Crime Stories Page 22

  “You ain’t counting on Smith being in sight, are you?” the detective−sergeant asked.

  “No. He’ll be holed up somewhere until he sees how things are going. But Madden Dexter will have to be out in the open to protect himself. He has an alibi, so he’s in the clear so far as the actual killing is concerned. And with me supposed to be dead, the more he stays in the open, the safer he is. But it’s a cinch that he knows what this is all about, though he wasn’t necessarily involved in it. As near as I could see, he didn’t go out on deck with Smith and me tonight. Anyway he’ll be home. And this time he’s going to talk—he’s going to tell his little story!”

  Charles Gantvoort was standing on his front steps when we reached his house. He climbed into our taxi and we headed for the Dexters’ apartment. We didn’t have time to answer any of the questions that Gantvoort was firing at us with every turning of the wheels.

  “He’s home and expecting you?” I asked him.

  “Yes.”

  Then we left the taxi and went into the apartment building.

  “Mr. Gantvoort to see Mr. Dexter,” he told the Philippine boy at the switchboard.

  The boy spoke into the phone.

  “Go right up,” he told us.

  At the Dexters’ door I stepped past Gantvoort and pressed the button.

  Creda Dexter opened the door. Her amber eyes widened and her smile faded as I stepped past her into the apartment.

  I walked swiftly down the little hallway and turned into the first room through whose open door a light showed.

  And came face to face with Smith!

  We were both surprised, but his astonishment was a lot more profound than mine. Neither of us had expected to see the other; but I had known he was still alive, while he had every reason for thinking me at the bottom of the bay.

  I took advantage of his greater bewilderment to the extent of two steps toward him before he went into action.

  One of his hands swept down.

  I threw my right fist at his face—threw it with every ounce of my 180 pounds behind it, re−enforced by the memory of every second I had spent in the water, and every throb of my battered head.

  His hand, already darting down for his pistol, came back up too late to fend off my punch.

  Something clicked in my hand as it smashed into his face, and my hand went numb.

  But he went down—and lay where he fell.

  I jumped across his body to a door on the opposite side of the room, pulling my gun loose with my left hand.

  “Dexter’s somewhere around!” I called over my shoulder to O’Gar, who with Gantvoort and Creda, was coming through the door by which I had entered. “Keep your eyes open!”

  I dashed through the four other rooms of the apartment, pulling closet doors open, looking everywhere—and I found nobody.

  Then I returned to where Creda Dexter was trying to revive Smith, with the assistance of O’Gar and Gantvoort.

  The detective−sergeant looked over his shoulder at me.

  “Who do you think this joker is?” he asked.

  “My friend Mr. Smith.”

  “Gantvoort says he’s Madden Dexter.”

  I looked at Charles Gantvoort, who nodded his head.

  “This is Madden Dexter,” he said.

  We worked upon Dexter for nearly ten minutes before he opened his eyes.

  As soon as he sat up we began to shoot questions and accusations at him, hoping to get a confession out of him before he recovered from his shakiness—but he wasn’t that shaky.

  All we could get out of him was:

  “Take me in if you want to. If I’ve got anything to say I’ll say it to my lawyer, and to nobody eke.”

  Creda Dexter, who had stepped back after her brother came to, and was standing a little way off, watching us, suddenly came forward and caught me by the arm.

  “What have you got on him?” she demanded, imperatively.

  “I wouldn’t want to say,” I countered, “but I don’t mind telling you this much. We’re going to give him a chance in a nice modern court−room to prove that he didn’t kill Leopold Gantvoort.”

  “He was in New York!”

  “He was not! He had a friend who went to New York as Madden Dexter and looked after Gantvoort’s business under that name. But if this is the real Madden Dexter then the closest he got to New York was when he met his friend on the ferry to get from him the papers connected with the B. F. & F. Iron Corporation transaction; and learned that I had stumbled upon the truth about his alibi—even if I didn’t know it myself at the time.”

  She jerked around to face her brother.

  “Is that on the level?” she asked him.

  He sneered at her, and went on feeling with the fingers of one hand the spot on his jaw where my fist had landed.

  “I’ll say all I’ve got to say to my lawyer,” he repeated.

  “You will?” she shot back at him. “Well, I’ll say what I’ve got to say right now!”

  She flung around to face me again.

  “Madden is not my brother at all! My name is Ives. Madden and I met in St. Louis about four years ago, drifted around together for a year or so, and then came to Frisco. He was a con man—still is. He made Mr.

  Gantvoort’s acquaintance six or seven months ago, and was getting him all ribbed up to unload a fake invention on him. He brought him here a couple of times, and introduced me to him as his sister. We usually posed as brother and sister.

  “Then, after Mr. Gantvoort had been here a couple times, Madden decided to change his game. He thought Mr. Gantvoort liked me, and that we could get more money out of him by working a fancy sort of badger−game on him. I was to lead the old man on until I had him wrapped around my finger—until we had him tied up so tight he couldn’t get away—had something on him—something good and strong. Then we were going to shake him down for plenty of money.

  “Everything went along fine for a while. He fell for me—fell hard. And finally he asked me to marry him. We had never figured on that. Blackmail was our game. But when he asked me to marry bun I tried to call Madden off. I admit the old man’s money had something to do with it—it influenced me—but I had come to like him a little for himself. He was mighty fine in lots of ways—nicer than anybody I had ever known.

  “So I told Madden all about it, and suggested that we drop the other plan, and that I marry Gantvoort. I promised to see that Madden was kept supplied with money—I knew I could get whatever I wanted from Mr.

  Gantvoort. And I was on the level with Madden. I liked Mr. Gantvoort, but Madden had found him and brought him around to me; and so I wasn’t going to run out on Madden. I was willing to do all I could for him.

  “But Madden wouldn’t hear of it. He’d have got more money in the long run by doing as I suggested—but he wanted his little handful right away. And to make him more unreasonable he got one of his jealous streaks. He beat me one night!

  “That settled it. I made up my mind to ditch him. I told Mr. Gantvoort that my brother was bitterly opposed to our marrying, and he could see that Madden was carrying a grouch. So he arranged to send Madden East on that steel business, to get him out of the way until we were off on our wedding trip. And we thought Madden was completely deceived—but I should have known that he would see through our scheme. We planned to be gone about a year, and by that time I thought Madden would have forgotten me—or I’d be fixed to handle him if he tried to make any trouble.

  “As soon as I heard that Mr. Gantvoort had been killed I had a hunch that Madden had done it. But then it seemed like a certainty that he was in New York the next day, and I thought I had done him an injustice. And I was glad he was out of it. But now—”

  She whirled around to her erstwhile confederate.

  “Now I hope you swing, you big sap!”

  She spun around to me again. No sleek kitten, this, but a furious, spitting cat, with claws and teeth bared.

  “What kind of looking fellow was the one who went t
o New York for him?”

  I described the man I had talked to on the train.

  “Evan Felter,” she said, after a moment of thought. “He used to work with Madden. You’ll probably find him hiding in Los Angeles. Put the screws on bun and he’ll spill all he knows—he’s a weak sister! The chances are he didn’t know what Madden’s game was until it was all over.”

  “How do you like that?” she spat at Madden Dexter. “How do you like that for a starter? You messed up my little party, did you? Well, I’m going to spend every minute of my time from now until they pop you off helping them pop you!”

  And she did, too—with her assistance it was no trick at all to gather up the rest of the evidence we needed to hang him. And I don’t believe her enjoyment of her three−quarters of a million dollars is spoiled a bit by any qualms over what she did to Madden. She’s a very respectable woman now, and glad to be free of the con man.

  THE MAN WHO KILLED DAN ODAMS

  When the light that came through the barred square foot of the cell’s one high window had dwindled until he could no longer clearly make out the symbols and initials his predecessors had scratched and pencilled on the opposite wall, the man who had killed Dan Odams got up from the cot and went to the steel−slatted door.

  “Hey, chief!” he called, his voice rumbling within the narrow walls.

  A chair scraped across a floor in the front of the building, deliberate footsteps approached, and the marshal of Jingo came into the passage between his office and the cell.

  “I got something I want to tell you,” the man in the cell said.

  Then the marshal was near enough to see in the dim light the shiny muzzle of a short, heavy revolver threatening him from just in front of the prisoner’s right hip.

  Without waiting for the time−honored order the marshal raised his hands until their palms were level with his ears.

  The man behind the bars spoke in a curt whisper.

  “Turn around! Push your back against the door!”

  When the marshal’s back pressed against the bars a hand came up under his left armpit, pulled aside his unbuttoned vest, and plucked his revolver from its holster. “Now unlock this here door!”

  The prisoner’s own weapon had disappeared and the captured one had taken its place. The marshal turned around, lowered one hand, keys jingled in it, and the cell door swung open.

  The prisoner backed across the cell, inviting the other in with a beckoning flip of the gun in his hand. “Flop on the bunk, face−down.”

  In silence the marshal obeyed. The man who had killed Dan Odams bent over him. The long black revolver swept down in a swift arc that ended at the base of the prone official’s head.

  His legs jerked once, and he lay still.

  With unhurried deftness the prisoner’s fingers explored the other’s pockets, appropriating money, tobacco, and cigarette papers. He removed the holster from the marshal’s shoulder and adjusted it to his own. He locked the cell door behind him when he left.

  The marshal’s office was unoccupied. Its desk gave up two sacks of tobacco, matches, an automatic pistol, and a double handful of cartridges. The wall yielded a hat that sat far down on the prisoner’s ears, and a too−tight, too−long, black rubber slicker.

  Wearing them, he essayed the street.

  The rain, after three days of uninterrupted sovereignty, had stopped for the time. But Jingo’s principal thoroughfare was deserted—Jingo ate between five and six in the evening.

  His deep−set maroon eyes—their animality emphasized by the absence of lashes—scanned the four blocks of wooden−sidewalked street. A dozen automobiles were to be seen, but no horses.

  At the first corner he left the street and half a block below turned into a muddy alley that paralleled it.

  Under a shed in the rear of a poolroom he found four horses, their saddles and bridles hanging near by. He selected a chunky, well−muscled roan—the race is not to the swift through the mud of Montana—saddled it, and led it to the end of the alley.

  Then he climbed into the saddle and turned his back on the awakening lights of Jingo.

  Presently he fumbled beneath the slicker and took from his hip pocket the weapon with which he had held up the marshal: a dummy pistol of molded soap, covered with tinfoil from cigarette packages. He tore off the wrapping, squeezed the soap into a shapeless handful, and threw it away.

  The sky cleared after a while and the stars came out. He found that the road he was travelling led south. He rode all night, pushing the roan unrelentingly through the soft, viscid footing.

  At daylight the horse could go no farther without rest. The man led it up a coulee—safely away from the road—and hobbled it beneath a clump of cottonwoods.

  Then he climbed a hill and sprawled on the soggy ground, his lashless red eyes on the country through which he had come: rolling hills of black and green and gray, where wet soil, young grass, and dirty snow divided dominion—the triple rule trespassed here and there by the sepia ribbon of county road winding into and out of sight.

  He saw no man while he lay there, but the landscape was too filled with the marks of man’s proximity to bring any feeling of security. Shoulder−high wire fencing edged the road, a footpath cut the side of a near−by hill, telephone poles held their short arms stiffly against the gray sky.

  At noon he saddled the roan again and rode on along the coulee. Several miles up he came to a row of small poles bearing a line of telephone wire. He left the coulee bottom, found the ranch house to which the wire ran, circled it, and went on.

  Late in the afternoon he was not so fortunate.

  With lessening caution—he had seen no wires for more than an hour—he rode across a hill to stumble almost into the center of a cluster of buildings. Into the group, from the other side, ran a line of wire.

  The man who had killed Dan Odams retreated, crossed to another hill, and as he dropped down, on the far side, a rifle snapped from the slope he had just quit.

  He bent forward until his nose was deep in the roan’s mane, and worked upon the horse with hand and foot.

  The rifle snapped again.

  He rolled clear of the horse as it fell, and continued to roll until bunch grass and sagebrush screened him from behind. Then he crawled straight away, rounded the flank of a hill, and went on.

  The rifle did not snap again. He did not try to find it.

  He turned from the south now, toward the west, his short, heavy legs pushing him on toward where Tiger Butte bulked against the leaden sky like a great crouching cat of black and green, with dirty white stripes where snow lay in coulee and fissure.

  His left shoulder was numb for a while, and then the numbness was replaced by a searing ache. Blood trickled down his arm, staining his mud−caked hand. He stopped to open coat and shirt and readjust the bandage over the wound in his shoulder—the fall from the horse had broken it open and started it bleeding again. Then he went on.

  The first road he came to bent up toward Tiger Butte. He followed it, ploughing heavily through the sticky, clinging mud.

  Only once did he break the silence he had maintained since his escape from the Jingo jail. He stopped in the middle of the road and stood with legs far apart, turned his bloodshot eyes from right to left and from ground to sky, and without emotion but with utter finality cursed the mud, the fence, the telephone wires, the man whose rifle had set him afoot, and the meadow larks whose taunting flutelike notes mocked him always from just ahead.

  Then he went on, pausing after each few miles to scrape the ever−accumulating mud from his boots, using each hilltop to search the country behind for signs of pursuit.

  The rain came down again, matting his thin, clay−plastered hair—his hat had gone with his mount. The ill−fitting slicker restricted his body and flapped about his ankles, impeding his progress, but his wounded shoulder needed its protection from the rain.

  Twice he left the road to let vehicles pass—once a steaming Ford, once a half−load of ha
y creeping along behind four straining horses.

  His way was still through fenced land that offered scant concealment. Houses dotted the country, with few miles between them; and the loss of his horse was ample evidence that the telephone wires had not been idle.

  He had not eaten since noon of the previous day but—notwithstanding the absence of visible pursuit—he could not forage here.

  Night was falling as he left the road for the slope of Tiger Butte. When it was quite dark he stopped. The rain kept up all night. He sat through it—his back against a boulder, the slicker over his head

  The shack, unpainted and ramshackle, grovelled in a fork of the coulee. Smoke hung soddenly, lifelessly above its roof, not trying to rise, until beaten into nothingness by the rain. The structures around the chimneyed shack were even less lovely. The group seemed asprawl in utter terror of the great cat upon whose flank it found itself.

  But to the red eyes of the man who had killed Dan Odams—he lay on his belly on the crest of the hill around which the coulee split—the lack of telephone wires gave this shabby homestead a wealth of beauty beyond reach of architect or painter.

  Twice within the morning hour that he lay there a woman came into view. Once she left the shack, went to one of the other sheds, and then returned. The other time she came to the door, to stand a while looking down the coulee. She was a small woman, of age and complexion indeterminable through the rain, in a limp, grayish dress.

  Later, a boy of ten or twelve came from the rear of the house, his arms piled high with kindling, and passed out of sight.

  Presently the watcher withdrew from his hill, swung off in a circle, and came within sight of the shack again from the rear.

  Half an hour passed. He saw the boy carrying water from a spring below, but he did not see the woman again.

  The fugitive approached the building stealthily, his legs carrying him stiffly, their elasticity gone. Now and then his feet faltered under him. But under its layers of clay and three−day beard his jaw jutted with nothing of weakness.

  Keeping beyond them, he explored the outbuildings—wretched, flimsy structures, offering insincere pretences of protection to an abject sorrel mare and a miscellaneous assortment of farm implements, all of which had come off second−best in their struggle with the earth. Only the generous, though not especially skilful, application of the material which has given to establishments of this sort the local sobriquet ‘hay−wire outfit’ held the tools from frank admission of defeat.