"Beaumont."
"Oh," without enthusiasm, "all right."
Jack opened the door and turned on the lights. He was in green-spotted pajamas. His feet were bare. His eyes were dull, his face flushed, with sleepiness. He yawned, nodded, and went back to bed, where he stretched himself out on his back and stared at the ceiling. Then he asked, with not much interest: "How are you this morning?"
Ned Beaumont had shut the door. He stood between door and bed looking sullenly at the man in the bed. He asked: "What happened after I left?"
"Nothing happened." Jack yawned again. "Or do you mean what did I do?" He did not wait for a reply. "I went out and took a plant across the street till they came out. Despain and the girl and the guy that slugged you came out. They went to the Buckman, Forty-eighth Street. That's where Despain's holing up-apartment 938-name of Barton Dewey. I hung around there till after three and then knocked off. They were all still in there unless they were fooling me." He jerked his head slightly in the direction of a corner of the room. "Your hat's on the chair there. I thought I might as well save it for you."
Ned Beaumont went over to the chair and picked up the hat that did not quite fit him. He stuffed the wrinkled dark cap in his overcoat pocket and put the hat on his head.
Jack said: "There's some gin on the table if you want a shot."
Ned Beaumont said: "No, thanks. Have you got a gun?"
Jack stopped staring at the ceiling. He sat up in bed, stretched his arms out wide, yawned for the third time, and asked: "What are you figuring on doing?" His voice held nothing beyond polite curiosity.
"I'm going to see Despain."
Jack had drawn his knees up, had clasped his hands around them, and was sitting hunched forward a little staring at the foot of the bed. He said slowly: "I don't think you ought to, not right now."
"I've got to, right now," Ned Beaumont said.
His voice made Jack look at him. Ned Beaumont's face was an unhealthy yellowish grey. His eyes were muddy, red-rimmed, not sufficiently open to show any of the whites. His lips were dry and somewhat thicker than usual.
"Been up all night?" Jack asked.
"I got some sleep."
"Unkdray?"
"Yes, but how about the gun?"
Jack swung his legs out from beneath the covers and down over the side of the bed. "Why don't you get some sleep first? Then we can go after them. You're in no shape now."
Ned Beaumont said: "I'm going now."
Jack said: "All right, but you're wrong. You know they're no babies. to go up against shaky. They mean it."
"Where's the gun?" Ned Beaumont asked.
Jack stood up and began to unbutton his pajama-coat.
Ned Beaumont said: "Give me the gun and get back in bed. I'm going."
Jack fastened the button he had just unfastened and got into bed. "The gun's in the top bureau-drawer," he said. "There are extra cartridges. in there too if you want them." He turned over on his side and shut his eyes.
Ned Beaumont found the pistol, put it in a hip-pocket, said, "See you later," switched off the lights, and went out.
Five minutes later he was walking away from an elevator down a long corridor towards an open door where Bernie Despain stood.
Despain was a small man, short and stringy, with a head too large for his body. The size of his head was exaggerated until it seemed a deformity by long thick fluffy waved hair. His face was swarthy, large-featured except for the eyes, and strongly lined across the forehead and down from nostrils past the mouth. He had a faintly reddish scar on one cheek. His blue suit was carefully pressed and he wore no jewelry.
He stood in the doorway, smiling sardonically, and said: "Good morning, Ned."
Ned Beaumont said: "I want to talk to you, Bernie."
"I guessed you did. As soon as they phoned your name up I said to myself: 'I bet you he wants to talk to me.'"
Ned Beaumont said nothing. His yellow face was tight-lipped.
Despain's smile became looser. He said: "Well, my boy, you don't have to stand here. Come on in." He stepped aside.
The door opened into a small vestibule. Through an opposite door that stood open Lee Wilshire and the man who had struck Ned Beaumont could be seen. They had stopped packing two traveling-bags to look at Ned Beaumont.
He went into the vestibule.
Despain followed him in, shut the corridor-door, and said: "The Kid's kind of hasty and when you come up to me like that he thought maybe you were looking for trouble, see? I give him hell about it and maybe if you ask him he'll apologize."
The Kid said something in an undertone to Lee Wilshire, who was glaring at Ned Beaumont. She laughed a vicious little laugh and replied: "Yes, a sportsman to the last."
Bernie Despain said: "Go right in, Mr. Beaumont. You've already met the folks, haven't you?"
Ned Beaumont advanced into the room where Lee and the Kid were.
The Kid asked: "How's the belly?"
Ned Beaumont did not say anything.
Bernie Despain exclaimed: "Jesus! For a guy that says he came up here to talk you've done less of it than anybody I ever heard of."
"I want to talk to you," Ned Beaumont said. "Do we have to have all these people around?"
"I do," Despain replied. "You don't. You can get away from them just by walking out and going about your own business."
"I've got business here."
"That's right, there was something about money." Despain grinned at the Kid. "Wasn't there something about money, Kid?"
The Kid had moved to stand in the doorway through which Ned Beaumont had come into the room. "Something," he said in a rasping voice, "but I forget what."
Ned Beaumont took off his overcoat and hung it on the back of a brown easy-chair. He sat down in the chair and put his hat behind him. He said: "That's not my business this time. I'm-let's see." He took a paper from his inner coat-pocket, unfolded it, glanced at it, and said: "I'm here as special investigator for the District Attorney's office."
For a small fraction of a second the twinkle in Despain's eyes was blurred, hut he said immediately: "Ain't you getting up in the world! The last time I saw you you were just punking around for Paul."
Ned Beaumont refolded the paper and returned it to his pocket. Despain said: "Well, go ahead, investigate something for us-anything-just to show us how it's done." He sat down facing Ned Beaumont, wagging his too-large head. "You ain't going to tell me you came all the way to New York to ask me about killing Taylor Henry?"
"Yes."
"That's too bad. I could've saved you the trip." He flourished a hand at the traveling-bags on the floor. "As soon as Lee told me what it was all about I started packing up to go back and laugh it your frame-up."
Ned Beaumont lounged back comfortably in his chair. One of his hands was behind him. He said: "If it's a frame-up it's Lee's. The police got their dope from her."
"Yes," she said angrily, "when I had to because you sent them there, you bastard."
Despain said: "Uh-huh, Lee's a dumb cluck, all right, but those markers don't mean anything. They-"
"I'm a dumb cluck, am I?" Lee cried indignantly. "Didn't I come all the way here to warn you after you'd run off with every stinking piece of-"
"Yes," Despain agreed pleasantly. "and coming here shows just what a dumb cluck you are, because you led this guy right to me."
"If that's the way you feel about it I'm damned glad I did give the police those I 0 Us, and what do you think of that?"
Despain said: "I'll tell you just exactly what I think of it after our company's gone." He turned to Ned Beaumont. "So honest Paul Madvig's letting you drop the shuck on me, huh?"
Ned Beaumont smiled. "You're not being framed, Bernie, and you know it. Lee gave us the lead-in and the rest that we got clicked with it."
"There's some more besides what she gave you?"
"Plenty."
"What?"
Ned Beaumont smiled again. "There are lots of things I could say to you, Bernie, that I wouldn't want to say in front of a crowd."
Despain said: "Nuts!"
The Kid spoke from the doorway to Despain in his rasping voice: "Let's chuck this sap out on his can and get going."
"Wait," Despain said. Then he frowned and put a question to Ned Beaumont: "Is there a warrant out for me?"
"Well, I don't-"
"Yes or no?" Despain's bantering humor was gone.
Ned Beaumont said slowly: "Not that I know of."
Despain stood up and pushed his chair back. "Then get the hell out of here and make it quick, or I'll let the Kid take another poke at you."
Ned Beaumont stood up. He picked up his overcoat. He took his cap out of his overcoat-pocket and, holding it in one hand, his overcoat over the other arm, said seriously: "You'll be sorry." Then he walked out in a dignified manner. The Kid's rasping laughter and Lee's shriller hooting followed him out.
At ti-me first corner he came face to face with Jack. He asked: "What are you doing here?"
Jack said: "I'm still working for you, far as I know, so I came along to see if I could find anything to do."
"Swell. Find us a taxi quick. They're sliding out."
Jack said, "Ay, ay," and went down the street.
Ned Beaumont remained on the corner. The front and side entrances of the Buckman could be seen from there.
In a little while Jack returned in a taxicab. Ned Beaumont got into it and they told the driver where to park it.
"What did you do to them?" Jack asked when they were sitting still.
"Things."
"Oh."
Ten minutes passed and Jack, saying, "Look," was pointing a forefinger at a taxicab drawing up to the Buckman's side door.
The Kid, carrying two traveling-bags, left the building first, then, when he was in the taxicab, Despain and the girl ran out to join him. The taxicab ran away.
Jack leaned forward and told his driver what to do. They ran along in the other cab's wake. They wound through streets that were bright with morning sunlight, going by a devious route finally to a battered brown stone house in west Forty-ninth Street.
Despain's cab stopped in front of the house and, once more, the Kid was the first of the trio out on the sidewalk. He looked up and down the street. He went up to the front door of the house and unlocked it. Then he returned to the taxicab. Despain and the girl jumped out and went indoors hurriedly. The Kid followed with the bags.
"Stick here with the cab," Ned Beaumont told Jack.
'What are you going to do?"
"Try my luck."
Jack shook his head. "This is another wrong neighborhood to look for trouble in," he said.
Ned Beaumont said: "If I come out with Despain, you beat it. Get another taxi and go hack to watch the Buckman. If I don't come out, use your own judgment."
He opened the cab-door and stepped out. He was shivering. His eyes were shiny. He ignored something that Jack leaned out to say and hurried across the street to the house into which the two men and the girl had gone.
He went straight up the front steps and put a hand on the door-knob. The knob turned in his hand. The door was not locked. He pushed it open and, after peering into the dim hallway, went in.
The door slammed shut behind him and one of the Kid's fists struck his head a glancing blow that carried his cap away and sent him crashing into the wall. He sank down a little, giddily, almost to one knee, and the Kid's other fist struck the wall over his head.
He pulled his lips back over his teeth and drove a fist into the Kid's groin, a short sharp blow that brought a snarl from the Kid and made him fall back so that Ned Beaumont could pull himself up straight before the Kid was upon him again.
Up the hallway a little, Bernie Despain was leaning against the wall, his mouth stretched wide and thin, his eyes narrowed to dark points, saying over and over in a low voice: "Sock him, Kid, sock him Lee Wilshire was not in sight.
The Kid's next two blows landed on Ned Beaumont's chest, mashing him against the wall, making him cough. The third, aimed at his face, he avoided. Then he pushed the Kid away from him with a forearm against his throat and kicked the Kid in the belly. The Kid roared angrily and came in with both fists going, but forearm and foot had carried him away from Ned Beaumont and had given Ned Beaumont time to get his right hand to his hip-pocket and to get Jack's revolver out of his pocket. He had not time to level the revolver, but, holding it at a downward angle, he pulled the trigger and managed to shoot the Kid in the right thigh. The Kid yelped and fell down on the hallway floor. He lay there looking up at Ned Beaumont with frightened bloodshot eyes.
Ned Beaumont stepped back from him, put his left hand in his trousers-pocket, and addressed Bernie Despain: "Come on out with me. I want to talk to you." His face was sullenly determined.
Footsteps ran overhead, somewhere back in the building a door opened, and down the hallway excited voices were audible, but nobody came into sight.
Despain stared for a long moment at Ned Beaumont as if horribly fascinated. Then, without a word, he stepped over the man on the floor and went out of the building ahead of Ned Beaumont. Ned Beaumont put the revolver in his jacket-pocket before he went down the street-steps, but he kept his hand on it.
"Up to that taxi," he told Despain, indicating the car out of which Jack was getting. When they reached the taxicab he told the chauffeur to drive them anywhere, "just around till I tell you where to go."
They were in motion when Despain found his voice. He said: "This is a hold-up. I'll give you anything you want because I don't want to be killed, but it's just a hold-up."
Ned Beaumont laughed disagreeably and shook his head. "Don't forget I've risen in the world to be something or other in the District Attorney's office."
"But there's no charge against me. I'm not wanted. You said-"
"I was spoofing you, Bernie, for reasons. You're wanted."
"For what?"
"Killing Taylor Henry."
"That? Hell, I'll go back and face that. What've you got against me? I had some of his markers, sure. And I left the night he was killed, sure. And I gave him hell because he wouldn't make them good, sure. What kind of case is that for a first-class lawyer to beat? Jesus, if I left the markers behind in my safe at some time before nine-thirty-to go by Lee's story-don't that show I wasn't trying to collect that night?"
"No, and that isn't all the stuff we've got on you."
"That's all there could be," Despain said earnestly.
Ned Beaumont sneered. "Wrong, Bernie. Remember I had a hat on when I came to see you this morning?"
"Maybe. I think you did."
"Remember I took a cap out of my overcoat-pocket and put it on when I left?"
Bewilderment, fear, began to come into the swarthy man's small eyes. "By Jesus! Well? What are you getting at?"
"I'm getting at the evidence. Do you remember the hat didn't fit me very well?"
Bernie Despain's voice was hoarse: "I don't know, Ned. For Christ's sake, what do you mean?"
"I mean it didn't fit me because it wasn't my hat. Do you remember that the hat Taylor was wearing when he was murdered wasn't found?"
"I don't know. I don't know anything about him."
"Well, I'm trying to tell you the hat I had this morning was Taylor's hat and it's now planted down between the cushion-seat and the back of that brown easy-chair in the apartment you had at the Buckman. Do you think that, with the rest, would be enough to set you on the hot seat?"
Despain would have screamed in terror if Ned Beaumont had not clapped a hand over his mouth and growled, "Shut up," in his ear.
Sweat ran down the swarthy face. Despain fell over on Ned Beaumont, seizing the lapels of his coat with both hands, babbling: "Listen, don't you do that to me, Ned. You can have every cent I owe you, every cent with interest, if you won't do that. I never meant to rob you, Ned, honest to God. It was just that I was caught short and thought I'd treat it like a loan. Honest to God, Ned. I ain't got much now, but I'm fixed to get the money for Lee's rocks that I'm selling today and I'll give you your dough, every nickel of it, out of that. How much was it, Ned? I'll give you all of it right away, this morning."
Ned Beaumont pushed the swarthy man over to his own side of the taxicab and said: "It was thirty-two hundred and fifty dollars."
"Thirty-two hundred and fifty dollars. You'll get it, every cent of it, this morning, right away." Despain looked at his watch. "Yes, sir, right this minute as soon as we can get there. Old Stein will be at his place before this. Only say you'll let me go, Ned, for old times' sake."
Ned Beaumont rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. "I can't exactly let you go. Not right now, I mean. I've got to remember the District Attorney connection and that you're wanted for questioning. So all we can dicker about is the hat. Here's the proposition: give me my money and I'll see that I'm alone when I turn up the hat and nobody else will ever know about it. Otherwise I'll see that half the New York police are with me and- There you are. Take it or leave it."
"Oh, God!" Bernie Despain groaned. "Tell him to drive us to old Stein's place. It's on. –