Johnny Liddell slouched in the big chair, watched the blonde bustling around his kitchen. The smell of coffee was strong and promising. Sally Horton still wore the flimsy pajamas, rolled to the knees, a shirt of Liddell’s draped over her shoulders, the tails flapping ludicrously as she walked.
Even the loose shirt couldn’t disguise the fluidity of her movement as she walked toward him, balancing a cup of coffee on a saucer. She made it without spilling a drop, pushed it at him triumphantly. She grinned as he tasted it, burned his tongue.
“That’s an old trick,” Liddell complained. “Burn my tongue so I can’t taste that the toast is burned.” He set the cup back on the saucer. “You’d better be thinking about going back to your place, hadn’t you?”
The smile dimmed. “Must I?”
Liddell shrugged. “Herlehy will probably want to be talking to you. After the coroner’s done with the autopsy.”
The smile went blank, some of the color drained from the girl’s face. “Autopsy? But he shot himself. You don’t need an autopsy for that. You said yourself—”
“He had a bullet hole in his head. It came out through his jaw.” He watched the muscles form little knots at the sides of her jaw. “A suicide rarely holds the gun so high the bullet comes out lower than at the place of entry.”
She backed away from him. “Then you killed him?”
Liddell grinned glumly. “No. You did.”
He took a swallow of the coffee, put cup and saucer on the floor alongside his chair. “And in a little while, Inspector Herlehy’ll be able to prove it.”
“You’re crazy,” she told him in shocked certainty. “Why should I kill my husband?”
“For one thing, because you’re tired of him. You might have stuck if he could hold onto his brother’s insurance. At least until you figured a way to get it away from him.”
“But I hired you. I was the one who told you he killed Jack. If it hadn’t been for me—”
Liddell shook his head. “The police weren’t fooled. When you opened that letter from the insurance company saying they were withholding payment, you knew you had to find a patsy. And your husband was made to order.”
She shook her head wordlessly, backed away. “You’re wrong. Bob killed his brother. You said so yourself.”
“I said that he could have. That was all part of your plan. You waited outside in the car. When Jack came out, you clouted him with something — a tire iron probably. Then you took off.” He watched the girl’s face. “The police have a witness to the fact that a car was in that alley when Jack was killed.”
“You can’t pin that on me.”
Liddell sighed. “The worst part of it was that it was all for nothing. Even if the police write your husband’s death off as suicide, you can’t collect the money.”
The color flooded back into her face. “I do. I’m his only heir. As his wife—”
“You get what he had. But if the police buy the story that he killed his brother, he can’t collect either the insurance or the estate. There’s a little clause in the law that says a murderer can’t benefit from the fruits of his crime.”
The color started to drain away again. She stared at him. “I... I killed him for nothing? I... I couldn’t collect anyhow?” Her eyes began to glaze as she started to laugh. Her laughter hit a high peak, she began to shake uncontrollably.
Liddell got out of his chair, shook her. She continued to shrill. He hit her with the flat of his hand; the laughter broke off on a high note. She stared at him.
“I hated him but I would have stayed for the money. Now I get neither.” She looked up at Liddell. “What do I do, Johnny?”
He shook his head. “That’s up to you, chickie. But whatever you decide to do, you’d better do it fast.” He consulted his watch. “That autopsy ought to be over in an hour and they’ll have all the proof they need that Horton had been fed a skin full of junk and then shot.”
The blonde stared at him. “How could you know?”
“There were two real fresh punctures on his arm. One was enough to send him out of this world — the other to keep him there. And the autopsy will show it.” He watched while she walked over, shrugged into her coat. “Where are you going?”
“To give myself up.” She smiled at him wanly. “I can’t wait to see whether I killed him in a moment of temporary insanity or in self-defense. Watch the papers.” She walked to the door, left.
Liddell reached down, picked up the cup and saucer. He stared glumly at the coffee, pulled himself out of the chair and spilled the coffee into the sink. He lifted the Scotch bottle from the closet, spilled three fingers into a glass.
“What a waste of good material,” he groaned.
He lifted the glass to his lips, drained it, shook his head sadly. “What a waste!”
Save Me in San Salvador
by Bill S. Ballinger
A very famous mystery writer laces grand larceny with a dash of Latin humor and high-tension suspense.
“Well,” said Dort, “I received a letter from a guy you know.”
“Who?” asked J. J. Peterson, vice-president in charge of claims for the North American Coastal Insurance Company. He began, leisurely, to unwrap a large cigar.
“Herman K. Berman,” replied Dort, glancing idly out the window of Peterson’s New York office to watch a pigeon plane in for a perfect three point landing. Peterson’s fingers snapped the expensive cigar and the ends flipped to the carpet. “Sure,” continued Dort, returning his attention to Peterson, “Berman sort of indicated you knew him.”
“I know him all right,” said Peterson, breathing heavily. “He’s an embezzler who cost us twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“How’d it happen?” asked Dort.
“It was one of those things which don’t make much sense. Berman used to teach college — he was a classics professor at Markam — a little fresh-water college on Long Island. Had been a fixture for ten, fifteen years. Then an old biddy named Elsa Shrewsbury kicked off and left twenty-five thousand bucks to establish an Otto Shrewsbury Scholarship Award. Old man Shrewsbury was her husband who’d died thirty years before and left her a wad of dough.”
Peterson paused, then continued indignantly. “This Professor Herman Berman had always kept his nose clean, and he was put in charge of the dough.” Peterson shook his head. “Who’d ever suspected the egg-head?”
Dort, a special investigator, had done business many times with Peterson. He said, impatiently, “So Berman grabbed the dough and departed.”
“Your understatement is admirable,” said Peterson. “Berman stole the dough and rah like hell.” Spotting a long segment of the broken cigar, he retrieved it. Lighting a match, Peterson settled back in his chair and continued, “But the college, unfortunately, had previously conceived the bright idea of having the administrator of the funds bonded — Berman.” He regarded the fuming end of his cigar with distaste.
“Maybe,” Dort remarked calmly, “Berman felt he was entitled to the award himself.”
“Berman was a man in his late forties,” Peterson said, “and he was a bachelor. I think he was getting fed up and all of a sudden he decided he’d get romance. He got a bunch of ideas, and a yen to live in Shangri-la.”
“Anyway,” asked Dort, “which’d you rather have back — Herman K. Berman, or your twenty-five grand?”
“I’d rather have both.”
“You can’t have both,” Dort said, “but I’m giving you your choice.”
“In that case,” Peterson said promptly, “I’ll take the dough.”
Dort turned away his boney, angular face to conceal any stray expression of triumph. He said indifferently, “I guess I can get your money back — less, of course, the usual commission.”