Read Online City for Ransom by Robert W. Walker - Free Book Online Page B

as you please.”
    â€œWhat tipped your men off to him, O’Malley?”
    â€œHis clothes were sooty…the hair on his forearms singed. We think it’s our man, but—”
    â€œNo garrote?”
    â€œSorry, no sir. That’d cinch it, I know.”
    Ransom asked, “Where’s he being held?”
    â€œDownstairs in Dr. Fenger’s meat wagon, under lock and key to be sure.”
    â€œI don’t suppose you found any Cuban cigars on him, O’Malley?” Ransom didn’t wait for an answer, going for the “suspect” instead.
    Ransom followed O’Malley to where the horse-drawn medical wagon awaited the release of the murder victim. A faded whitewash showed an earlier sign on its side in faint letters: OSCAR MEYER . It’d indeed seen an earlier life as a bona fide meat wagon.
    â€œGet the suspect outta there, O’Malley.”
    Mike did so, his fingers twitching over his nightstick. Soon Ransom was shaking the dead man’s wallet in the homeless drifter’s face. The poorly dressed, elderly fellow immediately told his tale.
    Alastair felt convinced of the man’s version of events, which metamorphosed from having simply found the wallet lying on the floor, to having been awakened in a stall in the men’s room where he routinely slept since arriving in Chicago. He’d emigrated along with tens of thousands of others from the prairies and surrounding states. Once in the city, he could find no work. He’d been in town for two days and two nights when he was awakened to the sound of two men conversing.
    â€œThen what?” asked Alastair. “What in blue blazes did they speak of, man?”
    â€œNot too many words passed before it happened. Awful…murder most foul, sir, most foul!”
    â€œCan you recall the tenor of the conversation? Angry, argument, foul words, what?”
    â€œOh, no, sir, as friendly as you please and the boy spoke of his girlfriend and the fair and how he was so happy, and suddenly the killer lit on him with a horrible attack.”
    â€œFriendly—draws the boy into talking, relaxing, washing his hands in the sink—was he, when the attack came?”
    â€œYes…but how’d you know?”
    Ransom imagined that his own recreation of events must represent as much magic to this homeless vagabond as Tewes’s sideshow disclosures had made on brighter fellows like Griff and Carmichael. After all, he had himself imagined the boy a student at a nearby college. Still, Tewes had known the boy’s name and where Purvis hailed from. Tewes knew too much—more than enough to incriminate himself but not enough for an arrest! “Did you have a talk with anyone about this at any time before O’Malley and me?”
    â€œNo one, I swear.”
    â€œThen you showed the wallet to no one? Spoke to no one named Tewes?”
    â€œI swear…the madman talked to the boy as if he knew him, and then suddenly he is cutting his throat, and next setting his body out on the column and setting him aflame.”
    â€œYou saw all this?”
    â€œYes, God forgive me! All happened so fast…no intervening, sir.”
    â€œDid he say a word over the body? Anything at all, man?”
    â€œHe laughed and he sang.”
    â€œSang?”
    â€œBadly, he sang.”
    â€œWhat tune?”
    â€œI don’t recall. Something familiar.”
    So much for Homerville Cliff going out of this world in a pleasant, smiling reunion with his ancestors, Ransom thought.
    â€œI—I—I wah-wah own-ly—” the drifter stuttered and stank.
    â€œSpit it out, man!” shouted O’Malley, his nightstick raised overhead as if it’d come down of its own volition.
    Ransom placed a soft palm against O’Malley’s chest. “Easy on the man, Mike. He ain’t used to our ways, are you, mister ahhh …what’d you say your name was?”
    â€œO-rion…Saville,