TEN GLASS EYES
by Maxwell Grant
As originally published in "The Shadow Magazine," December-January 1948.
Imagine a seemingly perfect murder, with no witnesses, no clues... except
the dubious one of a missing eye made of glass. The police are even more
disturbed when, on the lookout for the eye, they wind up with ten of them. Ten
glass eyes shimmering in silent glee!
CHAPTER I
IT began, if these things ever have a beginning, when a man darted across
a street in broad daylight.
Dashing through the traffic like a mad moth bent on immolating itself in a
flame, he made his way through the tangle of juggernauts. Broken field running,
he was thinking, was never like this.
Is there any stop, he wondered, once you begin to run? Is there any
escape? But there was no time for thought. Behind him, tenacious as death, came
that tall, thin man whose face kept popping up so often that it had become a day
nightmare.
The man who was running chanced a glance behind him. Had the traffic lost
the... no, there was that aquiline face. Persistent as death.
Into a department store. The man knew he should not run, but it was hard
to slow down to a walk with that menacing presence so close. Through shoppers,
mostly female, past counters that offered the treasures of Araby at ten percent
off, he made his way.
That elevator there... could he duck in just as the doors came to a close?
He wandered around as though there was not a thought in his head. Then, just as
the doors started to close, he darted within the cubicle.
He sighed. He was alone. Alone but for the twenty or thirty people in the
car. The elevator operator intoned in a voice laden with the weariness of all
time, "Second floor, gents furnishings, ties, shirts, suits, outdoor furniture,
anyone out?"
There was no answer. The man who was running from his fate edged his way
back as far as he could when the car door opened at the third floor. A bevy of
women left the car. Ahead through the open door he could see girdles, slips,
and various other completely female appurtenances.
He scrunched back into the now slightly more empty car. He had no plans
now. Where were those careful plans he had made? He smiled a sour grin. Where
are the snows of yesteryear? The careful plans had vanished as if they had
never been, when that other man had appeared in the background. What use was a
new identity, a mustache, colored glasses, a stooped walk, the new name, when
all the time that harsh face was somewhere in the environs?
It had all seemed so simple at first. Maybe it always looked simple.
Perhaps the Greeks were right, perhaps you did carry your fate inside you.
The door opened on the fifth floor. The car was now almost empty. He
walked out of it just as if he were a carefree shopper. Ahead lay what?
Materially there was a floor full of phonographs and radios. Two record players
were going full blast as though in competition. One was playing Beethoven's
Ninth... and the other? The young man scowled as he tried to get the beat of it.
What was it? "Get out of Town"... That was too apt. It was like a corny
clue in a bad play.
If only he could get out of town. If he could vanish off the face of the
earth for a while it would help. If he could... his brain stopped working.
Coming up the escalator, face set, eyes incurious, was the face of his fate.
The man had been trailing him for... it seemed like forever. Really it was
only two days. Forty-eight hours. Two days in which he had neither slept, nor
barely eaten.
The harsh-faced man seemed not even to notice his quarry. He looked
around. He made a small grimace at the warring sounds that came from the rival
phonographs. To the naked eye he could have been a shopper.
The young man, looking around desperately for some kind of exit, caught a
distorted reflection of his own face in a highly polished piano top. Could that
be his face? That gaunt, lined thing?
He was young, barely twenty-eight, but the face that leered at him looked
like a middle-aged, haggard man with the worries of the world on his shoulders.
It was time for a showdown. The whole thing would not be half as
nerve-wracking if he could be sure that his trailer was a detective. But would
a detective have given him so much leeway? Why had he not been arrested two
days back? Why was the man just following him?
His face lightened. He looked younger. He'd call the bluff of the other
man! He darted forward right past the tall thin man. He jumped on to the
handrail of the escalator.
All his life he had wanted to slide down a long banister. Here was his
opportunity. He smiled a gay, devil-may-care grin and slid out of view of his
nemesis.
It caused quite a sensation. He came rocketing down the banister from the
radio phonograph floor down to the floor which was devoted to baby things.
Young mothers and old looked up as the kiting figure came crashing into view.
He landed on his feet and darted for a closing elevator door.
Ah, he thought, this was the way to do it. He was having some fun for his
money. He ran into the elevator and smiled as the doors came together. Let his
trailer top that!
But a sudden thought wiped the smile off his face. He had gambled with the
fates. Gambled to see if the man would call for help, blow a police whistle,
show in one way or another whether or not he was a detective.
The slide for life had not brought a whistle or a command to stop. The man
was not a detective, then! That made it worse! When the elevator stopped at the
ground floor, a badly frightened young man, all gaiety gone, eeled his way
through the maddening crush of shoppers.
He wanted to get out into the air, out where there was some elbow room. As
he walked as fast as he could without looking as if he were running, he kept
looking behind him. His head turned for a glance backward so often that it
looked as if he had a nervous tic.
Here on the street, the sunlight bathing everything with a hard brassy
glare, he felt a bit better. After all, he thought, with all this melodrama it
should either be a dark black night, or there should be a bitter storm brewing.
The sunlight washed away some of the fear. He couldn't be too frightened
with all these people around. Why, not fifteen feet away a big burly traffic
cop was busily unsnarling a traffic jam.
His mercurial mood shifted again when one of his backward glances showed
standing out from the crowd of anonymous faces the gaunt harsh face of... This
was too much. How had the other man followed him? It was uncanny. Go into no
matter what crowd he would, let him dash into a swirling pool of mankind, still
that face arose to haunt him.
Forty-eight hours. He shook his head. Maybe he was getting a bit punchy.
Maybe some sleep would make a bit of difference. If he could sleep... he
yawned. Just a nap would help. This way it seemed like black magic. Perhaps if
he were rested, things would look differently.
But where could he go? Where to escape, if only for an hour? He walked on
through the streets of the strange city. He'd never been here before. All his
life had been spent on different levels. He was accustomed to being taken care
of. Ordinarily, one of the servants bought his train tickets, the chauffeur
drove him to the station, guided him to the proper track, and practically put
him on the train.
Going it blind this way, he could see how much his father's money had
coddled him. Maybe if his heart hadn't had that murmur, if he'd been in the
army, he might have become more self-reliant. But if he'd been in the army, he
probably wouldn't have been in this scrape.
He shrugged. He had come to a part of the city where wealth and poverty
were sisters in arms. Most big cities have these strange areas where the poor
are being usurped by the rich, where the process has not come to an end.
In New York, he thought, there was Sutton Place, where a distance of
twenty feet could take you from an elevator apartment to a tenement, and the
rent for the apartment for a month could pay the tenement rent for more than a
year.
This was such an area. He could not go toward the expensive looking
section. There was no surcease for him there. Perhaps... he turned to the left.
If he had gone to the right? That would have been another story. Looking back on
it, an hour later, he could not help but wonder what his fate would have held
for him had he gone to the right.
TO the left, past garages, past tumble-down wooden-fronted houses, past
garbage cans whose covers lay to one side, pushed there by gaunt alley cats,
allowing the contents of the cans to fester in the hot sun.
He walked slowly now. He had lost his second wind, or whatever it was that
had sustained him this long. Ahead was a group of men. Ordinarily, in that other
life he had left behind, he would have avoided such a group. You can see them
anywhere. Their social club is the street corner, their reason to be
questionable, their means of livelihood invisible. They were, in short, street
hoodlums.
There were four of them. Here was another chance for the fates. If he had
crossed the street and avoided them, then Charley Bates would not have been
arrested, and...
But he did not cross the street.
As he walked up to them, one of them who wore glasses said, "Pipe the
suit. Costs big bucks. Take him, Charley."
Charley said, "Well, I got this here date with Mingus, but..."
As the pursued man came abreast of them, the one with the glasses said,
"Now."
The one with glasses stepped out and bumped into the man. Charley stepped
forward and said out of the corner of his mouth, "Whyncha watch where ya goin'?"
That was all.
All, except that across the street, a cruising dolly car saw what had
happened. A cop in the dolly car said, "Charley just dipped that character."
The other cop said, "You'd think these crumbs'd learn they can't work in
daylight, wouldn't ya?" He sighed. They got out of the car. The four street
loungers saw the cops too late. They started to split. But one of the cops
grabbed Bates.
He grabbed him before he could ditch the leather. This is a fatal mistake
for a pickpocket. The cop shook him the way you would a bad puppy. He ran his
hands down Bates body. He found the stolen wallet.
Holding on to Bates with one hand, he flipped the wallet open. Only then,
when he saw the name that was under the celluloid of the identification card,
did he look up and see that the man whose wallet had been stolen had
disappeared.
The cop said, "What a break! There's a three state alarm out for that lad!"
Bates said, "Of all the lousy breaks... I have to lift into a deal like
that!"
Through a dirty window two flights up, the man whose wallet had been
stolen looked down at the tableau on the street. He saw the cop look up from
his wallet. He saw Bates point at the house into which he had run.
This really tied it. Now he was lost. His money gone, hidden in a house
which he had never seen before, in a city in which he had never been, with the
cops outside, and his trailer... he looked further out the window. There,
perhaps a hundred feet away, was his implacable trailer.
All around him myriad cooking smells smashed in. Garlic and the ghost of
eaten garlic was like a live thing. The peeling plaster on the walls looked
like something you would see upon turning up a stone.
The stairs were rickety, and noisy as the smells that pushed at him. He
took another look out the window. His trailer was easing around the little
huddle where one policeman talked to Bates and the other was holding on to
another of the four who had been leaning against the lamp post when he walked
up.
Two of them had run away. They had made a getaway. Why couldn't he? But
then they didn't have the tall, lean man after them. There, he was coming up
the stoop of the house.
The man in the hallway looked around. This was the dead end, unless... he
looked up the narrow stair well. Some of those old houses, he had read
somewhere, had stairs leading up to the roof. If he could get to the roof, run
across a couple of buildings and come down into a completely different house,
perhaps he could still...
But as he started up the stairs, he could hear only a floor below him the
steady determined footsteps which were getting to be the only reality in the
all-encompassing nightmare that tore at his sanity.
Only a floor separated hunted from hunter. There would not be time to make
the roof. His frantic eyes lighted on a door near him. There was a sliver of
light stabbing out into the darkness that hung in this hall even in the day
time.
The door must be slightly ajar to allow all that light to escape. He
reached for the door knob. If he could throw himself on the mercy of whoever
occupied these rooms...
He slid the door open quietly. He stepped into the room. That was all.
Time came to a halt. It was as though he had stepped from one universe into
nothingness.
CHAPTER II
HE opened his eyes. Lines. Wavy lines that shimmered off into the
distance. His eyes couldn't focus on whatever it was that he was staring at. He
blinked them.
Nothing happened. The same brown dirty lines wavered off out of the range
of his vision. He moved his head. Something was wrong with it. The lines
wavered then came together. He thought suddenly, stupidly, parallel lines
extended into infinity do not meet.
He pressed his hands down. They met resistance. He moved. His hands were
pressed flat on the floor. The reason he had not been able to make out the
lines was that his eyes were too close to the lines.
He was lying full length on the floor. The lines were the demarcations
between splintered boards that made up the floor. He lifted his head which felt
mushy. There was no pain, not yet, but it felt as though his brains had been
cooked over a slow fire. He sat up.
He was in a tenement kitchen. That seemed a little bizarre, but then, so
did everything else. There, not far away, was a stove. It was greasy and grimy.
There was a pot of something on the front burner. He twitched his nostrils.
Whatever was on the stove was burning.
He tilted forward as he got to his knees. Only then did he realize that he
had something in his hand. He looked at it dully. It was a knife. A bread knife
with a serrated edge that looked something like the Malay kriss his father had
hanging on the wall in his study.
He dropped the knife. It made the only sound in the room but that of the
spluttering pot on the stove. By some freak of chance it stuck point first in
the wooden floor. It quivered. The quivering put into motion a red fluid. It
seemed to be the wrong color for blood.
Blood? That set off an alarm bell in the confused brain that was the only
sentient thing in the room. He thought. Blood? Somebody been carving a roast?
He staggered to the stove and turned the gas off. That made the room
completely still. Now all he could hear was his own rasping breath.
His staggering, wobbling progression carried him to a doorway that
separated the kitchen from another room. There was no door, he noted, with an
unused section of his brain. Just a doorway where there must once have been a
door.
Standing in the doorway, he took some deep gulps of breath. He was trying
to get some sanity into his brain. He stood there and looked back at the room.
The stove, the bare floor, the dingy ceiling, the fly specked bulb that
hung from a snake-like wire from the ceiling. The smells; claustrophobic lack
of height to the room. The walls that seemed to press in like a torture device.
He gasped again.
How could people live this way? Suddenly, and for the first time in his
life, he could understand a bit, the mechanisms that drive poverty stricken
people to crime.
He knuckled his eyes. He shook his head. Not even a door to separate the
odorous kitchen from the next room. In the center of the tiny room, the knife
sticking up at right angles from the floor was a magnet that kept pulling his
eyes back, no matter how he tried to avoid it.
What had happened since he opened the outside door expecting, hoping,
praying, to find an exit? Violence, certainly. He turned away from the kitchen
toward the other room. The answer seemed to be in there... the answer to be,
too, that there was no exit.
He started toward the doorway without a door twice, before he finally
managed to make his muscles answer the commands his brain sent to them.
He saw his fate when he got into the other room. On the only chair in the
room sat a man. He was so dead that it seemed unlikely that he had ever been
alive.
His clenched hands were pressed into his stomach. His fingers had not been
enough to dam up that which welled between his fingers. The chair with its
burden, an unmade bed with soiled bed clothes, a picture of September Morn that
hung aslant on the wall, a jacket, worn and torn, hanging from a nail that had
shattered the plaster around it, a worn and greasy-looking felt hat... was
there anything else?
A bag of tobacco and some crumpled pieces of cigarette paper lay on the
floor in front of the chair. The living man went closer to the dead man. The
dead man's hands suddenly dropped from his stomach. Something hard and round
dropped from the red-gloved hands.
The man who could still breathe stopped breathing as he bent over and
looked closely at the thing that lay on the floor. It looked like a marble.
He looked from the marble up at the dead man's face and then wished that
he hadn't. The man in life had worn a glass eye. Minus the eye, the gaping
wound was obscene.
Not really knowing what he was doing, the live man picked up the glass eye
and dropped it into his pocket. He whirled. There had been a sound behind him.
The sound was made by the door opening. Only then did the young man in any
way come out of the fog that surrounded him. He felt his head. There was a small
lump over his ear. He had been slugged... that was clear.
In the short time it took the door to open all the way, he saw that he was
a goner. Here he was the only human in a room with a corpse. On the floor
outside was the murder weapon with his fingerprints on it.
In the other room was that which would send him to his death. It was too
much. He began to giggle.
The door was all the way open now. A tall man with a gaunt strong face
came into the room. His profile was hatchet shaped. It was the man who had been
trailing him, the giggling man saw.
His giggles got so loud now that they drowned all sounds out. He did not
even hear what his trailer said. The hunter had caught the hunted.
The older man slapped the younger's face. The sound was like that of a
seal applauding itself. Sharp and clear, it gradually drowned out the
hysterical sound of laughter that was making the room hideous with sound.
"Did you do it," the older man repeated.
The younger man said, "No... I don't think so."
"You don't think so? Don't you know?"
"I don't know. I was trying to get away from you... I opened this door...
and that's all I know. I came to with a knife in my hand and death in the other
room." The younger man began to laugh again. "I ran from you to meet my fate. No
matter how fast I ran, I couldn't get here any later or earlier. The fates must
be screaming with laughter!"
"I'm afraid the fates have other things to do besides laughing at you.
Shut up!" The man's face was as harsh as his voice. "Stop giggling or I'll
leave you to your fate!"
"But you are my fate. If I hadn't been running from you, I could not have
made it here! You drove me into this!"
"You drove yourself here! You forged the check, not me! You make your own
fate!"
"How true. How prosaically, how horribly true. But I forged the check
because my father doesn't approve of the way I live! Maybe it was my father who
made my fate."
"We haven't time for idle chitchat." The tall, older man walked into the
other room.
There was a banging at the door. A loud voice called, "Hey, Ally! I ain't
gonna wait out here all day! Come on. Open up!"
The tall man came running out of the deathly-still bedroom. "You," he
said, "the closet. Quick!"
The young man quivered his nostrils as he forced his way into a filthy,
smelly closet. The door closed on him. Through the thin wooden panel, he could
hear the door open.
"Who the hell are you?" the strange voice asked in surly tones.
"Lamont Cranston," was the answer. "Who are you, as long as we are
swapping identities?"
"Brett Dane." There was a silence. "Mean anything to you?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Here. Look at my rozzer." That meant nothing to the strained ears in the
closet.
In the room with the bread-knife still stuck in the floor, with the single
yellow twenty-five watt bulb trying to send some light through the fly specks
that defaced it, the two men stood and took each other's measure.
Cranston was looking at the wallet that the man held out. It identified
him as a private detective. Cranston looked from this to the man. He was about
six feet tall; a broken nose, instead of making him look tough, gave him rather
agreeably pugnacious air. His broad, high cheek-boned face was impassive.
"What are you doing here?"
"Don't see that it's much of your business, but Ally sent me a frantic
wire to come here."
"I see. Ally what?"
"Ally rat to his enemies, I suppose," the man said, with a crooked smile.
"Albert Mingus is the name."
"Was the name," Cranston said. "He's in the other room."
"I figured that, with the knife staring me in the puss. Who carved him up?"
Cranston shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."
"Only about half the town would have liked to twist a knife into Ally. He
was a shylock, you know. It doesn't make for popularity."
"I see. Why did he call on you?"
"Sheer modesty keeps me from giving you the proper answer." Dane grinned.
"I'm the best private operator in town. I guess that's why."
Cranston said, "He's in the other room if you want to take a look. I want
to look in the closet and see if there's any clue. There is nothing else of any
help here."
For a long, long moment, Dane stood stock still. Cranston wondered if he
could have any idea that hiding in the closet was Roger Stanton... But Dane
finally said. "You look familiar. Do I know you from anywhere?"
"Not that I know of." Cranston smiled so it wouldn't sound vain, "You may
have seen my picture in the papers some time or other."
"Could be," Dane said. He looked all around the kitchen. "No sign of
anyone here."
"None at all," Cranston said.
Finally, still looking all around him, Dane walked toward the doorway that
led into the room where Mingus sat, still in death.
Cranston stood with his back to the closet, making sure that Dane wasn't
going to change his mind and turn around again. There, he was walking through
the doorway.
Waiting till the private detective went into the other room, Cranston
opened the closet door. His body shielded the inside of the room from any
glance. He whispered, "Out the door. Hide out in the Alexis Hotel. Register
under the name of John Barrel."
The man in the closet said, "Money."
Cranston gave him ten dollars. There was no sound from the other room. The
open door of the closet cut off a view of the kitchen. Perhaps with some luck...
"Now..." Cranston said. "Beat it, Roger."
The younger man tiptoed out of the kitchen. It didn't seem possible that
he could make it. Dane's voice roared out of the other room, "Hey, Cranston!
Where's Ally's glass eye?"
Cranston walked into the bedroom as Roger Stanton left the kitchen.
Cranston's body cut off any view that Dane might have had of Roger.
"Glass eye?" Cranston sounded surprised.
"Guess you wouldn't dig that. Say, why were the boys in blue huddled
around this joint when I made my entrance?" Dane asked, coming back into the
kitchen.
"Pickpocket caught. Wallet he stole was that belonging to a youngster
named Roger Stanton."
"Stanton... where've I heard that name? Wanted poster, that's it. He's on
the loose and wanted in New York, isn't he?"
"That's right. He forged a check."
Cranston and Dane looked at each other. Dane said. "Guess we better let
the cops know about this."
Nodding, Cranston said, "I'm rather surprised they haven't been in to see
us already. They were looking over all the houses in the neighborhood. Stanton
ran into this house."
"Probably took it on the lam over the roof..." Dane's face scowled.
"Unless..." He turned and looked back at the bedroom in which a money lender
lay dead. "Say," he burst out, "you don't think Stanton ran in here do you?"
Cranston shrugged noncommittally.
"If he did, and Ally recognized him as somebody that the cops wanted, he
woulda tried to hold him. That boy didn't love money any more than a cat loves
catnip. Is there a reward out for Stanton?"
Cranston nodded. "A thousand dollars."
"That does it. Seven to five the kid bounced in here and was spotted by
Ally who tried to put the arm on him." The private detective looked
thoughtfully at the knife which was still stuck in the floor. He crouched down
on his heels in a deep knee bend. "Hmmm... you see the prints on the handle
here?"
"Uh huh," Cranston said.
"Lucky for the cops this is an open and shut case. There's a bill up
before the state legislature about a rise in pay for the Gestapo. Anything that
smears up the works is not going to go good with the politicos. The cops will
want to clear this up but fast."
"I see," Cranston said.
Dane looked out a dirty window. He saw some policemen on the street. He
raised the creaking window. "Hey, Butler! Up here! It's me, Dane. I got a kill
for you!"
The policeman looked up at Dane and said, "When don't you have a kill? You
ought to travel around with a meat wagon!"
"Cut the comedy," Dane said, "and come on up. This is bad!"
"They're always bad," the cop said, off-handedly.
"Not like this! Ally Mingus got his!"
"They ought to make it a holiday," the cop said. "If anyone ever asked to
get boffed, that character did!"
"Well, come on up and feast your eyes on the cadaver, then!" Dane said.
"Yeah, just a minute." The policeman turned to two quiet men in plain
clothes. He spoke to them. The two men looked up at Dane's head which stuck out
the window like a Punch and Judy show.
One of the plainly-dressed men waved at Dane. "Be right up."
The men on the street talked together for a moment. Dane said to Cranston,
"If they ever finish with their knitting, they'll be up. We're in luck. Some
homicide men are down there talking to the boys."
"Good," Cranston said.
"I been giving myself a good case of ear strain, but I can't make out what
the boys in blue are brooding about down there," Dane said.
"Probably talking about the weather," Cranston said.
"No doubt." Dane shrugged. "Funny, how callous you can get to anything,
including death."
"It's their business. I suppose they have to be callous."
"Sure." Dane still looked down at the street.
"Know anything more about Mingus?" Cranston asked Dane.
He eased the window back down. "You know, I don't get what happened to
Ally's glass eye. He was vain about that. It was his only vanity. He was never
seen without it."
"Curious," Cranston agreed.
Dane shrugged. "Doesn't matter, of course. If the prints on the knife
belong to Stanton, that'll be the end of the whole thing, eye or no eye."
The door burst open. Two uniformed policemen came in. One said, "I called
the homicide boys. Whatcha got, Dane?"
"Ally got shivved," Dane said.
The cops exchanged secret glances. One said, "Oh oh... that does it!"
"Why?" Dane asked.
"Didn't you know? He was backing John, good old Honest John Dorran, the
ward heeler. He put up the green stuff to put John in the state legislature.
Wonder if this is gonna be a political mess?"
Before anything more could be said, the door opened again. A man's voice
said. "If it ain't the demon detective! Ready to go to work on the force again,
Dane?"
Dane grinned, "Hi, Hogan. No, not yet. Make a buck or two more my way."
Hogan was a squat, strong looking man in his fifties. A wiry red brush on
the back of his head was all that was left of his hair. He had an unlighted
cigarette in his mouth. He gestured with his thumb to the man who was with him,
a small, thin, compact looking man with a set jaw and thin mouth. "You know
Dockerty? Or is he since your time?"
"Don't think I've had the pleasure," Dane said as he stuck out his hand.
"It's not much of a pleasure," Dockerty said, and his mouth barely moved.
Hogan had taken a look in the bedroom. "I always knew Ally Mingus was born
to be killed. I thought it would be in a dark alley some rainy night. Not this
way."
"The whole thing is all wrapped up in a neat package," Dane said, "Your
boys were chasing a lammister and he entered this house. There are prints on
the murder knife."
"Neat but not gaudy," Hogan said, looking at the knife. "What's his name?"
"Roger Stanton. You've got his pic up on the Wanted board at headquarters."
"I remember. We'll pick him up. Thanks a lot, Dane." Hogan grinned a sour
grin. "This'll be a quickie. He should burn in a month..."
CHAPTER III
THE Alexis Hotel: Strange name for a refuge. In room nine twenty-three,
the man who was registered under the name of John Barrel lay on a narrow bed.
He looked at the ceiling. A guttering cigarette sent a narrow plume up through
the gray blue haze that hung heavy in the small untidy room.
Three bucks for the room, in advance please, as long as you have no
baggage... twenty cents for cigarettes, a quarter to the bellhop. That left six
fifty five. You couldn't get very far on that.
Better stay right here until Lamont Cranston showed up. That was strange,
everything you read about Cranston put him on the side of the law. Why had he
aided and abetted a criminal in his flight?
The young man rolled over on the bed and put out his cigarette. Instantly
he lighted another one. He'd have to stop that. His mouth felt like a bar-room
floor after a big night. His head was pounding. He was too exhausted to sleep.
A rat race. That's what it was. What had happened in that room? Had he
killed that man? Had his hand driven that knife deep into the little man's
belly?
He knuckled his eyes. If Cranston had helped him to get out of that
impossible situation, did that mean that if at any time in the last two days he
had turned himself over to Cranston, that Cranston would have helped him get out
of the forgery rap? No... unless his father had gotten to Cranston. It wouldn't
be the first time that the old man's money had brought in help...
He thought back to the night when he'd been out on the town... it had been
a big night, all right. His lips curled in a sneer at his own idiocy as he
realized that he couldn't even remember the name of the hat-check girl for whom
he had forged the check. That made it perfect. Perfectly futile. What had been
her name? Bunny... no, Bobby? No, that wasn't it. He was sure it began with a
B, but that was all... whooo... he had been tight, all right.
Why had he forged the check? It came back slowly through gray mists...
he'd picked her up in a cellar night club. She'd suggested... or had he?...
that they gamble. No, she suggested it. That was it. She was a steerer. He'd
gone for a bundle on the crap table. He hadn't wanted to look small in her
eyes, so he'd forged the check to get more money to throw away on the dice...
and now he couldn't even remember her name, let alone her face. She was blonde.
He was sure of that. He never went out with brunettes. So she was blonde... so
what?
He looked back at the wasted and futile pattern of his life. As long as he
was in his own milieu, the asininity of what he did had never struck him. But
now, away from the pattern of athletic clubs, of golf and getting drunk at the
nineteenth hole, of wasted nights in unamusing night clubs where the only
entertainment was provided by the guests, and that very unentertaining... he
could see that in the last analysis, it wouldn't matter very much to anyone
whether he lived or died.
There might be a few head-waiters here and there who would wonder where
the sucker who usually tipped so lavishly was, there might be a girl here and
there, worried about her rent, who might think of him... his father?
In his mind's eye, his father had no features. Instead of a head, there
was a check book. Instead of features, there was a dollar sign.
Did his father have any real affection for him? Stanton could not figure
it out. As far as he could see, the only thing he represented to his father was
someone who could be dominated, made to obey commands.
He wondered what kind of person he might have been if he had been brought
up differently. If his mother had lived. For while she had lived, she had acted
as a buffer between his father and him. He thought of her despairingly. The only
person who had ever wanted him, who ever seemed to have any love for him and she
died when he was what? Six? No seven. That left twenty-one years in which he had
gone through a period of dry rot.
But that was a pretty easy out, he thought honestly. There were plenty of
people who had lived under the same conditions as he had and not grown up into
that which he had become.
No, the dry rot was within himself... of that he was sure. He wondered if
he could do anything about it. But this was hardly the time.
He leaped from the bed with a start. The door had opened. Surely he had
locked it! What was worse, he hadn't even heard a key inserted in the lock!
"Hello," Cranston said.
"Oh, it's you." Stanton's heart had missed a beat. "Uh... c'mon in."
Cranston sat on the only chair in the room. Stanton went back on the bed.
"You're in a jam."
"You don't say!" Stanton's mouth was grim. "I had figured that out. Even
with my feeble brain."
"It must be pretty feeble for you to have wound up in the mess you're in,"
Cranston agreed.
"How right you are. Sorry. My nerves are gone. I'm completely fouled up."
Cranston said, "We'd better start at the beginning."
"Okay. I forged my dad's name to a check. I've done it before. This time
he said it was the last straw. I didn't really believe him. Not even when he
called the cops. I thought he was bluffing right up to the time a cop came to
the house for me. It was then I went out the window. I had some money left from
the check. I figured I'd get away and let dad cool off."
"That's where I came in," Cranston said. "Your father called me in. He was
afraid he had gone too far. He asked me to keep an eye on your peregrinations.
He wanted me to follow you till you were ready to call it quits and come home
and face the music. I figured you would get tired of being an outlaw."
"Does he really mean to prosecute me?"
"He did. I think, however, that this latest development will change the
picture. I can't see him facing you going to the chair with any degree of
equanimity."
"But I didn't... how can I convince you... I didn't kill that little man!"
"I didn't think you did" Cranston said. "That's the only reason I helped
you get away. With the political scene what it is in this town, plus the fact
that the police are hoping for a pay rise to go through the legislature, you
may be sure that they're going to wind up this case fast!"
"Oh brother!" Stanton sighed. "Everything makes it worse! How can I prove
that I arrived after that man was stabbed?"
"I don't know," Cranston said.
Stanton looked desperate. "I'd be willing, now, to go back to New York and
throw myself on dad's mercy... but if I do that, the police here will... Hey!
Wait!" Stanton's voice was so excited that Cranston had to shush him. "Wait...
the police don't know I was there, do they? They saw me enter the building, but
how can they prove that I was in the room?"
"Very simply. Your fingerprints are on the knife... unless... have you
ever had your fingerprints on record?"
Stanton started to shake his head no, then he said, "This gets more and
more fantastic. Yes, they are on record. The police had a drive one time to
have every law abiding citizen file their prints. Dad insisted that everyone in
the family go down and have it done! Yes, they are on file."
There was a silence. Stanton broke it. "Would it serve any purpose for me
to give myself up to the police?"
"Ordinarily, I would demand you do that before I try to help you. But this
time..." Cranston said, "This time, with the political situation, with the
evidence what it is, I can only recommend that you stay hidden till I can get
my hands on some evidence in your favor!"
There was nothing else to say. The two men sat in silence. Cranston said,
"I have one angle. I almost can't put a name on it, but there's something
nagging at the back of the Cranston cranium."
"How's that?"
"The pickpocket whom the police picked up after he had lifted your wallet."
"Umm... what about him? I saw the cops grab him."
"I think he said something about having an appointment..." Cranston said.
"I don't get it," Stanton said. "But this is your business, not mine."
"I'll try to get word to your father somehow," Cranston said at the door.
"In the meantime, lie low; don't answer the door unless I knock three taps, a
pause and then another knock."
Stanton nodded. "Make it as fast as you can... I'm going to blow my top if
I have to hole up here much longer."
"I'll do my best." Cranston was gone, and a frightened young man was alone
with his thoughts.
Outside the hotel room Cranston looked up and down the hallway. This hotel
was precisely what he had wanted. It was not good enough to attract any
publicity, and not bad enough to have the police pay it any special attention.
He walked down the rather threadbare rug that carpeted the floor. The
elevator was slow in arriving at the floor. Cranston mused as he waited for it,
better pick up the newspapers and see what's been going on.
Strange set-up in this town. But as he thought more about it, there was
nothing too strange. Almost any town had its own political setup, its little
battles between its civil servants, its own kind of venality, of sudden death
and corruption.
The elevator car dropped to the ground level. On his way through the
quiet, dark lobby, Cranston bought the papers from a candy stand. The man
behind the counter was nodding in sleep. Cranston left the proper change on top
of the counter and walked away. The counter man didn't even stir.
There was no one else in the lobby but the incurious desk clerk who seemed
almost ready to join the counter man in a nap. Yes, it was exactly the right
kind of hotel for a badly wanted man to hide out in.
A doorman in a rather battered uniform signaled for a cab as he saw
Cranston exit. "Cab?"
"Yes, please." Cranston got in and leaned back. Too bad this whole thing
had developed in such a way that he had been unable to have Shrevvie along.
He looked over the papers he had bought. The world situation was relegated
to the comparatively unimportant left-hand side of the front page.
The reporters were busy making political capital out of the murder of Ally
Mingus. The two papers represented two different political camps. Each was
blaming the other political party. The democrats pointed out that only under a
republican administration could murder walk unchecked. The republican viewpoint
was that the murder was a hangover from the previous regime which had been
democratic. They both had very little about the actual murder, but a great deal
about the political aspects of the death of a ward heeler.
Mingus had obviously been one of those only too common figures who operate
in the shadowy area between legality and the underworld. Making their money in
the demimonde, they use it to control the local politicians... to put in a fix,
to keep the reins of power in their own hands.
The district attorney, a man with an eye to the future by the name of
Lancer, was clearly making hay while the sun shone. There was a long interview
with him in one of the papers in which he attacked the police.
This was a standard gambit. Cranston sighed. So often internecine warfare
between the police and the D.A.'s office interfered with the tracking down of
criminals. Petty politics so often could turn a criminal free...
Lancer, the papers said, was determined to get to the root of the death of
Mingus, no matter who was involved. The inference was clear that Lancer was
blaming the police...
"Some mess, huh?" The cabbie interjected.
It was a mess as long as the papers were not told of the existence of
Stanton's fingerprints. The police were clearly keeping that quiet till they
had their hands on him. No sense in tipping their hands.
Cranston answered, "I'm new in town. What are the papers so fussed up
about?"
"Ah, the D.A. wants to be guv-nor. You know. Besides," the cabbie
pontificated, "they always wanna make a stink the minute anybody who's even
close to politics gets knocked off."
"I see," Cranston said. It always helped to get the opinion of the man on
the street. "What kind of reputation did Mingus have?"
"Lousy," the cabbie said. "He was mixed up in every racket in town."
"You'd never know it from the way the papers are carrying on."
"That's because the guy who's in from Mingus' section, in the state
legislature, is a no party man. Both political parties are after his scalp.
They'll try to get him over this murder!"
"I can't see where it's his fault that someone from his neighborhood was
killed..."
"Course not. But they're gonna fix it so it looks like he ordered it. You
wait and see!" The cabbie nodded sagely.
They were in front of police headquarters. A mob of men were running down
the steps. If Cranston's guess was correct, they were reporters. They looked a
bit excited. The cabbie, alert for gossip, leaned out and called to one of
them. "Hey, Red! What makes?"
The auburn haired reporter turned, grinned, and said, "Hi, Mike, read all
about it in the papers. A witness to the Mingus kill just did the Dutch!"
"No kiddin... Who?"
"Some jerky pickpocket! They found him in his cell with his necktie on,
but tight!"
Cranston leaned back on his seat. That ended that... now how was he to
find out what appointment the little pickpocket had been unable to keep? The
killer, whoever he was, certainly did not believe in letting grass grow under
his feet...
This made the frame even more gilt edged... if ever a man was being
delivered to the police hog tied with the evidence wrapped around him, Stanton
was!
CHAPTER IV
IN the police station there was anger heavy in the air. Behind the desk
sergeant there was a door. Through the heavy door Cranston could hear an even
heavier voice raised in anger. It was saying, "Who paid you off to let that
creep keep his tie? You know blasted well you're supposed to take the tie and
belt and suspenders off every crook you throw in the tank!"
A rather hesitant voice answered, "But chief, you know he wasn't in for
anything stiff. He coulda done whatever his sentence was gonna be standin' on
his head. I didn't think he was gonna take it the hard way... he's been in the
can more than he's ever been out!"
The heavy angry voice said, "You know what the papers are going to say
about this, don't you? Do you want that raise in pay from the state or are you
makin' so much on the side you don't care about the raise?"
"I never took a cent of easy dough in my life, chief! You know that..."
The voice petered out.
The desk sergeant, who had been listening avidly, looked up finally and
saw Cranston. "What do you want?"
"I'd like to see the chief if it's at all possible."
"If you wanna, all right, but he's in no mood for light chatter. He'll
chew your head off." The sergeant paused, and then said, "Who are you?"
"I don't know if the chief will remember me, but I met him at a convention
a few years ago. My name is Lamont Cranston."
"Oh yeah... I heard of you. Wait a minute," The sergeant went through the
door as the officer who had just been being called down came out. His face was
red. He evidently felt that he had been treated unfairly. Cranston wondered if
it might not be a good idea to interview him while he was in this mood. But
there was no time. The sergeant came back and said, "C'mon. The chief would
like to see you."
The small room had a masculine smell, almost like a locker room. The ugly
desk that bisected the room was scarred by feet and cigar burns till it looked
like a relief map of a bombed country.
The man who sat behind the desk looked almost as battered as did the desk.
He was puffing a beat-up pipe. His round head was almost too large for his big
shoulders. He smiled, a rather tired smile, "Hello, long time no see."
"Farrell, good to see you." Cranston smiled.
"Get a load off your feet. What brings you to our thriving community?"
"An accident. I happened to be passing through when this murder occurred,"
Cranston lied.
"Oh no, not you too! If I get heckled any more about that..." The chief's
nouns were more descriptive than polite. They wound up, "The best thing that
little rat ever did was getting murdered. But why it had to happen now while
I'm having a feud with the D.A.'s office is more than I know."
"Why was Mingus so universally hated?"
"He was a brass bound no-goodnick. In the first place, he was a shylock.
In the second place, with the money he made out of money lending, he factored
into half the business in town. In the third place, he was a miser. Either he
made you pay or you went to the cleaners, and no fooling about that. In the
fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh places, he was mixed up in all the gambling,
girl and dope rackets that we can never seem to completely wipe out. Oh, he was
a cute one, all right. We could never get him with the goods. Plenty of stool
pigeons have barbered to us, but when the chips were down... he eeled out.
"We've had him down here, boxed around, wasted time, and then had to turn
him loose."
"Who gets his estate now that he's dead?" Cranston asked curiously. "If
you can release that information."
"The reporters wanted to know that, too. It's a funny angle. No one gets
it. He died intestate as far as we can find out. The dough goes to the state,
for I don't think he had a single living relative!"
"Then seemingly it was not a money kill?"
"Well, it's no secret... you were there, I hear. You know whose prints are
on the knife. It looks like Mingus was killed out of desperation by a guy on the
lam. That is certainly the most improbable thing that could have happened. I
woulda sworn there were a hundred different ways he was more likely to get his."
Before Cranston could ask the next question on his mind, the chief said,
"By the way, did you see anything of Mingus' false eye? Brett Dane is tearing
the whole building apart looking for it."
"No, I haven't seen it. Why does Dane attach so much significance to the
eye?"
"Dane's no dope," the chief said thoughtfully. "He makes the point that
Mingus had no personal vanity at all except about that damn eye. He was
literally never seen without it. Why would he have had it out? There was no
sign that he was asleep when he was killed. He might have taken it out while he
slept, but even so, why would anyone have stolen it?"
"That is a puzzle."
"I've wracked my brain... look, if he was killed by this forger, why the
forger didn't even know him. I've considered the fact that he might have had
something concealed in it. That's happened in the past. But if he was killed by
someone who didn't even know him, why would they have taken the eye, no matter
what was in it?"
"Do you think that might mean that he was not killed by the forger, who
could have run into his room looking for an escape?"
"So that's the way the wind blows!" The chief was no fool. "Why are you
interested in the forger, Stanton?"
Cranston shrugged. Had he overplayed his hand? He had tried to make his
query as innocent sounding as possible. "No reason. Just wondered. After all,
it seems too much like a laughing fate to have had this so-hated man killed
almost by an accident. I just wondered if it mightn't be a frame-up."
"Could be," said the police chief. "But I doubt it like hell. If this is a
frame, it's the most perfect I've ever seen. Besides... how could it be a frame?
The killer, if it was a frame up, could not have known that a forger wanted by
the police was going to walk into the apartment just in time for a frame to fit
him. No, that sounds ridiculous."
"But suppose someone else was slated for the frame and didn't get there in
time?" Cranston asked.
The chief shrugged. "Sounds too pat to me. You been readin' too many
detective books. The guy who's supposed to be framed doesn't get there in time,
so the killer takes whoever walks in."
"Have you wondered," Cranston asked, "why a pickpocket should commit
suicide?" He got up to leave.
"You mean the guy who did the Dutch was the one who was supposed to be
framed?"
"Could be." Cranston mimicked the chief.
"But, then, why would he kill himself?"
"Who said he killed himself?" Cranston asked as he eased the door closed
behind him.
Having dropped that disturbing comment behind him, Cranston walked out
past the desk sergeant. He looked around wondering how all police stations
managed to look alike. He thought, Hollywood must save a lot of money because
of that. They certainly could use the same set over and over again, and no one
would be able to point a finger at them and say it was wrong.
Some petty malefactors were being escorted in the door. Cranston stood to
one side as the cops pushed the men in front of them. One of the men snarled,
"Watch watcha doin'! Me, I'm a taxpayer, see!" He didn't look like one, that
was sure.
The cop said, "Benny, one more word out of you..."
Cranston walked out before Benny decided what to do about the situation.
Leaving the station house behind him, Cranston saw a drug store across the
street. As he headed for it he thought, wonder if the chief is brooding about
that crack of mine?
THE chief of police sat at his desk for quite a while after Cranston left.
He filled his pipe twice while he sat and thought. Finally he shrugged and
dismissed the whole thing from his mind. It was too far-fetched... and besides
where was the proof? To say nothing of the fact that they had a pigeon all set
with his fingerprints on the murder knife. No, it was too far fetched.
In the drug store not far from the police station, Cranston was thumbing
through a phone book. D... D... Da... Dane. Here it was. Dane, Brett, 43 Fale
Street. Private inquiries. Completely confidential, the Red Book said.
43 Fale Street... Cranston looked around. That was somewhere nearby. He
got directions from a ruddy-faced traffic cop.
Two blocks away. Cranston walked slowly, trying to get his thoughts into a
pattern. Rarely, if ever before, had he had so little to go on. Really, all he
had on his side was his opinion of Stanton's character... weak... yes, but not
vicious. He couldn't see the boy as a cold-blooded killer! The motivation
wasn't strong enough. Admittedly the boy had been trying to get away. But the
result of not getting away was not fateful enough for him to have murdered to
escape capture.
As he walked through a section of very old buildings which must have been
originally quite impressive, he wondered whether or not he had been wrong in
giving Stanton as much leeway as he had. The idea had been to show him how
futile was any thought of escape. It was to have been a softening up process.
Cranston had intended to give him about three days, and then suggest return. A
return that would have meant facing the music.
41 Fale Street. The next building was the one he wanted. Its old
brownstone face was badly in need of some plastic surgery. Cranston wondered
idly why the buildings near any municipal center were always so run down. He
looked at the building directory. It was full of lawyers, city marshals, and
the like. Brett Dane was in 612.
The elevator, a rickety wrought iron cage, complained and groaned all the
way up. The operator, almost as old and rickety as the elevator, croaked, "Six."
The unwashed square of frosted glass boasted, "Brett Dane, International
Detective Agency. We never sleep."
It was a lie. Cranston eased the door open. A rather pretty girl leaning
on her elbows on her desk, was sound asleep. She blinked her eyes open as
Cranston cleared his throat.
"Did I have a night last night." She shook her blonde hair. "Got to sleep
with the birds." She took a deep breath, and said, "What can I do for you?"
Cranston grinned, "Umm... I don't really need your help. I wanted to see
Mr. Dane."
"The boss? Sure." No buzzers or inter-communicating phones here. She
leaned back in her swivel chair and yelled at a closed door. "Brett! Business!"
She modestly pulled the skirt back down and again leaned forward on the desk.
The door opened, and the bulky frame of Dane filled the doorway. "Hi!
C'mon in."
The inner office was, if anything, more dilapidated than the outer. Dane
swept some papers off the only other chair in the room besides the one behind
the desk and said, "Squat."
He sat down, and with one smooth, almost automatic gesture, pulled open a
drawer in his desk, pulled out a bottle, set it on the desk and said. "What
makes?" and then, "Have one?"
Cranston shook his head no. Dane didn't wait for another word, but
instead, upended the bottle, took a swallow, put the bottle back in the drawer,
said, "That clears the cobwebs away."
"Had any luck," Cranston asked idly, "in your quest for the vanished glass
eye?"
Dane scowled, "Nah, I don't get it. Where could it be? Why would anyone
steal a thing like that?"
"I can think of a few reasons."
Dane leaned forward on his deck, knocking over an ash-tray. He paid no
attention to the mess he had made, but said, "Like what?"
"Ummm... I don't think they are the real reasons, but if a one-eyed man
saw a chance to steal an eye, he might."
"Jokes," Dane said. He made a face.
"We could postulate a case in which a dishonest man, mixed up in a
larcenous business, desirous of keeping a record which would not be found
easily, might keep a micro record of his transactions inside his eye."
Dane looked at Cranston. "Do you take it in the arm, kid?"
"I can even see a contingency in which a false eye might be a clue to a
killer."
"No wonder you didn't take a drink. You're so high you're walkin' on air,"
Dane said admiringly.
"To say nothing of the fact," said Cranston, without paying attention to
Dane's comments, "that there are at least six other hypothetical reasons I
could give for the theft of a false eye."
"Give. This is one for the books," said Dane with a grin.
Before Cranston could say anything more, there was a high-pitched scream
from the other room. The secretary? The scream had a word in it... or words.
"Don't... don't shoot!"
There was a splat. Something slammed into the wall with a sound like a
giant fist. If Dane had been sitting upright instead of leaning forward on his
elbows, the bullet would have gone through his forehead.
Cranston threw his chair backward and slammed the door open. The frosted
glass, splintered by the bullet, fell in shreds to the floor. In the other room
the secretary had fallen across her typewriter.
It dug into her chest. They left her there. Cranston in the lead, Dane
behind him, they slammed open the door to the hall. There was no one in sight.
Running out into the hall, Cranston looked all around. The place was like
a rabbit warren. There was no place to start looking.
Dane pounded off down the hall. But it was futile. He returned in a
minute, shaking his head.
"Whoever took the pot shot at me could be anywhere by now."
They stood and looked at each other, two big men, standing in the old
hallway. "That was close," Dane said.
"Much too close," Cranston agreed. "Where could the marksman have gone?"
Dane waved a heavy arm about him. "Anywhere. Look at these old doors! Look
at these old offices! Even with a housing and office shortage, there's still
plenty of unrented offices in this building. He could have ducked into any one
of ten doors on this floor and not have been seen.
"This is the kind of office building where two or three guys chip in rent
for a single deck amongst 'em. They get phone calls if anyone is in to take the
calls."
"Wildcatters?"
"Cheap hustlers. No real con men. Just the boys who carry their records
around in their heads because they don't pay any tax on what they graft. You
know the type."
"Only too well," Cranston agreed.
"Not much point in calling the cops."
"No, I don't see what they could do. Whoever did the shooting could be
halfway across town by now," Cranston said. "By the way, your girl!"
"That's right, Tootsie pulled a pass-out, didn't she!" Dane opened the
door and they went back into the anteroom of his office.
They looked at the girl who was coming to. She shook her head groggily.
She smiled. "Ain't I the one! I fainted!"
Dane growled, "If there's anything that annoys me, it's being shot at
before dinner! What happened, kid?"
"I was sittin' here mopin' and I thought I heard a squeak... I looked up
and saw the door opening slowly..."
"Remind me not to have that door oiled. Go ahead."
"That's all. The door opened, a gun poked in, I could just see the hand
that held it. I thought it was pointing at me. I screamed... and that's all. I
fainted." She looked rather proud of having been able to faint.
Dane walked to the door. "Cranston, would you go inside and sit at my
desk... slouch over the way I was."
He paused. "No, wait a minute. I'll do it. I wanna get the position
right." He grabbed a length of window blind off the window and fastened it to
what little glass remained in the door. "There, that'll give the same effect as
the frosted glass."
He went into the other room. Cranston could see what it was Dane wanted to
know. When he was sitting at the desk, slumped forward, a shadow was thrown on
the curtain. To an expectant eye, it would look as if he were sitting upright.
The gun had fired at the head of shadow which looked upright.
Dane came back. "What'd it look like?"
"Anyone shooting, from here would have thought they were firing at your
head."
"I thought so. That'll teach the scut it's hard to hit anybody in the
head. Why these gunsels never shoot at the body I can't figure."
Dane turned to the girl. "I'm not working on anything that would warrant
anybody making a clay pigeon outa me, am I?"
She shook her head. "You know how quiet things have been."
"Too quiet," Dane agreed. "Funny..." He and Cranston went back into the
little office.
"That leaves only one guy who'd be gunning for me."
Cranston asked, "Who?" although he knew what was in Dane's mind.
"That kill-crazy forger! Stanton! Although why he'd be after my scalp, I
don't know. This settles it. I'll get him if it's the last thing I do. I don't
like bullets! Especially when they have my name on them!" He paused. His face
was grim. "I haven't missed yet. I'll root Stanton out! He can't have left
town. Every cop is on the lookout. That means I'll get him!"
CHAPTER V
LEAVING Dane, who was still furious, Cranston made his way down to the
street. He looked across the thoroughfare. There was a cigar store there.
He got a supply of silver from the counterman. Then he went into a phone
booth. He had two calls to make. The first was to Burbank. He called his
handyman and left rather strange instructions. That done, he called Mr. Stanton
senior.
After being passed along from phone girl to secretary, from secretary to
assistant, from assistant to Stanton himself, when his supply of silver was
perilously low, Cranston finally heard Stanton say, "Lamont? Good lord, man,
what's happened? Where are you? Where's my boy?"
Keeping an eye on the window of the phone booth, making sure he was not
being overheard, Cranston said, "We're both in Custer."
Stanton chuckled. "Is the boy ready to give up now?"
Rapidly sketching what had happened, Cranston finished up with, "I can't
see anything to do but keep your son under cover until I can find the real
killer. If I turn him over to the police he's going to wind up in the chair."
"Well, good lord, don't just stay there, smuggle him out! Get him back
here to New York where I have some connections. Where I can protect him. Tell
him I've dropped the charges!"
"It's a little late for that, Mr. Stanton," Cranston said. He had not
approved of what the older man had done in the first place. Cranston didn't
feel that discipline at Stanton junior's age was going to do much good. To
Cranston, the older man had failed much earlier in his duties as a parent. This
sternness, coming now when the boy was full grown, seemed all wrong.
"You mean you won't bring him back home?" Stanton sounded amazed that
anyone would go contrary to his wishes.
"It would be the most foolish thing we could do right now. There's a
police net out around the city. The first move that Roger makes, he'll bounce
right into the cops' hands!"
"Wh... what do you intend to do?"
"I've already told you that," Cranston said impatiently. "I'm going to
keep him at the Alexis Hotel until I've caught the real killer. He's perfectly
safe there."
"I see. You will not obey me, then?" Stanton sounded cold.
"Obedience at this point would be suicidal for your son."
"I see." Stanton hung up.
Walking out of the cigar store, Cranston could see why Stanton junior was
the weakling he was. An eighteen ninety parent can do strange things to the
human psyche.
He hurried to the hotel. Roger Stanton would probably be eating his finger
nails by this time. A little reassurance at this point would not hurt.
The cabbie who was driving him suddenly said over his shoulder, "You goin'
out with somebody's wife, chum?"
That rather startled Cranston until he followed the cabbie's gaze. The
driver was looking in the rear-view mirror. Cranston leaned forward so he too
could see into it. In the reflection he saw a car behind them.
The cabbie said, "That boat's been tailin' us since you hailed me. I
wanted to be sure before I opened my yap."
"Thanks," Cranston said. What did this connote? In the first place, the
last thing to do was to continue to the Alexis Hotel. He changed his
destination. The cabbie grinned, a wise, world-weary grin.
"Sure, no sense in goin' there with the old man hot on your tail. You can
always phone her."
Cranston knew that protest would be futile. Instead he grinned and leaned
back in the cab. He had nothing more to do at the moment. He might just as well
do some sightseeing. If it had been the ubiquitous Shrevvie driving the cab, he
would have tried to get rid of the tail, but with a strange driver, boredom
might fit the situation as well.
The tailer must have gotten bored, for Cranston drove all over town. Night
fell and still he drove on and on. The meter was up to ten dollars.
They had driven from the municipal building district of the town through
the slums, up to the high rent area, out into a slightly suburban area, and
then back into the more crowded section of town.
All that time the car behind had carefully and skillfully tailed them.
Never getting close enough for recognition, but always appearing just when they
thought they had lost him. The car was like a magnet. It was as though there
were some invisible cord between the cab and the trailing car.
Cranston could see how upsetting his tailing of young Stanton must have
been. There is something infinitely nerve-wracking in the chase.
It was getting quite dark. That meant that the tailer could come even
closer with no fear of being recognized. If anything, the night was better for
tailing than the day. Cranston wondered if he should have his cab stop, and get
out and confront the tailer. That wouldn't get him anywhere, though... for all
he knew, the tailer might rip off into the night if he tried anything like that.
It seemed more sensible to try and tire out the driver of the car that
tailed along behind him. Cranston was rather grateful for the chance to just
sit still and relax. He was bone weary.
Suddenly the cabbie laughed. He gestured behind with his thumb. Cranston
looked back. The other car had run out of gas. It had pulled into a gas station.
"Now where, boss?" the cabbie asked.
"The Alexis Hotel. Make it fast before the tail can gas up."
"It's just in time. My gas is gettin' low."
They drove up in front of the run-down entrance to the hotel. The cabbie
said, "Boy, you've had a bad day, boss!"
Cranston opened the door of the cab. There was a fuss of some kind going
on. Three husky men were carrying between them a fourth who dragged along on
unresponsive legs.
The cabbie said, "Oh brother, has that guy got a load on!"
The doorman of the hotel said, "You can't take him out in that condition."
One of the three men snarled. "No? Who said so?"
The doorman looked around helplessly. There were no police in sight. The
trio had the man almost into a car by now. The doormen put his whistle to his
mouth and blew it. It was a futile gesture. Even if a cop heard it, he would
have assumed it to be a doorman whistling for a cab.
It was then that the sodden man who was being carried rolled his head
back. It was Roger Stanton. Cranston had been prepared to interfere in any
event. This merely made him act faster.
He sprang from the cab just as one of the three men slammed a blackjack
into the back of the doorman's head. It made a dull sick thud.
Reaching under his jacket, Cranston loosened his .45 in his shoulder
holster. He was out of the cab. The cabbie, seeing his hand go under his
jacket, said, "Yipe. Lemme outta here," and put the car in gear despite the
fact that Cranston had not yet paid him for the cab ride.
Slamming the cab door behind him, Cranston walked toward the car into
which Stanton was being thrown. There was no one else around.
The street was quiet with that sudden silence that falls on even the
busiest area. There was no sound but the huffing short breaths of the men who
were putting their unconscious victim into their car.
The doorman was a huddle on the ground. The cabbie, suddenly afraid of
living bullets, was frozen with his hand on the gear shift. "What was I doin'
carryin' a hot rod around with me?" he muttered to himself.
"Put that boy back on the sidewalk," Cranston said conversationally.
The three men jumped. It was as startling as a midnight voice in a
graveyard. One of them turned, ready to slash out with his blackjack.
Cranston flipped the muzzle of his gun down on the man's wrist. The
blackjack dropped to the sidewalk. The man stifled a scream. His hand hung at
an awkward and unnatural angle.
Stanton was half in and half out of the car. His head and shoulders were
in the car, and his hips and legs dangled on the ground. The two other men
stood frozen under the menace of Cranston's gun.
Thinking fast, Cranston realized that if a policeman were to come along
right now, everything would really be in the soup. He said, "Put him in the cab
and be careful."
The two men obeyed, obviously stalling for time. The cabbie was groaning
to himself. "How do I get in these messes?"
The two men placed Stanton on the back seat just as the doorman came to.
He sat up on the sidewalk groggily. He held his hands to his head. He opened
his eyes. Then he closed them. He was startled at seeing the unconscious man
being put into the cab.
Cranston eased into the cab next to Stanton, whose head wobbled as though
his neck were broken. Keeping the gun pointed out the window, Cranston said,
"Step back from the cab."
The two men backed up until they were almost on top of the man with the
broken wrist.
"Get going," Cranston said to the frightened cabbie.
All told, the whole thing hadn't taken more than three minutes. To the
cabbie it was like three lifetimes. He got the car going. His eyes were wide as
he looked back and saw one of the men on the street pull a gun and aim at the
back of his cab.
Before the man could fire, the man with the broken wrist used his good
hand to knock the gun out of the other man's hand. The man with the broken
wrist yelled loud enough for the cabbie and Cranston to hear, "Don't, we had
orders not to shoot!"
As the cab hauled around the corner, Cranston saw the three men leap into
the car and take off in pursuit. So did the cabbie. He said, "Ulp... uh... what
goes?"
"Step on it!" Cranston turned to Stanton. They might have a fighting
chance if the boy would come to. He pulled open the boy's lids. The pupils were
turned up. Cranston ran gentle fingers over the boy's scalp. No lumps... the
neck? No... there was no contusion there.
Cranston again lifted Stanton's lids, The pupils were widely dilated.
Cranston leaned forward and smelled the breath that came from the flaccid lips.
Knockout drops.
The cab was careening down a dark street when the first shot rang out. The
men in the car behind were aiming at their tires.
The second shot got the back left tire. The whole cab slewed around like a
jeep gone mad. They were now facing the opposite direction.
The trailing car was slamming closer. Cranston leaned out the window of
the car, his hand heavy with the weight of his .45. He aimed as carefully as
though he were skeet-shooting.
He shot the front tires out from under the other car. It twisted and
slammed into a lamp post. The sound was like a cannon going off. The car bent
around the lamp post.
The cabbie said, "One up for our side! Now what?"
"Get going!" was Cranston's only answer. He was watching the other car.
There was no motion from it... yet.
The cabbie said plaintively, "But it'll ruin my tires."
Without a word, Cranston reached into his pocket, opened his wallet, and
handed the cabbie a one hundred dollar bill. The cab got into motion
immediately.
The cab, like a crippled bird, drove off into the night with a clunk of
loose rubber slapping against the flat tire. In the car, Cranston sat with his
arm around the unconscious boy. This really tore it. The first cop who saw a
cab limping along with a flat tire would become curious... then what?
One look into the cab would show the unconscious Roger Stanton. The second
look would show that Stanton was badly wanted. The cab drove on.
CHAPTER VI
DOWN at police headquarters, Brett Dane plunked his big body into a chair
next to the chief of police. He said, "What did you say?"
"I didn't say a damn word as you well know!" The chief looked at the
newspapers which were spread across his desk. The screaming headlines tore at
the core of him. All of them were attacking him. The main point they made over
and over again was, why raise taxes to increase the pay of an incompetent
police force?
"That's good for police morale, that is!" he said, pointing to the papers.
"It should make the boys hustle their bustles!" Dane said.
"You were a homicide dick long enough to know what these papers either
don't know or pretend not to know. You know blasted well that we on the force
can't drop everything else just to go after a single killer. We do the best we
can, but crime goes on. This doesn't stop one heist, nor one numbers runner
from operating, you know!"
"Sure, take it easy," Dane said, and smiled. "It's rough, but the minute
you grab Stanton, the papers will sing a different tune. They'll all be on the
side of the boys in blue!"
The chief grunted and drew on his pipe. "We had the papers mention the
glass eye. Wonder if that'll get any action..."
"It's a long shot... but there's just a chance it'll turn up somewhere.
Stanton may have taken it for some bizarre reason, and then lost it... you
can't tell, and anyway, we haven't anything else to go on."
The phone rang. The chief growled into it, "Huh?"
A timorous voice on the other end said, "Uh... about the eye in the
papers... is there a reward for it, maybe?"
The chief barked, "No, but if you got it and don't turn it in, your reward
will be a small vacation for free in the can! Get it down here!"
Dane sat up. "You mean the thousand-to-one shot came in?"
"Umm." The chief nodded. "Wonder where he found it. Might be a lead to
where Stanton is hiding out."
Before Dane could say anything, the phone rang again. "Hello," the chief
said. "WHAT?"
The voice at the other end of the line this time was rasping and harsh. It
said it, loudly enough for Dane to hear across the desk, "Yare, I found a glass
eye. Want it?"
"The hell you say..." was the chief's only comment. "Sure, bring it
downtown."
"Another glass eye?" Dane wrinkled his brow. This didn't stack up.
"I don't get it. How many guys in our town wear phony eyes?"
"The phone, chief," Dane said, gently.
This time it was a rather officious female voice that snapped, "Will you
send someone for this glass eye, or shall I bring it to you?"
Weakly, the chief said, "If you wouldn't mind, would you bring it to us?"
The woman said, "It's certainly my duty as a good citizen to help you in
any way I can. I shall be right down."
Groaning, the chief put his hands to his head. "You know, Brett, sometimes
I wonder if you weren't right in leaving the department. You can't have the
headaches I do."
"Most of my headaches are from hangovers, not from helpful members of the
citizenry..." Dane smiled.
The phone rang again... and again. Ten times in all. By the tenth ring,
the first man who had called was at headquarters. He came into the chief's room
with his hand out in front of him. He said, "Do I give it to you?"
The chief nodded and rolled the eye on to the desk. It lay there, a small
semicircle of glass. The pupil, jet black, looked up at the chief. The iris was
brown. It looked odd, just an eye, in the center of the desk, it might have been
from a painting by Dali.
The man left.
"Ally's eye was blue, chief," Dane said.
"One of the ten that came in should be blue... we should have every color
in the rainbow." The chief was upset.
He was even more upset when at eleven o'clock, ten eyes were lined in a
row on his desk. They looked at him accusingly. Three were brown, three blue,
two green, and the others were off shades of hazel and green.
Dane said, "You pays your money and you takes your choice."
"If Stanton did this just to confuse the issue..."
"It's a smart move if that's the reason..." Dane agreed. "But will you
tell me how in the name of every unhung killer in this town, how a man badly
wanted by the police can calmly mope around and buy up ten glass eyes. You'd
think some oculist or optometrist, optician, or whatever the hell you call
them, would check with us, wouldn't you?"
"You would," the chief said grimly. "If I catch the guy who sold these,
he's going to wish he had called us!"
"Maybe whoever it was that sold them hasn't seen the papers yet. Keep your
fingers crossed." Dane pushed his slouch hat on the back of his head and got up
to leave.
"How come," the chief looked up at his friend, "how come," he repeated,
"you're so interested in all this?"
"In the first place, I demanded a fee from Ally before I ever went to see
him. So... in a way, I should try to earn the five G's he gave me. In the
second place, as I told you before, someone took a pot shot at me... I don't
like that. It's a bad habit for hoods to get into. If I let one get away with
it, you don't know how many are going to take a whack at me. One of them might
even get me..."
"I see how you feel," the chief said. "I guess I'd be a little annoyed if
some scout took a shot at me. But listen, Dane, take this easy. Everyone knows
you're a friend of mine... don't go taking the law into your own hands! If you
get anything, turn it over to me!"
"Of course!" Dane grinned at his friend. "You know that no private
detective can exist without being on good terms with you guys, no matter what
the movies show about us!"
They grinned at each other, two men who knew the score.
Dane left the chief sitting there, glaring at the ten eyes which winked
and glistened in the light from the overhead light.
Dane poked his head into the reporter's room. The interminable game which
had been going on uninterruptedly for something like ten years, was in the
doldrums. The men sat around the table. The dealer shuffled listlessly. One of
the reporters looked up. "Hey! New money! Siddown, Dane."
"Okay, but just for an hour, win, lose or draw," Dane said.
"Yeah, yeah, we know," the dealer said. "We've heard that before." He
shuffled the cards now with some animation. "Stud, fifty and a buck."
"Run 'em," Dane said. He looked very down in the mouth as he looked at his
hole-card and saw that he had aces back to back. "I dunno what happens to my
luck," he said as he pushed a half dollar out into the center of the table.
"Don't start cryin' before you get hurt," said the dealer, as he raised a
half. "Let's keep the ribbon clerks out."
"Look," Dane said, "brave guy, kings up!"
They squabbled happily as the game went on. The desk sergeant poked his
head into the door. "You guys, a funny one just came in."
They looked up from their cards incuriously. One said, "Yare?"
"Uh huh, an old doorman in front of the Alexis Hotel just got conked by
some guys who were dragging a drunk out of the hotel."
"So what?" a reporter asked. "Drunks get dragged in and out of hotels all
day long." He paused. "All night long, too."
"Yeah, but, wise guy, this don't happen, the three guys dragging the souse
into a car, when a cab draws up, a guy bounces outa the cab with a cannon, puts
the chill on the three guys, and waltzes off with the souse!"
The reporters looked at each other. One said, "Ah, to hell with it. Let
City News cover it. Don't sound like much of a much to me."
"What hotel was that?" Dane asked.
"The Alexis... an old fleabag," the sergeant said. "Why?"
"No reason," Dane said. "Just wondered what our hotels were comin' to." He
looked at the dealer, "Run 'em."
The sergeant left, muttering, "How those guys think they earn their
salaries is beyond me."
Dane had a pair of deuces on the board and a queen in the hole. He was
bluffing. He'd raised all the way. There was a pair of aces on the board. He
drew a second queen.
The aces said, "A buck."
"Come again," Dane said.
"Once more, just for fun."
The rest of the players stirred. One said, "Whyncha wait'll you get the
cards, boys?"
"Okay," Dane said. "I see."
The cards fell. Dane saw the aces and raised. The aces said, "Brett, if
you're bluffing me, I'll have your heart for lunch on rye toast. I see and
raise."
Dane grinned and raised again. The aces saw. Dane flipped his hole queen
up. The aces grinned and showed a third ace. He said, "The case ace, kid."
Dane grunted. "The case ace... that's too much. My hour's up." He rose.
"You boys can keep my sawbuck. Wear it in good health."
They waved good-bye and he left.
ACROSS the town there was no laughter, no gaiety, no camaraderie in the
cab that slowly inched its way up a steep hill. The cabbie said, "Look, I got a
wife and three kids. I can't louse around with you two guys. You're hotter than
a fire engine."
"Don't worry. Let us off at the top of this hill." Cranston had spotted a
bill board on the crest of the rise.
Cranston got Stanton out of the cab over his shoulder in a fireman's lift.
With his one hand he reached into his pocket. He took a fifty dollar bill out of
his pocket.
He dangled it in front of the cabbie's nose. "That hundred was for the
ride. This is for you to forget all about the ride!"
"I got a sudden attack of amnesia," the cabbie said.
"And get far away from here as you can without any cops spotting us."
"Don't worry. From here I should be able to get back to my garage."
The bill board was lighted in the front, but pitch black behind. Cranston
took his burden into the complete darkness. There was only one thing to do.
That is, there was only one thing he could do. A stomach pump would have been
the thing.
Under the circumstances, all he could do was to walk Stanton back and
forth... back and forth... hoping that he could exercise some of the poisonous
substance out.
For the moment they were in comparative safety. There didn't seem to be
much likelihood that anyone would meander behind the bill board.
But someone did.
CHAPTER VII
IN the stillness behind the bill board, in the darkness which Cranston had
hoped would protect him and his helpless friend from alien eyes, suddenly there
came a scratch of sound, then a flickering light.
Cranston moved to the rear so his back was to the bill board. He had
Stanton in his arms. The flickering light came from a wooden match. The match
was held in the grimiest hands Cranston had ever seen on a man. The dirt was so
thick that it splintered off as the man moved his fingers.
Stanton moved a trifle. Cranston held him so that the movement was
unnoticeable. The little penumbra that spread from the match showed a face
which was incredibly lined, and, if anything, dirtier than the man's hands.
Tatters pinned together with rusty safety pins made a costume that had to
be seen to be believed. The tramp took a crust of stale-looking rye bread from
his pocket.
Stanton, opening his eyes for the first time, saw for his return from
consciousness a strange sight. The tramp was not eating the crust. He was using
it as a strainer. From another pocket he took a can of Sterno. This is
solidified alcohol. Wood alcohol.
The tramp had difficulty in juggling the lighted match to the can of
sterno and the crust. He set fire to the alcohol. And when it was sending
streamers of flame up, he turned the edge of the can and poured the flaming
mass onto the bread.
As it started to pour, he blew the flame out. Only the stray flickers of
light from the street showed his avid gaping wound of a mouth straining to
catch the precious drops that fell from the bottom of the crust.
Knuckling his eyes, Stanton tried to turn and see who it was that held
him. Cranston whispered, "Shhh..."
Stanton craned and his neck turned so that he saw Cranston's face. It was
reassuring in the nightmare setting that hailed his return from limbo. He
relaxed. Things couldn't be too bad if he was with Cranston.
The tramp sucked the last of the drippings from the bottom of the crust.
He straightened his bowed shoulders. A grin of despair split his hatchet face.
He took a deep breath. He threw the crust away.
In two minds, as to whether to bribe the tramp or just to sit it out and
hope the tramp would go away, Cranston watched carefully.
Just when Cranston was sure that the tramp was ready to meander away, he
turned and peered into the patch of darkness in which the two men were hidden.
He scratched a match on the seat of his dilapidated trousers. He looked
straight at the two men. He said, "Hi, 'bo."
"Hello," Cranston said. Bribe it would have to be, then.
"Why didn't ya speak up, woulda give ya some alky."
"Uh... no... I'm not in the mood," Cranston said.
"Not in the mood?" the tramp said incredulously. He came closer. "What
kind of a 'bo has to be in the mood?"
His beady tiny eyes looked at Cranston, saw his arms around Stanton.
"Muggin'?"
Maybe that would be the best way to get rid of him. Cranston reached in
his pocket and took out a five dollar bill. "Yeah, here's some for you to keep
your yap shut."
The five vanished in the tramp's paw. He waved a hand. He walked around
the bill board and was gone. Stanton stepped away from the arms that had held
him upright. He staggered a little. "I'm all right now... I think. What
happened?"
"I was hoping you'd be able to tell me."
"All I remember is that somebody knocked on my door." Stanton rubbed his
aching head. "Three men came in... they told me to come with them. They showed
me a badge. I thought they were cops. I figured the jig was up. But... then
something strange happened. The 'cops' got friendly. One took a flask out of
this pocket. He took a drink..."
"Pretended to take a drink," Cranston said.
"I didn't want a drink, but I figured as long as they were being friendly,
I might as well go along with the gag. I took a drink... I put my hat on... then
it felt as if I'd been hit on the head with a blackjack."
"Chloral hydrate does make you feel that way."
"And that's all... until I came to and saw that... what was the bum doing?
Why'd he do that with the bread?"
Bracing Stanton with one arm, Cranston began to walk. "That's standard
practice. Sterno is wood alcohol with wax in it. The heat melts it, the bread
is supposed to strain the wax and the wax poison out of the wood alcohol... It
must, because some of those tramps live for years on it. It would kill us in
one gulp. I suppose the human stomach can get used to anything."
They were at the end of the bill board now. The street lights showed
Cranston that two figures were toiling up the hill toward him.
One figure was that of the tramp. The other was a policeman. Stanton and
Cranston could hear the cop saying, "If this is a drunken daydream, bum, you're
gonna be sorry you were born!"
"I'm spinnin' it straight. What'd I lie for?" the tramp whined. "I'm not a
gay cat. I know which end is up. I tell you there's somethin' funny goin' on
back of that bill board. Those two guys were no tramps... that was no muggin',
neither..."
The cop loosened his gun in its holster. "A guy about forty or forty-five,
and a youngster about twenty-five or six... Funny set up."
Stanton sighed, "This is the end. I better go give myself up. You beat it.
You can do more good on the loose than involved with me."
That was right, Cranston thought. That was the sensible thing to do. But
he hated to be defeated by circumstances. Behind them there was a little gully.
It was perhaps two feet deep. It was designed to take rain water away from the
base of the bill board, so that water could not weaken the supports. Cranston
whispered, "Get down in that gully. Flat on your stomach. Don't make a sound."
Lighting a cigarette, Cranston stepped back and walked behind the bill
board. He came out at the end opposite where the policeman and the tramp were
coming.
"Officer!" Cranston said sternly. "Will you make that tramp stop annoying
me?"
The tramp looked from Cranston's stern, self-righteous face to the cop's.
The policeman stared at Lamont Cranston, well dressed, impressive looking, and
then to the tramp.
"I gave the man five dollars after he whined and annoyed me so much that
it was cheaper to pay him and get rid of him."
"You got a pound on you, bum?" the cop asked.
The tramp whined. He held his hands in his pockets. "He guv it to me! He
told me he was muggin' the other slob!"
The patrolman used his night stick to poke the tramp's hands away from his
pockets. He found the five dollar bill. He said, "You couldn't have gotten this
any other way." Standing close to the tramp as he was, the cop sniffed. "Alky!
I been taken in by a smoke drinker! The tank for you, bud!"
Cranston said, "Can I help, officer?"
"No thanks. If I couldn't handle one of these wood alky boys, I'd hand in
my badge. Sorry you were bothered, sir."
The two turned and walked back down the hill. The tramp, sniveling... the
cop annoyed. The nerve of the tramp... feeding him drunken dreams! They were at
the far end of the bill board now. Cranston could sigh a deep sigh of relief.
Except, as the cop passed the end of the bill board, his hand went to his hip
pocket!
Could Stanton have stood up? Revealed his presence by a sneeze? Cranston
watched, frozen, as the cop peered back of the bill board. His hand came from
his hip. Something shiny flashed in his hand.
Suddenly a broad beam of white light flicked from the shiny thing. It was
a flashlight. Not a gun. The cop sprayed the area with the light. He said to
the bum, "See anybody back there, crumb?"
The tramp sniveled, "Nah..."
That was all. The cop had wanted to assure himself there was nothing to
the tramp's tale. The anti-climax made the breath rush out of Cranston's lungs.
He waved his hand to the policeman as he strode off up the hill.
As soon as the uniformed patrolman was completely out of sight with the
tramp, a matter of five minutes, Cranston ran back of the bill board. "Roger...
Roger... come on, we're in the clear now!"
There was no answer. Cranston lighted match after match. There in the
gully, smudge marks showed where Roger Stanton had hidden.
But of the boy there was no sign.
CHAPTER VIII
IT was the last match that picked up an eerie suggestion of reflection.
Cranston held it until it almost burnt his finger tips. He peered through the
darkness that had been a friendly cloak such a short time before. It was now an
enemy, keeping him from finding what he was looking for. Finally the charred
stub of match fell from his hand. Its dying sparks showed him what the
reflection had come from.
In the mud, half buried, an eye looked up at him.
He picked it up and walked back out to the street. In the bright light
that poured from the street lamp, he saw that the eye was glass. Black stains
around the rim showed where the eye had come from. This was Ally Mingus' eye
that Brett Dane had been so curious about.
It was obvious that it must have fallen from Roger Stanton's pocket when
he threw himself down in the gully. But why had the boy not mentioned that he
had it?
Of course, he didn't know of the city-wide search that was being made for
the glass eye... was it possible that he had picked it up at the scene of the
crime, then, with all the confusing events that had followed, forgotten all
about it? That seemed to make sense, but why had he picked it up in the first
place?
What significance did it have? Under what circumstances had Stanton found
it? Cranston now had a double reason for getting hold of the boy.
Mud streaked, almost fainting from the pain in his head, nauseous from the
remains of the chloral hydrate in his system, Stanton staggered across the
fields that he had found himself in after leaving the gully.
Ahead were lights, the city. As he staggered along, his brain about as
much use to him as a bowl of mush, he wondered vaguely if he were doing the
right thing.
Hidden there behind the bill board, he had come to a decision. He would
not have been in the position he was in now if, in the first place, he had
faced the music. Now, he felt that he could no longer hide behind his father's
power, or Cranston's friendliness. The thing to do was give himself up, keep
Cranston from being involved, so as to give Cranston a free hand in tracking
down the real killer.
It had all seemed so clear when he was lying in the mud there. Now that
the street was ahead, when the overhead light showed the figure of a burly
policeman phoning in from a call box, Stanton was no longer sure that his
decision was the correct one.
But the die was cast. He lurched up to the cop. The patrolman looked at
him distastefully. Drunk... did he have to get all the drunks in the city? At
least that's the way Stanton's muddled mind interpreted the expression on the
red face that looked at him.
"I'm not drunk," Stanton croaked.
"Prove it."
"No, look... you've got to take me downtown. I'm wanted by the police."
"Figuring on a free ride, bud?"
"My name is Roger Stanton."
That was all he got out. The effects of the knockout drops surged back
through him and he passed out at the feet of the incredulous cop.
Lamont Cranston came to a decision of his own. He could not see how
Stanton could keep at liberty under the circumstances. It was clear that he'd
be picked up by the police. Therefore, the place to look for him was at
headquarters. Cranston had to know about the glass eye.
A cab dropped him off at headquarters a matter of minutes after Stanton
was taken there. Cranston walked in as Brett Dane came stalking out of the
chief's office. Dane grinned. "It's all over but the shouting!"
"Ah?"
"The kid's in there. He's pretending to be sick! He was not very sick when
he took that shot at me!"
"Who caught him?"
"That's a funny thing, he wasn't caught. He surrendered."
"Hmm," Cranston said. "Any chance of my seeing him?"
"The chief's being a softy. He's putting him in the jail infirmary. You
can probably see him when the chief gets him all tucked in. I'd tuck him in
with a pair of these..." Dane held up a fist.
Since there was nothing to do for the moment, Cranston sat down and said,
"Look, Dane. Just for the sake of argument, assume that the boy didn't kill
Mingus. Can you make a list of the people most likely to have been interested
in the death of Mingus?"
Dane pushed his hat on to the back of his head. "I can go along with a
gag." He sat down and pulled out an envelope. He took a stub of pencil from his
vest.
"Mind you," Dane said, "I think you've got rocks in your head. I think
Stanton did the stabbing. But I've been wrong before. Let's see..."
Watching the list that Dane wrote down, he could see why the police and
Dane would be much happier if Stanton could be proved to be the killer.
The list in Dane's hand ran like this: 'Any cop, every other crook, Mary
Dustine, Betty Carroll, twenty other girls... Darrel Firn.'
"Who's Firn?" Cranston asked when Dane had reached that name in the list.
"Ah... I thought you knew him. He's the nominal head of Mingus' political
district. Mingus' money put him in office and it kept him there. Believe me
when I say that Mingus got his money's worth out of it. He led Firn around by
the nose."
Remembering something he had read in the papers, Cranston asked, "Isn't
the D.A. trying to pin the kill on Firn?"
Dane nodded.
"I see. The D.A.'s office could make more political value out of it if
Firn was in it."
"Oh yes... it might even end up with the D.A. in the governor's office...
it's hot," Dane said.
"Is a machine in power in City Hall?" Cranston asked.
"No, that's what made it so important to Mingus that he keep Firn in.
Without Firn, the cops would have put Mingus away years ago."
Cranston rubbed his forehead.
"It's a headache, all right," Dane agreed. "But if Stanton is the killer,
then the D.A. gets the dirty end of the stick, the cops get the credit for
catching him, the bill goes through the state legislature raising the pay of
the police, the noose hangs high, and it's a happy ending."
"Except for Stanton," Cranston said, wryly.
"Somebody always has to get hurt. Besides, his old man has plenty of what
it takes. They never fry a million bucks," Dane said cynically.
"Would you go on with your list, please?" Cranston asked.
Dane started to write. Then he threw the pencil down. "Look, do you know
how a shylock works?"
"Sure, he gets back six or seven for every three or four dollars he lends
you... and the interest goes up weekly!"
"Correct. Now... how many people in this man's town do you think like to
pay that kind of interest? Don't you see that any sucker Mingus was in to see
is a potential suspect?"
"His money-lending business was well organized?"
"But solid. You paid up or you got a broken arm... that was the first
time... the second time you got the boots..."
"The third time?"
"The river with concrete booties!" Dane said, "Mingus was a bad boy, or
haven't you got the idea yet?"
Cranston looked at the big clock-face up above the desk sergeant's chair.
He realized that in another hour it would be seventy-two hours since he had
slept.
He rose and stretched. "Nothing much more I can do tonight. I'll see
Stanton tomorrow."
"I'm pooped, too," Dane agreed. "I'll drop you off. Where you stopping?"
"The Alexis."
"Did you hear about the funny business there earlier tonight?" Dane asked.
Listening to the tale of his own exploits, Cranston realized that the
story had gained in the telling. Now, it seemed that he was about six and a
half feet tall and carried two guns...
When Dane finished re-capitulating, Cranston realized that there was the
danger that the doorman night recognize him. But if he changed his mind about
where he was going, Dane might find it suspicious; he went ahead.
In the car, Dane said, "Funny thing about that pickpocket taking it the
hard way."
"The one who committed suicide?"
"Yare. I don't figure that... of course he did have a date with Mingus at
just about the time that Mingus got it."
Cranston nodded. "You don't think he was the killer and killed himself out
of remorse?"
"That scut? Remorse? Besides, the cops had him at the time Mingus was
killed."
There was a different doorman outside the hotel, Cranston saw with relief.
Dane said thoughtfully, "You don't think Stanton was the one that was picked up
here by the three hoods, do you?"
Cranston shrugged. He got out of the car. Dane looked up at Cranston, who,
standing next to the car, seemed even taller than usual. Dane said, "You're
pretty tall, at that..."
"So I've been told," Cranston said. "Thanks for the lift." He turned into
the hotel.
"Oh, say..." Dane said. Cranston turned.
"Did you hear about the glass eyes?"
"Eyes?" Cranston said, feeling the glass eye in his pocket.
"Yeah... that Stanton kid is a joker. He stashed about ten eyes all over
town where they'd be sure to be found. The chief was going batty when all ten
eyes showed."
Ten glass eyes? Cranston wondered what had happened to the other two he
had told Burbank to have spread around town. They'd probably turn up tomorrow.
"Good way of scattering attention, wasn't it?" Dane asked.
"Sure. It'll be difficult to know which is the real eye, now..."
"Not too difficult," Dane said. "Mingus' eye was a distinctive blue." He
thought, then said, "I still don't get why Stanton stole the eye. It must have
been pretty grisly, taking an eye out of a dead man's eye socket."
That was it! Cranston thought... must be pretty tired not to have spotted
that. Stanton would not have taken the eye out... he didn't even know that
Mingus wore one. How could he?
Dane got the car in gear. "See you manana."
Cranston waved good-bye as the car drove off. Now for bed. That was the
only thing he could think of at the moment. Seventy-two hours had dulled even
his razor-sharp mind. He did not realize even then that he knew now who the
killer was. Knew it as soon as he realized that Stanton would not have pried a
false eye out of a cadaver...
CHAPTER IX
AT the same time that Lamont Cranston was stretching and rolling
restlessly on his bed, too tired to fall asleep directly, a curious colloquy
was going on downtown, a block from the prison hospital.
"It'd be a cinch..."
"It's always easier from the hospital."
"What are we waitin' for?"
"There's gotta be some planning here. We can't louse up the way we did the
last time."
There were three of them. Three men who had one thing on their minds.
Money. One of the men had an impromptu bandage on his wrist. He was feeling it.
"I don't get this deal one bit. What'd the tall guy grab the kid for, if he was
gonna turn him over to the cops?"
"The paper said that Stanton gave up himself." This was a short squat man.
"Ya believe everythin' ya read in the papers?" the third asked,
disgustedly.
"I bin in this can. The hospital's a cinch to crash out of," the squat man
said. "Look." He scribbled a sort of floor plan for them on a scrap of paper.
"There's a guy here at this door."
"Only one guard?"
"Just this one at this end of the corridor. There's some more at the other
end. But this guard is at what seems to be a dead end."
"What's the good of that?"
"The dead end only seems to be a dead end. I was all set to beat it when
my lawyer sprung me. The gag is that there's a door at this end that's never
used. Nobody knows that if ya get the door open there's just some old junk
there. A brick wall that'll fall down if ya blow on it."
"How come?"
"It's an old building. They musta walled it up when they built some new
stuff."
"If he's right," the man with the bandaged wrist said, "we can grab the
kid and beat it."
"Let's go," said the third.
On his bed in the jail hospital, Roger Stanton stared at the ceiling with
sleepless eyes. The opiate he had been given had worn off.
He was going around and around in a rat race. He had thought out his
problem at least ten times, but that didn't stop him from going over the same
ground again and again.
Down at the end of the corridor, he could see the prison guard nodding. It
was late. All the other men in the ward were asleep. It made it harder, being
the only one awake.
He looked around him. To one side, an old, old man grunted in his sleep.
His face was a yellow, gaunt mask. On the other side, a youngster groaned in
his sleep.
Roger Stanton yawned. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was
that the guard was gone from the doorway. He blinked and looked again.
The guard had fallen to the floor. It wasn't possible that anyone could
sleep so soundly that he could fall to the floor without waking, was it?
Sitting up in bed, Stanton looked again. The guard was indubitably on the
floor. Nothing stirred. No one had awakened. There was a suggestion of
someone... he looked, staring unbelievingly as a man stepped into view. The man
had a gun in his hand.
The man was the peak of a triangle. The other men were now in sight. They
stepped carefully, as though on eggs. The man in the lead... Stanton recognized
him. It was one of the men who had pretended to be detectives... the ones who
had given him the mickey...
He was at the side of the bed now. He gestured with the gun. "Up," he
whispered.
Stanton thought, why, what goes on? Wasn't he safe even in jail?
The answer, obviously, was that he was not safe, even in jail. The men
looked menacing enough to shoot him right there and then. He looked around the
ward. So many men, so many sick men. There certainly was no chance of their
helping, even if he roused the whole ward.
In the next bed to him there was an old sick man. The other side held a
boy who had been shot in being captured. He was under opiates, but even so, the
pain of his gun wound made him stir restlessly.
No, there was no help. There was not even a sign of a guard, aside from
the one who was on the floor, unconscious. Stanton whispered to the man who
faced him, "What do you want me to do?"
"Get dressed. We're goin' for a little trip." He smiled a crooked smile,
"Just what the doctor ordered."
He got unsteadily to his feet. He grabbed on to the bed for support. The
man took one hand from in back of him. The hand held some clothes. The man
whispered, "These mayn't be so good a fit, but get 'em on."
There was not much point to disobedience. Stanton got dressed. All around
them there was no sound but that of sick men stirring in their sleep.
He was half-dressed before the first interruption. A guard came down
through the space between the two rows of beds.
He was not very wide-awake. He did a double take when he saw the three men
with guns and a prisoner calmly getting dressed. He fumbled for his gun.
He got it out much too late. He was on his way to the floor before it
cleared his holster. The squat man wiped his gun on his trouser leg. It had
crashed into the guard's head hard enough to break the skin.
"Make it snappy before we have more company" he said.
Struggling into the jacket that had been provided for him, Stanton
realized, with that eerie sense that we have inherited from our cave man
ancestors, that eyes were on him.
The old man in the next bed was watching him through slitted eyes. It
didn't mean anything to Stanton... but it was to add something to the sum of
his troubles...
Dressed now, he preceded the three men. They walked to the door. The guard
on the floor did not even move as they passed. Stanton wondered where they could
be going. As far as he had been able to see, this door led to a corridor that
went back to the jail proper.
When he went through the door, he was astounded to see another door. It
was open. It led off the corridor. He saw around the casement of the door, some
bricks... some old mortar.
A gun in his back convinced him that there was no time for sightseeing. He
stepped over the fallen bricks. A long tunnel-like alley led off into the
distance. It was the last touch to the completely nightmare-like quality of the
proceedings. Stanton walked into the cave. The three men followed him closely.
The door closed behind them.
A flashlight in the squat man's hand was the only light now. They walked
silently, or as silently as the rubble on the uneven ground would allow.
"Where are you taking me?" Stanton hazarded.
"Shaddup." A poke in the ribs with the muzzle of a gun ended the
conversation.
In the ward behind them, the old man who had watched so secretly, got out
of bed. Dressed in a hospital wrapper and slippers, he sneaked away from the
bed. He looked at the guard. He was still unconscious. This was it!
Send him to jail for six months just for gettin' a potsy on, would they?
He'd show them! He went around from bed to bed. He spoke only to the men whom
he knew were well enough to get about.
Once they were awake, he told them gleefully there was a jail break on.
All they had to do was follow him.
There were ten of them well enough to follow his lead. He showed them how
the unused door opened. Silently, on cat feet, they followed him. Far, far
ahead, there was a will o' the wisp of light.
It blinked out suddenly. Stanton and his captors had just left the
corridor. Roger shook his head dizzily as he walked out into the street. It
seemed completely impossible that the whole thing could have been done so
simply. A car waited at the curb.
There was no one in sight. All the luck seemed to be on the side of the
men who were forcing him into the car. He looked around despairingly. No one
anywhere.
He got into the car. If only he knew what this meant. Why should they help
him escape from jail... unless... There was one explanation... if they meant to
kill him.
The car drove off. The squat man drove. The other two men sat with guns in
Stanton's ribs. It went around a corner and disappeared into the night.
Five minutes passed, then ten. A head poked into sight. It was the old
man. They made a bizarre procession. The sick, the halt, the criminal. Slippers
pattering, hospital gowns wrapped around them, they slid out of the building.
One minute they were there, the next they had split up and each had gone
his separate secret way. Each was sure that only he would be able to get help,
to get some clothes and money and make his escape... each, in his own heart,
considered the others stupid for leaving in the night, dressed as they were,
moneyless and alone.
THE headlines didn't help Lamont Cranston's breakfast go down very well.
They read, "Mass Jail Break! Old Jail Yields Twelve!" The story didn't tell
much more than that. All that was clear was that Roger Stanton was again on the
run.
Why would the boy have given himself up if he intended to escape? Cranston
spooned his egg into his mouth while he pondered. He was in his bedroom. His
breakfast was spread out on a tray.
The door resounded with a knock. Cranston called out, "Come in."
Dane took him at his word. He slammed the door open, waved a paper in the
air, and said, "How d'ya like this!"
"I don't know that I like it particularly. Coffee?"
"I just had some, but I guess I can force some more. Y'know," Dane said,
as he sat down on the only chair in the room, "what I can't dope out, is how
the kid does it. In the first place, I still can't figure out how the hell he
got those eyes all over town without being spotted. Now this crash out... you'd
think he had a whole gang here in town..."
"The jail break certainly would seem to be part of a well-laid plan,"
Cranston agreed.
"How could he have come into town for the first time, and know that the
old door in the jail hospital was the way out? It doesn't add up..." Dane shook
his head.
Cranston thought he knew who was behind the jail break, but he couldn't
voice his suspicions without checking up. Instead, he said, "This all makes it
much worse for Stanton."
"It sure does," Dane agreed. "The cops have been given orders to shoot him
on sight!"
CHAPTER X
INSIDE of three hours, eight of the escaped prisoners were caught. It was
pre-ordained, with the men dressed as they were, that they were sure to be
picked up by the first cop that saw them.
The old man who had led them was still at liberty. Until he was arrested,
the police had no way of knowing how they had found their way out. As a result,
they were positive that Stanton had led the men. They paid no attention to the
men's stories that an old man had been the one to wake them and show them the
exit.
The phone in Cranston's hotel room rang. He picked it up. This was
awkward. It was one of his men sent to town by Burbank. Cranston spoke as
noncommitally as he could with Dane sitting not five feet from him.
"Fine." That was in answer to how the glass eyes had been parked around
town. "Good. Keep at it." That was in answer to the question about whether or
not the search for motives for killing Mingus should go on. Dane was reading
the papers.
Cranston ended the call by saying, "Check with me later on today."
Puffing on a cigarette stub which was close to burning his lips, Dane
said, "This case will never go down in history as one of my triumphs. I just
cannot seem to get anywhere with it!"
"There seem to be too many things working at cross purposes," Cranston
agreed. "By the way, did you ever get a lead on whoever it was that shot at
you?"
"Nah... that's one of the things that's burning me," Dane said, pinching
his cigarette. "This is one of those cases you and I know the police can handle
much better than we can. There's no use in any private operative kidding
himself. Occasionally the free-lance worker can make the cops look like dopes,
but there are ten times as many cases in which the police machinery can handle
things much better."
"How too true," Cranston agreed, getting into his clothes.
"I can sit in my office with my feet up in the air, making a lot of fancy
guesses, but the boys in blue with the dragnet out are going to be the ones to
pick Stanton up.
"You know," said Cranston, "I don't think they're going to. If they'd been
able, I think they would have had him by now."
"That's right... he's been on the loose all night. If he got out of town,
he's well on his way by now."
Dane ran his hands through his tight curly hair. "I'm gettin' a little
punchy. This thing's gettin' my goat."
"Mine, too. You see..." Cranston said, as he tied his neck tie, "I still
don't think Stanton is the killer."
"You're a hard guy to convince, aren't you?" Dane grinned. "Give you an
idea and you stick to it."
They went downstairs together. Out on the street, Cranston said, "I want
one more look at the room where Mingus was killed."
"I'll go along for laughs," Dane said. "Hop in my car. I'll drive you
there. God knows, I haven't anything else to do."
"No other cases on your calendar?" Cranston asked, as he seated himself in
Dane's car.
"No. I had a good one last month." Grinning at his own folly, Dane said,
"But... where are the snows of yesteryear... I had a few tips on the horses,
you know."
"'Drink and damsels got the rest,'" Cranston quoted.
"How right you are." They drove along in pleasant silence. Dane said,
"There's the house."
They went up the stairs together. A cop was on guard at the door, but Dane
knew him and they were allowed in. They looked the shabby rooms over together.
"How can a room tell you so little," Dane said.
"If Stanton is not the killer, and I am convinced, as you know, that he is
not, this kill comes close to being the perfect murder," Cranston said. There
just was no clue in the rooms.
"There's plenty to be read about Mingus' character from these furnishings,
from the neighborhood in which he lived, despite all his money, but that's about
all," Dane said.
"Curious quirk, that he should live here," Cranston agreed.
"He could have afforded to live pretty high."
"Yes, I am convinced of that." Cranston sighed. "We may as well go."
They waved good-bye to the bored cop who was on guard. On the street they
parted. Cranston said, "See you later."
"Sure. Don't take any wooden nickels." Dane drove off.
As soon as Dane was gone, Cranston went into a candy store and dialed long
distance. He had his silver ready. As soon as he had gotten through to Mr.
Stanton senior, he barked, "Are you satisfied?"
"Really, I don't know what you're talking about... and I don't like your
tone of voice, Cranston!"
"I don't like the way you operate any more than you do my voice!" Cranston
was angrier than he usually allowed himself to get.
"What is this all about?"
"Don't tell me that it wasn't your goons who sprung Roger."
"Well... I acted as I thought best." Stanton's voice was edgy.
"You realize you've come pretty close to ruining any help I may be able to
give your son?"
"I don't realize that at all. I won't allow my boy to be thrown in a cell
like a common felon! He's home now, being taken care of."
Cranston smothered a groan. "I see. Now will you tell me what you intend
to do next?"
"Certainly. I have retained the best criminal lawyer in New York. We will
fight this thing if it takes every cent I have!"
"But... even if your son is tried and acquitted, he's always going to have
this hanging over his head. Don't you see that?"
"If I were in your position. I don't think I should take this attitude.
You certainly bungled a comparatively simple assignment."
"I..." Cranston hung up. He had taken on an onerous job because of his
friendship with the elder Stanton. He certainly had not looked at it as an
'assignment'... he stomped out of the candy store into the street angrily.
No point in losing his temper, he thought sourly. This whole thing was so
messed up, he needed a clearer mind. So the boy was in New York hiding out in
his father's home! The goons were probably guarding him.
The police were on the lookout. They would not be happy to find out that
the boy had slid right out of their dragnet. The boy was now wanted for a jail
break and murder. That made everything just dandy.
All around him, the busy life of a tenement section went on. Children,
forced out of dark railroad flats, played games that would have made any child
educator tear his hair out. The street was their living room...
It was then, feeling the glass eye in his pocket, rolling it over and over
in his fingers, that he realized who the killer was... had to be.
Proving it was going to be a tough assignment...
He strode off down the street, a tall dark man with a good-looking face, a
determined man with menace in him. He knew, now, and nothing was going to stop
him from bringing a ruthless, double killer to justice.
HE checked with his man, the man whom Burbank had sent to town to help
him. The man was nicknamed with a childish pseudonym that fitted him well. He
was called Hawkeye, and for good reason. Put him on a trail and nothing could
deflect him.
They sat in a luncheonette and Cranston said. "Then as far as you can find
out, anyone who came in contact with Mingus would have good reason to kill him?"
"You're right!" Hawkeye said. "What a swine!"
Cranston reached into his pocket and took out the envelope on which Brett
Dane had written the names of the people whom he considered most likely to have
killed the usurer. They looked at the scribbled names. One of the names on the
envelope was that of the killer, Cranston assured Hawkeye.
Hawkeye said, "You're sure?"
"Positive."
"I see. Then it's up to us somehow to nail the killer."
"Uh huh. Right now I don't quite see how. But I will not leave town until
we have the evidence."
"So if I don't want to live out the rest of my own life here I'd better
get a wiggle on. It'll be easier now. Before, I felt like a man in a coal
cellar at midnight looking for a black cat. Now that you are sure of who it is,
I can act more directly."
They finished lunch and Hawkeye left. Cranston headed for police
headquarters. Perhaps there he could find a slender thread... or at least the
end of a thread which, when unraveled, would lead to the murderer.
Smelling the odor of unwashed humanity, the heavy manifold reminder of the
misery that was a daily concomitant of running a police force, Cranston could
understand why so many cops got hard in face and manner. It was necessary to
callous oneself...
The chief looked up expectantly when Lamont walked into the office. The
expectant look vanished. "Oh, it's you. You're the guy who thinks Stanton is as
innocent as a new born babe."
"Uh huh."
"Despite all the evidence that has been added, despite the jail break?"
Cranston nodded.
"Then you either are thicker than a cement outhouse, or you know something
I don't know."
"That's right."
"Which, that you're thick?"
"No. I know who the killer is." Cranston reached into his pocket and
rolled Mingus' glass eye across the desk.
"Another of those damn phony eyes?
"Not at all. This is the real one."
The chief looked his disbelief.
"Turn it over and look inside it."
"So? There's nothing inside it but glass."
"Precisely."
"You're ribbing me." The chief did an Edgar Kennedy burn. "And I'm not in
the mood for ribbing."
"Not at all. The importance of the clue of the glass eye is that it is
just that, a glass eye. There are no mysterious messages inside the eye, there
is nothing startling about the eye. It is just what it seems to be."
"Now, wait a minute..."
"You wait a minute. I'll tell you why this eye tells us the name of the
killer," Cranston said firmly, "I'll tell you all, in a couple of hours! I am
wrapping up the whole case tonight!"
On that he left the chief.
CHAPTER XI
IT was turning from day to night when Cranston left the police station.
The sun was setting behind some decrepit buildings off to his left. He looked
up at the red haze the sun was leaving behind it. Red, red for blood.
Blood on the moon... on the moon and on a man's hands. A man who must feel
himself above the law, beyond the ordinary rules that apply to mundane humanity.
Cranston wasn't aware of how he got there, but Hawkeye was at his side.
They walked down the street quietly. Cranston spoke first. "Get anything?"
"Puhlenty."
"Give."
"Just what you figured."
"Good."
"Use the rig tonight?"
"Yes. Cover me. I'm going after him. I'm going to wind this up once and
for all."
Some reporters clattered down the steps of the police station. Hawkeye and
Cranston turned to look at them. They were piling into some battered cars that
were parked at the curb in direct violation of the city ordinance about fire
plugs.
"Hi!" Brett Dane separated from the mass of men.
"Hello Dane." Hawkeye was gone from Cranston's side.
"Anything new?" Dane asked.
"Yes. I guess you could say there is."
"Secret?"
"No. I'm going after the killer as of now." Cranston's face was set.
"Need any help?" Dane was eager.
"Yes. Always glad of an extra hand. You see, as I told the chief, there is
no real proof of my conviction. I have to bluff to a degree. I have no way of
knowing what's going to happen."
"Was that list I gave you of potential suspects any use?"
"Yes indeed. The name of the killer was on it."
"I'll be damned!"
"Did you tell the chief who it was you suspected?"
"No, I didn't think it would be fair... after all, I may be wrong. And if
I am, there's no use in having the police after an innocent person."
"Decent of you," Dane said, and then, "Where away? I know you don't have a
car with you."
"Down toward the waterfront, if my informant is correct."
"You mean," said Dane as they both got into his car, "that the Stanton kid
is in the clear despite all the evidence?"
"That's exactly what I mean. It's what I've been saying ever since Mingus
was found with the knife wound in his belly."
"You stick with an idea when one hits you, don't you?"
Cranston nodded as he shifted his shoulder. He felt the reassuring weight
of his .45 in his shoulder holster. You never know.
Aloud, he said, "Without your help I doubt if I could ever have taken the
noose from Stanton's neck. Thank you."
"You're welcome, but I wish I knew how I helped you. I feel like a jerk...
after all, I'm supposed to be a detective, too. Do I know all the things you do?"
"I think so. I have some verification that you don't, but you have the
basic facts..."
The car drove through traffic that got lighter as they went. Most of the
cars were driving the other way. People were going home from work, and going
uptown, not down toward the docks. Cranston looked in the rear view mirror.
There... yes, that was Hawkeye in that other car. Leave it to him to stick like
a corn plaster.
"Where now, master mind?" Dane kidded. "There're the docks, up ahead."
"Pier number forty two."
"Right you are."
They drove along in silence until they reached the pier Cranston had asked
for. Dane applied his brakes. "Now what?"
"We leave the car here."
As they got out of the car, Dane asked curiously, "Is the killer someone I
know?"
Cranston nodded. "We have to go down toward the end of the pier."
"You lead, I'll bring up the well known rear, since I'm definitely in
second place on this deal."
There was no one in sight. Dane said, "Wonder where the watchman is?"
"Probably too early. The day men have just gone off..."
They walked out to the very end of the dock. Cranston sat down on the very
edge of the dock with his feet hanging off. His back was to a pile that reared
up at a Tower of Pisa angle. He said, "May as well get comfortable. This may be
a long wait."
Dane sat at his right. He let his feet dangle off the edge, too. They
might have been two kids playing hookey from school. "Can we talk, or is this
one of those hush-hush vigils?"
"We can talk." Cranston looked at his watch.
Dane took a pocket knife from his vest pocket. It was one of those with a
spring where you push a button and the blade pops out. He hacked at a piece of
wood at his side. He got out a long splinter and sat whittling it.
He said, "You keeping the surprise for the last chapter, or can you go
over the thing with me? It should be good for me. I rarely monk up this badly."
He paused. "As a matter of fact, of the maybe fifty cases I've had since I left
the cops, I don't think I ever wandered around in as much of a fog as I have on
this little dilly."
"Ummm..." Cranston said, looking out over the water at the grimy tugs, the
long slender pleasure boats, the heavy wide cargo boats, that made a pattern on
the water. "This should go down on the record as the perfect murder that went
wrong."
"If, as you say, the kid, Stanton, is in the clear, then it does stack up
as the perfect murder."
"You see," Cranston said, still looking at the changing patterns in the
water, "the philosophers of murder, the writers, have done so much thinking
about the perfect murder, that they wind up in a veritable fog of murder
devices, of faked alibis, of unknown poisons... when we practical men of trade
know very well the perfect murder is the one that takes place in a dark alley
where a bludgeon beats the brains out of a careless head."
"Sure. Those are the tough ones to crack. No clues, no witnesses, nothing
to get a toe hold on."
"The man who killed Mingus knew that. Knew too, that more important than
strange poisons that leave no trace, or getting rid of the corpus delicti, is
the small matter of handing a suspect over to the police neatly wrapped up in a
package."
"Let's face it," Dane agreed, "cops are rather poorly paid civil servants,
one of the reasons I left the force, and they are as overworked as they are
underpaid. They do have a tendency to grab at the handiest suspect."
"I wouldn't go that far... the police have seen so much violence that
everything begins to fall into a pattern. For instance if a husband calls the
police and says that he has just come home and found his wife shot, the cops
figure, and rightly in ninety per cent of the cases, that the husband is the
killer and is calling to throw suspicion off himself."
"How true," Dane agreed. "That is the danger of the professional cop. He
has, as you say, seen so many patterns that a killer who breaks the accepted
patterns has a good, or at least better chance of getting away with murder."
"The smart killer," Cranston said in rebuttal, "is not the one who breaks
the pattern because that brings more attention to him, but the one who frames
his kill so that it falls into an accepted pattern - you see?"
Dane had whittled his splinter down to a toothpick. He idly picked at a
space between his two front teeth and said, "A frame up?"
"Exactly."
"All this is leading to the Mingus kill, of course. How did your smart
murderer conceivably frame the kid? No one but a mind reader could have known
that Stanton was going to duck away from the cops in time to waltz into the
frame."
"Not even a fortune teller could have predicted that... however, since our
killer had a blueprint, he just fitted a new character into the blueprint."
"That's over my head," Dane said, as he carefully split the toothpick in
half. "I don't get it."
"Look," Cranston said patiently, "Stanton was not the one that the
gilt-edged frame was rigged for."
"Now you're really confusing me."
"You remember a pickpocket who was arrested for picking Stanton's pocket?"
"Sure. That was the first inkling the cops had that Stanton was in town."
"That's where the plot really started. The pickpocket said, just before he
dipped Stanton's wallet, that he had an appointment with Mingus."
"The dip was meant to be the pigeon?"
"As far as I can see, yes. The killer must have come close to cracking
when he looked out the window after stabbing Mingus and saw his clay pigeon
being arrested. Here he had done the killing, all that was left was to hand
someone over to the police..."
"And then like a gift from the gods, the door opened and Stanton walked
in."
"Walked into the blackjack that was designed for the pickpocket. If
anything, that made the frame stronger, because Stanton was on the run, wanted
by the police."
"Neat, very neat," Dane said.
"The killer smashed Stanton, put the murder weapon, the knife, into the
boy's unconscious hand, and walked out."
"Cute. That left him completely in the clear."
"Except for one small item."
"What was that?" Dane asked curiously.
"Mingus, with his dying breath, left a clue that points directly to the
killer," Cranston said, looking at the swirling rainbows that oil from the
ships had left on the surface of the water. For no earthly reason, a vagrant
thought flickered through Cranston's mind. It had something to do with the fact
that whale oil will calm wild water down much faster than regular petroleum.
Cranston smiled at himself. Of all times to be thinking of extraneities!
"What in the world kind of clue could a dying man leave?" Dane scowled at
the water. "I can't buy these stories where the dying man gets up and scrawls
out a double talk message that only the great brain of the detective can ever
figure out.
"They seem pretty silly to me, too," Cranston agreed. "However, the thing
that Mingus did was something that could be done with a dying breath."
"What was that?"
"He plucked out his glass eye."
"You mean the kid didn't take it?"
"Oh, yes. Stanton took it all right. But he took it from the dead man's
relaxing hand. He didn't pluck it out of the eye socket." Cranston paused. "How
could he have? He didn't know the dead man wore a prosthetic eye."
"I don't know if I can buy that, either. After all, the muscles in the eye
might have forced it out in his death throes."
"I considered that, too, Dane. But I had the matter checked with a doctor.
The glass eye is kept in place not by muscular contraction, but by lifting and
stretching the eyelids. Epileptics have worn glass eyes and there is no record
of an epileptic popping a glass eye out. I assure you that no death throes
could be quite so violent as the convulsions of epilepsy.
"No, Dane, Mingus plucked his own eye out and held it in his hand as he
died, so that the first cop that came along and found the eye would know..."
Cranston saw that Dane wasn't listening to him. Instead, he sat with his head
cocked to one side.
"Shh," Dane said. "I hear someone!" He paused and they both heard the old
wood of the dock complain as heavy footsteps pounded towards them. Dane
whispered, "Is this your killer, come to call?"
Before Cranston could answer, a suave, rounded voice said, "Hello? Anyone
here? Why the mysterious phone call?"
CHAPTER XII
DANE said under his breath, "That fat slob! Darrell Firn!"
"Oh - it's you, Dane! If I'd known you were behind the call I would not
have come!" Firn said.
Cranston looked at the politician, the man who had been kept in political
prominence by Mingus' dirty money. The man was about forty-five, with a paunch,
a too-red face, a smile that came and went as though turned on by a button and a
real ham's voice. "I was the one who called you, Mr. Firn. My name is Lamont
Cranston."
With Firn still about ten paces away, Dane whispered to Cranston, "If I
stay here there's going to be a fight. I can't stand this guy!"
"I don't need you; if you want to, you may leave."
"Sure you don't need me?"
"Positive. Perhaps it would be better if you left. I can get more done
that way."
As Dane passed Firn the two men puffed their chests out like lighting
roosters. Firn waited till Dane was quite a bit away. Night was falling and
Dane was out of sight before he reached the land end of the pier. Firn said,
"Now then, what can I do for you, Mr. Cranston? I know you by reputation, of
course." His voice dribbled off as he waited for Lamont to speak.
Alone on the end of a pier that jutted out into the river, Cranston and
Firn took each other's measure. Cranston said slowly, "You were very close to
Mingus, weren't you?"
"You've been listening to that louse Dane."
Shrugging, Cranston persisted, "You knew a bit about Mingus' business?"
Firn nodded. "What do you want to know and why?"
"Do you know who was indebted to Mingus?"
"Some of the ones, yes."
"Who owed Mingus the most money?"
"That's a hard one. I couldn't be sure. Mingus had his money spread around
where he thought it would do the most good."
"I see. You don't know where he kept his records?"
"He didn't. He couldn't because of the income tax boys. He had a
phenomenal memory and he trusted it completely. No, you won't find any papers
with the information you want."
There was a silence. Then Firn said, "If it will help you any, I know that
Brett Dane was in hock to someone else!"
"Who?"
"Landers. Know him?"
Cranston shook his head.
"He's a very bad boy. I heard not long ago that Dane dropped a big bundle
to Landers in a crap game."
"I see."
"I guess that isn't much help - after all, you want to know who owed
Mingus money." Firn looked at Cranston, "Why do you want to know that?"
"I am sure that Stanton, whom the police think killed Mingus, is innocent.
I am just trying to find out about any other motives that might fit the pattern."
Standing up, Firn said, "Then I am afraid I can't be of any help."
As Firn turned to walk away, Cranston said quietly, "How much did you owe
Mingus, Mr. Firn?"
"That damn Dane! Did he tell you I was in debt?"
"No, but were you?"
"No, not a blessed penny! I think you have said all I want to hear, Mr.
Cranston!" Firn stalked off highly indignant. Cranston did not even turn around
to watch him as the politician walked away.
Instead Cranston looked out over the water. He could hear Firn's footsteps
echoing back to him. He sat on the edge of the pier.
Soon it was quiet. Quiet as the water front must have been before man
brought the hurry-burly of his complexities and superimposed them onto the
placidity of the water.
Getting to his feet, Cranston turned his back on the peace and quiet and
walked towards the man who waited to kill him.
Cranston felt the presence of someone else on the dock as he walked
towards a dense black patch of shadow cast by a high piling. A watchman's
shanty, jutting upwards like a broken finger, cast its own shadows.
There was a too-solid shadow in the darkness. Cranston put his hand to his
chest. He slid his fingers over the cold reassuring weight of the gun that was
holstered there. Aloud he said, "You can come out now." His voice was tired.
This was the showdown, the end of the case. The killer waited for him. It was a
death trap.
The dark patch that was a murderer said in low tones, "How did you know?"
A scurrying cloud passed over the face of the moon. It blacked out the
whole area like a deadly blanket. "Does it matter now?" The man stood up. He
was a menacing figure that had no identity except to Cranston who knew who he
was. Cranston said, "If you move again, I'll shoot you."
The answer could have been predicted. A bullet came out of the darkness.
It missed Cranston only because he had thrown himself flat on his belly as he
spoke. From his prone position he pointed his gun up and said, "Drop it."
The man tried to aim, and as he did, Cranston shot his gun from his hand.
Then the silence was broken by the clatter of the gun landing on the wood of
the dock. The man, instead of nursing his injured hand, leaped at Cranston. He
threw his whole weight into the charge. He landed solidly.
It knocked the pins from under Cranston. In the quiet that now lay heavy,
there was the sound of rasping breath. The two men rolled over and over. They
were perilously close to the edge of the dock.
Cranston could not bring his gun to bear on the man, for the man, using
his uninjured hand in a vise-like grasp, bent it backwards. The pain must have
eased up in the man's hand for somehow he got it into his pocket and came out
with a knife which flashed open. Rolling over and over like two children
playing, the two men rolled off the edge of the dock.
The knife flickered in the light as the moon came out from the cloud. The
knife flashed down at Cranston's throat as the battling men vanished under the
water.
The surface of the water smoothed out. The oil acted as oil always does.
It calmed down the little waves that the men had made.
Soon a rainbow remade itself.
Under the water, Cranston was able to move his injured arm more easily.
Gravity lessened, it felt almost normal. He slitted his eyes and saw the knife
driving toward his throat.
The water made the motions fantastic, like a slow motion picture. Fast or
slow, however, that razor-edged knife would do things to Cranston's throat.
Loosening his grasp, Cranston arched backward, away from the menace of the
knife. This had to end fast, or they'd both drown. The knife slashed through the
water, leaving a train of bubbles in its path.
Getting the gun out of its holster was a job, underwater. Keeping out of
reach of the knife, Cranston brought the gun up. Dane jackknifed his legs and
swooped down like a chicken hawk... or a shark...
He grabbed the gun from Cranston's hand. The blood was making little,
almost pretty, swirls in the water as it oozed from Cranston's arm.
The man grinned, and he was like a shark. He pointed the gun at Cranston.
Both of them were at the end of the air supply that tortured lungs were doling
out in fast disappearing quantities.
Knife in one hand, gun in the other, Dane could afford the luxury of a
grin. Cranston was out of reach of the knife. The trigger of the gun pulled
back.
Even in the murky water, Cranston could see the finger tightening on the
trigger. He knew that, turn and twist as he might, he could not evade the speed
of a bullet... but a thought made his mouth curl in a smile.
He stopped trying to evade the gun's menace. He stayed stock still, making
a perfect target for the bullet.
The hammer fell on the back of the cartridge.
CHAPTER XIII
COMING out from under the cover of the pier, Hawkeye swore. The rowboat
was clumsy, and the weight of the storage batteries under the seat in front of
him didn't make the boat any the less unwieldy.
He scanned the water, seeing bubbles that denoted the position of the two
men who were hidden under the water. Suddenly a little mountain of a bubble
rose to the surface and burst.
There was a low muffled sound, and then, Hawkeye sniffed. He could smell
the unmistakable fumes of cordite. Once smelled, it is never forgotten.
He knew that a gun had gone off under water... but who had fired it?
Brett Dane's head broke the water first. Hawkeye had to quell the desire
to bash Dane's head with an oar. He was glad he didn't when he saw Dane's face.
It was Cranston who had pushed the unconscious body of the private
detective into view. He smiled at Hawkeye. "Grab hold."
It was a job, getting the slack body into the rowboat. Cranston couldn't
be of too much help because of his arm. They finally managed it. Hawkeye said,
"Gotta be careful he doesn't drip on the wire."
"That's all we'd need," Cranston said.
They both looked at the mangled remains of what been a good-looking face.
Dane breathed stertorously. Hawkeye asked, "What'd you do to him?... Not that
he didn't deserve whatever it was..."
"I didn't do anything." Cranston explained about how Dane had wrested the
gun from his hand because of the wounded arm which had refused to mobilize
itself.
"Yeah... so he points the gat at you and pulls the trigger... so?"
"I figured... down there..." Cranston looked at the oily water, "that
either of two things were likely to happen; a: the cartridge would not go off
because the primer was wet... or b: that the gun would explode when the violent
forces set off by the impact of the pin met the blanketing effect of the water."
"B: happened. The gun blew up in his face," Hawkeye said.
"It almost deafened me, but outside of that I seem to be all right. We'd
better get him to the hospital."
"Him?" Hawkeye was indignant. "What about you? What about your arm?"
"I suppose it should be cleaned out and bandaged." With that, Cranston
leaned back. Wavering lines were flickering before his eyes. He realized that
he was a little faint from the wound, and the exertion of moving the damaged
arm.
In the prison hospital from which Stanton had been kidnapped... or
rescued... depending on how you looked at it, the doctor finished bandaging
Cranston's arm as the chief of police entered.
The chief looked at the bed on which Dane lay. The man moaned, even under
the opiate that had been given him. His head was a white mushroom of bandage.
"Don't I have enough trouble without detectives fighting among
themselves?" the chief asked.
Cranston, instead of answering said, "May one of my assistants come in,
chief?"
"Why not?"
Hawkeye entered with a package under his arm. "Is there an outlet, an
electric socket I can use?"
The doctor pointed to one and Hawkeye squatted on his heels. "This is a
lot more convenient than the batteries in the boat, huh chief?"
The chief of police looked puzzled until Cranston said, "He means me,
chief, not you."
"What is all this?"
"All this," Cranston said, pointing to the bed where Dane lay, "is the end
of the Mingus murder. That..." pointing to the package which Hawkeye was
connecting to the wall socket, "is a wire recorder."
"A which?" the chief asked.
"It's not particularly new. A recorder which translates sound waves into
magnetic impulses."
"I know... uses wire instead of wax. I always meant to find out about
them," the chief said. "I don't understand how they work. Does the needle
scratch the record into the wire the way it does into wax?"
"I can't explain a whole recondite subject in the time it will take
Hawkeye to get the setup, so, simply, a wire is run between the jaws of a
magnet. An electrically amplified sound jams the magnetic pattern into the
molecular structure of the wire. That sound is then later translated back into
sound... ah, ready, Hawkeye?"
"Sure, boss."
"A few words first, chief," Cranston said. "I jockeyed Dane down onto a
dock where he could see that there was not a soul around for miles. Then I
stalled until I was sure that my assistant, Hawkeye, had enough time to get
under the dock in a rowboat. He had the wire recorder, which can record a full
hour of conversation, in the rowboat. He started it as I began to set up the
case of the two murders."
"Murders? Plural?" the chief asked.
"Yes, Mingus and the pickpocket. However," Cranston said, "the wire record
will explain almost everything. I think."
The chief sat with his chin in his hands as the wire spool unwound itself
and its sordid story.
When the spool had finished, the chief turned and looked at Dane, whose
body moved in pain. "The dirty..." He paused. Words did no good. He just sat
for a few minutes.
"Dane owed a lot of money to Mingus," Cranston said.
"Twenty thousand... that's a lot of money. A lot more than a private
detective can ever hope to pay back..." Dane said, speaking through his pain.
"I never intended to pay it back," the killer said. "I built my credit up
very carefully. I'd borrow a grand and pay back eleven hundred in a week. Then
I borrowed two grand... I had it up to twenty fast..."
"Why did you need that much?"
Dane grinned sourly. He had never been able to talk over his problem with
anyone. "I was between the devil and the deep blue sea, if anyone ever was. I
dropped the twenty grand in a crap game with Andy Lander."
Cranston remembered what Firn the politician had said.
"Oh, I forgot. You don't know all the characters in this town. Lander is a
bad boy. I knew that if I didn't pay him back, I'd wind up in the river... with
concrete booties to keep my feet warm. I knew the worst that Mingus would do
the first couple of times he wanted his money, anyway, was to have me beat
up... well, I been beat up before... but I never been dead before..."
"So you got the heat off from Lander's end by paying him the money you
owed him..." Cranston prompted.
"And then I was in the soup with Mingus. I had to kill him... it was him
or me... and I like to live."
"Did you have to kill the pickpocket?" Cranston asked.
"Of course. Don't you see... I had phoned the dip, disguised my voice,
said I was Mingus, told him to be there about five minutes after I figured on
making cold meat of Mingus."
"Then, when he was arrested, you didn't want him telling anyone about his
'appointment'?"
"Right. You're no dope, Cranston. When Stanton put his neck in the noose,
I wanted the dip forgotten about... the quickest way out was to pay a visit
with the cops. I sneaked off, took care of the dip with his own tie, and
wandered back to the uniformed boys. They never even realized I was gone."
"You traded on the fact that your face is so well known down there that
people take you for granted."
"The way it worked out, I was right. No one even mentioned the fact that I
was there, did they?"
"Oh, you were seen, the only reason it didn't come up was because the
question wasn't raised," Cranston said coldly.
"So you raised the question?" Dane grinned.
"Correct."
"Like I say, you're a cutie pie," Dane said.
"It worked the same way as your appearance at Mingus' flat. What did you
do after you'd killed him? Run up and over the roof, come down the next house
and calmly go right back up into Mingus' flat?"
"You're so right. But the cops didn't pay me any mind because I've shown
up at plenty of murders. It's a nice cover-up."
"Very... you're the invisible man as far as the police are concerned."
Dane grinned. "Sure, I've made it my business to be on the right side of
them. Lots of them don't even realize I'm not on the force any more."
"I saw that."
"You seem to have seen too damn much," Dane said.
"It took me a minute to see through your misdirection with the bullet!"
Cranston said.
"Bullet? Oh, you mean in my office."
"Who did the shooting? The girl?"
"You wouldn't think she could shoot that well, would you? That's one of
the reasons I hired her. Sure, she waited till you were all set in my office,
then, she screamed, shot at my shadow... we had that figured out to the inch...
and then pulled the phony faint."
Cranston said, "It was you who tailed me all over town till you ran out of
gas, wasn't it?"
Dane nodded. "I just wanted to see what you were up to."
"That was a confusing pattern, because after I ducked you, Stanton's
father's goons picked up Stanton at the hotel, and I had some trouble with
them."
"It's not a pretty picture," the chief said, "but there's still some
things that don't add up to me. Like..."
"Let me explain one thing first," Cranston said. "I'm a lip reader, that's
how I knew what the pickpocket said to his friends..."
"But how, in the name of all that's holy, could Dane have known that
Mingus and the pickpocket had an appointment? There was no earthly way that I
could see that."
"Dane slipped there. He mentioned the date casually, as though it were a
well known bit of information!"
"He wasn't in sight when the dip said that he had to see Mingus?" the
chief asked.
"Of course not. He was up in Mingus' room killing the man when the
conversation took place. The only way he knew about the date was because he
made it! He had called the pickpocket, pretending to be Mingus, and asked the
dip to be there at a specific time! That's recorded on the wire, if you
remember."
"That didn't even occur to me," the chief said. "Someplace on that spool,
you said that the name of the murderer was on the list that Dane gave you. Do
you mean to say that Dane put his own name down?"
"That was misdirection," Cranston said, "and yet, it was true. You see, he
wrote out the list on the back of an envelope that he had received... well,
naturally, his name was on the front of the envelope. So..."
"I think after turning this killer over to me, you might be able to make a
deal with me about Stanton." The chief smiled. "I've been hounding the city
fathers for more money to fix the rat trap of a jail for ages. This escape has
brought the thing to a head. I think I'll get the appropriation now."
"I think, too," said Cranston, "that the rise in pay for the police should
go through now, don't you?"
"Are you telling me," said the chief, unbelievingly, "that you're allowing
the police credit for capturing Dane?"
"Yes. I think you would have, anyway, in the long run."
"I can't thank you enough, Mr. Cranston. This'll be a big help."
"You see, that was one of the factors that weighed so heavily with Dane.
He knew that because of the legislation on the pay increase, the police would
be doubly anxious for a quick conviction."
"How right he was. That was some real dust he threw in my eyes..."
"And speaking of eyes..." Cranston said, "I think your last question was
to be how I knew in the first place that Dane had killed Mingus?"
"That's right," the chief agreed. "Unless you knew something I didn't, I
can't see how you..."
"I did know something you didn't know, and that's why I don't take any
credit for perspicacity. You see... Mingus... dying..."
"Yeah," interrupted the chief. "The eye! What'd that mean?"
"You're too close to see, chief. What are the slang names for private
detective?"
"Shamus... private dick... private eye..."
"The private eye... precisely... you see, Mingus knew who killed him...
and wrenched his private eye from its socket so as to leave a clue!"
Cranston left with Hawkeye while the chief was still muttering, "Private
eye..."
There'd be good news for Roger Stanton... no murder rap... no arrest for
breaking jail... and certainly by now even Roger's stupidly adamant father
would have seen the futility of prosecuting his son for forgery. And Roger...
Cranston smiled to himself, for he was sure that Roger had learned a lesson he
would never forget.
It was raining as they walked out onto the street. Cranston wondered if
Burbank, back in New York, had dug up anything interesting...
THE END