CHAPTER XII
Black Light
Black Hood staggered to his feet, his brain still whirling from that blow to his head. He lurched toward the front door of the shop, stopped half way there, clung to a counter for support. Somebody was pounding on the front door. A hoarse voice was calling on him to open in the name of the law.
Black Hood turned, spurred the muscles of his legs to carry on. The brilliant light of a policeman's torch sliced through the semi-darkness and spotted him. He kept going. Glass in the front door shattered beneath a blow from the butt of the copper's revolver. Black Hood ran on leaden feet into the rear of the shop. The back door stood invitingly open. He stepped over the sill, all but fell into the arms of a second cop. He struck just one wild haymaker of a blow that cleared the head of the cop by nearly a foot. And then suddenly there were two cops—one on either side of him.
"It's Black Hood!" one of the coppers shouted triumphantly. "We've got him. We've got the Eye. Wait till Sergeant McGinty hears about this!"
Cold steel jaws of handcuffs closed on Black Hood's right wrist. A second cop frisked him quickly, emptying the pockets of his belt.
"Look at the sparklers, will you!" the policeman gasped.
And Black Hood, his mind still in a daze, stared down at the gems in the copper's hand. No use telling them it was a frame. That was the standard alibi of every crook who ever found his way into police courts. They had him cold, and in his present condition he was utterly unable to fight back.
As long as he lived he was never to forget that ride down to police headquarters. Nor could he ever forget standing there in Sergeant McGinty's office while the sergeant did a bit of triumphant gloating.
"As sure as my name's McGinty, I knew there'd come a day like this, Mr. Black Hood, alias the Eye. I've got you, and I've got you where I want you. You'll burn in the chair, Mr. Hood."
Black Hood stood erect, still handcuffed to the cop who had captured him. He could think a little bit more clearly now and the muscles of his powerful body were much more inclined to obey the dictates of his taut nerves. He looked at the top of the sergeant's desk. There the entire contents of his belt pockets had been spread out—the dozen diamonds which had been used to frame him; that crumpled check which he had taken from the dead fingers of Biggert; the powder box from Vida Gervais' boudoir, most of its contents now gone; all his little tools and weapons which he had found valuable in his valiant fight against crime.
"You know what I've done, Mr. Hood?" McGinty asked. "I've telephoned the members of the citizens' committee who got together to tell the police what to do to catch the Eye. I've asked them and their friends to come down here to headquarters for the unveiling of Black Hood, alias the Eye. When they get here, I'm going to jerk off that mask of yours and we'll all have a little surprise party."
"You might spare me that 'alias, the Eye' business," Black Hood said, some of his old-time banter returning. "The Eye died when Jack Carlson died, and I can prove that. Since Carlson was murdered, another has taken his place. The man who killed Biggert and also killed Jack Carlson, now wears the white rubber mask that identifies the Eye, goes around whispering orders to professional rob and kill men. He's robbed Carlson's safe and robbed Carlson of his life and even robbed Carlson of his identity as the Eye. And given half a chance, I'll prove that to you, McGinty."
McGinty frowned. He could not deny that many times before Black Hood had beaten him to the solution of crimes, much to his embarrassment. And in each case, McGinty had received full credit for the solving of these crimes.
"When the time comes, Mr. Hood," McGinty said, "you'll have your chance to speak your little piece. I wouldn't deny that to any man."
"Then perhaps you'll unlock these handcuffs," Black Hood suggested. "You've robbed my bag of all its tricks and I'm relatively harmless at the present time. Besides," he added, glancing at the cop to whom he was linked, "this man here becomes something of a liability after this length of time."
"Unlock the cuffs, Bricker," McGinty ordered the cop. "Black Hood can't get out of here, and that's a sure thing."
The cuff removed from his right wrist, Black Hood went to a chair beside the desk and calmly sat down.
"I want to appeal to your reason a moment, Sergeant, before this committee arrives for the 'unveiling' as you call it. First of all, is it reasonable to suppose that I would crack open a jewelry store just to get those few diamonds there on the desk? And having broken into the store with intent to rob, as you seem to think, would I be silly enough to fall on my head and knock myself out?"
"Could be those were the only diamonds you found in the store."
"There were one hundred thousand dollars worth of unset diamonds in that store tonight," Black Hood said. "And that's what this man who is posing as the Eye went after and got. The past record shows that none of these crimes have been what you could call petty."
"A fact," McGinty said, "which doesn't prove you haven't hid the diamonds somewhere."
"But kept a few of them on my person just to get myself in jail, huh?" Black Hood laughed. "Listen, McGinty, why do you suppose Biggert, Weedham's secretary, was killed?"
"The shot that killed Biggert was intended for Jack Carlson," McGinty said. "So it was an accident that Biggert was shot."
Black Hood shook his head, "Jack Carlson was nowhere near Biggert when the latter fell. That was no mistake. Biggert was killed because he was about to expose somebody who had forged that check which is lying on your desk. That check is the piece of paper that was in Biggert's hand when he died."
McGinty's eyes narrowed. "How did you get hold of that, Mr. Hood?"
Black Hood saw that he would have to lie in order to protect his prototype, Kip Burland.
"I reached the body of Biggert before Carlson or anyone else did. That's how I know Carlson wasn't near the man when the shot was fired."
McGinty thought that over a moment.
"Go ahead, Mr. Hood. I'm not convinced, but every man has a right to free speech."
"Did the police notice the smudge of white powder on the lapel of Carlson's coat when they found his body? Did they notice that the regular light bulbs in his garage had been replaced with ultra-violet bulbs?"
McGinty nodded. "Our lab men don't miss much. That smudge of powder contained some chemical that glows in black light. I figured it spotted Carlson for the killer, made a target out of him in the dark."
"Right, McGinty. But do you know that Carlson was betrayed by a woman named Vida Gervais? She lives in the house next to the Weedham place. That powder box which you took from my pocket and which is now on your desk, is a sample of her face powder, treated with naphthionate of sodium. You can prove that yourself. And if you'll question the lady thoroughly, you'll be able to get at the truth. She'll know that Carlson was the Eye. And she may even admit that she threw Carlson over and helped somebody else dispose of Carlson and step into the lucrative position which Carlson occupied as the Eye."
McGinty looked up at one of his men. "Send out for that Gervais dame." When the man had left the room, he turned to Black Hood. "You haven't cleared yourself yet. You claim Carlson was the Eye. That's the world's oldest alibi—putting the blame on a dead man."
"I can prove Carlson was the Eye," Black Hood persisted. "In the morning I will send you that signal device which the Eye used. It carries Carlson's fingerprints."
"You'll send it from jail, then," McGinty said.
Black Hood shook his head. "I wonder if you'd send to the police lab for an ultra-violet lamp? I think I can conduct an experiment which will prove my points."
McGinty considered this a moment, and finally sent out for an ultra-violet lamp. It was not long after that before the members of the citizens committee began to arrive. The two Weedhams, father and son, were ushered into the room, followed by Major Paxton, Harold Adler, and the rest of the committee. Jeff Weedham's newspaper was represented by Barbara Sutton and her ace cameraman, Joe Strong. And finally the police brought in a coldly furious Vida Gervais.
Black Hood carefully avoided meeting Barbara Sutton's eyes. He knew that her emotions must be strained to the breaking point, and even a glance from him might have caused her to betray herself.
"D-d-don't tell me you've finally caught Black Hood, Sergeant!" Jeff Weedham gasped.
The sergeant smiled. "Sooner or later, McGinty gets 'em all."
McGinty waited until all present were seated. Then he stood up alongside of Black Hood.
"Now, folks," he said, "as you can see, I've got Black Hood just where I want him. And I've wanted him quite a while. I promised you that I'd show you his face, and that's just what I'm going to do."
Harold Adler uttered a hoarse cry of warning that came just a bit too late. With one of those lightning-like movements of his, Black Hood had pulled the revolver out of McGinty's holster, turned it on the sergeant. A copper near the door started to intervene, but Black Hood stopped him with a narrow-eyed glance that held all the threat of a thunderbolt.
"Make a move toward me, and I put a bullet into McGinty's back," he said. "No one will ever see the face of Black Hood and live to talk about it. I've just given McGinty the entire solution to this mystery. I've told him that Jack Carlson was the Eye. I've explained how Jack Carlson was murdered and his powerful position in the underworld was usurped by another man who now poses as the Eye. If there is any doubt in his mind, I am about to dispel it."
Black Hood picked up the ultra-violet lamp with his left hand while his right kept the gun on McGinty. He said, "Mr. Adler, will you kindly turn out the lights."
Adler hesitated.
"Do as you're told," Black Hood insisted, "if you don't want to witness murder. And I want to warn everyone in this room, that when the lights go out if anyone makes any move toward me, McGinty will die. Even if I were to be shot, the reflex action of my fingers would pull the trigger of this revolver and McGinty will die. I am no murderer, but if you interfere with me in this business, you'll make a murderer of me."
Adler switched out the lights. The darkness lay like a smothering blanket upon them all. The air itself had a certain electrical tenseness about it, like the silence before a storm.
"I am now going to switch on the ultra-violet light. If the filter is perfect, you will not be able to see the light, because ultra-violet rays, when unadulterated by other rays, cannot be seen by the human eye. There. The light is on.
"I have offered evidence to Sergeant McGinty in which I intended to prove that Biggert, William Weedham's secretary, was killed because he was about to show to William Weedham a check to which William Weedham's signature had been forged. Not only that, but the forger, in cashing the check, also forged the endorsement of Major Paxton, to whom the check was made out.
"I have further pointed out to McGinty, that this same killer disposed of Jack Carlson, after Carlson had been betrayed by a woman. This woman must have been Carlson's friend. She must have known all his secrets, including the fact that Carlson was the Eye. She gave all this information to another man—the same man who forged the check which I mentioned before. Then she assisted this killer to shoot Carlson. This woman's face powder was treated with naphthionate of sodium. A little of this powder rubbed from her cheek to Carlson's lapel made Carlson a perfect target in pitch darkness, provided that darkness was penetrated by rays of invisible ultra-violet or black light. I have a sample of that woman's face powder here on McGinty's desk."
Black Hood turned the ultra-violet lamp on the desk. The box of powder there became phosphorescent.
"When I was framed for the Tauber jewel robbery tonight, I seized the opportunity to toss some of this face powder onto the jewels in the robbers' bag," Black Hood continued. "The face powder is that of Vida Gervais. Watch, please."
Black Hood turned the ultra-violet lamp out toward his audience. Vida Gervais' frightened face glowed in the black light. Startled gasps could be heard from the others in the room as they stared at that ghostly face.
"Vida Gervais," Black Hood continued, "knew a good thing when she saw it. To eventually better her social and financial position, she was willing to sell out Carlson, alias the Eye, to another man who, if he could accumulate, through fair means or foul, quite a tidy sum of money now would get his hands on a great deal more money in the future.
"So Vida Gervais betrayed Carlson, alias the Eye, into the hands of the man who had killed Biggert. The forty thousand dollars which this man had got from the forged check was a small part of the money he needed. But if he could step into the Eye's shoes for a little while, he could rapidly accumulate the rest.
"I mentioned a moment ago that I had tossed some of Vida Gervais' unusual face powder onto the diamonds stolen from Tauber's shop. The naphthionate in that powder would cling to the diamonds and subsequently cling to the hands of the criminal who eventually got hold of them. Watch now for the glowing hands of the killer—the man who has been impersonating the Eye ever since Carlson was killed. But one funny thing about that impersonation which I did not realize until tonight. The impersonator, this man who killed Biggert and Carlson, was most careful to avoid any word or name beginning with the letter 'D.' He would not, for instance, say the name 'Delancy,' nor would he speak the word 'diamonds.' Why? Because every time he says a word or name beginning with that letter, he stutters. He might disguise his voice by whispering, but he could not control this stutter, which would have been a dead give-away."
In the black light, luminous fingers suddenly showed themselves. There was a piercing scream. Men surged forward to close in and blot out the glow from the killer's fingers.
"Watch out!" Black Hood's warning voice rang out. "He is probably armed!"
Men bumped into each other. There was the repeated thud of blows. There were cries, grunts, stammered oaths. And when finally somebody turned on the lights, Jeff Weedham was on the floor, two cops astride him. He had a gun in his hand, but his hand was pinned to the floor.
Sergeant McGinty looked over his shoulder at the Black Hood—or rather looked where he thought the Black Hood would be. McGinty's jaw sagged. He looked down at his own gun which was poking him in the ribs. His revolver had been wedged into the baby-gate extension arm of his own desk telephone. And Black Hood was gone.
It was an hour later that McGinty and his men, by playing Vida Gervais and Jeff Weedham, one against the other, got a full confession which corresponded very closely to Black Hood's reconstruction of the crimes. Jeff Weedham had been placed in rather a desperate position by his father, Jeff explained. William Weedham had bought Jeff the newspaper, insisting that he make a financial success of it and thus prove his worth. If he failed in this as he had in everything else, William Weedham was determined that none of the Weedham fortune should fall into Jeff's hands.
Jeff had run his newspaper into the red. As the time came closer in which William Weedham was to examine the newspaper's ledger, Jeff Weedham tried desperately to make up the lost money, first by forgery, and then by stepping into Carlson's shoes as the Eye.
Ballistics tests proved that it was Jeff's gun which had killed both Biggert and Carlson.
Just as McGinty was about to leave his office for the night, his phone rang. Almost before he picked the instrument up, he knew who his caller was.
"I say, McGinty," the voice of the Black Hood came from the receiver, "I really intended to apologize for making a fool of you there in your office, sticking you up with a gun attached to that telephone arm. But then, as I thought the matter over, it occurred to me that I really wasn't to blame for making a fool of you. You've really got a bone to pick with dear old Mother Nature on that score!"
"Say, will you kindly go to Hell!" McGinty exploded. And as he hung up, a chuckle broke from his thick lips. "What that guy don't know is that I'm beginning to get a kick out of tangling with him!"
CANDIDATE FOR A COFFIN
By T. W. FORD
Wilson Lamb cuddled his automatic to play "Mr. Death" and fingered little Louis Engel for coffin cargo. But when he pulled the trigger, Whisper, the gun-cobra from Chi, spilled out of Doom's deck....
Death stood on the Times Square subway platform, uptown side, waiting for a subject. Death looked at himself in the gum machine mirror, then down at his watch. It was exactly 4:12 P. M., Wednesday, December 10th. When the second hand hit the "30" mark, he would turn around and the person nearest would be It. Death wore a blue pin-stripe suit, well fitting but slightly unpressed. Death's name was Wilson Lamb.
The second hand wiped over the "20" of the smaller dial, jittered on toward the half-minute spot. Inexorable and meaningless. Just as what Wilson Lamb planned. He said "Now" with a little sucking in of breath and a thin anticipant smile and spun on his heel. He was a slim saturnine-faced man with cigaret-ash stain on a coat lapel. Undistinguished from any typical strap-hanger except perhaps by the light-hued eyes. His shoes needed a shine. He lifted the pale eyes from them and looked for the corpse to be. To the left. To the right. Then he came as near recoiling from the thing as he ever would.
It looked as if it might be a woman. Somehow he had always thought of killing a man. Something that could strike back. Not that he would get the chance. It was just the idea of the thing. But she, the woman, was descending the stairs that led up to the shuttle, bearing down toward him, less than twenty feet away. Big and billowy and red-faced, waddling along like a sow. To face a jury, charged with doing away with a hunk of human beef like that and—
He flashed a glance to the left again. Nobody near. It was a fluke of circumstance a score of people weren't buzzing all about him. He whipped his eyes back toward the woman as a local thundered in. And Luck took a hand. A stocky man dodged around from behind the woman and came rapidly down the platform, neat, crisp, briefcase under his arm.
Wilson Lamb's pale eyes flickered with amusement. He said softly, "Tag, you're it, John W. Goon." This was his corpse to be. Mr. Death had made his pick-up.
"Ex-cuse me." An express rolled in and cutting over for it, the stocky man brushed Lamb. His voice was mild, colorless. He wore a gray snap-brim hat; it was set squarely on his head, precisely level. Lamb had seen hats worn like that by show-window clothing dummies. The man entered the third car, middle door. Wilson Lamb boarded it on his heels.
His victim almost got a seat. A pimply-faced office boy elbowed him out of it and the man turned away meekly. He hooked himself onto a strap, hitched the briefcase up under his free arm, and concentrated on a segment of his folded-open newspaper. It was one of the conservative sheets, comic-less, reactionary Republican to the core. Wilson eased down the aisle, casually pushing a woman out of his way, and glanced over his victim's shoulder. The goon was studying an advertisement for a nine-piece living room suite, overstuffed, at "special reduction this week only." It was at one of the better department stores.
Amusement flickered in Wilson Lamb's pale eyes. He got the picture. A typical George Babbitt in the flesh. To the core.
At Seventy-second Street, the stocky man got a seat. When he faced the light, Lamb saw that he was turning slightly gray over the ears. He had a roundish face, a little fleshy under the chin, a soft-lipped mouth that from habit he held slightly pursed, muddy eyes. He was inclined to plumpness. Somebody had scuffed his right shoe in getting out and now he pulled up the pant leg of his dark grey suit to study it ruefully.
"Typical taxpayer," Lamb said to himself, savoring it. "Always makes his insurance payments on time.... Probably has weak arches.... Is going to buy the Five Foot book-shelf, always next week, and read it.... Would like to get up nerve enough to take that blonde steno at the office out to luncheon...." Wilson Lamb wanted to laugh out loud; it was as good as having a duck flutter down smack in front of your blind.
Past 86th, the Express roared. Lamb's victim had turned his paper, halved back the last page. Automatic pencil poised, he was scanning the crossword puzzle intently. As they lolled through 91st, he bared his teeth in a satisfied smile and rapidly filled in four vertical blanks, then filled out the lower right-hand corner. Lamb saw that his four upper front teeth were a neatly fitted denture. He wondered how they'd look after a bullet had gone through them.
The victim got off at 96th, carefully straightening his muffler inside his black overcoat. He went downstairs, crossed beneath the local platform to the west side, mounted to street level. He had a cigaret in his mouth but waited until he was outside the subway entrance before he put a match to it. Lamb lit one too. He picked up an evening paper from the newsstand—it might come in handy if he got to close quarters with the dope and wanted to mask his face. The newsdealer was looking the other way as he made change so Lamb plucked back his nickel.
The victim started to cross 96th Street, heading north. A traffic officer's whistle shrilled. Broadway was spattered with the ruby red of traffic lights. Vehicles moved crosstown. Dutifully Lamb's goon turned and retraced his steps to the curb, holding his four-square hat carefully. A little trick with skimpy skirts whipped about plump calves crossed on over. Watching her, Lamb's victim shook his head.
Lamb could hear him saying: "Tsk! Tsk! Foolish to take chances like that." Imagine him saying it, anyway.
Lamb kept at a cautious distance as they moved several blocks up Broadway. Walking briskly, the victim turned into a side street. There was something smug about the way he picked up his heels, swung his briefcase.
"Little man who has had a busy day with a job well done," Lamb paraphrased it sarcastically. He pushed his battered felt hat further back on his head in a gesture of disgust. His cheap unbuttoned raglan-style coat fluttered in the wind off the Hudson. Abruptly, the man ahead halted, wheeled.
Lamb calmly turned and opened the rear door of a parked sedan whose driver was at the wheel. Put a foot in. Down the block, his victim headed into a distinctly second-rate apartment hotel. Lamb said to the sedan driver, "I thought this was a hearse" and went down the block.
His victim was getting his mail at the desk when Lamb entered the shabby lobby. Lamb got on the elevator after him. The victim said "nine," immersed in his paper again, studying that living room suite. He had his key ready in his hand, terra cotta-hued tab swinging loose. "914" was lettered on it in black.
"Ten, Bud," Lamb told the operator.
On the tenth floor, he moved quickly down the frayed carpet of a corridor and found the service stairs. Back on the ninth, even when he was yards from the door of 914, he caught the odor of cooking. Rich and greasy. He got his ear against the door.
"Spare-ribs and sauerkraut, huh, Ede?" the victim was calling out inside. Lamb could visualize him putting his coat on a hanger, carefully folding a scarf over it.
From the rear of the apartment came Ede's voice, reedy and with a bit of a whine. Lamb could visualize her too, a dyed blonde who devoured film fan magazines and thought the girdle was the world's greatest invention. "Uh-huh. How'd things go downtown today, Lou?"
Through the thin door, Lamb heard him clear his throat, mutter, "Oh, so-so."
But Ede wasn't to be put off. "Lou, did you tell the boss you had to have a raise, that the job is worth more?"
Lou started to mumble something. Ede's voice, penetrating the door easily, rose to a querulous pitch. "Lou, you're too easygoing! You ain't got the sense to stand up for your rights. You're an expert in your line and you know it. There's never any kick-back or complaint on a job you do."
"I know, I know, Ede but—" Wilson Lamb's victim got in.
"You're entitled to more money, Lou! You've never bungled a job yet. I need a new coat. And you said you wanted to put the kid in a private school after the first of the year. How're we gonna do it if you don't—"
Lou said, "Look, Ede! Something came up today and the boss had to leave in a hurry—right in the middle of a conference. I just had time to grab my briefcase myself. Let's get to work on those spare-ribs."
They moved toward the rear of the apartment and Lamb out in the hall could hear no more. He was chuckling as he walked away, loose mouth curled in a sneer. Back on the tenth floor, he boarded the elevator again. Again it was empty except for the operator, a tow-headed kid with a Racing Form tucked in a side pocket.
"Funny thing," Lamb mentioned casually, "I could've sworn I knew that man who rode up with me. Stocky chap. Got off at the ninth. But I can't seem to recall his name."
"Mr. Engel, yuh mean?"
"Engel ... Engel ... Lou Engel? Is he an accountant?"
"Yeah, Louis Engel's the name. But he ain't no accountant. Comes from Chicago. I heard him tell the manager he was an efficiency expert."
Lamb stopped rattling the coins in his pocket suggestively, kept them there, and strolled toward the main entrance. Behind him, a lobby lounger moved over to the elevator boy, jerking his chin in Wilson Lamb's direction as he asked a question.
At the corner, Lamb stopped in and bought a drink. Thin face creased in a smile of self-satisfaction, he glanced at the paper he had bought. Below the latest war communiques was a small column-head about a threatened gang war in the numbers racket. "Police Raid Joe 'The Flasher' Abadirro's Headquarters," it said. Lamb's eyes picked up flashes of it. "... when plainclothes squad walked into luxurious apartment ... mid-town West Side hotel ... several henchmen taken into custody on technical charges ... Abadirro reported out of town ... police acting on tip killers imported from Chicago ... showdown anticipated on who will boss numbers racket in metropolitan area...."
Lamb turned the paper over and winked at himself in the concave mirror of the semi-circle of bar. That was unimportant claptrap to somebody like him. That kind of tripe was for the little Joe Dopes who got their thrills vicariously. There was going to be nothing vicarious about what he was going to do. He was going to rub out Louis Engel. Blast him. Louis the Goon, as he had already christened him in his mind. He had put the finger on him.
"Louis the Goon is going to die," Wilson Lamb said softly. He liked the sound of it.
He wasn't crazy. Long ago he had assured himself of that. It was just that his mind operated on a different, a higher, plane than the norm. He was not one of the little pieces of protoplasm running along with the herd. He was above them. Looking down on them. Studying them. His perspective ranged somewhat further than the end of his nose, the latest double-feature at the neighborhood movie house, and spare-ribs.
That last made him laugh out loud. He picked up his change and headed back for the subway and his two-room apartment in the Village. His gun, a .45 automatic, was there. He would be needing it soon. Louis the Goon practically demanded, invited, the use of a .45 automatic on him.
"Efficiency engineer," Lamb said to himself once.
The guy was the perfect subject. Ripe for murder. The more Lamb thought of it, the more he was convinced he couldn't have dreamed up a better stooge. Engel was a model—for homicide. He himself might die for it.
But that was unimportant. The killing of Louis the Goon was the only thing that counted. The results, materially speaking, meant nothing. This slaying was to be an exposition of the ego. Without other cause. Emotionless. With no hope of gain, financial or otherwise. No female involved. Nothing. Just a killing, a plain open and shut case of homicide for no earthly reason imaginable to the police. It would be amusing to watch those flatfoots sitting around trying to sift a motive out of the thing. Baby, they'd sweat their so-and-so's off trying to cook up a reason for this one.
It was so simple to Lamb himself. Inevitable. A logical step in a sequence. The final step, perhaps. Louis the Goon Engel was a mere walk-on in the piece, a spear-carrier doomed to death. Little better than a papier mache dummy set up to be a target for the custard pie. Only, in this case, the custard pie was to be a cupro steel-nosed bullet.
To Lamb, it boiled down to an ultimate expression of the psyche. The final test of one's ability to project the personal ego over all else in the material world. Because the ego was the alpha and omega of all living the moment one got above the level of animal existence, the mere feeding of the face and satisfaction of the other instinctive physical hungers. As Braunitsch had put it so succinctly, "Even the lowest worm can procreate itself—unfortunately."
Then, of course, there was Nietsche and his superman. And some of Freud. And that treatise of Van de Water, the Belgian, on the sublimation of the sub-conscious by the negation of the self-censor. And the papers of Braulinski of the old University of Warsaw on the fear trauma which he termed a birthmark of civilization. Lamb had gone into them all, deeply. All of them dealing with the ego. The ego and its development and complete consummation. And the killing of Louis the Goon Engel was going to be the consummation of Wilson Lamb's experiments in the total exemplification of that ego.
It was no brash idea, no hare-brained impulse concocted in one's cups, perhaps. Analytically, objectively, he had thought out the whole thing. The axis of life was the psyche. Its two poles were birth and death. And, as Braunitsch had stated, the former was a function, often accidental, of which the lowest animal order was capable. A mono-cell, the amoeba, was able to reproduce itself by the simple stratagem of sub-division. But death—when it became a deliberate action, administered without emotion or hope of material gain—was one step removed from the godhead. Perhaps less than one step. But the step that would raise one above all the little fumbling, blind-spawning, life hugging bipeds who infested the scene.
In short, birth was fortuitous, a product of circumstance plus proximity, its get a biological accident. But death—the taking of life—was a selective process, intentionally executed, the result a foreseen conclusion. In so doing, the taking of life, you broke the greatest law of humanity and so became above it. You unfettered the ego with a single ineradicable stroke. In taking a life, one tasted the essence of living. He tried to remember who had said that. De Maupassant had put it better but Lamb could not quite recall the quotation....
He was still trying to remember it as he lounged down the block from Engel's apartment hotel at 8:10 the next morning. There was a bone-chilling breeze off the Drive that made Lamb belt his coat tighter about him. When, at 9:35, Louis the Goon Engel had not made an appearance, Lamb went down to the corner drugstore and had a cup of coffee. He could not see the entrance of the hotel through the window. But he commanded a clear view of the street and anybody coming up it toward the subway. And if he ever saw one, his corpse-to-be was a methodical little piece of humanity. He would come and go to the subway by the same route.
Wilson Lamb was correct as he had never doubted. But it was 11:07 by his wrist watch before Engel emerged. The gray hat just as squarely set on his head as before, without a glance around, Engel came out of the hotel and turned his steps dutifully in the direction of the subway. Lamb was strolling on the other side of the street at the moment. On sight of him, he turned up the front stairs of a brownstone. But a few seconds later, his long legs were carrying him rapidly toward Broadway. By hustling, he got to the other side of it, entered the subway on the uptown side, crossed underneath and was waiting in the by-pass when Engel came along. Engel trotted up to the downtown express platform. When the next train pulled out, Lamb was in the vestibule, half a car-length away from him.
Taking the trouble to keep at a distance, to make himself inconspicuous, seemed almost wasted effort. Louis the Goon went along, looking neither to right nor left, docilely intent on minding his own business.
"Efficiency expert," Lamb said to himself. "Bet he's a cracker-jack at cutting down on the overhead."
It was like playing a game of cat-and-mouse with him, Wilson Lamb, the cat. Only in this instance, the mouse seemed as good as blind.
Lamb could have given it to him any time, a slug in the back that would terminate his little life the way you would step on a cockroach. On second thought, he would not give it to him in the back. It would be the front so he could see the stricken stupid look of surprise. He'd probably try to get his foolish little briefcase in front of him like a shield. Lamb could just see it. Hear his squeal of futile protest, too.
Yes, he could give it to him whenever he chose. Just walk up to him and squeeze the trigger and savor omnipotence for a moment. Very simple. At his leisure. But Wilson Lamb wasn't going to do it that way. That would have been like a blind stab, in the dark, meaningless, impersonal. Like taking a hack at a piece of meat. Or tossing a bomb into a crowd. Instead, he wanted to know something about his specimen before he exterminated him. Understand his background. Get a fair picture of the little sphere of the life from which he was all unknowingly about to depart.
Lamb didn't figure it to take long in the case of Louis the Goon. What Engel was was pretty patent. A typical little taxpayer, careful to keep his nose clean, asking only to be permitted to tread his narrow path unmolested. Undoubtedly the type who got sick to his stomach at the sight of blood even though it might be no more than a nose-bleed.
At 42nd Street, Louis the Goon got off and trundled over to the shuttle. He passed through the Grand Central Station, stopping off to buy a package of Camels en route. The cigar store had a counter display of a bargain buy of razor blades combined with some unknown brand of shaving cream. Engel hovered over it like a bargain-hunting housewife. The clerk put on his spiel. Engel bought, got stuck for a bottle of after-shave lotion too.
Lamb saw it all from over by the counter of the baggage-checking room. "'A penny saved is a penny earned,'" he paraphrased for him.
They cut through the Graybar Building to come out on Lexington. Engel proceeded north a few blocks, turned into one of the commercial hotels noted for its name band. Halfway across the lobby, a tall swarthy man with one of those deadpan faces rose to greet him. They shook hands.
"You're right on the dot," the tall man said.
Engel's pursed mouth lengthened in a flattered smile. "I always make it a point to be punctual," Lamb dawdling in the background, overheard him say.
Then they headed for the elevator bank. The tall one shot two glances backward as they did so Lamb couldn't make it too obvious. When he rounded the corner of the ell where the elevators were, they were gone. Lamb went back into the main lobby and ensconced himself behind a morning paper. Midway down the page was more about the threatened strife in the numbers racket. It didn't interest Lamb in the slightest.
Engel probably had gone upstairs to try and peddle one of his efficiency schemes to some big shot. The guy he'd met in the lobby was a go-between, doubtlessly. Lamb wondered whether Louis the Goon would get up the nerve to hit his boss for that raise today, as Ede had demanded.
Lamb almost lost him. Half an hour later. Louis the Goon came down and scooted out the side entrance in a hurry. When Lamb got out there, his man was already in a cab, shooting away. There was something wrong about the conservative, penny-saving Engel taking a taxi. Wilson Lamb did not realize it at the time.
They went westward across town. Over near Sixth, Lamb's driver lost the other cab. Lamb was cursing when he spotted Engel on the sidewalk, coming back across town. That was strange because he could have sworn Engel's cab had not stopped. Must have gotten it mixed up with another. Out, he threaded his way recklessly through a welter of vehicles and picked up the tail as his man entered an office building.
It was fairly crowded in that foyer and it was simple to step onto the elevator right at Louis the Goon Engel's back, then wheel behind him out of sight as he turned. Engel called "Fourteen" and got out there, briefcase tightly clutched up under his arm, its flap unbuckled.
"Going in to high-pressure somebody on a sale," Lamb figured.
Another passenger had called fifteenth, the next floor. Lamb got out there, found the built-in fire escape, and got down to fourteen. This was a little foolish, he realized. There was no way of finding what office Louis the Goon had visited. Still, he might see him when he came out. Maybe he had gone to see the boss about that raise Ede was demanding. Maybe he'd come out bouncing on his tail-feathers. It was fun following and watching Louis the Goon. Like watching an ant on a sidewalk flagstone puttering about its puny business, knowing you were going to stamp out its life when it so pleased you.
Lamb was just lighting a cigaret, gazing down the hallway of the fourteenth floor, when the muffled report came up the staircase. It didn't seem possible, a gun seemed so out of place in such surroundings.... Then there were two more shots, a scream intermixed. The shattering of plate glass. Lamb was down the stairs and pulling open the firedoor onto the floor below. Immediately he sniffed the acrid fumes of gunpowder.
He was looking out onto an ell of that floor. Onto a tableau of violence. There was just a single office suite on that ell, directly opposite him. On one of its double doors was lettered "Continental Exhibition Corp." The frosted glass of the other door was almost completely broken out, leaving a jagged-fringed aperture through which to view the scene within.
Wilson Lamb flattered himself on being pretty cool headed under all circumstances. But he blinked three times rapidly now. Inside the Continental Exhibition Corporation one man was slumped over a desk, an automatic half-gripped in his inert hand. He was very dead. Half his head was shot off. Another man was sprawled on the gray broadloom of the reception room, a brownish puddle beneath his side. He wasn't going to be going any place in a hurry, either.
Even as Lamb stared at the carnage, a third figure appeared, wobbling drunkenly from an inner office. He came stooped over, holding his side. Crimson-speckled froth at his lips. He got to the shattered glass panel and moved the lips at Wilson Lamb.
"Tell 'em—the police—it was—was Whisper Ross from—from Chi—" He coughed twice on the "Chicago," then caved in on himself and went flat in the hallway.
Lamb saw an ashen-face bespectacled man peering around the corner of an ell. From further back, through an open doorway, a girl's voice was shrieking for the police over the phone. Lamb remembered the fact that he had a gun on his person. It might be extremely embarrassing if the police picked him up for questioning. Ducking back through the firedoor, he ran quickly up to the sixteenth floor, up past the fifteenth. Nothing had been heard up there yet. He caught a down car and got out just as the first prowl car came sirening its way into the side street curb.
Afterward, outside the police cordon thrown around the building, somebody jostled against him, peered under his hat brim. Later, Lamb recalled the bluish scar crescent on his left cheek.
"Hey, aren't you Reynolds of the Dispatch, pal?"
"Nope," Lamb said.
"You're a reporter with one of the local sheets, aren't you?" the other persisted. "I know I've seen you around before."
"You must have been wearing your other glasses, Bud," Lamb said and turned away.
Maybe it was the effect of seeing the handiwork of that other unknown killer. For the police had nabbed nobody yet in that mid-town mid-day shooting. Anyway, Lamb had the itch to strike. It was like a thirst building in a guy. You've seen somebody else dip into a tall cool one and after a while you feel like you got to have one yourself. Those three dead men on the thirteenth floor of that office building had acted like an aphrodisiac on Wilson Lamb. He wanted to get him his corpse. But soon.
He knew it when he picked up his victim again. It was almost 4 P.M., shreds of snow drifting down through New York's early darkness. He was hanging around by the cab stand above 96th on the west side of Broadway, waiting hopefully. He had got so that he felt a little lonely when he didn't have Louis the Goon right handy. He felt on familiar terms with the guy. Of course, Louis the Goon didn't know him. And when he introduced himself, Louis was going to get one hell of a big surprise. Like a kick in the teeth only a lot more permanent.
One of the hackies turned up his radio. A news commentator was on. He came to the topic of the mid-town shooting. Three dead, gunned in the office of the Continental Exhibition Corporation. Lamb edged over nearer. The Continental outfit, the announcer said, was the business front of one Big John Girra, well known local racketeer. Girra was a powerful figure in the metropolitan pin-ball game syndicate and had a piece of the number policy racket too.
"Police, promising an arrest within twenty-four hours, claim the triple killing a step in the fight for control of the numbers game business in this city. They are still seeking the missing Joe The Flasher Abadirro, also reputed to have boasted he would take over the numbers game. Two of the slain men have been identified as close associates of Big John Girra. A building employee stated earlier today that Girra left the premises less than five minutes before the killing. A prominent police official who refused to be quoted asserted the killer was a Chicago torpedo imported for the job, a killer who would not be recognized by members of the New York mobs. 'We are closing in on him at this very instant,' the official concluded."
The news broadcaster went on to another item of the day's reports. Lamb turned around. And there was Louis the Goon Engel, not four feet away. En route home from the subway, he had paused to listen to the report too. He stood now with a calculating look, almost as if he were checking the verity of the report. Lamb wanted to laugh in his face.
"If you'd seen those three carcasses leaking blood all over the place, you'd probably have swooned in your britches, my little dope," Lamb addressed him mentally. And the funny part was that the little dope had been so close to it. Just a floor away, in fact.
As he followed him on uptown, down his side-street, Lamb had a curious sense of elation. He was in on the ground-floor of Death, Inc. Even before voting at a stock-holders' meeting himself. For he knew who had triggered those three today, who the Chi torpedo the cops wanted was. One Whisper Ross. Of course, he might have tipped off the police say, by a phone call. But he wasn't going to.
"We killers must stick together." The thought tickled his sense of humor.
They were almost at Louis the Goon's roost when Lamb saw how he was going to do it. A boy with a carton of groceries almost ran down Louis, then ducked down into the delivery entrance of the apartment-hotel. And Wilson Lamb had his cue.
Some ten minutes later, after due investigation, he knew how he was going to put Louis the Goon on the spot. And how he was going to get away with it, get clear afterward. The taking of life was the important thing, the major premise. Whether he was caught or not had never seemed important before. But after reviewing the handiwork of Whisper Ross—who had ambled off unimpeded—Lamb saw no reason why he should not do the same. It would be the nth degree in the epitomization of the ego to kill and get away with it.
The building's delivery entrance was a perfect avenue of escape. Actually it did not enter the hotel at first. Down a few steps and then it ran rearward between the side of the building and the retaining wall next door, an open-topped alleyway. The delivery doorway was in the rear. A few feet further on was the backyard laid out in a garden with a waterless age-browned concrete fountain in the center. A low concrete wall separated it from the property that backed onto it. And there was the payoff.
Ambling casually through in the darkness, Lamb had discovered that the property in the rear, facing on the next street downtown, was several feet lower. It would be simple to drop over the wall to its paved courtyard. And from that ran a concrete passage beside the apartment house out to the street one block below.
Emerging on it, Lamb lit a cigaret and went back around the block to Engel's place. He appraised it like a surveyor. First off, it was one of those second-rate places that boasted no doorman. Across the street were those brownstones for a nice dim background. The nearest street lamp was down about ten feet from the entrance of Engel's place. Engel would come walking along primly, right into its light. A man crossing the street from the brownstones, a little behind Engel, calling out, "Hey, Mr. Engel," and—
It was a very nice set-up. The property line of the building where Engel lived was set back several feet further than that of the old-fashioned private homes between it and Broadway. They would serve as a screen for his movements from one direction when he hit into that delivery alleyway after fixing Louis the Goon's wagon once and for all, Lamb realized. It was almost ridiculously simple.
Why he could almost have chalked an "X" right there and then on the sidewalk where little Louis would lie down and forget it all. Wilson Lamb hummed as he headed up toward Broadway and decided to have dinner. He had a swell appetite. He was humming snatches from something. Minor key, descending scale. It went "Come to Papa, come to Papa, come to Papa." He didn't know whether it was from a song or a crap game. Anyway, the dice were sure loaded against a certain party he knew.
Down the block, a taxi that had been parked with meter ticking across from Engel's apartment-hotel drew away slowly.
He went to the movies with Louis the Goon that evening. Louis didn't know anything about it and Lamb bought his own ticket. That too had been extremely simple. After dinner, he had phoned Engel. When Louis himself answered, Lamb had asked for Toots. Louis said they had no Toots there and Lamb said he was very sorry, that he must have got the wrong number. And Louis said that was all right, no harm done. And Lamb said he was sorry he had disturbed him and Louis said to think nothing of it, no trouble at all. And Lamb said a four-letter word after he had hung up and laughed out loud in the phone booth.
Then he hung around and saw Louis come out after dinner. Ede was with him this time. Ede was the type after which some department store advertising-department diplomat had coined the term "stylish stout." Ede toddled and she was pretty hefty. If there was a family argument, Lamb would have laid two to one she would have come home in front by a t.k.o. before the fifth round.
They went into the movies on the north-west corner of 96th. The closest Lamb could get was some three rows back. He was disappointed because he could not watch Engel's face. It was a double feature. Pampas Nights was one of those alleged South American musicals whipped up by a couple of submorons with the intent purpose of sabotaging the Good Neighbor policy. The other picture was some ghoulish thing about a mad surgeon, described in the script as an "ego-maniac," who had a pleasant pastime of revivifying electrocuted felons. That one gave Lamb a pain in the pants too. He had really made a study of ego-maniacs.
He got out in the foyer right behind the Engels. He heard Ede say she thought the one about that "nutty doc" was so thrilling. Louis the Goon did not agree. He liked those musicals.
"They take my mind off business," he said.
Lamb left them and went in and had a drink. He had two drinks. Now that everything was settled, he felt no impatience. It was all lined up right down to the final curtain. Louis' final curtain. Lamb had already decided he would give it to him as he came plodding his smug little way home some evening. Any evening. Maybe tomorrow evening. Now that the details were ironed out, it was fun to leave the closing date open. He could play the fly-on-the-wall in Louis the Goon's life as long as he wanted. And when he got bored with Louis's act—bop! he would deliver his compact little package to Louis....
He started to get bored fast the next day. He rode downtown with Louis and they went over to that same East side hotel and Louis went upstairs. He was gone a long time. Lamb said to himself, "That dope goes around in a rut and I'll get in one too just following him and then I will get sore." Eventually Louis the Goon came back down into the lobby. The tall, swarthy man he had met there the day before was with him.
"Well, I guess there'll be nothing doing today," Louis the Goon said.
"Nope, nothing," the other said.
They parted. Louis went down to the telephones, used one after consulting a little black book. When he came out, he bought a white carnation for his button-hole in the florist shop, then treated himself to three twenty-five-center Perfectos.
"Something builds," Lamb told himself. Outside, when Louis the Goon got a taxi, there was something positively cocky about him. Lamb was humming his "Come to Papa" again as he took another and trailed him eastward this time. Louis got out at a Third Avenue bar and grill and went in. Lamb gave him five minutes and strayed in himself. There was no Louis. Not at first, anyway. Lamb could feel his pulse beat faster.
Then he spotted the dim backroom with the booths. And he went through it to the Men's Room. And there was Louis the Goon—his little clay pigeon—in one of the booths with a doll. She was red-haired by courtesy of the local beauty parlor, cuddling up in a flashy little leopard fur number. She looked like a dance-hall hostess from one of those joints where everything goes so long as you keep time to the music.
As Lamb passed, she was saying, "Now, Daddy—" That almost unbuttoned Lamb. Daddy! On his way back, he noticed there were two others in the backroom, a couple of men gnawing on pretzels over beers.
He stepped back into the bar just in time. Three men had entered. They headed straight for the rear. One of them shouldered Wilson Lamb from his path as if he did not see him. The second one pulled out a cannon and poked it at the bartender and told him to keep his britches on. Then the other two were in the rear and letting go with their cannon.
Slammed over against the bar, Lamb had a split-second glimpse of it. For a moment, it almost seemed as if the damn fools were out after Engel. One shot smashed the table lamp in the booth where he sat. Then the two beer drinkers back in there were around and swapping it out with cannon of their own with the newcomers.
Lamb got out of there fast. He got across the street. He saw two men dash out of a side entrance and into a dark sedan that roared away. He did not see Louis the Goon get out. Then the howling prowl cars converged on the scene. And there was an ambulance. It took one guy away. Another guy, it didn't. Lamb worked his way up into the throng and got a glimpse of the other guy getting stiff on the backroom floor. Everybody else was lined up in the bar for questioning. Engel was not among them. So Lamb knew he must have gotten away all right.
"This is some more of that numbers racket war," a gray-haired sergeant said. And then Lamb began to taste something like panic even as the first neon signs began to smear the wintry shadows. He got afraid he might lose his little clay pigeon. Louis the Goon seemed to have a blind genius for getting on the scene when some blood-letting was due. He felt a certain possessiveness toward Louis. Louis belonged to him. And he wasn't going to have him chopped down by any piece of stray lead. Lamb had a bullet ear-marked for Louis.
He said, "I've been wasting time." He got on the shuttle and over to the West side and up to 96th and across the street from where Louis lived. Well, where Louis used to live, anyway. He was there just twenty minutes—it was 4:43 by his wristwatch—when Louis the Goon came down from the corner. He couldn't make out his face at first but he knew him by that square-set hat. Lamb eased away from the stairs of the brownstone, humming "Come to Papa, come to Papa, come to Papa...." This was it.
The ultimate in the demonstration or the ego.... He told himself that as he moved over the scabrous snow of the street.... The zenith in the projection of the psyche.... Louis the Goon had his briefcase clutched up under one arm instead of swinging.... The final triumph over the fear trauma.... Louis was abreast of him, then passing by. Wilson Lamb brought the automatic out from under his coat. He called, "Mr. Engel—" And Louis the Goon turned and Lamb held it, wanting him to get a good look at the heater, wanting to get a good look at him as he saw it.
Engel had the briefcase open, unbuckled. He was bringing something out of it swiftly, jerkily. It was a heater too. That wasn't in the script. Louis the Goon was stepping out of role. But Lamb knew he had him anyway and started to squeeze. He would squeeze three times on that trigger and—
Somebody else squeezed first. It was the man running from that parked car down the street. Lamb got it in the side and then a red-hot finger was probing down into his guts. A man stepped from the vestibule of one of those brownstones and he squeezed and Wilson Lamb couldn't feel the side of his head any more. Knew he would never feel it again. He was down on one hand and one knee and his gun was gone. Some place in the black haze seething around him. Like a hurt animal, half crawling, knowing only the base instinct of self preservation, he tried for that delivery alleyway.
Somebody else had figured that was a good spot too. It was the man with the bluish cheek scar who had accosted him after the triple-killing in that office building. He squeezed. And Lamb took that one square on the chest. In a vague way, as the sidewalk slid up at him, he was aware of that car back-firing away like hell.
The man with the blue scar was standing over him, throwing words to Louis the Goon in a quick, harsh whisper. "This is the one, Whisper. He come in here with you Wednesday. He was on the spot when you give it to them boys in Girra's office, yesterday. Today, he was in that bar when they tried to get you. The Flasher said to stick close to you—an' him."
"Girra's finger man, eh?" called back Engel softly.
"Yeah, Whisper." The blue-scarred man ran. In a moment, a car roared off down the block toward West End Avenue.
Lying there on the sidewalk, blasted for keeps, his wagon fixed, Wilson Lamb tried to put it together. Things moved very slowly for him. Whisper. Whisper Ross, Chi torpedo. Then he had it. Whisper Ross was Louis the Goon Engel. Hired killer of Joe The Flasher Abadirro. The guy he, Wilson Lamb, had fingered for an exposition of his ego.
Down the sidewalk, little Mr. Louis Engel, alias Whisper Ross, stood looking at the body and going "Tsk! Tsk!" through pursed lips. Wilson Lamb's ego died a horrible death seventeen seconds before he did.
ONE HUNDRED BUCKS PER STIFF
by J. LLOYD CONRICH
Mr. Peck was dead ... the papers said so. Yet Mr. Peck performed his own autopsy and saved eight men from death!]
"There's a guy outside wants to see you, Chief," Charlie Ward's assistant announced through the door.
"What's he want, Joe?"
"I don't know. Says his business is confidential and urgent. Wouldn't say what. Looks harmless though, in spite of he drove up in a Rolls Royce with a chauffeur."
"Well, send him in."
Ward busied himself with a sheaf of morning mail and miscellaneous police circulars. Presently a small, immaculate looking individual with an apologetic, breathless air entered the room and approached the desk timidly. Silently, without even so much as a nod, he laid a newspaper clipping before the Chief of Police. Adjusting his glasses, Ward reached for the item and glanced through it hastily:
MAN KILLED AT EL GATOS GRADE CROSSING
El Gatos, November 1. The decapitated body of a man tentatively identified as J. Peter Peck, address unknown, was discovered by a company track walker early this morning on the South West Pacific grade crossing half a mile south of the town of El Gatos. Local police believe that the man was killed some time after midnight, possibly by the San Francisco milk train. Identification was established by a wallet containing papers of the deceased.
Ward laid the clipping on his desk, rolled a bulbous wad of chewing tobacco into one cheek and expelled it into a spitoon some ten feet away with a resounding plunk. Wiping his chin inexpertly with the back of a grizzled hand, he looked up and eyed his visitor interrogatively.
"I clipped it from last night's San Francisco Bulletin," the latter explained quietly. "I drove practically all night so as to be here this morning."
"You're a relative?"
The stranger smiled weakly and placed a pair of painfully thin hands on the desk as though to steady himself.
"Well, no, not exactly; that is, somewhat," he answered obscurely.
Charlie Ward eyed the little man curiously. "Come again, please?"
"Well, it's this way," slipping nervously to the very edge of a convenient chair. "There appears to have been a slight error made. The clipping is somewhat inaccurate."
"Sure. Half the stuff you see in the papers these days is cockeyed. Them guys never get anything straight. I always tell my wife you gotta believe only ten per cent of what you read and doubt that."
The stranger smiled thinly. "Precisely. Now the real truth of the matter in this particular case is that I happen to be J. Peter Peck and, to the best of my knowledge, I'm not dead. In fact I'd take issue with anyone who questioned the fact. I therefore feel that the report has been exaggerated; just a tiny bit, at least." He paused for breath. "I thought you'd like to know."
Ward arched his brows and smiled calmly. As a veteran police officer, he was used to surprises. "Well, now that's one for the book, ain't it?"
"Rather."
"So, if you're the guy that's supposed to be downstairs on ice," Ward supplemented, fumbling in a drawer of his desk, "how come we find this here wallet with your name all over the papers inside on him?"
Mr. Peck glanced at the wallet.
"Very easily explained," he answered. "I was held up last Monday evening in San Francisco. The wallet and the papers it contains were among the things taken from me. Incidentally, there were several thousands of dollars in the wallet when I last saw it."
Ward whistled softly. "How much?"
"About twenty-four hundred dollars."
"That's a lot of dollars."
"It would keep a man in cigars for a day or two."
"And this guy, after he stuck you up," Ward reasoned, "left Frisco and come North where he had the bad luck to meet with an accident."
"Precisely."
"What'd he look like?"
"There were two of them. One had red hair and his left ear was missing. The other was short; about my size, I would say; rather thin, with a small, black, straggly mustache and swarthy skin. I should judge he were either an Italian or possibly a Spaniard."
"The second one fits the guy on ice. Want to take a squint at him?"
Mr. Peck jumped to his feet.
"I'd be delighted," he said with what sounded to Charlie Ward like unwarranted glee.
Ward picked up a flask of corn whiskey and slipped it into his hip pocket.
"I warn you," he cautioned as he rose, "this guy's pretty much worked over in spots. A train went through him you know. Some people get goose pimples looking at them kind of things."
"I'll risk it."
The pair left the office and descended a flight of steps. At the end of a dark corridor, Ward led the way into a basement room. Upon one of two marble slabs in the center of the room, lay a sheeted corpse. Ward pulled the shroud back, revealing a horribly mangled body. Mr. Peck leaned over the corpse, revealing none of the repulsion that Ward was sure he would exhibit.
"Yes, that's unquestionably one of the men who held me up," the little man said quietly. "I'd know that face anywhere, what there is left of it. Er—seems to be quite dead, doesn't he?" he added wryly.
"Quite," Ward mimicked, wondering at the same time what strange complex could cause a man of Mr. Peck's evident refinement and good breeding to jest under such circumstances.
The little man leaned over the corpse again.
"Odd marks on his face, aren't they?" he observed.
"Huh?" Ward seemed startled.
"I said those were odd marks on his face," Mr. Peck repeated.
Ward's face clouded and he stepped closer to Mr. Peck.
"It's funny you should notice them red blotches, Mr. Peck," he said. "I been kind of wondering about them myself."
The two men eyed one another for a moment of tense silence, and marked suspicion.
"Why?" Mr. Peck asked abruptly.
Ward scanned the little man's face with an air of uncertainty.
"Er—do them marks mean anything to you?" he finally asked, his voice tinged with caution.
Mr. Peck made no immediate answer, but turned and leaned closer to the corpse, examining the faint red blotches on the cheeks with more care than he had at first taken.
"To the casual observer, that is, to the layman," he said, removing his glasses and facing Ward, "it might appear that the deceased was suffering from a mild case of measles"—he paused, glanced at the corpse again, then turned once more to Ward—"but to the trained eye, I would say that this man has received a shot of xetholine caniopus into his system."
"A shot of what?"
"The name means little. Xetholine caniopus is a drug; not rare, not common, but violently poisonous. Contact, even to the lips or to a flesh abrasion will bring about practically instantaneous paralysis of the cardia." The little man blinked. "Er—the heart, I refer to. Xetholine invariably leaves its mark, as you perceive, in the form of faint red blotches on the cheeks." He thumbed in the direction of the corpse. "Putting the diagnosis into simpler words, this man has been poisoned. He died from the effects of the poison as is indicated by the slight carmine tinge to the blood. The effect of this poison on the blood stream is similar to that caused by asphyxiation by coal gas or a similar substance, only not quite so brilliantly red. If this man had died as a direct result of injuries received by the train passing over his body, the blood would be darker, almost purple. Offhand, I would say that the train passed over his body some several hours after his death. Depending upon the determination as to whether the poison was self administered or otherwise, will settle the question as to whether you have a suicide or a murder case on your hands."
Ward stared into the little man's eyes in astonishment.
"Say," he interrupted, "who are you, anyhow?"
Mr. Peck smiled benevolently.
"My name," he explained, "you already know. I happen to be deeply interested in criminology. It's been an avocation of mine for many years. My specialty is toxicology. I...."
"Tox—tox...?"
"Toxicology; the study of poisons. The circumstances of this particular case are unusually close to home and I feel a personal interest." He paused and peered into Ward's face hesitantly and then added in a voice that half pleaded and half apologized—"I—could I—would you allow me to—er—work with you in this matter, Mr. Ward? I'd expect no pay, of course," he hastened to add, "and I can assure you that my efforts will be sincere and my intentions entirely honorable. My only interest is in clearing up the matter, or at least attempting to do so, for the—well—the fun of doing it."
"Some fun, all right," Ward observed wryly. "But, at that price, the County can't lose much. You're hired."
"That's fine," Mr. Peck enthused, his eyes shining brilliantly. He rubbed his palms together briskly. "I can't tell you how deeply grateful I really am."
"Okay, Mr. Peck," with a shade of doubt. "It's your funeral. The paper says so."
"Now first, I must make a test to satisfy myself that xetholine caniopus was the actual cause of death. There are a few things I'll need; a glass, an ordinary water glass will do, a small quantity of commercial alcohol and a bit of lime water. My chauffeur will get the latter two, if you'll supply the glass. Please notify him."
Ward hesitated, as though doubtful about leaving this unusual person alone in the morgue, but finally assented.
A few minutes later he reappeared with the glass, followed almost directly by the chauffeur with the alcohol and lime water.
"Thank you, Christian," Mr. Peck said in the chauffeur's direction. "You may wait in the car."
Ward's eyes followed the chauffeur as he left the room.
"He's a big guy all right," he observed, thumbing toward the vanishing driver. "Sure must have et his mush every morning when he was a little boy. Looks like he's about six foot six."
"Six, six and one-eighth in his stocking feet, to be exact," Mr. Peck corrected. "Before meals he weighs two eighty-eight; after meals two ninety-eight."
"Wouldn't want to run into him on a dark night."
"Hardly," Mr. Peck agreed. "When he first came to me, he applied for the position which he now holds under the name of Mike Dennis and explained that he generally answered to the intimate and thoroughly quaint cognomen of 'Butch.' But I changed that to Christian. Of course 'Butch' is more in keeping, but I do believe that Christian adds to his dignity in spite of his ears. Don't you think so?" Ward grunted vaguely. "I have it on good authority that he put Mr. Dempsey to sleep one evening about fifteen years ago in an amateur boxing meet." Mr. Peck's eyes sparkled as he glanced up from his work for a moment. "Unfortunately, I happen to be worth several million dollars. There have been two attempts to abduct me. Christian makes an excellent body guard as well as chauffeur. Not much intellect, but most conscientious and as faithful as an old watch dog. I've had him with me twenty-two months now and to date he's uttered not more than twenty-two words; except, of course, when I speak with him. A handy person to have about; most handy."
By now Mr. Peck had sterilized the glass with the alcohol and was prepared to make his test.
"In the glass," he explained, holding the object toward the light, "I have poured some lime water. By blowing one's breath into the liquid, through a common cigarette holder, the lime water becomes a milky white; thusly," and he suited the action to the word. "The balance of the test is quite simple. Several drops of the deceased's coagulated blood are now added to the water. As you see, there is no change. In a moment, I will add a little alcohol. If the lime water clears and becomes colorless again, and shows indication of a volatile oil on the surface, you may rest assured that xetholine caniopus exists in the blood stream. Although the test is simple, the chemical reaction is rather involved, being a combination and then a dissemination of structural heraetixae and third power phincus. I shall not, therefore, bother you with its details. Suffice to say, the test is infallible and conclusive."
Ward scratched his head in hopeless perplexity and stared in mild anticipation mingled with a great deal of skepticism as Mr. Peck poured a small quantity of alcohol into the glass. Immediately, the liquid became pure and colorless and the surface indicated a distinctly oily film.
"All of which bears me out," Mr. Peck said quietly, placing the glass on the table. "This man has been poisoned. Our next step is to determine whether the poison was self administered or otherwise. We...."
"Just a minute, Mr. Peck," Ward interrupted, raising his hand. "There's a couple of things here I ought to explain." Ward floundered for a moment of hesitancy. "You see, it's this way. For about twenty years, now, about twelve people a year have died in this here town; one a month; that's the average."
"Yes; yes?" Mr. Peck interjected interestedly.
"But in the last month, eleven people have turned in their rain checks. This guy's the twelfth."
"Which more or less upsets the law of averages."
"That's just what I'm getting at. But what's worse, is that ten out of these twelve met with deaths from accidents of one kind or another."
"Just how do you mean?"
"Well, this guy, for instance," motioning toward the slab, "was bumped by a train. The rest met with other accidents ranging all the way from hit and run, down the line to falling off hay lofts and being kicked in the head by a mule. Nobody seen any of the accidents, but the evidence was such that you couldn't help see what happened. For instance, the guy that was kicked by a mule, he had a hoof mark on his head and his mule had a bloody hoof. The hit-run guy, we found in the middle of the high way."
"Coincidence. Accidents almost invariably occur in threes or fours."
"Sure; threes and fours, but not tens and twelves. But there's something else."
"... yes?"
Charlie Ward moved a little closer and glanced behind him as he spoke.
"Of the ten who met with accidents," he said, "nine had these red marks on their cheeks."
"Excellent! Gorgeous!" Mr. Peck enthused through grinning lips. "A multiple murder! Nothing could be clearer or more fortunate!"
"Well, you may be tickled, Mr. Peck, but I ain't. Several of the victims were close friends of mine."
Mr. Peck's attitude changed at once.
"I'm deeply sorry, Mr. Ward," he apologized. "My enthusiasm carried me away for the moment. Please proceed."
Ward nodded and went on. "At first I didn't think very much about these blotches, but when this guy was brought in this morning, I began to get kind of nervous. As a matter of fact, I was just going to phone Frisco for help when you come in."
Mr. Peck nodded and smacked his lips thoughtfully. He removed his glasses and wiped them slowly and carefully, polishing each lens with meticulous care.
"You of course have a coroner or medical examiner of some kind," he finally said.
"Oh, sure. Old Doc Kraus handles the cases for the whole county when they come up. There ain't enough to keep him on full time, but we send for him whenever we need him. He makes the examination and runs the inquest."
"What did he think about the red blotches on the faces of the nine corpses?"
"Nothing. To tell you the truth I never thought enough about them to bring it up.
"And he's never mentioned it to you."
"No."
"I can't possibly conceive of anyone missing them."
"The Doc's getting pretty old," Ward explained. "He don't see so good. We been trying to get a younger saw-bones for a long time, but nobody had the guts to tell him he was fired, I guess. He was born here; lived here for seventy-two years. He's a nice enough old guy. Matter of fact, everybody sort of looks up to him as the town granddad. He's a kindly old duffer; always doing things for folks and going out of his way to help a neighbor and things like that. I'll send for him and ask him if he noticed the marks and what he thinks about them."
"No, I'd prefer it if you didn't. For the present, let's work quietly. As far as I'm concerned, everybody's under suspicion and any word getting out that we're working on the case might spoil things."
"Old Doc Kraus under suspicion!" Ward scoffed with a loud guffaw. "Say, that's rich. Why, I'd trust him ahead of my own Dad and that's saying a lot. Why he brought me into this world forty-two years ago. Used to spank me when I was a kid and needed one. Why...."
"I did not say I suspected Doctor Kraus," Mr. Peck interrupted. "I merely inferred that everybody was under suspicion until we begin to find something definite to go on. The reasons, I believe, are obvious."
"I get you Mr. Peck."
"Now then, the inquest has been performed in this last case?"
"Yes; early this morning; just before you got here. They handed down a verdict of accidental death."
"Have you made any attempts to identity the corpse?"
"Certainly. We figured it was you on account of the papers. We been trying to trace you through the Frisco police. So far no information has come in."
"That's quite possible. I lead a very quiet life; live at a bachelor club and am not listed either in the phone book or the City Directory."
"I sent finger prints to the Frisco Police. If this guy's got a record, we'll know who he is pretty quick."
"That's fine."
Mr. Peck stood for a moment with a thoughtful finger to his lips.
"I think we'll visit the spot where the body was discovered," he decided abruptly. "We can go in my car."
Ten minutes later, J. Peter Peck, accompanied by Charlie Ward and followed by Christian, stepped from the machine at a point opposite the spot where the body had been found.
"A machine has stopped here at the side of the road quite recently," Mr. Peck offered, pointing to the tire marks in the dust. "The occupant, as is indicated by those very clear foot prints, stepped from the car, crossed the ditch and walked to the railroad tracks. He was a heavy man, at that, or at least he has big feet. And they turn out more than the feet of the average person."
Charlie Ward nodded agreement.
"Now if you'll look closely," Mr. Peck went on, "you will observe that there are two sets of foot prints; one coming and one going. The return prints, significantly, are not as clear as those that go to the tracks, indicating that he was carrying a load to the tracks, but did not return with it." He glanced at Ward for a moment, then added, "It is pretty obvious what that load was. All of which gives us practically undeniable proof that a murder was committed. The deceased died of poison. We have definitely established that point. And his body was placed upon the tracks to conceal the fact; or to attempt to do so. If the deceased had walked to the tracks himself, which of course he didn't because these are not his foot prints, there obviously would be no return prints. Dead men, especially decapitated dead men, seldom, if ever, retrace their steps." He paused for a moment of conjecture. "We'll take plaster casts of the foot prints as well as the tire marks. Will you attend to that Christian? I believe you'll find sufficient plaster of Paris in the tool compartment."
Christian set to work and Mr. Peck and Ward retreated to the machine. When Christian had completed his work, the trio returned to headquarters, Mr. Peck leaving again to "do a little thinking."
Two hours later, Mr. Peck entered Charlie Ward's office again and eased himself into a chair.
"I have an idea," he informed Ward, "that the apprehension of the murderer is but a matter of moments. As a matter of fact, I can put my finger on him in ten minutes should I care to."
"You can put your finger on him right this minute if you want to," Ward supplemented, taking his feet off the desk and flipping a cigarette butt through the window.
"How so?"
Ward unlocked a drawer in his desk and drew out a tin box from which he produced a thickly padded envelope.
"I been doing a little scientific snooping myself," he announced with a proud ear to ear grin.
"That's extremely gratifying."
Ward thumbed toward a cigar butt in an ash tray.
"That," he said, "is what's left of a cigar you give me this morning. It gives off a pretty thick aroma."
"It ought to. They cost me a dollar each."
"Just take a whiff of this," Ward said, handing the envelope to Mr. Peck.
The latter smelled cautiously. "Why, it smells like my cigars."
"Exactly. Now take a squint in the envelope."
Mr. Peck opened the envelope and extracted a sheaf of currency.
"There's about twenty-four grand there," Ward offered.
"All of which is mine. It's the money that was taken from me when I was held up. I had the wallet and several of the cigars in the same pocket. The currency evidently became impregnated with the odor of the cigars. Where did you get it?"
Ward shuffled leisurely through some papers, finally producing a telegram.
"This wire," he said, flourishing the message with an extravagant gesture, "come in from the Frisco police while you were out. It says the guy downstairs on ice is Dominic Diaz. He was a guest at San Quentin up to four days ago where he was serving ten to fifty years for some mistakes he made when he was younger." Mr. Peck nodded interestedly. "It also says that when he so rudely walked off the premises without stopping to say goodbye, he was with a red headed monkey, minus one ear, that answers to the name of Mike McSweeney."
"I see."
"Mr. McSweeney had the bad taste to try to stick up our local drug emporium about half an hour ago."
"And he is now incarcerated in your bastille."
"Right. And he had your dough on him."
Ward sat back in his swivel chair, hooked his thumbs into the arm holes of his vest and beamed. "Well, I guess that makes it pretty clear. Eh, Mr. Peck? Diaz, the dead pigeon, and this guy McSweeney take it on the lam from the big house. They sticks you up, then blow North and land here. They're going to split, but McSweeney's a pig. He wants the works. So what does he do? He croaks his pal." Ward cocked his head and extended his hands, palms outward. "Okay?"
Mr. Peck scratched his chin thoughtfully.
"Well, fairly so," he answered without enthusiasm. "But before I say how clear, I'd like to see this McSweeney person."
A moment later a very sullen and defiant Mike McSweeney was ushered into the room.
"Turn around slowly," Mr. Peck ordered.
The man sulked, but with a little persuasion, he finally did as he was told.
"Now take your shoes off."
"Say, what is this, a racket?" the prisoner snarled.
"That will be all," Mr. Peck murmured after a hasty inspection of McSweeney's feet. "You may return him to his cell. And unless you care to have him prosecuted for his attempted robbery of the drug store, you may just as well notify the Warden at San Quentin to come up and get him. His list of crimes, I am sorry to say, Ward, does not include the murder of Dominic Diaz."
"Why—why it's as plain as the nose on your face," Ward spluttered as McSweeney was led from the room. "The cigar smelling currency...."
"You've tried hard," Mr. Peck interrupted, "very hard, in fact. Your efforts are indeed commendable and I do say that your deductions are plausible, but the fact remains that McSweeney is not the man we are looking for."
"Well, couldn't have McSweeney poisoned him and then thrown his body on the tracks?"
"He could have," Mr. Peck conceded, "but there would be no object in attempting to conceal his method of killing his confederate. Besides he is not mentally equipped to think of such things. Offhand, I'd say that his I. Q. is that of an eight year old boy. Remember also, that we are looking for a man—or possibly a woman—who has killed several persons within the past thirty days, using the same method; that of the injection of xetholine caniopus. McSweeney couldn't have killed any of the others, for the very simple reason that he has been behind bars up to four days ago."
Mr. Peck raised his hand to silence Ward. "In addition, Mr. Ward, please remember that I have a motor car full of foot print casts. Even in his bare feet, which you saw with your own eyes, he'd overlap those prints a half inch all around. That's why I had his shoes removed. Also, you recall that the man who carried Diaz's body to the railroad tracks possessed feet that pointed outward. McSweeney is decidedly pigeon toed." Mr. Peck raised his hands, palms upward, and then dropped them to his chubby knees with a sharp slap. "Now how clear does your case appear?"
Ward grunted and stared out of the window.
"On the other hand, Mr. Ward, as I before stated and now repeat, I can put my finger on the murderer within ten minutes, should I care to."
"Who is it?"
"I'll tell you later. There are one or two points I must clear up before I order the arrest. I'd like to drop in and have a talk with Doctor Kraus first. I believe he can furnish what little information I require."
"This is Mr. Peck, Doctor Kraus," Ward said as the pair entered the doctor's study ten minutes later.
"It's a pleasure," Mr. Peck conceded coolly. He drew a newspaper clipping from his pocket and handed it to Doctor Kraus. "To settle an argument, would you read this and give me your opinion?"
The doctor read the clipping through hastily.
"Why trepanning is nothing new," he scoffed. "The ancient Egyptians practiced it successfully five thousand years ago. They...."
"Never mind," Mr. Peck interrupted sharply. "I don't care a rap if the practice is new or old." He glanced sharply at Ward, who stood gaping in astonishment, then back at the doctor. "The point is, Doctor Kraus, how does it happen that you are able to read fine news print and yet, while performing autopsies on nine different corpses, you missed the fact that each of those persons had died from a shot of xetholine caniopus as was clearly indicated by the red blotches on the face of each individual victim?"
Doctor Kraus stiffened and stared at his inquisitor with cold precision.
"I'm afraid I don't quite follow you, Mr. Peck," he said smoothly.
"That likewise makes little difference. I also note that your toes point out considerably more than the toes of the average person."
"Your remark, Mr. Peck, is not alone vague, but makes no sense; at least not to me."
Ward intervened with a snort.
"You're crazy, Peck," he asserted heatedly. "I tell you I've known Doctor Kraus all my life. I'll vouch for him. I...."
Mr. Peck silenced Ward with an impatient gesture. Then turning again to Doctor Kraus, he said slowly and clearly, enunciating each word with care and precision. "There has been a murder committed, Doctor Kraus. As a matter of fact, there have been several murders, but I refer to one in particular; that of one Dominic Diaz, an escaped convict. Diaz died from xetholine caniopus poisoning. Later, his body was placed on the railroad tracks to make it appear that he had been killed by a train and to conceal the fact that he had been poisoned."
"Yes, I am aware of the incident," Doctor Kraus answered evenly. "I performed the autopsy. But...."
"And you also murdered this man, Doctor Kraus!" Mr. Peck glared into the doctor's eyes as he shot the accusation.
The old man sucked in a great breath and fell back a step and Ward saw, to his deep consternation, that the kindly light that had shown in Doctor Kraus's eyes for many a year, was no longer there.
"The tire marks that we found on the road near the scene of the train accident, Doctor Kraus," Mr. Peck continued, "were made by your car. In addition, Doctor Kraus, the poison was administered most carefully and professionally with a hypodermic needle. Only a physician, or one skilled in the use of such an instrument could so inject a poison as delicate and as deadly as xetholine caniopus. Obviously, because of the fact that you yourself were the autopsy surgeon, and because no other person in the County is familiar with such matters, you estimated your chances of detection as being extremely small. But...." Mr. Peck hesitated for a split fraction of a second. "Drop that!" he shouted, pouncing upon the aged physician and slapping a small glass vial from his hand.
But his action was just an instant too late, for the next moment, the old man slumped to the floor. Through eyes already dimmed by the instant action of the deadly poison, he peered up at Ward.
"I—I'm sorry, Charlie," he breathed softly as Ward dropped to his side. "After all these years, I—I've brought disgrace to—to our midst."
Ward, panic stricken and terrified, looked up at Mr. Peck, who stood frowning down at the pair.
"There's nothing we can do, Ward," he said quietly. "Look closely. The red blotches are already forming on his cheeks. Just hold him another ten seconds."
Presently Ward settled the body of the old man back to the floor. Then he rose and faced Mr. Peck.
"I can't believe it," he murmured, looking away. "I just can't believe it. I can't see why he should have done it. There wasn't any reason for it."
"Ah, but there was a reason for it," Mr. Peck asserted confidently. "Through various channels, I discovered this morning that Doctor Kraus was deeply involved financially. His circumstances were desperate. It was vitally important that he raise two thousand dollars at once."
"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.
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—"
Big Sid turned around, spat out his cigaret, heeled it into the concrete. He didn't take his eyes off Johnny the Itch for a long moment. They were big muddy eyes, protruding. When Big Sid looked at you that way, a guy felt he was being measured for a casket. Big Sid could haul off and belt your teeth down your throat with those tremendous arms of his. And those eyes would never change.
He really wasn't a tall or unusually large man, Big Sid. But he was solid beef. That big belly that filled out a double-breasted drum-tight. The massive shoulders that started minus courtesy of neck from right beneath his double chin. The big, wide-nostrilled nose that gave him a certain kind of heavy dignity. He exuded bigness.
Johnny the Itch fingered away sweat that rolled down from under his fedora and nodded obediently. He felt of the fedora gingerly as Big Sid turned away. Big Sid was thinking and had to be let alone. When Big Sid thought, it was real important. Later, he'd tell him.
Big Sid sweated and listened to the buzz of voices from down the corridor and tried not to believe he might have signed his own death warrant. He put his hands on his broad hips, ignoring the bandaged wrist where that copper's bullet had got him. He went back to the beginning.
It had been such a sweet set-up. This dinky little whistle-stop of a town. Duffyville. Over near the southwestern border of the state. With its single bank, the Duffyville National. And that motor parts plant on the outskirts with its heavy back-log of defense orders that had compelled a doubling of its help. A consequent raise in its payroll, too. And that payroll moved through the bank, naturally. Just a little matter of something over $21,000 each week.
"It's a shame to take it," he, Big Sid, had said in the beginning. Then he had cased it thoroughly. And he had moved into town, openly and aboveboard. Registered at the little hotel as one "Samuel Norris." Big front with plenty of credentials and a neat black mustache which could be shaved off easily enough later. Then he had walked right into that bank and identified himself. Even opened up a small checking account. "Just for ready cash, of course."
That was the way he did things. Cool and nervy. Always thinking, thinking ahead. He was a smart guy. Sure maybe you could grab that dough by blasting your way with the heaters plenty. But that kind of stuff only made you hot as hell, afterward. You had to keep lamming and maybe you never got a chance to enjoy it. Big Sid wasn't dumb like that.
His way, it had been a cinch to get the whole layout. How the payroll cash was brought from up the line in an armored car to the bank before opening time in the morning. And the company guards came down and picked it up immediately after lunch for their auditing department. After lunch!
He had put his finger on that weak spot almost from the start. The quiet lunch-hour in a sleepy little town. When two of the tellers and the bank officers went home to eat the way they did in those hick burgs. That was the time for the snatch.
And even that was not to be done crudely. Not Big Sid's way. He was pretty well known in the Duffyville National by then. Been dropping in to confer with the vice-president about the local real estate situation. It was so simple. A few hints dropped about the possible establishment of a new branch plant ... of course, a man wasn't always free to mention in advance whom he represented. And they'd have to get definite word about the extension of a railroad siding for the lading purposes, too.
Oh, it went over big. He knew how they did things in that bank. And he made them feel they knew him. Which was very important. Especially that teller down at the end window, Eckland. The one who stayed when the others went out to eat at the noon hour. Eckland was sort of good looking in a weak blond way. He studied accounting at night. "Samuel Norris" said he might know of an opening for a bright young fellow there. When he came up to the city, they'd have to get together. Least he could do would be to show him around the hot spots some night. That always made Eckland flush some; you could see he was the type who dreamed of himself as a glamor boy, a killer-diller with the dames.
And there was that fallen-arched Paddy who was the guard. Nice and simple. An occasional cigar, a friendly slap on the back, did for him.
So there she was. Perfect. The clincher was to get away without firing a shot. Before there was a warning. No shooting and they would be miles away before they stopped rubbing their eyes in that one water-tank burg. Probably wouldn't have figured out exactly what had happened until some time Saturday. The payroll came in on Friday.
They scoured every main artery and side road and cart track for miles in every direction, he and Johnny the Itch. They figured on cutoffs in case of a chase and how they could double in their tracks. And the pass over the mountain ridge that would take them across the state line. And about forty miles down the line, on that abandoned farm, they located the old barn where they would switch cars. They would hide the second heap in the barn. Williams would take care of that. He was the trigger man. Sonny Williams, cool as ice behind the business end of a Tommy gun.
Now, Sonny Williams was—
"Sid," Johnny the Itch said, watching the cell door nervously. He couldn't keep the whimper out of his voice now. "Sid, time's getting short. I—I think I got a way, a chance for us anyways. I got something—" His whisper cracked and he made a faint gesture toward his fedora as if he feared the walls had eyes as well as ears.
He was scared as hell. It made Big Sid sick. The little rat didn't have anything to be scared about. Not like he did. He glared at him. "I'm thinking," he warned heavily.
Johnny the Itch nodded so his under jaw jiggled. When a phone jangled down the corridor, his eyes bugged right at the door. Then he couldn't stand it any longer. "Look, Sid, how did it happen? You're smart. You figured it all out and—" He half choked and had to dredge his voice up out of his throat again. He took his hat carefully by both hands. "Look, Sid, I got—"
Big Sid took him by a bony shoulder and threw him. Back over the lower bunk of the cell. Johnny's head bounced off the wall. One of the town flatfoots came down and stared in, chewing gum methodically. He gave barely a glance to Johnny the Itch. The latter crouched there, frozen, hanging onto his hat as if it were a hunk of dynamite.
Lighting a fresh cigaret, Big Sid paid no attention to the copper. He was thinking what to do. He pulled at a vest button and picked up the thread again. She had been all set. He had given the office to Sonny Williams. Williams had planted the second heap at the old barn and they had picked him up and rolled into Duffyville. Right on the nose. At 12.08 according to his wrist watch. Dropped off Williams on that residential street around the corner from the bank.
Swung around the block. The timing was perfection. He, Big Sid, went up the bank steps as Williams came along less than ten yards away. Williams with that long bundle under his arm that looked like a florist's box. The sub-machine gun was in that box.
A local tradesman was just leaving the bank, nodded to "Mr. Norris." Then he, Big Sid, was over dropping his left hand on that guard's arm, asking affably for the vice-president. He had left for lunch, of course. And Sid slid the automatic from his side pocket and tucked it in the guard's side.
"This is a stick-up, stupid.... Keep your pants on an' don't try to be a hero. Now, pass me through!"
The guard's lips fell loosely away from his plates. He twisted his eyes over toward Williams. Williams was at a desk, the florist box lying in front of him, scribbling on a deposit slip. But Williams knew what was going on. The guard nodded his head on the fear-stiffened hinge of his neck and looked down at Eckland in the far cage, the only teller on now. The guard pointed toward the electrically controled door in the teller cage partition that cut off the offices and vault from the customers' side.
Eckland was looking down, smiling at "Mr. Norris." Eckland nodded. He pressed a button in his cage. The door down the line clicked. And he, Big Sid, was through, inside. It went smooth as grease.
Williams was over, the Tommy gun out. Had herded the guard into a corner where he was hidden from the teller as well as any passersby. Behind the partition, he, Big Sid, wasted only a single glance at the open vault. That would have been the stupid move. He was too smart for that. He moved swiftly down behind the empty cages toward Eckland's, walking on his toes. His left foot hit a discarded paper bill binder and it crackled and he pulled away from it so he struck one of those adding machines on a portable carriage. It jolted and rattled loudly. But Eckland did not look around.
Then he was right behind him. Had the automatic snout poking through the steel grille of the rear of the cage. Square at Eckland's back. Smack at the belt of his pinchback coat. "This is a stick-up, Eckland," he said quietly. "Don't try to be a hero—or I'll blow you outa your shoes!"
There was no sign from Eckland. He stood motionless, writing hand poised over a voucher.
"Now you're showing sense," he congratulated Eckland. "Now back up easy and unhook this—"
There was a low whistle. That would be Williams. It meant a depositor had come in. Williams had moved around to cover him with the Tommy gun. And that meant Eckland could see him and the gun now. Eckland's jaw unhinged and the pencil slid from his limp hand and fell to the floor. He peered forward, making gagging sounds.
"I told you this was a stick-up," he, Big Sid, told him, speaking louder now. "I got a gun on your back! Make a move for that alarm and I'll give it to you! I'm not fooling, Eckland!"
There was a long second ticking off into eternity. That Eckland almost acted as if he didn't hear. His head never even started to twitch toward the rear. One of his hands clawed at the counter in front of him. Then he was moving. His right leg. Shakily but purposefully. Toward that pedal that sounded the hold-up alarm, flashing it right to local police headquarters.
"Eckland, I'll kill—" But Eckland's foot never halted. And he, Big Sid, let him have it in the back. Twice point-blank.
But even as he tumbled, buckling forward in the middle, twisting with agony, Eckland's foot found the pedal, punched it. The damage was done. The bank resounded with the strident clamor of the gong. And Big Sid knew its twin was galvanizing them down at police headquarters.
He ran for it. Was moving even before the teller's slumping body hit the floor. Got through the partition door; he had even thought to block the snap-lock with a paper wad. Williams was out, going down the steps. The Tommy began to chatter. Then it was clattering down on the sidewalk, Williams crumpling over it with two slugs in his body. That cop coming out of the hardware store down the block happened to be a crack shot.
He, Big Sid, had sent him scurrying back with one well-aimed slug though. Then headed for the car parked down beyond the "No Parking" zone directly in front of the bank. He always believed in keeping the law when nothing was to be gained in breaking it. He was smart that way.
It was the cop running from across the street who got him in the wrist and made him lose the automatic. A lucky shot. Still, he might have made it. He got the car between them. He was almost at it, lunging for that open front door on the curb side. Johnny the Itch was quaking in there behind the wheel, hands up at his ears, yapping, "Cripes, I give up—I give up!"
Big Sid had always known how yellow Johnny was. That didn't bother him. He could take care of him when he got inside, got to that stubby .38 he had slipped into the glove compartment just in case. But he never got to it. That police car, roaring up from behind, siren a-scream, smashed into the tail end of their job. Jolted it ahead savagely. And with one foot on the running board, he was slammed to the ground hard, rolling his head against a tree. Then they had him. Him and Johnny the Itch. Only Johnny didn't count.
Big Sid shook his head. He still couldn't figure how it had happened. It was crazy, that guy, Eckland, committing suicide like that. Something had gone wrong but—
Johnny the Itch crept closer across the cell to Big Sid, shooting nervous glances toward the door. He admired Big Sid tremendously. Big Sid was so plenty smart, not a dumb cluck like him. He didn't blame Big Sid for what had happened. It couldn't be his fault; Big Sid never made a mistake. He could think.
Maybe he had figured out what had gone wrong by now. He would ask him, then tell him what he had. It was dangerous to interrupt him when he was thinking. But time was growing short. And then when he knew, Big Sid would figure out a way to use it. Johnny put a hand to his jammed-down hat and spoke.
"Sid, you got it figured how we was double-crossed maybe? What slipped? I know you figured it right." His voice squeaked out of his throat. "But—Sid, I got something you can figure on now, maybe. I got—"
Big Sid whirled on him, one of his heavy hands sweeping. He batted Johnny the Itch's fedora onto the side of his head. Johnny clutched at it as if it might be a life preserver. He started: "Sid, I got a—"
One of the County Homicide men came to the cell door. He plucked the cold cigar from his mouth and nodded at Big Sid. "You're lucky, pal. The hospital says Eckland the teller will pull through. If he hadn't, it would have been first degree and the hot squat for you."
Big Sid sneered. "Ah-h, that dumbhead, Eckland! He wanted to be a hero. He was asking for it!" He spat disgustedly onto the floor. "If he'd had any sense, he wouldn't have gone for the alarm. I told him I had a gun in his back!"
The Homicide man shook his head. "He never heard you."
"But I was only two feet away! I told him twice an'—"
"Eckland was stone deaf, chum," the Homicide man said.
Big Sid's lips curled. As if somebody had tried to tell him a fairy story. "Why, I talked to that chump many a time! I—"
The Homicide man agreed on that one. "Yeah, facing him. So he could look at you—and your lips. Eckland was a lip-reader. And—he was stone deaf, Cloras."
Big Sid swayed. He might have pulled it off if that guy hadn't been deaf. Could have. He swore, raking his hair savagely. "I never figured on that! I never figured—"
"You—you never figured that?" Johnny the Itch was on his feet when he screamed. His splinter of jaw jerked out fiercely. "You—Big Sid—the smart guy! You never figured—you—you was dumb?"
But he couldn't seem to believe it. Then—he did.
He jerked off his fedora, grabbing inside it. He came out with the stubby .38 from the glove compartment. He had been able to slip it out in the excitement after the capture. Nobody ever paid much attention to Johnny the Itch. Any more than they had thought to look under his hat when they searched him.
He said it again to Big Sid. "You was dumb." Then he just kept triggering until the gun was emptied and he had put five slugs fatally into Big Sid's carcass.
THREE GUESSES
by DAVID GOODIS
Detective Frey came in and saw Duggin lying dead, and he figured he'd go out and do big things. He went out and threw his weight around. Doing big things? You figure that one out!
It was one of those white stone places up in the east seventies. Plenty of class, Frey thought as he walked up the steps. He turned and looked at the guy waiting in the car. He shrugged, and the guy shrugged back.
Frey was in his early thirties. He was five eight and he weighed 170 and it was packed in like steel. He was a private dick and he was reckless. It showed in his grey eyes and the glint in his carelessly combed light brown hair and the set of his jawline. It showed in the thin grin of his lips.
His lips grinned like that as the door opened. A servant, a Jap.
"Yes, please?"
"I'd like to see Miss Rillette."
"She busy."
"Not too busy to see me," Frey said. "I'm coming in."
Japs are either very tough or they are very timid, and the servant was of the latter stamp. He stepped aside and Frey walked through a pale orange room, then through a burnt orange room and then into another pale orange room.
"Nice place you've got here, Miss Rillette," Frey said.
She was small and slim and even in the frock of a sculptress she looked delicate and graceful. In one hand she held a chisel. In the other she held a mallet. She was working on a chunk of marble and she had the forehead and general scalp contours almost completed.
When she turned around she showed a good looking set of features. She had dark brown hair coming in bangs to the eyebrows, and her eyes were gold-hazel. Her mouth was a little too wide, but still she was a good looking girl. She was in her late twenties.
"Just who are you and what is the meaning of this?" she said.
"My name is Frey, and I'm a friend of Harry Duggin."
"Is that so?" she said. "How is Harry?"
"He's dead."
She blinked a few times and then she said, "What happened—and when?"
Frey said, "He was murdered—this morning. Knifed."
She blinked a few more times and then she looked at the floor for a few seconds. Frey was watching her and then he was glancing sideways to a little jade box that held cigarettes. He took one up, eased a stray safety match from his vest pocket, flicked it with his fingernail, and lit up.
He took a few deep drags and said, "I got an idea that you know something, Miss Rillette."
Her face showed no emotion as she said, "I thought you said you were a friend of Harry's. You sound more like a detective."
"That's right. Harry was a good friend of mine. We went to law school together. He became a successful corporation lawyer and I starved for a while and then I became a private detective. I lost touch with Harry for a year or so and then last week he called me up and asked me to do a favor for him. He asked me to follow you."
She said, "Indeed?"
"That's right. He must have been looking around for a private dick and then he found out that I was in business and he asked me to follow you. He said that in return for the favor he would give me one hundred and fifty bucks. So you see, Miss Rillette, I have nothing against you personally. I just have to make a living, that's all."
"Why did he want you to follow me?"
"You don't have to ask me that, Miss Rillette. You know the answer. In fact, you know all the answers. I found that out through seven days of following you."
She blinked some more and then she reached out to the little jade box and took a cigarette. Frey flicked one of his safety matches with his fingernail and gave her a light.
"What am I supposed to say?" she murmured.
He knew he was going to have trouble with this girl.
"You don't have to say anything. I'll write out a confession outline and you sign it. If you want to, you can fill all the gaps. But what I want most is a signed confession—"
"What did you say you were?" she murmured.
"A private detective."
"Beginner, aren't you?"
That made him sort of sore. But he swallowed it and said, "Maybe, but I'm not an amateur. I make a living out of this."
She blinked and dragged half-heartedly at the cigarette and then she turned and looked at the marble she was doing. She looked back at Frey and her eyes were tired as she said, "How close did you follow me?"
"Here's what you did," Frey said. "On Sunday you attended an exhibition at the Wheye Galleries, up on 57th Street. From there you went to Larry's, in the Village, where you had a dinner engagement with a man named Lasseroe. From there this guy took you to a party at the Vanderbilt. He went home alone. You stayed at the Vanderbilt. You stayed there for five days, with your very good friend, Daisy Hennifer, the jewelry designer. You had a few luncheon and dinner engagements with Lasseroe. You went to a few shops with Daisy. Then early last night you left the Vanderbilt and I lost you in Fifth Avenue traffic. I went back to tell Harry about it and to get your home address, because in all the days I'd been following you—well, you didn't once touch home. When I got to Harry's apartment, his valet informed me that Harry was out for the evening."
"That's as far as you got?"
"Hardly. I went to Harry's apartment again this morning. The valet came to the door and told me that Mr. Duggin was sleeping. I explained that it was certainly most important and I went in. But I couldn't wake Harry up, because he was dead. I don't know why I'm telling you all this. You know it already."
"How did you get my home address?" She was still blinking a lot, but she wasn't excited.
"The valet gave it to me."
"You told him—?"
"I didn't tell him anything. I came out of the bedroom and told him that Mr. Duggin was still sleeping. Then I asked him for your address. Maybe he still thinks that Harry is asleep. Or maybe he's found out already and the police are in on the case."
She looked at the ceiling and then she looked at the floor and then she looked at Frey and said, "Now let me understand this. You say that I murdered Harry. You want me to sign a confession."
"That's all there is to it," he said.
"You're going to place yourself in a lot of difficulty, Mr. Frey," she murmured. "I advise that you give this matter a little more thought before you accuse anyone else—"
"I'm not accusing anyone else," Frey said. "What are you going to do?"
She blinked and then she looked at her wrist watch and then she looked at the marble. "I have a lot of work to finish before three thirty this afternoon," she said. "Please go now."
She turned, took up her mallet and chisel, and started to work on the marble. She acted as if Frey had already walked out of the pale orange room.
He shrugged and walked out.
The Jap servant followed him to the door. He said to the Jap, "Tell Miss Rillette that I'll be back—after three thirty."
He walked down the steps and stepped into the parked coupe.
He turned the key in the ignition lock and said, "No go."
"What happened?" this other guy said. This other guy was Mogin. He was about as tall as Frey and he weighed a little over 200 pounds. He had close-cropped blond hair and pretty blue eyes and he was a very tough boy.
"She don't know from nothing," Frey said. He took the car around the corner and stepped on the gas.
"What do we do now?" Mogin said.
"Well, we could go to a double feature and kill the afternoon that way. Or we could go up and visit this Lasseroe."
Mogin shrugged.
It was a new apartment house near Morningside Heights. It was elegant and smooth and important.
"Do I wait?" Mogin said.
"Maybe you better come in with me."
They went in and rang Lasseroe's number and he must have been expecting somebody because he buzzed an answer right away and the door opened. When Frey and Mogin stepped out of the elevator, Lasseroe was standing at the door of his apartment and when he saw them he expected them to walk right by. But they came up to him.
He was a man of medium height and he had a good build for a man of forty-five. He had a square, rigid-boned face, and deep-set dark grey eyes, and a good head of black hair threaded with silver. He was wearing a long collared silk shirt and an expensive cravat and an expensive silk lounging robe.
"Hello, Lasseroe," Frey said.
"I beg your pardon—"
"You don't have to beg anybody's pardon," Frey said. "All you have to do is answer a few questions. If you don't mind we won't waste time out here in the hall. We'll go into your room and talk."
"I presume you are thieves?" Lasseroe said. He wasn't excited.
"No, we ain't thieves and we don't like funny boys," Mogin said.
Lasseroe walked into the apartment and Frey and Mogin followed.
"Now, gentlemen?"
"My name is Frey. This is my assistant, Mr. Mogin."
Lasseroe ignored Mogin. He said, "What do you want with me?"
Frey began to talk. He didn't look at Lasseroe. He looked out the window and talked slowly, taking his time. He said, "You got a nice business, Mr. Lasseroe. You are an expert appraiser of art, and you take good fees from various dealers. Sometimes you hit healthy money. You check up on a Rembrandt and you give your okay to a buyer and the dealer gives you a sweet kick-back. It is all very legitimate and lucrative—"
"What are you, a census taker?" Lasseroe said.
"Quiet," Mogin toned.
"A short time ago you figured out a few new angles," Frey said. "You weren't doing so good on the old stuff and you reasoned that you might be able to make up for the deficiency by a few transactions with the modern boys and girls."
"Just what do you mean by—"
"Quiet," Mogin toned.
"So here's what you did," Frey said. "You rounded up several of the more snooty painters and sculptors—the artistic boys and girls who have a lot of dough because their parents or some uncle or somebody had a lot of dough. You told the suckers that you'd boost their work in return for tribute. Then you went to the dealers and told them that you had several sensational new artists whose work would bring high prices. You'd give that work a big build-up in return for the kick-backs. It worked."
"Now just a moment—"
"Quiet," Mogin toned.
"Everybody was happy," Frey said, "because nobody really lost out. The artists made dough and the dealers made dough and the customers thought they were getting high class stuff. One of these customers was Harry Duggin, the successful corporation lawyer."
Lasseroe opened his mouth to say something. Then he closed it and looked at Frey and looked at Mogin and looked at Frey again.
"You sold Duggin a few pieces of sculpture done by a girl named Tess Rillette," Frey said. "Duggin liked the sculpture and he wanted to meet the girl. You introduced him to Tess and he went crazy. He worshipped her. He asked her to marry him. She thought it was funny and she told you about it. You didn't think it was funny. You saw a new dodge—"
"Now damn you—"
"Quiet," Mogin toned.
"Duggin was out of his head because of Tess Rillette. And of course he bought up every piece of sculpture that Tess turned out. This sort of thing went on for more than a year, and Harry didn't know that sculpture takes a long time and a high-class artist can turn out so many pieces and no more in a certain period. In other words, Harry didn't stop to figure that you were selling him stuff that Tess Rillette had nothing to do with. That is—he didn't stop to figure about it until he found out that Tess had fallen for you."
"Now you look here—"
"Quiet," Mogin toned.
"Harry could be clever when he wanted to be, and he was always clever when he was good and burned up. He checked up on that stuff you sold him, found out that it was phoney. He got in touch with you, told you that you were slated for jail—but that you could snake your way out of it—by giving up those happy little plans for yourself and Tess Rillette. By that time, you were serious about Tess and you wouldn't give her up for anything. So you went and murdered Harry Duggin."
"What?"
"I said—you murdered Harry Duggin."
Lasseroe stared at the lavender rug. He raised his eyes and said, "Is Harry—dead?"
Frey reached in his pocket and pulled out a safety match and flicked it with his fingernail. Then he remembered he had no cigarette in his mouth and he reached out and Mogin took out a pack and gave him one. He lit the cigarette and he said, "I'm a detective, Lasseroe. I'd like you to tell me how you did it."
"I didn't do it."
"No?" Frey looked at Mogin. Mogin shrugged.
"No, I didn't do it," Lasseroe said. "Let me see your badge."
"I don't have a badge. I'm a private detective."
Lasseroe said, "I've a good mind to call the police."
"You don't have to call them," Fry said. "They'll be here soon anyway." He walked to the door. Mogin followed.
Lasseroe stood there in the center of the lavender rug. He said, "You gentlemen have wasted your time."
"Quiet," Mogin toned.
In the elevator Frey said, "Maybe we can still make that double feature."
"I'm getting hungry," Mogin said. "How about some lunch?"
Frey parted his lips and the cigarette fell from his mouth. He stepped on the stub and said, "We'll have lunch and then we'll visit another party."
"No double feature?" Mogin said.
"No double feature. We'll visit this third party and if we strike out we'd better leave town for a few days to avoid a lot of aggravation. See what I mean?"
"I see what you mean," Mogin said. "Who do we see now?"
"We see Daisy Hennifer, the jewelry designer," Frey said. "We go to the Vanderbilt Hotel."
They faked a story that they were representatives of a big Manhattan lapidary. That got them up to Daisy Hennifer's suite. It was topaz yellow, ceiling, walls, rugs and furniture—all topaz yellow. Daisy had on a topaz yellow gown and she had topaz yellow hair.
"You won't be able to stay long, gentlemen," she said. "I've a cocktail engagement at hof post threh—"
"What's that again?" Mogin said.
"Skip it," Frey said.
Daisy was frowning.
"What did you do last night, Miss Hennifer?" Frey said.
Her topaz eyes started to glow and she said, "Just what do you mean by coming up here and—"
"Don't get excited, Miss Hennifer. We're just doing our job, that's all."
"But you said you were—"
"No, we don't represent a lapidary. We're just up here to ask you a few questions, that's all."
"You're not police—" She was wearing four rings and she was twisting them about her fingers. They were all big yellow topaz stones.
"Not exactly—" Frey said.
"Well then—"
"Do you know Harry Duggin?" Frey said.
"Why—yes. In fact, I was to see him this afternoon—"
"You won't see him, Miss Hennifer," Frey said. "He was murdered this morning."
"Oh—"
"He was a fine sort, Miss Hennifer. You shouldn't have done it."
"Done what?"
"Killed him."
She was twisting the topaz rings. They circled fast about her long fingers, the nails of which held topaz yellow polish.
"You've been friends with Harry for a long time, Miss Hennifer," Frey said. "As far as you were concerned, it was more than friendship. You went for Harry. But he wasn't serious. And he finally gave you up altogether because he was getting big ideas concerning Tess Rillette. You hated Tess. You had known her for some time and you had paid no particular attention to her, except to laugh behind her back. You looked upon her as a girl with a lot of money and no brains and no real ability as a sculptress. When you saw her at teas and parties you just saw her, that was all. But when Harry fell for her, you had to pay attention, and you hated her. You—"
"How do you know this? Who are you? What—?"
"Please be quiet and listen," Mogin droned.
"It was sort of natural that you should begin to cultivate this Tess Rillette's friendship. You wanted to talk to her about Harry. You wanted to find out just how much she cared for the guy. And then you found out that she didn't go for him at all. She adored another man. That made you hate Harry. But at the same time you still weren't giving up hope. You went to Harry, told him that Tess Rillette was after another man. You begged him to marry you. But instead of helping the situation, your visit made things worse. Harry began to look into the matter. He found out about Tess and this man Lasseroe. He wanted to make doubly sure. He was worried about a lot of things. He had a private investigator follow Tess around during this past week."
Mogin threw a cigarette. Frey caught it and flicked a safety match with his fingernail.
Daisy Hennifer was saying, "All this—it's—I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say."
"You don't have to say anything," Frey said. "Just write me a confession note, that's all. Just write out the confession and sign it and you won't have to say anything."
"But—but—"
"It was convenient for you, Miss Hennifer. Lasseroe had a good motive for killing Duggin. So did Tess Rillette. At first she was indifferent to Harry. And after he threatened to have Lasseroe jailed, she hated him. But your feelings were even stronger. It was your kind of hate that turned to murder."
"You're wrong," she said. She was excited. "I didn't do it."
"A confession will get you off easy."
"I'm not signing any confession," she said. "I didn't do it. I had nothing to do with it. I adored Harry. I—"
"You'll save yourself a lot of misery—"
She started to sob. "I didn't do it. I—"
Frey looked at Mogin. The short, heavy guy shrugged.
"Is that all, Miss Hennifer?" Frey asked.
"That's all I've got to say." She stopped sobbing. Her topaz eyes were dull now. "Are you going to take me away?"
Frey shook his head. "We can't take you away. We're not cops."
She stared. "Then—what are you?"
Frey shrugged. "Maybe we're just a couple of damn fools."
He nodded to Mogin. They went out of Daisy Hennifer's suite.
They were walking toward the coupe. Mogin was saying, "It's almost three."
"We'll have something to eat and we'll go back and sit in the coupe and wait a while," Frey said. He put his hand in his change pocket and took out two half dollars, three quarters, six dimes, four nickels. "We'll eat a classy lunch on this," he said. "Then we'll wait around for a little while and we'll see where Daisy Hennifer goes."
"It's all right with me," Mogin said: "Anything's all right with me—as long as we eat."
They lunched at the hotel and then they walked out to the lobby and sat down and smoked. At twenty past three, Daisy Hennifer walked through the lobby and Frey and Mogin took their time and followed her.
A cab was waiting at the curb and Daisy got in.
The coupe followed.
Up Fourth avenue and two turns to blade through heavy uptown traffic and then down the street where Tess Rillette lived. The cab stopped outside the white stone house and Daisy got out.
The coupe went once around the block and then Frey parked it at the corner.
"This looks good," he said.
Mogin nodded.
Frey said, "Maybe you better wait here. If I'm not out in thirty minutes maybe you better come in and see what's happened to me."
Mogin said, "Maybe you better take this." He reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a little pistol. Frey looked at it and made a face.
"I hate to use those things."
He took the pistol and put it in his pocket and walked up the white stone steps. The Jap came to the door and Frey said, "Well—it's past three thirty. Miss Rillette is expecting me, isn't she—?"
The Jap shook his head. "Miss Rillette is busy. You must call later."
"Tell Miss Rillette that I—" He braked his tongue and said, "No—don't tell Miss Rillette anything. In fact—maybe you better take a walk around the block."
The Jap started to get excited. He said, "You were not among those invited—"
"Take a walk around the block," Frey said. "Look, I'll help you down the steps—" He grabbed hold of the Jap and hustled him down the steps. Mogin saw the deal and opened the door of the coupe. Frey pushed the Jap inside.
"What's this?" Mogin said.
"A glimpse of the Far East," Frey murmured. "Take him to a show. Take him to a dance. I don't care what you do with him, only keep him away from the house for a while. He'll get in my way otherwise."
The Jap started to yell.
"Tag him," Frey said. He looked up and down the street and he saw that it was all right. Then he heard a click and he saw Mogin's fist bouncing away from the Jap's chin. The Jap went to sleep.
"I'll drive around the block a few times," Mogin said.
Frey went up the steps again and took his time going through the pale orange room, the burnt orange room. Then he was moving slowly and very quietly as he heard voices coming from the other pale orange room. The orange door was closed but Frey managed to get in a look through the side windows of the studio. The windows were slits of glass running from the floor to the ceiling, and through them Frey saw Tess Rillette and Lasseroe and Daisy Hennifer.
They were all talking at once and at first their voices were low but then they started to argue and Frey got in on it.
"Clever, weren't you, Daisy?" Tess Rillette was saying. "You asked me to be your guest at the hotel, and I thought it was hospitality. But what you really wanted was to keep me away from here. You didn't want Harry to get in touch with me."
"That's a lie," Daisy said. "I asked you to stay at the hotel purely for business reasons. I wanted you to work on those inlaid ivories—"
"That's what I thought—at first," Tess Rillette said. "But I know the truth now. You wanted to keep me away from Harry. You thought maybe you had one last chance of winning him back. And when you found out it was futile—you killed him!"
"She's right, Daisy," Lasseroe said. "You killed Harry Duggin. You worshipped him—and hated him!"
He got out of the chair and pointed at her, and a few glasses on a cocktail tray tipped over.
Daisy was shouting, "You're both lying! You're trying to place the blame on me and switch things around so that I'll be put out of the way. You're trying to commit—double murder!"
"Just what do you mean by that?" Lasseroe said.
Daisy's voice was lowered as she stared at the art appraiser and said, "You killed him. You had every reason to kill him, and you did it. And now you're trying to get me out of the way. I know the truth about you, Lasseroe. I know how you've been swindling art patrons, charging them exorbitant prices for cheap junk such as Tess puts out—"
Tess Rillette wasn't taking this sitting down. She started to call Daisy a lot of nasty names. It was all very unpleasant.
And then Lasseroe said, "You've got a lot of influence around this town, haven't you, Daisy?"
She liked that. She nodded. And there was a mean smile on her lips. Lasseroe was moving slowly toward her, and his face was pale. There was a light in the man's eyes that told Frey a lot of things. Frey reached into his coat pocket and touched the revolver to make sure that it was still there.
"You've got a lot of mouth, too," Lasseroe was saying.
"Just what do you mean by that?" Daisy looked at him straight.
"You may turn out to be quite an annoyance," Lasseroe said. He kept moving toward her.
Tess Rillette was grabbing Lasseroe's arm, saying, "Please—enough has already happened—"
But Lasseroe was excited and he was pushing Tess Rillette away and then he was making a grab for Daisy. She fell backward and he went over with her and he got his fingers around her throat. She managed to scream once and then she started to gurgle. Frey opened the door and took out his revolver and pointed it at Lasseroe's spine.
"All right," he said, "Let's stop playing."
But Lasseroe was out of control now and he was choking the life out of Daisy Hennifer. He didn't seem to hear Frey, and he increased the pressure of his fingers around Daisy's windpipe. Tess Rillette was screaming and putting herself between Frey and Lasseroe, in an ungraceful try at the old martyr act.
Frey knew that he couldn't stand on ceremony. He had to break it up and break it up fast. He pushed Tess Rillette and she didn't like being pushed. She was screaming now, and she threw fingernails at his face. He let her have a slow right to the jaw and it sent her across the room, spinning.
Then he had a try at Lasseroe.
He tried to pull Lasseroe away from Daisy Hennifer, who by now was in a very bad way. But Lasseroe was a maniac now and he wanted to take the life away from the jewelry designer. Frey knew that he would have to use the revolver. He lifted it and then allowed the butt to come down and make contact with Lasseroe's skull.
Lasseroe went to sleep.
"We'll take them all down to Harry's apartment," Frey said. "If the cops aren't there already, it'll be a good idea to finish the case right on the spot where it started."
"That's a very good idea," Mogin said. "I have a hunch that this will put us on the map."
Frey nodded. He prodded Lasseroe with the revolver and said, "You and Miss Rillette will sit in the opera seats with me. Miss Hennifer will ride in front." He touched the shivering Jap on the elbow and said, "The studio is in quite a bad state. Better go in there and rearrange things. If you have any questions to ask Miss Rillette, maybe you better call the police station. That'll be her temporary address before she goes away on a long trip."
He stepped into the coupe and closed the door. Lasseroe was manacled to him and Miss Rillette was manacled to Lasseroe. Daisy was still groaning as Mogin put the car in first and sent it whizzing down the street.
"You're making a big mistake," Lasseroe said.
"I wouldn't talk about making mistakes if I were you," Frey said lightly. He felt very good. All a private investigator needed was one good break like this, and he was made. The cases would come in thick and fast, and so would the dough. Frey smiled.
Tess Rillette was saying, "I told you, Mr. Frey—you were letting yourself in for a lot of difficulty, and—"
"Do I turn here?" Mogin was saying.
There were a few police cars in front of the high-class apartment where Harry Duggin had lived, and where he had died. The coupe parked across the street and Frey saw the crowd and the reporters. He said, "All right—here we go."
Everyone was looking and murmuring as the five of them went into the apartment house. A cop walked over and said, "What's this?"
"It's the Harry Duggin case," Frey said.
They stepped into the elevator and went up seven floors to the apartment. There were a lot of cops up there, a lot of plain clothes men and lads from the homicide bureau. Reporters and photographers and a doctor.
"What's this?" a plain clothes man said.
"It's the Harry Duggin case," Frey said.
The mob crowded around. This little deal was taking place in the living room of the apartment. The dick was saying, "Carven is in the bedroom. He's talking to Duggin's valet." He frowned at Frey and said, "What have you got?"
"Enough," Frey said. He pointed to Lasseroe. "Here's your baby. I'm going in and talk to Carven."
As he started for the bedroom door he heard Lasseroe saying, "You're making a big mistake—"
Frey smiled.
He went into the bedroom and he saw Carven, the big shot detective. He saw the two cops in there and he saw the valet, and then the corpse of Harry Duggin. Carven had the valet by the back of the neck. Carven was a big man and he was forcing the valet to look down at Harry Duggin's dead face.
Carven was saying, "Look at him. He's dead. Do you get that? He's dead. You called us in here and you figured that would automatically put you out of the picture. And you told us that a guy by the name of Frey came in here this morning and killed him. But Frey's an old pal of mine. Frey's a private dick—a lousy one, reckless and careless, but still he's a dick and your story didn't go. You killed Duggin—why—why—?"
Not only was Carven big, he was plenty tough. He gave the valet a short left and a mean right to the ribs. The valet broke.
"I—I killed him," he said, and it turned into a sob. "I—I wanted something that he owned—"
"What was it?" Carven said. He raised his head, clipped to one of the cops, "Take this down."
The valet was sobbing, saying, "He had a fortune in little marble statues. He was always talking about those marble statues, telling me how priceless they were. He—kept talking about those statues all the time, telling me that the greatest sculptress in the world made them—and that money couldn't buy them. That's all he talked about—the statues made by Tess Rillette. He—drove it into me—made me crazy with the desire to own them. I—I—put a knife into him—"
Carven grinned. He looked at the cops and said, "Pretty fast, wasn't it? We came in on this case exactly two and a half hours ago. I can well imagine what happened to that wise guy Frey. He came in here this morning and he saw Duggin lying dead in bed and he figured he'd go out with his stooge Mogin and do big things. I'd like to see his face when he finds out—"
Then he turned and saw Frey's face.
Mogin was talking loud and fast. He was saying, "What're you crying the blues about? It was just a bad break, that's all. And at least we pinned something on somebody. We got that smart bird Lasseroe locked up for fake art manipulations, and—"
They were walking toward the coupe. Frey was shaking his head and his head was hanging low. He said, "Can we make a late double feature?"
"Sure," Mogin said. He put his heavy hand on Frey's shoulder and said, "It's a good idea. We'll go to the movies and get it off our minds. Don't worry, pal. Better days are coming. Hey—where you goin'?"
Frey was walking away from the coupe, toward a corner drug store. "I'll be right back," he said. "I just want to go in here and take an aspirin. It'll help me wait for the better days."
THE COP WAS A COWARD
by WILBUR S. PEACOCK
Johnny Burke had the making of a fine cop in him ... but there was something mighty strange about Johnny Burke—something mighty strange!
I liked the looks of Johnny Burke the first time I saw him. He was one of the cadets who had been signed on less than six months before. He was still on the probation lists, but I could see that he had the making of a fine cop in him.
"Sergeant Southern?" he asked, when he found me in the garage, where I was wiring in a new radio, "My name's Johnny Burke, and I've been detailed to work with you in 27."
"Glad to know you, Burke," I said, coming out from underneath the dashboard of the cruiser.
We shook hands, after I had wiped some of the oil from mine, and I winced a bit from the pressure of his fingers. I got my first good look at him then, and I felt my first bit of confidence since Riley, my old partner, had been detailed to the north end of the district.
He was big, and I mean big. Six feet four, he must have been, and must have weighed close to two and a quarter. Wide shoulders tapered into a narrow waist, his blond head sat squarely on his shoulders, and he carried himself with a panther-like grace. He appeared to be a swell partner to hold down the other half of cruiser 27.
I said as much, and he flushed at the compliment, which was another thing that took my liking. Too many of the cadet cops think they're big shots and are inclined to belittle the men who had been cops before they were out of three-cornered pants.
"I hope so," he said, "for I want to be a cop more than anything else in the world."
I grinned from my scant six feet. "Okay, let's see how we'll work in double harness. Shed that coat, and give me a hand with this set."
"Right," he said, and the two of us went to work.
That was our first meeting, and the one in which I judged him for the first time. I liked the kid and I let him know it, tried to put him wise to some of the things I've learned in ten years on the force. He listened to everything I said, tried to fit it in with the theories the police school had pumped into his brain. Some of it, I knew, he discarded because it didn't sound logical, but other parts seemed to make an impression on him.
He rode the other half of the seat with me for the next week, learning the neighborhood that was our patrol, memorizing names and locations and addresses as I gave them out. He learned fast, and I knew I had drawn a honey of a partner.
Still, there was something strange about him that I couldn't quite analyze. When we were alone, or when we were with the other men at one of the stations, he was big and quiet, seeming to know that he was not out of place. But when we made periodic inspections of boarding houses and the like, he was an entirely different person. He walked stiffly, his arms braced a bit at his sides. His face became a trifle white and his lips thinned, making him seem somebody suddenly alien to the kid I had for a partner. I didn't understand it, and in a way it shook my confidence in him, which, of course, meant that ours was not the instinctive partnership it should have been.
That sounds rather silly when I tell it, but there is nothing childish or amusing in its practical application. Cop teams should be as closely in accord as Tom and Jerry, or sorghum and flapjacks. The average person thinks that the mere routine of following orders takes care of the partnership angle, but that isn't the fact. Teams have to know exactly how much confidence each can place in the other, and each must know the capabilities of the other, or the two men don't make a good team.
And here was this new cadet partner of mine acting strangely as the devil any time the mere routine of covering the district became broken. I didn't like it, but I kept my mouth shut, waiting to see something definite that would prove something one way or the other.
Then one day, down in the station gymnasium where daily calisthenics must be taken, I got my first inkling of the mental twist that was in Burke's brain.
There were half a dozen of us in the place; some of the men boxing the bags, some on the bars, and Burke and I on the wrestling mats. He and I had been practicing jiu jitsu for ten minutes, and both of us were working up a good perspiration. Neither of us had the advantage for the moment, so I went in for a quick wristlock and spin.
Burke straightened as I came forward, squatted and drove forward with catlike speed. Before I knew what was happening, he had caught me with a knee catch and a hip flip, and I was skidding across the rough canvas on my face. I was growling to myself for being caught with an elementary trick, and came whipping back with my hands outspread in catch-all style.
There was blood on my face, although I didn't know it, and since I'm none too soft looking at best, I must have appeared to be rather in a mad rage at being thrown by a man of less skill than I.
I was half-crouched and gathering myself for a quick burst of energy. I noticed Burke's hands coming into position for sudden defense, and for a moment the mere fact that they were in position meant quite a bit to me. For there is no such thing as placing hands in defensive position in Jiu Jitsu; the entire science of this particular wrestling lies in keeping your hands out of the reach of your opponent.
I stopped momentarily, sudden wonder filling my mind. Burke's hands seemed to be warding off some unknown danger that was threatening, and I caught the flicker of some emotion in his grey eyes. I straightened out of my crouch, forced myself not to reveal what I had just seen.
Burke backed off a step, and slowly some of the tightness went out of his face and arms. He breathed deeply, and the sound was strangely like a gasp of relief.
"Whew!" he said relievedly, "I thought for a moment we were going to have a real fight."
I grinned, watching every play of emotion on his face, and carefully weighing every nuance in his tone of voice. And as suddenly as though somebody had told me, I knew he had a strip of yellow squarely up his back.
"That shouldn't worry you," I countered, "You could tie me into knots."
"Yeah?" he said skeptically, "And while I was tying you in knots, what would you be doing?"
I grinned, but I felt suddenly sick inside. Somehow, in the past week, I had come to think a lot of the kid. And now, despite his strength and brains and college degree, I knew that our days as partners in 27 were numbered.
I stretched, headed toward the showers, not answering his question.
"Come on," I said, "We've got just enough time for a cup of coffee before our shift."
I watched him that night and for the next three days. Now that I was particularly noticing him, I could see that my analysis was right. He was like any other cop I had ever known while in comparative safety, but when out of the usual routine and into some beer dive or fairly tough hangout, he was yellow clear to his heart.
He proved that one night when we picked up a quartet of drunks at a dive on the south end of our district. We went there on radioed orders, the complaint being phoned into headquarters by some old maid whose sleep was disturbed.
I shoved through the door of the dive, Burke following close behind. The report had been right, for we could hear the quartet murdering 'Sweet Adeline' in the back room. We went down the narrow passage and over to the drunks' table.
"Come on, fellows," I said, "we're going for a little ride."
Burke stood at my side, not saying anything, carrying himself with that same strained look that I had noticed the first few days we were together. The drunks joked with me at first, insisting that Burke and I have a drink or two with them. I wheedled with them for a while, not wanting to get tough.
And then the entire situation changed. The drunks got ugly, wanted to fight. I obliged them, taking the two on my side of the table, leaving the other two for Burke. I crossed a short right, then lifted a left, and turned to see how my partner was doing.
One of his own men was down, a bloody welt along the side of his head, and the other was cowering drunkenly from the heavy gun in Burke's fist. I knocked the gun up just as his finger pulled the trigger. I caught the gun from his hand, looked at his face in amazement.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Burke," I yelled, "These men aren't criminals; they're just drunk!"
"He was going to hit me with a beer bottle."
"So what!" I was shaking with the nearness with which tragedy had almost struck. "Hell, you don't shoot a man because of that!"
"But that's what that gun's for. I'm supposed—"
I looked at the drunks, who were rapidly sobering. "Get out of here and go home," I said, then turned to Burke, "Come on, let's get out of here."
I reported over the two-way radio that a gun had been fired accidentally, in case somebody phoned in about it, also explained that the drunks had disappeared when we got to the scene of the complaint. Then I turned back to Burke who was huddled in white-faced silence in the side of the seat.
"For God's sake, Johnny," I said slowly, "Just because you're a cop and wear a badge doesn't give you the license to shoot that gun any time you get a notion."
"I know," he said miserably, "I know."
And that was all that was said that night. Burke was uncommunicative and sullen the rest of the shift, seeming to realize now just what a boner he had pulled. As for me, I still shook with horror when I remembered how close he had come to putting a slug through the drunk. I didn't say any more, even tried to apologize for his action in my mind.
1 tried to cover up for him by saying that he was just a rookie and untrained. Too, I remembered how frightened I was the first time I had any trouble. I walked into a gang fight and waded into the leader of one gang. I had my man down, and was bouncing his head on the sidewalk, when other cops pulled me off. I was so scared that I didn't even know he had been unconscious for seconds. Luckily, I hadn't killed him in my unreasoning excitement.
So I covered for my new partner, and acted as though he had made but a natural mistake.
But I was only kidding myself, for two nights later, he let me down again.
It was about eleven at night, and the streets were slowly clearing of traffic, when we rode right into the center of a bank job. I was at the wheel, thinking what a swell life my girl and I were going to have when I got promoted to a detective's job. I pulled around the corner onto Harper street, and into the path of a tommy gun's fire.
We went over the curb, the tires shot to ribbons, before I had time to take a deep breath. I went sideways out of the door, grabbing my gun as I rolled on the pavement. I came up shooting at the two men who were in the touring. I heard Burke yell something from the other side of the cruiser.
And then a couple of slugs spun me like a top, and I hit the ground, having only a hazy memory of seeing Tony Flasco dodging out of the bank's door with another guy. I passed out cold, the drum of the touring's motor sounding in my ears.
I woke up once, when Burke came around the car to see how badly I was hit. I went back into blackness remembering that the flap to his belt gun was still fastened. The yellow rat hadn't even pulled his gun!
The next thing I remember was asking for a slug of whiskey and not getting it. After that, I slowly came back to earth. I hadn't been hit so badly; just bullet shock and a nicked shoulder to keep me in bed for a couple of days. Within forty eight hours, I was sitting up, and a week later I was aching to get back into harness again. True, I was still a bit muscle tender, but I figured a thing like that shouldn't be considered when a killer like Tony Flasco is running around loose.
I wouldn't see Johnny Burke in the hospital; I wanted nothing to do with him again. So, each time he tried to visit me, I had the nurse tell him I was asleep. Finally, he must have taken the hint, for he didn't come around any more.
I felt pretty badly about the kid, but I felt worse when Riley, my old partner, visited me. He came through the door of the hospital room, that map of Ireland he uses for a face ruffled up in a wide grin.
"I warned you, Southern," he said, "but you would play with the big boys. Now, look at you—your pants are ripped."
"Oh, shut up and sit down," I snapped from the wheelchair, trying not to grin, "Who the hell do you think you are—Dorothy Dix! Cripes, you've got enough slugs in you to make you rattle like a dice box!"
"My, what a nasty temper. Tch, tch, tch!"
"Okay, okay, go ahead and gloat. But first, let's hear the latest from headquarters."
And then his face wasn't grinning, instead it grew hard like granite. He told me the details that the chief hadn't let me know, for fear that I would get worried. Suddenly, I lost all desire to joke, too.
Tony Flasco, his lieutenant Vance, another killer named Keeper, and an unidentified man were in the mob that shot me down. They had forced the bank's cashier to open the bank for them at night, had murdered the watchman and then left the cashier for dead. He had rallied enough to identify two of the men from pictures. Burke's and my stories had fitted in the other pieces.
Tony and his mob had got away with over fifty thousand in cash and an unnameable sum in bonds. They had disappeared into thin air, were evidently holing up somewhere until the heat died down. Teletype and radio had the country blanketed, but with as much money as they had they would be able to buy their way out of the country.
"So that's that," I said, "not one blasted thing to go on."
"We haven't got a thing," Riley admitted, "but the chief thinks they're holed up somewhere in town. The identification was too fast to let them get far."
"Maybe," I said, "and maybe not."
Riley hitched his chair closer, and his face wrinkled up a bit in a smile. "There's that possibility that the chief might be right, anyway Johnny thinks so."
I felt blood pressure rising in me for the first time since my transfusion. I started to tell Riley just what I thought of a cop who wouldn't even draw his gun to save his own life. And then Riley pulled the thing that gave me my second shock within a week, and somehow it hurt me more than the slugs did.
"Yeah, Johnny," he said, "he thinks the chief may be right. He's a bright kid, too, smart as they come. He should be, he's my nephew and I put him through college."
"He's—he's your nephew?" I said.
"Sure, and a swell lad; he'll go high on the force. And Southern, you'll die laughing at this—he thinks you're about the bravest cop and finest man he ever met."
Well, that clinched it; I couldn't say a thing about the kid. I knew it wasn't the right thing to do; I should have reported him the moment I got out of the hospital, but the memory of Riley's pride stopped me before I could speak. Instead, I laughed and joked with the cops at the station, and tried not to be alone with Burke. I knew that I might tell him exactly what I was thinking if he rubbed me the wrong way.
And then on the tenth day after the shooting, Tony and his mob still in hiding, I went back into 27 with Johnny Burke. To all outward appearances we must have appeared to be the same old team, but there was a difference.
I was still taped, and the bandages irritated me every time I moved. But there was an irritation in Johnny that shifting a bandage couldn't help.
He tried to make conversation, but I wasn't in the least pleasant. After a bit, he shut up and remained hunched over the wheel, his face as white and stiff as though chiselled from marble. I felt sorry for him then, but I felt a dull hatred, too. He had almost cost me my life, and might do it again if something broke.
I made a mental resolution to apply for a transfer the moment we got back to the station.
About three in the morning, there was a furtive whistle from the mouth of an alley near where we had parked for a moment. Burke grunted something, then climbed from the car. I went, too, just out of general principles.
I knew the whistler the moment I saw him. His name was Lefty something-or-other, and he was about the sneakiest stool the department had. Burke seemed to know him, for he started talking the second we were out of sight of the street.
"You found it?" he said.
"Sure, it's down the street about six blocks. They're holed up in the old warehouse." Lefty's tone was a thin, scared whisper.
Burke pulled a packet of bills from his pocket, slipped them to Lefty's skinny hand. Then the stool was gone down the darkness of the alley, and Burke was turning to me.
"One hundred bucks," he said, "but it's worth it."
"What's worth it?" I asked, but I had a hunch about what was coming.
"The information. I've had Lefty working for me for ten days. He's spotted Flasco and his men in the empty warehouse down the street."
"Well, what are we waiting for?" I snapped, "let's take them!"
I had forgotten for the moment that the cop was a coward; but Burke didn't waste a bit of time in bringing back my memory.
"Maybe we'd better call headquarters?" he said slowly.
I caught at Burke's arm with a grip so tight it hurt my fingers.
"Let me tell you something, Burke," I said, "Lefty is too ratty to trust. Before a squad could get here, he'll tip Tony Flasco off about cops coming. That's his way; he collects both ways." I let go his arm. "We'll call headquarters, sure, but meanwhile we'll see what we can do to stop those punks from leaving."
Burke's face was whiter than any man's I've ever seen. A muscle twitched in his cheek, and his hands lifted a bit.
"Look, Southern," he said, "you don't understand."
"Don't understand!" I was so filled with rage I could barely talk. "I understand only too well. You dirty yellow rat, you're a disgrace to the uniform you wear. You're afraid, afraid to meet another man on equal footing. You were afraid of me in the gym; you were afraid of the drunk in the beer joint; you were afraid of Tony's guns—and now you're afraid to try to mop up a mob that's murdered two men in cold blood." I went toward the street. "Well, by the Gods, I'm afraid too. I'm just as scared as you of getting my belly full of hot lead. But this is my job, and I intend to do it."
"Look, Southern—" He caught at my sleeve.
I shook myself free. "Look, hell! You've got a gun; why don't you use it now the way you'd have used it on a defenseless drunk!"
"That's what I'm trying—"
I swung, lifted an uppercut from my knees. Johnny Burke went down, crumpling slackly to the cement.
"That's just in case I don't come back," I snarled, "I owe you that."
And then I was running down the street.
I ducked around the first corner, ran half a block, then slipped down the alley. I was over my rage almost as soon as I was out of sight of the cruiser, and suddenly sorry for what I had done.
I knew that he would be coming to in a minute or so, and would call headquarters and report. Meanwhile, it was my job to try and hold Flasco and his mob until help arrived. I laughed suddenly without mirth; I knew that one man didn't have a Chinaman's chance of holding four men in that warehouse.
I slowed down in the fourth block, realizing how weak my trip to the hospital had made me. My head was swimming a bit, and there was a throb of pain from my side where a slug had gouged a path.
I darted down the alley, keeping under cover, watching other shadows to see if there was a lookout posted. Finally, I came to the rear of the vacant warehouse, satisfied that I had arrived unseen.
I took a look around, trying to find a sliver of light that would reveal the part of the building in which the men were hiding. Empty windows leered back at me, scabby paint seemed to rustle in the light breeze, but I couldn't find the slightest signs of life.
I leaned weakly against the wall for a moment, wondering if the tip had been on the square, knowing instinctively that it had. I leaped and caught the bottom rung of a fire escape, pulled myself up until I could get a foothold.
Then I went upward as quietly as I could. I found an unlocked window on the third floor, slipped silently through. I held my breath for a moment, wondering if I had been heard. Then, my gun in my hand, I sneaked through the darkness.
I covered the entire floor, shaking a bit in nervousness as a rat scuttled to safety. For seconds, I wondered if I might not be smarter by waiting for reinforcements.
And then my mind was made up for me.
On the floor above there was the sudden sound of voices. I went toward the stairs, climbed them slowly. My mouth was dry, and I could feel cold sweat trickling down my spine.
"Come on, come on," That was Tony's voice. "This place'll be hotter than hell in another five minutes."
I edged further up the steps, crouched with my head just below the landing. I heard steps coming my way and saw the flicker of a light. Then I stood up, lifted my gun.
"Hold it," I said, "It's the law."
There were the sounds of startled gasps behind the flashlight, then a gun barked defiantly. I crouched a bit, blasted lead at shadowy figures. I heard someone scream in agony, then a giant hand lifted me and sent me rolling down the steps.
"Got him!" That was Tony again.
I tried to move, knew that another minute and I'd never be able to move again. I stumbled to my feet, went back to the stairs. Above, I could hear the mutter of scared voices. I knew why they didn't come down; they were afraid I was playing possum.
I collapsed on the second step, was suddenly sick because of the pain in my chest. And then, the steps vibrated from a heavy weight.
I lifted my head, wanting to see what was coming. For a moment, I couldn't figure it out. Then I screamed out a warning.
But Johnny Burke went on up. One moment he was limned in the glow of the flashlight, then gunfire made a blasting hell of that fourth floor. I saw Johnny Burke's body jerk a bit under the impact of the slugs, but he was too big to be stopped by them.
I got to the top of the steps, not knowing how I got there, but in time to see the finish.
One man was down, probably sent there by my bullets, and another was just crumpling from a smashed skull from a savage blow of Johnny Burke's gun. A third man turned and tried to run, but Johnny's hands reached out and hurled him against a wall. He was spreadeagled there for a moment, then slumped sideways.
And then Johnny closed with Flasco.
He went back two steps as Tony pulled the trigger of the gun, then shook his head and started forward again. He caught Tony, and they fought silently for a second. Tony was big, but Johnny was bigger. But Johnny was carrying enough lead to kill the average man.
Tony knew that and fought with the viciousness of a cornered rat. But he was no match for the devil that was Johnny then. Johnny caught him in arms like heavy lengths of hawser, and the back of his coat split from the sudden surge of strength that went through them.
Tony Flasco screamed then, screamed like a woman in deadly agony and fear. He pounded at Johnny Burke's face with bloody hands. Then there was the sound of a heavy stick breaking, and Tony went utterly limp.
Johnny loosened his grip, stood swaying for a moment. He was laughing, laughing with a madness that chilled my heart. He turned, tottered toward me, fell, then dragged himself along with his hands. He laughed when he saw my face in the flashlight's glow, but there was no mirth in the sounds.
"I'm yellow," he said, "yellow as hell! I've been afraid all of my life. Funny isn't it?" He choked a bit. "Then laugh, damn it, why don't you? I'm big, and big guys aren't supposed to know what fear is. So I become a cop, and for a while I think I'm learning bravery."
"Easy, Johnny, easy," I said, seeing the trickle of crimson on his lips.
"Easy, hell!" Johnny's hands clutched my shoulder. "Yeah, I was afraid of you; you were the first man who ever stood up to me. I was afraid of the drunk, too, and in my fear I almost murdered him. I knew then that I could never carry a gun until I learned what bravery was."
"For God's sake, Johnny, shut up!" I yelled, "You'll talk yourself into a hemorrhage."
"You'll listen to me and like it."
I nodded, felt a sabre of pain in my chest where Tony's slug had blasted into me. I tried to move, couldn't, his hand was too solid on my shoulder.
"So I couldn't get by without a gun," Johnny Burke's voice was growing weaker. "So guess what I did—I took the bullets out. Yeah, I carried an empty gun, afraid that if it were loaded I'd butcher somebody. You thought I ran out on you the night of the hold-up, but I didn't. I tried to tell you my gun was empty, but things happened too fast. And then tonight, after Lefty gave us this hideout location, I didn't have time to explain again. I had forgotten to bring shells for my gun, and wanted to get some before we raided this warehouse. But you slugged me and came yourself. I came to and followed you. Yeah, laugh that off, I followed you in here with a gun I could use only for a club. Sure I'm yellow, I'm yellow as hell, but I'm not such a rat I'd let you walk to certain death without lifting a hand. And don't tell me I was brave; I was still as yellow as I ever was. But I didn't have any choice. Hell, Southern, don't you think I'd like to be brave like—"
He crumpled inertly, his hand slipping from my shoulder. I don't remember much about what happened after that, but it couldn't have been much more than a minute before the cops broke in.
We've got beds in the same room, Johnny and I. He'll be here quite a bit longer than I will, but I figured maybe we'd better stick together while we're in here. After all, if you're figuring on being partners for a long time to come, there's no time like the present to make a few plans for the future.
I just caught a glimpse of his back through the silly gown he's wearing. Even partly covered by the bandages, I like it. Somehow, it still is pretty solid—too, I'm beginning to appreciate its whiteness.