Boy's Cinema (1939-40)

6 dressed and not at all bad-looking. This younger man was Charles Bixby: his middle-aged companion was known to the police, as well as to his acquaintances, as Chuck Morris. With a package and a receipt-book under his arm, the man dressed as a mes- senger ran across the pavement and knocked at the ornamental door of the shop the negro had just closed. The door was re-opened a few inches, and the porter looked cautiously out at it. "Special delivery for Mr. Crawford," said Mickey West. "Yassuh!" The negro reached out a hand and received the package. "You'll have to sign for it." The door was opened more widely, and the supposed messenger stepped into the shop and presented the receipt-book and a pencil. The ebony-faced porter was about to sign his name when an automatic was produced and levelled at his heart. The receipt-book fell to the purple-carpeted floor, and with eyes bulging and teeth chattering the negro held up shaking hands, one holding the pencil, the other the package. "Get back in there," rasped Mickey West, "and see that that burglar alarm don't go off, or your wife's a widow!" "Yassuh!" mumbled the frightened porter. " But I ain't even married!" "Get over there!" The porter backed away towards an ornate grandfather clock, according to which the time was twenty-six minutes to eight, and at that moment Charles Bixby entered the shop, closed the door, and faced the negro menacingly. "When the first clerk gets here," he said in a voice far milder than his ex- pression, "open the door for him like everything is all right. And don't get any ideas of running away." "Not me!" stuttered the frightened black. "Ah couldn't run now not if Ah had Vi/ings!" "You catch on quick," approved Bixby. "I'll take this, just in case," said Mickey West, and he grabbed up the package and the receipt-book and tucked them under his arm. He and Bixby stood well back from the door, and the clock ticked away ten minutes before a neatly dressed and clean- shaven young fellow approached the long glass panel and rattled the handle. "Okay!" said Bixby, with hardly any movement of his lips. " Go ahead!" The negro opened the door, and the young fellow crossed the threshold. He Was an assistant in the establishment. "Good-morning, Sam!" he greeted. "Yassuh!" mumbled the porter. "Ah wished it were a good mornin'." He closed the door, and immediately Bixby and Mickey West moved forward, Bixby's right hand in his coat-pocket and holding a gun there, while Micky's auto- matic was fully exposed. " Up they go!" snarled Bixby. Porter and assistant raised their hands, and Bixby pointed to a big steel door set in the rear wall of the shop, half-concealed by show-cases. "Open that vault with the uncut gems," he commanded. "Get me trays A, C, D, and R. The time signal went off at seven- thirty, and you know the combination." "It—it's been changed,' stammered the "Sure!" scoffed Bixby. "That's why you opened it yesterday! You've been spotted for days!" "No, sir!" protested the assistant. " You must have me confused with some- one else. Mr. Crawford knows the com- bination, and he doesn't get here until nine." "Okay!" Bixby jerked a thumb at a show-case upon which a telephone stood. " Call him. We want to get out of here before the street fills up." "Yes, sii-." The assistant went reluct- antly to the telephone and began to dial a number. " And make sure you use only the right words!" warned Bixby. Paul Crawford, proprietor of the Nov<;iTil)er 11th, 1039 BOY'S CINEMA establishment was at breakfast In the sitting-room of his flat up in One Hundred and Tenth Street, and it was his black maid who answered the call. "The store calling, Mr. Crawford," she said, and carried the telephone across to the breakfast-table from a little bureau. "Yes?" said the jeweller. 'I'm sorry to disturb you, sir," re- sponded the assistant, "but a customer who left his diamond ring to be repaired wants it right away. He's leaving town on an early train. Could I have the safe combination?" His voice sounded fairly natural to Bixby, but not to his employer, who replied: "I understand. It's twenty-four to the right, twelve to the left, eight to the right, nineteen to the left, and nine to the right. Got it? Fine! Good-bye!" The assistant had made a note of the combination on a pad. Crawford, having cleared the line, dialled "O," and said to the operator: " Give me the police—quick!" He was put through to a dispatcher in the radio transmitter room at police headquarters, and in less than three minutes the dispatcher was saying over and over again into a microphone : "Calling cars twenty-one, thii'ty-two and fourteen. Hurry! Hold-up at Blue Diamond jewellery store. Fiftieth. Hold your sirens and approach quietly." The officers in the three patrol cars thus enum.erated received the message from loud-speakers under their dashboards. Mike Casey was in car fourt-een, and the sergeant at the wheel immediately turned it about in Ninth Avenue. Patrol cars twenty-one and thirty-two were farther away, but from different directions set off for Fiftieth Street. Bixby and Mickey West emerged from the shop and got into the dark-grey saloon, Bixby resuming his seat in the back with a lot of uncut gems in his coat-pockets, and Mickey taking the wheel. The engine was running, and Mickey was slipping into gear when Chuck Morris looked out of the window and saw a patrol car racing along the roadway. "Step on it!" he cried. "We've been spotted!" The saloon gathered speed, but the patrol car was travelling faster, and Casey was out on its running-board with Danny's camera-gun in his hand. Chuck leaned out of the window with his six-gun and fired again and again. His first shot splintered the windscreen of the patrol car, the second bullet went through the open v/indow and ploughed the cheek of the sergeant who was driving. Casey fired, but missed Chuck by inches. The sergeant let go of the wheel and fell back in his seat, and the patrol car crashed into a lamp-standard on the kerb, snapping it off short, mounted the pave- ment, and came to a standstill. The driver had managed to cut off the engine and to jam on the hand-brake. Casey was flung off the near-side run- ning-board, but he scrambled to his feet, and was taking aim again when a bullet struck him in the chest and he collapsed. The dark-grey saloon was roaring towards Tenth Avenue when another patrol car came swinging round the corner from that thoroughfare. Chuck would have fired at it, but Mickey West thrust his left hand over the back of his seat and out of the window to force down the gun. "Don't be a fool!" he shouted, his right hand controlling the steering-wheel; and the saloon sped past the patrol car, over- took a motor-lorry, and disappeared into Eleventh Avenue. A little crowd was gathering round the prone form of Casey when the second patrol car was stopped on the other side of the street and two oflficers sprang down from it. Car thirty-two arrived while people were being ordered back; and then Captain Bill Dugan alighted from his own official car just as Danny came running along the pavement. Dugan opened the door of the damaged car and looked critically at the wounded Every Tuesday sergeant. He saw that he was not seri- ously hurt, and he said brusquely: " Get yourself fixed up." He dived round the front of the car to Casey, and knelt to raise him up; bv.z Casey was beyond human aid, and ho lowered him gently to the pavement again and instructed one of the officers to summon an ambulance. Danny and several other officers fol- lowed Dugan into the shop, and Danny straightway began to look for clues. "Who's the boss here?" demanded Dugan. "Mr. Crawford," the assistant shakily replied. "But he hasn't come in yet," " Did you lose anything?" Before the assistant could answer that question Crawford himself brushed past a sergeant at the door, crying anxiously: "Did the police get here in time?" "Who are you?" Dugan roared at him. "Paul Crawford, the owner," was the reply. "Clark, did they get into the vault?" The assistant nodded miserably. ■They got the Amsterdam shipment," he stated. " The ones we classified in trays A, C, D, and R." Crawford strode towards the open vault, and the assistant went with him. Dugan followed with his men, but Danny was looking down at a piece of tissue-paiDer on the carpet behind a counter. On the paper was a plainly marked heel-print. He glanced round and saw that only the negro porter was watching him, and he stooped and picked up the sheet of tissue. " Get me a box so I won't have to fold this," he said. The porter went to a cupboard, and re- turned swiftly with a large flat cardboard box. "Is that a clue?" he asked excitedly. "No," said Danny. "It's somebody's obituary.' A CHANCE FOR DANNY ON the first floor of a huge building in Fifth Avenue, just above Madison Square, Charles Bixby walked along a corridor to a door labelled: Martin Banford, Jeweller. Show-room. He opened the door and entered a large room in which there was an oi'derly array of glass-topped showcases containing trinkets of every kind, and particularly the more expensive kind. A smoke-blue carpet covered the floor, and smoke-blue curtains were draped over windows. A girl at a desk between two of the showcases rose and ran to meet Bixby. Her name was Crystal Morland, and she was almost as beautiful as Kathleen Burke —in a harder and more flamboyant way. Her hair was paler than gold, her eyes were so dark that at first sight one would scarcely have realised they were blue. She had a perfect figure, but she was diminu- tive, and she had to reach up to fling her arms round Bixby's neck. " I was worried," she said, after he had kissed her. "About the jewels or me?" he teased. "I can always get jewels—fi'om him." She dropped her arms and waved towards a door. "Be careful. He's in there.' " All I need," said Bixby, with a grim.ace, J "is for him to catch us kissing. I'd better j,j go in and report." 'I "Yes, " she nodded. "He's been askins; i for you." Bixby went to the door and knocked on : it, and a deep voice called out:. "Come in, please!" , Bixby stepped into a room carpeted likej the show-room, but furnished as an office.! The walls were panelled with plywoodX from floor to picture-rail, and near a window Martin Banford himself was seated behind an ultra-modern desk. Although in the late forties, his face was smooth, and it was clean-shaven except j for a little moustache; his dark-brown hair had receded from a brow that as a consequence looked lofty; he was well- * '