The Wheel of Death/Chapter 17

Wentworth shoved the bulky Grogan ahead of him through the big steel box. At the rear of the false safe he found an opening concealed by heavy curtains. Through these they emerged into another room, which was apparently a part of an entirely different building.

Wentworth snapped on an electric light and looked at Grogan, who seemed to be completely subdued.

"Who owns this place?" he asked sharply. "Mortimer Mack."

"Hide-away?"

Grogan nodded. "Uh-huh, and getaway."

"Grogan, you are becoming quite reasonable," said Wentworth with a smile. "I really should reward you. Would you like to bathe your leg in the bathroom? Remember, though, that my friend, Stanley Kirkpatrick won't take more than half an hour to get through that wall."

But Grogan, it proved, had no desire to stay longer than necessary in the vicinity. They left the apartment, which was quite empty, and took the elevator to the ground floor. It was a fairly large building, and the elevator man showed no surprise upon seeing them. Wentworth stood quite close to his companion, and Grogan felt no inclination to make a break or to offer any resistance. He was quite certain that so cool and desperate a man as Wentworth would not hesitate to shoot him down in an elevator, or anywhere else, if he felt the least desire to do so. Such was the result of Wentworth's harshness upon Grogan's brutal nature.

The doorman called a taxi, and Wentworth assisted Grogan, who was limping, to get in first. Only a few yards farther down the avenue a police emergency truck and several other police cars were drawn up near the entrance of the big apartment building which housed the establishment of Mortimer Mack. Several policemen and men who must be plainclothesmen were standing at the door of the building.

"What's going on in the next building?" Wentworth asked the taxi driver.

"Dunno, sir," the taxi man replied. "Looks like a police raid."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Wentworth as if dreadfully shocked. "Such a nice building for such a thing to happen in." He stood on the sidewalk for a moment, looking at the police activity, then called to Grogan in the taxi. "I say, Dan, shall we toddle over and see what the bally tamasha is about?"

Grogan's only answer was a grunt. He could not think of any appropriate reply.

"Ah, well, we'll read about it in the morning papers," said Wentworth regretfully. "Driver, take us to Grant's Tomb."

The driver had thought from the first that both his fares were a trifle drunk. He was sure of it upon being directed to take them to Grant's Tomb. Nobody went to that colossal monument, far up on Riverside Drive, during the small hours of the morning. Except in broad daylight, when a few sightseers stared at it, it was about the loneliest spot in New York City.

But his fares looked as if they had money, and the taxi driver stepped on the starting pedal as soon as Wentworth entered the cab.

It was quite a long drive to Grant's Tomb, and there was not much conversation in the taxi during the drive. Grogan had wanted to know why they were going to such a place and Wentworth had replied that it was an excellent place to commit a murder. He had also assured Grogan the murder could take place right there in the taxi at any moment if he attempted to offer the slightest resistance.

Grogan felt quite sure of it and began to suspect that his captor was insane. If he wasn't a crook and wasn't with the police, then what was he? There wasn't any other kind of a man within Grogan's scope of knowledge.

The taxi cut through Central Park at 86th Street and continued on, across the west side of Manhattan, to Riverside Drive where it turned north. It was that hour, between late night traffic and early morning traffic, when Riverside Drive had scarcely any traffic at all. Hardly a car passed them and, when they reached Grant's Tomb, there was not even a petting party parked within sight.

Below them the Hudson River lay almost shrouded in early morning mist and above them the sky was very dark without a star in sight. . . As Wentworth had said, it was a very good place for a murder.

To Grogan's surprise Wentworth paid the taxi driver, and to his disgust he was ordered to get out of the cab. The taxi man shrugged his shoulders, took the money and drove away. It made no difference to him why his fares wished to visit Grant's Tomb at so unreasonable an hour. There were all kinds of people in New York.

Grogan, placing most of his weight on his good leg, sustained the pain in the other and glared at Wentworth who, with apparent absurdity, had nothing better to do than to take out his handkerchief and blow his nose.

The handkerchief, being quite large and white, could probably be seen at some distance. At any rate a car, parked at a nearby curve in the road, moved swiftly out swooped down upon them and purred to an abrupt stop before them.

It was Richard Wentworth's town car; and beside the chauffeur upon the front seat was Ram Singh, who stepped swiftly out and confronted his master.

"Sahib?" the boy questioned, asking for directions.

But Wentworth spoke first to his chauffeur. "Jackson," he said, "I'd drive the bus myself. You don't mind walking home?"

"Not at all, sir," returned the chauffeur, touching his cap before turning upon his heel and walking quickly away. He had never had a better master and was quite accustomed to his unusual and sometimes astonishing ways.

On the sidewalk in the darkness beside the towering monument the three men stood in silence while the chauffeur walked away. Ram Singh did not know what was going to happen and did not care so long as he was with his beloved master. Neither did Grogan know, but he cared very much, not liking the look of things at all. Abruptly Wentworth spoke, but his words did not divulge his plans.

"Ram Singh, you have your knife?"

"Han, sahib!" ejaculated the Hindu in the affirmative, drawing a long blade from his sleeve.

"Think you could stick it in this bad wallah's stomach?" Wentworth asked with every appearance of being sincere.

"Han, sahib!" Ram Singh affirmed with considerable enthusiasm. "Him stick good!"

Grogan's eyes opened wide in horror. Never before had he been taken for a ride to face a Hindu with a long and ugly knife in the deep shadow cast by Grant's Tomb during the lonely hours of the morning.

"Take him up those stone steps and let him sit on a bench till I am ready for him," Wentworth directed. "Let him taste the tip of your knife if he is slow, and drive it into him up to the hilt if he disobeys you."

Grogan helplessly turned to do as Wentworth had indicated; and Ram Singh prodded him from behind with the knife, without waiting to see whether or not he was going to be slow. Grogan thought that the Hindu servant was quite as heartless as his cold-hearted master and he hobbled painfully up the steps, groaning and grunting.

Wentworth immediately entered his car, switched on the light in the tonneau and pulled down all the blinds. Quickly he undressed and dressed again in day clothes, which he took from a suit case on the back seat. In the suit case was also a shoulder holster which contained one of his most prized pistols, one with which he could spin a quarter dollar at twenty paces time after time. It seemed strange that there should also be a slender walking stick lying upon the back seat.

Having dumped his evening clothes into the suit case for Ram Singh to press and put in order, at some time when adventure was not so pressing, he extinguished the light, raised the blinds and stepped out of the car. He was far better equipped now for anything that might happen than he had been when he set out that evening, unarmed and in evening clothes, with Nita.

He ascended the stone steps buoyantly, swinging his light cane, until he reached the stone platform which surrounded the huge tomb. Dan Grogan, seated upon a stone bench with his injured leg stretched out before him, glared up at him while Ram Singh, knife in hand, stood a few paces to one side. . . Ram Singh could throw his knife quite as well as he could thrust with it.

"Grogan," said Wentworth, "your game is up. You killed Mortimer Mack's partner; and I want the evidence that will take Molly's father out of the death cell."

Grogan remained silent, squirming uneasily upon the hard stone bench.

"I'll make you a sporting offer," continued Wentworth. If you will sign a confession, I shall give you twenty-four hours to run from the police. That is my best offer, and you don't deserve it."

Grogan shook his head. "I didn't commit any murder," he said, "and, anyway, a confession secured under torture does not carry in court."

"I don't intend to torture you," Wentworth returned. "I intend— to kill you."

"Might as well die one way as another," replied Grogan. The pain in his leg was making him desperate and he was becoming resigned and obstinate.

Wentworth knew very well that a confession was no good if extracted by torture, and he was aware that Grogan could probably prove torture by means of his bullet-pierced leg and his lacerated stomach— if forced to do so to save his own life. As for killing him— Wentworth had never yet killed an unarmed foe.

But something had to be done with Grogan and Wentworth had planned that something when he had conversed over the telephone with Ram Singh and given that faithful servant the directions to meet him at Grant's Tomb.

There was just one door in the huge stone monument which towered so high into the sky, and Wentworth walked over to it now. The door was big and heavy and, of course, it was locked and would remain locked until the caretaker came none too early in the morning.

It was not, however, a very difficult lock, and Wentworth succeeded in opening the door with one of those keys with which he was so adept.

"Bring him over," he called to Ram Singh. Ram Singh prodded the bulky Grogan into motion and brought him to where Wentworth stood. Together they shoved the reluctant and almost stupefied man into utter blackness of the great tomb. Then the door was closed and locked again. For several hours at least, Dan Grogan would be utterly helpless and quite harmless to all the world.

He could not possibly get out and his loudest shouting would not be heard by anybody until the door was opened in the morning. True he was wounded and he would suffer. But his suffering was nothing in comparison to the suffering he had caused many people both physically and mentally.

Richard Wentworth's objective now became Grogan's Restaurant. The master of that dingy establishment would not, of course, be present to receive him. There would, however, probably be others there and, in any case, the problem before him was far from an easy one.

Seated beside his master on the front seat, while Wentworth drove the car, Ram Singh felt his long knife where it fitted snugly into the sheath which was sewn inside his sleeve. He had not been able to use it, except just a bit of the point where Grogan was accustomed to sitting down. But the night was not over, and there was much hope in his breast for better things to come.

Ram Singh was not overly blood-thirsty, but he believed that real men belonged to the warrior cast; and, although he could cry over an injured kitten, he liked to kill— in a good cause. And was not Wentworth sahib's cause always a good cause?

They swept southward on Riverside Drive at a high speed. There was practically no traffic to delay them and it was at that time in the morning when the traffic lights were not in operation. Passing Riverside Mansions, one of the largest apartment buildings on the drive, Wentworth looked up at the high tower where Nita had her little apartment and noted that her windows were dark.

Half a dozen blocks farther on he saw a car approaching at a rate of speed almost as high as his own. The approaching car was escorted by two motorcycle policemen. Then Wentworth knew that the car belonged to the Commissioner of Police and that he was bringing Nita home in safety as he had promised. He wondered if Nita would recognize his car as they passed— glimpse Ram Singh or read the number plate.

And Nita did just that. Leaning idly back beside the Commissioner she saw the approaching limousine and just as the two cars were passing, her eye caught sight of Ram Singh's dark face and straight figure. She could not help giving a little start and leaning toward the window to look out. Although she leaned back again very quickly, her action had not been unnoticed by the alert Commissioner.

Commissioner Kirkpatrick, whose mind was as sharp as a knife edge, jerked his head around and looked back through the rear window. In another moment he had the speaking tube in his mouth and their car began to slow its furious speed to an abrupt stop. The motorcycle officers, not expecting the sudden stop, shot a long way ahead, but turned and came roaring back to find out what was the matter.

"Catch that car and bring it back to me," directed the Commissioner, pointing.

With a mighty roar from their exhausts the two motorcycle officers swooped away upon their mission.

Nita bit her lip. "Why do you want that car!" she asked, though she knew the answer.

"My dear," replied the Commissioner, "there is only one car in New York City that would make you bend forward tonight the way you did. That is Dick Wentworth's car."

There was some silence while they waited for the motorcycle men to return with the car after which they had been sent.

"Surely you don't think that Dick is guilty of anything," Nita said at last.

"I have known Dick since he was a boy," the Commissioner answered, "and I know how deucedly clever he is. Only such a man could play the Spider and elude me for so long."

"Of course you know that the Spider never hurt any man who was fit to live," she retorted. "Don't you think that Mortimer Mack is the guilty man, and that Dick is only a very reckless bystander?"

Commissioner Kirkpatrick agreed that there was a lot surrounding Mortimer Mack to make him suspicious, but he insisted that there was no proof of guilt. All the trick entrances and exits through walls and unsuspected lower apartment had been explained by Mortimer Mack as devices by which he conducted illusional effects for the entertainment of his guests. Artists and troops of entertainers were thus brought in surprisingly and made to vanish miraculously. As for the two murdered men, Mortimer Mack had simply shrugged his shoulders and claimed that the thing was as much a mystery to him as to anybody else. He even hoped that the Commissioner would solve the mystery and punish the guilty parties. ..

And in the meantime Wentworth had been quite as quick-witted as the Commissioner of Police. Looking back in his rear view mirror, he had seen the Commissioner's car stop and he had seen and heard the motorcycles as they began their frantic rush after him.

But the speed at which the two cars had been traveling in opposite directions gave him a big start. He guessed exactly what had happened and turned sharply eastward on a side street. His car, under the drive of its powerful engine, leaped forward in the middle of blocks and slowed just enough to make turns at corners as he zigzagged over to Broadway and ran south on that great thoroughfare.

For a few blocks he continued to look back, and, seeing no motorcycles behind him, turned west again to Riverside Drive and retraced his course on that drive at a furious rate until he slowed and stopped immediately behind the Commissioner's car.

"Want to see me?" he asked, getting out and coming to the window of the Commissioner's car.

"If I did, I have changed my mind," said the Commissioner, believing that Wentworth would never have come back if he had had any evidence of guilt upon him. He smiled. "Don't you see I am taking a lady home? Get out of here and leave us alone."

Wentworth grinned at Nita and lit a cigarette from the Commissioner's automatic lighter just inside the window. "Any spiders on this lighter of yours, Commissioner?" he asked.

"Get out!" roared Kirkpatrick with a broad smile. "I'll put you at the head of my detectives if you will join the force."

"Not enough excitement in it," drawled Wentworth. "By the way, shall I find your motorcycle escort and send them back to you?"

"Go to the devil!" the Commissioner exclaimed, laughing and signaling to his driver to move on without waiting for the escort. To Nita, who had been highly amused, he added as their car moved off: "You can't help liking that fellow— even if he does sometimes make a monkey of you!"