Hollow Needle

by George Harmon Coxe

  “Profit-sharing with employees is not new,” the voice said now. “You of Caldwell Diesels know this because you have benefited for many years by such a plan. But never has profit-sharing been done on such a scale and in such a way.” There was a pause, the sound of a throat being cleared. Then: “As of this day the shares of my family are hereby cut under the terms of the will which I will shortly sign, so that the employees of Caldwell Diesels and those who succeed them will own outright thirty-four per cent of its stock.”

  Someone stirred in the room. A remark was made in hushed tones, but Murdock was listening now as Caldwell explained how the stock would be administered and used. The employees’ shares, he said, would be held in trust, to be voted by their representatives. The workers would elect a proportionate share of the board of directors to represent them in all matters concerning management; such directors would be responsible to the employees alone, and all profits from such shares of the company would be divided among them.

  There was more—a more detailed outline of the plan, a review of Caldwell’s philosophy of labor-management relations, his hope for a continued understanding by labor of management’s problems, as well as certain comments on the American way of life. Then it was over, and someone snapped off the radio. In the awed and impressed silence that followed, Nick nodded to Murdock and they went back into the butler’s office and closed the door.

  Donald Caldwell came in a few minutes later with a negative and an envelope in one hand, a damp eight-by-ten print in the other. He gave Murdock the negative and envelope, displayed the print.

  “We think it is very good,” he said. “Whoever had charge of sending us a photographer certainly picked the right man.” He paused, his smile nervous but polite. “We have made a few prints for ourselves, so the negative is yours to do with as you see fit. Thank you for coming.”

  Murdock examined the envelope, asked what it was for.

  “Why”—Caldwell cleared his throat—“for your trouble, and co-operation.”

  Murdock thanked him and put the envelope carefully on the desk. He gave Caldwell a crooked grin and, thinking with satisfaction of the infrared film in his equipment case, said that the Courier-Herald paid his-salary. He explained that it was his job to take pictures and that this was just another assignment, more important than some, but to him still a routine job.

  “Do you want to show me out?” he said, cocking a brow at Nick. “Or search me before I go, or anything like that?”

  Nick’s mouth worked, but he stifled a smile as he glanced at his employer. “This way,” he said, and took Murdock through the halls to the front steps.

  The morning was bright and cool, and as Murdock trudged down the winding driveway he was again reluctant to mar its graveled perfection until he realized what he was doing. He examined the manicured lawns and borders, and turned for a last look at the gray-and-white magnificence of Caldwell Manor before he rounded the bend and saw the gatehouse before him.

  The single gate swung open as he approached, and as he passed through he noticed that the company police were no longer in evidence. When he got his coupé started and turned around, he remembered the three union men and realized that they, too, had gone back to their jobs, now that the broadcast had been made and their legacy was assured.

  The photograph Kent Murdock had taken proved to be contrasty and well lighted, and by masking the negative slightly he was able to make prints that were suitable for reproduction. The representatives of the other dailies and the photo services declared themselves well satisfied with the result. They were curious, too, about his experience with the famous family, and they kept him busy answering their questions until the city editor called and summoned him upstairs.

  A rewrite man was already waiting for him and Murdock had to sit down while the fellow made notes and questioned him again on his impressions of Caldwell Manor. For while the photograph was a pool proposition, Murdock’s impressions were something else again and the sidelights he supplied concerning his assignment were whipped together into a human-interest piece to accompany the main story. As a result it was after two before he was able to get away and duck around the corner to the tavern for a roast-beef sandwich and a beer.

  Now, sitting at his customary corner table and with time to reflect on his recent accomplishment, he was able to view it with an understandable satisfaction that came from knowing that the afternoon papers throughout the land were carrying wire photos of his picture. In spite of the restrictions imposed and the peculiarities surrounding the assignment, he decided that it had turned out all right, and he was having a final cup of coffee before returning to the office when Phil Doane, a young reporter, barged in and headed directly toward him.

  Doane was chubby and good-natured. He was one of Murdock’s stanchest supporters and had long maintained that if a reporter could just follow Murdock around, he would get better stories than by taking the routine assignments the city desk handed out, the reason being, according to Doane, that things just seemed to happen when Murdock was around. Now he was a little out of breath and there was an air of suppressed excitement about him as he leaned stiff-armed across the table.

  “What happened to that luck of yours?” he demanded. “You’re slipping, pal. You’re losing your touch.”

  Murdock blew smoke in Doane’s face. “Yeah?” he said.

  “You should’ve waited,” Doane said. “You should have stayed there for lunch. Then you’d have had a story to go with that picture.”

  Murdock gave the reporter a good-natured scowl. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Caldwell. Old John himself. The guy that gave thirty-four per cent of his company to the workers—and, boy, are those guys lucky! We just got it over the phone.”

  Murdock’s scowl remained but his eyes were alert and things started to happen inside him.

  “Got what, damn it? What about Caldwell?”

  “He’s dead! Heart failure or hemorrhage or something. Just like that, boom! They figure it happened soon after the broadcast.”

  Doane had other things to say, but Murdock did not hear them. He got up and went out, with Doane at his heels, seeing nothing, not really aware of where he was going until he was back at his desk. He grabbed the telephone and stood there while he checked with the city room. Then he knew that for once Doane had not exaggerated.

  “Get up here!” the city editor yelled. “I’ve got two rewrite men standing by and you’re the lad they want to talk to.”

  Normally the city room was pretty quiet at that hour of the day, but there was activity now—plenty of it. A half-dozen typewriters clattered busily, there was an air of quiet excitement in “the slot,” the city editor was trying to talk over two telephones at once, and his assistant was going over the file on John Caldwell with the librarian.

  The flash had gone out over the wires and the details were coming in fast. All over the country the long-prepared obits on John Caldwell were being brought up to date for publication with the picture Murdock had taken that morning, all of it tying in with the broadcast the industrialist had made.

  The two rewrite men were waiting at their desks and Murdock sat down between them, going over the impressions he had formed and describing as best he could the upstairs study where the broadcast had taken place. But as he answered questions he also got a picture of his own as to what had happened.

  According to the information at hand, Donald Caldwell and Larkin, the butler, were with John Caldwell when he made the broadcast. Upon its conclusion John had complained of weariness and a slight dizziness, and had gone to his bedroom to lie down, asking that he not be disturbed. At one-thirty Larkin, concerned by the continued silence from the bedroom, had looked in and found the lifeless figure. The family doctor, arriving at two, announced that death had occurred some hours earlier, probably within a few minutes of the broadcast, and stated that death was due to a cerebral hemorrhage brought on by high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis, a condition that all h
ad been aware of for some time.

  But it was not these things that Murdock thought of as he listened to the staccato chatter of the typewriters and answered the questions fired at him; what he remembered was the white-haired old man who sat stiffly in a high-backed chair, who neither spoke nor moved while his picture was being taken. He thought of other things, each detail clear-cut in his mind. They were not things that he could repeat to the men beside him, but slowly there came to him an intuitive feeling that something was wrong and that all the story had not been told.

  At first he tried to tell himself that this came from his imagination and was due to the unaccountable spell the house and its people had cast over him. There was, he told himself, no basis for the slightest suspicion, and yet, remembering each little impression, a strange excitement stirred within him and he knew that as soon as he could leave he would go back to the studio and have a look at the infrared film he had exposed.

  5

  IN A TINY DARKROOM CUBICLE, one of a half dozen that stretched in an unlighted row from an alleyway leading from the studio printing-room, Murdock developed that film, and from it he made an eight-by-ten print, masking the negative so that only the head and shoulders were reproduced.

  What he had when the print came off the ferrotype dryer was an enlargement that was fuzzy in some respects and distorted by the peculiar light values characteristic of infrared pictures. But there were also certain details in this print that would not have shown up on panchromatic film, and for his purpose the lack of clarity was unimportant. He had enough now to fan the excitement inside him and to give some substance to the germ of suspicion that had come from he knew not where.

  He was at his desk, his back to the door, when he heard someone come into the studio. Because he assumed that it was one of his staff he did not look up, but continued to study the picture and nurse his thoughts. The first indication he had that something was wrong was when a man’s hand reached over his shoulder and snatched the print from him.

  Before he could turn or understand what was happening, another hand picked up the negative. Then, as he came angrily to his feet, he saw that there were two men instead of one, and he knew at once why they had come.

  Nick Taylor in his Brooks suit was closest, but it was his black-browed companion who had snatched the print and negative and who now said, “I told you he took an infrared shot— I spotted that infrared bulb you tossed in the study wastebasket,” he said to Murdock. “I told the boss I thought you’d sneaked one.”

  Then, as he spoke, he began to tear the print.

  Murdock did not stop to consider the odds. He had no time to blame himself for his carelessness in leaving the telltale infrared bulb where someone who knew about photography might find it and deduce what had happened. His action, which was instinctive rather than sensible, was prompted by the certain knowledge that he would lose the print and negative unless he did something about it. He was outraged by the intrusion and the strong-arm methods, regardless of who was responsible, and, knowing it would do no good to ask for the negative, he thought no more about it but started for the man who had it.

  The fellow backed up, reaching for his hip with his free hand. Nick stepped in, blocking Murdock off and muttering something about taking it easy. And now Murdock was no longer particular. Nick was still in his way. Nick reached for him again, and now Murdock stepped in and Nick, seeing what was coming, tried to hook a left.

  Murdock crossed with his right, moving in as he did so, and his punch landed flush on the hinge of the spade jaw. Nick went back on his heels. He rocked there, wide open, but Murdock, remembering that the other man was more important, swiveled away—or tried to.

  He almost made it. He had his swing started and saw, in fact, the other’s arm snap down, though it was a little late then and there was nothing he could do. He may have jerked his head an inch or so to one side, but if he did, it was not enough. Simultaneously the blackjack clipped him above the ear, and then the pain mushroomed inside his skull, and the room spun about him.

  He did not lose consciousness, but the floor was heaving and he would have gone down had he not grabbed a desk to save himself. A voice that seemed dim and faraway swore a protest, and an answering voice said, “Aw, I only tapped him.”

  There was, he knew, some movement about him, and through the haze that fogged his eyes he could see a pin point of flame that grew brighter as the haze lifted. Then the room was quiet and he was standing there, still clinging to the desk, the acrid smell of burning film in his nostrils as the flame flared and died out. What he saw when his vision cleared was a charred and blackened mass in the wastebasket; what had once been a negative and film was now nothing but ashes.

  He let go of the desk, but he was a little late getting started, for when he went into the hall he found it empty. There was no one in the foyer by the elevators. He could not tell whether his assailants had taken the stairs down or not, but he knew by now that there was no way of catching up with them, so he came back to the studio, head throbbing and his anger a bright, hot flame inside him. He thought only briefly of calling the police, for this was a matter that could not wait and, now that he could think again, he saw that there were more important things to be done.

  The first of these was to take a long pull from a flask in his desk in the hope that the throbbing in his skull would go away. When it did not, he explored the source of that throbbing, finding a small lump but no broken skin.

  He stared morosely at the blackened ashes in the basket, and presently he saw in fancy remembered details of that picture. True, he no longer had any proof of what he had seen, but this did not bother him long. The fact that someone at Caldwell Manor had been worried enough about that photograph to take unlawful means to get it back was enough to put Murdock’s speculations on their original track, and after a minute or so he left the room and went upstairs to the library.

  The next few hours were spent in research, first in the library files and later talking to some of the older men in the city room. Because it was important he took his time, making notes as he went along, reading each reference to the Caldwell family and putting aside the news photograph that someone had taken of Old John nine years before.

  As a result of his research he had a fairly clear picture of Caldwell history during the past twenty years—including a piece on Larkin, the butler, who had been with Caldwell for forty years—and he took his findings back to the studio along with the old photograph.

  Eddie Kelsey, a youngster who had only recently joined the staff, was reading an adventure magazine while he waited for an assignment, and Murdock gave him the picture and told him to look up the original negative.

  Ordinarily, run-of-the-mill negatives, having no value once they had been printed and published, were destroyed automatically after a certain period. On important pictures, however, those whose value was judged to be somewhat permanent, the negatives were filed away for future use. Murdock thought that the photograph of Caldwell might be one of these and the key letters marked on the back of the print gave Eddie a clue as to where to look. When he came up with it a few minutes later, Murdock told him to make a head-and-shoulder enlargement, then settled back to get the Caldwell family straight in his mind.

  According to early records, John Caldwell had married twice, though this was little known because the first marriage had been an unhappy one and of short duration. There had been three children—Donald, George, and Evelyn. Donald, who had been married and divorced some years ago, was childless. George had married, had worked up in the company to be president when Old John retired some years before, and had later been killed with his wife in a plane crash. There was a son from this marriage, named after his father, and now active in the company as the favorite of his grandfather.

  Evelyn had been married three times, and from her first marriage had come one child named Lawrence Alderson. Murdock had no particular interest in the mother, currently in Paris on a holiday—except for one thing. Eve
lyn’s husband of the moment was, as he had suspected, the Arthur Prentice he had seen the night before with the Sutton woman.

  Rumor had it that Monica Sutton, herself a divorcee, was engaged to Donald Caldwell. There was no verification on this, but remembering her now, Murdock found further speculation interesting but valueless, so he moved down his list until-he came to the Miss Kenyon he had met. Fay Kenyon, the records stated; the granddaughter of one of Old John’s early partners and now his secretary, and, so some stories said, his ward.

  All these things were neatly catalogued in Murdock’s mind by the time Eddie Kelsey had handed him the enlargement of the nine-year-old picture of Old John. Satisfied with the result, Murdock placed it in an envelope together with a copy of the photograph he had taken that morning for publication, but when he finally went in to talk to T. A. Wyman, the managing editor, he decided to say nothing at all about what he had done. He had no intention of mentioning the infrared picture until he had more answers, which meant that the story of how he had lost that picture would have to wait.

  “Sit down,” Wyman said, indicating a chair with a well-mangled cigar. “That was a good picture you turned in. Too bad you had to miss the story.”

  “I’m going back,” Murdock said.

  “You won’t get in now.”

  “I think I will.”

  “Hah! We had four men trying it all afternoon.”

  Wyman hesitated, his keen eyes narrowing slightly as he studied Murdock’s angular face and brooding dark eyes. He was a keen judge of men, Wyman, but he did not pretend to understand photographers. To him they remained a strange breed who talked but little—except among themselves—and were secretive about their methods. On difficult assignments they liked to come in and slap a picture proudly on the desk without comment. They’d take a compliment, like anyone else, but if you asked questions they’d say, “Never mind how I got it. There it is.”

  Wyman shifted the cigar to the other corner of his mouth, his gaze still narrowed. “Maybe you got an invitation.”