The Last Express

by Baynard Kendrick

  “A few minutes later I excused myself and told Claude I was going to the washroom. That time I took a different route—you see, I like to know what sort of a place I’m in—and by the time I returned to the table, I had pretty well fixed the size of the restaurant and the number and location of the tables it contained.”

  “You touched every table?” Sergeant Archer put in.

  “Certainly not, Sergeant. I’d hardly go around a restaurant groping at the diners—but every time I come close to a table, Schnucke signals me. I’m afraid we’re getting away from the subject—I was about to ask the inspector where Howard Hewitt and his party were seated.”

  “They were—”

  “Wait, if you don’t mind, Claude.” Maclain’s interruption held a tone of command which effectively stopped the D. A. “I said I was about to ask the inspector.”

  Davis mentally counted the crackers before he replied. “You want a cracker marked to indicate their table?”

  Maclain nodded.

  “Let Spud mark it.”

  The inspector indicated one with his finger. Spud broke a small piece out of each of the four sides and set it back in place.

  “You’re sure of your facts, I know.” Maclain felt the cracker and adjusted it to a slightly different angle. “I mean you have plenty of witnesses ready to corroborate everything?”

  “I have more than that,” Davis said calmly. “By tomorrow I can furnish you with photographs to scale of the entire place and measurements—to back up my witnesses.”

  “That’s very wise,” said Maclain, “but you and Claude really should get together at the start. You’re one table off, now.”

  “What do you mean?” Dearborn demanded shortly.

  “You, above all people, should know, Claude. It was you who told me Hewitt and his wife were four tables down from where we were sitting. Did you count our table as one?”

  “Certainly not. I started at the next table—Hewitt’s party was seated at the fourth!”

  “Or, counting ours,” said Maclain, “five tables away.”

  “That’s right,” Dearborn declared emphatically, “and that’s the way your markers there show it.”

  “Then I have an extremely clear picture of the situation, except for one thing—I don’t know who’s right, you or the inspector.”

  “We both agree,” said Davis.

  “That’s extraordinary,” declared Maclain. “You see, Inspector, you pointed out the fifth cracker to Spud. I’ve been told that my hands are extremely quick—somehow or other, while Spud was breaking off the pieces, I moved one of the crackers down. The table you indicated to Spud, Inspector, was five tables away from where I was sitting—not four! Am I right, Spud?”

  “Sure.” Spud grinned. “I know your tricks and was watching your hands.”

  “Well, anybody’s liable to make a mistake like that.” The inspector was ruffled.

  “That’s it exactly,” said Maclain. “Anybody. I don’t even believe two hundred people if they say they saw with their own eyes! Most people can’t see with their own eyes—and, added to that, I don’t think Chick killed that girl! Suppose we talk to the lady with the raucous voice.”

  Chapter Eighteen: EYEWITNESS

  Chick’s face was brighter, his eyes clearer, as he left the room in the custody of Lieutenant Healy.

  Evelyn was waiting for him in the anteroom adjoining Hoefle’s office. Chick’s arrest, added to Paul’s death, for a time had killed her ability to think, paralyzed her mind with the surety of a powerful anesthetic. Only the smells of iodoform and ether were needed to give the hallucination that she was passing through the nightmare of a serious operation. Oblivious to the others in the anteroom—watching her with mingled gazes of suspicion and hostility—she started to her feet when Chick and the lieutenant appeared.

  She was pale as she walked toward him, externally calm, and loyally disbelieving. The months she had spent in Chick’s company had taught her that he was tender and considerate. Her love for him had developed slowly from a comfortable security in his company to a warm inner glow at his presence.

  Strangely enough, the rending turmoil of emotion through which she had passed during 60 long minutes had fused her desire for him with the quick white heat of an electric retort. The tragedy of Paul’s death suddenly became shadowy. Her affection for her brother had been strong, but never tearing as she was torn with the thought that circumstances might take Chick away. She was ready to lie for him, perjure herself in every court—despite the stories of all those about her.

  Stark and terrible, the moment kept coming back to her when the lights came up in the restaurant downstairs. Again and again she shut out the flash of Chick bending over Amy Arden, taking his hand away, bloody and stained, from the protruding hilt of the slim deadly knife.

  She felt that she was partly to blame and mentally reiterated accusing questions. Why didn’t I watch him every minute after he left our table? Why did I switch my glance to Duncan Maclain and the dog beside him? I know Chick didn’t kill her! He had no reason to kill her! Must I go through life tortured with the thought that I saw him plunge a dagger into a helpless girl?

  She dammed the futile, unanswerable stream as she approached him and forced a smile. “What news, Chick?”

  “Maclain’s on our side.”

  “Oh, I’m glad.” She started to take his arm, but Lieutenant Healy interfered.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Zarinka. Orders. I can’t allow Mr. Hartshorn to talk to anyone yet.”

  “Where are you taking him?”

  “Just downstairs,” Healy said sympathetically. “He’ll be here some time yet. You can see him later.”

  A uniformed man at the door moved to let them pass.

  “They want to talk to Miss Kellogg,” Healy said. “Send her in.”

  A slender, immaculately gowned woman in her late 20’s rose at the sound of her name. The man beside her, sandy-haired and worried-looking, stood up, too.

  “Are you Miss Kellogg?” the officer asked, looking at the man.

  “I’m Mr. Bender—Louis Bender. I’m an attorney, and Miss Kellogg’s here with me.”

  “Well, you’ll have to get along without her for a while,” the officer told him meaningly. “She’s going inside by herself.”

  Mr. Bender started to protest about legal rights but subsided back into his seat when the girl said, “Shut up, Louie.”

  Spud watched her admiringly as she came in the room, but his admiration was not entirely unmixed with qualms. Spud knew a dangerous witness when he saw one. Miss Patricia Kellogg had all the attributes necessary to swing a jury. Dearborn saw it, too, and settled back with a satisfied smile of welcome. Miss Kellogg’s forehead showed high over wide steady eyes and was crowned with artistically coiffured reddish hair. She wore, along with her late model dress, an air of befitting importance, which Spud did not like. He had seen it in witnesses many times before—witnesses who had their stories pat and unshakable. He knew Maclain faced a gigantic task to find a rift in Miss Kellogg’s impregnable wall of self-assurance.

  The girl surveyed the occupants of the room and calmly, without invitation, took the chair which Chick had occupied a few minutes before. Dearborn, skillfully and with a minimum of questions, brought out Miss Kellogg’s story for the waiting notebooks. Spud grew gloomier at each line as the police stenographers imperturbably recorded it.

  He and the captain had faced many irritating problems together. Never before had they faced one which engendered in the optimistic Spud so much doubt. Personally he agreed with Maclain—that Hartshorn was not guilty, but he liked a run for his money. A roomful of panting witnesses, eager to prove their keenness, loomed insurmountable at first sight.

  Miss Patricia Kellogg led off the pack in full cry. Her age came out as 28; her occupation as a designer of clothes for a large department store. She had never seen Charles Hartshorn before in her life—but was ready to pick him out of a hundred men if called upon to do so. “You
see,” she said, sounding almost sprightly, “it’s hard to forget a man when you’ve watched him stab a woman in cold blood.”

  “You might repeat your story again, for Captain Maclain,” the D. A. suggested. Miss Kellogg gladly complied, although her glance at Maclain indicated a secret sorrow at his obtuseness. It was the fourth time she had gone over it, and the repetition was becoming a trifle boring—particularly when it had to be done for a man who could not see the fine play of emotions which Miss Kellogg knew must enliven her features.

  “They were seated a few tables away from me. I’d been watching them during the evening—the girl’s attractive, and looked worried.”

  Maclain raised his hand and interrupted with a smile. “I’ll have to ask you to be very specific, Miss Kellogg. I’m blind, as you know, and while Mr. Dearborn is taking notes on everything you say, I find it necessary to keep track in my own way. I hope you’ll understand.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” she said a little acidly. She was uncomfortable, with a feeling that Maclain was staring at her. Once conscious of them, the crackers annoyed her, too. She turned away from them and fixed her gaze on the inspector, who was toying with a watch fob and gazing at the ceiling.

  “I’ll try to make myself clear. Instead of referring to ‘They,’ would you mind stating names? I presume you mean Mr. Hartshorn and Miss Zarinka—but I’m not sure what you mean by ‘a few tables away.’”

  Miss Kellogg collected herself and thought.

  “Five, wasn’t it?” Davis remarked, abstractedly.

  “If Miss Kellogg needs prompting, Inspector,” Maclain exclaimed tartly, “I think we can dispense with her story entirely.”

  “Sorry!” The inspector sat up and added, “I was thinking out loud.”

  The captain’s remark had its intended effect on Miss Kellogg.

  “I don’t need prompting from anyone! Mr. Hartshorn and the young lady with him—Miss Zarinka—were seated five tables away from me on the edge of the dance floor. The girl was worried—had been worried all evening.”

  “I see you’re a keen observer. Not many people would notice the worried look of a stranger.” Maclain spoke in a congratulatory manner. He snapped one of the crackers in two and placed it back in its proper order in the line. Her annoyance at the interruption was tempered by Maclain’s word of praise for her observance.

  “My attention was probably drawn to them—Mr. Hartshorn and Miss Zarinka—because they didn’t dance. He—Mr. Hartshorn—left the table just before the ‘Dance of the Inferno’ was finished and started for where you were sitting.”

  “This way?” Maclain drew a finger between the two lines of crackers. “Surely he didn’t cut across the dance floor while the show was going on?”

  “I didn’t say that,” she flashed. “He walked down toward the other end of the dance floor and crossed there, then came up to your table on the opposite side.”

  “I see,” said Maclain, “this way,” and followed Chick’s route, as she had described it, around the crackers. “And what then? Think carefully, please.”

  Miss Kellogg hesitated, conjuring up the vivid scene once again. “He walked around the table to where the girl was sitting—”

  “Miss Arden ?”

  “Yes, Miss Arden!—to where Miss Arden was sitting—and leaned over her. I saw him reach into his pocket—”

  “Which pocket?”

  “I was about to say, his right-hand coat pocket. I saw him take something from it—then he turned his head toward where I was sitting, and before I could make a move or scream, he plunged that dagger into Miss Arden’s back. The lights came on just then, and I yelled. I saw the blood on her—and on his hand as he took it way from the hilt of the knife!” Miss Kellogg stopped talking, breathing heavily.

  “There’re plenty of others,” Dearborn said, unable to conceal his triumph entirely.

  “No doubt,” Maclain agreed. “For the moment, I’d like to separate Miss Kellogg’s acute powers of observation from her equally acute powers of divination.”

  “What do you mean?” She was suddenly keenly alert, accepting Maclain’s challenge.

  “The divination begins by you knowing Mr. Hartshorn was coming to my table when he started to walk in the opposite direction. You’re very inclined to connect cause and effect, Miss Kellogg. You wouldn’t want to swear that you knew Mr. Hartshorn was coming to my table, would you?”

  “Oh, come now, Maclain,” the D. A. put in. “Miss Kellogg’s hardly on trial.”

  “The facts are on trial, Claude. You wouldn’t like to have the grand jury bring back a No-Bill on this.”

  The D. A. grunted, and Spud grinned. “Go ahead,” said Dearborn. “Ask her any damned thing you please.”

  Davis started to speak, then refrained and resumed his occupation of ceiling gazing and fob twisting.

  “I was saying,” Maclain continued, undisturbed, “that you wouldn’t want to swear you knew where Mr. Hartshorn was going. Isn’t it possible you might have lost sight of him at the end of the room and someone else might have approached my table ?”

  “I never lost sight of him for an instant!”

  “Then the dance had finished before he reached my table?”

  “No,” she said, “it had not finished. I just told you that.”

  “That’s what you thought.” Maclain shook his head. “You never lost sight of Mr. Hartshorn’s progress from his table to mine for an instant—with twenty-two people cavorting about on the dance floor? It must have taken some footwork, Miss Kellogg, to dodge having any of them pass at any time between you and your view of Mr. Hartshorn!”

  “That’s foolishness.” Some of Miss Kellogg’s aplomb left her in the heat of anger. “I saw the man—Mr. Hartshorn—go around the room to your table. We know he was at your table, don’t we? He was seized there, with blood on his hand!”

  “What we’re trying to determine, Miss Kellogg, among other things, is how he got there. We’ve reached the point where he came around in back of my chair—another slight error on your part, if I may say so.”

  “Do I have to stand for this?” Her question was addressed to the D. A.

  “It may be good practice,” Dearborn advised. “I know a couple of lawyers who sometimes aren’t as polite as Captain Maclain.”

  “I saw him, I tell you!” The crackers began to dance before her eyes.

  “Undoubtedly you saw him, Miss Kellogg, but you didn’t see him pass in back of my chair.”

  “My word’s as good as yours,” she said, “and better! You couldn’t see him pass in back of your chair!”

  “I’m willing to leave that to the judgment of those who know me. I’m stating emphatically, Miss Kellogg, that you’re mistaken. Charles Hartshorn did not pass in back of my chair. He came around on the other side of the table, spoke to me, and was about to sit down in the vacant chair, with his back to you, when the lights came up. His story is that when they came up, he saw the handle of the knife in the girl’s back, and reached for it involuntarily—to pull it out, perhaps.”

  “I saw him take it from his pocket.”

  “You think you’re telling the truth, Miss Kellogg. Hartshorn took a cigarette case from his pocket and took out a cigarette. He had it unlighted in his mouth when he was seized. In the brief moment he held it in his hand, the dance ended and the girls trooped from the stage between you and him.

  “Whatever you may think, Miss Kellogg, your attention was diverted by those rapidly passing figures, and when the lights came up, you had a mental picture which you might have gotten from a broken reel. You saw Hartshorn’s hand in his pocket. You saw it come out. You saw his hand on the hilt of a knife in the girl’s back and saw it taken away—then, by your screams and quick talking, you printed the same picture in the minds of all those present.”

  Patricia Kellogg stood up and said defiantly, “I’m ready to swear to what I saw. It’s the truth!”

  Chapter Nineteen: SPLIT SECONDS—OF LIGHT

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sp; Duncan Maclain had an abnormal capacity for forfeiting sleep without appearing dullish on the following day. Doggedly determined not to miss a crumb of firsthand information, the inspector herded a line of frightened, irate guests through the office until the first gray of dawn. The procession left Maclain cool and physically unaffected. Spud’s collar had melted down and merged with his tie, and Dearborn was nodding drowsily when the inspector finally said incisively,

  “That’s the last of them.”

  Schnucke slept peacefully most of the night, but Dreist stirred restlessly at Spud’s feet and watched the arrival and departure of each witness with unwavering eyes.

  The rain had stopped when they left the club. They woke Cappo, who was fast asleep in Maclain’s car, to drive them home. At the sight of Sheridan Square, blank, damp, gray, its stillness broken only by a moving truck, Spud’s naturally buoyant spirits fell sharply. Stickily uncomfortable, he huddled in a corner of the car, too tired to push the warm body of Dreist off his feet.

  “Go straight up Eighth Avenue,” Maclain ordered Cappo as they started. “There’s no traffic at this time of the morning.”

  He leaned back his head, and Spud thought he was asleep until he said softly,

  “What a break!”

  “It couldn’t be worse, could it?” Spud was dripping gloom.

  “Worse ?” Maclain sat up straight, then said quickly, “I was thinking what a break it was for a murderer—to have Chick come and deliberately stick his hand in the jam pot.”

  “It looks pretty hopeless, Dunc.” Spud was silent for the space of a block. “Separately, you tripped every witness you talked to—but no matter how clever an attorney Chick gets, I’m afraid a jury won’t see it that way.”

  Maclain reached out and patted Spud on the arm. “It’s the lowest hour of the morning, Spud, or you wouldn’t feel that way. We’re up against a delightful example of mass suggestion. It’s a powerful thing. Without it, there wouldn’t be any professional magicians. Fortunately, its strength disintegrates when we break it down into its component parts!”