5 Detective Novels Magazine Cover — page 114: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

114 For a second she looked at me as if she were going to kiss me. And then—lI’ll be damned if she didn’t! I walked out, trying not to breathe and figuring it would sure be hell if Lake really had cooled Ryerson. Chapter VII EXT morning, I had a session with the D.A. and got myself aill squared about Hale. That part was easy. But when I told him he didn’t have a snowball’s ehance against Lake, he flared up. He not only flared up—he sprang up and glared. “You’re crazy! It’s plain larceny, tak- ing Valeria Lake’s retainer. Look here!” He threw me some enlarged fingerprint photos and the rest of the picture stuff. “Lake handled that tire iron. He had the motive and the opportunity. We found that air-gun of his. He admits he tried to drive Ryerson crazy. “The rest of it is easy. Lake kept un- der control until he had the bonds and then he cracked. Why would Borda do the job? You were away. Ryerson was packing up. The securities were dug up. According to your own story, Ryerson was too timid to fight back.” That was a pretty good mouthful. There wasn’t much I could say, so I just sat looking at the photos of the tire iron, the corpse, everything. I’d made the D.A. sore on purpose, and he’d bitten. Then to calm him down, I said: “To hell with you. I’ll handle the case free. I’m not blackmailing Valeria Lake.” I didn’t tell him about the photos. The case looked a shade easier, though not enough to brag about. No amount of argument that Lake hadn’t done it was worth a dime. I had to prove that Borda had done it, which the photos wouldn’t do. So I checked out and had a word with Lake’s lawyer. He was a nice chap but a pessimist who had advised Lake to plead guilty to manslaughter or sec- ond degree. Then he’d put Valeria on the stand. Murder for such a dame is seldom frowned on. Lake was stubborn as a pig, but I per- suaded him to let his lawyer tell the reporters he was pleading guilty. That’d get on the air in time. I spent the afternoon out at the Last FIVE DETECTIVE NOVELS MAGAZINE Stop Service Station. I walked up and down those creaking steps. I looked down from Ryerson’s room, Borda’s room, the bathroom. I squatted in the grease of the garage. I ran back and forth, figur- ing how I’d go about conking a guy, squatting under the steps that led from the second floor. Finally I dug up the mate to the tire iron and practiced con- king a fellow. If anyone had seen me, he’d have said I was nuts, but there was nothing but sandpipers and gulls around. Maybe I was nuts, anyway. At last, I laid the tire iron near the phone, checked up on the liquor supply and found it had been seized for evi- dence. It all came back to the blackmail which Hale and Borda had used to make a thief of Ryerson. So I drove back to Saint Augustine to do some blackmailing myself. First, I called Valeria and told her to drive out, run her car into a cross drive, and hide in the sand dunes. “Never mind the details,” I said. “Just watch the station and listen. Whatever you hear will be evidence, unless it’s me being shot in the back.” Then I went to see Borda. I found him in the lobby of a flossy hotel, one with a $2,000,000 price tag on its souve- nir postals. Saint Augustine has more big hotels per square yard than any other city on earth. Borda had a good cigar in his face, and four more in his breast pocket. They reached up from the blue-edged handker- chief that went with the gray suit and red-striped tie. His face wasn’t quite fit for a screen test, but then neither was mine, after George Lake had worked us over. ORDA didn’t lose that contented look when I barged in. He had no business being contented when he was out sixty grand he had almost collected. A dealer in hot paper would easily have given him that for Valeria’s legacy. I picked a Juan de Fuca from his pocket and threw my old cigar away. “You got your nerve, you cheap mug!” he said. “So have you, looking so cool after los- ing the dough you and Hale figured on grabbing. You’re wearing a contented- cow look because George Lake is taking CoOMmiclooo S (C(O)