Garret sprinted for the office steps, got the door open as Ryder and Scat came slogging along. The Consolidated lobby was empty; there was no one in the outer office.
Garret flung open the door of Loomis’ private office. Nels Jarnstrom, sitting back in the president’s swivel chair, did not move the muzzle of the forty-five gripped in his bony hand. It pointed straight at the Ajax super’s belt buckle.
“I thought you’d be the cops!” the smelterman snapped. “I phoned for the cops to lock this man up for murdering Mr. Loomis.”
Brann said nothing. His face was drawn and tense. There was a cut at one corner of his mouth; a little streak of dried blood ran down the cleft of his chin.
Ryder called across the room to him, “Don’t talk, Ken old man. I’ll get a lawyer for you. Don’t open your mouth!”
Brann’s lips silently formed the word, “Okay.”
“A bad choice, Brann,” Garret said. “Now’s the time to talk.”
“Won’t do him any good to keep still,” Jarnstrom rumbled. “He was seen going into the drainage-water shaft, so I followed him. Quarter-mile up the tunnel I found him bending over Mr. Loomis’ body. You don’t hear him deny it, do you?”
Brann spoke, with an effort. “I don’t deny it.”
“Takes more than that to get a murder conviction, Jarnstrom.” Garret threw a leg across the corner of the desk, lounged against it. “I was bending over Loomis’ body myself ten minutes ago.”
The forty-five swerved briefly in Garret’s direction. “Keep your oar outa this! I’ve got enough on Brann to hang him six times.”
Garret swung his foot idly, along the side of the desk. “Then there ought to be enough to go around, eh?” He raised his voice. “Scat!”
“Yezzir?” Startled, the ex-con made a sudden movement into the room. Jarnstrom’s eyes flashed toward him. And Garret kicked out, hard.
His foot caught the arm of the swivel chair, spun it around so Jarnstrom swung toward the rear corner of the room. Garret leaped.
He dived clear across the end of the flat-top, plunged into the smelterman, and knocked him — and the chair — over on the floor. It took only a second to wrest the gun out of Jarnstrom’s grip and another to drive a savage jolt to the gaunt man’s jaw. There was a dull snap of bone. Jarnstrom fell.
Garret hefted the forty-five. “You can put your hands down, Brann. And you can talk up, if you want to.”
Ryder cried, “No, no, Ken!”
The super lowered his hands, but kept his mouth closed.
Garret licked the knuckle he’d split open on the smelterman’s chin. “That speak-no-evil stuff won’t get you anywhere, Brann. Don’t you suppose I can figure out why you cleared the stuff out of your desk?”
The super answered him hoarsely. “I meant to get out of town.”
“Yeah. To give everybody the impression you were running away because you thought the law had caught up to you. Not very convincing, Brann. It does credit to your sense of loyalty, but not much to your common sense. If you’d been skipping out because you were guilty, you wouldn’t have left that Morse code message saying G is wise to Fear Street.”
Ryder roared, “What message! I didn’t see any message!”
“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed!” Garret let the muzzle of the gun angle over toward the general manager. “You saw it, Ryder. Blue pencilled dots and dashes, there on the pad on Brann’s desk. You couldn’t have missed it. It was the only thing there was to see, and you sat right there with your face a couple of feet away from it. Even dumb Bill Narriver noticed it, though he couldn’t read it, as you could.”
Brann said sharply, “You’ve no right to draw conclusions—”
“Hell! You’ve been drawing them for a long time, Brann!” Garret picked up the chair, sat down in it. “You must have concluded some time ago that Charlie Ryder was getting away with murder. Where you made your mistake was in believing he’d appreciate your loyalty in covering up for him.”
Brann pulled down the corners of his mouth, closed his eyes. “I owe damn near everything in my life to C.J. I was ready to pay the debt.”
“That might be all right,” Garret snapped, “if it didn’t affect the lives of other men. Men who are running bigger risks every day than you or I will ever run!”
Charlie Ryder whirled, dived for the door. Garret leveled his gun. His finger tightened on the trigger — but didn’t pull it. For Ryder collided with Shirley Brann, coming in at that same moment, and took instant advantage of the opportunity to use her as a shield.
There was a gun in Ryder’s hand now. He held his left forearm under the girl’s chin, pressing her head back and up so she couldn’t struggle without being choked.
He’s not trying to get away, Garret thought. He knows that, sooner or later, he’s a dead man even if he does escape now. But here in Loomis’s office are all those who know Ryder for a betrayer of trust and a killer.
“Drop your gun, Garret!” The command was accompanied by a shot from Ryder’s pistol, and Garret didn’t dare to fire in return for fear of hitting Shirley. He tossed his gun down.
Ryder fired again instantly. He missed, because the girl struggled violently at that moment. But there was no doubt that he meant to shoot them all.
If Garret could keep Ryder from thinking about it — if the murderer could be stalled long enough—
Garret shouted, “It won’t put you in the clear to kill the lot of us, Ryder! Not as long as Washington gets that report I mailed in when you dropped me off near the hotel tonight!”
“What’s a report” — Ryder held his gun high, sighted along the barrel — “without any witnesses to back it up?” “Enough to convict you. Washington can check my suggestion that you would be the most likely person in Stope City to have known I was coming. Some of your big-shot friends in the Capitol might have mentioned that an investigation of raw copper was under way. They’d probably figure, as Brann and his sister did, that you were so important you were above suspicion.”
Ryder laughed, pleasantly. “Even if they believed you, they couldn’t do anything about it — with you pushing up daisies.”
Her voice faint, Shirley said, “They could — check your — Chicago call! Wasn’t to — Consolidated backers at all. You talked with O.P.M. Asked about — Bruce Garret.”
Garret began again. “I thought there might be something phony about your talking an hour to Chicago about Consolidated. Loomis didn’t seem to know anything about any negotiations; he didn’t mention any to me. It’s a cinch he’d have been consulted if a deal was on. For another thing, I’ll bet if we check up, we find you had someone at your house on the phone while you were in that Chewy after me.”
The girl was half-strangled into submission.
Garret decided there wasn’t more than one chance in a million that Ryder could be prevented from a four-way murder.
He said, “So you learned from Chicago I was on the way West. You tipped off that note to Darcy — I suppose Jarnstrom, here, supplied you with the Consolidated letterhead — telling him when I’d get here and what I look like. Darcy could understand your telegrapher’s abbreviations.”
Scat Prodger began to sidle, cat-fashion, along the wall toward the door. Ryder couldn’t get a good shot at him because of the angle, but he tried.
It won’t be long now! Garret thought. He said, “You figured the easiest way to keep out of trouble, Ryder, would be to murder me before I found any incriminating evidence. You must have been right behind Darcy when he trailed me over from the Rocky Mountain House. Only you were in a car, not your big limousine. You drove along behind Darcy so that if he didn’t succeed in slitting my throat, you could get a shot at me.”