Despite this reassurance Doyle raised his head. He lay on the floor of the Freeman living room. Every window was open, and wind and rain drove in in gusts that sent the sodden curtains flying like wet flags. Bent over the couch he saw Myra’s golden head and the back of a police doctor. Freeman had not been removed, then.
The room was full of policemen who stood around with gloomy expressions that Doyle could not understand, under the circumstances. They should be out rounding up Lefty the Monk and tracing down the tall man who had been a witness at Lefty’s trial. Peck was not present. If an hour had elapsed the reporter would be busy at the newspaper office.
“For once I gotta admit a reporter has been of some use,” growled Wollson. “It was him that thought of opening the windows. Otherwise the doctor says enough of the gas would have seeped in through the crack in the door to do for you. You’re lucky, Slats. Ain’t many that have got a lungful of cyanide and lived to tell about it. Mike wasted time running in here instead of circling the house. When he got out again the killer was gone. Damn the nerve of the guy! He was after our witnesses! He’s thorough, damn him. Damn thorough!”
“Our one witness. The girl didn’t see anything.”
“He don’t know that,” Wollson growled. “He tried to put her on the spot, with you and Peck for good measure. We’ve got to protect that dame as carefully as her father.”
Doyle sat up. That the lives of the Freemans were still in danger was a startling idea, yet an instant of reflection revealed that Wollson was right. The killer had not rushed to get away after the loot was secured. He had dared to come back, to take the offensive against the law.
He had brains. Two lives stood between him and the enjoyment of the money he had stolen. A case of mail robbery is never marked closed. The government would spend years tracing down clews, though these led to the remotest corners of the world. A man noteworthy because of his height would not dare face the eyewitness of his crime.
“Freeman must be right. The killer is tall,” Doyle muttered. “Did Peck tell you about the tall man that testified at Lefty’s trial?”
“Yeah, he told me,” growled the lieutenant sarcastically. He passed Doyle a newspaper photograph which showed a man about forty, clean-shaven, with eyebrows that met about the bridge of the nose and a straight, thin mouth. “That’s the witness at Lefty the Monk’s trial. His name is Irving Traub. He’s a mining engineer and assayer that came to Seattle two years ago. Lives in his laboratory, don’t do much business and ain’t got no record.
“His height, according to clippings in the Herald office, is six feet seven or eight. Yeah. That reporter sure slipped us the dope. He damn near cried when I wouldn’t let him print anything. He allowed this case was a brilliant exploit by the police — meaning you — and a heroic rescue. He swore your theory of it was correct.”
“Well?” said Doyle sharply.
“So did I, an hour ago. We checked up and found that Traub left for Alaska three days ago. On a sailing ship that carries supplies to the salmon packers. We’ve tried to get her on the wireless, but she don’t carry any. Won’t dock for two days, either. Suppose this Traub did leave her, which is possible, what then?”
“Lefty knows him.”
“Lefty,” growled Wollson angrily, “was picked up four blocks away from here with a bullet hole between his eyes. The killer must have plugged him as soon as the mail bags was in the car. Didn’t I say he was thorough? I’m going to send the Freemans off to jail before he collects them, too. Then I can wait.”
Doyle was silent. The thought of Myra and her father in jail, even as guests, was not pleasant to contemplate. They were too independent, too strong willed and too fearless to endure that long, and they could not be held against their will. Once they went home again, police protection would be a mockery.
“Wait how long?” he asked guardedly.
“Why, about a week,” Wollson answered. “If the killer makes a getaway, this becomes a Federal case, don’t it? If he tries to hide out here and fight, he’s got to go to some of the gangsters to keep away from us. I’m figuring he’ll do that, and when he does, one of these birds will bump him for the jack. The newspapers will be out pretty soon with the news that he’s got two million bucks in cash and negotiable stuff, Slats. How long will he last with that?”
Again Slats was silent. Wollson was attempting to pass the buck. Even if he were right, and the dead body of a tall, bearded man were picked up some time in the next week, the money would remain lost. Worse still, Wollson was assuming that the killer was a fool — and every move the criminal had made argued quite the contrary.
“Freeman is about my size and build,” Doyle thought aloud. “Suppose I changed clothes with him, chief? Suppose you sent him to the police infirmary in my name? He’s as safe there as in jail. The girl could be sent there, too, to be treated for shock. I could stay here — in bed — under the name of Freeman. The police surgeon would keep his mouth shut, and we could get the Herald to print a story that Freeman was too badly injured to be moved. Bill Peck is friendly enough with us to fix it. Don’t guard the house at all — or only with one patrolman that has orders to keep both eyes shut if he sees any one trying to get close. If the killer thought we cops were dumb he might take another crack at his witness.”
The fat face furrowed with thought. The narrow eyes glanced at Doyle, and away again.
“It can’t do no harm. It would look to the commissioner as though you were backing his ideas,” Doyle argued cunningly. “Gimme a break, chief. You put the idea up to the commissioner and the Herald. If we get this killer before the Federals do, neither of them will forget who did it.”
“Yeah,” Wollson growled weakly. “You’re volunteering for his duty, Doyle? I don’t want no mistake about that! I don’t want it said I ordered any of my men to stay here and pass himself off as a guy that a damn thorough killer would give about a million bucks to see dead.”
“Sure, I volunteer,” Doyle grinned.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see a golden head bent over a figure that barely breathed. If he succeeded, a girl would be safe. If he failed — there would be no harm done. No harm at all.
“We gotta guess at his name, and he’s got two million bucks,” Wollson was growling. “Hell, the cops never get a break! He could hire more men than there are. on the force if he knew how to use his jack.”
“If? Yes — if!” Doyle agreed. This killer had brains and nerve. He would know.
Chapter IV
Murderer’s Money
The Hongkong Café had been a sailors’ boarding house in the days when seamen were shanghaied for their advance money. As the fashions in rackets changed it had become successively a gambling house, a saloon, and last, a dance hall, but the essential nature of the place had never changed.
The huge, rambling wooden structure, built on piles that extended far out over the harbor, was a plague spot, designed for smuggling men, drugs, or liquor; a maze of passages that led to secret or private rooms. It was pierced with trap doors, provided with a dozen exits by land and water, and, under the management of Gus Voticelli, was the stronghold of the underworld. Beer and alky runners, gamblers and all their ilk were glad to split with the fat Italian for legal or physical protection in times of difficulty, and the right to operate without competition in the territory he assigned to them.
At midnight a tall man whose face shone from a recent application of the razor, entered the Hongkong and asked the bartender for Gus. Though he was a stranger, he was ushered to the private room of the boss racketeer with the briefest delay. The eyebrows that crossed his face in an unbroken bar of black, the thin, straight lips, the eyes were those of a man who would tolerate no refusal.