Madman on a Drum

by N. R. De Mexico

  The same. H. H for Heroin. He studied the inside of the cupboard, feeling in the near darkness of the light from the radio tubes. Nothing here any more but the boxes--wooden and held with six clamp-bolts--in which the record blanks were transported. Still--he reached inside one, already opened. No records here. Only small boxes. He raised one, cautiously, through the open top, drew it over the crack of light filtering under the door.

  Castille Soap! Hastily he broke open the end of the box. Powder.

  Voila!

  They had to talk. Any minute, now, they might leave the room. If only there were something he could do. Some noise that would get them on the track. Some something.

  But there wasn't.

  If only you had a gun. You could have asked Ken Clark for a gun. Ken probably had one ... Or maybe not.

  Bill had one. You knew about Bill's. It was a relic. A .32 gentleman's pocket pistol. But it worked and modern cartridges fitted it. You could have asked him for it. But you hadn't asked. Hadn't even thought of it.

  They were still talking, running at the mouth like a bunch of old women. Chattering blithely about everything in the world but what you wanted them to. And, inch by inch, the recording head was creeping inward on the disk surface. Inch by precious inch. Second by precious second. There was no way you could get outside and put another platter on the turntable ... No way at all.

  The crashing of the thunderstorm filled the room. Why wouldn't they talk? Why? They had to talk.

  Couldn't be more than five minutes left of the record, now. They'd be leaving, any second, so O'Hannagan could get into his lousy parade. Sure. He'd parade and get himself elected District Attorney in the special election tomorrow. Then he'd protect the narcotics ring that this Vince-- whoever he was--and "The Boss"--whoever he was-- headed. At the same time he'd put on a drive to smash all the other narcotic-peddling groups so there'd be no competition. A sort of international cartel between the police and the criminals ...

  That was it.

  And the boys in the police uniforms ... They were in it too. The whole picture cleared, now. All except the part about Lois. And--about Larry Graham.

  Lois was dead. There was nothing that could be done about her. Nothing, except the electric chair--the tiny shock of the electric switch you had touched a few minutes ago, multiplied one million times. It was too good for the bastards ...

  If only they'd talk before the record ended ... If only you could get it down straight.

  Graham studied his watch. The sinister scraping sound was beginning again. Faintly ... Very faintly. But in minutes, seconds, the winding coil would tangle the stylus and it would do no good, no matter what they said.

  They had to talk. They had to.

  O'Hannagan was saying: "Well ... Nine o'clock. I'd better be on my way or I'll be looking at my own parade vanishing in the dust."

  The thunder crashed heavily overhead ...

  Chapter XVI

  FUN WITH A PHONOGRAPH

  "Wait a minute," Vince said. "I'll go down with you. I just want to stick a couple of nails in this window. I'll have a grill put on it tomorrow."

  Graham waited, tensely. They had to talk. They had to say something. All this couldn't be wasted.

  There was a sound of opening drawers. A search for a hammer--or for nails. What if they looked in here? Or if they even looked toward the cabinet? They'd see the turntables in motion, with the piled up coils of cuttings from the disks.

  But Vince found the hammer. The sharp clatter mingled with the heavier rumbling from the skies.

  O'Hannagan said: "What about this Morgan girl? What's all this trouble, anyway?"

  That was it. Graham's heart leaped. If only they'd talk fast. Fast, before the stylus fouled on the record.

  "Nothing. Wasn't anything to it. No more than was in the papers."

  "But what was it all about? Wasn't it dangerous to mess around with her at a time like this?"

  Up and down, like a see-saw. ["... First you got me high, then you got me low ..." How did the song go?]

  "Wait a second," Vince said. "I want to get this nail in straight. Hold this ..."

  The record was grinding badly, now. Graham could hear the churning of the fragments on the surface of the disk.

  Hammer blows. Sharp. Rapid. Then: "Seems she had fallen for this guy Graham. She wanted to get out of the business and go straight. But you know these dames: When they have a reform on, they go whole hog. She came to me and ... Wait a second! You're holding that wrong." More hammer blows. And a duller sound.

  "Damn!" shouted O'Hannagan. "Watch what the devil you're doing, man! You smashed my thumb."

  That did it. They'd worry about O'Hannagan's thumb until the record was over with.

  "Lessee," Vince said.

  "It's not bad," O'Hannagan told him. "Go ahead."

  "She came to me and told me she was leaving. Well, she'd been a sort of a distributor for the--the boys here. She knew all the ins and outs, and there was no question she'd eventually tell them to Graham. He's the conscience-stricken type. He'd probably persuade her to go and blab them to the cops.

  "Anyway, we didn't know how much she'd told him in the first place. So I told her to come around in the afternoon and we'd talk things over. This was all the night before last. Then I called the boss and told him the whole story.

  "He told me what to do. I called up Mason ... you know Mason. He's the lieutenant at the Fifty-first Street station house. Anyway, he lives in the same house Lois was in. But I didn't get a hold of him until yesterday afternoon. He said she'd already telephoned out during the day. I told him that, no matter what, he shouldn't let her do any more phoning. Deny he'd ever heard of her.

  "Around four she came uptown. I talked with her for a while, and then I had the boys lock her up here. Couldn't keep her downstairs, and this room is nearly soundproof. How the hell did I know she'd find that record you'd made and add something to it? I ask you? How would I know?

  "Anyway, when I came back up here, I found she'd written something on a postcard, that she threw out the window. I sent somebody down to get it there in the alley--but somebody had come through from the theater--that alley's open in the daytime. They've got an iron gate they close off at 126th at night. Anyway, somebody came from the theater and got the letter.

  "We figured it was to Graham. Who else would she write to? So we put a couple of men down by his house, paid off the landlord to lock him out and give us any mail, and got rid of the girl. The rest of it you know. We've got to get Graham for a few minutes before the cops do and grab off that postcard. That's all."

  The scratching and scraping on the turntable was becoming noisier, now. Couldn't use the full record. The loose curl of acetate would ruin it. Besides, that noise would get the two of them over to look at it, and they'd find the switch wouldn't work. Fortunately the thunder was louder, now.

  He reached up again, on the other side, found the switch wires, resisted the impulse to jerk back from the anticipated shock as he touched them. He crossed the wires and pressed his ear against the motor. Nothing doing. Wrong wire.

  He felt around, higher. This was it. This had to be it. He crossed the wires and listened again.

  The motor had started. Fine. Fine. Now, if only they said something ... Something to clear him before the record ran out ...

  He had the goods on them for narcotics--but that wouldn't get him out of the murder charge. And somehow they'd gotten the record back before Ken could get it.

  That was all. Graham reached up and pulled the wires apart. All but the shouting. Just the shouting left. He wanted to bounce about in his cupboard for sheer relief.

  They were still talking. Still arguing. Fighting about the logic of murder at a time like this--just before the election.

  "But, I'm telling you, we've got everything lined up for Graham," Vince argued.

  "A good lawyer could get him off," O'Hannagan said, sententiously.

  "Not with you handling the case," Vince said. "A
fter all, O'Hannagan, we're lining things up for you, but you've got to do your bit, too."

  "All right. All right," O'Hannagan said. "Let's get going. That parade--My God! Look at the time."

  The feet hurried down the stairs, after turning out the lights. Graham struggled with the door of the cupboard. He had locked himself in. But he found the inner clamp on the lefthand door, loosened it, and crawled out.

  He stared about in the lightning-interrupted darkness of the room. Empty. Have to check the records! See what you'd gotten.

  Graham removed the tangle of cuttings from the surfaces of the disks. The second was the important one. But the other would help.

  Graham lifted the weighted cutting heads from the records, and placed the light pick-up on the second disk. He turned on the amplifier, and set the needle on the record, with the volume set low.

  There was nothing on the recording but the crashing of thunder ... Nothing.

  You had to keep it low. You couldn't see, in the dim room, where the microphone had been placed. But it was probably at a distance. Graham turned up the volume, bit by bit--worrying about the amplification of the thunder. But he realized it didn't matter. More thunder was, simply, more thunder. Nobody downstairs would know the difference.

  Notch by notch he moved the volume up, until the recorded thunder was shaking the room. Then, mingled with it, came the weak voices, almost drowned in the thunder, but still there.

  "What with the election and all that fuss and bother coming up tomorrow, I'm worried, frankly ..."

  "Nothing to worry about, O'Hannagan. The boss has arranged everything ..."

  Graham lifted the needle and set it farther in on the disk. "Almost nine now. I'd better get going ..." Still O.K. that far in. He tried again, nearer the center. The quality of the reproduction was worse, but still intelligible, despite the clicks and cracks of the stylus striking the loose material.

  Now all you had to do was get out of here, with the records.

  Graham wrapped them carefully in paper, double thickness, triple thickness. If they were broken ...

  He carried the two disks gingerly to the window, set them down, pulled at the frame.

  It was tight. The lightning revealed two nails holding it in place.

  He picked up the records, opened the door into the front part of the loft. The neon signs no longer shone in the front windows. But there was light from the street, reflected from the blazing marquee of the Minerva.

  There were two stairways going down. The one to the right, obviously, led to the rear part of The Lantern. The other, on one side, to the street. He went down the long steps. The front door was locked, barred with a metal grill. You couldn't get out here, not without breaking the door down and--he stared upward--there was a burglar alarm spring pressing against the top of the door.

  Graham retreated hastily up the stairs.

  Have to use the back window. Find the hammer. Pull the nails. He fumbled excitedly over the tops of benches in the recording room. Nothing there. He felt over the tops of the portable speaker cabinets near the window.

  Here it was.

  Cautiously he pried the nails loose from the window jamb, trying frantically to ease their shrieks.

  Gently he raised the window, remembering the crashing sash weights. He looked down through the grill of the fire escape. There was a man standing in the alley.

  From outside came the clatter of a brass band, parading. The parade, of course. Rolling thunder shuddered overhead. Loud.

  He stepped onto the fire escape and raced upward, holding the records gently against his body. He looked down at the man standing below him in the alley. He had heard nothing.

  Rung by rung Graham climbed. One slip, one loose particle of rust falling would attract the watcher's gaze upward.

  Only a few more rungs. Carefully. Lightly. Holding the records.

  One more rung and his head would be above the parapet of the roof. He rose slowly, carefully, looked, pulled back, hastily.

  The front parapet was crowded, jammed, mobbed with people staring down. Down at the street, at the parade.

  He raised his head, again, slowly. Maybe, intent as they were on the street, he could walk behind them on the roof, carrying the records. He let the top of his head rise over the parapet, until his eyes were even.

  No dice.

  But what good were the records if you couldn't get them to the cops? There had to be a way out. There had to be. Or else you had to attract somebody here. You had to think. Fast.

  Maybe you could return on the fire escape, until you were right over the head of the watcher below. You could drop on his back, knock him down. Sure. Only ...

  Graham realized, suddenly, he knew nothing about violence--Nothing about how to leap on a man so he would make no outcry.

  No good. The man would know. And he had a gun. Besides, there would still be no way out from down there. Only through the Minerva. And Chimp was there.

  It was no good. There was no way out.

  None at all.

  Chapter XVII

  MORE FUN

  But there had to be. There was a way out of everywhere, everything. He drew back, silently, climbing down the ladder, standing on the flat of the fire escape, pressed against the wall against accidental observation.

  He had to get out quickly. The thunder was louder, now, and directly overhead. Jagged forks of lightning shattered the clouds, darted downward striking at protrusions on the nearby skyline. The rain would start soon, and they'd come back up to the room. Fast. Graham had to move fast.

  But where? In what direction?

  He squeezed back through the window into the sound room. What about a telephone? There must be a telephone somewhere in the front of the place. Call the cops, now that you had the evidence. You had everything you needed to clear you. You could get the cops from the police station and--but supposing they never gave you a chance to play the records and show them the evidence...? That was a chance you had to take.

  Graham went into the front room, searching for a telephone. After a while he found it--a booth phone. A nickel in the slot phone.

  He felt in his pocket.

  One huge, round half-dollar nestled neatly in its corner. Nothing else. Not a quarter. Not a dime. They would have roused the operator. Only a half-dollar.

  He leaned against the front window, staring down at the parade passing in the street. It would have been so easy, so damned easy to push open the window and jump down to the street. Only fifteen feet. Anybody could jump that far. Anybody. Anybody except a man carrying phonograph records--acetate on glass.

  His mind seemed out of control, now. It no longer searched calmly for a solution. It ran around the inside of his skull like a squirrel in a cage.

  The phone. The damned phone.

  No good. He thought of unscrewing the box and crossing the wires. But the box required a special screwdriver. No good.

  Nothing was any good. Eventually, he knew, he'd have to hide the records somewhere and jump from that window. He knew when that would be, too. The second he heard footsteps on the stairs.

  He began a search for a hiding place for the disks, stumbling through muddles of electrical equipment, banging his shins against microphone uprights, portable amplifiers, coils of extension wire ... Coils of extension wire. Amplifier! Speaker! Window!

  He set feverishly to work. He picked up one portable speaker with a built-in amplifier unit and set it in the window, speaker outward. He searched for a microphone and plugged it in. The power line he dragged excitedly behind him as he searched the baseboard for an outlet.

  There was none. O.K. This was a studio. The outlets would be somewhere in the tables.

  Have to hurry! The parade was nearly passed, now. He could see the tail end passing, the square signs rotating, flashing O'Hannagan's name from every facet, the campaign marchers gazing warily up at the lightning-streaked sky.

  He found the plug; thrust the male end into the socket.

  H
e went back to the amplifier in the window. The parade was past and the first drops of rain were spattering on the street. The crowd was scurrying along the pavement. There were only minutes left. Minutes until not a person would remain on the street. Minutes until there would be no one to hear. Minutes until the paraders would return to find him trapped here in the room. They would come up here to talk. That was obvious. This was a sort of offshoot of The Lantern, and they probably held their private conferences here in the soundproof room.

  The amplifier was warming up slowly. He tapped on the microphone, listening for the clattering response from the speaker. There was none, yet.

  He turned the volume controls open, wide; tapped the microphone again. There was a response, this time. Again. It was louder.

  He unfastened the hook that allowed the window to swing at right angles to itself. He tapped the microphone, heard the speaker beaten down with the crescendo roaring of the storm. He held the microphone directly in front of his mouth, a foot away for clarity.

  He screamed, putting everything he had into .his voice: "Police!" The speaker shouted: "POLICE!" sending his voice crashing through the street, beating down even the hideous clamor of the storm and the fading strains of the parade.

  "POLICE! HELP! SEND HELP QUICK! CALL THE POLICE! GET A POLICEMAN!" Over and over again, the echoes of his voice rolling down the thoroughfare.

  There was a crowd below, now, staring up at him. He kept it up, straining his voice for volume. "TELL THEM TO BREAK DOWN THE DOOR. HURRY!"

  He yelled, screamed, howled, roared. He barked, shouted, bellowed, hollered. Over and over again.

  They were coming! The police. He could see the green and white coupe, siren screaming, coming, and from behind came the clatter of feet on the stairs. He raced hastily to the stairhead, slammed the door, and began to lean things against it. Speaker-cases. Chairs. Finally a huge counter was dragged over and pushed into place. He returned to the amplifier.