Astrof was strong, powerful. But Hercules himself could not have resisted the lethal fury that inflamed Red Finger.
The gun crashed against Konyl Astrof’s temple. The Russian’s gigantic bulk slumped unconscious in the driver’s seat. A police whistle shrilled, far-off. Red Finger grabbed the steering wheel of the roadster, which in the lightning instant of that brief fight had been slowly gathering speed, twirled it. The car made a half circle in the roadway. Red Finger pushed down on a lax knee. The car leaped into sudden speed. At the final moment the counter-spy leaped from its running board and the black car crashed thunderously into the huge pile of shattered brick on which the dust raised by its collapse had not yet started to settle.
The policeman, coming on the run around the corner, saw a tall, slender man staring at the piled ruins of a condemned warehouse that had fallen at last and at the mangled wreck of a roadster that had smashed into it. “God,” Ford Duane jerked out as the patrolman came up. “The damn fool. He almost dipped me, speeding a mile a minute. He must have been drunk, or crazy.”
“Drunk, I guess.” The officer grunted, fighting off the shock of what he saw with a mechanical functioning of routine. “Comin’ from some damn masquerade, mebbe. Looka what fell out o’ the car.” He held out black, torn fabric to Duane. “Musta been dressed up like a Ku Klux Klanner or somethin’.…” He broke off. Then—“Godfrey! I wunner if anyone was caught under there. I got to phone headquarters.” He lumbered off.
Was anyone else caught under there? Was anyone…? The blood in Ford Duane’s veins were suddenly cold. Had she won free of the falling brick? There was no living soul, beside himself and the flatfoot in the street…
And then the forefront of a crowd surged around the corner. Before he was asked what he had been doing in deserted Avenue E, Fort Duane must slip away. He reeled as he walked, as though he were half-dazed. As though the fog had seeped into his bones with the chill of death.
* * * *
Radley Ransom was just dragging his sidewalk stands into his store for the night as Ford Duane passed him. “Oh, Duane,” he called.
“Yes.” The younger man’s voice was toneless, tortured. “What is it, Ransom?”
“This telegram came for you ’bout ten minutes ago. I signed for it.”
Duane snatched the envelope from him, ripped it open with shaking fingers. It said:
SALE TUESDAY INSTEAD STOP LET LAYTON INCLUDE NEWTON’S TREATISE STOP HAVE EVERHARD GOING AFTER MY ENCYCLOPDIA
and it was signed—FLOWER.
DEATH’S TOY SHOP
Jane West pecked falteringly at her typewriter. She peered near-sightedly at the shorthand notebook on the desk beside her, twisted ill-shod feet under her chair, stopped to erase what she had written, began again. Her dress of cheap rayon hung clumsily from stooped shoulders to lump in awkward folds about her more awkward form. Her hair, if washed, might have shown tawny lights, but it was grotesquely frizzed in a pitiful attempt at coquetry and her mouth gaped half-open, giving to her carbon-smudged face an expression of fairly blatant stupidity.
The man in the doorway of the office that was partitioned off from the big loft watched her with contempt in his shadowed gaze. But there was satisfaction, too. This was what one would expect, he seemed to be thinking, when one hired a seven-dollar-a-week stenographer from a fly-by-night business school. And it was exactly what he wanted.
Beyond the railed-off enclosure in which Jane worked, cluttered shelving went row upon row back into obscurity. The objects filling those shelves were weird and wonderful. Here a collection of tin frogs squatted, vividly green, waiting for someone to wind their springs and give them life. Next to them a horde of miniature hula dancers, shameless in short net skirts and nothing else, poised rivet-jointed limbs in expectancy of the same magical touch.
There were woolly prize-fighters, black and white. There were polkadotted beetles big as a baby’s fist, lifelike flies heading carded stickpins; an infinite variety of puzzles and games; miniature playing cards with which no game could be played because no single suit was complete. Gargoylesque masks hung in clusters from the drab ceiling. This was the stock, in short, of a “pitchman’s” supply house, destined to be hawked on street corners and at county fairs, or to serve as prizes at boardwalk and pleasure park concessions.
The Arnerico-Oriental Trading Company dealt in gim-crackery and brummagem. And in death!
If the loft’s one huge window had not been almost opaque with encrusted dirt, Jane West might have looked out through it over a pinnacled city in whose canyons six million people went about their early evening pursuits in fancied security. She might have seen the lights of an airplane that was burring westward to carry its mail and its passengers over three thousand miles of smiling, peaceful countryside; over a hundred million Americans unaware that the shadow of mass murder hovered over them; of sudden, unpresaged disaster; of rapine and arson and merciless, terrible slaughter. But Jane picked out a few words, wrinkled her freckled nose in dismay, reached for her eraser…
“I want that letter to get out tonight,” her employer said, in the precise, unaccented syllables of the educated alien. “You’ve been at it an hour now.”
The girl looked up, tears in her gray eyes. “But Mr. Carron,” she wailed. “You’re always so petickler ’bout every word bein’ spelled jest right, an’ about all them dozens an’ grosses in the orders. You’ll yell if I make a mistake. An’ you make me nervous, standin’ there an’ watchin’ me like that. As if—as if you t’ought I might steal somethin’ or somethin’.”
Carron’s thin lips twitched with covert amusement. “I was not watching you, Jane,” he responded. “I am expecting a very good customer from Mexico, and he’s late.” He was short, spare in his dark suit. His patent-leather shoes were pointed, almost effeminately small. The faintest of blues tinged the crescents of his carefully tended fingernails. His cheekbones were slightly too high, his black eyes vaguely almond-shaped. “I was wondering if anything—if he has been delayed. No, young lady, I trust you implicitly…”
“Thank you, Mr. Carron.”
“I’m right in trusting you, aren’t I, Jane?” The man’s voice dropped a note, slurred. “You wouldn’t by any chance talk to anyone about my business?” It was a low purr, somehow menacing, somehow infinitely cruel. “You wouldn’t try to listen at my keyhole?”
The cloddish girl looked bewildered, surprised in a dull sort of way. “Law, Mr. Carron! What would anyone be asking about your business for? An’ how could I listen at the keyhole when I’m all the time busy writing. It’s all I kin do to get my work out, let alone monkeyin’ aroun’ with what ain’t none of my affairs.”
An icy smile licked Carron’s sallow countenance. “No,” he murmured, half to himself. “There isn’t room in that dull brain of yours for even feminine curiosity.—Oh, hello, Señor Gonzales. Come in! Come right in.”
The elevator door had slid open, and a tall, cadaverously thin individual had stepped out of it. His pointed fingers twirled the end of a pointed black mustache; his chin, his nose, were pointed; his eyes were black, glittering points in a swarthy, hollow-checked face. He clicked his heels, bowed, and one listened for the jingle of spurs and the rattle of a sword.
“Señor Carron!” he exclaimed. “I am desolate’ zat I am late. Bot your so-beeg ceety, eet ees meex me all up.”
“Pretty puzzling for a stranger,” Carron smiled. “But you got here all right. Come on inside and we’ll get right down to business. I’ve got the greatest setup you ever heard of for your fiesta.”
Gonzales’ heels tack-tacked on the unwashed wooden floor, and Jane’s typewriter took up its halting tack-tack again. The two men vanished inside Carron’s private office. The door closed behind them.
The sound of its closing was metallic. Strange, that in this shabby establishment the ceiling-high parti
tion in which that door was set should be of heavy steel.
Stranger still was the change that came over Jane West. She was suddenly tense, vibrant with incongruous excitement. And while one hand still peeked at the typewriter, she did a very queer thing. She bent. The fingers of her free hand fumbled within the side of one of her disreputable shoes. They fished out two threadlike wires, jabbed their stripped ends into the slits on each side of a floor board far under the desk. Then Jane straightened, and once more was laboring, nearsightedly, falteringly, at her typewriter. Its tack-tack spat against the steel partition, penetrated it, assuring the men behind it that she was still at her desk, so far from them that what they said could not possibly be overheard.
But Jane West’s head was canted to one side, pressing one ear against a raised shoulder, against a flat disk that was hidden by the sleazy fabric covering that shoulder. And the voices of Messrs. Gonzales and Carron whispered very clearly in that ear.
“What happened?” Carron snapped. “Why are you late?”
“I was followed all ze way from Agualeguas. On ze train I could not get reed of my shadow, bot wiz a leetle ingeenuity, in ze ceety, he was—pouf.”
“You are sure you got rid of him?”
“I am Señor Alcido Tiano!” Insulted pride was in the reply. “I would not be alife eef long ago I deed not learn how to deal wiz spies.”
“Good Lord! What…?”
“A man lies in an alley, far from here, wiz a knife slash across ze gullet. Finee.”
“I wish that had not happened.” The man called Carron sounded worried. “It would be too bad if at the last minute you were traced here. This setup is perfeet. It has been quite natural for this kind of business to be sending and receiving letters from all over the country, and with all the items it handles easy to work out an unsuspectable code. And since most of the goods I handle are made in the Far East, neither my cables nor my letters to—our employers— have been subject to suspicion. If the police should trace you here now…”
“Zey deed not trace me.” Gonzales—or Tiano—seemed very sure of himself. “An’ it weel make no deeference aftair tonight.”
“After—You mean…?”
“I mean zat eef you haf done your part properlee, zere will no longer be any necessitee for secrecy aftair ze clock strikes seven. Our forces are massed along ze bordair, from ze Gulf of Mexeeco to ze Gulf of California. Ze fleet of—our allies—ees in ze Paceefic, wiz thousands of ze bombeeng planes ready to take off for ze attack. Remains only your word zat you are readee. Eef you geev me eet, zere weel be a telephone call here from Tito Manuon een an hour from now. He ees schedule to play ze guitar from ze WROW on a national—how you call?—hook ’em up. Eef I geeve him ze wor’ to play ze…”
“Mañana Rumba. I know. That’s the signal for everything to start. God, man, haven’t I been thinking about it, dreaming about it, for months? Well, you can tell him to play it. My men are ready. Trained, armed with the machine-guns and grenades and gas-bombs I’ve been sending, bit by bit, in my shipments. They’ll strike at the signal, invade every State Capital, every city hall of any importance and take a thousand hostages. The President is speaking tonight at a political rally. We’ll either capture him or kill him. The country will be paralyzed, disorganized. We’ll make our own terms by noon tomorrow, and they’ll be harsh ones.”
“Good. Vary good. My congratulations, Señor Ho Chien. We will show ze worl’ how to make war.”
“Thanks, Tiano. Well, since we’ve got nothing more to do till Manuon calls, suppose we have a drink.”
* * * *
Jane West was white, gasping. She had suspected the cables and letters to be coded, but since the cipher was an arbitrary one had not been able to get the details of the conspiracy. She had waited, discovery, death, always at her elbows, for this moment of illumination. She must get out of here…
“Zere ees somesing more, my fran’. Zat girl, outside…”
Jane pushed shaking hands down the desktop, shoving herself up from her chair. But her foot held the dictaphone connection, momentarily.
“Hell! She’s all right. She’s so stupid she doesn’t know her knee from her elbow. I’ll tell her—”
“She may be stupeed, bot I trus’ no one. Get her een here. We shall keep her here teel eet ees too late for her to betray us.”
“All right, Tiano, if you—”
Jane was on her feet. She threw a despairing glance to the emergency stairway door. It was locked, barred. No time… She darted to the elevator, thumbed both down and up buttons. If only the car were right here…!
“Jane!” Carron’s—Ho Chien’s—silken voice sounded behind her. “Where are you going?”
She turned. “I was just goin’ to run aroun’ the corner to let my boy friend know I was goin’ to be late. I got a supper date wit’ him.”
“Yes?” The man’s eyes narrowed. “Well, I need you here. You can telephone him.”
“He ain’t got no phone. An’ he’s that jealous he’ll be coming here to see what’s the matter if I don’t let him know I’m all right.”
She had no real hope that she could get away. But she had to try something, anything. Tiano pushed past Carron. There was a gun in his hand.
“You weel go nowhere, mees,” he snapped. “You weel—” Red light flickered over her head. The elevator was about to stop. “Wan wor’ to ze boy an’ you both die.”
The lift door slid open. “Down,” the black-faced operator called. “Who’s gwine down?”
“No wan. Bot eef you weel wait just a leetle meenute—” Tiano’s gun was concealed under his coat, but Jane knew it was there, agonizingly knew that a single word from her would being lethal lead flaming into her body, into the Negro’s—“Mees—zis young lady would lak you to deleever a note for her. She weel write eet now.” And their deaths would accomplish nothing. “To someone she likes so mooch she would like to see heem again, some day.”
His meaning was plain. He was offering her life in exchange for lulling the suspicions of a possible confederate.
“Yes, Jimmy,” Jane’s lips could hardly form the words. “That’s what I wanted.”
“Zere ees a quarter for you eef you weel take ze message.”
“Sure, mister,” the boy grinned. “I got time now. Everybody else is gone. I’m just waitin’ fer you folks to close up.”
“Zat ees good. All right, Mees. Write w’at you want to say.”
Jane dragged herself to her desk, her limbs moving as though through some viscid, invisible fluid. She stuck a sheet of the Americo-Oriental’s stationery in the machine, wrote:
Pat dear:
The boss has a lot of work for me and I can’t get away. I’ll see you in the morning, if I can, to hear how the game comes out. Be careful, dear. You never played for such high stakes before.
You understand, don’t you?
Flower
She was conscious that Tiano was reading over her shoulder. “I was going to watch him play bridge,” she said, “for a lot of money.” She folded the paper, addressed the envelope. “Mr. Ford Duane,—Fourth Avenue.”
“Pat?” the Mexican arched his eyebrows. “Flower?”
“They’re our pet names for each other,” the girl explained. “We always use them.” She licked the envelope closed, started back to the elevator. “Here, Jimmy—”
“No! Wait!” Tiano intercepted her, took the envelope from her. “I haf just theenk, I mus’ go out myself. I weel deleever ze note.”
The elevator door clanged shut. Jane stared at it, gelid fingers squeezing her throat. Tiano had tricked her. He had guessed that the note might conceal a warning, and was making sure that there would be no interference with his plans. “I know how to deal wiz spies,” he had said. “A knife slash across ze gullet…”
“Come on inside here,” Ho Chien purred. “We’ll wait for Tiano to get back.” His tongue licked his lips. “He’s an artist with that knife of his. Between the two of us I think we’re going to have some very interesting entertainment while we’re waiting for Manuon’s call.”
* * * *
Ford Duane, alpaca-coated, lank, stooped under a lassitude too dreary for his apparent youth, sat at a shabby desk near the front of his second-hand bookstore. A pencil in his long, slim fingers idly traced a rose on the dust-filmed desk-blotter, and he seemed half-asleep.
The shadows were thick and dark between the towering tiers of tattered books that filled the dusty store. Outside, wan street-lamps struggled vainly against the night, filling the grimy Fourth Avenue block that is known as the Port of Missing Books. In all the peaceful land, there could be no spot more somnolently peaceful than this.
And yet death was a living, breathing presence in this sleepy store. Duane’s ears were attuned to every footfall, every slither of movement, in the street outside. The keen blue eyes under his drooped lids slid, every now and then, to peer through an artfully contrived aperture in the piled books of his window-display. Eternal vigilance was the price Ford Duane paid for life itself!
He was not, by far, the defeated dealer in discarded volumes that he seemed.
All over the world a secret, deadly Game is being played, a game the stakes of which are nations themselves. Spy and counter-spy, saboteur and masked guard, the players of the Game fight an endless war. Unknown to the people they attack and protect, unknown even to each other, they breathe danger every second of the day, the year. They fight, and die, unwept. No medals are pinned on their breasts, no wreaths are laid on their tombs.
The rules of the Game are rigid. They say that the players must remain nameless, unknown to one another, team-mates as well as antagonists. But Nature scoffs at manmade rules. Ford Duane was a champion in the Game. But for months a face had hovered in his thoughts. A sweet mouth, formed for kissing. Gray, brooding eyes. Tawny hair in which light glinted duskily.
The Red Finger Pulp Mystery Megapack: 12 Tales of the Masked Hero Page 13
