Silent Are the Dead

by George Harmon Coxe

  “Oh.” Casey went around the desk and sat down, thinking fast and getting nowhere. “I don’t get it, Jim,” he said. “Where do you come in? Who was she?”

  “You don’t know?”

  Casey shook his head. “But there are a lot of things I. don’t know. Come on.” He got up suddenly and led the way into the semidarkness of the printing-room.

  He could hear Bishop waddling behind him, but he did not look at him then; instead he took the clips off the film, went over to the enlarger, slid a piece of paper in the easel. He put the film in the machine and snapped on the light, knowing from long experience just about how much exposure that particular print would need. He snapped off the light, slipped out the paper, and slid it into the developing-tray. Behind him he heard Bishop say, “Is that it?”

  Casey did not answer. He took another piece of paper and repeated the performance, giving this one another second or two of exposure and taking the first from the developer and putting it in water. Presently, when he had both prints in the fixing bath, he pulled out one and held it under the safe-light. One look was all he needed. He put the print back in the hypo and turned, folding his arms.

  “Lyda Hoyt,” he said softly.

  “Yes,” Bishop said. “I thought you knew. I thought—” He did not finish the sentence, or if he did Casey did not hear him. There was a curious tingling along his nerve ends now, and over and over his brain was saying, Lyda Hoyt, Lyda Hoyt. No wonder she’d looked familiar, since she was the best-known musical-comedy star of the day. He’d seen her on the stage a half-dozen times in the past five years, had taken her picture once or twice at press interviews. Her current show—she’d had it on the road for many months and was winding up at the Shubert this week—was last season’s hit, Crimson Blossoms.

  Casey thought of this and other things, remembering something else no less important. Lyda Hoyt had announced her engagement only a week ago to Grant Forrester, and the Forresters, some wag had once said, spoke only to the Cabots and the Lowells— Casey glanced down at the two prints in the fixing bath. They were face up, the image of the woman sharp and clear and, in the foreground, the head and shoulders of the murdered Stanford Endicott.

  Pure dynamite, he thought. What he said was, “Tell me about it, Jim.” He pulled a stool in front of Bishop. “Maybe we’d better talk in here, in case somebody walks in while these prints are washing.”

  Bishop ignored the stool. He moved to the doorway and glanced toward the anteroom. He came back and spoke in measured tones. “I have to have them, Flash.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Bishop’s mouth dropped, making four chins instead of three. “But, good God, man! Suppose someone got ahold of a print. Think what—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Casey said. “How do you fit? Why should Lyda Hoyt call you?”

  “I’m her uncle.”

  “What?” Casey peered at him. “You’re what?”

  “That’s right. She phoned me right after the curtain came down. You can imagine how she feels. She was frantic. She didn’t know what to do and luckily I thought to ask her what the fellow looked like that took the picture. Then I knew it had to be you. I thought if I told you how things were—”

  He broke off again and tried to read the answer in the big photographer’s face, but Casey was still sorting out tangled fibers of his thoughts. It would be a simple matter to tell Bishop that he could have the negative and prints. In the end Casey knew he would probably hand them over because he did not think Lyda Hoyt had killed Stanford Endicott, and he knew what the consequences would be if one of those prints found its way into the wrong hands.

  Yet, over a period of years, there had developed in Casey a curious complex about the pictures he took. Many a time he had found himself with some shot that might have caused trouble for an innocent person; more often he had pictures of men and women not so innocent. Very often they were well-known people—women caught in gambling raids, men in night clubs with women not their wives. Those people came to him and begged for those pictures and almost always he handed them over, since they did not constitute news and could do no one but a scandal sheet any good.

  But always before he gave up the picture he had to be sure. He had to know the circumstances because there were many who objected to having their picture taken on purely personal grounds. If he gave back the picture of everyone who protested he would have been fired long ago. No. The problem was one of selection and he was careful because once a negative had been destroyed there was no replacing it. In one or two instances he had been tricked, had been sold on a phony story and, not knowing the facts, had passed up a sensational and newsworthy picture. It was this same suspicion that made him question Jim Bishop now. There had been a murder tonight and Casey wanted all the answers he could get.

  “What’s the rest of it, Jim?” he said finally. “I guess you can have them, but I’d like to know what the score is. This uncle business—that’s kind of hard to take.”

  “Sure.” Bishop mopped his face again. “Sure it is, Flash. She’s my dead sister’s kid. It goes back about twelve years. Up till then I’d see her once in a while when her mother brought her to New York—I was on the Standard there for years, you know—and then her mother died and she went someplace with her father; someplace out on the coast. I lost track of them. I had some tough luck of my own and got to boozing and got fired and came up here and got on at the Express. Five years ago she called me up. I fell over. She was Lyda Hoyt, the actress, the new sensation direct from London.”

  He paused for breath and went on. “She’d had me traced. She’s the one that looked me up, not the other way around. I’d seen her picture in the papers and magazines and didn’t even know it was her. There’s a lot of difference in a woman’s looks between 18 and 25 —she’s 30 now—and as a kid she was fat and pudgy and no style and now she’s—well, you know. I never told anyone. You know how it is. The gag was that she was English and an orphan—which she was—and that was good publicity. She got around in society here and there and they had her engaged to Lord this and Count that, and that was good for her shows.

  “It would’ve been swell, huh, for the papers to find out she wasn’t English at all, and that she had a fat slob like me for an uncle. She used to sneak out to see me when she was in town, and she’d write and send me things, but nobody knew, and that was the way it should be. Now—well, you know. She’s going to marry Grant Forrester. Suppose anyone found out her uncle had killed a man in a drunken brawl and done two years for manslaughter?”

  Casey thought of a lot of things then. He’d been filling in gaps as Bishop unfolded the story and now those things fitted together in his mind. Bishop had come up from New York ten years previous to take a job on the Express at probably about one-third of his former salary. He’d been over 50 then, and they knew he’d been fired and put him on the police assignment, warning him to cut down on the booze. He straightened out then, and went along in fine shape until one day he’d dived in the river to pull out a kid who’d overturned a skiff. The river police had fished Bishop out more dead than alive and for a month it was doubtful whether he would pull through. At his age the strain had been too much for his heart and from then on he had to watch himself and take things easy.

  Right away he began to put on weight. They gave him a job on the copy desk and everything was all right until that night about three years ago when he’d got in an argument with some fellow in the back room of a Washington Street bar. They hadn’t even known each other, these two, but they were both liquored up and the fellow swung at Bishop and Bishop had slugged him with a bottle and killed him, hit him three or four times before they stopped him. Sanford or Sanburn, the man’s name was. Something like that. And when the police looked him up they found he had a record and two convictions for armed robbery. That and the fact that witnesses testified the fellow was a complete stranger, got Bishop off with a light sentence.

  He’d been out a year now, living on
a small income, playing chess when he could find an opponent, drinking a little beer on occasion but keeping quiet. There had been one more heart attack that nearly finished him but he was always cheerful.

  “Yeah,” Casey said thoughtfully. “I guess it wouldn’t be so good for her, Jim. Well—” He took the prints from the washer and rolled them and put them on the dryer. He slipped the negative from the enlarger. “Let’s go in the other room.”

  He sat down at his desk and Bishop lowered himself into a chair with a series of wheezes. Casey tossed the negative in front of him. “What about tonight? Did you know she was going to see Endicott?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know what she wanted?”

  Bishop shook his head. “She went and you caught her, that’s all I know. I was home playing chess with Emerson. You know we generally get together once a week.” Casey nodded. Emerson was the librarian, in charge of the morgue, a pensioner of the Express. “And I got her call about eleven. I came right over.”

  Casey got up and went in for the two prints. When he came back he gave one to Bishop and studied the other, seeing something now that he had not noticed before. Lyda Hoyt was in perfect focus, her eyes wide and startled, her hand on the door. In front of her, a little fuzzy but still identifiable, was part of Endicott’s body. Off to one side, atop a low bookcase that stood adjacent to the door, was an electric clock. The hands pointed to 9:35.

  “What’re you going to do with them, Jim?” Casey indicated the negative and print Bishop held.

  “Why—destroy them. Good God! You don’t think I’d leave them around, do you?”

  “Then I’ll keep this one.”

  Bishop looked up quickly, his glance puzzled. Casey put the extra print in his desk drawer and locked it.

  “Have you seen her show?”

  Bishop shook his head, still puzzled.

  “Neither have I,” Casey said. “It looks like she came over to Endicott’s during intermission—it’s only about five minutes away and she must have figured there was time enough.”

  “I still don’t get you,” Bishop said.

  “Without that picture she might not have an alibi, Jim. It’s a long shot, but it could happen. Suppose the police did find out? It might be sort of handy to be able to prove just when she was there. This shot with that clock in it will do it.”

  “But you know when she was there.”

  “Sure. And probably I’ll still be alive tomorrow and the next day and next year. But why take the chance I won’t be?” He shook his head and grinned. “Don’t worry about it, but I’m funny that way. Once you destroy a negative and its prints you’re out of luck. I’m keeping this one until I’m sure.”

  Bishop pulled himself to his feet with an effort. He looked at the negative and print in his hand. He reached for an ash tray, found a match, touched the flame to the corner of the negative and the print.

  “Thanks, Flash.” He offered his hand. “I’ll tell her. All I can say is thanks, but we won’t forget it, ever.”

  He turned and waddled out and Casey watched him go, wondering why he had to be so damn cautious about turning over that extra print. Nothing was going to happen to him, and there wasn’t a chance that anyone would find out Lyda Hoyt had been in Endicott’s office. Still—stranger things than that had happened. Who would have thought someone would have lifted his plate case right out of a police car—?

  The instant the thought came to him his eyes clouded. He felt for a cigarette, lit it, walked over to the windows. For a minute or two he stood there, staring sightlessly out across the roof tops, his broad face grave and resentment undermining his thoughts.

  Suppose Lyda Hoyt had telephoned Bishop earlier? Suppose he had hurried to the building housing Endicott’s offices? There’d be police cars out front then and he would have to wait. Suppose he had waited—for Casey. He could have tailed the police sedan, could have easily lifted the plate case while Casey was up with Logan and Manahan and Mrs. Endicott. It would be even easier that way than coming and asking for it. Only when the plate case was inspected the right picture was missing— A thing like that would force Bishop to come here.

  He sat down at his desk and picked up the telephone. Half-ashamed, yet driven by some inner stubbornness that would not rest until he knew the truth, he asked the night operator to try Mr. Emerson’s residence.

  “John,” he said presently. “This is Casey. I’m trying to locate Jim Bishop. Isn’t this your night for chess?”

  “Oh, hello,” Emerson said. “Yes, Flash. Yes, we played chess tonight.”

  “When?”

  “Well—I guess I got there at eight-thirty.”

  “Play long?”

  “Till pretty near eleven. We were on our second game. I’d’ve had him checkmated in three more moves, only the phone rang. He said he had to go out.”

  “Oh,” Casey said, still fishing. “You went out with him, huh? He didn’t say where he was going?”

  “No. He dropped me here at my place. It was just about eleven then. Said he had to see a fellow.”

  Casey thanked the man and hung up, feeling a little sheepish about the whole thing. Well, that was that. If Bishop was out of circulation from 8:30 until nearly 11:00 he hadn’t stolen any plate case between a quarter and half past ten.

  “Then who the hell did?” he said finally.

  Chapter Six: TIED UP WITH MURDER

  CASEY SAT THERE AT HIS DESK for quite a while before he got the matter of the missing plate case out of his mind, and after that he began to think about Perry Austin and the other film holder he was supposed to deliver.

  “Probably still clowning around down at the Berkely,” he said under his breath, and before he could continue with the subject the telephone rang.

  It was Blaine. He said, “I want to see you,” and hung up.

  Casey went upstairs and crossed to the city desk. Blaine gave him a quick gray stare and went back to editing a piece of copy. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Down to Endicott’s.”

  “What about pictures?”

  “I got one of him—dead.”

  Blaine looked up, interested now but nothing showing in his voice. “Just one?”

  Casey thought about the plate case. To hell with it. Alibis were no good. How he got pictures was Casey’s affair and if he ran into grief that was his tough luck.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just one.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Austin’s got it.”

  “Why?”

  Casey told him, deliberately, flatly.

  “You walked in right after he’d been shot?” Blaine said. “You and Austin. Why didn’t you call in?”

  “The place was crawling with reporters by the time Logan got there,” Casey said. “What’re you crabbing about? All I’m supposed to do is take pictures.” He turned away, stopped. “Austin’s your boy, isn’t he? Well, when he gets back you’ll get your picture.”

  He kept on going this time, detouring past the studio to get his hat and coat and then tramping down the street two blocks to a bar that charged ten cents more a drink and gave you atmosphere for it. Andre’s, it was called. There were lots of carpet and chromium and red-leather stools and black-topped tables. There were not more than a half-dozen customers about and Casey took a stool at the bar, ordering rye and soda.

  When the drink came he poured the rye, tasted the mixture. He lit a cigarette and emptied his glass. He was just about to order a refill when there was a flurry of movement around the entrance and three men came in. Casey saw that much, but there was no recognition in his glance until he heard the major domo greet them.

  “Good evening, Mr. Forrester, good evening.”

  Casey’s head came round. They were marching toward him now, three stalwart-looking fellows in top hats and tails, looking neither right nor left but at him.

  The two bartenders took up the chant. “Good evening, Mr. Forrester. Good evening, Mr. Forrester. Good evening, Mr. Van Do
ren.”

  Casey pegged the three of them then. The big fellow in the center he recognized as Grant Forrester, the fiancé of Lyda Hoyt. The blond on his right was his younger brother, Russ, and the third man was a cousin, Bill Van Doren. The way they carried themselves, the way they wore those rich man’s clothes told you they’d been doing it a long time.

  Opposite him they broke ranks, Van Doren going to the stool beyond and the two Forresters flanking Casey on the other side. The bartender flipped paper serviettes down in front of them and said, “Yes, sir. What will it be, gentlemen?”

  “Black Label,” Van Doren said, “and Perrier.”

  “Three,” Grant Forrester said. He looked at Casey. “You’re Casey, aren’t you? Yes. And give Mr. Casey another—whatever it is he’s having.”

  Casey looked one way and then the other, adding things up fast and getting only one answer: Lyda Hoyt had not only telephoned her uncle, but she had tipped off Grant Forrester as well.

  “We’d like to see you,” Grant Forrester said.

  “Swell,” said Casey. He looked the other in the eye. “And now what?”

  “Oh, I mean outside. After you’ve finished your drink.”

  “Drinks. I may be here quite a while.”

  “You can come back—I think.”

  “I like it here,” Casey said.

  Forrester shrugged and nodded to Van Doren. “All right. If that’s the way you want it.”

  “You’re going to drag me out, huh?”

  “Don’t you think we can?”

  “Yeah,” Casey said, “I think you can. Starting even, I might give you an argument, but we’re not starting even. If you start something everybody in the place will swear I slugged you first. You’re Mr. Forrester. You carry weight. People believe you and even if they don’t they’ll say they do.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” Forrester said.

  “It’s the only sensible way of adding it up and you know it. Because after the brawl I wind up in the can with a few lumps and all you’ll get is the lumps. Still,”—he watched the bartender put down his drink and drank some of it—“I might take you on just for the hell of it. What do you want?”