Death, blood, a corpse on a mortuary slab. Violence and the aftermath of violence—a grieving widow, fatherless kids, for a cop could die too, and the law and its defiers were tragically intertwined.
The only real difference was, a cop or any reasonably normal person didn't want to die. They wanted to go on living as long as they could. It was the guilt-ridden, the guilt-tormented, who wanted to die. They didn't know it, but they did. To beat their brains out against a stone wall was one kind of temptation to them—a gun, a knife, a noose another. To hang themselves was perhaps best of all, to their distorted way of thinking. But everything that invited death through a lack of foresight, a careless misstep, a needless risk was attractive to them—including a yawning excavation between two towering office buildings on a city street, only four-fifths boarded up.
But when Ruth Porges passed the excavation on her way to work, at nine in the morning, she wasn't thinking of the guilt-ridden alone and how appealing a leap downward through a gap in the boarding might have seemed to some of them. The idea crossed her mind, curiously enough, but only for an instant and then her thoughts went off on another track.
How easy it was to put a quick end to your life if you really wanted to. You didn't even have to go to the top of a tall building and jump. You just had to be a little careless in crossing the street between the early morning traffic—any day in the week.
True, you might be horribly injured and suffer pain and it certainly wasn't the best way. But itwasa way, and a very simple one. Not that it would have appealed to her even if her morbid, half-despairing mood of several months ago had failed to depart, leaving only the ugly scar that she was determined to keep from opening again. Lathrup's tragic death had shaken and sobered her, making her realize how uncertain any kind of happiness was and that wanting to die was a very bad thing, because you never knew when it would be your turn to find happiness for a month or a year.
To keep from remembering the shocking, horrible morning in the office six days before, with the police making it harder for everyone, driving Susan to the verge of hysteria and making Lynn Prentiss bite her nails and look so pale that she expected the girl would faint at any moment and Eaton himself bristle like a porcupine and then look worried and a little frightened, as if losing his business partner and most important editorial wheel—big wheel Lathrup, who specialized in messing up the lives of people of no particular importance to her—might cut heavily into his two-hundred-thousand-a-year-income. How could he hope to replace her, unless he applied to some very high-class employment agency for some exceptionally brilliant call girl who could step right in and take over where Lathrup had left off.
To keep her mind off that kind of bitterness she looked straight down into the excavation where it wasn't boarded over and a wave of dizziness swept over her. Sixty feet wasn't a long drop, but it gave her much the same sensation as standing on the roof of a fairly tall building and staring down into the street below would have done. She had a fear of heights, but there was a fascination in it too.
She was still standing there, leaning a little forward, when she felt the chain at her neck break and saw the locket go spinning downward, a flash of gold in the bright morning sunlight. She saw it strike the torn-up earth far below and rebound and come to rest in a deep crevice a foot or two from the base of the incline.
She cursed softly under her breath, reproaching herself for letting the locket dangle on so fragile a chain and then craning her neck unthinkingly. She'd been intending to have a heavier chain put on the locket for months. It was the most fragile kind of chain, as thin as a thread almost, the links so tiny you could barely see them with the naked eye.
And the locket was valuable, an heirloom. She couldn't afford to wait until the construction gang arrived at nine-thirty or ten and work started up in the pit. If she told one of the men or even the construction boss that there was a solid gold locket just waiting to be picked up down there her chances of ever seeing it again wouldn't be too good. She might and she might not ... get it back. Honesty was an intangible in a situation like that, and the locket meant too much to her to weigh the chances pro and con.
She'd have to climb down and recover it herself. Could she? Of course she could. The incline wasn't steep enough to prevent her from descending all the way to the bottom, if she moved with care and didn't start an earthslide.
She looked up and down the street, feeling a little self-conscious about it, knowing how foolish she'd look if anyone from the office saw her. Macklin especially, with his slow, good-natured grin, which could, on occasion, convey more than a hint of mockery. The excavation was only three buildings away from the Eaton-Lathrup offices and she'd probably be seen by someone she knew before she was back on the street again. But to heck with that. She just couldn't afford to lose that locket.
It was an act of folly to even hesitate. She climbed resolutely under the rope which stretched between the break in the boarding and started downward, leaning a little backwards and being very careful not to dislodge any of the small stones embedded in the gravel.
Two minutes later she was at the base of the excavation, standing in the shadow of an enormous crane which looked not unlike a Martian monster on stilts—a WellsianWar-of-the-Worldskind of Martian. But nothing like a war of the worlds was taking place about her and the only really ominous thing about the pit was its proximity to the scene of a brutal slaying.
In the depth of the excavation the sunlight seemed deeper and redder than it should have been, the shadows so thickly clustering that they seemed to be conspiring together to cast a pall upon her spirits. But she refused to allow the dismalness of the pit to upset her. Any deep, hewed-out hollow in the earth was dismal, with the damp smells of freshly-turned earth conjuring up a cemetery-like atmosphere.
She didn't envy the men who had to work sixty feet beneath the sidewalk all day long, in rain and slush on bad days and always with the deafening clatter of steam-shovels and riveting machines to add to their woes.
She found the locket without difficulty, because she had a quick eye for tracing the course of small glittering objects falling from a height and the crevice into which it had fallen was a yard long and it stood out.
She picked it up, examined the chain and shook her head in chagrin. One of the tiny links had simply parted and now the chain was in two parts and she would throw it away and get a heavier one this time for sure—no further putting it off. She snapped open the locket, looked at the picture of her father and a twinge of guilt shivered through her. She'd replaced her father's picture with a photograph of Roger, and had carried Roger around her neck like an evil talisman for almost a year. She was cured of that now and she hoped her father would forgive her, if a man dead twenty years could forgive, for what she had done. All of it—not just the disloyalty to his memory she'd committed by giving Roger a preferred place close to her heart.
Her father had been old-fashioned enough to think any kind of an affair a degradation, the equivalent of harlotry undisguised, a living in sin which he could not have forgiven. He'd been a kindly, charitable man, but not without a terrible, inward struggle which would have seared his soul. "That a daughter of mine—"
She glanced at her wrist-watch, and saw that she was still quite early—barely twenty minutes to nine. If she ascended to the street again quickly none of the Eaton-Lathrup office staff would be likely to see her emerging from the excavation, breathless and with a complete lack of dignity, her skirt swirling up above her knees.
She opened her hand-bag, dropped in the locket and snapped the bag shut, tightening her lips a little as her father's handsome, but sad-eyed, rather melancholy face flashed again before her inward vision. She was quite sure shedidn'thave a father-complex, but the thought of bringing any kind of pain to him—
Oh, damn such thoughts—damn such modern jargon silliness. You'd think people today spent nine-tenths of their lives on psychiatric couches. Perhaps they did—or that's what the head shrinkers wanted everyone to believe. She liked that word—head shrinkers. It put them in their place. A cult, that's what it was. Sweeping the country and poor old Freud himself had known poverty and heartbreak and if he could have gotten twenty dollars an hour he might have been able to smoke better cigars, at least, and taken more rides through the beautiful streets of old Vienna and have gotten in his personal life a few of the compensations genius was entitled to as a young man. How was he to know his theories would make perhaps a billion dollars for practitioners he'd never set eyes on in a far-off land?
She had turned and was just starting back up the slope when she saw the big flat stone. What is there about that kind of stone which fascinates almost everyone, which few people can resist overturning to see what lies beneath? Young school-boys do it all the time—young naturalists in search of beetles and centipedes and all kinds of damp, hueless crawling insects. And adults do it for a dozen reasons, often for the same reason, or to see if there's any grass growing underneath, in a region of barren, tumbled earth, or if it's covering a diamond necklace someone dropped weeks before—just as Ruth Porges had dropped the locket, but had given up more easily than she had done. Or just for the sheer pleasure of overturning a big flat stone, covering dampness, covering mold.
The stone was about forty feet from the base of the crane and almost directly in the path of a sturdy-looking steam shovel with a large enough scoop to lift it up and deposit it in a heap of tumbled earth into which it would sink, and be carted away and dumped elsewhere, along with the tons of earth which had already been scooped out of the pit.
As soon as the construction gang arrived and the clatter started up the stone would lose its identity, become just an impediment to be removed and buried in tons of earth and rubble. Its position on the floor of the excavation had quite possibly been changed already, shifted about a bit by the upheavals going on about it. The earth on both sides of it had a decidedly torn-up, worked over look.
Ruth Porges glanced at her wrist-watch again, hesitated for a moment and told herself that she was a complete fool to allow the stone to interest her.
Oh, well—why not? It would take her only a second or two to bend and overturn it.
When she started to lift it she discovered that it was even heavier than it looked, but she didn't let that discourage her. She tugged and the end she was gripping came completely loose and the rest of the stone began to rise also.
She toppled it with a single, vigorous heave, exposing the hard-packed earth underneath—an oblong of earth about two feet in length and twelve or fifteen inches wide.
She stared down at it, a cold chill coursing up her spine and all the blood draining from her face. The gun was half-buried in the earth, but its outlines were distinctly visible, as if it had been quite deeply buried at first, but had arisen to the surface of the earth when the ground about it had been shaken by the steam shovel, precisely as a corpse will arise to the surface of a lake when a dynamite blast has been set off in close proximity to it.
Closely packed as the earth was, it took her only a moment to work the gun free from its clinging overlay of earth and small pebbles. Her lips were shaking now and she could scarcely breathe, but she continued to dig and wrench at the weapon with her fingers until the butt was firmly in her clasp and the long black metal barrel, capped with a bulky-looking silencer, was pointing directly toward the slope.
If the killer had materialized before her at that moment at the base of the slope, ghostly and threatening, she would have screamed in terror and fired and fired again, not caring at all that deep in her mind another voice, also her own, would be screaming at her that it was only a specter and that she was completely alone.
She had seen the gun before—it had been shown to her with pride. And she had seen and talked with the killer, and even allowed the killer to compliment her on her hair-do, and drop a dime in a jukebox and say to her: "Just listen. Isn't that quite a song? Not the sort of song you'd expect to come out of a jukebox, is it?"
She had seen the gun before and she had talked to Lathrup's slayer, not once, but many times.
She knew exactly who the killer was. Knew, too, that that cunning, fiendish individual was still at large. But when you met and talked with a monster, a fiend—how could you know, if you had no warning, no reason to suspect the truth?
The police, too, would not be likely to suspect the truth, ever—unless she told them.
Unless she told them!Unless she went to them and said: "There is a remorseless slayer loose in the city and some night ... soon now perhaps, very soon ... another woman may be found slain, more horribly slain this time, her throat slashed from ear to ear." It may have been only a solitary crime, brought about by uncontrollable rage. But how can you know, how can you be sure ... when I myself suspected nothing and we were such close, good friends?
There is nothing ordinary about a killer, nothing predictable ... even a killer with completely innocent eyes, who can smile and order a cocktail and say: "Heads I pay. Tails we go Dutch."
A little whimsical fun, on the part of a dangerous killer. You enter one door and you meet a charming individual, light-hearted, brimming over with a friendly interest in you, your problems, your daily concerns. You enter another door and you meet the same individual, but only for a moment. There's suddenly a tiger close to you, with an odor of death everywhere and long, quivering flanks move in and out, in and out, and, low-crouching, you see death creeping toward you with bared fangs.
It seemed to her that her heart had become encased in ice—in a solid block of ice—and was no longer beating.
Should she go to the police? Dared she tell, did ... did she really want to send Lathrup's slayer to the electric chair?
Supposing it had been a solitary crime, brought on by a wrong so terrible and cruel and heartless that the killer hadn't been a tiger at all? Was there not a killer in everyone, if the provocation was great enough, if all the civilized layers of the human mind were to be stripped away by the inhuman conduct of someone who was bent on destroying you, with no mercy shown, no slightest trace of compassion, no yielding at any point?
There, but for the grace of God, go I.
Had she not herself been one of Lathrup's victims? Had she not once had an almost uncontrollable desire to make Lathrup suffer as she had suffered, to pay in full measure for the crime which Lathrup had committed in cold blood, with nothing really to gain, for she hadn't wanted Roger to go to bed with her for more than a week or two, if she could have endured him as a lover for even that short length of time. Hadn't she taken Roger away from her, stolen his love just to indulge a cruel whim, just because she happened to be a little bored at the time, and also had a streak of sadism in her nature which made her enjoy inflicting so cruel an injustice upon a woman she had no real reason to dislike?
Hadn't that injustice made her want to die, and aroused in her so furious a resentment that she had pictured herself fastening her fingers in Lathrup's throat and forcing her backwards across the desk and pressing and pressing until Lathrup ceased to draw breath?
She wouldn't have done it, of course. But did she really want to send one of Lathrup's other victims to the electric chair, simply because he was a little more primitive than she could ever be and had become, for a moment, a kind of madman, driven to desperation by a wrong which, for all she knew to the contrary, might have been much greater than the one which Lathrup had inflicted on her?
She suddenly remembered that there was a term for that in law which two or three states recognized as a justifiable legal defense in a first-degree murder case. An irresistible impulse. A man might know the difference between right and wrong and hence be legally sane and yet be compulsively driven to kill.
It was horrible, yes. She'd always go in fear of such a man and you couldn't think of him as entirely normal and he wouldn't deserve to get off scot-free. You could be modern and enlightened and humane and fight for a more civilized legal code, but there had to be a streak of hard cruelty in all killers which set them apart from men and women who merely killed in their thoughts. Or if you wanted to think of it in another way, their ability to go all the way—irresistible impulse or not—was a very terrible thing; it did make them wild beasts in a sense, more tigerlike that the overwhelming majority of mankind.
Her hands shook so she had difficulty opening her hand-bag again and putting the gun into it. But she was breathing a little more easily now, and there was a less frightened look in her eyes. The killer wouldn't know she'd found the gun, and she certainly had no intention of confronting him with it. She'd hide it somewhere or get rid of it—perhaps go right over to the East River at noon and very cautiously throw it in. Unless—she did decide to ... to go to the police. Had she any right to take so much for granted—that he wasn't a human monster who might not kill again?
If she got rid of the gun she'd be committing a very serious crime. She could be sent to prison for a long term of years. An accessory to murder after the event was what concealing that kind of evidence would make her.
She wasn't a criminal. She knew deep in her heart that she wasn't. But the law took a very dim view of that kind of personal interpretation of what was or wasn't a criminal act.
She'd have to decide. She'd have all morning to decide, to think about it. She'd put the hand-bag in her desk and pretend that nothing had happened to upset her, that it was a perfectly normal morning as far as she was concerned, if a morning six days after a murder could be thought of as normal. Eaton would come into her office, smiling a little, still worrying about the problem of replacing Lathrup, and putting twice the usual amount of responsibility on her shoulders, and on the shoulders of Lynn Prentiss and Macklin and Ellers—who would probably be too tight to give a damn. With Lathrup gone he probably wouldn't be fired, although he deserved to be, with his inability to remain sober two days in a row. The whole staff had been under quite a strain.
It helped her to swear inwardly, to be as cynical and hard-boiled as she could in a moment of torment and uncertainty such as this. Her father's face in the locket flashed once more across her mind and she thought: "Poor dad! Poor gentle, kind, moralistic, unworldly dad, who never quite knew what it was all about and whom I loved so very much. Do you know what your darling daughter has become? She has not only slept with a man out of wedlock, she's about to become an accessory to murder after the event. Or she may decide not to. It would make her much more of a hypocrite and less honorable and decent, actually, because she wanted to kill Lathrup herself. But maybe you'd prefer her to stay on the right side of the law."
Climbing up out of the excavation took her less than three minutes but she was conscious every moment of the bulge which the big pistol made in her hand-bag—it was a miracle she'd been able to fit it in—and she hoped no one would notice how lopsided and distended the bag looked when she arrived at street level.
It was only when she reached the pavement above the pit again that she realized that the worst possible calamity had taken place. Not one member of the office staff but three saw her climb out of the excavation, for it was now five minutes to nine and a rush to reach the office on time was in progress.
Lynn Prentiss passed and stopped to stare, raising her eyebrows slightly and then continuing on, as if she did not wish to embarrass a fellow editor in any way. But there had been more than a glimmer of bewilderment in her eyes, as if she found it difficult to picture Ruth Porges scrambling out of an excavation in such haste and in so undignified a manner. What could have prompted her to climb down in the first place? A rendezvous with the foreman of the construction gang? Unthinkable ... if you knew what kind of a girl Ruth Porges was—
Then Tommy Anders, the oldest of the two office boys passed, turning what was probably the sports pages of a morning newspaper, and probably not even seeing her, although he was looking straight in her direction. Then Susan, who had the courtesy not to stare at all, but must have been as startled as Lynn, and just as bewildered.
All she had to do was stand very still with the bag in plain view and everyone who hadn't reached the office a little earlier would know that she'd been behaving in a very strange manner, because there was dust all over her skirt and she was still breathless from her exertions. A half-dozen more Eaton-Lathrup employees would see her and perhaps even Eaton himself. And they'd be sure to notice the bulge in her hand-bag. The awful thought flashed across her mind that the very outlines of the gun might be visible.
And of course it would be all over the office in another half hour, and—hewould know. That was the really terrible, frightening thing. Even if he didn't pass and see her, along with the others, he'd be sure to know. At least twenty people would know and he'd be among them. Lathrup's slayer, shaken as he'd failed to be by all the police questioning, although she remembered—now that she thought about it and knew the truth about him—he had paled visibly once and almost betrayed himself. He'd said the wrong thing and had been forced to cover up quickly.
The man who had entered Lathrup's office six days before and shot her dead would know that a girl he couldn't possibly have imagined he'd have any reason to fear had gone down into the excavation where he'd hidden the murder weapon and had found it, and he'd remember that he had once showed it to her, and if she went to the police with it—
Or was she taking too much for granted again, letting her fear completely distort her thinking? He'd have no way of knowing she'd climbed all the way down to the bottom of the excavation. He wasn't stupid, he'd consider the possibility that she'd simply dropped something—as she had—and climbed down a few feet to recover it. A book perhaps, or her lipstick. He might not even give the matter a second thought, even though he knew where he'd hidden the gun, and how dangerous it would be if someone stumbled on it ahead of the steam shovel.
It was all very strange anyway. Why hadn't he gotten rid of the gun in a simpler, safer way—simply tossed it into the river, as she had thought of doing? Or driven out into the country somewhere and tossed it into a lake or buried it? It wasn't as easy to get rid of small objects of a dangerous nature as some people thought—even small phials of poison had a way of turning up again and sending murderers to the gallows. She'd read about such cases often enough. But still—
She suddenly thought she knew why he'd hidden the gun under a stone in the excavation, probably taking care to see that it was buried first pretty deeply. The gun had probably been down there since the day of the murder. He'd had to get rid of it quickly, had to make sure the police wouldn't find it anywhere about the office and trace it to him fast. And as the excavation was only a short distance from the office his hiding it there made sense, was logical enough. He'd probably climbed down during a lull in the construction work, when the pit was deserted, and gambled on the steam shovel scooping the gun up and carrying it off within a fairly short time. Possibly it hadn't even occurred to him it would still be there after six days. Quite possibly it had almost gone into the shovel. Been lifted up, tossed about and reburied. A steam shovel functioned erratically at times and the tumbled, heaved-up look of the earth all around the stone made that guess—of course it was only a guess—seem quite plausible to her.
It had probably continued to worry him, kept him anxious, robbed him of sleep—if a man with blood on his hands could ever not be robbed at times of sleep. But even a nightmare kind of anxiety was better than immediate apprehension by the police. If he'd climbed down into the excavation again later, to make sure that the gunhadgone into the scoop and been caught with the weapon in his hands or even just searching for a weapon that had vanished he'd be taking the same kind of risk a murderer with a psychopathic streak does when he returns to the scene of his crime in the grip of a morbid compulsion.
She'd just taken, all unwittingly, the same kind of risk herself but she was quite sure the police wouldn't suspect her, and if they did she'd have no trouble in clearing herself. Only the killer would suspect her—of knowing precisely who he was.
She felt suddenly that she'd been wrong about his not suspecting she'd gone all the way to the bottom. He'd be sure to suspect a little, when it went flying about the office that she'd been seen emerging from the pit. He'd hardly dismiss it with a shrug, even though he'd have no way of knowing for sure she'd succumbed to an irresistible impulse ... to overturn a big, flat stone.
She came to a sudden, perhaps not completely wise decision. She wouldn't go to the office at all this morning. She'd go straight back home and decide what to do about the gun in the privacy of her own apartment.
Let Eaton think what he wished, let all the others gossip about her. Compared to what she'd just discovered it had about as much importance as a microscopic hair on the leg of a gnat. She could plead illness, a sudden attack of migraine. It was a good enough excuse.
Better to return home at once with the gun and come to as completely wise a decision as she was capable of. If she decided to go to the police, there was nothing to be lost by waiting until noon.
It was strange, it never ceased to amaze Ruth Porges, how much familiar surroundings, a chair you sat in daily, a painting on the wall that had become as well-known to you as the face and even the shared thoughts of an old friend, a potted palm you'd watch grow and watered dutifully for years—just how much such objects helped you to think clearly when you were in a tormented frame of mind.
She'd made her decision now and she felt no remorse, no sense of guilt at all. She was probably a very unusual person in some respects, but she had long since ceased to reproach herself because she felt compelled at times to behave in an unusual way.
She'd hid the gun where she didn't think it would be found easily, if the police should suspect anything—they still kept dropping in at the office—and called unexpectedly within the next few hours to question her about her descent into the excavation and her sudden decision to take the day off. As soon as it became dark she'd take a taxi to the East River on the upper East Side, get out a few blocks from the esplanade that overlooked the most turbulent part of the river, walk calmly through the beautiful park that ended in an ascending terrace, and make sure that all of the nearby benches were unoccupied. Then she'd move quickly to the iron railing and toss the gun as far out into the river as she could.
Did they ever drag the East River for a murder weapon? Could they, with any real hope of finding it? She didn't know for sure, but she rather suspected they couldn't.
And how would anyone ever know, or even remotely suspect, where she'd tossed the gun? They'd have to drag the Hudson also and the bay all the way to Staten Island, because you could drop a gun from a ferry too.
She knew she couldn't morally justify what she was planning to do. It would have been useless to try. But if she had hated Lathrup herself enough to want to kill her, she couldn't see herself in the role of a hypocritical betrayer, sending to his death a man who had lost control completely and gone all the way. If the police had stumbled on the gun themselves, without her help, it would have been quite different. But having opened a Pandora's box, the horror that had come out had to be destroyed. It was her responsibility—hers alone. That the box had been a big flat stone that she had overturned impulsively, with no knowledge of what lay concealed underneath, changed nothing. The same woman's curiosity which had betrayed Pandora had been at work in her. It was the most destructive kind of curiosity in the world, but she had succumbed to it and must pay the price, even if it would mean that she would have to wear a gray prison uniform for four or five years.
Probably the killer should be caught and compelled to defend himself before the law, bolstering his defense with whatever justification he could offer. But she couldn't—she refused pointblank—to become the instrument of his destruction. It was a twisted way of thinking, perhaps, but it was her way and she would have to act upon it.
She had gone into the kitchen and was percolating some coffee when the doorbell rang. It didn't alarm her particularly or even bring the image of a policeman with one finger firmly pressed to the bell into her mind.
The doorbell usually rang eight or ten times a day when she was at home. Tradesmen mostly, with groceries she'd ordered by telephone the day before or a special delivery letter from the office with proofs that required a quick checking-over, or just a neighborly visit from the over-talkative girl who lived in the apartment across the hall. Sally Draper could be an awful pest at times—
Then she remembered that no one would expect her to be home on a week-day morning and did become a trifle uneasy. But salesmen and peddlers were always calling, weren't they, defiantly ignoring the big warning sign posted in the hall?
She turned off the gas under the percolator, removed the slightly soiled apron she'd put on to protect the severe, freshly-laundered office dress she'd been too emotionally upset to take off on arriving home and went to answer the bell, crossing the living room with a slight quickening of her pulse.
She paused for the barest instant with her hand on the knob of the front door, trying quickly to decide just what she had better say if it actually was a policeman.
Then she opened the door wide.
Her first impulse, prompted by sheer terror, was to close it again instantly, slam it in his face with all her strength. But he just stood there, staring at her so quietly, with not the slightest trace of hostility in his eyes, that she forced herself to remain calm. And when his expression changed, and his eyes narrowed to gleaming slits and his jaw hardened, he was too quick for her.
He brushed past her into the apartment and swung about to face her, nodding toward the door.
"Better put the chain on," he said. "I imagine the super has a key, and this is one time when we can't afford to chance any kind of interruption."
There was something about the way he was looking at her that compelled instant compliance. She closed the door, clicked the lock on, and inserted the head of the chain into the metal groove on the right side of the door. Her fingers shook as she ran it the full length of the groove.
He was staring at her very steadily now, his eyes still slitted. "You found it, didn't you?" he asked.
"Found what? I just don't understand. I didn't go to the office this morning because—"
"Because you found it," he said, not giving her time to finish, and taking a slow step toward her.
"No, you must listen. Please ... I...."
"Where is it? What have you done with it?" he demanded.
She shook her head, her lips deathly pale now. She was trembling so violently that it was like ... a confession. How could she hope to deceive him when he already knew, when the truth was written in her eyes?
"I showed it to you once," he said. "That's the bad part ... the really bad part. Just one word from you could send me to the chair. You wouldn't even have to turn it over to the police."
He took another slow step toward her and quite suddenly ... she knew. He'd come here to kill her. Even if she told him where the gun was hidden, even if she put it into his hands and swore that she'd keep silent, that not even police brutality could force the truth out of her, he'd never feel secure while she remained alive.
He'd never trust her completely ... because he didn't know herthatwell. She'd never really been close to him. Oh, if only she had. If only they'd been lovers, and she'd gone to bed with him ... anything. The thought revolted her even now, but it was better than dying ... and now she was going to die.
He wasn't the kind of man who propositioned every pretty woman he met. She would have had to let him know unmistakably that she was ... that kind. He'd respected her too much to make even a pass the few times she'd gone out with him. There had been something terribly decent about him ... and she'd admired him for it, respected him in return.
But it would have been better, far better, if she'd let him think her a whore. A killer could trust a slum prostitute because that kind of woman was herself an enemy of the law. Or felt put upon, an outcast, just as he himself had now become, because when he'd killed Lathrup he'd put himself beyond the pale.
She'd never been close to him, that was the trouble. He didn't know that there was a fierce kind of loyalty in her that would never have permitted her to turn informer, because she herself had been a criminal in her thoughts and had wanted Lathrup to die.
He could never have thought her a street-walking strumpet, but if she had slept with him he'd have known just what kind of woman she was, how fierce and determined her loyalty could be. Now it was too late ... much too late ... and she was going to die.
It seemed unjust, horribly cruel and unnecessary. But how could she make him see that?
"You've hidden it somewhere about this apartment," he said. "I'm sure of that. You'd better tell me—fast."
She shook her head, a faint glimmer of hope arising in her. If she refused to tell him where she'd concealed the gun he might not kill her until he knew. He'd have to know, have to find it. Or would he? If she was dead, unable to testify against him, the gun might have been so well-hidden it would never turn up again. He might even jump to the conclusion she'd gotten rid of it already or take a chance on that and—
No, no,no! Now she was thinking crazily. Getting rid of the gun would mean she was capable of sympathizing with what he'd done, understanding it—would mean that she was onhisside. And that was the very thing something deep in her nature, her every reasoning instinct, told her he'd never believe. The closeness again. She could plead with him until she was hoarse, but he'd never believe that. He'd kill her anyway. Kill her first perhaps and search the apartment for the gun afterwards....
And that seemed to be what he had made up his mind to do. He was losing patience with her; she could see that plainly enough and the tight knot of fear which was constricting her heart began to tighten even more, and she swayed a little and had to bite down hard on her tongue to keep from screaming.
It wasn't just that he was losing patience with her. There was a heightened tenseness in him, a kind of muscular rigidity that was making his neckcords bulge, his shoulders stiffen. She could sense it, feel it—that dangerous tension mounting in him.
He might want to search for the gun first, but there were times when the human mind went out of control, lost all of its capacity to reason intelligently.
His face was twisting terribly. She tried not to look at him, tried to avoid his eyes, and managed to do so for an instant. But she knew he was still looking at her, that his eyes were burning with a slow, merciless kind of rage simply because she had discovered the truth about him.
He was drawing closer to her suddenly. His feet made a scuffling sound as he advanced upon her and he was breathing in a strange way, hoarsely, almost raspingly.
Closer he came and closer, but still she dared not look at him. And then she did look and saw the glaze of fury in his eyes and she screamed in wild terror, knowing even as she screamed that no help could come to her.
She fought him desperately, trying to push his arms away, trying to get free of his arms that were beginning to tighten about her. It wasn't a lust-crazed lover's embrace. If only it had been there might have been some hope for her. But how could she hope to escape from the embrace of a man so goaded, the embrace of a man who thought that his own life would be forfeited if he did not silence her quickly and forever.
The harder she struggled the closer his arms came and then it wasn't his arms but his hands she had most to fear. They were reaching for her throat and there was no way she could keep them from encircling her throat and tightening cruelly, no way of avoiding the strangling grip of his strong, muscular fingers.
His thumbs sank into the soft flesh just above her wind-pipe, and began to press ... and to press....
She could only shake her head, frantically back and forth, and plead dumbly. "No. Please don't. There's no need. I'd have thrown the gun—"
When he finally arose and left her she was lying stretched out full length on the floor, her sightless eyes staring straight up at the ceiling, as if it were a great, rushing river sweeping above her and carrying with it a gun which he spent thirty-five minutes trying to find, ransacking the apartment and cursing softly from time to time, and even crying out once in savage rage and frustration.
He did not find it, and left the apartment without even stopping to look once more at the swollen, purplish face and protruding tongue of a woman who would have gone to prison to protect him.
Chapter VII
In newspaper jargonese it was what is known as "crowding." It drove copy-desk men half out of their minds and made reporters more than unusually bar-conscious. The overtime chalked up by the police department in the July heat was no more staggering than the extra hours that had to be divided up between newspapermen covering the Lathrup slaying.
Another slaying a few days after the first would have been sensational enough in itself. But two days after the lifeless body of a second Eaton-Lathrup editor had been found in that editor's own apartment, the victim of a brutal strangler, a third Eaton-Lathrup editor vanished.
Allen Gerstle, the magazine group's bespectacled, white-haired cafe society exposé editor failed to appear at his desk at his usual hour on a rainy Tuesday morning and in forty-eight hours, goaded into an extraordinary burst of check-up activity by frantic telephone calls from his wife and the implications involved in such a disappearance when the Lathrup slaying was being referred to, by a few papers at least, as the crime of the century—goaded, indeed, beyond the call of duty, the police had made certain that it really was a bona fidemissing personsdevelopment.
Gerstle hadn't simply gone off somewhere and gotten drunk. He wasn't given to that and with every policeman in the city on the lookout for him it is doubtful if he could have carried it off if he had been. A five-state alert had failed to turn up any trace of him. He had apparently disappeared into thin air, and while it wasn't quite as sensational a development as the Ruth Porges slaying, it added variety and spice to the headlines, and greatly increased the number of aspirin tablets—and in a few instances, tranquilizers—gulped down in haste by cops on double-duty and around-the-clock news commentators on all the major networks.
A "mysterious disappearance" following so close on the original slaying was just what the case needed—or didn't need, if the harassed brigade could have made their protests heard—to round out the pattern of violence.
To complicate everything, and give the Homicide Squad an additional headache and a feeling of bitter frustration, all this had taken place when they had been quite sure that the killer had been apprehended, and was safely in custody.
A young writer who had wanted to kill Helen Lathrup badly enough to have gone out and purchased a gun and visited the office on the very morning of the slaying! Now he would have to be released, in all probability. There was actually nothing to hold him on that would stand up in court, because Ballistics had confirmed that the gun he'd purchased had not been the murder weapon. He'd violated the Sullivan Law, of course—
The comments of Lieutenant of Detective Joseph Fenton on that particular aspect of the case would not have been printable.
But there was nothing unprintable about the conversation of the four men who sat now in the Eaton-Lathrup offices discussing the case. In Macklin's office, to be precise, because Macklin was the calmest, most unbiased and level-headed of the four and seemed to know just how comforting a cushion a little sensible talk could provide for pent-up or over-charged emotions.
"I still think we'll have to look for a pathological killer and will get nowhere if we write off that probability," Eaton was saying. He sat in a chair by the window, the sunlight bright on his wide bald patch, the lenses of his frameless glasses and the dial of his costly wrist-watch. He was of medium-height, medium-build and had a gray executive look—a top-echelon executive look—although he was sincerely trying to relax and fraternize.
"I think so too," Ellers said. "I've thought so from the first. I was pretty sure, when they arrested Gilmore and Lieutenant Fenton told me they'd traced the purchase of a gun to him, that they had the right man. That's doubtful now, but I agree with you about the psycho likelihood."
"It's very curious," Eaton said. "This whole pathological killer possibility ... stranger and more chilling that you might suspect. You'd understand better why I'm saying that if you'd known Helen as well as I did. There are people insurance companies shy away from or label very high risks. They're known as the 'accident prone.' It may be based on nothing but superstition, but you'd have a hard time convincing an experienced insurance-policy salesman of that.
"Some people seem to have a rare gift for making accidents happen, of drawing down the lightning upon themselves. They become seriously injured time and time again. And Helen ... well, you might almost say she invited a psychopath to kill her ... just because she dwelt on the horror of that kind of occurrence so often in her mind. The more gruesome aspects of crime fascinated her, and she liked to read about 'ripper cases' and brutal slayings in general. A lot of us do—normal, well-adjusted people in search of exciting reading in the mystery story field. But I always felt, with her, it went considerably beyond that. It was a horror which she acutely feared, a horror of the mind—"
By some kind of near-miracle the veteran ex-newspaperman wasn't even slightly tight and his voice was steady. He was standing a few feet from Eaton, leaning lightly against Macklin's desk and puffing on a light-weight briar.
"I was completely sure," Timothy Hansen said. "Every time Gilmore came to the office to talk with Miss Lathrup I felt uneasily, just looking at him. Those burning dark eyes, and that craggy, strange face of his. Brother! He sure fitted the picture most people probably had of writers—back in the Victorian Age. You'd think he'd stepped right out of the pages ofWuthering Heights."
Hansen was not quite an associate but a little more than an assistant editor. He was still quite young—twenty-seven—and had been on the staff for three years, working directly under Allen Gerstle's guidance. Macklin had always translated that as "thumb" in the preparation of the missing editor's cafe society exposure columns. Gerstle had a fiery temper and could lose it easily, but Hansen seemed to have a genuine affection for him and was taking his vanishment very much to heart.
Macklin sat behind his desk, idly running his forefinger over the space-bar of his typewriter, back and forth lightly, as if he were inwardly telling himself that if he should decide to write an account of the progress which the police had made so far, he would only need to depress the bar continuously.
"You're all making the same mistake," Macklin said. "It's one of the oldest mistakes in the world—and the most foolish. You're taking it for granted that there has to be something unusual, abnormal, different, about an imaginative young writer, or an old one, for that matter. Or a creative artist in any field. No, I'm not putting it in just the right way. There is something different about them, or they wouldn't be creative artists. But that difference doesn't reside in their sanity—or lack of it. It is my contention that creative artists are—if you wish to drag abnormality into it—almost abnormally sane."
"I'm afraid I don't get what you're driving at at all," Ellers said quickly. "I can quote you a passage in refutation of that from no less an authority than Aristotle."
He paused, smiling a little and nodding to himself, and Macklin found himself wondering if he were trying to impress Eaton with his learning, and was not otherwise interested in scoring a point in an argument which, with a little effort, might be enlarged to include alcoholics. It would be a completely false and unjustified enlargement, but Macklin hadn't said enough so far to give Ellers any inkling of that.
"Here's the quote," Ellers went on. "'No great genius was ever without some mixture of madness, nor can anything grand or superior to the voice of common mortals be spoken except by the agitated soul.'"
"How can you dispute that?" Hansen said, nodding in instant agreement. "All geniuses are a little mad. And by the same token, capable of a sudden, explosive violence when a situation gets out of hand and becomes unendurable to them."
"I couldn't disagree more violently," Macklin said.
Eaton sighed. "And I couldn't care less," he interposed. "Not right at the moment, anyway. I wish all three of you would shut up."
"I'd like to thrash it out with Fred right now," Macklin said, staring steadily at Ellers. "It angers me when someone makes a statement like that—Plato, Aristotle or whomever. It doesn't matter what towering minds they were supposed to have. They lived long before modern science could give us just a little understanding, at least, of why human beings behave as they do."
"All right," Eaton muttered resignedly. "Speak your piece and get it out of your system. Otherwise we'll have no peace...."
He smiled thinly. "Sorry. No pun intended."
"I'll try to keep it brief," Macklin said. "To me the one great, distinguishing quality of creative genius is sanity—a sanity that illuminates every aspect of human experience. I'll quoteyoua passage from Emily Dickinson: 'Pardon me my sanity in an insane world.'
"Well, that makes sense to me, that sums it up. I'll tell you why. A creative artist has superior insights into the nature of reality. Reason, completely rational behavior—common sense on a high level, if you want to put it in another way—is amustwith the creative mind, if it isn't to be crippled or completely destroyed.
"A man of creative genius wages a terrific struggle for survival every waking moment and even in his sleep. He is torn by emotions a hundred times as tumultuous as those of the average person. He has all the emotional intensity of your so-called 'mad genius', granted. But it stops there. He's simply incapable of accepting the lunacies of society at its most neurotic, its most hare-brained. In fact, he's incapable of accepting or compromising with those lunacies at any point. His basic sanity is too great."
"Just what are you trying to say, Jim?" Eaton asked.
"Simply this. He has a fifty percent chance of winning that struggle because a man of creative genius has much more than the average person's inner strength. Don't kid yourself. He has, or he'd go down fast. Few people could survive the kind of battle he wages with himself every waking hour for ten minutes at a stretch.
"Life itself, just the terrible kind of punishment that life inflicts—illnesses, misfortunes of every kind, tragic accidents, death—can hurt him much more than you or I can be hurt, simply because he has the emotional sensitivity which goes with genius.
"All right. He has at least a fighting chance of winning that struggle and contributing something important, a new insight, a new vision which will enrich human life. But what intensifies the struggle, making it so bad at times it's a wonder all creative artists don't go straight out and jump off the bridge, is the often completely irrational behavior of the people he meets.
"Don't you see? They fasten themselves on him, make impossible demands, take advantage of his sensitivity by making him a kind of target for all of their own frustrations and unrealistic adjustments to life—"
Macklin paused and spread his hands. "I could go on and on, but I think I've said enough."
"I think you have," Ellers commented, wryly. "I don't agree at all—with any part of it."
"There could be considerable truth in what Jim has said," Eaton conceded. "But I agree with Aristotle too, in a way. You might say that each opinion is a kind of half-truth. The trouble is, when you try to fit the two parts together you run into more trouble. I still say—and this really hasn't too much to do with what we've just been talking about—that the man who killed Helen Lathrup and Ruth Porges was probably mentally unbalanced. It has all the earmarks of that kind of double slaying."
"I'm not convinced of that," Macklin said. "And what makes you so sure the murderer was a man. It could have been a woman."
"I'm afraid I agree with Mr. Eaton," Hansen said.
Macklin regarded him steadily for a moment. "I don't think you do," he said.
"What's that?" Hansen's color rose a little and he returned Macklin's stare almost angrily.
"You've been agreeing with Mr. Eaton all along," he said. "And so has Fred. But I've a feeling you're really on my side."
"What makes you say that? Why should I lie about it?"
Macklin turned to Eaton. "If he tells you what he really thinks and why ... will that be all right? I mean, you won't mind his speaking frankly?"
Eaton looked puzzled. "Why should I mind?"
"Because I don't think he has too much to go on, and neither have I. If I told you what I suspect, from the few talks I had with Gerstle and things he let slip out I'd have to do an awful lot of guessing. And I think Tim's been hesitating to speak frankly for the same reason."
For the first time Macklin grinned, in his characteristic, almost boyish way. It was the kind of grin which could have charmed a bird down out of the trees, and it dispelled both Eaton's puzzlement and Hansen's anger.
"Go ahead, Tim," Eaton said. "Disagree with me as much as you want to. And if there are gaps in what you suspect, don't let it trouble you."
"There are plenty of gaps," Hansen said. "Frankly, I'm a little ashamed of myself. But I was thinking of Mr. Gerstle, of the great danger he may be in, and I felt it might be wise for me to pretend to go along with the psychopathic—Oh, heck, I seem to be making it worse!"
"Not at all," Eaton said, reassuringly. "Things get around, even when they're told to me in strict confidence. I'm not speaking sarcastically, believe me, or actually blaming myself. Only a fool would claim he can always keep every part of a confidence. A few stray bits of information often slip out subconsciously."
"Well," Hansen said, a little more at his ease. "Gerstle had dug up something pretty sensational and was going to run it, but Miss Lathrup said no. She was really putting her foot down about it."
"I see," Eaton said. "Did Gerstle show you what he was going to publish?"
Hansen shook his head. "I just know, in a general way, what kind of hydrogen bomb it was. No names, nothing specific. He wouldn't show me the signed statements he'd managed to assemble. But I do know this—it would have made that Jelke, cafe-society, party-girl scandal of ten or twelve years ago look like a pin-money racket."
"Was it wholly cafe society?" Eaton asked.
"No—it took in TV, and Hollywood. There were big producers involved."
"But it was a girls-for-sale racket, wasn't it?" Macklin asked, bluntly.
Hansen hesitated for an instant, then nodded.
"And that's all you know about it?" Eaton asked.
"That's all," Hansen said.
"Not much to go on," Eaton said. "But we'll have to tell the police about it."
"Should we, sir? That's what's been worrying me. If Mr. Gerstle is in danger, because of it, might it not be well to keep it to ourselves for a few days longer?"
Eaton shook his head. "I don't think so. When a child's been kidnapped, wise parents go straight to the police. It's the best, the safest way, in the long run. And I doubt very much if anyone is going to phone us, to say they'll release Gerstle if we promise to make him kill the story. If Gerstle is in danger—he'll need all the police help he can get."
"I agree with you there," Macklin said quietly.
Eaton got slowly to his feet. There was an utterly weary, half-despairing look in his eyes. "This is all very bad," he said. "It will do the magazines no good—although I suppose I shouldn't even be thinking of that. I haven't the least idea why Helen wanted to keep that story hushed up. She didn't tell me a thing about it and naturally Gerstle wouldn't take me into his confidence without her permission. He could have told me later—I wish to God he had—but I guess he had his own reasons for preferring to keep silent. It may cost him his life, if he isn't dead already."
Hansen paled visibly. "Sir, you don't think—"
"We just don't know," Eaton said. "You're pretty young, Tim. When you're my age, you'll give up trying to soften, or hide from yourself, just how ugly a turn life can take at times. There's nothing to be gained by it."
Chapter VIII
The next unexpected development in the Lathrup case took place in broad daylight, at two o'clock in the afternoon.
What does a police officer do when he has two sensational murders and a disappearance weighing heavily on his shoulders and he sees something of a criminal nature taking place right before his eyes?
There are several things he can do. If he happens to be sitting in a police car he can exercise quick judgment and gain an advantage right at the start. He can radio a half-dozen other cars to converge upon the scene or keep at a distance and follow his lead. He can put a call directly through to headquarters and in a matter of minutes a third of the police in the city will be alerted and a big dragnet will be spread fast.
He can even whip out a gun, step right up and do what he can to put a stop to it then and there.
But if he's on foot and off-duty, and weary as hell from days and nights of double-duty it isn't always possible for him to do any of those things, except the last, with its often dangerous and opportunity-destroying complications.
It was only by a kind of miracle—what else could you call a sudden, difficult-to-explain restlessness tugging at a cop who should have been home asleep with the blinds drawn?—that Lieutenant Fenton was there at all, a half block from the Eaton-Lathrup building at so early an hour in the afternoon. And the fact that other restless cops, cops who could never quite believe they'd done enough in the line of duty, had had similar experiences in the past, did not diminish the lucky-accident strangeness of it.
It was his sixth visit to the magazine offices in three days, and it could have been postponed. But there were still a few questions he'd neglected to ask the staff, and when sleep wouldn't come he'd gotten up, brewed himself two cups of strong coffee, put on his clothes—choosing a light gray tropical worsted suit because it was an unusually hot and muggy day even for New York in July—and taken the subway to the Eaton-Lathrup building, stopping only briefly at the drugstore on the corner to buy himself a fresh pack of cigarettes.
He was about fifty or sixty feet from the building's main entrance when Timothy Hansen, Gerstle's Man Friday on the big magazine group's two cafe society, exposé magazines, emerged into the clear, bright sunlight. The young associate editor was not alone. His steps seemed almost to drag, and two heavyset men wearing light-weight summer suits just a little darker in color than the one which Fenton had donned, had fallen into step on opposite sides of him, their turned-down panamas shading features which Fenton did not like at all.
There was a suspicious-looking bulge in the coat pocket of one of Hansen's two escorts, and the slow, reluctant way the man seemed to be moving left little doubt in Fenton's mind as to what was taking place.
There was a black coupe parked at the curb, and the young associate editor was being escorted toward it. He entered the car a little ahead of the two heavyset men, but they wasted no time in climbing in after him, and Fenton caught the momentary glitter of sunlight on what looked like the barrel of a drawn automatic.
All this Lieutenant Fenton saw, and froze to immobility. Only for an instant, however. A short distance behind him a middle-aged man with a brief case was just getting into another car, a green Ford sedan. He'd noticed the car in passing, along with the man's unhurried stride. He'd even noticed the car keys dangling from the sedan owner's hand.
Fenton swung about and was grasping the door of the second car before the startled man could ease himself completely into the driver's seat.
Fenton whipped out and displayed his badge. "Get out, please, and give me those keys," he said, his voice so sharp that the man obeyed almost automatically and without waiting for Fenton to add: "This is a police emergency. I'm taking your car. Nothing to worry about. You'll get it back. Just get out and do as I tell you."
He waited until the man reached the sidewalk before he gave him further, urgent instructions. He was himself in the driver's seat and using one of the keys when he met the car owner's agitated gaze and said, still speaking sharply, "Listen carefully, please. Go to the drugstore on the corner, and ask for the police. Put the call through as quickly as you can. Say that Lieutenant Fenton of Homicide—get that,homicide—has started trailing a car from this address. Say the car is heading north. And tell them ... it's a kidnapping. Be sure to give them the number of this building: 584—and the street. It's a black coupe: YG67999. Got that?"
The man nodded, his face very pale now.
"All right. Make it fast. If you should run into a cop, tell him the same thing. Evenafteryou've phoned."
Fenton barely waited for the man to nod again before he nosed the sedan out into the traffic flow and followed the black coupe at a cautious distance, taking care not to give it too much headway and slowing a little when he seemed in danger of overtaking it.
A half hour later Fenton was still trailing the coupe at a cautious distance and he was still alone. No wail of a police siren had arisen behind him and he was now grateful for that.
It had taken him a few minutes to make up his mind and decide that he was justified in feeling that way, and even now he had misgivings. He did not regret the instructions he'd given the owner of the sedan. The phone call had been routine, a necessary safeguard. He owed Hansen that much, at least.
And if police cars started converging around him he'd accept what came. But the kind of instructions he'd havelikedto give the startled car owner only a policeman could have sent in to headquarters. Keep me in view, but don't give the game away. Don't interfere unless you see I'm in trouble. A chance like this may never come again. The payoff could be: two murders and a disappearance solved.
It wasn't what a policeman would ordinarily do. It was against all precedent and could cost him his badge. In one way hehadincreased the risks for Hansen, by not whipping out a gun and forcing a showdown in front of the building.
It would have been a risky showdown and Hansen might have ended up dead. Fenton also—but it was to Fenton's credit that he hadn't given that a thought. His decision—and he'd made up his mind about it only after a few minutes of driving—had been influenced chiefly by two considerations. The missing editor was in great danger, if he was still alive. It could almost be taken for granted that the murderer had kidnapped Gerstle, precisely as Hansen had been kidnapped. Not to force an instant showdown might lead to Gerstle's rescue and to force a showdown to Hansen's death. To forgo that and trail the car might be increasing the risks for Hansen in one way, but not in the most dangerous possible way. If given the choice—would Hansen prefer to be trailed or dropped to the floor of the car with a bullet in the head?
One other consideration weighed a little. The murderer had slain twice and might slay again. He was no ordinary murderer, but the most dangerous kind of killer. This had become one of the big, nation-arousing series of crimes. To catch that kind of killer justified unusual measures, the taking of exceptional risks.
Or did it? Even now, he wasn't completely sure. When a policeman sees a crime taking place in his presence, he's supposed to draw a gun and start shooting, if the crime can be prevented in no other way. Immediately, without stopping to speculate as to what some of the possible repercussions might be.
Still ... still ... a man had to have the courage of his convictions, even if it meant bending the rules a little more than the Manual told young rookies they had a right to do. He wasn't a young rookie; and a cop who had been on the Force thirty years, and worked his way up to a Detective Lieutenancy the hard, patient way, had a right, surely, to exercise his own judgment in a situation like this.
He wouldn't be breaking the backbone of the rules, cracking the spinal column in a completely demoralizing way. The backbone would snap back, and a vicious killer would be started on his way to the chair ... and all he really had to do was to make absolutely certain that the coupe did not get away.
If he should lose it in the traffic....
He relaxed a little, telling himself that there was much less likelihood of that now, because they had passed over the Triboro Bridge into Queens and the traffic had thinned considerably.
They were still on the main highway and quite a few cars were passing in both directions, but there was no heavy congestion or traffic snarls or many big trucks to block the view. Fenton was just as well satisfied to see the traffic change a little now and then, growing slightly heavy at intervals but thinning out again the instant a turnpike swept past.
Just two cars on a clear road would have been very bad, he told himself. This way there was at least a fifty percent chance Hansen's two escorts wouldn't suspect they were being trailed. A car traveling on a main traffic artery didn't have to be trailing anyone, even if it kept a variable distance behind another car for a considerable length of time.
On sober reflection Fenton cut the likelihood that the pair in the car ahead would suspect anything from fifty to about twenty percent. To kidnap a man in broad daylight at the point of a gun from a building that the police had good reason to keep under fairly close surveillance was taking a big risk, of course. But it wasn't a police car that was trailing them, and they'd seen nothing on the block to make them suspicious—just a middle-aged man getting into another car further down the block, and a pedestrian approaching the building with nothing about him to suggest that he was a police officer.
Of course if they had looked back and seen him take over the other car on pulling out from the curb, the percentage would soar again, right up to the hundred mark. But would they be keeping on this way if they had? The car ahead hadn't zigzagged in and out of traffic at any time or put on an unusual burst of speed, as if in an effort to elude a pursuing car.
Fifteen minutes later the scenery changed a bit, the traffic thinned some more, and in the distance there were occasional glimpses of Flushing Bay.
The car ahead remained on the main highway for another ten minutes and then made a sharp turn at a circular, three-lane intersection and started traveling in the direction of the Bay. Fortunately the traffic became fairly heavy again at that point, and Fenton was able to continue on a cautious distance behind without running the risk of losing sight of the coupe. There were two more turns and the last brought them to a quite narrow road running almost parallel with the Bay.
The shining bright waters of the Bay were almost constantly visible now, cut off by long rows of trees at intervals, but close enough to bring a wide expanse of open water into clear view. But the coupe didn't slow down to enable its occupants to train an appreciative eye on white sails glimmering in the sunlight or to inhale with pleasure the tangy, brine-scented air. Fenton sat very still, with no admiring eye for the scenery either, his face set in harsh lines.
The black coupe finally turned into a side road that ran directly downhill to the bay and Fenton drew in quickly to the side of the highway and waited until the car ahead was out of sight before making a turn that otherwise would have been a dead giveaway.
Fenton made the turn slowly and for the next few seconds kept his eyes straight ahead and watched the road for the slightest stir of movement. But his extreme caution proved unnecessary, for the coupe had vanished around a corkscrew curve, and it did not come into view again until a wide stretch of open water burst on Fenton's vision.
The car ahead was heading straight for what appeared to be a fisherman's landing at the narrowing tip of a wide inlet. Fenton could see the wharf and the boathouse clearly, and rowboats bobbing about in the tide at the end of the wharf. Far out near the middle of the inlet a large motor cruiser rode at anchor.
Fenton drew in to the side of the road, switched off the ignition and descended from the car just beyond the corkscrew curve. He continued on down the slope on foot, taking care to keep in the shadows cast by overhanging foliage.
He had about a mile and a half of descending road to cover before he reached the boathouse and the open clearing in front of the wharf. He had just about reached it, still keeping close to the edge of the road with its protective foliage screen when the sound of voices raised to more than conversational pitch came to his ears.
Fenton stood very still, well within the last cluster of sheltering trees, and strained his ears to catch what was being said.
The voices came to him whipped by the wind, but he heard one, sharply-spoken order. "Push off! Don't just stand there! Every one of these goddam boats has taken on water!"
The complaint was followed by the steady click of oar-locks, and a dwindling murmur of barely distinguishable sound.
He did not emerge from the cluster of trees immediately, but waited several minutes. Even then he was careful not to step completely into the open, but crouched down and peered out from behind a waist-high clump of thinning foliage.
The rowboat was now about two hundred feet from the wharf and appeared to be moving out into the inlet on a very straight course, a course which could hardly fail to bring it close to the anchored motor cruiser.
He had very little doubt that it was heading directly for the cruiser, and that the three men in the boat would soon be going aboard. One of the heavyset men was plying the oars and the other sat in the middle of the boat facing Hansen, who sat in the stern. Whether or not he was keeping young Hansen covered with a gun Fenton could not determine. The sunlight was too bright and an automatic pistol too small an object to be visible from so great a distance.
Fenton stood very still for a moment, debating the wisdom of going straight to the boathouse and having a showdown with the man—or men—he might find there.
He was almost sure that whoever owned the wharf and the boats knew exactly what was going on and had been paid to cooperate. It seemed to him unlikely that the pair in the rowboat would have risked bringing Hansen there otherwise.
But he couldn't be completely sure, and getting in touch with Center Street fast was very urgent. He'd passed two Manhattan-bound police cars on the Queen's side of the bridge and a cop on a motorcycle. But his decision not to flash a warning signal to the car ahead by enlisting police aid had hardened during the drive and he'd decided not to. Now he regretted having taken so much upon himself. A police escort would have swiftly overtaken the kidnappers and rescued Hansen. Any chance of finding out what had happened to Gerstle or trapping the murderer would have vanished into thin air, in all likelihood, for the two kidnappers couldn't be depended upon to name him. And they could still have silenced Hansen with a bullet, figuring maybe that a good mouthpiece, hired by the killer, might be able to turn it into an act of self-defense before a rigged jury. There was no chance too desperate and even suicidal for trapped gunmen to take, if you hardly gave them time to reason.
He'd done a foolish thing, however, and he realized it now. Only a quick phone call from the boathouse could set it right again. With luck, a dozen police cars could close in on the wharf in fifteen or twenty minutes. And it wouldn't take long for the police to get to the cruiser. If it started moving, the Coast Guard could be alerted.
Fenton made up his mind quickly. He had a gun, and even if there were two or three men in the boathouse the odds would be in his favor. He was reproaching himself so bitterly now that he decided on the spot he'd turn in his badge and make a full confession if anything went wrong and Hansen was slugged and dropped over the rail of the cruiser before he could be rescued.