Jaxon led the way to a roadster. It was a speedster, low and yellow, remindful of an overgrown canary.
Chapter II
The Hot-Oil Ring
The canary car tweeted a horn when it pulled out of the airport parking. It tweeted a different one wen it turned into Sheridan Drive, heading toward town. Not once during the trip in did it sound the same horn twice.
“I was sent out here to meet you!” Halt Jaxon offered a cork-tipped fag from a silver case.
“I need something stronger!” Nace produced a stubby pipe and a silk pouch. “Whew-w-w! What a reception! Is that the usual thing out here?”
“If you’re going up against the Robin Hood, it is! I guess you’re out here on this hot-oil trouble.”
“What hot-oil trouble?”
“For cryin’ out load! Don’t you read the newspapers?”
“Where’d you get the idea your troubles mean anything to Broadway rags?”
“Oh! So it’s like that! Well, for the last year or so, most of the Oklahoma oil fields have been shut down. They passed laws—”
“Proration!”
“Go to the head of the class! The governor had to stick the militia in some fields to close ’em. They’re just discovering that, while the fields were shut down, somebody stole a lot of oil!”
“What do you call a lot?”
“We ain’t pikers! Thirty or forty millions!”
“Barrels?”
“Dollars!”
Nace felt tenderly of his shoe-bruised face. “You wouldn’t kid me?”
“I might, but I ain’t. I tell you, they’re just getting into the damn mess! The governor has investigators all over the state. Wherever they dig, they turn up a dead cat.
“Down at Bowlegs, they found a farm of 55,000-barrel crude tanks plumb empty. In the Oklahoma City field, a lot of leases are running salt water where they should be making oil. The oil has been pulled out by mysterious persons unknown — lifted, heisted, stolen!”
“Can’t they put a finger on anybody?”
“Sure — small fry! But some great big bright brain is behind the whole thing! They can’t learn who! I’m telling you, Skipper, it’s the most colossal robbery in history.”
Nace wiped crimson off his fingers. “What’m I supposed to do? Make news for App’s paper?”
“App owns a lot of production up in the Osage which ain’t in production any more. He’d like to know who pinched the oil! And any news fit to print, we print.”
The canary car swung past MacIntyre airport. Off to the left, derricks in the Oil Exposition grounds stuck up, a horny, cactus-like cluster.
“The hell of it is the way they get drowned in hot oil!” Halt Jaxon said.
Nace stuffed his pipe, then looked at the stem. It was cracked. He took a small metal case from his zipper bag, extracted a fresh stem from the assortment it held. He chewed an average of a stem a day out of the pipe. The total often reached three or four when the going got tough.
“What’s this — drowned in oil?”
“Several state investigators have been found that way. Also oil men and roustabouts. They’re simply drowned — and pretty badly scalded.”
The tower of the Exchange National swelled up ahead. Immaculate Jaxon tooled his canary roadster toward it, trying out different horns on the traffic.
“They all got too close to the master mind!” Nace mixed his question with a mouthful of smoke. “That it?”
“It’s a guess! Yours is as good as anybody’s!”
“The bodies found in any particular oil tank?”
“Never in any tank!” Jaxon touched a button; a horn gave a cow-like moo. “They find the bodies in the damnedest places. One was leaning against a lamp-post as stiff as a board. Some of them have been in hotels, houses — all over.”
“That’s a hell of a note!” Nace drew on his pipe.
The roadster paused for the traffic light on Main, then made a turn.
“App left this message in the office mailbox!” Jaxon fished a finger daintily in the pocket of the tea vest, as if afraid of soiling it. He produced a strip of coarse white copy paper.
Nace took it, read:
Jaxon:
Lee Nace, a private detective, will arrive on the three o’clock plane. Meet him and bring him to the hotel Crown Block, room 1820.
The note, typewritten, bore only a typed signature—“App.”
Nace stiffened his brake leg instinctively as the gaudy roadster shaved another car. “Don’t they have any traffic laws down here!”
A moment later he said, “I hope App don’t think there’s anything secret about this! I’m sunk if he does!”
“Yeah, that’s right!” Jaxon agreed. Then he added, “Unless you sent some agents ahead?”
“Who do you think I am? The army?”
Jaxon grinned. “Well, I didn’t know! The A. P. has carried stories about you! You’re supposed to be good. I thought maybe you had help. You’ll need it!”
Nace nodded toward an up-and-down sign which said, Telegram, and asked, “That’s the plant, huh?”
“The sweat shop itself!” Jaxon maneuvered his roadster around a corner.
The wind was from the south, bringing a smell of distilling crude from West Tulsa refineries.
Jaxon asked unexpectantly, “What about the blond in the Robin Hood’s car?”
Nace looked interested. “Well, what about her?”
Jaxon laughed. “I see you didn’t get a close look! What a form she had! Oh, man!”
The Crown Block Hotel was not quite the largest in the southwest, but it was generally conceded to be the most sumptuous.
When an oil man hits it rich, his first act was to take a suite in the Crown Block. It did not matter whether he made his strike in Seminole, Borger, Oil Hill, or East Texas. He took a suite in the Crown Block. It was sort of a ritual — a man’s way of telling the cockeyed world he was on top.
Jaxon swerved his roadster in to the curb. They got out, Nace with his canvas zipper bag. There was a flurry, then hard looks, when bellboys tried unsuccessfully to capture Nace’s bag.
They walked a gauntlet of doormen in Czaristic uniforms, and waded in a sea of rich, thick carpet. A silent elevator wafted them up, and they single-filed down the corridor, more rich carpets sponging underfoot.
The door of 1820 was massive, shiny, of mahogany, with a ponderous wrought-bronze lock.
Nace’s eyes roved with habitual alertness. Suddenly he grunted, lifted one foot off the carpet and hopped to the wall, propped against it, he began untying his shoe.
“Must’ve picked up a rock at the airport!”
His hand, apparently resting against the wall as a brace, made a slight rubbing motion.
There was a small, irregularly shaped chalk mark on the wall. This was almost unnoticeable to the casual eye.
When Nace took his hand away, the mark was gone.
Nace tore a bit of inner sole from his shoe, put it back on. Then he opened his canvas bag. He took several expensive looking cigars from a case and pocketed them.
The adder scar, seeming to come from nowhere, was once more coiling redly on his forehead.
“Let’s go!” His voice was dry, with a bit of a rattle.
Jaxon rippled knuckles on the door. A voice invited them in. Opening the door, Jaxon stepped back politely to let Nace in first.
Three men appeared suddenly, shoulder to shoulder, inside the room. The Robin Hood and his two followers!
Frontier six-guns bulked big in their fists.
The blond, without uncoiling herself from a chair in which she sat, said, “Come right in, boys! Cut yourself a piece of cake!”
Nace ambled into the room, hands held far out from his sides. He was so very tall that he instinctively ducked a little as he entered.