Brann cried, “Wait, Bill!”
But Narriver tugged out his automatic, levelled it, pulled the trigger. Scat’s scurrying figure would have been a hard target to hit in the half-gloom under any circumstances; Garret’s boot in the seat of the captain’s breeches didn’t make it any easier.
“Bill!” the super shouted. “You don’t want to kill him. Cut it!”
Narriver stumbled to his feet. His mouth worked, his eyes bulged. “I’m going to get him if it’s the last thing I ever do.” He waggled the pistol at Garret. “Then I’m coming back and take care of you.” He turned and made off at surprising speed after Scat.
Brann eyed Garret with distaste. “I don’t blame Bill. You’re certainly a big help!”
“Never can tell,” Garret retorted. “Wouldn’t have been any good to have Proctor in your morgue alongside Darcy. That old crack about dead men is on the up and up. They don’t testify.”
The super rubbed his chin resentfully. “Did you say Darcy was in the morgue?”
“No. He’s under the counter in an empty store down the street. Maybe he’ll keep long enough for me to get a line on that stolen ore. I didn’t want to bring the cops in this.”
“You’d certainly have a hard time making our local force believe Jig Darcy could have been involved in any big-scale theft of copper. There wouldn’t have been any way for him to get his hands on any poundage,” Brann said.
“He got his hands on these.” Garret touched the rails. “What I can’t figure out is why he bothered. Say he got four or five tons there. The most he could make out of it, second hand, would be forty or fifty bucks. That’s a hell of a lot of work and risk to run for that dough.”
Brann gazed at his shoe-tips for a second. “Might be some more scrap in the shack.” He strode across the sidewalk and up onto a tiny porch.
Garret followed. The super put his hand on the knob, was surprised to find the front door open.
The house was small and narrow. There were only two rooms downstairs; above there was a bedroom, reached by a wooden ladder. An unmade bed, clothing strewn carelessly on chairs, dirty dishes in the sink, said Darcy had been a careless and untidy bachelor.
There was no basement; no place in which scrap metal could have been concealed. Nor was there any evidence of affluence to indicate that Darcy had been stealing anything of great value.
Brann peered into closets and under the bed. Garret watched him. He saw him pick up a piece of paper from the kitchen table, read it hastily and attempt to stuff it in his pocket before Garret could notice him.
“Got something, Brann?” Garret asked.
“Just an old memo.”
“Let’s have a peek.”
Brann was about to refuse, but Garret’s insistent palm told the super it wouldn’t be wise. He laid the crumpled paper on the table again.
Garret saw that it was a letterhead which read:
In the upper left-hand corner was smaller type:
T. Allen Loomis, President
Typewritten in the middle of the sheet were curious abbreviations:
Ar. U.P. w.b. 6:40
med. ht. blk. hr. dk.
sut. Gr. ht. Tn sh.
Garret laughed, shortly. “So this is how he knew I was coming!”
Brann made no effort to conceal his astonishment. “You know what that gibberish means?”
“Ought to. Part of our job’s to know brass-pounder’s shorthand. That’s the telegrapher’s way of saying somebody was due to arrive on the Union Pacific west-bound at six-forty tonight. Meant me. Description was pretty fair, too. Medium height, black hair, dark suit, grey hat, tan shoes. All clear and correct — except who wrote it out for Jig Darcy and gave him orders to get me.”
Brann cleared his throat. “The letterhead’s plain enough.”
“Yeah. Who’s T. Allen Loomis?”
“One of the crookedest shysters,” the super said savagely, “who ever got into the copper business.”
“Now, now, Ken!” The voice startled them. It belonged to a big, florid-cheeked, white-haired man who stood in the kitchen doorway. A fawn-colored ten-gallon hat was tilted rakishly over one eye — a long, thin cigar angled up with equal jauntiness from the corner of a wide and humorous mouth. “You don’t want to talk about our competitors that way, Ken.”
Brann’s lips thinned. “What’s the use of kidding, C.J.? You know you hate Loomis’ guts as much as I do. And Mr. Garret here ought to, because it looks as if Loomis tried to have him killed tonight!”
The dapper man held out his hand. “Charlie Ryder, Mr. Garret. You a reporter?”
“Federal man,” the detective said.
“How’d you happen to tangle with Loomis?”
“I don’t know that I did. I tangled with someone. Brann thought it was Loomis. I never heard of him until a minute ago.”
Ryder’s eyebrows went up quizzically. “Lord’s sake, Ken! Haven’t we enough dirty linen of our own to wash, without looking for more on our neighbor’s line?” The super held out the letterhead. “Seems to be the same batch of linen, C.J. Darcy, on our payroll, must have been working for Loomis too.”
“I can’t believe that!”
“You’ll have to, C.J. Somebody sent a screwy rumor to Washington that a lot of copper’s being stolen out of Stope City. Garret got in town tonight to investigate. Soon’s he hopped off the train, Jig Darcy began to trail him.”
“This notation,” Garret held out the letterhead, “was apparently written to tell Darcy where to pick me up, and what I look like, so the investigation could be stopped before it started.”
Ryder tilted his head back and squinted at the message. “What’s that? Double talk?”
Garret translated, stuck the paper in his pocket.
“Where’s Darcy now?” Ryder asked.
“Gone. When I cornered him, he wanted to play for keeps, so I had to tap him hard. While he was out, somebody drove past and let go with a gun. When I picked him up, he was dead.”
Ryder whistled. “Did you give the murderer’s description to the police?”
“Too dark to get a look at him.”
Ryder threw a leg over the corner of the kitchen table, pushed the broad-brimmed hat back off his high forehead.
“How’d Loomis know when you were arriving?”
“Not sure Loomis did know,” Garret said. “Somebody knew. The only way it makes sense is to suppose this somebody is involved with the matter I came here to investigate.”
The super picked up a stack of dirty beer glass mats from the sink drain-board and began to shuffle them like a hand of cards. “Bill Narriver got the goods on Darcy, C.J. Four or five tons of those rails from that abandoned slag spur. Not much Darcy could get out of scrap iron, unless—” He turned on the sink faucet and rinsed the fiber disks under the water. Garret noticed the red rooster stamped on the mats and wondered what was behind Brann’s none too subtle dumb-show.
Ryder took the long cigar out of his mouth and inspected the ash carefully. “Better lay our cards on the table, Ken. Maybe our friend from Washington can tell us how to play them.”
Garret murmured, “I was wondering when you’d get around to that.”
“It’s not the kind of situation” — Brann tossed the dripping disks back on the drainboard — “we want to do much talking about.”
“If Washington is interested, it’s time to talk. To put it in a nutshell, Consolidated Reclaimers has us by the short hair. We’ve either got to pay tribute to Loomis on a sizeable chunk of our output or buy him out.”