The Last Express

by Baynard Kendrick

  There was no time to waste. He was weakening, and he knew it. With the fingers of his burned right hand locked painfully in the back of Spud’s collar, he half rose to his feet. Utterly confused as to direction, there were no commands he could give. He just clung to the brace on Schnucke’s back and said, “I’ll leave it to you, old girl—let’s get out of here.”

  It was a long, long journey. Spud’s limp form grew heavier inch by inch, but Maclain was an automaton, obsessed with the fixed idea that he must cling to dog and man. The flames were consuming the stripped-off wallpaper in the hall when Schnucke stopped at the top of the cellar stairs. Maclain tried to turn her toward the front door, but a single explorative touch of the toe and the smoke of scorching leather from his shoe told Maclain that exit was barred with a bed of white hot coals. Their one chance, remote as it was, lay in the cellar—a chance that the Fire Department would reach them before the house caved in, or that the entrance to the tunnel was more than an imaginative dream of a hold Italian.

  Maclain stopped long enough to find the pick and toss it down the cellar stairs ahead of them. Another trip up into billowing, choking smoke to get it was impossible. Under Schnucke’s guidance, the nightmarish descent was accomplished—with Spud’s heels clunking hollowly as the captain dragged him down each step behind him.

  He dropped down beside Spud, drinking in great gulps of the cooler basement air, then ran his hands over Schnucke. The smell of singed hair was so strong in his nose that he wondered how the dog had stood it. Cursing softly, he found the binding adhesive tape on Spud and tore it loose, freeing hands, feet and mouth. Much worry departed when he found Spud’s breathing regular and his heart strong. He dragged him into the rear of the basement. The roar had crescendoed overhead when Maclain found the place under the flue and started to work with the pick.

  He was convinced the tunnel was their last chance. Even if the Fire Department arrived immediately, no one could get to them through the fire-ridden house above.

  The heat had become unbearable when the pick broke through. A breath of welcome air, damp and cool, revived Maclain and set him more feverishly to work. His strokes were accurate as a machine, guided by the latent instinct of a North woodsman chopping down a tree, merely a co-ordination of muscles governed by the intangible feel of distance and space.

  The hole was a foot in diameter when Spud coughed in back of him. The captain continued his work without stopping, for a warning crackle was loud in the front basement room, and he knew the fire had broken through. Spud groaned and said weakly, “My God, who hit me?” Then added bewilderedly, “What happened, Dunc? And what are you doing now?”

  The captain knew that the light from Spud’s flashlight had found the hole. “Can you stand?” he asked.

  “I guess so.” Spud groaned again. “I feel like I’m burning from head to foot.”

  “You probably are,” said Maclain, “and we’ll be roasted completely if we don’t get out of here quickly. Can you give me a hand with this hole ?.”

  “It’s nearly big enough now,” Spud said after a moment. “Here—give me the pick—I’ll try it.”

  Maclain gratefully let go the pick and sat down, encircling his knees with his arms. “The house is blazing over our heads,” he said, “and it’s through in the front basement already, Spud. What’re the chances?”

  “We’re going through to the next house, or someplace—”

  “Not the next house,” said Maclain. “There is no next house on that side. I think it’s the entrance!”

  “I hope it’s an exit—not entrance,” said Spud. “Come on. We can make it now.”

  He went through first, but Maclain had to take off Schnucke’s harness to get her through the hole. Spud dragged Maclain through after the dog, shredding some of the captain’s clothes in the process, but neither of them cared.

  They were in a passage not over four feet square. Bent over double, they traversed it for 30 feet, to be stopped by a wall of brick. “We’re holed up like a rat.” Spud’s voice was anguished. “Wait here—I’m going back and get the pick. I stood it up right under the hole where I can reach it.” He returned in a minute and pushed Maclain and Schnucke back out of the way. Maclain heard the first powerful stroke and noted the crumpling of brick and mortar.

  “There’s just a single wall of brick there, Spud,” he exclaimed exultantly. “Go to it! I’ll put back Schnucke’s harness.”

  Under Spud’s frenzied strokes they were through in ten minutes, standing stunned and awed under a cavernous semicircle of brick. It was so dark that the beam of Spud’s light seemed feeble as he played it over the ancient arched walls. From overhead came a thunder and rumble, and the wail of powerful sirens dying away. “This is it, all right, Dunc. We’ve done a marvelous piece of work! We’re half burned to death—and Schnucke looks like a Christmas boar’s head—or a hairless Spitz. We’re in the darkest hole I ever saw in my life—and I’ve a brain tumor on the top of my head—with no idea in the world how we’re going to get out of here. Personally, I think it’s just ducky!”

  “Listen,” said Maclain fervently, “I was conscious in there—and you weren’t! Personally, I’d offer up hosannas and praise if we crawled out into a nice cool sewer!”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: THE MISSING PIECE

  For four hours a score of sweating, cursing firemen battled the stubborn blaze which threatened to turn into a three-alarm fire. Spud and Maclain could hear the rumbling overhead as additional mammoth apparatus rolled to the scene. Both of them knew the hopelessness of attempting to make themselves heard. Their first search proved beyond a shadow of a doubt how successfully they were entombed. The arched tunnel, still in a remarkable state of preservation, offered neither handhold nor foothold on the unbroken surface of its smooth walls.

  To forget the smart of their burns, and with the faint idea in mind that another secret entrance might reveal itself, they started a systematic scrutiny. Walking slowly, Spud swept his flashlight over ground and walls. At every spot where an irregular contour hinted at a hiding place, Maclain tested with the pick, relying on his keen sense of hearing. They gave it up after a while and sat down to wait for morning.

  Nursing his burns, Spud said disgustedly, “Not a sign. I don’t think Zarinka was ever in here in his life.—and I don’t believe anyone’s been in here since Gilbert Fox investigated it in 1916!”

  “If anyone has,” Maclain agreed sourly, “they took away the old wood-burning engine. At least I’d hoped to run my hands over that before we were through.”

  “They took the track along, too, Dunc, and ate all the mushrooms.”

  “Maybe it was the rats,” Maclain offered.

  “Or the mice.”

  “Don’t mention mice to me, Spud. I feel badly enough now—without bringing them up.”

  Two more hours passed before someone hallooed to them through the breach they had made in the wall.

  Cappo, alarmed at their prolonged absence from the car, had phoned Rena. She told him what she knew of their destination. He hurried to the scene, and ternor-stricken, had reported to the battalion chief the presence of the two men in the burning house.

  The house was gutted out before the chief risked sending men in to search it; then he removed his white helmet and shook his grizzled head despairingly at the mute question in Cappo’s eyes. “You’ve been watching it yourself, big boy. What chance do you think there is of their finding anybody alive in that?” He indicated the steaming, blackened wreck, still being deluged with water from three lines of hose.

  No one was more surprised than the chief when the two men he had sent to search emerged from the smoking heap followed by two stokerlike figures and a horribly dirty mass of singed hair, which the chief finally recognized as a dog.

  A waiting ambulance rushed the trio to the nearest hospital, where a night surgeon dressed their burns and pronounced them fit to go home if they wished. Spud declared afterward that Schnucke received much more attention than
he or Maclain. She was seized upon immediately by a couple of enthusiastic internes, who decorated her tail with soothing bandages.

  Disdainful of wounds, she stuck to her job, proudly wagging her bandaged appendage as she led Maclain to where Cappo had parked the car outside.

  The following morning the captain canceled his appointment with Max Gold. It was most necessary that he talk with Chick in the Tombs, but, seized with a terrible reaction, he felt unequal to the task. Schnucke, too, was entitled to a chance for rest and recuperation.

  Clad in a suit of thin silk pajamas and a lounging robe, he shut himself up in the office after breakfast, denying admittance to everyone, including Rena and Spud. The pain of his burns was comparatively slight, but he was seized with a black mood of discouragement and despair such as he had not known since the coming of Schnucke.

  He lay down on the divan, touched the button of the Capehart, and flooded the room with music. Impatiently he shut it off in the middle of a piece, covered his face with his hands and pressed hard on his sightless eyes. He was a fool, a bungler—a blind man running through darkness, trying to compete with better men. Filled with overconfidence at his own sagacity, he had plunged recklessly ahead to follow out a wild, fantastic idea—an idea unbacked by the most elementary thinking! What right had a blind man to pit himself against life ? What right had he to say, I’m better, and I know more than those who can see?

  His ego must be vast indeed to take upon himself tasks found hopeless by such men as Davis and Archer. Trained in a school of criminal combat, and backed by the efficiency of the greatest police department in the world, they would never have led Spud into danger for nothing.

  Never again would he let the lure of excitement put a knife into the thigh of Spud Savage—and a sharper knife into the heart of Spud Savage’s wife.

  Bitter anger thrust out its claws, scratching deeply as he thought of the wedged door he had faced the previous night. He had a job to complete, and then he was finished.

  He sprang to his feet and walked to his place behind the desk, clapping his hands sharply against his forehead. Everything had an answer. Somewhere, in a welter of murder, politics, and cross-purposes, a shadowy figure was dominating the scene—sending people to their death—mocking at his blindness. “Blindness of the mind,” said Duncan Maclain aloud. “Blindness of my mind.”

  He dumped the jigsaw puzzle on the desk before him and spread the pieces flat with an emphatic movement of his hands—so hard that he hurt the burned palm.

  One by one he picked them up, feeling, sorting and turning over—piecing together events. Each piece of wood became a thought. As he felt the place where it belonged, he held it in the other hand until the thought grew clear. When he knew the answer was right, he laid it down and patted it into place.

  Where did Chick fit in? Obvious. An honorable man caught in a maelstrom—covering up the brother of the girl he loved by filling up the ugly gap left in her estate.

  What place for Hewitt? A perfect place. A jealous man—but not a killer. A killer would have murdered the neurotic nymphomaniac he had interviewed the day before!

  Gilbert Fox? An engineer, but a dreamer. Handsome—but a philanderer only as dreamers philander. There was no material for murder there.

  Trilby and Shane? Two pieces of the puzzle fitted together to make one. The one piece followed such an irregular pattern it shouldn’t be difficult to place. Blackmailers. The scum of the private detectives, with one god—money.

  Then why did Hewitt hire them?

  Maclain reached for the phone, called the the Department of Gas, Water and Electricity, and asked for Hewitt. Brushing aside the engineer’s proffered sympathy and congratulations, Maclain asked quickly, “Why did you hire Trilby and Shane?”

  “They were recommended to me by the headwaiter at Benny Hoefle’s club.”

  “Why?” persisted Maclain.

  “Because I’d made inquiries from him”—Hewitt’s voice reflected sadness and despair—“about my wife.”

  After he hung up, Maclain twisted the joined pieces of wood around, then laid them to one side. A firm like Trilby and Shane stopped at nothing—for a price—and the headwaiter at the Hi-de-Ho had recommended them to Hewitt. That meant that Hoefle knew them well.

  It was part of their business to get things on crooks—things that could be used—but the puzzle had a flaw, a weakness—the weakness of Trilby and Shane: they were yellow.

  “Yellow,” Maclain whispered and fitted the two pieces into place. “Yellow men hire thugs to beat up defenseless men—and sometimes defenseless men, like Tom Delancey, die.”

  He reached for the phone again to get Inspector Davis. When the conversation was ended, he leaned back and sighed. Davis told him two things. The first concerned Chick’s account with Ludlows’. The second was about Amy Arden. She had gone to work for Hoefle six weeks after Tom Delancey’s death. Amy Arden had been Tom Delancey’s mistress.

  Another piece was in place, touching on every side—touching with Benny Hoefle to get revenge; touching with Paul Zarinka, who could give it to her; touching with Howard Hewitt, because through fear she’d been forced to lie—when her death was already on the cards.

  The center of the puzzle was complete but for a single piece—one which always annoyed Maclain. It defied him, because it lacked distinguishing angles. Its very smoothness to the touch made it similar to many others. Whenever he felt it, mentally he said, Too perfect.

  He picked it up and held it long before his sightless eyes.

  Too perfect, he said almost aloud, but his mind was on the dying words of Paul Zarinka.

  Paul Zarinka was saying something—something so obvious—something so clear that it was hard to fit in place. Hard to fit in place like the murderous hand which three times had struck without warning. Desperately difficult to allocate, like the murderous mind which knew everything before it was done. Had Galligan understood Zarinka? Maclain’s lips formed the words he had repeated so many times: “Sea Beach Subway—the last express!”

  It was so close and so clear that all of them had missed it—missed it as they missed the obvious presence of the killer they were seeking.

  “Sea Beach Subway,” repeated Maclain and patted the piece into its proper hole.

  He knew where Paul Zarinka had hidden the evidence and the money—and knew further who had killed him for his pains.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: A SMART PAIR

  Maclain’s postponed appointment with Max Gold to interview Chick in the Tombs was for nine o’clock the following morning. Still solicitous of Schnucke’s burns, he had called a Park Avenue veterinary to attend her. The doctor advised a few days of rest.

  Maclain, forced into what he called temporary blindness through Schnucke’s incapacity, telephoned Evelyn Zarinka a request to accompany him to the Tombs.

  She arrived at the penthouse early, and Cappo drove them downtown.

  The energetic Max was already there. He pursed his lips at Maclain’s smooth appearance and swept off a $100 panama as he took Evelyn’s hand.

  “I know you’re anxious to talk with Mr. Hartshorn, Miss Zarinka, but I’m going to have to ask you to wait.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Blame it on me, Mr. Gold,” said Maclain. “I pressed her into guide duty. My dog—”

  “Yes, I heard,” Gold interrupted sympathetically. “Your chauffeur pushed everything but you and the tunnels out of the newspapers when he told that battalion chief you and Mr. Savage were inside the building. It was most unfortunate.”

  “For many reasons,” Maclain agreed. “It was an expedition I hoped to keep secret. Since it was fruitless, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

  “Shall we go?” Max Gold looked at his watch. “You can wait here if you don’t mind, Miss Zarinka. We won’t be long, and I’ll send for you.”

  “Thank you.” Evelyn took a chair and watched Max Gold lead Maclain away. Her faith in the two men was strong bu
t not quite strong enough to mitigate a touch of claustrophobia at her drab surroundings. With Chick incarcerated on a murder charge, she was numbed to inaction. Ordinarily, she would have protested vigorously against any delay in seeing the man she loved. Instead, she found herself obeying Max Gold’s slightest suggestion with the docility of a listless child. She felt he was her only hope of ever being restored to normal again.

  Guided by Max Gold’s friendly hand on his elbow, Maclain followed a stolid officer through a clanging gate to a small interview room. There he and the attorney waited ten minutes on hard chairs until Chick was admitted.

  The captain saw none of the havoc the Tombs had wrought in his friend’s appearance, but the flatness of Chick’s voice and the bitter tenor of his speech proclaimed it more vividly than sight.

  “Where’s Evelyn?” Chick asked without a greeting. More than 48 dismally dragging hours of prison had stripped him of formalities.

  “I asked her to wait outside.”

  “Why can’t I see her?” Chick became petulant. “I’ve been questioned until I’m sick—there’s nothing more I can tell.”

  “Well, then, let me talk,” said Max, dripping honey.

  “I’ve some good news for you.”

  “I’m to be released?” Chick’s eagerness stabbed at Maclain.

  “I’m afraid I can’t promise that immediately,” Max told him, “but I’ve uncovered some important facts through the police.”

  Chick’s monosyllabic “Oh” was once more dead with disinterest.

  “They’ve traced the man who leased the office in your name—the man who traded as you with Ludlow Brothers, using that address. They’ve also found a girl who worked for him up until a short time ago. The man was your fiancée’s brother!”

  “You call that good news?” Chick asked dully. “It’s a lie on the face of it. Another lie—hatched up by Dearborn and the police to make their case more secure. Why should Paul do a thing like that?”