So Pale, So Cold, So Fair

Leigh Brackett

I

She was the last person in the world I expected to see. But she was there, in the moonlight, lying across the porch of my rented cabin. She wore a black evening dress, and little sandals with very high heels. At her throat was a gleam of dim fire that even by moonlight you knew had to be made by nothing less than diamonds. She was very beautiful. Her name was Marjorie, and once upon a time, a thousand years ago, she had been engaged to me.

That was a thousand years ago. If you checked the calendar it would only say eight and a half, but it seemed like a thousand to me. She hadn't married me. She married Brian Ingraham, and she was still married to him, and I had to admit she had probably been right, because he could buy her the diamonds and I was still just a reporter for the Fordstown Herald. I didn't know what Marjorie Ingraham was doing on my porch at two thirty-five of a Sunday morning. I stood still on the graveled path and tried to figure it out.

The poker game was going strong in Dave Schuman's cabin next door. I had just left it. The cards had not been running my way, and the whiskey had, and about five minutes ago I had decided to call it a night. I had walked along the lake shore, looking with a sort of vague pleasure at the water and the sky, thinking that I still had eight whole days of vacation before I had to get back to my typewriter again.

And now here was Marjorie, lying across my porch. I couldn't figure it out. She had not moved. There was a heavy dew, and the drops glistened on her cheeks like tears. Her eyes were closed. She seemed to be sleeping.

"Marjorie?" I said. "Marjorie—" There wasn't any answer.

I went up to the low step and reached across it and touched her bare shoulder. It was not really cold. It only felt that way because of the dew that was on it.

I laid my fingers on her throat, above the diamonds. I waited and waited, but there was no pulse. Her throat was faintly warm, too. It felt like marble that has been for a time in the sun. I could see the two dark, curved lines of her brows and the shadows of her lashes. I could see her mouth, slightly parted. I held my hand over it and there was nothing, no slightest breath. All of her was still, as still and remote as the face of the moon. She was not sleeping. She was dead.

I stood there, hanging onto the porch rail, feeling sick as the whiskey turned in me and the glow went out. A lot of thoughts went through my mind about Marjorie, and now suddenly she was gone, and I would not have believed it could hit me so hard. The night and the world rocked around me, and then, when they steadied down again, I began to feel another emotion. Alarm.

Marjorie was dead. She was on my porch, laid out with her skirt neat and her eyes closed, and her hands folded across her waist. I didn't think it was likely she had come there by herself and then suddenly died in just that position. Someone had brought her and put her there, on purpose. But who? And why?

I ran back to Dave Schuman's.

I must have looked like calamity, because the minute I came in the door they forgot the cards and stared at me, and Dave got up and said, "Greg, what is it?"

"I think you better come with me," I said, meaning all of them. "I want witnesses."

I told them why. Dave's face tightened, and he said, "Marge Ingraham? My God." Dave, who is in the circulation department of the Herald, went to school with me and Marjorie and knows the whole story.

He grabbed a flashlight and went out the door, and the local physician, our old poker pal Doc Evers, asked me, "Are you sure she's dead?"

"I think so. But I want you to check it." He was already on his way. There were three other guys besides Dave Schuman and Doc Evers and me: another member of the Herald gang; Hughie Brown, who ran Brown's Boat Livery on the lake; and a young fellow who was a visiting relation or something of Hughie's. We hurried back along the lake shore and up the gravel path.

Marjorie had not gone away.

Somebody turned on the porch light. The hard, harsh glare beat down, more cruel but more honest than the moonlight.

Hughie Brown's young relative said, in a startled kind of way, "But she can't be dead, look at the color in her skin."

Doc Evers grunted and bent over her. "She's dead, all right. At a rough guess, three or four hours."

"How?" I asked.

"As the boy says, look at the color of her skin. That usually indicates carbon-monoxide poisoning."

Dave said, in a curiously hesitant voice, "Suicide?" Doc Evers shrugged. "It usually is."

"It could have been accidental," I said.

"Possibly."

"Either way," I said, "She couldn't have died here."

"No," said Doc, "hardly. Monoxide poisoning presupposes a closed space."

"All right," I said. "Why was she brought here and left on my doorstep?" Doc Evers said, "Well, in any case, you're in the clear. You've been with us since before six last evening."

Hughie Brown's young relative was staring at me. I realized what I was doing and shoved my hands in my pockets. I had been running my fingers over the scars that still show on my face, a nervous trick I haven't quite been able to shake.

"Sure," said Dave. "That's right. You're in the clear, Greg. No matter what."

"That comforts me," I said. "But not greatly." I went back to fingering the scars.

I had enemies in Fordstown. I went out of my way to make them, with a batch of articles I was brainless enough to write about how things were being run in the city. The people involved had used a simple and direct method of convincing me that I had made a serious error in judgment. I turned again to look at poor Marjorie, and I wondered.

A man named Joe Justinian was my chief and unassailable enemy. Chief because he was the control center of Fordstown's considerable vice rackets, and unassailable because he owned the city administration, hoof, horns and hide. A uniformed cop and a city detective of the Fordstown force had stood by and watched while Justinian's boys had their fun, bouncing me up and down on the old brick paving of the alley where they cornered me. The detective had had to move his feet to keep from getting my blood on his shoes. Afterward neither he nor the cop could remember a single identifying feature about the men. Justinian had two right-hand bowers. One was Eddie Sego, an alert and sprightly young hood who saw to it that everything ran smoothly. The other was Marjorie's husband–now widower–Brian Ingraham. Brian was the respectable one, the lawyer who maintained in the world the polite fiction that Mr. Joseph Justinian was an honest businessman who operated a night club known as the Roman Garden, and who had various "investments." Brian himself was one of Justinian's best investments. From a small lawyer with several clients he had become a big lawyer with one client. And now his wife was dead on my doorstep.

Any way I looked at it, I couldn't see that this night was going to bring me anything but trouble.

Hughie Brown came back with a folded sheet fresh from the laundry. Doc Evers unfolded it, crisp and white, and that was the last I ever saw of Marjorie. Doc said, "Where's the nearest phone?"

II

On Monday afternoon I was in Fordstown, in the office of Wade Hickey, our current chief of police.

Brian Ingraham was there, too. He was sitting in the opposite corner, his head bowed, not looking at me or or Hickey. He seemed all shrunken together and gray-faced, and his fingers twitched so that it was an effort to hold the cigarettes he was chain-smoking. I kept glancing at him, fascinated. This was a new role for Brian. I had never seen him before when he didn't radiate perfect confidence in his ability to outsmart the whole world and everybody in it.

Hickey was speaking. He was a big, thick-necked man with curly gray hair and one of those coarse, ruddy, jovial faces that can fool some of the people all of the time, but others for only the first five minutes.

"The reports are all complete now," he said, placing one large hand on a file folder in front of him on the desk. "Poor Marjorie took her own life. What her reasons may have been are known only to herself and God–" Suddenly, viciously, Ingraham said, "You're not making a speech now, Wade. You don't have to ham it up."

His face was drawn like something on a rack. Hickey gave him a pitying glance.

"I'm sorry, Brian," he said, "but these facts have to be made perfectly clear. Mr. Carver is in a peculiar position here, and he has a right to know." He turned to me and went on.

"Marjorie's car was found in a patch of woods off Beaver Run Road, maybe ten miles out of town. There's an old logging cut there, and she had driven in on it about a quarter of a mile, where she wasn't likely to be disturbed. As it happened, of course, somebody did find her, too late to be of any help–"

"Somebody," I said, "with a fine sense of humor."

"Or someone wanting to make trouble for you," said Hickey. "Let's not forget that possibility. You do have enemies, you know."

"Yes," I said. "What a pity they were all complete strangers." Hickey's eyes got cold. "Look, Carver," he said, "I'm trying to be decent about this. Don't make it hard for me."

"It seems to me," I said, "that I've been shamefully co-operative."

"Cooperation," said Hickey, "is how we all get along in this world. You oughtn't to be ashamed of it. Now then." He turned a page over in the folder.

"Whoever found her and removed her body left the front door open, but all the windows were tight shut except the wind-wing on the right side. the That was open sufficiently to admit a hose running from the exhaust pipe. The autopsy findings agree with the preliminary reports made by the doctor up at Lakelands–"

"Doctor Evers."

"That's right, Doctor Evers–and the police doctor who accompanied the ambulance. Carbon-monoxide poisoning." He closed the folder. "There's only one possible conclusion."

"Suicide," I said.

Hickey spread his hands and nodded solemnly.

I looked at Brian Ingraham. "You knew her better than anybody. What do you think?"

"What is there to think?" he said, in an old, dry, helpless voice that hardly carried across the room. "She did it. That's all." He ran the back of his hand across his eyes. He was crying.

"Now," said Hickey, "as to why her body was removed from the car, transported approximately twenty miles and left on your porch, Carver, I don't to suppose we'll ever know.

A ghoulish joke, an act of malice–a body can be an embarrasing thing to explain away--or simply the act of a nut, with no real motive behind it at all. Whatever the explanation, it isn't important. And we certainly can't connect you in any way with Marjorie's death. So if I were you, I'd go home andforget about it."

"Yes," I said. "I guess that's the thing to do. Brian–"

"Yes."

"Do you know of any reason? Was she sick, or unhappy?" He looked at me, through me, beyond me, into some dark well of misery. "No, I don't know of any reason. According to the autopsy she was in perfect health. As far as I knew"–he faltered, and then went on, in that curiously dead voice–"as far as I knew, she was happy."

"It's always a cruel thing to accept," said Hickey, "when someone we love takes that way out. But we have to realize–"

"We," said Ingraham, getting up. "What the hell have you got to do with it, you greedy, grubbing, boot-licking slob? And how would you know, anyway?

You've never loved anything but yourself and money since the day you were born."

He went past me and out the door.

Hickey shook his fine, big, leonine head. "Poor Brian. He's taking this mighty hard."

"Yes," I said.

"Well," said Hickey, "it's no wonder. Marjorie was a mighty fine girl."

"Yes," I said. I got up. "I take it that's all?" Hickey nodded. He picked up the file and shoved it in a drawer. He shut the drawer. Symbol of completion.

I went to the Herald and did a nice, neat, factual follow-up on the story I had already filed. Then I stopped at the State Store and picked up a bottle, and returned to the bachelor apartment I inhabit for fifty weeks of the year. So I was home, as Hickey had recommended, but I did not forget it. I forgot to go out for food, and I forgot later to turn the lights on, but I couldn't forget Marjorie. I kept seeing her face turned toward me in the moonlight, with the dew on her cheeks and her lips parted. After a while it seemed to me that she had been trying to speak, to tell me something. And I got angry.

"That's just like you," I said. "Make a mess of things, and then come running to me for help. Well, this time I can't help you." I thought of her sitting all alone in her car in the old logging cut, listening to the motor throb, feeling death with every breath she breathed, and I wondered if she had thought that at the end. I wondered if she had thought of me at all. "Such a waste, Marjorie. You could have left Brian. You could have done a million other things. Why did you have to go and kill yourself?"

It was hot and dark in the room. The Marjorie-image receded slowly into a thickening haze.

"That's it," I said. "Go away." The haze got thicker. It enveloped me, too. It was restful. Marjorie was gone. Everything was gone. It was very nice. Then the noise began. It was a sharp, insistent noise. A ringing. It had a definite significance, one I tried hard to ignore. But I couldn't, quite. It was the doorbell, and in the end I didn't have any choice. I fought my way partly out of the fog and answered it.

She was standing in the hall, looking in at me.

"Oh, God," I said. "No. I told you. You can't come back to me now. You're dead."

Her voice reached me out of an enormous and terrible void. "Please," it said.

"Mr. Carver, please! My name

is Sheila Harding. I want to talk to you."

She was shorter than Marjorie, and not so handsome. This girl's hair was brown and her eyes were blue.

I hung onto the door jamb. "I don't know you," I said, too far gone to be polite.

"I was a friend of Marjorie's." She stepped forward. "Please, I must talk to you."

She pushed by me, and I let her. I switched the light on and closed the door. There was a chair beside the door. I sat in it.

She didn't look like her at all, really. She didn't move the same way, and the whole shape and outline of her was different. She kept glancing at me, and it dawned on me that she hadn't counted on finding me drunk.

"I can still hear you," I said. "What's on your mind?" She hesitated. "Maybe I'd better–"

"I plan to be drunk all the rest of this week. So unless it's something that can wait–"

"All right," she said rather sharply. "It's about Marjorie." I waited.

"She was a very unhappy person," Sheila Harding said.

"That's not what Brian said. He said she was happy."

"He knows better than that," she said bitterly. "He must know. He just doesn't want to admit it. Of course, I knew Marjorie quite a long while before I realized it, but that's different. We both belonged to the League."

"Oh," I said. "You're one of those society dolls. Now wait." The name Harding clicked over in my dim brain with a sound of falling coins.

"Gilbert Harding, Harding Steel, umpteen millions. I don't remember a daughter."

"There wasn't one. I'm his niece."

"Marjorie enjoyed belonging to the League," I said. "She was born and raised on the South Side, right where I was. Her biggest ambition was to grow up to be a snob."

I was annoying Miss Harding, who said, "That isn't important, Mr. Carver. The important thing is that she needed a friend very badly, and for some reason she picked me."

"You look the friendly type."

Her mouth tightened another notch. But she went on. "Marjorie was worried about Brian. About what he was doing, the people he was mixed up with." I laughed. I got up and went over to the window, in search of air. "Brian was working for Justinian when she married him. She knew it. She thought it was just splendid of him to be so ambitious."

"Nine years ago," said Sheila quietly, "Justinian was a lot more careful what he did."

She sounded so sensible and so grim that I turned around and looked at her with considerably more interest.

"That's true," I said. "But I still think it was late in the day for Marjorie to get upset. I told her at the beginning just what the score was. She didn't give a damn, as long as it paid."

"She did later. I told you she was an unhappy person. She had made some bad mistakes, and she knew it."

"They weren't that bad," I said. "They weren't so bad she had to kill herself."

Her eyes met mine, blue, compelling, strangely hard. "Marjorie didn't kill herself," she said.

III

I LET THAT HANG THERE in the hot, still air while I looked at it. Marjorie didn't kill herself.

There were two sides to it. One: Of course she killed herself; the evidence is as clear as day. Two: I'm not surprised; I never thought she did. I said carefully, "I was in the office of the Chief of Police this afternoon. I heard all the evidence, the autopsy report, the works. Furthermore, I saw the body, and a doctor friend of mine nine saw it. Monoxide poisoning, self-administered, in her own car. Period."

"I read the papers," said Sheila. "I know all about that. I know all about you, too."

"Do you?"

"Marjorie told me."

"Girlish confidences, eh?"

"Something a little more than that, Mr. Carver. It was when you were beaten so badly, a year or so back, that Marjorie began to feel–well, to put it honestly–guilty."

"I'm sorry. I'm not at my best tonight. Go on."

"Then," said Sheila, "my brother was killed, just after New Year's."

"Your brother?" I sat down again, this time on the edge of the bed, facing her.

"He was in the personnel department of Harding Steel, a very junior executive. He told me the numbers racket–the bug, he called it–was taking thousands of dollars out of the men's pay checks every month. I guess that goes on in all the mills, more or less."

"Around here it does. And more, not less."

"Well, Bill thought he'd found a way to catch the people who were doing it, and clean up Harding Steel. He was ambitious. He wanted to do something big and startling. He was all excited about it. And then a load of steel rods dropped on him, and that was that. Just a plant accident. Everybody was sorry."

I remembered, now that she told me. I hadn't covered the story myself, and there was no reason in particular why it should stick in my mind. But there hadn't been any suspicion of foul play at the time. I said so.

"Of course not. They were very careful about it. But Bill had told me the night before that his life had been threatened. He almost bragged about it. He said they couldn't stop him now; he had the men he wanted–Justinian's men, naturally–right here." She held out her hand and closed the fingers. "He was murdered."

"And you told this to Marjorie."

"Yes. We were very good friends, Mr. Carver. Very close. She didn't think I was hysterical. She knew Bill, and liked him. She became terribly angry and upset. She said she would find out everything she could, and if it was really murder she was going to make Brian quit Justinian."

"Go on."

"It took her a long time. But last Saturday afternoon, late, she stopped by. She said she was pretty sure she had the full story, and it was murder, and she was going to face Brian with it that night. I asked her for details. She wouldn't tell me anything because she didn't think Brian was personally involved, and she was in duty bound to give him his chance to get clear of Justinian before she told.

"Then she was going to give the whole story to my Uncle Gilbert. She said he was big enough to fight Justinian."

And he was, plenty big enough. If he had even reasonable proof that his nephew had been murdered, he could go right over the heads of the local law, to where the Emperor Justinian of Fordstown had no influence at all. He could smash him into little pieces.

Reason enough for Justinian to silence Marjorie. Reason enough. But. . . .

Sheila was still talking. "Marjorie did tell me one thing, Mr. Carver."

"What?"

"If Brian still insisted on sticking with Justinian, she was going to leave him. She said, "I'll go back to Greg, if he still wants me." That turned me cold all over. "And she did. No, what am I saying? She didn't come, somebody brought her. Somebody. Who? Why?"

"Surely you must have guessed that by now, Mr. Carver."

"You tell me."

"Who it was exactly, of course, I don't know. But it was somebody who knows Marjorie's suicide was a lie. It was somebody who liked her and wanted the truth known. Somebody who thought that if he brought her to you, you would understand and do something about it."

Yes. I could see that.

"But why me? Why not lay her on Brian's doorstep? He was her husband."

"They probably felt that he would be too shocked and grieved to understand. Or perhaps they didn't trust him to fight Justinian. You wouldn't be involved either way. And you already have a grudge against Justinian." Oh yes, I had a grudge, all right. But who was this thoughtful someone? One of the killers? An accidental witness? And why did he have to pass the thing along to anyone? Why didn't he just come out and tell the truth himself?

That last one was easy. He was afraid.

Well, so was I.

Sheila was waiting. She was looking at me, expectant, confident. She was a pretty girl. She seemed like a nice girl, a loyal friend, a loving sister. She had had her troubles. I hated to let her down.

I said, "No sale. Marjorie killed herself. Let's just accept that and forget it.She stared at me with a slowly dawning astonishment. "After what I've just told you–you can still say that?"

"Yes," I said. "I can. In the first place, how would Marjorie find it out even if your brother was really murdered? Eddie Sego plans those things, and Eddie is not the babbling type. Not to anybody, including the boss's lawyer's wife."

"Eddie Sego had nothing to do with it. He was in the hospital then with a burst appendix. That's one thing that made it harder for Marjorie, because she didn't know where to start." She added, with angry certainty, "She did find out, somehow."

"Okay then. She found out. Maybe she found out even more. Maybe she discovered that Brian was so deeply involved that she couldn't tell. Maybe she was in such a mess that there wasn't any other way out of it but suicide. You don't know what happened after she left you." I got up and opened the door. "Go home, Miss Harding. Forget about it. Lead a long and happy life." She didn't go. She continued to look at me. "I understand," she said. "You're scared."

"Miss Harding," I said, "have you ever been set upon by large men with brass knuckles? Have you ever spent weeks in a hospital getting your face put back together again?"

"No. But I imagine it wasn't pleasant. I imagine they warned you that the next time it would be worse."

"A society doll with brains," I said. "You have the whole picture. Good night."

"I don't think you have the whole picture yet, Mr. Carver. If you could find the man who brought Marjorie's body to you, you would have a witness who could break Justinian."

"All right," I said, "we'll get right down to bedrock. I don't like Justinian any better than you do, but it's going to take somebody or something bigger than me to break him. I tried to once, and he did the breaking. As far as I'm concerned, that's it."

"I don't suppose," she said slowly, "that I have any right to call you a coward."

"No. You haven't." "Very well. I won't." And this time she went.

I closed the door and turned off the lights. Then I went to the window and looked down at the street, three floors below. I saw her come out of the building and get into a black and white convertible parked at the curb. She drove away. Before she was out of sight a man got out of a car across the street and then the car went off after her. The man who had been left behind loitered along the street, where he could watch the front of the building and my window.

Somebody was keeping tabs on what I did and who came to see me. Wade Hickey? Justinian? And why?

I began to think about Brian Ingraham, and wonder how deeply he might be involved. I began to think about Joe Justinian, and what might be done about him. The Marjorie-image came back into my mind, and it was smiling. Then I thought of the brass knuckles and the taste of blood and oil on the old brick paving. I looked down at the loitering man. "The hell with it," I said, and I went and lay down on my bed.

But I couldn't sleep.

About midnight I quit trying. I smoked a couple of cigarettes, sitting by the window. I did not turn the lights on. I don't remember that I came to any conscious and reasoned decision, either. After a certain length of time I just got up and went.

I didn't go near my car. I knew they would be watching that, expecting me to use it. I slipped out the back entrance into the alley and across it to an areaway that ran alongside another apartment house to the next street. I was careful. I didn't see anybody I didn't want anybody to see me. I still thought I could quit on this thing any time it got too risky. At my age, and with my experience, I should have known better.

IV

THERE WERE STILL HONEST Cops on the force, plenty of them. they were hamstrung. As things

stood, they had two choices. They could resign and go to farming or selling shoes, or they could sweat it out, hoping for better days. One who was sweating it out was an old friend of mine, a detective named Carmen Prioletti. His house was pith-dark when I got to it, after a twenty-minute hike. I rang the bell, and pretty soon a light came on, and then Carmen, frowsy with sleep, stuck his head out the door and demanded to know what the hell.

"Oh," he said. "It's you."

He let me in and we stood talking in low voices in the hall, so as not to wake the family.

"I want to borrow your car," I said. "No questions asked, and back in an hour. Okay?"

He looked at me narrowly. Then he said, "Okay." He got the keys and gave them to me.

"I'll need a flashlight, too," I said.

"There's one in the car." He added, "I'll wait up." I drove through quiet streets to the northern edge of town, and beyond it, into the country, where the air was cool and the dark roads were overhung with trees, and the summer mist lay white and heavy in the bottoms. I drove fast until I

came to Beaver Run Road, and then I went slower, looking for the logging cut. Beaver Run was a secondary road, unpaved, washboarded and full of potholes. Dust had coated the trees and brush on either side, so they showed up bleached and grayish.

I found the cut and turned into it, and stopped the motor. It became suddenly very still. I picked up the flashlight and got out. I walked down the rutted track.

They had taken Marjorie's car away, of course, and the comings and goings of men and tow trucks had pretty well flattened everything in sight. But I found where the car had been. I looked all around at the crushed brambles, the rank weeds and the Queen Anne's lace. Then I walked a little farther down the track where no one had been. I walked slowly, watching my feet. I circled around to the side of the track, as one would in walking around a car. My trouser legs were wet to the knees with dew. The briars caught in them and scratched my shins. I went back to Prioletti's car and sat sideways, with the door open, picking a batch of prickly green beggar's lice out of my socks. The socks, and my shoes, were wet.

I backed out of the cut and drove into town again, to Prioletti's. He was waiting up for me, as he had promised. We sat in the kitchen, smoking, and all the time he watched me with his bright dark eyes.

"Carmen," I said, "suppose you're a girl. You're wearing an evening dress, sheer stockings, high-heeled shoes. You decide to kill yourself. You drive to a nice quiet spot, an old logging cut off a back road. You have brought a hose with you–"

Carmen's eyes were fairly glittering now, but wary. "Continue."

"You wish to attach that hose to the exhaust pipe, and then run it in through the front window. Now, to do this you have to get out of the car. You have to walk around it to the back, and then around it again to the front. Right?"

"Indubitably."

"All right. There are briar thickets, weeds, beggar's lice, unavoidable, and all soaked with dew. What happens to your nylons and your fancy shoes?"

"They're pretty much of a wreck."

"Hers were not."

"I see," said Carmen slowly. "You're sure of that? Absolutely sure."

"When I found her on my porch she was neat and pretty as a pin. Carmen, she never got out of that car until she was carried out, dead." I filled him in on Sheila Harding, and what she had told me. Then we were both through talking for awhile. The electric clock on the wall touched two and went past it.

Carmen smoked and brooded.

"What did you have in mind?" he asked finally.

"That depends," I said. "How much are you willing to risk? The minute certain people around Headquarters realize you're suspicious, you'll be in trouble."

"Leave that to me. I used to be proud of my job, Greg. Now I tell my kids I'm not really a cop, I play piano in a disorderly house." He clenched his hands together on the table top, and shivered all over. "This might be it. This might just by the grace of God be it."

"You'll have to play it mighty close to the vest. Now, what I would like to know is whether the autopsy report mentioned any external marks, no matter how slight, around the wrists and ankles, and maybe the mouth. Or a bruise on the head, under the hair."

"I'll see what I can find out. We'd better not be seen meeting. How about north of the lake in Mill Creek Park, around three?" I nodded and got up.

I walked home. I didn't meet anyone along the way. When I got within a block or so of my apartment house I took extra pains to stay in the shadows. I figured to come in the way I had gone out, across the alley and through the back door. I figured the boys out front would never know I had been away. I was happy in that thought right up to the minute I actually opened the door. Inside, in the narrow well of the service stairs, a dim light was burning, and I saw a man there. A large man, with a crushed hat pulled down over his eyes. I saw him in the act of leaping toward me, and I let go of the door and turned to run, and there was another man in back of me. He hit me as I turned, and then the man in the stairwell came out and banged me across the nape of the neck. I went down on my hands and knees in the alley, onto the uneven bricks, and there we were again. A visit with old friends. Justinian's boys. One of them pulled me up and wrenched my head back, and the other one gave me a fast chop over the Adam's apple. That was to stop me yelling.

Then he said, "Where were you?"

I coughed and choked. Nameless, who was holding my arm doubled up behind me, gave it an upward twist. I winced, and Faceless, who was in front of me, with his hat still pulled down so that nothing much showed in the dark of night, asked again, "Where were you?"

I whispered, "Out for a walk."

"Yeah," said Faceless, "I know that. You didn't take your car. So where'd you walk to?"

"Around. No place."

He hit me twice, once on the left cheekbone, once on the right.

"I'm asking you," he said. "Me. The dame came to see you, and right away you went sneaking out. I want to know why."

"No connection," I said. "She just dropped by. And it wasn't right away. I was restless and couldn't sleep. I went for a walk. So sue me." Nameless said conversationally, "I could break your arm." He showed me how easy it would be. I went down on my knees again. There was a taste of blood in my mouth. I thought my face was bleeding. I thought I could feel it running down my cheeks, hot and wet, to spatter on the bricks.

"If it hadn't been," said Faceless, "that we could hear your phone ringing and ringing through the open window, and you didn't answer it, we wouldn't never have known you'd gone. Now, that kind of thing can lead to trouble." He kicked me. "Get up, buddy. I don't like to have to bend over when I'm talking." I got up. I couldn't stand the feeling of blood on my face. I got up fast. I threw myself backward, butting Nameless as hard as I could with my head. It must have been hard enough, because he grunted and let go. He fell, and I fell on top of him, whipped around with my feet under me, and went for Faceless. He looked very queer. He was cloud-shaped, huge and looming, and the alley and the building walls were all twisted and quivering as though I was seeing them through dark water. I hit him full on and he went over backward, floating, slow-motion, like something in a dream. The blood ran down my face, filling my eyes, my nose, my mouth. I thought, This is what it feels like to be crazy. I knocked his hat off and got hold of his head and beat it up and down, up and down, hard, hard on the alley bricks.

So Pale, So Cold, So Fair

It was nice, but it didn't last long. It hardly lasted at all. Nameless got up. He was mad. He hit me with something much harder than a fist, and pretty soon Faceless got up, and he was mad, too. They let me know it. I heard one of them wanting to kill me right now, but the other one said, "Not yet, not till we get the order." He shook me. "You get that, buddy? The order. It can come any minute. And when it does, you got nothing left to hope for." He threw me down and they went away, down a long black tunnel that lengthened until I got dizzy watching and shut my eyes. When I opened them again I was lying in the alley, alone. It was still dark. I wanted to go to my apartment. I know I started and I know I must have made it up two flights of the service stairs, because I was lying on the landing when Sheila found me. . . .

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she said and helped me up, and we walked together up the rest of the steps and down the hall to the apartment. I told her to pull the blind shut.

"They're watching the place," I said.

"I know it," she said. "Somebody followed me home." She took me into the bathroom and went to work.

"It's not bad at all," she said. "Just ordinary cuts and bruises. But why did they do this to you? What were you doing?"

"I went out on an errand," I said. "They'd never have known I was gone, but some clown had to call me on the telephone. They could hear it ringing and they knew I wasn't here. What's the matter?" She was already pretty white and tense. Now she put her hand over her mouth and her eyes got big and full of tears. "Oh Lord," she said. "Oh, Lord, that was me."

"You?"

"I got to thinking after I got home. I didn't have any right to expect you to do anything. I didn't have any right to reproach you. I wanted to tell you that. And I thought I ought to warn you that you were being watched. So I called. When you didn't answer I thought at first you'd–" She hesitated, and I said, "Passed out," and she nodded.

"Then I began to get really worried. I called again, and again, and then finally I had to come back to see if you were all right." She began to cry.

"And it was my fault."

"You didn't mean it," I said. "You were trying to help." My first impulse was to kill her, but she looked so miserable. "Please, stop crying."

"I can't," she whispered, and looked at the bloody washrag she had in her other hand. "I think I'm going to faint." She looked as though she might. I put my arm around her and took her into the other room, and we sat together on the edge of the bed, with her face buried on my shoulder. I wound up kissing her.

I think both of us were surprised to find we liked it.

"You're a nice kid," said. "If you weren't so rich–" She said quickly, "Didn't you know? My side of the family doesn't have a million to its name. We're the poor Hardings. That's one reason my brother was so anxious to show off."

"You may be in danger yourself," I said, suddenly alarmed for her. "They're already curious about you."

"Since you're not going to do anything about Marjorie, I can't see that it matters," she said.

"Well–" I said.

"You have done something! What? Please tell me."

"No. You're in trouble enough already. Anyway, it isn't much." It wasn't, either, unless Prioletti could turn up something on that autopsy report. And even that would only be a first step, an opening wedge. "One thing I'd give a lot to know," I told her, "is where Brian Ingraham was the night his wife was killed."

"You don't think," she said, her face reflecting horror, "that Brian had anything to do with it."

"He's Justinian's man. Body and bank account."

"But his own wife!"

"This is a hard world we live in."

She shivered. "And Marjorie said she'd given the maid the night off, so they'd be alone, and she was going to make herself beautiful so Brian would have to choose her instead of Justinian. She was vain, poor Marjorie. I just can't believe–Well, it doesn't matter what I believe, does it? Anyway, I know where Brian was that night, or at least where Marjorie thought he was. She was going to have to wait until he got home to talk to him."

"Go ahead," I said. "Where was he?"

"At the Roman Garden, with Justinian."

V

SIN IN A MIDDLE-WESTERN STEEL town is organized, functional, and realistic. It is not like in the movies. The necessary furniture is there, and nothing more. No velvet drapes, no gilt mirrors, no ultramodernistic salons, no unbelievably beautiful females. The houses are just houses, and the whores are just whores. Numbers slips can be bought in almost any dingy little sandwich shop, pool hall, or corner grocery, and anyone can play, even the kids with as little as a penny. The night clubs and gambling palaces, like the Roman Garden, are businesslike structures wasting no time on the fancy junk. There's a bar, and there are the gambling layouts, and that's that. Food, entertainment, and decor are haphazard. The bosses don't figure that's what you came for. At nine o'clock on a hot morning the Roman Garden looked downright dreary. It was primarily a big, barny, old two-anda-half-story frame house, with a new front tacked on it, yellow glazed brick with glass-brick insets and a neon sign. There was a parking lot around back. A couple of cars were already in it. The sports car I knew was Eddie Sego's.

I went in through the back door. No one followed me. No one had followed me since the two musclemen left me in the alley. I had escorted Sheila to her apartment, making her promise that she would go to her uncle's first thing in the morning, and there had not been a sign of a tail, nor was there now. I wished I knew why.

I walked down the hall and pushed open the door that said OFFICE.

A thoroughly respectable-looking, middle-aged female was sitting at a desk, writing busily. I went past her to the door marked PRIVATE and went through it before she could do more than squawk.

Eddie Sego was in the inner office. He was busy, too. There's a lot of paper work in any business, and he had a stack of it. He was wearing a magnificent silk sports shirt, and a pair of hornrimmed glasses. With his hairy forearms and thick, low-growing black hair, the glasses made him look like a studious gorilla.

He leaped up, startled. Then he saw who it was and sat down again, and swore. He took his glasses off.

"You ought to know better than that, Carver," he said. "Bursting in without warning. I might have thought it was a heist and shot you." He looked at me with his head on one side. "What are you doing here, anyway? And what hit you?"

"You know damn well what hit me," I said. "Eddie, it isn't fair. I've played ball. The Emperor wanted me to shut up, and I did. What more does he want?"

"Look," said Eddie, "I'm no mind reader. What's this all about?"

"Of course," I said, "you're not going to admit you know. Okay, I'll spell it out. Last night a girl came to visit me. A mutual friend just died, and she was looking for sympathetic conversation. Everything was going fine with us until she went home. Then I found out my place was being watched. A big goon followed her and scared the wits out of her, and then when I left my room for a breath of air two guys jumped me. They wanted to know where I was going and why, and then they threatened to kill me, when they got the order. And I haven't done a damned thing. Everybody's got a limit, even me. And I'm pretty close to it."

"Are you?" said Eddie. He got up and came around the desk to me. He looked at me for close to a moment. Then he hit me, fast as a coiled snake, in the pit of the belly. He watched me double up and move back, and his lip curled. He stood there with his hands at his sides, almost as though he was giving me an invitation.

I didn't take it, and Eddie said, "Limit! You've got no limit. You haven't got anything." He turned his back on me. "You don't even have a reason to come whining to me. I didn't send anybody around. I don't care what dames you see, and I can't imagine Justinian does, either." He sounded as though he really had not sent anybody. In the small corner of my mind that was not concerned with the pain in my gut, I wondered if Justinian was playing this one over Eddie's head. It was possible. I managed to say,

"They were his boys, just the same. The same two that beat me before." Eddie didn't even bother to answer that. He picked up the phone and dialed a number. I started to go, and he gave me a black look and said, "Stick around."

"Why? What are you doing?"

"I'm calling the cops."

I stared at him, feeling my face go wide open and foolish. "You're what?"

"Calling the cops. They're looking for you–didn't you know that? I got the word just a few minutes ago."

I stopped holding my belly. I turned and went out of there, paying no attention to Eddie's shouts. I burned rubber going away. So the cops were after me. This was a switch. This I had not looked for. I thought now that that was why the musclemen had been withdrawn. Justinian liked to keep his right hand and his left from getting tangled up. But I couldn't figure what possible charge they could have against me. Of course, under the present setup, they didn't really need one. . . . I thought it was about time somebody did something about cleaning up this town.

I decided to go across the line into Pennsylvania for the rest of the day, until it was time to meet Prioletti. From Fordstown, Pennsylvania is less than thirty miles. I had a lot of time to kill, and nothing to do but hug my bruises and think. I thought of Marjorie, and of young Harding. I thought of the way

Justinian's corporation was set up. Two main branches-gambling and prostitution, under separate heads, with separate organizations. Gambling subdivided into three–regular lay-outs like the Roman Garden, horse rooms, and the bug. The bug, day in and day out, probably brought in more money than all the rest put together. I thought of Eddie Sego, who was almost boss of all the gambling rackets, next under Justinian himself.

When it was time, I went back over the state line, using the farm roads, dusty and quiet in the heat of the afternoon. At three o'clock I was in Mill Creek Park, in a grove of trees north of the little lake with the swans on it. Prioletti was already there.

"I didn't know if you'd make it," he said. He looked haggard and excited. "You know I'm supposed to be looking for you?"

"Yeah," I said. "But what for?"

"Investigation. That's a big word. It can cover a lot of things. It can keep you out of circulation for a while, and it can demand answers to questions." He peered around nervously. "I got a look at that report."

"Any luck?"

"Minor contused area on the scalp, minor abrasions at the mouth corners and cuts on the inside of the lips. There were also bruises and other minor abrasions on both wrists. No explanation."

"What would you say, Carmen?"

"Coupled with your other evidence, I would say it indicates that the girl was hit on the head, gagged and bound to prevent any outcry, and then driven to the logging cut, where her car was rigged for the fake suicide." I felt a qualm of sickness. I had known that was how it must have been, but put into words that way it sounded so much more brutal.

"Poor kid," I said. "I hope she never came to."

"Yeah," said Carmen. "But we've almost got it, Greg. Brian Ingraham is the key. If he knew that Justinian–"

He broke off, looking over my shoulder. "I was afraid of that," he said. He reached out and grabbed me fiercely. "Hit me. Hit me hard and then run. Hickey's cops."

He said that as though it was a dirty word, and it was. I hit him, and he let go, and I ran. Hickey's cops ran after me, but they were still a long way back, and I knew the park intimately from boyhood days. They shouted and one of them fired a shot, but it was in the air. I guess the order hadn't come yet. Anyway, I shook them and got back to my car. For the second time that day I burned rubber, going away.

I headed for the Country Club section, and Brian Ingraham's home. What Carmen had started to say was that if Brian, believing his wife a suicide, were to find out that Justinian had had her killed, he could be expected to turn on Justinian.

What Carmen had not said was that if Brian already knew it, and was co-operating with Justinian, his reaction would be quite different. I went in the long drive to the house, set far back among trees. I rang the bell, and Brian opened the door, and I walked in after him down the hall. Brian looked like a ghost. He seemed neither pleased nor displeased to see me. He didn't even ask me why I had come. He led me into the living room and then just stood there, as though he had already forgotten me.

"Brian, I've come about Marjorie."

He looked at me, in the same queer, twisted, other-dimensional way he had in Hickey's office that day. "You didn't have to," he said. "I know." And I thought, Well, here it is, and I'm finished, and so is the case. But something about his face made me ask him, "What do you know?"

"Why she killed herself. It was me." He said it simply, honestly, almost as though I was his conscience and he was trying to get straight with me. "I said she was happy, but she wasn't. For a long time she wanted me to quit and go back into regular practice, but I wouldn't. I laughed at her. Kindly, Greg. Kindly, as you would laugh at a child. But she wasn't a child. She could see me quite clearly. As I have been seeing myself since Sunday morning." Iee paused. Then, still in that heartbreakingly simple way, he said, "I loved her. And I killed her."

He couldn't be lying. Not with that face and manner. It wasn't possible. I felt weak in the knees with relief. "You had nothing to do with it," I said.

"Justinian killed her, to save his neck." He stood still, and his eyes became very wide and strange. "Justinian? Killed her?"

"Sit down," I said, "and I'll tell you how it was done." We sat in the quiet house, with the hot afternoon outside the French windows, and I talked. And Brian listened.

When I was all through he said, "I see." Then he was silent a long time. His face had altered, becoming stony and hard, and there was a dim, cold spark at the back of his eyes.

"I remember Sheila Harding. I didn't know about her brother. That side of Justinian's business is in Eddie Sego's hands, and Eddie is not talkative."

"No," I said. "But Eddie was in the hospital then. Justinian had to attend to that emergency himself. And somehow Marjorie found out."

"Marjorie was my wife," said Brian softly. "He had no right to touch her." He stood up, and his voice became suddenly very loud. "He had no right. Marjorie. My wife."

I thought I heard a car, coming up the long drive and coming fast, but Brian was shouting so I couldn't be sure. I tried to shut him up, but he was coming apart at the seams in a way that couldn't be stopped. I couldn't blame him, but I wished he would make sense. I put my hands on his shoulders and shook him.

"For God's sake, Brian! We don't have all year–" We didn't even have the rest of the afternoon. Two big men came in through the French windows, with guns in their hands. My old friends of the alley. Between them came a third man, with no gun. He never carried a gun. He didn't need one. He was Justinian, the Emperor of Fordstown.

Brian saw him. Instantly he became silent, poised, his eyes shining like the eyes of an animal I once saw, mangled by dogs and dying. He sprang at Justinian.

It was Eddie Sego, entering through the door behind us, who slugged Brian on the back of the head and put him down.

VI

THE LONG, FULL DRAPERIES were drawn across the French windows. The doors were locked. The cars, mine and Justinian's, had been taken around to the back, out of sight of any chance caller. The house itself stood in the middle of two wooded acres, and so did the houses on either side. In this section you paid for seclusion, and you got it.

Justinian was talking. He was a tall man, gray at the temples, distinguished-looking, dressed by the best tailors. He had immense charm. Women fell over fainting when he smiled at them, and then were always astonished to discover that the underlying ruthlessness in his steel-trap mouth and bird-of-prey eyes was the real Justinian. He was not bothering now to be charming. He was entirely the business man, cerebral, efficient.

"It's a pity I didn't get here a little sooner," he said. "I might have stopped Carver. As it is–" He shrugged.

Brian looked up at him from the chair where he was sitting, with Eddie Sego behind him. "Then you admit you killed Marjorie." Justinian shook his head. "I haven't admitted anything, and I don't intend to. The thing is, you believe I killed her, or that I might have killed her. The doubt has been planted. I could go to a lot of trouble to convince you you're wrong, but I couldn't make you stop wondering. I could never trust you again, Brian, any more than you would trust me. So your usefulness to me is ended." He turned to glare at me. "That's all you've accomplished, Carver."

"Oh, I understand," said Brian. "I've understood all along. Why else was all the business done in your office, and all records kept in your safe? You wanted to be able to eliminate me at any time, with no danger of incriminating papers lying around where you couldn't get at them. So that angle is covered. But I'm a pretty important man, Joe. Won't there be some curiosity?"

"If the bereaved husband takes his own life? I don't think so."

"I see," said Brian. "Just like Marjorie."

"And what about me?" I asked.

Justinian shrugged. "We planned that on the way. It will appear that Brian shot you first, before killing himself. You see? The old lover, accusing the husband of having driven his wife to. . . . " Brian whimpered and rose up, and Eddie Sego knocked him down again.

"All right," Justinian said. "He keeps his gun in the desk in the next room. Go get it."

Eddie nodded. "Cover him," he said to Faceless. He went out. I said, "There's a couple of things wrong with your plan, Joe."

"I'm listening."

"Other people know the whole story. You can't kill off everybody in town."

"If you mean Miss Harding, she doesn't know anything, not at firsthand. Suspicions are a dime a dozen. If you mean Prioletti, he'll forget. He has a family to consider."

"You're overlooking the most important person of all," I said.

"Who's that?"

"The guy who brought me Marjorie's body. He knows." Justinian's face tightened ominously. "A crank, that's all. Doesn't mean a thing." Eddie Sego had come back from the next room. He was holding Brian's gun. Brian was hunched over in his chair, but he was staring at me intently. The two large men stood still and listened.

"You don't believe that, Joe," I said. "You're saying it because you haven't been able to find out who the man is, and you don't want your underlings to get panicky about it."

"If he had anything to tell he'd have told it by now," said Justinian.

"Anyway, I'll find him. One thing at a time."

"You'd better find him fast, Joe," I said, "because he belongs to you. You've got a traitor in your own camp."

Justinian said, "Hold it a minute, Eddie." He moved a step or two closer to me. "That's an interesting thought. Go on with it."

"Well," I said, "a casual crank would have had to just accidentally stumble on the car with Marjorie's body in it. He would also have to have known who she was, and that she had once been engaged to me. He would have had to know I was on vacation, and where. Now, does that all seem likely?" He shook his head impatiently. "Go on."

"I'm just laying it out for you. Okay, we forget the crank. We say instead it was somebody who was fond of Marjorie and wanted her avenged, but was afraid to come out and tell the truth. So he figured that handing me the body would sic me onto what really happened to her."

"This sounds better."

"But still not good enough. If he was just a friend of Marjorie's, how did he know about the murder? Guess at it, stumble on it, happen to follow the cars into the logging cut and then wait around unseen while the thing was being done, when he could have been calling for help? Not likely. If it was one of the killers suddenly getting conscience-stricken, that fills all the requirements except one. Would he deliberately sic someone onto himself, to get himself hanged?"

Very briefly, Justinian's eyes flicked from Nameless to Faceless and back again to me. "No. This I can tell you."

"So what does that leave? It leaves a man who knew about Marjorie's murder, but was personally clear of it. A man who was clear on the Harding murder, too–so clear he could afford to talk about it. A man who wanted the murderer brought to justice, but who didn't want to appear in the business himself. Too dangerous, if something went wrong. So he handed the job to me. Not to Brian, because he was too close to it, but to me. See? If I got killed, he hadn't lost anything but this chance, and there'd be another some day. But if I succeeded in pulling you down, he–"

Nameless fired, past Justinian.

The noise was earsplitting. Justinian, with the instinct of an old campaigner, dropped flat on the floor. Eddie Sego, behind him and across the room, was already down and rolling for the shelter of a sofa. He wasn't hit. He did not intend to be hit, either.

"He was gonna shoot you in the back, Boss," said Nameless, on a note of stunned surprise. "He was gonna–"

I tipped my chair over onto him, and we went staggering down together, with my hands on his wrist. I wanted his gun. I wanted it bad. He wasn't going to give it up without a struggle. We got tangled in the furniture and when I got a look around again I saw Justinian, kneeling behind a big armchair. He was paying no attention to us. He had bigger things on his mind, like the gun he was too proud to carry. Faceless was crouched over in an attitude of indecision, his gun wavering between me and Eddie Sego. He couldn't see Eddie, and he couldn't shoot me without very likely killing his friend. Eddie solved his problem for him. He fired from the opposite end of the sofa and Faceless fell over with a sort of heavy finality. Brian Ingraham sat where he was, in the middle of it, watching with the blank gaze of a stupid child.

I saw a heavy glass ashtray on the floor where we had knocked it off an end table. I let go with one hand and grabbed it and hit Nameless with it. He relaxed, and then the gun was quite easy to take out of his fingers. I took it and whirled around.

Justinian was moving his armchair shield, inch by inch, toward the gun that Faceless had dropped.

I said, "Hold it, Joe."

He gave me a hot, blind look of feral rage, but he held it, and I picked up the gun. Justinian looked from me to where Eddie Sego was, and he cursed him in a short, violent burst, and then grew calm again.

"That was a crummy way to do it, Eddie. You didn't have guts enough to face up to me yourself."

Eddie stood up now. He shrugged. "Why should I commit suicide? I figured Carver ought to be mad enough to do something." He glanced at me. "I just about gave you up this morning. I was really going to turn you in."

"How did you find out?" asked Justinian. "I didn't tell you anything. The Harding job, yes. But about Marjorie. I didn't tell anybody."

"A guy like me," said Eddie, "can find out an awful lot if he sets his mind to it. Besides, I'd been feeding Marjorie what she wanted to know about Harding."

"Sure," I said. "How else could she have found out? You've been taken, Joe. You're through."

I motioned him to get up. And then Brian remembered who Justinian was, and what he had just admitted he had done, and he got up and rushed in between us and flung him-self on Justinian, and I was helpless. They rolled together, making ugly sounds. They rolled out from the shelter of the chair into the open center of the room. And I saw Eddie Sego raise his gun.

"Eddie," I said. "Let them alone."

"What the hell," he said, "now he knows what I did I have to get him, or he'll drag me right along with him. I'm clean on those killings, but there's plenty else."

"Eddie," I said. "No."

He said, "I can do without you, too," and I saw the black, cold glitter come in his eyes.

I shot him in the right elbow.

He spun around and dropped the gun. He doubled up for a minute, and then he began to whimper and claw with his left hand for his own gun, in a holster under his left shou lder. I went closer to him and shot him again, carefully, through the left arm.

He crumbled down onto the floor and sat there, looking at me with big tears in his eyes. "What did you have to do that for?" he said. "You wanted him dead, too."

"Not that way. And not Brian, too."

"What do you care about Brian?" He rocked back and forth on the floor, hugging his arms against his sides and crying.

"You make me sick," I said.

I went to where Justinian and Brian were in the center of the room, locked together, quiet now with deadly effort. I didn't look to see who was killing who. "You make me sick," I said. "All of you make me sick." I kicked them until they broke apart.

I felt sorry for Brian, but he still made me sick. "Get up. Brian, you get on the phone and call the police. Prioletti and the decent cops, not Hickey's. They've been waiting a long time for this. Go on!" He went, and I told Justinian to sit down, and he sat. He looked at Eddie Sego and laughed.

"Empires aren't so easy to inherit after all, are they, Eddie?" he said. Eddie was still looking at me. "I just don't see why you did it.

"I'll tell you," I said. "Because I want to see you hang right along with the others. Did you think I was going to do your dirty work for you, for free?" I turned to Justinian. "How did you find out Marjorie was so close to you on the Harding thing?"

"Why," he said, "I guess it was a remark Eddie made that got me worried."

"A remark that got Marjorie killed. But you didn't care, did you, Eddie?

What's another life, more or less, to you?" His face had turned white, with fear instead of pain. Justinian was looking at me with a sort of astonishment. And then Brian came and took my arm, and I stepped back and shook my head, and we sat down and waited until Prioletti came. When they were all gone and the house was empty and quiet again, I stood for a minute looking around at all the things that had been Marjorie's, and there was a peacefulness about them now. I went out softly and closed the door, and drove away down the long drive.