Collected Stories (Everyman's Library)

  He picked up both photos again and held them side by side. He looked a little puzzled. “Yes, sir. That’s him all right,” he said.

  “You’re an accommodating guy,” I said. “You’d remember almost anything, wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t get you, sir.”

  “Take another drink. I owe you four bucks. That’s five in all. It’s not worth it. You hops are always trying to pull some gag.”

  He took a very small one and balanced it in his hand, his yellow face puckered. “I do the best I can,” he said stiffly. He drank his drink, put the glass down silently and moved to the door. “You can keep your goddam money,” he said. He took the dollar out of his watch pocket and threw it on the floor. “To hell with you, you——” he said softly.

  He went out.

  I picked up the two photos and held them side by side and scowled at them. After a long moment an icy finger touched my spine. It had touched it once before, very briefly, but I had shaken off the feeling. It came back now to stay.

  I went to the tiny desk and got an envelope and put a five dollar bill in it and sealed it and wrote “Les” on it. I put my clothes on and my bottle on my hip and picked up my overnight bag and left the room.

  Down in the lobby the redhead jumped at me. Les stayed back by a pillar, his arms folded, silent. I went to the desk and asked for my bill.

  “Anything wrong, sir?” The clerk looked troubled.

  I paid the bill and walked out to my car and then turned and went back to the desk. I gave the clerk the envelope with the five in it. “Give this to the Texas boy, Les. He’s mad at me, but he’ll get over it.”

  I made Glendale before 2 a. m. and looked around for a place where I could phone. I found an all-night garage.

  I got out dimes and nickels, and dialed the operator and got Melton’s number in Beverly Hills. His voice, when it finally came over the wire, didn’t sound very sleepy.

  “Sorry to call at this hour,” I said, “but you told me to. I traced Mrs. Melton to San Bernardino and to the depot there.”

  “We knew that already,” he said crossly.

  “Well, it pays to be sure. Haines’ cabin has been searched. Nothing much found. If you thought he knew where Mrs. Melton—”

  “I don’t know what I thought,” he broke in sharply. “After what you told me I thought the place ought to be searched. Is that all you have to report?”

  “No.” I hesitated a little. “I’ve had a bad dream. I dreamed there was a woman’s bag in a chair in that Chester Lane house this morning. It was pretty dark in there from the trees and I forgot to remove it.”

  “What color bag?” His voice was as stiff as a clam shell.

  “Dark blue—maybe black. The light was bad.”

  “You’d better go back and get it,” he snapped.

  “Why?”

  “That’s what I’m paying you five hundred dollars for—among other things.”

  “There’s a limit to what I have to do for five hundred bucks—even if I had them.”

  He swore. “Listen, fella. I owe you a lot, but this is up to you and you can’t let me down.”

  “Well, there might be a flock of cops on the front step. And then again the place might be quiet as a pet flea. Either way I don’t like it. I’ve had enough of that house.”

  There was a deep silence from Melton’s end. I took a long breath and gave him some more: “What’s more, I think you know where you wife is, Melton. Goodwin ran into her in the hotel in San Bernardino. He had a check of hers a few days ago. You met Goodwin on the street. You helped him get the check cashed, indirectly. I think you know. I think you just hired me to backtrack over her trail and see that it was properly covered.”

  There was more heavy silence from him. When he spoke again it was in a small, chastened voice. “You win, Dalmas. Yeah—it was blackmail all right, on that check business. But I don’t know where she is. That’s straight. And that bag has to be got. How would seven hundred and fifty sound to you?”

  “Better. When do I get it?”

  “Tonight, if you’ll take a check. I can’t make better than eighty dollars in cash before tomorrow.”

  I hesitated again. I knew by the feel of my face that I was grinning. “Okay,” I said at last. “It’s a deal. I’ll get the bag unless there’s a flock of johns there.”

  “Where are you now?” He almost whistled with relief.

  “Azusa. It’ll take me about an hour to get there,” I lied.

  “Step on it,” he said. “You’ll find me a good guy to play ball with. You’re in this pretty deep yourself, fella.”

  “I’m used to jams,” I said, and hung up.

  Seven—A Pair Of Fall Guys

  I drove back to Chevy Chase Boulevard and along it to the foot of Chester Lane where I dimmed my lights and turned in. I drove quickly up around the curve to the new house across from Goodwin’s place. There was no sign of life around it, no cars in front, no sign of a stakeout that I could spot. That was a chance I had to take, like another and worse one I was taking.

  I drove into the driveway of the house and got out and lifted up the unlocked swing-up garage door. I put my car inside, lowered the door and snaked back across the street as if Indians were after me. I used all the cover of Goodwin’s trees to the back yard and put myself behind the biggest of them there. I sat down on the ground and allowed myself a sip from my pint of rye.

  Time passed, with a deadly slowness. I expected company, but I didn’t know how soon. It came sooner than I expected.

  In about fifteen minutes a car came up Chester Lane and I caught a faint glisten of it between the trees, along the side of the house. It was running without lights. I liked that. A shadow moved without sound at the corner of the house. It was a small shadow, a foot shorter than Melton’s would have been. He couldn’t have driven from Beverly Hills in that time anyway.

  Then the shadow was at the back door, the back door opened, and the shadow vanished through it into deeper darkness. The door closed silently. I got up on my feet and sneaked across the soft, moist grass. I stepped silently into Mr. Goodwin’s porch and from there into his kitchen. I stood still, listening hard. There was no sound, no light beyond me. I took the gun out from under my arm and squeezed the butt down at my side. I breathed shallowly, from the top of my lungs. Then a funny thing happened. A crack of light appeared suddenly under the swing door to the dining room. The shadow had turned the lights up. Careless shadow! I walked across the kitchen and pushed the swing door open and left it that way. The light poured into the alcove dining room from beyond the living-room arch. I went that way, carelessly—much too carelessly. I stepped past the arch.

  A voice at my elbow said: “Drop it—and keep on walking.” I looked at her. She was small, pretty after a fashion, and her gun pointed at my side very steadily.

  “You’re not clever,” she said. “Are you?”

  I opened my hand and let the gun fall. I walked four steps beyond it and turned.

  “No,” I said.

  The woman said nothing more. She moved away, circling a little, leaving the gun on the floor. She circled until she faced me. I looked past her at the corner chair with the footstool. White buck shoes still rested on the footstool. Mr. Lance Goodwin still sat negligently in the chair, with his left hand on the wide brocaded arm and his right trailing to the small gun on the floor. The last blood drop had frozen on his chin. It looked black and hard and permanent. His face had a waxy look now.

  I looked at the woman again. She wore well-pressed blue slacks and a double-breasted jacket and a small tilted hat. Her hair was long and curled in at the ends and it was a dark red color with glints of blue in the shadows—dyed. Red spots of hastily applied rouge burned on her cheeks too high up. She pointed her gun and smiled at me. It wasn’t the nicest smile I had ever seen.

  I said: “Good evening, Mrs. Melton. What a lot of guns you must own.”

  “Sit down in the chair behind you and clasp your hands b
ehind your neck and keep them there. That’s important. Don’t get careless about it.” She showed me her teeth to her gums.

  I did as she suggested. The smile dropped from her face— a hard little face, even though pretty in a conventional sort of way. “Just wait,” she said. “That’s important, too. Maybe you could guess how important that is.”

  “This room smells of death,” I said. “I suppose that’s important, too.”

  “Just wait, smart boy.”

  “They don’t hang women any more in this state,” I said. “But two cost more than one. A lot more. About fifteen years more. Think it over.”

  She said nothing. She stood firmly, pointing the gun. This was a heavier gun, but it didn’t seem to bother her. Her ears were busy with the distance. She hardly heard me. The time passed, as it does, in spite of everything. My arms began to ache.

  At last he came. Another car drifted quietly up the street outside and stopped and its door closed quietly. Silence for a moment, then the house door at the back opened. His steps were heavy. He came through the open swing door and into the lighted room. He stood silent, looking around it, a hard frown on his big face. He looked at the dead man in the chair, at the woman with her gun, last of all at me. He stooped and picked up my gun and dropped it into his side pocket. He came to me quietly, almost without recognition in his eyes, stepped behind me and felt my pockets. He took out the two photos and the telegram. He stepped away from me, near the woman. I put my arms down and rubbed them. They both stared at me quietly.

  At last he said softly: “A gag, eh? First off I checked your call and found out it came from Glendale—not from Azusa. I don’t know just why I did that, but I did. Then I made another call. The second call told me there wasn’t any bag left in this room. Well?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Why the trick-work? What’s it all about?” His voice was heavy, cold, but more thoughtful than menacing. The woman stood beside him, motionless, holding her gun.

  “I took a chance,” I said. “You took one too—coming here. I hardly thought it would work. The idea, such as it was, that you would call her quickly about the bag. She would know there wasn’t one. You would both know then that I was trying to pull something. You’d be very anxious to know what it was. You’d be pretty sure I wasn’t working with any law, because I knew where you were and you could have been jumped there without any trouble at all. I wanted to bring the lady out of hiding—that’s all. I took a long chance. If it didn’t work, I had to think up a better way.”

  The woman made a contemptuous sound and said: “I’d like to know why you hired this snooper in the first place, Howe.”

  He ignored her. He looked at me steadily out of stony black eyes. I turned my head and gave him a quick, hard wink. His mouth got rigid at once. The woman didn’t see it. She was too far to the side.

  “You need a fall guy, Melton,” I said. “Bad.”

  He turned his body a little so that his back was partly to the woman. His eyes ate my face. He lifted his eyebrows a little and half nodded. He still thought I was for sale.

  He did it nicely. He put a smile on his face and turned towards her and said, “How about getting out of here and talking it over in a safer place?” and while she was listening and her mind was on the question his big hand struck down sharply at her wrist. She yelped and the gun dropped. She reeled back and clenched both her fists and spat at him.

  “Aw, go sit down and get wise to yourself,” he said dryly.

  He stooped and picked up her gun and dropped it into his other pocket. He smiled then, a large confident smile. He had forgotten something completely. I almost laughed—in spite of the spot I was in. The woman sat down in a chair behind him and leaned her head in her hands broodingly.

  “You can tell me about it now,” Melton said cheerfully. “Why I need a fall guy, as you say.”

  “I lied to you over the phone a little. About Haines’ cabin. There’s a wise old country cop up there who went through it with a sifter. He found a gold anklet in the flour bag, cut through with pliers.”

  The woman let out a queer yelp. Melton didn’t even bother to look at her. She was staring at me with all her eyes now.

  “He might figure it out,” I said, “and he might not. He doesn’t know Mrs. Melton stayed over at the Hotel Olympia, for one thing, and that she met Goodwin there. If he knew that, he’d be wise in a second. That is, if he had photos to show the bellhops, the way I had. The hop who checked Mrs. Melton out and remembered her on account of her leaving her car there without any instructions remembered Goodwin, remembered him speaking to her. He said she was startled. He wasn’t so sure about Mrs. Melton from the photos. He knew Mrs. Melton.”

  Melton opened his mouth a little in a queer grimace and grated the edges of his teeth together. The woman stood up noiselessly behind him and drifted back, inch by inch, into the dark back part of the room. I didn’t look at her. Melton didn’t seem to hear her move.

  I said: “Goodwin trailed her into town. She must have come by bus or in a rent car, because she left the other in San Bernardino. He trailed her to her hideout without her knowing it, which was pretty smart, since she must have been on her guard, and then he jumped her. She stalled him for a while—I don’t know with what story—and he must have had her watched every minute, because she didn’t slip away from him. Then she couldn’t stall him any longer and she gave him that check. That was just a retainer. He came back for more and she fixed him up permanently—over there in the chair. You didn’t know that, or you would never have let me come out here this morning.”

  Melton smiled grimly. “Right, I didn’t know that,” he said. “Is that what I need a fall guy for?”

  I shook my head. “You don’t seem to want to understand me,” I said. “I told you Goodwin knew Mrs. Melton personally. That’s not news, is it? What would Goodwin have on Mrs. Melton to blackmail her for? Nothing. He wasn’t blackmailing Mrs. Melton. Mrs. Melton is dead. She has been dead for eleven days. She came up out of Little Fawn Lake today—in Beryl Haines’ clothes. That’s what you need a fall guy for— and you have one, two of them, made to order.”

  The woman in the shadows of the room stooped and picked something up and rushed. She panted as she rushed. Melton turned hard and his hands jerked at his pockets, but he hesitated just too long, looking at the gun she had snatched up from the floor beside Goodwin’s dead hand, the gun that was the thing he had forgotten about.

  “You—— ——!” she said.

  He still wasn’t very scared. He made placating movements with his empty hands. “Okay, honey, we’ll play it your way,” he said softly. He had a long arm. He could reach her now. He had done it already when she held a gun. He tried it once more. He leaned towards her quickly and swept his hand. I put my feet under me and dived for his legs. It was a long dive—too long.

  “I’d make a swell fall guy, wouldn’t I?” she said raspingly, and stepped back. The gun banged three times.

  He jumped at her with the slugs in him, and fell hard against her and carried her to the floor. She ought to have thought of that too. They crashed together, his big body pinning her down. She wailed and an arm waved up towards me holding the gun. I smacked it out of her hand. I grabbed at his pockets and got my gun out and jumped away from them. I sat down. The back of my neck felt like a piece of ice. I sat down and held the gun on my knee and waited.

  His big hand reached out and took hold of the claw-shaped leg of a davenport and whitened on the wood. His body arched and rolled and the woman wailed again. His body rolled back and sagged and the hand let go of the davenport leg. The fingers uncurled quietly and lay limp on the nap of the carpet. There was a choking rattle—and silence.

  She fought her way out from under him and got to her feet panting, glaring like an animal. She turned without a sound and ran. I didn’t move. I just let her go.

  I went over and bent down above the big, sprawled man and held a finger hard against the side
of his neck. I stood there silently, leaning down, feeling for a pulse, and listening. I straightened up slowly and listened some more. No sirens, no car, no noise. Just the dead stillness of the room. I put my gun back under my arm and put the light out and opened the front door and walked down the path to the pavement. Nothing moved on the street. A big car stood at the curb, beside the fireplug, up at the dead-end beyond Goodwin’s place. I crossed the street to the new house and got my car out of its garage and shut the garage up again and started for Puma Lake again.

  Eight—Keep Tinchfield Constable

  The cabin stood in a hollow, in front of a growth of jackpines. A big barnlike garage with cordwood piled on one side was open to the morning sun and Tinchfield’s car glistened inside it. There was a cleated walk down to the front door and smoke lisped from the chimney.

  Tinchfleld opened the door himself. He wore an old gray roll-collar sweater and his khaki pants. He was fresh-shaved and as smooth as a baby.

  “Well, step in, son,” he said peacefully. “I see you go to work bright and early. So you didn’t go down the hill last night, eh?”

  I went past him into the cabin and sat in an old Boston rocker with a crocheted antimacassar over its back. I rocked in it and it gave out a homey squeak.

  “Coffee’s just about ready to pour,” Tinchfleld said genially. “Emma’ll lay a plate for you. You got a kind of tuckered-out look, son.”

  “I went back down the hill,” I said. “I just came back up. That wasn’t Beryl Haines in the lake yesterday.”

  Tinchfleld said: “Well, I swan.”

  “You don’t seem a hell of a lot surprised,” I growled.

  “I don’t surprise right easy, son. Particularly before breakfast.”

  “It was Julia Melton,” I said. “She was murdered—by Howard Melton and Beryl Haines. She was dressed in Beryl’s clothes and put down under those boards, six feet under water, so that she would stay long enough not to look like Julia Melton. Both the women were blondes, of the same size and general appearance. Bill said they were enough alike to be sisters. Not twin sisters, probably.”