“You mean — you won’t give it to me?”
“That’s exactly what I do mean. This thing goes to the American Intelligence, if they want it.”
Her reaction surprised him somewhat. She sighed. “That’s all right, I suppose. You know — we have no fear of the Americans attacking us.”
Nace squinted down at the girl. He was, he made a mental note, going to take a future interest in her. She was a swell number.
She shrank against him, as if for comfort, shivering. “What about Baron von Auster—?”
“That guy,” Nace told her grimly, “fanned out!”
The Diving Dead
The man in black looked like a crow in mourning. He said he was an undertaker — and had a coffin ready for Detective Lee Nace. The police sergeant looked like trouble — went out of his way to make things tough for Lee Nace. The red-headed girl looked like a million. She brought haunting memories to Nace. The corpse in the cabin looked like a horrible nightmare. It plunged Lee Nace into an amazing race with a grim and terrible death.
Chapter I
Coffin Bait
It was the morning of Friday, the thirteenth. Nace accidentally broke the rear-view mirror on his roadster while driving downtown. A black cat angled his path when he was leaving the parking lot. Near his office, a ladder slanted over the sidewalk and Nace forgot to go around it.
Crass superstition? Sure it was. Nace paid no attention to any of it. Maybe it was his hard luck that he didn’t, for the pay-off was not long in coming.
In front of his office building, Nace met Police Sergeant Gooch. As far as Nace was concerned, Gooch was another black cat.
“Hello — tall, blond, handsome!” Gooch smirked around a cigar.
Nace gave him a bony-faced leer.
“You’re going for your morning shave, I suppose?”
Gooch’s teeth mashed his cigar angrily. He had a prolific blue beard, and was touchy about it. He shaved three times a day it was rumored.
“The same old cop-loving Lee Nace,” he said wryly.
“Sure! I love cops.” Nace pumped a breezy fist against Gooch’s fat middle. “I’ll prove it. C’mon up to the office. I’ll give you a cigar. I keep a special brand for you public servants.”
Gooch smiled dreamily, picked the Havana from between his teeth, and held it so Nace could see the maker’s name on the band.
Nace’s neck slowly became purple as he looked at the band. On his forehead, a small scar reddened out like a design done with red ink and a pen. A long time ago, a Chinaman had hit Nace above the eyes with the hilt of a knife that bore a carved serpent. The scar, a likeness of a coiled adder, was ordinarily unnoticeable, but came out vividly when Nace was angry.
“You got that stogie out of my office!” he rumbled savagely.
Gooch’s round face was placid. “I hope you don’t mind—”
“Mind!” Nace shoved his angular face against Gooch’s cherubic one. “If you think I’m gonna have flatfeet busting into my place, you’re crazy! I’ll prefer charges! I’ll have you clapped in your own holdover! I’ll—”
“Now, now, honey, don’t have a hemorrhage!” Gooch fished a folded paper out of his tight blue suit, presented it. “Look, dear!”
The document was a search warrant for Nace’s office.
Nace cradled back slowly on his heels. The serpent still coiled redly on his forehead. His eyes were smoky, far-off.
“What the hell, Gooch? What the hell? Is this one of your little ideas, or—”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Gooch blew smoke airily, then started off.
Nace planted in front of him. “You’d better tell me—”
“Tell you — nothing! It’s police business! We don’t roll around gabbing—”
Nace jerked the cigar out of Gooch’s teeth, threw it in the gutter. Simultaneously, his other hand dove under Gooch’s coat and came out with four more cheroots of the same brand.
Gooch grasped at his pocket, but was too late to save the Havanas. He made a slit-eyed, wrathful face, lower lip protruding beyond his upper. He gave a difficult, thick laugh.
He walked away, putting the search warrant in his pocket.
The elevator boy stared, fascinated, at the cherry serpent on Nace’s forehead as they rode upward. Nace found his office door locked, and knew Gooch must have used a master key.
Nace ducked a little, from habit, as he went in. He was tall enough so that the top of a door occasionally brushed off his hat.
He roamed, gaunt and angry, around the outer office, opening a tall green metal box of a clothes locker and probing desk drawers and other places. Tramping into the inside room, he wandered down a long workbench, delving into cabinets. Nothing was greatly disarranged, but evidence showed that Gooch had made a thorough search.
Frowning, Nace lunged back into the outer office and slammed down at his desk. He dug out his pipe and a silk pouch of rough cut. He rasped a match alight on the under side of the desk, applied it to his pipe and sat scowling. The serpent scar gradually went away from his forehead.
“Damned if it don’t beat me!” he muttered. “Gooch gets funny ideas of a joke! Maybe that was one of ’em!”
As if that dismissed the affair, he took the morning paper out of his pocket, cracked it open, and settled back to read.
He was over as far as the sport page when a strange-looking man came in. The fellow walked slowly, kept his head down. He wore a black suit, black derby, a black string tie, black cotton gloves on his hands. He was the picture of a crow in mourning.
“Good morning, sir!” he said solemnly. “I am in search of a Mr. Lee Nace.”
Nace put his paper down. “That’s me.”
“I believe you must have made a mistake about the address you gave us,” the newcomer murmured. He took off his black derby as if he had just thought of it. “There was, I am sorry to say, no such address.”
“What kind of an address?”
“Why — where we were to take the coffin.”
Nace placed his pipe atop his paper. He grinned widely, then scowled sourly, as if practicing making faces. On his forehead, the serpentine scar coiled redly.
“What the hell?” he said savagely. “Is this somebody’s lousy idea of more humor? Did Gooch send you?”
The man in the crow garments looked even more mournful.
“Perhaps I should have explained,” he murmured. “What I mean is the coffin bearing your brother’s body. It’s in a hearse downstairs.”
Nace picked up his pipe, laid it down. He gave the man a hard eye. “You wouldn’t kid me, buddy?”
The man seemed injured. “Perhaps there has been a mistake—”
“You’re blasted right there’s been a mistake!” Nace snorted. “I don’t know anything about a coffin or a dead man. Anyway, I haven’t got a brother!”
The other fumbled his derby. The hat was sized down by a stuffing of newspapers in the sweat band. “Are you Lee Nace, the private detective?”
“Sure.”
“When you telephoned me, you said—”
“I didn’t telephone you!” Nace got up from behind the desk and came around and stood close to the man. “I still think this is a joke, buddy! Maybe you’re in it, and maybe you’re not. Be a good guy and spill the works!”
The man absently adjusted the newspapers in his derby. “I am from Lake City. My name is Stanley, and I own the Quiet Service Funeral Parlor. Yesterday, a Mr. Nace telephoned me—”
“I’m betting his name wasn’t Nace!”
“He used that name. He said he wanted the body of his brother taken to New York. He told me to come to a home in Lake City for the — er, remains, and I did that. Then I drove all day and all night—”