by Jack Finney
"I think you can guess."
"No, I can't."
"Then wait and see."
Our carriage rolled through Washington Square, looking then as now except that there was no arch; even a lot of the buildings were the same, especially along one side of the square, and for a moment it seemed impossible that in the next second or two I wouldn't see a car somewhere. Block after block then, trundling up Fifth behind the endless clop-clop-clop-clop of our horse. From time to time Julia's eyes met mine, and I'd try to smile reassuringly, and so did she. Then I'd look out the windows, trying to be interested in the people and buildings we passed, but the certainty that somehow we were in serious trouble wouldn't let go my attention.
When finally we stopped, between Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth Streets, I'd guessed where we were going—so had Julia, I could see when she glanced at me—but I couldn't possibly imagine why. There it stood across the sidewalk from our carriage door: Andrew Carmody's Fifth Avenue mansion looking almost exactly like the old Flood mansion still standing on San Francisco's Nob Hill, even to the magnificent stone-and-bronze fence around its patch of lawn. The carriage door was open, the driver gesturing us out, waiting to take Julia's elbow, Byrnes reaching for my wrist.
On the wide front porch, the cop rang the bell, and we all stood waiting. Did Carmody think, when he'd seen Julia and me burst out of the boarded-up room beside Jake's office, that we'd somehow been part of the blackmail scheme? Was he going to accuse us of it now?
A maid opened the door; she wore a long black dress with sleeves to the wrists, an enormous white apron, and a complicated white lace cap. She was a girl, no more than fifteen, cheeks as red as though they'd just been scrubbed. "Please come in, gentlemen and miss; you are expected," she said so respectfully she seemed frightened. Neither Byrnes nor the cop said anything as they started us forward, and I smiled at the girl and thanked her, to show up what louts the cops were.
Facing us across a wide hall as we stepped in was a pair of magnificent staircases of dark polished wood, curving in opposite directions. As I followed the maid my head was turning, trying in spite of what was happening to us to see all I could of the immense hall stretching off into the distance on each side of the stairs. I saw tremendous rugs on a tiled floor, walls ornate with molded plaster, globed light brackets, tables, chairs, flowers in vases.
Through a vaulted doorway, down a short hall of polished parquet flooring, through another high doorway, and into a room as different from Aunt Ada's parlor as two rooms could ever be. It was four times as large, with french doors along one side, and its furnishings were entirely French, in the style, I think, of one of the Louis'—graceful, and so light and dainty they hardly seemed usable. The white woodwork and the backs of the two tall doors from the hall were heavy with gilt ornamentation. Framed paintings hung on the walls; white marble busts stood in arched niches. A white-and-gilt grand piano, or possibly a harpsichord, stood near the windows.
It was a beautiful room, all soft colors, and standing in it as though it were a setting for her—posed before a small white-manteled fireplace—stood Mrs. Andrew Carmody in a long loose-sleeved pink dress, holding a folded fan of ivory. Her face was precisely as Julia and I had seen it last night in her box at the Charity Ball, as composed as though she had never in her life had a doubt.
"Good afternoon, Inspector: Mr. Carmody has been told you are here and will be down in a moment." She smiled at Byrnes, as easily unconscious of the rest of us as though she actually didn't see us.
"Good awfternoon, Modom Carmody. I trust he ain't suffering?"
"His burns are painful, but ..." She moved a shoulder slightly, and smiled at him brilliantly in a way that said the conversation was over. Her fan spreading open as she lifted it, she moved it once or twice before her face, and to cover the truth that he hadn't been asked to sit down, Byrnes stepped over to a marble bust of Marie Antoinette, and bent forward to inspect it.
Steps were sounding slowly down one of the entrance-hall staircases, then along the parqueted floor of the hall. They reached the open doorway and as I turned to look, the steps became soundless as the shockingly bandaged man slowly crossed the great rug toward a chaise longue. The white bandages crossed his forehead, covered both temples and cheeks, and wrapped snug around his throat. But the nose and the narrow strips of flesh between it and the bandage edges were so red and swollen, so terribly burned, that whatever film of horribly damaged skin was left seemed hardly enough to hold in check the blood that seemed ready to break through just behind it. His hair was completely gone, burned off, the top of his head swollen and crusted. His eyes were inflamed, and he constantly blinked or momentarily squeezed them shut. One heavily bandaged arm hung in a black sling, and the finger ends protruding from it were swelled huge and split.
At the chaise longue he lay back as though exhausted. He wore black pants faintly striped in white, and a dark-blue braided smoking jacket. A folding table beside the chaise held a glass, a pitcher, an open cardboard pillbox, and a fever thermometer. For a few moments he lay silent, eyes closed, then he opened them, said, "As—" and coughed heavily several times, wheezing deep in his chest. Then he tried again, keeping his voice so subdued in order not to start up the coughing again that it was nearly a whisper. "As you see, I have been burned; in the fire yesterday. I was fortunate to escape with my life." He drew a sudden deep breath, his hand rising quickly to his chest as though he were about to cough, but he swallowed twice and repressed it. For a moment or two he lay motionless, eyes closed. Then he opened them, glanced at Julia, glanced at me, then nodded several times to Byrnes. "Yes," he said, almost whispering it, "it is they. Thank you, Inspector. Please sit down."
"Oh," Byrnes said as though he were standing only because he'd absent-mindedly forgotten to sit. He pulled a small chair to the chaise and sat down. "Now, sir, pray tell what has happened."
We stood listening while he told Byrnes about the letter Pickering had sent, and the meeting in City Hall Park. "I didn't doubt he had documents; as a contractor I'd done honest work for City Hall for which there were undoubtedly records of payment. Not everything done for the city while Tweed was in power was dishonest."
"Of cawss."
"And yet his documents had a slight value. I am engaged in certain delicate business negotiations involving millions, which could be upset by gossip and slander, however false. So I had the man followed. Pickering made no attempt to avoid this, and the gumshoe easily learned that he lived at 19 Gramercy Park. I had him ascertain the names of the other occupants, too. For all I knew, some of them might also be involved in this absurd scheme. Yesterday morning I met Pickering, who took me to his secret office in the old World Building; and I brought a thousand in currency, prepared to pay it merely to be rid of the man. If he'd insisted on one cent more, I'd have had you arrest him at his home."
"Quate rate," said Byrnes, and it took me a moment to understand that he meant quite right. It was a pretty good story, I thought; altered about as I'd have done, I supposed, if I'd been in his shoes. Stopping occasionally to cough, he went on to say that Pickering reluctantly agreed to accept a thousand dollars, knowing he had no proof of crookedness; that Pickering had explained what the boarded-up doorway was about; and that while Pickering was pulling documents from his files in exchange for the thousand dollars, a fire broke out in the next-door elevator shaft, he had no idea how. To his absolute astonishment we—he pointed at us—had burst through the boarded-up doorway, I had sprung at Pickering and grappled with him, while Julia began stuffing the money in her clothes. He could hear the crackle of flames, see smoke rolling up the shaft, hear shouts of "Fire!" and hear people running; he had to run for his life. He began to cough heavily, and Mrs. Carmody, glaring at us, hurried over, and held the glass of water from his table while he sipped at it.
I could only stare at him; then I turned to Julia as she turned to me, both of us mystified. Why Carmody wanted to involve us I couldn't begin to imagine—and then I thou
ght I might have a hint, because the bandaged head was shaking angrily as he pushed the glass aside, pulling himself upright on the chaise. "I escaped down the Nassau-street stairs," he said in a harsh whisper that was the equivalent of a shout. "One of the very last to do so, I suspect. At the cost of burns about the face and head and of one hand and arm that my physician says"—his voice was bitter—"will disfigure me for life." His face would be distorted forever, he said, and permanently reddened; very little hair would ever again grow on his face or head. "And they are responsible!" he said, his finger shooting out at us, and I felt he almost believed it, and that certainly he blamed us for his terrible injuries and hated us.
Obviously, he finished, we'd known about Pickering's scheme. As of course we had; at least I had. Of the people at Pickering's house, we were the only two who matched the descriptions and ages of the pair who'd burst into Pickering's office; that's why he'd had Byrnes bring us over for identification. He lay back in his chair. "And if Pickering is still missing, then they are responsible for his death. Except for their interference, he could have escaped with me."
Byrnes turned to look at us. "Pickering is still missing."
"Then there stand his murderers."
I'd never faced such hate as came from the reddened eyes blazing at us from between the bandages. Was there any use in my protesting the truth: that he had started the fire; that he, not we, had struggled with Pickering; that Pickering's death was Carmody's fault? I wanted to yell it out, but in that case how could I account for our hiding next to Pickering's office? By telling Byrnes all about Danziger and the project? There was no explanation for our being there.
Byrnes was looking at me. "Well?" he said. "Anything to tell me now?" And after a moment I shook my head.
The doorbell rang. We heard steps toward the front door, the door opening, the maid's voice, then a man's. Footsteps approached along the hall; then the maid stopped at the doorway, and the cop we'd left at 19 Gramercy Park came walking in carrying his helmet under one arm. He actually bowed, head ducking humbly, then took a step backward, a finger rising to smooth his mustache. The bandaged head on the chaise nodded regally in return, and Mrs. Carmody graciously inclined her head. The little ceremony actually took several seconds, and if I hadn't known this before, I'd have known now that this was a place of wealth and power and that both these cops understood it. "Well?" Byrnes said then, and his voice indicated his standing in this room, far superior to that of the uniformed cop.
"Yes, sor." The sergeant unfastened the two brass buttons of his uniform coat just over his belt. He shoved a hand in; then with the instinctive feeling for drama that everyone of this time seemed to be born with, he walked over to the table beside Carmody's chaise longue. Not till he reached it did he pull out a thick paper-banded stack of greenbacks and slap them down on the table. "Found this, sor, in his room." He nodded at me. "The landlady showed me the room, and the money was in his carpetbag, hidden under some clothes."
I was paralyzed, almost literally; I couldn't move or speak. Byrnes had crossed to the table, to lean over and examine the stack of greenbacks. "And is this your money, sir?"
The bandaged head turned as though it hurt, and the inflamed blinking eyes looked down at the money. "Yes, the bills are marked. My bank will identify them, every one." And Byrnes picked up the packet, turned, and walked over to Julia and me, tucking the bills into an inside coat pocket.
"Well?" He stopped before me almost cheerfully, and for the third time said, "Anything to tell me now?"
"There's nothing to tell." I shrugged. "He's lying, and the money is a frame-up to support the lie." I didn't know whether the word "frame-up" was in use yet, but if not he understood me all the same, and nodded. "We never touched that money—" I stopped suddenly; I'd thought of something. "Have you examined it for fingerprints?" I said excitedly. "You'll find his, all right!" I pointed to the chaise longue. "But you won't find mine or Miss Charbonneau's!"
"Won't find what?"
"Our fingerprints!''
"I don't know what you're talking about."
He didn't. I could see that he didn't. I didn't know when the use of fingerprints as identification was discovered, but obviously it was not yet. "Never mind. He's lying. That's all I have to say."
"Well, that's possible," Byrnes answered. The sergeant walked over to him and whispered in his ear. Byrnes nodded, and the sergeant left. Byrnes looked at me speculatively for a moment, then rubbed his chin as though genuinely considering the possibility that I was telling the truth. "We have a chawge and a denial. If you two done it, nobody but Mr. Carmody seen you. Tell me this: Were you there at all? Hiding next to Pickering's office? For some innocent reason, perhawps?" He smiled invitingly.
But I'd had time to understand that it was impossible to admit even being there. How could we explain it? If I admitted we were there but couldn't say why, Carmody's charge seemed true. I shook my head immediately. "No. The only connection between Pickering and us is that we lived in the same boardinghouse. We don't know anything about his blackmailing this man. Or whether it's even true that he was. I begin to suspect that maybe Mr. Carmody here killed Pickering. And left him to burn. He's afraid the truth will come out, and wants a scapegoat before questions start being asked. Since we lived where Pickering did, he hides the money in my bag or has someone else do it, and accuses us."
Byrnes was nodding sympathetically. "Quate possible, if you wasn't in the World Building at all yesterday. And you say you wasn't?" I nodded, and Byrnes stepped to the doorway. "Sergeant!" he called down the hall.
Footsteps sounded immediately on the parquet flooring of the hall; then the sergeant stopped in the doorway, his helmet still under his arm like a football. A man walked past him into the room, and I realized that I knew him but for a few seconds couldn't place him. He nodded politely to Mrs. Carmody, then glanced at the bandaged figure on the chaise, but looked quickly away. He stared closely at Julia and me for several seconds, then nodded to Byrnes. "Yes, it is they." He glanced at a pair of photographs in his hand, and I recognized them; they were copies of the police photographs of Julia and me taken earlier. "I recognized them from your photographs," he was saying, handing them to Byrnes. "As Dr. Prime told you, they escaped as he did; I helped them climb into my office." He looked at Julia and me again, his eyes genuinely troubled. "I am sorry if they are in trouble," he said, and it was an apology to us for the necessity of doing what he'd done. Byrnes thanked him, and J. Walter Thompson, into whose office we'd climbed from the burning World Building yesterday morning, nodded around the room and left. In spite of what he'd just had to do, he was a nice man and I almost wished I could call after him, and assure him that his little one-man business was going to succeed, and even grow.
We were deeply in trouble now. Anything to tell me? Byrnes had asked in the carriage on the way to Police Headquarters, and several times afterward. And certainly if we'd been in the World Building fire at all, we had something to say to an inspector of police unless we were hiding something. He'd pointedly offered us the chance to speak, I was sure now, in the certainty that it would make any explanation we made after we'd been accused seem like an obvious lie. He'd pinned us nicely, and I knew that in spite of the absurd way he talked this was a dangerous man.
"Congratulations, sir," he was saying, offering the credit to the bandaged man on the chaise. "Appears like you caught a pair of murderers."
"Thanks to you. When I am somewhat recovered, and back on Wall Street, I should like to thank you again. In my office. You still retain your well-known interest in the Street, Inspector?"
"Oh, yas, indeed."
"Splendid; we all appreciate it. Not a pickpocket, not a troublemaker down there since you established the John Street deadline. I will let you go now, Inspector. I know you will be fully occupied in making entirely certain this pair does not escape justice. Once that is done ... come see me at my office."
"Count on both those things, sir."
I was
hypnotized, listening to these two bargaining over us. And I was scared. But when I looked at Julia to smile reassuringly at her, it wasn't false; we were in trouble but I knew that for Carmody to prove anything against us in a courtroom, his word against ours, would be a lot different from persuading Inspector Byrnes.
And in less than a minute I learned that Byrnes thought so, too, and I began to feel almost cheerful. We were hustled out of the house, the sergeant between us, one hand gripping an arm of each of us, Byrnes behind us. At the curb Byrnes stepped forward to open the carriage door. But then, a hand on the door handle, he stopped, and turned to look at us thoughtfully. He said, "In the cawtroom, he'd charge and you'd deny. There's the money found in your room and Thompson's identification. But there is the smell of Tweed Ring scandal around Carmody too, isn't there? And he did pay blackmail, howsomever small." For a moment he was silent, looking at us consideringly; then he opened the carriage door. "Jump in, Sergeant!" he said, and the sergeant looked surprised but he let go our arms and did what he was told. Then Byrnes turned to us, his back to the sergeant, and spoke quietly; neither the sergeant nor the driver could hear him, I'm certain. "Constitutional rights, you say," he murmured as though the novel sound of the phrase intrigued him. "Well, all right; I think it's too soon to arrest you. I think we have to find more evidence." For a moment longer he stared at us, then seemed to reach a decision. "On your way," he said. "But you're not to leave the city, understand?" We looked at him, not entirely sure he meant what he seemed to be saying. "Be off with you!" he said almost kindly, smiling with a kind of fatherly affection for Julia, at least as well as that hard face could manage.
It was no time to wait till he changed his mind, I thought, and I took Julia's arm, and we walked away, fast, south on Fifth in the opposite direction from the way the carriage was headed. A dozen steps, twenty steps, thirty, and he hadn't changed his mind and called after us. I couldn't resist looking back. He was still standing by the carriage watching us. "Sergeant!" he yelled suddenly, and yanked open the carriage door. Then he pointed after us: "Our prisoners are escaping!"