E. Hoffmann Price's Two-Fisted Detectives

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “Take it easy, cap,” countered Flint. “Can’t you give a fellow a break? I didn’t have nuthin’ to do with this, but the Chinks’ll be waiting for me when I get out of the jug—”

  “They’ll be old men before you get out,” barked the sergeant. “Now get into that wagon.”

  Flint risked a whisper as the police hustled him toward the department car. “Grab that spare tire halfway up the block!”

  The sergeant glanced up Jackson Street.

  “Spare tire!” he growled. “Try another one, fella!”

  It was gone, but one still remained in the left fender well.

  “Get that—”

  But the Chinatown squad is hardened to artful dodges. Flint, now that his investigation had blown up, would have to start all over again, and he dared not continue the argument.

  The next instant justified him. A blot of whiteness appeared from a second story window; then a pale, slender, jewel-sparkling hand swept out. A burning cigarette lighter landed in the pool of gasoline collecting under the crushed tank. A roar, a fierce wave of heat, and a surging gust of flame enveloped Hawk-nose’s car.

  Flint cursed wrathfully as the police machine pulled out. Before that blaze was extinguished, not a scrap of evidence would be left.

  * * * *

  At police headquarters Flint identified himself. “Who is that hook-nosed guy, and will he live?” he asked.

  “Henrique Robles, according to his driver’s license,” answered the sergeant. Then, after a moment on the telephone, he added: “They tell me he coughed himself to death on the operating table. The rest were cold meat before we got to headquarters. Three highbinders. Yut Lee, of course, claims he never saw the Chink that went out to get the spare tires—or the others that tried to beat him to it. Which is pure baloney. If there’s not a tong war before morning, my name’s not McDermott!”

  “Worse than a tong war,” grumbled Flint. “Damn sight worse! Anyone big enough to crowd the other brands off the market is not going to confine himself to opium. Hitting the pipe is comparatively harmless, especially for a Chink. The damnable thing about it is that this Silver Dragon won’t stick to smoking opium. Deadlier drugs will follow. The kind that get at the white population.”

  McDermott’s ruddy face lengthened. Flint’s view had made a murderous tong war seem trivial in comparison.

  While waiting for news of the exotic girl he had glimpsed at Yut Lee’s place—the one he was certain had ignited Robles’ car—Flint proposed inspecting the wreck.

  They went. “Hawk-nose” Robles’ machine was in the pound. The blackened remains mocked Flint. The blast of the half-emptied tank had sprayed it with blazing gasoline. He drew a jackknife and moved toward the still smoking wreck.

  The hijackers had been interrupted before they could break the lock of the tire in the left fender-well. A slash, and the blistered rubber yielded. Flint’s hunch was confirmed when he tore into the tube: it was filled with five-tael tins of Silver Dragon, each held in place with a rubber band vulcanized to the interior. But that confirmation was thus far useless.

  The serial number had long been filed from the engine block, and no body number plate remained. The gutted interior was a total blank. Flame and the fire department had destroyed the ownership papers on the steering column.

  “At the speed this guy was driving,” said McDermott eyeing the insect-caked radiator, “he’d have to gas up about every hundred seventy-five miles. Watch towns that distance—”

  “This is better!” interrupted Flint, abruptly checking his examination of the interior of the car. He pried a small metal plate from above the right corner of the windshield, “Somebody slipped!”

  It was a greasing rack “tickler” with blank spaces for the speedometer reading at which oil should be changed and the chassis relubricated. The top of the plate was marked in red enamel, TIMOTHY’S SERVICE STATION—YUMA.

  “Bullseye!” exclaimed McDermott. “That short-circuits the guesswork. Now we know where to inquire. First stop for gas, Fresno, hundred and eighty miles south. Then the all-night filling station at Mojave, three fifty-five. And Yuma—”

  “Is headquarters,” Flint broke in. “Close to the Mexican border. This tickler’s never been marked. Probably not even Robles knew it was there. He’d grease up each round trip. Routine.”

  Flint then briskly ordered: “Get some mechanics to work on this heap. Fix it up with a used body the same color. I’m driving it south.”

  “Hell!” muttered McDermott. “You can’t get away with impersonating Hawk-nose Robles! And the big shot—the Silver Dragon—ten to one knows by this time what’s happened.”

  Flint’s mouth relaxed almost to a smile. “McDermott, if it’s got you guessing, this gag may catch someone else off guard. But unless I hit fast, I’ll pile right into a buzz-saw. Shake it up. This is big stuff.”

  Flint, while waiting for the police to have Robles’ sedan restored, listened to the radio network enveloping the Peninsula: but the incoming reports were a succession of blanks.

  He returned to the pound. The mechanics were checking up the restoration.

  “Put some bullet holes into the hood,” he ordered, approvingly eyeing the second-hand replacement body. “Radio the highway patrols down the San Joaquin to give me a clear block, and tell the small town speed traps to lay off, I’m going through.

  “And while you’re waiting for the radio in Yuma, find that black-haired jane with a quart of diamonds on her fingers and hell in her eyes. Just maintain contact, under cover. But don’t grab her. She’s been loose too long for a pinch to be any good. The beans must be spilled by now. She’ll be worth more on the hoof than in the jug.”

  * * * *

  Half an hour later the revamped car was hoisted bodily into a waiting truck. In a side street just short of the South San Francisco bottleneck, Flint took the wheel and nosed the powerful machine down the tailgate ramp and to the paving.

  * * * *

  Yuma is sprawled on the east bank of the sluggish Colorado. Its adobe shacks and broad, dusty streets were replaced by granite and marble and asphalt when the Chamber of Commerce used the winter sunshine as tourist bait; hence the modern hotels, schools like Moorish palaces, and a post office that covers a quarter of the city. Yuma is the biggest small town in the country—or maybe it’s the smallest big town.

  Flint headed for Timothy’s Filling Station. Six hundred and seventy miles in a little over ten hours, and the car looked it.

  “Give her the works, doc,” Flint ordered.

  Despite his careless tone and the amiable grin that cracked the alkali dust coating of his craggy face, he was tensely watching the effect of his appearance.

  The sandy-haired attendant’s blue eyes narrowed as his glance shifted from Flint to the car, and the bullet holes in the hood. No doubt that the machine was familiar; but there was little chance that the attendant would know enough about Robles’ business to be on guard.

  “Robles got hurt,” Flint remarked. “He tried to tell me who to get in touch with, but he passed out before I could get it. Know any of his friends?”

  “Don’t know anything about him, cap,” was the answer. “But there’s a fellow that drives up here with him once in a while. Perfesser Kane—the fortune-teller. Maybe you could find him in the phone directory.”

  Flint found that Alexander Kane was listed. That was something to work on.

  “I’ll be back for the grease job later,” said Flint, resuming the wheel.

  But just in case the man at the filling station knew more than he seemed to, Flint rounded the corner, pulled up at a drug store, and called the telephone supervisor.

  “Watch all calls going out of Timothy’s Service Station,” he ordered. “And report Alexander Kane’s phone out of order. Police business.”

  Then he hastened to police headquarters. He arriv
ed just in time to hear the sergeant at the desk rasp into the transmitter: “We don’t know anything about that order—”

  “You do now, sergeant,” Flint cut in, flashing a federal badge. “Tell the phone supervisor to go ahead with it, and I’ll explain a few things.”

  The order was confirmed; and presently he was conferring with Chief Fergus McDonald, lean and erect as the desert saguaros, and just about as thorny.

  “What’s the dirt on this fortune-teller, Kane?” he asked, after sketching the trail of the Silver Dragon.

  “As far as we’ve had any occasion to know,” answered McDonald, “he’s just one of those pests that stay inside the law. He came to town six months ago, and there haven’t been any complaints.”

  “I’m going to look him up,” announced Flint.

  * * * *

  Alexander Kane’s squat, thick-walled, old-fashioned adobe house was a brown cube surrounded by an uncultivated grove of grapefruit trees. Though not far from the southern limits of the city, it was aloof, and isolated from the neighboring places. A dusty drive, winding in and out among the trees, led to a sunbaked yard fringed by flame-crested ocatillas and tall, towering sahuaros. At the right of the flat-roofed adobe was a stack of fire wood, lying as though just unloaded from a truck whose tire tracks were still plain in the yard.

  Flint jabbed the pushbutton just below the brass plate that was etched, ALEXANDER KANE, PSYCHIC. No answer.

  He circled the house. The professor’s car was in the open garage. He returned to the stone slab at the threshold. Another futile ring. Then Flint went in. For a moment the cool dimness of the spacious room was too much for eyes dazzled by the outdoor glare. It was not until Flint had passed the table at the center that he perceived the thin, sallow-faced man who lay sprawled on the Spanish tiles. He had fallen, struggled to his knees, then slumped to his right. Life had ended with that last effort.

  The flow from the dark splash on his gray coat, just below the shoulder, had made little progress across the tiles. His thin, pain-racked face was a mask of futile wrath, made grotesque by the froth that had drooled from his lips as he gasped out his life. Dried, blackened blood—he had been dead for hours.

  Flint knelt beside the body, deftly probed an inside coat pocket and found a wallet. A glance at the contents identified the corpse as Alexander Kane.

  “He might have been psychic,” muttered Flint, “but not enough to keep from turning his back to the wrong guy.”

  Death had sought Kane with a smile and a knife. No mistaking that vengeful grimace; and the table runner, jerked awry, confirmed Flint’s opinion. The psychic had died trying to reach his telephone. Another step, another moment of life, and he would have lived to speak a familiar name into the transmitter.

  None of the living-room furniture had been disturbed. Then Flint noted that the trail of blood led to the rear. He followed it down the hallway. At his right was a door that opened into a room whose stucco walls were hung with astrological charts. In the center was a broad, flat-topped walnut desk on which were set, between brazen sphinxes, half a dozen occult books.

  Without entering, Flint continued tracking the blood splashes in the hallway. They led to the kitchen and came from a trapdoor opening into a cellar. He descended a short flight of wooden stairs, found and snapped a switch.

  “Hell’s bells!” he exclaimed, noting the open door of a wall cabinet.

  On one shelf were ten five-tael tins of Silver Dragon. On a table were several inner tubes, slit to receive their cargo.

  Flint, examining the hot-patch kit used in vulcanizing the cans of opium to the inner tubes, saw that the psychic had been preparing to conceal fifty five-tael containers. Forty were missing. If it was hijacking, why leave ten?

  “Flint retraced his steps, but this time he paused in the kitchen. It was large, neat, but scantily furnished—a refrigerator, a gas plate, and a shelf stocked with canned goods. In an alcove were two chairs and a dinette table.

  The latter had not been cleared. There were two plates, both coated with a greasy, congealed, reddish brown gravy; and cups that contained coffee dregs. A bowl at the center was one-third filled with frijoles and chili con carne. Beside it lay a heel of bread and a square of butter.

  He sniffed the chili. Home made. The real article.

  But before he could look for some definite trace left by the unknown guest, Flint heard a muffled groan, as though someone, handicapped by a gag, were making an effort to call for help. He turned. It was repeated, choked and gurgling.

  It might come from the mystic’s study, but he could not be certain. No—it originated in the basement. The silence of the thick-walled adobe had an uncanny trick of distorting sound.

  He paused, waiting for a recurrence of that deceptive cry of distress. He heard a sharp click as though a latch had either opened or engaged. No doubt about its origin. Regardless of prisoners, someone was on the prowl. Flint, pistol in hand, stretched long, stealthy strides toward the study door. Weapon leveled, he halted, peeped warily into the room.

  It was empty. Nevertheless he sensed that he was by no means alone in that sinister adobe. The groan was repeated. Flint was certain now that someone must be beyond the door which opened from the study into an adjoining room.

  Pistol still ready, he cleared the threshold; but as he bounded forward to reach the knob of the interior door, it jerked open to meet him. Simultaneously, something tripped him in mid stride, and a stick cracked down across his right forearm. His automatic slipped from numb fingers; yet swift as his headlong plunge was, he caught a glimpse of the short, moonfaced Chinaman who had lurked at the blind side of Kane’s desk.

  Only a flickering glimpse, as he desperately struggled to regain his balance: an unnaturally stolid, immobile face whose only animated features were the eyes, black fires that blazed in that frozen, yellowish mask.

  Then, slipping on the tiles, Flint’s efforts to regain his feet sent him plunging headlong across the threshold and into the darkness from which the choking sounds had come.

  An adobe wall checked his lunge. Rebounding, he whirled to a crouch. But the door slammed, and a bolt snicked home. The solid panels fairly crushed his shoulder as he hurled himself against them.

  Silence, except for his own hoarse breathing. He struck a match. He was caged in a cramped, dusty closet. The Chinaman, crouched at the blind side of Kane’s desk, had by simple ventriloquism thrown his voice so that it seemed to come from beyond the door. And Flint had taken the bait.

  His hands were slick and greasy, and so were his knees.

  Butter! Taken from the square in the kitchenette. No wonder he had floundered on those tiles. And peeping through the keyhole, he caught a glimpse of a strand of wire on the floor of the study. That was what had tripped him.

  He shifted and saw that blank face averted as yellow hands opened desk drawers and probed the contents. Without waiting to see what the raider was taking, Flint turned his back to the door. He braced himself against the knob, planted his feet against the closet wall, and heaved.

  The panels creaked as he slowly straightened his arched body. He heard a soft, mocking laugh. Another heave, and then Flint settled to the floor. There, lying on his side, he could apply pressure.

  But the groan of the wood was followed by the slip-slip-swish of shuffling feet and the locking of the outer door. And when the tongue of the lock finally tore the socket from the jamb, Flint was alone in a littered office. Escape was blocked by an iron-barred window and a door as strong as the first.

  His gun was on the desk, every cartridge removed.

  As he snatched a chair and began belabouring the remaining barrier, he wondered at the insane inconsistency of it all. Why such an elaborate trap when the Chinaman could have stabbed or brained him as he responded to ventriloquist’s bait?

  * * * *

  Flint finally shouldered his way through
the shattered panel. Although he knew that his captor had made good his escape, he nevertheless dashed to the front.

  Robles’ touring sedan was still there; but the top of the trunk at the rear was now braced open. Three prints of felt-soled slippers had registered before the emerging stowaway had reached the harder ground at the house. There were no tracks to show what direction the Chinaman had taken in flight from the adobe.

  “That Chink followed me from ’Frisco!” muttered Flint.

  In trying to outwit the enemy, he had carried one of the Silver Dragon’s men with him for nearly seven hundred miles. Flint grimaced wryly and gave the sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach a chance to subside. Then he cursed wrathfully and strode back into the house.

  “Funny,” he pondered, stepping to the telephone to call the police, “that Kane didn’t have this instrument in his office instead of out here.”

  He mentioned only having found the dead soothsayer. But as he started to the rear to resume his interrupted search, he heard a car coming up the driveway.

  Flint turned again to the front.

  A tall, swarthy man with a waxed black mustache emerged: a Spaniard or a Mexican. He carried a black leather bag.

  Flint met him at the door.

  “I am looking for Professor Kane,” the caller announced. He was sleek and well groomed, and his purposeful dark eyes regarded Flint with sharp, querying scrutiny as he added: “Tell him that Dr. Alvarez is here.”

  “Did he call you?”

  “Does it matter?” the doctor countered.

  Flint suddenly stepped aside and gestured. He sharply watched Alvarez to note his reaction when his eyes accommodated themselves to the abrupt change from outdoor glare to indoor shadows.

  Alvarez stared for a moment, then exclaimed and recoiled. He fixedly regarded the gray huddle just beyond the table, and the blood that blackened the tiles. Then, voice level and unwavering, he queried: “You found him this way?”

  “How long has he been dead?” Flint asked.