Miss Glenn stood up suddenly, pushing her arms straight down at her sides. Then she sank slowly down into the chair again, sat motionless. I said: «Did he have any help?» Then I made a sudden, sharp movement — and stopped.
Beasley jerked a swift glance at me, but I wasn’t looking at Beasley. There was a shadow outside one of the windows — a lighter shadow than the dark lawn and darker trees. There was a hollow, bitter, coughing plop; a thin spray of whitish smoke in the window.
Beasley jerked, rose halfway to his feet, then fell on his face with one arm doubled under him.
Canales stepped through the windows, past Beasley’s body, came three steps further, and stood silent, with a long, black, small-calibered gun in his hand, the larger tube of a silencer flaring from the end of it.
«Be very still,» he said. «I am a fair shot — even with this elephant gun.»
His face was so white that it was almost luminous. His dark eyes were all smoke-gray iris, without pupils.
«Sound carries well at night, out of open windows,» he said tonelessly.
Dorr put both his hands down on the desk and began to pat it. The black cat put its body very low, drifted down over the end of the desk and went under a chair. Miss Glenn turned her head towards Canales very slowly, as if some kind of mechanism moved it.
Canales said: «Perhaps you have a buzzer on that desk. If the door of the room opens, I shoot. It will give me a lot of pleasure to see blood come out of your fat neck.»
I moved the fingers of my right hand two inches on the arm of my chair. The silenced gun swayed towards me and I stopped moving my fingers. Canales smiled very briefly under his angular mustache.
«You are a smart dick,» he said. «I thought I had you right. But there are things about you I like.»
I didn’t say anything. Canales looked back at Dorr. He said very precisely: «I have been bled by your organization for a long time. But this is something else again. Last night I was cheated out of some money. But this is trivial too. I am wanted for the murder of this Harger. A man named Cadena has been made to confess that I hired him… That is just a little too much fix.»
Dorr swayed gently over his desk, put his elbows down hard on it, held his face in his small hands and began to shake. His cigar was smoking on the floor.
Canales said: «I would like to get my money back, and I would like to get clear of this rap — but most of all I would like you to say something — so I can shoot you with your mouth open and see blood come out of it.»
Beasley’s body stirred on the carpet. His hands groped a little. Dorr’s eyes were agony trying not to look at him. Canales was rapt and blind in his act by this time. I moved my fingers a little more on the arm of my chair. But I had a long way to go.
Canales said: «Pina has talked to me. I saw to that. You killed Harger. Because he was a secret witness against Manny Tinnen. The D.A. kept the secret, and the dick here kept it. But Harger could not keep it himself. He told his broad — and the broad told you. So the killing was arranged, in a way to throw suspicion with a motive on me. First on this dick, and if that wouldn’t hold, on me.»
There was silence. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t get anything out. I didn’t think anybody but Canales would ever again say anything.
Canales said: «You fixed Pina to let Harger and his girl win my money. It was not hard — because I don’t play my wheels crooked.»
Dorr had stopped shaking. His face lifted, stone-white, and turned towards Canales, slowly, like the face of a man about to have an epileptic fit. Beasley was up on one elbow. His eyes were almost shut but a gun was laboring upwards in his hand.
Canales leaned forward and began to smile. His trigger finger whitened at the exact moment Beasley’s gun began to pulse and roar.
Canales arched his back until his body was a rigid curve. He fell stiffly forward, hit the edge of the desk and slid along it to the floor, without lifting his hands.
Beasley dropped his gun and fell down on his face again. His body got soft and his fingers moved fitfully, then were still.
I got motion into my legs, stood up and went to kick Canales’ gun under the desk — senselessly. Doing this I saw that Canales had fired at least once, because Frank Dorr had no right eye.
He sat still and quiet with his chin on his chest and a nice touch of melancholy on the good side of his face.
The door of the room came open and the secretary with the nose-glasses slid in pop-eyed. He staggered back against the door, closing it again. I could hear his rapid breathing across the room.
He gasped: «Is — is anything wrong?»
I thought that very funny, even then. Then I realized that he might be short-sighted and from where he stood Frank Dorr looked natural enough. The rest of it could have been just routine to Dorr’s help.
I said: «Yes — but we’ll take care of it. Stay out of here.»
He said: «Yes, sir,» and went out again. That surprised me so much that my mouth fell open. I went down the room and bent over the gray-haired Beasley. He was unconscious, but had a fair pulse. He was bleeding from the side, slowly.
Miss Glenn was standing up and looked almost as dopy as Canales had looked. She was talking to me quickly, in a brittle, very distinct voice: «I didn’t know Lou was to be killed, but I couldn’t have done anything about it anyway. They burned me with a branding iron — just for a sample of what I’d get. Look!»
I looked. She tore her dress down in front and there was a hideous burn on her chest almost between her two breasts.
I said: «Okey, sister. That’s nasty medicine. But we’ve got to have some law here now and an ambulance for Beasley.»
I pushed past her towards the telephone, shook her hand off my arm when she grabbed at me. She went on talking to my back in a thin, desperate voice.
«I thought they’d just hold Lou out of the way until after the trial. But they dragged him out of the cab and shot him without a word. Then the little one drove the taxi into town and the big one brought me up into the hills to a shack. Dorr was there. He told me how you had to be framed. He promised me the money, if I went through with it, and torture till I died, if I let them down.»
It occurred to me that I was turning my back too much to people. I swung around, got the telephone in my hands, still on the hook, and put my gun down on the desk.
«Listen! Give me a break,» she said wildly. «Dorr framed it all with Pina, the croupier. Pina was one of the gang that got Shannon where they could fix him. I didn’t —»
I said: «Sure — that’s all right. Take it easy.»
The room, the whole house seemed very still, as if a lot of people were hunched outside the door, listening.
«It wasn’t a bad idea,» I said, as if I had all the time in the world. «Lou was just a white chip to Frank Dorr. The play he figured put us both out as witnesses. But it was too elaborate, took in too many people. That sort always blows up in your face.»
«Lou was getting out of the state,» she said, clutching at her dress. «He was scared. He thought the roulette trick was some kind of a pay-off to him.»
I said: «Yeah,» lifted the phone and asked for police headquarters.
The room door came open again then and the secretary barged in with a gun. A uniformed chauffeur was behind him with another gun.
I said very loudly into the phone: «This is Frank Dorr’s house. There’s been a killing.
The secretary and the chauffeur dodged out again. I heard running in the hail. I clicked the phone, called the Telegram office and got Von Ballin. When I got through giving him the flash Miss Glenn was gone out of the window into the dark garden.
I didn’t go after her. I didn’t mind very much if she got away.