...The Dead Don't Dream

By Robert Leslie Bellem

What was the grim mystery in this disappearance of the fat gag writer's
cousin? Hollywood's ace gumshoe, Dan Turner, had to meet and combat
a heap of rough to-do before he neared finish.

I SET fire to a gasper, blew smoke in Ben Holiday's piggish puss. "You can take your case and ram it," I said, "I'll go get a job digging sewers before I handle an investigation for a guy of your cheap ilk."

"I'm no ilk." He gave me an unabashed grin. "You don't see me wearing a lodge pin, do you?" His elly-bay shook as he laughed at his own corny jape; then he got serious. "Aw, come on, gumshoe, I didn't mean to insult you."

Over the flat expanse of my office desk I fastened the frozen focus on him; studied his lardlike fatness, his flabby jowls, and the oversized diamonds he wore on his fingers— yellow rocks to match his loud canary sports jacket.

As a radio gag writer his weekly wages were up in the fabulous brackets; he could afford to toss centuries around the way an ordinary mug would spend nickels and dimes. Yet I'd been working a week for him on a fifty-dollar expense advance—and here he was asking me for an itemized statement. He hadn't requested a report of my progress in the matter I was investigating, mind you; he just barged in and wanted to know how I was frittering away his geetus. From his manner you'd think I was chiseling myself a fortune.

"Look, you tub of blubber," I said. "Maybe that brand of buffoonery goes over big on the networks, but I'm not having any. I quit."

He put a pained expression on his pan. "Don't be that way. It was a rib, I tell you."

"Oh, sure."

"I mean it. I apologize."

"You can apologize till hell sprouts icicles for all the good it will do you," I growled. "In the first place, I didn't solicit your business; you came here voluntarily."

"Certainly I did. Any time anybody needs a private snoop here in Hollywood the first man he thinks of is Dan Turner. You've got the top rep in your racket and you know it."

I said: "So okay, so I'm good. I'm also honest—within loose limits. At least I wouldn't trifle around with crookery to a tune of fifty paltry bucks. That's picayune stuff; peanuts."

"But I didn't say you were dishonest," he protested.

"You implied as much." The more I thought about it the sorer I grew. Six days ago Holiday had wheedled me into instituting an unpublicized prowl for a missing cousin of his named Tom Quillen: a poor relation he kept around the house as a sort of charity display, as if to prove his own generosity. This Quillen was a witty and happy-go-lucky bozo who never seemed to resent being paraded as a living demonstration of Holiday's benevolence as long as he had access to Holiday's bourbon. Alcohol was Quillen's one failing; he was always mildly soaked and occasionally went on roaring benders.

IN THE current instance Quillen had gone off on a toot—with new trimmings. Instead of staying home and drinking himself paralyzed, he'd started his binge and then hauled bunions; disappeared completely. "I don't want him in the headlines, Hawkshaw," the fat Holiday had told me. "And I don't want him in trouble. I mean after all, if he pulls some screwy stunt and winds up behind the eight ball, it might reflect on me. I can't have that."

"So you want me to find him, eh?"

"Yes. That is, if your fee isn't too high."

"I'll charge you by the day for the days I work," I had said, not mentioning any specific price for fear he might have apoplexy. He had the reputation of being tighter than the skin on a sausage and I don't believe in driving customers away; it's easier to accept a case, clean it up, and submit a bill afterward. Then you can always sue if you don't get your pay.

With Holiday, though, I did insist on fifty hermans for expenses. This advance wasn't a retainer; it merely covered me in case I had to spend a little cash here and there for information. When you're hunting a drunk, you haunt the grog shops where he's likely to be; and how can you hang around gin mills without buying a jorum once in a while?

As a matter of fact, I'd already guzzled up most of that half century; and all I'd got for it was a hangover or two. There were no clues on the missing Tom Quillen, which, in itself, was aggravating; but now, to make it worse, Holiday was asking what I had done with his lettuce. That really fried me to a crisp.

I glared at him across my desk. "Look, pal. Ordinarily, as of this instant, you'd owe me for six days' leg work. But we'll call it square in exchange for the fifty if you'll kindly do me a favor and scram the hell out of here before I blow my top."

"Brushing me off, hunh?" He made a sulky mouth. A fine thing. I thought you had ethics." His peepers narrowed. "Or is this your way of sliding out from under a failure?"

"What do you mean, failure?"

"Well, you haven't found Tom for me."

I said: "Take your troubles to the Missing Persons Bureau. No charge for the advice."

"But I don't want to go to the cops, Sherlock! It might spill into the newspapers, and—"

He didn't finish the sentence because just then my telephone tinkled. I uncradled it, meantime waving him quiet. "Turner speaking."

"Hi, sleuth," a man's voice rattled the receiver, a voice so familiar I stiffened in my chair. "You alone?"

I said: "Not right now," and cast a cautious hinge at my corpulent visitor.

"This is Tom Quillen," the voice said, unnecessarily. I'd already recognized this fact; realized that by a crazy fluke of coincidence, the character Ben Holiday wanted me to locate for him was calling me up. "I understand you've been inquiring around the bistros, trying to contact me."

"Yeah," I said.

"Would you care to tell me why, Philo?"

"Not at the moment."

"I get it. Whoever's in your office, you can't talk."

"That's it exactly."

"Was it my fat and jolly cousin that hired you to hunt me?"

"But definitely," I said.

"I thought so, the heel. What's he paying you?"

I hesitated. "Nothing, thus far."

"But if you deliver the goods, meaning me?"

"That depends," I said. "I haven't found out yet how much the deal is worth."

"Well listen, let's get together and stick the slob. Nick him for a grand; we'll split it two ways—five yards apiece. Collect it in advance and guarantee results by sundown."

"That's a steep price, even for me," I hedged.

Quillen's laugh was hearty in the receiver. "Don't worry, Ben will pay. He can't help himself; he's over a barrel."

"Which tells me where he is," I retorted carefully, framing the phrase with an ambiguous meaning so Holiday, sitting opposite me, wouldn't savvy what I was talking about.

Quillen caught hep. "Yeah, that tells you where he is. So now you want to know where I am."

"If you don't mind."

He chuckled again. "Room 209 of the Wayson Hotel. That's just off Vine, near—"

"I know the joint. A fleabag."

"Can you hear me scratching? Okay, keed, get rid of your company and make the arrangements. Then come over and pick me up. I might even stay sober for your special benefit." There was a soft click as he disconnected.

I HUNG UP, gave the porky Holiday ginzo a shrug of simulated indifference. "People are always dumping cases in my lap. Let's see, what were you saying when the phone rang?"

"I was saying I don't want to go to the police about my cousin's disappearance. I don't want any publicity. And I don't like the way you're trying to brush me off. After all, I hired you for a job, and—"

"And I told you where you could shove it." Then, as he stood up, I went into my act. "There's only one way I'd play ball with you now, pal," I pretended to relent.

"What way's that?"

"For cash on the counter. Pay me a G and I guarantee to find Quillen by nightfall or you get a refund."

He looked agonized. "A th-thousand dollars?"

"Take it or leave it."

"How about a compromise? I'll meet your price—after you've found him. Word of honor. You'll have the cash the minute you deliver."

Well, a C.O.D. proposition looked okay from where I sat. The thing was in the bag anyhow.

"Done," I said. "You've made a bargain." And I ushered him to the door, watched him waddle to the elevator. I waited a few minutes, then got my hat and barged out of the building in a very pleasant frame of mind indeed—not knowing I was just about to encounter two flat tires and a corpse.

The flat tires were on my jalopy in the adjoining parking lot. I copped a gander, saw where the nails had gone through the thinning threads and cursed myself to a blister for not watching where I was driving when I came down to work that morning. I saved several naughty words for the careless character who'd scattered the nails on the street; then I turned, started on the prowl for a taxi.

Luck was with me, but not of the cab variety. Instead, a grinning ginzo hailed me from a passing underslung Mercedes speedster bedecked with chromium trim and genuine patent leather upholstery. "Hey," he called, and slammed on his brakes. "Hey, Hawkshaw, want a lift?"

"By a curious circumstance, yes," I made for his opulent bucket. This afternoon, it seemed, was my special time for encountering radio scripters in the comedy category; the party at the wheel of the Mercedes was Johnny Cook, writer of several transcontinental network shows and, oddly enough, Ben Holiday's collaborator in the dreaming up of belly-laugh routines. When I climbed into his gaudy chariot, though, I didn't mention that I'd just been in conference with his porky partner. I had other matters on my mind—mainly an immediate yen to be wafted in the direction of the Wayson Hotel near Vine.

I said so to Johnny Cook and he did things to the speedster's velvet gears; sent us sliding forward into the traffic stream. He asked me: "Out of gas, Sherlock?"

"No," I said sourly. "Out of air. Two flats and no time to repair the damage."

Johnny clucked his tongue, made appropriately sympathetic conversation and presently tooled us around the corner of Hollywood and Vine; drove a few more blocks, made another turn and indicated my destination dead ahead. "There's the Wayson—hey, look, isn't that Ben Holiday coming out of the joint? Seems to be in a hurry, too."

I peered forward, lamped the Holiday slob skittering from the hotel with his pistol pockets dipping gravel. It wasn't his haste that stiffened me, though; it was the plain fact that he had obviously scurried straight from my office to this moth-eaten rookery where his absent cousin was holed up. There was only one possible reason for the fat guy to have come here ahead of me; he'd discovered that the Wayson was Tom Quillen's hideout.

INDIGNATION sizzled through my nooks and crannies. "Now just a minute!" I caterwauled. Then, to Johnny Cook, I said: "Hey, he's piling into his kettle for a getaway. Drive up abreast, will you?"

"Sure," Cook nodded. "I don't savvy the caper but so what?" A split instant later he zipped the Mercedes up alongside an identical wagon parked at the curb—a glittering equipage into which Holiday was wedging his flabby tonnage. I bounced out of Johnny's heap; firmly planted my tootsies on Holiday's running board before the porky party could fire up his cylinders.

"Hold everything," I snarled.

"Wh-wha-what—?"

I shoved a ferocious scowl at his moonlike mush. "Don't go innocent on me, you cheap creep."

"Innocent—?"

"Yeah. I'm wise to this play. When you were in my office a while ago, I got a phone call from Tom Quillen telling me where I could find him. His voice has a carrying quality in the receiver and you heard his end of the conversation as well as my own."

"But—but—"

"That's why you were so willing to make a bargain with me," I growled menacingly. "You agreed to pay me a grand if I could find Tom for you; but all the time you were consenting to that proposition you were figuring on getting here first, thereby cheating me out of my fee."

"Fee?" he tried to bluster. "Highway robbery, you mean. What kind of a dope do you think I am to pay you a thousand dollars so you could split it with—I mean—er—"

I said: "Aha. Then you admit hearing what Quillen said to me over the phone."

"Well, I—that is, I—"

"And you never intended to slip me any dough. That was merely a stall to ease you out of office. Then you made a bee-line to the hotel here, stopping just long enough to drive tacks in my tires so I couldn't follow too close on your trail. But you won't get away with it, Fatso. Those flats are going to cost you."

"Tacks?" he said. "Tires?" He summoned an injured expression. "I don't un—"

I fastened the clutch on him, dragged him from under his tiller. "Layoff the lies. You and I are going up to Tom's room now. Pronto."

"No, Turner. No. I—I don't want—"

"And Johnny Cook can come along with us," I said. "I want him to be a witness when I deliver Quillen to you."

"But—but I've already s-seen—"

I snarled: "Nuts. You engaged me to find your cousin. So I'm finding him. And may Gosh help you if you refuse me that promised thousand hermans." I swiveled. "You, Johnny—park your crate and join the procession."

"Sure, Sherlock," Cook nodded, looking mildly perplexed as he berthed his boiler and ankled back to us. "I don't like to mix into something that's none of my business, though." He cast a doubtful grin at Holiday. "Look, Ben, I'm only a bystander. I don't even know what this is all about."

Holiday ignored him; tried to pull out of my grasp. "Let m-me g-go, damn you! I won't go back up to Tom's room. I won't! You've got no right t-to—"

"Quiet," I said, and shoved him to the hotel entrance. An ugly hunch was commencing to nibble at my brisket. "What's the matter with you? Why the panic? And how come you were lamming out of here in such a thundering yank?"

He made gulping noises in his fat gullet. "I—I—"

"Okay, save it. We'll soon find out." There was a long narrow staircase leading to the second floor and I prodded him into shuddering motion; followed him upward with Johnny Cook tagging along behind. We encountered nobody en route; reached the door of Room 209 without incident. The portal itself was slightly ajar and you could smell a stale whisky reek assaulting your beezer like poison gas as you barged across the threshold. I piped a dozen empty bottles scattered around the frowsy premises when I nudged Holiday into the bedroom. Then I lamped something else that froze me in my tracks.

There was a corpse on the floor, a guy with his conk battered to cranberry jelly. He was Holiday's cousin, Tom Quillen, and he was deader than minced clams.

THE DEFUNCT bozo lay sprawled near a battered bureau, staring glassily at me and smiling as if some sardonic jest. His rust- colored hair was stained to a deeper red where several quarts of ketchup had leaped from his fractured steeple, and his fingers were curved talons grasping at the threadbare carpet the way a drowning man clutches at stray driftwood. Beyond him, a sagging bed was a disorderly shambles of mussed covers; closer to the cadaver there was an overturned chair which might have been knocked that way by Quillen's falling body. It might have been tipped over in a fight, too, if you wanted to consider all the possibilities.

"Jeepers!" Johnny Cook whispered faintly. From the expression on his mush he was feeling as sick as I felt.

I disregarded him; forced myself to cop another reluctant gander at Quillen's gory remnants, thus assuring myself it wouldn't do any good to bleat for a doctor. No sawbones on earth could vulcanize that crumpled noggin, I realized. The poor drunken blister had been deceased before he hit the floor. I whirled; fastened the accusing focus on Ben Holiday.

"So this is why you didn't want to come back upstairs," I lipped in refrigerated accents.

He made fluttery gestures. "Listen, Turner—"

"Yeah. You got here ahead of me. You bashed Tom to his final reward. You were powdering when I arrived. You hoped nobody would spot you scramming; or at least you figured you wouldn't be recognized in a dump of this caliber."

"No! No, it's not true! I—"

"But you had lousy luck. Johnny Cook had picked me up, given me a lift. I got here just in time to put the arm on you. So now your number's up."

"You're wrong!" he moaned. "Johnny, don't let him—"

Cook said: "Easy, Ben. Take it easy. Right now it looks tough, but if you aren't guilty you've got nothing to fear. All you have to do is tell the truth."

"I am telling the truth!" Holiday yeeped. "I—"

"You haven't told anything at all," I said grimly. "Moreover, I don't think I'd be interested in anything you'd try to say. Keep it for the cops."

"You—you m-mean you're arresting me? But you can't do that!" he whined. "You're not an officer!"

"I'm a private dick. I carry a badge. I also carry a cannon," I said, and whisked it out of the shoulder holster where I always tote it for emergencies. Take my advice and never argue with the wrong end of a roscoe." Then, to Cook, I added: "Johnny, go phone headquarters."

Holiday's gag-writing partner hesitated. "Look, Hawkshaw, I'm not questioning your authority or anything like that, but are you sure you aren't going off half cocked? After all, you haven't any proof that Ben committed this murder—if it was murder."

"We'll let the bulls worry about proof," I grunted. "Go call them."

HOLIDAY started wringing and twisting. "No, wait, Johnny. Let me explain, Turner. I admit I came here to Tom's room with the idea of taking him back home with me before you could find him. It was just that I—I couldn't see the use of paying you a thousand dollars for nothing. But when I got here I—he—he was—I mean he was already d-dead. I swear it. I found him just the way you see him n-now."

"Tell it to the law," I sneered.

His glims glistened in their pudgy sockets. "Turner—listen to me. We made a deal. I promised you a grand if you located Tom. All right; the bargain still stands. I'll pay you the money. Now, I'll write you a check if you'll let me w-walk out of here."

"Bribery, hey?"

"Not at all. It's a business proposition. Give me a chance to get home before you n- notify the authorities. That's not too much to ask, is it? Then you can tell the police the truth—that you'd been working for me, trying to find my cousin, and when you located him he was d-dead."

I regarded him speculatively. "Pardon my curly tonsils, Tubby, but I make it a rule never to accept checks from guys I distrust; which includes you. How do I know you wouldn't stop payment before I could cash it?"

"Why, I—"

"How much folding stuff are you carrying?" I asked him.

He fished out his wallet, scanned the contents. "Six hundred; no, let's see. Six hundred and nineteen dollars."

"Give," I said.

"You—you want—"

"All of it," I held out my free left duke and made rubbing motions with thumb and fingers. "Six hundred and nineteen fish. Produce, please."

He thrust the stack of cabbage into my palm. "But—"

"We'll call it square," I said. "This pays me for my time and efforts. Now you don't owe me a dime."

"And I c-can go home?"

I leered at him. "In a pig's knuckle you can go home. I said I was holding you for the cops. I meant it. Okay, Johnny, go put in that yodel to headquarters."

Holiday squalled like a butchered pig, called me an assortment of nasty names, and then pulled an unexpected fast one. He slammed himself at Johnny Cook; hit him with a ponderous impact that sent the smaller and younger bozo crashing against me with the force of a tree in a cyclone. By sheer bad luck Johnny's cranium banged into mine the way the cue ball hits the triangular setup at the commencement of a pool game. You could have heard our skulls clunking together all the way to Glendale.

The blow dislodged my grey matter, set it adrift on a surging sea of darkness. The sea's surf roared in my ears and I had a sensation of drifting buoyantly on waves of pain. Then the waves suddenly receded, dropped me to the carpet and ebbed away; left me asleep. For the time being I was a very useless private snoop.

A VOLCANO revived me. I knew it was a volcano because it kept pouring molten lava down my throat. I gagged, gurgled, groaned as this liquid fire coursed into my clockworks and melted all the internal clogs. Then the stuff struck bottom and exploded. A billow of steam shot out of my kisser and I sat wildly upright, screaming like a banshee. "Save the women and children, I'll burn down with the building!"

"Hey, cut it out," a rumbling voice assailed my ear. It was a voice I recognized instantly, and when I opened my peepers, I lamped its owner. He was my old friend Dave Donaldson of the homicide squad and he was feeding me from a bottle labeled bourbon.

I might have known it would be Donaldson. He's the one guy in the world who can dig up such terrifying brands of rotgut; and in this instance he'd surpassed himself. I pushed feebly at his mitt and said: "Take it back where you bought it and pinch the dealer for peddling poison without a prescription. He's a menace to the community."

"So are you," Dave snarled. "What the hell was the idea, sending Johnny Cook to phone me there'd been a murder? And besides, I didn't buy this whisky; I found it here in the room."

In my fuzzy mental state I could handle only one thought at a time. I lurched groggily to my pins, rubbed the swelling on my scalp where Cook's conk had bonked me. "So Johnny recovered consciousness before I did and put in the bleat to headquarters, eh?" I said.

"Yeah."

I cast a hazy hinge around the room and came to the conclusion that I must have been in slumberland a considerable time. Tom Quillen's carcass had already been carted off to the morgue in a meat basket, the joint was crawling with coppers, and Johnny Cook himself stood to one side with a bemused look on his mush indicative of perplexity. He called over to me: "I explained everything to these guys, Sherlock. And wait till you hear the results of their preliminary investigation. You'll be surprised how haywire you were."

"Haywire?" I bristled. "Me?" Then I bent an offended glare at Donaldson. "Make that clearer."

Dave scowled, "There wasn't any murder."

"Are you out of your mind?" I yeeped. "I suppose I didn't see a corpse. It was all a figment of my disordered imagination— including the brains and gravy leaking from Quillen's thatch. Maybe I just dreamed it."

"Not at all. Quillen was dead, all right. I merely said there wasn't any murder."

"That's double-talk."

"Haven't you ever heard of accidental death?"

I blinked at him, "Are you trying to tell me—"

"Yes, if you'll shut up and listen. As soon as our departmental medical examiner inspected the body we began prowling the room for a weapon that might fit the head- wound. We found it. It was a corner of that bureau over there. You'd have spotted it yourself if you'd looked before leaping. There's a bloodstain on it, where Quillen fell and bashed himself."

"You mean where he was pushed."

"Don't be obstinate," Dave growled. "You've got the idea somebody fought with him, haven't you?"

I said: "Yeah. Ben Holiday."

"But you're wrong. There are no signs of a struggle—"

"How about the overturned chair?"

"Upset by Quillen's falling body," Dave said blandly. "We discovered the elongated smudges of his fingerprints, where his hand touched it and tipped it over as he went down. Besides, the rooms on either side of this one are occupied and we've quizzed the tenants; they say they didn't hear any brawl in here. The whole case is open and shut. Quillen went on a solitary bender; he holed himself up with a stock of bottles, drank himself stupefied, then accidentally stumbled against the bureau with enough force to cause death."

I CLUNG to my own theory. "I still say Holiday—"

"Aw, nuts! Of course I've put out a pickup order for him, on general principles; the damned fool shouldn't have got panicky to the point of running away. Although it was understandable, considering the circumstances. He had come up here, found the body, and had tried to leave without reporting it. Then you caught him, compelled him to come back to the room. You accused him of murder—which scared him spitless. Being somewhat of a coward, he reacted instinctively; slammed Johnny Cook into you and lammed."

I said: "Okay, wise guy, let me ask you one question: why didn't Ben report finding his cousin's remainders? Why did he try to powder in the first place?"

"An error in judgment," Dave shrugged. "I suppose he disliked the thought of being involved in an official inquiry." He brushed the matter off with an airy wave. "Naturally I'll give him a calldown for that when he's brought in, but it's not really important."

I goggled at him. "Not important? Well, hell's bells and soda crackers! Now I've heard everything. Here's a prime suspect, a bozo I nabbed red-handed running away from a corpse, and—"

"A corpse who'd been dead at least an hour according to competent medical testimony," Dave interjected. "Which means this Holiday guy couldn't have had anything to do with it. In other words, Quillen died long before Holiday came here. Now are you satisfied, you stubborn jackass?"

I seized the bourbon bottle out of his grasp, tilted it to my yapper and let a generous jorum run down my alimentary tract. The results were immediate and cataclysmic. Fire shot out of my smeller, sparks leaped from my ears and I was abruptly enveloped in a dense cloud of smoke. "Hell!" I yelped. "I've given my stomach a hotfoot!" And I went sailing from the premises in search of a fire hydrant to quench my internal blaze.

I took the bottle with me.

IT WAS dusk when somebody knuckled the portal of my bachelor apartment stash. Opening up, I beheld Dave Donaldson. "Hi, Hawkshaw," he said meekly.

When Donaldson gets meek, there's usually something brewing. I beckoned him in, closed the door and said: "Okay, spit it out. Wipe that dizzy look off your beefy puss and let's have the lowdown."

"Lowdown?" he played coy. "I don't get your drift. Can't an old friend pay you a visit without you making snide remarks? Damn it, I just wanted—"

"Yeah, yeah, you're puzzled about something and you wanted my expert advice. All right, shoot;"

His dewlaps reddened. "Well, ah, er, about this Quillen thing. There've been developments."

"I thought so. Have you pinched Ben Holiday yet?"

"What made you say that?" he peered at me curiously.

I lifted a palm. "I'm psychic. I've got a crystal ball."

"Better trade it in for a recent model," he made a sour mouth. "No, I haven't pinched Holiday. It's too bad Quillen's dead, though. I could have arrested him."

"Oh, so?"

Dave nodded glumly. "Of all the screwy cases . . . You remember I mentioned his fingerprints on the chair?"

"Yeah."

"Well, we checked them. Ordinary routine, the usual procedure in cases of death by violence. What do you suppose we found?"

"I'm no good at riddles. You tell me."

He rubbed the stubble on his jowls. "Tom Quillen was a lammister. A con who crushed out of stir back east. He was doing a life stretch; he was a three-time loser. They threw the book at him on a habitual-criminal rap: armed robbery, extortion, kidnaping, forgery—hell; he'd been a wrong guy ever since he was a punk in reform school at the tender age of fourteen."

"What?"

"It's true. He broke out of the pen two years ago, came right out here to the coast and started living with Ben Holiday, his only relative."

I digested this flabbergasting news. "You're sure?"

"Positive."

"But I knew Quillen," I said. "That is, he and I went on more than one brannigan together. He didn't have the earmarks of a con. He was just a witty wack with a whisky weakness."

"He was also as crooked as five aces in a poker deck."

I said resentfully; "You've destroyed my faith in human nature. And yet, I guess it meshes when you come to think about it. Now I begin to savvy Quillen's willingness to let me locate him and collect a thousand buck fee if I agreed to divvy it with him."

"Huh? What's that about a thousand buck fee?" Dave's tone got sharp.

I EXPLAINED the deal; told him how the Holiday slob had hired me to hunt for Quillen; and how Quillen had phoned me with a proposition whereby he and I could split a grand of Holiday's geetus. I finished with: "No damned wonder Holiday engaged me to find the guy without any publicity!"

"What do you mean?"

"It's plain enough," I said. "Ben was afraid the cops might accidentally pick Tom up on a drunk-and-disorderly beef—and if that happened, the whole stink would hit the headlines. It would mean extradition for Quillen back to that eastern brig, and the scandal would have its repercussions on Holiday himself. Hell, he might even be nabbed for harboring an escaped convict."

"I've already gone into that angle," Dave grumbled. "We hauled Holiday down to headquarters a while ago for quizzing. When we brought up the subject of harboring a criminal, he told us the entire story. Quillen forced him into it."

"Forced him?"

"Blackmailed him."

"How?"

"It was like this. Here was Holiday, a small caliber radio announcer at the time. In walks his cousin, Tom Quillen, a mugg he hasn't seen in years. Holiday doesn't know Quillen's a lammister. He entertains him in his home for a week or so, the way anybody'd do with his only relative visiting from the East. So then, all of a sudden, Quillen bursts out with the truth. I'm a wanted man, he tells Holiday. I jammed out of the penitentiary and there's a law against giving any refuge to convicts. So by letting me live with you, you've been guilty of a felony. If I get caught I'll see that you take the full rap. Consequently it's up to you to make sure they don't catch me. From now on I'm staying with you and you're going to front for me. Or else." Dave frowned thoughtfully. "That's what he told Holiday. And being yellow, the poor fat dope fell for it."

I said: "More and more it begins to make sense."

"What does?"

"The whole setup. Ben Holiday's got a rep for being a tightwad. I often wondered about his generosity, keeping Quillen around like a pet pup. The charity act didn't jibe with Holiday's normal characteristics; but on a blackmail basis you can understand it better. And it bears out my original contention."

"What original contention?"

"That Holiday bumped Quillen. He was ridding himself of a parasite."

Dave bridled. "Shut up! I tell you the medical examiner says Quillen was dead at least an hour before Holiday went to the hotel. And besides, it was the fall against the bureau that killed him—he was blind drunk, stumbled, conked himself."

"That's the part I don't quite savvy," I said. "Quillen had a hell-roaring capacity for liquor. I've seen him fried, but I never saw him so swacked he couldn't stand up."

"He was this time. The autopsy showed a terrific concentration of alcohol in the brain and spinal fluid. Enough to kill an ordinary man."

I WAS on the point of answering this when my phone rang. I unforked it and said: "Turner talking." Then I listened a while and learned plenty. When I rang off, I cast a triumphant slant at Dave. "Now we're getting somewhere."

"Meaning what?"

I torched a coffin nail. "When you revived me this afternoon in Quillen's room you fed me bourbon from a bottle you happened to find there, remember?"

"Sure. So what?"

"So it was the strongest essence of distilled pestilence that ever corroded a human gizzard."

"Well?"

"Well, I took the bottle away with me because I was suspicious of it. I carted it to a friend of mine over in Pasadena—the city chemist, name of Frank Marks. I asked him to analyze the stuff and phone me a report. That was Marks now."

"And—?"

"And it wasn't commercial whisky. It had been doctored up to a hundred and eighty proof by the addition of raw alcohol. In other words someone had tampered with the seal, removed the cork and strengthened the contents with undiluted neutral spirits, then resealed it."

Donaldson's glimmers looked befuddled. "I don't get it."

"Use your common sense. That kind of fire-water isn't sold in stores. Quillen couldn't have bought it that way; it's illegal. A rat could've given it to him, however; say a rat named Holiday in the hope it would croak him. Which it did, in a roundabout manner. It caused him to fall and bop himself."

"I'm damned!" Dave said. He paced the floor a time or two and flourished his fists indignantly. "If we could just prove—Nuts! What good would that do? I couldn't go into court and establish a deliberate criminal intent on Holiday's part even if I had proof that he doctored the bourbon."

"Not unless you forced a confession out of him in advance," I admitted. "You'd need his signed statement that he did it to take Quillen off his neck—permanently."

"He'd never sign any such statement and you know it."

"Not even if you ran him through the wringer?" I cocked a sarcastic eyebrow. "Or don't you use the third degree any more?"

"I don't use it on guys who've got influence. The money Holiday's been making these past couple of years as a radio comedy expert gives him some importance in Hollywood. We cops have to handle these big shots sort of gently. On the other hand, you

might be able to do it without any kickback. You're not an official policeman; you're private."

At long last Dave was getting down to brass tacks; coming out with the real reason for his visit to my wigwam. I said: "Aha. So that's what you wanted to see me about. You'd like me to hang the squeeze on the fat slob; pull your chestnuts out of the fire."

"Well, why not? After all, didn't he slam Johnny Cook into you and bat you both cockeyed? Don't you pack a grudge?"

I shook my head.

"Ix-nay. I settled my grudge ahead of time by nicking Ben for exactly six hundred and nineteen clams." I reached for my wallet to display this loot—and then leaped six feet into the air, as if the billfold had sprouted fangs. "Gone!" I screamed in stricken accents. "I've been stabbed!"

"What the devil are you talking about?"

"The geetus!" I gurgled. "It's gone! After Holiday sent Johnny Cook bashing into me and knocked us both cold he filched back the lettuce he'd paid me." Infuriated, I lunged toward the front door of my tepee. "Come on, slobber-puss. You asked me to fasten the pressure on that fat creep. Okay, I'm ready, willing, and anxious. Let's go!"

BEN HOLIDAY'S hacienda was fortunately within Donaldson's jurisdiction, located just this side of the Beverly line. It loomed in the night's early darkness like a large square wedding cake complete with pink stucco frosting and sugary ornamentation, and there were two chariots parked on the driveway—identical Mercedes speedsters. Donaldson anchored his own official sedan at the curb and we piled out, starting up the lawn. I said: "Looks as if Fatso's got company."

"Who?" Dave growled.

"His writing partner, Cook," I indicated the second Mercedes. "Johnny and Holiday bought twin buckets." And my guess proved accurate when I thumbed the doorbell; it was Cook himself who opened up.

He tabbed me, recognized Donaldson and gave us a worried welcome. "You boys didn't pick a very auspicious time to come calling. Could you postpone it until later?"

"No," I said. "We want to see Ben and we want to see him now." Loud voices, lifted in anger, drifted from within the opulent shanty. "What's brewing?" I added.

"Script trouble," Johnny answered wryly. "Mister Big himself is raising particular hell. I'm afraid Ben's about to get kicked out of a job."

Dave said: "Who's Mister Big?"

"The guy Ben and I work for." Johnny looked mildly astounded at the abysmal ignorance of the police department as represented by Donaldson. "Lew Zellerman, the funny man of the networks; the comedy star of the Crackle-Crunchies show. Ben and I write everything he puts on the air, didn't you know? We take alternate turns; Ben one week, me the next."

Dave was visibly impressed. "Lew Zellerman?" he said in awed tones. "I never miss listening to him. His jokes kill me." Then, hopefully: "You mean he's here? In person?"

"Yes, and raging."

"Do you suppose I could get his autograph?" Dave asked.

I rammed an elbow into his short ribs. "Stew his autograph," I snarled. "We're not interested in radio wise-crackers. It's Holiday I crave to confront. Come on!" And I shoulder past Johnny Cook; beckoned Donaldson to follow me as I made for the source of those upraised voices inside the joint.

They emanated from a combination den and library slightly less spacious than the waiting room of the Union Station, and it was the Zellerman citizen who was doing most of the yapping. He was a tall, skinny slug in a black broadcloth suit that made him look like a professional mourner suffering from malnutrition, and his sallow map was as sharp as a honed hatchet. You'd never have taken him for a comedian with that lugubrious puss—which, at the moment, was more sore than melancholy.

"Your stuff stinks out loud!" he was railing at the porky and perspiring Holiday. "Three times this week I've told you to do a new script without the corn—something with decent laughs in it, the kind you always used to write. How long do you think I could hold my Hooper and Crossley ratings if I went on the air with fooey material like you're trying to give me?"

"But—but if I can have just one more chance—"

"Chances I'm giving you since a week ago and you get worse instead of improving! All of a sudden you've got boiled tripe where your brains ought to be. And rehearsal day is tomorrow. Tomorrow, you numbskull! What am I going to tell my sponsor? What's the advertising agency going to say? Maybe I should recite into the microphone a recitation from East Lynne or Uncle Tom's Cabin, hah? With gestures yet?"

HOLIDAY was redder than a peck of tomatoes. "Look, Lew, I can have a new script ready for you by morning. I'll work all night. I won't get a wink of sleep until I—"

I took this for my own entrance cue. "You won't get a wink of sleep, period," I rasped, plunging into the room and making a grab for the fat gag-writer's lapels. "Unless it's in a cell."

"Wh-wha-what?" he strangled. His glimmers' protruded. "Turner!"

"Yeah. Surprised, are you?"

"Well, I—I you—I—"

"Where's the cabbage?" I said, shaking him violently.

"Wh-what c-cabbage?"

"The dough you lifted off me."

He cringed. "Oh, th-that. It . . . it was a practical joke—what I mean is, I intended to g-give it b-back to you—"

"So you admit glomming it out of my wallet in Quillen's hotel room after you knocked me senseless by slamming Johnny Cook at me. You picked my pocket."

"I—I thought I c-could—"

"Yah, you thought you could get away with it, the same as you thought you could get away with the Quillen kill."

"But—but I didn't—" His frantic glance flickered over toward Dave. "Lieutenant Donaldson, m-make Turner st-stop! Make him quit accusing me of something that never happened!"

"Quillen is now defunct, isn't he?" I growled.

"It was an accident! The police doctors said so!"

"The fall was an accident." I nodded bleakly. "But the needled whisky wasn't. You may as well confess you gave him those bottles containing almost straight alcohol. We'll pin it on you sooner or later anyhow, as fast as we can bring out your fingerprints on the bottles themselves."

"I—I don't know what you're t-talking about!"

Lew Zellerman, the radio comic, made a mournful mouth. "Neither do I," he intoned sepulchrally. "But it looks as if this is something I should maybe keep out of. Murder and comedy don't mix up very good together." He tugged at Johnny Cook's sleeve. "Come on, Johnny, let's get out of here before somebody accuses me of something! We'll go find a nice quiet padded cell and grind out next week's script—which it isn't your regular week, you understand, except you're going to do them all from now on. Killers I should strictly keep off my payroll."

"Wait!" Holiday bleated. "Please—I—"

"You're fired," Zellerman said. He and Cook pranced from the room. The front door slammed. I didn't mind this too much because the guy's dialect was beginning to irritate me.

Holiday blinked at me reproachfully. "See what you've done to me! There goes my bread and butter."

"Your bread and butter went out the window when Quillen kicked the bucket," I retorted grimly. "I think I'm hep to the inside story now."

"Wh-what inside story?"

"You were a fifth-rate radio announcer until two years ago, around the time Tom Quillen first started living with you. Shortly afterward you started doing free-lance comedy scripts, and pretty soon you were in the top brackets. Okay. Quillen went on a binge last week; and simultaneously you turned in a show so corny Zellerman couldn't use it. You rewrote it three times and it still stank. I know the reason."

"Reason—?"

"Yeah. You can't write humor worth a damn. But your cousin's wit was a commercial commodity. I think he ghosted your stuff for you."

Holiday's corpulent poundage seemed to sag and deflate. "How did you g-guess?"

"Guess hell. It's obvious," I said. "The way I figured it now, Quillen didn't blackmail you into letting him live in your igloo. It was the other way around. You blackmailed him. You knew he was a lammister and you held it over his head as a threat. You forced him to write radio material and you sold it as your own; collected all the profits."

He buried his mush in his palms. "That's all finished . . . now that he's d-dead. I'm washed up."

"In more ways than one," I agreed. Then I turned to Donaldson. "Handcuff this monkey, Dave. Let's go see about the fingerprints on those doctored bourbon bottles in the room where Quillen passed to glory."

Holiday moaned. "No. . . you mustn't! I don't know anything about any d-doctored bourbon! What motive would I have for wanting Tom to d-die? I needed him alive. He wrote the scripts I sold for big m-money. I wwouldn't—"

"Shut up," Dave snapped. "Maybe you didn't intend to kill him, but any idiot can see why you fed him straight alcohol. He was getting out of control. He'd left you and refused to come back. Needing him in your business, you decided to get him plastered so you could haul him home—only the treatment was too damned strenuous. It cooled him." There was a flash of steel, a glitter of polished metal and a musical tingling as the bracelets snicked around Holiday's chubby wrists. "Let's ramble."

We trooped out to Dave's sedan; headed for the Wayson Hotel.

THE Wayson had no downstairs lobby. You went up a long narrow flight of stairs to the second floor and passed a desk where there was a tap-bell you could ring if you wanted the manager. Otherwise you just took your room key off a board studded with hooks and nobody bothered you.

I didn't stop for the key. I always carry a ring of skeletons with me and I knew I wouldn't have much trouble unlocking the late lamented Tom Quillen's portal. "This way," I whispered to Donaldson and the fat slob.

Dave snarled: "Don't be so damned superior. I've been here before, remember? So has Holiday."

We ankled along the gloomy hall; gained the door of Room 209. It was ajar, and the interior was a solid cube of blackness. Then something clinked and I twitched sidewise. I was just in time. A spiteful streak of flame licked at me and a roscoe sneezed: Chow! Chow! in stuttering thunder. Directly behind me somebody groaned. I heard a thudding fall as a heavy body slumped to the floor.

At the same instant Donaldson whipped up his service .38 and triggered it at the fire-flash beyond the threshold. His pill zipped past my ear and the explosion nearly tore me loose from my moorings. Dave had shot instinctively, by reflex action—the training gained in long years as a copper; and his aim was almost as good as his reflexes. There came a shrill squeal from the gunsel we couldn't see. Bottles crashed.

I found the wall switch, gave it a quick tip; blinked in the sudden raw glow from an unshaded overhead bulb. "That'll be all," I yodeled. "You're through, Johnny Cook!"

Holiday's erstwhile writing partner crouched in a far corner, surrounded by a pile of empty whisky bottles and grabbing at an irregular hole in his right coat sleeve from which he was leaking considerable gravy where Donaldson's bullet had nipped out a hunk of meat. He dropped a gat he'd been holding, and smoke wisped out of its muzzle.

"Got you with the deadwood," I barged toward him. "I figured you'd come here and try to dispose of the bourbon bottles you'd tampered with; at least try to wipe your prints off them. That's why I mentioned them in your presence. I was baiting a trap for you."

He shivered; glared at me, speechless.

I said: "The pattern clicked into place when I realized Tom Quillen had been ghosting Holiday's scripts. It explained your motives in the deal. You and Holiday had been alternating on the Zellerman radio show and you wanted the whole job for yourself— wanted to nudge Holiday out of the picture. You'd found out that Quillen was the real writer of Holiday's material; without him, Holiday couldn't write acceptable stuff. So you lured Quillen off on a bender, saturated him with grain spirits. The idea was to keep him out of circulation long enough to expose Holiday as an incompetent script scribbler.

"But your scheme backfired when Quillen stumbled, fell, killed himself while in a drunken stupor. If you want to be technical about it, his death was accidental; but you caused it. You were morally responsible, if not legally. I think you came here to see him this afternoon and found him defunct. That scared you. Craving to keep your own skirts clear, you phoned me at my office and impersonated Quillen's voice."

"Wh-why would I—do a—thing like— that?"

"For two reasons," I said. "You wanted to get me here to the hotel so I'd find the body myself and report it to the law. And you wanted an alibi so you wouldn't be hooked into the case. As soon as you made that phone call you rushed over to my building in your

Mercedes; drove tacks in my jalopy's tires and then cruised around the block until you could offer me a lift."

"Where's—your—proof?"

I grinned frigidly at him. "The time element. Ben Holiday was with me when I received your phone call. He then left me and hurried to this hotel ahead of me. But according to the medical reports, Quillen had been deceased at least an hour. Therefore it couldn't have been Quillen who phoned me; he was already dead. It couldn't have been Holiday either; he was in my office when I was talking over the wire. So it had to be some third bozo; somebody who had a plausible motive for the whole screwy caper. I asked myself who might profit by it, and the answer was you. I proved it by trapping you now as you tried to get rid of the evidence bottles. Satisfied?"

"Completely," he said. His voice was firmer. "There's nothing you can do to me, even if I admit everything you've guessed. Quillen's death was an accident. You can't hold me for that."

Dave Donaldson butted in with: "We can hold you for being too fast with your rod when we caught you here. That panicky shot put you in the gas-chamber. You drilled Holiday through the heart and you'll sniff cyanide for it."

"Ben—Ben's d-dead?" Cook gasped.

"Yeah."

I said: "It looks as if Lew Zellerman will be needing some new writers. He can't get comedy from corpses." As usual, I was right. They sent Johnny Cook to San Quentin, sprayed him with lethal fumes and converted him into meat for the undertaker.