by Jerry eBooks
Tip shook his head. “I’ve found nothing. And the firemen won’t be able to check the wreckage till morning. Meanwhile, don’t you think you’d better let me take you home?” Hesitation flickered briefly in her face. Then she took the man’s coat from her shoulders. “I want to give this to someone. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Tip saw her go over to Alvin Barr, who stood near a pumper-truck. She spoke to the gray-suited liquor dealer briefly. Barr nodded.
Walking home, Tip confronted Lois suddenly, “Do you know who would want to burn down Jim Waters’ house?”
“I know very little about Jim Waters,” she said. “I’m a secretary. I just handle the business correspondence in the store.”
“Do you know anything about his past, or where he and Barr came from?” He saw her reticence. “I only want to help. If Jim—if something’s happened to Jim Waters I want to help you get at the bottom of it, Lois.”
“I know they come from Chicago. They’ve been in the liquor business a long time.”
“And during prohibition?”
Lois’ eyes fell. “Yes, they operated a speakeasy, if that’s what you want to know. But that wasn’t so terribly wrong, was it?” She stood away from Tip Dolan. She tossed her red bob back from her eyes, every nerve in her tense, trim body suddenly quivering, defensive. “They’re both honest, Tippy. There’s nothing illegitimate about Waters or Barr now.”
“You like them, Lois.”
“They’ve been nice to me.”
Lois stopped before a small house which she said was that of a married sister. It had been her home, she said, since the tragic death of her parents the year before. Her high heels clicked on the cement as Tip walked with her to the porch. She made a neat little figure standing there to bid him goodnight. Her vivid blue eyes were wonderfully wide, her full, plump lips dark against the fairness of her skin.
Tip slipped his arm about her slender waist, moved his mouth close to hers.
Her arms came up, and she struggled away. “No, Tippy. Please.”
He let her go. Turning quickly, she disappeared into the house.
Tip returned to the street, feeling strangely lonely. Pleasantville had become a town in which he no longer belonged—which he no longer understood. He thought of the whole strange circumstance of his being here. First, there had been that letter from Uncle Andy, mentioning simply that he believed his life in peril. Then his abrupt death, the burn on his wrist, a puncture—and a post mortem that revealed nothing. Then Dan Ford’s curious charges against Jim Waters and Alvin Barr. And now the mysterious fire and strange disappearance of Jim Waters with a bloody dagger thrust through his clothes.
Tip stopped in a shadow of a tree. A light was burning in the front room of the house where he’d left Lois. As he watched, another figure came up the walk. It was Alvin Barr in his chalk-striped gray suit. Tip glimpsed his handsomely dark, moustached face. Then Barr turned in on the walk toward the house. He went inside.
Tip watched curiously. Why had Barr come here? What news did he bring? Had Lois told all she knew about the liquor-dealing partners?
As if in partial answer, the light on the first floor of the small house went out. A moment later, the light in an upper bedroom came on. Tip saw Lois come to the window, pull down the blind.
The heart went out of Tip. He turned away. Was Lois married to Barr then? Why hadn’t she told him? She’d denied her ring was a wedding ring. Why was it a secret? And if she were married to Barr, did that brand as worthless testimony all she’d said about the honesty of Waters and Barr?
More than ever, Tip knew this was a town in which he no longer belonged.
He turned away. Without warning, something whined by his ear, smashed into a tree ahead of him.
Bark splattered. Tip was barely conscious that he’d heard the muffled sneeze of a silenced revolver before the slug struck. He’d been shot at!
He lurched for the shelter of another tree. He froze there, peering into the dark for sign of movement.
First warning was a footstep behind him.
He glimpsed the black-masked face, the bulky figure he’d seen earlier at Waters’ house. A club cracked down at his skull in the same instant. Tip threw up his arms, but too late to ward off the blow.
CHAPTER THREE
Murder Message
TIP DOLAN was conscious of his throbbing head when he awakened. He moved his long, spare body, blinked his eyes. He could see nothing. He touched his scalp, felt no swelling there. He rubbed his hand over his face. He suddenly became aware of a heavy growth of beard. He’d been clean shaven, as he last remembered. No wonder there was no swelling on his head. His heavy growth of beard showed he must have been unconscious for at least twenty-four hours.
He moved, struggled up from the dirt floor on which he lay, slapped dirt from the soft tweed of his suit. Had he lost his sight? Or was he in a windowless dungeon? His knees almost buckled as he walked. He put a hand to his stomach, flat, empty of food.
Tip bumped into something barring his way. He groped at it, and it felt like stairs. He searched in his pocket, found a packet of matches. He struck one. The flickering light illuminated a close-walled, windowless room—an old furnace, a gas heater, an empty bin.
He groped his way up the stairs’ steeply-inclined flight. Halfway up, his hands scraped a ceiling. That would be the trap door closing the cellar, he thought.
He shoved against the door. It did not budge. Its immobility suggested something heavy had been shoved or piled up on it.
Tip turned back again toward the dug-out room. The fact that he was not bound suggested that whoever had left him there was confident he could not escape. But who would want to take him prisoner? The same man who had by some devious means killed Uncle Andy?
Was it some mystery connected with the two hijackers, Waters and Barr, that had enmeshed him too, now? Did that mean Lois was in danger, as big Dan Ford had said he himself was menaced?
Tip studied the problem. Was it intended that he never be let free again? He went cold at the thought. He struck another match, and made his way to the gas heater. He turned its valve and found it worked. The fact that there was gas suggested the building was occupied. Then Tip saw the electric light switch. He tripped it. A single dirty bulb illumined the small, dug-out room.
Tip looked at the dirty ceiling-bulb, and a light flashed in his brain. A short jump and he jerked loose the braided electric wire leading to the fixture, the light dying as the cord broke.
Tip struck a match, studied long enough to see how to grasp the two ends of the wire. Then he thrust them together. There was a cracking spark, a greenish burst of flame. Then the wires went dead. He waited till the ends cooled, then twisted them together.
He let a soft sigh of satisfaction escape his lips. He’d blown a fuse, he knew. The damage wouldn’t be repaired until someone came down to untwist the wires he’d short-circuited.
He sat down on the stairs to wait. The response came sooner than he expected. Above him, shortly, came the sound of someone laboriously moving boxes, rolling them away from the trapdoor. For a moment, all was quiet. Then the trap door raised, admitting a triangle of gray daylight to fall on the flight of stairs.
TIP crouched back behind the stairs, the pipe clutched in his fist. Footsteps tapped cautiously down. Tip tensed for the fight he knew must follow. Then, suddenly, the breath choked in him as he saw high-heeled slippers, shapely legs.
“Lois!” Tip called.
The girl’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle a scream. And then she recognized Tip.
Tip moved close, seized her arm. “What is this, Lois?” He stared at her. “What part do you have in this?”
Lois’ face was as perplexed as Tip knew his own must be. “This is the warehouse for the store,” she explained. “How did you get down here? How—what—”
She stepped back up into a vast, barnlike room. Tip followed.
The noise of footsteps stopped Tip suddenly. Lois saw his con
cern. “Echoes,” she said. “That’s what you hear—the echoes of our own steps. No one else is here. I was alone in the store—when the lights went out.”
Tip related being attacked just after leaving her at her sister’s house.
“Why, that was the night before last!” Lois smoothed back Tip’s hair, found the bruises on his scalp where he’d been hit. Her perfume was near him, her warm, soft body.
Lois, you lied to me,he wanted to say. You’re married to Alvin Barr. But he could not, selfishly, think of that now.
He glanced about the vast warehouse room, piled high with liquor stock. Alvin Barr must be worth a lot of money to possess so much. He’d laid in his larder well against the shortages the government’s curtailed alcohol program had occasioned.
“Whoever put me down in that cellar must have had a key to this warehouse, must have known about that cellar,” Tip said.
Lois’ blue eyes clouded. “I have a key,” she said. “And Mr. Barr has a key. And Mr. Waters—” She saw the question in Tip’s eyes. “No. There’s no trace of Jim yet.”
Tip digested that. “That means whoever nabbed Waters might have gotten his key,” he pointed out. “Unless—” Tip finished bitterly—“Waters himself put me down there.”
Lois turned away, and he saw her hurt.
There was a back door. It was snap-locked from the inside. He opened it, stepped out into the alley. He almost tripped over a heaped-up pile there. It was clothing. A second look wasn’t needed to recognize it as Alvin Barr’s chalk-stripe gray suit.
Through the suit, pinning it to the ground, was a bloodstained knife. . . .
Tip Dolan went on toward Main Street. He’d have to call the police. He looked at the bank clock and he saw it was five o’clock. Then he saw the headline in the afternoon paper. He bought a copy, read the story under the black type: ALVIN BARR MISSING!
So Barr was missing, and Lois had neglected to tell him. Tip found a phone book, anonymously reported to the police the dagger-pierced clothing in the back alley.
Dan Ford, the paper reported, was being questioned by the police. But the police had nothing on Dan, Tip thought. Dan would soon be released—if he weren’t already. More hell might break loose at any moment. The answer to this murder-puzzle began to take shape.
Tip found his way to Dan Ford’s house, next door to the charred and blackened ruin of Sam Waters’ house which he’d seen destroyed by fire the other night.
No one answered his ring, and Tip forced a back door of Dan’s house, went inside.
Shortly, Tip Dolan heard a sound of movement in the basement. He found the basement door, opened it, switched on the light and started down. A man stood below.
“Dan?” Tip said. “Why didn’t you answer me? Didn’t you hear me call? Didn’t you hear me ring your doorbell?”
Dan’s face was pale. He chewed at his fingernails, his eyes avoiding Tip.
“You’re hiding down here? Why?”
“The police,” the big chemist finally managed. “I thought you were the police. I’ll never let them grill me again.”
TIP moved closer to Dan, clasped his arm. He led the former football star out of the dark area at the foot of the steps into a better lighted room in the basement.
Dan Ford sank onto a bench, buried his huge blond head in his hands, ran his fingers nervously through his hair.
“But the police released you,” Tip prompted.
“I told them what I knew, but they wouldn’t believe me. I told them the facts about Waters and Barr. I told them they were former liquor hijackers, that with the price on liquor up again, they were once more back at the old game. I said they had a warehouse full of liquor that would prove them guilty of hijacking if they were ever questioned about it. I told them Waters was just playing dead. And Barr too. The plan is for Barr’s wife to sell out the stock—a hundred thousand dollars worth. The police won’t be able to bother her. She can really play dumb. Then she’ll go somewhere to meet Waters and Barr, and give them the dough.”
“Barr’s wife?”
“Lois Barr is his wife,” Dan said.
Tip had expected to hear it, but he felt he needed something to hold onto.
“Why do you think there was that fire at Waters’ house the other night?” the blond chemist went on. “Waters isn’t taking any chances on the cops finding evidence around. That’s why I was hiding down here now. In a little while the Waters and Barr liquor-store office will be going up in smoke the same way. And then the cops will be looking for me again.”
“You’re crazy, Dan. How can you know such a thing?”
“Because I heard. Heard it over that dictaphone I told you I planted. Heard it before Waters and Barr ripped the phone out. I heard the plans to burn the house and then the store. But I kept quiet because I didn’t want to get involved. Then they found the dictaphone . . . and they knew that I knew. That’s why I told you when you saw me the other time that I was afraid they were going to kill me, that they killed your uncle only because they mistook him for me.”
“Did you tell the police all this?”
“Sure I told them. But they called me a liar. That fat-pants Chief Parnell said I was manufacturing the story—”
A sudden, distant blast cut Dan Ford off.
“That sounded like an explosion!” Tip said. He waited. Shortly, a fire siren began having a hemorrhage.
Dan Ford groaned. “That means the police will come here after me now. I told them there was going to be a blast. And what good’s my alibi? They’ll be sure I set off a time-bomb or something, since I predicted the blast.”
Tip stared at him and said nothing.
“I’ve got a car,” the blond chemist said suddenly. “I’ll drive out of town somewhere. It’ll be hard for them to trace me in the dark. I’ll let you know where I am, Tip. You’ll let me know when it’ll be safe for me to return . . .
Two firetrucks battled the blaze at the liquor package store. Several hundred townsmen, war workers returning from the day shift, looked on from behind police lines. But already the fire was under control. It was clearly restrained to the store and office and had not reached the liquor warehouse to the rear.
Tip held back with the crowd. He saw Lois Treat turn away from one of the police cars. He waved to her. She came over.
“What happened?” Tip tilted his head toward the departing cars.
SHE shook her red head wearily, unhappily. “The police have just received a phone call from Dan Ford. He told them he couldn’t go on, that he was taking the only way out he knew. He said they’d find him at Elm Avenue and Maddux Road. Oh, Tip—” She began to sob softly. Tip chucked her under the chin. “You better go to your sister’s house. I’ll be safer for you there.”
Tip found a taxi. “Elm Avenue and Maddux Road,” he said. This thing was breaking faster than he’d expected.
Police cars were clustered at the Elm Avenue intersection when he came up.
He saw Dan’s coupe. But something was strange. Several of the policemen were holding fire extinguishers, playing them on the car. Then Tip saw the car was smouldering. It had been on fire. Then he saw the sheet-covered form lying on the street.
He stepped to the covered body. Only a scorched hand showed. Tip studied the largefingered, manicured hand.
“Murder,” a voice said, and Tip looked over to see Chief Parnell had spoken.
Tip’s gray eyes studied carefully.
“Yeah, it’s murder,” he agreed. But he was almost sure it was not murder in the way the police thought it.
“That means,” Parnell went on, “that everything poor Ford told us must have been right. Waters and Barr aren’t dead. That’s why we didn’t find their bodies. They must be behind this killing. Waters and Barr wanted us to think Ford was guilty of killing them, and Ford’s ‘suicide’ was to be definite proof of it. Then they’d be free to collect on all that hijacked liquor Ford was talking about. Mrs. Barr would sell that liquor unmolested.”
Ti
p stepped back to his waiting cabbie. Lois was the pivot of this case now, no matter how he looked at it, he realized suddenly. Parnell and his police would go after Lois now. If they got her, they would grill her unmercifully until they learned the truth about Waters and Barr. So Waters and Barr, if they were the guilty ones, couldn’t afford to let the police question Lois. And if they weren’t the guilty ones, the real guilty party couldn’t afford to let Lois prove to the police Waters’ and Barr’s innocence!
Lois was caught in between—with death at either end!
Tip directed the cabbie to the house Lois had said was her sister’s—the house Tip had seen her and Alvin Barr disappear into the other night, just after the fire.
He stepped into the foyer and Lois came out of the living room toward him, her corn-flower-blue eyes wide with anxiety. He regarded her carefully. If she was playing innocent, she was doing a wonderful job of it. It broke the last vestige of doubt in his mind.
“Don’t worry, honey,” he said. “I’m sure now you’re clear on all this. Just as I’m sure Dan Ford is behind all the hell that’s been happening!”
“Dan?” Lois gasped.
“Dan supposedly just committed suicide, or was murdered. But it’s not Dan’s body, Lois. Dan chewed his fingernails to the raw flesh. There was nothing wrong with the fingernails on the body I saw.”
Perplexity was still on Lois’ stricken face.
“You understand, Lo? It means Dan killed Waters and Barr! Why, I don’t know yet. He’s sold the police on a story that Waters and Barr killed him. But if the police ever get you and question you they’ll find out in a hurry Ford’s story is a bogus baloney. That’s why I’m making a feint of taking you down to the cops myself. Dan Ford can’t risk letting you live, if he wants his story to stick. And I’ll bet my bottom shekel he’ll try to stop us. Are you game, Lois?”
He led her outside. The footsteps behind him did not warn him soon enough.
“Don’t try anything funny, Tip.”
