Helen dropped her eyes. “Yes. She didn’t like it.” Then she laughed. “I remember she said, ‘If I thought that man was bothering you, I would kill him!’ ”
Byron stuck a cold cigarette in his mouth and looked away...
On the train back he kept listening to the click of the wheels, and thinking of Hope the day she had made that confession. He kept telling himself it wasn’t hunch any more, it was logic. Pure police logic. Any dumb rookie could see it now. He’d have to go to Joel Martin’s club first, then to the apartment house where Hope had lived, and after that...
He went to the night club, then to the apartment house.
Now he was back to see Roger Harding. It was afternoon, and Harding was wearing slacks and a sports shirt. The Boston bull was chasing a rubber ball. Harding stirred himself a long drink, then flopped down in a chair and stretched out his legs.
“What is it this time?”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Byron said, “but I’ve got a couple of things to say. You can then judge for yourself whether I should have come to see you again or not.”
Harding lit a cigarette, shook out the match.
Byron watched him, then he said, “Look, I’ll tell you how it is. Your folks are next to broke, and that night you gambled at Joel Martin’s place and got in pretty deep.”
“What night?” Harding jerked forward.
“The night you were with Helen Wood and left her alone so long Martin had to take her home. I was around and the boys told me all about it. You dropped nearly a hundred thousand dollars, didn’t you?”
Harding rose. “What of it?”
“As I say, your folks lost their money on Wall Street and they couldn’t pay off for you — you knew it was no good even asking them. Your father has already borrowed up to his neck to keep his business going. It was bad for you, because Joel Martin was tough. You’d heard of welshers that had got killed. You were scared to death Martin would have you bumped off. That’s true, isn’t it?”
“No!”
“I think it is. I think it depressed you, to put it mildly. You got desperate. Helen said you acted sick — You were sick all right. That last night she was here you had a date with her, but you got crocked. While you were high as a kite you got the idea you could kill Martin. It was either him or you, you figured.”
Harding shook his head. “That isn’t true!”
“No? Listen. You got the key to Hope Miller’s apartment out of Helen’s purse. How do I know? Because after I figured it out I asked the night clerk and he said that when Helen came in she said she’d lost her key and they had to let her into the apartment. They didn’t know her name, but they knew she was living there, so it was all right. Just a little everyday occurrence, but it fits.”
“It doesn’t prove murder.”
“No. But this will. We would have known if anybody not belonging in the apartment house had entered around the murder time. We questioned the doorman and the elevator boys, but they didn’t see anyone who didn’t live in the building. So we would have known if you’d come in the regular way. But you didn’t. I talked to Helen, and on the train back from Virginia I thought about it. You used the dog. This Boston bull. You came through the service entrance in the rear and went up in the delivery elevator. You claimed you didn’t like taking the dog in the front way because he was so frisky he always jumped on people. Well, the guy in the service elevator doesn’t know the tenants very well, so he didn’t think anything about it. And since this was a crime somebody had already confessed to, nobody thought of asking him. Only I did, just a little while ago. He remembered you — and the bulldog. Both going in and coming out.”
Roger Harding backed a little.
Byron unholstered the Police Positive and covered him.
“You knew Helen was leaving on the midnight train. So you told Martin to come up at twelve-thirty. You had plenty of time because Hope wouldn’t be through at the club until two. The way you got Martin to come up was by telling him Helen wanted to see him there alone. When he came, you were waiting. You knew where Hope kept her gun, and you had it. You shot him. You weren’t so drunk that you forgot to wipe your prints off the gun...”
“Listen,” Harding whispered. “I wouldn’t have let Hope get sentenced, honest... It’s just that women, they get acquitted on cases like these. But men haven’t got a chance—”
Byron scowled. “Guys like you haven’t a chance. And haven’t guts, either. Look at Hope Miller. She thought that when her kid sister came home to get her bag, she’d met Martin and had some trouble. She thought Helen killed him. So she destroyed all other clues, and took the rap herself. She thought the kid had run off scared, and because she had always protected her, she was going to this time.”
Byron got out his handcuffs.
He was standing on the shabby street outside the Tombs when she came out.
She was lovely. The afternoon sun filtered down through the dusty buildings and shone on her red hair; her face was aglow with smiles. She held herself straight. Newspaper cameras flashed. She walked across the sidewalk to the taxi.
She walked right past Byron, so close he could have reached out and touched her. But he was just a pale young man with a felt hat pushed back on his head, and she didn’t even see him.
To Bury a Friend
by Stanley Anton
Stanley Anton’s “To Bury a Friend” is one of the thirteen “first stories” which won special awards in EQMM’s Ninth Annual Contest. It is a sincere and straightforward example of the tough-sentimental school — the hardboiled species that originated in the golden era of Black Mask. The author was born and raised in New York, and “nurtured in New York’s educational institutions.” He saw a good deal of the world and very little of the war as an Army medic on various troopships. After service, he took a B.A. degree in Drama at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and since then has followed a Joseph’s-coat pattern of odd-and-interesting jobs (the traditional apprenticeship for so many writers) — in Mr. Anton’s case, as a filling station attendant, a publicity man, a theatrical reviewer, a producer, and an advertising representative. And now, after the war and college and sundry occupations, Mr. Anton has come to believe that “the best stories are found in bars, where the atmosphere is most conducive...” Well, we may not agree — but then again, we cannot conscientiously disagree.
It started simply. In Mama Dukas’s kitchen. She showed Danny the letter. It said Nick was dead. In Chicago. It was a police letter.
She was too old, she said. She had buried two sons and his father. Would he go?
And please, why did he die?
It looked like Nick wasn’t going to beat her by much.
Danny went. It was an obligation.
The funeral parlor was dusty and old. Two rubber plants drooped their leaves in the gloom. John’s Funeral Home in gold paint on the window, was flaking, but the display model casket in the window was shiny and the brass handles polished.
There was a man seated at the desk. He was plump and shiny in a blue serge suit. He rose to greet Danny, a questioning smile on his face.
“I want to bury a friend.”
The face arranged itself into brisk sympathy.
“We must all go. May I extend my...”
“Never mind. I want a decent burial and I don’t want to pay an arm and a leg.”
The plump man sat down behind his desk, and wiped perspiration off his face with a large embroidered handkerchief. “Of course. We can arrange one that will be suitable and dignified and within the ah... realm of finance.” he said.