Halo in Blood

by Howard Browne

  “His name was Charles Hogarth. Another of his names was C. L. Baird. He got out of the pen lately and he came back to the hot little hunk he used to run around with in the good old days. He found she was in trouble: a guy named Marlin was putting the bite on her. Marlin was getting five hundred a month from her because he thought she had killed a man at the Laycroft Hotel.”

  “So she talked Hogarth—Baird—into killing Marlin. And when Marlin’s pal, Clyne, tried to take up where Marlin left off, he got it, too. Meanwhile a private dick by the name of Pine started to sniff around and find things out, so Hogarth had to get him as well. The first time he tried it, D’Allemand’s boys interrupted him. So Hogarth and his girl friend worked out another plan. She would date this private eye and take him out to a lovers’ lane— tailed by Hogarth—park there and let Hogarth come along and bump him off.

  “But the girl hadn’t been paying blackmail because she had killed the man at the hotel. She was paying it because she thought her stepfather had done it; and rather than refuse to pay Marlin and have the facts get to the police, she paid off . . . until Hogarth came along and took care of the blackmailers.”

  “But the night this nosey snooper was to get taken care of too, the girl found out that the man murdered in the hotel was not Raoul Fleming. That’s what she thought, anyhow, when she saw that newspaper clipping.”

  “That put an entirely different light on the matter. If the dead man was not her father, then John Sandmark was not the killer.”

  “And so the girl had a beautiful idea. She reasoned that the only person alive who could cause her any trouble, the only one who had anything actually on her, was not the private dick—oh, no. It was Hogarth—the man she had hired to get rid of Marlin and Clyne.

  “So she let things ride exactly the way she and Hogarth had planned. Let them ride right to the point where Hogarth was on the edge of killing the private dick. Then she yanked a gun out of her purse and killed Hogarth!”

  “Beautiful? Brother, I hope to tell you it was beautiful! The supposed stick-up man had a mile-long record, he was shot while engaged in a criminal act . . . and no one, except John Sandmark, would suspect the girl had ever seen Hogarth before that night.”

  “Yes, it was perfect. Hell, I thought all along that D’Allemand had hired Hogarth to get rid of all three of us: Marlin, Clyne, Pine. It wasn’t until just a minute ago that I saw the whole stinking picture.”

  “For you told me, baby! You told me while you were listing the men who died while this thing was going on. You named Fleming and Charles and Marlin and Clyne and John Sandmark. Get it, sweetheart? ‘And Charles’!”

  “How could you know Baird’s real name was Hogarth? You weren’t in the chief’s office in Glencoe when Abbott first learned the guy’s name. I was with you all the time afterward, and nobody mentioned that name. Hogarth was a man who dabbled in counterfeit bills; so was the guy you used to run around with!”

  “And so you turn out to be a murderer, baby. Not only because you arranged to have two men killed, but because you deliberately shot another man to death yourself.”

  I walked over in front of her, my arms dangling loosely at my sides. She shrank back in the chair, her face twisted with fear . . . and guilt. It was there to see, and I saw it. Nobody could have missed seeing it.

  “Murder is a matter between you and the State, baby. But when you try to lock the door permanently by running a love affair with me, selling me on how much you love me and how much I love you, laying me open for a kick in the teeth even bigger than the one I was just getting over— that is where it becomes a personal matter—a matter between you and me.”

  “You’ve got until five o’clock this afternoon to get out to Crandall and tell him the truth. I’ll let you tell him; I’ll like that. And maybe you won’t burn after all. Your legs are too nice and you stick out in front too pretty for that. A smart lawyer may get you off with a small sentence; maybe no sentence at all.”

  “But that won’t mean much to you, beautiful. A bloodstain soaks too deep. It does something to you. It takes something from you that you can’t go on without, and it puts something in it’s place that you can’t go on with. You’re finished, baby. You’re all washed up. You’re done for.”

  For another moment I stared down at her face—a face no longer beautiful but a hundred years-of-hell old. Then I turned and started for the door.

  “Wait! Paul, for God’s sake, wait!”

  She was out of the chair, across the room, at my feet, her arms holding desperately to my legs.

  “It’s true—all of it! I couldn’t help it . . . I couldn’t help it! I was so afraid John had killed my father. I was insane—crazy with worry. And then when Charles Hogarth came back, I took the only way out I could see. But things kept twisting and turning and closing in. . . .”

  “Oh, my dearest, haven’t I suffered enough? I love you, Paul, I love you! Don’t do this terrible thing to me!”

  I drew back my arm and brought the back of my hand down across her face with all my strength. The blow knocked her away from me, drove her into a huddled heap on the floor. I said, “Before five this afternoon, you hear me? Either you tell it or I do.”

  She lay there, staring up at me. I turned and went into the reception hall, opened the door and closed it behind me.

  The elevator was somewhere below. I put my finger on the button.

  It was very quiet there in the small corridor. The only sound was the faint whine of the ascending cage. It came up slowly—too slowly for me. Yet I could wait. I knew how to wait. I could wait forever.

  I was opening the elevator door when the sound came from behind the closed door to 6A.

  It was a single sound. A sharp, brittle sound. The sound of a Colt .32. A man named Charles Hogarth had died with that same sound in his ears.

  I got into the cage and rode down to the first floor and went out into the hot clean light of a new day.