Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 28, No. 3, November 12, 1927
- Автор: Alexander R. W., Ames John
- Год: 1927
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 28, No. 3, November 12, 1927». Краткое содержание книги:
Chapter I
The Holdup
“Look in there,” Ruggles whispered in my ear; “but don’t make a sound at what you see!”
“I won’t,” I whispered back. Then I looked through our secret peep-hole which gave Ruggles and me a clear view of the unexpected things that were taking place in the living room of our snug little first floor apartment; lighted now by the last tag end of the daylight.
There was a man in there, a hatchet-faced, gray-skinned man of about my own height and build, a man with thick, closely cut gray hair and a tigerish kind of slouch and crouch about him as he moved.
And move he did. He kept moving, moving, moving as if it were an impossibility for him not to move; for an instant, he would crouch against the wall, staring at the door into the vestibule; and the front windows seemed to give him the same anxiety, for, after studying the front door, he would study them with what looked to be nearly a mad intensity.
And all the time his chest rose and fell noticeably, like that of a fugitive who has spent himself in a desperate rush for liberty.
All at once then he became motionless as if turned into stone; even his coarse, heavy hands became motionless; it was as if every sense he had had suddenly concentrated on something, concentrated to its uppermost, and it came to me that he was listening.
That did not prepare me, though, for the long, swift, catlike leap which carried him to our front door; with one hand he flung it open and with his other he covered us with an automatic, which after a staring moment he lowered. To Ruggles, he said:
“Get in here, Garrison. I’ve been waiting near an hour for you!”
It was he who closed the door after us and made sure that the lock was turned. It was he who led us into our living room as if the place were his.
“If you got any other doors any one can come in through, block ’em up,” was his next command.
That was it: this man did not come here to beg our help as our other clients had done — he gave his orders with the confidence of one certain that he should be obeyed. I looked at him resentfully, but he met me with a leer on his hard lips and a cold glitter in his baleful eyes.
“Wipe it off,” he said in a voice with a rasp like a file. “Wipe it off an’ keep it off! You don’t know me, man, and you don’t know what I know!”
Leaving me as if sure he had disposed of me for the time, as indeed he had, he turned on Ruggles and said: “You call yourself Ruggles now, huh? Well, you’ve got some taller an’ you’ve grown up to yer bones; but I don’t see you’ve changed much except fer that name and th’ side yer working on.”
I looked at Ruggles and forgot, on the instant, the unexplainable things I had just heard; for Ruggles sat fixed as a statue, watching the other man as if those two had been alone in that suddenly silent room.
Then, in a voice I should not have recognized if I had not been in that room with him, Ruggles said slowly: “Yes, Markley, I’ve changed my name and the side I’m working on.”
“The name part of it, I can get,” the man, Markley, said hoarsely; “I’ve changed mine a good dozen times! But your leaving us and siding in with the harness-bulls — no, that’s too much! Did you get caught — do a stretch — and get converted?”
“No,” the man I had known for four years as Ruggles said in a dead voice, “I simply made a choice.”
“A clever One, likely,” Markley jeered. “You always were the wise guy, Garr — I mean Ruggles. You can tell me about it later. Just now I’m glad you did sign up with the bulls, for you’ve got to help me now from th’ inside.”
“What?”
“Sure — th’ inside; it was me croaked Dorgan, last week; one o’ my gloves split, and your friend, Stannistreet, th’ detective, found my finger-prints. Now you got to block Stannistreet off somehow an’ git me out o’ this town an’ out of this State — you got to do it an’ do it quick, for it’s th’ chair if Stannistreet gets me!”
The telephone rang. At the sound, Markley glared at the instrument like a hunted animal; his dirty, talonlike fingers closed on the arm of his chair, and the perspiration stood out on his brow.
“If that’s one of Stannistreet’s men and he’s traced me here—”
Ruggles cut Markley short with a gesture and lifted the receiver.
“Yes,” my companion said over the wire, “this is Ruggles. Oh, how are you? What? You say you want to give me a description? Go ahead! I’ll repeat it after you so as to get it straight. Now go ahead!”
There was a pause during which Ruggles looked over the top of the instrument at Markley. “All right. Five feet ten and a half. Weighs about one hundred and sixty pounds. Hair gray and cut close to the head. Eyes light blue? Yes, all right — light blue, with a squint. Cheek bones rather prominent. Complexion gray. An inch-long scar under right eye, becomes purple when man is angered. Desperate character, will not be taken alive, dead shot with each hand. Name is—”
With a snarl of fury, Markley, whom the description had fitted in every detail like a glove, tore the instrument from Ruggles’s hand and listened breathlessly, that forbidding scar under his right eye, burning an ever angrier and more ferocious purple.
Then Markley forced the instrument back into Ruggles’s hand, saying savagely the instant Ruggles hung up: “Stannistreet himself, that was. I thought first you were giving me away. If you had I’d have croaked you where you stood!”
Markley’s hoarse voice shook with passion, and he fixed on Ruggles’s wrist a hand on which the cords stood out like roots.
“Steady, Markley,” Ruggles said evenly. “Steady!”
“Steady, yes,” the fugitive said. “But, if you’re thinking you can tip Stannistreet off that I’m here, think again, for all I’ve got to do is slip him the word that you and I worked in the same gang, once—”
“Yes, I know,” Ruggles broke in. “I know that only too well, Markley.”
Markley’s hard face took on an acid grin. “Oh, I get you,” he said significantly; “your friend here don’t know about what you used to be.”
“There is no need of his knowing,” Ruggles said; “Mr. Crane is my friend as well as my assistant who helps me on all my cases.”
“Then,” Markley kept on, “as I look at it he ought to know — ought to know what gang you travelled with up to ten years ago; he ought to know what you are an’ what me an’ the other four have got on you. He ought to get hep to that an’ I’m goin’ to tell him.”
“No,” Ruggles said slowly.
“Who’s going to stop me? Not you, Mr. — Ruggles! Who then?”
“Stannistreet, the detective. You heard what he said to me; the description he gave me; you recognized his voice on the telephone. But you didn’t get the whole thing.”
“What didn’t I get?” Markley’s ice-colored eyes narrowed to slits.
“He’s on his way up here now,” Ruggles said steadily. “I’m playing this fair with you, Markley. He’s on his way up here now. If you want to get away before he comes, you’d better be starting.
“If you don’t want to get away before he comes, you’ve got to get out of sight. Go into that room there,” indicating our extra bedroom. “Shut the door and lock it on your side; but listen, if you like, through the keyhole.”
“He’s coming here to ask you to take my trail, is he?” Markley asked.
“Yes,” Ruggles replied. “I’m the only one who can get you out of the fix you’re in now, and I’m going to do it. I tell you this, and you know I keep my word.”
“You always did in the old days,” Markley said grudgingly; “but how do I know you will now? You’ve gone back on the old gang an’ probably squealed—”