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:
With my last strength, I leaped to the running-board of a passing taxicab and, as I crawled, with the driver’s help in through the door, told him to make all the speed his car could do to 144 Perry Street.
If the giant, who had gained on me in our descent of the stairs, had come up with me then, I could have made no resistance: I was as spent as a runner after a marathon and, I believe, should scarcely have felt anything that my huge enemy might have done to me.
But, as the taxi gained speed and I looked through the side window, I could see nothing of my pursuer. The sluicing rain lashed my face and I was glad of its invigorating coolness; but the glare and glitter of the lightning blinded me the next instant, and I ran up the window and leaned back in my seat, working out the details of what my next move must be.
I must warn Stannistreet that Markley was coming to kill him. I could not give the warning over the telephone, for my voice, husky as it was now from anxiety over Ruggles and my despair at discovering that he had gone, would not have been recognized by Stannistreet.
The only thing for me to do was to go direct to the detective’s house and give him the warning face to face. I was confident then I could make Stannistreet believe me.
The taxi was taking me there swiftly. It was no distance from Christopher Street to Perry Street. Before I could realize it, the taxi stopped at the door, and I was paying the driver his charge.
“Wait a minute,” he said quickly. “Sure this is the right place? There’s no light showing here.”
He was right; but the flash light, which I had out in an instant, showed the number “144” above the door.
“Yes,” I said, “this is the place. Pull up to the curb, across the street, and wait for me!”
“How long ’ll I wait,” he asked, naturally enough.
“I don’t know,” I said dully. “Perhaps you had better not — wait.” That was it: I had no idea of when I should come out of that door under those three numerals; I might never come out at all. I heard myself repeating mechanically the words: “Perhaps you had better not wait.”
“Just as you say,” the driver said surlily. He started his taxi, saying to me at the same time: “There’s a taxi parked over there anyway.”
His gears went into second, then into high, and his tail-light dwindled in size, then disappeared down the teeming street.
I dashed up the steps of the apartment house and turned the knob of the door, but the door did not open. There was a bell at the right hand side; I found it after running my fingers up and down the dripping wood. The janitor’s bell, I knew; and I started to press it, then stopped, for I did not want the janitor.
My association with Ruggles had taught me to keep equipped with skeleton keys and had made me an expert in the use of them; so it was not more than a minute before I had the door open and was standing in the vestibule; and there, on the tablet at the right on the wall, was the name by which Stannistreet had told Ruggles and me he was known here by:
That meant the top floor, and I rushed up the stairs.
It was at the back of the house. The halls were dimly lighted — low-power electric light bulbs — evidently the landlord was thrifty. But there was enough light for me to read the numbers over the doors I passed.
I doubted if there was an elevator in the remodeled building, but, even if I had seen an elevator, I should not have taken the time to rouse the elevator boy. I did not want to lose the time, and I did not want him any more than I had wanted the janitor.
I dashed on up the stairs, and “Suite 16” glared at me like the glowing eye of a lighthouse from which the shrouding fog has suddenly lifted. It may have been that my rush up the steep flights of stairs had left me breathless, or it may have been my sudden thankfulness that I had arrived in time.
Be that as it may, my legs suddenly went weak, and I leaned against the open window at the end of the hall for support.
Then I was across the hall and knocked on the door with my clenched fist.
“Stannistreet,” I called, through the door. “Stannistreet?”
The door opened, and Stannistreet looked down at me.
“Markley and his gang are coming to kill you,” I cried, bringing the words out in a rush. “They’s coming—”
No word of his stopped me: it was his automatic, which had leaped to a level with my chest.
“Markley,” Stannistreet said hoarsely. “Markley, by—”
In the blur which fell suddenly between Stannistreet and me, I saw him coming straight at me.
“I am Crane,” I said. “Crane! I—”
“All right — Crane,” Stannistreet said grimly. Then, as his gun rose, then turned, butt down. “Call yourself Crane if you like. Think you could get me the way you did Dorgan?”
His loaded hand, which held my eyes fascinated, fell like a bolt from the sky down on me. Too late I remembered my disguise. “It’s Crane,” I tried to say. Then something crashed down on my head; I felt unsupportable pain, then toppled backward into a bottomless abyss.
When I could see again, I realized, as much as my numbed faculties enabled me to realize anything, that my hands and feet were bound, and a gag I could not dislodge made speech impossible. Some one had propped me up in a chair — Stannistreet, of course — and lashed me securely to the front and the back of it.
I could see the inside of the room now for the first time; Stannistreet was sitting at his desk with his back to me. I had no idea what interval of time had elapsed; but he was evidently pondering, at the moment, some legal document, one of those with which I could see that the desk was littered.
He paid no more attention to me than if I had never existed, and the utter cold-bloodedness of this struck me through and through; I forgot what I should have remembered: that, to Stannistreet, I was Markley, Markley, who had come there, the detective believed, to kill him. I forgot this, I say; I could remember only that Stannistreet, my old friend, Stannistreet sitting there with his back to me at his desk, had knocked me out with the butt of his gun, had bound and gagged me, and now, having made sure of my helplessness, had no further thought of me.
That was it: to him I was Markley, his prisoner, now. Before long, he would look up from his work, over which he was bending motionless now, and, if something reminded him that I was there, lashed to the chair behind him, he would reach for the telephone at his right, on the flat-topped desk, and give the notice of my arrest to police headquarters.
A policeman, two, probably, would come then and take me away, gagged still and unable even to attempt to demonstrate my real identity.
Chapter VII
On the Stairs
Then a new phase of my predicament occurred to me: to the police, who would come for me, I should be Markley as I was to Stannistreet. Markley had killed Dorgan, the policeman; and all the police in Manhattan were possessed with one burning desire now — to get their hands on the man who had murdered Dorgan.
I heard then what made my blood turn to ice: the almost inaudible sound of some one coming up the stairs. Stannistreet did not hear it, for he was lost in his examination of the document or whatever it was which had so absorbed his interest.
But I heard that sound; try as I would to doubt it, I knew that I had heard it and could hear it now.
I could hear it because Stannistreet, without realizing it, had left the door open into the hall. I could hear even the faint sound of those catlike, cautious feet coming up the stairs, and I wondered, — almost idly because I was so powerless to do anything, how I could hear so perfectly so soon after my head had been broken by a gun.