Murder by the Clock

by Rufus King

“Tell me what, Lieutenant?”

  “That Mrs. Endicott told him she couldn’t stand it any longer: that she either was going to kill her husband or else commit suicide.”

  Mr. Smith smothered a sharp intaking of breath. “Oh, you know how women talk, Lieutenant. It’s just talk.”

  “Then he wasn’t impressed, really?”

  “Why, of course not. No more so than you or I would have been.”

  “He got back here from the Ritz at six?”

  “About.”

  “And stayed here until I phoned him?”

  Mr. Smith looked a little baffled. “Well, not exactly, Lieutenant.”

  “Just how exactly, Mr. Smith?”

  “Why, you see, he left for dinner right after he came in.”

  “Just after six?”

  “Near six-thirty.”

  “And what time did he get back from dinner?”

  “I wasn’t here, Lieutenant. I had a date and didn’t get back here myself until around midnight.”

  Lieutenant Valcour became very, very casual. “Did Hollander plan to marry Mrs. Endicott after she’d got the divorce?” he said.

  “Golly, no. There wasn’t going to be any divorce. It was platonic—and damned if I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s quite possible.”

  “I have never seen her—but to hear Tom rave!”

  “She is very beautiful.”

  “Lieutenant,” Mr. Smith’s exceedingly attractive dark eyes stared solemnly into Lieutenant Valcour’s veiled ones, “he thinks she’s a saint. I mean it.”

  “Dark and strange,” muttered Lieutenant Valcour. “Dark and strange.”

  “What’s dark and strange, Lieutenant?”

  “The rather terrible things that sometimes happen, Mr. Smith, under the patronage of love.”

  “I’ll be damned if you talk like a cop,” said Mr. Smith, suddenly very suspicious.

  “Then I’m afraid you are damned, Mr. Smith. What,” Lieutenant Valcour asked suddenly, “was kept in this?”

  Mr. Smith, momentarily distracted from his suspicions by the abrupt switch, stared at the leather sheath Lieutenant Valcour was holding out at him. “Some sort of a sticker that Tom picked up on the other side,” he said. “Damascus steel, he calls it. Uses it for a paper knife.”

  “I wonder why it isn’t in its sheath,” said Lieutenant Valcour mildly.

  “Search me.”

  Lieutenant Valcour poked around among the papers.

  “It isn’t here in this secretary, either.”

  “Well, I don’t know where it is, Lieutenant. It was there this afternoon.”

  “I don’t know where it is either, Mr. Smith, but I’m going to find out.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Where was it you saw it this afternoon? On this secretary?”

  “Yes.”

  Lieutenant Valcour’s search of the secretary was swift and thorough. The pigeonholes, the drawers yielded no stiletto of Damascus steel. Hidden in one of the drawers was a copy of the Oxford Book of English Verse. That interested him momentarily. He gave it sufficient attention to note that the most used portion included the Sonnets of Shakespeare. But there was no time now—no time.

  “I’m going through the rooms here,” he said, “and look for that stiletto.”

  “You’ll be exceeding your authority if you do, Lieutenant.”

  “Have you any objections?” Lieutenant Valcour asked quietly.

  Mr. Smith grew almost fervent in his protestations that he had none. Why should he? He had nothing to conceal, nor had Hollander. Of course, there were a bottle or two of gin and a quart of Scotch, but he didn’t imagine the lieutenant would be interested in anything along that line. No, the lieutenant assured him, he wouldn’t be. Liquor was not in his province. Then it would be all right to go ahead and search? Lieutenant Valcour wanted to know. Oh, quite.

  In spite of his verbal acquiescence Mr. Smith followed Lieutenant Valcour through the two other rooms of the apartment with a gradually growing air of truculence. He stood near and a little behind him when, after the search yielded nothing, Lieutenant Valcour went to a telephone and dialed the Endicott’s’ number.

  Lieutenant Valcour did not get the connection, because Mr. Smith drew a pliable leather-bound slug of lead from his pocket and struck Lieutenant Valcour with it on the head.

  CHAPTER XV

  2:13 A.M.—The Thin Steel Blade

  Miss Murrow began to feel fidgety.

  Even after the many, many years she had spent in nursing she had never accustomed herself to spending a night quite comfortably in a chair. She had always had her attacks of the fidgets, and would probably continue to have them until she arrived at the port of destination for all good nurses and married one of her patients or a doctor. Of the two she really preferred a patient.

  She trained a speculative eye on her present one over there on the bed. Not really speculative, as—she told herself firmly—he was already married. Although heaven knew that that never mattered. Take the case of that red-headed Gilford girl who had snapped old man Tomlinson right up from under his wife’s nose—probably, at that, because of his wife’s nose, which had been an unusually large one. Miss Murrow giggled. That was almost witty enough to tell to Mr. Hollander.

  He must have felt that she was thinking about him. What a curious expression that was in his eyes. He had just turned them toward her, and they seemed to glitter. Yes, that was the word exactly—“glitter.”

  It was a fancy of Miss Murrow’s to be meticulous in the matter of words. “Really,” she thought, “I don’t see why I couldn’t be an author.” She felt sure she had ever so much more knowledge of life than one encountered in the average run of books. Tripe. Yes, “tripe” was indeed the word. Of course, her books wouldn’t be average. Now that little story of Delia Hackenpoole and the interne with those shifty eyes…

  Eyes…

  Yes, Mr. Hollander’s eyes were glittering—even in that second flash she had just caught of them. But possibly he, too, had the fidgets. He’d been sitting terribly quiet for the past ten minutes or so. Not a budge out of him. A body would forget he was there, almost.

  Of course he was handsome. Especially in that soft, vague light from the distant lamp which picked his pale features out obscurely. And they were pale, at that. Genuinely pale. She did hope he wasn’t going to be ill or have a nervous breakdown and ruin this perfectly marvelous case of the dear doctor’s…

  Mrs. Sanford Worth. What a pleasant name it would be. Distingue. How apt the French were! (She knew ten phrases.)

  Was that right hand of Mr. Hollander’s actually moving, or was it an illusion of light and shade? It seemed to be slipping slowly from the arm of the chair and would eventually end up in his lap. It was moving—it wasn’t—quite creepy, really. Damn the fidgets! She shifted her center of balance and felt temporarily relieved. Overstuffed chairs were really wretched for prolonged periods of sitting, when you came right down to it, whereas a good old-fashioned horsehair sofa, such as Aunt Helen had had at Scioto…

  Why, the hand was gone!

  Positively gone—like a conjuring trick.

  It wasn’t on the arm of the chair, so it must be in Mr. Hollander’s lap. Then it had been moving after all, and she hadn’t been just imagining it. Why, it was almost sneaky…

  His profile was toward her. Not a snub nose, exactly, nor retrousse. You couldn’t apply that term to anything about a man, and whatever else he might be, Mr. Hollander certainly was a man.

  How interesting his life at sea must have been. (She had definitely ticketed him as a sailor.) Lives at sea were always interesting. All the best books were in accord with that. You never read of a Main Street on the ocean. What with the girls in every port and the fights and the smell of crisp salt air… What a wretched little twirp that boy had been down at the beach last summer, with his absurd remarks about the salt smell being a lot of decayed lobster pots and dead fish. Of course the air at sea was salt. S
ea and salt were synonymous.

  Mr. Hollander did have the fidgets.

  She couldn’t see exactly, because of the masking arm of the chair, but he certainly was fiddling with something. She’d think he was twirling his thumbs, if he looked like the sort of man who twirled thumbs, but he didn’t, so it wasn’t that.

  She looked at her wrist watch and saw that the hands were approaching the half hour. She’d have to examine her patient and note his pulse on the chart. What a pity that the only time you really felt comfortable in an overstuffed chair was at the moment when you had to get up.

  She stood up, smoothed starched surfaces, and sailed, a smart white pinnace, toward the bed. She smiled engagingly at Mr. Hollander and then started to take Endicott’s pulse. She gave a slight start and concentrated her full attention upon Endicott.

  “I think there’s a change.”

  Hollander looked up at her alertly. “Change?”

  “I think he shows signs of coming to.”

  Miss Murrow wondered a moment at the tight little lines which suddenly appeared on Hollander’s face, hardening and aging it rather shockingly, and altering the features into a cast whose hidden significance she could not define exactly. Strain, perhaps, better than anything else, served as an explanation: an emotional strain.

  “How can you tell?” he said.

  Miss Murrow smiled a bit superiorly. “It becomes instinct, mostly.”

  “Will it be soon?”

  “Very soon now. Be careful, please, not to disturb him or make any sudden noise or movement until I come back. I want Dr. Worth to be on hand before the patient actually does regain consciousness.”

  “You going up to get him now?”

  “Yes.” She went over to the bathroom door and spoke to Cassidy. “You gentlemen will be careful, won’t you, about being seen? I’d stay well back within the doorway, as sometimes a patient is a little, well, wild when he comes to like this, and if he started jerking around at all he might see you.” She smiled engagingly. “What with the uniforms and everything—”

  Miss Murrow left implications of the possible fatal consequences hanging in air and returned to Endicott. She examined him critically for another moment, checked his pulse again, and then started for the door. She stopped just before she reached it, and said to Hollander: “I suppose you had better lock the door after me. Lieutenant Valcour placed great stress on the fact that it should be kept locked constantly.”

  “I’ll lock it,” said Hollander.

  “It does seem kind of foolish, doesn’t it?”

  Hollander smiled grimly. “Most foolish.”

  He stood up and joined her at the door. She went outside. He closed the door and locked it. He stared almost blankly for an instant at the two policemen. They had drawn their chairs back a little within the bathroom doorway. Hansen was impassively studying the ceiling above his head. Cassidy, leaning forward a little, was looking with solemn eyes at the outline of Endicott’s still figure beneath the bedclothes.

  Hollander stretched cramped muscles and then went back to his armchair beside the bed. He sat down and was all but completely obscured from the two guards by its high back. With imperceptible movements he drew a thin steel blade from beneath the cuff of his left coat sleeve and held it in such a fashion that it was masked in the palm of his right hand, the hilt extending up a little beneath the shirt cuff. He leaned forward and stared down upon Endicott’s quiet face. Not quiet, exactly, for the lids were twitching—opening—and Endicott’s eyes, bright and unseeing from fever, stared up…

  CHAPTER XVI

  2:13 A.M.—Time versus Death

  O’Brian stirred a bit restlessly in his chair by the hall-door and yawned; then he looked at his watch. It was almost a quarter past two. He began to enumerate the various things he would give for a good cup of strong black coffee, and his shirt headed the list. Or, if not coffee, some excitement to keep him awake. The telephone jangled.

  He stood up abruptly and went to the instrument. It would be, he imagined, Lieutenant Valcour calling again to find out if everything was all right. Well, everything was.

  O’Brian lifted the receiver and said, “Hello!”

  No one answered him, and there wasn’t any sound from the other end of the line, unless you could call a sort of thumping noise and a faint tinkle that might have been breaking glass a sound.

  “Hello!” O’Brian said again.

  The line wasn’t dead, because there wasn’t that peculiar burring one hears when the connection is broken. The receiver of the phone at the other end was certainly off the hook. O’Brian singled out one of the patron saints of Ireland and wanted to know, most emphatically, just what sort of fun and foustie was being made of him.

  “Hello!” He tried it again.

  There was a click. The burring sound started. The line was dead. Whoever had been calling from the other end had hung up.

  O’Brian very thoughtfully did likewise.

  Then he began to wonder what he ought to do. It didn’t take him very long to decide, especially as the thumping noise and tinkle of breaking glass grew louder in retrospect the more he thought about them. He didn’t have to go as far as Denmark; something was certainly rotten right here in New York.

  He dialed the operator, identified himself as a member of the police force, and stated that he wanted the call he had just received instantly traced.

  “Oneminuteplease,” requested a voice with a macadamized smile.

  The minute stretched into two—ten—but eventually he was informed that the call had come from the apartment of a Mr. Thomas Hollander, whose phone number and address were thereupon given.

  O’Brian jotted them down. He then dialed the telephone number of Hollander who was, as he very well knew, right upstairs. Several persistent dialings failed to awaken any response.

  The complexion of the work afoot grew dirtier. O’Brian felt certain that it was connected with the terrain activities of Lieutenant Valcour. If it had just been some occupant of Hollander’s apartment who had wanted to call Hollander up about something, there would have been an answer.

  And there wouldn’t have been that thumping noise, and the tinkle of breaking glass.

  It seemed a matter that required investigation at once. O’Brian telephoned his precinct station and reported the occurrence and his beliefs about it to the sergeant in charge. He was assured that a raiding squad would be dispatched within a matter of minutes to the address he had given.

  One was.

  They found Lieutenant Valcour helplessly bound, very dazed, very weak, lying on the floor beneath a table when the men crashed the door to Hollander’s apartment and broke in. Cold water—a glass of whiskey from a convenient decanter—and intelligence and strength began to return. Lieutenant Valcour pushed away the hands that were supporting him and, going to the telephone, called the Endicott’s’.

  “O’Brian?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant—you all right, sir?”

  “Yes, yes—pay attention to every word I say and follow my instructions to a letter. Endicott’s life depends upon it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go upstairs to Dr. Worth and wake him. Tell him I believe that Hollander is armed with a knife and that he is probably just waiting for a chance to use it when he won’t be observed by the nurse or Cassidy and Hansen. Hollander is Endicott’s enemy, not friend. Tell Dr. Worth to go down and knock on Endicott’s door. Tell him to go right inside when it opens. Now get this.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell him to ask the nurse how the patient is—to act natural about it. Tell him to start to go out and then, as a second thought, tell him to beckon to Hollander as if he wanted to tell Hollander something. Hollander will get up and go to him. Tell him to whisper to Hollander that there’s something he wants to tell him privately, if Hollander will step outside for a minute into the corridor. You be in the corridor. When Hollander comes out, jump him. Put the cuffs on him and keep him quiet until I get there.
I’ll be right on up. O. K.?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lieutenant Valcour rang off. He turned to the sergeant in charge of the detail.

  “Leave one man here, Sergeant,” he said. “The rest of you men can go back to the station after you’ve dropped me at the Endicott’s’.”

  “Anything you want the man who’s left here to do, Lieutenant?”

  “Not unless a dark-haired youngster comes back, which he won’t. But if he should, just have him kept for me, please, on ice.”

  Down on the street, Lieutenant Valcour jumped in beside the driver of the department car and said, “Step on it, Clancy. It’s only eleven blocks up and three west.”

  The car shot forward, swept to the right at the corner, and lunged up Lexington Avenue. There was little traffic, and what little there was was so scattered that nothing impeded its way.

  “Something going to break on that Endicott business, Lieutenant?”

  “Either going to, or has.”

  “A homicide, ain’t it?”

  “Possibly—by now.”

  * * * *

  Nurse Murrow smoothed the last wrinkles from her uniform while waiting for Dr. Worth to open the door. It paid to look one’s best. Always, at any time at all. One never could tell.

  “Oh, Doctor. I’m sorry to get you up again so soon, but Mr. Endicott shows symptoms of coming to.”

  Dr. Worth, who was no longer the eager-eyed practitioner he once had been, did his best to shake off the puffy chains of sleep.

  “I’ll come right down, Miss Murrow.”

  “I’ll wait, Doctor.”

  “Just want to dash some cold water on my face.”

  “No hurry, Doctor.”

  He vanished into the room again. Ah, dreamed Miss Murrow, what a man! And he’d never been snappy with her, either. So many were snappy. Someone was coming up the stairs—quickly—two at a time—a policeman—

  “Where’s the doctor, miss?” said O’Brian, a little winded.

  “He’s coming right out, Officer.”

  “I gotta see him at once.”

  O’Brian brushed her aside and opened the door. Dr. Worth met him, astonished and glistening, on the threshold.