The Wheel of Death/Chapter 16

Richard Wentworth, descending with a dead man for company, was at the mercy of the master control which guided the elevator. It was quite as he would wish. To be carried without effort into the unknown was adventure, and adventure was his life.

He closed the sliding door of the car so that the guests on the floors below might not glimpse what the car contained. From his pocket he drew the pistol which he had taken from the dead man and examined it. The magazine contained seven cartridges, and there was one in the barrel. He had eight shots with which to meet what might be ahead of him. They should be, he felt, sufficient.

Slowly the car passed the upper floor of Mortimer Mack's duplex apartment. Wentworth could faintly hear the buzz of voices from guests outside the elevator door. They did not interest him. He believed that he was going where guests were not admitted.

A smile suddenly crossed Wentworth's face as the car reached the next floor. It had suddenly occurred to him that never before had a murdered man been stolen from under the eyes of the Commissioner of Police of New York City. He did not doubt, however, that the city police would recover the body.

At that very moment, in all probability, patrol wagons and radio cars were beginning their rush toward the magnificent apartment building in which Mortimer Mack lived. In a very few minutes the huge building would be surrounded, and no corpse could be smuggled from it without detection.

As the car passed the lower floor of the duplex apartment and began its approach to the mysterious apartment below, Wentworth reached up and again unscrewed the little bulb which illuminated the interior. Once more he stood in darkness, while the elevator came to rest.

This time he did not wait but gently and quietly slid back the door, exposing a corridor which was in almost complete darkness. Only a little light came into it from an open door which was quite a distance from the elevator.

Acting upon the spur of the moment, as was so habitual with him, he pressed the starting button which would send the car with its grim freight to the first floor above. Then he stepped out into the corridor and closed the door. Very faintly he could hear the elevator begin its ascent as the door closed. He smiled grimly as he visualized the consternation which would arise when some guest on the floor above discovered the dead man marked by the seal of the Spider.

He wondered, too, how long it would take the police to discover that the elevator had visited a floor still lower down.

In the distance, apparently from the lighted room with the open door, a telephone bell sounded. In the deep shadow of the hall Wentworth flattened himself against the wall, waiting to see if somebody would come to answer the telephone.

The bell stopped ringing, and he knew that somebody in the room had lifted the receiver from the hook. Very quietly then, but quite quickly, he passed down the corridor until he stood close to the open door. Inside the room a man's deep voice was commenting angrily, viciously, over the telephone. And he recognized it as the voice of Dan Grogan.

Suddenly the man in the room crashed the receiver into its cradle and rushed out into the corridor. He came so fast that there was no time for Wentworth to conceal himself. Then Dan Grogan, startled and scowling, came to a lurching halt as he looked into the muzzle of a pistol held by a man in evening clothes, a man who said nothing but seemed to smile very faintly as he indolently held the pistol.

"You're the guy that came down in the elevator once before," growled Grogan. "Whatcha doing here?"

Wentworth said nothing, but took a step forward. Grogan, growling, retreated nevertheless under the influence of the pistol, until he had returned to the room with the telephone. It was, Wentworth found, a bedroom, simply but well furnished.

"Get into bed," directed Wentworth abruptly, speaking for the first time.

"What?" gasped Grogan, amazed and indignant.

"You heard me."

Grogan sat on the edge of the bed. His eyes blazed with fury as he watched Wentworth feel behind him for the door, closing and locking it. The fury gave place to frantic fright as Wentworth raised the pistol and sent a bullet into the wall. The bullet passed so close to Grogan's ear that he threw himself to one side and lay gasping upon the bed. Outside of the apartment the report of the pistol must have sounded like the bang of a heavy door.

"I told you to get into bed," remarked Wentworth coldly.

Grogan scrambled to pull the counterpane up over him as fast as possible.

"Take your clothes off first."

This was almost too much. Dan Grogan's fat face looked out from under the counterpane in wrathful bewilderment. But he scrambled out from under the counterpane and began to undress with desperate haste as Wentworth again raised the pistol. The manner of the man who confronted him was exceedingly unnerving. He acted as though he might shoot to kill without a second thought.

In a few minutes Dan Grogan's big hulk exhibited its rolls of fat unadorned by any clothing. He pulled it hastily and clumsily under the counterpane in frightened silence. There was blasphemy in his mind, but he dared not speak.

Leisurely Wentworth, working with one hand and holding the pistol in the other, removed a picture from the wall and took off the wire by which it had hung. To Grogan's disgust and horror he jerked the counterpane from him and proceeded to bind his hands and feet to the four posts of the bed by means of the wire. Grogan protested, with the result that the wire was pulled tighter, cutting into the thick wrists and ankles.

Wentworth worked without speaking a word. His actions were so cold and deliberate that they were terrifying. Finally he stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at the gross body.

"Where is Molly Dennis?" he asked.

Grogan remained silent.

Wentworth stooped and withdrew the leather belt from Grogan's trousers where he had dropped them on the floor. With a mighty swing through the air he brought the buckle of the belt down in the very center of Grogan's fat stomach. The blow was severe, and the buckle cut through the skin, drawing blood.

Grogan groaned dismally and was quick to give an uptown address where he said that Molly was being held by some friends of his. He added that they were treating her very well.

Wentworth rested his hand upon the telephone. "I shall send a man to that address," he said in his cold, deliberate voice. "He will report back to me by telephone. If the girl is not there, I shall kill you. First I shall put a bullet through that fat stomach to give you a little pain.... After I lift this telephone you will die if you have not spoken the truth."

"Wait a minute'" Grogan half screamed under the influence of the threat which was made in such cold, slow words. "She isn't there, mister. I lied to you."

Wentworth, who knew that only brutality had any effect upon a man such as Grogan, swung the belt again. Once more the heavy buckle curved through the air and bit into the fat, heaving stomach, upturned upon the bed.

Dan Grogan writhed and groaned, but he was so utterly helpless that the fight was all gone from him. Wentworth had adopted this violent method of forcing the truth out of him for this very reason, knowing that it would be the quickest and surest way of doing it.

"Well, where is she?"

"She's where nobody can get her but me, mister. She's all right now, but they would croak her if anybody but me tried to get her." Grogan was speaking very earnestly and trying his best to make himself believed.

Wentworth's only answer was to swing the belt once more. The curving surface of the heaving stomach was becoming a bloody mess, and Grogan's face was turning purple with suppressed resentment. He was afraid to express that resentment in words, for fear of bringing down upon himself some even more severe torture. The man, who stood above him, seemed incapable of feeling any pity and appeared utterly fearless of the consequences of anything which he might do. Murder was in Grogan's heart, but he was physically incapable of the slightest retaliation.

Once more the threatening belt was raised, and this time Grogan screamed before the buckle cut into his soft flesh.

"She's at my restaurant, mister!"

The words were forced out of him by fear and pain. He was desperate and becoming very sorry for himself. Not remembering any of his own brutalities, he was considering only the brutality which was being exercised upon him.

"I shall hold the telephone to your ear," said Wentworth. "You will order her to be taken safely to my apartment within one hour. I shall telephone my apartment at the end of an hour and, if she is not there, I shall kill you."

Grogan only groaned in answer. The belt was raised but did not descend as he commenced to speak.

"Let me up, mister, and I'll go with you and get her. There isn't any other way. I can't telephone, because there isn't anybody there to answer."

He seemed to be speaking the truth. Helpless and suffering he had no courage left with which to lie, even if he possessed the ability to lie successfully in the face of such a man as Wentworth.

The telephone bell began to ring. Without any hesitation Wentworth picked up the receiver from the little table beside the bed.

"Yeah?"

The one syllable was uttered in the deep, chesty voice of Dan Grogan. It was a beautiful imitation but, being only one syllable, was really quite easy. It was Mortimer Mack at the other end of the line, and Wentworth recognized the voice at once. Mack was speaking very fast and said that he had only a few seconds to talk. He said that the police might come down to the apartment at any moment.

"Yeah?" This time the one syllable was a deep, questioning growl, which carried with it suppressed hatred and surprise.

Swinging the belt idly with his free hand, Wentworth kept the telephone to his ear while he watched the cowed man upon the bed. Grogan, unable to move hand or foot, remained silent. There was nothing else for him to do unless he wanted to bring the belt buckle down upon himself again. He was quite convinced that the buckle might easily seek a more vulnerable part of him than his stomach. If it crashed into his face, something he had feared, there were his eyes to think about. Once he had gouged out a man's eye and had laughed, but his own eyes were quite another matter.

From upstairs Mortimer Mack continued to speak very rapidly, as if in fear of being interrupted at any moment.

"Richard Wentworth is here, the man who brought the girl to your restaurant," he said.

"Yeah!"

The single syllable, which Wentworth uttered at the mention of his own name, was a syllable of raging hatred.

"Get rid of Buckley through the other house," Mortimer Mack continued. "Then go back to the restaurant and get rid of the girl. She's too dangerous to hold any longer."

"Yeah! O. K.!"

This time Wentworth added two more syllables in the deep growl. He could imitate a voice so well that he might have said more, but he was taking no more chances than were necessary when so much was at stake. He thought that the conversation had ended, but there was something more, something so very important that it gave him new hope in connection with little Molly and her father who was in a death cell with the electric chair very close to him.

"And Grogan," Mortimer Mack's voice snapped, "don't forget that I have your confession for the Dennis killing. You will do as I say, or— "

Wentworth crashed the receiver down upon its cradle as a violent man might do if he were overcome with fury and could find no words with which to express himself.

"Where's Buckley?" snapped Wentworth, tossing the belt upon the floor and deliberately picking up Grogan's clothes and commencing a search of the pockets.

"Across the hall," returned Grogan in too much amazement to hesitate in his reply.

From one of Grogan's pockets Wentworth removed a small pistol, examined it briefly to see that it was in working order and dropped it into his tail pocket. There were no other weapons and he tossed the clothes upon the bed.

"Get up and get dressed," he ordered as he unfastened the wire which bound Grogan's hands. "We are going places."

Dan Grogan was quick to unfasten the wire which bound his feet and to get into his clothes. He did not like to lie naked before a man who fired a pistol so carelessly, and who wielded a belt buckle with so little compunction. He felt that he would have at least a little more confidence in himself with his clothes on.

As a matter of fact Wentworth had denuded him of clothes for the very purpose of shaking his confidence and beating down his morale. A man, under our present day conventions, is weakened psychologically by being rendered naked.

Wentworth now had two pistols, one in his pocket and one in his hand. He toyed with the latter, watching Grogan hurrying to get dressed.

"Anybody else in this apartment?" asked Wentworth as Grogan finished dressing.

Grogan shook his head. "Not unless they came in after you did," he said.

Wentworth believed him. He was confident that the shot which he had fired so close to Grogan's ear would have brought somebody to the door of the room if there had been anyone else in the apartment.

He took up the telephone and dialed while Grogan was adjusting his collar and tie. In a few moments he was speaking in a way that made Grogan look over his shoulder in still more surprise. He was speaking Hindustani, which is not a language that is often heard in New York City, though there are, in the world, more people who understand it than there are people in the entire United States of America.

The conversation in Hindustani was brief. Wentworth turned to the man he had captured and who, because of the pistol in his hand, still remained a prisoner.

"How do we get out of here?" asked Wentworth.

"Well, there is the elevator," said Grogan. "You seem to know about that."

Wentworth informed his prisoner that the elevator was in the hands of the police of New York City and that they might use it to descend upon them at any moment.

"The cops!" exclaimed Grogan, startled again amid his state of amazement. "Say, who are you, mister?"

"You can call me Dick."

So much had happened that it seemed a long time since a flashy young man had told the proprietor of Grogan's Restaurant that he might call him Dick. Yet the actual elapse of time had been only a little more than twenty-four hours.

Grogan stared at Wentworth, and recognition slowly came into his eyes. At last he knew who this strange man was. Or did he know? He had heard that the strange man, called Dick, was really the fashionable Richard Wentworth, the man who had received so much attention in the newspapers for his adventurous expeditions in foreign countries and for startling detective work which he occasionally did with the police in New York City.

But Richard Wentworth had been to him only a name. Such a man never came into Grogan's Restaurant, and Grogan never visited drawing- rooms where such a man appeared.

"Dick!" Grogan exclaimed and then was silent, not knowing what to think or say.

"What other way is there of getting out of here?" asked Wentworth, tossing his pistol in the air and catching it with a deftness that was a threat to Grogan far more than any words.

Grogan said that there was the usual front door which opened into the apartment building. Wentworth replied that the police were in the building and that it would probably be impossible for them to escape in that way.

"Escape?" questioned Grogan. "You want to escape? Aren't you in with the police?"

Wentworth smiled and shook his head. "I'm only in with myself," he said. "Lead the way. Let's have a look at Buckley."

As he spoke there came, faintly through the window, the scream of a police siren. The great power and the cleverness of the New York Police Department was coming into play because of the astuteness of their remarkable head in paying a personal visit to the establishment of Mortimer Mack. With such a clever man in personal control of operations, there could not be long to wait before the members of the force would be overrunning every portion of the Mortimer Mack establishment, secret or otherwise.

"Hear the siren?" asked Wentworth as Grogan paused. "We've got to move fast."

"I don't understand it," complained Grogan, easing his shirt away from his wounded stomach.

"You don't need to understand anything," snapped Wentworth. "Do as you are told and lead the way to Buckley, or I'll begin shooting and work up from your feet till you are dead. Move!"

Dan Grogan moved. There was nothing else for him to do. With such a man as Wentworth, it meant abrupt death for him to refuse or rebel. Even the slightest argument was extremely dangerous.

Grogan unlocked the door and led the way across the hall into another bedroom. Wentworth followed him, pistol in hand and wary.

In the second bedroom the body of Buckley lay upon a bed where it had been roughly dumped. Instead of paying any attention to the corpse, Wentworth pulled open the drawer of a dresser. Inside, very neatly arranged, was a complete opium smoking outfit. He gave it but a glance and closed the drawer again.

"So Mortimer Mack uses this floor for allowing some of his favored guests to enjoy a little dope, eh?" he queried the sullen and badly puzzled Grogan.

Grogan only shrugged his shoulders in resignation. What did it all mean anyway? What did this man want, and what was he trying to do? He didn't know.

"Does he let them have the needle too?"

"Sometimes." Grogan admitted it sullenly. Wentworth turned to the dead man on the bed.

"You kill him?"

Grogan's face was a picture of the utmost rage. He could scarcely control himself. Probably he could not have done so if it had not been for the feeling of his shirt sticking to his stomach where the blood was congealing.

"Doesn't matter," continued Wentworth. "But he's dead— murdered. How are you going to get him out of here? The police will be here in a few minutes, you know."

Dan Grogan was so puzzled that he was bewildered. He simply did not know what to say or what course to pursue. He knew that his captor would torture him or kill him outright at the slightest provocation, and he certainly did not wish to give him any such excuse.

"What are you going to do with me, Mr.— Mr. Wentworth?" he asked at last.

"So you know me, eh?" The question was snapped. "It took a long time to get it through your thick head."

"Well, Mr. Wentworth, I can't understand it if you're not working with the police. What are you going to do with me if I do what you ask?"

"There isn't any question about you doing what I ask," retorted Wentworth. "How are you going to get this dead man out of here?"

"If the place is surrounded by police it can't be done, Mr. Wentworth," protested Grogan, beginning to raise his hands as an indication of utter helplessness on his part to do anything about it.

The rising hands stopped suddenly and fell as a bullet from Wentworth's pistol pierced the fat calf of Grogan's left leg. It was a pretty shot and well judged because of the slack of the trouser leg.

"All right!" groaned the big man in dismay as he leaned against the foot of the bed for support. "All right, Mr. Wentworth, I'll do it. Don't shoot again!"

"If you don't, I'll leave the two of you, dead together, for the police to find," retorted Wentworth, unconcernedly throwing the safety catch of the pistol off and on with his thumb.

Dan Grogan heaved his huge shoulders in utter resignation to what had befallen him. He knew very well that Wentworth was not bluffing and that he would do exactly as he said if his orders were not obeyed. He left the support of the bed, tested his wounded leg and limped slowly out of the room, followed by Wentworth.

"It's this way." Grogan said, turning away from the elevator and the front portion of the apartment.

Slowly Wentworth followed his wounded prisoner down the corridor. The passage was long, and, counting his paces, he decided that it reached to the limits of the big apartment house.

At the end of the corridor Grogan turned into a room. Wentworth followed him and found the room to be fitted out as a small office such as a man might use for his own personal affairs. But a secret means of escape was recognized by Wentworth after a single glance around. Another high, steel safe stood against the far wall, which must, he judged, abut upon the next apartment building.

Wentworth remembered the similar safe at the top of the elevator shaft and he remembered, too, the old iron box of a safe which sank through the floor of the back room in Grogan's Restaurant. Here was evidence of the same master mind controlling a gigantic plot throughout all its ramifications.

"Get busy!" directed Wentworth, indicating the door of the safe. "Open it up and let's get out of here. Commissioner Kirkpatrick's men may arrive at any moment."

"You'll have to carry the stiff down here," said Grogan, feeling his injured leg gingerly. "I can't carry anything with this leg."

"Open it up!" snapped Wentworth. "Of what good is a dead body?"

Helplessly Grogan began to obey. He fumbled at first with the dial of the safe, then began to turn it slowly and carefully. Suddenly his face went blank. A look of horror came into it.

"Geez!" he exclaimed. "I've forgot the first number!"

There was no doubt about him speaking the truth. The quick terror upon his face was convincing proof of it. That terror increased as he wondered if his enemy would believe that he was speaking truthfully.

"Try the first number that comes into your mind," ordered Wentworth quickly. "It may be the right one."

As Grogan hastened to obey a shout came from the corridor. Somebody, near the elevator at the other end of it, had called to somebody else. There was another shout in reply. The voices were authoritative and could mean but one thing... The police had arrived!

Under the cunning direction of Commissioner Stanley Kirkpatrick, they had already penetrated the secret of the automatic elevator. Had there been any doubt about it in Wentworth's mind, he needed but one glance at Grogan's trembling fingers to know that the shouts did not come from any of his friends.

Swiftly and silently Wentworth closed the door of the little office and turned the key in the lock. He watched Grogan nervously turning the dial of the safe and saw him fruitlessly pull upon the handle of the door when he had finished. The first number which he had chosen had been the wrong one. It might take a long time before the first number could be discovered by chance, and the situation was desperate for both of them.

In the extremity Wentworth directed Grogan to get away from the safe and to sit upon the floor with his back turned to him, warning him that he would plug him through the head if he moved before he was given permission to do so.

Before the safe, then, Wentworth seated himself. This was no old-fashioned iron box that could be opened easily, as had been the safe in Grogan's back room at the restaurant.

More voices were heard in the corridor and steps could be heard coming toward the little office.

"Give me one of the gats," suggested Grogan, "and we'll fight it out."

Wentworth did not reply. He knew that it was absurd to shoot it out, trapped in a room, with the whole New York police force. But aside from that, and infinitely more important, he had never killed a policeman and had no intention of doing so. Rather than that he would let them shoot him. But he was very busy. He had means other than pistols with which to fight.

From his pocket Wentworth took the fat, leather case and extracted from it a curious little ear piece which dangled from a thin, insulated cord. Attached to the cord were also a tiny battery and a very thin cuplike structure edged with rubber. He inserted the ear piece and pressed the thin cuplike structure against the surface of the safe door, where it clung by suction because of the rubber edging.

Quickly Wentworth began to turn the dial. He was using an ear phone of the highest amplification which had ever been built to fit into so small a space. It was so delicate that he had once listened to a fly walking across a piece of tin foil. Now, as he turned the dial, he could listen to the inner mechanism with very little trouble.

Somebody in the corridor tried the office door and, finding it locked, rattled upon it. Grogan turned his head, against Wentworth's orders, and held out his hand pleadingly. He was begging for his pistol. Wentworth worked steadily at the dial. He already had the first number and believed that he could detect the other two more quickly than Grogan could be brought to the safe to work the combination by memory.

More voices, undoubtedly those of policemen, sounded outside the door, and someone lurched against the door with his shoulder. But the door held.

"Bring an ax!" one of the policemen shouted to another.

Wentworth worked on as calmly as if he had all the time in the world, but he worked swiftly nevertheless. He had the second number and was searching for the third and last one.

An ax crashed against the door of the office, and Grogan struggled to his feet, frantic with fear.

At last, as the ax crashed again, Wentworth found the last number. He pulled on the handle of the safe, and the huge door swung open.

Grogan, without any urging, passed into the safe while Wentworth removed his cunning listening apparatus and wiped the dial free of all finger prints.

Then it was that the deviltry, the mad spirit of audacity, came out in Richard Wentworth, the adventurer. He reached for the electric light switch and plunged the room into darkness. Twice he shouted for help in the soprano voice of a woman, then slipped into the safe and pulled the door closed, where it locked itself automatically. ..

The door of the safe had scarcely closed when the outer door fell inward under the impact of many sturdy shoulders, and half a dozen policemen rushed into the room, pistols raised, flashlights piercing the darkness. The electric light switch was found and the place was flooded with light.

But the room was empty. Neither the woman who had screamed nor anyone else was within.

One of the most baffling mysteries of police annals seemed to have occurred. Mystified detectives searched the room and examined the one window carefully.

Then Stanley Kirkpatrick, Commissioner of Police, stood in the doorway of the office. He was never far behind the firing line when he was on a case. Sometimes he was ahead of it. He stood expressionlessly in the doorway and listened to what his men had to say.

"Send for an expert to open that safe," he directed without any hesitation. "You will find the explanation there."

In the Commissioner of Police, Richard Wentworth had a difficult opponent to deceive or to defeat. ..