Spear stood over him, himself a blood-marred savage. But the unquenchable fire in his eyes was not reflected in Randall Pierson’s. The lawyer sat slumped, knees lax, one hand limp and powerless on the arms of his chair. The other was clenched in a fist as rigid as though all the strength left in him were there. Slowly he lifted his head. There was a crimson blotch on his white shirt, a spreading red stain that plastered the cloth to his thin body.
Spear said gently, “How hard are you hit, Randall? Man, you can’t give up now. We’ve only—”
“How hard” — the words themselves came hard; he gasped them a few at a time — “must a man be hit... to die, Phineas? How much... must he endure? They... they thought I was dead. They took... Cara with them. What... are you waiting for?”
“Bardin?” Spear whispered hoarsely.
A ghastly smile twisted Pierson’s grey lips. With agonized effort he lifted the clenched hand, opened it — and suddenly it fell — powerless. His head dropped. Randall Pierson died and Jake Wolcott bent over, recovered the black button that Pierson had held in his hand. It was an ordinary button such as is found on many a man’s coat. It still had ragged thread running through the holes — as though it had been torn off violently. Phineas Spear dropped it into a vest pocket. His voice, when he got police headquarters, was harsh, flat.
Chapter VI
The Clean-Up
Evans was his name. He sat in his own speeding, official car with Spear beside him and Jake Wolcott on the other side. Lou Rosetti’s thin face, inscrutable, almost sinister in the occasional glow of his cigarette was half turned toward them. He sat in one of the folding seats. A uniformed cop occupied the other. Police Chief Evans spoke thoughtfully:
“These men of yours, Spear — they look capable.”
Wolcott chuckled mildly. Rosetti turned his head, inhaled and flipped the cigarette out of the open car. In the last light of the close-burned butt he had smiled thinly.
“I hope you’re right, Spear! If you are, it’ll be the answer to a lot of things. An answer most of us — didn’t expect.” Evans paused. “I owe you an apology, I think.”
“Forget it.”
Evans said: “No! Ever since you brought this Guardsmen thing out into the open, I’ve had the feeling you weren’t the yellow-sheet journalist people thought you. Things have been brought to my attention. Some of them have looked like just plain racketeering, but there have been other elements that were hard to figure! Floggings apparently without reason. A knifing six months ago that didn’t look like the ordinary crap-game wrangle. I don’t think they’d even considered the possibility that you’d publish their note. Who is it, Spear? D’you know?”
“How much farther is it,” he flared harshly, “to this duck-shooting lodge?” Evans shot a glance at the speed-merged scrub pine, the occasional darkened farm house that flashed past the hurtling car. “Slow down, Peters!” he ordered his chauffeur. To Spear he said:
“We turn off into the swamp in another few minutes. After that it’s a corduroy road and I don’t know how far we’ll get. Anyway, it’ll be best to surround the place on foot.”
“Who owns the lodge?” Wolcott asked.
“It’s been abandoned for a long time,” Evans clipped. “A group of wealthy sportsmen built it, but they lost interest — went broke — something. They haven’t been back, never sold it so far as I know.”
Lou Rosetti said, “Duck-shooting!” softly, and laughed. He fondled the barrel of the sub-machine gun across his knees.
When they parked, the other two cars pulled in behind them. More uniformed men got out. Gas-guns were in evidence, and that deadliest of all short-range weapons: the sawed-off shotgun. Spear’s men sought him out, moved forward at his back; Evans sent policemen to right and left in flanking parties.
The swamp sucked at feet grown heavy with mud. Briars reached out tenuous, detaining hands. But they moved almost silently. Only a muttered curse, a threshing fall now and then broke the dismal, lifeless hush. Then, plaintively:
“Vat am I — a fish? Vy can’t these gangsters come out and fight on paved streets like gentlemen?”
“Shut up, Epstein!” Boswell, the bearded man, rumbled.
They smelled smoke presently. Spear quickened the pace and a point of light gleamed through the surrounding thicket. The black bulk of parked cars — many of them — was revealed. The silence became absolute as the swamp gave way to solid ground. In a death-like hush men stalked the rambling, forgotten lodge from three sides. On the fourth lay the dim, misty vastness of the Bay. And a scream from the lodge brought them in without orders, running.
Spear was the first to reach the window from which the light came. What he saw brought a choking, wordless snarl to his throat, brought a .45 he carried to a line between his eyes and the masked figure who stood, whip upraised. Cara Collin was bound to a pillar that supported the roof. Her hands were over her head, lashed to a wooden crosspiece. Her dress was ripped to the waist, but her naked back was yet unmarked.
Men filled the room, all of them masked. One man, the obvious leader, stood spread-legged in boots and breeches, a high-collared Russian tunic of black satin that fell beyond the wide belt at his waist. His hood was of the same material. His voice came, measured, muffled:
“Your last chance, Cara Collin! What is the clue that Spear has? To whom does it point? I shall count to three. If you have not answered by that time — you know what to expect!”
He nodded to the man with the whip. Its leather coils unwound, quivered as though with serpentine life of its own.
“One...”
“Two...”
Flame from the .45! Shattered glass and a roar that paralyzed them all where they stood. The man with the whip stiffened, fell slowly forward full-length. And that broke the spell. Flame from all sides — from windows, but not into them. Gas-guns thumped heavily, but bullets from the outside in were impossible with Cara Collin in the center of that room!
Phineas Spear’s flung shoulder hit the door — and made no more impression than an idle breeze. From the window over the door — unseen from the porch — a machine gun chattered. Splinters leapt from the shingled porch roof, jumped viciously from the floor all around Spear’s feet, seeking him blindly. Then fire streaked from the darkness beyond the porch. The gun above ceased.
“Duck-shooting!” Lou Rosetti’s voice penetrated the roar. He raced up onto the porch. “Get back, Socker! I can cut the lock from this side — shooting away from the kid!”
They crouched on either side of the doorway. From an angle, held hip high, the gun shattered wood and steel. It stopped and the impact of two hundred and twenty pounds burst through. Lefty Crooks plunged headlong into a storm of lead. Spear stumbled over the fighter and went down. Boswell roared through with the high-pitched battle cry of Epstein for shrill accompaniment. Lou Rosetti crouched in the doorway. His bucking gun cleared the windows of the whole front of the place. And when he lurched forward, went down, his lips still smiled in sardonic amusement.
“Duck... shooting!” he gasped.
Somebody crawled over him in the dark, dragging a leg, cursing. “Yeah! Looks as though you forgot to duck. So did I!” It was Lefty Crooks. He crawled on. Holding his ripped left side, Rosetti groped for his gun — any gun.
“Cara!” Holding her, Spear tore down the nailed crosspiece by sheer frantic strength he didn’t know was in him. “Cara!” he choked again. “You... you’re not hit!”
“I... I’m all right, Phineas. But you?”