Chapter Twenty-Five

I limped along the corridor toward my apartment door. It was too early in the day for the lights to be on, but not much sunlight penetrated the place. There were heavy shadows.

Emerging from these, as I approached my door, was a smart figure. Of a woman.

“The trouble kid herself,” I said.

“I came back. I said I would come back.”

“This is a hell of a time to come, Elena. I gave you to Hanwood last night. He wanted to kill me so you’d stop seeing me.”

“Oh.”

“Does he know you came here again?”

“No,” she said.

“Yes!” snarled Hanwood.

He emerged from the shadows beside Mrs. MacEchran’s door. He had sneaked in there somehow without Elena seeing him; she gasped as he spoke.

Of course he had a gun in his hand. And there was on his face the expression of a man who has stood all he can stand. As far as Hanwood was concerned, the last straw had been laid on his back. He was going to reclaim Elena if he had to hang for it.

I unlocked my door. “Come in, come in,” I said. “This would make such a mess in the hall. You too, Elena. Or would you sooner wait here for the winner?”

Hanwood laughed. “The winner? A naive way to put it, Teed. As though we were going to duel.”

“We are, Hanwood.” I swung on him, my gun in my hand. “You’re careless, Paul,” I said. “Just because I wasn’t carrying a gun when you braced me in the hall before, you think I’m always unarmed? You think I never learn? Come in. And you’d better keep your eyes on this gun—on my trigger finger. Because I’m watching yours. The first sign of nervousness and I let fly.”

He was sweating. He didn’t mind shooting in cold blood. He didn’t relish a gunfight, though. He wasn’t that sure of his aim.

I backed through my hallway and into the living room. My gun never wavered from his chest. He followed at a respectful distance. He wasn’t watching me at all. His eyes were on my gun. I had him worried.

Elena followed on behind, staring, still.

We planted ourselves across the living room from each other, the big rug between us.

“The time has come,” I said. “The end of the road, and all that. This was a fine routine, Paul, this jealousy angle. You wanted to kill me because I was stealing your girl. That was the only reason, was it? Wasn’t there maybe a chance you were trying to put me out of the way because I was coming too close to you?”

He shifted uneasily. I jerked my gun up an inch, to show him how carefully I was watching, and he froze.

“I’ll begin at the beginning. There was an apartment used for gambling, Paul. You knew about it because it was right across the hall from your front door. Apartment sixteen. It was run by three men—a tough yegg named Irish Joe, a guy named Chesterley who was respectable on the surface, and a third partner so respectable he never appeared.

“Now, the third partner was an expensive boy who needed an awful lot of money for living. His share of the apartment earnings, big as they were, were not enough. So he had a brainwave. Why not take pictures of the important people who came to gamble? Then, somehow, get the police interested in the place so they would raid it. The pictures would then become a lot more valuable than the apartment had ever been.

“There was only one partner who didn’t like this idea. Irish Joe had no reputation at all—if the place was raided, he could pull out and open up shop elsewhere. The silent third partner wouldn’t be connected with the plan at all. But poor Chesterley was an established citizen; he’d be ruined if it became known he was a gambling club owner. All his friends would cut him—even his wife didn’t know his business. So Chesterley objected to the plan. The stakes were so big this meant he had to be rubbed out.

“I figured out quite a while ago how Chesterley’s killing happened to take place on the mountain. It wasn’t because he liked taking lonely walks—he knew his way around too well for that. It was because he had a rendez-vous with the third partner up there. Not Irish Joe; Irish he could meet in the apartment any time. The third partner always stayed away from that place, and met the others in secret. So he met Chesterley on top of Mount Royal. He probably brought Irish along for a muscle man. And it was the last meeting Chesterley ever had with anyone.”

“You’re telling me all this because it amuses you?” Paul Hanwood demanded.

“Be patient,” I said. “I’ll continue my story. Crawfie Foster had been recruited as photographer by this time, and since it was a little dangerous to use apartment fifteen for that job he had doped out a way to snap men who had been observed at the club, and fake the negatives so they could be used for blackmail. Only one thing went wrong. Priscilla Dover was smart enough to follow Crawfie to his hiding place. Too bad for Priscilla. When the third partner found she intended to tell me, he silenced her.

“Now everything was ready. A victim was picked. To have police raid the gambling joint was desirable. To have them come there and find a corpse, as well as gambling, doubled the return from the blackmail. So it was carefully staged. Someone watched Wales gambling. That was Crawfie. As Wales got ready to leave, Crawfie phoned the third partner. The third partner called the police to tell them about the body—remember, they got there before Wales was cold—and then was getting ready to shoot Wales. But there was a hitch.”

“Very clever, Teed,” he admitted. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought his finger tightened on the trigger. Mine did likewise. But neither gun spoke.

I said, “When MacArnold and I came into your apartment you were about to step out and shoot Wales. You’d already called the cops. There was no time to lose—and there we were. Lucky there was an alternate plan. Lucky someone else was standing ready with a gun. I could be wrong, but I’d say it was Crawfie.”

“I suppose the little weasel told you,” Hanwood burst out. “I suppose he told you all this—even admitted to murder. The white-livered little—”

“Never mind him. He’s dead. He died before he could talk. But thanks for the confirmation. You see, you were the only one except MacArnold, Montgomery and myself who could have guessed when I first came into the case. You were there in the Alamo Club when Priscilla told me she’d found Crawfie. You were coming out to the canteen on Decarie for a meeting with Crawfie and Irish Joe, the night I followed them there and got my leg broken. You’ve been around all the time—and operating against me with a good screen. You weren’t trying to stop my work on the case—oh, no. You were trying to keep me away from Elena. Well, I guess that’s all, Hanwood. That’s the end for you. You bludgeoned Chesterley while Irish Joe held his arms. You shot Priscilla while she slept and then strangled her while she lay sick and weak on a hospital bed. How do you like this for a change? Irish Joe and Crawfie are gone. They won’t help you, won’t do your killing for you. How do you like facing an opponent with a gun?

“I’m going to count to three and then fire. You fire whenever you’re ready, Paul. I’m not afraid of your aim.”

There was a scream and a flashing body in front of me, and Elena was hanging on to my arm. “No, no!” she screamed. “There’s been enough killing. I can’t stand it. I can’t—”

A gun roared. He hadn’t waited for Elena to get clear. And in shooting, he had defeated his own purpose. I wasn’t touched.

But Elena’s voice stopped in a choking whisper, and she collapsed to the floor. And with her, she dragged in a death grip my gun hand and my gun.

He laughed. “Now it is all over, Teed. Really all over.”

He raised his gun and aimed carefully for my heart.

And behind him, a beer bottle lifted higher and higher, and then with the sickening splat of a hammer cracking a coconut came down to split his skull.

“Thanks, Lila,” I said.

I stumped across the floor to him. I turned him face-upward with my foot. He was dead.

“Is Elena—?”

“Yeah.”

“A fine conclusion.”

“Almost. Only two more things to do.”

“Like what?”

“Phone Framboise,” I said. “But first this.” I got my gun from beside Elena’s body. Then I came over to where he lay on the floor.

“That for Chesterley,” I said, and shot. “That for Wales.” I shot again.

Then I pointed the gun at his face and emptied the rest of the clip. “That,” I said, “for Priscilla.”

Out in the corridor a woman screamed. I knew who it was. It was Mrs. MacEchran.

“Police! Help, police!” she yelled.

“Quiet, you old washerwoman!” I roared.

Lila came to me and put her hand on my arm. “There’s only one way to get away from her. Away from the whole mess. Let’s take your ten thousand dollars and go to—to Bermuda.”

THE END