The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries

“O’Leary doesn’t strike me as the nice, quiet, donating type.” I killed the remainder of the beer, crumpling the empty in my fingers. “We’ll have to think of something else, Clemmie.”

She pouted, tilting her cute blonde head. “Don’t you want to hear the rest of it?”

“Is there a rest of it?”

“You just listen, honey pot.” She wriggled comfortably on the couch. “This is how it is. O’Leary used to take all that bread to the night depository of the bank. But when he was stuck up for the third time, he made some changes.”

“I’ll bet he did. Third time’s always the charm.”

“Please, Freddie,” she huffed. “Will you let me finish?”

“Be my guest.”

“Well, O’Leary turned his private office into a fort. Steel bars on the windows. Burglar alarm wires all over the place. And a huge, burglar-proof safe to keep his boodle in until he can make trips to the bank in daytime hours with a security guard.”

“That really cuts it. Steel bars, hot wires, and huge safes are all beyond my calling.”

“You need another beer,” she said in that endearing, unpredictable way. She was up and back with the beer like a golden wisp.

She sat down and rested her head against my shoulder. “O’Leary unlocks his private office door, walks to the safe, opens it, and puts his money in. If someone quick and strong, like you, Freddie, were hiding inside the office, it would be simple to tap O’Leary on the head — not too hard so he isn’t seriously hurt — as he walks through the door. Then someone quick and strong could take the money and walk right out that door, quiet as a little old kitten.”

“Yeah, if someone could melt his way through steel window bars and burglar alarm wires and be inside the office when O’Leary entered.”

“Just slip into the short hallway that leads to the office, Freddie. You could do it, easy, with that late, noisy crowd in the bar. Then unlock O’Leary’s office, close the door so the lock clicks, and be waiting in there when the unsuspecting little hamster comes in with the loot.”

“Let’s forget the impossible right now,” I said, nuzzling her cheek. “With the beer and rest, I’m feeling like a new man. Also I couldn’t pick the lock on a piece of discount house luggage, much less the lock O Leary s bound to have on that office door.”

She didn’t move away from my nuzzling, but it didn’t have the desired effect on her chemistry either. As if her mind was elsewhere, she said, “Freddie, a girl working in a place like O’Leary’s learns to keep her eyes open. She meets all kinds of people, too.”

I shifted position, taking a swallow of beer, “So?

“So she knows where Mr. O’Leary keeps his bundle of keys, beside the automatic gun under the counter,” Clemmie said. “She knows how to make an impression of a certain key in a piece of wax in a few seconds when nobody is looking. And she knows a fellow or two who will make a key from that impression for a twenty-dollar bill, no questions asked.”

She stirred, sitting up and wriggling her fingers into the slash pocket of her hotpants. She slipped out the duplicate key to O’Leary’s office.

Dangling in her fingers, bright new metal catching the fire of reflected light, it positively hypnotized me.

One thing O’Leary had failed to put in his office was air-conditioning. Or maybe the sweats came from the waiting there in the darkness.

From the bar came the muted sounds of the last customers leaving, guys shouting good night to O’Leary, a character with too many under his belt singing a mournful song.

The song was cut off in the middle of a flat note and I knew O’Leary had closed the door behind the customer.

Silence.

Nothing, except this vacuum sucking at my ears and trying to stifle my breath.

I stood pressed close to the wall beside the office door, the length of old pipe in my gloved hand.

Distantly, I heard Clemmie say good night.

“See you tomorrow, Clemmie,” O’Leary responded in his high, thin voice.

More silence.

All of them were gone now, except O’Leary and the bartenders. The bartenders would be rinsing the last of the glasses, shucking their barman’s jackets, gulping tired yawns. O’Leary would be taking the last of the receipts from the cash register.

Time was the slow crawling of hot lava.

A few more muffled words out there that I couldn’t make out. O’Leary seeing his barmen off. O’Leary closing the front door and springing the lock, alone in the bar now. Giving the place the final glance for the night. Cutting the lights to night-dim.

The sudden rattle of his key in the office door lock almost jarred me out of my shoes.

The door swung open, and too suddenly almost, he was there, a scrawny silhouette in the very faint night light filtering from the bar.

I suddenly felt so clumsy and awkward that I almost panicked. The pipe weighed half a ton. He surely knew I was there.

I didn’t realize it was over until I heard the pipe thunk against his crown. He folded without a whisper, and I stood looking at the dim shadow of him, too scared to move. Was it I who actually hit him?