She got the coat open and one hand went into the bosom of her dress. The hand came out and it held a nickeled gun, a small gun. The barrel glittered, picking up gleams from the faraway street light. She backed away from O’Hara several steps.
O’Hara said sourly, “It was a swell act.” He moved his feet a little.
Inez Dana said with sharpness in her voice, “Don’t try it.” She held the gun firmly, easily, in front of her stomach. “If you make me do it, I will.”
“I believe you would.”
“You know I would.” All the helpless femininity of her voice was gone, leaving it hard, slightly husky and mocking. “You don’t think I’d let some scummy reporter push me around, did you? After all, I’ve played with some really hot numbers in my day. Now put that bag down on the ground and beat it toward the boulevard.”
O’Hara dropped the bag. It thudded on the sidewalk and Inez Dana cursed him expertly. She said, “If you’ve broken my perfume at fifty dollars an ounce—”
“I wish I’d broken your neck.”
She jeered at him. “You should have thought of it sooner.”
“Next time I will.”
“It’ll be a long time before you locate my neck again.” The distant rumble of a street car came faintly, then grew louder second by second. She moved the gun a little. “Now, if you please, small change, I’m in a hurry. Get going and make it fast. If you don’t I’m going to take a shot at you and, if I say it myself, I’m not a bad shot.”
O’Hara turned, started. He went a hundred feet, looked over his shoulder. Inez Dana had the bag in her hand but she was still watching him and the gun, a glimmer of light in her hand, still covered him. He lagged another hundred feet, looked back again. The girl was running toward the car stop. She had a three hundred foot lead on him but he turned, got under way after her.
The car, a row of flying yellow oblongs in the darkness, slowed for the crossing. The motorman caught sight of her signaling arm, slammed air on. O’Hara saw her reach for the rail of the rear platform, saw a husky conductor grab her arm, haul her aboard while the brakes were still chattering. O’Hara was still a hundred feet away in the darkness when he heard the air cut off with a swoosh and the car churned into motion again.
O’Hara took four minutes to run the four blocks back to the Club Barcelona. His heels hit the pavement solidly, his mouth had a chagrined thinness, his eyes were hard. He was sore, mainly at himself for falling for a gag as moss grown as the one the girl had pulled on him; and, being sore, he’d decided he was through with finesse, through with playing around on the fringes of this thing and making guesses.
When he got to the club entrance, he right-wheeled and went into the foyer, past the hat-check girl like a gust of ill wind on the way to do nobody any good.
As he passed through the dining-room, he didn’t see Davenport nor did he see Kerr. He got to the door of Kerr’s office and went in.
Kerr wasn’t there but Joe Rockley was. He had a drink in his hand but this time no sandwich. He looked surprised at first; then his pink face creased into a grin.
He said, “Either it’s that last drink I had or else I need another. I could swear it’s O’Hara but I know O’Hara is in the can.”
“Where’s Kerr?”
“Around some place. What’s the idea, Irish? Shuford change his mind about tossing you in the clink?”
“Somebody changed it for him,” O’Hara said. “Listen, Rock, you’ve been making a big play about helping me if I needed it.”
“Sure. And, oddly enough, I meant it. What can I do?”
“Get Kerr in here quietly for me without letting him know I’m here. And if Councilman Davenport is still around, get him to come in also.”
“Davenport went home just after you and Shuford left.” Rockley put his drink down on the desk, stood up from the leather-padded chair. “You sound like bad news for somebody.” Rockley hesitated. “After all, Ken, I work for the guy, among my other odd jobs. He’s bread and butter to me.”
“If you know which side of the slice to spread the butter on,” O’Hara said, “you’ll play ball with me and the Tribune. Do you get him?”
“If you put it that way.”
Rockley went toward the door, running one hand through the fluffy blond hair. When he was almost to the door, O’Hara said, “Wait, Rock. You got a gun?”
“Woh-oh,” Rockley said. “Now it’s guns.”
“Have you got a gun? If you have, lend it to me.”
“I haven’t,” Rockley said. But after studying O’Hara’s hard-angled face for a moment he came back to Kerr’s desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a snub-barreled .32, handed it over. He said, “Kerr’s rod. I hope you know what you’re doing, Ken.”
“If I don’t,” O’Hara said, “I’m on the way to learning. Now make it snappy.”
O’Hara slipped the gun into his trenchcoat pocket, moved so that he was out of sight from the doorway. Three minutes went by and Kerr came into the office. Rockley followed him only as far as the threshold.
When he saw O’Hara, Kerr looked as surprised as had Rockley. He said after a little pause, “Shuford got some sense, eh? Glad to know that.”
“Sit down, Kerr,” O’Hara said.
Rockley was looking pained and uneasy. He murmured, “Be seeing you guys,” and moved back out of the doorway, vanished.
Kerr sat down slowly, his eyes on O’Hara and his smooth dark face wary but not particularly alarmed. He said, “What’s on your mind, Irish?”
“Murder,” O’Hara said.
“Still got notions Lawton was murdered, eh?”
“And about ready,” O’Hara said, “to have a showdown on my notions.”
“Go ahead. It should be interesting. How can it be murder and who did it?”
“I’m not so sure about the how. But about the who... well, I probably wouldn’t have to move over six feet to smack that guy in the puss.”
Kerr’s lips parted under the spiky mustache. He looked blandly amused. “And what makes you think I murdered him, if he was murdered?”
O’Hara said, “I should spend a lot of time horsing around with you. When I get you and Davenport and Blane together, I’ll toss my cards on the table.”
He put his hand out for the phone and Kerr said, “Wait a minute, O’Hara. You’ve pointed a nasty finger at me, but I still think you’re regular enough to tell me why, to give me a chance to defend myself before you go messing me up with the law.”
He smiled faintly and O’Hara said, “O. K., I will. Lawton was murdered because he’d stumbled onto a plot to blackmail Councilman Davenport over some hotcha letters Davenport had written your strip dancer, Inez Dana. Somebody was working with Dana on the thing and that somebody has to be you.”
Kerr’s eyes were shining, curious. He said, “Why does it have to be me?”
“If it hadn’t been you, you wouldn’t have slipped bedtime drops in the drinks you set up for Shuford and me just before we left here a while ago.”
Kerr sat up with a jerk. He clipped “Drinks? You mean those drinks were loaded?”
“Don’t trot out the dramatics for me,” O’Hara said. “You knew I’d found evidence in Dana’s apartment of the plot against Davenport. You didn’t want that evidence to get into Shuford’s hands and you knew it would if I was booked. So you drugged our liquor, put out a hurry call for your hoodlums and sent them after us, figuring we’d pass out before we got to the Westwood station. Luckily I didn’t like the taste of my drink so I got only half as much as Shuford and I snapped out of it when Shuford went to sleep and let the car bounce into a pole.”
“I swear,” Kerr said slowly, “you’re wrong, O’Hara. I’ve got no hoodlums on my payroll and if those drinks were drugged, I don’t know anything about it. Let me call in the bartender that mixed them and see what we can find out.”