“No thanks. I can drink later. I’ll be on my way when you tell me who that prowler was in your house last night?”
I thought for a moment he was going to jump me, but he sat down quietly and said, “That’s none of your business.”
“Was it Howard Conklin?” I said. “Was Conk prowling around, trying to get some dope on your past dealings with Burt Morgan?”
His voice throbbed. “You’re all wet, Frazee. Glad you stopped in. Phone me sometime.”
“But I’m not leaving until I learn...”
A latch clicked behind me and York Rayfield tautly nervous voice said, “You’re leaving now, Frazee.”
I turned slowly. York was standing in the doorway. He had his father’s sinewy slimness and slight, shrewd face. But there was something lacking in York’s features which his father’s contained — a cautiousness, a ruthlessness tempered with deliberation. York’s petulant, spoiled mouth quivered with his quick, explosive anger. He came toward me, the gun in his hand centering at a spot between my eyes. It gave me a distinctly unpleasant feeling, for I knew York was the type to shoot first and consider the wisdom of the action later.
“I’m not as subtle as my father, Frazee,” he said. “I’ve been listening in the next room. We like you — but you’ve worn out your welcome. Now gel the hell out of here.”
I heard the desk drawer slide open and knew that John Ray field had reached for a gun. The gun in my own pocket felt very inadequate now.
Sweat popping from my pores made my skin feel sticky. With as much grace as possible, I shrugged, looked from the gun in John’s hand to the weapon in the hand of his son. They said nothing, and the room was very still. I tried a mocking little how that didn’t quite come off and left the room.
York followed me to the door. “Don’t get ideas about coming back here, Frazee, until you’re invited!” He slammed the door in my face, and I stood in the hall fighting down blind rage, convincing myself that discretion really is the better part of valor. I was working for Conk now, and to save my own hide. To work effectively I had to keep a whole skin and stay out of the hands of the police.
I went down the hall, closed the front door softly behind me. Turning left on the sidewalk, I glanced back at the house. And my heart bounced right up in my throat, as I barely caught the shifting shadow at the rear corner of the house in my vision. It was a shadow denser than the shadows of night, and after that one instant that it had been in my gaze, I wasn’t sure that it was even there.
Without breaking stride, I walked on up the sidewalk. I reached a hedge at the next lot, dropped behind it. I wormed my way around until I was crouched in the shadow of the hedge at the corner of Rayfield’s lawn.
I saw the dark form again, dimly, like a piece of the pineapple palm at the back corner of the house detaching itself.
With night a cool breeze had begun to ripple overland off the Gulf. But I was sweating. That skulking form ahead of me in the night had no reason to be there. I was certain that it was not John Rayfield or his son York.
Army training in scouting stood me in good stead. And the memory of Conk with the life blasted from him and the police on my neck as soon as Bailey broke out of my office and put in an alarm didn’t hurt any. I felt capable of hiding in the shadow of a blade of grass.
Inching my way forward I neared the palm, until its fronds stood out distinctly against the dark blue night sky. I edged to the palm. And the prowler was gone.
I heard the soft thud of a footstep behind me, whirled, off balance as the dark figure hit me. I had felt capable — but my adversary had gone me one better. While I’d been scouting him, he’d wormed his way behind me in the cloak of darkness.
We fell, he on top, thrashing. He was set, organized, and it gave him an advantage. He hit me twice with a gun barrel before I could get my fists clenched.
I heard a hoarse whisper several feet away in the darkness: “No, Burt!” But the gun barrel crashed down on top of my head and all the strength drained from me.
Against the pattern of stars and pain whirling in my bursting brain, I thought: “He got the drop on me because there were two prowlers in the night, one of which I never saw. Burt the dead man who has just knocked me coocoo. The other, the one who whispered and whom I saw from the street, is much too blonde and lovely to be doing this sort of thing, Millie Morge.”
I felt very sad that Millie was mixed in this. But it was too much trouble to think or feel. I shouted against the pain in my head, but actually emitted only a retching, gasping groan. Then I went to sleep.
3
I regained consciousness with a peculiar, bitter taste in my mouth. I sat up dizzily and as my senses cleared realized I had passed out with my mouth open and my face pressed against the grass. I spat out flecks of grass, which doesn’t taste nearly so nice as it looks, and grimaced.
One massive ache rode my shoulders in the spot my head should have been. I stood, getting faintly sick with the motion. It was still night, deeper night, and the moon had risen, a huge silver orb such as Florida alone can know.
I made my way quietly around the side of the house. I had other things on my mind at the moment besides Rayfield. In my present condition I didn’t want to argue with him, anyway.
Half an hour later I entered the sort of place for which I was looking, Bayside Tavern, crowded to the rafters with its lights very low. A cop would have had to rub shoulders with me to have seen me in there.
The fat, bald bartender served me three generous slugs of rye. They had no effect on my keyed-up nervous system except to put a spark of pain-free life in my throbbing, expiring head. I turned from the bar, and from a booth in back put in a call to a pal in New York. I was remembering Millie Morge’s statement that she had worked with the Peterson Detective Agency in New York five years back. The call was almost an hour getting through. Two more ryes saved me from being a nervous wreck under the black tension of waiting.
I came out of the booth finally, and something inside me had died. She was a very beautiful blonde bundle; and a very convincing little liar. No Peterson agency had been operating at the time she had claimed. She was a fraud, having worked her way into the Conklin and Frazee agency for some ulterior reason. She was neck deep in murder, and I knew I was going to hate to say the things I must say to her.
Her apartment was in a three-story, six apartment, stucco building facing the drive that ringed in Mirror Lake. I was fifty feet from the place when a woman came down the white stone steps, turned down the sidewalk. She paused to cross the street, turning her head, and the light from a street lamp fell full on her face. It was Millie. She started toward the taxi stand on the next corner.
My cab was running with darkened headlights when hers, a block ahead, stopped before a white, non-imposing bungalow on Tangerine Avenue, eighteen blocks south of Central avenue, the main stem. The house was set well back from the street with two bedraggled palms in the sandy front yard.
As I alighted from my cab I saw her, in the moonlight, glance about and hurry up the walk. I cut across the vacant lot next to the house, plunging through waist high weeds. She was fumbling in her handbag when I reached the edge of the porch.
She whirled, a small cry bubbling up in her throat.
I said, “Peterson didn’t give you such a hot recommendation.”
She was almost buried in shadows, but I could see her sag, as if with fatigue. She said nothing as I stepped close to her. The house hadn’t been occupied in some time, evidently. Sand lay in tiny ridges on the porch, gritting softly but harshly under my feet.
“You were going to unlock the door,” I said.