more I dig, the more I think of the hunch.” Harper spoke slowly and thoughtfully. “I think these disappearing rich men came to Boston because somebody sold them an idea.
“Most wealthy men have cash and bonds put aside in safe-deposit boxes, so they'll have an anchor to the windward. I'm wondering if somebody didn't sell them on the idea of a rich man's hideout. A place where they could drop out of sight; where those who were in danger of cranks could be safe; where those who might tangle with the D.A. could wait until they knew which way the wind blew.”
“It sounds crazy,” Galpin grunted.
Harper shifted his gaze from the ceiling to Galpin and smiled. “But,” he said, “the facts are crazy, too. You picked up one Boston broker— dead. You picked up another one last night. He'll be one of those missing men just as sure as you're sitting there. We know Dunlap came here—after being to his safe-deposit box.”
“But who's knocking 'em off, and why?”
Harper's voice took on a chill quality. “I don't know,” he said, “unless they've been kept until they were milked dry of their funds, and then tossed out for the city to bury.”
“Rats!” Galpin got up, chewed on his cigar, sat down again.
“Maybe. But that's how I happened to call on Louis Wyman. I had no hunch about him, understand. Only I figured it would take somebody who was big, who had connections in other cities, to sell the proposition for a cut.
“The biggest shot in Boston is Wyman. That's why I went to him first. It was just luck I happened to run across Slug.”
“Slug?” shouted Galpin. “Is he the guy?” He reached for the telephone, but Harper checked him.
“Don't bother. I don't think you'll be able to pick him up tonight. And if you did it would be tough to pin anything on him without Dunlap.”
Harper got up from his chair. He went over to the desk, leaned forward so his eyes were less than two feet from Galpin's. “Could you get a search warrant for Wyman's warehouse out in Dorchester tonight?”
Galpin scowled. “I doubt it. He's got too many friends. Tomorrow maybe.”
“Tomorrow's too late.” Harper felt of his pencil, of the .38 under his arm. “He knows my guessing is getting hot.”
“But why the warehouse?” asked Galpin, puzzled.
“It's the one place he owns that's made to order. I had a friend of mine drive me around a bit this afternoon. I stopped there, put up a bluff, flashed a badge and looked the place over.”
“What'd you find?”
“Nothing definite.”
“Then—”
“Will you stick around here for a couple hours—wait for a call from me?”
“Sure. But the warehouse—”
“The warehouse is ten stories high—according to those little windows outside.” Harper moved toward the door and stopped to face the captain. “The elevator, when it reached the iron covering at the top of the shaft,
Galpin's face twitched, but he did not speak.
Harper went to the door, stopped with his hand on the knob. “Did you ever see a man who'd fallen from a high building—say ten stories?”
“No,” said Galpin thickly.
“I think you have. The fellow you picked up last night, aside from his face, looked like a man I saw who'd tumbled out of a twelfth-story window. The rain would wash away any trace of where the bodies landed—on both nights.”
TEN minutes later a sedan stopped on a dark, deserted street in a neighborhood of wholesale establishments, and loft buildings, extending along a railroad spur.
Walt Harper said, “Turn off the lights, Charlie. Leave the buggy here.”
The two men got out, turned past a plumbing supply house, walked down a dead-end street which was swallowed up in the blackness of barren lowlands. They passed an alley, walked by a wholesale paint company, whose windows were like shiny black paper, and stopped at the alley which separated this from a tall, thick-looking building unrelieved by any light except a dim glow at a center door on the street floor.
Harper said, “Maybe we can do a job on the watchman.”
The two men moved slowly along the barren brick wall, stopped in front of a wide metal door. Harper cocked his head and looked up the bare, severe facade to the two small, turret-like corners. Four narrow, iron- barred windows on each floor gave the place the appearance of a fortress—or prison.
“O.K.,” said Harper. “Knock.” As he spoke he slipped his gun from the holster, and drew back against the front corner of the wall so that he faced the street.
Charlie raised a big fist and pounded on the door. He waited a few seconds, pounded again. There was another half-minute of silence; then a clank of metal, like the drawing of a bar, sounded inside the building. The door was opened an inch. A faint reflection of light from the office made an orange crack. And from this jutted the ugly muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun. Behind this, as the door swung open, was the shadowy outline of a man.
“Stick 'em up!”
Charlie raised his hands and the voice continued, “That's better. Now what the hell do you want?”
