CHAPTER III

THERE WAS menace in the voice of the news commentator. It lurked behind his vivid descriptions of marching feet and rolling caissons, made doubly strong by words he couldn’t say. Subtly, with sharp, clean-cutting phrases, he pictured the forces of a nation on the move; told of women and children waiting for death in huddled groups; hinted at the terror which gripped the world when a country was wiped from the map of Europe in a day.

Captain Duncan Maclain pressed the control button at the side of his desk. The voice from the Capehart radio stopped abruptly. The Captain touched sensitive fingers to his sightless eyes and sat very still. At his feet under the desk, Schnucke, his Seeing-Eye dog, was caught by the darkness of the usually bright penthouse office and the solemnity of her master’s mood. She whimpered slightly and comforted herself by resting her warm chin on the toe of the Captain’s shoe.

“War, Schnucke!” said Duncan Maclain. “You’re lucky to be a dog in days like these. You’re living in a world gone mad with senseless slaughter—a world that’s blind. Blind, as the last war blinded me!”

Schnucke answered the sound of her name by moving her head companionably. Maclain’s fine mobile mouth smiled into the gloom. It was satisfying to philosophize with Schnucke. She lived a life of such delightful fundamentals with never a word to say. He reached down and felt the wetness of her nose against his palm. Affectionately her tongue touched the back of his hand as he drew it away.

The room seemed uncomfortably warm. Maclain left the chair, back of his wide, flat-topped desk, and walked with quick sure steps to the terrace door. He moved with ease in the familiar surroundings, confident that each piece of furniture was in its accustomed place, firmly fixed to the floor.

For an instant after he opened the latch, he stood holding the French door ajar against the push of the late December storm. Twenty-six stories above Seventy-second Street and Riverside Drive the wind had full sway. Stinging snow beat in through the two-inch crack, tearing smartingly at his face and hands. He shivered under the blast and closed the door. The wind moaned defeat and further wet the dripping diamond panes with a defiant splash of mingled rain and snow.

A thermostat heat regulator was on the wall at the end of the bookcase filled with Braille. The Captain brushed the heavy volumes lightly in passing, located the small arrow at the base of the thermometer, and turned the heating lower. He selected a volume from the bookcase,—Van Loon’s Ships and How They Sailed the Seven Seas,—sat down at the desk, and began finger reading.

Smoking and reading failed to quiet a feeling of restlessness. He was glad to be interrupted by the buzz of his private phone.

There were two telephones on his desk. One was a unit of the regular apartment-house system connecting with the lobby switchboard twenty-six floors below; the other was smaller and operated by push buttons. It formed a link of seven phones in his apartment which gave communication from room to room. The Captain ignored both phones on the desk and turned to his left-hand top drawer. He opened it and took out a regular French type of dial phone. Not more than a dozen people knew the number. He mentally reviewed the short list before he lifted the receiver from its cradle and said, “Hello!”

“Has your man arrived?” The crisp voice of Spud Savage, the Captain’s partner and closest friend, crackled over the wire.

“He’s late,” said Maclain. “I’ll spend the night in town, Spud. He’ll certainly be here soon.”

“That’s what I wanted to know.” There were a few seconds of silence at the other end. “Look, Dunc. I’ll be in within an hour and a half to spend the night there with you.”

“Has it occurred to you that we’re guests at a Long Island house party for Christmas?” Maclain asked brightly. No one but Spud Savage and his wife Rena, who had been Maclain’s secretary for years, could have detected the underlying annoyance in the Captain’s tone.

“Yes, it’s occurred to me,” Spud mimicked. “And it’s occurred to Rena, too. She’s worried about Schnucke. Schnucke’s sensitive. We don’t like to have her staying in a closed-up apartment alone.”

“Kindly go to hell, both of you,” suggested Maclain. “I’m certainly able to take care of myself for a night in my own home. You’re insane if you try to come in town through this storm.”

“I’ll be there within two hours,” said Spud. “Anybody who’s been associated with you for twenty years is bound to be slightly fey.”

“Perhaps you’ve affected me!” The Captain hung up the phone. The conversation with his partner left him with a comfortable feeling of well-being. Samuel Savage, whom Maclain called “Spud,” was the only person who could be solicitous about the Captain’s blindness in an open and aboveboard way. They had served together in the army. During the trying period when the Captain was driving himself to a point of collapse to perfect the senses of hearing, touch, and smell, Spud Savage had scarcely left his side for a day.

Watching Maclain’s naturally keen faculties sharpen under rigorous dicipline, Spud had conceived a wild idea. Duncan Maclain was a wealthy man and inordinately proud. Slowly, and with infinite tact, Spud convinced Maclain that he could utilize the foundation of intelligence work mastered in the army. Together they would open a private detective agency. Captain Duncan Maclain would become unique. Blind, he would become the master of them all, greater than any detective who could see.

It was Spud who had engaged Rena as Maclain’s secretary, and, as Rena put it, “married her so she would stay.” It was Spud who had taught the Captain to shoot at sound—a patient matter of six years’ practice, for two long hours each day. It was Spud who had arranged for Schnucke and Maclain’s training at the Seeing-Eye school. Happily, with the advent of Schnucke, Maclain found he was free.

The fear of blindness was lifted, and held him enthralled no more. He was no longer a burden on Spud and Rena. Schnucke’s warm body was ever close to his side. She was only a German shepherd dog skillfully trained, but she was life to Duncan Maclain, for her deep dark eyes had sight. Sight was all that he needed to be as good as a man could be.

Schnucke stood up and rubbed her back gently against the Captain’s knee. The musical triple chime of an electric tocsin announced a visitor in the anteroom of the penthouse office. Maclain touched a button under his desk and clicked a latch which opened the office door.

The visitor paused on the threshold. “Captain Maclain?”

“I’m dreadfully sorry,” said Maclain. “You’ll find the light switch to your left just inside the door. I was reading with my fingers and for the moment I forgot it was dark in this room.”

The man in the doorway laughed softly. “It is black.” The light switch clicked. “I’ll admit I expected to walk into a lighted office. The darkness rather startled me.”

Maclain listened to the rich, cultured tones and said, “Take the chair in front of my desk, if you don’t mind.” When the man was seated, the Captain continued, “You keep yourself in good trim. Your step is light and quick for such a big man. You must weigh better than two hundred, and you’re taller than six foot two.”

“I’ve been told you were blind, Captain. Frankly, I was skeptical that you could ever be of help in the city’s defense plans. You’re already proving my stupidity to me!”

“Thanks,” said Maclain a trifle drily. “After many years I’m able to estimate the approximate height of strangers by the number of steps they take to my desk from the door. My blindness necessarily makes me a bit of a mountebank. I let you enter a darkened room to stop you at the door. It makes counting your footsteps easier.” He pushed forward a carved cigarette box. “Smoke? I understand you were to bring some Braille instructions to me.”

“They’re here. The Naval Intelligence requests that you memorize and destroy them as soon as possible, Captain Maclain. There are five vital points in here where an organized crew might sabotage the light, power, water, and sewage of this city. You’re an ex-Army Intelligence officer. I don’t need to tell you those would be dangerous papers for certain people to see.”

Maclain reached out one hand and papers rustled crisply. He spread the Braille embossed sheets flat on his desk and began to move his fingers over the lines, reading skillfully. He heard the scratch of a match. Tobacco smoke reached his nostrils. The room was silent until he turned the last of the sheets.

“I think I have it,” he said. “The instructions are perfectly clear. In the improbable event that New York is plunged into darkness and communication cut off, I know exactly where I’m to go, what I’m to do, and the men I’m to contact.”

“Good!” said the other. “Colonel Gray, the head of our defense plans, believes your ability to get around with your dog invaluable. Even under war conditions, a blind man could pass unquestioned where others might be suspected and stopped immediately. The vulnerable spots mentioned in there are in code. Before I leave would you care to name their locations for me as given you personally by Colonel Gray? I’d like to be sure you know.”

The Captain leaned back in his chair and locked his hands behind his head. “Let’s say I know them and leave it there.” He smiled slowly. “Did part of your mission here tonight consist of testing me?”

“You’re a cautious man, Captain,” the other said quickly. “It’s a trait we like to see!”

The Captain felt along a row of buttons beside his desk and pressed one. From a loud-speaker concealed behind a panel in the wall a voice announced: “When you hear the signal the time will be exactly ten twenty-three.”

“That’s a neat device, Captain. A hook-up with the time bureau, hey? Meridian 7-1212.”

“A direct wire,” Maclain explained. “I have to hear what I can’t see.”

“I regret I was late in arriving. I won’t detain you any longer.” Maclain heard the other rise. “The Army and Navy Intelligence both appreciate your co-operation. Colonel Gray suggested that I make myself known to you in case you might want further information after studying our instructions. I’m a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve, Captain Maclain, but you may have heard of me in my profession. I was on the stage for years—”

“Colonel Gray told me who you are,” said Maclain. “You underestimate your own fame. Anyone who ever attended a show has heard of Paul Gerente.”