by Lester Dent
Nace turned back to the girl but did not approach her lest he frighten her. “You’re mistaken, you know! What happened?”
“A man came in! He said Mr. Nace was waiting outside!” The girl’s voice was scared. “He went in to see Mr. App. And then someone must have hit me. I didn’t see who it was.”
That was all she knew. When he had finished his questioning, Nace ambled out into the hall. Jaxon stood there, undecided. He walked off hastily at sight of Nace.
Nace went down to the city room. There was a big picture of App’s Santa Claus countenance on the wall. Nace asked for a late edition, got it, was stared at, and left the building. He hopped a cab at the corner, said, “The morgue the city uses.”
UNLIMBERED on the cushions, Nace studied the newspaper, centering his attention on the unidentified man who had been drowned in oil. The fellow had been found near Reservoir Hill two days ago.
There was little else of interest—except that no one seemed to know who he was. The body was being held at the morgue.
On the front of the morgue, a sign said, “Funeral Home.”
It was a plain building. Fifteen years ago, when Tulsa was a village it must have been a private mansion. The doors had been enlarged to permit of coffins being carried through.
Nace found a bright-eyed little man in charge. They went into a room where there were long marble slabs and much noise—laughter, shouts.
The funeral home, it seemed, also conducted an ambulance service. The ambulance drivers and an assistant undertaker were rolling craps on a marble slab. They had turned a stiff body on the slab and were using it as a backstop for the dice. They reminded Nace of small boys trying to show how callous they were.
In the rear of the room, the undertaker uncovered a cadaver.
The dead man was tall, lean. His skin, where the oil had not been wiped off, was strangely white. Fingernails, hair, eyebrows—all were gone.
Nace studied the long, sharp features. Somehow, they struck him as vaguely familiar.
“Hot oil got this one!” he said. “And I don’t mean stolen oil, either!”
“The oil must have been scalding hot!” the undertaker agreed. “That’s what made his hair and fingertips slip.”
“Have the others been like this?”
“You mean scalded? Sure!”
Once more Nace squinted at the features of the dead man. He could not get rid of the idea he had seen the fellow before.
“O.K.,” he told the undertaker.
He went back, and stopped in front of the crap shooters bouncing dice against the body. He scowled at them.
“Cut it out!”
The dicers glared at him. “Who the hell’re you?”
“Cut it out!” Nace said, and beetled his brows.
The trio scowled, changed feet. The strange crimson scar on Nace’s forehead seemed to disquiet them. Then they gathered up their dice and went out, trying to maintain a dignity.
Disgust rode heavy on Nace’s long, bony face.
The undertaker began, “What was the idea—”
“When you’re dead, do you want three guys bouncing dice off your ribs—”
From the direction the three dice rollers had taken, came gasps, low cries of surprise.
“Stand still, you monkeys!” gritted an ugly voice.
Nace came to life like an electrical machine switched on. He dived for the door, whipping out his tear-gas firing cylinder. Reaching the door he got a glimpse of a man—a man he had never seen before. The fellow had a bulky, shapeless body, a long neck, and a chicken-like head.
He carried an automatic shotgun, the barrel sawed off at the magazine.
Nace shoved out the tear-gas cylinder and let it bang. Squawking, the man with the shotgun clutched at his eyes with one hand. With his other hand he slapped the automatic shotgun against his hip. He pulled the trigger three times.
The gun was ear-splitting. Across the morgue room other explosions crashed like echoes. Holes the size of washtubs opened magically in the wall. Plaster, lath, and bits of brick rained. Marble slabs upset on their stands.
Nace jumped clear of the door. Now he retreated further, dragging the undertaker.
THE shotgun was firing explosive slugs. They were capable of tearing a man to pieces.
Nace ran to a window. It was frosted glass. He boosted it up and dropped outdoors.
He waded through flower beds, leaping high, and circled the house.
The shot-gunner came out of a side door. He was blinded by the tear gas, feeling his way. He carried his automatic weapon in one hand.
Nace chopped knuckles at the gunner’s elbow. Pain reaction caused the man to release his gun. Nace sprang upon him.
They rolled briefly on the ground, grunting, swapping blows. Then Nace stood erect, his foe unconscious and cradled in his arms. Stooping again, he picked up the shotgun.
The fight, the shots and explosions, had excited the neighborhood. Heads were hanging out of windows. A few pedestrians, positioned close to trees, stood and stared.
Glancing about, Nace saw a small flivver touring which had been parked there since he entered the funeral home. He ran to it.
On the front floorboards, covered by a gunny sack, lay a dozen extra explosive shotgun slugs.
Nace propped his burden in a seat of the little car. He tossed the automatic shotgun in the rear. Then he went to the touring. He ramped the starter. The engine began to chatter, shimmy the fenders, and shake the steering wheel in his hand. He meshed gears and drove away. A bit later, he was guiding the flivver down a tree-canopied avenue of residences.
From time to time, Nace reached over and slapped his slumbering companion. The man was slow to awaken. Opening his zipper bag, as he drove, Nace dug out liquid ammonia in little cloth-covered glass phials. He broke one of these under the man’s nose. The fellow eventually sneezed, grimaced, and began to paw about aimlessly.
“Who sent you and your artillery after me?” Nace demanded.
The man made mumbling animal noises. He was still a little beyond speech.
Nace looked back. A small coupe seemed to be following him. He could not make out the driver. Nor could he be entirely certain that the car was on his trail.
He reached over to sting his companion into wakefulness with another slap.
A cream-colored roadster lunged out of a side street. Angling over expertly, it sideswiped Nace’s flivver. The little car, knocked out of control, jumped at a tree.
By springing suddenly erect, Nace kept his face from hitting the windshield as the car struck. His chest met the glass. It caved; he slid across the hood. His shoulder jarred the tree, and he tumbled to the ground, only slightly dazed.
Skidding all four wheels the cream-colored roadster had stopped as soon as it side-swiped the flivver.
The flivver was up on the curb, leaving plenty of room underneath. Into this space Nace crawled.
Glimpsing the feet of a man who had dropped out of the roadster, Nace wriggled for them. The feet were encased in cowboy boots. Hooking both hands about the boots, Nace pulled. There was a single profane bark and the owner of the boots sat down heavily.
It was Robin Hood Lloyd.
Nace tried to haul him under the flivver. The Robin Hood drew a heavy frontier six. But he made no effort to shoot.
“Damn you!” he snarled. “Why don’t you carry a rod!” He tried to bat Nace in the face with his gun.
Nace dodged back and pulled harder. The Robin Hood came sliding under the flivver.
The fight which followed, Nace was always to remember. The Robin Hood battled with fists and his revolver. He kicked, gouged, bit. Anything went. Nace returned all he received. They bruised themselves against the flivver chassis and against the concrete curb.
THEN the chicken-headed man entered the fray. He crouched down and looked under the car. He had secured his automatic shotgun from where Nace had placed it in the flivver seat. Deliberately, he aimed at Nace.
Glimpsing the man
, Robin Hood Lloyd threw up his six. Its boom seemed violent enough to blow the flivver off their backs.
The shot-gunner sagged, leaking scarlet from a blue-rimmed pit which had suddenly appeared directly between his eyes.
Nace and the Robin Hood separated as if by mutual agreement. They crawled out on different sides of the roadster and stood erect.
“Before I’m through with this, I’m gonna beat hell out of you!” the Robin Hood snarled. “But not now! I hear old Ebenezer App has been kidnapped! Anything to it?”
Nace hesitated briefly. “Yeah. And just before it happened, App found out who is heading the hot-oil ring!”
“Thanks!” Backing swiftly, the Robin Hood climbed into his roadster. The engine was running and the car got under way quickly. It volleyed off in the direction of town.
A few seconds later Nace saw a coupe pass the corner on a side street, a block distant. The tree shadows made it impossible to tell who occupied the machine. But it was the same coupe which had tailed Nace.
Nace ran around the flivver. One glance told him the man with the shotgun was dead. Getting his zipper carryall from the car, Nace set out across the back yards. He ran the first few blocks, then slowed down to a walk as he neared the business district. Excitement was noticeable in the Telegram Building when he entered. In the glass enclosed circulation room off the lobby, groups of clerks stood under a Santa Claus picture of App and talked. The pretty elevator operators were flushed and perturbed.
In the city room, Jaxon was talking to four policemen. The dressy oil editor glared at Nace. “There’s the bum now!”
The policemen came over, jaws out, eyes wintry. One jingled handcuffs suggestively.
Nace got in the first word. “I’m a private detective—”
“We know all about you, brother!” frowned one cop. “We don’t like your kind! And we don’t like the way you’re getting around this man’s town!”
The adder leered redly at them from Nace’s forehead. “So what?”
“So it’s the can for you.”
Nace put his zipper bag on a reporter’s desk, opened it, and extracted a yellow fold of paper.
“What’s that?” questioned the officer.
“Telegraphic commission from the governor—appointing me a special investigator in this hot-oil business.”
The policeman scowled. “Let’s see that!”
TEN minutes later, Nace was alone in the newspaper morgue. The policemen had gone their disgruntled way. They didn’t like it, but Nace had a special permission from the governor.
Jaxon, after making ugly grimaces to express his personal opinion of Nace, had gone off somewhere—probably to the oil editor’s sanctum.
The morgue was a dingy room, a fly-specked Santy picture of App on the wall. There were great steel filing cabinets. These held drawers, and the drawers were gorged with envelopes. There were pictures, mats, clippings, cuts.
The cabinet bore alphabetic file letters. Nace was looking under the “L” guide.
He found a quart of white mule, a pair of dice and two packs of cards, which some reporter must have hidden.
There were four envelopes on Robin Hood Lloyd, all fat. They traced his life from the cradle, his associates, his family, his boyhood chums—all were named.
The file was a potential fortune. It contained material enough to write a book on Oklahoma’s bad boy who was probably destined to take a place alongside Jesse James.
Nace read the clippings, replaced them, then left the morgue. As he was passing the city room, a copy boy ran out.
“Somebody on the ’phone wantin’ you, Mr. Nace!” he said.
“I’ll take it in the booth,” Nace told him, and entered a little glass enclosure, and picked up an instrument.
Julia’s voice came to him.
Chapter IV
The Oil-Boiled Trail
“WHAT’S eating you?” Nace asked quietly.
Julia said, “I followed them!”
“So it was you in the coupe!” Nace chuckled.
“Sure! I didn’t have anything else to do so I trailed you to the newspaper, then to the morgue, then away. That is, after we left the newspaper, I followed the Robin Hood, who was following the guy who was shagging you. That’s why I didn’t warn you—”
“Don’t get me dizzy!” Nace chuckled. “Where are you now?”
“In a bungalow at the foot of Reservoir Hill. I tagged the Robin Hood to a house at the top of the hill.”
“Describe the house!”
“I’ll do better than that! Here’s the number.” She gave him a street and numerals. “There’s several houses on the hill and this is one of the biggest.”
“O.K.,” said Nace. “What do you make of this jamboree?”
“Search me, boss! I’m fairly certain the Robin Hood is somebody big in the oil ring. But just now he’s sure going around like a chicken with its head cut off!”
“You know there’s a body in the morgue now.”
“Yes?”
“I just identified the corpse by pictures and clippings at the Telegram. It’s the Robin Hood’s kid brother.”
“Hm-m-m!” Julia made a thoughtful humming sound. “That may explain a lot, boss!”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Julia said hastily, “Are you coming out here?”
“What’s the address of this place you’re telephoning from?” Nace demanded.
Again she gave him a street and a number. “I’m going to hang around on the front porch!” she advised. “The lady who owns it is an old dear. So she’ll let me stay.”
Nace drew on his pipe and ran a smoke plume into the upper part of the booth. His forehead, wrinkling, bunched the crimson snake scar. He thought for a minute.
“Hold the wire,” he said.
“What?”
“I’ve got to see a man about a dog!”
He planted the instrument on the booth shelf, but did not hang up the receiver. Whipping out of the booth, he dived into a hallway and went up a flight of stairs four at a time.
He knew the newspaper phone P.B.X. operator was in an office on the same floor with the morgue. He had noticed the phone room door.
Rising on tiptoe, he gave a good imitation of floating as he went down the corridor. Nearing the frosted glass panel of the P.B.X. room, he ducked low, so his shadow would not show. He gave the knob a gentle try. It gave; the door swiveled in.
The phone girl looked around, gave him a forced, uneasy smile. Her lids shuttered up when she saw Nace’s peculiar scar. The sight seemed to frighten her.
“Wh-what do you want?”
“A look at your board!” Nace told her.
The girl’s jaw dropped. Her swivel chair squeaked as she spun. She reached both hands for the web of connecting cords on the P.B.X. board.
“None of that!” Lunging, Nace brushed her hands back.
The girl leaped up, mouth agape to scream. Nace plastered a hand over her mouth and forced her back in the chair.
Slotted brass holders under each jack on the phone board bore designation cards. Nace examined these; he followed cords with his fingers. His inspection lasted at least a minute.
He frowned at the P.B.X. operator. The serpent on his forehead seemed to coil and uncoil, as the winkles came and went.
“You’ve got my connection cut in on an outside line,” he pointed out grimly. “What’s the idea?”
The girl shrank down into her chair. “You’re crazy.”
NACE shoved his telegram from the governor under her nose. She seemed reluctant to look at it.
“Read that!” he said harshly.
The girl read. She began to shudder. Her hands opened and shut like the paws of a stretching cat.
“Do you know that a murder accomplice can draw a life sentence?” Nace asked fiercely.
The girl spread her hands over her face and began to sob.
“Cough up,” he commanded. “You’re in a tough spot, kid.”
The girl blubbered, “I didn’t know it was anything very wrong. If I had I w-wouldn’t have done it for fifty dollars a week.”
“Who hired you?”
“A man I met at the dance.”
“His name?”
“Chick Oliver.”
Nace thought of the chicken-headed man who had taken the Robin Hood bullet between the eyes. “Was he a little squatty guy with a long neck and a head like a chicken?”
“T-t-that’s him!” stuttered the frightened operator.
“He was killed about twenty minutes ago!” Nace said ominously, knowing it would do no harm to frighten her a bit more.
She began to rock from side to side and whimper.
“What conversations were you to connect outside?” he asked.
“Anything for Mr. App!” she moaned. “Then, a little while ago, I got a call asking for anything you received.”
“What number did you connect the calls to?”
She gave him a phone number, then quavered, “I h-h-hope I h-h-haven’t done any harm!”
“Oh no!” he jeered. “You haven’t done anything but nearly get me killed and get App kidnapped and probably murdered.”
The girl rolled over so she could mash her features against the arm of her chair.
Nace trailed downstairs, grim faced. He found the city editor—a youngish man with too much belly—and asked, “Got a back number directory?”
The directory was produced. Nace looked up the number the girl had given him.
“Clarence Oliver,” was the name which followed the number. The address was out on Eleventh. A high number! That meant it was far out.
NACE went back to the P.B.X. girl’s cubby. He had remembered his interrupted conversation with Julia.
The phone operator still sobbed in her chair.
Nace put on her headset and snapped levers. He called, “Hello!” several times but received no reply. Julia had left the wire.
“Did you touch these connections?” he asked the operator.
She shook her head, and tears fell off her chin.
“Keep your trap shut about this!” Nace advised her. “Maybe it’ll come out all right.”
He now called the house from which Julia had talked. A pleasant-voiced old lady—she sounded like an old lady—answered him.