“But if you had,” persisted Darrell. “You see this is all hypothetical. Now suppose with all your savings strapped in a canvas belt around your middle next to the skin — your own expression, you know — and your papers from the Despatch and letter of introduction to Mr. Crosby, you had been struck by a truck or something as you got off the car at Logan Square to walk north to Mr. Crosby’s home. Where would they have carried your body, Feldock?”
“How in hell do I know?” snapped Feldock.
“Why,” interrupted Notman, as though trying to throw oil on troubled waters, “that’s an easy question to answer, boys. They’d have carried Feldock’s body back along Milwaukee Avenue a block or so to the first undertaking morgue. And that would have been Brossmeier’s place, just south of the southeast corner of Logan Square.”
“Exactly,” agreed Darrell. “And your body, Feldock, would have lain in Brossmeier’s morgue for several hours, until the police department sent after it. After Brossmeier got through examining your corpse, your canvas money belt and your papers would have been stripped off of you clean, and you’d have reached the police morgue downtown as an unidentified corpse where you’d probably be to-day.”
“Devilishly unpleasant picture you’re painting,” Feldock remarked scornfully.
“Yes, and think how they’d have taken advantage of your valuable cognomen and your papers, Feldock. Your money might have gone to buying a car for Catherwood Jarndyce — to promoting a great swindle, in other words. And Von Tresseler, hiding in Brossmeier’s as he was at the time you came to Chicago, would have taken those papers of yours and I’ll wager a year’s salary that he would have speedily come to the conclusion that the safest place in a big city, swarming with police and detectives looking for him day and night, would have been on the staff of a big morning newspaper. But let’s forget such a dismal picture.” Darrell fumbled in his pocket and withdrew the second of his two telegrams. He directed his words to Crosby.
“Here’s the answer to a telegram I sent to a reporter friend of mine on the Frisco Bugle to-night.” He turned to Feldock. “Had him call up your former editor, Feldock. That’s how I learned about the date of your departure from Frisco and that canvas belt of yours with three thousand three hundred dollars in it.” He yawned. “And in case it interests any of you people, the coroner told me to-night over the phone that at nine o’clock on the night of the 20th of last month an unknown man getting off a street car at the northeast corner of Logan Square was struck by a swift motor truck and killed. His body was taken to Brossmeier’s place, thence a few hours later to the city morgue. One dollar and seventeen cents was all that was found on him.” Darrell smiled at Feldock.
“Just suppose that dead man had been you, Feldock. Just suppose. Then Inspector Notman here would have been demanding a lock of your substitute’s black hair to-night, and a free look at his chest, instead of sending out all of his armed detectives on a wild-goose chase for an innocent Russian count. He — ”
“Stop!”
The command came forth like the shot of a rifle. Where a second ago the subject to whom Darrell was addressing his words was sitting in an easy posture on the window sill of the room, his legs nonchalantly crossed, he now stood in a crouching position, his right hand, white and wiry, gripping a wicked-looking automatic whose gaping black muzzle slowly traversed the assemblage in a continuous oscillating semi-circle.
“Hands up — quick, you swine — quicker there — up, Notman — up there, Corrigan — you, too, Clancy — you, Mullins — up, all of you!” A pair of cruel blue eyes, ever alert for the slightest motion inimical to their owner, looked cynically from face to face of the group all of whom, fully ten feet from that black instrument of destruction, stood powerless.
“So — you swine,” he said slowly. “So — you hoped to fling one last line across the paper to-night, eh? One last line! Von Tresseler captured by the Call!” A mocking laugh came from the speaker’s lips, a laugh so pregnant with menace that it struck a chill to some of its hearers. It broke off short, as suddenly as it had come.
“Well, the Blonde Beast bids you all good evening, gentlemen. And lest one man in this room decide to become a hero, let me give him one final warning. Von Tresseler is shooting to kill to-night, and if one man or woman so much as makes a move toward hand bag or pocket or a single step across the space between them and this window, Von Tresseler will spray seventeen steel-nosed bullets broadcast into you all. Kindly — up there, Notman, you fool! Higher. Higher! Do you want to spill your worthless brains on this floor? Don’t try that, Corrigan. I see it in your eye. It’ll be massacre if you do. Crosby, your left hand higher, please.”
As these warnings came forth with startling promptitude, the speaker was feeling with his free hand back of him along the sill of the open window. Those in line with that ever-present automatic, held in a hand which had killed ruthlessly time and time again in its career, could see the look of satisfaction as its owner assured himself that the coast was clear for a quick backward drop six feet into the black, empty alley.
He raised his left leg. He thrust it backward through the open window and planted it firmly, knee downward, on the sill. Steadying himself with his free left hand, he did the same with his right leg — and not once did the black automatic cease its continuous travel back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in its warning semi-circle.
Now he stood kneeling in the open window. Across that face with its blue eyes and black hair — a face that smacked of the Celt rather than the Hun — flashed a sudden look of hatred — a look of hatred so intense that it must be that into that brain had come for a fleeting second the impulse to slay madly, wantonly, unrestrainedly to leave crimson carnage in its wake.
Then the look faded, and gave way to a smile of supreme contempt as it surveyed the group of seventeen human beings completely checkmated by a moat of hardwood floor ten feet across and a tiny engine, that, released by the single pressure of a finger, meant death for over half a score. He shifted the weight of his body slightly, preparatory to the quick drop to freedom.
“Swine!” he said with a biting laugh. “Miserable swi — ”
But the epithet was not completed, for the man who literally knelt on the very brink of liberty had not reckoned with one negligible occupant of the room. That occupant was an undersized, undernourished, wizened boy with thin, white face and frayed knee-pants, who had stood all the while pressed back against the wall next the window, watching proceedings with distended eyes and open mouth.
Now, like a ferocious little cat, he became suddenly galvanized into action. Up and on to the outstretched arm which held the weapon he leaped, clutching, clawing, scratching, jerking it downward with his seventy pounds of weight. A flash, and a hissing stream of bullets flowed from the deadly automatic, like water from the nozzle of a hose, drumming harmlessly into the hardwood floor.
The man on the sill struggled with his free hand to keep his balance. The two girls, terror-stricken, screamed simultaneously. And within the hundredth of a second, it seemed, the space around the open window was a tornado of struggling men, Notman and his henchmen having leaped as though one man across the space intervening.
A quarter of a minute later, the pseudo Marvin Feldock, panting heavily, his teeth bared in a snarl, his collar gone, his shirt ripped into ribbons, stood pinioned, handcuffed in the middle of the room, held in the iron grip of a half-dozen pairs of masculine hands. One of the detectives unceremoniously ripped open the silk undershirt, the white buttons flying in every direction. There, on the background of the chest’s white skin, stood the black Prussian eagle.
Darrell gazed sadly and silently at the snarling figure in the center of the room. At last he spoke. “I suppose, Von Tresseler,” he said slowly, “you never dreamed that day when you struck me, wounded and blinded, in the face, in a German prison camp, that one other day was to come when our paths were to cross again.” He shook his head slowly. “For days and days, Von Tresseler, I have pondered over t
he hatred displayed against me by Marvin Feldock — the attempts to get me ousted from the staff of the Call. I have felt always that that hatred lay far deeper than mere professional jealousy, and now it becomes clear. You were afraid that back in my mind lay the lingering memory of your voice that day at Innesbaden — afraid that some day I might recall that voice.” He turned away.
“Well, I guess there will be no Marvin Feldock of the Call after all.” He gazed at Crosby expectantly. Outside a whistle blew the hour of one o’clock in the morning.
“There’ll be no Feldock, all right!” said that individual brusquely. “But there’s still a Crosby and he’s still city editor — at least till Darrell takes his place next week.” He turned to Darrell, then to Farley and Hunter.
“All right, boys. Hop to your machines. I’ll lay out your parts of the story in a jiffy. Somebody get the engravers on the wire and clear the way for a big bunch of half-tones. Benny, I’ll see you later to-night before you go home. Get out in that city room and get ready to carry copy to the linotypes as fast as it comes. Miss Shaftsbury, you must excuse us all now. Better take a tour over the plant till dead line, and Mr. Darrell will be free.” He glanced impatiently at his watch. “Any remarks, anybody? Any remarks, Darrell?”
“None,” said Darrell, peeling off his coat and rolling up his sleeves preparatory to a swift session. He waved his finger tips to the girl, then turned to the door of the office. With his hand on the knob, he turned.
“None — except perhaps somebody might run upstairs and roust out Sentimental Sal in that retreat of hers on the fourth floor. Tell her there’s a little additional story in this case for her page alone. Tell her that Jeff Darrell of the Call and Miss Iris Shaftsbury of the Jarndyce case were married this noon. All right — let’s go.”
THE END
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Copyright
This edition published by
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Copyright © 1927 by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.,
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Registration Renewed in the name of the author, 1955
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 10: 1-4405-4824-2
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4824-6
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4319-4
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4319-7
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