Mrs. Rohan and her son Patsy were among the regular attendants at the clinic. They had been coming once a week for a long time past. Both had epilepsy. The mother, a widow, had the appearance of a normal woman, but was crushed with misfortune and overwork; the boy was one of Cynthia’s most repellant cases. Subnormal mentally and physically, he was seventeen years old, but except for the sprouting moustache on his lip looked like a boy of twelve. There was a furtive glitter in his eye but he scarcely ever spoke. At home there were other children whom Cynthia had never seen. None of these children should have been born; but there they were, and it was not their fault.
On Monday afternoon near closing time, Patsy turned up at the clinic alone. The Rohans had no appointment that day. He hung about, peeping around the corner of the corridor until Cynthia caught sight of him and beckoned him to her desk. He slunk forward with his upper lip lifted like a frightened animal’s. “Mom’s sick,” he blurted out.
Cynthia drew a long breath in the effort to conquer her repulsion. “What’s the matter with her?” she asked. “I dunno. She’s on the bed. She can’t get up. The kids is crying because they ain’t eaten since morning.”
Cynthia glanced at her watch. “All right. You run home and tell your mother I’ll be there in a quarter of an hour. I’ll give you money to buy milk and crackers for the children to keep them quiet until I come.”
Patsy cringed. “I better take you there,” he said. “It’s a hard place to find.”
“All right,” said Cynthia. “Sit down until I’m ready.”
The last of the patients had gone into the examination rooms. She made haste to clean up her desk and file the case histories. The boy’s veiled glance never leaving her face made her vaguely uneasy. It was impossible to guess what was passing through his mind-if he had a mind. He looked like a stunted weed grown in arid soil.
They left the hospital together. In the street Cynthia hailed a taxi and Patsy grinned. “I never rode in one of them before.”
He gave an address in the North-east corner of the island which Cynthia knew to be one of the most depressed areas in the city. After they had started he said uneasily: “Tell the guy to stop at the corner of First Avenue. If we was to stop in front of my house the street kids would razz the life out of me.”
Cynthia passed the word to the driver. She kept to her corner of the cab. The boy was clean enough-his hard-working mother saw to that, but he seemed to emanate a moral decay. Meanwhile he was enjoying the drive. “When I get money,” he boasted with a leer, “I’ll drive around in a taxi all day. And when I get hungry I’ll go in a restrunt and order a T-hone steak. And I’ll take my girl to the movies.”
Cynthia glanced at him in horror. “Your girl?”
“Sure, I got a girl.”
“You’ll have to work for the money,” she said. “Aah!” he sneered. “It’s only the dumb clucks ‘at works for wages. There’s ways of getting the jack without working.”
Cynthia shivered inwardly. She felt that it was useless to try to reason with him.
They got out on First Avenue and headed East. Cynthia had never visited this particular block. The tenement houses were ancient and decaying; some of them, condemned by the authorities, had their doors and windows boarded up; occasionally a house had been pulled down, leaving a gap in the row like a missing tooth. It had grown dark. The night was unseasonably mild; doors and windows stood open; children were playing in the streets. Patsy, glancing at the big boys in terror, pressed against Cynthia.
She took his hand though his touch made her flesh crawl. Coming to a small grocery store, she said: “I’ll get milk and crackers here for the children.”
“Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” he said with an odd excitement. “After I take you to my mom I’ll come back and get it.” They went on.
He led her into an old house whose greasy doorway was flush with the sidewalk. Inside a dim bulb lighted a long narrow hall with a splintery floor. A steep stairway went up at the side. Cynthia made for the stairway, but the boy pulled her past it. “It’s in the back,” he said. “We live in a backyard tenement.”
The light of the single bulb scarcely penetrated to the back of the hall. Suddenly Cynthia realised that something was wrong, and stopped. She could see through an open door at the back of the hall. There was no house in the rear, but only a littered yard, a broken fence and the rear of a hoarded-up house fronting on the next street. “You have been lying to me … ” she began. She got no further. There was a figure lurking under the stairs. A heavy blow descended on her head, stunning her. She did not lose consciousness altogether but all her faculties were paralysed except that of hearing. The cellar door beside her was thrown back and she was hastily dragged down the stairs. She could hear her own heels thudding from step to step. The boy pulled the door shut and ran down after her.
In the cellar she was flung on her face on the earthen floor and the man knelt on her back, crushing the breath out of her. He drew a cloth of some sort over her mouth. Her senses were returning to her. As she opened her mouth to scream, he jerked the cloth between her teeth, almost splitting her lips and choking off all sounds. He pulled her hands behind her to tie them. “Light the candle,” he growled.
A match was struck and a little light spread around. The boy placed the stub of a candle on the earth. His sub-human face was wreathed in a grin. Cynthia could not see the man who was holding her down. He said in his husky whisper: “Set the yard door open.”
The boy went away. The man was swiftly tying Cynthia’s wrists and ankles together. When the boy returned the man said: “Watch the cellar stairs.”
“Nobody comes down here but the gasman,” said the boy.
“Never mind. Watch the stairs.”
“Where’s my money?” asked the boy.
“Open her pocket-book.”
After a moment the boy said: “There’s only twenty-three dollars in it.”
“All right, take it and get.”
“You promised me a hundred,” whined the boy.
“Get out!” growled the man.
The boy began to cry. “If you don’t give me my hundred I’ll tell!” he wailed.
The man sprang to his feet with a muttered oath. The boy started to run, but was overtaken in two strides. They had passed out of Cynthia’s range of vision, but she heard the sickly crack of something hard on a human skull, and the soft collapse of a body on the earth.
The man returned to her. When he finished his knots he turned her over on her back and then for the first, as he bent over her, Cynthia saw him; the tall hulking frame in the shapeless yellow coat, the queer cap pulled close over his head. He had a black handkerchief tied over the lower part of his face; his glasses glittered in the candlelight, hiding the expression of his eyes. Instinctively Cynthia screamed with all her might, but only a strangled groan issued through the gag. The man pulled a gun from his pocket, and showed it to her lying on his palm. “Keep quiet,” he whispered hoarsely, ” or you’ll get what the boy got.”
Looking beyond her feet, she saw the pitiful thin figure sprawling on the foul earth. Blood was running through his sparse hair. She became quiet. She could not make noise enough to be heard; she wanted to save her strength.
Stepping over her body, the man trod out the candle flame. Returning, he took her under the arms and dragged her to a stone stair at the back of the cellar. He dropped her here and went ahead to investigate. Returning, he dragged her out into the open yard. As the back wall of the tenement rose before her with lights in a score of kitchen windows, Cynthia struggled with all her force and endeavoured to scream again. The man struck her savagely and she became quiet. It was useless.
He dragged her across to the broken fence and, lifting her up, coolly dropped her on the other side. Though he was such a big fellow, he was panting from his exertions. This was the yard of the abandoned house. It was heaped with piles of rubbish over which the man dragged her anyhow. They came to another cellar door. He pulled h
er through it and down a half stair, and, letting her fall on a cement floor, went back to shut the door. It had glass panes, and the upper part of his body was silhouetted against it. He lingered there, apparently stuffing the cracks of the door to prevent any sounds from escaping.
At this moment Cynthia’s heart was ready to break with despair. Bound and gagged in the cellar of an abandoned house; at the mercy of an armed madman! Then she discovered, that in her rough passage across the yard the ropes around her ankles had loosened, and hope stirred in her again. While the man was working at the door, she drew her legs up behind her, and hooking fingers under a strand of the rope, managed to work it over a heel. The rest was easy. When he came down the cellar steps her legs were free.
He struck a match in order to find her. In the brief flash of light Cynthia saw a dozen paces away, an open stairway leading up. She scrambled to her feet and raced for it. The man came after her, cursing, but his match went out and he couldn’t stop to light another. He sprawled over the bottom steps. Drawing his gun, he fired in the direction of Cynthia’s racing feet, but the shot went wild. Cynthia gained the ground floor hall of the house and leaned against the wall, trembling. The crash of the shot turned her blood to water.
Presently she heard him softly inching up the cellar stairs. Feeling her way along the hall with her forehead, she came to an open door and slipped through it. She discovered that all the doors and window sashes had been taken out and stacked against the walls. At the top of the stairs the man struck a match, but remained standing and listening, uncertain which way Cynthia had gone.
The rope around Cynthia’s wrists was partly loosened. Backing up to one of the doors leaning against the wall, she hooked a strand of the rope over the door handle and brought down her hands with a sharp jerk. The pull almost dislocated her wrists, but the rope came off and her hands were free. The man heard the sound, and started towards the door of the room she was in, striking a match. Feeling her way around the wall, she found another door and passed through it.
The man was following her and the dreadful thought came to her that he had her trapped in a room with only one door. But there was another room beyond it, and a fourth room beyond that. This was a front room; thin cracks of light showed between the planks nailed in the window openings, and sounds of the street came through, filling Cynthia with a sickness of longing. She had loosened the gag until it fell around her neck but she uttered no cry. Long before help could reach her from the outside, the man with the gun would have been upon her.
This front room had a door opening on the main corridor of the house, and she stood there listening. For some moments she had heard no sound of creeping feet or striking matches, and she didn’t know where the man was. Listening somewhere, like herself. Cynthia’s desperately sharpened wits had figured out the ground plan of this house. She knew that the cellar stairs were to the rear of the corridor and about forty feet from where she stood. She had seen the man stuffing the cracks of the door into the yard below, but she had not heard him lock that door. Apparently he had no key to it. If she could reach it first, safety lay on the other side. It was worth trying. She slipped off her shoes.
Nerving herself up for it, she dashed for the head of the stairs. The man, waiting, somewhere in the rear, heard her and divined her intention. He was nearer the stairs; they collided at the top and he flung an arm around her. His panting breath was in her face. She sensed that his gun was in his other hand. He was between her and the stairs. Cynthia, with the strength of desperation, launched her body against his, at the same time gripping the door frame. He toppled clutching at her wildly. His hold was torn loose and he went over backwards. His gun discharged as he fell.
An absolute silence succeeded the crash. Cynthia, listening, out of line of possible further shots, prayed that he might be seriously injured. Moments passed and she could hear nothing. Unable to bear the suspense, she moved one of the doors to the head of the stairs and let it slide down on its edge. It slapped over on the concrete below. So he was not on the stairs. Cynthia went down a few steps and looked towards the rear of the cellar. At the same moment the man struck a match to see what had caused the clatter on the stairs. He was lying in wait for her at the yard door, the only way out.
Drawing back out of sight, Cynthia softly returned to the front room on the first floor. Picking up another door, she launched it on edge like a battering ram against one of the planks over the window. The plank creaked but held fast. Before she could strike a second blow she heard him running up the cellar stairs. Dropping the door, she softly retreated through the rooms into the rear. He ran straight through the corridor into the front room, and joy welled up in her heart. The way out was clear!
She ran down the stairs on stockinged feet, and across the cellar. He had wedged a stick under the handle of the door to hold it fast, but it was the work of a second to kick that aside, and she breathed the sweet outer air again. She heard him plunging down the stairs, and scrambled anyhow over the piles of rubbish in the yard; fell over the fence, found the doorway to the house in front, and running through it, gained the sidewalk. There were people standing about. She sank down fainting at their feet.
WHEN Cynthia opened her eyes again it was to find the blessed Irish face of a policeman bending over her. The people of the neighbourhood were staring down at her curiously. “What happened, Miss?” asked the policeman. “A man seized me,” she stammered. “He dragged me into an abandoned house in the next street. He killed Patsy Rohan.”
A murmur of horror travelled around the circle. “What kind of man?” asked the policeman.
“A big man. Wore a yellow overcoat, cap pulled down close over his head.”
Several voices spoke up at once: “I saw him! He come out of the house and went down towards the river.”
A radio car with two more policemen had drawn up at the curb alongside. Word was passed to the driver and they set off to look for the man.
Cynthia’s policeman asked: “Where do you live, Miss?”
Afraid of entering her own place alone, she gave the address of Lee’s apartment. “Amos Lee Mappin!” said the policeman, surprised. “I read about him. I’ll take you there.”
A taxi was brought from First Avenue and they got in.
Lee lived on an upper floor of one of the lofty apartment houses overlooking the East River. When they arrived at the door, he paled at the sight of Cynthia’s limp figure, and the arms that took her trembled. He laid her on a couch in his living-room. The policeman told his story. Lee asked a few pointed questions; made no comment. “Miss Dordress will be available for questioning any time she may be needed,” he told the policeman.
When he had gone. Lee telephoned to Headquarters. He was told that Inspector Loasby had gone to the station house of the 5th precinct to direct the search for the murderer. Lee got him there and Loasby told him that the man in the yellow coat had not been apprehended. He had last been seen getting in a taxi which headed South on East River Drive. A general alarm had been sent out for him. “That’s not likely to produce anything,” said Lee. “He was disguised, of course. He will change it now.”
Loasby went on to say that the body of Patsy Rohan had been found in the cellar. The boy’s mother, who lived upstairs, was dazed by what had happened. No suspicion attached to her in the minds of the police. “I’ll pay for the wretch’s burial,” said Lee. “Don’t mention my name.”
When the police had searched the abandoned house in the next street, Loasby said, they found on the cement floor at the foot of the cellar stairs, a small flat key with a number cut in the shaft, number 415. “A hotel key?” asked Lee. “No. Hotel keys have the name of the hotel engraved on them. This key is too small and thin for a room key.”
“I’ll come up and take a look at it,” said Lee.
Returning to Cynthia he said: “The man has not been caught. Evidently he worked single-handed. Watching the clinic for days past, I take it. In the imbecile boy he found just the tool he n
eeded.”
“Why did he attack me?” murmured Cynthia. “I have never harmed him.”
“He was afraid. We are getting too close to him. He doesn’t know that I have consulted the police. He thought if he could make away with you, then with me, he would be safe. And O, God! How nearly he succeeded with you! We might never have found you!” Lee struggled with his feelings. “Did you have a small key marked 415?” he asked in his customary matter-of-fact voice.
“No,” she said. “Only my apartment key. That was in the bag they took.”
“The brute will be desperate now,” said Lee. “We must act quickly. I’ll send for Fanny to stay with you. Jermyn will take care of you both. You are quite safe here.”
“You are going out?” she said, freshly terrified.
“Only to see Loasby.”
“O, Lee, be careful! If anything happened to you …!”
“Don’t worry,” he said grimly. “If he tries anything with me, I’ll be ready for him.”
Telling his man Jermyn to phone Miss Parran to come and stay with Cynthia, and not to let anybody else into the apartment until he returned, Lee taxied up to Harlem.
Loasby was in the Captain’s private office, attended by Riordan, a young detective who acted as his secretary and aide. Both were in plain clothes. The handsome Inspector was angered by this dirty crime and inclined to blame Lee for not having prevented it. Lee ignored his ill-humour. As soon as Lee laid eyes on the key found by the police, he said: “I know what sort of key that is. I have often used them. They are for the lock boxes in railway stations where you drop a dime and check your bag.”
ALM02 The Death of a Celebrity Page 17