The Last Express

by Baynard Kendrick

“Then,” he said softly, “you may go on tomorrow night.”

  Chapter Eleven: TRANSCRIBED ON RECORDS

  “MR. SAVAGE: ‘Whew! What the papers will do to that one—D. A. HIRES MAN AND DOG TO TRAIL MICE—I’d say that lets us out, Dunc. What about it?’”

  The talking record paused and went on:

  “Captain Maclain: ‘Maybe they weren’t kidding. I think I’ll help you, Claude. One hundred dollars a day—expenses—and a free hand. I’m interested in those mice.’

  “Mr. Dearborn: ‘Good Lord, Maclain! You don’t think those could have come from Paul’s car. What in the name of heaven would Zarinka be doing with mice?”

  “Captain Maclain: ‘Some folks like them as pets. I don’t think Zarinka falls in that class. Others use them for experimental purposes in the science of medicine. He hardly fits there, either. Maybe he had them along with him to warn him.’

  “Mr. Springer: ‘What do they do? Sing?

  “Captain Maclain: ‘No. They wriggle and squeak whenever they get a whiff of poison gas.’”

  There was a click from the big Capehart in the corner as the record of Rena’s voice, repeating the conversation of the morning, stopped. Silence settled over six men comfortably disposed about Maclain’s office—silence for everyone except Duncan Maclain.

  From behind his desk he heard the creaking leather as Springer’s bulky form moved uncomfortably in his chair in the corner; the rustle of Claude Dearborn’s starched white evening shirt as the D. A. raised a cigar to his lips; the grunt of approval from Sergeant Aloysius Archer; the infinitesimal click as Inspector Davis thoughtfully snapped one fingernail with another; the swish of cloth on cloth as Spud settled himself more securely on the divan.

  A room with people in it was constantly alive with sound to Duncan Maclain. No one is ever entirely motionless; there is always the involuntary wink of an eyelid, the twitch of a muscle, or, in sleep, the automatic function of breathing. Just as surely, from Maclain’s view of the world, no one was ever entirely quiet.

  From the moment he came in contact with anyone he followed their movements by sound, tracing their progress to a chair, keenly aware when they sat down or stood up, handled an object, or walked to a window, rustling drapes to gaze out on a world he could not see.

  Oddly enough, Springer was the first to speak. “I might have knowed if I said anything, somebody’d take it down on a record. It’ll teach me to keep my mouth shut after this.”

  Spud laughed. “I learned that long ago in this room, Springer. Particularly when I start to make remarks about my wife. She’s the guilty party who takes it down and makes the records.”

  “She’s not the guilty party I’m looking for,” said Inspector Davis.

  “No,” Archer agreed, turning pleadingly to the D. A. “I think we’re wasting a lot of time, Mr. Dearborn. The only way we’ll get anything out of Hoefle is to take him in and work it out of him.”

  “What do you use, Sergeant?” Spud asked. “Kindness and a telephone directory?”

  “It’s against the policy of the police department to use either intimidation or any form of physical violence in an attempt to obtain an admission from a suspect.” The sergeant grinned. “This rule is rigidly enforced and upheld by all subordinates and superior officers—from the commissioner down.”

  “Good Lord,” said Spud, “what book did you get that speech out of?”

  “No book,” said Archer soberly. “In twenty-two years with the department I’ve never seen anything but the utmost kindness used toward prisoners.”

  “Maybe I’m nuts,” Spud told him.

  Archer’s round face resumed its grin. “You are,” he said, “if you think you’re going to bring a phonograph record into court to prove that we frame a defenseless man with a telephone book!”

  “Did you say ‘fram’ or ‘frame’, Sergeant?”

  This’s what I get for revealing the secrets of my office.” Maclain’s face twitched with laughter. “But seriously, Sergeant, I thought we should get together as quickly as possible and get a line-up on what we already know. I’m afraid even a rubber hose and a telephone book won’t beat a quick solution out of things as they stand now. Spud and I have both been busy today. I’ll let him tell you what he got on the Hewitts. He can do it better than I can.”

  “It won’t take long.” Spud locked his hands in back of his head. “Howard Hewitt’s forty-seven, an engineer and a politician, clever in both. He’s been with the Department of Gas, Water and Electricity for fourteen years.”

  “Where does he fit in?” asked Davis.

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. Two months ago he hired a couple of dirt diggers named Trilby and Shane.”

  “Now that’s a pair,” Archer said grimly, “that I’d break every rule in the department on. I thought they’d come into my life again someday.”

  “Well, they’re back, all right.” Spud grinned. “Hewitt had them trailing his wife. He married her out of the Follies. You can guess the rest. Her stage name was Gladys Gwynne.”

  “Don’t tell me,” the inspector said with a sigh, “that you’re going to drag in the old, old story—May and December and a snake in the grass. I’m voting against Hewitt, for my part. We’re working on a stiff that’s been blown up with a bomb. I’ve been around homicides too long to figure that as a popular method of killing for jealous husbands.”

  “On the surface, I think you’re right, Inspector,” Maclain put in. “That was my first thought, too, but it clicks in another direction. You’re overlooking Hewitt’s connection as a city employee with the Department of Gas, Water and Electricity.”

  “Now you’ve got me going,” said Dearborn, speaking for the first time. “I’d like to know how to present that to a jury.”

  “I’ll tell you.” Maclain’s hands folded themselves rigidly on the edge of the desk, like a child in school. “You just can’t go down to Hammacher Schlemmer’s and buy a Mills hand grenade. But a man familiar with the workings of the Police Department and the D. A.’s office might—I say might—know where to get one without arousing suspicion. There’s been plenty of that sort of thing confiscated in gangster raids, hasn’t there, Claude?”

  “Plenty,” declared Dearborn, “but if it’s evidence, it’s carefully guarded. Still—” He quit speaking and sat drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair.

  “I’d like to get this out of my system,” Spud went on. “You’ve already heard a record of what Evelyn Zarinka had to say. Howard Hewitt’s jealous, his wife’s young, and Paul Zarinka never had wings or played a harp, although he may be doing it now. Dunc believes that Zarinka knew the man who was waiting in the car for him. That checks with Hewitt. Patrolman Galligan saw the man cross the street and also had a look at him in the car. He thought the man looked familiar. That might check with Hewitt—”

  “Or with any other one of five hundred people,” the D. A. said.

  “Which still doesn’t eliminate Hewitt,” Spud continued, “nor Hewitt’s friends. Is Gilbert Fox on your list, Inspector?”

  “Everybody’s on my list—that is, everybody who had anything to do with the Zarinkas or their friends.”

  “That’s a large order. I’ll recommend Fox. He’s an engineer, too—electrical, I believe. Anyhow, he works for the New York Electric Company.”

  “And what are his qualifications?” Dearborn asked. “I suppose he’s another one that it’ll take hypnotism to convict.”

  “It’s my suspicious soul.” Spud grinned at the discomfited D. A. “He’s unmarried and lives in the same apartment hotel with the Hewitts—the Kingsley at 95th and West End Avenue.”

  “Not much to swear out a warrant on,” said Archer.

  “No, but his looks are. He’s built along the lines of the ex-Rudolph Valentino. From what the help around the hotel have to offer, he’s been seen more than once leaving the place with the glorious Gladys, his dark eyes glowing with passion.”

  Inspector Davis sighed. “If I start
running in every man who’s gazed on Gladys Hewitt, I’ll finish up with a lovesick line-up that’ll nauseate every detective at headquarters. Go on.”

  “I’m about finished. You can call your own shots, Inspector, but this fellow rather appealed to me. I think he’d kill for the love of a lady. Take it away, Dunc.”

  “I’ll have Rena type us all a list that we can work on,” said Maclain. “After all, it’s not our business to arrest them or try them. All we can do’s point them out. So far, we’ve Howard Hewitt, Gladys Hewitt—”

  “She was at the Hi-de-Ho when Zarinka was killed,” said Dearborn.

  “And I read recently that the price of having murder done in New York, when you were somewhere else, had dropped from one hundred to seventy-five dollars,” Maclain continued placidly. “The idea is to dig out who’s back of it, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” said Dearborn. “You win.”

  “—Gladys Hewitt, Gilbert Fox, Charles Hartshorn.”

  “Where does he come in?” Davis asked.

  “In the same bracket with Evelyn Zarinka.”

  “What motive—” Dearborn began.

  “I don’t know,” Maclain interrupted shortly. He reached for the jigsaw puzzle in his desk drawer and dumped it on the top. “It’s like this puzzle, Claude. If I put all these pieces together, I have a picture. If I showed you one of them separately, you wouldn’t have any idea what it belonged to—but the picture certainly wouldn’t be complete without that piece.

  “There’s a trust fund in the Zarinka family—a lot of money, $300,000. Charles Hartshorn is marrying into it. He’s just one piece in the picture. Evelyn’s just one piece in the picture—and Hoefle—and the other names we’ll put on our list tonight, including this dancer, Amy Arden, whom we’ll interview at ten—and the man who telephoned you the tip-off that she might have information.”

  “Then, when the pieces are all furnished, what are we going to see?” Dearborn left his chair and poured a drink of water from the carafe on Maclain’s desk. “You’re leaving a lot of blanks, Maclain. You’ve made some rather cryptic remarks today. Since I’m footing the bill, perhaps you’ll tell me where the mice and the gas fit in.”

  “I’ll exchange with you.” The captain found two pieces of the puzzle which fitted, put them together and traced the irregular line around them with his forefinger.

  “Zarinka was a member of your staff. What did he have on Hoefle?”

  The inspector hid a grin.

  “Nothing,” Dearborn said viciously. “Benny Hoefle’s back of the A. D. P.—that’s the Amalgamated Delicatessens’ Protective—but Tom Delancey was the president. They had a falling out, and Delancey was found beaten to death in a tunnel.”

  “What tunnel?”

  Maclain forsook the jigsaw puzzle and leaned back in his chair as though he were trying to fathom the expression on Dearborn’s face.

  “The tunnel connecting the 42d Street Station of the Independent Subway with the Times Square Station of the I. R. T. The pinch was premature”—his gray eyes favored Davis and Archer with a sour look—“and the grand jury refused to indict Hoefle. The newspapers have tried the case ever since, and me along with it.”

  “And you dropped it after that?” Maclain’s voice was flat.

  “No murder is ever dropped. Zarinka spent all his spare time on it. It became an obsession with him. That’s why I had to call in outside help—meaning you.”

  “Thanks,” said Maclain. “Now I’ll give you the picture. It’s dim, and there are a lot of pieces missing, but from reading the papers I understand that part of the evidence presented to the grand jury was that Hoefle’s hirelings had a habit of beating up men in tunnels. That was one case Zarinka handled. Another one, unless I’m mistaken, was against the brutality of subway guards who had beaten up a couple of people caught putting slugs instead of nickels in the turnstiles. Going back further, Rena found out for me today that Zarinka had been interested in franchises granted the New York Electric for miles of tunnels to carry their wires under the street. Add Zarinka’s last words—about the Sea Beach Subway. What is most noticeable ?” He stopped.

  Inspector Davis shifted uneasily in his chair.

  The D. A. poured another half a glass of water, touched it to his lips, set it back on Maclain’s desk, and sat down.

  There was a strange alertness in the room—as though everyone present was straining to see an out-of-focus picture take its natural lines on a screen.

  “By Judas, they come in strong, don’t they?” Davis remarked heavily after a moment. He was chewing at his upper lip.

  “Yes,” said Maclain, “they come in heavily. The secret of Paul Zarinka’s death lies somewhere in underground New York. Fortunately, our search has been narrowed down, or I doubt if we could ever find the answer.”

  “The mice?” asked Dearborn.

  “Yes,” said Maclain, “the mice. Paul Zarinka had been in tunnels, or was going in tunnels, where the public seldom goes. Tunnels like that are apt to be full of gas—dangerous gas. He lowered those mice in the cage down ahead of him before he went. It’s a crude test, but effective.”

  “Tunnels!” Dearborn ran a nervous hand through his hair. “What in the devil would he be doing in tunnels?”

  “He found something in them,” Maclain’s voice carried conviction, “or hid something. I’m inclined to think it was the latter. We’d better be getting on to the Hi-de-Ho Club. It’s getting late.”

  Chapter Twelve: TWO OF EACH NAME

  Faced with the necessity of painful and distasteful duties in connection with her brother’s death, Evelyn naturally turned to Chick. The trip to the morgue where she had to undergo the horrifying routine of identification and claim was nothing more than a blur—a succession of physical motions without thought. Numbly she allowed Chick to guide her from taxi to taxi and act as a buffer against the hardness of questioning officials. Scarcely grasping the fact that the paper-white effigy, numbered and lying on a slab, was once her brother, she nodded mutely, signed documents, and eagerly sought the clean wetness outside.

  There were many things yet to be done, an undertaker to be engaged and friends to be notified. It was almost with disgust that she realized Chick had piloted her into Longchamps and ordered food, and that a cocktail was on the table before her.

  “You have to eat, Evelyn,” he said solicitously. “Finish your drink. You’re haggard, played out—a drink will do you good.”

  She stared at him wordlessly across the table, wondering if it were she who had made the day discordant, or Chick. All morning she had felt an unnaturalness about him which she could not place, a vagueness in answering her questions, an avoidance of mentioning Paul’s name. Twice she mustered up courage to ask him directly about Trilby’s accusation. Each time she failed. As much as she desired to do so, she could find no reason to warrant Trilby making such a statement without foundation.

  With a gesture which hinted of desperation she gulped down the cocktail before her. “Why don’t you tell me the truth about Paul?”

  He twirled the stem of his cocktail glass between his fingers. “I don’t know what you mean, darling.”

  She felt he was on the defensive and pressed home her attack. “You do know what I mean, Charles. You’ve been fencing with me all morning, keeping something from me as if I was a child. I can’t stand it! You act as if I was suspicious of you. Don’t you trust me?”

  “Trust you?” His eyes came alive, and he reached one hand half across the table, then drew back. Evelyn felt she had lost, but continued to listen apathetically as he spoke: “You’re overwrought, darling. You know I trust you. More than that, you know I love you—otherwise you wouldn’t have said the things you have. You knew Paul better than I did, were closer to him. Is it likely I’d know anything about him which he hadn’t confided to you?”

  “I suppose not,” she admitted wearily.

  A waiter whisked away their glasses and placed the salad Chick had ordered b
efore them. She pushed the food away gently. “Men have codes of honor that I hate! They confide things in each other which they wouldn’t tell their own mother—and then lock them away from all women in some immortal, masculine vault where they keep them inviolate, regardless of what suffering it may cause to others!”

  She spoke more bitterly than she knew, and the hurt in Chick’s face added to her sorrow.

  “There’s no answer I can make to that, Evelyn, except to ask you to believe in me and trust me.” He leaned closer to her, across the table. “I swear, on my honor, I’m holding nothing back from you which you should know.” He glanced contritely at the ornate clock over the door. “It’s nearly half-past two—I’m going to put you in a cab and send you home. Lie down and get some rest, and let me attend to the details. I’ll call for you at six tonight, and we’ll have dinner some place on the Island. You’ll feel better.”

  “Perhaps I will.” She spoke a trifle more reassuredly. Everything was so upset, so topsy-turvy, that it was quite possible she had misjudged Chick and built a mirage of trouble out of the single discredited statement of a proven blackmailer.

  When she left him outside, he watched her drive away. Fine lines of perplexity showed between his brows. He was still thoughtful when he boa ded an I. R. T. subway train at 59th and Lexington and changed to a downtown express at Grand Central. Evelyn meant more to him than anything in the world. Money and position were trivial factors where her happiness was concerned.

  Underneath Charles Hartshorn’s dilettante exterior was a rock-hard substrata of aggressiveness when he had a definite object in view. He had deliberately adopted a course of action which he intended to follow at all costs, but his conversation with Evelyn at lunch had brought forth, unexpectedly, that the cost might be exorbitant unless he played his hand with care. Since the night before, murder had been added, a terrible additional hazard which no one could have foreseen.

  His lips were set grimly when he alighted from the subway train at Cortlandt Street and made his way through the bustling crowd on Broadway to the ancient building which housed the offices of Ludlow Brothers, members of the New York Stock Exchange.