“Yes,” Peggy said. “I’ll go. I’ll give it to you.”
“Fine,” Jack said. “Now we’ll do it this way. We’ll hold Ryan here till the boys come back with the dough. If you don’t do your part, sister, your pal Ryan gets his. And if you make any funny passes, in the bank or on the way, it’ll be too bad for you — and Ryan, too. So think it over.”
“Hey!” I objected. “The proposition was I would go to the bank, too.”
“You didn’t take me up,” Jack said. “We’ll do it this way. Maybe the twist don’t care what happens to you. Maybe she does. I think she does. So with you here we’ll be sure she goes through in a nice way.”
“Why should she care what happens to me? She just met me today. You’re nuts. And the guy that croaked Pete Blinker — if you didn’t — is looking for you. Or else why would he shoot Pete?”
That was the first Peggy had heard of Pete’s death. She gasped and moaned a little. Not that she cared much about Pete, maybe, but she had known him a long time.
I was just stalling, hoping they’d let me go along. Outside, even at the bank, I might have a chance; in this house I didn’t have any.
Jack looked thoughtful, frowned, rubbed his chin.
“Who killed Pete if you didn’t?” I pushed him. “Joe X. Swayne will want to know. He’ll find out, too. You think you’re tough, fella; but Joe X. is a lot tougher. He’ll pin a murder rap on you. besides the First National job. You may get the fifty grand, but you won’t get out of town with it.”
Dutch took a swing at me. I ducked.
“Let’s get going,” Dutch said. “We got to get out of this burg.”
“Wait,” Jack told him. “There’s something in what the shamus says. Swayne is a tough cop. But he’s a Homicide guy. He ain’t interested in the First National haul. The cops have almost forgotten that anyway; we didn’t leave ’em anything to work on. But the bankers’ association dicks are on the job. So are Gus’s boys. Let me figure this out. Pete was crossing us, dealing with Gus’s pals. Maybe crossing them and dealing with others. The damned little stoolie!”
“Sure,” I said, “he was a stool for the cops — and for the association dicks, too.”
Jack gave me a long look. Back of the hard look in his eyes you could see he was nervous, worried. He had to get the dough for a clean getaway. He was hunted and worried. If he didn’t get away soon, with a stake to last him a long time in his hide-out, somebody would get him — Joe X., the association dicks, Gus’s pals. He was the fox and they were the hounds. They’d get him. He knew it, and that knowledge was burning him.
“I got it,” he said, and turned to the big blonde. “Mamie, they don’t know you here. You just run this house. Nobody’s looking for you. You’re going to the bank with the doll. Spink will drive you — they don’t know him, either. She passes you the dough, you come back here. Then we all take a powder, leaving the doll and. the shamus in here. Go ahead, Mamie, and take your thirty-eight.”
He swung around to Peggy. “You’ll get hurt, sister, if you don’t play nice. And this guy, Ryan, will get worse than that.”
Jack switched on a little radio, dialed through a lot of swing and got a news broadcast. Joe X., the louse, had given it out that Pete had been killed in my office, that I had disappeared and the police were looking for me. What a pal! The idea was that I had croaked Pete and taken a powder.
Joe X. didn’t care what he did to my rep. He’d giveout anything that he thought might help to turn up the guy he wanted.
I heard the car glide out of the driveway. Peggy and Mamie were on their way to the bank.
Jack beckoned to Dutch and whispered to him. I strained my ears, but all I could get was “...pick up — the dirty so-and-so.” Dutch went out.
“Who you having picked up?” I asked.
“The guy that killed Pete,” he said. “I’m going to make Joe X. a present — give him the guy all trussed up and ready to hang.”
“Who is he?”
He didn’t answer me.
“You think you’re going to get out of town?” I went on. “How? And where can you go? Man, there’s no hide-out in the whole country good enough to keep you safe from the cops, the association dicks and Gus’s boys. You’re sunk, Jack. You haven’t a chance in the world.”
That made him mad. He began cussing me. He moved toward me, with his gun in his mitt. He was swinging it like he intended to knock me cold. I didn’t want to be knocked cold again.
I pulled back, away from him. “Don’t, Jack,” I begged. “Take it easy.”
“Then keep your trap shut!” he snarled, and swung away.
I was waiting for that. The mugg thought I was scared. I jumped and put the bee on him — arm around his neck, my knee against his back, my other hand on his gun wrist. He was powerful and he was fighting hard, but I was cutting off his wind. I was bending him back. I had disarmed plenty of muggs this way. But Jack was stronger than any of the others.
He was trying to free his gun hand, twist it around on me. I hung on and put extra pressure on his Adam’s apple. The guy could take a lot, but not all I gave him. When he began to gurgle, I let go of his wrist, swung one to his jaw. He slipped and I let him hit the floor, grabbing his wrist with both hands, testing the gun out of his mitt.
A kick in the skull put him away.
I tied him with the rope they had taken off Peggy, slapped the used adhesive tape across his mouth.
I started down. Dutch must have heard the fall of Jack’s big hulk. He was waiting for me in a doorway. He started shooting. A slug cut into my left arm. I dropped behind the railing, angled a shot down at him. It cut a red gash across the top and side of his head. Then there wasn’t any more shooting.
I waited quite a while. No sounds. Nobody around. Nobody running out.
I started down, my left arm dragging and bleeding a lot. I poked into rooms. The house was empty.
There was a phone in the kitchen and I dialed a familiar number — headquarters. I got Joe X.
It seemed no time at all before the cops were in. They came in quietly, leaving their cars on a back street.
“You louse!” I told Joe X. “Making out I’m a killer and that I ran away from you cops!”
He grinned at me. “Just detective work, shamus, just detective work! Now tell me.”
“I do the detective work!” I said. “O.K.! They’re picking up the guy that shot Pete, bringing him here. They’ll be here soon. You guys duck down and nab ’em when they come.”
“Who is he?”
“How the hell do I know?” I growled. “But Jack knows. He sent for him. I got Jack all tied up, upstairs. He pulled the First National job, with Dutch Schiller. Dutch is in the hall — and he’ll never stick up another bank. Now duck and wait for these mobsters to toss a killer in your lap.”
We didn’t have to wait long. About ten minutes. The car that had brought me here swung into the drive, entered the garage. There were three cops in there and they covered the three men in the car from all sides. They brought them into the house, the two I had seen before carrying the third.
And the third, who had been knocked out. was none other than my old pal, Rufus Sloan!
“There’s your man,” I told Joe X. “Jack says he’s been running a jewelry racket. Pete must have known about it and tried to shake him down. Maybe Sloan was trying to cut in on this First National dough, too. Anyway, there’s no doubt he wanted to get rid of Pete, and finding him out in my office was too good an opportunity to pass up. So he bumped Pete in my place, hoping you’d be dumb enough to pin it on me. You can make Jack talk and Sloan, too, if you know how. And you cops recommended him to Gates!”