by Jerry eBooks
IT WAS plain blind luck, firing in the pitch-black night like that, but two of the slugs almost got Mike Cheek. One of them snapped off a bough on a piece of shrubbery so close the severed spray fell against Cheek. And the second actually nicked the cloth of his coat sleeve over the wrist. He threw himself sideward and went to his knees behind a stump.
Seconds ticked off with a fresh smash of thunder ricocheting around the sky. Again the wind broke off momentarily and Cheek heard a car start away out in the lane. He got down the end of the drive in time to see the faintly gleaming body of a sedan, lightless, turning onto the main road.
Coldly raging, for a moment he speculated on getting out his hack and going in pursuit, then realized the futility of it. He took a quick look around, but no light had gone on in any house nor were there any signs of anybody having been awakened along the lane. The gunfire had been swallowed in the storm. Swearing steadily he went back to the house and re-emerged with a flashlight to look for tracks.
What footprints there were were pretty blurred in the muddied ground. Then, down near the lane, the beam winked on a red leather moc in the rain. He had hardly picked it up when he realized at once it was too small and narrow for a man’s foot. The slim one in the slacks must have been a girl.
Another moment and Mike Cheek laughed in the rain as he rubbed his throbbing water-dripping head. The explanation now was obvious. It was the flashy guy and the girl who’d seen him showing the roll accidentally in Joe’s place. He patted the bankroll; it was still in his trouser pocket. Even if they had gotten it, he wouldn’t have called in the police; he didn’t want them messing around at this stage of the game.
“They had a nerve, though, trying to jump me! The crazy half-baked kids! Lost their heads and were ready to murder for a coupla hundred. . . . Trying to jump me . . .
Before he found the woman’s moc, he had been wondering if Hoskins had somehow learned he lived in the town, had penetrated his disguise, and made an attempt on his life. But now he knew better. “Hoskins is too smug and dumb to smell anything——”
HE STAYED in the next day. A few minutes after nine that evening, he was pushing the sedan briskly along the State highway to the city. He had slipped the car out the back way from the stable, so nobody would be aware he had left town. Humming lightly he mused on how wealthy he would be in a few hours. One thing irritated him slightly. Marta had been very offhand about the whole thing when he phoned her that afternoon and told her it would be that night.
He shrugged that off; at 10:12 he was sliding the sedan into a berth in an uptown parking lot in the city. He got a cab. When he left it at a midtown parking field, the gray wig was in his coat pocket. Presenting the stub for his regular car, a smart maroon convertible, he headed out for his suburban bungalow. His wrist-watch, donned after quitting Elwort, showed a few minutes short of 11:30 When he passed the corner of Brampton Road, the street on which his modest house stood. A lane running between the backyards of adjoining streets bisected the block. It gave access to the file of galvanized hutches that were garages in each identical backyard. Heralding himself with some lusty horning, he slid the convert into one of the hutches, banged the metal doors unnecessarily, and went up the brick walk alongside his own place.
Inside, with the shades drawn, he lighted all the lamps and turned the radio on full blast. He got a bottle of rye and half-filled two glasses, placing them in full sight on the living room table. The next move was to get a woman’s cheap fur jacket from the closet and sling it over the arm of the chair beside the front door. He didn’t have long to wait till an irate thumb outside held down the bell button hard.
Lighting a second cigaret, Cheek placed it in plain sight on the lip of an ashtray. When he went to the door, he was in shirt sleeves, necktie askew, hair rumpled. With hand on the knob, he shouted through the din of the radio, “Now stay back there in the dining room, babe! And no singing, ya un’erstand?” And then he yanked the door open, rocking slightly, with a foolish smirk on his sharp face.
It was Ditmars, the hen-pecked two-hundred pounder from next door. His horse jaw was poked out determinedly. “See here, Cheek! You gotta—” He paused to pull his overcoat closer about his collarless neck as he coughed. “Say, how do you expect folks to get any sleep an’—an’—” His watery eyes took in the woman’s fur jacket, the cigaret smoking on the tray beside the one Cheek fumbled into his mouth, and the two glasses of whisky.
Cheek was all apologies. “Cripes, pal, I’m sorry. Just having a little party and I didn’t realize—” Stumbling a little he hurried over to the radio and cut down the volume, then gestured none too stealthily to an imaginary party in the dining room.
“Just having a little drink with an old friend and—”
Middle-aged half-bald Ditmars was leering with lascivious envy when Cheek returned to the door. “Well, you know how it is. I had ta do something to satisfy the old woman. She—”
“Sure, sure, pal. I—I’d ask you in for a shot but my friend—well, she—uh—he’s sorta shy.” Cheek winked wisely. Ditmar’s returned it in kind and went away. Cheek knew it would be common gossip on the commuter’s train the next morning.
He sat around slugging down rye for about an hour, flaring up the radio briefly at intervals. Then he got into his coat, left the lights on, and slipped out the back way. The neighborhood was wrapped in sleep as he went down the unlit alleyway to the garages like a ghost.
CHAPTER V
CHEEK didn’t take out the maroon job this time. Walking swiftly, he went almost a mile up the line to pick up the bus away from his home district. Leaving it in the next suburban community, he re-donned the gray wig in the darkness, then went to the local hack stand. In a short while he was back in town, shifting to another cab, then getting the second-hand sedan out of the parking lot. It was shortly after two A. M. when he swung onto the river road outside of Elwort.
Lights still gleamed from the hall and library of Lambert Hoskins’ place when he parked down at the bottom of the drive. Hoskins, as he knew, was a regular night owl. He went the rest of the way on foot and tugged imperatively on the pull bell. It was Hoskins himself who answered, his breath heavily laden with whisky as he peered out into the dimness.
Cheek’s body was like a tight-coiled spring, quivering but ready to flash into action. He felt very cold and possessed as he stood with his hands slanted into the pockets of his belted trench coat, one of them wrapped around his heater. He fully expected a little trouble and was ready.
“Y-you—it’s you—y-you?” Hoskins said in a croaking voice. His protruding eyes shuttered, then opened and strained as if he couldn’t believe what he saw was more than an apparition. “Why, you—h-how did y-you get here? I don’t un-understand?
Cheek laughed soundlessly as he walked in, backing the shaken Hoskins before him. The latter tried to pull himself together, scowling. Cheek wondered if he smelled danger. It made little difference to the private detective. Now they were inside, he would gun him any time.
They got down into the library where a radio played softly. The usually florid Hoskins was strangely gray, and he half stumbled as he edged to the corner of the desk and stemmed an arm on it as if for support. “What the devil do you mean coming here at this hour of the night?” he blurted, getting back into his old browbeating role.
“I’m in trouble, Hoskins. Got to get out of the city fast. So-o—I’ll settle for another ten grand,” Cheek said, enjoying the cat-and-mouse game with Hoskins. Cheek wondered where Marta was. According to their plans, she should appear on the scene. But nothing could go wrong now; he would kill Hoskins, rifle the safe, and get out. Marta, giving him a twenty minute head start, would report to the county police that there had been a shooting. She would feign hysteria, and due to her incoherency, they wouldn’t be able to make a move until they had visited the house.
That would give him time to get back to the city, abandon the sedan on a quiet side street, then get back to the bungalow in the suburbs
—back to the bungalow that nobody would know he had ever left, where there was evidence that he had been there all evening, just in case anything should happen.
HOSKINS was staring at him with a peculiar fixity. And Mike Cheek was watching him like a hawk lest he make a try for a gun in the desk. Hoskins said quietly: “You’ll get out of town? You’re on the lam?”
Cheek nodded. “Yep. Give me ten grand—”
“First thing in the morning,” Hoskins suddenly agreed. “Just as soon as I can get to the bank.” He turned toward the side table where a bottle of brandy and a bottle of seltzer stood.
He had acceded too easily, the tough old buzzard. Cheek smelled something wrong. He said, “Hoskins!”, in a sharp ragged voice. The other turned and was looking into the muzzle of Cheek’s revolver. Cheek started to walk forward.
“Wait, Cheek! Wait. . . . You don’t know. I—I’ll give you twenty-five thousand. Something—something’s happened. You don’t know. . . . You don’t know. . . .” Hoskins was panting as if he had run up a long high hill.
Once again Cheek laughed shortly. He was going to get a damned sight more than twenty-five grand. He pressured on the trigger, and the Police positive was kicking out lead. It kicked out two bullets at a four-foot distance into Hoskins; both of them smashed into his chest.
The soft music of the radio re-emerged as the Crash of the shots waned, and Hoskins was crumpled over the big leather chair behind the desk, his tweed jacket pulled half off one shoulder. As cool as ever, Cheek was over him for a quick examination. The man was deader than a dried herring. There was a faint creek and he spun to see Marta in the doorway.
“Don’t get excited,” he threw at her quickly. A few more moves and “Old Mainz,” wanted for murder, would disappear from the face of the earth. Vaguely he noticed that she said nothing.
It didn’t bother him. Putting the smoke-drooling gun on the desk, he went quickly to the safe in the corner. Dropping down before it, he went to work on the dial with his gloved hands. He didn’t need the copy of the combination; he had memorized it.
EVERYTHING worked to perfection. In a matter of moments, he had it open and was snatching out packages of neatly banded bills of large denominations. He stacked them on a nearby end table. Smiling like a cat, he turned to nod at Marta. Then he felt himself choking.
Marta had moved to the desk. She was just putting down his revolver that she had been handling in a handkerchief, and he saw the little pile of shells, removed from the gun, on the gleaming surface of the desk.
“Hey, what the hell is the—”
Her right hand came up from beside her woolen skirt. In it was a small automatic. “Leave the money right there,” she said in a voice with icicles in it. “And don’t try to jump me, Mike!”
“But what the hell is the idea of—” He was dumfounded, paralyzed with bewilderment as he smelled some kind of a double cross.
“And now get the devil out,” she went on without emotion, the gun in her hand steady as a rock. “Or I can always shoot you as an intruder who killed Mr. Hoskins! . . . . I’ll give you the head-start we agreed on before I summon the police. Get going, Mike.” He came forward a few short steps, then spat at her. “Why you dirty double-crossing tramp! You want to grab off all the money for yourself, eh? You—”
She nodded. “And I’m going to.”
“Why you—” She moved a foot as he leaned toward her. Lamplight glinted off her shoe. It was a red shoe, a moc like the one he had found in the drive of his place last night. Only this shoe was brand new, a pair that had been bought today. Slowly light dawned on him. He coughed as the fury churned up into his throat. “Like hell you will! I’ll implicate you! I’ll give myself up and name you as an accomplice and—”
She shook her head. “No, you won’t! I’d have no motive. Hoskins was going to marry me. We got the license over at the county seat this morning.”
He made some kind of a sound that wasn’t human as he failed to find words. She had been playing both ends against the middle, he saw. She had tipped Hoskins that he had been residing in town, masquerading as “Mr. Mainz.” She had come with Hoskins last night when Hoskins tried to kill him to silence him. And now, now she planned to get all the money without having to marry old Hoskins. He heard her ordering him to get going again. He saw the icy flicker in her eyes and realized she would blast him down if forced to.
“You—you—I’ll—” Then he broke off as the music on the radio suddenly broke off.
AN ANNOUNCER came on with a special news flash. Automatically he heard himself listening to the press statement from one of the city papers. “Police have just reported a mysterious explosion that completely demolished the surburban home of Michael Cheek, private investigator. Following the blast, the house was burnt to a crisped cinder in a matter of minutes by a type of liquid fire that has experts baffled. Police officials are already working on the basis that it might have been the work of foreign agents whom Mr. Cheek may have been investigating. The private investigator has definitely been ascertained to have been in the house at the time, but authorities have little hope of finding any slightest remains of the body due to the intensity of the blaze that ate up the wreckage. . . . We will now return to the musical program. . . .”
Cheek felt himself swaying in his tracks. An awful empty silence seemed to be shrieking in his ears. His senses seemed to be swirling downward into some bottomless pit. It was Hoskins’ work, he realized.
Failing to shoot him last night, Hoskins had made up one of the secret bombs and blown up his place.
“Get going, Mike,” the girl said again. “I hold the aces now.”
Like somebody else moving in a dream he found himself stumbling past her, then tearing through the front door and down the drive. The shock to his brain was so severe he still couldn’t quite comprehend what had been done to him yet. He got into the sedan and slammed it out onto the road, driving wildly.
When he came to the State highway, he swung southward toward the city. From behind came the shriek of the siren of a police car as it headed for Hoskins’ place. Marta hadn’t given him the promised headstart. But he had to make it to the city and get out home to establish his alibi as planned and—
Then he realized. He couldn’t go home because he was supposed to be dead. There would be no way of explaining, especially with his own car still in the garage, how he didn’t happen to be at home. Mike Cheek didn’t exist any more. He was trapped in the role of “Old Mainz,” the murderer of Lambert Hoskins. . . . The murderer he had dressed himself up to be!
He had to keep running, and he knew there was no escape; he would be caught eventually. . . .
(THE END)
THE BIG MONEY MAN
Wayland Rice
When the Cash Comes in Accompanied by a Corpse, Publicity Agent Hollister Has Reason to Wish He Were Broke Again!
TONY ARNOLD looked worried. Across the table from him was the young man who rented this office. His name was Hal Hollister and he was a slender, good-looking person of average height.
“Mr. Hollister, how did you ever get Into such a mess?” Tony Arnold said.
Hollister grinned. He was down, but not exactly hugging the floor. One shoulder still remained off the mat, though there was terrific pressure upon it.
“Mess is the right word,” he replied. “It began innocently enough. I had a girl friend who aspired to the movies and wanted me to help her get publicity. I did—and the racket turned out to be just my dish. Well—I had to make or break myself on what I could do for her so I put every nickel I had into it.”
“Did she get to Hollywood?” Arnold asked.
“Uh-huh. First, some night club work and neat publicity about getting married to a millionaire. Of course it was rigged. Then she got into a musical show and I created more publicity. The real stuff it was and it went over big. The movies came for her. That’s when I moved into these offices, figuring I was all set.”
“At two hundred and fifty a month
you took some risk.” Arnold glanced around the richly furnished office.
“Why not?” Hollister asked. “I said it was make or break and a publicity agent has to give a good account of himself too. This office spelled success and money. Well—my girl friend went to Hollywood, made a picture and fell flat on her pretty face. Seems there were no brains behind it and making movies takes brains, I’ve heard.”
Arnold shrugged.
“Well, Hal,” he continued, “I’m sorry, but what I said still goes. You know, old man Angus McVicker takes no credit from anyone. You paid four months’ rent in advance. It was up a week ago. Angus says you’ll have to get.”
“Angus,” Hollister grunted, “has a moneybag for a heart. Talk about publicity. Did you see what I got?”
Hollister passed over a copy of a legal journal. In it was a paid ad to the effect that Angus McVicker was in the process of forcing one Hal Hollister into involuntary bankruptcy.
“It’s really a laugh,” Hollister said. “He thinks I own this furniture. All his ad did was to bring down every blasted creditor I have on my neck. Furniture company, printer, hotel. Even the telephone company. You’d think a big concern like that wouldn’t notice when a chap owes them forty-seven dollars. Frankly, I expect to get a call any minute telling me to listen well because it’s the last time I’ll hear anything over this phone. Well, let them . . .”
The phone promptly rang, as if it had ears and a brain. Hollister laughed dryly, nodded to Arnold and picked up the instrument.
“I know all about it,” he said. “You can stop service when . . . what? Who did you say it was? Cumming? Clark Gumming? THE Clark Cumming? Well, I—yes, sir, I handle publicity. Yes, of course. Right away? Well, I’m somewhat tied up, but then you’re an important man. I’ll be right over.”
Hollister hung up.
“Hold everything, including Angus,” he told Arnold. “As building manager, you haven’t seen me on business until morning. That was Clark Cumming, the millionaire philanthropist. The man who won’t let a reporter within a mile of him. He wants me for some publicity work. Imagine that!”