CHAPTER I

THE WEATHER prediction for May twenty-first was “clear and cooler.” As a matter of fact it was hot and rained on and off all day—which didn’t make any difference in the end.

McKee went up the last flight of stairs in the long gray building on Centre Street that night fishing for a minnow. He caught a whale. No sign of it then. It was exactly ten-three when he opened the last door and stepped inside.

The radio room was an inverted finger bowl of dull gold. Light flowed back from the rounded walls, stopped at a patch of sky dark above the ventilators. In the middle of the floor three big tables formed a hollow square at one end. The top of the tables was a map of the five boroughs divided by colored cords into little red sectors and bigger gray ones. Scattered over the red sectors were numbered brass disks representing the green scout cars carrying two uniformed men, one to each red division and, moving about the gray ones, the unrecognizable master cars loaded with detectives, machine guns, tear-gas and smoke bombs. There was a microphone at the far end of the room; at right angles a short distance away, the sending apparatus.

There were two operators inside the square, keen young men in blue broadcloth shirts, head sets on, watching the movement of patrols with intent eyes. A third man, Lieutenant Balcom, sat at a desk thumping a typewriter. When the head of the Manhattan Homicide Squad came in, Balcom jumped up, his hand out. He said to the tall lean man in smoky tweeds:

“Well, this is a pleasure, Inspector. What can I do for you?”

McKee smiled. “I’ve been out of the city on a case—just back.” And put his request: A man the patrol had picked up in Brooklyn the night before. “He’s a Negro, twenty-one or -two, probably done time, probably gave a false name, also. He’s a fellow I’m after as a witness.”

“Right, Inspector, I’ll run through what we’ve got if you’ll wait.”

That was at ten-five. While Balcom went through the turnover for the last twenty-four hours stabbed on the file on his desk, McKee picked up the Annual Police Report, skipped the picture of the mayor, and began to read the commissioner’s summary of crime, with his customary morose expression:

“Crimes of violence decreased 2.6% as compared with the year 1931. There were 11 less murders and manslaughters committed than in the year 1931. Of the 478 cases of murder and manslaughter reported, 118 of those killed had criminal records. There were thirty-two less homicides committed with the use of firearms than in the year 1931. Felonious assaults were 4.3% higher than in the year 1931. Burglary cases reported were 9.7% lower than in the year 1931. Grand larceny cases …”

Balcom turned, flourishing a sheet of paper. Behind his shoulder the minute hand of the clock jerked forward. Six minutes after ten. Balcom said: “This may be the fellow you’re looking for. Call came in last night that a haberdashery store in south Brooklyn was being broken into. Broadcast the message to cars in that sector. When they got there, a smashed window—nothing else. They let us know. We then sent a general alarm through the entire district. A car a half-mile away saw a Negro lurking in a doorway. He might have been all right, then again he mightn’t. Our men hopped out to look him over. The Negro ran up some stairs. They followed. He had a big box under his arm. They asked him about that, and he said he’d been shopping. It was three o’clock in the morning. They opened the box. Six shirts, a flock of ties, B. V. D.’s, a dozen pairs of socks. They brought him in. He gave his name as Harold Kraft. His yellow sheet’s got plenty on it. I’m afraid——”

Then and there Mr. Kraft ceased to be of the slightest interest. A phone rang. The other men were busy. Balcom picked it up and listened. McKee listened, too, half absently at first, scarcely recording. In the still air of the golden bowl the voice of a man at the other end of the wire was distinctly audible, high, breathless, and edged thinly with hysteria: “Police Headquarters? Police … She’s dead. Right before our eyes … on the Sanctuary floor …” The voice stopped. Something banged, there was a muffled cry, a pause filled with silence, then a click. Balcom jiggled the hook up and down and swore. He said into the mouthpiece: “Operator, operator, Police Headquarters. I’ve been cut off. Trace the call that just came in. Hurry!” and turned to the inspector with a groan. “A woman dead in a church, and there are only two thousand, eight hundred and nine of them in the city. That’s all.”

McKee didn’t answer. He tossed aside the report he had been reading with satisfaction, thrust his hands into his pockets. His gaze touched walls, floor, ceiling. The “Sanctuary”… somewhere … recently … at his elbow the operator’s voice was nasal out of black rubber. “Sorry, Headquarters, can’t locate that call for you. Dial phone.”

Balcom slammed the receiver back on the hook and stared helplessly. If he’d gotten the location of the church the radio car would be on its way there now. The inspector went on thinking: “Sanctuary, Sanctuary!” The picture began to fade in. A chair, a lamp, a magazine. Telfair’s place, sketches in a magazine, a new weekly printed on good paper, “Bab … Babylon!” He said quietly:

“The Sanctuary is a speakeasy on Thirteenth Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. The number is 604.”

Balcom was across the floor in three strides. A quick look at the map for the number on the brass disk covering the location, at the microphone then. He reached up, pulled a lever. On the opposite side of the room, lamps in the transmitter were a blue glare behind wire netting. Crash and bang as though a bomb had dropped, above it, high, thin, electric, an owl’s hoot to let the men in the cruising cars know that an alarm was about to be sent out. Balcom put his face close to the bronze disk, said slowly and distinctly, “Car 253, Car 253, Sixth precinct, 604 West Thirteenth Street, Code signal 30, Time 10:09 P. M.” He stepped back.

McKee was already at the desk, crouched negligently over the department phone. Six words to the Telegraph Bureau next door: “Homicide, speakeasy, 604 West Thirteenth Street.” Six words alone were required for all concerned to report to the scene of the crime, medical examiner, district attorney on homicide duty, his stenographer, fingerprint men, photographer, district and borough commanders, the assistant chief, and the police commissioner himself, every one of them available at any hour of the day or night. This done, he pushed the phone away, picked up another, got his own office, and said, his voice unhurried and sure: “Hello, Steve. The inspector. Who’s doing night duty? … All right. Send them down to the Sanctuary.” He gave the address, put the receiver back on the hook, turned away, felt for a cigarette, didn’t light it, fell into a dreamless slumber on his feet, tall, slouching; cavernous eyes fixed, wide open. Who had a line on the speaks in the neighborhood? Hughes, the taxi starter at Twenty-third Street, for whom he’d done a favor, was thoroughly familiar with the lower West Side. He got the number and waited.

The radio room couldn’t wait. Calls coming in now—fast. Crime fermenting in the darkness, patience wearing thin, endurance ebbing. Bang and jar of the transmitter, steel flash, high whine of the signal. A man was trying to climb in a second-story window on 56th Street, a dog had been run over on Atlantic Avenue, a woman had taken iodine in a drugstore on Sutton Place. A hit-and-run driver.… McKee got Hughes and put his question: “Hello, Hughes, Inspector McKee. Who runs that speak called the Sanctuary on Thirteenth Street? Gus and Louis? … Citizens … I see. Fancy crowd?… Thanks. Yes, sometime soon.”

Already Balcom had reversed the little brass disk on the red sector bounded by Twelfth Street on the south and Seventeenth on the north. As McKee went past him with that deceptively languid stride, the lieutenant grinned and saluted.

“Luck, Inspector. Our men are probably there now.”

McKee nodded, waved a hand, opened the door, closed it behind him. He was in the Telegraph Bureau. In a shabby glare khaki-shirted men in black ties were ranged either side of a long switchboard, their faces moon ovals beneath eyeshades. Behind glass in a corner, another official commanded receiving and sending teletype machines. The Policewoman’s Bureau, the stairs. Down and down through the silent building, past the chief surgeon’s office, the line-up room, into the lower hall with its information booth; wall on the right hung with bronze tablets where one could only be inscribed with honor by being dead, through the revolving door to the street. Pete, policeman chauffeur, behind the wheel of the Cadillac, waiting. Thirty seconds later, with the blue plate in the windshield, the car was flashing north, its way cleared, past lights, through the dark labyrinth of the chill night streets.

Meanwhile pandemonium raged, discordant, ugly behind the grilled iron doors of one of New York’s smartest speaks. The Sanctuary was crowded that night. Bankers, brokers, artists, writers, men about town, women who should have known better, young people out on a bender, a sprinkling of social registerites, sightseers, sitting at small tables in soft light, perfumed with the odor of flowers, of wine, and of food, were shocked into cold sobriety in the twinkling of an eye. At one moment everything was just as usual. The long room was full of the tuneful wailings of the sax, the plucked notes of a violin, murmur of voices, figures shadowy above white cloths, people moving cautiously in gloom, cigarette tips glowing, glasses suspended in air, all eyes fastened with almost hypnotic compulsion on the slender gleaming figure in the middle of the dance floor. At the next, no one seemed quite to understand exactly what had happened, except that the delicately molded shaft of ice and glitter, arms extended, stopped whirling in full flight and tumbled, with a thud you could hear above the music, to the floor. One long-drawn shocked breath and the restaurant was a shambles of china and glass and incoherent babble. “What happened? … A stroke? … She’s dead.… Did you say she was dead? … A doctor, better get a doctor! … Heart, I guess.… Let’s get out of here!”

A doctor and the proprietor stampeded through the press. The spotlight, motionless on empty boards, had been turned off, the lamps on full. The doctor knelt, peered, sought for a pulse, didn’t find one, laid his head against silver lamé, took it away again, turned back an eyelid, and looked at the proprietor, who acted with a speed and decision surprising in a man of his bulk.

“Ladies and gentlemen … an accident … most regrettable … If you will all step into the inner dining room?” His voice was hollow out of colorless lips in a face exuding moisture. No one had the slightest desire to remain in the garden. There was a concerted rush for the door at the far end. Even the doctor went to have a brandy in the bar when he saw he couldn’t be of the slightest use. That was at ten minutes after ten. At ten-sixteen the radio patrol rolled up.

The police were just in time. The doctor, warmed by liquor to a regard for his civic duties, commandeered a couple of waiters in an attempt to hold the doors. Another moment and the clamoring crowd would have broken bounds. Some sort of order was at once restored. Detectives from the local precinct entering the speak at ten twenty-two were a help. Sergeant Halloway was in command. He shoved excited guests back into the inner dining room under guard. Another man took up a position at the foot of the stairs leading to the ladies’ room on the second floor, a detective went into the garden, and a uniformed man was assigned to the dark areaway to see that no one slipped past. That was the only entrance or exit.