Johnny stared down into the wise eyes. “You're with me, is that it?”
Her upper lip curled. “If I'm with you, it's because nobody else is with me. I couldn't get a dime out of the whole crowd put together.” She smiled at him. “Faint hope is better than no hope. You're my faint hope. But you should have told me.”
“If you're right, I should have told you.”
“I'm right,” she said confidently.
“Dechant was really overboard on the blonde?”
She was suddenly angry again. “It was almost pathological, the hold she had on him! I've never-”
“Okay, okay. Don't blow your boiler, little sister. Thanks for the entertainment. Send me a bill sometime.”
“No need.” She stretched luxuriantly beneath the spread, her smile impish. “My accountant says it comes under tax-deductible depreciation of a business asset.”
He had to smile. “Now I've heard it called everything. Toodleoo, queenie.”
“Johnny!” she called from the bedroom when he had a hand on the doorknob in the hall. He went back and looked in the door. She was kneeling up in the bed. “If you find out anything, call me,” she said earnestly. “I might have an idea that could help.”
“You never know,” Johnny agreed, and retraced his steps. In the corridor he looked at his watch and avoided the elevator. He ran lightly down the stairs.
The night air was mild. The stars were out, he noticed. Warm day tomorrow. Make that hot. Tough on night workers trying to sleep. Not as-
His feet did an instinctive shuffle to put himself on balance as a dark shadow detached itself from the building wall and loomed up in his path. “What are you doing snooping around up there, Killain?” Jules Tremaine demanded in a tight, hard tone. Even in the comparatively poor street light Johnny could see the heavy scowl on the handsome face.
“I didn't see any claim stakes on the property up there,” Johnny told him. “What's your beef with me, Frenchie?”
“You're too damned nosy!” Tremaine said violently. “And she's worse, playing both ends against the middle. I should never have said a word to you.”
“Maybe you're makin' sense to you, but you're sure as hell not to me,” Johnny said. “Take your troubles to the chaplain, sonny. Now get out of the way.”
“When I'm ready,” the Frenchman said deliberately. “First-”
“First, hell!” Johnny said abruptly, and drove a shoulder into the big man, who staggered backward half a dozen steps.
“Merde!” Tremaine growled, and bounded forward. His hand flashed from the pocket of his jacket, and his arm swung at Johnny's head. Johnny ducked, but not far enough. Something heavy struck him a glancing blow on the scalp and knocked him into the apartment building wall. He came off it with a muttered sound, deep in his throat, and grabbed Jules Tremaine by the forearms before the big man could swing again. Tremaine gasped and whitened as Johnny's hands clamped down on his arms. There was a clatter of metal as the gun in the big man's hand fell to the street.
“Break it up! Break it up over there!” Detective James Rogers ran across the street, his lightweight panama pushed back on his head. “Let go of him, damn it!” he said to Johnny, and Jules Tremaine slumped loosely against the building as Johnny reluctantly complied. “What the hell's going on here?” Rogers demanded. He stooped and picked up the gun. “You got a permit for this thing?”
Tremaine nodded. “Hip pocket,” he said weakly.
Rogers stared. “Then get it out-” he started, and stopped. “Turn around,” he said shortly. He slipped Tremaine's wallet from his back pocket as the Frenchman obeyed. The detective thumbed through it rapidly, removed a stiff, folded paper and deliberately put it and the gun in his pocket. “You come by the station in the morning and we'll see if you still have one.” He restored the wallet. “Now take off.” Without a word Jules Tremaine stumbled up the street.
“You followin' me or him, Jimmy?” Johnny wanted to know.
Detective Rogers' eyes were still on the man moving away from them. “Look at him. Can't lift his hands to his beltline. Might be able to comb his hair in about three days.” He swung on Johnny indignantly. “I swear you ought to be under lock and key.”
“I'm supposed to stand still while he works out on my head with that iron?” Johnny asked irritably.
“And why was he working out on your head?”
“Jealous, I guess. Only reason I know.”
“That's a likely damn story. Where did you come from just now?”
“So it was Tremaine you were followin',” Johnny said with satisfaction.
“I asked you a question! And another one is what is this man's connection with Dechant?”
Johnny shrugged. “Damned if I know. Oh, I'll grant you I got three, four people all lyin' to me from different directions about his connection and theirs, but as far as the truth is concerned right this minute I don't know up from sideways.”
“But if you knew you'd be happy to tell me, of course?” the detective inquired sweetly. Hands on hips, he surveyed Johnny crustily.
“You know it, Jimmy. Say, you remember that letter of Dechant's I told you to look for? The one he seemed to give special attention to the night he came in? You guys ever find it?” He grinned at Rogers' silence. “I see you did. Was it a letter to the effect that a certain shipment had been impounded and put in a government warehouse by the customs?”
“There was no letter.” Rogers paused, and seemed to be tasting the flavor of what he'd just said. “Where are you getting your information, Johnny?”
“Right now, from you,” Johnny said promptly. “You wouldn't kid me? There almost had to be a letter.”
“There was no letter,” the detective repeated. He looked at Johnny steadily. “It was a newspaper clipping.”
“Ahh,” Johnny said softly. “What a body blow that must have been to the master thief. All the years with never a bruise to show for it, and he stands there reading that and sees himself hung from a hook in the icebox. He couldn't take it. When I stood there in his room and hollered 'Food an' visitors' to him in the bathroom, he might not even have looked. He just went for the gun in the dressing gown an' dented his brain.”
“Who was in with him on the deal, Johnny?”
“You want hearsay?”
“It could be better than what I have.”
“I was told — ” Johnny emphasized the word-“that it was Max Stitt.”
Rogers looked surprised. “That's not what I expected to hear.”
“'Course it wasn't, if you're followin' Tremaine. How come you turned loose of him so quick just now?”
“Maybe it wasn't Tremaine I was following, Johnny.” Amusement glinted in the hazel eyes.
“Then the next place you can follow me is back to the hotel,” Johnny said. “The boat's leavin' right now.”
“I may be over later,” the detective said easily. “Don't let me keep you.”
Johnny turned away a little uneasily. He walked up to the corner, and stood there undecided. If Rogers stepped inside the apartment building and saw G. Philips on a mailbox-hell, Johnny reminded himself impatiently, Jimmy had her address anyway. That ever-present little notebook of his must have told him in whose neighborhood he'd found Killain and Tremaine at each other's throats. And, if Rogers decided to go up there and talk to her about it, there sure as hell wasn't anything Killain could do to prevent it. And, for that matter, he'd wager that G. Philips was perfectly capable of holding her own.
He shrugged finally, and hailed a cab. He wondered why Jimmy Rogers was more willing to believe it was Tremaine than Stitt he was looking for. Because the doorman and the other help at the Winters' apartment building hadn't identified Stitt? They hadn't identified Tremaine, either, but it had evidently been a near thing.
He stood on the sidewalk in front of the Duarte after paying off the cabbie. There was another possibility. Jimmy Rogers might know, something about Jules Tremaine that Johnny didn't. If Rogers-