by FRANCES
He could not easily find the house to which he had been taken, and so could not start there—start a search for something, anything, which would make his story less fantastic. He had only the vaguest idea where the house was—on the far side of a bridge, off a parkway, near the Hudson. He did not think he would know it if he saw it again, unless again he saw it as he had seen it first, wavering in fog. And, while he would know the two men who had pretended to be detectives if he saw them again, they were only two nameless men among millions.
The girl who had lied about him—the sister, the girl named Peggy Larkin—was quite another matter. She was, of necessity, one of “them.” Otherwise, why should she have lied about him, told of “dates” with her sister he had never had? Peggy Larkin, living somewhere in West Twelfth Street. Probably she would have a telephone and he could merely look her up in the directory. Go to her and, somehow, make her tell him what all this was about; make her—somehow—go with him to the police and admit that she had lied about him, that he was not the man who had been what was called “friendly” with her sister—friendly enough to have had some reason to kill her.
With that told, the police might believe the rest of it. They would, at the least, look into the rest of it. The girl named Peggy Larkin was the one to start with. They wouldn’t expect him to start with her.
The train ran for a little over half an hour without stopping; ran fast past stations, more slowly through areas increasingly built up—finally with apartment houses back from the right of way on either side. After a time, the train crossed a bridge and slowed and stopped—stopped at an elevated station. Nobody said anything; a few, but not many, of those on the train put down newspapers and left seats and left the coach.
This was not, clearly, Grand Central. Then, One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street For a moment, Reg thought he should get off here; there was a kind of itching impulse to get off here. But his mind scotched the impulse. Go on with the many, in the terminal station join the many. Safety, for the moment, in numbers; safety in being part of a crowd. The train started and went on, on elevated tracks, above a street. There were tenement houses on either side—ancient and bedraggled tenements. It was a part of New York Reg Grant had neither seen nor imagined. Then there were, suddenly, great blocks of flats, with cleared areas around them and what appeared to be playgrounds. Then more tenements. Then the train went underground.
After a few minutes, men began to stand up and put on coats and hats and then to walk forward in the aisle toward the front of the coach. That was the drill, Reg thought. Join the drill. He put on his Burberry and then, for the first time, noticed that the skirt of it was stained dark. He was puzzled for a moment, and then, even in the over-heated coach (how Americans loved heat!) shivered slightly, realizing what had stained his coat Nothing to do about that, now.
He went, with the others, through two coaches before the train stopped and doors were opened. He went out onto a wide, dimly lit concrete platform, and walked the way the others walked—finally up a ramp, through a portal, into the station. It was only then he thought the police would be watching the station for a very tall man with pale brown hair, wearing a Burberry. (Would the description say, “Probably stained with a girl’s blood?”) I think of things late on, Reg thought. I don’t know this drill. I’ve never had to run before.
Walk on as if going somewhere, as if going a familiar way. Do not look from side to side, or over shoulder, to see who watches. Tell yourself they will be looking for a tall man leaving the city, not for one coming to it. Tell yourself they will be at the gates from which trains depart, not at those where trains arrive. Find a telephone directory and look up an address.
He found a cluster of telephone booths and a rack of hinged telephone directories. He had not realized there would be so many. West Twelfth Street? He groped through a mind suddenly hazy. What was the other name for this part of New York which was the only part he knew? Manhattan. That was it. Presume West Twelfth Street to be in Manhattan.
There were a good many Larkins. He ran down the list. Larkin, Anthony. Larkin, Bates. He went faster. Larkin, Peggy.—W 12. He jotted the number in his mind. He looked at his watch. A few minutes before nine. Telephone her? Give her time to call the others and have them waiting too? Take a chance, and take a cab.
Time for coffee, for some sketchy breakfast at a counter? Better not chance it. Coffee could wait, would have to wait He went out into Forty-second Street and waved at taxis. The one which stopped was one of the midgets. He folded himself into it and gave the address. Traffic was not heavy yet.
His name was, appropriately, Hunter. He was a square man with a wide face and a brush haircut. He walked west in Twelfth Street and thought that, for his money, whoever was running things was trying to be too foxy for his own good—for anybody’s good. But that was only for his money, which was what he was in it for—what he was always in things for. Apparently, there was an angle he didn’t know about. It was all one to him, or near enough. He preferred simpler methods.
If you wanted to get rid of a man, you got rid of him. That was the simple method. The more complicated things got, the better chance there was that things would slip up. As, apparently, things had.
A telephone call—one that woke him up after a moderately busy night—had told him that. Let the cops do it had been the idea and the cops hadn’t. It had looked good enough, granting there was some reason he didn’t know about to do it this way. A wanted man asleep in a stolen car, parked among other cars—there was nothing wrong with that. A man on the run snatches what sleep he safely can. A man with all his belongings on him, including a suitcase which could be identified and clothes in it with laundry marks on them.
All neat enough, except that the man had apparently waked up sooner than was expected, and got away. Got away and, of all the damn fool things, come back to New York.
Not that coming back to New York hadn’t, from the man’s point of view, been a sound enough idea. Come back and go straight to the police and tell his story—a cockeyed story no cop in his right mind would believe. Six of one and half a dozen of the other, so far as Hunter could see, nearing his destination and checking house numbers. Better, obviously, to have him caught while running, instead of by voluntary appearance at the nearest station house. But his story would be cockeyed, either way.
If he had been running things, Hunter would have left it where it was. However, he wasn’t running things. He was getting paid for doing things, and now his instructions were simple and based on the assumption that the man wasn’t going to go straight to the police and tell his story—on the assumption that the man might detour. And also, Hunter gathered, that the girl was the weak link—a weak link, anyway.
If this Britisher was to be the fall guy for two kills, or even for one killing and an additional felonious assault, that would be all right. That would be the ticket. Hunter was allowed a reasonable amount of discretion. But the Britisher and the girl were not to go, together, to the police. If they showed symptoms of doing that, it was up to Hunter—to Hunter and associates. The associates were due to rally.
Hunter was still half a block from the address he sought when he saw a cab stop up ahead. At about the right place, he thought, and quickened his steps. A tall man in a Burberry got out of the cab. Worked out as they figured, all right. Give them that.
Hunter went faster still and was only a few doors from—West Twelfth Street when a man came down the steps from the front door. Hunter turned right abruptly and went down into an areaway and stood with his back to the sidewalk, like a man about to open the areaway’s grilled door.
The man walked on down the street, not paying any attention to Hunter. Hunter, after a reasonable time, came back up from the areaway.
But he didn’t hurry, now. They usually worked in pairs. Perhaps one of them was up in the girl’s apartment. Perhaps this man Grant had walked in on them. He’d better wait a few minutes before he himself walked in on anything. Or, wait until Bennie
showed up with the car?
VI
No.—West Twelfth Street was an elderly brick building, four stories tall. It was rather like the building Reg himself lived in. There were push buttons in a row in the ground-floor vestibule and names over them. He had to use his cigarette lighter to read the names in the dim vestibule. He found the one he sought and reached toward the button and thought, no, try to walk in on her. He tried the inner door, and it was locked. So he would have—
He heard somebody approaching the inner door from the other side and then the knob turned and the door began to open. Reg put a hand in a trouser pocket—the key pocket. He brought it out with keys in it, just as the door opened.
A man opened it—a youngish man with, Reg thought, an Irish face; a blue-eyed man who smiled politely, without emphasis, and held the door open for a tall man who was about to use his key to open it. Reg said, “Thanks,” and went in and the door closed behind him….
Detective (3rd Grade) Tim O’Hara walked down the stoop steps and turned to his right. Hadn’t got much of anything they didn’t have out of the girl. Quite a looker, the girl was. Too bad she didn’t know more but there it was. There it usually was, as old Nate would be the first to agree. All they could do was to keep their eyes open and ask what questions they could think of. Keep their eyes open. There was a slight ticking somewhere in Tim O’Hara’s mind and he listened to it. Just a ticking. Not even that as he walked past a thick-set man opening a grill door in an areaway….
There had been eight names over eight push buttons. Assume that, as in his own place, one read from left to right and that there were two flats to the floor. Buttons one and two for the ground floor. Buttons three and four for the first—no, damn it. For the second floor. Then Miss Larkin’s, number three, was on the second floor, probably in front. A place to try. He went up one flight and knocked on a door. After a few seconds the door opened and he looked down at the girl.
She was a small girl and a slim one. She had deep red hair and she was a very pretty girl. She looked a little—just a little, something about the eyes—like the other girl, except that this face was a grown-up face. Young—she must be in her early twenties—but grown-up. She wore a dark green suit and a beige coat over it and had a green handbag tucked under her arm. She looked up at him and raised her eyebrows.
He waited a moment, let her look. When he thought she was about to speak, he said, “You don’t know me, do you?”
She said, “Know you? Should I?”
“Then,” Reg said, “why did you lie about me, Miss Larkin? Tell people I—how did you put it?—was your sister’s boy friend.”
Then her eyes—very blue eyes—went blank and she moved back and started to close the door.
“It’s no good,” he said. “I’ve come quite a way to ask the question. I’d like an answer.”
And put a foot out to stop the closing door.
She was going to scream. He could see the coming scream tense her slender body. He pushed at the door, hard, and the girl went back with it as it opened. He went in and closed the door on them and she shrank back, as a cornered animal might, but still did not scream.
“Good,” Reg said. “I’ll not hurt you. Answer or not, I’ll not hurt you. I’m Reginald Grant. Why did you lie about me and your sister?”
She still retreated toward the center of the room—a longish room, with tall windows at the far end. As she moved back, she put her hands up, protectingly. She shook her head from side to side, rejecting something. He could not tell what she rejected, unless it was a peril she saw in him.
“You never saw me until a minute ago,” he said. “You don’t deny that, do you? You didn’t know who I was. But you told the newspapers, and the police—”
“There was a detective here,” she said. Her voice was very low, a quiet voice. But it shook a little. “Just a few minutes ago. He’s coming back. He’ll—”
“Fine,” he said. “And you can tell him you never saw me before. And why you lied about me.”
She had stopped retreating. She looked up at him. She said, “You’re Reginald Grant?”
“Right. Reginald Grant. Whom you never saw before.”
“You killed her. Why did you have to kill her? She—she was a child.”
She’s good, Reg thought. And she’s going to stick to it. And it’ll be only my word that, when she saw me at the door, she had never seen me before, and admitted she had never seen me before. I wish I were the kind who could shake the truth out of her. I wish she weren’t so small and didn’t look so frightened.
“Who put you up to it?” he said. “What’s the game, Miss Larkin?”
Her eyes were very wide. She said, “I don’t know what you mean. You’re Reginald Grant. You killed my sister. She—she thought you were wonderful. And you killed her.”
He shook his head slowly. He said, “It’s wearing a bit thin, my dear. You ought to have them write you some new lines, oughtn’t you? Call it some new lies, what?”
He watched her eyes. That he was fairly good at; that he had learned. The eyes of the adversary signal. But he could see only fear in the girl’s widened eyes. Then—something else. That was what you looked for. A plan came into a mind and the eyes showed it—not what it was, or not often that. Merely that it was there.
She began to back away, slowly, trying to minimize the movement. He looked beyond her. A table with a telephone on it.
“If this detective’s coming back,” he said, “you don’t need to telephone him, do you?”
The girl’s eyes went blank for an instant. Then she said, “He’s coming back.” She said it with a kind of helpless doggedness.
“The point is,” he said, “who put you up to it? I’d like to know why, but who will do as a starter. Because you haven’t got anything against me. Couldn’t have, that I can see. I never saw you before and you never saw me. So, you have to be for hire—have to have been hired. And—”
“Why are you saying all this?” she said. “You got—got my sister to like you. Go places with you. I don’t know—know what else. And—killed her. And now you come here and—” She stopped and shook her head and the red hair swirled with the movement. “I don’t get you,” she said. “I don’t get you at all. You say you’re Reginald Grant. The man they’re looking for. But you come here—” She raised slender hands in a gesture of bewilderment.
She’s good, Reg thought. She’s almost good. But they hadn’t coached her for this; he was ahead of them on this.
“I’ll make it simple,” he said, and got tolerance into his voice. “You tell people I was associating with your sister. I’d never seen her outside of class. Probably you know that. Anyway—you identify me as a man she was dating. But—twice now—you’ve admitted that you never saw me before today. I ‘say’ I’m Reginald Grant. That’s what you just said. Who put you up to it?”
She looked at him steadily and now her eyes narrowed a little—narrowed as if she were really listening; even as if she were trying to understand him, were considering what he was saying. Looking for a way out, of course. That was—
“You ran,” she said. “If you didn’t kill her, why did you run?”
“That was part of—part of the whole idea,” he said, and realized that he was, in turn, speaking to her as if, between two people and neither hired, he was trying to reach an understanding. She was even better than he had thought. One could almost believe—
“You know that,” he said. “Or, maybe they didn’t tell you about that? Just your own part—to lie about me and your sister. About a man you’d never even seen and—”
“I didn’t say I’d seen anybody,” she said. “That’s what’s wrong with what you’re saying now.”
Her voice was quite steady. It was as if she were really trying to explain something, trying to make him understand.
“If you’ll listen,” she said. “Jenny told me about you. Said you were—wonderful. All the things a kid says. That she’d gone to ask you something a
fter class and you—you’d said something that made her realize she wasn’t just another girl in a class and—” She broke off, and looked at him. “I’m telling you what you know,” she said. “What you did.”
They’d coached her well, after all. Of course that was it. All this—
“If she told you that,” he said, “which I don’t believe—if she told you that, she was—an inventive young woman. Apparently she was in one of my classes. I suppose that’s been checked out. So, I must have seen her before I found—” It was his turn to interrupt himself. No use going into that. This red-haired girl was, after all, the sister of the girl who had been crumpled, dying, on the cab floor. Whatever this girl was like, hired liar or not, there was no point in rubbing her mind in that.
“You’re saying,” he said, “that you only repeated what she had told you? And that you accepted it without question, and that the police accepted it without question?”
“Why do you go on with it?” she said. “Twice you telephoned—no, three times. Said who you were. Twice she went to the telephone and the third time—the third time she’d gone out to meet you. And—all three times I was the one who answered the telephone. Heard your voice. Heard you say, ‘This is Reginald Grant. Is Jeanette there? Could I—’” She broke off again, made again the resigned gesture with her hands. She said, “Why did you come here, anyway? What are you going to do?” There was, then, a kind of dimness in her voice.
“Come now,” he said. “A voice on the telephone.”
“Your voice,” she said. “As soon as you spoke—” But then, once more, she stopped. And for the first time he saw, or thought he saw, doubt in her eyes—a question in them. “You’re English,” she said, and now he heard—thought he heard—uncertainty in her voice. “The accent.”
Give her enough rope.