Bones Don't Lie Page 12

  This time the alarm never went off. Five minutes before it was due, Ray awoke, scrambling from his hard couch in mortal terror.

  From the sling of the traveling crane, not more than a dozen feet from him, the plates were showering to the ground in a thunderous uproar of cascading steel. They struck other plates in the piles beneath. Some of them turned end over end in the act of falling. Sparks flashed.

  One of the falling plates struck the pile on which Ray was lying, not more than inches from his head. The edge, sharp as a giant razor, cut a silvery gash in the surface beside him.

  Ray leaped to his feet, shrinking back as close to the wall as he could get. His mind recalled, even before the last plate hit the dirt, the grease spot from the chicken bone which he had seen a few days before. If one of those toppling plates struck him, the mill hands would have a nasty job tidying this end of the mill.

  Then the gang of men was clustering around excitedly while the crane operator leaned from his bridge, looking down. Ray stood stock still for a moment. When he stopped shaking, he went over to join the workmen.

  He’d had plenty of experience judging metal by the appearance of its fracture. He looked now at the edges of the broken wire rope cable.

  The inner strands had a clean metallic break, but the outer strands showed a peculiar smooth appearance. Ray knew what that appearance signified.

  They had been eaten through by acid.

  * * * *

  When quitting time rolled around, Ray did not leave the laboratory building. More than ever he wanted to search the place. But since his previous two attempts, late at night, had netted about the same degree of privacy he might have expected in the concourse of New York’s Grand Central Station, he thought he would try a different time, when any Test Department people who planned to work at night would be out to dinner.

  Most of the lab employees were quick to depart on the very stroke of the clock. The inevitable few stragglers remained, but gradually even these left. Ray waited patiently, lining up his work for the morning, until finally he thought he was alone in the building.

  He’d start with the chemical lab and work down, he decided, and turned to the stairs. Halfway up he discovered that someone was still around. Indistinct voices came from Clara Dunne’s office near the head of the steps, low voices which stopped abruptly as Ray appeared.

  Leonard Tracy was closed into the tiny, boxlike space with Clara Dunne. Through the glass panels Ray could see that the General Superintendent’s customary suavity had disappeared. Lines ridged the man’s forehead and anger twisted his mouth.

  Clara, also, appeared upset about something. There was less color than usual in her plump cheeks. They looked thinner on account of the rigid set of her jaw. It was the first time Ray had ever seen her wear other than her habitual calm expression. It occurred to him that her display of emotion was not at all unbecoming.

  The sudden silence, and the way both of them watched him as he neared the top of the stairs, gave Ray an acute feeling that he was an unwelcome intruder on a very private conversation.

  “I wanted to see the chemical results on that last batch of driving wheels,” he said in a spur-of-the-moment explanation as Clara opened the door and gave him a questioning glance.

  “They’re not ready yet,” she told him a trifle curtly.

  He said, “Okay, I’ll get them tomorrow,” then turned and went back downstairs hastily.

  With sudden impatience, Ray decided he would not wait for them to leave. Someone else was likely to come back by that time and he might again miss his opportunity.

  He went into Ashley’s office. Dying daylight still persisted, but the vast shadows of the mill buildings were beginning to disintegrate into shapelessness as the dusk closed in. Ray pulled down Ashley’s shades, turned on the lights. He left the door into the hall open so he would know if Clara or Tracy came downstairs.

  He pulled out the top drawer of Ashley’s private file, began to thumb rapidly through the folders inside. He found nothing of interest to himself.

  He had started on the third drawer when the squeaky hinge of the door at the side corridor entrance warned him. He heard it squeak open, then shut again, stealthily. Very soft footsteps whispered along the bare boards of the connecting hallway.

  Ray slid the file drawer shut noiselessly. He jumped for the light switch, plunged the room into darkness. He had just time enough to slip through the door and into the adjoining clerical office before the furtive footsteps reached the turn of the hall.

  Flattened against the wall just inside the clerical office, Ray heard Ashley’s door close quietly. The faint snick of the light switch reached his ears through the thin panel and then the sound of file drawers being pulled rapidly open and shut.

  Ray was thinking fast. If it were Ashley himself who had returned, the drawn shades in the private office would be a dead give-away. And if Ashley’s suspicions of Ray reached a positive stage, it could prove very embarrassing, not only to Ray, but to the General as well.

  Ray wondered if he might be able to get past the closed door of the private office without being caught in the attempt. He decided to take the chance. But in the very act of slipping out once more into the hallway, he heard the faint tap-tap of high heels approaching through the physical laboratory.

  He shrank back again into the clerical office, as the heels clicked into the corridor. A light tap sounded on Ashley’s door. A guarded, feminine voice said, “Chris, are you there?”

  Ray couldn’t distinguish the voice, but that it was Ashley who replied there could be no doubt.

  “We won’t be safe in here tonight,” the man said in a husky whisper. “Someone’s been snooping. Must have left just as I came in. We’d better get out of here.”

  The footsteps, no longer guarded, moved in Ray’s direction. The hall light came on. Ray looked around frantically. In the crowded room there was absolutely no place for him to hide. In desperation, he dropped to hands and knees, crawled behind one of the three stenographic desks just as Ashley came to the door.

  The ceiling light in the office flashed on. Ray crouched, motionless, holding his breath. One step into the office and Ashley could not fail to see him.

  Ashley did not take that step. The lights snapped off again; the Engineer of Tests moved back along the hall.

  Still on hands and knees, Ray crawled hastily to the door. The girl was in the very act of rounding the corner turn. All Ray saw was a head covered in a gay bandanna and a brief splotch of red skirt. But Ashley’s silhouette against the wall was unmistakable. It’s wisp of beard, magnified by the downward slant of the electric light, made Ashley’s shadow look like a grotesque caricature of Uncle Sam.

  At that moment Leonard Tracy came downstairs. Ashley’s silhouette, still visible to Ray, although the man himself was around the bend of the hall, remained stationary against the wall as the General Superintendent strode away purposefully through the physical lab.

  Although consumed with curiosity about Ashley and his companion, Ray realized that a check on Tracy’s moves was a matter of more concern to him than satisfying his inquisitiveness.

  But he could not leave the clerical office without almost certainly being seen by Ashley. The man’s motionless shadow showed that, whatever he was doing tonight with the help of the girl, the Engineer of Tests did not care to advertise his presence any more than did Ray. And by lingering as he did in the side corridor, Ashley unknowingly held Ray securely trapped.

  The moment Tracy disappeared, the couple moved tentatively from their hiding place, but ducked back hastily as purposeful footsteps sounded overhead and Clara Dunne came down from upstairs. She went straight out, but it was at least five more minutes before Ashley and his feminine companion went on along the corridor and the tell-tale squeak of the door hinge informed Ray he could safely emerge from hiding.

  He rushed out then thr
ough the physical lab. He still wanted to find Tracy, but with the head start the General Superintendent had gained, Ray feared it would be impossible.

  Coming out by the side of the forge shop, Ray looked around quickly. By this time it had grown quite dark. No one was in sight.

  Tracy could have gone in almost any direction. If he had intended to leave the plant, his most probable route would be between the blooming mill and the billet mill. Ray started in that direction on the run.

  He cut around the end of the billet mill and turned to the side of the slabbing mill. Even if Tracy were not far ahead of him, it would be easy to lose a man among the many buildings crowded into this part of the Works.

  Two men were standing halfway along the end of the slabbing mill as Ray reached that open stretch. He stepped back quickly. When he looked around the corner a moment later, the men had separated.

  Light from the slabbing mill reflected on eyeglasses and Ray recognized Benjamin Gaylord’s bony skull-like features as the Chief Inspector hurried past the end of the structure and disappeared. The other man came plowing around the corner near Ray.

  It was the heavy, monk-like Quentin Harris, coatless as usual and chewing on his inevitable cigar stump. He did not see Ray and barged ahead toward the plate mill. There was no sign anywhere of Leonard Tracy.

  Ray broke into a run. He couldn’t have lost him by a great distance. But the General Superintendent might have turned into any of the various mills, or he could have doubled back in the direction from which he had come, on the other side of the rolling mill buildings.

  Beyond the slabbing mill various types of merchant mills were housed. The nearest was the bar mill. Ray took the corner fast, straight into a slight, flying figure which hit him squarely, almost knocking him from his feet and driving the breath completely from his lungs.

  It was entirely dark now, but an early moon was already luminous overhead. Moonglow, together with the electric light which spilled from the noisy, clanging bar mill, gave Ray a good look at the person with whom he had collided. It was Jackie North.

  The girl scrambled hastily to her feet without a word. She was panting, more from fright, it seemed, than from exertion. The harsh glare from the bar mill revealed the pallor of her face, the rouge standing out in dark splotches against the whiteness of her cheeks.

  “Miss North!” Ray began gaspingly. “What…”

  He broke off, shouted, “Jackie! Wait!” as she began to run.

  By the time he had recovered from his surprise and started after her, he found she had already vanished somewhere among the mill buildings.

  Ray shrugged and started again along the side of the bar mill. He was afraid now that he had definitely lost Tracy. That would mean another long wait outside the executive offices again to pick up the General Superintendent, or, more likely, a completely wasted evening so far as learning anything new was concerned.

  He reached the end of the bar mill. In a shed-like addition beyond the door of the structure, bars of various sizes and lengths were kept in wooden racks. In front of the racks were alligator shears used for cutting the bars to desired lengths. The shear blades, electrically operated, moved up and down in rhythmical strokes like the monotonous opening and shutting of a four-foot pair of scissors.

  Just beside the shear, half squatting, half stooping, was the figure of a man—a large powerfully built man, far different from the slender Leonard Tracy. The man twisted about, startled, at the sound of Ray’s feet on the cinders which carpeted the ground.

  Ray also stopped dead, frozen with astonishment.

  The moon shone down palely, providing just enough illumination for him to recognize the convulsive twist of the facial tic which drew Glenn Cannon’s profile into a simulated leer.

  An exclamation burst from Ray’s lips. “Cannon!”

  Cannon straightened swiftly, leaped away like a frightened animal. Overcoming his initial surprise, Ray started after him, then caught a glimpse in the moon’ light of the thing on the ground over which Cannon had been stooping. He stopped short.

  He had caught up with Leonard Tracy.

  The man’s handsome face was turned to Ray as if watching, while Ray stooped in the same spot where Cannon had been. By a trick of reflection, the moonbeams made Tracy’s eyes gleam like those of a cat caught in the headlights of an automobile.

  But the eyes were not watching Ray. Nor did they gleam with inner fire. They were dead eyes. And the head stood by itself, without a body, just below the restlessly moving jaws of the alligator shears.

  Tracy’s body lay on the other side of the shear blades. Moonrays glistened reddish-black on the wet cinders into which the life blood of the General Superintendent had drained. With an oddly pathetic gesture they touched the rosebud in the lapel of the dead man’s once handsome tan suit.

  Ray bent over the headless corpse in frozen horror. Invisible fingers squeezed his stomach; he felt swift nausea rising in his throat.

  And as he crouched, still under the paralysis of disgust and terror, a burly figure stepped from the darkness of the shed-like storage space where the bars were racked. Moonlight shone on the nickel-plating of a police revolver.

  “Get your hands up,” the bull voice of “Windpipe” Bixler ordered. “This time I caught you red-handed, Locke!”

  Chapter Eleven

  The sudden appearance of the company cop was like a shot of adrenalin to Ray. His paralyzed muscles functioned once more. Slowly he straightened, raised his hands over his head.

  “You ain’t gonna have no more chances to go around murderin’ people in this here plant,” Bixler promised. His voice held a low, growling threat.

  “I just found Tr—found this, myself,” Ray started to protest. “You must have seen me come here, not more than a minute ago.”

  Bixler said, “Don’t try to talk yourself out of it, bud! Not with me.” There was something implacable in his tone, and a note which sounded almost like triumph.

  “I don’t intend to waste time with you,” Ray retorted. “I want to see Mr. Flint.”

  “Tryin’ to make more trouble, eh?” Bixler spoke slowly, as if he were thinking out loud. “Maybe the easiest way to settle this would be for you to get shot while resistin’ arrest. Yeah…”

  The murder in Bixler’s thoughts was as clear to Ray as type on a printed page. Only the slow functioning of the company cop’s mind delayed his homicidal action.

  Shot while resisting arrest. That, Ray knew, would be his epitaph. He would never reach Ironton’s gates, nor communicate with U. G. Flint. In another second Bixler would shoot.

  Ray threw himself violently to one side even as the thought swirled through his mind. He ducked while Bixler’s words were still forming, his finger tightening on the trigger of the gun. Then Bixler fired, the bullet whispering away harmlessly into the night.

  Panic and instinct for self-preservation gave Ray a speed of which he had never before been capable. He fled blindly, without definite destination ahead. To elude Bixler…that was his only thought. He had a vague hope that he might lose the man somewhere inside the maze of mill buildings.

  A kaleidoscope of half-perceived scenes revolved around him. He fled through the Bessemer plant, past forty-foot tongues of flame, with the earth shaking under the ear-splitting roar of air blasting through the mouth of the converter under terrific pressure and hot sparks, like fireflies, dancing through the vast building from roof trusses to the dirt floor.

  He dodged across the hot plates of the soaking pits, where glowing ingots like chunks of white metallic ice were dangling from overhead cranes. All the time Bixler hung grimly behind him.

  Darting in through a side entrance to the sheet mill, Ray found himself unexpectedly trapped. Directly in front of him was a train of rollers carrying its continuous strip of thin sheet from the finishing roll pass to the flying shears.

  Th
e flying shears themselves, heavy knife blades working continually up and down under the drive of a steam cylinder, were at Ray’s right. And the space between shears and mill end was blocked by the thick pile of cut sheets which tumbled automatically from the roll table at the delivery end of the shears.

  The way to get across to the other mill entrance was over a catwalk a hundred feet back in the other direction. Ray had turned the wrong way upon entering the mill. Now he was pocketed, unable to retrace his steps because Bixler was already barging through the aisle behind him, between the mill wall and the roll table.

  Bixler was slowing, raising the gun. Ray had lost count of the shots remaining in the cop’s revolver, but the situation was hopeless. Bixler would be shooting from point blank range and there was ample time for him to reload.

  There was one possibility: If he could leap the six feet over the roll table to the other side, he would escape the trap, while Bixler would be forced to retreat via the catwalk to get across the barrier.

  But to leap the roll table meant a truly desperate chance. If he missed, even by inches, he would either be fried alive on the hot sheets or sliced in half under the flying shears—perhaps both.

  There was no time for pondering a decision. Anyhow, he had no real choice. It was either risk a terrible death in an all-out bid for freedom, or stand his ground and be cut down by the fire of the murderous company cop.

  Ray gave a tremendous leap, putting all his remaining strength into a headlong dive over the roll table and across the moving steel sheet. The sheet was cooling, but it still glowed a dull angry red. Ray could feel scorching heat strike upward at his body as he plunged over. The downward slash of the shear blades, as brilliant electric light struck the moving knives from above, was like the sudden flash of a mirror. So close were they that Ray’s plunging body almost brushed them as he catapulted across. Sparks struck from the guide frame of the shears as one of Bixler’s steel-jacketed bullets glanced from the metal.