THE EFFORTLESS functioning of a perfect police machine relieves wear and tear on the individual and permits each man to work at the highest degree of efficiency. Following the cab ahead was the chauffeur’s business. But curiosity is an emotion that transcends expediency. After a moment McKee opened his eyes. The taxi swung left around a green light and up the now almost deserted lane of Fifth Avenue. He eyed its fleeing bulk speculatively. Where was its occupant going?
On the left, deep shadows beneath invisible trees; on the right, street lamps wreathed in drizzle. Tudor mansions, Norman châteaus, Elizabethan manors, Italian palaces which house the rich in an incongruous jumble, slid rapidly past. Sixty-second, Sixty-fourth … they were gaining on the cab now. At Sixty-sixth a lighted bus chugged away from the curb. The taxi, riding close, swerved and shot sharply across its bows. The bus shrieked to an indignant stop, barring the entrance to Sixty-eighth Street. The Cadillac piled up alongside; Pete, gripping the wheel hard, hurled a lurid stream of oaths. McKee glanced sideways. Nothing remained of their quarry but a red taillight, retreating rapidly along the side street. This vanished.
The Scotsman looked startled. As if to remove a certainty in his own mind, he glanced at the numbered plate on the tall iron stanchion close to the corner, then tapped on glass. “Never mind, Pete,” he said softly. “Turn right at the next corner.”
Sixty-ninth was a west-bound street dimly lighted in slanting rain. The Cadillac ran east along it, purring at a low direction to a mere walk. “Stop here.” Their lights were off now. A man went by on the opposite pavement under an umbrella, a big gray limousine splashing rain slid towards Fifth, behind the limousine—McKee sat forward on the edge of the seat—the green-and-silver taxi with the aluminum fenders came slowly into sight, just visible against the diffused glare of Madison Avenue beyond it. It stopped a hundred feet away. A man got out of the cab. He was not alone. There was a woman with him. The man was carrying a bag. They crossed the pavement. Light was a bright rectangle in the face of a tall narrow house as the door opened. They went in. The rectangle vanished.
With a swift “Get that taxicab number, Pete, and watch the house those people went into until I come back,” to the chauffeur behind the wheel of the Cadillac, McKee was out of it and loping east with a long steady swing that put distance behind him rapidly. He realized Tannin’s predicament when he found the penthouse empty. But the sergeant would know what to do. Inside a telephone booth in a drugstore on the corner of Lexington Avenue, be got the Homicide Squad. He was right. The clerical man had a number at which he could reach Tannin. McKee said into the mouthpiece, “Have him grab a cab and get up here as fast as he can. He’s to bring Peters. Tell them to meet me at the Park wall, Sixty-ninth and Fifth.”
The sergeant made good time tumbling out of the cab before it had come to a full stop. Taking them with him, the inspector pointed out the location, gave orders, narrow-lipped, abstracted. “Peters, cover the back. Remember it’s the third from the corner.” The precinct man vanished in wetness, praying devoutly for an empty lot. Devil of a job waking people up and telling them you wanted to go through their back yards!
McKee advanced on the narrow house. As they moved towards it side by side, Tannin said in a low voice: “What’s it all about, Chief?” And the Scotsman answered: “I’m going to pay a call on Mrs. Philip Barcley and find out who the two people are who left that penthouse in such a hurry and came straight here. This is the address she gave us down in the speakeasy. You cover the front.” With a wave he mounted two wide shallow steps and put his finger to the bell.
The delay was overlong before the grilled iron door opened a very little and a man in a green uniform, with silver buttons glinting, thrust out a bleak, inquiring face. The inspector made the opening wider by the simple expedient of thrusting himself into it, stepped carelessly past the man into the soft illumination of a handsome hall with a marble staircase ascending to the left.
“I want to see Mrs. Barcley, please, at once.” And against the fellow’s amazed stammer that it was very late, that Mrs. Barcley had retired, “Tell her that Inspector McKee of the Homicide Squad is here. I won’t detain her more than a few minutes.”
The man went away. McKee moved, too; advanced noiselessly to the foot of the stairs and listened. Above him somewhere, after a minute, the sound of whispering. The man came back too soon to have gone as far as Mrs. Barcley’s bedroom, which would be in a house like this, on the third floor. If the inspector would wait …?
“Thanks. I’ll wait upstairs. Mrs. Barcley won’t have so far to come. You needn’t accompany me. Stay where you are.”
The fellow, rooted to the floor, stared helplessly at his ascending back. McKee paused at the head of the first flight and looked around. He was in a Directoire foyer opening through double doors (closed) into what was probably a library at the back. There was a drawing room on the right. The drawing-room door was open. The inspector went through it and looked around. It was a very beautiful room. The woodwork was glazed in antique turquoise, with three paintings—one a Boucher—let into it at intervals. The furniture, which he guessed as fifteenth- and sixteenth-century, included a grand piano, finished in gold and ivory, a Louis Fifteenth canape with curved legs, a fauteuil in mauve velvet, a petite commode in … there was a hat lying on top of the commode. McKee stared at it fixedly, his lashes together. The only thing arresting about it as a head covering was the fact that Colonel Waring, the man with Mrs. Barcley in the Sanctuary, had been holding it in his hand while he answered questions. The colonel must be in the house now.
With that motionless padding slouch that made him look like a leopard now and again, the Scotsman crossed black velvet carpet under chandeliers in crystal and silver, pushed rose-colored hangings aside, and gazed into the Georgian library. Charming. Whoever had designed these rooms had excellent taste. Odd in the first place, and constantly becoming odder, that Mrs. Barcley should leave surroundings such as these to seek diversion in the tawdry furbishings of the Sanctuary garden. Recessed shelves were full of tooled-leather books, Chinese porcelains. There were some Chippendale and Queen Anne chairs, a monk’s stool, an Elizabethan trestle near the fireplace … His glance stopped at the fireplace. No cigarette butts in it, but something dully black against glazed black tiles.
The Scotsman turned his head. No sound of footsteps, nothing but the light patter of rain against the dull roar of the city beyond the walls. In an instant he was beside the hearth, down on his knees, still listening, his fingers moving swiftly. The thing on the tiles was a bit of charred paper. With the most delicate care he managed to get this up intact with the aid of a picture postal card his landlady’s daughter had providentially sent him from Niagara Falls, and had just the fraction of a second to insert it into his pocket and make the drawing room in front of the sound of low voices.
Mrs. Barcley came slowly into the room, followed by Waring, pausing just inside the door. She was pale now, paler than she had been in the speakeasy, and her features were pinched above the blue negligee trimmed with expensive fur that didn’t quite conceal the fabric of the gown she had had on in the Sanctuary and still wore. There were mules on her feet. They were pulled on over stockings; and, yes, tearmarks streaked powder on thin, sallow cheeks. They both tried to look surprised behind polite inquiry. The colonel succeeded. Mrs. Barcley didn’t And as she stood there staring at him, her nose took a sharper edge, the outline of her thin lips became more defined.
McKee apologized suavely for his intrusion, and on top of that said, “But before I go any farther, may I trouble you to ring for your butler?”
She was frightened behind brittle composure, masked it with movement, crossing to a chair while Waring rang the bell. When the man appeared, McKee said: “There is a detective at the back door, one at the front also. Ask the man at the front to step up here, will you,”
As the butler left the room, Waring said: “But, my dear fellow, is this necessary?” smiling indulgently at the histrionics of police routine. The Scotsman was equally casual—and apologetic.
“Just the usual procedure, Colonel. We’re not so brave as we’re reputed to be. An officer never advances on a place alone, for two good reasons: He doesn’t know what he’s going to find (someone might try to slip away), and then there’s got to be a witness to all testimony.”
Mrs. Barcley was drawing her negligee carefully about her slim body, erect on the edge of the chair. Waring drawled: “But—eh—why advance on this house?”
Tannin appeared in the doorway. McKee didn’t look at him but at their unwilling hostess, sitting motionless, ringed hands buried in her sleeves.
“Because we followed a man and a woman here from an apartment on Fifty-ninth Street, an apartment from which someone escaped by the back way while the police were at the front. We went there to get hold of a man named Gregory Archer. He was not at home. Can either of you tell us where he is?”
The room was very still. A clock ticked somnolently somewhere. Mrs. Barcley didn’t move, and yet, sitting perfectly still, she looked suddenly much more dead than Rita Rodriguez on the Sanctuary floor. Every bit of color had vanished from under her skin, her teeth protruded, her eyes began to glaze. The colonel sprang towards her as she slid sideways. And holding her in his arms, he shouted angrily over her bent head: “Archer’s her son, damn you! Ring for her maid. She’s fainted.”