Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

Murder and getaway were perfect — all that was left for the cops was a manila merchandising tag.

I

When Detective Walter Hewitt, alone in a department car, wheeled slowly past Konger Food Store No. 47 everything appeared serene there, a quarter hour before the ten o’clock Saturday night closing hour.

There was an armored motor truck double parked before the store and he had glimpsed the uniformed driver inside, signing for the daily cash receipts he was picking up. He knew that another armed and capable guard watched from within the tank, and on the surface of things, there was nothing to worry about here.

Hewitt hadn’t driven the entire length of the long block beyond, however, when the quiet night air of this suburban community was violently shattered by a series of explosions too sharp for backfires.

Jamming on brakes, he snapped his head about for a backward glance.

Flashes of dull orange winked on the sidewalk before the food store. He could see crouching figures about the armored truck, firing at the uniformed driver, lurching in the store doorway and returning the fire.

Swearing savagely, Hewitt jerked the department flivver about in a U-turn and sped back down the block.

Foolishly, perhaps, he switched on the red center headlight and started the siren blaring, and that warned the stickup mob pulling the bold coup of his presence in the vicinity and determination to interfere.

He saw the uniformed driver slump to the sidewalk; saw a man leap to the cab of the armored truck. Two other scampering figures piled into a small sedan parked at the curb at the rear of the truck.

Then, when the scudding police flivver was only thirty yards from the spot, and Hewitt, with plucked service revolver in his hand, was grimly ready to jam on brakes abreast of the truck, they pulled another smart trick.

The heavy truck with its steel armored tank lunged out from the curb directly in his path, practically blocking the street.

Quick work with brake and steering wheel helped a lot, but there was a sickening, crunching bang when the right wheel and fender of the sluing flivver plowed into the side of the steel monster.

The shock threw Hewitt against the steering wheel with rib-bruising force, jarring the breath from his lungs. His head banged a door corner smartly, laying open a cut over his left eye and all but sending his senses reeling.

The truck rocked but didn’t overturn. The flivver sagged crazily as the right front wheel collapsed.

The truck wallowed away as Hewitt fought for breath and a grasp on spinning senses. The sedan scooted out in the wake of the truck, and a man leaning from a door window emptied an automatic at the police flivver in a roll of searing shots.

Slugs crashed through a windshield already splintered by the collision, and thudded into the seat back. Luckily for Hewitt, he presented a poor target, wedged between wheel and door as he was.

Men came running from the sidewalk. One of them yanked open the left front door of the flivver and Hewitt spilled out. A man steadied him, burbling anxious questions at the sight of that streaming cut over Hewitt’s eye.

Hewitt’s lungs were working again, and he wasted some of his first hard drawn breath swearing. He shook off friendly helping hands and loped, lurching a little, for the store and a telephone.

One glance at the pain-contorted, gray face of the uniformed figure sprawled on the sidewalk before the store doors told a plain story. Blood welled from the unfortunate driver’s forehead and his chest. Fingers still gripped the butt of his revolver.

A stocky, elderly man blocked Hewitt at the doorway.

“I saw it all, sergeant! I’ll phone headquarters and tell them. Here. Take my car and get after them! The gray coupé at the curb. You can get police broadcasts on my radio.”

Hewitt recognized a business man of his acquaintance. Eagerly he snatched the ignition key thrust out at him.

“Thanks, Mr. Johnston! How many men in the mob, and what kind of a car were they using, if you noticed by chance?”

“There were four men. One stayed at the wheel of the sedan. It was a Piper Six, dark blue with red trimmings. I couldn’t catch the numbers when they pulled out. I happened to be looking when three of them started the business. They tossed something into the truck, through the little side port that was open. A gas bomb, I think. Then they opened up firing on the driver, when he rushed out to the sidewalk. When he fell, one of them jumped into the truck cab, and the others ran back to their car.”

Hewitt darted to the curb, piled into the gray coupé and started up the motor. The bandit mob had gotten precious seconds start of him, but this powerful car could outdistance the armored truck, he thought, if he could cut the trail.

Mr. Johnston shouted from the store doorway: “One of the bandits has a tommy-gun, Hewitt! Watch your step!”

Hewitt nodded grimly, sending the coupé leaping, and shouted back:

“When the first car gets here, tell ’em I’m taking the trail, and that the mob turned south on Clayton. Thanks for the car!”

Swabbing blood from his left eye as he roared up to the intersection with Clayton Street, Hewitt made a one-handed turn that rocked the gray coupé sickeningly. Straightening out, he noticed the broad skid marks on the asphalt, where the truck had made the south turn at high speed.

Those skid marks gave him a hint. He watched the pavement for more of them, feeding gas savagely.

Three blocks reeled off dizzily. Then Hewitt slammed on brakes, twisting sharply east on the Airport Boulevard. Those tell-tale skid marks gave him the cue. The armored truck and the sedan consort had turned off there, on a course that would take them out of the city limits within six or seven blocks.

The coupé lurched as he fought the wheel, straightened out and leaped ahead under the spur of the throttle. Hewitt hoped grimly that prowl cars taking up the trail and the emergency squad car headquarters would send roaring out there, would spot those skid marks and read the answers. He was leaving some of his own.

He swabbed at his eye again, peering eagerly ahead for a sight of blinking red tail lights. There were a number ahead but he couldn’t know whether or not one of them marked his quarry.

Fumbling, he switched on the radio, set the wave band and tuned in the police broadcasting station. The announcer was repeating a general alarm, and directing prowl cars and special cruisers to Konger Food Store No. 47.

In addition to the regular patrolling cruisers, a harassed chief had put everything on wheels at headquarters rolling tonight, manned by detectives singly and in pairs, anticipating another strike from the bold mob knocking off stores and filling stations for the past week. Hewitt had been engaged on that special duty.

They had struck, all right, Hewitt reflected grimly, and not just as anticipated. He happened to know that that armored truck had been nearing the end of the Saturday night pick-up route at Store No. 47, and that there would be something like five or six thousand dollars in currency and silver aboard, not figuring checks cashed for customers of the food chain stores.

He crouched over the wheel of the scudding coupé. The cut had about stopped bleeding, and trickling blood didn’t bother his vision. He was on the route the bandits had taken, he was pretty sure, but guessing their destination was something else again.

He overhauled a car, slowed long enough to make sure it wasn’t either the armored truck or the sedan and roared past. Two more cars in quick succession were overhauled and passed up. After that, Hewitt just looked for the bulky armored truck. That would be easier to spot at speed, and the truck was his main quarry, anyhow.

He was well past the city limits now, and houses facing the boulevard were thinning out. The radio kept up a chatter of orders. They were stirred up, back there at headquarters, and getting nowhere, apparently.

Ten miles reeled off in almost as many minutes. Hewitt had been watching the pavement ahead and on his left closely. On this broad boulevard though, there wasn’t much chance of picking up telltale skid marks.

There were dozens of chances for the bandits to have turned off the Airport Boulevard. Hewitt realized abruptly that he was following a rather blind trail now.

The brilliant lights of a filling station ahead caught his eye. He pulled down speed, whirled into the station and made a screeching stop. Attendants about the pumps scrambled to safety, then clustered when he stopped.

An alert chap eagerly answered his snapped questions. They hadn’t seen any armored truck pass within the past ten minutes.

“We’ve been watching, too!” the chap told him. “We caught the alarm on our radio, and we’ve been checking the cars going past, just in case they came this way.”

Hewitt grunted thanks, swung out of the station and headed the coupé back toward the city. Disappointed, he mumbled profanely. The mob had twisted, somewhere, and very probably had gone to cover by now.

He drove at a brisk forty, keeping to the center of the pavement and eagerly scanning both sides as well as he could, for skid marks, especially at intersections.

The pavement swung about a looping turn and the headlights played for a fleeting moment on a stretch of high board fence, built back from the boulevard a hundred yards. Hewitt made out a word or two in a sprawling sign painted on the fence and remembered the place as an amateur baseball park that hadn’t been used this summer.

Then, just when he was passing the place, his eye caught a series of weird, lightning-like flashes of greenish-hued light, lancing high above the fence.

The coupé had rolled a good three hundred yards before the significance of those flashes dawned on Hewitt. Then he jammed on brakes and swung the coupé in a feverish, screaming turn about.

That artificial lightning effect had been made by an oxy-acetylene welding or cutting outfit in operation. It wasn’t likely that any honest work of that nature would be going on in the ballpark at ten o’clock tonight.

Completing the turn, Hewitt switched off headlights and sneaked back to the ballpark, turning off the pavement onto the broad gravelled driveway leading to the fence. He made a silent stop a dozen yards from a dark break in the fence that marked an entranceway.

He knew the answer to something that had been bothering him. He knew how the mob had planned to get into that armored tank.

His gun was in his right hand, his pocket flashlight in his left, when he reached the dark gap. Tensely he passed through, rather dose to one side.

He had only gotten a glimpse of the bulky outlines of the armored truck, picked out by carefully held flashlights in the hands of four men crowded close to it, when there was a sudden movement from the deep shadows beside the fence and the hiss of exertion forced breath.

Something smashed down on the back of his head, crushing his Panama hat and sending Hewitt stumbling to his knees. The roar of his own gun, blasting harmlessly at the ground, dinned in his ears, then black nothingness descended upon him.

It seemed that the report of the gun still was roaring in his ears when consciousness drifted back to Walter Hewitt. His fingers clawed cinders for a moment and then he managed to get up on bended knees, swaying dizzily. His head ached fearfully, but quickly-exploring fingers could feel nothing worse than an egg-sized lump at the back of his head, that wasn’t moist.

Savagely he swore his disgust and anger, scrambling to his feet, thrusting out a hand to the fence to steady himself. He strained his eyes in the now pitchy darkness and could make out nothing familiar except the shadowy bulk of the armored truck, outlined against a lighter western sky. The only sounds were the hollow roarings of car motors on the boulevard.

II

Fumbling fingers found a box of matches. By the feeble light of the three struck in succession, Hewitt confirmed his suspicion that both gun and flashlight were gone. Apparently he had been dragged a few yards from the gap in the fence and dumped there.

He did find his hat, shapelessly crushed where a tire had passed over it.

A faint, wavering beam from a flashlight came threading through the gloom, through the fence gap.

“Hey! Anybody in there?” a quavering voice challenged.

Hewitt stumbled dizzily to the gap and showed himself in the torch beam that centered on him.

“It’s all right!” he croaked huskily. “Come over here, with your torch!”

Feet scrabbled in the gravel; a small man in shirtsleeves approached cautiously, and rays of his flashlight glinted on a big revolver that wavered a little uncertainly in his other hand.

“What’s coming off over here?” The chap tried to make his tones gruff and confident. “I heard a shot, and I saw two cars light out of the ballpark.”

Hewitt fished out his badge, identified himself quickly, with a brief explanation of his presence there. The man was relieved.

“My name’s Miller,” he explained in return. “I live across the boulevard. I heard about that stickup over my radio. Gosh! Is that the armored truck there?”

His torch had picked out the truck. Hewitt snatched it from his hand.

“That’s the truck!” he snapped. “Let’s have a look around.”

He hustled over to the armored truck, Miller scuttling at his heels. Hewitt saw at once the yawning opening in the side of the tank, just back of the cab, where a small half-door swung open. A brief scrutiny under the close held flashlight disclosed the ragged, blackened edges about the lock, cut through the metal by an acetylene cutting torch.

He poked the flashlight into the cavernous opening, thrusting head and shoulders after it, flashing the beam about.

He saw the huddled body of the uniformed guard on the floor of the tank. Then his eyes began to smart and the membranes of his nose to itch. He jerked his head out and inhaled deeply of cool, clean outside air.

“Gas!” he growled. “That’s how they got the inside guard, right at the start of the business. They shoved a gas bomb through the port and the poor devil never had a chance.”

Miller made gurgling sounds of wonder and awe, at his elbow.

Hewitt flashed the torch about, held down. Cinders before the yawning door were churned up with small wheel and shoe marks.

“They had a portable oxy-acetylene outfit,” he explained to Miller, “and cut the lock out. They raked out the sacks of cash. It didn’t take ’em long at the job. They must have been about ready to lam when I shoved through the gap.”

He widened the circle of the torch beam, moving slowly out from the armored truck.

The beam picked up a bit of white on the cinders. Hewitt leaped forward, stooped and picked up a small, oblong cardboard tag, with bits of wire protruding from a metal eyelet.

Curiously he examined his find under the torch beam. There was no printing on either side of the manilla tag, but plenty of greasy thumb and finger marks. And when he bent closer, he could make out a pencilled number, 16,748.

Hewitt grunted, fingering the tag thoughtfully. Just now it didn’t mean anything to him. It had been torn from some other object, doubtless, and might have been there on the ground for days. He examined the tag once more carefully.

There had been a light shower just after sundown tonight. Raindrops still sparkled on the cinders, under the torch beam. But there was no moisture on this tag. It had fallen to the ground tonight, then.

“Do you s’pose they dropped that?” Miller asked curiously.

Hewitt grunted, dropping the tag into a coat pocket. “I don’t know,” he said. “You got a phone at your place, Miller?”

“Sure. Want to use it?”

“I’ll get you to telephone headquarters, and have ’em send somebody out here.” Hewitt was striding for the gap. “That’ll save me time. I’m getting back uptown as fast as I can make it. Say, I’d like to borrow your gun, Miller!”

“Take it!” Miller thrust the revolver at him. “It’s fully loaded and I just cleaned it up a couple days back.”

The revolver fitted nicely into Hewitt’s belt holster and he felt a lot better with the weight riding his hip. He gave Miller his torch back, when they were outside the fence.

“Hustle over and do that phoning now,” he ordered briskly. “Ask for Captain Dailey, and tell him I’m on the way in.”

Miller was scuttling for home, when Hewitt raced to the gray coupé and climbed in.

Grimly hunched over the wheel, speeding the gray coupé for the city, Hewitt’s thoughts weren’t very pleasant. In his eagerness back there at the ballpark, he’d muffed things, and like a rookie sap, had made it easy for the lookout to take him out. He should have known that a smart mob like that wouldn’t be careless, at any time.

He’d had his chance to grab a mob that had everybody from the chief down jumpy with daring operations in Bluff City for a week now, and he had handled it with less use of brains than the dumbest cluck of the force would have been guilty of employing.

The mob would go to cover now, and a hangout the cops hadn’t been able to get a line on in six days of frenzied sniffing. Dozens of local bad lads had been dragged in and grilled, and turned out when dicks had been positive none of them were tied up with this new mob in any way. Stoolies couldn’t help. The chief and others had decided that a visiting mob working under a brainy leader was pulling these jobs.

After a take like the one they’d gotten away with tonight, they would more than likely lam out of town, ditching the Piper sedan, probably stolen for the job tonight. Hewitt swore aloud, as he was nearing city limits.

That tag now, that he had picked up at the ballpark. Maybe it meant something. Anyhow, it was the nearest thing to a clue yet apparent. He took it from his pocket, slowed his pace and examined it again under the instrument board light.

The number didn’t mean anything. Those tracks, when he could get the car to headquarters, might spell something to the fingerprint expert, checked with his records. He thrust the tag back into his pocket.

Miller had said that two cars had pulled away from the ballpark. The Piper sedan would be one of them. The other, doubtless, had hauled the acetylene outfit to the park and waited for the mob to bring the armored truck there. Hewitt tried to remember the little he knew about oxy-acetylene outfits.

There were hundreds of them in the city, he guessed. He’d seen them in operation on streetcar track jobs, cutting down old bridges and the like. Usually a couple of drums strapped to a handtruck, with trailing rubber tubes and a guy with a visored hood operating the torches. He’d never paid a lot of attention.

Then he remembered, quite suddenly, that there had always been tags hanging to the valve ends of those drums!

With the thought, flashing white hot into his racing mind, the coupé spun around a corner where brilliant signs spotted a drug store. Hewitt shunted the car to the curb, made a squealing stop and hustled into the drug store.

Feverishly he consulted a telephone directory. In the classified ad section he found what he was looking for. Under the sub-heading OXYGEN he found:

Thirty seconds later Hewitt was racing across town for the River Street address of the Western Air Products Company, taking chances with traffic lights and no siren to clear the way for his reckless flight.

Only one light burned in the office of the warehouse when he pulled up there. Hewitt thought there would be a watchman, anyhow. He ran up steps and pummelled a door. Presently a bulky man with a watchman’s clock slung from his shoulders and a flash-night in his hand came to the door and peered through the glass at the impatient night visitor.

III

Hewitt held his badge for the watchman to see. “Open up!” he bawled loudly. “Police business, brother!”

The watchman unlocked the door and opened it a grudging crack.

“What the hell?” he growled suspiciously. “There ain’t anything wrong here!”

Hewitt further identified himself by name, and added hastily: “I want a look around your shipping room, just the same. Show me!”

The watchman locked the door again, and rumbling to himself, conducted Hewitt through the office and back to a shipping room, where gas drums of all sizes stood about and were piled in stacks.

Eagerly Hewitt approached a stack, and fingered tags tied about thick drum necks. Most drums had several tags of assorted sizes and colors affixed, but he found one with a small, plain manilla tag matching the one now in his hand.

“Know anything about these tags?” he demanded of the watchman at his elbow.

“Sure I do. I used to work in the warehouse before my back gave out and I took the nightwatch job. That tag’s a record of the shipping order number. It’ll be in the shipping clerk’s order register, showing where the drum went.”

“Find that register, brother!” Hewitt grasped the watchman’s elbow and hustled him over to a high desk.

The watchman dug the book out of a drawer, leafed through it, after a glance at the pencilled number on Hewitt’s tag, and found the corresponding number on a page.

“Your tag come off a drum that went to Dave’s Welding Shop, out at 416 West 14th,” the watchman traced an entry on the page. “Where’d you get it, sergeant?”

“Never mind!” Hewitt snapped. “What do you know about Dave’s Welding shop, if anything?”

“That’s a jackleg welding and automobile repair shop, run by a fellow named Dave Risman.”

“Thanks! You can let me out now — after I use your office phone!”

Hewitt called headquarters from a phone in the office up front. The H.Q. operator, when asked for Captain Dailey, informed the detective that Dailey had gone with the squad car rushed out to the ballpark.

“Okay, Red. Hewitt speaking. Tell whoever’s the skipper to rush a couple of dicks or uniformed men out to 416 West 14th,” Hewitt ordered hastily. “Better send four men, anyhow. I’m on something hot on this bandit mob, and I’ll be there when they make it.”

“Sorry, Hewitt, but outside of me and the radio op, the desk sergeant and the turnkey, just about everybody’s out on this stickup thing. I’ll put it on the air for a cruiser to hop over there, and for Captain Dailey to hike, too. He may get the flash.”

“Swell!” Hewitt slammed up the phone, skipped from the office and roared off in the gray coupé.

West 14th Street, in the vicinity of No. 416, wasn’t five blocks from the Western Air Products warehouse. It was a dark and forbidding neighborhood, the street lined with warehouses and small shops.

Hewitt had no difficulty locating Dave’s Welding Shop. A weatherbeaten sign hung outside a shabby, two-story frame structure, informing the public that Dave did welding, auto blacksmithing and general repairing.

Hewitt parked a half block from the place, cut lights and motor and hurried back on foot. He studied the place, approaching. The downstairs was dark; solid double doors to the auto drive-in closed. No lights showed in the corner where the business office was.

Glancing up at the front second story windows, Hewitt thought he could detect faint gleams of light about edges of pulled down shades there.

The sensible thing to do was to wait until the radio flash brought a cruiser out here, or perhaps Captain Dailey and men from headquarters, if the skipper had gotten the flash and had been returning to the city.

On the other hand, Hewitt reflected, glimly staring up at those front windows, they’d come screaming up with a racket that could be heard ten blocks. If that stick-up mob was holed up here, they’d flush, before reinforcements could be of much help.

Odds never bothered Walter Hewitt. He made a decision now, walked up to a small door that bore the scabby “Office” sign and kicked at the bottom noisily, after a twist at the knob proved the door locked.

Presently his assault brought results. He could hear feet clumping down stairs somewhere within. Then a greasy dim bulb flashed on in the office, and he could see a squat thick-chested swarthy man in greasy coveralls coming to the door.

Hewitt grinned ingratiatingly when a pair of suspicious dark eyes surveyed him through the door glass. “Open up!” he called. Locks clicked and the swarthy man threw the door open.

“What do you want?” he demanded surlily.

“You do welding?” Hewitt asked. “Say, I’m broke down in the next block. It’s a welding job, and I want to get fixed up so’s I can hit the highway on my trip. You’re Dave Risman, aren’t you?”

“I’m Risman, but I don’t take no jobs after six o’clock,” the man growled. “Who sent you to me, mister?”

Both Hewitt’s hands made darting, marvelously quick motions. Dave Risman blinked stupidly at the gun muzzle held rock-steady three inches from his thick middle, and at the gleaming gold badge in Hewitt’s left hand.

“Back up, Risman!” Hewitt warned softly. “Don’t open your trap in a yell, either. I want to see the inside of your shop!”

The mechanic fell back a few stumbling paces. Panic dawned in his widened eyes. Hewitt pressed him closely, sending darting glances about the small office.

He spotted the side partition door at once, and beyond could see objects dimly in a dark shop. There was a switch beside the door frame. Warily, Hewitt sidestepped to the opening and turned the switch.

Brilliant lights flashed on in the shop. His guess had been good.

A grunt of satisfaction escaped Hewitt’s lips, when his darting glance fell on a sedan in the driveway running past the office, its rear bumpers just touching the closed big doors. It was a Piper Six, blue-black, with red stripings.

A few yards ahead of the sedan stood a light truck, with an open body.

The rounded ends of two gas drums strapped to a small handtruck showed in the truck, coils of rubber tubing looped about their necks.

Hewitt’s stern eyes flicked to the swarthy man, whose face showed dirty gray under grease smears.

“Stand here in the doorway, Risman!” the order cracked. “Where I can keep an eye on you. Make a funny move and it’ll be bad for you!”

The mechanic shuffled forward. Hewitt stepped out into the shop, and over to the tailgate of the light truck. He drew the little tag from his pocket and looked for bits of wire that might match the broken ends on the drum necks.

He heard the mechanic draw a hissing breath, jerked his head for a square glance at the man. Risman’s eyes, wide and full of a mute appeal for help, were raised and staring upward at a point behind the dick.

Hewitt snapped his head about, following the direction of that strained stare. He saw a shadowy platform at the top of a flight of open wooden stairs, leading to the second floor. There was a blurred movement up there and something metallic gleamed in light rays.

Hewitt let his knees hinge and ducked below the truck tailgate, not a split second too soon.

The crashing blasts of a tommy-gun rocked the shop. Down aimed slugs pinged on the gas drums, ricochetted with eerie winnings and ripped through the wooden flooring of the truck in a hail of death.

Hewitt crouched, his gun gripped, faculties alert. From the corner of his eye, he saw Risman duck behind the door casing, jerking at a rear pocket. He could hear feet thudding on the wooden stairs as men charged down.

Then an automatic popped from the office doorway. The shock of a slug socking into the big muscles of Hewitt’s left shoulder almost bowled him over. He caught balance with his right hand, twisted and brought the revolver up to snap a shot at all that he could see of the mechanic, merely an arm and a shoulder exposed beyond the casing.

Dust flew from the coveralls at the upper arm. Risman yelped and the automatic clattered to the floor, falling out into the shop.

Then Hewitt was very, very busy with a desperate mob trying to shoot out of a pinch.

Peeping under the truck he saw a pair of thick legs. The gun in his hand roared and a man crashed to the floor. Another stumbled over him, cursing frantically. The prone man propped on an elbow and shot at Hewitt.

Something bored into Hewitt’s thigh with paralyzing pain. His quick shot stiffened the chap on the floor. The stumbling one squatted, poking the nose of the tommy to rake the space beneath the truck.

A slug from Hewitt’s weapon glanced along the tommy barrel and found a target in the squatting man’s stomach. His eyes popped as he dropped the gun and rocked on his heels, hugging his stomach, face graying.

Hewitt reached up and caught the tailgate with fingers of his left hand, helping his paralyzed leg to pull him up. A flicker of movement at the stair head warned him. He snapped a slug tip there and sagged, keeping his clutch on the tailgate.

A sawed-off shotgun roared and pellets rained on the back of the truck and the tailgate, riddling Hewitt’s fingers.

Swearing, he huddled on the floor, wondering how many more of them there were up there, and how soon they’d get him now.

A siren shrieked, not two blocks away. Men cursed frantically up at the stair head, and feet sounded hollowly as a pair raced across the floor for the rear of the place.

Hewitt heaved up, tried a step toward the stairs and fell, swearing his anger and disgust. He half-crawled, half-wallowed over to the office doorway, and pulled himself erect by clutching door casings.

Men came hurtling into the office through the outside door, guns in their fists, faces grim and alert. The glint of light on brass buttons was a welcome sight to Walter Hewitt.

“Outside!” he croaked. “Watch the second floor — at the back!”

Two uniformed men rushed outside. Captain Dailey and a bulky dick sprang to catch Hewitt’s reeling figure and ease him into a chair.

“Stairs — inside—” Hewitt gobbled a warning, and they left him to plunge into the shop.

There was shooting, inside and outside, and presently things quieted down. Captain Dailey and the dick returned to the office dragging two handcuffed, apprehensive prisoners. The two cops came in from outside and handcuffed the groaning Risman.

There were two men out in the shop who Hewitt thought would need no handcuffs.

Dailey went over the stocky detective hurriedly.

“You all right, Hewitt, outside the slug in your shoulder and the one in your leg?” he inquired anxiously.

Hewitt waggled the numbed fingers of his bloody left hand.

“Count ’em!” he husked. “And see if I’ve got ’em all!”

Dailey examined the hand and grinned. “It’ll make a good fist — as good as ever — in a few weeks,” he gave cheerful information.

A dick and a uniformed man came down from an upstairs investigation.

“The loot from the armored truck is all upstairs,” the dick reported. “They must have been making the split, when Hewitt jumped them.”

“Tell us about it,” Dailey demanded respectfully. “How did you find the gang in this hole, Hewitt?”

Hewitt told them, beginning at the food store and running briefly through his experiences.

“Following that tag trail,” he wound up, “brought me to this place. That’s Dave Risman over there in the coveralls. They used his outfit to cut their way into the armored car tank. I guess they’ve been making his place headquarters.”

“We’ll make some of them sing, down at headquarters,” Dailey promised, “and we’ll find out about things.” He cocked his ear to the wail of an ambulance siren, nearing the place. “There’s you cab, Hewitt. The chief will be tickled to hear about this. He’ll be out to the hospital to see you, fellow!”

“Tell ’em to drive slow,” Hewitt cautioned huskily, when they were helping him out. “I’m not in any shape for a wreck!”