Chapter 9 No.9

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.

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