The Third Mystery

by James Holding

  After a few minutes’ drive the blindfold was removed. They were entering the downtown New Orleans. It was now around midnight, and the streets were nearly deserted.

  Landon directed them toward Dumaine’s place. The car halted at the end of the alley.

  “Ivan, you sit in the car and watch this end of the alley,” Barloff commanded. “Vassili, you go on ahead of us to guard the other end. Yakushev, you come with us. And, by the way, Captain, better go ahead of us. And be careful. No false moves.”

  As Vassili ran on ahead, Landon, Barloff and Yakushev entered the dark depths of the alley. “And now where is the prayer rug?” Barloff said.

  “I’ll show you,” Landon replied. Barloff’s eagerness to know, instead of waiting to see, renewed Landon’s suspicion that the deal was to be one-sided. While Barloff scarcely needed resort to treachery, he might decide to play safe. And Landon saw his chance to beat him to it.

  Instead of heading to where the rug was hidden, he led the captors toward the doorway through which Panopoulos had taken him earlier in the evening—this same evening, though it seemed weeks rather than hours ago.

  “It’s in here,” he lied. “Just a second—I’ll drag it out.”

  “Where?” That same eager reiteration.

  “Get the key so you can turn me loose,” temporized Landon, “when I hand you the rug. This neighborhood is tricky, and if we have to run for it, I want my hands clear. We can meet later, where you can give me the evidence I need—”

  “Hmmm…cautious,” murmured Barloff. Then, after getting the key from Yakushev, he added, “And that reminds me. Just to be sure you’ll be discreet, I’ll mail the evidence to Miss Foster.”

  Barloff’s show of counter-caution almost masked his play to lull Landon’s suspicions—almost, but not quite.

  Landon opened the door. Barloff followed, closing it after him. The locality was dangerous, and if the police were on the prowl, the closed door would help.

  Landon advanced across the courtyard, and into the passageway through which Panopoulos had led him to the street. Barloff’s gun prodded his back.

  With his manacled hands, Landon groped slowly along the walls of the passageway.

  “Here! Feel in here!”

  Barloff eagerly pressed forward. His pistol-muzzle shifted. This was the moment for which Landon had been waiting. He wheeled, knocking the barrel out of line, and driving one knee up to Barloff’s groin, and followed through with both shackled fists sinking him in the stomach.

  Pay-day! The Arab collapsed, paralyzed. His gun clattered to the flagstones.

  Landon retrieved the gun, then fished in Barloff’s pockets and found the key. He held it in his teeth, and in a moment unlocked the manacles. That done, he snapped them on Barloff, so as to fasten him to an iron window-grating.

  Barloff, though breathing, was still too weak to groan.

  One end of the passageway led to the street, and safety. The other was guarded by Yakushev. Beyond him was the wall over which Landon had thrown the bundled up prayer rug earlier in the evening. He retraced his steps. Must get the rug. It was evidence.

  As he stepped from the courtyard to the alley, he turned and over his shoulder remarked, as if to someone just following, “Well, Barloff, I hope you’re satisfied, now that you have the rug.”

  Yakushev exclaimed and crowded close. Landon’s pistol checked him.

  “Not a yeep, or I’ll plug you,” he warned, taking the Russian’s gun. But instead of pocketing the weapon, he smacked Yakushev across the head with it.

  Then he crossed the narrow alley, pocketed both guns and bounded up, to catch the crest of the wall with his hands. And then Vassili, at the further end of the alley, sensed trouble. As Landon pulled himself to the top of the wall, a shot rang behind him. A slug jerked through his coat, raking his back. Another blast—but he dropped from the barrier as lead whizzed past and ricocheted from a wall beyond. Recovering from the impact, Landon groped in an angle of the courtyard. He found a bundle, seized it, and struggled to his feet.

  Landon was concealed by dense gloom; but someone, clearing the wall he’d just scaled, was silhouetted against the skyglow. Someone else was running down the alley. Vassili and Ivan! In their position, they had nerve to spare, chasing Landon!

  He snapped his pistol into line. Smack! A yell, and the head disappeared. Pursuit was checked, but the heat was on now!

  Landon turned and groped his way toward the house that enclosed the court. In the darkness he found a door. It was locked. Feeling along the face of the building, he found a window—open. He stealthily cleared the still.

  He was in a perfumed silence. A decidedly feminine sweetness burdened the air. But not a sound. Bundle under his arm, Landon picked his way, his free hand feeling ahead of him for unseen obstacles. Once out of the house, he had a chance.

  Another pace…and another…some Vieux Carré beauty did go for Nuit Amou-reuse in a large way! Thank God she was out—or was she?

  A chair blocked him. He turned, but a shoe threw him off balance—and something low and soft, catching his chin at the wrong instant, completed the job. He pitched forward, landing on a low bed. A shrill scream, and someone slight, energetic and feminine writhed clear of him.

  Landon flung himself backward. Landing afoul of the chair, he crashed to the floor. A light snapped on. He scrambled to his feet—but not in time.

  “Don’t move, or I’ll shoot!”

  A tiny pearl-handled Luger stared him in the face. Behind the unwavering weapon was an extremely pretty olive-skinned girl, clad in a smart blue robe of Russian design.

  Chapter 08

  When Danger Pursues

  Landon swallowed his admiration and his heart at one gulp. Something had to be done in a hurry. “That gun makes me nervous,” he began, making a good effort at an engaging smile. “I lost my keys and—”

  But before he could get as far as reminding her that burglars don’t enter with baggage, she snapped, “Drop that bundle, and reach for the ceiling!”

  “Absolutely,” agreed Landon. “And speaking of bundles—”

  But instead of dropping it, he flung the rug at her pistol-hand. The Luger crackled, but before she could jerk a second shot. Landon had closed in and wrenched it from her grasp.

  “Sorry, darling,” he apologized, as he retrieved his bundle, “but I’m in an awful hurry!”

  Her violet eyes narrowed, and she nodded knowingly.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” she asked, smiling amiably. “I heard the shooting out there and—but if you’re in a jam, better hide here. They’ll never imagine—”

  “Thanks a lot.” She was right, but her sweetness was a bit overdone—like her perfume. With significant abstraction he fingered Barloff’s pistol as he added, “Better stay right where you are—you look perfectly lovely that way—while I check out. Be seeing you sometime later.”

  “That’s a promise!” she smiled. “And don’t forget the address.”

  The sudden intentness of her eyes contradicted her lips. She must have recognized him and was hoping to trap him, later.

  “Not a yeep out of you,” he warned.

  Pistol leveled, Landon backed toward the door. The encounter, though brief, had cost precious seconds. The screech of brakes, the pounding on doors, and the uproar of voices in the alley told him that the police had arrived. Flashlight beams criss-crossed the courtyard he had just left.

  The door behind Landon was locked. “Where’s the key?” he snapped.

  “Try and find it!” the girl challenged, laughing maliciously.

  “Suit yourself!” retorted Landon. “If I have to stay and shoot it out, you’re going into that clothes closet with me, and—”

  He advanced a pace, shifting his pistol to his left, and reaching out with his right. That settled her. She cried out and gestured toward the dresser.

  There was her key. But as Landon snatched it, two uniformed figures dropped into the court. He lost an instant snapping of
f the lights. A yell from without: a command to halt.

  Landon sprayed the window with lead. The machine-gun rattle would make them keep their heads down as they advanced. During the scant seconds he won, Landon unlocked the brunette beauty’s door. She was shrieking to the whole Vieux Carré. A pistol blast, the smack of lead, and a yard of plaster clattered to the floor as Landon bounded to the hallway. Slugs riddled the panel; but he paused, locking the door from the outside. The barrier would gain him the time he had lost.

  As he reached the rear gallery, he heard a rumble of gruff voices, accented with feminine hysteria. Then a pounding, and the creak of wrenching door-panels. But that faded as he scaled a low wall and dropped into an adjoining court. The occupants of the building he had left had either ducked for cover, or were heading for the main disturbance.

  He finally emerged on Bourbon Street and headed uptown. He reached his hotel, once more in the clear—for a while.

  The first thing that he did was to shave off the rest of his mustache. Enough people had now seen him with it, even in its changed form, so that it would no longer serve as a disguise.

  His bullet-creased back was becoming annoying. But with the aid of two mirrors, he determined that the wound was superficial—a dab of iodine and an awkward bit of bandaging settled it. But, tired though he was, he had to develop the film.

  He ventured out again, picked up an amateur developing kit at an all-night drug store, and, on the way, mailed the prayer rug to Eloise. To keep it in his hotel room would add to his risks. Thin and of silk, it folded readily; he guessed the weight, and twenty-four-hour service at the main post office provided stamps.

  When he finally turned in for a few hours’ sleep, his fingers were stained with chemicals and his head was swimming. But the developed film demonstrated that a clear picture could be taken at night with the professor’s movie camera—clear enough so that the combination of the safe could be seen with a glass.

  Landon slept late the next morning. Around ten o’clock, he came down for breakfast. And since the absence of his mustache might be noticed if he ate where he had been seen recently, he went to a small arm-chair restaurant a short distance from the hotel. He’d need a new hideout, quickly!

  On the way he bought a morning Picayune and spread it out and read it as he had his breakfast.

  The front page was good: “Captain Landon overpowers Alcide Dumaine and two customers—” Customers, eh? So that’s what Dumaine called the two gunmen of Panopoulos? No wonder the police let them go!

  “—and escapes police with customary daring. Soldier of fortune kills three accomplices—” Accomplices! Two of ’em were customers a minute ago!

  “—in desperate gun-battle in rooming house, quarreling over division of the loot.

  “Fourth victim dies while escaping in taxi- cab.” Poor Jake!

  “Landon later returns and murders Dumaine in cold blood.” Barloff’s work!

  “Then holds up Glenn Thomas, a cotton buyer from New York—” Couldn’t Barloff think up a better alias than that?

  “Wounds Thomas’ chauffeur in the head, but not seriously.” Too bad about that not seriously part!

  “Escapes through house of Jeannette Levaseur, cabaret dancer. Blocks police with fusillade while fleeing from her bedroom. The Levaseur woman is being held in jail on suspicion. She denies knowing Landon.” Landon grinned reminiscently.

  Then his grin faded as he saw, pictured on the page in front of him, the steel-trap features of John Healy, Chief of Detectives, and read his promise:

  “Landon, dead or alive, within twenty-four hours!”

  His eyes strayed from Healy’s picture to that of the alluring Jeannette Levaseur. Eloise must already have read the account. And the reporters of course would feature the dancer and his midnight call. Murder was one thing, but to be branded as a friend of the notorious Levaseur woman—!

  He hurriedly gulped his coffee, paid his check, and headed for a telephone booth. Healy or no Healy, he had to speak to Eloise.

  Eloise herself answered the phone.

  “Darling, this is Ray,” he said. “I never saw that woman before I escaped last night.”

  “Silly!” she laughed. “Of course you didn’t! But who killed Dumaine?”

  “Tell you later. I’ve got to skip out before they trace this call. Our experiment is okay.”

  He hung up and hurried from the restaurant, glancing both ways as he emerged. In one direction were two policemen, talking together on a corner. And from the other direction came the one man in all New Orleans whom Landon most feared to meet, the one man who knew him intimately enough to recognize him in spite of his trimmed eyebrows and absent mustache: Bert Collins, private secretary to the late Professor Foster.

  But Collins hadn’t yet seen him, so Landon ducked across the street. Glancing back, he saw that Collins was following him, but still apparently unaware of his identity. Landon ducked back into a doorway.

  Once inside, he looked about him. The room was crowded with men, mostly standing up. Along one side of the room was a large blackboard, on which a clerk standing on a stool was chalking figures: “20 1/8, 20 1/4, 20 1/2.”

  This was the stock-brokerage office of Bennett & Keene.

  Landon seated himself in an inconspicuous corner and pretended to be studying an investment bulletin. Neither Collins nor the police would think to look for him here. The hangers-on, either actual traders or tape-worms, would be too much interested in the market to have any thoughts for trifles like murder.

  And then came a familiar voice, low, but clear above the clatter of the teletype and the orders snapped into the battery of hand-sets on the desks of the customers’ men: “Buy Fourth Liberty Loan—ten one-thousands and a five hundred. Yes, at market.”

  Landon froze against the leather upholstery of his chair. Bert Collins was speaking. Landon dared not even risk a glance; nor was a glance necessary to assure him that fate stood at the nearby desk.

  “Just take a seat,” the customers’ man was saying. “We’ll have a confirmation for you in a minute, Mr. Collins.”

  Of course Collins might walk into the reference room to wait, but the seats right beside Landon would be the most handy. Landon felt the perspiration cropping out on his forehead and trickling down his cheeks. Bennett & Keene’s, of all places—with half a dozen other houses that Collins could have picked!

  So this was why Collins had seemed to follow him across the street—Collins had been bound for the very doorway into which Landon had ducked to avoid him. What beastly luck!

  Landon drew a deep breath, clenched his fists, tried to relax, to control himself, to assure himself that Collins would not expect to find him watching a quotation board.

  Someone was taking the next seat. In spite of himself, Landon could not resist the temptation to glance up at his neighbor. He felt eyes boring into him. Then he saw the man get up again and go toward the reference room. The tall slouching form and the gray suit were familiar. Collins had undoubtedly recognized him, and was now on his way to the telephone to call police headquarters.

  “I can beat that,” was Landon’s thought. “Just as he clears the door—” Landon rose slowly from his seat. There was plenty of time.

  And then he saw that he had jumped at conclusions. The man in the gray suit had not been Collins. Collins himself was now standing directly before him. Their eyes met!

  The consternation on Collins’ pale features, and the expression of his blue eyes, left no doubt that he was terrified at confronting such a desperate killer face to face.

  For an age-long instant both men stared. Landon recovered first, but before his fist could drive home it was too late.

  “It’s Landon!” shrieked Collins. “Stop him!” Landon’s fist connected like the smack of a baseball bat; but Collins, recoiling in mortal terror even before the blow started, missed its full force. Even as he crashed backward into a chair, he repeated his outcry.

  That precipitated a panic.


  Landon charged into a knot of customers that blocked the narrow hall. Those nearest him gave way. Some dropped to the floor to avoid the burst of pistol fire which they expected. Those in the rear crowded forward, valiantly yelling to the others to seize Landon. He knew that he could reach the door in a few seconds. Those whom he could not hurdle he could knock down; but Gravier Street, the heart of the financial district, had hair-trigger nerves. At any moment bank guards, armed with sawed-off shotguns, would be in the street. Policemen would come dashing up.

  A final rush, and Landon reached the sidewalk. Clear—but which way? There was an alley across the street, but Landon had no idea of what lay at its further end. He glanced swiftly, right, left, trying to see a way of escape.

  A traffic officer was at that moment racking his motorcycle at the curbing to Landon’s right front.

  “What the hell’s up?” he demanded, as he turned from his machine. Cries of “Landon! Landon!” came from the crowd that surged out of the brokerage house in the wake of the fleeing man.

  No time for parley or strategy. Landon saw the officer’s querying expression harden into grim recognition. But as the cop reached toward his holster, Landon charged, striking the officer’s wrist. An instant after that paralyzing slice checked the draw, Landon’s fist crashed home against the officer’s jaw.

  The impact sent the patrolman spinning to the gutter, his pistol clattering on the paving. Landon swung into the seat of the motorcycle, kicked the starting pedal, and roared off down the street. There were still a few seconds to spare before the pursuit could be organized and directed, but the odds were against him. A police department motorcycle ridden by a bare-headed civilian is harder to conceal than a carnival parade. A traffic officer hailed him as he sizzled past the first intersection, then blew his whistle.

  Landon jammed on his brakes, whipped around the left of a street car, and charged through the cross traffic.

  Dryades Street and its slums seemed the best refuge. There were alleys and crazily constructed buildings which concealed mazes of backyards. And then he saw Dryades Market looming up.