Popular Detective, December. 1943
Death Signals
by John L Benton
The F. B. I. and Naval Intelligence combine to smash a diabolical plan, directed at our supply ships!
HE long stretch of beach on the
hair. His eyes were constantly alert and coast of Maine was bleak and lonely
wary, for he knew that danger—perhaps
T as the shadows lengthened that late even death—lurked somewhere nearby.
wintry afternoon. The wind blowing in
As he walked on he was a thin, tall
from the sea was damply cold and figure in the gathering dusk. His topcoat whitecaps dotting the ocean as far as the was drawn tight about him to ward off the eye could see, foretold of a storm before evening chill. Sand churned up against the morning.
trousers of his tweed suit and trickled down Larry Lowell’s lean young face was
inside his heavy tan oxfords. His right set and grim as he plodded along. He wore hand, was thrust deep inside a side pocket no hat and the wind ruffled his thick brown of his coat, clutching the cold steel of an
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automatic.
tugged at something in his pocket.
Yet there was no fear in Lowell’s
“I wouldn’t do it,” said Lowell, his
heart—only the cool caution of a man who automatic abruptly covering Dedham.
had been trained to use his head when he
“That’s how people get killed. Don’t draw had a dangerous job to do. The F.B.I, did your gun or try to use it!”
not like their men to make mistakes by
“Gun?” Dedham said blankly as he
being too impetuous.
pulled out a big white handkerchief. “But I He glanced ahead at the big old
have no gun.”
stone house looming in the distance. The Lowell felt rather foolish as he
old Malden place was the sort of house that looked at the handkerchief. Apparently
seemed to belong on this desolate stretch of Dedham was not as dangerous as he had
coast. As gray and solid and grim as were seemed at first. Yet there was something the jagged rocks of a breakwater before it.
about the stout man that he did not like.
“Going somewhere special?”
“Remember, I do have a gun,” he
demanded a voice behind him.
said as he dropped the automatic back into Larry froze. He had been so intent
his pocket. “And since you seem so
on what lay ahead of him that it had been anxious about it, I’m headed for the old some time since he looked back along the Malden place down the beach.”
beach. He turned slowly now and the
“They will not welcome visitors,”
automatic in his coat pocket was even more Dedham warned, shaking his head. “There comforting than it had been before.
has been a death in the family. Young
Thomas Malden, I believe. He was found
A STOUT man with his hands in the drowned just yesterday—and such a strong pockets of his overcoat stood watching swimmer, too! I understand the funeral him. The face beneath the brim of his dark arrangements have all been made.”
soft hat looked like a piece of flabby
Lowell heard no sound behind him,
dough. His small eyes were colorless and for the roaring of the surf was loud in his vacant, and the fuzzy little mustache ears. Suddenly the noose of a rope flipped looked as though it would blow away at
over his head. He struggled to get it off, as any moment.
it tightened—tightened—
“I asked you a question.” The stout
Again Dedham’s hand came out of
man’s voice was harsh, the tones of one his pocket, this time clutching an
who delighted in browbeating. “Answer!”
automatic. He leaped forward and brought
“Why?” demanded Lowell quietly.
the gun barrel down in a brutal blow.
“I can’t see that where I am going is any of An all-engulfing wave of blackness
your business.”
swept over the F.B.I, man as he dropped to
“But I am John Clinton Dedham,”
the sand, unconscious. . . .
said the stout man. “And I demand an
It seemed as though he had been
answer.”
swimming for hours in the waters of a dark
“Pipe down! I’m Larry Lowell, of
sea. There were times when the white face the beach-roaming Lowells,” snapped the of his younger brother Jim appeared above G-man.
the crest of a wave—and always Jim
Dedham gasped. It was obvious he
shouted something that Larry Lowell could wasn’t accustomed to being answered in
not quite understand.
this manner. His right arm moved as he
The nightmare went on and on.
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Now he was on the freighter with Jim and flashlight in his right hand and a gun in his the rest of the crew. The ship was sailing left.
down the New England coast just before
“Must you make so much noise?”
the torpedo struck without warning.
he demanded as he stood glaring down at Swimming again—trying to keep Lowell. “Perhaps it would have been better afloat as the giant waves tossed him about.
if we had killed you at once.” He frowned.
There was Jim, shouting—shouting what?
“Yet I thought it best to find out how much That he was reported missing at sea? Larry you know first.”
tried to answer him, tried to tell him to
“Know about what?” asked Larry.
wait—
“Do you think I’m a fool?” Dedham
Now his eyes were open and he
said arrogantly. “There were identification heard himself moaning. He remembered papers in your pockets. I know that you’re the nightmare vividly now that he had from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, completely regained consciousness. sent here to learn if someone in this house Sorrow-swept over him. There was one has been signaling U-boats along the part of it that had been true. His younger coast.”
brother had been lost at sea just two weeks
“That’s right,” said Lowell calmly.
ago, when his freighter had been torpedoed
“Are you in charge of operations?”
by a Nazi submarine. That had not been a
“Naturally,” the stout man nodded.
dream. . . .
“For a job, such as this that requires brains Larry tried to move and found that
and courage, I would be selected—that is to his hands and feet were bound. His be expected.”
overcoat had been removed and he was
“Still you have had a little help, Mr.
beginning to feel cold. Although it was Dedham,” said a voice from the stairs. “So dark and he couldn’t see anything, he was sorry—but I must say that I have been of pretty sure he was inside a house, and since assistance.”
it was unlikely that the kidnapers would Lowell glanced up. A Japanese
have carried him any great distance, he stood on the stairs. He was dressed in a decided that it must be the Malden house, blue suit and looked as though he might be which was the only place for two miles in a servant in the house.
either directio
n along the beach.
“Oh, of course, Sato,” said Dedham
quickly. “You’ve been a great help. There HE HAD not the slightest intention of is no doubt of that—you have proved quite remaining where he was, silently waiting capable of carrying out my orders. Where for something to happen. He wriggled his is Miss Malden?”
back and managed to get into a sitting
“In her room in the other wing of
position with his back against a wall. Then the house,” said Sato. “She suspects
he began to yell.
nothing. The grief of her brother’s death
“Help! Help, somebody—they’ve has made her blind to what goes on about got me!”
her.”
He waited to see what would
As he listened, Larry decided that
happen. Then he heard footsteps as Sato spoke rather good English, and that he someone came down a flight of stairs. It wasn’t overfond of Mr. John Clinton
was Dedham. The stout man was still Dedham. In fact the G-man decided that wearing his coat and hat and he had a
Sato’s voice and the way he pronounced
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his words were very interesting. . . .
“Excellent idea,” said Dedham.
“We’ll have to act fast,” said “Couldn’t be better if I had thought of it Dedham. “With the G-men suspecting this myself.” He drew a roll of adhesive tape place, tonight is the last time we will dare out of his pocket and quickly covered
risk signaling from here. You have Lowell’s mouth. “Come on, Sato,” he said everything ready, Sato?”
then. “Help me carry him up to the attic.”
“Everything is ready.” Sato nodded
A pretty brown-haired girl had been
toward the prisoner. “What will you do
standing on the second-floor landing all with him, Dedham?”
this time, silently listening to the voices of
“Mr. Dedham to you,” growled the
the men below. Now she moved swiftly
stout man, glaring at the Japanese. “Don’t along the hall as she heard them coming up forget that, Sato.”
the stairs with Lowell.
“You Axis boys certainly are good
pals,” said Larry with a mocking smile.
NANCY MALDEN was grief-stricken
“Just one happy family.”
over her brother’s death. There had been
“Keep quiet!” snapped Dedham, as
just the two of them in the family since he looked down at the prisoner. “You talk their father had died two years ago. Nancy too much, Lowell.”
had kept the old home going since then,
“You’d be surprised at how much I
with the aid of two servants. Tom Malden, have been talking,” said Lowell. “I had a an Army officer, had been home on leave little chat with the commanding officer at for the past week.
the Coast Guard station this afternoon
As was his custom, before he went
before I decided to visit the old Malden into the Army, Tom had gone for an early place. He is going to have some of his men morning swim just two days ago. He had
look for me here if I don’t report back to been found washed up on the shore—
the station by midnight tonight.”
drowned—with his head smashed in.
“Midnight!”
muttered
Dedham.
Evidently the tide had dashed him against
“But the sub will not be expecting the
the jagged rocks of the breakwater not far signal tonight before twelve-thirty.”
from the house. Now his body was at an
“So sorry, Mr. Dedham,” said Sato
undertaker’s establishment and the funeral dryly. “If the Coast Guard men come to the was to be tomorrow.
house it will be impossible to give the Just three weeks ago the two
signal.” He glanced at his watch. “The servants who had been with the Malden prisoner has been unconscious a long time.
family for ten years, a cook and a butler, It is after eleven now.”
had given up their jobs and left hastily.
“Then we’ve got to get Lowell Nancy had found their explanations vague away from here before the Coast Guard
and unconvincing. A few days later, Sato, men search the house,” Dedham said the Japanese servant, had arrived. When anxiously.
she learned that Sato had been
“There is a coffin in the attic,” recommended by one of her good friends in suggested Sato. “The late Mr. Carson New York, she had been willing to hire Malden was the head of a casket him.
manufactory and this was the first one he Then Mr. Dedham came. He
ever made. I’m sure no one would think of claimed he was an old friend of her
looking for him there.”
father’s, and Nancy accepted him as a
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house-guest. But when her brother came
The prisoner was there, all right, his
home he decided there was something very mouth still cruelly taped—but his eyes
suspicious about Dedham, and he asked the were very much alive, glaring up at her.
stout man to leave. Dedham had agreed to
“So, you have found him!”
do so. The next day her brother drowned.
Nancy had to grip the coffin to keep
She was in Tom’s room now.
herself from falling. It was Dedham who
“I’ll carry on for you, Tom,” Nancy
had uttered the words as he staggered out whispered. “I promised that if anything of the shadows, blood dripping from a ever happened to you I wouldn’t wear wound in his chest. Nancy fired at the stout mourning. That’s why I put on this red
man but her shot went wild. He tried to dress—you liked this dress.”
come closer—and then he fell, to sprawl She felt lonely as she looked around
lifelessly on the floor. One sleeve was the room. And she was afraid of Dedham
pushed up, revealing the Nazi emblem
and Sato. She pulled open a drawer of the tattooed on his wrist.
bureau. In the back she found what she was Nancy was stunned. She just stayed
seeking—a fully-loaded automatic that had there, her smoking gun still pointing to belonged to her brother.
where Dedham had stood. She did not see She stood thinking, the gun held in
the leering face of the Japanese Sato as he one slender hand. That prisoner Dedham
pushed open a trap-door in the floor.
and Sato had taken upstairs. Who was he?
Abruptly Lowell sat up, wiggled
She had heard the men say something out through the opening in the coffin and about signaling a submarine shortly after snatched the gun out of Nancy’s hand.
midnight. What was it all about?
He aimed the automatic at Sato, at
The house was very still. Dimly she
the same time pulling the adhesive from his could hear the sea pounding against the mouth with his other hand.
rocks. Suddenly the sound of the shot
“So you shot Dedham!” Lowell
coming from the attic was like a terrific said, glaring at the servant. “I heard you cannonade in her ears. . . . Had they killed arguing. You got Dedham mad enough to
their prisoner before placing him in the pull his gun on you and then you killed coffin? Nancy felt she had to know that.
him, Sato.”
She tiptoed out into the hall and to
“Quite true,” said Sato calmly. “I
the stairs leading to the third floor, the merely meant to wound him, though. He
automatic ready in her hand. She heard
would be much more useful to us alive.”
nothing and saw no one
as she climbed the
“You’re not Japanese,” said Lowell,
stairs. Stealthily she mounted the rough glaring at the other man. “You don’t even steps to the attic.
talk like one. You have no trouble with the In the dim light she could see the
letter R—they pronounce it like L. You
black casket with its closed lid. She peered didn’t!”
into the shadows where old trunks and
furniture made gloomy patterns in the eerie
“THAT’S right.” Sato grinned. “I’m
loft.
Lieutenant Thornley, U. S. Naval
Slowly she tiptoed over to the Intelligence. We were tipped off by the coffin. She hesitated for a moment before Coast Guard that mysterious signals were she dared raise the lid. Then she bent down coming from this estate. Afraid we
and slowly lifted the cover.
suspected the Malden family for a time—
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that’s why we arranged for the old servants free?”
to leave without telling why they were
“Guess your servants used part of
doing so, and I got the job here as a the old casket to store things away,” said Japanese servant.
Larry Lowell with a smile. “I found some
“Of course, Dedham must have old silverware in the bottom of the coffin, been working for some time sending his
and those knives are still pretty sharp.”
signals outside the house—and then when
“Two more jobs I’ve got to do,”
he found I would apparently work with him said Lieutenant Thornley. “The first is he moved in here as a guest.”
signal that U-boat at twelve-thirty and send
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