Hollow Needle

by George Harmon Coxe

  “So you stuck around?”

  “Certainly. For another half hour. Then I walk the block and a half. Even then I have to make three calls before I can get you.”

  “I know,” Murdock said. “You’re wonderful. Have you got a gun?”

  “A small one.”

  “Let’s go over.”

  Fenner gave him a slanting glance. “You want to play copper?”

  “I don’t know what I want.” Murdock glanced up and down the street, sizing up the line of parked cars on either side, aware that this statement was as accurate as he could make it. He did not know what had happened and he did not want to guess. All his instincts told him that something was wrong, and it seemed now that the thing to do was find out what he could. “All I want to do is have a look.”

  Most of the parked cars were dark and looked empty. Headlights picked them up as they started to cross the street, but they waited, and presently a sedan rumbled past. They watched it as they continued to the opposite curb, and when it turned the corner the quiet came again. A block away there was a steady stream of traffic, but here there was no movement and the sidewalks seemed empty as they started up the steps and moved into the vestibule.

  Beyond the pane of glass in the door and its lettered words: The Charles, a light burned feebly, and as Murdock reached for the knob, Fenner spoke from the corner of his mouth.

  “Let’s make it quiet,” he said. “We don’t want that janitor tumbling around asking questions.”

  They went in, easing the door shut. They glanced about the narrow hall, taking in the stairs that clung to the left wall, and mounted toward the light on the next landing. There was a door to the right, and Fenner, nudging Murdock’s arm, moved quietly past it and along the shadowed hall toward the rear.

  At the time Murdock did not understand what Fenner had in mind, but he was satisfied that the detective knew what he was doing, so he went along, moving silently past the pay telephone behind the stairs and coming finally to another door at the end of the hall.

  Fenner palmed the knob, making no sound as he opened the door. A little light from the hall spilled through and into a small courtyard well littered with boxes and cartons. Additional light from some window above revealed a wall around the court, and in the center of this was a rickety wooden door, apparently leading to the alley beyond.

  Satisfied, Fenner backed away. He closed the door as quietly as he had opened it. He retraced his steps, Murdock following, and started up the stairs.

  The second-floor hall was darker and narrower than the first, and Fenner did not examine this but turned round the newel post and climbed another flight. Then he was going down the darkened hall to a door near the end stopping opposite it, jerking his thumb at it as he bent down to look beneath it.

  “No light there,” he breathed. “What do you want to do?”

  Murdock had been wondering the same thing. There was a film of moisture on his dark face now, for the hall was stuffy and the air was still. He was conscious of the stale smell of ammonia and cooking grease, and there was a stiffness across his back and legs that came not from the effort of moving silently, but from some inner tension.

  “Knock,” he said finally, and Fenner did, not loudly but sounding loud-in the stillness of the hall.

  “I don’t like it,” Fenner said, and as he did so, Murdock reached in front of him and turned the knob.

  He did not stop to wonder about it when he heard the latch click free, and there was no feeling of surprise as he started to open the door. There was, in that first instant, only a pool of blackness beyond, so he moved in, Fenner jostling him slightly as the detective stepped ahead.

  The light behind them was of little help, but diagonally to one side there was a window, through which could be seen the lighted window of another house some distance away. This comparative brightness served to make silhouettes of certain objects in the room, and it was then, as Murdock stepped forward, that he saw what looked like a man’s head.

  He stiffened instantly, some inner compulsion warning him to get clear of the doorway behind him. He heard Fenner’s soft grunt and knew Fenner was moving, though he could not move himself. Then Fenner stiff-armed him to one side and wheeled away, speaking as he did so, his voice clipped and grimly controlled.

  “Stay put!” he said. “You in the chair! Get a light on!” he said to Murdock.

  Murdock found he could move. He slid his hand along the wall. His fingers touched a light switch, and he flicked it on. Then, blinking in the sudden brightness, he saw the gun in Fenner’s hand. It was pointed right at Ross Neely, but Neely did not see it.

  Neely’s eyes were closed beneath the thick black brows. He was sprawled back in a worn and tattered club chair, arms dangling over the sides and his head angled upward and resting crookedly against the top of the chair back so that it projected slightly above it.

  Neely’s coat was off, and the front of his shirt was stained dark red, a dried stain now that had spread downward from the chest. There was a short-barreled gun on the floor near by, but Murdock merely glanced at it; for in those first seconds he saw only the broad, hard-muscled face, strangely slack and pale now, and the scarred, twisted brow.

  “Get the door,” Tenner said.

  Murdock eased it shut, the tension evaporating as reaction set in. He watched Fenner move up to the body and walk around it. He watched him slip a pencil through the trigger guard of the gun and give it quick examination. And now his own mind was working, remembering all he knew about Ross Neely, glancing about the poorly furnished, high-ceilinged room, but always coming back to the man in the chair.

  The sprawled position, the way. the legs were stretched limply out suggested that Neely had not been shot in the chair, and he said so to Fenner, who agreed.

  “I think he fell back into the chair. And that gun hasn’t been fired. It’s probably Neely’s.”

  “He tried to get it out,” Murdock guessed.

  “And didn’t make it,” Fenner said. He walked around the room and came back to stare at Murdock with his narrowed agate eyes. “I might’ve known,” he said. “Maybe some day I’ll learn to stay away from you and your screwball assignments.”

  Murdock made no reply, because he was thinking of other things. He moved round the chair, feeling nothing at all in the way of sympathy or compassion but trying hard to add things up in his mind. He did not know yet just what this meant, though it came to him that if he had gone immediately to the police the night before, Neely might well be alive. But there was no feeling of guilt to accompany the thought. Neely had known what he was doing. He had taken risks before and always he had come out on top; this time he had overplayed his hand, or grown careless, and he had paid for his stupidity.

  That part was simple enough. What complicated matters was that Neely could no longer talk. He had taken the negatives from Eddie Kelsey as he had been ordered to do, but from then on something had happened to the killer’s plan. Neely apparently had made some plans of his own, and thinking it over, Murdock saw a possible explanation of what had happened here. For another moment he let the thought expand, and then he became aware of other things that demanded more immediate attention. He turned to Fenner.

  “Let’s take a minute to figure it,” he said.

  “You figure it.”

  “Prentice didn’t come here to shoot him.”

  “Didn’t he?”

  “He went out the back way.”

  “Unless he stayed here for an hour and came out when I went to phone you, he sure as hell did!”

  “All right.” Murdock. pushed his hat back and leaned against the wall. “If Prentice came to do the job he would have come in the same way he went out—from the back.” He hesitated and said, “Because he could get in and out that way with less chance of being seen.”

  “You could be right.”

  “If I am, Prentice probably came here to make a deal. If he’s the one who killed Larkin and sent Neely for the pictures—”r />
  “Oh. So finally it comes out. Somebody did shoot that butler?” Fenner looked disgustedly at the ceiling and allowed himself a tired sigh. “Now you tell me!”

  Murdock ignored the interruption and tried again. “If he sent Neely for the pictures—not knowing what they might show—he could have come here today, expecting to buy them back.”

  “But carrying a gun just to be sure.”

  “Yes,” Murdock said. “And Neely held him up for more money than Prentice could pay.”

  “So Prentice knocks him off before Neely can get his gun out, because he wants those negatives and he doesn’t dare take the chance on Neely tipping off the cops,”

  Fenner cocked a brow, held it that way. “There’s still another answer. Prentice could have been unlucky. He could have walked in here and found Neely dead and ducked out the back way—and fast.”

  Murdock admitted the possibility. “What time did he arrive?”

  “Around ten of six. Maybe a quarter of. And while you’re figuring, maybe you’ll figure out something for me.”

  Murdock looked at him, and now he knew what the detective meant. Fenner had no interest in murder, and he did not want to be mixed up in it. It was, he had said in the past, bad for business. It gave people the wrong idea about private detectives, very few of which had any interest in murder cases or the apprehension of the guilty.

  “Are you going to call the cops,” he said now, “or do we walk out of here and keep our fingers crossed?”

  Murdock sat down on the arm of a chair, dark eyes brooding as he brought into focus this problem that he had heretofore ignored. Whichever decision he made meant a headache for him; for if he tried to walk out and it was later discovered that he had known of the murder without reporting it, there would be trouble for him and more trouble for Fenner. He had always tried to co-operate with the police, and he held the respect of those he had worked with because they knew this and trusted him. There had been times when he had covered up or delayed a report, but in such cases there had been a good reason for his action and he had done so because of his consideration for others. Never had he held out information because he wanted to solve a case himself. Even when he had a personal reason for doing so he was satisfied to let the proper authorities take over at the proper time.

  There was, he remembered, a personal element in this case, too. He had felt responsible in some measure for Larkin’s death. John Caldwell had already been murdered at that time, and if he, Murdock, had not gone back to Caldwell Manor with his suspicions, that murder would have gone unsolved and undiscovered. But he had gone, and Larkin had apparently been killed because of what he knew; now Murdock was honest enough to admit that he would like to see the guilty one caught and punished.

  What happened to Eddie Kelsey served to heighten this desire, and the fact that Ross Neely had paid for this, and more, did not change anything. The man actually responsible for the assault on Eddie Kelsey was the man who had killed John Caldwell, and Larkin. Up to now he had successfully covered up his tracks, and, so far as Murdock knew, the police were no nearer a solution now than they had been in the beginning. He shook his head to try to clear it. He did not know what to do, and he said so.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I can keep you out of it for a while.”

  “Elucidate,” said Fenner dryly.

  “I think I’d better call Lieutenant Bacon,” Murdock said, referring to a friend of his attached to homicide.

  “That’s a good start,” Fenner said. “That puts you in good with Bacon.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Murdock went on, “that I asked a private detective, whose name I will be reluctant to reveal, to follow Prentice. When he came down here the dick called me on the phone and told me about it, not waiting to see if Prentice came out. I came down here and found Neely.”

  Fenner looked at his friend, and deep down in his narrowed eyes there was reflected a sudden warmth that seemed genuine and approving. He smiled slowly, and the effect was to soften his angular, bony face in an odd and unaccustomed way.

  “You’re all right, Kent,” he said. “You always were. You think of things and you can figure the percentages and you take the breaks when you get them and your lumps when you don’t.” He expelled his breath audibly, the smile lingering at the corners of his mouth.

  “Bacon will love that,” he said. “At that it might be okay except for one thing. When I read in the paper tomorrow about Neely I should, as a good and honorable private operator who wants to get in solid with the department, come forward with the information that I am the guy who saw Prentice come in.”

  “All right,” Murdock said. “You can do that, too, but you don’t have to hurry. You can go get a few drinks tonight and pretend you have a hang-over in the morning. You stick around your apartment and don’t go out until afternoon.” Murdock turned his hands palms up. “So not until then do you have to see the story.”

  Fenner grinned. “I said you could think of things. What a schemer!” he said. “But you’re going to tell the cops about Prentice?”

  “Just that he came here. And I don’t think the city boys will do too much about that tonight. They have no jurisdiction at Caldwell Manor. They’ll have to work with the state police and the D.A.’s office. I imagine Prentice will get a polite invitation to put in an appearance in the morning—for questioning.”

  Fenner readjusted his hat. “I’m a sucker to buy that, but I will. Give me a couple of minutes start and then you can use that pay phone downstairs. Got any nickels?”

  After Fenner had gone, Murdock tried to get Harvey Blake. It took him awhile because he had to call on one of the Courier-Herald staff men before he could learn the proper number, but he finally located the lawyer and told him who he was. He said Ross Neely had been shot to death and gave the address, adding that he thought Blake should come over.

  “Why?” Harvey Blake said.

  “You’re the Caldwell attorney,” Murdock said, “and Neely worked for the Caldwells. I think he was working for one of them when he was killed.”

  “But I still don’t see—”

  Murdock cut him off brusquely. “It’s nothing to me, and I’m not going to stand here and give you all the details because it’s too long a story. I happen to know a member of the family was here to see Neely not too long before the body was found, but if you don’t want to bother yourself, forget it. I just thought I’d give you a break before I notified the police.”

  He hung up without giving Blake a chance to answer, and then, dropping a dime in the slot when he found he had no more nickels, he dialed Monica Sutton’s number.

  “Is Arthur Prentice there?” he asked when he had identified himself.

  “Why—no.”

  “Well, listen,” Murdock said, “because this is important. I want you to get in touch with him. Tell him I want to see him at my apartment between eleven-thirty and twelve. Tell him I think the police may be looking for him and that I know where he was around six o’clock tonight. Have you got that?”

  “Yes.” The voice was puzzled and distressed. “But I don’t understand why—”

  “Prentice will understand,” Murdock cut in. “Just tell what I said.”

  He replaced the receiver, waited a few seconds while he dug out another dime. Then he put in a call to police headquarters and asked for Lieutenant Bacon.

  18

  BY NINE O’CLOCK THAT EVENING the rooms that Ross Neely had occupied were fairly well cleared of the plain-clothes men and technicians who had been investigating the killing and getting pictures and fingerprints. Three or four men still tramped about the neighborhood houses looking for possible witnesses but in the rooms proper there were only Lieutenant Bacon, Murdock, and Harvey Blake.

  Bacon was in his middle fifties, a thin, stiff-backed man with a lot of gray hair and a dry, laconic way of talking that had fooled quite a few men to their ultimate sorrow. Right now he was walking around the room chewing on a half-smoked panatela, a black
and foul-smelling variety he bought by the box at five cents apiece, his annoyance apparent whenever he glared at Murdock. He had heard the photographer’s story but he was not satisfied with it, and now he stopped pacing and said so again.

  “Why didn’t you report that Eddie Kelsey thing last night when it happened?” he demanded.

  “I told you.” Murdock was very patient, and just as careful of what he said. “We had no positive identification. We wanted to wait until Eddie could tell his story.”

  Bacon greeted the announcement with a grunt. He took the cigar from his mouth, saw that it was ruined, and slammed it at a wastebasket in the corner.

  “Who was the private dick that tailed Arthur Prentice here?” he asked for the third time.

  “I told you I wanted to keep him out of it if I could. He was only doing the job as a favor.”

  “Maybe you can’t keep him out of it,” Bacon said.

  “In that case I’ll tell you.” Murdock shrugged. “He’ll probably come forward himself when he sees the story in the papers. But I don’t have to tell you now, and you know it. No good private detective wants to get involved in a murder case, and—”

  “All right, all right!” Bacon gestured for silence. “Let it go—for now.” He dropped down on the arm of a chair, gray eyes busy. “What would Arthur Prentice be wanting with a guy like Ross Neely?” he said to Harvey Blake.

  The lawyer had settled in the room’s other easy chair, his hat and coat still on. Under his hatbrim his eyes were in shadow.

  It was hard to tell what was going on behind them, but his dark face was composed, indifferent; so was his voice.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “I think you have,” Bacon said.