Читать книгу Terror Beneath the Streets - Arthur Leo Zagat - Страница 3

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AFTERWARDS, it was known that an essential element of the terror which ran riot through New York City on the night of March fourth was its perfect timing. But to Roy Parker the fact that the Trinity Church clock hands pointed to precisely seven o'clock meant little, and for a good reason. For at that moment he was standing on the northeast corner of Broadway and Pine Street, holding Ethel Vine in his arms.

Her lithe form was tiny against his huge body. She stood on tiptoe to reach him. Yet her small hands, slim and flowerlike on his burly shoulders, could twist and mould him at will. He loved her and as in everything else he did, Parker threw his whole soul and being into that love.

Those two; and a second slender, pert-visaged girl who watched the lovers with a half-smile on her lips—and a furtive shadow of pain in her gray eyes—were incongruously alone where an hour before a torrent of shouting, laughing humanity had poured. The air that had been palpitant with the ordered chaos of the nation's business heart was hushed, and there was a brooding, almost uncanny quality to the silence that lay heavily in the deep canyons of the financial district.

Towering buildings loomed, dark and dismal, jutting incredibly high to touch the moonless bowl of an overcast sky. They seemed lifeless cliffs enormously ponderous, enormously sinister. Street lamps struggled feebly against a creeping murk that was not fog but the forerunning shadow of fog.

Halfway down the block a single square splotch of neon glare spotlighted the all-night restaurant where the three had met for supper. A block to the east the tall pilasters of the Stock Exchange Building glimmered, and the black silhouette of a lonely policeman paced before it.

"Hey, Roy," Ann Vine said dryly, "isn't it about time you finished saying goodbye? You did give me your ticket for the theater, you know, so Ethel wouldn't have to go alone, and I refuse to sit in the orchestra in this tailored suit. Besides, I seem to remember your saying something about having work to do."

"There you are!" Parker grinned at her over his sweetheart's ash-blonde head. "The demon sister-in-law is getting practical again." There was gruff affection in his rumbling tones. "If Ethel would only shove you under a subway train tonight I'd take her down to City Hall tomorrow morning and get spliced."

"No you wouldn't! You'd track her to the end of the earth and send her to the electric chair with that nasty grin still on your homely mug." Ann's tip-tilted nose crinkled with pretended distaste. "That's why I've been trying to throw a monkey wrench in this affair of yours. I don't like the idea of having a famous detective in the family—just in case I decide to steal a batch of Rascomb Sloane's bonds." She shuddered prettily.

"Your boss would undoubtedly call me in on the case. And how I'd love to slip the steel bracelets on your wrists. I—"

"Stop it, Roy!" Ethel thrust away from him. "I won't have you two going on like that." White-frocked, slender and graceful as long-stemmed lily, she seemed to glow in the dimness with an inward light. "I know it's kidding, but some time one of you will say something that hurts, and then..."

"Aw, Kitten, Ann knows I love her," Parker slid a columnar arm around the slim waist of his fiancée's younger sister, drew her close to him, "darn near as much as—Hey! You're shivering, Ann! Frightened of the dark, Kitten? What's the matter?"

"I—I don't know." The tiny oval of her face looked up at him; tight, tawny ringlets framing its still pallor. "I'm all jittery and nervous inside." She pressed a hand to the tender, virginal swell of her bosom. "I—maybe it's the quiet around here, but I feel as if something—something awful—is going to happen—any second."

"Why, you—" Parker broke off, shrugged. "And I called you practical! Downtown's always like this after hours."

Ann shook her head, her pupils dilated, her long-lashed lids wide. "No. It's—different tonight. Listen!"

Underlying the brooding silence, the muted roar of the city came from the north where the residential and pleasure districts were just waking to their nocturnal life. From nearer at hand came the rush of an elevated train, the melancholy hoot of a ferryboat on the Hudson, the endless chug, chug, chug of some unseen machine. It was all utterly familiar—and yet somehow strangely ominous.

It was Ann herself who broke the taut, listening spell that held the trio. "Oh, I'm being awfully silly," she exclaimed, wrenching out of Parker's hold. "But not too silly to know it's getting later by the minute. Come on, Ethel. We certainly won't have time to shower and change unless we get started. We'll walk over to the Seventh Avenue subway at Cortland Street. 'Bye, Roy."

"Night, girls. Have a good time."

It was exactly seven-four when Roy Parker watched the two girls cross Broadway and vanish into the dim shadows of Cedar Street. Beneath his feet a long, rumbling growl sounded. It was the subway, of course, but it seemed as though some huge, subterranean monster stirred in its lightless, grisly lair. And as though the chug, chug, chug of the distant machine was its panting, hot breath...

That sound grew louder, sharper, more insistent, as the sisters neared it, walking fast beneath the gloomy loom of the sleeping skyscrapers. Ethel Vine's hand crept into Ann's, and it was icy, trembling.

"I'm worried," the older girl said, low-toned, apprehension husky in her voice. "I'm always worried when Roy works late. He's made so many enemies..."

"He can take care of himself." Ann achieved lightness in her tone with perceptible effort. "And after all it isn't as if he were a city policeman, fighting gangsters and killers. His work for the Stock Exchange is mostly checking up on brokers who break their rules."

"Mostly, yes. But he's had some terrible people to deal with, too. That gang of insurance swindlers, a month ago. And the band that was selling narcotics to bond and stock runners. And..."

"He handled them all right. That man of yours is a wildcat in a scrap—Ethel! Look! What on earth is that?"

They had rounded a corner into Church Street. Dead ahead of them a high, gaunt tower of interlaced beams straddled half the street. From somewhere within it glared a blinding white light, blackly barred by the criss-crossed timbers, and the machinelike chug, chug pounded out of its very heart.

"It's only some kind of drill," Ethel answered Ann's exclamation. "They're always boring into New York's vitals. Testing for a new subway, or a water tunnel or something."

"Oh yes, I remember now. Mr. Sloane said something about it only the other day." Ann slowed. "He said there are so many things under the surface of the streets; gas and water and sewer mains, telephone and telegraph cables, mail tubes and subways and so on; that nobody really knows all of it. So every time they want to build something new they have to bore way down. It's fascinating, though, and eerie. Queer, the thing seems to be working all by itself. I don't see anyone... Let's watch for a minute." She stopped.

"I thought you were in a hurry to get home and primp for the show—Oh, goodness!" Ethel's voice showed annoyance.

"Now what's the matter."

"The tickets! Roy forgot to give them to me! We'll have to go back to his office."

"But we haven't time."

"I'll 'phone him to call a messenger and send them to the theater. Look, there's a cigar store on the corner."

"All right. Go ahead. I'll stay here and watch this while you're calling up."

Fumbling in her bag for a nickel, Ethel brushed by a heavy-jowled, barrel-chested man lounging in the cigar store's doorway. Telephone booths were ranged across the front of the shop, their backs open against its plate glass window, so that as she went into one of them she could look out into the street and see Ann, a slim, fragile silhouette against the white glare from the drill-tower.

Her nickel rattled in the slot, pinged a small bell.

It was one of the few manual telephones left in the district. Ethel waited for the operator's voice. Her eyes strayed to the shop door, and she saw that a clock set into its transom gave the time as seven-fourteen. Her glance dropped to the man in the doorway. He seemed queerly tensed. He was watching Ann.

"Number please," sounded in Ethel Vine's ear.

"Hanover six, four-one-eight-two." The blue-jawed man's head jerked around, his eyes slitting, peering at her. He shouted something over his shoulder, started to come in.

A scream, shrill and terrorized, stabbed through the glass; pulled Ethel's startled gaze out through it. A black, uncouth shadow had materialized out of the angular shadows of the tower. It leaped at Ann...

The girl's scream choked off suddenly.

Fingers rasped at the door behind Ethel. She jammed her pocketbook through its inner handle, locking it shut for a precious second. The man who had been in the outer doorway cursed and lifted a burly fist to smash in the glass panel...