Bones Don't Lie Page 15

  “The way I doped it out, it could go like this,” Ray said. “Suppose they have some axle forgings which they know won’t meet requirements. They could cut a cylinder, or a core as it’s properly called, from metal they know will pass the tests. Then they go ahead and hollow bore the forging, break out the core and throw it away. Next they thread the phony core, tap threads into the bottom of the hole in the forging and screw in the phony core. The inspector can’t tell he hasn’t a solid piece of the axle for his test.” He appealed to Cannon. “Couldn’t it be done like that?”

  Cannon said, “Not only could, but has been, more than once by crooked steel men. I never allowed such things to be done at Ironton, but someone must have worked behind my back.”

  There was silence for a moment as the General thought it over. “I begin to see what you mean,” he said.

  “The inspector is really in a jam,” Ray broke in eagerly. “If he won’t approve the piece that’s been already bored for him, he’s afraid he will make a heel of himself. If he does…well, you know what happened to me!”

  “Of course, the trick is to do a sales job on the inspector,” Cannon added. “Give him a line about saving time, the way it was given Ray. And, of course, the inspector isn’t dreaming that anyone would go to so much trouble to fool him—not unless he’s been burnt before!”

  “I should think,” the General suggested, “that the threads on the fake core would show when the piece is broken out.”

  Cannon said, “That’s taken care of by cutting part way through the core just above the threads so that it breaks in the weakest place. If it’s cleverly done no one would ever suspect.”

  “Hmmm. It must be worth a lot to someone to have those forgings accepted.”

  “It is,” Cannon said shortly. “Those guys in the forge shop are paid on a tonnage basis. Rejected material doesn’t count.”

  “Who took you out to pick those tests?” Flint asked Ray. “Was it Gaylord?”

  “No, sir. I just went into the hammer shop and some of the men there showed me the forgings.”

  “Quite likely the guy who went with Ray knew nothing about the phony business,” Cannon added.

  “Someone in the forge shop would have to be involved,” the General said. He wasn’t asking a question, he was speaking as if to himself.

  Cannon said, “Someone in the forge shop would be the guy who paid off. He’d make it worthwhile for the plant inspector and then they’d have to get a machinist to do the boring and threading jobs for them.”

  “That would be the forge shop foreman, Al Sisco,” U. G. Flint said with satisfaction. “Was he here in your time, Cannon?”

  Both Ray and Glenn Cannon answered at the same time. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I’ve already ordered an investigation of him and also the machinist, Pete Kosleck.”

  The silence this time lasted for several minutes. Ray shifted uneasily in the darkness. Finally Flint said, “What do you intend to do about it, Cannon?”

  “I’ve been trying to get at the records in the department files.”

  “You had somewhat the same idea, Locke.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, you’re both wrong!” the General said abruptly. “You’ll get nowhere fast. Already you’ve done more harm than good.”

  “But I’ve got to do something, sir. I can’t just—”

  “There’s only one right way to clear the two of you,” Flint said. “We’ve got to catch the guilty parties in the act.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “Maybe so,” Flint admitted. “But I’ve found there’s a big order of carbon vanadium axles readying for the Gulf Southeastern within the next few days. Maybe there’ll be some skullduggery in that connection.”

  “Why, that’s the lot I heard Gaylord talking about the night of Keene’s death,” Ray exclaimed. “It was what he said about hollow boring them to save time that gave me the first confirmation of the trick we’ve been talking about. I’ll bet there’s something wrong going on with that lot.”

  “Could be,” Cannon admitted. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to do exactly nothing!” the General snapped. “Leave everything to me. The best thing you can possibly do is to go back through this tunnel and stay away from Ironton until I send for you.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t argue!” The General’s tone had become sharp. “Just do as I say. Your presence in or around this plant will only complicate matters. Don’t you see that I’m duty-bound to turn you over to the police in connection with Tracy’s murder?”

  Ray said, “What about me, sir?”

  “I might need your help, Locke, although you’re rather deeply involved in the Tracy matter, also.”

  “But you don’t think that I—”

  The General said, “We’ve already gone all over that ground. Let’s not repeat.”

  “But what do you think about Tracy, Mr. Flint? You must suspect someone.”

  “Everybody and his grandmother was around at the time Tracy was killed,” said Ulysses Flint. “And there are motives galore for them all. Most of the motives tie in with the crookedness in the Test Department. Take your choice—Gaylord or Ashley, or the smaller fry, Sisco or Kosleck.”

  “You’re counting out Clara Dunne?”

  “A very interesting thing about Miss Dunne,” the General said. “She has been greatly upset over Leonard Tracy’s death. It appears now that she and Tracy were secretly engaged to be married. She says they’d kept it quiet but just yesterday afternoon they’d settled the date and were getting ready to announce it.”

  “He was in Clara’s office at least twice earlier today,” Ray said thoughtfully. “And they both looked pretty serious.”

  “It would be instructive,” the General went on, “if we could know what your friend Bixler was doing so close to the place of Tracy’s death. Obviously, the man did a considerable amount of dirty work for his big boss.”

  “And how about Harris?” Ray could not refrain from asking. “He’s the one who stands to gain most from having Tracy out of the way. He’ll be General Super. The difference in salary between the two jobs must amount to twenty thousand a year. And Tracy told me he and Harris didn’t get on at all well.

  “We shall certainly have to remember Quentin Harris,” the General’s voice purred smoothly from the darkness. “But there are two other principal suspects we must not forget, either.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Ray Locke and Glenn Cannon. Both were at the scene of the crime. Both might have had excellent motives. Cannon believed he was unjustly treated. Locke thought Tracy might have designs on his life. Both had served prison terms in connection with falsified tests.”

  Ray caught his breath. “But I thought you said you didn’t…”

  “I know who the murderer is,” U. G. Flint said very softly.

  “You know! Then why…”

  “I can’t prove it,” the General said. “But I know because the murderer left a calling card with each victim.”

  “A calling card!”

  “Call it an identifying mark, if you prefer. You remember the mark on Keene’s head?”

  “The swage mark?”

  “No. The other. The smaller semi-circle, like a half moon.”

  “Yes, sir. I remember that.”

  “There was a similar mark on Tracy’s head,” the General said. “To my mind it’s conclusive proof of the killer’s identity.”

  “Then why don’t you turn him in to the police?”

  “I said I could prove nothing yet. I want to give the criminal plenty of rope—rope for the hangman. That, Locke, is where I’m going to need your help.”

  “Whatever you say, Mr. Flint.”

  “Finding who is responsible for these murders is just part of
my plan,” the General went on. “My more important task is to clear up this matter of crookedness at Ironton once and for all. The good name of American-Consolidated Steel is of considerable more moment than the death of one or two persons, even if one of them did happen to be the big boss at Ironton.”

  There was another short silence while both Ray and Cannon waited for the General’s next words.

  “I shall not be ready for final action,” the General said, “until I have word from certain confidential bank connections in New York. There are still aspects of this case which I don’t understand at all. But I shall make it a point to look at the Gulf Southeastern forgings tonight.”

  The bald streak on Ulysses Flint’s head shone in the light of the flash as the big man inspected his platinum wrist watch briefly.

  “It is now a quarter to eleven,” the General said, as he switched the light off again. “I want you, Locke, to meet me at that checker-work place at precisely one o’clock. You, Cannon, will go back through the tunnel and stay away from the Ironton Works as I previously suggested. Let me have an address or phone where I can reach you and I will see that you are informed as soon as there is any progress to report.”

  “How do I know you don’t intend to double-cross me?” Cannon demanded without finesse.

  “You don’t.” The General’s voice was serene. “That’s the chance you have to take. But if you don’t take it, chances are you’ll find yourself up to the ears in trouble.”

  “All right.” Cannon sounded sullen. “I guess I have no choice. You can phone me at Madison 3-2784.”

  The General held his light again while he jotted the numbers in a small black memo hook. Then, “Get along,” he said. “Locke, you can walk with me halfway back toward the mills.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ray could imagine how the actual murderer must feel. Instinctively he shrank from light, as a nocturnal animal shrinks from his cave mouth at midday. He felt a sense of isolation, of being set apart from his fellow man, accentuated by the fact that he had to be careful to avoid anyone who might recognize him and raise an alarm.

  His task was an easier one than that of the murderer, however, Ray reasoned. The inner tension must be less. The only thing required of him was physical alertness, whereas the real killer had his conscience to combat.

  An hour and a half had passed since he had left the General near the elevated trestles on the approach to the merchant mills. An hour and a half, during which Ray had skulked in shadows, one eye always on the large clock over the plant’s main gate. Never had an hour and a half seemed so endlessly long.

  He struck out now for the more congested area of the Ironton Works. He would go the long way around, he decided. It would help kill the remaining half hour. Actual danger was slight. The night was dark. With his hat brim pulled down well over his forehead, chances of his being recognized were remote.

  He encountered men occasionally in the spaces between mill buildings. Ray walked briskly, as if on a purpose connected with his work. No one gave him a second glance. He avoided the spots where the lights were brightest, plodding ahead steadily with lowered head.

  The Open Hearth loomed monstrous against the blackness of the sky, red glow spilling from its ports as from the open firebox of a locomotive. Above the lighted arches, dark building walls faded quickly, vanishing completely into the obscurity of night.

  It now lacked but a minute or so until one o’clock. Ray hurried on to the end of the long structure, confidently expecting to find the General waiting at the door to the checker-work chamber. But when he reached the building end, Ulysses G. Flint was not there.

  Ray waited, fidgeting impatiently. The nervousness against which he had been fighting grew as minutes lengthened. Suppose the General did not show up at all? Ray began to realize how completely all his hopes and his future were dependent upon the big, scrubby-mustached man, and how little he actually knew of what went on inside the General’s head.

  The delay was becoming unbearable. Ray went to the iron door. He struck a match. The door was locked. A new padlock had been substituted for one he had broken.

  He walked a few steps to the end of the building, came back again, pacing restlessly. As be passed the door to the checker-work chambers the third time, he thought he heard a sound.

  He stopped to listen. Something was moving behind the padlocked entrance.

  He moved close again. The door rattled. It sounded as if someone were knocking against it, weakly, from the inside. Then Ray noted the faint edge of light which showed at the sides and bottom of the door.

  Someone was inside…padlocked in!

  Quickly Ray ran around the end of the building and up the stairs to the charging floor of the Open Hearth. He found a sledge where he had found one before, near the side of Number Eleven furnace; he brought it down with him, smashed the padlock with a well-aimed blow.

  Light struck out at him as he flung open the iron door—light and heat. The checker-work chamber, cool before, was now like an oven.

  At his feet, electric light shone on the body of a man. Ulysses Flint lay just inside the door.

  Ray’s first thought was that the General was dead. But suddenly the big man’s black eyes flew open, he grunted, tried to sit up. Ray knelt swiftly at Flint’s side, helped him to an upright position.

  “What happened?” he asked anxiously. “Are you badly hurt, sir?”

  The General grunted again. He passed his hand across his head, wheezed, climbed to his feet with a big paw on Ray’s shoulder to steady himself.

  “No—not seriously hurt. A bit—shaky.”

  “But what…”

  The General’s neat gray suit was soiled now, the white of his shirt grimed by contact with the dirty masonry underfoot. He made an instinctive gesture as if to regain his former spotlessness by dusting himself with his hands. Then he lurched toward the door.

  “It’s stifling, let’s get out of here.”

  Cooler air from outside was sweeping through the iron door, but Ray wiped sweat from his face as he followed the General outside. It was like coming from the steam room of a Turkish bath.

  “I was slugged,” the General explained. He stood with his feet spread wide apart as if to brace himself.

  The big man fingered his head again, tenderly, then bent so that light from the open door fell squarely upon it. “Take a look and tell me what this is, Locke.” Ray moved to see better. Outlined against the smooth shininess of the man’s bald streak the General’s blunt forefinger indicated a crescent-shaped red mark a trifle smaller than a dime.

  “It’s like the bruise on Walter Keene’s head,” Ray told U. G. Flint.

  “And on Leonard Tracy’s.” There was an odd note of satisfaction in the General’s tone. “Just as I thought. The same person who killed Keene and Tracy has made an attempt on my own life. That, Locke, is the mark of the murderer.”

  Eagerly, Ray asked, “Who is it, Mr. Flint?”

  “For excellent reasons of my own, I’m not going to answer that question just yet.” The General had completely recovered his self-assurance. “If I did, I might never be able to prove it. We made one bad mistake already in underestimating the intelligence and cunning of the killer. It was a close squeak. I can’t afford another mistake.”

  “You haven’t yet told me what happened,” Ray reminded.

  “I knew there was danger, of course,” the General said. “Therefore, I took the precaution of fastening myself into that room with a new padlock on the inside so I couldn’t be surprised. But the murderer must have been hidden in the inner room when I came in. I was poking around the work bench when I was hit from behind. The murderer then turned the valve so that flames from the adjoining checker-work would roast or suffocate me.”

  “It’s a miracle you escaped!” Ray exclaimed feelingly. He felt a selfish wonder as to what might have happened t
o Ray Locke if the only person who believed in his innocence had been violently eliminated.

  “My head must he thicker than I believed,” said Ulysses Flint. His broad features twisted into a grin more human than any expression Ray had seen him wear before. “I was stunned, but I regained my senses quickly enough to turn the valve and shut off the flame. The murderer had switched off the lights, taken the padlock key from my pocket, and locked me in. I turned the lights back on. Thought you might see them around the door sills. If you hadn’t come when you did…”

  He shrugged expressively.

  “How long ago did this all happen?” Ray tingled with sudden renewed excitement.

  “I must have been out ten or fifteen minutes,” the General said. “About half an hour ago, I should say.”

  That was ample time for anyone to have gone from the Open Hearth to almost any other portion of the steel works.

  The General fumbled in his breast pocket, located his cigar case and selected a thick Perfecto. Not till he had bitten the end from the cigar and had it comfortably aglow, did he make further comment.

  “I come to the regretful conclusion,” he observed then, “that our personnel at Ironton includes a bunch of crooks and murderers. Test records at the laboratory are not all that have surreptitiously been removed, Locke. Those drawings of the fixation plants at Rjukan and Notodden have vanished also—taken by the murderer, without a doubt. This matter of nitrogen plays an ever increasingly important part in the whole case.”

  The end of the big man s cigar brightened as the General puffed vigorously. “We’ve work to do,” he said briskly. “I’ve made inquiries, Locke, and I find that the Gulf Southeastern inspector will be at Ironton to get his locomotive axles tomorrow morning. You and I, therefore, are going to pay a surprise visit to the forge tonight.”

  The hammer shop was even more cavernous, gloomier than in daytime. The open forges no longer gleamed along the walls; no glowing metallic ice cast streamers of flame and smoke beneath the heat of the monster steam hammers. Unlike actual steel-making processes, such as the blast furnaces, the Bessemer and the Open Hearth, the forge shop did not operate twenty-four hours a day.