by Jerry eBooks
I got my hat and coat quickly, and turned down the heat again. If I could get back in that room . . .
Rain was falling in uneven slanting sheets when I got outside, and although it couldn’t have been past three o’clock, it might have been midnight for the darkness.
The street was empty except for my car and another half way down the street. I got in, started the motor, and headed again for Steven Loring’s house.
THE cop at the door was nice about it, but he had his orders, he said. Maybe if I got an O.K. from the chief . . .
“Look . . .” I said patiently.
He shook his raincoated head.
“I’ve got to get in there!”
“Are you gettin’ tough with me?”
There was, I saw, no use arguing with him. Maybe, if it hadn’t involved crawling to the bloodhound-like plainclothes man—
I said: “I’m sorry I have to do this.”
“Do what?” he asked softly. He stuck his chin forward.
That was wrong.
I hit him in the stomach and once on that conveniently placed chin. I caught him under the arms when he fell and eased him gently to the rain-soaked porch.
Then I walked inside.
The room was dark and chilly. Once in it, I didn’t know what on earth to look for. Whatever it was, I’d have to find it quickly. The slumbering uniform outside wouldn’t slumber forever. Something so obvious, no one would notice. Something so obvious.
A floorboard near the back wall creaked. Instantly I flung myself to one side and toward the noise. Heaven only knows what I had in mind—certainly not what happened.
I ran straight and furiously into a wall. When the noise and weaving in my head had stopped, I picked myself off the floor, found a light switch and pushed it.
Dead ahead of me, on his knees like a fat Chinese waiting for the ax, was Mr. Switzer. His rear was toward me, his face was buried in his arms. Beside him lay his insect-sprayer.
Weakly I said: “You?”
For a time there was no sign of life; then slowly the rear went down, the head came up, and Switzer said: “What?”
“Couldn’t be,” I mumbled.
“I wasn’t satisfied,” Switzer explained, clearing his throat nervously, “to—let things go, so easily. I—thought maybe this sprayer meant more than it seemed to.” He beamed shallowly at me. “Fall down?” he asked.
When I didn’t answer, he picked up the sprayer and smiled beyond me. “Hi,” he said. He nodded toward me, still keeping his eyes on the doorway.
“Fell down,” he said.
I almost didn’t look. I was tired and my head still hurt. If that damned cop had recovered so quickly . . .
I raised my arms slowly. “All right,” I said, “you got me.”
The bullet caught me high on the left shoulder, slammed my arm against the wall, and turned me nearly completely around. Enough around anyway to see the second shot about to come.
I dropped to the floor behind the sofa and the second shot plowed through it and showered lint and scorched cloth onto my head.
Then silence.
“I have four more,” the voice of the postman, Bjornson, said. “Come out. Over in a second.”
I couldn’t understand. Even yet, it was beyond me. Bjornson, the postman. I said: “Why? For Pete’s sake, Bjornson . . .”
“Still alive? And squirming, no doubt. Steve squirmed. Please deny loving her. He did. Make it complete.”
“Deny loving whom?”
“Fine. Now I say ‘Rita,’ and you say ‘Rita!’ as though this is the first time you’ve heard the name. Go on.”
I couldn’t help it. I said; “Rita!”
Bjornson laughed.
Little by little things were beginning to fall into a semblance of sanity.
“I followed you to your home,” Bjornson said. “After I found that you couldn’t help Rita at all, I determined to kill you. But about the time I drove up, you came rushing out, and headed this way . . .”
“You’re John,” I said. “She said you worked for the government, but I didn’t—I never—”
“She divorced me. What a laugh! She still loves me. She must have suspected I had something to do with it when she saw me, but did she talk? Did she say anything at all?”
“But—why Steve? Just because he . . .”
“No. I got to gambling. I lost. Not fairly. I couldn’t pay. How could I pay on my salary? So I came to ask him for some time. Rita was here with him, and he didn’t even let me inside the house, just told me no. He hated to leave her long enough to even tell me no.”
BJORNSON’S voice was becoming lower now and strangely sad and gentle. Slowly I raised my head. The postman was standing by the door, his black slicker shooting off tiny spears of yellow light when he turned. His gun was hanging listlessly against his side. Beside him, his back to the wall, and his plump insect-sprayer laden hands raised, stood Switzer.
I said: “And the locked room?”
His voice rambled on as though he hadn’t heard me. “I came back around four this morning. It was easy to say I’d heard shots when I was on my regular route. Two fools even substantiated me.” He breathed deeply. “You were right about the pin and the string. I couldn’t believe you hadn’t found it out when you began explaining.” And I saw.
As quickly and as clearly as that. As long as there’s space for it to be drawn through, the pin and the string will work. I’d been incredibly stupid. When I’d made sure the pin couldn’t have been drawn out through the keyhole or under the door, I’d considered the whole possibility closed. But in this room, as in a thousand front rooms in a thousand houses, there was an opening almost as big as a man’s fist. I’d looked at it a dozen times and I hadn’t seen it. Mental invisibility. But I saw it now.
That opening was the built-in mailbox at the left of the door.
What could be sweeter? What would suggest itself to a postman as a means of undetectable breaking and entering faster than this?
I breathed: “The mailbox. That was it, you . . .”
Lightninglike the gun came up once more, leveled at my stomach.
“Pray, mister,” Bjornson said.
The index finger was whitening on the trigger when it happened. A loud wheeze came from above Switzer’s head, and when Bjornson turned his startled eyes, they caught almost the full blast of the insect-sprayer.
The few seconds he was turned away were enough. I vaulted awkwardly over the sofa, sprawled shouting into him, and together we hit the floor. Viciously I pounded whatever part of him was closest, and my hands came away red and wet. One of his feet caught the pit of my stomach, kicked, and the pain spread over me in tiny rhythmical waves.
“Get your head out of the way!” I could hear Switzer screaming.
I slashed outward with my crooked elbow, caught his mouth full on, felt the bite and tear of loosened teeth in my arm. Again the elbow, again the hot blood and the sting of teeth.
Swearing, I twisted back, and sitting on the floor, with one hand caught in the neck of his black slicker, I lashed forward with my right fist. His head rolled comically with the blow and more blood sprayed over me.
I had to hit him twice more before the eyes closed and the head stayed lax and loose over his shoulder.
And it was over.
While I sat there, waiting for the nausea in my stomach to quiet, Switzer said a little angrily: “Why didn’t you get your head out of the way?”
“How the hell could I?” I mumbled.
“I’d have got him. You did O.K., but if you’d got your head out of the way . . .”
It was then someone kissed me.
Quickly I jerked around and my eyes looked straight into Ellen’s.
I couldn’t speak. It was hard even to breathe. I said: “Darling . . .”
“Don’t. I heard.” She was kneeling beside me, and now she got off her knees and sat on the floor. Her eyes were moist and hurt. “I—I had to get it look at any gal who could t
ake my husband away from me.”
I murmured: “That gal doesn’t live.”
“I want to go home.”
“Sure.” I paused. “And you won’t leave? Nothing will have changed?”
She looked suddenly uncomfortable. “I won’t leave,” she said. “But—Jimmy—we have company—”
“Company?”
“Yes. I . . .” She glanced away. “When I got to Mom’s tonight, I met her coming out and we just got in the car and turned back.”
“Your mom is a wise mom,” I said. “She made you stop and think?”
“No. She’s leaving Pop for a couple of days. They had a fight . . .”
We looked at each other for a long time and then the laughter started, deep inside us, and we sat on the floor and whooped and shouted and laughed until we were both crying.
It was good to laugh again . . .
EIGHT HOURS TO KILL
Lee E. Wells
A V-man had only one slim lead to track down Quaid’s kidnapers. But this hazy clue flung him onto a six-way detour—giving death the right of way.
I SOON found out that war brings on a lot of changes. Roscoe Rex—that’s me—had been happy enough on the homicide squad, doing my daily stint of murders and running down clues. It looked like I was scheduled to keep that up for years. Then, about the time of the Midway battle, Chief Rourke called me in and gave me a cigar.
That’s always a sign that something’s brewing. I looked over the weed and then up at Rourke’s supposedly friendly smile. There seemed to be something of the wolf about it.
“What gives, chief?” I asked.
Rourke put his weight back in his chair and looked me over. I’m not much to see; a big, gangling guy with a square face and pasted-down, red hair. Rourke was too pleased.
“What do you know about defense factories, Rex?” he asked.
I shrugged. “They make things, widgets and wadgets, that do the Axis lots of no good. Now what’s the two dollar question?”
Rourke studied the end of his cigar. “What do you know about espionage and sabotage?”
I sat down in a chair across the desk, Definitely, this was becoming complicated. “Not a thing, chief. Now give me a good, or even slightly used, corpus delicti and I’ll give you a run for your money. But this other stuff leaves me cold.”
Rourke sighed. “Too bad, Rex. You’ve been transferred.”
My brows arched up to my hair. “I’m what? And why?”
Rourke enjoyed it. He leaned forward and his Irish face got deadly serious. “You’ve been transferred and promoted, Rex. You’re a captain as of this morning. You’re head of a new department on the force.”
He handed it out too quick. I sat there with my mouth open and a stunned look on my square face. The cigar was bending under the pressure of my fingers. Finally I gulped and got my voice back again.
“Take it slower and easier, chief. I know all the best bodies by their first names and I can pour a mean moulage, but that’s as far as it goes.”
Rourke didn’t smile, and that means something is bad somewhere along the line. “Rex, this city has more defense plants than any other its size. We make an airplane engine here that powers a lot of fighters and bombers. We’ve got a Commando training field and station. We make shells, propellers, and rifle bolts. The police force has a hell of a load dumped on it, with all this new stuff.”
I waved my big hand. “Hell, chief, there’s the F.B.I. and the Army and Navy Intelligence.”
Rourke nodded. “Sure, and they do a good job. But they’re new to the city. They can’t always get the complete picture. That’s where we come in.”
He had me going now and I was leaning forward on his desk. “So what happens to me?”
“You’ll have Detective Sergeant Johnson, a good man. I’m giving you Detective Borden and an office upstairs by the traffic department. You get some files and a lot of new report forms. Rex, you’re head of the Un-American Squad of the city police.”
That’s the way it came, and I had to take it like an ordinary assignment, in my stride. It didn’t take long to get the office in shape, but to start functioning was something else again. I met G-men, and had to do a lot of study with those boys on the messy ways Axis rats tore things up. I met Army Intelligence men who threw technical and engineering stuff at me until I was spinning like a whirling dervish.
Sergeant Johnson and I worked together like cylinders in a motor. lie was a little guy with a round, baby face and mild blue eyes. He had a voice as soft as a mother’s lullaby, and could go into action faster than a Kansas twister. He was a smart boy and would go far with the department.
Between us, we covered all the defense factories and had complete drawings of each plant building in our files. At the drop of a hat, we could give the exact location of any rest room in any vital plant in the city.
Chief Rourke outlined the department clearly enough. We got anything and everything that even faintly smelled of enemy action. If an aerial engineer bumped fenders, we cheeked on the other guy. If a lathe operator at the shell plant caught cold, we checked on his doctor.
THE F.B.I. boys gave us a list of names of those who had belonged to various shady organizations in the past. We made card indexes and had the guy’s life history clear back to the time the doc spanked him hard and said, “It’s a boy.” We made duplicate reports of everything, sending copies to the G-men and slipping dope to Army and Navy Intelligence men. It was a hell of a job and all three of us were leg-weary by the time we got things in shape for a normal routine.
I was sitting at my desk looking over a report Borden had just handed m. Borden was explaining that this Italian had his citizenship papers and was giving a lot of dough to anti-Fascist groups. The door opened and a little tanned guy in a loud blue suit stepped in.
I looked up at him. The man had thin lips and a hard voice. “Captain Rex? I got a job for you.”
I frowned and Borden shrugged his fat shoulders, pulling himself out of the chair. The little man sat down and pulled out his wallet. He looked like a prosperous carnival shill; but, believe it or not, he was Navy Intelligence—Lieut. Commander Conners.
He clipped his words as if he didn’t like fooling around with anyone. “I’ve been assigned to Warland Chemical, captain. I took over three days ago and had no chance to drop in. Now something’s happened.”
I sighed and wheeled around so I could make some notes on the desk. “I know, Mabel Glub down in Shipping has been dropping bobby pins in the TNT.”
Conners grinned and I didn’t think his icy face could make it. “I wish it was that easy, captain. Horace Quaid has disappeared.”
I gave Johnson a sign and he went over to the personnel file. He pulled out a card and handed it to me. Horace Quaid was chief chemist out at Warland and a very important man.
Conner hitched forward and his voice became even more hard and clipped. “Quaid was on the track of a new explosive, captain. I can’t say much. It’s a Navy secret, but we could give Hirohito’s yellow Aryans a lot of hell with it. We can’t take chances with Quaid.”
I nodded. “When did he disappear?”
“Warland got a call this morning that Quaid was sick and wouldn’t be in. The switchboard girl was on her toes, and swore the voice wasn’t Quaid’s wife. I checked within an hour.”
I began to feel something big coming on. “What did you find?”
Conners shrugged. “Quaid was in perfect health. He left for work at the usual time, but he never reached the Warland plant.”
“Check the call?” I asked.
“Tried to, but too much time had gone by before we got suspicious. It adds up bad.”
I gave Johnson and Borden a significant look. “I see the play. Quaid has the formula for this new explosive and there’s been a news leak. He was kidnaped and some one is going to apply the heat to get the formula.”
Conners’ face grew hard as stone. “One other step, captain. Quaid won’t be allowed to live, wheth
er he talks or not. That explosive would mean too much to the United Nations.” He pounded the desk in anger. “Why in hell don’t workers keep their traps shut? This is an example of what happens.”
I couldn’t say anything, for I had run into the same kind of careless, deadly talk before. Ships have been sunk and soldiers killed because a tongue got loose in an Oshkosh tavern. It was the old pattern.
Conners was talking again. “This is a big job and none of us have much time to work. We don’t know how soon Quaid will break if they give him the Gestapo treatment. I’ve passed the word to the G-men, but I think you’ll be the biggest help. You have the inside track in this town.”
He talked a little more, odds and ends about Quaid, and then left. I turned to Johnson and Borden. Both of them were pulling on their coats and Johnson’s baby blue eyes had a dangerous glint.
I stood up. “This is it, boys. Here’s where the Un-American Squad proves it’s got what it takes. Johnson, you check the Warland plant. See who Quaid palled around with. Start on that line.”
Borden rubbed his fat cheek. “What about me, Cap?”
I jerked open the door. “You and me will work together. We’re going out to Quaid’s neighborhood.”
I got one of the cars that didn’t have the police insignia on it and Borden climbed under the wheel. It was a tight squeeze, but Borden made it, and the fat boy could drive. We skirted the edge of the business district and headed north.
FOR a medium-sized city, Indianapolis divides off nicely into districts. A squint at a man’s income and you could just about tell where he lived. Quaid, for instance, lived on a boulevard that skirted Fall Creek north to the fair grounds. Just beyond the creek and hidden by the trees was another district, semi-industrial, with little houses that gradually gave way to one of our Harlem centers.
Mrs. Quaid was a badly scared blonde in a pair of red pajamas. Borden was so busy giving her the onceover that he hardly heard what she said. She knew no more than Conners had told me, but I was expecting that.