Ричард Деминг: The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories

Nan had returned to her chair and was eying Mac speculatively. “How would you like to work for Homicide, Incorporated?” she asked abruptly.

Mac sat up straight and forced a look of surprise on to his face. “Homicide, Inc.! I’ve heard of that, and it’s bigger than any of the guys I mentioned. Don’t tell me that outfit is run by a woman!”

“I won’t tell you anything,” she said in a suddenly cold voice. “Who runs it is none of your business. You’ll get your orders and your salary from me. Who I get them from is something you don’t have to know, and if you try to find out, Thomas will discourage the attempt by squeezing your throat until you stop breathing — permanently.”

“All right,” Mac said agreeably. “I won’t pry. Just so I get paid regularly, and know I’ll be taken care of if I get in a jam.”

“You’ll get five hundred a week, and if you get in a pinch, the best legal talent in the country will be retained to defend you.”

“You’ve got a new employee,” Mac said.

For the first time Nan almost smiled; but instead of being reassured, coldness crept along Mac’s spine.

She turned to Cougar and said, “You better run along now, Thomas. I want to talk to Mac for a while.”

The already tight skin seemed to tighten even more across the Strangler’s narrow face, and his eyes shot open hatred at Mac. But he rose obediently, muttered a good night and left.

As soon as the door closed behind Cougar, Nan’s brittle mask seemed to melt away. For a moment she stood staring at the door with a kind of uneasy relief, looking more like a bewildered young girl than a lieutenant in a murder organization. Again Mac experienced a sense of shock at the combination of sympathy and revulsion her two faceted character aroused in him.

“I hate him!” she said in a low voice. “I’ve wished him dead a thousand times!”

Mac looked at her with his mouth open, unable to correlate her obvious fear and detestation of Cougar with the cold and domineering manner in which she ordered him around. If she really wished the man dead, she was certainly in a position to get him that way. He wondered if for some obscure reason she was putting on an act, and resolved to guard his reactions carefully.

She shook herself like a kitten throwing off water, moved over to Mac’s chair, took his hand and led him to the sofa. Puzzledly he sat beside her while she continued to hold his hand tightly.

“I’m afraid,” she said simply. “I needed you badly.”

On guard, he examined her face, noting the wild excitement deep in her eyes. For a moment he thought the excitement was amorous, and wondered how he could duck such a squeamish situation, for he had no desire to make love to his brother’s murderess. But immediately he sensed it was something else — an uncertainty and something closely allied to terror.

She released his hand suddenly, clasped both of hers in her lap and looked up at him with a strange mixture of hope and wariness in her expression.

“I’m glad you’ve come in with me, Mac,” she said, then added quickly, “With us, I mean.”

A theory began to form in Mac’s mind, a theory that explained her dialogue with Cougar as well as her present action, which he half suspected was a deliberate act. The theory was that Nan was the real head of Homicide, Inc., and her talk of a “next higher contact” plus her present act was deliberate red herring.

At the same time she looked so frightened, so small and so defenseless, he automatically dropped a protective arm across her shoulders, one part of his mind half believing she really needed masculine protection, and the other part regarding himself with amazed disgust. Her head tilted upward, and in spite of his resolution, he kissed her. For a second he completely forgot himself.

Her lips clung to his coolly. For a moment he completely forgot she was a murderess, forgot his mission, forgot everything but the soft outline of her mouth. Then recollection sent a wave of revulsion over him and he jerked back so suddenly, Nan’s eyes widened in surprise.

At the same moment the door opened quietly and a woman entered from the hall.

She was a slim, shy-appearing brunette of about twenty-eight, pretty in a delicate-featured, subdued sort of way, but the type that instinctively huddle in the background and are therefore overlooked.

She gave an embarrassed cough, and stood twisting the strap of her bag uncertainly.

“Why, Claire,” Nan said in a surprised voice. “Is it after five?”

“Five-thirty,” Claire said apologetically.

Mac rose and Nan said, “This is Mr. MacDowell, Claire. Claire D’Arcy, Mac. She shares the apartment with me.”

Nan’s air of defenselessness had vanished, and her eyes were again brittle and mocking. “Claire is a working girl. Chief file clerk for Argus Mutual. She toils from eight to five while I flit from cafe to cocktail lounge, and secretly she disapproves of me.”

“Why, I do no such thing!” Claire said, coloring.

Mac lowered his lids to conceal the flash of interest inspired by the name, Argus Mutual. But he made no attempt to slow his racing mind.

The leak at Argus was immediately obvious, yet so simple it was no wonder it worked. One look at Claire D’Arcy was enough to indicate that her company would regard her as above suspicion, as she probably was. Even if they knew of Nan, it would never occur to Argus that the attractive apartment-mate of their chief file clerk was part of Homicide, Inc. Nor would it occur to the shy girl, who undoubtedly was glad of a sympathetic audience to listen to her story of the day’s work, never suspecting she was furnishing information to the most ruthless murder gang in the country.

The simplicity and audacity of the plan almost shocked Mac into letting jubilation show on his face. Instead, he greeted the girl civilly and mumbled something about having to run along.

“Come take me to dinner tomorrow night,” Nan told him at the door. “Be here at six and I’ll make you a cocktail first.” She added in a lower voice, “We can’t talk in front of Claire.”

As Mac’s taxi pulled away from the Plaza Towers, Mac saw by a glance through the rear window that another cab a quarter block back pulled out a moment later.

“Union Hotel,” he told the driver. “And don’t bother trying to lose our tail.”

Startled, the cabbie glanced at his rear-view mirror, then shrugged and kept silent.

The other taxi went on by when Mac’s driver stopped in front of the Union Hotel’s main entrance. Without glancing at it, Mac paid off his driver and entered the hotel. From the corner of his eye he saw the second taxi park fifty yards down the street.

At the desk he got his key, then entered the elevator with several other passengers.

“Two,” he said to the operator.

Getting out at the second floor, he walked quickly to the stairs, descended a half-flight and peered over the banister into the lobby. Thomas Cougar and a gangling, freckle-faced man who seemed to be with him were talking to the desk clerk.

Something passed from Cougar’s hand to that of the clerk who glanced at it, grinned delightedly and began bobbing his head in eager subservience.

Mac drew back out of sight, mounted stairs to the third floor and let himself into his room. It was only six o’clock, and he stretched himself on the bed until it got dark.

When it had grown quite dark, he went into the bathroom, turned on the light and wrote a detailed report of the day’s events. Then without turning on the room light, he crossed his bedroom to the window, noiselessly raised it and carefully scanned the street below.

A window stick used for opening and closing the upper part of the window hung from a bracket on the wall. Mac rapped its brass head sharply against the ceiling three times. A moment later a tin can suspended from a string descended from the window above him and gently settled on the outer ledge. Mac stuffed his report into the can, and it immediately rose again.