by Todd Downing
There was a clanging of the bell of the engine.
The sound seemed to erase the veneer of reserve which had for a moment lain over the Mexican’s manner and geniality flooded over him again.
“We are leaving!” he exclaimed. “In a few minutes more we shall be in Mexico City.”
Rennert stared through the door and down the aisle of the diner. His thoughts were on Jeanes. He wondered if the man who had turned into the sunlight with a smile on his face would want pity. Probably not. He was going toward the martyrdom which his own ego had viewed as the only goal worthy of his striving. He would die with the same smile on his face, confident that he was now the peer of saints. Heroic, yes, and at the same time….
He saw Miss Talcott rise hastily from her chair and walk with quick purposive step toward the rear. Her shoulders were held erect and her hands were straight down at her sides. In one of them she held the fiber bag clenched tightly.
“And now that this other affair has been disposed of,” the Mexican’s words broke into Rennert’s thoughts, “there remains the matter of the deaths which have occurred in the Pullman. The police will be at the station in Mexico City to take charge of the investigation. The Embassy of the United States has been notified. There will be cooperation and,” Rennert was afraid for an instant that the Mexican was going to embrace him, so eloquent was the gesture, “the best of feeling between our two great nations.”
“I trust that the whole procedure can be carried through with as much quietness and with as little publicity as possible.”
“Of course, señor, of course. These passengers will be taken directly to the Palacio for questioning. Unless,” he put forward tentatively, “you know the person who is to be arrested. In that case—if you will indicate his identity the others need not be disturbed.”
Rennert watched Searcey step into the diner and sit down at the first table to the right of the door, where Miss Talcott had been sitting.
“I am sure of the identity of the murderer,” he answered.
“Good! In that case the arrest can be made as soon as the train arrives at the station. This person is still on the train, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
The other flicked an imaginary particle of dust from the cuff of his neatly pressed coat. “It is to be hoped!” he shrugged, “that he eats a good breakfast.”
The bell clanged again and the train moved forward.
“Ah,” the Mexican exclaimed again, “the next stop is Mexico City.” He bowed to Rennert. “Con permiso, señor.”
He turned with a click of the heels and walked toward the first-class coach.
Rennert stood for a moment with his hand on the door of the diner. He watched Radcott come through the other door and walk up the aisle. Now that the end of the journey was at hand and the routine of existence was about to be resumed, he felt tired, as if he were finishing a race. That, he thought, is exactly it. It has been a race, a race to safety, above all for one person for whom every mile of rails has been an approach to retribution.
He opened the door and stepped into the diner.
Radcott had taken the table in front of King and was studying the menu. King and Spahr sat as before.
Rennert started down the aisle, paused for a moment, his eyes fixed on Searcey, then moved forward quickly.
Searcey had slumped in his chair so that his head rested awkwardly upon the back. His chin was thrust forward and the cords of his neck were tautened wires. His small delicate mouth was twisted and his blank glasses stared upward at the ceiling.
Rennert bent over him and felt for the pulse. Searcey was dead.
26
Memories of Tomorrow (9:40 A.M.)
In that moment in which he stood there, his thoughts in chaos, Rennert was acutely conscious of the incongruous irrelevancies of the backs of heads.
The three men in the diner sat facing forward so that the backs of their heads seemed to stare at him like enigmatic masks. King’s, with hair crisp and unruffled and iron-gray. Beyond him, Radcott’s round skull, naked-looking beneath the sparse light hair that glistened and which ran down to the fold of pink flesh at the nape of his neck. Spahr’s narrow head and slightly prominent ears and, like a furrow between them, a cowlick.
A muffled cry at the doorway behind him made Rennert wheel about.
Miss Talcott stood, one hand pressed against her mouth, staring at Searcey’s body. The change which had come over her since Rennert had seen her seated at this table a few minutes before was incredible. She seemed to have shrunk within herself so that her flesh looked withered and lifeless. Her face was devoid of color and her eyes dull and glassy. (As dull and glassy, Rennert thought, as those of the corpse in the chair at her side.)
“Is he,” she choked, “dead?”
Rennert nodded, his face grim. “Yes, Miss Talcott, he is dead.”
She stared at him for a moment with eyes into which a slow look of horror crept, then groped toward a chair across the aisle. She sank into it and seemed to become absorbed in contemplation of the forward door.
Spahr had turned about in his chair and was regarding them curiously. He got up, put down his napkin and walked back with quick step.
“What’s the matter?” his eyes went from Rennert to Miss Talcott. He glanced down at Searcey and his mouth fell open.
He raised suddenly fright-filled eyes to Rennert’s face. “God!” he emitted a long drawn out whistle. “Another one!”
Silverware clattered against china and Radcott turned his head. King was on his feet in the aisle, a cigar held in trembling fingers.
Rennert looked from one of them to the other. “Will all of you,” he ordered in a clear incisive voice, “go into the Pullman at once!”
He watched them go. Spahr’s fingers were fumbling for a cigarette as he moved slowly forward, his eyes fixed sideways upon the face of the dead man. Except for one furtive glance downward King did not look to either side of him as he followed. Radcott got up, walked down the aisle and paused by Searcey’s table. He stared down for an instant, then looked at Rennert. His blue eyes were queer and sharp.
“It was suicide, was it?” he asked in a strained voice. “He’s the one who’s been guilty all along?”
Rennert frowned impatiently. “In the Pullman, if you please, Radcott,” he said sharply.
He looked at Miss Talcott, who sat very still and looked back at him with eyes that held no expression.
“I think,” she said tonelessly, “that you want me to stay, don’t you?”
He nodded, scarcely conscious of his action, and stood in the aisle with his eyes on Searcey.
It had come so unexpectedly, this man’s death, that he was more than a little bewildered. He felt the need for a moment or two of quiet in order that he might get his thoughts marshaled into some semblance of order. Was this what had been needed to fit into place all those fragmentary little bits of evidence that he had been so carefully piecing together? Did this stamp irrevocably the mark of guilt upon the criminal? Or did it leave him at sea again, all his calculations strewn upon the waves of uncertainty?
He approached Searcey and scrutinized the table in front of him. There was an empty plate and silverware, unsullied by use. A napkin, unfolded. A Mexico City newspaper spread out flat upon the white cloth. An empty glass, its sides and bottom still moist with water. Rennert stared down thoughtfully.
He looked about the diner. The waiter was nowhere to be seen, busied undoubtedly in the kitchen.
He knelt and carefully surveyed the floor beneath the table and beneath Searcey’s chair. There was nothing there.
He got up, a frown of concentration upon his face, and not without repugnance began to go through Searcey’s clothing. He finished and stood back, still frowning.
He sat down at the table across the aisle and drew a cigarette from his pocket. He lit it and drew smoke into his lungs. He exhaled it very slowly, his eyes piercing the blue wraiths.
“You thought that he was g
uilty, didn’t you?” the words, softly spoken, came to him from a distance, as if an echo of his own thoughts.
He looked across the virgin-white cloth at Miss Talcott. Her face was more composed now but held upon it the same lifeless expression. Her eyes were vague and clouded as they rested upon his face.
He was silent for a moment, surveying her. “Yes,” he said.
She nodded. “I thought so.” With a curious note of interest in her voice she asked: “Why did you think so?”
Rennert stared again into the cigarette smoke. He was conscious of a bit of relief at being able to voice his thoughts, to bolster his shaken suspicions by repetition.
“I don’t see,” he said slowly, “how it could have been anyone except Searcey.”
“You mean because of the nature of these crimes? That they were the kind that a man of his type would have committed?”
“Partly, although twenty-four hours is too brief a period in which to judge a man’s characteristics, particularly if he’s watching every word and action of his own. Still, the whole business has had the marks of a man such as I think Searcey to have been—cool and level-headed yet with all of a gambler’s daring, an aggressive personality that would never stop until his ends were reached. The man who carried through the Montes kidnapping without being detected, who struck with precise and deadly accuracy each time his security was threatened, could not have been nervous, hotheaded, or timid. Unless one of them is a better actor than I give him credit for, I cannot fit King, Spahr, or Radcott into that picture.”
“No,” Miss Talcott agreed slowly, “neither can I.”
“In each of the three murders which were committed on this train as well as that on the platform at San Antonio,” Rennert went on, “the evidence pointed directly to Searcey when one looked at it calmly and objectively. Take them in order. Graves, the federal man, was killed before the Pullman was opened, at nine o’clock. King and Miss Van Syle were the only ones of this group who admitted having been there at that time. According to Searcey’s story he didn’t step onto the platform until shortly before the train was due to leave, at nine-thirty. Yet he told me in the diner yesterday that he had seen Miss Van Syle on the platform at San Antonio the night before. If, as she said, she got on the Pullman as soon as it was opened he could only have seen her before nine o’clock, when he claimed to have been nowhere near the station.”
“Miss Van Syle,” Miss Talcott murmured. “It’s better to leave her with that name, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Rennert paused. “I’m wondering now about that incident in the diner, when Searcey thought he recognized her. Their paths may well have crossed at some time in the past, in Fort Worth or in the small town near by where she taught. Now the albino had become brown-haired and the drab Ollie Wright had become the fashionably dressed Coralie Van Syle. Small wonder that neither one knew the other.”
A sharp exclamation in Spanish made him turn. The waiter stood in the aisle, staring at Searcey’s body. A pencil and a pad fell from his fingers.
“Go into the kitchen,” Rennert said to him quickly, “stay there until I call you. Do not say anything to anyone about this man.”
“¿Está muerto, señor?”
“Yes,” Rennert assured him, “he is dead.”
The man turned and without waiting to retrieve the objects from the floor walked toward the door.
Rennert looked at Miss Talcott. She might have been in a trance, her eyes resting upon his face without seeing it.
“Go ahead,” she said softly, “I’m listening.”
“Very well,” he resumed, “next comes Tomer’s death in the tunnel. As you know, all the evidence was against Searcey there. Jeanes’ testimony about the corduroy trousers and his statement that the person who had stood over the seat before him went toward the rear of the car. Also the fact that the hatbox in which the needle was hidden stood in the aisle between Tomer’s and Searcey’s seats.”
“And if Jeanes hadn’t felt my handbag against his hand you would have been more certain about Searcey at the time?”
“Yes,” Rennert was scarcely conscious of the interruption. “My suspicions were strengthened, however, by Miss Van Syle’s death. At first everyone except Spahr seemed to have an alibi for the period during which she was killed and her belongings searched. Spahr did go to her compartment but I’m satisfied—or,” he amended thoughtfully, “I was satisfied that his story was correct, that he found her already dead.”
Rennert paused and stared with slightly narrowed eyes into the smoke. Abstraction was in his voice when he went on.
“The alibis of two of the others were worthless, I ascertained later. King’s seemed unshakable until Radcott revealed last night the fact that for a few minutes in the smoker King was out of his sight. Searcey, however, had an even longer time at his disposal. His story was that he remained in the diner the entire time that Spahr was there, that he left with Spahr and accompanied him to the door of the smoker. When I had them repeat their actions, however, I saw that Searcey had no alibi at all for most of the time between Radcott’s and King’s exit and that of Spahr. The latter’s back was turned to him and he sat next to the door. The waiter was in the kitchen at the time and Searcey could easily have stepped out, gone to Miss Van Syle’s compartment and returned, all unseen by Spahr, who would swear that he had not left the diner. Throughout, Searcey seemed a little too ready to direct suspicion against others. When he learned that Spahr was under suspicion, for instance, he emphasized the fact that the young man had been drinking heavily, suggesting that this might render him unaccountable for his actions.”
Ashes fell unheeded upon the tablecloth as Rennert leaned forward. It was helping, this résumé, in clarifying his thoughts but it also was making him see straight ahead of him the impasse toward which he was headed: reaffirmed belief in Searcey’s guilt.
“Then there was the murder of the porter, who was killed to prevent him telling me something about the conversation which the murderer of Torner held with the latter the previous night. While we were in Saltillo I questioned the porter about what passengers had been up and about in the Pullman late the night before, when King had overheard the talking at the rear of the car. We were standing then in the corridor outside the smoker. Searcey must have been in the smoker, since he was neither in the Pullman nor in the diner. A few minutes later, after he had joined me in the diner, he seemed much interested in the fact that it was the porter who had known that someone was engaged in conversation with Torner. He was evidently suspicious of the porter and what he might tell about the events of that night, when Torner threatened him with blackmail unless he were paid off at Monterrey. Regardless of the porter’s evidence, however, the popcorn and the white horse stickpin which I found on the floor convinced me that it was Searcey who had sat there with the man who was murdered the next day.”
“Oh, yes, the pin with the white horse,” Miss Talcott murmured. “I’d been wondering about that. It was so grimly appropriate.”
“Searcey, as I learned this morning, was practically without funds on this trip. I noticed that he ate very little in the diner and wondered at it at the time. He was strong and robust and looked as if he would have a hearty appetite. He must have seen the cases of samples which Radcott carried with him and filched several boxes of popcorn. Since he had the berth above Radcott one of the cases may have been put into his berth by mistake the first night. He was eating the popcorn while he talked with Torner and dropped the worthless premium and some of the corn on the floor. The ring and the tin whistle were likewise from boxes of popcorn which Searcey had eaten surreptitiously at various times.”
“The whistle? I didn’t know about that.”
Rennert told her of his discovery of it upon the ground by the observation platform, where the porter had dropped it.
He smiled a bit shamefacedly. “I didn’t realize at the time its real significance. I thought that the man was preparing to use it as a signal to the Cristeros, lurki
ng in the darkness. When he told me that he had found it in the smoker while we were at Vanegas I remembered that I had gone into the smoker soon after the train stopped there and come upon Searcey with moving jaws, as if he had been eating something. He had tossed the whistle to the floor and the porter had found it while sweeping.”
“I noticed that you showed the stickpin to several of the men. You were asking them if they could identify it?”
“Yes. Searcey said that he thought the Mexican had been wearing it in his tie after the train left San Antonio. No one else remembered having seen it. Spahr was positive that it had not been in the man’s tie, which he had noticed particularly. It struck me then as likely that Searcey was anxious to account for the pin in the most logical manner, since he was aware that I knew Torner had been sitting in the seat where I found it.”
Miss Talcott was frowning slightly. “But if Searcey were so hard up for money why did he take a Pullman instead of riding in the coach?”
“Probably because he knew that Pullman passengers are subjected to much less careful scrutiny at the border than ordinary travelers. After the hue and cry which had been raised over the Montes kidnapping he would want to pass the border as quickly and quietly as possible. He may not have trusted the effectiveness of his disguise too much.”
“But what was it the porter had to tell you?” Despite the intelligence of the woman’s questions Rennert had the feeling that her thoughts were far away.
“I’ll never know exactly,” he answered. “He may have seen Searcey in conversation with Torner, although I believe not. It was probably that he knew Searcey had been out of his berth after the other passengers had retired. According to his words to the conductor, the porter had been carrying a ladder for one of the passengers when he saw Torner seated at the rear of the car. Now, the only person to have an upper berth, and thus need the use of a ladder, was Searcey. At any rate, he was suspicious of what the porter might have seen and used Radcott’s knife, which he had found upon the floor, to stab him last night when the lights were suddenly extinguished. My suspicion that this is what happened was confirmed last night when he informed me that Jeanes had had a knife in his possession. This was before the porter’s body had been discovered, remember. When Searcey described a knife similar to the one found later in the porter’s back he intended to throw the blame for the killing upon Jeanes, who he expected to make his escape and never be seen again. Actually, he betrayed his knowledge that such a knife had been used.”