Bones Don't Lie Read online

  Half a block before he reached the rotting board fence, a gaudy green-and-red neon sign bore the single word, Eat. Part of the letter a was missing. Narrow windows, so covered with grime that the dimly lit interior of the joint was scarcely visible from the street, were set in crumbling frames from which all vestiges of paint had vanished.

  Ray shrugged and turned into the place. He did not expect a course dinner; he could get a plate of beans here and that was sufficient. Stale atmosphere, redolent of onions and burned grease, closed about him. At a wooden counter covered with cracked and patched linoleum, two hunkies in overalls were waiting, while the fat Greek proprietor drew coffee from a badly corroded urn.

  A row of flimsy booths ranged along the left-hand wall. Ray picked one near the back, brushed away a swarm of flies hovering around the mouth of an almost empty catsup bottle, and waited for the Greek. Low voices came from the booth behind him, a man and a woman in earnest conversation. Ray paid no attention at first until suddenly a name stabbed him into alertness as if a needle had been thrust through the booth partition into his back.

  “…too dangerous after this Tracy business tonight!” the masculine voice had declared.

  The woman said, “Why don’t you just lie low for a few days until I tell you things have quieted down? Then we can try the test lab once more.”

  Ray got to his feet, stepped to the adjoining booth. As the fragment of overheard conversation had made him suspect, the occupants of the booth were Glenn Cannon and Jackie North.

  “You aren’t going to try anything once more, either of you,” Ray stated flatly. “If you think I’m going to be your fall guy again, you’re mistaken.”

  Both of them looked up at the unexpected interruption. The girl’s brown eyes widened, a sudden rush of color flooded her cheeks. Cannon’s heavy, dead-pan face twisted instantly into the leer caused by his nervous tic.

  The girl began to stammer. “You—you don’t understand…”

  “I understand all right,” Ray said roughly. “I don’t know which of you killed Tracy, but that’s up to the police to find out.” He called loudly to the Greek who was still behind the counter. “Come over here, George!”

  Cannon said hastily, “What are you going to do, Locke?”

  “Send for the police—right now, before you have a chance to run out on me again.”

  “Don’t go off half-cocked, Ray!” Cannon’s tone was urgent; his face twitched violently. “Jackie and I had nothing to do with that—with Tracy. I’ve been trying to help you as well as myself.”

  “Nuts!”

  “If you’ll just sit down and listen to me for a minute…”

  “Please!” Jackie implored. “For your own sake.”

  The Greek, a dirty white apron tied around his pudgy middle, had come over to stand beside Ray. “What you want, mister?”

  Ray was thinking quickly. Although convinced in his own mind that he had caught Cannon and the girl cold, it would still be a formidable job to convince the police of his own innocence. Perhaps it would be a smart idea to let these people talk first, before putting himself, along with them, into the hands of the law.

  “Bring me a plate of beans and a cup of coffee,” he told the Greek and seated himself alongside Cannon, thereby blocking the man into the booth and preventing any thought he may have had of making a break for the door.

  “Okay, Cannon,” he said as the Greek departed. “Go ahead and talk. But you’d better make it good. I’m not going to lay my head on the block for you.”

  Cannon blinked and twitched, but his voice was low and earnest. “I’m telling you the truth, Ray. Jackie and I just happened to stumble across Tracy’s body.”

  “You surely ducked fast enough!”

  “Wouldn’t you have ducked? With a murder rap pinned on me I’d be sunk. I’d never have a chance to clear myself.”

  “You’ve got to believe that we’re your friends,” Jackie added.

  They both sounded sincere. It came to Ray that Cannon’s mind actually seemed to work in much the same channels as his own. But he couldn’t afford to jump to conclusions.

  “Why has Miss North been chasing all around the Ironton Works at night?” he asked sternly.

  “Glenn happens to be my favorite cousin,” she told him simply. “I know he’s innocent and I’ve been trying to help him prove it. But every time we tried to get into the laboratory”—her tone turned petulant—“you’ve managed to spoil things for us.”

  “What were you trying to do at the laboratory? You lied to me,” Ray accused. “You told me Harris sent you there.”

  “He did.”

  “But you just said…”

  “I was framed on that other deal,” Cannon interrupted, “the same as you. I thought I might find something in the old records to prove it. If we could get those axle test originals…”

  “We wanted to beat Harris to it,” Jackie explained. “That’s what Harris wanted me to find for him. But I intended to keep watch while Glenn looked through the files.”

  It didn’t seem implausible to Ray, since that was exactly what he had attempted himself. He started to say so, stopped as the Greek appeared again with a plate of wilted looking beans, set the dish in front of Ray with a clatter and wiped his thumb, which had been in the juice, on his spotted apron. A coffee cup, thick as boiler plate, followed the beans to the chipped, porcelain table top.

  “You’ve got a smooth line of talk,” Ray admitted when the man had departed. “I’ll have to grant that much to both of you.”

  “You should be able to understand how it feels when everyone doubts you,” Jackie said severely. “Actually, if we were unfriendly to you, it would be simple enough to say that we saw you kill Tracy. It would be the testimony of two against one.”

  “Just as I thought,” Ray said bitterly. “You’re going to try framing me again.” He started to get up.

  “I’m just trying to show that we’re really friends,” Jackie said hastily. “If we can prove Glenn’s innocence, we’re bound to prove yours at the same time. Can’t you see that?”

  Cannon said, “Use your head, Ray! If I’d actually been guilty in connection with those defective axles, do you think I’d have left a letter lying around in my desk to nail down the case against me?” He leaned across the table and tapped with the handle of his knife on the table top to emphasize his point. “That letter was a forgery, Ray. It was put there by someone who wanted me out of the way.” His face twitched again in an uncontrollable spasm. “I’ve never been able to understand who could have wanted to do that or why.”

  Ray sat silent for a moment. The point was a good one, one which he had pondered himself without finding a satisfactory explanation. The more Cannon talked, the more convincing an impression he made upon Ray.

  As Ray hesitated, Cannon said eagerly, “Why don’t we work together, Ray, instead of pulling against each other? Let’s join forces. Our interests are identical.”

  Ray reached his decision. “Maybe I’m an awful sucker, but I’m going to play it your way. We’ve all got our necks stuck out a yard.”

  Jackie shuddered. “Oh, don’t say that, please. It makes me think of…”

  Ray grinned. He extended his hand across the table. The girl accepted it hesitantly. Cannon leaned across and laid his big hand on theirs. They looked like conspirators in agreement.

  Ray said, “This changes my plans. Now I think maybe we ought to go back into the plant tonight, while things are still upset over there. It might give us a better chance to look through those files!”

  Cannon’s face twitched. “You and I could take the chance, Ray, but Jackie…”

  “Jackie should go home,” Ray said with conviction. “This job is not for a girl.”

  Jackie smiled wanly. “I suppose I should insist on going along with you two strong, silent, masterful men, but I won�
�t. To tell the honest truth, what I saw tonight has got me down. So I think I’ll take you up about going home.”

  Ray got up. “I’ll phone for a taxi and while we’re waiting”—he eyed the plate hungrily—“I’ll finish these beans.”

  Later, as Ray and Cannon approached the entrance to the conduit tunnel, they could hear, from across the water, the rumble of skips on the inclines to the blast furnace loading bells and the shrilling of whistle signals from the rolling mills farther away. There was no lessening of the ceaseless clangor and roar of a great steel plant hurrying along its endless path of organized confusion.

  Even though its guiding brain, in the person of Leonard Tracy, was dead, the plant possessed an impartial, soulless power of self-perpetuation. Already it answered to the direction of a new brain. And that new brain belonged to Quentin Harris.

  Ray was in the lead. Sense of touch located for him the narrow tunnel opening with its shelf of lead-covered cables. One hand on the cables and the other against the concrete wall guided him as the passage dipped down beneath the water of the inlet.

  Just as it leveled again, Ray came to an abrupt halt, holding a restraining hand against Cannon behind him. A rustling sound had come from the darkness straight ahead. Ray held his breath to listen.

  There was nothing more. For a full two minutes he waited, ears straining. The tomblike silence was almost palpable, as was the smothering blackness.

  His imagination stirred disquietingly. He remembered a trip he had once taken into the Endless Caverns in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He recalled how, at a point two miles from the cave’s mouth, the guide had extinguished all lights to show what total darkness was like. It had been no darker beneath Massanutten Mountain than it was now in this cable conduit under Ironton Inlet.

  A sudden urgency seized Ray to get through, into fresh air again. Tugging at Cannon’s sleeve, Ray hurried forward. His groping fingers touched something soft and yielding, something that slid away from him. An involuntary yell burst from his throat.

  Then suddenly from the dead blackness ahead, a flashlight beam held them spotlighted.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The blinding beam prevented recognition of the person behind it, but the shadowy figure suddenly spoke. Ray recognized the deep, confident tone of Ulysses G. Flint.

  “Locke!” the General exclaimed. “You scurvy scoundrel! Who’s that with you?”

  Ray felt a swift surge of returning confidence. “This,” he said quietly, “is Glenn Cannon, Mr. Flint. I told you I saw Glenn in the plant. Since you’ve located this tunnel, you know how he managed to get in and out without passing through the gates. Incidentally, sir, how did you find the tunnel?”

  “By studying detailed maps of the plant,” the General said. “Obviously there was some means other than the gates whereby you were able to disappear as you did under Bixler’s nose. Now tell me why you ran away, Locke. This is serious. You’re even more deeply involved in Tracy’s death than you were in Walter Keene’s.”

  The big man stood blocking the narrow passage, with his light in the faces of both men blinding them, until Ray had told the detailed story of his race against Bixler’s gun.

  “What have you got to say about all this?” he demanded of Cannon.

  Cannon replied unhesitatingly, “Ray’s told you the truth. I had just discovered Tracy when Ray busted in on me. Naturally, I was scared. Didn’t want anyone to know I was around where I had no business to be, particularly since murder had been committed.”

  To Ray, Flint said, “I suspected Bixler’s yarn was fishy. He swore he caught you in the very act of sticking Tracy’s head under the shear blades. Viewed in the light of information I’ve dredged up recently, it didn’t quite ring true to me.” There was satisfaction in his tone.

  Abruptly, he questioned Cannon again. “Locke says you were at the laboratory the night Walter Keene was killed. Were you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you kill Keene?”

  “No.”

  “If you did, of course, you wouldn’t admit it. What were you doing at the laboratory?”

  “I intended to look through the storage files, to find the records of the tests on that axle. That was the test that sent me to jail, along with Ray.”

  “Why did you want to find it?”

  “I’m sure it was faked. If I could prove any tests faked around this plant, I could establish my own innocence.”

  “You have an idea how such a thing could be done?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I want to know about that.” The General switched his flashlight out of their eyes and along the upward slant of the narrow concrete slot. “But let’s get out of here. This is hardly the appropriate place for a council of war.”

  With the brilliant beam no longer blinding him, and with its radiance diffused by reflection from concrete surfaces, Ray could now see that the big bald-headed man had come into the tunnel wearing an impeccably tailored business suit. Yet, the grime and accumulated soot and dust of the subterranean passage had not so much as smudged the white cuffs of Flint’s shirt.

  Ray noted the dirt and grease on Glenn Cannon’s work shirt and his own soiled and rumpled clothing. He and Cannon must have done a good job as human brooms in sweeping out the conduit tunnel, unless U. G. Flint were one of those incredible persons who could fall into a tar barrel and emerge clutching a bouquet of American Beauty roses.

  When they reached the room which housed the transformers, the General turned off his light, went to the door, and looked around outside.

  “We aren’t likely to be interrupted for a while,” he said when he returned. “Now, Cannon, I want something definite from you about these crooked tests.”

  Cannon gave a short, harsh laugh. “If I knew anything definite do you think I’d have served a year in stir?”

  “I don’t mean that. What I’m trying to do is find the party or parties responsible. You must have fairly specific ideas along those lines.”

  Cannon said, “The jury had very specific ideas. They said I was responsible.”

  “I know that, of course.” The General was patient. “If I didn’t think there were more to it than that, I wouldn’t be wasting time with you. But falsification of tests did not cease when you left Ironton, Cannon. There have been other cases within the past few months. In fact, they are becoming more and more frequent.”

  “Yes, I know,” Cannon admitted. “Jackie told me.”

  “Jackie? Oh, yes, you mean Miss North. Speaking of her, Cannon, what connection has she with all this?”

  Ray answered. “She’s his cousin, sir.” He went on to tell the General how he had run into Cannon and the girl by chance at the cheap beanery.

  The General said, “Now let’s get back to these crooked tests. I know certain things about them already. I know, for instance, that this man Keene had deliberately falsified certain chemical analyses. But a chemist wouldn’t be able to rig the physical tests.”

  Cannon said, “You’re right on that. Whoever did it must have been someone with a certain authority around the physical lab. That means, either Ashley, Gaylord or myself.”

  “Leave yourself out of it!” Flint ordered. “We’ve heard your story, and Locke’s. The fact that phony tests have still persisted lends credence to what you’ve both told me.”

  “All right. Then Ashley or Gaylord must have a hand in it.”

  “Which do you think?”

  “Well, Ashley’s job is largely administrative and along research lines. The practical everyday inspection work comes under jurisdiction of the Chief Inspector.”

  “So you think Gaylord is the lad we’re after?”

  Cannon hesitated. “I wouldn’t want to condemn any man without proof. But as my assistant, Gaylord would have had ample opportunity for rigging the tests. And since he inherited my job, his chan
ces certainly haven’t decreased.”

  “Could he fake these tests all by himself?”

  “Only to a limited extent. In pulling tensile tests, for instance, it’s an old gag to run the machine too fast. In that way you can over-balance the arm of the scale and the reading is way too high. But such tests are pulled in the presence of the buyer’s inspector. You couldn’t work a mossy stunt like that on anyone but a green inspector.”

  “How about it, Locke?” the General asked. “Do you recall how fast the machine was run when you pulled those axle tests?”

  “I wouldn’t be likely to forget. I’ve pulled them again in my nightmares for the last year. The machine didn’t go more than an eighth of an inch a minute, which is the specified maximum crosshead speed.”

  Cannon said, “On the axle tests, chances are there was a substitution of test pieces.”

  “How could that be done? I understand from Locke that the test specimens were marked by the inspector with his own private identification.”

  “That’s correct, sir,” Ray said. “But on those particular axles, specimens were hollow bored before submission to me. I was told it had been done to save time. Of course I didn’t have to stamp the spots they’d selected for me, but I did it to cooperate.”

  The General said, “I don’t understand. What do you mean they’d already been hollow bored?”

  “The railroad inspector,” Ray explained, “puts his stamp on a prolongation left in a certain percentage of the forgings for that purpose. He picks a spot halfway between the center of the forging and the outer surface and marks it there. The forging is then sent to the machine shop and a round piece of metal, large enough to be machined into a standard test piece, is hollow bored. It’s as if you cut a cylinder from a tub of butter with a tin can. The cylinder is then broken from the casting and turned up on a lathe and sent to the lab for pulling the test.”

  “I still don’t see how…”

  In the complete darkness the voices of the three men produced an eerie effect, like disembodied spirits conversing in a graveyard at midnight.