by Jerry eBooks
All of a sudden the room was very still. Fesden stared down at the badge and then his eyes moved to the Dummy’s face, and it wasn’t an idiot’s face any more, and the gray eyes were wide with terror.
“A shamus, eh,” Fesden lipped. “A filthy insurance dick.” His fingers curled and started moving, slowly, very slowly, toward the Dummy’s straining neck. Slowly, but ready to clamp on any yell for help. “All right, wise guy, say your pray—” His right hand flashed sidewise and grabbed the Dummy’s left hand, that was sliding out of a hole in his shirt, under the armpit, clutching a knife.
The Dummy squealed, and his thin body arched up, with unexpected strength, to throw Fesden off. Fesden struck at it with the knife that was somehow in his own hand, struck at the Dummy’s breast and felt the blade slide in, to the hilt.
The meager form slumped, lay still.
“Lift them,” a hoarse voice said, above Wolf Fesden. “Lift your mitts quick or you get lead in you!”
V.
Wolf Fesden’s head jerked around to the voice. A revolver, looking as big-muzzled as a cannon, snouted at him from the doorway and behind it was the dark-clothed, ungainly form of Gimpy Morgan. Fesden’s hands went up over his head.
Morgan hitched in over the threshold, his artificial leg thumping the floor, pulled the door shut behind him. Between slitted, granular lids his tiny, bloodshot eyes looked down at the Dummy’s still form, looked up again at Fesden’s face.
“Nice,” he grunted through thick, bluish lips. “Very nice. I thought I told you to check your shiv with me. I thought I told you there wasn’t to be no rumpus here.”
Fesden found his voice. “He was a shamus, Morgan. An insurance company dick, spotting me for some swag I copped before my last stretch. Look at that badge he’s got pinned to his shirt.”
“A dick,” Morgan repeated huskily. “Holy—So he was.” Under its three-day stubble of beard, his gross-featured gorilla face was taut-lined. “He sure put it over on me.”
“I just tumbled to it,” Fesden went on. “So I had to bump him.” His elbows bent, starting to let his hands down. “I had to—”
“Keep ’em up!” Morgan ordered, his revolver jabbing forward. Fesden obeyed. “So you had to bump him,” Gimpy went on. “In here. You didn’t think maybe you ought to tip me off an’ let me attend to him, did you?”
“I . . . I—”
“You didn’t think that his office knows he was in here, an’ that when he don’t show up they’ll be after me wantin’ to know what’s happened to him. That don’t make no difference to you. You’re sittin’ pretty. You slit a dick’s heart and you scram . . . and you leave me holdin’ the bag.” Gimpy Morgan grinned, showing yellow, rotted tusks, but there was no grin in his little eyes. “So you figure. But me, I figure different.”
“What—” Fesden whispered through dry lips. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that it’s you is gonna take the rap for this, not me. See? I run a crummy flop house, maybe. Maybe I don’t ask no questions from the guys I rent rooms to. But when some kill-crazy screwball slices the heart out of my porter, then I gotta play with the law.”
“You . . . you’re not going to turn me in,” Fesden gasped. “Gimpy, you can’t! You’ll be marked lousy and—”
“The hell I will,” the other snarled. “Nobody’s gonna mark me lousy for sliding out from under a murder rap. I’ll be plastered with a fine for running an unlicensed rooming house, maybe. Maybe I’ll even draw a stretch for harboring guys that’s wanted. But for no filthy twenty-five bucks a day am I takin’ a chance on a kill rap. No, mister. That rap you take all by yourself. The murder rap. The hot squat.”
The hot squat! The ugly, heavy-built chair in a grim bare room! The agonized body straining against straps! The tiny wisp of smoke spurting from under the helmet that covered its face!
Wolf Fesden pulled the edge of his hand across his eyes to wipe away the picture, lifted the hand again before Morgan could growl, “Get ’em up.”
“Look,” Fesden said. “Look, Gimpy. You just said you wouldn’t take no chance on getting smeared with a kill rap for twenty-five bucks a day. But how about twenty-five grand? Would you take that chance for that?”
The left corner of Morgan’s mouth twitched. “Quit your kiddin’. You ain’t got it. You ain’t got twenty-five hundred. I—”
“I’ve got it, Gimpy. I’ve got a hell of a lot more. Listen to me. I’ll come clean. You know why this dick was after me? You know why he didn’t turn me in for the killings up at Lornmere and be done with it? Because he was after the Ramsdell swag. Five hundred grand in diamonds and pearls and emeralds. I know where it’s cached, Gimpy. I can put my mitts on the stuff as soon as it gets dark enough. It’s a half a million worth, but it won’t bring only about a hundred grand from the fences. Play with me, Gimpy, and I’ll split that with you, twenty-five—seventy-five.”
Morgan blinked. “The Ramsdell swag . . . I remember. Hey! You’re not kidding me, are you?”
“May I be struck dead right here if I am.”
“And you’ll split—Nope. No twenty-five-seventy-five. Make it fifty-fifty and it’s a go.”
“Gripes—”
“Fifty-fifty or I turn you in.”
“O.K. You take care of ditching this stiff and get me out of here, and after I fence the swag, I’ll send you your—”
“Nix,” Gimpy growled. “I’ll ditch the stiff all right, but I go along with you to pick up the loot, and we split it right off. I’ll do my own fencing.”
“Oke,” Fesden gave in. “Have it your own way.”
“It’s a deal,” Morgan growled. Then: “Get up and back to that chair and sit down in it.”
“What—”
“Sit down there. I’m tyin’ you to it till we’re ready to get going. I’m not takin’ no chances of your takin’ a run-out powder on me.”
There wasn’t any use arguing further. Wolf Fesden sat down in the chair and put his arms around behind its back and Morgan lashed their wrists together with some wire he had in his pocket. Morgan put his gun away and lashed Fesden’s ankles to the legs of the chair with some more wire. Then he lumbered over to the body on the floor, picked it up as if it had no more weight than a baby, and slung it over his shoulder.
He rapped twice on the door, waited a half minute, opened it. He turned in the doorway, showed yellow fangs in a meaningful grin, said:
“Ta-ta, feller. I’ll be seein’ you about midnight.”
Gimpy Morgan lumbered out with that limp burden dangling over his shoulder. The door closed behind him. Wolf Fesden’s lank jaws opened in a silent, sinister laugh.
The new highway bridge glimmered pallid in the darkness, but between its abutment and the north abutment of the railroad bridge it was so dark that Wolf Fesden could barely make out Gimpy Morgan’s black bulk moving beside him. The only way he could be sure they were working their way along the bank of Frog Creek was by the greasy lapping of its water and the odor of the oil that floated on its surface.
“How far are we going?” Gimpy growled.
“Just to the near leg of the railroad bridge,” Fesden whispered. “We don’t even have to go under it.” He shifted to his other shoulder the coal shovel they’d brought along from the hideaway. “But we may have to do plenty of digging. That damn pier is pretty wide.”
“For what’s buried there I’d dig plenty,” Gimpy answered, and started going faster.
Fesden let him get ahead. High concrete loomed over them, grim against the city’s glow in the overcast sky. Wolf Fesden took a good grip on the handle of the shovel, lifted it to bring the cutting edge of the scoop down on the unguarded head bobbing just in front of him—The shovel handle wrenched out of his grip, thudded to the ground as he whirled. A low voice said: “Not so fast, Fesden, unless you want a bullet in your belly.”
Light of a hand torch flared from behind and laid Wolf Fesden’s shadow across the slender body of the man who’d said that. The shadow didn
’t conceal the glint of the automatic that snouted point-blank at Fesden, and there was no shadow on the man’s face.
A blunt grim jaw. Eyes the gray of chilled steel. A puckered scar under black hair. The Dummy! The dick he’d stabbed to death, not three hours ago!
“No,” John Porter said, “you didn’t kill me. That was a stunt knife you twisted out of my hand, as I meant you to. Any pressure on its point and the blade slides back into the hilt.”
“You . . . you,” Fesden gibbered.
“You—” He couldn’t get any more out.
“I knew you’d holed up in one of the regular crook hide-outs,” the little detective went on genially. “The cops don’t know them, but we insurance dicks do, because we often swing deals to recover stolen property through their keepers. I let word get around of what we were ready to pay for a tip-off to you, which was plenty, but even that wouldn’t have gotten Morgan to talk if I hadn’t promised him you wouldn’t be nabbed in his dump, or anywhere near it. He knew he could trust me, and he worked with me.
“It was easy to figure out that you were watching the papers for something that would let you know it was safe to go after the Ramsdell stuff, so I waited till you would find it. When I saw that you had, tonight, I let you tumble to what I was and tricked you into thinking you’d killed me. Morgan was set to do the rest when he heard me squeal—Oh, Gimpy. That was swell acting.”
“Who couldn’t act,” Morgan said, “when he’s getting fifty grand for the job?” Chuckling, he drifted off into the night.
Fesden was manacled to a steelreinforcing rod that came out of the north abutment of the railroad bridge over Frog Creek. John Porter was digging for the casket Evar Galt had buried there four years ago. But Wolf Fesden was not watching Porter. He was staring at the pale glimmer of the new bridge over which a road ran out of Sea City and ran north, always north, till it came to Lornmere Penitentiary. Till it came to the grim, gray granite walls within which stood a heavy-built chair, a chair wired for death.
ONLY HUMAN
H.G. Merz
Patrolman Dan Walden impatiently tapped his feet upon the cobblestones at the mouth of the long, narrow alley. This was his post; he had been ordered not to move from the spot unless—or until—Lippy Layden came into sight.
Dan looked at his watch and his heavy shoulders tensed expectantly. In just a few more minutes the raiding squad would pile into the tenement at the other end. That is, they would enter by the front, depending upon the men who had been posted strategically to prevent escape either via the roof or through the alley at the rear.
Dan’s eyes, gray and wide-awake, had already examined the possible avenues of flight which converged upon him. There were the windows, from any one of which Lippy might drop—barring of course those whose height would make such an attempt suicidal—and there was that small locked door—Dan had already tried it—which opened directly, beside two garbage cans, onto the cobble-stoned alley itself.
A young woman, one flight up, opened a window and looked out. She was blond and cheaply pretty and Dan eyed her interestedly so that he might ascertain by her manner, if he could, whether or not she was gauging a possible road of escape.
At the distance, she fitted a description of a certain Eve Porter, who had been trailed to that house and who was known to be Lippy Layden’s girl friend. But her glance was casual—if she had been alarmed by the sight of police in the front and was seeking an unguarded way out, she gave no sign—and, after a moment, she withdrew, leaving the window open.
As the moments passed, Dan became more expectant and his jaw tightened grimly. Stopping Lippy would be no cinch. He was wanted for murder—not for one killing, but for three—and, as the evidence was conclusive, he was facing the chair. If Lippy tried to escape—and he undoubtedly would—it would be with a gun in his hand and with the animal desperation of the beast who has nothing to lose because death is inevitable.
As Dan noted that the raid would start in exactly one minute, the small door opened—apparently it had been locked inside—and a girl, carrying a bucket, stepped out. She was as blond as the girl in the window had been, pretty in the same cheap way, and, if anything, slightly younger. She emptied the bucket into a garbage can, re-entered the doorway and had half closed the small door behind her—when she screamed!
Dan raced to the door, gun drawn. In his mind was the fear that Lippy, alarmed and about to shoot his way out, had seized the girl to use her as a shield. Dan rushed through the half-closed door and halted as if snapped shut behind him, leaving him in a sudden dark. Then he felt a pair of soft, young arms—the girl’s arms—as they were flung about his neck. He heard her scream again.
He sought to free himself gently, but she clung tightly.
“I’m afraid! I’m afraid!” she shrieked aloud, almost in his ear.
Dan was not fooled. He knew it was a trick, he realized that the scream had been a ruse to get him out of the alley. With the girl clinging to his neck, he tried to back out through the door. But the lock had snapped, compelling him to make an awkward turn to open it while the girl still fought to detain him.
He halted momentarily, instinctively starting a short hook to her jaw, but he remembered that she was a woman, and, after that, the blow was impossible, Dan just not being built that way.
The girl was Eve Porter, her identity being self-evident for, gripped by the madness of an unworthy love, she was struggling to save her sweetheart with a courage worthy of a better cause.
Seeking to break her restraining embrace, on impulse Dan dropped his fingers to her ribs. She shrieked, then laughed, and, laughing, flung her arms wide, escaping his fingers and permitting him, too, to escape.
Dan swiftly stepped from the door and gave himself room enough to open it. As he emerged, he saw a man—Lippy Layden—flee out of the alley.
At top speed he pursued, rounding the alley corner just in time to see Lippy turn the corner at the end of the block. When he reached that second corner, the fugitive had made good his escape, being no longer in sight. In the distance there were several rapidly moving cars and it was not hard to guess that Lippy had gone off in one of them.
Inspector Corbett was not inclined to listen when Dan attempted to explain. Lippy Layden had escaped, the murderous killer was still at large, and that was a fact which all the explanations in the world could not eliminate. And, to make matters worse, the girl had also escaped, fleeing while Dan had been engaged in his vain pursuit.
“When the girl screamed, inspector,” Dan tried again, “I thought perhaps Layden had seized her in that hallway and so I ran to protect her.”
“You thought!” the inspector said bitterly. “Who told you to think? Your orders were to cover that alley and, if you had obeyed your orders, Layden would now be dead or in a cell., You’ve admitted noticing a blond girl look out of a window—Eve Taylor’s older sister, as we know now—but you failed to put one and one together, when even a blind man would have seen they were up to some trick.”
“But, inspector—” Dan protested.
“I know, I know!” Corbett interrupted. “It was a girl—and she screamed—and you ran to protect her—and—well, I suppose it was the human thing to do. But I do wish you hadn’t let her get away.”
Dan also wished that he hadn’t let her get away. But he knew, as well, that idle wishes were more than futile. Meanwhile, he was greatly concerned with his own fate and the tone of the inspector’s voice had given him reason to hope.
“Then . . . then I’m not suspended?” he asked.
Inspector Corbett shook his head. “How can I suspend you, man?” he demanded. “According to regulations, you were absolutely wrong, of course, but according to every code of decency, you were equally right. I can’t suspend you for what I might have done myself in a similar situation.”
Dan was grateful. He had hoped for leniency, but complete exoneration exceeded his every expectation. And put him, he felt, under a solemn obligation. He prayed with silen
t fervor for an opportunity—a quick opportunity—to atone for his mistake.
But, he reasoned, only a fool would sit behind a door and wait for opportunity’s knock. The wise man, the man deserving of success, would take steps to meet it.
Dan tried to put himself in Lippy’s place. He tried to figure what he would have done, had he been Lippy and had he known the house was being surrounded, as Lippy must have known when he schemed for his escape.
If I were Lippy, Dan thought, after plotting my escape, I would have arranged to meet my sweetheart—if she also escaped—elsewhere. I would have told her of some trusted friend through whom she could communicate her whereabouts. I would have told her to rent another hide-out—she could do that more easily than I—and I would have promised to join her there just as soon as I possibly could.
If I were Eve Porter, Dan thought next, I would do just as Lippy had ordered. And I would have confided in my older sister whom I would trust because she had sheltered me before. I would tell her where I was going, expecting her to visit me. I would do this, perhaps, because I disliked or dreaded being alone while waiting for Lippy to join me, or because I might want to borrow some money.
His reasoning proved sound for, that night, Dan, off duty and in civilian clothes, found himself in a cheap hotel in a disreputable section of the city. He had traced Eve Porter’s sister to the hotel and he had located Eve Porter’s room. Immediately after, he had managed to change his own room—which he had rented to gain unquestioned access—to another almost directly opposite.
However, an all-night vigil, seated with his eye to the crack of his partly open door, gave no success. After Eve Porter’s sister had gone, no one else called, and no one had either entered or left the room but Eve Porter, herself, upon—and after—an excursion to the bath at the end of the corridor.
Then, through a long difficult day on duty, Dan debated the advisability of notifying his superiors of the girl’s whereabouts. They would, he knew, assure themselves of Lippy Layden’s capture by setting a twenty-four-hour watch upon the hotel, taking the matter entirely out of Dan’s hands.