Stockholders in Death

CHAPTER IV Wanted — For Murder

The night after Joseph Crimm died, at almost the same late hour there was a light in the solid stone building of the Town Bank, on upper Broadway.

The light was in the small conference room. It illuminated five men, huddled around a big oval table at one end. The men talked in whispers to be sure the night guard — even though he was a floor below and many feet to the rear — could not catch even a syllable.

“We’ve got to give this thing up!” insisted one man. He almost whimpered it. He was horribly frightened and did not trouble to hide it. Fear rode high in his spectacled blue eyes. Fear distorted his lean, long-nosed face and made his pudgy body tremble.

The man was Theodore Maisley, president of the bank. The person he was addressing most directly was Lucius Grand, one of the directors.

Lucius Grand was tall and broad-shouldered, and had a jaw like a snowplow. He had stony eyes, too, which were not being softened any as they turned on Maisley.

“Get hold of yourself, Maisley,” he said, with contempt in his voice. “Everything is going fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”

The three other directors nodded agreement with Grand.

The three were Robert Rath, Louis Wallach and Frederick Birch. Rath was pompous and plump and loud-spoken. Wallach was thin and a little stooped, with the face of a deacon and a voice so soft it was almost a whisper. Birch was choleric and red-faced, but with a sort of emptiness in his blurry gray eyes which indicated that behind all the bluster was a wide streak of yellow.

“I tell you we’re heading into terrible trouble,” bleated Maisley, the president. “We’ve got to give it up.”

“What would you suggest that we do, Maisley?” asked Wallach in his soft, near-whisper. He rubbed his thin, dry hands together like a bishop about to pronounce benediction.

Maisley fearfully outlined his ideas of what they should do.

“We ought to burn that damned stock. If it’s ever found in our possession we’ll get jail for life. Maybe the electric chair! Don’t forget Joe Crimm.”

“Burn the stock?” It was a maddened bellow from Grand.

“Ssh,” said Wallach quickly. “Ssh! The bank guard—”

“Burn the stock?” Grand said in a lower tone. “Are you crazy?”

“But Crimm—”

“Is dead,” said choleric, red-faced Birch, voice as blustering in its carefully low-pitched tone as if he had shouted. “And he died naturally. Don’t forget that. A heart attack. They don’t put people in the electric chair for a heart attack.”

“The stolen stock, though,” Maisley persisted, wiping sweat from his forehead. “That’s grand larceny. Damned grand—$2,380,000 worth.”

“That will be taken care of,” said plump and pompous Rath. “Joseph Crimm was taken care of, wasn’t he? Well, this will be taken care of, too. All we have to do is—”

“You all seem to forget that there is a very weak point,” interrupted Maisley. “Crimm ordered the stock delivered to his home. You know that, don’t you? He was specific about it. Sent a note in his own handwriting to his broker. Instead of that, the broker, Haskell, deliberately delivered the stock to the bank, as we had ordered. Now, Haskell is a weak spot. If he ever talks—”

“He won’t talk,” whispered Wallach, rubbing his thin hands together. “That, also, will be attended to. You’ll see.”

“I’m against this,” persisted Maisley. “My vote is to drop the whole matter. Millions from the eventual sale of the stock? More millions from voting control of Ballandale Glass? What of it? The millions won’t do you any good if we get tripped up. Out-and-out crime like this—”

His voice died uncertainly at the look in the eyes of Grand and Wallach and Rath.

Maisley, with shreds of honesty still clinging to his petty soul, was in a bad spot. He was afraid of what might grow out of all this. But he was afraid of his associates, too.

Theodore Maisley, president of Town Bank, was not the only one to whom the weak spot in the crime plan was apparent. There were others thinking along that line. Right at the moment, in fact.

The Avenger had said that Nicky Luckow, Public Enemy No. 1 in the East, was smart in an animal sort of way. And he was correct.

Luckow’s eyes, like dully polished stones, were duller than usual as, for the fourth time, he went over what Tom Crimm had told him.

“Funny,” he said, “that your dad would have the stock sent to the bank when it was the bank he was thinking of fighting. If he didn’t trust ’em why’d he let the stuff get near enough for ’em to sink their hooks in it?”

“He says he didn’t,” said Tom. “He says he ordered the stock delivered to his home.”

“And it was sent to the bank instead,” mused Luckow. “Who’d be the guy to send it out?”

“Dad did business through the firm of Haskell, Lampert & Klein, on the New York Exchange. Particularly through Haskell, I guess. Probably it was Haskell who sent out the Ballandale Corp. stock.”

Luckow pressed a buzzer on his desk.

“I think we have something there, kid,” he said softly. “This guy, Haskell, may have a few things he’d like to talk about — if he’s approached the right way.”

Tim, the man who looked like a mean cat with a grouch against the whole world, padded in in answer to the desk buzzer.

“Tim, get Blinky and go with Tom here. Tom’ll show you where. There’s a guy he knows who may have something to say that we’d like to hear. Tom’ll do the questioning. You and Blinky will do the work of loosening his tongue.”

For an instant, faint apprehension came over Tom’s face. He had tied in with a tough gang just because they were tough; he had tough work ahead of him. But the sinister overtones in Luckow’s voice as he spoke of “loosening” Haskell’s tongue sent a chill to Tom’s spine.

He snapped out of that momentary weakness, though. His father had been robbed of his fortune and murdered. Anything that happened to men who could do things like that — anything — would be better than they deserved.

“You’re going with us, aren’t you?” he said to Nick Luckow.

The mob leader smiled a little, softly, dangerously. It had been some time since he went with his boys on a job. He preferred to let others take their chances with New York’s excellent cops.

“I’ll stay here,” he said. “I got some thinking to do. Luck to you, kid.”

Tom and the two called Tim and Blinky went out to a sedan parked in front of the hotel.

“So?” said Tim softly, at the wheel.

Tom gave the address of Harry Haskell, his father’s broker.

Haskell lived in a rather small penthouse on Riverside Drive. When the car pulled up to the building, Tim and Blinky hung back at the door.

“You go in, kid,” said Tim smoothly. “You know the ropes in these joints and you look slicker than we do. Get the guy in the lobby to look another way and we’ll catch up to you at the elevators.”

Tom went in. No one so easy to fool as a wise guy.

“To see Mr. Haskell,” he said, at the lobby desk.

“Just a moment, please,” the night man said.

He turned to a house phone. And as he turned, like twin shadows, the two Luckow men left the doorway and slid past his back to the automatic elevators.

The night man turned back to Tom.

“Mr. Haskell says it’s too late to see anybody. He is ready to retire.”

“Say it’s about Ballandale,” said Tom.

The night man nodded as he turned from the instrument a second time. “He’ll see you. Twenty-first floor. Penthouse.”

Tom got in the cage where Blinky and Tim were pressed to one side, out of the night man’s sight. He pushed the button for the 21st floor.

Tom’s heart was thudding hard as they went up. He was leaving the straight road entirely, now. No one knew that any better than he did. Haskell wouldn’t talk short of torture.

Well, let it come. The end justified the means. If he could turn up his father’s murderer this way—

The door was opened the instant Tom knocked. A wary, slightly frightened face peered out. The face of Haskell, himself, not a servant. The mention of Ballandale had upset him and made him secretive, all right.

“Crimm! I don’t understand, this is—”

Haskell tried to shut the door when he saw the two men behind Tom Crimm. But Blinky shouldered it open and took a gun carelessly from his pocket as he entered.

“This the guy, kid?” he asked, staring at the broker, a shivering, scrawny man in a violet dressing robe.

“That’s him,” said Tom.

Blinky’s fist flashed out. It got Haskell on the point of the jaw.

Blinky lowered the man to the carpet. Then, methodically, he went from door to door of the living room and locked each. No telling where the servants were.

He went back to Haskell, picked him up and deposited him in an easy-chair. Then he tied him to the chair, and slapped his face, hard. Tom watched with burning eyes. This man knew something of that stock.

Haskell’s eyelids fluttered under the slapping. He opened his eyes and cowered in the chair as much as his bonds would allow.

“Crimm!” he said. “What is the meaning of this? You, the son of my old friend, actually allow this brutality to be inflicted on—”

“That ain’t all he’ll allow, if you don’t sing,” said Blinky, lighting a cigarette.

“Sing?” repeated Haskell, seeming to withdraw into the loose folds of his violet bathrobe.

“Squeal, blow your top, talk,” explained Blinky.

“Talk? But about what?”

“Listen,” said Tom, voice edged like a knife. “You know all about Dad’s purchase of Ballandale stock, don’t you?”

Haskell was suddenly very still. His eyes seemed to retreat far back into his head, on the run from two terrors: this that confronted him and some other fear.

“You had that stock delivered to Dad’s bank instead of to his house, didn’t you?” Tom rapped out. “And yet, he ordered the home delivery. Now, you’ll tell us why you did that. Whose order were you obeying?”

Haskell looked at Blinky as if for help. Blinky grinned almost happily, and took the glowing cigarette from his lips.

“You ain’t got any idea how these things can hurt,” he said, eyes glittering in anticipation.

“Crimm!” moaned the broker. “For heaven’s sake—”

“Speak up!” said Tom grimly. “Who told you to send that stock to Dad’s bank instead—”

Haskell coughed and sagged forward in his bonds. His head rolled on his chest and his tongue hung out a little.

From his chest, a thin stream of red suddenly appeared! It was like magic. Horrible magic!

“Haskell,” said Tom almost stupidly. “Haskell—” Blinky grabbed Tom by the shoulder. “Come on! Scram! Quick!”

“But Haskell—” faltered Tom.

“The guy’s dead! Don’t you know a dead man when you see one? Some ape got him from the door. Silenced gun.”

“Then we ought to get the one who—”

“To hell with the one who got him. We got us to think about. Scram outta here, I tell you! We’ll take it if the cops—”

He and Tim were pulling young Crimm with them as he spoke. Into the elevator. Down to the lobby.

As they stepped into the cage, they heard a door click smoothly shut, far below. The man who had killed Haskell with a silenced gun had made good his escape in another elevator. He’d been so fast, they couldn’t have caught up with him even if Blinky and Tim had wanted to try. Which they hadn’t.

They emerged into the lobby. There was a big urn by the elevator shafts with sand in the top for cigar and cigarette butts.

Blinky picked this up and threw it! The night man, just starting to turn at the sound of the cage door, was on the receiving end. The urn caught him in the face. He went down like a felled ox.

They got to the car unseen. But that fact ceased to comfort Tom a little later, at Luckow’s headquarters.

The police band was tuned in on the mobster’s radio. A voice announced:

“Calling all cars. Wanted, Thomas Crimm. Age, twenty-six. Height, five feet nine and a half. Complexion, dark. Dressed in brown suit and brown felt hat. Last seen near the Trimore Palace Apartments. All cars. Wanted, Thomas Crimm, Age, twenty-six. Height—”

Shivering, Tom snapped off the thing. He hadn’t quite realized how definitely the night man at the building could identify him.

Just him. Not Blinky and Tim. For he had done all the talking. And, of course, he hadn’t anticipated the intrusion of another party with a silenced gun.

Wanted, Thomas Crimm. Wanted for murder, of course. The police don’t delineate murder any more on the air; too many people can listen and speed excitedly to whatever address is given. But that’s what they wanted him for, all right. Murder!

Luckow’s hand touched Tom’s shoulder for an instant.

“Tough, kid. But you stick with us. We’ll keep you under blankets.”

Blinky and Tim left the room to hide their smirks. They were clear out of this, due to a speck of foresight in having Tom do the entering. They’d done that just in case. Just in case—