The Leather Duke

Chapter Thirteen

The man from the Wiggins Detective Agency followed Johnny and Linda Towner back to the leather factory.

“Now,” Johnny said, “we’ll see whether he’s following you or me. I’ll go in and you drive off.”

“But I wanted to see Dad,” protested Linda.

“He won’t be back yet from his director’s meeting,” said Johnny, “and me, I’ve got to get to work.”

Linda hesitated, then nodded agreement. “All right, I’ll see you later.”

She stayed in her car and Johnny went into the plant. He stopped inside the door, however, and peered out through the glass. Linda started up the Cadillac convertible and drove off.

The man in the black Chevrolet continued to loll back in his seat. Johnny nodded thoughtfully. “Well, that settles that. He’s watching me.”

He climbed up to the office floor and was so wrapped in thought that he did not see Nancy Miller. She started to speak to him, then thought better of the idea. Johnny rang for the elevator, then saw Nancy.

He hurried back to her. “Eight o’clock this evening,” he said.

“Eight o’clock, what?”

“That’s when I’ll pick you up. Oh, I haven’t got your address.”

“Aren’t you taking a lot for granted?” Nancy Miller asked, coolly.

“Why, no, you said you’d go out with me if I weren’t a laborer and I’m no longer toiling with my hands.”

“Then why’re you going upstairs?”

“I’ll tell you about that this evening. Here’s the elevator. The address...?”

She hesitated, then suddenly smiled. “635 Armitage.”

“Eight o’clock — your best dress!”

He stepped into the elevator and rode up to the counter floor. He walked through to the sorting department and noted that it was ten minutes after two.

Hal Johnson was leaning against his desk. He looked up at the clock and then at Johnny.

“Hiyah, Hal,” Johnny greeted him cheerfully.

Johnson grunted. “Go out to lunch with Mr. Towner?” he asked, sarcastically.

“No, his daughter.”

Johnson blinked. “All right,” he said. “I’m only the foreman here. Maybe I’m not supposed to know what’s going on. I hired you for a counter sorter yesterday, and today the boss calls you down to his office and you have lunch with his daughter.”

“The office send up the John B. Croft order yet?”

“What Croft order?”

“The one I got just before lunch. Twenty barrels.”

“You got an order for counters from the Croft Shoe Company?”

“Yes, Mr. Towner wanted to find out if I was a good salesman.” Johnny shrugged. “So I ran over and got the order.”

Johnson groaned. “Now, I’ve heard everything.”

Johnny leaned toward the counter foreman. “Harry offered me the sales manager’s job.”

“Oh, no!” cried Johnson.

“Don’t worry, Hal,” Johnny said easily, “I turned it down.”

Johnson looked at Johnny a moment, then swallowed hard.

“Just a minute,” he said, thickly.

He left Johnny at the head of the sorting benches and strode down the line to where Elliott Towner was working at his bench. Johnny saw Johnson ask young Towner a question. He didn’t hear Elliott’s reply, but saw Johnson stagger as if struck by an invisible fist. Towner, however, continued to talk and Johnson listened intently for a moment or two. Then he bobbed his head and came back toward Johnny.

As the foreman approached Johnny saw that his face was filmed with perspiration. “I’m fifty-two years old,” Johnson said when he came up. “I’ve worked for this company since I was thirteen — thirty-nine years. I’ve seen a lot of men come and go here, Fletcher. I’ve hired thousands of men and I’ve fired a few hundred. But, so help me, I’ve never had a man here like you...” He cleared his throat. “And I hired you!”

“You almost didn’t,” said Johnny. “Sam Cragg was your first choice. By the way, where is Sam?”

“Piling up barrels,” said Johnson. “Without Joe Genara — and without the elevator. Now, don’t tell me you’re going to pull him off that job.”

“How could I pull him off?” asked Johnny innocently. “You’re the foreman.”

“I am?”

“Of course.”

“I thought you were taking over!”

“Me? Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Elliott said that you—”

“Shh,” said Johnny. “I’m going to snoop around here, that’s all. A little undercover work, until I smoke out the man who killed Al Piper. But don’t pay any attention to me. I won’t interfere with the work.”

“Will the work interfere with you?”

Johnny chuckled. “Not if I don’t have to do any of it.”

About eight pairs of eyes down the line of benches were watching Johnny and the foreman, while the owners were pretending to be sorting counters.

Johnny clapped Johnson on the shoulder and at least six audible gasps went up along the benches. Johnny left the foreman at his high bookkeeper’s desk and headed for an aisle between two rows of barrels. He reached the washbasins at the rear, stopped to listen and heard the thump of a barrel on concrete. He headed to the left and saw Sam lifting a barrel of counters over his head.

“Johnny!” Sam cried. “I was just thinkin’ that you ran out on me...”

He eased the barrel on top of a stack of three, then turned happily to Johnny. “Where’d you get the two bucks you left for me? I sure had a swell lunch and I still got ninety cents.”

“I’ve got about four-ninety, myself,” said Johnny. “Four hundred and ninety.” He took the bills from his pocket and exhibited them to Sam.

Sam gasped. “Johnny, you didn’t rob...?”

“Now, Sam, you know I wouldn’t do a thing like that. Mr. Towner gave me the money — an advance.”

“You conned him out of it?” Then Sam grimaced. “It’ll take us about a year to earn that, Johnny.” Sam’s voice rose in agony. “You ain’t gonna make us work here that long, are you?”

“You can ease off now, Sam. We’re back in the chips.”

“And we’re quittin’?”

“Well, not exactly.” Johnny coughed gently. “I sold Mr. Towner on the idea of letting me find the murderer of Al Piper.”

“No, Johnny, you didn’t!”

“I’m afraid I did.”

“But you promised me you wouldn’t do any more detective stuff.”

“I made no such promise, Sam. As a matter of fact, we were already working on the job. Only we were doing it for nothing. Now, we’re doing it for pay.”

“But that cop was up here again this morning, Johnny. He was askin’ all sorts of questions. About you — and me...”

“I know. He tried a little joust with me just before lunch. He came off second-best.”

“Maybe, Johnny, maybe. But don’t forget they got rooms down at Headquarters where they make you sit under a big white light and ask you a lot of questions with rubber hoses and things. We wouldn’t come out so good on that, would we?”

“That isn’t going to happen to us, Sam. I’m way ahead of Lieutenant Lindstrom right now. While he’s making up his mind, I’ll grab the murderer.”

“Now?”

“Well, no. I don’t know who he is.”

“You got any idea, yet?”

“Uh-uh. Let’s see, it was over in the next aisle you found him. Let’s take a look.”

“Do we have to?”

“Cut it out, Sam. The man’s dead. His body was taken away yesterday morning.”

Sam frowned, but followed Johnny reluctantly into the next aisle. “Now, let’s go at this scientifically.” Johnny said. “There are ten stacks of barrels on each side—”

“Only nine on the right side,” Sam said. “The empty place is where, ah, Al Piper was...”

“That’s right.”

Johnny walked into the aisle. “Four stacks of barrels, then this empty spot, then five stacks — mmm.” Johnny stepped past the empty spot in the row of barrels where the body of Piper had been found and continued on to the end of the aisle.

A rack had been built here, running the entire length of the counter sorting department. Partly filled barrels were piled on the rack and under it, more or less screening the sorting department from the stacks. But by stooping, Johnny could see under the rack and over the top of the barrels set on the floor, into the sorting department.

Johnny put his eye to the shaft. He found himself watching the back of the nearest counter sorter — Elliott Towner. He looked thoughtfully at the back of the Leather Duke’s son, for a long moment, then shifted his glance to the next bench. It was vacant, Sam Cragg’s place. Beyond it, on the left, Joe Genara was working and to the left of him two men with whom Johnny had not yet got acquainted. Past them was Cliff Goff, the horse player. Then came Johnny’s bench and, finally, at the very end, next to Johnson’s desk, the bench of old Axel Swensen.

As Johnny looked, Karl Kessler, the assistant foreman, came walking into the sorting department. He said a word or two to Swensen, then stopped at Johnny’s bench and began idly resorting some of the bunches of counters Johnny had piled up early that morning.

Sam moved up behind Johnny and bent down. “What’re you looking at, Johnny?” he whispered.

“Men at work,” replied Johnny.

“Jeez,” Sam exclaimed suddenly. “Maybe the murderer was watchin’ us workin’ yesterday morning.” He shivered. “Gives you a funny feeling.”

“What I can’t figure out,” said Johnny, “is why Al Piper came back here in the first place. He ran a skiving machine, which is out in the main room.”

“Maybe he came back here to meet, uh, whoever it was who killed him.”

“Which meant that he knew the man.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“But why couldn’t he talk to him out in the open?”

“You asking me, Johnny, or yourself?”

“Myself, I guess.”

Johnny sighed and rose to his full length. “What time did you come back here to help Joe with the barrels yesterday, Sam?”

“I didn’t look at the clock, Johnny, but I guess it was about a half hour after we started to work.”

“That would have been around ten o’clock, and it was an hour or so before you found him here. But he’d been dead for an hour to two hours then. In other words, he could have been killed as early as nine o’clock...”

“At that time we weren’t even working here yet.”

“Cut it out, Sam,” exclaimed Johnny. “We know we didn’t kill him.”

“That’s right,” exclaimed Sam. “We know that.”

“And one other person knows we didn’t do it — the murderer.”

Sam looked about uneasily. “You know, Johnny, I don’t like working here. I keep thinking somebody’s watching me. It’s too dark and too many places to hide. A guy could throw a knife at you before you knew it.”

Johnny snapped his fingers. “Sam, you’ve done it!”

“What’ve I done?”

“Given me my first clue. The knife.”

“But the copper said it was your knife!”

“I know it wasn’t my knife, Sam. Think back — when you found Al Piper and we were all nosing around here, there was no sign of any knife. It wasn’t until later that Lindstrom found my knife, back here. Planted. Yet Piper was killed with a knife.”

“Yeah, sure, but I don’t get your point. The guy who done it didn’t want to leave his knife laying here, because it could be traced to him.”

“Right, Sam — to a certain point. There are a lot of knives around here; every counter sorter has one. But if it was stolen from one of the benches it would be missed in a matter of minutes, because the sorters are always using their knives to trim leather. For the same reason, the sorters — if one of them was the murderer — couldn’t use his own knife to do the job. He couldn’t be sure he’d have time enough to really wash the knife thoroughly, without being seen. Those leather knives are eight inches long, sharp as razors and with long points. You can’t fold them so you can’t carry them around in your pocket.” Johnny drew a deep breath. “So it’s my idea that the murderer didn’t use a leather knife at all. He used a folding pocket-knife, which he could put into his pocket without washing. Then he got to worrying about that, was afraid there might be a search and blood found on his clothes, so he stole one of the knives from the bench and dumped it here.”

“And he just picked your knife by accident?”

“Maybe,” said Johnny. “And maybe not. I was a new man on the job. The police would waste a lot of time trying to ferret out the history of a man nobody around here knew anything about.”

“The cops couldn’t find out much about us, the way we’ve always moved around,” Sam said. “Of course, if they took our fingerprints...”

“Speaking of fingerprints, I wonder if Lieutenant Lindstrom went over that knife of mine that was planted here. I guess I’ll never know the answer to that because Lindstrom isn’t in much of a co-operating mood. Anything we learn we’ve got to dig up ourselves. And I guess we might as well get started.”

“How?”

“Go back to your bench and talk-talk to everyone you can. If they get sore, fine; people spill things when they’re mad. Talk about the murder.”

“What about work?”

“Keep on working. At least enough to make it look good.”