The porcelain mask A detective story
"Yes, it must be Haskins!" cried Wiggly. "Haskins is still in the
house! We dashed out into the hall when she screamed. The man's had no
chance of escape."
Sergeant Tish pursed his lips, frowned, and shook his head. "I can't
believe it," he muttered. "I can't believe Haskins would be such a
boob, hiding on the scene of the crime all these hours after the murder
has been committed. It's ridiculous."
Constable Ham Griggs decided he had been in the background long
enough; events had been developing too fast for him to keep pace with
them, but here was a situation that he could cope with. It required
no deductions, only action. He took a decisive step forward, dragging
forth a somewhat ancient forty-five-caliber revolver, which he gave a
dramatic flourish.
"Stand back!" he roared. "I'm the officer in charge here, and I'm goin'
up there to get my man!"
CHAPTER XXIII
THE TRAPPED RAT
With the breath wheezing noisily through his parted lips, which were
twisted back so that his clenched teeth were bared, Don Haskins leaned
tensely against the wall of the storeroom on the third floor of the
Gilmore house. Grim and desperate terror held him in its grip.
"They've got me--they've got me now!" he groaned. "Caught like a rat in
a trap!"
Half the night and all of the morning he had tried in vain to slip out
of the house--somewhere, anywhere. Each effort had been frustrated
by the danger of discovery; at each attempt there had been voices
or footsteps in the hall, or floating warningly up the stairs. Then
the coming of daylight had made the contemplated dash all the more
hazardous.
He had about made up his mind to wait for another coming of darkness,
when he had heard the arrival of a car, and, peering down from the
narrow dormer window, he had seen the arrival of Detective Sergeant
Tish. The coming of Tish naturally filled him with wild terror, for
that could mean but one thing--the New York detective had trailed him
to Greenacres!
So, after several minutes of tortured indecision, he had crept down the
inclosed stairs, determined to make a break for it.
He could not put up a fight, for he had no weapon. While he had
crouched at the foot of the stairs, ears straining in an effort to
catch any sound of warning from the other side of the panel, Mrs.
Bogart had turned the knob, and Haskins had seized it from the inside,
holding the door fast. Then she had yanked it again, the eyes of the
two met through the narrow crack, and the woman had screamed.
For Don Haskins there had been but one choice, that was to hurry back
to the storeroom and wait. There was no bolt on the door, but he
barricaded it with a packing box filled with non-descript odds and
ends, such as people relegate to the garret. There was no means of
escape except the stairs; the dormer window mocked him with its deep,
unbroken drop downward. And no weapon; even the clutter of stuff that
half filled the storeroom offered him nothing that would serve as a
cudgel. So, helpless, defenseless, muttering curses between his locked
teeth, he waited. He wondered why it was so long, why the New York
copper did not come pounding up the stairs to get him. His eyes were
upon the door, his gaze intent upon the knob--watching for it to turn.
And then he got an idea!
The knob was held in place by a screw, and, for lack of a screw driver,
he went to the task with his finger nail. The screw was set fast, and
the nail tore down to the quick, but he did not notice the twinge of
pain, merely attacked the screw with the thumb nail of the other hand.
At last it turned, and the heavy metal knob was free.
Haskins, that his shoes might make no alarming sound upon the bare
boards of the storeroom, was in his stockings. Hastily he tore one of
his socks free from his foot, dropped the doorknob into it and he had
a deadly slung shot that he could swing with telling effect. Not much
of a weapon, perhaps, but vastly better than no weapon at all. He put
on both shoes, the one over a bare foot, and again waited with tense,
twitching nervousness.
It must have been another five minutes--to Haskins the minutes dragged
into the length of hours--before he heard a voice raised to a bellow
and the tramp of heavy feet upon the stairs. He flattened his body even
closer to the wall, at a point where he would be behind the door when
it opened, as he took a tighter grip about the weighted sock.
There may have been some doubts as to Constable Griggs' nimbleness of
mind, but there could be no doubt as to his personal courage, as, yards
ahead of Sergeant Tish, he dashed, two and three steps at a time, to
the third floor.
"Come on outta there an' surrender!" roared Ham Griggs. "Dead or alive,
Haskins--that goes for you!"
But Don Haskins did not come out to surrender. He made not the
slightest sound. Griggs again shouted, but still there was no response,
and he began to share Tish's doubts of the wanted man being in the
house. Perhaps Mrs. Bogart's story had been purely a figment of the
imagination.
Without, however, relaxing the vigilant position of his gun, he reached
forward and tried the door. It moved back a little, and he met the
obstruction of the barricading packing box. The constable applied the
pressure of his shoulder, and his free hand cautiously cocked the
hammer of the revolver. The door was forced back another few inches.
The barred door, of course, was proof that the storeroom was occupied;
he paused a moment to peer through the narrow opening. No signs of
Haskins.
"He's here," he yelled down the stairs to Tish, who was looking up from
the bottom. "He's got the door blocked. I'm goin' in, and I'm goin' in
a-shootin'." Again his body battered against the door.
Don Haskins, his mouth parted into a terrible grimace, swung back his
arm. As the constable's head and shoulders appeared at the edge of the
door, the sock, the metal knob stuffed wickedly in the toe, described a
swift arc and caught Griggs a heavy blow on the skull.
With a grunt he pitched forward to the floor in a senseless heap; the
convulsion of his body pulled the trigger of the revolver, and its
roaring, angry voice thundered through the upper part of the house. The
gun slid across the boards and bumped against the leg of the discarded
couch.
Haskins dropped his improvised weapon and leaped for the gun; his body
had scarcely straightened when Sergeant Tish came pounding and panting
up the steps, drawn automatic in his hand. As Haskins whirled, he again
faced this Nemesis who had trapped him at Eighth Avenue Annie's. No
word was spoken; both knew it was one or the other.
Haskins fired first, but only by the difference of a split second;
the two shots rang out almost as one. Sergeant Tish's shoulder became
suddenly numb, a searing numbness, as hot lead bored the flesh. His arm
dropped limply helpless to his side, and a sickening nausea paled the
chubby roundness of his cheeks.
The other man reeled on his feet and steadied himself against the wall.
A gasping gurgle, that trailed off into a curse, burst through his
hideously parted lips, and his left hand, pressing to his waist, became
red with a trickle of crimson.
But Haskins did not fire again; there was no need. Sergeant Tish's
fingers had lost all their strength, and the automatic clumped to the
floor. He could offer no resistance when Haskins stumbled forward,
cleared the body of the unconscious constable, and went plunging down
the stairs. In the doorway at the foot of the steps Wiggly Price and
Doctor Bushnell were staring upward. Haskins lifted the revolver
menacingly.
"Get outta my way!" he gritted. "I'll kill the first man that tries to
stop me."
It would have been a foolhardy thing to have opposed the flight of this
armed, desperate man, wanted for murder, trying to beat the electric
chair. Doctor Bushnell, clutching Wiggly Price's arm, made haste to get
out of Haskins' path. Mrs. Bogart screamed shrilly and dashed wildly
for the first door. She hurled herself into the room and braced her
body against the panel.
Haskins, as he reached the second floor, was reeling like a drunken
man. His left hand, still clutching his body near the top of his
trousers was hot and sticky with his own blood. He reached the top
of the second stairway which led down to the first floor--and what?
Even in his desperately chaotic state of mind, he knew that the odds
were against him. But anything was better than the chair, and it was
that--or this. He felt his strength swiftly ebbing from his body,
slipping away from him through that hot, burning hole in his abdomen.
Downstairs, Bates, the butler, had heard the double shot and for a
moment was incapable of movement. It was only with supreme effort
that he got his frail old legs in motion and propelled himself toward
the stairs. Halfway up he faced Haskins, who held weavingly to the
bannister rail.
"Out--out of my way!" ordered Haskins, but his voice was thick,
hoarsely unsteady. The revolver wabbled with the lurching of his body.
Before Bates, petrified with terror at the menace of the pointing gun,
could obey, the wounded man at the top of the stairs sagged forward and
went crashing down, sliding, bumping, clawing, and his body came to a
halt on the first landing at Bates' feet. He had just enough strength
to lift himself weakly to his elbow.
"That dirty dick--got me--good!" he muttered. "I--I hope I
croaked--him. Curse the cops! The cops and the skirts--to hell with
both of 'em!" He coughed chokingly. "I'm dyin'," he screeched. "I'm
bleedin' to death--inside."
His distorted mouth was flecked with red.
CHAPTER XXIV
HASKINS KEEPS HIS SECRET
Stunned and sick from the paralyzing impact of Haskins' bullet,
Sergeant Tish did not realize that his own shot had found an even more
vital mark; he had failed to see the trickle of crimson that welled
from between the wanted man's fingers, as the latter had pressed his
hand hard against his body. In a daze the New York detective only
realized that the desperate fugitive was escaping from him a second
time, and that his flight must be stopped. As his thoughts cleared
a little, it occurred to him that Haskins might try to leave in the
police car out in front of the house, but he would have a hard job of
that, for the plain-clothes man had the key to the ignition switch in
his pocket.
The local constable still lay in a huddled, grotesque heap on
the floor, and he had not moved. Despite his own haste to pursue
Haskins--his injury would not stop that--Tish leaned over Ham Griggs,
puzzled that there was no evidence of a terrible, lethal wound. He
had taken it for granted that Haskins must have had another weapon in
addition to the one left beside the body of the murdered Helen Gilmore,
and that he had shot down Griggs, as the latter had burst in upon him
in the attempted capture. All he could find was a purpling swelling at
the edge of Griggs' temple; and then he saw the improvised weapon, the
strangest that had ever come to his notice--the sock weighted with the
doorknob.
"Huh!" said Sergeant Tish, with a grunt that was more than half a
groan. He saw what had happened. "Haskins beaned 'im with that thing,
handed him a knock-out, and then took his gun away from him." He bent
still a little lower and perceived that the constable's breathing was
reassuringly regular. "Don't look like he was goin' to croak."
As Don Haskins collapsed and went crashing down the stairs, Wiggly
Price and Doctor Bushnell stood gaping at each other, both struggling
with indecision as to which direction they would turn as their first
move to follow this breathless race of happenings. What had happened