by Jerry eBooks
Judging Ross’ position in the chair and the angle of the shot, the policeman decided the fatal shot had been fired through an open window from the garden outside.
“You two stay here,” Parden directed tersely. “I’m going to have a look around.”
He strode into an adjoining room which he discovered was the study. He spent several minutes there behind closed doors, and when he emerged he had a folded paper in his inside coat pocket.
Ignoring Tallman and the girl, Parden went outside, moving around the house through the grounds, damp and soggy from recent rains. When he came back he was smiling.
Parden walked up to the artist. Suddenly he drew his revolver and jammed the barrel into Tallman’s middle.
“Up with your hands!” he commanded.
TALLMAN scowled angrily.
“What is this?” he demanded. “You can’t—”
“Why did you kill Howard Ross?”
Parden’s question was flat and sharp. Watching both Tallman and the girl, he saw their features whiten and grow tense.
“Parden, you’re crazy!” Tallman exclaimed. “I told you we found Ross like this—dead. We called you right away.”
“Sure, you called me—as a clever cover-up for the killing,” Parden snapped, backing toward the window but keeping his gun leveled. “You shot Ross. The killer stood outside this window to fire the shot.
“There’s mud out there, and prints where the murderer stood. Tallman, you’ve got mud on your shoes. Offhand, without measuring the prints, I’d say they matched yours.”
Tallman’s face was a mask of mingled fear and rage.
“I got that mud from walking around my own cottage!” he declared.
“Tell him he lies, Miss Lukes,” Parden snapped, his eyes flicking toward the girl.
Barbara Benson gave a nervous start, her hand flying in horror to her mouth.
“No—no!” she stammered. “I’m not—”
“Yes, you’re Clyde Lukes’ daughter,” Parden told her. “I wasn’t sure, but you gave it away yourself. I found a snapshot of you and Lukes. Jordan had one of you, too, and it was marked ‘to Daddy.’
“I guess that belonged to your dad. But Jordan got his hands on it, and was blackmailing your father. Even that platinum tint to your hair didn’t quite fool me. Underneath it you’re blonde.”
Tallman was white with rage.
“Put that gun away!” he snarled. “What if she is Lukes’ girl? That doesn’t prove anything!”
Parden snorted cynically.
“No? Well, Lukes murdered Jordan. The murder weapon was registered in Lukes’ name and had only his fingerprints on it. In my pocket I’ve got Ross’ new will—in which he doesn’t leave Barbara a cent, incidentally. It hasn’t been witnessed yet so it isn’t legal.
“You and the girl were going to get married, and you knew about Ross’ old will, which left Barbara half his estate. You wanted to be sure to get the money—so you killed him. As for Jordan, he must have found out that Barbara was really Lukes’ daughter. Jordan knew what you three were after, so he blackmailed Lukes in return for his silence.
“I remember now that Barbara was married to some other rich guy who died suddenly. She didn’t get much out of him, though, because he had lost heavily in the stock market. She was really ready for the kill with Howard Ross, and she always managed to see her father was cut in on the gravy.”
“That’s right,” said a sudden harsh voice behind Tom Parden. “You’ve got it all figured out so now you’re going to die. Drop that gun!”
The policeman didn’t have to turn around to know that Clyde Lukes was at the window behind him. Lukes had been hiding out in the woods, no doubt, and had evidently returned to see if this second murder had gone off as planned.
Grimly Parden dropped his gun.
“Dad!” gasped the girl, her hard features softening.
Clyde Lukes, his seamed face twisted with brutality, stepped into the room and moved around a table opposite Parden. Tallman was reaching surreptitiously toward a shoulder holster for a gun.
LUKES’ weapon was pointed now at Parden’s chest. Without warning the patrolman ducked low, shoved his weight against the table and sent it upending the murderer. Lukes’ gun crashed and a bullet howled past Parden’s face. Then he was flinging himself on top of Lukes and wrestling for the weapon.
He got his hands on it as Tallman fired wildly. Rolling clear, Parden snapped a shot at the artist. Tallman yelped in pain, dropped his automatic and collapsed.
Tom Parden got to his feet, gathered up his own gun and faced the two men and the girl.
“Hold still!” he snapped. “The first one that moves stops a bullet.”
He thrust one weapon into his pocket, picked up the telephone on an end-table nearby and got the chief of police on the wire.
“I’ve got the murderer of Howard Ross,” he said tersely.
“Ross murdered?” came the startled gasp. “How—when—what about Clyde Lukes?”
“He’s here, too,” replied Parden. “And his daughter, Barbara Benson. It’s a real murder party, Chief. But as far as I’m concerned, they’re just amateurs who played around with dynamite, and it went off. I’ll wait here for you.”
FREIGHT TROUBLE
L.K. Frank
A private detective takes a vacation—and finds himself between the eight-ball and a grim mess of roaring guns!
SKID O’NEIL collected and banked his two-thousand-dollar fee for recovering the Vetter diamonds, told his stenog to hold down the office for a week, and then got in his coupe and started driving. He was that kind of impulsive fellow. By one o’clock the next morning he was sleepy and in strange territory, so he drove a few yards off the highway on a twisting lane and settled down for a snooze.
Sometime before daylight he was awakened by the idling mutter of a truck motor on the highway, around the curve of the lane. He got quietly out of the car and walked around the curve to come upon an interesting tableau on the pavement.
A girl stood in the glare of the truck headlights holding a gun on the driver. To one side, headed in the opposite direction from the truck, and partly blocking the road, was a sedan with its engine running and a shadowy figure at the wheel.
Someone was hammering at the back of the truck. Skid, unseen, stood quietly a moment, analyzing the setup. He moved off noiselessly to an angle, got out his Police .38, and aiming carefully at the glint of the girl’s automatic, blasted it from her hand.
The tableau flew apart like the automatic. The girl jumped to the car, which leaped ahead at the same moment. Skid dimly saw a man scramble aboard as the car roared past the rear end of the truck. The truck driver lowered his arms and sat down on the bumper.
As Skid stepped into the light the driver said, “Mister, I never was so glad to see anybody. But I wish you’d plugged that dame.”
“I’ll bet,” Skid answered. “Hijackers?”
“Hijackers!” the driver confirmed. He looked approvingly at O’Neil’s lithe height, his carrot hair, and the map of Ireland that he used for a face. “My name is Freeman—Fred to you. I own this truck and one other. Picked up some furs on the route today to take to Plain City for cold storage. I reckon this gang was after ’em.”
“Why didn’t you just bump the car off the road and keep rolling?”
Freeman smiled wryly. “That’s what I shoulda done. I been stuck up before, and I oughta smelled that dodge of having a dame fooling with a spare tire in front of her headlights at four A. M. But you know a guy can’t just breeze past and leave a pair of gams like that alone on the road in the middle of the night?”
“But she wasn’t alone, huh?”
“Naw. I stopped and got out to—er—help, and two lugs come out of the bushes with rods, and there I was. I’m gettin’ tired of these hold-ups. A couple more and I’ll be washed out. Us independents have been offerin’ a reward, but this gang—we think it’s the Panelli mob, but nobody can prove it—goes right on. Say!
D’you want a job?” Skid shook his head. “No thanks,” he said. “I’m a private dick, but I just finished a job, and I’m taking it easy for a while.”
“Well, all right. But I need a pusher for my other bus who can take care of himself. My last driver poured too much gin in his tank. Thanks for getting me outa the jam.”
“Okay,” Skid replied. “So long. My car is parked back here. Don’t stop for any more pretty legs.”
“Say, I wouldn’t stop for a harem full. G’by.”
BY LATE afternoon of that day Skid was in Plain City and bored to death already with his holiday. So he hunted around the motor freight terminals until he found Freeman, who was glad to have him take a truck down to Riverton.
The truck would not be loaded and ready to go until midnight, therefore he had five or six hours to grab some sleep. It would be an all-night trip.
At twelve-thirty Skid’s truck was whining and roaring up the last hill of the Plain City suburbs when his headlights picked out a girl standing on the curb at the top.
The hijackers used a girl for bait. He saw that this definitely was not the same girl from whose hand he had shot the gun, but he figured she could be another hook for the same gang. And, since he was pushing a truck for fun, he might as well get all the fun available.
Grinning as he realized he was about to do just what he had warned Fred yesterday not to do, he swiftly raised the bullet-proof window on his side of the cab, got his gun in his lap, and let the truck ease into the curb. He called to the girl through the other open window.
“Funny hour for a girl to be out alone. What goes on?”
“I was sleep-walking, but woke up. I want a ride,” the girl countered.
Skid waved a hand to acknowledge the repartee, and told her to hop in. With his gun in his left hand, but out of sight, he reached over and swung the door open. He remained alert while he got the truck under way again. Nothing happened, however, and when they were rolling smoothly Skid turned to his passenger and asked:
“Where to?”
“Where are you going?”
“Riverton.”
“That suits me.”
Her voice was not the voice of a girl one would expect to find bumming a ride at one o’clock in the morning. The light from the dash was bright on the cab floor, and her shoes looked expensive. In the darkness of the seat, he fingered her skirt. He knew little about women’s clothes, but he did know this outfit did not come out of a bargain basement.
Prodded by the thought that it could have been hijacked from a truck, he questioned her for ten minutes with a skill and acuteness born of experience in his profession. The tone of her evasive answers reassured him; if he had questioned one runaway like her, he had questioned twenty. She was no moll putting the finger on him for hijackers.
He shrugged; he wasn’t chasing runaways tonight. At three A. M. he stopped at a truckers’ roadside stand for coffee and hamburgers.
“Stay in the cab!” he told her. “There may be insurance spotters in this joint. I’ll bring you some grub.”
In the glare of floodlights that illuminated the parking yard he took a good look at her face. It was a pretty face, framed in blond, wavy hair and with a generous, inviting mouth. There was something vaguely familiar about her face, too, but at the moment he didn’t bother to recall what.
Inside, he sat at the counter and ate hamburgers while an extra order was being prepared for him to take along. A drunk, coming in, lurched into him and before he could turn around on the stool the drunk yelled, “Ya big lug, why don’t ya look where yer goin’!”
Skid looked at the man and said, “Nuts. You’re the one who can’t navigate. Beat it.”
“Oh, ya wanna make sumpin’ of it, huh!” the drunk roared, and swung.
AS HE ducked, Skid thought it was a pretty good swing for a drunk, but he did not have time to think any more because another man came to the aid of the first. Skid sent a right to the mouth of this one and felt lips mash satisfyingly under his knuckles.
He reached his left to the counter for a bottle of ketchup and conked the drunk with it. Half a dozen men in the joint applauded, but the waitress screamed and fainted, probably because the ketchup on the man’s skull looked like blood.
O’Neil spent ten minutes getting the waitress back to normal and by that time his two assaulters had disappeared.
When he got out to the truck, the girl had disappeared, too. He looked around for her, and waited a few minutes, but she didn’t show, so he pulled his truck out on the road to Riverton, wondering what to make of it.
Not until daylight crept into the cab did he happen to spot the tiny gold pencil on a section of a man’s watch-chain, in a corner of the floor. The chain was broken sharply off, as if it had been jerked during a struggle. He also picked up and pocketed a small old-fashioned cabinet key, with a hollow tip.
In town he left the truck at the terminal and looked up the boarding house that Fred had mentioned. A buxom young woman answered his ring. “My name is O’Neil,” he said. “Fred Freeman told me I could get a good bed here.”
“Any friend of Fred’s is a friend of mine,” she replied. “I’m Edna. C’mon in.”
He followed her upstairs and accepted the first room she showed him.
Six hours later he awoke to find a pitcher of ice water and an afternoon paper on the stand beside the bed. He yawned, reached for the newspaper, and came wide awake instantly when he spotted a girl’s picture on the front page.
It was the girl he had picked up, and the caption over the picture read: KIDNAPED!
The details were brief: Ursula Jensen had run away—as Fred had suspected—and had been traced to Plain City the day before. Early this morning her parents had received a telephoned demand for ransom. There were rumors that the State Police and Federals were investigating a tip that the girl had been picked up by a truck driver at Plain City.
Miss Jensen had left a note saying she was sick of society life and was going to see the world in her own way. So that was how he had known her face! The society pages carried her picture every month.
He was in a jam if the Feds believed he knew anything about the girl. Sitting on the edge of the bed after he had slipped on his pants, he reached for the pitcher and began to pour himself a glass of water, when a ratty-looking fellow stepped in the door, gun in hand, and whispered: “Upsy daisy! Quick!”
Skid threw the water pitcher at him, and followed it, catapulting from the bed like a rock from a sling. The slug shattered the pitcher at the same moment that Skid loosed a left while reaching for the mug’s gun hand with his right.
The rat was strong and wiry and Skid had a busy time until he suddenly heard a crash, and felt the man go limp. Edna was standing there holding the stump of a vase in both hands. Skid sat down and gasped.
“No bum is going to sneak into my house and bother my guests!” Edna said.
A furious pounding broke out below. Edna raised her eyebrows to ask, “What next?” and went downstairs to see, leaving Skid sitting on the bed contemplating the unconscious fellow on the floor, and idly twirling the captured gun.
THE next thing he knew, a uniformed State Trooper and two men he guessed to be Riverton detectives burst into the room. Skid looked up and coolly tossed the gun at the older of the two plainclothesmen.
“There you are, Lieutenant. You can thank the lady. She beaned the guy with a vase.”
The other detective turned the man over and after a glance at his face said: “One of Tony Panelli’s hijackers, Lieutenant. What’s he doing here, I wonder?”
The lieutenant turned to Skid. “Did you bring a truck in from Plain City last night?” he barked.
“Yeah. Nice trip. Nice scrap at Casey’s place, en route.”
“What were you fighting about?”
“Not a thing. A couple of drunks wanted a workout.”
“Where’s the girl?”
“What girl? Edna? She let you in.” Skid asked a question himself: “Say
, what’s this inquisition about, anyhow?”
“Nuts!” the lieutenant snapped. “Don’t try to pull that innocence on me.” He shot a glance at the newspaper on the bed. “You read the papers, don’t you?”
“Oh. You mean this. I don’t know anything about this—what’s-her-name, Jensen, isn’t it? How should I?”
The lieutenant tried a new tack: “Who’s this gorilla?” he asked, poking the inert body on the floor with a shoe.
“Well, Lieutenant, your man said it’s one of Tony Panelli’s mob.” Skid drew his private detective’s license from his wallet and showed it to the three men, adding, “I’ve been asked to go after this gang, and now it seems they’re after me. That makes it simple; all I have to do is sit here, and let Edna crown ’em when they come to bump me. I’ll have to buy her some more vases, though.”
The officer’s face remained skeptical. The trooper broke in, “Lieutenant Murphy, his story about the fight at Casey’s checks; that’s what they told us. This bird is a new trucker around these parts, but if he is tailing Panelli, and Panelli sends a man after him, that makes it click.”
Out of the corner of his eye Skid saw the trooper give Murphy a significant wink.
The latter’s suspicion seemed to leave him. “All right then, O’Neil,” he said. “If you can tag Panelli and make it stick, the Commissioner’ll be obliged. The guy’s been a pain in the neck a long time. We’ll take this rat along.”
Skid watched them drag the man out and closed the door after them. He pulled the tiny pencil from his pocket and looked at it curiously. He hadn’t noticed before the trinket’s evident costliness; it was strongly made, and heavy, yet the engraving was delicate and skillful. Examining it minutely, he started, and got a small lense from another pocket. With the lense he could just read a line of tiny letters around the cap: ANTHONY E. PANELLI!
SO THAT was it! Probably the set-up was about like this: Panelli and his mob, scouting for a truck to knock over, had spotted the girl in the cab of Skid’s truck at the parking yard, had recognized her, and saw an opportunity for a snatch.
