“Come on, we’re going out the back way!”
She was a baby who had been trained in a hard school, which was a good thing for me. There were none of the gasps or hysterics. She blinked her eyes once or twice to keep her mind concentrated, nodded once, gulped and grinned.
“
Let’s go,” she said.
We went.
“What’s next?” she asked as we slid down the fence into the alley.
“Make certain the bulls come,” I told her. “We’ll wait. After that we’ve got to act quickly.”
We slid around to the Avenue, and waited.
The bulls were slow. It was ten full minutes before they came. They came in numbers.
I grinned at Norma.
“Okey. Now we start.”
“For what?”
“For the girl that’s about the only witness that’s worth a hang, the chorus girl who gave me the out, the one who said she’d know the two men who were with you if she saw them again.”
“You mean Gertrude Brown?”
“That’s the one.”
“What’ll she do?”
“She may have a chance to do some good identifying.”
Norma shrugged her shoulders.
“You’re running the party,” she said.
We walked a ways before we called a cab, and then we went out to the place where Gertrude Brown had her apartment. Day had broken, a drab day that had wisps of fog drifting over the tops of the buildings. The morning was chill. It was a bad time to wake up a chorus girl.
We had to lean on the doorbell for a while. Finally the latch clicked. We went up.
Gertrude Brown blinked at me. She’d known me as a private detective when I’d called on her before and secured a written statement.
“My Gawd,” she said, “I lose more sleep over you than I do over my debts.”
She was big and blonde, hardboiled as a picnic egg, and a square shooter.
She sucked in a prodigious lungful of air in a great yawn.
“Baby,” I told her, “you’re going to lose a lot more sleep.”
“Yeah?” she asked, and her tone was one of extreme cynicism.
“Yeah,” I told her. “You’re going to clear up the rest of that murder case this morning.”
She snorted.
“I’m goin’ right back to poundin’ the pillow,” she said. “If I hadn’t thought you was a telegram from a sweetie, I’d have let you lean on that doorbell until you were black in the face.”
I grinned at her.
“Come on, Gertrude, be a sport!”
She sneered.
“How often I’ve heard that line!”
I tried another angle.
“This will clear the thing up and release an innocent man of suspicion.”
“Uh huh,” she said. “I was willing to tell all I knew and all I saw. And I told it just that way, and about got laid out on a marble slab for tellin’. But that was what a square shooter should do, and that’s what I did.
“But when it comes to runnin’ out in the chill of the morning for some Phantom Crook that’s nothing in my young life, and playing detective . . . yeah, a fat chance!”
I jerked my head towards Norma Gay.
“She’s asking you to do it to right a wrong for a working girl.”
The blonde turned her ponderous head, let her eyes slither over Norma in cold appraisal.
“How do you cut in on this?” she asked.
And Norma told her, told her in clear, crisp, clean-cut sentences.
“Because I’m Norma Gay, the girl that’s ‘wanted,’ that’s how I cut in on it. I’m a crook. I’ve been a crook. I tried to go straight. Two men fastened down on me like leeches and bled me white. Then when there wasn’t any more for them, they tried to pull a robbery and frame me for the rap. The robbery turned out to be a murder, and I’m left holding the sack, unless I can get the two men who sat at that table. . . .”
That was as far as she got.
“Sit down,” said the blonde chorus girl, “both of you. The gent can close his eyes if he’s easy shocked, ’cause I’m dressin’.
“Why the hell didn’t you come clean in the first place? Afraid I’d turn you in—and you a girl that’s had to support a flock of blackmailers! Hell! Wait until I get my clothes on!”
She probably was trained in the lightning change stuff on the stage. But it seemed to me she just walked as far as the bathroom, turned on the water, made a splash and came out, clothed for the street.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Norma turned to me.
“Where do we go?”
“We don’t,” I said, “because it’s too dangerous.” I explained recent happenings to her. “We’ve got to lay low. But either one of two things will happen. Either The Cracker’s accomplices or masters, whichever way you want to figure ’em, will leave The Cracker in the lurch, or else they won’t.
“If they leave him alone he’ll squeal and spill the whole play. If they come to his support, they’ll naturally bail him out. And they won’t let any grass grow under their feet in getting bail.”
The girl squinted her eyes.
“You think they’ll question him in connection with the Simpson murder?”
I grinned.
“If they don’t they’re dumb. I planted those diamonds in his apartment where the police will be sure to find ’em, and I put the bracelet and ring that tie up the murder case with the diamonds. When the police get those—well—”
The blonde blinked her pop eyes at me.
“What do I do?”
“Go plant yourself in front of the jail,” I told her. “Keep a watch for the men you saw at the table in the cabaret on the night of the murder. One or both of ’em will probably come up, perhaps with a lawyer, trying to get cash bail for The Cracker. When you see them make a commotion.”
“How much of a commotion?” she asked.
“Plenty,” I told her.
I loaded her in the cab, sent her on her way. Norma and I picked up another cab.
“Where?” I asked Norma.
Tears came to her eyes.
“I’m on the dodge, Ed. They’ve got me hooked in with that murder case. You’ve brought pressure to bear on The Cracker by tying him up with me, my clothes in his apartment and all that.
“It puts The Cracker on the spot, but it puts me on the spot, too. If The Cracker weakens and spills what he knows, it’ll be okey. But if he sits tight—well, it’s a frying job, and I’m on the dodge.”
She looked pathetic in the morning light, with her face showing what she’d been through.
“Two of us together,” I said, “two crooks on the dodge.”
“——! Ed,” she said, after a minute, “how glad I am you took those diamonds away from me . . . I guess I can make it now, but it seemed like that bird owed me the stones he’d sent me up for stealing—anyway. Let’s stick together until this thing breaks.”
“Let’s go,” I told her.
We went. It was touch and go whether the newspapers and the cops would start playing back trail and yelling for a mysterious man and a girl. We got a suite in a downtown hotel and waited.
The extras hit the streets around nine o’clock. They gave us the answer.
The blonde had waited in front of the jail. She’d collared a flatfoot cop on the way up and sold him on her idea. About seven, there had been two men and a lawyer drive up in a closed car. The men had bail for The Cracker, and they’d have made it stick, too.
The blonde barged out of the car and made a vociferous identification. The flat foot cop had been dubious. The lawyer had gone into action with a barrage of gab, and it looked as though the party was off, until one of the men, figuring it was getting pretty close to a showdown, tried to make a sneak. The copper got into action. He couldn’t handle the situation. The blonde did a football tackle, got one of the men down on the sidewalk and sat on him.