Bones Don't Lie Read online

  In the central portion of the structure, yellow light streamed down from flood lamps located up by the roof trusses. A traveling crane was moving billets to the side of a four-ton hammer. The crane operator, arms crossed on the side of his cage, looked down at the small group of men working beneath him.

  The two ends of the building where no work was going on were in comparative obscurity. But the General, who seemed to have some definite plan in mind, went directly to the idle hammer next to the one where Walter Keene had been killed. He reached for a long electric cord hanging from the roof, switched on a two-hundred-watt bulb.

  “Now, Locke,” he said, “this is your opportunity to do something constructive about your own problem. From what you and your friend Cannon told me tonight of the possible modus operandi employed in the falsification of axle tests, we have at least a chance of getting positive evidence.”

  “What do you wish me to do, Mr. Flint?”

  “You’re familiar with the test procedure. I get the general drift of your remarks, but I want you to show me, if you can, how these specimens are prepared, and whether or not there is anything crooked about this material for the Gulf Southeastern.”

  Ray moved to the side of the billet pile. “Here, sir,” he said and his heart was thumping suddenly with almost painful excitement. “These have all been hollow bored prior to inspection—the same as that unlucky test I pulled myself.”

  He indicated a spot on the end of a billet, halfway between center and outside of the forging. A circular hole, some two inches in diameter had been bored into the metal in a direction parallel to the length of the forging. In the center of this hole, like a miniature tree stump rising from a miniature well, was a solid core of metal.

  “You see,” Ray explained, “the inspector puts his hammer stamp on the end of the core. Then they break it out with a maul and a wedge and take it over to the machine shop to be turned into the standard test specimen.”

  “So if the core is actually a phony…”

  “We can unscrew it. Yes, sir.”

  Ray looked around rapidly, found a pair of leather-palmed work gloves on the anvil underneath the steam hammer. He drew them on.

  At this moment a gruff voice called from behind them. “Hey, you!”

  Ray and the General turned at the same moment. The hammer shop foreman, Al Sisco, was coming toward them, threading his way swiftly around the billet piles.

  “Why, you’re the same guys what was hangin’ around here the other day,” he exclaimed with apparent surprise. An angry red, visible even beneath the sweat-streaked soot which grimed the man’s features, colored his heavy face and thick neck. “I told ya then to get outta here!”

  “And I told you I’m here by authority of the plant management,” the General said grimly. “Don’t bother us. We’re busy.” To Ray he added, “Go ahead, Locke.”

  Ray seized the metal core of the hollow-bored forging. He twisted it vigorously.

  Sisco roared, “If you don’t get outta here I’m gonna bust ya one. You can’t come into my shop an’…”

  He came at Ray as he spoke. The General took a quick step forward, intercepting the burly foreman’s rush. One big hand shot out and seized Sisco’s wrist. The other hand clamped down instantly behind it. The General pivoted. He caught Sisco’s forward momentum against his hip, jerking upward at the same instant.

  Sisco shot into the air. His heels described a complete arc over his head. He landed flat on his back with a solid thump on the dirt floor, narrowly missing the end of the billet pile. The breath burst from his lungs in a grunting whoosh.

  For a hare instant Sisco lay motionless. Then he scrambled to his feet. His dirty face was contorted with rage and surprise. “Why you goddamn—”

  “Don’t say it!” the General warned. His voice was quiet but deadly. “And don’t start anything, Sisco. You might be badly hurt.”

  Ulysses Flint was a big man. But the hammer shop foreman was bigger—a veritable giant, with a wrist thick as an average man’s biceps and arms toughened by years of labor at the forge.

  “Hurt!” Sisco bellowed. “Goddamn it, I’m gonna kill ya!”

  He rushed at the General with arms flailing. There was nothing scientific about his attack; it was the frenzied drive of an angry hull.

  Ulysses Flint sidestepped. For such a big man he was amazingly light-footed. Little swirls of dust spiraled up through the stark glare of the bright electric light as his feet moved in a quick pattern. To Ray, crouching open-mouthed beside the billet pile, it seemed as if he were placing them in orderly sequence on invisibly numbered squares.

  As Sisco’s rush carried him past, the General lashed out suddenly. He did not strike with his fist, but with the edge of his hand as in jiu-jitsu. The shop foreman staggered, threw up both his grimy hands to his face as if he had been hit with an axe. When he turned he was panting, bubbles of saliva drooling from the comers of his mouth.

  The General’s voice cracked sharply. “I’m warning you for the last time, Sisco!”

  But Sisco was beyond warning. He gathered himself together again, shaking with fury. When he lunged, his brawny arms were spread wide as if he would scoop in his opponent to crush him in an infuriated bear-grip.

  Ray, watching, thought the General’s footwork beautiful to behold. Flint eluded the giant’s rush entirely. This time he struck with his right fist and with all the weight of his powerful body behind it. It landed right behind the ear, with a flat sound like a baseball smacking into a catcher’s mitt.

  Sisco’s knees buckled. He went down as if he’d been shot, his grimy face plowing a furrow in the dry dust of the shop floor.

  Ulysses Flint stepped back and slapped his hands together as if he were brushing away an unpleasant contamination. There wasn’t a drop of perspiration or a speck of dirt on the man’s face, other than what he had picked up previously from the floor of the checker-work chamber. He was not even breathing heavily.

  “Had me worried,” he confided to Ray. “It’s dreadfully simple to kill a man. Why, one time down in Laredo…” He stopped abruptly. “A blow with the side of the hand can break a human neck easier than you’d realize,” he finished lamely after a moment.

  Sisco sat up in the dirt. There was no more fight left in the shop foreman.

  The General stood with a wary eye on Sisco, but it was Ray to whom he was speaking. “Go ahead,” he ordered. “We’ve got a job to do.”

  Ray twisted the core of the hollow-bored billet. It remained unmoved. He exerted all his strength. Still nothing happened.

  “Looks like a false alarm,” he said finally, after several more efforts. His pale face mirrored deep disappointment.

  The General’s expression was unchanged. “Anyhow, we tried,” he said.

  A mocking smile had spread over Sisco’s dirt-encrusted features. “You guys ain’t so damn’ smart,” he muttered.

  “Wait a minute,” Ray said. He was examining the black collar of the axle forging, upon which the identification numbers had been stamped. “There may be more than one heat involved in such a big batch of forgings.”

  He moved around the billet pile, peering at each one, lips moving as he murmured the heat number under his breath.

  “I was right, sir,” he said at last. “Here’s one from another heat.”

  He stooped again, twisting with his gloved hand at the core in the billet prolongation.

  “This is it!” he shouted suddenly in wild excitement. “See!”

  Ulysses Flint stepped over to get a better look. The core was moving in Ray’s grip. In another moment he had it out, stood up, holding the core for Flint to see.

  The end of the core, previously invisible, had been machined to a smooth, smaller diameter into which threads were cut. Just above the first turn of the threads, a small nick entirely circled the metal.

  “That’s
where it’s supposed to break,” Ray pointed. “The inspector wouldn’t notice the small edge where it’s been cut. He’d take a quick look at the fracture and, of course, he wouldn’t see the piece again until it came back from the machine shop.”

  Sisco’s grin had turned into a black scowl, as the General faced him again.

  “I guess that winds up the game as far as you’re concerned,” Flint said. “No wonder you were so full of fight. It’ll go easier with you now if you tell me who else was in on this with you.”

  Sisco muttered, “I ain’t no squealer.”

  The General shrugged. “Suit yourself. I gave you one piece of advice you didn’t take. Now I’m going to give you another. Take it or leave it. But if you think the only thing involved is a hit of chiseling against some big railroad, you’re sadly mistaken. Unless you come clean right now and spill everything you know, you’re facing a murder rap, Sisco—two murder raps! I’m going to see that you’re formally charged with the slaying of Walter Keene and—”

  “I didn’t kill nobody!”

  “Keene was killed under that very hammer.” The General jerked his thumb to the ten-thousand-pound behemoth adjoining. “It takes skill to operate one of those things, Sisco. And it takes a lot of skill to crack a man’s skull without beating his whole head to a pulp. Just anyone couldn’t do it. But you could.”

  “Honest to Gawd!”

  “We’re wasting time,” the General said briskly. “Where’s your telephone, Sisco? I’m going to call the Iron and Steel Police.”

  The shop foreman turned defiant again. “If ya aim to phone, s’pose ya find it yerself!”

  “No. You’re going to show me.” Flint walked over beside the sullen man. Before Sisco knew what he intended, the General had seized his arm again, twisting it swiftly behind his back in an arm lock. “Now march, Sisco! Before I have to break your arm.”

  Sisco marched.

  “You call,” the General told Ray. “I seem to have my hands full.” His smile was ironic. “Ask to speak with the Chief—with Bixler. Tell him to get over here right away.”

  The company cop’s voice came over the wire.

  Ray was thoroughly enjoying himself. “This is Ray Locke,” he said into the mouthpiece, speaking very distinctly. “I’m over at the forge shop now, if you care to see me.”

  He held the receiver away from his ear as it suddenly began to crackle violently. Then, “Cut out the horsing around, Bixler,” he ordered roughly. “Mr. U. G. Flint wants you over here and he says to make it snappy. He can’t he waiting around all night for a lug like you.”

  He pronged the receiver, grinning.

  “Now, Sisco,” the General said, “are you talking or do you want your neck in a sling?”

  Sisco cracked. “I didn’t do nothin’. I rigged some tests for them inspectors, sure. That ain’t no crime.”

  “Who helped you fake the tests?”

  “There wasn’t nobody.”

  “In that case you’re the only one with a murder motive.”

  “Ben Gaylord knew about it,” Sisco said hurriedly. “In this shop they pay a tonnage bonus. I cut Ben in on the gravy.”

  “And someone in the machine shop—Pete Kosleck, for instance?”

  Sisco nodded glumly.

  “Did anyone else in the Test Department know about this? Mr. Ashley, for instance?”

  “I don’t know.” The foreman’s words rang true. “Ben Gaylord fixed everything. He’s the only guy I paid off.”

  The General rubbed his hands with satisfaction. “The murderer’s whole rotten fabric commences to disintegrate. Meanwhile the company’s dirty linen emerges in pristine whiteness.”

  * * * *

  He and Ray Locke stood together at the forge shop entrance. A loud and profane Bixler had arrived belligerently only to depart with his fires neatly and efficiently quenched. With Bixler had gone the equally subdued Al Sisco.

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Flint,” Ray began. “It looks as though I may be cleared after all.”

  “Thank me!” the General snorted. “You don’t need to worry about thanks, Locke, not after what happened at the Open Hearth tonight. I’ve been using you, that’s all. I needed your technical knowledge. Lambert and his boys would have been like fish out of water on a thing like this. And, now, Locke…”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I’m going to need your help again—in rather a big way.”

  “Anything I can do, of course.”

  “I want you to get back to that tunnel and out of the plant. Bixler’s seen you. I rather took his whiskers off a few minutes ago, but he may inform Lambert you’re here. The police are looking for you, of course. I want to be able to tell Lambert truthfully that I don’t know where you are.”

  Ray waited in silence for him to go on.

  “Stay away from the Ironton Works until eight o’clock tomorrow night,” U. G. Flint continued. “At eight o’clock, I want you to be downstairs in the Test Department building. I will see to it that there are test pieces to be pulled in the big machine. You will go into the lab, take the test pieces and break them in the machine, in the usual way. Got that clear?”

  “Yes, sir. But what…”

  “That’s all you have to do,” the General said. “Just leave the rest to me. I have a very definite reason for everything.”

  “Will you be at the laboratory, Mr. Flint?”

  “No one but yourself will be there at eight o’clock,” Ulysses Flint said positively. “But someone wall come in shortly after you arrive. That person will be the murderer, Locke. I will need you to tell me who he is.”

  “What shall I do when he comes in?”

  “Nothing. Just go about your business. You will be in no personal danger, that I promise you.”

  Ray hesitated. “Is that all?”

  “That’s all. I think I can safely say that if you follow my instructions to the letter, you will find yourself vindicated completely before tomorrow night is over.” The big man made a pushing motion with his hand. “Get along now!”

  As Ray was about to stride off into the plant, the General put a restraining hand on his arm. “Better check your watch now, Locke. I don’t want you to be late.”

  Ray flushed, and admitted that he had pawned his wrist watch.

  The General swiftly unfastened his own watch from his wrist, handed it to Ray. “Here, take this, son. Time is more important than you realize now. Remember, be there at eight o’clock on the dot—no sooner and no later.”

  “I’ll be there, sir,” Ray promised.

  Chapter Fifteen

  In accordance with his previous intent, Ray sought sanctuary across the inlet. Traffic through the tunnel, he thought with grim humor, was becoming comparable to that of the Hudson Tubes.

  Around the tapping hole, or iron notch, of an abandoned furnace, he found that time and the weather had deeply eroded the steel outer shell. Inside, the firebrick lining had also disintegrated. The hole, normally but eight inches square, was now large enough so that he could readily crawl through. Inside, he had a private fortress.

  He stayed there until the next evening. Obeying the General’s instructions to the letter, he reached the Test Department building precisely at eight. There was a light upstairs where the night chemist was on duty. As usual, the gooseneck above the entrance at the side corridor by Ashley’s office was glaring. But the building downstairs was completely dark.

  Taut as a compressed spring, Ray went in through the outer room, switching on lights as he did so. He had the uncomfortable feeling that eyes were watching him from the dark as he passed into the physical lab.

  Quickly he flipped switches until the big room was lighted like a Christmas tree.

  As the General had promised, a pile of neatly machined test specimens was waiting for him on the table near the b
ig Norton machine. Ray got a ruled sheet of report paper and a pencil and put them on the table beside the specimens.

  He picked up one of the specimens from the pile, a smooth steel shaft about six inches long and half an inch in diameter, turned to hourglass shape in the middle and with screw threads cut at each end to fit the testing machine.

  The Norton machine was a tall, black affair which looked like some kind of press. It had a long arm at the right, like a weighing scale. Ray pulled a switch to start the motor.

  The lab filled with a steady droning sound. Ray cast an involuntary glance about him, searching the shadows along the wall as if the murderer were lurking there, ready to pounce upon him.

  With an effort of will, he turned back to the machine. He shifted a lever and the crosshead moved rapidly upward. He measured the diameter of the test specimen at its narrowest point, using a micrometer caliper.

  When he started to enter the figures upon the report sheet he realized that he had forgotten them. Pulling himself together impatiently, Ray measured it again and jotted the result upon the paper.

  He shifted the lever once more and, as the crosshead ceased to move, inserted the test specimen between the jaws of the machine. He threw the worm gear which controlled the machine into slow downward motion. The jaws moved gradually apart again.

  As they did so, Ray cranked a movable weight along the scale arm, keeping the arm in balance as the tension on the test specimen increased. Suddenly, the scale arm dropped.

  The sharp smack of metal against metal made Ray jump. Once more he cast a furtive glance over his shoulder. No one was visible in the room except himself.

  He entered the scale reading on his record as the motor continued to drone. The scale arm jerked up again.

  Ray cranked the weight farther along the scale. When the test piece broke in its middle section, the dull thump made him jump for the second time.

  His nervousness made him furious at himself. He took the broken fragments from the machine, examined the fracture briefly, tossed them into the scrap pile.