Dan and the Death-Cell Bluff

Tossing his coat on the bed, Dan followed it with his tie, shoulder holster, shirt and undershirt. Adele, seated on a chair near the window, watched him with startled, uneasy eyes. Happening to catch her expression, the big man grinned in amusement, then ignored her completely as he opened his bag and drew out some fresh clothing.

Stripped to the waist, Dan Fancy was a throwback to the Neanderthal man. From great shoulders like wedges of concrete to his fleshless waist, iron-hard muscle girded his frame. A light matting of black hair covered his chest and arms like a sweater, and his deceptively deliberate movements, which could not quite conceal a catlike grace, added to the impression that he was a primeval being who would be more at home in a cave than a modem hotel room.

From nowhere the absurd vision of Dan Fancy dragging her into a cave by the hair popped into Adele’s mind. Angrily she shook it out.

Ten minutes later there was a knock at the door. Adele rose to answer it, then hesitated as she remembered the byplay with the taxi driver. Suppose instead of room service, it was one of Big Jim’s badged killers?

Glancing at the bed, she saw with surprise Dan’s holster with its heavy forty-five was gone, and realized he had taken it into the bath with him. Apparently the big man was capable of caution in spite of his tendency to ask for trouble. Relieved, she opened the door.

“The Collinses, ma’am,” Billie said, carrying in a tray containing a shaker and two frosted glasses.

The bellboy had hardly departed when Dan Fancy came out of the bathroom fully dressed. Over cool Tom Collinses she told him the story of Gene Robinson’s conviction for murder.

“Gene was relatively new in Lake City, you know,” she said. “About two years ago he came to town, and I guess I must have been the first person he talked to. I’m the owner and proprietor of Del’s Beauty Salon, and he asked me for a job. I gave it to him. I suppose you knew he was a hairdresser?”

“Yeah,” Dan grunted. “One of the reasons he never got along with the old man. His father thought he was a sissy.”

“He isn’t!” Adele said hotly. “Lots of men are in the beauty business. It’s a perfectly honorable profession.”

“All right,” Dan said mildly.

For a moment the girl looked at him suspiciously, then went on with the story. “I knew, of course, that Gene was the son of Martin Robinson, the millionaire steel man, but I doubt that anyone else in town did. Gene was bitter about their break and never mentioned his father. Mr. Robinson disowned him, you know, when he refused to enter the steel business.”

“I know,” Dan said.

“Until the trial it never came out who Gene was, or I don’t think they would have tried to frame him. It’s one thing to push around citizens of a town you own, but quite another to pick on the son of a nationally known figure. I imagine Big Jim Calhoun had a few uneasy moments when those big-time defense lawyers from Pittsburgh began to arrive in town. I think probably they would simply have killed Gene and made it look like an accident, had they known who he really was.”

“The advantage of having a big-shot parent,” Dan said dryly. “You get killed instead of framed.”

“Of course as it turned out it didn’t matter anyway, because Gene refused to accept any help from his father and wouldn’t even talk to the lawyers he sent down. The court finally had to appoint a defense lawyer, and that ended Gene’s chances, for the lawyer he appointed was just another tool of Big Jim’s.”

“Tell me about the killing,” Dan said.

“It happened about a month ago. George Saunders, the man who was killed, was a tavern owner in the same block where I have my beauty salon. He was a fiery, soapbox type of man, and I never liked him particularly. I don’t believe Gene did either, but he worked with him on the citizens’ committee because he believed in what Mr. Saunders was doing.”

“What was the citizens’ committee?”

“It was something George Saunders got up. A sort of vigilante outfit composed of merchants who wanted to break Jim Calhoun’s power. It was supposed to be secret, but George Saunders was constitutionally incapable of keeping his mouth shut, and practically everyone in town knew he was the leader and Gene was second in command.”

Dan looked interested. “So the chief of the citizens’ committee gets killed, and his first lieutenant takes the rap for it? Convenient for Big Jim. What happened to the committee?”

“It collapsed,” Adele said bitterly. “All the fight went out of it and the members scampered for their holes like frightened rats.”

The big man said, with a strange air of tolerance, “Don’t be bitter at them, Adele. Even brave men sometimes rout without leadership. How was the frame worked?”