E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Eloise sighed and sank into a chair. “You simply must get out of town, Ray! Don’t stay here another moment!”

  “Nothing doing. I’m playing a hunch.”

  “Collins will surely lead the police—” She stopped. A car drew up before the house. Eloise parted the window drapes. “They’re here now! Hide in that little storeroom, and when they enter you can—”

  “No go,” said Landon, stepping to another window. “The whole place is surrounded. Plainclothes and uniformed cops.”

  Another car pulled up to the curbing. A riot squad with sawed-off shotguns emerged. Landon regarded Eloise with a grim smile.

  “Can’t make it. Dozens of ’em, and they mean dead or alive. Pay day, darling!”

  “I know where you can hide. They’ll never think of looking in the—”

  But before Eloise could name the corner that would afford a refuge, they heard footsteps in the hallway.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Murderer at Bay

  Eloise screamed. London whirled. Four plainclothesmen, with drawn pistols, stood in the entrance of the library. At their head was John Healy, the Chief of Detectives who had promised to take Landon, dead or alive, within twenty-four hours.

  “Stand fast, Landon, and hoist ’em! Way up!” Healy’s voice was calm, but the fierce gleam in his steel-blue eyes and the unwavering muzzle of his service thirty-eight told Landon that the gray-haired veteran was more formidable than a whole squad of his subordinates.

  “Oh, all right,” agreed Landon. Then, with an amiable grin, “Mighty glad you brought Mr. Collins along.”

  In the background Landon saw Professor Foster’s secretary. It must have been his keys that had enabled the police to make their silent entry.

  “Put the irons on him,” snapped Healy. “I’ll keep him covered. And watch your step!”

  “If you have some extra handcuffs,” said Landon, as the steel clicked about his wrists, “put ’em on Bert Collins.”

  “Come along, and cut out the bull!” growled one of the coppers, prodding him with the muzzle of his pistol, but Healy’s eyes gleamed with sudden interest.

  “What’s that?” he demanded.

  “I’m telling you who killed Professor Foster,” answered Landon. “Shall I prove it to you now, or after you’ve let him go?”

  Eloise regarded Collins with dark eyes narrowed and glittering. Healy turned to the secretary and sized him up.

  “Wait a minute! Let’s listen to this!” he said.

  “Ridiculous!” protested Collins. “He’s crazy. I was at the same party as Miss Foster until after midnight, and I can prove it by—”

  “Your lady friend was so pie-eyed that she wouldn’t know whether you left her alone for two minutes or twenty,” retorted Landon. “Or long enough to kill Foster, shag me, and call the police. It’s only a short taxi ride from here.”

  Collins started; then, after a perceptible pause during which he vacillated between derision and dignified denial, he countered, “Preposterous! Who saw me leave the party? And why should I have killed my employer?”

  “Because you’d embezzled a bunch of his Liberty Bonds,” said Landon. “There had been fifty thousand in bonds in Professor Foster’s box in the bank. The professor never visited the box himself—always sent you. You stole—and sold—exactly ten thousand five hundred, I think, Bert.”

  Collins paled at Landon’s mention of so exact a figure.

  Landon continued, turning to Healy, “When the twenty-five thousand dollars was placed in the professor’s wall safe, to buy the prayer rug, Collins saw his chance to make a theft which would not be traced to him. He intended to use part of the stolen money to replace his earlier speculations, and still be nearly fifteen thousand to the good. He did use part of the stolen money that way this morning!”

  Collins swallowed, licked his lips. He dropped his eyes to avoid Eloise’s accusing eyes. But Healy looked incredulous.

  “You and Collins may have been in cahoots,” he suggested. “How about it? Can you prove your story?”

  “He can’t.” But Collins’ protest was a prayer.

  “Hell I can’t!” retorted Landon. “You were buying bonds at Bennett & Keene’s this morning—to replace your theft before the estate was settled. Where’d you get the ten thousand five hundred dollars to pay for them?”

  “Spit it out, Collins,” growled Healy. “Either Landon is nutty, or you’ve got plenty to explain. Why were you so anxious to have us catch Landon?”

  “Open Foster’s safe deposit box at the bank,” said Landon. “That’ll prove it.”

  “Look into it, O’Toole,” directed Healy. “Right now!”

  “I took the bonds,” admitted Collins, seeing the futility of denial. “But I didn’t kill him. And you can’t—I didn’t leave the party, I tell you!”

  “Shut up!” barked Healy. “If you’d steal, you’d kill. Never mind the bank right now, O’Toole. Take charge of this bird.” Steel closed about Collins’ wrists.

  “But I didn’t kill him! He didn’t catch me opening the safe. I couldn’t open it. He never gave me the combination.”

  “He’s right,” Eloise reluctantly admitted, as Healy caught her eye.

  “So of course he’d have given it to me, a comparative stranger?” was Landon’s ironic retort.

  “But you could have asked him to open it on some pretext, and then stabbed him!” cried Collins, regaining his courage.

  “No fingerprints were found on the dial,” countered Landon. Then, as Healy nodded, he continued, “If Foster had opened his own safe, would either he or the person that killed him have wiped Foster’s prints off?”

  “Bull’s-eye!” exclaimed Healy. “Someone that knew the combination to open that box—and you, Collins—”

  “But I didn’t know the combination, I tell you!”

  “Oh, yes, you did,” contradicted Landon, his face grim, his eyes hard and relentless. “You made a movie of the professor when he opened the safe, and you read the numbers from the film. Eloise, get the camera. Sergeant, pull out the big drawer of that desk.”

  The front of the drawer came away in the officer’s hand.

  “Now pull out the rest of the drawer.” The officer did so.

  “See that plugged-up hole in the back? This camera”—Landon took the Cine-Kodak from Eloise— “isn’t cranked. It runs by clockwork, and by jerking a string tied to the release Collins could have made the film without anyone’s noticing that he was operating a camera concealed in the desk.”

  “How about it, Collins?” demanded Healy. “Suppose there is a hole in that desk?”

  Collins’ face was white. His voice cracked as he desperately denied Landon’s assertions. Then, a sudden, triumphant gleam in his eyes, he said: “Find the film! That’ll prove his point!”

  Healy gritted his teeth. Collins’ ready defiance proved that there must have been such a film—and that it must also have been destroyed.

  “Too bad,” he muttered. “Take ’em both along.”

  “Too bad hell!” countered Landon cheerfully. “I found a piece of the film. He forgot to burn all of it. It’s in my left coat pocket. Somebody get it.”

  Healy reached into Landon’s pocket and produced about a foot of miniature movie film. Collins slumped into a chair. He exhaled a long sigh.

  Healy snatched the scrap of film from Landon’s fingers.

  “Quick! Give me that reading glass!” Then, as he peered at the film: “You could get those numbers if you enlarged it enough on a screen.”

  He whirled toward Collins, who was staring dully at the mocking, silvery-gleaming safe, and thrust the scrap of film under his nose.

  “Come clean!” he barked. “Thought you burned it all, eh? D’ya want to confess now, or”—Healy’s heavy hand clutched him by the shoulder—“do I have to take i
t out of you at headquarters?”

  Collins shrank from the scrap of film as though it were a living serpent. His muttered reply was scarcely articulate.

  “I was sure he—everyone would be away. But he came back and caught me opening the safe. I killed him, but I didn’t intend—in the beginning—”

  “And then you phoned Whitman’s party and got me to come to the house, to take the rap?” demanded Landon.

  Collins nodded, muttered, “Yes.”

  “Take him away,” commanded Healy. “Landon, you’re still under arrest, until I can check up on the rest of your doings.”

  Healy removed Landon’s handcuffs, phoned headquarters, then listened to Landon’s account of the intricate mesh of treachery and counter-treachery that had been connected with Shah Ismail’s prayer rug.

  When Landon concluded, the gray-haired detective put his hand on his firm chin, pursed up his lips and narrowed his eyes thoughtfully.

  “Hm!” he said. “And no wonder! Shah Ismail’s prayer rug, is it? Faith, and it’s Satan’s prayer rug I call it. We have a request in at Headquarters right now to send it to the Persian chargé-d’affaires at Washington, for return to his country. It’s a national relic and sacred to an important sect of Moslems. No wonder it caused all this trouble!

  “But where did you find that little piece of film? How would a smart fellow like Collins be that careless and leave it lying around?”

  Landon glanced at Eloise and grinned. “I didn’t find it. Miss Foster and I made it.”

  “What?”

  “Sure. Look closely. That’s me in front of the safe. Miss Foster shot it last night to find out whether you could really get the combination that way. I noticed the plug in the desk, but didn’t connect it up in my mind with the camera until about half an hour ago. It had never occurred to me to bluff the case. But when Collins fairly asked for it, I finally tumbled. This piece is a negative, but Collins didn’t notice that. And luckily, it caught fire while I was drying it, so that he thought it was a piece which he himself hadn’t completely burned. He was too scared just now to be observant.”

  “But why didn’t you bring the film to Headquarters?” demanded Healy. “Your story would—”

  “If I had come to Headquarters, I’d have gotten a hunk of rubber hose over the bean, and the papers would have said, ‘The police are momentarily expecting a confession’. Furthermore, I didn’t get the embezzlement slant until I heard Collins buying bonds instead of selling them. And it wasn’t until after I’d stolen that motorcycle and made my escape and calmed down again that it occurred to me that the pictures had been taken through the hole in the desk. That made things click.”

  “But just the same,” objected Healy, “you shouldn’t have shot at those cops last night, and socked that motor cop this morning. He might have shot you. You took an awful chance making that useless getaway.”

  “So did Bert Collins,” grinned Landon. “And as soon as you get out of here, I’m going to take a much longer chance.”

  As he spoke, his eyes shifted and he regarded Eloise inquiringly.

  “If you never take any worse risks,” she said, “you’ll live a long time.”

  REVOLT OF THE DAMNED

  Originally published in Double-Action Gang, June 1938.

  I

  Nita Ricco brought the wicker baskets of melons into her bedroom on the second floor of the filling station and carefully drew the shades. The gas pumps were locked, and below, the lights were out. Anyone wanting five gallons of regular could go elsewhere; to hell, for all Nita cared, or to Mexico, just south of the city limits.

  She wished to God Blaze Hayden would come home. Torres, delivering the precious melons, had made her uneasy, with his snaky eyes. He had not even bothered to count the thousand-odd dollars in large bills. He had been watching Nita’s every graceful move, trying to outwit the turquoise chiffon negligée whose half transparency gave tantalizing glimpses of her lovely legs.

  The gown enveloped her like a scented bluish mist. The desert breeze that invaded a shuttered window made the frail fabric cling to the sweetly rounded curve of her hips. A little crucifix gleamed in the hollow of her firm young breasts; it matched the red-gold of her wavy hair.

  The heels of her tiny satin mules sank into a thick-napped Chinese rug, which like the furniture, was costly but a bit garish. Blaze Hayden could never have bought those things for Nita by selling gas. Her gray-green eyes were somber as she emptied the melons on the hardwood floor, then knelt and split them with a knife.

  Each cantaloupe contained several five-tael tins of opium.

  A tap at the door made Nita start. She rose, and her smile reflected the sudden glow in her eyes. Blaze had returned. The blue chiffon trailed away from her thighs as she hurried to admit him.

  Then she recoiled from the open door and hastily drew her gown together. Torres had returned. His eyes glittered from smoking home-grown marijuana. He licked his thick lips. “Señora, ees dangerous for you to stay alone—” Torres made a sweeping gesture as he crossed the threshold. “So I ’av return. We ’ave the drink, no?”

  He produced a bottle of tequila. Torres was tall and swarthy and despite his loose mouth, not a bad looking young Mexican.

  “Scram!” snapped Nita, putting on a bold front. “I paid you.”

  A snarl now bared Torres’ white teeth. Cat quick, he flashed toward her. Nita dared not scream. If help did arrive, all those tins of Golden Pheasant opium would damn her and Blaze.

  Torres was beyond mincing words. He had seen too much of Nita’s white beauty to retreat. Desperate, she glanced about. There was the knife on her dressing table.

  She lunged, but Torres intercepted her. She clawed his swarthy face. She almost wriggled from his grasp, but her frail chiffon robe parted in trailing shreds. Then her brassiere slipped. The opium smuggler was beyond fear or reason.

  “You damn dirty lug,” Nita panted. “Blaze’ll kill you—”

  Torres skidded on some melon seeds. Nita, peeled down to her scanties, flung herself toward the dresser and seized the knife.

  “Drop it!” snarled Torres, recovering. “If you use it, the polees will know—about the opium—the beeg boss will keel you!”

  That was Bud Worley’s way. A foolproof racket is based on dead men’s bones. One strike and out! No bungler lived long in Worley’s mob.

  Then Nita’s fingers closed on a box of dusting powder. The Mexican, distracted by the gleaming blade, caught the choking cloud squarely in the face. She snatched the table lamp. But before she could smash it across his head, the door slammed open, and a tall man bounded in.

  “Blaze—my God—”

  “The greasy bastard!” He was lean, broad shouldered; wrath hardened his thin face into grim angles. “You black son—”

  He lunged. His fist landed like a caulking maul. Before Torres could collapse, Blaze picked him up and bodily hurled him through the window.

  The shattering of glass was followed by a grunt, a thud, a muttered oath in Spanish. Blaze, gun drawn, leaned over the sill. He turned away, grinning.

  “Running like hell, honey.” He caught Nita in his arms and stroked her copper-red hair. “That wallop sobered him, huh?”

  “Blaze,” she sobbed, “I’m checking out of the racket. I don’t care what you do! It’s lousy, stinking, putrid! Running hop—”

  “Baby, we can’t quit.” Blaze’s face lengthened, suddenly became old and weary. “The Feds’d get us. Worley, the rotten skunk, he’d turn us in.”

  This was an old story to Nita. First, a bit of easy money, smuggling perfume. Nothing wrong, nicking Uncle Sam out of customs duties he had no right to, anyway. Every tourist does it, or tries it. Then a load of Chinese. And finally, Blaze Hayden dared not refuse to run that filling station in Calexico, right on the border. Worley had said, “Play, or else.”

  Th
ey ignored the horn blast outside until it was repeated several times. Blaze started. He recognized the sound. Leadfoot Johnson had pulled up to get the northbound load of narcotics.

  “I’m quitting. I don’t care, I am!” Nita was half hysterical.

  “Shut up, you idiot!” snapped Blaze, dashing to the door.

  But Leadfoot was already clumping up the stairs. He was a big blond fellow whose tanned face was scarred from flying glass and metal; a racing driver not quite good enough for the big time, but a wizard on the highway, piloting a grimy old car with a supercharged engine.

  “’Lo, Blaze.” He eyed the disordered room and Nita’s remaining tatters of negligee. “Listen, you two. It’s none of my damn business you battling. But you was talking out loud. Forget this quitting idea. Bad for the health!”

  “This racket’s lousy,” Nita bitterly observed. “Sure, I said it.”

  Leadfoot scratched his sandy hair, shrugged. “Ditto, toots. But you know what happens to saps that think they can walk out. Let’s go, Blaze.”

  They loaded the junk. Then a gritting of tires, and the whine of the supercharger was swallowed in the roar of the big engine.

  Nita turned despairing eyes to Blaze when he returned.

  “I’ll stick,” she sobbed. “Any way we turn, we’re damned. I guess you and me can’t revolt…”

  “But you can keep a gat in your dresser,” muttered Blaze. “If that hop-crazy spic ever makes another pass at you, burn him down and hide the junk before the cops get here. Anyway, I’ll be on hand after this when Torres delivers a load…”

  Bud Worley’s mob operated on Sacramento Street, just on the fringe of Chinatown. Behind the old gray building on the corner was a tangle of ancient alleys, and a fantastic huddle of old houses that offered an unlimited assortment of approaches and getaways. And on all sides were the hangouts of the junk peddlers, white and Chinese, who have infested that glamorous district since San Francisco became world famous for its Barbary Coast.

  A wizened derelict shuffled up the steep street that led from the Embarcadero. His suit had not been cleaned for years. He was a Skid Row bum outwardly, but there was a purpose behind the furtive movements that took him across the street and into a dingy alley below the neon lights that emblazed the main stem of Chinatown.