The Pulp Hero

by Theodore A. Tinsley

  Kip Burland was on his feet while the others remained spellbound by the brand of light. Watching the projected sign of the eye upon the wall, he nevertheless moved swiftly and silently toward the French windows.

  The sign of the Eye flicked out, and in its place was a message in black letters:

  CARLSON HAS DEFIED ME.

  HE WILL DIE.

  Burland waited for no more, but slipped through the French windows and onto the terrace. The white beam of light rayed out from a thick grove of shrubs and small trees on the other side of the big yard. Kip Burland raced across the lawn toward the source of the light.

  CHAPTER VI

  The Lady In White

  Half way toward the thicket, Kip Burland saw that the light had gone out. But he had marked the spot from which it had originated, and in another moment he had broken through the tangled branches of the shrubs to the place from which the light ray had come. He saw no one. He stopped, listening. On his left he heard the crackling of twigs. He moved quickly in that direction, saw now a wraithlike figure in white.

  “Hello there.”

  It was the soft voice of a woman who called. Kip Burland took a few more cautious steps in the direction of the figure in white. Now that his eyes were more used to the gloom, he could see that the woman was not alone. There was a man standing beside her.

  “Hello,” Kip responded calmly. He took a box of matches from his pocket, struck one, and held it high. The woman wore a white evening gown. Her beautifully molded face was nearly as white as her dress. Her hair was black as India ink, drawn back from her rounded forehead to knot softly at the back of her head. Her eyes were cool green with an exotic lift at the outer extremities of the lids.

  The man beside her was evidently her chauffeur, judging from his uniform. He was a dark, somber looking man with a particularly ugly scar on his chin.

  The woman smiled—a smile that did not quite reach her green eyes.

  “Are you the man with the flashlight who was out here a moment ago?” she asked.

  Kip’s eyes narrowed. He wondered if the woman was beating him to the draw. He might have asked her, and with better reason, if it was she who had turned that beam of light on the Weedham house.

  The match burned out in Kip’s fingers. He tossed the stub of it aside.

  “Obviously I’m not the man with the flashlight,” he said evenly, “or I would not have had to light a match just now.”

  “How silly of me,” the woman with the green eyes laughed. “Of course you are not. But I am so anxious to find my little locket. I am Vida Gervais, and I live just over the wall in the next house. I think I lost my little locket while walking here this afternoon. I hoped that you were the man with the flashlight and could help me find it.”

  “Don’t you find that gown something of a liability hunting in this jungle?” Kip asked. Her explanation was entirely too glib to suit him.

  But before she could form an answer, the whip-crack of a shot rang out from the direction of the Weedham house. The woman who had introduced herself as Vida Gervais uttered a short, sharp cry. Then she and her chauffeur turned and fled.

  Kip Burland thrashed his way through the bushes to the border of the thicket. In the dim night glow, he saw a man running toward the house and a second figure that lay huddled on the lawn in front of the terrace steps. Burland could not be absolutely certain, but he thought that the running man was Jack Carlson. There were hoarse shouts from the immediate vicinity of the house, and Kip recognized the bellow of Joe Strong and the harsh rasping voice of Sergeant McGinty.

  Kip broke away from the shrubbery and ran across the open lawn toward that point where the man lay on the ground. The second figure, which he thought was Jack Carlson, was now kneeling beside the fallen man.

  In another moment, Kip saw that his first impression had been correct. The second man was Carlson. He looked up at Kip, his face chalk white in the uncertain light.

  “He’s dead,” Carlson said. “He’s been shot.”

  Burland dropped beside Jack Carlson, brought out his matches, struck one. The man on the ground was wearing an ordinary business suit. He was entirely bald, with a large, shapeless nose and chubby cheeks. He was lying on one side, his left arm extended. Clutched in the dead fingers of his left hand was a yellow slip of paper. It looked like bank check paper to Burland.

  Others were coming from around the side of the house—Jeff Weedham and Barbara Sutton. Behind them came Major Paxton and two other members of the committee.

  * * * *

  Kip Burland shot a glance at Jack Carlson, saw that the latter was looking in the direction of the newcomers. Kip thrust out a hand toward the piece of yellow paper in the fingers of the corpse. It was so rapid a movement that even if Carlson had been watching him it is doubtful if the auto livery operator could have caught it. Kip jerked the piece of paper from the hand of the dead man, and stood up.

  By the time Barbara and Jeff Weedham had joined them, Burland had rolled the slip of yellow paper into a cylinder and placed it inside the cap of his fountain pen.

  “Kip!” Barbara gasped. “What’s happened?”

  “Someone seems to have been shot,” he replied mildly. “I don’t know just who.”

  Jeff Weedham had a flashlight. He turned the beam on the face of the dead man.

  “D-d-damn!” he stammered. “It’s Biggert. Poor old Biggert. Why, he’s D-d-dad’s private secretary. Attended to everything for D-d-dad.”

  William Weedham, Adler, and the rest of the committee men hurried from the corner of the house.

  “Biggert, did you say?” William Weedham gasped. “Good lord! Where’s that Sergeant McGinty?” And then Weedham dropped beside the dead man, looked long and searchingly into the immobile face.

  Sergeant McGinty put in his appearance a moment later and with him was Joe Strong. He was holding onto Joe by the ear.

  “Try your football tackles on me, will you!” McGinty was growling, while Joe was trying to break away without losing an ear.

  “Aw, Sergeant, how did I know it was you prowling around in all that dark?” Joe complained.

  It was evident that Joe had made another of his unfortunate mistakes. But McGinty forgot and forgave when he saw the body of Biggert lying there on the lawn. The sergeant bent his thick knees, took Jeff Weedham’s flashlight, turned it on the corpse.

  “It was obviously a mistake,” Jack Carlson was explaining smoothly. “The killer had no designs on Biggert, certainly.”

  “Huh?” McGinty looked up, his red face contorted by a puzzled frown. “What do you mean, it was a mistake?”

  “This is obviously the Eye’s work,” Carlson explained. “I was standing just about in this spot when this man Biggert came running around the house and directly in front of me. That was when the shot was fired. The bullet was intended for me. You would expect as much after the Eye’s warning.”

  McGinty nodded his head. “Could be. And believe me, Mr. Carlson, you’d better put yourself under police protection.”

  “I can take care of myself, thanks,” Carlson insisted. As he turned away from McGinty and the body, his eyes met those of Kip Burland. And then Carlson stepped quickly to the outer rim of the circle around the body.

  Kip Burland knew that Carlson was lying. Carlson hadn’t been near Biggert at the time of the shooting. It was Carlson whom Burland had seen running toward the body.

  “D-d-dad,” Jeff Weedham stammered, “where was Biggert when we were in the library?”

  “Oh, how should I know!” The elder Weedham ran his fingers through his gray hair. “I don’t know where he was. In his room, I suppose, going over my personal accounts.”

  “Possibly,” Major Paxton put in, “he was disturbed when the lights went out in the house and came down to investigate. He probably heard the rest of us outside the house, searching for that prow
ler who turned the light through the library window.”

  “And possibly,” McGinty said, “Biggert had discovered something pretty important, too! There’s a little scrap of yellow paper in his fingers—just a corner, as though somebody snatched a note or something from his hand.”

  “Just a corner, you say, Sergeant?” Jack Carlson asked. “When he fell in front of me, I noticed that there was quite a sizable slip of paper in his hand.”

  “There was, huh?” McGinty’s eyes rested accusingly upon each face in the circle about the body. “All right. Now just tell me who first joined you and the murdered man, Mr. Carlson.”

  Carlson looked at Kip Burland. “It was that young man,” he said.

  “Burland, huh?” McGinty said. “I guess I’ll have to search your pockets, Burland, if you’ve no objection.”

  Kip smiled. “None whatever, Sergeant.”

  McGinty went through Kip’s pockets. He ignored the fountain pen which was clipped in plain sight. He stood back, shook his head.

  “I guess you’re clean, Burland,” he admitted, and then turned to the others. “But I’m finding whatever was in Biggert’s hand, understand? Mr. Weedham, you’ll go call headquarters and tell them I want the Homicide Detail out here.”

  “You mean me, d-d-don’t you?” Jeff Weedham asked.

  McGinty shook his head. “I mean your father. You and the rest stay here. I’ll have a little more searching to do. And a lot more questions to ask.”

  Though McGinty fulfilled his promise in so far as the questions and the searching were concerned, he didn’t turn up the piece of paper he was looking for. Neither did he find the weapon or the murderer.

  It was about eleven o’clock when Jack Carlson asked permission to leave. He had some urgent business to attend to, he explained to the sergeant. McGinty had no grounds for holding Carlson, told him to go ahead.

  But Carlson did not leave alone. Kip Burland, without asking permission from anybody or even saying good-night to Barbara, slipped quietly from the house. He was particularly interested in the urgent business which was pressing Mr. Jack Carlson.

  CHAPTER VII

  The Trail Of The Beam

  If Jack Carlson was as innocent as he pretended to be, it was curious that he should stop just outside the gate of the Weedham home, reach into a bed of dwarf evergreens from which he took a long copper cylinder which closely resembled a flashlight.

  From his hiding place in the shadows, Kip Burland saw this move on the part of Carlson. He then saw Carlson get into his car and drive away. Burland hailed a passing cab, ordered the driver to keep Carlson’s car in sight.

  Carlson drove down into the lower east side of town, parked his car in a narrow street, and got out. Kip ordered his cab to pass Carlson’s car. Looking back through the rear window, he saw Carlson turn up a narrow walk between two tenement buildings.

  “Stop here,” Kip ordered the cab driver. And as the taxi braked, he got out, threw a bill to the driver, and ran up the street toward the place where Carlson had disappeared.

  In the dusky shadows between the two tenements, Burland watched Carlson put something into a wooden milk box attached just outside what was apparently someone’s kitchen door. Then Kip had to duck back into a darkened doorway as Carlson retraced his steps, and got back into his car.

  Kip had to make a choice quickly. Either he continued to follow Carlson or he investigated the milk box which Carlson had mysteriously visited. In as much as there was no taxi in sight, Kip decided on the latter course. As soon as Carlson was out of sight, he left the doorway, went up the walk between the two buildings, opened the milk box.

  Inside the box he found the copper cylinder which he had seen Carlson take from its hiding place outside the Weedham home. The thing resembled a flashlight more closely than ever on close inspection. It was a little longer than the usual three cell case, and there was a finely ground lens at the end.

  Around the outside of the case was a piece of paper, held in place by a rubber band. Kip removed the rubber band, unrolled the paper, studied it in match light. On the paper was penciled the name “Delancy” followed by the words, “Second floor rear at end of fire escape, sixty-eight A Seventh Avenue.” At the bottom of the paper was that crude drawing, the sign of the Eye.

  Kip’s pulse quickened. Could it be that Carlson was the Eye? Certain here was a message which Carlson had delivered and which carried the Eye’s signature. And the flashlight device—Kip understood its construction and purpose immediately. Inside the case was some sort of a trigger mechanism operated by a button on the outside. The trigger operated a narrow strip of film, perhaps eight millimeter film, on which were photographed the messages which the Eye intended to send. This film would be placed between the light globe and the lens, so that the photographed message could be projected on any wall from a long distance.

  This was the device which had been used tonight at the Weedham home. Someone on the outside, probably the lady with the green eyes, Vida Gervais, had employed the light beam projected message. That warning which seemed to have been intended for Carlson was probably no warning at all. Perhaps the police had been keeping rather a sharp eye on Carlson, and Carlson had decided to put himself in the clear by faking that little scene at the Weedham’s and pretending that the Eye intended to kill Carlson.

  “And that would be suicide, I’d be willing to bet my last dollar!” Kip muttered grimly.

  He replaced the light signal device in the milk box together with the note which was attached to the copper case. He would await further developments. Carlson was the Eye, he was certain. It was now the job of the Black Hood to catch Carlson red-handed.

  * * * *

  He left the narrow corridor between buildings to take up a post on the other side of the street. He did not have to wait very long until a man in the garb of a telegraph messenger came up the street. The messenger looked both ways and finally turned up that sidewalk between the two tenements. Even from where he stood, Kip Burland could hear the rattle of the milk box top. A moment later, the messenger appeared. He was carrying that self-same copper cased flashlight device.

  It was a tangled trail that Kip Burland followed that night, shadowing that man who wore a telegraph messenger’s costume. From half a block behind the man, Kip watched the messenger walk along side of the bleak walls of Tombs prison. He saw the narrow ray of that signal beam reach out and up to one of the narrow, barred windows. The Eye was signaling to someone who was even now in the hands of the police!

  The further he delved into the mystery of the whispering criminal known as the Eye, the more intriguing it became. Who but a perverted genius could have planned so completely, so thoroughly that not even prison walls offered any sort of a barrier?

  It was when the messenger crossed over to Seventh Avenue that Kip Burland decided that this time he would be on the receiving end of that message that traveled the light beam. He knew where the messenger was heading. That paper banded to the flashlight device had carried a Seventh Avenue address. Someone else was to receive one of the Eye’s little missives. A man by the name of Delancy, judging from the writing on the note paper.

  The name struck a responsive cord in Kip Burland’s memory. It recalled Ray Delancy, one of the most dangerous rob and kill men in the business. Delancy would be the sort of a person valuable to the Eye.

  * * * *

  In a murky alley off Seventh Avenue, Kip Burland paused for a few precious moments. Quickly, he shed his outer garments, revealing beneath the yellow silk tights, the wide belt, and the black athletic shorts that identified the Black Hood. From the inter-lining in the back of his suit coat, he took a flat folded package composed of his gauntlet gloves, his black silk cape, and that combination mask and hood that completed the costume. Shortly, Kip Burland had vanished, completely over-shadowed by his famous alias—the Black Hood.

  The Eye’s me
ssenger had been moving at a leisurely pace. In spite of the delay his costume change had necessitated, Black Hood easily outstripped the messenger, reached the Seventh Avenue address which had been noted on that slip of paper attached to the signal device. This proved to be an ancient red brick lodging house which would have made an excellent hideout for a criminal.

  There was a fire escape on the side of the building. Black Hood raised his eyes to the second story, marked the window which was nearest the fire escape at this point. This was the window mentioned in the Eye’s instructions. Just across the alley from this point, Black Hood spied a wood telephone pole. He grinned. Nothing could be sweeter! He crossed to the pole, leaped for the lowest climbing spike, driven into the wood about eight feet from the ground, and drew himself upwards. At the second climbing spike, he stopped. From this position he would be able to see the upper part of the wall of the second floor room of the building across the alley, and also the ceiling. He pulled his black cape around him and waited.

  It wasn’t long before he heard the footsteps of the messenger crunching along the alley. The man came to a stop within a few feet of the very post to which Black Hood was clinging. He pointed the copper cased flashlight device upward toward the dark window which Black Hood was watching. The white ray stabbed out through the darkness, and Black Hood could clearly see the brand of the Eye, projected on the ceiling of the room across the alley.

  The light beam lingered for a moment, then went out. The shadowy figure of a man appeared at the window. A cigarette glowed in his lips. A signal, Black Hood wondered? And then the figure in the window withdrew and the light beam again shot up from below. This time the words of the Eye’s message were clearly projected onto the ceiling of the crimester’s hideout. Black Hood read:

  “Delancy, come to headquarters at once.”

  And then the beam of light went out.

  Black Hood altered his position slightly so that he clung to the pole with one hand, his body poised for a leap. The faint rustle of the Black Hood’s cape caused the messenger on the ground to look up.