MURDER IS BIGAMY

by Leigh Brackett
Chapter 1: Twenty-Four Hours
They take you into a little room. There's a big window of thick glass, and people outside it, looking in. They sit you down on
a chair and buckle the straps. There's a bucket underneath the chair. You can smell the sulfuric acid. The cyanide eggs are
dropped in. The door is shut tight, and outside the window a man takes out a watch.
I was running. I don't think anyone was after me then, but I was running. There was fog, and the beach road was dark, and
my heels made a sharp noise hitting the asphalt. I guess that's why I didn't see or hear the girl.
She was crouched down, sobbing, where the wind had blown a thick spit of sand across the road. I fell almost on top of her.
She screamed a muffled scream, like something crazy with fear.
"Take it easy!" I held her tight and panted. "I just didn't see you. Take it easy."
She lay quiet after a minute. Maybe I was crushing the wind out of her. But she didn't relax. I could feel her muscles taut as
fiddle strings.
"George," she whispered. "George?"
"No. My name is " I stopped. "I'm not George."
Where my hand touched the side of her face and neck, for all the chill fog, her skin was hot and moist. I could feel the big
vein pounding hard with her heartbeat. She wasn't sobbing so much with emotion as with trying to get her breath.
She began to struggle again.
"Let me go."
"Wait a minute. George who?"
"Let me go !"
"George Everetts?"
She jumped like I'd gaffed her, and then she was still, very still.
"What do you know about George Everetts?" I insisted.
"You're breaking my wrist," she said without emotion.
Somewhere back the way I had come, a car started, the motor coughing and banging in the cold. Faintly, men's voices
yelled. I got up and pulled the girl with me. She was tricky. She was strong. She almost got free, and I had to clout her one.
"They're coming," I told her. "They'll find us here."
That seemed to penetrate. She came along, with me still gripping her wrist.
We ran along an alley, away from the beachfront and the naked road, and then we stopped in the sickly yellow glow of the
sodium light at Avenue 35. I wanted a look at her.
She wasn't beautiful, nor the type to be pretty, but she had a lot more. Color and line and vitality. A young face that had
learned about life the hard way, and sweated off its baby softness in tears and anger, but hadn't yet learned submission. I
could see her brain crouching back of her dark eyes, waiting, watching, testing what was in the air.
She was dressed not expensively, but in good taste. The thick pile of her light-colored coat was clogged with sand.

Her bare head was damp from the mist. Her stockings were both torn, the right one with a big hole at the knee and a brush
burn on the flesh underneath. She wasn't wearing any shoes.
I turned her palms up and studied them.
"Did you jump out of the car?" I asked. "Or were you thrown? Whose car was it, and where was it going, and how long ago?
And why did you think I was George Everetts?"
"They'll be along here in a minute," she said. "They'll think of searching this road, too."
"So you have got something on your conscience!"
I laughed and we ran again, down into the flatlands beside the old canal, where there was nothing but the groan and creak of
hidden oil wells, spaced wide on the dunes, and the heavy stagnancy of sump water on the salt air. There were no houses.
I pulled her down into a black hollow behind broken concrete blocks where a rig had come out.
"Listen!" she whispered.
Sounds came like they do at sea in the fog, eerie, sometimes too close, sometimes too far away. Shouts. Automobile horns.
Heavy feet, running.
And then, coming south from Venice, came the cat-wail of a siren.
"Yeah," I said. "I hear." I got hold of her coat, high on the neck where I could feel her cool soft hair brushing my hands. "All
right, honey. Who are you? What were you to George Everetts? What happened to you, and why were you where I fell over
you, almost on George's doorstep and saying George's name?"
or a long time there was no answer.
"Who are you?" she countered then. "What's happened?" "You tell me."
"How could I know? Who are you?"
"Just a gent. A gent who went to see George Everetts to talk over business and old times. We finished our business, talked
our talk and had a few drinks and went to sleep, and then all of a sudden a shot wakes me up and I go downstairs and find
something that makes me a gent headed straight for the gas chamber." I tightened my hold on her. "You see why you're
going to talk to me?"
"No, no, I don't know anything! Not anything at all. Let me go!"
"Sure," I told her slowly. "We'll both go. Back to George's house to see the cops. An empty hand is no gamble at all, that's
why I ran away, but I got a card now. A queen. And any kind of a gamble is better than trying to sit it out when you're
playing with law."
I started to get up, still holding her coat. She seemed to have gone slack under my hands. She came readily enough, as
though it was no use to fight me any longer.
It was dark, very dark. She came readily. Too readily. I sensed her arm swinging and I didn't have any way to dodge it, for I
was holding on to her. She must have found a chunk of concrete just the right size. I let go of her, but not soon enough. She
hit me behind the ear.
It fixed me, all right. But it didn't put me quite out. Not so far that I couldn't hear her running away across the sand.
She was too smart to try the main road. She crossed the canal on the stringer of the lock that controlled the flow from the
tidewater inlet into the banked canal. There was nothing but marsh between there and Culver City. It was a long walk to
Culver City, but I knew she'd make it before dawn, even in her bare feet. There hadn't been any rain, and the marsh was dry.
After that, things were hazy for a while, and then I heard some of the men who were looking for me circle around and come
my way.

The whoop and holler they were making was enough to have roused everybody between Venice and Del Rey. The streets,
the alleys, the beach and the dunes were swarming with men, talking and flashing lights around. There were more sirens,
and the population was getting thicker every minute.
It looked to me like my only possible out was the marsh, the way the girl had gone. There was no way to get a car across it,
and if I got enough start, they couldn't head me off on foot. There was also just a bare possibility that I might catch up with
her.
I slid off the log, feeling shaky and hollow.
George's whiskey inside me was deader than George, and my head felt like a dropped melon. My bum leg was aching from
the cold. And all those men were hunting me. I came close to bawling like a scared kid.
Somebody got to the lock ahead of me.
They tramped across the stringer and began looking for prints on the other side. The men already coming behind me kept
coming closer, and then I heard voices and saw lights in the fog off to my right.
"Any sign of him?" somebody yelled.
"Naw!"
They closed in around the lock like a bunch of sheep, and I did the only thing I could do. I went in the water. I didn't splash
any. I just slid over against the lock gate, which was closed, underneath the stringer. I held onto a slimy post, trying to keep
away from barnacles.
The two who had been on the marsh side clomped back overhead. You could tell from their feet they were cops. They
stopped right over me, by the rusty iron wheel, and I heard a match sputter.
"Ah, rats! The bird's probably halfway to L.A. by now."
"Yeah. Pitch dark and this fog, what do you expect!"
"And no description."
"No. But there's bound to be fingerprints on those glasses."
"Sure, sure! But suppose he don't have a record?"
"Ah, the devil, let Fearon worry about that! Come on, I got a bottle in the car."
That sort of broke up the meeting. I stayed in the water, too chilled even to shiver, while everybody trailed off to get drinks,
to get warm. They thought they were cold! What I had inside me made the outside look almost hot.
But suppose he don't have a record Oh, but I have, I thought. Oh yes, Mr. Policeman! Maybe not the kind of record you're
thinking of, but good enough. You send my prints from the glass back to Washington and they'll tell you right away who I
am, and after that I'm cooked. If I run, or stay, or give myself up, I'm cooked.
Unless I could find that girl!
I probably had twenty-four hours before the F. B. I. would wire my name from Washington.
Twenty-four hours.
The searching men were all gone, now. It was safe to come out. I crawled up onto the marsh-side bank. It won't matter
anyway if I'm caught, I thought. I'll die of pneumonia.
My leg had stiffened up on me. I needed a smoke bad, and all my cigarettes were soaked through. I limped away, figuring to
hit the highway far enough above Venice to be safe, and then double back toward Santa Monica, where I was staying. It was
too late to catch up with the girl now, even if I'd been running.

Twenty-four hours in which to find her, and I didn't even know her name.
I made it home, safely, just before daylight. I dragged out a quart of bourbon and took it to bed with me. I took my bourbon
with aspirin, and I could feel my brain wheeling round and round in my skull as I lay. After a while, I was afraid my whirring
brain would wear grooves right through the bone. But the aspirin made me feel better.
Still, I had a cold when I went out to get the early afternoon papers with the story of the murder in them.

Chapter 2: Death In the Tub

The desk sergeant told me where I could find Mike Fearon, the officer in charge of the Everetts case. I went up a flight of
steps that were worn concave from being tramped on by size thirteen boots, and turned right. There was a small office at
the end of the hall, floored with mud-colored linoleum, and furnished with golden oak and a spittoon.
"Lieutenant Fearon?" I asked.
"That's right."
He was sitting behind the desk, in the angle of the window and the east wall. He was a big man, very beefy in the neck and
shoulders, sunburned with big rusty freckles sprinkled around, especially on his head. What little hair he had left was reddish
brown, or had been before the sun and the sea-salt got to work on it. He would have looked more natural in sweatshirt and
denims than in the cheap dark suit he was wearing.
His eyes were no particular color, and there was nothing particular in them. He looked like a heavy, placid man who wished
he was away from there, fishing.
"My name's Sullavan," I said. "Frank Sullavan Sullavan with an 'A'. I used to own a boat with George Everetts."
"Well," Fearon said. "Sit down."
I sat down. He lit up a cigarette. So did I. Outside the fog-smeared, streaky window was Windward Avenue. Dingy arcades
with pigeons nesting in them, little stores, beer joints. Mostly beer joints. There was bright sun, but winter was on the place.
The town looked like a drunken old hag lying dead in a gutter, gray, bleary, and hopeless.
"I read about the killing," I said.
"What did you think of it?"
"I don't know. I haven't seen George for two years. He was a low heel, but he was a good man in a boat. I knew him pretty
well. I don't know. Maybe I'm sorry. Maybe I'm not."
"Any idea who might have done it?"
"Like I said, I haven't been around for two years. Lots of gents have taken pokes at George. Including me. But I thought if we
talked it over we might get some ideas."
"If he was a heel, what do you care?"
"He was my partner," I said. "He was a good man in a boat. And he saved my life once, when we were diving for abalones
together and one shut down on me."
"I see," said Fearon. "Well, what do you want to know?"
"Just tell me what happened, first."
"It's all in the papers."
"Maybe. But telling it is better."
"Okay." Fearon sighed and leaned back. "A couple of the neighbors saw a man crossing the vacant lot to Everetts' house last

evening, but it was after dark and foggy and they couldn't even see what size and shape he was. Apparently this fellow went
inside, because Kraus he lives next door to Everetts--heard voices. Then after that there was nothing until about two fortyfive this morning when a rifle shot woke up the neighbors. Kraus sticks his head out the window and sees a man light out of
Everetts' back door and head down the Speedway like his pants were on fire. Kraus and some others started chasing him,
but he got away.
"Okay. So inside the house there was George Everetts with most of his head blown off. His own rifle was on the floor. He
was lying beside a table where two menhimself and one otherhad been drinking and smoking for a long time. There was
no sign at all of who the other man was, but there were prints on both the rifle and the glass he usedyeah, and on the
bottle. So maybe we got a chance."
"Well, that's something." I sneezed. I nearly blew the top of my head off.
"Got a cold?"
"Sure," I said. "Who hasn't?"
"Lot of 'em going around. My wife's been sick "
"That's too bad. Look," I said, "did you get any line on what George has been doing lately? Who his friends are, if he's fought
with anyone?"
"For cripe's sake, the man was only killed a few hours ago! But we did find a few things in his effects. Gee, have you got a
cold! Come on real sudden?"
"No, I been fighting it for a week. What did you find?"
"Well, a picture of you and him in front of a boat, for one thing. We'd have been looking for you to ask questions if you
hadn't come in. Questions about George, of course."
"Of course."
"Seems from some letters and other stuff that George Everetts spent about fourteen months in Seattle. Got married up
there."
"Married?"
"Why not? A lot of men do it."
"But he was already married." I said. "Got a wife in San Francisco he never got divorced from."
Fearon made marks on a paper.
"We'll check on that," he said. "What's his wife's name and address?"
"Billie Everetts is her name. I don't know the address. She's a burlesque pony, or was."
"H-mm. Well, anyway, Everetts married this girl Frances Sparling in Seattle." Fearon hunted around in a folder on the desk
and held out a photograph. "Really something, isn't she?"
I was hanging onto myself pretty hard, and wasn't really surprised anyway when I looked at the picture. She was something,
all right. Even more so than when I looked at her under the sodium light on Avenue 35, because in the picture she was
happy and smiling.
George was there, too. I wondered why it was a gent like him could always make the women trust him. Love him, sure. He
was that dark, laughing, wild-stallion type they always fall for. But trust him?
I thought I would rather remember George as he was in the picture than the way I saw him last. He'd been shot through the
back of the head. He wasn't very handsome now.
Fearon asked me if I'd ever seen the girl before.

"No." I handed the picture back to him. "George could always pick 'em. That's what made him most of his trouble. Anything
else?"
"Yeah. I just got a wire from Seattle. The Sparling girl was married before, too. To George Starke. Ever hear of him?"
I sneezed again. I was glad I did. George Starke, huh? George! My poker face was beginning to slip.
"Yeah," I said finally. "I think so. Gambler, isn't he?"
"Uh huh. Very tough boy. Very slick. We're trying to get a line On him, but I don't think it'll do us any good."
"Well, you still have your prints. I suppose there was no third set on the rifle?"
"Only Everetts' and the stranger's. Not even any smudges where the gun might have been handled with gloves." He looked
up at me. "You get any ideas?"
"I been away too long, I guess. Lost touch. Maybe I will later. Well, I guess that's all."
I got up. Fearon nodded his freckled dome.
"So far. Except about you, Mr. Frank Sullavan with-an-A. Where have you been the last two years?"
"In the Marines. I just got back to L. A. a couple days ago." "See George Everetts at all?"
"I told you that. No."
"Why not?"
"I was tired, I was busy, and I didn't have any particular reason to see him."
"This undivorced wife of his, Billie. You know her?" "Some," I said. "Haven't seen her for several years."
"You didn't know her very well? Not well enough to fight
with Everetts on her account, maybe?"
"George and I had a lot of fights. I told you that, too." "Um h-mm. Alibi for last night?"
"Blazes, why should I have an alibi! I went to bed early, all by myself, and slept late. What is this, anyhow?"
"I'm just being a cop," said Fearon apologetically. "I make my living at it." He was looking at my leg. "Medical discharge,
eh?"
"Yeah."
"Stiff like that all the time?"
"More or less. It's supposed to go away eventually. If it's any of your business."
"None at all." He was still apologetic. "You wouldn't mind leaving your name and address, would you?"
"Not at all."
"Iuhyou wouldn't mind leaving your prints, either, would you? Just for a check."
"That I would mind. What the devil is this, Germany? If I'm under suspicion, book me. If I'm not, I don't have to go around
crawling to every cop I see." I let myself go. "I came in here to see if I could help, and you treat me like I'm John Dillinger
with a case of scarlet fever! Asking a bunch of fool questions!"
I cussed him out. He took it sitting down, blinking a little. "I'm sorry, Mr. Sullavan," he said mildly. "I thought you wanted to

cooperate."
"Not so far that I want to be as good as accused of murder! Listen, I've been ducking Japanese lead all over the South Pacific
for two years so gents like you can hang onto your jobs, and I don't like being practically told I shot a pal of mine in the back
of the head."
"Now, now, Mr. Sullavan. I didn't mean it like that. But, of course, it's up to you." He rose with clumsy courtesy. "You've
been a lot of help, Mr. Sullavan. I appreciate you coming in." I let myself calm down, scowling at the floor.
"Sorry," I said curtly. "I guess my nerves are still a little jumpy."
"Sure. Forget it."
He sat down again, and I went out. The last I saw of him he was slumped back peacefully, still looking like a man who
wished he was somewhere fishing.
I felt like a man who wished he was anywhere, doing any-I thing, but what I was doing. My neck was stuck out so far I could
feel the tendons crack.
That'Il stall him for a while, I thought. He can't do anything about it, but oh brother! He is not thinking about fishing.
My twenty-four hours were getting shaved down. I had chiseled a couple of sign-posts out of Fearon, but I couldn't see that
they pointed anywhereespecially away from me. George Starke. Frances Sparling. So I knew a couple of names. So what?
Just for luck, I stopped in a drug store phone booth and pumped the directory. It didn't tell me where Mrs. Frances Sparling
Everetts lived. I hadn't really thought it would. She could be calling herself Elmira Zilch and camping at the Y. M. C. A. for
all I knew.
When I came out of the drugstore I found I had a shadow. I wouldn't have noticed him at all only I knew there would be
one, after that interview with Fearon. And after looking for Japanese snipers a police shadow wasn't so hard to see.
I didn't care. I wasn't going anywhere but home. I needed to think.
A little later, I walked up the path to my shack. It wasn't much, just a trailer-sized frame cabin that needed paint. But I
owned it, and I could do what I pleased in it.
I had the door half open before I noticed there was a trickle of water down the steps. More ran out then, over my shoes. It
had a queer rusty tint to it. The floor of the small main room was flooded, and there was a steady flow from under the
bathroom door. I could hear the tap running in the tub.
I had had enough water the night before to last me for a while. I had not taken a bath that morning.
I crossed the room, splashing. There was an unclean coppery stain where the moisture had crawled up the walls. I pushed
the bathroom door open.
It is a very small bathroom with an ancient white iron tub on legs, and a cracked washbowl. The bowl was full of a woman's
clothing, wadded up and tossed in with a handbag and a pair of high-heeled pumps on top. A woman's fur coat hung from a
wall hook.
The woman it belonged to was in my tub.
The running water was very cold, but she didn't seem to mind it. She lay back comfortably, her long perfect legs stretched
out, her long lovely body relaxed. I could see her body as a sort of surrealist's dream of a woman half veiled with an intricate
swirling pattern of red in the clear bath.
Her corn-yellow hair floated around her face, but I knew her, all right. Even with her eyes half-lidded in the idiot stare of
death, her lips a vivid scarlet against the drained, hollow whiteness of her cheek and jawI knew her!
Billie, Billie, how can you marry that skunk Everetts when you know I'd go through anything for you?
The motion of the water swept the hair aside. Somebody had done it with a long thin knife, thrusting it through her throat
from side to side and then ripping outward, the way you opened a fish.

She would have bled more if the water had been warm. She had bled enough.
I reached out and turned the water off.

Chapter 3: A Little Surprise

A broad black river was rushing over me, and a man was standing on the other side of it, talking. His voice came with a
queer singing clarity, like struck crystal. I couldn't see him, but I could hear him, even through the racing noise of the river.
"Police Headquarters," he was saying. "Hello, Sam. Vetch speaking. Yeah, a little murder. Let me talk to Fearon."
I tried to make my head break the river's surface and suddenly it did, and the darkness was gone. I was on my knees in cold
water, my hands on the edge of the tub, my head between them. My face and neck, my body, were covered with freezing
sweat.
I knew where the man was now. He was behind me, in my shack's living room, talking on my phone. I rolled my head
slightly to look over my shoulder. He saw the movement. He was watching me. He had a gun.
I got up slowly and went into the living room. He watched me, holding the phone in his left hand and the receiver between
his shoulder and his ear, and went on talking to Fearon. I sat down.
"Okay, we'll wait," Vetch said over the phone, and then set it down. "You look sick," he told me.
"I feel sick."
He nodded.
"Most of 'em do after the excitement's over," he said. "How'd you come to leave the water on? I wouldn't have followed you
in if I hadn't seen it running down the steps."
"There's a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard there." I pointed. "Give me a drink, will you?"
"You feel like passing out again, go right ahead and do it." He hitched one leg up on the table. "You don't have to walk to the
station, anyhow."
I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. Vetch had closed the front door. My place was fairly isolated, on a bluff
overlooking the Pacific, with a lot of tall angry cypress trees hedging it. Nobody had noticed us, or the flooding water. This
last was draining out now, leaving that ugly stain in streaks on the carpet.
I know that table Vetch was sitting on. I'd had a party once, and the table got knocked over and a leg broken off. I'd patched
it, but it was still weak.
I let myself go forward.
Vetch didn't shoot. He thought I had passed out again, and by the time he saw he was wrong it was too late. I slammed my
body against the shaky table leg, felt it crack, and kept rolling. The table top came down, the edge hitting the floor behind
me. Vetch yelled and came with it.
The place shook when he landed. I rose up under the edge that was tilted up, grabbed the legs and threw the whole thing
over on top of him. He didn't want to stay down. He was almost in position when I kicked him under the jaw.
I dropped his gun into my pocket, and then I heard the first distant screaming of a siren. There would be Santa Monica cops,
too.
I stripped off my wet pants and shoes, pulled on dry onesthe shoes were moccasins and didn't have to be laced. I was still
fastening my belt when I went back in the bathroom. I did not look in the tub.
Billie's cloth handbag was in the washbowl with her clothes. I clawed the contents out of the bag and stuffed it in my
pockets. Then I went through the pockets of the fur coat. Handkerchief, a couple of scraps of paper. I took those and went
out through the kitchen lean-to. Vetch was beginning to groan and squirm around.

The siren had relatives now, and they were all close.
The Pacific Electric cars ran into L. A. about half a block behind my place. I heard one coming down from the Santa Monica
station and ran for it, cursing my stiff knee. I caught the car, barely, and rode away, watching the police cars pulling up in
front of my shack.
I got off at Ocean Park. The cops would have heard the Pacific Electric, too. They would telephone ahead to Sunset or
Vineyard to have them hold it for a search. Besides, I didn't have any reason to go to L. A. They had cops there, too.
The theaters were open for the matinee, down on the Front. I went into one of them. There was a very slim audience,
mostly kids, at that time of day. I went to the Gent's Lounge, locked myself in, and began to look over what I had taken from
Billie's purse.
Billie had been George Everetts' undivorced wife, and George had married Frances Sparling anyway. And now it was worse
than bigamy. It was murder. Double murder.
A faint musky sweetness breathed out of everything. I remembered Billie's small angular handwriting, the cigarette case I
had given her, the smudge of lipstick on the handkerchief, the vivid red she always used. My head began to go round again.
I took the things piece by piece and studied them. Coin purse, ten or fifteen dollars in bills, an anonymous key, some
forgotten shopping lists worn at the creases, the half of a Greyhound ticket that would have taken Billie back to San
Francisco where she had been a burlesque pony. She didn't need a ticket where she was going. The city paid for the ride to
the morgue.
There were four cards. Three of them were the kind salespeople give you when they have you on the string, all from San
Francisco stores. The fourth was from a veterinary hospital in Hollywood. Hours 9 A.M. to 10 P.M.
Billie never owned a dog or cat. She didn't care much for I them. I turned the card over and over in my fingers, wondering,
and as the light caught the slick surface I noticed faint marks under the 9 and the P.M., as though someone had
pressed down hard with a fingernail.
It seemed as though Mrs. Billie Everetts had a date to meet somebody at Bradbury's Small Animal Hospital, on Orange
Avenue, at 9 P.M. There was nothing to tell me what night, or even what year. But I didn't have a wide choice of nights, and
a lead was a lead.
I went down and saw the show. There was a Betty Grable picture, and all through it I kept seeing Billie singing and dancing
instead of Grable. After a while I couldn't see anything at all. It was just a foggy blear in front of me.
I wasn't hungry. I didn't even think of dinner. I figured I would have a fair chance, even with a general alarm out for me, until
the nine o'clock editions hit the street, with my picture and the story of Billie's death. After that, any dumb joe on the street
could turn me in.
I sat through the double feature and then repeated on one of them, and then I walked out of the theater and across the
Front, dark and windy between the popcorn and hot dog joints, and took a blue bus into town.
I got off at Pico and La Brea and took a yellow bus north. It was about eight minutes to nine when I got off at Santa Monica
Boulevard and walked over one block. No one paid any attention to me, and even in L. A. there weren't enough cops to
cover every bus and street-corner.
I found the hospital. A low white stucco building of modernistic design, the rear part of the lot enclosed in a high wall. The
location was several miles from the bright lights and business of Hollywood. Here the street lamps were few and far
between. There were broad vacant stretches of land with the new weed-grass already inches high. There were buildings, hut
they didn't relieve the desolation. A laundry, a bakery, a lumber yard with sheds and a spur trackall industrial buildings
black and lonely with the night. The wind blew and it was cold.
Light came in thin slits through the Venetian blind in the big window of the hospital. Faintly, from inside, I could hear the
forlorn, uneasy crying of the dogs.
The street was deserted. I walked toward the door, passing a side yard that had a high wire fence where dogs were evidently

turned out for exercise. There was a three-foot hedge along the fence.
Something caught my eye.
It looked like a sheet of newspaper caught in the angle between the hedge and the hospital wall, with a corner of the paper
flapping. And then somehow it didn't look like a paper. I went up close to the fence and craned my head. The flapping thing
was the skirt of a white surgical smock. There was a man inside it, folded neatly out of sight of any cruising car and almost
out of sight of any pedestrian. I couldn't tell whether he was dead or not. There was no way to get to him, or even touch
him. I went to the hospital's door and opened it.
Close warm air breathed out at me. There was no sight or sound of anyone. There was a small foyer, painted black and
green. A flight of steps went up to a second story at my left, bending sharply so that the top of the flight was hidden.
A waiting room with red leather seats opened to the right. Ahead were two low steps up, a tiny office, a show case with
collars and leads and bottles of vitamins and rabies vaccine, and a door into the back marked NO ADMITTANCE. A neat
sign On the wall told me to RING BELL-PLEASE WAIT.
I stood still. The over-warm air smelled heavily of disinfectant, but not heavily enough to kill entirely the musky pungence of
animals. A wild smell. The noise they were making out in their neat wire cages was wild, too.
Thin-edged and nervous, the dog-wails were punctuated by the jungle scream of a cat. I began to sweat.
I got the feeling that there was someone on the other side of that NO ADMITTANCE door, poised and listening just like I
was. I tiptoed over. I couldn't hear anything. Very carefully I tried the knob, but the door was locked.
All this time I'd been watching over both shoulders, so I saw the man coming downstairs before he saw me. He was fairly
young, blond, pink-cheeked, with the solid massive build of a Percheron. He wore a starched white smock, the big righthand pocket of which sagged deeply, and not with the weight of his fist in it.
He came quietly, carefully, and yet with an air of nonchalance. I figured he had heard the front door.
My gun, or Vetch's gun, wasn't in my pocket. It was right out there staring at him.
"Hold it," I told him. "Spread your fingers so I can see them against the cloth, and bring your hands out, open. Take it slow,
and raise the other one, too."
His eyes dilated. He stood perfectly still there on the landing for a moment, and then did as he was told.
"Who are you?" he asked. "What do you ?"
"Turn around!" I cut in. "Put both hands flat on the wall. That's it. Now step backwards as far as you can. Go on, move!
That's it. Now cross your left ankle over the other one."
He was now the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle formed by wall and floor, stretched out so that any movement would
drop him flat on his face. I went up to him on the landing, took his revolver away, and patted him to make sure.
"All right," I said then. "Stand up."
He did. Beads of sweat stood out on his pink forehead. "Go back on upstairs," I told him.
I was nervous, down there so close to the front door. Anybody might come in at any time. The place was still open for
business. There was the back of the hospital, too. Anybody might come in from there, too, and get me flanked. The blond
man didn't argue. He took a good look at me, and then started climbing. There was a landing at the top, with a door
standing partly open. He went through into a small, comfortable apartment. I followed, and then stopped just inside.
"Well," I said. "Hello, Frances."

Chapter 4: Who's A Corpse?

She had come in from another room. Her hair was tousled, her dark eyes heavy with sleep, her face flushed and creased
from a warm pillow. She was wrapped in a man's enormous dressing gown, and her bare legs were a lovely shape below it.

Mrs. Frances Sparling Starke Everetts.

She said nothing. She looked at the blond man, at me, and at my gun. Her mouth opened, and she put her hand over it.
"All right, now!" the blond man said to me. "Who are you, and what do you think you're doing?"
"I'm Sullavan," I said. "Frances knows me. Frank Sullavan I used to be George Everetts' partner. I've known Billie a long
time, too. I'm keeping this date for her."
"What's happened?" Frances asked as hoarsely as she'd asked me that same question there beside the canal after George's
murder.
"Didn't either of you hear the six o'clock news broadcasts?" I looked at both of them.
"I was asleep," Frances said.
"I was doing a hysterectomy on a terrier," said the blond man. And then, irrelevantly, "The animal died."
"So did Billie. In my bathtub, early this afternoon, with her throat cut."
Frances turned slowly white, and then gray, and then she sat down. Her eyes held a terrible realization. The blond man lost
the pinkness in his cheeks. He seemed to be undecided whether to go on breathing.
"The police," I said, "want me for George Everetts and Billie both. The funny thing is I didn't kill either of them. That's why
I'm keeping this date for Billieto find out who did." Neither of them said anything.
"You're Bradbury?" I asked the blond man, and when he nodded, "Why were you pussyfooting around down there with a
gun in your pocket?"
"I heard the front door," he said. "Billie would have come straight up. A client would have rung the bell. You didn't do
either."
"Who did you think I might be?"
"Well, frankly, I thought you might be George Starke. He's been trying to find Frances."
"George Starke, eh? Not George Everetts, perhaps?" Silence burst over that room like a physical slam of power. Silence, and
eyes looking at me out of it, and nobody breathing.
"Are you crazy?" Frances whispered finally. "George Everetts is dead."
"Is he?"
"Oh, for mercy's sake." She put her hands over her face. "I can't stand any more!"
Bradbury moved forward.
"Look here, you " he began.
I stopped him with the gun.
"Did Frances tell you how and where she met me last night?" "Sure. But "
"She tell you what she saw in George's house?"
"She never got there."
"You believe that?"
"Of course! She "

"You believe that?" I demanded again.

He looked at me. His mouth opened angrily. It closed again, and he looked at Frances. She got up and came as close to me
as I dared to let her. She looked a little crazy.
"What did you mean about George Everetts?" she blurted. "Why did you question that he's dead?"
"There were only two sets of prints on the rifle," I said. "George Everetts' and mine. We'd been handling it earlier. I didn't
shoot George. That leaves just one possibility. George Everetts wasn't shot at all. George Everetts shot somebody else!"
Frances clenched her hands together hard. I caught her eyes. "Which George were you expecting when I stumbled over you
in the sand?" I pressed her.
She shook her head.
"You saw the body," she said. "You told me yourself you came downstairs and found it."
"With no face!" I snapped at her. "I've never seen George Starke, but he must be about my size, not much larger or smaller,
or you wouldn't have thought I could be George Starke. Unless you knew it would be George Everetts, who was, or is, pretty
much my size. I don't think I noticed particularly what the body in George's house had on, except vaguely that it was what
George had been wearingbrown pants and a tan loafer jacket. But there probably aren't three men on the Coast who don't
have an outfit like that." I paused a moment. "All right, Frances, how about it?"
She looked worn out and shaky. She sat down again, and Bradbury, obeying my gun, perched sulkily beside her on the arm
of the couch. I was where I could watch all the entrances. I didn't feel sharp and cool and confident. My head was stuffy and
aching. My throat was sore. I was tired, and I was scared. All I wanted to do was go to bed and be safe, and sleep for a
week.
"Go on, honey," I said. "Talk."
"If you're innocent," Bradbury said, "why don't you call the police and let Frances talk to them?"
"She'll do that, too. So will you, Bradbury. But right now I want a private performance."
"How did you get here?" asked Frances. "How did you know about this place?"
"I found a card in Billie's pocket." I leaned forward. "Billie's dead. And I'm going to find out who killed her."
"There's not much to tell." Frances spread her hands tiredly. "I was married to George Starke. I divorced him."
"Why?"
"Look here!" Bradbury began, but Frances stopped him.
"Why should I mind telling him?" she said. "George was a dog. He was selfish and brutal and inconsiderate, so I divorced
him, and then do you know what I did? George Starke was crazy about me, and he wanted me back, and I wouldn't go back
because he was a dog and I knew itand then I fell for George Everetts because he reminded me of George Starke."
She laughed, a desolate sort of laugh that was sadder than tears.
"Can you understand that?" she said. "I thought in George Everetts I had the man I'd always been in love withthe man
George Starke had seemed to be when I married him. They say we never really love our lovers, only the image of them we
create in our hearts. I guess that's true, or I couldn't have been such a fool, twice in a row."
"Yeah," I said gently. "How did you meet Billie?"
"She found out George was married again without divorcing her, and started to kick up a fuss."
"Blackmail?"
"I guess so. Anyway, I left Everetts, and Billie and I got to be good friends. Sort of a mutual comfort society, I guess. Then

George Starke started really trying to get me back again. Billie met him. She was fond of him. Maybe he reminded her of
George Everetts, the way Everetts reminded me of Starke. Anyhow, it wasn't funny for me. I was hiding out from both of
them, both Georges. They both wanted me back."
I began to think, looking at her, that I could understand a man being crazy to get Frances back. She had itthe something,
whatever it is, that hooks you for keeps. Most women you can forget. But some of themmaybe it's just your own dumb
brain playing tricks on you, but some of them drop anchor in you and never go away. They're always there ready to stab
you with the pain and the loveliness and the wonder of themselves. Billie had been like that. And some men get stabbed too
deep.
Frances was going on. It seemed to be a relief for her to talk. "George Everetts was furious at Billie for the trouble she was
causing, and both men were furious at me and each other. They both thought they could get me back if I'd quit thinking
about the other one."
"You had me," Bradbury said.
"Of course, Brad." She smiled at him. "But it's all been going on for such a long time, and I couldn't impose on you, not then.
Besides, you might have been hurt." She added to me, "Brad and I went to school together. I'm afraid he's the man I should
have married. But I never had good sense."
"Few of us do," I told her. "That seems to be life. Go on."
"Well, it seemed that every place I went to hide, the Georges would find out somehow. Everetts and I had been living at his
place, at the beach, when I left him. I didn't want to go back up north, and I didn't have money enough to go East, and Billie
got a job dancing in L. A. to be with me. I'd get a job, and then one or the other of them would turn up and start pestering
me, and I'd have to move."
"You know how they'd find out where you were, don't you?"
"George Starke has plenty of money and plenty of ways to find out things. And George Everettswell, he wasn't exactly
broke either, and he was no fool."
"Billie sold you out," I said. "You must have known that."
"Oh, no!" She stared at me with wide, stunned eyes. "You're either very loyal," I said, "or a darn good actress." She didn't
look like she was acting. Bradbury was scowling. "Speak no ill of the dead," I said. "Oh, sure. But just the
same, Billie would have sold her immortal soul, if she'd had one. I can say that because I knew her, because I loved her, and
because I nearly went off my head when she married George Everetts. So that shows you what good sense I have. Go on."
Frances looked at me for a long time. I couldn't read her eyes. I wasn't sure I wanted to. I was suddenly scared, more than I
had been, and in a different way. I couldn't figure out why.
"Yesterday," she said, "George Starke came to my apartment. He said we were going to have a showdown and I was going
to come back to him, and George Everetts was going to let me alone or find himself jailed on a bigamy charge. He hung
around for hours, and I didn't know what to do. I tried to calm him down, but around two o'clock in the morning he got in
his car and said he was going to see Everetts. I went along. I thought maybe I could stop him. But he just got madder and
madder, and said he'd have had me back long before if it hadn't been for Everetts, and finally he pushed me out of the car."
She stopped to draw a ragged breath and shiver.
"I was trying to get to Everetts' house toto do whatever I could, when you fell over me. I was scared. I didn't know what
you, or George, might have done. I didn't even recognize you then, though I had seen your picture, and I didn't know
whether you were trying to take me to the police or somewhere to kill me so I couldn't identify you. I was afraid to go home,
so I came to Brad. I've been here all day, asleep."
"And you didn't see anyone else on the Speedway?" I asked her. "Didn't hear anything?"
"No."
"You're not kidding anybody," Bradbury said to me. "Doubting the identity of the corpse is silly. Only you and he handled

the gun, and you're still alive."

"I did not kill George Everetts, or Billie, or anyone," I said emphatically. "Therefore George Everetts is not dead."
"Oh yes he is," said a voice from the doorway. A deep, unfamiliar, masculine voice. "And don't try anything. I've got you
covered through the crack of the door."
I had left the door open so I could hear anyone coming in, or moving around below. But the steps were concrete and
wouldn't creak, and a man without shoes could be silent as a dropping leaf.
Frances caught her breath.
"George!" she whispered.
I knew which George it was this time, all right. George Starke.
Bradbury rose uncertainly, glancing from me to the door. I was standing still, waiting. Almost at once Starke spoke again, I
his time calling loudly downstairs.
"Okay, boys! Up here. I've got him."
I heard doors opening and slamming and a lot of feet in thick-soled shoes, and then the place was full of policemen, headed
by a big, freckled, easy-going copper named Mike Fearon.

Chapter 5: Instrument of Death

Quietly, without sirens, they had sneaked up on us. There were a couple of Hollywood dicks, and about fifteen men with
badges. Enough to keep us all calmed down.
They took my gun, and Starke's, and Bradbury's. Lieutenant Fearon studied them briefly, and shrugged.
"Let's all have a little chat," he said. "Everybody sit down and be comfy."
We sat. But I don't think any of us were very comfy. Down below in the wards the dogs were raising bloody Cain. George
Starke crossed the room to a chair. I could see how much he was like George Everetts. The same black, wild-horse look, big
and male and striking. He passed Bradbury, who was still standing, stopped, looked him up and down. Then he hit him in
the face so hard and fast his fist blurred.
Bradbury fell down. Two cops grabbed Starke from either side. He didn't fight them, but sat down obediently, watching
Bradbury stagger up to his knees. He grinned pleasantly. "I'm tired of men cutting in on my wife," he said. "Let that be a
reminder."
"I'm not your wife!" Frances was white-faced and trembling. "And I haven't seen Brad three times since I've been in L. A."
"It isn't how many times, pet," Starke told her, "but what happens during them. And you are my wife. I don't believe in
divorce, and if you hadn't sneaked out on me to Mexico there wouldn't have been one. And now that Everetts is dead, we'll
start talking some sense together."
Frances tightened her lips to a flat line and said nothing. But her eyes had still not learned submission. Bradbury crawled up
into a chair and put a handkerchief over his face because it was dripping.
"Everybody all through?" asked Fearon. "All right. Starke, you called us, didn't you?"
"Yeah. I had a date to meet Billie Everetts here at nine. When I heard the news broadcast and knew she wasn't coming, I
didn't know what was going on, so I tried to sneak in the back way. Bradbury must have tipped his assistant, because the lug
spotted me and gave me an argument, and I had to clip him. I stuck him in the hedge where he wouldn't be noticed for a
while. How is he, by the way?"
"Got a headache," said Fearon. "Otherwise, okay. You may have a little battery charge."

Starke shrugged.
"Well, anyway, I heard this Sullavan gent come in and take Bradbury," he said. "I knew the cops wanted him for Billie and
Everetts. I didn't give a hang about Everetts, but Billiewell, Billie and I were friends. So I phoned from downstairs."
Fearon nodded.
"You came here to get Frances, your wife, I suppose?" he offered.
"Yeah."
Fearon looked at me.
"All right, Mr. Frank Sullavan-with-an-A," he said. "Suppose you tell me what you've been doing, what you did last night, and
why you gave me that song-and-dance this morning?"
"Well, I went to George Everetts' house last night," I said, "to see about buying back my half-interest in the boat that I sold
him when I went into the Marines. He was fishing her out of Santa Monica, and making good dough, and I wanted to get
back in. George was willing. We talked a lot, and had a few drinks. He'd been cleaning the rifle, and we played with it,
remembering how he had got drunk aboard one time when our motor went out on us and had tried to shoot flying fish with
the rifle, and how George had fallen overboard. That's how my fresh prints got on the rifle. George never mentioned
Frances, or being married again.
"Well, I haven't been out of the hospital so long, and drinks kind of got me, and I went upstairs to sleep it off. That was
about one-thirty. Next thing I knew, this shot woke me up and I dashed downstairs, and kept right on going. George and I
had had plenty of bad blood between us, off and on. Besides, I'd been handling that rifle, and it didn't look so good."
"No," said Fearon. "It wouldn't."
I then went on and told Fearon about falling over Frances on the road, and her getting away.
"I thought if I could find her before Washington identified my prints from my service record, I might have a chance," I
continued. "But I'd been away a long time, I was all out of touch, and I didn't have a thing to go on to help find her. The only
person I could think of I might pump for a lead was you, Fearon. And I was fairly safe, then. You didn't know yet you were
looking for me."
He nodded.
"You killed Billie, of course, just before you left to see me," he said.
"I didn't kill Billie. I didn't even know she was in town. And why on earth would I want to kill her?"
Fearon shrugged. "Some men kill for no reason at all." A faint smile hooked up his mouth. "You'd be surprised at the motives
we come across."
He began questioning Frances. She told him the same story she'd told me, and then Starke corroborated it.
"I don't know whether I was thinking of killing Everetts or not," Starke said. "I was pretty steamed up. But just as I started to
turn up his street I heard a lot of yelling and excitement and I decided I better call my visit off. No point in sticking your
neck out for trouble."
"Didn't you try to find Frances again?"
"Sure," he said. "As soon as I could get back through the mob that started charging up and down the Speedway. But she was
gone."
"Did you see anybody running from Everetts' house?" Starke shook his head.
"There's a house on the lot across the street," I said. "I must have been behind it, angling across to the Speedway." "Starke,"
Fearon said, "when did you see Billie today?" "I didn't. She called me up and told me where Frances was she had thought
of this Bradbury fellow and called him and we were going to give Frances a chance to rest up so she'd be in a good mood,

and then we were going to have a showdown talk with her."

"What did Billie think about the murder?"
"She was pretty sore about it. She'd had her hooks into Everetts for a pretty good income, on that bigamy score. But she
wasn't crying over him."
"When did you find out," I said quickly, "that Billie had been peddling Frances to Everetts, the same as she had to you?"
Starke gave me a hot, slow look.
"I always knew it," he said. "But she kept me in touch with Frances, and that was all I wanted. Besides, Billie" "Billie was
Billie," I said. "I know."
"Yeah," Starke said. "And you don't look very bright, trying to hang her kill on me. I'm clean. At the time of the murder I was
in the Gotham on Hollywood Boulevard, eating. You can check that."
"I will," Lieutenant Fearon said. "And now you, Mr. Bradbury."
The blond veterinarian looked up sullenly.
"Frances came here very early this morning." He talked through his handkerchief. "I took her in. Billie called around nine,
said she was frightened because Frances hadn't come home, and thought she might be with me. Then about a half hour later
she came in and woke Frances and asked her what had happened, and Frances told her everything she knew. It was quite a
shock to Billie. She went away, but said she'd be back tonight."
Frances began to cry, not making any fuss about it. Fearon nodded. He said nothing. He lighted a cigarette and sat staring at
the floor, patting the tips of his thick, freckled fingers together absently. Finally he looked at me. "Mr. Frank Sullavanwithan-A," he said, "you are going to have to be a very fast, very smart talker to get yourself out of this one. No fingerprints other
than your own were found in the bathroom, and the wound was suggestive of a fisherman. And as for Everetts...."
He let the silence lie there. So did I. I didn't have anything to put into it.
They were looking at me. All of them. Fifteen men with badges, and the Hollywood dicks, and Frances, and George Starke.
Looking at me the way you look at a man who has shot his friend in the back of the head and cut a woman's throat.
Bradbury still had his face in his hands, and Fearon's colorless eyes were perfectly empty.
I was tired. I had a cold and I felt punk and I was tired, and nothing seemed to be any use any more. I spread my hands and
let them drop.
"I didn't kill Billie," I said, "in my bathroom or any place else. I didn't cut her throat, like a fisherman or any other way. And I
didn't kill George Everetts, with that rifle or any other "
I stopped.
"Or with any other gun," I finished finally.
I got up. Armed cops closed in around me, but I didn't see them. I went over as close to Fearon as they let me, and I called
him something I seldom call a man.
He didn't seem to be angry.
"But, Mr. Sullavan," he said with quiet innocence, "have I ever, has anyone ever, even once, said that the rifle was the
instrument of death? George Everetts was shot, and the rifle was there, but that's all anyone ever said about it."
Once again there was silence. The tight motionless silence of held breath and waiting, with panic just two jumps away.
Everybody was thinking, thinking hard. Bradbury rose and went to Frances, almost as though he were guarding her from
suspicion.
"Everetts was killed by a forty-five caliber Colt automatic," Fearon said. "It was fired through the screen of a front window
which had been opened to cool the overheated room. We have not found the gun. But we know the murderer did not gain

access to the house. The front door was locked and bolted. The back door had a spring latch. Nothing had been tampered
with, and all the screen hooks were rusted in place.
"Therefore it's not likely that Mr. Sullavan-with-an-A committed the murder. It would have been hard, and pretty silly, to go
outsidegiving Everetts some excuse on the waygo round front and wait till he got in position for the shot, fire it, thereby
waking up everybody in the neighborhood, race around the house and in the back door again, taking time to fix the latch,
and then run right out again when everybody was awake and ready to see him.
"I let the rifle gag stand, because I wanted to see if anybody would make a slip. I was pretty curious about you this morning,
Mr. Sullavan. You might have just thought carrying on as you did, and coming to me, was a smart way to avoid suspicion.
And when the woman was found "
"All right," I cut in. "All right." I hung onto a policeman because the floor was dipping under me. "You know I didn't kill
Everetts. Billie's killing must have had some connection."
"Probably, but not necessarily. Looks to me like there are enough high tempers and hot passions around here to kill off an
army. So here I am. I got Mr. Sullavan, who didn't kill Everetts but could have killed Billie. I got Mr. Starke, who didn't kill
Billie, but who was Johnny-on-the-spot with Everetts. I got "
"If I killed Everetts," Starke burst out, "and knew that rifle gag was phony, would I have stuck my neck out to call you?"
"You might, just to make it look like you wouldn't. All right. I got Frances Sparling Starke Everetts who was within reach of
the victim last night. And how about it, Bradbury? Can you vouch for Frances' presence here all day?"
"Of course I can. She was dead tired. She's slept ever since Billie left."
"You were here yourself, of course."
"Of course. My assistant "
"Your assistant was out on a couple of lengthy ambulance calls in the middle of the day," Fearon put in. "And again between
five-thirty and seven."
"That should prove that I was here, then. The hospital is never left alone. And we're very short of help now."
"I see." Fearon sighed. "Well, I don't think too much of Frances for the actual killer in either case. A forty-five isn't a woman's
weapon, and Billie's killing lacked the feminine touch. But you never can tell." He studied the lot of us with a sort of tired
resentment. "I got a fair strike into Mr. Sullavan for Billie, but he might manage to wiggle off the hook. Just possibly. As for
the rest of you, and the Everetts kill I dunno."
"The weapons," one of the Hollywood dicks said, "are bound to turn up some place, sooner or later."
For some reason I hadn't thought about the knife that cut Billie's throat.
"Both my knives" I began.
"We found 'em," said Fearon. "Pretty well hidden, but we found 'em."
"I was going to be away a long time," I said. "That's why I hid them. I didn't want them stolen."
"Yeah. Well, they were both too broad-bladed and short to fit the wound anyway, and they didn't show any traces of fresh
blood. Of course, you could have had another and got rid of it."
"Sure," I said. "But I didn't."
There was silence again, an uncomfortable, glowering, sweaty silence.
George Starke cleared his throat, rather loudly.
"Point is, Lieutenant," he said, "if you don't turn up the weapons, and you don't get any new evidence of a really damaging
nature, you're apt to get a hung jury or even a refusal to indict because of lack of evidence."

"That," said Fearon sadly, "is about the size of it, Mr. Starke. Oh, by the way, Doctor Bradbury, we'd like to search this place.
Because of Frances, we have plenty basis on which to get a search warrant if you want to make us go to the trouble."
"Go ahead and search," said Bradbury stiffly. "You'll have a very hard job to pin anything on me. I never saw Everetts before
I saw his picture in the paper, nor Billie before this morning, nor Starke or Sullavan before tonight."
"That's right," said Frances.
Fearon smiled soothingly.
"Just a matter of routine, Doctor." He heaved himself up. "Well, get to it, boys."
The Hollywood dicks took a couple of men and went into the inner rooms. Fearon indicated me, Starke, and Frances.
"You three come along with me," he said, "and we'll talk some more, and I'll fix you all up with comfy little cells. You,
Doctor, I may want to see again, so don't leave town."
Bradbury nodded curtly. He went to Frances, taking her hands, and I watched Starke's face get dark. But he wasn't given a
chance to do anything. Fearon began to herd us all out, and the stairs went under my feet like stairs in a dream, and there
was a thunderstorm inside me, and people's faces were distant and mask-like, unreal.
For an instant, on the landing, Frances faced me, and I saw her very clearly, and the seeing was a sharp pain. Then her
features blended into Billie's, and Billie was looking at me with blind and pleading eyes, and her corn-yellow hair floated in
clear water seamed with red.
Billie was dead, and I might die for it, but Billie would not be paid for.
"Is it true?" said a woman's voice out of the mist around the foot of the steps. "Is she really gone?"

Chapter 6: Masked Evidence

Rousing, I knew suddenly I wasn't being spoken to. The animal hospital foyer swung back into focus again, normal and filled
with people. A woman was looking up at me in puzzled fear, and from me to the cops. She was a stranger. She had been,
and was, crying. There was a man with her, trying hard not to show that he had been crying too.
Bradbury stepped into the breach.
"Mrs. Pawley," he said, "there's been a little trouble here, nothing to worry about." He put his hand on her shoulder, nodding
to the man. "I'm afraid she's gone. Her heart simply stopped. That happens, sometimes, and there's no way to prevent it."
"Judy," she whispered. "My poor little Judy. She didn't suffer, did she?"
"No. I assure you of that, Mrs. Pawley. She didn't suffer, not at all." He paused, and glanced at Fearon. "Their dog died on
the operating table. I called them earlier."
Fearon nodded. The bunch of us began to jam slowly through the outer door.
"I'll get her for you," Bradbury said to the Pawleys. The woman held out a blanket.
"I brought this to wrap her in." She turned away, sobbing. Bradbury started for the back.
He vanished, and we went out and began piling into the waiting cars. A man named George and a woman named Billie and
a terrier dog named Judy, and a lot of bitter hearts, and a lot of tears. But no one would be accused of murdering the dog.
Murdering the dog?
I stopped, my foot on the step, my head already inside the car. "Fearon!" I said. I turned around, and he looked in my eyes
and frowned.

"Let me go back," I said. "Let me talk to Bradbury." "What is it?"

"I don't know. Maybe nothing. Let's go back."
He nodded. He and I and three cops went back.
The man was receiving a small limp bundle from Bradbury. "We'll get her a nice little stone, Mae," the man said to the
woman. "Don't cry now, honey. We'll "
"Bradbury," I cut in. "You operated on that dog at six o'clock, while your assistant was out. You did it all alone. Why?"
"I told you we're very short-handed now," he answered impatiently, and quite surprised. "It's not a difficult operation."
"You should have had someone to help!" Mrs. Pawley cried out. "I know what it's like. I've had it done before, and they
always "
"It's easier, of course," Bradbury said. "But it had nothing to do with your dog dying. My assistant was gone."
"Seems like you could have waited till he got back," Fearon said easily. He still didn't know what he was fishing for, but he
was a good fisherman.
"I have many dogs to take care of." Bradbury's mouth set. "I can't always wait. And now if you don't mind, I'm here alone
again, since Starke knocked Charlie on the head, and I "
"I'm thinking," I said, "of a man who has been in love with a girl for a long time. I'm thinking of a gun, which has vanished.
I'm thinking of a thin, sharp-bladed knife, a scalpel maybe, which was used the way a surgeon would use it if he wanted to
be sure and not look like a surgeon, and which has also vanished. I'm thinking of a dog that died with only one attendant,
when within an hour she could have had two. I'm thinking of a killer who will be safe if the weapons are not found."
Fearon caught on. A great unholy light blazed up in his eyes.
"I'm thinking," he took up the chant, "maybe we better have an autopsy on that dog!"
Bradbury's pink face had taken on a stiff, whitened look, almost gray in the shadowed places, as though the hand of death
was already upon him and the light. For a split fraction of a second he held my eye. Just once, in the face of a dying
Japanese, I saw eyes like that.
Then, quicker than anyone thought he could, Bradbury whirled and ducked out through the door into the wards.
Maybe I was that far ahead of the cops anyway, or maybe I was thinking of Billie. I don't know. But I was first through he
door. I caught a glimpse of a passageway with several doors opening off it, and an open space with wire runs at the end of it.
Then the lights went out. I stood in the hot close dark, breathing disinfectant and the odor of excited animals, listening, and
all I could hear was dogs going crazy in the wards.
There was a lot of confused racket in back of me, too. Cops with flashlights came. I caught glimpses through the side doors
of neat tiers of cages with eyes in them burning red-orange or diamond-white in the torch beams. I got my bearings again
and ran on.
Bradbury would not go out the side way because the men in front would see him. Fearon would have sent men to cover the
alley, too, but Bradbury would have the start of them. The ambulance, and possibly his own car, would be kept out back.
In the open court, the night was black and windy and cold. There was a garage at the end of the court. I found its door.
Inside, someone was grinding the starter of a car.
I pulled the car door open and got hold of the man behind the wheel. It was completely dark. The only way I knew he had a
knife was because it touched my cheek, the cool swift caress of a blade so sharp you don't feel the cut until later.
I caught his wrist, and I already had an arm around his neck. He fell out on top of me and we rolled and kicked around on
the hard floor. I suppose there were men outside, who would have come if I'd yelled. But I never thought of yelling. This was
between the three of us him and Billie and me.

He got my bum knee between his own and ground it, and I tightened my elbow on his neck, and we both shoved the knife
back and forth, not very far, and finally with his free hand he found my ear and tried to pull it off. Then I remembered a trick
they taught me in combat training. I knew where his face wasright below mine, because now for a minute I was on top. I
heaved my shoulders up and bent my neck and gave him the bull-butt. His skull cracked on the concrete, and he was all
through.
We were back in the hospital again, this time in the waiting room. Bradbury was talking, with leaden dullness, staring at the
handcuffs on his big wrists.
"You don't have to see a man to hate him," he said. "I hated both Starke and Everetts because of Frances. The girl was living
like a hunted animal because of them! And I knew I could never have her myself as long as they were alive. So I went down
and got Everetts. I thought Starke would be suspected of the killing, and chances were he wouldn't have a good alibi for that
time in the morning. If he did have, I would figure out a way to get him later on.
"Then everything got messed up, with Frances coming here and telling me about Sullavan and Starke and Billie coming after
Frances. Frances, of course, wasn't sure it was Sullavan, and Billie didn't know he was out of the service. Well, Billie went
away and did her business with Starke, but she was thinking all the time, and she came back here to question Frances some
more. Nobody but me saw her come in.
"She had heard a late news broadcast about the murder. I hadn't because it had been a very busy morning and I hadn't had
time. I nearly gave myself away when Billie said they had the murder weapon, with fingerprints on it. I was sure it was safe
under the seat of my car until I could get rid of it, but I began to be afraid I'd dropped it, or something. Then Billie spilled
about the rifle, and I knew that was all right. The police were just being cute. But I knew Billie would remember how I'd
looked, when the truth came out. She wasn't safe any more.
"I told her not to bother Frances. I had given Frances a sedative. I went out back and sent my assistant out on some calls
that would keep him away for a couple of hours. I disconnected the bell and locked the door into the wards, so if anybody
came they couldn't raise anybody, and would probably go away again. It was a risk, but I couldn't help it, and sometimes for
hours nobody will come at all. I told Billie I thought we better see about this Sullavan.
"She was glad enough to go, and I could see already she was figuring why I looked the way I had when she'd told me About
the gun. I didn't have any definite plan about killing her, except that Sullavan was the best peg I could think of to hang
suspicion on. There was no opportunity to kill her on the way down. Too many people around. Noon is a bad time for
killing."
He slopped and wiped his lips.
"Everything worked out perfectly," he went on. "This Sullavan fellow had just left his place. If he hadn't, I would have figured
something else. I wasn't even sure he mightn't have seen something. I knocked Billie on the head, put her in the bathtub and
used the scalpel I brought along, and left the water running so somebody would be sure and discover the body. Also, so
Sullavan couldn't cover up very easily if he tried to. Then I went home, and everything was okay."
He raised his eyes malevolently to me.
"And everything would have been okay," he growled, "and the weapons buried with that dog in the L.A. pet cemetery, if Mr.
Sullavan hadn't been so very, very smart!"
"Well, I guess that finishes it," Fearon got up. "Looks like I won't need you boys and girls until the trial, now." He turned to
Starke. "If I was you, I'd leave Frances alone. You never can tell how sore somebody may get with you. I'll give you a lift,
Sullavan."
While he was collecting Bradbury and his cops, I turned to Frances. I didn't like the way she looked. She went out suddenly,
outside, and began to walk down the street. I went after her, and Starke was right behind me. I caught her, finally, about a
block away.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"I don't know," she answered stonily. "To kill myself, maybe. I don't want to live any more. Not with things the way they are,
and knowing that everybody is " She sobbed, a dry, harsh, ugly sound. "I thought Brad was the finest man I ever knew."
"Everybody isn't like that."

"How do you know? And, besides" she looked over my shoulder at Starke "besides, what difference does it make, with
him hounding me? I wish I'd had the courage to do this a long time ago. All these murders mightn't have happened."
George Starke came up close, studying her.
"You mean that?" he asked. "You really mean that?" He sounded surprised. "You really mean you'll never take me back?"
She didn't answer. She looked at him steadily. Finally, he turned and looked back at the police cars. His face twitched, and
he glanced at me, and suddenly he shivered.
"All right," he said. He took a deep breath and cracked her across the face. "The devil with you!"
He started away, swaggering. I started after him, but Frances caught me.
"No. No more trouble. I think he means it. I think he's scared, and maybe a little bored with me now that Everetts is dead. I
think maybe he hated Everetts more than he wanted me."
There were tears trying hard to break through.
"Everybody isn't rotten, Frances." I took her hands. "I've been around enough to know that. Can I try to convince you?" We
stood under the street light a long time. Then she began to cry and I put my arms around her.
Fearon drove up. "You coming or not?" he demanded, impatiently.
"I don't think so," I told him. "No."
He scowled at us.
"More trouble on the way!" he exclaimed. "Why do gents and dames "
"Shut up," I said. "Come on, Frances."
The street was empty then, except for the wind. More trouble, eh? Well, maybe. But that was life. How did you ever know?
And she didn't feel like trouble, there in the circle of my arm. I was willing to risk it!
END