The Last Express

by Baynard Kendrick

  Chapter Twenty-One: THE TUNNEL OF LEGENDS

  Two front-page murders in as many nights had put every available reporter on the job. Maclain knew the lobby of his apartment house would be well spotted. Not wishing to be the center of a bulb-flashing, beseeching crowd, who singly were hard enough to shake off, he ordered his taxi to 71st and West End Avenue. From there it was a small walk to the rear entrance of the apartment, where an attendant took him upstairs on a freight elevator.

  His four visitors were waiting in the reception room when he arrived. He had already had a careful description of Hewitt and Fox from Spud. Their greeting and handclasps enlightened him further on the widely different characteristics of the two men.

  Hewitt’s clasp Maclain classified as full and rounded: the unthinking, cordial grip of an intelligent man. The handclasp of Gilbert Fox unwittingly reminded the captain of a cultured, brainy woman. Its slight effeminacy was not unpleasant; rather, by some necromancy, it transferred to the recipient a touch of brilliance missing from Hewitt.

  “Are the four of you together?” Maclain asked.

  “Yes.” The D. A.’s monosyllabic reply told Maclain a story. Dearborn had stopped after it on a half breath, as if straining against the repression of a flow of words. Unquestionably, some information of great importance had developed during the morning. For a moment, Maclain wondered if he were to be called off the case. He was already formulating plans to continue on behalf of Chick and Evelyn when he preceded the four men into the office.

  From his accustomed place in back of the desk he remarked, with just the proper trace of interest,

  “I hardly expected to see you so soon again, gentlemen.”

  “I hardly expected to be here, Maclain.”

  The captain reached for a jigsaw puzzle, dumped the pieces on the desk, and isolated Dearborn’s reply as he might have picked a single piece from the heap before him. Relieved by Fate from the necessity of seeing, and the attendant intrusion of foreign elements, Maclain was able with clarity and nonconfusion to think along dual lines, follow a conversation—almost memorizing it as he went—and, even while listening and talking, work out the solution of a knotty and irrelevant problem.

  On one occasion he succinctly explained this ability to a psychiatrist friend by saying, “Why marvel at me, Doctor, when every normal person you know shuts his eyes to think clearer? If you gaze at a picture in the midst of a conversation, subconsciously you’re thinking of the picture while you’re talking. I must make my own pictures to think of subconsciously. Fortunately, I can talk at the same time.”

  “I asked Mr. Fox and Mr. Hewitt to come here with me,” Dearborn was saying. “They may be able to help us.”

  The captain sorted the pieces of wood on his desk while his face issued invitation to proceed. He was listening intently, but his mind was on sounds, separating and cataloging, probing back through millions of noises, soft and loud—trying to isolate a single one. As the four men in his office followed him in from the reception room and seated themselves, he had heard it clearly. Wraithlike as a passing glimpse of a familiar face, it was haunting him to a point of irritation. Somewhere—sometime—from the moment Evelyn Zarinka entered his office—two nights before—to the instant when he seated himself at the desk, he had heard that sound.

  Impatiently he gave up what appeared to be a hopeless task and turned his attention to Dearborn. He had searched for sounds before. Sometimes, if he put them out of mind, his quest was successful. They sprang to life like the illusive syllables of a familiar, but forgotten, proper name.

  “I was afraid, when I heard you were here,” Maclain remarked, “that you’d come to ask me to withdraw. You know how I feel about Chick.”

  “He can wait. Suppose we call it a truce.” Dearborn leaned closer to punch his points home, his gray eyes trying to fathom the reactions by Maclain’s face. “I was in a jam before, Maclain—I’m in a worse one now. Paul Zarinka sold out.”

  “To whom?” The captain pulled himself closer to the desk.

  “To Hoefle. If that leaks, I’ll have to leave town!”

  “I’m sure you can trust Mr. Hewitt and Mr. Fox—but how many others know this, Claude ?”

  “I have to trust Hewitt and Fox,” Dearborn declared savagely. “There’s only one other person knows it—a woman.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” murmured Maclain.

  “Not so unfortunate as it might be. She’s a Miss Burberry who’s been in my office for years. Luckily she’s silent as a 1920 radio! She worked late at the office night before last.”

  “With Zarinka?”

  “Yes—but she left before he did. She got out onto the street in the pouring rain and found she’d left her rubbers behind her.”

  “I see.” The captain substituted a cigarette for his puzzle. “You can trust this woman—Miss Burberry?”

  “To the limit. When she got back upstairs to get her rubbers, a man was in the office talking to Paul.”

  “She knows him?”

  “That’s the rub—she stayed in the waiting-room outside and didn’t even see him. She got frightened at his tone. He said something to Paul about $300,000. She remembers distinctly that Paul said, ‘I don’t scare easy. Don’t forget that half that nest egg is mine—and I’m the only one that knows where it is.’”

  “That’s not much evidence on which to accuse a man of selling out.”

  “She knows he sold out, Maclain. He bragged to her within the past month that he had the goods on Hoefle. She was incredulous, and he told her more—that he got them from a girl who hated Hoefle—a former mistress of Tom Delancey!”

  “She died last night,” said Maclain. “Do you still think Hartshorn’s guilty?”

  “How can I drop a case like that?” Dearborn spoke in desperation. “The papers are riding me—the governor’s riding me—the police are riding me. Let the commissioner get a whiff of this cheese and its political maggots, and he’ll turn every dick in the department loose on me to prove I sold out along with Paul.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right, Claude.” Maclain inhaled deeply. “There’s one part of Miss Burberry’s statement that sounds like hell—‘half that nest egg’s mine.’”

  “Don’t I know it?” Maclain could hear the snap of Dearborn’s teeth as they closed. “I don’t need to tell you everything in the files about Hoefle is missing! Maybe I’ve been guilty of neglect by trusting Zarinka. When it comes to bribes and malfeasance, I’ll swear before heaven, Maclain, my skirts are clean!”

  The captain sucked in his lower lip and breathed deeply. “Those mice aren’t so funny now, are they, Claude?”

  “No,” said Dearborn, “it’s pretty clear. That’s why I called on Hewitt and Fox. Zarinka planted that evidence against Hoefle—and probably most of that bribe money—somewhere underground in New York!”

  “Why New York?” The cultured voice of Gilbert Fox entered the conversation. “There’re tunnels in Brooklyn, too. One is the best I’ve ever heard of for a hide-out. Atlantic Avenue.”

  “And why Brooklyn,” asked Maclain, “with so many possibilities close to hand?.—sewers, conduits, subways, waterways, mail chutes.” He rubbed his forehead and continued, almost admiringly, “Zarinka must have had a queer mind, Claude. He picked a place that was burglarproof and fireproof. I hope it’s not searchproof.”

  “It can’t be,” Dearborn put in. “Somehow, Maclain, you’ve got to find that evidence against Hoefle—and the money, if it’s with it.”

  “Even for $300,000,” said Maclain, “I rather hate the idea of going down into muck. Literally and figuratively speaking, I’m afraid I’ll have to do just that before I’m through.” He sat for a few minutes, chin in hand, then said, “He might have gone to Brooklyn, at that”—Paul’s last words about the Sea Beach Express, which covered so much of Brooklyn, were still graphic to Maclain—“simply because no one would figure he’d go that much out of his way. I’ll take it, Claude, and I warn you now: if I succeed, it
’s going to cost you plenty.”

  “It’s worth plenty,” said Dearborn with a sigh.

  The captain’s manner underwent a change. He had fitted several pieces of the puzzle together. Brusquely he returned them to the box. He considered Dearborn’s action in bringing Fox and Hewitt to the office precipitate, to say the least. Both men were tied up with the unpredictable Gladys Hewitt whom he had left within the hour. Involved with a mercurial creature, such as she, either of the men justly could be classed as a suspect. Trapped, not able to free himself, Dearborn apparently had forgotten their involvement.

  Maclain had not. He admitted their knowledge of underground New York was valuable. He could use it, and intended to, if properly tempered with caution. A headstrong, unplanned rush into conflict with a moneyed, organized opposition such as Benny Hoefle controlled, had one ending: disaster. Furthermore, although Dearborn’s story sounded authentic, Dearborn was carbon hard and clever as original sin when fighting for a conviction. Why has he so carefully side-stepped any mention of Chick’s connection with Zarinka? Maclain asked himself. The answer was all too transparent.

  Dearborn intended to establish Chick as the partner in the tainted $300,000. Maclain’s problem was greater than merely discovering the cache of hidden evidence and money. He must break the charge of murder which had confined Charles Hartshorn to the Tombs—a double charge, for beyond question the same hand had placed the bomb in Paul Zarinka’s car and the knife in Amy Arden’s back.

  Maclain’s course was clear before him when he asked Gilbert Fox, “What makes you think Paul Zarinka might have picked the Atlantic Avenue tunnel in Brooklyn?”

  “Possibly because I’ve been in it myself.” A light laugh mingled with his admission. “Possibly because of the strange legends which surround it.”

  “Tell him what you told me, Gilbert,” Dearborn urged.

  “After all,” said Fox in his pleasant voice, “I’m an engineer. Let me give Captain Maclain the facts first. I was in the tunnel about twenty years ago—1916, to be exact. There was some talk at the time that it was dangerous and about to cave in. I found it in excellent preservation.”

  “Where’s the entrance?” Maclain asked.

  “Strangely enough, there’s none—that I know of. I had one cut through and sealed it up after I left.”

  Howard Hewitt, who along with Springer had left the conversation entirely to the other three men, found the subject veering around to something with which he was familiar. He offered his first comment. “I’ve heard there were twenty or more secret entrances to that place”—he broke his statement by lighting a particularly vicious pipe—“and that there’s an old wood-burning locomotive sealed up in it and nobody knows what else.”

  “Newspaper talk, I’m afraid, Howard,” said Fox. “I’ll admit I didn’t explore the entire thing—just enough to satisfy myself it was in good condition.”

  “You’ve never heard of secret entrances?” Hewitt persisted.

  “I’ve heard of all sorts of things about that tunnel.” Maclain knew the engineer was smiling broadly. “I hate to explode good copy, but I can only tell you what I saw while I was in it. That was nothing.”

  “And that was twenty years ago, also,” said Maclain, adding in a conversational tone, “Rena, get me the librarian of the Long Island Historical Society on Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn.”

  The room was silent, broken only by the puff of Hewitt’s pipe and the uneasy twisting of Springer’s bulk as he moved in his chair. Dearborn broke it by saying, “The captain’s secretary—Mrs. Savage—takes down everything that’s said in here. Our entire conversation can be heard through a detecto-dictograph in the adjoining room.”

  Fox laughed again, and Howard Hewitt said between puffs, “It’s all right with me. I haven’t said anything.”

  The phone on Maclain’s desk buzzed softly. He talked for two minutes, then hung up. “You hit on a splendid idea, Mr. Fox,” he declared slowly. “You heard my conversation. All the data the library has on the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel was examined six weeks ago. A man spent three hours going over it. He signed their records ‘Paul Zarinka.’”

  Chapter Twenty-Two: THE UNDERGROUND PLAN

  Maclain was relaxed on a divan usually occupied by Spud. He ruthlessly put Dearborn’s problems from his mind and settled himself for an hour of music. A touch of the remote control button by the divan started the big Capehart.

  Lost in a rich melody of Dvorák’s New World Symphony, he was scarcely conscious of Rena’s return from a pilgrimage in Brooklyn. She stuck her head in the door, saw he was resting, and went into her own office. There, from her notes, she made an Ediphone record of information secured in two hours of research.

  With her record complete, she tried the switch at her end of the detecto-dictograph. The microphone switch in Maclain’s office was open. He had followed the New World Symphony with a record of the Nutcracker Suite. Rena waited until the last strains of the music died away before she went in. “Now I’ll play one,” she told him.

  She slipped the record on the Ediphone beside his desk and made the necessary adjustments so it would be amplified through the Capehart.

  Maclain sighed regretfully and dragged himself back from the music to the sound of Rena’s voice:

  “Brooklyn had the first subway in the world. It was started in 1836. It took seven years to build and was used for 16 years by one of the first railroads in the country—the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad—which had a total length of 10 miles. The subway was closed up in 1859—77 years ago. It extended under Atlantic Avenue from Boerum Place to Emmett Street—approximately five city blocks, passing—underground—Court, Clinton, Henry and Hicks streets. At Emmett Street the tunnel ended and the train came out into an open cut, past Columbia Street and Furman Street, to the station at South Ferry. At Court Street the subway’s roof was one foot under the street. The arch within was 17 feet high and 21 feet wide. At Clinton Street the subway was 13 feet under the street. Quoting from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 23, 1911 Quote. ‘In its depths it’s practically certain that there’s one old wood-burning locomotive—and nobody knows what else. There are probably 20 secret entrances.’ Unquote. Other articles, unauthenticated, give weird tales of distillers, river pirates and various bandits who have used the tunnel as a hideout and a place to store their loot. For a time, near-by Italian residents used its dark interior as a mushroom cave. Recently the Brooklyn police received anonymous letters saying they should investigate the tunnel. An investigation was made, but it was impossible to find an entrance. The police did not go inside. The only plan available is one which was filed in the engineer’s office of the Nassau Water Department on February 21, 1868. It is a cross-section plan signed by Van Brunt Bergen. Later accurate data is not available.”

  The record stopped with a click. Maclain left the divan, went to his desk and heard it through again. He touched a button beside him, and the time signal announced 4:15. Another button brought Rena.

  “Good,” he said. “I don’t suppose you could get hold of the copy of the Van Brunt Bergen plan?”

  “There was a copy in the newspaper—I made a tracing. I also made one from the street plan. I’ll have them ready for you in a minute.”

  “Where can I reach Spud?”

  “He said he’d be at the Hi-de-Ho Club until nearly five.”

  “Get him on the phone, please—but bring the maps first.”

  She was back almost instantly with two large pieces of heavy drawing paper. With the drawing paper thumbtacked to a hard-rubber drawing board, she had made copies of the plans, using a sharp-pointed stylus. Each line left a small groove, delicately legible to Maclain’s fingers.

  Lightly following each indentation, he indelibly committed the plans to memory, interrupting himself only long enough to answer the phone and talk to Spud.

  “How are you making out?” he asked.

  “The show’s just about over. It took some time to round up all the performers�
�and some persuasion to get them here.”

  “The lockers?”

  “Archer’s having them checked.”

  “I’ve one more job,” said Maclain. “There’s a man named Di Angelo who has a grocery store on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. It’s in the two-fifties. You take the I. R. T. Subway to Borough Hall—”

  “I can buy spaghetti here in the Village,” Spud protested.

  “I want information—not spaghetti. Di Angelo was born there and has lived there all his life. Tell him I sent you, Spud. It’s important. I want every bit of information he can give you about the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. It’s been sealed up for years, but it’s still there under the street.”

  “What can he tell you?”

  “That’s for you to find out. He’s a gossip—and he knows everybody around there. The principal thing I want to know is how to get in it. If Di Angelo doesn’t know, see if he can put you in touch with someone who does.”

  “I suppose the mice have come to life again!” Spud said.

  “Yes, the mice.”

  “What about getting Archer to send one of the Italian squad?”

  “That’s out. In the first place, Di Angelo wouldn’t talk to the police. In the second place, we’re not working for the police now—we’re working for Dearborn—and Chick.”

  “You confuse me terribly—linking those two together as clients,” said Spud, “but I’ll do my best. You’re not by any chance thinking of going down in that place?”

  “I can’t,” said Maclain, “until you find us a way to get in.”

  He hung up and walked to the French doors overlooking the terrace, then flung them open and stepped out. The sheltering awning was sizzling hot over his head. Schnucke, relieved of her harness in the house, rose from her place beside the desk and followed him, coming up from behind and standing at his left.

  Dreist, whose commodious kennel bordered the wall by the doors, roused from a nap and stood up, lightly rattling the chain which tethered him to the kennel. In spite of their opposite dispositions, the two dogs got along well together. Dreist’s brief wag of the tail was more for Schnucke than Maclain. It was no part of Dreist’s training to become too friendly with any man—even with Spud and the captain, to whom he was most loyal.