by Jerry eBooks
She sat up sullenly, rubbing her wrists. He tossed her a dress from the heap and fished in his pockets for his cigarettes. He was taking them out when knuckles rapped quickly on the door.
Half into the dress she stopped, looked up. Her mouth opened. Flaherty’s grasp yanked her head back in an instant.
“Quiet,” he said softly. “It’ll be better for you later, Anna.”
The knuckles rapped again. In two steps Flaherty was by the door, swinging it back, hidden as it came. Anna stood motionless by the couch.
A tall, gray-clad man entered, his head jerking forward as he saw her. He spoke quickly, without breath. “Anna! It’s all set. I—”
He might have heard Flaherty breathe. In the quick twist of his head under a lowered hat brim Flaherty could see nothing but lips and a sharp chin. He said, pushing the door to behind him: “Drop it, guy.” The other snarled, his eyes wavering for an instant to Anna.
“You dirty little—”
Flaherty shot as the man’s gun came out, dropping him limply, suddenly, like a pricked balloon. The short, sharp crash of the gun echoed back from the walls to a beating silence. Flaherty heard faintly the drunken woman still quarreling as he bent over the body.
“You’ve killed him,” said Anna. Her voice was quiet enough. She stood by the bronze stand, the cigarette in her fingers drifting smoke lazily across her face.
Flaherty said nothing. He gripped the man’s shoulders and swung him around back to Anna for a brief moment. At the sound of her rush behind him he straightened too late. On one knee as he brought the gun up he saw the light glinting dully on the edge of the bronze base. Then it crashed down in a vicious arc, before the dark glitter of her eyes. Flaherty fell forward across the dead man, his gun dropping from his hand, his mind whirling and lost in red-streaked confusion.
He was pulled back to consciousness slowly by a throbbing agony over his left ear. When he opened his eyes the light pierced them like tiny knives driving into his skull. He pushed the body away from him, got to his knees, his feet, stood swaying unsteadily as he looked around.
The lights in the room were still lit, but it was very quiet. Anna, of course, was gone. He went out to the kitchen and put his head under the faucet, letting the water pour coldly over his cheek. The skin was unbroken, but there was a lump that felt like an apple where the blow had landed.
After a minute he felt better; he dried off his face and returned to the living-room, looking at his watch. Quarter past twelve. He hadn’t been out long; half hour maybe—not more. He gripped the dead body and swung it over on its back.
He found himself looking at the thin, pale face of Barrett, the banker’s secretary. There was a hole just over the bridge of his nose. Flaherty squatted on the floor, resting his body on his clenched hands. Barrett!
It came clearer to him in a while. Barrett and Anna—the two of them had framed it from the start. Then where did Johnny Greco and the Jigger come in? Had Anna been using Barrett all the time, ready to ring in the other two for the big prize?
He cursed his aching head. This mixed it up worse than ever. If Barrett was the brains he wouldn’t have stood for the blow-up—not without the money. He’d be in a game like this once, for big stakes—but he wasn’t the kind to risk it as a steady racket. He hadn’t the guts. Then why had Devine been killed without a chance to get the money?
Flaherty couldn’t figure it. Unless there was something more, something in back, something he hadn’t come upon—He pushed back the dead man’s coat and turned out his pockets. A wallet, dark leather, well used; a few bills, a letter, some cards; a slip of white paper, without inscription, marked in hasty handwriting—1934. That was all.
He put the paper in his pocket, picked up the gun, and rose. He closed the door behind him, leaving the lights still lit and the dead eyes of Barrett staring glassily at the ceiling. The hall was pretty quiet as he descended. He wondered if anyone had heard the shot. Taken it for backfire if they had; it wouldn’t be healthy to meddle in a joint like this.
He turned left on the pavement and headed for the avenue, grateful for the cool night air that swept over his forehead. He had almost reached the corner when a car turned in. It raced along smoothly, slowed as it passed him. He had an instant’s warning in the split-second glitter of steel from the seat.
At his side a row of ashcans flanked the dark space of an area. He dropped to the ground, rolled over, heard the ting of the bullets, sharp and vicious, as they hit the metal cans. He turned quickly in the narrow space, fired twice. The car flashed under the lamps like a black monster, spitting four more stabs of orange from its side before it rounded the corner at the far end and roared away.
Windows slammed up and a man’s voice shouted hoarsely. Flaherty rose from his shelter, brushing his pants carefully. It was getting hot now. They’d come back for him, sure enough; if he’d been out five minutes longer, there’d be two stiffs up there now instead of one. Why? What was coming off, so important that they had to get him out of the way?
It was Anna, of course. She was the only one who knew where he was. She had told Johnny, and he came back to finish the job. The game wasn’t over yet, then. And whatever was going to happen they were afraid he would spoil—they thought that somehow, somewhere he’d gotten a tip. What the hell could it be?
It worried Flaherty. Did they take him for a sucker, potting at him like that? What was under his double-blanked eyes that he couldn’t see?
Farther down the avenue there was an all-night drug-store. Flaherty went in and called headquarters; after a minute he was connected with Mike Martin.
He said: “Meet me at the corner of Lynch and Holland as soon as you can make it. Things are popping, Mike.”
Outside again he waited in the darkened entrance of a jewelry store. Lynch Street, a thoroughfare of office buildings and stockbrokers’ firms, stretched dark and silent before him, its blackness interspersed by scattered yellow pools from street lamps. The black bulk of Devine’s bank squatted back from the pavement a half block away. Flaherty lit a cigarette and scowled at it. Things had moved fast in ten hours. Now—
A dull monstrous boom, a roll of thunder in a confined space, crashed in one wave down the avenue. A golden flare burst up and expired in an instant behind the glass doors of the Commercial bank.
Flaherty raced up the street, bringing his gun loose. A block away he heard the shrill pipe of a police whistle, and closer at hand the rasping squeal of car brakes. He swung around to see Mike Martin hop off a taxi running-board and rush to him across the sidewalk.
“Take the front,” snapped Flaherty. “Don’t go in. They’ve not had time to scatter.”
He raced around the side of the building over the grass plot that rimmed it. A door gaped open in the rear, with the red bulb of a night-light on top. In its glow Flaherty saw that the yard, rimmed by a high stone fence in back, was empty. They had to get out the front way then, or around by the grass plot. And they couldn’t have, yet. They were bottled.
He got inside, keeping to the shadows. A heavy puff of smoke was rising slowly from the center of the building’s long room; as he advanced cautiously it thinned, faded slowly against the high stone ceiling. Between the bookkeepers’ desks in back and the glass partitioned cashiers’ cages in front there was a wide, iron-gated alcove. The gate was open now, with the sprawled figure of a man before it.
Flaherty was motionless in the shadow, listening. He could hear nothing. Queer, this—They must have known the explosion would be heard, must have known—
After an irresolute moment he stepped over the dead man and into the lighted alcove, automatic ready before him. The huge steel door of the vault was flung outward against the wall, the center of it torn and twisted like paper by the charge. Flaherty gave it a glance and then went back to the watchman, rolling him over. An old, wizened face, not much expression now, a bullet hole through the back of his head. Flaherty got up and went softly to the back door.
Mike stood in
the shadows outside, dropping his raised arm when he saw Flaherty.
“The man on beat came up. I left him at the front. See anything, Flaherty?”
Flaherty took a second before answering. “The watchman’s stiff, Mike. He’s been dead at least an hour. And the vault’s been cleaned of cash.”
“Hell,” said Mike. “They couldn’t have cleaned it; they didn’t have time.”
“No,” said Flaherty. “They didn’t have time, Mike—that’s the funny part.”
After a second he continued: “We haven’t figured the thing right from the start. There’s something in back of this we’re not even sniffing. It don’t hang together the way it is. If they wanted to rob the bank what did they kill Devine for? He wasn’t in the way.”
“I don’t get you,” said Mike. “It’s open and shut to me. They bump off Devine but don’t get the money. All right—they figure they’re in and they might as well get somethin’ out of it, so they lam back here and blow the vault. Jigger’s opened ones a lot tougher than this cheesebox.”
Flaherty said: “That’s one way, Mike. But why did they clean the vault first and then blow it? That’s the only answer—we both know they didn’t have time after the charge went off. A guy would do that just for one reason; to make it look—” He stopped. After a breath he said: “Oh!” softly, and whistled.
Mike moved restlessly. “What the hell you getting’ at?”
“I was just wonderin’,” said Flaherty, “how tall Jigger Burns is.”
“He’s a little guy. Not much over five five.”
Flaherty grunted. “It’s beginnin’ to fit.” From his upper vest pocket he took a small slip of paper and held it out to Mike. After a minute Mike handed it back. “1934? Don’t mean nothin’ to me.”
Flaherty rapped out briefly the events of the night. When he had finished Mike said: “The secretary, hah? I’ll be double damned.”
“We ain’t got much time. What do you think that number means?”
Mike pushed back his hat. “A street number, d’ye think—”
“Yeh,” said Flaherty, “only there ain’t a street name on it. It might be a post-office box only there ain’t no key. Maybe it’s next year.”
Mike stirred uneasily. “Lay off,” he said. “Some day, honest to gawd, I’m gonna lay you like a rug.”
Flaherty said: “I found it on Barrett’s body. What’s he carryin’ it around for? Because it’s something important—something he mustn’t forget. Take it that way. Then he probably got to meet someone there tonight—they haven’t much time—at 1934. It wouldn’t be a street number; he’d know the house, and wouldn’t hafta mark the number down on paper. You can’t run out and hire a house in the middle of the night. Besides the getaway has to be fast, so it would be somethin’ they could hire any time and leave when they wanted. What’s left? A hotel room?”
“I was gonna say it,” Mike answered. “If it’s a hotel there’s only two in town high enough for a number like that: The Sherman and the Barrisford.”
Flaherty crushed the slip in his pocket. “There’ll be a squad along any minute. Stay till they slow, Mike. Let them go through the place—they won’t find anything. Then hop over to the Sherman; that’s the nearest and busiest. The clerk’ll know if I’m upstairs. If I’m not, try the Barrisford.”
He left Mike and walked swiftly to the corner after a word to the policeman in front. Three blocks up and two over he entered the lobby of the hotel Sherman. From the restaurant in back, swift syncopated strains of dance music floated out, but the lobby itself was almost deserted.
The clerk at the desk was a slight, superior-looking person with a pale face and exquisite hands. When Flaherty flashed the badge his lower lip dropped. He said: “Oh—oh! Really, I hope—”
Flaherty fumbled for the paper. “You have nineteen floors, haven’t you?”
The clerk looked relieved. “No,” he said. “There are only eighteen. Of course—”
Flaherty stopped searching; he cursed and chewed his lip while the little man eyed him apprehensively. “How tail’s the Barrisford?” he snapped.
“Sixteen, I believe. I know we’re the biggest in town. Eight hundred rooms—”
Flaherty got out the paper and looked again. No mistake: 1934. That settled that. Telephone number—safe deposit vault, maybe? But how—
The clerk cleared his throat nervously. “It’s funny,” he said. “I don’t know whether you—You see, we have to be careful, there are so many superstitious people. We haven’t a floor numbered thirteen—we skipped it. Thirteen is fourteen and so on. We really have only eighteen floors though our room numbers run up to nineteen. Now if you—”
Flaherty, turning away, whirled back. “Who’s in 1934? Get it quick. I want the key.”
The clerk jumped at his voice. He came back from the inner office holding a key, his eyes worried.
“A gentleman registered this evening for that room—a Mr. Walker. Is there anything wrong? I can’t let you have this without our man—”
Flaherty reached over and grabbed the key. “Who’s your house dick—Gilmour? Send him up as soon as you locate him. Tell him to be careful—it won’t be a picnic. There’ll be shooting.”
He headed across the lobby while the clerk said: “Oh—oh,” faintly.
At the top floor Flaherty left the elevator and stepped into a long red carpeted corridor, empty and brightly lit. He looked at the room numbers and swung to his left.
Nineteen thirty-four was near the end of the hall. He stood outside, listening. No sound . . . He fitted the key in the lock and twisted the knob an inch at a time, softly. A tiny line of blackness appeared at the crack and Flaherty bent double, slipped through in a flash, silently.
Darkness netted him in, diffused faintly by two windows at the far side. He made out the dim white splotch of a bed to his right—nothing more in the light-blurred focus of his gaze. Nothing happened. He stood motionless an instant, surprised and uneasy, before turning to the wall for the light switch.
The faintest flicker of darkness moved from his left—in the same instant he felt a thin rush of air, and something hard, sharp-edged, crashed viciously into his wrist, knocking his gun to the floor. He dropped, feeling for it, as the lights overhead snapped on. A woman’s leg flicked past his hand, kicking the revolver across the rug. Someone said in a soft, oily voice: “Hold it, Flaherty.”
Flaherty got up slowly to his knees, his lips pressed tight against the pain in his wrist. There were three people in the room: Anna, behind him and to his left, Johnny the Greek near the door, automatic in hand, and a slender small man in a chair, bound to it and gagged.
Johnny’s face, edged with a bluish bristle of beard, twisted in a leer. “Smart guy, Flaherty. Too bad we was expectin’ you. Next time you’re in a lobby look around. There’s telephones.”
“I shoulda thought of a lookout,” said Flaherty. “But this don’t help you, Johnny; I got the joint tied up in a knot. The outside’s lousy with cops.”
Johnny sneered. “Sez you. That stuff don’t go, dick—you came into the lobby alone. Your pals’ll be along, but that’ll be too late to do you any good. We’re about through here.” His eyes flickered to Anna. “Behind him, kid.” To Flaherty he said: “Get over to that chair, snappy.”
Flaherty went over slowly and sat down, watching his face. There wasn’t a chance. Johnny stared at him through narrow lids, his eyes small and hard like balls of black glass. Killer’s eyes . . .
“I’ll have to get some towels,” Anna said. “They’ll do for his arms.” She moved back of him towards the bathroom.
The little man made sounds under his gag. Flaherty looked at him and saw a large head with blond, oddly streaked hair, pale eyes, clean shaven upper lip.
“What you want?” snarled Johnny. The sounds continued. He dropped one hand and loosened the gag. “Spit it quick, fella.”
The little man breathed hoarsely once or twice before speaking. He looked at Flaherty and quic
kly away. His words were rapid, imploring.
“You’ve got the money—give me a chance to get free. I’ll leave you downstairs. If he knows who I am—”
“I know you’re Conrad Devine,” said Flaherty. He was stalling for time. Where the hell were Gilmour and Mike Martin? If he could keep them here five minutes—“You shaved off your mustache and blondined your hair—not a very good job, but good enough to fool anybody who thought you were dead. And who wouldn’t?”
The little man snarled savagely; he said to Johnny: “You see?”
“Sure,” said Flaherty. “Your bank was on the rocks and you didn’t have a nickel to save it. You thought you’d get what you could, so you framed this little racket with Barrett. The fact that you two birds got where you did in a bank is a laugh.
“Barrett knew Anna through going to the dance hall, and she got you in with Jigger Burns. You let Jigger in on it for a cut—you needed him for the bombs. You figured everything was as safe as Gibraltar—
“When I phoned tonight you made out you were scared, asked me to come right out. You cooked up some story for Jigger Burns—you were about the same size—and sent him out to your car when you saw the police flivver arrive. Fitted in one of your top hats, I was supposed to recognize your figger—I’d be too far away to see the face—watch you blown to hell, and give you a perfect alibi. Even the cops wouldn’t be dumb enough to suspect a dead man.
“You mentioned Jigger to me at your office so I’d be lookin’ for him. That made everything hotsy-totsy: you’d be livin’ in another town with enough dough to last you the rest of your life, the police would be lookin’ for a guy that was in a thousand bits, and I’d be left holdin’ the bag. Yeh—”
Johnny said: “That ain’t such a bad idea, Flaherty. I like to see cops holdin’ the bag. We’ll give you a start, Devine—but no breaks, guy! Let him loose, Anna.”
