Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

He hustled over to the armored truck, Miller scuttling at his heels. Hewitt saw at once the yawning opening in the side of the tank, just back of the cab, where a small half-door swung open. A brief scrutiny under the close held flashlight disclosed the ragged, blackened edges about the lock, cut through the metal by an acetylene cutting torch.

He poked the flashlight into the cavernous opening, thrusting head and shoulders after it, flashing the beam about.

He saw the huddled body of the uniformed guard on the floor of the tank. Then his eyes began to smart and the membranes of his nose to itch. He jerked his head out and inhaled deeply of cool, clean outside air.

“Gas!” he growled. “That’s how they got the inside guard, right at the start of the business. They shoved a gas bomb through the port and the poor devil never had a chance.”

Miller made gurgling sounds of wonder and awe, at his elbow.

Hewitt flashed the torch about, held down. Cinders before the yawning door were churned up with small wheel and shoe marks.

“They had a portable oxy-acetylene outfit,” he explained to Miller, “and cut the lock out. They raked out the sacks of cash. It didn’t take ’em long at the job. They must have been about ready to lam when I shoved through the gap.”

He widened the circle of the torch beam, moving slowly out from the armored truck.

The beam picked up a bit of white on the cinders. Hewitt leaped forward, stooped and picked up a small, oblong cardboard tag, with bits of wire protruding from a metal eyelet.

Curiously he examined his find under the torch beam. There was no printing on either side of the manilla tag, but plenty of greasy thumb and finger marks. And when he bent closer, he could make out a pencilled number, 16,748.

Hewitt grunted, fingering the tag thoughtfully. Just now it didn’t mean anything to him. It had been torn from some other object, doubtless, and might have been there on the ground for days. He examined the tag once more carefully.

There had been a light shower just after sundown tonight. Raindrops still sparkled on the cinders, under the torch beam. But there was no moisture on this tag. It had fallen to the ground tonight, then.

“Do you s’pose they dropped that?” Miller asked curiously.

Hewitt grunted, dropping the tag into a coat pocket. “I don’t know,” he said. “You got a phone at your place, Miller?”

“Sure. Want to use it?”

“I’ll get you to telephone headquarters, and have ’em send somebody out here.” Hewitt was striding for the gap. “That’ll save me time. I’m getting back uptown as fast as I can make it. Say, I’d like to borrow your gun, Miller!”

“Take it!” Miller thrust the revolver at him. “It’s fully loaded and I just cleaned it up a couple days back.”

The revolver fitted nicely into Hewitt’s belt holster and he felt a lot better with the weight riding his hip. He gave Miller his torch back, when they were outside the fence.

“Hustle over and do that phoning now,” he ordered briskly. “Ask for Captain Dailey, and tell him I’m on the way in.”

Miller was scuttling for home, when Hewitt raced to the gray coupé and climbed in.

Grimly hunched over the wheel, speeding the gray coupé for the city, Hewitt’s thoughts weren’t very pleasant. In his eagerness back there at the ballpark, he’d muffed things, and like a rookie sap, had made it easy for the lookout to take him out. He should have known that a smart mob like that wouldn’t be careless, at any time.

He’d had his chance to grab a mob that had everybody from the chief down jumpy with daring operations in Bluff City for a week now, and he had handled it with less use of brains than the dumbest cluck of the force would have been guilty of employing.

The mob would go to cover now, and a hangout the cops hadn’t been able to get a line on in six days of frenzied sniffing. Dozens of local bad lads had been dragged in and grilled, and turned out when dicks had been positive none of them were tied up with this new mob in any way. Stoolies couldn’t help. The chief and others had decided that a visiting mob working under a brainy leader was pulling these jobs.

After a take like the one they’d gotten away with tonight, they would more than likely lam out of town, ditching the Piper sedan, probably stolen for the job tonight. Hewitt swore aloud, as he was nearing city limits.

That tag now, that he had picked up at the ballpark. Maybe it meant something. Anyhow, it was the nearest thing to a clue yet apparent. He took it from his pocket, slowed his pace and examined it again under the instrument board light.

The number didn’t mean anything. Those tracks, when he could get the car to headquarters, might spell something to the fingerprint expert, checked with his records. He thrust the tag back into his pocket.