“You will remember, captain, earlier in the night, when Winters came into this office to be examined, Corporal Frank hastily excused himself and left. When Winters left here, Frank followed him and struck him down from behind. He had to get the ring before you, or I, or Baxter, noticed it. He flung it through the porthole, doubtlessly thinking it was gone forever and that he was safe at last. But the ventilator caught the ring, and I found it. On the ring was the second smear of ointment.
“Frank went to the wash room to clean the blood from the knife. Then he probably became aware that I was in the hold. Panic-stricken, he left without thoroughly cleansing the knife. He hit upon the idea of planting it under Shelby’s pillow. He knew that Shelby had threatened Winters during the dice game. But the water had not washed off the third smear of ointment.”
Flaherty mopped his bald head with the khaki bandanna.
“That’s all, sir.”
Captain Freeman had been listening open-mouthed to Flaherty’s piecing together of the jumbled happenings of the night.
“Flaherty,” he remarked at last, “I don’t know what the army would do without you old noncoms to solve the officers’ problems!”
The Most Dangerous Man
by Everett B. Holles
Without Mercy, Without Reason — the Red Career of Fred Burke, Gangdom’s Monster!
I
It was shortly after seven o’clock one Saturday evening in December that Forrest Kool, a young farmer, was driving along the rolling highway fringing the shores of Lake Michigan near the little resort town of St. Joseph, Michigan. A full moon cast a shimmery sheen across the lake, and shed a soft, still splendor over the snow-covered countryside. In the front seat of Kool’s light Ford sedan was Mrs. Kool, and in the rear seat were their ten-year-old son and Mrs. Kool’s mother, Mrs. Walter Carlson, of Baroda. Christmas was only ten days away and there was the holiday shopping to be done that evening.
As Kool drove his car along the broad highway, another car, a large blue Hudson coupe, drew abreast, careening wildly from one side of the road to the other.
“That man must be drunk!” exclaimed Mrs. Kool nervously.
As she uttered the words the driver of the big coupe steered madly — deliberately it seemed — into Kooks light sedan, crashing into the side of the lighter car and hurtling it into a shallow ditch at the side of the road. The coupe continued down the road for about one hundred yards and stopped. The driver got out clumsily, and walked back to where young Kool was examining his shattered fender.
“How much for the damage?” demanded the man. There was an odor of liquor on his breath and his eyes were bloodshot. He was a powerful appearing person, two hundred pounds or more in weight, with a ruddy complexion and a long underlip. One of his upper front teeth was missing. Kool, who spent his days in the fields and came into town only on Saturday nights, was ignorant of the fact that several thousands of detectives and police officers throughout the United States were looking for a man with a missing front tooth... a man with a ruddy complexion, a long underlip and weighing two hundred and ten pounds.
“Well, I don’t know just how much damage has been done.” Kool said. “But we can go into a garage and find out what is needed to put it back into shape.”
“No: we settle up now,” protested the large man.
The young farmer finally proposed that the stranger pay him twenty-five dollars. The price seemed agreeable to the man and he took a bulky roll of bills from his pocket, peeling off several one-hundred-dollar and fifty-dollar notes. Then he suddenly stuffed the money back into his pocket.
“Say, you can’t get away with this,” he said sullenly. “You know your whole damned car isn’t worth twenty-five dollars.”
And then he staggered off down the road.
“Just as you say,” Kool called after him. “We’ll let some one else settle for us.”
Kool went back to his car. He finally succeeded in prying the damaged fender from off the tire, and drove on. As he passed the blue coupe, which was still standing in the middle of the highway, he saw the stranger slumped over the wheel staring vaguely ahead. A few hundred feet farther on, Kool glanced into the rear view mirror and saw the coupe following, a short distance behind.
As Kool passed a tourist camp about a mile from the city limits, the blue coupe roared alongside, and again the driver steered his car at Kool, who swerved suddenly to the side of the road and narrowly avoided a second collision. Both cars came to a halt and the drivers alighted to renew their argument.
“You’re drunk and I won’t argue with you,” Kool said at last and started back to his car.
“Do you know who I am?” shouted the man.
“No, and I don’t care.”
If he had known... a man with forty-one thousand five hundred dollars on his head... the most heartless, most widely hunted, and called by police the most dangerous man in the world!
Kool drove into St. Joseph with the blue coupe still close behind. At State and Broad Streets, in the center of the town, he saw Policeman Charles Skelly standing at the curb, and he pulled over to the side of the street. He called to Skelly. As the officer approached his car, the blue coupe, traveling at a fast clip, shot by on Broad Street.
“There he goes now!” cried Mrs. Kool. “That man struck our car, forced us into the ditch, and then tried to hit us a second time.”
The officer jumped onto the running board of Kool’s sedan with a terse order, “Follow him!”
At State and Ship Streets, a block farther on, a red traffic light halted both cars, and as Kool drew alongside the blue coupe Officer Skelly called out:
“Say, mister, hadn’t you better settle with this man and save yourself a lot of trouble?”
The ruddy-faced man appeared not to hear the officer. Just then the traffic light changed and he sped off, turning south on Main Street. Skelly, on the running board of Kool’s car, ordered more speed, and after two blocks the two cars were abreast again. A car drew out of a garage, forcing the blue coupe to slacken its speed, and Skelly took advantage of the opportunity to step from the Kool car to the running board of the coupe. The window on the driver’s side was lowered.
With a contemptuous glance at the blue police uniform, the ruddy-faced man reached into the pocket of the door and closed his fist around a forty-five caliber revolver. He fired, the bullet struck Skelly in the chest. The officer swung around dizzily, but gripped the car door. He clutched at his chest.
There was a second shot that imbedded itself in the officer’s right side, and as Skelly cried out in pain and swung from the car to the pavement the man with the missing front tooth laughed and fired again.
Skelly, reeling with faintness and crying with pain, was clawing at the revolver holster at his side when the third bullet struck him in the stomach.
As the young officer crumpled to the pavement in a heap, the man in the blue coupe put his car into motion and roared south on Main Street, which led to the Indiana-Michigan line twenty-five miles away.
A score of men and women saw the ruthless shooting of the young officer, but those who didn’t run for cover at the sound of the first shot were too dazed by the suddenness of the crime to intercede. J. J. Theisen, president of the Commercial Bank, was less than twenty-five feet from the blue coupe and within easy range of the mad motorist’s bullets.
As the big coupe raced southward from the scene, William Struever, of Benton Harbor, Michigan, a witness to the whole affair, and a cousin of Skelly, ran from the curb to the wounded officer lying in a pool of blood.