Doc smiled behind the mask.
“Then you’d want to see John Murdock’s murder avenged?”
“By all means!”
“You knew the Smalls pretty well.”
If such a thing were possible, de Gaul’s eyes opened wider.
“Why, yes,” he faltered. “I knew them very well. They were my people also. They came regularly to hear my sermons. They were good people, very good people. But what have they—”
“Did they have any money?” the Scar put in. “Any valuables?”
“No. They were as poor as the mice in my cellar. They didn’t even have money enough to buy coal for their little stove. On cold nights they often came here and stayed with me.”
“Who paid for their funerals?” asked the Scar.
De Gaul paused for a long moment, his gaze riveted on the Scar’s face.
“Arnold Wisply,” he replied at last.
The name struck the Scar like a thunderbolt. He should have thought of Wisply before. He recalled now that he had heard of the tenement owner burying a good many of the elderly destitutes who lived in his dilapidated buildings, yet it had never occurred to him before as being significant. He should have realized the fat pinch-penny wasn’t the type to give away charity, unless he had a good ulterior motive.
A talk with Arnold Wisply might prove interesting, the Purple Scar decided. Better still would be a look through his books and papers.
There was a closet in one corner of the small office. The door was warped and almost ready to drop off, but it would hold a man of de Gaul’s feeble strength until the Scar could get out of the building and away.
Doc apologized briefly for the necessity, locked de Gaul inside the closet and left the building with a fresh scent to track down.
From a drug store telephone booth, he called Dale Jordan at her apartment.
“You have a car, haven’t you?” he asked.
“Yes,” the girl answered. “It isn’t much, but it’ll take you where you want to go and bring you back — I hope. That part unfortunately doesn’t depend on the car.”
“Get it and meet me at the corner of Chestnut and Autumn as soon as you can. But first stop at the studio and get my make-up kit.”
Less than twenty minutes later, Dale Jordan picked up Doc Murdock in her coupé. They drove to a secluded spot, where he quickly put on a fresh make-up. Then they proceeded to Wisply’s residence.
Wisply lived in the suburbs, which was the principal reason why Doc had called Dale to drive him. Transit facilities were bad out there and he wanted to make sure he had a quick getaway if he needed it.
A block from their destination, the Scar got out of the car. He told Dale to drive around and return to this spot at five-minute intervals until he showed up.
“I’ll be only about five or ten minutes at the most,” he promised.
The Scar found the home of Arnold Wisply to be a huge house set on a lawned terrace, surrounded with dense shrubbery and trees. It was a glaring contrast to the squalor of the tenements that paid for it. Always a humanitarian, Doc could scarcely control his anger and disgust.
Keeping well in the deep shadows of the hedges that cluttered the grounds, he stole to the rear of the house. The place was in total darkness. He climbed up onto the porch and tried the back door. It was locked.
From his inside coat pocket he drew a bunch of keys, a priceless collection that would have done justice to a first-grade burglar. As a matter of fact, they once had. They once belonged to Tommy Pedlar, the Sticky-fingered Kid.
The Scar easily got the door open and slipped inside. It was black and vast as the interior of a whale’s belly until he turned on his flashlight and proceeded warily through the rooms to the library. He didn’t know whether Wisply was home or not, but he didn’t think it necessary to put on the mask. His disguise, he knew, would be sufficient.
He went directly to the big desk standing in one corner of the library. Though he carefully went through the papers that littered the top of the desk, he could find nothing of importance. He started with the top drawer and searched the desk itself.
In the next to the bottom drawer there were several black ledgers. Each bore the name of a different street in the slum section. The Scar selected the book titled “Fleming Street,” the street the Smalls had lived on.
A glance at the first couple of pages told the Scar that the ledger was divided and arranged according to houses that Wisply owned on these streets. He thumbed back to 28, the number of the tenement where the Smalls had lived. On the third floor of tenement 28 was the name “Small, Anne and Joseph.” Beside their names were the words “Paid in Full. Account Closed. May 15, 1939.” And there were several odd numbers.
The significance of this entry brought the Scar’s altered brows together in a puzzled frown. The Smalls hadn’t died until March, 1941, yet they lived rent free in Arnold Wisply’s tenement since May, 1939. Why? In what way had Arnold Wisply been obligated to these people? Why had he allowed them a free apartment for almost two years?
Curious, the Scar went through the entire book. There were other names with the same cancellations, names that the Scar knew. They were all elderly people. What kind of devilish scheme was Wisply involved in? Was he really a great benefactor who didn’t want his good deeds known?
No matter how he tried, the Scar couldn’t picture Wisply as a philanthropist.
Placing the book back carefully in the drawer, he continued his search more eagerly than before. He was certain that those entries were cross-indexed some place else. When that cross-index was found, it would probably answer the question he was searching for.
There was nothing else in the desk, but in a small cabinet behind it he found a small card index.
He had memorized the numbers alongside Mr. and Mrs. Small’s names. He got out the card that corresponded. It read:
109
A — $750 — May 15, 1939
B — $500 — May 21, 1939
Final total — $370
It wasn’t hard for the Scar to figure out what those startling figures spelled. On May 15 and May 21 respectively, Arnold Wisply had taken over Mr. and Mrs. Small’s insurance polices and cashed them in for a total of $1250. It was plain that this was Wisply’s way of making a few extra dollars at the expense of these aged destitutes. According to the cards, he practiced it on all his elderly tenants, people with only a few more years to live.
Obviously he had them cash in their policies for what they could get, then turn the money over to him with the understanding that they would receive free burial and free rent in his house for as long as they lived. In the case of the Smalls, he had made the insignificant sum of three hundred and seventy dollars. Had Mrs. Small lived a few more years, Wisply would have lost money.
When dealing with individual cases, the profit would always be small, but Wisply housed many hundreds of aged tenants. The total must run into staggering figures. And a man who would stoop to taking such unfair advantage of these unfortunates might stoop to anything, even murder.
Disgustedly, still bewildered by it all, the Scar replaced the cards into the cabinet and shut the door. He heard a step behind him, snapped off his flash and started to turn. Something hard and heavy whirred through the air and collided with his skull.
He grabbed at the darkness. Another stinging blow hit him at the base of the skull. This one brought absolute darkness.
The Scar crashed to the floor.
Chapter X
Fish Food
Riding around in her coupé, Dale Jordan carried out the Scar’s instructions to the letter. At five-minute intervals she returned to the spot where he had left her, but he was nowhere in sight.