“Prove it, wise guy.”
“Easily,” Tracy said steadily. “My studio phone is unlisted. I use it to get last minute news flashes from my private secretary. Only two other people know that number. Hilliard, who was already dead — and his confidential secretary, Walter Furman.”
“I really ought to have a motive.”
“I can guess at one. That check Hilliard gave Alice this afternoon for $50,000. It might have been forged by—”
“No.” Hilliard’s wife spoke suddenly. “My husband signed it. He told me about it. It was a final gift to Alice in lieu of any share in his estate in the event she married Lord. He had already changed his will, cutting her off. Then Alice tried to blacken my character. My husband threatened to stop payment on the check. I heard him tell Furman to notify the bank in the morning. He wrote a notation on the stub. Make Furman tell you what he did with the book.”
Furman’s hand moved like a streak of lightning from beneath his prone body. He had slyly released his hidden right hand from the loosely twisted cords. As he heaved to his knees a pistol glittered.
“Quick!” Alice screamed harshly. “I can take it! Let’s go this way!”
Fitz tried to clutch at Furman but he twisted like an eel. He leaned swiftly toward Alice. She had knelt to face him, and she took without a quiver the bullet that he sent crashing into her breast. A second later the smoking muzzle-spat flame into Furman’s temple.
He fell in a flat huddle. There was a ghastly smile on Alice’s pale face. She had pitched forward across the body of her lover.
“She took it, all right,” Fitz said.
“Some women can take anything — except decency,” Tracy said.
His lips tightened and there was silence. What else was there to say?
Bullet Song
by Edgar Pangborn
Slugs of justice speed their way to racketeers’ hearts.
The large, moon-faced man climbed out of his roadster and padded across the dark street with a can of sardines in his left hand. November wind nagged at his overcoat, flinging snowflakes at his round cheeks and rushing away across the city with a whining laugh. Behind Tom Paradine’s preoccupied eyes there was music, and he hummed, scarcely knowing he did so — small broken music like the sound of someone trying out the lower register of a cello in another room.
He pushed through the revolving door of Hanifin’s Bar and Grill, and slouched at the bar. He shook the can of sardines he held in his hand, sighed and said, “Damn!” Then, “Beer, Pete,” and dropped the sardines in his overcoat pocket.
The young face behind the bar looked sick; Paradine forgot the music in his mind and added: “What’s the matter, Pete?”
The bartender’s high forehead was wrinkled and there were dark rings around the youthful gray eyes that would not meet Paradine’s. Pete’s mouth was tight-drawn.
“Nothing,” Pete said mechanically; but Paradine saw his hand tremble at the tap.
“Without beer,” said Paradine, “nobody could be a music critic. Do you know I lead a dog’s life, Pete? Always writing things about music, as if anybody gave a damn. Say, is Ed Hanifin anywhere around?”
“No. The boss is away for a day or two.” Pete studied a spot on his apron; said with uncalled-for hostility: “I don’t know anything about music... Did you want to see Ed?”
“No.” Paradine was mildly offended, and bored. “Just wanted to let my hair down and cry on his shoulder. You aren’t old enough to know about such things.”
One of the two other customers was sleepy drunk, nodding over an empty stein; the other read a newspaper at one of the tables, but Paradine glimpsed his eyes above it, and they were keen, cold eyes, on a slant; a hook-nosed man, sallow and hard and watchful. Pete stared unhappily at this man.
Heavy trouble had stricken old Ed Hanifin recently. In Paradine’s private knowledge of that, in the stillness of the bar on a Sunday afternoon, in the tension of Pete Holden and the dark alertness of the hook-nosed man, Paradine sensed something ugly. The room smelt of danger.
But the trouble came in from outside, on dragging feet. A man walked in uncertainly, and leaned on the bar, putting both manicured hands on it palms down, so that rings on his shivering fingers glittered. A small black-eyed man, neat and slim. He said:
“ ’Isk — ss — ’isky straight.” Then in a frail ghost of a voice: “Oh, my God...”
Pete made no move to get the drink. His young scared eyes bored in, hard, angry, pleading, still trying to dig something from the hook-nosed man behind the newspaper.
On the floor under the newcomer’s overcoat Paradine saw a drop of blood, and another splashed beside it. One ringed finger moved on the bar in a wet beer-stain; drew out the liquid uncertainly on the bright wood, making the capital letter E, and two more figures. An East Side address. Paradine could read it.
Pete’s arm swept across the address, wiping it away. The hook-nosed man behind the newspaper, without moving, spoke three words: “Watch it, Ferenczi.”
The black-eyed newcomer turned slowly, hands still palms down on the bar. The door swished, and a little sound came from that direction, like the pop of a champagne bottle. The black-eyed man jumped; said: “Look here, now — won’t stand for that...” He fell then in slow motion, and lay face up on the floor, choked once and was quiet.
The hook-nosed man stood up gradually, both his hands in plain sight holding his newspaper.
Paradine had not seen the one who fired the silenced shot; had only heard the door, and glimpsed a dark thing moving away in snow-spotted blackness. He hurled himself through the doorway and ran down the street after a lurching shadow that vanished around the next corner.
The street was crowded; the killer could be any one of the dozens who were passing. Paradine murmured that East Side address and added: “None of your business, Tom Paradine; but...”
He walked back to his car and sat at the wheel, watching. Rubbernecks had already gathered outside the big window and Paradine could see Pete Holden talking frantically into the phone. He would be calling the police. If the police wanted to talk to Tom Paradine, they knew where to find him. Paradine shrugged, and drove to a mean street — on the East Side. He found the address that had been written in death; it was a four-story brownstone, peeling, its windows boarded up except for the top floor, where jagged holes gaped from dirty windows.
It looked deserted, but from within there was faint confused sound. Paradine stepped down into the basement areaway and pressed himself into the deepest shadow. He heard stumbling footsteps and a sound like someone choking, trying to speak. Hands fumbled at the latch of the iron grille door and pulled it open. A girl stepped through, holding out her hands in front of her. Her face was distorted, the mouth a dark O of terror.
Paradine stepped out of the shadow; said, “Molly Hanifin.”
Her outstretched hands touched his vest before she knew he was there. She stopped, swaying, her eyes focusing on him without recognition or understanding. Paradine took hold of her hands; said:
“Molly Hanifin. Ed Hanifin’s own daughter, sure enough. Long while since I saw you last. You’re in a pretty tough spot. Can I help? Tried to see your dad tonight, but he wasn’t there. He’s with you, I suppose?”
“What? Who—”
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
“You’re the police? Go ahead, then. Burn me. I don’t care any more.”
“Hell,” said Paradine. “I’m not police Molly.” He kept hold of one of her hands; took the can of sardines from his overcoat pocket and looked at it glumly. “It’s this, Molly. I bought this at a delicatessen, and they didn’t give me a key to open the damn thing. Can t open it without a key. So when I heard that you might be up here, why, I thought maybe you’d know how to open it, you with all your experience at the Bar and Grill and all that, so I came along.”