Paul Bean had left that scene, which was not yet a murder scene, at half past eleven. He had paused in the corridor outside to light his cigar, with his shadow long and thin on the marble floor.
He had rung for the slow little elevator, but it had not replied at once. He had decided to walk down the stairs, and had done so, not meeting anyone on the way. In the lobby he observed the gilt scrollwork top of the elevator cage down in the basement. The operator was probably having supper, and had not heard his ring.
He had gone out into the night, walking west towards Park Avenue. A block away he passed a fat bellied policeman moving slowly down in the shadows of the building line, who adjusted his cap with a deferential gesture when Paul Bean spoke a gloomy, 'Good evening, officer,' to him. A block farther on a couple of half grown youths, playing some kind of wild chase tag game on and off the sidewalk, tripped Paul Bean as he tried to angle his way between them, and he fell sprawling in a tangled knot, like a giraffe, scraping his palms and the pads of his fingers, and tearing his pants knees.
With expressions of regret, the boys got hold of him beneath the armpits to help him up, and just as he got his long legs untangled and was starting up from all fours, kicked him in the pants, sending him sprawling again and running away down the street laughing. Considerably hurt, both in skin and feelings, and with his cigar mashed and lost on the sidewalk, Paul Bean got himself up once more. The boys had ducked around some corner, and the policeman he had passed a block before was no longer in sight. Holding his palms up like a melancholy Airedale, and limping slightly, Paul Bean proceeded on to Park Avenue, and down it to his own large and lofty apartment building.
The elevator man was still on duty—after midnight there was only a small selfservice elevator for tenants. Paul Bean rode up to the fourteenth floor, where he got off, with an exchange of good nights, and was unlocking the door of his apartment opposite before the doors were closed.
Having arrived home, where he lived alone now that he was a widower, and with his stepdaughter Jennie away at summer camp, Paul Bean proceeded into the bathroom off his bedroom, where he washed the dirt and skinned blood from his hands, and soaked them in hot water. He applied a soothing lotion when he had dried them, after which he wrapped surgical gauze with adhesive tape on his fingertips. At his bureau in his bedroom he removed his jacket, with some clumsiness because of his bandaged hands, and examined the dirt upon it.
He took out his watch from his pants fob pocket and wound it. It said five minutes and thirty seconds of midnight, he observed.
He began to remove the other items from the various pockets of his pants and jacket, putting them on the bureau with his watch, to have his suit ready for the cleaners in the morning. He paused a moment, standing before his mirror motionless, looking at the reflection of his dark green eyes in his small dark bony face, with his bandaged hands pressed to his hollow ribs, meditating. He continued his undressing, stepping out of his light coloured suit pants. He went to his clothes closet, where his robe and pyjamas hung on a hook, next to a hook on which hung a pair of dark baggy slacks and a dark golf pullover and reached in . . .
But Paul Bean was not the last man to see old Dan McCue alive.
At a quarter of midnight, or a few minutes later, the pan faced elevator operator of the Royal Arms opened his gates on the fourth floor for the little shadowy man who stood there, having rung to go down.
He was a slight little man, not more than five feet two inches in height and weighing perhaps not more than ninety pounds, dressed in a dark grey, silk like alpaca with a clerical collar, and a stiff straw hat which had been dyed black and varnished. He had a vague, wistful face, which he was rubbing with his fingers as the elevator arrived, in the way of a man who feels a new shave. He pulled out a tobacco pouch and pipe as he stepped into the elevator, with an apologetic, sidewise gesture.
The Royal Arms elevator men knew him by sight—Father Finley, as he called himself, a friend of Mr McCue's. He lived somewhere in the neighbourhood, and came in frequently to see Mr. McCue, or just to wander around the corridors or down in the basement—though Swede Rasmussen, the janitor, always chased him out when he got down there—looking for some stray cat to feed.
The pan faced elevator man, whose name was Boaz, didn't particularly like to have Father Finley riding in his car. That wasn't because the little man was probably demented, and might some day pull out a hatchet from underneath his coattails and maybe chop him from behind, but because he smoked a bad smelling shag tobacco, and had also about him a somewhat disagreeable meaty odour, in spite of his clean and well bathed look.
The goof had probably just come from Mr. McCue's, thought the elevator man.
'Mr. McCue still up, Padre?' he said, closing the cage doors, although he knew that old Dan McCue never went to bed before one or two o'clock.
'I believe so,' said Father Finley. 'I believe that he was up, or sitting down. I just dropped in to have a shave. Did I get it clean enough? I had a drink with him, too. Or rather, he poured out a drink for me. I'm not sure if I drank it. We were discussing philosophy, and I smoked my pipe. Have you seen a cat wandering about by any chance?'
His voice was soft and purring and quite inoffensive. Boaz, the elevator man, thought it disagreeable, however, like his smell. The sound of it always lifted the bristles on the back of his neck.
'What kind of a cat, Padre?' Boaz said.
'A grey Maltese cat,' said Father Finley, with his vague eyes lighting for the instant. 'More precisely, perhaps, a kitten. A grey half grown cat about five months old, with a short tail, a white breast, and three white feet—all except the left hind one. I saw it on the sidewalk out in front an hour ago, but before I could reach it it had disappeared, either into the building here or down the alley. It was homeless and hungry. It was crying. I shall not sleep tonight, worrying about it. You haven't seen it, you say?'
'No,' said the elevator man. 'Maybe it went down into the basement, and Swede Rasmussen caught it to make a stew out of it. If I see it I'll tie a brick to its tail and heave it out the door for you, though, Father Finley.'
'How brutal—how bloody—some men are!' said the little man in grey sadly. 'It is such a cruel world. A hard and cruel world. The things that some men have in their hearts are inconceivable.'
'Yeah,' said Boaz. 'Ain't it awful? It busts my heart, too. Was Mr. McCue alone when you left him, Padre?'
'I believe he was,' said Father Finley vaguely. 'Yes, I am sure of it. Dan mentioned that Paul Bean had just gone.'
'I just wondered,' said Boaz.
He took another bite of the half finished sandwich in his hand as they reached the lobby floor. He hadn't seen Mr. Bean go, though he had taken him up at about eleven. He hadn't seen Father Finley come in, for that matter, either. However, he was seeing him now, going out.
Boaz, the pan faced elevator man, strolled after the little man in thin whispering silky grey to the doorway of the Royal Arms, which stood open in the warm late summer night. Father Finley turned left, and Boaz looked right down the street, towards Third Avenue and Park beyond. The fat blue bulk of a patrolman was coming down the midnight street from there, having just emerged from a doorway, it looked like. Boaz recognized him as Ignatz Slipsky.
The little man in grey went down the sidewalk, past the entrance of the black alley which separated the Royal Arms from the old brownstone tenement next door, where he lived. He mounted the worn sandstone steps and went in through the heavy walnut doors with their small ground glass paneling, on which was lettered ARGYLL HALL in peeling gilt script. He went up the worn creaky wooden stairs inside, under dim bulbs above each landing, past snoring doors and dead deserted doors on the second and third floors, pausing momentarily to listen and look around him. At the top floor he paused again a moment.
He looked toward the door of the rear flat on the right. On tiptoes he moved toward it.
That right rear flat had been shown to him before he had moved in a month ago. However, he h
ad preferred the front with its view of the street and southern exposure, even at two dollars and fifty cents more a month.
As far as he knew, the rear flat was still empty. No truckload of broken furniture had been moved into it that he had observed. There had been no garbage cans at the door, no swarming children erupting from it, no sounds of yelling voices behind it, or any other normal indications of life and occupation. Father Finley listened a moment, with his head bent to the door panel, quietly pulling a pair of grey silk summer gloves on his delicate small hands, just as the great bonging bell in the clock tower around the corner on Third Avenue began the slow stroke of midnight . . .
But this was not the murder scene, of course. This was in Argyll Hall, next door, across the alley. The fact was that Father Finley, like Paul Bean before him, had departed from that murder scene, from old Dan McCue's apartment, before the murders began. Both the two known visitors whom old Dan had had that evening had departed. And the murderer, when those murders took place, was in the Royal Arms. He was in old Dan's apartment.
CHAPTER TWO
Twelve Minutes
That was the murder scene—old Dan McCue's apartment. Entrance hallway, dining room and kitchen to the right, bedroom and bath to the left, and down at the end of the hall, across the back of the building, the large library living room, furnished with bookcases filled with tooled leather, grand piano, a huge rug, satinwood desk, Old Masters and easy chairs grouped around the fireplace. Front door and fire escape in back. All windows of all rooms with bars on them, except the fire escape window, and one little bathroom window.
Old Dan was in the living room. Maybe he had been sipping and smoking, garbed in his green silk dressing gown, thinking of his birthday, which would be tomorrow, thinking of all the years of his life. Maybe he had just arisen from his chair, hearing a ring at his door—maybe the black eyed girl in that moment was at his door, waiting to be let in.
Or may be the doorbell didn't ring at all and she came in with a key old Dan had given her—there was the key on the bathroom shelf, and it might have been hers, not Finley's. Or maybe old Dan had arisen, instead, to pour himself a fresh drink at his mahogany cellarette—and looked around and his murderer was there.
Maybe the murderer said, 'Hello, Dan.'
'When in hell,' maybe old Dan said in startlement, 'did you come back? I thought I had got rid of you for good.' Or, 'How in hell did you get in?' with sudden suffused rage. 'Sneaked in, did you?'
Maybe the murderer said, 'It's a long story, Dan. I'll tell you about it.'
And maybe he picked up a half emptied highball glass then, that stood on one of the pieces of furniture, and half sat on the arm of one of the easy chairs, reaching in his pockets nervously for something to smoke.
'I've heard enough of your long stories and tall tales,' maybe old Dan said. 'I don't like you, boy, I've told you. I think you're sneaking, scheming, and too smart for your own breeches. I think you're a swine and greedy and money mad. Ay, by God there are times when I think you might be a murderer. You know who. And I've wrestled with me soul whether or not to take it up with Big Bat O'Brien at homicide. Yet it's not in me to give any man a dirty name without the proof, and I know Big Bat would say there was no proof. And even if there was aught of proof, it would not bring back the dead. If you have done murder and got away with it, let it be between you and your God . . .
'Here, let me get you a fresh glass,' maybe old Dan said. 'The liquor in that is stale. Help yourself to a cigar, if you've a mind to, too. Damned if I like you or anything about you, and this sneaking way of coming has a dirty look to me. But no man will be a guest of Dan McCue's without a show of hospitality. What kind of a story is it that you have to tell me, that brings you so quiet? About me money, maybe, that you'd like to get your hands on?'
Maybe old Danny said words like that. Or maybe he said something different. Or maybe he just turned to the cellarette to mix a highball for his murderer, and the murderer carefully and quietly picked up the heavy fireside poker from the hearth, or the champagne bottle with the pink ribbon around it which stood on the desk, and crept two steps towards old Danny, behind his back.
Maybe old Danny saw the gesture of that skull crushing blow, and reached for his telephone then. Or maybe the first furious blow had struck him before he knew it . . .
That was the scene, anyway. Old Dan's living room. And the murderer was there, in it, when he killed old Dan McCue at three minutes after twelve that night, and a dozen minutes later when he killed that black eyed girl.
Kerry Ott, the big deaf playwright, was never on the scene of those murders in the Royal Arms, like Paul Bean and Father Finley and, of course, the murderer. He would never, therefore, have to make any explanations to the police.
He did not know the murderer. He did not know Paul Bean or Father Finley. He did not know old Dan McCue. He had never seen or heard of that black eyed girl who died fifteen feet from him. He was even quite unaware that murder was happening near him in that quarter hour after midnight.
He had nothing to do with it and wanted nothing. Still it wasn't particularly fortunate for him that the killer would be able to escape only over his dead body . . .
A few minutes after the clock had struck, Kerry Ott came back to life.
Something—the reverberation of the ponderous bell, perhaps—had penetrated his remote absorption. He looked up at the peeled, discoloured wallpaper in front of him, in the dingy corner where he sat writing. What time was it? What was happening, if anything? And where was he anyway?
He had been working with intense concentration for an incalculable number of unstirring hours on the last act of his new comedy, which he had contracted to have in his producer's hands by the fifteenth of the month, under penalty for delay. Living, while he wrote, in an imagined time and an imagined place, while a set of characters of his own invention made their entrances and their exits before his eyes and spoke their lines to his inner hearing, for the moment he could not have told what day of the week it was, and hardly his own name.
But now something had broken the wall around him, and he was back on earth.
He was in the small side room of the six room unfurnished railroad flat, on the top floor of the four story old tenement called Argyll Hall in the East Sixties, which he had rented a few days ago as a hideout while he finished his play. A kitchen table to write on and a kitchen chair to sit on, a dilapidated chest of drawers to hold his necessary shirts and socks, and an army cot in the corner to collapse on when exhausted—he had bought the lot for ten dollars at a secondhand place down on Third Avenue, and anything more would have been only an invitation to ease and distraction.
A hundred watt bulb hanging from the ceiling just back of his left shoulder gave him light. A ream of yellow paper lay on the table, together with a smaller sheaf of completed draft, covered with his large firm black handwriting. The floor around him was littered ankle deep with many times as many crumped and discarded ones, like a strewing of wilted yellow chrysanthemums.
His big awkward frame seemed to have grown to his chair—to have become wood like it, and a part of it. He put down his pencil, and stretched himself. He was tired in every muscle and brain cell.
The only window of the room, beside him, was shut and its heavy green shade was pulled down. He liked to work in small, closed places, with a draftiess stillness all about him and by artificial light—as remote as the silent centre of the earth, lit by the flare of the never setting sun, which burns pallidly and forever at the core of things, and where no wind blows.
No wind blew now. And all around him in the dingy room there was, as always, the silence. But there had been an interruption. The thread of the play had slipped from him. The inaudible voices no longer spoke. The substanceless characters had no more life.
He found he had no remotest idea of the time. His watch had stopped at a quarter after three. It had been ten o'clock of the morning when he had stumbled up groggy eyed and swaying still from three h
ours sleep and had sat down, breakfastless, to resume work. He had lost all awareness of the passage of time since—whether it was daylight still, or whether the night had come, or the dawn of a tomorrow.
Somewhere, a minute or two ago, a clock had struck. It must have been that which had disturbed him. The great brazen bonging bell in the clock tower around the corner on Third Avenue. Once or twice before, during the past days, he had felt its slow repercussions throb through the shutin atmosphere of his room—at times perhaps when there was no street traffic to dissipate them, or when the wind was right. A thudding faintly felt in the marrow of his bones, like the strike of a muffled hammer on padded wood.
He thought back, counting the echoes of those slow beats in his memory —twelve. It was midnight, then. Unless it was noon again.
He pulled aside the shade from the window. A black and yellow spider, with long black legs, had spun its web across the dingy unwashed pane. It looked at him with jet points of eyes, not moving when it saw him.
What thoughts were in its brain, hell knew, at the great bland face and slow mild stare of the maker of plays appearing around the shade edge above it. Perhaps that doom's day had come on it, in its life of hidden, sticky murder. Paralysed, it awaited the blow which would smash it.
But it was no harm to him. He had no interest in destroying it. He was not God. He looked out, eating crackers.
Outside, darkness lay on the world. Night, then, and the middle of it had been the stroke which he had felt subconsciously. About two or three minutes after midnight now. Twelve or fifteen feet across an alleyway he looked out on a brick wall set with windows—the side of the six storey apartment building next door, called by some name such as the Royal Arms, an old fashioned but still respectable pile, several degrees higher in the social and financial scale than the decayed cold water old walk up he was in.
There was a small window with a dark frosted pane, open about six inches from the top, directly across from him—the bathroom window, by its looks, of the rear apartment opposite. There were two pairs of larger windows to the left of it. A light flicked out and a rim of shadow cut across the side wall just above those windows—a rim beneath which was blackness, and above which was blackness, also, though a shade less black. A pair of vague wavering shadows were moving on the wall above that shadow rim—a pair of gargoyle shapes, fantastic and grotesque, one of them resembling a human figure standing on its head and waving its legs in the air, the other a human figure hopping on one foot, holding its thumb derisively to its nose. There was a thin line above them like a shadow of a rope, motionless and horizontal.
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