Стюарт Стерлинг - The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

I bowed. “About the murder of R. C. Rupert. I happened to stumble across some witnesses, some witnesses who saw a girl with a mole running frantically down the stairs just about the time of the killing. They claim they could identify the woman if they should see her again.”

Her hand went to her throat, her face white.

“Ed,” she gasped, “Ed... It wasn’t you! You didn’t do that job?”

There was such genuine emotion, such horror in her tone, that I was puzzled. My whole plan of action began to dissolve into nothing.

“ I kill him?” I said. “I never saw the man in my life. I had thought you killed him.”

She shook her head, her eyes wide.

“I came into the apartment just after he had been struck down. In fact the blow was delivered just as I stepped inside the door. It was dark, and by the time I found a light I saw what had happened, and then I knew I had walked into a trap. For once I lost my head and dashed down the stairs, and there was that man and woman coming up, and then I knew, knew that they were there to see me as I burst from the apartment, knew that some people wanted to hold a murder charge over my head — and now when you sought to use that club I thought that it was you.”

I looked her over narrowly. She was one woman I couldn’t read. She might have been telling the truth, but a jury wouldn’t believe her. I wasn’t sure that I believed her. I had followed her that night, and she had left my apartment, gone to this flat, entered the door, and then there had been a blow and a gasping cry, the sound of a fall, and she had come tearing out. R. C. Rupert had been stabbed, and he hadn’t so much as raised a hand to protect himself. There was no sign of a struggle, just the man, the knife and the blood.

And while I studied her, she studied me, studied me in just the same way, searchingly, wonderingly, seeking to penetrate to my thoughts. It was masterly acting.

I waved my hand.

“We’ll forget about that, only I know where those witnesses are. It is only incidental, anyway.

“You were with me when I was taken to the head of your gang. In fact you took me there, and you saw him hand me an envelope containing papers, papers which were to be my reward for opening a safe. There were two papers missing from that collection. I played fair and earned the papers, and I got shortchanged. I want you to do this for me. Get me into the hangout of this crook who is the head of the crime trust. Let me talk with him.”

She looked at me narrowly.

“Ed, I believe you’d kill him.”

I looked her squarely in the eyes.

“I’ll kill him if he so much as tries to use those papers.”

She laughed, a rippling laugh of good-natured amusement.

“What a wonderful actor you are, Ed! You know you wouldn’t, know you couldn’t, and yet you almost look as though you would. The head of that crime trust, as you call it, is too well protected, protected by money, position, power, pull, and by the fact that no one knows him. In all the underworld there are only two people who can get to that man at will.”

“And you are one?”

“Yes, Ed. I am one.”

“And you’ll take me?”

She laughed again and shook her head.

“Certainly not. You don’t want me to. You’re really just running a big bluff, trying to frighten that man from using those papers. Listen, Ed, it can’t be done. He knows no fear — knows no mercy. He is planning to use those papers and use them he will. He can afford to ignore you because you are helpless, but you mustn’t make any trouble or you will go out — like a candle.”

I thought for a bit. She was lying to me, stringing me along. The man did fear me, or he wouldn’t have put the police on my trail, wouldn’t have sent Squint Dugan with a gun to get revenge. It hadn’t been Dugan who had located my apartment. It had been a far shrewder man than the loud-mouthed killer. Why should the girl lie to me, why taunt me with my helplessness? When a woman taunts a man with being helpless she usually gets him into a condition of blind rage. Did she want to get me so worked up that I would kill old Icy-Eyes, would shoot him down as soon as I came face to face with him? Did she plan to do that and thereby remove the man who held a murder charge over her head?

I could not tell. Women are peculiar; and she had known I was coming, had planned her story, had donned an elaborate negligee, and was sitting there beneath the silk-shaded lamp, her rose-colored kimono drawn apart, revealing a glimpse of lace, an expanse of gleaming silk hose, and was laughing at me, her bare arm toying about beneath the gleaming light, her red lips parted in a smile as she taunted me with my inability to accomplish anything definite.

I arose and bowed. Again I took her hand and raised it to my lips.

“What for this time?” she asked.

“Respect again, m’lady. You seek to have me remove a man you fear. You are clever, and I salute you for your cleverness.”

Her face fell.

“Ed, you are clever — clever as hell.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“That is something I won’t argue about; I admit it. When a woman pays me compliments I admit them and become twice as cautious as before. Here is something you can do, though. Tell this icy-eyed master crook of yours that until he has returned those papers to me his life is not safe. More, you can tell him that he can’t pull a single crime of any magnitude and get away with it.

“I shall be watching the underworld, and I will balk him in any crime he tries to pull off if it’s worthwhile, and if it’s a small, petty crime I’ll just dump enough monkey-wrenches into the machinery to throw out a gear here and there. Tell him that.”

There was a strange light in her eyes, an inscrutable light.

“You mean that, Ed?”

I nodded.

For a long minute she studied my face.

“If that’s the case, leave by the back entrance. There is a car parked in front with gunmen in it. You are to be killed as you step on the sidewalk.”

I could feel my face redden.

“You said I was clever,” I told her, “and yet you think you have to warn me of that ! Bah! As soon as you said that you’d rather expected me, that the ‘others’ had thought I’d spend the night in jail, but that you knew me better, you gave me my cue to vanish by the rear door. That showed that you had told the others about recognizing me at The Purple Cow, showed that I had been discussed, and that you had said I would probably come to call on you.

“The others thought I would spend the night in jail because they had located my hotel. When they realized that I was on guard, that I knew of their plans, knew that the police had visited my room, then they knew you were right, and they would have a closed car waiting. I appreciate the warning, but don’t again tell me of the obvious.”

With that I bowed my good-nights and left her, and as I stepped out into the corridor there was a gleam of admiration in her eyes as she stood there, her kimono forgotten, falling from her, her hand outstretched, her lips parted, her eyes warm with emotion. And yet she was cold. There was nothing of physical charm about her despite her wonderful figure, her flashing arms, her heaving breast, her shapely stockings. She was a girl with brains, and she admired but one thing in life — brains. There was no sex appeal about her. She was merely a reasoning machine. Her body was merely the vehicle for her brain — and she was most damnably clever.

At that I didn’t take the back entrance. I went up to the top floor, and then out on to the roof. It was cold and there were wisps of fog drifting in from the ocean, leaving globules of moisture on the stucco coping of the roof. Yet I could see the street clearly. It was as she had said. There was a machine parked there, a closed car with motor running, curtains drawn.