Chapter 2

The attack on the Lucky Swinger did not draw the attention of the newspapers, but the Steeles were not surprised, since, officially, the speakeasy didn't exist. However, there was no doubt that some gang leader noticed, since they had picked up over $24,000 from the office. That's too much lost money to ignore! Eagle and Hawk might even cause more mischief once Karl had a chance to go over the books they had picked up during their raid.

Karl and Helen were enjoying a leisurely breakfast when the telephone rang. "I wonder who that could be?" muttered Karl as he waited for the butler, James Arrowsmith, to announce the call.

"Sir, a Mr. Jason Arbuckle wishes to speak with you. Will you take the call?"

"Yes, thank you, James. I'll take the call in here... Hello, Jason, good to hear your voice after so many weeks. How were things in Europe?... What?... How can I help?... Yes, Helen and I will be there within the hour... Goodbye."

"What's up, dear?"

"Jason Arbuckle's son, Edward, is in the hospital, and he wants us to come by as soon as possible. Edward has been poisoned, and his mother, Alice, is nearly hysterical with worry. Jason hopes that you can calm Alice down. You seem to have a soothing way about you."

"Of course, I'll get dressed right away. Under the circumstances, I can be ready to leave in 20 minutes. Please have James inform the chauffeur. We should take the Lincoln."

Twenty minutes later, the chauffeured Lincoln was waiting in the driveway as Karl and Helen walked out the door. The chauffeur held the door for Helen as she slid into the back seat while Karl joined her from the other side. Moments later, they were on their way to the hospital.

Twenty-three minutes later, they walked quietly into Edward Arbuckle's hospital room where Helen found Alice Arbuckle sobbing her eyes out and Karl found Jason Arbuckle pacing back and forth like the proverbial caged lion. Helen began trying to soothe Alice as Karl asked, "What happened, Jason? I know you left Edward at home while you and Alice took the grand tour of Europe."

"God damn it, Karl! You know how kids will act as soon as their parents are out of sight. We got in this morning from New York to find Eddy lying on the sofa in the living room, pale as a ghost. He was still wearing his tux and had loosened his belt and tie when he fell on the sofa. I finally wormed out of him that he had taken a girl out night clubbing last night. She had felt sick, so he took her home, and got sick, himself, before he got home.

"Anyway, he kept feeling worse and worse, so we called the doctor. The damned quack was on the golf course and wouldn't come by the house until he had finished his 18 holes, showered, and had a drink with his golfing buddies. When he finally did get to the house, he took one look at Eddy and called for an ambulance.

"Eddy was rushed to the hospital. They pumped his stomach and flushed him out with all kinds of fluids. The resident here said that Eddy was lucky to still be alive. Something he drank at a speakeasy was poison and had played hell with his stomach lining. They still don't know if he will live! Shit! Shit! Shit!"

"Dammit, Jason, I wish I could do something. Have you reported this to the police?"

"Yes, I did, and the hospital called it in as a routine matter with them. The cops brushed me off, and I'll bet they didn't pay any more attention to the hospital's call."

"Hmmm. Look, Jason, I know some people who could look into this for us, but they would need some more information. Do you know any of the places Eddy visited last night?"

"Yeah. I'd like to kill the bastards if I could get my hands on them. The only place Eddy mentioned was The Lucky Seven Jazz Club. He thought that was the place where he got the bad stuff. Put your friends on it, Karl. I'll pay anything it takes!"

"Don't worry about the cost. That may not be a problem. I'll make some phone calls as soon as I leave here. I can't promise anything, but my friends have been lucky enough to close down a couple of places that sell to kids. I'm sure they'll help us if they can."

Karl and Helen spent two more hours at the hospital consoling their friends and just being there for them. However, once they had reached home, Karl placed a telephone call to Sgt. Alexander of the Detroit police department.

"Good evening, Sgt. Alexander, this is Eagle. Do you happen to have an address for The Lucky Seven Jazz Club?... Yes, I'll wait... Thank you. Have a good evening, I know that I will!"

Karl and Helen quickly changed into their Eagle and Hawk costumes and went to pick up Black Widow. They drove to the address provided by Sgt. Alexander and parked nearby. This was in a warehouse and light manufacturing district of a Detroit suburb, so the traffic was light this time of night.

Eagle remarked, "Well, it's nice to see such a quiet neighborhood at 1:00 AM on a school night. Most of the kids must have left, already."

"Yeah, that and a nickel will get you a cup of coffee most anywhere."

They used a fire escape ladder to reach the roof of an adjacent building and walked along the edge of the roof looking for a convenient place to cross over to the speakeasy. Hawk said, "This looks good. Let me go first, since I don't weigh as much as you... OK, the roof seems solid, haul your hulking beautiful ass over here."

Eagle joined her, "'Beautiful ass' is it? I'll show you some 'beautiful ass' when we get home!"

"Promises, promises. What I want is action!" They grinned at each other and got down to serious business. Nobody ever bothered to deaden the sound going to the roof, even though they did try to keep it from leaking onto the street. They could hear a loud, raucous music coming from the night club, so they assumed that their own sounds would be muffled.

They found the service door and stairs leading down into the building and slipped inside. The crooks weren't quite as dumb as they hoped: there was a guard stationed at the first landing they came to. Well, maybe, they had given too much credit to the crooks, since the guard was asleep! Eagle wondered how the man could sleep with all the noise coming from downstairs, but some people must just have the talent for it! They quickly overpowered the guard and bound him with industrial tape. Hawk said, "This tape is wonderful stuff! How could we ever do without it?"

There was a door leading off the landing into a short hallway, as well as a flight of steps leading further down into the building. They decided to investigate the hallway before going downstairs. Two doors led off the hall; one was a broom closet, but the other led into an office storage area. There were boxes of office supplies, pencils, pens, paper clips, that sort of thing. But there were two locked filing cabinets.

The crime fighters probably would have ignored the filing cabinets if they had not been so obviously locked. Working on the principal that only important papers get locked up, Eagle pulled a lock-pick from his belt pouch and soon had the first cabinet opened.

Invoices, a multitude of invoices! Despite the fact that the criminals dealt strictly in cash, they still had invoices covering the transactions. There were other items, but mostly food and liquor transaction records. This was a gold mine of names and addresses. Eagle and Hawk could spend months just closing down these places! The other filing cabinet held the same thing, just not so many.

This was too good a find to pass up, so they dumped stuff out of boxes from the shelves and dumped papers from the filing cases in. They quickly had four boxes of records, and this wasn't all there was, but it was all they could carry right now! They sneaked back up the stairs and put the boxes in a safe place on the adjacent roof for later transfer to Black Widow.

They repeated the operation with the rest of the records and were ready to venture farther into the depths of the building. So far, they already had enough information to give the crooks a very bloody nose, but it wasn't as emotionally satisfying as it would be to destroy this particular speakeasy.

They crept down the stairs and found an area of general disuse. This was one room the size of the entire building. There was nothing there to interrupt the open floor except for some supporting pillars and a few boxes of junk. Room for future expansion? Not if Eagle and Hawk could prevent it!

The next floor was the actual functioning speakeasy. There was a bandstand, a stage, a long bar, and an open floor covered with tables and chairs, except for a minuscule dance floor. It looked like business was winding down for the night. Many of the tables were empty, and there were only a few customers at the bar. The band appeared to be in its last set, and the 4 nearly-nude dancers, 1 male and 3 female, were just going through the motions. Most of the waiters were standing around waiting for closing time.

Eagle and Hawk didn't spend any time here, other than to observe the situation. They went down one more floor to the basement storage area and dressing rooms. About one-third of the basement was devoted to dressing rooms and the rest to liquor storage. There were barrels of raw alcohol and some empty bottles neatly stacked on a shelf. Another shelf held capped bottles which appeared to be freshly refilled.

Apparently, a bartender came down and mixed up another bottle of whatever they were running low on at the bar. He would use raw alcohol from industrial drums, mixed with water and appropriate coloring agents. Empty bottles must be saved and reused. The drums were labeled ethanol (grain alcohol), methanol (wood alcohol), and isopropanol (rubbing alcohol). Either of the latter two were quite poisonous, but would taste OK to the unsophisticated.

Eagle was in the process of picking the lock to the liquor storage area when a shout and a shot came from the stairway. Some goon of a guard had fired his short barreled pistol at Eagle and missed, but he did hit a drum of methanol. There were no sparks from the lead bullet, but a hole was punched in the drum, and the highly flammable methanol did start to leak onto the floor.

The next shot also missed, but hit a light fixture and knocked it loose. The bulb was turned on and it broke when it hit the floor. The hot filament ignited the methanol, and the flames quickly spread. Eagle and Hawk both yelled, "FIRE!" They turned and ran toward the stairs.