“Take it easy, Dick.”
“Keep your hands off me,” Dablin panted. “I told you I wouldn’t have anything to do with it, if there was any chance of anyone getting hurt. And now — four deaths!”
Pedley broke it up. “You’re tangled up in all of ’em, Dablin. You were in on the felony; you’ll be in on the indictment.”
“All I did,” the store owner’s face puckered up as if he was about to bawl, “was to order the rabbit coats from Lemwitz, and agree to buy the squirrel coats from Jack.”
Boyne spat at him. “Don’t rat on me, you stinker! You knew what we were going to do.”
“I didn’t know there were going to be any killings, as God’s my judge.” Dablin began to tremble; the sweat broke out in a leaden sheen on his face. “I thought it was going to be done when there was no one around Rossman’s office.”
The manufacturer bit his finger-tips in anguish. “You done this! You... you... slobs!”
“Sure.” Pedley pushed Boyne down into a chair. “I said it had to be somebody who knew the ropes. Boyne could get into your office without making the bookkeeper suspicious. He could get close enough to the watchman to strangle him before Whitey could raise an alarm. And he’d know how he had to fix up a deal with Dablin to sell the coats. Otherwise, there’d have been no profit in the job.”
Boyne sneered. “Dick can spill his guts all he wants to. If he says he was in it, maybe he was. Not with me. Because I was right beside you when Hymie Lemwitz was shot. Why don’t you ask Dick where he was right about then?”
Rossman muttered: “You got right, there, Jack. Hymie you couldn’t have murdered.”
The Marshal snorted. “Don’t worry about my asking enough questions, Boyne. Rossman, get over there on the phone. Ask for the police. Give them this address and tell ’em to rush the wagon.”
The manufacturer moved fearfully toward the phone. He had his hand on the receiver when a soft voice behind Pedley’s shoulder said:
“Drop it, Meyer! Or mamma’ll blow your hand off!”
Pedley fought down the impulse to pivot and shoot it out with her. She was too close. She couldn’t miss. So when she ordered him to drop his gun on the carpet, he obeyed.
But he was no more astonished than Jack Boyne. “How’d you get here, Rena?”
She laughed, harshly. “I suckered that fat-headed deputy into thinking I was a shock case... ducked into the little girls’ room and out the window. It was as easy as that.”
“Nice timing, babe. The Marshal was about to call up the reserves.”
She jabbed her gun into the small of Pedley’s back, made him walk beyond his pistol. “I called your hotel, Jack. When I found you were out, I guessed you must have run up here to collect on those coats. Never occurred to me you’d bring company along.”
Pedley held his hands up, shoulder high. He turned around slowly, so he could see her. “You didn’t come straight over here. You stopped for a bit. In Lemwitz’ garage. Didn’t you?”
The model picked up his gun. “Now that you know, what good’s it going to do you?” She handed a heavy automatic to Boyne. “You can take your .45. It practically broke my wrist when I popped Hymie.”
Jack Boyne snarled: “Watch how I do it, babe. You got to keep your wrist stiff.” He aimed at Dablin’s stomach.
“For God’s sake, Jack, don’t!” the store owner blubbered. “I wouldn’t have said a word against you, only he had me cold.”
“Yah,” Boyne began. “You yellow—”
“Sure I did,” Pedley grated. “I had you, too, Boyne. When I got to your hotel room, you were listening to the short-wave to see if there was any alarm out for you. Those police broadcasters pause too long between items to sound like a regular station.”
Rena sniggered. “You’d oughta be more careful about little things like that, Jack!”
“He was too careful.” Pedley thought he heard a faint click out in the hall — a click that might be the automatic elevator. “He was so careful that when I told him somebody’d been hurt at the fire he didn’t even ask who it was. So I wondered...”
Boyne slashed the barrel of the .45 across the side of the Marshal’s face. “It’ll all add up to a hole in the ground for you, anyway, fireman.”
Pedley listened for the sound of the elevator latch; didn’t hear it. Probably the car had stopped at another floor. But the only chance was to stall for time, to hope against hope for a break. “It was a cinch you were hiding some dame’s photograph behind that dime-store picture in the ten-buck frame on your dresser. Boyne. I wouldn’t have suspected you were tied in with Rena, though, if it hadn’t been for the tooth paste in your medicine cabinet.”
The salesman’s eyes narrowed. “What was wrong with my tooth paste, wisey?”
There was a sound like metal sliding on metal, out in the hall. Pedley raised his voice to cover it. “Tooth paste and tooth powder. Both in the same chest. Man doesn’t usually buy both. For himself. Paste was the same brand I saw on Rena’s washstand. Made me a little leery. Especially since the two of you would be thrown together a lot, in the office. But at first I couldn’t figure how she’d be in it, with her sister getting broiled alive that way.”
“If you haven’t doped it out yet, gumshoe,” the model shrilled, “you never will. Because in just exactly ten seconds, you’ll be—”
“Oh, I get it now.” He watched her gun come up level with his chest. “It didn’t bother you that Mary’d have to be put out of the way, before you and Boyne did your switching of the coats. Didn’t make any difference to you that she’d brought you up. Earned a living for you. Got you a job at her office. Wore cheap clothes or went without things while you tailed around in the height of style. I expect it only made you hate her more when she juggled her books to cover up the stuff you stole from Rossman. Or when, after she saw she couldn’t stop you from being crooked, she tried to keep you from getting punished. Don’t suppose it meant a thing to you that she was willing to run her chances of dying there in the vault, rather than send out an alarm so you’d be caught.”
“Yes! If you want to know; yes!” Her finger tightened on the trigger. “I’m glad she’s dead. She’s been at me and at me ever since I was a kid, to do this and do that, always things she thought were right and proper. Well, I’ve made my mind to have things ray way, for a change. And do the things I want to do. Right now, the thing I want to do most is—”
The shot was thunderous. Pedley was dropping and diving forward when it came. But he saw the gun slip out of her hand as she staggered aside. As he hit the floor, he realized Boyne was shooting, too — at the hall door. From the door to the corridor a gun belched a second orange flame.
Boyne put a hand across his stomach as if he was about to make a bow. He bent over, fell on his face, lay still.
Shaner poked his head around the corner. “What a job I had trailing that witch!” he exclaimed. He stared at Rossman and Dablin, huddled back against the wall like wax figures. He watched Rena crawling feebly along the floor to regain the .38.
“I couldn’t make out what it is she wants to do most, Skipper. Or where she wants to go.”
Without hurrying, Ben Pedley retrieved the pistol. When he bent to pick it up, he seemed exhausted. He said, “One thing sure, Shaner. She won’t need any fur coat when she gets there.” His shoulders sagged as he moved toward the door. “Some day,” he said, “I’d like to catch a pyro without having to wade through death up to my ears. It’d make my job a little more pleasant...”