Collected Fiction, page 424
“And that’s all?”
“I’m afraid it is. I—I wish—”
Hatch stood up, rubbing his jaw. “I’ll phone for somebody to guard you here. But first I’d like to look over your sister’s stuff.”
Silently Ruth led the way into the bedroom and pointed to a chest of drawers. She watched as Hatch swiftly went through them. He found nothing until, at the bottom of the lowest drawer, his eye lit on a magazine lying face down under a pile of feminine toggery. He drew it out—a true-detective magazine, with a slip of paper sticking out from the pages. Something was scribbled on that paper—a few words only.
He’s a masked murderer
That was all. Hatch shoved the magazine into his pocket and turned. He was just in time to hear Ruth scream, and see her go down, in the doorway, under the impact of a gun-butt that was swung viciously against her temple. The figure behind her was grotesquely masked and wearing a fuzzy overall suit. He jumped back out of sight as Hatch lunged toward him.
HURDLING the girl’s body, the G-man halted on the threshold, as he saw the masked man standing across the room, looming against the front doorway, signaling with one furry arm!
Hatch went for his gun. The strange figure hurtled toward him, and behind came others—two, three, four—disgorged from the darkness outside the house.
A sound behind him made Hatch leap aside, but too late. More of the masked figures had entered through the bedroom window. He went down under an avalanche of attackers, fighting desperately. The automatic was wrenched from his grasp.
He slugged, kicked, cursed, and fought against the gag that was forced into his mouth, but it was useless. There were at least six of the masked men. Hatch relaxed only when he lay bound and motionless on the floor. As though by some prearranged signal, his captors lifted him, concealing him between them, and went out of the house.
There was a light truck outside. Apparently it had slid up with the engine off, a trick Hatch himself had used. The agent was carried to the back of the truck and shoved in roughly; five of the masked thugs followed. The sixth swiftly stripped off his disguise, tossed it into the lap of one of his fellows, and ran to take his place in the driver’s seat. He was a man Hatch had never seen before.
The truck swung forward, the tires humming on the road as it picked up speed. Inside the back of the truck was only darkness, and silent menace. Hatch furtively tried to loosen his bonds, but could not. One of his captors used a flashlight which blazed blindingly into the G-man’s eyes. “Don’t try it,” a low voice said. “You can’t get away.”
The flashlight was turned off. Hatch lay motionless, thinking hard. As the truck lurched, his face smacked painfully against the floor of the light, closed delivery truck.
Then the pieces began to fall into place in Hatch’s mind. His wiry body tensed with sudden fury. He knew, now, what lay behind these killings.
Time dragged on. The truck, Hatch guessed, was heading into the Hollywood hills, by way of one of the canyons.
After about half an hour it slowed and stopped. The back doors were swung open. Hatch was carried out.
The moon had risen—a full moon, bright and lambent, silvering the California night. The truck was standing in a driveway that ran from the road along the side of a bungalow to a garage.
Hatch managed to look around as he was carried. This was, apparently, what was left of a hill subdivision that had flopped. There were no other houses near, and the distant ones Hatch saw on the neighboring slopes were dark, empty. He was carried toward the open doors of the garage. A lantern swung from a beam there, casting a pale yellow glow.
Hatch was dumped roughly in the center of the floor, on a dark stain that had once been oil, long since dried. One of the masked figures took the gag from the agent’s mouth. Hatch coughed and choked, his tongue feeling like a dry, swollen sponge.
When he could speak, he said sharply:
“Joe!”
One of the bizarre figures automatically turned a masked face toward him—and paused. There was the sound of a muffled oath.
“Is Keenan here?” Hatch said. “I want to see him.”
“Very well,” a low voice said. “Here I am, Hatch.”
Jen Keenan walked into the garage, chewing a cigar, his bald head yellow under the lamplight. His face was set in harsh lines of brutal triumph. He jerked his head at Joe.
“Okay,” he ordered. “Get the boys busy. We haven’t much time, and I want to talk to this wise guy.”
“Right, Boss.”
Joe led the six masked figures out of the garage. They went toward the truck which, latch saw, was parked in the driveway by a side door of the house.
Lying flat on his back, bound and helpless, he looked around. There was nothing in the garage that could help him. The lantern was out of his reach, and though the joists of the walls were studded with dozens of nails and hooks, placed there by the former tenant, he could not reach them.
A bundle of what looked like canvas was up on a beam; ropes hung from it. On Hatch’s left was a window, which had no glass in it. There was a hook on each side of the frame, and from one of these an old, patched inner tube hung disconsolately, its days of usefulness long since over. But the cement floor of the garage had been cleared, and held only dirt.
KEENAN stood staring down at his prisoner. Then, deliberately, he kicked Hatch in the side.
“Wise bird,” he said, his voice coldly vicious. “I figured I’d better find out just how much you know. And how much the Feds know.”
Hatch glanced past Keenan, down the moonlit driveway. The masked thugs, he saw, were carrying boxes out of the house and loading them into the truck.
“Sure,” he said wearily. “I’ll tell you what I know, punk. We’ll trade information.” Keenan laughed. “What’ll you do with it?”
“Janna Duquesne found out about your dope racket,” Hatch said. “She was at a coke party a couple of nights ago. Afterwards she got scared and phoned Lannigan at Division Headquarters. You overheard her phoning, and she knew it. That’s right, uh?”
“A friend of mine heard her,” Keenan said. “He told me about it.”
“So you killed her.”
“I don’t kill women!” the gangster blazed suddenly. “Listen, Fed. I got on top the hard way, by knocking down men tougher than I am. But I don’t kill women.”
“No? Maybe not. You just peddle the stuff to ’em.”
Keenan shrugged.
“You’ve been keeping dope in that secret room in your office,” Hatch went on. “Your yarn about using it for a hide-out was pretty weak. There wasn’t any ventilation in that room. The walls were perfectly blank. It wasn’t a hide-out. It was a store-room.”
“Well?”
“After Janna phoned Lannigan, you had a couple of your thugs start clearing out the store-room. Only Lannigan showed up quick—too quick for you. By that time you’d threatened Janna and scared her into keeping her mouth shut, but you were still afraid Lannigan might investigate. So you moved the dope through your office window into the light truck that was waiting outside. And the truck brought it here. By the time I got around, the job was almost done, and Janna and Lannigan were both dead.”
“Not my doing,” Keenan said. “I’m not kill-crazy. With me it’s business. Like rubbing you out because I have to.”
“Who’s Dyke Carnevan?” Hatch asked. “Who?” But the gangster’s gaze had flickered momentarily.
“Carnevan. The man who told you to give Janna Duquesne a job.”
Sudden, raging fury blazed in Keenan’s eyes. He ripped out a string of searing curses.
“Carnevan, eh? I’ll tell you who he is! The bozo who messed up my whole racket, that’s who! Left me holding the bag! That’s what I get for stringing along with—” he spat—“Carnevan!”
“Who is he?”
Keenan took out a gun. “I’m saving this load for him, if he’s fool enough to show up around me again. The truck’s full,” he added, glancing toward it. “So we’ll roll. This merchandise goes out of town tonight. As for you, Fed, I told you I’m not kill-crazy. But you’ve found out too much. It’s got to be this way. And don’t worry about Carnevan!” He knelt beside Hatch and carefully tested the prisoner’s bonds. “You’ll do.”
He took a corrugated metal ball, the size of a grapefruit, from his pocket, and stood fingering it, his teeth bared in a grin.
“I’ll say good-by. And leave this with you. In five minutes after I set it, you’ll go to blazes.”
The cement floor was cold against Hatch’s back.
“Wait, Keenan,” he said. “What about Lannigan, and Janna Duquesne?”
“What about them? I didn’t kill them.”
“I know you didn’t,” Hatch said. “That’s where you made your mistake—getting excited. Janna wasn’t talking to Lannigan about you. She didn’t know you peddled dope. She had some other information—information about a killer. She told Lannigan, but the murderer was too quick. He had disguised himself as one of your chorus boys, and managed to stick a knife in Janna and slip poison in Lannigan’s Martini. Then he made his getaway.”
Keenan shrugged impatiently. “Get to the end of it. I’m in a hurry.”
“That was what gave you the idea of using the same disguise on your thugs when they came after me. Ruth Duquesne saw only one man when you captured me at her place. She thinks it’s the killer. But listen, Keenan! The murderer made one attempt already tonight to bump off Ruth Duquesne. He’ll make another. And she’s lying there in her front room unconscious!”
Keenan shook his head in mock sympathy. “Too bad! But maybe Ruth knows more than she should, too. It’s nothing to me if she gets a knife in her gizzard. If the Feds are looking for that killer, they won’t have time to check up on me too close.”
He turned and called to his men.
“Start her up! We’ve got five minutes.”
CHAPTER IV
WOMAN KILLER
MASKED thugs clambered into the truck.
The truck engine purred. Keenan pulled a pin out of the bomb and laid it carefully on the cement floor. He went out hurriedly, closing the garage doors and locking them.
“So long, G-man!” his voice said, from outside. “Good luck!”
But Hatch was already busy. Five minutes. That was all. And he was bound and trussed like a mummy. His hands were tied together in front of him, but the knots were hard and tight.
The window? He might manage to clamber out, but he couldn’t get far enough away from the garage to be safe before the bomb went off. Maybe he could throw the grenade, though. There must be some way!
He heard the truck start up, its tires screeching on gravel.
Hatch rolled to the bomb and picked it up in his bound hands. There was no way of making the thing harmless now, of course. Gripping it carefully between his palms, he got his back against the wall and edged himself up, splinters digging painfully into his skin. But at last he was standing before the window.
His heart sank. The ground outside was overgrown with weeds and underbrush. With his hands fettered as they were, he couldn’t throw the bomb more than a few feet.
Thirty feet away was the road and, far beyond it, the distant, sprawling lights of Hollywood.
The inner tube dangled from its hook on one side of the window. That was it! The inner tube! It was a long chance, but the only one. And it might work.
Hatch still held the bomb between his palms. Keeping his balance with difficulty, he leaned over, gripped the rubber between his teeth, and managed to hook the tube’s free end over the hook on the other side of the window. Now the double loop of thick rubber hung across the empty window frame, like a sling-shot.
How many minutes had passed? Hatch couldn’t guess. It seemed like half an hour at least. With aching, fumbling fingers he got the bomb in place. Bracing himself, he leaned back, stretching the inner tube with its deadly missile. If the rubber broke… . There was sweat on Hatch’s cheeks.
Then he saw the truck swing into view on the road thirty feet away, its lights probing out through the night. Instantly he released the catapult.
Whup! The rubber sang as it snapped forward. Hatch went over backward, thumping his head painfully on the cement. Briefly he imagined that the roaring explosion be heard was only within his skull. The ear-shattering detonation blew in one side of the garage, and that convinced Hatch that his trick had worked.
Gasping, he dragged himself to what was left of the window. The bomb had exploded, all right. Probably within a few feet of the truck. And that grenade must have been loaded with super-dynamite!
Hatch went to work on his bonds. There were plenty of nails here and there, pounded into the joists, and it did not take long for him to wear through a few strands of rope. After that it was comparatively easy.
Free at last, he went cautiously to the scene of the explosion. What he found there convinced him that Keenan was dead. So were his thugs. The truck itself was scrap metal.
What about Ruth Duquesne? The thought lanced into Hatch’s mind. She might still be unconscious, at the mercy of the killer, who was almost certain to return.
The G-man found a gun, wiping it clean of the blood that stained it. The only way to get back to Hollywood was to walk, until he found a car. He took a short-cut down the hillside, brambles clawing at his clothing, whipping at his face. But presently he found a more frequented road, and stopped the first car that came along.
The boy who drove it gulped when he saw Hatch’s identification. He wanted to come along, but Hatch dropped him at the first gas station and shoved down the throttle. He was in a hurry.
The street lamps blended into a blur. As he drove, he drew the true-crime magazine out of his pocket and flipped the pages, precariously snatching glances at it. One page was marked. A picture was outlined, that of a man with a beak of a nose, thick, fleshy lips, and a mop of light hair. The caption read:
Charlie Doppler,
Wanted for Murder and Robbery of a
Federal Bank
Doppler. Hatch knew of the man. A shrewd, cunning, vicious killer, whose flaming guns had blazed a trail of murder through the Midwest. A man trying to wear Dillinger’s shoes. A woman-killer. He had been captured a year and a half ago in Des Moines.
DES MOINES! And Keenan had been in Des Moines a year and a half ago.
The authorities had never recovered the eighty thousand in currency that Doppler had stolen. He had stashed it somewhere, where it had been waiting when he broke jail after serving a year of a life rap.
That was the answer!
Hatch turned into Serrano, with a screeching of rubber. He was out of the car before it stopped, racing toward the porch of Ruth Duquesne’s cottage. It was still dark.
His shoulder struck the door, and he went into that room like a catapult. His gun was in his hand. He heard the crash of a shot, and felt hot lead fan his cheek.
Moonlight slanted in through the open door. It showed a bare patch of carpet. That was all.
But now Hatch knew the lay-out of this room. He climbed over the sofa like a cat, thrusting it out from the wall, dropping behind it as a bullet thunked into the upholstery. His groping hand found a lamp standard. Gingerly he levered himself up, sought for the switch, and turned it.
Light filled the room.
Ruth Duquesne was lying motionless on the floor. Hovering over her was the killer, still wearing the grotesque mask and furry overall suit that had disguised him from the first. His gun spat at the moment Hatch’s own did.
The bullet smashed into the G-man’s arm, swung him half around. Hatch kept his pistol leveled. He fired again.
The killer’s body jerked convulsively. His gun swung crazily, centered on Hatch, but only for a moment. Then it dropped from a limp hand as the masked figure crumpled.
Ruth was not hurt. Hatch had arrived in time. She bandaged his arm as they waited for a response to the agent’s phone call to Headquarters. The girl was as white as paper, but her curiosity was stronger than feminine weakness.
“You gave me one clue when you said Janna went out with Carnevan in the escort service,” Hatch said. “Carnevan was hooked up with Keenan, at the Window. That’s why he was able to get her that job there. And he kept seeing her—and he talked. Remember that snow party a couple of nights ago? Carnevan must have been hopped up to the ears. So much that he not only told her about Keenan’s dope racket, but about himself, too. Who he was, I mean.”
“Who was he?” Ruth murmured, moistening her lips.
“Charlie Doppler.” Hatch pointed to the true-crime magazine, open in the girl’s lap. “Remember when Janna came home that night, acting tight and talking about how Carnevan had met Keenan in Des Moines a year and a half ago? That was the time the Feds caught Doppler—Carnevan. But they didn’t get their hands on eighty grand he’d stolen. Now look. Six months after Doppler’s broken out of the pen, he’s here in Los Angeles, with Keenan.”
“You mean he gave Keenan the money before he—”
“I think we’ll find out that’s what happened,” Hatch said. “Doppler had some hold over Keenan. Probably Keenan sank the dough in narcotics. Or maybe after Doppler collected, he decided to cut himself in on Keenan’s racket. Only he talked too much to Janna, and he was kill-crazy. He was afraid she’d give him away to Lannigan. As for Keenan—well, Janna knew about the snow hidden in his office, of course, and he was trying to smooth down that end of the game.”
Ruth nodded toward the dead man on the floor. “He isn’t the same as the one in the picture,” she said, touching the true-crime magazine with an unsteady finger.
Hatch had already removed Doppler’s mask, revealing a tanned, hard face, with a pug nose and thin lips. Dark hair was bloodstained on the carpet
“Charlie Doppler—Dyke Carnevan,” Hatch said. “Compare the initials. They’re reversed, but crooks have a habit of using their own initials when they take an alias. Besides, Janna left the explanation on that sheet or paper stuck in the magazine. She wrote, ‘He’s a masked murderer.’ But the mask was Doppler’s own face. Ever heard of plastic surgery?”
