by Jerry eBooks
The baldheaded man staggered against the cage. He turned around crazily in a half circle, leaning his back against the structure.
And then Katherine screamed. She turned away.
The massive paw of the panther had come through the bars and ripped the man’s throat. For a moment before death struck, the man’s face was revealed to all as Captain Briggs leaped forward with a flashlight in his hand.
Then the skipper turned away, sickened. He stared at the others.
“I can’t imagine . . .” he gasped. “Clark Benedict! Why, I thought he had the fever . . .”
LATER, after sailors had removed the gruesome sight from before the black panther’s cage, Roger Cass explained. They were gathered in the captain’s quarters.
“Benedict,” he said, “had pretty thick hair for a man his age. He wore a toupee. We found it in his stateroom.”
Owen, the girl’s father, was still puzzled.
“But the man was ill!” he exclaimed. “We all saw him last night, burning up with fever . . .”
Roger shook his head. He removed the small bottle from his pocket. He held it out so that all could see the label. It read: INSULIN.
“Benedict was all over the fever,” Cass said. “He used this, in just the right dose, to produce fever—after he had done his killings. It was his alibi. Insulin, you know, produces shock and high fever. That muttering he did in bed, while we stood there, was all put on. It was just his fever that he had built up.”
“You’re sure?” Owen demanded incredulously.
Roger nodded. “His assistant, that skinny Paul Francis, has verified it. We’ve got Francis in the brig.”
Owen asked, “But what was the motive for such . . .”
Roger Cass had not quite finished with another explanation. He continued: “Francis also told us about the gorilla. Benedict had killed him, removed him from the cage and made it appear the creature had escaped. He used a mallet on Dougherty’s chest, so we’d think the man had been crushed by powerful arms.”
Katherine, her lovely face pale, shuddered. She looked at Roger Cass, said, Tell them why he did it!”
Owen and Captain Briggs waited to hear the words. Two seamen, a ship’s officer stood in the background.
Cass looked at the girl’s father and said, “You recall the agreement we all signed down there at Lost Mountain?” Owen nodded. “You mean to share and share alike on all profits derived from this journey?”
“Yes,” agreed Cass. “We’ve made important scientific discoveries. We’re bringing back valuable animals and priceless data and treasures. Benedict would receive all of this if we were dead!”
Owen stared. “But—”
“And there was one other thing he wanted,” continued Roger Cass. “A treatise I had written on a new medical procedure for replenishing red corpuscles in the blood stream. I have hopes that this discovery will bring a fortune—and a cure for thousands of people who needlessly die.”
“Benedict was after that paper?” asked Owen.
Cass nodded. “But I mailed it, registered, to New York on the last boat,” he explained. “It should be there waiting for me now.”
He told them about Steve, his brother. “Paul Francis has confessed that Benedict and that partner of his back there at Lost Mountain—Mitchell—tried to get Steve to frame me. Steve had a fight with Mitchell, and they framed him for the killing of Williams. But when Steve got the fever, and acted queer, they figured it would be better to place the blame for the murder on me. They wanted me out of the way when Benedict got back to New York!” Roger added: “They gave Steve an overdose of insulin. He wasn’t crazy. He was suffering from severe shock.” Roger Cass finished the statement in almost a whisper. He turned, headed out of the room. At the doorway, he met the radio-man coming in, a message in his hand.
“For you, sir,” the arrival said quietly.
He quickly read the message. It was from the tropics, and it read:
STEPHEN CASS FOUND IN JUNGLE. PERFECTLY SANE. CONFESSED KILLING WILLIAMS AFTER FIGHT INVOLVING FRAMEUP ON YOU. STEPHEN TOO WEAK TO PULL THROUGH ILLNESS. HE DIED LAST NIGHT.
The message was signed by a constable of police located near the Lost Mountain base camp.
Roger passed the message to the girl. His face was grim. Katherine read the message, handed it on to the others.
She followed Roger Cass out on deck.
Two hours later they were still standing against the rail watching the gray sea rush past. It had cleared now, and the stars were hung out in the sky, blinking.
Her arm through his, her warm vibrant form close to his own, she pointed with her other hand toward the distant, dark horizon.
She murmured softly, “It’s black now, but in the morning . . . tomorrow, it will be bright with the morning sun.”
Roger nodded. His hand closed over her own. . . .
DEAD MAN’S NERVE
Jack Bradley
Old Jimmy Cantrell of the Force starts off on the last tour of his beat—and runs smack into a gruesome case of murder!
THEY had all been nice down at the station house before he set out. Everyone had been careful not to notice that his shoes were unshined and his shabby old uniform unpressed. And, above all, they had been careful not to notice the smell of liquor on his breath. Some of the older cops, whose lives he had saved during the wild raids and gunfights of the crazy Prohibition Era had come up to grin embarrassedly and shake his hand. One of the police reporters had even done a brief article about him with the headline:
VETERAN PATROLMAN TO RETIRE
Old Jimmy Cantrell’s Last Tour Tonight
The article was a brief sketch of his twenty years as patrolman in Hell’s Kitchen. It told of innumerable fights and raids in which he had taken part. The time he had shot down three of the Krumer mob. Of a night when he had walked into a hail of lead, his own gun shot out of his hand, to smash down an escaped convict with his nightstick.
It was a nice story and old Jimmy Cantrell rather enjoyed being the center of attraction for once. If only it hadn’t been for that talk with Captain Marvin.
Marvin had called him into his office just a before he left.
“So this is your last tour, eh, Cantrell?” he had asked quietly. “You’re letting your application for retirement stand?”
Cantrell turned his head a bit so the Captain wouldn’t smell the liquor on his breath.
“Yes, Captain, I’m letting it stand. I—well, I guess I’m getting a little too old to pound a beat, sir.”
Marvin looked at him somberly for a moment.
“All right, Cantrell,” he had said then. “That’s your privilege. Only we do need cops pretty badly these days, you know.”
Before Cantrell could answer, young Lloyd Marvin, the Captain’s son, had walked into the office. As always, Cantrell had felt his heart leap at the sight of the trim, athletic young cop. He was so young! So young and clean-looking!
If only things could have been different and he could have had a kid like that on the Force! His fingers had tingled with desire to muss that mop of unruly blond hair, and he had tugged embarrassedly at his tunic, ashamed of the wild intensity of his emotion. It was plain Hades to love another man’s son like that.
“I just wanted to speak to Jimmy before he left,” Lloyd had said easily.
“Save it until he comes off duty, Lloyd,” his father had said curtly. “We’ll both see him then. Right now, I’m talking to him myself.”
“Okay, then. See you later, Jimmy.” Lloyd had grinned and gone out.
WHEN he had left, Captain Marvin had cleared his throat uncomfortably a couple of times before he could blurt out the question he wanted to ask.
“Uh—that trouble you told me about that time—you know. That still as bad as ever?”
Old Jimmy had looked stonily at a map on the wall.
“Yeah. Just the same as it has been ever since that fight with Tiny.”
Marvin nodded understandingly. “I see. Well, then, maybe it’s bet
ter this way. It’s just that I’m worried about Lloyd. He’s been seen going into Tiny’s club a couple of times lately, and I can’t understand it. I know the boy’s ambitious and it might be that he figures Tiny can help him get ahead. That no-good is swinging a lot of weight in the precinct, lately.”
“I know,” Cantrell had said. “I tried to speak to Lloyd about it a couple of times but I didn’t get far. Lloyd hasn’t got much use for sloppy cops.”
“He’s too young to understand, Jimmy, and he doesn’t know about your trouble. Anyway, there’s probably nothing you could do about it. So, we’ll just forget the whole thing. And tonight, when you come off duty, you’re coming home with us for a bit of supper. Good luck, Jimmy!”
He had pressed Cantrell’s hand quickly and turned back to his desk . . .
Old Jimmy Cantrell was making his last tour! All over the grimy, ancient neighborhood the word had spread and he had to stop a score of times to pass a few words with friends. The long years of exposure to wind and rain, plus the oceans of whisky he had consumed, had given him a bad case of arthritis. And now his stiff, bent figure in the faded old uniform and his slow, steady “harness bull” walk made him look, for all the world, like an aged beetle, as he plodded through the littered streets.
On past Mike’s Lunch Room, where he always stashed his raincoat when a storm threatened. On past Kiernan’s—a moment’s stop at Klotz’s Liquor Store, to try the door. Old Man Klotz had been yammering about that bum lock for five years and hadn’t done anything about it. Another stop at Tony’s fruit stand, where Tony was waiting breathlessly to make him a present of a huge basket of fruit.
Cantrell began to feel a warm glow in his heart because of the grand friendliness of these people. He knew them so well! Twenty long years of looking after them, keeping their kids out of trouble, giving them advice. Why, that warehouse down the street—that was where he had taken the escaped convict the police reporter had written about. But he, himself, thought of it as the place he had caught Tony’s oldest boy breaking into.
He had grabbed the kid by the scruff of the neck that night, and whaled him plenty with his night-stick. Tony had never known about that night. The kid was now a foreman in a war plant.
Yes, it was going to be tough leaving these people. He almost wished—
He snapped out of it abruptly. He had run into trouble and it was the kind of trouble he dreaded most. Nothing more than a bunch of longshoremen gathered around a sidewalk crap game, but he knew only too well what could happen. He forced a tolerant grin on his weather-reddened face as he came up to them.
“All right, boys. Break it up. Break it up. You can go into the alley, back of Hannegan’s and shoot craps all night, for all I care, but not out here in plain sight of everybody. Come on, now, break it up.”
Most of the men in that crowd were the old-timers he had known for years and they moved back at once. But there were a couple of strangers to him and one of them had the dice. That one faced about hostilely.
“Say! Why don’t you go take a walk for yourself, copper? We ain’t botherin’ you!”
It started to come up, the way it always did, that old feeling of sick panic. Jimmy Cantrell swallowed the lump in his throat and pushed forward calmly.
“I wasn’t kidding you, fellow. I said to break it up and I meant it. Come on, now!”
He prodded the stranger lightly with the tip of his night-stick. And that touched it off.
“Who are you pokin’ around, flatfoot?” the man snarled.
Suddenly he slapped the night-stick aside and lurched forward, swinging a right hook at Cantrell’s jaw. And it landed. Landed so clumsily that it was almost harmless, but it landed.
And, as always, the panic changed to an insane red haze, and through the haze Jimmy Cantrell felt himself moving forward, his stick poised in cold, murderous readiness. He heard a voice within him shrieking:
“Careful, now! Don’t cripple him. Don’t get yourself into another jam!”
EVEN as he started to swing, it was all over. Two of the old-timers had grabbed the stranger and yanked him back out of reach of that club.
“All right, Jimmy!” one of them yelled sharply. “Don’t hit him! We’ll take care of it! Easy, now!”
Between them they hustled the man off down the street and as they went Cantrell heard one of them saying breathlessly: “Don’t ever do that again! Don’t ever lay hands on old Jimmy Cantrell. I’ve known that cop for the last fifteen years and I bet he’s been up on charges a dozen times or more for half killing fellers that laid their hands on him. He’s funny about that. He just can’t stand it when you put your hands on him.”
The stranger growled something in reply and then they were out of hearing down the street. Cantrell turned and went on down his beat. He was shaking like a leaf and the sweat was pouring out of him. All of the warm, pleasant feeling he had had was gone.
Suddenly he looked up sharply. Young Lloyd Marvin was standing across the street, looking at him. Just standing there looking. Cantrell wondered how anybody could put so much searing contempt into a look as Lloyd was doing.
He started to raise his night-stick in halfhearted salute. Abruptly Lloyd snapped about and strode away, without returning Cantrell’s wave.
Far down the street, Jimmy Cantrell saw him turn in at the entrance of Tiny Anderson’s club. He started after him, then gave it up. That would involve explaining about “that trouble”, and Captain Marvin was the only one in the precinct who knew about that.
It had happened during the second year Cantrell was on the Force. Prohibition was in full swing and the mobs were riding high. Night after night big black sedans roared in from sheltered coves on Long Island, their tonneaus piled high with liquid platinum. Gangsters swaggered through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, their pockets bulging with money, their guns for hire to the highest bidder. Money, money, everywhere to the man who was willing to take a chance.
Jimmy Cantrell and Joe Marvin, himself a patrolman at the time, had been sent to arrest a cheap hoodlum named “Tiny” Anderson. It was a routine arrest, a matter so unimportant that Joe Marvin had stopped off to make a phone call while Cantrell strolled in alone to make the arrest. They had forgotten that the man they were after hated cops more than anything else in the world.
“Tiny” Anderson had been a promising heavy-weight prizefighter before he lost his license for crooked fighting. He had always blamed the cops for the loss of his license and when Cantrell came in, he had seen his chance.
He had taunted the green young bluecoat into laying aside his gun and night-stick, and then had gone to work. Slowly. Carefully. Jimmy Cantrell had never had a chance, from the first, against those trained fists. Tiny could have knocked him out any time he wished.
But he hadn’t wanted to knock out the young cop. He had wanted to hurt him. Dancing around Cantrell, he had bored in again and again, planting his skilled hands like a medieval torturer planting his knives.
Old-timers in Hell’s Kitchen still talked about that fight, but Jimmy Cantrell never remembered much of it afterward. To him, it had been only an eon-long nightmare of getting up off the floor to face that bullet-headed figure with the broken nose boring in—always boring in.
He had been out on his feet toward the end of it, and only dimly aware of Joe Marvin rushing in past him, of Joe’s nightstick smashing across that broken nose. Later, in the hospital, they told him that Marvin had beaten the big ex-prizefighter to a pulp, but that hadn’t changed things for Jimmy Cantrell.
A week or so after he had left the hospital and gone back on duty, he had had to break up a fight between two drunks. There had been a brief tussle that another cop would have forgotten in five minutes. And afterward Joe Marvin had found him crouched over in an alley, shaking, sweat pouring down his face. He had straightened himself shamefacedly as his fellow officer had come up.
“I’m all right,” he had said shakily. “Just a touch of nerves, I guess.” He told about the brief tuss
le he had just had. “I’ve been that way ever since the fight I had with Tiny. Soon as anybody lays their hands on me, I simply go to pieces. Looks like I’ll have to get off the cops if this keeps up.”
“Aw, forget that stuff,” Marvin had said heartily. “Give up your job when you’ve got a sick father to look after? You can’t. Why, anybody’s liable to be a bit jumpy after a fist fight that’s put him in the hospital for two months. But you get over things like that after a while.”
OH YES, you get over things like that after a while, old Jimmy Cantrell was thinking now. For the first few weeks you walk your beat with your, heart in your throat at the sight of any harmless drunk, who might swing at you.
And then you learn that if you take just the right amount of whisky the panic isn’t so bad, and if you do run into trouble the whisky in your brain turns that panic into a murderous red rage that will carry you through if only you can keep from hurting your man too much—and most of the time you can.
So you get the reputation of being a mean-tempered cop and the neighborhood toughs learn to keep their hands to themselves and things are much better.
Fight after fight comes up through the long, long years and you gradually gain a deadly sureness with gun, night-stick, chairs, bottles—in fact any weapon except your hands. You never get over that. The fact is that you’re not the least bit afraid of any weapon on earth except the hands of men.
In the course of time, you win a couple of citations for bravery and, almost inevitably, you save the lives of a number of your fellow officers. After that they sort of look after you. They make no effort to hide their disgust at your sloppiness and your drinking, and they keep away from you as much as possible. But after all, you’ve saved their lives so they sort of look after you when things are too bad.
Oh yes, you get over things like that after a while.
Cantrell was snapped out of his painful reverie by a voice calling him.
“Hello, Jimmy!” It was old man Klotz, hurrying toward his liquor store, a huge cardboard sign under his arm. “I hear this is your last night?”