"He is," Bertha said.

  "So Cullingdon sort of kept an eye on things," he said. "He admits that he went out to Donald's car and looked at the registration to check up on Donald. Donald was telling him the truth. He'd given him his right name and told him what he was there for. That's a point in Donald's favour."

  I sipped coffee and didn't say anything.

  "The car was parked out there for quite a while, Cullingdon says. He looked out every once in a while and it was still there. Then he looked out and it was gone. He didn't see Donald come and get it. Now then, if Donald can tell us ..."

  I opened my wallet and took out the taxicab slip that I keep for my expense account voucher. I handed it to Sellers and said, "That's the taxicab that took me out there."

  "Where did you pick it up?" Sellers asked.

  "Somewhere on Seventh Street," I said casually. "I can't tell just where."

  Sellers heaved a sigh and said, "Well, I guess this will do it all right. Someone planted the weapon in that car while it was parked out there in front of Cullingdon's. Now who the hell could have done that?"

  I said, "That's a job for the police department. I'm going home and get some shut-eye."

  Sellers said, "Your friend Cullingdon appreciates the fact that you told him the truth, Donald. And incidentally, it's a 1 darn good thing, from the standpoint of the police department, that you did. Cullingdon said to tell you that the amount of the settlement was seventeen thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five dollars, and that the case, he thinks, was handled on a contingency basis, and her lawyers got either a third or a half."

  I said, "That's nice of him."

  Sellers frowned and said, "The hell of it is that you were investigating another matter. I can't get over that."

  Bertha said, "We're a big agency. We have a lot of irons in the fire."

  Sellers looked at her thoughtfully and didn't say anything. "Well," I said, "I'm going home and get some sleep. I'm all in."

  "You poor kid, you look it," Bertha said.

  Sellers followed me to the door with Bertha. He said, "After all, Lam, I should have known better. You wouldn't have done anything so dumb as to have found that weapon and then lumped it in the back of the automobile."

  "Any fingerprints on it?" Bertha asked almost too casually.

  "Just prints of the two guys that picked it up and looked it all over before they knew what it was," Sellers said. "Any murderer who has sense enough to toss a murder weapon into the back of somebody's automobile certainly had sense enough to wipe off the handle."

  "But the head of it?" Bertha asked.

  "Bloodstains and a couple of hairs that showed up under the microscope. It's the murder weapon, all right."

  "Thanks for the food," I told Bertha.

  Bertha's tone was maternally tender. "You're entirely welcome, lover. Now you get to sleep and get a good night's rest and don't let anything bother you. After all, we're not mixed up in this murder case and we're not going to get mixed up in it. And we've done two hundred dollars' worth of work in that other matter."

  "Good night," I said.

  Sellers and Bertha chimed in a chorus. "Good night." Both voices were friendly.

  Chapter Ten

  THE three blocks back to my apartment house seemed to be three miles. I went down into the garage and grinned at the attendant. "I'm going to have to take my car out again," I said.

  He looked at the two-bits I handed him as though it was

  an insult rather than a tip, then moved a couple of cars and jerked his thumb towards the agency car. "There it is."

  I got in, started the motor and eased it out of the garage. I ran down the street for half a dozen blocks and pulled into the kerb and parked. I waited for about five minutes, then started up, gave it the gun, went round the corner fast, and did a couple of figure eights around blocks.

  No one was following me.

  A fog had drifted in from the ocean and now it was beginning to settle. The air had turned cold, and the damp chill went clean through to my bones. I'd be all right for a while and then the weakness would grip me and my blood, thinned from the tropics and weakened by bugs, would turn cold, and I'd shiver and shake the way I did when the old malarial chills would get me. But these spells only lasted for a minute or two and then I'd be myself again. It was just weakness.

  I drove up to the Hall of Justice, found a good place to park and parked the bus.

  I waited for half an hour that seemed like eternity. Then Billy Prue came bustling out of the lighted entrance, looked up and down the street, turned to the right and started walking with quick, businesslike steps as though she knew exactly where she was going.

  I waited until she had nearly a block head start, then slipped the car into gear.

  After a couple of blocks she began to look around for a taxi cab.

  I slid the car up close to the kerb, rolled down the window and said, "Want a lift?"

  She looked at me at first dubiously, then with recognition, then with anger.

  "You may as well," I said. "It doesn't cost any more." She came across and jerked the door open. "So you snitched on me. I should have known it."

  I said wearily, "Don't be a damn fool. I'm trying to give you a break."

  "How did you know I was here?"

  "It's a long story."

  "You'd better tell it."

  I said, "Somebody planted the murder weapon in my car

  while it was parked out in front of Cullingdon's place."

  Her startled gasp of surprise might have been overdone or

  it might not.

  I said, "Naturally, they hauled me over the coals. Bertha Cool, that's my partner, thought you'd snared me into it.”

  “And so blabbed to the police?"

  "Don't be silly. She isn't that dumb."

  "Well, how did it happen ... ?"

  I said, "Bertha Cool was sore. She made some crack about me having bought three packets of cigarettes and Frank Sellers, of Homicide, apparently didn't even notice the crack. That's when I knew where you were."

  "I don't get it," she said.

  I said, "Sellers isn't so dumb. If he hadn't known all about you, he'd have jumped on that opening about the three cigarette packets and pried enough information out of Bertha so he'd have known what he was after. He ignored it—just didn't seem to hear it, so I knew he'd found out all about you. And if he'd found out all about you before he came out to call on me, it was a damn good bet that you were being held at the D.A.'s office. The only thing I didn't know is whether they were going to hold you or turn you loose. I couldn't have stuck it out for more than another half hour, but I ..."

  A shivering fit gripped me. I put on the brake and slowed the car, but by gripping the wheel, didn't show how I was shaking.

  Billy Prue kept looking at me. After a minute the fit passed and I speeded up the car again.

  "So," Billy Prue said, "I came out and you were waiting—for what?"

  "To see you."

  "What about?"

  "To compare notes."

  "On what?"

  "How did that murder weapon get in my car while it was parked out at Cullingdon's?"

  "I don't know."

  "Try again."

  "I'm telling the truth, Donald. I don't know."

  I said, "I don't like to be played for a fall guy."

  "I shouldn't think you would."

  "And when I don't like something, I do something about it."

  "I'm telling you, I don't know anything at all about it."

  I drove along slowly and said, "Let's look at the thing this way. You go out to Cullingdon's. You're frightened. You want

  a witness. You take me back and pull a razzle-dazzle about finding Stanberry's body. Then you go to Rimley's and I duck out as you could have known I would. I walked a half dozen blocks before I found a cab. The cab took me up to 906 South Graylord Avenue and I picked up my car and drove back to the agency, had a talk with my partner and then drove out to see Archie Stanberry."

  "Well?" she asked as I stopped.

  "There was plenty of time for Rimley to have the murder weapon dropped in my car before I got there," I said.

  "And you think he dashed out and planted the weapon and... ?"

  "Don't be silly. He simply picked up the telephone and said to someone, `Donald Lam's car is parked out at 906 South Graylord Avenue. It would be a swell place for the police to discover the murder weapon because Billy Prue had him with her when the body was discovered. The police will think he's mixed up in it and . "

  "Baloney!" she interrupted.

  I said, "I know—it's easy to pull that stuff."

  "If you'd use your head for a minute, you'd realise that that would be the last thing on earth that Pittman Rimley would do. The minute you are brought into it, that attracts attention once more to me. That's why they had me down at the D.A.'s office and gave me such a grilling. I couldn't understand it, unless it was because you had double-crossed me."

  I pulled the car into the kerb and stopped. It was a quiet business street with virtually no traffic and a few lights. The little one-storey store buildings were all closed up.

  "Is this where I get out and walk," she asked nervously. I said, "I've got something to say."

  "Go on and say it."

  I said, "I went out to the Rimley Rendezvous. You told me to get out. I didn't get out. The head waiter sent me in to see Rimley. Rimley told me to get out and stay out."

  "Well," she said, "tell me something I didn't know already."

  I said, "Rimley's wrist-watch was an hour fast. The clock on his mantel was an hour fast."

  She sat absolutely motionless. I don't think she was even breathing.

  "Is that something new?" I asked.

  She kept perfectly still.

  I said, "We found the body of Rufus Stanberry in your bathtub. His wrist-watch was an hour slow."

  "What does Mr. Master Mind deduce from that?" she asked, trying to be facetious and making a botch of it.

  "From that," I said, "I deduce that Rimley was building himself an alibi. He arranged to have his clock and his watch an hour fast. Probably Stanberry had been in there. Perhaps shortly before that Stanberry went into the rest-room and took off his wrist-watch when he washed his hands. The rest-room attendant was under orders to set the watch an hour fast."

  She said without any particular expression, "An hour fast?"

  "That's what I said."

  "But you just said that when we found his wrist-watch, it was an hour slow."

  "Do I have to dot all the i's and cross all the is?"

  "You'd better. Since you started making i's and is—you'd better finish up artistically."

  I said, "Rimley was working out a slick alibi. Stanberry went in to see Rimley after his watch had been tampered with. Rimley took occasion to call Stanberry's attention to the time. Stanberry didn't realise it was that late, but he checked his watch with Rimley's clock. And then, to reassure him, Rimley showed him his wrist-watch. From there on its just a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth."

  "What do you mean?"

  I said, "When you discovered Stanberry's body, you knew that his watch should be an hour fast. You didn't know what time it was because you don't wear a wrist-watch. You simply took it for granted that Stanberry's wrist-watch was an hour fast, so you set it back an hour. But someone else, who also knew that the wrist-watch was an hour fast, had already set it back an hour."

  She was silent for so long that I looked at her to see if she might have fainted.

  "Well?" I asked.

  "I haven't anything to say—not to you."

  I said, "Okay," and started the motor.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Back to Bertha Cool's apartment."

  "What's at Bertha Cool's apartment?"

  "Sergeant Frank Sellers of Homicide."

  "And what are you going to do there?"

  "Tell him what I told you and let him do the talking from then on. I've been a sucker long enough."

  She stuck it out for a dozen blocks, then reached over and twisted the key in the ignition. "Okay," she said, "shut it off.”

  “Going to talk?"

  "Yes."

  I eased the car into the kerb and settled back against the cushions. "Go ahead."

  She said, "I'd get killed if they knew I told you this.”

  “You'll be arrested for first-degree murder if you don't.”

  “You're hard when you want to be."

  I fought against another spell of shivering as the cold damp fog penetrated into the marrow of my bones, and managed to say threateningly, "I'm as hard and as cold as the back of a barred jail door."

  She said in a tone of resignation, "All right, what do you want to know?"

  "Everything."

  She said, "I can't tell you everything, Donald. I can tell you the things that concern me. I can tell you enough so that you'll realise you're not being framed. But I can't tell you the things that relate to others."

  I said, "You tell me the whole story here and now and without waiting for reinforcements or you get a third degree from Sergeant Frank Sellers. Make up your mind."

  She said, "That isn't fair."

  "It's fair to me."

  "It's not fair to put me in that position."

  "Make up your mind. I've stuck my neck out for you a couple of times. Now I'm getting tired of it. You can start paying me back, beginning right now."

  She said, "I could get out of this car and start walking away. You wouldn't dare try to wrestle me back into it."

  "Try it and see what happens."

  I was shivering again now, but she was so intent on her own predicament that she didn't realise it.

  She sat silently for about ten seconds, then she said, "How did you think Rufus Stanberry made his money?"

  I said, "You're doing the talking."

  "Blackmail."

  "Keep talking."

  "We didn't know it for quite a while."

  "Who's we?""Pittman Rimley."

  "What happened when he found out?"

  "He got busy."

  "Tell me about the blackmail."

  "It wasn't just the usual thing. He was clever as the very devil. He did lots of embellishments and embroidery—the little things that really got in the big money."

  "Mrs. Crail, for instance?"

  "Exactly. He didn't bother with her on the small stuff, but waited until she got married and then cashed in in a big way —and he was doing it so that there wouldn't really have been any come-back. He was selling her the building at a price about three times what it was worth."

  "Nice business if you can get it," I said.

  "He was getting it. He did it in such a way there was almost no come-back. Most of the time his victims didn't even know him personally. He may have been blackmailing people he didn't know by sight."

  "How come?"

  "He has some sort of an organisation, of course—a little secret service that gets the goods. But Stanberry's cleverness was in the way he'd save information for months or years—until the time was ripe for a good killing. Then the victim would get a telephone call—just one."

  "What would be said?"

  "A nice little threat and orders to pay money in cash to his dear nephew, Archie. After that there might be an anonymous letter or two, but usually that first telephone call was so devastating the rest was just a mop-up that Archie could handle."

  I said, "Archie's eyes were all swollen with tearful grief—induced by breaking open a cigarette and putting a little grain of tobacco in each eye. I had to help him get one out. I saw the broken cigarette on his dresser."

  She didn't say anything.

  I said, "Archie had had your picture on his wall."

  "He'd taken it down, hadn't he?" she asked quickly.

  "Yes. He said it was a pin-up picture he'd bribed your publicity photographer ..."

  "Blackmailed was the word he should have used," she said bitterly. "Archie's a poor sap. His uncle had brains—dangerous brains."