No Quarter

CHAPTER I. CONFIDENCE MAN.

Rhoda Marchand, who drew a salary of three hundred dollars a month because of her extraordinary ability in clipping and classifying crime news, snipped the scissors along the edge of the newspaper column and took the article she had clipped into Jax Bowman's private office.

Jax Bowman regarded her with a slightly quizzical expression.

"Have you got something unusual, Rhoda?" he asked.

"Naturally," she told him, "or I wouldn't have come to you personally with it."

Bowman lowered his eyes to the clipping, but Rhoda Marchand didn't extend it to him at once. Her voice was rapid, nervous and high-pitched.

"You're paying me an excellent salary," she said, "to clip crime news out of newspapers. I cover newspapers of all the large cities. I classify them according to modes of operation. Whenever I find clippings that seem to indicate some gang of criminals has become too powerful for the police and is operating from city to city, using about the same methods, I call those clippings to your attention."

Jax Bowman's voice was suddenly hard.

"And you draw," he said, "a very handsome salary, as secretarial salaries go, for your work. Do I understand that you are dissatisfied?"

"No," she said, "I wanted to ask you some questions."

"I believe," he told her, his tone cold and formal, "that you wished to see me about a clipping?"

"Yes," she said, "a newspaper clipping from the Times Picayune in New Orleans. It deals with the breaking up of a criminal ring that had successfully baffled the police of San Francisco, Denver and Kansas City. The police don't know exactly how the criminal ring was broken up, but they do know that two men figured in it. Both of these men wore masks, and there were white rings around the eye-holes of the masks. A Negro servant got a glimpse of the two men."

Bowman's face was absolutely without expression. His voice said coldly, "Most interesting, Rhoda, and I presume you want to ask me about where it should be filed?"

"No, I don't," she said, "I wanted to tell you that the criminal ring that was broken up was the one concerning which I gave you clippings from the San Francisco, Denver and Kansas City newspapers."

"Yes?" said Bowman in the rising inflexion of a question.

"Yes, and immediately afterwards you and Mr. Grood left the city on an unexplained trip."

Bowman said nothing.

"It is, of course," Rhoda Marchand said, "too weirdly spectacular to warrant serious consideration—this talk of two master minds who are invading the underworld, wearing black masks with white rings around the eyes. Nevertheless, this is the fifth clipping that I've seen which has mentioned the possibility that such men are preying on the organized underworld."

"And you wish to ask me about it?"

"I wanted to tell you," she said, "that I was saving these clippings. I also wanted to let you know that when I took this job I couldn't understand why a multi-millionaire, with the extensive business interests that you had, and the suite of offices in other buildings, should have bothered to open up this office, in which your name doesn't appear on the door. I wondered what the association between you and 'Big Jim' Grood was. It's not often that a multi-millionaire forms a business association with an ex-police officer whose sole business qualifications are those relating to the underworld."

Bowman reached in the drawer of his desk for a check-book.

"I presume that you're about to tell me," he said, "that you wish to resign, is that it?"

"No," she said, her eyes staring steadily into him, "I was about to tell you that if you ever wanted to use me for any activities outside of the office, I too could wear a mask with white rings around the eye-holes."

Jax Bowman closed the drawer. His finger-tips drummed silently upon the top of the desk.

"I think, Miss Marchand," he said, "we won't discuss the matter any further. You are giving excellent satisfaction in your present position, and your present work is comparatively safe."

"Very well," she told him, "I simply wanted you to know that it wouldn't be necessary to pull your punches, as far as I'm concerned."

Jax Bowman's face softened.

"Good girl," he said. "And would you mind asking Jim Grood to step in here for a moment, please?"

Miss Marchand got to her feet, flashed Jax Bowman a smile.

"Some day," she said, "I think you're going to need my assistance outside of the office. I think you'll need a girl who can think straight and who can shoot straight. When you do, please remember that I put in my application for the job."

Jax Bowman nodded.

"Your salary," he said, "has been raised fifty dollars a month, and I think we understand each other perfectly."

"I'll tell Mr. Grood to step in," she said, "and, thank you."

Her manner highly efficient, she closed the door of the office behind her.

Jax Bowman sat perfectly still, staring at the door through which she had disappeared. He didn't turn until the door opened, to frame the figure of Big Jim Grood.

"Rhoda told me you wanted to see me," Jim Grood said.

Jax Bowman nodded, indicated a chair.

Big Jim Grood had a cauliflower ear. The knuckles of his hands had been reinforced with bony deposits, until, when he doubled up his fist, it seemed like some ungainly battering ram. His shoulders were broad. His neck was thick. His eyes held the aggressive stare of one who has long been accustomed to putting other men on the defensive.

Jax Bowman nodded his head toward the door through which Rhoda Marchand had departed.

"She knows," he said.

Big Jim Grood stretched out his massive legs, stared at the broad-toed shoes.

"Yes," he said, "she would. She's clever, that girl. What's she going to do about it—anything?"

"She wanted to help," Bowman told him.

Grood slowly nodded and said, "Yes, she would."

Bowman fingered the clipping on his desk thoughtfully. He raised his eyes to regard Big Jim Grood.

Bowman was in the early thirties. His skin was bronzed from exposure to sunlight. There was a disconcerting steadiness about his eyes, a keen appraisal which seemed to strip aside all subterfuge and penetrate to the very soul. His motions were as quick and swiftly efficient as those of a bird hopping about on the ground, picking up insects. He radiated power and vitality—not the type of radiant energy that is scattered from the so-called human dynamos, but a focus power as dazzlingly concentrated as the spot of sunlight which is gathered by a big reading glass.

No one knew the extent of his fortune. Perhaps Bowman himself didn't know. His money matters were delegated to subordinates who occupied several floors in a skyscraper office building in a different part of the city.

"Jim," he said, "we've got to find that woman."

Big Jim Grood said casually, "What woman?"

His tone was just a bit too casual, his expression just a little too innocent.

Jax Bowman's keen eyes stared steadily at the face of his big confederate.

"Rita Coleman Crane," he said. "The woman who was a tool of that New Orleans gang; who thought there was a stain on her record, and who vanished into the underworld. Her connection with the affair was innocent. She risked her life, when she realized what she had been doing, to rectify the wrong she had unwittingly done."

Big Jim Grood nodded.

Jax Bowman repeated in that tone of steady insistence which secured such surprising results, and made big financial giants bow to his will with the docile obedience of servants. "We've got to find her."

Big Jim Grood stared thoughtfully at the light blue smoke which ribboned upward from the tip of his cigar.

"Did you," he asked, "ever hear of 'The Kiss and Cut Girl'?"

"Doubtless," said Jax Bowman, "Miss Marchand can tell us all we need to know about her. Who was she?"

"Her real name," Grood said, "is Evelyn Mayer. She was engaged to a man. No one knows exactly what happened on the night when the man came to her apartment to tell her something that he had tried to write and had been unable to put on paper. Some said that it was another woman who had been tricked into a fake marriage; some that it was the embezzlement of money from an old crippled woman who had given him funds to invest.

"Whatever it was, there was a quarrel, the sound of loud voices, then the thud of a blow followed by the scream of a woman.

"Those things were plainly heard by the occupants of the adjoining apartment. Two minutes later Evelyn Mayer calmly rang up police headquarters and said 'I've killed a man. Send officers to my apartment.' The officers came. They found her boy friend dead. Stabbed through the heart with a long, pointed pair of scissors. Evelyn Mayer had a black eye. There were some bruises on her body. It looked as though she had been kicked several times. She never took the witness stand, never made any explanations. The thing that was duck soup for the newspaper boys was the fact that she had kissed the man, probably as he lay dying. Lip stick was smeared over his dead lips. The mark of the woman's last kiss.

"The newspapers called her 'The Kiss and Cut Girl.' They always need some kind of a label for attractive women murderers."

"What about her?" asked Jax Bowman.

"Rita Coleman," Grood said, "who is now going under the name of Rita Coleman Crane, drove an automobile with too much champagne under her belt. A speeding car at an intersection crowded her to one side. She clipped the corner of a safety zone, lost control of her car and killed a child. She was wealthy. She turned part of her wealth over to the child's mother, the rest of it went to a number of children's hospitals. She served a term in the penitentiary for manslaughter. When she got out, she disappeared."

Jax Bowman's voice was impatient.

"What's the connection?" he asked.

"When I checked back on the prison records," Grood said, "I found that Rita Crane and Evelyn Mayer were in the Big House at the same time. They struck up quite a friendship. The warden remembers it well. They were both unusual women.

"Evelyn Mayer got out first. She tried to beat the game for awhile, but couldn't do it. Criminal associations dragged her down. The last I heard of her, she was tangled up with Sam Belting. They call him 'Baloney' Belting. He's got a glib tongue. He was posing as a philanthropist, who was trying to give ex-convicts a chance to go straight, when she met him. He got her pretty well tangled up in his game before she found out what it was all about; then it was too late to extricate herself. Her criminal record was against her. She played along with him."

"What," asked Bowman, "is his game?"

"Rather a peculiar one," Grood said, frowning meditatively at the end of the cigar. "He works with a gang. He always relies on a pleasing personality to lay the foundation, but he hasn't got the patience to play a regular confidence man. When he's got his victim picked, he leads them into the hands of the gang. He's a killer at heart."

"He's done time?" asked Bowman, interested.

"No. About the only persons who can testify against a confidence man are his victims. Sam Belting's victims never testify."

"Why?" asked Jax Bowman.

"For the same reason," Grood said significantly, "that a mummy doesn't sing."

Jax Bowman pressed a business-like finger on a call button in the edge of his desk. Almost immediately the door to the outer office clicked open and Rhoda Marchand stood in the doorway, a figure of slim efficiency. Steady hazel eyes flashing a glance of alert inquiry.

"Look in your mode of operation file," Jax Bowman said, "and get anything dealing with bunco games worked with violence."

She frowned as though trying to recall some vague memory.

"Not very often," she said, as though thinking out loud, "do confidence men resort to violence. Not very often do stick-up men use a build-up. They're distinctive types of criminals. Let me see ... Yes, I think I have it."

She turned abruptly. From the outer office came the sound of steel filing cabinets being opened and closed with businesslike efficiency. Ten seconds later Miss Marchand entered the office with a brown manila jacket which she placed on Jax Bowman's desk.

Jax Bowman glanced at the type-written label which had been pasted on the top of the file. "Confidence games with violence."

He opened the jacket, took out some clippings which had been fastened together, turned through them with fingers that moved with the dextrous swiftness of a professional card dealer. His eyes slithered back and forth following the lines of the newspaper reports. His face settled into attentive interest.

"Not many clippings," Jim Grood said, rolling the cigar over to one corner of his mouth. "As Rhoda says, they're distinctively different crime types."

Jax Bowman's voice had the toneless quality of one who is trying to read and talk at the same time.

"A bunch of crimes centering around Southern California. Here's one about a year ago. The victim went across to Tijuana. He made a clean-up at the gambling tables at Agua Caliente, won about ten thousand dollars. He was last seen in the company of a very attractive, magnetic fellow with an iron-gray mustache. A man of about fifty-five, rather distinguished looking and well tailored. The body was found just outside of San Diego. There were two bullet holes—one in the head and one in the heart, the one in the head had been fired from the rear. There were powder burns on the back of the head. The money was gone.

"Here's another one that happened in Hollywood. This man also had been to Tijuana. He'd won quite a bunch on the races, played a ten to one shot to the tune of two thousand dollars. He was last seen in the company of a well-dressed, distinguished looking stranger—a man who was inclined to weight, a chap about fifty-five with keen gray eyes and iron-gray mustache. The hotel clerk placed him as a banker, or wealthy broker. The two went out together. The man who had picked the winner in the horse race soaked up a lot of lead without dying, until after the ambulance had reached the spot where the shooting took place. He made a dying statement. There'd been a stickup. He thought his friend had been either killed or kidnaped. He died before he could give details. The officers never got a clue.

"Here's another winner at Agua Caliente; won fifteen thousand dollars from the gold table—that was before they clamped the lid down on gold. They had a table, you know, at which only gold coins were accepted in play, and all winnings were paid in gold. No one knows what happened to this man. He told his wife a prominent banker from the East had taken him in on the ground floor of a wonderful proposition. He went out to investigate. His body was found in the Imperial Valley—a hundred and some odd miles east of San Diego. He'd been shot once through the heart. There were powder burns on the vest."

Jax Bowman ceased speaking. Big Jim Grood nodded his head thoughtfully.

"That girl," he said, "is a wonder."

"What girl?" Bowman asked.

"Rhoda Marchand. She saw through the scheme where the police didn't. She filed them as 'Confidence Games with Violence.'"

"Confidence games," said Jax Bowman, in that peculiarly incisive voice of his, "with murder."

His finger pressed the button on the desk.

Rhoda Marchand appeared in the doorway.

"Get us," said Bowman, "two tickets by the first plane to Agua Caliente in Mexico."

Big Jim Grood lunged to his feet, crossed to a wall safe of latest design, spun the dials of the combination, pulled the door open, took out holstered automatics with extra clips of shells; took out also two jet black masks large enough to completely cover the upper portion of a man's face. Each of these masks had eye-holes that were circled with wide rings of white.

"Those crimes," he called over his shoulder, "are the work of 'Baloney' Belting, all right."