Page 22 - Demo

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20 Black Mask
brisk, lawsuit tone. He flipped out a notebook and a pencil. "W hat's your name? Where do you Jive?"
"Who, me?" The dope reared like a pony. "I didn't see nothing. "
He went rapidly away. Tracy picked up the drilled hat.· He ripped out the monogrammed sweatband and dropped the hat in a near-by ashcan. That changed it from a front-page news item to a hunk of junk.
Butch's big lop-eared face was peer- ing from the doorway across the street. Tracy joined him.
"Did the guy get away ?"
"Yeah. But I wanna show you some- thing he lost."
They tiptoed quietly across the dim floor so as not to attract any attention from curi0us lodgers. Th ey descended steps to the yard. It was paved except for a str ip of earth alongside the r ear fence where tall weeds grew. Butch's big feet had smudged the smaller prints of the escaped fugitive. Butch had gone over the fence in a hurry but the other fellow had enjoyed too big a start.
was hard to keep juic y it em s like that under cover. Scandal tipsters, particu- larly women, had a vengeful habit of phoning the victim beforehand, to make sure that the barb hurt.
Tracy wanted it to hurt. He never used poison ar rows except on cr ooks. And Bert Lord was the dirtiest kind of crook. The sort who go after easy dough by the marria ge route. _I t was so fatally easy, too, when the girl was twenty-thre e, pretty as a rotogravu re special, and too decent to smell a rat hidden und er a layer of barber-shop culture and British tweeds.
Tracy could hav e gone directly to Bruce Hilliard , or perhaps to Hilliard's young and socially amb itious wife; but the radio method was better. When you told the world-and tha t includ ed the ships at sea-that the ado pted daughter of Tracy 's own cigarette sponsor, Bruce Hilliard, was in love with a sleek grad - uat e of a Br itish jail, it didn 't leave Alice Hilliard much chance to do any- thing foolish.
It didn't leave Lord much chance either, except for a quick try at murd er along Tracy's usual rout e to Radio City .
There was a cellar on the other side,
Butch report ed glumly, and a white-
washed alley that led to the rear stree t.
The guy must have had a car parked, dropped the carnation into the pocket one with a nice, speedy pick-up.
"This here is what I meant," Butch said, pointing down ward at the weeds. "The guy musta tore it off on the same nail that almost ruined my-"
"Let's not go into biology," Tracy said dryly.
He picked up the white carnation that had fallen by the fence. There are all kinds of carnations, beginning with the ones you can buy for a nickel from sad-looking street peddlers. This was the expensive kind , the so rt Bert Lord always wore.
that contain ed the flattened bullet. Butch gave his employer a low -lidded glance.
do
"Would thi s thing hav e wit' toni g ht's broad cas t, Tracy ha d r ecove red his
somepin to bo ss?"
The Daily Planet's dapper columni st
composure . His voice sounded as thin as a dime. "I'll give you the air instead of puttin g
you on if you don't mind your own busi- ness, Butch ."
Tracy stopped at an avenue shop and bought a new hat. To appear bareheaded
:was not in the well dr esse d Tracy man- ner; it might excite curious comment.
"Wind blow it away, sir?" the clerk There was no surprise in Jerry asked politely.
Tracy's mind. He had suspected Lord "I threw it away. It had a rat hole the moment the bullet had ripped in it."
through his hat. The sleek good-look-
ing Englishman must have found out
what Tracy was going to spill on the air
tonight in his cigarette broadcast. It couldn't resist the quip. He took a cab
"Yo u mean a moth hole, sir?"
"I mean a rat hole."
It was a foolish thing to say, but he