Silk made a fast trip to the rendezvous. His battered De Soto pulled off the highway. Tony Quinn got out of his own car, went over.
“Signals over, Silk. We’re going to have to be a little cagey about this. We’ll have to risk going slower than I had in mind, at first.”
“You think they may already have taken her away from that Ravenwood place, sir?”
“I doubt it. They were too careful to whisk the car away, even after they knew she’d telephoned me about the motel. If they’d taken her elsewhere, I expect they’d have left her car there as a decoy.”
Silk hesitated. “You don’t think they may have — disposed of Carol?”
“I don’t know.” Hard lines were etched deeply in Quinn’s face. “They may have. That’s one of the things we have to find out. If we don’t get her, alive and unharmed, I’m going on a little gunning trip. There might be somebody in this town who’d like to keep me in line by keeping Carol alive and under his control.”
“Let’s hope so. I mean—”
“I know. Now here’s the deal. You go hire a Drive-Yourself buggy. Buy two or three of those big metal sample cases, fill ’em with phone books or old newspapers or whatever, and lock ’em, and leave ’em in the rear seat. Then pile your own suitcase on top, after you pack it as if you’d been away on a week’s selling trip.”
“I’ve just finished a tough week’s trip. I’m ready for a little relaxation at the Ravenwood. That it, sir?”
“And a lot of liquor. Don’t forget the hooch, because you’re going to have to stay over tomorrow night, and in a riding academy like that, they won’t be used to single guys staying over the second night. But it’s going to take a while for me to get my trap baited, Silk.”
“No oyster’s ever been as completely stewed as I shall be, sir.”
“Change your suit. Put on a colored shirt. And a noisy necktie.”
“Dress like a successful peddler of cosmetics, in short.”
“Exactly. And didn’t you used to have a pair of binoculars — for keeping cases on some good prospects and how they lived and acted, before you braced them?”
“I have kept them — as a memento of the unlawful period of my life.”
“Pack ’em in your suitcase. They’ll help to keep track of the comings and goings at the motel, particularly the goings. If you have to get in touch, phone Butch. He’ll stay at the house.”
“And you, sir?”
“I’m going to make like a piece of cheese, Silk.” He punched his assistant’s shoulder lightly. “In the hope some rat will snap at me.”
“I wish I was going with you, sir.”
“I’d rather go back to the Raven wood with you, far’s that goes. I’d like to tear the place apart, find what they’ve done to her. But that might be the very thing that would make them kill her. I’ll have to depend on you to look out for her, best you can.”
He watched the De Soto speed back toward town, got his own car going. Ten minutes later he sat, shirt-sleeved and perspiring, at the telephone in his library, growling brusque commands to Butch while waiting for the operators to complete the long-distance connections.
“Lay down that shillelagh a second and give me some more dope on this Ha-Ha customer you’ve been telling me about.”
Butch tried to scratch his bandaged skull with a bandaged hand, groaned in disgust. “Real name’s Fuddy Ommlee. Got this here Ha-Ha moniker because he always comes up with the great big giggle every time he made a pass with the dice for a gee or so. Used to be a pro gambler. Turned hijacker of his own game one time when some other crook slipped in a pair of no-seven dice on him. Took a New York bunch of bookies for a fancy grab of seventy, eighty thousand a month ago. Gut-shot one of ’em. Got away clean. Since then everybody’s been after him. The boys in the back room want him worse’n the cops do, if that’s possible.”
Quinn asked, “Ever see him, yourself?”
“Sure. He use to run one of these three truck carney outfits — Ferris wheel, couple dizzy rides, six, seven toss game booths. I run into him in Norfolk one time when a gang of gobs was using him for a punching bag because he gypped ’em on a pitch-the-penny setup.”
“What’s he look like?”
“About your build, Boss. Skinnier, as I remember. Used to flash one of them South-of-the-Border mustaches.”
“Hm. Know where we can get hold of some crooked dice?”
“Huh?”
“Nothing crude, like the stuff they sell in these novelty stores. Some of those passers that look oke when you test ’em in a glass of water, but warm up after you hold ’em in your fist a while, maybe.”
Butch came as close to grinning as his bunged-up face would permit. “Boss, you grieve me. Y’really do. To think you’d descend to such treacherous devices. — Yeah, I guess I can borrow a pair or so. Only I warn you, you better let me get you one of them bullet-proof vests to wear.”
“Soon’s I finish talking to New York, get busy on the phone and rustle up those trick cubes.” Quinn began to unlace his shoes. “Yes? Mr. Carrigan, this is Anthony Quinn in Vulcan City — that’s right. Like to ask a small favor, if you don’t mind. Well, thanks. I’d just like to have you send a wire for me.” It was ten minutes before he hung up.
He was in the shower when the phone rang again. Butch hollered:
“It’s the airport. They got that charter job for you, Boss.”
“Tell ’em I’ll be there in twenty minutes. And Butch—”
“I got it fixed, about them never-sevens. They’ll be here in no time.”
“Fine. But give that long-distance operator a goose about that car dealer in Harrisburg, will you?”
Half an hour later, as the checkered pattern of lighted towns began to unroll smoothly five thousand feet beneath the chartered Beechcraft, Tonny Quinn tried to check over the points he might have overlooked in his hasty preparations.
He’d dreamed up the scheme, right, off the top of his head; it would be crazy to expect it to be foolproof. But it was either try to sneak in by the back door — as he hoped to — or crash in the front door. That would have meant dependence on a police force which was, to put it charitably, not disposed to cooperate with him too willingly. And a raid on Ravenwood, or on Jack-the-Wrecker’s junkyard, wouldn’t have netted much, if there’d been a leak from Headquarters or a tipoff in advance.
Momentarily he wished most earnestly that he might for one final appearance, show up as the Black Bat again. That black-clothed apparition might have succeeded in getting past the guard of Carol’s captors, might have acomplished her rescue — assuming she was still breathing. The excessively dressy pin-stripe he was wearing probably would never be as effective.
But it had been largely at her insistence that he’d agreed to drop his dual role of public prosecutor and private avenger for once and forever. He couldn’t break his promise to her now. Always she had contended, so stubbornly, that it had been his nerve and his knowledge of the criminal mind which had brought about his most amazing coups against the vicious and the vile. Now he’d be forced to put her belief in him to the utmost test!
Chapter VIII
Over his shoulder, the pilot spoke to Quinn.
“Those are the bridges over the Monongahela, sir. We’ll be down in five minutes, unless they give us a standoff at the field.”
Tony Quinn looked down at the glowing rows of chimneys, the flaring flames of the coke ovens at the great mills. Somewhere below there, in that devil’s cauldron of fire and smoke, might be the key to a killer’s closet, with its grisly corpses.
The pilot said, “Are you expecting a car to meet you at the airport, sir?”