Short Fiction · Bratton’s Idea (2/4)

His captors shut him in an inside cell generally reserved for psychopathic cases⁠—a solidly plated cubicle, with no window, grating, or other opening save a narrow ventilator in the ceiling that gave upon a ten-inch shaft leading to the roof. Then they gathered reinforcements and weapons and descended on the house with the cellar where the kidnapped director had been held for ransom.

Stealthily surrounding that house, they shouted the customary invitation to surrender. Silence for a few seconds, then a fainthearted member of the Salters appeared at the front door with his hands up. He took a step into the open, and dropped dead to the accompaniment of a pistol-report from inside. And the besiegers heard the shrill voice about which they had been wondering:

“Come in and take us. This place is as full of death as a drug store!”

Followed a loud and scientific bombardment with machine guns, gas bombs and riot guns. The mobster who had been placed on guard at the back door showed too much of himself and was picked off. A contingent of officers made a quick, planned rush. More fighting inside, with three more Salters dying in hot blood in the parlor and kitchen. What seemed to be the sole survivor fled to the cellar and locked himself in a rear compartment. The walls were of concrete, the one door of massive planking. The chief of the attacking force stood in front of this door and raised his voice:

“Hello, in there! You’re Juney Saltz, aren’t you?”

Gruff was the reply: “What if I am? Don’t try to crack in here. I’ll get the first copper shows me his puss, and the second and the third.”

“You can’t get us all, Juney. And we’ve got more men out here than you’ve got bullets in there. Come out with your hands up while you still have the chance to stand a fair trial.”

“Not me,” growled Juney Saltz from within. “Come in and catch me before you talk about what kind of a trial I’ll get.”

There was a keyhole, only partially blocked by the turnkey. One of the G-men bent and thrust in the point of something that looked like a fountain pen. Carefully he pressed a stud. The little tube spurted a cloud of tear gas through the keyhole into Juney Saltz’s fortress. The besiegers grinned at each other, and all relaxed to wait.

The waiting was not long, as it developed. Juney Saltz spoke up within, his voice a blubber: “Hey! I⁠—I’m s-smothering⁠—”

“But I’m not,” drawled the same high voice that was becoming familiar. “Sit back, Juney, and put your head between your knees. You’ll stand it better that way.”

“I’m⁠—done for!” wailed Juney Saltz. “If they crack in, I⁠—I can’t s-see to shoot!”

“I can see to shoot.” The shrill voice had become deadly. “And you’ll be the first thing I shoot at if you don’t do what I tell you.”

A strangled howl burst from Juney Saltz. “I’d rather be shot than⁠—” And next moment he was scrabbling at the door. “I surrender! I’ll let you bulls in!”

He had turned the key in the lock just as the shot that killed him rang out. A rush of police foiled an attempt from within to fasten the door again. Sneezing and gurgling, two of the raiders burst into the final stronghold, stumbling over the subsiding lump of flesh that had been Juney Saltz.

Blinded by tears from their own gas, they could not be sure afterward of what the scurrying little thing was that they saw and fired at. Those outside knew that nothing could have won past them, and the den itself had no window that was not bricked up. When the gas had been somewhat blown out, an investigator gave the place a thorough searching. Yes, there was one opening, a stovepipe hole through which a cat might have slipped. That was all. And the place was empty but for the body of Juney Saltz.

“Juney was shot in the back,” announced another operative, bending to examine the wound. “I think I see what happened. Squeaky-Voice was at that stovepipe hole, and plugged him from there as he tried to let us in. Then Juney tried to lock up again, just as we pushed the door open.”

Upstairs they went, and investigated further. The hole had joined a narrow chimney, with no way out except the upper end, a rectangle eight inches by ten. Even with six corpses to show, the agents returned to their headquarters with a feeling of failure. “In the morning,” they promised one another, “we’ll give that one Salter we’re holding another little question bee.”

But in the morning, the jailer with breakfast found that prisoner dead.

He had been caught with a noose of thin, strong cord, tightened around his throat from behind. Suicide? But the cord had been drawn into the little ventilator hole, and tied to a projecting rivet far inside and above.

On the same day, police, federal agents, newspapers and the public generally were exercised by the information that Shannon Cole, popular contralto star of stage, screen and radio, had been kidnapped from her Beverly Hills bedroom. No clues, and so the investigation turned to her acquaintances, among whom was Ben Gascon, recently retired from stage, screen and radio.

Benjamin Franklin Gascon left the office of the Los Angeles chief of detectives, where he had spent a most trying forenoon convincing his interrogators that he had no idea why he should be brought into the case. He knew nothing of the underworld. True, he knew Miss Cole professionally, but⁠—and his face was rueful⁠—had no reason to count himself a really close friend of hers. He had not seen her since the termination of their latest radio assignment. His personal affairs, meanwhile, were quite open to investigation; he had grown weary of ventriloquism, and had retired to live on the income from his investments. Later, he might resume his earlier profession, medicine. He was attending lectures now at the University of California in Los Angeles. And once again, he had no idea of how he was being brought into this case, or of who could have kidnapped Miss Cole.

But, even as he departed, he suddenly got that idea.

“Tom-Tom!”

It took moments to string together the bits of logic which brought that thought into his mind.

Things had happened to people, mostly gangsters, at the hands of a malevolent creature; that is, if the creature had hands⁠—but it must have hands, if it could wield a gun, a slip-cord, a knife! It must also be notably small and nimble, if it really traveled up chimneys, down ventilator shafts, along power-lines and through stovepipe holes. Gascon’s imagination, as good as anyone’s, toyed with the conception of a wise and wicked monkey, or of a child possessed by evil like the children of old Salem, or a dwarf.

But the point at which he coupled on his theory was the point at which police had paused, or rather begun.

Digs Dilson had been killed with a knife. So had old Bratton.

He, Ben Gascon, had given old Bratton the dummy that people called Tom-Tom. And old Bratton was forthwith murdered. Gascon had meant to go to the funeral, but something had turned up to interfere. What else concerned the janitor? What, for instance, had the younger electricians and engineers teased him about so often? “Electricity is life,” that was old Bratton’s constant claim. And he was said to have whole clutters of strange machinery at his shabby rooms.

Bratton had taken Tom-Tom. Thereafter Bratton and others had been killed. In the background of their various tragedies had lurked and plotted something small, evil, active, and strange enough to frighten the most hardened of criminals. “Electricity is life”⁠—and Bratton had toiled over some kind of electrical apparatus that might or might not be new and powerful in ways unknown to ordinary electricians.

Gascon left the rationalization half completed in the back of his mind, and sought out the shabby street where the janitor had lodged.

The landlord could not give him much help. To be sure old Bratton had made a nuisance of himself with his machines, mumbling that they would startle the world some day; but after his death, someone had bought those machines, loaded them upon a truck and carted them off. The landlord had seen the purchase, and later identified the purchaser from newspaper photographs as the late Juney Saltz.

And Juney Saltz, pondered Gascon, had been killed by something with a shrill voice, that could crawl through a stovepipe hole.⁠ ⁠… “You saw the sale of the goods?” he prompted the landlord. “Was there a dummy⁠—a thing like a big doll, such as ventriloquists use?”

The landlord shook his head. “Nothing like that. I’d have noticed if there was.”

So Tom-Tom, who had gone home with old Bratton, had vanished.

Gascon left the lodgings and made a call at a newspaper office, where he inserted a personal notice among the classified advertisements:

T-T. I have you figured out. Clever, but your old partner can add two and two and get four. Better let S. C. go. B. F. G.

The notice ran for three days. Then a reply, in the same column:

B. F. G. So what? T-T.

It was bleak, brief defiance, but Gascon felt a sudden blaze of triumph. Somehow he had made a right guess, on a most fantastic proposition. Tom-Tom had come to life as a lawless menace. All that he, Gascon, need do, was act accordingly. He made plans, then inserted another message:

T-T. I made you, and I can break you. This is between us. Get in touch with me, or I’ll come looking for you. You won’t like that. B. F. G.

Next day his telephone rang. A hoarse voice called him by name:

“Look, Gascon, you better lay off if you know what’s good for you.”

“Ah,” replied Gascon gently, “Tom-Tom seems to have taken up conventional gangster methods. It means that he’s afraid⁠—which I’m not. Tell him I’m not laying off, I’m laying on.”

That night he took dinner at a restaurant on a side street. As he left it, two men sauntered out of a doorway and came up on either side of him. One was as squat and bulky as a wrestler, with a truculent square face. The other, taller but scrawny, had a broad brow and a narrow chin, presenting the facial triangle which phrenologists claim denotes shrewdness. Both had their hands inside their coats, where bulges betrayed the presence of holstered guns.

“This is a stickup,” said Triangle-Face. “Don’t make a move or a peep, or we’ll cut down on you.”

They walked him along the street.

“I’m not moving or peeping,” Gascon assured them blandly, “but where are you taking me?”

“Into this car,” replied the triangle-faced one, and opened the rear door of a parked sedan. Gascon got in, with the powerful gunman beside him. The other got into the front seat and took the wheel.

“No funny business,” he cautioned as he trod on the starter. “The boss wants to talk to you.”

The car drew away from the curb, heading across town. Gascon produced his cigarette case⁠—Shannon Cole had given it to him on his last birthday⁠—opened it, and offered it to the man beside him. Smiling urbanely at the curt growl of refusal, he then selected a cigarette and lighted it.

“Understand one thing,” he bade his captors, through a cloud of smoke. “I’ve expected this. I’ve worked for it. And I have written very fully about all angles of this particular case. If anything happens to me, the police will get my report.”

It was patently a bluff, and in an effort to show that it did not work both men laughed scornfully.

“We’re hotter than a couple wolves in a prairie fire right now,” the triangle-faced one assured him. “Anyway, no dumb cop would believe the truth about the boss.”

That convinced Gascon that he was on his way to Tom-Tom. Too, the remark about “a coupla wolves” showed that the driver thought of only two members of the gang. Tom-Tom’s following must have been reduced to these. Gascon sat back with an air of enjoying the ride. Growling again, his big companion leaned over and slapped him around the body. There was no hard lump to betray knife or pistol, and the bulky fellow grunted to show that he was satisfied. Gascon was satisfied as well. His pockets were not probed into, and he was carrying a weapon that, if unorthodox, was nevertheless efficient. He foresaw the need and the chance to use it.

“Is Miss Cole all right?” he asked casually.

“Sure she is,” replied Square-Face.

“Pipe down, you!” snapped his companion from the driver’s seat. “Let the boss do the talking to this egg.”

“Your boss likes to do the talking, I judge,” put in Gascon, still casually. “Do you like to listen? Or,” and his voice took on a mocking note, “does he give you the creeps?”

“Never mind,” Square-Face muttered. “He’s doing okay.”

“But not his followers,” suggested Gascon. “Quite a few of them have been killed, eh? And aren’t you two the only survivors of the old Dilson crowd? How long will your luck hold out, I wonder?”

“Longer than yours,” replied the man at the wheel sharply. “If you talk any more, we’ll put the slug on you.”

The remainder of the ride was passed in silence, and the car drew up at length before a quiet suburban cottage, on the edge of town almost directly opposite the scene of the recent fight between police and the Salters.

The three entered a dingy parlor, full of respectable looking furniture. “Keep him here,” Triangle-Face bade Square-Face. “I’ll go help the boss get ready to talk to him.”

He was gone. His words suggested that there would be some moments alone with Square-Face, and Gascon meant to make use of them.

The big fellow sat down. “Take a chair,” he bade, but Gascon shook his head and lighted another cigarette. He narrowed his eyes, in his best diagnostician manner, to study his guard.

“You look as if there was something wrong with your glands,” he said crisply.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with me,” was the harsh response.

“Are you sure? How do you feel?”

“Good enough to pull a leg off of you if you don’t shut that big mouth.”

Gascon shrugged, and turned to a rear wall. A picture hung there, a very unsightly oil painting. He put his hand up, as if to straighten it on its hook. Then he glanced toward a window, letting his eyes dilate. “Ahhhh!” he said softly.

Up jumped the gangster, gun flashing into view. “What did you say?” he demanded.

“I just said ‘Ahhhh,’ ” replied Gascon, his eyes fixed on the window.

“If anybody’s followed you here⁠—” The giant broke off and tramped toward the window to look out.

Like a flash Gascon leaped after him. With him he carried the picture, lifted from where it hung. He swept it through the air, using the edge of the frame like a hatchet and aiming at the back of the thick neck.

The blow was powerful and well placed. Knocked clean out, the gangster fell on his face. Gascon stooped, hooked his hands under the armpits, and made shift to drag the slack weight back to its chair. It took all his strength to set his victim back there. Then he drew from his side pocket the thing he had been carrying for days⁠—a wad of cotton which he soaked in chloroform. Holding it to the broad nose, he waited until the last tenseness went out of the great limbs. Then he crossed one leg over the other knee, poised the head against the chair-back, an elbow on a cushioned arm. Clamping the nerveless right hand about the pistol-butt, he arranged it in the man’s lap. Now the attitude was one of assured relaxation. Gascon hung the picture back in place, and himself sat down. He still puffed on the cigarette that had not left his lips.

He had more than a minute to wait before the leaner mobster returned. “Ready for you now,” he said to Gascon, beckoning him through a rear door. He gave no more than a glance to his quiet, easy-seeming comrade.

They went down some stairs into a basement⁠—plainly basements were an enthusiasm of the commander of this enterprise⁠—and along a corridor. At the end was a door, pulled almost shut, with light showing through the crack. “Go in,” ordered Triangle-Face, and turned as if to mount the stairs again.