The Red Finger Pulp Mystery Megapack: 12 Tales of the Masked Hero

by Arthur Leo Zagat

  The two saboteurs returned to grope in the dark bulk of their boat. They straightened, each lifting a shadowy bag. And froze as cold, hard words vibrated behind them.

  “Stay just that way, you two.” That sudden voice was keen-edged with the threat of sudden death. “Put those bags down in the boat, gently, and your guns beside them.”

  The prowlers dipped to obey, lifted again. “Now turn, slowly.” Oddly the speaker seemed as anxious to avoid being heard as they themselves had been, to judge from the repression of his tone, pitched so as to reach them and be heard no further. They came around stiffly till they faced their captor.

  * * * *

  He seemed at first a part of the swirling fog, so blurred were his outlines. A shapeless gray felt was pulled low over his forehead, a gray mask covered his face so that only the glint of narrowed eyes were visible through its slits. His figure was formless in a black cloak that fell from his shoulders to the ground. But that which tightened the spies’ scalps and bristled the short hairs at the base of their skulls with superstitious fear was the steady hand that held a revolver point-blank at their heads.

  It was black, that hand, black-gloved except for the long finger that curled around the weapon’s trigger. That was scarlet; even in the misty dark they could see that glaring scarlet as if it had been dipped in fresh blood. And a name dripped like blood from Angelo’s bloodless lips. “Red Finger!”

  The mask head nodded, and it seemed almost as if the hidden mouth smiled humorlessly. “Red Finger,” it assented, savoring the dread that name inspired among all who moved in the murky underworld of international intrigue.

  A second’s silence intervened, accentuated by the greasy lap of water along the rowboat’s keel and the far-off melancholy hoot of a ferry. Then, “Who gave you the orders for—this?”

  “Capit—” Dominic began, his voice thinned by fear, but Angelo’s hard-driven elbow into his side choked off the words. “Try and find out!” the more virulent of the two said. “We have failed, and death is our reward, but we shall never talk. You will save time by turning us over to your police.”

  Red Finger’s black shoulders shrugged. “That, precisely, is what I shall not do. But you are small fry; I have no more time to waste on you.” The scarlet digit twitched, twice. No report shattered the river quiet, but two jets of fine spray spurted from the muzzle of his gun, to become a vaporous cloud about the saboteurs’ heads. The spies collapsed like two ripped meal-bags, thudded to the ground, lay motionless.

  At once the counter-spy leaped into furious action. His lithe figure sprang forward, in an instant he had heaved the unconscious saboteurs into their tiny craft, and shoved it off and whipped into it. He let it slide out into the Sound with the momentum of his initial shove, let the current take it. The fog closed around the boat. There was a dull plop into the water, then a second. Those particular bombs would lie at the bottom of the East River till Judgment Day. A tiny, hooded light flickered over a swarthy face; touched ascetic lips, a close-trimmed, black mustache; went out. A black cloak fluttered overside, a gray mask followed.…

  Minutes later a limp body, clad only in shirt and drawers, bulked along the rowboat’s gunwale. “God take your soul, Dominic Liscio. You did your duty as you saw it.”

  The river chuckled gruesomely as it clasped yet another flaccid bundle to its muddy bosom. Then muffled oars dipped softly into the stream and the boat’s bow turned toward the loom of the Santa Maria, until the rowboat reached and thudded against its rust-streaked hull.

  From the deck of the tramp steamer a cautious voice called, in Italian, “Who is it?”

  “Liscio,” the whispered reply came in perfect Piedmontese, and in the voice of the man whose corpse now bobbed somewhere on the Sound’s scummed flood. “Dominic Liscio. Get us on board quickly. Angelo has met with an accident, he’s unconscious. Help me with him.”

  An unintelligible exclamation came from above, feet thudded. The man in the boat heard an authoritative rumble, curiously guttural for an officer of an Italian vessel. Then a Jacob’s ladder coiled down, and he had fastened the boat to its end, had lifted Angelo to reaching hands, toward a flashlight’s glare above, and was himself stepping on to the dim deck.

  Shadowy forms were barely visible. One approached, broad-shouldered, paunchy, the shape of his head unmistakably Teutonic. Light flicked over the figure standing there in Dominic Liscio’s clothes, and fingering Dominic Liscio’s close-clipped black mustache so that his hand all but screened a swarthy face that might have been Liscio’s own. “Well, what happened?”

  Liscio’s reincarnation responded in English, taking the cue. “We got the bombs planted, all right. Hell will break loose in half an hour. We’d better get away from here. Someone—”

  “Wait. Tell me in the cabin. Come.” The other turned, waddled on thick legs to a companionway. Warm light irradiated the mist as a door opened, fanned out. The disguised Red Finger’s eyes slid to a face just revealed at the edge of the luminance; his lids narrowed. But he followed the German into the cabin and the door shut behind him.

  He stood just within that door, watching his bulky host, and his fingers hovered near the lapel of Liscio’s pea-jacket. The other heaved around, his flabby cheeks quivered. He was just beyond a table on which were a pitcher and a tall glass on the inside of which yellow foam still made dripping rings. His hamlike arms hung straight down and his hands were concealed by the edge of the table. “Now we can speak with more comfort. Tell me about it.”

  “First you tell me something, Herr Gans. Tell me how it happens that a Nazi spy is serving in the Italian Secret Service?”

  The vast expanse of Gans’ face was expressionless, but his piglike eyes glittered. “Ach! Once more! I told already that I was unjustly cashiered by von Goering when I reported that I had killed that dangerous American, Red Finger, and afterwards it was proved I was mistaken. Why must you ask that question again?”

  “Because it just occurred to me that if our little expedition had been tipped-off to the Americans and they had captured two obvious Italians sabotaging their gas-mask plant, this country would have been swept by a tempest of rage that would have forced its leaders to throw the power of the United States on the side of Hitler in the coming struggle.”

  The German’s red mouth twisted. “True. But what of it? They were not tipped-off.”

  The other’s voice dropped a note, was thick with menace. “But they were, Herr Gans. They were. And I think that fact will be of great interest to my compatriots aboard.” He half-twisted, got a hand on the doorknob, then froze, held for an instant by a sudden sound over his shoulder.

  “Stop!” Gans barked. “Stop—Red Finger!”

  The American’s eyes flicked back, saw the black tunnel-mouth of a forty-five automatic snouting at him. He came fully around to face that menace, his hands went above his head, and he smiled.

  “Good, Herr Gans! Very good! Suspecting my imposture you got me in here and you had that gun ready to flash on me at the proper time. But how did you know?”

  “Liscio was provided with a password to use when he returned, though I knew he would not return. When you did not use it, I knew you were not him. And who else could you be but—Red Finger? Only you, Red Finger, would have defeated the plan to wreck the gas-mask plant without the repercussion on which I counted, and then have the skill and the nerve to come here made up as the man you have killed.”

  “Thanks for the compliment.” The counter-spy, at the mercy of his archenemy, appeared as carefree as though the table between them were set for a luncheon instead of being spread for death. “But I must return it. Your whole scheme was clever, too clever, in fact for you to have evolved it.” The German’s smirk was suddenly replaced by a black scowl. “May I venture to guess that it was suggested to you by—a certain Baron Odun, that suave, brilliant chief-spy of—an Asia
tic power.”

  The fury that leaped into the other’s pink face rendered verbal admission unnecessary. The American’s eyebrows arched, and he went smoothly on. “Perhaps it did not occur to you that he was making you a catspaw to pull his country’s chestnuts out of the fire?”

  “A catspaw,” the Nazi spluttered. “Ach! What nonsense. How a catspaw?”

  “Simply enough. With all Europe at each other’s throats, and the United States embroiled, how simple it would be for that Far Eastern empire to wait till the nations of the white race were bled white and then strike—surely, swiftly, with certainty of success. Our Pacific Coast stripped of its man-power, our fleet concentrated in the Atlantic… You see? In a week Odun’s country would be entrenched in North America, and then—world domination!”

  Fear flickered Gans’ pig-eyes. Then they glazed over with red hate. “You talk well, Red Finger. But it will not save you. I shall not miss this time.” His fat finger trembled on the trigger. “You die—now!”

  The American’s long leg darted out, thudded against the underside of the cabin table. It lifted, crashed against Gans’ rotund belly. The pistol crashed; the shot thudded into wood. Red Finger was a streak of black action as he hurtled across the room.

  A knife flashed in yellow light from beyond Red Finger’s shoulder, and its gleam was quenched in fat flesh. Blood spurted from a thick neck, but, uncannily, the crimson blood seemed to catch only one finger of the counter-spy, the trigger finger of his right hand, dyed that finger scarlet.

  “Very good,” an oily voice slid into the room. “I could not have done better myself.” The American gasped, lifted to his feet.

  A slender, saturnine sailor was inside the closed door, the faintest of smiles twisting his tight lips. “But don’t try anything like that on me.” The hands that held two flat automatics were long-fingered, almost effeminate; their skin was oddly tinged, and the crescents at the base of their queerly pointed nails were deeply blue, strangely exotic.

  “Odun!” Red Finger said quietly. “I might have guessed you’d be here!”

  “Unfortunately—for you—I came to the same conclusion as he did, from the same premises. And Red Finger has put too many spokes into my wheels for me to miss this opportunity to dispose of him once and for all.” Except for an almost imperceptible odd hiss the man’s English was precise, even stilted. “I regret exceedingly the necessity of terminating the life of so gallant an adversary.”

  Under the film of brown with which he had painted it Red Finger’s face was gray, drawn with defeat. “So you win at last, Odun! But I wonder if you would grant me a favor.”

  The characteristic round eyes of his race in the saffron face were wary. But Odun’s tone was courteous, almost regretful. “If I can, but…” he shrugged, deprecatingly. “I shall not take any chances with you. You can hardly blame me.” He nodded to the quivering, jellylike mass that had once been the ace of the Nazi secret agents.

  “All I want is a puff at one last cigarette—yours if you wish.”

  Odun’s usually impassive countenance showed just a trace of puzzlement, but his racial code of courtesy forbade refusal, as Red Finger well knew. “I have none,” he said, “but you may take out and light your own, if you give me your word you will not draw a weapon instead.”

  “Thank you,” the American responded gravely. “I do give my word.” Then, at Odun’s nod, his hand slipped into a pocket, came out with a package of cigarettes and a lighter. The white tube in his mouth, a little flame flared at the quick rasp of his thumb and he inhaled gratefully. “You know,” he said. “If America did nothing else for the world her gift of tobacco entitles Columbus to immortality.”

  “But you must admit that it was the East that brought that gift to its perfection. Just so, when Asia conquers the world, we of the East will make it a far better place in which to live, even for you whites.”

  Red Finger’s cigarette glowed redly. “That will be—”

  With the last word a sudden puff sent the cigarette flying across space into Odun’s eyes. The arch-spy’s instinctive gesture to avoid it was uncontrollable, and Red Finger seized that split second to catapult upon him.

  His fists flailed, so fast that they were a mere blur, the spats of their landing a single sound. Odun crashed against the bulkhead, Red Finger twisted, had the door open and was through it and over the rail before the startled seamen outside realized that the door was open. Someone shouted; muddy water geysered; and the fog and the night closed their impenetrable veil over the muddy water.

  * * * *

  A skulking figure found an alley between two houses on Thirteenth Street in the block between Third and Fourth Avenues, and vanished into its shadows. That same figure might have been seen, had there been anyone to look, wearily climbing a fire-escape ladder to a roof, flitting shadow-like over gravelled tin, vanishing into the square, dawn-cast shadow of a brick chimney. But when the sun’s beams filtered across that roof, minutes later, no human form marked its blank expanse.

  Six stories below, the ceiling of Ford Duane’s secret cubicle opened like a trapdoor, and the bookseller’s weary form dropped through. The hook-lined wall open, shut again. And a perennially weary, young-old man touched flame to his breakfast gas-stove…

  The web holding the Scythe of Death from its disastrous fall seemed a trifle stronger this morning. But the two grim sentinels still held their place at each doorpost of Ford Duane’s Second-hand Bookstore.

  RED FINGER — DEATH DEALER

  THE sky was a bleak, gray vault over the city, sifting down a fine mist of chill rain. Along Fourth Avenue, the rows of bookstalls were tarpaulin-covered, and muddy rivulets streaked the window of Duane’s Second-Hand Bookstore. Within, lank and drooping-lidded, Ford Duane moved noiselessly between the gloom-shrouded, high walls of weary volumes across whose backs his fingers whispered lovingly. A single carbon lamp, pendant from an encrusted cord, spread heavy shadows on the bare boards of the floor and on the book-filled shelving—shadows that were somehow darkly alive and pregnant with an odd menace.

  Veiled as they were, the eyes of the long-legged bookseller were keenly blue, strangely restless. They flecked about constantly with a wariness wholly at variance with the drowsy peace of the deserted shop; and under his stained alpaca smock, tense muscles quivered with readiness for instant action. The thud of a passing footfall, the creak of a drying beam, twitched his sharp ascetic face to them and tightened his thin lips, time and again, till their source, their innocence, had been established.

  The doorknob rattled and Duane whirled to the sound, his hand flashing to an inner pocket. A ragged, swarthy man scraped sodden shoes on the threshold and smiled ingratiatingly. “Please,” he said in the liquid accents of southern Italy. “Please attend to moosic, meester.” He gestured vaguely with a battered flute clutched in one dirty, gnarled hand. “Pay all that you like.”

  Duane relaxed, but his face was rigid, expressionless. “No. No, I have work to do.” He crossed, with his curiously silent glide, to a paint-peeled writing table near the door and slid into its broken chair. “And I have no money.” He pulled a sheet of yellow paper toward him, a pencil. “I’ll be playing in the street myself if business keeps up the way it is. Try next door.”

  The musician did not stir. But Duane seemed to have utterly forgotten the intrusion. He frowned musingly, and inscribed three letters at the head of the sheet. P-A-T. A gleam flickered in the beggar’s eyes, vanished. He shrugged, back into the street.

  Duane smiled, fleetingly and without humor. He drew five horizontal lines across the paper, the five lines of the musical staff—and held his pencil poised, as if waiting for inspiration. But his eyes wandered to the three letters he had written, and his thin lips moved, repeating the flutist’s words; “Please attend to moosic. Pay all that you like.” Was it only coincidence that the initial letters of
the first three words of each sentence were the same, and were identical with those he had jotted down?

  A flurry of heavier rain beat at the window. Its tattoo seemed like fingers rapping a message on the glass, a message of death. P-A-T! Once an old man had sold Duane a dog-eared volume he represented as a Petronius, printed by Arden and bound by Trant. That night, men had died, suddenly, mysteriously. On another occasion, a pushcart hawker had called his wares, “Pails! Axes! Teenvare!” The bookdealer had made a purchase from him, and when the sun visited the city again, two bloated corpses were bobbing on the greasy waters of Long Island Sound. Now once more the three ominous letters had prefaced apparently innocuous words where Ford could hear them…

  Shrill sound pierced the wall separating Duane from the store next door, the lilting rhythm of a popular song. “Have you ever seen a dream walking?” the flute asked, muted by the intervening, thin partition. But the sugary flow of the tune was sprayed by a spatter of grace notes dropped in by awkward fingers fumbling the instrument’s stops. The discordance rambled through the melody, flew as it jotted down—those very notes! “—the Heaven in my arms was you.” The flute sobbed into silence. The five horizontal lines on Ford’s paper were filled now by the hieroglyphics of musical shorthand. The thin-faced man looked at the sheet before him:

  He paused a moment, considered the arrangement of the notes he had written, and suddenly his pencil was moving again, setting down English letters over the music he had inscribed:

  “Odon at Kensico since Sun. Why? T.”

  * * * *

  Ford Duane stared long at the paper on the desk before him, while lumping muscles ridge his lean jaw and a veil seems to drop across his eyes. The fingers of the rain tap against the storefront, but he hears only the fingers of Death rapping on his door. Not for him. This seeming shopkeeper has lived and breathed in the tangible presence of danger too long to fear it. The threat whose icy breath chills him is for the unsuspecting people of the teeming human warren called New York, for the women and the little children. At Kensico, in Westchester, the metropolis drinking water bids farewell to the sun before it plunges underground into great mains that divide and subdivide till their final capillaries reach into the city’s multifarious homes and gush the fluid of life into glasses, pots, and infants’ feeding bottles. At Kensico, if anywhere, is the City’s vulnerable point, the Achilles’ heel where an enemy may strike once, and slay a million-fold.