Lay Her Among The Lilies

by James Hadley Chase

  "That's all I wanted to know."

  "Didn't the Captain tell you to lay off the Crosbys?"

  Now it was coming.

  "He mentioned it."

  "Maybe you think the Captain talks just to hear his own voice?"

  I looked from MacGraw to Hartsell and back to MacGraw again.

  "I don't know. Why not ask him?"

  "Don't get tricky, Wonder Boy. We don't like 'em tricky, do we, Joe?"

  Hartsell made an impatient movement. "For Pete's sake, let's get on with it," he said.

  "Get on with—what?" I asked.

  MacGraw leaned forward to spit at the wall again. Then he scattered ash on the carpet.

  "The Captain didn't seem happy about you, pally," he said, and grinned. "And when the Captain's unhappy he gets sore, and when he gets sore he takes it out of the boys, so we thought we'd better make him happy again. We figured the way to get his smile back would be to come and see you and give you a little work-out. We thought it would be a good idea to sort of smack your ears down: maybe tear them off. Then we thought it would be another good idea to sort of wreck your place; kick the furniture around and hack bits out of the wall. That's the way we figured it, didn't we, Joe?"

  Hartsell licked his thin lips and allowed a leer to come into his stony eyes. He took out a short length of rubber hose from his hip pocket and balanced it lovingly in his hand.

  "Yeah," he said.

  "And did you think what would happen if you carried out these good ideas?" I asked. "Did it ever occur to you I might sue for assault, and that someone like Manfred Willet might take you apart in court and get the badge off your coats? Did that come into your sweet little minds or was that something you overlooked?"

  MacGraw leaned forward and screwed his burning cigar down on the polished surface of the table. He glanced up, grinning.

  "You're not the first punk we've called on. Wonder Boy," he told me. "And you won't be the last. We know how to take care of lawyers. A lush like Willet doesn't scare us, and besides you won't take us to court. We came here to get a statement from you about Stevens. For some reason or other—maybe you don't like our faces, maybe you're a little drunk, maybe you have a boil where it hurts—anything will do, you get tough. In fact, Wonder Boy, you get very tough indeed; so tough me and Joe have to sort of restrain you, and while we're restraining you as gently as we possibly can, you get a little roughed up and the room sort of gets wrecked. But it's not our fault. We don't like it that way—not much, anyway, and if you hadn't disliked our faces or hadn't been a little drunk or hadn't had a boil where it hurts, it wouldn't have happened. That's what they call in court your word against two respectable, hardworking police officers', and even a lush like Willet couldn't make much out of it, and besides that we could take you to Headquarters and keep you in a nice quiet cell where the boys could drop in from time to time and wipe their boots on your face. It's a funny thing, but a lot of our boys like dropping in on certain of our prisoners and wiping their boots on their faces. I don't know why it is; probably they're high-spirited. So don't let's have any more talk about assault charges and badges off coats and smart lawyers; not unless you don't know what's good for you."

  I had a sudden cold feeling in my stomach. It would be my word against theirs. There was nothing to stop them arresting me and slinging me into a cell. By the time Willet got moving a lot of things could have happened. This didn't seem to be my evening for fun and games.

  "Got it all worked out, haven't you?" I said as calmly as the circumstances allowed.

  "We've got to, pally," MacGraw said, grinning. "There are too many punks making trouble, and our jail isn't that large. So we just hand out a little discipline every now and then and save the city some dough."

  I should have kept my eyes on Hartsell who was standing a few feet to my left and rear. Not that I could have done a great deal about it. They had me, and I knew it, and what was worse, they knew it, too. But all the same I was dumb not to have watched him. I heard a sudden swish and began to duck, but I was much, much too late. The rubber hose caught me on the top of the head and I fell forward on hands and knees.

  MacGraw was waiting for that, and his foot shot out; the square steel-tipped toe of his shoe caught me in the throat. I fell over on my side, trying to get breath through a constricted, contracting windpipe. Something hit me on the forearm, sending pain crawling up into my skull. Something thudded on the back of my neck; a sharp something crashed into my ribs.

  I rolled away, got on my hands and knees, saw Hartsell coming at me and tried to duck. The hose seemed to bounce against my brain; just as if the top of my head had been trepanned and my brain was there to be hit. I sprawled on to the carpet, clenching my fists, holding back the yell that tried to burst its way out of me.

  Hands grabbed me and hauled me to my feet. Through a misty-red curtain MacGraw seemed over-large, overbroad and over-ugly. I began to fall forward as he released me. I fell on his fist that was travelling towards me in a punch that sent me reeling across the room, knocking over the table. I landed on my back amid a shower of jig-saw nuzzle pieces.

  I lay still. The light in the ceiling came rushing towards me, stopped, and then rushed away again. It did that several times, so I closed my eyes. At the back of my mind I was thinking this could go on and on until they were tired, and it would take a lot to tire a couple of thugs like MacGraw and Hartsell. By the time they were through with me there wouldn't be a great deal left. I wondered dreamily why they didn't move in; why they left me lying on the floor. So long as I didn't move the pain that rode me was bearable. I didn't like to think what would happen to my head if I did move. It felt as if it were hanging on a thread. One little movement would be enough to send it rolling across the floor.

  Out of the pain and the mist I heard a woman say, "Is this your idea of fun?"

  A woman!

  That last punch must have made me slug-happy, I thought, or maybe it was the beating I had taken on top of my head.

  "This guy's dangerous, ma'm," MacGraw said in a gentle, little-boy-caught-in-the-pantry voice. "He was resisting arrest."

  "Don't you dare lie to me!" It was a woman's voice all right. "I saw what happened through the window."

  I wasn't going to miss this, even if it killed me. Very carefully I raised my head. All the veins, arteries and nerves in it yelled murder, pulsed, expanded and became generally hysterical, but I managed to sit up. The light dug arrows into my eyes, and for a moment or so I held my head in my hands. Then I peeped through my fingers.

  MacGraw and Hartsell were standing by the door looking as if their feet were resting on a red-hot stove. MacGraw had a cringing this-has-really-nothing-to-do-with-me smile on his face. Hartsell looked as if a mouse had run up his trousers leg.

  I turned, keeping my head still, and looked towards the french windows.

  A girl stood between the half-drawn curtains; a girl in a white strapless evening-gown that showed off her deeply-tanned shoulders and the snug little hollow between her breasts. Her raven-black hair lay about her shoulders in a page-boy bob. I had a little trouble in focussing, and her beauty came to me slowly like a picture thrown on the screen by an amateur projectionist. The blurred outlines of her face slowly became sharp-etched. The misty hollows that were her eyes filled in and came alive. An oval, small-featured, very lovely face with a small, perfectly-moulded nose, red sensual lips and wide, big eyes as dark and as hard as nuggets of coal.

  Even with the blood pounding in my head and my throat aching and my body feeling as if it had been fed through a wringer, I felt the impact of this girl's allurement the way I had felt the impact of MacGraw's fist. She not only had the looks, but she also had that thing: you could see it there in her eyes, the way she stood, in the curves of her body, in the tanned column of her throat: shouting at you like the twenty-foot letters on an advertising hoarding.

  "How dare you beat this man!" she said in a voice which carried across the room with the heat and the for
ce of a flame-thrower. "Is this Brandon's idea?"

  "Now look, Miss Crosby," MacGraw said pleadingly. "This guy's been sticking his snout into your affairs. The Captain thought maybe we should discourage him. Honest, that's all there's to it."

  For the first time as far as I knew she turned her head to stare at me. I couldn't have looked a particularly pretty object. I knew I had collected a number of bumps and bruises and the cut on my right cheek where the Wop had hit me was bleeding again. Somehow I managed to grin at her: a little crooked, not much heart in it, but still, a grin.

  She looked at me the way you look at a frog that's jumped into your morning cup of coffee.

  "Get up!" she snapped. "You can't be as badly hurt as all that."

  But then she hadn't been slapped over the skull three or four times or kicked in the throat and ribs or punched in the jaw, so it wasn't fair to expect her to know if I was badly hurt or not.

  Maybe it was because she was such a lovely that I made the effort and somehow got to my feet. We Malloys have our pride, and we don't like our women to think we are soft. I had to grab hold of the back of a chair as soon as I was on my feet, and I very nearly spread out on the floor again, but, by clinging on and riding the pain that went shooting down into my heels and back again to my skull like a roller-coaster gone haywire, I began to come out of it and get what is termed my second wind.

  MacGraw and Hartsell were looking at me the way tigers look at a lump of meat that's been sneaked out of their cage.

  She began speaking to them again in that scornful, blistering voice:

  "I don't like your sort. And I'm going to do something about it. If this is the way Brandon runs his police force the sooner he gets the hell out of it the better!"

  While MacGraw was mumbling excuses I set my compass and steered a zigzag-course towards the overturned whisky bottle. The cork was well home so no damage had been done. It was quite a feat to bend and pick it up, but I managed it. I anchored myself to the mouthpiece and drank.

  "And before you go you're having a taste of your own medicine," she was saying, and, as I lowered the bottle, she thrust the rubber cosh she had picked up towards me. "Go on, hit them!" she said viciously. "Get your own back!"

  I took the cosh because otherwise she would probably have pushed it down my throat, and I looked at Hartsell and MacGraw, who stared back at me like two pigs waiting to have their throats slit.

  "Hit them!" she repeated, her voice rising. "It's time someone did. They'll take it. I'll see to that."

  It was an extraordinary thing, but I was pretty sure they would have stood there and let me beat their heads off.

  I tossed the cosh on to the settee.

  "Not me, Lady, that's not the way I get my fun," I said, my voice sounding like a record being played with a blunt gramophone needle.

  "Hit them!" she commanded furiously. "What are you frightened of? They won't dare touch you again. Beat them up!"

  "Sorry," I said. "It wouldn't amuse me. Let's turn them out. They're lousing up the room."

  She turned, snatched up the cosh and walked up to MacGraw. His white face turned yellow, but he didn't move. Her arm flashed up and she hit him across his face. An ugly red weal sprang up on his flabby cheek. He gave a whimpering grunt, but he still didn't move.

  As her arm flashed up again I grabbed her wrist and snatched the cosh out of her hand. The effort cost me a stab of pain through the head and a hard-stinging slap across the face from Miss Spitfire. She tried to get the cosh from me, but I held on to her wrists and yelled: "Beat it, you two lugs! Beat it before she knocks the hell out of you! "

  Holding her was like holding an angry tigress. She was surprisingly strong. As I wrestled with her MacGraw and Hartsell charged out of the room as if the devil was after them. They fell down the steps in their hurry to get away. When I heard their car start up I released her wrists and stepped away.

  "Take it easy," I said, panting with my exertions. "They've gone now."

  For a moment she stood gasping, her face set and her eyes blazing; a lovely thing of fury, and then the anger went and her eyes lost their explosive quality and she suddenly threw back her head and laughed.

  "Well, we certainly scared the daylights out of those two rats, didn't we?" she said, and flopped limply on the settee. "Give me a drink and have one yourself. You certainly look as if you need one."

  As I reached for the bottle I said, looking at her intently, "The name, of course, is Maureen Crosby?"

  "You've guessed it." She rubbed her wrists, making a comical grimace. "You've hurt me, you brute!"

  "Sorry," I said, and meant it.

  "Lucky I looked in. If I hadn't they would have had your hide by now."

  "So they would," I said, pouring four fingers of Scotch into a glass. My hand was very unsteady and some of the whisky splashed on to the carpet. I handed her the glass, and began to fix myself a drink. "Whiterock or water?"

  "In its bare skin," she returned, holding the glass up to the light. "I don't believe in mixing business with pleasure or water with Scotch. Do you?"

  "It depends on the business and the Scotch," I said, and sat down. My legs felt as if the shin bones had been removed. "So you are Maureen Crosby. Well, well, quite the last person I expected to call on me."

  I thought you would be surprised." There was a mocking expression in the dark eyes and the smile was calculated.

  "How's the drug cure going?" I asked, watching her. "I've always heard a dopie should lay off liquor."

  She continued to smile, but her eyes were not amused.

  "You shouldn't believe all you hear."

  I drank some of the whisky. It was very strong. I shuddered and put the glass on the table.

  "I don't. I hope you don't either."

  We sat for a long moment, looking at each other. She had the knack of making her face expressionless without losing her loveliness which was quite an achievement.

  "Don't let's get complicated. I'm here to talk to you. You're making a lot of trouble. Isn't it time you took your little spade and dug in someone else's graveyard?"

  I made believe to think this over.

  "Are you just asking or is this a proposition?" I said finally.

  Her mouth tightened and the smile went away.

  "Can you be bought? I was told you were one of those clean, simple, non-grafting characters. I was particularly advised not to offer you money."

  I reached for a cigarette.

  "I thought we had agreed we didn't believe all we heard," I said, leaning forward to offer the cigarette. She took it, so I had to reach for another. Lighting hers caused me another stab of pain in the head and didn't improve my temper.

  "It could be a proposition," she said, leaning back and blowing smoke at the ceiling. "How much?"

  "What are you trying to buy?"

  She studied the cigarette as if she hadn't seen one before, said, without looking at me, "I don't want trouble. You're making trouble. I might pay you to stop."

  "What's it worth?"

  She looked at me then.

  "You know you're a big disappointment to me. You're just like any of the other slimy little blackmailers."

  "You'd know about them, of course."

  "Yes; I know all about them. And when I tell you what I think it's worth I suppose you will laugh the way they always laugh and raise the ante. So you will tell me what it's worth to you and give me the chance to laugh."

  I suddenly didn't want to go on with this. Maybe my head was aching too badly; maybe, even, I found her so attractive I didn't want her to think me a heel.

  "All right, let's skip it," I said. "I was kidding. I can't be bought. Maybe I could be persuaded. What makes you think I'm stirring up trouble? State your case. If it's any good I might take my spade and go dig elsewhere."

  She regarded me for perhaps ten seconds, thoughtfully, silently and a little doubtfully.

  "You shouldn't kid about those things," she said seriously. "You might get yourself
disliked. I wouldn't like to dislike you unless I had a reason."

  I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes.

  "That's fine. Are you just talking to gain time or do you mean that?"

  "I was told you had the manners of a hog and a way with women. The hog part is right."

  I opened my eyes to leer at her.

  "The woman part is on the level, too, but don't rush me."

  Then the telephone rang, startling us both. It was right by me, and as I reached for it she dipped swiftly into her handbag and brought out a .25 automatic. She pushed the gun against the side of my head, the little barrel rested on my skin.

  "Sit where you are," she said, and there was a look in her eyes that froze me. "Leave the telephone alone!"