A DATE TO DIE

 

 

It was five minutes before five a.m. and the lights in my office at the fourth precinct station were beginning to grow gray with the dawn. To me, that's always the spookiest, least pleasant time of all. Darkness is better, or daylight. And those last five minutes before my relief are always the slowest.

In five minutes Captain Burke would arrive---on the dot, as always---and I could leave. Meanwhile, the hands of the electric clock just crawled.

The ache in my jaw crawled with them. That tooth had started aching three hours ago, and it had kept getting worse ever since. And I wouldn't be able to find a dentist in his office until nine, which was four long hours away. But, come five o'clock, I'd go off duty, and I had a pretty good idea how to deaden the pain a bit while I waited.

Four minutes of five, the phone rang.

“Fourth Precinct,” I said, “Sergeant Murray.”

“Oh, it's you, Sergeant!” The voice sounded familiar, although I couldn't place it; it was a voice that sounded like an eel feels. “Nice morning, isn't it, Sergeant?”

“Yeah,” I growled.

“Of course,” said the voice. “Haven't you looked out the window at the pale gray glory that precedes the rising of---”

“Can it,” I said. “Who is this?”

“Your friend Sibi Barranya, Sergeant.”

I recognized the voice then. It didn't make me any happier to recognize it, because he'd been lying like a rug when he called himself my friend. He definitely wasn't. On the blotter, this mug Barranya is listed as a fortune-teller. He doesn't call himself that; when they play for big dough, the hocus-pocus boys call themselves mystics. That's what Barranya called himself, a mystic. We hadn't been able to pin anything on him, yet.

I said, “So what?”

“I wish to report a murder, Sergeant.” His voice sounded slightly bored: you'd have thought I was a waiter and he was ordering lunch. “Your department deals in such matters, I believe.”

I knew it was a gag, but I pressed the button that turned on the little yellow light down at the telephone company's switchboard.

I'll explain about that light. A police station gets lots of calls that they have to trace. An excited dame will pick up the phone and say “Help, Police” and bat the receiver back on the hook without bothering to mention who she is or where she lives. Stuff like that. So all calls to any police station in our city go through a special switchboard at the phone station, and the girl who's on that board has special instructions. She never breaks a connection until the receiver has been hung up at the police end of the call, whether the person calling the station hangs up or not. And there's that light that flashes on over her switchboard when we press the button. It's her signal to start tracing a call as quickly as possible.

While I pressed that button, I said, “Nice of you to think of me, Barranya. Who's been murdered?”

“No one, yet, Sergeant. It's murder yet to come. Thought I'd let you in on it.”

I grunted. “Picked out who you're going to murder yet, or are you going to shoot at random?”

“Randall,” he said, “not random. Charlie Randall, Sergeant. Neighbor of mine; I believe you know him.”

Well---on the chance that he was telling the truth and was going to commit a murder---I'd as soon have had him pick Randall as anyone. Randall, like Barranya, was a guy we should have put behind bars, except that we had nothing to go on. Randall ran pinball games, which isn't illegal, but we knew (and couldn't prove) some of his methods of squelching opposition. They weren't nice.

Barranya and Randall lived in the same swank apartment building, and it was rumored that the pinball operator was Barranya's chief customer.

All that went through my head, and a lot of other things. Telling it this way, it may sound like I'd been talking over the phone a long time, but actually it had been maybe thirty seconds since I picked up the receiver.

Meanwhile, I had the receiver off the hook of the other phone on my desk---the interoffice one---and was punching the button on its base that would give me the squad car dispatcher at the main station.

I asked Barranya, “Where are you?”

“At Charlie Randall's,” he said, “well, here it goes, Sergeant!”

There was the sound of a shot, and then the click of the phone being hung up.

I kept the receiver of that phone to my ear waiting for Central to finish tracing the call, which she'd do right away now that the call had been terminated at that end. Into the other phone I said, “Are you there, Hank?” and the squad car dispatcher said, “Yeah,” and I said, “Better put on the radio to--- Wait a second.”

The other receiver was talking into my other ear now. The gal at Central was saying, “That call came from Woodburn 3480. It's listed as Charles B. Randall, Apart---”

I didn't listen to the rest of it. I knew the apartment number and address. And if it was really Charlie Randall's phone that the call had come over, maybe then Barranya was really telling the truth.

“Hank,” I said, “send the nearest car to Randall's apartment, number four at the Deauville Arms. It might be murder.”

I clicked the connection to the homicide department, also down at main, and got Captain Holding.

“There might be a murder at number four at the Deauville,” I reported. “Charlie Randall. It might be a gag, too. There's a call going out to the nearest squad car; you can wait till they report or start over sooner.”

“We'll start over right away,” he said. “Nothing to do here anyway.”

So that let me out of the game. I stood up and yawned, and by the electric clock on the wall, it was two minutes before five. In two minutes I could leave, and I was going to have three stiff drinks to see if it did my toothache any good. Then I intended going to the Deauville Arms myself. If there was a murder, the homicide boys would want my story about the call. And having something to do would help make the time go faster until nine o'clock when there'd be a dentist available.

If there wasn't a murder, then I wanted a little talk with Sibi Barranya. He might still be there, or up in his own apartment two floors higher. Maybe “talk” isn't the right word. I was going to convince him, with gestures, that I didn't appreciate the gag.

I put on my hat at one minute of five. I looked out the window and saw Captain Burke, who relieves me, getting out of his car across the street.

I opened the door to the waiting room that's between the hall and my office, and took one step into it. Then I stopped---suddenly.

There was a tall, dark, smooth-looking guy sitting there, looking at one of the picture magazines from the table. He had sharp features and sharp eyes under heavy eyebrows, each of which was fully as large as the small moustache over his thin lips.

There was only one thing wrong with the picture, and that was who the guy happened to be. Sibi Barranya---who'd just been talking to me over the telephone a minute before . . . from a point two miles away!

I stood there looking at him, with my mouth open as I figured back. It could have been two minutes ago, but no longer. Two minutes, two miles. There's nothing wrong with traveling two miles in two minutes, except that you can't do it when the starting point is the fourth floor of one building and the destination the second floor of another. Besides, the time had been nearer one minute than two.

No, either someone had done a marvelous job of imitating Barranya's voice, or this wasn't him. But this was Barranya, voice and all.

He said, “Sergeant, are you---psychic?”

“Huh?” That was all I could think of at the moment. On top of being where he couldn't be, he had to ask me a completely screwy question.

“The look on your face, Sergeant,” he said. “I came here to warn you, and I would swear, from your expression, that you have already received the warning.”

“Warn me about what?” I asked.

His face was very solemn. “Your impending death. But you must have heard it. Your face, Sergeant. You look like---like you'd had a message from beyond.”

Barranya was standing now, facing me, and Captain Burke came in the room from the outer hallway.

“Hello, Murray.” He nodded to me. “Something wrong?”

I straightened out my face from whatever shape it had been and said, “Not a thing, Captain, not a thing.”

He looked at me curiously, but went on into the inner office.

The more I looked at Barranya, the more I didn't like him, but I decided that whether I liked him or not, he and I had a lot of note-comparing to do. And this wasn't the place to do it.

I said, “The place across the street is open. I like their kind of spirits better than yours. Shall we move there?”

He shook his head. “Thanks, but I'd really better be getting home. Not that I'd mind a drink, but---”

“Somebody's trying to frame a murder rap on you,” I told him. “The Deauville Arms is full of cops. Are you still in a hurry?”

It looked as though a kind of film went across his eyes, because they were suddenly quite different from what they had been and yet there had been no movement of eyelid or pupil. It was somehow like the moon going behind a cloud.

He said, “A murder rap means a murder. Whose?”

“Charlie Randall, maybe.”

“I'll take that drink,” he said. “What do you mean by ‘maybe?’ ”

“Wait a minute and I'll find out.” I went back into the inner office, but left the door open so I could keep an eye on Barranya. I said, “Cap, can I use the phone?” and when he nodded, I called the Randall number.

Someone who sounded like a policeman trying to sound like a butler said, “Randall residence.”

“This is Bill Murray. Who's talking?”

“Oh,” said the voice, not sounding like a butler any longer. “This is Kane. We just busted in. I was going to the phone to call main when it rang and I thought I'd try to see who was---”

“What'd you find?”

“There's a stiff here, all right. I guess it's Randall; I never saw him, but I've seen his pictures in the paper and it looks like him.”

“Okay,” I said. “The homicide squad's already on the way over. Just hold things down till they gel then'. I'm corning around too, but I got something to do first. Say---how was he killed?”

“Bullet in the forehead. Looks like about a thirty-eight hole. He's sitting right there; I'm looking at him now. Harry's going over the apartment. I was just going to the phone to call---”

“Yeah,” I interrupted. “Is he tied up?”

“Tied up, yes. He's in pajamas, and there's a bruise on his forehead, but he isn't gagged. Looks like he was slugged in bed and somebody moved him to the chair and tied him to it, and then took a pop at him with the gun from about where I'm standing now.”

“At the phone?”

“Sure, at the phone. Where else would I be standing?”

“Well,” I said, “I'll be around later. Tell Cap Holding when he gets there.”

“Know who done it, Sarge?”

“It's a secret,” I said, and hung up.

I went back to the inner office. Barranya was standing by the door. I knew he'd heard the conversation so I didn't need to tell him he could erase the ‘maybe’ about Charlie Randall's being dead.

We went across the street to Joe's, which is open twenty-four hours a day. It was five minutes after five when we got there, and I noticed that it took us a few seconds over two minutes just to get from my office to Joe's, which is half a block.

We took a booth at the back. Barranya took a highball, but I wanted mine straight and double. My tooth was thumping like hell.

I said, “Listen, Barranya, first let's take this warning business. About me, I mean. What kind of a hook-up did it come over?”

“A voice,” he said. “I've heard voices many times, but this was louder and clearer than usual. It said, ‘Sergeant Murray will be killed today.’ ”

“Did it say anything else?”

“No, just that. Over and over. Five or six times.”

“And where were you when you heard this voice?”

“In my car, Sergeant, driving---let's see---along Clayton Boulevard. About half an hour ago.”

“Who was with you?”

“No one, Sergeant. It was a spirit voice. When one is psychic, one hears them often. Sometimes meaningless things, and sometimes messages for oneself or people one knows.”

I stared at him, wondering whether he really expected me to swallow that. But he had a poker face.

I took a fresh tack. “So, out of the kindness of your heart you came around to warn me. Knowing that for a year now I've been trying to get something on you so I could put you---”

His upraised hand stopped me. “That is something else again, Sergeant. I don't particularly like you personally, but a psychic has obligations which transcend the mundane. If it was not intended that I pass that warning on to you, I should not have received it.”

“Where had you been, before this happened?”

“I went with a party of people to the Anders Farm.”

The Anders Farm isn't a farm at all; it's a roadhouse and it's about fifteen miles out of town. Coming on from there, you take Highway 15, which turns into Clayton Boulevard in town.

“I left the others there around four o'clock,” Barranya said. “We'd been there since midnight and I was getting bored, and---well, feeling queer---as often happens when I am on the verge of a communication from the astral---”

“Wait,” I said, “were you there with someone? A woman?”

“No, Sergeant. It was a mixed party, but there were three couples and two stags and I was one of the stags. I drove slowly coming in, because I'd been drinking and because of that feeling of expectancy. I was on Clayton, out around Fiftieth, when I heard the voice. It said, ‘Sergeant Murray will be killed to---’ ”

“Yeah, yeah” I interrupted. For some reason, it made my tooth ache worse when he said that. I looked at him a minute trying to figure out how much truth he was telling me. I couldn't swallow that spirit message stuff.

But the rest of it? It would be easy to get and check the names of the people he'd been with. But that was routine, up to whoever was handling the case. . . .

Say Barranya left the Anders Farm near four o'clock. He came to my office at five, or a few minutes before. That gave him an hour. Not too long a time if he'd driven as slowly as he said. But it was possible.

I said, “Now about Charlie Randall. What were your relations with him?”

“Very pleasant, Sergeant. I advised him in a business way.”

I studied him. “Meaning when he had to bump off a competitor you'd cast a horoscope to see if the stars were favorable?”

That veil business was over his eyes again, and I knew he didn't like the way I'd put that. It was probably a close guess. We knew that Randall, like most crooks, was superstitious and that he was Sibi Barranya's best hocus-pocus sucker.

Barranya said, “Mr. Randall conducted a legitimate business, Sergeant. My advice concerned purely legal transactions.”

“No doubt,” I said. “Since it would be hard to prove otherwise now, we'll let it ride. But look---you're probably pretty familiar with Randall's business. Who would benefit by his death?”

Barranya thought a moment before he answered. “His wife, of course. That is, I presume she'll inherit his money; he never consulted me about a will. And there is Pete Burd; but you know about that.”

I knew about Pete Burd, all right. He was the only rival Randall had had, and not too much competition at that. He put his machines in the smaller places that Randall didn't want, and that was maybe why Randall hadn't done to him what he'd done to more enterprising competitors. But now that Randall was out of the way, it would mean room for expansion for Burd.

I let that cook for the moment. “Know where Charlie's wife is?”

“Yes. Out of town. That is, unless she has returned unexpectedly and I haven't heard.”

I snorted lightly. “Don't your spirits tell you things? . . . Let's get back to the warning about me. Did the what's-it suggest any reason why I might be killed?”

“No,” he told me, “and I can see you're incredulous about that, Sergeant. Frankly, I don't care whether you take it seriously or not. I had a message and it was my duty to relay it. Any more questions? If not, I'd like to get on home.”

I stood up. “We're both going to the same building. Come on.”

“Fine!” Barranya said. “Want to go in my car? I presume there'll be plenty of squad cars rallying around over there to give you a lift back.”

Well, there would be; and these days a chance to save rubber is a chance to save rubber. So I got into his car. And when I saw how smoothly it ran I wondered---as all cops wonder once in a while, but not too seriously---whether I'd picked the right side of the law. It was a sweet chariot, that convertible of his.

“Can you get short-wave broadcasts?” I asked, assuming that a boat like his would have a radio, and ready not to be surprised if it turned out to be a radio-phono combination. I was curious to see if anything new was going out to the squad cars.

“Out of order,” he said. “Worked early this evening, but I tried it after I left the Anders Farm and it wouldn't work.”

We drove a few blocks without either of us saying anything, and it was then that I heard the voice:

“Sibi Barranya killed Randall. He wanted Randall's wife.”

I blinked and looked around at Barranya. He wasn't talking, unless he was a good ventriloquist. Not that it would have surprised me if he was, because these fake mystics dabble in all forms of trickery.

But Barranya looked scared as hell. The car swerved a little, but righted itself as he swung the wheel back. We slowed up and he said, “Did you hear---”

“Shut up,” I barked. As soon as I'd seen his lips weren't moving, I looked around the rest of the car. Maybe it was the comparative quiet because we were slowing down, but I recognized and placed a faint sound I'd been hearing ever since we'd started; a sound I'd wondered about in a car that ran as sweet and smooth as that one did.

It was a faint crackling, like static on a radio, and it seemed to come from the loud-speaker that was up where the windshield met the car top, on Barranya's side.

“Cut in to the curb and stop a minute,” I said. As we coasted in, he said, “Sergeant, there are good spirits and evil ones. The evil ones lie, and you mustn't---”

“Shut up,” I said. “There are good radios and bad radios, too. Where's a screwdriver?”

He opened the glove compartment and found one. “Do you mean you think---”

I said, “I'm sure as hell going to see. When it comes to spooks, Barranya, I don't think anything. I look for where they come from. That radio's on!”

I got it out from behind the instrument panel with the screwdriver. The faint crackling noise stopped when I disconnected the battery wire.

The set showed what I had a hunch I'd find. It had been tampered with, all right. There was a wire shorted across both the short-wave band switch and the turn-on switch, so that it was permanently on, and permanently adjusted to the short-wave band. The condenser shaft had been loosened so the rotor plates didn't turn with the shaft. In other words, it was permanently set to receive anything broadcast on a certain short wavelength. Barranya was peering curiously at it. “Could someone with an amateur broadcasting set have? . . .”

“They could,” I told him, “and did. How's your battery?”

“How's--- Oh, I see what you mean.” Without putting the car in gear he stepped on the starter and the engine turned over merrily. The battery wasn't run down.

“This thing's been on,” I said, “since it was monkeyed with. If your battery's still got that much oomph, it means it was done recently. If your radio worked early this evening, this was done since then. Maybe while you were at the roadhouse.”

“Then that other message, the one that warned about you---”

“Yeah,” I said, “my apologies---maybe. I thought you were talking a lot of hot air.”

Unless he was honestly bewildered, he was putting on a marvelous act. He said, “But I have heard such voices elsewhere.”

I smiled. “Maybe your radio here was in tune with the infinite and it was a spirit, once removed. I got my doubts. Let's get going. I want to show this little gadget to the boys.”

He slid the car into gear and away from the curb. He asked thoughtfully, “Is there any way they could trace from that set where the messages came from?”

“Nope,” I told him. “But they can tell exactly what wavelength it was set for. That might help, but the F.C.C. has suspended all amateur licenses since the war started. It would have to be an illegal set.”

“Aren't illegal broadcasts tracked down?”

“Yeah. There are regular listening posts, with directional equipment. But if a set broadcast only a couple of sentences like that, they'd probably be overlooked. So that's no help.”

We were slowing down already for the apartment building when I remembered. “How's about what your radio ghost friend said just now? Are you chummy with Randall's wife?”

He took time to word his answer. I could have counted to ten before he said, “You'd find out anyway, I suppose. Yes, I like her a lot and she likes me. Her husband. . . .”

“Didn't understand her?” I prompted.

He glared at me, and started to say something that would probably have led to trouble if I'd let him finish.

“Hold it, pal,” I cut in. “Here's the big thing to think about. Whoever put on that broadcast just now knew about you and Mrs. Randall. How many people know that. Pete Burd, maybe?” He calmed down. “I don't know. Anyone might have guessed, I suppose. Uh---Charlie Randall didn't mind, so we weren't too secretive about being seen.”

“Randall knew you were making love to his wife!”

“I think so. He wouldn't have cared, if he had known. You know that little blonde who used to sell cigarettes at the Green Dragon?”

“I think I know which one you mean,” I told him. “The one with the nice---”

“That one,” he said. “She doesn't work there any more.” The car stopped in front of the Deauville Arms, and I got out, carrying the gimmicked radio. I waited until Barranya came around the car to join me.

When we got into the elevator I said, “We're going to Randall's flat first, both of us. You'll have to bear up a while yet before you go to sleep.”

“Why can't I go on up, while you---”

“Nix,” I said. “I'm going to report to Holding, and you're not going in that flat before I go with you. Listen, Barranya, the only thing I don't like about your alibi is that it's too damn good. Maybe you got something upstairs I'd like to see before you dismantle it. Such like a phonograph with your---”

I broke off, because as soon as I mentioned it I knew it wasn't a phonograph record that had made that call. Because I'd done part of the talking, and he'd answered what I said. I remembered that lousy gag about not shooting at random but at Randall. But I took Barranya with me just the same. Holding would want to see him.

The Randall flat was full of photographers and fingerprint men. I parked Barranya in the hallway, and told the man on duty at the door to keep an eye on him. I went in to give Holding my report and the radio set.

The coroner was working on the body; they'd moved it into the bedroom after taking photos. Captain Holding showed me the position of the chair and the ropes; everything checked with what I'd heard over the telephone.

Holding said, “Maybe Barranya could have called you from the phone booth in the hall at your precinct station, and then gone on into the waiting room while---”

“No, dammit,” I said. “I traced the call. It came from here. It must be some kind of a frame, but it's the goofiest thing I ever heard of. If anybody wanted to frame Barranya, why'd they give him that message about me that sent him to my office only two minutes after the murder?”

Holding shrugged. “Do you know anybody connected with the case who's a good voice imitator?”

“Not unless it's Barranya, and he wouldn't imitate his own voice. Nuts! I'm going in circles, and this toothache is driving me batty. Say, how's Mrs. Randall doing on alibis?”

“Excellent. We called the hotel in Miami she was supposed to be at. She's there all right. I talked to her myself.”

“Just now?”

“What do you mean, just now? Think we could have notified her yesterday, Sergeant?”

I shook my head. “Don't mind me, Cap. My mind just isn't working any more. But one thing. I take it you're going to send men up to search Barranya's place. Maybe while he's here and you're talking to him? Well, I'd like to go up with them.”

“You should go home, Bill. This is our job, now that you've reported,” Holding pointed out.

“Got to stay awake till I can see a dentist at nine. Having something to do will keep my mind off this damn toothache. Anyway, this is my big day, Cap. If Barranya's spirit controls are in working order, I'm due to be bumped off.”

“I'll question Barranya now. I'll hold him a while, and give you plenty of time, though.”

“Swell. I'm even going to take the kitchen sink apart up there. Say, know who lives above and below this flat---on the third and fifth?”

“Third's vacant. Guy named Shultz has the fifth, in between here and Barranya.”

“What's he do?” I asked.

“Manufacturer. Pinball games and carnival novelties.” Holding saw the sudden look of interest I gave him, and went on. “Yes, he did a little business with Randall. But he's clear on this. He's out of town, he and his wife. We've checked and it's on the up and up.”

“How about Burd?”

“Murphy's on the way over there now. I'm going to have that cigarette girl angle looked into, too. We can trace her easy enough if Randall set her up somewhere. Might be an angle there.”

“More curves than angles,” I said. “Sure you don't want me to---”

“I do not. Send in Barranya, and take Clem and Harry up to his flat.”

Clem and Harry and I spent two hours searching, but there wasn't anything in Barranya's flat worthy of interest except a bottle of Scotch in the cupboard. The homicide boys didn't touch it because they were on duty, but I wasn't.

When they left, I sat down at the table in the living room to wait. Holding kept Barranya down there another half hour. He looked mad when he came in. By that time my tooth had stopped jumping up and down and settled into a slow steady ache that wasn't quite so bad.

I waved my hand toward the Scotch on the table, and the extra glass I'd put there. “Have a drink.”

“Thanks, Sergeant, I shall. After that, if you don't mind, I'd like to turn in.”

“Don't mind me,” I told him. “Go right ahead and turn in. It's your flat.”

“But---” He looked puzzled.

“Don't mind me, I'm just sitting here thinking.”

He poured himself a drink from the bottle and refilled my glass. He said, “And how long do you expect to sit there and think?”

“Until I've figured out how you killed Charlie Randall.”

He smiled, and sat down on a corner of the table. He said, “What makes you think I killed Randall?”

“The fact that you couldn't have,” I told him, very earnestly. “It's all too damn pat, Barranya. It's like a stage illusion. It's a show. It doesn't ring true. It's just the kind of murder and kind of alibi that an illusionist would arrange. The kind of thing that wouldn't occur to an ordinary guy.”

“You're logical, Sergeant, up to a point.”

“And I'm going to get past that point. Go on to bed if you're tired.”

He chuckled and stared down into the amber liquid in his glass. “Is that all that makes you think I did it?”

“Not quite,” I said. “We found something very suspicious in this flat. That's what makes me sure.”

He looked up quickly.

“We found nothing, Barranya. Absolutely nothing of interest.”

His smile came back; mockingly, I thought. “And you find that suspicious?”

“Absolutely. I have a strong hunch that before you left here this evening you took away and hid any papers, any notations, you wouldn't have wanted the police to find. And the gimmicks connected with the seances you hold here.”

“They aren't seances. I've explained---”

“It's just unlikely,” I went on without paying any attention to his interruption, “for us not to have found something you wouldn't want found. Not even letters tied in blue ribbon. Not a scrap of a notation about one of your customers.”

“Clients.”

“Clients, then. Nothing at all. I just don't believe it, Barranya. And if you knew this apartment would be searched, then you knew Randall was going to be killed. That means you killed him, somehow.”

“Brilliant, Sergeant. Have your deductions gone any farther?”

“Yes. You knew when he was going to be killed---or when it would appear that he was killed. Probably it was twenty minutes before I got that phone call. Time for you to get from his flat to my office.”

“And you think I framed myself by accusing---”

“Why not? That radio was a swell trick. It wasn't the radio at all, Barranya. I've thought that out. It was ventriloquism. My first guess was right, only I found that radio going and naturally thought that the voice came from it. You fixed the radio yourself, and any spiritualist knows ventriloquism---the safest and easiest way of getting spirit voices in a seance. The trick has whiskers on it.”

He said, “Interesting, Sergeant---if you can prove that I do know ventrilo---”

“I can't, but I'm not interested. All I have to prove is that you killed Randall. As long as I know you could have pulled that stunt in the car, I can forget it. How's about another drink? And incidentally, what you said was clever as hell. You knew we'd find out about you and Mrs. Randall, and if you accused yourself of having that motive, it would spike our guns. You expect to marry her, don't you, and get Randall's money?”

He filled my glass, but not his own. He stood up, yawning. “Hope you'll excuse me, Sergeant. I am tired.”

“Go right to bed,” I said. “Got an alarm clock, or shall I wake you any special time?”

“Never mind.” He sauntered to the door of the bedroom and then turned. “I'll appreciate your leaving one drink in the bottle.”

“I'll buy you a new bottle,” I assured him. “Barranya, you know anything about relays?”

“Relays? I'm not sure I know what you mean.”

“I'm not, either. Probably that's the wrong name for it. But it's the first thing I looked for when I came up here. I didn't find it.”

“And where would you have looked for one?”

“I thought of the bell box of your telephone. Look, while you were playing Randall for a sucker on the celestial advice racket, didn't you have his phone wire tapped?”

“No, Sergeant. But how would a tapped wire---”

“Here's the idea. Holding gave it to me, in a way. He said you might have phoned from the booth at the station, right out in the hall. Except that the call came from here, that would have made sense. So I got to thinking.”

“So?”

“This could have happened. You came here, driving fast from the roadhouse, killed Randall, and switched in the gimmick. You'd have everything ready, so you could do it in a minute. There'd already be the tap on Randall's wire. The gimmick is a little electromagnet in your phone's bell box.

“You drive to the station and call your own phone. The circuit is shorted through the electromagnet, so instead of ringing the bell, the magnet throws the double switch---just as though the receiver had been lifted from Randall's phone. You're on Randall's wire and when the light goes on down at the phone company switchboard, it's over his number. That switch also opens his circuit, of course. When Central says ‘Number, please?’ you give my number, and---well, that's all it would take. You knew, of course, that snapping a rubber band across the diaphram of the transmitter makes a sound like a shot.

“And when you hung up, both circuits would be broken, and things just like they were. The call would trace back to Randall's phone, but his receiver was never off the hook!”

Barranya's eyes had widened while I was talking. He said, “Sergeant, I never thought it of you. That's positively brilliant. But you didn't find such an electromagnet?”

“No,” I admitted. “But it was a good idea.”

He yawned again. “You underestimate yourself. It was excellent. Pardon me.”

“I will,” I said, “but how about the governor?”

He chuckled and closed the bedroom door. I poured myself another drink, but I didn't touch it. The last three drinks hadn't had any further effect on the toothache, so I figured I might as well stay sober and bear it.

I listened until I heard him get into bed. Then I gave it another ten minutes by my watch.

I went out the door and closed it, being neither quiet nor noisy about my movements, got into the elevator and---in case the sound of the elevator would be audible---I rode it all the way down to the first floor and walked back up to five. One of my set of keys worked easily on the door of the absent Mr. Shultz.

I crossed over to the telephone and bent down to examine the box. There wasn't any dust on top of it, and there was a thin layer of dust on most other things in the room.

I didn't touch it. I was sure enough now that the electromagnet would be there, and I didn't want to lessen its value as evidence by taking off the cover until there were other witnesses. Anyway, there was an easier way to check my hunch.

I picked up the receiver and when a feminine voice said, “Number, please?” I asked, “What phone am I calling from?”

“Pardon?”

I said, “I'm alone at a friend's house. I want to tell someone to call me back here, and I can't read the number without my glasses.”

She said, “Oh, I see. You're calling from Woodburn 3840.”

Randal's number. That cracked the case, of course. Barranya had worked it just as I'd told him upstairs, except that, knowing his own flat would be searched, he'd put the tab on Shultz' phone and called up there.

“Fine,” I said, “Now give me---”

That was when something jabbed into my back and Barranya said, “Tell her never mind.” His tone of voice meant business. “Never mind,” I told the operator. “I'll put in the call later.”

As I put down the phone, Barranya's hand reached over my shoulder and slid my police positive out of its shoulder holster. He stepped back, and I turned around.

He'd really undressed for bed; he wore a lounging robe over pajamas and had slippers on his feet. That's why I hadn't heard him come through the flat. I'd known he'd be down sometime today to remove the evidence, but I'd expected him to wait longer, and I hadn't thought of the back door. Maybe I'd drunk more Scotch than I thought I had, to overlook a bet like that.

His face was expressionless; there was just a touch of mockery in his voice. “Remember that message I brought you from the spirit world a few hours ago, Sergeant? Maybe it wasn't as wrong as you thought.”

“You can't get away with it,” I said. “Killing me, I mean. If you do, you'll have to lam, and they'll catch you. The homicide boys know I stayed with you. If they find me dead---”

“Shut up, Sergeant,” he said, “I'm trying to think how---”

I didn't dare give him time to think. The guy was too clever. He might think of some way he could kill me without it being pinned on him.

I said, “A good lawyer can get you a sentence for shooting a rat like Randall. But you know what happens when you kill a cop in this state.”

I could see there was indecision in his face, in his voice when he said, “Keep back, or---”

I took another step toward him and kept on talking. I said, “There are still men in Randal's flat, right under us. They'll hear that gun. You won't have time to muffle it, like when you shot Randall.”

I kept walking, slowly. I knew if I moved suddenly, he'd shoot. My hands were going down slowly, too. I said, “Give me that gun, Barranya. Figure out what a rope around your neck feels like before you pull that trigger, and don't pull it.”

I was reaching out, palm upward for him to hand the gun to me, but he backed away. He said, “Stop, damn you,” and the urbanity and mockery were gone from his voice. He was scared.

I kept walking forward. I said, “I saw a cop-killer once after they finished questioning him, Barranya. They did such a job that he didn't mind hanging, much, after that. And don't forget the boys below us will hear a shot. You won't have time to pull those wires up through the wall before they get up here.”

And then he was back against the wall, and I must have pressed him too hard, because I saw from his eyes that he was going to shoot. But my hand was only inches from the gun now, and I took the last short step in a lunge and slapped the gun just as it went off. I felt the burn of powder on my palm and wrist, but I wasn't hit. The gun hit the wall and ricocheted under the sofa.

The burn on my hand made me jerk back, involuntarily, off balance, and he jumped in with a wallop that caught me on the jaw that knocked me further off balance.

I took half a dozen punches, and they hurt, before I could get set to throw one back effectively. I took half a dozen more before I got in my Sunday punch and Barranya folded up on the carpet.

I staggered across the room to the phone. My nose felt lopsided and one of my eyes was hard to see out of. There was blood in my mouth and I spat it out. A tooth came with it.

I got Holding on the phone, and told him. I said, “I guess there's no one downstairs at the moment or they'd sure as hell be up here by now.”

He said, “Swell work, Sarge. We'll be right over; sit on the guy till we get there. How's your toothache coming?”

“Huh?” I said, and then it dawned on me that my whole face and head ached, except for my tooth. I felt to see which one had been knocked out in the fight, and it was!

After I'd hung up, I found Shultz, too, was a good host; his whiskey was poorly hidden. My knees felt wobbly and I figured I'd earned this one. I had another, and then heard voices and footsteps out in the hall, and knew the homicide boys were back.

I walked over to the sofa where Barranya lay, to see if he was conscious again. He wasn't, but bending over made my head swim and suddenly my knees just weren't there any more. I don't know whether it was the whiskey, or the fight I'd been through, or the relief that I didn't have to go to the dentist.

But I'll never live down the fact that they came in a second later---and found me sleeping peacefully on top of the murderer.