Murder is the Pay-Off by Leslie Ford

little sheep. All she did was open her vapid blue eyes a little wider, move back another step, take hold of the back of the chair and moisten her pale lips.
    If I ever wait up for him, Connie thought, I won’t have on cotton pajamas and a woolen bathrobe, and I’ll comb my hair and put on some lipstick. And I won’t let him push me around like this.
    “Nothing’s the matter, Gus,” Janey was saying, “I—I guess I just went to sleep, is all.” She turned her small white face to him and tried to smile. “I’m sorry you caught me. Why don’t you get Connie a drink? There’s some Scotch in the pantry. And then take her home.”
    “That’s big of you, madam,” Connie said pleasantly. “But I can get home with no trouble whatsoever. I would like a drink.”
    “I’ll get you one if you two dames will shut up.”
    Gus pushed a chair into the table, pushed open the pantry door, and let it swing shut.
    “You know the green-eyed business is frightfully young, Janey,” Constance Maynard said evenly. “Did you drop this? I found it here on the floor.” She took the orange capsule out of her pocket and held it out to Janey. She smiled again. The girl really had thought of taking them tonight. She could tell by the way her body stiffened and her saucer eyes opened even wider. “Take it, dear. It’s yours. You don’t have to worry. It takes guts to really go to sleep.”
    She felt Janey’s cold finger tips touch her hand as she silently took the capsule and put it in the pocket of her dressing-gown. She started almost convulsively as Gus pushed the pantry door open again.
    “Didn’t your mother stay, Janey?” he asked. Connie’s eyes smiled again. He was the picture of the intelligent male trying to find out what was going on in the minds of a couple of women, one acting true to form, the other off on a tangent that made no sense of any kind.
    “Oh, if she did then you can take me home, can’t you?” Connie said quickly. “I do really hate to go alone.” She took the highball he handed her, raised it to her lips, and smiled across the rim of it at Janey.
    “Is your mother here?” Gus asked impatiently. “I told you—”
    Janey found her voice. “Yes. She’s here. She’s upstairs.” Her fingers tightened on the back of the chair. “I’ve made up the couch in the study for you. And if you—if you don’t mind, I’ll go on up and go to bed. Good night. Good night, Connie.”

NINE
    The iron curtain would be fluttering in as many shreds as a grass skirt if the news of the world spread as fast and as pervasively as local gossip in Smithville. It dripped from the sable wings of night and sped forth refreshed on the golden wings of the morn. On Saturday morning everybody in Smithville was feeling exceedingly sorry for Janey Blake. Her overdraft varied from one hundred to one thousand dollars, but there was no variation in the reason for it—the slot machines, the way Gus Blake was carrying on, tearing around the country with John Maynard’s divorced daughter. Even after Janey had driven a burglar out of the house singlehanded, Gus Blake had come home and brought the Maynard girl with him and gone off with her again, not getting back till five o’clock in the morning, leaving little Mrs. Blake and the kid alone there in the house all night. It made the patrolman watching the house sore as a pup. It was a dirty trick, with Mrs. Blake scared as she was and pretending she wasn’t. The milkman who saw Miss Maynard kissing Gus Blake at two o’clock in the morning on Fetter Street didn’t care what they did if she hadn’t nearly run into his truck just as he was starting out. They could kiss each other all they pleased—what worried him was five hundred bottles of milk and cream and an undetermined amount of cottage cheese. And everybody felt exceedingly sorry for Janey. Everybody, with two exceptions. One was Constance Maynard, who still, however, in a way and when she didn’t stop to think, felt a