MESSENGERS OF DEATH
STEVE CRONIN followed a round-about path to the cigar store that was run by Georgie Sommers. The time had not yet arrived for his prospective alibi but he realized that it was advisable for him to utilize discretion during every stage of this night’s venture. In fact, he probably would not have been summoned to Nick Savoli’s apartment, but for the fact that he had been a frequent visitor there during the past few weeks.
The cigar store was located on a side street at the edge of the Loop. Cronin entered the place and was pleased to observe that it was virtually deserted. Georgie Sommers, a rotund man who looked like an ex-bartender, stood behind the counter in his shirt sleeves, and waved his hand in greeting when the gunman arrived.
“Hello, Georgie,” said Steve Cronin. “Not many of the boys here tonight. Checking business getting slow?”
“Not a bit of it,” replied Sommers. “They’ve all been here and gone.”
“I’m kind of late, eh? Well, I’m not going anywhere for a while. How about a game of cards, Georgie? Anything doing?”
Sommers looked at Cronin rather skeptically. He had not been told whom to expect. He wanted to be sure that the gangster was the right man.
Sommers knew that Cronin was well established with both Savoli and Borrango. Nevertheless he believed in being careful.
“A game of cards, eh?” he questioned.
“You said it, Georgie,” answered Cronin. “Any of the bunch upstairs now?”
The cigar-store owner shook his head. Then he seemed to gain a sudden thought.
“Say, Steve,” he remarked, in a confidential tone. “I’ve got a girl friend who would like to meet you. She’s coming over here in a little while. How about coming upstairs until she arrives? Maybe we can play cards — and maybe — “
He paused and made the motion of lifting a glass to his lips. The action brought a grin to Cronin’s face.
“Good stuff, Georgie?”
“The best there is, Steve. I don’t peddle it. Just keep a little for my friends. Came over the border last week.”
“O.K. with me, Georgie.”
The cigar man opened the back door of the room and called upstairs. A young clerk came down, and Sommers ordered him to take charge of the shop.
Then he led Steve Cronin up the stairs, to a room where the blinds were drawn. He brought out a bottle and two glasses.
WHILE the two men were engaged in conversation, a slight incident occurred in the cigar store below.
A man staggered into the place and ordered a pack of cigarettes. He found fault with the brand that was given to him, and began an argument with the clerk.
The clerk went to the show case behind the counter to obtain the cigarettes required. When he turned around, he was surprised to see that the man had left. There was no one else in the store at the time.
The clerk decided that his customer had walked out. So he forgot all about the matter.
Had the clerk been watching the customer, he would have been surprised by the man’s actions. For the stranger had not left the store.
The moment that the clerk had turned, he had moved noiselessly to the back of the store and had slipped through the door to the stairway.
Once behind the door, the man strode rapidly up the stairs. Yet he moved with catlike stealth. He paused outside the half-opened door of the room where Georgie Sommers and Steve Cronin were conversing. The cigar-store owner was giving instructions to the gangster.
“Walk across the hall, Steve,” he was saying, “and go down the back stairs. You’ll find a door leading out on the alley. Come in the same way. It has a trick lock. Pull out the knob before you turn it.”
“All right, Georgie,” replied Cronin.
“You’ll find me here when you get back,” added Sommers. “Don’t lose any time. The sooner you’re here, the better.”
The gangster did not reply. He apparently decided that the sooner he started the better it would be. He opened the door of the room, and as he did so, the man in the hallway merged suddenly with the shadowy wall.
The door opened outward. There was a small space in back of it, and the man was lost in that narrow hiding place.
Steve Cronin found the back stairs, and groped his way down through the darkness. He stumbled once or twice, and made some noise despite his carefulness, for the stairs were rough and winding.
The man who followed him made no noise. He moved silently, as though possessed of eyesight that could see through the darkness.
Steve Cronin opened the back door and closed it behind him. He had not gone more than thirty feet along the alley before the door again opened, just far enough to allow passage for the form of a tall, thin man.
Cronin happened to glance backward at that particular moment, yet he saw nothing. For the door had opened softly and slowly, and the man who had come through the opening was clad in a black cloak that made him invisible in the gloom of the alley.
TWENTY minutes later, Steve Cronin arrived at Hallahan’s garage. He glanced up and down the street before he entered the building. Then he stepped through the doorway, and immediately spotted the touring car for which he was looking.
The automobile stood in an obscure corner. The gangster walked to it, unobserved, and climbed in the large back seat. He noted that the flap curtains were on the sides of the car. That was natural, for the night was cloudy, and rain was threatening.
A voice spoke from the darkness.
“That you, Cronin?”
“Right.”
“Lay low then. I’m McGinnis. We’ve got a couple of minutes to wait for Brodie. He’s driving us to night.”
Steve Cronin recognized the name of Brodie. He realized that he was with two of the most stalwart workers in Nick Savoli’s mob of killers.
Brodie was the man who had driven the car in which Savoli had escaped the gunfire of a rival gang chief — a man who had been killed afterward as a reward for his attempt on Savoli’s life. “Machine-gun” McGinnis was reputed to have fired the fatal shots that had brought down two of Savoli’s enemies while they were walking along Michigan Boulevard.
“Here’s Brodie now,” whispered McGinnis.
Steve Cronin turned toward the door through which he had entered the rear seat, and thought he detected a motion of the curtains. Then he heard a noise on the other side, and looked to see Brodie entering the driver’s seat. He could not distinguish the man’s features in the darkness.
“Funny thing,” said Cronin, half aloud. “I thought he was getting in back with us.”
He looked around to make sure that he had not been deceived. A pile of robes lay on the other side of the back seat, and as Cronin reached in that direction, his hand encountered cold metal — the barrel of a machine gun.
“Stay over on this side,” warned McGinnis. “I’ve got the typewriter ready, there, under the blankets. Don’t touch it until we need it.”
“Ready?” asked Brodie.
“Go ahead,” replied McGinnis. “You know where we’re going. Over by Birch’s drug store.”
The touring car rolled slowly from the garage, and as it reached the street, McGinnis drew Cronin to the floor beside him.
“Lay low,” he whispered. “Make it look like the car was empty. We’ll get the typewriter ready in a minute.”
In gangland’s parlance, the word typewriter meant machine gun; the instrument of death was so called because its rapid clicks resembled the noise of typewriter keys.
“We’re working from this side,” explained McGinnis. “This guy Clarendon is something of a dumb cluck, even though he thinks he’s smart. He’s going to be waiting on the corner for us.”
“How was that fixed?” asked Cronin.
“I don’t know,” replied McGinnis. “But he fell for some line of hokum, or he wouldn’t be there now. There’s just a chance that we won’t find him, but Borrango says that he’ll be there, sure.”
The automobile swung into a wide street. Far up ahead an electric sign displayed the name of Birch.
“That’s the spot, up ahead,” whispered McGinnis to Cronin, preparing the gun for action. “He ought to be outside right now.”
As a matter of fact, Morris Clarendon was outside of Birch’s drug store at that very moment. He had been waiting for more than fifteen minutes, and he intended to wait indefinitely. For the assistant prosecutor had arranged a meeting, at that place, with a man whom he believed would be an important material witness in a forthcoming trial.
Clarendon did not know that the person whom he expected would never keep the appointment. Gangsters had killed the man two nights before, and the victim’s body had not yet been found.
Savoli’s emissaries were thorough in their methods. They had learned of the rendezvous, and they knew that Clarendon had promised to wait until his man arrived. The drug store had been chosen as a meeting place because it was in a district unfrequented by gangsters.
The young attorney had no thought of impending danger. He paid no attention to the vehicles passing in the street. Standing in the full light of the corner, he was watching for the approach of the man he expected.
It was a freak of chance that warned Morris Clarendon of the doom which threatened him; and like so many of Fate’s grim jokes, the warning was to come too late.
A gust of wind swept across the sidewalk, and carried a hat from a man’s head. Clarendon saw the hat roll into the street. It was captured by its owner, and the man leaped back to the sidewalk to escape an approaching car.
Clarendon saw this, and the movement of the car immediately held his attention. For the automobile was a touring car with sideflaps; it was swinging toward the curb in an eccentric fashion; and its whole appearance and action betrayed its purpose.
Morris Clarendon recognized it as a death car, and in one brief instant he realized that he was the object of its threat.
He looked for a place to dodge; but he was too late. The car was almost upon him, now.
He was standing twenty feet from the corner, against the wall of the building. There was no doorway near. Clarendon’s knees could not respond to his desire to rush for safety.
All was futile. The car was at the curb, swinging slowly onward, and beneath the flap of the rear seat the young district attorney saw the projecting muzzle of the machine gun — a blackened muzzle that looked like the mouthpiece of a telephone.
That muzzle meant death! Quick death, and sure death. There was no escaping it.
So, with grim determination, Morris Clarendon flattened his body against the wall, ready to receive the fatal bullets which would end his life.