The Danger Zone and Other Stories

The Corkscrew Kid

Warden Bogger was a hard man, and he gloried in his hardness. He had no sympathy in his make-up. To him, justice was stem and righteous. His rugged countenance, as grim as granite, betrayed his uncompromising nature.

Slicker Williams stood before the warden. He stood slim and straight. His finely chiseled countenance was a mask.

The warden surveyed him with the grim disapproval which the plodder always feels for the man who has the fire of imagination.

“The trouble with you, Slicker, is that you think you can beat the law.”

Slicker took it, erect, silent, outwardly attentive.

He was attired in the conventional prison garb of discharge. The prison tailored clothes, the prison made shoes, the utter newness of every garment betrayed him for what he was, a con who had finished his term and was on his way out of the big house.

The warden made a grimace.

“There’s no need for me to talk to you. I could stand here from now until doomsday and preach, and you’d stand there, looking at me, thinking in the back of your mind what a lot of bunk I was handing out, waiting impatiently for me to finish, so you could go out and have another fling at beating the law.

“It ain’t as though you were dumb, or couldn’t do anything else. You’re skilful with your hands. You’ve mastered every branch of law breaking, and you’ve done it with an ease that shows how capable you’d be, if you just went straight. But you won’t go straight. You’re so crooked you could hide behind a corkscrew!”

Slicker said nothing. His hands were at his sides, his eyes level, attentive, and expressionless.

The warden made a gesture of disgust.

“You can go now.”

He pressed a button.

Yet, had he only known it, a little sympathy would have cracked through the shell of Slicker’s reserve. Slicker was feeling very lonely, very much abused. A kind word or two, a pat on the back, might, perhaps... But Warden Bogger didn’t believe in wasting sympathy on crooks in the first place, and he was temperamentally unfitted to deal it out in the second place.

So Slicker Williams walked out of the penitentiary with murder in his heart, and the feeling that he was as friendless as a stray cat.

Slicker knew how he had happened to “lose out” that last time. It had been because he had been betrayed by a stool pigeon, and Slicker intended to kill that stool pigeon.

He wanted that much of a joke on the law.

He would do it in such a manner that there wouldn’t be the slightest clew that would point to him, nothing tangible that the law could lay its hand on, and use as a basis for prosecution. Yet everyone in the underworld, everyone in the inner circle of police, every shivering, cowardly stoolie in the pack, would know that Slicker had had his revenge.

It would be clever. It would be fool-proof, one perfect crime. The warden had told Slicker he could hide behind a corkscrew. Slicker would show them just how easily and completely he could hide behind a corkscrew.

The interurban car jolted him toward the lights which marked the big city. Slicker nursed his thoughts. The corners of his lips played in a smile.

The car stopped at a suburb.

A girl got on. She was sad-eyed, patient-faced. She was tired. The gray of fatigue had tinged her face. The eyes were washed out, lifeless.

There was no vacant seat save the one by Slicker.

The girl sat down. Slicker could hear the sigh as her tired shoulders rested against the back of the seat.

In her hand she carried a brief case. She set it down on the floor, between her feet.

Slicker knew the exact moment her eyes rested upon the newness of his prison garb, on the tell-tale prison shoes. He saw her turn her head away, and interpreted the gesture incorrectly.

The car jolted toward town.

Slicker wished the journey would end. He wanted to get back into the underworld where he could ditch those prison clothes. He wanted to kill that stoolie. He wanted to get away from all contact with these high hat office workers who shuddered away from him because he was a crook.

Then the girl turned back, and Slicker suppressed a start of astonishment. Apparently she hadn’t turned away because she was disgusted. She had turned away to hide the tears that came to her gray eyes.

Slicker saw her blink, and then stared incredulously at the hand that rested on his arm.

“I wondered if you wouldn’t like to let me make you a cup of chocolate, when we get to the city,” she said.

He stared at her unbelievingly.

The eyes were not bold, they weren’t commercial. They were pleading and sad, and the voice was vibrant with that quality which had been so singularly absent from the voice of the warden, sympathy.

“You see,” she hurried on. “I had a brother who went through the mill up there. And you look so awfully like him that when I saw you were from there...”

Slicker knew the type now — a sob sister.

Slicker could use fairly good English when occasion required, and he was able to modulate his voice into a semblance of breeding. It always amused him to talk to people who had classified him as a toughie, in a voice that made them start with surprise.

He was polite now, urbane, polished.

He lifted his hat and bowed.

“Madame, I can appreciate your sympathy, and its cause. Unfortunately, however, I have a previous engagement.”

That didn’t cause her to gasp in surprise.

“You talk just like Phil. He was my brother.”

The tears were gone from her eyes, and her voice wasn’t so sympathetic now. It was more of a friendly voice, the sort of voice one expects of a friend one has known for a long time.

Much to his own surprise, Slicker Williams continued to talk to her. She didn’t mention the chocolate any more, and Slicker was genuinely sorry. He was commencing to like her.

She got out of the seat when the car jolted to a stop out in the district of the cheaper but respectable apartments.

“I’m leaving you here. I hope you... hope you go straight!”

Slicker surprised himself again. He found himself getting to his feet, bowing, lifting his hat.

“I’ll see you as far as your apartment, if you don’t mind,” he said.

The patient eyes quickened into a smile.

“I’d be delighted.”

He got off the car, helped her off, and took her arm as she crossed the street. He felt proud of himself. She wasn’t a sob sister at all, just a good pal that knew how a man felt when he was getting out of stir.

Her apartment was about a block and a half from the car line.

Slicker took her hand, bowed over it.

“Give me a ring some time. Ruth Mowbrae, Kenmore Apartments, and...”

A figure stepped out of the shadows.

Slicker knew the meaning of the broad shoulders, the bull neck, the square-toed heavy-soled shoes. He braced himself. The old formula came to the tip of his tongue: “You ain’t got anything on me,” he started to say.

But he didn’t say it.

The detective’s business was with the woman.

“You’re Ruth Mowbrae?”

She stared at him.

“Why yes. Why?”

“Work for The Stanwood Construction Company?”

“Yes.”

“I want to take a look in that brief case, sister. I’m from headquarters.”

And the heavy thumb flipped back the lapel of the coat to show the gleam of the star.

The girl seemed stupefied.

“Why... why... I have some home work that Mr. Stanwood wanted me to take with me...”

Slicker Williams was ignored.

“That’s all right, sister,” said the detective, reaching over and taking the brief case from the girl’s hand. “This is okay with Mr. Stanwood. He’s the one that rang us up and told us to get in touch with you... Hey, Bill!”

Another hulking shadow, similar to the first as two peas from the same pod, came out from the entrance to the apartment house.

“Let’s take a look. Got the description of them bonds?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

They snapped open the brief case. The flashlight reflected whitely from the interior. One of the men whistled.

“What are these?” he asked.

He fished out a packet of papers, folded, fastened together with elastic. The backs were lithographed in two colors.

“Why,” said the girl, “those are the Investment Bonds.”

“Yeah,” said the detective. “What’re they doing here?”

Ruth Mowbrae’s hands were white as she clenched them together.

“That’s what I don’t know.”

One of the men took another sheaf of papers from an inside pocket.

“What are these?”

The girl’s exclamation was one of dismay

“You got those out of my room!” she said.

“Yeah. That’s where they were, eh?”

“Yes. Those are some other bonds. I saw Mr. Neil Stanwood taking those out of the safe and putting them in his desk. I couldn’t understand it. I intended to speak to Mr. H. W. Stanwood about it... I felt there was something wrong, and I took the bonds out of Neil’s desk and then telephoned H. W. and told him I must see him at my apartment, and he promised to come, but he was called out of town by a wire... and so I kept them there. I hid them so no one would find them.”

“Yeah,” said the detective, and took her arm in a most efficiently business like grasp. “And how did it happen these investment bonds were in your brief case?”

“I don’t know. I swear I don’t know. Mr. Neil Stanwood might have put them there. He’s been drinking pretty heavily lately, and...”

“Yeah, sure,” said the detective.

“Say, listen, guy,” interjected Slicker Williams, “this could be a frame-up so easy it wouldn’t even be funny. This guy she tells about could have seen her lifting the bonds he’d swiped, and knowing she was going to tell his father.”

“His uncle,” corrected the girl.

“All right then, his uncle, and—”

One of the detectives stretched out a powerful arm, took Slicker Williams by the shoulder and pulled him around.

“Well, well,” he said, “see who’s here. Who are you, little buttinsky? And do you want to take a nice little ride in a big black automobile with mesh screen all around the sides?”

Slicker Williams clenched an indignant fist.

The girl’s tongue tripped into speech.

“No, no. He’s just a man I met on the car. He reminded me of some one I knew, and he was seeing me home, and—”

“Oh,” said the detective, “I see!”

And the sneer of his tone told more than the words themselves.

“Let’s see,” commented the other, amiably, “you got a brother in the pen, ain’t you, Miss Mowbrae?”

“He’s been discharged!” she snapped.

“Oh yes, that’s so. And he wired you for money a little while back, and you sent him two thousand bucks, didn’t you? He had to square a little job in Philadelphia, didn’t he?”

She drew herself up, regal, dignified, silent.

“Where did you get that two thousand bucks?” asked the officer.

“I got it from my savings.”

“Oh yes, and an audit shows that there’s been a bunch of securities missing from the company. Ain’t that funny! A real funny coincidence, just another one of those sort of things that will happen!”

The detective marched over to Slicker Williams, joined the one who had grasped Slicker’s shoulder.

“Okay, guy. You got ten seconds to beat it, and don’t make any more wise cracks. I have a hunch we’d oughta run you down to headquarters, but we’ll give you a break. On your way.”

“Say,” protested Slicker, “ain’t you guys got sense enough to know a frame-up when you see one?”

“She admitted she took the first batch of bonds up to her apartment and hid ’em, didn’t she?”

“Yeah. But what does that prove?”

A brawny fist was brandished under Slicker’s nose.

“Goin’ to get smart, eh? Well, guy, you either make tracks, an’ make ’em right now, or you take a ride in the nice black wagon. Which you go’nna do?”

And Slicker knew which he was going to do. With his record, he had just one thing to do.

He looked back over his shoulder at the corner.

The men were taking her away.

Slicker had been able to think circles around the police. Warden Bogger had called the turn. Slicker was one of the boys who wanted to match wits with the law and come out on top. He was the kind of man who could hide behind a corkscrew, and, figuratively speaking, he’d done that very thing, times without number.

He wasn’t done yet — not by a long shot.

The sad-eyed girl had given him a break. He’d be a poor excuse not to do as much for her. He’d walked off because he knew he had to, not only because he couldn’t keep out of a jam if he’d stayed, but because being in jail would have interfered with the plan he bad in mind.

He remembered that the girl had got on at a suburban town. He remembered she was carrying work to do at home. He remembered she worked at The Stanwood Construction Company.

He consulted a telephone directory and looked up the suburban telephones. He found The Stanwood Construction Company, and he found a telephone listed under the name of H. W. Stanwood, “residence”; and one listed under the name of Neil Stanwood, “residence,” and both telephones had the same number.

Slicker Williams knew a place in the city where he would be welcome. He went there.

There was a pawnshop downstairs, and a man who sat upstairs, behind a grimy door, in a little room that was littered with old papers and cobwebs. The man was abnormally fat and restless. He had restless eyes, restless hands, restless lips.

Like a spider in a web, Sam Felixburg sat and waited, and his waiting was very, very restless, and very, very productive.

He let his restless eyes slither over Slicker Williams, and his lips mouthed a greeting.

“Whatcha want, Slicker?”

“I want some cash for get-by money, a set of tools, and some soup.”

Felix ran an uneasy tongue over flabby lips and raised his head back, washboarding the rolls of fat at the back of his neck.

“What d’yuh want soup for? You never was a soup man. The safe you can’t spring with your two hands, ain’t a safe, it’s an invention.”

Slicker shook his head doggedly.

“Do I get ’em?”

“Sure, sure you get ’em. You know what I have, you can have. Ain’t we been like brothers?”

“Yeah. I make the profits and take the jolt. You take the profits from me and leave the jolt for me to keep, all for my very own.”

The big man waved his restless hands. “Now don’t you go talking like that, don’t do it I say. I been on the up and up with you. You give old Felix a square deal, and he’ll give you one. Whatcha goin’ to spring?”

“Nothing you get a percentage on. This is a grudge job. You owe me the stake in return for the stretch.”

The humid, brown eyes watched out from under fat brows with expressionless concern, then the head nodded in oily affirmation.

“That’s right, that’s right, that’s right. You always been a square shooter by me. You get the stake.”

He turned in a creaky swivel chair that protested unceasingly at the tax that was put upon it. He pawed at a pile of musty old papers, pulled them to one side, fumbled with a section of the wainscoting.

The wainscoting swung back, disclosing a series of well stocked shelves. Felix pulled several articles from the shelves. He opened a wallet and took out money. He paused with the second bill, raised his restless eyes to encounter the steady gaze of Slicker Williams, and hurriedly added two more to the pile. He raised his eyes questioningly once more, shrugged at what he read in Slicker’s expression and added a reluctant fifth bill to the pile on the table.

He pushed the pile across.

“When you start workin’ for profit, Slicker, you ain’t goin’ to forget Uncle Felix, are you?”

Slicker shook his head moodily.

“I never forget,” he said, and walked out of the door.

When Slicker got to the suburbs he realized why the telephones of Neil Stanwood and his uncle were listed under the same number. The address was a pretentious house that frowned darkly somber from well kept grounds.

Darkly somber, pretentious houses were Slicker’s meat.

He vaulted a fence, went to the side of the house, found a trellis and an open window on the second floor. He ascertained there were no burglar alarms, and slid into the warm interior of the house.

He used a flash to guide him to the stairs, went down them, and found a wide window on the ground floor. He opened that window, wide. But first he found and disconnected the burglar alarm that ran along the side of the window.

The ground floor of the house was wired for alarms, and that gave Slicker a thrill of relief. Houses that were wired for burglar alarms usually had something worthwhile in them.

His first plans had been more nebulous. They involved bringing pressure to bear for the getting of what he wanted. But when he saw a highly modern safe in the corner of the library, he changed his plans. He would see what that safe had to offer.

Slicker went about his work with calm deliberation.

He searched the safe for wires, found two and put them out of the running. Then he gave his attention to the locking device.

The manufacturers of that safe doubtless believed that it was reasonably burglar proof. Perhaps they were acquainted with certain idiosyncrasies of the lock, but it is doubtful if they realized in just what manner those little peculiarities could be utilized by expert hands.

Slicker Williams could have delivered a very interesting lecture to the makers of that safe, had he chosen. He did not choose, for obvious reasons.

At the end of fifteen minutes’ patient effort, he swung back the door of the safe. Then he commenced a detailed examination of the interior.

There were two compartments, each protected by a locked steel door with a combination. One of those compartments was marked with the initials “H. W. S.” The other one bore the name: “Neil.”

Slicker Williams made child’s play out of those combinations on the interior of the safe. He pulled out drawers, pondering over the contents.

In one of the compartments there was an assortment of jewels that made his mouth water. In another there was a roll of currency. Those were the compartments of the safe reserved for the head of the house. In the nephew’s side were several pigeon-holes stuffed with letters.

Slicker read a few of those letters.

Many of them were the usual blah, blah of lovesick girls, falling for an agreeable personality and a background of wealthy parents. But one stack had a far more sinister note. They had to do with blackmail, and the threats were lurid and hardly flattering to the character of Neil Stanwood.

There were other documents which evidenced that Neil Stanwood had been hard pressed for ready cash, and that he had met the demand for that cash by the sale of certain securities.

There was a letter which listed those securities, and there were some of the bonds, negotiable, not as yet sold.

Slicker Williams regarded those documents with great interest. A clock, somewhere in the house, chimed the hour of midnight.

Slicker Williams planned his campaign to depend upon what he would find upstairs. He left the safe for the moment, took folding rubber slippers from his pocket, adjusted them over the soles of his shoes, and crept softly up to the bedrooms.

He entered a front room, found a rather heavy man with sagging jowls, sleeping noisily. Slicker presumed this was the head of the house, none other than the great H. W. Stanwood, president of The Stanwood Construction Company. But Slicker Williams never left anything to chance. He made explorations in the pockets of the business suit which hung from a pole in the closet, uncovered a well filled wallet and business cards which confirmed his suspicions.

He left the room, after carefully replacing the wallet.

A side bedroom was the one occupied by Neil Stanwood, the nephew. As might have been expected of a young man whose affairs of the heart were so complex in their nature, Neil Stanwood was out.

Slicker Williams verified these facts.

Then he tiptoed down the stairs again and closed the safe. But he left the inner doors just a bit ajar. He poured soup composed of nitroglycerine around the crevices of the door, and held the soup in place by putting soft soap about the top of the crack, making a little funnel.

Then he piled carpets over the safe. When he had done this, he tipped over a chair and smashed some books to the floor. Then he went on silent feet to the staircase and concealed himself near the head of the stairs.

There were no further sounds of noisy slumber from the other room where the heavy man had sleeping. In place of that, there were the sounds of slippered feet slithering from the bed toward the door.

Slicker Williams glided into another bedroom, half closed the door and waited.

Old Stanwood, looking like an elephant in his gaudy bathrobe, slippety-slopped down the corridor, stood at the head of the stairs, listening. Then he cautiously descended. He held an electric flashlight in his hand.

Slicker Williams went to the head of the stairs, watched the descending figure. He was cool, as a veteran fighter, listening for the sound of the gong.

As Stanwood went into the room and gazed upon the piled up rugs which blanketed the safe, saw the overturned table and chair, the crashed glassware, Slicker Williams could hear the “whoosh” of surprise, the startled exclamation of fear. He heard the slippered feet start on a half run for the stairs once more.

Slicker ducked back out of the way as Stanwood came up the stairs on the run. He saw the flabby face, the joggling jowls, the livid hue of the skin, caught a glint of the panic in the man’s eyes.

Then he heard the bedroom door slam, the click of the key in the lock. He heard the sound of a telephone clicking, the quavering voice of Stanwood, summoning the police.

Slicker Williams went softly down the stairs.

He paused at the safe to light the fuse which would set off the nitroglycerine. Then he slipped out of the window and lit a cigarette, waiting patiently.

Ten seconds became fifteen.

There was a deep throated “BOOM” from the safe.

Slicker pinched out the cigarette, nonchalantly climbed back into the room.

The souping had been done in a bungling manner. The whole door of the safe had been ripped away and back. Acrid fumes eddied about the room.

Slicker saw to it that the papers were dribbling out on the floor, and that there was no fire. Then he left the house for the last time and melted into the shadows.

He could see dancing lights from the windows, hear the run of feet, the rattle of voices as the servants became aroused. In the distance, he heard the scream of a siren.

Slicker Williams lit another cigarette when he was a couple of blocks from the house, and casually stepped into the parked automobile he had rented.

He drove back to the city, returned the car, got a room and went to bed.

Twenty-four hours later he read two news items which were of interest to him. One related how a safe cracker, evidently a bungling amateur, had opened the safe at the palatial suburban residence of H. W. Stanwood, head of The Stanwood Construction Company. The thief, it seemed, had been heard by the master of the house, had been frightened away by the police just as he had the safe open. A check of the contents, made by the police immediately upon their arrival, had disclosed that nothing was missing. The thief had overlooked a large sum of money and missed a valuable collection of gems.

The second item had to do with the fact that one Ruth Mowbrae, arrested under a mistake by the police, had been released upon a dismissal of the charges against her by her employer. The item mentioned that there had been a cash consideration as a settlement of any claims for false arrest.

Slicker Williams laid down the paper and grinned.

It was a year later that he saw Warden Bogger.

Bogger’s grim face relaxed somewhat.

“Slicker,” he said, “I’m glad to hear that you’re married and going straight. Do you know, I did you an injustice? All the time I was giving you that lecture there in the office, I thought you were laughing at me inside. I hadn’t any idea you were taking it all in, making a resolve to go straight.”

Slicker took the outstretched hand.

“Glad to see you, Warden. You ought to drop in some time and see the kid.”

There was one good point about Warden Bogger. When one of his “boys” made good, the warden thrilled with pride, even if he did always insist upon taking a big share of the credit.

“By George,” he said, “I will. I always thought you’d stay crooked, Slicker, and I owe you an apology. I figured you could hide behind a corkscrew, and here you are, going straight and making money hand over fist.

“Hang it, man, it’s encouraging when you feel that a little interest will make a man see things in a new light. Tell me, Williams, weren’t you really a bit impressed by chose last few words I gave you, there at the office that day?”

Slicker Williams was a quick thinker. “Warden,” he said gravely, “nothing you ever said to me in your life ever made a greater impression.”