The Last Express

by Baynard Kendrick

  Gilbert Fox was carrying a paper-wrapped, cylindrical package. When greetings were exchanged, he tore it open and spread a heavy roll of blueprints flat on Maclain’s desk. He started to point to something, then, looking abashed, he stopped. Rena suppressed a smile, but Spud laughed openly and said, “I guess you’d better let me look at those, Mr. Fox.”

  Maclain placed one hand on top of the blueprints. “If you don’t mind, Spud, I asked Mr. Fox to bring these to me. I’d like to have them left on my desk while we’re discussing things. I’m afraid these are rather too cryptic for the layman to understand, anyhow. You see, I find myself in the peculiar situation of knowing, and yet not knowing, a hiding place. I may be able to get the answer, or part of it, from these plans—where even trained engineers like Mr. Hewitt and Mr. Fox have failed. Rena, before we get into this too deeply I think all of us could do with a highball.”

  Rena slid back a panel in the corner of the room, disclosing a buffet bar, took ice from the small electric refrigerator within, and began to prepare the drinks. The captain’s hands moved in a soft caress over the surface of the top plan. Hewitt, watching uncomprehendingly, remarked, “The first batch is of the Independent Subway.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Maclain abstractedly.

  “But—” Hewitt began.

  The incredulity of the single word distracted the captain for a moment and brought a smile to his face. “The seal of the engineers, and the date, is stamped in the corner, Mr. Hewitt. Not only do I read Braille with my fingers, but I’m fairly good at ordinary letters when they’re raised. Honestly—I’m not trying to show off. Sometimes I just forget—you see I know the names of the engineers who designed the subway and the date it was built. Is it strange that I know to which subway the plans belong?”

  “Yes,” said Hewitt decisively, “it’s still strange to me, but I’ll certainly hand it to you.”

  When the drinks were served around, Maclain raised his glass and said, “I’m going to drink to our success tonight.” He took a couple of swallows and set it down. “We’re engaged in one of the most unusual quests I ever heard of—a quest for a tunnel even more legendary than the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel in Brooklyn! It begins with Paul Zarinka’s interest in tunnels and the many months of research he spent on the subject. I’ve been drawn into an investigation which forced me to get the same amount of information in a very short time.”

  Maclain slowly leafed over the blueprints before him as he talked, sliding his fingers gently over each one, front and back. “Both of you said at luncheon today that Paul Zarinka had examined these plans, did you not?”

  “That’s right,” Fox declared. “He spent hours over the ones of ours you have there. Of course, they haven’t much to do with the subway. All those tunnels are filled with wires and cables—millions of miles of them. You may know, Captain, that there’re over sixty thousand manholes leading underground in this city. They give access for our men, the telephone company’s, the New York Steam’s, the gas company’s—and to city employees who check up on water and sewerage.”

  “Is it dangerous to go down in those?” Maclain asked him.

  “Not particularly. Of course, we use a ‘mechanical nose’ which detects any gas instantly and tells us what kind it is.”

  “The gas company has a big emergency service, too,” Hewitt added. “Their men in the green helmets attend every fire.”

  “Then one thing stands to reason,” said Maclain emphatically. “White mice were found in Paul Zarinka’s car. He had either been in—or was going in—a tunnel which he thought might contain poisonous gas. That would be one of the tunnels shown on the New York Electric plans, wouldn’t it, Mr. Fox? It certainly wouldn’t be a subway regularly used by the public.”

  “That’s correct,” said Fox. “But white mice wouldn’t do a man much good if he carried them down a manhole into a gas pocket.”

  “Maybe he lowered them down,” Spud suggested.

  “That point’s caused me plenty of thought, Spud,” the captain admitted. “I’ve tried to pick a New York street deserted enough for a man to pick off a manhole cover and stand and lower and raise a cage of white mice without being seen. There probably are such streets in New York—but the method doesn’t fit in—either with facility or with Paul Zarinka’s natural cautiousness. Point number two is that not a piece of rope or string was found in or around the wreckage of Paul Zarinka’s car nor on his person.”

  “What does that leave you?” Spud asked after a moment.

  “Again it leaves us the obvious,” said Maclain. “A door. Somewhere, in New York City, Paul Zarinka found a door which entered into a conduit. The danger of gas was in that conduit. Before he entered he opened the door a crack, placed the mice inside, then five minutes later opened the door and took them out. If they were all right, he went on in.”

  Hewitt’s voice trembled with excitement. “There’re ten thousand such doors under the street in New York, Captain Maclain. Access doors. They lead from the subways into conduits, and from conduits into passages running under the buildings—but you’ve tackled a hopeless task.”

  “Nothing’s hopeless,” Maclain said flatly.

  “This is hopeless,” Hewitt declared. “I’ll leave it to Mr. Fox. Why, the tunnels under New York have become so complicated that trained engineers have ceased long ago to attempt to use blueprints. Half the time we’re dependent on borings to find out what’s underneath the street. There’s not a living man familiar with the intricacies of the system. It’s outgrown them all.”

  “He’s right, Captain,” Fox affirmed. “There’re four levels of traffic underground at Herald Square.” He started to enumerate: “The B. M. T. Subway is right under the street. Under that are the Hudson-Manhattan tubes. Then comes the 6th Avenue Subway. And underneath there are the tunnels of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which run under the East River to Long Island. Holy Moses,” he exclaimed, struck by a sudden thought, “you don’t think Zarinka used the Sixth Avenue Subway for a hiding place!”

  Maclain sat frozen at his desk. Out of the stack before him he had picked two blueprints and was holding one in each hand. “Strangely enough, Mr. Fox,” he said, as though addressing an unseen audience with his mind entirely occupied with the text of his speech, “it’s not the newest subway in New York I’m seeking. It’s the oldest!”

  “That’s the Interborough,” Hewitt declared confidently. “It was finished in 1904 and ran from 96th Street down to South Ferry, crossing over from Times Square to Grand Central on 42d Street.” He snapped his fingers. “Now there’s a real possibility, Captain Maclain. A lot of that old track at Grand Central Station is closed up and out of use today. They run a shuttle train across, but it doesn’t go all the way. There’re a million hiding places in there—and they’re accessible, too!”

  “A million hiding places,” Maclain repeated, “but not the right one—and the I. R. T., Mr. Hewitt, is not New York’s oldest subway. It was antedated by thirty-five years. A brilliant man wrecked his life and his fortune in a futile attempt to prove that someday more than seventeen hundred million people would ride underground in a single year! That someday under the streets of New York there would be enough track to carry a train from New York to Chicago! He built the first subway in order to prove his contention that such a thing was feasible, and he ran a train in it, too—an express train, Mr. Hewitt, for the subway ran but a single block, from Murray to Warren. It ran through a brick tube eight feet in diameter under a motive power of compressed air!”

  Maclain laid the two blueprints down on top of his desk—one overlapping the other. The thick paper crinkled abnormally loud in the silent office. “Paul Zarinka found what was left of that subway—built in 1870. Has anyone ever made tracings of these plans, Mr. Fox—these plans or the conduits around City Hall Park?”

  Fox shook his head and said:

  “Never—to my knowledge. They’re a private set of my own.”

  “What about this plan—of the downto
wn B. M. T. Subway on lower Broadway?” Maclain asked Hewitt.

  “Never.” Hewitt was emphatic. “Those plans are my personal property—given to me by the Board of Transportation. They aid me in my work with the Department of Gas, Water and Electricity.”

  “But Zarinka saw them?”

  “Yes,” said Hewitt, “he did.”

  “And he traced them,” said Maclain. “You gentlemen are both engineers—you’ll find a full set of drawing equipment in Mrs. Savage’s office which adjoins this room. Tracings have been made of these two plans of approximately eight square inches in the section surrounding City Hall Park. Superimposed one on the other, I think we can find how Paul Zarinka discovered the place I’ve tried so hard to locate.” Maclain wet his lips and sadly shook his head. “He left word where it was before he died. The last thing he said.”

  “What do you mean, Dunc?” Spud asked unsteadily. “Zarinka said ‘Sea Beach Subway—the last express.’ The Sea Beach Subway runs out to Brooklyn.”

  “You two engineers will appreciate the irony,” answered Maclain. “It’s more than strange that the name of the pioneer of New York’s entire system of transportation should be so completely forgotten—but it is forgotten—yet it lives again in the subways of today! Small round signs hang by the track in the Times Square Station of the B. M. T. Millions read them every night as they pour underground at Forty-second Street on their way home to Brooklyn. The words on those little round signs sound the same as the last words of Paul Zarinka—‘Sea Beach Express’—but the meaning is not the same, although we can hardly blame Officer Galligan and the rest of us for confusing something so remote with something so near at hand. Paul Zarinka’s last words were: ‘See Beach’s subway—the last express’—the only express ever run in 1870, for one short block under Broadway. Galligan, not unnaturally, changed an ‘e’ to an ‘a’—and Paul’s precise instruction became nothing more than a subway train running to Brooklyn! You can see plainly now, Spud, what wasn’t plain to me at all—the name of the man who built New York’s first subway was Beach!”

  Chapter Thirty-One: BAITING THE TRAP

  The engineers of 1897 made a real innovation when they considered shooting the U. S. mail from one part of New York to another in underground tubes. Their system is still good. Daily over 6,000,000 letters are propelled up and down the island through 28 miles of pneumatic air tubes. Enclosed half a thousand to a batch in 28-pound metal torpedoes, they make a speed of 30 miles an hour, undisturbed by the congested traffic overhead.

  None of the engineers who designed them could have pictured in his wildest dreams the buried congestion of conveyors which have since encompassed the mail tubes. There was no picture in their minds of over 36,000 miles of electric wires, 50 miles of steam pipe, 4,200 miles of water mains, and 3,000 miles of sewers. The smartest of them could scarcely have conceived a single city with over 1,500,00 telephones requiring 10,000,000 miles of underground wire to serve them—so many miles of wire that, placed on telephone poles overhead, it would shut out a sight of the sky.

  It was into such a welter of wire, pipes, tracks and tubes that Duncan Maclain planned to go in search of Beach’s subway. It was a tribute to the confidence the man inspired in those who knew him that Gilbert Fox and Howard Hewitt agreed to go along.

  They were trained engineers, more familiar than Maclain with the hazardous complexities of his contemplated task.

  Rena, at Maclain’s request, typed the information she had gleaned from her morning’s search. Hewitt, Fox and Spud digested it carefully, reading it aloud to Maclain.

  The newspaper accounts of 1870 were lavish enough in a fractious vein. Actual data which might have proved useful in locating the remnants of Beach’s tunnel was sparse and inaccurate.

  Hewitt and Fox smiled grimly at the printed statements quoting leading engineers of Beach’s day—airing erudite opinions that New York’s streets could never be tunneled; that monstrous buildings, five stories high, would cave in immediately and crash in chaotic destruction. Only one editorial writer was sympathetic: some unknown man with keenness and vision enough to see the scope of Beach’s idea. In closing he said:

  Mr. Beach has undertaken a hopeless task—not to run trains beneath the streets of New York, which will someday be crowded beyond endurance, but to battle the undefeatable army of public ignorance—to crash his brilliant mind hopelessly against the blank, unscalable wall of suspicion and misunderstanding. To prove that someday speeding trains will run north under Broadway and Madison Avenue, and even dip beneath the waters of the Harlem River, Mr. Beach construtted his sample tube from Murray Street to Warren Street. The trial run of his train was eminently successful, but, despite its success, our great engineering minds say “No.” New York has seen its first underground express train. For Mr. Beach, who conceived it, it may be the last express. Is it the last this city will ever see? This writer says “No!”

  Hewitt, who read the editorial aloud, laid it down.

  “I’ll bet Zarinka saw that, too,” said Spud.

  “It’s quite possible,” Maclain agreed. “There’s a hopeless finality about the ‘last express’ which may have stuck in his mind, but we’ll know the truth tonight. Can any of you think of anything we’ve overlooked ?”

  “A canary,” said Fox. “They’re better than mice as gas detectors—more sensitive.”

  Spud was thoughtful.

  “I wonder why Zarinka didn’t use them instead of mice.”

  “Mice don’t sing,” said Maclain. “It might prove awkward if you were trying to conceal yourself from a policeman and a canary you were carrying with you burst into song. Send Cappo out to get one,” he told Rena. “There’s a pet shop at 74th and Broadway. Tell him not to come back here with a birdcage as big as a barrel—we want it in a small wooden one such as they use for shipping. He’d better hurry, too. They’ll be closing soon.”

  The two engineers refused Maclain’s cordial invitation to remain for dinner. Maclain was taking no more chances on failure. He had typed written instructions covering their procedure for Spud, Hewitt and Fox, and had made two additional copies for Dearborn and Springer, who were to join him downtown later in the evening.

  Hewitt and Fox had several hours of work ahead. Paul Zarinka had traced from the blueprints belonging to Howard Hewitt a short section of the B. M. T. Subway south of City Hall Park, and from the New York Electric Company’s conduit plan he had taken a similar section.

  Rena’s excerpts from the newspapers of 1912 told where diggers for the B. M. T. Subway had found a segment of Beach’s tunnel. It was a brick tube, eight feet in diameter. Gilbert Fox immediately suggested that Zarinka had found some underground passage into it from the basement of the Woolworth Building.

  The captain did not agree. It was true the 60-story Woolworth Building had many subbasements below ground, but the Woolworth Building was carefully planned. With all its intricacies known, Maclain considered it an unlikely place for exploration.

  He had set Hewitt and Fox the task of investigating and listing all the pedestrian passageways under Broadway, between Warren and Murray streets. Many of the older buildings ran down two or three stories. The passages crowded with pedestrians during the day were not closed up at night and were practically deserted.

  “If you can find some such passage,” Maclain told them, “with an access door in a secluded spot, I think we have a starting point for our search.”

  Fox and Hewitt left before six. Spud, Rena and Maclain dined in silence. The captain was much too preoccupied to talk.

  Usually lavish in his praise of Sarah Marsh’s cooking, he ate one of his favorite dishes, a delectable broiled bluefish, without comment.

  The near catastrophe in Brooklyn was too close to Rena. She found herself unable to add much buoyancy to the meal and kept stealing covert glances at the eyebrowless Maclain and her plucked-appearing husband. Nothing in her manner indicated how much out of sympathy she was with the proposed search.

&n
bsp; She knew that Dearborn had employed the captain for a specific purpose and that Maclain was bending all his energies to free the D. A. from a political trap. That failed to satisfy her.

  She could not help but feel that apprehension of the person responsible for murder and arson was more important.

  The captain’s best friend was in jail, and the brunt of freeing him rested squarely on Maclain. As much as Rena admired Davis and Archer, she realized their limitations. With a first-class case against Charles Hartshorn, the police were more than apt to sit back and rest quietly on their official heels.

  She felt Spud was chafing under the same idea, although he was far too loyal to the captain to give a hint of it. Piqued beyond endurance, she finally excused herself and left the table.

  Abstracted as he was, the brusqueness of her “Excuse me, please—I’m really not hungry,” did not pass Maclain.

  He reached out a staying hand as she rose. “You don’t think I’m doing much, do you, Rena—prowling around tunnels looking for money and papers when I should be man-hunting? Don’t let it worry you—please. If we’re successful tonight, there’ll be no more murders—and Chick will be out of jail long before Max Gold has to defend him at a trial.”

  Rena smiled, reassured in spite of herself. “You’re a trying man, Duncan,” she said. “Now and again, any woman likes to have a chance to think her own thoughts in private.”

  Evelyn Zarinka was announced shortly after half-past seven. It seemed impossible to her that less than a week had passed since her first visit to the penthouse. She had relaxed a trifle since morning, and Maclain was quick to note the change brought about by a better understanding of Chick.

  “How did you leave him?” he asked her when she was seated. “I was sorry to take the car away from you, but it’s essential for my transportation with Schnucke on the hospital list.”

  “I understand perfectly, Captain Maclain. I came up to tell you how grateful I am—really, Chick and I understand each other much better than before. I know he meant well—but his very secretiveness in trying to keep Paul’s actions from me had raised a barrier between us.”