“I see,” said Dodd slowly. “I’m very grateful for this, Elsie. I wish I could do something for you.”
“Well — you can. I’m coming to Bay City next month on my vacation, and... and you could thank me personally.”
“Yeah,” said Dodd. “But I don’t think my wife would like that. I’ll tell you, though. I’ve got a friend. His name is Dodd. He’s a swell fellow. He’s got money, brains, personality, looks — the works. You’ll love him.”
“I’d rather — see you. You have such a nice voice.”
“Dodd has one just like it,” said Dodd. “You send me a telegram in care of Dodd — his address is in the Bay City directory — and I’ll have him meet your train. Good-bye now, Elsie dear.”
He hung up the receiver and put the telephone back on the floor. “Why didn’t I think of the undertaker?” he muttered to himself. “I must be getting feeble-minded.”
He went back into the front office. Mason was singing in a blurred, gentle monotone, keeping time with an empty bottle. Broderick was asleep on the table.
Dodd nudged him. “Give me your gun.”
“Sure,” said Broderick, without opening his eyes. He fumbled it out of the holster and extended it blindly.
Dodd looked to make sure it was loaded and then slipped it in the waistband of his trousers and buttoned his coat to conceal it.
“Take care of things,” he said sarcastically, going to the door.
“You can rely on us,” Broderick answered, his eyes still tightly shut.
Cottage Grove Avenue straggled off into the outskirts of the city north of the bay and petered out in a dead-end halfway to the summit of a steep hill. Someone had popped out the last street light, and Dodd parked his coupe at the end of the pavement and felt his way up a stony, weed-lined path in the darkness.
He had gone only about fifty yards when another car, its lights out, stole cautiously up behind his coupe and parked there.
Dodd had been looking for just that, and he stopped and watched a shadowy, furtive figure climb out of the second car, scout around for a moment, and then start up the path.
Dodd stepped into the weeds and waited until the figure was even with him and then said harshly: “Halt! Hands up!”
“Wah!” Kastner yipped in sheer terror. He raised his arms so violently his heels left the ground.
“Look who’s jumpy now,” said Dodd.
“Oh!” Kastner gasped. “You...you— What’d you wanta do that for? What’s the idea?”
“You tell me.”
“Well,” said Kastner defensively, “I just thought I’d follow you just in case—”
“Just in case I’d uncover something you could hog the credit for,” Dodd finished. “Now you’re here, you might as well tag along. I’m headed for number 1702. It must be that bungalow right ahead.”
He pointed to a darkened, spindly building that was crushed in against the side of the hill and braced there precariously with long timbers.
“What... what’s in there?” Kastner asked warily. “Not that dame with bombs?”
“I hope so. I’m going in the front. You dodge around in back and catch anything I scare out.”
“Well,” said Kastner reluctantly. “All right.”
Dodd went on up the path to the bungalow. He went quietly, but he made no effort to conceal himself. No slightest ray of light showed from the windows, and the whole place had a slatternly, decayed air that hinted at long vacancy.
Dodd climbed the long flight of steps up to the front porch, and the braced structure trembled uneasily under his weight. He felt around until he found the door knob. The door was unlocked. Dodd flipped it open and flattened himself against the wall beside it, Broderick’s gun held loosely in his right hand.
“Want to come out?” he asked conversationally. “Or do you want me to come in?”
There was no answer. The silence was so deep that it hummed in Dodd’s ears. He took a long breath and then whirled around away from the wall and jumped through the door. The air felt still and sticky against his face. He crouched tensely, alert for the slightest sound.
After a long moment, he straightened a little and groped along the wall behind him with his left hand. The light switch snapped under his fingers, and a dusty globe swung down from the ceiling on a long green cord suddenly jumped into brilliance.
Dodd gulped, swallowing hard against the pressure in his throat. Blinky Tooper was lying flat on the bare floor not six feet away. He was a fat, smooth little man, and the bulge of his paunch looked like a half-deflated balloon now. He was dead enough this time. His throat had been cut from ear to ear, and he had bled in a great semi-circular glistening pool.
Dodd took a step forward, and then the door on the opposite side of the room opened. Dodd caught a glimpse of the white sheen of a face under a black, floppy-brimmed woman’s hat, and then the mouth in the face opened and shrieked crazily at him, and the door slammed.
Dodd shot through it twice, aiming at the middle of the panels. Another shriek and a jangling crash answered the bellow of the reports. Dodd hit the door with his shoulder and knocked it open and half-fell into a scummy, stale-smelling kitchen. The dull oblong of another door loomed at his right. Dodd jumped for it.
He stumbled down two shallow wooden steps, and then he saw a grotesque, skirted figure flopping and stumbling through the brush twenty yards away up the hill. He aimed the revolver at it and then, suddenly changing his mind, pointed the gun up in the air and fired.
The skirted figure fell down. It screeched and rolled over and over and slapped at the weeds madly. Dodd approached it, circling warily, the revolver leveled. “Here, you!” he said loudly.
The figure sat up and looked at him. Then it screamed and fell over backwards and lay still.
“Hey, Dodd,” Kastner’s voice called cautiously from the corner of the house. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” said Dodd absently.
Kastner came up to him. “What were you shooting— Hey! It’s the bomb dame! But... but she ain’t a dame at all!”
It was true. Trousered legs extended out from under the wrecked tangle of skirt on the prone figure.
“What’s the matter with her... him?” Kastner demanded. “Did you kill him?”
“No,” said Dodd. “He’s just so stinking drunk he couldn’t hit the ground with his hat. He’s passed out.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Harold Stacy. He’s the police force of Sparkling Falls, South Dakota. That is, he was. Blinky Tooper is up in the bungalow. He’s dead.”
“Blinky Tooper,” Kastner repeated stupidly. “Dead. Police force.”
“Never mind,” Dodd said. “I’ll explain it to you later. Go in the bungalow and call the wagon. There’s a telephone somewhere.”
“But I don’t want to eat!” Kastner said complainingly.
“I do,” Dodd told him. “Come on.”
Kastner got out of the coupe and tagged him across the sidewalk. “I gotta write a report, Dodd. I gotta know what this is all about.”
“Later,” said Dodd.
He pushed through glass and chrome swinging doors into the immense brightly white cavern of Siegal’s Restaurant. It was crowded now with workers going on night-shift, and the rattle and bang of crockery echoed like gun-fire.
Jack Siegal sat like a fat, bland Buddha behind his cash register beside the door. He nodded gravely at Dodd.
Dodd stopped to look around, and Miltgreen jumped up from behind one of the tables. “Mr. Dodd!” he called eagerly.
Dodd jerked his head at Kastner and walked over to the table.