Maxwell Grant
The Mobsmen On The Spot
CHAPTER I
THUGS IN THE NIGHT
SIX men sat sullen and silent in the old touring car as it rumbled swiftly through the night-shrouded street. With curtains tightly drawn, the car twisted between elevated pillars, turned sharply to the right, and then, skidding, slued about, broadside to the road, before a row of sinister-looking houses.
The heavy-set man, who sat beside the driver up front, grunted. His coat collar was turned up. His hat was jammed over his eyes; his right hand, plunged deep in one pocket, closed tightly about a hard metal object.
“This is good enough,” he muttered.
Understandingly, the driver snapped off the ignition switch and turned off the lights.
One of the others cautiously opened a back door. “I’m gonna dump Louie,” came a whisper.
The big man twisted thick shoulders, leaned back, and spoke rapidly from one side of his mouth:
“Louie stays right where he is. How you had the brains to live this long, stops me. All you gotta do is to dump Louie here and every flatfoot in town’ll be on our trail. You’ll spoil the whole racket for us and for Tim.
“It don’t take more brains than these dumb cops got to figure Louie was trying to muscle into our dough. Louie stays. You can keep him warm.”
The hunch-shouldered man in back grumbled: “I don’t like ridin’ next to a stiff.” But the door closed again softly.
OF the six swarthy passengers in the car, five of them were alive.
Ernie, the thick-set man who was their leader, cautiously opened the door and peered out. His squinting eyes strained to pierce the gloom. From a distance came the lonesome rumble of an elevated train. Aside from that — silence.
He cursed under his breath. Then, an instant later, he suddenly tensed. Through the stillness he heard faintly the exhaust of a heavy-duty truck’s motor.
Ernie’s eyes glittered. The three men in the rear seat shifted slightly, their ratlike faces tense, strained.
Soon headlights flashed on the stalled touring car. The brakes of the moving vehicle, a huge storage van, ground to a halt.
From its covered driver’s seat, two men leaped out. They seemed in a hurry; impatient to get the obstructing car out the way. They shouted gruff inquiries.
“Give ‘em the works,” spat Ernie. Suddenly the curtained doors of the touring car swung open. The gangsters poured out; swarmed upon the van men.
A quick scuffle; the panting sound of blows. A metal-incased fist slammed against the jaw of the larger man, the van’s driver. He slumped to the street like a wet paper bag.
The smaller man grappled with two of the gangsters, then fell as though stricken dead when a heavy wrench crashed over his ear.
“Bust up this load!” came Ernie’s low-pitched command.
The slight, wiry forms of the thugs moved swiftly, ghostlike, through the gloom. Two of them climbed into the driver’s seat; two more ran around to the rear.
A short crowbar in the hands of one of the latter pair had already been inserted at the tailboard. He threw his weight onto it. The board creaked. And at the sound came a low exclamation of warning from the other gangster in the rear.
He pointed to a small, low-hung sedan, drawn up to the curb within only a few feet of them. So silently had it arrived — rolling up with a closed motor — that none of the mobsmen had observed its coming.
The thug with the crowbar turned sharply. As he did, a peculiar, sighing sound came from the half-open rear window of the darkened car.
The gangster cried out. The crowbar clattered to the paving. He seized his wrist.
“He’s got a silencer!” grunted the wounded man. “Look out—”
Again came the sigh. The injured man’s partner suddenly collapsed.
Ernie ran around, dragging at his gat.
“Drop this van — get that car!” he yelled, approaching the sedan. He yanked open the door, gun raised.
The heavy-calibered pistol swished downward. But the blow was never completed.
A powerful, unseen hand had come from the darkness; steel-like fingers had grappled on Ernie’s thick wrist.
A quick, strong twist, and Ernie found himself thrown flat on his back in the street.
In the dim glare of the van’s lights, a black-clad figure swung into the fray. Like a huge bat in human form, the figure struck with his fists. At each blow, a gangster went down.
There followed a mocking laugh — eerie, sinister. The mysterious interloper had disappeared into nothingness. But the small, low-hung sedan was coursing away as noiselessly as it had earlier arrived.
Ernie rose to his knees in time to see the shadowlike car gliding swiftly away.
As if hypnotized, Ernie swayed, the memory of that mocking laugh still stinging his ears. But there came then a more earthly sound to spur the gangster into action.
The shrill alarm of a police whistle!
Ernie struggled to his feet. He rested a moment on the fender of the van, then, hands deep in pockets, hatbrim pulled down, he walked off, not too hurriedly, in the opposite direction from whence had come the warning blast.
He knew that those gorillas — lying senseless in the street — wouldn’t talk — if they wanted to take up living again.
CHAPTER II
RACKETEERS DISAGREE
THE Hotel Spartan was an old, third-class hostelry that stood near the edge of the lower East Side. It had been many years since the place had known its palmy days. It was surrounded by low, dilapidated buildings, and the elevated railroad ran in front of its grimy windows.
A heavy-set man walked through the door. He noted the loungers standing about the lobby, then started up the rubber-treaded stairs. Had he paused to glance through the broad window of the lobby he might have seen a shadowy form melt into the darkness.
At the fourth floor he stopped in front of the door of a room and knocked softly.
“Who’s there?” came a whispered voice.
“Ernie,” the visitor replied.
The door opened, and Ernie stepped inside. The door closed behind him.
A few moments later, there was a movement in the hallway outside the closed door. For a brief instant, the form of a human being came into view — then it disappeared; a shadowy figure that went back toward the stairway that led to the ground floor.
Inside the hotel room, two men faced each other amidst a gloomy light. They formed a strange pair, in the setting of an antiquated sitting room, with its few rickety chairs, and box couch in the corner.
“What’s the matter, Ernie?” demanded the tall, rugged man who had been in the room. “What’s happened to you?”
“Nothing, Tim!” Ernie growled in reply. “Nothing that matters! Give me a shot! I want to talk to you!”
Tim led the way to an inner room, leaving the door open.
This room was small. It contained a desk, two chairs, and a safe. On the desk was a typewriter. Beside it lay a pile of stationery that bore the heading: “Storage Warehouse Security Association.”
The man called Ernie reached out as the other poured him a drink of liquor. He swallowed the fluid at a single gulp.
“Sit down a minute, Tim,” he said.
Tim corked the bottle angrily and obeyed. He looked on in amazement while Ernie turned out the light, so that only the dim glow from the other room remained.
Tim watched while Ernie cautiously raised the blind of the window and peered downward into the blackness of the alley. Then he lowered the blind and turned on the light.
“What’s the lay, Ernie?” demanded Tim.
“If you want to know,” growled the visitor, “I’ll tell you! The Tim Waldron storage racket took it on the chin tonight!”
“Yeah?” There was menace in Waldron’s tone. “Yeah? What was the matter with Ernie Shires, the guy that has the tough gorillas?”