The Pulp Hero

by Theodore A. Tinsley

  Black Hood knew that he had to act fast. That signaling device which the messenger carried was an important piece of evidence. Jack Carlson’s finger prints would be on the case. That, together with the photo film which carried the Eye’s message and was enclosed in the trigger mechanism of the novel projector, constituted evidence that would prove that Jack Carlson was the Eye.

  Black Hood sprang out from the pole, swooped down upon the messenger like a huge black bat. The man turned to flee too late. Black Hood caught him by the coat tails, dragged him back. The messenger turned, grappled with Black Hood. Then followed one of those grim, silent struggles, too deadly serious for oaths and threats. Rat this pawn of the Eye may have been, but even a cornered rat will fight with the courage of a lion.

  Time after time the man tried to bash Black Hood’s skull with the copper cased signal device—tried once too often; for Black Hood’s gauntlet covered fingers closed like steel hooks upon the device. A twist, a sudden jerk, and it was Black Hood who had the signal device now.

  The copper cylinder gone, the messenger’s courage seemed to have gone with it. He turned, fled like a frightened rabbit up the alley and into the avenue.

  Again Black Hood was faced with one of two choices. He might follow the messenger, might catch him, turn him over to the cops. But in all probability, the messenger knew less about the identity of the Eye than Black Hood knew. He was merely a tool in the hands of a master criminal. And Black Hood was after that master criminal.

  The second choice, and the one which he decided to take, was to follow Delancy who had been given orders from the Eye to appear at the headquarters of the mob immediately. And in as much as Black Hood had not the slightest idea where the Eye had his headquarters, this was the wisest course to pursue.

  His heart beat high with hope as he waited in the alley for Delancy to make his appearance. He felt that he was nearing the end of the case, approaching the time when the Eye, that menace to the peace and safety of all New York, could be placed behind prison bars. And when he had proved that Jack Carlson was the Eye, Black Hood would clear himself of the charge of murder!

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Forces Of Evil

  The Eye had chosen his headquarters well. It was in the basement room of what had once been a Greenwich Village speakeasy. There he had brought together all of the important rival mobs of the city—forces of evil which might otherwise have been at each other’s throats. The Eye had brought unity to the underworld. He had taught them that there was nothing to be gained by warring among themselves; and there were millions to be gained by united action.

  Delancy was there, his toadlike form crouching on the edge of his chair placed next to that of Ron “The Bug” Brayton, formerly Delancy’s rival in the rob and kill profession. All of Delancy’s star gunsels were there—Squid Murphy, Shiv and the rest.

  The Eye was there, standing on a rough wood platform at one end of the room. His coat was off so that anyone present might plainly see the twin gun harness he wore and the black butts of two heavy automatics. His face and head was covered with a full mask of thin white rubber, pierced by two slots for eyeholes. He wore a black slouch hat.

  Black Hood was there, but nobody knew about that except the guard at the top of the basement stairway. The guard knew, but bound and gagged he was in no position to say anything about it. Black Hood stood in that shadowy stairway and was himself like one of the shadows—watching, listening, waiting for his time.

  Ray Delancy shuffled to his feet as the meeting began.

  “Mr. Eye,” Delancy said, “I got a complaint to make, that is if you don’t mind. Like to get it off my chest before we go into anything in the way of new business.”

  The Eye inclined his head. “Make your complaint, Mister—” He coughed. “Well, go ahead.”

  “It’s about this man Carlson who works for you,” Delancy said. “When I pulled that job at the Weedham plant for you, I was hot on the get-away. I thought I was hot, anyway. We switched paint jobs at Burkey’s station, see, and rolling into town that dame you sent to ride with us switched on the radio. A police call came through. The coppers were looking for us. I didn’t figure how come until a good bit later.”

  “Go on,” the Eye said.

  Delancy shuffled his feet and looked at the floor.

  “I don’t like to make trouble, see, but that was a put-up job.”

  “You mean what?” the Eye questioned.

  “I mean that wasn’t no police call. There was some sort of a phonograph device under the cowl of that get-away car, and this was hooked up to the radio switch. That police call was a phoney. We wasn’t hot. That was just rigged up to send us to Jack Carlson to ask that he get us out of town in a hurry.

  “I went to Carlson. I told him we was hot, because at the time I figured we was. He wanted fifty percent of our total take to move us out of town. Fifty percent, and with the ten that we are supposed to pay you, that don’t leave a guy much profit. I told Carlson I’d rot in jail first. And all the time, I ain’t hot at all, because the bulls haven’t turned the heat on me. It was a phoney, see, just to get me to spend a lot of dough on a get-away.”

  The Eye nodded. “There have been some other complaints about Carlson. I will see that he is eliminated. Someone else will take over the position which he has filled.”

  In the shadows of the stairway, Black Hood laughed soundlessly. That was a hot one, that was! Here was Carlson, playing both ends against the middle, getting his cut as the Eye and getting a second and large helping out of his crooked transport business. And now the Eye was talking about eliminating Carlson to appease Ray Delancy!

  “To get back to the business at hand,” the Eye said, “our next job is a small matter of one hundred thousand in unset jewels. And by a hundred thousand, I am not referring to the current market price. We can realize that amount from a fence. It sounds good, eh?”

  Some of the mobsters cursed appreciatively.

  “There is,” the Eye continued, “an obscure little jewelry shop known as Tauber’s which has received such a shipment of gems.”

  “Diamonds or other stuff?” Ron “The Bugs” Brayton asked.

  The Eye coughed. “The former,” he said. “Tomorrow night I will require the services of a select number of you. I’ll want Murphy, and—” he nodded at Delancy—“you. You, too, Brayton, and a number of your best men. We will also need a good safe expert.”

  One of the crooks held up his hand. “That’s me.”

  “Agreed, then,” the Eye said. “If there is nothing else to attend to, we may as well adjourn.”

  * * * *

  As some of the crooks started toward the foot of the steps leading up from the basement room, it appeared as though there was quite a bit more to attend to. This was the moment for which Black Hood had been waiting. Standing near the top of the stairs, he reached out and hauled the bound and helpless guard down to his level. As the first of the hoods showed his face at the foot of the stairs, Black Hood gave the guard a shove that sent the man flopping down the stairs to bowl over two of the foremost members of the mob.

  The Black Hood took a couple of strides and then leaped from halfway down the steps. He cleared the roped guard and the two fallen hoods, landed lightly on the balls of his feet within a yard of Squid Murphy.

  And then, before anyone in the room could quite understand what this was all about, the Black Hood unleashed a furious one-man attack on the startled crimesters. His two long arms reached out. His gloved fingers closed on Squid Murphy and the killer called Shiv simultaneously. He brought the two together, all but jerked them from their feet, to crack Murphy’s head against that of Shiv. Murphy and Shiv went limp, and as they fell, Black Hood snatched a half-drawn automatic from the shoulder holster of gunman Murphy. He stepped clear of the two men, faced the others, a mocking smile on his lips.

  “I am seldom req
uired to carry a gun, since one of my opponents nearly always gives me his,” he said quietly. “It will take just one smart move from any one among you to find out whether or not the Black Hood can shoot.”

  Ten of the most dangerous criminals in the city plus that master-mind, the Eye, stood there in awed silence, watching that tall figure in yellow tights and black silk hood.

  “I want the Eye,” Black Hood said. “If you will surrender him to me, I will give the rest of you a break—a break of five minutes in which to take your chances with the law.”

  Black Hood knew that the criminals would make no such bargain. He was talking to stall for time. He knew that sooner or later, either he or the criminals would have to make a move. What that move would be, he had no idea. But he was ready for anything.

  It was Delancy who made the first move. He had the idea that he could draw and shoot before Black Hood could discover from just what particular point of the room the danger threatened. And it was Delancy’s fatal mistake. Before he had his gun out of his shoulder holster, Black Hood had fired. He had fired, remembering that cold-blooded slaughter at the Weedham Industries plant. A third black and hollow eye appeared suddenly in Delancy’s forehead. The legs of the gunman bowed beneath the weight of his toadlike body. There was a dull, bewildered expression on Delancy’s face as he hit the floor.

  But that first shot was the spark that touched off the powder barrel. Two more followed—one that tugged at the Black Hood’s cape, a second that shot out the light in the room. Black Hood backed toward the bottom of the stair. He’d plant himself there in that narrow exit, and if the crimesters thought there was an avenue of escape, let them try. The automatic in his hand bucked and barked. His only target was the flame from the snouts of the gangster guns, but agonized cries told him that at least a portion of his slugs had found their mark.

  Suddenly he saw at the rear of the room, a narrow shaft of gray light. Somebody had opened a door. For just a moment, he saw the white face of the Eye, his rubber mask glowing like the surface of a moon. Black Hood shot twice, pulled the trigger a third time only to hear the hammer click on an empty chamber.

  Perhaps the Eye heard that click and understood its meaning, for it was then that he made his dash through the rear door. Black Hood knew that retreat was now his only course. He was without weapons in a battle of screaming lead. He turned, stumbled over a fallen form, caught his balance, and then took the stairway in long strides. A cop, attracted by the shooting, appeared at the top of the steps, but he was only a momentary barrier to the Black Hood—a very hard man to stop once he got under way. His fist lashed out, caught the copper on the chin. The man probably never knew exactly when the floor came up to slap the back of his lap.

  Black Hood was clear of the building now, his legs working like tireless pistons. He heard the shrill scream of police sirens, and in the basement of the building the roar of gun fire still sounded. Perhaps the criminals did not know that their opponent had left. One thing was certain: Black Hood had dealt the forces of evil a hard blow that night, and he had showed the Eye that the Black Hood was hard on his trail.

  Rounding a corner, Black Hood sighted a taxi cab cruising along. He dashed into the street, waving his arm. The cab stopped, the driver goggling at the strange figure that had hailed him.

  “I’m in a big hurry to get to a masquerade,” Black Hood said as he opened the door of the taxi.

  “So that’s what it is,” the driver said, apparently satisfied.

  As Black Hood got into the cab, he gave the address of Jack Carlson’s auto livery. So the Eye thought he had escaped, did he? Black Hood chuckled. Well, he’d planned a little surprise for Jack Carlson, alias, the Eye!

  CHAPTER IX

  Alias, The Corpse

  It was after two o’clock in the morning when Black Hood alighted from the cab near the location of Jack Carlson’s auto livery garage. There was not a sign of light in the garage building, and the big doors were closed and locked. Black Hood went to the side entrance. This also was locked. Reaching into one of the secret pockets of his wide black belt he removed a curiously shaped tool of finest tempered steel. He had met few locks in his adventures which this tool could not open. A deft thrust, a twist of the wrist, and the door was no longer a barrier to him.

  He returned the tool to its pocket and pulled out a tiny flashlight. The ray of light seemed swallowed by the gloom of the vast, lonely room that lay before him. Here and there were parked cars, oil drums, huge vans. Black Hood wondered how many of these vehicles had been used by the members of the Eye’s criminal pack.

  He crossed the room to the concrete ramp that twisted up to the second story. His footsteps whispered on the ramp. On the second floor there was neither light nor sound—not so much as the squeak of a rat. His flashlight pointed out the office, partitioned off from the rest of the big room. He crossed quickly, pushed open the office door, spotted the light switch. He turned the light switch to the on position, but no illumination came from either the central fixtures nor the lamps on the desk. A queer set-up, this.

  He went into Jack Carlsons private office, tried the switch in there, still without results. He pointed his flashlight beam around until it fell on the huge iron safe in the corner. The safe door was standing wide open, the interior cleanly empty. Queerer and queerer.

  He paused in the center of the room, his nostrils dilated. There was a faint, pleasant odor lingering in the room—a vaguely familiar odor.

  Black Hood crossed to the door of a coat closet, jerked it open. A body fell stiffly into the room, struck the carpet with a dull, jarring sound. Black Hood sprang back, turned his light down at the corpse. He dropped to his knees beside the dead man, grasped the shoulder of the coat of the corpse, turned the man over on his back. And as he saw that gray deathmask of a face, Black Hood knew that all his carefully worked out solution had tumbled like a house of cards. The corpse on the floor was that of Jack Carlson, and he had been dead for hours.

  Carlson could not have been the Eye, for less than an hour ago, Black Hood had seen and fought with the Eye!

  * * * *

  Bullets had pierced the chest of Carlson in three places. High on the left lapel of his dark suit coat was a white smudge made by some sort of powder. Black Hood stepped to Carlson’s desk, picked up an envelope and a letter opener, and returned to the body. With great care, he scraped some of the white powder from the coat lapel into the envelope. Then he moistened the flap and sealed it.

  Turning the flashlight away from the body, he suddenly noticed something else. That white smudge on Carlson’s coat glowed in the darkness.

  The Black Hood’s keen eyes narrowed on that patch of pale light. Then, as though seized by a sudden inspiration, he sprang to Carlson’s desk and tipped up the desk lamp. He reached in under the shade and laid his bare hand on the lamp bulb. The glass of that bulb was warm. Then he crossed to the door, flipped the light switch to the off position, and looked back in the direction of the corpse.

  The pale glow of light which came from that powder smudge on Carlson’s lapel was no longer visible!

  An understanding gleam came into Black Hood’s eyes. At least he understood how Jack Carlson had died, even if the mystery of the identity of the Eye had deepened. He withdrew quietly from the room and left the garage.

  At the fringe of dawn the next morning, Black Hood was high in the Catskills, in the mountain fastness of that whiskered old man who had been his teacher—that man known simply as the Hermit. There in the Hermit’s laboratory, Black Hood and the old man made a careful analysis of that scanty sample of powder which Black Hood had scraped from the coat of the murdered Jack Carlson.

  Finally, the old man straightened from the microscope over which he had been bending.

  “My son,” he asked of the Black Hood, “what are your findings?”

  “The stuff is face powder,” Black Hood said. “But
it’s something else, too. Mixed in with the face powder is another substance.”

  “Naphthionate of sodium,” the Hermit said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Black Hood nodded. “It’s one of those substances which becomes phosphorescent in ultra-violet light. And those light bulbs in Jack Carlson’s garage were ultra-violet bulbs. The light from them is invisible to us poor mortals. You see what that means, Hermit?”

  “Not entirely,” the Hermit said.

  “It means that Jack Carlson was marked for murder. That face powder came from the cheek of a woman—some woman who pressed her cheek against Carlson’s lapel. And a pretty gesture of affection it was, too. It made Carlson so easy to kill!

  “You see, the naphthionate of sodium in that powder sticks to just about anything. Even if Carlson had brushed the face powder off, the naphthionate would still have been there. When Carlson entered the garage, he turned on the light switch. No visible light came from those bulbs—only “black light” as it is called. And the killer was waiting. In the black light, the killer could not be seen, but Carlson was perfectly targeted by that smudge of naphthionate which glowed on his lapel.

  “It was all planned in advance—the lady’s part to smear the powder on Carlsons’ lapel, a sort of Judas kiss. And then there was the killer’s part—to replace the ordinary bulbs with the ultra-violet type, and to wait with drawn gun to shoot Carlson.”

  “Who, then, is the Eye?” the Hermit asked.

  “I’ll stick to my original idea,” Black Hood said after a moment’s thought. “I still think that Jack Carlson is—was—the Eye. That alibi he arranged for himself at Weedham’s home, that warning from the Eye which stated that Carlson was to die, his efforts to make Biggert’s death look as though the killer had been shooting at Carlson instead of at Biggert—that all points to Carlson as the Eye. He was trying to make himself appear the fair-haired boy in front of Sergeant McGinty.