“Here he is,” I said, turning back to Reg.
“Well, well,” he said, waving the now empty flask. “How is the old stiff? Let’s give him a drink.”
I snatched the flask from him. “If I could get tight as fast as you I’d save myself some money.”
Reg rose unsteadily to his feet. “Don’t you worry about me,” he said with a giggle.
I pulled open the cabinet and looked down at Dixon. He still looked pretty horrible. “Take a look at him,” I said. “He’ll sober you up.”
Reg looked and it did. “The poor old geezer,” he said, closing his eyes. “The poor, lonely old geezer.”
“Never mind the obituary notice. Get started.”
Reg reached for his camera, pulled it from its case and screwed in a flash bulb. Then he suddenly caught his breath and his eyes popped. He was looking at something behind me and I turned, my flesh creeping.
The steel door was slowly opening.
We both jumped different ways. Reg towards Dixon and I towards the door.
I had started a shade too late. Jeff Gordan snaked into the room, a gun in his hand and a frightened, vicious look on his face. My jump was still taking me towards him and I couldn’t stop myself, so I kicked out blindly. It was a lucky kick. It caught his right wrist and the gun fell from his hand. I cannoned into him and we sprawled on ground.
“Get that picture!” I yelled to Reg. “I’ll hold this swine.”
In actual fact, Jeff was holding me. His great arms encircled my ribs and he was putting on a hell of a squeeze.
“Get onto him!” Reg shouted excitedly. “Beat his brains out!”
I was hanging on all right, but it wasn’t doing me any good. I had only one free arm. My right was pinned to my side by Jeff’s bear-like hug. I slammed at his apish face with my left and then he rolled on top of me, nearly crushing me flat. I grabbed hold of his ear and began screwing it round while he tried to butt my chin with the top of his head.
I knew from a sudden blinding flash that Reg had taken the picture. A moment later he came rushing across to where we were wrestling and jammed the camera-case over Jeff’s head.
As Jeff was roaring and striking blindly at me I managed to wriggle clear. But he caught my leg and pinned me as I was getting to my feet. I went over and landed near the gun.
“Get the hell outa here,” I panted to Reg. “I can fix him, but get that camera away.”
Reg bolted out of the door. He knew how important that picture was and he was smart enough not to worry about me.
I belted Jeff over the head with the gun. I remembered how he had handled Audrey Sheridan and how he had roughed me around, so I put a lot of steam into the wallop. He went limp.
I dragged the camera-case off his head, rolled him on his back and made sure that he was out, then I legged it down the passage. There was no sign of anyone and no sound of activity. It looked like Starkey had considered Jeff big enough to handle the morgue on his own.
I shot through the post-mortem room and the receiving-room and stumbled out into the dark alley. The hot air and the musty smell hit me like a slap in the face after the cold of the morgue. There was another smell that hadn’t been there before. The faint smell of lilac.
I stopped short and sniffed again. It was lilac all right. I called to Reg.
He made an odd growling noise that came from almost at my feet and I turned on my flashlight. He was sitting against the wall, a dazed, blank look on his face.
“She’s got the camera,” he said, struggling to sit up.
Then I did get mad. “What do you mean?” I snarled at him. “Who got what?”
“Some dame... as I came out, she grabbed me—”
“You let some dame take that camera?” I said, hardly believing my ears.
“She stuck her hip into me and I hit the wall—” he began, but that was enough for me.
“The little smarty!” I said violently. “That’s the redhead... Audrey Sheridan, Cranville’s pet dick! She’s pinched every damn clue I’ve found up to now and I’ve had enough of it. Come on, don’t sit there like a stuffed duck, let’s go.”
He crawled to his feet. “It could be her,” he said miserably, as he tagged along behind me. “That jiu-jitsu stuff got me on the wrong foot.”
“It got me on the wrong foot too,” I said grimly, “but this is the last time she pulls a fast one on me. After I’m through with her she’ll be taking her meals off the mantelpiece.”
We reached the Ford coupe and bundled in.
“Where now?” Reg asked, starting the engine.
“Where do you think? We’re going to call on Miss Strangler Lewis and I’m getting that camera back!”
As he pulled away from the kerb the crazy woman let off another gurgling scream.
“If you think that’s anything like a noise, you wait until I’ve got my mitts on that little smarty-pants,” I said savagely. “Get moving, can’t you.”
“I think I’m going to enjoy this,” Reg said, and shoved his foot on the accelerator.
V
I wasted two valuable days hunting Audrey Sheridan, but I didn’t find her. When I broke into her apartment I discovered her toilet things, some clothes and a fair-sized bag I’d noticed previously had disappeared. It looked as she had decided to duck out of sight.
While I was searching around for her, Wolf had taken over the Granville Gazette. I had to leave him to it, and Reg reported that he was reorganizing the place in a big way. There was nothing I could do with the Gazette until I had found the picture of Dixon’s body. And it didn’t look like I was going to find it.
I was sore as hell about the whole thing. The worst of it was Starkey thought I had the photograph. I knew he would go all out to stop me using it and I was walking around town like a trapeze artist using frayed ropes. Any minute I expected someone to shoot me.
Most of my time was spent either watching Audrey’s apartment or her office.
At the end of the second day I had come to the conclusion that she had either left town or else had hidden herself away in some foxhole only she knew about. For the past forty-eight hours I had kept in touch with Ted Esslinger, but he had no idea where she was or where she was likely to be hiding.
It did cross my mind that she might have been kidnapped, but the fact that she had packed a bag and also had the photograph, which in itself was dynamite, seemed to me to be sufficient reason for her to duck out of sight. She would know that I’d do everything to get the picture back and she wasn’t likely to take any chance of running into me.
Starkey showed his hand on the night of the second day after Reg and I had visited the morgue.
I had spent the previous night watching Audrey’s apartment and I was feeling pretty low. I returned to the Eastern Hotel, went immediately to my bedroom and flopped into a bath.
One of Starkey’s thugs tossed four inches of lead piping filled with T.N.T. through my bedroom window and wrecked the room. If I hadn’t been in the bath I would have been by now a nasty stain on the wall. As it was, I had half the bathroom ceiling on my head.
I staggered out of the bath, grabbed a towel that was half buried under plaster and went into my bedroom.
A large hole was blown in the outside wall, the ceiling was down and the door was hanging drunkenly on one hinge. The furnishing of the room was wrecked.
That was enough for me. As soon as I got rid of the police, and they in turn had got rid of the rubbernecks, I packed what was left of my clothes and demanded my hotel check.
While the night clerk was making it out, Nora came down the stairs. She looked at me with a cynical, amused look in her eyes.
“Hello, tough guy,” she said, draping herself over the banisters. “Pulling out?”