Silent Are the Dead Page 18

  Casey felt the .38 special in his hip pocket and took the print out of the fixing bath. It showed an envelope, a legal-size envelope with Stanford Endicott’s name in the upper lefthand corner. Across it was written For Miss Lyda Hoyt. That was all. Casey put it back in the fixing bath, stared at it; then something clicked inside his head and stirred his memory. The answer fell neatly into place.

  “The envelope she went to Endicott’s for,” he said aloud and remembered what she had said in Logan’s office, the commission she had given Endicott to get a pardon for her friend and how she had hurried there during intermission to get this envelope.

  She never had a chance to get it because Casey had surprised her. But Perry Austin had the chance. There were eight or ten minutes while Casey was following Dixon when he could look over the offices. He had found this envelope and taken it, along with something else, something that pointed to Dixon as the killer.

  What this something was, Casey did not know, or care. The envelope had nothing to do with Dixon or the murder and Austin had merely taken it because its contents looked promising. There would be a pardon inside, and Lyda Hoyt’s name on the outside, and he had planned to sell that envelope for what he could get. The mistake he had made was in picking up something else in that office and then going to Dixon with it.

  “The stupid fool!” Casey said bitterly. “He might just as well have cut his own throat as go to Dixon and try to shake him down. He knew by then he had killed Endicott.”

  The doorbell cut sharply across his thoughts, its shrill summons jarring his nerves. Startled into immobility he stood there for long seconds, feeling the tension wind up inside him. Dixon?

  He waited, half expecting the telephone to ring. Then he remembered that he had not had the call from Logan yet, the one that was to tell him that all details had been arranged. Through the window he could see that it was already dark outside. And where the hell was Logan?

  The bell rang again, stirring him to action. He pushed aside the darkroom curtain and went down the short hall to the living-room. Here he stopped, conscious of a strange tingling that vibrated all through him. He felt like a hunted animal waiting for the kill and realized this and that made him angry. “Nuts,” he said softly and reached for the .38. He cocked it as he stepped to the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Western Union,” a voice said.

  Casey grunted to himself, “That’s an old one.” Aloud he said, “Shove it under the door.”

  “I can’t. I got a package.”

  Casey turned the lock, drew back, bent an eye around the corner of the door. When he saw the uniform, he put the gun behind him and made the opening wider. He saw the small package in the boy’s hand.

  “Sign here.”

  Casey shoved the gun in his pocket, accepted the package and the receipt and pencil. “Wait a minute,” he said, and shut the door.

  He came back to the table, inspecting the package. He signed the paper, felt for a coin and found a quarter; then he went back, opened the door, and got rid of the boy. Back at the table he realized that the muscular stiffness that had crept over him had not yet released him. He laughed. An odd relief struck through him, and he jeered at himself.

  “You’re worse than an old woman.” He chuckled again, realizing that it had not been fear as such, but uncertainty and suspense that had keyed him up. “Old lady Casey,” he said and opened the package.

  It proved to be an oblong leather box with the name of an exclusive jeweler imprinted on the cover. He lifted this and a card fell out which he caught in midair. Upon the velvet lining of the box was a wrist watch and when he saw it he sucked in his breath and blew it out in a soft whistle.

  The name, Mr. Grant Forrester, was engraved on the card and there was some writing on the front and back. Casey read: I hope this will replace the one I broke for you, and some day I want you to show me that right cross. It’s a honey— Lyda sends her love— Grant.

  The glow that came over Casey was like that produced by 20-year-old brandy. He read the card over again and said, “A nice guy,” and looked at the watch. It was thin, streamlined, and rectangular. It looked like platinum and he thought probably it was, and on the face was stamped Patek-Philipe. He strapped it on and was still admiring it when the telephone shrilled beside him. He jumped for it, pulse quickening again. “Yeah?”

  It was Logan. His voice was calm, matter of fact. “Okay?” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “We’re all set. The sergeant and I’ll be around until two or so and then somebody else’ll be waiting. He may not show tonight but—take care of yourself now, you big ox.”

  Casey said he would and hung up. He put the card from Forrester in his pocket, glanced approvingly at the watch again, and went back to the darkroom.

  When he saw the print of the envelope in the fixing bath, his thoughts came back to Lyda Hoyt—and Austin. He thought he knew what the other three negatives would yield. One would be a copy of the pardon Endicott had secured. The others? He held these two up to the safe-light. They looked like copies of newspaper clippings.

  Ten minutes later he saw that he had been right. He did not bother to examine the three prints then, but left them in the fixing bath and started to clean up. Later, while the prints were washing, he made a drink and went back to the living-room. He sat with the drink and a cigarette for several minutes, thinking about many things until finally the focus was on Bernie Dixon. Down deep where he had buried it a single thought struggled for attention, and when it continued to nag him Casey got up and went to the bedroom.

  From the night table, he took a small wooden-handled automatic. A Mauser. A .25 caliber and the lightest gun of its type he had ever owned. He balanced it in his palm, hefting it, his eyes narrowed in thought while one part of his brain insisted that he was being silly and the other argued just as strongly that he could afford to overlook no possibility, no matter how remote.

  In the end, just a little sheepishly, he gave in to this second line of reasoning. A trap had been laid for Bernie Dixon. On the face of it, he did not seem to have a chance of getting in this apartment without being seen. Yet Dixon was a desperate man now, a hunted man. He had become convinced that Casey alone stood between him and a murder conviction. With Casey gone, Dixon could take his chances with the processes of law. He had money for the best lawyers and would be a hard man to convict; in fact he undoubtedly thought that he could not be convicted without Casey’s testimony.

  Well, that was okay. That was exactly what Casey wanted him to think. So—why take anything for granted? Why not take every available precaution? Just in case Dixon proved to be smarter than they expected him to be. And don’t forget either, he thought, Dixon’s probably pretty clever with a gun, and you’re not.

  “Hell, yes,” Casey said. “I’m bait but no dope.” He inspected the automatic, made sure there was a shell in the chamber, slipped on the safety. Over at the dresser, he rummaged in a drawer and found a man’s sewing-kit someone had once given him. He had used it occasionally when important buttons came off, and now he found thread and tested the breaking strength of the four little spools.

  The one he selected was black, and he sat on the bed, measured off a length, and made a noose at one end. He took off his coat and vest, slipped the noose over his head, and held the free end across his chest and down his right arm as far as the wrist, breaking off the .thread at that point. After that he removed the noose, tied the other end to the trigger guard of the automatic.

  He had some trouble getting his coat and vest on, and tie gun adjusted the way he wanted it. He was afraid he might break the thread, and took it easy, stopping to curse himself for a fool now and then, but keeping at the job until, in the end, he stood up with the automatic hanging inside his coat sleeve, its muzzle about an inch back from the cuff. It felt all right and he didn’t think it showed much of a bulge. He moved his arm this way and that, holding it out from his body and then shoulder high; finally he lowered i
t, deciding that unless someone was actually looking for a gun in his sleeve it would go unnoticed.

  Back in the darkroom, he took the three remaining prints from the water, rolled them and put them on the drier. Then, keeping his curiosity in check until he could inspect them properly, he took all of them back to the living-room and sat down.

  He put the photograph of the envelope on the floor and examined the one reproducing the pardon. He could read most of it and saw that it was signed by the governor of a Middle Western state and that it granted a full pardon to Lucille Miter for a conviction handed down 12 years previously. This, then, was the job Stanford Endicott had done for Lyda Hoyt, and repeating the name, Lucille Miter, half-aloud, Casey stared across the room, his frown putting funny humps and wrinkles in his face.

  When his gaze finally came back to the photograph he dropped it beside the one of the envelope and inspected the remaining two, realizing that his guess about the negatives had been correct: both photographs were reproductions of newspaper clippings which looked old and discolored. The instant he read the first headline he knew why, for they were as old as the crime for which Lucille Miter was sentenced 12 years ago.

  The first said, Two Caught in Jewel Break, and as Casey read the subhead and tried to follow the rest of the story he saw that it bore out the statement Lyda Hoyt had made. A man giving his name as Frank Sanger had tried to stick up a jewelry store, and the girl, who had been sitting outside in a car, was arrested as an accomplice.

  The second clipping was smaller than the first and said,

  Sentence Two in Holdup Attempt

  Found guilty of the abortive attempt to hold up Steiger’s jewelry store last month, Frank Sanger was sentenced by Judge Dunn this morning to serve five to ten years in the State Penitentiary. Lucille Miter, his pretty girl accomplice, was given a one-to-two year term in the Women’s Reformatory.…

  Casey thought, It’s all there. Except the clipping that tells about the accident and her escape.

  He was never sure how long he sat there thinking about these things he had read, and what Perry Austin had done. He smoked two cigarettes, hardly moving in his chair, holding the photographs in one hand but staring vacantly at the spot of blank wall over the divan. When the second cigarette burned his finger, he put it out and stood up.

  Taking the prints back to the kitchen, he found the negatives, put them all together. In the lower drawer of his desk were some large-size envelopes and he folded the prints once and sealed them in the envelope, thinking all the time of Perry Austin. He walked back and forth across the room, his chin down and eyes morose, feeling now and then the pressure of the little automatic against his arm. When he noticed his empty glass he went back to the kitchen and made another drink. He had carried it back to the living-room when the doorbell rang loud and insistent.

  The sudden explosion of sound stiffened Casey and he looked at the door, waiting for the ringing to stop. He put down the glass, and suddenly the tension was clamping about him. For the bell was still ringing, a jangling, discordant note that rolled on and on in nerve-fraying crescendo, piling up against his eardrums until he wanted to shout. When he could stand the sound no longer, he started for the door, reaching for his gun. He was about halfway there when the ringing stopped and the silence struck back. He had the gun in his hand now and had nearly opened the door before he remembered and called, “Who is it?”

  “Got a message for you, Mister,” a small voice said.

  Casey could tell it was a child’s voice, but it could still be a trick and he inched the door open carefully, the gun ready. Outside stood a small, dirty-nosed boy with an envelope in his hand.

  “You Mr. Casey? Here.” He thrust the envelope at Casey, wheeled and was gone.

  “Hey. Wait a minute!” Casey said, but he could already hear the running feet on the stairs. “What the hell,” he said, and put the gun away, and started to look at the envelope. He saw his name on the front of it, the apartment number. Then the telephone rang.

  Still confused by the boy and his unexpected flight, he found the sudden clangor a startling, nerve-jarring sound and stared at the instrument as at something he had never before seen. A second ticked by. Then he remembered and jumped for it, a sudden apprehension vibrating along his spine. Was this it? Was there some connection between this ringing and the boy’s note? He scooped at the telephone, stilled it.

  The first thing he heard was a man swearing. Apparently not at him but at some operator, for the swearing broke off abruptly and the voice yelled, “Casey? He’s on his way up. Back door—”

  “Put it down! Now!”

  The thin, taut voice coming from behind hit Casey like an avalanche. He caught his breath and stiffened, nerves frozen, every muscle tight. The back of his neck was all goose flesh. He could not move. He could not even think until the voice rapped at him again.

  “Okay, then—”

  Casey pushed the telephone away as though it had burned him, hearing another voice in the earpiece that sounded urgent but thin and indistinct. It stopped suddenly and he wondered about it until he realized he had hung up. He got his weight on both legs. It was a tremendous physical effort in those first few seconds to make himself move but he did, turning slowly, the bottom dropping out of his stomach.

  Bernie Dixon was in the doorway of the inner hall. He had a heavy automatic in his hand. His coat collar was turned up and his hat brim was low; beneath it was a tight gray face and a hueless slash of a mouth.

  Chapter Twenty-Two: NEAT AND QUICK

  CASEY STOOD VERY STILL, some fragment of his brain sending out the curious thought that even now Dixon looked well-dressed and dapper. He was not exactly the Dixon of the Club Berkely, but he didn’t have to be now. He moved slowly into the room with a sliding, flat-footed shuffle, his shrewd little eyes darting in all directions at once until he was satisfied they were alone. Only then did he relax and let his gaze become fixed.

  “Turn around!”

  Casey hesitated. He was still all tight and rigid inside, but he didn’t want Dixon to know; he wanted to make him think there was all the time in the world.

  “Hello, Bernie,” he said, and glanced down at the envelope in his hand. “There isn’t anything in this, is there? You sent the kid up to give the bell a good long ring so I wouldn’t hear you unlock the back door, huh? Very neat.”

  Apparently Dixon didn’t care for the digression. “I said, turn around!”

  Casey took his turn deliberately.

  “Hold your arms out!”

  The gun hit him in the ribs as Dixon spoke and Casey put his elbows up, keeping his palms forward and bulging the muscles of his forearm against the little automatic in his sleeve. He felt Dixon’s hand slap his hips and was curiously relieved, for this meant the man wasn’t going to start shooting for a minute or so, not until he’d made his search.

  The probing hand found the .38 special in Casey’s hip pocket, withdrew it, continued patting his pockets and sides and armpits. When the pressure of the gun against his spine was removed, he turned.

  Dixon had backed away; he was eyeing the gun he had taken from Casey, and the slash which was his mouth dipped at one corner. “I can use this one just as well,” he said, and shifted it to his right hand. “Waiting for me, huh. Didn’t think I could get in.”

  “You had a key,” Casey said. “You couldn’t have picked that lock while that bell was ringing.”

  “I came up the back way two days ago.”

  “After you found out your two hoods had fluffed it.”

  “Right. I didn’t know what I was going to have to do and I like odds when I can get them. I made an impression of the lock and got a key. For a while I thought I wasn’t going to have to use it— Who was that on the phone?”

  “The office.”

  “You sure?” Dixon pushed back his hat with the muzzle of the automatic and Casey saw the film of moisture on the forehead.

  “What difference does it make now?” he said.
<
br />   “None, I guess. You asked for this and now you’re gonna get it, Casey.”

  “And what happens to you?” Casey was keeping his voice level, now but all the time he was thinking, watching the narrow frames of Dixon’s eyes, trying to read them, wondering how much time he had left. Where the hell was Logan? In another minute or two he ought to be outside with his men. But—how would they get in?

  “Me?” Dixon grunted softly. “Nothing, maybe. Anyway, I have to take a chance, don’t I? I might get away with this. I can hole up for a few months until I find out what the score is. What have I got to lose?”

  Lamp light gleamed from Dixon’s forehead now and made his skin look sallow. He was getting nervous and Casey knew it, knew that somehow he had to keep talking, keep Dixon’s attention centered on what he said.

  For Casey saw how the odds stood now. He had a gun up his sleeve but he couldn’t hope to stand here and get it out and still have time to use it. The idea had seemed pretty cute at the time; now it didn’t stand up so well. One bad move and Dixon would start shooting. That little automatic was no good unless he could shield his intention until he had it in his hand. Even then Dixon might beat him to the first shot.

  “You’d’ve been all right, I guess,” he said, “if it hadn’t been for that bond rap against Endicott. He knew they had him cold and he was going to sing for a light sentence. And then the judge would’ve thrown the book at you.” He went on, talking fast, never for an instant relaxing his study of the other’s eyes. He told about Logan’s theory, of the auto-accessory store and the wholesale jeweler who had served as outlets for stolen goods that Dixon and Endicott had provided.

  “You know a lot,” Dixon said.

  “But you wouldn’t leave Endicott’s wife alone, would you? And so he put Harry Nye on you and got the goods. That made it sure Endicott would cop a plea if he could. Did you go down to his office to kill him or make up your mind after you got there?”