Spike accompanied the inspector down the corridor to his office. They went in and Herschman crossed immediately to the big safe at the far side of the room where he stored exhibits. He stooped, rested on his heels and twiddled the combination knob.
“Good God!” It was Spike from the other side of the room.
The inspector paused, turned and looked over his shoulder.
“Look!” Spike was pointing to the desk, and on his face there was an expression slightly akin to horror.
Herschman shoved the envelope containing the stamp into the safe, swung the door shut and crossed quickly to the desk. It was there—another one—a tiny bit of paper that stuck out from under the leather corner of the blotter.
It was the nine-kreuzer Baden of the Crossley collection worth $11,000.
For a moment the inspector looked from the stamp to Spike. Then he leaped to the door through which they had just come. In the anteroom outside there was a stenographer.
“Who’s been in this office since I left it?” he barked.
The stenographer looked startled. “No one,” she said.
“You’re sure about that?”
“Why yes, Inspector. Anyone that went in would have to pass me and no one has.”
“And you’ve been here all the time? You haven’t left this office since I left an hour ago?”
“Why no, of course—”
“Didn’t I see you come down the hall and enter this office just before Mr. Tracy and I came in? Didn’t I?”
“But that was just for a minute. I just went down the hall and around the corner to the water cooler to get a drink and I came right back.”
“You entered the office just a few steps ahead of us?”
“Yes.”
The inspector whirled and confronted Spike. The two of them searched the inner office with their eyes. Unlike the district attorney’s office, it had only one door, only one entrance, and that through the anteroom.
“In other words,” Spike said and his voice held the awed whisper of one who has stumbled on something momentous and fearsome. “In other words, someone came into this room less than five minutes ago and placed that stamp here. That means that the person we’re looking for, the murderer, may still be in this building. Quick, Inspector, quick!”
But the inspector needed no directions. He leaped to his desk, pressed a buzzer, picked up the telephone. “Lock all doors…extra squad of men on each floor… don’t let anyone out…”
Commands rattled. Patrolmen rushed into the room, took their orders and were gone. “…men posted at every door… Parton and Medlin, line everybody up in the lower hall…”
He turned and started to rush from the room. Spike grabbed his arm.
“One more thing, Inspector!”
Herschman tried to shake him off. “Don’t stop me now. I’ve got—”
Spike jerked him roughly back to the desk. “This is important,” he snapped. “Get on the telephone quick and locate everyone concerned in the whole damn case. Find out where they are—now, this minute. Don’t you see?”
Suddenly Herschman saw. He grabbed one telephone, shoved a second toward Spike.
They barked names and numbers into the receivers. “…let me speak to Mr. Fream…Miss Ealing, this is the…Mr. Fairleigh, I’ll have to ask you to…get Homer Watson…
Spike even called the hospital and had them connect him with Koenig’s bedside telephone.
They were all there on the other end of the wire—Fream, Maysie Ealing, Homer Watson, Koenig, Fairleigh.
“And Mellett’s keeping tab on the Crossley dame,” Herschman snapped.
“We couldn’t be mistaken in their voices on the ’phone, could we?” Spike questioned.
“No, I don’t think so, but just to make sure, I’ll send men around.” He pressed a buzzer and another order rattled out.
Downstairs Headquarters was like a walled town under siege. Only the besiegers were within and not without. In the main rotunda on the ground floor the crowd milled about, irritated, bewildered. The y hurled questions ineffectually against the patrolmen who barred all exits. Every name and address was taken, every person in the building was scrutinized, interviewed—janitors, visitors, employees, patrolmen. Some looked frightened and guilty; some were pleasantly excited and innocent. Some were outraged and insulted.
At the end of two hours the inspector and his aides had finished their inquisition. He returned to his office, his shoulders sagging. The district attorney and Spike were there waiting for him.
“Nothing doing,” he said. He picked up the telephone, gave a final order. “Unlock the doors; let ’em all go.” He replaced the receiver in a gesture of defeat. “Not a one in the lot you could hang anything on. It’s got me down. I don’t know what it means?” He dropped into his chair with an exhausted sigh.
For a few moments the three men sat in taut, nervous silence. The late afternoon sun beat in at the open window. The air was heavy with heat and humidity. Spike took off his necktie, left his collar open at the throat. Presently he rose and tamped out his cigarette.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said and went out of the office and down the hall toward the men’s room.
But the “minute” stretched itself out to almost an hour. They found him finally hunched down in the bottom of one of the telephone booths in the upper hall. He was unconscious.
And inside his cigarette case they found that strangest of all philatelic aberrations—two stamps joined together, one upside down, the other right side up—a “tête-bêche”…head of Ceres, goddess of plenty, yellowish on a vermilion background.
It was the 1-franc 1849, the most valuable “tête-bêche” in the world—from the Crossley collection.
CHAPTER XXXI - Three Frightened People
SPIKE STRUGGLED up through half-dazed consciousness. The police doctor was bending over him. At the foot of the couch were his brother and the inspector looking helpless and anxious. He opened his eyes slowly, looked around him. He was in the district attorney’s office.
“Where,” he said weakly, “am I?”
“Philip!” It was the district attorney, and it was a cry of relief and thankfulness. There were moments when he forgot that his younger brother was a reprehensible character, and this was one of them. He bent over the couch and took Spike’s hand. “You all right, old man?”
Spike raised himself on one elbow and passed a hand gingerly over the crown of his head.
“I went out into the hall,” he said slowly, trying to piece together the recollection shattered by unconsciousness. “I—I just turned the corner—going down the corridor toward the men’s room and— and something—hit me—that’s all I know.”
The futility of the next half hour again brought sighs of exhaustion and frustration from the inspector. There was a second thorough search of Headquarters for anyone who might have good reason to sock Mr. Philip Tracy into unconsciousness, deposit him in a telephone booth, and leave in his possession stamps worth $10,000.
This last item they neglected to mention to Spike out of respect for his weakened condition. He discovered it himself, though. With returning strength he felt for his cigarette case in the left hand pocket of his vest. Then the district attorney told him.
For a moment he was thoughtful.
“First you,” he said slowly, nodding toward his brother. “Then you,” toward the inspector. “And now—me.”
Suddenly he sprang from the couch.
“Richard! Inspector! Don’t you see what it means? The stamps—those damned, cussed, priceless stamps! The murderer stole ’em from Crossley. The murderer left one behind when Mrs. Ealing was done in, like a trade mark or a calling card. Koenig got one, too. But now—now the tactic is reversed. The murderer is handing ’em out beforehand just by way of a little warning. Sporting, isn’t it? You’re next, Richard, and then you, Inspector, and then me.”
That night the inspector in his apartment in the Bronx slept fitfully despite the a
ttentions of a bodyguard of two brawny patrolmen who spelled each other in standing guard before the only possible entrance to his bedroom.
Likewise the district attorney. Rather than endanger the lives of the little woman and the kiddie who waited for him at the summer residence just outside of Saugus, he spent the night in town, at the largest and most bustling of midtown hotels, personally attended by two men in uniform.
But Spike at his apartment on East 102nd Street observed no such precautions. They—the district attorney and the inspector—had urged him to follow their lead and avail himself of the protective facilities of the New York police department, but his attitude had been singularly quixotic.
“If the killer come,” he had said, and his voice trembled with unspoken menace, “I shall be waiting for him. I shall not be caught napping.”
Yet that was exactly what he indulged in. From police headquarters he went directly home and took a drink, a smoke and a nap. Afterward he took a shower, his dinner and his car from the garage. It was eight-thirty when he turned it westward into the gaping white maw of the Holland Tunnel.
It was past one when he returned. He locked the door of his apartment and threw wide the bedroom window leading onto the fire escape. Then he turned out the light.
For a long time he lay looking out into the city night…thinking…He looked at his watch…
Two-thirty… He reached for the telephone, called a number.
“Sorry to get you out of bed at this hour, George,” he said presently when the connection was made, “but I’ve got a story for you… Yes, it’s exclusive with you if you’ll promise to break it in the first edition tomorrow, the one that gets onto the street around ten… No, no. Something that happened this afternoon at headquarters. You boys were all so busy streaking it out to West Albion that there wasn’t a one of you around, so it will be a beat for you…”
Spike appeared the following morning at police headquarters looking eminently fit, rested and intact. As he walked into the district attorney’s office where the inspector had already preceded him, he was met by two sets of haggard eyes whose owners had obviously spent a sleepless and nerve-racking night. They looked at him in silent, miserable question.
He flung himself carelessly into the nearest easy chair, lit a cigarette and smiled benignly on the two gentlemen in front of him.
“I did not,” he said, “have the pleasure of the killer’s company last night. How about you two?”
Herschman chewed his cigar and the district attorney deepened his frown. They seemed to think that their mere presence, alive and in one piece was sufficient answer.
“I did not, however, spend all of my time waiting for our homicidal friend,” he went on to explain. “I improved part of the shining moments since I saw you last dashing out to West Albion.”
Herschman, who had been looking moodily out of the window, became interested.
“I took the liberty, Inspector, of telling Mellett that I’d report to you. He’s staying out there until you send him some relief and I’d suggest you do it right away, although his job’s not arduous. I don’t think there’s much danger of Linda Crossley getting away now. I saw her and talked to her and she pretty much spilled the whole bag of beans.”
“Yeah?” Herschman’s eyes lighted up with sudden exasperation. “Well, go on and spill ’em to us.”
“Just what I’m about to do. Only tell me something first. You remember yesterday, Inspector, right after we discovered the stamp in your office, you and I called up everyone concerned—that is everyone except Linda Crossley?”
Herschman nodded.
“In other words, within five minutes of the time that that stamp was placed on your desk we had on the wire all the people who might conceivably be concerned in this case—Jason Fream,—Homer Watson, Fairleigh and Miss Ealing. I even called the hospital and talked to Koenig. And we found that they were all in their places, that they couldn’t possibly have been here in police headquarters in time to put that stamp in the position in which you found it on your desk. Fairleigh in Nassau Street is the closest, and it takes at least ten minutes to get there from here even when traffic is absolutely dear and there are no stops for lights. But just to make sure that there wasn’t any mistake you sent men out to tail everyone concerned. Is that right?”
Again Herschman nodded. “I put a man on all of ’em—Fream, Watson, Fairleigh and Ealing.”
“And what do they report?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“By that I take it that you mean that none of the four people in question did anything out of the ordinary last night.”
“No. Fream went to the movies with his wife. Watson stayed in and so did Fairleigh. The Ealing girl spent the evening with some of those neighbors back at 143 where she used to live before she moved to that rooming house.”
“But I’m not so interested, Inspector, in their movements during the evening as I am right after we called. You sent your men out immediately, so that within a half hour after we discovered the second stamp, each of these four persons was under surveillance. Right?”
“Right!”
“And yet, during the period of this surveillance I was slugged in the head by a person or persons unknown, dragged into a telephone booth and my unconscious form presented with one of the stolen stamps.”
Herschman pondered this for a moment. “In other words,” he said, “that just about lets Fream,
Watson, Fairleigh and Miss Ealing out of the picture.”
“It looks that way,” Spike agreed.
“That leaves only those other two.”
“Koenig and Linda Crossley. I thought of that too, so just to make sure I telephoned up to the hospital before I went out to see Linda Crossley. I talked to the floor nurse. Koenig’s better but he’s still weak from loss of blood. It’s rather superfluous to point out that he’s been safely tucked up in bed ever since last Thursday night. So that rubs out any faint chance of him being in on the dirty work. There remains only Linda Crossley.”
He paused, pursed his lips as if he didn’t quite know what to think of Linda Crossley. The inspector egged him on.
“So what. Go ahead. Did she give Mellett the slip and—”
“Oh no, no,” Spike protested, “nothing like that. She was there in West Albion and Mellett didn’t let her out of his clutches after we handed her over to him yesterday afternoon. He says that she cried in a half hysterical manner all the way out. When they finally got there, she simply opened the door of the Polks’ house and walked in and rushed up to Mrs. Polk and demanded her child.
“Mellett’s powers of description are none too graphic but I gathered that there was for a time considerable confusion. And into the midst of it walks the boy. At the sight of him, Linda Crossley went suddenly quiet, almost awe stricken. Just stood there and stared at him. The kid, of course, didn’t know what to make of it all.
“Finally Mrs. Polk took him and Linda Crossley and herself into a bedroom at the back of the house opening off the dining room. Mellett stayed in the dining room. They were in there almost an hour. Pretty soon they came out and Mellett said Linda Crossley looked like someone suddenly transported to Heaven. She had her arm around the kid. He looked a bit dazed. Mrs. Polk had been crying, but she was smiling, and altogether Mellett, who has a few tender feelings even if he is a Headquarters dick, wished he had drawn another assignment. But he stuck around.
“I got out there about ten o’clock, and I had a long talk with Linda Crossley.” He paused. Another one of those irritating pauses indulged in by story tellers, and designed especially to tantalize their audience.
“Well, go on, go on. Spill it,” Herschman put in impatiently.
“It’s her child, all right,” Spike continued. “Hers and David Ealing’s.”
“Who!”
“David Ealing, Maysie Ealing’s brother. Remember the picture, the one that was in the Saugus Index?”
Both Herschman and the district attorney nodde
d.
“Well, that’s the father of the child. She met him years ago during the war. She was doing some kind of Red Cross work, sort of got out from under her grandfather’s thumb for the first time. Ealing was about to sail for France. They—well, the inevitable occurred. It wasn’t just a passing affair, though. They were deeply in love. They were going to be married when he got back. But he never came back. ‘Missing in action.’ Old Mrs. Ealing got the notification from the War Department just five months before Linda Crossley’s baby was born. That’s how Linda found out. She hadn’t dared have his letters sent to her house.
“They were all sent in care of his mother and sister. Maysie slipped them to her. Letters and that bayonet—a war souvenir. He sent two of ’em home, one for his sister and one for Linda. Got ’em off dead Germans probably. Anyway it was the only thing she dared keep. She had to burn his letters. Afraid her grandfather might find them. That bloody bayonet was the only memento she had of the father of her child.
“When the old man found out his granddaughter was going to have a baby he raised holy hell. Acted just like a moving picture. And I must say that Linda acted a bit that way herself. She refused to tell who the man was. No reason why she shouldn’t. But that’s beside the point. The old man declared that he’d never permit her to keep the child. She fought him every way she could, but the cards were stacked against her. And anyway she was only nineteen, and she hadn’t a friend in the world outside of old Mrs.
Ealing and Maysie, and they, of course, were on the q. t.
“Old Crossley let her see the baby just once. Then he handed it over to Fairleigh and had him put it out with the Polks. She never knew where it was. Crossley told her she never would know, until he died. Then he didn’t care what happened. But she knew that Fairleigh knew.
“In the first year or so after the child was born she was too broken down with grief over the father’s death to put up much of a fight. And anyway she was only a girl at the time and frightened and scared of everything. As the years went on, though, the longing to see her child grew. Time after time she begged Fairleigh to break his word to her grandfather and tell her. But Fairleigh is one of those damnable eggs whose word is his bond. He had given the old man his promise and just as a matter of abstract principle he wouldn’t tell her. ‘A man of honor.’ And of course there was that little matter of $50,000 in the will.
A Most Immoral Murder Page 17