Chapter VII
Doyle Meets the Killer
The corridor outside the private office extended straight through the building. Through an unshaded window at the far end Doyle caught a glimpse of the lights of a steamship moving out to sea, which located the water side of the building and enabled him to get his bearings.
That Voticelli had gone toward the bar seemed unlikely, so Doyle walked toward the rear. There were half a dozen doors in the corridor, and he paused to listen at each. There was, however, no sound of voices.
At the extreme rear the corridor turned to the right. On the left, a steep, narrow flight of stairs mounted to the second floor. Doyle thought swiftly. The kitchen and private dining room were at the right. To the left was the dance hall. Any private rooms in which a girl might be hidden or a criminal concealed, would logically be found on the floor above the dance hall. Therefore he went up the stairs, and stepped at the top into a corridor such as he had left.
On a stool twenty feet away a slatternly old woman in black was perched like a dried up crow. Despite the hour, she was wide awake.
“Bringin’ me a drink, deary?” she cackled.
Doyle’s crude disguise had won him an instant’s respite. The old woman was peering at him, chin forward and eyes puckered as though her sight were dim. Doyle hoped she was half blind.
“The boss ordered this bottle, but he ain’t in his office. Did he come up here?” he questioned, stepping forward.
“No, he — hey, who the hell are you?” Like a flash the old woman was on her feet, her back against the door before which she had been posted.
“The new waiter—”
“Like hell!” she shrilled, and opened her mouth to scream.
Doyle leaped to silence her, but with an agility he had not suspected she ducked under his arm. The tray he carried fell with an echoing clang, and hard upon that the old woman’s screams cut the silence. Racing down the corridor, she yelled for help, for the boss, for a gat — quick!
On the floor below a door opened with an echoing slam. Heavy feet started on the run for the stairway. Doyle’s escape was cut off. To follow the old woman was to be guided into the midst of the gangsters. In the hope of breaking through to a window he hurled himself against the door which the woman had been guarding, only to recoil as though his shoulder had struck a solid partition.
No flimsy bedroom door, this! It was secured with a cylinder lock — and why should it be watched at two in the morning? He heard the heavy feet that were running toward him strike the stairs, but he caught up the stool and swung it with all his force against that massive door. At the third blow one of the upper panels cracked. That was all. The framework was still solid. To smash the door would take an ax.
Swiftly he put his eye to the crack. Though it was narrow as a knife slit, he could see an unshaded electric light, a part of a window, barred with heavy wire netting, and one side of a narrow iron bed. Only one side, but the blankets were pulled awry as though the bed were occupied.
The screaming and the hammering on the door had been enough to wake the soundest sleeper. Only a person drugged or insensible could lie quiet in such a racket. Drugged — or dead!
With a wild Irish yell Doyle snatched his revolver and sprang for the head of the stairs. Discover who lay in that bed he must. He would drive the gangsters back, then shoot a hole through that door if necessary. The police outside would hear the shots. There would be help for him in a minute if he could only hold his ground!
He was at the stairway just as Voticelli reached the top. They fired simultaneously.
A red hot whip flicked Doyle’s cheek. His own bullet missed completely, but with his left hand he managed to knock the gangster’s gun aside as Voticelli fired again. They were chest to chest, and with a fighter’s instinct Doyle clinched, holding the gangster’s gun away from his body. There was an instant when Doyle might have shot, but it would have been murder. Instead he swung his revolver at the head of the other man.
Though the blow landed, Voticelli half parried it with his left elbow. He was dazed and his pistol slipped from his fingers, but he managed to throw both arms around Doyle and cling like a leech. He was a foot shorter than Doyle, and though the detective struck again and again at the head pressed against his chest, he could not knock the gangster out or wrestle out of his grip.
A pistol barked, and a bullet zupped within an inch of Doyle’s ear. The shot came from the bottom of the stairs. He swung Voticelli between himself and the new enemy and looked down into cold eyes that glared from beneath eyebrows that were an unbroken bar of black, and into the muzzle of a levelled pistol that coolly followed every movement of Doyle’s head.
Even with the beard gone, and before he noticed Traub’s height, Doyle recognized him by the eyebrows. The killer was in no hurry to shoot. He was sighting carefully, making sure of his arm. In that tense second Doyle noticed that Traub was stripped to his undershirt, that he had a flash light wrapped with tire tape in his left hand. Then the detective dropped to his knees, dragging Voticelli down with him.
Traub swore aloud, for as his target vanished behind the gangster’s broad back a police whistle shrilled inside the café. There were shouts from the front of the building, the crash of a door burst from its hinges by a concerted rush, and then the loud pound of feet down the corridor. The police were coming at last.
Doyle strained to jerk his gun arm from Voticelli’s clutch. Traub coolly turned to the window, threw both legs over the sill, and then leaned back for a last shot at the men above. Doyle winced at the flash, but the bullet was not aimed at him. Voticelli suddenly went limp, shot through the shoulder blade to the heart.
Traub leaped into the harbor. The bullet Doyle sent after him only shattered the glass.
When the sergeant of the plainclothes squad reached the end of the corridor Doyle had come down the stairs and was climbing through the window. His face was a mask of blood, and the sergeant, seeing what looked to be a waiter on the point of escape, leaped for him.
“Not me — I’m Doyle,” said the detective through clenched teeth. “There’s a broken door upstairs, and Myra Freeman’s there, I think. Look after her, sarge! She’s here somewhere, if you have to take this damn place apart to find her!”
“Okay, but—”
“But, hell! The killer’s in the harbor! Tell Wollson it is Traub, and send a police launch to hunt under the piers. I’m going now!”
Doyle twisted and dived into the dark water, revolver in hand.
Chapter VIII
Under the Piers
When he rose he could see little. He trod water, and peered left and right. Beneath the café the darkness was absolute. Among the piling was a hiding place that Traub could have reached in three strokes, and where he might lurk for hours, slipping from behind one pile to the next unseen, even though half a dozen men with flash lights invaded his refuge. There was no sound but the slup slup of the tide against the piling, and no sign of the police launch whatever.
Yet if Traub had sought the nearest shelter, he would be caught when morning came at the latest. A swimmer could not move fast or far through the piling. Doyle’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness. The faint glimmer of the lights on the shipping anchored near by cast a sheen on the water. He began to pick out logs floating in the tide, a bit of box, square and black against the surface glimmer, and, suddenly, strikingly noticeable because, of all the small dark objects on the surface, it alone did not drift with the tide, a round blot perhaps fifty yards away that could only be the head of a man — a man swimming parallel to the piers, and within a dozen feet of their shadow.