CHAPTER ONE

Sifting Evidence

THE shrieks and moans of sirens greeted Tom Delaney as he swung into the corridor which led to his father’s office. He paused for a moment to listen, feeling somewhat ill at ease and out of place.

To a detective-sergeant, fires were the business of another world. But his father, old Blaze Delaney, chief of the fire-eaters, had called him and Tom Delaney had responded, wondering just how a detective could hope to extricate a fireman from an intricate web of circumstances.

Before Detective-Sergeant Tom Delaney could knock, his father swooped out of his office, drawing on slicker and helmet as he ran. Blaze Delaney’s fire-reddened face was set and hard and his smoke-stung eyes caught and held the image of his son.

“Another one!” he shouted, his mustache bristling. “Come on!”

The detective swung into line, hard put to keep up with the racing old man. When Blaze Delaney swung into the red car without pausing and sent it hurtling away from the curb, his son was forced to catch a precarious hold on the side, swinging from there into the seat.

“What’s up?” asked Tom.

“What’s up, be hanged!” bellowed Blaze Delaney. “There’s plenty up, and if you didn’t keep your big ears so close to the woes of petty thieves you’d know that your old man was about to be thrown out.”

Blaze Delaney thrown out? The detective blinked and tried to imagine such a circumstance. As long as he could remember, his father had been lord of the city’s fires. His father was an immovable institution, a character of great repute.

Tom Delaney watched the old fire-eater’s anger vent itself against the traffic. He always drove his own cars, did Blaze, for the good reason that he could drive faster than anyone on the department’s rolls.

“I’ve noticed,” began Tom, cautiously, “that we’ve been having more fires than usual, but—”

“More fires than usual! Humph! Young fellow, we’ve had two hundred and fifty percent more fires in the past two months than in any other corresponding period. If you don’t know that, you don’t even read the newspapers. Right now the Tyler Department Store is burning, and it’s a concrete building that can’t burn.”

He went around a corner on something less than two wheels, missed a pair of streetcars and gave a taxi driver the scare of his life. The automatic siren was wailing, almost drowning conversation in the coupe.

“But,” said the detective, “why should you be kicked out just because—”

“That’s why I sent for you. You’re supposed to be good at riddles.”

“You mean you think it’s arson on a big scale?”

Blaze Delaney grunted loudly. “I don’t think it, I know it.”

Tom’s dark eyebrows went up and his shoulders moved in the slightest kind of a shrug.

“I thought you had a special department which investigated such things,” he murmured.

“That’s what you think.”

“Well, I’m telling you this, Dad. I don’t know anything about fires and what starts ’em. But if you’re in trouble and you think I can be of help, here I am.”

“Good,” said the chief. “That’s what I wanted you to say. If this thing doesn’t stop, I’m out of a job and my reputation is wrecked. Well, there’s the fire.” Blaze Delaney rocketed up to the lines and jumped out.

“Confound that Number Three. I told ’em to wait for me before they—” And then a swelling wall of smoke swallowed both the chief and his words, and the detective-sergeant was left with his riddle.

Tyler’s Department Store was a welter of shooting smoke and snapping flames. The entire first floor was filled with lightning-like tongues, against which the thin streams of water seemed fragile and aimless.

Tom Delaney sat still and watched the toiling firemen at their seemingly hopeless task. Dusk was falling and lending color to the blaze. The flames began to recede slowly and sullenly under the onslaught of water and chemicals.

The detective looked up to see a tall, incredibly thin man approaching the red coupe.

“Where’s the old man?” asked the newcomer.

The detective shrugged. “In there eating smoke, like he always is.”

“You’re his son, that right? I’m Blackford, head of the Investigation Department.”

Tom Delaney shook the limp hand with a feeling of distaste.

“Three girls must have sizzled,” continued Blackford. “I can’t account for them. Too bad.”

“Looks like arson, doesn’t it?” said the detective.

“Don’t know. I never can tell until I get inside. There was a garage under the first floor and I think we’ll find it started from oily waste. It usually does. Some mechanic gets careless with a cigarette butt and zowie, there you are.”

“When do you investigate?” asked Tom.

“Soon as it cools down. That’ll be in about another hour. Why, you figuring on sticking around?”

“Do you mind if I do?”

“No,” said Blackford. “Glad to have you. Then you can okay my report.” He started away into the crowd, his eyes whipping about as though still searching for the fire chief.

Almost an hour later, Blaze Delaney came back to his car. He was black with soot and smoke, and dripping from innumerable encounters with lashing streams of water. He had an odor about him like that of wet ashes.

“Hell,” roared the old man. “There’s another one across town. Residence.”

Tom whistled. “I’ll stay here and go over the ruins with Blackford.”

“Know him? That’s good. Fine fellow, Blackford; he’ll show you the ropes if you want to learn. Go on, pile out. I’m in a hurry.”

Tom Delaney piled out and stood on the soaked asphalt watching the red coupe go screaming out of sight. Engines and hose carts were pulling out in its wake, carrying their cargoes of red-eyed, dripping men who swore wearily as they realized that the night’s work promised no respite.

Blackford was standing just outside the gutted door of the department store, playing a flashlight over the black interior. He turned the beam on the detective.

“Hello! I was hoping you’d be along. It looks safe enough inside, but don’t move anything. That second floor looks like it’s sagging in spots.”

Lazy spirals of steam were rising up from the ravaged counters to hang in the air like a choking poisonous gas. Goods were heaped in sullen, charred piles which dripped gray water. Two men in raincoats stood dismally beside the wall, looking at the chaos.

“Hello, Blackford,” said one. “Hope you get this thing figured out in a hurry. There’s a hundred thousand in goods insurance alone.”

“Yeah,” grunted the other. “You would be worried about your blamed insurance. What about my company, that’s paying all this? If we find out it’s arson, it’s going to go hard with somebody. Look alive, Blackford.” Slowly he trudged out of the shambles into the flickering glitter of the street lights.

“That first one was Tyler himself,” said the investigator. “The other guy was Morley, of Graysons’ Insurance Company. Those insurance guys always give me a pain. They act like I cause all these burns. Let’s go down in the basement and look around at what’s left of the garage.”

Tom Delaney coughed as smoke stung his throat.

“I thought it looked as though it started on the main floor,” he objected. “How could flame get through this concrete?”

“Elevator shafts,” said Blackford. “It always looks as though it started on the main floor. That’s because fire burns upward.”

“Sounds reasonable, but I think I’ll look around up here.”

“Go ahead,” said Blackford, amiably, and followed the detective over to the front wall.

Tom Delaney broke out his own flashlight and stabbed it through the foggy interior, probing into piles of goods and along the floor. He went slowly ahead, marveling that anyone could ever trace arson in such a hideous shambles.

Then he stopped with something like a shudder and played the light on a charred hand which jutted out from beneath a counter. He bent down and then straightened up.

“I’ll send in the morgue wagon when we go outside. That’s one of your missing girls, Blackford.”

Blackford looked quickly away. “I found the other two.”

“Uh-huh. Both dead, weren’t they? This isn’t only arson, it’s first-degree murder. That is, if the fire was more than an accident. Funny they couldn’t have seen the flames coming at them.”

“Panic,” muttered the investigator. “People get trampled.”

“Sure, but it was almost closing time when this fire started, and there couldn’t have been many in the building. I think we’ll find that it started on this floor, and in more than one place.”

Blackford sighed. “It takes a detective to figure all that out. I wouldn’t have thought about it, I guess.”

Tom Delaney said nothing more. He walked ahead still lashing the counters with his light. This must have been the dress goods department, he judged. Then once more he stopped and stood looking down. Blackford came up and peered over the detective’s shoulder.

“Bottle glass,” said Delaney. “Now what the devil could bottle glass be doing here?”

Blackford shrugged and picked a fragment up, sniffing at it.

“Furniture polish. They used it to polish the counters, I guess.”

But the detective took the fire-dulled splinter from the investigator and shoved it into his pocket.

“Maybe so, but I’ll analyze this for explosive or acid. Nothing like being thorough.”

He began to search the floor over a radius of fifteen feet. Painstakingly he went over the charred and littered surface, moving unrecognizable objects, examining others. And then he found a piece of copper wire. Slowly he traced it down and uncovered another thread of metal.

“Does insulation burn off extension cords?” he asked.

“Sometimes.”

“But if these things had had insulation on them, there’d be charred pieces. And”—he reached down and scooped up a bit of straw—“excelsior.”

Blackford smiled tolerantly. “They pack a lot of things in excelsior in department stores. Come on, I’ve got to get busy. We have a certain routine that usually gives us the answer, and I’ll have to have a report in another hour. I’m going outside and get another battery for my light. This thing is getting pretty dim.”

Delaney nodded. “I’ll go with you.”

They worked through the choking fog to the door, skirting the ruins in the aisles and carefully avoiding the spot where the dead girl lay.

When they stepped into the open air, Delaney took a long, deep, grateful breath.

“I’ll get the morgue squad,” he said, “and then go up to Headquarters and analyze this glass.” Idly he watched a black sedan draw up to the curb not ten feet away.

“Okay,” said Blackford. “If you find anything—”

A pistol shot, as vicious as it was unexpected, gouged the concrete near Delaney’s feet. A harsh, strident voice bellowed:

“Up with the mitts, you guys, or we’ll let you have it.”

Delaney started to reach for his own gun and then realized that he was checkmated. Slowly he elevated his hands and watched two men walk toward him through the thin stream of light from the street lamp.

“Connely,” grunted the detective. “And Soapy Jackson.”

“Know us, do you?” grated Connely. “Seen us in the lineup, that it? Turn around, both of you!”

Delaney turned because he knew that this pair always meant what they said. He saw Soapy Jackson bring a blackjack down on Blackford’s head—and then something crashed against his own skull. He stumbled bitterly forward into unconsciousness.