In the glow from our headlights faces stood sharply out; white, horrified faces, furtive faces, faces that were callously curious. Below the faces, white arms and shoulders showed, and bright gowns and jewelry, against the duller background of masculine clothing.
This was the first impression I got, and then, by the time I had removed my face from the windshield, I realized that this cluster of people had a core, a thing about which it centered. I stood up, trying to look over the crowd’s heads, but I could see nothing.
Jumping down to the driveway, I pushed through the crowd.
Face down on the white gravel a man sprawled—a thin man in dark clothes—and just above his collar, where the head and neck join, was a hole. I knelt to peer into his face.
Then I pushed through the crowd again, back to where Axford was just getting out of the car, the engine of which was still running.
“Pangburn is dead—shot!”
XIV
Methodically, Axford took off his gloves, folded them and put them in a pocket. Then he nodded his understanding of what I had told him, and walked toward where the crowd stood around the dead poet. I looked after him until he had vanished in the throng. Then I went winding through the outskirts of the crowd, hunting for Porky Grout.
I found him standing on the porch, leaning against a pillar. I passed where he could see me, and went on around to the side of the roadhouse that afforded most shadow.
In the shadows Porky joined me. The night wasn’t cool, but his teeth were chattering.
“Who got him?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” he whined, and that was the first thing of which I had ever known him to confess complete ignorance. “I was inside, keepin’ an eye on the others.”
“What others?”
“Tin-Star, and some guy I never seen before, and the broad. I didn’t think the kid was going out. He didn’t have no hat.”
“What do you know about it?”
“A little while after I phoned you, the girl and Pangburn came out from Joplin’s part of the joint and sat down at a table around on the other side of the porch, where it’s fairly dark. They eat for a while and then this other guy comes over and sits down with ’em. I don’t know his name, but I think I’ve saw him around town. He’s a tall guy, all rung up in fancy rags.”
That would be Kilcourse.
“They talk for a while and then Joplin joins ’em. They sit around the table laughin’ and talkin’ for maybe a quarter of a hour. Then Pangburn gets up and goes indoors. I got a table that I can watch ’em from, and the place is crowded, and I’m afraid I’ll lose my table if I leave it, so I don’t follow the kid. He ain’t got no hat; I figure he ain’t goin’ nowhere. But he must of gone through the house and out front, because pretty soon there’s a noise that I thought was a auto backfire, and then the sound of a car gettin’ away quick. And then some guy squawks that there’s a dead man outside. Ever’body runs out here, and it’s Pangburn.”
“You dead sure that Joplin, Kilcourse and the girl were all at the table when Pangburn was killed?”
“Absolutely,” Porky said, “if this dark guy’s name is Kilcourse.”
“Where are they now?”
“Back in Joplin’s hang-out. They went up there as soon as they seen Pangburn had been croaked.”
I had no illusions about Porky. I knew he was capable of selling me out and furnishing the poet’s murderer with an alibi. But there was this about it: if Joplin, Kilcourse or the girl had fixed him, and had fixed my informant, then it was hopeless for me to try to prove that they weren’t on the rear porch when the shot was fired. Joplin had a crowd of hangers-on who would swear to anything he told them without batting an eye. There would be a dozen supposed witnesses to their presence on the rear porch.
Thus the only thing for me to do was to take it for granted that Porky was coming clean with me.
“Have you seen Dick Foley?” I asked, since Dick had been shadowing Kilcourse.
“No.”
“Hunt around and see if you can find him. Tell him I’ve gone up to talk to Joplin, and tell him to come on up. Then you can stick around where I can get hold of you if I want you.”
I went in through a French window, crossed an empty dance-floor and went up the stairs that lead to Tin-Star Joplin’s living quarters in the rear second story. I knew the way, having been up there before. Joplin and I were old friends.
I was going up now to give him and his friends a shake-down on the off-chance that some good might come of it, though I knew that I had nothing on any of them. I could have tied something on the girl, of course, but not without advertising the fact that the dead poet had forged his brother-in-law’s signature to a check. And that was no go.
“Come in,” a heavy, familiar voice called when I rapped on Joplin’s living-room door.
I pushed the door open and went in.
Tin-Star Joplin was standing in the middle of the floor: a big-bodied ex-yegg with inordinately thick shoulders and an expressionless horse face. Beyond him Kilcourse sat dangling one leg from the corner of a table, alertness hiding behind an amused half-smile on his handsome dark face. On the other side of a room a girl whom I knew for Jeanne Delano sat on the arm of a big leather chair. And the poet hadn’t exaggerated when he told me she was beautiful.
“You!” Joplin grunted disgustedly as soon as he recognized me. “What the hell do you want?”
“What’ve you got?”
My mind wasn’t on this sort of repartee, however; I was studying the girl. There was something vaguely familiar about her—but I couldn’t place her. Perhaps I hadn’t seen her before; perhaps much looking at the picture Pangburn had given me was responsible for my feeling of recognition. Pictures will do that.
Meanwhile, Joplin had said:
“Time to waste is one thing I ain’t got.”
And I had said:
“If you’d saved up all the time different judges have given you, you’d have plenty.”
I had seen the girl somewhere before. She was a slender girl in a glistening blue gown that exhibited a generous spread of front, back and arms that were worth showing. She had a mass of dark brown hair above an oval face of the color that pink ought to be. Her eyes were wide-set and of a grey shade that wasn’t altogether unlike the shadows on polished silver that the poet had compared them to.
I studied the girl, and she looked back at me with level eyes, and still I couldn’t place her. Kilcourse still sat dangling a leg from the table corner.
Joplin grew impatient.
“Will you stop gandering at the girl, and tell me what you want of me?” he growled.
The girl smiled then, a mocking smile that bared the edges of razor-sharp little animal teeth. And with the smile I knew her!
Her hair and skin had fooled me. The last time I had seen her—the only time I had seen her before—her face had been marble-white, and her hair had been short and the color of fire. She and an older woman and three men and I had played hide-and-seek one evening in a house in Turk Street over a matter of the murder of a bank messenger and the theft of a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Liberty Bonds. Through her intriguing three of her accomplices had died that evening, and the fourth—the Chinese—had eventually gone to the gallows at Folsom prison. Her name had been Elvira then, and since her escape from the house that night we had been fruitlessly hunting her from border to border, and beyond.
Recognition must have shown in my eyes in spite of the effort I made to keep them blank, for, swift as a snake, she had left the arm of the chair and was coming forward, her eyes more steel than silver.
I put my gun in sight.
Joplin took a half-step toward me.
“What’s the idea?” he barked.
Kilcourse slid off the table, and one of his thin dark hands hovered over his necktie.
“This is the idea,” I told them. “I want the girl for a murder a couple months back, and maybe—I’m not sure—for tonight’s. Anyway, I’m—”
The snapping of a light-switch behind me, and the room went black.
I moved, not caring where I went so long as I got away from where I had been when the lights went out.
My back touched a wall and I stopped, crouching low.
“Quick, kid!” A hoarse whisper that came from where I thought the door should be.
But both of the room’s doors, I thought, were closed, and could hardly be opened without showing gray rectangles. People moved in the blackness, but none got between me and the lighter square of windows.
Something clicked softly in front of me—too thin a click for the cocking of a gun—but it could have been the opening of a spring-knife, and I remembered that Tin-Star Joplin had a fondness for that weapon.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” A harsh whisper that cut through the dark like a blow.
Sounds of motion, muffled, indistinguishable … one sound not far away. …
Abruptly a strong hand clamped one of my shoulders, a hard-muscled body strained against me. I stabbed out with my gun, and heard a grunt.
The hand moved up my shoulder toward my throat.
I snapped up a knee, and heard another grunt.
A burning point ran down my side.
I stabbed again with my gun—pulled it back until the muzzle was clear of the soft obstacle that had stopped it, and squeezed the trigger.
The crash of the shot. Joplin’s voice in my ear—a curiously matter-of-fact voice:
“God damn! That got me.”
XV
I spun away from him then, toward where I saw the dim yellow of an open door. I had heard no sounds of departure. I had been too busy. But I knew that Joplin had tied into me while the others made their get-away.
Nobody was in sight as I jumped, slid, tumbled down the steps—any number at a time. A waiter got in my path as I plunged toward the dance-floor. I don’t know whether his interference was intentional or not. I didn’t ask. I slammed the flat of my gun in his face and went on. Once I jumped a leg that came out to trip me; and at the outer door I had to smear another face.
Then I was out in the semi-circular driveway, from one end of which a red tail-light was turning east into the county road.
While I sprinted for Axford’s car I noticed that Pangburn’s body had been removed. A few people still stood around the spot where he had lain, and they gaped at me now with open mouths.
The car was as Axford had left it, with idling engine. I swung it through a flower-bed and pointed it east on the public road. Five minutes later I picked up the red point of a tail-light again.
The car under me had more power than I would ever need, more than I would have known how to handle. I don’t know how fast the one ahead was going, but I closed in as if it had been standing still.
A mile and a half, or perhaps two—
Suddenly a man was in the road ahead—a little beyond the reach of my lights. The lights caught him, and I saw that it was Porky Grout!
Porky Grout standing facing me in the middle of the road, the dull metal of an automatic in each hand.
The guns in his hands seemed to glow dimly red and then go dark in the glare of my headlights—glow and then go dark, like two bulbs in an automatic electric sign.
The windshield fell apart around me.
Porky Grout—the informant whose name was a synonym for cowardice the full length of the Pacific Coast—stood in the center of the road shooting at a metal comet that rushed down upon him. …
I didn’t see the end.
I confess frankly that I shut my eyes when his set white face showed close over my radiator. The metal monster under me trembled—not very much—and the road ahead was empty except for the fleeing red light. My windshield was gone. The wind tore at my uncovered hair and brought tears to my squinted-up eyes.
Presently I found that I was talking to myself, saying, “That was Porky. That was Porky.” It was an amazing fact. It was no surprise that he had double-crossed me. That was to be expected. And for him to have crept up the stairs behind me and turned off the lights wasn’t astonishing. But for him to have stood straight up and died—
An orange streak from the car ahead cut off my wonderment. The bullet didn’t come near me—it isn’t easy to shoot accurately from one moving car into another—but at the pace I was going it wouldn’t be long before I was close enough for good shooting.
I turned on the searchlight above the dashboard. It didn’t quite reach the car ahead, but it enabled me to see that the girl was driving, while Kilcourse sat screwed around beside her, facing me. The car was a yellow roadster.
I eased up a little. In a duel with Kilcourse here I would have been at a disadvantage, since I would have had to drive as well as shoot. My best play seemed to be to hold my distance until we reached a town, as we inevitably must. It wasn’t midnight yet. There would be people on the streets of any town, and policemen. Then I could close in with a better chance of coming off on top.
A few miles of this and my prey tumbled to my plan. The yellow roadster slowed down, wavered, and came to rest with its length across the road. Kilcourse and the girl were out immediately and crouching in the road on the far side of their barricade.
I was tempted to dive pell-mell into them, but it was a weak temptation, and when its short life had passed I put on the brakes and stopped. Then I fiddled with my searchlight until it bore full upon the roadster.
A flash came from somewhere near the roadster’s wheels, and the searchlight shook violently, but the glass wasn’t touched. It would be their first target, of course, and …
Crouching in my car, waiting for the bullet that would smash the lense, I took off my shoes and overcoat.
The third bullet ruined the light.
I switched off the other lights, jumped to the road, and when I stopped running I was squatting down against the near side of the yellow roadster. As easy and safe a trick as can be imagined.
The girl and Kilcourse had been looking into the glare of a powerful light. When that light suddenly died, and the weaker ones around it went, too, they were left in pitch unseeing blackness, which must last for the minute or longer that their eyes would need to readjust themselves to the gray-black of the night. My stockinged feet had made no sound on the macadam road, and now there was only a roadster between us; and I knew it and they didn’t.
From near the radiator Kilcourse spoke softly:
“I’m going to try to knock him off from the ditch. Take a shot at him now and then to keep him busy.”
“I can’t see him,” the girl protested.
“Your eyes’ll be all right in a second. Take a shot at the car anyway.”
I moved toward the radiator as the girl’s pistol barked at the empty touring car.
Kilcourse, on hands and knees, was working his way toward the ditch that ran along the south side of the road. I gathered my legs under me, intent upon a spring and a blow with my gun upon the back of his head. I didn’t want to kill him, but I wanted to put him out of the way quick. I’d have the girl to take care of, and she was at least as dangerous as he.
As I tensed for the spring, Kilcourse, guided perhaps by some instinct of the hunted, turned his head and saw me—saw a threatening shadow.
Instead of jumping I fired.
I didn’t look to see whether I had hit him or not. At that range there was little likelihood of missing. I bent double and slipped back to the rear of the roadster, keeping on my side of it.
Then I waited.
The girl did what I would perhaps have done in her place. She didn’t shoot or move toward the place the shot had come from. She thought I had forestalled Kilcourse in using the ditch and that my next play would be to circle arou
nd behind her. To offset this, she moved around the rear of the roadster, so that she could ambush me from the side nearest Axford’s car.
Thus it was that she came creeping around the corner and poked her delicately chiseled nose plunk into the muzzle of the gun that I held ready for her.
She gave a little scream.
Women aren’t always reasonable: they are prone to disregard trifles like guns held upon them. So I grabbed her gun hand, which was fortunate for me. As my hand closed around the weapon, she pulled the trigger, catching a chunk of my forefinger between hammer and frame. I twisted the gun out of her hand; released my finger.
But she wasn’t done yet.
With me standing there holding a gun not four inches from her body, she turned and bolted off toward where a clump of trees made a jet-black blot to the north.
When I recovered from my surprise at this amateurish procedure, I stuck both her gun and mine in my pockets, and set out after her, tearing the soles of my feet at every step.
She was trying to get over a wire fence when I caught her.
XVI
“Stop playing, will you?” I said crossly, as I set the fingers of my left hand around her wrist and started to lead her back to the roadster. “This is a serious business. Don’t be so childish!”
“You are hurting my arm.”
I knew I wasn’t hurting her arm, and I knew this girl for the direct cause of four, or perhaps five, deaths; yet I loosened my grip on her wrist until it wasn’t much more than a friendly clasp. She went back willingly enough to the roadster, where, still holding her wrist, I switched on the lights.
Kilcourse lay just beneath the headlight’s glare, huddled on his face, with one knee drawn up under him.
I put the girl squarely in the line of light.
“Now stand there,” I said, “and behave. The first break you make, I’m going to shoot a leg out from under you,” and I meant it.
I found Kilcourse’s gun, pocketed it, and knelt beside him.
He was dead, with a bullet-hole above his collar-bone.
“Is he—” her mouth trembled.