Dead Men Kill

 

In a voice which held the icy tones of death, the dark-clothed man in the open doorway rasped, “I have come to kill you, Gordon! I have come to kill you!”

 

Gordon stiffened in his massive chair. His ruddy face went ashen; his thick fingers clutched at the corners of his desk. “Jackson!” he shrieked.

 

The killer’s eyes were glassy. His hands reached out before him, grasping, talonlike. The pallor of the dead was on his wasted face. He was clothed in the garments of the grave! Silently, relentlessly, he walked forward.

 

“Stop!” screamed Gordon. “My God, Jackson, what have I ever done to you?”

 

The answer was toneless, harsh. “I have come to kill you, Gordon!”

 

The clutching hands came closer. Gordon covered his face, tried to cower away. Beside him was a telephone. Furtively he reached out for it.

 

If Jackson saw, he gave no heed. Blindly he came against the outer edge of the desk. Slowly he skirted the obstruction and came on.

 

“Police!” cried Gordon into the receiver.

 

If Jackson heard, he gave no sign. His hard, glassy eyes, sunken and horrible, were fixed on his victim’s throat. Gordon stared up and caught the odor which had assailed him from the first. It was the smell of moist earth mingled with the perfumes of the undertaking parlor. The stench of the grave!

 

“I have come to kill you, Gordon!” repeated the murderer. It was as though this phrase was all that remained in the man’s mind.

 

“My God, Jackson! Get away!” Too late, Gordon tried to scramble out from behind his desk.

 

Jackson lunged, hands convulsing. When the sunken eyes were a foot away from Gordon’s, the fingers snapped down on the victim’s throat. There was a shriek and the crash of the overturned chair. Gordon whipped about, writhing under the maniacal strength of the hands.

 

Shuddering sobs were coming from the victim’s distorted mouth. Slowly the body under the hands relaxed and lay still. Jackson’s fingers still clutched the throat. 

 

Seconds ticked by before the murderer moved. Then, with his expressionless face turned toward the door, he walked slowly from the room.

 

The toneless phrase came again. “I have come to kill you, Gordon!” And the man who was dressed for the grave disappeared into the corridor.

 

Inspector Leonard rushed from his desk into the squad room and spotted Detective-Sergeant Terry Lane. “Lane! Snap into it. Gordon’s been murdered and I think it’s a clue on your Burnham killing. The man on the switchboard heard Gordon shout ‘My God, Jackson, get away!’ into the phone. Get out there right away!”

 

Detective-Sergeant Terrence Lane needed no further word. Like a shot, his wiry figure hurtled through the door, plunged down a flight of steps and swung aboard the scout car at the curb.

 

“The Gordon residence!” shouted Lane to Monahan at the wheel. “And step on it!”

 

The car roared up the street, Lane hanging to the running board, his blue eyes flashing, the wind tearing at his raven black hair. Monahan had given the wild figure a brief glance, decided that Terry Lane meant what he said, and the squad car ripped past a red light, lanced up a traffic-jammed avenue, screamed around a curve and then came to a stop before the imposing mansion which was the home of the late Ralph Gordon, a well-known wealthy sportsman.

 

If Detective Lane was disheveled, he had good reason to be. For a week he had been on the trail of a killer he could never reasonably expect to apprehend. The papers were blatant in their denouncement of the police force in general and Terry Lane in particular.

 

Since that fatal day seven days before when Edward Burnham, head of a power trust, had been found dead in his home, Lane’s life had been a nightmare. He had not known which way to turn, since the only conceivable clue had pointed the guilt to Hamilton, secretary to Burnham. And that was impossible. For Hamilton had been dead and buried for two weeks!

 

Lane sprinted up the steps, kicked open the front door and stepped inside. Then, undecided, he stopped and stared about him. In the hall of that great home, in spite of the clamor of traffic outside its door, silence reigned. It was the sinister, clammy silence of death. An odor came to him oppressively.

 

Worry flicked across Lane’s lean, nervous face and he looked down at his feet. There, in the center of the hallway, lay a blue gray cotton glove. When he picked it up, Lane again smelled that faint odor. Suddenly he recognized it.

 

It was a pallbearer’s glove that he had found and from it came the stench of moist earth and sickening perfume. The odor of the grave!

 

Jamming his first clue into his pocket, Lane ran into the room at his right and then stopped abruptly.

 

As many times as the detective had witnessed death, his stomach retched at the sight before him. Gordon was sprawled on the floor, rigid and staring. His once-dapper clothes were ripped about the throat. The flesh beneath his jaw was blue and swollen. But it was the face which held Lane’s gaze. Surprise, horror and disbelief were mirrored there so strongly that even death had not erased them.

 

Lane stepped forward with a shudder. He looked quickly about for some telltale bit of evidence, but nothing untoward rewarded him.

 

From the street came the noise of sirens and screeching brakes, heralding the arrival of the wagon and the coroner. With them, Lane knew, would come the newshawks and cameramen. He dreaded their arrival more than he did the prospects of solving this second murder. It was certain that a few more scathing articles such as those which had recently appeared would ruin Terry Lane’s promising career.