Bones Don't Lie Page 5

  “When we sent for you,” he went on, “you were up and dressed. Yet I understand you worked the night shift at the Open Hearth. It seems a bit peculiar that you weren’t asleep, if your conscience was clear.”

  Ray shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I have some rather peculiar habits about sleeping. I sleep only a couple of hours at night and make up for it by taking short naps during the day. It’s a good routine to get into—gives you several extra hours a day. A man can do a lot in these additional hours…”

  “Such as cracking the skull of someone you despise?” the General asked quietly.

  The eagerness faded from Rays face. “You think I’m guilty, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think anything—yet,” the General said. “Snap judgments are dangerous. A man’s judgment is only as good as his information.”

  “Well, that’s what I was doing up and dressed when this plug-ugly Bixler barged in on me,” Ray insisted. “I’d had my nap. I was reading, brushing up on the basic open hearth process.”

  The General began, “I understand—”

  The ringing of the phone on the desk interrupted him. He reached out a big hand and took up the receiver. “Yes? Yes, Flint speaking. He did, eh? Well, that’s something worth knowing! Keep it under your hat, please, until you hear from me.”

  He set the receiver back on its hook. When he turned again to Ray, there was a new sternness in his manner.

  “That was Mr. Harris,” he said. “He’s checked with the people at the Open Hearth. They didn’t send you over here last night.”

  Ray said nothing.

  “You lied about that,” the General accused. “What were you doing here then?”

  Ray hesitated. “You know my background, sir?” he asked.

  “To a limited extent. Mr. Harris informs me you’re the man whose dishonesty was responsible for that railroad wreck.”

  Ray was thinking fast. If he told the truth it might cost him his chance to clear himself of the bribery charge. If he didn’t, it might cost him his neck. He chose the lesser of the two evils and took the plunge.

  “I was framed,” he told the General. “I was absolutely innocent. I came to the lab last night because I wanted to look through the old Test Department records. I thought I might find something to help me prove what I’ve told everyone.”

  “What makes you think anything revealing—provided you’re telling me the truth, of course—would still be around?” the General probed.

  “It would have been risky destroying or altering the old test records,” Ray replied. “Someone might have noticed and started asking questions. Anyway, why bother? Cannon and I were the only ones who would have been interested, and we were safely tucked away, God knows!”

  The General’s face was as expressionless as granite. His eyes burned steadily into Ray’s with an intensity which made the younger man flinch.

  “You asked for the truth and I’ve given it to you,” Ray cried out. “I was accused of accepting a bribe from the Chief Inspector of this plant. But I was as innocent of that charge as you are.”

  “You were convicted,” the General said finally. “There was documentary proof!”

  “Why would I do a petty thing like that?” Ray argued desperately. “My father was a highly successful research engineer. He’d trained me from childhood for a career in research metallurgy, particularly the metallurgy of iron and steel. I worked in the mills on summer vacations. I had training in metallurgical engineering at the very finest technical university. I was simply rounding out my training with a year as Material Inspector for the railroad. Then I was going in with my father. Would I throw away all my future prospects for a few lousy dollars in graft?”

  “There was once a man named Judas who sold out for a handful of silver,” the General said quietly.

  “I’m no Judas,” Ray said, “and I’m not an utter and complete fool!”

  The General leaned back in the swivel chair and regarded Ray unwinkingly. Ray could feel his pulse throbbing in his throat with suffocating intensity. Not until the silence had begun to grow intolerable did the General speak.

  “I had an idea,” he said, “that your visit here last night might be for exactly the reason you’ve outlined. That’s why I wanted to talk with you alone. And it’s one of the principal reasons I asked the police to keep hands off until I had time to do a little investigation of my own. I don’t care to have the company’s dirty linen washed in public.”

  U. G. Flint took a cigar from his pocket, trimmed the end with deliberation. Not until he had it alight, did he continue. “This matter of dishonesty in tests of steel at the Ironton Works is of the most vital importance to my people,” he went on. His manner had changed, becoming surprisingly confidential. “The reputation of American-Consolidated Steel is a matter of considerable more importance than the death of an obscure chemist or even a hundred chemists for that matter.”

  Ray let out his breath in a sigh of relief. “Then you do believe me?”

  “Say, rather, that I haven’t yet found reason to disbelieve you,” the General amended. “What I’m trying to do is get all the facts. I want you to tell me, now, exactly what happened when you came here last night. Don’t omit a single detail, no matter how unimportant it may seem to you.”

  Ray followed instructions to the letter, even to relating the injury he had unwittingly inflicted upon the unoffending laboratory cat. When he had finished, the General sat a while in silence, meditatively watching the smoke circling upward from his cigar.

  “Entirely too many people were milling around this place at two o’clock this morning,” he remarked finally. “Maybe an excessive amount of overtime is required from Test Department personnel. That would indicate faulty organization: a management problem. Or else”—his piercing eyes hooded suddenly—“or else we have a bunch of scurvy scoundrels and sanctimonious sons-of-sea-cooks on the payroll.”

  Abruptly he stabbed a blunt forefinger at Ray. “One thing I want to impress upon you strongly: Say nothing to anyone about your reason for being at the laboratory last night. Not to the police, not to your department heads, not even to Mr. Tracy if he should ask you. Is that quite clear?”

  A crushing weight seemed to be removed from Ray’s chest. “I understand,” he said quietly. “It’s the last thing I want to talk about.”

  The General said, “Good. You may just happen to be useful to me, Locke. For your own good it’s very important that you follow my instructions. Just remember what Eve said and…”

  His manner indicated he was about to terminate the interview. Ray spoke quickly. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the manner in which Walter Keene was killed and the fact that his skull was smashed into several pieces. Did you notice the marks on his scalp?”

  The General’s bushy black eyebrows lifted. “I did indeed. What about them?”

  “It looked to me,” Ray said, “like either the mark of an inspector’s hammer stamp or a swage.”

  “I don’t quite follow you,” Flint said. “I’m not a steel man, you see.”

  “Oh, I thought you were.” Ray was amazed. “Well, it’s like this. A hammer stamp is used for marking test pieces and accepted orders. When an inspector from some large buyer of steel like a railroad is notified that a shipment is ready, he comes to the plant and looks over the material for surface defects. He also picks specimens at random for laboratory tests.

  “These specimens are turned in the machine shop to the standard size and shape for breaking in a machine for determining tensile strength. So he can be sure the test piece actually came from the material he looked at, the inspector marks his specimen with a small hammer he carries with him.”

  “The hammer has a distinctive mark?”

  “Yes, sir. The head of the hammer is made of tool steel with a die that cuts into softer steel. Each company has its own identifyin
g mark. In the case of the New York, St. Louis and Pacific, the mark consists of a capital T in a circle, standing for the road’s trademark, Transcontinental Line.”

  “Go ahead,” Flint said. “I’m listening.”

  “However, a blow with a hand hammer hard enough to cause death would probably have smashed a hole in the man’s skull,” Ray pointed out, “not cracked the bones in several places, as the doctor said was the case. Moreover the mark on Keene’s scalp was much larger, maybe twice as large as the hammer stamp. It could have been done by a swage. That would have caused the mark and crushed his head without any external evidence.”

  “What’s a swage?” the General cut in.

  “A swage,” Ray explained, “is a tool used in metal working operations, particularly forging. It’s held on top of the work and struck a heavy blow. The work is therefore forced into the shape of the swage. That’s the way the work is given its finished form.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I happen to know,” Ray finished, “that driving axles, truck axles, main and side rods and other miscellaneous forgings made to the specifications of the Transcontinental are always marked with the road’s emblem. The swages used for that road’s work all have its identifying symbol.”

  The General slapped his hand against the desk top. “Locke, maybe you’ve got something!”

  “Could be nothing but imagination,” Ray admitted. “In order to kill Walter Keene by covering his head with a swage and pounding it under a steam hammer, the operator would have had to be very skillful or he’d have beaten the man’s head to a pulp.”

  “It could have been done, however?”

  “A really expert hammer man can break a watch crystal under his hammer without hurting the watch itself.”

  U. G. Flint raised his powerful hulk from Ashley’s swivel chair. “I respect ideas, Locke,” he said. “Even a wild idea is better than none. Most people have no ideas; they never use their brains. You’re going to take me right now to the place where they use these swages. We’ll soon see whether your idea is a good one or not.”

  But in the short hallway outside the office, the General turned back. “You wait here,” he ordered. “I’ve got a phone call to make first.”

  Ashley’s door shut behind Flint. Ray was wet with clammy perspiration.

  In about three minutes the General was hack. “Let’s go,” he said briskly.

  The forge, or hammer shop, was a long building with a dirt floor. Like Vulcan’s workshop it was cavern-like, gloomy, peopled with grimy, sweating gnomes. And like the workshop of the mythical Roman god, it was a place of flame and smoke, of blinding brilliance and deep contrasting black shadows.

  Along the walls near the shop entrance, sinewy men worked small glowing bits of iron by hand, as in an ordinary blacksmith shop. In the center space, and running the length of the long building, were the steam hammers. They were of all sizes, ranging from little two-hundred-pounders to the sixteen-thousand-pound monsters used to reduce alloy steel ingots to billets for drop forging.

  Ray Locke stopped near a big hammer about a hundred and fifty feet in from the entrance nearest the testing laboratory. On the earth at one side of the hammer, a pile of black, rectangular-shaped billets, was stacked like cordwood. On the hammer’s other side were billets which had been beaten under the hammer to a circular shape. Ray stooped and examined one of the round shapes.

  He pointed. “Look.”

  Stamped into the black metal about five inches from the end, were a series of numbers ending with the circled T Ray had mentioned.

  “Normalized carbon-vanadium for engine axles,” Ray said. “These will be rough turned before they are delivered to the railroad’s own shops for finishing. Specifications require each forging to be marked with heat number, part number, test number, and the like. They also require that a black collar of metal be left on the forging, with these numbers and the inspector’s personal identifying stamp. You can see that these numbers have been put on by hand with dies, but the road’s emblem is cut into the billet by the swage. There is no inspector’s mark, so evidently these forgings have not yet been submitted for inspection.”

  The General was bending over the steel, following Ray’s index finger along the marks. “So far, so good,” be murmured. “Now let’s see if we can find the swage that might have been used on Keene.”

  Ray picked over the tools beside the hammer frame. He selected a piece of metal, rounded at one end to form a handle, flaring into a heavy curved section at the other.

  “We want one like this,” he said. “See, this is the way it works.” He reached for a lever like a locomotive’s throttle bar at the side of the towering hammer frame. A five-ton block of steel swung downward, then up again, pulsating restlessly, poised over the massive hundred-ton anvil beneath.

  “You hold the swage like this,” he said, demonstrating. The tool was thrust between the hammer and anvil, curved portion downward. “A few ten-thousand-pound blows and the hot metal shapes up quickly enough.” Ray grimaced. “You can imagine what would happen to a man’s head!”

  A burly giant in soiled work clothes approached them from the rear of the shop. “Leave that hammer be,” he ordered gruffly. “What d’ya think y’re doin’?” Ray recognized the same big man he had seen with Gaylord in the machine shop early that morning. He released the throttle. The hammer swung back to the top of the guide frame and stayed there.

  The giant’s eyes were noting U. G. Flint’s expensively tailored, dark gray business suit. “If you’re the railroad inspector,” he said, “we ain’t ready for you yet. Had to pull my men off on a rush job.”

  “I’m not the railroad inspector,” Flint said.

  “Then get away from this stuff,” the big man ordered. “You ain’t got no business messin’ around.”

  “Who are you?” the General inquired.

  “I’m Al Sisco, the foreman of this here hammer shop, that’s who! Now you guys scram outta here!”

  Very quietly the General said, “I’m here by authority of Mr. Leonard Tracy and the management of the company in New York. I intend to stay here until I get good and ready to leave. If you care to start something…”

  Sisco didn’t. The General’s positive manner overawed the man. But he didn’t like it. All the time Ray and the General remained in the forge shop, the big man lingered near the next hammer in the row, watching them with a sullen, scowling stare.

  Ray was now eyeing the swage closely. “This can’t be the one!” he said. “This is a roughing tool. There’s no circle T mark on this one.”

  The General fingered the other tools beside the hammer frame. In a moment he gave an exclamation of satisfaction and straightened with another swage in his hand.

  “Looks as if you were absolutely right, Locke. This is where Keene got it, all right.”

  On the inner curve of the tool, the circle with its T was plain. A slight brownish discoloration stained the edges of the circular die, about as much as two drops of drying blood would leave. And caught on the crossbar of the T was a single, short, sandy hair. Unless one looked carefully, neither the stain nor the hair would have been visible.

  “Lucky for me,” Ray observed, “they weren’t working this hammer today.” To himself he was thinking exultantly, “Bixler was wrong.”

  Flint said, “This will interest Lieutenant Lambert. We’ll take it along with us to the laboratory and lock it up somewhere for safe keeping.”

  Ray turned to follow the General and as he did so, a glint of gold from the dirt floor caught his eyes. He stooped.

  It wasn’t gold; just brass. A fragment about an inch long, like a hollow truncated pyramid, with sharp ragged edges, it looked as if it were a corner broken from a brass box.

  Delicate lines, made by some kind of hand tool, were etched on the yellow metal in an indistinguishable design which twisted from one straig
ht segment around the box corner to the other. Ray could not determine what the design was supposed to represent, since the piece was so small.

  What, he wondered briefly, was a thing like this doing on the floor of the hammer shop? Heavy steel forgings, such as locomotive axles, were the only materials usually shaped under the hammers. Brass was distinctly out of place.

  He thrust the bit of metal into his pocket, forgot it as he hurried to catch up with U. G. Flint already a dozen paces ahead of him.

  There was a new note in the Generals deep voice, a note of distinct friendliness. “You know, Locke, you’ve really been very helpful. I think you’re being wasted on the Open Hearth. I should like to have you on the Test Department payroll.”

  Ray said, “I’d like it, too, sir. But Mr. Tracy didn’t feel it wise to put me there.”

  “Tracy will,” U. G. Flint said decisively, “I feel sure, change his mind about that.”

  Chapter Five

  Leonard Tracy was not in his luxurious private office when Ray and the General reached the Administration Building. He had gone, Tracy’s secretary informed them, to supervise the blowing in of a new blast furnace.

  Almost as soon as the General had seated himself in Tracy’s blue leather swivel chair, Lieutenant Lambert walked in. He gave Ray a quick, unfriendly glance.

  “We’ve checked Locke’s statement,” he told the General, “that he went to the laboratory last night on an errand for the Open Hearth foreman.”

  “Here it comes!” Ray thought, and braced himself mentally. Lambert had discovered his lie, thereby putting him squarely on the spot he had dreaded.

  U. G. Flint’s insistence that Ray say nothing, even to the police, of his real motive for visiting the laboratory was going to put him in an even worse jam.

  “I felt sure Locke was lying,” the homicide detective went on. “The boys at the Open Hearth could have checked a carbon analysis by phone.” His hard eyes studied Ray intently. “And it was a good hour after you were supposed to go off shift.”