Tracy stopped at an avenue shop and bought a new hat. To appear bareheaded was not in the well dressed Tracy manner; it might excite curious comment.
“Wind blow it away, sir?” the clerk asked politely.
“I threw it away. It had a rat hole in it.”
“You mean a moth hole, sir?”
“I mean a rat hole.”
It was a foolish thing to say, but he couldn’t resist the quip. He took a cab over to Radio City. He always came and went by the rear elevator used by bandsmen with their bulky instruments. It was insurance against nuts and cranks. Tracy’s broadcast was done from a private studio. The public never saw him at the mike; and if they hung around the rear corridor, Butch’s shoulder took care of that.
But Butch didn’t try to shove away the girl in the furred wrap. She stepped quickly in front of Tracy.
“Please! I’ve got to talk to you.”
It was Alice Hilliard. Slim and lovely, with blue eyes and hair the color of strained honey. Butch and Tracy got the same look at her, but saw different things. Butch noticed the slender line of thigh and hip candidly molded by the evening gown, the soft cleft of her bosom as she swayed appealingly toward Tracy. Tracy saw only her eyes. They were filled with tears.
“Jerry, don’t do it! I realize you’re trying to protect me. But, Jerry, you’re not God! You can’t judge a man and condemn him and punish him in one—”
So she knew! That made it tougher.
“Who told you?”
“The woman who phoned you the scandal tip was vicious enough to telephone me, too. Jerry, you’re so wrong about Bert. He’s a straight shooter.”
Tracy’s nostrils whitened. “Not so damned straight at that,” he said. “Almost six inches too high.”
“Wait until next week before you—”
“A week and you’ll marry the louse.” He stared at her. “Won’t you?”
Before she could answer, a suave, perfectly modulated voice sounded behind them. “Mr. Jerry Tracy, I believe? The scandal-monger?”
The man had stepped noiselessly into the corridor from the street. The first thing Tracy saw was the fresh white carnation in his lapel. He was a tall, strongly built man in his middle thirties, with a dark smudge of mustache and a scrubbed, pink skin. His clipped voice was insultingly polite. He was wearing dinner clothes under a Chesterfield. His expression was cool and remote, like a British gentlemen in an ad for Scotch whiskey.
Alice Hilliard gave him a quick, frightened look. “Bert, you mustn’t—”
“I’m afraid I must,” Lord said. He took her gently by the arm and turned her toward the street exit. “A blackmailer can always be reasoned with — that’s the heart of his trade. Wait for me in the public lounge, darling. I think I can promise you there’ll be no dirt concerning you and me on the wireless this evening.”
Alice hesitated, then she obeyed. It irked Tracy to witness her childlike submission. After she had left, Butch stared grimly at the fresh white carnation in Lord’s lapel.
“He musta just bought himself a new one. Jerry, is this guy the louse?”
Lord’s gloved hand tightened on his Malacca stick. But he kept his hard, smiling gaze on Tracy.
“I’m not used to haggling. What’s your lowest price?”
“Take him, Butch,” Tracy snapped. “I want his gun.”
Butch dove with a low growl of pleasure. Lord’s cane struck like a whiplash at Butch’s skull, be he swerved and took the blow on his hunched shoulder. There was a quick, panting tussle, followed by a shrill squeal. Lord’s stick was wrenched from his grasp and fell clattering to the floor.
One of Lord’s arms was twisted behind his back. The painful angle at which it was bent drained Lord’s face of color. Butch’s big knee was poised for an upward thrust at the belly of his antagonist.
“Stand still, pal, or I’ll rupture you. Go ahead, Jerry.”
Tracy frisked the man. There was no gun.
“What did you do with it?” Jerry asked him tonelessly. “Park it somewhere after you went over the backyard fence?”
Lord didn’t say anything until Butch released him. Then profanity bubbled from him in a husky whisper. Nasty stuff. Gutter talk from the slums of London. All of his culture forgotten.
“You bloody fool! I’ll ’ave your ’eart for this!”
“I’m skipping that gunplay of yours a while ago,” Tracy told him steadily. “But I have no intention of skipping the broadcast. If you have any sense, you’ll hop the nearest garbage scow and take a quick sneak to England.”
Lord’s narrowed eyes were bits of mica. He kept watching Tracy with a bloodless smile as he adjusted the damage to his clothing. He picked up his cane. When he finally spoke he had regained both his self-control and his faultless accent.
“I’m int’rested in your remark about gunplay and a backyard fence. Are you suggesting—”
“I’m suggesting that you get the hell out of New York and let Alice Hilliard alone.”
“Cards on the table, eh? Right-o. I think I can play any style of game that suits you, Mr. Tracy. If you slander me on the wireless tonight, I’ll see that you stop living. Good evening.”
He left the building with a quick stride. Butch growled “Nuts!” as Tracy grabbed him. The columnist swung him around and punched the elevator button.
“It’s eight o’clock sap! I’m on the air in thirty seconds.”
They ascended swiftly. In the upper corridor a man’s head was jutting anxiously from a doorway. At sight of the Daily Planet’s columnist his worried forehead smoothed and he patted the tip of his nose as a signal to someone inside the broascasting room.
Tracy was arriving exactly on time. Even a bullet couldn’t spoil his record of never being late for his weekly gossip show.
The announcer was reading the commercial at the floor mike. Tracy slipped into his familiar wooden chair, grabbed his table mike, placed the neat pile of script pages under his eyes. The announcer’s voice crackled with the familiar introduction that once a week turned a million listening ears toward loud speakers:
“And now the Hilliard Tobacco Company reminds you that ‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire.’ Light up and let America’s greatest gossip columnist tell you the news you like to tell your neighbors! Presenting — Jerry Tracy!”
Jerry came in as he always did, like sleet bouncing off a tin roof. He ripped competently through his assignment, tossing each script sheet to the floor as he finished it. The squib about Bert Lord was not in the script. Tracy would be deliberately breaking studio rules by inserting it. He watched the clock and killed his last item to make room for it. He was conscious of the gasp of the announcer as he spoke his piece with hard, nasal clarity:
“What British crook has come to the U.S.A, under forged passports on a suave hunt for cigarette money? According to your correspondent’s information this gentleman’s specialty has led him close to the adopted daughter of a well known tobacco tycoon. ‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire’ is a swell warning for a crook to remember. It may save him a bad burn when the girl’s father realizes what’s going on. Will the crook be smart and scram? Lord only knows!”
Tracy’s jaw was tight at the sign-off. Dabney, the announcer, stared curiously at him. Dabney was a veteran on the hour and a good friend of Tracy’s.
“It’s none of my business, Jerry, but did Bruce Hilliard O.K. that last item?”
“Why?”
“I just wondered. Do you think it’s a good idea to dump a load of dirt in the front yard of your own sponsor?”
“If you got the point,” Tracy said slowly, “Hilliard will, too. That’s what I wanted. If I have to, I’ll take the rap for it,” he added grimly.