by Jerry eBooks
“Listen, Morse—” I began, when from the side of my eye I caught a glimpse of motion. I looked up—into a mirror. Covering me with a small automatic in a trembling hand, Sheila Kerby stood in a doorway. I released Morse, straightened up and faced the girl.
“This is he, George,” she said, walking toward us. “He is the man in whose pocket I put the eyes when—”
“Shut up, you fool!” screamed Morse.
Careful to keep out of the line of fire, Morse moved to the side of Sheila Kerby He transferred the gun from her trembling hand to the quivering fat of his own paw.
“Now, you meddling idiot,” he shrieked at me. “You’ll never repeat what you just heard. I’ll call it self-defense.” The dimples at his knuckles widened as he tensed for the shot. He hesitated, took a step back. “Where are they?” he shrilled.
I had been close to death before. It took a moment for me to get control of my parched vocal machinery.
“Morse, the Law will be here any minute,” I warned. “Happy Locke is under arrest. Don’t make it worse for yourself by—”
An authoritative knock on the door interrupted me. Morse’s eyes widened. He turned to Sheila Kerby, who sat tense and white-faced in a chair at his right. As I sprang forward, swinging from the hip, Morse turned to me. My fist buried itself in the fatness that was his jaw. He spun back and I grasped his hand and forced the gun to fly out of it. I hit him again to quiet him. With a groan he fell, heavily.
I wheeled around in time to stamp my foot on the gun, bruising the clutching fingers of Sheila Kerby as I did so. I picked her up, shoved her into a chair and pocketed the rod. Then I opened the door.
Happy Locke, handcuffed and scowling, was hustled in. Mike Cahill lumbered in after him. He looked at the weeping Sheila, then at the unconscious Morse. His lips tightened into a narrow line. He cocked one scarred eyebrow, opened his mouth, then noisily clamped it shut.
“Make yourselves at home, gentlemen,” I invited, grinning.
WHILE Cahill prodded Locke to a chair and settled himself on the table, I gathered up Morse, who was coming around, and dumped him into a chair close to Happy Locke. Then I sat down beside Sergeant Mike Cahill.
There they were: Sheila Kerby, nervously twisting a handkerchief; Happy Locke, sullen and alert; George Morse, moaning a little and dabbing at the thin trickle of blood that oozed over his chins. If Cahill had any doubts about backing my play he didn’t show them.
Rapidly I sketched the picture while four pairs of wondering eyes centered on me. I painted it all in black. I told them about Morse’s plundering of the company funds, and how I could proveit by the records; Sheila Kerby’s part in giving me the eyes, her acknowledgment of it; Locke’s demountable copper tub for acid baths; the acid soaked floor of the shed; the diamond pin that I knewto be Benten’s.
When I finished I pointed to Sheila. “I can promise nothing,” I said quietly. “But to talk now might be the detour into the Big House from the road to the chair.”
She sprang to her feet, her eyes feral with fear—or hate—or both. Her hands balled into tiny fists.
Morse gulped, ran a fat finger around his wilted collar. “Suppose I talk? Will you promise—” Morse began.
“Quiet, damn you!” roared Locke. “Stand pat. They can’t prove a thing. It won’t hold up in court.”
Cahill’s heavy hand smashed into Locke’s mouth. Locke slumped back, his dazzling smile permanently damaged.
“Talk,” Cahill hissed, clamping Morse by the shoulders.
Morse nodded in my direction. “He’s right. I did use the company’s money. I used it to pay the huge debts I ran up at Locke’s gambling tables. When Benten learned about it he gave me twenty-four hours to make good. This was all Locke’s scheme. I was to pay him twenty thousand over a period of two years. He had Benten kidnapped and—ah—disposed of the body.”
“The eyes,” I snapped. “Why were they kept?”
“I insisted that I be given proof of Benten’s death and proof that the body would not turn up. Locke promised proof. The eyes were his idea of proof. Proof and also an effective warning for me to play fair—I suppose.”
Morse’s head fell forward. He shuddered.
“Why did Shelia give them to me?” I demanded.
“Don’t say any more, Georgie,” Sheila cried. “Don’t!”
Locke called me,” Morse went on, ignoring the girl, “and told me the proof was ready. I sent Sheila. On the way back to my office, Sheila became panic-stricken when a traffic officer walked toward her. She put the eyes in the pocket of a man near her—you. Locke had a man of his trail her. He saw the foolish thing she had done and followed you. And you know the rest.”
Morse closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair. His face was no longer red; it was a streaked purple.
“So that’s it,” I snapped at Locke. “You sent Pock-Mark back for me; and after I was taken care of properly he would have made delivery of the eyes, eh?”
“Yeah?” Locke sneered. “Prove it. These yaps sang, but I won’t. Suppose I was sucker enough to admit bumping Benten? Ever hear of a corpus delicti, Smart Boy?” He snorted contemptuously.
Mike Cahill, a puzzled, frown pulling his heavy brows together, looked at me. Bunching his fists he started for Locke.
“Wait, Mike,” I said.
I produced the picture of Bert Benten, stood it on the table. The bottle containing the eyes I placed beside the picture. I tossed the pin up and caught it in my hand, fingering it while I carried on. Touching the picture I laid a finger on the eyes.
“Here’s the pay-off, Locke,” I warned. “Courtroom pay dirt, too. J. Edgar’s bright boys have recently proved that there is as marked a difference between the markings of the human eye as on the fingers. It has been said that photographing eyes will take the place of fingerprinting. In time it will. Okay! Here’s a fine picture of Benten. Enlarged photos will bring out the eyes in microscopic detail. Here,” I touched the bottle, “are eyes for comparison. Get it? The establishment of a corpus delicti—which after all means nothing more than the establishment of a crime.”
I paused. Locke was not sneering now. He leaned forward, breathing heavily. I leaned closer to him; held out the pin. It flashed fire. I touched the picture, my finger on the stickpin in Benten’s tie.
“The only way,” I continued, “to identify a diamond is by micro-photos. I found the pin at your joint. It will be compared with the one in the picture. All this with Morse’s confession, your record and reputation, any tidbits your pals may produce under the light hands of the boys at Headquarters builds up the State’s case. You’ll beat it? You’ll fry, rat!”
After Cahill subdued the raging Locke with a neat right hook I phoned the order for the Hurry Buggy. As I turned from the phone I grinned at the doubting sergeant.
“Now you can apologize, you big ape, for those earlier harsh words.” Cahill smiled crookedly, and drew a folded paper from his pocket. Handing it to me he observed drily:
“I won’t be needin’ this now.”
I laughed as I took the warrant charging one Gerald J. Jerome, press agent, of Obstructing Justice and Disorderly Conduct, and tore it up.
HELL-BENT FOR THE MORGUE
Don Larson
Roger Grant didn’t stop when he saw the figure in the darkness opposite the row of cheap apartments. He hunched in his seat and let his roadster coast ahead.
The figure was a man, fat, pugnacious, with a frayed cigar stuck between thick lips, and a low-crowned derby set on his bullet head. He had the look of a stage detective.
Grant could guess who he was. A dick from some private agency, watching the residence of Linda Powers, hoping to get a line on the Van Horn diamonds that the Rinaldi mob was reputed to have stolen.
Roger Grant, free-lance investigator of crime, was after the same thing—hot ice valued at a quarter of a million. It was stained already with a murdered man’s blood, and with a five-grand reward up for its recovery.
; He swung his roadster around the block, parked on a street facing the rear of the Powers Apartment, and got quietly out. There were more old-fashioned houses here. He found the areaway door of one open, gumshoed in, crossed a cellar silently, and reached a back yard.
A board fence separated him from the court of the building he sought. He climbed this and raised his eyes to the rusty fire escape that snaked down the apartment’s rear. Then abruptly he crouched behind a privet bush close to the fence.
A window on the second floor had opened. Someone was coming out, feeling for the iron landing with cautious feet. Grant saw that it was a girl.
She came down the ladder slowly, stopping to stare at the lower windows, before she dropped. A light was burning in one. It shed a faint glow over her youthful face and trimly graceful figure. Grant tensed with interest.
She was the girl he was after, Linda Powers, whose brother Stanley, had been taken away by the bandits when they grabbed the ice at Van Horn’s office. Her picture had appeared in the papers. Her brother was under suspicion, thought to be in with the jewel thieves. But she had fiercely defended him when the cops had questioned her.
The other Van Horn clerk had been shot in the holdup. Powers hadn’t been heard from. Grant watched her move cautiously across the court.
It was plain that she, too, had seen the agency man out front. She was giving him the slip, and her stealth indicated that she had something to hide. Her features looked pale and strained. The darting glances of her wide, long-lashed eyes betrayed nervousness.
She moved behind the row of apartments, following the long tradesmen’s court that paralleled the street. Grant followed, keeping her carefully in sight. He had come merely to talk to her. Now he was more interested in seeing where she would go.
She continued along the court to its end and ducked through a gate into a small alley leading to the street. She emerged out of sight of the agency man out front. She walked to the end of the block and unlocked the door of a garage. In a moment she was backing a flivver into the street.
She rattled away, and Grant ran to his own parked roadster. He was two blocks behind when he nosed out of the street at right angles to the one she’d taken. He was alert now. The girl’s tense face and furtive manner made him certain something was up.
He followed the flivver for fifteen minutes, until it finally stopped on a block of suburban houses. There Grant turned into a side street, but braked instantly and hurried back on foot.
The girl was a hundred yards ahead. He could tell even by her silhouette that she was excited. She kept looking behind, and it took all Grant’s skill as a shadower to keep from being seen.
At the end of the block was a small, square park, with a fountain in its center. Concrete paths cut through it, and thickly interlacing shrubbery grew around its edges.
The girl ducked into this. Grant thought for a moment she was taking a short cut somewhere. Instead she stopped by the side fence that skirted the street, and began to grope around. There was no one else in sight. The park was deserted. Grant crouched behind a hydrangea clump and watched without being seen.
He was close enough to see her face. Her eyes had fear shadows in them new. She seemed desperately impatient as her slim hands pushed through the tangled shrubbery and parted leafy bushes.
Five minutes passed, and abruptly she straightened, clutching something. Grant’s pulses leaped in excitement. Before she stepped back on the walk, she tucked the thing under her coat, but he had got a glimpse of it. It was a small, black bag.
Hurrying over the concrete on her clicking heels, she came straight toward him, biting her lips and walking with head bent down. He tried to edge stealthily around the clump of bushes and keep out of sight; but a rose trellis barred his way. A thorny shoot caught his coat and snapped away with a swish.
She lifted her head like a startled doe, gasped, and began to run. She went by him in a flash of silk-clad legs and flying skirts. He was surprised at her lightness and speed. She had reached the park entrance by the time he’d sprung after her. But he had to know what was in that black bag.
She threw a terrified glance over her shoulder and raced toward her flivver standing beside the curb. She leaped into it, slammed the door, and he heard the starter whine. The car was lurching away when he got to its side, but the motor coughed with a half-flooded carburetor.
Grant grabbed the side of the windshield and pulled himself up on the running board. In almost the same movement, he reached down inside and yanked the emergency brake. The next instant he ducked his head and hurled his body sidewise in the nick of time.
For the girl had pulled a gun on him. Its muzzle lanced flame as she jerked the trigger twice, missing both times. He snapped his hand forward and grabbed her wrist with steely fingers.
She struggled madly to get free, twisting over the top of the wheel, gritting her small white teeth tightly.
“You—let me go! I’ll—” She tried again to snap the trigger as Grant wrenched her fingers loose. Then she made a dive for the car’s opposite door with the black bag in her hand. Her dress ripped at the shoulder as Grant caught her and pulled her back. He got in beside her then, holding her still with one tense arm. He was smiling thinly, his voice very calm and cold.
“You’re a regular hell-cat, Miss Powers! I wouldn’t have guessed it—from your pictures.”
She was silent for a moment, her face deathly pale and her eyes dark with fury as she struggled to catch her breath. Then she spoke.
“You—double-crosser! I won’t give them up—until you tell me where Stanley is. I—you’ll have to kill me first.”
Grant shrugged and spoke quietly. “Who do you think I am?”
“I know who you are!” she flared. “One of Rinaldi’s rats. He sent you—to spy—and take the diamonds from me!”
Grant’s arm stiffened about her shoulders. “So you have them then!”
She seemed to realize she’d said too much. Abruptly she whirled and struck at his face with her small, clenched fist, her knuckles sliding harmlessly over Grant’s lean jaw. Grant said with a note of humorous reproach:
“Quit it! You’re a swell fighter, Miss Powers—but let’s get each other straight. I’m not in with Rinaldi. I’m after the ice, it’s true—but not the way you think. There’s five thousand reward on the stones, and I thought I could use a little cash. But since you’ve got them, they’re yours. All you need to do is turn them in and collect. My name’s Grant.”
“Not Roger Grant?”
He nodded, took out his wallet, and showed her the special card he carried. It was signed by the commissioner of police, and gave him carte blanche powers as an unofficial investigator of crime.
“I—I’ve heard of you,” she said, a little awed. “But—I’m not going to turn the diamonds in for the reward, I’ve got—to save my brother!”
A sound of sob came from her throat. She looked small and pitiful suddenly.
“You mean you’re going to hand the stones over to Rinaldi?”
“Yes, they’re holding Stanley. If I don’t give them the diamonds, they’ll kill him.”
“How did you know the stones were in the park?”
“Stanley got away and threw them there—from a car window. Then they caught him again, and tortured him to make him talk. I don’t know what he said exactly. But they got in touch with me a half hour ago, called me on the phone. Stanley, they said, had told them he’d hidden the diamonds in a place we used to play as kids. I knew he must mean this park, so I came and looked.”
Grant nodded somberly. “What did they tell you to do if you found the diamonds?”
“Drive along Harrison Road at ten tonight. They’re going to meet me, and release Stanley when I give them the stones.”
“How do you know they’ll keep their word?”
“I don’t. It’s a chance I’ve got to take.” A sob muffled her speech again.
Grant looked at his watch. “It’s nine,” he said. “We’ll see if w
e can’t fix up some way to save your brother and the diamonds, too. And, if you don’t object, I’d like to take a look at them. A quarter of a million in ice makes me sort of curious.”
Her gaze swept over the clean, grim lines of his face, the smiling lips under a close-clipped mustache, and the straightness of his eyes. She nodded and handed him the black bag.
Under the instrument-board light, he opened it and saw a small chamois-skin pouch inside. The girl breathed quickly as he pulled back the zipper fastening of this. There was a tissue package at the bottom, with something inside the paper that rattled faintly.
Grant undid the paper with cautious fingers, then heard the abrupt gasp of amazement that Linda Powers gave. Her pointed fingernails dug into his arm. He was staring himself, gazing wideeyed, holding his breath. For there weren’t any diamonds inside the paper, only small round opaque objects.
“Stones!” she gasped. “The diamonds are gone! That’s only a bunch of—pebbles! Oh!” As though she’d been holding herself up on sheer nerve alone and this was the last straw, she began to cry in great sobs.
Grant fingered the pebbles doubtfully. For a brief instant he wondered if she had tricked him, lied to him. But the sight of her tear-wet face assured him. He looked at the pebbles again. They were round, white and even; the sort one would expect to find in a florist’s shop, or in a pet shop for goldfish globes. The girl checked her crying suddenly, and said in a stricken voice:
“What can I do about Stanley now? They’ll murder him—as soon as they find the stones aren’t here.”
Grant nodded again and she clutched him desperately. “Those diamonds were here. My brother wouldn’t lie. Somebody must have found them in the park and put those pebbles in the bag. Now—they’ll never be found, I’d better tell the police. It’s the only thing left to do.”
Grant was silent for a moment, then he said: “Your best chance is to bluff them. Meet them at ten, and pretend to hand over the stones. I’ll help you.”
He didn’t say how. He was wondering about her brother and those pebbles.