Корнелл Вулрич - Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 50, No. 5, October 10, 1936

“Over behind the ropes there, in the crowd across the street. Take him over and point out the guy to him, Marty.”

Step trailed the fireman whom he had clouted with his shoe — which incidentally had vanished — limping on his one unshod foot, and ducked under the rope beside a grizzled, perspiring little man. Palmed his badge at him to add to his terror, and asked, while his eyes roved the crowd that hemmed them in: “Who was the woman top-floor front?”

“Insoorance?” whined the terrified one.

“No, police department. Well, come on—”

“Smiff. Miss Smiff.”

Step groaned. But he’d figured she’d been hiding out anyway, so it didn’t really matter much. “How long she been living up there in your house?”

“Ten day.”

“Who visited her, see anybody?”

“Nome-body. She done even go out; my wife bring food.”

Good and scared, reflected Step. Scared stiff, but it hadn’t saved her. “Did you hear anything tonight just before the fire? Were you in the building? Hear a couple shots? Hear any screams?”

“No hear no-thing, train make too much noise. Only hear fella laff coming downstairs, like somebody tell-im good joke. Laff, laff, laff, all the way out to street—”

The marihuana, of course. Just two drags had affected his own risibilities. The effects of a whole reefer ought to last hours, at that rate. Step shoved away from the futile janitor, flagged one of the patrolmen holding the crowd in check behind the rope-barrier, introduced himself. The excitement was tapering off, now that everyone was out of the house and the fire had been subdued, it was only a matter of minutes before they’d start melting away. Overhead the “El” trains, which had been held back at Desbrosses Street while the smoke had been at its thickest, were again being allowed through, although surface traffic was still being detoured.

“Who’s on this job with you?” Step asked the cop in a low voice.

“One other guy, down at the other end.”

“Think the two of you can keep ’em in like they are, another couple minutes?”

The cop looked insulted. “That’s what we been doing. You don’t see anybody edging out into the middle of the street, do ya?”

“No, you don’t understand what I mean. Can you put up another rope at each side, hem them in where they are, keep them from strolling off just a little while longer till I get a chance to take a careful look through them all?”

“I’m not authorized to keep people from going about their business, as long as they don’t hamper the fire apparatus—”

“I’ll take the responsibility. There’s someone I’m out to get, and I’ve got a very good hunch he’s right here looking on. Firebugs are known to do that, murderers too when they think they’re safe from discovery. When you’ve got a combination of both, the urge to stay and gloat ought to be twice as strong!

“Bawl me out,” he added abruptly, “so it don’t look too phony, my standing talking to you like this.”

The cop swung his club at him, barked: “Get back there! Whaddya think that rope’s for? Get back there before I—”

Step cringed away from him, began to elbow his way deeper into the tightly-packed crowd jamming the narrow sidewalk. He did this as slow as he did everything else, didn’t seem like anyone who had a definite place to go, just a rubber-necker working his way toward a better vantage-point. From time to time he glanced over at the gutted building, or what could be seen, of it under the shadowy “El” structure that bisected the street vertically. Torches blinked deep within the front hallway of it, as firemen passed in and out, still veiled by the haze that clung to it.

There wasn’t, however, enough smoke left in the air, certainly not this close to the ground, to send anyone into paroxysms of strangled coughing. Such as that individual just ahead was experiencing, handkerchief pressed to mouth. Step himself had inhaled as much smoke as anyone, and his lungs were back on the job again as good as ever. He kept facing the burned building from this point on, edging over sidewise to the afflicted one. The spasms would stop and he’d lower the handkerchief; then another one would come on and he’d raise it again and nearly spill himself into it. Step was unobtrusively at his elbow by now.

When a person is suffering from a coughing-fit, two ways of assisting them will, occur to almost anybody. Offer them a drink of water or slap them helpfully on the back. Step didn’t have any water to offer, so he chose the second means of alleviation. Slapped the tormented one between the shoulder-blades; but just once, not several times, and not nearly forcefully enough to do any good. “You’re under arrest,” he said desultorily, “come on.”

The concealing handkerchief dropped — this time all the way to the ground. “What for? What’re you talking about?”

“For two murders and an arson,” drawled the wearied Step. “ I’m talking about you. And don’t be afraid to laugh right out. No need to muffle it with your handkerchief and try to change it into a cough any more. That was what gave you away to me. When you’ve been smoking marihuana, you’ve just gotta laugh or else— But watching fires isn’t the right place to do your laughing. And if it had been real coughing, you wouldn’t have stayed around where the smoke irritated you that much. Now show me where you dropped the gun before you came back here to watch, and then we’ll get in a taxi. I wouldn’t ask my feet to carry me another step tonight.”

His prisoner bayed uncontrollably with mirth, then panted: “I never was in that building in my life—” Writhed convulsively.

“I saw you,” said Step, pushing him slowly before him through the crowd, “through the window from an ‘El’ train as I was going by.” He knew the soporific effect the drug was likely to have, its blunting of the judgment. “She came to us and told us she was afraid of this happening to her, asked for protection, and we been giving it to her. Did you think you could get away with it?”

“Then what’d she rat on Plucky at his trial for? She knew what to expect. He sent out word—”

“Oh, that vice trial. And she was one of the witnesses? I see.” Step slammed the door of the cab on the two of them. “Thanks for telling me; now I know who she was, who you are, and why it was done. There is something to be said for marihuana after all. Not much, but maybe just a little.”

When he stepped out of the cab with his handcuffed quarry at the foot of the Franklin Street station four blocks away, he directed the driver: “Now sound your horn till they come down off of up there.” And when they did, his mates found Inspector Stephen Lively seated upon the bottom step of the station-stairs, his prisoner at his side.

“Fellas,” he said apologetically, “this is the guy. And if I gotta go up there again to the top, I wonder could you two make a saddle with your hands and hoist me between you. I’m just plumb tuckered out!”

Warren Louw and his comely young wife were driving slowly through the moonlit night. The film they had just witnessed — a tender, little comedy of love and marriage — had left them with a sense of mellow contentment. Mrs. Louw, sighing happily, snuggled close to her husband’s side as he gripped the wheel, intent on the glistening, coiling ribbon of road that wound through Twin Peaks and on to Kenwood Way. Surely violence and sudden tragedy were utterly foreign, unthinkable, in this soft, eucalyptus-scented night.