As he approached Lee Circle, Barrett pulled up at the service station at his right. He knew he could not logically account for his action: but he knew also that the Square could not have foreseen it.
“Give me a tow, buddy,” he requested.
“No use towing it,” countered the service man. “We’ll fix it right here.”
“I want a tow,” persisted Barrett, “and not advice. No, the steering gear isn’t damaged, but I don’t want anyone at the wheel. Lift ’er up with the crane and drag her on her tail!”
The service man eyed him curiously; then, noting Barrett’s stern, thoughtful expression, and the cold gleam in his eye, nodded wisely and smiled to himself.
“Oh, all right,” he agreed. “We won’t have nobody at the wheel. I got you.”
“Yes?” murmured Barrett as he seated himself beside the driver of emergency car. And to himself, “Maybe he’s right—someone might have been figuring on pouring a charge of buckshot into me as I sat at the wheel…and this will throw them off the track.”
Barrett had lost little time in getting a tow; but the wrecker was going at a leisurely pace and delaying his getting in touch with Frost.
“Step on it!” he snapped. “I’m in a hurry!”
The driver stepped. But the words had scarcely left Barrett’s lips when a terrific concussion nearly blasted him from his seat. Shattered glass from the rear and sides of the cab rained about him.
Barrett, pistol drawn, leaped from the cab and into a wave acrid, black smoke which billowed about and overwhelmed them.
The Hispano was a smoking, tangled ruin. Flames were lapping up from the hood, and around the remnants of the wheel. A bomb had blown away the front seat, caved in the instrument panel, and set fire to the gas that ran from the shattered lines.
“Score one for the Square!” growled Barrett as he snatched a fire-extinguisher from the wrecker. Then, to the still speechless service man, “That’s what I wanted to find out! Take ’er back—though there’ll be damn little salvage.”
“Nothing stirring! I’m through.”
“Suit yourself.” Barrett shrugged, discarded the extinguisher, and boarded a cab that had halted near the smoking ruin.
* * * *
As he approached the 4000 block, Barrett dismissed the cab and proceeded on foot. He paused at a pay station and called police headquarters.
“Dolan? Barrett speaking…now get this carefully…”
Barrett rapidly summarized the events of the evening, and concluded by saying, “Rush a man to my house to wait for a call from Frost—No, I’ll warn Hartley myself. I’m just a few blocks from where he lives.”
Hartley himself met Barrett at the door and led the way to the library, in the left wing.
“When you hear what the Square did for me,” said Barrett as he seated himself, “you’ll probably spend the rest of the evening in pious meditation.”
Hartley listened without comment to Barrett’s account of the bombing.
“Funny,” concluded Barrett, as Hartley reached for a decanter, “that the Square would pick on me, when I paid off—whereas you did trifle with him.”
Hartley regarded Barrett speculatively for a moment and shook his head.
“That is puzzling. I think I’ll drive down town to stay at the Union Club until this thing has blown over.”
Hartley’s right hand toyed with the neck of the decanter. “Let’s have a drink first,” he suggested.
“Why not!” agreed Barrett easily. Then, in a low, tense voice, “And I think you’d better put that capsule into your drink, Hartley!”
Hartley stiffened and swayed forward, leaning on his desk.
“Easiest way out, Hartley,” murmured Barrett with ominous smoothness. “You betrayed yourself by—”
Barrett’s right hand flashed to his shoulder; but swift as the gesture was, Hartley’s left hand had the advantage of an earlier start as it emerged from the table drawer with a pistol. The flash and the fumes blinded Barrett, and the bullet, boring into his right shoulder, paralyzed his arm before he could reach his shoulder holster. Hartley’s second shot went wild as Barrett, recovering from the shock of the first, cleared the corner of the table and drove home with his left, sending Hartley crashing backward into a book case, pistol clattering to the hardwood floor.
The enemy was closer than the pistol; and Barrett’s right arm was out of action. He closed in, empty handed, to counter-attack. His left doubled Hartley with a jab to the pit of the stomach; but a split second later the decanter crashed home. Barrett jerked his head, going with the blow, but though he thus kept his skull intact, he went down before the crushing impact, flattening out into a pool of bottomless blackness. He wondered, in his lingering vestige of consciousness, how the killer would dispose of his body: for Hartley would be the first to recover…
* * * *
To his considerable surprise, Barrett finally opened his eyes and realized that Hartley had not taken the logical course. His first sensation was in his splitting head and throbbing, bullet-bored shoulder; and then the tang of high-powered whiskey trickling down his throat. He heard the gruff voice of John Dolan, and saw, as he lifted himself up on his good elbow, that the leaded glass front doors of the house had been well scattered over an acre of Persian carpet. Dolan had entered unceremoniously, but in time.
“I knew it would take more than a banker to bust your thick head,” said Dolan as he helped Barrett to his feet. Then, indicating Hartley who, handcuffed, battered, and still unconscious, lay on the floor, he said to the detective who had accompanied him “Lecoin, phone for the wagon.”
“And so he is the Square, eh?” interjected Dolan, as he heard Barrett’s account of the encounter. “How did you dope it out?”
“I knew that Benton couldn’t possibly raise one hundred thousand dollars. Any businesslike blackmailer would also have known that fact. Thus I knew that there must be some other motive.”
Barrett then explained how each death had concentrated the control of the bank and several local corporations in the hands of the survivors.
“And tonight, in the courtyard,” continued Barrett, “Hartley put a dummy roll into the hole in the wall: this was to get a warning to scare me into line, so I’d not pull the same gag. I showed him a roll of bills, but actually substituted a packet of wrapping paper. And since I wasn’t warned, it tipped me off that Hartley and the Square were the same person. The Square didn’t know I’d fudged the play, because Hartley didn’t know. Get it?”
Dolan nodded.
“As for that bomb—Hartley had plenty of chances to plant it. He had to do something. He knew that he’d be exposed unless I were wiped out.”
“But how about the way those packets disappeared?” wondered Dolan. “And that warning?”
“The warning,” explained Barrett, “was made up in advance, and delivered by a confederate who didn’t know what it was all about. As for the packets—they were probably forced down into a space between the double wall. Frost will be able to tell us when he checks in with whatever he’s found. That, and other details…”
A heavy, muffled explosion shook the house.
Dolan and Lecoin dashed to the rear to investigate. Barrett did not accompany them. Instead, he turned to the bound Hartley.
Hartley regarded him in baleful silence, beaten but defiant.
“The play is over,” continued Barrett, “all except the final act, a solo dance with you on the end of a rope. Hartley, you will hang!”
“There’s still a chance, Hartley,” said Barrett. “Before they come back. Where’s that pill-box—you took it, that night.”
A flash of rage contorted Harley’s features for an instant. Then he rose from the floor; and, as Barrett covered him with his own pistol he went to his desk, opened a drawer, and with his manacled hands picked out a small cardboard box. He
seated himself just as Dolan and Lecoin returned from the rear.
“Lot of smoke and smudge, but not much damage,” remarked Dolan, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
Barrett, who had handed Hartley a glass of water, turned and stood between Hartley and the detectives. “Probably not,” he said. “That shot was to complete his case by faking a bombing of his own house, to tie in with the explosion that was to tear me and my car to pieces.”
“Don’t see how we’ll keep this mess under cover,” said Dolan. “Sorry, but there’s no way out.”
“Don’t worry about that, John,” countered Barrett. “The coroner will find heart failure as the cause of his death.”
“Death?”
“Look at him,” was the laconic reply, as Barrett stepped aside. Hartley’s saturnine features were pale. He sat slumped in his chair. The capsule had acted swiftly.
Then Barrett added, “Now that everything is all square again, suppose you drive me to the Emergency Hospital. My shoulder is giving me hell!”
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