LITMIR.BIZ

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he said, “The world needs cars. They’ll never get enough automobiles, because we’re building roads now to burn ’em out within a couple of years. Okay, let’s turn Farrans over to making good, fast autos.”

      He even brought Henry Ford up to clinch the argument, though it was an argument in reverse. “Ford turned from making cars to making planes, didn’t he? What Ford can do that way, we can do oppositely.”

      It had been his brainchild—and he had a good brain for designing, though it wasn’t geared to practical production techniques.

      The baby took a long while to emerge. Maybe there was more to making a car than looked from the outside, as Henry Kaiser was also beginning to find. When a year had passed, and half a million in research was down the drain, Farran put a stop to the agony.

      “We know how to make planes,” he said. “Okay, we’ll stick to making ’em. We’ll gamble on the market picking up within a couple or three years, and we’ll go ahead with carrier planes.”

      It had picked up. And but for these strikes, they’d have been sitting pretty, too. The one prototype car made, hand-built down to the last nut and bolt, almost, was a beauty, though not to be bought at such a price ever again.

      And it had done some good, because Burt wouldn’t come near the factory now. Burt stayed home these days and sulked, because he hadn’t been given the fifty million he’d found they’d need to get even a modest assembly line moving. He still got up ostentatiously when Farran came into the room, and stalked silently out.

      Farran turned into the Boulevard some time later, and thought that was one good thing, anyway, getting rid of Burt. The Farran plant was stiff with relatives, and he didn’t give a darn for any of them. Not many, anyway.

      He stopped off at Clem Cole’s bar and had lunch, though the coffee didn’t have the smell of that strong brew from the strikers’ wagon, and the hamburgers definitely lacked virility. Then he got back into his car and turned towards Santa Monica Harbour.

      Maybe with this wind offshore he’d do some sailing. There wasn’t anything else to do, and sailing did take your mind off bellyaches. And he’d got a nice boat all waiting for him.

      Two blocks from Clem’s he saw Lydia van Heuson. She had come out of Macartneys and looked about to get a taxi. She was dressed to kill, and the moment she saw Farran she thought he was the answer.

      Farran trailed his eyes away just as he saw Lydia’s face brighten and her hand come up. Then he went right on past her, just as if she wasn’t there. “The hell, she can buy a taxi,” he thought. He’d been out with Lydia plenty times, and she wasn’t for him anymore. Not for a mind soured by a strike back over the hills costing half a million a week.

      But it did something, seeing Lydia. He went right across, instead of coming left at the next intersection—even avoiding a woman brought you trouble. And that meant driving on to the next crossing and making the turn there.

      In itself, with all those horses prancing under the bonnet, that was no hardship, but coming into the unaccustomed turn Farran remembered the name of the street—and a number.

      He stopped on an impulse. This was where Joe McMee had set up office a couple of months back—he’d promised to look him up and hadn’t, and always when he remembered he’d felt a bit of a heel in consequence.

      They’d been through college together, Joe McMee and Russ Farran. Joe had been a better boy in the lecture room than on the football field, and he’d only made the team in a few games, but Farran had got to know—and like—him during those times.

      A good, steady, plodding type, Joe, yet curiously brilliant on occasions. A man of contradictory character, Farran thought. Joe had joined the F.B.I. when his degree came through, and for a few years was quietly out of everybody’s ken.

      Then he’d hit the headlines, digging out some of the Detroit Chopper Boys. In his curious way he had had his usual flash of brilliance and made good.

      He’d spoken to Farran over the phone on making L.A. He’d quit the F.B.I. Farran felt the regret in his voice. He’d married, got a wife who thought there was no sense in taking risks.

      “She’s right,” Joe’s slow, heavy voice had come over the wire to Farran. “I got hurt with the Chopper Boys. Bad. And that’s something you’ve always got to expect in the Bureau. Getting hurt, I mean.”

      So, for his wife’s sake, he’d quit the G-job and set up office here in L.A. No, he didn’t call himself a detective, Joe told him modestly. Just a private investigator. Now, there must be a lot of things needed investigating at a place as big as Farrans.…

      Farran promised to look him up some time when he was in town, and turned him over to his Labour Relations Officer, who might find work for him. Farran hadn’t thought to ask Uncle El how Joe had made out with him.

      He got out of his car slowly. He didn’t really want to meet Joe. Not while he was in this broody mood. They’d been pals at college, but friendships kind of died as the years of maturity piled up. Still, out of politeness, now he was in the district, he’d drop in on Joe. Perhaps Joe wouldn’t be in, he thought hopefully. Then he’d be able to go sailing with an easy conscience.

      He went up. Joe’s office looked like any of the other hundreds in the same building. Just one door with his name in black across the glass—Joe McMee, Private Investigator. Farran walked through without knocking. It’s a habit you get when you own hundreds of doors and you want to save seconds of time all day.

      There was no one in the microscopic reception office, but Farran saw that the inner office door was slightly open, so he went straight on through the little swing gate and walked in on Joe McMee.

      Joe was lying on his back, one foot stuck in a wire wastepaper basket. His chair was over on its side against the wall, and there were some—but not many—papers on the floor.

      Farran stopped in the doorway, and was immediately impressed by the stillness, the quietness of that office. Especially the stillness of Joe.

      So he went cautiously a couple of paces into the room and saw then that Joe would never make another noise this side of wherever good Joes go.

      A blue-rimmed hole made a startlingly vivid mark on Joe’s right temple, just where the hair was thinning back. A hole that could have been made by a spinning .38 bullet. A hole that was big enough, in that place, to spill the life out of anyone.

      Anyway, it had spilled the life out of big Joe McMee, private investigator.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Farran felt himself go as stiff as a tomcat scenting danger. And it felt, too, as though his hackles were risen on end. He looked at Joe, and looked and looked and went on looking. And back of his eyes his brain was spinning madly, trying to cope with a situation foreign to it.

      Murder!

      Because there was no gun in the dead man’s hand, no gun anywhere near it. And men can’t shoot holes in their temples like that without guns. Someone had done it for him.

      Farran looked at the wastepaper basket on Joe’s foot. It looked comical, made the dead Joe look funny. For the first moment, that is. Afterwards it looked somehow obscene, certainly indecent.

      And Farran saw how it was. Those two paces into the room had brought him in view of a part-opened drawer—the top left drawer of, presumably, the late Joe McMee’s desk. Inside Farran saw a gun—it looked like a Colt, probably a .45 service weapon.

      Could be Joe had made a dive for that drawer, got it part-opened before the death bullet tore through his skull. And in making that dive, it looked as though Joe had stuck his foot into the basket—could be that basket had hindered him in going for his own gun, had delayed him just that vital fraction of time which had resulted in this. This—a scene over which only bells could toll.

      Farran looked at a telephone on the desk. His blood was beginning to thaw out. He knew that a wise guy in a movie or the crime book of the

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