Chandler, Raymond – Trouble Is My Business (Collection)

“A dick,” she breathed. “What goes on?”

“Don’t you know?”

“All I heard was Mrs. Lacey left some money in a shoe she wanted a lift put on the heel, and I took it over to the shoemaker and he didn’t steal the money. And I didn’t, either. She got the money back, didn’t she?”

“Don’t like cops, do you? Seems to me I know your face,” I said.

The face hardened. “Look, copper, I got a job and I work at it. I don’t need any help from any copper. I don’t owe anybody a nickel.”

“Sure,” I said. “When you took those shoes from the room did you go right over to the shoemaker with them?”

She nodded shortly.

“Didn’t stop on the way at all?”

“Why would I?”

“I wasn’t around then. I wouldn’t know.”

“Well, I didn’t. Except to tell Weber I was going out for a guest.”

“Who’s Mr. Weber?”

“He’s the assistant manager. He’s down in the dining room a lot.”

“Tall, pale guy that writes down all the race results?”

She nodded. “That would be him.”

“I see,” I said. I struck a match and lit my cigarette. I stared at her through smoke. “Thanks very much,” I said.

She stood up and opened the door. “I don’t think I remember you,” she said, looking back at me.

“There must be a few of us you didn’t meet,” I said.

She flushed and stood there glaring at me.

“They always change the towels this late in your hotel?” asked her, just to be saying something.

“Smart guy, ain’t you?”

“Well, I try to give that impression,” I said with a modest smirk.

“You don’t put it over,” she said, with a sudden trace of thick accent.

“Anybody handle those shoes except you–after you took them?”

“No. I told you I just stopped to tell Mr. Weber–” She stopped dead and thought a minute. “I went to get him a cup of coffee,” she said. “I left them on his desk by the cash register. How the hell would I know anybody handled them? And what difference does it make if they got their dough back all right?”

“Well, I see you’re anxious to make me feel good about it. Tell me about this guy, Weber. He been here long?”

“Too long,” she said nastily. “A girl don’t want to walk too close to him if you get what I mean. What am I talking about?”

“About Mr. Weber.”

“Well, to hell with Mr. Weber–if you get what I mean.”

“You been having any trouble getting it across?”

She flushed again “And strictly off the record,” she said, “to hell with you.”

“If I get what you mean,” I said.

She opened the door and gave me a quick, half-angry smile and went out.

Her steps made a tapping sound going along the hall. I didn’t hear her stop at any other doors. I looked at my watch. It was after half past nine.

Somebody came along the hall with heavy feet, went into the room next to me and banged the door. The man started hawking and throwing shoes around. A weight flopped on the bed springs and started bounding around. Five minutes of this and he got up again. Two big, unshod feet thudded on the floor, a bottle tinkled against a glass. The man had himself a drink, lay down on the bed again, and began to snore almost at once.

Except for that and the confused racket from downstairs in the dining room and the bar there was the nearest thing you get to silence in a mountain resort. Speedboats stuttered out on the lake, dance music murmured here and there, cars went by blowing horns, the .22’s snapped in the shooting gallery, and kids yelled at each other across the main drag.

It was so quiet that I didn’t hear my door open. It was half open before I noticed it. A man came in quietly, half closed the door, moved a couple of steps farther into the room and stood looking at me. He was tall, thin, pale, quiet, and his eyes had a flat look of menace.

“Okay, sport,” he said. “Let’s see it.”

I rolled around and sat up. I yawned. “See what?”

“The buzzer.”

“What buzzer?”

“Shake it up, half-smart. Let’s see the buzzer that gives you the right to ask questions of the help.”

“Oh, that,” I said, smiling weakly. “I don’t have any buzzer, Mr. Weber.”

“Well, that is very lovely,” Mr. Weber said. He came across the room, his long arms swinging. When he was about three feet from me he leaned forward a little and made a very sudden movement. An open palm slapped the side of my face hard. It rocked my head and made the back of it shoot pain in all directions.

“Just for that,” I said, “you don’t go to the movies tonight.”

He twisted his face into a sneer and cocked his right fist. He telegraphed his punch well ahead. I would almost have had time to run out and buy a catcher’s mask. I came up under the fist and stuck a gun in his stomach. He grunted unpleasantly. I said: “Putting the hands up, please.”

He grunted again and his eyes went out of focus, but he didn’t move his hands. I went around him and backed towards the far side of the room. He turned slowly, eying me. I said: “Just a moment until I close the door. Then we all go into the case of the money in the shoe, otherwise known as the Clue of the Substituted Lettuce.”

“Go to hell,” he said.

“A right snappy comeback,” I said. “And full of originality.” I reached back for the knob of the door, keeping my eyes on him. A board creaked behind me. I swung around, adding a little power to the large, heavy, hard and businesslike hunk of concrete which landed on the side of my jaw. I spun off into the distance, trailing flashes of lightning, and did a nose dive out into space. A couple of thousand years passed. Then I stopped a planet with my back, opened my eyes fuzzily and looked at a pair of feet.

They were sprawled out at a loose angle, and legs came towards me from them. The legs were splayed out on the floor of the room. A hand hung down limp, and a gun lay just out of its reach. I moved one of the feet and was surprised to find it belonged to me. The lax hand twitched and reached automatically for the gun, missed it, reached again and grabbed the smooth grip. I lifted it. Somebody had tied a fifty-pound weight to it, but I lifted it anyway. There was nothing in the room but silence. I looked across and was staring straight at the closed door. I shifted a little and ached all over. My head ached. My jaw ached. I lifted the gun some more and then put it down again. The hell with it. I should be lifting guns around for what. The room was empty. All visitors departed. The droplight from the ceiling burned with an empty glare. I rolled a little and ached some more and got a leg bent and a knee under me. I came up grunting hard, grabbed the gun again and climbed the rest of the way. There was a taste of ashes in my mouth.

“Ah, too bad,” I said out loud. “Too bad. Must do. Okay, Charlie. I’ll be seeing you.”

I swayed a little, still groggy as a three-day drunk, swiveled slowly and prowled the room with my eyes.

A man was kneeling in prayer against the side of the bed. He wore a gray suit and his hair was a dusty blond color. His legs were spread out, and his body was bent forward on the bed and his arms were flung out. His head rested sideways on his left arm.

He looked quite comfortable. The rough deer-horn grip of the hunting knife under his left shoulder-blade didn’t seem to bother him at all.

I went over to bend down and look at his face. It was the face of Mr. Weber. Poor Mr. Weber! From under the handle of the hunting knife, down the back of his jacket, a dark streak extended.

It was not mercurochrome.

I found my hat somewhere and put it on carefully, and put the gun under my arm and waded over to the door. I reversed the key, switched the light off, went out, and locked the door after me and dropped the key into my pocket.

I went along the silent hallway and down the stairs to the office. An old wasted-looking night clerk was reading the paper behind the desk. He didn’t even look at me. I glanced through the archway into the dining room. The same noisy crowd was brawling at the bar. The same hillbilly symphony was fighting for life in the corner. The guy with the cigar and the John L. Lewis eyebrows was minding the cash register. Business seemed good. A couple of summer visitors were dancing in the middle of the floor, holding glasses over each other’s shoulders.

FIVE

I went out of the lobby door and turned left along the street to where my car was parked, but I didn’t go very far before I stopped and turned back into the lobby of the hotel. I leaned on the counter and asked the clerk: “May I speak to the maid called Gertrude?”

He blinked at me thoughtfully over his glasses.

“She’s off at nine-thirty. She’s gone home.”

“Where does she live?”

He stared at me without blinking this time.

“I think maybe you’ve got the wrong idea,” he said.

“If I have, it’s not the idea you have.”

He rubbed the end of his chin and washed my face with his stare. “Something wrong?”

“I’m a detective from L.A. I work very quietly when people let me work quietly.”

“You’d better see Mr. Holmes,” he said. “The manager.”

“Look, pardner, this is a very small place. I wouldn’t have to do more than wander down the row and ask in the bars and eating places for Gertrude. I could think up a reason. I could find out. You would save me a little time and maybe save somebody from getting hurt. Very badly hurt.”

He shrugged. “Let me see your credentials, Mr.–”

“Evans.” I showed him my credentials. He stared at them a long time after he had read them, then handed the wallet back and stared at the ends of his fingertips.

“I believe she’s stopping at the Whitewater Cabins,” he said.

“What’s her last name?”

“Smith,” he said, and smiled a faint, old, and very weary smile, the smile of a man who has seen too much of one world. “Or possibly Schmidt.”

I thanked him and went back out on the sidewalk. I walked half a block, then turned into a noisy little bar for a drink. A three-piece orchestra was swinging it on a tiny stage at the back. In front of the stage there was a small dance floor, and a few fuzzy-eyed couples were shagging around flat-footed with their mouths open and their faces full of nothing.

I drank a jigger of rye and asked the barman where the Whitewater Cabins were. He said at the east end of the town, half a block back, on a road that started at the gas station.

I went back for my car and drove through the village and found the road. A pale blue neon sign with an arrow on it pointed the way. The Whitewater Cabins were a cluster of shacks on the side of the hill with an office down front. I stopped in front of the office. People were sitting out on their tiny front porches with portable radios. The night seemed peaceful and homey. There was a bell in the office.

I rang it and a girl in slacks came in and told me Miss Smith and Miss Hoffman had a cabin kind of off by itself because the girls slept late and wanted quiet. Of course, it was always kind of busy in the season, but the cabin where they were–it was called Tuck-Me-Inn–was quiet and it was at the back, way off to the left, and I wouldn’t have any trouble finding it. Was I a friend of theirs?

I said I was Miss Smith’s grandfather, thanked her and went out and up the slope between the clustered cabins to the edge of the pines at the back. There was a long woodpile at the back, and at each end of the cleared space there was a small cabin. In front of the one to the left there was a coupé standing with its lights dim. A tall blond girl was putting a suitcase into the boot. Her hair was tied in a blue handkerchief, and she wore a blue sweater and blue pants. Or dark enough to be blue, anyhow. The cabin behind her was lighted, and the little sign hanging from the roof said Tuck-Me-Inn.

The blond girl went back into the cabin, leaving the boot of the car open. Dim light oozed out through the open door. I went very softly up on the steps and walked inside.

Gertrude was snapping down the top of a suitcase on a bed. The blond girl was out of sight, but I could hear her out in the kitchen of the little white cabin.

I couldn’t have made very much noise. Gertrude snapped down the lid of the suitcase, hefted it and started to carry it out. It was only then that she saw me. Her face went very white, and she stopped dead, holding the suitcase at her side. Her mouth opened, and she spoke quickly back over her shoulder: “Anna–achtung!”

The noise stopped in the kitchen. Gertrude and I stared at each other.

“Leaving?” I asked.

She moistened her lips. “Going to stop me, copper?”

“I don’t guess. What you leaving for?”

“I don’t like it up here. The altitude is bad for my nerves.”

“Made up your mind rather suddenly, didn’t you?”

“Any law against it?”

“I don’t guess. You’re not afraid of Weber, are you?”

She didn’t answer me. She looked past my shoulder. It was an old gag, and I didn’t pay any attention to it. Behind me, the cabin door closed. I turned, then. The blond girl was behind me. She had a gun in her hand. She looked at me thoughtfully, without any expression much. She was a big girl, and looked very strong.

“What is it?” she asked, speaking a little heavily, in a voice almost like a man’s voice.

“A Los Angeles dick,” replied Gertrude.

“So,” Anna said. “What does he want?”

“I don’t know,” Gertrude said. “I don’t think he’s a real dick. He don’t seem to throw his weight enough.”

“So,” Anna said. She moved to the side and away from the door. She kept the gun pointed at me. She held it as if guns didn’t make her nervous–not the least bit nervous. “What do you want?” she asked throatily.

“Practically everything,” I said. “Why are you taking a powder?”

“That has been explained,” the blond girl said calmly. “It is the altitude. It is making Gertrude sick.”

“You both work at the Indian Head?”

The blond girl said: “Of no consequence.”

“What the hell,” Gertrude said. “Yeah, we both worked at the hotel until tonight. Now we’re leaving. Any objection?”

“We waste time,” the blond girl said. “See if he has a gun.” Gertrude put her suitcase down and felt me over. She found the gun and I let her take it, big-hearted. She stood there looking at it with a pale, worried expression. The blond girl said: “Put the gun down outside and put the suitcase in the car. Start the engine of the car and wait for me.”

Gertrude picked her suitcase up again and started around me to the door.

“That won’t get you anywhere,” I said. “They’ll telephone ahead and block you on the road. There are only two roads out of here, both easy to block.”

The blond girl raised her fine, tawny eyebrows a little. “Why should anyone wish to stop us?”

“Yeah, why are you holding that gun?”

“I did not know who you were,” the blond girl said. “I do not know even now. Go on, Gertrude.”

Gertrude opened the door, then looked back at me and moved her lips one over the other. “Take a tip, shamus, and beat it out of this place while you’re able,” she said quietly.

“Which of you saw the hunting knife?”

They glanced at each other quickly, then back at me. Gertrude had a fixed stare, but it didn’t look like a guilty kind of stare. “I pass,” she said. “You’re over my head.”

“Okay,” I said. “I know you didn’t put it where it was. One more question: How long were you getting that cup of coffee for Mr. Weber the morning you took the shoes out?”

“You are wasting time, Gertrude,” the blond girl said impatiently, or as impatiently as she would ever say anything. She didn’t seem an impatient type.

Gertrude didn’t pay any attention to her. Her eyes held a tight speculation. “Long enough to get him a cup of coffee.”

“They have that right in the dining room.”

“It was stale in the dining room. I went out to the kitchen for it. I got him some toast, also.”

“Five minutes?”

She nodded. “About that.”

“Who else was in the dining room besides Weber?” She stared at me very steadily. “At that time I don’t think anybody. I’m not sure. Maybe someone was having a late breakfast.”

“Thanks very much,” I said. “Put the gun down carefully on the porch and don’t drop it. You can empty it if you like. I don’t plan to shoot anyone.”

She smiled a very small smile and opened the door with the hand holding the gun and went out. I heard her go down the steps and then heard the boot of the car slammed shut. I heard the starter, then the motor caught and purred quietly.

The blond girl moved around to the door and took the key from the inside and put it on the outside. “I would not care to shoot anybody,” she said. “But I could do it if I had to. Please do not make me.”

She shut the door and the key turned in the lock. Her steps went down off the porch. The car door slammed and the motor took hold. The tires made a soft whisper going down between the cabins. Then the noise of the portable radios swallowed that sound.

I stood there looking around the cabin, then walked through it. There was nothing in it that didn’t belong there. There was some garbage in a can, coffee cups not washed, a saucepan full of grounds. There were no papers, and nobody had left the story of his life written on a paper match.

The back door was locked, too. This was on the side away from the camp, against the dark wilderness of the trees. I shook the door and bent down to look at the lock. A straight bolt lock. I opened a window. A screen was nailed over it against the wall outside. I went back to the door and gave it the shoulder. It held without any trouble at all. It also started my head blazing again. I felt in my pockets and was disgusted. I didn’t even have a five-cent skeleton key.

I got the can opener out of the kitchen drawer and worked a corner of the screen loose and bent it back. Then I got up on the sink and reached down to the outside knob of the door and groped around. The key was in the lock. I turned it and drew my hand in again and went out of the door. Then I went back and put the lights out. My gun was lying on the front porch behind a post of the little railing. I tucked it under my arm and walked downhill to the place where I had left my car.

SIX

There was a wooden counter leading back from beside the door and a potbellied stove in the corner, and a large blueprint map of the district and some curled-up calendars on the wall. On the counter were piles of dusty-looking folders, a rusty pen, a bottle of ink, and somebody’s sweat-darkened Stetson.

Behind the counter there was an old golden-oak roll-top desk, and at the desk sat a man, with a tall corroded brass spittoon leaning against his leg. He was a heavy, calm man, and he sat tilted back in his chair with large, hairless hands clasped on his stomach. He wore scuffed brown army shoes, white socks, brown wash pants held up by faded suspenders, a khaki shirt buttoned to the neck. His hair was mousy-brown except at the temples, where it was the color of dirty snow. On his left breast there was a star. He sat a little more on his left hip than on his right, because there was a brown leather hip holster inside his right hip pocket, and about a foot of .45 gun in the holster.

He had large ears, and friendly eyes, and he looked about as dangerous as a squirrel, but much less nervous. I leaned on the counter and looked at him, and he nodded at me and loosed a half-pint of brown juice into the spittoon. I lit a cigarette and looked around for some place to throw the match.

“Try the floor,” he said. “What can I do for you, son?”

I dropped the match on the floor and pointed with my chin at the map on the wall. “I was looking for a map of the district. Sometimes chambers of commerce have them to give away. But I guess you wouldn’t be the chamber of commerce.”

“We ain’t got no maps,” the man said. “We had a mess of them a couple of years back, but we run out. I was hearing that Sid Young had some down at the camera store by the post office. He’s the justice of the peace here, besides running the camera store, and he gives them out to show them whereat they can smoke and where not. We got a bad fire hazard up here. Got a good map of the district up there on the wall. Be glad to direct you any place you’d care to go. We aim to make the summer visitors to home.”

He took a slow breath and dropped another load of juice.

“What was the name?” he asked.

“Evans. Are you the law around here?”

“Yep. I’m Puma Point constable and San Berdoo deppity sheriff. What law we gotta have, me and Sid Young is it, Barron is the name. I come from L.A. Eighteen years in the fire department. I come up here quite a while back. Nice and quiet up here. You up on business?”

I didn’t think he could do it again so soon, but he did. That spittoon took an awful beating.

“Business?” I asked.

The big man took one hand off his stomach and hooked a finger inside his collar and tried to loosen it. “Business,” he said calmly. “Meaning, you got a permit for that gun, I guess?”

“Hell, does it stick out that much?”

“Depends what a man’s lookin’ for,” he said, and put his feet on the floor. “Maybe you’n’ me better get straightened out.”

He got to his feet and came over to the counter and I put my wallet on it, opened out so that he could see the photostat of the licence behind the celluloid window. I drew out the L.A. sheriff’s gun permit and laid it beside the license.

He looked them over. “I better kind of check the number,” he said.

I pulled the gun out and laid it on the counter beside his hand. He picked it up and compared the numbers. “I see you got three of them. Don’t wear them all to onst, I hope. Nice gun, son. Can’t shoot like mine, though.” He pulled his cannon off his hip and laid it on the counter. A Frontier Colt that would weigh as much as a suitcase. He balanced it, tossed it into the air and caught it spinning, then put it back on his hip. He pushed my .38 back across the counter.

“Up here on business, Mr. Evans?”

“I’m not sure. I got a call, but I haven’t made a contact yet. A confidential matter.”

He nodded. His eyes were thoughtful. They were deeper, colder, darker than they had been.

“I’m stopping at the Indian Head,” I said.

“I don’t aim to pry into your affairs, son,” he said. “We don’t have no crime here. Onst in a while a fight or a drunk driver in summertime. Or maybe a couple hard-boiled kids on a motorcycle will break into a cabin just to sleep and steal food. No real crime, though. Mighty little inducement to crime in the mountains. Mountain folks are mighty peaceable.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And again, no.”

He leaned forward a little and looked into my eyes.

“Right now,” I said, ‘You’ve got a murder.”

Nothing much changed in his face. He looked me over feature by feature. He reached for his hat and put it on the back of his head.

“What was that, son?” he asked calmly.

“On the point east of the village out past the dancing pavilion. A man shot, lying behind a big fallen tree. Shot through the heart. I was down there smoking for half an hour before I noticed him.”

“Is that so?” he drawled. “Out Speaker Point, eh? Past Speaker’s Tavern. That the place?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“You taken a longish while to get around to telling me, didn’t you?” The eyes were not friendly.

“I got a shock,” I said. “It took me a while to get myself straightened out.”

He nodded. “You and me will now drive out that way. In your car.”

“That won’t do any good,” I said. “The body has been moved. After I found the body I was going back to my car and a Japanese gunman popped up from behind a bush and knocked me down. A couple of men carried the body away and they went off in a boat. There’s no sign of it there at all now.”

The sheriff went over and spat in his gobboon. Then he made a small spit on the stove and waited as if for it to sizzle, but it was summer and the stove was out. He turned around and cleared his throat and said: “You’d kind of better go on home and lie down a little while, maybe.” He clenched a fist at his side. “We aim for the summer visitors to enjoy theirselves up here.” He clenched both his hands, then pushed them hard down into the shallow pockets in the front of his pants.

“Okay,” I said.

“We don’t have no Japanese gunmen up here,” the sheriff said thickly. “We are plumb out of Japanese gunmen.”

“I can see you don’t like that one,” I said. “How about this one? A man named Weber was knifed in the back at the Indian Head a while back. In my room. Somebody I didn’t see knocked me out with a brick, and while I was out this Weber was knifed. He and I had been talking together. Weber worked at the hotel. As cashier.”

“You said this happened in your room?”

“Yeah.”

“Seems like,” Barron said thoughtfully, “you could turn out to be a bad influence in this town.”

“You don’t like that one, either?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Don’t like this one, neither. Unless, of course, you got a body to go with it.”

“I don’t have it with me,” I said, “but I can run over and get it for you.”

He reached and took hold of my arm with some of the hardest fingers I ever felt. “I’d hate for you to be in your right mind, son,” he said. “But I’ll kind of go over with you. It’s a nice night.”

“Sure,” I said, not moving. “The man I came up here to work for is called Fred Lacey. He just bought a cabin out on Ball Sage Point. The Baldwin cabin. The man I found dead on Speaker Point was named Frederick Lacey, according to the driver’s licence in his pocket. There’s a lot more to it, but you wouldn’t want to be bothered with the details, would you?”

“You and me,” the sheriff said, “will now run over to the hotel. You got a car?”

I said I had.

“That’s fine,” the sheriff said. “We won’t use it, but give me the keys.”

SEVEN

The man with the heavy, furled eyebrows and the screwed-in cigar leaned against the closed door of the room and didn’t say anything or look as if he wanted to say anything. Sheriff Barron sat straddling a straight chair and watching the doctor, whose name was Menzies, examine the body. I stood in the corner where I belonged. The doctor was an angular, bug-eyed man with a yellow face relieved by bright red patches on his cheeks. His fingers were brown with nicotine stains, and he didn’t look very clean.

He puffed cigarette smoke into the dead man’s hair and rolled him around on the bed and felt him here and there. He looked as if he was trying to act as if he knew what he was doing. The knife had been pulled out of Weber’s back. It lay on the bed beside him. It was a short, wide-bladed knife of the kind that is worn in a leather scabbard attached to the belt. It had a heavy guard which would seal the wound as the blow was struck and keep blood from getting back on the handle. There was plenty of blood on the blade.

“Sears Sawbuck Hunter’s Special No. 2438,’ the sheriff said, looking at it. “There’s a thousand of them around the lake. They ain’t bad and they ain’t good. What do you say, Doc?”

The doctor straightened up and took a handkerchief out. He coughed hackingly into the handkerchief, looked at it, shook his head sadly and lit another cigarette.

“About what?” he asked.

“Cause and time of death.”

“Dead very recently,” the doctor said. “Not more than two hours. There’s no beginning of rigor yet.”

“Would you say the knife killed him?”

“Don’t be a damn fool, Jim Barron.”

“There’s been cases,” the sheriff said, “where a man would be poisoned or something and they would stick a knife into him to make it look different.”

“That would be very clever,” the doctor said nastily. “You had many like that up here?”

“Only murder I had up here,” the sheriff said peacefully, “was old Dad Meacham over to the other side. Had a shack in Sheedy Canyon. Folks didn’t see him around for a while, but it was kinda cold weather and they figured he was in there with his oil stove resting up. Then when he didn’t show up they knocked and found the cabin was locked up, so they figured he had gone down for the winter. Then come a heavy snow and the roof caved in. We was over there a-trying to prop her up so he wouldn’t lose all his stuff, and, by gum, there was Dad in bed with an axe in the back of his head. Had a little gold he’d panned in summer–I guess that was what he was killed for. We never did find out who done it.”

“You want to send him down in my ambulance?” the doctor asked, pointing at the bed with his cigarette.

The sheriff shook his head. “Nope. This is a poor county, Doc. I figure he could ride cheaper than that.”

The doctor put his hat on and went to the door. The man with the eyebrows moved out of the way. The doctor opened the door. “Let me know if you want me to pay for the funeral,” he said, and went out.

“That ain’t no way to talk,” the sheriff said.

The man with the eyebrows said: “Let’s get this over with and get him out of here so I can go back to work. I got a movie outfit coming up Monday and I’ll be busy. I got to find me a new cashier, too, and that ain’t so easy.”

“Where you find Weber?” the sheriff asked. “Did he have any enemies?”

“I’d say he had at least one,” the man with the eyebrows said, “I got him through Frank Luders over at the Woodland Club. All I know about him is he knew his job and he was able to make a ten-thousand-dollar bond without no trouble. That’s all I needed to know.”

“Frank Luders,” the sheriff said. “That would be the man that’s bought in over there. I don’t think I met him. What does he do?”

“Ha, ha,” the man with the eyebrows said.

The sheriff looked at him peacefully. “Well, that ain’t the only place where they run a nice poker game, Mr. Holmes.”

Mr. Holmes looked blank. “Well, I got to go back to work,” he said. “You need any help to move him?”

“Nope. Ain’t going to move him right now. Move him before daylight. But not right now. That will be all for now, Mr. Holmes.”

The man with the eyebrows looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then reached for the doorknob.

I said: “You have a couple of German girls working here, Mr. Holmes. Who hired them?”

The man with the eyebrows dragged his cigar out of his mouth, looked at it, put it back and screwed it firmly in place. He said: “Would that be your business?”

“Their names are Anna Hoffman and Gertrude Smith, or maybe Schmidt,” I said. “They had a cabin together over at the Whitewater Cabins. They packed up and went down the hill tonight. Gertrude is the girl that took Mrs. Lacey’s shoes to the shoemaker.”

The man with the eyebrows looked at me very steadily.

I said: “When Gertrude was taking the shoes, she left them on Weber’s desk for a short time. There was five hundred dollars in one of the shoes. Mr. Lacey had put it in there for a joke, so his wife would find it.”

“First I heard of it,” the man with the eyebrows said. The sheriff didn’t say anything at all.

“The money wasn’t stolen,” I said. “The Laceys found it still in the shoe over at the shoemaker’s place.”

The man with the eyebrows said: “I’m certainly glad that got straightened out all right.” He pulled the door open and went out and shut it behind him. The sheriff didn’t say anything to stop him.

He went over into the corner of the room and spat in the wastebasket. Then he got a large khaki-colored handkerchief out and wrapped the bloodstained knife in it and slipped it down inside his belt, at the side. He went over and stood looking down at the dead man on the bed. He straightened his hat and started towards the door. He opened the door and looked back at me. “This is a little tricky,” he said. “But it probably ain’t as tricky as you would like for it to be. Let’s go over to Lacey’s place.”

I went out and he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. We went downstairs and out through the lobby and crossed the street to where a small, dusty, tan-colored sedan was parked against the fireplug. A leathery young man was at the wheel. He looked underfed and a little dirty, like most of the natives. The sheriff and I got in the back of the car. The sheriff said: “You know the Baldwin place out to the end of Ball Sage, Andy?”

“Yup.”

“We’ll go out there,” the sheriff said. “Stop a little to this side.” He looked up at the sky. “Full moon all night, tonight,” he said. “And it’s sure a dandy.”

EIGHT

The cabin on the point looked the same as when I had seen it last, The same windows were lighted, the same car stood in the open double garage, and the same wild, screaming bark burst on the night.

“What in heck’s that?” the sheriff asked as the car slowed. “Sounds like a coyote.”

“It’s half a coyote,” I said.

The leathery lad in front said over his shoulder, “You want to stop in front, Jim?”

“Drive her down a piece. Under them old pines.”

The car stopped softly in black shadow at the roadside. The sheriff and I got out. “You stay here, Andy, and don’t let nobody see you,” the sheriff said. “I got my reasons.”

We went back along the road and through the rustic gate. The barking started again. The front door opened. The sheriff went up on the steps and took his hat off.

“Mrs. Lacey? I’m Jim Barron, constable at Puma Point. This here is Mr. Evans, from Los Angeles. I guess you know him. Could we come in a minute?”

The woman looked at him with a face so completely shadowed that no expression showed on it. She turned her head a little and looked at me. She said, “Yes, come in,” in a lifeless voice.

We went in. The woman shut the door behind us. A big grayhaired man sitting in an easy chair let go of the dog he was holding on the floor and straightened up. The dog tore across the room, did a flying tackle on the sheriff’s stomach, turned in the air and was already running in circles when she hit the floor.

“Well, that’s a right nice little dog,” the sheriff said, tucking his shirt in.

The gray-haired man was smiling pleasantly. He said: “Good evening.” His white, strong teeth gleamed with friendliness.

Mrs. Lacey was still wearing the scarlet double-breasted coat and the gray slacks. Her face looked older and more drawn. She looked at the floor and said: “This is Mr. Frank Luders from the Woodland Club. Mr. Bannon and”–she stopped and raised her eyes to look at a point over my left shoulder–‘ ‘I didn’t catch the other gentleman’s name,” she said.

“Evans,” the sheriff said, and didn’t look at me at all. “And mine is Barron, not Bannon.” He nodded at Luders. I nodded at Luders. Luders smiled at both of us. He was big, meaty, powerful-looking, well kept and cheerful. He didn’t have a care in the world. Big, breezy Frank Luders, everybody’s pal.

He said: “I’ve known Fred Lacey for a long time. I just dropped by to say hello. He’s not home, so I am waiting a little while until a friend comes by in a car to pick me up.”

“Pleased to know you, Mr. Luders,” the sheriff said. “I heard you had bought in at the club. Didn’t have the pleasure of meeting you yet.”

The woman sat down very slowly on the edge of a chair. I sat down. The little dog, Shiny, jumped in my lap, washed my right ear for me, squirmed down again and went under my chair. She lay there breathing out loud and thumping the floor with her feathery tail.

The room was still for a moment. Outside the windows on the lake side there was a very faint throbbing sound. The sheriff heard it. He cocked his head slightly, but nothing changed in his face.

He said: “Mr. Evans here come to me and told me a queer story. I guess it ain’t no harm to mention it here, seeing Mr. Luders is a friend of the family.”

He looked at Mrs. Lacey and waited. She lifted her eyes slowly, but not enough to meet his. She swallowed a couple of times and nodded her head. One of her hands began to slide slowly up and down the arm of her chair, back and forth, back and forth. Luders smiled.

“Ida liked to have Mr. Lacey here,” the sheriff said. “You think he’ll be in pretty soon?”

The woman nodded again. “I suppose so,” she said in a drained voice. “He’s been gone since midafternoon. I don’t know where he is. I hardly think he would go down the hill without telling me, but he has had time to do that. Something might have come up.”

“Seems like something did,” the sheriff said. “Seems like Mr. Lacey wrote a letter to Mr. Evans, asking him to come up here quickly. Mr. Evans is a detective from L.A.”

The woman moved restlessly. “A detective?” she breathed. Luders said brightly: “Now why in the world would Fred do that?”

“On account of some money that was hid in a shoe,” the sheriff said.

Luders raised his eyebrows and looked at Mrs. Lacey. Mrs. Lacey moved her lips together and then said very shortly: “But we got that back, Mr. Bannon. Fred was having a joke. He won a little money at the races and hid it in one of my shoes. He meant it for a surprise. I sent the shoe out to be repaired with the money still in it, but the money was still in it when we went over to the shoemaker’s place.”

‘Barron is the name, not Bannon,” the sheriff said. “So you got your money back all intact, Mrs. Lacey?”

“Why–of course. Of course, we thought at first, it being a hotel and one of the maids having taken the shoe–well, I don’t know just what we thought, but it was a silly place to hide money–but we got it back, every cent of it.”

“And it was the same money?” I said, beginning to get the idea and not liking it.

She didn’t quite look at me. “Why, of course. Why not?”

“That ain’t the way I heard it from Mr. Evans,” the sheriff said peacefully, and folded his hands across his stomach. “There was a slight difference, seems like, in the way you told it to Evans.”

Luders leaned forward suddenly in his chair, but his smile stayed put. I didn’t even get tight. The woman made a vague gesture and her hand kept moving on the chair arm. “I . . . told it . . . told what to Mr. Evans?”

The sheriff turned his head very slowly and gave me a straight, hard stare. He turned his head back. One hand patted the other on his stomach.

“I understand Mr. Evans was over here earlier in the evening and you told him about it, Mrs. Lacey. About the money being changed?”

“Changed?” Her voice had a curiously hollow sound. “Mr. Evans told you he was here earlier in the evening? I . . . I never saw Mr. Evans before in my life.”

I didn’t even bother to look at her. Luders was my man. I looked at Luders. It got me what the nickel gets you from the slot machine. He chuckled and put a fresh match to his cigar.

The sheriff closed his eyes. His face had a sort of sad expression. The dog came out from under my chair and stood in the middle of the room looking at Luders. Then she went over in the corner and slid under the fringe of a daybed cover. A snuffling sound came from her a moment, then silence.

“Hum, hum, dummy,” the sheriff said, talking to himself. “I ain’t really equipped to handle this sort of a deal. I don’t have the experience. We don’t have no fast work like that up here. No crime at all in the mountains. Hardly.” He made a wry face.

He opened his eyes. “How much money was that in the shoe, Mrs. Lacey?”

“Five hundred dollars.” Her voice was hushed.

“Where at is this money, Mrs. Lacey?”

“I suppose Fred has it.”

“I thought he was goin’ to give it to you, Mrs. Lacey.”

“He was,” she said sharply. ‘He is. But I don’t need it at the moment. Not up here. He’ll probably give me a check later on.”

“Would he have it in his pocket or would it be in the cabin here, Mrs. Lacey?”

She shook her head. “In his pocket, probably. I don’t know. Do you want to search the cabin?”

The sheriff shrugged his fat shoulders. “Why, no, I guess not, Mrs. Lacey. It wouldn’t do me no good if I found it especially if it wasn’t changed.”

Luders said: “Just how do you mean changed, Mr. Barron?”

“Changed for counterfeit money,” the sheriff said.

Luders laughed quietly. “That’s really amusing, don’t you think? Counterfeit money at Puma Point? There’s no opportunity for that sort of thing up here, is there?”

The sheriff nodded at him sadly. “Don’t sound reasonable, does it?”

Luders said: “And your only source of information on the point is Mr. Evans here–who claims to be a detective? A private detective, no doubt?”

“I thought of that,” the sheriff said.

Luders leaned forward a little more. “Have you any knowledge other than Mr. Evans’ statement that Fred Lacey sent for him?”

“He’d have to know something to come up here, wouldn’t he?” the sheriff said in a worried voice. “And he knew about that money in Mrs. Lacey’s slipper.”

“I was just asking a question,” Luders said softly.

The sheriff swung around on me. I was already wearing my frozen smile. Since the incident in the hotel I hadn’t looked for Lacey’s letter. I knew I wouldn’t have to look, now.

“You got a letter from Lacey?” he asked me in a hard voice,

I lifted my hand towards my inside breast pocket. Barron threw his right hand down and up. When it came up it held the Frontier Colt. “I’ll take that gun of yours first,” he said between his teeth. He stood up.

I pulled my coat open and held it open. He leaned down over me and jerked the automatic from the holster. He looked at it sourly a moment and dropped it into his left hip pocket. He sat down again. “Now look,” he said easily.

Luders watched me with bland interest. Mrs. Lacey put her hands together and squeezed them hard and stared at the floor between her shoes.

I took the stuff out of my breast pocket. A couple of letters, some plain cards for casual notes, a packet of pipe cleaners, a spare handkerchief. Neither of the letters was the one. I put the stuff back and got a cigarette out and put it between my lips. I struck the match and held the flame to the tobacco. Nonchalant.

“You win,” I said, smiling. “Both of you.”

There was a slow flush on Barron’s face and his eyes glittered. His lips twitched as he turned away from me.

“Why not,” Luders asked gently, “see also if he really is a detective?”

Barron barely glanced at him. “The small things don’t bother me,” he said. “Right now I’m investigatin’ a murder.”

He didn’t seem to be looking at either Luders or Mrs. Lacey. He seemed to be looking at a corner of the ceiling. Mrs. Lacey shook, and her hands tightened so that the knuckles gleamed hard and shiny and white in the lamplight. Her mouth opened very slowly, and her eyes turned up in her head. A dry sob half died in her throat.

Luders took the cigar out of his mouth and laid it carefully in the brass dip on the smoking stand beside him. He stopped smiling. His mouth was grim. He said nothing.

It was beautifully timed. Barron gave them all they needed for the reaction and not a second for a comeback. He said, in the same almost indifferent voice: “A man named Weber, cashier in the Indian Head Hotel. He was knifed in Evans’ room. Evans was there, but he was knocked out before it happened, so he is one of them boys we hear so much about and don’t often meet–the boys that get there first.”

“Not me,” I said. “They bring their murders and drop them right at my feet.”

The woman’s head jerked. Then she looked up, and for the first time she looked straight at me. There was a queer light in her eyes, shining far back, remote and miserable.

Barron stood up slowly. “I don’t get it,” he said. “I don’t get it at all. But I guess I ain’t making any mistake in takin’ this feller in.” He turned to me. “Don’t run too fast, not at first, bud. I always give a man forty yards.”

I didn’t say anything. Nobody said anything.

Barron said slowly: “I’ll have to ask you to wait here till I come back, Mr. Luders. If your friend comes for you, you could let him go on. I’d be glad to drive you back to the club later.”

Luders nodded. Barron looked at a clock on the mantel. It was a quarter to twelve. “Kinda late for a old fuddy-duddy like me. You think Mr. Lacey will be home pretty soon, ma’am?”

“I … I hope so,” she said, and made a gesture that meant nothing unless it meant hopelessness.

Barron moved over to open the door. He jerked his chin at me. I went out on the porch. The little dog came halfway out from under the couch and made a whining sound. Barron looked down at her.

“That sure is a nice little dog,” he said. “I heard she was half coyote. What did you say the other half was?”

“We don’t know,” Mrs. Lacey murmured.

“Kind of like this case I’m working on,” Barron said, and came out on to the porch after me.

NINE

We walked down the road without speaking and came to the car. Andy was leaning back in the corner, a dead half cigarette between his lips.

We got into the car. “Drive down a piece, about two hundred yards,” Barron said. “Make plenty of noise.”

Andy started the car, raced the motor, clashed the gears, and the car slid down through the moonlight and around a curve of the road and up a moonlit hill sparred with the shadows of tree trunks.

“Turn her at the top and coast back, but not close,” Barron said. “Stay out of sight of that cabin. Turn your lights off before you turn.”

“Yup,” Andy said.

He turned the car just short of the top, going around a tree to do it. He cut the lights off and started back down the little hill, then killed the motor. Just beyond the bottom of the slope there was a heavy clump of manzanita, almost as tall as ironwood. The car stopped there. Andy pulled the brake back very slowly to smooth out the noise of the ratchet.

Barron leaned forward over the back seat. “We’re goin’ across the road and get near the water,” he said. “I don’t want no noise and nobody walkin’ in no moonlight.”

Andy said: “Yup.”

We got out. We walked carefully on the dirt of the road, then on the pine needles. We filtered through the trees, behind fallen logs, until the water was down below where we stood. Barron sat down on the ground and then lay down. Andy and I did the same. Barron put his face close to Andy.

“Hear anything?”

Andy said: “Eight cylinders, kinda rough.”

I listened. I could tell myself I heard it, but I couldn’t be sure. Barron nodded in the dark. “Watch the lights in the cabin,” he whispered.

We watched. Five minutes passed, or enough time to seem like five minutes. The lights in the cabin didn’t change. Then there was a remote, half-imagined sound of a door closing. There were shoes on wooden steps.

“Smart. They left the light on,” Barron said in Andy’s ear. We waited another short minute. The idling motor burst into a roar of throbbing sound, a stuttering, confused racket, with a sort of hop, skip and jump in it. The sound sank to a heavy purring roar and then quickly began to fade. A dark shape slid out on the moonlit water, curved with a beautiful line of froth and swept past the point out of sight.

Barron got a plug of tobacco out and bit. He chewed comfortably and spat four feet beyond his feet. Then he got up on his feet and dusted off the pine needles. Andy and I got up.

“Man ain’t got good sense chewin’ tobacco these days,” he said. “Things ain’t fixed for him. I near went to sleep back there in the cabin.” He lifted the Colt he was still holding in his left hand, changed hands and packed the gun away on his hip.

“Well?” he said, looking at Andy.

“Ted Rooney’s boat,” Andy said. “She’s got two sticky valves and a big crack in the muffler. You hear it best when you throttle her up, like they did just before they started.”

It was a lot of words for Andy, but the sheriff liked them.

“Couldn’t be wrong, Andy? Lots of boats get sticky valves.” Andy said: “What the hell you ask me for?” in a nasty voice.

“Okay, Andy, don’t get sore.”

Andy grunted. We crossed the road and got into the car again. Andy started it up, backed and turn and said: “Lights?”

Barron nodded. Andy put the lights on. “Where to now?”

“Ted Rooney’s place,” Barron said peacefully. “And make it fast. We got ten miles to there,”

“Can’t make it in less’n twenty minutes,” Andy said sourly. “Got to go through the Point.”

The car hit the paved lake road and started back past the dark boys’ camp and the other camps, and turned left on the highway. Barron didn’t speak until we were beyond the village and the road out to Speaker Point. The dance band was still going strong in the pavilion.

“I fool you any?” he asked me then.

“Enough.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“The job was perfect,” I said, “but I don’t suppose you fooled Luders.”

“That lady was mighty uncomfortable,” Barron said. “That Luders is a good man. Hard, quiet, full of eyesight. But I fooled him some. He made mistakes.”

“I can think of a couple,” I said. “One was being there at all. Another was telling us a friend was coming to pick him up, to explain why he had no car. It didn’t need explaining. There was a car in the garage, but you didn’t know whose car it was. Another was keeping that boat idling.”

“That wasn’t no mistake,” Andy said from the front seat. “Not if you ever tried to start her up cold.”

Barron said: “You don’t leave your car in the garage when you come callin’ up here. Ain’t no moisture to hurt it. The boat could have been anybody’s boat. A couple of young folks could have been in it getting acquainted. I ain’t got anything on him, anyways, so far as he knows. He just worked too hard tryin’ to head me off.”

He spat out of the car. I heard it smack the rear fender like a wet rag. The car swept through the moonlit night, around curves, up and down hills, through fairly thick pines and along open flats where cattle lay.

I said: “He knew I didn’t have the letter Lacey wrote me. Because he took it away from me himself, up in my room at the hotel. It was Luders that knocked me out and knifed Weber. Luders knows that Lacey is dead, even if he didn’t kill him. That’s what he’s got on Mrs. Lacey. She thinks her husband is alive and that Luders has him.”

“You make this Luders out a pretty bad guy,” Barron said calmly. “Why would Luders knife Weber?”

“Because Weber started all the trouble. This is an organization. Its object is to unload some very good counterfeit ten-dollar bills, a great many of them. You don’t advance the cause by unloading them in five-hundred-dollar lots, all brandnew, in circumstances that would make anybody suspicious, would make a much less careful man than Fred Lacey suspicious.”

“You’re doing some nice guessin’, son,” the sheriff said, grabbing the door handle as we took a fast turn, “but the neighbors ain’t watchin’ you. I got to be more careful. I’m in my own back yard. Puma Lake don’t strike me as a very good place to go into the counterfeit money business.”

“Okay,” I said.

“On the other hand, if Luders is the man I want, he might be kind of hard to catch. There’s three roads out of the valley, and there’s half a dozen planes down to the east end of the Woodland Club golf course. Always is in summer.”

“You don’t seem to be doing very much worrying about it,” I said.

“A mountain sheriff don’t have to worry a lot,” Barron said calmly. “Nobody expects him to have any brains. Especially guys like Mr. Luders don’t.”

TEN

The boat lay in the water at the end of a short painter, moving as boats move even in the stillest water. A canvas tarpaulin covered most of it and was tied down here and there, but not everywhere it should have been tied. Behind the short rickety pier a road twisted back through juniper trees to the highway. There was a camp off to one side, with a miniature white lighthouse for its trademark. A sound of dance music came from one of the cabins, but most of the camp had gone to bed.

We came down there walking, leaving the car on the shoulder of the highway. Barron had a big flash in his hand and kept throwing it this way and that, snapping it on and off. When we came to the edge of the water and the end of the road to the pier, he put his flashlight on the road and studied it carefully. There were fresh-looking tire tracks.

“What do you think?” he asked me.

“Looks like tire tracks,” I said.

“What do you think, Andy?” Barron said. “This man is cute, but he don’t give me no ideas.”

Andy bent over and studied the tracks. “New tires and big ones,” he said, and walked towards the pier. He stooped down again and pointed. The sheriff threw the light where he pointed. “Yup, turned around here,” Andy said. “So what? The place is full of new cars right now. Come October and they’d mean something. Folks that live up here buy one tire at a time, and cheap ones, at that. These here are heavy-duty all-weather treads.”

“Might see about the boat,” the sheriff said.

“What about it?”

“Might see if it was used recent,” Barron said.

“Hell,” Andy said, “we know it was used recent, don’t we?”

“Always supposin’ you guessed right,” Barron said mildly.

Andy looked at him in silence for a moment. Then he spat on the ground and started back to where we had left the car. When he had gone a dozen feet he said over his shoulder: “I wasn’t guessin’.” He turned his head again and went on, plowing through the trees.

“Kind of touchy,” Barron said. “But a good man.” He went down on the boat landing and bent over it, passing his hand along the forward part of the side, below the tarpaulin. He came back slowly and nodded. “Andy’s right. Always is, durn him. What kind of tires would you say those marks were, Mr. Evans? They tell you anything?”

“Cadillac V-12,” I said. “A club coupé with red leather seats and two suitcases in the back. The clock on the dash is twelve and one-half minutes slow.”

He stood there, thinking about it. Then he nodded his big head. He sighed. “Well, I hope it makes money for you,” he said, and turned away.

We went back to the car. Andy was in the front seat behind the wheel again. He had a cigarette going. He looked straight ahead of him through the dusty windshield.

“Where’s Rooney live now?” Barron asked.

“Where he always lived,” Andy said.

“Why, that’s just a piece up the Bascomb road.”

“I ain’t said different,” Andy growled.

“Let’s go there,” the sheriff said, getting in. I got in beside him.

Andy turned the car and went back half a mile and then started to turn. The sheriff snapped to him: “Hold it a minute.”

He got out and used his flash on the road surface. He got back into the car. “I think we got something. Them tracks down by the pier don’t mean a lot. But the same tracks up here might turn out to mean more. If they go on in to Bascomb, they’re goin’ to mean plenty. Them old gold camps over there is made to order for monkey business.”

The car went into the side road and climbed slowly into a gap. Big boulders crowded the road, and the hillside was studded with them. They glistened pure white in the moonlight. The car growled on for half a mile and then Andy stopped again.

“Okay, Hawkshaw, this is the cabin,” he said. Barron got out again and walked around with his flash. There was no light in the cabin. He came back to the car.

“They come by here,” he said. “Bringing Ted home. When they left they turned towards Bascomb. You figure Ted Rooney would be mixed up in something crooked, Andy?”

“Not unless they paid him for it,” Andy said.

I got out of the car and Barron and I went up towards the cabin. It was small, rough, covered with native pine. It had a wooden porch, a tin chimney guyed with wires, and a sagging privy behind the cabin at the edge of the trees. It was dark. We walked up on the porch and Barron hammered on the door. Nothing happened. He tried the knob. The door was locked. We went down off the porch and around the back, looking at the windows. They were all shut. Barron tried the back door, which was level with the ground. That was locked, too. He pounded. The echoes of the sound wandered off through the trees and echoed high up on the rise among the boulders.

“He’s gone with them,” Barron said. “I guess they wouldn’t dast leave him now. Prob’ly stopped here just to let him get his stuff–some of it. Yep.”

I said: “I don’t think so. All they wanted of Rooney was his boat. That boat picked up Fred Lacey’s body out at the end of Speaker Point early this evening. The body was probably weighted and dropped out in the lake. They waited for dark to do that. Rooney was in on it, and he got paid. Tonight they wanted the boat again. But they got to thinking they didn’t need Rooney along. And if they’re over in Bascomb Valley in some quiet little place, making or storing counterfeit money, they wouldn’t at all want Rooney to go over there with them.”

“You’re guessing again, son,” the sheriff said kindly. “Anyways, I don’t have no search warrant. But I can look over Rooney’s dolihouse a minute. Wait for me.”

He walked away towards the privy. I took six feet and hit the door of the cabin. It shivered and split diagonally across the upper panel. Behind me, the sheriff called out, “Hey,” weakly, as if he didn’t mean it.

I took another six feet and hit the door again. I went in with it and landed on my hands and knees on a piece of linoleum that smelled like a fish skillet. I got up to my feet and reached up and turned the key switch of a hanging bulb. Barron was right behind me, making clucking noises of disapproval.

There was a kitchen with a wood stove, some dirty wooden shelves with dishes on them. The stove gave out a faint warmth. Unwashed pots sat on top of it and smelled. I went across the kitchen and into the front room. I turned on another hanging bulb. There was a narrow bed to one side, made up roughly, with a slimy quilt on it. There was a wooden table, some wooden chairs, an old cabinet radio, hooks on the wall, an ashtray with four burned pipes in it, a pile of pulp magazines in the corner on the floor.

The ceiling was low to keep the heat in. In the corner there was a trap to get up to the attic. The trap was open and a stepladder stood under the opening. An old water-stained canvas suitcase lay open on a wooden box, and there were odds and ends of clothing in it.

Barron went over and looked at the suitcase. “Looks like Rooney was getting ready to move out or go for a trip. Then these boys come along and picked him up. He ain’t finished his packing, but he got his suit in. A man like Rooney don’t have but one suit and don’t wear that ‘less he goes down the hill.”

“He’s not here,” I said. “He ate dinner here, though. The stove is still warm.”

The sheriff cast a speculative eye at the stepladder. He went over and climbed up it and pushed the trap up with his head. He raised his torch and shone it around overhead. He let the trap close and came down the stepladder again.

“Likely he kept the suitcase up there,” he said. “I see there’s a old steamer trunk up there, too. You ready to leave?”

“I didn’t see a car around,” I said. “He must have had a car.”

“Yep. Had a old Plymouth. Douse the light.”

He walked back into the kitchen and looked around that and then we put both the lights out and went out of the house. I shut what was left of the back door. Barron was examining tire tracks in the soft decomposed granite, trailing them back over to a space under a big oak tree where a couple of large darkened areas showed where a car had stood many times and dripped oil.

He came back swinging his flash, then looked towards the privy and said: “You could go on back to Andy. I still gotta look over that dollhouse.”

I didn’t say anything. I watched him go along the path to the privy and unlatch the door, and open it. I saw his flash go inside and the light leaked out of a dozen cracks and from the ramshackle roof. I walked back along the side of the cabin and got into the car. The sheriff was gone a long time. He came back slowly, stopped beside the car and bit off another chew from his plug. He rolled it around in his mouth and then got to work on it.

“Rooney,” he said, “is in the privy. Shot twice in the head.” He got into the car. “Shot with a big gun, and shot very dead. Judgin’ from the circumstances I would say somebody was in a hell of a hurry.”

ELEVEN

The road climbed steeply for a while following the meanderings of a dried mountain stream the bed of which was full of boulders. Then it leveled off about a thousand or fifteen hundred feet above the level of the lake. We crossed a cattle stop of spaced narrow rails that clanked under the car wheels. The road began to go down. A wide undulating flat appeared with a few browsing cattle in it. A lightless farmhouse showed up against the moonlit sky. We reached a wider road that ran at right angles. Andy stopped the car and Barron got out with his big flashlight again and ran the spot slowly over the road surface.

“Turned left,” he said, straightening. “Thanks be there ain’t been another car past since them tracks were made.” He got back into the car.

“Left don’t go to no old mines,” Andy said. “Left goes to Worden’s place and then back down to the lake at the dam.”

Barron sat silent a moment and then got out of the car and used his flash again. He made a surprised sound over to the right of the T intersection. He came back again, snapping the light off.

“Goes right, too,” he said. “But goes left first. They doubled back, but they been somewhere off west of here before they done it. We go like they went.”

Andy said: “You sure they went left first and not last? Left would be a way out to the highway.”

“Yep. Right marks overlays left marks,” Barron said.

We turned left. The knolls that dotted the valley were covered with ironwood trees, some of them half dead. Ironwood grows to about eighteen or twenty feet high and then dies. When it dies the limbs strip themselves and get a gray-white color and shine in the moonlight.

We went about a mile and then a narrow road shot off towards the north, a mere track. Andy stopped. Barron got out again and used his flash. He jerked his thumb and Andy swung the car. The sheriff got in.

“Them boys ain’t too careful,” he said. “Nope. I’d say they ain’t careful at all. But they never figured Andy could tell where that boat come from, just by listenin’ to it.”

The road went into a fold of the mountains and the growth got so close to it that the car barely passed without scratching. Then it doubled back at a sharp angle and rose again and went around a spur of hill and a small cabin showed up, pressed back against a slope with trees on all sides of it.

And suddenly, from the house or very close to it, came a long, shrieking yell which ended in a snapping bark. The bark was choked off suddenly.

Barron started to say: “Kill them–” but Andy had already cut the lights and pulled off the road. “Too late, I guess,” he said dryly. “Must’ve seen us, if anybody’s watchin’.”

Barron got out of the car. “That sounded mighty like a coyote, Andy.”

“Awful close to the house for a coyote, don’t you think, Andy?”

“Nope,” Andy said. “Light’s out, a coyote would come right up to the cabin lookin’ for buried garbage.”

“And then again it could be that little dog,” Barron said.

“Or a hen laying a square egg,” I said. “What are we waiting for? And how about giving me back my gun? And are we trying to catch up with anybody, or do we just like to get things all figured out as we go along?”

The sheriff took my gun off his left hip and handed it to me. “I ain’t in no hurry,” he said. “Because Luders ain’t in no hurry. He coulda been long gone, if he was. They was in a hurry to get Rooney, because Rooney. knew something about them. But Rooney don’t know nothing about them now because he’s dead and his house locked up and his car driven away. If you hadn’t bust in his back door, he could be there in his privy a couple of weeks before anybody would get curious. Them tire tracks looks kind of obvious, but that’s only because we know where they started. They don’t have any reason to think we could find that out. So where would we start? No, I ain’t in any hurry.”

Andy stooped over and came up with a deer rifle. He opened the left-hand door and got out of the car.

“The little dog’s in there,” Barron said peacefully. “That means Mrs. Lacey is in there, too. And there would be somebody to watch her. Yep, I guess we better go up and look, Andy.”

“I hope you’re scared,” Andy said. “I am.”

We started through the trees. It was about two hundred yards to the cabin. The night was very still. Even at that distance I heard a window open. We walked about fifty feet apart. Andy stayed back long enough to lock the car. Then he started to make a wide circle, far out to the right.

Nothing moved in the cabin as we got close to it, no light showed. The coyote or Shiny, the dog, whichever it was, didn’t bark again.

We got very close to the house, not more than twenty yards. Barron and I were about the same distance apart. It was a small rough cabin, built like Rooney’s place, but larger. There was an open garage at the back, but it was empty. The cabin had a small porch of fieldstone.

Then there was the sound of a short, sharp struggle in the cabin and the beginning of a bark, suddenly choked off. Barron fell down flat on the ground. I did the same. Nothing happened.

Barron stood up slowly and began to move forward a step at a time and a pause between each step. I stayed out. Barron reached the cleared space in front of the house and started to go up the steps to the porch. He stood there, bulky, clearly outlined in the moonlight, the Colt hanging at his side. It looked like a swell way to commit suicide.

Nothing happened. Barron reached the top of the steps, moved over tight against the wall. There was a window to his left, the door to his right. He changed his gun in his hand and reached out to bang on the door with the butt, then swiftly reversed it again, and flattened to the wall.

The dog screamed inside the house. A hand holding a gun came out at the bottom of the opened window and turned.

It was a tough shot at the range. I had to make it. I shot. The bark of the automatic was drowned in the duller boom of a rifle. The hand drooped and the gun dropped to the porch. The hand came out a little farther and the fingers twitched, then began to scratch at the sill. Then they went back in through the window and the dog howled. Barron was at the door, jerking at it. And Andy and I were running hard for the cabin, from different angles.

Barron got the door open and light framed him suddenly as someone inside lit a lamp and turned it up.

I made the porch as Barron went in, Andy close behind me. We went into the living room of the cabin.

Mrs. Fred Lacey stood in the middle of the floor beside a table with a lamp on it, holding the little dog in her arms. A thickset, blondish man lay on his side under the window, breathing heavily, his hand groping around aimlessly for the gun that had fallen outside the window.

Mrs. Lacey opened her arms and let the dog down. It leaped and hit the sheriff in the stomach with its small, sharp nose and pushed inside his coat at his shirt. Then it dropped to the floor again and ran around in circles, silently, weaving its hind end with delight.

Mrs. Lacey stood frozen, her face as empty as death. The man on the floor groaned a little in the middle of his heavy breathing. His eyes opened and shut rapidly. His lips moved and bubbled pink froth.

“That sure is a nice little dog, Mrs. Lacey,” Barron said, tucking his shirt in. “But it don’t seem a right handy time to have him around–not for some people.”

He looked at the blond man on the floor. The blond man’s eyes opened and became fixed on nothing.

“I lied to you,” Mrs. Lacey said quickly. “I had to. My husband’s life depended on it. Luders has him. He has him somewhere over here. I don’t know where, but it isn’t far off, he said. He went to bring him back to me, but he left this man to guard me. I couldn’t do anything about it, sheriff. I’m–I’m sorry.”

“I knew you lied, Mrs. Lacey,” Barron said quietly. He looked down at his Colt and put it back on his hip. “I knew why. But your husband is dead, Mrs. Lacey. He was dead long ago. Mr. Evans here saw him. It’s hard to take, ma’am, but you better know it now.”

She didn’t move or seem to breathe. Then she went very slowly to chair and sat down and leaned her face in her hands. She sat there without motion, without sound. The little dog whined and crept under her chair.

The man on the floor started to raise the upper part of his body. He raised it very slowly, stiffly. His eyes were blank. Barron moved over to him and bent down.

“You hit bad, son?”

The man pressed his left hand against his chest. Blood oozed between his fingers. He lifted his right hand slowly, until the arm was rigid and pointing to the corner of the ceiling. His lips quivered, stiffened, spoke.

“Heil Hitler!” he said thickly.

He fell back and lay motionless. His throat rattled a little and then that, too, was still, and everything in the room was still, even the dog.

“This man must be one of them Nazis,” the sheriff said. “You hear what he said?”

“Yeah,” I said.

I turned and walked out of the house, down the steps and down through the trees again to the car. I sat on the running board and lit a cigarette, and sat there smoking and thinking hard.

After a little while they all came down through the trees. Barron was carrying the dog. Andy was carrying his rifle in his left hand. His leathery young face looked shocked.

Mrs. Lacey got into the car and Barron handed the dog in to her. He looked at me and said: “It’s against the law to smoke out here, son, more than fifty feet from a cabin.”

I dropped the cigarette and ground it hard into the powdery gray soil. I got into the car, in front beside Andy.

The car started again and we went back to what they probably called the main road over there. Nobody said anything for a long time, then Mrs. Lacey said in a low voice: “Luders mentioned a name that sounded like Sloat. He said it to the man you shot. They called him Kurt. They spoke German. I understand a little German, but they talked too fast. Sloat didn’t sound like German. Does it mean anything to you?”

“It’s the name of an old gold mine not far from here,” Barron said. “Sloat’s Mine. You know where it is, don’t you, Andy?”

“Yup. I guess I killed that feller, didn’t I?”

“I guess you did, Andy.”

“I never killed nobody before,” Andy said.

“Maybe I got him,” I said. “I fired at him.”

“Nope,” Andy said. “You wasn’t high enough to get him in the chest. I was.”

Barron said: “How many brought you to that cabin, Mrs. Lacey? I hate to be asking you questions at a time like this, ma’am, but I just got to.”

The dead voice said: “Two. Luders and the man you killed. He ran the boat.”

“Did they stop anywhere–on this side of the lake, ma’am?”

“Yes. They stopped at a small cabin near the lake. Luders was driving. The other man, Kurt, got out, and we drove on. After a while Luders stopped and Kurt came up with us in an old car. He drove the car into a gully behind some willows and then came on with us.”

“That’s all we need,” Barron said. “If we get Luders, the job’s all done. Except I can’t figure what it’s all about.”

I didn’t say anything. We drove on to where the T intersection was and the road went back to the lake. We kept on across this for about four miles.

“Better stop here, Andy. We’ll go the rest of the way on foot. You stay here.”

“Nope. I ain’t going to,” Andy said.

“You stay here,” Barron said in a voice suddenly harsh. “You got a lady to look after and you done your killin’ for tonight. All I ask is you keep that little dog quiet.”

The car stopped. Barron and I got out. The little dog whined and then was still. We went off the road and started across country through a grove of young pines and manzanita and ironwood. We walked silently, without speaking. The noise our shoes made couldn’t have been heard thirty feet away except by an Indian.

TWELVE

We reached the far edge of the thicket in a few minutes. Beyond that the ground was level and open. There was a spidery something against the sky, a few low piles of waste dirt, a set of sluice boxes built one on top of the other like a miniature cooling tower, an endless belt going towards it from a cut. Barron put his mouth against my ear.

“Ain’t been worked for a couple of years,” he said. “Ain’t worth it. Day’s hard work for two men might get you a pennyweight of gold. This country was worked to death sixty years ago. That low hut over yonder’s a old refrigerator car. She’s thick and damn near bullet-proof. I don’t see no car, but maybe it’s behind. Or hidden. Most like hidden. You ready to go?”

I nodded. We started across the open space. The moon was almost as bright as daylight. I felt swell, like a clay pipe in a shooting gallery. Barron seemed quite at ease. He held the big Colt down at his side, with his thumb over the hammer.

Suddenly light showed in the side of the refrigerator car and we went down on the ground. The light came from a partly opened door, a yellow panel and a yellow spearhead on the ground. There was a movement in the moonlight and the noise of water striking the ground. We waited a little, then got up again and went on.

There wasn’t much use playing Indian. They would come out of the door or they wouldn’t. If they did, they would see us, walking, crawling or lying. The ground was that bare and the moon was that bright. Our shoes scuffed a little, but this was hard dirt, much walked on and tight packed. We reached a pile of sand and stopped beside it. I listened to myself breathing. I wasn’t panting, and Barron wasn’t panting either. But I took a lot of interest in my breathing. It was something I had taken for granted for a long time, but right now I was interested in it. I hoped it would go on for a long time, but I wasn’t sure.

I wasn’t scared. I was a full-sized man and I had a gun in my hand. But the blond man back in the other cabin had been a full-sized man with a gun in his hand, too. And he had a wall to hide behind. I wasn’t scared though. I was just thoughtful about little things. I thought Barron was breathing too loud, but I thought I would make more noise telling him he was breathing too loud than he was making breathing. That’s the way I was, very thoughtful about the little things.

Then the door opened again. This time there was no light behind it. A small man, very small, came out of the doorway carrying what looked like a heavy suitcase. He carried it along the side of the car, grunting hard. Barron held my arm in a vise. His breath hissed faintly.

The small man with the heavy suitcase, or whatever it was, reached the end of the car and went around the corner. Then I thought that although the pile of sand didn’t look very high it was probably high enough so that we didn’t show above it. And if the small man wasn’t expecting visitors, he might not see us. We waited for him to come back. We waited too long.

A clear voice behind us said: “I am holding a machine gun, Mr. Barron. Put your hands up, please. If you move to do anything else, I fire.”

I put my hands up fast. Barron hesitated a little longer. Then he put his hands up. We turned slowly. Frank Luders stood about four feet away from us, with a tommy gun held waist-high. Its muzzle looked as big as the Second Street tunnel in L.A.

Luders said quietly: “I prefer that you face the other way. When Charlie comes back from the car, he will light the lamps inside. Then we shall all go in.”

We faced the long, low car again. Luders whistled sharply. The small man came back around the corner of the car, stopped a moment, then went towards the door. Luders called out: “Light the lamps, Charlie. We have visitors.”

The small man went quietly into the car and a match scratched and there was light inside.

“Now, gentlemen, you may walk,” Luders said. “Observing, of course, that death walks close behind you and conducting yourselves accordingly.”

We walked.

THIRTEEN

“Take their guns and see if they have any more of them, Charlie.”

We stood backed against a wall near a long wooden table. There were wooden benches on either side of the table. On it was a tray with a bottle of whisky and a couple of glasses, a hurricane lamp and an old-fashioned farmhouse oil lamp of thick glass, both lit, a saucer full of matches and another full of ashes and stubs. In the end of the cabin, away from the table, there was a small stove and two cots, one tumbled, one made up as neat as a pin.

The little Japanese came towards us with the light shining on his glasses.

“Oh having guns,” he purred. “Oh too bad.”

He took the guns and pushed them backwards across the table to Luders. His small hands felt us over deftly. Barron winced and his face reddened, but he said nothing. Charlie said: “No more guns. Pleased to see, gentlemen. Very nice night, I think so. You having picnic in moonlight?”

Barron made an angry sound in his throat. Luders said: “Sit down, please, gentlemen, and tell me what I can do for you.”

We sat down. Luders sat down opposite. The two guns were on the table in front of him and the tommy gun rested on it, his left hand holding it steady, his eyes quiet and hard. His was no longer a pleasant face, but it was still an intelligent face. Intelligent as they ever are.

Barron said: “Guess I’ll chew. I think better that way.” He got his plug out and bit into it and put it away. He chewed silently and then spat on the floor.

“Guess I might mess up your floor some,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

The Jap was sitting on the end of the neat bed, his shoes not touching the floor. “Not liking much,” he said hissingly, “very bad smell.”

Barron didn’t look at him. He said quietly: “You aim to shoot us and make your getaway, Mr. Luders?”

Luders shrugged and took his hand off the machine gun and leaned back against the wall.

Barron said: “You left a pretty broad trail here except for one thing. How we would know where to pick it up. You didn’t figure that out because you wouldn’t have acted the way you did. But you was all staked out for us when we got here. I don’t follow that.”

Luders said: “That is because we Germans are fatalists. When things go very easily, as they did tonight–except for that fool, Weber–we become suspicious. I said to myself, ‘I have left no trail, no way they could follow me across the lake quickly enough. They had no boat, and no boat followed me. It would be impossible for them to find me. Quite impossible.’ So I said, ‘They will find me just because to me it appears impossible. Therefore, I shall be waiting for them.’

“While Charlie toted the suitcases full of money out to the car,” I said.

“What money?” Luders asked, and didn’t seem to look at either of us. He seemed to be looking inward, searching.

I said: “Those very fine new ten-dollar bills you have been bringing in from Mexico by plane.”

Luders looked at me then, but indifferently. “My dear friend, you could not possibly be serious?” he suggested.

“Phooey. Easiest thing in the world. The border patrol has no planes now. They had a few coast-guard planes a while back, but nothing came over, so they were taken off. A plane flying high over the border from Mexico lands on the field down by the Woodland Club golf course. It’s Mr. Luders’ plane and Mr. Luders owns an interest in the club and lives there. Why should anybody get curious about that? But Mr. Luders doesn’t want half a million dollars’ worth of queer money in his cabin at the club, so he finds himself an old mine over here and keeps the money in this refrigerator car. It’s almost as strong as a safe and it doesn’t look like a safe.”

“You interest me,” Luders said calmly. “Continue.”

I said: “The money is very good stuff. We’ve had a report on it. That means organization–to get the inks and the right paper and the plates. It means an organization much more complete than any gang of crooks could manage. A government organization. The organization of the Nazi government.”

The little Jap jumped up off the bed and hissed, but Luders didn’t change expression. “I’m still interested,” he said laconically.

“I ain’t,” Barron said. “Sounds to me like you’re tryin’ to talk yourself into a vestful of lead.”

I went on: “A few years ago the Russians tried the same stunt. Planting a lot of queer money over here to raise funds for espionage work and, incidentally, they hoped, to damage our currency. The Nazis are too smart to gamble on that angle. All they want is good American dollars to work with in Central and South America. Nice mixed-up money that’s been used. You can’t go into a bank and deposit a hundred thousand dollars in brand-new ten-dollar bills. What’s bothering the sheriff is why you picked this particular place, a mountain resort full of rather poor people.”

“But that does not bother you with your superior brain, does it?” Luders sneered.

“It don’t bother me a whole lot either,” Barron said. “What bothers me is folks getting killed in my territory. I ain’t used to it.”

I said: “You picked the place primarily because it’s a swell place to bring the money into. It’s probably one of hundreds all over the country, places where there is very little law enforcement to dodge but places where in the summertime a lot of strange people come and go all the time. And places where planes set down and nobody checks them in or out. But that isn’t the only reason. It’s also a swell place to unload some of the money, quite a lot of it, if you’re lucky. But you weren’t lucky. Your man Weber pulled a dumb trick and made you unlucky. Should I tell you just why it’s a good place to spread queer money if you have enough people working for you?”

“Please do,” Luders said, and patted the side of the machine gun.

“Because for three months in the year this district has a floating population of anywhere from twenty to fifty thousand people, depending on the holidays and weekends. That means a lot of money brought in and a lot of business done. And there’s no bank here. The result of that is that the hotels and bars and merchants have to cash checks all the time. The result of that is that the deposits they send out during the season are almost all checks and the money stays in circulation. Until the end of the season, of course.”

“I think that is very interesting,” Luders said. “But if this operation were under my control, I would not think of passing very much money up here. I would pass a little here and there, but not much. I would test the money out, to see how well it was accepted. And for a reason that you have thought of. Because most of it would change hands rapidly and, if it was discovered to be queer money, as you say, it would be very difficult to trace the source of it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That would be smarter. You’re nice and frank about it.”

“To you,” Luders said, “it naturally does not matter how frank I am.”

Barron leaned forward suddenly. “Look here, Luders, killin’ us ain’t going to help you any. If you come right down to it, we don’t have a thing on you. Likely you killed this man Weber, but the way things are up here, it’s going to be mighty hard to prove it. If you been spreading bad money, they’ll get you for it, sure, but that ain’t a hangin’ matter. Now I’ve got a couple pair handcuffs in my belt, so happens, and my proposition is you walk out of here with them on, you and your Japanese pal.”

Charlie the Jap said: “Ha, ha. Very funny man. Some boob I guess yes.”

Luders smiled faintly. “You put all the stuff in the car, Charlie?”

“One more suitcase coming right up,” Charlie said.

“Better take it on out, and start the engine, Charlie.”

“Listen, it won’t work, Luders,” Barron said urgently. “I got a man back in the woods with a deer rifle. It’s bright moonlight. You got a fair weapon there, but you got no more chance against a deer rifle than Evans and me got against you. You’ll never get out of here unless we go with you. He seen us come in here and how we come. He’ll give us twenty minutes. Then he’ll send for some boys to dynamite you out. Them were my orders.”

Luders said quietly: “This work is very difficult. Even we Germans find it difficult. I am tired. I made a bad mistake. I used a man who was a fool, who did a foolish thing, and then he killed a man because he had done it and the man knew he had done it. But it was my mistake also. I shall not be forgiven. My life is no longer of great importance. Take the suitcase to the car, Charlie.”

Charlie moved swiftly towards him. “Not liking, no,” he said sharply. “That damn heavy suitcase. Man with rifle shooting. To hell.”

Luders smiled slowly. “That’s all a lot of nonsense, Charlie. If they had men with them, they would have been here long ago. That is why I let these men talk. To see if they were alone. They are alone. Go, Charlie.”

Charlie said hissingly: “I going, but I still not liking.”

He went over to the corner and hefted the suitcase that stood there. He could hardly carry it. He moved slowly to the door and put the suitcase down and sighed. He opened the door a crack and looked out. “Not see anybody,” he said. “Maybe all lies, too.”

Luders said musingly: “I should have killed the dog and the woman too. I was weak. The man Kurt, what of him?”

“Never heard of him,” I said. “Where was he?’

Luders stared at me. “Get up on your feet, both of you.”

I got up. An icicle was crawling around on my back. Barron got up. His face was gray. The whitening hair at the side of his head glistened with sweat. There was sweat all over his face, but his jaws went on chewing.

He said softly: “How much you get for this job, son?”

I said thickly: “A hundred bucks but I spent some of it.”

Barron said in the same soft tone: “I been married forty years. They pay me eighty dollars a month, house and firewood. It ain’t enough. By gum, I ought to get a hundred.” He grinned wryly and spat and looked at Luders. “To hell with you, you Nazi bastard,” he said.

Luders lifted the machine gun slowly and his lips drew back over his teeth. His breath made a hissing noise. Then very slowly he laid the gun down and reached inside his coat. He took out a Luger and moved the safety catch with his thumb. He shifted the gun to his left hand and stood looking at us quietly. Very slowly his face drained of all expression and became a dead gray mask. He lifted the gun, and at the same time he lifted his right arm stiffly above shoulder height. The arm was as rigid as a rod.

“Heil Hitler!” he said sharply.

He turned the gun quickly, put the muzzle in his mouth and fired.

FOURTEEN

The Jap screamed and streaked out of the door. Barron and I lunged hard across the table. We got our guns. Blood fell on the back of my hand and then Luders crumpled slowly against the wall.

Barron was already out of the door. When I got out behind him, I saw that the little Jap was running hard down the hill towards a clump of brush.

Barron steadied himself, brought the Colt up, then lowered it again.

“He ain’t far enough,” he said. “I always give a man forty yards.”

He raised the big Colt again and turned his body a little and, as the gun reached firing position, it moved very slowly and Barron’s head went down a little until his arm and shoulder and right eye were all in a line.

He stayed like that, perfectly rigid for a long moment, then the gun roared and jumped back in his hand and a lean thread of smoke showed faint in the moonlight and disappeared.

The Jap kept on running. Barron lowered his Colt and watched him plunge into a clump of brush.

“Hell,” he said. “I missed him.” He looked at me quickly and looked away again. “But he won’t get nowhere. Ain’t got nothing to get with. Them little legs of his ain’t hardly long enough to jump him over a pine cone.”

“He had a gun,” I said. “Under his left arm.”

Barron shook his head. “Nope. I noticed the holster was empty. I figure Luders got it away from him. I figure Luders meant to shoot him before he left.”

Car lights showed in the distance, coming dustily along the road.

“What made Luders go soft?”

“I figure his pride was hurt,” Barron said thoughtfully. “A big organizer like him gettin’ hisself all balled to hell by a couple of little fellows like us.”

We went around the end of the refrigerator car. A big new coupé was parked there. Barron marched over to it and opened the door. The car on the road was near now. It turned off and its headlights raked the big coupé. Barron stared into the car for a moment, then slammed the door viciously and spat on the ground.

“Caddy V-12,” he said. “Red leather cushions and suitcases in the back.” He reached in again and snapped on the dashlight “What time is it?”

“Twelve minutes to two,” I said.

“This clock ain’t no twelve and a half minutes slow,” Barron said angrily. “You slipped on that.” He turned and faced me, pushing his hat back on his head. “Hell, you seen it parked in front of the Indian Head,” he said.

“Right.”

“I thought you was just a smart guy.”

“Right,” I said.

“Son, next time I got to get almost shot, could you plan to be around?”

The car that was coming stopped a few yards away and a dog whined. Andy called out: “Anybody hurt?”

Barron and I walked over to the car. The door opened and the little silky dog jumped out and rushed at Barron. She took off about four feet away and sailed through the air and planted her front paws hard against Barron’s stomach, then dropped back to the ground and ran in circles.

Barron said: “Luders shot hisself inside there. There’s a little J ap down in the bushes we got to round up. And there’s three, four suitcases full of counterfeit money we got to take care of.”

He looked off into the distance, a solid, heavy man like a rock. “A night like this,” he said, “and it’s got to be full of death.”

* * *

TROUBLE IS

MY BUSINESS

* * *

ONE

Anna Halsey was about two hundred and forty pounds of middle-aged putty-faced woman in a black tailor-made suit. Her eyes were shiny black shoe buttons, her cheeks were as soft as suet and about the same color. She was sitting behind a black glass desk that looked like Napoleon’s tomb and she was smoking a cigarette in a black holder that was not quite as long as a rolled umbrella. She said: “I need a man.”

I watched her shake ash from the cigarette to the shiny top of the desk where flakes of it curled and crawled in the draft from an open window.

“I need a man good-looking enough to pick up a dame who has a sense of class, but he’s got to be tough enough to swap punches with a power shovel. I need a guy who can act like a bar lizard and backchat like Fred Allen, only better, and get hit on the head with a beer truck and think some cutie in the leg-line topped him with a breadstick.”

“It’s a cinch,” I said. “You need the New York Yankees, Robert Donat, and the Yacht Club Boys.”

“You might do,” Anna said, “cleaned up a little. Twenty bucks a day and ex’s. I haven’t brokered a job in years, but this one is out of my line. I’m in the smooth-angles of the detecting business and I make money without getting my can knocked off. Let’s see how Gladys likes you.”

She reversed the cigarette holder and tipped a key on a large black-and-chromium annunciator box. “Come in and empty Anna’s ash tray, honey.”

We waited.

The door opened and a tall blonde dressed better than the Duchess of Windsor strolled in.

She swayed elegantly across the room, emptied Anna’s ash tray, patted her fat cheek, gave me a smooth rippling glance and went out again.

“I think she blushed,” Anna said when the door closed. “I guess you still have It.”

“She blushed–and I have a dinner date with Darryl Zanuck,” I said. “Quit horsing around. What’s the story?”

“It’s to smear a girl. A redheaded number with bedroom eyes. She’s shill for a gambler and she’s got her hooks into a rich man’s pup.”

“What do I do to her?”

Anna sighed. “It’s kind of a mean job, Philip, I guess. If she’s got a record of any sort, you dig it up and toss it in her face. If she hasn’t, which is more likely as she comes from good people, it’s kind of up to you. You get an idea once in a while, don’t you?”

“I can’t remember the last one I had. What gambler and what rich man?”

“Marty Estel.”

I started to get up from my chair, then remembered that business had been bad for a month and that I needed the money.

I sat down again.

“You might get into trouble, of course,” Anna said. “I never heard of Marty bumping anybody off in the public square at high noon, but he don’t play with cigar coupons.”

“Trouble is my business,” I said. “Twenty-five a day and guarantee of two-fifty, if I pull the job.”

“I gotta make a little something for myself,” Anna whined.

“O.K. There’s plenty of coolie labor around town. Nice to have seen you looking so well. So long, Anna.”

I stood up this time. My life wasn’t worth much, but it was worth that much. Marty Estel was supposed to be pretty tough people, with the right helpers and the right protection behind him. His place was out in West Hollywood, on the Strip. He wouldn’t pull ‘anything crude, but if he pulled at all, something would pop.

“Sit down, it’s a deal,” Anna sneered. “I’m a poor old brokendown woman trying to run a high-class detective agency on nothing but fat and bad health, so take my last nickel and laugh at me.”

“Who’s the girl?” I had sat down again.

“Her name is Harriet Huntress–a swell name for the part too. She lives in the El Milano, nineteen-hundred block on North Sycamore, very high-class. Father went broke back in thirty-one and jumped out of his office window. Mother dead. Kid sister in boarding school back in Connecticut. That might make an angle.”

“Who dug up all this?”

“The client got a bunch of photostats of notes the pup had given to Marty. Fifty grand worth. The pup–he’s an adopted son to the old man–denied the notes, as kids will. So the client had the photostats experted by a guy named Arbogast, who pretends to be good at that sort of thing. He said O.K. and dug around a bit, but he’s too fat to do legwork, like me, and he’s off the case now.”

“But I could talk to him?”

“I don’t know why not.” Anna nodded several of her chins.

“This client–does he have a name?”

“Son, you have a treat coming. You can meet him in person–right now.”

She tipped the key of her call box again. “Have Mr. Jeeter come in, honey.”

“That Gladys,” I said, “does she have a steady?”

“You lay off Gladys!” Anna almost screamed at me. “She’s worth eighteen grand a year in divorce business to me. Any guy that lays a finger on her, Philip Marlowe, is practically cremated.”

“She’s got to fall some day,” I said. “Why couldn’t I catch her?”

The opening door stopped that.

I hadn’t seen him in the paneled reception room, so he must have been waiting in a private office. He hadn’t enjoyed it. He came in quickly, shut the door quickly, and yanked a thin octagonal platinum watch from his vest and glared at it. He was a tall white-blond type in pin-striped flannel of youthful cut. There was a small pink rosebud in his lapel. He had a keen frozen face, a little pouchy under the eyes, a little thick in the lips. He carried an ebony cane with a silver knob, wore spats and looked a smart sixty, but I gave him close to ten years more. I didn’t like him.

“Twenty-six minutes, Miss Halsey,” he said icily. “My time happens to be valuable. By regarding it as valuable I have managed to make a great deal of money.”

“Well, we’re trying to save you some of the money,” Anna drawled. She didn’t like him either. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Jeeter, but you wanted to see the operative I selected and I had to send for him.”

“He doesn’t look the type to me,” Mr. Jeeter said, giving me a nasty glance. “I think more of a gentleman–”

“You’re not the Jeeter of Tobacco Road, are you?” I asked him.

He came slowly towards me and half lifted the stick. His icy eyes tore at me like claws. “So you insult me,” he said. “Me–a man in my position.”

“Now wait a minute,” Anna began.

“Wait a minute nothing,” I said. “This party said I was not a gentleman. Maybe that’s O.K. for a man in his position, whatever it is–but a man in my position doesn’t take a dirty crack from anybody. He can’t afford to. Unless, of course, it wasn’t intended.”

Mr. Jeeter stiffened and glared at me. He took his watch out again and looked at it. “Twenty-eight minutes,” he said. “I apologize, young man. I had no desire to be rude.”

“That’s swell,” I said. “I knew you weren’t the Jeeter in Tobacco Road all along.”

That almost started him again, but he let it go. He wasn’t sure how I meant it.

“A question or two while we are together,” I said. “Are you willing to give this Huntress girl a little money–for expenses?”

“Not one cent,” he barked. “Why should I?”

“It’s got to be a sort of custom. Suppose she married him. What would he have?”

“At the moment a thousand dollars a month from a trust fund established by his mother, my late wife.” He dipped his head. “When he is twenty-eight years old, far too much money.”

“You can’t blame the girl for trying,” I said. “Not these days. How about Marty Estel? Any settlement there?”

He crumpled his gray gloves with a purple-veined hand. “The debt is uncollectible. It is a gambling debt.”

Anna sighed wearily and flicked ash around on her desk.

“Sure,” I said. “But gamblers can’t afford to let people welsh on them. After all, if your son had won, Marty would have paid him.”

“I’m not interested in that,” the tall thin man said coldly.

“Yeah, but think of Marty sitting there with fifty grand in notes. Not worth a nickel. How will he sleep nights?”

Mr. Jeeter looked thoughtful. “You mean there is danger of violence?” he suggested, almost suavely.

“That’s hard to say. He runs an exclusive place, gets a good movie crowd. He has his own reputation to think of. But he’s in a racket and he knows people. Things can happen–a long way off from where Marty is. And Marty is no bathmat. He gets up and walks.”

Mr. Jeeter looked at his watch again and it annoyed him. He slammed it back into his vest. “All that is your affair,” he snapped. “The district attorney is a personal friend of mine. If this matter seems to be beyond your powers–”

“Yeah,” I told him. “But you came slumming down our street just the same. Even if the D.A. is in your vest pocket–along with that watch.”

He put his hat on, drew on one glove, tapped the edge of his shoe with his stick, walked to the door and opened it.

“I ask results and I pay for them,” he said coldly. “I pay promptly. I even pay generously sometimes, although I am not considered a generous man. I think we all understand one another.”

He almost winked then and went on out. The door closed softly against the cushion of air in the door-closer. I looked at Anna and grinned.

“Sweet, isn’t he?” she said. “I’d like eight of him for my cocktail set.”

I gouged twenty dollars out of her–for expenses.

TWO

The Arbogast I wanted was John D. Arbogast and he had an office on Sunset near Ivar. I called him up from a phone booth. The voice that answered was fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man who had just won a pie-eating contest.

“Mr. John D. Arbogast?”

“Yeah.”

“This is Philip Marlowe, a private detective working on a case you did some experting on. Party named Jeeter.”

“Yeah?”

“Can I come up and talk to you about it–after I eat lunch?”

“Yeah.” He hung up. I decided he was not a talkative man.

I had lunch and drove out there. It was east of Ivar, an old two-story building faced with brick which had been painted recently. The street floor was stores and a restaurant. The building entrance was the foot of a wide straight stairway to the second floor. On the directory at the bottom I read: John D. Arbogast, Suite 212. I went up the stairs and found myself in a wide straight hall that ran parallel with the street. A man in a smock was standing in an open doorway down to my right. He wore a round mirror strapped to his forehead and pushed back, and his face had a puzzled expression. He went back to his office and shut the door.

I went the other way, about half the distance along the hall. A door on the side away from Sunset was lettered: JOHN D. ARBOGAST, EXAMINER OF QUESTIONED DOCUMENTS. PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. ENTER. The door opened without resistance onto a small windowless anteroom with a couple of easy chairs, some magazines, two chromium smoking stands. There were two floor lamps and a ceiling fixture, all lighted. A door on the other side of the cheap but thick new rug was lettered: JOHN D. ARBOGAST, EXAMINER OF QUESTIONED DOCUMENTS. PRIVATE.

A buzzer had rung when I opened the outer door and gone on ringing until it closed. Nothing happened. Nobody was in the waiting room. The inner door didn’t open. I went over and listened at the panel–no sound of conversation inside. I knocked. That didn’t buy me anything either. I tried the knob. It turned, so I opened the door and went in.

This room had two north windows, both curtained at the sides and both shut tight. There was dust on the sills. There was a desk, two filing cases, a carpet which was just a carpet, and walls which were just walls. To the left another door with a glass panel was lettered: JOHN D. ARBOGAST. LABORATORY. PRIVATE.

I had an idea I might be able to remember the name.

The room in which I stood was small. It seemed almost too small even for the pudgy hand that rested on the edge of the desk, motionless, holding a fat pencil like a carpenter’s pencil. The hand had a wrist, hairless as a plate. A buttoned shirt cuff, not too clean, came down out of a coat sleeve. The rest of the sleeve dropped over the far edge of the desk out of sight. The desk was less than six feet long, so he couldn’t have been a very tall man. The hand and the ends of the sleeves were all I saw of him from where I stood. I went quietly back through the anteroom and fixed its door so that it couldn’t be opened from the outside and put out the three lights and went back to the private office. I went around an end of the desk.

He was fat all right, enormously fat, fatter by far than Anna Halsey. His face, what I could see of it, looked about the size of a basket ball. It had a pleasant pinkness, even now. He was kneeling on the floor. He had his large head against the sharp inner corner of the kneehole of the desk, and his left hand was flat on the floor with a piece of yellow paper under it. The fingers were outspread as much as such fat fingers could be, and the yellow paper showed between. He looked as if he were pushing hard on the floor, but he wasn’t really. What was holding him up was his own fat. His body was folded down against his enormous thighs, and the thickness and fatness of them held him that way, kneeling, poised solid. It would have taken a couple of good blocking backs to knock him over. That wasn’t a very nice idea at the moment, but I had it just the same. I took time out and wiped the back of my neck, although it was not a warm day.

His hair was gray and clipped short and his neck had as many folds as a concertina. His feet were small, as the feet of fat men often are, and they were in black shiny shoes which were sideways on the carpet and close together and neat and nasty. He wore a dark suit that needed cleaning. I leaned down and buried my fingers in the bottomless fat of his neck. He had an artery in there somewhere, probably, but I couldn’t find it and he didn’t need it any more anyway. Between his bloated knees on the carpet a dark stain had spread and spread–

I knelt in another place and lifted the pudgy fingers that were holding down the piece of yellow paper. They were cool, but not cold, and soft and a little sticky. The paper was from a scratch pad. It would have been very nice if it had had a message on it, but it hadn’t. There were vague meaningless marks, not words, not even letters. He had tried to write something after he was shot–perhaps even thought he was writing something–but all he managed was some hen scratches.

He had slumped down then, still holding the paper, pinned it to the floor with his fat hand, held on to the fat pencil with his other hand, wedged his torso against his huge thighs, and so died. John D. Arbogast. Examiner of Questioned Documents. Private. Very damned private. He had said “yeah” to me three times over the phone.

And here he was.

I wiped doorknobs with my handkerchief, put off the lights in the anteroom, left the outer door so that it was locked from the outside, left the hallway, left the building and left the neighborhood. So far as I could tell nobody saw me go. So far as I could tell.

THREE

The El Milano was, as Anna had told me, in the 1900 block on North Sycamore. It was most of the block. I parked fairly near the ornamental forecourt and went along to the pale blue neon sign over the entrance to the basement garage. I walked down a railed ramp into a bright space of glistening cars and cold air. A trim light-colored Negro in a spotless coverall suit with blue cuffs came out of a glass office. His black hair was as smooth as a bandleader’s.

“Busy?” I asked him.

“Yes and no, sir.”

“I’ve got a car outside that needs a dusting. About five bucks worth of dusting.”

It didn’t work. He wasn’t the type. His chestnut eyes became thoughtful and remote. “That is a good deal of dusting, sir. May I ask if anything else would be included?”

“A little. Is Miss Harriet Huntress’ car in?”

He looked. I saw him look along the glistening row at a canary-yellow convertible which was about as inconspicuous as a privy on the front lawn.

“Yes, sir. It is in.”

“I’d like her apartment number and a way to get up there without going through the lobby. I’m a private detective.” I showed him a buzzer. He looked at the buzzer. It failed to amuse him.

He smiled the faintest smile I ever saw. “Five dollars is nice money, sir, to a working man. It falls a little short of being nice enough to make me risk my position. About from here to Chicago short, sir. I suggest that you save your five dollars, sir, and try the customary mode of entry.”

“You’re quite a guy,” I said. “What are you going to be when you grow up–a five-foot shelf?”

“I am already grown up, sir. I am thirty-four years old, married happily, and have two children. Good afternoon, sir.”

He turned on his heel. “Well, goodbye,” I said. “And pardon my whiskey breath. I just got in from Butte.”

I went back up along the ramp and wandered along the street to where I should have gone in the first place. I might have known that five bucks and a buzzer wouldn’t buy me anything in a place like the El Milano.

The Negro was probably telephoning the office right now.

The building was a huge white stucco affair, Moorish in style, with great fretted lanterns in the forecourt and huge date palms. The entrance was at the inside corner of an L, up marble steps, through an arch framed in California or dishpan mosaic.

A doorman opened the door for me and I went in. The lobby was not quite as big as the Yankee Stadium. It was floored with a pale blue carpet with sponge rubber underneath. It was so soft it made me want to lie down and roll. I waded over to the desk and put an elbow on it and was stared at by a pale thin clerk with one of those mustaches that get stuck under your fingernail. He toyed with it and looked past my shoulder at an Ali Baba oil jar big enough to keep a tiger in.

“Miss Huntress in?”

“Who shall I announce?”

“Mr. Marty Estel.”

That didn’t take any better than my play in the garage. He leaned on something with his left foot. A blue-and-gilt door opened at the end of the desk and a large sandy-haired man with cigar ash on his vest came out and leaned absently on the end of the desk and stared at the Ali Baba oil jar, as if trying to make up his mind whether it was a spittoon.

The clerk raised his voice. “You are Mr. Marty Estel?”

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