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

Miller had said that two cars had pulled away from the ballpark. The Piper sedan would be one of them. The other, doubtless, had hauled the acetylene outfit to the park and waited for the mob to bring the armored truck there. Hewitt tried to remember the little he knew about oxy-acetylene outfits.

There were hundreds of them in the city, he guessed. He’d seen them in operation on streetcar track jobs, cutting down old bridges and the like. Usually a couple of drums strapped to a handtruck, with trailing rubber tubes and a guy with a visored hood operating the torches. He’d never paid a lot of attention.

Then he remembered, quite suddenly, that there had always been tags hanging to the valve ends of those drums!

With the thought, flashing white hot into his racing mind, the coupé spun around a corner where brilliant signs spotted a drug store. Hewitt shunted the car to the curb, made a squealing stop and hustled into the drug store.

Feverishly he consulted a telephone directory. In the classified ad section he found what he was looking for. Under the sub-heading OXYGEN he found:

WESTERN AIR PRODUCTS CO.

Oxygen, Hydrogen, Welder’s Supplies.

Thirty seconds later Hewitt was racing across town for the River Street address of the Western Air Products Company, taking chances with traffic lights and no siren to clear the way for his reckless flight.

Only one light burned in the office of the warehouse when he pulled up there. Hewitt thought there would be a watchman, anyhow. He ran up steps and pummelled a door. Presently a bulky man with a watchman’s clock slung from his shoulders and a flash-night in his hand came to the door and peered through the glass at the impatient night visitor.

III

Hewitt held his badge for the watchman to see. “Open up!” he bawled loudly. “Police business, brother!”

The watchman unlocked the door and opened it a grudging crack.

“What the hell?” he growled suspiciously. “There ain’t anything wrong here!”

Hewitt further identified himself by name, and added hastily: “I want a look around your shipping room, just the same. Show me!”

The watchman locked the door again, and rumbling to himself, conducted Hewitt through the office and back to a shipping room, where gas drums of all sizes stood about and were piled in stacks.

Eagerly Hewitt approached a stack, and fingered tags tied about thick drum necks. Most drums had several tags of assorted sizes and colors affixed, but he found one with a small, plain manilla tag matching the one now in his hand.

“Know anything about these tags?” he demanded of the watchman at his elbow.

“Sure I do. I used to work in the warehouse before my back gave out and I took the nightwatch job. That tag’s a record of the shipping order number. It’ll be in the shipping clerk’s order register, showing where the drum went.”

“Find that register, brother!” Hewitt grasped the watchman’s elbow and hustled him over to a high desk.

The watchman dug the book out of a drawer, leafed through it, after a glance at the pencilled number on Hewitt’s tag, and found the corresponding number on a page.

“Your tag come off a drum that went to Dave’s Welding Shop, out at 416 West 14th,” the watchman traced an entry on the page. “Where’d you get it, sergeant?”

“Never mind!” Hewitt snapped. “What do you know about Dave’s Welding shop, if anything?”

“That’s a jackleg welding and automobile repair shop, run by a fellow named Dave Risman.”

“Thanks! You can let me out now — after I use your office phone!”

Hewitt called headquarters from a phone in the office up front. The H.Q. operator, when asked for Captain Dailey, informed the detective that Dailey had gone with the squad car rushed out to the ballpark.

“Okay, Red. Hewitt speaking. Tell whoever’s the skipper to rush a couple of dicks or uniformed men out to 416 West 14th,” Hewitt ordered hastily. “Better send four men, anyhow. I’m on something hot on this bandit mob, and I’ll be there when they make it.”

“Sorry, Hewitt, but outside of me and the radio op, the desk sergeant and the turnkey, just about everybody’s out on this stickup thing. I’ll put it on the air for a cruiser to hop over there, and for Captain Dailey to hike, too. He may get the flash.”

“Swell!” Hewitt slammed up the phone, skipped from the office and roared off in the gray coupé.

West 14th Street, in the vicinity of No. 416, wasn’t five blocks from the Western Air Products warehouse. It was a dark and forbidding neighborhood, the street lined with warehouses and small shops.

Hewitt had no difficulty locating Dave’s Welding Shop. A weatherbeaten sign hung outside a shabby, two-story frame structure, informing the public that Dave did welding, auto blacksmithing and general repairing.

Hewitt parked a half block from the place, cut lights and motor and hurried back on foot. He studied the place, approaching. The downstairs was dark; solid double doors to the auto drive-in closed. No lights showed in the corner where the business office was.