The Best of Argosy #8 - Minions of the Shadow Read online

  The first cab stopped in the middle of a block. He hastily ordered his own driver to stop some distance behind. He fished in a pocket and brought forth a notebook. He rapidly thumbed through it until he came to the right page.

  “Hell,” he grunted, half aloud. “That’s where he lives. I better get some sleep myself. And some dough, too.”

  A few minutes later he was carefully setting an alarm clock for seven o’clock, four hours hence. Thence he laid his clothes where he could jump into them in a hurry, and went to sleep.

  HARVEY opened the street door to his quarters, and fixed the latch so the door could be opened without a key. Then he sprinted up the flight of stairs and did likewise with the door at the top.

  A second later he was at the window, peering up the street. He was rewarded by the sight of a taxi driving off. He smiled grimly and seated himself in an easy chair beside a small writing desk. Still in the dark he opened a drawer and removed an efficient army automatic.

  Harvey hadn’t missed seeing the man who had dodged aside when he left Patelli’s. He had also seen him trail his cab. And now, Harvey decided, the man was on his way back to report to Bonzetti that his victim was safely in his flat.

  Harvey smiled again, and patted the gun in his hand. He didn’t intend to take a chance on letting himself be kidnapped now. With enough evidence to force a confession out of Danvers, there was no need for it.

  He settled back further in the chair and waited. His eyes tried to droop, but he forced them to stay open. It wouldn’t do to have Bonzetti barge in and find him asleep.

  The only trouble with trying to stay awake in the dark was the fact that his eyelids could close and he wouldn’t know it. He lit a cigarette. It scorched his finger a minute later, and he put it out. He wondered vaguely if a man could fall asleep with his eyes open. It was dark anyway. Did eyelids have to be closed in order to sleep?

  “CAN’T you get away yet?”

  “No. Tried a couple times. Too weak. You’re to blame for this! Suppose I have to live through this man’s whole lifetime, stuck here in the past?”

  “You’re really his shadow now, eh? Haven’t you strength enough to send me to watch Schwartz? That might help.”

  “No. It’s all I can do to keep you here. Maybe if I let you drift back to your own time, I’d have strength enough to release myself from Harvey, though. I’ll try that if I can’t get loose.”

  “Don’t do that! Harvey’s about to be kidnapped! Stay with him and help out. He’s in real trouble. And you’re to blame for that. Don’t forget it.”

  “How in the name of — All right. I’m to blame for it. But that don’t say I’m going to stay here the rest of his life and watch over him. He’s big enough...”

  Chapter 17: Milly’s Chilly

  MILLICENT FORBES was a nice girl. She had put up a pretense of being happy and contented with Harvey’s promise to put his mind down to the problem of Omega. That was only because she was a nice girl and didn’t want to worry him. He had enough worries.

  But as a matter of fact Millicent wasn’t happy at all. She was miserable — as Harvey could have easily seen if he hadn’t been on the opposite side of her door when she closed it. For Millicent slumped wearily in a chair and gazed blankly at the wall. Tears welled up in her eyes and she angrily blinked them out. Unheeded then, they furrowed a way through her lightly-applied makeup.

  She listened to the clang of the elevator doors and went into the bedroom. She spent some time undressing, washing and applying creams, but the ritual failed to cheer her as it usually did.

  Harvey’s promise, for the first time since she could remember, wasn’t much good. The very fact that he postponed the solution to that problem revealed that he hadn’t the slightest hope that anything could be done about it. Procrastination wasn’t one of his faults. When Harvey had a problem, he went after it immediately.

  The thing was fantastic anyway. Shadows were impalpable things, not given to talking back. Where you went, they went, and never argued about it. But something had happened, something completely outside the realm of human understanding.

  For Harvey’s shadow was really alive, and decidedly frisky. She couldn’t ignore it — or him, as this shadow must properly be designated. As a husband Harvey would be impossible — unless something were done.

  Millicent climbed into bed and pulled up the covers. The pillow felt cool; then after a minute, slightly damp. Annoyed, she wiped her eyes and turned it over. Sternly she forced her mind into other channels, determined to forget all about it and go to sleep.

  That, of course, was a mistake. Sleep can’t be bullied. And besides, her mind refused to co-operate. It returned to Harvey of its own volition.

  For three years she had loved him, sometimes almost hopelessly. She had admired his kindness and the idealistic view he took of everything around him. Lately he had changed, losing some of his trustfulness and replacing it with a better insight into the motives of those he associated with.

  But his ideals were still there. Intensified, if anything. She loved him more for the change; for it had enabled him to get up the nerve to propose. He had lost some of his shyness, the thing which had kept him from the step before.

  Millicent half believed that Omega had something to do with it all, though she couldn’t be sure. If he had, then she owed him a debt. And that thought brought her back to her main problem. Harvey had said that he had come to regard his encumbrance as another human, an entity which couldn’t be eliminated without destroying a life. He had even come to develop a certain fondness for him.

  And now that she thought it over, Millicent wasn’t so sure that it wouldn’t be murder ruthlessly to destroy Omega — providing, of course, that it could he done at all. He was a likable cuss at that.

  Sleep finally came, though it was fitful at first and broken by dreams of Omega interfering all through the years to come. When she woke there was still the feeling of futility and sorrow which had gripped her when she had said goodnight to Harvey. For several seconds she lay in bed, staring at nothing, trying to get her thoughts in order. Until a gentle rap sounded at the door.

  Hastily donning a housecoat, she answered, opening the door a few inches. A heavy man in a business suit smiled at her. He flipped open the lapel of his coat and Millicent caught a fleeting look at a shield.

  “Headquarters,” said the man. “Lieutenant Schwartz would like to have you sign a statement. Mr. Nelson is over there now. I’ve got a car downstairs if you’d like to come right away.”

  “I’ll be ready in a jiffy,” she said, opening the door wider. “Make yourself comfortable while I dress. There’s liquor in the cabinet.”

  The man’s eyes widened as he accepted the invitation. “Lady,” he said as she disappeared into the bedroom, “you’re a gentleman.”

  He managed to slug down four drinks out of a brown bottle, and was eyeing a green bottle distrustfully and trying to decipher certain words in Italian on the label, when she reappeared, fully dressed.

  At first Millicent didn’t notice that the car was already occupied. The man who sat in the back seat was in shadow and wore a dark suit. It was too late to jump out when she did see him, for he had a pistol pointed at her. She did hesitate, but he reached out the other hand and pulled her the rest of the way inside. The door slammed behind her.

  “I always have to supervise these things myself,” he said, conversationally. “That’s why Lucky Bonzetti stays out of jail. Get goin’, Barney.”

  MILLICENT sighed and relaxed in the seat. She clucked sympathetically. “It is a bore, isn’t it? Not being able to depend on your hired help.”

  Bonzetti nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Understand, they’re dependable. They won’t cross me up, or anything. But they’re dumb. They ain’t smart, like Lucky Bonzetti. They make mistakes, and that’s bad in my business.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Millicent.

  “A nice place, toots. You’ll like it, though you’ll only be ther
e for a few weeks.”

  “Only a few weeks?”

  “Sure, sure, just till after the primaries.”

  Millicent nodded calmly, as if the matter were quite the usual thing. “I thought it was something like that,” she said.

  “Say, you’re pretty cool, ain’t you.” Bonzetti observed. “That’s the way I like ’em. Saves a lot of trouble.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to be any trouble,” said Millicent. “I know it’s all a matter of business. Nothing personal.”

  Bonzetti nodded and looked at her admiringly. “That’s the proper attitude. I wish more people realized that, instead of getting all excited and raising a fuss.”

  Millicent idly watched the city flow past the car window and noted that they were approaching the edge of town. She could see through the glass of the door, obliquely, but well enough to recognize the route. There weren’t any windows at the sides of the back seat, and the curtain was pulled down over the rear window.

  To a person outside the car both she and Bonzetti were probably invisible in the shadows. Bonzetti at least made no attempt to conceal his gun. She noticed that he kept it pointed in her general direction, in spite of her docile manner. She had hoped that he would relax, but the scheme didn’t work. Bonzetti was smart.

  The car reached the edge of the city and continued, picking up speed. Then it slowed suddenly and turned into a side road. After a short distance it stopped under a tree.

  “I guess you won’t object to a blindfold,” Bonzetti ventured. “Part of the business, you know.”

  “Not at all,” said Millicent, agreeably. “Be careful with my hair, though. It’s a new wave.”

  The gangster covered her eyes effectively with a black silk handkerchief, carefully tying it in the back under her curls. “You’re pretty good, you are,” he declared. “How’d you ever come to hook up with a guy like Harvey Nelson?”

  “Oh, he has his points,” said Millicent. “Though at times, he is hard to get along with. He’s always banging his head against a stone wall. Like trying to make politicians give the public a break. It can’t be done.”

  “You said it,” agreed Bonzetti. “But I figure he ought to have had more sense than to buck Pembroke. That guy’d double-cross his own mother.”

  MILLICENT was silent for a moment, thinking about the excuse which had brought her out of her apartment. No doubt Bonzetti had read about the murder in the morning papers and decided it would make a good story to get her to come peaceably. And then again...

  “That business in Dolly Patterson’s apartment,” she began. “Was that one of your jobs? I thought it was pretty neat. There didn’t seem to be a clue, except that the place had been searched thoroughly.”

  Bonzetti’s eyes narrowed. Millicent couldn’t see that, of course, but she sensed that the man beside her had tensed a bit. There was a pause before he answered, and when he did there was a different tone to his voice. It was slightly colder, less affable and friendly.

  “Thoroughly, eh? Then you figure the one who searched it found what he was looking for?”

  Millicent didn’t answer right away. Not because she didn’t know what to say, but because she was trying to keep her mind straight on the number of turns the car had made since she had been blindfolded. She gave it up, though, for she suddenly realized that some of them had been natural turns of a winding country road, and that she couldn’t be sure which ones were actual changes to another road. It didn’t matter anyway. Knowing where she was wouldn’t help her escape.

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “He might have found it in the last place he looked. Then again he mightn’t have.”

  “I get it,” said Bonzetti, suddenly thawing. “If the place had only been half searched, you could be sure the guy found it. Or maybe was scared before he finished. So it looks to me like he didn’t find it. And I bet I know the answer!”

  “What?”

  “Your boy friend found the papers! Right?”

  “Papers? What papers?”

  Bonzetti laughed, apparently very pleased. “Never mind,” he chuckled. “I got it all now. This Dolly had swiped some papers off Danvers. Why, I don’t know. But it’s a good chance that they were bad business for Pembroke. Because he asked me to put the dame on the spot and get them back. But my price being too high, he said he’d get somebody else. And that somebody else botched the job!” Bonzetti finished with another roar of laughter.

  There was comparative silence for a few minutes, broken only by the whine of tires which had moved onto a stretch of concrete or some other smooth surface, and by the occasional chuckle of Bonzetti. He was probably having a lot of fun thinking about the results of Pembroke’s hiring a less able agent to do his dirty work. Millicent began to get fidgety.

  “Where are we going?” she asked again.

  “A nice place, like I said,” Bonzetti insisted. “Say, I was just thinking; we’re going to be cooped up for quite a while.”

  Millicent groaned inwardly. “And you’ve got ideas, of course,” she observed.

  “Why not? I’ve sorta taken a shine to you. You seem to be a pretty sensible fem, and —”

  THE car gave a sudden jolt as it turned abruptly up a rough country lane. Bonzetti grabbed a strap at his side and placed his gun in its holster. For a couple of minutes it was necessary for both of them to keep their jaws tightly clenched to prevent biting off their tongues. Then came a surging stop which almost threw them from the seat.

  “Here we are, boss,” came Barney’s cheerful voice. “That road needs a going over.”

  “You need a going over,” rasped Bonzetti. “If you ever give me a ride like that again, I’ll make you drink a gallon of nitro and then I’ll push you off City Hall!”

  “I hate to slow down, boss,” Barney said, lamely. “Sorry if I —”

  Bonzetti made a vicious pass, but allowed it to fall just short of Barney’s jaw. This was another evidence of his braininess; for if Barney had actually been struck, his slow moving brain might not have worked in time to prevent him from hitting back. And that would have been bad for morale, especially if he had flattened his boss. And that probably is what would have happened, Barney being about fifty pounds heavier.

  Bonzetti’s rage evaporated as he looked at Millicent. His face softened and then looked regretful. Still being careful of her curls, he untied the blindfold. She blinked at the sudden light and then smiled.

  “I’m outa the mood now,” he stated. “I’ll talk to you later. Besides, I got an important phone call to make.”

  Bonzetti turned and entered a stone bungalow which set back from the driveway. A large calloused hand took Millicent’s elbow.

  “Don’t mind him, sister,” said Barney. “He always has them moods. Now me, I’m different. I’m always in the mood, come to think of it. So don’t go pining away...”

  “I wasn’t pining away,” Millicent assured him. “I was merely looking at the house. It does seem to be a nice place. Shall we go in?”

  Bonzetti had put through his telephone call. He turned and beckoned as she entered the living room. “It’s your boy friend,” he said, chuckling. “Tell him I’m going to take good care of you.”

  Chapter 18: The Life of O’Reilly

  HARVEY woke up with a splitting headache, and vaguely wondered why. Then he suddenly remembered. He jumped to his feet and looked at his watch. Eight o’clock. He hadn’t been kidnapped after all! He might just as well have gone to bed. A dozen aches in a dozen muscles amplified the thought.

  Hastily he stripped off his rumpled clothes and headed for the bathroom. He winced as stabs of pain shot through his head, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. A cup of coffee, when he got time for it, would fix the headache. In the meantime...

  He fumbled in a medicine closet for a moment and pulled out a bottle filled with a brownish liquid. There was a skull and crossed bones on the label, but that didn’t deter him in the least. He tilted it, pouring every last drop down his throat
.

  “What’s the skull for?” Omega asked.

  Harvey started, guiltily. “I’d forgotten you,” he said, a bit, unsteadily. “That’s to indicate poison, so nobody will drink it by mistake.”

  “You drank it,” Omega pointed out.

  “Not by mistake,” Harvey said, dashing cold water on his face. “I drank it on purpose.”

  “Then it’s not poison, except by mistake, eh?”

  Harvey dried himself briskly. “I’ve got friends,” he explained, laboriously. “They drink everything in sight sometimes. But they won’t drink poison. Therefore I always have an eye-opener left when I wake up. I’ll refill that, first chance I get, with the finest poison on the market.”

  Harvey was changing clothes as he talked, and occasionally casting a glance at the clock. He finished hurriedly, and headed for the door.

  “Wait a minute,” came Omega’s wail. “I want my duds, too.”

  Harvey groaned. “Not this time, please,” he said. “I’ve got to get a confession out of Danvers and I haven’t much time. Please!”

  There was a silence during which Harvey quaked inwardly and involuntarily braced himself against a punch in the stomach. Finally Omega said, “All right. I don’t want to cause any trouble.” He sounded so dejected that Harvey almost told him to get dressed, but he caught himself in time and strode out the door.

  He didn’t call a taxi, but instead headed for a repair shop a block away. His car was in running order, the bumper straightened and the blown tire replaced. He drove off feeling much better. His headache was tapering off; a cup of coffee would ease it completely if he could find time for one. The morning air and the urgency of the work to be done had sharpened his mind and made him forget his other problems.