SSC (1950) Six Deadly Dames by Frederick Nebel Page B

his check and got up.
    “So soon?” Libbey asked.
    “I've got places to go.” Before he left the speak, however, he made a telephone call. “Hello, Ames?... Listen, Billy. This is Donahue.... I'm jake. Say, can you meet me in Fritz's in fifteen minutes?... Oh, something. I'll tell you then.... Great, Billy!”
    When Donahue stepped from the booth there was a hard smile on his face. He walked briskly to a subway station and walked impatiently for a northbound train. His manner was eager and alert. He was smiling when he went down into a basement speak on Thirty-sixth street.
    Ames was standing at the bar. He was a medium-sized man, blond, casual, smiling. “Hello, Donny.” He was lazy-voiced.
    “Listen, Billy. D'you hear about that kill in Fourteenth Street?”
    “Yeah. We got it over the precinct. Mob job, eh?”
    “I wouldn't know. There's a possibility it wasn't. Want to do something for me?”
    “Any time.”
    “Find out who was released from Sing Sing recently, and if any of the guys was a cell-mate of Alfred Poore.”
    “That all, Donny?”
    “That's all.”
    “Have a drink?”

III
    DONAHUE HAD BATHED and was on his way out for dinner that night when the telephone rang. He went back to answer it.
    “Yeah, this is Donahue.... Oh, hello, Roper. What's on your mind?... Oh, you do? Well, I'm going out to eat.... It can wait, can't it? Okey. I'll drop in.”
    He hung up, stood for a long moment with the telephone in his hand. Then he put it down, looked a little puzzled, and went out.
    Roper was sitting in the back room of the station-house.
    Madden, his partner, and another dick named Crowley, were with him, and none of them smiled. Crowley closed the door, and Roper creaked his swivel chair. He drew a letter from his pocket, held it out.
    “Read it, Donahue.”
    Donahue took the letter, spread it and found it to be a note written on I. Friedman's business stationery. It said:
    Dear Benny:
    Business is not so good, but that seems to be the case all around. I can lend you a hundred till the first, but I've got to have it back then.
    My back is a little better, and I guess I'll be all right soon.
    Nothing has happened, except a visit yesterday by a fly cop named Donahue. He threatened me, but I laughed that off.
    Don't forget I've got to have that century back by the first.

    .-Ike.

    Donahue said, “H'm,” handed the letter back and added, “What do you make of it, Roper?”
    Roper wore a dull, inimical look. “I'll turn that question right around at you.”
    “And we still don't get an answer,” Donahue said. “Don't we?”
    Donahue looked at him with wide-open brown eyes. “What's this-another indication of your sense of humor?” Roper's gaunt jaw shifted. “Why did you threaten Friedman?”
    “Did I threaten Friedman?”
    Roper stood up, a bony man with wide, stooped shoulders, hard wrists and big-knuckled hands. “You read this letter, didn't you? This guy Friedman wrote to his brother, and he wrote you threatened him.”
    “It doesn't say I threatened his life, does it?”
    “It says you threatened him.”
    “All right. I threatened to bust him in the face. What about it, copper?”
    “Why did you threaten to bust him in the face?”
    “It was personal. I lost my temper.” Madden came up behind Donahue and gripped his arms. Roper said, “Come on, Donahue. Why did you threaten him?”
    Red color began to creep into Donahue's face. “You guys going to get rough?”
    “I'm waiting for an answer,” Roper said.
    “Then tell this mutt to take his hands off me!”
    “Let him go, Madden.”
    Madden stepped back.
    Roper said, “Okey, Donahue. Now tell me.”
    “I've told you. It's my business, and if you're dumb enough to think I'm mixed up in this job, arrest me!”
    Madden grabbed him again, twisting his arms behind his back. Donahue's brown eyes got humid, and his lip curled, a dark shadow swept down across his forehead, across his face, making the red there dull and