Murder is the Pay-Off

by Leslie Ford

  Gus looked after him as he closed the door. Wretched as he was, he still knew a lot of words when he heard them. So Fergie was going duck-shooting. Ordinarily, he’d have said so and shut up. But everybody was wacky tonight. Even John Maynard. He was over at the cloakroom getting his overcoat and hat. Uncle Nelly was with him. They weren’t what you would call vocal. Uncle Nelly had had too much to drink and John Maynard not enough.

  “Sorry about your accident, Gus,” Maynard said briefly. “I want to talk to you on Monday.”

  “Okay,” Gus said. He added to himself, And if I’m fired I’ve already quit.

  He followed Janey up the companion way. She stopped halfway along and waited for him, her blue eyes looking through him, not at him, just the way they had in the pantry that morning, when he’d first learned Janey was not all sweet and warm and putty in anybody’s hands.

  “Poor Uncle Nelly,” she said. She let her hand rest lightly in Gus’s crooked arm. “It is ulcers. He told me. They’re all popped again and he feels dreadful. He’s quit playing the slot machines, too. Hello! Hello, there!” She smiled at some people Gus didn’t know, coming out of the bar. “Do come back to Smithville, won’t you? I hope you have a good trip.”

  At the door of the bar she turned and looked into the mirror. “Oh, wait a minute, will you, Gus? Or why don’t you get a drink while I powder my nose? My bag’s over there.”

  She went on into the room. “Hello, Janey! Hi, there, Janey!” It started all over again—Janey back once more from a year in the bush. She smiled at everybody and went over to her table. Orvie Rogers was still there waiting. Orvie and Connie. Martha Ferguson and Dorsey Syms were at the slot machines again.

  “Did I leave my bag here? I need my lipstick.”

  “I don’t see it,” Orvie said.

  “Where’s Gus?”

  “He’s getting a drink, Connie. I guess he needs one. He’ll be over in a second. Why don’t you wait for him? He’s in a foul mood.”

  Orvie was looking for the bag. Gus saw him search around on the seat and dive under the table. He came up with it in one hand, brushing it off with the other.

  “Somebody’s walked all over it, Janey.” He handed it to her. “I guess you dropped it.”

  “No wonder,” Connie Maynard said. “Gus barging in—”

  Janey turned away. “I’ll be right back, Orvie. Order me something, will you?”

  She went past Gus at the bar and across the hall to the powder room. He saw her close the door, and moved out with his-drink to meet her. People were coming in and out. He could go over and look at the pictures of last June’s races on the wall opposite the powder-room door without being too obvious about it. And almost at once she was there by his elbow again. He looked down at her. She shook her head. A roar came out of the bar as someone got a jack pot. She raised herself on tiptoes as she slid something wrapped in white cleansing tissue into his pocket.

  “It’s gone.”

  She spoke quickly under the covering racket from the bar.

  “Give that to Swede. It’s my compact. It’s got powder on it and he must have touched it, fishing around. He couldn’t have had gloves on tonight. Be careful of it.”

  She pointed to the picture on the wall. “That’s a lovely thing. Just look at Orvie’s boat. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  She smiled at some people coming up the stairs. “And I think you ought to change that dressing, Gus. It looks awful. There’s a kit in the cloakroom. Do you want Connie to come down and help you? She’s had first-aid, before the war. Or during it, which was it? The last war, I mean.”

  She smiled at him and joined some of her friends heading back to the bar. “No, thanks, I’ve got a drink waiting for me.”

  He stood staring stupidly at the picture of Orvie’s sailing craft. Compact—fingerprints— That was fast thinking in the clutch. He’d never have thought of it. How had Janey got so smart all of a sudden? Or had Janey always been smart while one Gus Blake was always being dumb?

  It was still in his mind when he came back up from giving the compact to Swede Carlson—still there, and heavily underlined. Swede hadn’t been surprised that Janey had used her head. He’d also taken time out to do the underlining by telling about the footprint in the back yard that Janey had found and the kid had planted grass seed on top of—that Gus Blake had, in fact, told the kid to plant it on, though he was already too cut down to size to tell Carlson that and Janey evidently hadn’t. And Swede Carlson was in a hurry, too. The lucky piece could have been Wernitz’s. Janey’s father might know. The little gambler could have told his only friend, on one of those long moonlit nights. Lieutenant Williams of the city police was on his way to the Rogers plant, Carlson was following. Two birds with one missing lucky piece.

  Gus ordered his second milk punch. The first had helped. He didn’t feel as groggy as he had. The milk was as useful on his empty stomach as the fine battening bourbon that laced it. And two would be plenty; he had to keep his wits about him till Swede got back. He looked about. The only people left there who’d been at the Maynards’ were Orvie and Dorsey over at the table with Connie and Janey, except Al Reed, who’d won the jack pot and was breaking his neck to put it all back again. But he’d come up the stairs when Gus and Janey came back from Swede’s car, before Janey retrieved her bag. He tried to remember who else had been in the room when he took Janey out the first time. The only people he could think of were the ones at the table with her now. There could have been others in the reading-room across the hall, or somebody at the slot machines. It would have to be somebody who could have seen Janey go out without her bag and who could move over to the table and join the rest of them on perfectly casual terms. And while any of the Maynards’ friends could do that, this had to be one of a particular group of the Maynards’ friends.

  He realized suddenly that going along by tortuous and unwilling stages to exactly what it meant, he was unconsciously balking at every step of the way. It was full of complicating negatives obscuring a final conclusion. If it was not somebody he’d not seen who came to the table, it had to be someone who was there when he pulled Janey away. If it had to be somebody who was at the Maynards’ party who had to risk his neck to look in the velvet bag she’d had at the party and had with her now, it had to be one of the people who made up his and Janey’s most intimate circle of friends. It had to be Orvie Rogers, or Dorsey, Uncle Nelly Syms, or John Maynard, or Jim Ferguson. They were the only ones at the table when Buck took his message over to Janey. No one of them would have broken into his house.

  He was face to face with it finally. No one of them would have killed Doc Wernitz. That was cockeyed. It was not anything anybody, namely Gus Blake, could bring himself then if ever to believe. He downed his milk punch. He was sweating, first cold then hot. It must be his accident catching up with him. Or the milk. Milk was dangerous stuff. He ordered another drink of it. Plain milk, or was it plain bourbon, this time, and tried to get his mind around to where it was working straight.

  “What’s the matter, Gus? Come on over.”

  Connie Maynard’s voice came across the room. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright. Connie had been lapping it up, and Connie when she was getting high could also get definitely unpleasant, if people didn’t do what she wanted them to. He could see symptoms in the yellow-green cat’s eyes now. She tossed a ten-dollar bill to her cousin Dorsey.

  “Play it for me, Dorse. We’ll go halves on it, and don’t hold out on me, dear. Bring me a drink, Gus. Scotch.”

  She turned back to the table. “Why don’t you kids go dance?” She looked from Orvie to Janey. “Go on. I want to talk to Gus. Business, dear. Newspaper business, I mean.”

  Bringing her drink, Gus saw Orvie look at Janey and the two of them get up, and Janey, smart little girl, slip her bag off her wrist and leave it casually on the seat. She moved out with Orvie just as Connie Maynard got herself started.

  “Gus, I’m going to get Dad to give me the paper,” she
said abruptly. “How’d you like that? Then we wouldn’t have to worry about what people liked and what they didn’t like.”

  “That’s fine,” Gus said. He slipped over behind the table. “I’ve decided to quit, anyway. Monday? How’ll that be?”

  She straightened up slowly. “What do you mean, you’ve decided to quit?” Her eyes smoldered.

  Gus saw Janey stop for an instant. She didn’t look around. He raised his voice.

  “Just that,” he said. “If Janey’s sore at me there’s no use my sticking around Smithville. Corny as it sounds, it’s that old woman-I-love stuff. And I wouldn’t work for a dame, anyway, Con,”

  He saw Janey’s body stiffen before she took hold of Orvie’s arm and the two of them went on through the arch and around to where the orchestra was playing on the enclosed deck. He leaned back and raised his glass. Connie leaned forward, her lips tight and her eyes narrowed.

  “Cut it out, Connie.” He shook his head at Martha Ferguson and Dorsey, easing in to help him out. If they got in it, the barmen would have to call the cops. Martha’s red hair and the Martinis she was still drinking after dinner didn’t mix into any smooth blend, and Dorsey was always cockier the higher he got.

  He grinned at them. “This fight’s private. You two keep out. Go play the slot machines. Here’s five bucks, Martha.” He took a bill out of his pocket and tossed it to her. “Play it for me. In the nickel machine—it’ll last longer. Go away, both of you. Connie and I are talking business.”

  While Martha Ferguson hesitated there was a scream from in front of the fifty-cent machine. They were both off to see who’d won.

  “What do you mean, you won’t work for a dame?” Connie Maynard demanded angrily. She was still leaning forward over the table, her eyes shooting sparks. “If Dad gives me the paper, you’ve got a contract, haven’t you?”

  “I said cut it out, Connie,” Gus repeated deliberately. “Let’s get this straight, sweetie—and it’s tonight and last night, or this morning, whatever you want to call it, that I’m talking about at the same time. It’s no soap, Con. Just relax. Nobody warms up last year’s cold mutton. You or me. Especially you, Con. You know it as well as I do.”

  They were alone in the corner. Everybody concerned was giving them all the room they needed, and the slot machines for once in their metallic life span were cooperating. They were paying off all over the place. When that happened, murder, arson, and mayhem could go on behind them with no one to care or even see.

  “Look, Connie. You could have married me if you’d wanted to. You didn’t. It was a damned good thing for both of us. We’d have fought like a couple of polecats, and if we hadn’t murdered each other first we’d have been washed up a long time before now. You know it, and I know it. So let’s skip it. You don’t love me and I don’t love you. That’s daid, honey, daid and buried. It’s—”

  Across the room at the bar, Buck was holding his arm up, signaling elaborately. Gus stopped.

  “Miss Maynard! Mr. Maynard wants her at the telephone.”

  Connie straightened up. The flush on her white face had long since darkened into a congested purple. She looked slowly around.

  “Go talk to your father on the phone,” Gus said. He started to move around to help her to her feet. She was in no need of help. She rose in a single coordinated flash, put one hand on the table, and leaned across it. Her other hand came up and out before Gus could move. It caught him in a stinging blow on the side of the face, the metal of her big ring gashing his cheek that had escaped the wreck.

  He sat quietly, his eyes colder than the blazing blue sapphire in the ring. He didn’t want to look around. The people at the slot machines wouldn’t have noticed, but the men at the bar couldn’t fail to.

  “You won’t work for a dame—” Her voice was soft and malignant as sin. “We’ll see. I’ll ask my father right now. We’ll see what you’ll do.”

  She turned and went across the floor, her head high. Gus ran his tongue around his lips and raised his glass. He looked over at the people in the room. If anyone had seen what had happened, they were all too polite or too scared to show it. The barmen especially. They were all busy as hell getting bottles out from under the bar. All he could see was broad white backs. And coming cheerfully in then he saw Orvie Rogers.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ORVIE PICKED HIMSELF UP A DRINK at the bar and brought it over.

  “Saw Connie. She’s mad as hell.” He slipped into the seat beside Gus. “I feel sorry for the poor devil that marries her.”

  “Where’s Janey?” Gus asked curtly.

  “Oh, somebody grabbed her. That’s the trouble. You dance three steps with Janey and there’s a stag line you didn’t even see. But I guess you’re used to that, too.” He took a drink and put his glass down. “As a matter of fact,” he said solemnly, “I wanted to talk to you, Gus.”

  Oh, God, Gus thought. Was this going to be on a high and noble plane? Was Orvie going to put everything on the up and up? I’m going to marry your wife, old fellow, but no hard feelings, what? For a minute he thought the milk and bourbon were neither of them staying down.

  “You don’t mind, do you, Gus?”

  “No, ho,” Gus said. “Not at all. Go ahead, Orvie. What’s on your mind?”

  “It’s about Janey, chiefly,” Orvie Rogers said.

  Gus closed his eyes and tightened his grip on his glass and on himself. Connie had socked him. If he let Orvie have one, it would be a record night even for the Sailing Club. He opened his eyes and cleared his throat.

  “What about Janey, Orvie?”

  “Why—” Orvie stopped and glanced quickly around the room. “First let me give you a tip on something else. Don’t, for God’s sake, tell anybody I told you.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Don’t let Connie kid you about her old man giving her the paper. He doesn’t even own it.”

  Gus stared at him. The pale eyes under the blond hair were regarding him with owlish earnestness. He straightened up slowly.

  “What are you—”

  “Ssssh.” Orvie looked nervously about again. “That’s right, Gus. Dad told me today. Maynard hardly owns anything around here, Gus. Dad told me today.” He lowered his voice still more. “Maynard’s just a front guy, on a lot of things he’s supposed to own—like the paper, and his bank stock, too. Not that he hasn’t stashed away a lot of what he made being a front guy. You know who owns the paper, or did own it?”

  Gus shook his head, still staring at him.

  “Wernitz,” said Orvie Rogers. “Doc Wernitz. Vanaman—he’s a lawyer here Wernitz hired to keep his eye on Maynard, and I guess he had another one to keep his eye on him—Vanaman called Dad from New York this morning and told him Maynard better not sell any of his bank stock on the quiet. It really was Wernitz’s. Dad was sore as hell, because he didn’t want any gambling dough in his bank. I wish you’d seen him. Anyway, Vanaman told him Wernitz owned most of the paper. Maynard owns ten per cent. So you don’t have to worry about—anything.”

  Gus sat there quietly. It was one of the things a guy learned in the reporting business, and he’d had a rough refresher course from Swede Carlson in the last couple of hours.

  “How long has Wernitz owned the paper?” he asked calmly.

  “About five years. He was the one figured it’d make some dough if they got the right guy to run it. Isn’t that why they got you?”

  Gus raised his glass to his lips and choked, coughing, as he put it down. They’d got him cheap, too. Cheaper than he’d thought. He grinned sardonically, thinking about his deal with Maynard, all friendly and informal. It wasn’t sixty per cent of all the stock. It was sixty per cent of Maynard’s stock. Who owned all the stock had been clearly understood, by both of them—in different ways. He could see it all down in black and white. Maynard wasn’t to sell any of it for the next four years. That was the deal, and it had nothing to say about what he’d already sold. He raised his glass and was able to swallow straight this time.
/>   “Well, I just thought I’d tell you,” Orvie said. “Janey was pretty upset when she heard Connie. Now about Janey, Gus—”

  “Yeah,” Gus said. He pulled himself together. “What about Janey?” If he could take Wernitz’s owning the paper he could take anything. So, let’s have it—

  “Why, it’s about this.” Orvie pulled an envelope part way out of his pocket and stuck it back again. “I mean, this is why I came by your house this morning. You know I’m crazy about Janey. She’s swell. But I don’t need to tell you that.”

  He blinked solemnly into his glass. “It’s just that I wouldn’t want you to get any funny ideas. I thought you were sore this morning, and I wouldn’t blame you. But I just came by because—why, because Dad wanted to send Janey a check.”

  Gus looked at him through a bewildered fog.

  “You see, Janey was sore because you and Con were so busy all the time,” Orvie said. “Not that it’s my business,” he added hastily. “All I mean is—” He stopped, looking at Gus earnestly. “I always seem to do the wrong thing, but I’m sure this—it isn’t wrong to tell you this, Gus. You see, Janey was sore about you and Connie, and she was hitting the slot machines. Nobody could stop her. You know. So she was overdrawn at the bank. Doc Wernitz collected checks the way some guys do stamps, and he dumped ’em all in yesterday. Fergie didn’t want to embarrass Janey, or you, I guess, so he told Dad and John Maynard. And you know Dad. He’s crazy about Janey, and her old man—both of ’em—so he sent me in with this.” Orvie touched his pocket. “To give to Janey to cover her overdraft.”

  Gus waited.

  “But Janey wouldn’t take it,” Orvie went on quickly. “She called Fergie. He was at the bank all afternoon. And she says he told her she didn’t have an overdraft.”