The Menace: A Thriller

— Found—

On the occasion of the 75^th anniversary of Mike Hammer’s first appearance in I, the Jury (1947), we are including with the novel The Menace, as a bonus feature, the short story The Duke Alexander, which bears upon two key aspects of Mickey Spillane’s storytelling career.

During our friendship — which began in 1981 when we appeared together at the 1981 Bouchercon, the annual convention for mystery fans and professionals — Mickey shared various things with me from his files that he thought I might get a kick out of. These included two Mike Hammer manuscripts, each of which represented the first third of an unpublished novel. As it happened, I would eventually complete both (The Big Bang, 2010, and Complex 90, 2013) after his passing.

Another partial manuscript he shared was of the very first Mike Hammer novel (Killing Town, 2018), pre-dating I, the Jury and never completed by Mickey, and the unpublished, unfinished sequel to The Delta Factor (The Consummata, 2011). Again, I would eventually complete those works for him, honoring a request he made of me a few weeks before his death in 2006.

Mike Hammer was, obviously, Mickey’s signature character (his “bread and butter boy,” as he put it) but, strangely, he never published a short story about his famous private eye, other than condensations (by other hands) of his last two Hammer novels. Though Mickey frequently published short fiction, none of it starred his most famous character.

On one of my trips to his home in South Carolina, Mickey handed me the “The Duke Alexander,” saying it was something he prepared in the 1950s for Mickey Rooney (and indeed a notation on the folder containing the pages specified it as such). I was astounded to find it was a Hammer story, but became confused when I read it, because it didn’t seem like Mike Hammer at all.

For one thing, it was a humorous yarn told in a Damon Runyon-style voice Mickey never employed elsewhere. The crime aspects were minimal, and the dual identity situation at its core brought to mind The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), the swashbuckler by Anthony Hope that Mickey considered one of his three favorite books. The other two, in a similar vein, were The Three Musketeers (1844) and The Count of Monte Cristo (1844), both by Alexandre Dumas. Mickey’s The Erection Set is a modern reworking of the latter, and the former bears upon the shocking finale of The Three Musketeers (also, Mickey claimed in his comic-book scripting days to have written the scripts for the Classics Comics versions of both Dumas novels).

And for another thing, in “The Duke Alexander,” Hammer asks a woman who is not Velda to marry him!

Curiouser and curiouser.

As was par for the course, Mickey didn’t recall (or at least pretended not to) anything beyond “Duke” being something he put together for Mickey Rooney... who would have made an offbeat choice to play Mike Hammer, to say the least.

The manuscript was difficult to make out — a faded mimeograph — but as the only existing (and unpublished) Hammer short story, it was of course worth the effort. But when I set out with my fellow Spillane enthusiast Lynn Myers to put together a collection for Crippen & Landru of mostly non-fiction by Mickey, we decided (for commercial reasons if nothing else) to include “The Duke Alexander.”

The shape of the manuscript, however, meant a lot of educated guesswork was required. Both Lynn and I worked hard at deciphering it, and Spillane expert James Traylor took a swing at it, too. We all three did our best, and it was published as part of Byline: Mickey Spillane (2004).

Shortly before his death, Mickey asked his wife Jane to round up all of his unpublished material for me. Among these extensive materials, I ran across a different, earlier version of “The Duke Alexander.” What I came upon was — is — a typescript with Mickey’s own minor revisions and corrections in pen.

In this, the original version, Hammer is not the protagonist — which explains why the story as Lynn and I published it just didn’t sound like Mike. The hero here is Joe Moran, who runs a small-town garage and is on vacation.

It’s likely when Mickey Rooney requested something from Mickey Spillane, the former Andy Hardy insisted that it star Mike Hammer. In any event, in creating a version of the story for Mickey Rooney, the major thing Mickey Spillane did was substitute Hammer’s name and replace the garage with the detective’s office and swap out the small town for Mike’s Manhattan.

As the Rooney connection indicates, for a good portion of his career Mickey was very focused on Hollywood, even though he said he hated the place. He had a genuine interest in producing films, starting with a (lost) Mike Hammer test film he wrote and directed himself in the early 1950s featuring his friend Jack Stang, an ex-Marine and (then) current cop. Mickey was also involved on the producing end of The Girl Hunters (in which he starred as Hammer) and the screenplay for The Menace indicates his continued interest in producing and possibly directing film as late as the early ’80s.

With the exception of some minor editing (spelling, missing words, etc.), this version of The Duke Alexander restores the original, and demonstrates that while Lynn and I (and Jim) did pretty well guessing when the mimeograph got too faded to read, we didn’t always get it right.

As for Mike Hammer short fiction, there is now a volume (A Long Time Dead, 2016), collecting seven of the nine Hammer stories I completed from fragments in Mickey’s files. The other two are included as bonus material with the 75^th anniversary Hammer novel, Kill Me If You Can, published by Titan Books.

For now, however, The Duke Alexander is (as Rod Serling used to say) submitted for your approval as the one and only Joe Moran tale.

Finally, we are including a second bonus feature by way of a rare Spillane excursion into true crime, published in 1952 at the height of Mickey’s Mike Hammer success. Essentially a lost story itself, The Too-Careful Killer has not been seen since its appearance in the Sunday supplement section, American Weekly.

M.A.C.

June 2021

The Duke Alexander

I’m only minding my own business, see? I’m sitting there next to the window crouched down behind a magazine so the porter would get the idea and go away. All morning long he’s been on my back, bringing me water, steering me to the diner and even shaving me. Yeah, he hauls me in the lounge outside the men’s room and gives me a lather and blade job before I wake up even.

Sure, I slip him a buck and he says, “Thank you, Duke, sar.” Then I go back to my seat with him standing so close I can reach out and touch him. Nobody else gets this treatment. Just me. The guy’s got everybody turning around to look and I feel like a bug in the customer’s potatoes.

If I go to move, he’s right there with, “Somethin’ I can do, Duke, sar?” and no matter what I say he does it anyway. Can’t even comb my hair. Duke, sar. That’s all the guy knows. I told him my name was Joe and if he’s gotta call me anything, call me that. So what happens.

“Yes, sar, Joe Duke sar,” he says.

What a train. What a vacation.

Anyway, like I said, I’m only minding my own business when along comes this bozo. He looks like a lampshade in a double-breasted suit that doesn’t fit and waddles up the aisle like a duck. Every time he passes a seat he looks at the guy sitting there, shakes his head, then moves on. That is, until he gets to me. He gives one peek at me behind my magazine and his eyebrows shoot up to his hatband.

He shrieks, “Ah, you scoundrel... you... you brigand! So you think to elude me. You are contrariwise! He who is the retiree from the Sûreté. Now I have you caught flatfooted and never will you get away again until you pay me my moneys!”

What can a guy do in a situation like that?

I yell, “Scram, ya bum, before I brain ya!”

Yeah, I was pretty mad. Does he flinch? Nix... not a bit. He perches his hands on his hips and taps his foot impatiently.

After a couple of “humphs,” he says, “No... do not tell me. This time it is that you have the amnesia. You do not fool me, for I, Alfred, know who you are. Now, do I get my moneys?”

“No,” I tell him, good and loud.

He smacks his lips a few times. “You say no. How can you sit there and... all right, tell me why it is no.”

“Because I don’t owe ya none. Now scram.”

“Oh, I am distressed. Overcome I am.” He holds his head and shudders. “This country, she is mad. I demand payment!”

Real calm like, I tell him, “Chum, would you like a punch in the nose?”

I get a real hurt look for that remark. “Of course, certainly not. The thought is horrible to me. Why?”

“Because that’s what you’ll get if ya don’t get outa here.”

“Ah ha! Now it is that you will assault me. Very well, we shall see. I assure you that the gendarmerie will not treat the matter so lightly as I. You are practically chained to the wall of the bastille right now!” The jerk snaps his fingers in my face. “Poof! I go, but I shall return... then you will go, as they say in this country, to the hoosegoo!”

Then he stamps off down the car with his chin out further than Mussolini’s, slightly forcefully assisted through the door by a shove from my buddy, the porter. Natch, old toothy grin is my pal from then on. I wave him over confidentially.

“Look,” I whisper, “we got a Section Eight car tagged to this train?”

“Section Eight, Duke, sar?” His face is blank, so I circle my finger around my temple and he gets the idea, then he makes like it was quite a joke. “No, sar, not so’s I recollect. Very funny, Duke, Sar.”

So I shrug my shoulders and go back to my mag. It’s only ten minutes before we get to Washington, where I change to the Great Southern Special, then I’ll be out of this rolling booby hatch.

That’s what I thought.

I had a half-hour layover so I walk up to the reservation desk to see if I can do any good about getting myself a bunk for the night instead of doing my sleeping at right angles to myself.

Do any good? Man, the guy at the desk gives me a pair of wide eyes, then all of a sudden I am with what amounts to the presidential suite on wheels. He’s all splutters and spluts, so I don’t get half what he’s talking about. But I sign my name, he gives me a very knowing smile like he’s been let in on a state secret, and the merry-go-round starts to twirl again.

What a vacation!

Two porters grab my bags and zip off, but instead of following them, I duck into a normal looking place where a bored babe in gingham slides me a plate of bacon and eggs, no questions asked, and I get some of my strength back.

I shouldn’t’ve taken so long to eat. Before I know it I hear my train being announced and I rip out of there on the double. You know what the squeeze is like in a train station. Sixty-five people trying to get through a four-foot doorway at the same time. That’s where they got the name bottleneck — opening the gates is like pulling the cork. Everybody jams together, then pop... they get blown through. Sometimes they lose their clothes, sometimes their baggage. Just as I was compressed into the breech I thought I lost my head.

A millimeter away I am staring at my own face! It takes one look at me and says, “Eek, I am seeing double! You are not me, so who am I?”

But before I can think of an answer to that one, someone pulls the trigger and I am shot through on the way to the train. Luckily, one of the porters gets me, or I would have ended up with the engineer.

At half past twelve that night, I pop straight up in my berth. I flip the shade up so I can see my reflection in the glass and say, “That you, Joe?” The image nods back vigorously, but I hold my hand under my chin just to be sure it’s my own skull doing the bobbing, then try on a few grimaces for size. When I’m sure I’m not suffering a case of overdue battle fatigue, I throw my hands up and flop back to sleep.

Okay, now do you blame me for trying to get out of there on the fly when we hit Memphis? But do you think it did any good? Huh! Before the train has jerked to a stop, I am down at the wrong end, tossing my bags out on the platform and jumping for it.

I don’t know what I expected, but it sure wasn’t a million bucks worth of southern fried chick in a gray twill suit, with a face to make you stop breathing and a figure to give you artificial respiration.

She has the prettiest little drawl, but the way she looks at me makes me feel like I just crawled out from under a rock.

She says, “I figured you’d have to come this way. Fortunately, Pam has a cold and couldn’t meet you.”

I try to talk but can’t think of anything to say. Southern-fried motions with her beautiful blonde head. “The car is out back. Come along.”

She doesn’t need a leash, I heel perfectly. I’m far from being even a medium-size guy, but this dish comes to where I’d hardly have to bend my head to kiss her. She has more dough on her back than I have in the bank, but already I have ideas about keeping her in buckskins. I think to myself that maybe this isn’t going to be such a bad vacation after all. When we get to the extra deluxe super sports special that she obligingly calls a car, I change my mind.

She turns her head and can’t keep the sneer out of her eyes.

“I want you to understand something,” she tells me. “It is three days until the wedding. During that time I’ll do everything in my power to make my silly sister see the light and chase you back to wherever you came from. If that doesn’t work, maybe a little violence will help.” Then I get the world’s nastiest look. “You’ll stay a lot healthier if you take the hint now,” she reminds me.

About that time I get my voice back. It isn’t as strong as usual, but I can make a speech with it.

“Now, look, sis,” I grind out, “ordinarily I’m a fairly bright boy, but I’ve been swinging at curves ever since I left home only hitting nothin’ but pop flies. Just what in blazes goes on around here? I try to take a vacation and I get treated like a king, threatened like a criminal, then tossed back to the dogs like a college freshman at the senior prom. I even talk to myself face to face and that ain’t logical. At first I thought it was me, but now I think the whole world is bats but me. Am I or ain’t I Joe Moran with a little garage up in Holly Corners? Is this or ain’t it a vacation where I’m supposed to have a good time? And just who the hell are you?”

Think that makes an affect? Nuts!

She says, “You can stop being incognito with me, Alex. I can see you’ve spent a good deal of time being indoctrinated in colorful American expressions, but for the time being you can put your garage away and just be sure that my sister is one curve that isn’t going to be tossed at you. Incidentally, I’m Pam’s big sister. You know — the grouchy one... Vi. Now let’s go before the brass band Mother brought along finds out you’ve taken a powder. Daddy is waiting to have a prenuptial chat with you... alone.”

So where does that leave me?

If I take off on my own, there is no telling what will happen. As least here I can put in a plug for myself if I need it. I like to know what’s going on. Besides, I was getting ideas about straightening out some of Vi’s curves. She sure could pitch ’em. I throw my bags in the back and get in the car.

We drive for about an hour without saying a word, and then pull up to a place that seems to be a small mountain with the top cut off. Part of the Great Wall of China keeps out busybodies, and the fancy sign that hangs on the post by the driveway reads HATHAWAY HEIGHTS. It should have been called Incredible Heights, because if you didn’t see it, you’d never believe it. Moolah is written all over the place, from the crew-cut lawns to the mansion that peeks at me through the magnolia trees.

A small army of servants march out and surround the car. One picks up my bags like they were dirty socks and tiptoes in with them. When Vi gets out they all bow like the Rockettes, but with me I get a lifting of the upper lip and a nod. At the end of the line is the chauffeur who mutters something very nasty as I go past. That does it. I turn on my heel and walk back.

The guy has got one of those faces. For a chauffeur he’s a grade A thug. Busted nose, thick lips and scar tissue over the eyes.

I say, “Punchy, did you just make silly sounds with your fat mouth?”

His hands fold into big hams.

“No, sir,” he answers. Then as I go to walk away he mutters, “You’ll get yours later!”

I’m a good guy, see? I can hold my temper just so long, and if I expect to hold it much longer, I have to get out of there. I look back at him over my shoulder and he must have thought I was scared, so he sneers at me.

Vi grabs my arm as I go up the steps. She is being very sweet all of a sudden.

“Daddy’s waiting to meet you, Alex. You’re going to like daddy, and if you want him to like you real much, you’ll do just as he asks, won’t you, dear?”

She melts my temper with that “dear.” I give her a big, dreamy smile. “Why don’t you do the asking, honey?”

Just like that she drops my arm.

“Louse!” she snaps.

What a shavetail! She gets over it fast. The sweet smile comes back and she steers me into the library. I’ve been in libraries before, and this one is just as big and just as quiet. And it has just as many books. Only the others never had a male librarian who looks and scowls like a bear ready to jump on you as you come in.

Before the bear can move, Vi says, “Daddy, this is the Duke Alexander. I’m sure he’s going to be reasonable.”

The bear stands up. He is even bigger than me, and like I already told you, I’m no midge. He says, “Am I supposed to bow or shake hands?”

I don’t know what I’m expected to do, but if he wasn’t Vi’s old man, I would have plastered him. As it is, I stick out my hand.

“Ain’t I pleased to meetcha,” I say.

The bear shows his teeth, wipes his hand on his pants like I do back in the garage, and mitts me.

Right away I can see this is a game with the old boy. Vi smiles happily as his hand starts to crush mine into pulp and remarks, “Daddy used to be a steelworker, Alex. You wouldn’t know it though, would you?”

I wait until Daddy is sweating a little bit, then step up the pressure some more.

“Really?” I am being real bright. “I never would have known it. I was in the game a while myself.”

Then I look straight at daddy. He is getting red in the face and he plants his feet and gives it a last effort.

“Yes, sir,” I say when I hear his knuckles start to pop. “Ain’t I sure pleased to meetcha.”

Daddy is real glad to let go of my hand. The old bear is a little on the cub side now, but his teeth still show. He drops in a chair behind the giant-sized desk and rubs his sore hand so I can’t see it. Vi has her lip between her teeth.

“Sit down,” he barks.

So I sit.

Daddy gets right down to business. He pulls open a drawer and yanks out an oversize checkbook. “I imagine you know why I wanted to see you, Duke. Ever since I’ve had a bankroll, a royalty-minded wife, and one foolish daughter, I’ve been keeping half the courts in Europe in cheese and crackers. Now how much do you want to go back where you came from?”

Well, it takes me a long time, but I am beginning to catch on. If I have any sense, I will spout off a figure, grab it and head for Holly Corners. But I don’t have much sense. You can have fun on a vacation in more ways than one.

“Nuts, daddy dear,” I grin, “I like it here.”

Vi slams her palm against the arm of her chair. “Okay, Daddy, he wants to play it dumb. He won’t take a cash settlement because he thinks he can marry Pam and get all he wants. Let him go ahead. Let him try. Just let him try!”

“I’ll be damned if I will!” He is a mad bear again. “Do you get out of here or do I throw you out?”

The ugly chauffeur must be listening outside, because he comes in on cat feet. “You callin’ me, sir? Want I should t’row the bum out?”

Mama saves the day for somebody.

I know it is Mama, because she is just what you expect to find in a joint like this. She bursts into the room leading a pack of people that must have been the local society, because there are more diamonds and fancy duds than at Tiffany’s. Her face is a smile, from ear to ear, and she spreads her arms wide open and shrieks, “Why, Duke! You naughty, naughty boy! Surprising us at home like this, just when I was beginning to believe you had missed your connections!”

“Hiya, mama,” I say. Then I squeeze her good. If they want an act, then they are going to get an act. It is about time I get into this game. Over her shoulder, I began to wave at everybody and they wave back. Some duck grabs my hand and pumps it. Two babes crowding fifty try to bow and almost split a dress. They get helped to their feet.

“But your voice, Duke... it has changed,” mama says curiously.

“Sure. I got some jerk from Brooklyn to gimme lessons in American and now I talk just like people. Good, ain’t I? Now I fit in.”

I sure made a funny with that one. Mama clutches her bosom. “Why, how quaint! Duke, you’re marvelous.”

Vi doesn’t think so, though. I see her looking at me, her face as black as a thunderhead. As they say in books, I am getting a look that could kill.

Not to get Vi and Pop in bad with the battle-axe, I dummy up a story as how I got off the wrong car at the train and was very luckily recognized by their charming elder daughter.

Then I spring the sticker. “But how’s about Pam. Where’s she?”

Mama pets my arm. “The poor dear has a horrible cold. But I’m sure she’s dying to see you at once. George! Why didn’t you show the Duke upstairs when he arrived? The poor boy has traveled thousands of miles to see his intended and you keep him away. Shame!”

Everybody snickers but Pop and Vi. They haven’t got a word in edgewise yet.

Mama takes my arm. “Come along... son. I know you can’t wait to see your beloved.”

“You can say that again, Mom.”

Her bosom rises and falls in a wind-tunnel sigh. She says to herself, “‘Mom’... just imagine, having a real duke in the family.”

I feel like adding “...at last” to her thoughts, because the way she says it, she has been trying for a long time.

Two maids are playing watchdog outside the door that keep Pam’s germs to herself. They part to let Mama do the honors, and with a flourish she throws the door open and pipes, “Pam, dear, there’s someone to see you.”

With that she shoves me and I get propelled into milady’s boudoir.

Pam is laying back in bed holding a frilly handkerchief up to her nose, blinking at me through watery eyes. She lets out, “Oh, Alexander, to think you have to find me like this!” Then sets up a wailing that brings the house down.

I say, “Aw, take it easy kid. You only got a cold. How’s every little thing?”

“But, Alex, you’re speaking in English!”

“American,” I correct her.

Behind me I heard the door open a little, so I spread it on thick. “Ain’t I gonna get a little hello kiss, sugar?”

“You are not!”

Vi comes at me with claws out, then remembers herself mighty sudden like. “Alex, we don’t want you catching Pam’s cold... not with the wedding so close.” She looks at her sister. “Don’t you agree, Pam?”

My intended wrinkles up into a sneeze and Vi pulls the covers up around her. She looks at us both very confidentially. “Now I’ll tell you what we’ll do. While you’re recovering from the nasty cold, I’ll have Alexander escort me around town and meet all your friends. Don’t you think that will be best?”

“You... you sure you don’t mind, Vi?”

“Not at all, darling.”

“But... Alex...”

I say, “Don’t worry about me, kid. I wanna get to know the lay of the land around here anyway. And don’t worry about Vi here. You can trust her, all right.”

I pick up Pam’s limp hand from the bed and plant a smacker on her palm. “There’s some healthy germs for you, Honey-bunch.”

“Oh, Alex, you’re so sweet,” she says.

Vi mutters something I didn’t get.

Mama meets us outside the door and Vi tells her the plans. I can see right off that Mama doesn’t like the idea, but I tut-tut her objections and everything is okay again. Boy, this was the berries. With mama, the duke could do no wrong.

We take the tunnel entrance to the library where the old bear is camped in his den ready to pick my bones. When we come in he and the chauffeur, who are yappity-yapping at close range, jump back trying to wipe the smug looks off their pans, and I know that the no-good being bred had just been born.

Yep, maybe this wasn’t gonna be such a bad vacation after all. Sometime during the day I had to get a wire off to my buddies who were expecting me at the fishing camp so they wouldn’t tear up the countryside looking for me. Those guys were always pretty loyal to a mug who could never stay out of trouble.

The chauffeur takes off at a nod from Popsie and leaves the three of us there alone. The bear keeps an ear cocked for Mama’s footsteps and growls, “Well?”

“Alex is going to be my escort for a while, Dad,” Vi tells him. I can see the funny smile playing around with her mouth. “A sister’s duty, you know.”

The bear stares at me. “I’m only going to ask you once more. How much will you take to clear out of here? Name it and it’s yours. I’m willing to go any price to make sure my daughter marries a man instead of a gigolo with a title.”

“How about ten or twenty million.” I wink at him.

His face got red up to his hair. “All right, Vi, escort the gentleman about town. Be sure he sees the sights. All of them,” he adds significantly.

I don’t even get time to change my shorts. Out we go, not to the sports special, but to a shining black limousine. Parked behind the wheel is Punchy, licking his chops. Vi climbs in with me after her and the wheels spin in the gravel. Wherever we’re going, we’re in a hurry.

“Nice country around here,” I observe.

“Take a good look at it while you still can see it,” she pops back.

Right then I think it is time for a heart to heart talk.

“Look, sister. Set me straight on the rules, will ya? I’m having a swell time and all that, but leave us name some places so I can figure ahead of time. I’ve been climbing a tree ever since I left Holly Corners.”

“Quit the act, Alex. I’m disgusted with you, your phony American accent and anything connected with you. This afternoon you had a chance to leave well enough alone, but you wouldn’t have it. All right, take it any way you want, but you’re not going to marry Pam if I can help it. We don’t want your kind near us. Mother’s title-happy and you’re money-mad. Poor Dad is the one who has to pay for it. Pam will forget you in a month or so, but if we have to go through much more of these international affairs, Daddy will wind up in the sanitarium.”

“But you got me all wrong, baby. Ya see, there’s been a switch. My tag is Joe Moran...”

“Yes, I know,” Vi interrupts, “you have a garage in Holly Corners and you’re on vacation.”

“Yeah, that’s it. All along the line people have been calling me Duke. Say, who is this guy anyway?”

Vi turns and passes me over slowly. There is no doubt in her voice when she says, “Alex, although this is the first I’ve ever seen you in the flesh, so to speak, your picture has been staring at us from Pam’s room clipped out of every newspaper society column for this last year. All I’ve heard since mother and Pam came back from Europe is Alex this and Alex that. You are a very clever actor, Alex. I imagine your kind must have to be. But it is no use. That scar on your cheek is not fake, is it? You got that in a duel, I heard. One you lost.”

“As a matter of fact, cherub, I got it when some babe hit me with a flowerpot. I was twelve years old.”

“And your eyes are not the same color, one blue, one brown. How do you account for that?”

“You mean the other guy’s got sad-sack eyes too? Amazing!”

“...The same height, about six-one I should imagine. Yes, you even weigh the same, one-eighty.”

“Two-oh-six,” I put in.

“So you see, Alex, you don’t have to try to assume another identity with me. You have too many definite characteristics. I know you for what you are.”

“Aw, phooey,” I say.

I am getting sick of it all now. I am just about to tell Punchy to take me back when he starts to slow down. We are way the devil out in the country, off on a side road somewhere. The birds and the bugs are trying to out-chirp each other and if I hadn’t been sore I might have enjoyed the scenery. Punchy gets out, opens the back door.

“This way... sir,” he snarls.

“What do you want?”

“I want to show you somethin’. Come on, hop out.”

Vi smirks, “Don’t worry. It will be very interesting — jerk!”

Now she is making me even madder. I climb out and Punchy takes a little path up the field with me behind him. When we round the bend in the trees, he throws his cap on the ground, gives me the old leer and snaps a roundhouse right over on me.

Poor Punchy, his timing is shot to hell. I kinda bend at the knees until it goes over my head, then tap him like the trainer used to tell me to, right where it counts. Punchy does a buck and wing, flaps his arms like a crow then sits down, his eyes like marbles. I put his hat back on him and picked him up.

Vi comes running out to meet me. “Nick!” she yells. “What happened to Nick?”

“He was gonna show me something and he tripped and his head hit a tree. What was he gonna show me up there, anyway?”

“Nothing,” she snaps.

Vi doesn’t know whether to believe me or not. I stow Punchy in the back seat and get behind the wheel.

“You come with me,” I tell her. “By damn, I’m going to have me a vacation and you’re going to like it.”

She slides in alongside me, but she doesn’t like it. It takes me a half-hour to get feeling good again. Hightailing it along the open road in the fancy rig is something and ahead of me is the city. Yes, sir, I sure was enjoying myself.

That is, until I hear the siren come screaming up beside me. Two big state troopers give me the heave-to sign, but since they have me dead to rights anyway, I am going to have a little fun out of it. I tramp on the gas and yell, “Hang on, baby!”

Boy oh boy, what a ride it is. Vi is shouting at the top of her lungs for me to slow down and each time she hollers, I jump the needle up a notch. The police car is dropping away fast when I hear a couple of slugs smack the back of the heap. I’m allergic to bullets. And those guys aren’t fooling. The turns save us. We have a two hundred-foot lead and bullets can’t shoot around corners. Then when we hit the straightaway, I give it everything she has, and when I look in the mirror, you could hardly see the black sedan.

“You fool!” Vi says. “You’ll kill us all. Stop this instant!”

“Why, chick, I thought you had nerve. Golly, if I thought a little thing like that would scare a red-blooded American gal like you, why I’d...”

“Who’s afraid? Pam said you’d never driven a car in your life and I don’t want to be run off a cliff by a crazy maniac at the wheel of something he’s never handled!”

“Oh, there isn’t a cliff for miles. Relax.”

I don’t slow down a fraction until we hit the city limits, then I lead a rat race up and down every street and alley I can find. We can hear sirens all over the place by that time. Every cop on wheels is cruising the town with an eye out for the limousine. I park outside a theater, grab Vi, and yank her out on the sidewalk.

“Now what, bright boy?”

“So we’ll leave Punchy behind and he can tell the bulls how he was held up by a maniac, slugged and taken for a ride. Come on, we have a vacation to enjoy.”

I pull her down the street on the gallop, and turn into the first place that carries a beer sign in the window.

But we don’t get a beer. A miniature tornado jumps from a table and points a finger at me.

“It is you! So you think you evade your debts. Now I have you on the spots and will wring my moneys from you. Garcon! Garcon! Call the gendarmes... at once. This man is a crook!”

“Not you again, pally,” I yip.

It is Alfred from the train.

“So,” Vi howls, “they even chase you in this country to get their money back. Now you’re in for it... and brother, will I squeal on you! You won’t get back to the old country for ten years! Waiter, call the cops!”

He doesn’t have to be told twice. When Vi lets loose, four guys detach themselves from another table and move to cover the doorway. This kind of response I can understand. I grab a pair of chairs and go for the roadblock.

If I could reach it, I’d be out of there in nothing flat, because the opposition doesn’t like the way I am moving those pieces of chromed steel and leather, but a hundred-twenty pounds of southern fried chick take me out high, and a butterball of one-fifty name of Alfred does the same down low, and the opposition moves in for the pile-up. A referee in navy blue blows the whistle, and I go to the Black Maria.

I guess I am the only sad one on the trip to the station. Alfred smirks and makes faces. “Now even if I have to sell the suits on your back,” he says, “I will get my moneys. Aha, you never get away from Alfred as long as I live. We shall see anon. Aha!”

“Aha yourself and shut up.”

“So! You still insist you do not know me. Ho. So I will prove it to you who you are. Tonight you have a nice bed in the clink and I will have my moneys. So! Ho!”

“And I,” says Vi, “will send you cigarettes. Nice moldy ones.”

The cop at the end of the paddy wagon tells everybody to shut up. Which is fine with me. I need time to think. The wagon tears down the main drag, makes a right turn and brakes screech.

I climb out of the cage with the cop standing by, one hand on a billy, while the driver gives me the thumb to get inside. Vi is absolutely overjoyed. She is loving every minute of it. So is Alfred. He marches in to present his case like a bantam rooster.

The cops on the inside are collecting us in a group with motions to be quiet when from outside comes the most gosh-awful racket you ever heard. Somebody is yelling bloody murder, and a deeper, raspier voice is for the other guy to stop or be killed.

A whistle blows, two cars bang together, and women shriek. Whoosh! Just like that the doors bang open and I run in. No. It isn’t me, but it is me. Hell, I don’t give it too much time. I get smart fast. Right behind me is Punchy waving a club ready to bash out my brains. No, that other me’s brains.

It is all so confusing, but I am lucky. I see it all before anyone else does and make a dive for the water cooler just as the other me buries himself in the arms of the cop that is supposed to be guarding me.

Somehow Punchy is disarmed, but he isn’t devoiced. He swears up and down that he will rip me apart with his bare hands, he will cut me into little pieces and make me eat them before I am dead.

Alfred starts to voice first claims on my body and Vi wants to call the undertaker right away, but the cop stops her. I don’t know how the bulls manage it, but they get everybody in front of the chief’s desk before murder is committed. This leaves me out behind the cooler still in a fog.

So I can take a joke. I have me a drink of water, pat the cooler affectionately, then find a side room to peek in from on the proceedings.

The chief is next door to a stroke, Vi is having a laughing spasm and Punchy is fit to be tied. But poor other me. I stand there watching myself shake like a bowl of pudding.

The other me cries out “Alors! Woe is me! I am entirely innocent, I insist it. Here I am walking calmly down the street when I am attacked by this... this thing! I seek the protection of the noble police and what do I find? I am incarcerated! This cannot be America. I will refer the matter to my consulate! I will...”

“You will shut up,” the chief tells me. I mean, the other me.

Punchy yells, “He beaned me, that’s what he did. Picked up a rock and beaned me, then stole the boss’ car. He’s a kidnapper!”

This is Vi’s cue. Yes sir, she swears, she was kidnapped, right there in broad daylight. I was a villain, even worse. And what was more, I was practically an extortionist to boot.

At that moment who comes in but the state troopers. One look is all they need. Yep, that was the guy who drove the speeding car. Yup, yup. They had a good close look and couldn’t forget a face like that, yup, yup.

The other me is up there screaming that it isn’t so. It is an international conspiracy so that good American dollars can’t be exported to the old country. It is a foul plot!

No kidding, I like to split a gut watching it. The only trouble is, I felt sorry for myself even if it wasn’t really me out there.

Then more people come in. The mama bear, the papa bear, and Pam, the baby bear. One peek at them and the other me lets loose in a foreign language that switches back and forth to English in tones that imply Incredible Heights is a suburb of Looneyville and that all was off in the wedding department. Mama faints, Pam opens the dam and forth comes a flood of tears.

“So now the would-be duchess is cry!” the other me says. “Ha... never would you see the inside of a royal court. For your moneys I care not a pouf! So there!”

Papa plays it smart. He grabs me fast. I mean, the other me. He says, “Are you refusing to marry my daughter?”

“Of the certainty, that I am. Arrest me, torture me, I am unsway. I do not marry anyone!”

Old Pop just grins like a fool. So does Vi.

She says, “I guess that tears it, Pop. We can go home now.”

“But my moneys, what about my moneys?” Alfred hoots. “Am I to be deprived of my moneys? Am I to be deprived of what is owed me?”

The other me gives him a haughty look. “It is a trifling sum. I will pay you someday.”

“Now! I want it now!” Alfred does a dance.

Papa laughs. “How much does he owe you?”

“Three thousand American dollars... trifling sum, ha! It will take him all his life to earn that in the hoosegoo. How am I to collect?”

Papa shows him how in a swipe of his pen on a blank check. “It’s worth it,” he says.

Just then Mama comes to and faints all over again. Pam decides to stay out of it with a little faint of her own. Punchy fans her with his hat, but he keeps glowering at the Duke. By this time I am leaning against my door jamb, out of breath from laughing. Honest, this was the best vacation I ever had in my life!

Vi and the old bear put their heads together, then Papa steps forward. Right away I see he is a big man in these parts. His whisper is loud enough for me to hear.

“Chief, do you think we can straighten this thing out of court? I’ll be glad to pay any fines or damages, and if you jug this jerk, there really is liable to be some kind of international complications. What do you think?”

I know that Pop is more concerned with the publicity angle than any across-the-ocean mix-up, but the chief saw the wisdom in the words. The matter is straightened out then and there.

While the Duke is putting his ruffled feathers back together, Vi walks up to him. “You know, for a while there I was beginning to like you. Yet you almost have me fooled. I couldn’t see how anybody could pick up a Brooklyn accent so fast. You almost, but not quite, sold me a bill of goods.”

My heart does a flip. Then it flops when the Duke looks at her as though she were crazy.

“Silly girl,” he sneers, and much to Punchy’s disgust, stalks out.

I wait until they all stood outside on the sidewalk. Papa loads the mama bear and Pam into one car, while Punchy holds the door of the limousine open for Vi. The Duke is nowhere around. After Papa drives off, I came down the steps fast.

“Hey, chick, how about that beer we missed having?”

“You!” she gasps.

Punchy said something like, “Agrrr!” He came boiling around the car and sneered, then let loose with that roundhouse. I bend a little at the knees again and it breezes by, then I plant one on him, and this time he does the buck and wing on the other foot.

“That guy will never learn,” I say to Vi. She is standing there with her mouth wide open, staring at me with those big blue eyes. When I take her arm and took off down the street, she is as limp as wet spaghetti.

I laugh because I get her point. She never saw the Duke dash in the station house ahead of Punchy. Sure — she thought Punchy happened to see me and came charging up to get his licks in while he could. Oh, great!

It takes a while, but we reach the spot where I almost ordered the beer. We sit at the table a minute, then the waiter comes up with a half empty bottle in his hand.

“Can’t you stay put, Mac?”

“Who, me?”

“Yeah, you.”

Then I see what he meant. The “Pointers” door opens and the Duke comes out. He is a sorry sight. Vi shrieks and stares at him, then at me, then back to him again. Right then her mind is in an awful stew. I pat her on the head and stand up. After all, I do owe the Duke something.

I went over and held out my hand. “Look, pal, how about you and me let bygones be bygones. I’ll...”

“Eek! It is my doubles again! You have ruined everything. Ah ha! Ah ha! Now you come to me on bend knee for forgiving. No is the answer. Nothing I forgive, not one little thing! You have made me look like a fool, and for that I am objectionable!”

His arms go wide and he shouts to the public, “This... this man, he has stole my train, my woman, my honor...” His eyes found the half empty bottle on my table. “...now he’s even drinking the beer I ordered yet!”

“Now look, it was all a mis—”

“Do not ‘now look’ me. It was the insult supreme and I am challenge you. To the death we fight.”

Up comes his hand and patty-cakes me across the cheek. All is quiet. I see the bartender reaching for the phone.

Right then I look over my shoulder at Vi. “Now do you believe I’m just Joe Moran with a garage in Holly Corners?”

Vi nods.

“Did you really mean that about sorta liking me?”

Vi nods.

“Enough to marry me quick so we can get out of this madhouse and up where all the nuts are on the trees?”

Vi nods.

My face is still stinging from that slap. I grab hold of the Duke’s coat. “Okay, Buster, you asked for this, but remember something, from now on there ain’t gonna be nobody what’ll mistake me for you again!”

It only takes one solid punch to change the Duke’s whole personality. His looks, too. The bartender is busy on the phone. I hear the siren wailing. I yank Vi to her feet and we beat it out to a taxi.

“Union Station,” I order.

“Where are we going?” Vi asks. “Dad won’t like this.”

I grin at her, “I don’t know about that, chick. He said he wanted a man in the family. Now he’s got one. There’s a train going north in five minutes and you better hope we make it. I don’t think we can get your Pop to talk us out of anything ever again.”

The taxi is in time. I pay the driver as we unpile, but I am slightly disturbed. Vi hasn’t said a word during the entire ride to speak of. As we run for the train I give her one last chance. “Want to back out, honey?”

She shakes her head.

“Then why so quiet?”

“I was just thinking...”

“Yeah?”

The train jerks, starts to pull out, and I shove her aboard.

“When you socked the Duke back there, so there wouldn’t be any more mix-ups... Now he doesn’t look like anybody... but you still look like the Duke!”

A white-sleeved arm shoots out, pulls Vi up, then grabs me. I look up into the grinning face of my pal, the same porter that came down with me.

“Glad to see you back, Duke, sar,” he says.

I let out a long groan. “Oh no, not again!”

Vi says, “See what I mean?”

I saw.

The Too-Careful Killer

There’s a penalty for murder. Sometimes the payoff isn’t too quick, but it comes. Time can be a torturer and some place there’s always a killer dying piece by piece, a little more each day, cursing himself when he’s asleep and feeling his mind loosening when he’s awake until he has to fight to hold on.

Then maybe he starts wishing he were dead, too. Or anything but alive and not knowing when his kill is going to come back and haunt him and hound him — and betray him.

Some place, on July 6, 1940, there was a killer and a dead body, known only to time. Then a killer’s mistake came home to roost.

The man in the rowboat fishing Washington State’s Olympic Mountains Crescent Lake probably knew the legend. The lake never gave up its dead, tradition held. The dead stayed dead, the dead stayed put in this icy lake fed by the near freezing mountain streams that bordered it.

So there was only curiosity in the fisherman’s mind when he saw the tapering fingers of a hand break the surface of the lake.

But curiosity can even overcome horror. He rowed closer, perhaps even felt relief when he noticed the waxy sheen of the hand, thinking it was only that of a window-display dummy. Then came sickish horror when he realized the hand was real and so was the body that hung there beneath it.

Tradition had been broken. The lake had given up its dead.

It didn’t take medical science very long to give its explanation. Perhaps Crescent Lake never gave up the dead it claimed, but Crescent Lake had never claimed this woman. Somewhere she had been beaten and strangled and her killer knew of Nature’s own tomb to bury her in. Nature wasn’t enough, though, he reasoned. He’d insure his kill and bury it deep, his insurance a stout rope and a weight to lock the tomb’s door.

It was his own tomb that he locked. If he had left nature alone, he would have been safe. Had he merely dropped the body in the water it would have remained at a level where natural decay and the attacks of fish would have disposed of it.

His improvement on Nature brought his kill back to life because the icy waters of the lower levels completely preserved the body, and during that time permitted a slow transformation known as saponification... chemicals in the water united with the fat molecules in the tissue to form soap... the floating kind!

Time had betrayed the killer, because the rope finally rotted, but the body had been a long time in rising. Pathologists established that the woman had been dead from one to three years.

Sheriff Charles Kemp, Criminologist Hollis Fultz and Prosecutor Ralph Smythe had a corpse, and some questions. They wanted answers... badly. The natural embalming process had left the woman’s face deformed so that photos were of no help, but there were other, more useful clues.

They knew she was young, pretty and unusually small waisted. Her right foot had a huge bunion. Scraps of the blanket she was wrapped in, shreds of the rope that tied her, clung to her body. She still wore fragments of a dress... but wore something more important — a six-tooth partial dental plate the killer forgot to remove.

Acting on this last piece of evidence, the authorities had 15,000 circulars printed and distributed to dentists around the country.

Photos and descriptions of the denture were published in newspapers and dental magazines. If the killer saw them and knew any sudden panic at all it must have gradually left him, because there was no report on the denture throughout 1940 or during early 1941.

Meanwhile, three dead ends had to be run down. Three women reported missing in the Crescent Lake area were identified as the victim and in each instance the missing person had identical measurements and the same colored hair.

The criminologists solved those cases but as yet could not identify their own murder victim.

The trio of sleuths worked another angle. Medical crime experts had determined that prior to her death the victim had had her hair set. In their opinion the bunion on her foot indicated that she had been employed in a laundry or as a waitress.

Here greater ingenuity than the killer’s came into the picture. Edgar Thompson, secretary and treasurer of the Culinary Alliance, came up with names of several women who had dropped out of the organization during the time in question. One had done a peculiar thing. .she had left without taking a union transfer or withdrawal card,

Her name was Hallie Illingworth.

With this information the lawmen located Hallie’s married sister, Lois Bailie, in Walla Walla, Washington, to confirm their identification. Mrs. Bailie reported that her sister had been missing since a few days before Christmas 1937; she did have a partial denture in her upper jaw and an agonizing bunion on her right foot.

What was more important, she said Hallie Illingworth had a husband, Monty, who claimed Hallie had walked out on him for a naval officer, then later she was some place in Alaska... and Monty wasn’t around to say differently. At that time his address was unknown.

When the trail is hot the hounds run faster. The police moved into Vancouver, Washington, for a short talk with another sister of the missing Hallie, Mrs. James Johnson. Two more pieces dropped into place, Mrs. Johnson established the date when Hallie was last heard from with a postcard dated December 21, 1937, from Port Angeles, Washington, and also led them to the dentist, Dr. A. J. McDowell of Faulkton, South Dakota, who identified his handiwork in Hallie’s partial plate.

Some place a killer must have been getting mighty nervous.

There was still another path in this rat race with a murderer. A path that took the officers to a cook house in a lumber camp at Lake Pleasant near Port Angeles. At its end was Jessie Hudson, a friend of Hallie, and she had a story to tell, one of intense jealousy between Monty and Hallie that brought on constant fights. A story that linked Monty with a girl named Elinore Pearson and set the stage for the final act.

The evil that murder is rooted in can’t slay hidden long. Now the officers knew what tack to take. They began to find out things about Monty and Hallie Illingworth. More than once Hallie had said that if they didn’t separate one would kill the other. And once a hotel owner had entered their room at the sound of fighting and found Monty standing over Hallie, who lay moaning on the bed.

So the finger swung to Monty. He had, it developed, been granted an uncontested divorce from Hallie in 1938 at the very time her body lay weighted in Crescent Lake!

Monty, a 32-year-old truck driver, was located living with Elinore Pearson in Long Beach, California. He gave some confusing statements and then, when he realized he was trapped, began to tell a story with some logic. He said that on the night of December 21 he went to a party with a friend, Tony Enos. They were out all night. When he came home the next day, drunk and boisterous, Hallie was angry. She left the house, he said, swearing she would never return.

Police located Tony Enos. He confirmed the party and the date. He said he had brought Monty home at 3:30 a.m., and had seen him again at 9 a.m. near a Port Angeles bank. Monty, Enos said, told him he was taking Hallie to the Port Ludlow ferry.

That made three different stories Monty had told about the night of December 21 — one to Lois Hailie, one to the police and yet another to his friend Tony Enos.

While awaiting his divorce from Hallie he had spread the word that he and Elinore Pearson were married. There was only one person who knew differently... his lawyer, Max Church. And Max Church had succeeded Mr. Smythe as prosecuting attorney in Port Angeles.

Murder was coming home. Perhaps Prosecutor Church knew where it lived when he read the reports. Perhaps he already had the answers when the officers checked on Elinore Pearson. If he did, he took no chances. It took a lot of digging, but Max Church located Mrs. Harry Brooks, owner of a general store near Monty’s home.

She told him that just before Christmas, 1937, Monty had borrowed a part of a piece of rope from her.

She still had the other piece of the rope and under microscopic examination it matched the one found tied to Hallie’s body!

It was on October 24, 1941, that Monty was arrested, and on February 24 of the following year brought to trial. There were lies then, lies that Monty tried to live up to, a vain attempt to prove that his wife was still alive. Even science almost came to his rescue, but the work the police put into establishing the identity of the murder victim was too air tight, too positive to be smashed. The prosecution fought for the death penalty, but the evidence of the constant fights and Hallie’s own prophetic statement that unless she left Monty, one or the other would die, threw doubt on it having been a premeditated murder.

The jury’s verdict was guilty of second-degree murder and on March 20, 1942, Monty Illingworth was sentenced to life imprisonment in Washington State Penitentiary.

Nature had foiled a murderer’s cunning by allowing Crescent Lake to give up the missing dead. The irony came at the beginning and was still there at the end... Monty had the rare opportunity of hearing the man who had once been his own lawyer present the case against him to a jury that saw fit to put him away for life.