by Jerry eBooks
“I told you to keep out of here, Slats,” growled Kilgore, his resentful voice filling the room. “No use to come whining around me with your grief.”
But “Slats” Kehoe came on, trailing a dark stream of water across the floor from his shiny, wet garments.
Kilgore glared in contemptuous irritation at the pinched face of the treacherous crook smirking at him across the desk, shoe-button eyes aglow.
“Lissen, Jake—I got a fat deal for you,” protested Slats, his twisted mouth working excitedly. The man’s voice was reedy, tense. “It’s a pipe, Jake—an’ lousy with sugar.”
Kilgore stirred his bulk like a hungry shark. His harsh, gray face lifted higher, and into his bulging eyes there came a venal glitter as they probed the mean soul of the shriveled parasite fawning at him.
Slats fidgeted uneasily; a violent cough racked him. His thin lips were bright red and curled back, showing buck teeth.
The breathless rush of the rain on the window was the only other sound in the office.
Kilgore was in the temper of a wounded bull. Since he had been summarily dismissed from the detective bureau by the Commissioner for grafting, ill luck had trailed him like a pestilence.
Often, of late, thoughts tinctured with homicide rolled like scarlet mist through his brain. An inner whisper, sibilant and urgent, kept mocking his inertia. The devil had posted a beguiling shadow at his elbow. “Private Detective” Jake Kilgore was ripe for any dark and desperate venture.
But he knew Slats Kehoe was treacherous. To hide a surge of suspicion Kilgore glowered at the rain-splashed window, and grudgingly waved a broad hand.
“Spill it, Slats, but no funny angles or I’ll wring your dirty neck.”
The pinched face of the thin little crook flamed evilly.
“This here cashier, Cyrus Rathbone,” breathed Slats, darting red tongue flicking his red lips nervously, “who ducked outta th’ Citizens National Bank with twenty grand in currency is our bacon. I got it straight where th’ mug’s hidin’ out with th’ dough.”
Kilgore snorted in disgust. “You pinheaded little jackass! Headquarters would run me ragged if I messed in that case to chisel in on th’ reward. Anyhow I know this Cy Rathbone—wise guy. He’s just about on his way to South America by now.” Kilgore’s cold eyes mocked Slats with sardonic skepticism and mounting anger.
“Don’t be a sucker,” squeaked Slats indignantly. “Didn’t I tell you I know where he’s hidin’ at? What in hell do you want, anyway? Monk Gazzo an’ Spider Bailey tailed Rathbone when he lammed. They put on th’ stickup, but Cyrus was too flip with a rod. He eased a coupla slugs into Monk an’ that scared th’ punks off. They laid up with a pal of mine an’ he tipped me off. Honest, Jake, th’ rumble ain’t an hour old. That’s how I got th’ lowdown on Rathbone an’ found out where he’s headin’ for.”
“What in billy-hell’s all this to me?” exploded the intolerant Kilgore. The cuspidor rang as he exasperatedly fed it a dead cigar butt. “You trying to fix me?” he blazed. “Tangle me up in a mess so the department’ll climb my back?”
“Nuts!” smirked Slats scornfully. “You won’t lissen. Rathbone’s outta their jurisdiction—away down th’ river. You nail Rathbone an’ lift th’ twenty G’s off him. Ain’t cha hep? Th’ hell with th’ reward.”
The drowsing shark in Kilgore whipped furiously into life. He slapped his massive thigh with a resounding thwack.
“Bully boy, Slats! Where’s Rathbone?”
A violent coughing spell, brought on by the sudden excitement, shook Slats’ frail body. He came out of the spasm weak and gasping. Wiping his red lips with a white handkerchief, he tried to hide the crimson stains.
Kilgore had bounded to his side like a worried uncle.
“Take ‘im alive, Jake. Take Rathbone alive.” Slats’ breath was coming laboredly; the lower rims of his eyelids turned outward, showing two half circles of red membrane. “And keep me out of it, Jake.” His voice rose to a whine. “Me—I can’t take any chances on gettin’ thrown in th’ pen with what ails my lungs. A damp cell would plant me under the daisies,” he panted. “When I get my share of this dough, me for Arizona.”
“Take ‘im alive, yeah,” gloated Kilgore. “But dead or alive I’ll take ‘im.”
All during the spasm of coughing Kilgore hovered around Slats with oily solicitude. What if the nasty little runt croaked before he came through? A benignant concern, like a smokescreen, veiled the rapacious greed in Kilgore’s lobster-like eyes. With a practiced hand he yanked a secret drawer of his desk open and withdrew a flask.
“Here, Slats, my boy”—and Kilgore, enlarging on the exhibition of brotherly unction, poured four fingers of whiskey into a glass. “Throw this into you. Just what you need. Wish I’d have known it before. Say,” with a lavish gesture, “put the bottle in your pocket. It’s good stuff. Big Dan Gaffney from the Bureau of Criminal Identification gave it to me. I keep in touch—slip him a tip once in a while—see.”
“Gee, Jake!” blurted Slats in embarrassed amazement. “You mean it? That’s swell. Now I’ll give you th’ full directions in writing. Th’ walls might have ears. Rathbone was beatin’ it away in an old twenty-four model flivver. I’d go after him myself only my nerve’s shot an’ I’m ‘under th’ gun,’ an’ gotta lay low from th’ bulls. They want me for that Fountain Inn stick-up. Here you are, Jake—here’s where Rathbone is,” and Slats handed Kilgore a card on which he had penciled the directions.
Kilgore all but snatched the card from him. His big cheeks puffed out gloatingly. “Jake, when you get your hooks on that twenty G’s,” rasped Slats, his shoe-button eyes burning, “keep it in mind that yours truly gets an even fifty-fifty cut—ten grand. This lunger’s Arizona bound.”
“Well, I should say so, Slats,” boomed Kilgore, and he reassuringly patted the crook’s thin shoulder, beaming on him with a lupine grin. “Where’ll I find you?”
Slats hesitated, wavered, then flung caution to the winds.
“At th’ Sailors’ Roost. It’s a classy hideout, even if th’ bedbugs are big as Java beans.”
Kilgore put on the grand air. “Leave it to me, Slats. Go home and rest—stay inside. Take good care of yourself—and remember I’ll take good care of you.”
“I’m sure you will,” leered Slats, turning toward the door.
“Here, old boy—go out the back way—it’s safer.”
Alone, Kilgore reread the card: Michael Whorl, taxidermist—an’ old stir-bum, known to th’ mob as Chuck “Hardhead” Yandi. Ask at Gant’s Landing on the river for Whorl’s farm.
“This old ex-con must be a relative of Rathbone’s,” mused Kilgore.
“Well, that pretty pair’s going to have a caller—a first-class collector.”
Kilgore left his office, went downstairs to a telephone pay-station. A moment and he had the central police station on the wire. “Talk to Dan Gaffney.” A moment’s wait. “That you, Dan? This is Jake. Here’s an earful—and, Dan, keep my name out of it. Slats Kehoe wanted in the Fountain Inn robbery can be found at the Sailors’ Roost. Check? Okay, Dan. Eh? Yeah, I could use another batch of that spring medicine.” He hung up.
“That saves me ten grand,” he grinned to himself, “and it’ll keep Slats out of the wet.”
Private Detective Kilgore, snug in a slicker, and unmindful of the driving rain, sat hunched at the wheel of his rented powerboat, as he raced down the swollen river in greedy pursuit of the absconding bank cashier.
The storm god droned and hissed over the inundated lowlands where the rocky shoulders of the pine-clad hills splay out, and swooped over the boiling flood to taunt and thwart the fever-eyed man hunter.
Gray ghosts loomed suddenly in the slanting rain-lines, were caught up and wound around Kilgore in fierce tumult by the blaring gusts of wind. A soggy trip.
He ran in, tied up at Gant’s Landing and entered the store, where he bought a supply of gasoline.
“How far is it to Michael Whorl’s place?”
he asked.
Gant looked at him curiously. “A good twelve miles by th’ river. Figurin’ on stoppin’ there?”
“I got a little business with Whorl. Odd duck they tell me.” Kilgore sat down to smoke and dry out.
“You can say that again. There’s funny talk about that fellow. Lives alone on his small farm—shoots and stuffs eagles. Ships th’ mounted specimens to a shopkeeper in Saint Looey. Th’ general idea is that he’s bad medicine. Him an’ me don’t hitch. A bullet-headed old crab.”
Kilgore nodded, and hurried to his powerboat. By now the rain had stopped and Kilgore swung away from Gant’s Landing, his motor roaring wide-open. The river valley was dotted with flocks of hungry-wheeling birds, flying low above the flood waters. Scavengers of the air.
Kilgore lumbered through the gate and across Whorl’s yard to where he saw a stocky, heavy-jawed man cleaning the carcass of an eagle.
“You Michael Whorl?” Kilgore asked. “That’s me,” answered the man, out of the corner of his mouth; he looked his caller over with an appraising and somewhat suspicious eye, for “copper” was written on Kilgore in block type.
“I understand you hunt these big birds and mount ’em, Whorl,” Kilgore began disarmingly.
Whorl relaxed. “Yeah, I’ve mounted hundreds of ’em. I’d like to sell you a nice specimen. I got some beauts.” He cocked an eye skyward. “There’s th’ chieftan of ’em all.”
Kilgore saw a great eagle soaring aloft in wide interweaving circles.
“I’m goin’ to bag him one of these days,” promised Whorl. “I’ve got a whole family of his on pedestals. Missed more shots at that old lord than any bird I ever drew a bead on.”
The eagle began to plane downward. He bucked the uprushing air currents joyously as he sailed for a perch on a limb above the river, near where Kilgore had moored his powerboat. As the eagle lighted, the limb swayed up and down from the bird’s weight, with a pleasing rhythm.
“I saw that fellow when I turned in to your landing,” said Kilgore. “Sure is a whopper.”
“There he is—home again,” grinned Whorl. “Many a shot I missed at him from here ‘count of th’ limb dancing up an’ down that way.”
The great bird perched there breasting the airy torrent, his fierce eye sweeping the rolling expanse of water, scornful of the scrutiny of the two men.
“But I’m not interested in birds,” said Kilgore. “I’m looking for a man—friend of mine,” he added craftily. His sharp eye didn’t miss the sudden tension in Whorl’s bulldog face.
“A friend of mine by the name of Cyrus Rathbone,” continued Kilgore, in an off-handed manner. “Cy told me to meet him here at your place.”
By now Whorl’s expression was blank as porcelain.
“Haven’t seen any such party. Never heard of th’ mug.”
Kilgore nodded and frowned. Here was a complication.
“Then I’ll have to send a telegram to his folks. Maybe they’ve heard from him and can let me know where I can find him. Where’s the nearest telegraph station?”
“Fayette. It’s ten miles back from th’ river.” Whorl’s voice was hard, but level and calm. Kilgore was suspicious.
“Got a car? I’d like to borrow it.”
“I got one. But you couldn’t get through. High water.”
“That your car in the shed?” Kilgore’s trained eyes had been busy. He walked over to the machine and his pulse jumped. “Flivver, eh?” It was a twenty-four model! Kilgore’s eyes moved over an old mower, then widened with interest. One wheel was missing. It startled him. A new and sinister angle presented itself.
Kilgore’s mind worked fast. Whorl was lying. Rathbone’s car and the missing wheel pointed to foul play. Kilgore subdued his growing excitement. He scented robbery and murder.
“Say, Whorl, if Rathbone shows up tell him to wait for me.” Kilgore knew he was on a hot trail, but he intended to conceal his investigations from Whorl. “I’ll be back,” he said in a casual tone. “I’ll have to go to Hollendale in my powerboat to send the wire.”
Kilgore started his motor and gazed over the sullen flood and on to the distant marshland. The busy flocks of carrion birds intrigued him. He decided to investigate each milling huddle of feathered scavengers and learn what deleterious flood-drift caused their voracious activity.
Kilgore held the wheel of his powerboat with a grim hand, as he scouted eager and tense through the water trails of the inundated areas. He stuck to the marshes where the flood waters often floated strange cargoes.
He had frightened flock after flock of scolding crows away from drifting carcasses. In an expansive backwash, Kilgore came upon a milling cluster of carrion birds near an upthrusting sand-spit.
He sent his boat in close, scattering the crows, who reluctantly took to the air, voicing their anger in a harsh and clamorous cacophony.
Above the water an object the size of a man’s arm caught his startled eye. The hair on the back of his neck prickled. Using a stick he had picked up Kilgore poked at the object, and a human arm came into view. A moment later a man’s foot, bare and muddy floated slowly to the surface, the ghastly center of a ring of poisonous-looking bubbles.
Smothering his revulsion Kilgore got the body into the boat, rinsed the mud and filth from the features, and thereby justified his zeal, for the dead face of Cyrus Rathbone confronted him.
A wire trailed from the waist into the water. Kilgore tugged at it, pulling strongly, and presently fished a mower-wheel from the flood.
Further examination revealed a jagged bullet hole in the back of the dead cashier’s head. The hands had been bound with wire, a remnant still clung to one wrist.
Pools of mist hung in the gullies and it had started to rain again when Kilgore’s motor roared into life and he headed for Whorl’s landing.
The murderer saw the gun in Kilgore’s hand first, and then he looked into the private detective’s gloating, sneering face.
“I found a piece of your property, Mr. Chuck Yandi,” rasped Kilgore. “Come on—I’ll show it to you.”
Whorl’s massive jaw shot out, his little eyes flamed.
“What th’ hell you drivin’ at? Thought you went to Hollendale.”
“Walk in front—no funny business now, Hardhead,” and Kilgore waved his gun.
Whorl glared, tense bodied, eyes dangerous. “Thought you was a flatfoot.”
“Out of the yard—go on,” yelled Kilgore contemptuously. “Down the path to the river—move.”
Whorl stepped out slowly, trembling with passion.
Kilgore followed, gun leveled at the man’s spine.
Whorl stared at the ghastly passenger in the powerboat stolidly, unmoved.
“Know him, Hardhead?”
“If you’re dredgin’ stiffs from th’ marshes you’ll have plenty to do, copper.”
“Yeah?” Kilgore grinned. “Pull the body out on the bank.”
“What you want me to do—take that up to th’ house, stuff ‘im an’ mount ‘im?” Whorl sneered, but he obeyed.
“Can the wisecracks—now pick up that wheel.”
“What for?”
“Because this roscoe says so,” gritted Kilgore, and rammed the gun-muzzle into Whorl’s midsection.
Eyes hot with hate, Whorl shouldered the mower-wheel.
“Back to the barnyard,” ordered Kilgore.
They trudged up the muddy path in silence. The rain was lashing down again, boisterous gusts of wind went whooping through the pines. The barnyard looked like a hog-wallow, in the downpour.
“Over to the mower there, Whorl. Now slip a wagon-jack under the axle and put that wheel back on the spindle where you took it from.”
Kilgore inspected the completed job with infinite satisfaction and expansive conceit.
“You see, Whorl,” he goaded with relish, “the wheels match. A dead giveaway on you. Two-by-four brains. You shot the cashier, Cyrus Rathbone, in the back of the head with your rifle and then like a fool gave him to the
river.”
Whorl’s face worked ferociously, a desperate fear in his eyes. “You’re a damned liar! Dirty, crazy dick!”
“Don’t you know better than to trust the river—with its changing moods and bad manners? Huh! Sap.”
“You can’t pin this on me in court—you can’t prove it.”
“Th’ hell with court,” snapped Kilgore. “I’m not monkeying with courts of law. I’ll hold a little trial right here. Where’s the dough you took off that stiff?”
“You’ll get fat tryin’ to talk that way to me, flattie,” jeered Whorl, his little eyes blinking swiftly. “Cheap dick.”
Kilgore knocked him sprawling in the mud. Whorl bounded to his feet in a fury, and unmindful of the menacing gun rushed the big detective. He rightly judged that Kilgore wouldn’t shoot him, for dead, he couldn’t reveal the hiding place of the stolen money. As the murderer came in savagely, teeth bared, roaring oaths, Kilgore grinned. His great fist whipped up and again Whorl splashed full length in the muck.
“I can knock you down as often as you get up,” Kilgore laughed, for Whorl was a ludicrous sight. “Wipe the goo off your handsome puss and show me where that dough is.”
A blazing volley of curses was the only reply. “All right—all right, Hardhead—that’ll do. I got plenty of time and you’re going to dig up all that kale for me and like it.”
He leered at the ex-convict. Quick as a flash he snapped on the handcuffs.
“Get this through your thick skull: Stall all you want to—have a good time. But I’m too smart for you, and in the end you’ll sing pretty for me.” Kilgore emphasized his prophecy with a grim snarl.
Whorl laughed, a confident, taunting laugh. “Get into the barn—there,” roared Kilgore, giving him a violent shove. “I need a few yards of hemp.”
Back of the horse-stalls Kilgore found a coil of rope. Here he also found a cow-whip.
“So you beat up the gentle cows?—you dirty dog!” Kilgore took the “blacksnake” off its hook, and grinning maliciously at Whorl, picked up the coil of rope. “Now, Hardhead, we’re ready to open court in the basement of the house. Waltz out of here.”