And since whispered consolation had no effect, a shock might snap her out of it.
One hand slipped from her waist to the warm white curves that smiled through her filmy gown; but it was Slade who got that shock. Nancy shuddered and snuggled closer. It might have been hysteria, but it reminded him of something else—though the two are after all pretty much the same.
His next exploring caress made her breath come in short, quick gasps that weren’t a bit like sobs. Then they were lip to lip, and Nancy’s sighing murmur was quite rational.
As she sank back among the cushions, drawing him toward her, Slade told himself that if he broke away now, there was no telling what she might do. As it was, she did nothing more outrageous than snap out the floor lamp.…
* * * *
For an engineer, Slade had it figured out well enough. And when he finally extricated himself from Nancy’s arms, they were both closer to rational thought.
“…You must think I’m perfectly awful…” she whispered. “But…Oh, for the time, I just didn’t…”
“Forget it—” interrupted Slade. “But what was your hunch? According to those test blocks, there must have been a shipment of five million feet of phony lumber about to go to Belize—”
“About? It’s already gone. And with that faked wood—which’d rot overnight—costing the manufacturer about half as much as the real article, you can figure the profit someone would have taken if Jim hadn’t cracked down on them.”
“Get dressed and we’ll follow it up.”
A few minutes later, Nancy Forrest stepped into Slade’s car and they drove downtown to the Federal Indemnity building. The janitor recognized Nancy and admitted them. He took them to the eleventh floor, and turned back to his rooms. Nancy unlocked the front office door and followed Slade to Tilford’s private suite. They set to work searching Tilford’s desk.
“Here it is!” exclaimed Slade, after five minutes of digging. He jerked a carbon copy from the center drawer. “A letter to the surety company that bonded the contract, telling them to pay off on account of the fraud. In other words, Union Wood Products is sunk—the bonding company’ll burn ’em alive and—”
And then things happened in a dizzying blur of split second action. A click, and the faint screech of a hinge. Nancy’s scream. Slade whirling. The blast of a pistol, and the searing scorch of lead. A stocky, red faced man, automatic in hand, standing in the threshold. The killer had come back for the carbon copy of Jim’s report.
Slade ducked as the pistol again jetted flame. Something hit him in the shoulder like a sledgehammer. Nancy hurled a filing basket.
As the third shot blasted the plaster from the wall, Slade recovered and crashed home, driving the enemy into a corner. But he was dizzy from pain and the loss of blood, and the red-faced man was desperate. He felt his strength slipping.
Another pistol blast. As Slade forced himself to a final effort, he saw Nancy sink into a chair, clutching the red stain that blossomed from her side.
Slade’s fingers closed on the armed wrist just in time to deflect the descending barrel He wrenched, and hammered home with his free fist. Red Face’s head snapped back. He was out cold.
“Oh, Dan—!”
Valene’s voice. She had arrived at the height of the party.
Slade staggered to his feet. Valene’s face was pale and her eyes blazing. She dropped the smoking stand which she had picked up just too late to brain Red Face.
“I’m all right,” said Nancy, pulling herself out of her chair. “That shot just raked me—Oh, you’re bleeding!”
“Nuts!” grumbled Slade. He picked up the keys that Red Face had dropped at the threshold: Tilford’s missing ring. And then the police followed the janitor into the office. Slade eyed Valene, and concentrated on Wolmanized wood.
“Damn’ near a hundred thousand graft. This buzzard tried to beg off, but Jim couldn’t give him a break. Finally he sat down and wrote the letter to the bonding company himself, to keep the mess strictly private in case he relented.
“Put off mailing it, hating to sink the fellow, even though he had pulled a fast one. And that cost Jim his life. That’s what I make of it,” he concluded.
“Now if you want to check his finger-prints and see if he tinkered with that self luminous highway marker, go to it. But his coming up here with Jim’s missing keys is enough.”
And that held the police. Before Red Face recovered, he was getting more from the cops.
There was a three cornered exchange of glances as Tilford’s friend and two widows stepped to the hall.
“I guess we’d better get patched up a bit,” was Slade’s suggestion.
Nancy’s glance was curious as she said, “I’ll call a cab, Dan. It was only a scratch. You take care of Mrs. Tilford.”
Then a brief, deadly crossfire as blue eyes clashed with black.
“What the hell are you doing here?” asked Slade, as Valene caught his arm.
“I knew you’d end up here, probably with her keys,” said Valene. “So I came up—to tell you—you wouldn’t listen—that Jim and I wrote that note. He knew he couldn’t give me to you. Even if we broke, you’d steer clear of me, just for the looks of things.
“So he faked that message to catch us at it and make you like it. And to give Nancy a break. Jim knew you really liked me a lot.”
And that was a lot for Slade to digest at one bite. He shot a long look at Nancy, then said to Valene, “Once the doc picks the lead out of my frame, you and I are going home—to give me a chance to find out what it’s like with a clear conscience!”
SCOURGE OF THE SILVER DRAGON
“That’s funny,” muttered Gilbert Flint to the silence of his dingy furnished room, but there was no mirth in his frosty gray eyes as he watched a touring sedan emerge from the swirling mists of Chinatown and pull to the curbing of Jackson Street.
His craggy, suntanned face tightened into angles that were accentuated by the sudden grimness of his mouth. Crouched beside the sill of the flyspecked window that gave him a view from Stockton Street down to the Embarcadero, Gilbert Flint of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a moment seemed to be a lurking tiger. It was time to strike. Twice during his endless prowlings as a shabby drifter in Chinatown, he had seen that six-wheel job pull up at the mouth of the alley that led to the rear of Yut Lee’s “Abode of Felicitous Fraternal Association.” And the third time confirmed his hunch that the Silver Dragon came to San Francisco by motor.
The same car, and the same driver: a hawk-nosed, swarthy man whose thin face, for a moment illuminated by the yellowish glow of the nearby electrolier, was deeply lined and haggard from hard driving. He stretched his lean, rangy body, then stepped to the side door of Yut Lee’s place. He rang and was at once admitted.
Flint reached for a wreck of a hat, slipped into a shapeless, tattered topcoat, and resumed the role he had for a moment cast off. He bit off a chew of Rattle Axe and shambled down the two flights of creaking stairs. If a Chinaman emerged from the alley to remove the spare wheels from the fender wells, Flint wanted to be within arm’s reach. Those tires—unless his hunch was wrong—would be filled with more than air.
He wondered how many five-tael tins of opium each inner tube could conceal. He wondered also what master smuggler was flooding San Francisco with Silver Dragon, the new brand that was forcing the old ones out of the market.
Flint slouched upgrade, crossed Jackson, and ducked into an intersecting alley not far from the parked sedan. He entered a gloomy doorway and ascended a flight of stairs. On the second floor hall he lifted a window, cleared the sill, and emerged on a balcony that overhung the court in the rear of Yut Lee’s place.
While the Abode of Felicitous Fraternal Association was the center of the local opium traffic, Flint had larger game in view—the smuggling ring that supp
lied Yut Lee. The Chinatown squad, complying with a request from federal headquarters, arrested just enough peddlers and hop-heads to avoid a suspicion-arousing lull.
Across the court was a window, a blot of yellow glow in the gloom. Flint was looking into the inside of Chinatown. Lean, grizzled Yut Lee was earnestly conversing with a girl whose loveliness caught Flint’s breath. She was not Chinese, and he doubted that she was Eurasian. Her blue-black hair was drawn sleekly back and caught in a lustrous cluster at the nape of her neck. Cream-colored skin and dark eyes perilously smouldering behind curled lashes; just a glimpse, but an unforgettable one.
This was the home of the Silver Dragon that had invaded San Francisco despite the airtight cordon of FBI men guarding the Embarcadero and searching every ship that came from the Orient.
A door silently swung into the murky gloom below. A Chinaman emerged. His felt slippers swish-swished as he shuffled across the flagstones. Same old routine. Haul the spares in, one at a time; then later, come out with other tires.
The Chinaman fumbled with keys. A latch click—but as the door to the street opened, the Chinaman froze for an instant. Then his hand darted forward, sending a silvery streak zipping on ahead of him. Screeching wrathfully, he drew another knife and bounded toward the street. That opened the show.
Flint, clearing the balcony railing, heard the tinkle of steel and the answering yell. He dropped to the shadows of the court, rocked for an instant on the balls of his feet to regain his balance. But instead of rising, he rolled back and to the shelter of a pilaster. The Abode of Felicitous Fraternal Association was waking up.
The hawk-nosed driver of the parked car came plunging into the court. As he reached the street, a pistol crackled. Lead thudded into the door. Wild shots spattered to whining fragments against the brick wall at the rear. A yell came, and the sodden thud of a man dropping to the paving.
Hawk-nose, ducking to the shelter of the jamb, cursed wrathfully and snapped an automatic into line. The blast of his heavy pistol drowned the spiteful rattle that came from beyond his parked car, but flame still streaked over the hood.
Flint caught it at a glance. Rival opium dealers were rising in revolt against the monopoly of Silver Dragon. One spare wheel lay on the sidewalk where the hijacker had dropped it to take cover as the Chinaman emerged from the court.
“Cabron!” roared Hawk-nose above the thunder of his .45, then he shifted to get a better line of fire.
His maneuver was good. Another shot, and the enemy’s fusillade ceased. Hawk-nose bounded from cover. Sirens were screaming in the distance, and in another few moments the Chinatown squad would appear to mop up the disturbance. The iron gratings of windows opening into the court of Yut Lee’s place were slamming shut; and when the police appeared, bland faced Orientals would be insisting: “No savvee.…”
Wisely enough, Yut Lee’s highbinders were not taking a hand. There was no use. The car parked at the curb was Hawk-nose’s funeral, not theirs.
Hawk-nose was losing no time. Even as the wounded hijacker dropped gurgling and groaning to the street, the opium runner leaped to the wheel.
Flint emerged from cover. Getting the license plate number was not enough. That would be changed; but by riding the rear bumper he could flag some traffic cop to tail the machine. But both Flint and the opium runner miscalculated.
Before Hawk-nose could jab the starter, a dark form jerked up from behind the front seat to meet him. A hand snaked up, striking aside his automatic, and a curved blade lashed upward. There had been two hijackers, one working on each fender well. And the one at the left had played a cunning game.
The interior of the car became a tangle of writhing bodies and grappling hands, and a relentlessly flickering blade that darted in and out of the confusion. Hawk-nose sagged to the floorboards.
Flint bounded to the running board. The hijacker, a short, stocky Chinaman, kicked clear of his wounded adversary and lunged to meet him. Flint ploughed in, his left hand catching the highbinder’s wrist and deflecting his dripping blade, his fist popping home. The Chinaman, dazed but still kicking, sagged across the steering column.
Before Flint could regain his balance, the parked car began rolling downgrade. The emergency brake had been disengaged in the tussle. He jerked back, but the highbinder blocked his attempt to leap clear. The knife descended. Flint wriggled clear. Its red length stabbed the upholstery.
Flint drew his knee up to his stomach to boot the highbinder through the windshield—but gravity and the steep grade had been at work. The now swiftly, erratically descending car backed over the low curbing and crashed into a house on Grant Avenue, shattering the door. The impact pitched the highbinder and Flint to the paving. They came up fighting. A blade raked Flint from shoulder to hip. He jerked aside, struggled to his feet. Another vicious jab. Flint feinted, then ducked inside the highbinder’s guard, planting him squarely on the jaw.
Hawk-nose, aroused by the shock that flung him from the floorboards, lashed out blindly with both arms.
The riot ended with a savage yell, a gurgle, and a gasp. Flint saw that the highbinder had impaled himself on his own blade.
Hawk-nose was still alive, though the ever widening pool of blood through which he was trying to crawl left his chances in the balance.
“Take it easy, Jack,” cautioned Flint, kneeling beside the wounded man. “You got them both. I’ll give you a lift—which way?”
Hawk-nose muttered, gestured vaguely as Flint lifted him from the paving. The car, despite its rear end crash, was worth a trial.
And then the Chinatown squad came pounding into action. Flint swallowed an oath, and obeyed the brusque command to surrender.
“Jeez, chief,” he whined, resuming his pose as a drifter, “I don’t know nuthin’ about this. I was just helpin’ this guy to his feet—”
“You look like it,” growled the sergeant, eyeing Flint’s knife-tattered coat and battered face. “Now shut up, or do I have to sock you?”
“Take it easy, cap,” countered Flint. “Can’t you give a fellow a break? I didn’t have nuthin’ to do with this, but the Chinks’ll be waiting for me when I get out of the jug—”
“They’ll be old men before you get out,” barked the sergeant. “Now get into that wagon.”
Flint risked a whisper as the police hustled him toward the department car. “Grab that spare tire halfway up the block!”
The sergeant glanced up Jackson Street.
“Spare tire!” he growled. “Try another one, fella!”
It was gone, but one still remained in the left fender well.
“Get that—”
But the Chinatown squad is hardened to artful dodges. Flint, now that his investigation had blown up, would have to start all over again, and he dared not continue the argument.
The next instant justified him. A blot of whiteness appeared from a second story window; then a pale, slender, jewel-sparkling hand swept out. A burning cigarette lighter landed in the pool of gasoline collecting under the crushed tank. A roar, a fierce wave of heat, and a surging gust of flame enveloped Hawk-nose’s car.
Flint cursed wrathfully as the police machine pulled out. Before that blaze was extinguished, not a scrap of evidence would be left.
* * * *
At police headquarters Flint identified himself. “Who is that hook-nosed guy, and will he live?” he asked.
“Henrique Robles, according to his driver’s license,” answered the sergeant. Then, after a moment on the telephone, he added: “They tell me he coughed himself to death on the operating table. The rest were cold meat before we got to headquarters. Three highbinders. Yut Lee, of course, claims he never saw the Chink that went out to get the spare tires—or the others that tried to beat him to it. Which is pure baloney. If there’s not a tong war before morning, my name’s not McDermott!”
“Worse than a tong war,” grumbled Flint. “Damn sight worse! Anyone big enough to crowd the other brands off the market is not going to confine himself to opium. Hitting the pipe is comparatively harmless, especially for a Chink. The damnable thing about it is that this Silver Dragon won’t stick to smoking opium. Deadlier drugs will follow. The kind that get at the white population.”
McDermott’s ruddy face lengthened. Flint’s view had made a murderous tong war seem trivial in comparison.
While waiting for news of the exotic girl he had glimpsed at Yut Lee’s place—the one he was certain had ignited Robles’ car—Flint proposed inspecting the wreck.
They went. “Hawk-nose” Robles’ machine was in the pound. The blackened remains mocked Flint. The blast of the half-emptied tank had sprayed it with blazing gasoline. He drew a jackknife and moved toward the still smoking wreck.
The hijackers had been interrupted before they could break the lock of the tire in the left fender-well. A slash, and the blistered rubber yielded. Flint’s hunch was confirmed when he tore into the tube: it was filled with five-tael tins of Silver Dragon, each held in place with a rubber band vulcanized to the interior. But that confirmation was thus far useless.
The serial number had long been filed from the engine block, and no body number plate remained. The gutted interior was a total blank. Flame and the fire department had destroyed the ownership papers on the steering column.
“At the speed this guy was driving,” said McDermott eyeing the insect-caked radiator, “he’d have to gas up about every hundred seventy-five miles. Watch towns that distance—”
“This is better!” interrupted Flint, abruptly checking his examination of the interior of the car. He pried a small metal plate from above the right corner of the windshield, “Somebody slipped!”
It was a greasing rack “tickler” with blank spaces for the speedometer reading at which oil should be changed and the chassis relubricated. The top of the plate was marked in red enamel, TIMOTHY’S SERVICE STATION—YUMA.
The E. Hoffmann Price Spice Adventure MEGAPACK ™ Page 20