Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 62, No. 2, October 3, 1931
- Автор: Энгланд Джордж Аллан, Philips Judson P.
- Год: 1931
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 62, No. 2, October 3, 1931». Краткое содержание книги:
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Flaherty straightened as his mind, dazed by this last discovery, reeled dizzily through a maze of contradictory facts developed in the past hour of this most eventful night. From the description given in the radio message, the murderer sought by the New York police must be one of three men, Recruits Baxter, Winters, and Shelby. Unknown hands in the dark had attempted to strangle Baxter to death. Winters had been struck down, evidently by a knife. That left Shelby.
But Winters had been wearing a good-luck ring, similar to the one stolen from Roy Davega’s body by John Horning, the brother-in-law. Why did Winters’s murderer take that ring from Winters’s body? Why was Baxter choked? Only one man of the three, Baxter, Winters, Shelby, could be the murderer, John Horning. Which one was it — the choked Baxter, the murdered Winters, or Shelby? If Winters were Horning, who killed him, and why?
Questions and cross-questions leading to nothing. The more Flaherty thought, the more mystified and completely baffled he became. One thing he knew. Winters’s murderer had to be found at once. Two men attacked in the space of an hour, and one of the two killed. A murderer on board, and apparently on a rampage of death. Who would be next?
That question spurred Sergeant Flaherty’s wits. He would go into the hold. He wanted to see the sullen-faced Shelby again.
He was turning to go down the corridor when his eye, glancing toward the porthole close at hand, caught a tiny, brilliant flash in the tropical “air catcher,” a metal tube made in the shape of a scoop and inserted in a porthole in order to deflect the breeze, made by the ship’s passage, into the hold. His groping hand closed on a ring!
With fingers that trembled, he examined it. A diamond scintillated in the center of a raised swastika. By match light the sergeant made out the initials engraved on the inner band. “R. D.” — Roy Davega.
As he handled the ring, Flaherty became aware that his fingers slid on its smooth, gold surface. By the light of another match he bent to find the cause and discovered that there was a thin coating of grease-like substance on it. For a second he looked at the ring curiously, and then he put it to his generous, Hibernian nose. His sandy eyebrows knitted perplexedly. From the greasy smear on the ring came a pungent odor, strangely familiar, yet perversely baffling in its refusal to be catalogued.
Finally, Flaherty stowed the ring in his pocket, cast one more look at the corpse, and turned to make his way to the stern where the soldiers slept. As he strode rapidly along, constantly glancing all around, he reached a conclusion about the ring. The murderer of Winters had thrown the ring through the porthole, intending it to lie on the ocean’s bed forever. Unknown to him, the ventilator had caught it.
Flaherty found the hold in darkness save for the bulb that glowed dimly beside the iron ladder. Waiting for a moment until his eyes became used to their surroundings, he managed finally to make out the shadowy outlines of the numerous tiers of bunks whereon the men slept. His ears were keenly alive to sound, but all they heard were the normal noises of the night, the breathings of many sleepers and occasionally a brief, restless creak of springs.
Then, suddenly, he caught another sound, the furtive squeak of a door being closed cautiously. It came from the opposite side of the ship, and instantly Flaherty knew its source — the wash room. Some one had either just entered or left it.
With his heart once more pounding in his massive chest, the sergeant cut swiftly and silently through a black aisle between tiered bunks. Who was the softly stepping unknown, secretly opening doors in the middle of the night?
Only the closed door of the wash room, partially obscured by shadow, met Flaherty’s gaze. Stepping inside, he found the place empty. A single, unshaded electric bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling showed only rows of white wash bowls against a wall, on which mirrors were fastened.
Flaherty stared at his face in a mirror and was startled to find it drawn and strained. It seemed like another’s face staring back at him, the blue eyes wide with the horrors and mysteries of the night. He cursed mentally, and wished fervently that mirrors retained their impressions. Then they would reveal the face of the one who had just quitted the wash room and melted so swiftly and silently away.
Flaherty’s roving gaze hesitated at a wash bowl. Its top and sides were wet, eloquent signs that the bowl had been used recently. Drawing nearer to it, the sergeant’s eyes widened and stared at that which streaked the undrained splashes of water at the bottom of the basin. Blood! Bright red, fresh blood!
With hammering pulses, Flaherty whirled and dashed for the door. He had just missed the murderer, who had undoubtedly visited the wash room to wash from his hands the gory evidences of his crime!
The hold was as unsuspicious as before. Nothing moved, and the only sounds were those made by the sleepers and the propeller shaft.
Flaherty was moving to the wall to throw the switch that would illuminate the place, when a tiny glow, deep in the wilderness of bunks, appeared momentarily and vanished.
Padding like a big cat now, the sergeant groped his way to the spot. He sucked in his breath at what he saw. The dark bulk of a soldier, apparently on his knees, was bending over a trunk locker. His cupped hands carefully shielded a small flash light, whose beam was directed into the tray of the trunk.
The soldier gasped as Flaherty’s big hand dropped on his shoulder. The light went out, and he struggled viciously and silently against the sergeant’s hold. But Flaherty’s massive body was padded with bands of muscle tough as steel, and hardened by years of regular army service and compaigning.
Gradually he forced the unknown’s arm behind his back, the old army hold, learned by Flaherty during the grim, relentless days of the Philippine Insurrection. The soldier moaned in pain as his shoulder bones cracked audibly under the inexorable pressure that would break an arm unless the victim surrendered.
And surrender he finally did, standing motionless and silent in the dark. Still maintaining his punishing grip with one fist, Flaherty groped with his other hand for the light. Finding it, he pressed the button. In the glare was Recruit Baxter!
The recruit’s white face was fixed in hard, defiant lines. His blue eyes gleamed steadily and inscrutably. Above his face, his red hair flamed in a disordered mass.
“Baxter!” Flaherty’s voice was low and hoarse in his amazement and suspicion. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” replied the soldier defiantly. “Let go of my arm! You’re breakin’ it!”
Flaherty directed the beam of the flash light into the open trunk locker. What he saw on the tray made him start violently. A blood-stained, white handkerchief was wrapped tightly in a small, compact bundle. Beside the handkerchief was a newspaper clipping, an exact duplicate of the one Captain Freeman had. Flaherty’s gaze flickered across the black headline: Double Killing in Bronx.
As he took up the handkerchief, he received another mental jolt. The blood stains were dry!
Unwinding the cloth, he extracted a black clasp knife, thick with blood.
As he placed the gruesome articles into a pocket, he realized that the knife was surely not the one which had slain Winters. Blood did not dry that fast. But Roy Davega and his wife—
Flaherty now picked up the clipping. A grease spot on a corner of it focused his attention. Impelled almost by instinct, he lifted the paper to his nostrils and smelled the spot. Faint, yet definitely distinguishable, came the same, pungent, exasperatingly familiar odor he had smelled on the ring. Again his memory strove to place it, and again it failed.