The Phantom Detective: Fangs of Murder. Robert Wallace
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night, had worked for one of those four big king-pins of New York City’s underworld, looked impressed rather than regretful. In the unfeeling underworld there was little personal sentiment, especially when money flowed freely.
A broken-nosed man spoke then, with a self-important laugh. “Boy, did I finish Dutch in style! Nobody even heard that silenced gat when I clipped him from the aisle soon as he blew up over that note.”
A pallid-faced, long-jawed thug put in, “Hell, Gus, you shoulda seen me sideswipe Ricco over that cliff —”
“Cut it, you mugs!” the big man in the slicker snapped out angrily. Again he addressed the hard-faced gathering.
“Them four babies all got just what was comin’ to ’em, see? An’ the same goes for anyone else who thinks he’s big shot now! Why? Because you’re workin’ for a guy, bigger than any of these punks ever were! A right guy who won’t keep you warmin’ park benches while he goes off on vacations! They’ll be dough, an’ plenty of it! They’ll be dough enough to buy the whole damn town! From now on we all got one boss — and we’re doin’ whatever he tells us, see?”
Eager eyes were fixed on the speaker.
Eager voices rose from the vast interior of the garage.
“Where’s th’ Big Shot, Monk?”
“Let’s meet ’im! Th’ dough you jes’ passed out from him is like old times!”
“Is he comin’ here, Monk?”
“Whadda we do next?”
Monk Gorman again held up his hand for silence.
“I’ve already told you guys that th’ big shot’s been — well, he’s been sending me orders from where he’s been hiding out. Yeah, he’s coming to take personal charge tonight — about eleven, when th’ Charlemagne docks. But he ain’t coming to this dump.”
He paused and indicated the five bullet-riddled bodies which lay in a huddled heap in one corner.
“We’ve jes’ finished our first job for him when we cleaned out Rinaldi’s garage here, but we gotta scram. We got one more job to do, and then, if we do it right, we meet th’ new Big Shot in person.”
CHAPTER II
MURDER BY APPOINTMENT
ELEVEN P.M. THE CLOCK over the passenger gateway showed the time.
The huge, newly constructed pier on the Hudson River was jammed with people meeting the late docking S.S. Charlemagne which was nine hours ahead of its schedule. Private cars and taxis pulled up in turn outside the vast concrete and steel structure which was three city blocks in length.
In a rather small but handsomely finished office room of the big pier building which towered above cobblestoned Twelfth Avenue and the newly-built express highway which flowed north along the western edge of Manhattan, Inspector Thomas Gregg, chief of the Bureau of Detectives, spoke to seven elderly men.
“Without disrespect to you, gentlemen,” he said gruffly, “I must say this sounds juvenile and screwy to me. The idea of a super-criminal staging a come-back after twenty years is ridiculous on the face of it. And there were no super-criminals twenty years ago. Why, I had one devil of a time even getting reports from the mid-west on this — er — Albert Millett. And look at the picture I got from Arizona — a smooth-faced kid with buck teeth. It’s so faded you can scarcely decipher it.”
“Inspector Gregg, you are making a grave mistake in taking this matter so lightly,” said Carl Fenwick, the theatrical producer, in a solemn voice. “We were all young then, some younger than others, and photography was bad. You didn’t know Al Millett. We did.”
A sort of psychic shiver seemed to ripple around the group of seven at his words. Even Inspector Gregg felt it, and the hackles wanted to rise on his thick, red neck. This made the chief detective mad. He fairly scowled around the group which half-encircled him.
Seven elderly, influential, wealthy, distinguished men. He told them off mentally. Now that he thought of it, this was the first time Gregg had ever been in close contact with any of these prominent men — the very first time he had even heard of them appearing publicly together.
Clyde Dickson, gaunt-faced, with dark and brooding eyes, an unusually thick shock of grey hair on his oddly pointed head, was huddled deep in a leather armchair. He was the owner of the highly successful Palladium Club — one of New York’s most luxurious night spots.
Stocky, broad of beam, heavy-jowled, but visibly short of legs despite their massiveness, Bernard J. Andrews leaned on a beautifully carved cane as rugged as himself as he stood there. Andrews was the president of a nationally known radio station.
Paul Corbin, owner and operator of a small chain of exclusive night clubs and cocktail bars, stood next. Corbin was small, slender, with an effeminate sort of face out of which looked large, tragic eyes which, in themselves, were beautiful. He wore loosely tailored tweeds which almost looked too bulky, too mannish for him.
John Gifford, massive-chested and craggy of features, with arms that were a trifle abnormal in length, sat beside Dickson and spoke to him in deep whispers. Gifford was a well-known operator of a huge amusement park at Coney Island and the designer of the breath-taking Leap-for-Life rocket ride.
Gordon Drake, a well known figure in the motion picture industry, stood looking out the window. Drake was the most handsomely proportioned man present. At fifty, his body was still classical in its lines. But he marred the sweep of his fine figure by wearing a light opera cape about his shoulders. And he always wore gloves.
KENNETH MEADE, A RENOWNED RESTAURATEUR, gaunt of feature and spare of frame, attired in evening clothes for his appearance at Milady’s Salon, his newest and finest restaurant, was tapping on the desk and frowning anxiously.
Fenwick, the seventh man, was a tall, cadaverous individual clad in severe black and wearing a high, stiff collar which gave him a clerical air. Had he been funny instead of lugubrious, he could have walked right out on the stage in any one of his productions as the stage parson.
All of these men were prominent and respected. There was nothing particularly odd about them individually. But, together, they exerted a queer effect upon the inspector that was almost weird. It was an intangible feeling. Perhaps it was due to the fact that these men were noted for living so utterly alone. None of them were married. Their private lives were simple, retiring, exclusive. No two of them lived together, except the Marcy brothers, who had not arrived for this meeting.
Baffled, the Inspector shook his head and scowled.
“All right, all right,” he said. “Let’s go over it again. This Al Millet was guilty of several minor crimes some twenty-odd years ago. The worst we can find is that train robbery in Utah, and he served a sentence for that. He called himself ’The Fang’, theatrically leaving a tiger tooth as a marker on the scenes of his depredations.
“The penitentiary sentence must have taken the starch out of him. He abandoned crime upon his release to become a showman. He joined Crowley and Buckill, the then-famous circus. That was the hey-day of circus business. They puffed him up as the ’Fang’, the man with the terrible and bloody history and the criminal mind which, if loosed, could wreck the country. And all he did was ride wild horses, shoot blank pistols, and generally exhibit himself as the madman from the gory West.
“That, gentlemen, may have gone over big in those days, but no hick town in the whole United States would give that sort of side-show attraction a second glance today.
“And, as for this Al Millett, the police of this day and time have never even heard of him. I am positive that you are needlessly alarmed over this twenty-year-old bugaboo —”
“But you don’t understand!” broke in Gordon Drake, whirling about at the window. “We’ve explained that Millett disappeared suddenly just twenty years ago — right after his wife died. He blamed us for her death because we wouldn’t back him in a venture of his own. He disappeared