Clint Kale scowled.
“That wouldn’t be very good advertisement for me, would it?”
The reporter shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s news, an’ we gotta print the news.”
“Of course.”
“Have you any theories?”
“No. Only I shall recover the radium. The reward will do it. It’s of no commercial value. Only hospitals and lie detectors, scientific laboratories and certain limited manufacturers are in the market for radium. It will be returned. I’ll be out the reward. That’s all.”
The reporter nodded.
“I think I’ll get off an extra,” he said.
“Yes, yes, do so. My scientific apparatus is greatly curtailed in efficiency as long as the radium is missing. Be sure to state that I think it is merely lost, or that, if it was stolen, it will be thrown away by the thief in order to escape detection. Discount the theory of theft.”
The reporter hesitated a moment.
“I shall report the facts,” he said, and walked away.
Clint Kale sidled up to the lunch counter in the gloomy restaurant. The odor of stale grease was a rancid insult to the nostrils. The place was blue with the by-products of cooking.
The tired-eyed girl smeared a bare arm over a perspiring forehead.
“We got ham an’ eggs or steak. Which’ll you have?”
Clint Kale picked ham and eggs.
A shadow fell over the counter. He looked back and up. Ellery Hatcher, the chief of police, was grinning down at him, and the grin was triumphant.
“Hear you lost somethin’.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you won’t be so highhat now.”
“I fail to follow your reasoning.”
“Haw, haw, haw, the big detective! Comes to town to show us guys up, an’ what happens? Gets held up and a million dollars of radium stolen. Haw, haw, haw.”
Clint looked around apprehensively.
“Not so loud.”
Chief Hatcher raised his voice.
“And it takes the local police to come to the rescue. You got a crook workin’ for you, an’ we have to tell you that. He’s Boston Blackie, a parole, and the big house wants the dope on him. I wired in a report this mornin’. They’ll likely wire me back to pick him up.”
Clint straightened, dropped knife and fork clattering to the lunch counter.
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I knew ’m the minute I clapped eyes on him. But I sent in a wire to find out if they still wanted him. They sent me his picture and finger-print classifications, and told me to report in detail. Haw, haw, haw!”
“But,” protested Clint, “how could you know?”
“Oh, we know,” boasted Chief Hatcher, swinging his triumphant glance to include the circle of gawking faces which had assembled as by magic. “Us country police ain’t boobs. We know our way about — even if we don’t donate no million dollars’ worth of radium to crooks. Haw, haw, haw!”
Clint Kale seemed to have lost his appetite. He paid for his check, clapped his hat on his head and sprinted for the hotel. Nor did he emerge from his room the entire day.
Chapter IV
“What About the Reward?”
At night Boston Blackie, carefully coached in the part he was to play, moaning dire calamity to come, slipped from the back entrance and made his way to the home of Ezra Hickory. He was the unwilling custodian of the radium.
“I want your help,” he husked.
Ezra Hickory, a wrinkled specimen of hardened manhood, fastened cold eyes upon the man.
“You’re a convict,” he rasped. Boston Blackie started.
“You know that?”
“Sure.”
Boston Blackie groaned.
“That’s the tough part of it. I am. And the boss lost a tube of radium. It spilled out. I happened to find it. There’s a reward offered for it. But, if I should say I found it they’d bring up my criminal record and I not only wouldn’t get no reward, I’d get put back in the big house with another sentence hung on me.
“Now I was figuring that you’re an old-established citizen here, and you’re a client of the district attorney. Maybe if you was to find this here radium there wouldn’t be nothing said. You’d collect the reward and then we could go fifty-fifty.”
Ezra Hickory glanced up and down the dark lane which led to his secluded dwelling. Frogs were booming in various cadences. A whippoorwill whistled his mournful note. An owl hooted from the telephone post at the corner of the driveway. Everywhere were evidences of isolation.
“Come in here where there’s light,” he invited.
Boston Blackie entered the hallway, produced a golden capsule from his pocket.
“How much is she worth?” asked Ezra.
“Pretty near a hundred thousand dollars, even money.”
“How much is the reward?”
“The boss offered a thousand. He’d pay ten if he had to.”
Ezra wrinkled his brow shrewdly.
“Any way of identifying this here bit of radium as belonging to Clint Kale?”
“None whatever.”
“Humph,” murmured Ezra.
“You an’ me, fifty-fifty on the reward,” said Boston Blackie.
Ezra extended his hand.
“Give it to me,” he said.
Boston Blackie passed it over.
“You gotta put it some place. You can’t carry it for no length of time. It’ll burn the skin. That’s what they use it for, burnin’ out cancer and such stuff.”
Ezra Hickory regarded the small capsule, then his face stiffened in decision.
“You wait right here,” he said. “Don’t move.”
And he glided out of the hallway, into the house, as furtively as a shadow.
Ten minutes later he was back.
“The chief o’ police is lookin’ for you. He’s got authorization from the penitentiary to pick you up as a parole violator. And the district attorney is aiming to frame a crime on you because your boss was highhat to him. You better do somethin’.”
Boston Blackie collapsed on the stoop.
“Oh, my God!” he moaned. “As bad as that!”
“Worse,” croaked Ezra Hickory.
“Gee, what’ll I do?”
“I’m goin’ to help you. I’ll put you in my machine an’ you can get to the State line. We’ll get there in a couple of hours. I’ll give you money to get away with. You better keep movin’.”
“How about my half of the reward?” asked Boston Blackie.
“What reward?”
“For the radium I gave you, of course.”
“You didn’t give me no radium,” said Ezra Hickory.
“The hell I didn’t!”
“The hell you didn’t. Do you want a lift to the State line and money to get away on, or do you want me to call the chief an’ tell him I found you prowlin’ around the house?”
And Ezra Hickory produced a big revolver, levelled it at the whimpering figure of Boston Blackie.
“I want a lift to the State line,” said Boston Blackie. “How much get-away money do I get?”
“Enough. I don’t want to have ’em catch you.”
“You won’t get into no trouble?” asked Boston Blackie.
“Heh, heh, heh,” chuckled Ezra Hickory, “the district attorney’s my private, personal lawyer. Heh, heh, heh!”
They went to the garage. The light flivver roared into activity and jolted away into the darkness.
Minutes passed. The frogs failed to resume their chorus. The owl had ceased to hoot. The whippoorwill had faded into the night.
A furtive shadow glided along the driveway, inserted a skeleton key in the front door, and entered the house. The shadow became a figure of a man carrying a heavy bag. The bag was opened, a flash light taken out, also a glass jar.