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.