“Hold it, Johnny!” he cried.
Johnny struck at the cane with the gun in his hand. “Put down that stick!…” His eyes were still on Peel and he was poised to spring forward and smash Peel with the gun in his hand. His hand went up…
There was a click and eight inches of sharpened steel leaped out of the end of Otis Beagle’s cane. Johnny cried out and tried to turn his gun on Beagle. But it was too late. The blade slithered into Johnny Wade’s chest and choked off his scream.
Joe Peel caught Johnny Wade’s revolver before it hit the floor. He started to swing up with it, but saw Dunning bearing down on him. Peel let himself fall flat on his face and rolled over onto his side. Dunning’s gun roared and the bullet clipped a lock of hair from Peel’s head.
Peel fired from his elbow. An expression of shock and horror broke Dunning’s face and he fell back.
“Look out, Joe!” cried Beagle.
Peel whirled, saw the muzzle of George Byram’s gun pointing at him. He threw himself back, yelled and fired. Flame seared his left arm even as he pulled the trigger. But Byram disappeared before him.
Peel began to climb to his feet, was aware that Otis Beagle had Marcy Holt pinned to the wall, with the point of the blade in his cane, less than a half inch from Holt’s throat.
“That’s that,” said Joe Peel, thickly.
And then he saw Mary Lou Tanner struggling with her purse. Even as he lunged for her, a little automatic appeared. Peel saw he wouldn’t reach her in time, stopped and threw Johnny Wade’s gun with the last strength he had in him.
The gun made a sickening plop as it struck Mary Lou, halfway between her mouth and forehead. She screamed and clawed at her face with her hands. The little gun fell from her hand to the floor. Peel kicked it away weakly, staggered to the couch.
He surveyed the scene.
“That’s the trouble with guns,” Beagle said, coldly. “You fool around with them and someone always gets hurt…”
And Peel was looking at Johnny Wade, who had been perforated by the blade of Beagle’s cane.
23
His left arm wrapped in about six inches of bandages and held up in a splint, Joe Peel pushed open the door of the Beagle Detective Agency.
He held the door open with his right shoulder, gestured with his head at the ground glass of the door.
“Get that sign changed,” he said to Beagle, who was in the office at his desk.
“What’s the matter with it?”
“It says, ‘Beagle Detective Agency’. Change it to read: ‘Peel & Beagle’.”
“So it’s gone to your head!”
Peel let the door swing shut. “Your bull satisfied that rube sheriff, but you’re going to have to have all the answers for Lieutenant Becker.”
“He’s already been here.”
Peel seated himself in his swivel chair, leaned back and grinned at Beagle across the desk. “And was he satisfied with what you told him?”
“Well, not exactly. He kept harping about a couple of things…”
“Such as?”
“Well, how we figured it was Mary Lou who killed Helen Gray.”
“You told him, didn’t you?”
Beagle coughed gently. “As a matter of fact, I’m a little hazy on that point myself…”
Peel chuckled. “You’d better give the thing some thought, then. Becker’s a man who likes his cases airtight.”
Beagle scowled. “Cut it out, Joe.”
“Is it going to be Peel & Beagle…?”
Beagle hesitated. “Make it Beagle & Peel…”
Peel rocked back and forth a couple of times in the swivel chair. Then he shrugged. “Okay, I guess you’ve got to have your front.” He drew a deep breath.
“It was probably Wilbur Jolliffe’s collecting of dime novels that got George Byram started. He learned that Malaeska was the choicest of all dime novels and somewhere — probably from one of the big libraries — he got a copy of it. Stole it. He set up his little forgery business and things went fine. But he couldn’t resist selling his brother-in-law a copy of Malaeska. Naturally he couldn’t do it himself, so he had one of his sales people, Helen Gray, make Wilbur’s acquaintance. Which wasn’t very hard, Wilbur being the kind of guy he was. Wilbur fell for the dame and the book, but while he didn’t suspect the girl he suspected the book. Anyway, he found out that it was a forgery and squawked. Helen stalled him along for a while, but then Wilbur called in a private detective… Otis Beagle… Byram knew that it wouldn’t take a detective long to discover that Wilbur’s own brother-in-law was head of the forged dime novel racket, so he — well — he got Wilbur to commit suicide… That’s how I know it was Byram in the first place. Wilbur wouldn’t have taken anyone but a relative into his library late at night…”
“I get that all right, Joe,” Beagle cut in, “but you told me yourself that all you said to Helen was to warn her to lay off of Wilbur Jolliffe… So what made them suspect we were hep to the dime novel racket?”
Peel screwed up his face. “What I didn’t tell you, was that while I was telling off Helen, I picked up a copy of Malaeska. I put it in my pocket, but they didn’t notice it was missing until after Johnny Wade, or Bill Gray, as they called him then, had, uh, disposed of me. Then they figured my talk to Helen was just a stall — the real stuff being the dime novel business.”
“You mean to tell me,” cried Otis Beagle, “that if you hadn’t stuck that book in your pocket, Wilbur would be alive today?”
Peel shook his head. “It would have happened, but maybe not quite so soon. Remember Mary Lou Tanner…”
Beagle’s eyes lit up. “Yeah, I can’t figure her in this. If she was Jolliffe’s secretary, how come she got mixed up with Byram…?”
“She was Jolliffe’s secretary but she was Byram’s girl friend, first. She told me she’d been with Jolliffe three months… Actually, she’d been there only two weeks. She was planted by Byram…”
“But you claim she was the one who knocked off Helen Gray. Why would she do that, if they were all in it together?”
“Helen got scared, when I kept coming around. She wanted to blow. Mary Lou…” Peel sighed. “The female of the species, you know…”
“…Is more deadly than the male…” Beagle finished the quotation.
The phone on his desk rang and he reached for it.
“Yes?” Peel saw him scowl, then assumed a forced smile as if Pinky could see him. “Pinky, old boy, how are you…? Yes, yes, just fine… Got it all wrapped up and tied with a nice pink ribbon… What?…” The scowl came back to his face. “He’s got that goddam table wired, I tell you… Of course I can’t prove it, Pinky, but it stands to reason… all right, if that’s the way you feel about it…” He swallowed hard. “I’ve got the money. I’ll send him a check today… a good one… good-bye…”
He hung up and glared at the phone. “That’s a friend for you.”
“So Pinky is behind Charlie?”
“He says no, but why would he be so damned insistent on me paying Charlie?… It’ll take every nickel I’ve got.” His eyes fell on the card case in front of him. “We need a case — a good paying one.” He opened the card file.
But Joe Peel let out a yell and kicked back his swivel chair. As it crashed to the floor he shot around the desk and snatched the card file from Beagle.
“No, you don’t! You’re not going to make any more cases. That’s how we got into this mess.”
“All right,” said Beagle, “then you tell me how we’re going to get a client.” He nodded toward the door. “You’re a partner in this agency, you know…”
Peel stared at Beagle for a long moment, then he suddenly handed back the card file.