There was no tie-in with the spectacular Dineen murder of yesterday, no mention of the name of William Tracy. He breathed a bit easier and hoped his luck would hold.

  From the Blade, he learned nothing new. The account in the Times, although it didn't rate the first page, was more complete. Tracy gleaned a few facts.

  The body had been discovered — at one-fifteen, as Bates had already told him — by a Mrs. Murdock who, with her husband, lived in Apartment Fifteen. Tracy didn't know her by name; probably he'd know her by sight as a fellow tenant.

  According to the Times account, she had gone down to the basement after lunch to dispose of some old letters and bills. She had intended to put them into the furnace and burn them rather than throw them away. The Smith Arms had no incinerator system. She had opened the furnace door and had discovered the body.

  Cause of death was a single stab wound in the back — probably an ordinary butcher knife with a sharp point and a single! cutting edge. The killer had been skillful — or lucky — in striking the blow. The knife had entered the left ventricle of the heart and death had been instantaneous.

  The deceased wore only a nightshirt and slippers. His bed had been slept in.

  It was after eight when Tracy left the restaurant. He strolled aimlessly for a block or two, and then stepped up on a bootblack's stand to have his shoes shined.

  There was a magazine lying on the empty seat next to him. He picked it up absent-mindedly and found himself staring at the familiar hosiery advertisement on the back cover and wondering if Millie would be home by now.

  He said “Damn” and put the magazine down.

  CHAPTER 5

  SOMEHOW, HE didn't want to go home. He didn't want to get drunk, either, but he did want to see someone he knew and talk a bit. Only there were so damn few people he could think of whom he wanted to see.

  Dammit all, why hadn't he been foresighted enough to get Dottie's telephone number? He could call her up and arrange to do some work with her on the scripts. Not that he felt much like working, but he'd do a little as an excuse for seeing her and then suggest a drink somewhere.

  He went into the next tavern and called Wilkins' home. Wilkins was there; even saying “Hello,” his voice sounded as small and neat and precise as Wilkins looked.

  “Tracy,” said Tracy. “Thought I'd better tell you about Dick Kreburn, Mr. Wilkins. He's been bedded down safely, and it's not quite as bad as laryngitis, according to the doc. He'll be back by next week, with his voice nearly normal.”

  “Good. You've seen him since?”

  “No. I don't want to go around tonight because he'd insist on doing his share of the talking. I'm afraid the note-writing idea we used in today's script wouldn't work.”

  “Maybe it's wiser to let him alone, Mr. Tracy. Ah — by the way, what happened to you this afternoon? I rather expected you to come back to the office to work on tomorrow's script. Or did you work on it at home?”

  “No, something came up. I've been tied up until now. But it's all right; tomorrow's script won't be difficult to straighten out; Reggie isn't in most of it. Just a few lines changed to fit in the fact of his laryngitis, and to write out the one or two short parts he is in. It'll be less than an hour's work.”

  “Good. Dotty will be available if you want her to help again. Or do you work better alone when there's no hurry?”

  “Oh, no. I like to work with a stenographer. And Dotty is a good one. Nice kid; I like her.”

  “She's interested in script writing, I understand. Might give her a lift whenever you work with her. I mean, tell her the reasons for the changes you make. And let her make suggestions to see if they're good ones. Things like that.”

  “Be glad to,” said Tracy. “Know where she lives, by the way, or her phone number? If she does happen to be free, we might get tomorrow's work out of the way this evening.”

  Tracy thought he heard a dry chuckle over the phone. “But why waste an evening, Mr. Tracy, if it will take you less than an hour tomorrow? But seriously, I don't know how you could reach her.”

  “Her address ought to be on file at KRBY, oughtn't it?” 'I imagine so. You might phone and ask them.”

  “I might,” said Tracy, “but what's her last name?”

  “I don't know, Mr. Tracy. Mr. Dineen hired her; I've just seen her around the studio a few times.”

  “Thanks anyway, then. I'll see you tomorrow morning.”

  He hung up and went back to the bar for a solitary beer. That was that, of course. He wasn't going to make an ass of himself calling the studio to find out the phone number of a girl whose last name he didn't know. They might not misunderstand. He said to the bartender, “It's hell to be lonesome on Christmas Eve.”

  “Huh?” said the bartender.

  “Have a drink,” said Tracy, putting a bill on the bar.

  “Thanks,” said the bartender. He poured himself a shot from! a bottle on the back bar. “Here's how. Well, I guess there won't be any Christmas Eve next year, huh?”

  “I'll bite. Why not?”

  “Santa Claus; he'll either be caught or in hiding. He's wanted for murder. Didn't you see yesterday's paper?”

  Tracy frowned. He said, “Just a minute. Want to put in a phone call. Pour us two shots.”

  He went to the phone again and tried Millie's number. No one answered. He put up the receiver, disgusted with himself for having tried again when he knew she was out. Dammit, hadn't she told him she'd be busy? What was he, anyway — a lovelorn Romeo? Well, not that exactly, because if he knew Dotty's phone number—

  He went back to the bar. The bartender was busy at the other end of the bar, this time, but a shot was poured for Tracy and a shorter one, for the bartender, stood on the back ledge of the bar. So Tracy sat to wait until the bartender came back, and meanwhile sipped his beer.

  He wondered if he should go ahead and get drunk. He felt lousy, mentally. Hell, it wouldn't matter to anyone if he got drunk. He thought, what the hell's wrong with me; cold sober and yet on the verge of crying into my beer because it wouldn't matter to anyone whether I get drunk or stay sober.

  But unless he found someone to talk to—

  He pulled his notebook out of his pocket and started to leaf through it to see if any names suggested themselves. It was a random sort of notebook. Harry Burke; no, Harry was out of town. Helen Armstrong; what had ever possessed him to write down her phone number? Thelma; who the devil was Thelma?

  Oh. “M. tries for p. lic.” What the hell was that? Oh, yes; “p. lic.” was “pilot's license” and of course “M.” was Millie Mereton. He'd thought of having her get interested in flying, and then decided not to; too much trouble to do all the research he'd have to do to learn the technique and the lingo. Pete Ryland; no, he worked evenings. “MCBF: Mn strgled with own cravat.”

  He stared at that one minute, wondering what “strgled” was. Oh sure, strangled. “Murder Can Be Fun: man strangled with own cravat.” He'd jotted that down a few days ago, as a method of murder to build a plot around.

  He yanked out the page, crumpled it, and dropped it into the cuspidor. It wasn't much of an idea to begin with — not a particularly intriguing way of committing murder. One he'd never write. One, therefore, that wouldn't happen in real life, as two he'd written already had.

  He happened to look up and saw his face in the mirror and it scared him a little. He straightened it out carefully.

  For just a minute there, he had almost felt his own necktie tightening around his own neck. If someone was acting out his scripts, why wouldn't he be the logical person to try the next one on, if there were to be a next one?

  Would someone try to kill him, sooner or later? But why? No one short of a homicidal maniac could have any serious reason for murdering Bill Tracy — but wasn't it the best bet that the unknown murderer was just that, a homicidal maniac? There wasn't any connection on earth between Dineen and Hrdlicka, except that both of them knew Bill Tracy. Nobody sane could have had a logical motive for killing both of them.

  And the only link between them, the only conceivable one, was he, Tracy. Right smack in the middle of whatever the hell was happening and going to happen.

  “Stop it,” he told himself, and was startled that he'd spoken out loud.

  The bartender looked down his way, and then came back the length of the bar.

  He said, “Didn't see you come back, mister. Thanks for the shot. Bumps.”

  “Bumps ” said Tracy. His hand was steady when he picked up the whisky and tossed it off. “Better give me another; I got to sober up.”

  “It's one way,” said the bartender.

  Tracy looked at him, wondering if he should try to talk to him. Maybe a stranger would make a good guy to talk to. The bartender looked like a good enough guy, all right. A little foreign, maybe, and there was just the faintest touch of an accent that could have been Russian or Polish or from somewhere in the Balkans; Tracy didn't know accents well enough to identify it.

  The bartender was a stocky, solid man, with shoulders that looked almost as broad as he was tall. He had bleak eyes and big ears. But there was something familiar about him. Either he had a resemblance to someone Tracy knew, or else Tracy had talked to him before, at some other bars. He'd never been in this one before, but bartenders changed jobs a lot. It was probably that, all right.

  Maybe, he thought, he should get drunk enough to want to talk to a bartender, and then he wouldn't feel so lousy. It wasn't the complete answer to feeling lonesome and a little scared, of course, but it was something to do. Better than going home. Only, hell, when he felt like this, the more he drank the soberer he felt — up to a point, anyway.

  Maybe he should stay sober and act drunk. After all, drunkenness is only mental, in the ultimate analysis. Might be worth trying to see if he could make himself tight by thinking about it, sometime.

  “Look at the money it'd save,” he said to the bartender. “What would?”

  “Not drinking,” Tracy said. “Have 'nother.”

  “Sure. You, too?”

  “Me, too,” Tracy said. He leaned more comfortably on the bar and glanced up at the little sign standing on top of the cash register. “Serving You — STAN,” it said.

  “Stan,” Tracy said, “I got trouble.”

  “We all got trouble. Last night—”

  “I bought you a drink,” said Tracy firmly. “You haven't bought bade yet. So you listen to my trouble.”

  The bartender's eyes got bleaker. He didn't say anything. He just looked at Tracy as though Tracy were just another drunk.

  It jolted Tracy a little. He wondered if that same look was in bartenders' eyes when he really was drunk and wanted to talk to them. Probably. It was a sobering thought. Bartenders must listen to an awful lot of guff.

  And the guys were human. This guy was human; big ears, big shoulders and all, he was a human being.

  “Stan,” he said, “I was kidding you, acting that way. I'm not drunk. I'm damn cold sober. The couple I had just now were my first today. But what would you think if I told you I planned a couple of murders — and then they happened just like I planned them?”

  “You did them, maybe?”

  Tracy shook his head. “Would you say, though, that it could be coincidence if you wrote a radio script about a man wearing a Santa Claus suit to commit a crime, and the very next day after you wrote it, somebody did just that?”

  “Sure it could be a coincidence. Hell, if you didn't even know the guy—”

  “I know the guy,” Tracy said. “The one who was killed, I mean. He was my boss. And I knew the other guy who was killed.”

  “You're kidding,” the bartender said. He put his hands flat on the bar. They were big hands. He glowered at Tracy.

  “I'm not kidding,” Tracy said. “The other script was about a janitor who was stabbed in the back and stuffed into a fur—”

  Tracy didn't even see it happen. He felt the bartender's hand grasp the front of his coat and shirt and pull him forward almost over the bar. And he saw the man's bleak face nearing his, and the sudden change in that face. But he didn't see the fist coming for his chin, and couldn't have ducked it if he had.

  He felt it, though, for the fraction of a second between the explosion on his jaw and the blackout inside his head.

  He was in a car and the car was moving. He felt woozy and his jaw hurt. He felt a strange reluctance to open his eyes. But his hand — his hands weren't tied — went up to his chin and touched it gingerly.

  “You're lucky,” a voice said, “it ain't busted.” It was a friendly voice, a familiar voice. Only he couldn't place it.

  “Huh?” he said. He opened his eyes.

  It was Sergeant Corey. Corey was driving the car, and nobody was in it except the two of them.

  “I thought some fresh air'd do you some good, Mr. Tracy,” Corey said. His voice sounded apologetic, a little.

  Tracy thought of the scene in Through the Looking-Glass, in which Alice is talking to a sheep who is knitting, and then the knitting needles are suddenly oars and they are sitting in a boat and the sheep is rowing. One of the best dream sequences in literature.

  Only this wasn't—

  “What happened?” Tracy asked.

  “Plenty might have happened if I hadn't got there. The guy mighta killed you, Mr. Tracy. Of all the crazy — What'd you do it for?”

  “Do what?”

  “Go there and pop off,” Corey told him. “He mighta killed you.”

  Tracy didn't say anything until he had carefully moved his jaw back and forth once or twice. It wasn't broken, but it was plenty sore.

  He said, “I started wrong, I guess. Let's start all over, Sergeant. Where am I?”

  “In my car.”

  “And how did I get here?”

  “I put you here, when I saw you needed some fresh air. Maybe a drink would help you, too, huh?”

  “Got one?”

  “There's a pint in the glove compartment. Help yourself.”

  Tracy helped himself. He screwed the cap on again, but didn't put away the bottle.

  “Now,” he said, “the next step. What'd he hit me for?”

  “He thought you done it,” Corey explained, sounding very reasonable. “He was gonna hold you and call a copper, only he mighta worked on you a bit first. So I guess it was a good thing I was there.”

  “He thought I done — did what?”

  “Killed his brother, of course.”

  “Who?”

  “Stanislaus, the bartender. Stan Hrdlicka.” Corey slowed down the car. “Mean to sit there and tell me you didn't know who he was?”

  “I don't believe it,” Tracy said.

  Corey grunted. “Go ahead and don't. He is.”

  “It's not possible. I remember now Frank once mentioned his brother tended bar. But that out of all the bartenders in town I'd pick — Say, Corey!”

  “Yeah?”

  “You see what this proves?”

  “What?”

  “It proves — to my feeble mind — that it's utterly impossible that those murders and the scripts constituted a coincidence.”

  “How do you figure that, Mr. Tracy?”

  “Look, my happening to pick Frank's brother, out of all the bartenders in town, was a genuine coincidence. It couldn't have been anything else; nobody steered me there. I just wandered in, at random, on the loose. Now if the other business was a coincidence, that'd make — well, three coincidences, if you try to figure each of the two murders as just happening to be like a script I wrote. Now I'll concede one coincidence — I've got to — but you can't have three of them in that short an order. It's like parlaying three long shots at the track.”

  “I tried that once,” Corey said. “I didn't win. But hell, I'd have been rich if they all had come in.” He paused a moment. Then he said, “One of 'em did win. I see what you mean, I guess.”

  Tracy looked out and saw they were heading south on Amsterdam. He asked, “Where we going?”

  Corey slowed down again. “Uh — nowhere. I was just driving around to get you some fresh air, that's all. Any place you want to go, Mr. Tracy?”

  “I don't — Say, Sergeant, how did you happen to be there?”

  “I was following you, kind of. I got back to the bureau about the time you left, and — well, I just kind of followed you.”

  “Oh,” Tracy said. Corey said, “I didn't mean — uh—” His voice sounded embarrassed. Tracy looked at his face, and it was embarrassment.

  “It wasn't business,” Corey said. “I mean, I wasn't tailing you, exactly. I just wanted to talk to you.”

  “I don't get it,” Tracy said, honestly puzzled. “You mean you followed me from the time I left the station? While I ate and got a shine and then went into the tavern—”

  Corey nodded. “I was waiting. I was going to pick the right — uh — psychological moment. It was something personal, so I was just waiting.”

  “Until what? Until I got tight?”

  “N-no, not that. I did have in mind to wait till you stopped for a drink after eating, though. Then I was going to pretend t6 run into you accidental like. But what happened was you went in the Silver Dollar, and I knew this Hrdlicka worked there — because I talked to him this afternoon while you were at the station with the inspector — and I figured you wanted to talk to him privately about his brother. So I waited instead of going in right away. I waited across the street awhile and then went up to the window to be sure you were still there, and I was looking in when he pulled you halfway across the bar and—”

  “Don't remind me,” said Tracy. He rubbed his jaw gently and wondered if his chin was going to be too sore to shave. Maybe he'd have to raise a goatee.

  He got out a cigarette and lighted it, and then said, “Well, Sergeant, I don't know whether this is the psychological moment or not — but what the hell is it you wanted to talk about?”

 

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