Mourn the Hangman Page 9

  He heard Lowering’s voice from afar. “It’s all right, Blake. You can sleep now.”

  And Blake slept….

  Monday morning sunlight streamed into the upstairs bedroom window. Listlessly, Blake opened his eyes. His head moved languidly on the pillow. He was in a warm white bed with the covers up about his chest. His mouth was cottony and bitter. His parched throat burned. He wanted a drink of water and knew the taste of it would make him ill.

  His eyes found Al White sitting loosely in a wicker rocker across the room. Their gazes met, locked and Al White straightened a little.

  “You ‘wake, sonny?” he said.

  “I’m awake,” Blake said.

  “Can you hear me?”

  “I can hear you.”

  “You out of it? You know what I’m saying?”

  “Say something. I’ll let you know.”

  Al White nodded. He leaned forward a little, the muscles bunching across his yard wide shoulders.

  “I ain’t slow on my feet,” he said gravely. “I wasn’t ever. Not when you saw me at Soldiers’ Field. Not now.”

  Blake grinned tiredly. “Okay. So you heard me. Okay, so you don’t like me. I’m going to hate myself all day.”

  “Doc says you ain’t going to have strength enough all day to hate yourself,” Al White smiled. This seemed to please him.

  “The doctor doesn’t know how much I have to do,” Blake replied. But the weariness he felt in his brain was even worse in the muscles of his body.

  “You might as well forget what you got to do,” Al White said. “You ain’t going anywhere. You’re going to stay here. Just you and me.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  “Don’t you count on it. You spilled your guts, brother, last night. You ain’t worth much this morning.”

  “Is that what happened to Roberts the night before the die casting machine blew up in his face?” Blake inquired.

  Al White stiffened. “I don’t know nothing about it,” he said. “You’d be a lot better off right now if you didn’t know nothing either.”

  Blake looked at him. “You’re pretty loyal to your boss, eh, Al?”

  “I get along. I’m smart enough to live.”

  “And I’m not?”

  Al White just grinned at him.

  “Why are you loyal?” Blake taunted after a moment. “Because you believe in that human vulture? Or because you’ve got a price and Arrenhower has met it?”

  Al White leaned forward. His face was taut. “I get along all right.”

  “Up until now,” Blake said. “You never met me, Al. You never tried to keep me where I didn’t want to stay. You better get help.”

  “I’ll do all right.” He sank back and smiled contentedly. “You talk brave. A brave little man. They’re the kind that die early. Runnin’ around pokin’ their noses in other people’s business.”

  “Is that all you got to say?”

  “Not quite, sonny.”

  “Say the rest of it.”

  “Okay. Mr. Arrenhower says for you and me to sit here until he sends for you. If you got any idea that you’re getting out of here to talk about what happened to you last night, forget it.”

  “I’ll never forget it,” Blake answered. “You can tell him that.”

  “I heard a lot of tough talk in my time,” Al White said. “It don’t mean much to me any more. I’m just telling you. The boss says you should be happy. You’re still alive.”

  Blake looked at him. “For how long?”

  He struggled up on the bed. The room careened dizzily for a moment. Blake closed his eyes tightly. The spinning stopped and when he opened his eyes, Al White was standing at the foot of the bed, grinning disparagingly at him.

  “Listen,” Blake said raggedly. “You tell Arrenhower — you tell him I’m looking for a murderer. I’m gettin’ out of here, if I have to walk over him to do it.”

  Al White shrugged and went on grinning. “Just tell us where you want the body sent,” he said indifferently.

  “It’ll be in my wallet,” Blake told him. “It’ll be there when you pick my pockets.”

  • • •

  It was late afternoon before Al White left the room at all. Blake got out of bed groggily. No wonder they called them goof pills, he thought. He walked as far as the door. He was sweated down. His legs were trembling. He sank down on a straight chair, breathing shallowly through his mouth.

  He looked longingly at the comfortable bed. He wanted to get back into it. He wanted more sleep. There was no relief from the effects of the drug yet. But the fact of Stella’s brutal murder worked its way through to his mind and he knew he could not rest.

  He dressed slowly. He knew only the fact that Stella’s murderer still moved free forced him to get dressed. Now it forced him to stand up again, his eyes aching, his legs weak.

  The door was unlocked. He smiled grimly. Al White had underestimated him. He left the room and started down the hallway. He was tense in every muscle, waiting for the sound of Al White’s roar to pin him helpless against the wall.

  He straightened his coat on his shoulders. There was a chair near the head of the stairs. He was breathless and bone weary. He sat down to rest, feeling the sweat in cold beads across his forehead.

  When he looked up, he saw Al White. The big boxer was standing at the head of the stairs, smilingly pleasedly.

  “Big brave man,” Al White said. “Going to walk right out.”

  Blake stood up. “Get out of my way,” he said.

  White laughed. “You’re going back to bed, sonny. Come on.”

  “I’m warning you, White. Keep out of my way.” Blake felt his lips pull back, baring his teeth.

  “I told you. I heard me tough talk before, sonny,” Al White said.

  “You ever see a man who’d love to kill you?”

  “Plenty of times.”

  “You’re looking at another one. Get out of my way, White.”

  “Temper! Now look here, guy. You won’t have any trouble if you’ll come back to your bed like I tell you.”

  “I told you, White. I’m looking for the man who killed my wife. That’s all there is to it. I’m not going back in there. I’m not staying here. I’m leaving.”

  “Don’t talk to me that way. It makes me mad. I don’t like to get mad.”

  “Get out of my way. This is the last time I’m telling you.”

  White reached out for him. He made one serious error. He reached with his long right arm. As the huge fist closed on Blake’s shoulder, Steve stepped in close, sweating and trembling, and drove his left fist as deeply as he could sink it into the ex-fighter’s pot belly.

  There wasn’t anything behind that fist but desperation. But it paid off. Blake heard the breath retch outward across White’s mouth. The big man’s face went pale and he doubled slowly forward. Stepping aside, Steve chopped down across the back of White’s neck with his hand. White seemed to gather momentum and struck the hallway runner hard, on his face.

  Steve, breathing through his mouth, looked around. The house was silent. But he knew how well it was guarded. Now there was only one thing to do. Get out of here alive. And fast.

  11

  BLAKE LOOKED once more at Al White sprawled across the runner at the head of the stairs. He turned then and walked back along the upper hallway. At the rear stairs, he hurled one last look across his shoulder and went down the steps, running.

  He could hear muted voices from the kitchen when he reached the lower hall. As he moved, he considered ways of getting out of the rear of this house. He was unarmed. He supposed his hand thrust threateningly into his coat pocket might deceive a cook and his helper long enough to get him across the room. But he discarded that idea. That was a fool’s game. Once he was out of the house, the cook would yell for help. The chase would be on. As a matter of fact, he had only until Al White came to his senses enough to cry out. He had better play those precious moments for all they were worth.

  He stood
for a moment in the gray hallway. There was what appeared to be a maze of doorways. Open the wrong door, he thought, and you are lost.

  He heard a door slam. He smiled grimly. A side entrance. A carriage entrance. Stealthily he moved along the hall toward the place where the door had slammed. He stopped. There was a right turn in the corridor and there was the carriage door with the sunlight and freedom shining just beyond it.

  And one of Arrenhower’s brown uniformed company police standing just inside it.

  In desperation, Blake looked around. There was nothing. No weapon in the hallway. He looked again at the vase of flowers on an end table.

  Holding his breath, he removed the flowers with both hands and set them, dripping, on an antique oakwood straight chair.

  The police officer must have heard him. He said, “Who’s there?” and started across the short corridor. Blake’s hand closed on the neck of the vase.

  For a moment they stared at each other. The big policeman slapped at the gun holstered on his hip. Blake didn’t wait any longer. “Here,” he said. “Catch.”

  He brought the vase around overhanded, hurling it with all his strength. The company cop gasped and tried to dodge, but the distance was too short, the vase hurled too swiftly. He could only stand there, his eyes widening as the heavy glass vase struck him squarely between the eyes, with such force that it shattered.

  The cop took a step forward. Behind him, Blake could hear the cries and footsteps of the kitchen help. The cop was staggering. Blake’s fist in his belly only hastened the moment of striking the floor.

  Blake went through the side door of Arrenhower’s huge old house with no idea what he was going to meet in the driveway. He expected another company goon. He knew by now that they usually traveled in pairs. But there was no one in the tan Arrenhower Corporation Plant Guard car.

  Blake ran around it and slid under the wheel. There were no keys in the ignition, either. His hands sweating and trembling, he felt under the dash, ripped loose the ignition wiring. Without taking his eyes from that side door, he twisted the wires together, and stepped on the starter. The engine roared into life. The car leaped away in a cloud of exhaust smoke and a shower of gravel.

  “Hey!” It was the guard. He was standing in the doorway. He was still too stunned to run. The best he could do was stand with one hand across his bleeding nose and yell.

  The company car had been facing the rear of the property. Blake knew the front gates would be closed and locked anyhow. There was no point in turning the car around. The main hope he had anyway was to get as far away from the house as possible before he was stopped. The gravel drive wound toward garages and stables. Both hands on the wheel, Blake drove swiftly. He wished for a gun. That sort of personal protection seemed indicated from this moment forward.

  He looked around. There was undoubtedly a police positive holstered somewhere in the car. The goons would have used it for a kind of hideaway. The outbuildings loomed close ahead. Frantically, Blake searched with his hands along the side of the seat. He found the gun and with a laugh thrust it into his coat pocket.

  For a moment, Blake was afraid his wild ride across Arrenhower Land was going to end in the stables. But the gravel drive curved sharply around them. There was a straight, short road to a wire fence — cyclone fence topped with barbed wire.

  In his rear view mirror, Blake could see men running across the rolling grass toward him. There were two other tan cars like the one he was driving, whipping along the gravel drive.

  He skidded the car hard against the fence. It bounced a little, but otherwise, nothing happened. He stepped on the gas again and stalled the engine with the car jammed against the wire. He could already hear them shouting behind him.

  He came out of the car, climbed up on the hood. He pulled off his coat and spread it flat across the barbs of the wire. Then he got on top of the car, fell across the coat. He leaped outward then, dragging his coat after him. He cleared the fence and landed on his feet on the ground outside Arrenhower’s property. But the coat was impaled on the barbs of the wire.

  He wasted only half a minute looking at that coat. It was lost to him. But there was no time to worry about that. The first of the company police cars was almost to the fence, with one of the goons leaning far out the window with a pistol in his hand.

  Blake turned and ran into the thick brush. Ahead of him he could see cleared fields, and rows of small, low-priced homes of somebody’s subdivision. And a couple of blocks away was the noise and clamor of McDill Highway.

  He began to run across the open field. His luck held. As he reached the corner of the highway, a yellow cab loomed into view. He ran out into the street and waved his arms. The cab screamed to a halt. The driver threw the door open. “Where to, mister?” he said.

  “Take me to town,” Blake said. “And hurry. I’m trying to catch a plane.”

  The cabbie shook his head. “Ain’t no planes in town, mister.”

  “That’s where I’m catching one,” Blake said. “Let’s go.”

  He left the cab at the entrance of the Union Bus station. He bought a ticket for Gulf City and then walked through the exit gates and through the loading ramps to the street beyond. He got into another taxi. He wanted to go to see Manley Reeder in Hyde Park. To hell now with being polite. If Reeder knew anything Blake should know, Blake knew the way to force Stella’s ex-husband to talk. But when the driver asked him where he wanted to go, Blake smiled grimly and gave the address of Clinton Edwards’ home in Seminole Heights. Hell, Blake thought, Arrenhower’s goons would be combing Tampa for him by now. But which one of them was smart enough to look for Blake in the home of Arrenhower’s private secretary?

  • • •

  Clinton Edwards opened the door of his Seminole Heights home. When he saw Blake, he seemed to go lax all over. His mouth fell open. He stepped back and tried to slam the door. Blake thrust his shoulder against it and pushed his way inside. Edwards wheeled, starting for the foyer telephone. Blake caught his shoulder in his hand, spun him around.

  Edwards stared up at Blake’s murderous green eyes. His voice quavered. “What is this, Blake?” he demanded. “What’s the meaning of this?”

  “It’s easy to see you, Edwards,” Blake said. “A lot easier than it would be to see Arrenhower. I want you to answer some questions.”

  Edwards tried to laugh. “Why should I? How long do you think it will be before Mr. Arrenhower’s men find you and pick you up?”

  “Maybe longer than you think,” Blake replied. “And here’s another angle. Maybe they are going to kill me. Maybe I will be the next hit-and-run victim on page five of the Times. I haven’t got much to lose, have I, Edwards? It won’t make much difference what I do to you, will it? They can only kill me once, Edwards. I’m a guy with nothing to lose. That’s the one guy in the world you don’t want to fool with.”

  “You’ll never make me talk to you. I know my rights.”

  Blake laughed coldly. “Your rights! The private secretary to the great Arrenhower. This is my life, Edwards. And your rights aren’t going to do you any good with your face shoved in. It’s up to you.”

  The defiance in Edwards’ face weakened. “When they get you — ” he faltered.

  “Sure — but that’s later. This is right now.” His hand tightened mercilessly on the thin shoulder. “Arrenhower and his boys kicked me around. Now it’s my turn.” He doubled his fist. “Your face a pulp, Edwards, or you tell me what I want to know.”

  Edwards made one last attempt to laugh. “There isn’t much I could tell you — if I would,” he said.

  Blake’s fist cracked into Edwards’ face. The blow came so suddenly, so sharply and sounded so loudly in the room that Edwards went completely to jelly in Blake’s grip. He covered his face with both his hands, sobbing. He cringed away, trying to break loose from the grip on his shoulder.

  “It’s up to you,” Blake said again. There was no hint of mercy in his voice.

  “What do you want t
o know?” Edwards whispered.

  “My wife was killed,” Blake said. “Who did Arrenhower send over there? Who did it? Tell me, Edwards, or I’m going to beat you until you do.”

  “Nobody,” Edwards whispered in terror. “I swear it. He never ordered your wife killed. I’d know it, Blake. I swear I would. Mr. Arrenhower trusts me. I know everything that goes on. He’s had to trust me. He spent a great part of the past two years in Lowering’s private hospital. I ran things. He — he just found out about you. He ordered you taken care of, that’s all.”

  “But I got out of the plant in time and he had to come looking for me?” Blake said. He tightened his grip on Edwards’ shoulder. The secretary cried out in agony. At that moment, there was the sound of heavy fists on the front door. “Mr. Edwards! Edwards!”

  Blake reached out to clamp his fist over the little man’s mouth. But the secretary jerked free of his hand and leaped away, screaming.

  “He’s here! He’s in here!”

  Thick shoulders were already battering at the door. Blake drove his fist into Edwards’ face. The little man sprawled out backwards, half the length of the hall and lay still on the runner. Blake leaped across him and went out the back door of the house as the front door splintered under the powerful shoulders of Arrenhower’s police.

  • • •

  Thirty minutes later, Blake started up the sidewalk to Manley Reeder’s ugly old house in Hyde Park. It seemed a hundred years ago since he’d walked up and down here, waiting for a taxi.

  The heavy odor of the honeysuckle attacked his nostrils. He went quickly across the old-fashioned front porch with its swing and wicker rockers. The screen door was closed, but the inner door was ajar. The house was silent. Blake rang the doorbell, stood listening to it echo in the deep old rooms.

  He tried the screen door. It was locked. He jerked on the handle and felt the single catch give. The second time he tried it, the screw ripped free of the panel and the door opened.

  This was a good place to wait. And he had to talk to Manley. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Stella’s death had nothing to do with the Arrenhower trouble. If it didn’t, the answer lay with Reeder or at least with someone Reeder knew. And Reeder was going to talk this time, because Blake knew he was a man with nothing to lose. Funny, what a difference that made. You no longer cared about things that might have mattered once.