Burks, standing at the rail of the police boat with the commissioner at his side, was trying to dope it out — and wasn’t getting far.
As the gangsters stood in a huddled group, still blinded by the ammonia fumes, the coast guard boats and the police patrol closed in. Searchlights played on the two vessels that were locked with grappling hooks. The dead men on the decks, the havoc caused by the flame-thrower, showed how fierce the battle had been.
Agile coast guardsmen were the first to leap to the deck of the yacht.
INSPECTOR BURKS swore harshly again and stared in amazement, for Banton was fighting like an enraged beast. Blinking through watery eyes he tried to yank an automatic from his pocket and fire at the coast guardsmen.
A balled fist knocked him flat. If he had tipped off the police and sent up rockets for help what was the matter with him? Inspector Burks couldn’t figure it out.
He climbed to the deck of the yacht with Commissioner Foster at his side. The coast guard boats had pushed in, surrounding the two locked vessels. Their crews were swarming up from all sides. Six cops from the harbor patrol joined them.
Banton was yanked to his feet by the man who had knocked him down. The private detective stood blinking, sullen. Burks hurled a harsh question at him.
“What the hell’s going on here, you rat?”
“Find out for yourself!” yelled Banton.
“You sent up those rockets, didn’t you?”
“Rockets! Do you think I’d call any of you lily-livered cops in to help me! The girl did it — the little—”
“What girl?”
Banton shook his head and sneered into Burks’s face. But at that moment two coast guardsmen brought a kicking, struggling figure between them up from the cabin of Banton’s ex-rumrunner. It was Rosa Carpita, the Spanish dancer. She wasn’t speaking English now. She had lapsed, screaming, into her native tongue.
“We found her locked in a closet,” said one of the men. Sweat dripped from his face. He was panting. “She don’t like being rescued,” he said.
Burks, growing more perplexed, bawled a question.
“How in damnation could she send up rockets locked in a closet?”
But he didn’t question the girl at the moment. A more important matter claimed his attention. The tip-off had been that the band of death-torch murderers were escaping in a yacht with their fortune in loot. It was to see the murderers rounded up that Burks and Commissioner Foster had come out here.
There were pungent fumes of ammonia inside the cabin, keeping the coast guardsmen back. Here was another mystery. Who had thrown them? The murderers on board the yacht, Burks decided.
The fumes began to clear. The cops and coast guardsmen entered. They held machine guns, automatics and sawed-off shotguns ready. There must be life still on the yacht, more of the flame-throwers. They were taking no chances.
Three hideous hulks that had once been men were sprawled on the floor of the cabin. They went on to the head of the stairs, then shouted. At the bottom of the stairs lay another figure, helmeted and goggled. One of the torch murderers — dead. The mystery of their identity was at last to be disclosed to the police.
Inspector Burks was trembling with excitement. The police had had little part in catching this band of sinister raiders, but he was in at the finish. If there were any left alive they would have to stand trial for the murders they had committed in the city.
It was Burks himself, gun in hand, who saw a face ahead of him along a passageway of the yacht. His features grew white. He thought he was looking at a ghost. Then the face disappeared, a door slammed. From behind the door Inspector Burks heard a single pistol shot and the thud of a falling body.
He leaped forward, yanked open the door, and stood, gun in hand, staring down.
A tall man lay at his feet, a man with stern, aristocratic features, blue eyes and light hair. The blue eyes were blazing now. The features were setting into the immobility of death. There was a cruel sneer on the aristocratic mouth.
“Von Blund!” gasped Burks.
He leaned against the wall, rigid, dumfounded. The man who lay at his feet was supposed to be dead already, slain in the last raid on the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Bank, a charred and hideous corpse identified by his cuff links and jewelry. Understanding of this ghastly mystery began to filter into Inspector Burks’s mind. With a harsh oath he stumbled back along the passageway, stooped over the goggled and helmeted figure at the foot of the stairs.
While Commissioner Foster watched, he ripped off the helmet and goggles exposing the dead face beneath. It was the commissioner’s turn this time to gasp in surprise.
“It’s Francis Marsh, inspector! In God’s name, what does this mean? He was killed tonight — burned!”
“We thought he was!” barked Burks. “Von Blund’s in there, too. He shot himself when he saw he was trapped, when he saw the game was up!”
“You mean—”
“I mean that the cleverest bunch of thieves and murderers in the history of the city pulled the wool over our eyes, chief.”
“What about Osterhout, Davis and Honor — the partners killed in the first raid?”
THE answer to that question came before Burks could speak. Two coast guardsmen came into the cabin carrying a sprawled figure on a piece of canvas. He, too, was goggled, helmeted. But the helmet, ripped off, exposed the face of Eric Osterhout — von Blund’s wartime partner, the man whose supposedly charred corpse found in the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ bank had shown the wings of a flyer. He, also, was dead, riddled by bullets from the guns of Banton’s raiding gangsters. And a group of cops herded a shaking, thin-faced man into the cabin following the corpse.
It was Honer — the fourth bank partner. He had little stomach for action, and they had found him hiding in a closet.
But he wouldn’t speak. His bloodless lips were locked tight.
It was the black-eyed girl, Rosa Carpita, taken from the closet on Banton’s cruiser, who answered vehemently when Burks asked a question.
“What about Davis?” the inspector said. “He must be around here, too.”
The girl, standing in the door of the cabin, stamped her foot.
“Fools!” she said. “Bunglers! He is not here. He was killed — murdered!”
“That’s what we thought about the others,” answered Burks.
“But he was murdered, I tell you. I know. He was the only honest one. He told me terrible things were going to happen. He suspected, but he was afraid to go to the police. They, the murderers, hated him after he had been approached and had refused to aid them. Their bank was going to pieces. They were desperate men. So they killed him — because he knew too much.”
“And you were sweet on him, weren’t you, girlie?”
Color flooded Rosa Carpita’s dark face.
“You are impertinent,” she said coldly. “I shall not answer that question.”
“Why didn’t you come to the police if you knew so much? Why did you wait to tip us off tonight?”
“Tip you off?” Rosa Carpita pouted in puzzlement. “I did not tip anyone off. You are talking crazy. I employed that big pig, Banton, to catch these men. I wanted to be revenged.”
Banton spoke then, sneering through clenched teeth.
“She wanted to get her paws on the reward money that was up for the killers’ capture. But she got cold feet and called on you cops at the last minute.”
“You liar! You double-crosser! I didn’t get cold feet! I didn’t call the cops! But I would have if I could — after you locked me up and threatened to kill me.”