Mouthpiece (3 page)

“Well, this is the same kind of sand.” Mat bounced it in
his hand. “If my mineralogy doesn't tell me wrong, it's identical—and there's
very little in this part of the world. Then, too, see that black grain there?
That's ink.”

“Then,” concluded Halloway, “he replaced the powder in
the cartridges with the sand from the box on his desk. Well, well, and well.
But that evidence isn't necessary. I've enough on him to bring him to trial.
I'd better take him into custody now. Drop around to the station tomorrow and
we'll get everything straight.”

Mat juggled the mound of sand in his palm and carefully
pocketed the faked bullets for future evidence. He gave the room a brief sweep
with smiling eyes and then slowly made his way out into the hall where Petey
and Blake still dangled from the coat hooks. They hung there like abandoned
marionettes from some wild
apache
puppet show, their faces set in an
emotionless, fatalistic stare.

Grinning now, in appreciation of the joke, Mat stopped
before them. He presented the little white mound in his palm, beside which he
had placed the key to the safe-deposit box which held a fortune.

“You know,” remarked Mat Lawrence, “it takes sand to get
along in this world. But,” he made the mound jump again, “your boss in there
has just a little too much.”

And Petey and Blake, with their hard, emotionless eyes,
watched him saunter out through the ornate doorway—back to a world where
buzzards flew and coyotes howled and wheels were waiting to be turned in the
construction of a mammoth power dam.

Flame City

CHAPTER ONE

Sifting Evidence

T
HE
shrieks and moans of sirens
greeted Tom Delaney as he swung into the corridor which led to his father's
office. He paused for a moment to listen, feeling somewhat ill at ease and out
of place.

To a detective-sergeant,
fires were the business of another world. But his father, old Blaze Delaney,
chief of the
fire-eaters
, had called him and Tom Delaney had responded,
wondering just how a detective could hope to extricate a fireman from an
intricate web of circumstances.

Before
Detective-Sergeant Tom Delaney could knock, his father swooped out of his
office, drawing on slicker and helmet as he ran. Blaze Delaney's fire-reddened
face was set and hard and his smoke-stung eyes caught and held the image of his
son.

“Another one!” he
shouted, his mustache bristling. “Come on!”

The detective swung
into line, hard put to keep up with the racing old man. When Blaze Delaney
swung into the red car without pausing and sent it hurtling away from the curb,
his son was forced to catch a precarious hold on the side, swinging from there
into the seat.

“What's up?” asked
Tom.

“What's up,
be
hanged
!” bellowed Blaze Delaney. “There's plenty up, and if you didn't keep
your big ears so close to the woes of petty thieves you'd know that your old
man was about to be thrown out.”

Blaze Delaney thrown
out? The detective blinked and tried to imagine such a circumstance. As long as
he could remember, his father had been lord of the city's fires. His father was
an immovable institution, a character of great repute.

Tom Delaney watched
the old fire-eater's anger vent itself against the traffic. He always drove his
own cars, did Blaze, for the good reason that he could drive faster than anyone
on the department's rolls.

“I've noticed,” began
Tom, cautiously, “that we've been having more fires than usual, but—”

“More fires than
usual! Humph! Young fellow, we've had two hundred and fifty percent more fires
in the past two months than in any other corresponding period. If you don't
know that, you don't even read the newspapers. Right now the Tyler Department
Store is burning, and it's a concrete building that can't burn.”

He went around a
corner on something less than two wheels, missed a pair of streetcars and gave
a taxi driver the scare of his life. The automatic siren was wailing, almost
drowning conversation in the coupe.

“But,” said the
detective, “why should you be kicked out just because—”

“That's why I sent for
you. You're supposed to be good at riddles.”

“You mean you think
it's arson on a big scale?”

Blaze Delaney grunted
loudly. “I don't think it, I know it.”

Tom's dark eyebrows
went up and his shoulders moved in the slightest kind of a shrug.

“I thought you had a
special department which investigated such things,” he murmured.

“That's what you think.”

“Well, I'm telling you
this, Dad. I don't know anything about fires and what starts 'em. But if you're
in trouble and you think I can be of help, here I am.”

“Good,” said the
chief. “That's what I wanted you to say. If this thing doesn't stop, I'm out of
a job and my reputation is wrecked. Well, there's the fire.” Blaze Delaney
rocketed up to the lines and jumped out.

“Confound that Number
Three. I told 'em to wait for me before they—” And then a swelling wall of
smoke swallowed both the chief and his words, and the detective-sergeant was
left with his riddle.

Tyler's Department
Store was a welter of shooting smoke and snapping flames. The entire first
floor was filled with lightning-like tongues, against which the thin streams of
water seemed fragile and aimless.

Tom Delaney sat still
and watched the toiling firemen at their seemingly hopeless task. Dusk was
falling and lending color to the blaze. The flames began to recede slowly and
sullenly under the onslaught of water and chemicals.

The detective looked
up to see a tall, incredibly thin man approaching the red coupe.

“Where's the old man?”
asked the newcomer.

The detective
shrugged. “In there eating smoke, like he always is.”

“You're his son, that
right? I'm Blackford, head of the Investigation Department.”

Tom Delaney shook the
limp hand with a feeling of distaste.

“Three girls must have
sizzled,” continued Blackford. “I can't account for them. Too bad.”

“Looks like arson,
doesn't it?” said the detective.

“Don't know. I never
can tell until I get inside. There was a garage under the first floor and I
think we'll find it started from oily waste. It usually does. Some mechanic
gets careless with a cigarette butt and zowie, there you are.”

“When do you
investigate?” asked Tom.

“Soon as it cools
down. That'll be in about another hour. Why, you figuring on sticking around?”

“Do you mind if I do?”

“No,” said Blackford.
“Glad to have you. Then you can okay my report.” He started away into the
crowd, his eyes whipping about as though still searching for the fire chief.

Almost an hour later,
Blaze Delaney came back to his car. He was black with soot and smoke, and
dripping from innumerable encounters with lashing streams of water. He had an
odor about him like that of wet ashes.

“Hell,” roared the old
man. “There's another one across town. Residence.”

Tom whistled. “I'll
stay here and go over the ruins with Blackford.”

“Know him? That's
good. Fine fellow, Blackford; he'll show you the ropes if you want to learn. Go
on,
pile out
. I'm in a hurry.”

Tom Delaney piled out
and stood on the soaked asphalt watching the red coupe go screaming out of
sight. Engines and hose carts were pulling out in its wake, carrying their
cargoes of red-eyed, dripping men who swore wearily as they realized that the
night's work promised no respite.

Blackford was standing
just outside the gutted door of the department store, playing a flashlight over
the black interior. He turned the beam on the detective.

“Hello! I was hoping
you'd be along. It looks safe enough inside, but don't move anything. That
second floor looks like it's sagging in spots.”

Lazy spirals of steam
were rising up from the ravaged counters to hang in the air like a choking
poisonous gas. Goods were heaped in sullen, charred piles which dripped gray
water. Two men in raincoats stood dismally beside the wall, looking at the
chaos.

“Hello, Blackford,”
said one. “Hope you get this thing figured out in a hurry. There's a hundred
thousand in goods insurance alone.”

“Yeah,” grunted the
other. “You would be worried about your blamed insurance. What about my
company, that's paying all this? If we find out it's arson, it's going to go
hard with somebody. Look alive, Blackford.” Slowly he trudged out of the
shambles into the flickering glitter of the street lights.

“That first one was
Tyler himself,” said the investigator. “The other guy was Morley, of Graysons'
Insurance Company. Those insurance guys always give me a pain. They act like I
cause all these burns. Let's go down in the basement and look around at what's
left of the garage.”

Tom Delaney coughed as
smoke stung his throat.

“I thought it looked
as though it started on the main floor,” he objected. “How could flame get
through this concrete?”

“Elevator shafts,”
said Blackford. “It always looks as though it started on the main floor. That's
because fire burns upward.”

“Sounds reasonable,
but I think I'll look around up here.”

“Go ahead,” said
Blackford, amiably, and followed the detective over to the front wall.

Tom Delaney broke out
his own flashlight and stabbed it through the foggy interior, probing into
piles of goods and along the floor. He went slowly ahead, marveling that anyone
could ever trace arson in such a hideous shambles.

Then he stopped with
something like a shudder and played the light on a charred hand which jutted
out from beneath a counter. He bent down and then straightened up.

“I'll send in the
morgue wagon when we go outside. That's one of your missing girls, Blackford.”

Blackford looked
quickly away. “I found the other two.”

“Uh-huh. Both dead,
weren't they? This isn't only arson, it's first-degree murder. That is, if the
fire was more than an accident. Funny they couldn't have seen the flames coming
at them.”

“Panic,” muttered the
investigator. “People get trampled.”

“Sure, but it was
almost closing time when this fire started, and there couldn't have been many
in the building. I think we'll find that it started on this floor, and in more
than one place.”

Blackford sighed. “It
takes a detective to figure all that out. I wouldn't have thought about it, I
guess.”

Tom Delaney said
nothing more. He walked ahead still lashing the counters with his light. This
must have been the dress goods department, he judged. Then once more he stopped
and stood looking down. Blackford came up and peered over the detective's shoulder.

“Bottle glass,” said
Delaney. “Now what the devil could bottle glass be doing here?”

Blackford shrugged and
picked a fragment up, sniffing at it.

“Furniture polish.
They used it to polish the counters, I guess.”

But the detective took
the fire-dulled splinter from the investigator and shoved it into his pocket.

“Maybe so, but I'll
analyze this for explosive or acid. Nothing like being thorough.”

He began to search the
floor over a radius of fifteen feet. Painstakingly he went over the charred and
littered surface, moving unrecognizable objects, examining others. And then he
found a piece of copper wire. Slowly he traced it down and uncovered another
thread of metal.

“Does insulation burn
off extension cords?” he asked.

“Sometimes.”

“But if these things
had had insulation on them, there'd be charred pieces. And”—he reached down and
scooped up a bit of straw—“
excelsior
.”

Blackford smiled
tolerantly. “They pack a lot of things in excelsior in department stores. Come
on, I've got to get busy. We have a certain routine that usually gives us the
answer, and I'll have to have a report in another hour. I'm going outside and
get another battery for my light. This thing is getting pretty dim.”

Delaney nodded. “I'll
go with you.”

They worked through
the choking fog to the door, skirting the ruins in the aisles and carefully
avoiding the spot where the dead girl lay.

When they stepped into
the open air, Delaney took a long, deep, grateful breath.

“I'll get the morgue
squad,” he said, “and then go up to Headquarters and analyze this glass.” Idly
he watched a black sedan draw up to the curb not ten feet away.

“Okay,” said
Blackford. “If you find anything—”

A pistol shot, as
vicious as it was unexpected, gouged the concrete near Delaney's feet. A harsh,
strident voice bellowed:

“Up with the mitts,
you guys, or we'll let you have it.”

Delaney started to
reach for his own gun and then realized that he was checkmated. Slowly he
elevated his hands and watched two men walk toward him through the thin stream
of light from the street lamp.

“Connely,” grunted the
detective. “And Soapy Jackson.”

“Know us, do you?”
grated Connely. “Seen us in the lineup, that it? Turn around, both of you!”

Delaney turned because
he knew that this pair always meant what they said. He saw Soapy Jackson bring
a
blackjack
down on Blackford's head—and then something crashed against his own
skull. He stumbled bitterly forward into unconsciousness.