E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “Very good, Mr. Grant,” agreed the Chinese sage. He smiled approvingly at his young ally’s apt retort in terms of Oriental proverbs; yet he did not miss Grant’s impatience, and with a sly, malicious twinkle in his inscrutable eyes he added, “But allow old man to offer hint. You gravely endangered our cause by personally venturing into enemy’s house in San Jose. As learned Kung-Fu-Tsze says, ‘I could not have ally who would barehanded attack tiger, or who would die without regret.’”

  But before Grant could acknowledge the touch, Slesson broke in: “If youse guys ever get through bowin’ and swappin’ wisecracks, let’s do somethin’ about somethin’. When do we haul freight for Chi?”

  “You birds don’t haul—you stay here and keep out of sight, or do whatever else Mr. Hop thinks best. Mr. Hop, can one of your sons drive Torchy and me down to the airport?”

  “If unworthy old man can offer further suggestion, my worthy guests will first sleep.”

  Torchy cut in with, “Say, dats an idea, Jim! You an’ Buddy gets all carved up over in Chi. An I flies de crate all day. An den de t’ree of us stays up all night in San Jose gettin’ recarved all over again. Wot de hell! Let’s us hit de hay.”

  Grant sighed, for he craved action. “Okay,” he grudgingly replied.

  Once more, he slept the clock around. The following morning, before setting out for the airport, it suddenly occurred to him to inquire for the exotic little Chinese girl, whom he had rescued. Strange that, in spite of how intimate and pulsingly real she had seemed to him in that midnight ride and fight along the marshes, yet he had absolutely dropped her from his mind at the council of war which immediately followed. Now he remembered her once more poignantly, and longed to see her dainty face and figure.

  But old Hop Ching was orientally evasive as to Tin Yuk’s whereabouts and availability, except to say that she was safe and well-guarded; until finally Grant gave up the idea of saying good-bye to her, and proceeded to the airport with Torchy Cullinane and Hop Ching’s grandson, Hop Wang.

  Joe Murray’s plane, according to telephonic instructions, had already been wheeled out; and thus Grant’s departure was delayed by no more than the time it took to warm up the engines. And presently, as they gained altitude, Grant viewed the lordly expanse of San Francisco Bay.

  Somewhere, not far from the Embarcadero, was that Chinese city-within-a-city, fifty thousand Orientals cramped in a few city blocks. Somewhere, in the mysterious mazes of the town that never sleeps, was faithful Foo Yong, a prisoner in the hands of savage high-binders, paid—or forced—to their task by a menace less exotic but even more bloodthirsty and relentlessly grasping.

  Slim Hammond—and behind him, the crime king. The Man on Long Island, the hidden emperor whose mask Jim Grant had resolved some day to blast from his face with a spray of screeching lead.

  Then, as the swift-moving plane headed across the Sierras toward Nevada, Grant turned his thoughts to his Chinese allies. The race had always seemed to him to be made up of inexplicable automatons wearing masks of yellow parchment. But now, having met the Heavenly Jewel and the grave old scholar, Grant began to regard the Chinese as human beings—decidedly human—especially the girl.

  Strange how, within a couple of days, he had twice been fated to dash off on a plane trip without the opportunity to say good-bye to a beautiful girl Now he was on the way back to one of these two girls, slim but well-rounded, with corn-colored hair and corn-flower blue eyes. And, yet his thoughts were less on the anticipated pleasure of seeing Mary Smith again, than on his regret at leaving behind him the slant-eyed exotic little Oriental, Tin Yuk, the Heavenly Jewel.

  Grant took the controls a part of the way. It was late evening when they nosed down at the Chicago airport From there, Grant and Torchy hired a taxi to within several blocks of the Halsted Street warehouse, and then walked the rest of the way.

  Joe Murray met them in the hallway of the penthouse apartment, his massive frame hung with a rubber apron, his sparse gray hair awry, and a kitchen knife clutched in one ham-like hand.

  “Faith an’ it’s glad Oi am to see yez,” said he, his pasty face lighting up with genuine pleasure. “An’ where is Foo Yong?”

  Grant’s face fell. “We’ve a long road ahead,” he said.

  “Well, come into th’ kitchen whoilst Oi finish me wurk,” said Murray, leading the way, “an’ tell me all about it.”

  “What are youse up to, Joe?” asked Torchy, with a malicious grin spreading over his freckled face. “Feedin’ de baby?”

  Murray shook his head with perfect seriousness. “No,” he explained. “Th’ root-rot an’ th’ root-borers has got into me choicest oiris, an’ so Oi’m cl’anin’ out th’ rhizomes.”

  “What in hell is rhizomes?” Torchy interrupted.

  “Roots ter you, me bye,” Murray replied. “An’ so Oi’ni cl’anin out th’ rhizomes.”

  The kitchen was a mess, the sink and tables covered with dirt and iris plants, and the floor littered with cutoff iris tops. Murray went right to work, trimming the leaves off all the plants down to a length of about three inches, prying black-headed white grubs out of boles in the roots, and cutting off and dusting with plaster-of-paris any portions which were brown and squishy.

  As Murray worked, Grant related the events of the night’s fighting in and around San Jose.

  Finally, when he completed the telling of it, Murray exploded, “An’ so the dirthy so-an’so is usin’ high binders ter foight agin’ honest white men, is he? Faith, an’ whin a gangster carries on loik thot, it makes me ashamed av me profession. If The Man on Long Oiland has taken th’ notion ter be King av America, be annexin’ th’ tongs, he can dom near do it. But it’s th’ Murray mob’ll dane ’em out: white men an’ yeller bellies aloik. Now do yez be takin’ it aisy, whilst Oi round up th’ byes. For, wit’ Pug Dorni quieted down, an Slim Hammond in a tong war out in Frisco, we might just as well mix it up wit’ Slim out there as here.”

  He ceased messing with his beloved iris roots, hung up his rubber apron, and switched off the kitchen lights.

  Grant “took it aisy” by reaching for the phone and calling Mary Smith, before Joe Murray could stop him.

  Her breezy Iowa prairie voice came softly to him over the wire. “Oh, Jim, I’ve been so worried about you, and more than ever since I’ve seen the papers. I phoned your home and office, but they hadn’t heard from you, and I just knew you’d been bumped off, or something.”

  “Why didn’t you call Joe?”

  “I had just thought of that, when he called me. But that didn’t help much. He said you’d suddenly gone West on business, and I knew it must be dangerous business, or something. I’ve hardly slept, worrying about you.—Can’t you come up, Jim? We can have a talk.”

  “Or something,” Jim grinned into the mouthpiece. “I’ll be right up.”

  He hung up, saw that his pocket machine gun was in its holster, slipped extra clips into the pockets of his Norfolk jacket, and hurried to the elevator. Here he got into his own small coupe and soon was speeding north, up Halsted Street.

  At her apartment hotel, he parked the car and bounded in. Snatching up one of the room phones, he gave her number.

  “Hello,” said Mary’s voice, but there was a peculiar note in it.

  “Come right up, Jim—quick!”

  It was Mary’s voice, all right, but it sounded strained, as though she might not be glad to see him just then. Had someone been telling her tales about him? About him and, possibly, Tin Yuk?

  Well, damn it all, she had been cordial over the phone. Whatever was the matter now, he felt confident he could straighten it out quickly.

  The indicator showed that the single elevator was somewhere near the roof. Rather than wait, Grant dashed up the stairs, taking two and three steps at a bound. Dignity was all right for Oriental scholars—

  As Grant’s finger reached for the doorbe
ll button at Mary’s apartment, some instinct of caution prevented the contact. And then, through the panel, his sullenly taut ears caught the sibilant “Sssh!” uttered by a masculine voice within the room.

  Grant thanked his stars that he had come up the stairs, and thus avoided the warning clank of the elevator door. A grim chuckle on his lips, he crossed the hallway and jabbed at the elevator button. Then he raced silently to the end of the hall and through the open window onto the projecting cornice.

  Edging his way along the sheer wall, he heard the elevator whirr to a stop and the doors clang open. Good! Inside Mary’s apartment, they would be set for a wipe-out the moment he opened her door. What a surprise he would have for them!

  In another moment he was at the window of Mary’s living room, peering in. Mary, gagged, was being securely trussed up by two men he knew—Red Moran and Squinty Czudalk, two of Slim Hammond’s beefy gorillas.

  Covering the hall door with a forty-five was a yellow-haired, tall, brawny rod whom Grant recognized, even without a look at the face that was tensely watching the door. This was Gus Svenson, former sweetheart of Mary, but lately hooked up with Snake-eyes Hammond. Beside the door stood a wiry Cantonese, and on the opposite side, waiting, a flat-faced celestial with shoulders like an ox. The Chinese grasped upraised daggers.

  “And all that is meant for me,” thought Grant.

  He dared not fire from his narrow perch. The window was already raised two inches. Grant sent it crashing up and piled inside. Svenson whirled as Grant’s midget machine gun came up in his two hands.

  Both men fired at the same instant. The Swede’s shot was a narrow miss. Grant slapped two shots in return. One hit Svenson in his gun arm and sent him staggering, momentarily helpless. Grant dodged behind the sofa, escaping a clumsy volley from the burly Chinaman, who had snatched out a rod.

  Grant bobbed up again and squeezed the trigger. The huge, highbinder, with a half-dozen chunks of lead in his stomach, doubled up like a Chinese lantern. As Red Moran, letting go of Mary, came up with a smoking gun; Grant ducked once more behind the sofa.

  The apartment echoed with the roar of powder and the impact of bullets. Plaster and lead rained about Grant, the slugs probing deep into the upholstery. He shouldered the sofa out of its corner and made a crouching leap toward its further end. A knife, hurled by the wiry Cantonese, zipped the length of Grant’s jacket as he flattened out on the floor. He was exposed, but his change of position gave him an edge on Red Moran. The gorilla’s hasty shot missed, and Grant plastered his remaining slugs squarely between Red’s eyes. The gangster flopped face down, and his last convulsive squeeze sent a bullet ricocheting from the radiator.

  “Grab the moll and clear out,” snapped Svenson.

  Squinty Czudalk jerked Mary clear of the crossfire, and flung her to one side. Instead of leaving, he began to work toward Grant’s left. Svenson, gray of face and cursing; had recovered his forty-five and was leveling it for a left-handed shot. The Cantonese highbinder was tipping the heavy table on edge, for protection. Grant, still crouching, slipped a fresh clip into his gun.

  “Get him, then, you damn dopes!” raged Svenson. “The cops—”

  Squinty Czudalk lunged suddenly, gun thrust forward. His timing was wrong. Grant filled his narrow chest with slugs, and he went down clawing at his shirt front. Now for Svenson—

  But Grant had too many on his hands. The wiry Cantonese, from behind the upturned table, came out with a heavy vase in his hand. It landed on Grant’s head even as he turned. He dodged, and thus probably escaped a smashed skull and death. But the impact floored him. The room exploded in a blaze of coruscating lights, then impenetrable blackness closed in on him. As if from a great, foggy distance, he heard Svenson’s hoarse Swedish voice, racked with pain, and the singsong of the surviving highbinder. Then a door slammed, and Grant dimly understood that he was now alone.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Ambushed

  Jim Grant lay on the floor of Mary Smith’s apartment, dazed more by the sudden let-down after a few moments of super-activity, than by the impact or the large vase against his skull.

  Somewhere in the back of his consciousness, something was urging him to thrust another clip into his forty-five machine gun. He could easily overtake a wounded Swede and a little five-foot Chink, weighed down with even so light a burden as Mary Smith. But, in his dazed condition, his lingering spark of will power was not sufficient to prod his battered body into action. He reached out for his weapon, fingered for a few moments in his pocket for a fresh clip, tiredly gave up the attempt, and slid the gun into its shoulder holster.

  He became vaguely aware of a confused blur of many people talking, the tramp of heavy feet, and the barked crossfire of authoritative commands. Then a woman’s voice filtered through his haze. Maybe, if he opened his eyes, he could see—but his eyelids became intolerably heavy, and the exertion sent him slipping back beyond the further frontier of blackness.

  Yet that feminine voice was oddly familiar.

  Someone was lifting him bodily from the floor—cool night air fanned him. More voices, and a low, feminine slightly nervous laugh, and the throbbing of an idling motor—he wasn’t lying on a floor any longer—somehow he seemed to be huddled in a heap on cushions.

  “He’s merely cold-calked, lady,” said a gruff, not unpleasant voice. “Take him home—and tell him not to butt in that way again.”

  Then the soft lash of gears, and the rapid acceleration of a car. Grant was being taken somewhere, and it didn’t make much difference where. But bit by bit his dominant spark of will flickered to life. He gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, dragged in a deep breath. He perceived that a woman was driving the car. She was looping away from the lake shore. He caught a gust of familiar, somewhat too heavy perfume. Water heliotrope.

  So it wasn’t Mary Smith. And then things began to straighten out in his bewildered mind.

  “Hey—what the hell?” Grant cracked. His head felt as big as a bass drum. His mouth tasted of the nitrous fumes of smokeless powder, and his lips were caked with blood and bits of plaster. He tried to sit up, but slumped hack again against the pillows. He was now a quivering mass of aches. Old bruises and new ones competed with the tingling trace of a knife that had zipped the length of his back, and the raw furrow of a bullet-creased rib.

  “Take it easy, darling,” said the low throaty voice from the wheel “Leave it to me—Little Julia is taking you home.”

  So it was Pug Dorni’s sister! And her voice told Grant that she was trembling from head to foot as she tooled his car through the traffic.

  He groaned and shaped to the cushions again, but caught the flicker of Julia’s dark long-lashed eyes as she anxiously glanced back at him.

  “What a show you did stage, Jimmy,” she exclaimed. “That is, judging by the way you wrecked the place. But I kidded the cops into letting you go. Told ’em you and me was calling on a friend, and you heard a woman scream, and piled in, and—well, they could see for themselves you was a gentleman and couldn’t a been part of that mob. So—now sit still, Jim—so here we are, a respectable married couple, on our way home. You ain’t so much the worse for wear, only kinda shaken up.”

  Julia was right. He was shaken up. And certainly in no shape to take on the pursuit of Gus Svenson and the remaining highbinder. He licked his lips and grinned feebly as he recollected the gray, pain-racked face of Gus Svenson, trying to handle his gat left-handed. Grant got a savage thrill out of remembering the wide-eyed, dumb expression of the Polack, with his chest filled with lead, and Red Moran going down with a red rosette between his eyes. But how the devil had Julia happened to show up at the right moment to get him away from the police?

  What difference did it make, anyhow? Grant had reached the stage when thinking, puzzling, actually was painful, and it was pleasant to be taken care of. Julia had her good points, though she was a little hellcat in s
ome ways. If she was so damn crazy about him—well, he could stand that. But if she wasn’t so damn vulgar—!

  Then Grant’s instincts asserted themselves. He checked up on the machine gun, now back in its holster, and inserted a fresh clip. That was better. He sighed and curled up in a heap, abandoning the effort to piece things together.

  Julia was taking short cuts to her apartment, down dark side streets, in and out among lumbering trucks and parked machines. It was tricky work, and it required all her attention.

  Suddenly she jammed on the brakes. A big sedan, coming out of an alley, stalled dead ahead of her, instead of beating her to the right of way. Another car screamed to a halt at the left, likewise blocked by the sedan. Even as Grant was flung to the floor of the coupe, he knew there was more in this than a traffic jam.

  Julia’s disgusted “Damn!” trailed off into a gasp of consternation. Two men bounded from the car at the left and leaped to Grant’s running board. Julia reached for her handbag. The door was jerked open and a heavy hand muffled her scream. The pistol was flipped from her fingers.

  Instinct directed Grant’s hand to his holster. The enemy, evidently unaware of his presence, were dragging at the struggling girl.

  They didn’t have a chance. Grant’s slugs screamed past Julia and found the nearest snatcher, blasting off the top of his head; The other whirled, releasing the girl, and dived for his gat. His curse was drowned by the roar of Grant’s second burst of slugs, and the fellow pitched backward, dead before he landed.

  “Flatten out!” yelled Grant, sweeping the girl to the floor.

  Ribbons of flame spurted from the stalled sedan, while the driver of the other car poured lead at Grant’s machine. Grant, crouching on the floor, picked off the enfilading gunner from the wheel. This disposed of all the enemies on the left.

  Grant inserted a new seventeen-shot clip and turned to the sedan.

  The machine gunner there was fumbling with a fresh drum for his tommy. Grant pressed the button on the front handle of his weapon, swung the tiny searchlight onto the gunner’s face, and let him have the entire clip. The man at the wheel of the sedan swung it about and pulled out on a fast getaway.