Dan Griffin kept his word. At four o’clock sharp he had Chris Korpuli, Arnold Wisply and Peter de Gaul at the slum mission. De Gaul had been allowed the courtesy of dressing.
Dan Griffin’s life this past hour had been no rose-strewn path. He had been called down for letting a murder suspect slip through his fingers. When it came to rounding up the lawyer and the tenement house owner, it was like caging a hyena and a water buffalo. They weren’t at all backward about telling the captain that they’d promptly see to it that he lost his captaincy, maybe even his job.
Griffin knew they weren’t joking. They both had influence enough to do it easily.
Griffin had stationed his men in front of the hall to make sure that a man with a “scarred, purple face”—as de Gaul had described it — got in all right. The order was unnecessary. The Purple Scar was already inside. So was Tommy Pedlar.
The Scar used the sound psychological trick of making his opponents wait, hoping to get them on edge, restless. Men in that frame of mind cannot think clearly enough to pattern falsifications.
At four-fifteen, more for Griffin’s sake than for the others, the Scar decided to go in. Through the rear office door he entered abruptly, alone.
“I’m sorry to have kept you gentlemen waiting,” he said in a voice that seemed to have come from the grave.
The four men in the hall whirled to face him. Griffin hadn’t even hinted the true reason he had summoned them here. The Scar swept each face before him. Korpuli, white, pop-eyed, was shaking as if with St. Vitus. De Gaul was as pale-faced as the lawyer, his restless eyes never leaving the Scar’s grotesque features for an instant. Dan Griffin stared in awe, too, for he had not seen this horrible face since that night in the morgue.
Of those before the Purple Scar, only Arnold Wisply seemed contemptuous of his appearance.
“What’s the meaning of this nonsense?” he asked scornfully.
“I am John Murdock!”
“John Murdock is dead!” Wisply retorted.
The ghastly face nodded. “I am dead — murdered by someone in this room — by the same person who killed Jerry Farar, Gus Martin, Luke Condor and Mrs. Small!”
At the mention of the last name, the tenement owner’s attitude changed instantly. The scorn vanished from his fat, pasty face, was replaced by white, quivering fear.
“You bought her insurance policy and her husband’s for small sums, in return for free rent in the fire-traps you own,” stated the Scar. “She showed no signs of approaching death, though, and you were close to losing money on the deal. That gave you every reason for wanting to kill Mrs. Small.”
The pudgy landlord stiffened in his chair and his pasty features went even whiter than before.
“I didn’t kill her!” he suddenly yelled. “All I got out of her death was a couple of hundred dollars. If I wanted to kill anyone for profit, I hold policies five and six times the amount of hers—”
“I know that,” interrupted the Scar. “I want to know whether you investigated Mrs. Small and her husband as carefully as you investigate all your elderly tenants when checking to learn how much insurance they hold.”
Wisply bobbed his head nervously, ran his thick tongue over his blubbery lips and put a lumpy finger between his wilted collar and his lardy neck in order to relieve the pressure.
“They were Italians,” he said finally. “They changed their name to Small right after they landed in this country. They wanted to sound more American.”
“What was their original name?”
“Pocoapoco.”
The Scar wheeled to face Chris Korpuli.
“Your part of the story is that Luke Condor told you to spring Gus Martin, but that you never knew who was behind it.”
Korpuli was perspiring freely.
“For all I know, it was himself he was protecting,” he argued.
Slowly the Scar turned to Peter de Gaul, the missioner.
“Which brings us to you, doesn’t it?”
De Gaul swallowed, mustered a spiritless grin.
“Me? What have I to do with it?”
No one could see behind the mask of the Purple Scar, but his right eye-brow had become the black spade of danger.
He raised his voice and called out sharply:
“Tommy!”
The Sticky-fingered Kid came out of the office and advanced with mincing steps. Everyone watched him.
“Tommy, let me have those deeds we took from Mister de Gaul’s safe,” the Scar ordered.
The Sticky-fingered Kid passed the papers across. De Gaul’s eyes were like saucers.
“This is a frame-up!” he protested savagely.
“What are those deeds for?” Griffin put in.
The Scar told him briefly. Korpuli knew the property.
“Why the city’s been looking everywhere for those deeds!” he exclaimed. “That’s the exact spot where the beach and the boardwalk are going. Those deeds are worth every penny of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars!”
“Which happens to be the reason why de Gaul murdered Mrs. Small and Luke Condor!”
“He’s trying to frame me,” de Gaul yelled fiercely.
Griffin, quiet up to this point, interrupted in the missioner’s defense.
“He couldn’t have killed Condor. He was at Headquarters when it happened.”
“That’s exactly what he wanted you to think,” said the Scar. “The perfect alibi. He didn’t have to be present when his victims were blown to pieces. The protective medallions which de Gaul makes and sells to his people gave me the answer. When he wanted a person conveniently out of the way — such as Condor, Martin, Farrar, or Mrs. Small — he bored tiny holes in these coins. Into these cavities he froze nitro-nitoxide.”
“Nitro-nitoxide?” Griffin repeated uncomprehendingly.
“A new and powerful explosive announced only a short while ago by Professor Hendrixson of the University of Maine. Among other ingredients, this explosive contains nitrogen, wood pulp and solidified nitrous oxide. Nitrogen and nitrous oxide have always exploded on reaching a certain temperature, but this discovery lowered that point. When frozen, nitro-nitoxide is inert. When heated to a temperature of ninety degrees Fahrenheit — lower than the external heat of the body — it detonates.”
THE Scar saw Griffin’s bewilderment increasing.
“Placed in a warm pocket, or next to a person’s body,” he explained more graphically, “it would take only about fifteen or twenty minutes for the temperature to reach the exploding point. Only a few grains are necessary to blow a human being apart.”
“Now all you’ve got to do is prove that fairy tale,” de Gaul snarled.
The Purple Scar shook his head.
“No. I think you’re going to take care of that little detail yourself.” He paused to look up at the big, rustyfaced clock ticking away on the wall. “We found your medallions carefully hidden in your refrigerator, so we thoughtfully placed one inside your clothes while you were sound asleep.”
De Gaul’s thin face blanched with fear.
“I don’t believe you! You’re just trying to scare me into confessing something I didn’t do.”
The Scar shrugged indifferently.
“That’s up to you, but if you don’t start talking fast, you won’t be able to talk. You’ve got just three minutes left.”
De Gaul’s hand flew beneath his coat, came out with an ornate pearl-handled revolver.
“Where is it?” he shouted, his free hand turning each pocket inside out.
Doc Murdock grinned triumphantly behind the purple, elastic mask.
“That’s all the proof we need, Mister de Gaul!”
Chapter XVI
Judgment Day
Slowly the Scar’s powerful hand tightened around de Gaul’s scrawny gun-wrist. He could feel the muscles tense convulsively.
“It won’t do any good to pull the trigger,” the Scar said placidly. “Your gun’s empty. Another little detail we attended to.”
De Gaul drew back in horror. The Scar quickly slapped the gun from the man’s hand, sent it spinning across the floor. He grabbed the missioner by the throat.
“Now start talking!”
“But the medallion!” de Gaul choked out, twisting and squirming frantically to look at the clock. Never for an instant did he pause in his mad search through his clothing for that loaded medallion. His eyes were wild with terror. “Where is it? Where is it?”
“You can’t do this,” Griffin shouted harshly.
“Stay out of it, Cap!” Tommy Pedlar warned.
He had retrieved the gun which the Scar batted out of de Gaul’s hand. He trained it on the detective-captain.
“That thing’s not loaded,” Griffin snorted, advancing.
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Cap,” Tommy said.
“We didn’t even know he had a revolver,” the Scar added. “Now be nice, Captain, and stand back.”
“But that medallion!” Griffin cried. “It’ll go off. I can’t let you kill him, even if he is a murderer.”
“That little matter is up to de Gaul!” the Scar shot back.
The missioner was tearing at his garments, trying to get them off his shivering body while his eyes were riveted on the clock. Only two minutes left! He fell to his knees, pleading, sobbing, still clawing.
“Where is it?” he panted. “Where is it?”
The Scar reached down, yanked the whimpering man to his feet and pinioned his hands at his sides so he could no longer tear at his clothes.
“Start talking!”
“All right, all right — I’ll talk!” de Gaul blurted out. “I did kill them. Josef Small and his wife bought those deeds from a couple of swindlers when they first came from Italy. They paid every penny they had in the world for the property — over three thousand dollars. Then they learned it was nothing but marshlands, in some places six feet underwater. It broke the old man’s heart, but he refused to give up the deeds.
“No one else knew he had them. I was the only one he ever told. He and his wife trusted me. When he was dying, he called for me. He gave me these deeds to hold for his wife. In his delirium he believed they’d some day turn into something worthwhile.”
De Gaul glanced frantically at the clock, struggling to get his hands free to search again for that deadly coin. Only a minute and a half to go!