“Did you love him?”
She hesitated. “I don’t think so—probably because I knew so little about him. I might have learned to low him, though. He was a wonderful man—”
“He gave you the clasp you’re wearing?”
A heavy brass belaying-pin hurtled through the darkness, thrown with murderous accuracy. It grazed against Stan’s head. Without a sound he turned a somersault over the low railing, and dropped grotesquely two stories down into the black waters of Biscayne Bay. Eve Earraday watched the white clothed body disappear below the surface before she slipped unconscious to the deck.
Chapter X
Millie LaFrance lay rigid in the bed, listening to the brush of a palm against the screen of the porch. Since eight o’clock in the evening a man had been strolling back and forth across the street. Twenty times she had gone on the porch to look. The man was always there. At midnight another man had taken his place.
She covered her eyes with a shapely arm to shut out the light of a street bulb on the corner. The moving palm cast shadows on the bedroom wall, driving her close to hysterics with their faltering undulations. Millie was not timorous. She had lived too long close to violence and sudden death. But she knew that Zorrio and Eckhardt were both supreme egoists, claiming any woman for life. Miles Standish Rice had not underestimated her danger with Caprilli in Miami.
Stealthily she turned in bed and thrust one white hand under her pillow. The squeak of a loose board under pressure had warned her someone was in the sitting room. Her groping fingers closed around the butt of her pearl-handled automatic and began to slide it out an inch at a time.
“Hold it, Millie! It’s Ben!” The beam of a pencil flash, directed into the palm of one hand, briefly illuminated his lace in the doorway.
“You damned idiot. I might have shot you.” She still held onto the gun.
He came closer and sat on the foot of the bed. “The house is being watched. I’m parked three blocks north. I came between the houses and in the back way.”
“To tell me that?”
“I’m onto something big, Millie. It will fix us for life.”
“You’re always on to something big. I’ll tell you something bigger. The coppers are on to you. They may fix you for life. One of them paid me a call this afternoon—a private dick called Rice. He’s smart, Ben. You better watch him.
“He was too smart. He got himself rubbed out on the Four Leaf Clover tonight. Somebody tossed a crowbar at him and tumbled him over the rail. When they fished him out the chimes were ringing.”
“You know a hell of a lot about it.”
“I saw it. That’s part of what I’m on to. It’s going to put me on easy street—”
Millie raised herself on one elbow to try and see his face in the dim light of the room. “Easy Street is a one way street. Are you sure you’re driving the right way? If you’re not I’m getting out, Ben Eckhardt. There’s a chair at the wrong end. You can sit in it alone and fry your damn tail off!
“Why you bitch. I’ll—” He made a move toward her.
“Keep on your end of the bed. Ben. You’re a small time gambler and you’re bucking an electric wheel. You better tell me the story. If your nose is clean—I may help. If it’s not—” Her perfect shoulders lifted slightly.
He leaned back against the foot of the bed, nonplused at Millie’s tone. He could deal with her when she raved, cursed, and cried, but her assured calmness alarmed him.
“You’ll never walk out on me,” he told her, sullenly.
“Zorrio still thinks that about himself.”
“Well you can’t sneeze me into Alcatraz like you did him.”
“I’d kill you for that, right now, Ben—except I know you said it to make me mad. Think this over before you get big-mouthed again: Caprilli’s in Miami. Late this afternoon I wrote a letter to a friend. It’s to be mailed on to Caprilli if anything happens to me. If it’s ever delivered a pardon from the Governor won’t save you. Now about you and me. I’m tired of your strange ideas about beating hell out of a dame to show her you love her—and the day I want to walk out—I’ll walk. If you try to stop me—I’ll get word to Caprilli that you’ve been pestering me. Now you better tell me why the coppers are on your trail for killing Fowler.”
The pastiness of his face showed startlingly against the moving shadows on the wall. “Jesus, Millie! You’ve gone nuts! I never knocked off a guy in my life—but I’m not going to drop a wad of dough because I happen to know who did. I saw that dick get his tonight—”
“Who did it?”
“The same guy who gave it to Fowler last night.”
“You’re lying, Ben.”
“I swear to God, Millie. We’ve got a fortune in our mitts if you keep your head!” He was intent, pleading. “But it’s better if you don’t know the whole works. They may sweat the devil out of you at headquarters tomorrow when this Rice thing breaks loose. You can’t tell something you don’t know—”
“Neither can you.”
“Where do you think this came from?” The pencil flash glowed on a piece of folded paper thrust before her eyes. She read it without relinquishing her hold on the automatic.
Don’t leave now—it’s worth your life. Call Toby to hall door of card room—any excuse—so I can see you’re still here. Then go to poker room across the hall and wait for me. Sit quietly without lights until I can come. DB
“Dave Button!” Millie inhaled softly. “I don’t believe it.”
“You’re acting dumb, Millie. Do you think Button would stick his own initials on a note like that?”
“Why not? Fowler wouldn’t have gone in the poker room unless he knew who the note
