“No... I don’t have anyone working for me in the shop.”
Eddie came back. “Lieutenant’ll be over in two shakes, Frank.”
“Sniff around, see if you can get onto that dame who phones in that tip.” Frank dismissed his side-kick. “See anybody on the way over here, Rixey?”
“Nobody I know.”
“Ha. An’ you never did get a peek at this dame you claim phones you this hurry-up call?”
“No.” Don was about to say he’d know her, on account of her voice, if he ran into her again. But then he remembered how affected she’d been on the phone — probably she’d been disguising her voice, anyway.
“Say you didn’t see the party who you figure slugged you?”
“Didn’t see anybody. Until I came out of my fog an’ found him... on the floor beside me.”
“You couldn’t of got that smack on the conk, fightin’ with Slenz, could you?” Frank lifted the muzzle of his pistol speculatively.
“Slenz?” Don was hypnotized by the black, staring eye of the gun. “No. I wasn’t fighting with him. Or with anybody. I tell you 1 never saw him before. Didn’t even know his name.”
Frank rocked back on his heels.
“Don’t recognize him, hah?”
The hair at the back of Don’s neck prickled. He hadn’t really looked at the man’s face until right now. The bullet wounds, the gaping mouth... they’d kept him from noticing the cleft chin; the sharp hawk-beak of a nose — the small, delicate ears.
Don recognized him now, all right — from the descriptions in the papers!
“This is the gun goof who shot that paymaster an’ got away with thirty yards this morning,” Frankie corroborated Don’s guess. “1 don’t suppose you been anywheres near Clark-McGeekin’s fact’ry recently?”
“Not since yest—” Don caught himself. But too late...
Frank was up on his feet. “Keep on pourin’, Rixey. We’ll get all this stuff sooner or later, anyway. Just save yourself a lot of trouble if you spill it now.”
“The office manager called me over yesterday to tune down the amplifiers on the office intercom system,” Don said. “That’s all! 1 don’t know one single thing about the robbery!”
“Lessee.” Frank’s chin dropped to his chest in concentration. He scratched his ear with his free hand. “You case the job. Slenz pulls it. You come here to get your split. He won’t give it to you. You mix it up...”
Don pointed to the Klaravox console against the wall, beyond the dead man. “1 came to fix that radio. For Mrs. Garnet. That’s all. Period. You can’t ring me in on any holdup!”
Frank stepped over the corpse, snapped the ON knob of the big set. “I never hear of a radio man acting as caser for a mob. But they’s a first time for everything.”
The radio began to emit a queer, muffled croaking, as a popular song came over the air.
“I guess a little tunin’ is all it needs,” Frank said.
“No!” Don cried. “That’s—”
The hall door opened abruptly. Frank wheeled around, eyes on the arched doorway.
Don came out of the chair, got to the console. He swung it out from the wall, was peering in the open back of the set before Frank realized it.
The detective’s pistol swung in a sharp arc.
“I tol’ you to siddown. You want to be able to plead, in court tomorrow, you stay set! Hear?”
Don backed over to the low-slung chair, dropped into it. “I—” he began.
“Shuddup,” growled Frank. “Hello, Lieutenant. I think we got this ball a yarn pretty well wound up, already.”
The body’d been removed. The camera crew’d come and gone. Tarpaulin covered the carpet stains. The console had been shoved back against the wall.
Eddie and Frank were combing the building for the mysterious informant who’d phoned headquarters. Only Lieutenant Wiley remained in the living-room with Don and Annalou.
She’d been there long enough for worry to congeal into cold fear. When the patrol car picked her up at Outside Inn, she’d been angry — after waiting an hour for Don to show up.
When they brought her to the apartment she was horrified at the murdered man — at Don’s battered head. Now — watching the skepticism on Wiley’s long, collie-dog face — she was panicky. Plainly, the Lieutenant didn’t believe a word Don was saying:
“This dame is tall, thin, holds herself kind of stuck-up. Maybe twenty years old. Not much color in her face — uses lipstick that makes her look like her mouth’d been cut with a razor. Wearin’ a sort of grayish suit—”
“Powder blue,” Annalou corrected. “Hat to match.”
The Lieutenant ran fingers through silver curls at his temples. “Thought you told Frank you’d never seen her.”
“Didn’t realize I had. Came to me just a minute ago. She was at Annalou’s counter, around seven. When she came in with this boy-friend of hers, I was telling Annalou how I’d been at Clark-McGeekin’s yesterday on a job. Then I said I’d go back to my shop an’ work till nine.”
Annalou nodded. “That’s right, Lieutenant. Because—”
“One at a time.” Wiley was sardonic. “Hard enough to follow him.”
“My truck was parked there,” Don went on, earnestly. With Regal’s phone number on it. All she had to do was come back here to her apartment, ring me up. Why I’m so sure it was her — just when I was leaving the Inn, she says something to this guy with her about a Patsy. She meant me... to be the patsy. Site thought it would be a cinch to frame me.”
Wiley blinked. “A dame says ‘Patsy’ and you decide she’s a killer. You see her out on Route 60 — so you figure she lives here on Chestnut. You never saw her but that once — you don’t know what her name is — she’s gotta be this Mrs. Francine Garnet!”
“I know it sounds wacky,” Don protested, “but—”
“It doesn’t even sound that good!” Wiley turned to nod to Frank, in the doorway.
The plainclothesman held out a briefcase. Battered pigskin with a brass side-lock. Frank held the flap up so Wiley could see the lettering burnt on the under side. PROPERTY CLARK-McGEEKIN CORP. LIBERAL REWARD IF RETURNED TO PAYMASTER’S OFFICE.
“Where’d you find it?” Wiley glanced inside to make sure it was empty.
Frank looked sourly at Don. “In his truck. Under the front seat.”
Annalou cried, “No! Noll”
Don swore beneath his breath.
“There’s a locked compartment, in the back of the truck, Lieutenant,” Frank said. “Maybe they’s something else stashed in that.”
Don took out his keys, tossed the leather case to Wiley.
“If you birds think I’d be dumb enough to hide that briefcase in my own truck—”
Wiley handed the keys to Frank. “Haven’t time to tell you how dumb I think you are, Rixey. Take all night.”
Frank went away.
Annalou jumped up excitedly. “Every single word Don says is absolutely true!” She ran to the Lieutenant, grabbed his arm, put her face down close to his.
Wiley threw a leg over the arm of his chair, shifted his position, pointedly avoiding her gaze.
“I bet those two came to Outside Inn in the first place just to see if they could learn anything about Mister Whalen’s condition, from Marie!”
“Who’s Marie?” Wiley asked patiently, still keeping his eyes away from her. From Don, too.
Don reached for the kit which Annalou had rescued from the lobby. He slid noiselessly out of his chair, backed toward the kitchen.
“Marie Whalen. My night relief at Outside Inn. Mister Whalen’s her uncle. So of course when she heard he’d been shot and might die any minute, she telephoned me she wouldn’t come to work tonight...”
Don was in the passageway, catfooting toward the kitchen. Even that far away he could hear Wiley’s: