"Listen, York, why don't you stow that publicity stuff and think of your kid for a change? Keep this under your hat and you'll invite another s.n.a.t.c.h and maybe you won't be so lucky. Especially," I added, "since somebody in your household has sold you out."

York shuddered from head to foot.

"Who was it, York? Who's got the bull on you?"

"I . . . have nothing to say."

"No? Who else knows you're counting your hours because of those radiation burns? What's going to happen to the kid when you kick off?"

That did it. He turned a sick color. "How did you find out about that?"

"It doesn't matter. If I know it others probably do. You still didn't tell me who's putting the squeeze on you."

"Sit down, Mr. Hammer. Please."

I pulled up a chair and parked.

"Could I," he began, "retain you as sort of a guardian instead of reporting this incident? It would be much simpler for me. You see, there are certain scientific aspects of my son's training that you, as a layman, would not understand, but if brought to light under the merciless scrutiny of the newspapers and a police investigation might completely ruin the chances of a successful result.

"I'm not asking you to understand, I'm merely asking that you cooperate. You will be well paid, I a.s.sure you. I realize that my son is in danger, but it will be better if we can repel any danger rather than prevent it at its source. Will you do this for me?"

Very deliberately I leaned back in my chair and thought it over. Something stunk. It smelled like Rudolph York. But I still owed the kid a debt.

"I'll take it, York, but if there's going to be trouble I'd like to know where it will come from. Who's the man-hating turnip that has you in a brace?"

His lips tightened. "I'm afraid I cannot reveal that, either. You need not do any investigating. Simply protect my interests, and my son."

"Okay," I said as I rose. "Have it your own way. I'll play dummy. But right now I'm going to beat the sheet. It's been a tough day. You'd better hit it yourself."

"I'll call Harvey."

"Never mind, I'll find it." I walked out. In the foyer I pulled the diagram out of my pocket and checked it. The directions were clear enough. I went upstairs, turned left at the landing and followed the hand-carved bal.u.s.trade to the other side. My room was next to last and my name was on white cardboard, neatly typed, and framed in a small bra.s.s holder on the door. I turned the k.n.o.b, reached for the light and flicked it on.

"You took long enough getting here."

I grinned. I wondered what Alice Nichols had used as a bribe to get Harvey to put me in next to her. "h.e.l.lo, kitten."

Alice smiled through a cloud of smoke. "You were better-looking the last time I saw you."

"So? Do I need a shave?"

"You need a new face. But I'll take you like you are." She shrugged her shoulders and the spiderweb of a negligee fell down to her waist. What she had on under it wasn't worth mentioning. It looked like spun moonbeams with a weave as big as chicken wire. "Let's go to bed."

"Scram, kitten. Get back in your own hive."

"That's a corny line, Mike, don't play hard to get."

I started to climb out of my clothes. "It's not a line, kitten, I'm beat."

"Not that much."

I draped my shirt and pants over the back of the chair and flopped in the sack. Alice stood up slowly. No, that's not the word. It was more like a low-pressure spring unwinding. The negligee was all the way off now. She was a concert of savage beauty.

"Still tired?"

"Turn off the light when you go out, honey." Before I rolled over she gave me a malicious grin. It told me that there were other nights. The lights went out. Before I corked off one thought hit me. It couldn't have been Alice Nichols he had meant when he called some babe a man-hating b.i.t.c.h.

Going to sleep with a thought like that is a funny thing. It sticks with you. I could see Alice over and over again, getting up out of that chair and walking across the room, only this time she didn't even wear moonbeams. Her body was lithe, seductive. She did a little dance. Then someone else came into my dream, too. Another dame. This one was familiar, but I couldn't place her. She did a dance too, but a different kind. There was none of that animal grace, no fluid motion. She took off her clothes and moved about stiffly, ill at ease. The two of them started dancing together, stark naked, and this new one was leading. They came closer, the mist about their faces parted and I got a fleeting glimpse of the one I couldn't see before.

I sat bolt upright in bed. No wonder Miss Grange did things that bothered me. It wasn't the woman I recognized in her apartment, it was her motions. Even to striking a match toward her the way a man would. Sure, she'd be a man-hater, why not? She was a lesbian.

"d.a.m.n!"

I hopped out of bed and climbed into my pants. I picked out York's room from the diagram and tiptoed to the other side of the house. His door was partly opened. I tapped gently. No answer.

I went in and felt for the switch. Light flooded the room, but it didn't do me any good. York's bed had never been slept in. One drawer of his desk was half open and the contents pushed aside. I looked at the oil blot on the bottom of the drawer. I didn't need a second look at the hastily opened box of .32 cartridges to tell me what had been in there. York was out to do murder.

Time, time, there wasn't enough of it. I finished dressing on the way out. If anyone heard the door slam after me or the motor start up they didn't care much. No lights came on at all. I slowed up by the gates, but they were gaping open. From inside the house I could hear a steady snore. Henry was a fine gatekeeper.

I didn't know how much of a lead he had. Sometime hours ago my watch had stopped and I didn't reset it. It could have been too long ago. The night was fast fading away. I don't think I had been in bed a full hour.

On that race to town I didn't pa.s.s a car. The lights of the kid's filling station showed briefly and swept by. The unlit headlamps of parked cars glared in the reflection of my own brights and went back to sleep.

I pulled in behind a line of cars outside the Glenwood Apartments, switched off the engine and climbed out. There wasn't a sign of life anywhere. When this town went to bed it did a good job.

It was one time I couldn't ring doorbells to get in. If Ruston had been with me it wouldn't have taken so long; the set of skeleton keys I had didn't come up with the right answer until I tried two dozen of them.

The .45 was in my fist. I flicked the safety off as I ran up the stairs. Miss Grange's door was closed, but it wasn't locked; it gave when I turned the k.n.o.b.

No light flared out the door when I kicked it open. No sound broke the funeral quiet of the hall. I stepped in and eased the door shut behind me.

Very slowly I bent down and unlaced my shoes, then put them beside the wall. There was no sense sending in an invitation. With my hand I felt along the wall until I came to the end of the hall. A switch was to the right. Cautiously, I reached around and threw it up, ready for anything.

I needn't have been so quiet. n.o.body would have yelled. I found York, all right. He sat there grinning at me like a blooming idiot with the top of his head holding up a meat cleaver.

CHAPTER 4.

Now it was murder. First it was kidnapping, then murder. There seems to be no end to crime. It starts off as a little thing, then gets bigger and bigger like an overinflated tire until it busts all to h.e.l.l and gone.

I looked at him, the blood running red on his face, seeping out under the clots, dripping from the back of his head to the floor. It was only a guess, but I figured I had been about ten minutes too late.

The room was a mess, a topsy-turvy cell of ripped-up furniture and emptied drawers. The carpet was littered with trash and stuffing from the pillows. York still clutched a handful of papers, sitting there on the floor where he had fallen, staring blankly at the wall. If he had found what he was searching for it wasn't here now. The papers in his hand were only old receipted electric bills made out to Myra Grange.

First I went back and got my shoes, then I picked up the phone. "Give me the state police," I told the operator.

A Sergeant Price answered. I gave it to him briefly. "This is Mike Hammer, Sergeant," I said. "There's been a murder at the Glenwood Apartments and as far as I can tell it's only a few minutes old. You'd better check the highways. Look for a Ford two-door sedan with a bent radio antenna. Belongs to a woman named Myra Grange. Guy that's been b.u.mped is Rudolph York. She works for him. Around thirty, I'd say, five-six or -seven, short hair, well built. Not a bad-looking tomato. No, I don't know what she was wearing. Yeah . . . yeah, I'll stay here. You want me to inform the city cops?"

The sergeant said some nasty things about the city boys and told me to go ahead.

I did. The news must have jarred the guy on the desk awake because he started yelling his fool head off all over the place. When he asked for more information I told him to come look for himself, grinned into the mouthpiece and hung up.

I had to figure this thing out. Maybe I could have let it go right then, but I didn't think that way. My client was dead, true, but he had overpaid me in the first place. I could still render him a little service gratis.

I checked the other rooms, but they were as scrambled as the first one. Nothing was in place anywhere. I had to step over piles of clothes in the bedroom that had been carefully, though hurriedly, turned inside out.

The kitchen was the only room not torn apart. The reason for that was easy to see. Dishes and pans crashing against the floor would bring someone running. Here York had felt around, moved articles, but not swept them clear of the shelves. A dumbwaiter door was built into the wall. It was closed and locked. I left it that way. The killer couldn't have left by that exit and still locked it behind him, not with a hook-and-eye clasp. I opened the drawers and peered inside. The fourth one turned up something I hadn't expected to see. A meat cleaver.

That's one piece of cutlery that is rarely duplicated in a small apartment. In fact, it's more or less outdated. Now there were two of them.

The question was: Who did York surprise in this room? No, it wasn't logical. Rather, who surprised York? It had to be that way. If York had burst in here on Grange there would have been a scene, but at least she would have been here too. It was hard picturing her stepping out to let York smash up the joint.

When York came in the place was empty. He came to kill, but finding his intended victim gone, forgot his primary purpose and began his search. Kill. Kill. That was it. I looked at the body again. What I looked for wasn't there anymore.

Somebody had swiped the dead man's gun.

Why? d.a.m.n these murderers anyway, why must they mess things up so? Why the h.e.l.l can't they just kill and be done with it? York sat there grinning for all he was worth, defying me to find the answer. I said, "Cut it out, pal. I'm on your side."

Two cleavers and a grinning dead man. Two cleavers, one in the kitchen and one in his head. What kind of a killer would use a cleaver? It's too big to put in a pocket, too heavy to swing properly unless you had a fairly decent wrist. It would have to be a man, no dame likes to kill when there's a chance of getting spattered with blood.

But Myra Grange . . . the almost woman. She was more half man. Perhaps her sensibilities wouldn't object to crunching a skull or getting smeared with gore. But where the h.e.l.l did the cleaver come from?

York grinned. I grinned back. It was falling into place now. Not the motive, but the action of the crime, and something akin to motive. The killer knew York was on his way here and knew Grange was out. The killer carried the cleaver for several reasons. It might have just been handy. Having aimed and swung it was certain to do the job. It was a weapon to which no definite personality could be attached.

Above all things, it was far from being an accidental murder. I hate premeditation. I hate those little thoughts of evil that are suppressed in the mind and are being constantly superimposed upon by other thoughts of even greater evil until they squeeze out over the top and drive a person to the depths of infamy.

And this murder was premeditated. Perhaps that cleaver was supposed to have come from the kitchen, but no one could have gone past York to the kitchen without his seeing him, and York had a gun. The killer had chosen his weapon, followed York here and caught him in the act of rifling the place. He didn't even have to be silent about it. In the confusion of tearing the place apart York would never have noticed little sounds . . . until it was too late.

The old man half stooping over the desk, the upraised meat-ax, one stroke and it was over. Not even a hard stroke. With all that potential energy in a three-pound piece of razor-sharp steel, not much force was needed to deliver a killing blow. Instantaneous death, the body twisting as it fell to face the door and grin at the killer.

I got no further. There was a stamping in the hall, the door was pushed open and Dilwick came in like a summer storm. He didn't waste any time. He walked up to me and stood three inches away, breathing hard. He wasn't pretty to look at.

"I ought to kill you, Hammer," he grated.

We stood there in that tableau a moment. "Why don't you?"

"Maybe I will. The slightest excuse, any excuse. n.o.body's going to pull that on me and get away with it. Not you or anybody."

I sneered at him. "Whenever you're ready, Dilwick, here or in the mayor's office, I don't care."

Dilwick would have liked to have said more, but a young giant in the gray and brown leather of the state police strode over to me with his hand out. "You Mike Hammer?" I nodded.

"Sergeant Price," he smiled. "I'm one of your fans. I had occasion to work with Captain Chambers in New York one time and he spent most of the time talking you up."

The lad gave me a bone-crushing handshake that was good to feel.

I indicated the body. "Here's your case, Sergeant."

Dilwick wasn't to be ignored like that. "Since when do the state police have jurisdiction over us?"

Price was nice about it. "Ever since you proved yourselves to be inadequately supplied with material . . . and men." Dilwick flushed with rage. Price continued, addressing his remarks to me. "Nearly a year ago the people of Sidon pet.i.tioned the state to a.s.sist in all police matters when the town in general and the county in particular was being used as a rendezvous and sporting place by a lot of out-of-state gamblers and crooks."

The state cop stripped off his leather gloves and took out a pad. He noted a general description of the place, time, then asked me for a statement. Dilwick focused his glare on me, letting every word sink in.

"Mr. York seemed extremely disturbed after his son had been returned to him. He . . ."

"One moment, Mr. Hammer. Where was his son?"

"He had been kidnapped."

"So? " Price's reply was querulous. "It was never reported to us."

"It was reported to the city police." I jerked my thumb at Dilwick. "He can tell you that."

Price didn't doubt me, he was looking for Dilwick's reaction. "Is this true?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't we hear about it?"

Dilwick almost blew his top. "Because we didn't feel like telling you, that's why." He took a step nearer Price, his fists clenched, but the state trooper never budged. "York wanted it kept quiet and that's the way we handled it, so what?"

It came back to me again. "Who found the boy?"

"I did." Dilwick was closer to apoplexy than ever. I guess he wanted that ten grand as badly as I did. "Earlier this evening I found the boy in an abandoned shack near the waterfront. I brought him home. Mr. York decided to keep me handy in case another attempt was made to abduct the kid."

Dilwick b.u.t.ted in. "How did you know York was here?"

"I didn't." I hated to answer him, but he was still the police. "I just thought he might be. The boy had been kicked around and I figured that he wanted Miss Grange in the house."

The fat cop sneered. "Isn't York big enough to go out alone anymore?"

"Not in his condition. He had an attack of some sort earlier in the evening."

Price said, "How did you find out he was gone, Mr. Hammer?"

"Before I went to sleep I decided to look in to see how he was. He hadn't gone to bed. I knew he'd mentioned Miss Grange and, as I said, figured he had come here."

Price nodded. "The door . . . ?"

"It was open. I came in and found . . . this." I swept my hand around. "I called you, then the city police. That's all."

Dilwick made a face and bared what was left of his front teeth. "It stinks."