Silent Are the Dead

by George Harmon Coxe

  “The picture you took of Miss Hoyt,” Forrester said.

  Casey looked at the bartenders. They were giving him the worried eye and he knew they could hear what was being said. Well, that’s what happened when you gave pictures away. He couldn’t tell Forrester the truth now. He couldn’t tell him about Bishop because he didn’t dare betray the secret that Lyda Hoyt and her uncle had kept. And if he couldn’t tell about Bishop he couldn’t tell’ Forrester what he’d done with the print and negative. He glanced at the bartenders again; they still looked worried in an expectant sort of way.

  “All right,” Casey said, “I’ll go out with you.”

  “Splendid. Shall we drink up?”

  “By all means. Then we can have another.”

  “But—”

  Casey turned on the innocent eye, the candid manner. “You bought. Shouldn’t I have the privilege of returning the compliment?”

  “Well—” Forrester cocked an eye at his brother, looked back at Casey, and a gleam of humor fought its way through the disturbed darkness of his eyes. “You win,” he said and ordered again.

  From then on Casey liked him, and, studying him covertly, he quickly decided that Forrester would be no bargain even without the support of his brother and cousin. About 35, Casey thought; as tall as he was and weighing about 190. His hair was a medium brown, his eyes gray-blue and clear and direct. He played six-goal polo, had boxed in college, and once went three rounds in a charity exhibition with Braddock. It wasn’t just his rich man’s clothes and manners, either, that impressed; it was something in his eye, something about the cut of his jaw that told you that although he was accustomed to the best he could battle the worst down to the finish without saying uncle.

  He shifted his gaze to Van Doren. Solid, dark, not so tall. And the brother, Russ—he was not more than 26 or 27, blonder, engaged to Senator Waverly’s daughter. Casey shook his head absently. What a spot Lyda Hoyt had picked to have her picture taken—

  The sedan at the curb, its bumper practically touching a fire plug, looked 25 feet long. Van Doren got in behind the wheel and Casey climbed in between the two brothers, wondering what he was going to say.

  He couldn’t say a word about Bishop. He had no intention of telling about the one print in his desk; to do so would only make Forrester demand the negative. There wasn’t much use in stalling or saying that the film didn’t come out.

  “Where is it?” Forrester asked as the car got under way.

  “I haven’t got it.”

  “Oh?” Forrester’s voice got polite but thin. “What happened to it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I thought you were going to be reasonable,” Forrester said. “What is it you want, money?”

  Casey felt the surge of hot anger in his neck. He sat up. Then he got an idea and cooled off again.

  “Look,” he said. “I saw Lyda Hoyt tonight. All I had to do was tell the police—and Lieutenant Logan who was detailed to the case is a friend of mine. Did I tell him?”

  “Why—I don’t know.”

  “The hell you don’t. If I had you’d have heard about it hours ago. Logan would have been waiting for her when she walked off the stage.”

  “Yes. I suppose that’s true.” Forrester flexed his lips. “But just the same. That photograph—”

  “It’s like this,” Casey said, liking his idea better all the time. “I haven’t got it. It hasn’t been developed. I gave it to a fellow named Perry Austin. Because I knew I’d be tied up with the police. He didn’t know what was in the film holder but I told him to hang on to it and not develop it or hand it over to anyone but me. I haven’t seen him since. For all I know he’s out on some assignment.”

  “You say he works with you?”

  “Sure. And I’m sort of the boss in the studio. He’ll do what I tell him. So why don’t you forget it? Nobody’s going to get that picture but me and if I wanted to throw any curves I’d have done it before now. Forget it. Don’t worry about it.”

  When Casey talked like that, you believed him and Forrester said so. “I believe you,” he said. “After all you could have told the police, as you say. I’m very grateful that you didn’t and I—well, I apologize for dragging you around this way. It was a crazy idea but I didn’t know what else to do— Well, thanks a lot, old man. I shan’t forget it. Is there any place you’d like to go? Back to Andre’s?”

  Casey glanced out the window as the car sped along, saw that they were within a block of Austin’s apartment, and decided to stop and see if he was home. “This’ll do,” he said. “Right here on the corner. I want to see a fellow.”

  Van Doren pulled up at the curb and Casey got out. Grant Forrester leaned forward, offering his hand. “Thanks again—and when can you give me the picture?”

  “By tomorrow afternoon,” Casey said. “Call me some time after noon.”

  He watched the sedan roll away and started down the street, well pleased with his subterfuge. Some time during the morning he’d make a copy of that picture he had in his desk. When he developed the negative of that copy, Forrester probably wouldn’t be able to tell it from the original.

  Casey played with these thoughts as he glanced at the row of brownstone fronts that marched along with him in the darkness. He had never been in Austin’s apartment, but he had dropped him off here several times and when he entered the building he found the entryway lighted and got the apartment number from name cards along the wall.

  Beyond the inner door, the interior had been modernized, but long old-fashioned stairs hugged one wall, and he went up whistling softly, his hand trailing on the polished bannister. Then, just as he turned the corner at the second floor, he saw the girl.

  She was coming toward him from an angle, as if she had just stepped from one of the apartments ahead. He had only a fleeting glimpse of her face before she started to pass him, and although the light was bad, there was something familiar about the tweed suit and the angle of the tapered face that made him move in front of her so that she had to stop or bump into him.

  “Hello,” he said, and then she looked up and he knew he had been right, that this was the girl who had come to the studio asking for Austin. “Isn’t he in?”

  For one brief instant her face seemed white and startled, but she composed it quickly and said, “Oh, I didn’t recognize you— No, he didn’t answer,” she said, and stepped past. Then she was going down the stairs and he stood there, grunting softly, wondering who she was and why she was so interested in Austin.

  The apartment he sought was one of the two at the front and he knocked at the door, waited, knocked again. The lock, he saw, was of the old-fashioned type and he stooped and put his eye to the keyhole. When he found nothing but blackness beyond he sighed and went back downstairs, a little annoyed with himself for not taking the girl’s word. In the foyer he glanced at his wrist watch. It was just 12:20. He went out on the sidewalk, glancing up at the apartment again as he tramped off down the street.

  It was a seven- or eight-minute walk to the Express and Casey went directly to the studio. The anteroom was empty and he slid out of his coat and tossed it on the desk; then, as he pulled out his chair to sit down, he saw the plate case.

  At first he didn’t believe it and stood staring, a frown biting into his brow and his eyes puzzled. Finally he realized he was staring and, with mounting incredulity, lifted it to the desk, fumbled with the straps, opened it. Then he was sure it was his and quickly yanked out the camera, inspecting it to be sure it was all right. It was. But there was no film holder in it; no exposed film holders in the case itself. “What the hell!” he said.

  He looked across the room, brows still warped but seeing nothing. Presently his gaze came back to the camera and case. He kicked the chair out a little farther and sat down. That’s when he noticed the center drawer of his desk. It was open about an inch. The wood around the lock was chewed and the lock itself was bent.

  The impact of this discovery was like a physical jolt an
d he grabbed for the drawer and pulled it open. He pawed through it again and again with sweaty hands.

  He searched the other drawers but even as he did so he knew it was no use. He had put that picture of Lyda Hoyt in the center drawer. It was gone. Whoever had stolen his plate case had found out the picture was not in that case and had come back with it to resume the search.

  Casey sat back and the stiffness went out of him. His face was dark and brooding under its film of moisture. He thought of Jim Bishop and the things he had told Grant Forrester, and a bitterness was in his mouth and throat as he tried to think and then tried not to, when he found the result so discouraging.

  He was still sitting there, a burly grim-faced man, when the sound of whistling came along the hall and Tom Wade swung into the room. “Hi, big shoot,” he said airily. He slid his plate case along the floor. “Boy, did I have an assignment tonight. The West Roxbury Players—and not bad either. There was a dame there —” He broke off and walked round to look at Casey. “What’s your trouble?”

  “Go ’way,” said Casey, not looking up.

  Wade shrugged and began whistling again. He opened his plate case, took out a couple of film holders and started toward the darkroom corridor, his heels rapping on the composition floor. He went through the doorway. Suddenly the rap of his heels stopped and Casey heard what sounded like a gasp. Then Wade yelled. “Flash!”

  An icicle ripped along Casey’s spine and he jumped up, knocking over the chair. There was something in that yell he had never heard before and he leaped for the doorway, his throat dry and heart pounding.

  Wade stood stock-still on the threshold of the printing-room and Casey couldn’t stop in time and slammed into him, knocking him aside. Wade never said a word; he just stood there looking ahead of him at the floor. Then Casey saw why. Crumpled there in the semi-darkness of the room lay a man, his topcoat bunched about his waist, his hat half on and half off his head.

  Casey sucked in his breath and stepped forward, going to one knee. The man was on his side, his head on one outstretched arm. “Finell!” he breathed.

  “Good God!” Wade said. “What—is he—”

  He didn’t finish the question but Casey knew what he meant and got the hat off and felt a wrist and said, “No. He’s alive.”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  Worry and anxiety made Casey’s voice ragged and stiff. “How the hell do I know?” He got his arms under Finell’s knees and shoulder, lifted him easily. “Get his coat off.”

  The man’s arms hung limp and it was a simple matter for Wade to slip off the topcoat; then Casey carried Finell into the lighted anteroom, ordered Wade to make a bundle of the coat, and stretched out the inert form on the floor, the coat under his head. That was when he saw the ugly bruise near the top of the skull and knew that Finell, the redheaded photographer that everybody liked, had been slugged.

  “Get on the phone,” he said. “Get a doctor up here.”

  And even as he spoke he knew that this thing that had happened to Finell was tied up with him—with his stolen plate case, and jimmied desk, and the picture he had kept because he thought he was being so smart.

  Chapter Seven: A COUPLE OF HOODS

  THEY WATCHED THE DOCTOR examine Finell—Casey and Wade and Blaine and the two ambulance men who stood in the doorway. Wade was hunched over in a chair, his elbows on his knees, his round face still pale and miserable. Blaine paced the floor in tight little circles, his hands behind his back and his thin, angular features tight and hard. Casey stood over the doctor, legs spread, fists thrust deep in his coat pocket. No one said anything; no one had said anything in the past three or four minutes.

  “I think he’ll be all right, but we never know about head injuries until we get some X-rays. Probably only a concussion—you say he had his hat on and that may have saved him from a fracture—but I can’t be sure.”

  “How long will he be our?” Casey said.

  “I can’t tell that either. Five minutes, five hours, a day.” He shrugged and put on his coat, nodding to the ambulance men who came forward and lifted Finell gently to the stretcher.

  “We’ll go with him,” Casey said. He looked at Wade. “You take my car and I’ll go along in the ambulance.”

  He started for his coat and Blaine took his arm. “Why would anyone slug him?”

  Casey looked down into the narrowed gray eyes. “He must have walked in on somebody who didn’t belong here.”

  Blaine watched the stretcher being carried out. He told the doctor to see that Finell had the best of every-thing, but he still held to Casey’s arm. “Let Wade ride the ambulance,” he said. “You can go along in a few minutes.”

  Casey thought it over and nodded to Wade. “Okay. Take his coat with you. I’ll be out.”

  Blaine waited until they were alone. “What would anybody want to slug him for?” he asked again.

  Casey thought he knew but he couldn’t tell Blaine the whole story and there was another possibility. He asked about it. “What was his assignment? When did he leave here?”

  “I called him about ten-forty. A fire in the South End.”

  Casey went to Finell’s plate case—they had found it in the printing-room—and opened it. There were two film holders exposed, indicating Finell had taken four pictures. That they were here proved that Casey’s alter native was wrong; Finell had not been slugged because of them.

  “Somebody broke into my desk tonight,” he said, and showed Blaine the damaged lock. “I think Finell walked in on the guy—or guys—that did it. Somebody put the slug on him and dragged him into the other room.”

  “What was in your desk?”

  “Lots of things.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Casey was in no mood to argue, nor did he feel he could tell the truth about the picture of Lyda Hoyt, even to Blaine. He could not help feeling that he was indirectly responsible for what happened to Finell, and this thought served only to heighten his resentment.

  “Somebody swiped my plate case tonight,” he said and went on to explain what had happened, how he had found the case here when he came back for the second time.

  “What pictures were in the case?” Blaine asked.

  “The ones I took at Endicott’s,”

  “And what else?”

  Casey stifled an angry outburst and deliberately waited until he could speak reasonably. “If I knew all the answers I wouldn’t be horsing around here arguing with you,” he said finally.

  “You didn’t tell me about the plate case before.”

  “Because you’re the guy who hates alibis. You want pictures from me.”

  “And so far I haven’t got any.”

  “You will,” Casey said. “When Austin shows up.”

  Blaine stepped back. He wasn’t satisfied, not by a long way was he satisfied. His mouth was thin and sardonic and his gray eyes were speculative and intent.

  “All right,” he said, and picked up Finell’s film holder. “Develop those for me before you go, will you?”

  When Casey had sent Finell’s prints up to Blaine he came back to the studio and for the first time in an hour or more began to think about Perry Austin and that film holder he was apparently carrying around with him. Where the hell was he? And why hadn’t he left the film holder here as he was told?

  There was no answer to these questions, but thinking of them raised another. Could there be any connection between the theft of the plate case and that picture he had taken of the man he had followed from Endicott’s apartment? In any case the thing to do was find Austin and see what was on the film.

  He looked at his watch. It was too late to go down to the Club Berkely; the place would be closed. Nevertheless he picked up the telephone and asked the operator to get the number. Someone might be there. Someone was.

  “Yes?” An accented voice came to him. “Dominic speaking.”

  Casey identified himself. “Is Bernie Dixon there?” No, Bernie Dixon had just left.
“Well, look. You know Perry Austin, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “What time did he leave?”

  Dominic didn’t know. Yes, he remembered seeing Mr. Austin earlier in the evening but there had been a big crowd and he had been very busy and—

  “Yes, sure,” Casey said. “Okay, Dominic.” He hung up, scowled at the instrument, glanced at his wrist watch again. That was the hell of this town. The bars closed down too early and you never knew where to look for anyone at this hour except home. Still, there was one place that might be open at this hour—and it was the kind of place that Dixon patronized.

  He picked up the telephone again and called Dixon’s apartment. When the houseboy finally answered and said Dixon had not returned, Casey called the hospital. After some delay he got Wade.

  “How is he?”

  “Pretty good, so they tell me.”

  “Conscious?”

  “No. But no fracture. His condition’s good and they say he’s going to be okay.”

  “Swell,” Casey said. “When he comes around maybe he can tell us who slugged him. Stick around awhile, will you?”

  “But I thought you—”

  “I was, but I can’t,” Casey said. “I got to look for Perry Austin. I’ll call you back.”

  The Avenue was deserted now and the traffic lights along its tree-lined length had been turned off. There was a block or so of sedate and modern apartments, an occasional one thereafter, but for the most part there were only ancient houses of brick and stone that looked stiff and unpromising in the shadows. Some were empty, some had the windows boarded up or shuttered, almost all were dark.

  The house Casey sought was in the middle of the block but the management preferred to have its patrons leave their cars distributed over a wide area rather than have them bunched near the entrance, so Casey pulled the convertible to a stop, just beyond the intersection and walked the rest of the way.

  He stepped into a small entryway and at the same time the door at the opposite end opened and shut and a trim, smooth-faced youth was there to meet him.