With what the police already had on Rob Trenton, however, they felt justified in checking on the young woman with whom he had made a recent European trip.
The only hitch was that Harvey Richmond, ace narcotic investigator, who had been working on that “angle”, couldn’t be reached. He was, in the words of the reporting trooper, “Not immediately available.” He was, in fact, investigating a “hot lead”, so that he expected to make a flock of arrests by midnight, and had asked for two loads of state troopers to be held in readiness at that hour.
Colonel Miller C. Stepney paced the floor thoughtfully, studying reports which were pouring in from state troopers all over the country. The man who had been picked up had refused to talk. The driving license showed that his name was Marvus L. Gentry. He had in his possession every one of the oiled silk packages which had been left at the scene to act as bait for the persons who would return to pick them up. There was at the moment nothing to connect L Gentry with any person anywhere in the state. He had an out-of-state driving license, and while the classification of his fingerprints was being rushed in for comparison, it would be a matter of several hours before anything definite could be obtained. His manner, however, was that of the veteran crook, sitting completely tight and keeping his mouth clamped in a firm line of silence.
Colonel Stepney debated the possibility that the passenger list would give him more information about Rob Trenton’s companions on the European tour. This matter had been within the exclusive province of Harvey Richmond and it was against the policy of Harvey Richmond to make a report until the case was thoroughly in hand. Richmond was a special narcotic officer and his relationship with the State Police was that of coordinating the narcotic work of the different law enforcement agencies. While he might make more detailed reports to his immediate superiors, he certainly adopted an enigmatic policy with the State Police.
Under the circumstances, knowing how easy it is to flush game by being too eager, and how disastrous premature questioning may be, Colonel Stepney decided to hold off on everything until he had heard from Harvey Richmond. After all, the State Police now had the entire cache of heroin which had been smuggled in and subsequently buried. There was no way of communicating this information to Harvey Richmond. However, Richmond would doubtless soon put in a call.
So Colonel Stepney paced the floor and waited.
Chapter 16
It had been dark for some hours when Rob Trenton heard the car driving up. Judging from the sound of the motor, the machine was being operated at high speed.
A few moments later he heard quick steps on the planks of the mooring pier just outside the porthole of the room where he found himself confined.
There was something hauntingly familiar about those steps. The quick, nervous impact, the light, lithe footfalls. They were the steps of a woman. Could it be...? Rob struggled to a sitting position and listened hopefully.
He heard the sound of excited voices, then the low hum of a conference. The steps of the woman were heard again as she ran back down the pier. Then Rob heard heavy steps coming towards his room. They were steps made by men who seemed to be walking irregularly and with an effort, as though they were carrying something heavy.
The steps approached his room. Quite evidently they were the steps of men carrying some burden.
The key twisted in the lock. The door was kicked open, and Rob saw only two grim-faced men, each carrying a steel shaft which apparently weighed some seventy-five or eighty pounds. They also carried several lengths of baling wire.
The men were ominously silent as they dropped these articles on the floor, turned and started out without a word.
“What’s the matter?” Rob asked.
“Matter enough,” one of the men said. “You thought you were pretty damn slick. Okay, buddy, you’ll pay for it when you start blowing bubbles.”
“Look here,” Rob said desperately. “That wasn’t a trap...”
“Oh, no,” one of the men said sarcastically. “That State Police just happened to be waiting there. They just happened to grab my buddy! Well, you’ve taken the first trick. Let’s see how you do on the rest of the tricks.”
The two men left the room, slamming the door behind them. The key once turned in the lock.
Rob knew from the expressions on their faces, from what he had already seen of their methods, that he could expect no mercy. These men were clearing out. They had played the game to the end of the string and now within a few hours they would be scattering to the four winds, hunting places of concealment, before the State Police and the Federal Narcotics Division could broadcast accurate information.
Rob gloomily contemplated the two steel shafts and the baling wire so mutely eloquent of the fate in store for him. He knew now that these men didn’t intend him to leave the boat alive.
The knowledge gave him a certain desperation.
He thought back with self-anger to the opportunity he had missed, to the knife in his pocket. He had never had to cope with a situation such as this, and as a result he felt as though he were backing against a stone wall. At the same time he realized he either had to use every bit of concentration and ingenuity he possessed or it would be too late.
His eyes roamed over the room without finding anything that furnished the inspiration.
Then suddenly he thought of the glass. That glass was sitting on a corner of the table where the man had placed it when Rob had finished drinking and just before the smuggler had started to search Rob’s pockets. The results of that search had been so important that the man had forgotten all about the glass.
Rob squirmed and twisted, snaking his way like a sidewinder, until he had his feet against the legs of the table. Then he flung himself up and around like a desperate floundering fish. The rope jerked at his wrists with a strain that threatened to part the skin as he kicked; he struck the water glass and it rolled to the floor but did not break.
Rob followed the glass, picked it up in the fingertips of his bound hands, then squirmed his way back to the nearest steel shaft and started pounding the glass on it.
The second smash cracked the glass into sharp fragments, and Rob wedged one of these circular, knife-edged fragments in between the shaft and the wall, then lying on his back, started sawing away at the rope which held his wrists.
He found it difficult to move his arms so as to keep the glass cutting in one place, but he kept sawing away until he had cut his wrists in half a dozen places, until he could feel the warm trickle of blood over his fingers, until it seemed his cramped muscles could no longer endure that tiresome pushing and pulling as he rubbed the strands of the rope across the glass.
Then, when it seemed almost impossible to carry on, the rope suddenly parted, and Rob, stretching his cramped arms, was able to untie his ankles, get to his feet and start flexing his muscles. Returning circulation made him feel that his extremities were full of pins and needles.
He could hear people moving around the interior of the big houseboat. Doors were slamming, steps sounding in the corridors, then climbing the stairs. So far, for the moment, Rob had been undisturbed, but he knew that at any moment they would he calling far him. He felt like a condemned man in death row, waiting for the tramp of the solemn death march.
Rob dragged the table over to the locked door, unknotted the rope which had been used to tie him, and then tied the cut pieces together. He found he had a strip of rope some ten feet long. He hastily knotted one end of this rope over one of the heavy steel shafts, stood on the table and managed to elevate the shaft so that it was balanced on a small beam which ran directly over the door, some two feet above the level of the door itself.