A Cue For The Corpse

Ed grinned at that. He was used to it now, though it had been a little
thrilling for the first couple of years. It was ten years since he had
first gone up in electric lights. And now he was the highest-paid
performer on the Partages Circuit. He liked it. He liked to juggle
those heavy guns, and bring down the house in thunderous applause when
he shot out the flames of a dozen candles in succession thirty feet
across the stage. Every night it was a new thrill.

He pulled open the door and started to step out into the corridor. But
he suddenly stopped with his hand on the knob, and said in surprise,
"Well, for the love of Pete!"

There was a girl in the hall, and she was lugging a dead man by the
feet!

SHE was hardly more than seventeen or eighteen, and her figure was
slender and supple in a thin silk dress. She must have put it on in a
hurry, because, even in the dim light of the hallway, it was easy to
see that she wore nothing at all underneath it. And she had no shoes
or stockings on, either.

He stared.

She was dragging the man by the feet. His shoulders bumped along the
floor, and his arms did a crazy slithering act on the wine-colored
rug. He was on his back, and there was a large black hole in his left
temple. The blood was dried around the wound. His eyes were open and
glazed, and his jaw hung slack. There was no doubt that he was dead.

The girl apparently had dragged him out of Room 814 across the hall,
because the door of that room was ajar. When she heard Ed Race, she
dropped the man's feet as if they were scorching hot. Her eyes became
wide and round. Her lower lip was trembling, and her small breasts
were rising and falling with trip-hammer speed.

She stared at Ed Race without speaking.

Ed said gravely, "Why, you're only a kid. How come you're lugging a
corpse? Don't you know you mustn't touch dead men till the police
come?"

"I want to get rid of the body," she told him matter-of-factly.

"I guessed as much," he said dryly. "Who killed him?"

"I killed him."

Ed raised his eyebrows. "With what?"

"With a gun."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because he was no good. He's a gunman--Lefty Mott. I'm--I was his gun
moll. We had a fight and I shot him."

Ed looked at her thoughtfully. "A gun moll, eh? Aren't you a little
young to be a gun moll?"

"I'm twenty-five!" she lied defiantly.

Ed grinned. "Twenty-five, eh?? A pretty ripe old age at that. Do you
mind telling me what you were going to do with Mr. Lefty Mott?"

"I was going to put him in the incinerator," she said.

"There isn't any incinerator here. This isn't a housekeeping hotel."

Her eyes widened. "But--but I thought every New York building had an
incinerator."

"You haven't been in New York long, have you?" Ed asked.

"I have so! And I'm a moll, too. I'll prove it. Want me to prove it?"

"How?"

"Like this," she said.

She knelt swiftly beside the dead man, and thrust a hand inside his
coat. She brought it out holding a huge automatic which she had taken
from under the corpse's left armpit. It was so heavy she had to hold
it in both hands as she pointed it at Ed.