I looked at the woman again. She wore well-pressed blue slacks and a double-breasted jacket and a small tilted hat. Her hair was long and curled in at the ends and it was a dark red color with glints of blue in the shadows — dyed. Red spots of hastily applied rouge burned on her cheeks too high up. She pointed her gun and smiled at me. It wasn’t the nicest smile I had ever seen.
I said: «Good evening, Mrs. Melton. What a lot of guns you must own.»
«Sit down in the chair behind you and clasp your hands behind your neck and keep them there. That’s important. Don’t get careless about it.» She showed me her teeth to her gums.
I did as she suggested. The smile dropped from her face — a hard little face, even though pretty in a conventional sort of way. «Just wait,» she said. «That’s important, too. Maybe you could guess how important that is.»
«This room smells of death,» I said. «I suppose that’s important, too.»
«Just wait, smart boy.»
«They don’t hang women any more in this state,» I said. «But two cost more than one. A lot more. About fifteen years more. Think it over.»
She said nothing. She stood firmly, pointing the gun. This was a heavier gun, but it didn’t seem to bother her. Her ears were busy with the distance. She hardly heard me. The time passed, as it does, in spite of everything. My arms began to ache.
At last he came. Another car drifted quietly up the street outside and stopped and its door closed quietly. Silence for a moment, then the house door at the back opened. His steps were heavy. He came through the open swing door and into the lighted room. He stood silent, looking around it, a hard frown on his big face. He looked at the dead man in the chair, at the woman with her gun, last of all at me. He stooped and picked up my gun and dropped it into his side pocket. He came to me quietly, almost without recognition in his eyes, stepped behind me and felt my pockets. He took out the two photos and the telegram. He stepped away from me, near the woman. I put my arms down and rubbed them. They both stared at me quietly.
At last he said softly: «A gag, eh? First off I checked your call and found out it came from Glendale — not from Azusa. I don’t know just why I did that, but I did. Then I made another call. The second call told me there wasn’t any bag left in this room. Well?»
«What do you want me to say?»
«Why the trick-work? What’s it all about?» His voice was heavy, cold, but more thougtful than menacing. The woman stood beside him, motionless, holding her gun.
«I took a chance,» I said. «You took one too — coming here. I hardly thought it would work. The idea, such as it was, that you would call her quickly about the bag. She would know there wasn’t one. You would both know then that I was trying to pull something. You’d be very anxious to know what it was. You’d be pretty sure I wasn’t working with any law, because I knew where you were and you could have been jumped there without any trouble at all. I wanted to bring the lady out of hiding — that’s all. I took a long chance. If it didn’t work, I had to think up a better way.»
The woman made a contemptuous sound and said: «I’d like to know why you hired this snooper in the first place, Howie.»
He ignored her. He looked at me steadily out of stony black eyes. I turned my head and gave him a quick, hard wink. His mouth got rigid at once. The woman didn’t see it. She was too far to the side.
«You need a fall guy, Melton,» I said. «Bad.»
He turned his body a little so that his back was partly to the woman. His eyes ate my face. He lifted his eyebrows a little and half nodded. He still thought I was for sale.
He did it nicely. He put a smile on his face and turned towards her and said, «How about getting out of here and talking it over in a safer place?» and while she was listening and her mind was on the question his big hand struck down sharply at her wrist. She yelped and the gun dropped. She reeled back and clenched both her fists and spat at him.
«Aw, go sit down and get wise to yourself,» he said dryly.
He stooped and picked up her gun and dropped it into his other pocket. He smiled then, a large confident smile. He had forgotten something completely. I almost laughed — in spite of the spot I was in. The woman sat down in a chair behind him and leaned her head in her hands broodingly.
«You can tell me about it now,» Melton said cheerfully. «Why I need a fall guy, as you say.»
«I lied to you over the phone a little. About Haines’ cabin. There’s a wise old country cop up there who went through it with a sifter. He found a gold anklet in the flour bag, cut through with pliers.»
The woman let out a queer yelp. Melton didn’t even bother to look at her. She was staring at me with all her eyes now.
«He might figure it out,» I said, «and he might not. He doesn’t know Mrs. Melton stayed over at the Hotel Olympia, for one thing, and that she met Goodwin there. If he knew that, he’d be wise in a second. That is, if he had photos to show the bellhops, the way I had. The hop who checked Mrs. Melton out and remembered her on account of her leaving her car there without any instructions remembered Goodwin, remembered him speaking to her. He said she was startled. He wasn’t so sure about Mrs. Mellon from the photos. He knew Mrs. Melton.»
Mellon opened his mouth a little in a queer grimace and grated the edges of his teeth together. The woman stood up noiselessly behind him and drifted back, inch by inch, into the dark back part of the room. I didn’t look at her. Melton didn’t seem to hear her move.
I said: «Goodwin trailed her into town. She must have come by bus or in a rent car, because she left the other in San Bernardino. He trailed her to her hideout without her knowing it, which was pretty smart, since she must have been on her guard, and then he jumped her. She stalled him for a while — I don’t know with what story — and he must have had her watched every minute, because she didn’t slip away from him. Then she couldn’t stall him any longer and she gave him that check. That was just a retainer. He came back for more and she fixed him up permanently — over there in the chair. You didn’t know that, or you would never have let me come out here this morning.»
Melton smiled grimly. «Right, I didn’t know that,» he said. «Is that what I need a fall guy for?»
I shook my head. «You don’t seem to want to understand me,» I said. «I told you Goodwin knew Mrs. Melton personally. That’s not news, is it? What would Goodwin have on Mrs. Melton to blackmail her for? Nothing. He wasn’t blackmailing Mrs. Melton. Mrs. Melton is dead. She has been dead for eleven days. She came up out of Little Fawn Lake today — in Beryl Haines’ clothes. That’s what you need a fall guy for — and you have one, two of them, made to order.»
The woman in the shadows of the room stooped and picked something up and rushed. She panted as she rushed. Mellon turned hard and his hands jerked at his pockets, but he hesitated just too long, looking at the gun she had snatched up from the floor beside Goodwin’s dead hand, the gun that was the thing he had forgotten about.
«You !» she said.
He still wasn’t very scared. He made placating movements with his empty hands. «Okay, honey, we’ll play it your way,» he said softly. He had a long arm. He could reach her now. He had done it already when she held a gun. He tried it once more. He leaned towards her quickly and swept his hand. I put my feet under me and dived for his legs. It was a long dive — too long.
«I’d make a swell fall guy, wouldn’t I?» she said raspingly, and stepped back. The gun banged three times.