“You’re bluffing.”

  “Like hell we are. You were identified in the lineup.”

  “What?” McKay cried, startled.

  Hendricks smiled. “Yeah, I thought that would make things shape up a little different for you.”

  “You’re stringing me.”

  Hendricks shrugged. “You were identified by a witness on the scene, and that’s God’s own truth, McKay. That was no deserted shack on the lot like you thought when you killed the Blair girl. There was a guy in that shack saw you croak the girl, friend. And in a few minutes there’ll be another witness here to tell us about you—the doctor whose car you stole to take Doris for that last joy ride.” Hendricks’ smile was triumphant. “Remember, McKay?”

  Puzzled, McKay looked down at the floor. Hendricks put it down as a gesture of guilt and evasion.

  “We got no time to waste with any wise guy stew bums, you get me, McKay?” he shouted. “Come clean quick, you understand?”

  McKay shook his head slowly from side to side. Detective Harrison, standing just next to McKay, reached down and with a quick movement pulled the shirt front out of the top of the young man’s trousers, exposing his abdomen.

  “Now, tell it,” Hendricks roared.

  “I still say you’re full of it,” McKay muttered with an effort. He still could not believe that all this was happening to him, that he was in custody on suspicion of murder, that these grim, determined men were fully set on beating a confession out of him. It was like a dream, a fantasy that came out of a bottle. It was the kind of dream you had when you drank too much 50¢-a-gallon wine. Only you woke up out of those dreams. The only awakening out of this one would come in the gas chamber.

  “You killed her,” Hendricks said.

  “Like hell I did.”

  “You’re lying,” Harrison said, as if to give himself some justification for what he was about to do. As McKay turned to face this new accuser, something descended on his naked belly with a dull thud. A horrible pain went through his viscera, his chest felt as if it were cracking open, and his limbs from the groin down stung as though they were being pricked with thousands of needles.

  Through gritted teeth he muttered, “No—I didn’t—I didn’t touch her—”

  Another blow descended. This one was three times as agonizing as the first. McKay slumped down in the chair, his eyes closed and his mouth open, giving himself over to the pain with short, moaning gasps. A hand on his shoulder jerked him roughly back into an upright position.

  “That goes on, McKay,” he heard Hendricks’ voice saying as though from a great distance. “That keeps on happening to you until you learn not to lie to us. Now tell us why you did it.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You aren’t very smart, McKay. You’re only asking for more of the same. More and more and more. We’ll break you down, though. We’ve broken stronger men than you. You’re just a weakling. A punk who’s been on the skids so long he doesn’t know which way is up anymore, and you think you’re going to hold out against us. Well, think again, McKay.”

  McKay said nothing, simply continued to gasp for breath.

  Harrison waited for another signal. Brady looked on placidly. Hendricks kicked McKay sharply on the shin. The fresh sting of pain caused McKay’s heart to contract so that he was sure he was going to die, hoped for it as an escape from the ache of his entire body.

  They hemmed him in, with their cold menacing faces. The bright light blazed down. “Talk, McKay.”

  “You can’t hold out against us, McKay.”

  “We’ll turn you into pulp, McKay.”

  “Talk, McKay.”

  “Talk.”

  “Talk.”

  “Talk.”

  The door opened and an officer put his head in through the doorway.

  “That doctor’s here,” he said.

  Hendricks nodded. Harrison tucked McKay’s shirttails back into the top of his trousers, drew his jacket about him and buttoned it. Brady took a glass of water from the table and held it to McKay’s lips. It merely splashed down over his shirtfront.

  Hendricks went out. Harrison and the uniformed cop hoisted McKay none too gently out of the chair he was sitting in and walked him around the room. His knees buckled several times, and if they had let go of him he would have pitched forward on his face. But after a few moments he was able to stand upright again.

  “All right,” he murmured. “You can get your lousy hands off me now.”

  8

  They released him, and he swayed for a moment, then got his balance. He looked dazedly at the men on either side of him, then the same insolent look as before came back into his eyes.

  “I’d like to work on you someday,” he said savagely to Harrison.

  “I’ll give you another lesson later,” Harrison said. “So you’ll know how.”

  They led him into Hendricks’ office. A tall, dignified looking man was talking to the Captain as they came in. He turned and looked at McKay. He looked at him long and hard, then he nodded his head.

  “Yes, that looks like him,” he said. “Though of course it was dark and I was excited, so I shouldn’t say definitely.”

  “I believe you can say definitely, Doctor,” Hendricks said. “He’s already been identified by another. You can’t both be wrong.” He turned to McKay. “This is Dr. Clayton, McKay,” he said. “Remember? Your memory’s so damn weak. You know what you did? You lay down in the back of Dr. Clayton’s car and waited for him to come out of a patient’s house and then you stuck him up and took the car away from him because you needed a nice car to take your pretty girlfriend for a ride in. Remember that, McKay?”

  Dr. Clayton stepped closer to McKay. “Possibly if I could hear his voice,” he said to Hendricks. “I could tell. I’d hate to pick the wrong man, you know.”

  “Speak up, McKay,” Hendricks said. “Dr. Clayton wants to hear what a rat sounds like.”

  “Wasn’t it you who held me up from the back of my car?” Dr. Clayton asked lamely.

  McKay shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. His voice was only a little higher than a whisper.

  “Is the fellow hurt?” Clayton asked Harrison. “He hardly seems able to speak.”

  “Drunk,” Harrison said. “He was picked up with enough liquor in him to have killed a horse.”

  Clayton returned to the Captain’s desk. “Well, of course it’s hard to say. If I could hear his voice normally, I believe I could tell.”

  “Well,” Hendricks said impatiently. “He looks like the man who took the car from you, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, but as I said, it was dark and I was excited. I really hate to say for certain. Can’t you identify him from fingerprints on the car or something like that?”

  Hendricks smiled benevolently. “Only a sap would have left prints on that car. He used it to drive the girl out to the lot where he murdered her, you know. He was smart enough to wipe the steering wheel and the doors clean of prints. Now, look, Dr. Clayton, you saw him, didn’t you? He must have been right close to you if you gave him your money. Why should you have any doubt about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Clayton replied irritably. “It’s just that it was dark. People often get false impressions in the dark, especially when they’re excited. This is serious. I don’t want to involve a man who might be innocent.”

  “But you will say that he looks like the man who held you up.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “O.K. Dr. Clayton, that’s fine.”

  “Look here, Captain,” Clayton said sharply. “This isn’t the beginning of a lot of calls to come down here, is it? I haven’t much time, you know, and really I’d rather forget about the whole business.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Hendricks said reassuringly. “We won’t bother you any more than is necessary.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” Clayton said.

  He started for the door, then with his hand on the knob he turned and looked at McKay. Somebody pushed the door open from the outside and Clayton stepped aside and went out past the man who came in. It was Ned Lowry. He smiled genially, then saw McKay and pulled himself up short. McKay grinned feebly at him.

  “Hello, Ned,” he said.

  Lowry nodded curtly, quickly grasping the inadvisability of establishing friendliness.

  “Nothing for you, Lowry,” Hendricks said. “Mosey around somewhere else. We’re busy now.”

  “Just as you say, Captain,” Lowry said but he sat down on a chair near the wall. Hendricks gave him a dark glance, then motioned to the detectives to take McKay out. When McKay looked at him again, Lowry raised his eyebrows questioningly. McKay understood and shook his head. The simple message got across. “I don’t know any more about it than you do,” it said to Lowry. Lowry saw Brady watching him and forced a smile. In Brady’s eyes he read a challenge. McKay was led out.

  Hendricks made it clear that he intended to ignore Lowry. He bent over a sheet of paper on his desk and proceeded to look busy. The hint was wasted on Lowry.

  “Rather special attention you’re giving the drunks these days, Captain,” he said, “or is it just that you’re always nice to celebrities.”

  “Who’s a celebrity?” Hendricks growled.

  “McKay. Perhaps I should have said was.”

  “What kind of celebrity—or is the fact that you know him enough to make him one?”

  “It’s been known to happen. No, McKay had a big-name orchestra. Dance the hours away with Bob McKay, remember? Don’t tell me you stay home nights, Captain.”

  “Not if I can get out, but I don’t dance when I go out. I like short cuts. Why haul a dame all around the floor first?” Hendricks grinned maliciously.

  “The subtle approach, eh Captain?” Lowry asked amiably. “Swell story for me in McKay. How the mighty have fallen and all that, you know. Could I see him?”

  “The hell you could.”

  “Thanks. That’s what I thought. What have you got on him?”

  “Murder,” Hendricks snapped. “Now go haunt a house or something, will you?”

  “Murder,” Lowry said. “I understand that’s serious.”

  “It used to be. There’s nothing to it anymore. They just put you to sleep now, you know. Like an operation. Don’t even feel it.”

  “Very pleasant.”

  “Too damn pleasant. Hanging, now, or the chair—there’s something else again.”

  “Something you can get your teeth into, eh? Substantial capital punishment.”

  Hendricks grinned. “Yeah, but the lethal chamber—like ether before they take your tonsils out.”

  “Sissy stuff.”

  “Right.”

  Hendricks bent over the sheet on the desk again.

  “I couldn’t see McKay, could I?” Lowry asked.

  “I said no,” Hendricks said without looking up.

  “Murder, you said. Do you mean somebody was killed in the brawl at Carrol’s last night?”

  “You were there, huh?”

  “Made a special point of it.”

  “No, a real fancy job. Doris Blair.”

  It was no surprise to Lowry. He had simply wanted to make certain.

  “Did he confess?”

  “Police business, Lowry. Now beat it, will you?”

  “I was just going.” He started for the door, then turned and looked solemnly at the Captain. “Have you been getting much exercise lately, Captain?”

  “No,” Hendricks replied without thinking. “What for?”

  “I was just thinking,” Lowry said slowly. “If you decide you need any, don’t take it on McKay. I’ve heard tell of such things.”

  Hendricks shot a withering glance at Lowry but the bland eyes that met his held a quiet threat in them that made the Captain uncomfortable.

  “So long, Captain,” Lowry said pleasantly. Hendricks grunted.

  9

  Another day rolled by for McKay, marked only by the rhythmical questionings and beatings. He lay on the cot in a cell which was his alone now, his body a mass of bruised and tortured nerves, his brain afire with confusion and resentment.

  The next day they had him in District Attorney Ford’s office and here the tactics were subtler, wider in range. Most questions met with obstinate resistance and eventually Ford wearied to the extent where he sprawled in his chair behind the desk and lit a cigarette.

  “You can’t bluff us, McKay,” he said. “We’ve got everything but your motive and we’ll get that too, mark my words. I’ll line it up for you and you can see that you can’t bluff us. You were intimate with the girl. Your landlady, Mrs. Duncan, saw you leave the house at four in the morning.” Ford stopped abruptly, hoping a surprise question would work. “Where were you going at four in the morning?”

  “Where I told you,” McKay answered quietly. “To El Centro to look for a job.”

  “Pitching alfalfa?”

  “Yes.”

  “You expect anybody to believe that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You, a musician who never did anything harder than blow on a clarinet, were going to break your back pitching alfalfa?”

  “Yes.”

  Ford sighed wearily. “You’re a liar. I’ll tell you where you went at four in the morning. You looked around for a good, reliable car, one that you could count on taking you where you wanted to go and getting you away in a hurry. You found Doctor Clayton’s car but the key wasn’t in the switch—so you got a better idea and waited in the back of it. When Clayton came out, you pointed a gun at him, made him hand over the keys and took his wallet because even though that wasn’t your real objective you figured you might as well grab the cash. Where did you put the gun?”

  “I didn’t have a gun.”

  Ford leaped out of his chair. “Then you admit that you hid in the car and held Clayton up.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Ford sat down again. “You forced Clayton out of the car and then you drove it off and waited for Doris Blair to come out of Carrol’s. You picked her up and drove off to the lot. You strangled her and pulled her body out of the car and left it in the weeds. The Filipino who lives in the shack on the lot saw you do it. And he saw you get back in the car and drive off. Then you left the car on a street three blocks away and disappeared for a couple of days. Where did you go?”

  “None of those things happened,” McKay said. “I was in El Centro those few days.”

  Ford banged his fist on the desk. “You’re a liar, McKay,” he shouted. “You were identified by Dr. Clayton and by the Filipino.” He rose to his feet once more and pointed an accusing forefinger at McKay. “And I’ll tell you why you murdered Doris Blair, too. It was because you were jealous of her. You thought she was tearing around with other men. You know you were and you let that vicious temper of yours get the best of you—that same vicious temper that made you hit the bottom—that same vicious temper that made you lose job after job until nobody would have you. You murdered Doris Blair when that temper got the best of you, just as you once broke a man’s jaw when you worked at the Lafayette, just as you once smashed a violin over the head of one of your musicians, just as you’ve always resorted to violence when anyone has crossed you.” Ford paused dramatically, looking for the effect of his oratory.

  McKay straightened up in his chair. He surveyed Ford contemptuously. “I thought you said I waited for Doris,” he said. “That I had planned her murder. How would temper enter into a situation like that?”

  “Very clever, McKay,” Ford said ominously, then he banged his fist on the desk again. “But I’ll tell you why. Because you had only to look at her to be reminded of your jealousy and to feel the rage that comes so easily to you.”

  McKay smiled faintly, accentuating the look of scorn on his face. Ford shifted from one foot to the other uncomfortably. Then he motioned to the guard who had brought McKay there to take him out.

  Back in his cell, McKay lay on the cot again, worn with the unending hurt of his battered body and the unutterable weariness of his ragged nerves.

  And wherever he felt the sudden twinge of a pain, he immediately began to see and feel again the blow that caused it, to experience from beginning to end the shatteringly humiliating punishment.

  Hatred for the men who had beaten him seethed inside him, and suddenly something seemed to explode where the turmoil had been and he screamed like a madman, a long high frenzied wail.

  A guard opened the door of his cell to quiet him. McKay, maddened, sprang forward.

  “Filthy bastard,” he gritted. “Teach you to beat a man up—”

  And, falling on the astonished guard, McKay struck the man a fierce blow behind the ear. But the guard spun away, recovering himself, and with a quick slap sent McKay sprawling down to the hard floor. The next moment the cell was full of other guards. McKay dimly heard them talking.

  “Tough guy—tried to break out.”

  “We better fix him so he don’t get no more fancy ideas along that line.”

  They hauled him to his feet. McKay stared frightenedly into cold, ugly eyes.

  The clubbing which followed left him mercifully unconscious for hours. When the doctor finally pulled him out of it, McKay would not talk. He would not move from his cot. He would not touch the unmentionable soggy food that was brought him in rusty metal trays.

  He lay in a sullen stupor, closing his eyes, losing himself in a dream world where a lovely girl with clear brown eyes and firm, warm breasts soothed the tired ache of his body and held his head tenderly cradled in the sweet-smelling cleft of her bosom, against those ripe, delightful swells of rounded flesh, and then she opened her blouse to him and he buried his bruised face between her breasts, and their silky warmth took away all the pain, all the humiliation and agony, and there was only peace and calmness and love.…

  He stirred uneasily. A guard doing his rounds heard him muttering thickly, “Why, Terry? Why…?”

  10

  In the meantime, Ned Lowry tried repeatedly to get into the cell to have a talk with McKay. But Hendricks, shrewdly suspecting that there was plenty more to Lowry’s interest in the case than the mere desire to pick up a good story for his column, made a special point of seeing to it that what could easily have been arranged was made impossible. But the papers had the side of the story which the police and the District Attorney’s office had given them, and Lowry, sitting in his office scowling behind his typewriter, felt a pang as he remembered McKay’s worn, handsome face and knew that the certainty of conviction of which the papers spoke so confidently was, indeed, a certainty.