Bates repeated the orders crisply to be sure he had them right. “Information is wanted as to the whereabouts of Linky Teagle. It is wanted within an hour.” He paused a moment, and “X” heard him issuing swift instructions at the other end. Then his voice came again. “Okay, sir. Stegman and Oliver have left. Anything else?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Vardis. “What reports have you on the robot murders?”
“Nothing helpful, sir,” regretfully. “All the witnesses of the crimes who have been interviewed by our men swear that the murderers are a strange race of robots. They did not talk, and they walked stiffly, as automatons do. The four murders reported have netted them large sums of cash and were all attended by an absolute lack of mercy. In no case were the victims warned, or threatened. In fact, no word was spoken, The robots merely shot to kill, then walked off with the money.”
“I know all that,” Mr. Vardis said shortly. “I will call you back every hour from now on. Have the men circulate in the underworld; let them try for any kind of lead to these robots. Any further reports now?”
“Only one, sir. The man who is shadowing ‘Duke’ Marcy reports that Marcy has done nothing suspicious today, in fact seems to be busy running the Diamond Club. The only thing of possible interest was a short conversation that Marcy had only a few minutes ago with a stranger named Vardis. Our man recommends looking up this Vardis.”
“Vardis is all right,” said Mr. Vardis. “I know all about him. Proceed with the investigation of the robot murders, and with the matter of Linky Teagle.”
Mr. Vardis left the telephone booth and walked east, purchasing an evening paper on the way. He turned in at a dilapidated brownstone house west of Sixth Avenue. This was one of a row that had deteriorated into boarding houses for down-at-heels theatrical people. Mr. Vardis had been able to secure the basement floor at a nominal rental, and he lived here alone, coming at odd times, going as he pleased, with no one to note his actions, which were, at times, more or less surprising. Now, in the seclusion of an inner room, he set himself to scan the paper carefully, studying the reports of the so-called “robot murders.”
A great deal of space was devoted to them, for they bore all the qualities of sensational terror that aided in the building of newspaper circulation.
The first of them had occurred the day before yesterday, and had been attended with an exhibition of daring, ingenuity and ruthlessness that had left the city gasping.
At eleven-thirty at night, four figures had strutted stiffly into the office of the cashier on the mezzanine floor of the Grand Central Station. This was the office where all the ticket clerks brought their cash from the ticket windows on the upper level of the station. It was estimated that the cash on hand exceeded twenty thousand dollars.
The four figures might have been men — they had the faces and bodies of men — except for the fact that they moved stiffly, jerkily, like automatons, and never uttered a word. They bore a striking facial resemblance to each other — so much so, that they might have all been cast from a single mould. Their faces were youthful in appearance, pleasant and harmless looking. But they quickly demonstrated that they were far from harmless. For they drew automatics with silencers attached, and shot to death the cashier, the assistant cashier, and a guard on duty in the office.
Then they scooped up the cash in sacks which they produced from under their clothing, and boldly marched out through the lower level exit. It was not until they were well away that the bodies of the murdered men were found in the office. The assistant cashier lived long enough to tell the story to the police.
The police might not have believed the story in its entirety, even though the four robots had attracted attention in their march through the station, had there not come in swiftly upon the heels of this crime, the news of three other robberies committed at almost the same time by men answering the same description. In one case a patrolman on the beat where the robbery took place had seen them escaping with a sack of loot from a local post office, and had emptied his service thirty-eight at them. Bystanders swore that every one of the patrolman’s shots had struck the robots, yet they were not wounded. Instead, one of the robots turned as if impelled by some mechanical device, raised its gun and fired at the policeman, killing him instantly.
FOR three days now those robberies had continued with impunity, the robots striking in parts of the city where they were least expected, always avoiding spots where the police had massed to trap them. The city was growing panicky. Deputy Commissioner Pringle, in charge while Commissioner Foster was away in Europe, had cancelled all leaves, had every available man on duty.
Mr. Vardis put down the paper, clenched his hands tightly. His eyes were bleak, almost fathomless. This menace of inhuman robots devoted to crime was a possibility that he had often envisaged with dread — not for himself, but for the community where they would strike. For it was inevitable that at some time or other there would arise a criminal with a mind of such scientific skill, of such devilish ingenuity, that it might develop such robots to do its work.
Such a criminal would be difficult to combat, for he would be clever, dangerous; he would remain hidden in security while his machines robbed and killed. And even if some of those machine-like fiends of man’s creative skill should be caught or disabled, the criminal himself would still be free to continue in his diabolical traffic.
If this thing had arisen now, it was a most inopportune time for the agencies of law enforcement, because of the added menace of those twenty-five hard-bitten convicts who were still at large, and who might be heard from at any moment now — also with reports of pillage and murder.
The newspaper flares about these escaped criminals had not died down yet, even after a month. The accounts of the nation-wide search being conducted for them shared honors with the robot murders. In addition to the rewards offered by the government, many individual newspapers were offering large sums for information leading to their capture — dead or alive. But no amount of tempting cash reward had so far succeeded in coaxing a single hint as to their whereabouts. Were they out of the country? The editorial writers hoped so — for, though it might reflect on America’s penal institutions that these convicts had been able to make a clean getaway, yet thousands of citizens would sleep easier if they were sure that those vicious men were no longer a hidden menace to their families.
“X” was almost certain that they were still somewhere in the country, hiding in some extremely clever retreat until they were ready to make their presence felt. The task of locating them, however, seemed utterly hopeless. He had reports from his agents everywhere — with not a single helpful hint among them.
So far, the only lead he had was the name which Leane Manners had spoken — that of Linky Teagle, “Duke” Marcy’s former pay-off man. “X” knew him as a crook of a low order of intelligence, who, since Marcy had turned from bootlegging to other, possibly more subtly insidious enterprises, had existed as a hanger-on at the fringe of the aristocracy of the underworld.
It was his business to “spot lays” for daring hold-ups, to “put the finger” on likely looking victims for kidnap plans; it was quite likely that a man like him would know where those escaped convicts were hiding out — but very unlikely that he would impart this information to a casual questioner. His very value to the underworld lay in the fact that he could be relied upon not to talk under any circumstances. Many a time had he been sweated in headquarters, “put through the mill,” but never had he uttered a word of betrayal. Teagle must be handled in a skillful manner to be induced to disclose information.