Kelsey shook his head. “No, chief. He darted away after he emptied his right-hand gun. He — listen!”
The sound of lively shooting in the rear could now be heard, mingled with shouts, curses, blows as of a heavy brogan against a door, and the tinkle of more falling glass. Kelsey, revolver in hand, just as a shadow flashed across the same front window which before had spouted a rain of steel, fired close to Folwell’s elbow, holding his gun in a crack in the wagon timbers. The roar of his firearm and the ringing in Folwell’s ears, was followed by another avalanche of bullets that sprinkled up and down the roadway, and thudded against the box-cars in their rear. The occupant of number 1124 was far from dead yet, holding his fort both front and rear with grim earnestness.
A longer silence than any preceding now filled the air. From every house on Hickory Avenue faces peered anxiously, but the streets themselves remained quite deserted. In that rain of several hundred leaden drops, it was plain that nobody had the desire to venture into the open. Of a sudden McIlroy stepped around from in back of the garbage wagon. He stood stockstill, head thrust forward belligerently, his body lighted up by the rays of the street lamp some distance up the street. He showed a contemptuous fearlessness as he cupped his hands about his mouth.
“Michaelovitch,” he shouted, “you’re under arrest, and we’re going to get you, dead or alive. Better surrender and come down with your hands above your head.”
Silence. Then the ugly snap of a single shot, and the hard dust at McIlroy’s feet spurted into a miniature fountain as the villainous missile missed him. Folwell felt a stinging spray on his cheek where the lead had struck a hard pebble and peppered through the cracks in the wagon. He rubbed at it dazedly. McIlroy had once more stepped in back of the wagon.
There was silence again for a few minutes. Then it was followed by a desultory popping of guns both at rear and front, and occasionally the deadly rattle of the automatics, but whether of besieger or besieged in the rear could not be determined. One bluecoat ensconced back of a huge battered zinc ash-can a hundred feet to the right of the garbage wagon, blazed away at regular intervals, but the shadow that moved from front to back on that second storey seemed untouched.
At last, however, as the bluecoat fired, he thrust up his head and shoulders too high, and this time from the crack of one of the dark front windows of the first floor came a vicious red spurt of flame. The bluecoat gave a sharp cry, rose up from behind his zinc barricade, and staggered across the open to where Kelsey, McIlroy and Folwell were grouped. “Got me,” he said, half moaning. “Got me — in the shoulder.” He sat down and leaned weakly against the protecting wagon.
McIlroy turned to Kelsey. His voice was troubled. “Kelsey, this bird’s going to kill off three or four men from the department before he’s taken, and I’m not going to have that. I could call out th’ rifle squad, but with him fast an’ tight in the dark th’ way he is, I can’t see as they can do any more than you boys can with your popirons. Anyway, I want to take this Russian alive, or we never will know what he pulled here in Chicago or how he pulled it. So I’m going to use the old method we used back in Glasgow, where we blew out tougher rats than this one. Yes, Kelsey, ‘dinny ‘; that’s what I’m going to use. So take this man back to Division Street, travelling close in along that line of box-cars. When you get there, telephone Lieutenant Grant for that searchlight mounted on the motor-car he’s been using on the docks. Also have him send his two men to run it, and also six dynamite capsules, size three. That shack’s worth two thousand dollars or less. And I’ll blow it out, wall by wall, and let the city pay for it before losing our men.” He turned around. “Now get the boys in the back to stand still and wait till the dynamite comes, while I’m rounding up our men here. I’ll risk no lives on any Roossian lunatic. Kelsey, where’s Sheffly?”
“I think he’s back of them box-cars, chief,” replied Kelsey. “I’ll cross to the back of 1124 myself.”
“No. Get that man back to Division Street and get an ambulance. Can’t you see he’s suffering?” McIlroy looked undecidedly about him as Kelsey helped the groaning bluecoat to his feet.
“Let me skip back, Inspector McIlroy,” said Folwell. “I can get across the street into that gangway in quicker time than it takes to tell it. Michaelovitch is at the rear now. Hear him shooting?”
And sure enough, the staccato rattle of one of the Russian’s guns rose on the night air. Kelsey, obedient to his superior’s orders, was already supporting the shot bluecoat away from the wagon and to the line of sheltering box-cars fifty feet away. McIlroy fastened his gaze on Folwell, then spoke.
“Go to it, then,” he said briefly. “Make your journey quick and snappy. Tell Lyons or Flannery we’ve sent for the dock searchlight and dynamite. Tell ‘em no rushing of the house now. We’ll take this bird a little differently, now that he’s showed murder in his tactics.”
‘Folwell made no reply. He hitched his coat about him and buttoned it tightly. Then he emerged from behind the wagon and began a sprint across the space intervening between his shelter and the gangway of number 1124 that reminded him of track days at technical school. But hardly had he covered two-thirds of the hundred yards or so, than a spurt of red flame from the darkened lower window of the house in front of him apprised him of the salient and significant fact that the man cornered in number 1124 had detected one of his would-be captors dodging across, and was taking no chances on having an attempt made to break in his door. The ground in front of Folwell seemed to shout “sput — sput — sput — sput.” And with the fourth “sput” he felt a smashing blow on his foot that sent him limping over the last quarter of his run into the dark gangway, where for the present he was quite safe. Feeling down with his fingers, as his breath came quick and short, he discovered that the heel of his left shoe had been shot completely off the sole.
But it was no time for examinations of demolished footgear or self-congratulations. He threaded his way along the narrow passage, and clear to the back alley. Nothing occurred now to interrupt his progress. In the alley itself, lighted up by the lilac flame of a foundry to the south, he came upon Lyons and Flannery talking together. “Inspector McIlroy,” he said, still panting from his dash, “says to make no attempts to break in. He has sent for the dock searchlight and dynamite.”
“Dynamite, eh?” chuckled Flannery. “The old boy always was strong for that for blowing Chicago crooks out o’ their rat-holes. Well, that’ll get him out. Lyons, we’ll lose out on some show if they ever spill that razzle-dazzle of a dock light into this Russian’s eyes. I seen Mickey O’Halligan, the river rat, go into a regular daze once when he got a taste of them few thousand candle-powers.”
Folwell, his message delivered, waited to hear no more of the conversation, but limped back along the gangway with his foot still feeling numb from the destroyed momentum of the bullet. He paused a moment undecidedly at the front end of the passage-way. Then a sudden venomous rattling breaking out in the rear showed him that Michaelovitch had changed posts once more, and that this time his passage across could be made in safety. Half skipping, half hopping, on account of the missing heel, he got back once more into the shadow of the friendly wagon which had sheltered him and Kelsey. McIlroy had evidently rounded up Sheffly, for he was there in conversation with him.
“I will do no rushing of the place,” he was saying heatedly, “because I won’t have the boys killed. That’s all about it, Sheffly. You’ll stay right here where you belong. I’ll get this man without the loss of a life.”
Folwell lost no time in telling him that the message to those in the rear had been delivered. There was more or less quiet now. That Michaelovitch was still cornered there was no doubt, for the front of the street was well guarded, and the back, too, for there were several houses to either side of number 1124. A few heads still peeped cautiously from doorways up and down Hickory Avenue, but nobody ventured forth. Every one waited, apparently, for the next development in this tense drama of life and death.
It seemed longer, but it could hardly have been more than twenty minutes when the props came. Sheffly had left ten minutes before, to guide the motor-car down the ten-foot strip of land that lay between the nearest spur track and the one beyond. McIlroy and Folwell could see the big motor-car bumping along slowly over rocks and stones and clumps of mud. They could see it stop crunchingly at the gap nearest the scene of activities, then back up, turn around and finally settle with its rear end squarely between a box-car and a gondola. From where Folwell stood, he studied the great polished silver-plated reflector, five feet in diameter, with the dark carbons squarely at its focus. He remembered reading in a popular technical magazine of this odd contrivance used by the Chicago police for work along the dark, unlighted regions of the river. The whole rear of the car, he recalled, was covered with storage batteries, giving a voltage sufficiently great to run arcs, and an enormous current. As he studied it from his point of vantage, Kelsey, under his two arms six paper-enclosed cylinders each with a long black fuse attached, came out from under the right hand box-car as though by magic and crossed the intervening distance to the wagon body.
“Here we are, chief. Dynamite, searchlight and everything. Twenty-one minutes by the watch. They made a quick run.”
McIlroy made no comment, but took two of the paper cylinders from under Kelsey’s arms. “Two is enough for the present,” he said. “Carry the rest back out of line of any bullets from Michaelovitch. Tell Grant’s men to be ready to turn full candle-power on number 1124. Make no move to attract Michaelovitch’s fire. When you’re ready signal me with a match under yon box-car. I’ll plant the dynamite myself. If I know you’re ready, I’ll let ‘em rip. I’ll give the whole front of the house a double charge. I tell you, this rat will come out.” His voice was savage and determined. “Tell Grant’s men the minute the explosion takes place, turn her on full.”
And like a soldier, brave in duty, intrepid in his courage, each blue-clad arm carrying a paper cylinder, McIlroy marched contemptuously across the street in which one well-aimed shot would have blown him to atoms, and disappeared in the shadows that lay about the steps of number 1124. And he was just in time, it seemed, for in the upstairs lighted window that already had belched forth its quota of acrid smoke and flamelike jets, appeared the occupant of number 1124. A single, infinitesimal pause, and he proceeded to cover the street with an automatic fusillade which proved beyond doubt to those around that he was far from dead, far from considering himself taken, and equally far from being short of ammunition.
Folwell heard the low purring of the tiny motor which altered the direction of the giant reflector. He saw a head cautiously sighting along a mechanism at the side. The purring stopped. A low voice filtered across the space between — a voice speaking to another man. At last, under the box-car he saw a match flare on, move back and forth a bit, and then go out as suddenly as it had come. McIlroy he could not see at all. The Scotsman was probably lying on his stomach close under the steps, Folwell surmised, waiting for the single signal he had ordered. But that he had placed the dynamite cartridges in position, Folwell was to learn ten seconds later, when, after the flare of Kelsey’s lighted match, a stream of sizzling, scintillating sparks shot forth from a point over the brick foundations that held up the frame structure, and then, following the crash of a brick hurled through one of the front windows, a second stream that rose from the ground, teetered on the window sill, and then tumbled gracefully inside the first-floor room. This done, McIlroy appeared, leaping across the low fence, sprinting like an express train across the wide road and circling square into the arms of Folwell back of the wagon.
Then followed the tensest stillness that Folwell had ever endured in his life. For a moment he wondered if the two fuses had both gone out. And as he pondered on this weighty possibility a figure peered out from the second-storey window. The picture persisted for but the fraction of a second, for it was broken by an explosion that was like the roar of a thousand French 75's going off at one time; the great searchlight to the rear blazed forth like an enormous sun, its dazzling rays lighting up the front of the house as though noonday had returned. Almost on the heels of the first explosion came a second one, as loud and detonating as the first, punctuated by a veritable rain of glass, and the whole front of the house, ripped from the remainder of the structure, fell with a mighty crash forward into the street.
A form, its cotton undershirt smoke-begrimed and torn into tatters, a revolver in one hand, picked itself up from the debris, and standing on the overturned front of the shell that had been a house tried and tried in vain with its free hand to press from its eyeballs that dazzling, piercing, intense cascade of light that beat against it as only the sun itself might do. The face of the figure was begrimed, covered with powdered plaster; its tangled hair held in it bits of wood, of plaster, of wallpaper. Round and round it twirled, shaking its head against the overwhelming light as a setter shakes off water, paralysed, stupefied, unable to shoot, to aim, to see anything in any direction. And from every side came running men, revolvers in hand, plunging up over the bulging wooden side like terriers, till the figure in tattered undershirt was borne down in an avalanche of grim, straight-jawed men, the centre of the heap.
It had been a victory — a victory of high explosives and light. Not a man had been killed. Not a man had been dangerously wounded. McIlroy had known after all the way to get his man with the least cost.
Folwell stood close to the splintered mass of wood as the tangled heap of bodies resolved itself into men once more. The intense light from the great reflector some distance away soon revealed once more the face of the Russian; his cotton shirt now stripped clean from his torso, his bare, muscular arms held tightly by two men, his two legs each pinioned by two more, his automatic revolver torn from his grasp, his even white teeth gleaming, his pointed black beard and black eyebrows powdered with plaster, his lips red and bleeding.
“Take him over to the wagon,” ordered McIlroy, buttoning up his blue coat. “Lyons, you and Flannery make a complete search of the premises. You Number 442, and you, Number 312, you’re on duty to-night guarding the place till you’re relieved in the morning. Sheffly, take charge of Grant’s men, and keep ‘em here till midnight if necessary — as long as Lyons and Flannery need light.” He nodded to Folwell. “Come, my lad. The show’s over for all of us.” He raised his voice a trifle to Kelsey, who stood staring from a point at the edge of the overturned raftlike platform at the pinioned figure snarling in the middle of it. “Come, Kelsey. Have you never seen a man run amuck yet in your life? Do you think you’re at a medicine show? Shake a leg.”
At his superior’s words, Kelsey appeared to wake from his reveries. He stepped aside to make way for the men who were clambering down to the ground, dragging the raging half-naked Russian up Hickory Avenue to the auto-patrol which was now clanging up the street to meet them. As they passed from the brilliant circle of light he scratched his chin and turned to McIlroy.
“Chief, I’m thinking that it’s him you call Camera Eye who can tell you who this bird is, now that I’ve had a look at his phiz. And it may surprise you a bit when I tell you. In the first place, his name’s not Michaelovitch. It’s Feodor Bresloff. He’s a former Russian chemist who came near pulling down a cool hundred thousand out of Uncle Sam just about the time the Armistice was signed away back in 1918. And it’s thinking I am that I know now just about how he’s been pulling off part of his killings.” Kelsey shook his head grimly. “Chief, will you let me compliment you on to-night’s job? You were takin’ one clever and dangerous man when you took our friend Feodor Bresloff!”
CHAPTER XVIII
AN AFTERMATH OF 1918
MILROY at first made no answer to Kelsey’s surprising and cryptic remark, but his face lighted up with curiosity. At last he spoke. “Well, that’s surprising, Kelsey. You can tell me what you know on the way back to-night.” The three men were trudging along toward Division Street now, Folwell the silent one of
the trio. “Here’s a relic of the old days, a saloon. First we’ll step in, have a drink of near-beer, and order a taxicab.”
Together the three men went in. Folwell’s mind was still whirling at the words he had heard Kelsey direct toward his superior — Feodor Bresloff! Olga Bresloff! The same name. So Michaelovitch — or at least he who had called himself Michaelovitch — was connected with the very girl Lionel had married in his callow days. Had Lionel held back something in his story? His ruminations, however, were interrupted by the arrival on the polished bar of three of the foaming cereal beverages which were shoved across the mahogany counter by a rubicund little man who vehemently waved away the silver change which McIlroy tendered. That the roly-poly proprietor lost nothing on his customers, however, was soon evident, for the whole saloon filled as by magic with uncouth Europeans in labouring clothes who drank and stared, ox-like, at the three men who occupied the farthest end of the bar, McIlroy gulped down his beverage in several quick swallows, then disappeared into the interior of the telephone booth which Folwell himself only that afternoon had occupied for twenty minutes. In about five minutes he reappeared. “All right, let’s go,” he said, surveying the rapidly filling drink emporium. “All of Siberia seems to be moving in here.”
On the outside, however, McIlroy had to wheel savagely on his heel when the whole crowd inside, gulping down at one draught their beverages, or else deserting the foaming glasses entirely, turned out as though one man, to trudge after them.
“Be on your way!” he shouted. “Get along with you, or I’ll run you all in.”
The crowd of Europeans, their curiosity as to what the evening’s excitement was about still unsatisfied, fell back overawed. McIlroy, Folwell and Kelsey were once more alone. Far in their rear the searchlight still played upon the tottering remains of number 1124. And far ahead of them, the red tail-lights barely visible, was the patrol wagon disappearing over the bridge on Division Street.
The Fourth King Page 20
