I remembered the cigar I was holding and put it in my mouth. Marty's Colt was very steady on me while I got matches out and lit it.

I puffed smoke and said through the smoke: 'The sucker list I spoke of is in code. So I can't read the names yet, but there's about five hundred of them. You got twelve boxes of books, say three hundred. There'll be that many more out on loan. Say five hundred altogether, just to be conservative. If it's a good active list and you could run it around all the books, that would be a quarter of a million rentals. Put the average rental low say a dollar. That's too low, but say a dollar. That's a lot of money these days. Enough to spot a guy for.'

The blonde yelped sharply: 'You're crazy, if you '

'Shut up!' Marty swore at her.

The blonde subsided and put her head back against the back of her chair. Her face was tortured with strain.

'It's no racket for b.u.ms,' I went on telling them. 'You've got to get confidence and keep it. Personally I think the blackmail angles are a mistake. I'm for shedding all that.'

Marty's dark-brown stare held coldly on my face. 'You're a funny guy,' he drawled smoothly. 'Who's got this lovely racket?'

'You have,' I said. 'Almost.'

Marty didn't say anything.

'You shot Steiner to get it,' I said. 'Last night in the rain. It was good shooting weather. The trouble is, he wasn't alone when it happened. Either you didn't see that, or you got scared. You ran out. But you had nerve enough to come back and hide the body somewhere so you could tidy up on the books before the case broke.'

The blonde made one strangled sound and then turned her face and stared at the wall. Her silvered fingernails dug into her palms. Her teeth bit her lip tightly.

Marty didn't bat an eye. He didn't move and the Colt didn't move in his hand. His brown face was as hard as a piece of carved wood.

'Boy, you take chances,' he said softly, at last. 'It's lucky as all h.e.l.l for you I didn't kill Steiner.'

I grinned at him, without much cheer. 'You might step off for it just the same,' I said.

Marty's voice was a dry rustle of sound. 'Think you've got me framed for it?'

'Positive.'

'How come?'

'There's somebody who'll tell it that way.'

Marty swore then. 'That d.a.m.ned little ! She would just that d.a.m.n her!'

I didn't say anything. I let him chew on it. His face cleared slowly, and he put the Colt down on the table, kept his hand near it.

'You don't sound like chisel as I know chisel,' he said slowly, his eyes a tight s.h.i.+ne between dark narrowed lids. 'And I don't see any coppers here. What's your angle?'

I drew on my cigar and watched his gun hand. 'The plate that was in Steiner's camera. All the prints that have been made. Right here and right now. You've got it because that's the only way you could have known who was there last night.'

Marty turned his head slightly to look at Agnes. Her face was still to the wall and her fingernails were still spearing her palms. Marty looked back at me.

'You're cold as a night-watchman's feet on that one, guy,' he told me.

I shook my head. 'No. You're a sap to stall, Marty. You can be pegged for the kill easy. It's a natural. If the girl has to tell her story, the pictures won't matter. But she don't want to tell it.'

'You're a shamus?' he asked.

'Yeah.'

'How'd you get to me?'

'I was working on Steiner. He's been working on Dravec. Dravec leaks money. You had some of it. I tailed the books here from Steiner's store. The rest was easy when I had the girl's story.'

'She say I gunned Steiner?'

I nodded. 'But she could be mistaken.'

Marty sighed. 'She hates my guts,' he said. 'I gave her the gate. I got paid to do it, but I'd have done it anyway. She's too screwy for me.'

I said: 'Get the pictures, Marty.'

He stood up slowly, looked down at the Colt, put it in his side-pocket. His hand moved slowly up to his breast-pocket.

Somebody rang the door buzzer and kept on ringing it.

11.

Marty didn't like that. His lower lip went in under his teeth and his eyebrows drew down at the corners. His whole face got mean.

The buzzer kept on buzzing.

The blonde stood up quickly. Nerve tension made her face old and ugly.

Watching me, Marty jerked a small drawer open in the tall desk and got a small, white-handled automatic out of it. He held it out to the blonde. She went to him and took it gingerly, not liking it.

'Sit down next to the shamus,' he rasped. 'Hold the gun on him. If he gets funny, feed him a few.'

The blonde sat down on the davenport about three feet from me, on the side away from the door. She lined the gun on my leg. I didn't like the jerky look in her green eyes.

The door buzzer stopped and somebody started a quick, light, impatient rapping on the panel. Marty went across and opened the door. He slid his right hand into his coat pocket and opened the door with his left hand, threw it open quickly.

Carmen Dravec pushed him back into the room with the muzzle of a small revolver against his brown face.

Marty backed away from her smoothly, lightly. His mouth was open and an expression of panic was on his face. He knew Carmen pretty well.

Carmen shut the door, then bored ahead with her little gun. She didn't look at anyone but Marty, didn't seem to see anything but Marty. Her face had a dopey look.

The blonde s.h.i.+vered the full length of her body and swung the white-handled automatic up and towards Carmen. I shot my hand out and grabbed her hand, closed my fingers down over it quickly, thumbed the safety to the on position, and held it there. There was a short tussle, which neither Marty nor Carmen paid any attention to. Then I had the gun.

The blonde breathed deeply and stared at Carmen Dravec. Carmen looked at Marty with doped eyes and said: 'I want my pictures.'

Marty swallowed and tried to smile at her. He said: 'Sure, kid, sure,' in a small, flat voice that wasn't like the voice he had used in talking to me.

Carmen looked almost as crazy as she had looked in Steiner's chair. But she had control of her voice and muscles this time. She said: 'You shot Hal Steiner.'

'Wait a minute, Carmen!' I yelped.

Carmen didn't turn her head. The blonde came to life with a rush, ducked her head at me as if she was going to b.u.t.t me, and sank her teeth in my right hand, the one that had her gun in it.

I yelped some more. n.o.body minded that either.

Marty said: 'Listen, kid, I didn't '

The blonde took her teeth out of my hand and spat my own blood at me. Then she threw herself at my leg and tried to bite that. I cracked her lightly on the head with the barrel of the gun and tried to stand up. She rolled down my legs and wrapped her arms around my ankles. I fell back on the davenport again. The blonde was strong with the madness of fear.

Marty grabbed for Carmen's gun with his left hand, missed. The little revolver made a dull, heavy sound that was not loud. A bullet missed Marty and broke gla.s.s in one of the folded-back french windows.

Marty stood perfectly still again. He looked as if all his muscles had gone back on him.

'Duck and knock her off her feet, you d.a.m.n' fool!' I yelled at him.

Then I hit the blonde on the side of the head again, much harder, and she rolled off my feet. I got loose and slid away from her.

Marty and Carmen were still facing each other like a couple of images.

Something very large and heavy hit the outside of the door and the panel split diagonally from top to bottom.

That brought Marty to life. He jerked the Colt out of his pocket and jumped back. I snapped a shot at his right shoulder and missed, not wanting to hurt him much. The heavy thing hit the door again with a crash that seemed to shake the whole building.

I dropped the little automatic and got my own gun loose as Dravec came in with the smashed door.

He was wild-eyed, raging drunk, berserk. His big arms were flailing. His eyes were glaring and bloodshot and there was froth on his lips.

He hit me very hard on the side of the head without even looking at me. I fell against the wall, between the end of the davenport and the broken door.

I was shaking my head and trying to get level again when Marty began to shoot.

Something lifted Dravec's coat away from his body behind, as if a slug had gone clean through him. He stumbled, straightened immediately, charged like a bull.

I lined my gun and shot Marty through the body. It shook him, but the Colt in his hand continued to leap and roar. Then Dravec was between us and Carmen was knocked out of the way like a dead leaf and there was nothing more that anybody could do about it.

Marty's bullets couldn't stop Dravec. Nothing could. If he had been dead, he would still have got Marty.

He got him by the throat as Marty threw his empty gun in the big man's face. It bounced off like a rubber ball. Marty yelled shrilly, and Dravec took him by the throat and lifted him clean off his feet.

For an instant Marty's brown hands fought for a hold on the big man's wrists. Something cracked sharply, and Marty's hands fell away limply. There was another, duller crack. Just before Dravec let go of Marty's neck I saw that Marty's face was a purple-black colour. I remembered, almost casually, that men whose necks are broken sometimes swallow their tongues before they die.

Then Marty fell down in the corner and Dravec started to back away from him. He backed like a man losing his balance, not able to keep his feet under his centre of gravity. He took four clumsy backward steps like that. Then his big body tipped over backwards and he fell on his back on the floor with his arms flung out wide.

Blood came out of his mouth. His eyes strained upward as if to see through a fog.

Carmen Dravec went down beside him and began to wail like a frightened animal.

There was noise outside in the hall, but n.o.body showed at the open door. Too much casual lead had been flipped around.

I went quickly over to Marty and leaned over him and got my hand into his breast-pocket. I got out a thick, square envelope that had something stiff and hard in it. I straightened up with it and turned.

Far off the wail of a siren sounded faintly on the evening air, seemed to be getting louder. A white-faced man peeped cautiously in through the doorway. I knelt down beside Dravec.

He tried to say something, but I couldn't hear the words. Then the strained look went out of his eyes and they were aloof and indifferent, like the eyes of a man looking at something a long way off, across a wide plain.

Carmen said stonily: 'He was drunk. He made me tell him where I was going. I didn't know he followed me.'

'You wouldn't,' I said emptily.

I stood up and broke the envelope open. There were a few prints in it and a gla.s.s negative. I dropped the plate on the floor and ground it to pieces with my heel. I began to tear up the prints and let the pieces flutter down out of my hands.

'They'll print plenty of photos of you now, girlie,' I said. 'But they won't print this one.'

'I didn't know he was following me,' she said again, and began to chew on her thumb.

The siren was loud outside the building now. It died to a penetrating drone and then stopped altogether, just about the time I finished tearing up the prints.

I stood still in the middle of the room and wondered why I had taken the trouble. It didn't matter any more now.

12.

Leaning his elbow on the end of the big walnut table in Inspector Isham's office, and holding a burning cigarette idly between his fingers, Guy Slade said, without looking at me: 'Thanks for putting me on the pan, shamus. I like to see the boys at Headquarters once in a while.' He crinkled the corners of his eyes in an unpleasant smile.

I was sitting at the long side of the table across from Isham. Isham was lanky and grey and wore nose-gla.s.ses. He didn't look, act or talk copper. Violets M'Gee and a merry-eyed Irish d.i.c.k named Grinnell were in a couple of round-backed chairs against a gla.s.s-topped part.i.tion wall that cut part of the office off into a reception room.

I said to Slade: 'I figured you found that blood a little too soon. I guess I was wrong. My apologies, Mister Slade.'

'Yeah. That makes it just like it never happened.' He stood up, picked a malacca cane and one glove off the table. 'That all for me, Inspector?'

'That's all tonight, Slade.' Isham's voice was dry, cool, sardonic.

Slade caught the crook of his cane over his wrist to open the door. He smiled around before he strolled out. The last thing his eyes rested on was probably the back of my neck, but I wasn't looking at him.

Isham said: 'I don't have to tell you how a police department looks at that kind of a cover-up on a murder.'

I sighed. 'Gunfire,' I said. 'A dead man on the floor. A naked, doped girl in a chair not knowing what had happened. A killer I couldn't have caught and you couldn't have caught then. Behind all this a poor old roughneck that was breaking his heart trying to do the right thing in a miserable spot. Go ahead stick it into me. I'm not sorry.'