Richard Deming

Dan and the Death-Cell Bluff

Chapter One

The little sad-faced man in the worn seersucker suit arrived in Lake City on the nine-thirty A.M. train. He shook his head at the redcap who tried to relieve him of his bag, shook it again at the ring of eager taxi drivers, found his way to the waiting room and hunched his meager frame onto a bench in the farthest corner. For an hour and a half he sat there quietly, staring sadly at his folded hands, and he was such an insignificant little man, no one gave him a second glance.

The big, heavy-shouldered man with the perennial lopsided grin arrived in Lake City on the eleven A.M. train. He, too, shook his head at the redcap, but he grinned when he did it, as though amused at the thought of hiring a youngster half his size to carry his heavy bag. He grinned again at the eager taxi drivers, said, “Later, maybe,” and went on to the waiting room.

He was an enormous man, probably six feet four and two hundred and seventy pounds, but he moved with the controlled grace of a ballet dancer. His square, craggy face, lined by weather and seamed with laughter lines, looked forty; his iron-gray hair looked fifty. Actually he was thirty-six.

The little man barely glanced up when the big man entered, then returned his sad eyes to his hands. But suddenly the hands were clenched tautly together.

With his huge suitcase hanging as easily at his side as though it were a bag of cream puffs, the big man scanned the benches of the waiting room. His eyes touched the little man without interest, moved over the assorted dozen other people in the room and settled on a black-haired girl reading a magazine. She looked up at the same moment.

He grinned his lopsided grin, waited expectantly, and after studying him a moment, the girl rose and approached him.

“Mr. Fancy?” she asked tentatively.

He nodded, widening his grin and examining her with frank appreciation of her beauty, for she was as trim and flawless as a cut cameo. And not much bigger, the big man added mentally.

“Mr. Dan Fancy?” she persisted.

“How many people named Fancy do you think you’d find in one waiting room?” he asked quizzically. His voice was a husky, almost rasping bass.

She grinned, then, too. “I’m Adele Hudson. Mr. Robinson wired me to meet you and explain about the town.”

“I know. Can it wait till I settle in a hotel and catch a shower? Trains make me feel gritty all over.”

She was looking beyond him, through the waiting room door, and her face was suddenly pale. “I’m afraid it will have to wait,” she said.

Dan turned so effortlessly, the movement seemed deliberate, but he was facing the door before the girl’s sentence was finished. Two men in expensive gabardine suits entered the waiting room and stopped in front of him. One was a wide, barrel-chested man nearly as broad as he was tall, with a flat, swarthy face and a low forehead. The other was tall and lean, and carried himself with a sort of rawhide tenseness. He had a thin, cruel face and eyes containing no expression whatever. The tall man did the talking.

“Your name Fancy?”

Dan merely nodded.

Both men flashed badges, then slipped them back in their pockets.

“We got a tip you were arriving,” the tall man said. “I’m Lieutenant Hart of Homicide and this is Sergeant Bull.”

Dan examined the swarthy sergeant with interest. “Haven’t I seen your picture on a reward poster somewhere?” he asked mildly.

Sergeant Bull’s face reddened and his lips drew hack in a snarl, but the tall lieutenant waved him aside and said quietly, “We don’t like gunmen in Lake City, Fancy.”

“So?” Dan asked.

“So let’s start by turning over your gun.”

Swinging his huge suitcase slightly forward, Dan let it drop with a crash. The barrel-chested sergeant jerked his toes out of the way just in time, turned brick red and stepped toward the big man with one hand raised to deliver a back-hand slap.

Dan regarded the sergeant’s jaw with calm calculation, his lips grinning but his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. The barrel-chested sergeant hesitated, let his hand drop and contented himself with snarling, “You heard the lieutenant. Let’s see your heater.”

“Sure,” Dan said obligingly. His right hand flickered under his coat and reappeared with a forty-five automatic, which cocked with a distinct click. “Take a good look.”

For a moment the bore centered directly in the sergeant’s stomach, then Dan’s thumb dropped the hammer to quarter-cock and the gun disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.

“For the information of you lads and any other hoods around here who wear badges,” Dan said huskily, “my permit to carry a gun is signed by the governor. So is my appointment as special investigator to find out what in hell’s going on down here.”

Unexpectedly both his big hands lashed out and grabbed a double handful of shirt-front. Jerking the two men off balance, he brought his fists together in front of his own chest so that one shoulder of each was clamped against one shoulder of his partner as they half-faced each other, and their other shoulders were crammed against Dan’s chest, a position which effectively immobilized their arms. Nor in their side-wise position was either able to bring a knee into play.

They hung helpless in the big man’s powerful grip, glaring up at him murderously as he grinned at them.

“Tell Big Jim Calhoun the war is on,” Dan said huskily. “And next time not to send boys to do a man’s job.”

A sudden thrust sent both men reeling backward to sprawl either side of the doorway. Sweeping up his suitcase, Dan took the girl’s arm and piloted her through the door. Without a backward glance he made for the group of taxi drivers, extended his suitcase to one by holding it with two sausage-like fingers through the strap, and grinned when the man was nearly jerked off center by its weight.

“You shouldn’t have done that to Morgan Hart and Larry Bull,” Adele Hudson said breathlessly. “They’re Big Jim Calhoun’s foremost hired killers.”

“Nice type to have on a police force,” Dan grunted.

As they followed the loping cab driver, Adele’s legs moved like twin pistons in her attempt to keep up with the big man’s long strides. “I wonder how they knew you were arriving,” she said.

Dan Fancy’s grin became even wider than usual. “I sent Big Jim Calhoun an anonymous wire from Pittsburgh saying a private dick named Daniel Fancy had been engaged by Martin Robinson to get young Robinson out of death row, and that Fancy would arrive on the eleven A.M. train today. I signed it ‘A Friend’.”

The girl stopped in her tracks. “Whatever did you do a thing like that for? Are you trying to get killed?”

“No. Trying to get framed,” Dan said cryptically.

Back in the waiting room, as the two plainclothesmen picked themselves up and began brushing themselves off, the sad-faced little man in the corner rose to his feet and unobtrusively left by the same door Dan and Adele had used. When he reached the group of taxi drivers, he surrendered his grip to one, nodded his head toward the retreating back of Dan Fancy, and said in a thin, reedy voice, “Five bucks if you keep the big fellow in sight without him catching on.”

“What’s the best hotel?” Dan asked. Adele Hudson as he helped her into the cab.

“The Lakeview, but its rates are tremendous. We’re in the middle of the tourist season, you know.”

“With a millionaire paying expenses, I should quibble?” he inquired. To the driver he said, “Lakeview Hotel.”

On the street Dan Fancy merely looked big, for his breadth was in proper proportion to his height except across the shoulders, and their width tended to make him seem shorter than he was. But in the close confines of a taxi his size was hard to conceal. He was hot built for taxis. His heavy shoulders spanned half the back seat, crowding the girl against the far window, where she sat like a toy doll, the top of her head barely even with Dan’s collarbone.

“Tell me about the town,” Dan said.

“Well—” the girl started uncertainly. “I’m not sure how much Mr. Robinson told you. If I knew that—”

“Nothing about the town, except it’s as crooked as a Scotch walking stick. Just that his son was in the death house on a fake murder rap and I’m supposed to get him out. Also that you’re the kid’s fiancée, so presumably are trustworthy, and can give me the whole story.”

“I see.” She paused, frowning over her thoughts, then asked, “What was that you said to those detectives about being a special investigator for the governor? Mr. Robinson’s wire said you were a private detective.”

“The old man had an afterthought subsequent to wiring you. Seems another private dick he sent down here was arrested for vagrancy, beat up and kicked out of town two hours after he arrived. The governor is a personal pal of old man Robinson, so he armed me with enough authority to hit back in case any local cops start swinging. Makes it tough for the locals to work a vagrancy charge. Get on with your story.”

“It’s a rather long story,” she said doubtfully, looking at the back of the taxi driver’s head and then giving Dan a warning glance.

“Even the walls have ears, eh?” he said amusedly. “Look, Adele, there’s nothing subtle about me. All I know how to do is wade in slugging with both hands. I’ve got no secrets from anybody, so talk up.”

She glanced again at the driver, then said reluctantly, “The town is about fifty thousand population and it’s ruled completely by Big Jim Calhoun. He owns a good part of it. Literally, I mean. Property deeds and mortgages. Not any of the better part, or much of the main business district, but most of the property over east of the tracks is his. Saloons, amusement places, gambling houses. That sort of thing. He also owns the mayor, the city council, the police commissioner, the sheriff — this is the county seat, you know — the district attorney, the coroner and both city judges.”

“How about newspapers?”

“There are two. The Star and the Post. Big Jim owns controlling interest in both, and since the Star owns our only local radio station, he controls that, too.”

“In short, he’s got the town sewed up tight,” Dan said. “How does he use all this power?”

“To suck the lifeblood out of Lake City,” Adele said savagely. “To protect his crooked gambling houses, to allow everything to run wide open. To peddle dope to school children, to extort money from merchants. And to kill anyone who gets in his way.”

“H’m-m—” Dan remarked. “This is all general knowledge?”

“Everybody in Lake City knows the town is rotten to the core and that Big Jim Calhoun makes it that way.”

Dan said thoughtfully, “You mentioned the population is fifty thousand. That’s a lot of people to take a kicking around. Just figuring the adult males, you’d have the equivalent of at least one full infantry division, if somebody organized them. How come no honest citizen has tried?”

“Gene Robinson tried,” the girl said dully. “And so did George Saunders, the man he was convicted of murdering. Others have tried and have ended up dead, or in the penitentiary on framed evidence. The civic leaders in the community are paralyzed with fear.”

The taxi pulled up before the marquee of a large white-stone hotel. Without getting out, the driver reached over the seat to unlatch the door. Helping the girl to the sidewalk, Dan opened the front door, swung his suitcase out and slammed the door again. Then the driver slipped- the car into low.

“Aren’t you going to wait for your fare?” Dan asked huskily.

Throwing him a startled glance, the cabbie wet his lips and mumbled, “One-fifty.”

Dan gave him the exact change. “Your tip is the fifty bucks you’ll get for phoning Big Jim our conversation.”

“Huh?” the driver said.

“Tell him your passenger was Dan Fancy and he may make it seventy-five.”

He picked up his suitcase and escorted Adele Hudson into the hotel.

“Why do you keep doing things like that?” she asked.

“Like what?”

“Sending Big Jim messages. Letting him know every move you make.”

Dan stopped and looked down at the girl. “Look,” he said gently. “Apparently both Mr. Robinson and you expected me to come down here and quietly nose around until I uncovered evidence that Gene Robinson is innocent. But in a setup like this there won’t be any evidence. And we’ve got just seventeen days to get the kid out of death row. Our only possible chance is to stir up Big Jim to the point where he sticks his neck out, and then try to step on it. I intend to start a war that will tear this town apart. Want to back out, or come along for the ride?”

The girl looked up at him with slightly frightened eyes. “I’ll come along,” she said in a small voice. “But you underestimate Big Jim. You don’t know him.”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

“Do you?” she asked in surprise.

“He was raised in Pittsburgh. As kids, we beat each other up and as teen-agers we worked in the same steel mill. Being a year and a half older than me, he could always lick me. I’m anxious to see if I’ve caught up to him yet.”

After registering, Dan said to the girl, “I’m going to catch a shower before I do anything else. Want to wait in the cocktail lounge or come up and wait?”

“I’ll come up,” she decided.

As they entered the elevator, the little sad-faced man carried his grip through the front door. From the desk he watched the elevator indicator until it stopped at five. Then he turned his attention to the clerk, noted he was copying data from a registration card into a ledger, and read the room number of the card upside down. It was 512.

“I’d like a room with bath facing the lake on the fifth floor,” he said. “I had five hundred and fourteen once before.”

The clerk consulted a chart. “Five-fourteen is occupied, and so are the two rooms either side of it.”

“How about five-ten?”

Superciliously, the clerk examined the little man’s shabby seersucker suit. “That’s vacant, sir, but it’s a suite.”

“I’ll take it,” the little man said.

As the bellhop, a slim, towheaded boy with a pug nose and a cocky grin, laid the big suitcase on its stand, Dan asked, “What’s your name?”

“Billie.”

Dan slipped him a five dollar bill. “When I ask for room service, I want you, Billie. Take care of me right and you may get an extra dime when I leave. You can start by getting a shaker of Tom Collinses up here in ten minutes.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Fancy.” The boy left the room with alacrity.

Tossing his coat on the bed, Dan followed it with his tie, shoulder holster, shirt and undershirt. Adele, seated on a chair near the window, watched him with startled, uneasy eyes. Happening to catch her expression, the big man grinned in amusement, then ignored her completely as he opened his bag and drew out some fresh clothing.

Stripped to the waist, Dan Fancy was a throwback to the Neanderthal man. From great shoulders like wedges of concrete to his fleshless waist, iron-hard muscle girded his frame. A light matting of black hair covered his chest and arms like a sweater, and his deceptively deliberate movements, which could not quite conceal a catlike grace, added to the impression that he was a primeval being who would be more at home in a cave than a modem hotel room.

From nowhere the absurd vision of Dan Fancy dragging her into a cave by the hair popped into Adele’s mind. Angrily she shook it out.

Ten minutes later there was a knock at the door. Adele rose to answer it, then hesitated as she remembered the byplay with the taxi driver. Suppose instead of room service, it was one of Big Jim’s badged killers?

Glancing at the bed, she saw with surprise Dan’s holster with its heavy forty-five was gone, and realized he had taken it into the bath with him. Apparently the big man was capable of caution in spite of his tendency to ask for trouble. Relieved, she opened the door.

“The Collinses, ma’am,” Billie said, carrying in a tray containing a shaker and two frosted glasses.

The bellboy had hardly departed when Dan Fancy came out of the bathroom fully dressed. Over cool Tom Collinses she told him the story of Gene Robinson’s conviction for murder.

“Gene was relatively new in Lake City, you know,” she said. “About two years ago he came to town, and I guess I must have been the first person he talked to. I’m the owner and proprietor of Del’s Beauty Salon, and he asked me for a job. I gave it to him. I suppose you knew he was a hairdresser?”

“Yeah,” Dan grunted. “One of the reasons he never got along with the old man. His father thought he was a sissy.”

“He isn’t!” Adele said hotly. “Lots of men are in the beauty business. It’s a perfectly honorable profession.”

“All right,” Dan said mildly.

For a moment the girl looked at him suspiciously, then went on with the story. “I knew, of course, that Gene was the son of Martin Robinson, the millionaire steel man, but I doubt that anyone else in town did. Gene was bitter about their break and never mentioned his father. Mr. Robinson disowned him, you know, when he refused to enter the steel business.”

“I know,” Dan said.

“Until the trial it never came out who Gene was, or I don’t think they would have tried to frame him. It’s one thing to push around citizens of a town you own, but quite another to pick on the son of a nationally known figure. I imagine Big Jim Calhoun had a few uneasy moments when those big-time defense lawyers from Pittsburgh began to arrive in town. I think probably they would simply have killed Gene and made it look like an accident, had they known who he really was.”

“The advantage of having a big-shot parent,” Dan said dryly. “You get killed instead of framed.”

“Of course as it turned out it didn’t matter anyway, because Gene refused to accept any help from his father and wouldn’t even talk to the lawyers he sent down. The court finally had to appoint a defense lawyer, and that ended Gene’s chances, for the lawyer he appointed was just another tool of Big Jim’s.”

“Tell me about the killing,” Dan said.

“It happened about a month ago. George Saunders, the man who was killed, was a tavern owner in the same block where I have my beauty salon. He was a fiery, soapbox type of man, and I never liked him particularly. I don’t believe Gene did either, but he worked with him on the citizens’ committee because he believed in what Mr. Saunders was doing.”

“What was the citizens’ committee?”

“It was something George Saunders got up. A sort of vigilante outfit composed of merchants who wanted to break Jim Calhoun’s power. It was supposed to be secret, but George Saunders was constitutionally incapable of keeping his mouth shut, and practically everyone in town knew he was the leader and Gene was second in command.”

Dan looked interested. “So the chief of the citizens’ committee gets killed, and his first lieutenant takes the rap for it? Convenient for Big Jim. What happened to the committee?”

“It collapsed,” Adele said bitterly. “All the fight went out of it and the members scampered for their holes like frightened rats.”

The big man said, with a strange air of tolerance, “Don’t be bitter at them, Adele. Even brave men sometimes rout without leadership. How was the frame worked?”

“With Big Jim’s usual efficiency,” Adele said in a weary voice. “At the trial a half dozen witnesses testified George Saunders made a practice of teasing Gene about being a hairdresser. That wasn’t true, incidently. The same witnesses testified the two had come to blows over it the day before the murder, and Gene threatened to kill George. A pawnbroker testified Gene bought the gun identified as the murder weapon. Five witnesses testified they were customers in Saunders’ saloon when Gene entered and fired five shots into Saunders’ body. The arresting officers, who happened to be the same two you met at the station, said they heard the shots, rushed into the tavern while Gene was still firing, and overpowered him. What could the jury do? They convicted him.”

“The kid have any defense?”

“None anyone would believe. I was off that day and Gene was responsible for closing the shop. He said he had just locked the front door when two masked men entered the back way, covered him with pistols and kept him there for three hours. About eight P.M., just as it began to get dark, they forced him out the back door and down the alley to the rear of Saunders’ tavern, where they all entered through the kitchen. The two masked men told him to walk straight ahead into the barroom, but they themselves stayed back in the kitchen out of sight, and presumably left again by the back door as soon as Gene obeyed them.

“Gene said several men were in the tavern, apparently awaiting him, and two of them were Lieutenant Morgan Hart and Sergeant Larry Bull. At the time George Saunders was lying dead behind the bar, but Gene didn’t know this. Lieutenant Hart thrust a gun at Gene by the barrel and said, ‘Here. Take this.’ When Gene refused, the lieutenant slapped him twice, so Gene took the gun. Then he was arrested for murder.”

Dan grinned. “Bet the prosecution had a circus with that.”

“It was terrible. Even the judge obviously thought it was a lie. When he summed up, he told the jury it was up to them to weigh the statements of eleven reputable citizens and two officers of the law against the unsupported testimony of the defendant.”

“Was the judge in on the frame?”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t think so. It was Judge Anderson of the circuit court. I think he comes out of Mayville. Big Jim’s power doesn’t reach up into the state courts.”

Dan rose and stretched. “Let’s go down and have lunch. Afterward you can go back to your shop, if you like, while I sit in my room and wait for Big Jim to make a move.”

Adele said hesitantly, “I’d like to stay with you, if I may.”

The big man shrugged indifferently. “All right, if you wish.”

Chapter Two

Death Row Stooge

As the elevator swallowed Dan and Adele, the door to suite 510 opened cautiously. The little man, wearing a fresh seersucker suit as worn as the first, stepped out in the hall with his suitcase in his hand. Quickly he approached room 512, for a moment fiddled at the lock with a piece of wire, pushed open the door and shut it behind himself again.

Rolling the bed away from the wall, he spread his handkerchief on the floor, removed a small brace and bit from his bag, and drilled a hole through the baseboard, allowing the sawdust to fall on his handkerchief. When he felt the bit break through on the other side, he carefully folded the handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

Then he pushed two wires attached to a small microphone through the hole, screwed the mike to the baseboard, rolled the bed back in place and repacked his bag. The whole operation took no more than fifteen minutes.

Dan and Adele had been back from lunch barely a half hour, and were desultorily smoking cigarettes when a knock came at the door. Adele, in her chair by the window, stopped her cigarette halfway to her lips and gave Dan a frightened look. Dan, flat on his back on the bed, came erect lazily and swung his feet over the side.

“Come in!” he called.

The man who opened the door was a giant, towering above Dan Fancy a good three inches and outweighing him thirty pounds. He was blond and chubby-faced and had the slightest suggestion of a paunch, but most of his weight consisted of muscle as solid as Dan’s. His pink face, with its upturned nose, was that of a cherub, but his small bright eyes spoiled the effect. They were the eyes of a hawk, and they glittered coldly when his lips smiled.

Dan gave him a lopsided grin. “Never stopped growing, did you, Jim? Thought I’d have passed you by now.”

“You’re a long way from Pittsburgh, Dan,” Big Jim Calhoun said quietly. He glanced at Adele, jerked his head toward the open door and said, “Outside, honey.”

The girl made no move.

“Better do like the man says, Adele,” Dan told her huskily.

Her face pale, Adele rose and walked to the door. There she paused and gave Dan an appealing look.

Fancy chuckled amusedly. “He won’t eat me, Adele. Wait in the hall.”

When the door had closed behind her, Big Jim Calhoun walked over to the bed and smiled without humor at the seated man.

Dan rested his right ankle on his left knee and leaned back on his elbows.

“You didn’t used to be so careless, Dan,” Big Jim said softly. “I could be all over you before you moved.”

Without taking his eyes from the other man’s, Dan shook his head. “If you move an inch closer, my heel will break your kneecap.”

Momentarily the giant’s eyes clouded. Then he stepped back and walked around the bed.

Effortlessly Dan came to his feet and turned to keep his face toward Big Jim.

“What do you want, Dan?” the giant abruptly asked.

“I want to get a kid named Gene Robinson out of death row over at the state pen.”

Big Jim said impatiently, “He’s a convicted murderer. He had a fair trial.”

Dan said carefully, “I don’t give a hoot in Hades about your rackets down here, Jim. All I’m interested in is the kid.” He paused and examined the other’s cherubic face estimatingly. “I’ll give you a choice, Jim. Throw the real killer to the wolves so the kid can go free, and I’ll leave you alone.”

“What’s the other half of the choice?”

“Fight me and I’ll bust your organization wide open.”

Big Jim shrugged with apparent indifference. “That’s a big order for one man. Even a guy with your reputation.” His tone turned sardonic. “How many crooks have you killed now? Five or six? It’s been in the papers, but I lost count.”

“Let’s stick to the subject,” Dan suggested.

Big Jim’s smile widened without affecting the coldness of his eyes a single degree. “You don’t worry me a bit, Dan. The only reason I dropped in is for old time’s sake. To pass a friendly warning. Be out of town by six tonight.”

“Or?” Dan asked.

“Or you get the works. You can’t buck me, Dan. Not here, you can’t. I own this town, lock, stock and barrel. I can get away with anything. I could kill you right now, and the cover-up would be so complete, I’d never be touched.”

Dan’s lopsided grin grew in dimension. “Wrong, Jim. Passing over the certainty that you’d have a hole in your head before you got your gun out, you couldn’t afford to bump me off. You may be the big frog in your own little puddle, but you’re not big enough to cover the murder of a special investigator for the governor. You’re worried silly, or you wouldn’t be here. Get smart and make it easy for both of us by turning in Saunders’ real killer.”

Big Jim shook his head. “Sorry, Dan. No chance.” He studied the big man and said in a tentative voice, “Don’t suppose it would be worth-while to offer you money?”

“You got a million dollars?”

Big Jim’s grin was a trifle crooked. “Same price as always, eh? I remember when we were kids you used to say you wouldn’t be crooked for less than a million dollars. That’s why you’re still working for peanuts, and I own a city.”

“Only till today, Jim. Tomorrow you lose the city, but I’ll still have my peanuts. I’ve got a little paper signed by the governor, Jim. Tomorrow morning early I’ll be at the courthouse. I’m confiscating all city and county records.”

The giant chuckled. “You’ll run into a battery of lawyers and a squad of cops.”

“They’ll be dead lawyers and dead cops if they get in my way. My paper authorizes me to call on militia.”

Jim’s smile faded. “The governor wouldn’t go that far. You can’t invade an incorporated community with militia against the consent of the local authorities.”

“Read your state constitution. In the public interest the governor can order militia anywhere in the state where local authority has broken down or is incompetent. The governor seems to think yours is incompetent.”

“He wouldn’t dare!”

Dan laughed aloud. “He dared to sign the paper, Jim. And I’ll damn well dare to use it.”

“Let’s see the paper.”

Dan shook his head. “Phone the governor if you want verification. I like my hands free when we’re in the same room.”

Big Jim’s bright eyes became narrow. “Then I guess it’s war, Dan. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He rounded the bed and held out a hand the size of a pancake griddle. “No hard feelings, though, no matter how it comes out.”

“Of course not, Jim.”

Dan stuck a hand only slightly smaller into that of Big Jim. A slight smile touched the giant’s lips as he suddenly jerked Dan toward him and started a vicious left cross.

The blow never landed. Expecting the maneuver, Dan added his own impetus to Big Jim’s powerful pull, and smashed his left elbow into the other’s jaw. Big Jim reeled backward, recovered his balance and surged forward again.

At the same moment the door behind Dan opened. With a catlike shift, he sidestepped the giant’s rush and half turned to meet the new adversary. That was as far as he got when a sap caught him behind the ear.

He managed the rest of the turn with a great ringing in his ears. Through the wrong end of a telescope he saw thin-faced Lieutenant Hart in the room. Then the contorted face of Big Jim Calhoun appeared before him and a huge fist started toward his jaw.

His mind willed a left-hand parry, but his arm refused to obey the command.

Dan awakened with his head in a lap and with soft arms around his neck. He looked up blearily at Adele Hudson’s face just as a drop of warm salt water landed on his nose.

“What are you crying about?” he asked thickly. “I’m the one who got belted.”

Her arms tightened convulsively. “Oh, Dan! I thought you were dead.”

The big man disengaged her arms and rose to his feet. She too rose from her seated position on the floor.

“You’re a nice kid, Adele,” he said gently.

Her face flaming, she turned abruptly and walked to the window.

Gingerly he fingered the lump behind his ear, then prodded one finger along the base of his jaw. “What happened to my guest?”

With her back still to him, she said, “Big Jim? He and that lieutenant he owns left right after they knocked you out. Big Jim had a paper in his hand and seemed pleased about something.”

Quickly Dan’s hand darted to his inside coat pocket and came out empty. “Now he knows what a liar I am,” he said ruefully. “That paper was signed by the governor, but all it said was that I was authorized to reinvestigate the circumstances of George Saunders’ death, and requested the local police to cooperate.”

The girl turned to face him. “What are you going to do now?”

The big man ignored her question. He was thoughtfully regarding the baseboard near his bed, against which he had apparently fallen when slugged by Big Jim, for the bed was pushed to one side. Dropping to his hands and knees, he studied the small microphone curiously. Then, placing his lips close to it, he suddenly emitted an ear-splitting shriek.

Through the wall to the room next door, they could distinctly hear a startled curse.

Grinning, Dan moved the bed back in place while the girl regarded him open-mouthed. “Just mark it up that I’m crazy,” he said. “Got a car?”

She shook her head.

“Then we’ll rent one. It’s twenty miles to the state prison, and I want to visit Gene Robinson.”

Crossing to the phone, he called the state capitol and arranged for permission to visit the prisoner in death row. The assistant state’s attorney said he would phone the warden immediately, so that Dan and Adele would be expected when they arrived.

The red tape disposed of, they walked three blocks to the nearest car rental, where Dan managed to obtain a 1948 Buick that seemed to be in excellent condition.

As they pulled away from the garage, Dan said casually, “Don’t look around, but we’re being followed.”

Adele caught her breath. In spite of the warning, she half turned, but settled front again when the big man frowned at her.

“Big Jim?” she asked.

“Not personally. Probably a stooge. A short, heavy-set man in a plaid suit. Bald-headed. Looks like a salesman. I thought I noticed him watching us when we crossed the hotel lobby. He rented a Lincoln and pulled out right behind us.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing,” Dan said. “Let him follow.”

During the twenty mile trip to the state prison, Dan made no attempt to shake the Lincoln, but kept his car at an even fifty-five most of the way, and dropping to forty over the short stretch of mountain road marking the halfway point. In the rearview mirror he could see the other car maintained an even hundred yard interval. But when they stopped before the prison gates, the Lincoln rolled on past without slackening speed. Seconds later a battered sedan driven by a little man in a worn seersucker suit flashed by in the wake of the Lincoln.

As the assistant state’s attorney had promised, the warden was expecting them. Greeting them courteously, he turned them over to the assistant warden, who in turn left them with the chief guard in that section of the prison containing the death house. Here Dan was relieved of his gun before he and Adele were led hack to the somber death row.

The long corridor leading to the execution chamber contained four cells, but only one was occupied. Gene Robinson lay on a hunk reading the Saturday Review of Literature, while immediately outside his cell a yawning suicide guard sat on a straight-backed chair trying to keep awake.

Robinson was a slim, graceful man with even, almost pretty features and a pencilline mustache. He had the longest eyelashes Dan Fancy had ever seen on a man.

When he saw Adele, he smiled a dazzling white smile, rose from his bunk and said, “Hello, dear. It was good of you to come.”

Like welcoming her to a tea, Fancy thought. He waited while Adele offered a dutiful kiss through the bars, and frowned slightly when the condemned man accepted the offer with a reserved reluctance indicating he considered it not quite in good taste to demonstrate affection in front of strangers.

Gene Robinson was a curious man. He seemed not in the slightest degree worried, and his manners were impeccably correct.

“My name is Dan Fancy,” the big man rumbled. “I’m a private investigator, and I’ve been engaged to get you out of this spot.”

Robinson raised one eyebrow. “By whom, please?”

“Your father.”

The young man’s teeth continued to glitter, but the welcome was gone from his smile. “I don’t accept help from my father, Mr. Fancy. I’m afraid I can’t use you.”

Dan moved one big hand impatiently. “Your old man told me all about that. He doesn’t expect any thanks.”

“Then he didn’t tell you enough. I’m sorry you’ve been troubled, Mr. Fancy, but you’re wasting your time.”

Turning his attention back to Adele, Robinson ignored the big man. For a moment Dan watched him broodingly.

“Your old man told me enough,” he said finally. “You’ve been a poet by profession, and before that you were an artist, and before that a musical composer. Only you never made a dime at any of those professions, so you took up hairdressing as a sort of substitute art. You like to associate with people who work with their minds.

“You never had any respect for your old man because the money he educated you in Europe on was made in the disgusting business of manufacturing steel. You never let him forget he started out as a day laborer. He was a peasant and you were an aristocrat. Finally when your snobbery got too far under his skin, he kicked you out. When he got over his mad, he asked you back again, with you writing the ticket. But aristocrats don’t accept largess from peasants.”

The big man paused, then went on huskily, “You’re living in a dream world, kid. Aristocrats are mortal, just like people. In seventeen days they’ll strap you in the electric chair. You’ve got your old man crazy enough now with your martyr act. Come awake and start cooperating. I want some questions answered.”

“I’m afraid I don’t like you, Mr. Fancy,” Robinson said frigidly. “Please inform my father I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.”

“Sure you are. Want to bet when they strap you in the chair, you won’t break wide open and start screaming for your father? But then it’ll be too late.”

“Guard!” the condemned man said crisply. “Please take Mr. Fancy away. I don’t wish to talk to him.”

Without waiting for the guard’s reaction, Dan turned and strode toward the barred and locked door of the cell block. As he walked away, he heard Adele say, “Please, Gene. Don’t make things so difficult. All that Mr. Fancy is trying to do is help.”

During the first mile of the ride back the girl was so quiet, Dan realized she was making an effort not to cry.

Finally he said irritably, “The guy is a psycho, you know.”

Startled, she glanced sidewise at him.

“Delusions of grandeur,” Dan said. “Nothing can touch him. A miracle will happen to get him out of his jam at the last minute, and then he won’t owe his dad a thing.” He glowered at the road ahead. “He doesn’t know it, but the miracle is that his old man even bothered to try to help him. I’d let him fry.”

“Don’t say that!” Adele said passionately. “Gene is a fine man. He’s just too proud and stubborn for his own good.”

Dan glanced at her curiously. “How’d he happen to condescend to become engaged to you? You read all the correct books?”

A slow blush diffused her face. “I thought you were so particular about taking advantage of a man in death row.”

“Sorry,” he said tersely, and lapsed into silence.

A mile farther on he remarked, “Our shadow is with us again.”

The girl tensed, but did not look around. “The same man?”

Dan nodded. “Don’t worry about it. Apparently all he wants is to see where we go.”

But when they reached the short stretch of mountain road Dan began to wonder if the Lincoln was solely interested in tailing them, for in the rear-view mirror he could see the gap between the two cars was slowly being closed. When it had decreased from a hundred yards to a hundred feet, he glanced reflectively at the guard rails flashing by at their right, thin wooden rails which in places edged a sheer hundred foot drop.

The next curve, Dan remembered, formed a narrow horseshoe and the bank fell away nearly vertically over a deep chasm. His lips thinned as the Lincoln edged nearer and suddenly started to pass just short of the curve.

Aside from his tightened mouth the big man gave no indication that he even noticed the other car until it came fully abreast. Then suddenly he slammed on the brakes.

The Lincoln cut in viciously at the same moment, nearly touching the rail a mere car length ahead of the point where the Buick slid to a screeching halt. Careening around the curve, it disappeared in a burst of power.

“He tried to kill us!” Adele gasped, pushing herself back in her seat.

“He would have,” Dan said grimly, “if I hadn’t braked a split second ahead of his swing.”

Shifting into low, he lifted the speed to forty again, but made no attempt to catch the Lincoln.

It was just before five when Dan dropped Adele in front of her beauty shop. Returning the car to its rental garage, he walked moodily back to his hotel, not even bothering to ask the garage attendant for the name of the renter of the Lincoln. In front of the hotel his moodiness increased when he discovered the thin, sharp-nosed man who had been staring vacantly into a dry-cleaning window next door to the garage when he returned the car, was now staring just as vacantly into a jewelry window fifteen feet from the hotel entrance.

Momentarily he toyed with the idea of pitching the shadow into the gutter by the seat of the pants, but decided against it. Just the thought, however, somewhat relieved his feelings.

As he crossed the lobby, Dan saw Billie, the bellhop, standing near the front desk, and crooked a finger at the boy. Billie scampered over like an eager dog, a wide grin splitting his features.

“Yes sir, Mr. Fancy?”

“What does the hotel do with old newspapers, Billie? Sell them to a junkman?”

The boy looked puzzled. “Yes sir. I believe so.”

“Probably stores them somewhere in the basement until they get a big enough pile to sell, eh?”

“I guess so, sir. Did you want a particular back issue?”

“Thirty of them,” Dan said. “See if you can find me every issue for the past month. Either local paper. I’ll be in my room.”

It did not take Billie long. Within twenty minutes he delivered a thick stack of the Lake City Star. Piling them on the floor in front of the window chair, the big man went through them unhurriedly, reading every item he found on the killing of George Saunders and the subsequent trial and conviction of Eugene Robinson.

It was nearly seven when he finished the pile, and the only new information he had gained was the names of the witnesses who had testified against Robinson. Picking up the phone, he ordered dinner sent up to his room, and while waiting for it, methodically went through the phone book and listed on a sheet of paper the phone numbers of all those witnesses he found listed. All, peculiarly enough, were men. Of the five who had testified to bad blood between the deceased and the defendant, three were listed in the book. Of the six who were actual witnesses to the shooting according to their testimony, four possessed phones. The pawnbroker who had testified to Gene Robinson’s purchase of the murder gun had a business phone, but none listed for a residence.

Dinner arrived and the big man wolfed it hurriedly, eager to get on with his work. As soon as he finished gulping the last of his coffee, he pushed the dining cart aside, lit a cigarette and seated himself on the bed by the telephone.

The first number he called was that of a man named Adolph Striker, one of the witnesses to the alleged teasing of Robinson by the murdered man. A woman answered the phone, peremptorily announced that Mr. Striker was “on vacation” and could not be reached for two months. She hung up before Dan could ask any questions.

In chronological order he went down the list, and every number got him a variation of the first reaction. Some of the men had moved and left no forwarding addresses, some were “out of town for a while,” and the informants had no idea how they could be reached. Some simply bluntly denied ever hearing of the person asked for.

The operator answered when he called the last number on the list — that of the pawnbroker.

“That number has been disconnected, sir,” she told him.

Slowly the big man crumpled to a ball the list of names he had made and dropped the ball in a wastebasket. For a long time he sat in the windowside chair, his feet cocked on the sill and his hands locked behind his head. He smoked two cigarettes, arced the butts out the window, and stared glumly at nothing.

Suddenly a startled expression crossed his face, lingered and developed into a pleased grin. Rising to his feet, he thumbed the phone book once more until he came to the name: Bull, Lawrence. He copied the address on a card which he put in his wallet. Then whistling noiselessly, he left the hotel and hailed a passing cab.

“Seventeen-eleven Fairview Avenue,” he said loudly for the benefit of the thin, sharp-nosed man who had trailed him out of the hotel lobby and now stood idly in the entrance.

As he expected, a second taxi pulled out from the curb a few moments after his.

1711 Fairview Avenue was a white frame house in one of the nicer sections of town. A stupid looking but pretty blonde in a tight-fitting red dress answered Dan’s ring.

“Looking for Sergeant Larry Bull,” the big man said.

The woman’s expression as she examined his huge frame was that of a cattle buyer judging a steer, and a flicker of animal interest appeared in her eyes.

“Come in,” she said, stretching the “in” to an open invitation.

She led him through a hallway into an elaborately furnished living room where the police sergeant sat watching television. Dan estimated that the furnishings of the living room would have cost two years of an honest policeman’s salary.

When Sergeant Bull looked up at his visitor, his eyes hardened. Rising, he cut the television switch and said to the blonde in a flat voice, “Scram.”

The woman’s mouth turned sullen and her eyes flicked sidewise once more at Dan, but she turned obediently and left the room, slamming the door behind her.

“Well?” Bull asked.

“Just remembered where I saw your picture,” Dan said easily. “Armed robbery and murder in St. Louis about nineteen forty-six. Can’t remember the name, but it wasn’t Bull.”

Chapter Three

Hide-and-Seek with Death

Sergeant Larry Bull’s flat face turned the color of paper, but his eyes remained expressionless and hard. For a long time his gaze remained unwaveringly fixed on the big man’s grin.

“What do you want?” he asked finally.

“Nothing,” Dan said. “Absolutely nothing. I’m not going to turn you in. Just wanted you to know I recognized you.”

“Why?” Bull asked flatly, but the big man only grinned at him.

Puzzlement and wariness mixed with the fear in the sergeant’s face. “You know you’re giving me a damn good reason to knock you off. You’re not that dumb, Fancy. What’s the angle?”

“No angle. Does Big Jim know you’re wanted for murder in Missouri?”

Bull licked his lips. “No.”

“Want him to?”

“No.” The man watched Dan’s face, a waiting expression on his own.

“Might give him a toe hold on you, eh?” Dan asked. “You don’t mind working for Jim Calhoun, but you wouldn’t want to be in a spot where you couldn’t quit, would you?”

“What do you want?” Bull demanded.

The big man simulated surprise. “Nothing, I told you. Nothing at all. I’m not going to inform the Missouri cops, and I’m not going to tell Big Jim. You can depend on it.”

“You must want something,” the sergeant insisted worriedly. “If you’re working up a deal where you expect me to cross Big Jim, forget it. I’d rather face Missouri.”

Dan shook his head and grinned hugely. “You’re an untrusting soul, Sergeant.” Opening the door by reaching behind himself and turning the knob, he backed out of the room.

He was still grinning when he pushed the door shut again.

Back at the hotel the big man put in a long-distance call to Martin Robinson.

“Fancy!” the old man said sharply. “I’ve been going crazy waiting to hear from you. Have you seen Gene?”

“Yes,” Dan said shortly. “He’s bearing up. Think I have a lead.”

“Yes?” The old man’s voice was eager.

“For five thousand bucks and a guarantee of immunity one of the arresting officers will repudiate his original story and sign a full confession to the whole frame.”

“Five thousand?” Martin Robinson’s tone made it sound like five cents. “Well, for goodness sakes, Fancy, promise it to him. I’ll wire it imniediately.”

“Good. I’m in room five-twelve of the Lake view Hotel.”

He hung up before the old man could ask any questions.

The short, burly man with the bald head rapped quietly on the bar at the Downtown Athletic Club, bringing the bartender from his dreams of a chicken farm.

“Hello, Stub,” the barman said.

“Big Jim in?” The burly man’s voice was as soft as his manner. Everything about him was soft, except his eyes, which could have chipped sparks from a piece of flint.

“Yeah. He’s expecting you. Go on up.”

Stub approached a door at the side of the bar and waited. The bartender’s foot touched a concealed button, a low buzz sounded, and Stub pushed open the door. He followed a narrow hallway to the open door of a self-service elevator, pushed the button marked 2 and rose silently to the second floor. When the elevator door slid back, another steel-grilled door barred his exit from the car.

Facing him from behind a desk across the room sat Big Jim Calhoun.

“It’s Stub, Mr. Calhoun,” the baldheaded man called.

Another buzz sounded. Stub pushed open the steel door and let it swing shut behind him. His eyes flicked briefly at Lieutenant Morgan Hart, who sat with his back against one wall, then returned to Big Jim.

“I kept Fancy in sight all day,” Stub reported in his soft voice. “Gyp Fleming relieved me at five.”

“You didn’t make a special trip over here, just for that?” the blond giant asked.

“No.” The burly man glanced at Lieutenant Hart. “He rented a car and drove up to the prison to visit Gene Robinson. He took Adele Hudson along with him. Following your orders to take advantage of any situation where it would look like an... ah... accident, I cut him off on the mountain road so short it should have pushed him over a hundred-foot bank. He was expecting it and he crossed me up.”

“You still haven’t said anything that couldn’t have waited till tomorrow,” Big Jim said irritably.

“No,” Stub agreed. “It’s coming now. I left word for Gyp to phone me if anything special developed, and he just phoned me at home.” His eyes again flicked at Lieutenant Hart, then moved back to Big Jim. “I want to report this privately.”

A frown disturbed the cherubic blandness of Big Jim’s expression. “You can talk in front of Morg. You know that.”

“Yes, sir. Generally. I’d prefer to report this privately.”

Big Jim’s eyes narrowed and swung to Morgan Hart. The homicide officer rose with a mixture of puzzlement and suspicion tingeing his expression.

“What you getting at, Stub?” he asked belligerently.

“Speak up,” Big Jim commanded, his voice nearly as soft as Stub’s. “If Morg doesn’t like it, he can learn to.”

The baldheaded man shrugged. “I’ll give you the full report in order, including what we got from the phone tap. About a half hour after you left his room, Fancy put in a call to the state justice department and arranged to see Gene Robinson at the prison. Like I told you, he rented a car and took the girl with him. They were at the prison about forty-five minutes. When they got back to town, he dropped off the girl, returned the car and went back to the hotel. That’s when I dropped out and Gyp Fleming took over.

“Fancy had a bellhop find him a month’s back issues of the Star, and stayed in his room with them about an hour and a half. At seven he had dinner sent up. At seven-fifteen he started making phone calls. He made eight, and these are the numbers.” He laid a half-sheet of paper on Big Jim’s desk. “From the names he asked for whenever he got an answer, I guess he was calling all the witnesses in the Robinson trial.” Stub smiled briefly. “He didn’t have any luck.”

“He wouldn’t,” Big Jim said without interest.

“About eight he left the room and grabbed a cab to Larry Bull’s house. He was inside about fifteen minutes. Then he returned to the hotel and phoned Martin Robinson in Pittsburgh.”

Stub paused and for the third time his eyes moved to Lieutenant Morgan Hart. “This is where I wanted it to be private. Bull is a pal of the lieutenant’s.”

Hart’s eyes narrowed to slits. “What about Larry?”

“Go on,” Big Jim ordered.

The baldheaded man shrugged. “Fancy told Robinson he had a lead. He said one of the arresting officers in the Saunders murder was willing to repudiate his testimony for a guarantee of immunity and five thousand bucks. Robinson promised to wire the money.”

“I don’t believe it,” Morgan Hart said flatly.

Stub raised brows over eyes as hard as steel knives. “You mean I made it up?” he asked softly.

The homicide officer took a step toward the bald man, both of his fists clenched.

“Cut it!” Big Jim said. His eyes moved with displeasure from one to the other of his men. “Get Bull over here,” he ordered Morgan Hart. “Don’t tell him why. Just get him here.”

Without a word the lieutenant strode into the elevator. The steel door clanged and the elevator door slid shut.

“Think that’s wise?” Stub asked. “Sending Hart, I mean.”

Big Jim glared at him irritably. “Morgan would kill his mother if I told him to. And when I need punks to advise me, I’ll let you know. Sit down and shut up.”

The bald man blinked rapidly and a film settled over his eyes. He took the chair Morgan Hart had deserted and sat looking straight ahead. Big Jim opened a ledger and began adding figures.

Twenty minutes later Morgan Hart returned with Sergeant Larry Bull. He left the sergeant standing in front of Big Jim’s desk, and retired to a corner himself. Bull’s flat face wore a faintly worried expression.

“Dan Fancy called on you tonight,” Big Jim said without preamble. “What did he want?”

The sergeant flushed. “I don’t know. He just asked some silly questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like — I don’t know. I don’t remember exactly.”

“You mean you don’t want to remember?” Big Jim asked softly.

The sergeant looked alarmed. “No, sir. It wasn’t anything important. Nothing about the Saunders murder.”

Big Jim’s cherubic face became even more cherubic. “Now why would you mention the Saunders murder if he didn’t talk about it?”

Bull’s alarm visibly increased. “That’s why he’s down here, isn’t it? I mean, I thought it was funny he didn’t mention it.”

Big Jim nodded agreement. “Very funny. My sides practically ache.” He dropped his eyes to the ledger again. “That’s all I wanted, Bull,” he said quietly. “Go on home.”

An expression of incredulous relief flooded the sergeant’s flat face. “Sure, boss,” he said hurriedly, backing into the elevator.

When the elevator door had closed, Big Jim looked up at the two remaining men. “Arrange it as soon as you possibly can,” he said casually. “Dan Fancy will be the sucker, of course. And make it fool-proof. We’ll probably have the best defense lawyers in the country defending Fancy, and I want it so tight nothing can upset the apple-cart.”

Dan rose at eight, had breakfast in his room, and phoned Adele Hudson about nine. She was cool over the phone, apparently having not entirely forgiven him for his frank comments about her fiancé, but she agreed to have lunch with him. He arranged to meet her in the hotel cocktail lounge at eleven.

Over a Manhattan her coolness melted a trifle, particularly after Dan made a point of apologizing for his frankness. It was a somewhat oblique apology, however.

“I shouldn’t have sounded off the way I did about young Robinson,” he said. “It’s none of my business whether the guy you love has all of his marbles or not.”

“You just don’t understand Gene,” she told him. “You’re like his father. Gene has the soul of a poet.”

Fancy grunted and changed the subject, not trusting himself to comment on Gene Robinson’s poetic soul without starting the argument all over again.

“The witnesses at the trial have all been pulled into cover,” he said. “There isn’t a chance in the world of breaking open the Saunders killing again, so I’m trying something else.”

“What?”

“You’ll be better off not knowing. But the wheels are in motion. At least I think they are. I’m banking on Big Jim’s having had my phone tapped. If he did, I expect to be neck deep in trouble by tomorrow at the latest. And I want to be left in it. Don’t try to help me out by hiring lawyers or any such thing. Just sit tight and watch.”

She frowned puzzledly. “Why, Dan? I’m not afraid. You said I could go along for the ride.”

“The ride just ended. From here on all you could do is foul things up. Be a nice girl and stay away from me awhile, eh?”

“If that’s what you want,” she said slowly. “Is that all you asked me here for?”

“Not entirely. I was bored. There isn’t a thing I can do until Big Jim makes the next move, and I figured I might as well kill time with a beautiful girl as on my back in a hotel room.”

She made a face at him, but her facial muscles got out of control and reduced if to a grin.

From the cocktail lounge they moved into the dining room for lunch, where by tacit consent they kept conversation away from both Big Jim Calhoun and Gene Robinson. At twelve forty-five she left him to return to her beauty shop.

“Good luck, Dan,” she said softly, putting her small hand in his enormous one.

He grinned down at her. “Thanks. But I’m banking on a little more than just luck.”

As he recrossed the lobby after escorting Adele to the street and putting her into a taxi, he was stopped by Billie, the bellhop.

“There’s two plainclothes cops waiting in your room, Mr. Fancy,” the boy whispered.

“Thanks, kid.”

As he neared the door of 512, Dan began whistling. Making an unnecessary amount of noise when he inserted the key in his lock, he pushed open the door and stepped in. His eyes widened in simulated surprise when he saw the two men in the room.

Lieutenant Morgan Hart sat in the chair by the window with a snub-nosed thirty-eight leveled at Dan’s stomach. The thin, sharp-nosed man who had tailed Dan to Larry Bull’s house leaned negligently against the wall with both hands in his pockets.

“Drop your gun gentle, Fancy,” Lieutenant Hart said quietly.

“Sure,” Dan said.

Carefully he drew the weapon from under his arm, using only an index finger and thumb. With exaggerated daintiness he laid it on the carpet.

“This an arrest, or just a killing?” he asked.

“An arrest. But we’d be glad to make it a killing, if you want to resist.”

“No thanks. What’s the charge?”

“Homicide.”

“Anyone I know?”

The thin lieutenant scowled at him. Rising, he dropped his Panama hat over his gun and urged the big man out of the room. At the doorway he stooped and pocketed Dan’s .45 automatic. The hat-covered gun never varied from its bearing on the big man’s nose as the trio rode down the elevator, crossed the lobby and entered a squad car at the curb. The skinny, sharp-nosed man drove, while Lieutenant Hart sat in the back with Dan.

“You don’t really need that gun,” Dan remarked. “I wouldn’t make a break because I’m curious to find out your intentions.”

The lieutenant said nothing, but he did not put away the gun. The grim manner in which he continued to eye Dan caused a tremor of uneasiness to run through the big man, for Morgan Hart’s expression resembled nothing so much as that of a hired killer about to practise his profession. Fleetingly Dan wondered if perhaps he had mis-estimated Big Jim, and instead of being framed he was simply going to be murdered.

Then he decided that Big Jim would be guilty of nothing so crude, and settled back to await developments.

They were not long in coming. Swiftly the car drove toward the center of town. Near the hub of the shopping district it slowed to cruising speed and drifted with the traffic. Repeatedly the sharp-nosed driver glanced in the rear-view mirror, apparently awaiting some sign from the lieutenant. Finally, in the center of a block in which traffic whizzed in both directions and the sidewalks were crammed with pedestrians, Morgan Hart gave a slight nod.

Immediately the driver slammed on his brakes, and almost before the car stopped moving he had flung open the right-hand door and thrown himself to the sidewalk amidst startled pedestrians. Standing in a crouch, he drew a gun and fired over the top of the car.

Simultaneously Lieutenant Hart flung himself out of the back door and winged a bullet into the upholstery immediately beneath Dan.

Grasping the door handle on his own side, Dan threw his shoulder against the door and sprawled headlong into the street. Two more shots crashed, one nicking the asphalt on either side of the car.

Traffic from both directions screamed to a halt, leaving a wide path between Dan and the mouth of an alley across the street. Like a harbor of safety the alley beckoned, but to reach it Dan would have to traverse a wide street while two men with pistols potted at his back. Even as he hit the street on all fours, his mind was racing, and he found time to be amazed at Big Jim’s audacity. Picking the center of town with a hundred witnesses to stage a killed-while-escaping act was a stroke of genius, for even the governor would be impotent in the face of the testimony of so many disinterested witnesses.

That he would never make the mouth of the alley across the street was a certainty. With split-second decision he bounced erect, slammed shut the car door through which he had just tumbled, jerked open the driver’s door and slid under the wheel.

Racing around either side of the car toward the point they expected to find Dan, and not expecting the maneuver, the two detectives were caught off balance. The motor was still running, and when Dan threw the car into low and gunned it, Morgan Hart was behind the car and the thin-nosed man was in front of it. The latter leaped backward in terror as the hood shot toward him, stumbled over the curb and fell flat. Then Dan was racing through a red light and was cut off from possible fire by the stream of traffic which immediately began to flow in the cross-street behind him.

Dan estimated he had at least five minutes before Lieutenant Hart could get a general alarm on the air, and he resolved to make the most of each minute. The shipping dock area along the lake front would be his best bet, he decided, for there he could probably find a cheap hotel which made a point of not asking its guests questions. Opening the siren wide, he headed in the general direction of the dock area at seventy-five miles an hour. At the same time he switched on the radio so that he would know the exact moment his squad car ceased to be a haven and became a target.

His guess was optimistic by two minutes. He had roared a little over three miles across town and was passing through what seemed to be a second-class residential district when the radio suddenly intoned: “Calling all cars. Calling all cars. Be on lookout for squad car number two seventy-six. Repeat car two seventy-six. Last seen at Fourth and Locust heading at high speed toward lake front. This car has been stolen by Daniel Fancy, who is wanted for murder. Fancy may have abandoned car and may now be on foot. He is six feet four inches, two hundred and seventy pounds, suntanned, has blue eyes and iron-gray hair. He is wearing a gray suit and no hat. This man is a cop-killer and may be armed. Take no chances with him.”

That fixed him but good, Dan thought. Labeling him a cop-killer. Every cop in town, even the honest ones, if any, would now shoot first and call “halt” after Dan dropped. He cut his siren, slowed to a crawl and began looking for a parking place, so that he could proceed more inconspicuously on foot.

A quarter-block later he found it, a lone vacancy in front of a neighborhood tavern. Pulling alongside the car in front of the vacancy, he started to back in.

The rear end of his squad car was halfway in when another police car drifted from the side street immediately in front of him, crossed the intersection and stopped with a jerk. As it slammed into reverse, Dan gunned out of his parking place, whipped into a U-turn which made his tires scream in agony, and headed back the way he had come with the accelerator to the floor.

At the first corner he swung left at fifty-five miles an hour. A block farther on he made a dirt-track left turn by skidding around the corner sidewise at sixty. He was two blocks ahead and his speedometer needle wavered at eighty by the time the pursuing car rounded the second turn. When he reached ninety-two, his heart leaping to his throat every time a side street flashed by, he had increased his lead to three blocks.

But by then the radio was chattering his location and sirens began to whine from all directions. Ahead he caught a flashing glimpse of the sun reflected on water, gritted his teeth and roared on. What he would do, or could do, when he reached the lake was something he had to decide within seconds.

Off to his left the screech of a siren grew to a, crescendo. He caught a glimpse of a gray squad car flashing at him from a side street, its tires screaming as the horrified driver locked brakes to prevent crashing head-on into Dan’s side. There was a sharp metallic click as a hub cap scraped his rear bumper, and in the rear-view mirror he could see the police car stalled diagonally across the street. A moment later another set of brakes squealed as the car which had originally given chase came to a frustrated stop, its way blocked by the stalled vehicle.

Dan realized his respite would amount only to seconds, however. He also realized the chase was nearly over, for a bare two blocks ahead he could make out the shipping dock, and there was nowhere left for him to go except into the lake. The distance shrank to a block before he made his decision.

Without slackening speed he flashed onto the wooden dock, slammed on his brakes fifty feet from its edge and skidded the rest of the way.

Considering he was driving an unfamiliar car, his timing was perfect. The squad car came almost to a full stop, maintaining just enough momentum to slide off the end of the pier in slow motion, loiter in the air for a fraction of a second and then drop vertically. During that fraction of a second Dan managed to shoulder open the door, part company with the squad car and enter the water in a shallow dive.

The car disappeared with an enormous splash. Underwater, Dan allowed himself to shoot forward until the force of his dive was nearly spent, then twisted and with two powerful underwater strokes was under the dock. He continued swimming underwater until his lungs would no longer sustain him, then broke to the surface and held on to a piling while he gulped deep lungsfull of air.

He found he was some twenty feet back under the dock. There was barely two-foot clearance between the underside of the dock and the water, he was gratified to discover. It would be impossible to get a boat underneath. Leisurely, he swam deeper under the pier until his feet touched bottom.

He could not have found a better hiding place had he deliberately hunted for one, he realized. He estimated that the dock was a hundred feet deep and possibly a block long. Even a dozen swimmers would have difficulty finding him, for the place was in perpetual dusk and there were literally hundreds of pilings to play hide-and-seek behind.

Apparently the police decided the same thing, for a few minutes later several boats crowded to the edge of the dock and powerful lights were beamed under it. But they contented themselves with peering from the boat and no swimmers ventured back to seek for him. Dan merely stood quietly behind a piling until the police gave up and went away.

Walking back into shallower water, he soon found his chest and shoulders above the surface, but his head scraping the underside of the dock. Sinking to a crouch, he continued back until he was able to sit on the hard sand bottom with his head and shoulders above water. He was not uncomfortable, for while the water was cool, it was clear lake water and probably clean enough to drink. However, he realized he might have to stay under the pier until dark, which was at least six hours off, and he would certainly grow uncomfortable if he had to stay immersed.

It occurred to him that if he crawled back far enough he might find a strip of dry sand where the pier joined the shore. Investigating, he did find sand, though it could hardly be called dry. Lying sidewise, he was able to wedge himself almost entirely out of the water, so that it merely lapped against one arm and shoulder. He lay there until dark, and though he became cramped and chilled through, he was not nearly as uncomfortable as he would have been if he had been forced to remain seated in water for six hours.

At dark he swam to the edge of the pier a half block from the point where the squad car had sunk, listened five minutes for any sign of police patrol, then cautiously drew himself out of the water. Ten minutes later he was wringing out his wet clothes in a deserted warehouse. When he redressed he looked as if he had slept outside during a shower, but at least he did not squish when he walked.

He found a pay phone in a waterfront tavern where his appearance excited no comment, since all the customers looked as if they had slept in their clothes. Locating Adele Hudson’s home phone number in the book, he dropped a nickel and dialed. She answered so promptly that he got the impression she had been waiting by the phone.

“Dan!” she breathed. “I’ve been worried to death ever since I heard it on the radio. Are you all right?”

“A little damp,” he said huskily. “What was on the radio?”

“About your being arrested for murder, and escaping right in the heart of town and then drowning. I knew you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what? Kill somebody or drown?”

“Either,” she said breathlessly. “I had a feeling I’d hear from you, and I’ve been practically sitting on the phone.”

“Who was I supposed to have killed?” he asked curiously. “Larry Bull?”

“Yes. You didn’t, did you?”

“Not that I remember. But I have been expecting him to show up dead. When was I supposed to have done it?”

“Last night. A little after eight.”

“Humm...” he said thoughtfully. “I was at his house about then. No doubt Big Jim has witnesses to the shooting, ballistic tests to prove it was my gun and all the other necessary proof. Should make an interesting trial.”

“What are you going to do, Dan?”

“Nothing. But you are. Get a pencil and paper. I want you to make a couple of long distance calls for me.”

Chapter Four

Tough Town Justice

District Attorney Edward Ossening was a round, sleek man with a calm manner and horn-rimmed glasses which gave him the appearance of a benevolent owl. During the first few days after the murder of Homicide Detective Lawrence Bull, a series of secret conferences took place between Big Jim Calhoun and District Attorney Ossening. They were not very satisfactory conferences, and Big Jim’s temper grew more ragged after each one. The D.A. managed to maintain his benevolent air, but beneath it his calmness disintegrated and his nerves became as ragged as Big Jim’s temper.

The first conference took place the day after Dan Fancy, accompanied by Broadway columnist Henry Drew, turned himself in at the Lake City police headquarters.

“You said Fancy would never come up for trial,” Ed Ossening complained nervously. “You said he’d be killed resisting arrest, or attempting to escape, and no one but the coroner would have to pass on the evidence against him.”

“That was before Drew entered the picture,” Big Jim snapped. “How the hell can I have him bumped when a nationally syndicated columnist sits outside his cell all day?”

“I don’t understand how Drew got down here, or what his interest in it is.”

“I do,” Big Jim said grimly. “He flew down. He’s a pal of Dan Fancy’s, and Fancy is using him as life insurance. But with the evidence we’ve got rigged, he’ll need more than a newspaper columnist, to beat this rap.”

The second conference took place the following afternoon.

“I don’t like this lawyer, Farraday, who’s defending Fancy,” the D.A. said. “He’s one of the top criminal lawyers in the country.”

“It takes more than a legal rep to beat the kind of evidence you’ve got,” Big Jim growled at him. “What’s eating you?”

“He hadn’t been in town ten minutes when he had a writ of habeas corpus,” Ossening said nervously.

“So what? The hearing went all right, didn’t it? Fancy’s bound over for the grand jury without bail.”

“That’s what worries me. Farraday didn’t didn’t even ask for bail.”

“Relax,” Big Jim advised. “At least Fancy is where he can’t make any trouble over the Saunders killing. In two more weeks young Robinson takes the final jolt, and Fancy won’t even be up before the grand jury by then.”

That same evening the third conference took place.

“Listen,” Ed Ossening said plaintively. “I’m getting scared. Somebody’s pulling strings.”

“What now?” Big Jim inquired irritably.

“Fancy has been moved way up on the grand jury’s calendar. He goes before it tomorrow morning.”

Big Jim pulled a blank mask over the expression of surprise which started to grow on his face. “So what?” he asked with studied indifference.

“Well, we don’t have any fix in with the grand jury, do we?”

“We don’t need one,” Big Jim said. “What can they do in the face of the evidence but remand him until trial?”

The fourth conference occurred the morning after the grand jury decided Fancy should be tried for first degree homicide.

“I thought somebody big was pulling strings in the Fancy case,” Ed Ossening said breathlessly. “Circuit Judge Anderson has Fancy’s trial scheduled to start this afternoon!”

“Well, you’re ready, aren’t you?” Big Jim asked irritably.

“Yes, of course. But who ever heard of such quick action in a murder case?”

“You lawyers make me sick,” Big Jim told him. “You get all upset if there isn’t a lot of legal delay. I read of a case in Alabama where a guy was arrested for murder, legally tried and hanged in twenty-four hours.”

“This isn’t Alabama,” the D.A. muttered.

The fifth conference took place the evening of the first day of Dan Fancy’s trial.

“I can’t understand this lawyer, Farraday,” Ed Ossening said worriedly. “He didn’t challenge a single juror. Didn’t even question them. Who ever heard of a jury in a murder trial being seated in one day?”

“You got the jury you wanted, didn’t you?” Big Jim said. “I own every one of those guys. With that jury, you couldn’t lose the case even without evidence.”

“I’m scared,” the district attorney said simply. “Let’s withdraw charges.”

“Are you crazy?” Big Jim roared. But his next words were a tacit admission that the same thought had at least occurred to him. “We can’t withdraw charges without admitting the whole thing is a frame. Get in there and prosecute, or there’ll be a new district attorney in this county next election.”

“Yes, sir,” said the D. A.

The case of the People versus Daniel Fancy started out rather dully. The prosecutor, though a man of unquestioned legal ability, and seemingly in possession of an airtight case, did not have an inspiring courtroom manner. Though he presented a bland, unruffled visage to the jury, there was an indefinable air of unease surrounding him, and it seemed to increase as he paraded witness after witness before the jury. There was no obvious reason for his unease, for little by little he was weaving what appeared to be an indestructible case.

From the spectator’s standpoint the defense contributed little more to the interest of the trial. The famous John Farraday, who most of the spectators had come to see in action, disappointed them by apparently going to sleep in his chair. His sharp chin rested upon his chest during the entire presentation of the state’s case, and his eyes seemed to be closed. But periodic indication that he was conscious came each time Prosecuting Attorney Edward Ossening finished with a witness and Judge Anderson inquired if the defense wished to cross-examine. Then the theatrically long white hair of the famous lawyer would flutter briefly as his head gave an impatient shake, after which he again seemed to sink into a coma.

As the trial moved on, Judge Anderson’s expression became more and more disapproving and his voice grew grimmer each time he asked the defense if it wished to cross-examine. Twice he brought the prosecution up short when the scope of Ed Ossening’s questions went beyond the latitude the judge felt should be allowed in his court, and both times he glared at John Farraday, obviously feeling objection should have come from the defense.

During the entire trial the defendant slouched back in his chair, his fingers laced together across his lean stomach, and grinned a lopsided grin. Part of the time the grin was directed at Adele Hudson, who sat in the front row of the spectators’ seats, and part of the time it was turned on the prosecuting attorney. It seemed to increase the unease of the latter.

As is usual in trials for murder, the first witness called by the prosecution was the arresting officer — in this case Lieutenant Morgan Hart. In a straightforward manner the lieutenant recounted that on the evening of the fourteenth at about eight-thirty o’clock, a call had come into the Homicide Bureau from the fiancée of Detective Sergeant Lawrence Bull. The girl had been hysterical, but he gathered that Sergeant Bull was hurt.

Immediately he repaired to the home of Sergeant Bull at 1711 Fairview Avenue, the lieutenant continued, where he found the sergeant dead in his living room with a bullet hole in his hack. On the basis of information furnished by the sergeant’s fiancée, a Miss Ella Spodiak, he had located the cab driver who had brought the murderer to the scene of the crime, and through him traced the murderer to the Lakeview Hotel. It was the next day before he was able to accomplish the latter, however, and at about one P.M. he and a Detective Fleming had arrested the defendant in his hotel room. Lieutenant Hart went on to describe the defendant’s daring break for freedom in the very center of town.

Ossening had the lieutenant examine a forty-five automatic and asked if he recognized it.

“Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Hart. “I took it from the defendant at the time of the arrest. I memorized the serial number so I could be sure of identifying it again.”

The prosecution submitted the gun as exhibit A.

The second witness was Detective Fleming, who merely corroborated Lieutenant Hart’s testimony of the arrest and subsequent escape of the defendant.

The next witness was the taxi driver who had driven Dan Fancy to the home of the deceased. He was a lean, shifty-eyed man who licked his lips frequently during the testimony. He stated that he had picked up the defendant in front of the Lakeview Hotel about eight P.M. on the fourteenth and had driven him to 1711 Fairview Avenue. He said the defendant was inside only a few minutes, at the end of which time he heard a sound like a shot. Immediately afterward the defendant rushed out of the house, jumped into the cab and ordered him to speed off. The driver said he took the defendant back to the Lakeview Hotel and did not see him again until he was asked to pick him out of a police lineup.

When Ed Ossening said, “Your witness,” Judge Anderson frowned at John Farraday, obviously expecting him to ask why the driver had failed to report to the police the peculiar actions of his customer, and had waited for the police to come to him before he told his story. But when Farraday only gave his head a mild shake, the judge’s lips drew into a thin line and he said to the witness, “That’s all. You may step down.”

The prosecution’s key witness was Ella Spodiak, who described herself as the fiancée of the deceased. She turned out to be the well-built but stupid-looking blonde who had admitted Dan to Larry Bull’s house. For her courtroom appearance she had discarded her red, tight-fitting dress in favor of a sedate black suit and a hat with a black veil. The effect of mourning was somewhat spoiled, however, by open-toed pumps which exposed toenails of flaming crimson.

She gave her testimony in a sullen singsong, her eyes carefully averted from the grinning Dan Fancy. She told how she had been visiting Sergeant Bull on the evening of the murder, and had gone to open the door when the defendant rang the bell.

“He pushed right inside,” she recited mechanically, wrinkling her brow in what might have been a continued effort to remember her lines. “He drew a gun and twisted my arm up behind my back and told me if I said a word, he’d shoot me. So I didn’t say nothing — I mean anything. Then he asked if Larry was in the living room, and when I said yes, he pushed me ahead of him and made me open the door. Larry was watching television, and he jumped up when he saw Dan Fancy. ‘Turn around’, Fancy ordered him, ‘and put up your hands.’ And when Larry did, he shot him right in the back. Then he ran out of the house.”

This time John Farraday’s expression was pained when he shook his head.

The rest of the prosecution’s witnesses were more or less routine. A medical examiner testified to the time of death, fixing it at approximately eight P.M. on the day of the fourteenth, and in medical terms declared that death had been caused by a bullet in the back. A ballistic expert said that the bullet removed from the body of Larry Bull matched a similar bullet fired from the gun taken from Dan Fancy. To clinch the matter the prosecution entered in evidence a pistol permit showing the gun belonged to Dan Fancy.

As the last witness stepped down, Ed Ossening discovered that due to lack of interference by the defense, the case he had planned to spend at least a week presenting had somehow gotten itself presented in four hours. But for some reason he was more frightened than reassured by the smoothness with which the trial had so far run.

He glanced uncertainly around, as though hoping to spy some witness he had inadvertently overlooked, then said in a voice higher than necessary, “The prosecution rests.”

The judge glanced at his watch. “It is two P.M.,” he announced. “If the defense has no objection, we will recess until ten A.M. tomorrow.”

For the first time since the trial had started, John Farraday fully opened his eyes. “No objection, Your Honor,” he said in a caressing voice which carried to every corner of the courtroom, though he spoke in a conversational tone.

At ten the next morning, after Judge Anderson had brought the court to order and inquired if the defense were ready, John Farraday rose slowly to his feet. He was a tall man, as thin and bony as Abraham Lincoln, but with a grace of body movement Lincoln lacked. He paused theatrically to sweep brilliant blue eyes over the packed courtroom, then said in his caressing voice, “The defense has but one witness, Your Honor. Will Adrian Fact please take the stand?”

From the back row rose a little insignificant-looking man in a worn seersucker suit. He advanced diffidently, raised his hand to be sworn, and kept his eyes lowered to his lap after he had taken the witness chair.

“Your name is Adrian Fact?” Farraday inquired.

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you please look at the defendant and tell the court if you know him?”

Judge Anderson cleared his throat. “Your witness should be instructed to address his remarks to the jury rather than to the court, counsellor.”

Gracefully John Farraday turned to face the judge. “Your Honor, the defense has nothing to say to this jury, for there is little likelihood it will be asked to render a verdict. I asked the witness to address the court because I am sure after Your Honor has heard his testimony, you will kick this case out of court so fast it will make the head of my esteemed colleague, the district attorney of this county, spin like a top.”

Leaping to his feet, Ed Ossening squeaked, “I object!”

“To what?” asked the judge curiously.

“To... to the insulting tone of counsel for defense. And to—” The prosecuting attorney hesitated, suddenly brightened and said in a stronger tone, “If the defense has evidence which the court might consider sufficient to dismiss this trial, it should have been introduced before the prosecution even presented its case. Before the jury was seated, for that matter. If there is such evidence, and I personally doubt it very much, the defense is criminally negligent in good citizenship, if nothing else, to allow the trial to proceed to this point before bringing it out.”

Judge Anderson nodded. “A good point, counsellor.” He turned to John Farraday. “You have anything to say to that?”

“If the court will be indulgent for a very few minutes,” John Farraday said, “Mr. Fact’s testimony will bring out why it was necessary for the defense to allow the prosecution to present its full case, even though a motion to dismiss based on the same testimony you are about to hear would undoubtedly have been granted before the trial started.”

The judge frowned at the silver-haired lawyer. “I don’t understand that statement, counsellor. And if this testimony you speak of is directed solely at the court, suppose I declare a recess and take it informally in my chamber?”

“That would be more proper procedure,” Farraday admitted. “However, the defense has a particular reason for handling the matter in this way, and I beg the court’s indulgence.”

“Go ahead, then,” the judge decided. “But I warn you, if it develops you have deliberately allowed this court to waste its time, not to mention the time of the jurors and the witnesses involved, I will take a serious view of the matter.”

Farraday nodded agreeably. “Now, Mr. Fact,” he said, returning to the witness, “please look at the defendant and tell the court if you know him.”

The little man glanced at Dan Fancy. “Yes, sir. I know him well.”

“What is your relationship with the defendant?” the lawyer pursued.

“We’re partners in the firm of Fact and Fancy, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It’s a private detective agency.”

The silver-haired lawyer smiled at the prosecuting attorney. “Now, Mr. Fact, in your own words will you explain why you and the defendant are in Lake City?”

Ed Ossening was again on his feet. “I object, Your Honor. It is immaterial to this case why either the defendant or the witness are in Lake City.”

“On the contrary, it is highly material,” Farraday put in smoothly. “And even if it weren’t, the prosecution has no right to object to data not directed to the jury. If Mr. Ossening is afraid the jury will be unduly prejudiced, he should ask the court to retire it until this matter is finished. But I assure both Your Honor and the prosecution it will make not the slightest difference to the outcome of this trial what the jury thinks. If the prosecution intends to continue objecting every time I ask a question, I will request Your Honor to reconsider his own suggestion and receive the witness’ testimony in the privacy of his chamber. However, I sincerely feel that it is in the public interest and to the interest of justice that the prosecution and the spectators in the courtroom hear what the witness has to say.”

“This is a highly irregular procedure,” said the judge, “and I am not sure I shouldn’t take your witness’ testimony privately. However, in view of the peculiar manner in which this case has so far progressed, I am not inclined to stifle the first evidence of interest counsel for the defense has shown in the trial.” He glared at the prosecuting attorney. “If there are further interruptions from the prosecution, I will recess court and take this evidence privately. If you want to hear it, please keep that in mind.”

Ed Ossening opened his mouth, closed it again and sat down.

John Farraday said to the witness, “Please explain to the court why you and the defendant are in Lake City.”

“We were on a job,” the little man said. “Martin Robinson, the father of Eugene Robinson, who awhile back was sentenced to death in this same court for the murder of a man named Saunders, hired us to prove his son had been framed.”

“How did you decide to approach this case?”

“Well, from what old Mr. Robinson told us about the trial, we were convinced from the beginning that one of two things was true. The evidence against Eugene Robinson was so complete, either he actually was guilty, or the trial was crooked. We decided to work on the assumption that the trial was crooked.”

Ed Ossening jumped to his feet, but sat down again when the judge glared at him.

“Mr. Fact,” Judge Anderson interrupted in a cold voice, “the case you refer to was tried in this court. Unless you clarify that last statement immediately, you will find yourself held in contempt.”

“I didn’t mean the court was crooked,” Adrian Fact said calmly. “The governor of this state is a personal pal of Martin Robinson, and the old man had him check up on you. He was quite satisfied with your integrity.” Undisturbed by His Honor’s speechless glare, the little man went on, “I meant we decided all eleven witnesses and the two police officers involved perjured themselves.”

This time the prosecuting attorney jumped to his feet and remained there, silent but quivering.

“That’s a pretty serious charge,” Judge Anderson said after pounding down the sudden hum in the courtroom. “For your own sake, I hope you can substantiate it.”

“I can’t directly,” the little man admitted. “But I can prove it’s a likely situation in any trial prosecuted by District Attorney Ed Ossening. I can prove all the witnesses in this trial perjured themselves.”

Chapter Five

“Good Hunting, Mr. Fancy!”

Following a deathly silence, an excited hum rose over the audience. Judge Anderson rapped for order.

John Farraday, who had quietly stepped to one side while the judge was asking questions, interposed himself again.

“Mr. Fact, will you describe the exact procedure you and the defendant took in your investigation of the Robinson trial?”

“Sure,” the little man said agreeably. “We reasoned that in a local setup tight enough to run a frame like the one worked on the Robinson kid, we wouldn’t have the chance of a snowball — we wouldn’t have much chance to uncover evidence that it had been a frame. At the same time, there was a good chance the same crowd that framed Robinson would work a similar frame on us if we stepped on their toes.

“Then Fancy got the idea of coming down here and deliberately throwing his weight around until the local crowd got tired of him and framed him. He figured if he could publicly expose this bunch in the middle of a frame, it would force an impartial reinvestigation of the Robinson case. He had me tail him and keep track of every move he made.” He added modestly, “I’m pretty good at tailing people, because hardly anybody notices me.

“I planted a mike in Dan’s room and recorded every conversation that took place there. I’d be glad to play these off for Your Honor. Particularly the one where a local man known as Big Jim Calhoun bragged about the way he controlled this town, and what would happen to Dan Fancy if he didn’t drop his investigation of the Saunders murder. I also took a lot of pictures with a chest camera, which I would like Your Honor to examine.”

He paused to separate his shirt front slightly and expose the lens of a flat camera strapped to his chest.

Judge Anderson said, “You have made some amazing statements, Mr. Fact. But so far I detect no proof that the defendant was framed for the murder of Sergeant Bull.”

“I’m coming to it,” the little man assured him. “On the evening of the fourteenth, Dan Fancy visited Larry Bull about eight o’clock, just as various witnesses testified. I know, because I followed him. Or rather I followed the taxi which followed Dan’s, for he was tailed there and back by Detective Gyp Fleming, one of the officers who later arrested him.

“But from that point on, all the witnesses’ testimony departs from the facts. No shot sounded inside the house. I happened to be watching through the window the whole time Dan Fancy and Larry Bull talked, and Bull was still alive when he left. When Fancy came out, he was walking, not running as that taxi driver said.

“When Dan got back to his room at the Lakeview, he phoned our client long-distance and told him one of the arresting officers in the Saunders murder was willing to talk for five thousand bucks. I knew Fancy’s phone was tapped by the local mob, because I had it tapped too, and I could always hear a second click after Fancy hung up. I figured Fancy’s conversation with our client meant a death sentence for Larry Bull, because the local mob would figure Bull was selling out. I also figured Fancy would be framed for the kilting. So I dropped Dan fast and scooted back to Larry Bull’s house to keep an eye on him.”

Adrian Fact paused for breath. “This is where the proof comes in that every witness in this trial is a perjurer. Bull was supposed to have been killed around eight P.M. on the fourteenth. But at nine P.M. that evening he left his house with Lieutenant Morgan Hart, who took him to the Downtown Athletic Club, the headquarters of Big Jim Calhoun. Bull was inside with Hart not more than ten minutes, then came out alone and returned home. At midnight he was sitting in his front room watching television when Morgan Hart came back and shot him with a snub-nosed thirty-eight revolver. I’ve got a picture of the shooting.”

Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. The crowd shouted, news cameras flashed, and the district attorney began objecting at the top of his voice. Judge Anderson pounded until there was a momentary hush.

Taking advantage of the silent interval, the little man finished calmly, “That makes a liar of everybody, including the medical examiner who said Bull had been dead since eight P.M. and the ballistic expert who said he was killed by Dan Fancy’s forty-five.”

Disorder broke out again, and this time the judge’s gavel could not quench it. A half dozen news men broke for the door, but slid to a halt in unison when Lieutenant Morgan Hart suddenly barred the way with a snub-nosed thirty-eight revolver.

“The first person who makes a move,” he said distinctly over the sudden hush, “gets a soft-nosed bullet right in the gizzard!”

Stepping to the lieutenant’s side, Detective Gyp Fleming emphasized the threat with his own gun. Simultaneously other gunmen rose from the crowd and covered the spectators with guns.

Quietly the door at the rear of the room opened and the neat gray arms of two state troopers passed under the chins of Morgan Hart and Gyp Fleming from behind. In unison the troopers’ free hands clamped over the gunmen’s wrists, forcing the two pistols to point harmlessly in the air. In the wake of the first two, a dozen gray-uniformed men armed with riot guns filed into the court and lined up along the rear wall.

In a resonant voice the trooper with a strangle hold on Morgan Hart called, “Any other local gunnies who feel tough can step right up. You’ve got two seconds to drop your guns on the floor or get a load of buckshot.”

There was a clatter as a half dozen pistols fell to the floor.

“Carry on, Your Honor,” the spokesman for the state police called cheerfully.

But for the moment his honor was beyond carrying on, being occupied with gaping like a fish at the riot guns of the men in gray.

Quietly Dan Fancy left his seat, picked up “Exhibit A” and seated the full clip lying next to it. Working the slide once to throw a shell in the chamber, he dropped the hammer to quartercock and stuffed the gun in his pocket. He nodded to the judge, who politely nodded back without seeing him, grinned at Adrian Fact and John Farraday, and winked at Adele Hudson as he strolled toward the door.

The trooper holding Morgan Hart pulled both himself and the lieutenant aside from the exit and said, “Good hunting, Mr. Fancy.”

“Thanks,” Dan said as he passed out of the courtroom.

As Dan expected, the news of the crash of Big Jim Calhoun’s empire had not yet penetrated to the Downtown Athletic Club. The arrival of the state police at the courthouse had effectively blocked any envoys to Big Jim from there. When he entered the barroom on the first floor, Dan found it deserted except for the bartender and the baldheaded Stub, who were quietly playing gin rummy.

The big man came in so suddenly that the gunman, Stub, barely had time to swing around on his bar stool and shoot one hand toward his shoulder when Dan was upon him. Grasping the burly man by both biceps, he lifted him bodily, and discouraged the bartender’s reach for a billy club by tossing Stub over the counter on top of him. Both men disappeared behind the bar in a crash of bottles and glasses.

Placing one hand on the surface of the counter, Dan lightly vaulted over, grabbed the bald gunman by the seat of the pants and the collar, and heaved him headfirst back to the customers’ side of the bar again. Stub traversed a short distance on his face, but stopped suddenly when his head, in cooperation with an iron chair leg, acted as a brake.

Satisfied that one antagonist was safely out of the fight, Dan turned his attention to the bartender, who alone hardly constituted competition, being a consumptive-looking man in his fifties who weighed approximately a hundred and thirty-five pounds.

Jerking the man erect by the shirt front and holding him at arm’s length with one hand, so that the bartender’s feet were six inches clear of the floor, Dan shook him gently.

“Where is Big Jim?” he asked in a husky voice.

The man’s eyes rolled upward and he said in a strangled tone, “Upstairs. Second floor.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, sir,” the bartender whispered.

The big man gave him another gentle shake. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

“Hell, no!” the barkeep said, literally horrified by the suggestion.

Satisfied that the man was too frightened to do anything but cooperate, Dan suddenly released his grip. The bartender’s feet hit the floor with a jolt which caused him to stagger against the back bar and add another bottle to the whiskey-reeking litter of broken glass on the floor. He regained his balance by embracing the cash register.

“How do you get up there?” Dan asked mildly.

The bartender stumbled all over his own feet in his eagerness to demonstrate the floor button which operated the door’s electric lock. Vaulting the bar again as gracefully as a cat, the big man waited for the buzz, then pushed open the door next to the bar.

“By the way,” he said before passing all the way through. “When your bald-headed friend wakes up, tell him to sit down and relax. The joint is surrounded by state cops.”

Which was not exactly a lie, Dan thought, for the troopers would be on their way as soon as they wound up their duties at the courthouse, and by the time Baldy regained consciousness, the place probably would be surrounded.

Following the short hallway to the elevator, Dan entered the open door and pushed the button marked 2. As the car rose, he drew his automatic and raised the hammer to full-cock.

The bartender had not mentioned the extra steel-grilled door which disclosed itself to Dan when the elevator door slid back, an oversight Dan attributed to his own hurried questioning rather than to the man’s lack of cooperation. He recognized it for what it was even before Big Jim recognized his visitor, however, and had his gun aimed through the steel latticework, the barrel steadied on one of the crossbars, before Jim could even begin to reach for a desk drawer.

“If you so much as wriggle a finger, I’ll blow off the top of your head,” Dan said with husky relish. “How do you work this contraption?”

The cherubic face of the giant behind the desk was an expressionless mask. “It’s an electric lock,” he said tonelessly. “The buzzer’s under my desk.”

“Then you can move one foot,” Dan conceded. “But move it slow.”

Through the open desk well he could see both of Big Jim’s legs, and he watched critically as the giant’s right foot cautiously slid forward under the desk. Then a buzz sounded, and a jolt of electricity passed from the steel door through Dan’s gun, hurling him back against the rear wall of the car. The automatic fell to the floor outside the elevator.

Groggily Dan picked himself up as the steel door swung open and Big Jim beckoned him in with his own gun.

“You have to wait until after the buzz before you touch it,” the giant said with a grin. “Otherwise you get one hundred and ten volts. I had it designed particularly to cover situations like this.”

Dan watched the steel door clang shut again, then turned to face Big Jim.

“The gun isn’t going to do you much good,” he said mildly. “Your frame blew up in your face, and the building is surrounded by state cops.

“I hope,” he added mentally.

Big Jim’s grin did not falter. Backing to the window, he cast a quick glance over his shoulder. Then his eyes returned to Dan’s.

“How did you manage it, Dan?”

Apparently the building was now surrounded.

Big Jim’s grin had faded to a moody expression. “Did you do a thorough job, Dan? Have you really got me licked?”

“You won’t be able to wriggle out, Jim.”

The giant nodded, accepting Dan’s estimate as the truth. “How bad is it? For me personally, I mean.”

“Well,” Dan said consideringly, “all your pet witnesses are going up for perjury. Morgan Hart is going to the chair for the murder of Larry Bull. You know how rats begin to squeal when they’re cornered. They’ll all shift as much as they can on to you. Only you know how much that is.”

The giant thought a moment. “Ten years maybe. Twenty at the outside. I haven’t personally killed anybody.”

“Going to start now?” Dan asked.

Big Jim glanced down at the gun. “Possibly. You meant to get me, didn’t you?”

Dan shook his head. “Not that way. I meant to make sure you weren’t armed, then finish the slugging match we started in my hotel room.”

Big Jim examined him curiously. “You’re a persistent guy, Dan. You’ve tried to take me at least ten times since the first time I heat hell out of you twenty-five years ago. And all it ever got you was more bumps.”

Stepping behind his desk, Big Jim dropped the gun in a drawer, locked it and put the key in his pocket.

“All right, sucker,” he said, grinning at Dan. “Come get your bumps.”

During the short part of a minute between Dan’s last remark to the bartender and the actual arrival of the state police, the bartender took off like a jet-propelled plane, leaving. Stub still unconscious. Consequently when the troopers arrived, trailed by Adrian Fact and Adele Hudson, they found no one to explain the combination of the knobless door next to the bar. A husky trooper was just preparing to solve the combination with an axe, when the door opened from inside and Dan Fancy staggered out.

Dan’s coat was gone and the whole left side of his shirt hung from his belt in shreds, exposing half his hairy chest and one naked arm. One of his trouser legs was ripped from cuff to hip, and flopped open to disclose blood welling from a perfect set of teeth marks in the fleshy part of his calf. His left eye was tightly closed and the other was slowly swelling shut. Blood from both nostrils dribbled across his mouth and seeped from the end of his chin.

Supporting himself with one hand against the door jamb, he focused his remaining eye blearily on Adrian Fact and opened the other hand to exhibit a large yellow molar, obviously not his own.

“I finally grew up to the big bum,” he said in groggy triumph.

Then he pitched forward on his face...

Martin Robinson stood stiff and straight as his son approached the group waiting for him at the prison gate, but something yearning in the old man’s expression told Dan he would bow right down to the ground for a smile from his son.

Eugene Robinson glanced without interest at Adrian Fact, swept his gaze curiously over Dan Fancy’s bruised features, then flashed his dazzling smile as he took both Adele Hudson’s hands and gave them a light squeeze. Apparently he considered it too public a place to exhibit more affection.

Last of all the young man turned to his father. “Hello, Dad,” he said tonelessly.

The old man winced. “Are you ready to come home now, Gene?” he asked.

In a careless tone Gene said, “I rather thought I’d get married instead.”

Martin Robinson smiled eagerly. “Your wife will always be as welcome as you are, son.”

Watching, Dan Fancy’s stomach sickened in sympathy for the lonely old man. He turned to Adrian Fact.

“Mr. Robinson’s check clear through yet, Ade?”

The little man glanced at him in surprise and nodded. Dan directed his next question to Adele Hudson.

“You don’t think it would be unfair to take advantage of a young man who wasn’t in death row, do you, Adele?”

Puzzled, she asked, “What do you mean?”

“Just this.”

Raising one large palm, he covered the face of Eugene Robinson with it and pushed. The young man staggered backward, tripped over a hedge and sat in the dust with a thump. Swinging Adele up in his arms like a baby, Dan strode toward the taxi which had brought him and Adrian to the prison.

“What I want with a woman stupid enough to fall for a twerp like that is beyond me,” he growled. “But maybe eventually I can train some sense into your head.”

He stopped to begin the training.

“Dan!” she squealed. “Kissing in public! What will Eugene think?”

Content

Richard Deming
Dan and the Death-Cell Bluff

Chapter One

Chapter Two Death Row Stooge

Chapter Three Hide-and-Seek with Death

Chapter Four Tough Town Justice

Chapter Five “Good Hunting, Mr. Fancy!”