Читать книгу Midnight - Octavus Roy Cohen - Страница 6

The barren trees which lined the broad deserted thoroughfare jutted starkly into the night, waving their menacing, ice-crusted arms. The December gale, sweeping westward, shrieked through the glistening branches. It shrieked warning and horror, howled and sighed, sighed and howled.

Spike Walters felt suddenly ill. He forgot the cold, and was conscious of a fear which acted like a temporary anesthesia. For a few seconds he stood staring, until the match which he held burned out and scorched the flesh of his fingers. His jaw dropped, his eyes widened. He opened his lips and tried to speak, but closed them again without having uttered a sound save a choking gasp. He tried again, feeling an urge for speech—something, anything, to make him believe that he was here, alive—that the horror within the cab was real. This time he uttered an "Oh, my God!"

The words seemed to vitalize him. He fumbled for another match, found it, and lighted it within the cab. It seemed to have the radiance of an incandescent.

Spike had hoped that his first impression would prove to be a mere figment of his imagination; but now there was no doubting. There, sprawled in an ugly, inhuman heap on the floor, head resting against the cushioned seat of the cab, was the figure of a man. There was no doubt that he was dead. Even Spike, young, optimistic, and unversed in the ways of death as he was, knew that he was alone with a corpse.

And as he gazed, a strange courage came to him. He found himself emboldened to investigate. He was shivering while he did so, shivering with fear and with the terrific cold of the night. He could not quite bring himself to touch the body, but he did not need to move it to see that murder had been done.

The clothes told him instantly that the man was of high social station. They were obviously expensive clothes, probably tailor-made. The big coat, open at the top, was flung back. Beneath, Spike discerned a gray tweed—and on the breast of the gray tweed was a splotch, a dark, ugly thing which appeared black and was not black. Spike shuddered. He had never liked the sight of blood.

The match spluttered and went out. Spike looked around. He felt hopelessly alone. Not a pedestrian; not a light. The houses, set well back from the street, were dark, forbiddingly dark.

He saw a street-car rattle past, bound on the final run of the night for the car-sheds at East End. Then he was alone again—alone and frightened.

He felt the necessity for action. He must do something—something, but what? What was there to do?

A great fear gripped him. He was with the body. The body was in his cab.

He would be arrested for the murder of the man!

Of course he knew he didn't do it. The woman had committed the murder.

Spike swore. He had almost forgotten the woman. Where was she? How had she managed to leave the taxicab? When had the man, who now lay sprawled in the cab, entered it?

He had driven straight from the Union Station to the address given by the woman—straight down East End Avenue, turning neither to right nor left. The utter impossibilty of the situation robbed it of some of its stark horror. And yet—

Spike knew that he must do something. He tried to think connectedly, and found it a difficult task. Near him loomed the shadow which was No. 981 East End Avenue—the address given by the woman when she entered the cab. He might go in there and report the circumstances. Some one there would know who she was, and—but he hesitated.

Perhaps this thing had been prearranged. Perhaps they would get him—for what he didn't know. When a man—a young man—comes face to face with murder for the first time, making its acquaintance on a freezing December midnight and in a lonely spot, he is not to be blamed if his mental equilibrium is destroyed.

Wild plans chased each other through his brain. He might dump the body by the roadside and run back to town. That was absurd on the face of it, for he would be convicting himself when the body was found. It would be traced to him in some way—he knew that. He was already determined to keep away from No. 981 East End Avenue. There was something sinister in the unfriendly shadow of the rambling house. He might call the police.

That was it—he would call the police. But how? Go into a house near by, wake the residents, telephone headquarters that a murder had been done? Alarm the neighborhood, and identify himself with the crime? Spike was afraid, frankly and boyishly afraid—afraid of the present, and more afraid of the future.

And yet he knew that he must get in touch with the police, else the police would eventually get in touch with him. He thought then of taking the body in to headquarters; but he feared that his cab might be stopped en route to the city and the body discovered. They would never believe, then, that he had been bound for headquarters.

Almost before he knew that he had arrived at a decision, Spike had groped his way across the icy street and pressed the bell-button on the front door of the least unprepossessing house on the block.

For a long time there was no answer. Finally a light shone in the hall, and the skinny figure of a man, shivering violently despite the blanket-robe which enfolded him, appeared in the hallway. He flashed on the porch light from inside and peered through the glass door. Apparently reassured, he cracked the door slightly.

"Yes. What do you want?"

At sound of a human voice, Spike instantly felt easier. The fact that he could converse, that he had shed his terrible loneliness, steadied him as nothing else could have done. He was surprised at his own calmness, at the fact that there was scarcely a quaver in the voice with which he answered the man.

"I'm Spike Walters," he said with surprising quietness. "I'm a driver for the Yellow and White Taxicab Company. My cab is No. 92,381. I have a man in my cab who has been badly injured. I want to telephone to the city."

The little householder opened the door wider, and Spike entered. Cold as the house was, from the standpoint of the man within, its hold-over warmth was a godsend to Spike's thoroughly chilled body.

The little man designated a telephone on the wall, then started nervously as central answered and Spike barked a single command into the transmitter:

"Police-station, please!"

"Police?"

"Never you mind, sir," Spike told the householder. "Hello! Police!" he called to the operator.

There was a pause, then Spike went on:

"This is Spike Walters—Yellow and White Taxi Company. I'm out at No. 981

East End Avenue. There's a dead man in my cab!"

The weary voice at the other end became suddenly alive.

"A dead man!"

"Yes."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know. That's why I called you."

"When did he die? How?"

Spike controlled himself with an effort.

"Don't you understand? He has been killed—"

"The devil you say!" replied the voice at headquarters, and the little householder chimed in with a frightened squeak.

"Yes," repeated Spike painstakingly. "The man is dead—killed. It is very peculiar. I can't explain over the phone. I called up to ask you what I shall do."

"Hold connection a minute!" Spike heard a hurried whispered conversation at the other end, then the voice barked back at him: "Stay where you are—couple of officers coming, and coming fast!"

It was Dan O'Leary, night desk sergeant, who was on duty at headquarters that night, and Sergeant Dan O'Leary was a good deal of an institution on the city's force. He hopped excitedly from his desk into the office of Eric Leverage, the chief of police.

Chief Leverage, a broad-shouldered, heavy-set, bushy-eyebrowed individual, looked up from the chess-board, annoyed at this interruption of a game which had been in progress since ten o'clock that night. O'Leary grabbed a salute from thin air.

"'Scuse my botherin' ye, chief, but there's hell to pay out at East End."

O'Leary was never long at coming to the point. Leverage looked up. So, too, did the boyish, clean-shaven young man with whom he was playing chess.

"An' knowin' that Mr. Carroll was playin' chess with ye, chief—an' him naturally interested in such things—I hopped right in."

"I'll say you did," commented the chief phlegmatically. "I have you there, Carroll—dead to rights!"

O'Leary was a trifle irritated at the cold reception accorded his news.

"Ye ain't after understanding" he said slowly. "It's murder that has been done this night."

"H-m!" Carroll's slow, pleasant drawl seemed to soothe O'Leary. "Murder?"

"You said it, Mr. Carroll."

Leverage had risen. It was plain to be seen from his manner that the chess-game was forgotten. Leverage was a policeman first and a chess-player second—a very poor second. His voice, surcharged with interest, cracked out into the room.

"Spill the dope, O'Leary!"

The night desk sergeant needed no further bidding. In a few graphic words he outlined his telephone conversation with Spike Walters.

Before he finished speaking, Leverage was slipping into his enormous overcoat. He nodded to Carroll.

"How about trotting out there with me, David?"

Carroll smiled agreeably.

"Thank goodness my new coupé has a heating device, chief!"

That was all. It wasn't David Carroll's way to talk much, or to show any untoward emotion. It was Carroll's very boyishness which was his greatest asset. He had a way of stepping into a case before the principals knew he was there, and of solving it in a manner which savored not at all of flamboyance. A quiet man was Carroll, and one whose deductive powers Eric Leverage fairly worshiped.

On the slippery, skiddy journey to East End the two men—professional policeman and amateur criminologist—did not talk much. A few comments regarding the sudden advent of fiercest winter; a remark, forcedly jocular, from the chief, that murderers might be considerate enough to pick better weather for the practice of their profession—and that was all. Thus far they knew nothing about the case, and they were both too well versed in criminology to attempt a discussion of something with which they were unfamiliar.

Spike Walters saw them coming—saw their headlights splitting the frigid night. He was at the curb to meet them as they pulled up. He told his story briefly and concisely. Leverage inspected the young man closely, made note of his license number and the number of his taxi-cab. Then he turned to his companion, who had stood by, a silent and interested observer.

"S'pose you talk to him a bit, Carroll."

"I'm David Carroll," introduced the other man. "I'm connected with the police department. There's a few things you tell which are rather peculiar. Any objections to discussing them?"

In spite of himself, Spike felt a genial warming toward this boyish-faced man. He had heard of Carroll, and rather feared his prowess; but now that he was face to face with him, he found himself liking the chap. Not only that, but he was conscious of a sense of protection, as if Carroll were there for no other purpose than to take care of him, to see that he received a square deal.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Carroll, I'll be glad to tell you anything I know."

"You have said, Walters, that the passenger you picked up at the Union

Station was a woman."

"Yes, sir, it was a woman."

"Are you sure?"

"Why, yes, sir. I couldn't very well be mistaken. You see—o-o-oh!

You're thinking maybe it was a man in woman's clothes? Is that it, sir?"

Carroll smiled.

"What do you think?"

"That's impossible, sir. It was a woman—I'd swear to that."

"Pretty positive, eh?"

"Absolutely, sir. Besides, take the matter of the overcoat the—the—body has on. Even if what you think was so, sir—that it was a woman dressed up like a man—and if he had gotten rid of the women's clothes, where would he have gotten the clothes to put on?"

"H-m! Sounds logical. How about the suit-case you said this woman had?"

"Yonder it is—right on the front beside me, where it has been all the time."

"And you tell us that between the time you left the Union Station and the time you got here a man got into the taxicab, was killed by the woman, the woman got out, and you heard nothing?"

"Yes, sir," said Spike simply. "Just that, sir."

"Rather hard to believe, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir. That's why I called the police." Chief Leverage was shivering under the impact of the winter blasts.

"S'pose we take a look at the bird, David," he suggested, nodding toward the taxi. "That might tell us something."

Carroll nodded. The men entered the taxi, and Leverage flashed a pocket-torch in the face of the dead man. Then he uttered an exclamation of surprise not unmixed with horror.

"Good Lord!"

"You know him?" questioned Carroll easily.

"Know him? I'll say I do. Why, man, that's Roland Warren!"

"Warren! Roland Warren! Not the clubman?"

"The very same one, Carroll, an' none other. Well, I'm a sonovagun! Sa-a-ay, something surely has been started here." He swung around on the taxi-driver. "You, Walters!"

"Yes, sir?"

"You are sure the suit-case is still in front?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well"—to Carroll—"that makes it easier. It's the woman's suit-case, and if we can't find out who she is from that, we're pretty bum, eh?"

"Looks so, Erie. You're satisfied"—this to Walters—"that that is her suit-case?"

"Absolutely. It hasn't been off the front since she handed it to me at the station."

Carroll swung the suit-case to the inside of the cab. It opened readily. Leverage kept his light trained on it as Carroll dug swiftly through the contents. Finally the eyes of the two men met. Carroll's expression was one of frank amazement; Leverage's reflected sheer unbelief.

"It can't be, Carroll!"

"Yet—it is!"

"Sufferin' wildcats!" breathed Leverage. "The suit-case ain't the woman's at all! It's Warren's!"