He paused, leaned across the desk, and said in slow, even tones, a stiffly pointing finger just beneath Garth’s nose:
“The prints on the badge checked with yours, Bootan. The first, second and third fingers are shown. How did they get there?”
Garth came slowly to his feet, his mouth sagging open, staring eyes fixed upon the shiny surface of the badge. He essayed to speak, but succeeded in bringing forth only a croak.
“I’ll tell you how they got there!” Inspector Radway suddenly thundered. “They got there when you thrust Sam Brayden over the edge of the dam — to his death! John Talbot saw the act — and those finger-prints prove who the actor was! The first three fingers of your left hand came in contact with the Radge when you sent Brayden to his end. Take him, Sheriff Storey — before he faints!”
Six months later they hanged Herb Garth — the man who had boasted to himself that he could pick out Old Man Opportunity in a world filled with so many fakes!
Marked Men
by Ralph R. Perry
Only one man saw him kill, and that man the killer was determined to silence.
Chapter I
The Eyewitness
Slats Doyle entered the station house of the Eighteenth Seattle Precinct wet to the skin, and blue as only an Irishman can be.
Outside the rain was falling heavily, even for Seattle in November. The night was black as a pocket and wet as Niagara, and the sight of Lieutenant Wollson at the desk, who would be certain to order Doyle out into the storm again, was the final bitter drop in the new detective’s cup. He flung himself into a chair and stared at his sodden trouser legs — a lean-waisted, handsome hundred and ninety pounder with curly black hair and eyes of light Irish blue. Wollson grinned down at him maliciously.
“Any flat foot can bust down a door and take a gat away from a crazy hop-head. That’s all you done, Doyle — and the commissioner put you in plain clothes for doing it,” the lieutenant taunted. “Nervy and two fisted are you, huh? Well, that don’t make you a detective — not in this precinct. What have you done about your case?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Wollson repeated in mock surprise. “Three weeks you’ve been on it. If you don’t get results you’ll be back on a beat.”
“You’ll hate that, won’t you?” snapped Doyle. “Okay, gimme back my club. I’ve found out all that’s going to be found out. There was no reason for that killing. No motive at all. So there’s nothing to follow up.”
“Maybe three guys was bumped off for fun, huh?” Wollson settled his huge body more comfortably in his swivel chair. He was fat-bellied, thick-necked, and slow-witted, a man who had reached his present position by invariably doing the obvious. When his subordinates succeeded he took the credit. If they failed, the blunder was theirs, not his, and they bore the blame. The little eyes that were like slits in his fat cheeks gleamed with enjoyment at Doyle’s dejection.
“You ain’t kidding me!” said the detective aggressively. “You assigned me to this case because you figured I’d make a flop. I have — because so far I haven’t got a break.
“A moving van is found parked at the curb with three guys in the front seat, dead. The glass doors of the cab are tight shut, and there’s not a mark on the bodies. The autopsy shows they died by inhaling hydrocyanic acid gas, but the coroner’s office can’t figure out how enough of that stuff could be got inside the cab.
“I did, didn’t I? I found splinters of a glass bottle in the radiator. The bottle was busted against the radiator, and the fan sucked the fumes back into the cab. That gas will kill in half a minute. That’s how they were bumped off.”
“Yeah,” Wollson grunted with heavy scorn. “That’s how. Who the hell cares how? What the prosecutor wants to know is who done it, and why.”
Slats Doyle clenched his fists. “The driver and his helpers didn’t have an enemy in the world,” he explained bitterly. “There was nothing in the van but furniture. Cheap furniture. It wasn’t a gang killing. It wasn’t done for revenge, and it ain’t a case of hijacking where a mistake was made about the truck. Some guy bumped off three perfect strangers. He did it on the road, too, while the van was moving. When the driver felt himself getting groggy he drew over to the curb and shoved the gears into neutral. It would be the natural thing to do.”
“Yeah, you’re smart. You got everything but a suspect,” Wollson snorted. “The commissioner wants two-fisted, aggressive dicks that will go after the crooks, does he? I hopes he likes the sample he picked — over my head. Maybe next time he’ll let promotions be made by the men that should make them.”
“Meaning you?”
“Right,” Wollson nodded. “I ain’t got nothing against you personally, Slats. You’re a good cop. You knew that hophead was going to shoot when you touched that door, and you went after him like a college guy after a football. I saw the bullet holes in the door. Why he didn’t bump you off only the saints know. I’ll give you your beat back, and I’ll get you into plain clothes again. Sometime. Later. But right now, your being what you are is a crack at me, see?
“The commissioner is an efficiency hound, and a business man.” Wollson’s grin took a scornful twist. “He wants results, and he don’t see that results can be got by a guy that sits still. His kind has got to get out of the department, or my kind, see? You’re the commissioner’s choice, and this moving van case was played up so big in the papers that it’s a test case, see?”
“Where me and the commissioner are licked before we start!”
“No,” Wollson growled. “The trouble with both of you is that you ain’t learned to wait. Look at me. I’ve been thirty years on the force and nobody ever saw me excited, or in a hurry. Three bozos get bumped off for no reason. No witness saw the job done and the stoolies don’t know nothing about it. Okay. Nothing can be done — so instead of running around in the rain I don’t do nothing. Sooner or later that murderer will try that same thing again. He will slip up, and I’ll get him.”
“While you wait he’ll bump off a couple more.”
“Of course. That can’t be helped,” growled Wollson, half angrily. “The crook always gets the first shot.” The telephone on the desk rang, and he drew the instrument toward him with a sweep of a huge fat arm.
“Eighteenth Precinct,” he growled.
At once over the slosh of the rain on the street outside the shrill squealing of an excited voice in the transmitter filled the station house, word tumbling over word.
With a scowl Wollson put the receiver against his fat cheek.
“Okay, Mike,” he grunted contemptuously. “Now take your foot out of your mouth. I got you so far. You heard shots and a girl screaming at 242 Rose Street, and when you got there you found a man had been shot, through the window of his own living room. Okay. That’s old stuff, Mike. What’s there about it to make you start talking in bunches?... Huh?... What!... What!”
Despite Wollson’s boast that he never became excited, his face had turned red and white in patches, and his gruff voice shook. Slats Doyle was on his feet like a sprinter waiting the word to go. Mike Slatterly was a patrolman and a good, level-headed guy.
“Mike says the man was wounded too bad to speak,” Wollson explained heavily. “The girl claims her father was looking out of the window. Powie! some one outside unloads a whole clip. The girl screams and starts to bandage her old man. He’s hit in three places. Mike rings up an ambulance and goes outside. And... and... there’s a registered mail truck parked at the curb with the engine running—”