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38
Black Mask
sir. There haven't been any calls." while a dumb butler sat like a fool in Tracy noticed that a small screen Hilliard's study and a cop stood jammed
had been shifted from its accustomed
place and was standing in front of the
telephone desk. He whisked it away
and nodded with grim understanding.
Someone had slyly disconnected the sounded angry. "Your instrum ent was phone by lifting it from its cradle. H e off the hook. There's a call that's been placed it back.
Tracy stood stiffly still, his brow wrin- kled in thought. His preconceived sus - picion of Bert Lord as Hilliard's mur- derer had long since v.anished. There was the phone call which Tracy had re- ceived on his private line at the broad- casting studio from Bruce Hilliard. Re-
membering something that Ken Dun lap had told him sneeringly in his Park Ave- nue apartment, Tracy was coldly con- vinced that Hilliard had been dead when that alleged call of his had gone over the wire at 8:32. And if Hilliard was dead, only two people could possibly
have made the phony call.
One of them was a woman, one a
man. The realization of the man 's iden- tity made the hair crawl on Tracy's scalp. He did a sudden, seemingly il- logical thing. He darted toward the radio over which Hilliard had been lis- tening when he was shot to death. He examined the dial swiftly_
"Has anyone been near this ma- chine?"
"No, sir," Marcom said.
"Come on! I want to have a look at the front door."
The rug in the entry was badly dis- arranged. On the polished boards of the exposed floor was a tell-tale drip of blood. Tracy followed the trail a few feet to a hall closet. When he wrenched open the door, the unconscious body of the missing polic eman tumbled
head-first out. He had been knocked cold, probably by bra ss knuckles, judg- ing from the multiple abrasions across his bleeding temple.
Marcom utt ered a terrified cry.
Tracy said, "Ah, shut up." Th e thing
home was located. Speed sa ng in hi s them had sneaked out the back door, blood. The wild automobile race north-
was too foolishly simple. Th e four of
on unconscious feet in the hall closet. The phone began to ring.
"Hello!"
A woman operator answered. She
blocked for five minutes. Jerry Tracy?"
Are you Mr.
Insp ector Fitzgerald 's
came on the wire. "I've been trying to get you, Jerry . What's wrong?"
"Plenty! Fum1an and Alice have gone to Hilliard's Long I sland estate with Betty Hilliard and Dunlap. The
.trip was ostensibly taken to avoid re- porters, but I suspect it concerns cer- tain letters which Betty wrote to Dunlap after her marriage."
Tracy's words raced. "Fitz, we've got to get there fast, or there'll be another murder I A double one this time!"
"I'll pick you up with a police car
that'll do eighty." . .
· "Swell. Only phone the police air base first . Tell 'em to have an amphibion
waiting. The car'll do as far as North Beach. We'll need the plane to make up the time we've lost."
"I'll handle it I" Fritz growled .
"Yes. L et's have it!"
ORTH
AIRPORT
away like a flat, black pancake in th e unc e r- tain light of dawn. The police pilot did not climb very high.
Banking, he gunned the amphibion into bullet-level flight. Fitzgerald and Ser- geant Killan were packed uncomfortably together, with Jerry Tracy crouched be- tween their knees.
The hills and coves of Long Island's north shore raced swift ly astern. Tracy stared ahead through the moonlit dark- ness, watching for the narrow entran ce
to the inlet where Hilliard's country
crisp
voice
BEACH whisked