Peret was deathly pale under his olive skin. Burton knew better than to make a move for his gun in those seconds. Here they had heard of him, heard of that lightning-swift draw from under his left shoulder; they would never give him the opportunity to use it if they could help it. They were too wary of him.
Peret was babbling: “Lavergne, you cannot believe this dog’s word against mine! He lies!”
Lavergne interrupted. He had reached out his big hand and was pawing in his desk drawer. For an instant Burton was aware of a small packet of letters there, then he understood. Peret had intended to take those letters with him, in one way or another, before he left here today. Lavergne’s hand closed over the butt of a Luger and he said to his henchman:
“Gaston! Attendee! Peret has said that the gentleman lies. Look in Peret’s pocket very carefully, for he has a weapon somewhere, I am sure. See if those letters are there! But see first if the tickets are there as M. Burton said.”
Gaston went about his work with caution. Peret backed to the wall. His eyes were bulging with fear and his mouth was agape like a suffering fish’s. All the suave veneer and polish of the man was wiped away by sheer terror. There was deadly meaning in Lavergne’s eyes, a menace in the soft, low purr of his voice.
Burton said, in a low tone: “Not too much of the bluff, Lavergne! You fooled me and it’s you who have the letters. Peret only hoped to steal them from you before he left. But you—”
Burton took his hazard as Peret saw his last slim chance evaporating. The eyes of them all were mostly for him. Then he moved, just as Gaston flipped back Peret’s coat lapel.
A startled gasp came from Gaston. Peret’s hand dove downward. A ridiculously small pistol emerged as if by magic from under the white of the cuff on his left wrist.
Burton moved. Lavergne, just in time, recalled that the gambler was probably the greatest menace in the room. The big Luger swiveled.
The small gun so suddenly in Peret’s hand spat at Gaston and the crack of it was ridiculously inane in the tumult that ensued. Then Burton felt lead from Lavergne’s Luger breathe past his head. Heard it as it smashed into the paneling beside him.
He heard Gaston’s wild cry; then a tom sob that was half a curse and half a prayer as Gaston fired at Peret. Then Burton’s own .38 was in action. Through the crimson blaze at its mouth, through the whirling smoke layers in that small room, through the hammering, deafening echoes of the tumultuous firing, he could see Lavergne go down.
Something burned Burton’s shoulder. Crouching, he swung about as Lavergne crumpled forward across the green baize table top, the big gun still clamped tight in his fist. Blood spurted from him.
Peret’s cry lingered. Burton whirled in time to see Gaston on the floor, bringing up his weapon.
Burton snapped a shot. Gaston’s slight body gave a tremor and slammed back against the wall that had been half bracing him.
Peret wavered, started to speak, choked something incoherent; and then, as a rush of blood foamed to his lips, he crumpled and fell.
Burton took a deep breath. For a long moment he stood there, until the echoes of firing had almost died away and a tense, almost unreal stillness had come.
Then carefully he slipped the gun into its holster, methodically picked out the letters from the drawer He glanced at them to make sure of them, then he went to the fire still burning low in the small grate in the outer room. He placed each envelope with meticulous care in the tiny blaze. As he dropped the last one and watched it shrivel up he saw the thick stream of crimson that was running unchecked down over his own wrist.
At last he straightened and his dark face looked tired. He moved wearily toward the door.
In the hotel, much later that day, he told Vivian the story. Patricia Blaine had gone to the Bureau de Police to await her fiancé’s release. Burton was still weary.
“Yes, my dear, that’s all,” he said. “One thing is certain: Without those letters the police could never make out a ghost of a case against Rowdy and they know it. I think it was Lavergne’s idea all the time to erase Descamps from the picture because the lad was getting too troublesome; began getting that way, I gather, after it developed into a real case of love for Patricia. They were really frightened of what he could reveal about the whole crowd.
“And there, right in their hands, was a suspect made to order for them, a suspect they even had the goods on without trying overhard. Rowdy. Only they couldn’t even be satisfied with that. Anyway Peret couldn’t; and afterward, when Lavergne saw the same opportunity, it got him, too. They had to try another stunt, double-crossing one another to do it. And the odd part of it is that if they hadn’t wanted to squeeze the last cent out of their merry-go-round murder they’d probably not have left a single workable clue. Somehow I think there must be a moral in that, but I’m too lazy just now to worry about it.”
My Dough Says Murder
by H. H. Stinson
O’Hara twists a crime tornado.
On his entrance into the small and smartly-furnished living-room two minutes before, Ken O’Hara had taken one glance at the body on the rug. After that he didn’t look at it again but stood, spraddle-legged, warming himself in front of the gas log at one end of the room and letting his glum and overcast gaze coast around at the others in the place.
There was, for one, Inez Dana. She sat on an imitation-Spanish divan at one side of the imitation-Spanish room and held her body tightly in her arms, rocking and sobbing jerkily in the tail end of a fit of hysterics.
Tears had cut channels through the rouge on her cheeks but she was still beautiful in a damp tawny fashion with a slick black bob, wounded-fawn brown eyes and a smooth creamy skin.
Detective Lieutenant Otto Shuford sat on the divan beside her. He had the round decent face of a small boy under sandy, graying hair, a body like that of a bear, big ruddy hands that kept patting at her while he clucked comfortingly:
“Now, Inez, it ain’t your fault. Now, now!”
Through his words came the muted thump of melody from the Club Barcelona on the floor below where Joe Bullfinch’s Swing Boys and an assorted hundred or so of patrons went to town to the scream of brasses and the mutter of drums, unaware that death had also gone to town just above their heads.
The body lay by the highboy radio and the leg of the cabinet propped the head up at an awkward angle. The eyes were half-lidded and the man looked as though he were staring with mild reproof at his feet which touched the fringe of red velvet window draperies. Blood had seeped in half a dozen thin streams from a wound in the right temple and not far from the man’s hand a revolver, a .38 Police Positive, lay on the rug. In life the man had been small and he looked even more shrunken now. His face was sharp and high-boned, with a long nose that death had turned into a pallid wedge. Until a bullet had smashed through the thin bone of his temple he had been Johnny Lawton, café and amusement-beat reporter for the Pacific Tribune.
Well away from the body there stood two other men. One of them was a big jovial looking man with a long lock of gray hair combed back over a thin spot. That was City Councilman Homer E. Davenport, in whose district the Club Barcelona happened to be spotted.
The other was Johnny Kerr, owner of the Barcelona. A thin wiry man, with black spikes of mustache on a smooth dark face, he stared into space and whistled soundlessly and continuously.
Inspector Blane of the homicide squad was on his knees beside Lawton’s body. His oblong pockmarked face was professionally interested and, at the same time, a little shocked as he plodded methodically through the dead man’s pockets. He found a watch, keys, billfold, old letters, a thick wad of copy paper, and laid them all on the cool marble top of a coffee table. He straightened, glanced at the wad of copy paper, riffled through the old letters.