Nightmare Town: Stories (31 page)

The gun roared under my arm. I was surprised not to feel the bullet. It seemed that he must have hit me.

There wasn’t a second shot.

I looped my right fist over as I jumped. It landed when I landed. It took him too high-up on the cheek-bone – but it rocked him back a couple of steps.

I didn’t know what had happened to his gun. It wasn’t in his hand any more. I didn’t stop to look for it. I was busy, crowding him back – not letting him set himself – staying close to him – driving at him with both hands.

He was a head taller than I, and had longer arms, but he wasn’t any heavier or stronger. I suppose he hit me now and then as I hammered him across the room. He must have. But I didn’t feel anything.

I worked him into a corner. Jammed him back in a corner with his legs cramped under him – which didn’t give him much leverage to hit from. I got my left arm around his body, holding him where I wanted him. And I began to throw my right fist into him.

I liked that. His belly was flabby, and it got softer every time I hit it. I hit it often.

He was chopping at my face, but by digging my nose into his chest and holding it there I kept my beauty from being altogether ruined. Meanwhile I threw my right fist into him.

Then I became aware that Cara Kenbrook was moving around behind me; and I remembered the revolver that had fallen somewhere when I had charged Tennant. I didn’t like that; but there was nothing I could do about it – except put more weight in my punches. My own gun, I thought, was in one of his pockets. But neither of us had time to hunt for it now.

Tennant’s knees sagged the next time I hit him.

Once more, I said to myself, and then I’ll step back, let him have one on the button, and watch him fall.

But I didn’t get that far.

Something that I knew was the missing revolver struck me on the top of the head. An ineffectual blow – not clean enough to stun me – but it took the steam out of my punches.

Another.

They weren’t hard; these taps, but to hurt a skull with a hunk of metal you don’t have to hit it hard.

I tried to twist away from the next bump, and failed. Not only failed, but let Tennant wiggle away from me.

That was the end.

I wheeled on the girl just in time to take another rap on the head, and then one of Tennant’s fists took me over the ear.

I went clown in one of those falls that get pugs called quitters – my eyes were open, my mind was alive, but my legs and arms wouldn’t lift me up from the floor.

Tennant took my own gun out of a pocket, and with it held on me, sat down in a Morris chair, to gasp for the air I had pounded out of him. The girl sat in another chair; and I, finding I could manage it, sat up in the middle of the floor and looked at them.

Tennant spoke, still panting.

“This is fine – all the signs of a struggle we need to make our story good!”

“If they don’t believe you were in a fight,” I suggested sourly, pressing my aching head with both hands, “you can strip and show them your little tummy.”

“And you can show them this!”

He leaned down and split my lip with a punch that spread me on my back.

Anger brought my legs to life. I got up on them. Tennant moved around behind the Morris chair. My black gun was steady in his hand.

“Go easy,” he warned me. “My story will work if I have to kill you – maybe work better.”

That was sense. I stood still.

“Phone the police, Cara,” he ordered.

She went out of the room, closing the door behind her; and all I could hear of her talk was a broken murmur.

Ten minutes later three uniformed policemen arrived. All three knew Tennant, and they treated him with respect. Tennant reeled off the story he and the girl had cooked up, with a few changes to take care of the shot that had been fired from the nickeled gun and our rough-house. She nodded her head vigorously whenever a policeman looked at her. Tennant turned both guns over to the white-haired sergeant in charge.

I didn’t argue, didn’t deny anything, but told the sergeant:

“I’m working with Detective Sergeant O’Gar on a job. I want to talk to him over the phone and then I want you to take all three of us down to the detective bureau.”

Tennant objected to that, of course; not because he expected to gain anything, but on the off-chance that he might. The white-haired sergeant looked from one of us to the other in puzzlement. Me, with my skinned face and split lip; Tennant, with a red lump under one eye where my first wallop had landed; and the girl, with most of the clothes above the waistline ripped off and a bruised cheek.

“It has a queer look, this thing,” the sergeant decided aloud, “and I shouldn’t wonder but what the detective bureau was the place for the lot of you.”

One of the policemen went into the hall with me, and I got O’Gar on the phone at his home. It was nearly ten o’clock by now, and he was preparing for bed.

“Cleaning up the Gilmore murder,” I told him. “Meet me at the Hall. Will you get hold of Kelly, the patrolman who found Gilmore, and bring him down there? I want him to look at some people.”

“I will that,” O’Gar promised, and I hung up.

The “wagon” in which the three policemen had answered Cara Kenbrook’s call carried us down to the Hall of Justice, where we all went into the captain of detectives’ office. McTighe, a lieutenant, was on duty.

I knew McTighe, and we were on pretty good terms, but I wasn’t an influence in local politics, and Tennant was. I don’t mean that McTighe would have knowingly helped Tennant frame me; but with me stacked up against the assistant city engineer, I knew who would get the benefit of any doubt there might be.

My head was thumping and roaring just now, with knots all over it where the girl had beaned me. I sat down, kept quiet, and nursed my head while Tennant and Cara Kenbrook, with a lot of details that they had not wasted on the uniformed men, told their tale and showed their injuries.

Tennant was talking – describing the terrible scene that had met his eyes when, drawn by the girl’s screams, he had rushed into her apartment – when O’Gar came into the office. He recognised Tennant with a lifted eyebrow, and came over to sit beside me.

“What the hell is all this?” he muttered.

“A lovely mess,” I whispered back. “Listen – in that nickel gun on the desk there’s an empty shell. Get it for me.”

He scratched his head doubtfully, listened to the next few words of Tennant’s yarn, glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, and then went over to the desk and picked up the revolver.

McTighe looked at him – a sharp, questioning look.

“Something on the Gilmore killing,” the detective-sergeant said, breaking the gun.

The lieutenant started to speak, changed his mind, and O’Gar brought the shell over and handed it to me.

“Thanks,” I said, putting it in my pocket. “Now listen to my friend there. It’s a good act, if you like it.”

Tennant was winding up his history.

“… Naturally a man who tried a thing like that on an unprotected woman would be yellow, so it wasn’t very hard to handle him after I got his gun away from him. I hit him a couple of times, and he quit – begging me to stop, getting down on his knees. Then we called the police.”

McTighe looked at me with eyes that were cold and hard. Tennant had made a believer of him, and not only of him – the police-sergeant and his two men were glowering at me. I suspected that even O’Gar – with whom I had been through a dozen storms – would have been half-convinced if the engineer hadn’t added the neat touches about my kneeling.

“Well, what have you got to say?” McTighe challenged me in a tone which suggested that it didn’t make much difference what I said.

“I’ve got nothing to say about this dream,” I said shortly. “I’m interested in the Gilmore murder – not in this stuff.” I turned to O’Gar. “Is the patrolman here?”

The detective-sergeant went to the door, and called: “Oh, Kelly!”

Kelly came in – a big, straight-standing man, with iron-gray hair and an intelligent fat face.

“You found Gilmore’s body?” I asked.

“I did.”

I pointed at Cara Kenbrook.

“Ever see her before?”

His gray eyes studied her carefully.

“Not that I remember,” he answered.

“Did she come up the street while you were looking at Gilmore, and go into the house he was lying in front of?”

“She did not.”

I took out the empty shell O’Gar had got for me, and chucked it down on the desk in front of the patrolman.

“Kelly,” I asked, “why did you kill Gilmore?”

Kelly’s right hand went under his coat-tail at his hip.

I jumped for him.

Somebody grabbed me by the neck. Somebody else piled on my back. McTighe aimed a big fist at my face, but it missed. My legs had been suddenly kicked from under me, and I went down hard with men all over me.

When I was yanked to my feet again, big Kelly stood straight up by the desk, weighing his service revolver in his hand. His clear eyes met mine, and he laid the weapon on the desk. Then he unfastened his shield and put it with the gun.

“It was an accident,” he said simply.

By this time the birds who had been manhandling me woke up to the fact that maybe they were missing part of the play – that maybe I wasn’t a maniac. Hands dropped off me, and presently everybody was listening to Kelly.

He told his story with unhurried evenness, his eyes never wavering or clouding. A deliberate man, though unlucky.

“I was walkin’ my beat that night, an’ as I turned the corner of Jones into Pine I saw a man jump back from the steps of a buildin’ into the vestibule. A burglar, I thought, an’ cat-footed it down there. It was a dark vestibule, an’ deep, an’ I saw somethin’ that looked like a man in it, but I wasn’t sure.

‘”Come out o’ there!’ I called, but there was no answer. I took my gun in my hand an’ started up the steps. I saw him move just then, comin’ out. An’ then my foot slipped. It was worn smooth, the bottom step, an’ my foot slipped. I fell forward, the gun went off, an’ the bullet hit him. He had come out a ways by then, an’ when the bullet hit him he toppled over frontwise, tumblin’ clown the steps onto the sidewalk.

“When I looked at him I saw it was Gilmore. I knew him to say ‘howdy’ to, an’ he knew me – which is why he must o’ ducked out of sight when he saw me comin’ around the corner. He didn’t want me to see him comin’ out of a buildin’ where I knew Mr. Tennant lived, I suppose, thinkin’ I’d put two an’ two together, an’ maybe talk.

“I don’t say that I did the right thing by lyin’, but it didn’t hurt anybody. It was an accident, but he was a man with a lot of friends up in high places, an’ – accident or no – I stood a good chance of bein’ broke, an’ maybe sent over for a while. So I told my story the way you people know it. I couldn’t say I’d seen anything suspicious without maybe puttin’ the blame on some innocent party, an’ I didn’t want that. I’d made up my mind that if anybody was arrested for the murder, an’ things looked bad for them, I’d come out an’ say I’d done it. Home, you’ll find a confession all written out – written out in case somethin’ happened to me – so nobody else’d ever be blamed. “That’s why I had to say I’d never seen the lady here. I did see her – saw her go into the buildin’ that night – the buildin’ Gilmore had come out of. But I couldn’t say so without makin’ it look bad for her; so I lied. I could have thought up a better story if I’d had more time, I don’t doubt, but I had to think quick. Anyways, I’m glad it’s all over.”

KELLY AND the other uniformed policeman had left the office, which now held McTighe, O’Gar, Cara Kenbrook, Tennant, and me. Tennant had crossed to my side, and was apologising.

“I hope you’ll let me square myself for this evening’s work. But you know how it is when somebody you care for is in a jam. I’d have killed you if I had thought it would help Cara – on the level. Why didn’t you tell us that you didn’t suspect her?”

“But I did suspect the pair of you,” I said. “It looked as if Kelly had to be the guilty one; but you people carried on so much that I began to feel doubtful. For a while it was funny – you thinking she had done it, and she thinking you had, though I suppose each had sworn to his or her innocence. But after a time it stopped being funny. You carried it too far.”

“How did you rap to Kelly?” O’Gar, at my shoulder, asked.

“Miss Kenbrook was walking north on Leavenworth – and was halfway between Bush and Pine – when the shot was fired. She saw nobody, no cars, until she rounded the corner. Mrs. Gilmore, walking north on Jones, was about the same distance away when she heard the shot, and she saw nobody until she reached Pine Street. If Kelly had been telling the truth, she would have seen him on Jones Street. He said he didn’t turn the corner until after the shot was fired.

“Either of the women could have killed Gilmore, but hardly both; and I doubted that either could have shot him and got away without running into Kelly or the other. Suppose both of them were telling the truth – what then? Kelly must have been lying! He was the logical suspect anyway – the nearest known person to the murdered man when the shot was fired.