I may have imagined it, but it sounded as though he let out a sigh of disappointment. Then I heard him step heavily away from the hall door. Lighter footsteps followed behind his. A small hand groped beneath my arm from behind and slid my P-38 from its holster. The same hand patted my waist and hips for other concealed weapons.
“He’s clean,” came the husky voice of little Jimmy Goodrich.
“You may face this way now, Mr. Moon,” said Dan.
Facing around, I allowed my hands to drop. I discovered my guests totaled three, Art Depledge, the third member of the trio, now stood in the doorway where Dan Ironbaltz had been. His bland face was the picture of friendliness.
“You boys flatter me,” I said. “With all the hoods you hire, how come I get personal attention?”
“This time we want it done right,” Jimmy Goodrich said huskily.
“You can’t get away with it,” I said.
Dan Ironbaltz looked pained. “From you I expected better repartee, Mr. Moon. That line went out with the Rover Boys.”
I said, “I meant it literally. If anything happens to me, Warren Day knows right where to look. Knock me off and he’ll also reopen the Ketterer case, which he currently has tabbed as a suicide. I’m safer for you alive than dead.”
From the hall door Art Depledge commented cheerily, “Unless there’s no corpus delicti.”
I felt the hair rise along the edge of my scalp. “Listen, can’t you fellows take a joke? Just because I loused up your racket, so you had to rub put your boss, is no cause to get unreasonable. Lots of businessmen have setbacks, but just pitch in and start over. Why don’t you take your profits and open up in some other town? Moscow, for instance.”
Art Depledge emitted a genuinely amused horse-laugh, which made him look more like a good-natured grocery clerk than ever.
Modestly I said, “It wasn’t that funny.”
He stopped laughing to scowl at me. “I wasn’t laughing at your bum humor, stupid. I was laughing because you think you loused up our racket. You’ve been helping us.”
“Shut up!” Ironbaltz ordered. “You go first, Jimmy. Then you, Moon.” He paused to bow ironically. “Mr. Moon, I mean. You follow me, Art.”
So we held another procession down the stairs, across the curb and into a car. This time it was a regulation gangster’s black sedan, however. I sat in the back between little Jimmy Goodrich and hairy Dan Ironbaltz, while Depledge drove.
Chapter Six
Eclipse of Manny Moon
By the assured way Dan held his gun, and by the faintly eager look still in his eyes, I knew it was hopeless to try anything such as I had pulled on young Hank. No one said a word while we drove across town to the waterfront, turned down an alley and pulled into the basement garage of a warehouse.
Jimmy got out of the car and Dan prodded me after him. All three of us waited while Art Depledge pulled shut the garage doors, then Dan motioned toward an open door at the rear of the garage, and emphasized the gesture by prodding me in the ribs with his pistol. The door opened onto a set of cement stairs leading downward.
Again Jimmy went first, I followed, and Dan and Depledge brought up the rear. The stairs ended in a low, vault-like room with stone walls and no windows. The floor was concrete except for a circular section of iron about three feet wide in the center of the room, which on second examination proved to be an oversized manhole cover. Illumination was furnished by a lone bulb hanging from the ceiling.
The room was bare of furniture. Against one wall stood two galvanized scrub pails without handles, a larger bucket with the end of a long coil of rope tied to its handle, two wooden stakes and an overturned soap box on which lay a large bag labeled: Plaster of Paris — 100 lbs.
“Stand over there,” Dan ordered, pointing at the wall opposite this interesting equipment.
I leaned against the wall indicated, and watched as Jimmy and Art heaved open the manhole cover. Through the open hole came the murmur of sluggishly moving water just beneath.
Sweat was beginning to stand out on my brow, but I managed to keep my voice steady. “That the river?” I asked politely.
All three glanced at me, but no one said anything.
Art Depledge crossed to the large bucket attached to the rope, carried it to the hole and dropped it in. It disappeared with a gurgle, and he played out the coil of rope for what seemed an interminable length of time, but probably was only seconds. When it finally stopped sinking, he glanced at the remaining dozen feet of rope and said, “About twenty feet, I’d guess.”
“Can’t you remember the depth between killings?” I asked in a voice that surprised me by not cracking.
Again all three glanced at me.
“It changes,” Depledge explained kindly. “Silt sifts in and out. I’ve seen it thirty feet, and I’ve seen it nearly to the cover. We’d look silly dropping you in two feet of water, wouldn’t we?”
“I think two feet is a nice depth.” I said. This time there was a slight crack in my voice.
Hand-over-hand, Art pulled the bucket up again. When it stood brim-full next to the hole, Jimmy brought over the two pails without handles, and carefully poured half the muddy water into each. Then together the two of them heaved the hundred-pound sack of plaster of Paris over to the pails, ripped it open and poured half into each. They used the wooden stakes to stir it into a thick solution, tossing both the stakes and the empty bag through the hole when they finished.
Art Depledge said, “You see, we leave no evidence at all. Must have been twenty or more go through this hole over the years. They are all buried under silt now.”
“You talk too much,” Dan Ironbaltz said in his bell-like tenor. Then to me, “Over here please, Mr. Moon.”
I walked over to the hole and looked down. The water drifted by a scant two feet below it.
“Stand in the buckets,” Dan said.
I looked at him in amazement. “Why should I do a silly thing like that?”
“Because I’ll blow your head off if you don’t.” His voice was still polite.
I shrugged, but I doubt that my indifferent expression fooled anyone, for my face was beaded with sweat. “Blow away. What’s the difference?”
“The difference is you live fifteen minutes longer while the stuff sets. Either way your feet go in it.”
He began to raise the revolver, and I said, “All right. I’ll take the fifteen minutes.”
Slowly I raised my right foot and let it descend into one of the buckets. It made a squishing noise as the gray-white fluid rose half-way to my knee. Then quickly, as though wanting to get it over with, I raised the left foot, pretending to lose balance, and brought my heel down on the edge of the other bucket with my full weight behind it. The bucket tilted, teetered on the edge of the hole and plunked into the water with a dull splash.
My arms gyroscoped in a struggle to regain balance, and I would have followed head-first into the river had not Jimmy Goodrich grabbed my arm.
All three of them stared at me irritably.
Finally Depledge said, “One will hold him down just as well.”
I felt a surge of hope. A lot of people know I have a false leg, but a lot of others don’t. Apparently these three were in the latter group.
The big gorilla with the gun sank my hope. “We’ll play it safe. Get upstairs and bring another bucket and a fifty pound sack of stuff.”
“How much do you stock?” I asked.
“About ten sacks and a dozen buckets,” Art told me. “But you won’t get a chance to kick another overboard.”
He and Jimmy went upstairs together. They were gone ten minutes, and by the time they had returned, drawn another pail of water from the river and mixed it with plaster of Paris, the mixture around my right foot had set.