“Yeah, I had plenty of trouble,” the Scar slurred boastfully, as Sleepy Harry might have done, “but I got out of it oke. I just used the old bean.” He started to go into the club, turned and asked: “You say the boss was out some place?”
“Downtown. He went out soon as he heard you was nabbed.”
The Scar nodded and went into the club. The hat-check girl flipped him a big “hello” from across the half-door of her cubicle. He took off his hat and grinned back at her, then continued walking.
The fun was at its height. Bejeweled ladies in expensive evening gowns danced, chatted and sipped drinks with male fashion-plates. A marimba band was beating out a conga.
Two of the mob glimpsed “Sleepy Harry” the minute he showed his face inside the door. They came over fast, bursting with curiosity.
“What happened to you?” one demanded. “How did you get away from that guy?”
“What’d he do to you?” the other asked.
“What’d he do to me?” The Scar forced a sickly grin and his eyes narrowed wisely. “What’d I do to him, you mean. Soon as he took that gat outa my ear, I batted the ugly puss off him. Where’s the boss?”
“In the office. Boy, will he be surprised to see you! He was getting ready to collect for flowers for ya.”
“Yeah, come on,” said the other. “We wanna get a slant at his face when he gloms you.”
They took hold of the Scar’s big arms as though he had suddenly become someone they were proud to associate with. They hustled him past the crowded tables, skirted the dance floor and led him through a narrow archway to the right of the band dais. Then down a narrow, blue-lighted corridor they went, halted before a green door.
One of the thugs rapped at the door three times. The door opened.
From behind the huge flat-top desk at which he sat, Luke Condor radiated power. It had to be admitted, too, that when Condor wore evening clothes, he was a candidate for Hollywood. The club owner was tall and handsome and his black hair was long and sleek. For all his good looks, though, it was obvious that he was muscular and kept in trim.
Condor’s eyes swelled in his head when he saw “Sleepy Harry Russell” standing before him on the threshold.
“What the devil!” he ejaculated. “I thought you were—”
The Scar grinned. “Naw, I got away.”
“How?”
“Long story, Boss. Learned plenty of important stuff, too. I better tell you alone.”
Condor was curious to hear what had happened after the Scar had abducted Sleepy Harry Russell and what he had learned. Chris Korpuli had got in touch with Condor immediately after the Scar left and told him all about the strange visit.
The club owner nodded to those in the office to leave. They filed out with dark looks. They didn’t like being shut out this way.
When Condor and the man he thought was Sleepy Harry Russell were alone, the gang leader demanded:
“Well, let’s have it! What’s this big secret? How did you get away from this Purple Scar? Who is he?”
The Scar stood facing him, but his eyes were not on the night club owner. Instead they were focused on the door behind Condor. Obviously that door led out the back way. The Scar had spied it the moment he entered. He hadn’t counted on this swift course of action, but since the breaks had come his way and he was in more danger every moment he stayed here, he decided to take this chance.
He leaped to the door through which he had just entered. His left hand flew to the bolt. His right dropped simultaneously to his gun.
Behind him was an ear-splintering explosion. The force of it hurled the Scar back against the side wall. For a moment he knelt, stunned, then dazedly turned.
Luke Condor, reduced to a smoldering, charred, mangled corpse, was sprawled across the shattered desk. There was as little left of him as there had been of Mrs. Small or the two killers at the shack on Red Point.
Chapter XIV
Under Arrest
The door behind the Purple Scar was suddenly thrown open. He turned his head. Half a dozen of Condor’s prize thugs pressed whitefaced in the doorway. He continued to kneel there an instant longer, not knowing quite what had happened, still groggy from the impact of the sudden explosion.
Abruptly, though, he understood. He had been alone in this room when this horror had happened. He was the only person who apparently could have done it. Before he could rise to his feet, or utter a word in his defense, one of the thugs cried out:
“He killed the boss!”
Instantly they were upon him. The six of them flattened him to the ground, punching, hammering, beating him across the head with their gun butts and fists until the world went black and he felt no more pain.
Stars and rockets flashed big and bright inside his head. There was a blur of color — red, gold, pink, silver and blue, but mostly blue, swimming before his blurred gaze as consciousness came roaring back into his brain. He stirred, opened his eyes wider and looked around. Cops were everywhere, blue-coated cops with glittering gold buttons, silver shields, pink faces.
He blinked furiously. He could remember the exposion, Condor, his face and the entire front of his body blown away. The six menacing thugs in the doorway and the beating they dealt out. How his head pounded and his body ached from that beating!
A voice seeped through to his throbbing brain. He turned his head half-around and looked up. Out of the crazy-quilt of color and forms dancing before his eyes appeared a face. It was a square face with snapping, black eyes.
Detective Captain Dan Griffin! For that was the Scar truly thankful.
“He’s come to, Captain,” someone said close to the Scar’s ear.
Griffin came forward. His square jaw was set hard. He glared down at the Scar, his eyes like black dots on a square white die.
“Why did you kill Luke Condor?” he demanded harshly.
Miles Murdock, the Purple Scar, gazed up at his friend. The beating he had taken must have made his face even more unrecognizable, he thought. The Scar pretended that he wanted to answer Griffin’s question, but that he could not speak above a strangled whisper. The pretense worked. Griffin bent forward and put his ear close to the Scar’s mouth.
“Get rid of this mob, Griff,” the Scar breathed. “I didn’t kill Condor any more than you did. I’m Doc Murdock.”
Griffin stifled his exclamation before it reached his lips. He drew erect with an incongruous expression on his blocky face, he stared down at the man on the floor with mingled astonishment and admiration. He knew it was Doc Murdock, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Griffin had recognized his voice and, though the features were entirely different, anything Doc did with faces no longer surprised the detective-captain.
Griffin quickly cleared the room. When they were alone, Miles sprang to his feet and knelt beside the torn, mangled corpse of Luke Condor. He inspected it thoroughly, in his mind unraveling the answers to this baffling riddle.
Farrar, Martin, Condor and old Mrs. Small had each been killed in concentrated explosions that did little damage except to the parties immediately involved.
Doc thought back to that scene at Red Point. At the time it had looked like coincidence that Punchy Gus Martin should have been there at that precise moment, but it wasn’t fortuitous. The arch-criminal behind these killings had known the time Martin was to be there, knew the bus schedule, knew just how long it would take the giant killer to walk from the last stop to the fateful shack. Also, the fiend must have arranged it so he could catch that bus, which had passed Doc on the bridge, back to Akelton.