Fletcher Flora: The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!

I’d guessed her identity, of course, from the moment I’d walked in.

“Until this afternoon,” I said, “I hadn’t seen Hal for a long time. He probably has a lot of friends I’ve never heard of.”

She leaned forward stiffly, clutching the edge of the desk. “You’ve seen him?”

“I just came from the municipal prison.”

“How is he?”

I shrugged and lit a cigarette of my own, taking my time, answering her through smoke. “Licked,” I said. “Ready to quit. I’m supposed to be his lawyer, but it’s just for looks.”

“He didn’t mention me at all?”

“Not by name. He said he spent the night of the murder with a girl. That you?”

Delicate color flushed her cheeks. “Yes.”

“It’s an air-tight alibi, honey. You could save his hide with a dozen words in the right place.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here.”

“This isn’t the right place. If you speak up, Hal won’t even need a lawyer. All you have to do is see the district attorney.”

“I’ve seen him.”

In his corner, Oliver Wendell Holmes, with no problems, slumbered quietly in his web. The office seemed filled, of a sudden, with a poised and breathless menace.

“Yes? What did he tell you?”

“He told me it was a nice try and that he admired me for the attempt, but said he had a witness of his own who contradicted my testimony. His witness was one of his own investigators. He told me to go home and forget it, otherwise I’d find myself involved in a perjury charge.”

Her voice had sunk to a whisper of bitterness. I got up and moved over to a window that looked down into the narrow chasm of a dreary alley.

After a while, I turned back into the room. She still sat on the edge of her chair, the ineffectual cigarette burning forgotten between her fingers. A thin line of smoke ascended past her face. Her eyes met mine, fear swimming darkly.

I said quietly, “You know anyone out of town? Anyone you could visit for a while?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad. You ought to take a nice trip. You ought to take a quick trip to a far place. You got a job?”

“Yes.”

“Get sick. Give me time to figure something out. In the meantime, go home and lock your door. For your sake and Hal’s, take care of yourself.”

She jerked erect. “I’ll be all right. Will you call me when you need me?”

“I’ll call you. Leave your address with my secretary.”

She went to the door and stood there with one hand on the knob. “Why?” she asked. “He’s just one of the little guys. He isn’t big enough to rate a top bracket frame.”

I was suddenly wishing I had never known Hal Decker and that this girl was a thousand miles away. I wasn’t proud of the feeling, and I said softly, “There’s nothing personal about it. Any guy would have done. It’s just that someone needs a patsy... it’s just that Hal pointed at himself with his big mouth... it’s just that he made himself logical.”

She continued to stand there for a few seconds, her eyes fixed in a blind stare of intense absorption. And then, saying nothing, she went out.

I leaned back to study the wall beside the door. Outside in the reception office, the voices of Kitty and Wanda Henderson were engaged in a brief exchange. Then the hall door opened, closed, and silence descended.

Suddenly, beyond my door, Kitty’s typewriter began a furious clattering. Shadow on the glass, I thought. The clattering ended abruptly, and Kitty’s voice rose brightly. Almost immediately, my door swung open, and my reflexes had me reaching for a stack of paper, while I thought unkindly of Kitty’s negligence in forgetting to cue me in. But I didn’t complete the action. I knew, somehow, that the two guys who entered would not be susceptible to the routine.

One of them leaned against the door. The other moved in on my desk, with a cordial smile on his face. He even removed his hat, placing it carefully on a corner of the desk. His hair was light brown and clipped close to a skull. He was tall, topping-six feet, with heavyweight shoulders that moved in easy co-ordination with his legs. A pretty nice-looking guy, really, except that his light tan eyes were cold and shining with conditioned wariness. There was about him the delicate and indefinable scent of violence and death.

“You Solomon Burr?” he asked, pleasantly.

“Yes,” I said. “Have a chair.”

The cordial smile spread a trifle. He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and removed a thick, green packet. He fanned the edge of it with a thumbnail and laid it on the desk among the legal papers.

“No, thanks. We won’t stay. The girl who was just here — Wanda Henderson — this will pay you to forget her.”

It was a lot of money, a hell of a lot of money for a lawyer with a relatively new shingle. I looked at the packet, and my palms were itching.

“Go to hell,” I said.

The guy with tan eyes kept smiling. He picked up the money and returned it to his pocket. Leaning across the desk, as if he were going to argue the point, he slashed the horny edge of his hand across my month. My chair teetered, crashing over backward, not so much from the blow as from my effort to get away from it. The guy came around the desk and kicked me. I tried to move away, but all my muscles were drawn in a kind of excruciating contraction. I felt myself hoisted, jammed against the desk. Stony knuckles raked my face and the pleasant voice, spaced precisely between blows, reached me faintly on a rising wave of thunderous nausea.

“You could have made a nice bundle, just for turning down a job. Now you’ll turn it down without the bundle, just because I ask it. You hear me, counselor? You hear me real plain?”

I heard him, but I didn’t answer. I slipped away under cover of night and descended in soft and sweeping gyrations a thousand sickening miles to the blessed sanctuary of the floor.

My head was lying on something delightfully soft. Far off above me, a voice said, “Damn it, you’re getting me all bloody.”

Opening my eyes, I saw through a swimming pink mist the shimmering, elusive face of Kitty Troop.

“Pardon me,” I said, shutting my eyes again.

The effort detonated a bomb inside my skull.

“Shut up,” Kitty said. “If you’ve got to bleed, bleed quietly.”

When I’d accumulated enough strength to lift my lids once more, the pink mist had thinned a little, and Kitty’s face was closer and clearer.

“You’ve been crying,” I said.

She sniffed. “Like hell I have. You think I’d waste any tears on a guy three months delinquent on my salary? What the hell you trying to do, sonny, make like Perry Mason?”

“Perry Mason never gets beat up,” I said. “Perry Mason is a hero. Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got nice legs?”

“You’d be surprised,” she said. “Anyhow, you ought to use a more direct approach. Between you and me, lover, this is a damned devious technique. Now get up. The fun’s over.”

I tried a grin and suffered for it. “You’re profane, honey. You’re a very profane dame.”

“To hell with you,” she said.

Slipping an arm across my shoulders, she made enough clearance to draw her leg out from under. Then, very gently, while bells rang and sirens whined in a vivid shower of colored sparks and streamers, she deposited me into a chair.

She went away, and I let my eyes close. Pretty soon, she returned, and I let them stay closed. She swabbed the cut on my cheek bone with liquid fire.

“Ouch,” I said.

“Merthiolate,” she said.

“Take it easy, honey.”

“It ought to have a stitch.”

“Nothing doing.”