by Jerry eBooks
“Save the five-dollar words,” Finchley growled. “But as long as you put it that way, sure I’ll go. Anything to show the cops I’m cooperating. Law and order, that’s Square Deal Finchley.”
“Good,” Bernie Koster said, leading the way. “I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Finchley, especially since this is my beat and I feel a personal responsibility about what goes on in it.”
“The Little Flower sure went off his trolley when he got that bright idea about getting educated cops in the Department,” Finchley muttered.
They passed through the outer room, to the stares of the ward heelers, and came out again into the falling snow. There was an inch-deep carpet on the sidewalks and few people were abroad to trample it. All around the snow fell silently, muffling sounds and masking familiar landmarks in a strange white fleecy coat.
The sirens wailed, far off, sounding all about them as though some invisible, but mighty cordon was being tightened about the solid blocks of city streets.
They walked down to the corner and stopped. There was a vacant store here, evidently a former drug-store, for above the windows were still the painted legends advertising laxatives and headache powders—the mark of every drug-store.
“You own this property, don’t you, Square Deal?” Koster asked.
“Yep,” the boss replied disinterestedly.
“Trying to rent it?”
“Of course. What about it? Where are we going?”
“You know,” said Koster lazily, “an empty store could make a pretty good hide-out, at that. Who’d look in a place like that?”
Finchley surveyed him over his cigar with obvious astonishment.
“Are you bats?” he demanded. “What gives you that idea?”
The policeman pointed with his club to the two steps leading up to the locked door of the store. A set of footprints led up to the door and down again.
Finchley stared at the tracks in the snow.
“Someone came up to the door, tried it, found it was locked and went away,” he said. “The prints go up and come right down again.”
“Sure do,” Koster said. “Have you got a key to this dump, Square Deal?”
“What now—a search?” the politician growled. “Let’s see your warrant, Koster.”
“If Baby Face Hynes is in there he won’t ask me for it,” the cop said.
“I’m asking you for it. The store’s mine. And I’m about fed up with you and your smart country tricks! I didn’t have to come out here with you and by gravy I’m drawing the line right now at an illegal search! Are you looking for trouble, Koster?”
“Guess so. We haven’t got time to go get a warrant now. So make with the key and I’ll take the responsibility.”
“You’ll get the city sued and yourself thrown off the Force!” Finchley yelped. “Which would be a good thing, but I’m double-dashed if I’ll accommodate you. Who do you think you’re ordering around, you corn-fed hick? I’m going back to the club!”
“You’re staying here,” Koster said, reaching out a long arm and catching his collar. “And we’re going in there together.”
“Lay off, copper,” said a voice in his ear. “Want we should spread him around a little, Boss?”
HANDS pulled Koster back. The two pool players from the AC club ranged themselves one on either side of him. Brass knuckles glinted dully on the fist of one.
Finchley said nothing, but Koster saw the political boss’ left eyelid droop slightly. With the upward sweep of the brass knuckles, the cop dodged, and his nightstick flicked out with the speed of a striking cobra. The brass knuckles glanced off the base of his skull, making his head ring like a gong, but at the same moment the nightstick crunched against the pool player’s knee-cap with an ugly sound. The man screamed wildly and went down in the snow.
Koster kept going in a circle, his nightstick moving like a scythe, and caught the second man across the backs of his thighs. As effective as hamstringing, it chopped him down and laid him helpless in the snow.
Finchley stood with mouth agape at this swift and stunning destruction. Koster motioned slightly with his club.
“The key,” he reminded.
“No.” Finchley pulled back.
The sirens moaned beyond the curtain of softly falling snow that cut them off from the rest of the world. Somewhere a police whistle shrilled, and they heard a faint shouting.
“He’s over there,” Finchley said. “Hear the shouting?”
“Open up,” Koster said. His voice all at once turned hard and brittle as glass. “I won’t take any more stalling, Finchley. You’ll get a taste of what your punks just took.”
The politician’s lips tightened. He fumbled out a key case, selected a key and stepped we up to the door. His feet obliterated the rapidly filling tracks on the step. The door creaked open on musty darkness. Finchley stepped aside.
“Go on in,” Koster said, jabbing him with the club end.
“Koster, you’ll pay for this!” Finchley said through clenched teeth.
He stepped inside, with Koster behind him. The cop’s hand slid under his coat, came out with his service revolver.
They moved down a center aisle between shrouded, ghostlike counters, dusty and neglected.
Then all of a sudden Finchley screamed and threw himself headlong on the floor, heedless of his expensive coat.
“Don’t shoot, Baby Face! It’s me!”
A red mushroom of flame blossomed in the darkness and something tugged sharply at Bernie Koster’s coat sleeve. The explosion slapped his eardrums, but he scarcely heard it, so busy was he working his own trigger.
The little red mushrooms bloomed one after another before him and the air was filled with strange whispers. From somewhere behind him came the smash of breaking glass. So intent was he upon his forefinger squeezing back the trigger of his own gun that he was not even conscious of the sound and flash of his own shots.
The red mushrooms disappeared and his gun clicked empty. There was silence in the empty store. Square Deal Finchley embraced the floor as though it were his mother. Bernie Koster crouched over him, peering into the thin, acrid veils of burnt powder.
Then there was a commotion outside and cops poured through the door. Flashlights stabbed the gloom.
“Two cripples outside,” said the sergeant, gold buttons and badge flashing in the light. “That you, Koster? What’s all the racket . . . Hey! Mr. Finchley! What’s this, Koster?”
“It’s an outrage!” Finchley screamed, temper and fear blending into hysteria. “I’ve been kidnaped, forced—”
“Hey, Sarge!” came a bellow from the back. “It’s Baby Face Hynes! Shot to pieces!”
“It had to be,” Koster said. “Take in Finchley and the two men outside, Sarge. They were hiding Baby Face and supplying him with food.”
“How’d you get on to this, son?” the sergeant demanded.
“Well, Sarge,” said Koster, feeling like Sherlock Holmes explaining things to Watson at the end of a case, “it was the tracks in the snow.”
“What tracks?”
“There was this empty store and there were tracks leading up to the door and coming down again. Finchley said it was plain someone came up, tried the door and found it locked, so came right back.”
“Sure, and what of it?”
“Only one thing was wrong, Sarge, and maybe being a country hick like Mr. Finchley says I am made it stick out like a sore thumb to me. Tracks are something we know about in the country. The tracks coming down the steps were more filled in with snow than the tracks going up.”
THE sergeant looked at him sharply, and then said:
“The . . . Huh? But that’s crazy, Koster! That means the tracks coming down were made before the ones going up!”
“That’s right!”
“But what happened to the ones going up?”
“They had to be still in the store! See? I figured it like this. Somebody went in that store just before the snow started to fall. He spent some time
in there. When he came out it was snowing and he left those tracks coming down—tracks which started to fill in right away. Then a little later a second man arrived, went up the steps and went inside and stayed there. He left tracks which were fresher and not so much filled in a few minutes later when Finchley and I got there. Now if you assume that the first man went in and left supplies, and that the second man was staying in there to use them, all the parts fit into place.
“Finchley, owning the store, had a key and could come and go without suspicion. Hynes could slip in under cover of the snow and stay put as long as he had to, with Finchley bringing him food and whatever else he needed. And nobody would look in an empty store because normally nobody would ever think of someday living in there, in spite of the fact that it has heat, water and toilet facilities in the back.”
“A smart piece of reasoning, son,” the sergeant breathed.
“I knew the second man had to be inside,” Koster said, “because there was one clincher. The last track going up the steps was just a heel track. The rest of the foot was under the door. The only way that could have been made was for the door to have been opened. So that made Mr. Finchley a liar when he told me somebody came up and went right down again, finding the door locked. Somebody had gone inside and the same man had not come out!”
“Whatcha got to say, Finchley?” the sergeant asked.
“I’ll talk to my lawyer!”
“Much good it’ll do you.” The sergeant chuckled. “We’ve got a case if I ever saw one!”
DARK HORIZONS
William G. Bogart
A cargo of wild beasts and a passenger list that included a man accused of murder were enough to make this voyage of the Inca a memorable one
CHAPTER I
Wild Cargo
NO WORD was spoken by either of the two men hunched over the chess board. Each stared quietly at the few remaining figures left in the game. One move—one clever move, and disaster would be spelled for one of the two players.
Perhaps there was something in this situation that made both men quietly somber, for a more sinister fate awaited one of the players, a fate that hardly depended upon the movement of a chessman. It was a fate that was definite and complete.
Roger Cass stirred a trifle restlessly in his chair. He let out his breath in a long sigh.
“Gad, this heat!” he murmured.
The bulky man seated opposite him, his opponent, stirred restlessly also. He pulled a damp handkerchief from the breast pocket of his rumpled linen suit and mopped at his perspiring brow.
His heavy features were red with the sultryness of the tropical, breathless night.
“Dammit,” the big man said. “We’ve got three more days of this heat, too, before we reach cooler climate.” He frowned as he turned his attention again to the chess board.
Roger Cass smiled tightly. “Sure,” he muttered. “Three days. Three centuries. What the hell!”
His heavy-set opponent said nothing. For only an instant did his gaze flick to Roger’s, and then it was back on the table again. He silently studied the small wooden figures before him.
Through an open porthole in the small cabin of the freighter a hot, sticky breeze came fitfully. It was hardly enough to stir the soiled curtains hanging there. Beyond the walls of the cabin, somewhere deep in the ship, bulkheads creaked mournfully. It was like a man groaning. A weird sound, utterly dismal. And all the time there was the steady pumping of the engines, a throbbing that sort of got into your blood, that was a part of you. That ceaseless pounding of the engines that got so monotonous you wanted to scream.
Beneath his white shirt, Roger Cass felt a trickle of sweat drop down his chest. The lids of his eyes stuck together as he blinked from time to time. They felt salty.
He said quietly, “Your move.”
The large man seated opposite him nodded.
“Sure, I know,” he said. He kept looking at the board, his brow furrowed.
The cabin door was open a crack, to help with the circulation of air. But it hardly helped. The stifling air from the open port was too limp to reach across the room.
SOMEWHERE in the creaking ship a bell tolled quickly. Roger Cass looked at the big man.
“Eleven o’clock,” he said.
His opponent nodded, silent.
Outside the porthole, the night was like thick pitch.
Suddenly, as though from some distant part of the throbbing ship, came the faint, unearthly cry. It echoed through the passageway outside the cabin. It reminded Roger Cass of domestic laughter, subdued.
“That damned hyena!” blurted his opponent. “All them blasted wild animals is going to drive me nuts before we get off this tub!”
Roger Cass smiled. But there was no laughter in his steady gray eyes.
“If that’s all you’ve got to worry about—” he started. He raised his arms from his lap, held them toward the other man. He continued: “For the hundredth time, Dougherty, what the hell could I possibly do? I can’t get off the ship, can I? I can’t run away, give me a break. After all, a thing like this can get damned uncomfortable.”
As the heavy-set man looked up, there was something in his eyes that told Roger Cass the fellow was on the verge of finally agreeing to the request.
Cass stretched his hands farther toward the big man.
“What do you say?” he asked quietly.
The handcuffs that bound his wrists made a slight metallic sound in the quiet, sultry cabin.
DOUGHERTY, the detective, studied Cass. He chewed his lower lip thoughtfully, before he said:
“Cass, I come all the way to Rio to pick you up, to intercept this lousy freighter. I got orders. You’re a murderer, and I gotta get you back to New York. You’re making it tough for me, Doc.”
Roger Cass—Doctor R.M. Cass, to be exact—smiled patiently. “I was just thinking,” he remarked.
“Thinking what?”
For answer, he inclined his head slightly toward the partially open cabin door. He had a well-shaped head. He had thick sandy-colored hair that made his weather-tanned skin look even darker. He was fairly young.
Through the corridor came the eerie laughter sound of the hyena. And there was something else. A chattering, like a crowd of women talking behind a closed door.
Dougherty winced. “That damned hyena. Them monkeys. They’ll drive me nuts!”
“I was thinking of something else,” said Cass. “I was thinking of those other animals. The bengals and that black leopard.” He indicated his shackled wrists. “If one of those wild devils should ever escape, what chance would I have?”
The big detective nodded. “I know, I know. It’s tough. But just the same—”
“Or Goliath. If that big brute should ever get loose!”
Dougherty was wiping at his neck, around his loose collar with the sodden handkerchief. “Cut it!” he snapped. “Just thinking about that caged gorilla gives me the creeps!”
Roger Cass looked at the heavy-faced detective steadily.
“All right, then,” he said. “That gives you an idea how I feel.” He rattled the handcuffs. “Besides, there’s Katherine and the others . . . those scientists and people I worked with down there at Lost Mountain. They’re my friends. They know me. How do you think I feel appearing in front of them in these? As I’ve told you, I’m innocent.”
Dougherty sighed uneasily.
“Look, Doc,” he said, “I’m only a cop. I got orders to bring you back. I’m not a judge and I’m not sayin’ you’re guilty and I’m not sayin’ you ain’t. But I gotta keep you ’cuffed, see?”
The unholy laughter of the wild thing floated through the throbbing ship. There was the soft chattering of the monkeys. And over all, the distant feel of the mood of these wild beasts. A mood of only partially repressed fury. Anger at this new state into which they’d been placed. Caged, watched by strange creatures who moved on two legs, and who peered into their cages.
The detective continued to sweat, more so t
han Roger Cass. He indicated the chess board and said almost angrily, “Let’s get on with it!”
It was then that the other sound knifed through the ship. It covered the sound of the creaking, complaining bulkheads; it made one forget the ceaseless pounding of the engines.
A girl’s wild scream, a cry of stark terror.
CHAPTER II
Escape
BOTH men were instantly on their feet. The one man was as solid as an oak; thick-shouldered, slightly hunched forward, eyes slightly heat-bleared and wide. That was Dougherty, the detective.
Roger Cass was taller, agile-looking, lean. There was a slight gauntness about his features. Nevertheless he was good-looking. His gray eyes held a sharpness lacking in the other man’s.
It was Cass who exclaimed, “Something’s happened. You see now? You’ve got to give me a break. Dammit, man, how can I possibly escape? Maybe I can help you!”
For just an instant, Dougherty hesitated. Cass knew it was the man’s slow-plodding brain turning the idea over in his mind.
And again the girl’s scream came, fainter this time, but nevertheless blood-chilling, fraught with wild despair.
The detective’s hand shot to his trousers pocket, came out with a small key. Quickly, he unsnapped the steel bracelets. He said belligerently, “All right. But by damn, if you try to trick me—”
“Forget it!” snapped Cass, and both men leaped toward the doorway.
The girl’s cry had appeared to come from somewhere forward. Roger Cass felt suddenly cold. There was a prickly feeling in his arms and legs, as though the blood was being drained from his body. He was thinking that the caged wild animals were also forward—housed on the open forecastle deck!
They covered the passageway, climbed a ladder. Other feet were pounding the deck somewhere behind them. Outside of this, for the moment, there was no other sound. It was as though every other living thing on the ship was holding its breath, listening.
Dougherty drew up short. He was breathing hard. He demanded, “Well, where the hell—”