by FRANCES
I’m an ass, Reginald Grant thought; I’m a very silly ass. But there could have been a gun held against her. She can be an honest girl, on my side of whatever this is. It can be that she’s in a bad spot of trouble.
Then, as suddenly as his doubts of the girl had arisen, realization that their validity had, now, nothing to do with anything practical entered Reg Grant’s mind. His side or the other side—it didn’t actually matter a damn. Because now the gray sedan, with the girl in it and (probably) a couple of men in it was all he had to go on.
He had had more. He had had the square man. He had found his needle in the haystack and tossed it back into the stack again. He had acted on an impulse and, quite probably, made a mistake. But there is no use, he told himself, in crying over spilled impulses.
And—it was now more than ever imperative that he have something to go on before he went to the police. It was, for one thing, imperative that he have the girl herself, because—and this was unpleasantly apparent—if anything happened to her, he would be the one they’d blame.
He had left his Burberry in the apartment, which was certainly a witless thing to do. He had also, beyond question, left his fingerprints. Sooner or later—there was no telling when—the police would discover that the girl, this red-haired filly named Peggy, was missing and start to look for her. They would start in her apartment, and find a telephone torn out—how had she put it?—by the roots and a table overturned and heaven knew what else, except his coat, his fingerprints. They would put two and two together and come up with abduction. He would himself, in their position. He couldn’t blame them.
Get the girl—somehow. Take her with him to the police and—and what? Chances even that she would say, “Sure he kidnaped me. Grabbed me and forced me into a car and—” His word against hers, and his already, and to put it mildly, of questionable value. Still—proof that he hadn’t, anyway, killed her.
I’ve flubbed it from the beginning, he thought. I’ve been led—call it dragged and not be far off—up the garden path. Why? Damn it all, why?
“What it looks like, Mac,” the cab driver said, without turning around, “is they’re making for the country. Thing is, I got about a quarter of a tank and maybe not that. So if they start across the bridge, I don’t know, Mac.”
Reg had paid little attention to their direction; their direction was whatever the gray car chose, and the gray car went on ahead.
“Where are we?” he said, and the driver said, “Past Hundred Twenty-fifth, Mac. On the parkway. They can cut over the bridge, or go up Saw Mill or maybe take the Thruway. If they do that, Mac, they’ll shake us, on account—”
It had been too foggy the other time to see much. But there had been the hooting of ships from the river; the feel and smell of the river. The river was to their left again now, as it had been then. The slanting November sun lighted the uneasy river.
“Beyond the other bridge,” Reg said. “I don’t mean the big one.” He groped for its name—the name of a most beautiful bridge, a long slender bow across the water. “George Washington,” he said. “A short bridge. You drop a coin in a basket.”
“Harlem River bridge,” the driver said. “So, across it, Mac?”
“Not far,” Reg said. “Down toward the river, I think. There’s a section with detached houses? Not blocks of flats—houses. Probably built years ago?”
“Some still there, I guess,” the cabbie said. “That’d be River-dale. Why, Mac?”
“I think perhaps that’s as far as we go,” Reg said. “Somewhere around there. You’ve petrol enough for that?”
“Pet—oh, sure Mac. That we can make. You know where your girl’s going, Mac?”
“Perhaps,” Reg said. “We’ll see. They’re opening up a bit, aren’t they?”
“No turn-off for quite a spell,” the driver said. But he speeded up and closed, a little, on the gray sedan.
They went across the Harlem River bridge. It wouldn’t be long now—not as he remembered it. Not if he was right.
It was not long. The gray sedan turned off the parkway and the cab followed it, dropping, now, farther behind. “On account of,” the driver said, “they might spot us. Or don’t that matter, Mac?”
“It matters,” Reg said. “Only, don’t lose them.”
They went slowly on narrowing streets, through decreasing traffic. “We stick out,” the driver said. “Like a sore thumb, we stick out. You said no shooting, Mac?”
“I’ve nothing to shoot with.”
“Good. On account, I don’t like shooting, Mac.”
They came to a street which ran parallel with the river—ran high above the river, with nothing on that level between it and the river. At first there were apartment houses on their right; then, widely spaced, large houses, for the most part curiously shaped; for the most part not well cared for. They seemed to cling irresolutely to this rim of the city; to turn their backs on the city and to cringe, knowing that in time the city would push them from its rim.
“Sort of look left over, don’t they?” the driver said and, it occurred to Reg Grant, said very well.
Grant knew from some little distance away which house it would be. It did not, now, waver in fog like something out of Poe, something imagined by Charles Addams. But it was, still, tall and with an improbable tower, a house of which Addams would not have been ashamed.
“If they turn in, drive on past,” Reg said. “Go around the next corner. Get out of sight.”
The driver said, “O.K., Mac. If—”
The gray sedan turned into the short crescent of a drive, stopped in a porte-cochere.
It was more than two hundred yards before the cab found a place to turn off, and then it turned into what was, clearly, a cul-de-sac. This street went a block or so and ended in a barricade and a sign which said, “Dead End.” Higher up, farther from the river, there was a bulldozer, apparently deserted, and other machinery which Reg could not identify, and which was not in action.
“Housing project, probably,” the driver said. “They’re all over these days. Now what, Mac?”
“I wish I knew,” Reg thought, but did not say. He paid the driver what the meter showed and as much more as seemed suitable. “You know, Mac—” the driver said, and stopped, triumphing over conscience after the briefest of struggles. Reg smiled. He said, “That was a bonus, Mac.”
The driver turned the cab around in the narrow street, and waved cheerfully and took off. At the corner he turned left, which meant that he would repass the oddly turreted house.
So, if anybody happened to be looking out of the house, having noticed a taxicab pass after a gray sedan stopped, the watcher would know—
All right, Reg thought. Flubbed it again.
It was a minor point. The major point was “now what?” as the cabbie had so aptly remarked.
In the direction of the house, and a short block back from the river street, there was a wooded slope. An odd thing to find in the city of New York, but there it was—a slope with trees and with undergrowth. The remains, Reg thought, of what had once been—how long ago?—a parked area of an estate, almost a country estate, above the Hudson. Waiting for bulldozers now; waiting, it could be assumed, to be weighted down with the great mass of a block of flats.
If he went through the wooded area, he would come up behind the house. He would come to the trees which, some hours before, had shut off his view from a narrow, nailed-tight window one flight up in a really preposterous house.
Shapiro made two telephone calls, one to get a number and the second to it and started to leave the precincts of Homicide, Manhattan West, and was called back. Lieutenant Stein showed him a photograph.
“Yes,” Shapiro said, “that’s our man. Taken a few years ago, at a guess, but our man.”
He sounded disappointed. But he usually sounded disappointed. Stein was tempted to say he was sorry that Grant, the man in flight, was also Grant, poet admired by Nathan Shapiro, and refrained. Nate was sad enough already. Stein used
the telephone to tell those it concerned that the pix was oke and to let it go. It would “go” widely—in reduced size to policemen everywhere and to the FBI in Washington, on the chance that the FBI might, now or later, be interested. It would go to the newspapers. As cabled photographs went, it was a good photograph.
So, Shapiro thought as he walked to the subway, no impersonation. He hadn’t supposed it would be, hadn’t even hoped it would be. He had been dim-witted to entertain, to suggest, the possibility. Which was to be expected.
He left the subway at Penn Station and walked to the hotel in the East Thirties. The hotel was for women only and Shapiro entered it with, in spite of himself, some trepidation. He enquired at the desk for Miss Laura Felson and was told that Miss Felson was waiting for him in the lobby. The lobby was not large; it did not invite relaxation. There was only one person in it—a young woman in a tweed suit; a young woman pretty enough but in what Shapiro thought a rather sparse fashion. She had short and notably crisp brown hair. Shapiro said, “Miss Felson?” and she said, “Yes. You’re the detective who telephoned. I’m sure I don’t know how I can help you.” Her voice and manner were as crisp as her brown hair. No nonsense about Miss Felson, Shapiro thought, and said that they had to bother a good many people and that he would not keep her long. He said, “Anything you can tell us about Mr. Grant.”
“I can’t,” she said, “imagine why you come to me. I barely knew the man.”
Then Shapiro had misinterpreted, drawn wrong conclusions from something somebody had said. He had understood that she and Grant—
“Nonsense,” she said. “I can’t imagine who could have told you that. I went to one or two of his first lectures and there was a tea at the faculty club. A quite large affair. Not that I’m a member of the faculty, you realize.”
Shapiro realized. He said, “Only that?”
“I met him at a concert,” she said. “By accident. As we were leaving. We talked about the music. We did go some place for tea. It was an afternoon concert. What are you trying to find out? Did I think he was likely to kill somebody? Certainly not.”
Shapiro went, a little mournfully, through the obvious. In such cases as this, they tried to find out everything possible about everybody, and most especially about those suspected of crime. This meant that they had to bother a good many people; ask questions which people couldn’t answer. Had she, for example, heard at the university that Mr. Grant was associating with the younger female students? Particularly, of course, with Miss Jeanette Larkin?
“No,” she said, and added that she did not listen to gossip. Shapiro thought of asking her how she avoided it, but did not. He was, clearly, wasting time. Professor Parkins had, it appeared, implied more than was true. Or, Shapiro thought, I inferred more, and it wouldn’t be the first time.
“It’s a little difficult,” he said. “We want, of course, to ask Mr. Grant a few questions and he isn’t available. And he doesn’t seem to have made any close associations while here—become part of any group, if you know what I mean.”
“Of course I know what you mean. After all, he had only been here for a couple of months. I gathered he didn’t really know anybody in New York before he came. He is quite—insular.”
“On the other hand,” Shapiro said, “he’s quite well known.”
“My dear man,” she said, “very few poets are well known, as you put it. Frost. Sandburg. Somebody from the Times did interview him and his publishers sent out some items, of course. Did you think a lot of fuss was made over him? That is, of course, before this happened?”
“No,” Shapiro said. “At this tea at the faculty club?”
“People from the English Department. A few others. Like me. To—I suppose balance out the sexes.”
“He didn’t mention any friends he might have in New York? Then or when you had tea with him after the concert?” She shook her head. “You see,” he said, “we’re trying to find somebody who can tell us something about him. That’s what it comes to.”
“Probably,” she said, “there are dozens of people in London.”
There was a handbag on the floor beside her chair, and a black notebook under it. She reached down and picked them up. “I was,” she said, “on my way to the library.” It sounded a little as if she were being delayed on the way to her wedding. Nothing here, Shapiro decided. If, in flight, Grant turned for aid to anyone it would hardly be to Miss Laura Felson.
“He did,” Miss Laura Felson said, “mention Professor Pepperill. Said he was sorry to hear ‘the old boy’ was on the sick list. He said that, ‘curmudgeon’ or not, the old boy was quite an old boy.”
“You gathered he knew Professor Pepperill?”
“I—” she began, and stopped. “I don’t know,” she said. “He spoke as if he did, but perhaps it was merely that he knew of him. I understand Dr. Pepperill is a rather celebrated authority on something obscure—ancient Slavic, or something like that. Perhaps he was at Cambridge when Mr. Grant was there.”
She picked up notebook and handbag. She said, “I really must—” and stood up. He stood up and thanked her and watched her briskly go. Good figure, crisp mind. Pretty enough in her sparse way. Not, Shapiro thought, a girl for a poet. But on the other hand, what did he know of poets? Not enough, evidently.
Shapiro went back to the subway and back to Dyckman University, Downtown Branch. He went without optimism and without special plan. He was, he thought, trying to find some association, and through it some pattern, which probably did not exist and would, even if found, almost certainly prove worthless. Take a new angle? Try to backtrack not on Grant but on the girl he probably had killed? And on the other girl it seemed likely he had abducted, and perhaps killed too?
Eventually, Grant would be picked up. He didn’t look like everybody, and didn’t speak like most. Somebody would see his picture in a newspaper and remember having seen him somewhere—having a drink somewhere, getting into a cab somewhere, walking along some sidewalk. (Of course, hundreds of people would see a photograph in the newspaper and call to say they had seen the man—seen him in Washington and in Seattle; seen him on the Bowery and at the Waldorf.) That way, in the end, they’d catch him. And, by then, would he have killed twice? The second time, Shapiro thought, because I let him go.
Start on the surely murdered girl. Get rosters of classes of which Jeanette had been a member. Take them one by one, doggedly. Find out about her; find out why she was born to be a victim of murder.
The information clerk in the registrar’s office was startled almost out of her composure. She said, “Goodness!” and added that she didn’t know. But she passed Shapiro on, and up, and an assistant registrar sighed and said, “If you feel it really necessary. It will take considerable time. If Miss Larkin was carrying the usual number of hours you may have a list of more than a hundred, you know.” He considered. “Perhaps considerably more than a hundred,” he added, his tone almost as doleful as Shapiro’s own. “A class at a time, perhaps?”
A class at a time would do very well. Shapiro was sorry to be a nuisance. He would drop back in—say an hour? He was told, firmly, an hour and a half.
He went across an office of several desks and through a gate in a low fence. He was opposite the telephone switchboard when he heard the operator say, “I’m sorry. Professor Pepperill’s line is busy.” He stopped. When there was a chance he said, “I gather Professor Pepperill has returned?” The operator said, “I’m sure I don’t—Dyckman University, one moment, please—I’ll ring him, Professor Busley—Dyckman University. One moment, please—what?”
Assuming the last was to him, Shapiro repeated what he had said before.
“Professor Herbert Pepperill?”
Shapiro was patient. He said, “Yes.”
“Slavic languages?”
“Are there,” Shapiro said, “many Pepperills?”
“One’s uh—” the operator said. “He came back this morning. That is, about an hour ago. He’s been—Dyckman University.
Thank you. One moment, please—away sick.”
On the telephone, asked for a few minutes’ time, Professor Herbert Pepperill said, in effect, “Urgh,” which was unencouraging, might mean anything, and was interpreted as an invitation to come right along. Policemen learn to do without cordiality.
Professor Herbert Pepperill was a florid man in his sixties, with a brush of white hair. He had very shining and regular white teeth. He removed eyeglasses, the better to glare at Detective Nathan Shapiro. He said, “Who might you be?” in a tone which implied that any answer to that one would be wasted and with an intonation markedly British.
Shapiro explained. Pepperill said “urgh” at intervals, and put his glasses on and read papers on his desk. Curmudgeon was the word for him, Shapiro thought, but also that the underlined inattention might be more seeming than real. So, anything Professor Pepperill could tell them about Grant, about his possible associates in New York would be—
“Bad show,” Pepperill said and took his glasses off again, the better to glare without. “Don’t know the man. Poet chap.”
“He went to Cambridge,” Shapiro said, feeling rather defensive. “You were—”
“Undergraduate,” Pepperill said, dismissing that, and its like. “Hundreds of them. Thousands. Well?”
It was, clearly, another waste of time. Shapiro, who had not been asked to sit down, turned toward the door.
“What is it you’re after?” Pepperill said.
Shapiro told him again, patiently.
“I’ve been away,” Pepperill said. “Picked up something, y’know. Somebody tell you I know Grant?”
It had merely, Shapiro said—as he had partly said before—been a chance. Compatriots, both associated with Cambridge; both now in New York where, it had occurred to him, they might move in the same circles.
“Not I,” Pepperill said. “Circles, bah! No time for what you call circles.”
It occurred to Shapiro that Pepperill rather laid on the curmudgeon business. The gruff eccentric to the letter. Mildly, Shapiro said, “All right, Professor.”
“Poor Cutler’s cousin,” Pepperill said. “You know about that?”