by Todd Downing
Searcey’s body seemed absolutely motionless. Rennert wondered if he imagined that there was a tenseness about it, as of tightly coiled springs ready to whirl into action at the touch. There had been, he realized now, something of this effect of coiled springs about the man throughout the day. It became more noticeable now, here in the darkness where one could not observe the masked directness of his gaze and the enforced steadiness of his nerves. Only his voice, steady and cool and persistent, coming from a black bulk. This voice asked: “Did Jeanes kill these two people on this train?” Rennert watched the steady glow of the pipe. “The evidence is certainly against him,” he said.
Searcey said very evenly: “That’s not an answer.”
“I’m afraid that it’s the only answer I can give right now.” “Did you know that he had a knife?”
“No,” Rennert said slowly, “I didn’t know that.”
“Well, he did. I saw it a few minutes before the train left us, after you’d gone back into the smoker.”
“What kind of a knife was it?”
“A small ordinary knife with a celluloid handle. I saw him take it out of his trousers pocket and put it in his coat pocket.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“This is the first chance I’ve had.” Searcey was silent for a moment. “It struck me that that was rather conclusive proof.”
“Of what?”
“That he committed these murders.”
“Not necessarily.”
Searcey stood up. “That means that you don’t think he did commit them,” he said.
“I’m not sure that he did, Searcey.”
“And it means that you suspect one of us who are left?”
“I’m not satisfied as to the innocence of a single person on this car.”
“Including myself?”
“Yes, including yourself.”
Corduroy brushed against corduroy as Searcey moved a step closer.
“Want to explain that statement a bit, Rennert?” his voice was soft, dangerously so.
“The explanation is up to you,” Rennert said evenly.
“To me?”
“Yes, the explanation of that blood stain on your coat sleeve.”
Searcey stood stockstill. Only the bowl of his pipe began to glow a bit brighter. Above it his glasses were oval panes of reflected light.
“What blood stain?” for the first time Rennert heard his voice falter.
“On the cuff of the right sleeve.”
Rennert could make out that Searcey had raised his right arm and was staring down at it.
“It does look like blood,” his voice seemed to come from a distance.
Whistling, low but determined, echoed down the passage.
Searcey stepped back and let his right hand fall to his side.
A cigar glowed in the doorway and King’s nervous voice sifted through the stillness which held them. “Who’s out there?”
Rennert answered him.
King stepped upon the platform. “Everything all right?” he asked with forced cheerfulness.
“Everything is all right, Mr. King.”
King seemed to hesitate. “I was just wondering about Miss Talcott,” he said.
“About Miss Talcott?”
“Yes, doesn’t it seem strange to you that she didn’t come out of her berth when that shot was fired?”
“Really,” Rennert admitted, “I didn’t give a thought to Miss Talcott. She didn’t come out then?”
“No, I haven’t seen anything of her. I stopped in front of her berth just now and could hear no movement. You don’t suppose,” King paused and went on desperately, “that anything has happened to her, do you?”
“I don’t think so, but we might be sure.” Rennert started toward the door. “Coming with us, Searcey?”
Searcey’s voice was toneless: “I suppose so.”
They walked down the corridor in silence. They came to a stop at the second berth on their right.
Rennert called softly. There was no response. Behind him he heard King’s breath coming and going rapidly.
Rennert called again, more loudly, and put out a hand to unfasten the curtains.
“Yes?” a muffled voice came from within.
“Rennert, Miss Talcott. Are you all right?”
“All right?” there was a pause. “Why, of course.”
“We were worried when you didn’t come out when that shot was fired.”
Again a pause. “Oh, yes, the shot. What was it?”
“The soldier on the observation platform merely got alarmed and fired out into the desert.”
“I supposed that was it. I didn’t see any need to get up.” Rennert smiled. “Very well, Miss Talcott, pardon us for disturbing you. I trust it won’t happen again.”
“I hope not,” he thought he heard a laugh within. “Good night.” King laughed self-consciously. “Imagine,” be murmured, “sleeping through all this!”
“Shall we go back to the smoker,” Rennert suggested.
There was a pause. “If you don’t mind,” King said, “I’d like to talk to you a minute, Mr. Rennert.”
Searcey’s shoulder brushed against Rennert’s. “I’ll go back to the smoker and let you have your talk,” he said.
Rennert drew King to the vacant seats across the aisle. They sat down.
“You’ll probably think that I’m still imagining things,” King seemed to be absorbed in contemplation of the end of his cigar, “but there’s something that has me worried.”
“Yes?”
“It’s about those stains on Spahr’s hands and on Radcott’s sleeve.”
“What about them?”
King cleared his throat and said: “I don’t think it’s red paint. I think it’s blood,” the words seemed to be thrust out of his mouth.
“The same thought, Mr. King, has occurred to me.”
“It has!” shock was in the exclamation. (He wanted, Rennert thought, reassurance against his fears and not confirmation of them.)
“Yes, the decidedly unpleasant conclusion has been forced upon me that several of this group have blood upon their clothing.” King sat very still, his breathing all at once inaudible.
Then, as if at the snapping of a thread, the cigar fell from his mouth, he leaned forward blindly and rested his head in his hands.
“I’m afraid, Mr. Rennert, I don’t mind admitting it,” the words came brokenly from a throat that might have been held by a tight hand. “Today has been like a nightmare to me. One thing after another—and now this blood and we don’t know where it comes from. There’s something unnatural about all of this! It’s insane, I tell you, insane!” His voice rose to a hysterical pitch and he reached out with one hand, caught Rennert’s sleeve. “Why couldn’t that be it—one of the men on this car is a madman, something’s snapped in his brain and he’s killing us one by one?”
Rennert reached forward and caught him by the shoulders. He shook him. “See here,” he said sharply, “you’ve got to cut that out!”
King subsided a bit.
Rennert got up and made his way forward, ascertained with some difficulty which was his berth and pushed aside the curtains. He found his grip and opened it. He took out a bottle of whisky and carried it back to King’s seat.
“Drink this,” he ordered, “it will help you.”
King groped for the bottle, found it and held it to his lips. For several seconds there was a gurgling choking sound. Then Rennert felt the bottle thrust again into his hands.
“Thanks!” King said in a mumble.
Rennert thrust the bottle into a hip pocket. “Feel better?” he asked after a moment.
“Yes,” King’s voice was still unsteady. “Sorry I acted like that, but I’d had about all I could stand.”
“Shall we go back into the smoker then?” Rennert got to his feet.
“All right,” King rose and they went down the aisle in silence.
In the passage King paused and caugh
t Rennert’s elbow. “I want to ask you a favor,” he whispered.
“Yes?”
King laughed embarrassedly. “Don’t ever say anything to anyone about that,” his voice was urgent.
“Of course not,” Rennert assured him. “The strain today has gotten us all rather keyed up.”
“No, no, I don’t mean that. I mean about the whisky.”
“Well,” Rennert was rather at a loss.
“You see,” King went on in quick hushed tone, “that’s the first drink I ever had in my life. I’m president of the Tarrant County Temperance League and if my wife or any of the organization were to learn of it—” he didn’t finish.
Rennert said, just before he opened the curtains of the smoker: “I’ll carry the secret to my grave, I assure you. But if your wife or any of your fellow members do hear of it, advise them to take a trip like this sometime.”
The air of the smoker was stifling and reeking with smoke. Two points of light glowed against the wall.
“Who is it?” Radcott’s voice came from below one of the points of light.
Rennert told him. He stood in the doorway and looked about him. “Shall we have roll call?” he suggested grimly.
“Here!” Radcott responded with a slight laugh.
“I’m here,” Spahr spoke up beside him. There was a pause.
“And I am standing here,” Searcey said in a level voice from across the room.
Rennert said: “I wanted you all together because it becomes necessary to inquire into a matter which seems to involve several of us. I am going to strike a match now. Radcott, I want you to step forward and hold up your left sleeve.”
“What the hell?”
“Exactly that, Mr. Radcott.”
“Well,” Radcott got to his feet and came forward, “here it is.”
Rennert struck a match (only one remained now) and held it close to the extended arm. Extending from the elbow downward was an irregular dark smear that glistened slightly.
Rennert held the match before Radcott’s face. The latter blinked. He was breathing heavily and his face looked moist and flushed.
“Are you aware,” Rennert asked him, “that you have blood upon your sleeve?”
“Blood!” the eyes widened into a stare of horror. “Blood! Is that what it is?”
“That’s what it is, Mr. Radcott. Can you account for it?”
“No,” Radcott swallowed noisily. “I can’t. I don’t know where I got it.”
Rennert felt the flame hot upon his skin. He said: “If you will turn around, I should like to see your clothing.”
Radcott did so. Rennert moved the match quickly over his body. He could see no other trace of the ominous dark stain.
He was about to let the match fall when Radcott said sharply: “Give me a piece of paper, somebody! An envelope—anything.”
Spahr took an envelope from his pocket and thrust it forward. Radcott snatched it and held it to the flame of Rennert’s match. As it flared with what seemed dazzling brightness, Rennert let the match fall and turned to Spahr.
“I suppose,” he said, “that you know by this time that what you washed off your hand in the basin was blood—not red paint?”
Spahr said weakly: “Yes.”
“Can you account for that blood on your right hand?”
“No, I can’t.”
“I wonder if you’re aware, Rennert,” Radcott’s voice was more incisive than he had ever heard it, “that you too are smeared with blood?”
A taut breathless silence followed his words.
“Good God, man, it’s all over the shoulders and back of your coat! And yet you ask us where we got it on us!”
Rennert’s fingers were very tight upon the little paper folder in which remained a single match. He felt an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh at the whole mad, utterly mad situation. For an instant, when the realization of the presence of blood stains upon three of these men had been thrust home to him, an idea of its explanation had crossed his mind. On second thought, it had not been as impossible as it had seemed at first. Why could not two or three or even more of them have been involved in the affair from the first, each protecting the others? And now he himself wore a coat which was stained with blood!
“If you’ll take off your coat,” Radcott held the burning paper and spoke in cold measured tones, “you’ll see it.”
Rennert did so. He held the coat of blue serge to the light. Both shoulders and the back between them were damp with blood.
He stared at the coat for a moment, as the truth darted into his mind.
He was putting on the coat again as Radcott tossed the expiring fragment into the basin.
Without a word he turned and pushed aside the curtains. He walked down the passage and into the Pullman. He stopped before his berth and deliberately struck his last match. He held it up.
Dark stains ran down the edges of the curtains from a point about halfway up.
He threw the curtains aside and held up the match.
On a level with his eyes the edge of the mattress of the unmade upper berth was dark and sodden with what could be nothing but blood. As he stared at it a tiny drop formed, hung for an instant like a dark stalactite and fell to the floor.
In the berth, grotesquely huddled, lay the body of the porter.
The flame of the match touched Rennert’s skin. He let it fall and heard a faint sizzling sound as it expired upon the damp carpet.
21
Rider of a White Steed (11:50 P.M.)
The man was dead, Rennert ascertained when his fingers had groped to the pulse of the brown hand which lay outflung, clawlike, near the edge of the berth. The flame of the match, in its brief illumination, had shown clearly the handle of a knife protruding from the center of the damp blackness that soiled the back of the starched white jacket.
Rennert extracted the knife with a handkerchief-wrapped hand and examined it as best he could in the light from his cigarette. It was small, with a celluloid handle and a thin blade that looked (but had not been) inadequate for such a grim mission. There had been strength behind the blow and exact knowledge of where it should fall.
Rennert slipped the knife into his pocket. He let the curtains fall together and stood staring into the darkness that masked them. It helped, this unfathomable darkness, in giving his thoughts an unusual clarity, undisturbed by extraneous sights.
He visualized what had happened: the porter, hesitant to divulge whatever information he possessed yet betraying by his manner his hesitation; his sudden resolve when the engine had arrived and the normal routine of the train’s journey toward San Luis Potosí was about to be resumed; someone watching him closely, aware of his knowledge and resolved to silence him at the first opportunity.
Rennert remembered the porter’s words to him in the smoker, when he had been sitting with Spahr, and his own words to the man when the latter had stood where he was standing now, making up this berth. A brief interchange of words which had been overheard or noticed by the watcher. Then darkness in the car as the lights were extinguished and in the darkness this knife thrust dexterously into the back of the man who stood here. The body caught as it fell and tossed into the upper berth, whence the blood had dripped….
In the darkness again. There was something uncanny, terrifying about this murderer’s ability to strike in an element which left others helpless….
The aisle was a vault, muffled by the thick enveloping curtains, and voices were hushed and confined in the narrow space.
“What is it?” Radcott’s voice was high-pitched in its excitement.
The glow of a cigarette lit indistinctly Spahr’s white face, and behind and to one side of him the bowl of Searcey’s pipe was a glowing coal.
“I’ve found the source of the blood,” Rennert said to them with quiet emphasis, “the porter has been stabbed and his body put into an upper berth. Everyone who has brushed against the curtains has gotten some of the blood on his clothing.”
“God!” the exclamation came hoarsely from Radcott’s lips.
“Stabbed, you say?” sharp terror was in King’s voice.
“Yes, Mr. King, stabbed.”
“What with?”
“A knife.”
“A knife,” King said in an oddly flat voice. He repeated it: “A knife.”
None of them seemed to move for a long moment. The only sound was that of heavy labored breathing.
“Do you have any idea,” King seemed to be moving forward, “what kind of a knife it was?”
“A small knife with a celluloid handle. Why do you ask that?”
King choked. “Because I know—”
A fist thudded dully on flesh and Rennert felt himself carried backward by the impact of a head upon his chest. He caught hold of the shoulders of the inert man and shoved him toward the berth. Awkwardly, he stretched him upon the mattress.
It was, he knew, King. He was breathing in long labored gasps and moaning slightly. His nose was bleeding.
Satisfied that he was not seriously injured, Rennert drew another cigarette from his pocket and applied it to the end of the one which he held in his lips. He inhaled with quick puffs as his fingers went deftly through King’s pockets. He found two full packets of wax vestas and half a dozen wooden matches.
He straightened up, lit one and looked across its flame at the dimly outlined figures in the aisle.
Radcott stood in the center, his eyes bright as they stared at the match. Behind him stood Searcey and Spahr, their faces almost indistinguishable.
Rennert knew that his voice was vibrant with anger as he said: “I suppose there’s no use asking who struck that blow?”
The silence became prolonged. He could see Spahr and Searcey looking at each other and at Radcott. Radcott stood very still and stared straight in front of him.
“I don’t know,” Searcey said evenly. “I didn’t but I couldn’t say which of these two men did.”
“I didn’t!” Spahr put in quickly. “I was standing back here behind both Searcey and Radcott. I couldn’t have!”
Rennert looked at the man who stood in the center of the aisle. “And you, Radcott?”