The Condor

CHAPTER VIII. TIMED DEATH

IT was after seven o’clock when Harry Vincent returned to the garage. The proprietor had gone out; a light was burning, however, and a note on the seat of the old roadster served as a receipt for Harry’s fifty dollars.

The owner’s license was attached to the note; it listed the name of the proprietor as Jerry Cassidy. The key was ready in the ignition switch. Harry seated himself at the wheel and drove from the garage.

Murky darkness had settled during the dinner hour. Street lamps had been lighted; their intervals were too great, however, to provide more than intermittent illumination. Harry turned on the headlights of the flivver. They furnished a fairly strong glare as he drove toward the outskirts of the town.

Harry did not overtax the chugging motor. He wanted to note the roads as he went along; and consideration of that fact caused him to open the bag beside him as he neared the fork outside of town.

From the bag Harry produced a flashlight. He knew that he would need it when he reached the path; it would be wise to have it in the meantime.

Swinging left at the fork, Harry took the road that skirted the west side of the slope. Heavy silence lay over the countryside. Except for the chug of the motor, Harry could hear nothing. The road was a dirt one, but in good condition. Harry kept along at moderate speed until the lights showed a new fork ahead.

Harry stopped as he reached that point. He let the motor idle; above its wheeze he could hear the rush of water from a stream to the left of the traveled road. His thoughts, however, were centered on that old road that forked to the right.

No wonder it had been abandoned. A short cut, perhaps, but it was steep. Rains had washed away clay surface, leaving cross ledges and jagged rocks. Harry understood why the garage man had estimated twenty minutes for the trip to the beginning of the path. No speed could be made along this bad stretch of road.

Harry started the car again. He shifted to second; the old roadster jounced and quivered as it fought its way up the rocky grade. Ahead, Harry could see more level road; but a flash of the lights indicated more rocks to be avoided. He decided that the old rattletrap would not stand many trips over this punishing relic of a highway.

Shrouding trees swallowed the jolting roadster. Thick hush lay above the entire slope. Not even the whisper of a breeze was present to offset the stillness. Harry Vincent had driven into a forest of gloom.

Blackened treetops made a somber mass upward from that ghostlike road. In all the darkened slope, there was but one spot that formed a contrast to the sea of boughs. That was the ledge called Table Rock.

MOONLIGHT would have brought a silver glimmer from the broad surface of Table Rock. There was no moon tonight, yet the rock was dully visible at close range. Beside this spot that commanded the slope, crouching men were clustered. Their voices formed harsh whispers beneath the fringe of trees.

“No lights now,” cautioned one. “Keep to the path. We can get there ahead of him if we move.”

“Sure thing,” was a panted response. “We passed the upgrade cutting over to the big rock. It’s a cinch from now on. All down hill to the shack.”

“Thuler’s there anyway,” added a third. “He’s had plenty of time to be on the job. He can take care of things, if the guy gets there ahead of us.”

“Yeah?” The first speaker seemed annoyed as he started the course down through the trees. “Well, Thuler won’t stage anything on his own. This is going to be a job that will keep people guessing. That’s why we’re lugging the stuff. Careful with those bundles, Jengley.”

“I’m watching myself,” was Jengley’s retort. “Worry about Delland here. He’s more likely to stumble than I am.”

“Both of you be careful,” growled the leader. “It’s easy walking, maybe, but remember, we’ve got no light. Better to let the guy get in ahead of us than to run chances.”

Pushing their way through underbrush that covered a darkened path, the trio reached a clearing. The blackness here was as great as in the woods; yet the openness was recognized by the clearer atmosphere.

Cautiously, the leader of the trio groped to the center of the clearing. With the others close behind him, he stopped and whispered:

“Thuler!”

A slight sound came from the darkness; then a responding voice:

“That you, Jake?”

“Yeah,” returned the leader. “Jengley and Delland are with me. He hasn’t shown up yet, huh?”

“Not yet, Jake,” informed Thuler. “I’ve got the fuses planted. Under the cabin floor. No risk using a light inside. You’ve got time to shove in the charges.”

“Go to it, fellows.” Jake’s order was to Jengley and Delland. “Blink your lights when you come out. We’ll signal back; if we don’t, it means scram.”

DELLAND and Jengley crept forward. Flashlights glowed upon the battered door of the ramshackle cabin. The two men entered; Jake crouched in the darkness with Thuler. The latter was plucking something from the ground. He passed it to Jake; it was a long, cordlike object.

“Keep following, Jake,” suggested Thuler. “It leads us up into the woods. Fifty yards. Say — I made good time getting here.”

“No wonder you did,” snorted Jake. “You weren’t lugging dynamite. I was jittery coming over from the lodge. I’d rather have carried the stuff myself. But it was best for me to pick the path and let Jengley and Delland do the hauling.”

“The chief worked quick enough,” chuckled Thuler, as they passed the edge of the clearing. “As soon as he got the tip that the wise guy was heading here, he got busy. Say, though — do you think the mug knows anything?”

“No telling, Thuler. He wouldn’t be up here if he wasn’t wise to something. That’s the chief’s business. Our only worry is if the guy changes his mind and went back to town instead of coming here.”

They had stopped at the end of the fuse. Looking about, the two men stared through the darkness toward the cabin. A flashlight blinked; then another. Thuler signaled with a torch of his own.

Two minutes later, Delland and Jengley stumbled up to join them. Each reported the placement of a dynamite charge at the end of a fuse.

“They lead off from splices,” said Thuler to Jake. “One click, and they’ll both go. What time have you got, Jake?”

“Ten minutes of eight.”

“The guy’s due—”

Thuler stopped short as Jake gripped his arm. A distant blink had shown through the trees below. It was coming closer, its bearer picking out the upward path. Watchers remained silent.

Appalling gloom hung over the little cabin at the lower edge of the clearing. Nothing betrayed the presence of the men who watched that shack that had become Harry Vincent’s objective. The intermittent glare of the flashlight was nearly to the cabin.

“If he sees the fuse,” whispered Jake, “maybe he’ll wise.”

“He won’t,” returned Thuler. “I buried it under the grass. Those old steps help cover it, too.”

The flashlight was blinking at the cabin door. It went out for a dozen seconds; then blinked again and moved inward. Blackness; then paneless windows showed the light come on inside the shack.

“Let it ride,” growled Jake.

A CLICK as Thuler pressed the switch. An instant followed; one that seemed an interminable wait to those gloating men who crouched in darkness. Then came a mighty shudder of the darkness; a terrific cataclysm burst from across the clearing.

An upheaving roar sent blazing streaks in all directions. Like a display of pyrotechnics, huge flashes splashed with mighty force. Amid that instantaneous holocaust ripped chunks of logs and timbers, tossed like wisps of grass amid the man-made tempest.

Torn asunder, the bulk of the cabin broke into sections that crashed against the trees below. Tearing a path down the slope, the scattered ruins echoed to a standstill, while falling boards and bits of woodwork dropped everywhere about the clearing.

A spreading shroud of whiteness became visible in the dark that followed. Smoke, rising from the ruins, formed ghostly shapes that lingered, as if gloating, about the spot where death had been delivered.

Jake growled harshly. His tone expressed satisfaction in the fact that a human being had been blown to atoms. His harsh voice was a signal to the others. Rising, they advanced across the clearing, blinking their lights to avoid slivers of shattered timber.

“The whole works went,” chuckled Jake. “Like it was supposed to. That’ll wake the dead heads down in Paulington. They’ll be coming up here; but not until we’ve had chance to look around and then scram.”

“Why look around, Jake?” inquired Thuler. “You won’t even find pieces of that guy.”

“Chief’s orders. He might have had something with him that would serve as identification. Come on — spread out and look.”

FLASHLIGHTS glimmered on scarred tree trunks below the clearing. The explosion had crashed some dead trees; pieces of the cabin had ripped the bark from others. But traces of the murdered man were vanished.

When the four prowlers joined at the path below, their only souvenirs were fragments of cloth, a strip of leather that might have come from a wallet, and a twisted chunk of thin metal that Jake identified as a portion of the victim’s flashlight.

“Down the path,” ordered Jake. “He may have left a car down on the road. We’ll take a look for it.”

The murderers made swift progress with their flashlights showing the way. Jake’s gleam caught a patch of birch trees. Past the white trunks, the glimmer showed Harry Vincent’s flivver parked at the side of the old road.

Jake made an inspection of the car. It was empty; the key was gone from the ignition lock. His examination ended, the leader turned to the others.

“All right,” he ordered gruffly, “back to the path. We’re heading up the hill. Across past Table Rock.”

“You’re leaving the buggy here?” questioned Thuler, his harsh tone puzzled. “So they’ll know the guy was in the cabin?”

“So they won’t know anything,” snorted Jake. “Listen, Thuler — you did your job, getting here in plenty of time to plant the fuse. The rest of the orders are mine. You know that.”

“Sure thing,” agreed Thuler. “I’m not objecting, Jake. I was just wondering.”

“All right, then. Look at it this way. The chief knows how to figure it. There’s going to be a lot of speculation about who blasted that shack and why. That’s plain, isn’t it?”

“Sure. But this car the guy left here—”

“Will give them more to guess about. It will look like the guy might have come here to blow the shack himself. Everybody will recognize the flivver as the one Cassidy had at his garage.”

“Which means they will inquire at Cassidy’s—”

“And learn nothing.”

“You’re right, Jake. Cassidy is not likely to know anything about the fellow’s business.”

Jake and Thuler had passed the turn in the path; they were blinking their flashlights while Delland and Jengley followed. They were skirting the remains of the cabin, going around the clearing to gain the obscure path to Table Rock.

Blinks faded; hushed darkness reigned supreme. Shrouding trees had gained the stillness of a tomb, hiding the fragments of the blasted shack, bending above the deserted car that Harry Vincent had left on the road below.

Fiendish killers had come across the slope to deliver spectacular death. Evidence of their victim gone, they were returning to their habitat. Scornful, sure that their crime would not be traced, this band of murderers had eliminated the first man who had come to pry into their schemes of evil.