She sagged back against him and began to moan softly. The small sound came through a light froth of blood that was deepening the carmine stain of her lipstick.
He put his hands under her elbows and lowered her to the floor. She sighed once and opened her eyes. They were clouding fast. She said, “Smart copper,” and turned her face away from him. She coughed once or twice and then her body stiffened in his arms. She said, “No, no,” and tried to sit up, but she didn’t make it. When she slumped back again it was all over.
O’Neill looked up and Betty Nelson was standing in the doorway. Her hands hung at her sides. In one of them was a smoking gun. Her face was empty.
“She killed Eddie,” she said. “She didn’t give him a chance. She told me he killed himself, but I knew she was lying.”
“She was lying,” O’Neill said. He was still crouched beside the dead body Estelle Moran. He felt too tired to ever get up.
“I came here after her. I told the desk clerk you’d sent for me and he gave me a key.”
O’Neill heard footsteps in the corridor, excited voices.
He got up quickly, took the gun from the girl’s hand.
“Don’t talk,” he said fiercely. He took her by the shoulders, shook her hard. “I did send for you! You came here, and she was dead already. I shot her. She pulled a gun on me and I had to shoot her. Don’t forget that!”
The copper came into the room then.
“Gosh! Mr. O’Neill—”
He stopped and looked at the body on the floor. “What happened?”
“This is the girl Logan was looking for,” O’Neill said. “She’s wanted for two murder raps. Keep the corridors clear. Send the tenants back into their rooms.”
Logan got there ten minutes later. When O’Neill finished his story he was nodding contentedly. “This is the best way all around. No trouble about a trial now.” He looked down at the dead girl and shook his head gloomily. “With those legs she’d beat any rap.”
Estelle Moran didn’t make the eight o’clock Chief that morning. But she was on it the following day. There was an aunt in California who claimed the body, and was willing to pay the expenses of burial, so she was shipped out West, not in a drawing room, but in the refrigerator car up close to the engine.
O’Neill went down to the station with Logan to see that she made connections for her final trip.
They waited until the train pulled out, then started back down the ramp.
“Well,” O’Neill said, “that’s what she hired me for. To put her on the Chief. So everybody should be happy.”
He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out the crisp fifty dollar bill she’d given him. He looked at it for a minute and then began tearing it into pieces.
“Are you nuts?” Logan asked.
O’Neill didn’t answer. Tearing up the bill made him feel better. But not much.
