So there actually was someone higher than Nan in the organization, Mac thought. Hoping to create a diversion, he asked, “Got demoted, did you, Nan? What was the apple?”
Nan’s eyes swung at him. “You were. Smarty-pants Thomas phoned Dude Emory again and asked more detailed questions. When he found out Larry MacDowell had a cheek scar, he went running to teacher instead of to me, and got marked A for effort.”
“Is that all the fuss is about?” Mac asked indifferently. “Ever hear of plastic surgery?”
“Sure,” Cougar said. “I thought of that, which is why I asked the color of his eyes. Explain how you changed your eyes from blue to brown, and We’ll let you go.”
“Shoe polish,” Mac said seriously.
Benny Chisholm said, “What we waiting for? Let’s get this over with.”
“The boss wants her to do it personal,” Cougar said, nodding at Nan. “To sort of make up for her boner.”
He slipped a second gun, a vest pocket automatic, from his coat pocket and held it butt first toward Nan.
“Take him in there,” he said, pointing his own gun toward the drape-covered door.
Nan’s eyes brightened, almost as though she were glad of the opportunity to kill. “All right, Mac, darling,” she said. “Forward march.”
Tickles of cold sweat ran down Mac’s sides beneath his shirt, but he managed to keep both his expression and his tone mocking. “Murder gets to be habit forming, doesn’t it, Nan? You’re becoming almost the official executioner for Homicide, Incorporated.”
“What do you mean by that?” she said suspiciously.
“I won’t be the first suspected cop you killed, will I? About the fourth now, isn’t it?”
Cougar emitted a single hoarse guffaw, which was half laugh and half snarl.
Nan’s eyes burned at the Strangler and she spat, “Don’t throw so much weight around that you get in the boss’ hair. You don’t know how close you have come to the river before, when you got over-ambitious.”
His pale features lost what little color they had, and he seemed to shrink within himself. Nan tossed her head in: triumph at having at least temporarily put him in his place, then jabbed her little gun at Mac.
“I said move. Or do you want it right here?”
Abruptly Mac turned toward the doorway and pushed through the drapes, Nan following with the gun almost touching his back. The second room proved to be sleeping quarters and contained nothing but two double bunks, two heavy dressers and what seemed to be a closet, for at one side of the room was a second drape-covered door.
“Turn around,” Nan commanded in a loud voice.
Slowly Mac turned to face her, his body tensed against the expected jolt of a bullet. Nan’s face was dead white and her eyes held a gleam of unnatural excitement.
In a voice so low he could barely hear it, she said, “I haven’t time to explain, but take this gun and go out shooting.”
Mac’s jaw hung wide as she suddenly reversed the pistol and thrust the butt into his palm.
“Now hit me,” she said tensely. “Quick, so I’ll have an out! Make it look like you got the gun by force.
But Mac merely stared at her. “Quick!” she said fiercely. “Hit me! Hard!”
Recovering his mental balance, he clenched his left fist, slowly and almost reluctantly raised it chest high, then suddenly lashed out and caught Nan square on the chin. Her eyes crossed and she dropped flat on her back.
The drapes parted as Cougar pushed through, his revolver half-raised. Centering the little automatic on the Strangler’s vest, Mac squeezed the trigger and stepped back.
There was nothing but a sharp click. Cougar grinned wolfishly, and as Mac stared blankly down at the empty gun, a soft chuckle came from the side of the room. Mac glanced sidewise just as Claire D’Arcy stepped from the closet, a man-sized .45 automatic clenched in her small hand.
“An interesting show, and just what I expected,” Claire said.
Nan sat up and dazedly felt of her chin.
“Thanks for the demonstration, Nan,” Claire said sardonically. “Did you really think we’d trust you with a loaded gun after planting a cop in our midst?”
Nan worked her lower jaw tentatively and remained both seated and silent.
“When Dude Emory told Thomas over the phone that he had informed you of Larry MacDowell’s cheek scar and blue eyes, there were only two explanations possible for your not branding Mac here a cop right then and there, and taking necessary action,” Claire said. “Either you are awfully stupid, or you’re a cop yourself. I rigged up this little act so I could listen in and learn which.” She smiled, and there was an unpleasant glitter in her eyes. “Now we can have a double funeral.”
The whole picture clicked together in Mac’s mind, and at the same time his mind wildly searched for a way out of the situation. Seemingly of its own accord there popped into his remembrance the Strangler’s craven fear of the “boss,” and Nan’s constant needling of him about the “boss” dislike of his over-ambition. With the remembrance a wild idea occurred to him.
“You mean a triple funeral, don’t you, Claire?” Mac asked insinuatingly.
She looked at him suspiciously. “What do you mean by that crack?”
“Just what I said.” Mac made his voice confident. “Three people in this room are going to die.”
Both Claire and Cougar frowned at him intently, and a faint uncertainly appeared in Cougar’s eyes.
“I suppose you told Cougar I didn’t know you were head of Homicide, Incorporated, and had been completely taken in by Nan acting as your front,” Mac continued blandly. “But you see, Cougar knows you deliberately sent Nan out of town yesterday so you could talk to me alone in order to satisfy yourself I was safe. He also knows I spent six hours in your apartment, because he was having me tailed.”
“So what?” Cougar asked roughly.
“So she never even suspected I was a cop then,” Mac shot at him. “She didn’t suspect it until you told her today. Last night she thought I was just a newly hired gun, and she gave me an assignment.” His next words he spaced slowly and distinctly. “She said you were getting too big for your boots, Cougar. And she told me to kill you. That’s the third funeral. She’ll get you before you get out of this room.”
The uncertainty in the gunman’s eyes had turned to fear and suspicion. Like a trapped animal he swung his eyes from Mac to Claire and back again. Claire’s expression was merely one of indulgent amusement. Apparently she did not realize the profound impression Mac was making on Cougar.
“Nice try anyway, Mac,” she said, and her .45 centered on his stomach.
Cougar’s’ eyes were still on Mac, as Mac shouted; “Look out, Cougar!”
The muzzle of the Strangler’s revolver jerked toward Claire and suddenly spat flame. At the same moment Mac hurled his empty automatic straight at Cougar’s narrow face. It caught the man square in the left eye, Cougar staggered backward.
Mac hit him in a headlong tackle, and the revolver skittered along the floor to a far corner. As they grappled, Cougar’s elbow caught Mac under the chin.
At the moment a regular fusillade of shots came from the next room, but Mac was too busy to concern himself with anything but the Strangler, who had managed to twist on top of him and get his powerful hands on his throat.
Desperately Mac tried to claw the hands loose, but they held with the grip of a vise. The pale, mummy-like face was inches from his, and the man’s teeth were bared in a sadistic smile. With his lungs bursting and waves of darkness pressing against him. Mac’s struggles became weaker and weaker.
His distended eyes were nearly popping from his head when the Strangler’s cruel smile suddenly faded into a vacuous grin. His grip relaxed and he collapsed.