by Jerry eBooks
He flung himself forward. A man moved out at him. He sent a left to a fat face, felt the hand sink into soft flesh, heard a man swear. His eyes were still glued to the face of the man who had slugged him the most. He must get to him, smash him once, at least once, for luck. There wasn’t much sense in it maybe, but the urge was there—and a copper didn’t just up and quit.
The man he wanted most wasn’t unwilling. He came to meet John Loess, and he moved as if he knew a great deal about fighting. He had cauliflower ears, too.
John Loess got one hand on this man. Then he went down from a right-hander that almost tore his head from his shoulders. He didn’t have a chance against the man with the cauliflower ears—so what chance could he possibly have against him and as many others as Whitey Gargan cared to loose on him?
He staggered and fell to his knees when he tried to get up to resume the struggle with Cauliflower Ears. But through the sick fog which enveloped him he could hear the voice of Gargan.
“Don’t you realize you can’t get anywhere, Loess? Suppose you forget it? My doc’ll fix you up, you take a little hush money, be Whitey Gargan’s man, and we’ll call this thing off.”
“You remember where I told you to go, Gargan?” said Loess, through smashed and bleeding lips. His voice sounded crazy even to him, because it appeared that teeth were also missing.
“Well, the door is still open, as far as I’m concerned. There are a lot of things I wouldn’t do with Gargan money. I wouldn’t take it even to save my teeth and lips and whatever else your cannibals want to chew on!”
“Try him some more!” said Whitey Gargan.
THEY were closing in on Loess who was on his feet, getting ready to take some more, when a voice that Loess couldn’t believe was real sounded in the room.
“That’ll be all for now, gentleman. The law has moved in!”
There wasn’t much of the law that had actually moved in. It was just Martin Truce, who would have two guns, no more, and no chance to reload either of them. Martin Truce, the man who didn’t believe in killing criminals for any reason! And while one of these gents lived and could think, he would keep right on shooting. They were whirling now, to take a crack at Martin Truce.
Bullets began to hum in the place, to kick splinters put of the floor, to break windows, to create a terrible bedlam.
Loess tried to help all he could. His erstwhile attackers had turned their backs on him to get a crack at Truce, who had somehow managed to follow, get in, and break up the “softening-up” process. Loess didn’t ask how. Maybe Whitey had been too sure of himself, hadn’t thought sentries necessary. In any case, here was Martin Truce, his guns flaming.
Cauliflower Ears went down. He fell right at Loess’ feet and Jack looked down at him. There was a hole in the bridge of his nose, with blood oozing from it. Whitey Gargan was yelling commands. The room was shambles.
“Hey, Jack,” yelled Truce, “catch!”
One of the weapons came spinning, end-over-end, to Jack Loess. Then, with fist and gun muzzle, Jack was fighting his way to stand beside Martin Truce. He saw Whitey Gargan, scrambling for what appeared to be a door. He used two shots on Gargan, saw him go down. Loess grinned to himself. It was good to have a gun in his hand again.
There were soon plenty of guns. Loess shot a couple out of men’s hands himself. And he sent bullets into them in plenty of other places. There were dead men scattered around. Martin Truce was fighting now with one hand only. His left arm hung limp at his side, and blood dripped from every one of his fingertips. He must have taken a slug through the elbow. The arm seemed to be broken. But Truce was doing very well with the good arm.
Men were breaking for the doors now, going down as though they were being tripped by an invisible wire. Bullets were coming close to Loess and Truce still, for Loess’ legs both felt numb, and he wasn’t sure that he could stand on them much longer. If he went down this time, he wouldn’t get up again.
Martin Truce, the man who had called him a killer was shooting to kill. He must have changed his mind.
Loess was feeling giddy, even silly. He wanted to laugh at the whole foolish business. The smell of powder, the odor of blood and the constant taste of his own blood all added up to pure nonsense. Just because he had killed a man in line of duty, and got into an argument over it with Martin Truce, a lot more men had been killed, and more were going to be killed before this nest of thugs was wiped out. But Whitey Gargan, whatever happened, was through in Los Angeles, before he had even got started.
If Gargan did the usual, of course, some friend of his would haul him out before the police followed the sounds of shooting right into his hideout.
Now and again, in the midst of the shooting, Loess turned to see whether Gargan was getting away. He wasn’t, so far. He was writhing, probably cussing, yelling commands to his gunmen, but he wasn’t getting away.
Nor did he.
THE officers from a lot more prowl cars came in, just as the first of Whitey’s men started out through the door, and Loess yelled to a sergeant that Whitey Gargan, no less, was the man on the floor, near the far door. They got Whitey, then, in a hurry.
This done and the rest of the gunmen collared, Loess and Martin Truce looked at each other. Then they looked down at the dead men scattered about. Loess shook his head and made clucking sounds with his mouth.
“Shame on you, Marty!” he said. “You’ve killed some people! I shot at legs and arms. That’s why we’ve got Whitey Gargan to send to the gas chamber. I’m surprised at you, Marty, after all you said to me. Right here, in no time at all, you’ve killed more men than I killed in months of what you called hunting!”
Truce’s face was very white. There was no hint of a smile on it.
“I regretted what I had said,” he explained, “and started to go back to the car. I saw you haul away from the curb. I commandeered a car I thought was fast enough to catch you. I saw that other car swing in behind you. I followed, that’s all.”
“And will finish in tomorrow’s papers by being the man who captured Whitey Gargan,” said Loess grinning, “and rescued the ‘modern Wyatt Earp’! Then you come in here, you who argue against killing, and shoot five men to death. You toss me a weapon, but I don’t kill anybody. I just break a bunch of bones. How do you add all that up, Marty? Am I to be the critic hereafter, and you the killer?”
“Maybe,” said Martin Truce, “we’re neither one of us so good alone. Maybe we make a better team, after all. But I don’t know. When I slipped in here, and saw them working on you I—well, maybe there’s a bit of killer in each and every one of us.”
“Only my killer, Marty,” said Loess quietly, “is, and always will be, on the side of law and order. No one I have shot bothers me, you understand?” Martin Truce looked down at the gunmen he had shot, shook his head.
“Funny,” he said, “I don’t feel anything, either. Maybe it’s because they were working on somebody I liked, someone very close to me. Maybe that makes the difference?”
“To a cop,” said Loess, “every man, woman and child he’s supposed to protect is as important as a loved one. That’s why I’m a cop. I feel that way. Sometimes it gets in the way of ‘sportsmanship’ and I shoot a man, but when I think of Dulcie Osman, lying there by her dangling telephone . . .”
“That’ll do,” said Truce, swaying on his feet. “I’ll never preach to you again!”
Loess grinned.
“Suppose we put it this way, as partners should,” he wagged his head. “You preach at me when you feel like it. I’ll preach at you when I feel like it. It’ll help to pass the time.”
“Between shootings?”
“Between deserved shootings!”
KIDNAPPED EVIDENCE
Joseph J. Millard
There was a low hedge along one side of the Mainwaring estate, dividing the landscaped lawn from the graveled driveway. In McGee’s mad dash toward his parked car, he forgot this hedge. But he remembered it when thorny branches clawed at his wet p
ants legs and tangled with the bottom of his raincoat. He tripped, went over the low hedge in a helpless dive and landed on his face on the wet gravel.
The corpse of Jonathan Mainwaring bounced out of his arms, skidded grotesquely, and brought up against the back wheel of McGee’s coupe.
McGee scrambled up, cursing breathlessly. Behind him, Hilda Mainwaring was still leaning out the window, screaming in high-pitched yelps of anguished terror. Other voices, probably awakened servants, were taking up the clamor. Lights popped on along the storm-swept street and somewhere unpleasantly close, a police whistle bleated shrilly.
With panic clawing at his nerves, McGee scooped up the lifeless body, shoved it into the car and squirmed under the wheel beside it. The motor snarled and the coupe hurled wet gravel at the night and exploded down the drive like a frightened deer.
McGee caught one glimpse of a beat policeman lumbering up from the corner of Maple Street, waving his gun and blasting his whistle. Then he was clawing the coupe’s wheel, skidding wildly to the right and screaming off down the dark suburban street. In the rear view mirror, McGee could see the bluecoat’s gun come down and wink at him redly, but no lead touched the coupe and another screaming turn blotted out even that sight.
The corpse of Jonathan Mainwaring suddenly bobbed forward and slumped against McGee’s shoulder. McGee swore hoarsely and shoved it back with his right hand. When he brought that hand back to the wheel, it was darkly wet and sticky.
McGee made a gagging sound deep in his throat and scrubbed the bloody hand against his wet raincoat. His eyes were muddy, his bony angular face tight and shiny from the rain and the tension of taut nerves and muscles. Rain drummed steadily on the car’s metal roof and the windshield wipers squeaked monotonously, louder and more nerve-wracking than the endless sucking whine of the tires on the wet pavement.
But louder than all these sounds was the mournful, sobbing wail of squad cars ripping through the night, converging on the neighborhood McGee was desperately fleeing.
McGee could easily imagine the radio call that was sending them to the hunt.
“Pick up Samuel McGee, age thirty-one, private detective, believed to have shot and killed the broker, Jonathan Mainwaring, at the latter’s home tonight, afterward fleeing with the corpse of his victim . . .”
“Here we go again!” McGee growled bitterly, talking aloud to his reflection in the windshield. “Screwball McGee is on the loose. Get your guns, boys. The Mad Irishman has another case.”
Trouble, it seemed, simply hovered around waiting for an opportunity to drop with hobnailed boots onto McGee’s defenseless neck. Every case he got was worse than the ones before and every one put him that much closer to the day when the profane and bitter Inspector Paul Eldritch would make good his threat to see McGee headed either for the chair or life on the rock pile.
It wasn’t that Private Detective Sam McGee sought trouble. He fled from it with a whole-souled craving for peace and quiet. But some devilish fate seemed to doom him to a life of crazy cases and hair-breadth escapes. McGee swore earnestly that if he took the job of discovering who stole the sugar lumps at the Presbyterian Missionary Tea, it would turn into a wholesale massacre the moment he appeared.
That was simply the way his luck ran—and this latest uninvited fracas was a climax that dimmed the insanity of anything he had ever previously encountered. But this one was his own fault.
The louder screech of a siren clawed into McGee’s thoughts. A squad car was headed toward him on the cross street ahead and there was no time to turn around and get out of sight. McGee took the only other alternative.
He slammed on the brakes, went into a looping, skidding slide and straightened in time to dive into a private driveway between two darkened houses. A moment later, sitting with the lights out and the motor idling, McGee saw the squad car flash meteorically past on the street behind.
When sight and sound of the radio car had died away, McGee backed into the street and headed toward the feverish glow of the city lights in the dripping sky ahead. Using side streets and alleys, McGee managed to avoid any more close shaves before he had circled the downtown section and drawn up at the rear of a small, square, dark building.
He got out, leaving the motor running, and hammered on the back door. Presently the door opened, spilling orange light around the silhouette of a small, knotty little man.
“Okay, smart apple!” the little man growled. “Beat it. This ain’t no . . . Hey, Sam, I didn’t recognize you. Come on in and—”
“Can’t, Jake,” McGee said hoarsely. “Are you all alone?”
The small man grinned wolfishly. “You should ask. You think I do any entertainin’ in a joint like this?”
McGee bent close and began to whisper earnestly. The small man started violently, flapping his hands in negation.
“Good tripe, Sam, you know what they’d do to me if I did. No! Not even for a friend like you, Sam, would I—”
It took McGee ten solid minutes of impassioned oratory before he won his point. Finally the small man sighed, swore bitterly, and tagged behind McGee out to the waiting coupe.
Between them they got the body of Jonathan Mainwaring out and hauled it into the building. McGee came out a few moments later, alone, and got back into the coupe. He was breathing more easily, now, and color was coming back into his face. Before driving off, he reached down and snapped on the radio. The voice of a rapid-fire news commentator faded in as the tubes warmed.
“—Mrs. Mainwaring was alone in her room when she heard the sounds of gunshots from her husband’s den downstairs. Running down the stairway, she saw her husband lying on the rug before his desk, the front of his dressing gown smeared with blood. Bending over him, gun in hand, was Samuel McGee, a private detective who has frequently been under police fire over his methods of operation. Mrs. Mainwaring positively identified McGee, whom she says has visited her husband several times recently on some mysterious business.
“At the sight of Mrs. Mainwaring, McGee snatched up the broker’s body and fled with it, racing out through an open French window onto the terrace and getting away in his car. Neither Mrs. Mainwaring nor the police can offer any explanation of the mystery or the reason for the shooting. It is not even known for certain that Jonathan Mainwaring is dead, although his wife is sure that what she glimpsed so briefly was his lifeless corpse. McGee is still at large, but the object of an intensive police man-hunt. Stay tuned to this station for further developments in the myst—”
McGee swore harshly and snapped off the radio. He backed the coupe, swung around and headed south, following dark, twisting streets deep into the maze of warehouses and factories that hovered close to the railroad switch yards. Angling through this district, he came at last to a short, quiet street lined with modest bungalows.
Driving down this street, McGee swung off and parked the coupe in the dark driveway of a warehouse a block away. Then he returned on foot, and swung in at the third bungalow from the corner.
The place was small and neat and dark. No lights showed anywhere in the little house nor in the houses on either side. McGee went around the bungalow to the garage in the rear and squinted in through the dark window. Enough light filtered in from the distant street light to show that there was no car inside. McGee grunted in satisfaction, backed into the shrubbery close by and made himself as comfortable as possible on the wet ground.
An aching hour dragged by and McGee was slowly crazy with the inactivity and the endless dropping of rain when the headlights of a car bounced down the street and turned into the drive. McGee tensed, shrinking deeper into the concealing shrubbery. He got a heavy .45 caliber automatic out of its holster under his left arm and tucked it into the pocket of his raincoat, keeping his right hand tight on the butt.
The car growled slowly up to the garage and stopped. A big, beefy man got out, hunched against the rain, and stood briefly in the beams of the headlights, fumbling with a padlock on the garage doors. The garage doors swung back
, cutting off McGee’s view, and the car snarled its way inside. McGee slipped out of concealment, went around the doors in a running crouch and into the garage.
When the big man shut off lights and motor and started to get out of his car, he backed right into the solid menace of McGee’s gun. He stiffened, standing frozen with one foot on the concrete floor and the other still on the running board.
McGee could see the white blob of the man’s big face swimming around slowly, trying to identify the man behind him. The private detective could feel an almost imperceptible quiver run up the gun to his own taut nerves, a telegraphed warning of big muscles setting themselves for explosive action.
“Don’t do it, Paul,” McGee said flatly, through his teeth. “I’m messed up so badly now that a little more can’t matter. Come out the rest of the way slow and easy.”
“You!” Homicide Inspector Paul Eldritch’s voice sounded thick and strangled. “You won’t get away with this!”
“I am getting away with it.” McGee snapped as his fumbling left hand found and snatched the big detective’s gun. “You can relax, now. All I want is to talk a few minutes while you listen. I knew you’d be home about midnight, even with your family away on a visit, so I came here and waited for you.”
“You murdering rat!” Eldritch spat furiously. “This is one trick you won’t wiggle out of. This time you’ll fit the chair and there won’t be any ifs or ands about it. We’ve got the town sewed up so tight you’ll be nabbed the minute you—”
“I haven’t been so far,” McGee interrupted dryly. “And for the record, I didn’t kill Jonathan Mainwaring.”
“Then he is dead?”
“You’ll get the answer to that one when I’m ready to give it. Nobody’s tried to—to make any trouble for Mrs. Mainwaring yet, have they?”