and eased the door shut behind me.
Very slowly I bent down and unlaced my shoes, then put them beside the wall. There was no sense sending in an invitation. With my hand I felt along the wall until I came to the end of the hall. A switch was to the right. Cautiously, I reached around and threw it up, ready for anything.
I needn’t have been so quiet. Nobody would have yelled. I found York, all right. He sat there grinning at me like a blooming idiot with the top of his head holding up a meat cleaver.
CHAPTER 4
Now it was murder. First it was kidnapping, then murder. There seems to be no end to crime. It starts off as a little thing, then gets bigger and bigger like an overinflated tire until it busts all to hell and gone.
I looked at him, the blood running red on his face, seeping out under the clots, dripping from the back of his head to the floor. It was only a guess, but I figured I had been about ten minutes too late.
The room was a mess, a topsy-turvy cell of ripped-up furniture and emptied drawers. The carpet was littered with trash and stuffing from the pillows. York still clutched a handful of papers, sitting there on the floor where he had fallen, staring blankly at the wall. If he had found what he was searching for it wasn’t here now. The papers in his hand were only old receipted electric bills made out to Myra Grange.
First I went back and got my shoes, then I picked up the phone. “Give me the state police,” I told the operator.
A Sergeant Price answered. I gave it to him briefly. “This is Mike Hammer, Sergeant,” I said. “There’s been a murder at the Glenwood Apartments and as far as I can tell it’s only a few minutes old. You’d better check the highways. Look for a Ford two-door sedan with a bent radio antenna. Belongs to a woman named Myra Grange. Guy that’s been bumped is Rudolph York. She works for him. Around thirty, I’d say, five-six or -seven, short hair, well built. Not a bad-looking tomato. No, I don’t know what she was wearing. Yeah . . . yeah, I’ll stay here. You want me to inform the city cops?”
The sergeant said some nasty things about the city boys and told me to go ahead.
I did. The news must have jarred the guy on the desk awake because he started yelling his fool head off all over the place. When he asked for more information I told him to come look for himself, grinned into the mouthpiece and hung up.
I had to figure this thing out. Maybe I could have let it go right then, but I didn’t think that way. My client was dead, true, but he had overpaid me in the first place. I could still render him a little service gratis.
I checked the other rooms, but they were as scrambled as the first one. Nothing was in place anywhere. I had to step over piles of clothes in the bedroom that had been carefully, though hurriedly, turned inside out.
The kitchen was the only room not torn apart. The reason for that was easy to see. Dishes and pans crashing against the floor would bring someone running. Here York had felt around, moved articles, but not swept them clear of the shelves. A dumbwaiter door was built into the wall. It was closed and locked. I left it that way. The killer couldn’t have left by that exit and still locked it behind him, not with a hook-and-eye clasp. I opened the drawers and peered inside. The fourth one turned up something I hadn’t expected to see. A meat cleaver.
That’s one piece of cutlery that is rarely duplicated in a small apartment. In fact, it’s more or less outdated. Now there were two of them.
The question was: Who did York surprise in this room? No, it wasn’t logical. Rather, who surprised York? It had to be that way. If York had burst in here on Grange there would have been a scene, but at least she would have been here too. It was hard picturing her stepping out to let York smash up the joint.
When York came in the place was empty. He came to kill, but finding his intended victim gone, forgot his primary purpose and began his search. Kill. Kill. That was it. I looked at the body again. What I looked for wasn’t there anymore.
Somebody had swiped the dead man’s gun.
Why? Damn these murderers anyway, why must they mess things up so? Why the hell can’t they just kill and be done with it? York sat there grinning for all he was worth, defying me to find the answer. I said, “Cut it out, pal. I’m on your side.”
Two cleavers and a grinning dead man. Two cleavers, one in the kitchen and one in his head. What kind of a killer would use a cleaver? It’s too big to put in a pocket, too heavy to swing properly unless you had a fairly decent wrist. It would have to be a man, no dame likes to kill when there’s a chance of getting spattered with blood.
But Myra Grange . . . the almost woman. She was more half man. Perhaps her sensibilities wouldn’t object to crunching a skull or getting smeared with gore. But where the hell did the cleaver come from?
York grinned. I grinned back. It was falling into place now. Not the motive, but the action of the crime, and something akin to motive. The killer knew York was on his way here and knew Grange was out. The killer carried the cleaver for several reasons. It might have just been handy. Having aimed and swung it was certain to do the job. It was a weapon to which no definite personality could be attached.
Above all things, it was far from being an accidental murder. I hate premeditation. I hate those little thoughts of evil that are suppressed in the mind and are being constantly superimposed upon by other thoughts of even greater evil until they squeeze out over the top and drive a person to the depths of infamy.
And this murder was premeditated. Perhaps that cleaver was supposed to have come from the kitchen, but no one could have gone past York to the kitchen without his seeing him, and York had a gun. The killer had chosen his weapon, followed York here and caught him in the act of rifling the place. He didn’t even have to be silent about it. In the confusion of tearing the place apart York would never have noticed little sounds . . . until it was too late.
The old man half stooping over the desk, the upraised meat-ax, one stroke and it was over. Not even a hard stroke. With all that potential energy in a three-pound piece of razor-sharp steel, not much force was needed to deliver a killing blow. Instantaneous death, the body twisting as it fell to face the door and grin at the killer.
I got no further. There was a stamping in the hall, the door was pushed open and Dilwick came in like a summer storm. He didn’t waste any time. He walked up to me and stood three inches away, breathing hard. He wasn’t pretty to look at.
“I ought to kill you, Hammer,” he grated.
We stood there in that tableau a moment. “Why don’t you?”
“Maybe I will. The slightest excuse, any excuse. Nobody’s going to pull that on me and get away with it. Not you or anybody.”
I sneered at him. “Whenever you’re ready, Dilwick, here or in the mayor’s office, I don’t care.”
Dilwick would have liked to have said more, but a young giant in the gray and brown leather of the state police strode over to me with his hand out. “You Mike Hammer?” I nodded.
“Sergeant Price,” he smiled. “I’m one of your fans. I had occasion to work with Captain Chambers in New York one time and he spent most of the time talking you up.”
The lad gave me a bone-crushing handshake that was good to feel.
I indicated the body. “Here’s your case, Sergeant.”
Dilwick wasn’t to be ignored like that. “Since when do the state police have jurisdiction over us?”
Price was nice about it. “Ever since you proved yourselves to be inadequately supplied with material . . . and men.” Dilwick flushed with rage. Price continued, addressing his remarks to me. “Nearly a year ago the people of Sidon petitioned the state to assist in all police matters when the town in general and the county in particular was being used as a rendezvous and sporting place by a lot of out-of-state gamblers and crooks.”
The state cop stripped off his leather gloves and took out a pad. He noted a general description of the place, time, then asked me for a statement. Dilwick focused his glare on me, letting every word sink in.
“Mr. York seemed extremely disturbed after his son had been returned to him. He . . .”
“One moment, Mr. Hammer. Where was his son?”
“He had been kidnapped.”
“So? ” Price’s reply was querulous. “It was never reported to us.”
“It was reported to the city police.” I jerked my thumb at Dilwick. “He can tell you that.”
Price didn’t doubt me, he was looking for Dilwick’s reaction. “Is this true?”
