairs, half expecting one of the tenants on the other floors to fling open a door and confront him.

It was still raining when he reached the street. It would be difficult to get a taxi in a storm like this. A horn blasted insistently eastward. Its volume rose higher as it neared.

He crossed the street, walked toward the river, so his back would be toward the arriving police. But he made himself turn as the patrol car whined to a stop a hundred yards behind him. Cops would think it queer if a passerby should pay no attention to a racing police car.

That would be one of the precinct patrol cars, the one Clem had arranged for, no doubt. Don hesitated long enough to watch the two officers run up the steps. Then he lowered his head against the driving rain and plodded slowly on to the corner.

Wouldn't he have presented a picture of fleeing guilt if those uniformed boys had decided to pick him up! Bare to the waist, carrying his shirt and coat, a bottle of looted liquor in his pocket! And a swollen left ear that felt like an eggplant and probably looked like one!

Taxis streamed past on Seventy-second, but they were all full. He thought of taking a bus, then decided the subway would be safer. At the "Telegrill" near Broadway he turned in, headed past the lineup at the long bar to the stag's room.

He went into one of the toilet booths, hung up his raincoat, put on his undershirt, shirt, tie, vest and coat. Then he took a slug from the Fundador bottle.

A small painted label caught his eye as he lowered the uptilted bottle from his mouth. He examined it:

Sammy's Package Store
Everything From A Cork To A Cask
At Lower Prices
On 9W, Congers, New York

He knew Congers. It was the sort of small town where a liquor dealer would know his regular customers. Of course there was the big probability the bottle had been bought while somebody's car was en route up or down the Hudson. It was also likely enough the brandy had been bought by Suzanne herself. But there was still the outside chance Clem had bought it and that Sammy, or one of his employees, might know who Clem Was.

Don went to the washbowl, looked at his puffed-up ear in the mirror. He didn't give the ear a second thought when he saw the scratches on his right cheek.

The sort of scratches that might have been made by a girl's fingernails! Even the fingernails of a dying girl—if somebody else had clawed them against Don's face.

Chapter VII

ON THE subway down to Christopher Street, Don stood on the platform of the rear car of the local pretending to read a damp newspaper so no one would be likely to notice those scratches on his face. If Clem had done what Don thought he had, the lab technicians down at Broome Street would presently be suggesting to the Homicide specialists that they put out a bulletin to be on the lookout for a man displaying marks of feminine fury.

Quite likely someone in the houses along Seventy-fourth Street who had been looking out a window when the patrol car had rolled up, would by now have given the police his description, anyway. For that matter, Clem might have telephoned his description to the cops when sending in the alarm which had brought the radio car.

The doorman at his apartment house was busy blowing his whistle for a taxi. He didn't notice as Don stalked into the building. The elevator man was descending from one of the upper floors. Don didn't wait for the car. He met no one on the stairs or in the corridor of his floor.

He shucked his clothes, stood under a hot shower for five full minutes while his ear throbbed and hammered like an abscess. Then he let the cold water stun him. When he looked in his mirror the scratches seemed more lividly prominent than before, but the swollen ear had been reduced a little.

He had one more shot at the Fundador before he sat down in his bathrobe to call the office.

It was Cora who answered. "Oh, Lord, Mr. Marko! When're you coming back?

The most awful thing—"

"Mary?"

"No. She's still on the critical list, but they think she'll be all right. It's Mr. Harrison!"

"Maxie told me."

"They've found another phony delivery, Mr. Marko. To the Stuyvesant Binns! For nine thousand!"

"Oh, great! What was it—furniture?"

"And curtains and mirrors and light fixtures. Mr. Harrison is throwing a Grade A fit. He's been calling for you every fifteen minutes!"

"Switch me over to him, Cora." After what he'd been through, the G.M.'s bellowings wouldn't bother Don too much.

Bob Harrison wasn't in a bellowing mood. He was in a cold, quiet rage. "Where are you, Don?"

"Downtown." He was purposely vague.

"I want you here in my office as fast as you can get here.

"No can do. Boss I'm riding a hot lead on the Deshla thing."

"Deshla!" the G.M. snorted. "It's a half-dozen swindles by now and God knows how many more to come! Do you realize this thing is getting up toward the fifty thousand mark! We've got to put a stop to it, if it means shaking up the entire protection staff, understand?"

"Perfectly. But it might mean going even higher."

Harrison fumed. "What do you mean by that?"

"These things had to be inside jobs, partly. From what I'm onto right now, I'd say there's quite a crew involved and one or more of 'em will turn out to be Nimbletts employees."

"Then get back here, damn it, and—"

"Can't, Bob. There's more than our loss to take into consideration."

"Yes, yes. I know all about Miss Bayard and Ralph Eddrop. Unfortunate."

"Murder's generally very inconvenient, Boss."

"Murder?"

"Couple of dead girls, so far. Both members of the con crowd, near's I can make out. Might be more if I don't stick with this."

"What have you found out?"

"Bit here. Piece there. Seem's as if some interior decorator has been getting inside dope on some of our heavy-dough customers who're gone away for winter vacations, got stuff shipped to their country places, then transferred it elsewhere. Leaving no trace except a bunch of unpaid bills."

"Who do you suspect here in the store?"

"Haven't got to that yet. But you might have someone with discretion in the credit department check over all the charges billed out by the furniture and drapery departments for the past sixty days and make a list of the ones that haven't been paid to date."

"Eddrop be all right? He's absolutely trustworthy."

"Sure. He'll have his heart in it, too, after that crack in the mouth."

HARRISON was subdued. "When'll you be in, Don?"

"No telling. But I'll have something when I get there."

"I hope to heaven. These murders—they'll bring in the police?"

"Sure. I'll try to keep Nimbletts from being involved too much, Bob."

He phoned his garage, ordered his car. By the time the doorman called up to say it was at the curb, Don was dressed.

Once over the George Washington Bridge, streaking northward on Route 9W, he began to mull over the question of Benny. The guy was evidently someone Suzanne had depended on— likely the big lunk Eddrop had described as having slugged him and Mary Bayard. But if that was the case, the chances were that Benny was on Nimbletts's payroll. Only someone who knew the store well, the location of the store protection office and the stairs close by it, could have staged that assault and getaway. It would have been difficult enough for anyone to get in the executive corridor, with that watchful receptionist at the entrance.

The rain lessened, but the clouds were still low and threatening by three o'clock when he parked in front of the General Greene Hotel just off the main highway at the Congers crossroad. A hundred yards to the west, on the intersecting blacktop, he saw a green neon:

SAMMY'S
WINES, LIQUORS, BEER

He went in the hotel, consulted the thin phone book. There were only a few pages devoted to Congers, so it took no more than five minutes to run down the list. But he found no one whose first name was Clement.

A dime connected him with Sammy's Package Store. He spoke loudly, as if he'd been doing all right with a bottle.

"Hey, Sammy, sen' up couple bottles that Spanish brandy, will ya?"

"Yes, sir. Right away. Who's this?"

"Oh, ha-ha. I'm callin' fr Clem. Y'know. Clem."

"Oh. Okay. Two Fundador, right away."

"Attakeed."

He was behind the wheel of his car when a motorcycle with a sidecar whooshed out of the hidden driveway beyond Sammy's, heading west on the intersection.

The motorcyclist drove like a bat, was out of sight around a curve before Don could get his car up to speed. But he picked the motorcyclist up on the straightaway, a quarter-mile beyond.

A winking red eye and a clanging gong warned of an approaching train at the crossing two hundred yards ahead. The motorcycle bounced across the track boards at seventy. Don had to slam on his brakes as the express thundered into the crossing.

The tires of the sidecar left clear marks on the wet blacktop. If the delivery vehicle didn't swing off onto some concrete road, Don ought to be able to follow those marks even if he didn't catch up to the fellow.

It was like trailing a hippopotamus across Central Park. The tracks continued for another half-mile, swung off at a right angle on a wide gravel road beside which was a reflector-marker; "Ayerell." The tracks went in but didn't come back.

Don drove on for another mile, turned, took his time returning to the marker. If "Ayerell" was Clem, there was the likelihood the murderer would be on his guard now that he knew someone had sent him a phony order of brandy. There was a certain poetic justice in using that method to trace a man who specialized in having stuff shipped to someone who hadn't purchased it, Don thought grimly.

There were new marks on the gravel and on the wet tar showing where the sidecar had gone back to Sammy's.

Don drove down the graveled way.

White-railed fences began to hem in the roadway. This must be quite an estate, Don thought. Big lawns clotted with groves of elm and oak. A huge Quonset hut back there across the plowed field. Evidently Mr. Ayerell was a gentleman farmer of sorts.

Around a bend the white fences came together at a pair of concrete gate posts with a Kentucky lift gate barring the way. At one side a large white square bore neat black scroll lettering:

Jerome Clement Ayerell
Antiques—Interiors—Designing

Don stopped the car, reached out, pulled the hanging cord. The wooden gate swung open. He drove through. The gate closed behind him slowly.

AHEAD was a huge rambling white Colonial farmhouse flanked by sheds, garages, tool houses. No smoke rose from any of the four chimneys, nor were there any tire marks on the driveway except those Don recognized as the motorcyclist's.

He pulled up in front of a long, low glassed-in porch, honked twice, waited.

No one came out. As far as he could tell, there was no movement at any of the curtained windows.

He unlocked the glove compartment, took out his .38, checked the load, thumbed off the safety.

If there were to be any fireworks this time, he would do the touching off himself.

He walked cautiously around behind the closed garage to the rear of the house. The only thing that caught his eye was a small piece of torn yellow cardboard in the mud of the walk from the tool-shed to the kitchen. He picked it up, knowing what he would find printed on it before he turned it over:

IMBLETTS
The Great Store

It was the kind of shipping tag used on crated furniture and cumbersome carpets.

Chapter VIII

THE DRIVEWAY that circled the farmhouse to the garage continued on past the tool shed toward the Quonset hut. It was a deeply rutted driveway, as if heavy trucks had cut their signatures in the gravel.

Don went back to his car, drove the quarter mile to the hangarlike structure. It didn't seem reasonable that thirty or forty thousand dollars worth of furniture and floor coverings would be stored in the farmhouse; and the garage certainly wasn't big enough to hold any great part of that amount. But the Quonset could take all the furniture on Nimbletts's eighth floor and everything in the big Brooklyn warehouse as well.

The double-doors to the metal hut were locked, as he'd expected. The windows were tightly shuttered.

He backed his car a hundred yards, came forward again straight for the doors, bracing himself for the impact. An instant before he crashed the bumper against the building, he cut the ignition.

The doors burst open, the car rolling right into the hut before he braked it to a stop.

If there was anyone around the place, he thought—some caretaker or servant—that crash ought to bring him a-running. He got out, inspected the damage to his car. A mashed left fender, a cracked headlight, the bumper slightly askew.

The end of the high-arched shed into which he'd come like a projectile was fitted up as a paint shop. Electric sprayers and spray shields, an overhead trolley for suspending articles to be sprayed from beneath. Racks of brushes. Enough paint, oil finishes, waxes and varnishes to equip a hardware store. The floor boarding was spattered with cream and buff, white and apple green, blues and chocolates.

Beyond were piled crates of furniture, long burlapped bundles of carpets. Wooden mirror- cases were stacked against cardboard cartons of lighting fixtures and drapery hardware. There were no tags on any of the stuff. The black paint with which the consignee's name had been marked on the casings had been sanded or planed off. But he recognized some of the items of the Deshla shipment. There was no doubt this was where Clem had cached the loot from Nimbletts.

The next step would be simple. Call Bob Harrison and put it up to him. From here in it would be a job for the local sheriff or the state troopers. The stuff couldn't be claimed or taken away from here without a warrant.

Tires made a sucking sound on the mud of the fenced-in lane. He ran to the door. A maroon convertible was coming in toward the house. There was a girl at the wheel; she seemed to be alone. Only the accident of Don's car being inside the Quonset hut kept her from noticing that there was an uninvited guest on the Ayerell farm.

He waited until she'd driven up by the porch, then went out, swinging the big double-doors shut, hiding his car completely. Either she would be ringing the doorbell and, finding no one at home, would go away, or else she would be letting herself into the house with a key Clem had given her. Maybe she was Mrs. Jerome Clement Ayerell.

He walked without haste back toward the garage. For a considerable part of the distance to the farmhouse he would be shielded from anyone looking out the rear windows. Even if she did see him, she'd assume he was someone who lived nearby—unless she'd noticed the marks of his tires.

Her car didn't come into view again. She couldn't have waited all this time; she must be inside the house.

Cautiously he walked around the garage to the porch, keeping on the grass as much as he could to prevent his shoes from making a squashing in the muddy gravel. There was no one in the car. The front door was closed.

He moved quietly to the porch, opened the front door as noiselessly as he could manage. She was talking to someone. After listening a moment it became apparent to him she was speaking over the phone.

"—I got two on the Clipper out of Miami for Rio, but there wasn't anything open for Miami until day after tomorrow.... Well, I didn't ask about a charter job, Clem. I didn't think you'd want to go to that expense."

DON edged in silently. He could see part way into a large Colonial living room with white woodwork, bright chintz-covered rocking chairs, rag rugs, a rose-brick fireplace.

"—well, all right, darling. But aren't you coming up here at all?... Yes, I'll do the best I can about packing, but—"

Don closed the door behind him. It made a tiny click as it shut.

"Clem, listen! There's someone here in the house! I just heard the front door—Oh!"

Don leaned negligently against the lintel of the living room door. "Go right on. Don't mind me."

She let the receiver clatter back on the handset, started to get up out of the antique ladder- back chair.

"What do you want?"

Her voice was low and husky like that of a blues singer. The voice matched her sultry beauty. She was a redhead with a short snub nose and a wide, full-lipped sensuous mouth. She wore a tight-fitting black sweater and a gray suede leather skirt. Her long-lashed eyes were so heavily shadowed with mascara that she gave an impression of voluptuous dissipation.

"You Mrs. Ayerell?" He made no effort to hide the gun.

"Yes." She took the trouble to adjust her small, fur-trimmed cloche hat and pull the sweater down tightly enough to outline the full breasts. "Who are you?"

"I'm a life-saver, far as you're concerned." He guessed this would be the redhead Maxie had mentioned as having executed the Red Bank swindle for seventy-eight hundred bucks worth of Oriental rugs. "The gentleman you were just talking to has a habit of knocking off his female accomplices. Chances are you'd be next on his list if I don't save you."

"I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about."

"He just killed a blonde he'd been keeping down on Seventy-fourth Street in New York. Cops're after him. That's why he wants to scram to South America."

"I don't believe it!" She was shocked and he didn't think it was pretense.

"I was there when he shot her and tried to frame me for it. He murdered another babe down in Maryland a few weeks ago. Wouldn't surprise me to find a few more dead dames in Bluebeard's closet before we're through. Idea is, he needs sexy- looking dolls to put over his con games, but he wouldn't trust any of you not to give him away in a pinch. So after he uses a babe for a little while, he pushes the button on her. I wouldn't know whether you're really his lawful wedded partner or not, but I'll give long odds you haven't been twoing around with him very long. Right?"

"Th-three m-months," she stammered. "You're a detective. You're just making this up to frighten me so I'll tell you about him!"

"I know enough about him to put him in that famous antique chair across the river. I'll give you an idea what I know about him. Sit right there. Don't get up. Better fold your hands in your lap like a good little girl."

He lifted the receiver, asked for Long Distance, and got through to Nimbletts in Manhattan. "Mr. Harrison. This is Marko."

"Gee, he's been calling you often enough, Mr. Marko! Here he is."

"Bob? Don."

"How you making out?"

"I've found some of that Deshla stuff and a good deal of the other merchandise that we were gypped out of—maybe most of it."

"Where is it?"

"At Congers, up the Hudson on Route Nine- W. Farm belonging to a Fancy Dan interior decorator named Clem Ayerell. Stuff is stored in a big Quonset. Better get some state troopers out here to stand guard over it until we can get the warrants for seizure."

"I hate to bring the authorities into this, Don! But I suppose it's the only way. Why can't you handle it, if you're up there?"

"I have another problem on my hands, Bob."

"That murder business?!"

"Indirectly. I wouldn't worry about too many other people getting the idea this was a sure-fire swindle method. Way it was worked with Nimbletts rates it as being fatal to two out of three."

"You damn well better get back here before something happens to make you Number Three, fellow."

"I'm on my way, Boss."

THE redhead frowned as he set the receiver back on the base. "Thank you." she said.

"For what?"

"Not mentioning me." She smiled twistedly. "You see, I lied to you. I'm not married to Clem. I'm Evaline Hurley. My family have been customers of Nimbletts for two generations, at least. I know they'll be glad to pay nearly anything to keep my name out of this." She ran the tip of her tongue across her upper lip. "And so would I—if you know what I mean."

"You're the second girl today who's offered to illustrate a bedtime story for me," Don said solemnly. "One of these times I'm going to quit being a Galahad and go for it. But not this time."

Chapter IX

IN HER convertible, Don sat beside Evaline Hurley as she tooled the fast car out to the house gate and pulled the swing rope to open it.

"When you don't call him back," he told her, "he'll know you're with someone who's on the side of the law. He may suspect I was the party who made you hang up on him, but it won't make any difference because he won't trust you now, anyhow. If he gets close to you, you're a gone goose."

"But where can I be safe?" she wailed. "You don't know how daring and resourceful Clem is. He has nerve enough to try anything, no matter how risky."

"I'll take you to a place where he can't get at you."

"Oh! You're underestimating him. Everybody does, at first, on account of that pleasant manner of his. I did, God knows. But if you think arresting me and putting me in jail would keep him from getting at me, if he wanted to, you're terribly mistaken."

"That isn't what you're afraid of, if they book you into the Tombs."

"Of course it is! What else!"

He put his left hand on her right knee, pulled her skirt up to show pink flesh and raspberry embroidery on the edge of gauzy nylon. "That." He touched the inside of her thigh about six inches above her knee. A dotting of tiny purple-blue scars freckled the skin.

Her nostrils flared with quick resentment. "He must have told you! The dirty rat!"

"That you are an addict? No, he didn't. Strictly a guess. Partly on account of your eyes. Partly because the kid he shot down on Seventy- fourth had been buying cocaine. Struck me maybe that might be how this louse kept a hold on his women, by getting them addicted to H or C and threatening to turn them in if they didn't play ball."

She slowed the car to stare at him in awe.

"That's what he did with me. You do seem to know an awful lot about him."

"Learned quite a bit on short acquaintance," Don answered drily. "But you see what might happen if I turned you over to the precinct boys. Pretty soon you'd be needing a lift and then you'd agree to go out on bail when some shyster lawyer of his put up the dough. Once you were out, he'd snap the switch on you and I'd have a dead witness instead of a live one." He pulled her skirt down.

She drove in silence for a while. "If I have to go into court and testify to his—his relations with me, I'd as soon be dead, anyway."

"Maybe we can get around that. If you're cooperative."

Some of the come-on came back to her face. "I'll be the most cooperative little kitten you ever knew," she said fervently.

"I'm going to take you to my apartment."

"Um!" She shot him a provocative sideward glance. "But if he knows you, he'll find me."

"He won't be able to get at you. I'll have a plainclothes lad down in the lobby on the lookout for him."

"I'm scared as hell," she admitted. "But if you want the truth, I always have been scared of him, since I first met him."

"Where was that?"

"Coming back from Buenos Aires on one of those vacation cruises. He was so clever and such a good dancer and—and so horribly exciting when he made love to me."

That was probably how he'd met the others, too, Don thought. Daughters of well-to-do families, shipped off to South America for six weeks to get them out of their parents' hair or to break up undesirable affairs. Crazy for romance and ready to try anything once. After they'd tried it with Clem, he'd have them roped.

It wouldn't have been too hard to convince them they wouldn't be running into real trouble even if they got picked up in the store, trying to pass themselves off as society girls accustomed to ordering large quantities of expensive furniture. Probably Clem had coached all of them to do what Suzanne had done when she'd been cornered by a floor-watcher who'd happened to know the woman the Collinson girl had claimed to be, they would pretend it was just a joke.

"Keep on down the expressway to Fourteenth," he directed her, when they were over the bridge. It's on Christopher."

"How long do you expect me to stay with you?"

HE WAS evasive. "Can't tell. Worrying about your 'lift'?"

"I have a little." She touched the handbag at her side. "But by tomorrow—"

"There's a doc who's a pal of mine. If you feel like breaking the habit—I'm not preaching, you understand—but he could help you get off it."

She drew a deep breath. "If it doesn't mean going to one of those hideous institutions, that's the thing I want to do most in the world!"

"All right. We'll see about it." He told her where to park.

Upstairs in the apartment he said; "See, Evaline, I'm taking you strictly on faith. You can scram out of here as soon's I'm gone."

"Are you going right away?" She was disappointed.

"Yes. You can beat it, five minutes after I leave, if you want to. But then we'd get you sooner or later, and your family would be dragged into it. Even if Clem didn't put the dot on you first."

"I'll be here when you get back." She came up close to him. "I want you to know how grateful I am for not—making things worse for me."

She kissed him. She held her lips on his until he disengaged her arms gently.

"Okay. If you're really grateful—" he pointed to the desk in the bookcase corner—"sit down and write out everything you can remember about that Red Bank business. From the beginning. What Ayerell told you to do, what you did, who you saw at our store, every last damn particular. Especially about the big red-headed guy."

"I don't know any big red-headed guy. You couldn't call Clem big."

"No. Tough. But not big. Know a man named Benny?"

Evaline shook her head. "No. I never heard of him. Maybe he's the one in the store. I'm sure Clem had someone in Nimbletts tipping him off which accounts to charge to."

"Sure. He'd have to. He wasn't trying his tricks on any other store." He patted her arm. "Keep the door locked. Even if you hear somebody holler 'Fire.' I'll use my key when I come in."

WHEN he got back to his office Cora gaped at him. "For goodness sake, Mr. Marko! What did that girl do to you?"

He looked at the slip on his desk. It had the red "Urgent" sticker on it. "I found things a little rough up there," he murmured.

His secretary took out her handkerchief, dabbed at his chin. "She might have been discreet enough to wipe off her lipstick!"

Don said absently, "Oh, that was another girl."

Cora sniffed, "And it's all I can do to get you to treat me to coffee once in a while. What have they got that I lack?"

He grinned. "Elastic morals, honey. What's this from Eddrop's office?"

"That snippety little assistant of his you know, the one with the horsetail hair-do and the prissy little mouth?"

"Meoww."

"Uh-huh. I could be catty about Miss Wrenn. Anyhow, she says Mr. Eddrop's left the office and she can't get him at his hotel and she wants to speak to you about him just the instant you get in."

"Hah!" He glanced at his watch. "Put in a little overtime tonight, will you? I might need you." He hung up his raincoat.

"I'll be pretty mild company, I'm afraid, after the B girls you seem to have been waltzing around with. She went back to her typewriter.

He found Miss Wrenn in Ralph Eddrop's private cubicle where he was accustomed to interview customers who wanted to open charge accounts. She was a small, slim, bony girl who used an oddly orangeish shade of rouge. Her lipstick was an off-tone, too. Her eyes were large and limpid. She gazed at Don almost piteously.

"I don't know what to do, Mr. Marko."

"What's the problem?"

"Well—" she hesitated "I feel like a nasty little ingrate, after Mr. Eddrop's been so kind to me and everything. But the way I look at it, I owe something to the organization, as well as to Mr. Eddrop."

DON said, "You think he's been up to no good?"

"I don't know, Mr. Marko. That's the trouble. I may get him in wrong by talking when he hasn't done a single thing he shouldn't have."

"Better let me be the judge of that."

"Well, I do hope I'm wrong. But there's been something queer going on about those credit tokens, the little coins with Nimbletts and the customer's name and charge number stamped on them."

"What's queer?"

"The bill from the stamping company that makes them up for us—Gothametal Die and Stamping—came in last week and he took it out of the file, Mr. Eddrop did. After a couple of days a new bill came in and it wasn't for the same amount. It billed us for only 121 new coins instead of 127 like the first one. Mr. Eddrop okayed that and passed it for payment, but he never did mention the first bill. And I remembered checking the coins when they came—they send them by registered mail, you see—and I'm positive there were 127 charge tokens, but on the list he gave me to make out for new customers, there were only 121." Miss Wrenn was almost tearful. "I wouldn't have thought another thing about it, of course, if it hadn't been for this mess in the furniture department. And I hate so to say anything that might get Mr. Eddrop in trouble."

Don said, "He's had his share already today, that's a fact. Could you come back after supper tonight for a couple of hours? I might want to go over this again."

Miss Wrenn smiled primly. "I'd love to help you, Mr. Marko."

"Say eight o'clock, then."

Chapter X

SLOWLY Cora hung up the phone. "They say she's 'satisfactory,' Mr. Marko, though how a fractured skull can be satisfactory, I can't see. But she won't be able to see anyone for twenty-four hours at least."

Don looked up from the employee cards he was studying. "By then, whatever she might have to tell me wouldn't be much help. What'd headquarters say when you phoned in that description of Clem?"

"There'll be an officer around here in a few minutes. You're to wait for him."

Don stuck the stack of cards in his pocket. "That's what he thinks. I'm on my way."

Cora was exasperated. "What'll I tell the policeman?"

"To be sure to add to his bulletin that Clem is gun-goofy. He'd rather shoot somebody than furnish a new home. Stick with it. I'll buzz you here in a little while. I hope."

He went down the private elevator, out the employees' exit, stopping briefly to ask the door guard a question. Then he taxied to the Calabria, an ancient hostelry on East Twenty-eighth.

The desk clerk was an amiable Mahatma Ghandi in a salt-and-pepper double-breasted suit and a bright azure bow tie.

"Mr. Eddrop? No sir, haven't seen him around since he left this morning, sir. But I'll try his room for you." He plugged in on the antiquated switchboard, worked the jack without result.

Don opened his wallet to show his Nimbletts "Chief of Store Protection" card. "Anyone call here to see him while he was out, happen to remember?"

"No, sir." The clerk's eyes crinkled. "Mr. Eddrop has practically no visitors, you might say. But he often has phone calls and goes out to visit his—ah—friends. Is there anything wrong, sir?"

"Afraid there may be. Would these friends of his be feminine?"

"Well, I wouldn't like to encourage gossip, sir. But since you're from his place of business, and if he's in any kind of trouble, I'm sure you wouldn't pass along any ah—scandal—"

"I wouldn't."

"Feel sure of it, sir. I've been in this business long enough to be able to size a man up pretty well. You look reliable to me."

"Thanks. He has a gal pal, then?"

"I believe you might draw that conclusion, sir. He's quite often what we call a sleep-out, sir. Doesn't use his bed at all. The maid always reports those things. Couple of times a week he never comes to the hotel at night at all."

Don smiled. "Old boy's single. No law says he can't go stepping. Would she be in town, or out in Westchester or Long Island?"

The clerk tapped his prominent teeth with a yellow pencil. "I don't wish to send you off on a wild goose chase, sir. But he frequently calls a Regent number."

"Happen to have any record of it?"

Mahatma touched an index finger to his bony forehead. "In here, only. Regent 1-6643, to the best of my recollection."

"You do all right for a young fellow. Would it be possible for you to take me up to his room? I don't want to notify the police and go through the routine of getting a search warrant—if Eddrop turns up all right."

"Oh, I couldn't do that, sir. I couldn't leave the desk all alone. But since you have a legitimate interest in Mr. Eddrop's well-being, I could let you take the pass key for a few minutes. I don't think there'll be any harm in that."

"Good deal," Don agreed. "Keep the hotel's name out of the papers if there should be any disagreeable publicity. What's his room?"

"Three-nine." The clerk jingled a key ring. "You won't disturb any of his things? I wouldn't like him to feel that we were permitting any liberties with his possessions."

"He'll never know I've been up there." Don took the keys.

THE credit man's room was as neat as a newly opened box of cigars. The things on the bureau and in it were arranged with military precision. Hairbrush, comb, clothes-brush, link-box, photograph of an elderly woman whose round, sad face resembled Eddrop's markedly. Shirts, sox, underclothing, all stacked in clean piles. Suits on hangers, shoes on trees. Even the ties on the rack fixed to the closet door had all the reds and browns on one side, the greens and blues on the other.

There were books on the table. Function of Credit in Commercial Management, Theory of Time Payment Liabilities, Department Store Policies, more of similar nature. Ralph Eddrop kept his hotel quarters neat, whatever he did outside.

The medicine cabinet in the bathroom was equally tidy. Soap in wrappers, shaving cream, toothbrush, bottles and bottles of patent remedies. Hair restorer. Deodorant. Toilet water. Laxatives. Tonics. Vitamins. And on the second shelf a small gilt cylinder tucked behind a box of headache tablets. Don took it out, removed the gold cap, dabbed some of the stuff on the back of his left hand.

"I wonder what Cora would think of that," he muttered, dropping the recapped cylinder in his pocket.

Downstairs again, he returned the keys to the desk clerk with thanks. "Nothing up there to help much. But I'll let you know what we find out. You can tell Mr. Eddrop I was here, if he comes in."

"I trust you turn up nothing of an unfortunate nature, sir."

"So do I."

Don walked to Madison, to a drug store. In the phone booth he called his office.

Cora spoke loudly. "Mr. Marko's office. No sir, he's not here."

"Ho! You have an official eavesdropper, hah?"

"Yes sir, I'll tell him," The secretary was jittery.

"Does he have a warrant for me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Fine. Keep him amused, honey. Can you remember a message for Maxie?"

"Oh, yes. sir."

"Ask him to check with Joe Kelly down at the telephone company. I want to know the address of the subscriber listed as Regent 1—6643. Got that?"

"Right."

"Have Maxie ring me up at—wait a minute. I'm at Bryant 5-8017."

"Thank you. sir. I'll tell him, soon's he comes in."

He bought an evening paper, read the story under the headline:

NUDE GIRL KILLED
MURDERER HUNTED
IN BRUTAL BUTCHERY

The facts were a little garbled. The user of the shotgun was reported as having been an elderly man—that could have come from Clem's notifying the cops about Don's white hair. The shooting was alleged to have taken place after a violent lovers' quarrel—that was strictly newspaper mahaha. Any nude female corpse would have to be the aftermath of a crime of passion. But there was no suggestion of any third party having been present and apparently none of the neighbors had come up with a description of Clem as the man who must often have visited Suzanne in the apartment.

The next editions, he reflected, would blazon Clem's name and description across the front pages. Also, he thought uncomfortably, they might have one or two more demises to record, if Don himself didn't work at top speed.

The phone in the booth jangled. It was Maxie.

"I got that subscriber, Boss." The pickpocket specialist was agitated.

"Who?"

"You coulda knocked me over with a whiff of Chanel Five. That phone's in the name of Ralph Eddrop."

"At what address?"

"Two twenty-five Jane. In the Village. Know where it is?"

"About three blocks from my place on Christopher, Maxie. Thanks."

"Y'need any help, Boss?"

"Just hold the fort, Maxie. The cavalry's in my office, already."

"You don't know the half of it. The G.M. is popping his top."

"Go in and hold his hand. I'll buzz you back."

HE CABBED to Jane Street. Two twenty-five was a new four-story walkup apartment house.

Ralph Eddrop's name was on the 2-A bell. But the door in the little lobby was open on the latch. Marko went up without ringing.

There was another bell beside the door on the second floor landing. He thumbed it.

After a while a tense male voice, Eddrop's voice, inquired, "Yes?"

"Janitor." Don disguised his voice as well as he could. "We got to get in there. They's a gas leak."

The door opened. Eddrop gawked at him.

Over the credit man's shoulder Don could see into the living room, where a pair of girl's shoes stood beside a footstool.

Eddrop stammered, "You—you can't—come in—here!"

Don put a hand on the credit man's chest. "I am in, Ralph." He walked in, shoving Eddrop before him.

A door slammed. The bathroom door.

Don said, "Tell Miss Wrenn to come on out, Ralph. I can't very well bust down the door while she's in the john."

Chapter XI

EDDROP began to protest, "There's no one here!" Then he saw the shoes, stopped.

Don tried the bathroom door. She'd locked it.

He called, "Never mind whether you're dressed or not, Miss Wrenn. Come on out."

Eddrop put trembling fingers to his still swollen lips: "Really, Don! This seems so unnecessarily high-handed!"

The store protection chief regarded him with disgust. "What'd you call what she did in the corridor outside my office this morning? Half killed Mary Bayard! Slugged you in the mouth when you tried to prevent her from beating Mary's brains out while she lay there on the floor! And you didn't even have the guts to put the finger on her, after that! Don't talk to me about being high- handed after the way you've let her hook you into cheating the store all these months. Get over there on that phone. Call my office. Ask for Cora. Tell her where I am. Say that anyone who wants to see me will find me here! Jump!"

The man obeyed meekly.

Don held the gun at his hip, kept the muzzle on the bathroom door.

Eddrop gave Nimbletts's number to the operator.

The bathroom door flew open. The Wrenn girl, in nothing much beneath a Japanese- embroidered kimona, crouched by the washbowl. A snub-nosed, nickeled automatic was clenched in her right fist.

Don looked at her steadily. "You want to trade? This one of mine'll make a hole you could put a crowbar through."

She lowered the nickel-plated weapon.

Don said, "Throw it out here on the rug."

She did. He picked it up.

Eddrop was talking to Cora. "—that's what he said—anyone who wants him can find him here. Yes."

Don gestured at the girl with his gun. "That's so your blood-thirsty playmate will find a reception committee if he calls here this evening— which I guess was what you had in mind when you told Ralph to meet you here at your cuddle-up, hah?"

She cursed him out in colorful language.

He laughed unhumorously. "You'll completely disillusion Ralph, if you haven't done it already. How long since you seduced the poor old dodo?"

She snarled, "That's a good one! He got me into this with his nice, quiet, gentlemanly bushwah! He engineered the whole thing. I've been sick of him for weeks but I didn't know how to break off with him and not lose my job."

Eddrop, from across the room, said dully, "I don't suppose I cut a very good figure as a sugar- daddy, Benny, but I don't think you ought to lie about me and mislead Mr. Marko. I didn't put you up to anything, you know, except this apartment."

Don said, "Benny. That's what the watchman said some of the girls called you. On our cards you're listed as Ruth A. Wrenn. What is that— your middle name?"

She told him to go to hell.

Eddrop continued mildly, "You might as well tell Mr. Marko. They're bound to find out, just as I knew sooner or later they'd find out about those duplicate coins you made me order." He looked at Don. "Her middle name is Abenita. Benny for short."

Don raised his eyebrows. "Oh? Well! I have a message for you, Benny. From a friend of yours."

Benny told him that she wasn't interested in any messages.

"From Suzanne Collinson," he said. "She gave the message to me just before she died." He hadn't expected her to show any surprise at the news of the blondes death, and she didn't. "She said to tell you that Clem had shot her and I was to let you know and you'd square things up with him."

Benny cried frantically, "It's a lousy, rotten lie! Clem wouldn't have hurt Sue for anything. You killed her yourself. And he'll get you for it, too!" She flung out an arm accusingly.

Don squinted at her, puzzled. She wasn't making that defense for his benefit, or Eddrop's, either. Behind her, in the mirror of the medicine cabinet he saw a growing panel of light. The hall door, opening.

He dived for the corner of the room behind the chair where Benny had taken off her shoes. Shots thundered in the small living room. Glass shattered. Metal whined.

ON HIS knees he pivoted, peeking over the arm of the chair. Clem Ayerell sauntered jauntily in from the hall, a .45 automatic held in front of him like a torch, with smoke trailing from the uptilted muzzle instead of flame. There was no red bandanna covering his face this time, and Don saw why the mask had been so necessary. A black patch covered the man's left eye. It was fastened around his head with a black cord. Even with the disfiguring patch, the fellow was remarkably good- looking. His big even teeth showed in a grin of delight.

He fired again at Don. The bullet hit the arm of the chair. Dust spurted in Marko's eyes, blinded him. He shot aimlessly, cursing, heard Clem's laugh in answer.

He rolled behind the chair, blinking desperately to get back partial vision.

Benny screamed, "Clem! Look out! Ralph!"

Clem's voice came calmly. "Wait'll I fix the man. I'll attend to the mouse later."

Don could see a little, through stinging tears. He lifted his gun, raised his head. Anything was better than getting blasted without putting up a fight.

But he didn't shoot. Eddrop stood between him and Clem. Kept moving to stay between them as Clem circled, trying to get a clear aim at Don.

"You can finish me, Ayerell," the credit man was saying grimly. "I'm ready for it. You've corrupted me, and Benny has debauched me until I'm done for, anyway. I want to go. I couldn't face them at the store any more."

Clem put the automatic to Eddrop's stomach, pulled the trigger.

Don saw Ralph double over like a jackknife, then straighten slowly and take a few tottering steps toward his attacker. He flung his arms out, grabbed Clem as the gunman poked the muzzle at his chest and fired again.

Eddrop's body jerked like a toy on a string, but he clung to Ayerell's arms until his grip slid to the man's waist, his legs.

Benny screeched, "Clem! Clem! Get out! The cops are on their way!"

Clem aimed painstakingly at the top of Eddrop's head. Don shot with his hand braced against the side of the chair. Clem's smile vanished. He closed his mouth, opened it again. Don shot once more.

Clem and Eddrop crumpled to the floor like brawlers in a street fight.

Benny ran shrieking to the hall.

A bulky figure in blue grabbed her at the door, calling,

"All right, you in there! Heave ya guns out here! Before we have to come in and blow ya t' pieces."

Don got up shakily. "Officer, come in and get 'em yourself. They're both dead ducks."

Chapter XII

NOW the apartment was crowded with humans and full of the smell of death. Ambulances had taken along the bodies of the two men. The patrol wagon had swallowed a wildcat Abenita. Don Marko lounged on the chair that had saved his life or nearly cost him his life, he couldn't make up his mind which.

Cora was there and Bob Harrison and Maxie, in addition to four men from Homicide and a lucky reporter for the City News Syndicate.

Don was sourly waving aside congratulations. "Don't make any damn hero out of me. If I'd used my head, Eddrop wouldn't be dead, and they might have caught Ayerell alive. First time I heard about Benny I should have figured the name referred to a girl, because even then it was pretty clear butcher- boy Clem got dames to do all his dirty work."

Cora stood up for Don. "Her name wasn't Benita or Abenita on our records. I'd never heard her called that."

"The girls in the credit department must have, though," he said. "I should have checked on them, soon as it began to look as if the credit coins were phony."

The general manager chewed on an expensive cigar. "They weren't phony. That was the worst of it, Don."

"Oh, no," Don said. They were the McCoy. Benny looked over the accounts, followed the society columns, and found out which of our big customers were due to be away on winter vacations. Then she made Eddrop order duplicate coins for a few of those accounts, as we do when they're lost, anyway. When the tokens came in, she'd give them to Clem. She'd pass them on to the particular feminine stooge he'd selected to do the job. He couldn't use any of them more than once, naturally, or they'd have been spotted by someone of the sales force in the furniture or floor coverings. or draperies departments. But probably he kidded the babes along, told them they'd try it on another store later. Then as soon as the job was over, he'd knock them off, the way he did the dame down there at the Deshla place in Maryland."

Maxie asked, "Why'd he stick to furniture, with what looked like an easy graft like that?"

Don was astonished to see how his fingers trembled when he lit a cigarette. "He was a decorator. Got jobs for doing over big country places from the swanky set. Soon's he'd get an order from some of that hot-buttered bonbon, I suppose he sent one of the babes into our store and ordered exactly what he needed to fill his contract. Only, instead of having it charged to Mrs. Ritzbitz, he used the Deshla coin and name. When the stuff got down there in our truck, he'd be there to get it unloaded and ship it back in his own truck to the job he was doing or else to his Quonset hut out in Congers, to wait for the time it'd be needed."

"Mary busted that up," Cora said.

"And got busted to hell herself, for doing it." Don blamed himself. "I should've been on the lookout for an inside worker right then."

The general manager defended him. "I don't know why you should have. We haven't had a Nimbletts employee go bad on us for years. In anything as big as this, I mean. I hate most mightily to have it come out that our assistant credit manager was a crook."

"Maybe it won't have to come out," Don suggested. "Eddrop kind of paid his bill, there at the last. If that Benny hellcat doesn't insist on dragging his name into her trial—which won't be necessary if she pleads guilty to conspiracy for grand larceny—I'd say we could talk to the D.A. about making Eddrop simply a victim of a crazy butcher."

Cora said, "He was such a nice little man."

Don agreed. "Not a bad guy until this Benny got a job in his department and suckered him into making love to her. After that, she could get him to do anything she wanted him to, because he'd have been afraid of scandal at the store. But he evened it up pretty well. The way he walked into that gun would have broken your heart."

The G.M. nodded. "One of the few instances where the pig stabbed the butcher. Let's do what we can to keep his name clean, Don."

CORA asked, "Did Clem come here after you, Mr. Marko? Or after Mr. Eddrop?"

"Oh, after Ralph. Benny knew the game was up when she heard about Suzanne's murder. So she decided to make Ralph the fall guy. She gave me a long rigmarole about Ralph's finagling with the credit coins, then arranged to run right up here and meet him, hold him here until Clem came. She'd given Clem a key to this apartment. I'd say she knew Clem was going to kill the poor guy. What she probably didn't know was that he'd have shot her, too. He hated leaving loose ends around that might trip him up."

Maxie moved to avoid one of the Homicide photographers. "You ain't said how you come to find this cuddle-up, Boss."

"Clerk at Ralph's hotel remembered the phone number he used to call three-four times a week. And up in his room I found a lipstick of that Congo orange Miss Wrenn used all the time. I couldn't imagine a bird like Ralph carrying around anything like that unless she'd happened to drop it in his pocket some time when they'd been out together."

Cora touched his arm. "Aren't they going to let you go home pretty quick? You look shot to pieces."

He smiled. "You ought to see the other guy, honey. No, they'll have me making depositions until midnight. But I wish you'd call Doc Towbin for me."

"You want him to come, here?" his secretary was solicitous.

"Oh, no. I'd like to have him run down to my apartment and take a peek at a gal pal of mine who needs a little help."

She stuck out her tongue at him. "Oh, you're impossible!"

"Incorrigible is the word." He smiled. "Go phone him, like a good girl."