Лоуренс Трит: Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 6, April 16, 1938

Elmore fell into a moody silence.

“Well?” Stan prompted.

“She doesn’t need Julia’s money. Selma is well enough off as my daughter — and John Harne’s wife.”

Stan frowned. “But, Judge, you knew that before.”

Horace Elmore’s large head drooped. “Yes. But I didn’t know Kendall was a cold-blooded killer. There’s the vital thing. Selma must never be branded as the child of a murderer!” He raised a clouded, brooding gaze to Stan’s face. “Baxter, you agree with me, don’t you?”

“Wait a moment,” the young lawyer said. “What makes you so sure Kendall is a murderer?”

The judge got up from the little bench. He began a nervous pacing across the grimy floor. Bits of coal crunched under his feet.

“But there’s no doubt about it,” he declared. “I know the whole story. Callum asked Randt for money to start a suit against Kendall. When Frank Kendall got wind of it, he killed them both. He believed that Lois was Julia’s daughter, and he went gunning for the two men who knew the secret.”

Stan shrugged. “Judge, you’re lawyer enough to know that’s only a theory.”

“But there are facts to prove it,” the older man asserted. “I might as well tell you. Randt planned a meeting in his home tonight. He invited Harne and me — told me Frank Kendall would be there. Kendall had been kicking up a fuss with the government — some unfair competition charge. Ranch intended to confront him, accusing him of killing Joe Callum. There’s no doubt in my mind that Kendall knew what to expect, and therefore he shot Randt.”

“It isn’t proof,” Stan said. “It’s only more theory.”

“That isn’t all,” Elmore gulped. “Baxter, I arrived at Randt’s home tonight before the police did! As I drove up the hill, a man came running out of the driveway with a gun in his hand. He ran over the top of the hill and leaped into a sedan parked in the shadows there. Instead of turning into Randt’s driveway. I followed that sedan. It went straight to Frank Kendall’s home.”

“But you didn’t tell the police that?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

The judge threw back his head, straightened. “Because they would have held me as a material witness. I didn’t know how much they would make Kendall confess, if they arrested him. Sooner or later, I thought, they would get at most of the truth.” He was pacing now and he paused in front of the furnace and said. “I wanted to keep Selma’s name out of it. I wanted time to do this! ”

He whirled, with astonishing speed for a man of his bulk and years. His plump right hand clawed, raked open the furnace door. The other hand darted inside his coat.

The furnace flames threw dancing red shadows across Horace Elmore’s face, distorted with a look of wild triumph.

Stan Baxter blurted, “Hold that!” and hurled himself forward. A thunderous crash-h boomed and echoed. There was a metallic ping, and the electric bulb exploded into bits. Darkness washed across the basement, turned to a ruddy pink in front of the furnace where Stan grappled with the judge. A reek of pungent gunsmoke penetrated the air.

The two men weaved momentarily in a tangle of interlocked limbs. Stan grunted, flung Horace Elmore into the blackness beyond the furnace. The gun roared again as they rolled on the concrete. Stan could hear the bullet glance from the furnace.

Stan gritted an oath and succeeded in pinning his weight across the other’s body. He could hear the big man’s breath whistling through clenched teeth. Elmore flung himself into another convulsive struggle.

Stan pinned a hand to Elmore’s threshing arm, forced that down. He had a leg across the other arm. He looked up. A cry choked in his throat.

Across the boiler room two tiny, gleaming eyes shone in the dark. They were very bright, curiously wedge-shaped. They wavered, seemed to swim together...

Stan shivered. An icy tingle engulfed his tensed muscles. Those eves weren’t human! They were—

There was another blinding flash, a bellow that reverberated under the low ceiling.

Stan quickly let go of Horace Elmore. He yanked the flashlight from his pocket, clicked its switch. Nothing happened. Afterward, he found the bulb broken; it must have shattered when he fell on the steam shovel, or perhaps when he landed in the yard...

The eyes had disappeared, anyway.

Someone came running along the corridor upstairs. A spill of light swept down the steps. Thin smoke drifted across the beam.

“Baxter!” It was Worthington’s voice. “Are you all right? What happened?”

Stan said, “Get that light down here!”

The blond man came down the steps, two at a time, and Stan met him; took the electric torch. He pointed it around.

Horace Elmore sat up on the floor; he was thoroughly smeared with coal dust, and he looked both ill and angry.

“You fool!” the judge said. “Pulling a gun on me!”

Stan cried, “Me? I didn’t pull any gun!” He had the .38 in his hand now, though. He ran across the boiler room, flinging the electric beam under a thicket of asbestos-wrapped pipes. He looked into the coal bin, and scowled. He looked around the furnace, too. Farther on, he found an ash-lift. This had a chain operated hoist.

Staring up, he saw the hatch open, saw stars in the sky.

Behind him, Horace Elmore wailed, “Baxter! Come here!”

It was an agonized cry. Stan swung around, came back into the boiler room. On Elmore’s face was an expression of helpless panic.

“The papers!” he gasped. “Have you got them. Baxter?”

“No!”

The judge said, “I dropped them! They’re gone!” He was hunting around in front of the furnace, and he said: “They’re here somewhere. Got to be! Let’s have that light, Baxter!”

Stan said. “You didn’t throw them in the furnace?”

“No, no!”

Stan made sure of this. He stared into the furnace, studied the red flame licking over the undisturbed coals. There wasn’t a trace the blackened crisp papers would have left.

He wet his lips. “All right. They’re gone. They’re just gone.”

The judge couldn’t believe it. He searched around the furnace thoroughly. He swore. Finally he turned to Worthington.

“You didn’t pick them up?”

“No,” the blond man said. “What were they?”

“He could have,” Elmore said to Stan. “I insist we search this man!”

Stan grunted. “That’s wasting time. Where’s that watchman?”

“Why, with me,” Worthington said. “At the phone. I left him there when I heard the first shot.”

They went upstairs. Stan stepped outside. The steel gate was open now. He had rather expected that. He went inside again: the watchman was still beside the telephone, in a little room off the main corridor.

Stan sat down, put his hands on his knees, and looked intently into the old man’s face. “You’re scared, aren’t you?”

“I’m hurt. My head hurts,” the old fellow said plaintively. He rubbed his forehead and groaned.

“What’s your name?”

“Sam Bedlow. I’m sixty-three years old.”

“How long have you worked here?”

“Nine months.”

“The man before him got pensioned,” Judge Elmore interrupted. He leaned against the wall, frowning. “What’s the point of all this, Baxter?”

Stan said to Sam Bedlow, “What happened tonight?”

“I was in the boiler room. They sneaked behind me. I didn’t have any chance.”

“Who sneaked behind you?”

“Them,” Bedlow said. “Three of them. They had masks on.”

Stan grunted. “What were you doing in the boiler room?”

“I fired up. I was pulling my box when they grabbed me. I couldn’t fight off three of them, grabbing me from behind that way.”