Paradine snatched open the door, turned:
“If you wear pajamas like that,” he snarled, “you’ve got to expect this sort of thing.”
Paradine ripped out the key, hustled Molly through the door and locked it from the outside. They ran down the two flights of stairs, and out the front door of the lodging house. Molly Hanifin had not spoken; her teeth were digging at her upper lip. In the hallway, Paradine said:
“Easy now. Coat collar up, hat down, and don’t hurry.”
He guided her to his car and bundled her in; neither of them looked up the street at that other house. As he put the car in gear and slid way from the curb, Paradine laughed at his chest and said:
“Only a couple of days ago Captain Shapiro was trying to tell me I was too old to run around the way I do.”
“He’s the one who arrested me and tried to make me say I’d killed Dutch Tiemann — before I was allowed to see a lawyer or anything. He kept saying, even if Tiemann was a racketeer and a louse, murder was murder. I got to thinking maybe I had killed Tiemann. He got me so I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing... It was my hand-bag, you know. I had been there to see Tiemann that night. And Captain Shapiro — oh!”
“I had a notion,” Paradine said, “that Shapiro didn’t do things that way. Thought he was usually decent. Backroom technique, huh?”
Molly stared straight ahead, watching the white street they traveled.
“And then,” Paradine said, “the mob turned up fresh and full of ideas when you were on your way from the precinct station to the court-house, and scattered lead around, and got you loose, shooting a police driver. He died before they got him to the hospital, by the way. A whole lot of fight about one girl. And now I’ve got you under my wing.” He pressed down on the gas. “Look back when I turn this corner. That car’s followed us for two turns.”
Molly stared through the rear window. “Yes; they’re following. Let me out. I can’t drag you into this.”
“Duck down now. That’s it.”
“But you’ve got to let me out!”
“And don’t talk so much. Try to be a little different from most women, Molly. Please.”
Paradine stepped up the motor, shooting across town. The other car followed.
“Stay down, Molly, ’way down.”
“You can’t run away from the police like this, just for me.”
“They aren’t police,” said Paradine. “More likely friends of the late Dutch Tiemann. Must’ve tailed me uptown and hung around in their quiet way. Of course, I ought to let you out, Molly. Just put you out on the pavement, and drive around the block and come back to see how you look all full of holes. You’re a damned fool, Molly. Damn it, I like this. Haven’t felt this young in twenty — ah! That was business.”
The rear-vision mirror had shattered, and a coughing noise rose above the shouting of the motors. Paradine swung his car around an El pillar, took the center of the street again, and then darted around a corner. From behind him he heard a sickening crash and a yell of pain. He braked sharply, jumped out and ran a few steps.
What was left of a long red sedan clung to one of the pillars of the El, wheels spinning slowly and more slowly. A human thing twisted on the pavement; a Tommy gun was within reach of the thing’s no longer dangerous hand. A man in blue was running toward the mess from the next block down. Paradine got back in his car. Molly was climbing out the other side, pressing her hand over her mouth. Paradine pulled her back roughly and drove away. He said: “We’ll go home now. I need a drink.”
Tom Paradine closed the door of his bachelor apartment behind Molly and shook himself like a big dog; he dropped the can of sardines on the mantel.
“I’ll have to leave you alone a while, Molly. I’ve got to go out visiting. You’ll have to give me your word you won’t take a run-out on me.”
Molly stared at him. “I give you my word,” she said. “But I still wish—”
Paradine smiled. He turned away, humming under his breath; went to the kitchenette and mixed two highballs. Into one of them he poured a little white powder. When he came back with the drinks Molly was crying silently.
“What’s that you’re humming?” she asked, trying to brighten up.
Paradine set down the drink beside her. “That? Some of the world’s greatest music. I heard it this afternoon, and wrote my little piece about it in time for tomorrow’s paper, as if it mattered the fraction of a damn, what a music critic thinks about Brahms’ ‘German Requiem’. I’m tremendously unimportant, Molly. I got interested in running around with the cops and playing unofficial hell and all that sort of crack-pot activity because I realized a few years ago just how unimportant I was. I had to be something, to make myself feel big occasionally. You see, once upon a time I thought I was a musician myself.”
“What are the words you were humming?” Molly asked.
“Well, in English: ‘Make me to know the measure of my days on earth, to consider my frailty, that I must perish.’ ”
Molly Hanifin turned her face away quickly.
“I’m sorry,” said Paradine. “No, I’m not sorry. Don’t brood, Molly. Why, after a while you’ll simply be glad to remember that Ed Hanifin lived and died like the good man he was... No; writing bromides about music isn’t much fun any more. So, after grinding out my little column to report that Johannes Brahms was really quite a musician in his way, why, I went to Hanifin’s Bar and Grill and had a drink.”
“Was Pete there?”
“Pete was there,” said Paradine slowly. “Another man too, came in. His name, I understand, was Ferenczi.” Molly’s face gave no sign of knowing the name. “A little dapper man with rings on his fingers. And still another man was watching things from behind a newspaper. I didn’t like him. A parrot-nose guy, with a nasty pair of eyes. Well, Ferenczi spelled out the address of that place where I found you; seemed to be doing it for Pete’s benefit, and didn’t want the parrot beak to horn in on it. Ferenczi was in a pretty bad way, Molly. He was bleeding and then only a minute or two after he’d come in, somebody slid through the front door with a silenced gun and finished the job.”
Molly’s wide-eyed stare was pure pain. “Ferenczi? I don’t know—”
“Ferenczi’s dead. I saw that. I chased the killer and lost him in the crowd. Thought I’d look up the address on the chance it’d be interesting. It was. Isn’t it time I had the whole story, Molly? No; don’t drink that just yet. I’ll be honest, I put a bit of sleeping powder in your drink. I want you to sleep. But first, how about telling me the story, Molly Hanifin?”
“The story?” she said.
“Yes. Or should I tell you? Dutch Tiemann was a louse. He worked the protection rackets for all he could, with a bit of blackmail on the side, and maybe half a dozen other things. I knew him slightly. I know lots of queer fish. I think I can guess why he was killed — he was too loose around the mouth. So last Wednesday morning the charwoman found him spread around his apartment with your hand-bag in his fist and his safe rifled, and your finger-prints all over. Lots of people who could have done it, of course... A few days ago, someone told me that a young guy was trying to muscle in on him. A young guy called Pete Holden.”
“No!” Molly jumped up, hot-eyed. “He was not. Pete Holden isn’t in the rackets and never was. Whoever told you that was lying.”
“Sit down, honey. Please. Do you know who it was, told me?”
“Whoever did was lying.” But Molly sat down again. “He — I know Pete. It just isn’t so. Who told you that?”