by Frances
He put a damp Burberry on again; he put a screen in front of the fire, on the outside chance it was not planning to smoulder out; he went ahead of the two police officers down the stairs and across the sidewalk and into a dark gray car parked at the curb. The square man got in beside him and the man in the raincoat—the speechless man—got behind the wheel. They started west; started, Grant assumed, toward the station house in West Twentieth Street where he had talked to the now “chewed out” Detective Shapiro.
But this driver apparently knew a better route than Joe had followed when the cab carried death in its back seat. This driver turned north on Fourth Avenue and then west on Twenty-third. And, when Grant was quite sure he had gone much farther west than the cab had gone, the car turned south in a wide, one-way street, went a block and U-turned up a ramp. It was only then that Reginald Grant asked the pertinent question: “Where is this captain of yours?”
“Uptown,” the square man said. “Fact is, he’s checking something out. About the girl. Figured it would save time if we took you where he is instead of going to the station and waiting till he gets back. See what I mean?”
They were on the West Side elevated highway. They were, now, going quite fast. They were, it occurred to Grant, going as if no immediate stop were contemplated.
“No,” Grant said. “I can’t say I do, officer. For one thing, you said an hour. An hour and a half at the most.”
“It could be,” the square man said, “it’ll take a little longer than that, Mr. Grant.”
“I’d like,” Grant said, and spoke slowly, “to see your warrant card, officer.”
“Huh?”
“Identification,” Grant said.
“Oh,” the square man said. “Didn’t get you at first. Shield. Sure.”
He put a hand into a coat pocket It came out with something flat, something that shone.
“Should have shown you that earlier,” the square man said, and put the shield back in the pocket. “Maybe you should have asked earlier, huh?”
“I still—”
“Police Department, City of New York,” the square man said. “That’s what it says. Nothing to get worked up about, Mr. Grant.”
But he did not offer to show the shield again, and it seemed to Grant that now the gray saloon car was going faster—faster, surely, than the speed limit; almost dangerously fast through the foggy night. The speed did not slacken when they left the elevated highway, continuing north. On a bridge, the car checked, and hardly more than checked, while the man in the black raincoat dropped a coin into a waiting bin.
A few blocks beyond the bridge, the car turned from the parkway onto a side road which paralleled it and then went across an overpass above the parkway. After that, it went more slowly on narrower streets and went, generally, downhill. As it moved down the heavy moan of ship horns—always a part of sound on a foggy night in New York—grew louder.
Reg Grant’s knowledge of New York was no more than a man may pick up in a few weeks during which he has much else to do. He did not, he realized now, have any clear idea where in New York he was except, he thought, they were coming back to the Hudson River, beside which the elevated highway had taken them. And—that they had come a long way from Twentieth Street, or from Gramercy Park. And—that they had come a very long way indeed from the corner where a cab had stood, unoccupied, long enough for the body of a fragile girl to be thrust into it, so that the body’s blood might flow away, unseen.
He looked at the square man. The square man was looking at him. The light was dim, but not so dim that Reg Grant could not see that the man was no longer smiling.
Realization had nibbled under the surface of his mind for some time, as in still fishing the hoped-for prey may nibble and make the cork bob, just perceptibly. Now the cork went under. This was not what the square man had said it was; this was no formality, to be got through quickly. Nobody needed, now, to tell him that, even by letting a smile fade out.
They had told him that that was it, that that was all it was, merely to make it easier—easier for themselves. He would have said, “May I see your warrant, please?” if there had not been this subterfuge. If they had produced no warrant, he could have said, “Sorry. No,” when they started to walk into his flat, and closed the door against them. What was the American for it? They had—“soft-soaped him.” That was it. They had had him on.
The car was going quite slowly now through the foggy night. The fog was thicker here, nearer the river.
They had found out something that, somehow, in their minds, tied him to the girl’s death. He could not imagine what it was, what they thought it was. He tried to bring a picture of the dead girl’s face into his mind. The most likely thing they had discovered—thought they had discovered—was some connection between himself and the dead girl. He studied the face he had pictured in his mind. Vaguely familiar—yes. But only as one of a certain kind of face—as a common denominator of the faces of American girls of about her age. He was entirely certain, as certain as he was that he had had nothing to do with the girl’s death, that he had never known her, anywhere.
Was it then something else they had discovered, thought they had discovered? He could not have been seen near the cab while it stood empty at the curb. But, was there someone who would say he had been seen? He had gone to his flat that afternoon at about five, after one of his undergraduate classes. He had had a scotch as he checked over his notes for the evening lecture; put slips of paper between the leaves of books. At about seven he had had bread and cheese, and a bottle of bland American beer, and had checked to see whether he needed to shave again and, deciding it would do no harm, briefly run an electric razor over his face. Then, at about half past seven, he had walked downstairs, ruminating vaguely about the difference between British and American verbal usage (to keep his mind off the lecture ahead; to keep his stomach from twittering) and, in the fog, raised a hand to summon Joe’s big taxi.
He could not, of course, prove any of this. No one had seen him go into his flat at about five, or he knew of no one who had. No one could corroborate his assertion that he had stayed in it. No one, certainly, could swear that he had seen him out of it, behaving suspiciously in the vicinity of the parked cab, perhaps with a small girl in sweater and skirt—not and swear truthfully. But—mistakes can be made. Were they bringing him here—wherever here might be—to show him to some witness; some witness who might, perhaps in all honesty, say, “Yes, that’s the man I saw.”
There aren’t, Reg Grant thought, too many men who look like me. Not in New York, there aren’t. I’m a type of sorts, but not a type here. It’s going to be sticky going if—
The car turned off the street into a semicircular drive curving back toward a house. The house appeared to be large; it appeared to waver in the fog and to have a square tower in the center, with a little fence around the top. A quite preposterous house—an incongruous house; a house out of Poe; a house drawn by that somewhat chilling American, Addams.
The car stopped in a porte-cochere.
“End of the line,” the square man said, quite matter-of-factly. Reg Grant wished he had chosen other words. He nudged Grant’s arm. “Captain’s inside,” he said, and Grant folded his long body out of the car. With the square man behind him, Reg Grant walked to a door and the door opened as if somebody had been watching for them through the glass panel. But Grant had seen no one. He went into a hall with a staircase rising out of it and, as the square man pushed the door to behind them, he heard the car start again—heard the motor rev up and the squish of rubber on the wet pavement.
“Upstairs,” the square man said. “Captain’s upstairs.”
The captain and—what? What kind of confrontation, what twisted game to play?
Reg Grant went up the stairs obediently. If there had been a time for disobedience, the time had been earlier. At the head of the stairs, the square man said, “Right along there, Mr. Grant,” and pointed “along there,” and Reg walked, the square man beh
ind him, to a door at the end of a hallway. He was told to go right in, and opened the door and went right in—into a room furnished with a couch and a chest of drawers and two comfortable enough appearing chairs; a smallish, but pleasant room, with a single, not large, window.
“O.K.,” the square man said. “Make yourself at home, Mr. Grant. Captain’ll be right along.”
He had not entered the room. Now he closed the door, with himself on the outside and, as he turned toward the door, Reg Grant heard the grate of metal on metal as the square man, who had never given a name, locked him in.
Grant was not really surprised. He was, however, suddenly, even violently, annoyed. He went to the door and hit it twice, hard, with the knuckles of his right fist and said, also loudly, “I say!” The silence which followed was complete and what is commonly referred to as hollow. It was rather as if he had been beating on the head of a drum.
Grant did not repeat this obviously futile activity. There was no use bruising knuckles—not on a door. There was no use making vocal protest to people who were not listening.
Grant went to the window and tried to raise it, and discovered that it would not open. He tried to look out of it, and found he could see nothing; he returned to the door and a light switch beside it, and turned the light off and looked again out of the window. This time he could see grayness, with the shapes of not distant trees wavering in it.
He turned the light on again and tried a door in the side wall of the room. It opened on a bathroom, small and orderly and windowless. All the comforts of home; more than the comforts of a cell. Yet a cell was obviously what it came to.
His indignation did not subside, but it became orderly. He would have a few things to say to this “captain” when the captain appeared. One might be able to treat an American citizen in this manner. A British subject was another matter. He would bring this fact to the captain’s attention.
When the captain came. It was not for the better part of an hour that Reg’s reluctant mind changed “when” to “if.”
This, he thought, goes beyond even the worst I have heard of the methods of the American police. This is official arrogance without meaning; this was the sort of thing the Nazis had done; that he supposed the Russian police still were doing. This went beyond—
I am, Reg thought suddenly, a bit slow on the uptake. Lay it to inexperience in such matters; lay it to an orderly life within the law.
These men said they were policemen; one of them showed me a piece of shining metal to prove it. But—the piece of metal did not prove it, did not prove anything. These men said that this was all a matter of routine, requiring only an hour or so for completion. Clearly, they lied. They said a “captain” would be right along. And lied.
They said they were policemen—and lied.
Which left his mind occupied with one large word—one large question. Why? The question grew louder as time passed.
Poets require logical minds, since the use of words, and especially their non-wasteful use, is a logical exercise. Poets learn to practice economy of thought, as well as other economies more material. So, when it became apparent that the large question was not going to find an immediate answer, even a small one, Reginald Grant exercised mental economy. He turned out the light and lay down on the couch. Briefly, he considered rearrangement of a line of verse which had for some days persisted in his mind. Then he went to sleep.
III
Light wakened him and he discovered that sleep had not provided an answer to the Why?
Sunlight trickled through the window and in mid-November the sun does not rise early. He looked at his watch, and it was well after ten o’clock. They had let him sleep in; decent of them. Unless, of course, they had merely locked him up and gone away, which would he anything but decent.
He went to the window and looked through it. The trees were evergreens, closer than he had supposed when he had seen them wavering in the fog. No fog now; a bright day as November days go. The sun topped the trees, which screened the house—this side of the house, at any rate. He could see nothing beyond the trees, but got an impression that, beyond the first line of evergreens, the ground rose rather sharply.
He turned from the window when he heard the key in the lock, and faced the door. The door opened and there were the two of them—the square man and, again, the taller dark man behind him. The square man carried a tray; the man behind him carried, in his left hand, a small suitcase which Reg recognized as his own, and a folded newspaper. In the other hand, he carried a pistol.
“Breakfast,” the square man said.
Reg merely looked at him; looked down at him, which was agreeable, but did not seem to give him any tangible advantage.
“Have a good night?” the square man asked, and found a small table and put the tray down on it. The other man put the suitcase on the floor and the newspaper with it—two newspapers, from the bulk—and kept the pistol pointed at Grant.
“Compliments,” Grant said, jerking a thumb toward the tray, “of the captain, I suppose?”
“A joker,” the square man said, pleased. “A real sure enough joker. Captain said to tell you he was detained.”
Grant took a step toward him.
“Wouldn’t,” the square man said. “Just eat your breakfast and read your newspapers. Interesting story in the newspapers. Brought some of your things along, too. Think of everything, don’t we?”
“What’s the bloody idea?” Grant said. He did not speak loudly; there was obviously no point in raising his voice, just as there was no point in going against the gun in the dark man’s right hand.
“You’ll get it,” the man said. “Give you time and you’ll get it, Mr. Grant.”
They went out then, not turning their backs on him, and closed and locked the door. Grant made no further move until the door was locked. Then he went over and picked up the newspapers. The Daily Mirror was uppermost, and there was enough on the front page:
“Poet Sought In
Co-Ed’s Murder!”
That was enough. That was enough to go on with.
Reginald Grant, admittedly a poet, stared at the leaping black letters.
He picked up The New York Times. The headline was smaller on the front page of the Times, but it was on the front page of the Times. He sat on the couch and slowly, unbelievingly, read what was in the Times. As he read on, down the long column on the front page, on the inner page to which the account was continued, Reginald Grant became conscious of a kind of dizziness in his mind.
The girl was—had been—Jeanette Larkin. She had been nineteen years old and a student in the College of Arts and Sciences of Dyckman University. Among the classes she had attended had been one in Contemporary Poetry and the class had been conducted by Reginald Grant, widely known English poet and this year’s Bingham Lecturer on modern poetry. And Reginald Grant was being sought for questioning by the police and had disappeared from his apartment.
It was all most carefully worded. The account of the delivery of the girl’s body to the West Twentieth Street police station by Mr. Grant and Joseph Abrams, 57, of—Melrose Avenue, the Bronx, was accurate. And read about, it was preposterous. That anyone should, even for a moment, have believed so unlikely a story! Reginald Grant shivered slightly. He took the napkin off the tray, noticed that the plate contained scrambled eggs and bacon, and poured himself a cup of coffee. He could have done with something stronger.
Mr. Grant had denied to the police any acquaintance with the girl. When her identity was established, several hours later (How, Grant wondered? Fingerprints?) the police had gone to Mr. Grant’s apartment to ask how it had happened that he had denied ever having seen a young woman who, since the opening of the academic year, had sat in a class to which he lectured each Tuesday afternoon. They had found that Mr. Grant was not in his apartment. They had also discovered that on the closet shelf in the apartment there was a dustless oblong where a small suitcase might have been, and that in the bathroom there was no shaving gea
r, no toothbrush. One dresser drawer was partly open and it appeared that several articles of clothing might have been hastily removed.
The Times merely stated, did not comment.
Miss Larkin had had a sister and had stayed in the sister’s apartment,—West Twelfth Street, in Greenwich Village, since the start of the school year. The sister was Peggy Larkin, a secretary. And, according to the police, Miss Peggy Larkin said that, far from being unknown to Mr. Grant, her sister had had several dates with him.
“She was so happy,” Peggy Larkin was quoted as saying. “So excited that he had noticed her.”
Grant put the newspaper down and blinked slightly, as if what he had just read had hurt his eyes. What they had hurt, however, was his mind. Momentarily, Reginald Grant considered the possibility that something had happened to it. Had his personality, which was to say his mind, split down the middle, each half periodically controlling his bodily activities? Grant finished the coffee in his cup and poured it full again, doing these things—these simple and reassuring things—very slowly.
Theoretically, he supposed it was remotely possible that such a split had occurred. Such things were said to happen, and not only in the pages of Stevenson. If this had happened to him, there was clearly nothing he could immediately do about it and the presumption was that, eventually, he would end up in an institution for the criminally insane. Meanwhile—
Meanwhile, the point was to arrive at some less embarrassing explanation, assuming he was now, and had all the time been, of one piece.
He was not a hermit by nature. During his weeks in New York he had had “dates.” None of them was with a child; certainly none was with a child named Jeanette Larkin. Nor had he ever known a woman, apparently older, named Peggy Larkin. Start with those things, assume them incontrovertible. Then Peggy Larkin, like the men who had kidnaped him, lied. Why?
The only explanation was, on the face of it, preposterous: Peggy Larkin and the men who had pretended to be policemen must be in something together, and that something directed against him. It was, on the whole, almost easier to believe that his mind had divided against itself. Conspiracies simply were not arranged—not against people of so little importance as poets. There was, flatly, nobody in the world who would go to that much trouble to do in a man like himself. (He had, to be sure, been rather devastating a year or so before in reviewing a volume of verse by an English “poetess.” He had called her that, to rub it in a bit. She had, he was quite certain, been annoyed. But probably she was in Greece—she was a great one for being in Greece—and was in any event unlikely to be prone to violence. She wrote as if she were hand-coloring china, for one thing.)