Black Mask (Vol. 7, No. 5 — April 1950), British Edition

“You’re the guy, Schmidt, I slugged on the stairs, aren’t you?” Rawne said. “I’m the guy you kicked in the head. Right? You hairless little rat! I can find out pronto. You wouldn’t trust a hiding place. You’d pack the whole ten grand around with you. You killed Jim Greer!”

Schmidt whipped a blued .32 from his coat pocket. “I have a permit for this gun. I keep rent money overnight and this is a bad neighborhood.”

Rawne laughed. “Put that away. You can’t buck the whole police system.” Schmidt’s eyes were diamond hard. “It’s been done. This is my home, my castle. You’re trespassing. I come in. You go for your gun. I shoot you. Miss Nolan tries to get your gun. I shoot her. Two murder suspects dead. The case of James Cullen Greer, deceased, closed.”

“Awfully simple, the way you tell it. How about Lee Searle? You caught him switching off the hall lights, didn’t you? He was going to hijack me. You swiped him with the shovel, slugged him with your fist, came upstairs, dumped me, emptied my wallet and tossed it in the hallway, killed Greer, got the rest of the ten grand, and sneaked down after I went into Greer’s apartment.”

“Searle didn’t see me,” Schmidt said.

“But the man and woman across from Greer’s saw you,” Rawne said. “He called the cops.”

Schmidt laughed harshly. “Try to describe him. His face, I mean. I was too far back in the room when I hit Mr. Greer. They might have seen a shadowy movement but nothing more.”

Lulie Nolan caught Rawne’s eye and her glance went briefly, sharply to a corner of the divan. She made a motion with the manuscript.

Schmidt glowered at her. “What’s this, Miss Nolan? You going to throw Shady Lady at me? You want, maybe, a bullet in your sweet little nose?”

Rawne belched loudly and plopped down in the corner of the divan. He sang softly.

Schmidt stared at Rawne. “You’re nuts. I’m going to knock you off and you sing ragtime. I’ve been waiting years for James Cullen Greer to snag himself a bundle of lettuce so I could bump him off profitably. This is my night.”

Schmidt stepped toward the typewriter. “You read, maybe, what’s on the machine? Yah! Lady Vandermeer: Blah, blah, blah. Lord Cavendish: Blah, blah, blah. Funny, eh? Pathetic, eh? Who’s going to buy a janitor’s lords and ladies? Why don’t I write about deadbeats and all the riffraff I know? I’ll tell you. Because I’m part of the riffraff. My life’s a gray monotone. My life screams for escape. So I kept up the facility, I kept up the flow in a fantasy world of lords and ladies. Now I’ve got the escape — ten thousand dollars’ worth of escape. I can write about the drabs now. Tremendous stuff about deadbeats and—”

Lulie Nolan laughed hollowly. “And they’ll all be as worthless as — this!”

She ripped the yellow-covered manuscript of Shady Lady in two.

“Hey!” Schmidt shouted.

Rawne’s hand came from where it was dug down behind the end cushion of the divan. That brown hand came up wrapped around a snub-nosed automatic and it was spouting flame. The walls took the angry crack of it and bounced it around. The bullet smashed the distracted Schmidt in the shoulder and knocked him back.

Schmidt was blasting as be fell. A bullet splintered the closet door. Blue-tinted plaster fell from the ceiling. Schmidt collapsed then and Rawne kicked the smoking gun from Schmidt’s hand. Rawne kicked it again, across the room.

Then he had Lube Nolan in his arms.

“You suspicious honey!” Rawne said. “If you hadn’t hid my gun—”

The door crashed open and a cop stumbled into the room with a drawn Smith & Wesson. Griffin, breathing heavily, came in behind a .38 Special. Men poured in through the bedroom.

“Whew!” Griffin exclaimed. “My tobacco heart! We heard Schmidt canary on himself, Rawne, but we were afraid to disturb him. I sent men up through the furnace room to pick Schmidt off from the rear. That wasn’t good, either. A dying man can do a hell of a lot of damage with a gun in a split second.”

“You certainly had your fun with me,” Rawne said.

Griffin shrugged. “You liked it that way, didn’t you? You were on top of the list, but I thought things would go faster letting you move around a bit.”

A plainclothesman extracted a stuffed wallet from the cursing Schmidt.

“Hey!” Rawne exclaimed. “Go easy with my money!”

“Life’s little ironies,” Griffin said, grinning. “You’ve got to stand in line with the other creditors now, Rawne.”

“I think,” Rawne told Lube when they were in a squad car bound for Headquarters, “that we should commiserate each other over a quantum of Daiquiris. We’ll be lucky to pay off ten cents on the dollar. I’ll vary the mood with a few passes.”

The car stirred up a breeze and Lube made herself comfortable in the curve of Rawne’s arm. “We’re old enough not to cry over spilt milk.”

“Okay,” Rawne said. “I’ll just make passes.”

He kissed her and her bps were dinging.

“Maybe,” he said after a while, “I should go home first and change to my bowtie.”

“You mean the one that lights up,” Lube murmured, “and makes you the life of the party?”