Dan and the Death-Cell Bluff

Chapter Five “Good Hunting, Mr. Fancy!”

Following a deathly silence, an excited hum rose over the audience. Judge Anderson rapped for order.

John Farraday, who had quietly stepped to one side while the judge was asking questions, interposed himself again.

“Mr. Fact, will you describe the exact procedure you and the defendant took in your investigation of the Robinson trial?”

“Sure,” the little man said agreeably. “We reasoned that in a local setup tight enough to run a frame like the one worked on the Robinson kid, we wouldn’t have the chance of a snowball — we wouldn’t have much chance to uncover evidence that it had been a frame. At the same time, there was a good chance the same crowd that framed Robinson would work a similar frame on us if we stepped on their toes.

“Then Fancy got the idea of coming down here and deliberately throwing his weight around until the local crowd got tired of him and framed him. He figured if he could publicly expose this bunch in the middle of a frame, it would force an impartial reinvestigation of the Robinson case. He had me tail him and keep track of every move he made.” He added modestly, “I’m pretty good at tailing people, because hardly anybody notices me.

“I planted a mike in Dan’s room and recorded every conversation that took place there. I’d be glad to play these off for Your Honor. Particularly the one where a local man known as Big Jim Calhoun bragged about the way he controlled this town, and what would happen to Dan Fancy if he didn’t drop his investigation of the Saunders murder. I also took a lot of pictures with a chest camera, which I would like Your Honor to examine.”

He paused to separate his shirt front slightly and expose the lens of a flat camera strapped to his chest.

Judge Anderson said, “You have made some amazing statements, Mr. Fact. But so far I detect no proof that the defendant was framed for the murder of Sergeant Bull.”

“I’m coming to it,” the little man assured him. “On the evening of the fourteenth, Dan Fancy visited Larry Bull about eight o’clock, just as various witnesses testified. I know, because I followed him. Or rather I followed the taxi which followed Dan’s, for he was tailed there and back by Detective Gyp Fleming, one of the officers who later arrested him.

“But from that point on, all the witnesses’ testimony departs from the facts. No shot sounded inside the house. I happened to be watching through the window the whole time Dan Fancy and Larry Bull talked, and Bull was still alive when he left. When Fancy came out, he was walking, not running as that taxi driver said.

“When Dan got back to his room at the Lakeview, he phoned our client long-distance and told him one of the arresting officers in the Saunders murder was willing to talk for five thousand bucks. I knew Fancy’s phone was tapped by the local mob, because I had it tapped too, and I could always hear a second click after Fancy hung up. I figured Fancy’s conversation with our client meant a death sentence for Larry Bull, because the local mob would figure Bull was selling out. I also figured Fancy would be framed for the kilting. So I dropped Dan fast and scooted back to Larry Bull’s house to keep an eye on him.”

Adrian Fact paused for breath. “This is where the proof comes in that every witness in this trial is a perjurer. Bull was supposed to have been killed around eight P.M. on the fourteenth. But at nine P.M. that evening he left his house with Lieutenant Morgan Hart, who took him to the Downtown Athletic Club, the headquarters of Big Jim Calhoun. Bull was inside with Hart not more than ten minutes, then came out alone and returned home. At midnight he was sitting in his front room watching television when Morgan Hart came back and shot him with a snub-nosed thirty-eight revolver. I’ve got a picture of the shooting.”

Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. The crowd shouted, news cameras flashed, and the district attorney began objecting at the top of his voice. Judge Anderson pounded until there was a momentary hush.

Taking advantage of the silent interval, the little man finished calmly, “That makes a liar of everybody, including the medical examiner who said Bull had been dead since eight P.M. and the ballistic expert who said he was killed by Dan Fancy’s forty-five.”

Disorder broke out again, and this time the judge’s gavel could not quench it. A half dozen news men broke for the door, but slid to a halt in unison when Lieutenant Morgan Hart suddenly barred the way with a snub-nosed thirty-eight revolver.

“The first person who makes a move,” he said distinctly over the sudden hush, “gets a soft-nosed bullet right in the gizzard!”

Stepping to the lieutenant’s side, Detective Gyp Fleming emphasized the threat with his own gun. Simultaneously other gunmen rose from the crowd and covered the spectators with guns.

Quietly the door at the rear of the room opened and the neat gray arms of two state troopers passed under the chins of Morgan Hart and Gyp Fleming from behind. In unison the troopers’ free hands clamped over the gunmen’s wrists, forcing the two pistols to point harmlessly in the air. In the wake of the first two, a dozen gray-uniformed men armed with riot guns filed into the court and lined up along the rear wall.

In a resonant voice the trooper with a strangle hold on Morgan Hart called, “Any other local gunnies who feel tough can step right up. You’ve got two seconds to drop your guns on the floor or get a load of buckshot.”

There was a clatter as a half dozen pistols fell to the floor.

“Carry on, Your Honor,” the spokesman for the state police called cheerfully.

But for the moment his honor was beyond carrying on, being occupied with gaping like a fish at the riot guns of the men in gray.

Quietly Dan Fancy left his seat, picked up “Exhibit A” and seated the full clip lying next to it. Working the slide once to throw a shell in the chamber, he dropped the hammer to quartercock and stuffed the gun in his pocket. He nodded to the judge, who politely nodded back without seeing him, grinned at Adrian Fact and John Farraday, and winked at Adele Hudson as he strolled toward the door.

The trooper holding Morgan Hart pulled both himself and the lieutenant aside from the exit and said, “Good hunting, Mr. Fancy.”

“Thanks,” Dan said as he passed out of the courtroom.

As Dan expected, the news of the crash of Big Jim Calhoun’s empire had not yet penetrated to the Downtown Athletic Club. The arrival of the state police at the courthouse had effectively blocked any envoys to Big Jim from there. When he entered the barroom on the first floor, Dan found it deserted except for the bartender and the baldheaded Stub, who were quietly playing gin rummy.

The big man came in so suddenly that the gunman, Stub, barely had time to swing around on his bar stool and shoot one hand toward his shoulder when Dan was upon him. Grasping the burly man by both biceps, he lifted him bodily, and discouraged the bartender’s reach for a billy club by tossing Stub over the counter on top of him. Both men disappeared behind the bar in a crash of bottles and glasses.

Placing one hand on the surface of the counter, Dan lightly vaulted over, grabbed the bald gunman by the seat of the pants and the collar, and heaved him headfirst back to the customers’ side of the bar again. Stub traversed a short distance on his face, but stopped suddenly when his head, in cooperation with an iron chair leg, acted as a brake.

Satisfied that one antagonist was safely out of the fight, Dan turned his attention to the bartender, who alone hardly constituted competition, being a consumptive-looking man in his fifties who weighed approximately a hundred and thirty-five pounds.

Jerking the man erect by the shirt front and holding him at arm’s length with one hand, so that the bartender’s feet were six inches clear of the floor, Dan shook him gently.

“Where is Big Jim?” he asked in a husky voice.

The man’s eyes rolled upward and he said in a strangled tone, “Upstairs. Second floor.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, sir,” the bartender whispered.

The big man gave him another gentle shake. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

“Hell, no!” the barkeep said, literally horrified by the suggestion.

Satisfied that the man was too frightened to do anything but cooperate, Dan suddenly released his grip. The bartender’s feet hit the floor with a jolt which caused him to stagger against the back bar and add another bottle to the whiskey-reeking litter of broken glass on the floor. He regained his balance by embracing the cash register.

“How do you get up there?” Dan asked mildly.

The bartender stumbled all over his own feet in his eagerness to demonstrate the floor button which operated the door’s electric lock. Vaulting the bar again as gracefully as a cat, the big man waited for the buzz, then pushed open the door next to the bar.

“By the way,” he said before passing all the way through. “When your bald-headed friend wakes up, tell him to sit down and relax. The joint is surrounded by state cops.”

Which was not exactly a lie, Dan thought, for the troopers would be on their way as soon as they wound up their duties at the courthouse, and by the time Baldy regained consciousness, the place probably would be surrounded.

Following the short hallway to the elevator, Dan entered the open door and pushed the button marked 2. As the car rose, he drew his automatic and raised the hammer to full-cock.

The bartender had not mentioned the extra steel-grilled door which disclosed itself to Dan when the elevator door slid back, an oversight Dan attributed to his own hurried questioning rather than to the man’s lack of cooperation. He recognized it for what it was even before Big Jim recognized his visitor, however, and had his gun aimed through the steel latticework, the barrel steadied on one of the crossbars, before Jim could even begin to reach for a desk drawer.

“If you so much as wriggle a finger, I’ll blow off the top of your head,” Dan said with husky relish. “How do you work this contraption?”

The cherubic face of the giant behind the desk was an expressionless mask. “It’s an electric lock,” he said tonelessly. “The buzzer’s under my desk.”

“Then you can move one foot,” Dan conceded. “But move it slow.”

Through the open desk well he could see both of Big Jim’s legs, and he watched critically as the giant’s right foot cautiously slid forward under the desk. Then a buzz sounded, and a jolt of electricity passed from the steel door through Dan’s gun, hurling him back against the rear wall of the car. The automatic fell to the floor outside the elevator.

Groggily Dan picked himself up as the steel door swung open and Big Jim beckoned him in with his own gun.

“You have to wait until after the buzz before you touch it,” the giant said with a grin. “Otherwise you get one hundred and ten volts. I had it designed particularly to cover situations like this.”

Dan watched the steel door clang shut again, then turned to face Big Jim.

“The gun isn’t going to do you much good,” he said mildly. “Your frame blew up in your face, and the building is surrounded by state cops.

“I hope,” he added mentally.

Big Jim’s grin did not falter. Backing to the window, he cast a quick glance over his shoulder. Then his eyes returned to Dan’s.

“How did you manage it, Dan?”

Apparently the building was now surrounded.

Big Jim’s grin had faded to a moody expression. “Did you do a thorough job, Dan? Have you really got me licked?”

“You won’t be able to wriggle out, Jim.”

The giant nodded, accepting Dan’s estimate as the truth. “How bad is it? For me personally, I mean.”

“Well,” Dan said consideringly, “all your pet witnesses are going up for perjury. Morgan Hart is going to the chair for the murder of Larry Bull. You know how rats begin to squeal when they’re cornered. They’ll all shift as much as they can on to you. Only you know how much that is.”

The giant thought a moment. “Ten years maybe. Twenty at the outside. I haven’t personally killed anybody.”

“Going to start now?” Dan asked.

Big Jim glanced down at the gun. “Possibly. You meant to get me, didn’t you?”

Dan shook his head. “Not that way. I meant to make sure you weren’t armed, then finish the slugging match we started in my hotel room.”

Big Jim examined him curiously. “You’re a persistent guy, Dan. You’ve tried to take me at least ten times since the first time I heat hell out of you twenty-five years ago. And all it ever got you was more bumps.”

Stepping behind his desk, Big Jim dropped the gun in a drawer, locked it and put the key in his pocket.

“All right, sucker,” he said, grinning at Dan. “Come get your bumps.”

During the short part of a minute between Dan’s last remark to the bartender and the actual arrival of the state police, the bartender took off like a jet-propelled plane, leaving. Stub still unconscious. Consequently when the troopers arrived, trailed by Adrian Fact and Adele Hudson, they found no one to explain the combination of the knobless door next to the bar. A husky trooper was just preparing to solve the combination with an axe, when the door opened from inside and Dan Fancy staggered out.

Dan’s coat was gone and the whole left side of his shirt hung from his belt in shreds, exposing half his hairy chest and one naked arm. One of his trouser legs was ripped from cuff to hip, and flopped open to disclose blood welling from a perfect set of teeth marks in the fleshy part of his calf. His left eye was tightly closed and the other was slowly swelling shut. Blood from both nostrils dribbled across his mouth and seeped from the end of his chin.

Supporting himself with one hand against the door jamb, he focused his remaining eye blearily on Adrian Fact and opened the other hand to exhibit a large yellow molar, obviously not his own.

“I finally grew up to the big bum,” he said in groggy triumph.

Then he pitched forward on his face...

Martin Robinson stood stiff and straight as his son approached the group waiting for him at the prison gate, but something yearning in the old man’s expression told Dan he would bow right down to the ground for a smile from his son.

Eugene Robinson glanced without interest at Adrian Fact, swept his gaze curiously over Dan Fancy’s bruised features, then flashed his dazzling smile as he took both Adele Hudson’s hands and gave them a light squeeze. Apparently he considered it too public a place to exhibit more affection.

Last of all the young man turned to his father. “Hello, Dad,” he said tonelessly.

The old man winced. “Are you ready to come home now, Gene?” he asked.

In a careless tone Gene said, “I rather thought I’d get married instead.”

Martin Robinson smiled eagerly. “Your wife will always be as welcome as you are, son.”

Watching, Dan Fancy’s stomach sickened in sympathy for the lonely old man. He turned to Adrian Fact.

“Mr. Robinson’s check clear through yet, Ade?”

The little man glanced at him in surprise and nodded. Dan directed his next question to Adele Hudson.

“You don’t think it would be unfair to take advantage of a young man who wasn’t in death row, do you, Adele?”

Puzzled, she asked, “What do you mean?”

“Just this.”

Raising one large palm, he covered the face of Eugene Robinson with it and pushed. The young man staggered backward, tripped over a hedge and sat in the dust with a thump. Swinging Adele up in his arms like a baby, Dan strode toward the taxi which had brought him and Adrian to the prison.

“What I want with a woman stupid enough to fall for a twerp like that is beyond me,” he growled. “But maybe eventually I can train some sense into your head.”

He stopped to begin the training.

“Dan!” she squealed. “Kissing in public! What will Eugene think?”