Free Murder is the Pay-Off by Leslie Ford Page A

“I’m—I’m tired! Do you hear me? You’ve got to come home!”
    She saw the alarm in Gus Blake’s face change as she stamped her foot on the floor. Anger flashed up in his eyes, his jaw tightened in white hard ridges. “Gus, please! I’m tired, Gus!”
    Then she saw Carlson put his heavy hand on Gus’s arm.
    “Go on, Gus. It’s late. I’m goin’, too.”
    She turned, pushed the door open, and ran out again, across the dry ruts in the littered yard to the safe and cooling darkness of the car.
    “Take it easy, son,” Swede Carlson said. “High blood pressure boils the brain. And find out why Miss Maynard’s so upset, all of a sudden. From what I hear, she don’t get tired till four or five in the mornin’, and not from just sittin’ in a car. Go on, Gus. Maybe we’d both like to know.”
     
    The clock in the courthouse tower struck eleven as Janey reached the top of the narrow crooked stairs. She unlatched the folding gate that was there to keep little Jane from toppling down the steps, fastened it securely back again, and went along the passage to the front room where she and Gus slept. She switched on the light between the beds, went over to the dressing-table, and sat down, looking blindly into the mirror as she automatically pulled open the side drawer, put her velvet bag into it, closed it, and reached up and pulled the velvet bow off her hair. After a moment she got up and went back to little Jane’s room, picked up the warm sleeping child, took her to the bathroom, and brought her back, still half asleep. It was a nightly routine that ordinarily filled her with a warm glow of happiness. Tonight she went through it automatically, without feeling. She was too numbed to think or feel.
    She put the pink wool panda back up straight in the corner at the foot of the crib, facing the lop-eared white rabbit in the other corner, saw that the picture book was on the chair where little Jane could reach it if she woke first in the morning, and opened the window a little. Out in the hall she reached up to turn off the light and remembered that Gus never remembered about the gate across the stairs when he came in late, always bumped into it, always swore. She left the light on, started back to her room and stopped. Little Jane had waked.
    “Daddy.” Janey could hear her voice calling sleepily. “Daddy—little Dane wants a drink of water.” At two and a half she could pronounce all her letters except the J of her name. Blue-eyed and yellow-haired, she looked very like what she called herself. Her father called her the little Dane. The little Dane and the big Swede. It flashed into Janey’s mind. That was what he called the Chief of the County Constabulary. Her hand trembled as she went back to the girl’s door.
    “Daddy isn’t here yet,” she said. “He’ll get you a drink of water in the morning. Good night, sweet.”
    She heard the sleepy, “Night,” and closed the door. Her knees were watery-weak again. She put her hand on the rail across the stair well and stood there. She shouldn’t have thought of Chief Carlson. Doc Wernitz’s house was out in the country. The chief of the county police would be in charge. He’d be out there with Gus now. He was a friend of Gus’s. If he found the checks— She closed her eyes, holding on to the railing. It was all back again, all the writhing agony and despair. A thousand dollars, she thought dully. All the money she’d saved since Gus had turned over the accounts to her because he could never save anything. She’d worked so hard, and so gaily, saving it, had such fun shopping and planning, standing in line at the markets, making her own clothes and little Jane’s, doing everything she knew how to do. Nest egg, backlog, call it anything, money in the bank; something she’d worked so happily to build up for them, to match the secure enchantment of the other part of her life with Gus— and then turned on, tearing it down and throwing it away, when