Hollow Needle

by George Harmon Coxe

  “Larkin!”

  Murdock did not speak the word; he breathed it. He remembered that the door was open and reached behind him to close it. He moved up on unsteady legs, realizing he had been holding his breath and letting it out slowly. He reached for a limp, bony wrist, his busy eyes noting the small red-rimmed hole in the right temple, the powder burns that had tattooed the skin around the circumference of that hole.

  There was no pulse now, and as he released the wrist and his hands fumbled automatically with the camera, he noticed the small leather case that lay open a foot from Larkin’s head. There was a hypodermic in the case. There was something wrong with it. He saw this at once but his mind was still dulled by shock and he had to look twice to be sure, to see that the needle had been broken off close to the glass cylinder.

  It meant nothing to him then. Nothing meant anything in those first seconds except that Larkin was dead from a bullet in his head, though later it occurred to him that it was the psychological association of that word, “bullet,” that saved his life.

  For he had started to raise the camera, bringing his eyes up and seeing what looked like a closet door with an open, one-inch crack of darkness beyond. Then, as he considered the field of view and his glance touched the floor by the dead man’s feet, his heart turned over and his scalp crawled.

  It was all over in five seconds, but it seemed a lifetime to Murdock as he held the camera and forced himself stand there, his stomach tight and the fear thickening in his throat. He knew he had to take the picture. He knew he must pretend that this was his only concern. But he could not keep the panic from his thoughts, or ignore the one vital flaw in this scheme of death that he had first accepted as suicide.

  There was no gun! Either on the desk or on the floor!

  He had heard a shot outside the door. No one had come out. The window—the lighted one he had seen when he inched his way along the outside gutter—was closed. And if there was no gun it could only mean that the killer watched him from the closet, that gun in his hand.

  Murdock got his picture as the flash bulb exploded, and he had never been more scared. It took a tremendous physical effort to keep his eyes from that closet door, to keep from bolting from the room. He forced himself to turn slowly, hoping only that the man in the closet was too concerned to think logically or try to stop him. It seemed a long way to the door but he was there at last, the perspiration coming out now, his palm slippery as he grasped the knob.

  He went out. Unhurriedly he closed the door, and now, as his nerves steadied and he began to breathe again, he hesitated, his glance moving to the center hall and stairs. Then, knowing that he could never reach the lower floor and get back again with help in time, he saw what he had to do.

  Moving swiftly past the room, the window of which he had entered, he continued to the next door. Larkin had left the key in the lock as Murdock had expected, and now he turned it and moved in. With the light already on, he closed the door and moved to his equipment case. He could think clearly now but he was still a little shaken, for his fingers were unsure as they fumbled with the camera, removing the film holder and tossing it on the bed, selecting a fresh one, substituting a new bulb for the used one, and putting a spare in his pocket.

  When he had reset his focus and wound the shutter, he went back to the door. He knew the odds now. He knew that if he had opened the closet door in the other room he would now be as dead as Larkin, and he had no intention of stepping blindly into the hall and perhaps running into the one who had waited in that closet with a gun. Instead he snapped off the light and palmed the knob so he could turn it silently.

  He started to open the door. He had it open about two inches. Then the light in the hall went out and he found himself peering into darkness.

  After that he hesitated no longer but pushed the door wide, stepping out to turn in the direction of the stairway, wondering if he had heard some whisper of sound. Then, because he had no time, he lifted the camera, pointed it blindly down the hall, and tripped the shutter and bulb.

  He saw nothing in the resulting flash of light; he was, in fact, blinded by its brilliance. He had to feel his way along to the central hall, and when he reached it, there was no one on the stairs, no sound below him.

  He found the light switch and snapped it on.

  Both halls were quiet.

  The shadows at the ends were empty, and all the doors were closed except one. This one, opposite the stairs, was ajar, and when he walked over and opened it, he found a second and-narrower stairway leading down into darkness. Far below him he thought he heard a door click shut, but he was not sure and knew it was too late now to make any difference. He went back along the corridor to Larkin’s room.

  It was just as he remembered it except for one thing; the closet door was closed. There was still no gun in sight—he got down on his knees to make sure—and so he reversed his film holder and took a second picture with his remaining flash bulb before he opened the closet door.

  Clothes and uniforms hung from metal rods and the shelves were piled with paper boxes. Overhead a single bulb served to reveal the interior and he saw that there was a patent switch in the doorframe, so that the light went on and off automatically whenever the door was opened or closed. Aside from the well-stocked shoe rack there was nothing on the floor that interested him, but he was careful not to touch anything and he avoided the inside knob as he withdrew.

  He glanced briefly at Larkin’s still figure as he crossed the room and a new uneasiness began to stir in him, though he did not know what caused it until later when he’d had a chance to think back and wonder why. It was not death, as such, that bothered him, for he had seen and photographed it too often; it was more like some vague sense of guilt that he did not understand then because his mind was busy with other things and he was not yet able to see that in some small measure part of the responsibility was his.

  For a moment more he stood there, his dark face somber, his eyes disturbed; then he straightened his shoulders and went back to the room where Larkin and Nick had left him. The film holder he had tossed on the bed he put in his jacket pocket together with the holder he now removed from the camera. He packed the camera in the case with his extra holders and supplies, put it on the bed beside his coat, and sank down beside it.

  For another minute or two he sat there, thinking hard but nothing moving in his face, not even his eyes. The things he saw were not in the room, but in his mind, and when, finally, the picture unreeled to include the hypodermic, a new thought came to him so shocking in its implication that he could not at first accept it. Only when he could no longer ignore the possibility it presented, would he let himself explore its ramifications, and once started, he was lost.

  He glanced at his watch and stood up. He went down the hall, stopping at the head of the stairs to make sure they were empty, then hurrying quietly down to the second floor. He could hear, faintly, someone speaking on the floor below, but there was no one in sight, so he stepped swiftly along the railing until he came to the door he had entered that morning to take the picture.

  He went in without knocking, and now a semidarkness lay over the study, relieved only by the faint glow that came from the adjoining bedroom. As he made his silent way across the rug he could see the huge four-poster where John Caldwell had slept and where he now lay thin and still in death. The glow came from a floor lamp not far from the bed. Its dimness made Murdock think of the night before when the source of light had been candles and oil lamps, and he felt again the ironic circumstances that had forced this man, who had done so much with his inventive genius, to spend his last hours under the same primitive conditions he had known as a boy.

  It may have been this thought that made Murdock pause at the door, and having paused, made him reflect. Whatever the reason, he stepped back, ashamed of the impulse that had brought him here, a little sick when he realized what he had been about to do. He saw now that there was no longer any hurry, that if his hunch was right it could
be verified at the proper time and by the proper authorities.

  He turned away and, as if in payment for his reconsideration, his luck turned good. He had a second’s warning, and there was a heavy leather chair close by, so that as the doorknob rattled and turned he had a chance to step behind the chair and duck low before the door opened.

  He stayed right where he was when it closed, the feeling of guilt still with him. He waited, not wanting to be caught, listening to the faint brush of footsteps across the rug, and then, realizing that they were moving not toward the bedroom but in the other direction, he poked his head out and peered cautiously along the side of the chair.

  The man stood anonymously at the far end of the room in front of one of the corner cupboards where the shadows were thick and impenetrable. A faint clinking of keys, followed by a metallic, sliding sound, suggested that there was a filing-cabinet beyond the built-in cup board door, and that this was John Caldwell’s method of hiding his business accessories so that the period of the house and its furnishings would remain consistent and authentic.

  Presently there was the sound of a match being scratched. A feeble flame, which sputtered erratically, silhouetted head and shoulders, and apparently the man knew what to look for, because a moment later the match flickered and went out. When the drawer rolled shut, Murdock pulled back behind the chair and waited until the muted steps had brushed past him and reached the door. Light spilled into the room as it opened and in the instant before it closed, and while the brightness was still flooding the opening, he got a quick glimpse of a tanned, good-looking face. Then he knew that the intruder was Arthur Prentice, and that he had folded the papers he had taken from the cabinet and was now stuffing them into an inside pocket.

  Murdock straightened up and moved to the door. Waiting there for ten or fifteen seconds, he inched it open, took a quick look, and slipped into the hall. When he stepped over to the railing he again heard voices below him, but no one was in sight, so he started down the last flight of stairs. He was halfway to the main floor when a curly, close-cropped head appeared around the newel post and its owner started up.

  “Oh,” Nick said. “I was just coming up for you. Larkin send you down?” When Murdock made no reply he added, “I guess they’re ready for you—in here,” he said, and nodded toward the voices that came from the drawing-room.

  Murdock walked to the partly-drawn sliding doors and as he reached them Nick stopped and turned. What stopped him was the sound of steps on the stairs, and as Murdock glanced back he recognized the man who was coming down as the one who had been in the library that morning when Caldwell’s speech went on the air. Murdock, remembering how Mr. Blake had commented on the sound of his voice, reviewed his research and knew that the man was a member of the firm of Blake, Anderson, and McCall, long the Caldwell attorneys.

  Blake—his first name was Harvey—looked different now. He had exchanged sport coat and slacks for a blue suit. His dark face seemed paler somehow, and though Murdock and Nick stood in plain sight he seemed not to see them. He seemed, in fact, to see nothing at all as he rounded the newel post and started along the rear hall. He probably would have kept on going had not Nick called to him.

  “In here, Mr. Blake,” he said. “They’re waiting for you.”

  Blake turned slowly. “Oh,” he said, his eyes focusing now. “Yes, of course.”

  7

  WHEN THE DOORS HAD BEEN CLOSED, leaving Nick in the hall, Donald Caldwell took a position in front of the fireplace. He waited until Murdock was seated, and gave Harvey Blake a chance to settle in a chair. He looked at the others who waited on twin divans on either side of the fireplace, one of which held three men, the other, Fay Kenyon and Monica Sutton, whom Murdock had met before.

  Murdock glanced at Arthur Prentice. He identified the two men who sat beside him from photographs he had seen, but he was watching Caldwell now and already sensing a change in the older man that made him forget the other’s slight build and impeccable grooming. He seemed somehow to gain poise and stature under pressure, so that he appeared more like the man who had been president of Caldwell Diesels for a short time before moving on to board chairman when young George took over a month previous. He had a firm, crisp way of speaking, and he apparently knew what he wanted to say when he introduced Murdock as the man who had come to take the picture of John Caldwell before the broadcast.

  “I don’t know,” he said with restrained bitterness, “whether Mr. Murdock just wanted to be smart this morning, or whether he resented the restrictions we imposed on him when we limited him to one picture. I do know that he took an extra, infrared photograph by some trickery, and because of that photograph I now have to justify an act which Larkin and I had desperately hoped to keep secret.”

  He paused, his glance severe. “Mr. Murdock knows what that secret is. He came back here this evening to force our hand, and now you will have to know, too.” He took a breath and said, “The fact is, Father did not make that speech this morning. He made it yesterday morning as a test and we took it off on our recorder, order to present that speech this morning we had tc replay it—because at the time of the broadcast Father was already dead!”

  The silence that followed that announcement did not last long. There was a shocked, momentary hush and then a murmuring that swelled galvanically into words that had no meaning or sequence. Caldwell cut in sharply.

  “It’s true,” he said. “Larkin found him dead in bed when he went in to wake him at eight. Larkin called me at once. ‘His poor heart has stopped,’ he said, and as we sat there wondering why it had to happen then of all times, I thought about the broadcast and the arrangements that had been made for the country to hear it. Larkin must have thought about it, too, because he said, ‘There may still be a way for John to make that broadcast.’”

  Caldwell looked down at his hands, discovered he wa twisting them, and put them resolutely behind his back. He stuck his chin out a fraction of an inch and looked straight at his audience.

  “I don’t know how it sounds to you now,” he said. “I stand ready to accept any criticism or censure that you may have to offer, but I want you to know that it was nothing that Larkin and I decided on the spur of the moment. We made up our minds and decided to take the gamble only after we were sure no one would be harmed by our scheme.”

  He said, “It was a thing Father wanted to do—you know that as well as I. He hated publicity but he knew he hadn’t much longer to live and he was proud of his an to share the family stock with his workers, because e was not just sharing profits but actually giving that stock away. He had already consented to have his picture taken. Plans had been made and carried out to bring Mr. Murdock in ahead of time so that picture could be taken whether the storm continued or not A recording of that speech had been made.”

  He paused and said, “Some of you know that in the past Larkin often doubled for Father. He had a make-up kit and the proper sort of toupee. We knew that no photographer would ever know the difference since there had been no picture taken of Father in nine years, and we knew we could arrange it so that the radio engineer could sit in another room after he had set up his microphone.”

  He went on with his account of what had actually happened, and Murdock listened no longer to the familiar details but took stock of those around him.

  Both Monica Sutton and Fay Kenyon were in black, but knowing their background now, Murdock found it easier to fit them into their proper place in the family line-up. He could understand how a man like Donald Caldwell could become engaged to a woman like Monica, with her full-blown figure and sultry beauty. It has been said that opposites attract each other, and Murdock thought this pair might illustrate the contention—Donald with his small, trim figure and precise ways; Monica and her voluptuous, exciting body and her decorative, sophisticated manner. That she was twenty years younger seemed unimportant, all things considered. What did seem strange was the tautness in her face as her attention focused, not on Donald Caldwell, but on the s
andy-haired Arthur Prentice.

  Murdock put his age at forty-one or -two, and the information he had compiled gave him a picture that his imagination now filled in. Prentice had gone to Yale, and his activities there closely paralleled those of other sons of the rich and near rich, though in the end Arthur discovered that in his case there was less money than he had been led to believe.

  With the build of a football player, but having no stomach for so strenuous a sport, he had busied himself with polo and swimming. He made a good fraternity, and he had a facility with the guitar which, with a pleasant voice and some natural ability, made him popular with his friends. It was in his senior year that he discovered his father had lost most of his money, and he debated leaving school and might have done so if some of these friends, who needed his guitar and his voice to round out a quartet, had not chipped in to see him through. He had paid off the obligation after graduation by playing polo whenever asked and by making himself generally agreeable. He had learned to sail as a boy and he was always ready to fill in as a crewman on the Bermuda and the Marblehead-Halifax races, as well as other yacht-club cruises. By remaining a bachelor he was in great demand as an extra man at house parties; there was always a job of some sort that could use his capabilities, and his life had been adapted to this general pattern until four years ago when he became the onetime Evelyn Caldwell’s third husband.

  He had, apparently, the necessary attributes of a prince consort, and since his discharge from the Navy—he had a lieutenant commander’s rank with a desk job in Washington—he had been allowed to indulge in the sports he liked, and to assume a position of some importance with Caldwell Diesels. His wife, Old John’s daughter, was at present in Paris on a holiday, and Mur-dock found himself wondering how Arthur Prentice got along with his father-in-law.

  As he considered this his attention moved on to the two young men who sat on either side of Prentice. Both were tall and well set up, with the brown-haired one thicker in the shoulders and more bulky of body than the straw-haired one. In some ways they looked like brothers, but they were not. The grandsons of Old John, they were cousins who had more or less grown up together and were now in their late twenties.