Gungen. You find out why he had that much in cash. He told his wife he had driven up from L.A. with a friend—no name. She went to bed around ten-thirty, leaving him reading. He had the money—two hundred hundred-dollar bills—in a brown wallet.
“So far, so good. He’s in the living-room reading. She’s in the bedroom sleeping. Just the two of them in the apartment. A racket wakes her. She jumps out of bed, runs into the living-room. There’s Main wrestling with a couple of men. One’s tall and husky. The other’s little—kind of girlish built. Both have got black handkerchiefs over their mugs and caps pulled down.
“When Mrs. Main shows, the little one breaks away from Main and sticks her up. Puts a gun in Mrs. Main’s face and tells her to behave. Main and the other guy are still scuffling. Main has got his gun in his hand, but the thug has him by the wrist, trying to twist it. He makes it pretty soon—Main drops the rod. The thug flashes his own, holding Main off while he bends down to pick up the one that fell.
“When the man stoops, Main piles on him. He manages to knock the fellow’s gun out of his hand, but by that time the fellow had got the one on the floor—the one Main had dropped. They’re heaped up there for a couple of seconds. Mrs. Main can’t see what’s happening. Then bang! Main’s falling away, his vest burning where the shot had set fire to it, a bullet in his heart, his gun smoking in the masked guy’s fist. Mrs. Main passes out.
“When she comes to there’s nobody in the apartment but herself and her dead husband. His wallet’s gone, and so is his gun. She was unconscious for about half an hour. We know that, because other people heard the shot and could give us the time—even if they didn’t know where it come from.
“The Mains’ apartment is on the sixth floor. It’s an eight-story building. Next door to it, on the corner of Eighteenth Avenue, is a two-story