Romano made himself comfortable in an overstuffed chair, accepted a drink of Bourbon that Dab poured from a crystal decanter.
“Tell me what this is all about,” Dab asked.
“I will,” said Romano. “Prepare yourself for a shock. Then don’t interrupt me with a lot of foolish exclamations. To get it over fast, your friend Phil Linton’s been murdered. Shot through the belly with a .45. Assailant unknown. One prime suspect. More about that later. Take a drink now, and I’ll give you what facts we have.”
“I—I can’t believe it!” said Dab inadequately.
“Nobody believes murder until it happens,” the swarthy detective answered. “According to the statistics six out of every hundred thousand persons living today are going to die from a slight case of murder. But no one believes murder can happen to him or anyone close to him.”
Dab opened his mouth. Romano raised his hand. He said, “A little after midnight a call came in to an uptown precinct station. It was a man, unidentified, call untraced. He said there’d been trouble at a certain address and the police had better investigate. Then he hung up. It was Phil Linton’s address. Prowl car reached there about twelve-twenty. Lights on downstairs. Door locked. French window to porch closed but unlocked, with a pane knocked out. Cops went in, found Linton shot to death, called Homicide. We found Linton lying beside a little coffee table. Carpet had soaked up a lot of blood. Pretty obvious he’d been shot by man standing just inside the room, in the window.
“Medical evidence Linton probably killed somewhere between eleven-thirty and twelve, may have lived some ten minutes after bullet hit him. Linton had those little fingerprint-symbol cards he uses in his lectures on the floor beside him. Some of them he’d arranged into a kind of order or pattern. A display, you might call it. Evidently he wanted you particularly to see this display, thought it would mean something to you. Something special, maybe. Anyway he’d propped a letter addressed to you against the leg of the table, like he wanted to attract your attention to the cards. We read the letter, I’m afraid. It didn’t seem very important. Said he couldn’t dine with you at the hotel Friday night. You were to come to his place instead, because there was going to be a kind of family dinner and his granddaughter had an important announcement to make. We’re pretty sure now what the announcement was.”
“This is awful. Awful!” exclaimed Dab. The actor’s face was drawn, bloodless.
“It’s worse than awful,” replied Romano. “I’m afraid there’s an even greater shock coming for you, Mr. Dab. Murder’s not the worst thing in the world, not from a cop’s standpoint, anyway. We like to solve a murder fast, but there’s no real urgency. The victim’s already dead. There’s no statute of limitations on murder. We can take all the time we want in tracking down a murderer. Years, sometimes. But kidnapping’s a different matter. In kidnapping, time’s the all-important factor. We have to solve a kidnapping in a matter of hours, days at most, or we almost always find the victim dead.”
“Kidnapping?” Dab’s expression was blank. “What’s kidnapping got to do with Phil’s death?”
“Patricia Linton, Phil’s granddaughter, has been kidnapped,” Romano said flatly.
Dab sank back in his chair. “Oh, no!” he cried. “Oh, my God, no! Not little Pat, Lieutenant! Not my little girl! When? How, man?”
“Don’t get impatient, honey boy,” said Romano. “It’s a tough story to tell, because it’s screwy. A little before one, while a dozen or so cops were stewing around at Linton’s house, another call came in to headquarters. It was from Detective Allan Walters. He was at a gas station, on a little country side road off the main highway in Westchester, just across the New York City line. He was pretty frantic. He’d had a date with Patricia Linton. It was a very important date. He was going to ask her to marry him. So he took her ’way up in Westchester to one of those farmhouse restaurants with candles on the table and prices high as a camel’s hump. Pat said yes, so they took a long time over dinner. Didn’t finish until nearly ten. They decided to do a little more celebrating at a roadhouse with a big-name band that was even farther up-country, but when they got there all the tables were taken, so they left and just drove around. The car had a heater, so they were cozy. Just after midnight, on the way back to town, they stopped at a roadside stand for hamburgers and coffee. Walters parked his car outside in a dark space near some trees. When they finished, he took a short cut, a side road, back to the main highway. He hadn’t got far when the car began to cough and spit, and then it stopped. He’d had a full tank when he started but he was out of gas. He figured somebody had siphoned his gas while he was parked at the hamburger joint. He remembered that he’d seen a gas station a few hundred yards back on the side road. It was closed, but it looked like one of those places where the proprietor combines his home and his business. He thought he could wake up the proprietor. He asked Pat to walk back with him. She said it was cold, the road was rough and she was wearing high heels. Pat’s a rugged girl who’s not afraid of the dark. She said she’d sit there in the car while her boy friend went back for a can of gas. Said she could keep the heater on. He didn’t argue too much. The road was deserted. One car came toward him while he was walking back to the gas station. He stood and watched it until it made a turn in the road, past the place where his own car with Pat in it was parked. He had some trouble waking the gas-station people and took a little abuse, but finally got a can of gas and went back up the road. The front door of his sedan was standing open. Pat wasn’t inside. She wasn’t anywhere. Walters threw in the can of gas and drove back to the station. He called the Westchester police from there, which was proper, then he called his own people. Headquarters was to send men up to work with the county boys. Walters didn’t know about Linton’s murder, of course. He couldn’t have. They’re going to bring him to the house to tell him. He’s probably there by now.”
Dab poured himself more Bourbon. “This is fantastic, Lieutenant,” he said.
“Yeah, honey boy,” replied Romano. “Murder and kidnapping and things like that are always fantastic. But they happen. One thing, the cops, especially the fingerprint men, think they’ve read those little cards that Linton arranged without any trouble. They’re pretty sure they know who killed him. But they want you to take a look at them before they’re disarranged.”
“They think they know the murderer? Who, Lieutenant? Who?”
“Linton’s foster son. Abner Ellison.”
Dab’s mouth fell open. His eyes stared. An expression of complete amazement that any actor might have envied was written on his face. The expression faded. Now there was nothing in the old man’s face but the blank, shocked look of death itself.
Inside his head there was an insistent sound like a whispering My son! My son! said the whispering voice. The little boy with the great, wide eyes that held so much of fear and hurt. The little boy I tried to comfort. The little hoy who became the only son I ever had. Abner. Little Ab. The human being I love most in the world. They’re telling me my little boy is vile, a murderer.
Dab shook his head, fought to regain control of himself. He said, “With all due respect, Lieutenant, are you quite insane? Ab? Impossible! Phil was a father to Ab from the time he was eight years old. He brought him up, housed him, fed him, educated him. They were devoted to each other. What possible motive