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hell! I thought, and I clobbered him anyway. Maybe I put a bit too much pleasure into the blow, but I was thinking about Pam, and the small satisfaction Mr. Franklin would get when I told him who had raped and killed his daughter. Chuck would come out of it eventually. He'd make the gas chamber. Lucille and I had heard enough to send him to the cyanide cell.
    Lucille!
    I turned around. She lay unconscious. Her blouse was in ribbons. I knelt by her and felt for her pulse. It was strong. There was a lump alongside her head, but her hair had kept the skin from being broken. This was the first time I'd seen her face relaxed, composed; and without her act, the hard, brash manner to confuse the impression, I had to alter my original opinion of the girl. With most of the paint off her face and the thick mascara thinned, she'd be choice. She was the first cop I'd ever thought of as sexy.
    In three or four minutes she moaned and came slowly out of it. Her eyes focused and she sat up fast, reaching for my face, long fingers curling into hooks.
    "Whoa! Hey!" I yelped. "It's me. It's me."
    She stopped reaching, sat up straight and blinked at me wonderingly. I remembered then that she had been sapped before I charged. "Oh," she said. "Mr. Scott. What . . ."
    She was still bewildered. I gave her a quick explanation, told her everything was all right.
    She looked around her. "Did you do all that?"
    For a minute I didn't answer her, because I'd got another shock. It was her voice. It didn't twang. It was honey and warm wine, a lovely lilting sound that caressed my ears, sent a pleasant shiver up my back. I should have known. All the rest had been an act; the voice was just another part of it.
    Finally I found my own voice. "I did it," I said. I almost added, "With my little hammer."
    She winced then. "Ooh. My head hurts."
    "Wait till these kids wake up." I had to chuckle. Seemed like everybody I knew had been hit on the head. Lucille and I talked for two or three minutes, and not once in all that time did it occur to me how silly this was: a shapely next-to-naked doll and me sitting here in the wilderness surrounded by virtual corpses.
    I found out that she was from Robbery and had been casing the Black Gang for three weeks. She'd got just about enough information about four robberies the kids had pulled under Chuck's leadership — including where some of the loot was stashed — to put Chuck, Ratface, and Shorty, plus half a dozen more of the gang, out of circulation. Then the Franklin case had come up — and it fingered the Black Gang. She'd been in a perfect spot, close to Chuck, and she'd volunteered to stay with the gang a while longer.
    She said, "I'm sorry I had to slap you, Mr. Scott —"
    "Shell."
    "— but the whole idea was that if Chuck got rattled he might spill something to me — if he was sure I was on his side. I had to make him think so, Mr. Scott, and —"
    "Shell."
    "— and I had to laugh. You did look funny, Mr. Scott."
    "Shell."
    She honestly didn't seem to realize how much was showing. Of course, she wasn't sitting where I was.
    "If I made an arrest I'd need both my tin and gun, and Chuck spotted them," she continued. "He ran out of cigarettes and went looking in my bag for some. That's when he found out. He had my gun in his pocket when he ran into us outside the club. But I had him fooled till then." She made a face. "I even had to let him kiss me, but he never —" She stopped. "My God!" she gasped. "Just now, before he hit me, he said he was going to . . . going to . . ." She couldn't seem to get it out, and at first I didn't know what she was driving at.
    "Going to . . . maybe he . . ."
    Then I got it. "No, no. I saw him sap you. Two seconds later I came charging in like Thor. He didn't . . . he didn't . . . uh, well, anyway he didn't."
    A big expression of relief flooded her face and she sighed heavily; oh man, she sighed heavily, and my mouth dropped open, and perhaps because of the