“For Pete’s sakes,” Triangular Head blubbered, “don’t do nothin’, fellers!”
Now that he wasn’t the one in danger, Korpuli tried to goad the two thugs on. They refused to make a move, though. They thought even more of their friend than they did of their lawyer.
“Now all of you get into the bedroom,” the Scar instructed. “I’ll give you five seconds.”
The two mobsters and the attorney hastened into the bedroom. The Scar followed, his gun still jabbed into Triangular Head’s right ear.
“Down under the bed.”
The three of them obediently dropped onto the floor and crawled under the bed.
“Now don’t try to get out from under there for at least five minutes,” said the Scar. “I’m going to be right in the next room, talking to this crook. And the first sound I hear in here is going to be too bad for him.”
The Scar slammed the door shut and locked it from the outside. He had taken his arm from around the neck of Triangular Head and now held the gun at the small of the thug’s back.
“March out the door to the elevator,” he said abruptly. “Keep talking to me all the way down. Make believe I’m one of your pals. I’m going to have this revolver in my coat pocket, covering you every second. One wrong move—”
“I won’t cross you, mister!” the crook blurted out.
“Then start marching!”
As the thug shuffled toward the elevator, the Scar suddenly whipped the ordinary mask out of his secret pocket and slipped it on over the fearful one. When they stopped at the shaft and he rang the bell, the crook glanced at him, started in surprise. He smiled, for Triangular Head was looking up the corridor puzzledly,
“I’m still here,” the Scar assured him. “I’m afraid it’s going to be very difficult for you criminals from now on. You’ll never know who I am, or who isn’t me. One of your own friends may suddenly reveal a scarred, purple face—”
“Gawd!” the thug moaned, his face white and terrified.
“How did you three know I was up here?” asked the Scar.
“The boss owns this hotel,” offered Triangular Head hurriedly. “He was expectin’ maybe you’d call on Mr. Korpuli, so he planted us down stairs in the lobby. He told the desk clerk to keep his peepers open. If anybody wanted to see Korpuli, we were to be sent up.”
“That still doesn’t answer how you knew I was here.”
“You slipped one of the bellhops a buck. The kids pool their tips. The minute the clerk found out where the buck came from, he tried to get Korpuli on the house phone. There wasn’t any answer, so he hot-footed us up there to see what was going on.”
The elevator door slid open.
“Everything all right in Mister Korpuli’s room?” the operator asked. “The desk clerk is having high blood pressure, wonderin’ whether to send up the house dick or the cops.”
Miles prodded his pocketed gun in Triangular Head’s back.
“Oh, no,” the thug said hastily with a deathly grin. “Everything’s swell in there. The boys are just havin’ a drink and this guy is my pal.”
The driver glanced sharply at the Scar, slid the door closed and the lift descended.
Chapter XIII
Death of a Suspect
Outside the hotel, they took a cab. As Triangular Head stepped inside, the Scar hit him expertly on the back of the head. Ten minutes later Triangular Head awoke to find himself propped up in a chair under a bright domelight. He didn’t know it, but he was in Doc Murdock’s Swank Street laboratory. His hands and legs were tied.
Dale Jordan and Doctor Murdock wore gauze masks over their faces so that their prisoner could not identify them.
Doc took the girl over into one corner of the room, out of earshot. He told her his risky plan. She was terrified at the idea, afraid he would be discovered.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said reassuringly. “While I’m gone, though, you’ll have to stay here and keep him company. See that he doesn’t get any notions about trying to get away. Two of him showing up at the same time would be very embarrassing for one of him.”
They went back to Triangular Head, whose name, Doc learned, was “Sleepy Harry” Russell. Doc got out his makeup materials. He sat down before the criminal he was to impersonate. Talking to him skillfully, he studied the man’s face from every conceivable angle, including the way he laughed, smiled, frowned, grimaced. He watched for shadows, highlights.
His examination over, he sat at an angle where Triangular Head could not see him and began to build a face in clay and gum elastic. While he worked, he kept talking to Sleepy Harry Russell to acquaint himself with the tone and quality of the thug’s voice. It was of a lower register than Miles’ voice, and he was a lazy talker. He slurred words, dropped final “gs” and “hs,” and mispronounced every second word.
Doc mimicked him, answering him in the same voice. Dale listened and nodded. It was perfection.
Doc Murdock had still another purpose in asking these questions. He wanted to learn where Sleepy Harry stood in the mob. What were his duties? Who were his closest pals? What did the different men in the gang look like and what were their names? He also asked what the crook had been doing these past few days, so he couldn’t be tripped on that point. His questions were so adroit that his captive gave out information almost without being aware of it.
Sleepy Harry told him he had been spending a lot of time lately, driving Condor around. They had visited Red Point quite a few times.
“What’s Condor been doing over there?” Doc Murdock asked. “It’s not much of a place to operate from.”
“I don’t know,” Sleepy Harry admitted. “Lookin’ at some land, I guess. He’s had a lot of them guys who look through a telescope on a stand. You know, the guys with tape measures.”
“Surveyors?” prompted Doc.
“Yeah, that’s it. They go around measuring the place.”
“Is this land he’s looking over the same spot where the two men were blown up tonight?”
“Naw,” Sleepy Harry said. “It’s up at the end of the island, where the bridge is goin’. The boss owned that place where the shack was for years. Used to use it as a hideout.”
Doc went on with his reconstruction of the thug’s face. When he was finished, he sent Dale out of the room while he changed into Sleepy Harry’s clothes.
Dale returned after Sleepy Harry was covered and tied in his chair again. She was flabbergasted. She looked first at Doc, then at Sleepy Harry, and then back at Doc. Until the plastic surgeon spoke to her in his natural voice, she couldn’t tell them apart.
Doc slid a gun into his hip pocket, left another with the girl.
“Don’t take any chances with Mister Russell,” he warned her. “If he moves, shoot to kill.”
He left by the back door and through the twisting back alley. The Scar was off on one of the most dangerous ventures that Doc Murdock would ever assign to him.
The Black Falcon night club was one of Luke Condor’s most valuable properties. With ample elbow-room, a good-sized dance floor and the best talent he could hire, it gave him a large slice of his vast income. Valuable as it was in that respect, however, the Scar had learned from the captive that it served the still more important function of front for the gang.
Under the guise of Sleepy Harry Russell, the Scar approached the place. There was a resplendently uniformed doorman under the gaudy canopy.
“Hello, Pete,” he said.
“Pete” was one of those little details he had obtained from his prisoner. Pete turned and recognition showed in his eyes. It gave way to surprise.
“Hello, Sleepy!” he cried enthusiastically. “I thought you had some trouble. The boss is all hot and excited about ya. He just came in.”