The Leather Duke

Chapter Seven

The waiters were still putting out food when Johnny and Sam attacked their steaks. Johnny munched a huge forkful of meat.

“You’re right, Mr. Towner,” he said, happily, “they simply don’t know how to broil a steak here.”

“Are you kidding?” cried Sam. He shoved half of a clover leaf roll into his mouth, pushed it back with about four ounces of steak.

The headwaiter came up to the table carrying an extension telephone. “Telephone, Mr. Towner.” He plugged the cord into a socket.

“Who is it?”

“Miss Towner, sir.”

The Leather Duke brightened, took the telephone. “Yes, my dear?... Oh, you are? Well, look, why don’t you come down to the grill room? We’ve just started to eat. Fine.” He put down the receiver. “My daughter’s up in the main dining room,” he said to Johnny. “They’re coming down to join us.”

“They?”

“Oh, she’s with Elliott and her fiancé.” Harry Towner made a careless brushing movement. “Continue, Fletcher, you were saying that the Mafia was behind this business...”

“No, sir,” Johnny said promptly, “I didn’t say that. I merely reminded you that the Mafia has been considered extinct several times before and each time—”

“Damn this hush-hush stuff, Fletcher!” exclaimed Towner. “You’re talking to me — you don’t have to beat about the bush. You said that this man, what the devil was his name, Piper or Fifer...?” He stopped, suddenly snapped his fingers. “You said yourself that the Mafia always confined itself to Italians. Piper is certainly not an Italian name.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Johnny. “And that’s exactly what I was driving at. This man called himself Piper — do you see, sir?”

The Leather Duke’s eyes lit up. “Ah-h, yes!”

“We know, Mr. Towner,” Johnny said softly, “that an Italian named Carmella Vitali had a quarrel with this man who called himself Piper and we know that Carmella quit his job this morning and that” — Johnny paused significantly — “shortly afterwards Piper was found dead, his throat cut!”

Harry Towner nodded thoughtfully. “The police took this Carmella into custody this afternoon. For questioning.”

“They’ll get nothing out of him,” Johnny said promptly. “Nothing but evasions and lies. The rule of the Mafia — silence!”

“I’d make him talk,” Towner said grimly. “If the police’d give him to me for a half hour, he’d talk. I’d take him and—”

He stopped, looked past Johnny and Sam. Johnny turned. Elliott Towner was approaching the table. Behind him was a tall, dark-haired man of about thirty, wearing tweeds, and the most beautiful girl Johnny had ever seen. She was fairly tall with dark chestnut hair. But it was her face that was really beautiful. Not that she had even, classical features, no, many girls had those. This one had a sparkling vitality, a personality that jolted Johnny like a live power line.

He kicked back his chair, got to his feet.

Harry Towner also rose. “Elliott,” he said, “Linda!” He put all the emphasis upon the girl’s name. He ignored the fiancé completely.

“Dad,” said Linda Towner and kissed her father on the cheek.

“Linda, Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Cragg.”

“H’arya,” said Sam.

Johnny smiled, leaned forward and she gave him her hand. “How do you do, Miss Towner.”

She murmured an acknowledgment.

“My son, Elliott,” went on Towner. Elliott stared coolly at Johnny. “We’ve met.”

“Oh, of course, at the plant. Ah yes, I almost forgot. And, ah, Mr. Wendland, Mr. Fletcher, Mr. Cragg. We’ve been discussing business, but we’re about through for the moment. Won’t you sit down?”

A waiter brought additional chairs and everyone seated themselves. Johnny, aware that Elliott Towner was regarding him steadily, shifted his look from Linda T owner.

“You can’t pay here,” Elliott said.

Johnny looked at him blankly. “Eh?”

“Members sign.”

Harry Towner heard the last remark. “What’s that, Elliott?”

“Why, I was just saying that Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Cragg are fellow workers at the plant.”

Harry Towner laughed jovially and slapped the table with an open palm. “So they are, Elliott, so they are, and you think—”

Johnny put a warning finger to his lips. “Mr. Towner, please!”

“But this is my family, Fletcher. Freddie, too — he’s practically one of us...”

“Just the same,” began Johnny.

“Nonsense, Fletcher, nonsense, I have no secrets from my family. They’re interested in the business as much as I am.”

“A secret!” exclaimed Linda Towner. “What is it?”

“A secret,” said Johnny desperately.

Then Linda turned the full power of her hazel eyes on him. “A secret, Mr. Fletcher, connected with the business? And you’re trying to keep it from me? You haven’t got a chance. I’ll get it from you, sooner or later, so you might as well save yourself wear and tear and spill it now.”

Harry Towner sobered. “I don’t know, Linda. It’s rather unpleasant, but then you’ve probably already seen it in the papers...”

“Oh, that! Of course. As a matter of fact, Elliott was telling us about it upstairs.” She suddenly turned to Sam. “Cragg — you’re the Sam Cragg who found the body. Is it true that you lift up barrels of leather with one hand?”

“Naw,” replied Sam, “I use two hands on account of it’s too hard to get hold of a barrel with one hand. But I could lift ’em with one hand if they had handles.”

“What’s that?” asked The Leather Duke.

Elliott turned to his father. “Sam Cragg’s a strong man. He picks up two-hundred-pound barrels and raises them over his head.”

Towner regarded Sam with interest. “You’re really strong, eh?” He nodded in satisfaction. “Comes in handy with your work, I suppose.”

“Yeah, sure,” agreed Sam. “We don’t have to bother cranking up that dinky elevator.”

“Speaking of elevators,” Johnny said loudly, “remember that Senegalese in Casablanca...” Then he winced. “No, I can’t talk about that. Not yet.”

“Why not, Mr. Fletcher?” Elliott Towner demanded.

Johnny squinted and looked at Harry Towner. The leather man took it up for Johnny. “That’s the secret, Elliott. And perhaps Fletcher is right, the fewer who know the better...”

“The fewer who know what?” persisted Elliott.

Harry Towner hesitated and Johnny, with a sigh, put his napkin on the table. “What do you say, Sam, shall we get going?”

“Huh? I ain’t had my dessert yet. I was figuring on apple pie a la mode. You promised me...”

“I know, but it’s getting late and we’ve got to stake out that place...”

“Stake out!” cried Linda Towner. “I know what that means. I read it in a detective story. Who’re you going to watch, Mr. Fletcher?”

Johnny got to his feet. “I’m afraid I’ve said too much already, Miss Towner. You’ll... you’ll keep this quiet?”

“Of course, but...” She frowned in sudden thought. “I’ve half a mind to make you let us come along. Freddie, are you game?”

“Game for what, Linda?” asked Fred Wendland. “This is all a little too fast for me.”

“How can you be so dense?” cried Linda. “What’ve we been talking about all through dinner?”

“Why, that horrible murder.”

“And Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Cragg are going to do a stake-out. What does that suggest?”

“They’re going to, ah, well what are they going to do?”

“I’m afraid we’ve got to run now,” cut in Johnny.

Linda Towner got to her feet. “Wait — I’m going with you.”

“Oh no,” said Johnny quickly. “You couldn’t possibly.” He appealed to Linda’s father. “Little Italy, hardly the place for—”

“Of course. Linda, sit down,” said Harry Towner.

“I’m not afraid, Dad. It’ll be fun — watching from a dark doorway... watching.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Towner,” Johnny insisted. “If it were possible, I’d let you come along. But it isn’t.”

Linda looked at him, sighed and seated herself. “All right, but I want to know all about it tomorrow. You’ll tell me?”

“Yes,” said Johnny, “I will.”

“I’d like to hear it, too,” chimed in Elliott Towner.

Johnny gave him a faint smile and tapped Sam’s shoulder. “Come on, Sam. You’ll excuse us...?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Fletcher,” boomed Harry Towner.

Sam got up reluctantly from the table and followed Johnny. As they left the grill room, he said peevishly, “I can’t understand why it is I never get around to the dessert. Somethin’ always happens...”

“Something much more drastic would have happened if we’d stayed, Sam. Elliott doesn’t like us one bit. We got a dinner out of it.”

Sam brightened. “Such a line of bull, Johnny, I never heard.”

“Every word I spoke was the truth, Sam.”

“Huh? You told him we were undercover men.”

“I told him nothing of the kind. Mr. Towner may have assumed from the way I spoke that we were more than laborers in his factory, but the words I used were true.”

“Yeah, but that Black Hand stuff...”

“Nothing but the truth. I gave him a brief history of the Mafia and that was all. I told him that the Mafia had been extinct several times, which was true.”

Sam thought that over until they had left the club and were turning the corner of Michigan into Madison. Then he exclaimed, “Yeah, but you said this guy Piper called himself Piper—”

“That’s right, he did.”

“He did what?”

“He called himself Piper because that was his name.”

“The way you said it to the old boy it sounded like he was a... a Italian.”

“Speaking of Italians, Sam, what do you say we take a little run over to Little Italy...?”

Sam grabbed Johnny’s arm. “No, Johnny, no, that’s no place to go snooping around at night.”

“Little Italy’s no worse at night than any other place.”

“But I know what you’re figurin’ on doing. I’ve seen it before. You’re going to play detective and I’m going to get the hell beat out of me and we’re going to wind up broke.”

“We were broke this morning, Sam. Flat broke. Now, we’ve each got ninety cents in our pockets and we’ve had a couple of swell meals. But what about tomorrow?” Johnny shook his head. “We’ve no choice. Elliott’s going to give us away to his old man. We’ll have no jobs tomorrow, unless I can give the old man something to sink his teeth into.”

“So we lose our jobs? What of it? We never had jobs before.”

“But we had books to sell. We haven’t got any now and we won’t have until we get a stake. This job’s got to give us that stake.” Johnny hesitated. “And don’t forget, you found the murdered man and my leather knife was missing from my bench.”

Sam gasped. “You mean they — they suspect one of us?”

“And how! We’re walking the streets free men, but suppose the cops decide that we’re a couple of likely suspects, in view of the fact that they can’t pin the rap on anyone else. What then? We can’t prove we didn’t kill Al Piper.”

“But we never even knew the guy!”

“There are innocent men in jail right now,” said Johnny ominously.

Sam groaned. “All right, Johnny, we’ll go down to Little Italy. But I’m not going to like it. I’m not going to like it at all. Those Black Hands—”

“Don’t be silly!”

They walked to Wells Street and in a few minutes caught a northbound streetcar. They got off at Oak Street and walked west in one of the worst slum areas in the city of Chicago. It was still early evening and there were plenty of people on the street, men, women and children.