Just before his eyes finally clouded, Linton looked at the array of nine cards:
They were arranged correctly. Old Dab would puzzle it out.
Philip Linton, whose testimony had helped convict nineteen murderers, died in the belief that the mute testimony on the floor beside him would convict a twentieth.
He was a good cop to the very end.
2
IT WAS midnight.
Abner Ellison appeared nervous and distraught as he paced the floor of the small room he occupied in the Heights Hotel on upper Broadway. Ellison was a tall, heavy-shouldered young man. His clothes always seemed to be slightly rumpled and the knots of his ties were usually a bit askew. Despite the protests of barbers, he kept the dark ringlets of his curly hair closely clipped. The short, unruly curls still spilled down over his high forehead. Abner paused in his pacing and glanced in the mirror that hung above the washbowl. Through force of habit, he picked up a plastic comb and dug it through the massed curls. It was a useless gesture. The obstinate ringlets were like small springs that snapped back over his forehead immediately.
He put down the comb, rolled up his shirtsleeves. He picked up an inadequate cake of hotel soap and began to scrub his hands in the bowl. He washed his right hand with a ferocity that was almost savage. He seemed to be making a futile attempt to wash off a stain as ineradicable as Lady Macbeth’s “damned spot.” When he finally dried the hand he looked upon it with disgust. He wondered how a woman felt when a hand like that caressed her. Such a thought had not bothered him before. Now, suddenly, it seemed all-important. That was because the thing was done, the die was cast. Tonight had marked a crisis in his life.
Ellison began pacing his narrow quarters again. This was the room of a man who had been a soldier. It was neat, plain, bare. Bulky law books were piled on the glass-covered table that served as a desk. Drawers and closets were tightly closed and no articles of clothing protruded from them. Nine conservatively patterned neckties hung from a rack on the closet door. Ellison’s overcoat, jacket and gray felt hat, however, had been tossed carelessly on the bed as if he planned to put them on again very soon. The maid always left the green and white bed-spread dangling to the floor. Daily Ellison tucked the spread under the mattress, army-style. The only decorative notes in the room were a frilly shade on the bridge lamp and a monochrome of sheep grazing in a meadow, both supplied by the hotel, and a silver-framed photograph beside the law books on the desk. The photograph showed the face of an impishly pretty girl. Her eyes laughed under arched brows, her nose tilted provacatively and the mouth was childishly soft. The photographer had not eliminated a small area of attractive freckles about the nose. It was a photograph of Patricia Linton whose grandfather now lay murdered less than half a mile away.
Ellison looked at the framed photograph. Then he looked down at his right hand. He balled the hand into a fist, as if he were concealing something. Pat had gone out with another man tonight. Pat had gone out with a cop named Walters. Oh, well, Ellison thought, it will be the last time she’s ever out with him.
Abner Ellison kept glancing at the cradled telephone as if he expected it to ring momentarily. He felt warm. The small room was overheated. His right hand unclenched and fumbled with his loosely knotted tie. He unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. He crossed to the window and was in the act of raising it when something on the street below attracted his attention. He turned hastily and snapped off the light of the bridge lamp with the frilly shade. He stood by the window, partly concealed by the drapes, gazing out into the light-pricked night. A big car was parked across the street, some twenty yards away. A man stood beside the car. The car and the man were only thicker shadows in the darkness, barely discernible, yet Ellison had a distinct feeling that the man was watching the hotel, was even looking up at the room. Abner stood by the window for several moments. Finally the man walked off into the deeper shadows. Ellison began his pacing again.
The clangor of the phone split the silence of the little room. Ellison picked up the phone, said, “Hello.” There was a click at the other end as if the receiver had been hung up, breaking the connection. There was a muted humming on the wire now. Abner slammed the knuckles of his right hand up and down on the receiver button and there was a crackling like static in his ears. Then the room clerk said, “Mr. Ellison? There was a call. Didn’t you get it?”
“Nobody on the line. Sounded as if they hung up.”
“I’m sorry. It was a man’s voice. A very low voice.”
Ellison was irritated. “You must have pulled out the plug or something. I was rather expecting a call.”
“No, sir. I did not. There’s still an outside connection.”
“Okay. I guess they’ll call again.”
The phone rang again very soon. This time it was the room clerk. “A man just left a note at the desk for you and hurried out,” the clerk said. “I’m sending the note up by the elevator boy.”
“Note?” asked Abner.
“Not a special delivery or telegram. The fellow who left it looked like one of those bums who hang around the corner. Seemed in a big hurry. Just tossed it on the desk and shuffled right out again.”
Abner answered the door, found coins for the elevator operator. The envelope was made of cheap paper. On it was printed in pencil, “Mr. Abner Ellison, Heights Hotel.” He closed the door, slit the envelope open. He read the penciled note. His expression was blank. He read the note over again. Then he crushed the note in his right hand. He stood looking down at the fist doubled over the note. He seemed to regard either the note or the right hand that held it as something obscene. At length he smoothed the note out again, replaced it in the torn envelope and slipped it in the pocket of his trousers.
Ellison turned off all the lights in the room at the central switch. He crossed to the window again and stood motionless, peering out into the darkness. He could see the massed shadow of the big car down the street. The man had returned and was standing beside the car. The man’s figure was little more than a murky outline, like the wraiths that float in a fog. The upturned face could barely be discerned, pale and faintly luminescent against the thickness of the night. Were the eyes staring at the window? Abner Ellison thought they were.
Ellison closed the window and lowered the shade over it. He switched on the lights of the room. He glanced nervously at his wrist watch. What did you do when a murder was committed? What had his father done that time some twenty years or more ago when he had killed a man? He must have run, even though there was no place at all for him to hide. He must have run and kept on running until a relentless cop named Linton tracked him down.
Abner had to run, too. But first there was something he must check. He picked up the phone, asked the night clerk to ring the number of the Linton house. For long moments the receiver trembled with the bee-buzzing sound of the ringing phone. At length Abner hung up. The police had not arrived, then, and dead men cannot answer telephones.
Sweat plastered the curly ringlets to Abner’s forehead now. He pushed them back impatiently. For a moment he felt nauseated with fear and helplessness, as he had felt that time when Rundstedt struck back in the Ardennes and Patton’s tanks had not crashed through. He’d