"But I can't see how his killing anybody could have brought him any money. He...." "You forget, Mr. Ward," Mr. Peck elucidated with a wry smile, "that Doctor Kraus was not a permanent employee of the County. He was retained, as needed, to perform an autopsy and preside at the inquest. For these services, he was paid at the rate of one hundred dollars a case. Twelve inquests at one hundred each, comes to twelve hundred dollars; or at least it did when I studied mathematics as a small boy. Now, Mr. Ward, is the motive clear?" Ward nodded. "The doctor needed eight hundred dollars more," Mr. Peck concluded. "But for a strange set of circumstances which brought me here, you, Mr. Ward, might have been his next victim." DEATH IS DEAF by CLIFF CAMPBELL Big Sid couldn't understand it, and he was a smart monkey. He had cased this job himself, personal. Had cooked up the scheme for pulling it off and spent a good two weeks laying the groundwork. Yet, here he was locked up in the county jail with the hot squat waiting to claim him. [Illustration] Big Sid couldn't understand it. And he was a smart monkey. He had cased this job himself personal. Had cooked up the scheme for pulling it off. Had spent a good two weeks laying the groundwork. Nobody yet had ever called Big Sid Cloras a dummy either. Yet here he was locked up in their tin-can of a jail, as good as a dead duck. He couldn't understand it. It couldn't be. Not for him, Big Sid. Yet the bars of that cell door were chrome steel, not papier mache. And those birds chatting down the hall were local coppers with a couple of men from the County Homicide Squad. And an escort of State Troopers were en route to take him over to the real clink at the county seat. It couldn't happen to him, Big Sid. But it had. And it was going to be for murder, maybe. "Sid ... Sid," said Johnny the Itch almost reverently. He always addressed Big Sid that way. He said, "Sid, I think maybe I got something figured. But--but how did it happen, Sid?" "Aw, shut up," said Big Sid with a disgusted glance over his thick shoulder. He didn't bother really looking at him. Nobody much ever had bothered looking at Johnny the Itch. He was one of those little insignificant hangdog things with vacant eyes. Round-shouldered. The kind they turn off the assembly line to hold up the fronts of pool parlors. He had that twitching muscle in his right cheek. It made the skin jerk and pull as if he were trying to get rid of an itch without using his hand. He could do one thing. He could tool a heap like a maniacal genius born with a steering wheel in his hands. "Shut up," Big Sid grunted his way again and walked past the bowl in the corner of the cell. He was trying to figure this out. He stood there winding the tail of his necktie around a big finger. Johnny the Itch pulled nervously at the wide-brimmed fedora jerked down on his bony skull. "But, Sid, I think I got a way to--"