Lights flickered from the albino’s eyes as he glanced back. «You should know, rube.»
The car slowed in front of a big frame house with a trellised porch, walls finished in round shingles, blind, lightless windows. Across the street, a stencil sign on a brick building built sheer to the sidewalk said: «Paolo Perrugini Funeral Parlors.»
The car swung out to make a wide turn into a gravel driveway. Lights splashed into an open garage. They went in, slid to a stop beside a big shiny undertaker’s ambulance.
The albino snapped: «All out!»
Carmady said: «I see our next trip is all arranged for.»
«Funny guy,» the albino snarled. «A wise monkey.»
«Uh-uh. I just have nice scaffold manners,» Carmady drawled.
The dark man cut the motor and snapped on a big flash, then cut the lights, got out of the car. He shot the beam of the flash up a narrow flight of wooden steps in the corner. The albino said: «Up you go, rube. Push the girl ahead of you. I’m behind with my rod.»
Jean Adrian got out of the car past Carmady, without looking at him. She went up the steps stiffly, and the three men made a procession behind her.
There was a door at the top. The girl opened it and hard white light came out at them. They went into a bare attic with exposed studding, a square window in front and rear, shut tight, the glass painted black. A bright bulb hung on a drop cord over a kitchen table and a big man sat at the table with a saucer of cigarette butts at his elbow. Two of them still smoked.
A thin loose-lipped man sat on a bed with a Luger beside his left hand. There was a worn carpet on the floor, a few sticks of furniture, a half-opened clapboard door in the corner through which a toilet seat showed, and one end of a big old-fashioned bathtub standing up from the floor on iron legs.
The man at the kitchen table was large but not handsome. He had carroty hair and eyebrows a shade darker, a square aggressive face, a strong jaw. His thick lips held his cigarette brutally. His clothes looked as if they had cost a great deal of money and had been slept in.
He glanced carelessly at Jean Adrian, said around the cigarette: «Park the body, sister. Hi, Carmady. Gimme that rod, Lefty, and you boys drop down below again.»
The girl went quietly across the attic and sat down in a straight wooden chair. The man on the bed stood up, put the Luger at the big man’s elbow on the kitchen table. The three gunmen went down the stairs, leaving the door open.
The big man touched the Luger, stared at Carmady, said sarcastically: «I’m Doll Conant. Maybe you remember me.»
Carmady stood loosely by the kitchen table, with his legs spread wide, his hands in his overcoat pockets, his head tilted back. His half-closed eyes were sleepy, very cold.
He said: «Yeah. I helped my dad hang the only rap on you that ever stuck.»
«It didn’t stick, mugg. Not with the Court of Appeals.»
«Maybe this one will,» Carmady said carelessly. «Kidnapping is apt to be a sticky rap in this state.»
Conant grinned without opening his lips. His expression was grimly good-humored. He said: «Let’s not barber. We got business to do and you know better than that last crack. Sit down — or rather take a look at Exhibit One first. In the bathtub, behind you. Yeah, take a look at that. Then we can get down to tacks.»
Carmady turned, went across to the clapboard door, pushed through it. There was a bulb sticking out of the wall, with a key switch. He snapped it on, bent over the tub.
For a moment his body was quite rigid and his breath was held rigidly. Then he let it out very slowly, and reached his left hand back and pushed the door almost shut. He bent farther over the big iron tub.
It was long enough for a man to stretch out in, and a man was stretched out in it, on his back. He was fully dressed even to a hat, although his head didn’t look as if he had put it on himself. He had thick, gray-brown curly hair. There was blood on his face and there was a gouged, red-rimmed hole at the inner corner of his left eye.
He was Shenvair and he was long since dead.
Carmady sucked in his breath and straightened slowly, then suddenly bent forward still further until he could see into the space between the tub and the wall. Something blue and metallic glistened down there in the dust. A blue steel gun. A gun like Shenvair’s gun.
Carmady glanced back quickly. The not quite shut door showed him a part of the attic, the top of the stairs, one of Doll Conant’s feet square and placid on the carpet, under the kitchen table. He reached his arm out slowly down behind the tub, gathered the gun up. The four exposed chambers had steel-jacketed bullets in them.
Carmady opened his coat, slipped the gun down inside the waistband of his trousers, tightened his belt, and buttoned his coat again. He went out of the bathroom, shut the clapboard door carefully.
Doll Conant gestured at a chair across the table from him: «Sit down.»
Carmady glanced at Jean Adrian. She was staring at him with a kind of rigid curiosity, her eyes dark and colorless in a stone-white face under the black hat.
He gestured at her, smiled faintly. «It’s Mister Shenvair, angel. He met with an accident. He’s — dead.»
The girl stared at him without any expression at all. Then she shuddered once, violently. She stared at him again, made no sound of any kind.
Carmady sat down in the chair across the table from Conant.
Conant eyed him, added a smoking stub to the collection in the white saucer, lit a fresh cigarette, streaking the match the whole length of the kitchen table.
He puffed, said casually: «Yeah, he’s dead. You shot him.»
Carmady shook his head very slightly, smiled. «No.»
«Skip the baby eyes, feller. You shot him. Perrugini, the wop undertaker across the street, owns this place, rents it out now and then to a right boy for a quick dust. Incidentally, he’s a friend of mine, does me a lot of good among the other wops. He rented it to Shenvair. Didn’t know him, but Shenvair got a right ticket into him. Perrugini heard shooting over here tonight, took a look out of his window, saw a guy make it to a car. He saw the license number of the car. Your car.»
Carmady shook his head again. «But I didn’t shoot him, Conant.»
«Try and prove it … The wop ran over and found Shenvair halfway up the stairs, dead. He dragged him up and stuck him in the bathtub. Some crazy idea about the blood, I suppose. Then he went through him, found a police card, a private-dick license, and that scared him. He got me on the phone and when I got the name, I came steaming.»
Conant stopped talking, eyed Carmady steadily. Carmady said very softly: «You hear about the shooting at Cyrano’s tonight?»
Conant nodded.
Carmady went on: «I was there, with a kid friend of mine from the hotel. Just before the shooting this Shenvair threw a punch at me. The kid followed Shenvair here and they shot each other. Shenvair was drunk and scared and I’ll bet he shot first. I didn’t even know the kid had a gun. Shenvair shot him through the stomach. He got home, died there. He left me a note. I have the note.»
After a moment Conant said: «You killed Shenvair, or hired that boy to do it. Here’s why. He tried to copper his bet on your blackmail racket. He sold out to Courtway.»
Carmady looked startled. He snapped his head around to look at Jean Adrian. She was leaning forward staring at him with color in her cheeks, a shine in her eyes. She said very softly: «I’m sorry — angel. I had you wrong.»
Carmady smiled a little, turned back to Conant. He said: «She thought I was the one that sold out. Who’s Courtway? Your bird dog, the state senator?»
Conant’s face turned a little white. He laid his cigarette down very carefully in the saucer, leaned across the table and hit Carmady in the mouth with his fist. Carmady went over backwards in the rickety chair. His head struck the floor.