Hooded Detective, Volume III No. 2, January, 1942

"We're tailed now," he said hoarsely.

"Aw nuts!" Murphy said from the back seat. "We ought to make you get out and walk. Every time you see a car behind you, you get the ants."

Delancy drew his tongue over dry lips. He said, "Take a look for yourself, Murphy. That guy behind is burning asphalt off the road."

Murphy and the other hoods looked backwards. The car behind was a roadster, they could see in a sudden splash of lightning. And it was traveling like the wind.

Delancy opened the glove compartment in the instrument board and took out a pair of field glasses. He got to his knees on the front seat, turned around so that he could sight out the back window. He tried to hold the speeding roadster in the range of the glasses, and when the lightning came again he thought he could make out the figure of the driver at the wheel. He thought that he saw a sleek rounded head closely covered by a black silk hood. He was almost certain that he saw a black silk cape whipping out from the shoulders of the lone man in the car.

Delancy got cold all over. He gripped Shiv's shoulder convulsively, nearly sending his own car into the ditch by so doing.

"Step on it, Shiv," he said hoarsely. "I don't like the looks of that guy in the car behind us."

"So you don't like the guy's hair-do!" Shiv sneered. "And I should kick the bottom out of dis crate just because you don't like the looks of somebody behind us!"

Delancy passed the glasses back to Squid Murphy.

"See what you see, Murphy," he said quietly. Then he turned around, hauled out his gun, and shoved it into Shiv's ribs. "When I said step on it, I wasn't fooling."

"Gees!" Murphy said. "That guy back there's got a hell of a thing on his head. Looks like a hood."

"A black hood," Delancy said. "And I don't think I want to have anything to do with that guy, do you, Shiv?"

Shiv came down on the gas pedal and the car picked up speed. He said, "All right, all right! I'm steppin' on it, ain't I?"

If Delancy's car hadn't speeded up, Black Hood in the car behind might not have taken particular notice of it. But that sudden spurt of speed on the part of the gray sedan was a dead give-away. Black Hood knew that he was hot on the trail.

The big gray sedan carrying Delancy and his pals, hit the suburban town at a scant seventy miles an hour. It ran by three red lights without shaking the roadster piloted by Black Hood. The streets were slippery with rain that was sheeting out of the black sky, and when Shiv tried to negotiate the next corner, the big sedan turned completely around.

Delancy thought then that the chase was over, but Shiv had a trick or two up his sleeve. He spurted, took the car half way down the block, heading in the very direction from which Black Hood was coming. Then Shiv whipped his wheel around for a short turn into the mouth of an alley.

Delancy breathed again. He could see where everything was going to be all right now. The gray sedan bounced over the rough alley pavement, cut across the street at the next block, and rolled onto the concrete area in front of a large gas service station. The overhead doors beneath a sign which advertised car washing by steam ran up on their track as the gray sedan came into sight. Shiv steered into the wash room, and the doors dropped back into place.

Delancy got out, his body bathed in a cold sweat. The proprietor of this gas station was in the employ of Delancy's boss who had planned every step of the stick-up at the Weedham plant and the subsequent get-away. Delancy had supreme faith in his boss. For the first time since he had sighted that strange figure in the roadster that had followed them, he began to feel a little bit secure.

Delancy entered the filling station office, followed by his mob. The proprietor, a huge bear of a man in brown coveralls, scowled at Delancy. He said:

"The way you came in here, it's a wonder you didn't bring a whole squad of cops with you. What's the matter, anyway?"

Delancy didn't answer just then. The proprietor of the station wasn't alone in his office. There was a dame. She was a tall, well-dressed woman with wax-pale skin and black hair that was parted in the middle and slicked back to a soft knot. She had peculiarly cold green eyes that were tilted at the outer extremities. Her lips were full, soft and brilliantly rouged.

Delancy jerked his head at the woman and asked of the proprietor: "Who's that, Burkey?"

Burkey shrugged big shoulders. "She's from the boss. She's got a message for you."

The woman was beautiful. But there was something about the chilly expression in her eyes that made Delancy feel decidedly uncomfortable. She did not smile as she opened a black purse and produced an envelope which she handed to Delancy.

While Burkey was opening the steam valves that would spray hot vapor on the car in the wash room, Delancy tore open the letter which the woman had handed him. Inside was a slip of paper on which had been typed the following:

"The bearer will ride with you into Manhattan."

There was no signature, but in its stead was the crude drawing of an eye, formed by two bowed lines that represented lids and two circles, one within the other, representing iris and pupil. Delancy knew that the message was from that man he had never seen – the big boss, the man who knew all the answers.

Delancy touched a match to the message. He looked at the woman with the cold green eyes.

"What's the idea?" he asked.

"I suppose," she said in a quiet voice, "that it will look less suspicious if you are seen driving a car with a woman beside you. Your men are to get into the baggage trunk at the rear or else crouch down on the floor of the rear compartment."

Delancy snorted. "That's nuts. There ain't any sense to this. It was a clean job. We didn't mix with any coppers."

"No?" she said, elevating her eyebrows. "Nevertheless, you will carry out the orders. The Eye knows what he's doing."

CHAPTER III

Haven Of The Hunted

Ten minutes later, Delancy drove the get-away car out of the service station. It was a gray sedan no longer. It was a brilliant blue job with red wheels, and it carried a Texas license. Delancy was at the wheel and the woman with the cold green eyes rode beside him. Two of Delancy's gunmen crouched out of sight on the floor of the rear compartment while two more had been crowded into the luggage compartment at the rear.

As the car rolled on toward Manhattan's northern boundary, the woman with the green eyes switched on the radio on the dash. All of the cars used on stick-up jobs were furnished with receivers capable of picking up police calls, and out of the corner of his eye, Delancy saw that the woman was twisting the dial down to the police band.

"What's the idea?" Delancy asked. He wasn't particularly pleasant to this woman who rode with him, largely because she treated him like the dirt under her feet.

"I simply want to check up," she said coldly. "I want to know just how clean that job was."

"Clean?" Delancy fumed. "Listen, lady, we knocked off every damned guy who could have told anything about us. And there wasn't a copper in sight. Why, I haven't seen a bull in so long I'd have to look twice to recognize one."

"That may be," she admitted, "but I want to make sure."

"Listen," Delancy said, now thoroughly angry, "how do you get that way? Who the hell are you, checking up on me? You the Eye's moll?"

"Moll?" questioned the woman. "I do not understand."

"You don't understand!" Delancy scoffed. "Listen, babe, don't get high-hat with me or I'll slap you down."

"You would not be so foolish," she said scornfully. "The Eye would tear you into small pieces. He would – "

The flat voice of a police announcer came from the radio speaker and interrupted the threat:

"Warning to all cars. Be on the lookout for blue Buick sedan, nineteen thirty-nine model, red wheels, being driven by Raymond Delancy. Delancy is wanted for hold-up and murder. Wanted for hold-up and murder, Ray Delancy, height five feet eight inches, weighing one hundred eighty pounds – "

Delancy's hand shot out to the radio switch, cutting off the voice of the announcer. It was impossible! There had been no police at the Weedham plant. No cops had tailed them. No cops had seen that the gray sedan which had driven into Burkey's filling station had come out a blue sedan.

"A clean job, you said?" the woman with the green eyes mocked.

One of the gunmen who crouched on the floor of the rear compartment cursed quietly and without interruption for nearly a minute. Delancy tramped nervously on the gas pedal.

"Don't worry, anybody," he said. "The heat's on, and I don't know how the hell the cops got that way, but it ain't the first time I've given them the shake. We'll go to Jack Carlson's garage. He'll get us out of this. It'll cost something, but hell, we've got lots of dough."

Delancy drove as though he was rolling on thin ice. The sight of a traffic cop made him dodge around a corner that threw him off his course. He came close to having convulsions when a squad car passed on the next street west, its siren wailing. He told the boys in the back seat to get their guns out, just in case they had to shoot it out. But somehow all of his anxiety was wasted, and he at last sighted a neon sign which read:

"ATLAS AUTO LIVERY"

Delancy turned the sedan through the door of the big garage, rolled across the wide parking floor to the cement ramp at the rear. He got into second gear and zoomed up the ramp to the second floor. Then he got out of the car, walked to the office which was partitioned off from the rest of the floor by means of frosted glass. The door of the office carried the words, "Jack Carlson, President."

Carlson had started out as the operator of a wildcat bus company. In this business he had learned so many ways to circumvent the law that he had decided to put that knowledge to more lucrative uses. Under the cover of a legitimate auto livery and trucking business, he had built a vast transportation system which was employed by any criminal who was wanted by the police and could afford to pay Carlson's fee. When the town got too hot for a killer or stick-up artist, Jack Carlson had many tricks up his sleeve which would enable the wanted man to move to a cooler spot.

Delancy entered Carlson's reception room which was never closed. At the invitation of the blonde stenographer at the desk, he squatted on a chair and lighted a cigarette. Jack Carlson entered the room a moment later, walking with the energetic bounce of a busy man.

Carlson was a little above medium height, dark complexioned, his brow a washboard of horizontal wrinkles. He had a waxed mustache which he was in the habit of twisting whenever in deep thought.

"Well, well, well," he said cheerfully as he shook hands with Delancy. "Some little trouble bothering you tonight, Ray?"

Delancy scowled. He couldn't see that there was anything to be cheerful about.

"The boys and I pulled a little job," he said. "It didn't amount to a whole lot, but I think there's a leak somewhere in our organization. The cops got the heat on us, and we'd like a hand out of town for a few days."

Carlson went to his desk, sat down, stuck a slim cigar in his well formed lips.

"How much was your job?" he asked quietly as he struck a match.

"Not much," Delancy said. "Maybe ten grand at the outside." He purposely lied about the take because Carlson usually charged on the percentage basis. Another thing which was inclined to influence Carlson's price was that little business of murder. If you killed on a job Carlson considered the danger greater and pushed up his fee accordingly.

"Anybody knocked off, Ray?" Jack Carlson asked.

Delancy squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. "One of the boys had to shoot a guard in the leg. Nothing messy, though."

Carlson inhaled deeply. A faint smile came to his lips. He removed his cigar and waved it at Delancy.

"So you got only ten grand, Ray? And nobody knocked off?"

"That's what I said," Delancy crabbed.

Carlson chuckled. "I happen to know that a number of men were killed, that you're wanted for murder, and that your total take was about seventy-five thousand dollars. And it'll cost you just thirty-two thousand five hundred dollars of that money to get you out of the jam."

"Thirty-two thousand – " Delancy gasped.

Carlson waved his cigar. "But for that price I'll see that you and all your boys get a nice cool spot to hideout in, somewhere a long way from New York."

Delancy stood up. "Why you damned greaseball, you! I'd see you in hell first. Pay fifty per cent of my take to you and the usual ten per cent to the Eye for his part of the job! Hell, that leaves me a lousy forty per cent without counting the split to the boys."

"Take it or leave it," Carlson shrugged.

"I'll leave it!" Delancy rapped. "Why, damn you, that's robbery!"

"And your crime was murder," Carlson said. He twisted his mustache thoughtfully. "I think you'll take my offer, Delancy, because there just isn't any other out for you."

Delancy's scowl deepened. His eyes narrowed. An idea was beginning to roll around inside his head. He didn't know exactly what he ought to do with it, but it was an idea, anyway.

He said, "You think there's no other out for me, huh? Well, I'll make an out before I'll pay any such figure to you. And listen, fellah, if I thought – " He stopped a moment, dropped his cigarette onto the carpet and heeled it out. "Well anyway, Carlson, I'm going to have a little talk with the Eye. And that little talk is going to be about you and the rotten deal you tried to hand me."

"Go ahead and talk," Carlson said. "And when the cops start closing in on you and your mob, let me know. I'll get you out of the jam for the same figure."

Carlson got up, walked around his desk to where Delancy stood in front of the door. He stuck out his hand.

"No hard feelings, Ray?"

Delancy looked down at the hand and sneered.

"No hard feelings, chiseler, but I sure would like to put a couple of slugs in your belly!" And Delancy swaggered out of the office. He guessed he'd told that chiseler where he got off.

As soon as the door had closed, Jack Carlson bounded back to his desk, touched a button on an inter-office communications box. Somebody on the lower floor of the garage answered.

Carlson said, "Ray Delancy is just leaving. I want him tailed."

CHAPTER IV

Live Steam

The Black Hood had reached a dead-end in the trail which had led him from the Weedham Industries plant. The gray sedan in which the fleeing criminals were riding had vanished, apparently into thin air. Black Hood had spent thirty minutes of search at break-neck speed in an attempt to pick up the trail of the gray sedan again. He had driven the roadster which belonged to Jeff Weedham in and out of alleys in a trial and error effort to sight the killers' car, but all without success.

It occurred to him then that it was entirely possible that the rob and kill boys had not left the suburban town at all. Perhaps this was their hideout. With that in mind, he parked Jeff Weedham's car and stepped out into the rain, his black cape wrapped around him. He felt that he could walk the streets in comparative safety in spite of his costume, for it would have required close inspection under direct light to distinguish the garb he wore from the standard poncho and rain-hood worn by the traffic police in bad weather.

After an hour or more of leg work that yielded him no information so far as a possible hideout for the criminals was concerned, Black Hood came across the drunk. The drunk was in a dismal alley, leaning up against the wall of a tavern which he had evidently just left. He was a young man, and he wore some sort of a uniform – that of a chauffeur, taxi driver, or something of the sort. When Black Hood put in his appearance, the young man started to move along up the alley, staggering as he walked.

"Wait a minute," Black Hood called.

"'S all right, officer," the drunk said, mistaking Black Hood for a cop. "I'm on my way. I'm goin' home."

"You think you'll get there, weaving around that way?" Black Hood asked, catching up with the man. "If you don't fall asleep under the wheels of a truck you'll be mighty lucky."

"Only live a block from here," the drunk explained. "I'll make it. I gotta skin full, all right. Never been drunk before, so help me, officer. But Burkey fired me because he said I was drunk when I wasn't. A man's gotta live up to his reputation, don't he?"

"Who's Burkey?" Black Hood asked. He was determined to see that the young drunk got safely home.

"Runs the Super-Charged Gasoline Station two blocks south of here. He said he wouldn't have a drunk working for him, but I was cold sober when it happened."

"When what happened?" Black Hood linked his arm with that of the young man.

"I was out at the gas pumps when a gray sedan barreled into the station and in onto the wash rack," the young man explained. "Burkey brought the doors down in the wash room and turned on the steam. About ten minutes later, the gray sedan drove out the other side of the wash room, and it wasn't gray any more. It was blue – blue with red wheels."

At the mention of a gray sedan traveling fast, Black Hood's interest increased.

"Maybe," he suggested, "there were two cars in the wash room."

"Can't be," the young man said. "There's only room for one at a time. I went to Burkey and asked him how it happened that a car would change color like that. He said it hadn't changed color and if I thought it had I must be drunk. So he fired me. But I was cold sober, I tell you. And I'd like to know what I'm going to do and what my widowed mother is going to do with me out of a job."

Black Hood reached inside his cape. The broad black belt which he wore contained many secret pockets, and from one of these he extracted a ten-dollar bill. He pressed the money into the young man's hand.

"That'll tide you over until you can find a job," he said. "Think you can get across the street all right?"

They had reached the end of the alley by this time, and the young drunk had said that his home was just on the other side of the street. The drunk stared at the crumpled bill in his hand. Then he raised his eyes to Black Hood's face. In the glow from a nearby street lamp he could clearly see the black mask that covered the upper part of Black Hood's face to the tip of his nose. The drunk was startled.

"Who – who are you?" he stammered.

Black Hood laughed. "Never mind, son. Just forget you ever saw me." Then he turned and ran back along the alley to walk quickly in the direction of the gas station where the drunk had worked, two blocks to the south.

The overhead door of the car washing room was open, and as Black Hood entered it he glanced through the glass pane of the door connecting this portion of the service station with the office. A big, shaggy-haired man in brown overalls had just picked up the telephone from his battered, grease-stained desk. This man would be Burkey, the owner of the station.

Black Hood's keen eyes flicked around the room in which he now stood. At the back, near a stand that racked a number of grease guns, he saw a second telephone fixed to the wall. An extension of the one in the office, he wondered?

He crossed to the wall phone and gently removed the receiver from its hook and held it to his ear. He heard a gruff voice which might well have been that of the man Burkey, say: "Is this the Eye?"

Black Hood's eyes narrowed. The voice that came back over the wire was a toneless whisper.

"This is the Eye speaking."

Burkey said, "Delancy came through here about a couple of hours ago."

"Delancy?" the Eye said. "Yes, I know."

"I changed paint jobs for him according to instructions," Burkey explained. "But what I called you about, I got a young fellow working here, grinding gas. He saw the gray sedan roll in here and he saw that it was blue when it went out. He came to me to ask how come."

"What did you do?" the Eye whispered.

"Told him he was drunk and fired him," Burkey replied.

"That was careless of you," the voice whispered after the pause of a moment. "Very careless. You should have silenced this man at once."

Burkey said, "How the hell could I do that?"

"That is your problem," the whisperer said. "But you must dispose of him immediately, do you understand?"

"Is that an order?"

"That is an order," the Eye whispered grimly, and broke the connection.

Black Hood hung up quietly. Then crouching low, he crossed the room to where the strainer top of the sewer drain was placed in the concrete floor. It was in this room that Delancy's get-away car had changed paint jobs, and in about ten minutes. How was such a thing possible?

He dropped to his knees, nerves tense as he lifted the strainer plate. Dove gray particles clung to the sewer opening beneath – particles of some sort of paint that was soluble in water or perhaps live steam. A glint of understanding came into his eyes. Delancy had driven the get-away car into this room. The car actually was not a gray car at all. It was a blue car, the paint covered with this gray, steam soluble substance. All that was necessary to convert the car which Black Hood had been following into a blue car which he certainly would have missed was a good bath of steam. It wouldn't have required more than ten minutes at the outside.

A rumbling sound that did not originate in the thunder caps above jerked Black Hood's attention from the drain. His glance darted toward the overhead doors which were dropping swiftly into place. His eyes turned toward the door leading into the service station office. Burkey, the proprietor, was standing at the door, watching Black Hood through the glass. There was a diabolical grin on the face of the station owner.

Black Hood straightened as the overhead doors fell into place and locked. He took two long, springy strides toward the door. But he never quite reached that door. With an explosive hiss, gray jets of live steam erupted from pipes around the edge of the room. Scalding steam that could burn and blister and boil human flesh.

Black Hood fell back from the door, staggered by his first contact with that hissing gray hell. He threw back his head, looked above at steam pipes that criss-crossed overhead. And then Burkey manipulated the valve that controled the overhead pipes, and the steam poured down upon Black Hood from above.

He couldn't see now, because of the steam. He dared not open his eyes lest the heat blind him permanently. But in that brief glimpse upward, Black Hood had marked the location of one of the steam pipes. He crouched, nerves and muscles tense, controled in spite of the torturous cloud of scalding vapor that pressed close to him. Suddenly, he unleashed all the pent-up power of flexed legs, leaped into the air, one gauntlet protected hand out-thrust for the pipe which he knew was there even if he could not see it. Fingers grasped, held like steel hooks. He drew himself up with one powerful arm until his other hand could join its mate.

The intense heat penetrated the leather palms of his black gauntlets. Still he hung on, drawing himself upward to hook a leg over the very pipe that threatened to boil him alive. He understood now why the Hermit, that wise old man who had nursed him from the very jaws of death, had been so insistent upon regular muscular exercise. The power to save himself was there in the muscles of back, legs and arms. It was there, waiting for just such moments of danger as these.

Gradually, he hauled himself to the pipe above, got his feet onto the pipe and stood erect, his hands reaching up to the rafters to maintain his balance. And there he waited in that hot gray cloud that pressed to the roof where it condensed and fell like warm rain. His body was safe from direct contact with the blistering jets of steam.

At last the steam was shut off, the gray clouds dissipated. Cautiously, Burkey unlocked the door which connected the car washing room with his office. He stepped out, doubtless expecting to find Black Hood curled up on the floor, all consciousness driven from him by the pain of countless steam burns. The Black Hood, watching from the pipes above, showed white teeth in a wide grin.

"Look up, Burkey!" he sang out.