Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 44, No. 5, September 28, 1929
- Автор: Dunn J. Allan, Flynn T. T.
- Год: 1929
- Язык: английский
- Год: Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 44, No. 5, September 28, 1929». Краткое содержание книги:
Approaching the resort city, they slowed the car to reconnoiter. They were by no means despairing of a capture yet.
“They were wise that they were being followed,” said Fitzpatrick, “but not until after we followed them out of New York. But they are not wise that we know where they are heading for — that we have the dope that their job is to be at Lakewood. They think they’ve lost us and will go ahead with the business. But I think we ought to park the car and do the rest of it around the town on foot. The sound of another automobile burring around the streets here at this hour of the night” — it was nearing two o’clock in the morning — “would be all the warning they’d need to figure that we were wise to Lakewood, too.
“Besides, there’s Burgess on the job. They are bound to meet Bugs with the tools. And Burgess has Bugs in sight. He’ll be on deck when Bugs meets Liverpool and Blackie. Their arrival will tell him we must be somewhere around and, anyway, if he spots them enter the bank he has only to get the Lakewood police busy and make the bag. So it’s not so bad after all.”
This burst of optimism had no more than passed the lips of Fitzpatrick when a voice called from behind a tree on the highway, the car having come to a complete halt:
“Hey, Fitz!”
“Good! There’s Burgess now!” said Flaherty.
“Hello, Ed!” said Fitzpatrick. “Maybe we’re not glad to see you! Lost our guys!”
“You did?”
“Yes. They had a trick chauffeur that knew all kind of funny things about the New Jersey roads. It was like following a pinwheel — or trying to. But where did they show up at? Where did you trail Bugs? Are they together now? Maybe we’re just in time — hey? Have they started their job?”
“Search me!”
“What?”
“Lay off yelling like that,” said Burgess, “or they’ll hear you if it’s in Atlantic City. They lost you. Bugs lost me! That’s the sad story. Don’t take it too hard.”
Groans chorused from the car.
“Well, if Bugs got wise to you, they got wise to us,” said Fitzpatrick, “so I guess it’s all off for the night.”
“No,” said Burgess, “I don’t think Bugs got wise to me at all. He never by the least action betrayed that he was. It was simply that damn string of lorries that stopped me in my tracks. But it was for hardly more than a minute. I didn’t think it worth while running around behind them because I didn’t want to hang too close to Bugs, of course. But when they had passed — no Bugs. It’s simply that wherever he was bound for must have been near the depot and he disappeared into ft. But I’ve looked into every dump in the neighborhood and watched every house and not one of those showed a light. So then I figured they’d be along in a car as we had doped it out and you’d be after them and. of course, that would lead you to Bugs and all would turn out fine.”
“Did you see anything that looked like them?”
“I didn’t have any idea what they looked like, did I? I didn’t know what make of car they’d have. There were two or three hundred cars moving along this road until about an hour ago.”
“Sure — that’s true enough,” admitted Fitzpatrick. “But the main thing is that you are pretty certain Bugs didn’t suspect he was being followed!”
“I am,” asserted Burgess.
“Then perhaps we are still in line. For Liverpool and Blackie are certain they shook us and if Bugs doesn’t say he was followed here, they’ll go ahead. We’ll park the car up that side road and hit down into the business sections where the banks would be.”
“That’s a hunch!” agreed Burgess.
Which is what they did.
Lakewood boasts several banks. The New York detectives found them and their vaults and their watchman all intact.
In the vicinity of Lakewood are the estates of many wealthy men — some the mansions of the fabulously wealthy. So the detectives telephoned a warning to the State Police headquarters. Probably one of these modern palaces was the golden “rarebit” the mob was after.
Then a hunch hit Burgess.
“By God! The post office!”
“Liverpool Jack never played one in his life,” protested Fitzpatrick.
“No — but Connecticut Blackie has. It’s been his principal lay.”
“That’s right. A post office would be soft for Liverpool, too. No harm to look.”
No outward sign of depredation could be seen at the post office. But the Lakewood police chief at word from the New York detectives as to the distinguished character of the criminal visitors to his city, soon had the doors of the institution open. And the inquirers were a minute later gazing at the wreck of a big safe. Aroused from sleep, the distraught postmaster was soon computing the loot up to at least thirty thousand dollars.
“Fast work!” grunted Fitzpatrick.
“Under our noses, Fitz! I’ve a blamed good mind to resign overnight. Lord, what a kidding we are in for all around — newspapers, headquarters—”
“Lay off the wailing! We’re not dead yet. Back to New York for us as fast as the car can take us. They’ll head for New York sure. I’ll bet if we work fast enough we can hop back to New York and pick Liverpool Jack out of the hay in his West Side flat!”
“There’s a chance,” put in Flaherty. “Let’s get a move on!”
It was something after five o’clock in the morning when the police car slid up in front of the apartment house where Liverpool Jack with his wife and small son had been making his home.
The first move there would be to awaken the superintendent or janitor for admission quietly to the apartment of Liverpool Jack. Flaherty meanwhile was despatched to the street in the rear of the apartment to gain entrance to the backyards there and guard the fire escapes of the Liverpool Jack apartment house.
But the detectives did not have to awaken the superintendent. On the first touch of the bell, he was at the door, eyes glaring with anger, hair mussed, suspenders of his trousers drawn over his pyjama jacket.
“Say, what the hell’s the matter with people to-night?” he demanded. “I just manage to get back to bed when along comes somebody else and—”
The glint of the hall lights on two gold police badges choked off further utterance of indignation.
“What’s happened that’s got you all worked up?” asked Burgess.
“The darnedest thing ever happened since I’ve had anything to do with apartments! Of course, I could hardly say nothing against it. He had always been a good tenant, always paid his rent regular, always been a darned fine sort of a man to have in the house. His little kid and my kid were good friends and his kid was a dandy kid — used to let my kid play with the things he had that I couldn’t afford to buy my kid. But, goshall gee, starting to move out at four o’clock in the morning, waking up everybody in the house — not but what he made the movers work as quiet as he’ could — but, say, that’s not the sort of thing to do, is it?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Mr. Lawrence Preston — an Englishman, a limey, but a mighty nice fellow exceptin’ for what he pulled about an hour ago.”
“And he shows up to move out at five o’clock in the morning?”
“Yeh? Can you beat it?”
“What’s his hurry — did he explain that to you?”
“Yes, he did. But I’m pretty dopey with sleep. I only got a hazy notion of what he was talking about. It was something about getting a hurry call from the old country that his father’s dying and he’s got to make a boat in the morning and can’t leave his wife and kid behind and has got to get his furniture out and put in storage, and he has only got a blamed little time left to do a whole lot of things. I’m sore as a boil. But he slips me a fiver at that. And, like I say, he’s always been an all right tenant.”