Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 111, No. 4, June 12, 1937

A courageous newspaper publisher bucks dirty politics and a band of terrorists.

Chapter I

The man in the baggy tweeds turned in at the Post Office, his mien casual, affable.

A battered hat, reduced to limp and flapping comfort by years and inclement weather, was pushed well back on his head. His teeth, when he smiled — and he was always smiling — were strong, regular, clamped on the bit of a scarred and ancient pipe. Raw-boned, angular, there was a hint of the scarecrow in Phineas Spear as he bent his long frame over a lock-drawer in the bottom row. But nobody laughed — or even smiled! He opened it, scooped up the half dozen letters therein and straightened.

“Gentlemen,” he announced genially, “good morning!”

There was a sticky silence.

Unruffled, the only apparent cause for that silence glanced through his mail. His eyes — smoky grey, whimsical — acquired an added touch of mild, good-humored cynicism. He glanced up finally at the cluster of men who watched him, not with open hostility, but with a guarded, stony coldness. Phineas Spear was new to Liberty — but it was not his newness that marked him. It was his new ideas that Liberty was finding it hard to swallow. No one answered his greeting. Phineas Spear smiled more broadly.

“Nevertheless,” he remarked, “it is a good morning.” And he went out with his peculiar, loose-jointed stride that was almost an ambling lope. Morning gossip in Liberty’s new Post Office was resumed, though not in customary vein.

“Is that him?” somebody asked. “The guy that runs the Blade now?”

“Yeah!” was the answer. “Runs it now is good! Way he’s started, he won’t last long. Flyin’ in Major Bardin’s face like he’s done — attackin’ the Courts — printin’ stuff that just as good as says Abel Parkes didn’t kill ol’ Senator Southard. I tell you men it ain’t American! This guy Spear’s no better than Abel Parkes himself — a damned Red — an’ somethin’ oughta be done about it.”

Another voice cut in, harsh, rasping, “Maybe — somethin’ will!”

There was a furtive silence. No one looked at anyone else. Then: “Seen the News-Herald this mornin’? Read what Major Bardin said?”

“Sure! The Major sorta rubbed this fella’s nose in it. The Blade used t’be a good, respectable newspaper, but... Well, the Major’ll straighten him out soon — or run him out!”

They agreed, and turned as one man to watch Spear cross the street and turn toward the dingy brick building that housed the offices of the Liberty Blade — the one that used to be a good, respectable newspaper. And at the corner they saw him stop to talk to a small, thin man who looked like a shabby child beside Phineas Spear’s slim height.

“Randall Pierson!” somebody said. “Wonder if he’s drunk yet. Birds of a feather, I guess!”

There was a guffaw.

But Randall Pierson wasn’t drunk — yet! In spite of the sickly sweet odor of gin that hovered about him in a palpable aura, Randall Pierson held his thin body erect, walked steadily. He looked old. His cheeks were hollow, ghastly pale and mottled with the interlaced, fine veins of an alcoholic. Randall Pierson, attorney at law, was nearer forty than the sixty his appearance indicated. Ill-kempt, needing a shave, there still lingered in the man the shattered remnants of breeding, intelligence not yet wholly consumed by liquor’s slow destruction. In his sober moments, Randall Pierson was still shrewd, still capable. He raised an almost transparent hand in greeting as Phineas Spear called out:

“Hi, Counselor!”

“Morning, Spear,” he smiled one-sidedly. “So you’re still among the living! Weren’t murdered in your sleep last night. I thought you might be after reading your editorial. It was fine, my boy, but wasted! Liberty is dead to such truthful blasts, even when they carry the punch you give them.”

He paused. Phineas Spear’s smile grew somewhat vague, his eyes grimly reflective, but he did not speak. The lawyer shook open the folded paper he carried — the News-Herald, Bardin’s paper. Three-inch headlines announced:

Spear took the paper, nodded. He opened it to the Editorial page and pretended to read, his voice bitter mockery:

He broke off suddenly, then grated, “Pierson, it makes me sick! Abel Parkes no more killed the Senator than I did. He’s psychologically incapable of it — even physically incapable of driving a pair of rusty grass shears completely through the heart of a man as big as Southard was. Why it’s—”

“Libel, my lad!” Pierson cut in. “What you just read between the lines of Bardin’s editorial is splendidly obvious, but it’s also very close to libel if anyone else heard it! You know that, of course.”

Phineas Spear grinned again and they paused in front of the building with its dirty brick front, and brightly new plate glass windows lettered in gold: The Blade, P. Spear, Editor and Publisher.

“You’re not,” he inquired gently, “telling me to lie down and be good, are you, Counselor? You’re not advising me to quit and let the Blade sink back to the colorless, timid rag it was?”

“By no means!” Pierson’s voice acquired for a moment a ghost of its old ringing clarity. “But don’t give Bardin a chance to smash you for some small offense — such as libel. This town needs an opposition sheet. Give it to ’em, Spear — but build slowly, carefully.” The fire in his eyes died slowly. He drooped all at once. “Quite a speech,” he finished, “from the village drunk! Well — I’ll see you later.”

He turned away abruptly, crossed the street toward the back stairway leading to his own squalid, back-room office. And Phineas Spear watched the thin, stooped figure. Randall Pierson, once the most brilliant trial lawyer in the State. Destined for a great future — and caught in the maelstrom of the dirtiest political deal of the century! An unproven charge — never actually disbarred as a lawyer — it was enough to ruin his career. Until, in his own bitter words, he was the “village drunk.”

But out of that same deal, Spear knew, others had come into prominence. From it, Major Joe Bardin — owner and editor of the News-Herald — had risen to influence. “Build slowly, carefully,” Pierson had said. But as Phineas Spear turned and entered the Blade building, he thought: Slowly! When a man was being railroaded to the death-house. When others were climbing to ruthless power on a ladder of murder and terrorism?

“Mornin’, Chief! Look — this ad. Is it...”

“See Miss Collin,” Spear cut him off, and the grimy typesetter who had spoken looked at him again, then scratched his head. He turned toward the door next to the one through which Spear vanished. Two minutes later he emerged again, followed by a girl. She hesitated at Phineas Spear’s closed door, then opened it.

His eyes lighted, smiled. “Hi, Cara,” he said. “I know — I’m late, but I won’t let it happen again today! Stopped to talk to Pierson. I see there was a—”

“Phineas,” she cut in, “what’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” he inquired. “Why?”

“I heard you snap at Pete when you came in, and saw your face. You looked—”

“Oh! That. Just the usual, Cara. This Southard thing. Pierson and I were talking about it. He advised caution and the long pull to fame and fortune. And it got me— Wait a minute! What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” she said hurriedly. “Only — Phineas, I wish you’d take that advice! Pierson’s right. You’ve only been here three months — you’ve had the Blade only six weeks. And — and you simply don’t know Liberty! How smug it is, how cruel and vindictive and set in its ways!”

Phineas Spear heaved his lean body out of its slouch with effortless ease. He came around his desk and stood smiling faintly into the dark eyes, the perfect, upturned oval of her face.

“Cara,” he said irrelevantly, “you’re a pretty little thing — but to get back. I don’t know the town — you say! Now I’ll tell you a secret. I do know the town, and it’s just like any other town of twenty thousand — or two million! I spent my first month here in the local barber shops and gin-mills, the street corners and back alleys and hotel lobbies — where you meet people in the raw. I read the News-Herald and the Blade every day, from cover to cover, and maybe I could tell you some things about Liberty that you don’t know! But anyway, I wanted to buy a newspaper — one that was down at the heel, preferably — that I could have some fun in building up. And the Blade was the answer to all that.”

“Yes, Phineas, I know, but...”

“Then,” he went on as though he hadn’t heard her, “old Senator Southard was murdered, and that poor wretch, Parkes, was caught without an alibi. Oh, I know they’ve got a motive against him, but forget that, Cara. I’ll tell you why Southard was killed! Because he had the courage to stand up and tell this smug and cruel and vindictive town just what was happening to it! Tell it what to expect if it kept on letting the News-Herald gang do its thinking, run its affairs. And Southard’s death proves he was right! By Heaven, Cara, there’s something afoot in this town that won’t stop at one killing to get what it wants. There’s something—”

“I know, Phineas,” she said. “They... they won’t stop at just one killing! But I don’t want the next one to be — you! I found — this — pinned on the door of your office when I came in this morning.”

In silence Phineas Spear’s gaze dropped to the sheet of paper she held out to him tensely. For an instant he stood motionless, taut as drawn wire, before he snatched at the sheet, read aloud the crudely printed message:

As he finished he crumpled the thing in a fist that quivered with the fierce pressure of his grip.

“Guardsmen of America!” he grated, then: “Cara! Get Pete in here, get Hanley, Johnson! Kill whatever we’ve got on today’s front page. I want an extra on the streets as soon as you can get it there. Headline — take this — ‘War Declared!’ Eight column spread, Cara. Under it print a facsimile of this note, and an explanation at the bottom as to how and where you found it. You write it. I’m going to do a sizzling editorial and print that—”

“Hello!” He scooped up the jangling phone. “Yeah... What? Oke, I’ll be there.” And to Cara again, “Court just convened. The Southard jury’s coming in. You write the editorial too. Make it — you know — hot! S’long.”

The door banged. A gleam of excitement blotted out bewilderment, anxiety in Cara Collin’s face. She threw open the door again. “Pete!” she called. “Here — Hurry! Extra edition.”

In the court-room a silence that was heavy with a surcharge of electric tension brought jammed spectators to their toes. Phineas Spear made no attempt to reach the Press table. The trial judge — Blake — was already on the bench, the jury had just filed back into the box. He heard the voice of the clerk intone that fateful question: “Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?” And the solemn answer, “We have.”

Using elbows and shoulders, Spear ignored muttered objections, reached a window sill and climbed on it. Clinging precariously, he looked over massed heads to the railed enclosure below the bench. His eyes focused upon the defense’s table, upon Max Horstmann, counsel appointed by the court to defend Abel Parkes. And Parkes himself, his thin, emaciated face turned upward to the jury with terrible, hopeless intensity.

“And what is that verdict?” the clerk droned on.

To Phineas Spear, it was grotesque, unreal. The man spoke his lines in this set and unvarying drama apathetically, with no feeling for the depths of human emotions that were being plumbed. The foreman looked once at Abel Parkes and the old man’s head dropped, his thin shoulders trembled. He knew before the words were said.

“We find the defendant guilty as charged.”

An indrawn, multi-throated breath sighed like a gust of wind through a broken window. No one heard the rest of it. Very few of them heard Judge Blake postpone the pronouncement of sentence until the following day. But Phineas Spear heard. He slid down from his window sill, his eyes bleak, his mouth thinly determined.

Chapter II Suspicion

The bar was crowded, heavy with smoke, loud with talking. Everyone talked at once. Only in the immediate vicinity of Phineas Spear was there any silence, and that was soon overwhelmed in the contagion of words. But Phineas Spear didn’t talk. His hat low over his eyes, nose buried in a half empty beer glass, he listened.

“Naw! There won’t be no appeal. Horstmann won’t appeal.”

“Why should he? Parkes is the guy!”

“Parkes did it — the rat! Bit the hand that’s fed him.”

“After the Senator kep’ him all these years.”

“Guilty as hell. Oughta be lynched.”

“I ain’t so sure!”

In the split second of startled silence that followed that last statement, Spear marked the man who had made it. Big, level-eyed, slow-spoken, the doubter was garbed in overalls. His hand on a beer glass was grimy-nailed. He looked like a mechanic. The fierce storm of protest that burst about him did not alter his somberly reflective face, nor his posture.

Behind him, Phineas Spear heard, “Somebody oughta — sorta talk to Charley Vargas, shouldn’t they?”

“Yeah,” was the reply, “somebody will!”

Spear’s glass thudded on the bar. He pushed back his hat, turned and caught the smouldering stare of the man who had spoken last. Spear smiled narrowly, and shouldered his way out. A muffled yodel from the street filtered through the chaos inside. At the curb he bought one of his own extras, regarded it with grim pleasure and watched the faces of others who bought. He wondered how Charley Vargas — the man who wasn’t so sure — would look when he read the Guardsmen’s note. What would he think when somebody came around to “sorta talk” to him? Spear crossed the street, strode half a block to the tall, elaborately facaded News-Herald building. He left the elevator at the tenth floor, entered the door marked Max Horstmann. And the attorney for the defense — Horstmann himself — turned away from a window to eye him.

Slowly the lawyer crossed the room. The girl at the switchboard stopped chewing to watch, her mouth hanging open. Horstmann said:

“Well, what d’you want?” He was tall, black-haired, glowering.

Phineas Spear drawled, “I’d like to get your confirmation that there’ll be no appeal in the Southard case, Counselor. I’ve heard—”

“You’ve heard lots, haven’t you?” the lawyer blasted. “But so far you’ve not got anything straight in that sensational, yellow-dog sheet of yours! Get out, Spear! You’ll have no statement from me!”

Still smiling, Phineas Spear spoke musingly, as though he read from a sheet before his thoughtful eyes. “Obviously displeased by a verdict utterly unjustified by the pitiful evidence presented in the case of the People vs. Abel Parkes, Defense Attorney Horstmann refused today to confirm persistent rumors that no appeal will be taken. In view of the — somewhat strange — conduct of the defense, it is the opinion of this observer that Attorney Horstmann has been saving his case for an appeal. It is incredible that Mr. Horstmann would permit his client to go to the electric chair with no more effort on his behalf than was evidenced at his trial, and thus the only logical inference is that an appeal is planned.” He paused, then clipped, “That’s fine, Counselor! Makes good reading — front page stuff — publicity! Keep it up and you’ll be Governor some day... And you’d like to be Governor, wouldn’t you, Horstmann?”

“Spear—” he choked — “If you print that after what—” But he caught himself, stood breathing hard.

“After — what?” Phineas Spear grated softly. He spread out the Blade extra, held it so that Horstmann could see the whole of the front page. “After that, you mean?”

For an instant the lawyer stared, his eyes unguarded. Then he rasped, “You’d better heed that warning, Spear! You know as well as I that Parkes murdered Senator Southard. And you’d better learn — fast — that this town won’t tolerate the kind of journalism you’re trying to give it! Understand?”

“Perfectly!” he smiled. “There will be no appeal.”

“No!” he roared.

“Then I can print that!”

Phineas Spear went out and closed the door.

No appeal... But he’d expected none! It was merely the final, the complete confirmation of his own belief that Abel Parkes was being made the goat in a murder that would rock the country — when the truth was known! They didn’t have to appeal! Every formality, every small detail of the law’s requirements had been met. Appeal was not mandatory here, as it was in some states. No review by higher courts was called for — and so there’d be none!

Phineas Spear strode rapidly, his smile a bit more grim, his eyes a shade more steely. He passed his own office, crossed the street and took the stairs leading to Randall Pierson’s. Pierson would be drunk, more than likely, but if he could only sober him, keep him that way... Spear knocked and the voice that told him to come in was thinly fuddled, hoarse.

Randall Pierson said, “Ah-ha, my boy! You come, no doubt, from the Courts of Justice to tell me that once again Justice has been done. That—”

“Not exactly,” Spear grinned mirthlessly, slouched into the only remaining chair. “How drunk are you, Pierson?”

The man winced visibly. His eyes fell. He said, “Not like you, Phineas. Heretofore you have ignored — as a gentleman must — what is patently not your affair. I am drunk. I have always been drunk. Unquestionably I shall continue to be drunk. How drunk I am at any given time is...”

“I’m sorry, Pierson,” he cut in. “As you say, it’s not my affair — none of my business. But drunk or sober, you know what’s going on here in Liberty.”

“Of course!” he grated. “So does any man of intelligence! Southard knew — and they killed him for it! It’s going on all over the world. The people — the sovereign people — have at times a strange dislike to thinking. They are only too glad to turn the job over to any nickel-plated jackass who claims — provided he claims it loudly enough — the God-given ability to do it for them. But what about it? Why bother me with it? I am in the process of becoming drunk — which is the only escape for a man of intelligence.”

Phineas Spear said grimly: “Escape from what? Yourself, Counselor?”

“No...” He spoke slowly, distantly; his eyes were bleak. “You can’t do that. But does it matter?”

“It matters, Pierson,” Spear said, “only if you’d like to clear Abel Parkes! Only if you’d like to strike a body-blow at some nickel-plated jackasses among those present — here — in Liberty! And perhaps get the people down to some unwilling thought on where they’re headed.”

“Go on, Phineas. I’m not too drunk to hear you.”

“Then listen! I don’t know how closely you’ve followed this case but I’ve followed it until I know it backward. Old Parkes was odd-job man about Senator Southard’s home. Probably not worth his salt, but the Senator must have felt that he needed the money. He’d kept Parkes on for years — provided for him in his will — and that’s the motive they’ve set up for the murder. Twenty-five dollars a month, and a tumbled-down shack.”

Pierson nodded. Spear went on:

“Southard lived alone — you know that. You know he had a housekeeper. She testified that on the afternoon of the killing, Parkes was cutting the grass of the Southard place. She said she left the house at about 6:30, and he had almost finished the job. She said that when she came back later, it was dark, Parkes was gone, the Senator was dead. But have you wondered, Pierson, where that housekeeper is now? Has anybody?”

“No,” Randall Pierson said. “Where is she?”

“I tried to locate her yesterday,” Spear rapped, “and she’s not available — to me, anyway! But just keep that in mind. Listen some more: Southard was killed by a stabwound to the heart. A jagged, brutal wound! The print of a bloody hand on the door-knob leading from Southard’s study — more of them were on the wall of the staircase — lots of them! All the way downstairs as though the killer had steadied himself against the wall. And another was found on the knob of the side cellar door. That’s the door, according to testimony, that Parkes always used in coming and going from the house. And in all that mess there wasn’t a single fingerprint — but that may be all right. According to testimony — his own — Parkes wore an old pair of kid gloves to work in. He plays the violin and doesn’t want to coarsen his hands. But get this, Pierson.

“They found the death weapon in Parkes’ tool shed. A pair of grass-shears, obviously wiped clean, but still retaining traces of human blood that could be identified. And on the basis of that — the State proved that Abel Parkes, seventy if he’s a day old, a physical wreck who doesn’t weigh over a hundred and ten pounds, plunged these shears to the handle in Southard’s heart!”

He paused, and Pierson breathed cynically, “I think, Phineas, that the State was not so good at proving as the defense was negligent in disproving!”

“But listen, man! Don’t you see it? Aside from the fact that Parkes wasn’t strong enough to do it, there was definite proof right in that court-room — in the testimony offered — that he was framed! I saw it! You’d have seen it, if you had been there. I know Abel Parkes was framed, but until I find out who did kill Southard I can’t spring it on this cock-eyed, smug town! I’ve got to stall — and you must help!”

There was a strained, gin-laden silence. The struggle of Randall Pierson against the deadening waves of the alcohol already in his brain was not a pretty thing. But he mastered it. If he were not sober when he spoke, at least there was no evidence of drunkenness left in him. He said quietly, but with an overtone of eagerness:

“Yes. I think I see it! It is so very simple, Phineas. But we must have a retainer of some sort from Parkes! An appointment of me as his counsel and a revocation of his acceptance of Horstmann. It’s irregular, Phineas, but Blake may permit it if we can get a letter. Blake’s an honest man. I’ll move for an appeal and—”

“A letter?” Phineas Spear surged out of his chair. “Only a letter? Hell, Counselor — you write what you want. Write it now! I’ll get it signed. I’ll get you a whole mail sack full of letters.”

Chapter III Protection Racket

His eyes gleamed as he finished reading: “The Blade accepts this challenge to Freedom, freedom of thought and the right to say what it thinks. It is the opinion of the Blade that the murder of Senator Southard has not been solved. Come what may, it is the intention of the Blade to say so!” And Phineas Spear slapped the paper on the counter with a resounding whack.

The man in the soiled white apron said softly, “That Blade — it tells ’em, huh?”

He looked up, still narrow-eyed for a moment. Then he relaxed and grinned.

“You want somethin’, Mr. Spear?” the counterman offered.

“Yeah, Nick. I want a steak and spuds and gravy — but I’ve only time for a hamburger. Make it thick, will you, and fast. Coffee, black... You read the Home Edition?”

“Sure, Mr. Spear. I read your extry, too. Y’musta sold a million copies o’ that! The headline — that war stuff! It got ’em!”

“What’d you think of it, Nick?” Spear shot at him.

The man bent over his stove. His hands shaped raw hamburger swiftly; hot grease hissed and crackled as he scaled it into the frying pan. He looked around the little diner furtively, even though he must have known there was no one else in it. Nick said:

“Mr. Spear, in this town, what I think an’ what I say sometimes two dif’rent things. You know?”

Phineas Spear nodded, smiled vaguely. The Greek went on, “You tell me once that you come here from New York. Now I tell you something — an’ maybe it help you un’erstan’ some things. I come from New York, too — three-four years ago. It was tough goin’ in the city, but anyway I get a little ahead. Then — bang! Some hard guy come in my place an’ say I got to buy this or that from his boss — an’ pay twenty per cent more for it. Or else my restaurant is smashed! Only he don’t say that, but I know! So I buy this or that from his boss.

“But what the hell?” he shrugged expressively. “I have to up my prices — people beef about it — but I go along some more, get a little ahead again — Socko! Some other hard guy come in. He say I got to have protection. Lots o’ places like mine been wrecked lately — by the mobs. It don’t cost me but fifty bucks a month, an’ I gotta have protection — or else! He don’t say so either, but I know that gag, too! I buy protection. Then I go along some more, but now I can’t even pay my bills, let alone gettin’ a little ahead. An’ I got a wife, two little Nicks — so I come here where there ain’t no gangsters — maybe.”

Phineas Spear shook catsup over the smoking hamburger, bit into it and munched silently. His eyes were distant, reflective. Nick spread both hands palm down on the bar, leaned over and finished softly:

“Funny though, ain’t it, Mr. Spear? Wherever you go I guess they have hard guys. In New York they call ’em racketeers. Here they call ’em somethin’ else. You know? But it’s all the same if you don’t pay. Black coffee, y’said?”

Spear drawled, “Yeah, Nick. Black. Which costs the most — Racketeers or Guardsmen of America?”

“They cost... about the same, Mr. Spear.”

The door opened and two men came in, ordered food. Both of them eyed Spear, but neither spoke.

He poured water in his coffee to cool it, drained the cup in long, thirsty gulps. Rising, he tossed a dollar on the counter and went out into the half-dark of early evening.

He walked slowly. “The Blade accepts this challenge to Freedom.”

Cara had written that! All in all the most stirring editorial the paper had ever printed, and Cara had written it! Phineas Spear felt no envy, felt rather a surge of grim, sardonic humor. Cara Collin, graduate of the best school of journalism in the country, had tried for months to land a job. Bardin had offered her one — in a nice little apartment that wouldn’t cost her a cent — if! But Cara had just paid him off for that!

She had, he reflected, got out the Blade alone today. After leaving Pierson, Spear had spent the afternoon at the jail, waiting to see old Abel Parkes. Waiting! No one had said he couldn’t see him. They told him he’d have to wait, that was all. But after a while he got the idea. While he waited, a News-Herald got through to Parkes’ cell. A press photographer was passed in. Phineas Spear smiled politely and left. There was another way of getting at Parkes — as soon as it grew dark! He stopped in at the first hardware store he passed, then strode on toward the Blade building. There’d be nobody around this late, but he could leave some notes for Cara to write into tomorrow’s paper.

Without consciousness of stealth, he let himself in without a sound — and then stopped inside the door, tense, fiercely thankful he had come in quietly. From Cara’s half open office door light filtered, a suave voice reached his ears.

“Now Cara, you’ve known me almost all your life. You can trust me — my judgment, my experience. After all, what do you know about this Spear? Why a man who would print such stuff as this...”

Spear heard Cara’s clipped, contemptuous words:

“Major Bardin, it happens that I not only printed, but also wrote the stuff you’re referring to. Mr. Spear had enough faith in my ability — as a newspaper woman... to—”

“Oh!” A harder note crept into Bardin’s smooth tones. “So Spear turned his editorial writing over to a woman! Nice trick — one I might have expected from a yellow—”

From the door, unseen himself in the shadowy outer office, Spear saw them. Saw Cara Collin’s flaming eyes when she said quietly, “Get out of here!” But Bardin laughed.

He stepped closer and a powerful arm encircled her suddenly, jerked her against him. He kissed her, laughed again — and laughter vanished swiftly from his eyes. He cursed incoherently, raised a hand to the cheek she had raked from hair-line to jaw with manicured, sharp nails. Then he ground between clenched teeth:

“You little hell-cat! Don’t think you’ll get away with this! Don’t think you and Spear can—”

“Well, Major?” Phineas Spear stood in the doorway, blocking it. He spoke pleasantly but his eyes blazed. “Fraternizing with the opposition, what? Can I show you around our plant? Our back yard, perhaps. We have a lovely back yard. Practically no one can see into it and I doubt if sounds would carry far.”

Bardin’s teeth flashed. He was a big man, beefy, thick-bodied. He spat the words savagely, “Get out of my way, Spear! I should’ve known better than to try to reason with you. I should’ve—”

Phineas Spear smiled and stood where he was. “Yes,” he drawled, “if that’s what you call it, you should’ve brought your gang! I thought we might spare Miss Collin the actual fisticuffs, but if you don’t want to see our back yard—”

Bardin moved swiftly. In spite of his size he handled himself well, like a boxer. To the watching girl — taut as a bow-string, eyes wide, and scarcely breathing — it seemed that his weight alone must break through Phineas Spear’s almost negligent guard. To Cara, the storm of stabbing, probing lefts that Bardin threw furiously were all landing. But Bardin knew better! He felt the blocking elbow, the lean wiry shoulder that caught every blow he started.

His attack shifted. Feinting viciously he unleashed a poised and waiting right, crossed it with all the weight of a heavy body behind it. And Cara Collin gasped, her hand at her throat. For a split second, she shut her eyes, opened them again.

The whistling grunt had been Bardin’s. It was Bardin who was down, or almost down. Half through the doorway, knees sagging, he hung on Spear’s left arm, looked up into mocking, glinting eyes. There had been no effort to block that blow. The chin at which it was aimed had moved backward two inches — and Bardin had literally thrown himself out the door. Surprise — then something akin to fear — flashed in his face.

Phineas Spear drawled: “He can hand it out! Now let’s see if he can take it.” And he heaved suddenly. Bardin reeled upright, staggered back and slammed into Cara Collin’s desk.

Spear hit him twice — light blows — fast. Incredibly fast! They stung rather than hurt, stung the man back into roaring fury. Again he charged and Phineas Spear’s lithe body recoiled in the crouch of a panther — sprang forward and in behind the ripping right hand that met Bardin’s jaw with the dull thud of a maul. And the man dropped where he stood. Dropped on his face and lay still.

For an instant there was quiet. Cara Collin’s voice quivered a little, but she smiled when she said:

“Th-thank you, Phineas.”

“It was a pleasure!” he bowed, gently mocking.

He grinned at his bloody knuckles, then stooped and caught Bardin’s coat collar. The girl watched him, still deathly pale, but in eyes the flame of thrilled delight. She heard the street door close, then Spear came back. He sat on her desk.

“Y’know, Cara,” he mused, “Canada has a swell climate this time o’ year! Banff — Lake Louise — you’ve no idea! We could use some good vacation copy on the woman’s page. Clothes, sports, local color — feminine viewpoint.”

“No!” she clipped, “I won’t go, unless—”

“What?”

“Unless you go, too, Phineas!”

“Okay,” he sighed. “At least I can take you home. That’s where you’re going to stay unless there’s somebody else here at the office with you.”

“But—”

“I said yes!”

He said goodnight ten minutes later. After he had left her, when he was alone again on the pleasant, maple-bordered street, his humorous half-smile faded. Cara was probably in no immediate danger, but even though he’d known she would refuse, he wished she had accepted that vacation offer. The fat, he reasoned grimly, was in the fire. Bardin was the sort who would never rest until that personal humiliation had been avenged ten times over. And to his satisfaction!

What form would that take? He could not erase from his memory the mad, black fury that had raged in Bardin’s eyes.

A neon Western Union sign caught his glance and Spear turned in there. The telegram he sent cost an astonishing amount for one telegram. It was long, addressed to a man named Jake Wolcott. He told the girl to rush it in all the ways he could think of, then left and continued down Bank Street to Court Avenue. The County Jail loomed on his left, but Spear passed it without a glance, continued on downhill to the river and darkened warehouses. If he were, by any chance, being tailed, it shouldn’t be hard to find it out — and lose it — in the deserted alleys of the water-front.

Fifteen minutes later a dim and cautious figure approached the jail, from the rear, across a rubbish-littered vacant lot. Ahead of him was a wall twelve feet high topped with broken glass set jaggedly in cement. Phineas Spear slid a light rope from where it lay hidden under his vest, coiled around the curve of a bent, hook-like metal rod. Like a gigantic fish-hook with the rope fastened to its shank. The curve and point of the hook was carefully wrapped in friction tape.

For a silent minute Spear hugged the base of the wall, watching, listening. From beyond came the muted wail of a violin — haunting, nostalgic. He straightened suddenly. The hook shot upward and caught on the wall top, the grating of steel on glass and concrete muffled by the tape. Tentatively Spear shook the rope. The hook settled more firmly. He pulled hard and it sank home. His coat came off. Holding it in his teeth, he went up the wall hand over hand. At the top his folded coat protected him against knife-like points of glass and he threw a leg across, hung thus while he turned the hook and rope inside. Then he slid down into the dismal yard of the jail.

The violin was the only sound. Old Parkes had worn gloves at work to save his fingers for his violin! Phineas Spear smiled and followed the sound to the third lighted window from the end. The ledge was scarcely a foot above the tips of his reaching fingers. He crouched, sprang upward and hung precariously until he grasped solid bars in a firm grip. The violin stopped abruptly at his third light tap.

Abel Parkes peered blankly toward the window, his bow poised — and Spear cursed that sudden cessation of the music. Why didn’t he have sense enough to play on! Slowly the old man rose and approached the window. He raised it quietly enough and sank to his knees, his eyes level with Spear’s strain-distorted face. Hoarsely Abel Parkes faltered:

“Who is it?”

“Go on playing, man!” he said fiercely, “or I’ll be in there with you! It’s Phineas Spear — you know, the Blade!”

A quavering discord was torn from the violin as his bow crossed it. Then it sang again, softly, plaintively. Abel Parkes’ lips moved. “Phineas Spear? Oh yes! I remember you. But I didn’t kill him! I didn’t kill my friend. They try to make me say so — for that other paper — but I cannot! Not even for you, Phineas Spear. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t.”

Spear’s face contorted with added effort as he let go one hand and reached in his vest pocket. He laid the folded letter Pierson had given him — the retainer — on the window sill. He got a pen, unscrewed the top with his teeth and laid that beside it.

“Listen, Parkes!” he panted, “I know you didn’t kill Southard. I can prove it.”

“You... can!” the music faltered again. Watery, red-rimmed eyes lighted dully, “Then why...?”

“Don’t talk! Play — listen. Horstmann wasn’t trying to help you. He didn’t want to prove you innocent, but Randall Pierson does.”

“Randall Pierson,” he breathed, “wants to help me?”

“That paper” — Spear’s face was purpling slowly — “says that you consent to Pierson’s acting for you as your attorney. Read it. Sign it. Drop it down to me!” And he vanished.

It was almost as though the violin were part of his emotions. He played slowly, tensely, while he must have been reading. Then the tempo quickened, the music became ragged, raucous — stopped! A white square of paper fluttered to the ground and Phineas Spear crouched as footsteps grated on the gravel of the yard.

The guard almost passed — then paused.

His coat! The coat that he had left on the wall-top! It broke that serrated skyline, broke it with a bulge that looked mountain high to Spear. How did it look to the patrolling guard? The man turned toward it, toward the dangling, invisible rope that was Spear’s only means of escape. But before he reached it a whirlwind hit him from behind, left him groaning faintly in a heap upon the ground. When he recovered and rose shakily, the bulge on the wall was gone.

Phineas Spear stood in Pierson’s dingy office and looked down at the inert body of Randall Pierson. The letter that Abel Parkes had signed slid slowly back into his own pocket, and he bent over the lawyer, lifted him and heaved him with a grunt across his shoulder. He kicked an empty gin bottle under the desk. Pierson’s breathing was labored, heavy.

The village drunk!

Out like a light!

Expressionless, his eyes smouldering, Spear went out with his burden. He crossed to the Blade building, went in and emerged again shortly, alone. As he relocked the door, he muttered, “But you’re going to be sober, fella, for tomorrow’s court appearance!” And Phineas Spear went home, and wearily to bed.

His body ached. Every bone and muscle in him cried out for rest, sleep. And every atom of his brain refused feverishly. The luminous hands of the alarm clock on the table beside him crawled from midnight to one o’clock. At a quarter of two he turned the clock around, and he didn’t know how much later it was when his phone rang. He took it before he was fully out of the doze into which he had fallen, said:

“Yeah?” Then, “What!”

“Phineas!” The very timbre of Cara’s voice sent a shock through him, prepared him for anything. In a half second he thought of everything but what she told him, frantically, “Phineas — the office! It’s burning!”

His feet hit the floor. Light flared. “How bad, Cara? Is it—”

His heart pounded.

“Oh, it’s the whole building. They say it’s hopeless — gone!”

“Cara...” His voice was hoarse. “Where are you? Are you near there?”

“Yes. I’m in Randall Pierson’s office.”

“Then tell ’em — tell ’em quick! Pierson’s in that fire! I left him, dead-drunk, in my office. Locked in! Hurry, Cara — I’m coming!”

Chapter IV Sentence of Death

A gain the court-room was jammed. People stood on one another’s toes, or sat two in a seat intended for one. People waited, panting in air grown unfit to breathe, crowded intolerably while still more tried to enter. And no one would have left willingly as long as he could retain consciousness. The mob that had assembled to hear a verdict of guilty pronounced upon Abel Parkes was apathetic compared to that which had gathered to hear him sentenced to die. But it was not only the morbidly curious who had come, not alone the sensation seekers!

Men who had not attended a single session of the trial of Abel Parkes — who had been satisfied to read about it — were there now. Business men: bankers; doctors. And their wives. And some of them seemed a little ill at ease, a little dazed. More than one glanced again, furtively perhaps, at the printed single sheets — like cheap hand-bills — that were scattered through the room, through the streets, throughout the town for anyone to see and read, free of charge.

Those handbills bore the masthead of the Blade. They were marked “Extra.” They said simply:

There was no reference to fire, no mention of presses smashed into twisted junk before fire ever touched them. There was no statement of the fact that the pungent reek of burned kerosene still permeated the smouldering ruins of the Blade building. But those things were not necessary to be printed. Rumor had them! Rumor flung them, amplified by the clamoring tongues of repetition, to all the town.

Rumor said that Randall Pierson had died. That Spear had killed him. That Pierson had started the fire. That Major Bardin had been found, beaten and robbed. Rumor said that a guard had been half killed under Abel Parkes cell window. That Phineas Spear had bought an antiquated hand-press in a neighboring town and had set it up in an empty loft.

That seemed to be a fact — a bald rock of reality in the surrounding sea of rumor. And the sentence of death about to be pronounced upon Abel Parkes faded into the background, became suddenly but the opening move on a chessboard of grim conflict. Instead of the yellow cur, snapping at the fringes of respectability, beyond the pale of recognition, the Blade loomed as a tiger challenging those lions of civic virtue: public opinion and the News-Herald!

But they sat passively while the preliminaries were done. They rose when Judge Blake entered, and sat down when he did. They tolerated the bustling activity of court attendants, whispered conferences among attorneys. They had eyes only for Abel Parkes and the subtle change that had taken place in him. Instead of the hopeless futility that had marked him throughout his trial, he had now a breathless quality of dog-like eagerness.

His eyes wandered from crammed doorways to press table, with its full quota of News-Herald men, and its two vacant chairs where the Blade’s representatives might sit. Major Bardin was there with his contingent. Spear was not — nor Randall Pierson. But rumor had not penetrated to Abel Parkes’ cell. He hadn’t heard that a besotted lawyer had been trapped in the Blade inferno.

Then the drama had been acted out. The letter of the Law had been appeased and the clerk broke the waiting silence.

“The defendant will rise.”

Slowly, his face like a frightened child, uncomprehending, Abel Parkes wavered to his feet. Judge Blake’s voice was resonant, sternly uninflected.

“Abel Parkes,” he said, “you have been found guilty by a jury of your peers of the wilful and felonious murder of Justin Southard. Under the Criminal Code of this State, the penalty for such murder is death by electrocution. Have you any reason to give why that sentence should not be pronounced upon you?”

There was the quiet of death. The old man’s eyes went slowly from judge to jury, rested briefly on press table and prosecution, reached Max Horstmann’s darkly handsome face. Then, “Your Honor,” he panted, “please, Your Honor, I... I didn’t do it! I...” and Abel Parkes’ throat closed in a racking sob.

“Is that all?” the Judge asked. “Is there — nothing else?”

Max Horstmann spoke. “Your Honor, that is all.”

It was getting dark. They stood together at a dusty window with a broken pane and looked out over the street. Behind them the dim emptiness of the warehouse loft was broken only by the bulk of a dilapidated hand-press, a limited stock of printers’ supplies. But such as it was, the Blade! Phineas Spear turned slowly and looked at it.

His face was soot-grimed, gaunt, ink-streaked. A livid gash over one eye had been stitched, bandaged earlier in the day, but the dressing had long since been lost. His hair was singed and ragged; remnants of tweed hung on him in charred shreds — mute evidence that if Randall Pierson had died, at least he had not gone without an effort to save him! His gaze dropped to Cara Collins, almost as dirty as he.

She breathed, “Why— Oh, why doesn’t somebody phone!”

“It’s a good sign, Cara!” he said. “If he’d been thrown out, we’d have known it long ago! But now” — his teeth gleamed white in the dimness — “we’ll beat ’em! We’ll smoke ’em out with the very fire they thought was burning us into oblivion!”

“But Phineas,” her voice was almost a sob, “how can we go on? The insurance won’t buy a third of the equipment we need. We can’t last — like this—” Her hand, in a hopeless gesture, swept the bare loft. “No advertising — not a cent coming in. And — nobody’ll even work for the Blade! I saw old Pete this morning, Phineas — and even he’s turned against us!”

He nodded grimly. “So did I, Cara. I got him by himself, got a few drinks into him. Word for word, this is what he told me! See what you think of it. Pete said, ‘Mr. Spear, I reckon I’m gettin’ old, an’ mebbe soft in the head. All old people think the same, I reckon, but it do seem like things is not what they once was. Mind ye, Mr. Spear, I ain’t accusin’ no un — but a man ain’t free any more t’come an’ go as he pleases. Y’know, sometimes I used t’get thinkin’ ’bout them furrin countries where they have dictators an’ such-like, an’ I’d wonder why the people puts up with ’em. But now I... I think I know! I’m sorry, Mr. Spear, but I got a wife an’ my daughter’s two kids t’look out fer.’ ”

He stopped, and his face in the semigloom was harsh, thin-lipped. Cara’s voice was taut. She said:

“The... the Guardsmen!”

The phone on the small table beside their press shattered quiet. And they looked at each other as though life itself depended on that call. Phineas Spear crossed to the table in long strides and jerked the receiver off the hook. The mouthpiece quivered with the tension of his grip, but his voice was steady.

“Yes!” he clipped, then shouted, “He did! Coming back now? Man, we’ve won! If Blake’s let him go this far — we’ve won, I tell you! Send the kids down — all you can get. The extra’s ready and there’s ten bucks apiece in it for the boys. Get ’em here fast, Charley — fast!”

He dropped the phone, seized Cara bodily in his arms and whirled her about the room. She clung to him, eyes wide, lips parted, until he placed her once more on her feet and made a lunge for his hat.

“Cara!” he panted then, “Charley Vargas — one guy who’s not afraid to work for the Blade! That was Vargas! Blake let Pierson argue a motion for an appeal. There was hell in court, but Blake’s a man! He cleared ’em out — declared a half-hour’s adjournment to study Pierson’s brief. He’s coming back in five minutes with a decision and you know what it’ll be — what it’s got to be! I’m going.”

She seized the top sheet from a pile of more handbills — ranked piles of them — thousands of copies of the second extra edition. Printed and ready — waiting for the moment that was almost upon them. Her voice husky, trembling on the verge of hysteria, Cara Collin read:

“Phineas — who is it? Who murdered Senator Southard? Was it—”

“I dunno,” he grinned, “yet! But I do know Abel Parkes didn’t. And I’m going to find out who did! Hold everything, Cara. Charley Vargas is sending his kids down to broadcast the extra, and they’re bringing their gang. When they come— Here they are now! Let ’em in.”

A confusion of scraping feet on the stairway drew Cara to the door. She opened it — and recoiled before the man who stood there. He was short, fat. He wore his hat low over irritable, snapping eyes. He clipped:

“Why — hello, sweetheart!” He came in. He had a suitcase that he dropped heavily.

Cara Collin backed slowly away. Others followed the squat one: a dark man, tall, with a thin moustache and a sallow, expressionless face; two more: one bearded, bear-like, and the other a weazened man with a beak of a nose and questing black eyes. Another came in, lumbering, grinning at her. He was the biggest of the lot. He had the swollen ears and fiat nose of a fighter. His hands were splayed, shapeless knobs.

Cara retreated to where Spear stood beside the press. She stopped then, in front of him, as though to protect him from them. The fat man rasped:

“So you call this a newspaper, huh?”

“Who are you?” Cara gasped. “What do you want?” The tall dark man grinned faintly.

“Who’s the dame?” he asked. “Your sob-sister — or do you just keep her around to look at?”

Phineas Spear laughed. “Your boss, Lou!” he rapped. “Cara Collin — until I have time to change her name. City editor of the Blade! And yeah — I call it a newspaper! The best in town!”

“Phineas Spear!” She whirled on him. “I hate you! They scared me half to death — and you knew them all the time! I thought they were— Who are they?”

“The fat one,” he grinned, “is Jake Wolcott — after me, the best newsman in America! The gent with the moustache and the gangster face is Lou Rosetti. He thinks he’s the greatest feature-writer in the world, but he isn’t. I am. These two — the guy with the beaver and the one with the nose — are Boswell and Epstein. They’ll tell you they know all there is to know about linotype and rotary presses. And” — Spear moved toward the door, bobbed a stiff left into the fighter’s ribs that brought a grunt and a grin — “the only gentleman of the lot: Lefty Crooks, ex-champion and your personal slave from this time on! Put ’em to work, Cara. Tell ’em the set-up. I bought a plant a month ago and the new machinery’ll be here soon. Then you gorillas’ll wish you were back in Manhattan. S’long.”

The door slammed.

Jake Wolcott grinned at her. Wrinkles of fat spread from his small mouth to his ears, fine crow’s-feet creased the corners of his eyes. He said, “That’s a great guy, Miss Collin! Why, when Socker Spear was workin’ for the—”

“Socker?” she said.

“Sure. That’s what we called him in New York. And I guess he hasn’t changed much. What’s he got into here? He didn’t say in his telegram.”

“Telegram!” Cara’s breath caught. “But... but I don’t understand! How are we going to — pay you? How can Phineas get new machinery? He... we were wiped out last night — in the fire!”

Lou Rosetti’s cold, hard face softened in a sardonic smile. “Wiped out?” he said. “Sister — you don’t know your Phineas! Socker Spear had an uncle. See? The uncle had about ten million bucks and a will. He died. Get it?”

“Ten — million — dollars!” she whispered.

Chapter V The Cane Clue

Clouds and spreading, gigantic elms obscured the grounds. The Southard home bulked huge, larger than it was in daylight — forbidding, lonely. Forgotten since the furor of investigation that had followed the murder of the old senator, his home stood empty on the knoll that overlooked the town. But if only walls could speak...!

Phineas Spear felt the mysterious, eery presence of the man Justin Southard had been. Felt it in the dark silence, the ghostly rustling of leaves. The harsh grate of a steel jimmy on a window sill, the sudden snap of a broken catch, seemed almost a desecration. But Spear hesitated not at all. He vanished through the open window, and the stalking noiseless figure that stole from the cover of nearby shrubbery followed cautiously, crouched beneath the window he had forced.

If walls could speak...?

But walls can speak — to those who have ears to hear them! They had spoken — unmistakably, incontrovertibly — the walls of the very stairway up which he climbed! Now, if others could add their testimony... those of the panelled, dignified study where Southard had died!

A faint suggestion of light winked from the small flash he carried. Satisfied that curtains were drawn, that inner, folding walnut shutters were closed, Phineas Spear snapped on the light on Southard’s desk. He stood beside it, motionless save for darting eyes that scanned rapidly a room, every detail of which he knew already.

That room had been gone over a dozen times. Books, from the hundreds that lined the walls, had been taken down one by one. Rugs, pictures had been removed. Desk drawers and files had been searched, every inch of the room gone over for a secret panel, a hidden safe, or even a thread — a hair! The police had searched well, honestly, He knew that. The trouble was that they had found only what they were supposed — or allowed — to find. In the study of the man who had devoted himself to a fight against individual, secret power, against gag-rule and the apathy of the people, had been found not one scrap of evidence of that fight. Not a single hint to point to anyone as his murderer!

But Phineas Spear was not looking for something definite. He was almost convinced that there was nothing of that nature here. He had come — almost superstitiously — with a deliberately emptied mind, just to look. On a hunch! And abruptly he left the study. Southard’s body had been found there. It was assumed that he had been killed there. Had he?

His bedroom adjoined the study. Spear entered, using his flash sparingly until he saw that this room also was closed and shuttered. In the somber light of wall brackets he searched it. A four-poster bed, massive, carved, canopied in some rich tapestry. A mahogany high-boy contained nothing of interest — not even personal effects. All of those, he knew, had been impounded pending the finish of the trial of Abel Parkes, the settlement of Southard’s estate. A clothes closet offered...

A cane — standing alone in one corner!

Instantly Spear recognized it.

A heavy cane, carved from some dark wood into the semblance of three smaller canes twisted together. The head was of antique gold, its lavish encrustation of ornament worn smooth by years of use. It was the cane old Senator Southard carried habitually — not for support, but with a courtly flourish... Southard’s favorite cane — of many that had been found and taken away with his other personal belongings. Why had this one been overlooked?

He didn’t touch it. His nostrils flaring with quickened breath, Spear knelt over it. Full-force, brilliant in that dark corner, his flash started at the gold knob, moved slowly down to the worn metal ferrule — and found nothing. Gingerly he turned the cane around, repeated his scrutiny. But this time the beam stopped halfway down. Stopped, and Phineas Spear swore aloud in staccato, sharp tones. He grasped the cane at the top. Flashlight and wall brackets went dark and he strode back into the study. He stopped there — hand on lamp, he turned rigidly.

“I said reach!” the masked man repeated, hoarsely soft, and Phineas Spear’s hands rose shoulder high. His right still grasped the cane.

The man in the doorway was average size — medium height, thickish. The hair on the hand that held the gun was light, sandy — and Spear’s eyes gleamed. So was the hair that adhered to the cane he held, stuck there by a small, dark, scab-like particle that looked like dried blood! The masked man came closer. His eyes behind the slit handkerchief were restless, uneasy. He rasped:

“You can drop the cane, wise-guy!”

Spear did — but he never let go of it. It fell lightning fast. The iron ferrule hit the gunman’s wrist and the silence of the vast, old house was blasted with a roaring shot that shattered the lamp on the desk — banished light.

They fought silently in utter darkness. Deliberately Spear dropped the cane. A formidable weapon — but also a clue to murder. And as he swung — and stopped — desperately flung fists, he wondered if the blow he had already struck had dislodged the hair — ruined the one bit of evidence he had found at long last.

Panting, the masked man fought with the fury of a trapped animal. Fought to escape, to reach the door, the stairs. The terror of darkness, of uncertainty, was in him. Spear sensed it. His first mad lunge had put him at the door. He stood there, letting the other come to him, beating back rush after rush, hoping for the lucky punch that would put the man out. But it worked the other way! It was he who stopped the hardest punch of the fight!

He went backward — broke nails, ripped skin from finger-tips, in an unavailing grab at the doorjamb. Then he tripped, smashed into the opposite wall with sickening force. He hung there fighting for consciousness, aware that the other was groping in the dark, feeling for his gun. Then suddenly the wave of paralysis broke. Spear remembered his flash. The beam caught the other full in the face, limned the half raised gun and Phineas Spear flung himself forward in a desperate dive.

His hand on the telephone was bloody. For an endless second he waited, not breathing — until the operator’s impersonal voice told him that the phone had not yet been disconnected. There was another moment before Jake Wolcott snapped:

“Blade. City desk.”

The irony of it brought a quick grin that hurt his bashed lips. He said thickly, “Jake — Phineas. I want another extra.”

“Right, Socker!” came back. “Are you at—?”

“Never mind where I am! Take this: Headline: Further evidence unearthed in Southard murder! Blade investigator assaulted in senator’s home.”

“Are you,” he lashed back suddenly, “at the Southard place now?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Then listen — get hold of yourself! Five minutes ago a guy who said he was Randall Pierson phoned here. He said—”

Spear tensed fiercely. “Go on. Go on!”

“Said you were in his office and wanted the girl to come over.”

“You — didn’t let her go!” he ripped. “Damn you, Jake, if you let her go I’ll—”

“Wait a minute, Socker!” Wolcott pleaded. “I know it looks bad, but you didn’t say to keep her here. You didn’t tell us—”

“I told you that Lefty was to look out for her! He went too, didn’t he?”

The hesitancy in Jake Wolcott’s voice answered him before Wolcott responded, “She — wouldn’t let him go! Socker, I’m — sorry. But she said it was just a block away. She said—”

Phineas Spear’s voice cracked over the wire, “Get to Pierson’s office, Jake! Take the boys and tell ’em to take their guns. If Cara isn’t there, wait for me.”

He spun away from the desk, and the sandy-haired man cringed under the searing whip of his eyes. Slowly Phineas Spear dropped the gun he held into the one pocket of his coat that remained intact. When he spoke, his tone was metallic.

“Want to talk, fella? Want to tell me where they’ve taken the girl? Because if you don’t—”

He hovered over him, knees flexed, hands like blood-stained talons. The man in the chair half sobbed:

“I dunno — what you’re talking about! I dunno—”

The talons struck. Jerked erect, the man went down heavily under the impact of a cutting right hook. Not crushing! None of the blows that followed was a knockout punch. Phineas Spear was grimly careful to avoid that. The already bruised face of the man with the sandy hair went sickeningly to pulp. He wallowed on the floor, refused to get up and each time Spear lifted him sapped his remaining strength. Nauseated, his own head spinning, he tore the telephone from its wires, ripped the wires from the box. Holding them doubled in a four-lashed whip, he grated between set teeth:

“Talk! Or so help me God I’ll cut you to ribbons — with this! Talk — killer!”

He raved, “I... I tell ya I dunno... but wait! I... I’ll talk! There’s a huntin’ lodge — Barrow’s Point. That’s where — they always meet. Ah-h-h...” He fainted from sheer terror. Spear used the wire to tie him up.

Randall Pierson sat at his desk. The men of the Blade filled his office. They were silent, grim. Jake Wolcott said, “He wanted it like that, Socker. We tried to get him out — to a doc, a hospital — but he wouldn’t have it. He says he’s done for, and I think he is. I think he just doesn’t want to live.”

Spear stood over him, himself a blood-marred savage. But the unquenchable fire in his eyes was not reflected in Randall Pierson’s. The lawyer sat slumped, knees lax, one hand limp and powerless on the arms of his chair. The other was clenched in a fist as rigid as though all the strength left in him were there. Slowly he lifted his head. There was a crimson blotch on his white shirt, a spreading red stain that plastered the cloth to his thin body.

Spear said gently, “How hard are you hit, Randall? Man, you can’t give up now. We’ve only—”

“How hard” — the words themselves came hard; he gasped them a few at a time — “must a man be hit... to die, Phineas? How much... must he endure? They... they thought I was dead. They took... Cara with them. What... are you waiting for?”

“Bardin?” Spear whispered hoarsely.

A ghastly smile twisted Pierson’s grey lips. With agonized effort he lifted the clenched hand, opened it — and suddenly it fell — powerless. His head dropped. Randall Pierson died and Jake Wolcott bent over, recovered the black button that Pierson had held in his hand. It was an ordinary button such as is found on many a man’s coat. It still had ragged thread running through the holes — as though it had been torn off violently. Phineas Spear dropped it into a vest pocket. His voice, when he got police headquarters, was harsh, flat.

Chapter VI The Clean-Up

Evans was his name. He sat in his own speeding, official car with Spear beside him and Jake Wolcott on the other side. Lou Rosetti’s thin face, inscrutable, almost sinister in the occasional glow of his cigarette was half turned toward them. He sat in one of the folding seats. A uniformed cop occupied the other. Police Chief Evans spoke thoughtfully:

“These men of yours, Spear — they look capable.”

Wolcott chuckled mildly. Rosetti turned his head, inhaled and flipped the cigarette out of the open car. In the last light of the close-burned butt he had smiled thinly.

“I hope you’re right, Spear! If you are, it’ll be the answer to a lot of things. An answer most of us — didn’t expect.” Evans paused. “I owe you an apology, I think.”

“Forget it.”

Evans said: “No! Ever since you brought this Guardsmen thing out into the open, I’ve had the feeling you weren’t the yellow-sheet journalist people thought you. Things have been brought to my attention. Some of them have looked like just plain racketeering, but there have been other elements that were hard to figure! Floggings apparently without reason. A knifing six months ago that didn’t look like the ordinary crap-game wrangle. I don’t think they’d even considered the possibility that you’d publish their note. Who is it, Spear? D’you know?”

“How much farther is it,” he flared harshly, “to this duck-shooting lodge?” Evans shot a glance at the speed-merged scrub pine, the occasional darkened farm house that flashed past the hurtling car. “Slow down, Peters!” he ordered his chauffeur. To Spear he said:

“We turn off into the swamp in another few minutes. After that it’s a corduroy road and I don’t know how far we’ll get. Anyway, it’ll be best to surround the place on foot.”

“Who owns the lodge?” Wolcott asked.

“It’s been abandoned for a long time,” Evans clipped. “A group of wealthy sportsmen built it, but they lost interest — went broke — something. They haven’t been back, never sold it so far as I know.”

Lou Rosetti said, “Duck-shooting!” softly, and laughed. He fondled the barrel of the sub-machine gun across his knees.

When they parked, the other two cars pulled in behind them. More uniformed men got out. Gas-guns were in evidence, and that deadliest of all short-range weapons: the sawed-off shotgun. Spear’s men sought him out, moved forward at his back; Evans sent policemen to right and left in flanking parties.

The swamp sucked at feet grown heavy with mud. Briars reached out tenuous, detaining hands. But they moved almost silently. Only a muttered curse, a threshing fall now and then broke the dismal, lifeless hush. Then, plaintively:

“Vat am I — a fish? Vy can’t these gangsters come out and fight on paved streets like gentlemen?”

“Shut up, Epstein!” Boswell, the bearded man, rumbled.

They smelled smoke presently. Spear quickened the pace and a point of light gleamed through the surrounding thicket. The black bulk of parked cars — many of them — was revealed. The silence became absolute as the swamp gave way to solid ground. In a death-like hush men stalked the rambling, forgotten lodge from three sides. On the fourth lay the dim, misty vastness of the Bay. And a scream from the lodge brought them in without orders, running.

Spear was the first to reach the window from which the light came. What he saw brought a choking, wordless snarl to his throat, brought a .45 he carried to a line between his eyes and the masked figure who stood, whip upraised. Cara Collin was bound to a pillar that supported the roof. Her hands were over her head, lashed to a wooden crosspiece. Her dress was ripped to the waist, but her naked back was yet unmarked.

Men filled the room, all of them masked. One man, the obvious leader, stood spread-legged in boots and breeches, a high-collared Russian tunic of black satin that fell beyond the wide belt at his waist. His hood was of the same material. His voice came, measured, muffled:

“Your last chance, Cara Collin! What is the clue that Spear has? To whom does it point? I shall count to three. If you have not answered by that time — you know what to expect!”

He nodded to the man with the whip. Its leather coils unwound, quivered as though with serpentine life of its own.

“One...”

“Two...”

Flame from the .45! Shattered glass and a roar that paralyzed them all where they stood. The man with the whip stiffened, fell slowly forward full-length. And that broke the spell. Flame from all sides — from windows, but not into them. Gas-guns thumped heavily, but bullets from the outside in were impossible with Cara Collin in the center of that room!

Phineas Spear’s flung shoulder hit the door — and made no more impression than an idle breeze. From the window over the door — unseen from the porch — a machine gun chattered. Splinters leapt from the shingled porch roof, jumped viciously from the floor all around Spear’s feet, seeking him blindly. Then fire streaked from the darkness beyond the porch. The gun above ceased.

“Duck-shooting!” Lou Rosetti’s voice penetrated the roar. He raced up onto the porch. “Get back, Socker! I can cut the lock from this side — shooting away from the kid!”

They crouched on either side of the doorway. From an angle, held hip high, the gun shattered wood and steel. It stopped and the impact of two hundred and twenty pounds burst through. Lefty Crooks plunged headlong into a storm of lead. Spear stumbled over the fighter and went down. Boswell roared through with the high-pitched battle cry of Epstein for shrill accompaniment. Lou Rosetti crouched in the doorway. His bucking gun cleared the windows of the whole front of the place. And when he lurched forward, went down, his lips still smiled in sardonic amusement.

“Duck... shooting!” he gasped.

Somebody crawled over him in the dark, dragging a leg, cursing. “Yeah! Looks as though you forgot to duck. So did I!” It was Lefty Crooks. He crawled on. Holding his ripped left side, Rosetti groped for his gun — any gun.

“Cara!” Holding her, Spear tore down the nailed crosspiece by sheer frantic strength he didn’t know was in him. “Cara!” he choked again. “You... you’re not hit!”

“I... I’m all right, Phineas. But you?”

Abrupt silence returned — silence of surrender, of death all around them. And Evans’ voice broke it. “Light!” he bellowed. “Any man who wants to live step to the middle of the room — and reach high! Round ’em up, boys.”

Gas fumes wavered into dissolution in the draft from broken windows, wrecked doors. Sudden light blinded momentarily the streaming gas-tortured eyes of prisoners and victors alike as seven men huddled together under police guns, hands held high. Phineas Spear fought blindness. Vaguely he saw the sprawled motionless forms on the floor. He recognized Lefty Crooks, still cursing as he sat braced against the wall of that shambles, holding with both hands the spouting hole in his thigh. He saw Lou Rosetti, deathly still, collapsed over the gun that had done grim execution. He scanned the prisoners, but the man in the boots and satin tunic was not among them. Then masks were ripped off, cringing faces were revealed — well known, some of them, in Liberty. And the last one. the twisted, dark face of Max Horstmann.

There was a button missing from the coat of his suit — torn off, with ends of thread hanging loose. Spear’s fingers plunged into his vest, reappeared gripping a black button. Silently he held it out, pointed to the missing button on the lawyer’s coat and Horstmann’s eyes followed his tense finger. He paled. The hands over his head shook.

“Horstmann,” Spear grated, “this button was found in Randall Pierson’s hand. And Pierson is dead — murdered!”

“No!” he choked, “No! I tell you I didn’t kill him! Bardin. Bardin killed him — when he jumped at me. It was Bardin, I tell you! I...”

Spear whirled to Evans. “We’ve lost him! Somehow he got away. The man in the boots was Bardin. We’ve got to search.”

“No, you don’t!”

He stood in the doorway, the madness in his eyes — madness that had driven him in his ever growing greed for power — changed now into a flame of sheer insanity. Gripped in his hands was a machine-gun that threatened them all, but it bore directly on Phineas Spear and Cara Collin. Until she screamed, fell a dozen feet away under the impact of his outflung arm. She tried to rise. Jake Wolcott caught her, held her. Spear faced the maniac with the gun.

Bardin swayed drunkenly. His face beneath streaked mud and grime was livid. The once polished boots were briar-torn, water darkened. The gun trembled in his hands and every man in that room knew that when he touched the trigger Phineas Spear would not die alone. That knowledge held them frozen, indecisive. No one but Spear moved. He walked straight into the muzzle of the gun.

Bardin laughed. He spoke in a voice that was hardly human, barely coherent: “You thought you could beat me — me! You thought you could stand between me and my goal! Well — others have thought so. Southard did — and he died! So will you, Spear — now!”

The gun shivered in his hands. Stabbing tongues spoke eloquently of death. The roar was of many guns, but Phineas Spear halted where he stood, stumbled, and pitched slowly forward.

“Mr. Rosetti,” the cool, impersonal voice so many miles away assured him, “is definitely off the danger list. Naturally it will take some time for him to regain strength.”

“Thank you,” he said softly.

He replaced the phone without noise and relaxed luxuriously in his own bed. His fingers touched gingerly the two inch groove — almost completely healed, now — that had been plowed across the top of his head by a bullet from a madman’s gun. A man whose grinding obsession for power had completely unbalanced a mind that must never have been entirely rational.

Phineas Spear lay in somber thought. The full revelation of Bardin’s madness would never cease to amaze him, its flaming finish could never be entirely forgotten. And yet it had happened — he remembered Randall Pierson’s bitter words — it was happening all over the world. Whole nations had surrendered all their human rights to such men as Bardin! The man had wanted to be king!

In a hidden safe at his almost fortress-like home, Bardin’s plans had been found — staggering in their scope. Laughable, perhaps — to some — but tragically so! The Guardsmen of America was Bardin’s brain-creature. It was to be a national organization — an army of terrorists — his storm-troops. The battle that had ended his insane ambition had been but a drop in the oceans of blood of a civil war — a smashing of democracy — a dictatorship!

Impossible! Not in America!

Phineas Spear had felt that himself. Yet he had seen the thing come perilously close to success in an American town! It had come slowly, insidiously — as it had come elsewhere. Criminal syndicalism was the name the law gave it — mingled with arson, murder and a hundred other crimes. Funny about “isms,” he thought grimly. Fascism, Communism, all the other isms with which the world deluded itself. Democracy — Liberty — Freedom — no “isms” in them, none necessary!

But that was over and done with — at least so far as Bardin was concerned. Doubtless there were others. But doubtless there would be men to deal with them, too. Men like Lou Rosetti — half-killed himself, he had found the strength somehow to turn his gun upon Bardin, had riddled him before the man could fire more than the first wild burst that had downed Spear. Men like all the rest of them: slow, sometimes, to fight, but fighters all when the time for fighting came.

His mind returned to Abel Parkes — the minute pawn whose helplessness had first aroused Phineas Spear’s curiosity. Abel Parkes was free now, freed by a hair! Literally! A hair stuck on Senator Southard’s cane — the cane with which he had struck his last blow at the Guardsmen! For his murderer had been a Guardsman, and the light colored hair on the cane had trapped the man who had tried to trap Spear in Southard’s empty house.

He thought, too, of what walls had told him! Speaking walls. The walls of a stairway, stained all the way down with the prints of a bloody hand. An impossible detail unless deliberately done! For blood — or any thick liquid — wipes off quickly with contact. And each succeeding print will be lighter, less heavily marked. But on the wall of the Southard stairway there were a dozen hand prints — and they seemed to become more gory as they progressed instead of less. As though the killer had gone back and reddened his hand again in order to mark a trail to the door old Parkes always used.

But it was over, and the sun rose higher over Lake Louise in the Canadian mountains, transforming it into a jewel, radiantly brilliant from the window of their room. Phineas Spear grew restive. Smiling faintly, he nudged the coverlet hidden figure beside him.

It stirred. A mop of dark hair appeared and a yawn was audible.

“Don’t do that,” he grinned, “or I’ll go back to sleep. And it’s too nice outside. Take a look at the Lake, Mrs. Spear.”

She sat up. “Gorgeous!” She yawned again, and dropped back.

He said, “Woman — in the name of starvation, will you have me eat alone?”

Cara stirred comfortably.

“Eat?” She sat up again, smiled. “Make mine ham and eggs!”