THE BURDEN OF PROOF

Originally published in Speed Detective, April 1943.

Taking part in the Community Chest Drive wasn’t as bad as I’d figured it’d be. So far, everyone had paid off, and at about every house, they offered me a drink. And by the time I got to Grant Hobson’s big stucco heap. I began to get a kick out of the idea of putting the bee on him for substantial dough.

When I saw the big Cadillac with a “C” sticker (gas ration, usually issued to doctors, ministers, others who had to travel a lot) on the windshield, I knew Hobson was in, the heel. And so was Bernice and her little blue Chevvie. Near as I or anyone else could figure it out, the only good thing about Hobson was Bernice.

Bernice came to the door. She was dark and shapely, and her red gown did justice to it all. That was partly because of how the gown was built, and a lot because of how the gal inside of it was arranged.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Darrow, come on in, how’s the drive?”

“Driving along, Mrs. Hobson. I got your pledge card all made out.”

That was a gag of mine, having it all filled in advance, it kept the prospect from beefing. I got the jump that way.

Then Hobson came in. He was big and important looking, and when he had a client all lined up for a real estate swindle, he was hearty and pleasant, and you’d sign almost anything without reading the fine print. But right now, he was off duty. He gave a dirty little laugh and said, “I guess you were calling him Mister Darrow all the time you two were parked up on Circle Drive.”

“Don’t be silly, Grant! He’d just changed a tire for me, and we took time out for a smoke before I drove home. How often do I have to tell you?”

Hobson turned a frosty eye on the Kit of receipt cards and window stickers and such like, and said, “I get stuck the limit down at my office, I do not see how you get this way, trying to nick me at my house.”

He was right that time, but the last five shots of “community spirit” under my belt, and the fact that he was a prime heel made me figure out my answer: “Now, see here, Mr. Hobson, I’m trying to make this subdivision one hundred percent. Instead of paying all your quota downtown, just dish out maybe twenty bucks of it here, and the rest there.”

“So I can put one of your I CONTRIBUTED stickers in the window, huh?”

Bernice was giving me the high sign to shut up. And she was saying something, only I’m no good at lip reading unless a gal is close. So I sounded off, “Well, it’d look good alongside that ‘C’ card on your windshield. I’ve worn outa pair of shoes hoofing to the train, account my ‘A’ card (absolute smallest gas ration) not going around.”

He was sensitive about that “C” card. Everybody said swindlers like him ought to be walking for the duration, so they couldn’t pull in so many suckers, and he’d heard about it. Which maybe is why he took a poke at me.

Well, I took a poke back at him, but the scatter rug on Bernice’s slick hardwood floor did me dirt, and about the time I was picking a place to land, Hobson was helping me. With his boot. I skated down a couple steps, and landed in the walk. “Get out and stay out,” he howled, “and if I ever catch you two together, I’ll give you some more of the same.”

Cards and checks and window stickers were fluttering all around the garden. And a man’s house is his castle. Just to make sure of that, he had slammed the door. But Bernice was outside, caging checks and stuff.

He began hollering for her to come in before he came out and dragged her in. She turned to hand me a bunch of papers and she said, low and in a hurry, “This evening, I’ll contribute to the chest.”

Then she headed back to the house, “Grant, that was a rotten trick, and so are your insinuations, I hope you starve some day, you stingy—!”

Two gals from the neighborhood had watched the show, which I didn’t realize until I reached the street. One of them said, “Cleve, you looked the funniest, but I wouldn’t’ve laughed to save my life, not with him watching.” The other said, “Excuse it, please, but I’m going to laugh myself dizzy now.”

Which they did, and I joined in. When the two gals got the mirth out of their systems, they headed home, and I figured I’d spend the next hour or so cleaning up the subdivision; a lot of ground for a Sunday afternoon, but I’d gotten an early start.

Well, I got a contribution at the next place, and a laugh. It seems the two dames had wasted little time on the phone. But the contributions were getting bigger, and so were the drinks. By the time I made the last call, I wasn’t a bit griped.

Nobody liked Hobson. He’d sold most of the property in that suburb. He’d told some of the customers there was a bus every fifteen minutes. He’d convinced another that a house had sound foundations, when the truth was that the foundation cracked regularly, and made the doors jam. The shack was perched on a steep down slope and every winter it slid a couple inches, which is a bit too much.

I learned plenty about Hobson, at that last stop. Old man Sorenson and his wife got out a jug, and I ate supper with them. Hobson had pretty nearly had his license permanently revoked, account of slick dealing, and he’d been let off with a warning. One more beef, and he was barred from business anywhere in the state.

When I finally headed down the road, I was thinking, “If someone ever got something on that guy, it would be a blessing.”

Funny thing of it was, with all his easy and crooked money, he kept the bank roll sewed up tight. A couple months previous, he and Bernice had a big row when he said he’d be darned if she could have either a joint checking account or a personal one.

I couldn’t remember exactly when Bernice had said for me to come back. Another thing, how would she make a contribution, when she never saw the color of money anyway? It was all messed up, and she’d been talking in a hurry. So I got the idea of barging in, telling him it’d sure look like hell, booting a Community Chest Collector out of the house, and if he didn’t come across, I’d tell Dan Ingalls, the columnist of the local paper, and wouldn’t that sound swell?

A bit of the old blackmail. To make the subdivision one hundred percent, and to make that son squirm a little.

After all, you can’t beat a man up in his own house, no matter what you think of him, but there are other ways, and this was one of them.

Her car was out, but the Cad was in. I must’ve misunderstood her. All the better then. So I went to the door. Lights were on, the radio was playing, and the latch hadn’t been caught.

I gave the knocker a couple whacks. Being full of vintages and ideas, my touch wasn’t the most accurate. And the door swung wide open, almost a hint. I got no answer, and I said, “Wake up, Hobson, I got something to tell you.”

By then I was weaving far enough into the vestibule to get a look at the living room. There was Hobson in a blue smoking jacket, the same one he’d worn that afternoon. The air was thick with whiskey from a busted decanter.

“Huh. Drunker’n a fiddler’s—!” Meaning him; but that held for me, too, or I’d not barged in to find out if the guy could get up on his feet and drink some more.

He couldn’t. His knuckles were cut, and his head was hammered all out of shape. There were a couple new twenty dollar bills on the Persian carpet. A chair turned over. The poker from the fireplace was what had beaned him. And on the Chesterfield, lying between cushion and arm, was a Colt automatic that didn’t smell as if it’d been fired.

I couldn’t get out fast enough. The guy was dead. He had to be. After such a conking, once they quit twitching, they don’t start again. And by now I was stony sober.

I hoofed it home to the leaky cracker box he’d sold me and my mother, a couple years before she died.

It was pretty nasty all around. If anyone had seen me go in there, I’d have a sweet chance of proving we’d not gone round and round. I wondered if he’d threatened Bernice with that gun, and she’d knocked him out, and then gone wild and finished him off with some extra taps. The first sight of blood does drive some people off their conks.

And I’d made it worse, leaving without reporting to the cops. If I’d called right away, they might be able to tell when he’d been socked, and might give me a good out, as I’d been eating and drinking with the Sorensons for a couple hours. Well, it might still work. Unless the guy had been conked just before I got there.

And if he had—I wouldn’t be with the gang when they lined up in front of draft headquarters next week. We’d quit our jobs, and most of us were looking forward to it. Some of us had asked the Board to set our numbers ahead, so we’d be with a couple buddies whose turn had come. Now I’d not have a friend left in town, if this mess made me miss the train.

I said to myself, “Who’d’ve seen me anyway?”

Just because I told a couple people I’d sign that guy up if it was the last thing I did, it didn’t mean I’d gone back that evening to do it, did it? Sure it didn’t.

I should have told McDougal, the radio patrol cop. At one time, his beat had been a private patrol, with every property owner chipping in to pay him, though later he got on the county payroll. He’d always been a deputy sheriff, and he had his job to do, but at least he wouldn’t jump at conclusions. I was about to follow up this notion when a car came helling up the drive.

The gal got out in a hurry. It was Bernice, and while I was still wondering what to say, she came bouncing up the steps. I stuttered, “Wait till I turn off your headlights.”

Then I followed her into the shack. Her eyes had a gleam and her hand shook when she fumbled with the clasps of her suitcase sized handbag. Funny, but I began to get shivers and thrills watching her. I could feel that something was going to happen when she spoke.

I couldn’t tell whether I was thrilled or scared. That smile and those eyes did both. I wondered where she’d been since she killed him. She was mussed up a little, but her clothes weren’t torn, and she wasn’t bruised any place where it’d show.

This didn’t take as long as the telling of it does. Funny how many shivers and thoughts you can jam into a couple seconds while a girl is getting her breath, and opening her handbag. Finally she said, “Here are my keys, run my car into your garage and lock it up.” Before I could make sense out of that, she went on, “And here’s twenty dollars, make out a receipt and everything.”

She put it on the table, and spilled a couple or three other bills the same size. Remembering she never got her fingers on folding money, I got shaky and had a tough time running my heap into the drive and putting hers under cover and behind lock. When I got back she had glasses set out.

Her laugh was shaky. “I’m through with him—through, you hear? I don’t know what to do, yet, but I’m not going back to him. Can you put me up till I decide?”

I saw the way her mouth was trembling and said soothingly: “I don’t know as I blame you. Sure, I got plenty room here. You need a drink, all right. Come on, I’ll have one with you.”

I gulped a slug, and smelled “Tabu” from behind her ears. I knew it was “Tabu” because I asked her that day I changed a tire.

I guess it was the perfume and the way she raised her head to look up a bit more. So I pulled the switch, and while we were both blinking in the dark, I grabbed her with both arms, and knocked over a glass, and didn’t even miss a beat. It ought to freeze a fellow a little, hearing a dame lead off by saying she’s dropped in to get even with her husband, when you’ve just seen the guy looking as if a tractor had given him a going over, but I was past freezing.

Maybe that was because we started kissing each other. But it just couldn’t be stopped. I was thinking, “I’d’ve been a sap, phoning the cops, and missing all this…”

It wasn’t just the girl. It was the way she’d dropped in. It happens all the time to people in books, but us mill run fellows get our faces clawed crosswise.

When I heard the siren, Bernice was cuddled up with her head parked on my shoulder and she was saying, “I guess you think I’m awful.”

I did not have to help her to her feet. I said, “That’s Mac.”

She found her way in the dark. The door out of the living room closed before Mac pounded at the front. I snapped on the lights and said, “What the devil?”

Mac was short and solid. He wore khaki breeches and a cap, a gun and a star, but this time he wasn’t cocking his head and chuckling like he always does. I said, once more, “What the devil? Isn’t a blackout, I didn’t hear the sirens downtown.”

That was silly. My lights hadn’t been on. He eyed me, and I began to think of lipstick. Mac said, “When you went to get Hobson’s contribution, this evening, was he in?”

“Nobody answered when I knocked.”

I was doing a slick job, my voice was steady, but I was breaking out in a sweat.

Mac said, “You didn’t go in at all?”

“Not without knocking. Not after getting kicked out on my fanny this afternoon.”

Mac made a funny face. He was trying to be hard, and trying to forget I was one of the first people in the hills to chip in a buck a month for his radio patrol. He said, “The sheriff and I found a Community Chest pledge card all made out except for his signature, it had his name and everything on it.”

That took quick thinking. “I guess I dropped that in the yard when he booted me out. Mrs. Hobson helped me pick up a lot of stuff and we skipped that probably.”

“You aren’t asking what it’s all about?”

“You aren’t giving me a chance so far. I bite, what is up?”

“You want to talk to Hobson now and find out?”

“I never did want to talk to that heel, and I don’t want to now, but if it is business, it is business. What’s Mrs. Hobson say?”

“I haven’t asked her. She’s still out.” He gave me a queer look. “Hobson’s dead. Some prowler conked him. We’re trying to find out who saw him alive last.”

“The guy that conked him did. Anything else you want to know?”

He began sniffing the air. Then he pointed at the woman’s handbag parked on a chair. Bernice had forgotten the obvious. Mac said, “Where’s the girlfriend?”

“She checked out. Or don’t you know how peevish women get sometimes?”

Mac made a face. “Jim, I hope your girlfriend can fix you up with an alibi. We’re looking for whoever gave Hobson the works, and the whole neighborhood knows you two wrangled, and she told some neighbor about how he raised hell about you and her having a smoke in her parked car.”

“It was broad daylight, and I changed a tire, and what the devil?”

“They got to find someone, Jim. I don’t say the D.A. is going to elect you, but you are going to be asked things. And a fellow working for the Community Chest getting the bum’s rush is likely to get hot headed. A guy that’d give a Chest worker a boot is still a human being, as far as law is concerned.

“You mean I am pinched?”

Mac shook his head. “Can’t pinch people on suspicion unless they’re plain fly by nights. But you may end up by having to dig up good answers if you don’t want to face a hearing and an indictment. Even if you beat it hands down, you’ll miss going to camp with your buddies. Come clean and tell me what is what; I do not promise a thing, but I’ll do everything I can for you.”

“I’ve spoken my piece. It is your move.”

Mac shrugged. “Good luck, fellow. It is none of my business, but I would sure love to know who left her bag on the chair, her lipstick on that glass, and her smell all over the room. That’s hot stuff she wears. You know, I smelled stuff like that not long ago.” I didn’t ask him where. He didn’t say it was in Hobson’s house. He just went to the door. And after he pulled out, I got pretty nearly sick wondering what’d’ve happened if Bernice’s car had been in the drive. But he knew, he must have known whose bag was on the chair.

For a cop, Mac was one of the best. But a cop, like a soldier, has to do his job. As long as he could, he’d hold off on her account, but there was a limit.

Before I could start for the rear, Bernice came out. “I heard it all, Cleve. Isn’t it awful?”

I stood there like a goon. “How long were you gone, and where?”

She answered, “I was awfully sore quick. So I came up here. You don’t think I knew?”

“When you came in, I quit thinking.”

“Cleve, you didn’t do it.”

“I didn’t, but they got me where I live. That card made out in advance. That’s bad. You heard what he said.”

She sighed. “I’d be in an awful jam, saying I was with you when it happened. Cleve, I just couldn’t! It’d be different if Grant hadn’t been—I mean, it’d be embarrassing any time, but tonight—”

I wasn’t able to ask her how we’d know when it happened. I couldn’t believe she’d done it, and then come up here. But it wasn’t impossible. That fistful of twenties worried me.

“Where’d you get all that money? He never gave you any. The whole neighborhood knows that.”

Her eyes opened wide, her whole face changed. It was like when a dentist thinks the anesthesia is complete, only it isn’t.

“Give me my keys, I’ve got to go. Before they catch me here. I’ve got to think.”

I gave her the keys, but I said, “The smell of Tabu don’t prove anything, but you heard Mac. Suppose someone is waiting to see if someone leaves?”

She began to wilt. “I didn’t think of that.”

I found my hat. “Wait till I come back.”

“Where are you going?”

“Out to think. Before they come back and corner me so I can’t think.”

“Let me go with you.”

“That’d be dynamite. You stay here. If I leave, they’ll follow me, if they’re really watching. You’ll be safe. Mac don’t want you caught here, not if he can help it. He’s a solid man.”

So I checked out in my heap.

She’d been to Coppa’s. I knew the place. A bit noisy, but OK, and the younger crowd liked it. So I headed in the back door and gave Ted the high sign.

He came from the bar, and I asked, “Will you tell Bernice Hobson I’m waiting out in back for her?”

“Hobson? I don’t know any Bernice. Come on in and look.”

“Nuh-uh.” I winked. “Can’t. Got reasons.”

“What she look like?”

“Wearing a red hat. And a slick fur coat.” I made motions. “Built something like that, and dark haired. And she has legs.”

People in the Hobson bracket just didn’t go to Coppa’s, they went to the Camino Grille. It was odd, Bernice coming to this un-swanky place.

Ted squinted a bit and said, “That dame ain’t here, but she was here. Pal, I am going in mourning for you, you should weep, a gal like that walking out on you.”

“You mean she’s been here and gone?”

“Yeah, and it was funny. She was sitting alone in a booth. A guy came in and they had a huddle, and he paid the check, and checked out, and she went out, and the look on her face was something.”

“You sure are observing.”

Ted chuckled. “She had lots to observe. The haybags that hang around here, why wouldn’t I notice a new face and so forth like hers? The smell of her put me walking on bubbles.”

He’d seen Bernice, all right. And she’d met some guy at Coppa’s because she didn’t want to meet him where she’d be known by name, like she’d been at the ritzy places. Hobson spent money all right, only he didn’t believe wives ought to ever have cash in their handbags, he said women couldn’t count over five anyway. “Well, who was the guy?”

Ted gave me a sharp look. “No use fighting about a dame, where you’re going, there won’t be any to fight about. Nuts for her.”

“Well, who was the guy? Quit stalling, is he a regular?”

“Yeah. What are you figuring?”

“Not making trouble for you. Give you my Word. I won’t conk him or anything. I just want to know.”

“Say, Hobson—Hobson—that’s the real estate guy’s wife. Are you crazy, Cleve?” Then he laughed. “Well, it serves him right, and I wish you’d gotten the dame, and not—”

“Well, spit it out, who?”

“Larry Towne. Not so bad, not so good. Too smart, but he’s a customer.”

“And he checked out. She bought a bottle. What with?”

“Money. Say, it is funny. Look here, Cleve, she don’t like him, it wasn’t sociable, and he didn’t look happy even when he came in, and—”

“What’d she pay with?”

“Well, a twenty, I don’t get many of them, not from our crowd.”

I had some Community Chest money with me. I said, “Give me her twenty for these little ones. But I want hers.”

“Only one in the till, that’s a cinch.” He snickered. “That’s sentiment, I say. And don’t raise the devil with Towne, she don’t like him at all, she had a five minute date with him.” When I got back to the alley, I whiffed the bill. It wasn’t new. And it didn’t smell like Tabu. But the one Bernice had given me did smell that way.

I looked Towne up in the phone book. He lived right near the city limits, down in the flats, just short of the foothills. Maybe Bernice did conk Hobson, and hurried down to Coppa’s to make an alibi, ten minutes was all she’d need, and no one could cut it that fine when it came to saying when a man was knocked off. But why didn’t she stay there, why didn’t she stick with Towne, drinking? Why’d she come up to me, when she had a public alibi that wouldn’t embarrass her?

Towne’s bungalow was dark. If he had a wife, I figured she must be out of town, hence this finagling around with Bernice. So I decided to risk prowling around. Something told me that Mac hadn’t pinched me simply because he’d rather someone else did it; or else, because he had some other hunch and was leaving me to sweat awhile, until I got jittery and told all. But if he didn’t have something on someone else, I was a cold duck.

I fooled around at the back door, and used a pledge card to slip between frame and screen, and lifted the hook. It worked. Then I went back to get my flashlight, which I’d left in the car. Lord, what a chump, forgetting that! If the real criminal was only that dumb!

After a bad case of shakes, I was back in the house again. It looked like the guy lived alone. The rubbish in the kitchen made that pretty clear. His kitchen wasn’t any dirtier than mine, though.

But there was something fishy about it all. He must have given Bernice that money. The bill she gave Ted for the liquor didn’t smell of perfume, because she hadn’t kept it in her handbag. Those she gave me did smell sweet. Get my angle?

Well, I remembered how detectives don’t know what they’re doing, but they try everything and finally they corner their man. So I began looking at Towne’s shoes. The FBI does it better with microscopes, but this was the best I could do.

There were two bits of broken glass in the rubber heel of one shoe, a brown one. There was a pre-war brown suit in the closet. It had glass flakes in the cuff.

But the payoff was a handkerchief in the breast pocket. It had a soot smudge, like he’d wiped a rod about the thickness of his finger. A poker, for instance, a square wrought iron poker, the corners had left sharp lines. The cops wouldn’t find fingerprints on the poker that’d conked Hobson, or else this was coincidence, for Towne didn’t have a fireplace in his bungalow.

Pretty nice, pretty nice. I was just stuffing the handkerchief back into the pocket, and feeling smug, when a switch ticked, and someone said, “Hold it, don’t move.”

There was a fellow pointing a gun at me.

It looked like trapping the assassin had kicked back. They tell me that in the army, you learn to close in and cold-caulk a guy that has you covered with a pistol, and confidentially, I’d rather have had some military training than a million dollars, a case of champagne, and five gallons of gas.

“What you doing here?” the tough guy asked.

“Um—just a bit of burglary, Mr. Towne. No hard feelings.”

Then Mac stepped in. He looked glum and he said, “Cleve, what did you do this for, anyway?”

I said, “Pinch Towne there. I got evidence against him. That was what I was looking for.”

The guy with the gun flipped back his lapel and showed a star. “The name is Smith. Now turn around and keep your hands up. Mac, snap ’em on.”

Mac did so. Do you know, they publish millions of pages, these days, about the beauties of liberty, but until you get a pair of handcuffs on you, you simply can’t understand what the word means. If I’d known what shackles are like, I think I’d’ve risked fighting for it even without a dime’s worth of training in disarming a fellow that had me covered with a gat. Some of my crowd weren’t any too keen about shouldering a musket. But I knew, then and there, that if I ever got a chance to tell them what I felt like with handcuffs on, they would think it was a downright treat to charge massed artillery.

Then I said, “Look here, I got a case against Towne. Get that handkerchief he used to wipe the poker that killed Hobson.”

“I thought so,” Mac said, kind of sadly. “Not that I blame you for conking him, but it is illegal doing things like that.”

Copper Smith snorted. “Foxy, stuffing your handkerchief in his pocket. Is it monogrammed?”

It wasn’t. And it was new. No laundry marks. I felt sicker than ever. “How about the glass in his heels and pants cuffs? Glass from the busted decanter.”

Smith looked, nodded. “Planted, huh? Buddy, you been making a nice confession, you know more about Hobson’s death than we do.”

“I tell you, I don’t! Sure I lied about not going in. I saw him, and I was scared silly. Sure I told Old Man Sorenson I was going back to collect. But I always make out the pledge cards in advance, to stop sales resistance, his card being made out don’t prove I wrangled with him about his contribution and conked him when he tried to run me out with a gun.”

Smith said, just as sadly as Mac, “This man is too smart for any good use.” Then, to me, “Young man, do not try to tell me that the pledge card we found was dropped the first time you went round and round with Hobson.”

“Well, it was. You prove it isn’t. That’s the law. The burden of proof is on you, not me. This is a democracy, you can’t railroad me.”

“Every crook pulls that, buddy. Listen here. The card we found had a blood stain on it. It fell on a little blood clot on the carpet and it stuck there. You dropped it the second time you went into Hobson’s house.”

Mac sighed. “I am sorry, Cleve, but that is the way it is.”

Mac was a gentleman. It seems he hadn’t told about Bernice’s bag and her perfume, in my shack. She was a lady, so he gave her the breaks. He just said, “It is illegal to kill a heel, even if he swindled your aged mother selling her a cracker box.”

Was I fixed up with motivations? Smith nudged me. “Get going.” We didn’t go to jail. We went to Hobson’s house, Bernice was there. I knew from her eyes that Mac had gone to my place and told her to go home, and she was flagging me to shut up and not tell about her; I knew Mac wouldn’t spill that if he didn’t have to.

They had another guy there. He wasn’t happy looking either. Smith said, “Mr. Towne, this man says one of your handkerchiefs wiped that poker. And that you have a pair of shoes with glass flakes, decanter glass, in your heels and pants cuffs.”

Towne brightened up. He wasn’t little, he wasn’t big, he was too smart, too shrewd looking. He turned up his soles, one at a time, and turned his pants cuffs inside out. “Look and see.”

Mac said to me, “Darrow, you might as well quit.”

“Hey, how about looking at his other things?”

“Planted. We found glass in your heels too, at your house. You changed your shoes. The handkerchief you showed us could be yours too, it is yours.” He turned to Towne. “I think that that is all, Mr. Towne, unless Mr. Smith has something to say.”

Smith said, “Darrow needs locking-up. Take him away.”

Then Bernice went wild.

“You ask Towne why he met me at Coppa’s, ask him why he gave me $100 in twenties. You ask him what he said when I phoned him from Cleve’s house and told him he killed my husband!”

Towne went wild. He made a dive, slapped Bernice down, and knocked her over an ottoman. Lucky, the glass had been swept up, or she’d been in deplorable shape as far as sitting down to meals.

Then Mac conked Towne, and Smith conked Towne, and they both picked him up. I picked Bernice up, and she began shouting it out, “You can’t frame Cleve, I’ll tell everything. My husband would never give me a thin dime in cash money, so when he pulled just one final fast one, I told Towne, and he began to put the bee on Grant, and Towne and I split.”

“You mean,” I yelled, “he pulled one so fast that the real estate board would blow up his license for keeps?”

“That’s it. I had to blackmail my own husband, and do you blame me? After all—well, it was wrong but a woman feels awful, without one dime in cash, no matter how many charge accounts she has. Well, I was at Coppa’s to meet Towne and get my payoff and I was going to chip in for the Community Chest. I don’t know what happened before he met me, but I bet Grant quarreled with him and pulled a gun, and—”

Things began to look different. With Bernice telling all. Anyway, Towne was sunk. Mac had followed me, I learned later, and heard me wrangling with Ted at Coppa’s, and he followed me to Towne’s, and meanwhile, another cop had located Towne.

Towne, conking Hobson in what he called self-defense, got scared and wouldn’t touch Hobson’s new bills. We found out later that he’d cashed a check to get the cut Bernice was waiting for.

They’d been bluffing me about thinking I’d planted the handkerchief and the busted glass. I had dropped the pledge card, it slipped out of my kit when I stumbled in and found Hobson’s corpse. But Mac didn’t quite believe I was guilty, so he followed through.

Well, that’s the way it turned out. They couldn’t indict Bernice for blackmailing her own husband. They couldn’t even get far by nailing her for conspiracy. I don’t know what they’ll give Towne. I don’t give a darn, I’m in the army, and with what I learned about liberty, I am all for armies, and don’t try to poke a gun at me. I know the answers now, I’ll take your gun and shove it down your throat and pull the trigger.

And I like the army just a bit more, and for a reason you can guess. Bernice figured it’d be silly, not dropping in every so often until my date with the draft board. I don’t know what’ll happen to her while I’m gone, but a date with her in the meantime makes a date with the army look brighter!