_Alias, The Corpse_
It was after two o'clock in the morning when Black Hood alighted from
the cab near the location of Jack Carlson's auto livery garage. There
was not a sign of light in the garage building, and the big doors were
closed and locked. Black Hood went to the side entrance. This also was
locked. Reaching into one of the secret pockets of his wide black belt
he removed a curiously shaped tool of finest tempered steel. He had met
few locks in his adventures which this tool could not open. A deft
thrust, a twist of the wrist, and the door was no longer a barrier to
him.
He returned the tool to its pocket and pulled out a tiny flashlight. The
ray of light seemed swallowed by the gloom of the vast, lonely room that
lay before him. Here and there were parked cars, oil drums, huge vans.
Black Hood wondered how many of these vehicles had been used by the
members of the Eye's criminal pack.
He crossed the room to the concrete ramp that twisted up to the second
story. His footsteps whispered on the ramp. On the second floor there
was neither light nor sound--not so much as the squeak of a rat. His
flashlight pointed out the office, partitioned off from the rest of the
big room. He crossed quickly, pushed open the office door, spotted the
light switch. He turned the light switch to the on position, but no
illumination came from either the central fixtures nor the lamps on the
desk. A queer set-up, this.
He went into Jack Carlsons private office, tried the switch in there,
still without results. He pointed his flashlight beam around until it
fell on the huge iron safe in the corner. The safe door was standing
wide open, the interior cleanly empty. Queerer and queerer.
He paused in the center of the room, his nostrils dilated. There was a
faint, pleasant odor lingering in the room--a vaguely familiar odor.
Black Hood crossed to the door of a coat closet, jerked it open. A body
fell stiffly into the room, struck the carpet with a dull, jarring
sound. Black Hood sprang back, turned his light down at the corpse. He
dropped to his knees beside the dead man, grasped the shoulder of the
coat of the corpse, turned the man over on his back. And as he saw that
gray deathmask of a face, Black Hood knew that all his carefully worked
out solution had tumbled like a house of cards. The corpse on the floor
was that of Jack Carlson, and he had been dead for hours.
Carlson could not have been the Eye, for less than an hour ago, Black
Hood had seen and fought with the Eye!
* * * * *
Bullets had pierced the chest of Carlson in three places. High on the
left lapel of his dark suit coat was a white smudge made by some sort of
powder. Black Hood stepped to Carlson's desk, picked up an envelope and
a letter opener, and returned to the body. With great care, he scraped
some of the white powder from the coat lapel into the envelope. Then he
moistened the flap and sealed it.
Turning the flashlight away from the body, he suddenly noticed something
else. That white smudge on Carlson's coat glowed in the darkness.
The Black Hood's keen eyes narrowed on that patch of pale light. Then,
as though seized by a sudden inspiration, he sprang to Carlson's desk
and tipped up the desk lamp. He reached in under the shade and laid his
bare hand on the lamp bulb. The glass of that bulb was warm. Then he
crossed to the door, flipped the light switch to the off position, and
looked back in the direction of the corpse.
The pale glow of light which came from that powder smudge on Carlson's
lapel was no longer visible!
An understanding gleam came into Black Hood's eyes. At least he
understood how Jack Carlson had died, even if the mystery of the
identity of the Eye had deepened. He withdrew quietly from the room and
left the garage.
At the fringe of dawn the next morning, Black Hood was high in the
Catskills, in the mountain fastness of that whiskered old man who had
been his teacher--that man known simply as the Hermit. There in the
Hermit's laboratory, Black Hood and the old man made a careful analysis
of that scanty sample of powder which Black Hood had scraped from the
coat of the murdered Jack Carlson.
Finally, the old man straightened from the microscope over which he had
been bending.
"My son," he asked of the Black Hood, "what are your findings?"
"The stuff is face powder," Black Hood said. "But it's something else,
too. Mixed in with the face powder is another substance."
"Naphthionate of sodium," the Hermit said.
"That's what I thought," Black Hood nodded. "It's one of those
substances which becomes phosphorescent in ultra-violet light. And those
light bulbs in Jack Carlson's garage were ultra-violet bulbs. The light
from them is invisible to us poor mortals. You see what that means,
Hermit?"
"Not entirely," the Hermit said.
"It means that Jack Carlson was marked for murder. That face powder came
from the cheek of a woman--some woman who pressed her cheek against
Carlson's lapel. And a pretty gesture of affection it was, too. It made
Carlson so easy to kill!
"You see, the naphthionate of sodium in that powder sticks to just about
anything. Even if Carlson had brushed the face powder off, the
naphthionate would still have been there. When Carlson entered the
garage, he turned on the light switch. No visible light came from those
bulbs--only "black light" as it is called. And the killer was waiting.
In the black light, the killer could not be seen, but Carlson was
perfectly targeted by that smudge of naphthionate which glowed on his
lapel.
"It was all planned in advance--the lady's part to smear the powder on
Carlsons' lapel, a sort of Judas kiss. And then there was the killer's
part--to replace the ordinary bulbs with the ultra-violet type, and to
wait with drawn gun to shoot Carlson."
"Who, then, is the Eye?" the Hermit asked.
"I'll stick to my original idea," Black Hood said after a moment's
thought. "I still think that Jack Carlson is--was--the Eye. That alibi
he arranged for himself at Weedham's home, that warning from the Eye
which stated that Carlson was to die, his efforts to make Biggert's
death look as though the killer had been shooting at Carlson instead of
at Biggert--that all points to Carlson as the Eye. He was trying to make
himself appear the fair-haired boy in front of Sergeant McGinty.
"Further, and I think conclusive proof, is that signal device which was
used to 'warn' Carlson. That was--Carlson's own device. It was Vida
Gervais, I believe, who turned the signal light through the French
windows at the Weedham house. And then later, in a previously appointed
spot, she left the signal light for Carlson to pick up as he left the
house.
"Carlson changed the film in that light, putting in one which would
deliver two more of the Eye's messages--one of which went to Delancy,
telling him to come to a meeting tonight."
Black Hood propped one foot on a laboratory stool, rested an elbow on
his knee. His eyes were bright, his face animated.
"Don't you see that up to that point, Carlson was the Eye. But shortly
after he had planted the signal device for his messenger to pick up,
Carlson was murdered. The man who directed the criminal meeting later on
wasn't Carlson, because Carlson was dead. It means that somebody took
over where Carlson left off. It means that somebody muscled in on
Carlson's little racket, killed Carlson, began playing the part of the
Eye."
"Which means," the Hermit said, "that you're not at the end of your task
yet."
"Not by a long shot," Black Hood replied. "And I'm wondering about this
Vida Gervais. Is she the woman whose face powder was smeared on Jack
Carlson's lapel? I thought the odor of the powder was familiar. And
here's another thing I didn't mention."
Black Hood searched the pockets of his wide belt, brought out his
fountain pen.
"Here's a little item which I snitched from the hand of the murdered
Biggert, who was William Weedham's personal secretary. It's a check, and
I've scarcely had time to look at it myself."
He unscrewed the cap of the fountain pen and removed the piece of rolled
up yellow paper which he had taken from the dead Biggert's hand. He
flattened out the slip of paper and placed it on the table in front of
the Hermit.
It was a check in the sum of forty thousand dollars, made out to the
order of Major Paxton and signed by William Weedham, the major's
brother-in-law. The check had been endorsed and paid through a New York
bank.
"I think this is the reason that Biggert was killed," Black Hood said.
"Weedham said that Biggert was going over his personal bank account, and
it's entirely possible that Biggert discovered there was something queer
about that check."
"A forgery, perhaps," the Hermit suggested.
"That was my idea," Black Hood agreed. "Anyway, that gives us a couple
of leads--Vida Gervais and Major Paxton. And if both of them are knocked
off before I can get the truth out of them--" Black Hood laughed without
mirth.