He saw a young man with a brown paper bag in one hand and a gleaming switchblade in the other burst through the liquor store door and dash down the street. He gave chase and discovered there was more to this hold-up than met the eye.

I seen this kid running from the liquor store with a open knife in his hand, a switchblade, I think, and in his other hand a brown paper bag, and the guy from the liquor store was yelling but the kid took off down Laclede, where it was dark, down toward Weirdville. So I went after him. I don’t know why I did. Maybe it was some kind of compulsion like the headshrinkers talk about, or something else, who knows? But when I seen the kid running like that, all I could think of doing was to run after him. I didn’t even think right then about being a hero or nothing like that, like bringing back the money, just running.

The guy from the liquor store ran to the corner and stopped, and yelled at me, “Mister, it ain’t worth it! Don’t get cut for nothing!”

I heard him but kept on running. The kid, about twenty, tall with greasy wavy hair, a beat blue shirt and faded jeans and tennis shoes, ducked between two rickety buildings halfway down the block. Just before he disappeared he glanced back, his yellow eyes narrowing when he looked at me. I cut into the dark passageway right after him and trotted along the broken cement walk between the old buildings, my shoes clumping with a crazy racket.

Suddenly somebody squawked. I crashed into two hot bodies. Two teenage kids necking. I grabbed the boy. “Who is he?” I gasped.

“You a cop?”

“Who is he?”

“I ain’t telling no cop.”

“I ain’t a cop.”

“You chasing him?”

“What his name? Where’d he go?”

“Sammy,” said the girl. She was breathing hot. She pulled her boy friend away from me, stood between us pointing her pert chin sarcastically toward my face. “Sammy Barlow. Maple and Twenty-Third.”

“Damn you!” boyfriend hissed, I don’t know if it was at her or me.

But I took off again, through a cluttered backyard, past an open garbage can from which a profusion of rats scurried, and to the alley. He wouldn’t go back up toward Grand Avenue, because he’d come out on the street just half a block from the liquor store, and by now there’d be cops around. He went east down the alley, or else he went straight through the other yards up to West Pine. Then I heard some kids roar with laughing far down at the end of the block, so I started running down the alley. There was a juke joint there, a half dozen guys standing around in front of it, all of them laughing under the red and yellow neon lights with the green bugs and the white moths flurrying over their heads in the hot summer night.

“Hey, boy, you racin’ somebody?” one of them shouted to me. They all giggled.

Another one said, “There’s a man with a cause!”

“Sammy Barlow,” I panted. “He came past here. Where’d he go?”

“Hoydehoy! What makes Sammy run? Hey, maybe he’s takin his lunch home to Mama!”

“He robbed a store!”

One of the bigger kids walked over to me and put his face close to mine. His eyes were yellow fire. “Smart man, he don’t rob nothin, hear that?”

“He robbed it,” I growled back. “I seen him run out with a knife in his hand and a bag in the other.”

“A bag?” somebody giggled. “Man, he was takin his girl friend for a walk!”

“Cut it out!” Their laughing infuriated me. “I can call a cop if you want it that way!”

“Call a cop?” said the bird with his face close to mine. He put a big hand on my shoulder. He was strong. “Why don’t you just take your problem to Sammy, man?”

I jerked away from him. “Maybe I’ll do just that!” I spat back. “I know where he lives!”

“Hey, cat, you do? You birds, hear that? Pussycat here knows!” The kid grabbed me again when I started away, raised the palm of his hand, ducked histrionically when I started to throw a swing at him, and said, “Pussycat, you don’t got to go to Sammy’s house!”

“Why not?” I demanded, ready to swing.

“Cause I’m here, Mister.” The voice was basso, practically right behind me.

I spun about. He was leaning against the wall of the juke joint, on the alley side. In one hand he held the paper bag. In the other hand was the switchblade, the long blade scattering reflections from the red and yellow neon sign up above. Sammy wasn’t more than twenty, a clean looking kid, with good features now crossed up by a mixture of frown and grin. I don’t know why, but I liked him sort of, even if he did have the bag of money in one hand and the glittering knife in the other.

“Give me the money, Sammy,” I told him.

Somebody in the crowd laughed, but stopped when Sammy looked past me at whoever it was. Sammy said, “Man, you ain’t a cop. You’d have a gun out by now if you was.”

“I seen you come from the liquor store,” I said. “I’ll take the money back.”

“Sure you will, Pussycat.”

“I mean it.”

“Hey,” somebody giggled. “Pussycat’s a hero. Sure ain’t no cop.”

“No, man. Cops ain’t heroes like pussycat.”

“Old Pussycat, he just chases little birds, don’t he?”

I was still looking at Sammy. “I want the money,” I said.

He grinned again. “Pussycat, that’d hurt lots of people’s feelings. You don’t want to go hurt people’s feelings, do you?”

“Hey, Pussycat,” the big boy who had faced me before said. “How come you run after him?”

“I just seen it and I run, that’s all.”

“Just run? Just take off like a hero every time some cat runs down a alley?”

“Go to hell,” I told him. I heard a shuffling of feet, the kids moving in a circle around me. I said to Sammy, “Give me the bag. I’ll take it back to the guy at the liquor store, and nobody’ll know. Lots of kids like you do stupid things sometimes, but once that guy gets his money back, you can forget it.”

The others laughed, but Sammy’s face became serious, his eyes troubled. “Man,” he said quietly, “you was crazy to come running after me. You don’t know, Mister.”

“Give me the money,” I said. “I’ll forget your name.”

Sammy’s eyes narrowed and he shouted “No!” at somebody behind me just a second before one solid fist smashed into the back of my head. All I could think of was that he tried to stop it, and that nobody had put a knife in me. Then I spun down to the cement of the alley.

I woke up more than an hour later. For a while after I started to hear sounds and opened my eyes and could see where I was, I lay on the concrete, my head feeling like somebody had used a battering ram on it to knock out half my brains. I pushed myself up to a sitting position and asked: What brains? I couldn’t have been more stupid if I’d stood on my head in the middle of the streetcar tracks on Grand Avenue. Running after some punk who robbed a liquor store, stupid! Dumb! Kids are robbing liquor stores and grocery markets every day in St. Louis, but I had to play hero. Like I was a cop or something. Stupid!

I groaned for a little while before I got to my feet, and when I stood up I had to shake my head and rub my face with my hands to keep from getting dizzy. I staggered back for a few steps until I could walk straight, and went out on the street by the juke joint. The red and yellow neon lights were still flashing, the green bugs and white moths were still fluttering about, and the kids inside were having a real gay time. But out on the street was nothing and nobody. I pushed open the screen door of the juke joint, stood there wobbly for a minute with all the cats and broads staring at me, and went to the bar.

“Gin and beer,” I said to the fat bartender. He had bloodshot frog eyes in a sweat shining face. He nodded dumbly, brought me the gin and beer, and stood looking at me even after I paid him. “What you got to stare at?” I demanded.

“You lay off them boys,” he said.

“What boys?”

“You know what boys, smart man. Just lay off.”

“They clobbered me. Who’s to lay off?”

He stared at me with his bloodshot frog eyes. “They was put up to it, man. You lay off.”

Gulping down the rest of my beer, I shoved the glass across the bar at him and got out of the place. When I slammed the door behind me the kids all started talking again. The street was still empty. Sammy lived at Maple and Twenty-Third, if I could believe what the little broad had told me in the alley. I started to walk up toward West Pine, but when I got to the corner I stopped. I thought for a change. Already, for no reason, I had run after a guy and wound up getting my head boomeranged. Why try again?

Sammy was a good enough kid. I could remember his face. And he didn’t want the other punks to pound me, but they did it before he could stop them. Still, it wasn’t my concern. I turned and walked up West Pine to Grand Avenue, wondering all the time: What did Sammy mean when he said I didn’t know? What did the bartender mean when he said they were put up to it? Talk? Coverup? You could always count on one kid covering up for another one, I guess.

I looked at the sign on the front of the liquor store before I went inside. It said: Kelly’s Liquor. Inside was a guy behind the counter, bald-headed, what hair he had left was a cross between gray and red. He had a big nose and little pig eyes set close together. He was serving a broad about forty, who was buying a carton of cokes and two boxes of snuff. I knew what they did with it. They dumped a half box of snuff into a bottle of coke, shook it up, and drank it. They said it gave them kicks. Who knows.

When the broad left, the guy looked at me. I said, “You Kelly?”

“Kelly Burke,” he said.

“Maybe you don’t remember me. It was only a couple of hours ago.”

“Sure!” he said, putting on a false grin. “You was the guy run after that punk stuck me up!” He squinted his pig eyes. “Looks like you lost him. How’s about me giving you a sawbuck for your trouble?” He pressed a key on the green brass cash register, the machine rang, and he held a sawbuck out toward me.

I shook my head and glanced around. “The cops gone now?”

“They was here and left. Happens too often to guys like me who’re close to rough neighborhoods.” He forced another one of his grins. “Hazards of the business, I guess. Come on, take the money.”

“No, thanks.” There was something about this creep that made even his money seem distasteful. “I just came to tell you something. The kid’s name. Sammy Barlow. He lives over on Twenty-Third and Maple.”

Kelly pursed his lips and nodded silently, his eyes dropping as he replaced the sawbuck in the cash register. “That helps one hell of a lot. Thanks again. Say...”

“Yeah?”

“Can I get your name and address? You know how the cops and insurance companies are.” He grinned. “Anybody seen what happened, they want to know.” I gave him my name and address. He raised his eyebrows and repeated the address: “3245 West Pine? Hey, that ain’t a bad neighborhood.”

“It’s a rooming house,” I said.

He stuck his hand over the counter. I shook it queasily. He said, “You sure you won’t take that sawbuck?”

I got away fast. The fresh air tasted good, and I couldn’t figure why. Maybe just because I was out, when I shouldn’t have been mixed up in it all in the first place. I had a distantly rumbling worry about the mess, but I closed my mind to it as I walked the ten blocks west on West Pine to the place where I lived. I said I had been stupid, got myself knocked in the head for it, but dumped it all right back in the lap of the guy whose business it was. Kelly Burke would phone the cops, they’d pick up Sammy, and that’d be all.

Sammy was a good looking kid. Crazy maybe, pulling armed robbery. Crazy wild bunch he hung around with, what could you expect? Comes running out of a liquor store with a bag of money in his hand and a knife in the other hand, stupid kid, should’ve put the knife away when he was on the street, and maybe nobody’d know he had a bag full of money. It was too obvious.

I almost fell on my face as I stepped off a high curb. I wasn’t watching where I was walking, I was getting so interested in my thoughts.

Obvious... about the bag of money. But all I saw was a paper bag. I didn’t see any money. Yes, I did. I saw money in Kelly Burke’s cash register just a few minutes ago, and now it was only about two and a half hours since it all started. Where could Kelly get a bundle of cash this time of night, when all the banks were closed? And why wasn’t he more shook up? Most guys would close up for the night if a kid with a gleaming knife come in and pulled a robbery.

I tried to push it out of my mind again. It was only a couple blocks farther to my house, so I tried to concentrate only on walking, noticing people and cars, not thinking at all. But I couldn’t really stop thinking, because I was involved. I would have been involved even if I hadn’t stupidly run after Sammy at first, because he was a kid in trouble, and whenever a kid’s in trouble, everybody’s involved. I noticed a couple kids walking ahead of me, slower than I was walking. Boy and girl, arms around one another’s back as they strolled. Good sight. Catty corner across the street a beat car parked by the curb and shut off its lights. More kids, probably, stopping there for a while to neck. I grinned at myself and was feeling good.

The feeling changed two minutes later when I was going up the sidewalk to the porch of the house where I had a room. Something moved on the lawn and I turned quickly when a thick voice said,

“Hi Pussycat.”

It was three of the ones who’d been outside the juke joint, one of them the big guy who clobbered me. Three tough kids, and three neat switchblade knives open in the darkness. Then they rushed me, cutting ahead toward the porch, but I spun about and, yelling at the top of my lungs, ran into the middle of the street, with cars zooming past, and kept running right down the white line in the middle. I heard above the horns honking at me the sounds of their angry voices, glanced back once and saw them heading for the car they had parked on the side street. They’d get me once they were able to get out in the traffic. I kept running, waving my hands over my head and screaming like a lunatic. Then brakes were screeching and some guy hollered at me. The guy in the fifty-three Buick was middle aged, mad, and scared.

“Give me a lift!” I shouted.

“Get in, you nut!”

And I got in, panting, my throat hurting, and he took off. When I looked back there was too much traffic for me to make out the car the kids were driving. “Thanks, Mister,” I told him.

“Sure.” He glanced suspiciously at me, probably expecting to see a gun. “Where you want out, the nuthouse?”

“Some guys are after me. You going to Kings Highway?”

He grunted. “I’ll take you back to the County Home on Arsenal Street if you want,” he snickered.

“Just let me off at Kings Highway so I can call the cops.”

“OK,” he said. “OK, OK.”

The sister turned out to be a photographer’s model whose specialty was poses of a strictly “under-the-counter” variety. Under some pressure, Al Delaney took the job of finding her.

When the clatter of Elsie’s typewriter in the reception room ceased abruptly, Al Delaney heaved his six foot frame erect in his chair. A look of expectancy settled on Delaney’s face which was hard and tanned with white squint lines around the eyes.

Presently, Elsie’s smartly tailored figure slid around the door of his private office. Elsie had a flair for business in her dark, pretty head which never ceased to amaze Delaney.

He watched the relaxed, easy swing of her slim hips as she crossed the room. He grinned, whistling softly to tease her, and his gray, level eyes kindled appreciatively.

“Act your age, big boy. We’ve got a client in the other room,” Elsie snapped. She knew only too well what he was thinking.

“He or she?” Delaney asked hopefully.

“She,” Elsie snorted, glaring at him.

“What’s the pitch?” Delaney leaned back in his chair.

“She’s lost a sister in the big city. Wants you to find her.”

Delaney grunted and shrugged his shoulders. “What’s her name?”

“Blair. Eunice Blair. From Benson, Arizona.” Elsie wrinkled her nose at him and her luscious lips parted in a smile as she turned back to the door.

Delaney was stuffing some papers into his desk when the client entered. Without looking up, he said cheerfully: “Please sit down. Have a chair.”

He closed the desk drawer with a flourish and turned, smiling with anticipation. Delaney was shocked.

In his eyes, Eunice Blair was an unattractive little wren of twenty-four or five hiding behind a pair of horn rimmed glasses. She had a thin, pointed nose and thin, pale lips devoid of lipstick and a thin, pointed chin. She wore a frilly white blouse above a black jersey skirt, and her hat made him shudder mentally.

Eunice sat primly on the edge of her chair facing Delaney. She was nervously snapping the catch on a large leather bag while her eyes filled with tears. She worked her mouth wordlessly and dabbed at her nose with a piece of Kleenex.

Delaney thumb-nailed a match and lit a cigarette. He watched her for a moment, then growled: “Cut it out. That won’t buy you anything.”

Eunice’s eyes widened in shocked disbelief. Her mouth flew open, then closed with a snap and she glared at him furiously.

Before she could say anything, Delaney grinned: “That’s better. Now, Miss Blair — Eunice — your sister’s missing?”

“Yes—!” Eunice spat the word out and slammed her bag on his desk. Then she looked apprehensive and a flush mounted into her pointed face. She said, “I’m sorry. You made me mad.”

“We haven’t heard from my sister Mavis for six months. She used to write us — my mother and me — every week. Then she stopped.” Eunice’s voice was hesitant at first, then became firm and she spoke more rapidly as she gained confidence.

“When we didn’t hear from Mavis for so long, I came to Los Angeles to see her. But she’s moved. And that place where she was living is an awful, rundown place. Really. The land-lady is awful, too. I asked her where Mavis had moved, but she said she didn’t know and didn’t care. When I asked her how long ago Mavis had moved, she swore at me and slammed the door in my face. You’ve got to help me, Mr. Delaney. Mother will be so worried.”

“Yes — I imagine,” Delaney said drily.

“What do you mean?” Eunice asked.

“The time for your mother to get worried was six months ago,” Delaney said sharply. “Let’s start over again. Suppose you fill in the background this time.”

Eunice had a stricken look on her pale, fox-like face when she spoke again.

“Father passed away several years ago. Since then mother has operated a little cafe in Benson where we girls were born and raised. Mavis and I had to help mother in the cafe. But Mavis didn’t like it. She was too restless. Finally she went to stay with Uncle Jim Kennedy in Tucson.

“Mavis stayed with Uncle Jim for three years, then she came home. But she wasn’t happy. Mavis was home only a few weeks when she left again. This time she went to Los Angeles.”

Delaney grunted with impatience. “How long ago was that?”

“A... a little over a year ago,” Eunice replied.

“And—?” Delaney prompted her bruskly.

“Mavis wrote us every week. Such cheerful letters. Then she stopped writing.” Eunice looked at Delaney helplessly.

“Just like that? Her letters didn’t become fewer and farther between?” Delaney watched Eunice closely.

“They... they just stopped coming,” Eunice faltered. Then, lifting her chin, she added complacently, “So I came to Los Angeles to see Mavis.”

“But you waited six months to do it. You sure worried about your precious sister,” Delaney said disgustedly.

“I... I had to help mother,” Eunice protested tearfully.

Delaney shook his head. “I don’t get it. If you were so upset by what you found here, why didn’t you go to the police?”

“Oh no. Mavis wouldn’t like that,” Eunice said firmly.

“This is a big city,” Delaney said flatly. “There’s more than two million people here. The police have organization, manpower, equipment—”

“Please. Won’t you help me?” Eunice pleaded. Her hand dove into her purse and came up with a wad of money.

Taken back, Delaney stared at the roll of bills which had partially opened in her hand. He could see several fifties and some twenties. He estimated she was holding six or seven hundred dollars in her hand.

Eunice said cautiously: “I’m willing to pay you something in advance. How much will it cost?”

She peeled off three fifties, then hesitantly added one more. Eunice shoved the four bills across the desk and put the others back in her purse. When Delaney didn’t pick up the bills, she got a pinched, frightened look on her face. She patted the money, pushing it closer to him, and asked in a small voice: “What’s the matter — isn’t that enough?”

Delaney hesitated, looking at her narrowly. Then, without touching the money, he asked, “What does Mavis look like?”

Eunice eased back in her chair and let her breath out slowly. She smiled at him for the first time and crossed her legs.

Surprised, Delaney caught a glimpse of smooth satiny roundness — a flash of gleaming ivory above nylons tightly rolled to slim, shapely knees. He looked at Eunice more closely and noted the firm, natural fullness under her frilly white blouse.

Eunice spoke hurriedly, watching his eyes. “Mavis is taller than I am. She has brown hair, wavy and full of highlights — not dull and flat like mine. And... and she’s very pretty.” Eunice dove into her bag and came up with a snapshot.

The picture was clear, with good detail and definition. It showed a woman about three years older than Eunice with bold, striking features. The eyes were large and widely spaced above prominent cheek bones. The nose was large and slightly up tilted above full, sensual lips framing a generous mouth. It was the face of a woman given to reckless impulses, not restraint. Mavis was wearing a white linen dress which clung to her show-girl figure and accented an exciting collection of lush curves. Delaney decided Mavis was quite a dish.

He studied the features and a puzzled frown creased his forehead. He looked at Eunice. “Your sister—?”

“My — half sister. My mother was married before.”

Eunice spoke diffidently while a wave of color mounted into her face. She dropped her gaze and slowly uncrossed her legs, revealing more than was necessary. She dove into her bag again.

“Here’s Mavis’ address. The one I went to. You... you’ll start looking for her right away?”

Eunice left her chair and laid a pencilled slip of paper on Delaney’s desk. She stood expectantly while her eyes questioned him.

Delaney rose to his feet, slowly shaking his head. He picked up the money, folding it, and pressed it into her hand. He said: “You’d better go to the police, Eunice.”

“But why? I... I don’t understand,” she cried, her eyes filling with tears.

“Like I said before, this is a big city. I’m only one guy. I can’t take your money,” Delaney said flatly.

Putting the bills in her purse, Eunice turned blindly towards the door. Her figure sagged and her heels dragged across the floor.

Delaney started to speak, then shrugged his shoulders. He rounded his desk with a grin and lifted her hat from her head.

Startled, Eunice was too surprised to move.

“Leave it off when you go to the cops,” he suggested softly.

“Oh—!” she gasped, snatching her hat from his hand, her tears gone, her face flaming. “I never met such an impertinent man.”

Delaney watched her flounce out of the room then settled in his chair. He started to drop the snapshot of Mavis and the pencilled slip of paper in the waste basket, then carelessly tossed them into a desk drawer. He was just closing the drawer when Elsie’s slim elegant figure slid into the room.

“Al — what happened?”

“I passed her on to the cops,” Delaney grinned. Then, as Elsie’s eyes widened with surprise, he quickly summarized Eunice’s story.

“Something’s fishy,” he finished firmly. “It smells. I wouldn’t touch the deal with a ten foot pole.”

After Elsie returned to the reception room, Delaney settled back in his chair and put his feet on the desk. He stared unseeingly out the window while his thoughts turned to Eunice and her half sister Mavis. He was trying to find the gimmick.

Most newspaper men drink a little. Jim drank more than most... but then he had good reason.

Jim had been expecting it all week. But when his notice of dismissal came that morning it caught him off balance. He hadn’t realized that it showed that much.

The clock at the far end of the newsroom told him that he had another hour left in his shift. The last shift. He bent over his typewriter and dug into the last summary. He hoped that Alec, the senior editor and desk man, would let him go early. It was the least he could do.

Otherwise, Jim thought, he wouldn’t be able to get downtown to make the payment before the store closed. Then there would be the weekend, and by the time Monday came around, he knew he wouldn’t have enough money.

He slapped the first half dozen pages down in front of Alec; Alec took them automatically, without looking up. He had been checking news copy for almost thirty years. Methodically, his tired eyes swept up and down the yellow pages, his right hand correcting a comma here, a typo there. Jim went back to his own desk.

Alec finished up his little pile of copy, with a continuous motion placing page after page in front of the teletype operator.

And all across the country, his stories came up on similar teletype machines in every private radio station. Every hour another fifteen hundred words, to be ripped from the machines by breathlessly running copy boys and spread in front of editors and announcers. So goes the news of a turbulent world, he thought.

Jim finished up and threw the remaining sheets in front of the older man.

“Leaving early tonight, do you mind?” he forced civility into his voice.

“Can’t see what difference it makes,” Alec replied, still glaring at the copy. “This the best you can do?” he asked, referring to the UN piece.

“Do you want me to go out and make the news too?” he said.

“See you sometime, Jim,” said Alec with the small smile of a man who has had his revenge.

“Yeah,” Jim said, getting his coat from the rack. He walked through the room to the door. No one looked at him directly. But as he passed each man he could feel his eyes on him. Word gets around fast in a news office.

He wasn’t embarrassed. He had been through the same thing four times since the beginning of the year. This was the shortest tenure yet, not quite five weeks. He had better learn to watch himself from now on, he thought. He took the stairs three at a time.

The notice had come that morning with his pay. Not much warning. Too bad the place wasn’t unionized, he thought. Maybe then he could have raised a little hell.

He stepped into the street. The setting sun made him squint. He pulled his Spring-and-Fall closer about him and strode to the streetcar stop.

He glanced at his watch and saw with relief that he would miss the rush hour. It was the last payment he would have to make and it was now or never. He knew what would happen to the money unless he made use of it now.

He waited with the handful of workers at the corner. He wondered what he would do. There was always a chance of getting a temporary job with UPI, that is, until word got around that he had been canned again. But it would be a couple of weeks’ pin money.

But what would Marie think? She had been very patient, but he winced at the thought of hurting her again. He didn’t imagine she could take it much longer.

The street-car was slow in coming, and he began to fidget. The tentacles of that familiar hunger crawled through his body and he tried to put it down. He had to control himself. He looked at the people around him. Strange people, he thought... jobs, lunch pails... loves...

Again, the hunger. More urgent this time. Again he clenched his fists in his pockets.

Alec hadn’t said a thing to him all week. He just sat and spied and informed on him. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t done his job, he told himself. It was just that Alec couldn’t stand people doing what they wanted. What bothered him most, apart from the effect it would have on Marie, was the total indifference of his so-called friends. You’d think it was the most natural thing in the world to be fired for being a drunk.

He began to sweat. He needed a drink. He stepped aboard the streetcar, went to the rear and slumped down.

He thought about the job and how he lost it, and the three before it. Hell, he thought, drinking was almost a prerequisite in the news business. Even Alec was known to take a drink now and then. What are a few drinks between friends?

It must have been the black-list, he concluded. Not overt, but spread slowly by word of mouth, over poker, over drinks. He was not liked and must be kept on the merry-go-round.

The streets sped by. He took out his wallet and counted his money. Forty-three dollars, after taxes. Well, he hadn’t lost much. He realized that he had come to his stop and lept for the bell rope. He got off and went into the small jewelry store near the corner.

It was a second rate place by any standard. He knew when he first bought the ring that he had been bilked. But he didn’t care. It looked pretty on Marie’s finger, and she seemed to think the whole world had been imprisoned in that tiny, gleaming chunk of glass. She had been happy, and so had he.

He was happiest when he was paying for it. Every month for over two years he had taken his thirty-six dollars to the tiny shop, chatted with the old man behind the counter, and checked the dwindling balance.

He suddenly became a little sad when he realized that this was to be the last payment. He had come to look upon the old man as a benefactor, someone he could share his happiness with. And paying had been one way of showing his love for Marie.

“Today’s the day, eh?” the old man cackled, opening the account book.

Jim had the right change clenched in his fist, and he spread the meagre bills one by one on the counter.

The old man counted the money and made an entry into the musty old ledger. Then, with a minutely magnificent gesture, he crossed out the account. Then he handed the card over to Jim.

“Here. The honour of ripping it to shreds,” he said, smiling.

Jim started. “No. I... I’d like to keep it,” he said blushing, and thrust the tattered card into his coat pocket. Just a reminder of two years of diligence.

“How’s the girl?” the old man asked, his eyes laughing.

“Getting along fine. I guess this’ll be the last time I’ll be seeing you,” he answered. He was reluctant to leave.

“You’ll be buying an anniversary gift before long. I’ll save something for you... nice... not too expensive.”

Jim waved good-bye and went out the door. He didn’t look back. It was too early to go home to Marie. And he needed time to think of a reasonable excuse for again being out of a job.

He walked south, looking at the receipt the old man had given him. The word PAID was scrawled in large red letters over it. He put this, along with the card, tenderly into his wallet.

At least it wouldn’t be all bad news, he told himself. She’d be happy to know that at last the ring would be her own, and no one could take it from her. But what would she say about the job? He had promised again and again that he wouldn’t drink. But she must have known that it would be a hard promise to keep. He wondered how much longer she could love a man like himself, who couldn’t even hold a forty-three-dollar job... a man who couldn’t control a simple thing like drink.

He sat at his usual spot, and the waiter dropped a glass of beer without waiting to be asked.

He shuddered at the first taste of the cold, bitter liquid, then sat back in the gloom of the seedy men’s room. The first glass went down badly, but swiftly, and he felt better after a couple more.

He had roughly six dollars left. More than enough to get a glow on with beer at fifteen cents a glass, not counting tips. He never drank anything but beer.

He lit a cigaret and blew a smoke ring. It spread out in front of him over the black, wet table. Then someone opened a door and the draught exploded it. He let the lighter remain lit for a moment then blew it out. The top was hot with the flame and he relished the feel of it.

Someone was talking about astrology in a loud voice.

He knew that Marie would be very angry that he was drinking the last of the money. He would need it for food, car fare, and clean shirts when he would have to look for a job.

Marie loved him now, he knew that. But for how long? He ordered another drink and began talking to himself out loud.

“Shaddup!” someone said.

He went to the washroom and doused his face with cold water. He felt better. His reflection in the mirror glared redly back at him. He cursed himself, then followed it up with a sly smile and went back for more beer.

An old man was sitting at the table he had just left. He was annoyed, but sat down anyway, putting his change on the table. The old man looked at the heap of silver acquisitively, then went back to his dreams.

He had met Marie three years before, and loved her from the first moment they had met. Marie didn’t take to him at first. He was far too moody, she said. But after a time she became accustomed to his shifting tempers and erratic habits. And he didn’t drink then.

He finally got the nerve to propose to her. She accepted, not too readily, but life took on a new meaning for him. He got a job with a small newspaper, bought a ring, got a job with a bigger paper, and things were just dandy.

Then he began to drink and talk to himself.

He was thrusting a finger at an imaginary Alec when he toppled a full glass of beer over the old man. The waiter came over and wiped up after him. The old man left, cursing him through toothless gums. He ordered another round, and found that he could just pay for it, with two dollars to spare. That would be for the cab. He was in no condition to walk very far, and street-car drivers can be sticky sometimes.

The waiter looked closely at him, decided that he had had too much to drink, and threw him out into the street. Jim fell and bruised his knee, but he couldn’t feel the pain. He picked himself up slowly and walked toward the cab stand.

He felt strong enough now to have it out with Marie. It was only when he was completely drunk that he could talk to her about things that really troubled him.

The cab driver was apprehensive, but took him in without asking him beforehand how much money he had.

He shuddered a little as he went through the front door. The house was dark, except for a light in the upstairs hall. He looked at his watch. Marie would still be up. He tip-toed up the red-carpeted stairway to her room. He hesitated, his heart pounding, opened the door and went in to the room.

It was dark.

“Marie...” he said quietly.

There was a shuffling sound from the bed.

“Don’t say anything, Marie... I’m sorry,” he said as he searched for the fight.

He wondered how he would break it to her. His hand closed around the account card in his pocket.

“I’ve done it, Marie...” he said joyfully. “I’ve made the last payment!”

“Get him out of here, for god’s sake,” a man’s voice said.

Jim’s heart sank. She was at it again, he thought, and turned for the door.

“Come back in an hour, Jimmy,” she was saying as he went out.

Heinrich Fischer glanced into the window of the delicatessen and gasped. There, behind the hanging rows of meat-stuffed intestines and sausage, like prison bars, appeared a face. Bloated, smooth, full-lipped, innocent looking... it was Haller.

He was a man distinguished only by his plainness, thin almost to emaciation, jostled along by the last-minute stampede of Christmas shoppers. Stringy arms clutched a battered, handleless violin case against his chest. He came up out of the subway in the West Side tenement section. It was snowing. It had been snowing all day and the slush was heaped in dirty mounds on the pavement.

In the middle of a long block he stopped, waited for a break in the traffic, and crossed. He hissed at a growling dog that darted out to snap at his heels. He did not like dogs. They were vile things that ate perfectly good food without so much as a snicker of appreciation.

He stared down at the pounded slush as he walked, chin thrust forward, shoulders stooped from too many years of sleeping in a cramped wooden cubicle. In front of Liebermann’s Delicatessen and Grocery he stopped again. He stood on the patch of wet sidewalk under the awning where the snow hadn’t reached and examined the merchandise in the window. It was a ritual with him. He had stopped in front of Liebermann’s on nearly every week-night for the past fifteen years. Tonight there was a new display; shiny tins of potted meat and Christmas cakes from the Old Country. He thought briefly about buying one of the tins of meat but changed his mind. The price, scribbled on a sign atop the pyramid Liebermann had painstakingly built in the window, was exorbitant. There was no money to spare. It was always this way at Christmas. Nobody wanted music lessons. After the holidays, when the children had new instruments, things would be better.

He stamped the loose snow from his shoes. Perhaps some sausage. He could afford that. His gaze shifted to the rows of meat-stuffed intestines hung from bloody hooks in the ceiling. Something happened. In his mind the sausages suddenly became metal bars, partially obscuring a bloated face, smooth and perspiring with a full-lipped pink mouth, innocent looking, smiling.

He felt a cold twist in his heart. A quick squeeze. He did not understand. The hated image had never come on him in just this way. Never so suddenly. He closed his eyes.

It was Haller’s face.

The image, like a searing knife-blade in the brain, branded there the washed-out blue eyes and mocking smile and sensuous lips. For a moment he stood there, fighting the rising tide of hate that for so long had eaten away at his mind, blotting out everything else. Things would be different if he could forget. But he could not. He swallowed, his mind burning as the familiar features wavered and changed shape before him, becoming a series of jagged slashes inflicted by an imaginary knife until the red gore ran together into one sickly wound that trickled blood down inside his pounding chest.

A man lurched out of the doorway, jostled him, his galoshes leaving a trail of dark pockmarks as he trudged off through the snow. The thin man opened his eyes. He blinked. The image was gone, replaced by the reflection of his own vacant face, the weak chin and thin lips a pale smear against the dark upturned collar of his coat. He stared at the reflection, feeling sorry for himself. The odor of fresh-baked bread lingered in his nostrils. He hugged the violin case closer to his chest, sneezed, dropped his gaze to the fingerless left hand protruding from a threadbare sleeve.

With a barely discernable shrug, he turned, choking back the bitterness in him as he trudged two more blocks on Sixth Street to his room.

“Anton,” Mrs. Kopping said. “I want to reward you for your years of faithful service.” Then she told him where she’d hidden his wife’s body.

Anton Vandrak groveled in the dirt, literally and figuratively. And he cursed the day and the hour and the woman that had brought him to this place.

He halted his toil, sitting back on his heels, resting his agonied back, wiping perspiration from his face with both grimy sleeves. He surveyed his handiwork, not with pride, only with hatred and bitterness.

“I want a rose-bordered driveway,” Mrs. Harriet Kopping had decreed. “All the way from the gate, right up to the verandah, and around the circle. And all red roses, mind you, Anton. I want a solid wall of red roses on both sides of the drive. I’m going to give my house a new name, Rose Hill.”

He had groaned inwardly when he’d received the command. It was almost three hundred feet from the front gate at the street up to the house. Adding the keyhole circle, and figuring the bushes at four feet apart, it meant a hundred and sixty plants. A hundred and sixty holes to dig!

But he hadn’t grumbled aloud to Mrs. Kopping. He’d saved his resentment for Stella, when they were alone together in their apartment behind the kitchen area.

“A hundred and sixty holes to dig!” he’d shrieked at her.

“Sh!” Stella had said. “Mrs. Kopping will hear you.”

“Well, let her hear me.”

“Do you want to lose us our jobs?”

“Yes, I’d like to lose this job of mine, or it’ll be the death of me.”

Stella had turned on him then, with the kind of quick fury she could manage so easily. “Now don’t start complaining about your back. When I have this whole house to care for, and the cooking besides, and when all you have to do is to keep the outside neat...”

“Nine acres!”

“When you were farming, you had eighty.”

“I was a young man then.”

“But you had an old back right from the beginning. It was your poor suffering back that lost us the farm. Well, it won’t lose us this job. Now get your lazy carcass out there and dig.”

He had obeyed her, because at the time he had been able to think of no other alternative. He had gone out in the fresh dew of the morning with spade and fork. The truck from the nursery met him and deposited forty rose bushes, balled and sacked and ready for planting, on the lawn.

“I’ve ordered forty delivered each morning for four mornings,” Mrs. Kopping had said. “I expect you to complete the job in four days, Anton.”

And now it was the end of the first day. And more than a fourth of the job was finished. He’d not only dug forty holes, but he’d cultivated the earth so that now, along the whole left side of the drive, was a neat strip of freshly turned soil. For a hundred and sixty feet of that strip, and regularly at four-foot intervals beginning at the gate, the bare, thorny stumps of young rose bushes jutted out of their newly dug bed.

But his poor back was on fire. Punished muscles and nerves were in open, savage rebellion. As he struggled to rise from his knees, to straighten his curving spine, fresh waves of pain engulfed him with each movement. But because he wanted to walk, rather than crawl, he persisted till he got himself erect. And then the sweat on his brow was the cold kind, clammy, chilling, unpleasant, unlike the honest sweat of toil.

He began trudging up the drive past the already long line of bushes. And looking up, he saw what he knew he would see — Mrs. Kopping, sitting at a window watching him.

He had expected to see her there, because she almost always watched him, changing windows as he went from one side of the house to the other, or from front to back. She spent some time, of course, overseeing the management of the interior of the big white house. But she never read or watched television. She was just one of those old women whose greatest pleasure seems to come from looking out of windows. And her eyes were sharp. Anton Vandrak knew that she had personally checked his procedure on every one of those forty rose bushes.

Now as he looked up to meet her gaze, he saw her white head nod. That meant approval. He had done well, she was telling him. He could keep his job therefore, and for the next three days he could perform just exactly as he had performed today!

Curse her, he thought, and he lowered his eyes so that she might not detect the hatred in his face. Curse her! I don’t believe she is interested in roses or any of the other things I plant, or water, or trim. She’s interested only in having some human being cavorting out here for her entertainment and pleasure, doing something not because it needs to be done, but simply because she has ordered it done.

He hurried as fast as he could to get out of her sight. When he reached their quarters, Stella wasn’t there. She’d be putting Mrs. Kopping’s dinner on the table, so the mistress of the house could dine precisely at six. It didn’t matter when the people who’d actually been working got fed.

But this night he wouldn’t bother to complain. He was too weary, too full of pains, to want to eat anyway. He stretched wearily on his bed. I am tired, he thought, and will need to sleep tonight, but how can I sleep with these horrible aches in my back?

But without sleep — his thoughts continued — how can I put forty more rose bushes in the ground tomorrow? Then at the prospect of tomorrow his mind rebelled. No, he simply could not go on as he’d done today. No matter what the consequences, that was his decision.

He was still lying there about eight when Stella returned. “Mrs. Kopping is very pleased with the work you did today,” she said.

“I’m glad,” he said, “because it’s the last work I’ll do for her.” Stella came to the bed and glared down at him. She was getting fat, he noticed suddenly, but without great interest. Her face, always round and plain, was even rounder than it used to be. Life in the Kopping house somehow agreed with her.

“You’re talking nonsense,” she said. “If Mrs. Kopping wants roses, you’ll plant roses.”

“I am not taking orders from Mrs. Kopping any more.”

Stella hesitated for just a moment, perhaps shocked. But she rallied quickly. “What do you mean by that?”

“I am quitting this job. I am leaving this place.”

“Oh no...”

“Oh yes, Stella. Don’t argue. I’ve already decided. If I cannot get another job somewhere... an easier job... then that will have to be. If you are afraid what will become of us, you can stay here.”

She answered him with an obvious lack of wifely affection. “I wouldn’t mind that a bit, staying here and sending you off. But she wouldn’t let me do it. She wants a couple to run the place, and if you’d leave she’d find another couple, and I’d be out in the cold. So it’s either both of us or none of us, my lad, and we’ll have to stick together.”

“All I know is,” Anton said with great fatigue, “I am leaving. It’s been a soft life for you here, Stella. In the house all day, with all the new machines to help you. You’ve gotten fat with it. But I’ve worked hard... too hard. And today was the last.”

That was when her quick temper broke loose. First she hurled imprecations at him, all the unpleasant names she could put her tongue to. Then she hurled her person, fists flailing, nails clawing. And when he had managed to fling her off, she used the last weapon in her arsenal — the threat.

“I’ll have the police after you. It’s against the law in this country for a man to leave his wife and not support her...”

He was no expert on what the law did or didn’t say. But he caught the menace in Stella’s tone, and it made him pause. This sign of weakness only encouraged her.

“And if you think you can run away and hide somewhere, Anton, you’re mistaken. You’ve talked of leaving before, and once I told Mrs. Kopping about it. And do you know what she said? She said a man’s a dog who’d run away and leave his wife. And she’d spend her own money to hire detectives to go out and look for you. And when they found you, you’d be clapped in jail where you belong...”

Anton Vandrak was by nature a mild-mannered man, a man of the soil, patient, plodding, humble, not given to rebellion or violence. But Stella’s revelation goaded him to a sudden, white-hot fury.

That his wife should have discussed him with another woman... that they had understood his anguish and his desires... but should have plotted together to thwart him... to keep him in slavery here...

Such was the blinding power of his anger that he forgot his weariness and the pains in his back. But even in his righteous wrath, he at first intended only escape. He lurched to his feet and made for the door. “I am going now,” he said.

But Stella was fully as angry and desperate as he. She interrupted him, grabbing at his clothes, screaming repetitions of her threat into his ear.

Stung, hounded, beseiged, Anton Vandrak reacted with primitive passion. This time he did not merely try to fling her off. Rather, he counter-attacked. His muscular arms, the arms of a man who had labored physically all his life, turned aside her blows. His powerful hands, unwashed and ingrained with the dirt of decades, went by instinct to the most fatal area, Stella’s throat.

Possibly she managed one shriek of terror, but if so, it was lost amid the other sounds she was already making. And Anton’s great hands immediately choked off her breath. Now that he had her in this deadly grip, now that he held this ultimate power over her, all his hatred burst, as it were, from its containment deep in his heart and coursed through all his veins, screaming for vengeance down to the tips of his fingers.

He knew what he was doing. He knew the facts of life and death well enough to realize what was meant when her face grew red, then purple, when her eyes bulged out of her fat face, when her speechless tongue groped out to lap up air that couldn’t be swallowed. He knew that he was killing her, and he wanted to do it.

Then, when it was over and he let her body fall out of his grip, he knew that she was dead, without having to feel for a pulse or listen for a heart beat. He simply stepped over the corpse, went back to his bed, and lay down for a few moments. For a man already tired from a hard day’s work, it had been a strength-sapping task, choking Stella. For her neck had been fat and her ample lungs had contained a large supply of reserve air. So the strangling had taken some time.

But as he lay there, his mind was active. More active than it had been for years. Not since he’d had the farm, with all its responsibility of figuring how to battle enemies like weather, insects, crop diseases — had his mind been prodded to such activity as this.

He had a new enemy now, and he was aware of it. Stella had said there were laws against a man’s leaving his wife. He knew that there were also laws, sterner laws, against a man’s killing his wife. And he knew that the law does not forgive or forget.

He did not want to go to prison or to give his own life for killing Stella. What would he have accomplished, only to have exchanged this prison for another? No, he wanted to gain something, to be ahead in the long run.

Go back to the farm maybe. He was a practical man. It had always made more sense to him to grow wheat rather than roses. And with the machinery one can use on a farm, perhaps he could work without straining his back. Yes, to be a farmer, not a gardener, that would be progress, a step ahead. And this time without having to provide for Stella.

Only he was not yet free of the burden. Stella’s presence, her voice, her appetite, her nasty humor — they were gone, to be sure. But her body remained, still a burden to him. He wouldn’t be free till he’d rid himself of that last part of Stella.

He thought, and the solution came quickly and easily. If there was no body, there was no murder.

He raised himself from the bed, his weariness suddenly gone. It wasn’t yet nine, and he couldn’t be sure that Mrs. Kopping would be in bed till ten at least. But there was other work to be done in the meantime.

He spent the next two hours packing the pair of suitcases and the trunk that he and Stella had come to this place with. The trunk could be sent for later. He filled it, locked it, and left it sitting in a corner. He put into one suitcase things he might need immediately, and into the other, similar things for Stella. He felt he was shrewd in this... just in case someone might search those suitcases.

By ten-thirty he had erased from the two little rooms all evidence of his and Stella’s occupancy. Then he turned out the lights, lifted Stella’s body to his shoulder. She’d been getting fat, but she’d been a short woman. With his mind ecstatic in his new freedom, his back did not complain of the weight.

He carried her down the drive to the last bush he’d planted that afternoon. He was forty-five years old. Four... five. He would bury Stella between the fourth and fifth rose bushes.

He was glad now that the earth was already turned over. And the well-kept soil was soft and grainy, not hard-packed. It was a matter only of minutes to dig the grave. Three feet by three feet. Curled up on her right side, Stella fitted into it neatly.

He did not stop for any formal leave-taking. He covered her up, replaced the tools, and went calmly to bed.

“Money talks,” said Cummins. “A man will do anything if the price is right... even kill.”

“So this is it,” said Sam Tuttle, the public-relations man, casting diagnostic eyes over the development. From the road off which Cummins’ car was parked they had walked about a half-mile into the property. “This is the dream stuff you want me to tout. A piece of Florida at a low, low price. Anybody can afford to be a landowner now. Take that first step towards independence and retirement. What’s wrong with the deal, Sheldon? What’s your gimmick?”

The unassailable dignity of Sheldon Cummins’ square cut face did not change, but he attempted no pretense with Tuttle; Tuttle had worked for him before. He merely replied, “That concern you, Sam?”

“It does. I’d like to know what kind of trouble I might get into.”

“It’s not too bad. Not bad at all. Nice-looking property, wouldn’t you say? I’ve got roughly two thousand acres in here, mostly level, crossed by babbling brooks, dotted with charming little ponds, off a good U.S. highway, a short ride to beaches, resort areas, shopping towns and industry. Ideal location and a clear title; every buyer gets an ironclad deed. Minimum plot is one-eighth acre. Streets, as you see, are marked out.”

Tuttle bent his head to let some of the rain water spill from his hat brim. For several days the weather had been unsettled, vacillating between fine drizzles and heavy downpours. The rain was falling harder now. Still fairly dry in their raincoats, the two men stepped beneath the shelter of a tree. Tuttle glanced at the occasional rough signs projecting from the brush and tall grass. The closest sign read, “Beachcomber Drive.”

“Picturesque,” observed Tuttle. “Who wouldn’t want to live on that street. You going to actually build the streets, Sheldon?”

“Hell, no. I’ve had them surveyed and marked. That’s it.”

“Maybe someday the town that collects the taxes will build them, eh? Maybe someday next century, after a fat assessment. But meanwhile the streets are neatly drawn on your plot maps. Let the buyer beware. Well, that doesn’t throw me, Sheldon, but I think there’s more to your gimmick than that.”

“Why so?”

“I look at it like this,” said Tuttle. “Here’s two thousand acres of good-looking land in one of Florida’s more desirable locations. Empty. No buildings, no improvements on it. There are a lot of legitimate real estate developers in Florida — if you’ll pardon the distinction. Some of them sell mail-order. But none of them have touched this parcel, and they haven’t just overlooked it. You picked it up for next to nothing, if I guess right. Something’s extra special wrong about this land. What is it?”

Cummins looked at Tuttle, his thick eyebrows crawling a little closer to each other, like caterpillars. It wasn’t Tuttle’s curiosity he disliked as much as his attitude. He never had liked Tuttle, he remembered. For an instant he toyed with the idea of booting Tuttle off his property, but his keenly developed acumen as to his own self-interests stopped him. He needed the younger man right now. He needed favorable publicity. He didn’t know another public-relations man as competent and as unscrupulous as Tuttle, and anyone who would take on this job would have to be unscrupulous.

There was a lot of money involved here. This was the biggest operation he had ever promoted — by far. It was so big that it frightened him. No one would guess that under his distinguished front beat a frightened heart, but it was true. He was far out of his league — and alone. He didn’t think there was anything as lonely as manipulating a million dollar operation by yourself. Or as worrying.

How he worried! He’d worried every step of the way, over even the smallest decision, over every cent he’d put out. It would be a miracle if he came out of this without an ulcer.

But if things worked out he’d be a millionaire, actually a millionaire. The stake was worth the grief. If things went wrong, he was through. Everything he had and could raise was in this venture.

He said, “Sam, it’s been raining a while now. Look there, at that wash coming along that little gully. Look beyond it, there’s another one, and another one. Look there, at that brook. Notice how wide and rapid it’s become? This is a flood basin, Sam.”

Tuttle nodded comprehendingly. “Thought it was something like that.”

“Ninety-five percent of the year this area’s all right. The rest of the time it’s flooded. You can’t put a house on this property. The rains hit the hills, miles of them, and they all drain into this basin. Looks like Niagara Falls when the run-off is heavy. Flash floods hit every now and then.”

Tuttle swivelled to face Cummins. “Hadn’t we better get out of here then? I’ve read about these flash floods. Read where only a little while back a fellow in a car was swept off a road and drowned.”

“Relax,” said Cummins. “I know this property. There’s a little ridge crossing it from the road, no more than fifty feet wide at best. It’s the only ground that never gets flooded. You could hardly tell, but we’re standing on it now. We’re safe enough. There’s even an old shack the surveyors have been using not far along the ridge.”

“All right.” Tuttle’s sharp face went thoughtful. “So what are you asking for one of your damp-dry eighth-acre plots?”

“One hundred dollars.”

Tuttle nodded. “Doesn’t sound like much. Let’s see, two-thousand acres at eight-hundred an acre...” He whistled softly. “Better than a million and a half dollars!”

“Don’t forget the streets, Sam.”

“O.K. Subtract the streets. Subtract your land investment and all your expenses. Subtract say two-hundred thousand give or take fifty all told. You’re still way over a million.”

Cummins said, “And capital gains taxes?”

“You ought to still clear over a million.”

Cummins again repressed his irritation with Tuttle. He lit a cigar. “You through figuring my deal, Sam?”

“Yes, I’m through. And in answer to your implied question, yes I’m interested. I don’t foresee trouble. It’s not too much of a swindle.”

“No swindle, Sam,” said Cummins slowly. “The customer gets the land. Maybe it’s a little shock when he finds out he can’t build on it, but he still owns the land. He’s only put a hundred dollars in it. He can pitch a tent in nice weather and go hunting or fishing. He can talk about his Florida property. Maybe some day a flood-control job will happen around here, and then the property will really be valuable.”

Tuttle snorted. “Flood control! I wouldn’t want to hold my breath until. But it’s not too bad a swindle, Sheldon. What do you want me to do?”

The rain turned abruptly into a heavy cascade that gushed through the foliage that had been sheltering them. “We’ll be drenched!” yelled Tuttle. “Let’s get back to the car.”

“Too far in this rain. The shack’s a lot closer. Come on.”

The two men pounded along the ridge, the hissing torrent driving through their rain-coats in seconds. The shack showed up, and Cummins fiddled with the lock and they burst in.

The shack had once been used as a dwelling and contained several rooms in one of which the surveyors had stored some equipment. The floors sagged and were covered with dust, dried mud and woods debris, and the walls leaned, but the roof still managed to shed water, and the men took off their wet coats and hung them on a couple of the nails that bristled from the walls. They were silent a while, listening to the fury of the downpour, strumming on the roof shingles as it swept across, slapping at the crusted window panes and leaving flowing streams of water that obscured the outside.

“We’re liable to see some flooding before this is over,” said Cummins. “But, to go on with our business, all I want from you, Sam, is a good press, and I mean nationwide. Most of this land is going to be sold mail-order. Sure, some buyers will come in person, but the odds are they’ll see the property at its best, and for a hundred dollar investment they won’t be doing much investigating. Mainly, it’s the advertising campaign that’ll be doing the selling, so it’s got to be topflight, and believe me, it is. It’s wrapped up now, all set to go, waiting for the word from me. We ran a couple of test ads, and the percentage was pretty.

“But advertising needs support to gain public confidence. You know how it is, Mr. Doakes reads our ad and sits there dreaming how phenomenal the offer is, if he could believe it. Then he starts forgetting it, and turns some pages, and surprise, right before his eyes is a dignified little news article on our beautiful development. That does it. Doakes has learned to trust us. He digs for his money. That’s where you come in, Sam. I want those dignified little articles.”

“Can do,” said Tuttle. “How much?”

“Five thousand now, two payments of ten thousand each as the work progresses.”

“Not enough.” Tuttle’s reaction was automatic. “That’s only twenty-five thousand. I’ll take fifty.”

Cummins glared. “Don’t try to hold me up, Tuttle. The job’s not worth that much. It’s no sweat for you and I know it. I’m offering you more than enough.”

“A job with a smell costs more. Let’s hear another offer.”

Cummins resentment began to boil. Tuttle was a nasty little profiteer and a wise-guy to boot. If there were any handy alternative he’d tell him off. He needed Tuttle all right, but he didn’t appreciate being black-jacked, and maybe someday he could return the favor. Meanwhile, he forced himself to dissemble.

The bickering went on, seeming as endless almost as the hard driving rain, but at last they agreed on a figure of thirty-seven thousand. When it was settled, they grew impatient to get back to Cummins’ car, but the rain refused to let up, so they waited, until finally there came an abrupt cessation of its violence. Through the windows they saw the sky lighten a very little, and the sound outside changed to a delicate unsteady patter. They were donning their raincoats when the new sound began.

“My God!” said Tuttle. “What’s that?”

It was a far-off roar that rushed rapidly and irresistibly, swelling as it came until it had grown to a frightening thunder that seemed to submerge and surround them, holding interminably, finally to lessen to a huge rustling.

Cummins watched Tuttle’s paling face maliciously. He didn’t feel too comfortable himself, but it was good to watch the man fighting against panic. “Flash flood,” he explained at last.

“Well then, let’s get the hell out of here! What are we waiting for?”

“According to my information this ridge has never been under water. This shack’s been standing here a good fifty years, so we should be all right. Let’s take a look.”

The men went out, took a few steps and halted. The narrow strip of dry land which was the ridge still meandered before them, but everything else on either side was under water. It was as though they were standing within a restless lake across the surface of which white, foaming streams still rushed down from the heights.

“My God,” repeated Tuttle. “And this is what you’re selling! What makes it come so fast?”

“Same principle as a rolling snowball. Water flows together as it descends from a thousand different sources.” Cummins headed back along the ridge, but unhurriedly, aware that Tuttle was still afraid, savoring and prolonging Tuttle’s fear. Tuttle could not give up his dignity and run; he had to stick with this pace.

Therefore it was quite some time before the two men reached a view of what had happened out on the water.

Cummins saw it first, his suddenly rigid back bringing Tuttle to his side. Cummins’ immediate reaction was that of a surprised bystander, but then the implications grew clear and a sick feeling pushed into his middle. Why? he thought. Why right now?

“Looks like kids!” Tuttle was shouting in his ear. “Two boys.”

The figures stood a couple of hundred feet across the turbulent water on what had been a knoll, except that it was now about a foot under. The water raced and splashed over the boys’ knees as they hung on to some brush. They began waving and calling frantically at sight of the men.

“How soon’ll the water go down?” yelled Tuttle.

Cummins looked at him grimly, and pointed at the white streams still roaming over the lake, breaking into spray where they divided around the trees that rose from the flood. “Still going up.”

“The kids will drown. We’ve got to get help.”

Cummins grabbed Tuttle’s arm. The blind fool, he thought. Doesn’t he understand? “No time. It’s up to us. The surveyors keep some line in the shack. Let’s get it.” He turned and ran heavily, aware that after a pause Tuttle followed.

When the line was secured and fastened to a tree at a point opposite the marooned boys, Cummins rapidly stripped. Tuttle eyed him with a peculiar expression. “You really going in, Sheldon?”

“What the hell does it look like?”

“I take my hat off to you. I didn’t think you had it in you. I wouldn’t step into that torrent for anything.”

Cummins looped the line around his waist and ungracefully splashed into the flood. He gasped at the cold shock and struck into the turbulence. His muscles felt the strain at once and water surged into his nostrils. He was only a fair swimmer and he was too heavy but he forced his arms alternately ahead with savage persistence until it seemed that he had been swimming a very long time. Then he looked up and was stunned to discover that he had lost ground. The travelling water had moved him below the boys, although he was some distance from the ridge.

Cursing his stupidity in not allowing for the flow, he turned back, gained the ridge and flopped upon the ground, gasping, waiting until his breathing had slowed, paying no attention to Tuttle’s talk.

When he was ready he plunged in again a good distance above his first position. He noted that the boys were now submerged almost to their waists. He had to get them out on this try.

He swam powerfully, but tried to avoid haste, to conserve his strength. Soon his eyes lost all sight but that of the plunging water which struck at his face. There was no sound in his ears but the rushing and roaring of water.

While his body fought for its life, steadily losing power against the tireless water, his mind grew curiously calm and detached, as though this diminished world in which he struggled could make no demands upon it. Was he being a fool, he wondered? His mind deliberately weighed this, while he admired the clarity of his thinking. He had come to the fork in the road, his mind told him. He had rejected the easy path that led to — nothing. It was now all out, and nothing suffered to block him, even the risk of his own life. He was not being a fool.

Now it seemed impossible that he could lift each arm one more time. He was out past the edge of endurance, almost past the edge of consciousness, but the thought held fast: those kids must not drown.

He made it, of course, that single-minded purpose driving him to his object. After he dropped his feet onto the knoll, he fastened the line to the sturdiest and highest limbs he could find among the brush, praying that it would hold. He sized up the kids quickly and sent the larger and huskier of the two back along the line by himself.

He waited until he was sure the kid was making it, then started the other one off, staying right with him. Twice the force of the water began to tear the boy off the rope, but Cummins grabbed him and held him, bulling him along until he regained his grip.

“Why, you’re a hero, a blasted hero,” Tuttle told him when the boys were safe on the ridge, sitting huddled together, resting. “That was a fine thing to do, Sheldon.”

Cummins regarded him contemptuously, and swivelled his head to make sure the boys were out of hearing range. “Save your praise, Sam,” he said. “I did it for only one reason — a million dollars.”

“Clear that up, will you.”

“You slipping, Sam? You can’t be that dense. Suppose the two little punks drowned on my property. That’s news, isn’t it? Headline news a lot of places. The national papers would carry something on it. Florida Flash Flood Drowns Two Youngsters in Real Estate Development. I might as well fold up and steal away after that. Nobody would pay a dime for this property. You don’t think I want to spend my declining years selling insurance, do you?”

Tuttle bowed satirically. “Forgive me for misjudging you. Ever the promoter, eh Sheldon? As a public relations man the aspect you mention should have occurred to me, but I was too concerned about the boys’ danger. Foolish of me. I must he, as you say, slipping.”

“Now, this way,” went on Cummins, “it doesn’t matter too much if the boys chatter about what happened. A close shave is hardly news. Oh, it might make a local paper or two, but that’s about all. The kids are alive, that’s the main thing. Corpses we don’t need around here.”

“I admire your logic,” said Tuttle. He glanced at Cummins meditatively. “You’d do anything for money, wouldn’t you, Sheldon?”

“For enough money. Like anybody else. Don’t you go superior on me, Sam, we’re all the same, all of us humans. The only difference is the price. Everybody has their price, five hundred, five thousand or five million. For me a million does it. I’d do anything for a million. You didn’t jump in after those boys because there was only thirty-five thousand in it for you. Not enough.”

“Plus the fact that I can’t swim.”

The rain began to patter down more strongly again, and Cummins looked worriedly over at the boys. Couldn’t have them contracting pneumonia either; had to get them under shelter. They’d return to the shack.

When they were all inside the old building, Cummins regarded the youngsters keenly. They seemed to be about fifteen or sixteen years old, neither too well built although one was slightly taller. The taller one had a broad jaw, open blue eyes and freckles. The other was spindly looking with sharp features and a narrow head and a weak button of a chin. His eyes seemed perpetually half-closed and flat.

“We want to thank you again for pulling us out of there, Mister,” said the spindly one. He said it reluctantly, as though grudging the necessity.

“That’s all right, that’s all right,” returned Cummins genially. “As long as you kids are safe. Where you from?”

“New York.” The boy pulled up a leg of his worn jeans and scratched casually.

“New York. That’s a long way off. What are you doing all the way down here?”

“Seeing the country.”

“Where are your folks?”

The boy jerked a thumb at his companion. “Joe there, he doesn’t have any. Mine arc still in New York, I guess.”

“You guess? What did you do, run away?”

The boy shrugged. “Nothing to run away from. The old man’s a booze hound. My old lady, well let’s forget her. They ain’t missing me.”

“What’s your name?”

The boy’s grin was almost a snarl. “Elias. Elias Smith. That’s Joe Jones over there.”

“Oh, come on!”

The boy nodded his head vigorously, grinning. “Sure, that’s us. Smith and Jones. Jones and Smith,” He laughed.

“Now don’t get smart,” said Cummins heavily. “What were you doing on this property?”

“Sight-seeing.”

“I’m losing my patience,” said Cummins.

“Well, for Chris-sake, what do you want, a big fancy story? We turned in off the road to sleep last night, that’s all. Say what are you, a cop or somethin’, Mister?”

“No, I’m not a cop, I’d just like to know.”

“Hey, he’s just nosy,” said the other boy.

The spindly one cackled. “Sure, nosy. So this is what happened, nosy. We couldn’t stay dry account of the rain, so in the morning we walked in a ways looking for a better spot. We found one and settled down and all of a sudden there was this wall of water, looked about ten foot high coming down on us. Joe and me, we got to that little hill. The other guy didn’t make it.”

The silence stretched while Cummins absorbed the words. “What other guy?” he asked slowly, at last.

“The other guy, the other guy. Herb, the other buddy. The water caught him.”

“There were three of you? You’re telling me that there were three of you?”

The boy appealed to Tuttle. “Hey, has this lad got all his marbles? Ain’t I just finished tellin’ him there was another guy?”

Suddenly Cummins struck the boy a back-handed blow across the cheek that sent him sprawling. “Enough of your sass. Talk straight, now. What happened to the third boy?”

The boy who called himself Smith lay on the floor as he had fallen, his eyes growing flatter and more heavy-lidded. He did not appear otherwise angered or surprised at the blow; he appeared used to blows. He said softly, “I guess Herb got drowned. That straight enough for you? Anything else you want to know?”

This was too much, Cummins thought. After all he’d been through, to end up with a drowning on his hands was too much. “Let’s take a look around,” he said to Tuttle dully. “You boys wait. We’ll be back.”

The men walked the ridge carefully, not speaking, watching the water and the ragged water line along the ridge. After a while they came upon it, as Cummins had known they would. It was a soaked blob of denims, and when Cummins turned it over with his foot, there was the young drowned face.

“Pity,” said Tuttle.

“Yes, a pity,” said Cummins bitterly, not meaning it the same way.

After a silence, Tuttle said, “I guess this blows your million all right.”

Cummins was thinking hard. “I don’t think I’m through yet, Sam.” His mouth worked. “Suppose nobody finds out about this drowning?”

The two men stared at each other, each working out this line of thought in their own way.

“We bury the body in the muck,” Cummins went on. “It’ll never turn up. The kid was a nobody, like the other two. The chances are there’ll never be any inquiry made after the little bum. There isn’t anybody gives a damn about kids like these or knows where they are. So another drifter disappears.”

“You want me to keep quiet?”

“That’s right.”

“For a price?”

“That’s right. You got a price, Sam.”

Tuttle nodded. “Certainly I have. You know me that well, Sheldon. How much?”

“Seventy thousand.”

Tuttle whistled. “Just for keeping my mouth shut. Well, well. It’s tempting, but risky. What about the other two boys?”

“I admit that’s a weak point. I was thinking we could give them some money and a couple of tickets out of the state.”

Tuttle shook his head slowly. “Not good. They can talk wherever they are. Sooner or later those boys are going to run foul of the police. How do you know what they’ll say then? No, Sheldon, the story’s too apt to come out.”

Cummins looked at him broodingly.

“Count me out,” Tuttle said regretfully. “It’s a nice piece of change, but I don’t want to be accused of hiding a body. Besides, if the story came out it would really queer your little deal, wouldn’t it?”

“I agree with you, Sam,” Cummins said in a strained voice. “It won’t do. But there’s another way to make sure the boys won’t talk.”

Tuttle grinned. “Oh, sure, we can...” But then he saw Cummins’ eyes and the grin died.

“Yes,” said Cummins, “there’s another way.”

“Now don’t be fantastic, Sheldon.”

“Fantastic! I tell you, Sam, this means a million dollars to me. One million dollars! For that price I’ll do it.”

“Forget it, will you. You don’t think for one moment I’d go along?”

“You’ve got a price for this too, Sam.”

“Not for this.”

“Less than an hour’s work, Sam. Two lousy little bums. They’re no use to themselves or anybody else anyway. We’d be doing society a favor. We could plant the three of them so deep in the muck they might as well have vanished into thin air. Nobody’s going to bother wondering about them. Hell, they’d be dead right now if I hadn’t rescued them. So I made a mistake. I’ll just correct that mistake.”

“I wish you’d stop talking this way.”

“What’s the price, Sam? Two hundred thousand?”

“I admit I’ve pulled some shady stunts in my time,” said Tuttle, “but I stop short at murder, at any price. Now cut it out, Sheldon You’re not a murderer and you know it.”

“You’re absolutely right,” replied Cummins. “I have no desire to murder anybody. It makes me sick to think about it. But I’m telling you again, Sam, for this much money I’ll kill. How about three hundred thousand?”

“Look, Sheldon, why don’t you simmer down? Forget it, and I’ll see what I can do about squashing the story.”

Cummins shook his head. “There’s nothing you can do or you would have mentioned it before. A kid drowned in a flood in a big real estate development? That story won’t squash once it gets out. I’m convinced this is the only way. Don’t try holding me up, Sam, I’m warning you. I’ll go four hundred thousand and that’s my limit. Are you going to accept it?”

“No.”

“All right, Sam,” said Cummins softly. “I gave you your chance.” He raised his powerful hands and placed them on Tuttle’s throat. Tuttle tried to jerk back, but the hands tightened. “You’re crazy, Sheldon,” Tuttle yelled and swung his fist against Cummins’ head, but the blow seemed to make no impression.

Cummins began to squeeze, ignoring the man’s struggles, and slowly Tuttle sank to his knees and his back arched, so that Cummins had to bend over him while he squeezed. Cummins went to his own knees to ease the uncomfortable position. After a while he took his hands away and rose to his feet and Tuttle’s body collapsed on the ground.

It was the only solution, Cummins thought. It might be taking a chance, but he had chosen to go all out and he would have to accept the risk. He estimated that the odds were with him. Tuttle was a lone wolf, and since this job was on the shady side it was unlikely that he had discussed it with anyone. He had no car here; he had arrived by plane. It would simply be a case of a man disappearing, a man whose connection with himself would remain private. If ever questioned he would give the proper answers. It would occur to no one to search this property, and in any case, Tuttle’s body would never be found.

Next, the boys. Unfortunately, he had no weapon with him, but if necessary he would take care of them with his bare hands also. However, he seemed to remember something about the surveyors’ supplies. He knitted his brow, trying to visualize. Yes, he remembered. There was an axe.

He decided on his course of action. When he entered the shack he would walk casually to the storeroom and get the axe. They would be unsuspecting, so that he could kill at least one of them without a struggle. After that, the axe would make short work of the other, even if he tried to fight.

Cummins reached the shack, opened the door and stepped in.

The kids were sitting on the floor, backs against the wall. “Hey!” said the skinny one. “Look who’s here.” He rose, grinning sarcastically and sidled over to Cummins. “Where’s the other fellow?”

“He won’t be back,” Cummins said shortly. “Had some business.”

The last thing Cummins saw was the knife the kid pulled...

When the body was still the boy began going through the pockets. “I don’t know if you shudda knocked him off,” the taller boy said doubtfully.

“Why not? Looks well-heeled, don’t he?”

“Yeah, but after all he saved our hides.”

“Because he was a dope. If he wasn’t a dope he wouldn’t have got it now. That’s what I keep tellin’ you, don’t be a dope. He rubbed me the wrong way anyhow.” The boy came up with a fat wallet and cackled. He counted the money and looked up, his flat eyes taking on a glitter. “Two hundred and thirty-eight dollars,” he said, awe creeping into his voice. “It was worth knocking him off. Jeez, for that much money I’d knock off anybody.”

“Let them laugh,” he thought. “Let them laugh now, but they’ll be dead and I’ll be alive.” He dug furiously and each night his bomb shelter became deeper and- more impenetrable.

Ed Manson, the candlelight casting flickering shadows on his tousled, brown hair, listened to the sounds of many excited voices. They were the first voices he’d heard for two days and two nights.

“Ed, listen to me.” It was the irritated voice of Neil Nicholson. “Everything is o.k. Now, come out of there.” The voice was losing its patience, as it pleaded with the man in the dark, cellarlike room.

“Open the door, Mister Manson,” urged the quivering voice of the elderly spinster who lived two houses away.

His eyes formed narrow slits of distrust as he stared at the thin sheet of lead which covered the door leading from the house. There were, in addition to the indestructible-looking hasp and padlock, three formidable bars of steel spanning the door. This was the only entrance to the underground room.

He knew something like this would happen after an attack. They would all change into animals. They would try to break into his shelter — the only one on the block. Probably the only one within miles.

They would kill him for his uncontaminated food and water. That’s why he was ready for them.

“Who’s laughing now?” He demanded, semi-hysterically. “Let’s hear it! Aren’t you folks laughing anymore?”

“No, we’re not laughing, Ed.” Neil was the closest thing to a friend that he had. Neil was a foreman at the Magnesium Products Chemical factory a mile up the street. Ed dropped him off there every morning and picked him up on the way home. The Nicholsons had been his next-door neighbors for five years now. Being a single man, though, he’d never gotten too thick with them — he wasn’t too thick with anyone.

“Ed — you listening? The doctor is here.” Neil’s voice was different, somehow, as he tried to reason with his friend. “It wasn’t a bomb. It was an explosion at the lab. Now, open the door. We’re worried about you.”

Manson waved the high-powered rifle at the door as if they could see it. “Clear out! You’ll get no help from me,” he told them, bitterly. “You all had your chance — same as I did.”

He thought he could hear the shuffling of feet. Then the house above him was silent.

He stumbled away from the door and slumped on the cot. He tried the radio again — but only for an instant — until he remembered his stupidity.

Even with the sound-deadening bags of sand piled around the room, he felt the jar of a battering ram on the door. The cross-bars jiggled. The lead warped and buckled, ringing a short alarm.

He ran back to the door, cursing under his breath as he knocked over the ten-gallon pail which had taken the place of his toilet.

“Don’t do that again!” He shouted at them, desperately. “I’ve got a gun and I’ll start pumping bullets through the door.”

Neil laughed — a low, nervous laugh, barely loud enough to carry into the completely enclosed chamber.

“Take it easy, Ed old boy.” He talked as if to a child. “We’re just doing this for your own good.”

Ed could picture Neil shrugging his broad shoulders and turning up his palms as he lifted his arms to his sides. He could almost see the grin on Neil’s face — the same grin he had seen eight months ago.

Was it that long ago? It seemed like only last week that they were on their way to work when Ed disclosed his idea.

Neil had laughed, heartily. “A bomb shelter? You mean you’re going to build a shelter just because of that program on television?”

The literature from the local Civil Defense office had arrived two days later. It contained all the necessary instructions and plans.

Right from the time he began hauling in the lumber and bricks they laughed at him. At first, just giggles and amused expressions but later they laughed openly to his face.

There was no cellar or basement and he had decided on an underground shelter connected to the house. He also decided to build it himself.

He’d always been considered somewhat of an eccentric and now they were sure there was something strange about him as he dug in the yard until all hours of the night.

He seemed to work with a dreadful urgency. It took him nearly the whole summer to dig the gaping hole. It was a ten foot square and seven feet deep — as long as he was doing it he decided to make it comfortable.

He went a step farther than the pamphlets advised. After building up the eight-inch-thick concrete walls and ceiling he covered the interior with a thin layer of lead, after reading somewhere that it was an excellent shield against radiation.

Then against all the walls, piled to the ceiling, he placed sand bags. Covering one sand-bag-wall was a stack of shelves loaded with canned goods. Another smaller set of shelves was filled with books — he knew his worst enemy would be boredom.

By the time he completed the entrance from inside the house and attached the lead on the inside of the door the immediate usefulness of the shelter had become a foregone conclusion in the mind of Ed Manson. He read the ominous headlines and the pessimistic accounts of the disarmament talks. He saw right through the smoke-screen the Russians were sending up.

He read all the books on atomic warfare, particularly a prophetic novel about how atomic particles, after a nuclear war, were carried by the winds to every part of the earth. He believed the story. He was convinced of its inevitability!

By the time he had the walls of the room half-covered with sandbags his nightly sleep was already being interrupted by vividly horrible dreams of an atomic war.

By the time he had stocked the underground den of salvation with food enough for many months he found pangs of doomful premonition continually invading his innermost thoughts.

And indeed, by the time everything was in preparedness he found his mind saturated with visions of worldly disaster. Instead of a relaxing effect, the escape chamber had produced an everpresent aura of morbidity — a constant reminder that the earth was one large ball of atomic explosive with a short, highly inflammable fuse.

It happened on a Saturday night. He was in the living room, his head against the back of his chair, which faced away from the window. His eyes were closed. He was thinking about the bomb and its giant, ascending mushroom.

A loud thud in the distance! Then a rumble. The windows in the house shattered. He was lifted from the chair by a great, invisible hand.

He opened his eyes. The room was filled with brilliance.

Pure reflex action took over. He knew he musn’t turn and face the radiation. He ran from the room — through the kitchen to the door leading from the service porch, shielding his eyes as best he could.

He slammed the door behind him. Leaned against the cold metal for only a few seconds, his heart beating, wildly.

There was another explosion — more violent than the first. He felt the ground shake. He clutched at the door. He trembled in the darkness.

He stood, frozen, for what seemed like an hour. But only a minute passed.

His eyes were open but they saw nothing. Groping around in the dark his hands located the large candle. He was half-afraid to strike a match, convinced that the radiation had blinded him. But he felt no different — no burning sensations.

He struck a match and thanked God as the room lit up. He was alone with the slowly quivering flame.

The next explosion nearly toppled the book shelf. A horrible vision of the outside panic raced through his mind.

When everything was still again he went to the door, slid the steel bars over and fastened them in place. He pushed shut the padlock, sealing himself in and everyone else out. It served the stupid fools right — they’d been warned for years.

The portable radio failed to bring in the Konelrad stations — it was dead. He imagined things were pretty bad when there wasn’t even an emergency broadcast.

“How in the hell had they surprised us so?” He asked no one in particular.

The rest of the night was punctuated by wailing sirens, clanging bells, and the raucous blasts of frantic horns. At least there were other survivors.

Outwardly calm, he sealed off the major portion of his mind as he drank a cup of black coffee. It helped to loosen the lead-tight muscles of his stomach.

Surprisingly, he slept through the night.

The next morning he ate a hearty breakfast. He hadn’t depended on it but there was still gas coming through the pipes. He was supposed to have turned off the main valve — it was only one of the many things he had not done.

He spent the day reading and listening. It was much quieter than the night before.

The second night he spent in deathly silence, except for the steady ticking of the clock, which became unbearably loud.

He passed most of the next day reading Shakespeare.

If only he knew what was happening outside. He had never gotten around to installing some sort of radiation detector that would tell him when it was safe to leave the shelter. He had depended on the radio for instructions but he had also never gotten around to putting up an antenna.

Gotten around to it, hell! He told himself. He’d never even tried the radio until it was too late. The portable was useless to him.

It was a quarter past one in the afternoon when he heard the first sounds of the day from the “outside world.” Someone was walking around in his house.

He heard voices calling his name.

“He must be in the bomb shelter. We’ve looked everywhere else,” said Neil’s wife, concernedly.

There was pounding on the door.

He remained silent but alert, his mouth grimly taut but his eyes wide and alive.

“He must be in there. Maybe, he was injured from the explosion and he’s in there, unconscious. We’ll have to break down the door.”

“Stop!” Ed shouted. “Get away from the door and leave me alone.” He would kill every one of them before he’d ever open the door.

They were silent for a moment. “What on earth are you doing in there, Ed?”

“I’m trying to survive. That’s what I’m doing.”

“Survive what? You must have been in there for two days now. Nobody has seen you since the explosions.”

Ed’s laugh was wild. “Why do you think I built this thing? I was in here twenty seconds after the bomb went off.”

“Bomb? What bomb?” Neil’s short laugh caused Ed’s mind to leap forward to the present.

Neil was repeating, for the fifth time, “Those were explosions down at the lab.”

The battering started again.

Ed pulled the trigger of the rifle. He heard a woman scream, then the murmuring of voices.

“You’ve just killed old Miss Willowby, Ed. I don’t know what’s gotten into you.”

He looked at the gun. Dropped it to the floor. Stared at the hand which had fired the shots.

He shook his head, rubbed his eyes, blinked three times.

What had he done?

It was like awakening from a dream. Numbly, he made his way to the door, shoved the key into the lock — it snapped open with a loud click. He slid the bars to the side.

He started to pull the door back when it rushed at him. It knocked him backwards. He heard their low, gurgling mumbles as they rushed in.

He was half-way behind the door so they were able to pass him without trampling him to the floor. But he could see the horrible splotches and burns on their faces and arms. He could see the crazed expressions in their eyes — eyes which had seen unbelievable sights during the past two days.

He wondered how they’d been able to fool him so completely.

He wondered how they’d been able, in their condition, to think so clearly.

He wondered how long it would take for them to contaminate everything in the room; the food, the water... and him.

There were two down and one to go. The third was the big man, the master mind. I had to get to him in a hurry because there was a general alarm out on me... for murder.

I knew I was trapped the moment I looked out the window of my room. I recognized Monk’s car across the street, backing into a parking space only a few doors up from the hotel. I watched the car slide back to the curb, rock for a moment, then settled down. The front door opened and Monk stepped out. He looked down to the corner, then flashed a look up at my window. I knew he couldn’t see me behind the drape but I shrank back anyway. He walked across to the hotel entrance.

There was no use running for it now. If Monk would come in the front way like that it meant somebody else would be out back — waiting to gun me down like a scared rabbit if they could flush me from cover. These boys were top professionals, they played rough football, and they played for keeps. Well, so did we.

I swore to myself as I backed away from the window. This wasn’t the way I wanted it but now it couldn’t be helped. It had only taken me twenty minutes to tape the miniature microphone and recorder to my thighs and connect the fine wire to the switch to hide in my clothes, but that was twenty minutes too long. I finished dressing quickly — then slumped into the one stuffed chair in the room and leaned back as if I were dozing. The door was locked, but if Monk had a key he wouldn’t knock.

As I waited I wondered if it would have been better to duck right in and away — grab the transistor recorder and put it on somewhere else, instead of trying to do it here. Then I realized that it didn’t matter. Whoever was watching for me would have turned into a tail and followed me until he could reach Monk or one of the others and tell them where I was. This was quicker, it might even work out better. And I was all set now, or as set as I could be, with the little electronic ear all ready to go right to work. I slid my hand into my jacket pocket and turned the tiny switch on. Outside the door I heard the faint sound of a footstep on the soft carpet. I put my hands on the arms of the chair, in plain sight and palms down.

The doorknob turned silently, then it turned back when he found the door locked. A soft tap sounded.

“Huh? Yeah?” I grunted. “Who is it?”

“Telegram for you, Mr. Young.” The voice was much higher than Monk’s.

I almost laughed. One wrong move for Monk. He didn’t have two cents worth of imagination in his whole body. I was tempted to tell him to slide it under the door, but that would only delay things.

“Okay,” I called. “Right away.”

I shuffled over to the door noisily and turned the lock and pulled the door opened. I kept one hand high on the door and the other out front rubbing my eye.

“I wasn’t expecting a telegram from any...” I stopped talking and put the most surprised look on my face I could. “Monk! Am I glad to see you. Come on in.”

He was standing a little off to the right, his 38 automatic held up high in his left hand. It was aimed right at my heart. His face was set, his mouth grim, his eyes bird-bright.

“Monk, what is this?” I said. I thought my voice sounded surprised too.

“Shut up and get back in the room,” he growled.

I backed up fast, my hands still way out front. Monk followed me in and closed the door. Then he locked it carefully. He leaned against the bureau and motioned me into the chair I had just left.

“Now we can have a nice little talk without being disturbed,” he said. “Just sit there nice and quiet and answer my questions. Make one quick move and you’re a dead one. In fact, if you make a slow move you’re a dead one too. Understand?”

“Sure, Monk, sure,” I said. I tried to put a whine in my voice. “What’s this all about, anyway? Coming up here putting a gun on me — I thought I was supposed to be working for you.”

“Yeah, good buddy. I thought you were working for me too. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe you’re working for yourself, or for somebody besides me, or maybe you’re working against me, who knows? Now tell me just what happened this afternoon, right from the beginning. And the first time I catch you in a lie it’s just like you pull the trigger yourself. You don’t know just how much I know about what happened, so let’s have it, real straight.”

That’s where Monk was wrong. I knew more about every single move he’d made all afternoon than he did himself. In fact I think I knew more about Monk Saunders, past, present, and future, than he could ever know himself.

“Okay, okay, Monk,” I said. “You don’t have to wave that gun under my nose. I didn’t know how to get in touch with you or Larry, so I thought the best thing to do was come back here and wait in my room for you. I thought maybe you’d call and give me a meet. I stashed the stuff away so it’s safe. I don’t want any part of it, I just did what I thought was right, so help me, Monk.”

“What happened this afternoon?” Monk repeated. His voice was grim.

“Jeez, Monk, you were there. You know as much about it as I do. After I met you at the bridge we rode down in the subway to Radio City. The guy Pete who was supposed to show me which jeweler to go to sat across from me all the way down, reading a paper. I never even nodded to him. When he got off at 47th Street I followed him, just about ten feet behind, like you said. You saw us, you and Larry in the same car.”

“Yeah, I saw you all right in the subway, but what happened on the street?”

“I followed Pete up the subway steps to the street. Just as he got to the top two coppers grabbed him and pushed him into a cigar store. I had that bag full of stuff and it sure felt awfully heavy right then. I was sure they’d grab me too. There was nothing I could do but keep on going as fast as I could. I did. I figured you and Larry would be right behind me but when I looked for you at the next corner I couldn’t see either of you. I guess I panicked a little but I knew I had to get out of that neighborhood fast, so I just kept travelling until I came to Grand Central. Then I calmed down a bit and thought the best thing to do was stash that stuff someplace real quick.”

“Where is it?” Monk interrupted.

“I put it in a subway locker in Grand Central Station,” I told him. “It was the nearest and best and safest place I could think of. After all, I’m not used to carrying a load of hot jewelry around. Anything could happen, then you’d blame me.”

“Okay, buddy, let’s have the key.” Monk held out his free hand.

I swallowed hard. “Look, Monk, let me explain. These coppers scared me the way they grabbed Pete. As soon as I put the stuff in the locker I got a heavy brown envelope in a store there and mailed the key to myself here at the hotel. Nobody saw me, I’m sure of that. One night last week my parole officer was sitting right here in this room waiting for me to come in, and when I did he tossed me from head to foot. If he was waiting here tonight he’d do the same thing. I just didn’t want to take a single chance, that’s why I did it. The key will be here in the morning mail, Monk. You can stay right here with me and I’ll go down with you to get the stuff. That’s the truth, so help me.”

“Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,” Monk said. His mouth was still a thin line, his eyes still shiny-bright.

I could read a little relief there, when he heard the stuff was stashed someplace where he might get his hands on it again — the greed showed through.

I knew he’d never kill me until he had his hands on that haul again and right now I was his only chance of doing just that. If that did happen, and I knew it couldn’t, I’d never need my Blue Cross again, but might be able to use a clear title to a little plot in some graveyard.

“That’s a pretty good story,” Monk said slowly. “Trouble is, I don’t believe it. This whole deal today smells, and the more I figure it, the more I think it’s you that stinks.”

“Look, Monk, I did what I thought was right. I did just what you told me to. You got no right saying that to me.”

“I got right,” Monk said. He raised the .38 a little higher on me. “I got all the right I need. Me and Larry and the Boss talked a lot about you tonight, and none of it was good. We even figure you might be a stoolie.”

I half rose out of my chair, my face angry. “I’m no stoolie, Monk. If you didn’t have that gun on me I’d wrap your nose around your face for calling me that. If I was crossing you I could have grabbed a train in Grand Central and been on my way to Chicago with the stuff by now. But I come back here to wait for you to give you your lousy diamonds and you peg me as a stoolie. You and your friends are the ones who stink.”

“Shut up and sit down,” he growled.

I could see I’d scored heavily by the doubt and confusion in his face. Monk was badly rattled by everything that had happened today. He wasn’t a fast thinker and I wanted to keep him off balance.

“What you don’t know,” he continued, “is that when those cops grabbed Pete two young punks with copper written all over them tried to nail me and Larry at the same time. Only we saw them coming and took off real fast. Larry had to belt one of them to get away, but we made it. Then later we couldn’t figure out how come Pete was grabbed so nice and how they tried to grab me and Larry at just the same time. It looks too much like a finger job, and the only finger we can come up with is you. You walk clear away with our diamonds and nobody even looks at you. How come?”

“Are you blaming me because half the detectives in New York hang around the Jewelry Exchange? You paid me five hundred to cart that stuff around for you, just because you thought you might be picked up. You’re known jewel thieves — those coppers probably have your mugs framed on their desks, you know that — then you call me a stoolie. Drop dead!”

Monk’s head snapped up. I saw the red flush of anger creep up around his neck. His hand tightened on the gun. I knew I had gotten under his skin. My only hope was to make him angry enough to stop thinking.

“Too bad you said that, good buddy,” he rasped. “Something else you don’t know is that I saw one of those young coppers coming down on the train with us, so we’re pretty sure it was a finger job. And even Pete didn’t know where we had to meet you. So that leaves only you. Stand up, boy. Lock your hands behind you. I’ll teach you some manners. You ever been pistol-whipped?”

I hadn’t, but I’d seen some guys who had. Empty hulks with part of an ear gone, or their noses smashed in, or no cheekbone where cheekbones should be — and always something on the inside gone forever — walking dead men. Monk would have to kill me before he pistol-whipped me. I stood up shakily, a tight knot growing in my gut but ready for the coming battle. I backed slowly away from him.

“Get your hands behind your back,” he ordered. He came in at me very slowly, a mean smile playing at his lips.

I wasn’t afraid he’d shoot. I was his golden goose, or maybe diamond goose, and he wouldn’t cook me — yet. But that automatic looked awfully big in his mitt. He waved it from side to side like a knife man, always coming closer. He feinted once, but I saw it in his eyes a second before, then I knew a real one was coming.

He brought around a roundhouse, but I was able to roll with it. It caught me over the ear, stinging more than hurting, but I let out a loud groan to make him think I was hurt bad. I’d have t take two or three like that before I went for him. He telegraphed the next one and I rolled with it again and ducked sideways. That one wasn’t as bad, but I groaned louder.

“Shut up, stoolie,” he snarled.

He swung viciously again, but missed completely when I ducked way down. My hand touched something behind me and I knew I had a weapon. It was one of those big, square, glass ash trays, Woolworth’s best, and it weighed at least a half pound.

I had to get him crazy mad to get the gun away from him. “All right, Monk,” I yelled, “I tipped the cops, but I’ve got the diamonds. You can have them, but don’t hit me again! I can’t stand it!”

His face contorted, his eyes seemed to get red, but his greed won. He brought the gun back for a mighty roundhouse that would have clubbed me through the floor. I ducked down, grabbed the ash tray with my right hand and swung it around as hard as I could, right for his eyes. I let it go like a discus inches from his face, then crouched down, ready to spring for his gun hand.

He didn’t have a chance. It must have looked like a bomb to him. It caught him right under his left eye, a sharp corner gouging upward, then it broke against his face bones, the ragged edges cutting across his flesh like a cleaver. The gun flew out of his hand as he jerked his arm up. I dove for it. He stumbled backwards without a sound, blood spurting from his face. Then he fell back and his head cracked against the edge of the bureau, making an ominous, crunching sound. I thought I knew what that meant.

I had his gun in my hand as I went to look at him. His face was a mess, but not bad enough to kill him. But I knew he was dead. I felt the back of his head — it was as soft and pulpy as a rotten melon. I’d heard that same sound in Korea when a rifle butt crashed down on an unprotected skull. Monk had no more worries about his hot diamonds now. Or anything else. I laid his gun on top of the bureau, then felt in my pockets for the recorder switch and shut it off.

In a way I felt sorry for him. His temper had caused his death, just as it had caused most of his troubles in his life. Monk Saunders was probably the best safe man in the country, a sort of real life Jimmy Valentine. I don’t think the safe or vault was ever made that he couldn’t open, given enough time. He could almost make those hunks of steel talk for him. But his temper and the queer idea he had that he was a tough guy were his undoing. If he played it as a loner he could have opened up safes forever and lived like a prince on what he got out of them.

Monk and his two partners gave us a hard time over the years, that was for sure. I work for one of the biggest insurance companies in the business, and have the fancy title of Chief Investigator of Frauds, but I don’t mind that because the salary and extras are pretty fancy too. For the past five years I’ve been trying to nail these three guys — now there were only two of them.

The first time I ever saw Monk was three years ago, when I was stuck in the maximum security cell block in Sing Sing, just before he arrived. He’d been convicted of a felonious assault rap — his temper again. He’d been celebrating the success of a big job and got in a fight with a legitimate john in a bar and almost killed him. The john happened to have a cop friend right there with him, so Monk didn’t have a chance to beat that one. We were cell neighbors for a week then, until Monk moved on to his permanent jail, but we hardly noticed each other. He was up for parole a little sooner than expected, just a few weeks ago, and I’d been pulled off an investigation in Los Angeles and flown back in a jet to sit in the same cell Monk had seen me in three years before. Then we’d struck up a sort of acquaintance, an acquaintance that led to me being hired by Monk and getting into the enemy camp.

Monk never knew it, but all during those three years in the can he’d been like a bug on a slide with guys watching him and studying him. The insurance companies even had psychologists exercising with him in the prison yard to find out what made him tick. I read all the reports, that’s why I felt sorry for him.

His body was partly blocking the door, I tugged his legs out of the way so that I would be able to get out, then searched him quickly. He didn’t have much on him, but I did find a folded paper in his inside jacket pocket which made me whistle in surprise as I read it. It was a list of fifteen jewelry houses in the city — five or six I recognized as active fences — some of them big, respectable businesses, supposedly above suspicion. But I imagine if the stakes were high enough some of these guys would come down off their pedestals to do business with Monk.

I had no time now to stay and explain things to the Homicide boys, that would have to come later, if I got through with the rest of the night. I wasn’t worried about Monk’s friend outside, he would just be a hood to watch the back way out of the hotel — he wouldn’t even see me leave through the front. I unlocked the door and slipped into the hall, then walked down the one flight and through the lobby. My bill was paid a week in advance so I got a big, Good evening, Mr. Young, from the manager at the desk. When the cops came for Monk’s body that guy would hate me forever. The one thing no one could ever do was die in a hotel in New York, even a third-rate joint like this. It was the unforgivable sin.

In the street I decided to walk to a drugstore a block away to call my office. Among other things I had to start the wheels moving for Monk’s funeral, and I was anxious to get the latest reports on his partners.

I hadn’t gone thirty feet when two fellows stopped me. They looked like college kids. Anyone standing more than ten feet away would think they were just that and that they were asking for directions. Only they weren’t college kids, they were two of my best men. I had almost forgotten how closely Monk had been followed.

“Bill, Monk went in that joint twenty minutes ago,” Jim Trevor, the taller one, said to me.

He was holding a card out for me to look at. I took the card, looked at it, and pointed down the street and started making gestures.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But you can forget about Monk now. He’s dead.”

Jim Trevor whistled.

“Dead, huh?” Bob Moran said. “You know we got four Safe and Loft Squad guys floating around here with us? You want us to tell them?”

I was still gesturing. “Stall them for five or ten minutes. I can’t stay here now. If we don’t break this case tonight, especially after this, we can forget all about it.”

Both of them were looking at me with funny expressions. Then I realized what it was. Leaving the scene of an automobile accident was kindergarten stuff compared to what I was doing — walking away from a stiff who had died at my hand. And I also realized what a very dim view the Police Department and the District Attorney’s Office would take. There are certain things you just can’t do, only now I had to, I had no choice.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll try to straighten it out later,” I said to them. “Monk tried to gun-whip me, I slugged him and he cracked his head open. He’s in my room. Take those cops in five minutes from now. Ask them to keep it away from the reporters as long as they can.”

“Okay, Bill,” Jim Trevor said. “Only those boys are going to be a little steamed at you for walking out on the party.”

“Yeah, I know, but I can’t help it, Jim. If we can hand them the other two alive and with the right evidence they’ll get over their mad — I think.” I waved to them and hurried down the block, hoping I wouldn’t be stopped by any of the detectives staked out on Monk. It wouldn’t be so easy to get away from one of them.

We have a perfect working arrangement with the police, especially here in New York. The second and third grade detectives are all bucking for promotions, the first grade men just want glory, and the bosses want glory and prestige and politically important friends among the big businessmen in the city. We aren’t selfless wonders, but when we break a big case it means moving up in a league where they pay the same kind of dough the top ballplayers get, and it’s done quickly. So we give the cops all the glory and credit and everything else they want and keep quiet when the reporters flock around them to find out how they broke a case.

I made the corner and then thought I’d better do my telephoning a little further away. There was a bar five blocks down with two booths off in a corner that I could use. I hurried along, my mind racing at what I could possibly do to wrap this case up. I hadn’t been kidding when I told Trevor and Moran it would have to be finished tonight or not at all.

One of the two other men we wanted wasn’t much of a problem, he was really in a box. Monk’s friend Larry was Larry Coster, a two-time loser, both for buglary raps. He’d gone bad after he was discharged from the Navy after the big war — those two convictions represented his first efforts in crime. After that he learned fast and it didn’t take him long to turn in to a real pro, especially after he met Monk. Larry Coster had been a radar and communications man in the Navy, and I think he knew as much or more about electronics as any engineer.

Robbing a safe today isn’t just a mechanical job. The average vault or safe is wired with all kinds of burglar alarms and detection devices. Even a third-rate set up has some kind of wires hooked up to it and if they aren’t handled right by safe men the cops join the party in two or three minutes. Larry’s job was to neutralize the alarm system on a job, and he did it every time perfectly and easily, giving Monk all the time in the world to play with the safe.

A pair like Monk and Larry could cause all kinds of trouble, and they did, but neither of them had the brains to pull off really big jobs. That’s where the guy they called the Boss came in. His name was Leon Schell, and that’s about all we knew about him. I’d read all the European dossiers on him and everything else, but the only real information we had was his name. He’d come out of Europe after the war with a valid American passport issued by the American Military Command in Berlin and had caused us nothing but headaches since. But there was never the slightest shred of evidence to tie him up to any of more than a dozen big jobs he’d pulled, all we knew was that no one but Leon Schell could do them.

I’d only seen photographs of the guy, but I’m convinced that he must have been a general on the German High Command, he had that kind of a mind. No detail ever escaped him, nothing was ever left to chance, the planning on his jobs was fantastic. He’d work for months or even years setting up a job, then clean the place out, and vanish without ever leaving the slightest clue except the absolute perfection of the job.

After we’d been taken four or five times we thought we’d spotted the only weak point in their set-up. Even three guys like that sometimes needed other help on the jobs, either before they hit or during the actual job. We’d caught up with several of them and had learned that Monk always hired them and paid them off for their work, whatever it happened to be. That figured, because Monk was the only one of the three who had a thorough knowledge of the racket guys and thugs who were available. That’s how come I’d been elected Monk’s neighbor in Sing Sing Prison.

That paid off. Monk had been out of touch for three years and Larry Coster and Leon Schell must have been waiting months for him to get out. I got out the same week as Monk and he needed someone in a hurry so I got the job. He’d come to see me at my cover job as a counterman in a cheap restaurant and made a meet with me in my hotel room three days before this last job, paying me in advance and telling me to wait for a phone call to go to work.

From the moment Monk got out of prison we’d had three of the best men in the country tailing him, but after that we doubled the cover — he couldn’t possibly duck away, we thought. Only Leon Schell had that one figured out too. The afternoon before the job Monk took a cab out to Newark Airport, jumped into a waiting helicopter, and vanished into a low fog over the airport. Three days later we found the pilot sobering up in Poughkeepsie. It seemed that a big, luscious blonde met them there when they landed but her boy friend hadn’t come along as she expected and she was so disappointed she let the pilot comfort her in a local motel for three days. Then she took off too.

So we had nothing to do but sit and wait it out. There was a holiday weekend coming up, with Monday the holiday. Most jewelry houses stayed open for business all day Saturday, but even so, figuring a six p.m. closing, that left sixty-three hours for them, until nine a.m. Tuesday morning. And they could be anywhere at all in the United States. We sent out a general alarm bulletin to all members of the jewelers’ associations because that’s all we could do, but we knew most of them wouldn’t even be seen until Tuesday.

On Tuesday morning we didn’t have long to wait though. The call came through at 9:15. It was almost unbelievable. They’d taken one of the biggest firms right here in New York, and oh, brother, how they had taken it. Normally this house kept in the neighborhood of a half million dollars worth of stones in their vault, but a few weeks before they had received a consignment of uncut diamonds from the African mines worth at least a million. The underwriters decided to keep the stuff there until it was cut, for maximum safety, because this house had one of the most modern, burglar-proof, security vaults in the city. Or at least it was until then.

The robbery was a masterpiece, no question about that. The jewelry firm occupied an entire five story stone and brick building on Fifth Avenue. They went in through the brick wall of the adjoining building in the sidestreet on the second floor level. This was more of Leon Schell’s planning. The second floor of the adjoining building was rented out a year before to a rug importing firm, a perfect cover for them. Over weeks and months they had removed the double row of bricks in that building and a single row of bricks in the abutting jewelry building for an almost doorsized opening. The work on their side was concealed from accidental discovery by keeping a bank of metal clothing lockers against that wall. When they were ready to break in all they had to do was wait for a heavy truck to pass by and shove what was left of the wall in on the jewelry house side.

That let them in to a small office on the second floor of the jewelry building. The gaping hole in the wall couldn’t be seen from the street, but to prevent anyone in the building across the street from noticing it they pasted a blue cloth over the opening — the same shade light blue as the walls. And every bit of dirt and debris was cleaned up; we found it all in trash barrels in the adjoining building.

The rest of the second floor, all of the first floor, and the part of the first basement where the vault was located, were protected by burglar-proof, invisible infra-red light beams. Each light source was focused on a light sensitive relay across the room — any interruption of the invisible light would turn in an alarm. The only trouble was that the guy who designed this setup never had basic training in any of the services where he had to crawl on his belly with his back end down to keep under a curtain of live machine gun fire. The light beams were installed in doubles, one at waist height, the other at knee height. I suppose the idea of the doubles was that if one set failed the store still had the protection of the other. But all you had to do to avoid the alarm system was crawl around on the floor under it, which is just what these guys did.

In the first basement, across from the vault, was the electronic marvel that made a burglary impossible. A television camera kept its unblinking eye focused on the vault door; any living thing that entered its range would show up on the viewing screen in the control room of the detective agency that provided security for the jewelry house. This closed-circuit television setup was really great, it did away with the necessity of having watchmen on the premises, and would work for you for as many hours as you wanted at a single stretch. A couple of dozen banks, brokerages houses, and jewelers in the city had them installed. I’d seen the rows of viewing screens in the control room, each screen identified with the name and location of the camera installation. If anything showed on the screen all you had to do was call Police Headquarters and the cops would have the building surrounded in minutes. An extra bonus was that you could punch a key to take a tape record of what was going on.

Only it wasn’t foolproof. Leon Schell figured out a way to beat it. They brought in a canvas sheet, probably rolled up to get it under the light beams, then unrolled it and stretched it on a collapsible metal wire frame and snapped it up into position in front of the camera eye. Painted on the side facing the camera was a perfect picture of the vault door and the surrounding part of the basement room. Except for the momentary flick on the viewing screen when they snapped the canvas into position — the kind of flick you’d get on any television screen when an automobile passes — there was nothing to indicate that there were three men in the room in front of the vault. To make certain that no stray light struck the back of the canvas they hung a heavy black cloth on it.

There were four infra-red light beams crisscrossing the area immediately in front of the vault door. Larry Coster took care of them by rigging up new invisible light sources close to the relays so that the light beam was never interrupted; then he neutralized the alarm system on the vault itself. He hooked up relays and induction coils and pulse generators all over the side of the vault and then tied them in to the lead in wires. When he was finished they could have carted the thing off to Central Park if they wanted to without setting off the vault alarm.

All that might have taken them as long as five hours — they still had almost sixty hours to get it open. But Monk didn’t need that long, it might have taken him somewhere between twenty and thirty hours, counting resting and eating time, as nearly as we could figure it. That meant that they were probably finished shortly after midnight Sunday evening leaving them a day and a half to get out and away.

And they cleaned the vault out, but good. They took everything, cut and uncut diamonds, mounted stones and necklaces, rings, bracelets, and even several dozen diamond studded watches. The insured value of the loot was over a million and a half, they could probably get close to a million for it if they could get rid of it in the European market.

When we were reconstructing the job Tuesday morning we got our only lucky break. Somehow, impossibly, Larry Coster had left a full set of fingerprints on the front surface of the vault door. There was no way to understand that kind of stupidity or carelessness after what they had done, but whatever the reason, they were there. It was a blessing for us, and it hung up Larry Coster for this job high and dry. The only possible explanation I could come up with was that he was smoking or eating when Monk swung the big door open. If he was smoking or eating he probably had his glove off his right hand, and in the excitement of seeing what they had he accidentally touched the front of the door. I didn’t care why, I was just mighty grateful that he did.

That simplified things tremendously for us. We knew who pulled the job, and, as important, we knew who didn’t. The Safe and Loft Squad detectives were all for putting out a nation wide alarm for Larry Coster, but I was able to talk them out of it. If we did that, it would tip our hand. The only chance to get the three of them was to let them think we were completely stumped. The newspapers carried a subdued account of it, with no figure mentioned, and only that the police had commenced an investigation.

Knowing how Leon Schell’s mind worked, and how he planned things, the logical thing to expect them to do was to try to run the stuff out of the country. There were several reasons for this, but the most important one was money. If they could get the stuff to the European market they would net twice as much as they could here. But getting it out of the United States and then into Europe wasn’t easy, only someone like Schell would try it. For the amount involved we were almost certain he would.

There are only two ways to move stolen jewelry across borders. One way, of course, is to smuggle it, but it was almost inconceivable that they would try to do that — it’s much too risky and uncertain. If they were caught either leaving here or entering any foreign country they would blow the whole job, netting exactly nothing but trouble for their efforts.

The other way is the way that would appeal to Leon Schell. If they could enlist the services of a man big enough in the jewelry industry to move it for them, get it through customs on both sides as a legitimate shipment by disguising it with false documents to cover its movement, they would be in the clear. It meant an extra cut, but they would not only be a lot safer but still ahead in the final take from the job. And because Monk had hired me to carry for them several days before I was positive that’s what they planned to do.

That Tuesday afternoon I sweated it out at my cover job in the restaurant, watching the minute hands of the wall clock crawl around, hoping desperately that Monk would contact me. He did, just before six o’clock. He didn’t say much over the phone, just told me to meet him Thursday afternoon at one thirty at the Manhattan end of the George Washington Bridge near the Eighth Avenue Subway entrance. That phone call started things rolling.

The Safe and Loft cops wanted to grab Monk and Larry Coster on sight when they appeared Thursday afternoon, but I talked them out of it, after a lot of wrangling. I pointed out that the most important thing was to recover the jewelry, whether they liked it or not, and that after we had the stuff back they could go around locking anybody up they wanted to, but they couldn’t spoil our chances at getting it back. Monk could be trying a dry run, with Corn Flakes or soap powder in a bag instead of jewelry, and I wasn’t taking any chances on that. I also pounded away on the fact that Larry Coster was the only one of the three we had any evidence against, and if they grabbed Monk too early they’d blow the case against him and we’d probably never even see Leon Schell. Finally they agreed to let me be the general, and we set up an elaborate trap.

Relays of my men and city detectives were to pick up the trail when I met Monk. I wasn’t sure that Larry Coster would be with him, but I thought he probably would be. Leon Schell was a big question mark, that much dough might make him come, but his cunning would tend to keep him in the background. There were to be no arrests until they got a definite signal from me; but part of the plan was to have city detectives scare off Monk and whoever was with him if I had possession of the jewels so that I could get away from them with the stuff — again only at a signal from me.

That part of the plan worked perfectly. Monk and Larry Coster pulled up in a cab right on time. They had another man with them, but it wasn’t Leon Schell. Monk was carrying a slightly oversized attache case, of dark brown leather. They hurried down the subway steps and waited for me on the halfway landing, out of sight of the street. Monk handed me the attache case and told me to follow Pete, the third man, wherever he went, and not to talk to any of the three of them for any reason. We separated, and I tagged along after Pete. It was easy to figure out what his part was. He was the steerer for the fence. If anything did go wrong they knew he couldn’t tell the cops anything because he really didn’t know what it was all about; and he would save the fence from any embarrassment of publicly meeting with known jewel thieves. My part was supposed to be the hot seat — if the cops grabbed me they’d just throw me on the griddle and keep turning me over until I was one well done hamburger.

We rode downtown on the subway and I saw three of my men in the same car — it was pretty crowded, even at that time of day. When we got off at Radio City I knew they were heading for the jewelry center in the city, and flashed signals for them to grab Pete and get him out of the way and to scare off Monk and Larry Coster. When I got upstairs and saw I was clear of them I hailed a cab and had him run me over to Grand Central Station. We had only gone a block when a detective cruiser fell in right behind the cab as an escort — the cops must have been using walkie-talkie radios. When I got to the station they piled out of their car and fell in place around me as I headed for the elevator to ride up to the floor our special office was on. Insurance companies maintain special security offices at all railroad stations and airline terminals for the use of jewelry salesmen and carriers. If they ever need to leave any valuables in a safe place overnight or longer the facilities are always available to them. The one in Grand Central is rather large — three big rooms with four armed guards always in attendance. Ten minutes after I get there the place was swarming with people. The president of our insurance company, along with his top brass, more than a dozen detectives, from Assistant Chief Inspector O’Leary down through Inspectors, Captains, and Lieutenants, a couple of Assistant District Attorneys, and some of my own men.

We were naturally anxious to see what we had in the attache case and tried to open it in a hurry, but that didn’t prove easy. Under the brown leather the entire case was made of a high grade steel. The two locks at either end looked ordinary enough but they were far from ordinary. I’m no lock expert, but I’d never seen finer ones in my life. One of the detectives knew a locksmith with a shop nearby, on Third Avenue. He went out and brought him back in fifteen minutes. That guy tried the locks for a half hour before he finally threw down his tools in disgust.

“I never seen nothin’ that tough to open,” he said. “The only thing I can do is use diamond pointed drills on them.”

When he started on the locks an idea started to form in my mind — I thought I might be able to use these locks somehow to help snare Leon Schell. The idea wasn’t clear yet, but I didn’t want the locks damaged.

“No,” I told him. “Is there anyone you know who’s a specialist at something like this. Someone who could get them open without damaging them?”

He did know of a specialist, probably the top man in the whole field. According to him this man could open locked chests and vaults even in sunken ships. His place of business was up in Harlem, so Inspector O’Leary called the Harlem Precinct and told them to pick this man up and run him down to us in a radio car. While we waited you could feel the tension building up in the room.

“I’m an old Navy man myself,” Inspector O’Leary announced. “Just get me a bigger hammer and I’ll open the damn thing up.”

I couldn’t help smiling. Inspector O’Leary is a big, brawny Irishman. I don’t know how old he is, but his hair is jet black, despite the wrinkles in his face. His manner is pleasant, but gruff. His eyes are truly remarkable, they’re sky blue but as hard and penetrating as chipped steel. He could look right through you. He had the reputation of being a good friend but a terrible man to cross, and I think that this reputation was deserved, because I noticed that all his subordinates, even the men only a rank under him, gave him a lot of respect.

He asked me why I insisted on not damaging the locks or the case, so I told him how I thought I could use the case to wrap up Leon Schell — if I could get to him. His eyes got a little twinkle in them, they looked almost human, and he nodded his approval.

“It will be dangerous, I’ll tell you that,” he said. “But you’ve done wonders on this case so far. If the stuff is in that bag I’ll say go ahead if you’re sure you know what you’re doing.”

The master locksmith came in then, and he was really a character. He was over sixty with a shiny bald head fringed with gray tuft, and a happy, absolutely beaming smile. Right then he was the only happy guy in the room. I told him what we wanted and he went to work like a surgeon performing a delicate brain operation. While he worked over the locks he sang almost continually — German lieder, Italian and French arias, American and Argentine cowboy songs, anything and everything. In between he told us about Bach and Mozart and Wagner while we were biting our nails. He got the first one open in about forty minutes, then started on the other one.

“Now it will be quicker,” he said. “I think I know who made this case — there is only one man I know of and he died five years ago. He was a true craftsman, a shopkeeper in Dusseldorf, Germany. Nobody else could make work like this.”

I wondered how I could tie that to Leon Schell, probably with a little digging it wouldn’t be too hard. But it wasn’t enough.

When he finally got the other lock open and threw back the lid of the case I breathed a long sigh of relief. It was almost all there, dazzling in its massed brilliance. By then several officials of the jewelry firm that was robbed were there. They had a check list and started taking an inventory of what we had. Except for a few watches and some smaller stones we had the whole thing.

The locksmith was beaming more than ever and all ready to break into a song, so I told him what I wanted him to do in a hurry, and he went back to work. I had sent out for some fake jewelry to a firm which specialized in stuff like that and they had sent quite a bit of it down to us. When the attache case was ready I started packing it with the false glassware. This stuff wasn’t junk though, it was so good only an expert would be able to spot it as phoney — an expert like Leon Schell. To make it look as good as I could I asked for and got the diamond studded watches back from the jewelry firm officials and put them back in the case the way they were. Then the locksmith carefully closed the case and locked both of the locks again. I was all ready to start what I had to do. I told my men to get back to our office and wait there, then started out with the attache case in my right hand. Hardly anyone noticed me, but I did see Inspector O’Leary watching me with those cold blue eyes. He only nodded to me.

I went down in the elevator to the main floor, walked through the terminal until I came to a row of public lockers, slid a dime in the slot and put the attache case in and closed and locked the door, just as I told Monk a few hours later. Only I didn’t mail myself the key, that was still in my pocket. I only needed one more thing. I cabbed down to Radio Row on Cortland Street to see a friend of mine who ran an electronics parts store and asked him if he could rig up one of the new miniature recording machines with the tape in a cartridge so that I could conceal it on my body. He thought he could and promised to have it ready in a couple of hours.

While I waited I kept in close touch with my office and got the reports of the men who were still trailing Monk and Larry Coster around. They’d separated when they’d been scared off in the subway at Radio City, each of them taking off alone and riding around in the subways for more than an hour, but then they both started making telephone calls. I suppose when nothing else happened to them and they calmed down a little they thought they were in the clear. They must have contacted Leon Schell, because about two hours later they met in a downtown bar, then went for a long walk together, occasionally stopping off at drug stores to make phone calls. Once they made a long call in a street booth outside a filling station on the west side, each of them taking turns going in to the booth. It could only be Leon Schell they were talking to then — I would have given anything to see his face when he heard what happened.

I wanted to get them alone, first pick up Larry Coster and put him on ice, and then go to work on Monk, and I hoped, through Monk, to find out where Leon Schell was. We still had no idea where he could be.

When the transistor recorder was ready for me I cabbed up to my room in the hotel, and that’s where Monk upset my plans. I never dreamed he’d have anyone watching the joint for me, but he did and he had, and I couldn’t get too mad at the guy for it because he’d paid for it with his life.

Now as I turned into the bar to make my call to the office I felt a terrible urgency, because if I couldn’t get to Coster alone I might just as well forget about Leon Schell. I wanted to bag him as much as the jewelry firm wanted their stuff back. The office phone answered before the first ring was finished. It was Jack Finch — he’d been glued to that phone for the last ten hours. I told him briefly about what happened with Monk.

“Yeah, Bill, I heard,” he said. “A Captain Carrara of the Safe and Loft Squad called a couple of minutes ago. He’s in your hotel room now and he’s plenty mad. He wants you to call him right away — he said that when Inspector O’Leary finds out what you did he’ll chew him out until there’s nothing left of him and he’ll probably tear you apart personally when he catches up to you. Maybe you’d better call him fast, Bill.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll call him right away. First give me a run-down on Larry Coster.”

“He and Monk were together in a bar on West Eighth Street until a little over a half hour ago. Monk got a phone call and took off real fast — that’s when he went over to your hotel room. Coster stayed there a few minutes then went out and made a phone call from a drug store on the corner. Then he took a cab up to an apartment hotel on West Sixty-Second Street. He went in there about ten minutes ago. We found out he’s in Apartment 4E under his own name — Coster. That must be his voting address.”

“Very funny. Give me the number on Sixty-Second Street,” I told him. He did and I jotted it down.

“Look Jack,” I said, “I’m going up there now to make the pinch. Before I do, though, I have to find out something from him, so I don’t want you to let anyone know I called or where I’m going. You got that straight?”

There was a long pause before he answered. “You mean you’re not going to telephone the cops, Bill? Those guys are really awfully mad at you for leaving Monk alone.”

“I’ll call as soon as I make the pinch,” I said. “Just forget I called you now, understand?”

“Okay, Bill,” he said. “I can follow an order. Good luck.”

I hung up and went out and found a cab right away and told him to run me up to Sixty-First Street and Central Park West. I wanted to have the attache case with me when I went in to Larry Coster but there wasn’t time for that now — I’d have to figure out another angle. I knew I wouldn’t be the general of this operation much longer. Maybe by now Inspector O’Leary had me down to buck private or worse. If my office knew where Coster was it was for sure the Safe and Loft Squad did too, and the same five minutes that Inspector O’Leary decided to grab Coster they’d go in and bag him and that would be the end of what I was trying to do. I was still determined to get Leon Schell no matter what chances I had to take to do it.

The cab pulled up to the corner of Sixty-First Street. I paid the driver and got out. My gun was at the office and I needed one now so I walked up towards Sixty-Second Street looking for one of my men. I saw him sitting at the wheel of a cab we used for tail jobs right on the corner of Sixty-Second Street. It was Harry Sloan and he was alone in the cab. He saw me coming through his mirror and slid open the cab door when he saw me head for the cab. I stepped into the back and sat hunched forward on the seat.

“He still in there?” I asked.

“Yeah, Bill. I followed him uptown and saw him go in the building. Then a couple of minutes later the light went on in that fourth floor room on the corner. He came to the window and I saw him good when he closed the blind.” He pointed to the window he meant. There was still a light in the room.

“I haven’t got time to fill you in on everything that’s happened,” I said. “I’m going in now and make the pinch, but first I have to see him alone and try to find out something. You got your gun on you?”

He nodded.

“Let me have it,” I said.

He took it out of his shoulder holster and handed it back to me. I slid it under my belt, around on the left side.

“How many city detectives are there around here now?” I asked.

“Three or four that I know of. A couple of them are out behind an alley that leads into the back yards there. Why, Bill?”

“I’m in a mess with them, and I want to steer clear of them if I can,” I said. “I’ll make this as fast as I can, but if I get in any serious trouble, Harry, I’ll try to smash that window. Come in fast then, but come in with a gun, and bring those cops with you. I’m not sure what this guy might try, he’s certainly pretty upset and mad after what happened today. If I can bag him quietly, though, I’ll call the office and have them contact you over your radio — keep it on. Then you can come in alone or with our guys, but leave the cops out of it until I can duck out. I don’t want to see them if I can help it. You got that straight?”

“Whatever you say, Bill.”

I got out of the cab and started for the entrance of the apartment building. I could feel that knot growing in my gut again. I walked in and went right to the elevator and rode to the fourth floor. Apartment 4E was off to the right. I reached into my jacket pocket and turned on the switch of the transistor recorder. I didn’t need any more evidence against Larry Coster, but you could never tell — it might come in useful. Then I pressed the doorbell button twice, two short ones.

In a couple of seconds a low voice came through the door. “Who is it?”

“Me, Bill. Bill Young,” I said. “Monk just sent me up.”

The door opened a little and he peered out at me. I could see the blue glint of an automatic at his waist. When he saw I was alone he opened the door wide enough for me to walk in. He stood off to the side of the door and then I didn’t have any trouble seeing the gun.

He waved me into the room with it and shut and locked the door behind me. He kept the automatic right on my middle.

“Where’s Monk?” he asked.

“Downstairs in his car,” I told him. “He came to my hotel room and I gave him the suitcase with the stuff in it. He brought me out to his car and we rode up here. He couldn’t find a place to park so he told me to come up here and get you. He said you should call the Boss to let him know he had the stuff and find out what he wants you to do.”

I threw the whole can of bait at him — there was no time for stalling. I just hoped he took it. From here on I’d have to play it by ear.

“How come Monk didn’t call me?” he asked. “He was supposed to call me here.”

“How do I know? Maybe because he has no telephone in his car. Go down and ask him,” I said.

Larry Coster was a bundle of nerves. His face was haggard and strained and he looked as if he had a few too many belts of liquor to keep himself under control. He searched my face with a hard, vicious look in his eyes.

“If I thought you were trying anything funny I’d let you have it right now,” he said. He inched the gun a little higher. Now it was aimed at my heart.

“You guys make me sick,” I said. I wanted to quiet him down, I didn’t like that look in his eye, and he had the gun.

“You’re the friendliest bunch I ever worked with. Every time I see one of you, you throw a gun on me. Monk even accused me of being a finger man.”

“Are you?” he asked. His voice was deadly.

“Would I be here if I was? I try to work with you guys — duck cops all afternoon and worry about getting your stuff back to you — then go back to my hotel room where I figure Monk will be able to reach me and all I get are guns thrown at me. This is the last time I have anything to do with a bunch like you. If I was a finger man I wouldn’t be here, but there’d be cops swarming all over the place. Now if you want to shoot me go ahead, enjoy it. If not put that thing away. I’m getting out of here.”

It worked. I breathed out nice and slow and felt the knot in my middle loosen as he shoved the gun in his hip pocket. He shook his head as if to clear it and rubbed his hands over his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mac,” he said. “It’s just I can’t take any chances. I’m nervous as a cat. You know what we have in that bag?”

“Yeah. Monk told me hot jewels,” I said.

“Yeah, man, hot jewels. But you know how much? You know how much jewels is in there?”

“Must be a big deal to make you guys so jumpy,” I said.

“It’s big, man, so big I can’t believe it almost. I never thought I’d be so lucky. That’s why I went to pieces when those cops moved in on us today. At first we were sure you fingered us. Monk and I got separated, but then I met him later and we were plenty sore at you, but we talked to the Boss and he thought it over and a little later when we called him he said he wasn’t so sure you were a pointer. The job we pulled was so big he thought the cops might just have a bad case of the heebie-jeebies and were going around grabbing everybody they even saw near the diamond center. We shouldn’t have gone down there. Someplace out of New York would be better. That’s what we’ll do now. Maybe Philly or Miami.”

That Leon Schell told them I wasn’t a finger man was the best piece of news I’d had in hours — maybe he meant it and maybe he didn’t — but it tipped the scales for me when I needed it most. Larry Coster lost some of the tense expression on his face, he was walking back and forth rubbing his hands together. His lips were parted in something that might be a smile, only it made him look like a hungry shark.

“Man, that is good news, we got away from those cops after all. I still can’t believe I’m so lucky. When this is over I’ll send you five big ones for your trouble today. How about a quick drink before we see Monk?”

“No thanks,” I said.

“Maybe I had enough, too,” he said. “Let’s go meet Monk.”

He reached for his topcoat on a chair. My heart started to beat faster. I spoke as casually as I could. My face was frozen.

“Oh, Monk wanted you to call the Boss. You want to call from here or someplace else?”

Everything hinged on this. He had to call from this room. If he went out the door now I’d never learn what I had to and I could kiss Leon Schell goodbye for keeps. But I couldn’t let Coster even suspect how important this was. I stood up and started for the door.

“Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. Maybe I better call him now. Wait a minute.” He walked over to the telephone.

My heart kept on beating faster and faster. I could almost hear it in the stillness of the room. He picked up the instrument and started to dial. I held my breath — half closed my eyes. The tiny clicks came through clear and as loud as drumbeats to my ears. I burned them into my memory. 6-4-4-2-1.

Then I caught the last two digits and almost shouted for joy. I had it. I knew where Schell was now. I repeated the numbers to myself. I could never forget them.

I made a quarter turn and closed my hand around the gun in my belt and brought it down to my right side, out of Larry Coster’s line of vision in case he should turn around to face me. My heart kept right on hammering hard. I wanted to end it quickly now — I just hoped the conversation wouldn’t be long.

They didn’t talk much. I heard Coster tell him briefly that Monk had found me and had the stuff back and was waiting for him downstairs. That news must have overjoyed Leon Schell, because then about all Larry Coster said was that they’d be over and bring me along — that he’d see him in twenty minutes or a half hour. He hung up without saying goodbye.

It was ridiculously easy then. He reached for his topcoat again and I levelled the gun at him.

“You won’t need it right away, Coster,” I said. “You’re under arrest.”

His face blanched, his eyes seemed to roll back in his head. His right arm made a slight motion for his back pocket where his gun was but stopped when I cocked my revolver.

“Your friend Monk Saunders is dead,” I told him. “He wanted to play rough with me, and now he’s dead. You try anything and you’re dead too.”

I saw fear come into his eyes.

“Put up both hands, real high, and turn around,” I said.

He turned around slowly and I walked over to him and took the gun out of his back pocket and slipped it into my coat.

“Now lie down on the floor and keep your hands out in front of you, face down.”

He got down on his hands and knees and then straightened out. He turned his head to look at me, his face an ugly mask of fear and hatred.

“Put your nose in the rug or I’ll kick it off,” I said.

He did, a wracking sob of anger and frustration shaking his body.

I backed up two steps to the telephone and picked it up with my left hand and dialed the operator and told her to get my office number. She told me in a syrupy voice that I could obtain that number by dialing it. I said I had my dial finger on the trigger of a 38 Detective Special with the hammer cocked and it was aimed right at the head of a jewel thief and that I had killed one of his buddies less than an hour ago and didn’t want to kill him unless I had to and would she please get the number. All the syrup left her voice and she stuttered all over the place but finally rang the office.

Jack Finch was still answering and he snapped it up.

“Jack, this is Bill Young,” I said. “I’ve got Larry Coster on ice. Now listen carefully. Harry Sloan is parked in a cab on the corner — he’s got his radio on waiting for a call from you. Call him on the air and tell him to get right up here. Coster is stretched out on the floor chewing the rug, he won’t give me any trouble. Tell Harry to come up alone — he’ll understand. Then wait five minutes or so and call the Safe and Loft Squad Office and tell them that Harry has Coster here and that they can pick him up and book him. I need that five minutes to get out of the building — I have a little errand to do. You got that clear?”

“Yeah, Bill, I got it clear. But wait a minute...”

I cut him short. “I can’t wait, Jack. Every second counts for me now. I’ve got to hang up.”

He yelled through the phone. “Don’t hang up, Bill. It’s an emergency. Inspector O’Leary called a couple of minutes ago and the air is still blue around here. He’s down in his office in Police Headquarters and he said if he didn’t hear from you in fifteen minutes he’d send out a general alarm for you on a murder charge. He was so mad he could hardly get the words out. You better call him right away, Bill, he’s not fooling. And you know what the brass in this company would do if a thing like that hit the papers about one of their men.”

“Okay, okay, Jack, I’ll call him.” I hung up and frowned.

I hadn’t expected that strong a reaction from O’Leary — pinning me down to fifteen minutes ruined any chance I had of getting to Leon Schell. But Jack Finch was right. If a general alarm went out for me it would queer me but permanently with the brass in my company and every other company in the business. It wouldn’t matter one bit whether I handed them Leon Schell wrapped in cellophane or a big red bow. I’d be out of work a long, long time.

I tried to think of something that would quiet O’Leary down, something that would keep him pacified for the little bit more time I needed. I knew I’d have to call him in the next ten minutes — that I couldn’t avoid. The first thing he’d want to know was where I was so he could have a radio car pick me up — that I had to avoid. I got a very small idea.

I walked around Coster and stood in front of him so that he could see me by lifting his head a little.

“Coster, I want you to tell me where Leon Schell is now,” I said. “You can help me a lot if you tell me where he is so I can pick him up. If you do maybe I can make things easier for you with the District Attorney or the Judge at your trial. How about it?”

If I knew anything at all about criminal psychology this was the worst possible way in the world to get information out of a guy like Larry Coster. There was only one answer I could get and I got it and it was just what I wanted.

“Don’t make me laugh. You insurance dicks are the creepiest cops in the world. I wouldn’t spit at you if you was in the middle of the ocean. You’re so smart, go find him.”

He glared at me, his shark teeth showing in a wicked grin.

“Okay, shove your face back in the floor,” I said.

The doorbell sounded and I backed over to the entrance door. It was Harry Sloan and he had two of our men with him. He came in first with a big 38 Police Positive revolver in his hand.

“Spare I keep in the cab,” he said when he saw me looking at it.

I took Larry Coster’s automatic out of my pocket and handed it to him.

“The Safe and Loft guys will be up in five or ten minutes,” I said. “Coster had this on him — they can add that to the charge. Hold him here and whatever you do don’t let him near a phone and don’t let him talk to anyone, anyone at all. Tomorrow he can get fifty lawyers if he wants to, but I don’t want a peep out of him tonight. That’s important, Harry.”

“No talk. Okay, Bill,” Harry said.

“You better put handcuffs on him,” I said. “Oh, and one more thing, Bill. Give me the keys of the cab.”

He handed them to me without saying anything, but gave me an odd look. Minutes were valuable to me now, and I needed the cab to get out of the neighborhood. I put the gun I had borrowed from Harry Slaon back under my belt and watched as one of the other men bent over Larry Coster and snapped the cuffs on him. My hand felt in my jacket pocket for the recorder switch and I turned it off. Coster had really tied up the case against himself by everything he had said — all he could possibly do now would be to plead guilty. I went out the door and downstairs.

Across the street from the entrance to the building there were two men standing under the street light. They stared hard at me as I came out and headed for the cab. Both of them had on gray hats and coats and so help me they looked like real grayhounds to me and for a crazy moment I thought I was a rabbit and when someone pressed a button I’d have to start running around a track until one of them caught me. Well, O’Leary had the button in his hand and it was up to me to stop him from pressing it.

I drove the cab up a few blocks and turned west to Broadway and when I saw a big drugstore I parked it and went in to a phone booth. Now I had to get the information I needed. I got a lucky break. The Night Wire Chief at the telephone company office was a guy I knew — he didn’t hesitate when I told him what I wanted. I gave him the number Larry Coster had dialed from his apartment.

“Call me back in about five minutes, Bill, and I should have the dope for you then,” he said.

That only left Inspector O’Leary. I took a deep breath and called Police Headquarters and asked for his office. When I told the cop who answered who was calling I didn’t have to wait for O’Leary. He almost came through the phone at me.

He had no trouble getting the words out now. He was icily sarcastic, his words hit me and stung me like a high-pressure needle shower. He went on for over a minute until I started to wonder if he were trying to trace the call, then I remembered it was practically impossible to trace a call over a dial system in a city.

“...and now the Commissioner knows about it and if you think I’m going to cover you five minutes more you’re out of your mind. I wouldn’t care if you got back ten million dollars worth of jewelry today you had no right to leave that room when that man died. It’s a felony and I personally will throw the book at you if you don’t get right down here...”

When he slowed down a little I tried to tell him about Coster. That made it worse.

“Ah, yes. I just learned how truly heroic you were. You went right up there alone and placed him under arrest. I’m going to call the Mayor right away and have him proclaim a whole week’s celebration for everyone in the city for such a great thing. But we have over twenty thousand men in the Police Department in New York and the dumbest cluck on the force could have done the same thing and probably better.”

“Look, Inspector,” I said. “You know why I went up there. I had to try to find out where Leon Schell is so we could get to him before he finds out about Monk. If he takes off we’ll never find him. I thought...”

“Did you find out?”

“I asked him where Schell was,” I told him truthfully. “He laughed at me, told me to find him myself.”

“Do you know where Schell is?”

“No, Inspector, I honestly don’t.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about it. After your fine day’s work you should rest up a little. I’ll put a couple of hundred of those twenty thousand men on the case and maybe they can do almost as good a job as you could do. Mind you, I only said maybe.”

He was getting under my skin but I tried to reason with him.

“Inspector, you know that even if you do grab Schell it won’t do any good. We only have a circumstantial case against him and he’d have a high-powered lawyer get it thrown out before we even went to trial. We have to get something on him to tie him directly to this job, and you know I’m the only one who can possibly get close enough to him to do it. You’ve got to let me try.”

“No! Absolutely not, Young. Murder is still a more serious crime than robbing a safe. I don’t care if we ever convict Leon Schell. I want you in so we can clear up this Saunders death.”

“He tried to gun-whip me,” I said. “When I fought back and hit him with an ash tray I cut his face open and he fell back and cracked his skull. It was self defense. I certainly didn’t murder him.”

His voice became even more sarcastic. “I know that, Young. Believe it or not I did get a report from the men up there. But I’m only a dumb cop, remember? To me any death by violence is murder, until a Grand Jury decides otherwise. So all you have to do is make a sworn statement to a District Attorney and then tell your story to a Grand Jury — if they believe it then it’s self defense. But you’re not supposed to tell me about it over a telephone. That’s why I want you in — now!”

I still wanted a chance at Leon Schell. I was willing to plead.

“Please, Inspector. All I need is an hour, maybe two. I have an idea that I think might work. I want to...”

“Where are you now?” he interrupted.

I gave him a location fifteen blocks away.

“Wait there,” he said. “I’ll send a radio car right over to pick you up. Don’t leave there, you understand?”

“I’m sorry, Inspector, but I want Leon Schell convicted. I have to leave.”

He had a lot of trouble getting the words out then, but when they came they were five times as loud as before.

“...and so help me, Young, if you leave there, I’ll ruin you. I’ll indict you for everything I can find. I’ll put a general alarm out for you for murder...”

I’d have to take my chances on that. I put the receiver back on the hook gently. The booth wasn’t hot but my face and neck were wet from perspiration. I took out my handkerchief and dried off and lit a cigarette.

Inspector O’Leary wasn’t bluffing when he said he could ruin me. I knew it and he knew I knew it. I’d been called in before the Board of Directors of my company a couple of times on cases and knew just what I could expect from them. I don’t think one of them ever had to work for a living. The only thing they did was get enough education so the family fortunes would never shrink during their lifetimes. Maybe their fathers or grandfathers or great-grandfathers piled up the family fortunes in the beginning by running dope or smuggling or maybe a little white slavery here and there but of course that was all forgotten now and they were oh so eminently respectable and super honest it was disgusting. And heaven help any dumb employee like me who ever got himself in trouble by cutting a legal corner now and then or who got himself featured on the wrong side of a front page newspaper story. It would shock them silly — so silly they’d fire you in five minutes and see to it that you never went back to work with any of their cousins who ran other companies the same way. Okay, so I’m dumb and stubborn, but I was still going after Leon Schell.

I fished up another dime and called the Night Wire Chief back. He had the information for me and I jotted it down. The telephone that Larry Coster had dialed was listed to a Sandra LaCoeur in Apartment 21 in a fancy Sutton Place apartment building. With an improbable name like that she’d have to live in a fancy joint. I didn’t much care where she lived. That’s where Schell was and that’s where I was going.

There was only one more thing I had to do. Now I needed the attache case with the junk jewelry in it, so I went out and got a cab on the corner and gave the driver a ten dollar bill and told him to get me to Grand Central Station as fast as he could. The guy was a real jockey and for once I got my money’s worth.

I half ran through the main waiting room to the bank of lockers where the case was, thankful I hadn’t told O’Leary I’d left it there. If he knew that he’d have about ten guys waiting for me. I got the case out of the locker and half ran for the exit on the east side of the building. The clock over the information desk showed me it was almost a half hour since Coster had made his call. It would take me at least another ten minutes to get up to Sutton place. That wasn’t good, but it couldn’t be helped.

The second cab driver was better than the first guy. He got me to the front of the building in nine minutes flat, but I had him roll past and leave me out at the corner. I walked back slowly, looking the place over. It was a fancy place, alright. The entrance doors were all glass and chrome. The lobby walls were all white marble that gleamed softly under the indirect fighting. The rugs inside were ankle deep. There was no doorman — either the management was saving money or he was off for a beer. A big directory board with a house phone hanging next to it was back near the elevators. S. LaCoeur, Apartment 21, was printed in gold letters under where it said Second Floor. The elevators were self service jobs. I stepped in and punched 2, then felt in my jacket pocket for the recorder switch and turned it on again — this was where I really needed this gadget.

Apartment 21 was almost right across from the elevator. I stepped across and pressed the button twice and wondered what kind of a gun Leon Schell would have on me when he opened the door.

He opened it almost immediately, without even looking through the interviewer and he had nothing in his hands. His eyes flickered momentarily in surprise when he saw me standing there alone, then narrowed as they swept over the attache case in my right hand.

“Are you Leon Schell?” I asked him.

“Yes.” There was no expression on his face but his eyes were as sleepily alive as a lion’s.

“I’m Bill Young,” I said. “Monk Saunders and Larry Coster sent me up here. They told me to give you this bag.”

“Oh. Won’t you come in?” He held the door open a little wider and moved to the side for me.

“Sure,” I said.

I went in and heard him close the door behind me. I placed the attache case on a small upholstered chair near the door and looked around. It was a beautiful apartment — obviously a woman’s — with everything in good taste and very, very expensive. Just ahead of the small entrance foyer we were in was a dropped living room. Several lamps were on and a large console radio, a deluxe Hi Fi job, was turned on, playing classical music very softly. There was a little hallway at the far left end of the living room, but all I could see was a closed door — probably the bedroom. A kitchen and dinette were off the foyer to the right. I didn’t see any sign of the woman.

“I expected Monk and Larry along with you,” Schell said in a mild voice.

I shrugged my shoulders and put a dumb look on my face.

“They drove me over here,” I said. “All they told me to do was bring the bag up to you and tell you they’d be up in a little while.”

“Strange,” he muttered.

I could almost see the wheels spinning furiously behind those bland eyes. He was a big man, much bigger than I expected from his passport photograph and description. He had twenty or thirty pounds on me and was an inch or two taller, and I’m not exactly small. I wasn’t expecting exactly a bald professor type, but somehow, maybe because of his reputation as a brain, I was surprised at his physical appearance. He might be near forty, but he looked ten years younger and as if he’d be right at home enjoying himself in any kind of a barroom brawl.

“Well, I guess I’m through for the day,” I said. “I sure earned my dough on this deal — ducking cops all afternoon...”

I took a couple of steps towards the door and reached for the knob. No matter how calm this guy looked on the outside, he had to be upset about letting a million and a half get kicked around on him, even if he did think he had it back now. I had to stay there, but I thought he might bite on a double in reverse. If I seemed anxious to go, he’d want me to stay.

“No rush,” he said. “Why not stick around until Monk and Larry get up? I can fix you a drink while we’re waiting.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Maybe I could use one.”

He picked up the attache case from the chair and walked down the two steps into the living room to a large portable bar next to the radio, set the case down, and pulled open the front of the bar. I could see the glistening porcelain front of a small refrigerator tucked under the bar.

“Anything special?” he asked.

“Make it Scotch on the rocks,” I said.

He fixed two drinks with his back to me, and I watched him closely. Maybe I could have taken him then and maybe I couldn’t. With all the little crystal mirrored surfaces on the bar he was probably studying me closer than I was studying him. He was fully dressed except for his suit jacket — instead he was wearing something I think is called a smoking jacket, but I’d never seen one before except on an old TV movie. This one was dark maroon in color, with a black velvet collar. It came down a little further than a suit jacket and had two big pockets in the front. I thought he had something in the right one but it looked too small to be a gun. He turned and handed me my drink.

“Monk tell you what was in that bag?” he asked.

I noticed that he kept his drink in his left hand. His right hand went into the right pocket of the jacket and closed around something and stayed there. So it was a gun.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s hot jewelry, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “We thought you took off with it in all the excitement today. It was mighty nice of you to go back to your hotel and wait for Monk. Most guys would just disappear if they had a chance like that.”

I was on mighty dangerous ground and I knew it. This was something I had to explain satisfactorily to Leon Schell or forget about getting any direct evidence on him, and maybe forget about living. But I had thought a lot about it and was ready for him.

“Maybe,” I said. “Only hot jewelry isn’t my line. It’s too hard to handle and too hard to get rid of unless you have the right contacts. And I didn’t want you guys gunning for me.”

Schell was far from a dummy, I couldn’t tell from his eyes if he bought it or not, but I thought I could sense a slight relaxation in his body.

“Speaking of guns,” he said, “what do you think of this?”

He took his right hand out of the pocket and I saw his fist closed around one of those small calibre European models. He didn’t aim it at me exactly, it was just pointed in my general direction. I didn’t say anything.

“Marvelous piece of workmanship,” he said. “I don’t like your clumsy American arms at all. I can almost hide this in the palm of my hand but it’s deadly under fifty feet. You know I practise a great deal with it in my spare time — I lay empty beer or soda bottles on their sides and try to shoot through the necks of the bottles and knock the bottoms off from forty or fifty feet. I can do that seven out of ten times.”

“So you’re a good shot,” I said. I was trying to figure out what he was up to.

“Do you have a weapon on you now?” he asked.

Now I knew. He was a pro, all right. I didn’t want him frisking me — if he ran his hands over my legs he couldn’t miss the recorder parts taped to my thighs.

“Yeah. I got a little nervous today so I borrowed this one from a friend of mine.” I pushed my jacket aside and showed him the butt of Harry Sloan’s .38 stuck in my belt.

“May I see it?” he said.

“Sure.”

I pulled it out, being careful to keep it pointed to the floor, and handed it to him. His gun was two feet away from my nose, and it was aimed directly at it. He put his drink down on the bar.

“This is typically American,” he said as he took it. “It’s just like your cars and your houses and everything else — much too big. It’s clumsy and inefficient and not nearly as accurate as my gun. Don’t you agree?”

I shrugged. I didn’t know what to say. I was beginning to think Schell was a bit of a weirdie — this was really going the long way round to lift a gun off a guy. He backed away from me, then half turned around and walked to the far side of the room, where the little hallway was, and laid my gun on top of an end table. He put his own gun back in his jacket pocket but kept his hand on it. Then he motioned to me to sit in a chair near the bar, picked up his drink, and sat in another chair across from me.

“May as well relax and enjoy your drink,” he said. “If you don’t mind I’ll leave your gun over there. I don’t like people I don’t know too well to be armed around me, it makes me uncomfortable. Now tell me what happened today — everything.”

This wasn’t going the way I wanted it to, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I didn’t care about the gun, but I wanted his voice on the tape, not mine, and I didn’t want his opinions about the size of American guns, automobiles, or houses.

I told him almost the same thing I told Monk, only I didn’t say anything about leaving the attache case in a public locker — instead I told him I went into a movie house until it got dark so it would be safer to go back to my hotel to wait for Monk. And I told him the time Monk arrived there was a half hour earlier than the time he had really come.

I had a simple plan to trap Schell, something that was based on a very simple fact. The one single thing all thieves have in common is their fear of being double crossed. No matter how long a thief has known or worked with another thief, he always has that fear in the back of his mind, and sometimes it’s not so far back. My job now was to plant a big fat seed of mistrust in Schell’s mind about Monk Saunders and Larry Coster and force it to grow fast until it became a certainty. I wasn’t too worried about him suspecting me; the biggest thing in my favor there was that Monk saw me in a prison cell next to his three years ago — Schell would know about that. And now here I was in front of him, playing it dumb, but I had carried the attache case in to him.

I slanted my story carefully, working slowly towards the big pitch. Schell just sat there listening attentively, watching me through half-closed eyes. It began to look to me that it would have to be the big pitch, or nothing, because he didn’t interrupt me once.

“...so he said I should wait right there in my hotel room for him. Then he went out, he took the bag with him, and came back about forty minutes later. He told me to come on, we had to...”

Leon Schell’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I was wondering why you took so long to get up here,” he said. “Monk got to your hotel room almost two hours ago. You mean he left you there, took that bag out, and then came back?”

“Yeah, that’s right. He said something about the locks being pretty good, but not good enough. Then when he came back he said we had to meet Larry...”

“Shut up,” Schell barked.

There was a thin white line around his nostrils, his forehead was furrowed with lines. I could almost see him thinking of Monk working over those locks. If Monk could open burglar-proof vaults, those locks on the attache case wouldn’t be too tough for him, no matter how good they were.

“Monk wasn’t supposed to open that bag,” Schell said. He was thinking out loud now. “It was going out of the country. If he and that other crumb pulled anything on me...”

He was on his feet, the gun in his pocket forgotten as his right hand searched in the trouser pocket and came out with a long, slender key. He walked over and picked up the attache case and laid it on the radio, then slid the key into the first lock — it snapped open in a moment. Then he unlocked the other one and lifted open the top. He stood there for long seconds, his face draining of color the white line around his nose and mouth deepening. He picked up a handful of the stones, held them under the light, and for more long seconds studied them closely.

Leon Schell knew diamonds, he didn’t need a loupe. And he knew glass stones, even good glass stones. He let out something that sounded like a groan and flung the whole handful against the far wall.

He stood still for almost a minute, not saying anything, his face working spasmodically. Then he started swearing in a low, deadly voice. He called Monk Saunders and Larry Coster every vile name I ever heard, and some I never heard before. His hands shook in his rage.

“...those slobs couldn’t get in that building even when they were open for business. I never should have cut them in. It was all my work, my work and planning, two whole years it took, and then I get this from pigs like them...”

I still hadn’t figured out why Leon Schell had his two buddies and me carry the stuff for him today, why he hadn’t been along, but I didn’t think this was the time to ask. I wanted him to talk, and brother, he sure was. It was just beautiful. I sat there and listened and wondered how it would sound when it was played back in Court.

He went on and on, it was unbelievable. He had no restraint or caution. He seemed to be unaware that I was even in the room, even though he was looking right at me and talking right to me. He told me how he had set up the job, everything he did, how he had timed it, and how little Monk and Larry Coster had to do with the whole thing. I had come up here hoping he’d open the attache case with his key and that he would make a damning statement or two against himself, and here I had something far better than any confession. It was all over, all wrapped up now for keeps. I could hand him over to O’Leary now as one very dead duck. All I needed was five minutes or less to get to a phone and Leon Schell was through. I only had to figure out a way to get away from him gracefully and that shouldn’t be too hard.

He kept on talking, telling me how he had seen the infra-red ray light beams diagrammed and described in a trade electronics magazine, and how he had read about the television eye to protect the vault in a national industrial security magazine, and then how he planned to outwit these measures. He just wouldn’t stop talking.

I began to feel like the farmer who prayed for rain and then had all his crops washed out in a cloudburst. I just wanted to get out and away from him now to call O’Leary, but there was no way I could think of to shut him up and make my break. He kept going for minutes more, but finally ran out of breath.

It gave me the break I wanted. I stood up and moved a couple of steps towards the foyer. He eyed me sharply and seemed to realize that I was in the room with him for the first time since he started his ranting.

“Guess I’m no use here, Leon,” I said. “May as well mosey off. I’m real sorry for your trouble, though.” I turned and headed for the door.

“Wait a minute.” His voice was sharp and commanding.

I turned around and looked questioningly at him. He apparently didn’t suspect anything yet, his hands were clenched together, not exactly wringing them, but almost. At least they weren’t near his gun pocket.

“Wait a minute. I may need you for something. I’ve got to think of something.”

He paced up and down on the rug in quick hurried strides, his face a mask of concentration. This was a fine note. Here I had the guy signed, sealed, and almost delivered, on my way out of the dump to call the cops, and he tells me to wait while he thinks of something. But I couldn’t run out on him, now I really had to play it cool, very cool.

I shifted my weight and half faced him. I dug into my jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one and blew the smoke at the ceiling and watched it curl upward. My mind was racing. If he sent me out on some kind of an errand it would still be all right. All I had to do was get out of his sight and to a phone booth — in five minutes the building would be crawling with cops.

He kept pacing up and down, making sharp turns at the end of each little trip he made on the rug, his back never to me. The room was very quiet, the music coming from the hi-fi radio seemed louder and louder. I cursed myself for getting hog-tied like this, every minute was precious, but there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it.

The music stopped on the radio, an annoying fifteen second commercial came on, so annoying it made Leon Schell head for the set to snap it off, but a news announcer came on before he got there. The announcer’s words smashed into the room like live devils, loud and clear as rifle shots. My blood froze, my insides felt as if an icy hand was ripping them out.

“...police have identified the dead man as Martin Saunders, better known in the underworld as Monk Saunders. He is believed to be one of the suspects involved in an enormous jewel robbery last weekend which...”

Leon Schell’s right hand darted into his pocket and came out with the little gun as soon as he heard Monk’s name mentioned. Now it was aimed right at my head. His eyes glared into mine, beady marbles of hate. My heart felt like lead, slowly sinking into my legs, and for a crazy second I thought my eyes had changed into Coca Cola bottles.

“...high police officials refused all comment, but reporters on the scene learned that the occupant of the hotel room was an operative for an insurance concern and that he was seen in the vicinity shortly before the body was found...”

The announcer kept talking, but I couldn’t hear the words, the blood was pounding in my head too loudly. Schell was slightly bent over the set, still glaring at me, not missing a word. Finally the announcer shut up and he snapped off the set.

“So you’re an insurance copper, and you killed Monk,” he snarled.

He was too far away from me to try anything, and he held that gun like it was on a tripod. I just swallowed hard and didn’t say anything.

He threw his head back and gave an insane laugh, it was the weirdest thing I ever heard in my life. I could feel the cold sweat beading on my forehead, a chill raced down my back.

“That’s real funny,” he said. “An insurance cop slob like you almost fooling Leon Schell, imagine that. But that was the last laugh, you’ll be very dead in a minute or two, after you tell me why you came up here with that junk. Now talk, while you’re still alive.”

My mind was a chaos, I tried desperately to think of something, anything, to stall for time. For sure I didn’t want to die, but if I lived, I didn’t want him to get away.

“Sure, Leon, sure,” I said. “Only if I were you I’d put that gun away and forget all about shooting people, especially me. You’re hung up on the jewelry job, you’ve had it on that. There’s no percentage in making it worse and signing your own death warrant by killing me and that’s just what you’d be doing.”

He was icy calm again, his face a hard mask of hatred.

“Why would I sign my death warrant?” he asked. “Seems to me I remember saying a few indiscreet things to you a while back, things I never should have said. You don’t think I’ll let you walk out of here so you can tell people what I said, do you? You might even try to convict me for that jewel robbery. And I hate witnesses. A bullet in your head now and I never have to worry about you.”

The way he looked, the hate in his eyes, I knew he meant it. It had never looked worse for me. I decided on a desperate gamble — it was all I could do.

“Look, Schell,” I said, “I didn’t come up here for a social call, you realize that. And I didn’t come up here to hand you a suitcase full of glass. I came up here to get you to talk, and brother, you sure did, with bells. Only I have a microphone and a transmitter strapped to me, and every word you said was broadcast to a truck my boys have downstairs. And they have earphones on so they know what’s going on up here and by now they’ve probably called Police Headquarters to send a few squad cars around. So now if you want to shoot, go ahead.”

I knew from the flicker of doubt and confusion in his eyes I had scored heavily. Nobody commits a murder when the cops might walk in a couple of minutes later.

“Where’s the mike and transmitter?” he asked. His gun still hadn’t moved a fraction of an inch.

I half bent over and pulled the material of my trousers tautly over the bulge of the recorder strapped to my thigh. “Right here,” I said.

“I don’t mean like that. I want to see this great invention. Take your clothes off. Strip.”

“What!” I was incredulous. I couldn’t believe it.

“You hear me boy, get your clothes off fast, otherwise I take them off you, after I put a slug in you. Now!”

There was nothing I could do but obey. I started to unknot my tie.

“Just be very slow and easy with your hands, copper,” he said. “If they move too fast I’ll put a slug in your head. Now strip, right down to your skin.”

I undressed slowly, careful not to make any abrupt moves with my hands.

“Fact is,” he said, “I just don’t believe anything you say. If you are telling the truth, it seems to me your cop friends should be here by now, and I don’t hear anything. But if they are outside, I’d be foolish to try to make a break for it, if that’s what you want me to do. If you’re lying then you don’t have a transmitter there and that’s what I want to see, just what it is.”

Leon Schell was no dummy. He almost had it figured out. I had slipped the control switch out of my jacket pocket and it was hanging down over my belt. I unhitched my belt and slipped out of my trousers. The recorder and the microphone were clearly visible now, held to my legs with adhesive tape, the wire to the control hanging to the floor. I felt like a damn fool standing there in my underwear, socks, and shoes.

“Okay, boy, that’s enough. Now just turn around and get your hands up high over your head,” Schell ordered.

He came up behind me and I felt his hand on my left leg at the microphone, but didn’t feel the gun in my back. He was a pro, all right. I couldn’t move a muscle. He ripped the microphone off, then the recorder, tearing savagely at the tape. It felt like two fistsful of flesh came with them. I almost screamed with the pain. Then he backed away from me.

I turned around to look at him and lowered my hands without him telling me. He had dropped the microphone on the floor but had the recorder in his left hand and the gun still in his right. The recorder was half covered with adhesive tape, I knew he’d never get it off with one hand, and that meant he’d have to lay the gun down. An idea started ballooning in my mind.

My cigarette was still burning in an ash tray on a little end table next to a chair where I had placed it before I got undressed.

“Okay to smoke?” I asked him.

“Sure, relax,” he said meanly. “It may be your last one.”

He was eight or ten feet away from me, then moved a couple of feet further away to the bar and laid the gun on top of it. He didn’t have to be an electronic wizard to figure out that the recorder wasn’t a transmitter, and when he did tag it for what it was, I was dead six ways and up. This would be the only chance I’d have.

I reached toward the ash tray to flick my cigarette. It was made of heavy copper, just about the size of a baseball. This looked like my day for ash trays, but if that was all I could come up with, it would have to do. Now my life depended on it.

He was just starting to tear the adhesive tape off the recorder. I dropped my cigarette into the tray, seized it, and in one sweeping motion snapped it off right at his head.

He saw my first motion. His head came up, he hesitated for a split second, then his arm shot out for the gun. But his reflexes took over. The tray was whistling at his face like a meteor. He raised both arms to ward it off and tried to duck. It caught him on the side of his face and almost tore his ear off. He let out a shriek of pain.

I didn’t wait. There was an overstuffed pillow on the chair and I scaled that at him, then took two jumps toward him and dove at him in a vicious tackle. His arm shot out frantically for the gun, but I smashed into him just as his fingers were inches from it and we both crashed to the floor. I dropped my head just as I hit him and rammed him full in the belly. It knocked the wind out of him, but only for a second.

He twisted and turned under me and brought his knee up at my groin and I was just able to roll out of the way. I slammed my elbow into his gut and heard him grunt horribly as the air went out of him again. I rolled away and tried to scramble to my feet, but he came with me, his fingers groping for my eyes.

I smashed my right into his nose and the blood poured out but that didn’t slow him up a bit. I tried to knee him but didn’t get him right and he kept coming at me like an octupus, all arms and legs flailing. I reached a nerve center in his bull neck and squeezed hard. He screamed in pain and rolled away from me. I got to my knees and sprang up.

He didn’t wait. He climbed up and jumped at me in one motion. His right slammed into my chest and it felt like a truck hit me. Then his left smashed into my face just under my right eye and for a second I thought I was going. I backed away from his deadly punches. With that thirty pounds he had on me I had to keep away from him. I kept peppering him with my left to slow him up, but he wouldn’t slow. I threw a right at his chin that would have stopped any normal man — it landed perfectly but he just shook his head and kept coming. He landed another crusher over my heart, then another, and out of nowhere a fist slammed against my jaw. My head was spinning, I fought against passing out. All I could see was his bloodsoaked face and ear and an evil grin on his face.

Then he made the mistake he couldn’t afford to make. A couple more shots like that and he’d have me on the floor, unconscious. But he was a gun man. The gun was still on top of the bar, four or five feet to his right. He stopped coming at me and took a step sideways towards the bar.

I shook my head desperately and jumped him. I landed two hard lefts on his face and a powerhouse right in his ribs. He gasped but tried to shift his weight and start in on me again, but I had all of that I wanted. He was just off balance enough to make himself awkward. I shot another right at his nose and more blood spurted, then smashed my open hand on his right shoulder in a Judo chop. It landed perfectly, his right arm fell dead like a tree. For the first time the evil grin disappeared and a look of alarm came on his face.

This was better, it evened up his thirty pound advantage. He was game, though, he wouldn’t give up. He kept lashing out at me with his left, and kicking viciously at me whenever he thought he could reach me. Only now he couldn’t.

From then on it wasn’t really fair. I kept slamming his body with hard rights and jabbing his face with my left. His useless arm kept him off balance — it was like slugging a punching bag. Only he wouldn’t quit and he wouldn’t go down.

I knew he’d go for the gun again if he got a chance. I circled him around so that his left side was against the side of the room where the bar was and backed away from him for a second. He thought he could make it and tried. It was just what I wanted. I stepped in and threw a roundhouse right against his jaw with everything I had. His body sagged, then fell backward and this time it sounded like a tree when he hit the floor. He was out, but good.

I sucked air into my lungs, they felt as if they were on fire. I felt dizzy and wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t pass out. I moved groggily over to the bar and pushed the little gun back until it dropped behind it. I didn’t want Schell jumping for that thing any more if he came to.

The recorder with its precious cartridge was lying on the rug in front of the bar, I bent down and picked it up and hugged it to me.

“That must be very valuable to you.” It was a woman’s voice.

I turned and saw her at the other end of the room. The bedroom door was open and she was standing just this side of it, with my gun in her hand, and it was pointed right at me. Oh, no, I thought wildly, I can’t lose this guy now, after everything that’s happened today.

She was big, and beautiful; a big, gorgeous blonde. Her voice sounded like the Gabor sisters with a sort of mittel Europe accent, but there was enough of her to make three Gabors. She had on a silk dressing gown which did nothing but show off what she had. Somehow she looked familiar, then I remembered. This must be the blonde who shanghied the helicopter pilot last weekend, the babe with the improbable name of Sandra LaCoeur. In a way I didn’t blame that pilot.

She was looking at me with a smile playing around her lips, and I suddenly remembered I was in my underwear. Then I noticed with dismay quite a bit of it had come off in my go with Leon Schell.

“How do you do, Miss LaCoeur.” I said dismally. “Sorry I had to mess your apartment up. You mind if I get dressed?”

“Please do,” she said. “But don’t try any of your tricks. You might not be as lucky with me. I grew up in Alsace during the war, and I killed three German soldiers before I was nine years old.”

I knew from her eyes she was telling the truth. Besides, there were no more ash trays around and anyway I don’t think I could throw a spitball across the room the way I felt. I walked over to my clothes and shoved the recorder cartridge into my jacket pocket, pulled on my trousers and tugged on my shirt. That cartridge had me crazy, if I lost that now it would ruin me for life, if I lived.

“Just who are you, and what are you doing here?” she asked me.

That started a lot of wheels going around in my head. She was no dumb blonde, whatever else she was.

“Your boy friend and I had a little fight,” I said. I was trying to get the pitch, to fit her into the picture.

“He’s not my boy friend,” she said. “Leon is just a friend, more a business associate I guess you would say.”

That didn’t figure, but the wheels started turning faster. Leon Schell never worked with a woman, that I was sure of. But he would hire one for a specific job, such as grounding that pilot for a weekend, and it was easy to see he wouldn’t mind mixing a little pleasure with business, and with this Amazon that kind of mixing would be a real pleasure. I wanted to get that gun away from her in a hurry, so I gave her a fast pitch. With a dame like this there was one thing in the world that interested her more than anything else, dough.

“Look, honey,” I said, “I’m working with the police. I don’t know if you know it or not but your friend Schell here is one of the most wanted jewel thieves in the country. He’s wanted so bad by just my company that they have a twenty-five thousand dollar reward out for him. You have a pretty fancy layout here, with that kind of dough you could pay some of the expenses for quite a while.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Leon Schell moved his legs and let out a groan. This had to be fast. I put the pressure on.

“I want you to give me that gun right now, and I want you to testify about how Schell hired you for that job in Poughkeepsie last week. In a little while this place will have a couple dozen cops swarming over it, and somehow I can’t imagine you having a gun fight with the police over any man, especially a guy who is just a business associate. If you work with me I know I can talk my company into giving you all or a good chunk of that reward money. But it has to be right now, before this guy wakes up. If you stick with him there’ll be a mess when the cops get here, but no matter what happens, he’s finished, and you won’t get a smell of that dough.”

She was a Frenchwoman with French logic, she could see a chance at some heavy money, and heaven be praised, she was a woman who could make up her mind quickly.

“Okay, handsome, I work for you,” she said.

She lowered the gun and walked, no strutted, no I mean sidled toward me. Everything shook, but it shook just right. So help me, in a spot like that I was distracted. When she handed me the gun I just kept looking.

“I wasn’t really going to shoot you,” she smiled at me. “You’re really much too handsome. I thought maybe you were a burglar or something like that. I was asleep in my bedroom when I heard all that racket and...”

“It’s okay, baby,” I smiled back at her.

Leon Schell moaned again, but now I didn’t care if he sang the St. Louis Blues.

“Where’s your phone?” I asked her.

She went over to the sofa and pulled open the door of the end table at the far end. I found myself getting distracted again, but forced my mind back to business. For a big gal she sure had perfect control of her musculature. I sat down to face Schell. He was still out and now I hoped he’d stay that way for another ten minutes. Just to be sure, I kept my gun at the ready on him. Sandra LaCoeur sat on the couch a foot or so from me, looking at him. She even smelled nice.

I dialed the operator and asked her to get me Police Headquarters. This time I didn’t get any jazz about dialing it myself, I heard a bunch of clicks and noises over the wire and then the cop operator at Headquarters came on.

“Drop the gun, Young. Fast.”

I half turned my head towards the foyer and saw them — two, no three men, stepping quickly out of the kitchen into the foyer, spreading out. Each had a gun in his mitt. My heart leaped, then I recognized one of them, I think his name was Cosgrove, one of the Homicide Squad boys. I dropped the gun silently on the rug. The cop at Headquarters kept saying hello but I couldn’t say anything. I looked at Sandra LaCoeur and she had a stricken look on her face.

“It’s okay, baby,” I said. “These guys are the cops I was telling you about.” I had no idea how they got there that fast.

“Put the phone down, Young,” one of them said. “You won’t have to make any calls for a long, long time.”

I put it down on the cop who was still saying hello. One of the detectives walked to the front door and opened it, then I got another surprise. Men poured through it, but the first one in was Inspector O’Leary himself. His face looked like red granite, his eyes were flashing fire and brimstone if I ever saw it. He looked mad enough to eat me alive if I so much as sneezed. He didn’t say anything at first, his eyes swept over every detail in the room — at Leon Schell still out on the floor, the open attache case, the junk jewelry on the far side of the room where Schell threw it, the mess of the bar where Schell and I had crashed into it, over Sandra LaCoeur, and finally over me. They fastened on me like two gimlets. I realized I had my coat and tie off and Sandra LaCoeur was only a foot away from me on the couch — my face got very red.

“Little hootchie-cootchie on company time?” he finally asked.

One of the detectives let out a wolf whistle behind him.

Inspector O’Leary whirled around. “Shut up!” he bellowed.

He turned back to me. “Now will you mind telling me just what the hell is going on here?” he yelled at me.

“Sure, Inspector, sure,” I told him.

“Shut up, wait a minute,” he barked. “Perrozzi, get your pad out and take down every word he says.”

“Yes sir,” Perrozzi answered.

I told him the whole thing, from the time I left him earlier that afternoon right up to the end. I embroidered the end a little, exaggerating what Sandra LaCoeur had done to help me. Hell, I was willing to give her the whole insurance company for the way she bailed me out of that mess. Inspector O’Leary’s face gradually relaxed as he listened. When I was finished he almost looked human again.

“Where’s the recorder cartridge?” he asked me.

I got up and got it out of my coat. “It’s all on that,” I told him as I handed it to him. “Everything, from the time Monk came in to my room right up to the time Schell made me strip.”

Sandra LaCoeur smiled and a couple of the detectives snickered. Inspector O’Leary took it in his giant paw and slipped it into his pocket. He was almost beaming at me.

“I hate to admit it lad,” he said, “but you did a fine job, sure enough you did. I admit I was a little mad at you for a while, but you were lucky and it worked out just fine.”

“Well, Inspector,” I said, “I promised you I’d get the three of them for you, and that’s what I tried to do, even if I had to cut a few corners. You know, like the old song goes, ‘One, Two, Three, O’Leary’.”

Inspector O’Leary threw back his head and roared with laughter. I didn’t get it, I didn’t think it was that funny, in fact now I couldn’t see anything funny about it at all. But he was having the time of his life. Even the detectives looked puzzled.

When he was able to talk he called Perrozzi again. “Get handcuffs on Schell and get an ambulance up here for him — we don’t want anything to happen to the lug now, and get a Matron up here so Miss what-ever-her-name-is can get dressed. Bring her in for questioning, we’ll need her as a material witness. I’ll take care of Young myself.”

“Gee, thanks, Inspector,” I said.

He swooped up my coat with one hand and me with the other. He put his right arm around my shoulder and I thought I was dancing with a bear. He headed me across to the foyer, up the little stairs, and out into the hall, then rang for the elevator.

“What’s so funny about ‘One, Two, Three, O’Leary’?” I asked him when I could breathe again.

His eyes twinkled. “You wouldn’t understand, lad,” he said. “But it brings back the old days to me. When I was a rookie in Hell’s Kitchen I never locked anybody up unless I had three charges against them, and I always made them stick. I got the nickname ‘One, Two, Three, O’Leary’ those many long years ago. It just struck me funny coming from you.”

That didn’t clear it up at all. “Why was it so funny coming from me?” I asked him.

“Well, lad, it’s like this. When my men brought that other punk, Larry Coster in, I told him I’d personally unscrew his head from his shoulders unless he told me where this Schell guy was hiding. I figured you’d be up there with him. He came across fast enough, and on my way up here I guess I was pretty peeved at you. As a matter of fact when I got you I was going to book you on no less than sixteen different charges. But you did such a good job I’m going to forget all that now, I’ll let bygones be bygones.”

“You mean you won’t book me?” I asked hopefully.

“Oh, I have to book you, lad, you know that. But I’ll cut it down to three. Homicide, leaving the scene of a homicide, and failing to report a homicide.” He roared with laughter again.

The elevator came and we stepped in. This guy had the lousiest sense of humor I had ever seen in my life. All I could say was “Um.”

“Cheer up, lad,” he guffawed. “I’ll buy you a beer or two before I book you. No, I’ll make it three. Three for ‘One, Two, Three, O’Leary’.”

I wondered if I could talk him into five or six so I could get to sleep and maybe dream of Sandra LaCoeur.