E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives

by E. Hoffmann Price

  The Silver Dragon could not be far away; three dry cells would not carry for more than two thousand feet. Flint returned to the surface. He circled the house, inch by inch, scrutinizing the hard packed earth. Whoever had buried that line could not at the time have anticipated the necessity of removing it to block an investigation; and Kane’s residence at the adobe had not been long enough for time to conceal the trench.

  Yet the flashlight glow revealed not a trace.

  Flint’s jaw set stubbornly. You can’t bury a cable without leaving a trace. The damn thing was there. It must lead to the Silver Dragon.

  Then a white blot in the gloom at the edge of the grove caught his eye. It was the concrete lip of the underground irrigation tiles that honeycombed the citrus grove. Far down the dusky aisle his flash beam picked up another outlet that once had gushed an eight inch stream of water. “Got it!”

  Flint bounded toward the nearest outlet. But the tongue of light he flashed down the tube touched only a bare bottom.

  He looked again. The wall of the vertical riser had been pierced near the bottom. An obliquely drilled hole, not a trench, had led the line to the long unused aqueduct. Whoever had cut and pulled the cable could not have foreseen that Ramon Guevara’s efforts to clear himself would uncover the trick.

  “North—toward Alvarez’s place,” muttered Flint as he regained his feet.

  Flint set out on foot for Alvarez’s house. Despite the hour, the lights were on. The doctor himself came to the door. His greeting was suave, but his dark eyes expressed his unspoken query.

  “Sorry to bother you, doctor,” beamed Flint as he crossed the threshold, “but I’d like to use your phone. Yeah, I’ve been switched to the Kane case. The company disconnected the wire next door.”

  “A pleasure to oblige you,” assured Alvarez.

  Flint followed him through a vestibule and into an ornately furnished living room. A cigarette was fuming from the edge of a smoking stand at the arm of a chair just in front of an all-wave radio.

  “In the next room, Mr. Flint,” directed Alvarez. But Flint’s pause had been long enough for him to note that the radio dial was set for police wave lengths.

  On the mahogany desk of the doctor’s residence office was a single telephone. Flint had not expected to find two; but his stall would give him a chance to look for the marks left by a recently removed instrument.

  “Make yourself at home,” Alvarez continued. “There’s a directory—and let me give you some more light.”

  As he spoke, he stepped forward to reach for the chain of the desk lamp. It blazed to life. Flint, picking the telephone handset from its cradle, saw the doctor pluck an oversize fountain pen from the blotting pad.

  Too late, he caught the meaning of the left handed gesture. A blinding, choking jet of vapor hissed from the black cylinder. Tear gas.

  Something had warned Alvarez.

  Before Flint could reach for his pistol, an uncontrollable cough and a devastating sneeze racked his entire body. He could not force his hand to his weapon. The involuntary catch of breath that followed drew in a gulp of the hissing vapor.

  It was more than tear gas. It was a searing and corrosive narcotic. His head was already spinning, and his legs were sagging. One more gulp of that deadly vapor and he would be out. For an age-long instant, he fought the spasm that would have drawn in the finishing breath of the drugging mixture. He flung himself aside—anything to get clear of that hissing poison.

  As he plunged out of that venomous cloud, a racking sneeze jerked every fiber of his body. Somehow, he forced his hand to his pistol butt. The effort was wasted. Before the weapon cleared the holster, an attack from his right knocked him from his feet.

  A curved knife, and a blank, yellow face identified Alvarez’s ally. There would be no betraying pistol fire to make the execution conspicuous.

  The blade swept down. But that last inhalation of diluted gas stirred Flint’s muscles to a spasm that no conscious effort could have equaled. The descending point nailed his arm instead of sinking hilt-deep into his chest. The shock of that biting steel prodded his whirling senses.

  The knife rose again—but Flint’s free hand jerked his pistol clear.

  The blast was muffled by the yellow flesh it riddled. The Chinaman jerked back, then slumped forward. His wild thrust stabbed the floor. His dead weight pinioned Flint.

  Flinging aside the now emptied gas tube, Alvarez closed in before Flint could extricate himself or disengage his pistol. The doctor knocked the weapon from his hand, but as they grappled, the concentration of oily fumes thinned into an agonizing mist that leveled off the odds.

  The office became a hazy nightmare. Tear-blinded, sneezing, gasping, racked by coughs and seared by lung-corroding gulps of tainted air, they rolled and kicked and slugged.

  Flint, almost overwhelmed during those first instants, saw red spots dance before his eyes, and steel-bright flashes that became raking cuts. The doctor must have seized the Chinaman’s knife. He was no longer certain, but that warm flood that ran down his ribs and legs must be blood.

  Voice in that murderous maze—Alvarez yelling—and then a droning, dry voice, like pebbles rattling in a gourd.

  “Calling all cars! Miguel Smith—Mexican Mike—wanted for the murder of Ramon Guevara—heading for Telegraph Pass in a blue sedan…”

  McDonald broadcasting to the prowl cars and highway patrol. Miguel Smith—engineered Valencia’s jailbreak and—

  Another slash. That one didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. He found a man’s throat and hung on. His fingers were weakening. So was Alvarez. Maybe his teeth would do the trick—got to get a look at that Chink’s blank face.

  Then a shriek. A low, tigerish feminine cry vibrant with wrath.

  Some woman was helping Alvarez. But another stab wouldn’t hurt. Let her help—

  He felt Alvarez’s sagging muscles perk taut and become iron. Flint lost his grip. Then he heard a strangled, gurgling cry. As he struggled to regain his hold, the doctor slumped to the floor, still clutching a knife.

  * * * *

  What followed was a hazy confusion seen through streaming eyes. Flint crawled toward the droning radio. A woman was weeping with rage and grief.

  And as Flint gulped in clean air, he saw her lying in a huddled heap on the divan near the radio. A dripping stiletto was clenched in her red hand.

  Valencia.

  Flint slowly began to understand why she had not stabbed him. It wasn’t a mistake, knifing the doctor.

  “Yes. I came to help him, that dirty—” The next few words choked her. “Then I heard that police call. Miguel was one of Alvarez’s crowd. Got me out of jail and brought me here. So I knew that Alvarez had tricked Ramon back across the line to give him the works.”

  “Afraid that Ramon Guevara might be tripped up and spill some beans?”

  “Maybe,” said Valencia. “But mainly jealousy. That rat over there probably told him how Ramon and I stood. I didn’t care for Alvarez. And I don’t care what you do with me. Ramon’s dead.”

  “How’d he fit into things?”

  “He smuggled the stuff across the line to Kane’s place, concealed in loads of vegetables and firewood.”

  The arrangement was characteristic. Guevara, Kane, and Robles ran the risks of actual handling. Alvarez supervised by remote control. And Valencia, when not in Mexico, maintained contact with Yut Lee in San Francisco.

  Then Flint remembered the blank-faced Chinaman. He turned back to the office, flung open a window, and as the lingering fumes thinned, he knelt beside the Asiatic hoodoo. A moment’s intent scrutiny explained the facial immobility—a snugly fitting, lifelike rubber mask.

  He jerked it clear, exposing the face of lean, grizzled Yut Lee—the Silver Dragon, who had come to Yuma to take charge.

  “Who killed Kane?” Flint demanded.

 
She gestured toward Alvarez.

  “He’s got forty tins of Silver Dragon. He never kept the stuff in his house before. Figure it out yourself.”

  And that did not take long. Flint remembered the two bowls of chili and began to see their possibilities. He stepped to the telephone and called McDonald.

  “I’ve got it, Mac.” Then, after covering his discovery of the private wire, he continued, “Alvarez killed Kane after Valencia arrived from ’Frisco… I don’t give a damn about the autopsy. Suppose Alvarez dropped in to see Kane about two A.M. to talk shop and have some coffee and a plate of home-made chili. Then knife Kane.

  “The autopsy would show he died shortly after eating. And with everyone taking it for granted Kane always ate around six, the alibi was holeproof.

  “Why kill Kane? Nobody could be sure Robles died in ’Frisco before he had a chance to mutter anything while coming out of the ether. Knifing Kane and leaving ten cans of hop for us to find would make us think we had cleaned up the mob. And it would have worked if Guevara hadn’t tried to prove he didn’t kill Kane.”

  And then McDonald wondered why Yut Lee had not used his first chance to dispose of Flint.

  “Simple, Mac. Bum play, blotting me out before he had a chance to find out just how much the D.J. really did know. Having Alvarez drop in was like getting a ringside seat.”

  He listened a moment, and as McDonald’s voice burred over the wire, Flint eyed Valencia. Finally he answered: “The girl got away during the riot. We’ve got nothing on her. She was never caught smuggling hop anyway. The Silver Dragon is cold meat.”

  TONG WAR

  Written with Ralph Milne Farley.

  Originally published in True Gang Life, May 1935.

  CHAPTER I

  Opening Guns

  Ominously, a sudden hush fell upon the gay company of diners in the House of a Thousand Dragons. Then came the whispering cough of silenced automatics. Two Chinese waiters clutched at their throats as they fell sprawling, in their flowing garb, onto the floor of gilded tiles.

  While the patrons ducked foolishly, the remaining Oriental waiters ran jabbering toward the kitchen doors. A blast of gunfire met them from the region of pots and pans, and they staggered back.

  Jim Grant reached out a compelling hand and shoved his petite blonde companion onto the floor in a corner of their booth.

  “Scrooch down, Mary, and keep still,” he cautioned. As he spoke, his hand whipped out the ultra modern, midget seventeen-shot machine gun from his left armpit. Parting the bamboo curtains, he thrust his broad-shouldered, athletic body into the main dining room. With both hands upon the gun, his brown eyes slitted in a swift survey that took in every person present.

  The blunt nose of an automatic poked out from a kitchen door, and spat flame at a waiter who had not found cover. At the same instant, Jim Grant’s midget machine gun blazed. A tall, thin half-breed Chinaman pitched out, head first, onto the gilded tiles. His gun clattered under a chair, and he lay still.

  “Next!” Grant invited, striding toward the kitchen, but no one accepted the challenge.

  Sensing that the big fellow in the dinner coat was not only an ally but a leader, the Chinese waiters rallied around him. Long, keen knives slid out of their flowing sleeves, and the group moved toward the door through which the half-breed had fired.

  “Open it!” Grant barked, with the deadly little rapid-fire gun trained on the door.

  A slant-eyed Oriental seized the handle, jerked it toward him, and sprang to one side. Grant leaped forward, but the compartment was barren of enemies. The two cooks lay dead upon the floor, knives buried up to the hilt in their chests. Grant singled out the head waiter and led him into the manager’s office.

  “Quick!” he ordered. “Get me a regular gun, to swap for mine, before the cops get here!”

  “Yes, Missy Glant,” the waiter replied, and the transfer was completed in a moment.

  Grant examined his new weapon, then shoved it into his armpit holster. “Hide my machine gun now,” he said. “I’ll get it later.—Where’s my friend, Foo Sam?”

  “Him go see him blutha.”

  Grant snatched up the desk telephone and dialed a number “Hello,” came a sing-song voice over the wire.

  “What you want?”

  “Foo Yong?” Grant asked.

  “No; me Foo Sam—me lun les’lant, Missy Glant.”

  “Oh—well, your restaurant has just been shot up, Sam. I’m in your office now. Where’s Joe Murray? Where’s Foo Yong?.”

  “Foo Yong, him snatched,” came the reply. “Missy Mully, he go look for you light now.

  “Good Lord!” Grant whistled. “Foo Yong snatched! That must be Dorni’s work—or that damn Hammond mob.”

  “You come quick, Missy Glant,” begged the birdlike voice.

  “You—” A harsh Irish voice cut in on the telephone, “Hello, Jimmy bye. This is Joe. Oi been lookin’ fur yez, Jimmy, all over hell.”

  “You won’t find me there for a long time, Joe,” Grant retorted. “What’s this about Foo Yong being kidnapped?”

  “Looks like a tong war,” Murray explained. “The On Leons have snatched Foo Yong. Foo Sam, here, says his tong, the Hep Sings, are boilin’ over, ’cause somebody bumped off their big shot, out in Frisco, two—three days ago.”

  “Well, I cut myself a nice slice of their war just now,” Grant returned, “Four of Sam’s Hep Sings are dead, and I rubbed out one On Leon rod.”

  “What the hell you givin’ me?” Murray snorted, “A Chink rod? Rats!”

  “The guy’s a half-breed,” Grant admitted. He studied things a moment, then went on: “You stay where you are, Joe, till I get there. I’ll have to see the cops, then take Mary home. After that, I’ll be right over. Meanwhile, don’t let Foo Sam out of your sight”

  He hung up, then returned to the ornate dining room. The police were there. A sergeant came toward him, but Mary Smith got to him first and linked her arm in Grant’s.

  “So you drove out the killers, did you?” the sergeant demanded. “And killed one of them, to boot. How come you pack a rod?”

  Grant was ready for that question. “I have a gun permit in my own home town,” he explained, exhibiting a printed slip, “and on top of that, I hold a reserve commission in the U.S. Army.”

  “Hm—that permit’s no good in Chicago, or anywhere else, outside of your own city,” the sergeant replied, handing back the slip.

  “I didn’t know that,” Grant apologized ingenuously.

  “Let it pass, now,” said the sergeant “Tell us what happened, and maybe you’ll get yourself a medal.”

  Grant told what he knew, but omitted to mention his pocket machine gun, a weapon far deadlier than the one now nested under his arm. Then the waiters and patrons were questioned. No one had seen the knifing of the two cooks nor the shooting that started the trouble. The Chinamen professed utter ignorance concerning the cause of the attack upon them.

  “Well, the score is only five Chinks,” the sergeant said at last “So what th’ hell?”

  Grant got his coupe from a nearby parking lot and started with Mary for her North Shore apartment hotel. She snuggled against him.

  “I want you to keep out of this war,” she admonished him. “You go right back home—tonight.”

  “Since when were you my boss?” Grant jeered lightly. “Anyway, it looks as though I’m already in.”

  “Oh, Jim,” she colored a little, “why can’t you stick to your real estate business and keep away from your father’s old gang? It was the gangs that killed him, and they’ll kill you too, if you don’t quit.”

  Grant shook his head. “Foo Yong has been snatched,” he pointed out. “I’m going to find him. He’d do more than that for me, Mary, even if he is only a Chinaman. And you shouldn’t be too hard on dad’s old mob—they came to your rescue once, r
emember.”

  “I know,” the girl’s lip trembled. “They were noble, Jim. And I wouldn’t really want you to leave Foo Yong in the lurch. But do be careful, boy. I don’t want you killed, or something.”

  Grant patted the small hand which she placed pleadingly on his knee. “Don’t worry, honey,” he said. “I’ll look out for me.”

  They finished the drive to the hotel in silence. Grant bade her good-night at her apartment, then hurried back to the street floor. At the cigar counter two familiar figures were loafing. One was tall, broad shouldered, slim of hip, bronzed of face, with wavy brown hair. Except that he lacked the marks of breeding that Jim Grant possessed, he might have been Jim’s twin brother. This was Buddy Slesson. The other lounger was short, wiry, red-headed, and freckle-faced. This was Torchy Cullinane.

  “Hello, punks!” Grant grinned as the pair of Joe Murray’s ace gunmen scowled at the epithet. “What brings you here?”

  “Joe sent us,” Torchy returned. “But if you got your coop handy, it’s going to take us away.”

  “Yeah?” Grant kidded. Then, seriously: “We’re in a jam, punks. The tongs are shooting hell out of each other, and they’ve snatched Foo Yong. Come on!”

  “De hell!” Unconsciously, Buddy Slesson felt for his shoulder gat.

  “Chinks—hell!” barked the red-head contemptuously. “Chinks!”

  The trio piled into the single seat of the coupe, and Grant edged it into traffic, As he drove, he gave his companions a quick review of the battle in the House of a Thousand Dragons.

  Traffic on Halsted Street had thinned, and now as they neared the short blind alley at the dead end of which was Joe Murray’s warehouse with penthouse and garden on its roof, the whole area seemed deserted and desolate. The scattered street lamps tried unsuccessfully to relieve the gloomy after-midnight darkness.

  An eddy of air from between two buildings caught up a pile of waste paper and sent it flying in a crazy swirl. A lean and furtive alley cat slunk silently across the street, carrying a morsel of food salvaged from a garbage can. In the distance, an owl car groaned and grated on a corner curve.