by Jerry eBooks
Tip pivoted slowly. Even in the dark he clearly defined the blocky face of Dan Ford, the gleam of dull light showing the barrel of the gun clutched in his fist.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Cold Box
“I’M AFRAID I’ve muffed it, Lois,” Tip I said tragically. “I didn’t expect him to get here so soon.” He moved closer to her. “Now Dan Ford wants to put you out of the way, Lois, to protect his alibi with the police. Maybe he will have you ‘commit suicide’, so it will look like an admission of implication with Waters and Barr.”
“Clever, aren’t you?” Ford said. “Start walking.” He prodded them behind the house toward the alley at the rear.
“And how are you going to kill this time, Ford?” Tip flayed. “A hypo jabbed in the arm? An air bubble in a vein? I see you’ve solved the problem of getting a big enough bubble in a vein to choke the heart. Liquid air expands several hundred times its volume when it’s warmed. Liquid air made the burn on my uncle’s wrist. The hypo made the puncture. You were careless and spilled a little of the stuff. Cold burns worse than heat.”
“I know something better,” the ex-footballer said. “A bath in liquid air would fix you up nice and brittle. Then I could go to work chipping you away with a mallet. You’d shatter into little chunks of fine ice that would wash down a drain.”
Dan Ford was mad—stark, raving mad.
He turned up an intersecting alley, and they came up at the rear entrance of the liquor warehouse. Dan Ford stopped them. “I know a place to keep you both, and work on you at my leisure. I put you down there the first time, Tip, because I wanted you out of the way until I’d finished my job. Now I’m ready for you.”
The big ex-footballer unlocked the warehouse door. He came forward a step, his eyes glistening, his gun pointed at Tip. Tip remembered Ford’s thefts in college, the head injury he’d blamed for it. It had been a nice cover-up.
Ford forced Tip and Lois inside the dark warehouse. Tip remembered the door to the cellar. He looked off in the dark in the direction he remembered it to be.
“You brought Lois and me to the wrong place, killer,” Tip said. “I have a man covering you from behind those cases.” He jerked his head toward the dim outlines of stacked liquor boxes.
“I don’t fall for any queer gags,” Dan said.
But Tip pointed his finger ahead toward the far side of the warehouse. “Hello!” he called.
“Hello,” came back the answer from the other side of the room.
Dan Ford twisted his head slightly. Tip had figured the odds. He leaped down the dark aisle between piled boxes.
With a curse, Ford was after him, gunning. He had a clear target at Tip’s back. But Tip leaped as if he were jumping over an open pit. Then, suddenly, Ford’s arms flailed wildly. Screaming, he plunged down into the pit over which Tip had just apparently jumped.
With a quick, backward lurch, Tip threw shut the opened cellar door across which he himself had leaped a second before. He threw himself across the door.
Lois was beside him.
“I remembered what you said about the echoes,” Tip panted to her. “And I noticed the cellar was open. I just wanted to distract him, decoy him through the dark.”
The redheaded girl picked up a weapon from the floor. “His gun—he must have lost it when he fell.”
Almost as if in answer, a shot sounded from the cellar. Tip felt a sharp pain in his side. A slug, he knew, had splintered through the cellar door. Dan Ford had another gun. Tip found himself slipping off the door, unable to hold back the pressure of Ford pushing up from below.
“Shove on some packing cases!”
They were too heavy for Lois to move quickly. Any moment now, Ford would break out. Tip saw a large, empty iron barrel, apparently used for trash. He thrust the gun back to Lois. “Here! Fire it into that barrel!”
HE SAW her thrust the gun into the barrel, her body tense as she pulled trigger. A firecracker set off in a bucket, he knew sounded like a TNT blast. A gun in that empty iron barrel sounded like an exploding bomb. Tip knew Lois understood the tactic then.
Three more times the redheaded girl triggered those blasts.
Dan Ford suddenly quit battering upward at the cellar door. Bare seconds later, firemen and then police, searchlights sweeping the place, barged into the warehouse.
Plump-faced, moustached Chief Parnell gasped seeing Tip. Then his bluster subsided as he saw the bloodsoaked front of Tip’s shirt. “Man, you’ve been shot—”
“Dan Ford’s down here,” Tip said. “He killed Waters and Alvin Barr. He murdered my uncle!”
“Ford? You crazy? Why, we just found Ford out on—” The tintype chief broke off as realization came. “You mean that wasn’t Ford we found in the car? It was one of the others?”
A single shot from the cellar interrupted. There was a moan.
Parnell wheezed, “Sounds—sounds like he’s killed himself! Rather than face what was coming to him.”
Tip reached for the hasp on the cellar door, raised it with his left hand. Dan Ford was still living—faintly. He told his story then, A story as sordid as it was lamentable—of talent! gone wrong. He’d developed a formula for the use of oxygen as an explosive—one that overcame the old fault of rapid deterioration of the liquid agent. Since he’d made the development on the firm’s time, the rights to the invention legally belonged to his employer.
Waters and Barr, unaware that Ford had no rights to the invention, had each bought a share for ten thousand dollars. Uncle Andy Tipton had learned of the fraud—and paid with his life. Then Waters and Barr were put out of the way. Dan Ford burned the house and office of the men he’d falsely accused of hijacking, for fear some evidence of his transactions with them might be found there.
Barr’s body he’d shattered after freezing it brittle by contact with liquid air. It had gone down one of the plant laboratory’s giant drains. Waters, because of his size and build, was used by Ford to substitute for himself in the blazing coupe. He’d hoped his scheme would allow him to go somewhere else and begin a new life, undetected and unmolested . . .
Tip Dolan found Lois afterwards, sobbing quietly to herself. The ambulance surgeon had dressed the clean gouge in Tip’s side. It had been too late to help Dan Ford.
“I’m sorry, Lois,” Tip said. “I know how you must feel.”
But Lois shook her head. “No, it’s not like you think. Oh, Tip. Don’t you see? Alvin Barr was a fine man, and I so wanted to be a good wife. I couldn’t tell you I was married when I first saw you because—because I knew then that I still loved you, Tip. I thought you were gone for good, and Alvin was kind—”
“I’m going away,” Tip said. “My job has kept me out of the war till now, but next week I’m going in. I’ve felt pretty badly about it, going into it without having anyone to come back to—”
“I’ll write.” Her hand was in his. Tip felt his arm slip about her waist. He wouldn’t kiss her now. But there would surely be a furlough.
Lois’ soft lips touched his cheek.
Tip knew he just had to come back from the war then. It really would be different now.
THE END
MURDER RIDES BEHIND THE SIREN
Prescott Chaplin
When a Man’s on the Hunt for a Killer, Says Mike Dolan, Dames Are Dangerous!
I’D NEVER seen the dame before and that’s how I got jammed the night Zeke Manners died with five bullets in his chest. I’d brought Zeke in to the Atlanta Street Hospital, and when I’d been helping the doc snake the stretcher dolly out of the ambulance hack, Zeke had opened his eyes.
“Thanks for the ride, Dolan,” he’d muttered. A faint friendly smile shone through the grayness of pain on his face. “Squares us, Dolan.” And that was the last thing he ever said to anybody.
“Squares us, Dolan.”
I didn’t agree. I could never pay Zeke Manners back for what he’d done for me. Ten years ago I’d been a cocky kid with more dough than a kid my age should have—tw
enty-five grand, Irish lottery winnings. It was all that was left out of a hundred and fifty grand. I’d gone to Zeke’s place with the gang, wild crazy kids who loved spending dough, my dough. I was going to show-off. Break Zeke’s bank like the guy is supposed to have broken the bank at Monte Carlo.
Only I lost. Had only two hundred bucks left, and no control of my temper when a drunk started riding me. Yeah, we fought. I was too wild with my punches to hurt him, and he was too fizzled to be accurate. He swung. I ducked. He whirled off-balance, went down, his head striking the edge of a table. It was his last fight.
I faced a twenty year rap, but Zeke Manners, gambler—but the squarest guy in town, kicked my fairweather friends out, let them know what would happen if they ever opened their mouths, and took me into his office and talked to me.
“Look, kid,” he’d said, “I know you didn’t kill him. I can make the police see it that way too. They won’t like it but they’ll see it if I—”
He didn’t go on with that. He took a new tack.
“I had a kid brother just like you. He went to the chair in another state because I didn’t get there in time to save him. I’m squaring myself with him by saving you. And by jingo,” he’d snapped, “if you don’t stay on your feet you won’t answer to the cops. You’ll answer to me!”
No, he didn’t give me a lot of dough, his dough or what I’d lost. He took my last two hundred bucks, said it was time I saw how people suffered and what two hundred bucks could mean to them. He had a guy coach me for the Civil Service exams, then got me a job driving an ambulance. A year later he gave me back my two hundred bucks. My eyes had been opened—I’d seen plenty.
Zeke would never let me do anything to try to repay him. But when I’d helped carry him into the hospital ten years later, he’d said: “Squares us, Dolan.”
Like fun it did!
I was wishing he’d made me a cop, instead of an ambulance hack driver. Then maybe I’d know how to go about finding the guy that pumped five slugs into his chest. I’d really be able to do something about squaring myself with Zeke.
Those things were going through my head when the dame came into the picture.
I WAS sitting in the hack, with the radio tuned to a newscast. The announcer was saying: “No trace has been found yet of Robert Galloway, whom police declare is allegedly guilty of the ruthless shooting of Zeke Manners.”
It was then the dame came rushing to the hack, her starched white skirts rustling, her blue cape flaunting behind her.
“Seven forty-five South State, driver,” she commanded breathlessly.
I stared at her as she climbed in quickly, swinging her kit into the rear of the hack beside the seat the interne usually rode on. She was beautiful—the soft fluff of her hair above her smooth features making me think of golden honey poured over ripe peaches. But it wasn’t just her looks that made me stare. It was something else.
Her blue eyes met mine sharply, briefly.
“Seven forty-five South State,” she repeated, and again she sounded breathless, nervous.
“I’ve seen you somewhere before,” I began, frowning.
“Around the hospital,” she said quickly, giving me a keen look. “I’m the new interne.”
“Doctor Brown?” I questioned.
She looked impatient.
“How many new women internes are there? Are you going to sit here and question me all night? Either start driving or go inside and check up on me. But for pity’s sake stop wasting time. Do something!”
I kicked the starter and rolled the hack. Just as we approached the street and I moved my knee toward the siren control she spoke again.
“Never mind the siren, we’re not in that much of a hurry.”
I obeyed. I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking there was something queer here. She seemed nervous, contradicting herself: first I must hurry, then I mustn’t use the siren.
I remained silent until I got the hack past Seventh and Willoughby, a bad corner, and a tough one to take without the help of the siren when traffic is heavy just before theatre curtain-time.
“This your first case?” I asked her. “That why you’re so nervous?”
“Yes,” she declared.
“Nuts!” I snapped, stepping on the brake. “Doc Brown’s been out on three calls that I know of even though she’s never ridden in my hack. If you ask me, I don’t think you are Doc Brown. Now what goes on here?”
I heard her kit snap open and I looked around. She pulled out a little gun and pointed it at me Her eyes were desperate.
“Keep driving,” she ordered. “Don’t use the siren. Don’t do anything to attract attention. Do you understand?”
I took my foot off the brake.
“Aren’t there any taxies left in the city?” I growled. “People are sick, in accidents, dying. This hack is needed. If you’ll pile out quietly, I won’t tip off the cops to you or—”
“I need an ambulance,” she declared. “And you’re not going to tip . . . to . . . tip . . .”
Her voice faded.
I glanced around carefully. She’d been looking back. Her head whipped toward me as I turned, and she steadied the gun. Her face was white, scared, desperate.
“Is that car back there following us?” she gasped. “I just saw it jump a signal light.”
I looked into the mirror.
“Hurry,” she said. “Don’t let it catch us.”
“Maybe it’s a prowl car,” I suggested. “Ambulance follow-up.”
But as soon as I said it, I knew it couldn’t be the cops. She wasn’t a doc. She’d cooked up a phony call to make me leave the hospital. That’s why she hadn’t had me use the siren. She didn’t want the hospital to know I was leaving and become suspicious.
“Don’t let them catch us,” she said, and this time she wasn’t commanding. It was more like pleading.
“We don’t know they are following us,” I answered. “But we’ll soon find out.”
I TURNED right at the next corner.
The car, a sedan, appeared around the corner when we were in the middle of the block. I turned left on the next corner. The car followed.
“Lose them—please try,” the girl pleaded.
I looked quickly at her and she tightened her hand on the gun. “Why should I?” I retorted. “They don’t want me, whoever they are. They want you. Why should I help you? I got things of my own to do. The swellest guy I ever knew is dead in the hospital and—”
“Zeke Manners?” she asked. “You brought him in, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said wonderingly.
“He was a friend of yours, you want to find out who killed him?”
“Yeah,” I frowned. “How did you guess—”
“I’m trying to do something that will catch his murderer too,” she declared.
I stared briefly at her. Her eyes met mine, and I felt she was telling the truth.
I nodded my head toward the rear.
“What about that car shagging us? Know who’s in it?”
“Yes,” she said earnestly. “They’re friends of the murderer. They know I—I’m trying to find him, and they don’t want me to. Now will you help me?”
“I’ll take a chance for Zeke Manners any day,” I muttered. “Hang on.”
I crushed the gas to the floor and the hack leaped ahead. I whipped around a comer, jammed the brakes, spun the wheel, hit the gas again and lurched the hack into an alley. We roared through the narrow drive, dusted a guy’s shoes, another guy’s fender as we shot out onto the next street. Just before we cleared the alley I saw the pursuing car back up past the alley, then come charging in after us.
I raced the hack across an intersection and swung into another alley before the sedan appeared behind us. For two minutes I snaked through alleys, lurched around corners, before I barged out on MacArthur Boulevard and rolled the hack south.
I grinned at the girl. She smiled faintly. She was plenty scared but game.
“That’s that,
” I said. “Now, where do you think we can find this rat Galloway? Seven forty-five South State?”
“Galloway is not the man we are looking for,” she declared uneasily.
“He is for my money,” I declared. “What makes you think he—”
“He didn’t do it,” she insisted. “I know.”
I looked sharply at her.
“Are you trying to pull a game on me?” I demanded. “Because if you are—”
I jerked my gaze from the traffic again as something about her features clicked in my brain. I’d seen Galloway a few times recently when I stopped in to say hello to Zeke. He’d been gambling desperately, and Zeke had had an argument with him about the money he owed. I remembered Galloway’s face now. It was a lot like the face of this girl in the hack with me.
“That’s it,” I snapped, glaring at her. “You’re Galloway’s sister I’ll bet.”
She nodded silently, her eyes pleading with me.
“So that’s the game?” I declared. “He’s in hiding. Every cop looking for him. No chance to get out of town, but an ambulance might get him out. You picked the wrong guy, sister. If you think I’m going to help Zeke Manners’ murderer you’re—”
“Have you already forgotten that car that was following us?” she demanded. “They don’t want my brother to be found by the police. They want to find him themselves because they’re afraid he might put the police on the right track.”
I SWUNG the ambulance around a truck and slipped between it and a street car.
“If your brother’s innocent,” I retorted, “why doesn’t he give himself up and put the police on that track?”
“Do you think he would stand a chance?”
“If he’s as innocent as you want me to think, which I don’t,” I began.
“Please listen to me,” she interrupted. “My brother phoned me tonight after—after it happened. I knew he was going to see Manners because he’d told me how much he was in debt. But I wasn’t the only one he told this afternoon. He told his boss at the bank where he works. Told him he’d been gambling, that he’d have to quit his job because he couldn’t fight the temptation any longer to take the bank’s money to pay his debts.
