City for Ransom, page 32
part #1 of Alastair Ransom Series
“He’s cunning enough to know it’d take an elephant gun or Moose Muldoon to bring you down.”
“Well . . . Muldoon’s been set straight.”
For a moment, they thought the carriage would go over on its side.
“Do you think he’d really dare strike the ladies in their home with Tewes present?”
“He’s likely planning to kill them in their beds.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Sensationalism, to strike a deeper fear in us.”
“To say we’re unsafe when snug in our own beds?”
“And he’s reaching higher along the scale of respectability, money, and social standing.”
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“He really is a hatter, isn’t he?”
“A mad hatter.”
“But why? Just because he can?”
“He alone holds the answer to that.”
“Faster!” Griff now shouted even as he tumbled about the cab, banging into every wall and door.
“Get what you can from the whip!” shouted Ransom.
The wheels spun madly beneath them, screaming, and on sharp turns now left the ground.
Stumpf did it . . . he did it all. All the killing, that is.
Waldo didn’t even feel he was inside his body when Stumpf, at that moment of taking life—willed the essence of the dying into him. It was why Stumpf liked mirrors, liked killing them before mirrors.
He’d done it both ways of course, but the thrill and satisfaction became so much more heightened if he could stare into both their eyes and those of Stumpf at the moment of knowing. The moment of crossing over. From behind the garrote, before a mirror, he could watch all the eyes!
Stumpf could more readily act at the instant of death to net and catch the soul within his web of wanton lust if he knew the very instant of the soul’s leap toward the next dimension. Wanton lust—part and parcel of it—as Stumpf so enjoyed what Waldo Denton’s body felt at the death leap.
Stumpf got Waldo an erection—that true insignia, emblem of corporeal lust.
“All of life becomes more pronounced and clear and worth the discovery if a man is in his right spirit,” Waldo Denton was telling Jane Francis Ayers and Gabby—as he’d come to know their names. He’d first been attracted to them and their home that night he’d killed Purvis at the train station. The same night he’d seen Gabby and Cliffton kissing below the lights near the lagoon. He’d been kicking around the fair, wandering, exploring, one side of him determining good locations for murder as he scouted for Stumpf, while 310
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another side looked and hungered for precisely what that college boy had—a future, yes, but also a future with a beautiful young thing. A promise at a fulfilling life of happiness, warmth, camaraderie, mutual respect, admiration . . . mutual pleasure. All things denied him.
How was it Shakespeare put it in the performance he’d seen at the theater? “If I cannot prove a hero, I shall prove a villain. . . .” Words to take heart in. Words that indicated to Waldo that he might be considered important by everyone he came into contact with, that he could affect their lives.
But even more, the play was the thing that informed Waldo that deviant thoughts belonged to others as well—even to the most famous author on the planet, William Shakespeare.
Giving hope that he perhaps was not so absolutely alone and craven as he’d felt since childhood.
Stumpf and Waldo had wormed past the Tewes threshold to allow Stumpf his chance. That was what Waldo had become—a pimp to the base Stumpf inside, who didn’t even want to spare Gabrielle, the most beautiful and innocent and pleasant and most kind person ever to address Waldo. She, and the idea of a future relationship with Gabby, remained the only thought in his head that held Stumpf back now.
So far as the older woman was concerned, Waldo had no compunction about turning Stumpf loose. When he did let Sleepeck Stumpf have his way, however, it would destroy any hairsbreadth of a chance to make Gabby see him . . . really see him and eventually see into him and eventually somehow understand the so-called Phantom of the Fair.
Enough to eventually accept his past ill behavior and forgive his transgressions as only unconditional love could free the beast within to slink off elsewhere, back to its den to hiber-nate and hopefully die of its own loneliness and suffering, which, in the end, Waldo Denton had no part of and had never had any part of—and so his mind raced at the moment of sipping tea and chewing birthday cake.
She had invited Waldo in—dear, sweet angelic Gabrielle, CITY FOR RANSOM
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with the smiling assent of the woman Gabrielle called Aunt Jane.
Earlier . . . it seemed moments earlier, he’d watched Gabby as her aunt called out to her, something about being out alone after dark, that a girl of her social position, being the daughter of Dr. Tewes, she must not give the gossip columnists a scrap to chew on, not even an appearance of impropriety. It had made him, sitting atop the coach, impulsively call back, “Oh, no ma’am, no one could think ill of Miss Gabrielle, never!” That’s when Gabby smiled at him, her attention like a balm. Each time he drove her home from the university, where he intentionally waited, turning away other fares, Gabby gave him all her attentiveness while he spoke of one day owning his own farm and farm animals. No one had ever given him what she offered—attentiveness.
At that moment when she’d smiled up at him, what he saw in her was so amazing. She’d alighted from the cab like a floating princess with hidden wand and invisible wings.
She’d forgotten her umbrella in his cab, a memory lapse or an invitation? Of course, she wanted him to return. She liked men like him. Cliffton hadn’t been so different from him, not really? Save his prospects . . . save his dreams. But even in their dreams, especially their secret desires, to have this angel of earth caress their bodies and touch their trapped souls . . . even in this, he was no different from Purvis. The two of them clinging on Gabrielle, wanting the honor of being possessed by her, and wanting the honor of being able to address her as an enduring love, as her closest intimate on earth, to call Gabby his. And if he could not have her, surely . . . surely Stumpf would.
Waldo wanted more for her . . . more for himself . . .
more for them. He hated the thought of the empty, lost, acrid feeling in his soul whenever Stumpf finished with him.
Whenever Stumpf was sated and fulfilled, the bastard thing just went away with his good feelings and left Waldo empty and lonelier than ever, a depression like a dull blunt knife 312
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cutting directly into his brain and soul. If the word lie had a face, it was Stumpf.
She had left the umbrella, rushing off after pushing the few coins through the slot to his fingertips, touching him as she did so. He’d savored the touch and lingered there, noticing the umbrella, but then he’d been distracted by the aunt’s calling out from the porch.
He’d momentarily forgotten about Gabby’s umbrella, thinking he must get in somewhere, while another part of him gave an evil thought to how he’d manipulated Chicago’s so-called premiere detective away from the Tewes home and the Tewes women he’d been watching now for some time, sending Ransom to stand about in the rain at the lagoon on the say-so of Waldo Denton!
He wondered how it’d play in the press to people if it were known that while Stumpf killed someone tonight, the great detective and “last survivor” of Haymarket spent his night in the park!
Stumpf hated Ransom but Waldo Denton had even more reason to hate him. According to all accounts, Ransom had bound and beaten and eventually burned to death Waldo’s father. Waldo felt justified in unleashing Stumpf—who had always been in the shadow of his soul, awaiting release. Felt justified in allowing Stumpf to terrorize a city that had allowed Alastair Ransom to operate above the law, and in fact crown him in a sense with promotion and career advancement, and why? Haymarket and his bloody injury? As if being injured carried with it some badge of heroism and honor!
Had there been no bomb thrown into a crowd—lobbed from they say twenty or twenty-five feet from some unknown assailant—perhaps authorities would have done a thorough investigation into one Alastair Ransom by now. Would they’ve concluded him a coward and a murderer instead or a hero? Those men who were hung as anarchist of Haymarket long before Waldo knew their names or their connection with his father—these were the real heroes of Haymarket!
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contemplating all this when he recalled the umbrella, his invitation to return to Gabby tonight. What must Waldo do then? He must prove himself to her, prove his case, lay it all out in black and white. The war in which he meant to harm everyone Ransom cared for—Polly, Philo, and now Gabrielle if he could not have her. He’d seen them that night up late, Ransom leaving the house, and Gabby saying goodbye at the door.
“Appearances,” the aunt had said on a number of occasions from doorway and window. Hell, it was no appearance the way they’d looked at one another, and the aunt in slum-ber somewhere deep in the house, and the father nowhere to be seen.
And so here he stood in the foyer, Gabby offering him tea, the aunt concerned his wet clothes from the storm might cause him to catch his death.
To catch his death? She oughta concern herself with her own death, he thought from behind the smile as Aunt Jane helped him remove the heavy frock, part of his hansom cab-man’s uniform.
Jane failed to notice the buttons on the hansom uniform overcoat. Each button read CPS. She merely shook off the rain and hung the heavy coat on the rack beside her telephone.
CHAPTER 25
The hansom coach nearly toppled over as it came around the corner at Broadway and Belmont, and then it came to a screeching halt before the newly chiseled and painted overhanging shingle that announced the residence and infirmary of Dr. J. P. Tewes.
Ransom leapt from the cab, shouting, “Mark me, Griff, that idle carriage over there tied to the lamppost! It’ll be Denton’s hack!”
Griff stuck his head from the cab into the rain, and he saw the single horse hansom standing idle under the downpour.
Could Ransom be more right? He was also surprised at how agile the big man could be when circumstances dictated sup-pleness. But just as he made this conclusion, Alastair slipped on Tewes’s stairs and tumbled into a puddle of mud. With cane in hand, Ransom pushed upward and stood, his suit doused and dripping of mud, his face splotched with it, making him into a creature out of H. G. Wells’s books. But the big man allowed nothing to slow him, and like a raging animal, he rushed for the front door, his revolver drawn.
Griffin lifted his collar against the wind-driven rain as he rushed for the rear of the house. “I pray we’re in time!” he shouted against the night. “I have the back covered!”
“Good man, Griff!”
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Ransom began taking the door down with his boot, chop-ping directly at the lock. Two kicks, shoulders pulled in-ward, Ransom crashed through, no warrant sworn out, no caution taken, no thought of anything beyond saving Jane and Gabby from tragedy. The sheer explosion of his entrance sounded like lightning had hit.
Griff found the rear door and hesitating only a moment, he followed Inspector Ransom’s example and lifted his foot and kicked out viciously at the lock. The door came way on the second kick, flying open. Just as he kicked open the back door, Griff heard the gunshot—a single huge explosion crackling at the front of the house. Griff had whipped out his own weapon, a Winchester muzzle-loading six-shooter his father had given him the day he’d joined the force. Griff inched toward the gunfire, cautious, prepared for anything, and certain Inspector Ransom needed his help.
He came on the scene in the parlor late. What he found startled him.
Young Gabby held an enormous revolver extended and pointed at a wounded Alastair Ransom whose blood had discolored both the Oriental rug and Waldo Denton, who lay trapped below what appeared a dead Alastair Ransom.
“God, Rance’s been killed!”
But Ransom’s death was not, for the moment, complete.
He moaned and shouted, with his face buried in Denton’s chest, “Damn you, girl! You’ve shot me!”
“What do you expect, breaking in here on us!” shouted Jane Francis, tears streaming, on knees over Ransom, doing all in her power to staunch the wound to his side where the bullet had exited, mud from his filthy clothes commingling with blood.
“Get this ape the bloody hell off me!” screamed Denton from below Ransom.
“Do not . . . let him up . . .” Ransom painfully muttered,
“till someone shoots him!”
“Shut up and save your energy,” Jane shouted. “This is a serious wound!”
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Griffin’s gun now pointed at Gabrielle, a fleeting thought of Gabrielle Tewes’s being the monster with the garrote instead of Denton flitting through his mind—and how awful the revelation would be—an attempt at justifiable homicide to stop Ransom’s gaining on the truth. “Drop the weapon!
Now!” he shouted.
Gabby and Jane both looked at Griffin, both startled. From the look of the room, the items on the parlor table, the overturned, broken dishware and teapot, it appeared that Jane Francis and Gabrielle had simply been entertaining—entertaining a multiple murderer in their parlor, asking young Denton, no doubt questions regarding his plans to become a photographer.
No doubt asking what Waldo thought of his employer’s arrest.
Whether he thought the man guilty or wrongly accused. No doubt, offering Denton tea and cake between inquiries.
The big cabbie who’d gotten them here in record speed without running over a single stray cat or dog, stepped through the torn-open front door and was mumbling something about having been stiffed by coppers again. “I’ll not put up with it this time!” he called out but froze when Gabby’s long-barreled cannon turned in his direction.
“I said put the gun down, Miss Tewes! This fellow and myself mean you no harm, Miss Tewes . . . Miss Tewes . . .”
Griffin calmly cautioned in his most authoritarian voice, imagining the horror of it, should she call his bluff. But her eyes met Griffin’s and he saw no malice or rancor there so much as a dazed horror that she’d actually shot Ransom. Griff had seen the look before. A look that, in a sense, acquitted her of having had any more sinister plan or thought than simply the reaction that’d resulted in defending her hearth and home and self from a mud-painted man brandishing a huge blue gun.
Still, she held the gun, albeit limply, in her hand.
“Drop the weapon,” he repeated coldly, his gun still pointed.
The huge, dark figure of the cabbie stood dripping water below him in puddles, asking, “What the devil is going on here, Inspector?”
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wagon here for Inspector Ransom. He could bleed to death if we don’t act quickly.”
“Where is Dr. Tewes? Surely, he can—”
“He’s out of town,” she lied. “Besides, Ransom’s best chances are with Dr. Fenger. He’s got to be carefully transported to Cook County.”
“I’m not ready for that bloody coroner yet!” shouted Ransom.
“Just get the ambulance!” Francis shouted. “I’ve done all I can for him, but it is a nasty wound.”
“Yes, to Dr. Fenger,” agreed Griffin.
“And quickly, man! Do it, now! Use my phone.”
“Who me?” asked the cabbie.
“I’ll make the call,” said Griffin, “but you—what’s your name?” he asked the giant-sized cabbie.
“Lincoln Hardesty.”
“Take the gun from Miss Tewes and hold everyone here, and especially the one under Ransom. He’s under arrest.”
“Under arrest—I get it.” Hardesty laughed at this.
“Just watch him. He’s the bloody Phantom.”
“Him, that shrimp Denton, the Phantom?” Hardesty laughed. He knew Denton from the various cab stands. He now stood disbelieving, while the two women erupted.
“Impossible!”
“This boy?”
“You must be wrong.”
“Alastair, are you mad?”
“You cops have a sense of humor,” added the cabbie.
“Just hold him here whatever you do, and do not allow him a moment’s chance to ditch anything from his pockets.”
“He’s no more the Phantom than I am,” said Jane.
“You coppers trying to railroad Waldo?” asked Hardesty.
“I’ve seen it happen time and again in Chicago.” He then spoke to the ladies. “Cops’ll do that. Arrest an innocent man to make him out guilty.”
“But they’ve already arrested Mr. Keane for the killings,”
said Gabby.
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“Makes my point,” replied Hardesty.
Griffin had stopped listening to the civilians, but he imagined their conversation would likely be repeated throughout the city once the news of police arresting a hard-working, clean cut, good Christian boy for the Phantom’s deeds, only to release a pervert. Everyone in the city would be looking for the next victim still, and Chief Kohler will have gotten what he wanted, a humiliated and broken and demoted Alastair Ransom.
The weapon and jewelry would be crucial. Griffin knew this. After making the phone call, he returned to hold everyone at bay. With Denton, that proved quite easy. From below Ransom’s inert body, they heard Denton laboring to breathe.
“Can’t you get the inspector off Waldo?” pleaded Gabby.
“No! No, we must not move Ransom until necessary,”
said Jane Francis, “and even then with great care as to cause no more bleeding. We should leave the moving to those trained in doing the least harm.”
“Oh, that’s damned great!” shouted a still conscious Ransom. “That’d be those dirty-nailed devils, Shanks and Gwinn. Take me in Hardesty’s cab, Griff! I beg you!”
