“Don’t look now.” Her eyes were on the rearview mirror. “But I believe there’s another car following us. I’ll make sure.”
She took the next corner on two wheels and just skinned through a changing light. Norton glanced back over his shoulder. A black Cadillac had halted for the red light.
“That settled their hash!” cried Jean gleefully.
“I hope so.”
The Elk River Mills had large offices in a modern building. Norton and Jean passed from secretary to secretary until they reached a “Mr. Grimes” — a small man with a big office all to himself.
He examined the edge of the black disc under a magnifying glass. Then he measured the thickness against a little steel gadget with adjustable jaws.
“Bindersboard,” Grimes explained. “Most cardboard is made by pasting two or more sheets of paper pulp together. That’s why it’s called pasteboard. But bindersboard is made from a single sheet compressed at a pressure ranging from two hundred to four hundred tons. The finished board is almost two and a half times thinner than the original sheet. Density gives it exceptional stiffness and a smooth, hard-rolled finish like vulcanite. What is this funny little disc used for?”
Jean groaned aloud. Norton said: “We were hoping you could tell us! Can’t you hazard a guess, now you’ve identified the grade of cardboard it’s made of?”
“Good heavens, no! Bindersboard is used for dozens of things. You’d better see Stubbs. He’s a jobber who buys all grades of cardboard from us and other mills in large quantities and then sells it in small lots to manufacturers of cardboard objects. He might give you a list of his customers for bindersboard and you might find some company among them who manufactures discs like this. Stubbs’ address is Ten Greenwood Lane.”
The sun had disappeared. The city was colorless as a black and white print, stone buildings and lifeless trees dark against a pale, pearl sky. As the car started, Jean said quietly, “That man’s here again.”
Norton looked in the rearview mirror. The black Cadillac was just behind them. In the treacherous half-light it was impossible to see the driver.
“Better go home and let me take over,” said Norton.
“Certainly not! Where is Greenwood Lane? It sounds rustic and quaint.”
It was neither. It ran through the older part of the city, a dusty region of small factories and warehouses. It was hardly more than an alley, paved with cobblestones. On either side stood dingy, brick houses that must have been comfortable homes seventy years ago. Now they were used as warehouses by distributors of wholesale goods. Delivery wagons parked before yawning double doorways made progress difficult.
Again Norton looked in the rearview mirror. No sign of the big black car now. He frowned. He liked his enemies to be where he could see them.
No. 10 was hardly more than a shell. Every floor and partition had been torn away leaving the house one big storeroom four stories high. Every window had been bricked up. A single, bald electric bulb made little impression on the cavernous darkness within. Workmen were loading a truck with rolls of pasteboard. A foreman in overalls was comparing a bill of lading with a ledger. Norton explained their errand to him.
“Boss ain’t here, but I guess there’s no harm in letting you know what companies use bindersboard, seeing as old Grimes sent you.” He flipped the pages of his ledger. “Fletcher Bindery uses it for bookbinding — Mannering Body Company for the insides of sedan cars — Singleton Brothers for boxes — Ashley and Marx for cartridges — Diamond Pattern Company for templet board — Machinists Accessory Company for gaskets — Fur Workers Supply Company for furriers’ accessories—”
“Hey, wait a minute!” Norton was scribbling frantically on the back of an old envelope, wondering what a templet was and what you did with a gasket. “Are there any firms connected with real estate or house construction that use bindersboard?”
“Blake and Brandt use it inside the walls and ceiling of a house.”
“Did they build any of the new houses at Wickford?”
“Couldn’t say offhand. But they probably did. They get all the fat construction jobs around here.”
“Ever see anything like this before?” Norton dropped the black disc on the ledger.
“No.” The foreman squinted as he held it up to the light. “Cut with a die. That’s funny.”
Norton’s attention quickened. “What’s funny about it?”
“Bindersboard is so tough it wears out the cutting edge of a die quicker than pasteboard. Manufacturers who die-cut cardboard into shapes like this here use pasteboard to save wear on the die.”
“But there are exceptions?”
“Never saw one before. But this disc is made with binders-board and it was cut with a die.”
Norton’s eyes brightened. At last he had discovered something unique about the black disc, something that might prove significant.
It was only five o’clock but the stars were out, the street lamps lighted.
“Let’s go to a drugstore,” said Norton. “I want to consult a telephone directory.”
Jean Stacy released the clutch. The car swerved to avoid a delivery truck and bumped over the cobblestones. At the corner where Greenwood Lane emptied into Brickett Street, Jean slowed down. At this hour there was little traffic in the neighborhood. Its factories and warehouses were empty except for an occasional night watchman. Street lamps were the only source of light.
Again Jean released the clutch. The car had hardly moved a yard when she stamped on the brake. A big, black car without lights shot out of another side street parallel with Greenwood Lane. The car cut in front of Jean’s compact, so close it almost grazed her radiator. Its door swung open. Something long, inert and shapeless fell before Jean’s front wheels.
The black car gathered speed. Like a wraith it disappeared into the darkness without noise or lights. The license number was veiled in shadow. But Norton recognized the now familiar silhouette of the Cadillac.
He pushed open the door beside him and tumbled out. Jean was at his heels.
“Don’t come,” he warned her. “This is going to be ugly.”
She stammered. “It... it was a body, wasn’t it?”
The headlights of the car shone like twin spotlights on a woman huddled face down in the roadway. Gently, Norton turned her over. Dark hair framed a pale face, thin and worn as a profile on an old coin. The eyes were glazed and vacant, the lips slightly parted. But she was still breathing.
“W-who is she?” Jean’s shaking hand was on his shoulder.
“Marie Chester, the chambermaid whose story was suppressed.” Norton was so angry that he forgot to be afraid. He would have made a splendid target kneeling in that blaze of light. But he wasn’t thinking of that.
“Were we meant to find her?” whispered Jean, huskily.
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Norton answered without looking up. Then he added, “Quick! We must drive to a hospital.”
At the hospital Jean waited in an anteroom while Norton interviewed the chief surgeon. When he returned his face was as bleak as granite.
“Marie Chester is dead. She was horribly tortured first. She insisted on leaving a written statement describing what she saw the night Diana Clark was murdered.”
Jean Stacy caught her breath. “It’s unbelievable that Benda would go to such extremes as to actually kill the girl.”
“Benda wanted to silence a witness,” Norton said. “He murdered in order to frighten other witnesses. These things do happen. Ask any police reporter. In the old days in New York she might have been sealed in a block of wet cement and dropped into the East River as soon as the cement had hardened. Its weight keeps a body from rising to the surface, so there’s no evidence of murder.