“I went there, was admitted by the butler. Cal said he hadn’t called me, that I must have misunderstood, but that he wanted to talk a little business with me. I only appear in one show a night here at the Golden Swan. The one I’ve just finished, the midnight show. He wanted me to appear also in the earlier show, and we argued about it a little. No girl wants to work more than she has to, does she? I made Cal’s club in the first place and lie knew it. I expected, demanded, and got special privileges.
“Cal had dismissed the servants right after I got there. Once over our squabble, we had a few drinks. It was late when I left. I’d just arrived at the club here when I got another call. This time it really was Cal. I recognized his voice. It sounded strained. He said he had to see me. So I went back to his house. He was dead. I ran. I admit that. I was frightened, and I bad nobody to help me, tell me what to do. I... I thought my name would never come into it. At least not in this way. So I hurried back here, barely making my show. The gun in the powder box...”
“...is yours,” Lumsden stated flatly. “The papers in your fireplace, your admission that you were at the scene of the crime. This crazy story you’ve told... Hell, you’re so guilty it’s sticking out all over you!”
She sobbed, and Lumsden told us to get on down the hall. I was thinking. Barney Thomas. Mrs. Groat, who cooked.
Then Lumsden told me to open the alley door, breaking in on the thoughts pouring through my mind. I opened the door. The night outside was blacker, thicker, wetter, it seemed.
There was a metal stairway from the door to the alley. Madeline, Barney and me all started down. Lumsden stepped down after us. Lumsden’s car was gleaming wet in the night, just up the alley. In seconds now we’d be on our way to a place where there were entirely too many cops to hope to do anything ever for Madeline.
Well, those metal stairs were slick anyhow with the rain. Lumsden was close behind me. It was almost a natural thing to slip, to bend myself back, my arms going like windmills, to keep from falling.
Lumsden snarled a curse and tried to scramble back. But it was over even before he, could bring his gun up. My fingers closed over his gun wrist. I heaved, and it was like an elephant snapping a cougar over his back with his strong trunk.
Lumsden hit the alley hard enough to crack a rib. It knocked him cold. But I’d really lost my footing with the heave, went to my knees. I was in a prime position. I had no warning. Barney Thomas kicked me flush in the face.
I went back, and he stomped on me, and I heard Madeline trying to scream. It was like having thick sorghum molasses poured over me.
I heard Madeline say, “Barney... You’re hurting me!” and knew he’d grabbed her.
“The hell with that,” he said. “Spill it and make it fast! Where’s the dough, the loot? The thirty thousand bucks undeclared money you killed Cal Eurich for?”
“But, Barney... I didn’t...”
I heard the sound of him hitting her, and she whimpered like a lost kitten. “Barney... I... thought you liked me...”
He laughed and called her a name. He said he’d been thinking for some time of taking over Cal Eurich’s rackets and he’d played up to her what little he had because she had an inside track. Then he said, “And you might as well spill the whereabouts of the thirty grand, baby. There’s a long night ahead, and it won’t be hard to find a quiet corner where we won’t be disturbed.”
She was really sobbing now. You could feel her shivering and trembling in the night. We were so deep in the alley, wouldn’t have done her any good to scream. Barney’d never let the scream do more than get started, and then he’d really be mad.
“Barney... You wouldn’t... couldn’t...”
“I’ll find that dough or beat your brains out,” he told her, “just to see if they’re really made of cellophane.”
She started squirming and struggling and fighting him like a crazy thing then. He laughed and was all set to hit her again, when I finally got to my feet. I was quiet about it, and she was making some noise, so he didn’t hear me.
I grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around, and hit him. I pulled the punch some, so as not to break his neck, and he went sailing across the alley, slammed into the wall of the building, and slid down, like grain running out of a gunny sack.
I took Madeline in my arms and talked to her like I would a kitten. There wasn’t any hardness about her now. She was scared. She needed somebody to help her, to lead her along, to show her what to do.
She said so. “Where can I go, Willie?” she said.
I thought about it. She said, “The police... want to put me in the electric chair. Barney will have all Eurich’s men behind him after this. Barney will take over. Barney... believes... I’ve got thirty thousand dollars. But I haven’t... and he might kill me.”
She held onto me and said, “Willie, where can I go?”
I took a breath and said, “With me.”
“But... where, Willie?”
“Everywhere. All over the country. Across the ocean. You can sing. I got a big strong back. We’ll have a helluva good time.”
She cried a little more. I held her and said, “Barney showed you what he was, just now. You don’t think nothing of Barney after this?”
“I hate Barney Thomas!” she said. “I... I was just crying, Willie, because I know — at a time like this when every soul on earth is out to kill me — that I’ve got somebody like you.”
I got all choked up. She ran her hands over my big arms and chest and shivered like she liked it and whispered, “Let’s go, Willie!”
So we scrammed out of town and a justice of the peace married us and we headed down into Jersey.
I guess you’ll admit that I’m nobody’s booby. Mr. Eurich thought I was. So did Barney and everybody else. Mr. Eurich let me come and go in the house when I was gardening for him. He never had the slightest idea how slick I was in pilfering his desk, snitching the combination to his safe, learning about that thirty thousand dollars.
I had to plan it all careful, pick just the right time, but look what I got just for murdering Mr. Eurich. Thirty thousand bucks and the best-looking dame you’ve ever seen!
Sure, it was me called Madeline that first time, to get her to Eurich’s and give me time to get in her apartment, burn the papers, find the handkerchief for the plant in Eurich’s living room, get my hands on the gun where she’d always kept it in a chest of drawers after the mugging scare slackened.
I went to Eurich’s place then, waited outside. I saw her leave. I timed it. I went in and made him call Madeline at the Golden Swan. No wonder she said his voice sounded strained on that second call. I was holding a gun to his head. Then I shot him. I had a taxi a block away, and a package ready to slip the money in, addressed to General Delivery in this little Jersey town that I spoke of. I went to the Golden Swan, planted the gun, dropped the package in the box on the corner, and went back to Eurich’s. I gave the cab driver ten bucks so he would drive like hell, and I made the round trip nearly as fast as Madeline made it one way.
It was a hell of a thing to do to Madeline, but I’m just a country boy and there was a lot of competition around. Anyhow, anything’s fair in love and war.
Yes, sir, as long as I’m awake, I’m sure nobody’s dumb-bell. But when I’m asleep, I guess it’s a different matter.
Like Pa used to say, it must run in the blood for the men in our family to talk in their sleep when they got something heavy on their mind. I figured I was smart enough to throw it off my mind, never think of it, and I did that all right But I must have felt a little too much like congratulating myself.