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Hollywood Detective, March, 1944
Trying to trip up a kidnaper, Dan Turner finds himself in the middle of a murder mess. Behind it all looms up the hoodoo cab, license number, 8-BA-11. Accidents, lawsuits, and now a murder! But what can you expect of a cab, handicapped like that, and with a girl driver to boot?
MY JALOPY was laid up for lack of rations and I was using a Yellow when the trouble erupted. To make matters worse, my hacker was she-male gender: a smooth young brunette filly with a nice touch on the wheel and even nicer curves under her uniform. War-time Hollywood is full of these chauffeurs in skirts, and I had drawn the cream of the crop.
All of a sudden the cream curdled. She twisted her tiller to the right; gave vent to a tonsil-splitting yeep.
We were walloping out Wilshire at the time, which was about midnight. I was dozing in the tonneau after an evening spent at various gin mills; and now, pleasantly bottled on Vat 69, I had ordered my cabby to roll me home to my apartment stash. I was lying down on the rear seat when the crash came.
First the jessie yodeled, which rousted me out of my torpor in a thundering yank. Then she swerved curbward before I could sit up straight. The next, thing I knew there was a jarring bump as a front tire smacked the curbstone. The impact jolted me to the floor; temporarily wedged me there.
I gasped: “What the—!” and tried to unscramble myself from the movable foot- rest. Nobody heard me, though. The commotion up forward would have drowned out the Battle of Gettysburg. Apparently another chariot had shoved my cab to the gutter, and on the heels of this skullduggery some sinister character emerged from the offending crate to lay violent mitts on my delishful driver.
The result was a fracas that sounded like a riot in a boiler factory. The jane screeched, the guy cursed, and there was a drumming of tiny heels on the floorboards. Presently I heard a slap, a moan and a scuffling noise that subsided into abrupt silence; then came panted breathing and a slithering of soles being dragged on asphalt. A car door slammed.
THE thing was finished in a flash. Just as I got my plastered poundage untangled, gears clashed and a motor roared. I raised myself barely in time to tab a dark sedan spurting away like a comet with the hot-foot. My hacker was in it, of course; she'd been bopped groggy and grabbed. Snatchery had been committed under my very optics—and I hadn't lifted a finger to prevent it. Me with a private badge beneath my lapel and a roscoe holstered inside my coat!
My orey-eyed condition was no excuse. I should have got out from under the foot-rest, tried to protect the chick. Maybe her abductor would have laid off if he'd known she had a passenger; obviously the only reason he'd pulled the stunt was because the tonneau had seemed empty. It was my fault for lying down when I should have been sitting up.
The situation had its silver lining, though, even if it was slightly tarnished. At least the snatch artist didn't know he'd been witnessed at his work. Realizing this, I got cold sober in a hurry; slammed my heft up front and took the taxi's rudder; clanked the gears. Three blocks distant you could see a pair of crimson dots, the kidnap sedan's tail lights. I started driving buckety-larrup in vengeful pursuit.
And then, just when I'd begun to shorten the gap, hard luck overhauled me.
The hard luck was wearing a blue uniform and riding a motor bike, and he was one of the toughest looking cops you'd care to encounter at sixty miles an hour. He cut loose with a screaming blast of his soprano siren; opened his yap and yelled me toward the curb.
“Ix-nay, dopey!” I caterwauled back at him without reducing speed. Then I made a gesture at the snatch chariot ahead; tried to make him savvy the score. “Kidnaper in that black bucket. He captured my cabby!”
The bull couldn't hear me over the thunder of his cylinders. He reached down to his belt, then again waved me curbward. This time his wave was emphasized by a service .38 which he thereupon aimed at my noggin. “Pull over.”
I damned him, damned his family, his precinct, and his brother officers. I also tossed out my four wheel anchors; screeched to a shuddering halt. Then, as the motorcycle minion dismounted and stalked stiff-legged at me I shrilled: “You numbskull, climb back on your bike and get that sedan. It's a—”
“Quiet. Let's see your wrists.” He sounded mean.
I blinked at him. “What about my wrists?”
“I've got cuffs for them.” He produced his nippers.
“Now wait a minute,” I snarled. “You can't do this. I'm Dan Turner. I'm a private dick.”
He made a nasty mouth. “Don't irritate me. Your wrists. I'm not going to ask you again. That's a warning.”
“You won't listen to me about the kidnaping?”
“I won't even listen to you about the murder.” Then he conked me over the cranium with the barrel of his gat; dealt me one of the dirtiest taps I've ever taken. I passed into a sudden coma with his mysterious mumble about a murder still buzzing within my dislocated brains.
MY FRIEND Dave Donaldson of the homicide bureau resurrected me by pouring a jorum of gin down my gullet. I hate gin; Scotch is my tipple. I choked, strangled, came awake and discovered I was in Donaldson's office at police headquarters. My scalp was throbbing where I'd been maced, my throat was afire from Dave's alcoholic first aid, and my disposition was as rancid as a milk-and-vinegar cocktail. “Hey, dammit—!”
“Take it easy,” Donaldson's growl matched the grimness that darkened his beefy features. “Know where you are?”
I lurched to my pins. “Certainly. I suppose that motorcycle moron brought me here. Or had me brought!”
“He did. On a murder charge.”
“What is this?” I bleated indignantly. “The thing was a kidnaping, not a bumping. I tried to tell the guy but he wasn't in a listening mood.”
“He wasn't supposed to listen. He and every other cop on the force had radio orders to pick up a certain cab and whoever was driving it. Okay; you were driving it. Damned fast, too, according to his report.”
I said: “Of course I was traveling fast. My hacker had been snatched and I was trying to catch up with her.”
“You mean she'd been killed and you were trying to get away from her. You were putting distance between yourself and her body. Why'd you croak her, Hawkshaw?”
“Don't be an idiot,” I rasped. “She was alive the last time I lamped her. If she's defunct now, it's news to me.”
Dave's glimmers narrowed. “She's dead, all right.” He glued the clutch on my arm. “Come along. I'll show you.” Whereupon we took a swift mosey to the morgue and he nudged me toward a slab of marble that had something on it; something covered by a white sheet. He yanked the sheet downward. “Take a look at her and begin spilling.”
Scrutinizing corpses isn't my idea of a pleasant occupation, especially when other people are scrutinizing me. In this case the other people were Donaldson himself and another guy who was already in the chilly chamber, ankling up and down like a hyena in a cage. This jittery bozo was short, skinny and sallow; the type you'd cast for mobster roles in Class quickies. I didn't like the furtive way he kept staring at me, and under other circumstances I might have told him so. Right now, though, I couldn't be bothered. I was too busy studying the murdered wren.
She was embellished in a grey whipcord uniform, and in life she'd been fairly pretty if you go for peroxide blondes; but her beauty was a trifle marred by a bullet hole in her forehead. It gave me a queasy feeling when I piped it.
I turned to Dave. “When and where did it happen?”
“As if you didn't know,” he sneered sourly. Then he had the decency to dredge his notebook from a coat pocket and warble me the facts he'd gathered, which weren't many. “At eleven fifteen tonight a Yellow cab traveling west on Hollywood Boulevard made a left turn at Cahuenga. Its door accidentally opened, and this corpse fell out.”
“So what?”
“Whoever was at the wheel evidently realized the beans were spilled and pulled away fast. But a bystander got the hack's license number, 8-BA-ll, and phoned headquarters.”
“And?”
“I put out a radio bleat, had the dead girl brought in, and called the taxi company. Their night despatcher identified her.” He indicated the sallow character. “This is the despatcher, Joe Brock.”
BROCK stopped pacing long enough to snivel: “Yes. She's Betty Calvert, the regular driver of cab 8-BA-11. That damned hack has been unlucky ever since it got those numbers. When you look at the figures and letters they seem to spell 8-Ball. A hoodoo, that's what it is! Accidents, lawsuits, and now Betty murdered! We were to be m-married next week. . . .”
“That's tough,” I tried to make my tone sympathetic but didn't succeed too well. There was something about this Brock citizen that rubbed my fur the wrong way; something phony and insincere. His grief had a counterfeit quality, or at least that was the impression I got.
Donaldson went on: “The way I see it, Miss Calvert was shot and stowed in the tonneau; the killer probably intended to dump her later, but not so openly.”
“This was quarter after eleven?” I said.
Dave nodded. “And a little past midnight you were picked up driving that cab. What can you say to that?”
“Plenty.” I put a gasper in my profile, set fire to it. “At eleven-fifteen I was swilling Scotch at the Beachcombers' joint on McCadden Place. The waiters and bartenders will alibi me.”
“Are you leveling?”
“Yeh. I hailed the cab and boarded it just a few minutes before midnight. Shortly afterward that bull pinched me. Check up and you'll find I'm telling the truth.”
His puss started to redden. “But—but—”
“My chauffeur was a jane, but not this blonde. Mine was brunette, and she got snatched. I tried to pull a rescue and wound up with a lump on the dome. Police efficiency,” I added in a sarcastic voice. “Hit first and ask questions later.”
Donaldson made placating gestures. “Don't hold that against us, Sherlock. Dammit, he was doing what he thought was his duty. After all—”
That was as far as he got with the official apology routine. The rest of it was interrupted by the headlong arrival of a dapper guy in expensive tweeds, a party whose prematurely grey hair made curious contrast to his youthful pan. He came busting into the morgue room; pelted forward and glommed a frantic swivel at the deceased Calvert cookie. Then he pivoted with a flabbergasted look in his bulging peepers.
''This isn't Gloria!” he panted. He grabbed Donaldson by the lapels. “Where is she? For God's sake tell me!”
TO MAKE this screwball outburst all the crazier, I recognized the youthful yuck with the frosty tresses. His name was Todd Quentin and he was a flack—a press agent— for Magnifilm Studios. I'd met him on several clambakes around town and I knew his reputation for planting clever publicity stories in the newspapers for the benefit of Magnifilm stars and starlets. He wasn't acting like a public relations expert now, though. He seemed to be scared spitless; on the verge of the screaming meemies. That was proven by his antics. Nobody in his right mind would try to shake Dave Donaldson's lapels. It was the same as striking matches in a dynamite factory.
I dropped a duke on Quentin's shoulder, spun him around and said: “Ease off, bub, or the lieutenant's likely to deprive you of your front teeth; he's touchy tonight. What's got your tripes in such an uproar?”
“Hunh?” he gave me a blank glance. Then he tabbed me. “Turner!”
“Yeah, in person. Why all the excitement?”
He shivered. “I just heard a radio newscast that a girl cab driver had been m-murdered, and I thought it was Gloria. I mean I was afraid she—that is, I—”
“Gloria who?” I said.
“Gloria Farrand.”
The monicker made me blink. This Farrand cupcake he'd mentioned was Magnifilm's latest starring discovery, a delishful little raven-haired dish who'd come up through the extra ranks, won herself a fat contract on the basis of sheer acting ability plus an added cargo of she-male loveliness. A year ago she'd been utterly unknown; now she was one of the best bets in the galloping snapshots.
But I still couldn't figure what Quentin was yeeping about. I said: “Why should you think Gloria Farrand got creamed while tooling a Yellow? She's a movie star, not a hacker. You don't make sense.”
“Sure she's a star. But she was driving a taxi tonight. Sort of a publicity stunt. And now I c-can't f-find her!”
Donaldson clouded up like a storm hunting a place to sprinkle. He horned into the dialogue with: “Back off and start again. From the beginning.”
“It was a gag,” the Quentin character quavered. “I thought it up myself. Gloria was to wear a cabby uniform from the studio's costume department and drive a taxi from midnight to dawn, incognito.”
“Speak English,” Dave snarled.
QUENTIN went on: “The idea was to see if any passengers recognized her. If so, we'd break the story that way. Public Spots Movie Star Despite Disguise. But if nobody realized who she was, we planned to play it from the reverse angle. Talented Star Hoodwinks Public. Whichever way it broke, we couldn't miss hitting a jackpot of newspaper headlines.”
“Very clever, I'm sure,” Dave said heavily. “For Pete's sake, the crackpots there are in this crazy town!” He thrust out his jaw. “Well, then what?”
“We arranged the deal with—” Quentin stared across the room and noticed the sallow despatcher ”—with Mr. Brock there. And with this girl on the slab,” he added, indicating the defunct Betty Calvert. “She was to turn her cab over to Gloria around eleven o'clock tonight at a certain intersection.”
Joe Brock nodded jerkily; didn't stop pacing back and forth. “It's true, just like he says. That's exactly how it was to happen.”
“And did it?” Donaldson asked dourly. “I mean, did this Calvert girl give her hack to Gloria Farrand as agreed?”
Brock licked his lips. “I don't know. I wasn't there. I had to be at my despatcher's desk in the garage office.”
“Well, then, would you know?” Dave looked at Quentin.
“No. That is, I made the arrangements but I didn't think it was necessary to be on hand and follow them through. Gloria knew the time and place where she was to get the taxi from Miss Calvert, so I didn't bother to go with her. I stayed home and waited for her to phone me a report after midnight. She promised she would let me know how she was making out.”
“But she didn't phone?”
“No. All I heard was a radio report that a girl hacker h-had been murdered, and I rushed right d-down here. . . .”
Dave thoughtfully rubbed the stubble on his jowls. “It's all clear now,” he announced. “I get the picture. Gloria Farrand had some secret grudge against Betty Calvert. When Betty showed up in cab 8-BA-ll, Gloria croaked her and stowed her in the rear; lost the corpse a little later at the corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga. Then she—”
“Don't you dare say that!” Quentin yammered. “Gloria's one of our most important stars at Magnifilm! You can't accuse her of being a murderess! I won't have it.”
“You won't, huh?” Dave smiled sweetly, the way a man-eating tiger does before it samples your gizzard.
I decided it was time to poke my oar in. “Look,” I said. “I guess we can take for granted it was the Farrand doll who drove the cab I rode in. But that doesn't prove she committed killery. Quite the contrary.”
“How come?” Dave demanded.
“If she had been the one who'd lost Betty Calvert's remainders, she'd have ditched the hack in a hurry. She wouldn't cruise around for passengers. Furthermore, there's still her kidnaping to be explained.”
The Donaldson countenance assumed a supercilious expression. “Okay, genius. Explain it.”
“Sure.” I torched a fresh coffin nail. “The kidnaper is the guy who cooled Betty Calvert.”
“Is that a riddle or just doubletalk?”
I SAID: “Neither; it's a logical theory. I really shouldn't tell it to you after the way I've been pushed around by the law tonight, but here it is anyway. We'll start with the snatch artist. Somehow he learned that Gloria Farrand was going to tool a taxi. She's a valuable Magnifilm property, so he decided to put the grab on her; hold her for ransom.”
“Get to the point.”
“Well, let's assume he made his play a little too early. Instead of getting the Farrand cookie he finds he's waylaid Betty Calvert, who's no good to him. But if he releases her, she might warn Miss Farrand, so he plugs her.”
Dave lifted a lip. “Pretty thin, Philo.”
“It can be thicker. Maybe the Calvert quail recognizes this would-be abductor. Therefore he's got to murder her to keep her from beefing to the cops. So now what does he do? He stuffs the corpse in the tonneau—and then accidentally loses it at Hollywood and Cahuenga.”
“Next chapter, please.”
I said: “He drives the empty cab to a certain spot and abandons it there. Presently Gloria Farrand shows up, blissfully ignorant of what has happened. She sees the empty hack and assumes it's been left there for her. She drives away in it; later picks me up as a passenger. Does this make sense?”
“I hear you talking.”
“All right. Now the killer is cruising around in his own jalopy. His plans have been knocked galleywampus because he'd kidnaped the wrong jane and been forced to bump her. Suddenly he notices cab 8-BA-ll going by. This time the Farrand wren is at the wheel, the doll he yearns to snatch. Her taxi looks vacant; how can he guess I'm lying down on the rear seat? So he jams the jessie to the curb, strongarms her into his own sedan, and gets away with her. Which explains everything.”
“It does if I choose to believe there was such a thing as a kidnap sedan,” Dave grumbled. “How do I know you weren't having a drunken nightmare?”
I felt my temper bristling. “If it was a dream, it was clearer than any I've ever had before. I even tabbed the getaway buggy's rear plate; made a note of the number just before the bull on the motorcycle flagged me down.”
“Well for Pete's sake!” he roared. “Why didn't you tell me that in the first place? Let's have it. I'll put out a dragnet; comb Southern California until we find—”
“Stew you,” I said.
“Wh-wha-what?”
I favored him with a sardonic leer. “I have nightmares. I'm just a tackling dummy for the police department. The cops shove me around and I'm supposed to like it. You call me a liar. Okay, so I'm a liar. Skip the whole thing.” I pivoted on my heel, aimed for the exit; powdered.
And then, just as I gained the sidewalk, somebody pelted up behind me; shoved a rod against my favorite kidney. “Freeze,” a sniveling voice said. “Before I burn you down.”
I RECOGNIZED those nasal accents even though I couldn't see the guy with the gat. “Hi, Brock,” I remarked. “Does the cab company teach its despatchers to handle firearms or did you learn in college?”
“None of your mouth. You know I ain't a college punk. Walk forward slow. In that alley there. I'm going to beat the bejaspers out of you with this heater.”
I said conversationally: “That's nice. Mind telling me why?”
“No I don't mind. You tried to put the finger on me, that's why.”
“What finger?” I asked him.
“You rigged the story so I'd be the only one they could suspect when they got around to thinking about it. Nobody else was hep to the Gloria Farrand deal but me. I made the arrangements to let her have a hack. I knew where she was to pick it up. Donaldson's going to tumble to all that pretty soon; then the heat will be on me. They'll say I'm the kidnaper and killer.”
I turned carefully, put the steady focus on him. “And aren't you?”
The question drove him off his chump. He raised his roscoe; started to slam it across my complexion. I ducked, swung, pounded the cannon out of his clutch. It landed with a clatter on the alley pavement. Then I grabbed his shoulders, yanked him toward me. At the same time I lowered my noggin; butted him.
My descending cranium caught him full on the smeller; squashed it like a ripe strawberry. He moaned, staggered, started folding. I assisted this folding process by doling him an uppercut—a short, snappy punch that jolted him as stiff as a load of lumber. He dropped.
I ankled out of the alley, whistling to myself. Ten minutes later I found an all night beanery; used its pay phone and called Dave Donaldson. “Meet me at my apartment stash as fast as you can get there,” I said. “I have tidings.”
Then I hailed an owl cab and went home.
DAVE ARRIVED almost as soon as I did. “News, eh?” he barged to my cellarette, poured himself an uninvited snort of highland lightning. “Let's hear it.”
“Okay.” I took a slug of the same medicine to ward off snakebite. “I pulled a rannigan on you at the morgue when I said I'd tabbed the snatch car's pads. That was a lie.”
He coughed in his jorum. “Why, you—”
“I had a reason,” I said soothingly. “In the first place the killer-kidnaper has to be somebody who knew all about Gloria Farrand's deal to become a hacker for the night. The stunt was supposed to be a secret, but at least four characters shared it.”
“Four?”
“Sure. Todd Quentin was one; he dreamed up the idea. Gloria herself was the second; she was to benefit from the publicity—never guessing she'd be abducted. The third was the she-male in charge of cab 8-BA-ll, Betty Calvert.”
“Count her out of it,” Dave growled. “She's dead.” Then his glimmers widened. “Hey, that leaves the despatcher guy with the sallow map; Joe Brock!”
I nodded. “Naturally he was in on the scheme. Anyhow, I pretended I could identify the kidnap sedan if I wanted to. Then I clammed up.”
“What was the idea?”
“I figured the guilty party would be scared I might reverse myself later and slip you the information. If that thought came to him, he might try to shut me up.”
“You mean bump you? You're using yourself as live bait?”
“Yeah. And I've already got a nibble. Brock followed me out of the morgue, pulled a rod on me.”
“Well I'll be go to hell!”
I said: “It wasn't much of a fracas. I clipped him on the dimple with a set of fives; rendered him useless for a while.” I blew on my knuckles. “The last I saw of him he was out like a light in the morgue alley.”
“For the love of Whozit!” Dave caterwauled. “Why didn't you come back inside and tell me? I could have pinched him, used a rubber hose on him to make him confess! Dammit, Sherlock, what's wrong with you?”
“Avarice,” I said. “It's my worst failing. I'm in this racket for all the geetus I can collect. I'm trying to save up a retirement fund before some dumb copper bunts me once too frequently and installs me in a wooden kimona.”
He looked bewildered, which wasn't hard for him to do. “How do you figure to make any dough out of this mess?”
“By rescuing Gloria Farrand,” I said. “Her studio ought to kick in with a nice reward if I pull the trick.”
Comprehension spread across his mush. “I get it! By letting Brock run loose, you think he may lead you to where the jane's being held captive!” Then he scowled. “But isn't he likely to take another crack at you first?”
“I'm hoping for another attack, yes,” I admitted. “Let's put out the lights and see what happens.” I clicked the switch, took Donaldson's arm, steered him into my bachelor boudoir. After he was settled in a closet I went to the bed, arranged the pillows to look like a sleeping figure. It was a corny setup straight out of dime novels, but I had a hunch it would work.
I joined Dave in the closet. “No matter what happens, don't show yourself; don't do any shooting. Everything depends on that. Savvy?”
His grunt meant yes, he understood.
TIME snailed by. Thirty minutes. An hour. I'd have given my left arm for a gasper and a jigger of skee but I didn't dare move. The luminous dial of my strap watch showed another hour going to hell in no great hurry; and then, abruptly, there was the sound of a window being cautiously opened across the room. Some sharp disciple was coming in from the fire escape landing.
A hooded flashlight winked briefly, just long enough to dab a spray of glow on the bed and fix its position. Then there was a dull report; a stab of flame from the muzzle of a gat wrapped in many thicknesses of cloth. The cloth served as an improvised silencer, muffling the gun-thunder. My pillow dummy twitched under the covers.
Alongside me in the closet, Donaldson tensed. I pinched his arm, signaled him quiet. A blurry form was vanishing beyond the window, lowering itself out of sight.
The instant it was gone I whispered: “Now, chum.” Then Dave and I scuttled across the flat, blipped to the corridor and descended the stairway as fast as we could ramble. We gained the main lobby door just in time to lamp a black sedan pulling away from the curb, its headlamps and taillights doused.
“The snatch bucket!” I said. “We don't dare lose it or the whole case falls apart!”
Dave was already slamming toward his official chariot at a careening clip. I leaped along with him, piled in. He took the wheel and we boiled into sudden motion under forced draft. Dead ahead the black sedan yowled around a corner. We made the same turn with our own lights switched off. The chase commenced; but our quarry didn't know it. We stayed just the right distance behind him to keep him from suspecting it.
Presently Donaldson said: “Look where the louse is going—straight for the Yellow garage! That proves it's Joe Brock. Now we've got the deadwood on him!”
“We haven't got Gloria Farrand, though,” I snapped. “Take it easy. He's parking. Stop here and we'll gumshoe the rest of the way. There he goes through the side entrance.”
The next couple of minutes were nip and tuck. We skulked to the garage, crossed the threshold into solid darkness. There was a smell of old rubber and oil and gasoline in the joint, heavy and pungent. This section was the repair shop where damaged cabs underwent mechanical surgery; a partition separated it from the front area. There were probably lights burning in that front portion, but not here in the back. Which might have been disastrous for the detective business, except for the fact that we got an abrupt break of luck.
Our guy used his flashlight for a split second. That spotted him for us. We piped him scuttling through a narrow doorway. He disappeared.
THE doorway stood alongside an oversized elevator platform; a giant freight elevator used for conveying taxis to and from the upper storage floors. When we reached the aperture, we discovered a steep steel staircase leading downward into the elevator pit; the cavernous subterranean chamber which housed the platform's big hydraulic plunger. This plunger was what raised and lowered the elevator proper, and the pit itself made the concrete- lined bottom of the huge square shaft. Except when the mechanism needed tinkering, nobody would ever enter the pit; therefore it formed a perfect hideout for a kidnap victim. It was the one spot a guy wouldn't ordinarily think to search.
And the snatch artist had led us straight to it!
Below us, his electric torch was glowing again. In its dull reflection I got a gander at him, saw he was wearing a hood mask of black cloth with two slits for his glimmers. The material adhered to his noggin and draped his puss; rendered him unrecognizable.
You could recognize his captive, though. The brunette Gloria Farrand lay in a far corner, trussed like a Christmas goose and clad in a hacker's uniform. There was a gag in her gorgeous kisser and fright in her dark optics. She squirmed against her bonds, made whimpering noises.
I nudged Donaldson. “There's the chick who drove the 8-Ball cab I rode in,” I whispered grimly. “Now will you believe what I told you about the snatch?”
“Yeah. Imagine a movie cutie in a spot like this. Come on—let's wash it up.” He pulled his service .38 and went catapulting downward. “Okay, Joe Brock. Get your mitts up before I make a sieve of your giblets!” he roared.
The masked character gave vent to a startled yeep; whirled and froze when he lamped Dave's artillery. I crossed the floor of the pit, barged close to him and said: “The jig's up, chump. Only you aren't Joe Brock. You're Todd Quentin.”
Then I yanked off his black hood, revealed the prematurely grey hair and youthful map of the Magnifilm publicity agent. I motioned to Donaldson, “Nipper him.”
DAVE LOOKED stupefied as he lowered his rod, reached for a set of bracelets. “But—but I thought—”
“Sure,” I said. “All the signs pointed to Brock except one. When you had Betty Calvert's carcass brought to the morgue, you phoned the taxi company. Brock came and identified the Calvert jessie—and he stayed there in the morgue from then until the time he followed me out, tried to pistol-whip me.
“Actually, that gave him an alibi. It was while he was pacing up and down in the morgue that this Farrand doll was kidnapped. Consequently Brock couldn't be the one who grabbed her. So the guilty guy had to be Quentin, the only other bozo who knew Miss Farrand would be driving cab 8-BA-ll. He dreamed up this whole publicity stunt so he could snatch her and hold her for ransom.”
As I spoke, I moved to the fettered quail; pulled the gag out of her lovely yap. She moaned: “I—I never realized it was Quentin. He wore that horrible hood wh-when he dragged m-me from the c-cab, and—”
“And now his game is up,” I said.
Quentin chuckled. “That's what you think, shamus.”
I spun around; felt a sinking sensation in my elly-bay. The dirty heel had an automatic in his duke; had drawn it while Donaldson was fumbling for the handcuffs. Now Dave stood petrified as Quentin covered him. I was in the same fix. If I made a move, the press agent would plug me.
He backed toward the steep stairs. “I'm leaving.”
“You won't get far,” I snarled bitterly. “We'll be on your trail before you can belch. The dragnet will go out for you and your number will be up.”
“How can you trail me when you're going to be dead?” he inquired sarcastically. “So- long, suckers.” He touched an electric switch in the wall.
Machinery hummed, hissed. Overhead the elevator platform began slowly to descend. As it dropped, I realized what would happen. The damned thing would crush us against the bottom of the pit, convert us into three generous portions of unrationed hamburger. Quentin stood on the stairs, safely beyond the lowering cage.
The Farrand doll screamed. Donaldson raged. “You rat! You're not satisfied with croaking Betty Calvert. You want three more kills on your conscience—”
Even as he spoke, somebody came lurching down the steps. It was Joe Brock. “So you murdered Betty, eh!” he screeched. Then he maced Quentin across the conk with a spanner.
Quentin tumbled headlong into the pit. At the same instant I gathered Gloria Farrand into my clutch, raced with her to the stairway. Donaldson followed with his hip pockets dipping sand. We reached safety just as the elevator closed the gap. The unconscious Quentin slob never had a chance.
The platform squashed him.
Moaning softly, the brunette cupcake fainted in my embrace. I toted her upward; pinned the glimpse on Brock. “Well, you got your revenge on the creep that cooled your sweetie.”
“Yes,” he sniveled. “Now I suppose I'm pinched for knocking him off. That damned 8- Ball hack is a hoodoo.” He turned to Donaldson. “I'll go quiet, officer.”
Dave brushed him aside. “Don't be a dope, you dope. You deserve a medal.” Which was correct, although I wasn't paying too much attention. I was thinking about the reward I'd collect for returning Gloria Farrand to her studio, safe and sound.