Millions For A Murderer by G. Wayman Jones

Book Details

Millions For a Murderer – Five wealthy industrialists conspire to take over another man’s invention of a secret plastic formulation that can entirely change the course of the war. An escaped convict knows who killed the original inventor but he’s being hunted. Not just by the police but also by the five who stand to make millions. Add to this the fact that Japanese secret agents are also looking for the plastic formulation and will not hesitate to kill to get it. Only the Black Bat can sort out this set of conspiracies and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Millions For A Murderer (1943)
The Black Bat Battles to Prove an Escaped Convict’s Innocence—and to Keep a Precious Secret War Weapon from the Hands of the Enemy—when Homicide, Espionage and Intrigue Join in a Conspiracy of Doom!
Chapter I – Whim of a Dead Man
Chapter II – Death Ends a Quest
Chapter III – The Blind Can See
Chapter IV – Five Men Afraid
Chapter V – Vanished Car Wheels
Chapter VI – Five Men Afraid
Chapter VII – Girl Made of Glass
Chapter VIII – The Dead Can’t Talk
Chapter IX – The Four Left
Chapter X – Strange Secret
Chapter XI – Coffin of Glass
Chapter XII – Carol’s Bad Luck
Chapter XIII – Dr. Kroo’s Inferno
Chapter XIV – Murder in the Mass
Chapter XV – Weird Rescue
Chapter XVI – Tanked Annihilation
Chapter XVII – Blue Death
Chapter XVIII – Secret Weapon
Chapter XIX – Out of the Depths
Chapter XX – Battle of Murderers

Millions For A Murderer has 28 illustrations.

G. Wayman Jones was a “house name” for Better Publications. It was used by eight different writers including Laurence Donovan (1885–1948) who wrote Millions For A Murderer. Donovan also wrote for Doc Savage, The Phantom Detective, G-Men Detective, and The Masked Detecive.

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1. GWJones-MillionsForAMurderer.epub

Excerpt: Millions For A Murderer

Chapter I

Whim of a Dead Man

EVERY little creaking sound touched Matt Hanlon’s raw nerves. The ancient frame chemical building seemed to groan and complain at the dampness of the drizzling night.

“I’m a fool to take it seriously,” whispered Hanlon. “I should have too much sense to be waiting here in the darkness for an escaped murderer to come back. I suppose the thing he found in this room five years ago must have touched old Jared, and yet—”

A slow, creaking footstep in the corridor outside the door cut off his whispered soliloquy. Because he did appear to be a fool, sitting here without a light, at a desk where murder had been committed five years before, Matt Hanlon flicked on the bulb convenient to his hand.

He knew the step to be that of Barnaby, the old watchman. He could not reasonably explain to old Barnaby why he was sitting in darkness. The watchman rapped lightly. Hanlon pretended to busy himself with some papers as he told old Barnaby to come in.

The ancient office door was solid, lacking a transom. Barnaby would not know the light had just been turned on.

“Excuse me, Mr. Hanlon,” said Barnaby, rubbing his gray stubbled chin. “I nearly always use the stairs, but my rheumatic knee’s troublin’ me, sir. I’ll take the elevator and send it back up.”

“Sure thing, Barnaby,” said Hanlon. “And, Barnaby, you needn’t make the upper floors again until I leave. I’ll let you know. I’m arranging a few things, for perhaps the last time.”

Old Barnaby nodded sadly.

“Yes, sir, I understand. I’ll not be makin’ the rounds any more after this week. Mr. Wright, rest his soul, provided handsomely for me, but after twenty years I’ll be missin’ this place. On rainy nights like this, the old plant seems to talk to me. Sometimes I hear—”

Hanlon glanced quickly toward the skeleton shape of the fire-escape outside the open window.

“Yes, Barnaby, I suppose it does,” he said, to cut him off. “Go right ahead and use the elevator.”

“Thankee, sir.” Old Barnaby backed out, closing the door.

Hanlon heard the creaking sound of the old-fashioned operating cables on the elevator. The platform lift had served for at least a quarter of a century, for both freight and passengers.

MATT HANLON again flicked out the desk light. The open window became a square of unrelieved blackness. Rain dripped dismally on the fire-escape outside.

Then abruptly all little sounds were lost in a grinding crash. Hanlon came to his feet with a quick, nervous oath. Then he was suddenly sick. The seconds of splintering sound outside ended in a jarring smash that shook all of the ancient chemical building.

When Hanlon got the door open, he saw and breathed the fine, dry dust that rose like smoke in the old elevator shaft. A broken steel cable still twisted and writhed like a beheaded snake.

Hanlon skipped three stairs at a time descending from the fourth floor. He was guided by the light bulbs at the turns. The faint illumination of the bulb on the bottom floor showed enough to shrink Hanlon’s stomach muscles.

“After twenty years he’d be missin’ this place,” muttered Hanlon thickly. “But not now, Barnaby.”

It was useless to feel for old Barnaby’s pulse. His neck was twisted grotesquely in death. Jared Wright had provided a pension the watchman would not be needing.

Matt Hanlon started toward the first floor phone, but halted suddenly. It came to him with a jar that the fall of the elevator had not been an accident!

“And that means I was expected to be the first to use it to come down,” he mumbled grimly. “Old Barnaby just died in my place and—”

He was already on the stairs, climbing swiftly. That elevator had been fixed to fall after he had ascended less than an hour before.

“If it is murder, then the killer is still in the building, and that means he may be after the record,” thought Hanlon. “Old Jared Wright may not have been as queer as it seems.”

He was on the turn of the stairs at the third floor before sense and caution really functioned. The thought of the death he had just escaped, of the danger possibly still lurking above, sent him to the dark wall, listening.

He realized that he was unarmed, although he had been obeying instructions to wait in a murder room that had been closed for five years for the coming of the man who had been convicted of committing that murder, five years previously.

The instructions, which amounted to an apparently insane request to meet a man sentenced and serving a life term for murder, were on the dictaphone record Matt Hanlon had left in the machine upstairs.

And that record was perhaps the strangest bequest ever made by a dying man. For the record told that Jared Wright, sole head of the Wright-Jones Chemical Company, had left to Matt Hanlon the sum of one hundred thousand dollars, and the custody of one Harvey Lansing, life termer, who had been convicted of killing Jared Wright’s partner, Thaddeus Jones, five years before.

Moreover, that fantastic dictaphone record fixed tonight as the time, and the office where Thaddeus Jones was murdered as the place where Matt Hanlon was to meet and take charge of Harvey Lansing, life convict. Yet there had been no word of Lansing having escaped.

Because he had memorized every word of that record, Hanlon considered its possible truth now, as he crouched, listening. What had appeared incredible began to take shape as possible fact. For Hanlon still breathed the fine, dry dust that had heralded the death of another man in his place.

UNTIL this time. Matt Hanlon, chemist and for three years secretary to the late Jared Wright, had felt he was making a fool of himself to even go through the motions of obeying the dead man’s whim.

Hardworking and always law-abiding, Hanlon had not even considered the possibility that Jared Wright’s conditional bequest of a hundred thousand dollars was to be taken seriously. What amounted to considerable fortune to Matt Hanlon had been bequeathed free and clear, in a legal document. The condition was separate.

That he would himself become a criminal, personally responsible for the freedom of a fugitive convict, or that he was walking into deadly danger had not until now really penetrated Matt Hanlon’s straight thinking mind.

He remained frozen to the dark wall for a long minute. The virtual command and the warning on that dictaphone record in the machine upstairs were repeated in his mind.

“You will shelter Harvey Lansing by every means at your command. His appearance has been arranged. I have set aside on deposit virtually the total amount of my fortune, six millions in cash, to be paid to the man who produces the absolute convicting evidence that was lacking following the murder of Thaddeus Jones.

“Lansing’s conviction, as you well know, was obtained on purely circumstantial evidence. It is my belief that one of five men knows the truth of the murder. I have notified each of those five men of the opportunity to claim the six millions provided. Aside from my attorney, Lester Shott, and yourself, no other person has been or will be informed of this unusual reward for the successful reopening of a murder case.

“In due time you will be contacted by the five men to whom I refer. I warn you to be cautious. While I have no evidence other than my intuition, I am convinced that one of the world’s most vital chemical secrets was and is involved in the death of Thaddeus Jones. I leave to you this grave responsibility because of my confidence in you, and further because of your relationship with my ward, Marley Weston.”

Matt Hanlon’s wide lips were a grim line as the name of Marley Weston came into his mind. Perhaps for her sake, if for no other reason, he must go through with this as Jared Wright desired, if there was possible truth in Jared Wright’s recorded words.

There was this much sudden truth. A gun cracked twice from the stairs above. Slugs gouged the wall close to Hanlon’s head. They buzzed away viciously.

Hanlon dropped, flattening himself, swearing under his breath. Why had he not taken the dead watchman’s gun before he started up?

He could hear a scuffling movement. The gunman was moving downward with cautious steps. If Hanlon moved, he was trapped by the light at the turn. A few more steps and the determined killer could not miss him.

Hanlon poised, prepared to jump desperately past the lighted space. The stalking killer took his next steps more quickly than he had intended. His gun exploded again, but the slug went wild, for Hanlon had glimpsed a fast moving, shadowy figure above the gunman. He heard the crunch as of metal upon bone. The killer came on down, rolling over and over.

Excerpt From: G. Wayman Jones. “Millions For A Murderer.”