RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Detective Fiction Weekly, June 1940 with "Suicide Roughly"
A taproom shooting runs the gamut from suicide to
accident to murder—all on the strength of hunches.
"Suicide Roughly" is a crime-mystery novelette in which William Gray Beyer blends his characteristic hard-boiled police atmosphere with a puzzle built around a death that appears—at first glance—to be suicide. As in many of Beyer's detective stories, the narrative hinges on procedural detail, psychological misdirection, and the gradual uncovering of a hidden motive...
IT AIN'T often that the Homicide Department goes out to drum up trade. As a general rule business comes in pretty regular without us advertising for it. People commit murders for all sorts of reasons, in all kinds of weather. There's no seasonal slumps and we usually manage to keep fairly busy. When you come to think of it, we got a pretty good racket.
But in spite of the regularity of the business, every so often we get a breathing spell when every case on the books is closed and no new ones have come up. This don't happen often, mind you, but when it does, everybody gets the jitters waiting for something to bust loose. It was during one of these temporary lapses that me and Tim Casey was sitting in the station house wishing for a race riot or something. Tim had just turned off the radio because some guy was telling him about the marvelous qualities of his brand of face powder. I think Tim got insulted when the guy suggested that he shove a handful of it in his mouth and chew it, to prove how free from grit it was. As he snapped the switch and spit on the floor to get the imaginary face powder out of his mouth, Tim fixed a baleful eye on me.
"How about you going out and conking somebody," he suggested. "Then I'll solve the murder."
I glanced at the clock. "In five minutes I'm through for the day," I reminded. "And I never kill anybody on my own time. Besides, you couldn't solve anything without me. And if I done the dirty deed, I wouldn't help you."
Tim grunts, disdainful like, as if to imply that my valuable assistance wasn't indispensable. But he decides not to put that into words. "Let's hit a beer," he says instead.
We took my car, being off duty and not entitled to use a squad buggy. And Tim didn't own one. He claimed that even though he was drawing a sergeant's salary, he couldn't afford a car of his own on account of having a flock of kids to feed. Myself, I figure he either fed them hummingbird's wings or else he had a sock tucked away. On a first-class detective's salary, I always managed to have a jalopy, and I had as many mouths to feed as him. And most of them were blondes, who can eat more than any kid. So accordingly I worked him for a tankful of gas.
After we left the gas station I headed for a tavern where you meet the right sort of people. The place wasn't exactly to Tim's liking, but I was driving the car. Tim's taste runs to nickel beers and dime shots. He feels more comfortable in that kind of a joint, probably because there's never a crease in his pants and his coat usually looks as if he'd hung it up on the floor. But me, being the Beau Brummel of the Homicide Squad, I prefer a filling station with more class. As I said, you're more apt to meet the right sort of people where the beers cost twenty cents and the liquor slides down real smooth and then sneaks up and kicks you in the pants.
"I can't see the sense of it," says Tim. "They got the same brand of beer down at Brady's for a nickel, and what's more the glasses are bigger. Why, they ain't even got a dart board here!"
"Yeah," I remarks, "but in a place like this they got atmosphere. And I don't mean the kind that smells like stale beer and disinfectant."
"Sure. Fifteen cents worth of atmosphere with every beer," he growls. "I'd rather pay a nickel for the beer and then go over to the art gallery for the atmosphere."
THIS sort of light-hearted banter goes on for the space of three beers with Scotch chasers, when I realize that Tim's right. I'm certainly not enjoying the expensive surroundings when I have to argue with him. So I finally gave up and piloted my jalopy around to Brady's, which ain't really such a bad place if you're merely intent on oiling your tonsils and would just as soon get your swing band off of a record.
"This is more like it," sighs Tim, as we sidle up to the bar at the end where the dart board is located. "Two beers, with no more than four inches of collar," he orders, plunking down a dime. "Wanta shoot a game? Loser pays for the next round."
This was a very subtle dodge of Tim's calculated to appeal to my sporting blood. He always beat me, mainly because I don't usually bend the elbow at dives where they cater to the dart-shooting element, and therefore don't get much practice. Tim, on the other hand, is an expert, and foxy in the bargain. He never beats me by much of a margin, though I suspect that he could if he wanted to. Evidence to support this is the fact that no matter how good a game I might be having, Tim's game always improves just enough to nose me out. As a result he never pays for any but the first drink, which is always a beer. After that he orders Scotch on me.
He hands me a dart and I flip it at the cork. But I must've had some outside English on it because it missed by a couple inches. Tim's dart sticks plumb in the center, which entitles him to shoot last. This little detail is very important the way Tim plays, because no matter what score I make on a number he has a chance to equal it or barely beat it. But if he shot first, he'd have to shoot his best to be sure of keeping ahead. And then he might lick me by such a big margin that I'd get discouraged and quit on him. So Tim always makes a special effort to beat me to the cork so that his supply of free Scotch won't be cut off. It's easy to see why I work him for a few gallons of gas when I get a chance.
Me being first Tim handed me the third dart and I went to pull the other two out of the board. That gave me a chance to notice a peculiar thing that I might have missed if it hadn't been for his cork shot. For his dart had not only smacked into the board dead center, but it was buried clear up to the wood. Pulling it out required no effort at all. It wasn't even necessary to wiggle it to get it loose. It was loose. The steel point was resting in a hole, slightly less than a quarter-inch in diameter, which went clear through the board! The cork was painted a dark blue, the same as the outer area of the board, and the blackness of the hole wasn't noticeable except at close inspection.
"What happened to the board?" I asked the barman. "Somebody trying out a new drill?"
He leaned over the bar and looked at the hole, but just shook his head.
The game progressed in the usual manner. I clipped off a thirty-five in the nine innings, which was a good game for me, but Tim, with a great show of very careful shooting, made a forty. I grinned to myself as I considered the fact that he could have made it forty-five without even trying.
But Tim's too good a guy to begrudge a few drinks, even if he does win them that way. And being single I don't have to feel that I'm robbing a wife and kids every time I buy a drink. I imagine that's the way Tim would feel if he was setting them up instead of winning them. And as I said, Tim's a pretty good guy. He don't take all the credit when we solve a case, as he could easily do, him being a sergeant and me only first-class. Far from it. It's always "we" when Tim's telling about one of our cases. He leans over backward in that respect. Which is one of the reasons why the team of Casey and Burns is generally known to be unbeatable. We work together, though you'd never know it to listen to us wrangle.
I was just aiming for a very careful cork shot, in the vain hope of getting the dart so close to the center that Tim couldn't get closer, when a minor commotion in a booth at my back spoiled my shot. Like a temperamental golf ball it flew way out in the rough over by the double six.
"I'm getting tired of it all!" shouted the disturbance in the booth. "Same old grind every day. And what do I get out of it? The only fun I have is drinking, and that gives me a headache."
I watched the guy next to him calm him down, while Tim nonchalantly placed his dart about an inch nearer the cork than mine.
"Take it easy," said this lad, while the two girls across the table from them looked bug-eyed. "What you need is another drink. Life's not so bad. If you don't believe me, take a look at the gorgeous creatures helping us with this bottle."
The "gorgeous creatures" seemed to perk up a little when he said that, and tried a couple of sickly smiles. I was thinking at the time that neither of them was gorgeous enough to accompany me to a murder, but every man to his taste. Which was a funny thing to be thinking, the way things turned out.
I didn't pay any more attention to what went on in the booth, because I happened to glance at the board and saw where Tim's dart landed. As a matter of fact I was chuckling inside at the way Tim stuck to his teasing method of barely beating me with every shot. And I forgot all about the guy who was "tired of it all."
BUT I remembered all of a sudden in another minute or two. Tim was taking elaborate aim at the four when the commotion broke out again.
"Don't try to stop me!" says the screwball. "I'm going to put an end to a useless existence!"
The goof was pretty wild-eyed when he said that, but I didn't take him very serious. I've known guys that got that way every time they smelled a cork. Those kind are the same as a lot of other drunks that suddenly decide they want to attract attention. They're usually quiet inoffensive guys when they're sober, but feel that they've got to be the life of the party when they're tanked. You know, the kind that sing on trolley cars and argue with cops.
But this particular stew fooled me. Before I could do more than take a step he had whipped out an automatic, put it up to his ear, and squeezed the trigger!
He got a very funny look on his pan just before he toppled off the seat. He looked kind of amazed, like a guy that's shot when he don't expect it. The other peculiar thing that I noticed in that split second—though neither thing sunk in very far at the time—was that the lug along side of him didn't seem very surprised or perturbed about the whole thing. He hadn't made a move to stop the suicide, even though he was on the guy's right and could have reached the gun, or at least tried to. Nor did he shout or show any sign of being upset when his pal dropped a slug into his brain. The girls, on the other hand, let out a couple of screams that they could have rented out to a locomotive engineer.
Right at that moment Tim grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back toward the bar.
"We're off duty, you dope," he reminded. "And besides it's out of our department. Let some of the other monkeys handle it."
He was right, of course. If there was a crime to be solved, neither of us would have considered whether the city was shelling out for our time. But this was open and shut. It was bad enough that we would have to show up at the coroner's inquest as witnesses, without spending a couple hours of our own time doing a routine job of taking names and addresses and getting the statements of the other witnesses.
The bartender called the cops and a radio car arrived in two minutes flat. Tim and me leaned against the bar, getting a kick out of watching somebody else work. Tim forgot himself and shoved out a bill and ordered Scotch. We had just put that one down when a couple of plainclothes men showed up. They spotted us right away. First they looked surprised, then mad. It turned out that they had been partners in a cut-throat pinochle game a few minutes ago. And at the moment when their desk sergeant had sent them out to cover this business, they had been about to set their opponents up on an over-bid. They were plenty mad about it on account of they were playing a dollar a game.
"You're gettin' paid, ain't you?" Tim pointed out. "Go into your act and forget we're around. We're homicide men, anyway."
"Stick around," one of them growls. "If I get any madder there's liable to be a homicide."
IT DIDN'T take long to straighten things out. Tim and I told what we saw, and the plainclothes boys got all the dope on who the guy was from the lad who sat beside him. The dead man was George Cummings, a buyer for a gyp jewelry house.
The other guy, James Medway by name, describes himself as a "gem speculator." This, he explains, is a man who buys up stones at auctions and forced sales, and hangs on to them until he can find a buyer at a decent price. Personally I didn't like this gent's looks. He was a little too smooth to suit me. He answered all the questions without getting flustered or showing that he was nervous or ill at ease in any way. He gave me the impression of expecting each question and having the answer all ready on the tip of his tongue. And what's more he didn't seem to give a damn whether it was a friend of his that lay on the floor or some unknown Scowegian which had just fallen off a glacier and happened to land there. Which is probably why I didn't like him. I know if somebody I had been hoisting them with had bumped himself off, I would have felt kind of bad about it.
One of the harness cops picked up the automatic and was looking it over when I happened to glance at him and saw something unusual about the rod. He handed it over when I asked him. The thing was a target automatic, twenty-two caliber, with five inches of rifling in its barrel, and a magazine designed to hold nine bullets. Ten shots... counting the one in the chamber. It was a special job, and fully as heavy as my thirty-eight. I'd heard about guns like it, but I'd never run across one before. They were supposed to be a marvel for accuracy and with plenty of muzzle velocity with high-speed shells.
Idly I counted the cartridges in the clip. There were seven, and one in the chamber. And considering that there was one in the guy's head, I deduced that he hadn't replaced the ninth one in the clip when he had pumped one into the chamber. That was odd, because a man usually carries his gun fully loaded. But it didn't impress me very much, him being a jewelry buyer and not a cop or a gunman. I passed the rod over to Tim, but he just grunted and handed it back. That was because he don't like automatics and still has the idea that revolvers are the more dependable gun.
And that, like a lot of popular ideas, is only half right. As a matter of fact an automatic is only undependable when it's not treated right. A dirty shell or a few grains of sand will jam them. Pocket lint will raise hell with their mechanism. But if the user keeps his automatic clean and properly oiled, it will shoot as straight as any revolver of similar size, and a whole lot faster. And that last item can very well mean the difference between a whole skin and one with a hole in it.
The powers that run police forces, however, are wise enough to know that some of the dopes that get by the civil service examinations haven't enough brains to see that fact, and therefore they require them to carry revolvers, which are closer to being foolproof. I hesitated slightly when I handed the twenty-two back to the cop, wondering if there was any chance of me lifting it when nobody was looking. I had a hankering to experiment with the thing, to see if it was as accurate as I'd heard.
In about fifteen minutes the taproom was almost back to normal. The detectives had bundled off the two girls and the smooth Mr. Medway to have them sign typewritten statements. The girls had wept brine all over the place, insisting that they had never seen either of the two gents before they met them in the taproom, and that the cops were spoiling their whole evening, taking them away like that. Medway just smiled and went along without saying a word. And, of course, neither did the corpse when they heaved it in the morgue wagon. His top-coat, a light tan one with big patch pockets, they tossed on the floor beside him, not caring whether it got dirty or not.
TIM and me went back to the dart game. We started in the fourth inning where we had left off. When the stew had put on his act, I had been two runs ahead but by the time I finished the eighth I was eleven behind. Tim very foxily threw off with the first two darts and then made a single with the third, making me twelve behind. "Shoot for the cork," he suggested. "Counts ten on the first dart. Then make all you can with the other two. You can't say I ain't a sport."
"No, no, of course not," I agreed. "You'd risk a buck on a horse anytime—if you knew the race was fixed."
But I took him up on it anyhow. There's always a chance of a miracle. And the miracle happened! With a dead sounding plunk the first dart landed smack in the center of the cork! That counted ten points, according to Tim's offer, but all of a sudden I lost interest in making more points with the other two darts. The reason for that was that I noticed a thin dribble of white powder trickle out from behind the board.
I didn't even throw the other two darts. It was silly anyway. Even if I had made two triples, Tim would have come through with a miraculous seven. But I wasn't thinking of that. I had to find out why there was so much plaster dropping on the floor. The few darts that would go through that hole couldn't account for it. Checking up wasn't such a big job. I loosened a screw with the blade of my pocket knife and pulled the board away from the wall.
"What the hell goes on?" queried Tim.
I didn't answer right away. I was busy digging with the small blade of my knife in the hole that was directly back of the spot where the cork had been. In a minute I had it... a small slug of lead less than a quarter of an inch in diameter. I held it up so Tim could see it
"A twenty-two," he said. "So what?"
"So it was a twenty-two that the jewelry guy used," I reminded.
"Oh, I see," Tim says, very judicious. "You mean that the bullet passed through his head and landed in the dart board fifteen minutes before he shot it?"
Ignoring Tim's silly remark I collared the barkeep./p>
"That hole in the dart board was caused by a bullet," I informed him. "Did anybody shoot off a gun before we came in?"
"Not since I came on duty. But then that was only an hour ago."
"That guy that shot himself," I pursued, "was he here when you went to work?"
"No. The four of them came in right after... two at a time. First the girls, who ordered beer... then the two gents, who stood at the bar and had straight rye. The girls gave them the eye and they sat down and bought a bottle."
"Uh-huh," I mused, trying to make something out of it, but failing. "Pour a couple Scotch. Have one yourself."
"Thanks. I'll take a cigar." He pours the Scotch, takes a three-cent cigar out of a box and removes seventy-five cents from the bill I shoved across the bar.
"Did you ever see those two guys before tonight?" I inquire.
"Yeah, once. They were in here last night when I came on. Had a couple of girls in the same booth they were in tonight. Different girls, though. They took them out right after I came on."
"I see. Pour a couple of short beers for chasers. Have one yourself."
"Thanks. I'll take a cigar." He pours the beers and takes another cigar, deducting fifteen cents from the remaining quarter. You can't win.
"I know I'm dumb," sighs Tim. "But what's it all about? Let me in on your brain wave."
"I'm not so sure," I confessed, screwing the dart board back against the wall. "I just got a hunch."
"You and your hunches!" snorts Tim. "What about?"
"Murder. I got a hunch that suicide was caused."
TIM almost choked on his drink. He spluttered a little, set down the glass, and then got kind of red in the face. It was almost a minute before he decided he could talk.
"You feelin' all right?" he inquires, real calm.
"Sure, sure."
"Then maybe it's your eyes," he concludes. "Me, I saw the guy shoot hisself."
"Yeah, I know. But did you notice how surprised he looked? Almost as if he didn't think the gun was loaded."
"Phooey! That often happens. It's like a guy sees something just when he's dying, and it registers on his face in that last second. Maybe he was expecting to see Saint Peter and instead it's the guy with the horns."
I shook my head, unconvinced, and took a sip of my Scotch.
"And besides," Tim clinches, "he said he was tired of it all. And then he said he was going to put an end to a useless existence. That shows he intended to give himself the works and he done it."
"Now you're arguing on my side," I said. "Nobody talks like that unless they're putting on an act. 'Tired of it all.' 'Put an end to a useless existence.' Sounds like a melodrama."
"Phooey again! Why don't you wait for the murders to come to us instead of trying to make them where they ain't?"
"This one landed right in our lap," I claimed. "Look. Suppose we take this slug down to ballistics, and ask them to see if it matches up with the one in the guy's head. If it does, that ought to prove something, oughtn't it?"
"Sure. It'll prove that they came out of the same gun. That's all. The barkeep said the guy was in here yesterday. He just tried a little target practice. Where's that get you?"
That had me stumped. "Well let's try it anyhow. I might think of something."
"With what?" Tim remarks, looking at his watch. "Me, I'm a married man. I got a lovin' wife who is probably glarin' at a cold steak and an empty chair. I'll see you tomorrow."
Tim left, taking the subway. But the look on that jewelry guy's face was haunting me, so I hopped in the jalopy and headed back to the station. The ballistics man told me he'd have the dope in the morning.
TIM beat me to work the next day.
He was listening to the radio when I arrived, after stopping first at ballistics. I didn't waste any time breaking the news.
"They matched!" I chortled, showing him a report.
Tim just shook his head, and handed it back.
"But look, Tim," I pleaded. "There's some reason why he took a shot at the dart board. Let's find out. I got a hunch, I tell you."
"Sure there's a reason. Didn't you ever notice how the cork on a dart board looks about the same as the bulls eye on a target?"
"All right, maybe that's it," I admitted. "But let's make sure. I got a hunch."
Tim grumbled about wasting time, but seeing that we weren't doing anything anyway, and the captain was getting tired of looking at us, we wound up at Brady's bar. The day man was on duty, and he exploded when I informed him that the guy who rubbed himself out had also shot a hole in the dart board.
"So that's who it was!" he chirps. "That dope! Well what do you know about that?"
"Look, Toots," I says, real patient. "We came in here to find out what you know about it."
"Me? I didn't know nothin'. I was tendin' bar."
"Of course. But what did you see? How did he come to perforate the dart board?"
"Oh. Well he just let fly with an automatic and hit it smack in the middle of the cork. I soaked him a half buck for the damage."
Tim was grinning and looking very superior.
"Look, Toots," I says, feeling kind of desperate. "Tell me everything you noticed about him from the time he came in. Who he was with and everything he did."
"Oh," says the barkeep, trying to think. "Best I can remember, they came in about four o'clock. The guy with the gun—though of course I couldn't see the gun then—and another guy and two girls. They sits at that booth over there and orders a bottle of rye. For about a half-hour they're quiet and I don't pay no attention to them, havin' other things to do. Then all of a sudden this guy yells that he's tired of it all and yanks out his rod. He aims it at his head and pulls the trigger. But it don't go off. It just clicks."
Tim's grin has faded by this time, and I got one. "Keep going, brother," I prompts. "What next?"
"Why, the guy takes the gun down from his head and does something to it. Then, like I said, he aims it at the dart board and it goes off! Then he laughs at the look on the girls' faces, and puts the gun away. The other guy laughs too. About that time I wake up and go over and raise hell about the hole in the dart board. The guy musta been some kind of a screwball."
About this time I notice the visible part of Tim's neck beginning to get red. To look at his face now you'd never think that it could be made to register a smile.
"All right," he growls. "So the guy was in the habit of pullin' an act to thrill the girls. And the last time he made a mistake and left a bullet in the chamber. So what? Is that murder?"
"No, and it ain't suicide either," I chortles.
"Okay then, Sherlock," says Tim. "We'll tell them all about it at the coroner's inquest and they'll call it accidental death. Let's have a beer."
"Nothing doing," I returns. "Let's have Scotch. I think better on Scotch."
"I hadn't noticed," says Tim, putting his dime back in his pocket when I flashed a bill.
I DIDN'T taste that drink. I was still thinking about the screwball, Cummings, and his "gem speculator" friend, Medway. And there still seemed to be something fishy about the set-up. Suddenly I got it.
"Say! Why didn't that guy Medway mention something about that suicide act being a gag? Answer me that!"
Tim set down his glass and got a very resigned look on his pan. "Still got hunchophobia, hey? You're not satisfied with suicide, so you make it accidental death. Now you're back to murder again, I guess. Just because you're on the Homicide Squad don't mean you can make a murder out of nothing at all."
"As I remember it," I says, ignoring him, "Medway said practically nothing, except to point out to the plainclothes dicks that he had calmed Cummings down when he started to talk wild a few minutes before he actually shot himself. He even got the girls to back him up on that, which they did. Now why did Medway go to the trouble to stop Cummings from going through with his act, if he didn't want to be able to tell about it afterwards? Which indicates that he knew what was going to happen when Cummings finally did pull his little routine. That's it!"
Tim shook his head mournfully. "S'wonderful," he said. "The man turns a harmless little accidental death into a murder, and then puts his finger right on the killer. Deductive reasoning, I calls it. Do you mind if I shake your hand?"
"Nerts! I got something, and you know it."
"You got something, all right. I only hope it's not contagious. The chances are that they figured out that part of the act beforehand, to make it look more realistic."
"I can't see it. A man don't make a mistake with his gun when he's figuring on doing a trick like that. According to this barkeep, the gun clicked when Cummings pulled the trigger. That means that it was cocked, with no bullet in the chamber. So Cummings prepared the twenty-two beforehand, by removing the magazine and cocking it. That would eject any cartridge that was in the chamber without putting in a new one. Then he put in the clip and later pulled his little act. The gun just clicked. Then he cocked it, which threw a shell into the chamber, and fired at the dart board. It went off and the girls probably thought he had escaped death by a miracle. Only the last time he did the trick somebody monkeyed with the gun after he had fixed it. I figure that Medway called on him, or maybe they room together, and cocked the gun when he wasn't looking. That threw a shell into the empty chamber and crabbed his act. Which accounts for Cummings' surprised look and also Medway's lack of surprise or concern. What d'you think?"
"I think you're nuts," said Tim, reaching in his pocket and cornering a quarter. "Let's have a beer. Pour one for yourself."
"Thanks. I'll have a cigar," says the barkeep. He probably went to the same school as the night man.
"Make mine Scotch," I says, pretending not to notice as Tim scowled and reached down in his jeans for another ten cents. "There's no two ways about it, Medway's gotta be checked up on. He knew about the suicide gag and therefore he could have fixed the gun. That makes it murder, and right up our alley."
"Up your alley, maybe," growls Tim, still burning about the thirty-five cents for one round of drinks and probably figuring that it would have bought three and a half rounds of beer. "Me, I still think it's accidental death. If you can tell me why Medway would want to kill him, I'll be interested. Otherwise I'm going back to headquarters and report what we found."
I slammed the Scotch down in one gulp, a thing I never do. But Tim's unreasonableness hurt me more than you'd think. "All right," I snapped. "You go back and listen to the radio. I'll go out and dig up a murder, if I have to commit one myself."
"When'll you get in?" he asked, kind of sulky.
"Depends. Couple hours, maybe."
Tim poured the last of the beer down his gullet and headed for the street. He slowed down at the door, as if he was going to change his mind, but kept on going. As soon as he disappeared I made for the phone. In about two minutes I had the addresses of Cummings and Medway. Two addresses! They hadn't roomed together. But the addresses were pretty close to one another. Within a few blocks. I decided to try Medway's first. It was Saturday and he might be home.
THAT turned out to be a bum guess.
The place was an ordinary rooming house with a flock of push-buttons in the entry. I found his button and gave it hell. No result. So I went over to take a look at Cummings' former place. This time I rang for the janitor. He turned out to be a dopey-looking gent in a pair of overalls. I flashed the tin.
"Want to take a look in Cummings' room," I said.
"Second floor," he mumbles. "Third door left."
"How about the key?"
"Door's open."
Before I had a chance to ask him how come, he ducks through a door and I hear his brogans thumping down a flight of stairs. So I started up toward the second floor. There wasn't any light on the landing and I had to feel my way, it being slightly darker than the inside of your chapeau, in spite of the sun shining outside. I felt around for a light switch when I reached the top, but I couldn't find it and continued down the corridor by sense of touch.
The janitor was right about the third door. It swung open when I turned the knob. But that's as far as I got. I took one step into the room, blinking at the light streaming past a lifted shade, when I almost had the pants scared off me by a guy who jumped out from behind the door. He wasn't as tall as me, but the way the light was blinding me he looked as wide as King Kong. And he didn't wait for me to get my eyes focused on him. He came out from behind that door slugging. I went down like a ton of bricks.
There was more than sunlight blinding me as I made a half-conscious grab for his legs. That light was brighter than the sun, and came and went in waves, pitch-black in between. I don't know whether I got his legs or not, because one of the black spells stayed for awhile.
I got a notion he slugged me twice, but I never felt the second one. But that second wallop might have been caused by hitting the floor. Whatever it was I had two sore spots when I woke up.
It took both hands to explore the extent of the damage. One for my chin, which came away with blood on it. The other for my forehead, which was sporting a knob you could have hung your hat on. After a minute I remembered what I came for and looked around the room. It was a mess. Every drawer had been emptied on the floor, the bed torn apart, the carpet folded back and the knobs had even been pried off the brass bed posts.
A sudden inspiration struck me and I went for the stairs and took them two at a time. Each thump of my heels started a vibration which coursed up my legs and through my torso to finally explode with fireworks in the front of my head. I was kind of unsteady when I flung open the door at the foot of the stairs and yelled for the janitor. That didn't help the head any, either. He came up after a minute, during which I alternately dabbed at my chin and clutched the door to keep on my feet.
"Did you know there was somebody up there when you sent me up?" I snapped.
"Yeah, sure," he answered, puzzled. "Another cop. I thought you knew."
"What did he look like? Quick, you dope!"
That was bad tactics. The chump just looked scared and started to mumble: "An ordinary looking guy... Yeah, ordinary looking. Taller than me and younger... shorter than you and older."
"What kind of clothes?"
But that drew a blank. He couldn't even remember if he wore a cap or a felt. I left the place in a hurry and chased the squad car over to Medway's dump. There was a hazy idea thumping around in my conk that it might have been him. What description I had would fit him—or a million other guys. And he hadn't been home when I called before. If I was right about this, I'd at least have something on the guy... illegal entry, impersonating a cop and assault and battery. Enough to sew him up good and tight while I checked my murder hunch.
THERE was a woman in charge of the place. I explained that I had cut my chin by slipping and banging it on the door of the gas buggy as I got out. That quieted her before she had a chance to get alarmed at my appearance.
"... I thought that my friend Jimmy Medway would give me something to put on it. But he don't answer, and he ought to be home. Maybe we'd better go up and see if he's sick or something?"
She hesitated, fumbling with a ring full of keys. "Well, I guess it's all right," she finally said. "But if he's not home, you can't go in. I'll give you some collodion for your chin."
"Oh, I don't want to go in," I said. "I'm just worried about him. He didn't look so good last night."
As a matter of fact I wanted that door opened without warning Medway that I was coming. If it was him that socked me, I'd know soon enough. And I reasoned that if it was him, he'd have ducked in here right after he scrammed from the other place. It was the quickest way to get out of sight.
The woman was wearing bedroom slippers that didn't make a sound. I walked as quietly as I could without showing her that I was pussyfooting. Medway wouldn't have the slightest warning until I was on top of him. I loosened my thirty-eight in its holster, and hoped I could draw faster than he could. But there wasn't any need of that. The room was empty. We went back down the stairs and the woman plastered some stickum over my cuts. I thanked her and shoved off, ripping it loose when I turned the corner. The bleeding had stopped anyway.
I didn't wait for the janitor when I got back to Cummings' diggings. I just jabbed the first button I came to and opened the door when it buzzed. This time I found the light switch and turned it on. A frowzy-looking dame stuck her head out of a door on the second floor and glared at me.
"Sorry, lady," I chirped. "Got the wrong button."
She glared again and pulled in her head. I headed for the third door to the left, determined to find out what I could from the scattered remains of Cummings' belongings. I flung it open and stepped in—and stopped dead! In about a fortieth of a second I got a glimpse of a guy's back bending over some of the trash from one of the bureau drawers. Just about a fortieth of a second. For at the sound of the door he straightened and turned. I saw his roscoe just in time to dive sideways for the floor, trying to draw my own while I did it. I felt the wind from his bullet fan my neck as I hit on my shoulder and rolled over. A second shot roared but I didn't feel anything though.
I was too busy getting my somersault over and my rod out to be sure of anything.
When I faced him again, with the thirty-eight in my hand, he was on the floor, and twitching! I passed a hand slowly across my throbbing forehead and looked through the fingers toward the door. Tim, of course—grinning, and twirling his revolver by the trigger guard.
"You need a nurse-maid, boy," he gloated. "Leave you by yourself and you'd be punctured in no time at all."
I got up and looked at the gunman. "You're a great help," I growled. "I could have asked this guy some questions."
"Well go ahead and ask 'em."
I turned him over with my foot. There was a neat hole over one eyebrow and the back of his head was a mess. "I don't think he's in the mood to be giving the answers," I said.
"You'd be in the same mood if I hadn't been right on your tail when you came in here. He was taking aim for his second shot and you were still turning over when I dropped him. There wasn't time for any fancy shooting."
"Pretty fancy at that," I judged, looking at the defunct. "Say... Don't he look familiar to you?"
"Sure," said Tim, very pleased with himself. "I pinched him once. Name of Anthony Staub. Right now he's wanted in connection with the murder and robbery out at the Mason House."
I NODDED. With this little prod to my memory I placed where I'd seen the lug's map before. I guess the little beauty mark over his eyebrow had fooled me at first, but now that Tim mentioned it I remembered seeing that phiz on a poster with two others. The poster had said that they were wanted for murder. The killing had happened while the three of them had stuck up a shindig at the Mason House, a suburban hostelry patronized by economic royalists. I also remembered that they had managed to get away with quite a wad of cash and some assorted necklaces and bracelets. I hadn't taken any great interest in the job, happening out of town as it did and therefore not our responsibility.
"This sort of ties up," I remarked.
"Ties up with what?" Tim wanted to know.
"Jewelry," I answered, trying to connect something in my mind. "Cummings was in the jewelry business."
"But Staub wasn't," Tim pointed out. "He was in the breaking and entering and stick-up business."
"Oh. I had a notion he specialized in jewelry."
"He specialized in anything that wasn't bolted to the floor," Tim informed me. "He probably heard about Cummings kicking the bucket, and didn't know but what the stuff Cummings handled was valuable. So he just dropped in to see if there wasn't something he could lift. No tie-up at all."
"I ain't so sure about that," I said. "Staub was in hiding, wanted for murder. It don't seem natural that he'd risk poking his nose around any place where a cop was likely to show up."
Tim scratched his chin, the upper one, and shook his head. I leaned over and went through Tony's pockets. Outside of a couple extra clips for his rod, a bunch of keys and some other odds and ends there wasn't anything of importance. His wallet was stuffed with frogskins but there wasn't any addresses or anything to provide a lead. It looked like a blind alley to me.
"How'd you come to tail me over here?" I inquired.
Tim laughed, kind of embarrassed. "Aw, I waited a while and then I began to get worried, knowing you ain't got as many buttons as you might have." He paused and picked up the wallet, absently counting the bills. "Then I decided to look you up. I figured you'd call up and get this address, so I checked up and found I was right. Then I started over and... Say, look at this!"
He had taken out the bills to count them, and when he did a flap of leather came up and disclosed a secret compartment. The bills had held the flap down flat, as it should have been, but there was something behind it pushing it up. Tim took the thing out and I could see it was a folded snapshot. When I saw the flap I'd expected to see a couple big bills tucked away, because I'd seen wallets like that before. They make them for henpecked husbands who have to hide a few bucks from their pay in order to have some spending money. The snapshot surprised me and I stepped over to take a closer look. Tim was too busy admiring it to pass it over.
And he had reason to, even if he was an old married man. The dame on the photo was a wow, and I do mean wow! The face was a delicate oval, framing a set of features that would have made a Hollywood glamour girl turn green with envy. The lips were smiling and the eyes sparkled. That picture was the next things to being alive. You almost expected to see the lips part and hear a melodious chuckle. I wondered what the hell Tony Staub had been doing with a picture like that.
TIM took a deep breath and handed it over. That was when I noticed that there was some hen-scratching on the back. A closer look proved that the penciled marks were a phone number. Tim saw them the same time I did, and made a grab for it. I yanked it back and growled like a dog.
Tim grinned. "All right, Casanova," he chuckled. "You run it down while I clean up the gory details. You always manage to leave me with a mess like this. And no doubt the captain will think you're very industrious, when I tell him all about it. And say... Don't slow up any lead! The prettiest of 'em get nasty at times."
It was a routine matter to get the address that went with the phone number, and also the name of the dame who subscribed for the phone. Her name was Fifi Frazier, which didn't cause any clicks in my dome, and the address was a pretty swanky apartment house. I didn't waste any time shoving the squad car in that general direction.
There were a million or so cars parked in front of it and it looked as if I'd have to scout around for a place to put the department jalopy. I was just glancing toward the front entrance of the place, trying to make up my mind whether to park double or not, when I saw a guy dash down the front steps and hail a passing taxi. It was Medway!
For a minute I was so startled that I almost ran into the car in front, which had stopped at the end of a line waiting for a green light at the corner. I slammed on the brakes and saw Medway hop into the hack and ride off in the opposite direction. And when I tried to loop in the street to chase him, I heard a screech of sliding tires, and another, buggy just managed to get stopped abreast of me, blocking my turn. In about no time at all traffic was snarled in both directions. It took five minutes to get untangled, during which time the taxi disappeared. I was madder than a boiled owl when I finally parked around the corner.
Just to calm myself I took another look at the photograph of the lady with the sparkling eyes. It was the right medicine. One look at those sparkling glims and I wanted to smile right back at her. I forgot about being mad. Of course she wasn't blonde, but then I never claimed to be a gentleman anyway. All of a sudden I realized that she was a very important link in the mystery I had on my hands. She might know why Tony had apparently taken a flier in trying to ransack Cummings' belongings. The thought that struck me dealt with something I had read of this gentleman. It seemed that he was a careful worker, always making sure that a job was worth while before he pulled it. And that made it appear that he must have known that Cummings had something that was worth stealing, or he wouldn't have tried, especially with the law already looking for him.
It followed then, that if Staub knew, Medway would know too. Which provided a motive for the crime of killing Cummings. Ordinarily the kind of phony trinkets handled by an outfit like the one Cummings worked for wouldn't have been worth killing to get. So he must have had something valuable in his possession. And if I was going to hang his death on Medway, I'd better get a move on and find what it was.
I put the picture in my pocket and went to see the original, wondering if the rest of her matched her gorgeous kisser. They made me use the house phone system before they'd let me up to see her. A clerk, about whom I harbored some doubts of his masculinity, insisted on calling her and mentioning my name. She asked him to put me on.
Her voice was all I expected. "What did you want to see me about?" she inquired.
"It's about Mr. Staub," I answered. "I'd rather not speak of it over the phone."
"Let me speak to the room clerk," she said, after a minute's hesitation.
I handed him the phone and he listened for a second, then smiled all over his sissified pan. "Room 320," he simpered, and started to fuss with a lot of register cards. I didn't let any moss grow on me getting to the third floor.
FIFI lived up to all qualifications.
"Are you a friend of Mr. Staub's?" she inquired sweetly, without stepping away from the door.
My brain started clicking on all three. It seemed that my answer was going to determine what kind of a reception I was going to get. And when I considered what kind of a guy Tony was, and what kind of a girl she seemed to be, I decided to take a chance.
"Well, I wouldn't say that," I replied. "As a matter of fact, he seemed kind of mad at me a little while ago."
"He's no friend of mine either, the cheap chiseler!" she snarled in her pretty way, and moved away from the door.
I walked right in and she languorously plunked herself on a divan. I plunked also. "I think you and me's going to be friends," I remarks. "What have you got against the lug?"
"Plenty!" she obliges, boiling over with her peeve. "He's been bothering me for weeks. I do a song and dance over at the Chrome Club, you know." I assured her that I had admired her work many times. "So does Tony," she says. "Though it may be something else. Anyway, he pestered me for a date every night for weeks. Finally he showed up one night with a pearl necklace, and wanted me to wear it. I turned it down. But he kept on offering it and finally I gave in and promised to wear it just one night.
"Well he got called out suddenly or something and he wasn't there when my turn was over. Then I didn't see him for a couple of weeks. In the meantime I fell in love with the necklace. It just seemed to go with everything I wore. It got so I felt naked till I put it on. Then, what do you think? He sneaks in here one day with another guy and demands it back!
"I told him I had it in a safe deposit vault, but it didn't work. When I told him that, he turned to the other guy and shrugged. The other guy looked mad. T tell you I can get ten grand,' he raved. 'Get it off her!' Then Tony grabbed me and started to choke. All I could think of was the marks that he might make on my neck. And you can't very well sing under a spot-light when you're all bruised up. So when he let loose I handed over the necklace, which was on my vanity all the time. Then..."
She stopped suddenly, twisted around and looked into my eyes very questioningly. "By the way, Mr. Burns," she cooed, "you haven't told me who you are and why you came here."
I took another chance and flashed the tin.
"Oh!" she gasped. "Then it was a hot necklace. And Tony is a thief?"
"Worse than that," I told her. "A murderer. That's why he disappeared right after he gave you the pearls. He got them at the stick-up of the Mason House a while back. A guy died from a bullet wound a few days after the holdup, and the newspapers gave out that the bandits had been recognized. A private dick on guard there knew them in spite of their masks. When Tony and his pals heard about it, they got under cover. We've been looking for them ever since. So anything you can tell me will probably be of great value."
She shook her pretty head. "I doubt it," she said. "I don't know where Tony is." She stopped, struck with an idea. "But I might help you recover the necklace! You see, after they went out with it I quickly threw on a wrap and followed them. I was going to call the first cop I saw and have them arrested. But you know how cops are when you want them..."
She stopped again and blushed when she remembered I was a cop in disguise. "I'll try not to be that way," I says, patting her on the knee to relieve her embarrassment.
"Anyway," she continues, "they got in a car and I followed in a taxi. But when they stopped in front of a rooming house and went in I didn't try to follow any further. On the way I happened to remember what the other man had said about getting ten thousand dollars for the necklace. I figured that meant that it was stolen. So I went home, not wanting to get mixed up in anything crooked."
I nodded, approvingly. "But what did you mean when you said you might help recover it?"
"Oh, I forgot. This man came into the club with another man, only a few nights ago. And just when I was finishing my number and walking off, this new guy says, 'Hya Toots?'. Without thinking, I answered, 'Hello, Sugar.' Then I went through the door to the dressing rooms, which was right back of their table. But I stopped behind the door and listened. The first guy says, 'You know her?' The new guy says, 'Sure. Old friend of mine.' That was a lie, of course, but a lot of people pretend to be acquainted with the entertainers. 'Why don't you ask her if she's got a friend?' says the first guy. Right afterwards they went out."
She stopped, real pleased with her story, but personally I didn't get it. "How does that help me..."
"Oh, I forgot. The first guy, that's the one who was with Tony, was just in here a few minutes ago, all hot and bothered. He claimed that I had wangled the necklace back from the friend he had with him at the Chrome Club—the guy who was going to sell the necklace. I told him that I didn't even know his friend and that I never saw the necklace again after he and Staub took it. He didn't believe me at first, but I think he did by the time he went out. And here's how I can help you: The man who was to sell the necklace for them was George Cummings, the man who killed himself in that taproom last night! I recognized his picture in the papers. All you have to do is..."
I JUMPED to my feet. The whole set-up was clear now. Tony had tried to win the favor of Fifi by giving her what he thought was a trinket of small value. Medway, who monkeyed with jewelry himself, must have learned about it and knew about the value of the thing. Probably from a list of the stolen goods which had been published in one of the newspapers. It was also a good bet that Medway had a working arrangement with Cummings whereby the latter disposed, through his legitimate connections in the trade, of certain baubles that Medway might pick up at a bargain. So Medway put through the deal for Tony to get the necklace for Cummings to fence.
Then he probably got the bright idea that he might be able to get rid of it himself, and take all the profits. He had to do this in a way that Tony wouldn't suspect him. So when he stopped to pick up Cummings for a night of carousing, last evening, he slid a fresh cartridge into the chamber of the automatic so that Cummings could put some realism into his favorite act. Medway probably figured he could lay his hands on the necklace this morning in Cummings' room. I was thinking of the brass knobs on the bed posts, which might have been Cummings' favorite hiding place. But he hadn't found what he was looking for.
Then Tony had probably read about the suicide in the papers and came out of hiding once more to try to recover his property. With the result that he wound up in the morgue. And Medway, after conking me and scramming, had thought of Fifi and remembered that Cummings had said they were old friends. He'd drawn a blank there. But the trick was, where the hell would he look next? I wanted Medway. I wasn't so particular about the necklace, but I'd have to trail the necklace to get him. It was a cinch he wouldn't turn up at his apartment again. He couldn't have helped but recognize me when I'd barged into that room with the light in my face, blinding me. And he'd have to assume I'd be looking for him.
"I know. You're thinking," said Fifi; smiling brightly. "But I was just going to tell you that all you have to do is search Cummings' belongings and you'll find the necklace."
"I think you got something there, Babe," I agreed.
"Promise you'll come and tell me how you made out? I think detective work is so thrilling..."
"You got no idea, Beautiful. Suppose I meet you at the club after the show and tell you all about it. Still better, I'll call for you and take you to work tonight."
A little while later I was back in the squad car trying to get my mind back on the problem of where Medway might have been headed when he left in the taxi. I was having a little trouble controlling my thoughts, on account of I was looking at the picture of Fifi and wondering how a photographer could so mangle up a gorgeous Rand and McNally like hers. It didn't do her justice, there was no two ways about it. For one thing it didn't show up the bluish glints in her jet-black hair. I finally finished that line of thought by concluding that the only photo that could do her justice would have to be full length anyway. There was too much missing otherwise.
Having disposed of that matter, I really got my brilliant intellect to work on the problem of Medway and the necklace. Suppose I was Medway, where would I figure that Cummings might have put the thing? And incidentally where was the danged thing, supposing I was me. The trouble there was that I didn't know enough about the life and habits of Mr. Cummings. It wasn't in his room, that was sure. Medway would have found it. In fact for all I knew he might have already turned it into cash and had figured to doublecross both Tony and Medway. His character hadn't been of the best, from what I had learned. And if a man'll fence stolen goods, which is the same as stealing off honest people, he certainly wouldn't balk at stealing from his crooked pals if he saw a way of doing it.
STILL running up mental blind alleys, I stopped for a bite of lunch. If there was any possibility of doing it, I wanted to nab Medway and take him back to Tim Casey. Not only prove that murder had been committed, but hand him the murderer as well. But all I did was waste half the afternoon trying. I looked up Medway's landlady and got the names of a few of his friends and then I looked them up. But none of them had any idea where I might find him. If he had any regular haunts that he might be found at, they didn't know of them.
Finally I gave up and went back to headquarters to seek the advice of Mr. Casey, who still thought Cummings' death was accidental. The fun 1 had watching his face while I handed him my story made up for the wasted afternoon. It was a bitter pill he was swallowing, but I had too many facts, all pointing the same way, for him to see any way out.
"I know when I'm licked," he finally said. "So don't crow so much. It's murder, all right. At least it's got everything a good murder should have, now that you've found the motive. But you got to admit all you had at first was a corpse. And an obvious reason how he got that way. Me, I only work on facts."
"Yeah, I know. You don't like hunches, even when they're right. But how are we going to locate the Medway guy?"
Tim looked at the clock. "We're through for the day," he says. "So we'll tell the captain all about it and he can turn the night boys loose. Let them do a little work for a change. Bringing the guy in is a minor detail after the crime's solved. Then let's hit a beer."
This seemed to be a sound idea, so I put away the squad car and got my own out, while Tim acquainted the captain with the facts. Brady's was the next stop. I didn't feel up to an argument about a nicer joint. The barkeep greeted us with smiles and filled them up. He was still talking about the suicide he had witnessed. I sipped the amber fluid and paid little attention to Tim telling him that he'd soon see some more in the newspapers about the affair.
My mind had returned to the promising acquaintance I had made this morning. In a couple more hours I'd be stopping to pick her up. I was wondering how she'd take it when I told her that Tony was in the morgue with a ventilated head, for trying to get her little necklace back. And that I was still looking for Medway and the necklace. "All you have to do," she had said, "is search Cummings' belongings..."
It must have been the thought of the morgue and Cummings' belongings coming so close together that gave me the idea. In my mind's eye sprang a picture of the tan coat with the big patch pockets that the boys had tossed on the floor of the dead wagon.
I gulped the rest of the beer. "Look, Tim," I says. "I just got another hunch, and I don't want to listen to any of your arguments. You and me's going down to the morgue."
The morgue was only a block and a half away, so we walked. The car was parked facing the wrong way and the directions of the one-way streets in the vicinity would have made it a four-block ride. We climbed the marble steps into the place and turned to the left toward the office. Just as we did a man came out of the corridor to the right and headed for the door. He had a small package in his hand and was taking the paper off it. I turned my head to get a look at him. He looked at me at the same second and bolted.
I LET out a yell and went after him.
It was Medway, and that package must be the necklace! He must have got the same idea as me, that maybe Cummings had carried the thing with him. Somehow he had fooled the morgue attendants into giving it to him, or else had lifted it when they weren't looking. As it turned out I never did learn which. And at the moment I wasn't greatly concerned about it. This boy Medway must have been training for this race, using a gazelle for a pace-maker. He was down the marble steps in three jumps. I almost went on my nose trying it myself.
Without looking back, knowing I must be following, he sped up the street in the direction Tim and me had just come. I was hot after him, but in spite of my long legs he was widening the space between us. But I guess he must have thought I was right on his tail, for he dropped the package. Trying the old trick of the lady with the golden apples. But I didn't bite. I was too far behind already. Tim did the biting, though it didn't matter, he was so far in the rear anyway. I heard the pound of his brogans slow up, stop for a second, and then start again. But Tim was outclassed worse than me in this contest. His squat two hundred and fifty pounds weren't designed for running.
By the time Medway reached the corner, there was about two hundred feet of distance between us. I tried firing at him—not up in the air, at him. He didn't stop, and I missed him clean. There wasn't another chance to fire, for a woman rounded the corner in the line of fire, and I was afraid of hitting her. Medway was gone the next instant, out of sight around the same corner. When I reached it I followed the way he disappeared, but in the meantime he must have turned another corner.
The blocks in this part of town are chopped up with a lot of little side streets. At Brady's corner, half a block from where I lost sight of him, I stopped and looked both ways. No dice. The lead he had on me had given him the chance to reach another side street, and I didn't know in which direction. The newsboy on the corner said he hadn't even seen anybody running. Tim caught up to me, panting like an Airedale in August, and clutching the package with its paper half undid.
"You take that way," I said. "I'll try down this way."
"No..." he gasped. "I need a beer."
So saying he half stumbled toward Brady's swinging doors. Disgusted with such lack of co-operation, I started to climb into my buggy, thinking to cruise around the neighborhood on the chance of running across him. I had my foot on the running board, when I heard an explosive grunt and turned around to see what had caused it. I saw Tim back-pedaling to keep from going over on his posterior, and I also saw an outstretched arm that had just been sunk to the elbow in Tim's stomach. The arm belonged to Medway, who, I suddenly realized, had ducked into Brady's thinking we would dash on past. At the sight of me coming toward him he ducked back in, reaching for a hip pocket.
I was right after him, and darn near got a slug for my hurry. It hit the door jamb a couple inches away. It came from the direction of the bar and I slung one that way, just for luck. It was too quick to be accurate, and made a mess of the mirror back of the bar instead of hitting him. He was on the floor before I could get another shot. For a second I wondered what to do. I couldn't get to him without absorbing some lead, a thing I had no desire to do. I had an engagement to cover that evening and it wasn't in a hospital. On the other hand he couldn't move without exposing himself to my fire. The barkeep was just standing there with his hands up in the air and his eyes popping out.
I'd just about got breath enough to yell to Medway to surrender, that he couldn't spend the rest of his life where he was, when matters were taken out of my hands. Two shots rang out. I ducked in spite of myself... even though my ears told me that the second of the shots hadn't come from behind the bar. I looked around and there was Tim, twenty feet away and standing where he could see back of the bar. He'd come around to the side entrance and got in position for a shot.
"It's Casey and Burns, kid," said Tim, twirling his thirty-eight by the trigger guard and grinning all over his homely mug. "You can't get along without me."
"You said it," I admitted, leaning on the bar. "Pour a couple slugs of Scotch. Take one yourself."
The bartender slowly lowered his hands and reached for glasses.
"Thanks," he said automatically. "I'll take a cig—... No, by Heaven, I'll have a Scotch, too! So help me!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.