"And where did Rimley come in? Don't make me laugh by telling me he was blackmailing Rimley."

  "He was, in a way. But, of course, it was indirect.”

  “How?"

  "Blackmailing Rimley's clients, using the Rendezvous to pick up stuff that he could use later. But he was able to keep under cover and do a lot of his stuff before we found out what was happening. It was the Crail deal that really put us wise. And, of course, Rimley had quite a stake in that. His lease lapsed within ninety days after a bona fide sale."

  "So Mrs. Grail really didn't want to buy, and Rimley really didn't want to have Stanberry sell. Is that it?"

  "Something like that."

  "What's the rest of the deal?"

  "I don't know. All I know is that Stanberry had a whole safe-full of papers and we got them."

  "Who did the getting?" I asked.

  She said simply, "I did."

  I jerked up in my seat with the sheer surprise of that. "You got them ! "

  "Yes."

  "When?"

  "This afternoon."

  "How?"

  She said, "It worked out just about as you figured. You know the wash-rooms there at the Rendezvous, they have a coloured grafter who turns on water in the bowl, sprinkles in a little toilet water, hands you some soap and a towel and stands poised solicitously with a brush, all ready to go to work as soon as your hands are dried, which, of course, means a nice tip. Stanberry always washed his hands as though he wanted to make the scrubbing last until Saturday night. He'd take off his wrist-watch and hand it to the attendant. Rimley simply instructed the attendant to set the watch ahead an hour."

  "Then what?"

  "Then, almost as soon as Stanberry went back to the dining-room, Rimley sent for him. And, of course, Rimley had fixed the watch and the clock in his own office."

  "All right," I said, "that accounts for that much of it. Now tell me how he happened to be in your apartment."

  "Don't you get the sketch?"

  "No."

  "He was blackmailing me."

  "Over what?"

  She laughed and said, "Over some bait that I gave him. When Rimley wanted to stop his blackmailing activities, he needed a decoy. I was it."

  "And so?"

  "Archie Stanberry had been making little passes at me. I let Archie get the bait and take it to his uncle. The uncle swallowed it."

  "What did he find about you?"

  She smiled. "I was wanted for murder."

  "Any foundation?"

  "Of course not. It was a plant. I had some old newspaper clippings and a couple of incriminating letters that I'd written to myself and a few other things in a drawer in the table where Archie could find them. He found them, read them, and took them to uncle."

  "And what did uncle do?"

  "Called on me this afternoon, you dope. Haven't you got the play yet?"

  "And you cracked him over the head with a hatchet?"

  "Don't be silly. I slipped him a drugged drink that was due to make him unconscious for just about an hour and fifteen minutes."

  I said, "I get it now. You had an appointment with him for a definite time. You made some mention of the time when he came in so that he would see that he was exactly on time. Then when he became unconscious you'd set his watch back to the right time, tell him that he'd only been out for ten or fifteen minutes; that it must have been a spell with his heart, and let it go at that."

  "Exactly."

  "And during that hour and fifteen minutes, what were you doing?"

  "During about forty-five minutes of that time, I was playing burglar."

  "Did you leave any back trail?"

  "I don't think so."

  "How did you work it?"

  She said, "About a month ago, I got an apartment in the Fulrose Apartments. I was very careful never to go there except when I knew Stanberry was out. And even then, I only stayed there overnight once in a while so the maids would find the bed had been slept in. My story was that I was a newspaper woman who was working on a story and commuting

  between here and San Francisco. When I get ready to give up the apartment, it's going to be because I find that I'm in San Francisco so much of the time it will be cheaper to stay at a hotel whenever I happen to be back here."

  "Go on with the rest of it."

  "That's just about all there was to it. He had his drugged drink, got groggy and started for the bathroom. Then he got sleepy and half fell in the bathtub. I slipped the keys out of his pocket. We already knew that the combination of the safe was written in his notebook so it would look like a telephone number. Rufus Stanberry never trusted anything entirely to memory.

  "It was duck soup. I simply whizzed out to the Fulrose Apartments, went up to my apartment, then down the hall to his, opened the door with his key, spun the combination on the safe and cleaned it out of everything that was at all incriminating to anyone. We put Rufus Stanberry out of the blackmail business in one clean sweep."

  "Then what happened?"

  "You know. I got back to my apartments. He was dead.”

  “What did you do with the keys?"

  She said, "I put them back in his pockets."

  "Then what?"

  She said, "I telephoned Rimley. He told me over the telephone to beat it out right away to Philip Cullingdon's place and find out everything he knew about an Irma Begley who had shaken him down in an automobile accident."

  "Did you ask him why?"

  "Yes."

  "What did he say?"

  That Irma Begley was Mrs. Crail."

  "Who told you about the amount of the settlement and about those other actions."

  "Rimley did."

  "Over the telephone?"

  "Yes."

  "And what did he tell you to do after that?"

  "He said to get out and get the stuff on Mrs. Crail, then I was to pick up some witness, very casually, make it seem accidental if possible, and go to my apartment and discover the body."

  "So you picked me as a witness?"

  "After you horned in on my play I thought that you mightmake a swell witness. The trouble was you were too good. You figured things out because of that key."

  "Why the sudden interest in Mrs. Grail?" I asked.

  "Because Mrs. Crail was with him in the Rendezvous. She went out when he did. And when Stanberry's car pulled away, Mrs. Crail was following it."

  "How do you know?"

  "Rimley told me."

  "How did he know?"

  "I don't know."

  "And you think Rimley thought Mrs. Grail was implicated in the murder?"

  "I think he thought it would be a good thing to have enough evidence ... oh, Donald, I don't know what Rimley thought. He's a deep one."

  "All right, let's get back to the murder. You drugged Stan-berry's drink. Where did you get the drug?"

  "Rimley gave it to me."

  "Had you ever drugged a drink before?"

  "No."

  "Now then, when you went out leaving Stanberry in your apartment, exactly what did you do? You locked your door, of course?"

  "No, I didn't."

  "Why not?"

  "I was instructed not to."

  "By whom?"

  "Rimley."

  "What was the idea?"

  She said, "I was to leave a note in Stanberry's hand where he'd be sure to see it when he woke up, saying: `You've had a spell with your heart. I'm dashing down to the drug-store to get some medicine.' In that way in case Stanberry recovered consciousness before I returned, I could account for my absence."

  "That's all right, but why did you leave the door of the apartment unlocked?"

  "Unlocked and slightly ajar so that Stanberry would think I'd dashed out in a hurry."

  "Whose idea was that?"

  "Rimley's."

  "I don't like it."

  "Why not?"

  I said, "If your story is true, it looks as though Rimley had played you all the way through for a fall guy. It's all just too convenient—a perfect setting for murder. The man passes out in your apartment. You are instructed to leave the door open. You're sent out on an errand that . . . No wait a minute ! "

  "What is it, Donald?"

  I said, "Rimley's too smart for that. If he had wanted to frame you, he wouldn't have hit the man over the head with a hand axe. He could have put a pillow over his head and smothered him and then it would have appeared that the drug had affected his heart. No, that tapping him over the head with a hatchet is just too crude. And it doesn't fit in with Rimley's scheme. Now I see Rimley's interest in Mrs. Crail. The note was still in Stanberry's hand when you returned?"

  "Yes."

  "What did you do with it?"

  "Destroyed it."

  I said, "Well, so far it checks. It was a nice scheme. Stan-berry would have kept his appointment with you. Naturally it would never have occurred to him that his watch had been set ahead an hour and then turned back an hour. He might well have been suspicious that the drink was drugged, but would hardly have thought you'd have had time to get his keys and—his keys were important?"

  "I'll say they were important. He had a lock on his door that no pass-key would open. There was a very fine lock on the inner steel door of his safe and another lock on the steel door of the compartment where the incriminating papers were kept."

  I said musingly, "It could have worked out just that way. On the other hand, it could have been a perfect set-up for the murder, only . ."

  She flung herself on me. Her arm went around my neck. Her face pressed up close to mine.

  Startled, I tried to pull away.

  She crushed me to her, said in my ear, "Get hot ! A prowl car just swung around the corner. We've got to be necking. If they catch you and me parked out here ..."

  She didn't need to say any more. I kissed her.

  She mumbled. "Don't be so damned platonic."

  I hugged her a little tighter.

  Her full red lips half parted, clung to mine. Her body pushed itself up against mine.

  I heard a car stop.

  "You're not in Sunday School," Billy Prue muttered.

  I warmed up to my job. A flashlight beat on my face. A hard-boiled gruff voice said, "What the hell's coming off here?"

  I released Billy Prue and blinked into the flashlight.

  "What the hell's the idea?" the man said. "This is a business street."

  Billy Prue gave him one look, then covered her face with her hands and started to sob.

  The flashlight darted around through the car. "Let's have a look at you," the cop said.

  I held my face up to the beating rays of the flashlight. He took in the smeared lipstick, the rumpled hair, the necktie that was pulled to one side, said, "Okay, get the hell out of here and try an auto camp next time."

  I started the car and drove away fast.

  Billy Prue said, "Gosh, that was a squeak ! "

  "You thought that up quick," I told her.

  "I had to. My God, Donald! Does it always take you that long to get going?"

  I started to say something and then the chill of the fog and the emotional build-up that had come when Billy Prue started necking hit me with the force of a sledge-hammer. I was shivering all over. I tried to stop the car, but before I could get it stopped I was wobbling around the street.

  "Say, what the hell's the matter with you?" Billy asked.

  I said, "The tropics turned my blood into water and—and you started it boiling."

  I brought the car to a stop.

  Billy Prue pulled me out from behind the steering wheel.

  "Listen," she said, "you're going to bed. Where do you live?”

  “Not my apartment," I told her. "You can't take me there.”

  “Why not?"

  Frank Sellers will be having it watched."

  She didn't say anything, just started the car.

  "Where?" I asked.

  "You heard what the cop told us."

  I HAD a confused impression of white lights over a portico, a row of neat little stucco bungalows. I heard Billy Prue say, "... my husband ... sick ... back from the tropics ... thank you ... Extra covers ... yes, a double."

  I was dimly conscious of water running, then I was on a bed, and a steaming hot towel quieted jumpy nerves that were causing the muscles to cramp.

  Billy Prue was bending over me.

  "Go to sleep."

  "I've got to get my clothes off."

  "Don't be silly. They're off."

  I closed my eyes. Warmth enveloped me and sudden oblivion.

  I wakened with sunlight streaming across the bed. The aroma of fresh coffee was in my nostrils.

  I knuckled sleep out of my eyes.

  The door gently opened. Billy Prue peeked into the room. Her face relaxed when she saw I was awake.

  "Hello," she said, "how are you feeling?"

  "I think I'm feeling fine. Gosh! Did I pass out last night!”

  “There wasn't anything wrong with you except you were weak and completely fagged."

  "Where did you get the coffee?"

  "I've been shopping. There's a store down the block.”

  “What time is it?"

  "How the hell would I know?" she said. "I don't carry a watch. You remember you pointed that out to me yesterday night when you were trying to pin a murder on me?"

  Almost instantly all of the various ramifications of the Stan-berry murder came crowding back into my mind.

  I said, "I've got to telephone the office."

  She said, "You'll eat before you do a thing. The bathroom's all yours. Don't be too long about it because I'm cooking waffles."

  She went back in the kitchen. I went into the bathroom, had the luxury of a hot bath, dressed, combed my hair with a pocket comb, and went out to the kitchen. Billy had grub cooked, and I was really hungry.

  She watched me with wide, thoughtful eyes. "You're a good kid, Donald," she said.

  "What have I done now?"

  She smiled. "It's the way you didn't do the things you didn't do," she said, "that makes you a gentleman."

  "How are we registered?" I asked.

  She said nothing, simply smiled at me.

  I ate quite a bit before my stomach suddenly went dead on me right in the middle of taking a bite.

  I pushed the plate back.

  Billy said, "Go out there and sit in the sun. If the woman who runs the place comes over and talks with you don't be embarrassed. We haven't any luggage and she thinks we're living in sin, but she's got a boy in the Navy."

  I went out and sat in the sun.

  The auto camp was out of town on the rim of a valley that stretched away to where a tracery of white snow-capped mountains hung against the deep blue sky.

  I settled back and relaxed.

  The woman who ran the place came over and introduced herself. She had a son who was on a destroyer somewhere in the South Pacific. I told her I had been on a destroyer myself, that I might have seen her son, might have even talked with him without knowing his name. She sat down beside me in the orange-blossom-scented sunlight and we both kept quiet, each respecting the thoughts of the other. After a while Billy Prue came out and sat down beside us. Then Billy said we had to go and the woman who ran the place made some excuse to get away so she wouldn't embarrass us by letting us know that she knew we didn't have any luggage.

  Billy slid in behind the wheel of the agency car and started back towards town.

  "Cigarette ?"

  "Not while I'm driving, Donald."

  "Oh yes, I forgot."

  We were almost at the Rendezvous when she suddenly asked, "How much are you going to tell your friend Sergeant Sellers about what I've told you?"

  "Nothing."

  She slid the car to a place at the kerb and stopped.

  Soft gentle fingers that somehow had a lot of strength in them squeezed mine. "You're a good egg, Donald," she said, "even if ..."

  "Even if what?" I asked as she stopped.