Paul Cain - The Paul Cain Omnibus

The Negress came in from outside while I was getting the water. Her eyes were big as banjos. She said: “Didn’t ah heah a shot, Mistah?”

I told her she had, that Mrs Steinlen had shot herself. Her eyes got bigger.

“Daid?” I said: “Daid.”

I went back to the library and worked on Boehme. She came around in a little while and sat up and stared at Mrs Steinlen and at the revolver in her clenched outstretched hand, then she put her hands up to her mouth and started moaning.

I told her to shut up and asked her if she knew where the check was. She acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about and I reminded her that if she’d help me all she could I’d see what I could do about forgetting the junk angle — about her acting as go-between and laying herself open to a bad rap on a narcotic charge.

She looked a lot more intelligent when I mentioned that, and when I asked her about the check again she said she thought she could find it.

I was out of cigarettes but I found some in a box on the desk. I found an old edition of Stoddard’s Travel Lectures on one of the shelves and I sat down and made myself comfortable and read about Constantinople and waited.

Decker, the big, bulldog jowled city editor, swung around and yelled: “Gay!”

The purplish moon of his face wrinkled to a scowl, split to another vast bellow:

“Gay!”

Every typewriter had stopped and a leaden, foreboding silence hung over the long room. Decker’s swivel chair wailed shrilly as he swung forward, stood up.

In the dusk of the farthest corner of the room a lanky figure slowly disentangled itself from the ill-assorted debris of a flat desktop and stalked unsteadily out of the shadows. As the light grew upon it, it materialized almost magically into a man.

Johnnie Gay stood six-foot-three in his socks. His long, leathery, good-natured face, heavily lidded blue eyes, and wide mouth went with six-foot-three.

He strolled down the double file of desks until he came to Decker’s and then he leaned forward and put his hands on the desk and very carefully and deliberately yawned in Decker’s face.

Decker leaned forward, too, and tapped a small stack of copy paper slowly with the back of his hand.

“This,” he said, “is the swellest damned newspaper story I ever read in my life.” He said it almost belligerently as if inviting argument. He raised his big head and swept the room with his scowl, repeated in booming crescendo: “... In my life!”

Gay looked very serious and bobbed his head up and down slowly.

Decker sat down. He leaned back in his chair and regarded Gay with what he probably considered a benign smile.

“Now I want you to hustle over to the Shepphard,” he said, “and get the inside on Pamela Arno’s marriage. They smuggled her in from Hollywood this afternoon and I’ve got a tip she an’ the Prince sail on the Ile at midnight. Take Peanuts with you and get some pictures...”

He spoke very swiftly. He leaned forward, picked up an enormous blue pencil and started scribbling busily.

Gay said: “Uh-huh.” He shook his head slowly.

Decker’s head snapped back.

Gay repeated, “Uh-huh,” turned slowly away.

“Uh-huh what?” Decker’s roar filled the room.

Gay didn’t turn back. He stuck his hands in his pockets and sauntered back up the room, out the swinging doubledoors at the far end. He stopped at the third door on the left in the corridor, stared sleepily at the legend: Martin L. Beresford. Managing Editor .

Then he went into the small outer office, closed the door softly, crossed to the one marked: Private . He opened it.

Beresford was leaning back in a heavily carved chair, gazing dreamily at the ceiling. His secretary was sitting beside the wide desk, her pencil poised over a notebook. They both turned swiftly to stare at Gay as he crossed, leaned lightly against the desk and smiled down at them.

Beresford cleared his throat, rumbled: “Well, sir — what can I do for you?”

He was a broad, potbellied man with heavy sloping shoulders and a curiously thin face. His eyes were small dark-brown beads divided by a narrow nose.

Gay tilted his head a little to one side, spoke to the secretary: “Will you please leave us alone, Miss Cort?”

Beresford and Miss Cort both looked vastly surprised; she glanced questioningly at Beresford and then closed her notebook, stood up and went swiftly to the door. She turned in the doorway, asked: “Would you like me to type what you’ve given me, sir?”

Beresford nodded. She closed the door softly.

Gay said: “You’ve had Decker riding me for three weeks — ever since you’ve been here. The Old Man sent you in to reorganize this sheet and that meant getting rid of me and Peanuts and Grayson as far as you were concerned. You’ve hated me ever since I showed you up for the louse you were on the old Times in Chi. You couldn’t hang the can on Peanuts or me because the Old Man liked us, so you’ve tried to work us to death — an’ tell us how good we were...”

He slid around the corner of the desk until he was almost directly above Beresford.

“I’ve been on the Crandall graft probe,” he went on gently, “washed it up tonight. Fifty-eight hours without sleep. Now Decker puts me on the Arno story because” — he leaned, over Beresford, almost whispered — “you happen to know Pamela Arno and I were engaged, and that she gave me the air — and that I wouldn’t go near her...”

He straightened.

Beresford stood up, cleared his throat noisily. “This is entirely uncalled for,” he blustered. “I assure you that—”

Gay smiled, said softly: “ That’s the way I wanted you...”

His right fist shot suddenly up and out and there was a sharp smack; Beresford’s head snapped back. There was a second sharper smack and Beresford slid slowly along the arm of the chair, crashed to the floor. He held his hands over his face, yelped: “Help!”

Gay leaned over him. “And I’ll tell you what you can do with the Star-Telegraph and the job,” he said. He put his hands on the chair and leaned very close over Beresford and whispered.

The door flew open and Miss Cort stood a split second on the threshold, her eyes wide with stunned horror, then she screamed.

Gay straightened and turned to smile thinly at her. He went round the desk, across to the door. Miss Cort leaned against it weakly, her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wide on Gay. He patted her shoulder as he passed, crossed the outer office and went out into the dim corridor.

The double doors to the city room burst open and Decker rushed out, followed by several men. He almost ran into Gay in the semidarkness, stopped so suddenly that one of the men behind bumped into him.

Gay pressed the elevator button.

“Where you going?” Decker roared.

Gay leaned close to the bars of the elevator shaft, looked down and pressed the button again. Then he turned to Decker, said softly: “To bed.”

The phone at the end of the short, almost deserted, bar tinkled merrily. The bartender picked up the receiver, said: “Hello... Mister Gay?... Who wants ’im?... Mister Decker?...”

He turned to regard Gay expressionlessly. Gay shook his head. The bartender said: “He ain’t here, Mister Decker — ain’t been here for two or three days...”

He hung up, waddled back to lean on the bar facing Gay. “What’ll it be? Same thing?...”

Gay finished his drink, shook his head wearily, said: “No, Paddy — I’m going to bed.” He slid a quarter across the bar and turned away. He turned back in the doorway. “And if there are any more calls tell ’em I’m dead and don’t want to be disturbed.”