She crouched behind the barricade, waiting, wondering, thrilling with the first imperative command which ever, as a woman, had been given her. The mastery of it steadied her, and was sweet. It almost made her forget the aching shoulder where the rifle-butt had plunged, and the dizzy swimming of her head.
The moments lagged eternal. What if some evil chance should fall and he should never come? She trembled at the thought. Suddenly and for the first time in her whole life she realized what manner of thing the comradeship of man may be, how very needful, very dear.
“Come back! Come back!” her lips formed the words there in the night — words which she dared not bring to utterance.
She heard a sudden wild noise on the sea. “They’re coming back!” she shuddered.
Then, all at once, sounded a clear, low whistle on the starboard side.
“Drop a line here, and make it fast!” a voice rose up to her.
Not understanding, just obeying with a strange, new happiness in her fear, she tugged a rope from the tangled barricade, cross-looped it firmly on a chock, and flung it overboard. She heard it swish and strike the water — felt it tauten. The voice rose again: “First-rate, so far. I’m coming up!”
She peered across the rail. From the wreckers’ fleet a nearing tumult wafted. The torches now were blazing not five hundred fathoms off.
“Hurry!” she cried. “Hurry, or it will be too late!”
Staring down into the dark, she could just see a dim mass toiling up the rope. Then, quite suddenly, the doctor swarmed to the rail — was over it.
“We’ve got to rush!” he panted. “Found a mighty handy craft banging at the end of a liana-cord — obliging of ’em to have left it! By dropping off to starboard, they may never know we’re gone; at least, not till we’ve made a start. You gather up the cartridges. We’re apt to need ’em. I’ll take the guns.”
She filled her bosom with the leaden deaths, while he, with his knife, slit out a square of tarpaulin, wrapped the guns in it, and lashed them with a cord. He made a loop and slung the bundle over his head.
Then a match r-r-rasped, and eager little flames licked at the barricade, fingering the oil-soaked cabin wall.
“Good-by, old Suth!” the doctor whispered hoarsely to himself.
A moment there was silence — then the doctor faced her.
“Come!” said he. “Come, now! Are you afraid?”
“Afraid — with you?”
VI.
AND IT BEFELL that, just before the breaking of the day, a man and woman, all disheveled, weary, black with powder-grime, resting on their paddles in a huge, uncouth barraca, turned and gazed back over the heaving ocean-breast to the distant tower of flame that bloodied the horizon.
Neither spoke. There was no need of words as the swift dawn flared up the sky. The sea crimsoned; fantom blues and opals spread abroad; luminous greens rimmed the far crescent of the western heaven as the last few watchful stars faded in the glory of another day.
“See?” said the man, pointing ahead.
The woman from her place in the bow looked far across the painted waters where a thin-drawn blur of smoke trailed slowly landward.
“See there? Two hours more and we’ll be with — well, people again. Two hours more, and this will all be over, all be at an end for me — everything. I know how it will be! Just as I said last night, things will seem different to you — by the light of day. It is useless for me to hope otherwise.”
“No, no,” she answered, while her paddle dragged. “Not Africa — not you!”
As the full broad circle of the sun kissed the sea suddenly to gold, a song rose to the man’s brave, eager lips. Strongly he plunged his paddle, urging the long barraca northward up the coast of Africa, over the bosom of the morning sea.
A WORTH-WHILE CRIME
“IT LOOKS TO ME like a very ordinary sort of case,” declared T. Ashley, tilting back his desk chair in the little office-and-laboratory place of his, whereof the door showed the sign in gold letters: T. ASHLEY, Investigations.
“Ordinary!” echoed Scanlon. “You call it ordinary when ‘Big Boss’ Hanrahan himself gets touched for seventeen thousand? I call it most extraordinary, I do. Hanged if I don’t!”
“Oh, I don’t mean that part of it,” T. Ashley disclaimed, a trace of a smile curving his austere lips. “That particular angle of the affair possesses no interest for me. The personality of the victim, his affiliations, his control of the city’s political machine are matters wholly beside the point, so far as I’m concerned. All I’m looking at, from the standpoint of my profession, is the technique of the crook. And this case presents no original factors there.”
The September sunshine through his office window that overlooked the unending come-and-go of Albermarle Avenue, showed amused lines about the investigator’s shrewd, keen gray eyes. Evidently he found Scanlon’s agitation diverting.
“It’s all quite a routine sort of thing,” he added.
“Maybe ’tis,” admitted Scanlon. “But there’ll be somethin’ infernally out o’ the routine happen if that quick-touch artist ain’t rounded up, P.D.Q.!”
“Indeed? Well, why did Hanrahan send you to me, then? I’m not what is known as a fast worker. I proceed with rather marked deliberation. Why didn’t the boss turn this matter over to the bureau of criminal investigation?”
“And have every double-blanked paper in town full of it? Have every cop in the burg wise to it? Have the whole city laughin’ up its sleeve at the boss? What’s this here practical psychology I’m hearin’ about, these days?”
“Of course,” said T. Ashley. “I see. Ridicule can certainly kill a man, where all the ‘uplift’ attacks in the world would rattle off like peas from a rhinoceros. Yes, yes, I understand.” Contemplatively he tapped the cover of an anthropological society’s report. “So I’m to ‘get’ this malefactor for you in a private and inconspicuous manner. I’m to round up this genius, who’s been clever enough to rob a — er —”
“A robber,” Scanlon finished the phrase. “Say it, if you want to! That’s what most o’ the papers in town have been printin’ for years. You got the idea, an’ got it right. How much you want for the job?”
“The investigation,” said T. Ashley, correcting him. “Well, Mr. Scanlon, my fee varies according to the interest I take in a case. Big interest, small fee. Enough interest, no fee at all. Slight interest, large fee. No interest at all —”
“You’re frank, ain’t you?” interrupted the boss’s henchman. “That’s somethin’. I figger, judgin’ from the sympathy you feel for the boss, you’ll want about five hundred bucks for tacklin’ this case.”
“A thousand,” said T. Ashley dryly.
“Whew!” And Scanlon rubbed a shaven chin. “Well, if that’s the best you can say —”
“It is. And not a contingent fee, either. I shall collect that thousand whether I succeed or not. Though in justice to myself I must say that I have still to record a failure. Agreed? Thank you. Now then, let us get back to the evidence. You say there was a window broken in Hanrahan’s house by the crook?”
“Yep. A pane was busted out in the room where the safe is. The crook get in over the porch, there.”
“Does anybody know about that broken pane?”
“Only the boss’s boss.”
“You refer to Mrs. Hanrahan?”
“Sure. And the fact that there’s a playground nex’ door, where the kids play baseball, makes that busted window a cinch to explain. Nobody knows about the ‘touch’ but me and the boss. He’s havin’ the pane reset today.”
“The robbery,” asked T. Ashley, “took place last night, while Mr. and Mrs. Hanrahan were at the theater?”
“That’s what.”
“You saved the broken pieces of glass, naturally?”
“Surest little thing you know! I handled ’em with gloves, too, an’ brought ’em along with me.”
“Good! And then —”
&nb
sp; “Well, the crook just opened the gopher, that’s all, an’ cleaned it like he’d had a vacuum cleaner.”
“He didn’t use force, I believe you said? No ‘soup’ or thermite. No tools.”
“Nope. He just juggled the knob, that’s all.”
“I see. Well,” and T. Ashley pondered a moment, pencil, in hand, “I’ll take a run out and look the ground over this afternoon. But — let’s see the glass, first.”
Scanlon drew a flat package from his pocket, undid a string, opened the package, and spread out various bits of broken glass on the desk. He took good care not to touch them with his fingers, but poked them with a penholder to separate them.
“Very good, indeed,” said T. Ashley. He took pincers from a tray, with which he seized the pieces one by one and examined them. Putting a jeweler’s loupe into his eye, he gave them a more detailed inspection, turning them a little this way and that to vary the light across their surfaces.
“H’m!” he said at last, while Scanlon watched him with keen attention, his full-lidded blue eyes squinting a little. “This is altogether too easy. Yes, yes, indeed. Why, there are prints enough here to convict a regiment!”
“That’s how I jiggered it’d be.”
“Too bad you couldn’t have turned this case over to the bureau. The whole thing is simplicity itself. You could have saved the boss a clean thousand, and he needs the money. That’s his motto, isn’t it — ‘I need the money!’”
“We all need the money these days,” returned Scanlon. “But other things has got to be reckoned, too. We don’t want no public officials a-tall to get hep to this. Some way it’d leak if I was to give any of ’em a crack at these prints. All the boss wants now is to nab this bird, see, an’ do it without makin’ no roar. The boss is a bearcat for gettin’ back at any guy that passes him the dinkum oil. Oh, he’s a wise old kick, all right, the boss is!”
“So I understand,” said T. Ashley. “But he can’t get back at this bird, as you call the malefactor, without exposing the break and bringing down ridicule on himself. The minute that the bird is arrested —”
“Arrested? Who said anythin’ about arrestin’ him?” And Scanlon laughed twistedly. “He ain’t goin’ to be arrested! There’s better ways to get a bird than by arrestin’ him, an’ you can pin that in your lid!”
“I suppose so. Well, that’s none of my affair. My undertaking is just to earn my fee by locating the bird. After that, what happens to him is none of my affair.”
“I see you’ve got me cold. You can locate him, can’t you, with fingerprints like those?”
T. Ashley laughed a little scornfully. “By the way,” he added, “now that I’ve looked these over, I don’t think it will be necessary for me to visit Mr. Hanrahan’s house. That would be ‘gilding the lily,’ you understand.”
“Doing what to the which?”
“Pardon me. I mean, taking too much pains. I must say this so-called bird has been unusually liberal about leaving us his calling cards. I repeat that this affair is most ordinary. It’s so easy as to possess hardly the interest of an ordinary, common or garden variety of murder. Still, as I’ve agreed to take it on, I’ll go through with it.”
“And you’ll call me up?”
“As soon,” promised T. Ashley, “as I have this predatory person’s name, age, description, record, and present address. After that —”
“We’ll look out for the ‘after that’ part of it!” exclaimed Scanlon grimly.
“Quite so. But I tell you now, you’re gunning for small game. A modern ‘house prowler’ who doesn’t know enough to wear gloves must be deficient, indeed. Poor game!”
“All the more reason why the boss can’t afford to let such a guy run round loose an’ get away with it,” said Scanlon. “Supposin’ it should leak that a third-rater had —”
“Of course. Well, I’ll let you know. I’ll phone you at your office. Let’s see, now — Scanlon Paving and Contracting Co., isn’t it?”
“That’s me. Well, thanks!” Scanlon stood up and extended his hand. But T. Ashley, already once more bending over the fragments of glass, apparently did not see it. “Well — good day.”
“Oh, good-day!”
When Scanlon was gone, and the door closed, T. Ashley leaned back and smiled.
“Vanity,” said he, “thy name is man!”
II.
THE MESSAGE SCANLON received over the wire several days later vastly astonished him.
“Hello there! Scanlon? . . . Yes, T. Ashley speaking. I say, Scanlon, what the deuce do you mean by trying to amuse yourself at my expense? . . . Don’t understand, eh? The devil you don’t! Practical jokes are all very well, but — what’s that you say? . . . Oh, yes, I’ll tell you, all right enough. . . . Yes, any time you like; the sooner the better. Have I what? . . . Found out? Good-by!”
The slam of the receiver onto the hook left Scanlon vastly amazed.
“Well, what d’you know about that?” he asked himself. “What’s he vaporin’ about now, I’d like to know? Can you beat it? Has that bird gone cuckoo all of a sudden, or what?”
He took his Panama and departed from the office of the Scanlon Paving and Contracting Co. in more of a hurry than he had been for weeks.
“I tell you, I don’t get you a-tall,” he insisted, when he and T. Ashley were alone together in the little laboratory office overlooking Albermarle Avenue. “Anybody’d think, from what you just now shot over the wire at me, that I’d been tryin’ to feed you some phony stuff!”
“And anybody would be quite correct in that assumption,” returned T. Ashley. His jaw looked tight, his eye hostile. “I suppose, from your point of view, it’s an excellent witticism, trying to make sport of a private investigator.”
“What d’you mean? Come across!”
“Of course, the department is out to knife a man who’s proved them lunkheads half a dozen times. That’s quite comprehensible. But I hardly thought the Big Boss himself — and you — would be quite so childish. Another thing: you forget that in trying to bring me into ridicule,” and T. Ashley struck the desk a blow with his fist, “you two may get involved worse than I am! That would be a horse of another color!”
“What d’you mean, horse? All the horse I see, round here, is on me!”
And Scanlon shook a puzzled head. He let both hands fall, palms outward.
“Who instigated this, anyhow?” demanded T. Ashley.
“Here’s where I quit!” said Scanlon. “I’d better beat it while my shoes are good. Maybe you know what you’re talkin’ about, but darned if I do!”
“You — you mean to say you really don’t understand?”
“Well, you heard me the first time!”
“You don’t know what kind of a wild-goose chase you’ve been putting me up against?”
“How many more times d’you want me to say it? Bring a stack o’ Bibles, or something and —”
“But, what the deuce?” exclaimed T. Ashley. “Whoever in the world gave you those fingerprints?”
“Nobody! Get that straight, now. I rounded up them prints myself. The boss called me out to his house and told me about the break, and I —”
“Do you mean to tell me,” and T. Ashley’s eyes narrowed, “that those prints, to the best of your knowledge and belief, were really made by the man who robbed Mr. Hanrahan’s safe?”
“That’s the way it rides, s’help me! Why?”
“Why? Oh, by the Lord Harry, now, that’s flogging it! Look at that, will you?”
And T. Ashley with a flirt of the wrist tossed over a letter on his desk for Scanlon to read. He added, in a tone vastly far from his usual suavity:
“See what McDonald, of the Federal identification bureau at Leavenworth has to say about it. Somebody has been having a devil of a joke with somebody. Now then, who is it — and why?”
Scanlon caught up the letter.
*
Dear Mr. Ashley: Reporting on the microphotographs of
the prints, let me say they have been identified as those of Peter W. Blau, alias Dutch Pete, alias The Grayback. His number on our records is 143,297. Will send Bertillon if desired. Very truly yours,
M. S. McDonald.
*
Scanlon reread the letter before looking up. Then he asked, puzzled. “Well, that’s all right, ain’t it? That’s straight dope. What’s all the roar you’re sendin’ across?”
“What’s it about? Oh, I say, now!”
“I don’t see nothin’ phony about this! All it looks like, from where I stand, is the first move toward landin’ this here Dutch Pete guy in the big house, and —”
“Is that all it looks like, to you?” demanded T. Ashley, with mordant scorn. “Well, now, where do you suppose I’d have to look to find that man?”
“How the devil should I know? That’s your job!”
“My job, eh? A job for sextons, you mean! And I’m not in the pick-and-shovel brigade — not just yet.”
Scanlon regarded him with eyes of astonishment.
“Come on, come on!” he exclaimed. “Shoot it across, clean, and get it off your chest! What d’you mean, pick-and-shovel brigade?”
“I mean,” answered T. Ashley with emphasis on every word, “that this Peter W. Blau, alias Dutch Pete, alias The Grayback, was electrocuted nearly six months ago!”
III.
NOW IT WAS Scanlon’s turn to flush with anger.
“You must be bats!” he exclaimed. “What kind of a gag are you tryin’ to slip over on me, anyhow?”
“No gag at all, to quote your own choice language! And as for being ‘bats,’ I’m not so crazy as to assert that a dead man can get up out of his grave and go gallivanting round the country robbing safes!”
“I never said nothin’ like that!”
“The deuce you didn’t! You brought me a dead man’s fingerprints, with the preposterous assertion that —”
“I brought you the prints that was on that there pane out to the boss’s house. The man that made them prints cleaned that gopher!”
THE SUPREME GETAWAY AND OTHER TALES FROM THE PULPS Page 17