OFFICER KELLY, on post at the corner of 110th Street and Seventh Avenue, saw the fleeing cab first. He hadn’t heard anything at all about it, but he didn’t like the way the driver pulled from behind a truck, shot past the changing lights, and nearly ran down a colored man leading a white poodle on a bit of clothesline towards the confines of the park. Blowing his whistle, Kelly detached himself from the curb and stepped directly into the taxi’s path. He didn’t stay there—he jumped back just in time to keep the buttons from being shaved off his uniform by the near fender, and got a glimpse of the driver’s frightened face and license number.
Swearing lustily, he put the number in the alarm box at the next corner and took up his post again. The motorcycle man straddling his machine in a side street twenty blocks farther along was the next one to pick the cab up. Unfortunately he was on the wrong side of the avenue. Nevertheless he pressed the accelerator, opened the throttle wide, and gave chase.
Meanwhile the little radio car for the section to the north was cruising past the empty ball park when the alarm shrilled. Picking the numerals out of the air, the man at the wheel headed down the hill—not at a snail’s pace. The traffic officer at the bottom was shouting something to the motorcycle man in the snarl of traffic, when they reached the intersection of streets. The wanted car had just gone across the bridge. Both vehicles roared after it, under girders over the dark ribbon of the Harlem, picked out with red and green lights.
Halfway along that modest span is an opening to a ramp which turns sharp left. When the motorcycle flashed steadily east along the main fork, the radio car took this turn on two wheels. A stopped trolley at the foot of the little incline, a jam of people gesticulating indignantly. A woman had been hurt—not badly—by the fleeing cab. The little green Ford didn’t wait for details. A dozen willing voices and twice as many hands sent them towards the dark mouth of Sedgwick Avenue, opening towards the north.
The radio car rolled plenty then on broken-down macadam badly lighted, above the bank of the Harlem where railroad trains shunted to and fro and an occasional tug steamed tranquilly past. It wasn’t a crowded road. But at the shrill warning—the siren was on full—motor trucks grinding along drew sharply towards the curb, scattered cars bunched to a stop like frightened fowls. Under the arch of Washington Bridge a man and a girl in a roadster, roused abruptly from pleasanter things, stood up and pointed ahead. The cab was still invisible, but it had left plenty of evidence in its wake.
Rounding the sharp elbow above whose bank the Hall of Fame rears a stately crest, where famous men shiver in stone among the arches, they caught a glimpse of their quarry for the first time. The yellow-and-black taxi was swaying a little and moving at a dizzying pace. The officer at the wheel gave the car all he had, but the cab’s motor was a better one. The distance between the two vehicles widened. Suddenly they lost the cab in a V of converging streets where an ambulance cut sharply in. But not for long.
There is a dip in the terrain there, where Fordham Road is laid like a long snake between the breasts of twin hills sloping gradually towards the river. On the right Conklin’s Funeral Home is a decorous sheet of plate glass with monstrous green ferns behind it. As the radio car hurtled down the last slope, the driver put the brake on—hard. Their chase was over.
The fleeing cab, in an altercation with an advancing trolley, had crashed into the front of Mr. Conklin’s Home (which was no longer decorous) and stood, hood crumpled, fenders buried deep in an avalanche of falling glass fully across the pavement, surrounded by a rapidly increasing crowd of excited spectators.
The radio men persuaded, shoved, pushed men, women, and children out of their path. The taxi was a complete wreck. There were three people inside. The driver himself slumped over the wheel, his eyes half closed, blood all over his face, and a woman and a girl in the back. The woman had fainted. The girl, hat crazily sideways on her head, was kneeling on the floor at the woman’s feet and crying over and over again in a loud, monotonous singsong: “He’s gone, Mother, he’s gone. It’s all right … it’s all right. Won’t somebody please get a doctor? Mother, he’s gone!”
When Lieutenant Henry Barr left his home on Catherine Street that night to report for duty at the precinct, instead of following his usual custom, which was to take the trolley, he decided to walk, with the laudable intention of getting air down into his lungs and fat off his muscles. About a minute before the taxi crashed (he wouldn’t have heard it anyhow, he was too far east), he struck across a small park which would cut off a quarter of a mile of his journey—for, although the spirit was willing for exercise, the flesh was inclined to be weak. The park, except for an occasional tightly linked group, was empty at that hour. He had almost reached the gates of the old Sailors’ Home, that mellow landmark of another century, when he saw a running man leap through some bushes and start up the hill. The man had a knife in his hand. Reflected light from a street lamp drew a glimmer from along the blade. The lieutenant instantly gave chase.
Barr was inclined to be corpulent; on the other hand he knew the ground. The man dashed through a scattered clump of elms, disappeared under the walls of the building, and the lieutenant smiled grimly (for there was no out that way), simply walked to the far wing and waited. The fellow literally jumped into his arms. The struggle was short and sharp. Breathing deeply, Barr finally subdued him in the dense shadow of an old ship’s prow anchored to the grass. A final desperate fling and the small dark man, without any hat and with blood soaking one trouser leg, collapsed like a jellyfish, flat on the turf, and lay still. The lieutenant picked up the knife and put his whistle to his lips.
Three quarters of an hour later, when McKee and Tannin entered the circular sweep of that big building at the edge of what used to be the Claflin estate, the district attorney’s car was already there. So was the ambulance that had brought the waiter, and one of Conklin’s funeral coaches into which the taxi driver and the women had been put. The two men mounted the steps, Tannin pushed the door out of the way. Right and left of the square entrance hall corridors stretched, gleaming, arid, empty of dust and of germs, full of the smell of iodoform, the sweet clinging odor of anesthetics. An interne, Lieutenant Barr, who had effected the capture, and two plainclothesmen from the local precinct were standing in a knot near the desk. Armstrong was pacing up and down the polished floor, his rubber heels making a little squashing sound as he turned. His stenographer leaned against the wall, looking sleepy.
The district attorney advanced on the Scotsman and threw out his hands. He said with triumph: “Well, we’ve got him. I guess this is the end! Forestalled you this time. I was dining in the neighborhood. When the call came in I rushed right over. The women are merely shocked. I let them go. They and the taxi man tell the same story. He’s upstairs. Green, the waiter, is upstairs, too, in the operating room. They’re still working on him. He’ll be through in a couple of minutes.” Armstrong’s lips folded grimly.
And when McKee said nothing but simply looked inquiry, Armstrong continued: “Well, here’s the story. The cab these two women engaged had just started away from that house in Fifty-eighth Street when the waiter dashed out of the apartment house next door, leaped on the running board, wrenched open the door, jumped inside, whipped out a knife, told the driver to step on it, and threatened the three of them that if they yelled or in any other way attracted attention, he’d kill them all. Nice peaceful citizen! The rest you know. Only that the driver lost his nerve and finally smashed up at the corner of Sedgwick Avenue and Fordham Road, the fellow would have got away.
“You haven’t seen him yet, Armstrong?”
“No. They’d just taken him upstairs when I got here.”
“Did you—get the emerald?”
And at the D.A.’s blank stare of astonishment McKee smiled. “I forgot you didn’t know about that.” While they waited he outlined briefly the archeologist’s story, his hesitation over the name “Green,” his own interview with the hat-check girl, and his trailing of the waiter to the pawnshop. At the end, grudging respect animated Armstrong’s austere features. He said:
“Good work, Inspector. That was a long way to go from the bit of jade you found in the dancer’s bag. Didn’t have much to work with, did you? Well. We’d better have a look now.” He turned towards the young doctor with whom the lieutenant was conferring about his boy’s attack of measles. “Where are this fellow’s clothes?” And as the interne led the way down the hall to an office at the far end: “Did he kill her for the stone, Inspector? Looks like it—looks as though we’ve got a real case!”
McKee only shrugged, his shining gaze inscrutable behind short thick lashes which were always puckered in the same fashion when he was thinking—or puzzled. Armstrong continued: “There’s no doubt that he was desperate—hijacking that cab—whipping out that knife—by the way, it’s a small machete which he must have brought with him from South America to have handy. If we could prove his ownership of the pistol that shot the dancer, we’d be sitting pretty, eh?” Armstrong rubbed his hands together. He was in high good humor.
McKee said quietly: “That’s the weak point, that and the testimony of the janitor’s wife in the house next door to the Sanctuary, through which Green made his escape. I’m not yet entirely convinced in my mind that …” Armstrong swore under his breath. He had no use for such quibbling in the face of facts. His own legal training was too sound to permit him to ignore these loopholes, however. But they might wring a confession out of the waiter. They had their hands on him now—he couldn’t get away!
An attendant behind a slab produced a bundle from a locker marked “13” with profound indifference, threw it down on the counter, and returned to a moody perusal of a letter from his girl. McKee unrolled the neatly strapped clothing. The gray trousers stiff with dried blood were not informative. He pushed them aside. Neither were the socks, B.V.D.’s, a cheap white shirt, or a green tie. But the brown coat was. He felt in the pockets, took out some change, a key to the dancer’s apartment (you could tell that from the notches on the haft), another key of a very ordinary make (with which he had probably gotten into Telfair’s little house in Grove Street), a box of matches.
At a wave of the district attorney’s hand the interne and attendant had already withdrawn. The sergeant, Armstrong, and McKee were alone in front of the checkroom. The nursing home was very quiet. Off in the distance a stretcher was wheeled in and out of view, a bell rang some place, a nurse rustled across the hall carrying a feeding cup against the slam of a door blown by the wind.
McKee opened the matchbox. Tannin drew a deep breath. Armstrong said: “I’ll be damned!” The Scotsman didn’t say anything. Standing very still, they all stared down at the lump of green fire that burned inside the little wooden box and that had once rested, at the end of a platinum chain, in the dancer’s white breast.
It was the district attorney who made the decisive movement. Turning away he said trenchantly: “Well, I guess that’s about all we need. We’ll talk to this gentleman now!” The Scotsman didn’t follow him immediately. There was something else in the pocket of the waiter’s coat. He drew it out. It was a small black box, about three inches long by two wide by one deep, and was made of some dull wood smooth as a pearl from countless years of handling. He took off the lid. Inside were three small darkish objects about the size of pea beans varying a little in weight. McKee, studying them, looked blank and then suddenly startled and incredulous. He put out a tentative finger, rolled them over one by one. From behind his shoulder Tannin murmured: “Gee! Something else? More jewels?”
The Scotsman didn’t answer. Armstrong was waiting impatiently, a few feet away. An interne advanced towards them along the corridor, stripping rubber gloves from his hands, his face wet with perspiration above his surgeon’s gown. “You’re the police?” he asked curtly. “All right. Your man’s coming out from under the anesthetic now. Nasty wound. We’ve fixed him up. He won’t be able to talk long. Better take the elevator. First door on your right as you get out.”
The district attorney went in first. McKee followed him. Tannin remained in the hall. The room into which they stepped was small, narrow, painted gray, held a white bed, a dresser, a table, a screen, and one hard chair. A nurse was standing beside the bed holding a small pus basin in front of the patient. She drew back as the two officials appeared, wiping his lips with a piece of gauze. McKee closed the door behind him.
The waiter was just ahead on a pillow, very dark against the whiteness of stretched linen, his body a small flat mound beneath the counterpane. His eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling. His sallow skin was greenish, and there were heavy shadows under his eyes. But there was a curious dignity in his stripped aspect, the small compact skull, the straight nose, sharp jaw, delicate chin. He was conscious.
The district attorney addressed him. He said in a slow monotone: “Green—we don’t know what your real name is, but you killed Rita Rodriguez last night down in the Sanctuary. You might as well come clean now. We’ve got plenty of witnesses. And we have the emerald you killed her for. You might as well come clean—it will be easier for you in the long run. You can’t get away.”
This was not the opening McKee would have chosen. Standing to the left of the bureau in the gaunt room, he watched intently, almost as aloof as the man in the bed, thinking things over, weighing intangibles, drawing a thousand impressions, his senses curiously alert. The waiter neither moved nor spoke, but a change had come over him at the end of the district attorney’s slow, drawled statement. He kept on staring at the ceiling, but his face, his whole body, was locked suddenly in an unspeakable rigidity. It was as though, while they stared in the silence of that bare little cell, broken only by the rustle of the nurse’s starched uniform as she moved involuntarily, he was turning to stone, a petrification that nature achieves only after the passage of a thousand years.
Armstrong cleared his throat, gripped the iron rail at the foot of the bed tightly, leaned over it, as he repeated: “We’ve got the emerald,” raising his voice as though the waiter were deaf. And indeed he might well have been for all the attention he paid, his gaze fastened persistently on unbroken white plaster. But in spite of the man’s control a flicker ran across the immobility of olive-skinned features without touching eyes or lips, and that flicker rang a bell deep in McKee’s mind.
Once, fishing off the coast late at night, he had heard the same forlorn and mournful cry from a floating buoy. Reaching out, he put his hand on the D.A.’s shoulder. But Armstrong was oblivious. “Better tell the truth, Mr.—er—Green—that name will do as well as any for the Grand Jury. We have you dead to rights. The woman next door to the speakeasy saw you beating it right after Rita was shot. We’ve got the gun the job was done with. You can’t get away. Why did you kill her? Come on—speak up! What’s the use of it? If you give us a statement …” The waiter turned his head. It was only to motion towards a bowl of cracked ice on the table beside the bed. The nurse gave him a spoonful, and for a moment the only sound in the room was a crunching of ice behind strong white teeth. It was then that McKee took the black box from his pocket.
Sighing, he tapped it, and the little repeated sound was very loud in the confined space, against the footrail. This by-play startled the district attorney. He turned with a frown. But the Scotsman was speaking to the nurse.
“When this—gentleman—was undressed and taken to the operating room, was there—anything peculiar about him? Was he—mutilated in any way?”
The girl (she was quite young and stiff with professional pride, afraid of these big men, sorry for her patient) hesitated. As for the man in the bed, he was paying attention now, his eyes wide open, glaring, the pupils contracted in the space of a second to mere pin points. He looked like a man being hypnotized, drawn out of himself by some overwhelming force as though in another moment he would put the covers aside and leap at the Scotsman.
But he didn’t move. The nurse merely stood there at the bedside, looking down anxiously at the waiter, still speechless behind that terrible and staring gaze. McKee said, turning to the district attorney: “The things in this box belong to this gentleman in the very truest sense of the word. He was born wearing them. But no power on earth can restore them to him now. It’s too late. They are three of his toes, sliced off some time ago” (the nurse gasped) “by a person or persons unknown. Pleasant little memento to carry about with one, Armstrong? But—eh—Mr. Green doesn’t seem disposed to tell us about it now. There will be plenty of time later on. Shall we go?”
It was time. The man in bed suffered a sudden relapse, his eyes closed. He was breathing thickly. The two men left the room.