Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 75, No. 4, April 15, 1933
- Автор: Day Stanley, Dunn J. Allan
- Год: 1933
- Язык: английский
- Год: Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 75, No. 4, April 15, 1933». Краткое содержание книги:
The reckless thinking machine in his capacious head spurred by a burning hate had worked fast and furiously.
He leisurely sauntered out of the gang’s boathouse quarters, went downtown and visited a department store. He made several purchases — two small silk American flags, a lithograph of Abraham Lincoln, and an enlarged facsimile of the famous longhand letter which Lincoln wrote to the widow Bixby who had given five sons to the Union cause in the Civil War. He carried these to the Lonergan home, spent half an hour with Anna Lonergan, and, on taking leave, bade her good-bye “Perhaps for good.”
Several hours later he turned up at the boathouse. The gang was waiting for him.
“Get yourselves together,” Lovett announced. “Follow me and ask no questions. Just stick outside Dinny Meehan’s Loaders’ Club when I go in. Ditch your guns here. There won’t be any need of shooting.” He opened a drawer in a long table, but it was too small to hold all the guns. Some were thrown in a heap on the floor.
Wild Bill started for the Loaders’ Club, his vassals following him half a block behind, deployed in groups. Under his arm he carried the package — the two flags, Lincoln’s portrait, and the Bixby letter.
Chapter V
Fight or Fade
Alone and unarmed, Wild Bill walked into the presence of Dinny Meehan. The four burly bodyguards were ranged along the wall in chairs. The bar was crowded with dock wallopers guzzling their beer and whiskey. Lovett threw his package on a table, and casting a surly glance at Meehan, proceeded to undo the bundle. He drew out the flags, unfurled them, and standing on a chair, draped them over a dust-streaked lithograph of playing cards fanned out in a royal flush. Meehan and his bodyguard looked on with startled eyes. Wild Bill tacked the Lincoln portrait to the wall; then the Bixby letter.
The legs of Meehan’s high-backed chair scraped on the sanded floor as he pushed it back and sprang to his feet. His protectors arose, en masse.
“Pull that stuff down off there,” Meehan bellowed.
Wild Bill glared at him. “Whoever touches these things won’t live to tell what happened,” he snapped. The bodyguards reached for their gun pockets. Lovett eyed them. “Aw, don’t waste your time and bullets shooting at me,” he said. “If you want to do any shooting there’s a war on. Go out and join the army.”
“Chuck the rat out,” yelled Meehan.
Lovett touched two fingers to his lips and whistled shrilly. His shock troops, waiting outside, for his command, stormed in, led by Peg Leg and Cute Charley. Meehan’s stalwarts crouched back and stood dazed. Meehan sank into his chair. Bill was still on the chair. His men were crouching, alert for a further command. The wallopers at the bar, twenty or more giants, turned away from their drinks and stood staring at Lovett.
“I suppose all you guys think I’m trying to drive Meehan out so I can be your boss,” he cried. “You’re all wrong. I couldn’t be your boss because I won’t be around here long. There’s a war on and I’m going into it. This afternoon I enlisted. I’ll get my uniform tomorrow.”
At first his listeners were struck dumb by the announcement, then they broke into cheers, the dock wallopers as well as his own followers.
“That’s great stuff,” Bill went on. “You’re all glad to hear I’ve enlisted. You’re strong for a guy that wants to fight for his country, eh? Well... if that’s the case, then what about you guys climbing into uniforms, too?”
The men eyed each other gravely.
“You’re all big huskies, just the kind of fighting gents the country needs,” Bill cried. “And you’re not taking orders from Meehan now. I’m giving orders, see? If you’re the kind of fighters you crack yourselves up to be, let’s see. How many of you have got wives and kids?”
Only a few shot their hands into the air.
“You guys,” said Wild Bill, “haven’t got any business going to war. But the rest of you — how about digging out of here and enlisting?”
There was a solemn silence. The men eyed each other again.
“Any guy can load ships and make money out of the war,” Bill continued, “but not every guy can make the kind of a soldier you big fellows should make.” He waved a hand at Meehan. “This fat grafter,” he went on, “couldn’t get into any man’s army. They wouldn’t have him. Come on now, whose gonna hop into a uniform and join me?”
There was a roar from the crowd. “Let’s go, Bill, let’s go.”
“That’s the stuff,” yelled Bill. He jumped down from the chair. “Follow me.”
They piled out after him, dock wallopers and White Hands. There were some forty men in the crowd.
Not all of them could make the Army standard for enlistment, but a sufficient number of Meehan’s brawniest dock wallopers joined the colors to sadly deplete his ranks. Those who remained behind were Meehan himself, his bodyguard, and older men with families. Peg Leg was a cripple and couldn’t enlist; Cute Charley had a prison record and was barred, while Raycraft was flatfooted and had one bad eye. Wild Bill left them behind to complete the break-up of Meehan’s empire. What the spindle-legged, flatchested boy from Catharine Street had failed to do with muscle, he had accomplished by a stroke of strategy which almost emptied the Loaders’ Club and at the same time put a lot of brawny giants into army uniforms for the duration of the war.
The next day he donned his own uniform and became Private William Joseph Lovett, machine gunner, Company I, 11th U. S. Infantry. Among his buddies in the same outfit were several White Hands and dock wallopers. There wasn’t room in the same outfit for all those who tried to get into the same regiment to be near him.
When Wild Bill was on a transport, bound overseas, Dinny Meehan found the nerve to tear down the two silk flags, the Lincoln portrait and the Bixby letter. Then he opened wide the gates of Shantytown and called in Italians from Navy Street to take the places of the giants who had followed Wild Bill into the army.
In the army Bill Lovett, for the first time in his life, touched a machine gun. He had always avoided the gun. Now it was his duty to man the wickedest and deadliest of all automatic man killers.
Chapter VI
The Marks of War
If Meehan thought that the rigors of war would end the career of the weak-kneed, flat-chested demon of the White Hands — with a bullet already lodged in his chest — he cherished a futile hope.
On a sultry afternoon, late in July, 1919, Private William J. Lovett lay squirming and twisting on a cot in a Brooklyn hospital. For him the war had ended two months before the armistice in November, 1918. A jagged chunk of shrapnel had been taken from his right shoulder, deadly mustard gas had eaten his throat raw and was ravaging his lungs. His emaciated body also held two machine gun bullets which the surgeons dared not probe for. Thus Wild Bill carried around three bullets and yet lived.
He had gone through the battle of Château-Thierry. In a later battle he had plunged into annihilating barrages laid down by the enemy to rescue and bring back to the lines wounded buddies trapped in a shell crater. He had dragged back three men, then, returning to the shell hole he had mowed down the enemy with his machine gun. Shrapnel, a creeping wave of mustard gas, and machine gun fire had put an end to his deadly work. He had been found bleeding and insensible in the shell crater.
And he had won the Distinguished Service Cross. The man who had started life hating to see a fly swatted brought back from France a reputation not only as a hero, but as a machine gunner who had taken savage delight in mowing down the enemy.