I stopped off at a store and bought a box and some paper. I found an all night lunch room with nobody but a sleepy counter man in it. There I ordered coffee and a hamburger and while it was being prepared, I wrapped the gun into the box.
First though, I wiped it off carefully. There was plenty of cordite all around the butt and the trigger. I slipped out the magazine and counted three slugs. The load capacity was nine. Lila had fired four times. What had happened to the other two bullets — if they’d really been in the clip?
I gave up trying to solve that and finished wrapping the gun. I addressed it to Ernest Doane at his office, marked it Fragile and from a book of stamps, I plastered what I thought was plenty to carry the thing. I mailed it at the next parcel drop and felt better. Much better.
But I was worried, too, because something should have happened to Freddie. If Hazy’s murder was a frame, the real killer couldn’t let much time lapse before his trap was sprung. I didn’t know it then, but I was worrying about an item that was due to knock me into right field.
The desk clerk swore Westover hadn’t been around. I telephoned Sedley then and asked him if he’d come to see me. He recognized the urgency in my voice and promised to leave right away.
I went to my room, cleaned up a bit and was putting on a fresh shirt when someone knocked on the door. Sedley, of course. He’d made very good time. I opened it and a big hand shoved me so hard I went backwards, and tripped.
Lieutenant Westover didn’t laugh at me. He was beyond the laughing stage. There was savage determination in his eyes and I knew my goose was cooked.
Westover cocked one foot back. “Stay there, con. Stay there or I’ll kick your jaw loose.”
I let my full weight rest on the floor again. I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t necessary. Westover would spill his piece.
He went over to a chair, picked up my coat and turned it upside down. He shook everything out of the pockets and huffed a little because the contents were nothing by which he could put me back in stir. He took a pair of cuffs from his pocket and began twirling them.
“This time,” he told me, “you really went over the dam, Trent. Where’s the knife?”
“I swallowed it,” I said.
“You’re going to swallow a few thousand volts of juice. Get this, con. I’m arresting you for two murders. I can bring you in half dead if I like and nobody is going to say a word. Not a single squawk. Now talk.”
“Tell me what to talk about,” I suggested. “Not two bodies, Lieutenant, because I only know one formally and I didn’t kill Gus Cooney.”
“You knifed him and you knifed an old prison pal of yours named Hazy with the same blade. Give up, con. You can’t get away with it forever. Soon as we found Hazy, I went to work on it. Happens I met a couple of radio patrolmen who told me they had seen Hazy not so long ago and at the time they thought he was being worked over by another mug. So what happens? The patrolmen glance at the rogue’s gallery and yelp when they see your puss. You roughed Hazy up then, but you had to let him go. Later you got him right. What for, con?”
I said: “If you’re taking me in, take me in. I won’t talk to you.”
He raised his foot, kicked out and clouted me alongside the jaw. It hurt like hell and for a moment blind rage almost made me tackle him. I didn’t though. He’d have a time proving me as the double killer. Otherwise there’d been no questions, just a straight hook to the jaw and a fast trip to the cooler.
He kicked me again and then unlimbered a blackjack. “I’m going to bat your ears off, con,” he warned. “Talk!”
I didn’t say a word. Not until the sap hit me across the back of the neck and then I only groaned. He shellacked me with the sap a dozen times, being careful to hold back the blows and all the while I was thinking of how I could get back at this overgrown ape.
He got tired after awhile and sat down again. I was lying on my face, tasting blood and hating the taste of it. Westover spoke, but he seemed to be a long, long distance away. Once he kicked me experimentally in the ribs, but I didn’t even grunt. I was past the stage of making noises. All I wanted was a nice long sleep. Preferably in a cool hospital bed.
Hospital bed! That was it. The very thing. Westover didn’t know it, but he was doing me a favor. I was laughing like someone in a padded cell. Laughing at myself because it seemed I did my best thinking when my brains were knocked loose. The laughing got him.
“This is your last chance, con. I’m going to kill you if you don’t talk.”
I spat a mouthful of blood in his face and started laughing all over again. He swarmed around the room, ripping stuff apart in his search for the murder knife. I wasn’t worried about his finding it because I knew where the knife was and it wasn’t here.
He came back to my side and poised the sap. “Here it comes, con. This one will split your skull open. You killed Cooney and you killed Hazy. Tell me all, if you want to keep your head.”
Sedley knocked on the door at that moment. I often wondered afterward if Westover would have used the sap again. There was one man Westover feared and he stood in the doorway now. Sedley had power and authority. He wielded a big club and Westover was no match for him and knew it.
Westover lowered the sap, put it into his pocket, growled something and brushed past Sedley. He kept on going and I started laughing all over again.
“Damn that mayhem-mad cop.” Sedley went for a wash cloth and a glass of water. I called him back.
“Don’t clean me up. In about two minutes I’m going to collapse. Pass right out. You’ll get excited and call for an ambulance and make sure that ambulance comes from Community Hospital.”
“Of course,” Sedley said. “Of course, Rick. Anything you say.”
He was humoring me. I sat bolt upright to show him I wasn’t finished — and fell back again. Passing out would be easy for me.
“I mean it, Mr. Sedley,” I told him. “I’ve got to go to Community Hospital and this way nobody will be in the least suspicious. Later on, we can arrange to take care of Westover. Things never worked out better.”
“You mean nobody was ever worked over better.” Sedley went to the phone. “Some day I’m going to kiss that guy and embarrass both of us.”
We had quite a wait for the ambulance. Sedley sat down on the edge of the bed while I stayed on the floor so when I collapsed for the doctor I wouldn’t have far to fall.
Sedley was frowning. “An idea hit me not so long ago, Rick. About Ernest Doane. Keep in mind his family history — it smells. His family was full of the worst kind of people. Isn’t it possible then that Ernest reverted?”
I said: “I know what you’re going to offer. Ernest Doane wants the money his second wife left to Lila. I considered that for awhile. About ten seconds. No, Mr. Sedley, there’s more than that to it. In a way you’re on the right track though.”
“Just how? I feel as wound up as a top.”
“Someone is playing on Ernest Doane’s reverence for the present. Doane felt he had licked the past — until Lila told him she’d knocked off Manning. That worked squarely into the scheme of things fashioned by this somebody.”
“In what way?” he wanted to know.
“The murderer staged all of this for one reason. Put yourself in Doane’s position. He’d licked the black strain in him. Prevented any of it from cropping out in the daughter he loves — Lila. Now she turns into a killer. What would you do in Doane’s shoes? Defend her — of course. But after that? Would you want all that money he’d leave, to go to her and foster the continuation of this family of high class mugs?”
Sedley nodded. “I see. Ernest would prevent Lila from getting a dime.”