At the cigar counter near the front entrance, Murdock bought a packet of cigarettes. He opened it carefully, taking his time while he extracted a smoke and got a light. By that time he saw the man who wanted Harry Usher swing around the corner from the elevators. When he marched through the revolving doors to the street, Murdock sauntered after him.
The man he followed glanced neither to the right nor to the left as he proceeded down the street. He walked at the same quick, even pace for two blocks, slowing down in the middle of the third one to stop at the door of a heavy sedan. Unlocking the door without so much as a glance behind him, he climbed in. When the lights went on Murdock noted the licence number and filed it away for future reference before retracing his steps the block and a half to the Greene Hotel.
Here he stopped at the news-stand for a copy of the Evening Ledger and then went directly to his room to see what the paper had to say about the death of Lee Farnsley. What he read was very vague, indicating that the authorities were not ready to tell all they knew or even to express very much in the way of a theory. According to the papers Lee Farnsley, a free-lance publicity man, had been found dead in a down-town hotel room, the victim of an attack that might possibly have robbery as its motive; the police and the state’s attorney’s office were questioning certain unnamed suspects known to have been associated with Farnsley; an arrest was expected shortly.…
Murdock glanced up as knuckles drummed against the door. He tossed the paper aside, in no mood for visitors and scowling his displeasure. His first thought, to sit it out and hope whoever was outside would go away, he finally discarded when the knock came again, not because of any real curiosity but simply because he did not want to play the role of a man hiding out. Sighing his resignation as he hauled himself out of the chair, he went over and opened the door.
The two men who stood there were strangers. The one in front was on the slender side, well-dressed, good-looking in a dark, saturnine way. His companion was huskier, but the light here was none too good, and Murdock wasn’t quite sure what he looked like until they were in the room.
The slender man said: ‘You Murdock? We’re from Headquarters.’ He sauntered forward, followed by his companion. ‘You’d better get your hat and coat’, he said, ‘Lieutenant O’Brien wants to talk to you.’
Murdock said: ‘Oh, brother’, under his breath. Aloud he said: ‘What does he want?’
‘He didn’t say.’
Murdock opened the closet and got his things. He turned back to inspect the pair and now his attention centred on the second man who had not spoken. Right then some unknown protective mechanism began to operate within him, an intuitive warning that defied analysis but was none the less real. The thrust of this impression was sufficiently strong to make him stop what he was doing and start thinking, and the instant this change occurred his suspicions began to mount.
He was not sure why. It may have been the man’s wordless immobility, the flat-footed way he stood there; it may have been his square-faced, truculent appearance, the set of the broad, battered nose, the scarred brows, long since healed, the curl of one ear into a pattern known as cauliflower. Whatever the reason Murdock glanced back at the first man and said:
‘Let’s see your identification.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve got a badge, haven’t you?’
‘Oh, sure.’ He glanced at his companion, his shoulder moving in the faintest of shrugs. ‘Sure’, he said. ‘How’s this?’ And then he pulled a short-barrelled revolver from his pocket, not far, just enough to show the gun over the top of the pocket and to leave no doubt as to which way the muzzle pointed.
Chapter Eleven
THE man with the gun did not display it for long. He made sure Murdock had a good look at it and then he slid it back in his pocket, his right hand still holding it ready. He showed white teeth in a crooked smile and let his glance slide to his companion.
‘I guess he didn’t like your looks, Willie’, he said. ‘I was afraid of that. You never did look like a cop, Willie’, he said. ‘You look like a thug.’
‘Who wants to look like a cop’, Willie said in a voice that had a thin, high quality which seemed inadequate for one of his build. ‘Let’s blow.’
Murdock looked from one to the other, feeling neither fear nor uncertainty, but only annoyance. He stood with one arm in his coat and one arm free while all this happened, and he continued to stand there, his lean face darkly brooding.
‘What’s the pitch?’
‘We take a small ride’, the slender man said. He showed his gun again, adding: ‘Willie’s got one of these, too, so don’t get ideas. We just go out of here quietly and down the elevator and through the lobby, still quiet. That way there’ll be no trouble for anybody.’
Murdock hesitated, but not for long. He knew that for the present any argument on his part would be a waste of breath so he finished putting on his coat and reached for his hat. The man, who as yet had no name, backed to the door and opened it.
‘Follow him out, Willie’, he ordered.
He stepped into the hall, waiting. Murdock pocketed the room key and followed him. Willie closed the door. He walked around to get on Murdock’s right side, and now his companion stepped close so that Murdock stood between the two, and slightly ahead of them.
‘Can you feel the gun?’ No-name asked.
‘I can feel it.’
‘Then let’s go. Keep step, Willie, but if I have to dump this guy start running.’
Kent Murdock considered the remark as they rode down in the elevator, well aware that it might be bluff and designed simply to intimidate. The trouble was there was no way of telling unless you had some insight into the character of the man who held the gun. Experience, and his talks with those whose business it was to know about such things, had told him that it was sometimes possible to figure out about what a man with a gun might do. But when you didn’t know your man or his behaviour pattern, when you realized how easy it was to pull a trigger, not necessarily with premeditation or according to plan but, with equally deadly effect, from nervousness or sudden panic, the problem became one which called for caution rather than recklessness or heroics.
He went all over this again as they walked through the lobby. He noticed the two bellboys having a quiet laugh near the captain’s stand; he counted the occupied chairs and settees and was even able to eye with approval the crossed legs of a red-headed young woman who was giving her attention to her well-fed and middle-aged companion. There was a huddle over by the news-stand and he knew that if he made a break he’d have help within a few seconds’ time; he also knew that by the time the help came he might not know about it.
He kept on like a good boy, his resentment rising, not so much from the threat of the gun as from his own helpless compliance. He nodded at the doorman’s good-evening, feeling again the pressure of the gun muzzle and hearing No-name direct him to turn right. He did so, walking to the corner, and turning right again until they came to a broad, low, late-model car where he was ordered to halt. Willie opened a rear door, told Murdock to get in, and sat down beside him, at the same time producing a somewhat larger gun than his playmate’s and holding it in readiness.
No-name got in behind the wheel without a word, stepped on the starter, and pulled away from the kerb. Murdock, sitting on the edge of the seat, watched them turn right again, this time into a one-way street, darker than the one they had left and less crowded.
‘Relax, mister’, Willie said in that odd high voice of his. ‘Sit back in that corner’—he waved the gun to give emphasis to his words—‘and enjoy yourself. It ain’t often you get to ride in a heap like this. Feel them seats. Sponge rubber. Good, hunh?’
Murdock sat back, one eye cocked out the windows. He counted six cross streets, and then they turned right for a block and then left. Here, half-way to the corner, the car swung wide to make the turn into what proved to be a narrow alley enclosed by high brick walls, the car wheels rumbling over the cobb
lestones underneath until, presently, there opened on the right an area of blackness, squarish in shape and formed by the rear of some building less deep than the two which flanked it.
He could see, parked against one wall, a smaller sedan. No-name backed once to align the heavier car, and then the headlights went out and the motor was cut. Willie stirred as his companion slid from behind the wheel. Murdock could not follow him in the darkness but he heard the tap of his heels and saw the man’s figure silhouetted briefly as a door directly ahead opened and closed.
Willie opened his door and backed from the car. ‘This way, mister’, he said. ‘We’re gonna change wagons.’
Murdock pushed over on the seat. He could see better, now that his eyes began to adjust themselves to the darkness, and he was watching Willie as he stepped from the car. He left the door open purposely, moving a little to one side and noting that Willie had put his gun back in his pocket.
It was here that Willie made a mistake. He may have decided that because of Murdock’s perfect behaviour up to now he posed no further problem. Possibly he felt that his captive had been too thoroughly intimidated to offer resistance and because of this grew over-confident; maybe it was simply that Willie did not think at all. Whatever the reason he noticed the open door and closed it, using his right hand to do so and forgetting the gun. In that same instant Murdock slugged hard with his right, gauging the distance nicely, pivoting and moving in and aiming at Willie’s belt-line.
It was a good punch. It had all the power of Murdock’s one hundred and seventy-five pounds behind it. Had it not been that Willie wore a topcoat it might well have dropped him, but as it was the coat was an effective cushion, dissipating at least part of the power behind the punch, so that while Willie bent over and gasped for air he did not drop.
He rocked, both hands down and the gun still forgotten, and Murdock straightened him with a left and, when Willie’s head came up, hit him with a left to the jaw and a right to the head.
Willie staggered back against the wall and rolled along it trying to get his balance. Murdock still followed him, his right hand numb from shock and feeling as if it had been broken on Willie’s hard head. He could, had he thought of it in time, have turned and run without too much interference from Willie, but he swung once more with the left, trying too hard and not hitting cleanly; then light flashed out of the darkness to spread widely about him.
‘Hold it!’ The voice was harsh and it carried authority. ‘Stand still!’
Murdock glanced over his shoulder to find the door of the recessed building was open. The light that poured out of it silhouetted clearly the two men who hurried towards him and gleamed metalically from the gun one of them held. When he saw it Murdock stepped back. He dropped his hands as the door swung shut and the light went out.
‘What the hell goes on here?’ said a voice that sounded familiar. ‘Turn on the headlights, Nick.’
The man who had accompanied Willie leaned into the small sedan and snapped on the headlights. Joe Apollo stood in front of them, watching Willie pick up the hat he had lost and dust it off.
‘He swung on me when I wasn’t looking’, said Willie.
‘Why weren’t you looking?’ Apollo said disgustedly. ‘You had a gun, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t think he——’
‘You didn’t think period’, Nick said.
‘You drive, Nick’, Apollo said and then turned back to Willie. ‘He would have taken you if we hadn’t come out just then.’
‘I don’t know.’ Willie shook his head. He had, apparently, taken a lot of punishment in his time, and his skin had toughened with the abuse that had flattened his nose and curled one ear. He had a small mark on one side of his jaw and a slight discoloration on the opposite cheekbone. That was all. He wasn’t even angry. ‘I don’t know’, he said again. ‘He hits good but can he take it?’
Murdock found no humour in Willie’s remarks. He stood there massaging his right hand and wrist, deciding it wasn’t broken when he explored it more carefully. But it still ached, and he was both discouraged and angry with himself for having spent so much time on Willie when he might have turned and run.
‘I might have known you were behind this’, he said to Apollo.
‘And don’t say I didn’t warn you’, Apollo replied. ‘Come on. In the back with Willie and me. Let’s ride.’
They climbed into the back seat of the car, Murdock in the middle because he had no choice in the matter. Nick manœuvred the sedan until he got it straightened out in the alley and they bumped along until the turn was made into the street. They turned again at the corner and went along a street that became progressively darker and more deserted. A block of lighted store windows gave way to one which had windows but no lights; then they were rolling downgrade into a district of loft buildings and delivery platforms, their outlines vague and shadowy in the surrounding blackness.
Ahead was an inlet from the Sound and they went along it for perhaps a half-mile, across a small bridge and into a flat, marshy area that stretched on either side of the road, smelling of the sea. Although he was not sure, Murdock thought that the railway yards were off to the left, for high lights showed in the distance beyond an embankment.
‘This is a dumb play’, he said and found his throat was dry.
‘Could be’, Apollo said. ‘You never know.’
Silence, broken only by the throbbing of the motor, moved in upon them again. The marshy area gave way to more solid ground, and an area of new development and small houses appeared on one side, though the terrain remained flat.
‘Suppose I had a talk with Lieutenant O’Brien.’ Murdock offered the idea as a tentative suggestion, not knowing whether he was serious or not. What he did know was that the nerves had begun to tighten across his shoulder and a feeling of strain grew slowly across his back. There was an odd hollowness inside him that he had not noticed before, and he wondered if the coolness that began to spread through him came from the night air or from something inside him that had as its basis the elements of fear. ‘Suppose I told him I made a mistake about seeing you.’
‘I don’t know’, Apollo said. ‘Maybe it would depend on whether I wanted to believe you or not.’ He leaned forward to tap Nick on the shoulder. ‘You know where to turn.’
The sedan began to slow down as the housing development was left behind. From what Murdock could see there was nothing about but open fields, and presently Nick made a quick turn into a narrow dirt road, bumpy and grass-grown in between the ruts. He switched the lights from bright to parking, continued on a few feet and then cut his wheels sharply on to a grassy space where he stopped the car.
Murdock stopped kidding himself. He was scared and he knew it. He did not want to believe any of this and had maintained an air of outward calm to disguise as long as possible the spreading feeling of doubt and uncertainty that had been with him ever since Joe Apollo had joined the party. He took stock of the men who flanked him, measuring the distance to the door handle, not liking his chances but liking even less the thought of sitting helplessly. Realizing that Apollo had begun to talk he listened while he tried to devise some plan that might give him a chance.
‘There’s a factory over on the far side of that field. There’s a little path a few feet off to the left.’ Apollo turned to get a look at his wrist watch. ‘It’s ten twenty-five’, he said, ‘and nobody is going to be tramping around here to-night. Around seven or seven-thirty in the morning maybe some guys from the development we passed will be taking a short cut through here on their way to work but that leaves around nine hours before anybody’ll find you.… Show him with the spot, Nick’, he said.
A beam of light exploded its brightness as Nick obeyed the order. It swept the field, touching remotely the factory building on the far side before it swung back and went out.
‘I’ll have three guys to swear I’ve never been out of my office’, Apollo said, his tone ominously even. ‘The same with Nick and Willie. The
reason I come along is I don’t ask the boys to do anything I won’t do myself. So the way it happens is this. Willie gets out and then you get out and then me. We walk over there a ways—some try to run—and then we dump you. Have you got that?’
‘I’ve got it’, Murdock said, and set himself for what came next.
‘Okay.’ Apollo leaned back. ‘Go ahead, Nick.’
The motor had continued to idle. Now Nick gave it a little petrol, backed swiftly as he cramped the wheel, and came out on the rutty road. He started back the way they had come, switching on the headlights when he reached the main highway and made his turn; then they were riding back towards the city lights and the sedan was picking up speed.
Chapter Twelve
FOR quite a while then no one had anything to say, least of all Murdock. When he understood that the experience had been planned as a demonstration and nothing more, his immediate feeling was one of overpowering relief. For a brief spell he felt weak all over as reaction struck at him, but on the heels of this came an anger that left him outraged and shaking, an impotent anger because he knew that to speak, to voice the things he felt, all of them profane, would serve only to show to all how really frightened he had been.
Because he could not let Joe Apollo know how realistic and effective his plan had seemed, he sat woodenly between the two men, breathing easier now but still nursing a quiet fury that was made worse by its lack of expression. He paid no attention to the route covered on the way back, and when they came at last to the darkened parking space next to the heavy sedan he got out as ordered and allowed himself to be escorted through a doorway into a dimly lighted hall and thence up a flight of stairs to a room which proved to be Joe Apollo’s private office.
It was not large, this office, but it was expensively furnished and in good taste. The few photographs along the walls were all autographed, reminding Murdock of the place he had eaten dinner, but there was no other evidence that Apollo wished to impress a caller with his fellowship with those in the entertainment world. The walls themselves were pine-panelled and properly stained, the desk was antique maple, the two leather chairs and the divan looked comfortable.
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