“Further, and I think conclusive proof, is that signal device which was used to ‘warn’ Carlson. That was—Carlson’s own device. It was Vida Gervais, I believe, who turned the signal light through the French windows at the Weedham house. And then later, in a previously appointed spot, she left the signal light for Carlson to pick up as he left the house.
“Carlson changed the film in that light, putting in one which would deliver two more of the Eye’s messages—one of which went to Delancy, telling him to come to a meeting tonight.”
Black Hood propped one foot on a laboratory stool, rested an elbow on his knee. His eyes were bright, his face animated.
“Don’t you see that up to that point, Carlson was the Eye. But shortly after he had planted the signal device for his messenger to pick up, Carlson was murdered. The man who directed the criminal meeting later on wasn’t Carlson, because Carlson was dead. It means that somebody took over where Carlson left off. It means that somebody muscled in on Carlson’s little racket, killed Carlson, began playing the part of the Eye.”
“Which means,” the Hermit said, “that you’re not at the end of your task yet.”
“Not by a long shot,” Black Hood replied. “And I’m wondering about this Vida Gervais. Is she the woman whose face powder was smeared on Jack Carlson’s lapel? I thought the odor of the powder was familiar. And here’s another thing I didn’t mention.”
Black Hood searched the pockets of his wide belt, brought out his fountain pen.
“Here’s a little item which I snitched from the hand of the murdered Biggert, who was William Weedham’s personal secretary. It’s a check, and I’ve scarcely had time to look at it myself.”
He unscrewed the cap of the fountain pen and removed the piece of rolled up yellow paper which he had taken from the dead Biggert’s hand. He flattened out the slip of paper and placed it on the table in front of the Hermit.
It was a check in the sum of forty thousand dollars, made out to the order of Major Paxton and signed by William Weedham, the major’s brother-in-law. The check had been endorsed and paid through a New York bank.
“I think this is the reason that Biggert was killed,” Black Hood said. “Weedham said that Biggert was going over his personal bank account, and it’s entirely possible that Biggert discovered there was something queer about that check.”
“A forgery, perhaps,” the Hermit suggested.
“That was my idea,” Black Hood agreed. “Anyway, that gives us a couple of leads—Vida Gervais and Major Paxton. And if both of them are knocked off before I can get the truth out of them—” Black Hood laughed without mirth.
CHAPTER X
“Stop, Murderer!”
The following morning, Kip Burland read the early edition of Jeff Weedham’s paper, The Daily Opinion, with his breakfast coffee. The latest story concerning the criminal exploits of the Eye was headlined:
“EYE IS BLACK HOOD”—BURKEY
The following story told how A. J. Burkey, filling station operator from a northern suburb, had been held in Tombs prison for questioning in conjunction with the murder and robbery at the Weedham plant. The night before, Burkey had confessed that his boss, the criminal known as the Eye, was actually the Black Hood.
The part of the story that put a dull ache in Kip Burland’s heart was the fact that it was by-lined by Barbara Sutton, The Daily Opinion police reporter—and more particularly the woman whom Kip Burland loved.
There was another “Eye” story, stating that the body of Jack Carlson had been found. This murder, too, was attributed to the Eye. And once again it was pointed out that the Eye and the Black Hood were one and the same.
As night fell upon the city, Kip Burland once more vanished behind the identity of the Black Hood, not without full realization that he was taking his life into his hands. Again he visited the Weedham estate on West End Avenue, this time determined to have a talk with Major Paxton.
Prowling around the house in search for a suitable entrance, Black Hood discovered that he could not have come at a worse time. William Weedham was host to Sergeant McGinty and his cops as well as a number of reporters, including Barbara Sutton and her clumsy cameraman, Joe Strong. Evidently the police expected to gain further information about the crimes of the Eye.
Black Hood took to a stout iron trellis, climbed quickly to the second story where he found a bedroom window open. He slipped into the empty bedroom and from there went into the hall. Tiptoeing down the hall, he came to a small upstairs living room in which a light burned. There, studying a European war map was Major Paxton.
Black Hood entered silently and closed the door behind him. As the major looked up, Black Hood stepped quickly forward so that his tall figure over-shadowed that of the peppery little major.
“What—what—who—” Paxton sputtered. “Why, look here, you can’t come in here like this!”
“But I am in,” Black Hood said quietly. “And you won’t utter a sound, or you’ll force me to live up to my unjustly earned reputation as a murderer.”
“But it’s illegal! It—it’s damnable!”
“Now sit down and cool off, Major,” Black Hood said patiently. “You can blow off steam after I’ve left.”
“Left, huh? You’ll get out of here over my dead body!”
Black Hood nodded. “If necessary, even that. But first we’re going to have a quiet little chat, you and I. A little talk about a check in the amount of forty thousand dollars.”
“I’ll not pay you one cent!” Paxton exploded. “Why, do you think you can frighten me into—”
“I have frightened you, Major,” Black Hood said, smiling. “And it won’t cost you a cent, either. All I want you to do is take a look at this check.”
Black Hood drew the check, which he had taken from the dead fingers of the murdered Biggert, from a pocket in his belt. He held it so that Paxton could look at it. Paxton stared, and then suddenly looked at the Black Hood’s eyes revealed in the slots of his black mask.
“Why, it’s made out to me!”
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” Black Hood said. “It was found in the fingers of the murdered Biggert.” He turned the check over to show the endorsement. “Is that your signature?”
“It most certainly is! But, great heavens, I didn’t receive any money from William Weedham. I’ll have you know that I am a man of independent means. He’s never given me a penny. Why, what does this mean?”
Black Hood studied the little man closely. He had seen liars before, and it seemed to him that if Paxton was lying he was doing a remarkable job of it.
“That’s your signature, though,” he persisted.
“Yes, but I didn’t sign it.” The major pressed a hand to his forehead. “Wait. I’ve an idea. A mere ghost of an idea!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette lighter. “My signature is engraved on this lighter,” he explained. “Anyone could have borrowed my lighter and traced that endorsement. Let me see the check a moment.”
* * * *
Black Hood shook his head. “And have you destroy it?” he said with a smile. “Rather, let me see the lighter.”
The major handed over the cigarette lighter. Holding it beneath the check, Black Hood could see that the signature of Paxton on the back of the check followed in every detail the engraved signature on the lighter. He handed the lighter back.
“And the signature of William Weedham,” he said. “Take a look at that?”
Major Paxton scowled. He shook his head doubtfully. “It could be genuine. And then again, it could be a forgery. It seems to me—”
The door behind Black Hood opened. The master manhunter wheeled, saw the lank figure of Jeff Weedham standing in the door. Jeff Weedham opened his mouth, shouted at the top of his voice.
“D-d-dad! Help! The Black Hood!” And then young Weedham tried a necktie tackle that was supposed to
flatten Black Hood to the floor.
Black Hood bent double to duck that high tackle. The result was that Jeff Weedham landed squarely across Black Hood’s broad back. The manhunter straightened, threw Jeff to the floor, darted from the room and out into the hall.
The stairway was within three long strides of him. Black Hood slid half way down the broad stair railing before he saw William Weedham and Sergeant McGinty at the foot of the steps waiting for him. McGinty had his gun out. Black Hood kicked his legs over the rail, reversing his position, gave himself a shove with his hands. He dropped over the railing, landed on his feet in the hall below. He turned, dashed through a door that stood open beneath the stairs. This brought him into a huge dining room.
But he wasn’t there long enough to tell about it. He went through a swinging door into a butler’s pantry, then into a kitchen. There was a cop at the back door, waiting for him. He pivoted in his tracks, doubled back into the dining room, went through another door that brought him to the living room. No way out there. And then he remembered that William Weedham’s library was between living room and hall. The French windows of the library might be the one avenue of escape which McGinty’s thinly spread men were not guarding.
He reached the library, ran to the French windows. They were locked, but the key was in place. He was about to unlock the windows when he heard the door off the hall open and close.
“Stop, murderer!”
Black Hood turned, just a little slowly this time, because he had recognized that voice—a voice that haunted his dreams as did the face of the lovely girl who owned it. Barbara Sutton stood in the doorway, a small but businesslike revolver in her hand.
CHAPTER XI
The Frame Complete
“Barbara,” Black Hood said quietly, “you’re joking!”
She shook her head. Her lower lip trembled.
Black Hood took two steps toward her and saw her gun wrist stiffen.
“Listen,” he said grimly, “I could take that penny pea shooter away from you in a second. I want you to know that I’m staying here in this room when every second of delay may spell my death. I’m staying here because if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to convince you that I’m not a killer. And I’m not the Eye.”
“That picture Joe took,” she said. “And that confession of the man in Tombs. And you’ve told me time and time again that you’re an outlaw.”
He nodded. “If my real identity were known, the police could take me on the charge of robbery. But that charge would be a frame, just as this one is. I can never clear myself of the robbery charge. But I can and will clear the Black Hood of the charge of murder. Joe must have got that picture by accident. I was simply bending over that watchman at the Weedham plant gate to see if there was any chance that he was alive and had witnessed the crime. When I saw the knife, I planned to withdraw it from the watchman’s throat, to use it as possible evidence.
“You’ve got to believe me, Barbara. I’m fighting this creature who calls himself the Eye just as you are and just as the police are. You and I have been through a lot of adventures together. Ask yourself if I have ever done a single thing which would indicate that I would stoop to the slaughter of the innocent. Ask yourself that, Barbara.”
He took another step toward her. Her violet eyes glistened with tears.
“Joe Strong has tried to poison your mind against me,” he said. “I can’t blame him for that, since all’s fair in love and war. But you’ve got to believe me, Barbara. You’ve got to believe me because—because I love you. I’ve always loved you from the first day I set eyes on you. And—”
The gun spilled from Barbara’s limp fingers, and suddenly she was in his arms. He held her fiercely, tenderly for a long moment, kissed her warm lips. And then there were sounds of footsteps in the hall. He heard Jeff Weedham say:
“D-d-did anybody look in the library?”
Black Hood released Barbara, turned, dashed back to the French windows. He looked back before he plunged out into the darkness, and his teeth gleamed in a smile. Barbara was smiling, too—smiling and crying at the same time.
There was a police guard at the gate of the Weedham estate, but then Black Hood had never cared a whole lot about using gates anyway. He raced across the lawn, vaulted over the wall which separated the Weedham property from the place belonging to the green-eyed Vida Gervais next door.
To all appearances, the green-eyed lady was not at home—not unless those catlike eyes of hers were capable of seeing in the dark. Black Hood found his way into the house through a window. Inside, the house was as silent as it was dark.
Eventually, he found his way to Vida Gervais’ boudoir and there poked and sniffed among the boxes and jars of cosmetics on her dressing table. A box of face powder attracted his particular attention, and when he looked into the adjoining bathroom he discovered a suitable means of testing the powder to make sure that it was the same which he had scraped from the coat lapel of the dead Jack Carlson. Evidently, the lady was somewhat concerned about her pale complexion, for there was a sun lamp in the bathroom. Beneath its ultra-violet rays Black Hood discovered that the face powder took on a phosphorescent glow, proving that sodium naphthionate had been added to it. He took the powder with him when he left the house a few minutes later dressed in a spare uniform of Vida Gervais’ chauffeur.
* * * *
It was an hour later that Black Hood came to an obscure little jewelry shop known simply as “Tauber’s.” It was here that the Eye’s crimesters were supposed to pull their next job, according to the plans which had been set forth at the meeting on the night before. Whether or not Black Hood’s unexpected appearance at that meeting had put a crimp in those plans, he did not know. But there was no way of learning except by trial and error. Except for a night light which glinted through the show window, the place was dark.
Black Hood reflected that had he any desire to live up to his false reputation as a criminal, he could have done very nicely for himself. It required just twenty minutes of work for him to open the window at the back of the shop—steel grill work, burglar alarm, lock and all. It was rather a tight squeeze for his broad shoulders, getting through the opening, but he managed it. No sooner had his feet hit the floor, however, than he felt the cold, stern prod of the barrel of an automatic.
“All right, Mr. Hood, put up your hands!”
Black Hood jerked a glance over his right shoulder to behold the unlovely visage of Mr. Ron “The Bugs” Brayton.
“Hi there, Bugs,” he said lightly, raising his hands to the level of his shoulders. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Brayton laughed. “If you’da knocked at the front door, we’d have let you in, Mr. Hood. It’s pretty early, for a heist, ain’t it? But we figured the early bird would get the diamonds. And then you was wised up to this job, wasn’t you?”
“Oh, I did hear it mentioned at the lodge meeting last night,” Black Hood said. He laughed. “Isn’t that Squid Murphy over there in the corner, trying to disguise himself as a corner of that safe?”
Murphy stepped out of the shadows. He had a gun in his fist. A third hood put in his appearance from the front of the store and a fourth came out of Tauber’s private office.
“You’re just a little bit too late, Mr. Hood,” Bugs Brayton said. “That is, too late to get your hands on these beauties.”
Brayton extended his right arm in front of him. He was holding a small leather satchel, the mouth of the bag wide open. What light there was in the place scintillated on a layer of unset diamonds in the bottom of the bag. It was then that Black Hood got one of those sudden inspirations which had made him the underworld’s most capable adversary. His right hand dropped with incredible swiftness to his wide black belt, snatched something from a concealed pocket there. That same hand shot out toward the bag of diamonds, lingered over its open mouth a moment before it clenched into a fist and ha
mmered to the point of Squid Murphy’s jaw.
Murphy went back very fast and didn’t stop until he had rammed into the Tauber safe. But the three other hoods closed in upon Black Hood. Bugs Brayton’s big automatic rose and fell like an ax. The barrel of it caught Black Hood on the temple with stunning force. Black Hood fell to the floor and an unidentified but effective shoe toe caught the side of his head with a powerful kick. Blazing blobs of light exploded within his brain, and then the total blackness of unconsciousness funneled down upon his brain.
Bugs Brayton stood over the fallen manhunter. He weighed his automatic thoughtfully in his hand. He looked at Squid Murphy and the others.
“Well, boys,” he said, “I guess it’s up to me to finish off Mr. Hood. And I can’t say that I got any regrets about him dying so young.” He laughed, stooped over Black Hood, pressed the muzzle of his gun to the manhunter’s forehead.
“Stop, Bugs!” came a whispered command from the front of the store.
Brayton straightened. Coming toward the group of crimesters around the unconscious Black Hood, was the man they knew as the Eye, his white rubber mask resembling a death’s head in the half light.
“It would be a grave mistake to kill Black Hood, Brayton,” the Eye said. “Once he is dead, the police will turn their attention to others—perhaps to any one of us. You understand?”
“But the guy’s dangerous,” Squid Murphy protested. “I’ll take my chances with the bulls any day, rather than with Black Hood.”
“He won’t be dangerous to us in prison,” the criminal chief argued. “Hand me the gems, Brayton.”
Brayton obeyed. He watched the Eye’s slim white fingers reach down into the layer of diamonds, watched them sift the glittering gems. Then he took a dozen or so of the stones from the bag, transferred them to a pocket in Black Hood’s belt.
“Now,” he said, “the frame is complete. I will take care of the gems and as soon as I have sold them, I will split with you. Let’s get out of here.”
So great was their fear of their leader that the crimesters obeyed without protest. Just outside the rear door of the jewelry shop, the criminal chief stopped, raised a whistle to his lips, and blew a skirling blast.
The Pulp Hero Page 40
