The place was down on the docks. Lash tooled north along the waterfront on the banks of the Hudson, craning his neck to see addresses and company signs. He found himself in a dingy, unused section. Lash's destination was set back from the road in a nest of shadows cast by scrawny trees – a low, squat, stucco block located at a sagging bend in the pier.
He rolled past, parked outside a sagging warehouse, then cat-footed it back to the Brand concern. The sign above the door was sun-faded, the place rundown and unassuming. Lash donned the goggles and studied the doorknob.
There was no red glow. The self proclaimed lawyer had not been there within the last hour. What was behind the telephone call?
Faint noise from an open basement window drew his attention. Crouching before the opening, he peered through the grime. The view was obscured so he withdrew a collapsible spyglass from the inner pocket of his suit coat and brought the device to his eye.
The place was a hive of activity. Workmen were packing thin metal rods, roughly twenty four inches in length, into wooden crates marked for shipment via Hauser Import out of Hamburg. Precision drills shrieked as more rods were hollowed out. The rods glinted in the bright lights with a gleam that was unmistakable to Lash's trained eye.
Titanium.
Lash leaned back on his haunches. What the devil would Chaney or the Koivus do with drilled titanium rods?
The question gave him ideas he would need to check out in the lab. He succumbed to the siren song of scientific theory. There was nothing more he could learn squatting by the window anyway. And there was no sign of Ham Koivu or Eckert.
Tormented by more questions than answers, Lash glided back to the automobile. He would apply science to obtain his answers.
CHAPTER FOUR
Backlash
News of the impending armored car robbery reached Lynn Lash as he and Dean were in the laboratory.
“Hold that steady,” he scolded his diminutive secretary.
“I am!”
He worked the controls on the gramophone speaker he'd adjusted. The thing hummed but that was all.
“That's not it,” he said, frustrated. “I was certain sound was the secret. You're sure you overheard that woman mention a humming noise before the Robeson killing?”
“That's what she said," Dean replied. She set down the tube she was holding. She jerked at the boom of thunder outside. The rain had returned and it was a monsoon descending on the streets of the city. “The lady told the cops that she opened her window to toss out her husband's cigar butts and heard the hum just before she saw Robeson fall across the street.”
“Any chance she saw the killer?”
“Nope. She skedaddled to the phone to call in the bulls.”
“Damn! I heard what we can assume was the same hum when Chaney was killed,” Lash said. “I wasn't far from where the shot was fired at Chaney. The woman must have been close to the killer as well.” His gaze turned inward. “Now if sound isn't at the heart of it, what is?”
Lash had worked around the clock on his theory and was no closer to discovering the murder method. The telephone rattled. The police consultant was closest to the instrument. He snatched up the handset.
The familiar voice of Al Cord, reporter for the Times-Dispatch, gabbled over the wire.
“Slow down, Cord,” Lash said. “What's got you so hot?”
“Armed robbery!” the reporter bellowed.
“Give me the facts.”
“A stoolie of mine. Dependable guy. Gives me this tip about an armored car heist, got real particular about it. I sent the yarn downtown but they ignored it.”
“Why?”
“They think it's a crank.”
Lash paused to consider. The secret of the Murder Master's weapon eluded him for the moment. The report Casey had sent over earlier had revealed Chaney's involvement with German business overseas – frowned upon these days with the Nazis running the show over there, but not illegal. Everything pointed to the Finns being behind the Robeson and Chaney hits and he needed to work that angle with Casey. And yet Dean had sweet-talked someone down at City Hall and had learned that Brand Tool and Die was registered to Chaney. So many angles. But still... “This one is on the level? You're sure?”
“No question.”
“Where? Who?”
“Diamond shipment to the Chemical Bank. Hanover and Lexington. Gardner Security handling the transfer.”
Diamonds again. Lash thought of the Robeson murder. That clinched it. “When?”
“Midnight.”
Lash shot a glance at the wall clock. Thirty minutes.
“You're cutting it fine.”
“Been peddling it to the cops all night. No soap. That leaves us.”
“Us?”
“I'm in the all night diner across the street from you. I know this isn't your usual type of case but I was desperate. Get down here!”
Lynn Lash fired instructions at Dean to call in the details he gave her concerning the robbery. His hope was that a corroborating report would make the police take the job seriously.
Lash slid an automatic into his jacket pocket, his spidery fingers snatched up various gadgets and inserted them into the pockets of his vest, pants and jacket. He made for the door. Dean's excited voice barking into the telephone followed him out of the office and to the elevator.
Cord was at the wheel of a battered coupe, engine idling. Lash barely made out his associate's form behind the wheel with the thunderous rain coming down. He slid into the passenger seat with practiced ease.
Al Cord was a man of contradictions. His stocky frame led those who saw it to think him slow but he was as agile as a cat. Also the funereal expression etched into his blunt features belied the excitement he could not keep out of his voice when danger, and a story, were afoot.
“Did you try to get through to Sam Casey?” Lash enquired.
“No luck.” Cord's black eyes regarded Lash frankly.
“All right, we'll go this alone and hope Dean can get through to the law.”
Cord gunned the engine and the auto shot out into the sparse Sunday evening traffic. He guided the vehicle with his left hand. His right thumb was hooked in his vest pocket where it absently caressed the egg-shaped grip of a double-barreled .44 derringer.
They gingerly approached the armored car route by way of an alley. The street was deserted, an interlocking series of light and shadow as the weak streetlights struggled to cast radiance through the gloom.
“We're three blocks from the bank,” Al Cord explained. “Most of these tenements are vacant. Stoolie said they didn't want witnesses.”
“All right, kill the engine. If the robbers aren't already in position they soon will be. We don't want to give away our presence. We hoof it from here.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that. Damn rain.”
The two men eased to the mouth of the alley. Lash leaned out to glare up the deserted street.
“I don't see anything?”
“You think I have a road map with a big X to mark the spot?”
Then they heard it.
The heavy snore of a truck engine, deep and grumbling.
Lash peered around the wall of the building he was pressed up against. The rain was unyielding, obscuring all. However he did make out a hulking square vehicle grinding up the rain slick street.
“This is our boy,” he told Cord.
The armored car rolled toward them. Headlights threw cones of light to be fractured in a million places by the rain.
Lash detected the faint tell-tale hum over the purr of the engine. A half block from the alley, the hum cut off and a shot clanged through the radiator of the armored car.
Lash and Cord started out from the alley but another shot from across the street exploded one of the behemoth's front tires. Lash put an arm out to restrain the gutsy reporter.
“What are those monkeys firing?” Cord wanted to know.
“There's more than one,” Lash observed as another shot struck the car
's windshield – this time from a darkened window two doors from their position.
Lash had not expected this. His thinking was that the Murder Master would have hired muscle to help with the job, not a mob armed with the strange weapon.
“What are we waiting for?” demanded Cord.
A frantic moment passed as Lash considered their options. Yes, the weapon was deadly – he'd seen enough evidence of that – but it was still only a form of firearm. He and Cord were armed themselves.
Shots now hit the car from both sides. All four tires were flat now, the bulletproof windshield was swiss cheese. The driver stomped on the gas but the reinforced chassis only crawled.
The guard riding shotgun threw open his door. A Colt in his fist spouted tongues of flame and two men who had started out of a darkened doorway sprouted blood roses on their chests and sprawled down the brownstone steps. That strange hum came from everywhere and the guard jerked as holes were drilled through him, tumbling him to lie motionless in the street.
The driver was next to die. His foot came off the gas as a shot went through the side of his neck and the car lurched erratically to collide with a parked panel truck.
“Saps never had a chance in that shooting gallery,” Cord said through gritted teeth.
“Neither will we if we don't play this right,” Lash said. “We'll hit them when they show themselves.”
They did not have long to wait. The truck stopped, the guards dead, the attackers charged out of their hiding places. Six men clutching strange metal tubes in their fists stood in the street. The tubes were an exact match to what Lash had seen coming out of the Die shop. Snaking steel hoses connected the tubes to oblong packs on their backs which gave them the appearance of hunchbacks converging on the stopped vehicle.
“Now!” Lash spat.
The two men bolted from the alley. Lash's first action was to lob a gas grenade amidst the robbers. He was leery of its success in the open space punctuated by heavy rain to hamper dispersal but he tried to avoid needless bloodshed whenever possible.
Cord had other plans.
His derringer coughed and one of the robbers shifting around to the truck's rear doors cried out and pitched headlong.
The gas pellet went off at the same moment and the other gunmen jerked. Gas enveloped the man closest to the small explosion. He groaned and fell, senseless.
That distinctive hum filled the air and shots struck all around Lash and Cord, driving them to cover. Cord dove behind a cluster of garbage cans. From his place of safety in a recessed stairwell, Lash saw shots punch through the cans around Cord like they were made of tissue paper.
He let loose a storm of frantic lead, hit one man in the chest and scattered the rest.
“Al! Get across the street! Use walls for cover!”
Cord scampered to safety. Lash saw him duck into a stairwell that was the mate to his own place of concealment.
Nitro exploded the rear doors of the armored car.
In the momentary blinding flash and roar, Lash and Cord dashed forward.
With two men at the rear of the truck, there was only one gunman to stop their assault. But too much distance between targets rendered the man indecisive as the strange pack on his back hummed menacingly.
Cord fired and the man's large head was knocked drunkenly to one side. The gunman dropped.
Lash threw himself down on the wet pavement. He fired under the body of the truck at the legs of the men as they climbed out with the loot. The shots went wide but they convinced the crooks to abandon the truck and make for a closed furniture repair shop.
The glass door disintegrated under their boot heels. The men vanished inside.
Lynn Lash swung around the rear of the truck and came face to face with Al Cord aiming his .44 at him. Lash's foot nudged a black velvet sack as big as a grapefruit.
The diamonds.
In their panic the thieves had dropped it. Lash stuffed it into his pocket.
“We split up,” Lash said. “This mess needs the law. Get to a phone and make them understand it's for real. I'm going to tackle the two that got away before they come after me for the stones, try to keep them pinned down until the cavalry arrives.”
Cord didn't like the idea but knew there was no time to argue.
“Watch yourself!” he said, then he was gone. They'd passed a drugstore before turning into the alley.
Lash lobbed another smoke pellet through the doorway of the furniture store. A cloud of white smoke boiled out.
Gun drawn, Lash bolted toward the cloud. However he did not launch himself through the blind doorway and risk being drilled if the gunmen had guessed the purpose of the covering smoke. Rather he leapt up and kicked his way through the shattered display window damaged during the explosion of the armored car's doors.
He snapped off a shot haphazardly to keep the heads of the gunmen down. Inside, Lash dove behind a display case of drawer pulls.
No shot came.
Not wanting to lose his quarry, Lash came around the display cabinet and sidled quickly toward the back rooms of the place. The two men counted on a rear door through which they might make their escape.
Lash heard the scrape of feet. He threw himself to one side an instant before the humming noise which followed suddenly cut off. The men had turned to shoot it out. Glass shattered behind where he'd been standing.
The passageway was narrow. He'd be an easy target trying to cross it. There was no alternative however.
It was at this moment that a side room off the passageway presented itself as Lash's vision adjusted to the gloom. The men had not seen it with all of the smoke in the place.
The humming noise sounded again.
Lash bolted across the threshold, slammed the door and threw the flimsy bolt. He heard the tramp of heavy boots coming closer.
The deathly hum sounded through the door.
Lash threw himself behind the only cover available. This was a narrow metal wall, thinner than the garbage cans Cord had used as protection outside. There was no chance it would stop the coming shots.
Clang!
A thin column like the tip of a javelin jutted from the wall two inches from the end of his nose. The wall was a thin sheet of lead that vibrated with the impact. The weapon hummed again and the first protrusion had a mate – this one parting Lash's hair.
“Get 'im?” a gruff voice asked.
“Can't tell,” came the whispered reply as the door shuddered. “Come on! Break it down!”
Lash was already moving. He'd been lucky, he knew, but it would be foolhardy to wait for Lady Luck to smile upon him a second time.
The room he had entered was a closed chamber. Three walls stood before him in the deathtrap he'd blundered into. Shots punched through the door around the bolt, shredding it.
Mind racing, Lash sought an escape. Inspiration came to him. Thrusting a hand in a jacket pocket, he extracted four small fluorescent tubes. He shook them in his fist like a high roller and they responded with a yellow glow.
Lash fired two shots through the open doorway to buy him the precious seconds he so desperately needed. The brightening incandescence of the tubes showed him the remains of a workman's lunch on a small rickety table. He snatched up the square of crumpled cellophane and wrapped the tubes. A rubber band closed the top of the glowing ball.
He fired another shot, then he knelt to pry up the sewer cover. Leaving it askew with a man-sized gap visible in the feeble light leaking through from a streetlight outside the grimy basement window, he paused with the cellophane globes poised over the hole. The muted sound of rushing water reached him.
“Catch me if you can!” he roared as the door splintered. Lash tossed the wrapped lights into the open maw of the sewer and dove clear.
The words spurred the men to recklessness like a red cape before a bull. They charged in, firing their odd weapons. One of them spied the faint glow from the open manhole.
“He's gone down that sewer! The boss'll skin us alive i
f we don't get them rocks!”
They scurried for the hole. One of them thrust his head inside. “There he goes!” he announced as the glow dwindled. Seconds later they were in the drain chasing after the receding light.
The room they'd fled remained silent as a tomb for a moment. Then a faded, fetid tarpaulin bunched on the floor twitched and undulated.
Lynn Lash appeared from its folds.
He stood over the open sewer, a sly grin on his face. The sack of glow tubes dropped into the shallow rushing water beneath his feet had fooled the crooks into thinking he had fled through the pipe with a flashlight to guide his way. Quick thinking had saved his life. With only one cartridge in his automatic and his supply of gas and smoke pellets exhausted, Lash had had no choice but to let the men escape.
But the evening had yielded many positives. The diamonds were a telling weight in his trouser pocket. And he finally had a sample of the slug the strange weapons fired.
Lash retraced his steps and found himself standing before a large, walled-in, square bathtub. It was a stripping bath used to immerse large pieces of furniture in to remove decades old coats of shellac or varnish. The stripping agent was highly corrosive and the walls surrounding the bath were one inch lead.
He stepped into the drained bath and examined the deep conical dents that had been punched into the wall instead of through his flesh earlier. The men had fired from a slightly downward angle and the lead had not been pierced. Unless the slugs had shattered on impact, they had to be inside the makeshift receptacles gouged into the lead wall.
Lash extended two long fingers into the first oblong protuberance, hunting for the slug. What he encountered burned his fingers and he hastily withdrew them. They were wet. Steeling himself for another burn, he thrust his fingers inside again.
There was no slug.
The bent lead was filled with scalding water. They both were.
Lynn Lash froze. His brain poured over the facts to date, hunting correlations and conclusions.
He had it!
But he had to be certain.
He turned and bolted for the street. Bursting out of the furniture shop and into the warm summer rain, he made a beeline for the weapons with the fallen crooks.
The New Adventures of Lynn Lash Page 3