Horror Wears Blue

by Lin Carter

  “Thanks, bud,” he said cheerfully, as the leader indicated that it was okay for them to sit down and eat. “I’ll call room service when we’re through eating, and you can come and clean away the dishes,” he added.

  Number Six smiled briefly. “Cheerful cuss, aren’t you,” the thug remarked.

  “Well, why not, after all?” Scorchy demanded around a mouthful of rather tasty hash. “We got room and board free here, and a lotta you guys around to wait on us hand and foot. I think I’ll recommend this joint to my pals, when I leave.”

  “That may not be for a while,” grinned Number Six.

  They ate their dinner and drank down the hot black coffee. Then the revolvers directed them back into the corner while the dinner things were cleared away and the thugs left the room, locking and bolting the stout door behind them.

  “Why don’t you get some shut-eye, kid,” advised Scorchy Muldoon. “I think it’s gonna be a long night.”

  The storage and shipping facilities of the Japanese firm of Hirobachi Electronics were in a small building on a side street in one of the more rundown areas of south London.

  The watchman was in his little office with his feet propped up, comfortably observing an old Humphrey Bogart movie on a small portable black-and-white television set when the dark van pulled up.

  He ambled out to inquire what the men in the van wanted at this time of night. As they began emerging from the rear of the van and could clearly be seen in the glare of the streetlights, the watchman blanched and his jaw dropped.

  He reached for his pistol out of pure habit, but then his hand faltered and fell away. He knew it was no use to threaten the men from the van with a firearm.

  The Blue Men grinned, and went about their business, once they had tied up the watchman. With brisk efficiency, they loaded the materials they had come for in the rear of the van. They had gone unerringly to the right shelves in the storage building, as if guided by some sixth sense.

  The helpless watchman looked on without being able to interfere. In the harsh light, the Blue Men could be narrowly observed. They wore ordinary business suits which seemed oddly bulky and ill-fitting. They walked with exaggerated caution, like men would when attempting to negotiate a sidewalk slippery with ice. They communicated with brief hand gestures, apparently using some variation on the deaf-and-dumb sign language.

  There was something unnervingly uncanny about them as they methodically looted the storage building, taking only certain cases of components and ignoring the rest.

  They were as completely blue as the papers had reported. Even their teeth and the whites of their eyes were the same shade of powder blue as their shoes and suits.

  And they weren’t wearing any gloves. The sharp-eyed watchman was certain of the fact, which he gave later to the constables when they arrived in a hurry answering his call, once he had worked free of his bonds.

  It was as if they had no fingerprints to leave behind as clues. But this was too weird to be possible. Everybody leaves fingerprints. Oh, sure, the watchman — a great reader of detective stories in his youth — had heard of Chicago gunmen who had burned off their fingerprints with diluted acid back during Prohibition days.

  But that process was dangerous and very painful. It would have been a lot simpler, just to put on gloves.

  Once the van was loaded, they got in and drove away into the night.

  The watchman eventually wormed loose and called the police.

  Zarkon had gone to sleep when the telephone rang, arousing him. He spoke into the receiver, then listened intently, asking a few brief questions. When he hung up the phone, his features expressionless, Doc Jenkins inquired:

  “What’s up, Chief? Any news about Scorchy and the kid?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” replied the Master of Omega.

  “Not them boys in blue again?”

  Zarkon nodded. In brief words he described the latest raid by the Vulture’s gang.

  “Same M.O. as before,” muttered Doc Jenkins, rubbing his heavy jaw thoughtfully.

  “Not precisely the same,” Zarkon informed him.

  “How was this raid any different from the last couple?” inquired the man with the camera eyes and tape recorder hearing.

  “This time there were twelve of them.”

  CHAPTER 19 — The Ruse

  By the time that Prince Zarkon and the Omega men arrived at the warehouse, the experts from New Scotland Yard had already gone over every inch of it. Val Petrie, looking grim, greeted Zarkon at the gate.

  “No fingerprints,” he said briefly. “Except those of the men who work here. And the night watchman swears that the Blue Men were not wearing gloves. Interesting.”

  “Very interesting,” agreed Zarkon.

  Petrie glanced at a list on the clipboard he held.

  “They took the same sort of components as they have taken before. There was plenty of cash in the safe, but they didn’t even bother with it. Also, they took nothing else, although there were more valuable materials stored here than the sort of thing they stole.”

  “Did the watchman get a good, close look at them?”

  “He did, indeed,” answered Petrie. “Do you want to talk to him?”

  Zarkon replied that he did.

  A brief interview with the night watchman disclosed little that was of interest. His report tallied precisely with every other eyewitness to the robberies committed by the Blue Men. The watchman did, however, place special emphasis on the fact that the robbers had walked about with exaggerated caution.

  Zarkon and Petrie looked at the floor of the storage space. It was of cement, and very gritty underfoot. It was difficult to imagine why anyone would have walked upon so rough and secure a surface with the sort of precautions the watchman described. You couldn’t have slipped and fallen on this particular cement floor if you tried.

  “Interesting,” said Petrie again. Zarkon made no reply, but he seemed to agree.

  Early morning was pink in the skies over London, by the time that Zarkon and his men left the storage area. Driving back to the sleazy little hotel, Doc Jenkins asked his chief:

  “You got any idea what all this is about?”

  Zarkon nodded. “I have a few notions, Doc. Nothing very definite. Just a few informed hunches.”

  Doc Jenkins looked satisfied. “Good!” he said. “I’m glad somebody has a hint of what’s really going on, cause I’m stymied.”

  Zarkon smiled, but said no more.

  They had a very early breakfast in the little Piccadilly pub. Miss Cathleen McCullen was not yet on duty, but a sleepy-eyed porter, recognizing them by now as regular customers, served them an indifferent meal consisting of scrambled eggs, sausages, toasted muffins, and plenty of strong coffee. They wolfed the meal down hungrily, all but Nick Naldini, who toyed with his food, and who looked listless and troubled.

  Nobody bothered to ask Nick what was wrong, because they all knew without asking. Although Naldini and Scorchy Muldoon were constant verbal sparring partners, they were secretly the closest of friends. And Nick was suffering from Scorchy’s unknown fate.

  “From the way Nick looks,” muttered Ace Harrigan to Prince Zarkon, “maybe we oughta give Val Petrie a free hand, let him assault the Old House. After all, Chief, if Scorchy and the boy are being held there ...”

  Zarkon shook his head slowly.

  “Too dangerous. If the Vulture is holding them prisoner, which I have no doubt will prove the fact, then he will contact me. They will be the bait for the trap. They would have to be, Ace, since they are of no other use to the Vulture, save as bait for me.”

  “I hope you’re right, Chief,” said Ace Harrigan fervently.

  Zarkon did not reply. He hoped the same, and no less fervently.

  But time would tell.

  Scorchy had decided to stay awake while little Joey Weston slept. Since the Vulture’s men had apparently decided to keep the lights on all night in their “guest room,” the bantamweight prizefighter determined to
use the illumination to good advantage.

  He searched their prison thoroughly, discovering nothing that was of any particular interest. No microphones were in evidence, although he looked under the mattress and behind the sink and toilet, and even under the table and twin chairs.

  This didn’t mean much of anything. The Vulture could easily have planted a mike behind the plasterboard wherewith the walls were covered.

  Also, Scorchy discovered no TV cameras. These can be made very small, he knew, and could have been concealed in the molding or in the light fixtures.

  Apparently, they were not. For one thing, there was no molding on the walls. For another thing, the “light fixtures” consisted of a single naked bulb dangling from the ceiling at the end of a wire.

  A hidden microphone, however, remained the strongest possibility. Scorchy made his plans with that in mind. After his search of the room in which they were imprisoned, he went over to the card table and sat down. In the pocket of his borrowed jeans resided a plastic knife which he had purloined from their dinner.

  With this, Scorchy began to pry out the gem set in the ring on his finger.

  The Vulture’s agents had cleverly ordered them to disrobe, as the men had guessed (quite correctly) that each of Zarkon’s operatives carried a miniature arsenal concealed in their garments. The thugs had not been smart enough to make Scorchy take off the ring he wore.

  It was an ordinary-looking ring, the style of which designated it as a high school graduation ring. It held a cheap blue stone and the name of Scorchy’s high school and the date of his graduation class was embossed around the setting.

  With the tip of the fragile plastic knife, Scorchy carefully pried out the stone. This did not prove very difficult to do, since the ring had been fabricated for precisely that purpose.

  Once the gem was free of its setting, Scorchy dug into the pocket of his jeans and extracted therefrom one of the plastic spoons from their dinner.

  He then cracked the fake gem smartly on the edge of the card table, exactly as one cracks a fresh egg. It contained a fine gray powder, which he emptied into the plastic spoon.

  The Blue Men thought they had completely disarmed Scorchy Muldoon, but as it turned out, they hadn’t quite managed the feat.

  Now, Scorchy had the means to break out of here, with just a little bit of luck. And, if he proved lucky in the attempt, it was his most fervent wish to be able to toss a monkey wrench or two into the mechanism of the Blue Men.

  And Scorchy was very proficient with monkey wrenches ...

  Scorchy was perfectly correct in assuming that the Vulture’s “guest room” was bugged. The miniature microphone was cunningly concealed in the wall, and the bead-sized instrument was disguised as a nail head. It protruded a half inch from the wall, and from the faded square patch beneath it, had once served as a picture hanger. Or so, at least, occupants of the small cell were supposed to think.

  The operative in charge of staying up all night to listen in to the two prisoners was called Number Nine. He had been a small-time safecracker until he had been successfully recruited by the Vulture during the formation of the Blue Men.

  Listening to a microphone that reports nothing of significance can be a crashing bore, Number Nine discovered. There had been no conversation in the “guest room” since Scorchy Muldoon had said good-night to Joey Weston. Then, according to the faint creaking of the floor boards, the feisty little Irishman had restlessly prowled about the prison room, before settling with a creak into one of the two folding chairs drawn up before the card table.

  The cracking of the fake gem had been a sound too faint for Number Nine to hear. Besides, by that point, he was reading a newspaper and paying little or no attention to what was coming over the headphones.

  After a while, he heard something that roused him to full attention: a hoarse, gargling sound.

  And the voice of Scorchy Muldoon, saying urgently: “Kid! What’s wrong? You sick or something? holy mackerel — hang on — I’ll git some help!”

  Then there came the hammering of a balled fist, evidently on the only door to the room, and an anxious cry for help.

  “Hey, you guys! The kid’s having a fit or something! Help me, willya!”

  Number Nine uttered a coarse expletive and got swiftly to his feet. The Vulture would never forgive him if anything was allowed to happen to the valuable prisoners.

  Two more of the gang were sleeping on cots outside the cubicle where Number Nine monitored the microphone planted in the “guest room.” He shook the two into wakefulness.

  “Something’s wrong inside,” he snarled. “The kid’s sick or something. Let’s move —”

  They unbolted and unlocked the door and went in cautiously, revolvers out and ready for action.

  CHAPTER 20 — The “Guests” Check Out

  Never before had so few of the Blue Men entered the room wherein Scorchy Muldoon and little Joey Weston were being held prisoners. The reason for this was obvious, from later correlation of information: most of the gang were out on the night raid on the storage facilities of the Japanese manufacturer.

  Temporarily, it seemed, the Vulture’s Roost was undermanned.

  It was just the sort of break that Scorchy had been waiting for.

  When the three armed men came bursting into the “guest room,” they found Scorchy bent solicitously over Joey Weston, who lay on the bare mattress, doubled into the fetal position, clutching his stomach and groaning.

  Scorchy lifted an anxious face to the thugs.

  “Git some help, willya? The kid’s sick.”

  Number Nine waved him aside with the barrel of his revolver, and Scorchy obediently withdrew to the side while the two other members of the gang currently on the premises went to check on the little newsboy’s condition.

  Number Nine’s attention was more concentrated on the boy, who moaned and writhed, than it was on Scorchy Muldoon.

  This proved to be a mistake.

  “Seems to have a pain in his gut,” confided Scorchy, approaching Number Nine, who frowned and bit his lip, studying the sick lad on the mattress.

  Then Scorchy flung the contents of the plastic dinner spoon directly into the eyes of Number Nine. The thug gasped and went pale, and raised both hands to claw at his eyes.

  But Scorchy was there, grabbing the hand that held the revolver. It went bang!, but by that time it was aimed at the ceiling, where the bullet did no harm other than to gouge a handful of plaster out, which came sifting down like sudden snow.

  Then, howling his war cry gleefully, Scorchy kicked Number Nine in the stomach and, as the first crook sagged to the floor, flung himself on the other two, who lifted startled faces. They also raised their guns.

  But in the next instant, Joey Weston — recovering from his fit with what appeared to be an instantaneous and miraculous healing — bit one of the men in the hand. Snatching the injured wrist away with a startled oath, the thug dropped the gun, which Joey adroitly snatched up and leveled.

  “Drop it, mister,” said the plucky lad in dangerous tones to the remaining armed man. The crook cursed feelingly, but let his pistol fall to the floor.

  “Good work, kid!” breathed the bantamweight boxer feelingly, as he and Joey bound and gagged the three men with strips of cloth torn from their own clothing.

  Joey grinned briefly. His eyes were sparkling, and he was having a marvelous time. What an exciting adventure to tell to his schoolmates, once he got back home to Knickerbocker City!

  Once the three were effectively put out of action and rendered harmless, Scorchy could not resist a bit of bragging.

  “I figgered you guys had a microphone planted somewhere in the room,” he crowed, “so I woke Joey up and whispered to him — too low for your gadgets to pick up — and tol’ him to play sick and grab his stomach.”

  Then, turning to Joey Weston, Scorchy said: “Let’s get outta here, kid!”

  They left the room, locking and bolting the door behind them.

&
nbsp; On the floor, the three Blue Men looked disconsolately at one another and thought their own sour, bleak thoughts.

  The Vulture was swift to punish failure.

  And they had failed ...

  Outside the small room in which they had been held captive, the two found a dimly illuminated hallway. At one end was the small cubicle in which Number Nine had sat, monitoring the secret microphone; outside of it were the two cots on which the other thugs had slept.

  “Follow me, kid,” hissed Scorchy Muldoon. “Keep yer mouth shut and yer eyes an’ ears open, okay?”

  “Sure, Mister Scorchy!”

  The boxer nodded at the pistol which Joey Weston clutched.

  “You know how to use that thing, kid?” he inquired.

  “Sure I do,” claimed Joey Weston stoutly, although he had never fired a pistol in all his young life. Scorchy nodded.

  “Okay, let’s go. I wanna take a quick look-see around this joint.”

  The two proceeded down the hall with Scorchy taking the lead position and little Joey taking up the rear.

  The Old House was as silent as the proverbial tomb. So silent that it would have been difficult to imagine that anyone else but themselves and the three men they had bound and gagged were in the structure. But Scorchy thought it more than likely that the Vulture was somewhere on the premises, and he meant to take the criminal mastermind by surprise and — turning the tables rather neatly — make him their prisoner.

  They crept on silent feet through empty corridors and sparsely furnished rooms, wherein they encountered no more of the opposition. Scorchy was not to realize this fact until much later, but all of the other members of the Vulture’s gang were out on another of their burglarious missions tonight. At any other time, the place would have been bustling with thugs and it would have been difficult if not actually impossible for Scorchy and Joey Weston to have gotten this far undiscovered and unchallenged.