“Hell no. He’s got nothing on us.”
“Will you do it that way?”
“Right. Ten-thirty on the nose.”
The strangler took a roll of bills from his pocket, having a little difficulty on account of his gloves, peeled off two twenties, went to the table with them, and gave them a good rub on both sides with his handkerchief.
He held the bills out to Skinny. “I’ve paid the agreed amount, as you know. This extra is so you won’t get impatient and leave before half-past ten.”
“Don’t take it!” I called sharply.
Skinny, the bills in his hand, turned. “What’s the matter, they got germs?”
“No, but they’re peanuts, you sap! He’s worth ten grand to you! As is! Ten grand!”
“Nonsense,” the strangler said scornfully and started for the bed to get his hat and coat.
“Gimme my twenty,” W-J demanded.
Skinny stood with his head cocked, regarding me. He looked faintly interested but skeptical, and I saw it would take more than words. As the strangler picked up his hat and coat and turned, I jerked my body violently to the left and over I went, chair and all. I have no idea how I got across the floor to the door. I couldn’t simply roll on account of the chair, I couldn’t crawl without hands, and I didn’t even try to jump. But I made it, and not slow, and was there, down on my right side, the chair against the door and me against the chair, before any of them snapped out of it enough to reach me.
“You think,” I yapped at Skinny, “it’s just a job? Let him go and you’ll find out! Do you want his name? Mrs. Carlisle — Mrs. Homer N. Carlisle. Do you want her address?”
The strangler, on his way to me, stopped and froze. He — or I should say she — stood stiff as a bar of steel, the long-lashed eyes aimed at me.
“Missus?” Skinny demanded incredulously. “Did you say Missus?”
“Yes. She’s a woman. I’m tied up, but you’ve got her. I’m helpless, so you can have her. You might give me a cut of the ten grand.” The strangler made a movement. “Watch her!”
W-J, who had started for me and stopped, turned to face her. I had banged my head and it hurt. Skinny stepped to her, jerked both sides of her double-breasted coat open, released them, and backed up a step. “It could be a woman,” he said judiciously.
“Hell, we can find that out easy enough.” W-J moved. “Dumb as I am, I can tell that.”
“Go ahead,” I urged. “That will check her and me both. Go ahead!”
She made a noise in her throat. W-J got to her and put out a hand. She shrank away and screamed, “Don’t touch me!”
“I’ll be goddamned,” W-J said wonderingly.
“What’s this gag,” Skinny demanded, “about ten grand?”
“It’s a long story,” I told him, “but it’s there if you want it. If you’ll cut me in for a third it’s a cinch. If she gets out of here and gets safe home we can’t touch her. All we have to do is connect her as she is — here now, disguised — with Mrs. Homer N. Carlisle, which is what she’ll be when she gets home. If we do that we’ve got her shirt. As she is here now, she’s red hot. As she is at home, you couldn’t even get in.”
I had to play it that way. I just didn’t dare say call a cop, because if he felt about cops the way some rummies do he might have dragged me away from the door and let her go.
“So what?” Skinny asked. “I didn’t bring my camera.”
“I’ve got something better. Get me loose and I’ll show you.”
Skinny didn’t like that. He eyed me a moment and turned for a look at the others. Mrs. Carlisle was backed against the bed, and W-J stood studying her with his fists on his hips. Skinny returned to me. “I’ll do it. Maybe. What is it?”
“Damn it,” I snapped, “at least put me right side up. These cords are eating my wrists.”
He came and got the back of the chair with one hand and my arm with the other, and I clamped my feet to the floor to give us leverage. He was stronger than he looked. Upright on the chair again, I was still blocking the door.
“Get a bottle,” I told him, “out of my right-hand coat pocket — no, here, the coat I’ve got on. I hope to God it didn’t break.”
He fished it out. It was intact. He held it to the light to read the label.
“What is it?”
“Silver nitrate. It makes a black indelible mark on most things, including skin. Pull up her pants leg and mark her with it.”
“Then what?”
“Let her go. We’ll have her. With the three of us able to explain how and when she got marked, she’s sunk.”
“How come you’ve got this stuff?”
“I was hoping for a chance to mark her myself.”
“How much will it hurt her?”
“None at all. Put some on me — anywhere you like, as long as it don’t show.”
“You’d better give me the story — why she’ll be sunk. I don’t care how long it is.”
“Not till she’s marked.” I was firm. “I will as soon as you mark her.”
He studied the label again. I watched his face, hoping he wouldn’t ask if the mark would be permanent because I didn’t know what answer would suit him, and I had to sell him.
“A woman,” he muttered. “By God, a woman!”
“Yeah,” I said sympathetically. “She sure made a monkey of you.”
He swiveled his head and called, “Hey!”
W-J turned. Skinny commanded him, “Pin her up! Don’t hurt her.”
W-J reached for her. But, as he did so, all of a sudden she was neither man nor woman, but a cyclone. Her first leap, away from his reaching hand, was side-wise, and by the time he had realized he didn’t have her she had got to the table and grabbed the gun. He made for her and she pulled the trigger and down he went, tumbling right at her feet. By that time Skinny was almost to her and she whirled and blazed away again. He kept going, and from the force of the blow on my left shoulder I might have calculated, if I had been in a mood for calculating, that the bullet had not gone through Skinny before it hit me. She pulled the trigger a third time, but by then Skinny had her wrist and was breaking her arm.
“She got me!” W-J was yelling indignantly. “She got me in the leg!”
Skinny had her down on her knees.
“Come and cut me loose,” I called to him, “and give me that gun, and go find a phone.”
Except for my wrists and ankles and shoulder and head, I felt fine all over.
X
“I hope you’re satisfied,” Inspector Cramer said sourly. “You and Goodwin have got your pictures in the paper again. You got no fee, but a lot of free publicity. I got my nose wiped.”
Wolfe grunted comfortably.
It was seven o’clock the next evening, and the three of us were in the office, me at the desk with my arm in a sling, Cramer in the red leather chair, and Wolfe on his throne back of his desk, with a glass of beer in his hand and a second unopened bottle on the tray in front of him. The seals had been removed by Sergeant Stebbins a little before noon, in between other chores. The whole squad had been busy with chores: visiting W-J at the hospital, conversing with Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle at the D.A.’s office, starting to round up circumstantial evidence to show that Mr. Carlisle had furnished the necessary for Doris Hatten’s rent and Mrs. Carlisle knew it, pestering Skinny, and other items. I had been glad to testify that Skinny, whose name was Herbert Marvel and who ran a little agency in a mid-town one-room office, was one hundred proof and that, as soon as I had convinced him that his well-dressed male client was a female public enemy, he had been simply splendid. Of course, when Skinny had returned to the room after going to phone, he and I had had a full three minutes for a meeting of minds before the cops came. I had used twenty seconds of the three minutes satisfying my curiosity. In Mrs. Carlisle’s right-hand coat pocket was a slip noose made of strong cord. So that was her idea when she had moved to get behind me. Someday, when the trial is over and Cramer has cooled off, I’ll try getting it for a souvenir.