by FRANCES
The little man’s assurance was so obvious, so complete, that for a moment Reg was sure he had missed something—a knife in the man’s hand, or a gun in his hand. When he made sure the man carried nothing, at least in sight, Reg was forced to the only other conclusion—the man was slightly mad.
Reg felt a curious kind of embarrassment. He would, if he was to get on into the house, find the girl and get her out of it, have to dispose of this incredibly cocky little man—and do it soon, because the little man continued to walk smiling across the big room. It is embarrassing to have to use force on a man hopelessly outweighed and, in addition, more than a little balmy.
Well—be as gentle as possible. Grab him and, perhaps, tap him softly and tie him up. Try not to make too much noise about it and—
Reg advanced to meet the little man, his own hands hanging loosely, ready to grab. He saw that the man, now, doubled his fists. Spunky little chap, balmy or not. Reg moved faster and clutched at the little man and the little man moved aside and his left fist jabbed out, as a snake strikes, toward Reg’s face. Reg blocked the blow, but only partially. Aimed at his jaw, it raked, stingingly, at his cheek. A cutter, Reg realized, as he clenched his fists. And he realized something else.
The little man wasn’t balmy. The little man was a pro, and between them in the business now immediately, and literally, at hand there lay that gulf which, in all things, lies between amateur and professional. Weight advantage and reach might lessen the gulf but—
The left jabbed again. This time the block was more successful, and this time Reg countered. And then the smile disappeared from the smaller man’s face, even as, with no apparent trouble—entirely as if he were not thinking about it at all—he moved his head just enough to let a fist pass harmlessly.
The surprise wasn’t, after all, all one side. Reg realized this, and what he had to do.
The man was a cutter—a man of raking fists; sharp knuckles made for slashing. Which probably meant that he hadn’t even, in his own class and his own day—which was not yesterday or the day before, at a guess—had a finishing punch. Jab and jab and slash and slash, until the other man was cut and bleeding from a dozen minor hurts which added, in the end, to a major hurt; win on points or by the intervention of referee or ring physician.
Against that—weight and reach and a right which had stopped bigger men. Bigger men, but other amateurs; men who played this as a game, the rules strict—
Watch his eyes and keep moving in, and take three for one—and watch your own eyes, because he’s aiming for them—and make the one count and—watch his eyes—watch his eyes. God—how he moves. Pin him down. Pin him down—
They fought silently, circling near the center of the big square room, their feet shuffling—except that those of the small man seemed, at first, almost to patter—on slippery linoleum. Reg slipped once, and almost fell but caught himself. And the little man caught him a slashing blow just above the right eye, and this time blood started. Reg shook his head, and blood splattered on the floor. And he kept moving in.
It was not three to one at first—it was a dozen to nothing; a dozen little, stinging blows, which seemed to come from nowhere. Reg blocked some of them, but not enough. But he kept moving in, and the little man danced back and struck, and danced again.
The little man wasn’t smiling any more. There was that. He wasn’t breathing as easily as he had at first. Or dancing as well, as if it were fun to dance—to dance teasingly. Not teasing any more. A kind of flatness in his eyes. Gray eyes; partly closed eyes. The jabbing left again, like a snake’s jab. Knuckles raked Reg’s nose. And there was more blood—little hurts, and little hurts and little hurts. But he’s not moving as well now and—
The first solid blow caught the little pro in the belly, and it hurt him. He gasped and covered and for a moment there was glaze over the slitted eyes. Then he was all right again, dancing again, and he hit Reg’s face—he aimed only at the face—three times more (three out of six, though; not three out of four as it had been) before, again, Reg feinted with the left and drove the right into the belly. It hurt more this time. But the little man covered and got away and—almost—danced again.
Little hurts can add to major hurt, and a little blood from this and a little from that—and I’ve grown soft from sitting and watching, and handling nothing heavier than words and—how long have we been at it?—why doesn’t the bell end the round and?—watch his eyes. Watch his eyes. The eyes are betrayers—you’ve got the reach on him—use the reach. You’ve got the weight on him—on the little jumping flea—on—
The impact of his left jarred to the shoulder. Too high and—
The right leaped of its own will, used its own mind. The little pro went down and lay very still on the linoleum.
Reginald Grant, panting a good deal and swaying slightly, looked down at the small man with considerable disbelief. Twice in one day was something to disbelieve in. That one of them was a pro, even a small pro—Reg backed over to a counter and leaned against it, feeling the need to lean. Out of condition, he was. Have to do something about that. Take up something. But not, he thought, boxing. A bit strenuous for a man pressing forty. Lucky this hadn’t lasted much longer; lucky, too, that the little man was also out of condition. Belly muscles gone slack, that had been his trouble. Cut me to pieces otherwise. Must have been pretty good in his day—
Reg pulled scattering thoughts together and took another, more careful, look at the little man. He wouldn’t be out long. And it wouldn’t be long, certainly, before somebody came to investigate. Large house, obviously; probably cut up into many rooms, and many rooms trap sound. Also, they hadn’t been especially noisy, hadn’t knocked things over. The small man, backing away—dancing away—had circled, as if the ropes of a prize ring penned them both. A reflex it must have been with the little man; movements built in, trained in. Forget that. Get on with it. For a start, tie the little man up.
Everybody has some occasion to wrap parcels, even the most inexplicable of people, as these surely were. He opened kitchen drawers. Not in this one—knives here. Not in this one. Tea towels in this one. Not—here we are. A ball of heavy cord. What the doctor ordered.
He used a good deal of cord on the small man, starting with wrists and going on to ankles. While he was knotting cord about ankles the small man opened his eyes and looked balefully at Reginald Grant. Begin to yell as soon as he was fully conscious, Reg thought, and got a tea towel and folded it several times lengthwise. He forced the man’s mouth open and ran the towel through the open mouth and tied it behind the small man’s head. (The small man tried to bite him, but he was too late at it.) Reg finished his trussing. He noticed he was dripping blood on the small man. Have to try to do something about that, when he got around to it.
He sat on his heels and looked at the trussed man. Not a very expert job, probably. Came from never having tied a man up before. Well, the occasion had not arisen before. So—now?
Now, obviously, put him some place out of the way. He had come out from behind a door—the door on the right. Reg went to the door and opened it. It opened on a small, square room—obviously a storeroom.
Reg sniffed. Unmistakably, the odor of cigarette smoke. As if somebody had been waiting in the room and having a cigarette—
Small man waiting, obviously. Waiting for the fly to come into the parlor. Which meant that the man had seen him behind the tree, after all. Seen, and known himself seen, and gone back to the center of his web for the inevitable fly. Waited with confidence, knowing his own skill.
And, Reg thought, going back for the small man and dragging him across the floor into the lumber room, not knowing I had a little, too. Nothing to compare with his but, with weight and reach added, enough. Just barely, but enough. Knew when I countered the first jab, and then he quit smiling. And—hadn’t known before. He tucked the little pro behind a trunk, out of sight.
So—the square man, who did know and have reason to know, hadn’t been in touch; hadn
’t had a chance to warn that the fly was rather bigger than it appeared to be, and, in most un-flylike fashion, carried a sting in its tail. Surely the square man wasn’t still lying on the floor in the West Twelfth Street flat. I didn’t hit him all that hard, Reg thought. Should be up and about by now.
But—hadn’t got here yet. The little man, tucked away safely enough for the moment; the man in the dark raincoat, not tied up at all, and probably waiting somewhere behind a door with a sap. But, not the square man—probably not the square man, at any rate. (Of course, he might have arrived, might merely have neglected to mention that Reginald Grant was a poet handy with his fists. If so, the small man would have just cause to complain, when he was ungagged.)
Reg went to the sink. There was a small mirror over it and Reg looked at himself. His face would need reconstruction, but not as extensively as he had supposed. Cut over the eye, not bleeding so much now. Nose not bleeding at all.
He splashed cold water on his face, and felt the better for it. So—get on with it. Find the red-haired filly. One door to the storeroom. The other, obviously, offering a means of access to the rest of the house.
He opened the door. It opened on a corridor. The corridor was almost completely dark. As he went into it, Reg let guiding fingers trail along the wall. He went forward very cautiously.
X
Claude Wilson, Hack License 2772, was not, by nature, a reader of afternoon newspapers—or, for that matter, of much else. Give him the Mirror in the morning and save the News for night and that about did it. He was, however, a man who liked to drive a reasonably clean cab and one who picked up after his customers. (There was also, always, the faint chance that some careless passenger might leave behind something of value, which Wilson always turned in to the police, if he remembered to. He was a little forgetful, but he tried to remember.)
He dropped a fare—female, not bad looking—at the Forty-ninth Street entrance of Saks Fifth Avenue, knocked his flag up and drove on through Forty-ninth to Sixth, and pulled into a taxi stand for a ten-minute break, confident that nobody would think of looking for a taxi at a taxi stand. He looked into the back seat and the female fare had left a newspaper—New York World-Telegram. Might as well have a look at the comics, Wilson said, and stretched back and retrieved the paper. There was a two-column photograph on page one, and it was captioned “Missing Poet.”
Wilson was vaguely conscious of this, and looked at the photograph vaguely, and started to turn back to the comics and stopped and looked at the photograph again. He said to himself that he’d be damned if it didn’t and held counsel with himself. On the one hand, there were no fares in it and the guy had seemed like a decent guy, and a generous one. On the other hand, if a guy played along with the police the police might, should the occasion arise, play along with the guy. Anyway—
Being already headed in that direction, Claude Wilson drove across town, and five blocks up, to the West Fifty-fourth Street station house.
Lieutenant Stein answered the telephone, named himself, and said they certainly would, but that it wouldn’t be the first one. Then he listened and said, “Yeah,” and again “Yeah” and then, “He did, did he? That does fit. Have him come down, will you?” and hung up and looked at the telephone for some seconds and went to the door of his office and said, across several desks to one by a window—first grade needs more light, in the summer more air, than lesser grades—“Come in a minute, will you, Nate?”
Nathan Shapiro went in. Stein told him they looked like having something. “Hackie,” he said. “Seems pretty sure from the picture. And—picked him up in West Twelfth Street.”
“The girl?”
“Seems not, from what the sergeant says. They’re sending the hackie—man named” (he looked at notes on a scratch pad) “Wilson-down to see us. A break, could be.”
“Could be,” Shapiro said, and said it sadly. But he said everything sadly.
It did not take Claude Wilson long to get there. Wilson was a New York cab driver. He was a bony, youngish man with no hair to speak of. Ulcer type, Shapiro thought. They ran to it, the poor guys. A hell of a way to make a living.
“You’re pretty sure?” Stein said, and Wilson said he was pretty sure. “In West Twelfth Street?” Wilson said, “Yeah,” and then, “That fits in?”
“It could. Tell us about it.”
Wilson told them about it.
“No girl with him?”
“Nope. But, a girl in it, see?”
“No,” Stein said. “How in it?”
They listened. Shapiro said, “‘Running off with his girl.’ He said that?”
“Come to think of it,” Wilson said, “maybe I said that. But he said, ‘Yeah. That’s the size of it,’ or something like that.”
“The sedan. A girl in it?”
“Now Mac,” Wilson said, “that I don’t know. On account, we didn’t get that close, see?”
“You’ve no idea at all?”
“A guy driving,” Wilson said. “Maybe two guys in back. Maybe a guy and a girl.” He looked at the two policemen.
“He’s wanted for murder,” Stein said, to which Wilson said, “Jeeze!” with emphasis, and then, “You can’t always tell, can you?”
“Very seldom,” Stein said. “You can find this house again?”
Wilson could.
“Only, listen, cap. You said ‘murder.’ Can’t ask a man—”
“You won’t get hurt,” Stein promised. “You want to take it, Nate?”
“I let him go,” Nathan Shapiro said. “Sort of funny about the girl, isn’t it?”
Stein nodded.
“This sedan,” Shapiro said to Wilson. “Didn’t try to shake you off?”
“No. Anyway, he didn’t act like it.”
“Act like he knew he was being followed? Didn’t mind? Maybe was just showing the way?”
“Now Mac,” Wilson said, “I’m a mind reader or something? I followed ’em and they went to this house and we went around the corner and I let this guy—tall guy, like you say—out and came back downtown. And see his picture and go to the station.”
“Very virtuous of you,” Stein said. “Take some of the boys with you, Nate. Don’t go charging in and—”
“Johnny,” Shapiro said sadly, “when did I ever charge?”
The squad car, O’Hara driving, Detective (3rd Grade) Hallahan beside him, Shapiro and Claude Wilson in the back seat, went past the house Wilson pointed at, proceeding at a leisurely pace through a rainy late afternoon. A dark sedan, lights on, cruising slowly on a narrow street at the edge of nowhere. It went two blocks and stopped.
“Tim,” Shapiro said, “you want to see if you can get around and cover the back? Maybe if you go part way up the street marked ‘Dead End’ and—”
“I saw it,” Tim O’Hara said. “Give me—how long?”
“Ten minutes. Watch your light, Tim.”
Detective O’Hara got out of the car and walked back through the rain. He turned into the dead-end street. “We’d better give him fifteen,” Shapiro said to Detective Hallahan, and they gave him fifteen.
“Look,” Wilson said. “You don’t want me, Captain?”
“No,” Shapiro said, “we don’t want you.”
They walked back up the street on the edge of nowhere. “There weren’t any lights,” Hallahan said. “You see any lights, Nate?”
“No,” Shapiro said. “Could be at the back, though.”
The tall square house was dark. It seemed to Shapiro that it wavered in the rainy air. It did not seem to him like a very probable house. “Spooky, isn’t it?” Patrick Hallahan said, as they walked up the short, curving drive. He fingered the revolver in his shoulder holster, making sure it was loose in the holster. They went under the porte-cochere and Shapiro used a pencil flash to find a button which would ring a doorbell. He pushed it, and they heard nothing. He knocked, hard, on the door, and nothing happened. Shapiro sighed. He prefers the entirely legal, when the entirely legal is adequate. He
used a rather special key.
With the door open, Shapiro knocked again, this time on the inside of the door and this time with the butt of his .38. Then he shouted that this was the police. When nobody answered, he looked for and found a light switch and hit the lever. A light high up went on, showed them a staircase leading up; the square hall they stood in, and several closed doors. Shapiro shouted again, but did not expect to be answered and was not.
It was a big house—twenty rooms or more. They didn’t count the rooms. Hallahan took the upstairs—the second floor and the lower-ceilinged third floor, and went up a ladder and out through a trap door onto the fenced area in the rain at the top of a stubby, square tower. There was nobody anywhere. Most of the rooms were unfurnished. Several were furnished as bedrooms and in one—a small, square room at the end of a corridor—Hallahan thought somebody had been smoking not too long before.
There were fewer rooms, but larger ones, on the ground floor, but they were equally empty. Shapiro went, with some caution, down a narrow hallway to the kitchen and turned lights on there. He had turned lights on everywhere; there seemed to be no point in cautiously groping in the dark.
He opened the kitchen door and looked out into the rain. No sign of O’Hara. Good for O’Hara.
“O.K. Tim,” Shapiro called, and there was movement—still cautious movement—behind a tree. “Come in out of the rain, Tim,” Shapiro told the movement, and Timothy O’Hara came.
“Birds flown?” he said, as he came through the door, and stopped at Shapiro’s gesture. Shapiro was looking at the floor. Shapiro pointed the small, sharp beam of his pencil flash at the floor and bent down.
Blood had splashed on the floor—not a great deal of blood, but some. It was dry, now. O’Hara leaned down and looked where the flash-beam pointed.
Everywhere he goes, there’s blood left behind, Shapiro thought.