CASTLE OF TERROR
By E. J. LISTON
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories November1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Too bad, Griffin," Hale Jenkins said to the man alongside. "Now ifyou'd have just stuck to bank stick-ups, you'd have been all right."
"Nah!" Bud Griffin said, his mouth twisted in a wry grin. "I'd have beenall right if you'd have just stuck to being a traffic cop. But you hadto show the Commissioner you were on the ball, so he sent you after me.That's all."
The light suddenly flashed over the pilot's compartment with its warningto fasten safety belts. A few seconds later, the stewardess came aroundwith a smiling warning that they were coming over some bad pockets, andthat there was no need to worry.
Both men fastened their belts, as did all the other passengers on thegiant airliner, and after a while the elevator began its ride. Griffinreached up and pulled the air vent down, so that the cold air of theupper reaches at which they were flying could send its refreshing draftsof air down the vent. Jenkins had been airsick once and didn't want anymore of the same. He followed Griffin's gaze, and looked into the greyfog of a huge cloud bank.
Jenkins, to get his mind off the possibility of getting sick again, tookup where the other had left off: "Yeah. But like I say, you shouldastuck to robbin' banks."
His lean, strong face with the unusual bone structure which made it aface of highlights and plane surfaces, broke into a wide-angled grin. Hethrew the shock of black hair from his eyes, and continued: "Guys likeyou never learn. Gotta work with a heater."
Griffin's opaque eyes shifted from the greyness which had encircled theplane, and met the dancing grey ones of the detective beside him.Griffin's lips mimicked the grin of the other. But his words were not solight-hearted: "Look, copper! You just got lucky. If it weren't for thatdame.... Aah! I shoulda been smart. I shoulda known she'd of sung. Nodame can keep her yap shut! But get this. We ain't in yet! So be smartand don't think Bud Griffin's fryin'. Not yet he ain't."
Jenkins was, for a detective, a rather amiable sort. In Griffin's case,however, he could not help but give an occasional needle. The hoodlumand murderer's bragging rasped on Jenkins' nerves.
"Now, don't blame the girl," Jenkins said. "She was just the last stepin my trail. The guy who really talked was Bud Griffin. There's acharacter who'll never stop talkin'. If you hadn't talked to thebartender in that joint on the waterfront, I'd have never found outabout Myrtle. But he knew Myrtle and the kind of girl she was; he knewshe only went for the hoods who had dough, and no guy who drinks beerlike you do and leaves no tips ought to have dough. So when Myrtle walksin with a platina fox jacket and says you bought it, he gets mightysuspicious.
"It was a cinch then, Bud. All I had to do was tell the girl she wasgoing to be named as an accessory after the fact, and she spilled herload."
Pin points of flame suddenly danced in Griffin's eyes. His hands, lyingquiescent on his lap, curled into balls of bone and muscle. Griffin hadmany weaknesses; of them all, anger was his greatest. For in the heat ofanger he would do anything, and not care about the consequences. It hadproved his undoing many times. His last surge of anger had