He didn't say anything.

  "Who gave me the dope in the first place?"

  "I wouldn't know that. I presume it has been going on a long time."

  I felt my chin. "All of two days," I said. "They ought to have gunned me. Less kickback in the long run. So long, warden."

  "If you go out of here," he said thinly, "you will be arrested at once."

  "Not just for going out," I said softly.

  As I went out he still had his hands behind his head.

  There was a chain and a bolt on the front door, beside the lock. But nobody tried to stop me from opening it. I crossed a big old-fashioned porch, went down a wide path fringed with flowers. A mockingbird sang in a dark tree. There was a white picket fence on the street. It was a corner house, on Twentyninth and Descanso.

  I walked four blocks east to a bus line and waited for a bus. There was no alarm, no cruising car looking for me. The bus came and I rode downtown, went to a Turkish Bath establishment, had a steam bath, a needle shower, a rub-down, a shave, and the rest of the whisky.

  I could eat then. I ate and went to a strange hotel, registered under a fake name. It was half past eleven. The local paper, which I read over more whisky and water, informed me that one Dr. Richard Sharp, who had been found dead in a vacant furnished house on Carolina Street, was still causing the police much headache. They had no clue to the murderer as yet.

  The date on the paper informed me that over forty-eight hours had been abstracted from my life without my knowledge or consent.

  I went to bed and to sleep, had nightmares and woke up out of them covered with cold sweat. That was the last of the withdrawal symptoms. In the morning I was a well man.

  SIX

  Chief of police Fulwider was a hammered down, fattish heavyweight, with restless eyes and that shade of red hair that is almost pink. It was cut very short and his pink scalp glistened among the pink hairs. He wore a fawn-colored flannel suit with patch pockets and lapped seams, cut as every tailor can't cut flannel.

  He shook hands with me and turned his chair sideways and crossed his legs. That showed me French lisle socks at three or four dollars a pair, and hand-made English walnut brogues at fifteen to eighteen, depression prices.

  I figured that probably his wife had money.

  "Ah, Carmady," he said, chasing my card over the glass top of his desk, "with two a's, eh? Down here on a job?"

  "A little trouble," I said. "You can straighten it out, if you will."

  He stuck his chest out, waved a pink hand and lowered his voice a couple of notches.

  "Trouble," he said, "is something our little town don't have a lot of. Our little city is small, but very, very clean. I look out of my west window and I see the Pacific Ocean. Nothing cleaner than that. On the north Arguello Boulevard and the foothills. On the east the finest little business section you would want to see and beyond it a paradise of well-kept homes and gardens. On the south-if I had a south window, which I don't have-I would see the finest little yacht harbor in the world, for a small yacht harbor."

  "I brought my trouble with me," I said. "That is, some of it. The rest went on ahead. A girl named Isobel Snare ran off from home in the big city and her dog was seen here. I found the dog, but the people who had the dog went to a lot of trouble to sew me up."

  "Is that so?" the chief asked absently. His eyebrows crawled around on his forehead. I wasn't sure whether I was kidding him or he was kidding me.

  "Just turn the key in the door, will you?" he said. "You're a younger man than I am."

  I got up and turned the key and sat down again and got a cigarette out. By that time the chief had a right-looking bottle and two pony glasses on the desk, and a handful of cardamom seeds.

  We had a drink and he cracked three or four of the cardamom seeds and we chewed them and looked at one another.

  "Just tell me about it," he said then. "I can take it now."

  "Did you ever hear of a guy called Farmer Saint?"

  "Did I?" He banged his desk and the cardamom seeds jumped. "Why there's a thousand berries on that bimbo. A bank stickup, ain't he?"

  I nodded, trying to look behind his eyes without seeming to. "He and his sister work together. Diana is her name. They dress up like country folks and smack down small-town banks, state banks. That's why he's called Farmer Saint. There's a grand on the sister too."

  "I would certainly like to put the sleeves on that pair," the chief said firmly.

  "Then why the hell didn't you?" I asked him.

  He didn't quite hit the ceiling, but he opened his mouth so wide I was afraid his lower jaw was going to fall in his lap. His eyes stuck out like peeled eggs. A thin trickle of saliva showed in the fat crease at the corner. He shut his mouth with all the deliberation of a steam shovel.

  It was a great act, if it was an act.

  "Say that again," he whispered.

  I opened a folded newspaper I had with me and pointed to a column.

  "Look at this Sharp killing. Your local paper didn't do so good on it. It says some unknown rang the department and the boys ran out and found a dead man in an empty house. That's a lot of noodles. I was there. Farmer Saint and his sister were there. Your cops were there when we were there."

  "Treachery!" he shouted suddenly. "Traitors in the department." His face was now as gray as arsenic flypaper. He poured two more drinks, with a shaking hand.

  It was my turn to crack the cardamom seeds.

  He put his drink down in one piece and lunged for a mahogany call box on his desk. I caught the name Galbraith. I went over and unlocked the door.

  We didn't wait very long, but long enough for the chief to have two more drinks. His face got a better color.

  Then the door opened and the big red-faced dick who had sapped me loafed through it, with a bulldog pipe clamped in his teeth and his hands in his pockets. He shouldered the door shut, leaned against it casually.

  I said: "Hello, Sarge."

  He looked at me as if he would like to kick me in the face and not have to hurry about it.

  "Badge!" the fat chief yelled. "Badge! Put it on the desk. You're fired!"

  Gaibraith went over to the desk slowly and put an elbow down on it, put his face about a foot from the chief's nose,

  "What was that crack?" he asked thickly.

  "You had Farmer Saint under your hand and let him go," the chief yelled. "You and that saphead Duncan. You let him stick a shotgun in your belly and get away. You're through. Fired. You ain't got no more job than a canned oyster. Gimme your badge!"

  "Who the hell is Farmer Saint?" Galbraith asked, unimpressed, and blew pipe smoke in the chief's face.

  "He don't know," the chief whined at me. "He don't know. That's the kind of material I got to work with."

  "What do you mean, work?" Galbraith inquired loosely.

  The fat chief jumped as though a bee had stung the end of his nose. Then he doubled a meaty fist and hit Galbraith's jaw with what looked like a lot of power. Galbraith's head moved about half an inch.

  "Don't do that," he said. "You'll bust a gut and then where would the department be?" He shot a look at me, looked back at Fulwider. "Should I tell him?"

  Fulwider looked at me, to see how the show was going over. I had my mouth open and a blank expression on my face, like a farm boy at a Latin lesson.

  "Yeah, tell him," he growled, shaking his knuckles back and forth.

  Gaibraith stuck a thick leg over a corner of the desk and knocked his pipe out, reached for the whisky and poured himself a drink in the chief's glass. He wiped his lips, grinned. When he grinned he opened his mouth wide, and he had a mouth a dentist could have got both hands in, up to the elbows.

  He said calmly: "When me and Dunc crash the joint you was cold on the floor and the lanky guy was over you with a sap. The broad was on a window seat, with a lot of newspapers around her. okay. The lanky guy starts to tell us some yarn when a dog begins to howl out back and we look that way and the broad slips a sawed-off 12-gauge out of the newspapers and shows it to us. Well, what could we do except be nice? She couldn't have missed and we could. So the guy gets more guns out of his pants and they tie knots around us and stick us in a closet that has enough chloroform in it to make us quiet, without the ropes. After a while we hear 'em leave, in two cars. When we get loose the stiff has the place to hisself. So we fudge it a bit for the papers. We don't get no new line yet. How's it tie to yours?"

  "Not bad," I told him. "As I remember the woman phoned for some law herself. But I could be mistaken. The rest of it ties in with me being sapped on the floor and not knowing anything about it."

  Galbraith gave me a nasty look. The chief looked at his thumb.

  "When I came to," I said, "I was in a private dope and hooch cure out on Twenty-ninth. Run by a man named Sundstrand. I was shot so full of hop myself I could have been Rockefeller's pet dime trying to spin myself."

  "That Sundstrand," Galbraith said heavily. "That guy's been a flea in our pants for a long time. Should we go out and push him in the face, Chief?"

  "It's a cinch Farmer Saint put Carmady in there," Fulwider said solemnly. "So there must be some tie-up. I'd say yes, and take Carmady with you. Want to go?" he asked me.

  "Do I?" I said heartily.

  Gaibraith looked at the whisky bottle. He said carefully: "There's a grand each on this Saint and his sister. If we gather them in, how do we cut it?"

  "You cut me out," I said. "I'm on a straight salary and expenses."

  Gaibraith grinned again. He teetered on his heels, grinning with thick amiability.

  "Okydoke. We got your car in the garage downstairs. Some Jap phoned in about it. We'll use that to go in-just you and me."

  "Maybe you ought to have more help, Gal," the chief said doubtfully.

  "Uh-uh. Just me and him's plenty. He's a tough baby or he wouldn't be walkin' around."

  "Well, all right," the chief said brightly. "And we'll just have a little drink on it."

  But he was still rattled. He forgot the cardamom seeds.

  SEVEN

  It was a cheerful spot by daylight. Tea-rose begonias made a solid mass under the front windows and pansies were a round carpet about the base of an acacia. A scarlet climbing rose covered a trellis to one side of the house, and a bronze-green hummingbird was prodding delicately in a mass of sweet peas that grew up the garage wall.

  It looked like the home of a well-fixed elderly couple who had come to the ocean to get as much sun as possible in their old age.

  Galbraith spat on my runningboard and shook his pipe out and tickled the gate open, stamped up the path and flattened his thumb against a neat copper bell.

  We waited. A grill opened in the door and a long sallow-face looked out at us under a starched nurse's cap.

  "Open up. It's the law," the big cop growled.

  A chain rattled and a bolt slid back. The door opened. The nurse was a six-footer with long arms and big hands, an ideal torturer's assistant. Something happened to her face and I saw she was smiling.

  "Why, it's Mr. Galbraith," she chirped, in a voice that was high-pitched and throaty at the same time. "How are you, Mr. Galbraith? Did you want to see Doctor?"

  "Yeah, and sudden," Galbraith growled, pushing past her.

  We went along the hall. The door of the office was shut. Galbraith kicked it open, with me at his heels and the big nurse chirping at mine.

  Dr. Sundtrand, the total abstainer, was having a morning bracer out of a fresh quart bottle. His thin hair was stuck in wicks with perspiration and his bony mask of a face seemed to have a lot of lines in it that hadn't been there the night before.

  He took his hand off the bottle hurriedly and gave us his frozen-fish smile. He said fussily: "What's this? What's this? I thought I gave orders-"

  "Aw, pull your belly in," Galbraith said, and yanked a chair near the desk. "Dangle, sister."

  The nurse chirped something more and went back through the door. The door was shut. Dr. Sundstrand worked his eyes up and down my face and looked unhappy.

  Galbraith put both his elbows on the desk and took hold of his bulging jowls with his fists. He stared fixedly, venomously, at the squirming doctor.

  After what seemed a very long time he said, almost softly: "Where's Farmer Saint?"

  The doctor's eyes popped wide. His Adam's apple bobbled above the neck of his smock. His greenish eyes began to look bilious.

  "Don't stall!" Galbraith roared. "We know all about your private hospital racket, the crook hideout you're runnin', the dope and women on the side. You made one slip too many when you hung a snatch on this shamus from the big town. Your big city protection ain't going to do you no good on this one. Come on, where is Saint? And where's that girl?"

  I remembered, quite casually, that I had not said anything about Isobel Snare in front of Galbraith-if that was the girl he meant.

  Dr. Sundstrand's hand flopped about on his desk. Sheer astonishment seemed to be adding a final touch of paralysis to his uneasiness.

  "Where are they?" Galbraith yelled again.

  The big door opened and the big nurse fussed in again. "Now, Mr. Galbraith, the patients. Please remember the patients, Mr. Galbraith."

  "Go climb up your thumb," Galbraith told her, over his shoulder.

  She hovered by the door. Sundstrand found his voice at last. It was a mere wisp of a voice. It said wearily: "As if you didn't know."

  Then his darting hand swept into his smock, and out again, with a gun glistening in it. Galbraith threw himself sideways, clean out of the chair. The doctor shot at him twice, missed twice. My hand touched a gun, but didn't draw it. Galbraith laughed on the floor and his big right hand snatched at his armpit, came up with a Lugar. It looked like my Lugar. It went off, just once.

  Nothing changed in the doctor's long face. I didn't see where the bullet hit him. His head came down and hit the desk and his gun made thud on the floor. He lay with his face on the desk, motionless.

  Galbraith pointed his gun at me, and got up off the floor. I looked at the gun again. I was sure it was my gun.

  "That's a swell way to get information," I said aimlessly.

  "Hands down, shamus. You don't want to play."

  I put my hands down. "Cute," I said. "I suppose this whole scene was framed just to put the chill on Doc."

  "He shot first, didn't he?"

  "Yeah," I said thinly. "He shot first."

  The nurse was sidling along the wall towards me. No sound had come from her since Sundstrand pulled his act. She was almost at my side. Suddenly, much too late, I saw the flash of knuckles on her good right hand, and hair on the back of the hand.

  I dodged, but not enough. A crunching blow seemed to split my head wide open. I brought up against the wall, my knees full of water and my brain working hard to keep my right hand from snatching at a gun.

  I straightened. Galbraith leered at me.

  "Not so very smart," I said. "You're still holding my Luger. That sort of spoils the plan, doesn't it?"

  "I see you get the idea, shamus."

  The chirpy-voiced nurse said, in a blank pause: "Jeeze, the guy's got a jaw like a elephant's foot. Damn if I didn't split a knuck on him."

  Galbraith's little eyes had death in them. "How about upstairs?" he asked the nurse.

  "All out last night. Should I try one more swing?"

  "What for? He didn't go for his gat, and he's too tough for you, baby. Lead is his meat."

  I said: "You ought to shave baby twice a day on this job."

  The nurse grinned, pushed the starched cap and the stringy blond wig askew on a bullet head. She-or more properly he-reached a gun from under the white nurse's uniform.

  Galbraith said: "It was self-defense, see? You tangled with Doe, but he shot first. Be nice and me and Dune will try to remember it that way."

  I rubbed my jaw with my left hand. "Listen, Sarge. I can take a joke as well as the next fellow. You sapped me in that house on Carolina Street and didn't tell about it. Neither did I. I figured you had reasons and you'd let me in on them at the right time. Maybe I can guess what the reasons are. I think you know where Saint is, or can find out. Saint knows where the Snare girl is, because he had her dog. Let's put a little more into this deal, something for both of us."

  "We've got ours, sappo. I promised Doe I'd bring you back and let him play with you. I put Dune in here in the nurse's rig to handle you for him. But he was the one we really wanted to handle."

  "All right," I said. "What do I get out of it?"

  "Maybe a little more living."

  I said: "Yeah. Don't think I'm kidding you-but look at that little window in the wall behind you."

  Galbraith didn't move, didn't take his eyes off me. A thick sneer curved his lips.

  Duncan, the female impersonator, looked-and yelled.

  A small, square, tinted glass window high up in the corner of the back wall had swung open quite silently. I was looking straight at it, past Galbraith's ear, straight at the black snout of a tommy gun, on the sill, at the two hard black eyes behind the gun.

  A voice I had last heard soothing a dog said: "How's to drop the rod, sister? And you at the desk-grab a cloud."

  EIGHT

  The big cop's mouth sucked for air. Then his whole face lightened and he jerked around and the Luger gave one hard, sharp cough.

  I dropped to the floor as the tommy gun cut loose in a short burst. Galbraith crumpled beside the desk, fell on his back with his legs twisted. Blood came out of his nose and mouth.

  The cop in nurse's uniform turned as white as the starched cap. His gun bounced. His hands tried to claw at the ceiling.

  There was a queer, stunned silence. Powder smoke reeked. Farmer Saint spoke downward from his perch at the window, to somebody outside the house.

  A door opened and shut distinctly and running steps came along the hail. The door of our room was pushed wide. Diana Saint came in with a brace of automatics in her hands. A tall, handsome woman, neat and dark, with a rakish black hat, and two gloved hands holding guns.

  I got up off the floor, keeping my hands in sight. She tossed her voice calmly at the window, without looking towards it.

 

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