Murder Behind the Scenes
"I got the address where those cabs delivered the goons who jumped us," the chemist squeaked. "What about you?"
The attorney dropped into a chair facing the large desk. "My initial inquiries and investigations into the business dealings of the Whithers and McCarthy Shipping Company turn up no obvious funny business - nothing that would lead to their being a target, anyway. So perhaps the attack on their tanker in Boston was just a fluke."
"You think so?"
"Perhaps, but I'm not entirely convinced," Ham said. He rested his chin on the silver knob of his sword cane. "Especially after speaking with Irving McCarthy, the company's vice president."
"You got to meet him?"
"Not yet. The company president, Franklin Whithers, is in Europe, checking on the status of the company's holdings there in the wake of the war. But I got hold of McCarthy on the phone. He didn't want to meet at the company's Fifth Avenue offices." The lawyer frowned. "Instead, I'm supposed to meet him at their wharfside warehouse office - where we can talk 'more privately,' as he put it." Ham rattled off the warehouse address.
"Hey, that's close to where I'm going," Monk said. "When are you supposed to meet this McCarthy character?"
Ham checked his watch. "In less than an hour."
"C'mon," Monk picked up a small suitcase and twitched his bullet head toward the door. "I'll drive."
Taking one of Doc's cars from the skyscraper's underground garage, Monk and Ham soon pulled up before a warehouse displaying a large sign proclaiming it the property of Whithers and McCarthy Shipping Company. A tall fence surrounded the structure, but the gate was open and unattended.
Monk pulled up by a door Ham indicated on the side of the building. Two other cars were already parked there. "McCarthy said to use this entrance. Let's go."
The two entered. The cavernous enclosure was only dimly lit, and there was no activity occurring inside. However, the warehouse was filled with crates, boxes and metal drums stacked and bound onto large pallets.
"Kinda quiet for a shipping outfit," Monk noted. "Hello!" his squeaky voice bellowed out and echoed.
Ham gestured toward a staircase nearby that led to a row of offices lining one wall and overlooking the floor of the warehouse. The two men clattered up the steps to the gallery that fronted the offices. The first two office doors were fitted with windows made of pebbled glass. The interiors were dark. The third door was solid wood. Painted in black on its upper panel was the word MANAGEMENT.
"This is it," Ham said. He rapped the door panel using the knob of his sword cane.
"Come in," responded a voice from within.
Monk led the way into the office, swinging the door inward. As he stepped inside, a gun butt slammed down on his head, swung by someone standing behind the door. The door crashed shut, and before Ham could draw his sword, a gun barrel was pressed against his throat.
Monk, groggy, squirmed on the floor. Ham twisted his eyes around. The gun barrel led to a big western-style six shooter held by a weird-looking character: a man wearing a tuxedo, boots, a scruffy cowboy hat and goggles.
"Who are you?" the stranger demanded.
Ham cleared his throat. "We have an appointment with Irving McCarthy."
Curly Wolfe pressed the gun more tightly against the attorney's throat. "What about?"
"We had questions about the tanker that blew up in Boston," Ham answered.
Monk crawled to a nearby corner, where he curled up and groaned.
"Yore pardner is shore one ugly monkey," the gunman said.
"This isn't one of his better days," Ham noted.
"Well, I reckon you're gonna be disappointed in meeting Mr. McCarthy," Curly Wolfe declared. "I just got here a few bits before you boys showed up, and I was likewise disappointed."
Ham realized the smell of gunpowder hung in the room. "Who are you?" he asked.
"I already asked you that," the tuxedoed cowboy snarled, "and you ain't really answered to my satisfaction yet." He ground the end of the gun barrel into Ham's Adam's apple.
The lawyer hacked against the discomfort. Ham quickly considered the danger of revealing his and Monk's association with Doc Savage. Here stood a man wearing a tuxedo with goggles - just how stable could he be? "I'm an attorney," Ham answered, "Theodore Marley Brooks. I've been checking into this tanker explosion."
"Hah!" spat the gunman. One hairless brow rose, and the worn Stetson tilted back from the man's face. "Well good luck, Mr. Lawyer Man. Take some advice from Curly Wolfe - you'll be a whole lot healthier checking into something less explosive, pardner."
He stepped back and gestured with his six-gun for Ham to move away from the office door. When the attorney complied, Curly Wolfe said, "I'm a-leaving right now. And if you don't want to get done for," and he shook his pistol meaningfully at Ham's face, "you and your varmint pal won't be coming out this here door for a good ten minutes."
"Don't worry about that," Ham replied.
"Oh, I ain't worried a bit," Curly Wolfe laughed and left the office, slamming the door behind him. The lawyer heard the cowboy's bootheels clattering down the stairs that led to the warehouse floor, then the slam of the farther door.
Ham crouched beside the moaning Monk and helped him sit upright. "Your noggin will soon be a phrenologist's dream," he said.
"After today's fun and games, I feel kinda like Humpty Dumpty," the chemist groaned. He looked around. "Did you let that creep get away? You didn't even try to stop him," Monk complained.
"Not only does he wear a perfectly good tuxedo badly," Ham answered, "but it's hard to argue with an uncivilized man carrying a gun that big."
"Why didn't you use your normal shyster methods and talk him into a coma?"
"We're lucky," Ham retorted, as he eyed Monk's garb: a striped jacket worn over a polka dot shirt and checked trousers. "He could have shot us both when he caught sight of your outfit."
Monk uttered some words that would set fire to most grades of paper.
The attorney ignored the invective. "I wonder what's become of Irving McCarthy," Ham mused, "and if Mr. Curly Wolfe knows anything about it?"
"No use wondering about McCarthy," Monk squeaked. From his seat in the corner, he could see past the edge of the large desk located opposite the office door. "I think he's been here the whole time."
Ham turned. Hidden behind the desk sprawled a body, a bullet hole in its chest.
"That's McCarthy, all right," Ham sighed. "I've seen his photo." He went over to study the corpse.
Monk slowly stood, a bit unsteadily, and leaned against the desk for support. "Think this Wolfe fella did the dirty deed?"
Ham unbuttoned McCarthy's shirt and peered at the wound. "From what the cowboy said - if you can trust that - it sounded like he got here after the murder. And if he killed McCarthy, why didn't he shoot us as well?"
"That's a thought," agreed Monk. "But killers are weird folks - who can explain what they're likely to do?"
"True," the attorney said. He stood up from the body. "But from my only slightly practiced eye, I'd say that hole was made by a smaller-caliber gun than that .44 Wolfe was waving my way."
Ham began shuffling through the papers spread on the desk and in its drawers. He found shipping invoices and a few memos, both recent and old, including some papers tucked into a pulp-paper magazine - nothing that immediately threw any light on the mystery of the exploding tanker or McCarthy's murder.
After using the office phone to report the murder to the police, Ham and Monk departed. Only one car remained parked at the warehouse - the car, apparently, of Irving McCarthy, who certainly wouldn't be requiring its use again.
Written By:
Duane Spurlock
based on notes by:
Kenneth Robeson
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