The Last Express

by Baynard Kendrick

  “He’s a wonderful boy, Miss Zarinka. I believe it’s Chick’s little streak of old-fashioned ethics that I admire so much. I wish I could have given him more hope this morning. Unfortunately it was necessary for me to antagonize him to get information which might hasten his freedom.”

  “Oh, I knew you were making every effort. I told him so, Captain Maclain. Mr. Gold’s a splendid attorney—but I don’t want that kind of freedom for Chick. He shouldn’t have to face the ordeal of a trial. Tell me the truth—won’t you, please? Be frank with me. I have to know! Will he be there long?”

  Maclain appeared to be gazing past her into an indecipherable future. Many slow, long minutes passed before he answered.

  “The greatest danger faced by Chick, Miss Zarinka, is the danger that I’ll move too hastily for his good. Do I need to tell you the difficulty of my task—when even you, who love him, have felt the wrench of doubtful moments?”

  “I never thought—” she began.

  “Yet, along with the others,” Maclain interrupted her, “you were forced to believe the evidence of your eyes. I have no eyes, Miss Zarinka; therefore I am surer of Chick’s innocence than you. I know the man who killed Paul Zarinka—the man who murdered Amy Arden—”

  “You know—” she gasped. “Then why don’t you act, Captain Maclain? The police—the district attorney—anyone—anything—”

  “I’ve already told you of the danger. It lies in people like you, Miss Zarinka—people who can see—who are ready to swear Chick’s life away and believe they are telling the truth. Pit my story against theirs: I claim Amy Arden was murdered fifteen or twenty minutes before Chick came to my table. The blood on her back and dress was hidden—merged in a blood-red floodlight which shone on her from the opposite corner of the dance floor. The murderer left the Hi-de-Ho Club wearing a raincoat to hide the bloodstains, if any, on his clothes! They would be visible, you know, when he left the red glow for the white lights in the reception hall. That’s the word of a blind man, Miss Zarinka, against a restaurantful of people who can see. The only way I can free Chick is to bring Amy Arden’s murderer into the open. Unless I’m mistaken, I’ll do it tonight. I hope to find $130,000 which your brother concealed—along with the evidence against Benny Hoefle! I’m sure your brother kept the evidence, for it was his only protection against death. That’s why I’m equally sure that Benny Hoefle didn’t kill him.”

  “And if you find it? What then, Captain Maclain? You still have no proof.”

  “No,” said Maclain, “no proof—but unless I misjudge the man I’m after, I’ll have something better, Miss Zarinka—bait!”

  Chapter Thirty-Two: THE LAST EXPRESS

  The slotted streets of New York’s financial district, black with a human swarm during the day, are amazingly deserted by night. From eight to nine o’clock each morning of the week incoming thousands move in and up. They converge in millions upon a section scarcely larger than one of the myriad small towns which most of them had left for the city. To house them and their work, to bring them there and take them away, New York was forced to provide space above and below the streets.

  During the day each Brobdingnagian building is a city in itself, its speedy elevators, local and express, under the direction of a skillful starter, moving with the regularity and precision of a railroad. The superintendent of such a building must be a man of wide and varied knowledge. Under his supervision are great power plants, gigantic boilers, intricate machinery. He must allocate his available space with care. The tenants of his building must have a place to eat without facing inclement weather, to buy clothes, tobacco, haircuts, reading material—in fact, most of life’s necessities—without leaving the confines of the building where they work.

  Finally, space became so scarce on the street level that retail stores were forced underground. The New York worker today eats, drinks, shops, and sometimes attends a picture show underneath the level of the sidewalk.

  At five o’clock in the evening the tide turns, and the exodus begins. The traffic is routed down and out. The millions disappear, shooting under streets and rivers, packed into steel torpedoes tighter than the letters of the U. S. mail. Speeding by subway underground, by bus on the street level, by ferries large enough to move an average small town over the river, and by elevated train overhead, they are soon absorbed by New Jersey, Staten Island, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Westchester.

  Shops and restaurants, thronged by day, begin to close. By nine o’clock at night a visitor to the subterranean depths would walk alone through brightly lighted passageways, flanked by the bare, dumb stare of semidarkened plate-glass windows bearing names.

  There are such visitors, for work never stops in the city. A new crew moves in at night—a tithe of the daytime workers, but considerable nevertheless. They prepare the field for the following day. Lights wink on to disclose night auditors, newspapermen, janitors and scrub women, busy at their tasks. Later, as the transportation demands decrease, the subway expresses, which stop only at every fifth or sixth station, cease to run. The locals continue all night, bearing the brunt, crowded to capacity.

  A few restaurants in the financial district remain open. The nocturnal workers must be fed.

  New York is deadened, but never, day or night, entirely dead.

  Maclain had arranged for the six of them to meet shortly after midnight in the great underground Automat Restaurant on Park Row. It stayed open until three and was always crowded. He and Spud were the first to arrive. Dearborn and Springer arrived shortly after.

  Over their coffee, while they waited for Hewitt and Fox Maclain outlined his plans.

  “I don’t care whether we’re followed or not,” he said in conclusion. “If Hewitt and Fox have succeeded in finding anything that looks promising, we’re going to cover our route so carefully that anyone trailing us won’t have a chance. I was afraid that Schnucke would be more of a hindrance than a help—so Spud will have to stick close to me. I want Springer to cover our rear. If we get into any passageways where there are right-angle turns, he can wait for us as we go around each corner and let us go on ahead until you go back to get him.”

  “How do I know who to stop ?” Springer asked.

  “Don’t stop anyone,” Dearborn said. “Just keep track of them. I’ll leave it to your judgment. You certainly know a shadow when you see one.”

  Springer gulped his coffee and said, “Okay,” then relapsed into his usual watchful silence. His eyes were already searching the tables in the crowded restaurant.

  Hewitt was the first to come, but his report was not encouraging. He had covered the passages under every building for three or four blocks on the west side of Broadway. Only one door looked promising to him. It was one floor underground, in the basement of a building just north of Warren Street, and was marked No Admittance. He found it unlocked, but apparently there was nothing inside except drums of cable which controlled the elevators. Gilbert Fox joined them just after Hewitt was through speaking, and the story was repeated again.

  Fox shook his head. “I don’t know, Maclain. I’ve spent the time since I left your office talking with one of the best tunnel men we have at the New York Electric. He called up a friend of his with the telephone company. Their opinion was that there might be lots of unknown vaults, pockets and tunnels in this section of the city. As the subways were built, and new pipe lines and wires laid, the old discarded shafts were sealed up and forgotten. A portion of the conduit blueprint which Zarinka traced shows several that lead down under the subway tracks—but there’s no indication that a remnant of Beach’s subway still remains.”

  “Still,” said Maclain with confidence, “I believe it does. For a starter, let’s go and have a look at Mr. Hewitt’s door.”

  “Two things we want to avoid,” Spud warned. “Policemen and reporters.”

  “And friends of Mr. Hoefle,” said Dearborn. “Keep your eyes peeled, Springer.”

  They left by threes so as not to be too conspicuous, crossed Cit
y Hall Park, and joined forces near a row of public telephone booths in the basement of the building Hewitt had listed. Four shops, a closed newsstand and the phone booths formed the L of a tunnel. The long part of it ran down under Broadway for two blocks, crossing under Murray Street, and eventually formed an entrance to the City Hall Station of the B. M. T. Subway.

  At Murray Street the lighted, tile-walled passage ducked down farther underground. Springer waited behind by the phone booths as agreed.

  The door to the elevator control room was at the bottom of the dip, a place Hewitt estimated to be directly under the center of Murray Street.

  As they stopped and the echoes of their own footsteps died away, a short intense silence followed. The city above them became distant and remote; shut out, but omnipresent. Undisturbed, it ignored them, as a great dragon might ignore microscopic organisms moving about in its vitals.

  The hush was broken by a clang and whir inside the door as an elevator far overhead carried a late cleaner from floor to floor. Fox walked farther on down the passageway to guard against interruptions. Hewitt opened the door, and Spud carefully guided the captain inside, warning him to stoop, as the door was lower than average.

  They were standing beside a complicated mass of machinery. Spud’s flashlight lighted it up and moved to a small electric bulb hanging overhead. He turned it on and jumped back, startled. Close behind him a magnetic control switch closed with a flash and crackle. One of the gigantic drums began to rotate swiftly, paying off heavy cable.

  Maclain, always under iron control, remained motionless, without a sign of being startled. He felt Spud’s jump and said:

  “We’re in an elevator control room, Spud. If you can’t do better than that, I’ll have to send uptown for Schnucke.”

  “She’s welcome to the job,” Spud assured him warmly. “I thought I was about to start upstairs by the seat of my pants.”

  Dearborn chuckled and added,

  “These things are twice as bad, Maclain, when you can see them.”

  “What’s on the other side of the room?” the captain asked.

  “More drums,” said Spud, “and oil. Lots of oil.”

  “I mean on the wall, Spud. Suppose you take a look, Mr. Hewitt. If there’s a way out—” His speech was blotted out by a roar, and the room trembled slightly. It lasted but an instant, and Maclain continued, unmoved, “We’re right beside the subway tracks. There won’t be any door over there. Try to our left, Mr. Hewitt.”

  The engineer picked his way through the 20-foot morass of cogs and cables. He fought his voice to keep it steady when he announced, “There’s a hinged iron plate set in the wall. It’s about four feet square. Shall I open it?”

  “Wait,” Maclain cautioned. “Where’s the canary?”

  “Fox has it,” said Spud.

  “Well, you’d better get him—and you might go for Springer, Claude, and post him outside this door in the passage. I don’t think we’ll be disturbed from any other direction.”

  Hewitt stood silent as he waited by Maclain for the others to return. He was face to face with a feat impossible to assimilate. He had spent years dealing with the cold science of figures, and the percentage against Maclain’s success was too high to be computed; yet he knew that door in the wall was an access door, leading into a wire conduit big enough to accommodate a man. Where it went to, he didn’t know, but he was most anxious to find out. Spud, Fox and Dearborn returned quickly, for excitement sent them back on the run.

  Fox looked at the door and said admiringly, “By George, I believe you’re right, Captain Maclain.”

  “If I am,” said Maclain, “Claude and I owe you gentlemen a thousand thanks. I know I must be very close to right. The problem is not as difficult as it seems, for Beach’s subway covered only a block of the city. Don’t forget that if Paul Zarinka got in it, somehow he found it. He left us a most valuable clue.”

  Hewitt was still skeptical when he opened the door just wide enough to place the caged canary inside.

  “How long?” asked Dearborn.

  “Ten minutes should be enough,” Fox told him.

  It dragged leadenly, punctuated twice by the startling flash and movement of the cable drums. When Hewitt removed the bird they crowded as close about him as they could get in the confined space.

  “I guess we can go in, Dunc,” Spud said unhappily. “The darned thing’s still alive and hopping around.”

  Fox led the way on hands and knees, and Maclain brought up the rear, guided by an occasional touch of Spud’s coattails. They were in a tube not over four feet in diameter, but Fox knew that farther on it would widen out to where a short man could stand by stooping. Maclain kept his hands on the floor, for Fox warned them the place was full of wires carrying high voltage, and that electric leaks might prove perilous. The shaft led straight on for 20 feet, without a break. There it was crossed at right angles by another and larger one.

  Spud’s light touched a roof and siding of wire so thick a toothpick could scarcely have been inserted between them. Suspended from the top by iron rods was a clump of five large pipes which might have been carrying water or gas.

  “Thank God they’re not steam,” Spud thought, “or we’d be in for a baking instead of a roasting.”

  At the juncture of the tunnels Fox stopped and described their surroundings. Without hesitation Maclain directed him to take the one to the right. “We have to bear in toward Broadway, Mr. Fox, but go carefully. There may be a drop down under the subway tracks.”

  They had not gone 30 feet before Maclain proved he was not guessing. The tunnel narrowed and fell away sharply. The captain refused to proceed without another test made with the canary.

  “Gas sometimes collects at the bottom,” he said. “I’d feel safer if two of you would fasten your belts together, loop them onto the cage, and let it slide down ahead.”

  Another ten minutes of silence followed, pierced by a distant monotonous drip of water and the nearer rumble of a train. The canary proved unharmed, but after the slow descent down the sharp incline Fox paused and called back, “There’s a faint smell of illuminating gas down here, but it didn’t seem to hurt the bird.”

  “I think we can go on,” said Maclain. “I smelled it clear back to where we made the turn. That’s why I asked you to test.”

  Dearborn’s voice came out of the darkness. “I wonder if I could coax you into going quail hunting with me sometime, Maclain. I’ll do the shooting, and you do the smelling!”

  At the bottom of the incline the character of the tunnel changed. All of them were able to stand by slightly bending their heads. The narrow part ran between huge pipes placed closely on each side. The wires had thinned out over their heads, disappearing in bunches on each side through tubes of strong insulation. Maclain began walking, carefully touching the cool iron pipes with the tips of his fingers. Spud and the others were a short way ahead of him when he called on them to wait.

  The noise of a speeding train had just sounded deafeningly from above. “Shine your light here, Spud,” said Maclain.

  He was holding to a small iron bar set unobtrusively between the big pipes.

  “Isn’t this a ladder leading up?”

  Spud slowly slanted the rays toward the top of the tunnel.

  “Yes,” he said, “it is. There seems to be a manhole or a plate of some kind about ten feet overhead.”

  “I’ll try it,” Fox offered. “We might as well see where it goes.” He started up the iron rungs between the pipes. At the top of the sixth pipe they gave way to a regular iron ladder set into the bricks. Maclain, in his intentness, started up after the engineer. Fox’s feet were on the rung by Maclain’s hands when the engineer stopped. “There’s a manhole, all right,” he said. “Not a round one, but a square trap. I’m going to push it up.”

  He took another step. The captain, straining every faculty to listen, heard the faint creak of iron hinges, but as Gilbert Fox started up ahead of him, he heard another sound, growing
like a tornado. He judged the engineer must be half through the hole above, staring curiously about.

  There was no time for warning cries. With the grip of an expert tackler, he seized Fox around both legs below the knees and, using all his strength, flung himself clear of the ladder, carrying the engineer with him.

  They crashed to the floor together, Fox on top.

  “What’s happened, Maclain?” Dearborn yelled. “For heaven’s sake, what’s happened?” The noise was so terrific that Dearborn failed to realize he was screaming at the top of his voice. Green devilish lights flashed above, sparkling and crackling through the open hole. Then, suddenly as it had come, the noise and the lights were gone. The tunnel below was silent and black. Maclain climbed painfully to his feet and automatically tried to dust off his clothes.

  “I’ve been a fool many times in my life, but never such a one as now. We’re on the right track—and it’s a subway track. Paul Zarinka took the same route we’ve just followed—climbed this same ladder—and went out the manhole overhead. A similar trap door leading down to the remnants of Beach’s subway probably lies not ten feet away! We’ll find, like the one above, that it’s located right in the middle of the express tracks of the B. M. T.—for the B. M. T. Subway was built over Beach’s subway. That was the rest of Paul Zarinka’s message. ‘Don’t try to get in there early at night—don’t try to get in there before the last express!’”

  Chapter Thirty-Three: FINAL CURTAIN

  Maclain was wakeful. A high summer gale was blowing around the penthouse. Even with the soundproofed windows, his sensitive ears received the annoying noise of its constant roar. Fighting for sleep, he succeeded in losing it entirely.

  He got out of bed and adjusted the thermostat on the wall. The air conditioning was not functioning properly, and, despite the heat outside, he found the room too chilly.