For all his bulk, the giant could move like a slim youngster. He was on the man in two soundless, flowing leaps. The fellow looked up in time to see a human avalanche descending on him, but not in time to do anything about it. Not even in time to yell.
Smitty got one hand on the man’s throat, and the other on his right wrist, as his hand clawed for his gun. The hand went almost around the man’s throat, it was so big. It squeezed a little.
After a minute Smitty left the man lying there, and went back to the closet. He returned with sheets and pillow cases. With the sheets he tied the man up like a mummy. With the pillow cases he gagged him till he couldn’t have uttered so much as a squeak. Then he bundled the guard into the linen closet, closed the door, and went back to the door that interested him so much.
He opened it an inch. His ears picked up mumbling voices a room or so beyond. His eyes told him that there was no one in the small foyer off the hall.
He went in.
Beyond was a two-story room, big, elaborate. In that the voices were sounding. Smitty tiptoed to the entrance, and stood there behind a drape.
In the duplex room were three men. One was a young fellow with ancient eyes. Another was a narrow-jawed man who looked as if he’d slit a throat for a quarter and give back ten cents change. The third—
Well, the third must be Kopell, the leader of Garfield City’s underworld, himself.
He was a little on the heavy side, about forty, well dressed and well barbered. His hands were soft and immaculate. His voice was soft and oily. But his eyes, dark and cold, like cold-black onyx, were a plain warning that here was a master killer.
“Trillo got the job drivin’ the station wagon.” the narrow-jawed man said. “Took a little work. Cranlowe was suspicious as hell after that crazy accident that put his old driver out of the world for six months.”
“Nice,” said Kopell, in his smooth, oily voice. “Now we got at least one guy inside that iron fence.”
“But Maizie,” said the young fellow, “didn’t get to first base on the secretary’s job. Either Cranlowe smelled something wrong, or else, for now, he don’t need a secretary.”
Smitty’s lips thinned. Here was the reason for the suicide of that girl, and the mad accident of the old station-wagon driver. Simply to get two of Cranlowe’s employees out of the way so that two of the enemy could get in in their places. And the fact that one death and one near-death had resulted meant nothing at all to this murderous crew.
“What’s this talk about a Negro out at the plant?” said the narrow-jawed man.
Kopell’s dark eyes slitted.
“I don’t know, exactly. He got in as a shoe-shine boy. I don’t know that it wasn’t all right. Nobody does. But it looked suspicious — like he was sent to spy around. So it was thought best to get him out of the way. But he managed to lam.”
The young fellow with the ancient eyes said thoughtfully: “There was a Negro in that sedan.”
Kopell stared, then laughed.
“I guess it couldn’t have been the same one. Fats said he stayed at the water’s edge for five minutes, and nobody had come up by then. And nobody could come up from seventy feet of water anyway.”
“I suppose not—” There was a little silence. Then: “What’s all this stuff of everybody out at the plant goin’ goofy, boss?”
“What do you care?” snapped Kopell.
“I bet you don’t know, yourself,” said the young fellow.
Kopell looked as if undecided whether to get sore or not. Finally, he didn’t. He scratched his jaw.
“Well, I don’t know if it’ll do you any good to be told. A lot of people have done a lot of funny things. I’m curious, naturally. But I don’t ask questions. I figure it’s none of my business—”
Smitty, behind the drape, heard a faint rasp from the door, and whirled fast. But not in time!
A man was standing on the threshold, pointing a gun at him. The man was the jolly-looking fat fellow he had seen up here before. The door had made that rasp, not when it was just beginning to open, but when it was opened all the way. And that was too late for Smitty.
“Just stand easy, with your hands up,” said the jolly-looking man. “Kopell!”
There was a rush from the duplex room, and the three within appeared on the other threshold, a few feet from the giant. They stared at him, first in amazement and then in murderous fury.
“What— How—”
“I came up the hall and didn’t see Pete at the door, where he should have been,” explained the fat man. “I looked around a little and found him — in the linen closet. So I came in quiet, and here’s this overgrown ape listenin’ in.”
“Kopell,” said the young fellow, eyes wide, almost whispering the words, “in that sedan, besides a Negro, there was a great big guy. How big, I couldn’t tell, because he was sitting down. But he might have been this guy here.”
“Nuts!” said Kopell. “There’s more than one big guy on earth. Everybody in that car’s dead, I tell you. They’ve got to be!” He glared at Smitty. “But I’d like to know where you come in on this, just the same. Who are you? Who you working for?”
Smitty was silent, a giant with hands raised and a gun almost touching the wall of his chest.
“Is another mob horning in?” snapped Kopell. “Who’s behind it?”
Still Smitty said nothing. His upraised hands were touching the drape behind which he had hidden.
“Look!” said Kopell persuasively. “You’ll get bumped off, here and now, if you don’t talk. If you do — well, maybe your mob can work with ours. This is awful big. There’ll be enough for both—”
Smitty’s hands flashed forward and down, and at the same time his body twisted sideways as if it had been a willow wand instead of a gorilla torso. A shot blared from the fat man’s automatic, slicing a red welt on Smitty’s abdomen. And then, the drape, torn loose by the giant’s big hands, went over the fat fellow like a fish net.
The fat man screamed in a muffled way under the drape, and fought to get loose. Guns appeared in the hands of Kopell and the narrow-jawed man.
The guns weren’t fired. Smitty’s vast paws had each by the nape of the neck. He smashed the two bodies together as if they had been rag dolls weighing about a pound apiece, flung the limp results at the young fellow with the ancient eyes and raced out of there.
CHAPTER XII
The Secret Voice
A man who looked to be about seventy years old, save that his bitter blue eyes were clearer and brighter than the eyes of most old men, went into the anteroom of Dr. Wheeler Markham, psychiatrist and specialist in mental diseases.
“Will you tell Dr. Markham that Dr. John MacGregor would like to see him when he has a free moment,” the old man said to the trim nurse at the desk.
“Surely, Dr. MacGregor,” the girl said.
She went into an inner office. The elderly doctor was left in the anteroom with one patient — an overweight, childish-faced woman who carried a yapping Pekingese under her fat left arm. The old man sank into a chair as if burdened with the weight of years.
Which he was distinctly not.
Fergus MacMurdie, distinguished biologist, pharmacist and chemist, could call himself “doctor” any time — though he could not truthfully call himself MacGregor. There was a gray wig over his sandy-red hair, and grayish powder over his highly colored, coarse-skinned, freckled face. He walked with a weary stoop. It was a simple but excellent disguise.
MacMurdie had talked to three doctors who had attended Blandell and Sessel. Among the three had been the two who had been overpowered at Blandell’s home. They had had little information to offer.
Three well-known men had suddenly done insane things. Criminally, murderously insane, in the case of Allen C. Wainwright, now being held for murder. But no one of the three had a background of mental unbalance either personally or in his family. And each of the three had been sane by every known test—after his strange lapse.