City for Ransom (32 page)

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
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!

He'd gotten a couple blocks away from the Tewes home
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 slumber 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 cabman'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.

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 suppleness. 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!”

Ransom began taking the door down with his boot, chopping directly at the lock. Two kicks, shoulders pulled inward, 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!”

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?”

Jane Francis shouted, “Get on my phone! Get a medical
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.

“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!”

The exertion made Ransom pass out as Shanks and Gwinn started out from Cook County. Soon on hand as they waved an emergency bell overhead when acting as an ambulance, the duo handled Ransom easily, having trained under Dr. Fenger's care, and in the meantime, Dr. Fenger had been located and was said to be prepping for a major operation. When they'd lifted the bloody Inspector, Denton climbed to his knees under the gun of Griffin Drimmer.

 

They've come for me…only matter of time now…smells like death…blood and decay and death…Angel of Death himself will be right at home wherever I am…

A huge pothole sent Ransom's body over with the stretcher in back of the meat wagon. The jolt opened his wound and Ransom awoke in the stench-filled darkness. He imagined
himself in Hades itself, and rightly so for the mistakes he'd made and the bad judgment that'd gotten him killed.

His thoughts only added to the flame of punishment in this acrid, ambling elephant gut he found himself alone in. After an initial moment of horror and acceptance of both his death and damnation, Ransom realized precisely where he lay. The same wagon that retained the charred flesh odors of Polly and Purvis before her. The back of Shanks and Gwinn's horse-drawn death carrier. The two coroner's men had never heard of soap and water. The interior of the wagon shut out all light and sealed in all rot.

“Get me the bloody hell out of here!” he shouted, raised up and kicked out at the boards of the wagon. He'd chosen the spot where he guessed the buckboard seat holding Shanks and Gwinn must be. He kicked again and again like a bucking angry mustang.

Each kick sent a searing pain through his side where he'd been wrapped mummy fashion by Jane, and he could feel the bandages filling with wetness—his blood.

The wagon bucked back, and Alastair was thrown into the very wall he kicked when the wagon came to a sudden halt. Ransom lay silent, bleeding profusely, passed out on the flatbed below the overturned stretcher just as Gwinn tore open the doors, cursing.

Gwinn sucked in the acrid air without coughing, used to it. Seeing that Ransom had silenced and lay as dead as a stump, he slammed the doors closed again. Taking his squat little body back to the front, he climbed aboard and shouted to Shanks. “Hurry on before that damned maniac wakes again! He's put a hole through the boards!”

“Is he passed out for now?” Shanks needed no second telling as he lit into the horses with a whip.

“Passed out, maybe…maybe better than passed out.”

“Dead?”

“We can only hope.”

In the inky black rear, the patient bounced like a huge sack of potatoes with every pothole and mislaid brick.

“Gawd forgive me,” said Shanks. “I hafta hope the bugger dies.”

“He's never been no friend of ours,” agreed Gwinn.

 

After locking Waldo Denton behind bars in a cell alongside Philo Keane, Griffin Drimmer looked long and hard at the puny prisoner.

Drimmer still could not believe that this pipsqueak fellow hardly out of his teens might possibly be the infamous Phantom. However, once Ransom was lifted off him by Shanks and Gwinn, Griffin had done precisely what Alastair wanted. He yanked the kid up off the floor, and in quick fashion began to cuff Denton to loud disagreement not only from Denton, but from the ladies.

The only saving grace was that the boy—one hand yet free—put up a fight and tried to go for Griffin's throat when he broke loose. Then he pulled a fancy twirling move to grind about Griffin's body in an attempt to get behind him—a concealed garrote pulled from somewhere. Griffin knew a few Far East combat moves of his own. Realizing the danger if this bony little fellow should get that wire noose around his neck, he upended a parlor table and used it to bash Denton in the temple. As a result of a final blow from Griffin's gun slashing across Denton's face, the supposed Phantom fell hard against a brick fireplace, knocking him senseless.

With no more resistance, over the next hour the suspect, and now assailant, was handcuffed and hauled off to the Des Plaines Street Bridewell. But by the time Griffin turned the key on Denton, his doubts had returned.

The garrote notwithstanding.

When Waldo had come to, he'd told this nonstop tale of how, seeing the success of the Phantom in bringing down his prey, he thought a garrote a good weapon for himself, and so he'd taken to carrying one at all times. “A hackman can't be too careful these days, not with the sort running about this
city, I can tell you. I'll tell the judge the same. You've gotta believe me! You've got the wrong man, and that crazy Alastair Ransom—may he die of his wounds, God—he oughta be brought up on charges for breaking and entering. He spoiled me with Gabby, you know. Spoiled the moment, any chance I may've had to please her dear, dear auntie and to impress on Gabrielle my undying love for her! But no—in charges this raging bull, shouting I'm a danger, and making mad accusations. Why, if he does live beyond the bullet that sweet Gabrielle put in him on my behalf, why then he ought to be investigated for being a madman and a maniac, and who's to say that Ransom himself ain't the mad Phantom? Much time as he spends prowling the streets; seeing so much of the gutter trash, living among the rats of this city…the man sees shit every day until…until all he sees is to kill, kill, kill! What's to say he ain't the Phantom?”

Meanwhile, Philo Keane shouted over his one-time apprentice at Griffin, “It all makes sense now! This creepy little sot here under our noses the whole bloody time! He's the one set me up, isn't it true, Drimmer? Didn't he put the notion of my being the Phantom in your ear? And now he's shifting it to Alastair! Don't you see? Don't you?”

“I know the little rat came at me with this wire in front of witnesses, in front of his little sugar, that daughter of Tewes.”