“I’m going to go to the place where the body was discovered, the rubbish heap where you finally found the body. I think I can show you something interesting. I’ll go there at once. It’s nearer here than it is headquarters, so I’ll be waiting for you there. I’ll have my car parked against the curb and leave the dome light on so you can recognize me. Good-by.”
And Sidney Zoom hung up the telephone, stalked out of the back door of the house and into the garage where his coupé and his police dog awaited him.
The dog thumped his tail in greeting.
Zoom jumped into the car, opened the garage doors, started the motor and purred out into the night.
He drove directly to the lot where the rubbish had been dumped, a marshy hollow, surrounded with scattered dwellings of a cheaper sort, fringed with clumps of brush.
Sidney Zoom opened the back of the coupe and took out a straw figure. He sat this figure against the steering wheel, clamped his hat upon it, turned on the dome light, and walked briskly down the sidewalk and into the shadows of a clump of brush. The police dog padded at his side.
The silence of the night enveloped them.
Far away, there was a sleepy rumble from the slumbering city where heavy trucks or belated passenger cars ground their way through the main boulevards. Once there was the whine of a motor coming at high speed, but that sound abruptly died away.
Minutes passed.
Sidney Zoom yawned. The dog flexed his muscles, wagged his tail.
There was the distant wail of a siren.
Some sound, inaudible to the ears of the man, caused the dog to stiffen to rigid attention. His ears pricked forward. He crouched, muscles as tense as steel wires.
“Steady, Rip,” warned Sidney Zoom in a whisper.
A low, warning growl came from the dog, ceased when Zoom’s hand pressed down upon his head.
Motionless, tense, the two waited, master and dog.
Bang!
The darkness spurted flame. There was the crash of glass.
It was a rifle shot, and the stabbing flash had come from some fifty yards across the pile of rubbish, from a dense clump of brush.
Bang!
A second shot, fired with slow deliberation.
Glass tinkled and a window of the coupé collapsed. A great square of glass fell to the sidewalk.
Bang!
The third shot thudded into the straw figure, sent it hurtling to the seat of the coupe.
Sidney Zoom took his hand from the neck of the police dog.
“All right, Rip,” he said.
The dog went into the darkness like a streak of shadow, stomach close to the ground.
Bang! sounded the rifle.
A siren wailed.
Zoom was running now, his hawklike eyes penetrating the darkness sufficiently to show him the obstacles to be avoided. But the dog was far ahead, running with padded feet that made no noise, guided by eyes that were as accustomed to the darkness as the eyes of a wolf.
Zoom heard a throaty growl from the night.
A man screamed.
There was the thudding impact of flesh against flesh and the sound of a body striking the ground.
The siren wailed close at hand. A police car, red spotlight glowing like a red pool of fire, swung around the corner.
Bang! went the rifle for the last shot, such a shot as might have been the result of a cocked rifle having been dashed to the ground.
Zoom ran toward that shot, his long legs covering the ground rapidly.
“Steady, Rip,” he warned.
The police car applied brakes and wheels screamed along the pavement. The spotlight shifted its ruddy beam to the lot, showing a huddled figure on the ground, the form of the police dog crouched a little bit to one side.
Sidney Zoom shouted and burst into the circle of illumination, waving his hands.
The door of the police car banged open as two figures sprinted for the place where the still figure lay on the ground. Zoom was the first to arrive.
A second later Lieutenant Sylvester, accompanied by Captain Mahoney, produced a pocket flashlight and sent the brilliant white beam down on that which lay upon the ground.
“Wetler!” exclaimed Mahoney.
“Wetler,” said Zoom.
Mahoney knelt by the man.
“You murdered Stanwood?” asked Captain Mahoney. “You’re dying. Better tell the truth.”
Wetler nodded, groaned.
“Why?” asked Mahoney.
“Wanted money... under will... damned miser!... Dog knocked me over... rifle went off...”
“Why did you use a wax figure?”
“Afraid police... might trace car took him away in... wanted make sure to blame it on the girl... hated her... snooty... stuck up...”
The figure twitched and lay still.
Captain Mahoney got to his feet.
“That seems to be the end of it,” he said. “I suppose your call to Sylvester was intended to be overheard by Wetler?”
Zoom nodded.
“I used the wax for a third degree. I knew the murderer would become alarmed when he saw there was wax on his shoes or slippers. He would never think I had trapped him to walk on the wax, but would think I had doped out the solution of the crime and suspected him.
“Naturally, he would listen to my telephone conversation, then follow me, hoping to get a chance to kill me before I could tell what I knew. So I left a dummy for him to shoot at and relied on the dog to drag him down. I hadn’t figured on the man being killed. Rut it’s a good thing. Saved the executioner a job. Frankly, I’m glad of it.”
Captain Mahoney sighed and stared at Zoom curiously.
“A reasoning machine,” he commented, “devoid of sympathy.”
“Sympathy, bah! That’s the trouble with the world’s attitude toward the criminal. Sympathy! Here is a man who planned murder, planned to pin it on an innocent young woman, and you prate of sympathy!”
“You’re not strong for mercy, for a fact,” commented Lieutenant Sylvester.
Sidney Zoom raised his strong, rugged features.
“No,” he said in a tone that was almost dreamy, “I simply see mercy from a broader standpoint. For instance, from the standpoint of an innocent young woman accused of crime. And, perhaps, I see a little more in this than you do.”
“Such as?” asked Lieutenant Sylvester.
“Such as divine justice, for instance,” said Sidney Zoom, and turned on his heel.
“Come, Rip,” he called to the dog. “Our work here is finished.”
And, followed by the padding feet of the tawny police dog, he stalked away into the chill shadows of the night, walking with that catfooted sureness of motion.