Bones Don't Lie Page 6

  Ray decided to stick to his guns. Whatever happened, he would follow U. G. Flint’s instructions. He had a hunch the General was his best—maybe his only—hope of clearing himself from suspicion.

  “I’m not a clock watcher,” he told Lambert quietly. “When my boss asks me to do something extra, I do it.”

  “That’s what the head guy told me,” Lambert admitted surprisingly. “Said they’d taken an extra sample and sent you over to the lab with it.”

  Ray hoped his astonishment did not show in his face. The General’s features were devoid of expression and the big man did not meet Ray’s eyes. “Then he had a perfectly legitimate reason for being there,” he said to Lambert. “Locke’s story strikes me as being straightforward. For the time being, at least, I think we’d better give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Lambert admitted reluctantly. “But don’t think you’re not still under suspicion,” he added to Ray. “Your record and your threat against Keene still carry a lot of weight with me.”

  The General said, “I’ve asked the various Test Department supervisors to come over. They’re waiting outside now.”

  “Let’s have them in,” Lambert agreed, “but one at a time. Locke, you can go now. Stick around, though, where I can get you when I want you.”

  “I think,” the General said as Ray got to his feet, “it might be advisable for Locke to remain here while we talk to these people.”

  Lambert shrugged. “If you wish, Mr. Flint.” He did not question the General’s purpose.

  “I do.” The General flipped a switch on Tracy’s inter-office communication system. “Will you ask Mr. Ashley to come in, please?”

  The secretary’s voice replied promptly. “Yes, sir.”

  “We’ll take the department head, first,” the General said. “Better for organization morale than to keep him cooling his heels.”

  Ashley came through the door from the anteroom. The Engineer of Tests seemed definitely ill at ease. He stroked his small, pointed beard nervously, standing awkwardly in front of the big, circular desk like a schoolboy about to receive a reprimand from the principal.

  The General waved the man to one of the deep blue leather chairs. Ashley perched gingerly on its edge, waiting in silence for Flint to speak.

  “Unfortunate affair,” the General said conversationally. “Too bad we have to take your time and the time of your supervisors. I guess you’re all pretty rushed these days?”

  “Dreadfully so,” Ashley agreed. “Like everyone else we’re short-handed. Now that Keene is gone…”

  “Keene was a valuable man?”

  “He’d been with us a long time,” Ashley said. “Shouldered a lot of Clara Dunne’s detail work. I don’t know what she’ll do now.”

  The General trimmed the end from a cigar. “Your people put in a lot of overtime?”

  “They’ve had to lately, since we run one shift instead of three.”

  “What time do you start in the mornings?”

  “We have someone on duty all the time,” Ashley explained, “in the chemical lab, that is. We cut two shifts on the physical lab, however. We simply didn’t have the manpower. Of course we have our inspectors in the various mills all night, but the physical lab itself opens now at eight A.M.”

  “And runs until when?”

  “Five, theoretically.” Ashley was growing more at ease. He leaned back in the armchair, stopped plucking at his wispy beard. “Actual hours don’t mean much to us. We’re all salaried employees, you know, white-collar workers. We have no union to look after us.”

  “Even so,” the General suggested, “sticking around until two or three in the morning seems rather drastic. Is that sort of thing customary?”

  “I wouldn’t say so. Occasionally—”

  Lieutenant Lambert cut him short. “Your laboratory last night was lousy with people.”

  Ashley didn’t reply. His eyes were roaming Tracy’s big, elaborate office, with avid curiosity. This was the first time, evidently, that he had been inside the Ironton czar’s private sanctum.

  Flint said, “I understand you were not here yourself last night.”

  “No. I wasn’t.”

  “What time did you check out?” Lambert asked. “Shortly after five.”

  “Then you didn’t know about Keene until…”

  “One of the girls upstairs, a chemist, found him this morning,” Ashley explained. “She was the first one in. She came running down and informed Gaylord. I didn’t get in until half an hour later.”

  “Is there anything you can tell us at first hand? Think carefully.”

  Ashley stroked his heard a moment in silence, then he shook his head. “Nothing you don’t already know.”

  “Can you think of any enemies Keene might have had? Anyone with a motive which might have led to murder?”

  “This man right here!” Ashley nodded toward Ray. “Every time Locke comes around the Ironton Works we seem to have trouble.”

  Lambert bobbed his head in agreement. The General, however, brushed the remark aside.

  “That’s rather indefinite,” he said. “Why should Locke have it in for Keene? Was there any past feeling between the two men, to your knowledge?”

  Ashley said, “No,” reluctantly. “But they had a serious argument yesterday. I told you that.”

  “I know. It appears that Keene took it upon himself to make certain gratuitous, insulting remarks, remarks any man would have resented.”

  “Locke threatened to break Keene’s head,” Ashley insisted stubbornly. “And this morning Keene’s head was broken.”

  Lambert murmured, “Quite true!”

  The General looked at Ashley searchingly. “Then, you can’t add anything that might help us.” He summed it up, “You weren’t anywhere around the plant last night yourself. You—”

  “Where were you last night?” Lambert cut in. “Just for the record.”

  Ashley answered very quickly, almost as if he had anticipated the question. “I went into the city to the public library. Spent the whole evening there with Stanton Masey’s book Micrographic Analysis of Austenitic Steels.”

  Lambert grunted. “Nice entertaining reading!”

  “One of the librarians down there, a Miss Jackson, will probably remember seeing me last evening,” Ashley added. “I go there fairly often.”

  “You weren’t at the library at two in the morning, were you?” Flint demanded suddenly.

  “Of course not, sir. I left the library when it closed at nine-thirty, and went home to bed.”

  “Did anyone see you there? Are you married?”

  “No, sir.” Ashley’s absent-minded brown eyes held a startled look. “I have a bachelor apartment in town.” He mentioned a city address. “I hope you don’t…”

  “I don’t think anything,” the General said brusquely. “I’m just trying to get the facts—all the facts.”

  “I’ve told you everything I can.” Ashley shifted uncomfortably in the deep soft chair. “I wasn’t anywhere near the plant last night. My card at Gate Six will show the time I checked in and out.”

  “Just one more thing,” Flint said. “What do you suppose your former Chief Inspector, Glenn Cannon, was doing around the lab last night? He might have had good reason for wanting to knock off this man Keene.”

  Ashley sniffed. “I don’t think Cannon was in the plant.”

  “Locke says he saw him.”

  “Locke says a lot of things,” Ashley retorted curtly. “The word of a convicted felon means nothing.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way because you may have to work with Locke.”

  “What do you mean!”

  “I have reason to believe that Locke may be transferred to work in your testing laboratory.”

  “I don’t want him in m
y department,” Ashley said.

  “Nevertheless,” the General insisted, “he is quite likely to he placed there. And if he does come under your supervision, you’re to give him a fair break. Do I make myself clear on that point?”

  Ashley gulped. “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s all for now, then.”

  As Ashley walked toward the door, the General flipped the switch on the desk box. “Send in Mr. Gaylord next, please.”

  “Didn’t get much to help us from that bearded old goat,” Lambert remarked.

  “You can’t kill a pig every day in the week,” the General observed serenely, “and cast the bollix to feed the poor.”

  Benjamin Gaylord was wearing the faded, clay-brown suit which Ray had seen the day before. It was evidently his customary work costume. He looked like a neat but threadbare cadaver.

  The man’s diffidence, as he came into the big paneled office, was evident. His eyes, deep sunk into his skull-like head, darted around in a quick look before he took the chair to which the General waved him.

  “I understand,” the General said, “that you rank next to Mr. Ashley in the Test Department.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Just what is the nature of your work, Gaylord?”

  “As Chief Inspector,” Gaylord said, “I am responsible for the condition of all steel that leaves this plant.”

  “Just what does that mean?”

  “We have inspectors constantly checking each step of manufacture,” Gaylord explained, “from furnaces to finished product. For instance, we have men in the plate mill who measure and gauge each plate to see that it has been rolled and cut to the proper size. And the products of all the various other rolling mills are similarly examined to make sure they are free from surface defects and imperfections. All such inspectors report to me.

  Flint’s black, bushy brows drew together slightly. “I thought you told me,” he remarked to Ray Locke, “that this sort of work was done by inspectors employed by big buyers of steel products?”

  Gaylord gave a death’s head smile. “Oh, we have outside inspectors around the mills every day,” he explained. “Part of our job is to help these fellows to make their own tests and to keep them happy. But the biggest part of our work, naturally, is keeping tabs on our own steel. It doesn’t help the sales department if we ship inferior goods to our customers. If something’s wrong with our product, we want to catch it first.”

  “You don’t always, do you?”

  “With the tonnage Ironton turns out, I think we have a fairly small percentage of rejected material.”

  Lieutenant Lambert said, “Let’s see now if I get this Test Department set-up straight. If I were in charge of your open hearth furnaces, say, and I wanted to check the amount of carbon in a certain batch of steel, I’d come to you. Is that right?”

  “Not exactly. Chemical analysis would be Miss Dunne’s province. She has charge of the chemists. I handle everything except the chemical end. My man would take the test specimen, or would help an outside inspector take it. But the chemist who made the actual analysis would be Miss Dunne’s helper.”

  Lambert said, “I get it now.”

  “Keeps you right busy these days, I guess,” the General suggested casually.

  “You can say that again. This place is a madhouse lately.”

  “Put in a lot of overtime? I mean yourself, personally.”

  “Almost every day,” Gaylord admitted. “Couldn’t keep up with the work if I didn’t.”

  “You were here pretty late last night, weren’t you?”

  For the first time Gaylord seemed to sense the direction the questioning was taking. “Last night was unusual,” he said hurriedly. “I had some special tests to arrange for today. I stayed very late on that account.”

  “What kind of tests?”

  “Axles for one of the railroads.” Gaylord gave Ray a sidelong glance. His almost colorless wisp of brown mustache twitched slightly.

  “What do you know about this business of Walter Keene?” Lambert demanded suddenly.

  “Nothing at all,” Gaylord said promptly. “I was nowhere near the laboratory.”

  “Locke says he saw you in the machine shop talking with a couple of men. That’s not far from the Test Department building.”

  “Right next door,” Gaylord admitted. He had lost his air of confidence, spoke more slowly and cautiously. “But I didn’t come back into the laboratory after I’d finished arranging the tests.”

  “What time was it when you left the machine shop?”

  “Two-thirty. I remember looking at my watch and thinking I was going to get a very short night’s rest.”

  “Where did you go from the machine shop?”

  “Home. Directly home.”

  “Who were these two men Locke saw you with?”

  “Just a couple of men around the plant.”

  “Give us a more direct answer, please,” the General said sharply. “We will want to talk with those men. This, you know, is a murder investigation.”

  Gaylord’s eyes behind his rimless glasses were apprehensive. “Certainly you don’t think I had anything to do with Keene’s death?”

  “You might have,” Lambert said bluntly. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

  “I hardly knew the man,” Gaylord protested. “He was a chemist. I didn’t come in contact with his work.”

  “No one’s accused you,” Lambert said. “We were just asking.”

  “Who were the two men?” the General asked again.

  Gaylord hesitated. For some reason he seemed reluctant to mention names. “One of them, a big fellow named Sisco, is the hammer shop foreman,” he said finally. “His men are working on the axle order.”

  “And the other one?”

  “Pete Kosleck, a machinist. He was turning up test pieces for the railroad inspector to pull at the lab this morning.”

  The General tried a new tack. “What do you know about Glenn Cannon?”

  Gaylord looked bewildered. “Cannon used to be Chief Inspector.” Again he darted a sidelong glance at Ray.

  “You formerly worked for him?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And after he…after he left, you got his job?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do you suppose he could have been doing around the laboratory at two o’clock this morning?”

  Gaylord was visibly shaken. “It’s impossible that Cannon could have been at the lab.”

  “Why impossible?”

  “Because Glenn’s…he’s a long way off,” Gaylord finished lamely.

  “You heard Locke say he saw Cannon at the laboratory last night.”

  Gaylord faced Ray directly then. “You must have been mistaken, Ray. You must have seen someone who looked like Cannon.”

  “It was Glenn,” Ray said positively. “I ought to know what Glenn Cannon looks like.”

  The General switched the subject. “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to kill Keene?”

  Very promptly Gaylord said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Who?”

  “‘Windpipe’ Bixler for one. He had a kid brother working in the chemical lab a short time back. Bixler got him the job, of course. Through Clara—Miss Dunne. But the kid was worthless, and Walter Keene was responsible for having Clara fire him. Bixler made quite a bit of talk about it and threatened to ‘get’ Walter.”

  “I see.”

  “Mr. Quentin Harris made some queer remarks about Keene quite recently, too,” Gaylord volunteered. “I got it from one of the girls at the Exec offices.”

  “Sounds interesting. Tell me about it.”

  “It’s hearsay,” Gaylord admitted, “but I understand Harris was here in Mr. Tracy’s office with someone, I don’t know who. It wasn’t Tracy, though. Anyhow,
Harris raised his voice suddenly and said, ‘Someone ought to take a little stick and kill Walter Keene.’”

  “What else?”

  “That’s all I know about it.”

  The General said, “Well, that’s informative. What else can you tell us?”

  “I can’t think of anything else, sir.”

  There was a little more conversation. Unlike Ashley, Gaylord made no reference to the argument between Ray Locke and the former laboratory assistant.

  When the General finally told Gaylord he might go, the tightly stretched skin of the man’s bony face seemed visibly to loosen. He hurried from the office with evident relief.

  After the Chief Inspector had left the room, the General spoke to Lambert. “With your permission, Lieutenant, I’d like to give a few instructions to those men you left at the laboratory.”

  Lambert said, “Certainly, Mr. Flint. Give them whatever orders you wish.”

  The General spoke into the intercommunication system. “Please get me the laboratory on the telephone.”

  A moment later the phone jingled and he lifted the receiver. “Are the two men from the city police department still there? I’d like to speak to one of them.”

  A moment later he said, “Who is this? Jones? This is Mr. Flint. The Lieutenant wants you to do a little job for him. Yes. Is Reed there, too? Good. Here’s what he wants you to do. One of you go over to the forge shop and get hold of the foreman, Al Sisco. The other go to the machine shop and locate a man by the name of Kosleck, a lathe operator. He wants you to check with each of these men about what they were doing with the steel company Chief Inspector at about two o’clock this morning. And do it before Gaylord has a chance to talk with them. Right? Yes. That’s all.”

  He put back the receiver on its cradle and swung back to Lambert. “Maybe there’s something there and maybe not. But Gaylord was around the laboratory at about the same time Keene was killed, if the Medical Examiner’s timing means anything.”

  Chapter Six

  The General cast his half-smoked cigar into Tracy’s fireplace and rose to his feet with punctilious politeness as Clara Dunne came into the room. He bent slightly at the hips, a courtly gesture reminiscent of the Old South.