Page:Weird Tales v01n03 (1923-05).djvu/46

Rh “Terence!” he cried, his voice harsh with grief. “Terence, lad!”

Kenton bent over and touched him on the shoulder.

“Are you Captain Dolan?” he asked.

The old man looked up, one hand still resting upon the motionless body beside which he knelt.

“I am,” he said simply.

“I understand this man—Terence McFadden, his name is?—”

Captain Dolan nodded.

“I understand he was on board your ship tonight ?”

“Yes,” said Captain Dolan, rising to his feet.

“What time did he leave?”

“‘Twas not more than half an hour ago, officer. Shortly after midnight, I would say. He was just aboard for a little farewell banquet, y’understand—just a friendly visit, eating and drinking and the like, before I leave at day-break for another trip. I’m going down the coast,”

Kenton shook his head.

“Never mind that. Have you any idea how he met his death? Had he any enemies that you know?”

Captain Dolan ran his bony fingers through his grizzled locks, his eyes still on the body of his friend.

“Enemies he had aplenty, officer, like any two-fisted man with the disposition of Terence McFadden. ’Twas only last week he cleaned up two of the Jerry Kramer gang that tried to hold him up with a pistol down on this very street. But his worry tonight had nothing to do with them. A man like Terence could take care of himself against any man. Truth to tell, he was his own worst enemy.”

Kenton broke in sharply.

“What’s that? He was worried tonight, you say?”

There seemed to be a trace of evasion in Captain Dolan’s manner,

“It was a piece he read in the paper. It fair spoiled his supper for him.”

“What was it about?”

“It was an item from the Zoo,” replied Captain Dolan.

Kenton fingered a button puzzledly, casting a mystified glance at me. It was evident that his inquiries were not getting him anywhere.

Before he could question Captain Dolan further, the group about the doorway behind us was thrust roughly aside, and Patrolman Corcoran, the new officer from the adjacent beat, shouldered his way in. His right hand was twisted in the lapels of a short, squat foreigner with a swarthy face half hidden by a coarse, reddish-brown beard. The neck of his sweat-soaked undershirt was open, and his sleeves were rolled above hairy, muscular forearms.

Corcoran stared at the group about the lifeless body of Terence McFadden.

“So it’s true, is it?” he curiously asked. I thought ‘Big Jim’ here was trying to give me a wrong steer.”

“Who?” asked Kenton,

“Dobrowski, or some such name—‘Big Jim,’ they call him, He’s one of the Kramer gang, they say.”

“Where'd you get him?”

“Caught him coming out of a basement over on Efton Street. He took one look at me and ran like hell. So I rounded him up and asked him what was the big idea of running. He just looked dumb, but I knew he'd been up to something. So I frisked him, and found— these!”

He pulled a watch and purse from the side pocket of his coat. Captain Dolan leaned forward eagerly.

“Terence’s!” he cried. “See if his initials are not in the back!”

He fairly snatched the watch from Corcoran’s hand. The younger patrolman turned to Kenton.

“Who’s the old bird, anyway?” he asked in an undertone.

Kenton established the captain’s connection with the affair in a few words. In the meantime the old man had pried open the gold case with his heavy thumbnail and was squinting inside.

“See!” he affirmed, pointing to the initials “T. J. M.” engraved there.

Corcoran nodded carelessly.

“ ‘Big Jim,’ all right,” he said decisively, “He's the man that killed McFadden here.”

“Big Jim” stared at his captor, chewing vigorously.

“No Kill!” he exclaimed. “No kill!”

Kenton had been frowning perplexedly. Now he turned to Corcoran.

“Say, Bill,” he demanded, “how did you get over here, anyhow? Who told you there’d been a man killed ?”

To our utter amazement, Corcoran jerked his thumb toward “Big Jim.”

“He did,” he said.

“He did?” repeated Kenton incredulously. “Then you were the one that ’phoned in to the sergeant?”

Corcoran nodded, taking a tighter grip on the captive’s lapels.

“I was going to call the wagon and go straight in with ‘Big Jim’ here. Then he told such a funny story that I thought maybe he was trying to string me, so I marched him over here to make sure.”

Kenton shook his head.

“That was no way to do,” he muttered under his breath. ‘‘Well, no matter. What does he say ?”

“Says he took this stuff away from McFadden, but didn’t kill him,” sneered Corcoran. “Doesn’t know who killed him, but he didn’t. Fishy? Well, I’ll tell the world!”

Captain Dolan again bent over the body of Terence McFadden, Then he looked up at “Big Jim.”

“Tell us what happened,” he commanded.

Words popped turbulently from “Big Jim.” Either he was actually telling the truth, or he had committed his story to heart.

“No kill!” he vociferated, gesticulating. “No kill! Take watch, but no kill! Hide for man—pull him in—fight—he dead! Take money—run—hide—”

Fear shone in his shifting eyes and on his swarthy, perspiring face. As he glanced nervously about the building, the fantastic idea occurred to me that his fear was less of the police than of some unseen, intangible force beyond his comprehension. I caught myself looking apprehensively over my own shoulder.

Corcoran spat on the floor disgustedly.

“Part of that yarn’s all right,” he said. “That part about his stealing the watch and all, I mean. The rest is all bull. How would he get the stuff off a big guy like that without croaking him? How did he kill him, anyway?”

Captain Dolan leaned forward, his eyes gleaming.

“Yes, officer,” he repeated. “How did he kill him? Tell us that if you can.”

Corcoran thrust his captive toward Kenton and knelt beside the body. When he looked up, his face was blank. Rising he turned savagely on “Big Jim.”

“Come, now!” he ordered roughly, shaking the foreigner by the shoulder. “How did you kill him? Speak up!”

“No kill!” repeated “Big Jim” stubbornly. ‘No kill!”

Corcoran raised his club menacingly. Whether he would have struck “Big Jim,” or merely wished to intimidate him, I do not know; he had not been long on the force, and he felt his authority keenly. But Captain Dolan stepped forward, holding out an imperative hand.