The Scarlet Ace Read online

  Meanwhile the same colloquy that had taken place in the subway was repeated in the traffic of Lafayette Street, almost in the shadow of the Municipal Building. A Stutz town car snaked cleverly alongside a light delivery truck. The Stutz was driven by a trim chauffeur in a dark uniform and cap. The windows were lowered and the passenger sat hunched forward, watching the delivery truck. He was an aristocratic looking young man in formal morning clothes and a top hat.

  The dirty faced truckman grinned across at the formal young man. Suddenly his grin froze. He asked a brief tight-lipped question in a mumble:

  “The day?”

  The answers were given him. He glanced northward where the tall shaft of the Cloud Building pierced the sky like a landmark. The truck rattled northward.

  The Stutz took a different route. It drove into a garage and the man in the top hat got out. He emerged in a few minutes behind the wheel of a light tan coupe. He drove with easy skill, cutting corners lazily as though he were killing a little time before an appointment somewhere.

  There were others who seemed to be interested in that two o’clock rendezvous. Diagonally opposite the Cloud Building a new skyscraper was being erected. An ironworker rode aloft on a swinging girder and stepped inward at the 18th floor. While the chains were being loosened he walked across rickety planks and conferred with a tall friend of his in greasy overalls. When he shot earthward again, his feet anchored in chains over the huge metal ball of the derrick tackle, he left a silent and serious eyed confederate high above him...

  Tattersall Lacy was a man of precise habits and it was two o’clock almost on the dot, when he drove up the ramp from the basement entrance of the Cloud Building and turned into Sixth Avenue. He was on his way to a conference with District Attorney Marvin and he was driving his own car, a fast little convertible roadster, with its top down as a tribute to the excessively warm weather.

  As he reached the first street crossing a tan coupe swerved in between the L pillars, just ahead of him. The major frowned with annoyance and his hand twisted the wheel. Unfortunately, a light delivery truck chose that awkward moment to swing sideways into view and close the gap he had aimed for.

  His foot jammed the brake as a palm waved from the tan coupe in a stop signal. Lacy couldn’t stop; his momentum was too great.

  He banged into the car ahead, and the two automobiles sideswiped an L pillar and locked together in a crashing mess. The tan coupe received the brunt of the collision. Its floor was wrenched violently open and a dapper young man in a top hat sprang out. He was pale with rage. He shook his fist in Lacy’s face.

  “You almost killed me, you fool!” he shouted. “Didn’t you see my hand? You’re drunk and reckless! Where’s there an officer?”

  Lacy’s eyes grew hard.

  “Just a moment, my foppish young friend. That truck over there caused the trouble.”

  “Oh, yeah?” The truckman leaped belligerently from his seat. “Nuts! Try to frame me, Mister, and I’ll pop you one on the nose!”

  A small crowd was beginning to ring the disputants. Two policemen appeared with remarkable promptness.

  “He’s a liar,” the truckman kept shouting. “He was speedin’ along like a bat outa hell. Ast some o’ these guys, Officer.”

  “That’s right,” a new voice muttered. “I seen the whole thing.”

  The eyewitness grinned virtuously and mopped his damp pimpled face with a grimy handkerchief. The gaping crowd pushed closer. A couple of ironworkers from the nearby construction job had wriggled behind the policemen. One of them whirled about and made a vicious gesture.

  “Git back youse! Who the hell yuh think you’re pushin’?”

  His brawny companion was scanning the crowd vigilantly, his right hand deep in his overall pocket.

  “Shut up everybody,” said one of the policemen suddenly.

  The cop’s roving eye had noted a Stutz town car standing motionless at the curb a few yards away. It was empty except for a chauffeur in a dark uniform and cap.

  “You want this fella arrested?” the cop growled.

  “I certainly do,” said the man in the top hat. “He’s guilty of gross carelessness and reckless driving.”

  “Look here, Officer,” snapped Tattersall Lacy.

  “Shut up! You willin’ to appear against him an’ make a charge?”

  “Yes. I’ve got two witnesses—the driver of the delivery truck and this gentleman here.” He nodded toward the pimply-faced man who looked surprised and pleased at the description. “I insist that you make an arrest.”

  “Okay. Move back everybody.”

  White with anger, Lacy felt himself pushed smoothly along.

  “My God, somebody will suffer for this, Officer!” he protested. “This thing is a barefaced swindle; a conspiracy to collect fraudulent damages.”

  “Git in there,” said the cop. “Where’s them witnesses?”

  He nodded heavily to the uniformed chauffeur of the Stutz.

  “This car’s bein’ commandeered, Buddy. Drive to the West 28th Street Precinct house.”

  Like a man in a bad dream Lacy found himself plunked in the center of the rear seat, a policeman on either side of him. He was in a cold rage. He’d fix these officious apes as soon as he had a word with the precinct captain.

  The man in the top hat took one of the folding seats; the pimply-faced witness the other. The driver from the delivery wagon hopped up front with the chauffeur. Lacy was suddenly suspicious. This whole thing looked queer entirely too pat and smooth.

  The Stutz began to crawl slowly from the curb.

  As it did so there was a noise of pounding feet and the milling crowd parted. A third policeman came racing into view. He was the traffic man from up the avenue. He ran alongside the car as the chauffeur meshed gears.

  “Hold on, here! What’s the matter? What’s goin’ on?”

  A bluecoat shoved his head out of the car.

  “Okay, Paddy. Just a pinch for reckless drivin’. Go ahead, chauffeur.”

  “Whaddye mean, Paddy? Wait a minute! Who are you?”

  He sprang to the running board and peered inside. His eyes fixed with swift suspicion.

  “I thought so. A couple o’ phonies! What’s the idea o’ the cop suits? You guys takin’ a movie?”

  The car leaped forward.

  “In the gutter, louse!” snarled a shrill voice, and the muzzle of a black automatic spat flame.

  The patrolman on the running-board cringed backward, felt his weak fingers slip. He crashed bleeding to the pavement. The heavy Stutz shot round a corner and streaked east. The dying patrolman lifted his heavy head and watched the license number vanish.

  People were bending over him, shouting in his ears. His eyes were glazed now. He mouthed numerals at them.

  “Write ’em down... Write ’em... Write…”

  The glazed eyes went blank. Blood trickled from the corner of his stiffened mouth and stained the asphalt with a bright red smear.

  Somebody said, tremulously, “Jeeze!”

  The big Stutz roared away. It dodged from avenue to street, clipped corners, under the deft guidance of its uniformed chauffeur.

  Behind it the groping hand of the law began to feel out like the aim of a blind man. Clutching, groping... A license number shrilled into the central switchboard at police headquarters and the noisy teletypes began clicking in every precinct station in Greater New York.

  The short wave radio alarm began to spit viciously. “Grey town car, Stutz model, blah, blah, blah... Manhattan serial letter, license number blah, blah, blah…”

  Radio cars flicked into action like terriers on a scent. Block the ferries! Bottle up the bridges! Plug the Holland Tunnel! Cop killers in a Stutz with smoking guns. Dangerous’ Big grey Stutz...

  Tattersall Lacy knew nothing of this wild alarm. Indeed, he was barely conscious of the motion of the fleeing car. A savage blow on the skull had toppled him headlong as he had grabbed for his shoulder holster. A lap-robe was tossed h
astily over his sprawled form.

  Voices filtered dimly to his blurred eardrums.

  “The finger’s on us, you damn fool! What didja have to smoke that bull for?”

  “Could I help it, Pimples? He had us cold. He was pullin’ his roscoe when I slipped him the heat.”

  “You coulda slugged him, dope.”

  “Aw, nerts! Stop cryin’ an’ gimme a butt. Cripes, we’re crawlin’. Why don’t Charlie step on it?”

  “Shut up, you apes.” The man in the top hat sounded bitter.

  “Keep an eye out for Moe and the Packard,” he ordered curtly. “There he is now. Slow down!”

  The Packard was close to the curb, barely crawling. The Stutz drew alongside. The man in the top hat flung open the door.

  CHAPTER III

  BRIDGE TRAP

  The ex-driver of the delivery truck grinned and followed him across to the Packard. He carried a couple of police caps in his hand; and over his arm was draped two blue uniform coats. Inside the Stutz the fake cops were hurriedly pulling on grey caps and sliding into blue-serge coats.

  The Packard jerked forward, turned into Third Avenue and roared downtown under the noisy L structure. The Stutz streaked grimly for the bridge. It crossed the plaza and shot up the approach. A sturdy, bronze-faced German-American, with a traffic wheel on his blue sleeve, saw the Stutz racing toward him. He was Eagle Eye Gus Sonnenschein of Traffic Squad A. He had held the bridge post for years because of the uncanny accuracy of his eye and his memory. He had a sweet record. A hundred and ninety-seven tabbed cars.

  His blue eyes narrowed as he saw number one ninety eight coming.

  Up went a white-gloved palm. The other reached for his weapon.

  The Stutz roared faster. A twist of the wheel sent it hurtling directly at Eagle Eye Gus. He missed being run down by a whistling inch. Backward he sprang and sprawled on the pavement. Bullets whined over his head. He scrambled up and emptied his weapon at the vanishing car. Terrified chauffeurs stopped dead in their tracks. The air was shrill with the squeal of brakes.

  Sonnenschein raced to a motionless Triangle cab and sprang to the running-board. The hackman stepped hard on the gas.

  The chase roared grimly under the spidery cables high above the East River. The Stutz was having trouble with the press of traffic in the narrow vehicle runway. The Triangle cab was gaining, gaining—

  * * * *

  Tattersall Lacy awoke under a lap-robe on the floor of the Stutz to a dazed realization of a tremendous racket of banging explosions. The folding seats had been snapped up. Pimples was on his feet, staring out the side window, his wrist was jerking with the recoil of a flaming gun. The two phony bulls on the back seat were firing out the rear window, crouched apart, swearing horribly.

  Suddenly there was a dull thwack and one of the cops pitched silently forward on top of Lacy. Daylight filtered through a round hole in the car’s body where the man’s ribs had been pressed, a moment before. The Stutz was rocking and bouncing like a mad thing.

  Feebly Lacy shoved aside a corner of the lap-robe. A stiffened hand lay close to his face and beside it a dropped gun. The major’s own gun was gone; he reached quietly for the substitute.

  Pimples saw the gaunt major rising like a ghost from the embrace of a dead man on the floor. The thug whirled from the window with a shrill oath. Lacy squeezed. He saw the pimpled mask of rage drip crimson. With a swift twitch of his left hand he released the catch behind him and heard the door bang open.

  The whole thing was like a phantasy of horror. A bullet from the rear seat spat past his ear. He saw a jouncing taxi on the other side of the Stutz, with a policeman hunched on the running-board, scattering lead from a flaming muzzle.

  “Pull over!” Eagle Eye Gus was shouting. “Pull over!”

  The brakes of the Stutz squealed. It lost headway. As it slowed Lacy sprang out the open door and landed on his face on the asphalt paving.

  The Stutz had slowed for a grim trick. Swing and ram the taxi! The kidnapper missed his wild thrust, veered away and skidded crazily toward the frail barrier of the railing. The murky East River flowed sluggishly hundreds of feet below.

  Lacy held his breath with a sick shudder. Swaying on bleeding knees in the roadway he saw the Stutz scrape the railing and swing back as the driver spun his wheel desperately to the left. The front wheels twisted and locked. The big car skidded toward the inner railing.

  It turned completely over in a giant somersault, crashed through the guardrail of the inner runway where shining trolley-tracks glittered. The overhead feed-wires bounced it like a rocking toy.

  Lacy’s dry throat whispered: “God above!”

  The Stutz was adazzle with blinding blue light. It flared and crackled like an incandescent bug. Then the short-circuited wires snapped and dropped the seared wreck to the shining trolley track below.

  As Lacy staggered to his feet he heard the thud of police brogans and something hard and cold was thrust inta his belly with a force that made him gasp with pain.

  “Stick ’em up!” roared Patrolman Sonnenschein. “You’re one of ’em. I saw huh come outa the car.”

  A beefy hand twisted in his collar. He backed away.

  “Hold on, Officer! Let me explain... I’ve got credentials…”

  A police car came streaking along the bridge roadway with a wild whoop of its siren. Bluecoats hopped out.

  “Okay, Maguire,” Lacy’s captor grunted. “Got one of ’em. Went out the door on his mush just before the crash.”

  “Nice work.” Maguire turned and stared with expressionless face at the scorched wreck of the Stutz. “Jeeze, what a mess!”

  Another bluecoat ambled up.

  “Four stiffs in the bus,” he volunteered. “Two of ’em with bullets in the gut—all four of ’em fried on both sides.”

  The battered major was beginning to recover his breath.

  “Just a moment,” he suggested icily. “Will one of you uniformed master minds reach into my vest pocket and examine the folded document you find there? I’m beginning to get a trifle weary of holding my hands aloft.”

  Patrolman Maguire’s paw dug and he unfolded and glanced at the paper. His jaw sagged slightly.

  He said to Sonnenschein, “Easy, Gus. You’re off on the wrong foot. This is the guy that was kidnapped.”

  “No kiddin’. Are yuh sure?” He swore in disgust.

  The major lowered his aching arms.

  “You can prove it and save yourself a reprimand by taking me as fast as God will let you to the Criminal Courts Building. The instigator of this outrage got clean away. I’m Major Lacy. I want you to drive me at once to the office of District Attorney Marvin.”

  “We can’t,” Maguire muttered uneasily. “This is a Bridge patrol car. I can’t take it off the span. Not without orders.”

  “The hell with orders!” Lacy rapped imperiously. His lips were a taut line and his eyes blazed. “You read those credentials, didn’t you?”

  “Better take him, Mike,” said Sonnenschein.

  Lacy turned impatiently away and stepped into the police car.

  * * * *

  A perfect crime is a rare, almost legendary affair. Things happen—you can’t plug every leak, not every loose thread—things happen that are not in the book.

  The proprietor of a small sporting goods store a block or two from the bridge had sharp eyes and an alert mind. He gummed up the smooth getaway of the efficient young man in the top hat. While the murder Stutz was roaring over the bridge, little sporting goods Goldfarb was pattering barehead to the harness bull on his beat with an excited story. He had seen two men transfer themselves to a slick-looking Packard with an armful of cop clothes.

  “This ain’t no neighborhood for high hats,” he quavered.

  He hadn’t bothered with the Stutz’s plates but he got a flash of the Packard’s numerals as it swung recklessly into Third Avenue. He jotted them down on a greasy pad.

  The cop raced to a nearby box and flashed th
e precinct desk. The system began to whip out tentacles. The license number was checked and spat to headquarters from Motor Vehicle. Short Wave got busy. A radio cruiser made a quick left turn and went bouncing over greasy cobbles toward a shady renting garage on the east side of the rocky spine of downtown Manhattan.

  The man in the top hat had disappeared neatly somewhere on the trip south. But the chauffeur was hooked. They nabbed him as he climbed out of the hired Packard and walked innocently out the garage door.

  He was whisked to a quiet spot and men went to work on him. Men who know all the answers, all the lies, all the yelps. They belted it out of him. Nobody said, “Oops, I’m sorry!” He came clean, spilled all he knew in shrieking haste. When they pushed him aside and smiled at one another, he was as clean of secrets as a gutted fish.

  Then the thing really started. Roundup! A grim compass making a neat steel circle around a city block. Tattersall Lacy finally put a call through from the Criminal Courts Building to police headquarters, just as the commissioner was reaching with eager fingers for his derby hat.

  The commissioner swore as the phone rang, but a grin cut his mouth open like a knife-slash as he heard Lacy’s polite murmur.

  “Traced him, Major!” he trumpeted. “Got him! He’s holed up.”

  “Good.” The polite voice grew softer. “Where’s the place? What’s the address? Let me have it and I’ll get down there at once with my staff.”

  The commissioner shook his head jubilantly at the transmitter.

  “Sorry, Major. This guy killed a cop and we always handle cop-killers ourselves. I just had a flash from Inspector Schwartz and it’s sewed up. Wait a half hour and then come directly to my office. I’ll have the rat on the carpet and I promise you a free hand at questioning him. Goodbye; I’m hurrying away to take personal charge of the assault.”

  “Assault? Hold on, please. What is it, a siege?”

  “Siege?” howled the commissioner. “I’ll say so! It’s merry old-fashioned hell. Two-Gun Crowley all over again—”

  He snapped down the receiver with a bang and tore outside to where his car throbbed at the worn curbstone.