Bones Don't Lie Read online

  Contents

  Copyright Information

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Copyright Information

  Originally published in 1946.

  Dedication

  For Mildred

  Chapter One

  The sprawling gray mills, wrapped in their eternal pall of smoke, were a lift to young Ray Locke’s spirits as he first saw them from the train window in the early morning. His spirits needed a lift. It had been a long year since he last saw the Ironton plant of American-Consolidated Steel, an endless year.

  Nervousness came later, after he had made the half-hour trolley ride from the city, and stood before the plant’s Administration Building. Then it was only nervousness based upon the almost hopeless task confronting him.

  Before he walked up the granite steps, he plucked from his vest pocket the pair of large bone dice he always carried. They had belonged to his father and he was strongly attached to them. He rattled them now in his loosely cupped hand, opened his fingers, palm flat.

  Ray grimaced. “Snake eyes! Not so good.”

  But the dice seemed to be wrong—at first—when he was admitted to the office of the General Superintendent with no more than a ten-minute wait. He would not have been too surprised if he hadn’t been admitted.

  Leonard Tracy, czar of the Ironton Works, sat behind the huge, custom-built, circular desk in his elaborate private office. He was a tall, slender man of early middle age, and the double-breasted, blue pinstripe suit with knife-edge creases gave him a dapper look. Tracy was distinctly handsome. He had, in fact, such a distinguished appearance that he might have modeled for a whisky ad—except for the scar.

  The scar began on Tracy’s right cheek, just above the jawbone, and ran down his throat to disappear beneath his collar. It was a dull brick-red, with a brownish tinge like blood recently dried. In the process of healing, livid white scar tissue had drawn and puckered hideously, resulting in a repulsive disfigurement.

  Tracy got up as Ray entered, coming around the curve of his desk with hand outstretched. “Ray Locke! Glad to see you, boy!” He waved to a deep chair upholstered in blue leather. “Sit down, Ray. How are you?”

  Ray eased himself into the comfortable seat. Tracy’s cordiality seemed an excellent beginning. Better than he had anticipated. But then Tracy, he remembered, was always pleasant, the type of man who had carefully studied the art of saying, “no,” without arousing resentment.

  “You’re looking well,” Tracy went on. The usual stock phrases cloaked a crack salesman’s trick of putting his own personality across by raising the other fellow’s ego.

  Ray Locke had taken a good look at himself in the mirror of the train washroom. He was not looking well. The dead pallor of his skin made his black eyes seem too large for his narrow, rather pointed face, as if he were recovering from a serious illness.

  The bad haircut, too short, didn’t help, either. And he’d noticed scattered threads of gray among the black. They hadn’t been there a year ago, any of them. He was much too young for gray hairs.

  “I’m fine,” he said, unable to keep his eyes from the scar. “But what happened to you, Mr. Tracy?”

  Leonard Tracy touched the scar with his fingertips. “Oh, this? I got myself badly burned, Ray. Shortly after you were…after you went away. I was in the hospital four months. I’ll carry this reminder to my grave.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Around the plant.” Tracy waved his hand vaguely. “Just one of those things. What brings you to Ironton, Ray?”

  Ray braced himself mentally. “You’re probably thinking I have an infernal crust,” he said, making the plunge, “and, frankly, it has taken just about all my courage. But the fact is I need a job—badly. I thought maybe you’d give me a chance at the Ironton Works.”

  The General Superintendent’s gray-green eyes met Ray’s squarely. “When did you get out, Ray? I thought you had two more years…”

  “I did. I served a full year,” Ray said quietly. “They gave me a year off for good behavior. I asked for a pardon, but it was refused. I’m on probation now for a three-year period. I hope you’re going to believe me when I tell you again I was absolutely innocent.”

  Leonard Tracy was fiddling with a sharp-pointed, steel letter opener, bending it in long, supple fingers. He hesitated, weighing his words. “I’ve never doubted it. Not for a moment. I told you so at the trial. Remember? Belden Locke’s son didn’t need to go in for petty chiseling.”

  Mention of his father made Ray’s throat constrict. He could feel his heartbeat quicken as he awaited the other man’s decision because so much more than a mere job depended upon it. His level eyes did not leave the General Superintendent’s face.

  Tracy said, “As long as I’m head man around these mills there’s a meal ticket here for you, Ray. It’s the least I can do for my old friend Belden.” His eyes dropped then. An apologetic note came into his voice. “But for obvious reasons, I won’t be able to put you in the Test Department. You understand, don’t you?”

  “Anything,” Ray said quickly. “Anything at all. I expect to start at the bottom.”

  Tracy raised his eyes again. “That’s where I’m afraid it will have to be. Otherwise, I’d be subject to criticism from our people in New York.”

  “I quite understand,” Ray said quietly.

  “We need laborers on the Open Hearth rather badly. But, of course, a man with your background and training should be able to do much better. Maybe if you tried some other plant, you could land higher up the scale to start.”

  “It would be the same story at any plant.”

  “You might use another name.”

  Ray could feel the hot flush creeping into his pale cheeks. The suggestion stung like a lash but he made an effort to keep resentment from creeping into his voice. “My real name is plenty good. I’m not sailing under a false flag, here or anywhere.”

  Tracy’s probing eyes mirrored approval. “Good. Then I’ll promise that what happened in the past will not stand in your way at Ironton—not while I’m here. You’ll be pushed ahead as fast as I can justify it.” The General Superintendent flipped a switch on the interoffice communication box on his desk top. “Mr. Harris, can you step in for a moment?”

  While he waited, Ray glanced around Tracy’s office. The walls were paneled in Circassian walnut. A deep, costly Chinese rug, its blue shades harmonizing beautifully with the blue leather upholstering of chairs and lounge, edged toward a stone fireplace where a neat pile of small birch logs stood ready for the touch of a match.

  His eyes came back to the vast, circular desk of rare, light-colored wood and exquisite craftsmanship. Its top was clear, except for a fountain pen set with an engraved silver base, and a made-to-order desk pad of hand-tooled leather.

  This office reflected the personality and orderly mind of a sixty-thousand-a-year executive. It was the kind of office Ray Locke had once hoped to earn.

  Rays jaw hardened. His own atmosphere would be fumes and dust and raging heat. Instead of personally designed desk accessories, his tools would be a shovel, a slice
bar, a sledge. It was up to him to bridge the chasm by his own efforts.

  He’d do it, too, Ray vowed to himself. This job on the Open Hearth was his entering wedge. His real job would begin after the work shift was finished.

  A bulky, monk-like man entered Tracy’s office, a man with heavy jowls, a swarthy complexion and eyes incongruously light blue—hard, suspicious eyes. In contrast to the dapper Tracy, he was in shirtsleeves, his collar loosened at the neck. A half-smoked cigar was clamped in his strong white teeth.

  “You’ve never met Mr. Quentin Harris,” Tracy told Ray. “He came here after your time. Mr. Harris is Assistant General Superintendent and, therefore, second in command at Ironton.”

  To Harris he said, “This is Ray Locke. His father was an old friend of mine. I’ve promised to give Ray a job at the Open Hearth. Will you take care of the details?”

  Harris shifted his cigar stump. “Locke,” he said reflectively. “Ray Locke! Isn’t that the name of the man who was mixed up in The Prairie Comet affair a year or so ago?”

  “That’s right. The same man.”

  “You’re not going to have him around this plant, are you?”

  Tracy said, “Twenty thousand men work in these mills, Quentin. Don’t you suppose there are some thieves and maybe even a few murderers among that many?

  “Possibly so. But we don’t know who they are. Otherwise, they wouldn’t stay here. I certainly wouldn’t want to employ someone I know has a criminal record, particularly a record involving our relations with an important customer.”

  “You won’t have to employ him,” Tracy said quietly. “I’ll take full responsibility.”

  The monk-like Assistant General Superintendent still wanted to argue the point. “How’d this man happen to come here to the general offices? Why didn’t he go to the employment gate? I don’t like the looks of this—”

  Tracy, turning suddenly from suave salesman to decisive boss, cut him short. “I make the final decisions around here. Please do as I say. Tell Quirk I want Locke put on his payroll right away.”

  Harris turned on his heel. His lips were compressed. “Come with me,” he ordered Ray curtly.

  Harris’ office adjoined Tracy’s, with a connecting door cut through the walnut paneling. Like the man himself, the office differed markedly from Tracy’s.

  True, the walls were finished with the same expensive woodwork, but there was no built-in fireplace.

  The rug on the floor was the stereotyped green seen in ten thousand business offices. And the plain, somewhat worn, walnut desk, was piled knee-deep with papers.

  In another respect, the tastes and working habits of Tracy and Harris showed complete divergence. Whereas Tracy’s secretary occupied a desk in the anteroom in front of his spacious quarters, Harris had his right in the room with him.

  She was clattering away on her typewriter as Ray walked in at Harris’ heels. Ray gave her only a casual glance, just enough to see an exceptionally pretty brunette, with glossy chestnut hair done in a short bob framing a pert, oval face.

  Harris said, “Miss North, please get me Eagan at the Employment Office.”

  The girl dialed the phone on the edge of her desk. She spoke a moment, then flipped a switch. “All right, Mr. Harris.”

  “Eagan? This is Quentin Harris,” the Assistant General Superintendent said into the transmitter. “I have a man here by the name of Locke. We’re putting him on at the Open Hearth. I’m taking him over personally to Quirk, then I’ll send him to you. You’ll have to cut the red tape and take him on whether you like it or not. Mr. Tracy’s orders.”

  Ray was conscious that the girl was regarding him curiously. Her eyes were soft and brown behind the plain lenses of reading glasses. The glasses were set in a frame of red-tinted plastic which matched exactly the shade of lipstick she wore and the vermilion of her sheer, silk blouse.

  Harris got to his feet. “Let’s go,” he said brusquely. His voice softened as he told the girl, “I’ll be back shortly, Jackie.”

  Ray followed him from the office building and through a gate in the high fence surrounding the plant. A guard in a blue uniform, with the words Iron and Steel Police on his visored cap, saluted respectfully.

  “Give this man a visitor’s badge,” Harris ordered. “I’ll be responsible for him.” To Ray, as they moved on, he added, “After you’ve got your number at the Employment Office you can turn in the temporary badge on your way out.”

  The tall stacks of blast furnaces, with their batteries of stoves, towered to the right of them as Harris led the way across a maze of narrow-gauge tracks toward long, gray buildings a quarter of a mile away. Ray could hear the rumble of skips carrying loads of ore, coke and limestone up inclines to the loading bells. Signal whistles shrilled in orderly confusion.

  Ray knew the route they were taking, knew it almost as well as Harris.

  “I don’t need to take any more of your time,” he suggested to the big man at his side. “I can find my own way to the Open Hearth. I’ve been there often.”

  “I know that,” Harris retorted. “You’ve been there too often.” His words were an accusation. “You’d never go there again if I had my way.”

  Angry words were on Ray’s lips. He bit them back. “Why not give me a break?” be asked. “You don’t know the whole story. What good does it do to kick a fellow when he’s down?”

  “It’s your own fault you’re down,” Harris said.

  “I wasn’t any more responsible for that faulty axle than you were,” Ray said stoutly.

  “Who was?”

  “I don’t know.” It was on the tip of his tongue to add, “That’s what I’m going to find out,” but be didn’t say it.

  Quirk, Superintendent of the Open Hearth, was a little Irishman with a wide, good-humored mouth and a wrinkle of crow’s-feet around his bright, restless eyes. He wore a pair of stained corduroy pants and a flannel shirt open at the neck.

  “Here’s a new man for you,” Harris told him shortly. “Tracy wants him to start right away.”

  “New man?” There was recognition in Quirk’s sharp eyes, and a suggestion of scorn in the way his lips curled at the corners. “Nothing new about Locke to me. I know him from way back.” He turned to Harris belligerently. “What’s the idea? You putting Locke here to show me how to make steel?”

  “I’m not putting him here.” Harris was emphatic. “Ask Mr. Tracy the idea. And this man is not working with you, he’s working for you—anywhere you can use him.”

  “Now ain’t that just fine!” Quirk’s eyes stabbed swiftly at Ray. “Locke used to tell me when he didn’t like my steel. Now I’ll tell him a thing or two.”

  Ray said, “Okay, Mike Quirk. You dish it out. I can take it.”

  Quirk said, “I need men. I’m short-handed. You’ll be on the four-to-midnight shift.” He grinned suddenly. “We’ll let you dip tests for the hoys at the lab. You can start tonight.”

  Locke grinned back at the little Super. “Okay. I’m pretty good at that.”

  It was still before eleven when Ray finished the routine at the Employment Office. He’d been thumped by the company doctor, had filled out pages of personal data. In spite of Tracy’s sponsorship, and the fact that he was hired regardless, the regular procedure had to be followed.

  Out in the sunshine again, Ray stopped to consider. His peculiar sleeping habits would be something of a problem now. Over the years he had reached the conclusion that people spent too much of their lives in bed. Scientists had proved that from two to four hours’ sleep was ample, provided short naps were taken during the day whenever the body showed any signs of fatigue. The results, of course, were most gratifying—at least six extra hours added to the day. What a lot of constructive things people could do with those six additional hours!

  Ray had followed this program assiduously during his earlier years at Ironton, mu
ch to the amusement of the other plant workers who had grown accustomed to seeing him snatch forty winks in some dark, deserted corner at various times during the day. He couldn’t hope to resume this routine immediately, of course, and, anyway, he’d been out of practice for a year. He could get back by easy stages.

  There had been six dollars in his pocket when he reached Ironton. Two of them he had already put out as a deposit on a barren room in a crummy, frame rooming house, half a mile from the main gate into Ironton. Three more went now for a pair of work pants and a blue denim shirt.

  He took a half-hour nap on the hard bed in his new, shabby living quarters, awaking completely refreshed. He put on his work clothes and went again to the mills.

  It was still nearly three hours before he was due on shift at the Open Hearth. On his way through tire noisy, clanging plant, Ray remembered how it had been a year ago.

  He’d been a man with a future, then, a man groomed from early boyhood for big things. When he visited the Ironton Works of American-Consolidated Steel, he stayed in a good room at the best hotel in town. He came out to the plant in a taxi, with a rosebud in his lapel. As a representative of the Transcontinental Line, one of the steel company’s biggest customers, he was treated with deference by all the plant men.

  Ray shrugged. That was ancient history. He did not doubt his reception now would be vastly different.

  Chapter Two

  The Test Department at Ironton occupied in entirety a small, two-story building in almost the geodetic center of the four-mile plant. The ground floor of the aged, brick structure was filled with physical testing equipment. There were machines for determining tensile strength, for making bending, torsion and drop tests and all the supplemental devices for accurate testing of steel, including a Shore scleroscope and a machine for obtaining Brinell hardness.

  Beyond the big room with the apparatus was the small private office of the Engineer of Tests, and a somewhat larger office containing three desks for clerical help. The wall space in the larger office was jammed with filing cabinets of old test records.