“This time there ain’t gonna be no door, bud!” he growled.
Something crashed into my jaw and suddenly it was D-Day on Omaha again and all the guns in the world were going off in my face.
Now I know what they mean when they say he went down like a poleaxed steer. That was me — and there was almost as much blood. If I’d had any sense, which I hadn’t, I’d have stayed down after the fourth time, but I kept rolling to my feet and coming up for more. And I got it.
After a while the sand wouldn’t hold the weight of my body and I started falling through space. It must have been a very deep hole because I don’t remember getting to the bottom.
I came to fighting for breath; it felt as if I were drowning. I was lying face down on the wet beach and the waves were lapping at my head. I tried to get up but I couldn’t — something was on my back. It was a foot, a big heavy number 12.
“He’s coming to now,” said Kosloff’s deep voice. “He can take it, so I give it, yes?”
“No. That’s enough just now.”
It was Janie’s voice, but the sound of it was so strident that I could hardly recognize it.
“Bring him over here,” she told him.
Kosloff picked me up and flung me over his broad shoulder like a side of beef. He walked for a few moments, then dumped me heavily into the sand. I didn’t move for a few seconds because I couldn’t. I ached all over and I felt tired and sleepy, but I forced myself to sit up and take stock.
I tried to talk, but my bruised lips never got past the unintelligible muttering stage.
Then Janie started laughing. After a while I caught on that she was laughing at me. It hurt. I was still being played for a sap and I couldn’t do anything about it.
Finally she stopped laughing and said, “Things catch up, Mr. Martin, don’t they?”
“Yeah, bud, that’s right,” boomed Kosloff. “First we work you over but good, and then you end up on the cops’ door-step. Pretty, huh?”
Listening to the strong man’s heavy voice and looking at Janie’s grinning face, I was beginning to get some crazy ideas. I rolled over to my knees and sat there like Buddha for a few minutes, trying to take stock. At last I blurted out what had slowly been taking shape in my mind.
“You killed her, didn’t you, Janie?” I said harshly. “You murdered your own sister!”
I caught the stunned look on Janie’s face and then Kosloff grabbed me, jabbering something about finishing me off. Short jarring blows poured down on me like a heavy rain, but it didn’t bother me any more. I didn’t even feel the storm because I was swimming in a nice warm pool. Only it kept spinning around faster and faster and faster, until I knew I couldn’t keep above water very much longer.
At last I let go, and as I went under, I saw Janie tearing at the big man’s arms, and heard her screaming. Only I didn’t know what she was saying. I was floating... floating...
My body felt hot and heavy with soreness. My mouth was dry and filled with millions of sharp little needles, but there was something about my head and eyes that was deliciously cool and soothing.
A small soft hand was tenderly stroking my brow. I was stretched out on the sand, my head resting in Janie’s lap, her fingers gently massaging my forehead. She had been crying and the sound of her voice was still filled with it.
“You’ll be all right,” she soothed. “Just rest, please.”
I tried to move and waves of nausea rolled over me. I swallowed hard and stayed where I was.
“I’m a fool,” whispered Janie. “I thought you killed Ethel. But when you accused me, I knew you couldn’t have done it or you wouldn’t think I had.”
I sighed wearily. “What difference does it make? I’m tired of running.”
“No, no.” There was a catch in her throat. “You’re tired, hurt... It was that terrible beating — that brute, Kosloff.”
“What was he trying to prove?” I asked. “How much punishment a man can stand?”
“It’s my fault,” she murmured. “I was glad when he was doing it.”
“That’s nice to know,” I muttered bitterly.
“We were sure you had murdered Ethel, and he was going to half kill you and then turn you over to the police.” She rung her hands. “It makes me sick when I think of it.”
I managed a thin smile. “Makes you sick?” I touched my battered face and shuddered.
“Oh, I’m sorry, so terribly sorry,” she said. “If there was just something I could do...”
There was, and after what had happened to me I didn’t hesistate to lay it on the line. “You’re going to help me catch the real killer, baby,” I said.
Forty-five minutes later we got out of Janie’s car and went into a small diner twenty miles the other side of Atlantic City. I ordered sandwiches and coffee for both of us and there we sat, the two people who had every reason to benefit most by Ethel Winters’ death — ten thousand reasons a piece and all of them with a dollar sign tucked in front.
Only I hadn’t killed the gal — and if I was to believe Janie and follow my masculine instincts, neither had Janie.
“There’s nobody,” she said in answer to my question about her relatives. “Ethel was all the family I had.” She shook her head sadly from side to side and I looked thoughtful.
“The same goes for me,” I volunteered. “So I guess I can’t pin it on some guy who’d get the ten thousand dollars if I got the chair.”
Then suddenly I tingled all over. I snapped my fingers sharply under Janie’s nose and she jumped with a start.
There was someone who would benefit if I was stashed six feet under. Mike Hartley, my boss! There was that insurance policy he’d made me take out when he hired me, and Hartley, Inc. was the beneficiary. A rule of the firm, he’d insisted, and I do mean insisted. I needed the job so I let him write me up. Had he also written my ticket to the death house? I told Janie what I was thinking.
“But how was he mixed up with my sister?”
She was alive with the expectant excitement that she had caught from me. I tried to think slowly and clearly, but I couldn’t find the answer to her question. All I knew was that Mike Hartley had written Ethel’s policy and had been instrumental in sending me down to Atlantic City. Also that he had access to the trench knife on my desk. I was a sap for not seeing it before and I became inflated with the thought of my success.
Then all at once the air went out of my tires.
“Mike Hartley isn’t the murderer.”
“But he must be,” argued Janie. “It all seems to fit.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “it jells all right except for one thing. The old stinker wasn’t in Atlantic City today.”
“How do you know?”
“Because, baby,” I replied evenly, “I phoned him when I arrived in Atlantic City, and he was still in his office in New York.”
“Then he’s not the one?”
“That’s right.” I grimaced. “I’m still it.”
And that was just the moment that Janie got the idea that my boss might know something about the guy who had been playing around with her sister.
Well, it was just an idea, but you know how it is when a gal gets a notion like that. I was sure that the Old Man couldn’t give us a lead to Ethel’s boy friend, but like I said, Janie had an idea. Trying to buck her was like trying to swim the English Channel with your arms wrapped in tin foil.
Five minutes later, Janie was accelerating her sleek buggy past a road sign that read: New York, 115 miles — only I didn’t see it because I was snoring my head off on the seat beside her.