Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 6, April 16, 1938
- Автор: Трит Лоуренс, Вулрич Корнелл
- Год: 1938
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 6, April 16, 1938». Краткое содержание книги:
His first deduction had turned out splendidly. He hadn’t been fooled by that license tag. It was of authentic manufacture, he had been sure. He also knew Virginia state convicts made the tags. It was as easy as adding ten six-place figures together. That tag must have been manufactured by a convict in the state stamping factory, smuggled out to the gang! And it was natural to suppose the last man leaving the factory was the one responsible.
The police could look up the number of that tag as much as they pleased; it wasn’t even on the records. Yet it would never arouse suspicion as it was authentic down to the last detail, was made like all the rest of the Virginia tags, on state machinery and with the real dies! It was pretty clever, Penny thought.
That the last man released from prison who worked in the stamping department lived in Alexandria, just across the river from Washington, was a stroke of luck. His name was Kiki Mawson and he had been paroled two weeks before, had reported each Saturday night to Alexandria police as required. And Kiki Mawson was a mechanic, had owned a garage when he was caught receiving property. He also had been mixed up with a wire-tapping gang operating out of Pimlico, the race track—
Pimlico — PIM!
That’s where that name of his had come in! Penny saw the words of the note as if they were in front of him. “Got word from Pim.” Also further along in the note: “Don’t worry about Pim.” The note referred to some person the writer had met in Pimlico! The name of the track had merely been abbreviated into “Pim.”
Penny Pim grinned to himself as the taxicab turned right off the bridge on the far side of the Potomac, headed for the river drive leading to Alexandria. Penny paid off the driver at King Street, walked to the drug store on the corner and made for the phone booth.
He was taking a chance on the Southern R.R. freight office being open, and it was. In a minute he had the night freight agent on the telephone. “Who’s talking?” Penny asked softly.
“This is Holland, night freight agent, sir.”
“Oh, yes, Holland,” Penny said, now making his voice gruff. “By the way, how many pieces of sheet steel were in that last shipment I got from you?”
“Just a minute, sir. This is Mr. Rawson, isn’t it?”
“No. Name’s Mawson,” Penny corrected with an excited grin.
“I meant Mawson,” the freight agent said. There was a pause for a minute and Penny dimly heard the rustle of papers. Then: “There were eighteen pieces, Mr. Mawson. You got all of them?”
“Yes,” Penny said quickly, “but there seems to be some mistake. I got a bill for them this afternoon, but the address was wrong. By the way, what address have you on the waybill?”
“At the garage, sir. Let’s see. The address is Gem Garage. 8418 Ort Mill Road. That’s you, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Penny said, voice shrill with excitement. “That’s all.” He replaced the receiver on the hook, walked from the booth.
Ten minutes later, behind the wheel of a Drive-It-Yourself flivver, Penny Pim was headed toward the Ort Mill Road. According to the way the numbers ran the garage must be several miles out. Penny guessed it was a combination soft drink spot and garage, possibly with living quarters attached.
Penny came to the crest of a hill, stopped the car. Facing him at a turn in the road below was a cluster of lights. He took a knife with a long blade from h is pocket, got t o the road and walked to the rear of the car. After a minute of sawing with the blade he managed to get the point through the easing. There was a sharp hissing of air. Penny got back into the car, released the brakes and coasted toward the cluster of lights in the little valley and the electric sign which read Gem Garage.
There were three men in the room. Two of them looked at the third a man wearing a cab driver’s badge on his shirt. The number was #490.
“Go ahead, Mike,” one of the men prompted.
“Well, like I said, Mawson,” Mike Duffy began, “I filled the police full of wrong info just like you told me to do. I told ’em the car that almost runs me down is red and they believe that. I says it was a Super-8 Caddie instead of a Pierce-Arrow and that it has a District license. Gunner,” he nodded to a youth with burning black eyes sitting opposite him, “happens to drop the note from his pocket, I suppose, because when they picks up the stiff I sees it.
“Then this guy, Pim’s his name, who comes running up makes like he was wiping sweat. He drops his handkerchief and picks up the note. Pim is the sort who likes to shoot off his face, knows everything. I knew he’d tell the coppers about the note. Well, I goes on down to headquarters, as was planned, and tells the dicks about seeing this Pim palm the note. I tells it before he does and it sure gets him in bad.
“The door is open four-five times and I overhears him telling everything he knows. And, Mawson, it was puhlenty! That guy sure uses his eyes. Rut when I tells ’em Pim picks up the note and was hidin’ it they locks him up. He’ll be in there from now on. They’ll throw the key away. I—”
“Wait a minute,” Mawson interrupted. Kiki Mawson was a big man, had a bald head, small eyes set close together in a prison-gray, puffy face, a cruel mouth. “You say this guy’s name is Pim?”
“Yeah,” Duffy nodded, “something Pim. Didn’t get his first name, but his last name is Pim.”
“I’ll be damned!” Mawson laughed. “That note has the word ‘Pim’ in it twice! Only it refers to Gunner here.” Mawson jerked his thumb at the little man with the burning eyes. “It was from Hugon and he’s referring to the man from Pimlico, Gunner Wry! Hugon, by the way, is due here tonight with the jack. We picked Gunner up down in front of the Government Printing Office on lower 14th Street. I let him see the note and he must’ve stuck it in his pocket, then dropped it when he made a dash for the brief case after Tommy-gunning Carveth. Jeeze,” his laugh was loud, “it’s a good thing he did drop it! This Pim punk will take the rap for us!”
“But he got all the dope on the car, this time, the fact that Carveth had a brief case chained to his wrist!” Duffy shrilled.
“Yeah, but that note’ll put him in the chair, Mike,” Mawson laughed. He lit a cigarette.
“Maybe so,” Duffy worried. “But he saw the kind of tires, the bent place in the fender, knew the car was armored—”
“How’d he know that?” Mawson asked incredulously.
“Well, he saw it was mighty low on the rubber and guessed the rest, I suppose. Those steel plates weigh down on the tires pretty heavy, you know. Hell, he even saw Gunner’s new shoes!”
“Uh?” Gunner looked up, then at his spotless shoes.
Mawson laughed. “Don’t you worry, Gunner. Mr. Pim will have nice boarding for a long time. What if this Pim did see you? That was a good guess about the car being armored, though. He’s a smart guy at that.” Mawson nodded.
There was a knock at the door and Mawson growled: “Come in,” and moved his hand near his left armpit. A man dressed in dirty coveralls entered the room. He was short, heavy, had a tanned face with an oil smudge across the chin. Mawson grinned. “Oh, it’s you, Scotty. How’s the gas and oil business?”
“Rotten,” Scotty said, face in a frown. “I gotta guy out there in a push-it-yourself who’s got a flat. Looks like the damn tire’s been sliced with a knife. Looks phoney to me. Maybe he’s—”
“You guys got a case of the heebie-jeebies,” Mawson jibed. “Go ahead and fix the tire and get him out of the way. You won’t have to play garage-man after tonight, Scotty. But what’s the guy doing now? Suppose he’d followed you in here?”