Radio Digest (Nov 1929-Apr 1930)

112 right. He ain't even in the city — much less in the gang. You know the little fruit store on East Main Street?" "What — Greco's ?" "Yes. We all call him the Turk. He's swarthy and looks like one, anyhow. That's the fellow." KENNEDY nodded. "I gathered as much from what Ryder Smith just told me. Runs a speakeasy back of the fruit store, eh?" Merck nodded. Kennedy was considering something. "I suppose he has to know you pretty well if you are going to get in." "Oh, yes. No strangers get in there. He just grins and doesn't know a thing when you talk about wine." "But you know him." "Certainly." "I thought as much. The surest way to find a drink is always to get in the good graces of a taxi driver. Naturally, they know them all. Well, McNaught, Merck, is one you will have to release to me for a little while, after I have committed him to your care. I will be responsible. Come on, Jake. Walter and I haven't become so well known here yet that we mightn't be a couple of good thirsty fares for whom you can vouch." "Yeah," pulled back Merck. "But what am I gettin't out o' this? Maybe a knife in my back some dark night, later?" Kennedy shook his head reassuringly. "No; there's nothing the Turk has done that incriminates him. He was an innocent tool in the affair." Merck was at last bestirring himself. Kennedy leaned over and whispered something to McNaught. "It just means you'll have to be doubly careful with them all, Mac. Keep your eye on them, every one. There's enough authority for holding them — material witnesses, and all that." "Oke!" agreed McNaught. "I don't know what you expect to get but I hope you get it." Outside we departed in one of the cars and as we came into the town Kennedy signed to Jake to stop and park the car around the corner on Main Street. "We'll walk there. Then he won't see you're not driving a taxi. Pin your taxi badge on your coat. There. Now, Walter, just a little bit exhilarated — as if we had to have more!" "Hello, you big Turkey!" greeted Merck as we came to the fruit stall around the corner. "I got a couple of good spenders — all the way out from the city. The sky's the limit. O. K, Turk. I know 'em for years." He turned and introduced us. The fruit vender sized us up carefully. We certainly did not look like cellar smellers or even secret agents. His scrutiny seemed to satisfy him. He paused in the back of the shop for a couple of muttered remarks to pass between him and Merck, then unlocked what looked like a closet door but was really a cellar door. We followed him down, not into a cellar exactly but into a basement, almost on the level with a yard in back of the store, due to the slope of the land. HERE was as complete a bar as I had ever seen, brass rail and everything, even to the mirror back of the bar with a landscape painted on it with soap and Epsom salts. We had a drink, and another. The Turk proved to be not a bad sort of boniface. He bought and treated on the house. We began to get chummy, so much so that Kennedy was emboldened to rally him on his nickname and his looks. "My mother, she was a Turk," he confided. "You know my father was in the army." He was off to a proud recital of the family's military prowess. A nudge from Kennedy once when the Turk was away back of his bar and I gathered that Merck and I were on any pretext to become so chummy that we left Craig and the Turk to themselves. There was nothing to do but to overcome my curiosity and give Kennedy his chance, for he was getting along famously apparently with the fruit vender. Merck and I started to roll the bones, much to my discomfort, for I found he shot them very much too well for me and I was fighting off the danger of being cleaned by him into the bargain. "White grapes — and you were to put them in a basket," I caught wafted over from Kennedy once in a lull in the game. I knew he was getting somewhere. These must be the grapes we had discovered on the table before Lola in the cabin of the "Gigolo," half eaten, seeds and all. We resumed our rolling the bones. But that made it twice as difficult as before for me. For not only was I feeling the potency of the Turk's liquid refreshment, but I was consumed with curiosity to catch some next fleeting remark from Kennedy. "Now, tell me about the Turks — you've been in the Levant of course?" "Oh, yes. Now I tella you. ..." THE next interchange was lost to me. Kennedy and the Turk were becoming more and more confidential. "I'll make you a little side bet, Jameson, that I " "Shut up!" I ground out between my teeth. "You're taking my money fast enough without any side bets — while I'm trying to get an earful of .this. Now, shut up — and shoot!" "... sure, Mister, and everything looks yellow to them . . . sure . . . turn green. ... I have seen them with my own eyes. ..." "Don't snap your fingers, so, Jake. You can buy baby a new pair of shoes without making all that noise over it. Come to papa! There, now match that! Only don't wag that infernal tongue of yours so loud when you do it!" "... over there last year. I brought some back . . . just curiosity ... all of it yet except that little bit I told you about. ... I don't care if I do . . . if you pay me " Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Turk go back of the bar and bend down. I rose io light a cigarette. He was on his knees twirling the combination of a country safe. I did not dare look longer, but as I resumed the crap game I saw him return to Kennedy with a little paper of something, hand it to Kennedy who in turn passed over a crisp Treasury note, regarded the white paper in his hand as he unfolded it, looked in at something, then folded it again. "... three of them . . . that one . . . the one you have . . . and I have the other in the safe. . . . Oh, I collect strange things wherever I go abroad. Tn Syria . , . a little silken cord . . . you know that was an idea they brought back during the Crusades and in Spain they made what they call yet the Garrote Chair. ... I could go on all day about the strange customs of the East. . . . Have another, gentlemans?" Kennedy agreed. But I understood now why he was watching us all so closely but covertly. A good part of what was supposed to have slipped down his throat had slipped surreptitiously into the spittoon under the table. It is one very successful way of keeping your head when the drinks are coming fast. And Craig was only at the beginning of a big job. > He glanced at his watch. "Oh, by Godfrey, Merck! Look at the time! And I had an appointment at six. If I'm paying you to drive me I'm paying you to think for me, too! So long, Tony! I'm coming out to see you again. I like to talk to you. I learn so much!" Chapter XVIII. THE GREEN DEATH i i rT> HEM double-crossin' devils!" Bitterly and distinctly, even if he was muttering, Captain Ryder Smith ground out the words, the first he uttered as he saw us driving up the steamboat dock to which the "Geronimo" had tied up only a few minutes before we appeared driven with taxicab recklessness by Merck. "What double-crossing devils?" I demanded. "Just a moment, Walter. Now, Captain, not a word until we get over to the Hancock bungalow. I have them all there, with McNaught, all but Merck, of course." "And did you get what I told 'em to send yer over the air?" "I did. That's what made me a little late. Having too good a time with the Turk." Kennedy took the little white paper packet from his breast pocket, then replaced it carefully, patting his pocket. "I could have proved it by my own autopsy, of course. I knew what to look for. You knew where. This makes it perfectly open and shut." Merck was burning up the road. Now and then his lips moved. I could not catch a word. But I knew that he, too, had a hate in his heart and was perfectly willing to pay off an old score. "This road would break a snake's back!" I gritted as I clung to the seat as Jake took the curves between the Port and St. James. It seemed merely a matter of seconds before we were let into the big living room of the Hancock bungalow. "There, Mr. Kennedy, it happened just as I told you it was going to happen! Dad did come in!" Reproachfully Judy greeted us, and behind her Mr. Hancock, while over in the corner a very crestfallen Eversley Barr was slumped in a big chair and a much subdued group of amateur and professional rum-smugglers were draped nervously about the room. "Them double-crossin' " Kennedy swung about and forcibly interposed his weight between Ryder Smith and those in the room. "Now, not a word, Smith, until I ask you to speak, not a word! You know, you are a partner in the crime, in one sense. The rum-running case against you is perfect. And here's McNaught. Please, just a minute." Ryder Smith subsided, muttering under his breath. "What was it killed her, Kennedy?" insisted Hancock. "Coke?" "Hardly," replied Craig. "Cocaine would hardly account for the strange effect that the drug had on her." No one betrayed even by a look knowledge of what Kennedy was driving at, although I knew that someone must know. All were looking keenly at him now. <4TT WAS a queer poison from the A Levant," he said suddenly. "It was a poison that a speakeasy proprietor brought over on his last vacation abroad. It was santonin, which has the strange effect of making the victim literally see yellow and green — and finally turning the victim himself yellow, then green!" "But I was talking to Dr. Gibson," put in Hancock. "He told me he could find no trace of any poison in the stomach contents!" "Perhaps not. Nor in any scratch or wound. But Dr. Gibson failed to remem