The Slickers (8 page)

Men stopped flailing their arms and looked down at him. Several of them tried to see the sweatband but could not.

Hartman came closer, his mouth open in astonishment. “So! That's the answer to the riddle. Greyson stole that orangutan for some reason. Maybe he had something up his sleeve.”

Bill put the band back in place. “Probably so. Probably Greyson knew what Joe was worth in advertising and he intended to steal him. Joe's worth a couple thousand, you know.”

Hartman whistled. “That's it. Our trademark, ‘Stronger than a gorilla' was eating away into Greyson's own business. Besides, Greyson has had us under his thumb for some little time. He figured that he could humiliate us this way by exhibiting our own ape.”

“Sure,” said Bill, intent on his thoughts. “Greyson must have brought a couple thugs with him, and when Joe got mad in the car, he broke Greyson's neck and the thugs threw them both out for fear they'd be named as felons or accomplices or something. That sort of lets Joe out, doesn't it?”

“The hell it does,” snapped O'Connor. “This gorilla is a killer. He'll have to take the consequences.”

And then Bill Lacy said something which was very unexpected. “Where's your evidence that names Joe as the killer?”

O'Connor started to bellow something, but stopped and gave Bill an exasperated stare.

And Bill went on. “Greyson had Hartman and Para Rubber under his thumb. Greyson didn't have to resort to ape stealing.”

Hartman glared. “What do you mean? Greyson didn't have anybody under his thumb. He was a two-for-a-cent crook! That's what Greyson was.”

Bill grinned slowly. “You didn't like him, did you?”

“Of course not,” replied Hartman.

“And you killed him.”

Bill's words struck silence to the crowd. All eyes traveled from Bill to the face of the Para president.

“You're crazy,” said Hartman, slowly.

“Not so crazy,” replied Bill. “Why didn't you identify Greyson for the cops when you first came?”

“Why—why—” Hartman gasped.

“Why did you rip out Greyson's identification after you strangled him? Did you figure he'd be marked as missing and that's all? They've got morgues, Hartman, and morgues are meant for identification. As soon as Greyson disappeared, he'd be looked for in the morgue.”

Hartman laughed nervously. “You're seeing things, Lacy.”

“Am I?” replied Bill. “There's a couple things you don't know about an orangutan, Hartman.”

The crowd was nervous enough already. Hartman's laugh died. The darkness was thick beyond the lights of the crowd which, by contrast, dimmed all men's eyes.

“Yes,” said Bill, “there's a couple things you don't know. The orangutan has a marvelous memory. There have been cases where orangutans have suddenly gone mad, plowing through everything to get at anyone who has hurt them.”

“Yaw,” said O'Connor. “Quit it. You been sayin' …”

“Yes, I know,” said Bill. “But I didn't know that Hartman here had cut Joe up before he set him loose. That means that Joe is probably in a blind, red rage. Such a brute would not stop at anything to get at Hartman, to tear his flesh from his bones and snap his neck like it was a match and throw the mangled corpse …”

“Quit it!” said Hartman.

“No,” said Bill, “you don't know orangutans. There was one case where a hunter shot one and before he could fire again, the orangutan charged straight in and gouged out the hunter's eyes like they were marbles and then ripped out his throat with long, white fangs.…”

Nobody spoke as Bill went on. Men were nervous enough already. Eyes raked the darkness beyond them which they could not penetrate.

And suddenly Bill stopped talking and listened intently. Hartman's eyes were wide and staring. He listened too.

Then Bill looked scared. He stepped a pace toward the darkness, staring into it. He appeared very nervous. But he knew that his car was across the road behind him.

Nerves were at the snapping point and O'Connor opened his mouth to bawl Bill out for making such a show. But Bill beat him to it.

With a sudden yelp, Bill threw himself backwards, knocking O'Connor down. Bill grabbed O'Connor's revolver and began to stab flame into the night.

“Don't let him get away!” cried Bill, shooting wildly. “There's the brute! Under that tree! He's charging! Kill him!”

Hartman stood it but an instant. The shots snapped his strength to stand. Guilt was too heavy in his brain and death was too near.

With men falling back upon him in panic, Hartman was almost knocked down and then the panic hit him.

He whirled and saw Bill's car. With a shriek of terror he raced toward it.

Bill abruptly turned and saw where Hartman had gone, that Hartman had done the right thing for Bill and the wrong one for Hartman.

The police saw nothing under the tree at last as their sweeping flashlights showed.

“What the hell  …?” began O'Connor, glaring at Bill.

“Look!” said Bill. “But don't shoot!”

The crowd turned and looked at the coupe. An awful thing had happened.

A pair of great hairy arms shot out and caught Hartman in their embrace. Hartman screamed and the arms tightened.

“The ape!” shrieked O'Connor. “The ape's got him!”

Unmindful of the pain in his ankle, Bill dragged himself across the road to the car. He straightened up, catching hold of the door window for support. But he made no move to drag away Joe's arms or to touch Hartman. Bill was standing there as a shield. No one would shoot at the ape, now.

Hartman was moaning deep in his tortured throat. O'Connor, the newshawks and the police were coming up now, heartened by the sight of Bill's supposed bravery.

“Let me at him!” shouted O'Connor. “I'll drill him.”

“Shut up,” said Bill, not moving an inch. “The minute you promise to take Hartman away and Hartman only, I'll let you pass.”

“But he'll kill him!” wailed an officer.

“What if he does?” snapped Bill. “Hartman had it coming.”

Joe was looking intently over Hartman's quivering shoulders, and his brown eyes saw nothing but Bill. Slowly his arms relaxed and Hartman was allowed to slither out and into the snow. Slowly, Bill closed the coupe door and pointed down.

“Take him,” said Bill. “Lock him up. He'll have to stand trial for the murder of Greyson.”

“But he's dead,” shouted O'Connor, looking at Hartman.

“No, he isn't dead,” replied Bill. “Joe was just squeezing him a little, that's all.”

And as though in confirmation to Bill's words, Hartman raised himself up and looked at the guns about him. He let his head slump again.

“Don't let him get me,” moaned Hartman.

“I will if you don't come clean,” snapped Bill, heady with a sudden inspiration. “What happened?”

“I'll tell, only don't let that ape get me!” He looked up with terror-shot eyes at the coupe. He saw Bill's hand fumble with the handle of the door. “Greyson had me,” cried Hartman. “He was going to wreck me and he knew I'd taken some money which wasn't mine. He was putting down the screws on me. So I killed him. I choked him to death. And then I put that ape in the car and brought the body out here. When I dumped them, the ape turned on me.”

“Why?” said Bill, rattling the handle.

Hartman could see Joe through the glass and he shivered. “Because I put soap in his mouth and cut his lips so they'd bleed. And then I whipped him so he'd get mad.”

Bill Lacy nodded. “Take him away, O'Connor. Better handcuff him, too. He's slippery.”

O'Connor knelt and executed the rite. “You're telling me?”

The fingerprint expert shook his head dazedly. “Funny there weren't any fingerprints on Greyson. Hartman must have used gloves.”

“Sure he did,” said Bill. “If there had been fingerprints, Joe would have been guilty.”

“What do you mean?” said the expert.

For answer Bill opened the door and took Joe's long hand. He pulled it toward him gently and turned the light on the fingertips.

“See,” said Bill. “There are all the whorls and arches and loops and composites you ever want to see. Apes have fingerprints just like everybody else.”

“I'll be doggoned,” breathed the expert. “You're right.”

“Of course I'm right. That's what made me suspect that Hartman wasn't aboveboard with this thing.”

“Funny we missed the initials on that hatband,” said the coroner.

Bill grinned and shifted his game foot. “You didn't miss them because they aren't there. I just took a shot in the dark about it, and when Hartman ran, that sealed it for me. Joe wouldn't kill anybody. A little girl down in Oleleh, Sumatra, raised him on a bottle. Well, if you boys have got your prisoner and everything is all right, I guess I'd better be getting to a hospital.”

O'Connor nodded and saw for the first time that Bill was hurt. “Can you manage all right?”

“Sure,” said Bill. “I'll have to get Joe fixed up, too. He's had a pretty hard night of it and if he don't get attention, he might catch cold.”

Bill Lacy climbed into his coupe and motioned for Joe to move over in the seat. When Joe was curled up beside him, Bill started the engine, warmed it and let in the clutch. They slid away from the headlights and the police.

“Well, Joe,” said Bill Lacy. “I don't guess you've got any home, now, and though I don't know what in the devil I'm going to do with you, I guess we'll have to be pardners.”

Joe assumed an expression which was very much like a smile and decided that it was time for all good orangutans to go to sleep.

Story Preview

N
OW
that you've just ventured through some of the captivating tales in the Stories from the Golden Age collection by L. Ron Hubbard, turn the page and enjoy a preview of
The Chee-Chalker.
Join
FBI Agent Bill Norton in Ketchikan, Alaska, where he discovers an heiress to a bankrupt fishing fleet, a missing G-man and a string of corpses dismissed as “accidental drownings” … all leading him to a murderous heroin smuggling ring.

The
Chee-Chalker

P
AUL
W
AGNER
owned the Tamgas Trading Company and was a very important man in
Ketchikan
, even in Alaska. “Aren't you with the FBI?”

Norton looked at him from under his hat brim.

“Fagler said you were and I wanted to know what you thought about it. I'm Paul Wagner.”

“Well?”

“I wanted to know what you thought about this. It is serious. James England was an important fellow to Alaska. His station up there on the knoll is Alaska's biggest and best. Now what's going to happen to it? I depend on him, or rather did, for my advertising. What do you make of it?”

“Make of what?” said Norton.

“Why, his murder.”

“I thought they said it was suicide.”

“They said it was accidental.”

“I wasn't listening very closely.”

“What do you make of it?”

“Why should I make anything of it? It's none of my business.”

“I thought you were in town to look into his disappearance.”

“Did you?”

“Well,” said Wagner, his dark face turned full on Norton now, “that was my impression. The Federal marshal wasn't making any progress and so I thought you had been sent down to look into it.”

“Know anything about it?”

“About his disappearance?”

“Yes.”

Wagner looked closely at Norton but he couldn't see through the rain and shadows well enough. “I know no more than anybody else. He had no enemies in particular and he was well loved.”

“I heard differently,” said Norton.

“No man is worth his salt who hasn't a few enemies,” said Wagner nervously. He stayed around for nearly a minute but nothing more was said and so, uncomfortably, he went away.

Norton was glad he had gone. He wanted some more cold rain on his face. He wished corpses weren't a part of a lawman's business. At times like these he intensely regretted the small gold disc pinned to his wallet. That small gold disc sent him to such unseemly places.

Ketchikan, for example.

He looked at the rain and wondered that the skies were never emptied. A hundred and eighty inches a year was a tropical output with none of the tropical advantages. Of course it wasn't as cold here as it was in
Juneau
. Far north though it was, it was as warm through the winter as most of the US coastal towns. If only it wouldn't rain.

Bill Norton did not much like this country. He had been in it six months, most of the six spent behind a desk in Juneau, the last spent wandering around Ketchikan trying to get a lead on a sack of
“snow”
and Jerry McCain. He had found the heroin leading nowhere so far as he could discover. And he had found no sign of FBI special agent Jerry McCain. There was no more “snow.” There was no trail whatever leading to the disappearance of his former boss. There was only rain. Rain and bars and drunken Indians and soldiers much drunker. Bill Norton, looking at the bobbing masthead and boom of a halibut boat tied to the Tamgas dock, was reminded of a
gibbet
.

Up the slippery boards skated a burblingly active young man, one of Bill's main responsibilities. Chick Star had just graduated from the School in Washington. Some clerk had sent him to Alaska on the first boat. Chick wore people out.

“What's the excitement?” said Chick.

“Corpse,” said Norton diffidently.

“Aw, honest? Who, where?”

“England. Drowned.”

“Gee! You finally located England? Gosh! Say, that's good work! Gosh, why wasn't I around?”

“If you'd stop chasing
klootches
you might get in on something sometime,” said Norton, bored.

“Klootches,” said Chick in a hurt voice. “I don't chase klootches. I can't stand the sight of an Indian. Why would I chase klootches?”

He was so earnestly involved, so gashed to the marrow, that Norton looked at him. Chick was six feet seven. He weighed two hundred and eighteen pounds. He ran into and knocked over things. He was twenty-three and serious. He was full of ambition. He polished his gold disc every night before he went to bed and carried his heavy
Colt revolver
to dances.

“If you don't you'll go nutty with this rain,” said Norton.

“Oh, I like the rain,” said Chick. “It's exciting. Things are dark and mysterious. Where'd you find England?”

“I didn't find him.”

“But you must have,” said Chick, gloatingly surveying his hero. “Was he stabbed?”

“He fell in and hit his head on a piling. The fish ate his face.”

“Aw.”

“Well if you can't take it you've got no business hanging around the Bureau.”

“You're being modest,” said Chick hopefully. “You found him and he was murdered and you know who did it.”

“Sherlock Holmes doesn't happen to be even a faint relation of mine,” said Norton. He slogged through the horizontal sea in the air toward bed at the Sourdough Hotel.

“Say!” said Chick, “did you see that?”

“What?”

“Those two men come out from behind that truck and turn the corner up there. They looked suspicious!”

“If they're suspicious you've given them plenty of warning with that brass voice of yours.”

“Honest they did.”

“Probably were having a quiet drink where their pals wouldn't ask for any.”

Chick loped up beside Norton, splashing heavily through the puddles like an overgrown tank and thoroughly spattering his despondent boss. Suddenly Chick threw out his arm to stop Norton and almost knocked him flat backwards on the slippery boardwalk.

“Look at that!” said Chick in what he hopefully supposed to be a whisper.

A young woman had come out of the door of the Sourdough Hotel ahead of them. The lights from the windows were not sufficient to show her features but they were ample to bring into silhouette the two men who emerged from an alleyway. The silhouettes swooped down upon the young woman and grabbed her. Hurriedly they led her straight toward the dock. They evidently did not see Chick and Norton standing on the walk before them for all was blackness in that direction.

“Take your hands off me!” protested a girl's voice.

“Come along,” said one of her captors.

Norton was always faintly nervous when he was with Chick. He could never be sure what Chick would do. Chick would follow orders after a fashion—with a few “improvements” of his own—but when Chick had no specific orders, anything might happen.

To find out more about
The Chee-Chalker
and how you can obtain your copy, go to
www.goldenagestories.com
.