“Yes,” the General agreed coldly. “It would have simplified matters for us all. However, Mr. Harris himself removed the records in question night before last. Documentary evidence, proving that those axle test figures were altered, is now safely under lock and key, although in view of more recent developments, such records will not be needed.”
Abruptly his finger shot out, pointing accusingly to Bixler. “You,” he said, “are a murderer! You made one proven attempt—quite possibly two or more additional attempts—against young Locke. You richly deserve the hangman or the electric chair, for even though you were unsuccessful, your intentions were murderous. It’s nothing more than dumb luck for you that you will not get either.”
Bixler protested hoarsely, “I didn’t do nothin’. I was just keepin’ an eye on the kid. Mr. Tracy thought…”
“You will be rewarded as you deserve, Bixler. The company has no further need for your services and I rather imagine you will find it difficult to obtain a connection with any other large industry in America. I promise you I shall do my best to see that such is the case.
“Now don’t interrupt,” he snapped fiercely, as Bixler started to speak again. “I know you did a good deal of ugly, secret work for the late unlamented Leonard Tracy. Tracy was a man who lived by the sword. It is quite fitting that, in accordance with the Biblical prophecy, he should have perished by the sword.”
Ulysses Flint tilted his head, his eyes fastening on the joists and beams above the tall test machine, as if he were studying the sooty cobwebs which had accumulated there.
“I want all you people to remember,” he said, “that management is not gifted with omnipotence. The men at the head of the company’s affairs make judgments based upon past records and the information at hand. No man’s judgment is better than his information. Therefore, the management of American-Consolidated Steel had no reason to suspect that Leonard Tracy was a criminal. Yet he was—almost as great a criminal, as the one actually guilty of these murders.”
Ray Locke’s mind was whirling in hopeless confusion. To him, the General’s explanations had thus far only succeeded in clouding the picture. A substantial number of possible suspects appeared to have been eliminated but there was still no indication of the actual killer’s identity.
Jackie North and Glenn Cannon were both definitely out, according to Ulysses Flint. So were the smaller fry, the workmen, Sisco and Kosleck, and the dangerous company cop, Bixler.
Had the General meant to count out Gaylord as well? On this point Flint had been ambiguous. He had made no definite statement, but it was Ray’s impression that Flint did not consider Gaylord to be the murderer.
“Leonard Tracy,” the General was continuing, “was a great opportunist. To the public, the wreck of The Prairie Comet was a horrible tragedy. To the officials of American-Consolidated Steel it was not only a tragedy but a headache. But to Leonard Tracy the catastrophe came as the opportunity of a lifetime for the making of an enormous personal fortune. It was Tracy, therefore, who planted among Cannon’s papers the forged letter which convicted both Cannon and Locke and sent them to the penitentiary!”
The General looked down from the ceiling then, and at Ray. “You labored for some time, Locke, under the delusion that Tracy was your friend. But before he died, I believe you had satisfied yourself of the reverse. Undoubtedly, Tracy gave you a job at Ironton for the sole purpose of making sure, with Bixler’s help, that you would die inside this plant.”
Ray’s confusion was greater than ever. “But why?” he demanded. “What earthly reason did Tracy have for wanting to kill me?”
“That’s what bothered me, too, for quite a time,” the General admitted. “I’ve finally pieced the story together, with what I believe to be a fair degree of accuracy, from certain confidential sources of information open to my people in New York—bank sources. They revealed records of certain frenzied financing undertaken by Tracy; financial transactions of the late Belden Locke, before his tragic death in the wreck of the streamliner.
“You see, Ray”—it was the first time Flint had called Ray by his first name and Ray wondered at the sudden warmth of the big man’s tone—“you see, your father had been working for some time before his death upon a new and superior process for the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen, a process which tied in closely with the steel industry. In fact it would enable the steel industry to recapture the importance of its former position as the leading producer of manufactured nitrogen, lost when byproduct coke-ovens came into competition with the Haber method of atmospheric fixation.
“It appears that Belden Locke, having successfully developed his new process in the laboratory, went to his friend Leonard Tracy with the suggestion that it be developed for commercial use through further experimentation at the Ironton Works. There were the inevitable ‘bugs’ to be overcome, problems of large scale production to be determined and solved. In consideration of his help and the privilege of utilizing Ironton’s facilities, Tracy was to get a small percentage of the total royalties, when, as and if the new process came into widespread use in the steel industry. Did your father, Ray, ever mention any of this to you?”
Ray said, “He must have been working on it that year I was with Transcontinental. I was traveling almost constantly, ten nights out of eleven on a sleeper. He never once uttered the word ‘nitrogen’ in my presence.”
The General nodded with satisfaction. “Just so. Belden Locke said nothing, even to his son. Leonard Tracy kept his mouth shut, too. Tracy should have consulted New York before making any such agreement involving use of the company’s equipment, but he saw a chance for a huge personal profit. I am informed by New York that if this process comes into general usage in the steel industry, royalties might easily run to ten or twelve million a year. You see, then, it was no peanut stand affair. Even a man of stronger moral fiber than Leonard Tracy might have been tempted. Tracy risked his important and lucrative position against the probability of great wealth. Then came the wreck of the Transcontinental flyer. That wreck brought death to Belden Locke and to Tracy the chance of appropriating the entire process for himself.”
A glimmer of light was beginning to clarify Ray’s understanding. The hidden reason for Leonard Tracy’s enmity was now revealed, and also the reason Belden Locke’s entire resources had been drained away so inexplicably. What, Ray wondered, would be the final disposition of his father’s process?
“Two obstacles confronted Tracy,” Ulysses Flint was saying. “Most immediate was his fear that Belden Locke’s son might stumble across the secret process among his father’s effects. It was, therefore, providential for Tracy that the axle which caused the wreck had been manufactured here at the Ironton Works and from defective steel. The fact that Raymond Locke had been the inspector who accepted the steel for the railroad was one of those tremendous trifles which always have and always will determine the future course of events. Tracy was quick to seize upon this coincidence as his means for insuring against possibility of interference. He framed you, Ray, by planting a forged letter among Glenn Cannon’s papers!”
“What about me?” Cannon asked.
“You,” Ulysses Flint declared, “were simply a sacrificial victim upon the altar of Leonard Tracy’s ambition. As a small part of his own plan, Tracy quite deliberately and cold-bloodedly wrecked your career.”
A strangled sound came from deep in Cannon’s throat. “If I’d known that I would really have been glad to kill him.”
The General paid no further attention to Cannon, but went on with his story. “The other obstacle which confronted Tracy was less formidable. Full details of the process had not been furnished by Belden Locke. And Tracy was no scientist himself. He knew he would need expert technical assistance. But that offered no great difficulty since he had available at Ironton a full staff of technical experts. He entered into an agreement of his own with one of these technicians. They would go full steam
ahead to work out the entire process, just as Belden Locke had intended to do. A small cut of the profits would go, this time, to the technician. Since the new process involved utilization of products of combustion from the open hearth and blast furnaces, an experimental laboratory was rigged under one of the furnaces in the Open Hearth. So far as other plant employees were concerned, this scientific workshop was kept strictly under wraps.
“Up to this time,” the General went on, “everything had worked out smoothly for Tracy. But now things began to go sour. During preliminary tests of the apparatus, Tracy managed to get himself severely burned by the flame from the open hearth checker-work. He was in the hospital for several months. But he instructed his technical collaborator to go ahead with the research.”
The big man swung suddenly to Benjamin Gaylord. “Incidentally, Gaylord, this type of scientific research would be far beyond your depth. Thus, when I began to understand the real motivations behind the crimes at Ironton, you were automatically eliminated from my list of possible suspects. Your dishonest activities have been on a petty scale only. You’re only a small time chiseler and it’s undoubtedly true that Leonard Tracy never had the slightest knowledge of your crookedness.”
Benjamin Gaylord opened his mouth as if to speak. The General waited pointedly, a look of loathing for the man upon his face. Gaylord closed his mouth again without uttering a word.
“When Tracy came back from the hospital,” Flint resumed, “the research was well advanced. Complete success was imminent. But by that time another obstacle had arisen in the path of the collaborators. It always happens when one embarks on a career of crime. Walter Keene, never averse to turning a dishonest dollar, as his activities in respect to the falsified tests have proven, had in some manner learned of the nitrogen research at the open hearth checker-work. Perhaps he demanded to be cut in on the proceeds. Exactly what happened then behind the scenes doesn’t matter. The important climax came when Keene, finding that certain papers pertaining to the research were kept in a locked metal box, attempted forcibly to appropriate the box. Tracy’s scientific collaborator was then obliged to make a sudden decision. That decision resulted in Keene’s death.
“With the first murder quickly and successfully accomplished, the murderer had another inspiration—the same inspiration which occurred to Tracy after the train wreck. Why not squeeze Tracy out and appropriate the entire process? You see, greed has been the whole motivating influence in this affair from the very start, nothing but ordinary, ugly, sordid greed.
“Tracy knew nothing of the scientific details. His collaborator refused to give him the requested information. They must have had several angry altercations. Finally, to settle the matter beyond further doubt, the collaborator eliminated Tracy by decapitation with the alligator shears. The pattern of Eternal Justice is visible when we consider that Tracy, who initiated the whole series of crimes, ended as its final victim.”
The General stopped talking. His black, inscrutable eyes moved slowly over all the faces before him. “Now,” he said, “that I’ve made the background and motivation of these crimes clear to you all, I know you are anxious to know the identity of the killer.”
He turned to Clara Dunne. “Miss Dunne, you told me not long ago that you thought my chances of finding the murderer among twenty thousand Ironton employees were nil. But the fact is, the killer left clues which definitely established his identity, even among so large a group—clues which definitely, inevitably stamped his guilt!”
Flints voice boomed accusingly. “You see, Miss Dunne, Mr. Ashley, who unquestionably has the necessary scientific attainment for pursuing the research on Locke’s process for fixation of nitrogen, had an alibi for the time when Walter Keene was murdered. Or, I should say, he told us he had an alibi. Subsequent check of his time card seemed to bear out his statement. But further investigation on the part of Lieutenant Lambert and the homicide detail has shown conclusively that Christopher Ashley was actually inside the Ironton Works at two-thirty on the night of Keene’s death.”
Chapter Seventeen
In the sudden breathless silence the mewing of the newborn kittens in the container behind the test machine rose plaintively. The eyes of everyone had shifted to Christopher Ashley.
The man’s whole appearance seemed to have undergone a subtle change. His small, pointed beard no longer created an illusion of absent-minded scholarship. Instead, together with the shadows which the overhead light traced on Ashley’s cheeks, it gave him a cruel, ruthless look, like the paintings of cold-blooded Spanish conquistadores from a bygone century.
Ashley’s eyes, too, had lost their scholarly abstraction. They were arrogant now, hard. Yet deep below the surface they held a light of defiance as well—defiance and fear.
“It’s a lie!” he said and his words were chill and precise. “I don’t care who you are, Flint, it’s a lie! You can’t prove I was in the plant that night.”
“Oh, but you’re so wrong!” The General’s voice was almost purring. “So wrong! You see, Ashley, we have a witness who actually saw you around the splice bar mill that night, and who is prepared to swear to it.”
“Then your witness is a liar, too!”
“We’ll produce two witnesses, or should I say one witness and one accomplice. The girl will testify, too, Ashley!”
Ashley was visibly shaken. “The girl! Well…” He collapsed quickly. “I did actually go to the splice bar mill, but—”
“Why didn’t you tell us instead of lying?”
“I thought…”
“You wear a cloak of respectability, almost of righteousness,” Flint interrupted. “Holier-than-thou and all that sort of stuff. But withal you’re really a sanctimonious old fraud, Ashley. You didn’t tell us you were in the plant because you wanted no one to suspect your extracurricular activities. Isn’t that the fact?”
Ashley moistened his lips. He looked suddenly haggard. “It’s true,” he admitted. “But I know nothing of the murders. I swear I know nothing.”
“I didn’t say you did,” the General retorted unexpectedly. “But I wanted to give you a bad fright. You deserved it, for the way you’ve been acting. Actually, you’ve been sowing a few wild oats. Right?”
Ashley nodded silently, biting his lips. His face was brick red.
“The boss,” Ulysses Flint explained to Clara Dunne, “has been amusing himself with one of the girl chemists from your laboratory. He took her, that night, to the empty offices above the splice bar mill.”
To Ashley again, he said, “New York isn’t going to like it one bit. This company is in the business of making steel. It’s not a missionary society. But moral turpitude, particularly among supervisory personnel, is something the management in New York despises.” The General swung around again to Clara Dunne.
“And so we have eliminated everyone,” he said. “Except you! But we really didn’t need to follow the process of elimination. Because, as I remarked before, you left your individual stamp quite plainly on each victim.” Ray was unaware that his mouth had dropped open. He stared in almost comic amazement, his eyes traveling from the General to the calm, emotionless face of Clara Dunne.
Even now, although Ulysses Flint had disposed of each possible murderer and named Clara as guilty, Ray could not believe it. Nor could he imagine how U. G. Flint had identified the red bruise on his head as the trademark of the stocky Chief Chemist.
The big man was bending now, pointing to the circular mark in the middle of his bald spot. “This, Miss Dunne, is what gives you away, even without further evidence. A similar mark was found on the head of each murdered man. Your method was remarkably simple, Miss Dunne—simple and efficient.”
That would be like Clara, Ray was thinking. Anything she did would be done simply and efficiently, even murder.
“Your murder method must have come to you on the spur of the moment,” the General went on, “probably at th
e time you found it necessary to do away with your troublesome assistant, Keene. Keene had been growing increasingly inquisitive about your work on the nitrogen research. He even tried, himself, to find the key to the Locke, as he called it, meaning, of course, the Locke Process. He knew you were working with the products of combustion from the open hearth furnace. He also managed to divine an additional application from the gases of the blast furnace. How near he came to learning something definite we will never know. But he must have worried you plenty. When he appropriated your brass box with the Chinese puzzle lock, in which you had temporarily placed certain recent data, you knew something must be done. You found him in the forge shop where he had broken open the box under a steam hammer. Action was imperative. So you removed your shoe, struck him on the head with the heel. Then, while he was still unconscious, you placed his head under the hammer and cracked his skull.”
Clara Dunne had not lost her composure. In fact, she hadn’t even changed color at the accusation.
“Ridiculous!” she said coolly. “Ridiculous on the face of it. How would I know how to run one of those big steam hammers?”
The General said, “Aha! That’s a good point. We checked it very carefully, Lieutenant Lambert and I. We remembered what you told us about how you used to play around your father’s metal-working plant when you were a small girl. That plant was actually a small forge shop, a hammer shop. We found out all about it, how you learned at that time to operate a steam hammer as well as a skilled hammer-man.”
Clara stared at the General. Her eyes seemed bigger than usual, but except for that she was seemingly unmoved.
“The fact that it would look like the sort of crime no woman would commit was why you killed Keene that peculiar way!” the General went on remorselessly. “And it was the reason you took a chance on carrying his dead body back to the laboratory. That required strength. But you’re a husky woman, Miss Dunne. You’d be perfectly capable of lifting a little runt like Keene.
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