Stewart Sterling

Down Among the Dead Men

I

The scream knifed sharply through the March twilight, cutting above the grumble of the police-boat’s exhaust, the hrrush of the bow-wave. Steve Koski slid aft from the pilot-house, squinted across the river’s dark mirror. Against the far shore black dominoes lay side by side — canal barges moored under the towering gloom of Manhattan’s dimmed-out financial district.

“What you make of that, Sarge?”

“The dame who yelled? Ah...!” The blocky-shouldered individual at the Vigilant’s wheel made a pushing gesture with one huge palm. “Was only one of them barge floozies getting beat up.”

“Think so?”

“Her old man has prob’ly looked too long upon the whiskey when it is red.”

“Use some skull. She’d have hollered more than once if she was getting a mauling. That baby was scared.” Koski whipped off his felt hat, shielded his eyes from the port running light. The reflection from the water ruddied his long narrow face, high-lighted the prominent cheekbones so he looked more like a — weathered cigar-store Indian than a plainclothes lieutenant. His gray eyes searched the shoreline. “Run in, Irish.”

The Sergeant made a half-revolution of the spokes. “One will get you five if it is anything more than a wrangle for the Domestic Relations magistrate.” He sighed. “Far as that goes, I have a certain matter of more-or-less domestic relations to take care of, myself — if we could so kindly wind up this tour of duty.”

“Old glamour-pants Joe! Lothario Mulcahey of the Marine Division! Hah! Little more to starboard. Where the lantern is, there.” Koski indicated a yellow spark winking beside the cabin of the end barge. “Might be a kid in the water.” He ran knotty-knuckled fingers through hair wind-bleached to the color of new rope. “No. Looks like somebody hurt, on deck.”

“Always somebody getting banged up on them hulks.” Joe Mulcahey scowled at the silhouettes milling around the pinpoint of illumination. “The farmers who handle them barges is forever busting a leg falling down a hatch or getting caught in a bight of the tow-line.”

Piers emerged from the murk. White lettering on the high stern of the barge became distinguishable: Anna Flannery, Rondout, N. Y. Koski raised a warning hand.

The Sergeant gave the clutch-lever a touch of reverse; the patrol-boat lost way. “If there has been a mishap, it is funny none of them kids is running for help, Steve.”

“Might be somebody’s already gone. Run out a stern line.” Koski edged past the pilot-house to the foredeck as the blunt-bowed thirty-two footer nuzzled the barge-hull. He swung across to the battered rub-rail; peered up on deck.

Five figures clustered around the lantern: a man and a woman, two young boys, a small girl.

Koski called: “Everything all right?”

The taller boy, squatting beside the lantern, pivoted around on his haunches. He wore overalls and a cloth cap; his eyes were round with alarm.

“Pa! The cops!” He pointed to Mulcahey, busy looping a line over one of the barge cleats. “They’s a shield on that one’s cap.”

“Take it easy.” Koski went up over the rail, moved toward the group. “What’s the matter here?”

The man looked over his shoulder, grunted something unintelligible. The woman muttered and made a grab for the tousle-haired girl. “You keep away from it, Dorothy. It’s bad enough for Herbie to go an’ drag up a terrible thing like that...”

“Haw’d I know!” The younger boy, in knickers and a sweater too large for him, knelt beside a black metal suitcase with the lid open. “Jeeze, as many times as I been fishin’ for blue-daws—”

“Shuddup!” The father rubbed at sooty stubble on his chin. “Let the cop ask you what he wants to know.”

“I was only telling him we didn’t know what was in it when we hauled it up...”

“Shuddup!” The man made a threatening gesture with the back of his hand. The little girl buried her head in her mother’s skirts, flung her arms around the woman’s legs, began to bawl.

Koski got close enough to see a lumpy bulk wrapped in wet fabric, salmon-tinted under the smoky flare. Extra padding of cloth had been wadded into each end of the canvas-lined case so the contents would fit tight.

The older boy stood up, stuck his fists in the pockets of his overalls. “It was awful heavy. I hadda help Herbie pull in on it. We thought maybe they was something in it Pa could hock...”

“They wouldn’t ever have laid a finger to it—” the woman shuddered, “if they’d any idea—”

Koski put a hand on the wet cloth for an instant. The thing beneath was cold, soft, slithery. He swung up the lid of the suitcase, closed it. “Where’d you fish this up, Herbie?”

The boy pointed. “Off the side of the pier, there. ’Bout twenny minutes ago. We was after crabs; best place to catch ’m is off the side, there.”

“He hooked it right by the handle,” his brother said. “We didn’t know if the line would bust or not, haulin’ up...”

Herbie stared at the lid. “I’d never lugged it all the way over here — Jeeze — if I’d known what was in it...”

“All right,” Koski snapped the tinny catches that fastened the lid. He straightened up, took out a notebook with a worn, black leather cover. “What’s your name, son?”

“Herbert Gurlid. You going to arrest me, huh?”

The man growled: “Why would he run you in, now, for Pete’s sake! You ain’t done nothing.”

“Spell that G-U-R-L–I-D?” Koski tilted the notebook toward the lantern, so he could see to write. “Live here on the barge, mister?”

“Three years, regular.” Gurlid rubbed his hands along the thighs of his wash-faded dungarees. “Winters here. Summers on the Erie. Never any trouble with the po-lice. You ask anyone. Enough trouble keeping your head above water, with a family, three kids...”

“Yair.” Koski put the notebook back in his pocket, hefted the suitcase. “Any idea who this was?”

“Crysake, no.” The bargeman spat overside, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “How could you tell anything... by that!”

“Maybe we can’t. But the guy who hacked him up better not count on that.” The amber light upspilling from the lantern varnished grim lines into Koski’s long face. “No notion who dropped the valise into the water, either?”

Gurlid shook his head. Herbie said: “Uh, uh.” The little girl took her head out of her mother’s skirt long enough to cry; “I saw him!”

The woman caught hold of the child. “Don’t you be telling any lies now, Dorothy!”

“Wait a minute.” Koski scrunched down so his head was on a level with Dorothy’s. “Who’d you see?”

She dug a fat fist into the comer of one eye. “A big man. Onna wharf.”

The bargeman swore, thickly. “Don’t pay no attention to her. She don’t know what the hell it’s all about.”

Dorothy stuck out her chin. “I did so see him.”

“He have this suitcase?” Koski made a shushing movement toward Gurlid.

“Mmm, hmm. He was luggin’ it down the wharf.”

“She’s makin’ it up,” the older boy burst out. “She never told us she’d seen the suitcase before.”

Koski held up both hands. “One at a time. How long ago was it you saw the big man, Dorothy?”

“Around about...” she puckered up her face, “quarter pas’ six.”

“Ah, she’s nuts,” Herbie jeered. “She wasn’t even on the pier half an hour ago.”

“It was this morning.” The child began to cry. “An’ I know it was around about that time because the gong just rung over to the fish market.”

Koski looked up at Gurlid.

“Crysake, mister, I don’t know. The kid was playin’ on the slip right after breakfast. Soon’s it was light.”

Koski put his hand on Dorothy’s head, rumpled her hair. “What’d the man look like? Was he as big as your father?”

“Mh, hmm.” She stopped weeping, eyed him warily. “Bigger.”

“What kind of clothes was he wearing?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Remember his hat? His overcoat?”

“I don’t b’lieve he had any. Any overcoat, I mean. I don’t know if he had a cap...”

“Know him if you saw him again?”

She nodded.

“How would you know him? Did he have a mustache? Or a beard?”

“He was hurt.” The announcement was defiant.

“Oh!” Koski crinkled up the corners of his eyes; held out his hand. “You mean he was lame? Limping? Or where was he hurt?”

She put small fingers on his palm, timidly. “His face. It was all bandaged up.”

“Across here?” The Lieutenant ran one finger across his forehead.

“All over his chin.” She clasped her free hand over her mouth, close up under her nose. “Like this. A big white bannage.”

Gurlid tapped Koski’s shoulder. “Listen, mister. I don’t like the idea her getting her name in the papers saying she could spot this fella. Maybe he comes down here some fine night an’ Dot winds up in the river, see? I don’t like it.”

“Keep your hair on.” Koski made one more try, with the child. “How’d the man get on the pier? Come in a car? Or walk?”

“I only saw him onna wharf. Before I went over on South Street for oyster shells for the winna-box.” She pointed to a box nailed beneath the white curtains of the cabin window.

“Okay.” Koski patted her shoulder. “You’re a help, Dorothy. Now I want you to do one more thing for me.”

She waited gravely.

“Don’t tell anyone you saw this man. Understand? Not anybody at all.”

“A secret?”

“That’s it.” He turned to the boys. “Show me where you dragged this thing up.”

They led him across a bridge of barges, jumping from one to the next, over yawning gaps with swiftly flowing tidewater beneath, as if they were merely playing hopscotch. He scrambled up the string-piece, crossed the pier after them. A solitary drunk watched them owlishly from his perch on a huge, iron bollard.

“Right about here,” Herbie pointed.

“Yuh, that’s right.” The older boy indicated a row of splintered wood-fibers. “Here’s where we dragged it over.”

Koski looked around. There were no barges on this side of the wharf. A man might have dropped the suitcase overside without anyone noticing unless the pilot of a passing tug should have observed him from out in the river. “All right, boys. Don’t ask around about this bird with his face bandaged. But if you hear anyone else talking about him — or if you see him — hike for a cop. Ask him to call Koski, Harbor Precinct.”

They said they would.

He went back to the barge, took the suitcase, dropped down to the deck of the Vigilant.

Mulcahey put down the comic section he was reading by the binnacle light. “All quiet on the Potomac?”

“This guy is quiet.” He laid the suitcase flat in the cockpit. “Take it away, Irish. Want to put this on ice before it spoils.”

The Sergeant cast off, backed the patrol-boat out into the tidestream. “You’re not telling me there is a stiff in that? Unless maybe it was a contortionist?”

“Part one, only. To be continued. Maybe.” When the Vigilant hit her stride, Koski thumbed back the catches, got the lid up, pulled the cloth away. “Kid fished it up on a crab line. Sweet?”

“Holy Mother!” Mulcahey swallowed hard. “What kind of filthy devil would be hackin’ up a dead body like that, now!”

“Gent who wanted to be sure we didn’t identify his victim. All I know about the killer is he wore a bandage over the lower part of his mugg. For the same reason. So we couldn’t identify him.”

“That lug who runs the barge, mayhap?”

“Oh, sure. Bird who’s been workin’ the river tows for three years. Raising a family of five in a two-room cabin with no electric or running water. So you’d figure he was a criminal because his kid happens to dredge up a corpse!”

“Since I first started scuffing grooves in the pavement of the eighteenth parish,” Mulcahey braced himself against the wash of a railroad tug, “it has been my understanding the powers that be insist on detainment of the person reporting a homicide.”

“Want me to take a ten-year-old kid into custody? Make with the gas. Maybe the Medical Examiner’s boys can tell something from this guy’s insides.”

“They would have no trouble doing the same with me, after giving that the once-over.”

Koski pulled the wadding out of the suitcase — strips of torn sheeting, a ripped pillowslip. Something that had been caught in a fold of the fabric clattered to the cockpit floor, rolled in a corner against the tool locker. He retrieved it — a polished cylinder of brown plastic about an inch long. On one end was a narrow band of copper; from the other extended two metal prongs. He held it up so the Sergeant could see.

“Looks like one them wall plugs for an electric fixure, Steve. Some kind of a jack-plug.”

“Plug, all right. Crystal.”

“Huh?”

“Crystal. Inside this.” Koski tapped the plastic with a fingernail. “For a radio set.”

“Is it now?” Mulcahey threw the clutch into neutral, let the Vigilant coast into the quiet water of the Battery Basin. “From the looks of them mutilated remains, I would deduce they been worked over by something considerably more brutal than a loudspeaker.”

“Yair.” Koski remained in his crouching position, with the bit of plastic in his fingers, for some seconds after the police-boat came to rest rocking gently on its afterwake. “Sure. But under the right circumstances — or the wrong ones — this thing might murder a hell of a lot of men, too.”

He closed the suitcase, carried it ashore.

II

Koski snapped the metal catches, pressed the lock to one side. “It’s not much to go on, Inspector.” He lifted the lid of the suitcase.

“Ahrrr!” Deputy Inspector Nixon pressed his lips tightly; squinted as if his eyes hurt from the light funneling down out of the green conical shade over the table. “Don’t you ever get the jeebies, thinking about the floaters the Marine Division turns over to the Bureau?”

“This one’s no floater. Hadn’t been in the water long enough to bloat. Somebody packed him in the suitcase, just like this; dunked him in the East River. Barge-kid fishing for crabs hooked onto the handle, dredged it up.”

“First stiff I ever saw who really went to hell in a hand-basket.” Nixon ran fingers through graying hair, made a gargling noise in the back of his throat. “Where’s the rest of him?”

Koski spread his palms. “That’s all the murderer could get in one suitcase.”

“Just enough so the press boys can drag out those torso headlines. Holy Joe! Get busy with your grappling irons. Bring us something to work with. We can’t tell you anything from this.” Nixon jerked a thumb disgustedly toward the raw stump of flesh. “He was male, white and over twenty-one. He’d never had his appendix out. What more you expect?”

The man from the Harbor Squad pulled down the corners of his mouth. “Thought you Identification experts were supposed to have comparative tables on weights, heights, chest measurements...”

Nixon lit a cigarette, snorted twin jets of smoke from his nostrils. “Department of Miracles. Two doors on your left. If this damn corpse had even one arm—”

“Make a stab at it. How old was he? How much’d he weigh? How tall would he have been?”

Nixon tilted his head over on one side, assumed a fixed sweet smile. “You wouldn’t like to know his religion or how long had it been since he’d slept with his wife, would you?”

“Might help, at that.”

The Deputy Inspector groaned. “All right, all right. I’ll put somebody on it soon’s the Criminal Alien boys give us a breathing spell. They’ve got me dizzy.”

Koski tapped the damp metal of the suitcase, irritably. “Don’t stick it on your spile and forgetsis. It could be important. Somebody took a lot of trouble to see this lad wasn’t easy to identify.”

“He got away with it, too. If you only had something for us to work with...”

“There was a crystal.”

“My, my. Should have brought it along. Lieutenant. You always expect us to be clairvoyant—”

“You wouldn’t have made anything out of it,” Koski pushed his hat back on his forehead, stood with hands in his hip pockets. “It was probably dropped in the suitcase accidentally. I turned it over to the technical lab. Kind they use in, shortwave sets. Might have belonged to this guy. More likely to the murderer. I’m interested in any gent who runs around with spare short-wave parts, these days.”

“Well, listen! Don’t expect us to identify your suspects. Tough enough to trace the cadavers.”

“Then there was this.” Koski touched the sodden cloth. “Strips torn from a sheet. Old sheet. Part of a pillowslip.”

Nixon’s eyebrows went up. “Laundry mark?”

“Might be. Might have been the owner’s mark. Hotel, maybe.” Koski held up the segment that had been packed between the right arm-stump and the canvas lining of the case. “Three vertical lines and a cross-bar.”

“Not a hotel. Not one of the big ones, anyway. I’ll put Yulch on it; he’s got every cleaning plant from Washington east in that card index.” The Deputy Inspector rubbed the fabric tentatively between thumb and forefinger. “Cheap stuff. Sort they use in buck-a-night joints.”

“Likely. Shoot this over to the Examiner’s office soon’s you’re through with it, huh? They might find out what he had to eat for his last meal.”

“That’ll be a big help.”

“Give me a bell at Pier One when you’ve got something on him?”

“If we get anything.” Nixon grimaced at the contents of the suitcase, let the lid down gently. “Want a check on the luggage, too?”

Koski nodded. “Regular leather-goods store wouldn’t carry that kind of junk. Probably came from one of the gyp stores near the midtown hotels. If it didn’t come from out of town. Be a manufacturer’s lot number stamped on the inside of the frame, won’t there?”

“Sometimes is. Sometimes not. Only take two men the best part of a week to run that down.” The Deputy Inspector snapped out the light over the table. “Some day you’re going to bring in a nice clean suicide with his name and address on a label sewn inside his coat pocket. Then I’ll drop dead!”

“Don’t put that on the bulletin board. Somebody’d take you up on it.” Koski went out.

His heels clicked along the marble floor of the corridor as far as the dingy black lettering proclaiming Missing Persons Bureau.

There was one clerk in the office — a pudgy man of about thirty — picking feebly at a loose-jointed typewriter. He swung around, pushed the green visor of an eyeshade up on his forehead. “For the luva Pete, Lieutenant! Don’t tell me you’re in a swivet for some rush data. I got this report to get out...”

“Only take you a minute, Edgey.” Koski unlatched the rail-gate, stalked in.

“Yuh? Last time you told me that, I spent half the night—”

“Hoist your stern, fella. Lemme have your new cards. For, say, the last forty-eight hours.”

Patrolman Edge eyed him suspiciously. “This is only the beginning, folks,” he intoned, hollowly. “Only the be-ginning.” He moved to a row of steel files, pulled out a drawer. “I been trying to get them closed cases typed out since I come on duty at six o’clock. Every time I get started some wise guy comes along—” He stacked a sheaf of 5x7 cards on top of the file. “Who you looking for? Some dame who did a Brody?”

Koski shuffled the cards. He wasn’t interested in Mrs. Leonie Amarifa’s daughter, Isabelle, aged fifteen, dark-eyed, brunette, last seen wearing a brown-and-green plaid coat and apple-green felt hat or in George Purman Bostock, aged seven, blond, blue eyes, last seen wearing a blue corduroy on playground of Public School Number One Twenty-two.

There were about twenty cards; he went over them carefully. The only one he came back to a second time described Ansel Gjersten, thirty, brown hair and black eyes, engineer, yacht “Seavett.” At the bottom of the card, on the line marked Person Reporting Disappearance, was a slanting scrawl: Zachariah Cardiff. Beneath, next the words Relationship to Missing Person, was written Employer.

Koski held up the card. “What’s about this one, Edgey?”

The clerk thrust his index finger into his right ear, rotated his fist vigorously. “Was a phone-in. That’s Sebe Levine’s writin’. Sebe’s on the day side. Why? Got a lead to this Guh-jersten?”

“Yersten,” Koski corrected. “The G is silent, as the p in psychoanalysis. Seems to be a Scandahoovian. I’ve got part of a guy who was hacked up and dropped in the East River. From what we’ve seen of him, he could be thirty as well as any other age. There isn’t enough of him to tell about the brown hair or black eyes.” He studied the card. “Last seen at Rodd’s Dock, Brooklyn, five-thirty Sunday, the eighteenth.”

“Yeah. And that’s peculiar.” Edge jabbed a thumbnail at the date. “We don’t generally get requests to snag after guys who have done a duck-out for anyhow two, three days after they do the vanishing act. With a kid, of course, his folks are liable to throw a hysteric half an hour after the little darling was last noticed talking to a swarthy-looking foreigner on the way home from the A and P. But with guys old enough to button their own pants, it’s usually a couple days, at least. But Z. Cardiff calls up at quarter past eight this ayem to notify us about his hired hand who only dropped out of the pitcher las’ night.”

“This Cardiff took his time, at that.” Koski scowled at the ink lines drawn through the blanks next the headings: FORMER RESIDENCE, PLACES FREQUENTED, RESIDENCES OF RELATIVES, ETC., and PERSONAL ASSOCIATES, FRIENDS OR RELATIVES MOST LIKELY TO KNOW OF MOVEMENTS OR WHEREABOUTS OF MISSING PERSON OR WITH WHOM HE WOULD BE LIKELY TO COMMUNICATE. “On a yacht, ‘missing’ most likely means ‘overboard.’ Twelve hours is a hell of a long time to be overboard, in March. Make a copy of this for me, Edgey.”

The clerk puffed out his cheeks, blew a long breath, reluctantly ripped the report blank out of his typewriter. “I’d give you six, two and even, this lug has joined the Navy an’ gone to see the Japs. You oughta see the list of able-bodied males who done a skipola from the boozum of their families in order to wear them bell-bottom pants. You want all this stuff on here?”

“Yair. Maybe this Gjersten wasn’t so able-bodied. Says there he wore glasses.”

“That’s a thing I never could unnerstand.” The clerk attacked the keys of his machine. “Can’t a lad who wears cheaters haul up an anchor or swab down a deck as good as one who can read all the fine type at the bottom of the card?” The keys clattered. “Anyway, this cluck might of been in the Navy before. Had tattooing on his left bicep.”

“I guess there’s a law says you have to be a gob before you let somebody stick a needleful of indelible ink in your epidermis! Snap it up, Superman.”

Half an hour later Koski marched down the ramp at the Battery Basin. A big fire-boat with its line of gunlike nozzles lay on the other side of the Basin; compared to her the chunky black hull of the police-boat with its tiny pilot-house was a marine midget. But there was a sturdiness about the way the Vigilant strained at her lines in the backwash from a fast-moving lighter that said the smaller craft could take care of herself when the going was rough. Something told Koski the going might be rough, right about now.

He vaulted over the Vigilant’s rail. Mulcahey reclined against a pile of tarpaulin in the corner of the cockpit. His mouth was open; his eyes closed. The Lieutenant bent down, smeared his hand over the boiled-ham countenance.

“Up an’ at ’em, Irish.”

“Steve?” The Sergeant blinked resentfully. “I would call it a dog’s life, working with you. Only now and again, a pooch gets some chance to sleep.”

“If you’d lay off some of those dizzy dames you go out with, you might not be dead on your feet at eight pee-em. Come out of your coma. Twist her tail.”

“I hope,” Mulcahey thumbed the starter, throttled the motor down to a steady grumble, “we are not about to grapple for any more of this piecemeal cadaver?”

Koski made a neat coil of the bowline over left hand and elbow. “We’re about to locate the Seavett. Eighty-foot, bridge-deck, twin-screw job. Supposed to be over at Rodd’s, getting a propeller straightened.”

The Sergeant lifted the engine-box cover, tightened up the grease cup on the water pumps. “We could do with a short session at Randall’s Island for repairin’ the ravages of time an’ tide, ourselves.”

“A week from Tuesday. If not later. We got a job of work to do. It calls for overtime and hot-shot delivery, Joe.”

The hundred and eighty horses inside the engine-housing grumbled — began to roar. Koski switched on the running lights. The Vigilant thundered away from her berth. She shot out of the Basin, pitched violently in a ferry wash, angled over toward Buttermilk Channel. A gray silhouette with sharply raked funnels and hooded guns on the foredeck slid across the police-boat’s bow in the direction of the Navy Yard. Over by the tip of Governors Island, the red eye of a tug peered from beneath the black V of a derrick barge.

Mulcahey adjusted the timing lever; the motor raised its voice. The patrol-boat’s forefoot lifted slightly; her stern squatted in a white churning of froth. “Ordinarily I would not connect a piece of butcher-work like this mangled carcass with the kind of people who play around on a pleasure hull, Steve. It is more the Legs Diamond type treatment — the sort of bluggy operation Dutch Schultz might of thought up for one of his intimate pals.”

“Don’t go gangster-movie on me. We’re just checking. Captain of this Seavett notified Centre Street his engineer was A.W.O.L. Might not have any connection. No report of violence.”

“Who owns this rich man’s toy?”

“Lloyds says she was bought four years ago by Lawford Ovett.”

“Oh, oh! The shipping magnet? One who owns them banana boats?”

“Yair. I called up to see if the yacht was in commission. She is. But Ovett’s not aboard. Maid at his apartment says the old geezer’s just back from a meeting of the Shipping Council and has gone to bed and can’t be disturbed.” Koski fished a charred corn-cob from his pocket, fumbled with a red rubber pouch. “Trying to finagle some more vessels, probably. Tin fish have made quite a dent in the Ovett fleet. Their Santa Mercede was sunk only a couple weeks ago. Crew was just picked up off Charleston.”

“Twelve days in open lifeboats; I saw them in the newsreel. Like dead men, they looked.” Mulcahey slewed the Vigilant in toward the Brooklyn shore to avoid a hot-shot freight ferry.

“Some of them were dead, but those lads didn’t get their pictures taken. Not sixty fathoms down. One of the lifeboats didn’t show up.” Koski struck two matches, sucked their combined flame into the bowl of the corncob. “Wonder what you think about, waiting like that. You probably go nuts. Be the best thing.”

“I tell you something about them lugs who sail the seven seas, coach. I never give them much thought one way or the other before this fracas begins — except to fish a few of them out of the briny when they had too much of a load on. But you got to hand it to them for being the number one tough guys, now.”

“Yair. Takes guts.”

“Some of the lads been sunk six or seven times; keep going back for another dish of the same.”

“The odds are bad enough, bucking the swastikas, on the other side. But they’d be a hell of a lot worse if some heel on our side was stacking the cards against our own ships.” Koski smoked silently for a minute. “Run right up to the bulkhead if you don’t see the yacht. We’ll ask the watchman.”

The Vigilant skirted Red Hook, swung around the Erie Basin, nosed in toward the shipyard at the mouth of the Gowanus. Ranks of ships lay three-deep along the docks; rust-streaked freighters, mud-gray tankers, a knifelike subchaser, two snub-snouted minelayers. In the dry-dock a broken-down passenger liner was being converted into a transport. There was no sign of any yacht.

Mulcahey gave the clutch-lever a touch of reverse, braked the police-boat’s way. The black hull shouldered gently against the slimy-green planking between the piers.

“Hi!” Koski called up to a man with an electric lantern. “Seen anything of an eighty-footer? The Seavett?”

“Ain’t seen her since last night. She dropped hawsers along about suppertime.” The watchman spat down through the luminous green of the patrol-boat’s starboard running light. “She might as well of left. The Yard couldn’t get around to her for another six months, way work’s piling up around here.”

“Know where she headed?”

“City Island, think they said. She’s one them Cee Gee Volunteer Auxiliaries — doin’ patrol duty out on the Sound somewheres. What’s matter? Something wrong?”

“Looking for one of her crew. Much obliged.” For a long minute Koski stared across at a spark of light which showed from inside a tanker through a hole in the bent and twisted plates at its waterline. “Allez oop, Irish.”

Mulcahey grunted. “Course to City Island would take her right past the barge where the Gurlid kid was fishing. We might be getting hot, skipper.”

“Yair.” The spark flared up into a dazzling glare as an acetylene torch burst into action inside the damaged hull. “You mix up a short-wave crystal, a Coast Guard Auxiliary and a stiff like that — there could be something fricasseeing. The recipe calls for rapid stirring.”

III

The river was a dark tunnel under the shadowy span of bridges. The Vigilant got up to twenty knots, her bow uptilted like a runner’s head thrown back for air. Koski stood in the cockpit, bracing himself against the bulkhead, scanning the gloom ahead for lights which might signify an eighty-footer moving north.

As they surged past the tall stacks marking the Navy Yard, he caught a stealthy movement in the field of his binoculars. A black boat, low of freeboard and displaying no lights, was slipping in toward the Queens shore.

“Junkie.” He pointed her out to the Sergeant. “Probably got a load of manila off one of the supply scows.”

“We could nail him, skipper.”

“Not now. Looks like Eustape’s tub. We’ll get around to him in due course.”

“Give him enough rope, that otter’ll set himself up in the cordage business.”

“He better learn the jute business. It’ll come in handier where he’s headed.”

The giant span of the Triborough Bridge came into view as they sped past the upper end of Welfare Island. They circled an Army dredge, felt the slew of the Hell Gate race, boomed along past a sand-barge tow toward North Brother and the Sound. There were plenty of slowly moving lights on the dark expanse toward College Point and Whitestone — but none that might have been the Seavett.

A Coast Guard cutter anchored inside Throgs Neck pointed a tapering finger of white at them, cut off its searchlight, as soon as the beam touched the square-green flag whipping from the Vigilant’s jack-staff.

“Run over, Joe. Maybe they know a thing.”

The patrol-boat swerved inshore. A hundred feet away, Koski cupped his hands, bellowed: “Seen an eighty-foot Cee-Gee Auxiliary? Going down Sound?”

“Five... minutes... ago.” The hail came faintly over the rumble of the heavy-duty motor. “Need... any... help?”

“No,” Koski hollered. “Much oblige.”

“I am cutting the corners as close as I dare, Steve.” The Sergeant shaved the inshore side of a black nun-buoy whose tall cone teetered over against the drag of the current until its white number was almost under the surface. The clear, green jewel of Stepping Stones light came up around the Neck.

“Thar she, Irish,” Koski nodded toward a white spark far to the left of the lighthouse. “Won’t be long now.”

It was another five minutes before they made out her outline against the dim riding lights of the lumber fleet anchored off City Island. The Seavett had a corsairlike sheer and a slant-front, streamlined deckhouse. She was moving along at a steady five knots.

The Vigilant crawled up on her starboard quarter. When they were a hundred yards away, Koski put the beam of the flashlight on the yacht’s deckhouse. He held it on the varnished woodwork and plate glass long enough to make sure he had the helmsman’s attention; then threw the beam down toward the water, reached up and held his hat over it so that only enough light escaped to illuminate the police flag. The Seavett didn’t alter course or slow her speed.

“There,” Mulcahey observed, “is one dumb dilly. How do they let farmers like that fly a Cee-Gee Auxiliary flag?”

“I wish we had one of those one-pounders aboard. I’d put the fear of the Lord into him. Run across her bows, Irish.”

The Vigilant crept up to the yacht’s counter, came abreast, forged ahead, cut in sharply.

Profanity belched from the Seavett’s deckhouse. She slewed westward, heeling over heavily. Mulcahey followed her around, nosed the police-boat against her, amidships. Koski swung over to the yacht.

“What the heirs the matter with you! Don’t you know a police flag when you see it?”

The man who stumbled angrily out of the deckhouse was short and stumpy-legged; the plump beer-belly made his uniform coat a little too tight. His nose was too big for his face and networked with fine purple threads; sacks of puffy flesh under the prominent eyeballs gave him a toadlike appearance. The smell of liquor was strong on his breath.

“Dammit, you got no right to stop us. We’re on Coast Guard duty.”

“Y’don’t say. We work with the Cee-Gee, too. And when a cop-boat pulls up beside you, you stop or you’ll get your ears pinned back. You Cardiff?”

“ ’Sme.”

“Koski. Lieutenant. Harbor detail. Drop your hook.”

“What’s all the rumpus about?”

“Get your hook down. Talk afterwards.” Cardiff went forward, threw off lashings, tossed his plowshare anchor overside — kullunge.

He came back to the deckhouse, put his gear in reverse, took a strain on the anchor-rode, cut the motor.

“Satisfied?”

“Hell of a long way from it.” Koski was curt. “Heard from your man, Gjersten?”

“Don’t much expect to, now.”

“Why not?”

Cardiff looked at him out of the corner of his eyes. “If he’s gone overboard, somebody’d have picked him up before this. He could handle himself all right in the water. So I imagine he just skipped ship.”

“Didn’t figure that way this morning when you phoned headquarters.”

“Didn’t figure one way or the other. No basis for figuring. Nobody saw Ansel go ashore. Other hand, nobody saw him go overboard. One of us would most likely have heard him yell, even if we were under way.”

“You saw Gjersten last at Rodd’s Yard?”

“Yuh. Just before we left.”

“Who else was on board?”

The Captain held his left hand out in front of him, studied the palm as if he were reading from a note. “Missus Ovett was down in the main cabin. Mister Hurlihan was down there, too. He’s general superintendent of the Lines; comes around every so often to discuss... uh... business. Then there was Frankie — he’s our Filipino cook and bottle-washer — he’d have been forward in the galley. And me.” He closed his palm abruptly, glanced up.

Koski pushed past him into the deckhouse. The only light came from an underlit chart-glass, forward of the mahogany wheel; the dim glow made mirrors of the deckhouse windows. Beyond the chart-glass, up against the port windows, was a gray metal cabinet with vernier dials, switches, a one-piece telephone instrument in a nickeled fork at the side.

“You only carry two in your crew, Cardiff?”

“Supposed to have four. Been short-handed since Pearl Harbor. I don’t squawk. I’d probably be drawing Navy pay myself, if it wasn’t for a leak in my pump valves. There’s only me and Frankie left. He’s not sure of his citizen status, or maybe he’d try to get in as a mess-boy.”

“Who handles the short-wave apparatus, here? Gjersten?”

“No. I do. What little handling it gets. We’re restricted to the Coast Guard fixed frequency now. Mr. Ovett had it put in a couple of years ago so he could use the ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore channels. All that’s out, times like these. Don’t use it once a week. Nothing to it, anyway. Press a button to talk, listen for the buzzer when the control officer wants to give us an order.”

Koski snapped a switch at the side of the set. A glass button glowed red. “Gjersten have any pay coming to him?”

“His wages so far this month. About seventy-five dollars.” Cardiff watched the Lieutenant twiddle the directional antennae. “Not as if he’d signed on with the Line. If he’d jumped ship there, he’d forfeit it all. Here, it’ll be waiting, if he calls for it. I hope it’s the last money I have to turn over to him, though I don’t know where I’ll get a man to take his place.”

“Good riddance, hah?”

“I’d have given Ansel the bounce long ago, even though he was a wiz around those heavy-duty gas motors. But he was a disagreeable guy. Never did anything without griping. Worst of it was, he knew he could get away with it.”

“Drag with the owner?” Koski turned up the volume control, but the tubes weren’t warm enough to snap the set into action.

Cardiff pointed to the deck at his feet. “She hired him.”

“That way? Isn’t she pretty well along in years to be mucking around with a thirty-year-old yacht-hand?”

The Captain’s eyes bulged; his forehead wrinkled. “She’s a long way from being on the retired list.”

“Thought Ovett was around seventy...”

“Sure. But she’s not Missus Lawford Ovett. His daughter-in-law. Son’s wife. Twenty-five or so.” The man’s cupped palm described a sinuous vertical movement in the air.

Koski’s lips made a soundless O. “Where’s young Ovett?”

“We don’t see much of Merrill.”

“Not around last night?”

“Well... he was... and he wasn’t.” The Captain appeared to be rummaging in the drawer for something he couldn’t find. “We hadn’t seen him or heard from him — at least I hadn’t — for a couple of months. Then yesterday he showed up out of a clear sky while we were lying there at Rodd’s Dock.”

“What time?”

“About high tide. Say five. He just walked on board without saying where he’d been or what he’d been doing.” Cardiff closed the drawer, cleared his throat “Kind of surprised... everybody.”

“Somebody caught with his pants down?”

“No, no. Nothing like that.”

“Was there a fight?”

“Oh, no.” Cardiff fidgeted. “No rough stuff.”

“Did Hurlihan clear out?”

“Not right away.” The Captain looked over his shoulder, made sure there was no one on the deck outside. “Missus Ovett sent Frankie up to the bridge to tell me we’d run around to the East River and drop the super off at the club float, foot of Wall Street. So I sent Frankie over to Rodd’s machine shop to locate Ansel. He was trying to get hold of a template — so we could straighten out the propeller ourselves. Few minutes after they came back, I took the tub across the river. We could only make about quarter-speed; the fog was thicker than a steam-bath and running on one propeller makes her vibrate so I thought she’d shake her guts out.”

“Gjersten didn’t mix in this family argument?”

“Not that I heard. He went right down to the engine-room. If you’re thinking he tipped Merrill off to any dirt about Missus Ovett—”

Koski made a brusque gesture with the flat of his hand. “I’m thinking there must have been plenty of rough stuff, no matter what you heard, or didn’t hear. What else would you call cutting off a man’s head? And arms? And legs? Stuffing his body in a suitcase...?”

Cardiff cleared his throat again, ceremoniously. “Now I suppose I ought to say I’m sorry for Ansel. But I never did like the surly son of a sea-cook. Still, that decapitation business — that’s enough to turn your stomach.”

“It was. Whether it was Gjersten or not. There’s damn little to go on in the way of identification. How tall would you say he was?”

“Little under six feet. Well built. Weighed maybe a hundred and seventy-five pounds, I’d guess.”

“Ever see him stripped?”

Cardiff rubbed a forefinger under his nostrils. “In his undershirt. Only thing I remember is that whacky-looking tattoo mark.”

“Yair...?”

“A propeller. Four-bladed propeller, it was supposed to be, only it looked more like a purple four-leaf clover. Frankie kidded him about it once; Ansel got sore and near broke the Filipino’s arm before I cut in.”

“What was on his arm doesn’t help. Recall any marks on his body?”

The Captain shook his head. “There’d have been plenty of marks on him if he got into a fight with Merrill, though.”

“Tough?”

“Boss’s son has a temper like a fulminate cap; runs in the family, sort of. The Old Man blows his valve if anybody looks crosseyed at him. And I’ve seen Merrill make a pretzel out of a pipe-stanchion when he got in a rage at her.” Cardiff jerked his thumb toward the deck again.

“Well, hell. You’d have heard it if he and Ansel mixed it below deck, hey?”

“Hard to say.” The Captain was thoughtful. “Those old motors make more noise than a bombing plane. Even when they’re idling, they’re nothing to lull you to sleep. I didn’t even hear Merrill when he came up on deck and jumped to the float.”

“You see him?”

“I saw him sprawling on the float after he took a flying leap for himself.”

“Where was Ansel?”

“Well, he’s supposed to handle the for-rad line when we dock, but he hadn’t shown since he first went down below, so I figured maybe he was in the John or something. So I ran the bow-line out myself, because I could tell Mister Hurlihan was in a swivet to get on shore.” Cardiff hiccoughed gently. “He hopped off onto the float and beat it up the gangplank to the pier. I gave her right rudder and a touch of reverse to swing out — went up to cast off. Frankie was at the stern-line; I heard him yell. When I looked back, there was Merrill doing a broad jump clear across to the float.”

“He have a suitcase with him?”

“Jumping across five feet of water? Didn’t have anything except what he could carry in the pockets of his blue serge.”

Koski thumbed brown flakes into the bowl of the corncob. “Where was his wife?”

“Below. In her cabin, she says.”

“Didn’t you think it was queer for young Ovett to shove off like that, without saying so-long to anybody?”

“How’d I know he hadn’t been talking to Missus Ovett?” The Captain puffed out his cheeks, exhaled like a balloon deflating. “I thought likely he was hotfooting after Mister Hurlihan. That was no skin off my stern.”

“You see Ansel after you left the Wall Street float?”

“No. Matter of fact, now I come to think of it, I don’t recall seeing him at all, after we left Rodd’s. But I didn’t pay any attention to that; he’s been such an unreliable scut.”

The radio burped, beeped, exploded intoraucous voice:

“...Cutter Algonquin calling Coast Guard Fire Island...”

“...go ahead, Algonquin...”

“...bringing in twenty-two survivors torpedoed merchant vessel. Expect to disembark Freeport about three A.M. Will need four ambulances. Hospital accommodations for fifteen. That is all.”

“...Message received, Algonquin...”

The set fell silent. Koski switched it off, grimly. “You say Merrill Ovett knew how to operate one of these sets?”

“I didn’t say so. But if you ask me, I’d say he does.”

Koski gripped his arm. “Listen, don’t play twenty questions with me. I’m after a killer. I’m after a man who may have been responsible for those fifteen people being rushed to a hospital — and for those who won’t need any medical attention because they weren’t picked up. You tell me what you know. Without my having to drag it out of you. And start now.”

IV

“I’ve told you all I know.” Beads of moisture crystaled on the Captain’s eyebrows. “I... I’m sure of that.”

“I can’t wait around while you cross-question yourself. Show me young Ovett’s cabin.”

Cardiff led him down the companion-way, opened a stateroom door at the foot of the steps. “He wasn’t on board a great deal... so he used this guest cabin.”

Koski grunted. There wasn’t much to indicate the owner’s habits. Military brushes on the bureau; a copy of Hosmer’s Navigation; some old copies of Yachting. On the wall a water color: the Tarpon Springs sponge fleet at anchor. In the hanging locker, a couple of suits, some crew-neck sweaters, a long-visored fishing cap, a pair of knee-high rubber boots. Automatically, Koski picked them up. One was heavier than the other. There was a red tin can about sixteen inches high in it. The tin was labeled:

One Dozen

COSTON FLARES

12 — Red — 12

He opened the can. In it were only three of the wooden sticks with the redpaper ends.

“You use flares much, on this yacht?”

Cardiff scratched his nose. “Never use any. Didn’t know there were any on board.”

“Mmm.” Koski tucked the rubber boot under his arm. “Where’s Gjersten’s bunk?”

“Fo’c’sle. Up forrad.” Cardiff seemed relieved. He led the way to a wedge-shaped cubicle up in the eyes of the yacht.

Koski noted the narrow pipe berth, the pint-size lavatory, the solitary porthole. The white paint of the hull planking was generously covered with tacked-up pages torn from magazines. All the illustrations were of the female form in various degrees of undress.

“Guy had a one-track mind, didn’t he?” Koski opened a hanging locker, saw a worn melton jacket, white ducks, sneakers.

“Cheesecake, they call it nowadays.” Cardiff grinned, weakly. “Used to have a different name for it, when I was chasing around.”

“Yair.” A thin packet of letters was stuck behind the thumb-screw of the porthole; the envelopes were all postmarked Waterford, New York and were addressed to Mr. Ansel Gjersten, care Yacht Seavett, General Delivery, City Island, New York, N. Y. Koski took out a couple of the letters. Woman’s handwriting began: “My dear son,” the contents were devoted to what a hard time she was having, how terrible the war was, how much she wanted to see him. “With all those pictures, there ought to be one of him around.”

“Never saw one.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Square face. Sort of flat. Black eyes.”

“Hair?”

“Brown. Lot of it. No mustache or anything.”

“Wouldn’t stand out in a crowd.” Koski pulled out a drawer beneath the berth. A little stack of laundered underwear, a few pairs of woolen socks, some shirts. In another drawer, below, Koski found a cheap, shore-going suit of gray flannel, a pair of tan oxfords, a necktie and an expensive hat of dark blue velours. “You know this stuff was here, Cardiff?”

“Well, now. I didn’t go over it carefully.”

“You didn’t have to make an inventory to dope out no yacht-hand’s going to jump ship and leave all his clothes aboard.”

“When I said that, I didn’t know he’d been murdered.” Cardiff shoved his hands deep in his coat pocket, flexed his neck muscles uneasily. “I figured it was either he’d fallen overboard or else ducked out on account of... expecting trouble.”

Koski examined a pile of books and magazines on a bulkhead shelf. Strubel’s Internal Combustion Engines; four old copies of Physical Culture with pages cut out; an ancient blue volume entitled Hvem, Hvad, Hvar, which seemed to be a Norwegian Who’s Who; an advertising booklet, Keep Your Motor Young, put out by an oil company. Some duplicate carbons of ship-chandlers’ bills made out to L. Ovett, Seavett, Y20741, and countersigned Okay to pay, C. Hurlihan.

“This Hurlihan gent. When’d he come aboard?”

“Saturday afternoon.”

“Stay Saturday night?”

“Yuh.” Cardiff coughed behind his hand. “All according to Emily Post. He had the guest cabin.”

“Merrill’s cabin?”

“That’s right.”

“Then he must have had a suitcase.”

“And a brief case.”

“Take it with him when he left?”

“Absolutely. Carried it himself. Frankie was going to carry it up the dock at Wall Street for him, but Mr. Hurlihan told him not to bother.”

“Notice what kind of a suitcase it was?” Koski’s glance traveled across colored cartoons of wenches wearing little more than seductive smiles, to a double-page spread from Life displaying a rear view of the legs and buttocks of a row of damsels entered in some beauty contest and bearing labels telling which city they represented.

“Tan leather, as I remember. To match the brief case.”

“Not the same one the body was in, then.” The double page was fastened above Ansel’s berth with red thumbtacks; the tack at the lower left-hand comer had been pulled out and replaced many times, according to the numerous punctures in the paper. Koski wondered why, — pulled the tack out. A snapshot which had been hidden behind the magazine page slipped down to the blanket on the berth.

“Mmmmm!” Cardiff’s exclamation had an up-and-down inflection.

Koski picked the photograph up. It was a nude girl stretched out on her stomach, head turned to one side and pillowed on her forearms. A striped bath towel was laid across her backside, but no attempt had been made to conceal her face. She was lying on a lounging pillow; a couple of deck cleats showed at one edge of the print.

“Who’s she, Cardiff?”

Cardiff inclined his head aft.

“Yair? She pass these around to the crew?”

“Not to me, anyway. I never saw it. Must have been taken last summer, sometime.”

“Was Ansel around then?”

“No. Hired him at the end of last season. He couldn’t have taken that.”

“You don’t think her husband gave it to him, do you?” Koski slipped the print in his pocket, pulled a pillow off the berth. There was no laundry mark on the slip unless it had been made with the invisible ink some laundries use for identification. “Ship’s wash done on board?”

“No. We send it ashore.”

“Where to?”

Cardiff scratched his ear, looked puzzled. “Now I ought to be able to tell you. But I can’t. Frankie takes care of the bedmaking.”

“Let’s see Frankie.”

Cardiff led the way aft through a steel door in the watertight bulkhead. To starboard were more crew quarters; to port, a galley gleaming with copper and monel. The Filipino, in a starched jacket and white monkey-cap, was slicing bread. A jar of anchovy paste stood open beside a yellow bar of butter.

The Captain put his head in the galley door, jerked a thumb at Koski. “Gentleman’s from the Police Department. Inquiring about Ansel.”

Frankie poised the knife, regarded the two men with alert black eyes. His skin was the color of lubricating oil; there was a suggestion of oil about the black-enamel hair.

“Inquiring about last Sunday dinner, right now. What’d you feed the folks for the big meal?” Koski gauged the steward to be about twenty-one.

“Roast lamb, baked sweets, lima beans, pear salad, chocolate pudding.” The steward cut halfway through a slice of bread, stopped. “There was nothing wrong with the food!”

“Tchah, tchah. Didn’t claim there was. Everybody eat hearty?”

Cardiff said: “Ansel didn’t. Least not on board. He had leave to go ashore Sunday until four.”

“Oh.” Koski waved casually. “Think nothing more of it, Frankie. Tell me, where you have your boat laundry done?”

“Pelham Shore Hand Laundry.” There was no expression on the Filipino’s face. “Four twenty-nine City Island Avenue.”

Koski made a notation in his leather book. “You make up the bunks today?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All the sheets and pillowslips present and accounted for?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You didn’t check all the berths, though? Only those that’d been used this week?”

Frankie laid down the knife. “None of the berths are made up, except those that are in use.”

“Anything gone from the linen chest?”

“No.” The jet eyes slitted. “Are you claiming I had anything to do with... whatever happened to Ansel?”

Koski rubbed his chin, reflectively. “What makes you think something happened to him?”

“She said so.” The steward’s lips compressed as if he had said more than he meant to.

“Yair? You didn’t know anything about it before that.” Koski made it as a statement.

“No, sir.”

“Where’s Mrs. Ovett, now?”

“In her cabin, sir.”

“Which one is that?”

Cardiff edged past. “Double stateroom there. At the stern. I’ll show you.”

“Never mind.” Koski moved through a carpeted saloon with knotty-pine paneling, hunting prints over a fireplace mantel, red leather club chairs. Before he knocked at the door of the aft cabin he glanced over his shoulder.

Cardiff was standing at the foot of the main companionway; he started up the steps hastily.

The Captain looked worried.

V

A throaty “Come in” answered his knock. Barbara Ovett was propped up against a mound of satin pillows on a wide, double bed. Koski eyed the curves which made her nile green sweater and black slacks seem just a little too tight.

“From the Police Department, Mrs. Ovett.”

“Oh, ye-e-es...” She lifted one hand, languidly brushed a spun-copper bang off her forehead. “Looking for Ansel, aren’t you?” She waved vaguely at a tiny boudoir chair.

He sat down, surveyed the gold-backed toilet set on the dresser; the mandarin gown with its cabalistic embroidery in gold. “Steward says you think something happened to him.”

“Something horrible.” She smiled sadly, half-closed her eyes as if she addressed a stupid child. “I knew it would.”

“How’d you know?” He put the rubber boot down.

Barbara opened her eyes wide in evident astonishment. “Why, the Fish told me. You know the Fish, of course?”

“The Fish. Yair.”

“Ansel’s birthday was the seventh of March.” She stroked her hair with a movement like a caress. “This is the nineteenth. Born under the sign of the Fish, with Neptune retrograding, — threatening the most dangerous vibrations, — with a tendency to terminate in a fatal accident...”

Koski pulled down the corners of his mouth, nodded. “There was a fatality, all right. Wouldn’t come under the head of an accident. Do your astrology books give any dope on what Ansel might have run into, — or who?”

She frowned daintily but there was no impatience in her voice. “The truth doesn’t really come from the books, Mister—?”

“Koski. Lieutenant Koski.”

“—it comes from the stars.”

“Okay. The stars have any data?”

“There are always indications. Only people don’t always interpret them properly. I did my best to warn Ansel. Every astro-physicist is aware that Neptune in an air sign has evil potentialities for those whose natal charts—”

“Yair, yair.” Koski sucked in his cheeks, pursed his lips. “Let’s skip the air signs and get down to earth. Any practical reason you know of for anyone to kill him?”

She opened her mouth to say something, changed her mind, shook her head instead.

“Or hack him to pieces? Or chuck his body in the tideway?”

She put her hand to her throat, — bent her head back, stared at him under lowered lids. “If that’s what happened, I’m not astonished. He never would pay any attention to the planetary influences that were so plain—”

“Pull over.” He held up a palm. “They don’t include a study of the stars at the Police Academy. So if it’s all the same with you, let’s skip the abracadabra.”

She pouted like a schoolgirl; there was a juvenile innocence in her wide-set green eyes. “But I was only trying to help you. You want to know what hapened to Ansel, don’t you?”

“I’ve a good idea what happened to Ansel. Right now I’d like to know a little something about your husband. For instance, he hasn’t been on board for quite a while, — until yesterday, — has he?”

She bent over to take a cigarette from a jade box. “Said the little black hen to the big red rooster, you ain’t been around, sir, as often as you useter.”

“Where has he been?”

“Where hasn’t he?” She let him strike a match, smiled intimately into his eyes when she leaned toward him. “Merrill has a crazy notion he ought to learn his father’s business from the sea up. So he’s tried it all. Longshoring, stoker, able-bodied sailor. Says he intends to learn all about going down to the sea in ships so some day he won’t be having to give orders he doesn’t know anything about. Carrying romance-of-the-sea a bit far, don’t you think?”

“Nothing very romantic about it these days, Mrs. Ovett. How long’s he been away this last time?”

“Seven weeks.”

“Mean to say he came home after two months’ absence, — and didn’t stay overnight? A fine thing!”

She pulled the sweater down tightly over her breasts, sighed. “The Seavett isn’t exactly Home Sweet Home to Merrill.”

“You live in town?”

“We have an apartment on Riverside Drive. We don’t use it a whole lot. You’ve heard of people being married — and not working at it.”

“Happens. One of those things?”

She lifted one shoulder, curled up a corner of her lips. “He’s so ridiculously jealous. He’s known Clem Hurlihan for years; — he’s perfectly aware I consult Clem about investments now and then. Yet when he came aboard yesterday and found Clem here, he got the sulks. Wouldn’t even talk to me.” She wriggled down on the pillows; rolled over on her side so she faced him. “I don’t have to tell you it was strictly for business reasons.”

“No. You don’t have to tell me that.” He began to sweat a little; it was close and hot in the stateroom. “You might tell me where your husband would have gone, if he wanted to find Hurlihan. After the superintendent had gone ashore.”

“Clem lives at the Sulgrave Hotel.”

He wrote it down. “Your husband didn’t actually have anything on you and Hurlihan?”

“Don’t be silly.” She kicked off one sandal. “Merrill might have wanted to get something on me, as you put it. That may have been why he was going after Ansel, hammer and tongs.”

“He was, hah?”

“I heard them wrangling down in the engine-room the minute Ansel came aboard. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, of course. But it would be just like Merrill to try and make Ansel admit that Clem and I... you know.” She put on a shy frown of embarrassment.

“Yair. There wouldn’t have been any reason for your husband being jealous of Ansel?”

“You must think I’m terribly bad!”

He took out the photograph, held it out on the flat of his hand.

“That?” She giggled, half-closed her eyes. “If that’s what’s bothering you! Clem took it. As a joke, of course. One day last summer when I didn’t know he’d come aboard.”

“I found it in Ansel’s cabin.”

“You did!” Color flooded up into her face. “You can’t imagine I knew he had it...”

“I had my imagination cut out years ago. What I want to know is where he got this. And if your husband knew he had it.”

“He might have taken it out of the stateroom Clem stayed in.” She watched his eyes to see whether he believed her. “One thing sure. He didn’t get it from Merrill. Merrill never saw it.” Her hand grabbed at the snapshot.

Koski held it out, away from her. A hand came from behind him, over his shoulder, snatched the print. He pushed his feet against the edge of the bed, tilted the chair back, wrenched around, got a grip on a starched white coattail.

A metal tray smashed down on his head, scalding fluid splashed across his face, crockery toppled into his lap. He hauled on the coat; fabric ripped. The Filipino came back to him, flailing wildly and clawing at his eyes.

Koski drove a short-arm jolt to the steward’s belt buckle. Frankie went to his knees, spitting in the Lieutenant’s face.

Barbara cried “Stop it” but made no attempt to interfere.

Koski’s left hand bunched the cloth of the Filipino’s coat just below the collar, yanked the steward toward him; his right, with the wrist and forearm rigid, drove in and up at the other’s chin.

Frankie fell down on his face, among smashed cups and plates. He stayed down, but one fist came up in a slashing arc. There was a jagged shard of tumbler in it. Koski kicked at the black hair. The Filipino jerked his head back. The toe of the shoe clipped him under the jaw, hard. He went over on his side, still jabbing ineffectually with the sliver of glass.

Koski stood up, shifted his weight stamped on Frankie’s wrist. “Cut it out now. Or I’ll part your hair down to the bone.” He pried the weapon out of the numb fingers, threw it behind him. Then he wound his fingers in the back of the Filipino’s collar, yanked him erect. “What makes with the berserk business?”

The steward showed his upper teeth. “You have no right to that photograph!”

“No? Maybe you have a. better one?”

The Filipino brought his knee up viciously, caught Koski in the groin. The pain doubled him up, but as he bent over, his left hand shot out, got a grip on Frankie’s throat. The steward squirmed, bowed his head, sank his teeth into the detective’s thumb. Koski smashed a hard right just back of the boy’s ear; his knees sagged; it took only a push to send him to the floor in a heap.

The Lieutenant straightened up, grimacing. He wiped a little blood from his thumb. “Have to take an anti-rabies shot for this.”

“He did act like a mad dog, didn’t he?” Barbara’s eyes were bright with excitement. “But Frankie simply misunderstood, Lieutenant.”

“You think so?” He prodded the Filipino with his foot. “You want another helping?”

Frankie lay still, wrapping a handkerchief around his hand where the glass had cut him.

“Get up.” Koski wound his fingers in the black hair, brought the steward to his feet, moaning. “If I didn’t have more urgent business on hand, I’d take you back downtown with me and run you through the wringer. If you start anything again, I’ll do it.”

“Oh, but Lieutenant.” Barbara pouted. “He didn’t really attack you. He thought you were trying to take something that belonged to me. You didn’t see what it was, did you, Frankie?”

The steward looked sullenly at the floor. “No, ma’am.”

“You can’t blame him for defending his employer’s interest, can you?” She waggled her fingers at the mess on the carpet. “Just see what you’ve done to my cabin.”

Koski released the steward, shoved him toward the door. “Better get that hand fixed up. You can come back and clean this up later.” He picked up the trampled snapshot.

Barbara held out a hand. “You hurt yourself, Frankie. Let me see.”

The Filipino put the hand with the stained handkerchief behind him. “It’s just a little cut, ma’am. I’m sorry I ruined your tray. I’ll make some more sandwiches. Excuse me, please.” He stalked away.

“I had no idea,” Barbara propped herself up on one elbow, “he would tear into you like that. But there’s no sense apologizing for loyalty, is there?”

“Not so far as I’m concerned.” Koski wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “But if he gets sudden spells of misunderstanding,—”

“You think he might have done away with Ansel?” She seemed to be debating the matter with herself. “Oh, Frankie was too scared of Gjersten. No,” she retrieved the chart of the zodiac which had slid to the floor, “all the signs seem to point... in another direction—”

“Here we go again. By any chance, do these celestial signboards say where your husband has gone?”

“I don’t need any planetary progression to know where Merrell will be.”

“Give.”

“With Ellen.”

“Keep pouring.”

“Ellen Wyatt. The sculptress. She has a studio on South Street somewhere. Merrill’s supposed to be posing. For a life-size figure. That’ll be his bedtime story.”

Koski grunted. “How you and your husband handle your private affairs is nothing in my life. I’m after a killer who might not stop with one murder. Take a tip from me. Don’t depend on the constellations to keep you out of trouble.”

He retrieved the boot, went out, up the companionway. She followed him to the deckhouse.

“If I could help you by working out Ansel’s horoscope...?”

“You can use voodoo, if it’ll dig up any real dope. But don’t expect me to go into a trance over any of your starfish.”

She disappeared below deck.

Cardiff was backed up against the chart-case. An empty glass and a bottle of Demerara rum, nearly empty, were within easy reach. “Get what you wanted, Lieutenant?”

“Nothing but a runaround. Except from that Filipino cookie. He blew his top. I had to muss him up a little.”

“Was that it? He came up here to get me to stick some adhesive on his hand. I thought I heard a fracas.”

“You haven’t heard the last of it. Quote you odds on that. When you go on patrol again?”

“Tomorrow night. We have the twelve-to-eight. Stratford Light to Penfield Reef. Why?”

“Because I want you people where I can get my hands on you. Nobody on this tub has a clean bill of health as yet. We might have to make a few bloodtests before we get through. I want all of you here. When I get back. All of you. Understand?” He went aft, hauled in the Vigilant’s bow-line, cast her off, jumped aboard.

Mulcahey was nursing an aluminum pot over a canned-alcohol flame. “A poor substitute for what you prob’ly been guzzling up on the palatial pleasure-craft. Would you turn up your nose at mere caffein, after bein’ offered the best the house affords?”

“Had all the stimulation I can stand, Irish. Kick her over.”

“Speaking of stimulation,” the Sergeant blew the flame out, “if that damsel you were interviewin’ was a sample of the upper crust, I could go for a moderate morsel of such.”

“You wouldn’t care for it. Too hot for your taste.”

“You underestimate me, Steven. I would not even require the customary book of verse. No, nor a jug of anything; — not with her beside me, now.”

“Mrs. Ovett has plenty of the old McGoo. More than she knows how to handle.”

“She got a rise out of you. Ha!” Mulcahey thumbed the starter-button.

“She’d get a rise out of a mummy. But she’s strictly a ga-ga. Kept double-talking me about foretelling this hatchet-work from the constellations. Wanted me to wait while she doped out who did it, — from a chart of the celestial cycles.”

“Hell, plenty of right people believe in astronomy. I got a cousin over in Hackensack who cleans up on the parimutuels by consulting one of them birthday books. He looks up every nag’s birthday before he will lay a buck on the line.”

“I must get him to pick me a winner for the Derby sometime. But that isn’t all that’s whacky with the Ovett babe. She’s a witch.”

“Now, now.” Mulcahey poured coffee into a thick mug. “Is that a thing to say on short acquaintance!”

“I should have sent you on board to make inquiries.”

“Foo.” The Sergeant blew on the coffee. “When better dames are made, Mulcahey will make them.”

“You’d have little or no trouble with this one.”

“Man-goofey?”

“Way I read it, she’s been steaming up to every male on the Seavett. Except the Cap, maybe. He’s over the age limit.”

The Sergeant peered at him across the top of the mug. “And her married to Ovett?”

“Young Merrell Ovett. He’s the guy absence didn’t make her fonder of. Just got back to the yacht last night after two months away. Stayed a few minutes, took it on the lam again.”

“When the cat’s away, the mice will play around. You tie this marital laxness to the human remnants in that suitcase?”

Koski stoked his pipe. “That’s the sixty-four-dollar question. I pass. Get going, will you? I have to make a hurry call.”

“The last one on the day’s schedule, I trust.”

“Never can tell... with a dame.”

“How do you care for that!” The Irishman bobbed his head in resentment. “You got to see a dame! What about the cute little canary who’s been eating her heart out all evenin’ long because I ain’t showed!”

“This is business, Sarge. You know what business comes before.”

VI

The luminous dial of the clock on the Vigilant’s instrument board said ten forty-five when Koski stepped ashore at the Battery Basin. It took him five minutes on the phone to the Oak Street station to locate the address of Wyatt, Ellen, artist, — because she wasn’t listed in the phone book; another five to drive the green-and-white coupe of the Harbor Precinct to 88B South Street.

88B didn’t look like a residence to Koski. It was a battered two-story frame structure; it had seen better days and many of them. The ground floor was occupied by H. Bloomfield, Ironmonger and Ships Chandler; a sign across the second floor proclaimed:

David Angel, Sails, Awnings & Boat Covers of All Kinds.

The cans of paint and putty, the hardware and ships’ lanterns in the ground-floor windows said that the chandler was still in business. But a sail-loft might be big enough for a sculptress’s studio...

A flight of unsteady stairs climbed up at one side of the building; the door at its foot was unlocked. He went up. Somewhere above he heard mustic — violins singing a melody he remembered but couldn’t recognize.

There was another door at the top of the stairs. He pushed it open, found himself in a great barren room, with piles of baled rope and long spars laid up on wooden horses. Dozens of ships’ blocks hung from hooks along one wall. A row of naked bulbs in a metal trough suspended from the ceiling threw a fierce illumination on the far end of the loft vault. There was no canvas; no sailmaker’s table; — only a scattering of wood and metal frames built up on boxlike pedestals, a few piles of fat sacks. A brick fireplace had been built against one wall; its hearth had been bricked-in, too, save for a small iron oven door halfway up the arch. An old potbellied stove with an isinglass front spilled wine-stained light over a cot, a chest of drawers, a plank table laid on wooden horses. The music came from a portable phonograph on the table. Stuck up on a round wooden platform a couple of feet from the floor, was a shapeless blob of clay that reminded Koski unpleasantly of the thing in the suitcase.

A girl in a smock and a red bandanna bound around her head stooped beside the pedestal. She seemed to be stirring with an iron slice-bar at an enormous mud pie on the floor.

Koski got halfway across the loft before she heard him, turned.

He touched the rim of his hat. “Miss Wyatt?”

She laughed, held up arms sticky to the elbows with clay. She had the light at her back; he couldn’t see her clearly. “I didn’t hear you on account of Peer Gynt.” She picked her way through a group of plaster busts to the phonograph, lifted the needle. “I’m sorry.”

Koski noticed that the portrait busts were all longshore types. “You’d have trouble hearing an air-raid siren, wouldn’t you?” He surveyed the windows that gave out onto the river; they were covered with old army blankets. “Merrill Ovett around?”

She went back to the clay, resumed her stirring. “He isn’t here. Are you a friend of Merrill’s?”

“I’m a cop. Koski. Lieutenant.” He sauntered over beside a lumpy figure shrouded with muslin; he could see her better, now. A small, oval face with too wide a mouth, too long a nose to be beautiful; a boyish figure in short skirts that showed trim legs, neat ankles. “I was told young Ovett might be here.”

“I have to keep working this clay now it’s started or I’ll lose the whole batch.” She eyed him steadily. “Barbara told you he’d be here. She thinks Merrill’s in love with me.”

“That’s right.” Koski decided she was on guard but not particularly alarmed. “Has he been here?”

“Not for a fortnight or so.”

“Haven’t seen him for a couple weeks.” He repeated it as if to remember what she had said. “He wasn’t around last night, then?”

“No.” She laid the slice-bar down carefully. “Are you looking for him on Barbara’s account?”

“I’m from the Marine Division, Miss Wyatt.” He admired a bronze bas-relief of dorymen hauling in a loaded trawl. “We’re busy enough these days. Without monkeying around keyholing. That’s for punks in the private agencies.”

“Then it’s something serious?” She picked up a handful of the wet clay, squeezed it through strong fingers to test its consistency.

“It’s serious I haven’t got a warrant in my pocket. Hasn’t been a presentment to the Grand Jury yet. Ovett’s only wanted for questioning, at this stage.” He dug at the bowl of his pipe with a jack-knife. “Been a man killed.”

“Who was he?” She pressed a spatula against the shapeless mass on the revolving platform.

“Hasn’t been identified, positively. But there’s an engineer missing from the Seavett. Name of Ansel Gjersten.”

The sculptress’s fingers swiftly molded the contour of a man’s shoulder. “I never heard of Gjersten. Are you trying to suggest Merrill murdered him, Lieutenant?”

“Trying to find out what happened on the yacht yesterday evening, when young Ovett came aboard. Nobody’s seen Gjersten since Ovett left. Some reason to think there might have been a quarrel. Part of a body was recovered from the East River tonight. Not enough to specify in the indictment. I’m the Inquiring Reporter, asking what it’s all about.”

Her hands shaped in the corded neck ligaments and straining pectoral muscles of a seaman pulling at a hawser. “I don’t believe it.”

“What? That Gjersten was corpsed?”

“That Merrill was mixed up in any murder.” She regarded him solemnly.

“That’s natural. He’s your friend.”

“He is. Not in the way you probably mean, though. But it’s more than that.” She kneaded clay off her fingers. “If he’d done... anything like that... he’d have realized the police must come here to the studio; Barbara would make sure of that. So he wouldn’t be coming here, would he?”

“What makes you think he is?” Koski rubbed his hand over the rough wood of a ship’s figurehead that was propped up against a pile of clay-sacks. “You hear from him?”

From beneath a cup and saucer on the table, she took a yellow telegraph form, held it out to him.

He read the pasted-on capitals:

STILL TRYING TO CARRY THE MESSAGE TO GARCIA STOP SEE YOU TOMORROW BEFORE I TAKE OFF AGAIN

SINBAD

The wire had been sent from the Fulton Street office of Western Union at 8:00 P.M. Monday, less than three hours before. Koski pointed his pipe-stem at the signature. “Private term of endearment?”

“Oh, no. Oblique sense of humor. He always signs letters to friends that way.”

“This doesn’t sound like a sailor. More like a code.”

“The message to Garcia part?” Ellen went back to the clay figure, picked up a spatula, began to smooth the throat. “That’s just his way of saying he intends to go through with what he started, even though this last attempt failed.”

“Um. What’d he fail at?”

“Going through with a convoy, I suppose. War supplies for Murmansk. That’s where he expected to go when he left, — but he couldn’t have made it over and back on a freighter in this time. I expect the convoy was sent somewhere else after it reached the assembly port, — and now he’s going to start all over again.”

“Happens once in a while. What was his ship?”

“He didn’t tell me; he wasn’t supposed to talk about it.” She bent her head, lifted one arm to brush a spattering of gray from her cheek. “Do you think a man who went to sea over the bitter objections of his family — because he thinks it is the one thing he can do best in the war — is the sort who’d be a murderer?”

Koski blew smoke at a stone statuette of a hip-booted clam-digger. “Maybe some of these psychiatric sharps could tell you who’s likely to be a killer. I can’t. Plenty of people who wind up behind a homicide eight-ball couldn’t be classed as criminals, — until after the fact.”

“I understand that.” Her face was impassive; only the speed with which her fingers patted the clay into shape showed the tension she was under. “If a man got angry suddenly—”

He shook his head, briefly. “This wasn’t one of those. Guy hotheaded enough to commit manslaughter offhand wouldn’t go to the trouble of dismembering his victim afterwards.”

Ellen laid the spatula carefully on an up-ended orange crate. “That’s what I meant Merrill couldn’t have done that.” She indicated the row of portrait busts. “It’s my business to know something about men, — what sort of human beings they are, underneath their habits, their prejudices, the masks they wear in front of people. Without that, it’s no good starting a sitting.”

He waited, worrying the pipe-stem between his teeth.

“I know Merrill. He could no more do a horrible thing like that than be one of Hitler’s storm-troopers.” She flipped the muslin drape back off the life-size figure. “See for yourself.”

The statue was that of a sailor on lookout, one hand gripping the ship’s bulwark, the other shading his eyes. He wore cloth cap and pea-jacket; leaned into the wind, chin outthrust. It was a strong, hard, youthful face with boldness and perhaps a little bitterness stamped into the firm mouth and prominent nose.

Koski had known plenty of seamen like that; this had the flavor of salt spray in a force five breeze. “You’re good, Miss Wyatt.”

“If this is good, it’s because I’ve caught Merrill as he is. Perhaps not as some people know him, but the sort of individual that’s actually there.”

“Is it life-size?”

She held up a pair of huge calipers. “Every measurement is exact. It’s the only way I can work.”

“Probably a swell likeness. But I can’t carry it around in my pocket.”

She didn’t understand.

“You may be right about his not having anything to do with this dead man. But I have to make sure; I have to put him through a true-or-false. He might show up here, as per telegram, — but I can’t depend on that. So I have to send out an alarm. With a description. I doubt if the Commissioner would stand for the expense of running off a few hundred copies of your statue.”

“Oh, I see.” Ellen hesitated a moment, went behind the table, to a trunk. “Here are some stills from a sixteen-millimeter film a friend of ours took.” She handed over a half-dozen glossy miniatures. “Posture studies. Some of them don’t show his face.”

“These ought to do it. I won’t tell him I got them.”

She smiled. “I will. I’m not afraid he’s done anything so very wrong. So I don’t mind helping you to find him. But I expect — he’ll be here before you can get those reproduced...” Ellen stopped, listening to heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.

Koski wandered casually toward the door.

It banged back on its hinges. A blocky-shouldered man strode in, stopped short at sight of the detective.

Koski had the feeling he’d seen this man before; then he realized it had been in plaster; one of the portrait busts there on the floor had this same short-necked build, — compact as a truck motor. His leather jacket and deep-sea cap spotted him as a waterfront worker. He took off the cap; the strong light showed features reddened to the dull shade of old brick; a jagged purplish scar zigzagged down from one corner of his mouth across the jutting chin.

“Hi, Ellen.”

“Hello, Tim.”

“Am I comrade Buttinsky?”

“Not at all.” She gestured toward Koski. “A plainclothesman, inquiring about Merrill.”

Tim said “Oh” and “You came to the wrong place, cop.”

“Yair?”

“Yeah. We know from nothing about Señor Ovett.”

Ellen cut in quickly. “I do, Tim.” She fluttered the telegram. “Had a wire from him.”

The man bent his head as if he hadn’t heard correctly. “You did?”

“Isn’t it... odd?”

Koski said: “What’s odd about it?”

Tim took the telegram. “One thing... I didn’t know he was where he could send a wire.”

“Another thing,” Ellen put her hand on Tim’s sleeve. “Merrill knows how I feel about Tim. He must have something pretty... important... to say to me.”

Koski said: “Might be something about the killing”

“What killing?” Tim’s tone was hostile.

“Body was hauled up out of the East River tonight. Engineer on Ovett’s yacht is missing. I’m trying to add this and that together.”

Tim shrugged, disinterested. “You won’t get the right score if you add Merrill into a murder case. Did you try him at home?”

“His wife says he doesn’t use the Riverside Drive place much; the phone doesn’t answer, there.”

Tim made a slashing movement with the edge of his palm. “His father’s home. Harbor House. Up in the fancy Fifties. Merrill usually goes there sometime or other when he’s in town.”

“Thanks.” Koski drifted toward the door. “Don’t be surprised if there’s a couple of loungers hanging around your front door for a while, Miss Wyatt.”

“Detectives?” She laughed. “It’ll be the first time I’ve had any police protection since I’ve been on the waterfront.”

Tim spoke up. “Tell your sherlocks they better not try to strong-arm Merrill He’s a mean customer in a rough and tumble.”

“I’ll bear it in mind.” Koski went down to the street, stood for a moment gazing out over the line of barges nestling between the piers. On one of those dark hulks the Gurlid kids would be asleep, now...

He climbed back of the coupe’s wheel, made time over the cobbles toward the Battery.

VII

It was eleven o’clock when Koski made his way through the tunneled driveway that pierces the old Dock Department building at Pier A, jerked open the little green door marked Detectives, Harbor Precinct. In the bunk room, a lanky plainclothesman lay stretched out on a cot, reading a Racing Form. He waved the paper.

“Hi-yo, Silver. Identification calls you, few minutes ago.”

“What about, Johnny?”

“They been doing some leg-work for you.”

“Makes it even. You’re doing some, too. Gallop these pix up to Centre Street. For a rush flyer.”

“You think I’m kidding?” Johnny O’Malley got up, unwillingly. “I’m not kidding. They found a leg for you.”

“Goody.”

“Or rather one of the Army Em-Pees on Governors Island finds it. He sees a bare tootsie sticking out of the water, figures it’s some A.W.O.L. who tries to swim back after the last ferry. Turns out it’s a solo limb with no body attached. So prob’ly it belongs to that tasty little tidbit you found in the river.”

Koski grabbed the phone on his desk. “Climb in your cockpit, Johnny. That’s really a rush, now.”

He called the Bureau of Identification, learned the recovered fragment wasn’t going to help a great deal. Gulls had stripped most of the flesh off the bones...

He talked to the headquarter’s dispatcher, put in an all-borough alarm for Merrill Ovett: six feet one, two hundred pounds, muscular, aged 29, fair, freckled, prominent nose, square chin, pear-shaped ears close to head, high straight forehead, educated, sailor, last seen wearing cloth cap, blue serge suit.

He got through to Homicide, suggested covering the Riverside Drive apartment, the Wyatt studio, the Sulgrave. “You can get a description of Hurlihan at the hotel. Might check on the bird who sent a wire to the Wyatt wren about eight tonight from Fulton Street Western; signed himself Sinbad. And listen. This thing has a slightly Nazi smell to it. Bear down, — but sudden.”

He left word where he could be reached, went out, flagged a taxi.

“Harbor House. Sutton Place. At Fifty-fourth. Forget there’s a rubber shortage, will you?”

Lawford Ovett lived in a penthouse; neither the major-general at the street door or the head-usher in the elevator could, or would, tell if he was in.

The maid who answered the doorbell wasn’t much better; she said she would see if Mister Ovett was in and what was the Lieutenant’s business, s’il vous plait.

“Official,” Koski said. “And I’m in a hurry.”

From windows opening out on a terrace, he looked down on the dark avenue of the East River. A railroad car-float was being herded toward Hell Gate by a sheepdog of a tug; a deep-laden fish-boat bucked the ebb toward Fulton Market; a ferry swam over to Welfare Island, throwing a brassy radiance on the water.

Faint yellow beads moved across the black lacework of the Queensboro Bridge; — men and women returning to Long Island City, Jamaica, Flushing, Richmond Hill, Jackson Heights. There would be men there who had a stake in the hand Koski was playing. Men who had been working overtime making shells that would be going over in one of the convoys in a few days; men taking their girls home after one last night before they shipped out on a tanker; men reporting to the Coast Guard for the early morning offshore patrol; men with brothers or cousins or sons in the fighting ships that shepherded the convoys to the other side.

A door closed down the corridor; a middle-aged Santa Claus emerged briskly. His chipped-beef skin had a freshly scrubbed look against the white hair; deep crinkles were etched around the corners of eyes blue and shiny as agates. His nose was short; it spread flatly at the nostrils.

“Lieutenant?” The voice had the soft Scandinavian accent. “Vaer so göd.” He held out his hand toward an armchair.

“Came about your son, Mister Ovett.”

“I am not Merrill’s father. Lawford’s in there.” He moved his head an inch to one side. “I’ll take care of anything you want. I’m Rolf Berger. His executive director.”

“This is a person-to-person call.”

“You can’t see Lawford.”

“You think I can’t?”

“He’s asleep.”

“Wake him up.” Koski scowled, “I told the maid this was urgent.”

Berger rotated his head slowly from left to right, back again. “It’s impossible. Better let me help you. Lawford’s under doctor’s orders.”

The man from the Harbor Squad planted his fists on his hips. “He’ll be under police orders, if you keep horsing around.” He stalked toward the hallway.

Berger held out an arm, barred the way. “Looking for trouble, aren’t you? I’ve dealt with your kind before. Get out. Stay out until you have a proper warrant.” Koski reached inside his coat; brought out his service-special, hefted it on his palm. “I’m after a criminal. You may be aiding him to escape. In such cases, there’s a little thing called the privilege of hot pursuit. It makes this,” he dangled the gun loosely in front of him, “a damned good warrant.” He pushed past the other, flung open the door.

The room was small and narrow, paneled in white painted tongue-and-groove. The floor was bare save for a couple of rag rugs. There was no furniture except one sagging wicker chair. Across one end of the room a ships-berth had been built in between two plain-front lockers. Opposite it was a hanging locker, a mahogany dresser-cupboard, a white commode. On the commode, in place of jug and basin, was a huge bust of marble.

Overhead a varnished hatch was partly open to the night sky; the faint light which came through its ground glass was the only illumination in the room. An aneroid barometer in a brass case hung between a couple of framed photographs of old ships. Koski thought it likely this cabin had been transferred board-by-board to the penthouse and set up there in memory of long years on blue water. He went over to the berth.

The head on the white pillow looked, in the vague illumination from the hatch, like Salome’s offering on the silver platter.

The man was asleep. His cavernous face was lead-gray; deep shadows emphasized the gauntness of the eye sockets; slate-blue lips gaped open under the long hooked nose.

Koski put the gun away. “Good evening!”

The head remained motionless.

“Looks like a dying man.”

“He’s a broken man.” Berger glowered. “He’s been a sick man for a couple of years. Ever since his son began the farce of working his way up a ladder he never had to climb at all. Lawford’s been badgered about enough, sir, — and if you’ve any expectation of rousing him out of his sleep tonight, I’ll stop you if it’s the last thing I do.”

“You won’t stop me doing anything I have to do.” Koski was brusque. “You a friend of the family? Or just a business acquaintance?”

“When you’ve stayed in business with a man for thirty years, you’re his friend.” Berger bit off the end of a panetela, stuck it in his mouth, unlighted, at a defiant angle.

“Okay. One of the Ovetts seems to be in a jam.” Koski glanced curiously at the tell-tale compass inverted in the ceiling over the berth. “You want to be a help, you can tell me what I need to know. If you don’t, I’ll have to ring in the higher-ups. The old gentleman might not care for that.”

“We’ve had enough trouble from stupid officials. More than enough. Telling us what we can ship, where to take it, how much to charge for it. Fixing it so the damned union howlers can give us orders as to who we have to hire, how much to pay them, what kind of cheese our men have to have with what kind of pie. Good Heavens, if we have much more of it, Lawford’ll be in his grave. So if I can save him any of it...”

Koski examined the bust on the commode; it was a badly chipped head of Kaiser Wilhelm. Part of the nose had been broken off. One of the mustaches was gone. An ear was missing. Around the base were the marks of chisels spelling out words which at first he thought were Hoch der Kaiser...

“What the hell goes on here?” he inquired. “A little pro-Germanism?”

“Not at all.” Berger snapped. “That’s a relic of the old Vaterland, later the Leviathan. Used as a transport during the last war. The statue was mounted at the head of the swimming pool. The troops marked it up, naturally. After the war, when we took over the ship. Lawford thought it would be amusing to have it here in his cabin. It’s not exactly the sort of thing a German would be proud of, in its present shape.”

“Never was, was it?” Koski went back into the living room.

“You wanted some information about Merrill?” Berger tongued the cigar around in his mouth.

“Want to know where he is.”

“I couldn’t tell you. Doubt if Lawford has any idea, either. He and the boy don’t jibe very well. But if there’s any trouble I can straighten out...” Berger spread his palms. “I’ve come to Merrill’s rescue once or twice before so Lawford wouldn’t have to know about it.”

“He’ll take some rescuing this time. It’s murder.”

Two vertical creases formed between Berger’s eyebrows. He chewed on the cigar, morosely. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“You wouldn’t like the sight of it, either. The murderee was hacked into hunks. We haven’t found all of him, yet.”

“Someone Merrill had a fight with?” The Executive Director clasped his hands behind his neck, began to pace up and down.

“All we know for sure is there was a murder. An engineer from the Ovett yacht is missing. Ansel Gjersten, his name is. And young Ovett’s done a disappearing act. That’s enough to make an arrest.”

“You must be mistaken. I don’t believe Merrill would run away from trouble if it came looking for him. But I’m certain he’d not run away after there was trouble.”

“You wouldn’t be holding out on me?”

“Certainly not.”

“It’d be very nokay. Because we’ll catch up with him, sooner or later. Sooner the better for all concerned. If you hear from him, — or can get word to him, — smart thing for him to do is walk to the nearest station and give himself up.”

“If he’s killed a man in self defense, he’d have given himself up, already. If he killed this engineer for any other reason, Merrill’s probably shipped out of the country by now.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that—”

The maid came in with a white-enameled hand-set. “Call for you, sir.” She plugged it in a wall receptacle, handed the instrument to Koski, departed.

It was Nixon. “On that comparative weight thing...”

“What you make it?”

“Taking the leg into consideration, we arrive at an estimate of a hundred and sixty-seven pounds, five ten and a half.”

Koski thought about that. “It’s not too far from our tentative identification. Ansel Gjersten, engineer, yacht Seavett, Came through Miss Persons.”

“Be nice if those lugs in there would let me know before I run myself ragged.”

“Keep running. Plenty more ground to cover.”

“We covered some of it. Fingered your laundryman for you.”

“Now you’re pitching. Whatsit?”

“Three verticals and a cross-bar stand for initials H.H. together.”

“Reasonable.”

“H.H. stands for Hong Hop.”

“Where’s he push his flatiron?”

“1143 Lowden. Know where that is?”

“Brooklyn somewhere. Red Hook.”

“Reddest part. Heart of the Jungle. Three blocks below the Erie Basin.”

“Sounds like stuff. Heathen Chinese have any record?”

“Clean as a whistle. You going to check on him?”

“Always run ’em out, is my motto. Even if they’re scratch bunts. I’ll be over there before he gets another shirt ironed.”

He was jabbing at the elevator button before he called “So-long” to Berger.

VIII

The Vigilant furrowed the oily blackness of the Gowanus Canal like a plow in soft mud. The funnel of light from her searchlight moved past ramshackle sheds of corrugated iron, a sand-loader on high stilts above a decrepit loading dock, the rotten skeleton of an old tug. Her exhaust clattered hollowly from the factory walls lining the east bank. An over-powering stench of garbage hung over the estuary like a blanket. The scummy surface of the water was littered with floating debris, orange baskets, shoe boxes, refuse wrapped in paper bags...

Mulcahey examined the dial of his strap-watch moodily. “The witching hour, no less. And instead of me making time with my mouse, here we go shagging after another will-of-the-wisp. Which by rights should be up the alley of the Homicide crew.”

Koski manipulated the searchlight so its bright disc focused on a gantry crane which spread its scarecrow arms above a yardful of rusty pipe, discarded plumbing fixtures, junked automobiles.

“The Death Valley boys are on it, Harp. The F.B.I. is on it. Naval Intelligence is sending in a crew of trouble-shooters. The Coast Guard Intelligence is stirring its stumps. They’re all busy. Making inquiries along South Street about the bird with the bandaged puss. Checking on Gjersten’s mother up in Waterford to see what she knows about his acquaintances. Rounding up dossiers on the babe aboard the Seavett, the yacht captain and that dizzy Filipino. Making inquiries about Merrill Ovett. There are a couple of men around the Wyatt girl’s studio in case Ovett shows up. But everybody’s shorthanded; any delay might cost the lives of a lot of good guys out on the Atlantic. They want all the weight on it they can get; could we so kindly cover the waterfront end since we have a little head start on the others.”

“It does not prevent me from registering a slight beef. While you are away hobgobbling with the idle rich, I give my sweethot a buzz; she’s off me for life. Is it my fault I have to work sixteen hours instead of a legitimate eight? Hey!” Mulcahey registered belated astonishment. “What brings out all the brass for this one dead man? Especially since nobody knows who he is? How does one single stiff rate so much attention from the armed forces?”

“You might find out if you keep those Hibernian ears open for what the short-waves are saying.” Koski held the circle of light on a steel bulkhead that marked the end of navigable water. “End of the line. All ashore that’s going ashore.”

“Mrs. Mulcahey raised no radio experts. So I am none too sure I snatch the significance of your remark.” The sergeant manipulated the clutch-lever. Water boiled up around the patrol-boat’s stern. She glided to a dead stop six inches from the bulkhead. “You refer to that crystal gimmick?”

“Yair. The tech lab has it. They tested it out; it could only send or receive on the 2900 band. Not like a regular broadcast receiver. You can’t tune a crystal set; only sends or receives on one fixed frequency. According to the particular crystal you have plugged in. But you can take one crystal out of a set and stick another one in. So that gadget we found could be used on any short-wave set.”

“I begin to gather in a glimmer...”

“Reason the Navy and the Cee-Gee are doing nipups, — the Federal Communications Commission hasn’t permitted broadcasting on 2900 kilocycles for quite a while.”

“Do I comprehend your meaning? It might have been used to talk abroad?”

“Not that far, Marconi. But given enough wattage behind it, with a high enough antenna, no reason it couldn’t get a message to one of those schickel-subs, offshore ten or twenty miles.”

Mulcahey looked as if he was about to sneeze. “That is another color of a horse. We might be bunking up against them Gestapo ginzos?”

“There you go. Start gumshoeing around for a thick-necked Nordic with a guttural accent.” Koski clambered onto planks covered with coal dust. “You ought to lay off those shifting pictures; you’ll be seeing spots in front of your eyes. All the Ratzis aren’t German, by a damn sight. There’s plenty of scum floating around in the good old Oo-Ess who’d like to help the fascists put over their program.”

“True for you. The dirty dogs. Have any of the other johndarmes made inquiry about such an apparatus aboard the Seavett, now?”

“I saw one there, myself. A twenty-five watt set. Cap says it’s only used for communicating with the Cee-Gee.”

“We are not duty bound to take his word, skipper.”

“I’ll say we’re not. Then again, maybe he’s giving us straight but isn’t wise to what’s been going on aboard his command.”

“A yacht on patrol like that would be a very handy spot for anyone who wished to observe sailings down the Sound, if I do not mistake.”

“You got right, Joe. But that doesn’t hook up with this epidemic of sinkings lately. The convoys that have been taking the beating were made up of vessels that went out of the harbor the other way. Through the Narrows.”

“Nevertheless and notwithstanding, it is something to think about.”

“Are you bragging?” Koski drifted into the murk, called back: “Break out the canned heat, Sarge. Brew yourself a spot of scoff. Keep yourself awake. And keep that volume up. WPEG might let us know if the Medical Examiner’s office has anything for us.”

He made his way swiftly past shipyards and warehouses, broken-down shacks, odorous tenements, — came to a dismal district of poolrooms, coffee-pots, dime-a-dance halls. Sandwiched between a pawnshop and a fruit-store was a narrow window with an anemic display of ironed shirts and collars against a wrinkled poster advertising the China Relief Fund. There was a curtain behind the window; the shade was drawn at the door, but a thread of light showed at the sill.

He rapped on the glass. There was a shuffling inside. The shade was pulled back a crack; a placid, waxy face appeared. The Chinaman shook his head, smiled, dropped the shade into place.

Koski hammered on the glass. “Hey! Open up in there.”

The face materialized again, unsmiling.

The Lieutenant held his badge up in a cupped hand. A key turned.

“Police? For me?”

Koski got inside. “Keep your didies dry. Just want to ask some questions.” A radio in the back room announced five minutes of the latest news gathered from the far corners of the earth.

“Question? Yes?”

“Where’s your list of customers?”

Hong Hop tucked his hands into black sateen sleeves, shook his head impassively.

“No list. Too many customer. Don’t know address.”

“I was afraid of that.” Koski eyed the package rack, filled with thin shirt-sized bundles. “Most of the stuff you wash is clothing?”

“Shirt. Drawer. Sock. Everybody get back from Hong.” The loud-speaker said something about General MacArthur.

“Okay. Nobody says you stole anything. How many customers send you bed-linen?”

“Please?”

“Sheets. Pillowslips. Maybe blankets.”

Hong felt of his fingernails. “Few.”

“Name ’em.”

The laundryman went to a shoe box stuck in one of the compartments of the rack, began to paw over pink, torn pieces of paper. The newscaster’s round tones reported:

“The Navy Department announces the sinking of a medium-sized merchant vessel, somewhere in the North Atlantic. The sinking occurred on the fourteenth of last month. Survivors were landed at an East Coast port.”

Koski made an unintelligible growling sound; his eyes were angry. Survivors landed at an East Coast port! After how many days and nights of fear and suffering! What about those who weren’t survivors, who had faced it out there on the cold dark sea, knowing it was the windup! Did they think it was easy because the announcer said it quick!

Hong put the slips back in the box. “No sheet.”

“I didn’t ask you if you had any. Whose sheets do you wash when you wash ’em?”

“Different people. Sure.”

Koski put his hands flat on the counter, leaned over it. “Listen. You want China to lick Japan?”

The laundryman showed white, even teeth.

“Okay. The U. S. is helping China?”

“Yes. Helping.”

“All right. I’m trying to find a man who may be a spy. Understand? Against this country. And China.”

“Japanese?”

“No. Likely isn’t a German or an Italian, either. Most likely an American. Only way I can run him down is by a piece of sheet that had your laundry mark on it.”

“How long ’go?”

“Week or so.”

Hong stared at a fly on the ceiling. Then he looked at Koski. “Agarappoulous.”

“How’s that? Say it slow.”

“Agarappoulous. Runs saloon.” He ducked his head quickly, seized a black crayon, made a mark on the fresh ticket. “His place. Saloon.” He grinned, handed over the paper. “Sign like this.”

Koski looked at it.

— O

“Big Dommy’s place? The Bar-Nothing Ranch?”

“Yes, yes. I do sheets.”

“Copacetti, Chungking. Keep it under your hat. No talk. Catch?”

Hong scratched an armpit. “Catch.”

Big Dominick’s place was a couple of blocks north, a conglomerate establishment of restaurant, saloon, hotel and dance hall. There was no quivering neon in the sign over the door to the saloon; the windows had been painted black.

“Gangway!” Koski shouldered into a hard-faced crowd lounging around the doorway. “One side.” They made way.

Inside, fluorescent lights gave an unhealthy appearance to the crowd lining the horseshoe bar. A juke-box glowed cerise and purple, wah-wah’d boomingly. The air was heavy with smoke, sour beer, sweat, perfume. The Bar-Nothing wasn’t as full as Koski had usually seen it but the crowd was the same.

Shipyard hands and longshoremen in dungarees; seamen and stokers; Portuguese, Danes, Mexicans, Negroes, Lascars, Chinamen. A few panhandlers drinking their take; a knot of Irish laborers in noisy argument; a solitary drinker with no chin and foxy, protruding teeth; two greasy-faced youths in barrel-top pants and long pinch-waisted coats. And girls, — of every age, shape, size, and condition of sobriety.

Koski elbowed through to the far end of the horseshoe. Behind the shiny chromium of the cash register, a fat-jawed Buddha gave no sign of recognition. He inspected Koski coldly with small, pale eyes encased in folds of tallow-gray flash.

“How you doing, Dommy?” The Lieutenant got his elbows on the bar.

“Bad enough.” The lipless slit of a mouth hardly opened. “Lousy enough without Little Boy Blue come blowing his horn to drive patrons away.”

“If I blow, it won’t be to drive anyone away. On the contrary. Mix me a lime and Jamaica.”

Big Dommy reached mechanically for the rum bottle. “If you got to make a collar, for Pete’s sake, take the guy out in the alley first. Last time I had a free-for-all in here it cost me two hundred clams for breakage.” The puffy eyelids blinked; the sausage of fat beneath his chin wrinkled like the neck of a turtle withdrawing into its shell.

“I don’t want much.” Koski sniffed the liquor. “What do you cut this with?”

The colorless eyes stared stonily. “Carbolic acid. Get to it. You’re not boosting business.”

“How’s for a personally conducted tour of the joint? Just me and you.”

“In your hat. Where the hell would I get off with my trade if they saw me stooling around with you!”

Koski drank. “That’s your problem. Come on. Les’ go.” He set the glass on the bar.

“You putting on a pinch?”

“I will if I have to. I’m fanning the rooms, upstairs. You want to make me get a search-warrant, close you down?”

The saloonkeeper cursed bitterly. “Why don’t you ask your beat-man if I’m pulling anything, before you bull around? This place is run legitimate.”

“What you sweating about?” The Lieutenant waited until Dommy had circled the end of the bar. “I’m not on the Vice Squad.”

The fat man waddled to a blue-painted door, flung it open angrily. “Why do you have to futz around outside your own precinct? Why couldn’t you call up the Captain, here? He’ll set you right... on your tail.” He swore again, thickly, lumbered out into a narrow hall, grabbed a shaky banister and began to haul himself up brass-treaded stairs.

“Get moving.” Koski followed him into the hall, left the door open. “I haven’t got all night.”

“Just long enough to wreck my setup. Look at that bar. There won’t be a nickel coming across it in five minutes. All because somebody leaves a manhole open and a stink blows in.”

Koski got to the foot of the steps. “You’re going to talk yourself into a punch in the teeth—”

The light went out. The hall door slammed. Somebody jumped him, from behind. Big Dommy turned, swung on him. Koski got in one solid punch to the fat man’s face; heard him grunt. The Greek retreated up the stairs, swung his foot from the higher step, kicked the Harbor man in the head.

Then blows rained on him. Arms pinned his arms to his side. His knees buckled.

The blows were cushioned by unconsciousness...

IX

When Koski opened his eyes, he was looking at a ceiling. The ceiling was gray, mottled with irregular brown stains; a crack ran across it from one corner to the other with tributary cracks spreading out like forks of a river. His head left as if somebody were squeezing it in a vise; he moved it enough to see the foot of a white, iron bed. He put his hand flat to push himself on his side, felt coarse mattress ticking beneath him.

He rolled over. Big Dommy sat in a kitchen chair three feet away. A pink-striped pillow without a pillowslip lay in the saloonkeeper’s lap; his arms lay across it, the hands on his knees. Koski’s service-special was in the fat man’s right hand. Dommy’s face was congested; one of his eyelids was blue and swelling. His neck glistened with sweat.

“I’ve been trying to think of some reason why I shouldn’t cancel you. I can’t think of any.”

“I can tell you one.” Speech came clumsily; Koski’s lips were bruised; his tongue felt as thick as a rubber heel. “My partner will be around.”

“No dice. You been out nearly half an hour. It’s after one. If you had a partner an’ if he was coming, he’d be here before this.”

“You don’t know Mulcahey. He might have taken a shine to some jane on the way over.”

“He should have come here first. I got some nice numbers downstairs.”

“Headquarters knows where I am, too.”

Dommy shook his head. “I could name half a dozen people who saw you walk outa here.”

“You must be loaded to the gills.” Koski levered himself, painfully, to a sitting position, sparred for time. It didn’t look as if he was going to be able to do much in the time he had. Nobody would be likely to hear him if he yelled; the jukebox was blasting full force; Jingle, Jangle, Jingle. There was nothing to use for a weapon, nor any question of getting the gun away from Dommy, without getting a .38 slug in the wrong spot. “If you snap the switch on me, it’s better than even money you burn.”

“I been taking chances all my life.”

“You’ll be hot, all the rest of it. Even if they don’t tie a conviction on you.”

“I’d sooner be hot, on the outside looking in, than cooling on the inside looking out. I’m a two-time loser already on account some of your stinking finks frame me into Dannemora on a phony Mann Act rap. So what’s the odds? You come around, pin something on me — and there’s the judge ready to throw the book at me for being a habitual criminal. Habitual—!” The muzzle of the gun swung slowly around until Koski could look straight along the barrel.

“How’d you know I was going to pin something on you?” The Lieutenant gauged his chances of taking the pistol away, decided they were no good.

“The name is Dommy. Not dummy. Why you think I had you tossed in here?” The pale eyes stared at a point on the mattress close to the detective’s fingers.

Koski looked down. The red-brown stain had been underneath him; it covered half of the mattress. He propped himself up, groaned at the stab of pain in his side. It felt as if someone had run a red-hot skewer in under his heart. A cracked rib, probably. What the hell. What difference did a cracked rib make when you were about to have your last look at the light! That was what he was due to have in a second, now. “Yair. This is where he got it, hah?”

Dommy nodded slowly. “Where you get it, too.” He held the pillow out with one hand, stuck the pistol-muzzle in the middle, folded the pillow back around the gun. He bent forward, pushed the pillow-ticking toward the Lieutenant’s face.

Koski put out a forearm, warded it off. “Oh, no. Not as easy as that. Not through the forehead so it’ll look like suicide when they find me finished with one of the bullets from my own gun.” He got one knee twisted around under him. “I’d as soon have you work on me with a saw, the way you did the other guy.”

The fat man removed the revolver from the pillow, leaned back in his chair, stuck the weapon out rigidly at arm’s length in front of him. “Who was this... other guy?”

“You don’t know. You just cut him up for practice.”

“I don’t know,” Dommy blinked rapidly. “I didn’t kill him. I didn’t cut him up. A gun is quicker. It don’t waste good sheets.”

“If you’re leveling on that, Dommy, I might make a deal with you.”

The Greek smiled thinly. “Go ahead. Deal. I got the big ace, already.” He sighted along the barrel.

“You say your nose is clean on this other thing. Okay. Give me the low on that — I’ll keep you out of it. We forgetsis about that mugging down on the stairs. And this.” He waggled his fingers at the revolver.

“I never trust a cop until he’s at the undertaker’s.”

“You get along with the boys at your precinct all right, don’t you? Maybe you slip ’em a bonus for their birthdays, now and again. Okay. You can do me something.”

“Paying off so I’ll be let alone to make a dollar is one thing. That’s not stooling. Before I’d stooge for any cruddy cop, I’d—”

Koski slid one foot over the edge of the bed. “You’re in the driver’s seat. I can’t tell you how fast to go. If you won’t help — don’t get in my way. I can get what I want from whoever takes the two bucks from the occupants of the rooms.”

“You don’t get anything. From anybody. You’re in no position to get anything...”

Koski leaned out over the edge of the bed; his other foot touched the floor. His eyes were bloodshot; his hair stood up stiffly like rope ends. “All bets off,” he growled. “Hell! I’d play ball with a pimp or a gunman if I have to — but there’s no use trying to string along with a half-wit!” He braced his hands on the edge of the bed frame at either side.

“Get back!” Dommy snarled. “I’ll give it to you!”

Koski leaned away from the gun, turning his body a little to the right. His left leg straightened slowly; it was a natural movement to balance the weight of his body as he leaned back. “Go on. Get it over with. You haven’t sense enough to recognize a good break. Instead of being readied up for a leg-shave and a nice, new set of electrodes, you could be in the clear—” his foot touched a rung; the toe hooked it, “—with the word passed down the line to lay off you—” he jerked up on the rung, threw himself backward flat on the bed.

The front legs of the chair came up. Dommy squeaked; flung out his arms to regain his own balance. The gun went off. Powder grains stung Koski’s ear; the metal of the bed pinged loudly; the fingers of his left hand tingled. The Greek crashed over backward.

He was on his knees when Koski rolled off the bed. Dommy tried to get the .38 angled upward in time. The detective dived, landed on the fat man’s neck. The flabby shoulders went down; the puffy face smashed against the floor.

Koski got a grip on the bulbous throat, hauled the Greek up to a sitting posture. The man from the Harbor Squad hunched his right shoulder, drove his fist to a spot just above the pendant necklace of fat. Dommy’s body sagged as if it had been a sack of mush, but Koski held him up by the hair, hit him twice more, carefully, in the same spot. Then he let the lump of flesh collapse.

Koski picked up his gun, gritting his teeth at the slashing agony in his side. There was a washbowl at the head of the bed; he let cold water run into the chipped enamel bowl, doused his head, rinsed his mouth. Threadbare towels, smelling of disinfectant, hung on a hook. But he dried his face with his handkerchief, looked around for his hat. It wasn’t in the room.

He squatted beside Dommy, went through his pockets. There was a wallet with a wad of singles, a gold Elgin on a thin platinum chain with a gold penknife on the other end, a ten-cent pocket diary with entries scribbled against various dates: January 10, Oranges, $75; January 24, Figs, $50; Feb. 7, Figs, $25; Feb. 21, Apples, $50. Koski put the book back in Dommy’s vest. The only thing he kept was the penknife and a thick bunch of keys.

He used the penknife to slit out the top of the mattress ticking, which he folded and stuffed into his hip pocket. Then he tried the keys on the ring until he found one that locked the door of the bedroom.

He went out into the hall, looked at the number on the door. It was 5. He turned the key in the lock, put the key ring in his pocket.

Below, in the barroom, the juke-box was rumbling boogie-woogie. Upstairs, the lights were on again. He considered the advisability of going down to locate the master switch that must have been pulled, decided it would waste time.

He moved along the hall, toward the head of the stairs. The office was on a landing one step below the second-floor level; he could see the green-painted “desk,” the open register and the keyrack. Someone was moving around, out of sight.

He dug the .38 out of its armpit holster, stepped quietly around the jamb of the door.

An enormous Negress in a shapeless dress and loose straw slippers on her feet sat in a low rocker, tapping her feet on the floor to the rhythm of the juke-box below. There was a knitting bag on the floor beside her, a nearly finished sweater in her lap.

She rolled her eyes at the gun but didn’t get up or stop rocking. “Shah! Put that thing away. Ain’t no call for we’p’n’s, up heah, mister. Down below, maybe yu need fiah-ahms. But not on the second flo’. This my flo’. I don’t allow no disturbances of the peace, up heah.”

Koski holstered the pistol. “You the night clerk?”

“I’m Dora. I run this place. Day an’ night. I mean I run it. You want a room fo’ tonight?”

His grin was a little lopsided on account of a swollen lip. “I want some information.”

She stopped rocking but went on knitting. “That’s about the scahsest thing they is aroun’.”

He leaned against the desk. “I’m not hard to satisfy. Let’s start with the occupant of Room Five, yesterday.”

X

Dora got up, laid her knitting bag on the chair, put the sweater on top of it. “Dick, ain’t yuh? New one, roun’ here?”

“Not too new. I won’t stand for a brush-off, anyway. What about the guy in Five?” He reached for the register, flapped over the pages.

“I don’ know nothing ’bout Room Five.” She clopped around behind the desk with short, wary steps.

“Dommy says different.”

“I ain’t heah him say so.”

The only entry against the fifth numeral for Sunday was a carelessly printed MR. & MRS. T. JOSLIN. The name probably wouldn’t mean anything, anyway, he knew. Nobody gave his right name in a dive like this.

“You were supposed to change the sheets and pillowslips in there. Weren’t any sheets to change. You saw the mattress. You know what happened.”

She eyed him stolidly. “You gonna run me in? You know I ain’t goin’ to do no squawkin’.”

“You don’t understand the set-up, Dora.” He rested his right elbow on the counter; it lessened the pain in his side. “Your boss is in wrong. Up to here.” He touched his neck. “I had to flatten him; I’ll have to book him. Any number of charges — obstructing an officer, Sullivan violation, assault with intent to kill — enough to put him on a state diet long enough to thin him down quite a lot. He’ll be in the lineup in the morning. The payoff boys over at the station won’t burn their fingers on him now.”

“Ain’t goin’ singe none of my hair, neither. Keepin’ my mouth shut ain’t never got me in no mess.”

“Going to get you in one, now. Person who fails to report a murder to the police can be charged as accessory.”

“Don’t high-jive me. I minds my own business strickly—”

“Pretty puking business. Covering up for a killer who saws his victim’s head off.”

The Negress slapped a hand up to her lips. “Yu lyin’! To sca’h me!”

“Grab your coat. We’ll hop over to the morgue. I’ll show it to you.”

“Was that what happen? Hones’ to Moses?”

“Cut up in hunks. Like a side of beef. Wrapped in pieces torn off the sheet. Heaved in the river. Haven’t found all of it yet.”

Dora wrinkled her nose. “Wouldn’t want nobody to think I got any truck with that beheadin’ stuff.”

“All right. Talk.”

“I don’t know nothin’, hardly.”

“Maybe it’ll be enough.” His finger tapped the register. “What’d this Joslin look like?”

“Now you problems me. Man who pays me fo’ Five look like a sailor. He wear glasses.”

Koski dragged a description out of her, piecemeal. It corresponded roughly with Ansel’s age, height, weight and coloring. The man had checked in around three-thirty Sunday afternoon, with a blonde girl and a black suitcase.

“But he don’ sign in. He’s s’pose to. He say he do so. But he don’.”

“How’d he get by you?”

“I’m down th’ hall gittin’ sheets out the closet. He come in from the office with this girl an’ the bag. He got his money in his han’; he give it to me an’ say he sign the book. But when I go look, he ain’ done so. I figure on makin’ him do it when he come out — but I don’ see him come out.”

“You don’t know how long they stayed in. there?”

“I ain’ seen neither him or her go out. But I don’ think he stay long.”

“You find the door of Five unlocked?”

“Uh, uh. But I see some other man come out.” She craned her neck to see past Koski, into the hall. “Them gals ain’t puhmitted to stay in no room twice on one pay. Boss, he persist agains’ it.”

“This other man a sailor, too?”

“I couldn’ tell nothin’ ’bout him; he got a cloth wrap’ all roun’ his face.”

“Bandage.”

“Must been.”

“How you know the blonde was still in there?”

“Don’ know, pos’tive. Ain’t many men comes up heah for no otheh reason, excep’ cravin’ female comp’ny. An’ when I asks him what business he got in Five when he ain’ paid me, he just laugh kind of as if I knows why he in there. So he reach in his pocket; give me some money. I make him go sign on the register heah. So they ain’t no need to say nothin’ ’bout it to the boss.”

“Especially since you got paid double, hah?” Koski tried to synchronize the crime. Gjersten had been back on board the yacht at five-thirty or so. The killing in Room Five must have been done after that. “What time’d you see this other man?”

“ ’Round nine, I put it. I jus’ finish my suppah. I eats late Sundays.”

“Didn’t you think there was something funny about a bird with a bandaged face... coming out of another man’s room?”

“Didn’ ponder it so much, right then. Sees plenty peculiar things ’round this place. But when I find them sheets an’ pillahcases gone an’ all that blood sticky on that mattress, I say to myself, ‘Them white folks been cuttin’ each other up. But they ain’t no remains lyin’ dead aroun’ so mos’ likely nobody got hurt fatal.’ ”

“You knew somebody’d been killed, all right. Must have been enough blood for a slaughterhouse, even after the murderer’d sopped it up with the sheets and drained it down the washbowl. When’d you get in the room?”

“This mornin’. Monday mornin’. Wasn’t no more need for the room las’ night; we had plenty empties. Anyhow, I ain’t suppose to clean up without I find the key on the hook.” She curved a thumb toward the numbered board. “Man might been sleepin’ off a load, way he was hollerin’ an’ carryin’ on las’ night.”

“He was yelling? When was this? Why the hell didn’t you say so...!”

“Shah. Ain’ nothin’ special ’bout singin’ in this shebang. Man puts down some of that mule-hoof they pour over that bar, he feels like hollerin’.”

“What was he singing?”

“Differen’ things. Like men off ships do. One I hear befo’.” She threw back her head, set her arms akimbo, sang in a rich, easy contralto:

“Many brave souls are asleep

In the deep... so beware

Be...e...e...e...ware.”

Koski understood. “He’d have to do something to cover up the sound of the saw when he was cutting up the body. A concert for the corpse. Fine stuff. Would you be able to recognize this songbird if you saw him again?”

“ ’Deed I don’ know. I misdoubt I would. He got his cap pull down oveh his eyes. With that cloth all roun’ his face, I don’ see ’nough to remember.”

“How about the girl? The blonde he was with? Remember her?”

“She just one them poor tramps, picks up men downstairs, brings ’em upstairs.”

“Know her name?”

Dora closed her eyes, moved her head slowly from left to right, back again. “I wouldn’t get one them in trouble, nohow. They livin’ the hard way, without me worsenin’ things on ’em.”

“Get wise! You might be saving her life. If she spotted this killer, he might come around and put the dot on her so she wouldn’t be able to identify him.”

“You hear me say I don’ know her.”

“Yair. You know her.” Koski touched his swollen lip. “If you see her again, no tip-off, hear?”

“Furthes’ out this thing I can keep, better off I like it.”

“You’re not out of it, by a long shot. You’re liable to be a mark for this chopper, yourself. There’ll be a plainclothesman on post downstairs, for a while. If you see this blonde or anyone who looks like the bird with the bandage, go down and tell the officer. Don’t think you can play hide-and-seek with this killer. You’d be safer juggling dynamite.” He strode stiffly back up the corridor to Room Five; unlocked the door.

Dommy was motionless on the floor, his eyes closed.

Koski took out his gun. “Don’t bother with it, fink. I’m not so dizzy I can’t remember where I left you. Up on your pins.”

The saloonkeeper opened his good eye, mumbled: “You broke my jaw.”

“I didn’t. But I might. Allez oop, now.”

The fat man rolled over on his back, doubled up his knees. “You made a deal with me.”

“In a horse’s rosette. I would have. But you wanted it all your way. It didn’t go your way. So you’re for it. Stand up and take your dose.” Koski swung the pistol barrel, hit the Greek on one kneecap.

Dommy yelped, nursed his knee with pudgy hands. “What’ll it take to square things?”

“More than you’ve got.” Koski thought a moment. “Unless maybe you could save me some time.”

“I would go a long ways,” the fat man wheezed to his feet, “to save myself twenty years.”

“Now, you would. Well, I’ll give a try. I want the girl who came up to this room yesterday afternoon with a sailor by the name of Gjersten. She’s one of your regulars. A blonde. She checked in around three-thirty.” He gave a description of Ansel, mentioned the thick-lensed spectacles.

“The guy is a stranger to me. About the blonde, I’ll have to ask around the babes. I don’t keep a double-entry system on them, no matter what you headquarters lugs think. They don’t work for me. I just rent rooms.”

“Go on and make inquiries, Snow White. This is a rush order.”

Dommy limped to the door. “No charge, huh? You aren’t fixing to slip over a fast one?”

“Depends.” Koski prodded him in the small of the back with the .38. “On how good a bird dog you are.”

They went out in the hall. The Lieutenant locked the door behind them. “Keep out! This means you! And all your scummy crew. The Homicide outfit will want in on that. For prints, photos, whatnot. Hands off... savvy?”

Dora barely glanced up from her knitting as they passed the office. Going downstairs aggravated the lancing hurt in Koski’s side; his voice was brittle when he stopped Dommy at the barroom door.

“Get it right, slug. I can’t watch all the things that might crawl out from behind your woodwork. So I watch you.” He stuck the gun, muzzle down, under his belt inside his pants, pulled the vest down over the grip. “I can’t afford to take any more chances. You’ll have to take ’em.”

The fat man cringed. “You can’t hold me responsible for what some other gee might do.”

“Don’t bet on it, futz-face. I’ll arrange it so all the sulfanilamide in the city won’t help you any — at the first crack. Bear it in mind.” He shoved the saloonkeeper into the barroom, kept close at Dommy’s heels.

There were only a dozen customers around the horseshoe; a couple of them departed hurriedly as soon as the two men came in from the hall. Conversation among the other drinkers dwindled. The fox-faced man grinned slyly at Dommy, wiped froth off a smudge of mustache.

The Greek side-stepped around the end of the bar, went into whispered consultation with a baldheaded bartender who kept buffing the top of his skull with the hollow of his palm. Koski rested his left elbow on the mahogany rim. He thought a drink might quiet the hammering at his temples.

“Fizz me a lime and Jamaica while you’re chewing the fat, Dommy. Double the prescription.”

The baldheaded man wiped drippings off the bar with his apron, looked at Koski sideways. Dommy came over with the drink.

“We can’t finger the girl without we know the man. How we gonna know which one he was, out of maybe five hundred clucks who come in an’ out every day?”

“Name was Gjersten. Ansel Gjersten.” Koski winced as the rum stung the cut in his lip. “Wasn’t an ordinary seaman. Yacht-hand. Engineer.” He caught a sudden movement in the mirror at Dommy’s left, swung around with his back to the bar.

There was no one near him. The motion he had seen came from the direction of the fox-faced man with the buck teeth and seedy mustache. The man wasn’t looking in Koski’s direction; he stood with one foot on the rail, his elbows on the bar, his shoulders hunched over a glass of beer.

Koski turned back to the Greek. “I can’t be waiting around till you close up. Get action.” He saw the movement in the mirror again. The fox-faced individual was dipping his forefinger in his glass, wetting it, then drawing something on the polished surface of the bar. It was the sort of preoccupied thing a man might do if he was deep in thought and unaware he was noticed.

Dommy swore, beneath his breath. “You got to give me time enough to feel around a little.”

The chinless man finished his tracing, picked up his glass, drained it. Then he set it gently back on the bar, turned away from Koski and sauntered out of the saloon.

“Give you time enough to cook up a batch of hamburgs, Dommy.” Koski wanted a smoke but he couldn’t load a pipe with one hand. “Say about half a dozen. With onion. See if the chef can slice the Bermudas thicker than paper, will you?”

The Greek cursed again, joggled away to give the order through the service-window. Koski edged crabwise along the bar, reached for a basket of pretzels.

Beside the empty beer glass letters gleamed wetly on the bar. They were crude and already fading. But Koski could read:

CLAIRE

XI

He took the basket back to his drink. Dommy was in a huddle with another bartender who carefully avoided Koski’s eyes.

After a while the Lieutenant took his glass, went into a phone booth opposite the bar, kept an eye on the bar through the booth door.

He used a nickel, talked to the Sixth Detective Division. There was no report from the men covering the Wyatt studio. He got through to the doctor on night duty at the Medical Examiner’s office. The autopsy hadn’t showed anything beyond the fact that the murdered man had once fractured his collar bone; that he had eaten roast beef and spinach and potatoes some time before his death; there were indications the man had been severely beaten, abrasions, some hematoma, numberless ecchymoses. Koski said:

“I’m no Quiz Kid, doc. If the guy was beaten up, he was beaten up. You don’t have to use all the drugstore lingo.” He hung up.

An old woman in a frayed shawl hobbled in with an armful of tabloids. Koski paid a dime for one.

The murder was on page eleven, “Torso” wasn’t in the headline. Black capitals said:

GANG VENGEANCE SUSPECTED IN SUITCASE KILLING

There wasn’t anything to the story. A body had been found; it hadn’t been identified; an unnamed high official issued a vague warning that the authorities were cracking down on all criminals known to be connected with the policy racket — there was to be no such sinister growth of violence as followed in the wake of the last war...

A single dead man didn’t cause a ripple on the surface of news that told of thousands maimed or killed every day, Koski reflected grimly. It would get more attention one of these days if it turned out that the short-wave crystal was really part of the picture — that would jolt a lot of people who still thought ship sinkings, men swimming in burning oil or drowning in icy water, was something far away from Forty-second Street. But he was glad no hint of that angle had reached print. He wanted no publicity, not yet awhile. He stuck the folded paper in his pocket, went back to the bar.

Dommy brought a brown paper bag. “For free. I’m breaking house rules, too. The ration regulations say only two to a person...”

“I’m not going to cram ’em all down my own throat. What else you got for me?”

The Greek mopped his face with his handkerchief. “Nothing. You don’t have to ride me. I’m doing the best I can.”

“Is there a blonde hangs around here—” Koski unwrapped the wax paper from one of the sandwiches, smelled of it, “—by the name of Claire-something-or-other?”

“Claire?” Dommy spoke through venriloquist’s lips. “Wait. I’ll ask Riley.”

“Save it. Ask him in the back room. At the station.” Koski moved his head toward the phone booth. “I just buzzed the precinct.”

Dommy’s eyes were as expressionless as a blind man’s. “Yap! Yap! Yap! Why’n’t you call off your dogs; you think I keep a card index of these tomatoes!”

“I know what you keep. Better climb into your coat.”

“You act like it hurt you to stand still a second. Lemme catch my breath.” Dommy fumbled for a bottle behind him, spilled four fingers of rye into a highball glass, gulped it. “Would she be a skinny little piece? Toothpick gams? Flat chest?”

“Claire what?”

“Purdo,” the Greek husked.

“Address?”

“How can you expect me—”

Koski jerked a length of steel chain from his left hip pocket, held it out, made it jingle. A nickeled T was attached to each end of the chain.

Dommy refused to notice it, whispered hoarsely: “Somewhere on Treanor. Twenty-one Treanor Place. Damn your guts for making me stool.”

Koski put the twisters away, held out his hand, palm up. “There’s a hat of mine around somewhere. The hat... or five bucks for a new one.”

Riley produced the felt from under the bar. Koski brushed it with his sleeve. “This doesn’t wash it up. I haven’t got the girl yet. I haven’t got the lad who did the job in Room Five. Until I do, you’re on the hook. And I’m on the other end of the line.”

He found the call-box on the corner, used his key, talked to the precinct desk. In two minutes a green-and-white coupe rolled up. In another two, Koski was standing in a hallway of a three-story tenement, odorous of musty carpeting disinfectant and a heavy sickening sweetness that reminded him of Harlem.

The punched-aluminum tag on the door said Mrs. Claire Rawson Purdo; there was no answer to his knock; nobody came out in the hall to see what he wanted. He returned to the patrol car.

“Lady isn’t in.” His eyes searched the block, without result. “Dommy might have got to her first.”

The uniformed man behind the wheel scratched his chin. “Can’t expect a working woman to be at home during business hours. It’s only quarter past two.”

“Late enough, with us nosing around on a cold trail. Ask your desk to scour the district for her. Set a watch at Dommy’s. Go through his place, top to bottom. Here’s your passport.” Koski gave him the keys he had taken from the Greek. “And after you roll me around to the Gowanus, come back here and stick on this door. I want this babe; I want her bad.”

The car dropped him at the edge of a vacant lot littered with pyramids of rubbish. From the coal dock came a rumbling, off-key bass:

“I’ll only be here a minute or so

Said Barnacle Bill the sailor;

I’m on my way to To-kee-yo

Said Barnacle Bill the sailor.”

“You’ll be on your way to the canal, in a minute, if you don’t pipe down.” Koski let himself down gingerly to the foredeck. “How could that dispatcher make himself heard — your roaring like a bull!”

“Set your mind easy, coach. He made himself heard, only about five minutes ago.” Mulcahey gawked at the Lieutenant’s lip. “Holy mother! Were you mickied?”

“A bunch of the boys were whooping it up. I got muscled around a little. Also, I got a lead.” He tossed the paper sack across the cockpit. “Your iron rations. With Big Dommy’s compliments.”

The Sergeant bit into a hamburger. He held out the bag. “Will you join me, sire?”

“I’ve had a bellyful, Irish.” He sat down on the engine-housing.

“You hurt, skipper?” Mulcahey laid down the hamburg, quickly.

Koski took out his pipe. “Fit as a fiddle, Joe. One rib might need a little tuning up later — but right now I have a couple of chores that need tending.” He flicked flame across the bowl. “That stiff wasn’t butchered on the yacht. He was killed in Dommy’s place. Get going. Back to the Basin.”

The Sergeant cast off, pulled the clutch into reverse, backed the police-boat out into the muddy creek. “Was it the geezer with the chin-wrapping?”

“Yair. Chance the killer did get hurt in the brawl, really needed the bandage.”

“ ’Twould fit in better with your notion that these Gestapos do not go in for disguise and so forth.”

Koski groaned. “What is that under your cap! We don’t know this murderer’s a foreign agent. He could be. But there’s always the possibility the crystal was simply a leftover from some amateur who used it for experimental sending, back in the days when they allowed it. We’ve nothing definite on the spy angle. Except the pains taken to destroy the stiff’s identity. The fact that the Seavett is a Cee-Gee patrol. The coincidence that the owner of the yacht also owns a lot of ships that have been going down offshore.”

“If I could get one dim glimmer of the kind of person you are looking for—” Mulcahey detoured to avoid a railroad tie just beneath the surface, “mayhap I would seem a little less befuggled.”

“How the hell do I know who we’re looking for? He had a bandage around his chops; if he isn’t wearing it now, that doesn’t help us. He can sing sailors’ songs. He knew how to find his way around the Bar-Nothing. He was wearing work clothes or old clothes.”

“Thought the Gurlid kid couldn’t describe how he was dressed...”

“That’s as good as a description.”

“Perhaps I am a trifle slow in responding to the acceleration — but I do not get this...”

“She would have noticed if he was wearing anything very different from the men she’s used to seeing around the docks.”

“Marvelous, how the man figures these things. The only data I can dope out is that he’ll be handy with a saw and a butcher knife. And if this radio device belonged to him, he would know something about electricity.”

“If he doesn’t, he’ll learn something about it, one of these days. Up river.”

“That reminds me. Up river. I nearly forgot.” The Sergeant slewed the wheel, the Vigilant rounded the Erie Basin. “You had a message from the dispatcher.”

“You and your memory! Give.”

“One of the Homicide troupe is playing tag with Bre’er Hurlihan; he seems to have caught up with the gent. The address where he is patiently awaiting your arrival — wait a sec—” he picked up the coffee pot, looked at its side. “Pier Nine. Yeah, I thought that was right.”

“You thought! Don’t make me split my sore lip.” Koski pounded out his pipe on the gunwale. Sparks cascaded over the stern. “If that super’s working, it might mean they’re getting some fire-alarm freight on board for a quick clearance. There’s a certain guy I wouldn’t want to see leave these parts so sudden, Irish. Lean on that throttle!”

The motor’s pitch rose a note higher. The hull shuddered. Wings of spray fountained out from the bow.

XII

Under the fierce glare of top-shielded lights, Pier Nine was a noiseless nightmare of activity. Rubber-shod longshoremen padded quietly along with pneumatic-tired hand-trucks loaded with steel drums. Rope slings were hoisted soundlessly up over the mud-gray side of the freighter bulking alongside the pier. No donkey engines barked; there was no whining of winch drums or screeching of taut wires; none of the raucous bedlam or bawling of orders which usually provide accompaniment for a rush job of night-loading.

The unnatural hush reminded Koski of an old silent film; the straining figures in jerseys and dungarees lowering the drums gently to thick fiber mats; the absence of the normal clutter of bales, crates, boxes.

Across the end of the pier, a red-enameled truck had been parked: Chemical Company No. 12; — three men in dark blue uniforms sat on the running board, with extinguishers at their feet. Sling-men made their lashings fast with an air of tense concentration. As the boss stevedore signaled, palm up to the hoist man, Koski noticed the red and blue concentric circles painted on the end of the drum, read the yellow stenciling:

C-A-U-T-I-O-N

Vulcan Chemical Corp.

— TRINITROTOLUENE —

“They keep telling me there’s no danger handling this stuff, Lieutenant.” A small, dark man who looked like a prosperous barber emerged from the gloom beyond the loading lights. “All the same, nobody is doing any tap routines while those cans are going aboard.”

“Hi, Van. What goes?”

“We all do. If one of these boys should trip over his own dogs.” The Homicide officer pointed toward a plump man in a tight-fitting trench coat, standing by a checker’s stand halfway down the pier. “Hurlihan says they already put aboard quite a few tons of smokeless powder and three hundred cases of mine fuses — but the big noise has to be tucked in bed last. Say,” he took out a cigarette mechanically, stuck it between his lips, removed it with a grimace. “I pick your friend Hurlihan up at his hotel. I was going to take him down and fling him in the clink, but all you said was you wanted to gat heem. So I just tail him down here.”

Koski sized up the superintendent’s narrow, sloping shoulders; his round bullet-head, dead-white skin and mat of black, curly hair. “What’d he have to say for himself?”

“Says from eight to ten pee-em Sunday he was at Leon and Eddie’s. I bet it’s the first time that place’s ever been used for an alibi.”

“Anybody with him?”

“Pal of his. Lawyer for the Line. Fella name of Fross. I couldn’t get Fross on the phone to check it, but Hurlihan says plenty of other people who know him saw him here... including Leon.”

“He go there straight from the Seavett?”

“Claims he went to his hotel, first. Doesn’t admit knowing anything about any trouble on the yacht. He could be putting on an act. But he don’t seem to be fretting himself about anything except the twenty-four hundred cans of this stuff.” Van jerked a thumb toward a drum twirling slowly as it ascended over their heads. “You can’t blame him for that. I’ve aged a couple of years since midnight, myself.”

“Okay, Ponce de Leon. Go find yourself a fountain of youth. I’ll take over.” Koski walked over to the checker’s stand, touched the superintendent’s shoulder.

Van came up behind him. “Here’s a gent you better not try to give the brush-off, Mister Hurlihan. Meet Lieutenant Koski.” Van eased away.

Hurlihan glanced up from the stowage plan, fluttered a fat palm at the file of loaded trucks being trundled out of the pier shed. “Don’t bother me now. This stuff’s dangerous. Got to watch it every second.”

“You’re not the only guy watching it.” Koski eyed two men in belted raincoats and white caps bearing the gold shield of the Coast Guard; they stood on the alert just beyond the checker’s stand.

“I’m responsible for getting it in the holds.” Fear flickered in Hurlihan’s gray eyes. “Those lads have cost me a couple hours already, giving the once-over to my dock gang. Now you cops come along. Lord knows when we’ll get done now.” He pulled his coat collar tighter. “Tugs’ll be here at five tomorrow afternoon. Hatches have to be battened down by then, win, lose, or draw. How the hell can they expect us to make overnight turnarounds with everybody butting in—”

“Must keep you kiting. Been on the job all day?”

“Since half-past eight this morning. What is this? A third degree?”

“You’ll know it if we have to put you over the hurdles. Here on the pier all the time?”

“Out here. In my office. In the bathroom, if you have to be so damn nosey.”

“Seen young Ovett? Heard from him?”

“Hide nor hair. Since I left the Seavett.”

“After you had that scrap with him over your attentions to his wife, didn’t he follow you off the yacht?”

“Nothing of the kind.” Hurlihan wagged his head in emphatic denial. “There wasn’t any fight. Merrill and I didn’t even discuss Mrs. Ovett. Nobody followed me when I went ashore. Did Merrill sic you on me?”

“The guy who sicced us onto you is packed in ice up at the City mortuary on Twenty-ninth.”

Hurlihan opened his mouth, closed it, squinted at Van. “That’s why you been keeping tabs on me the last hour? Because you think I killed somebody.” He snorted. “You damned dimwits, I don’t even know who’s dead!”

“You haven’t anything on us. There isn’t enough left of this guy to tell. What we have checks with the description of Ansel Gjersten. The Seavett’s engineer.”

The superintendent’s chin sank on his chest. He shoved his hands deep in his coat pockets. “Ansel was live enough the last time I saw him. I had no more reason to kill him than I have... you, for instance. I don’t know who murdered him. Or why. Or the first thing about it.”

“What were you doing on the yacht? Besides playing boops-a-daisy with Mrs. Ovett?”

“Hadn’t anything to do with Gjersten. Purely a matter of business.”

“I’ve heard of murder for business reasons.”

“Nothing like that in this.” Hurlihan took an envelope from an inside pocket, extracted a paper. “I went out to get Barbara’s proxy. To vote her shares at the special stockholders’ meeting next week.”

“How come you get her proxy?” Koski scanned the document, stuck it in his pocket. “When her husband’s in the offing?”

“Hey, that’s mine! Gimme that!”

“Control yourself. Number of things I don’t savvy about these proceedings. Why doesn’t young Ovett handle his wife’s business affairs?”

“Merrill,” — Hurlihan picked his words cautiously — “won’t act to protect his own interests — to say nothing of Barabara’s. The Line is shaping up for a terrific breakdown. On paper, we’re making a profit. At sea, we’re losing so many ships we’ll be out of business in six months. That’s the thing some of us are trying to put a stop to.”

“What’ll you do? Keep ’em afloat with proxies?”

“We could cut our losses, under the right management.” The superintendent swore under his breath as a longshoreman slipped on the wet planking of the pier, nearly let a drum topple over. “Better engines, to hop up speed; it’s the ship that drags behind the convoy that gets versenkt. Better loading; to prevent cargo from shifting and cutting down knots. Younger captains, trained in blind navigation, so they won’t stray out of convoy at night. These new intercommunicating systems that won’t get out of kilter in an emergency.”

Koski growled: “Is young Ovett against improvements?”

“His father is. Because they cost dough. Merrill doesn’t seem to give a damn. The crowd I’m with want new blood at the top, to spend the money, save the ships. And the men. Doesn’t sound as if it would lead to manslaughter, does it?”

“Might be a connection. If somebody figured he could grab control by putting the Line on the rocks first.”

Hurlihan’s face puckered. “You suspect someone in the company of deliberately...” his voice trailed off.

“We have reason to believe the killer knew short-wave radio. Most likely way to communicate with the U-boats. The Seavett has a ship-to-ship set. Gjersten was on the yacht. So was Merrill Ovett. So were you.”

“Well!” The superintendent took off his hat, wiped off the sweat-band. “You don’t add that up and make a spy case out of it. Or a murder case. Everybody in the shipping business uses short-wave. Or used to. I had a set in my office; I turned it over to the Navy. What does that make me?”

“If I knew all the answers, I wouldn’t be asking questions.”

Moisture streamed down the superintendent’s face; more than could be accounted for by the mist. “Dammit, we aren’t the only company losing vessels. We’ve had some rotten breaks, but that doesn’t mean anything except that our management is dead on its feet—”

“I heard that record. Turn it over. Tell me how a man could discover when one of your ships is going out? This one, for instance?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the freighter.

“He might be tipped off by someone who’s on a hatch-crew; they know when the Pobrico’s supposed to be loaded. Or someone connected with the longshoremen’s union, who’d hear about it when the men reported for new jobs.”

“But they wouldn’t know which route the ship was going to take?”

“Only way anyone could find that out would be to get into my office, study the location chart.”

“What’s the location chart? To show the position of your ships?”

“Every bottom we own or charter. Where they’re supposed to be every minute, day or night. But no one’s allowed in my office. It’s always locked when I’m not there. Nobody can get near the pier shed without being checked, double-checked and vouchered, these days.”

“Merrill ever go in there?”

“He might.” Hurlihan looked out past the freighter at the river, a sluggish, leaden stream under the glare of the loading lights. “He worked there for a couple of months, few years ago.”

“Still have a key, does he?”

“Don’t know. Some of the Line officials have. But anybody else would have to run the gantlet o-f our guards, the customs men, and the pier patrolmen.”

“Let’s have a peek at this location thing.”

The superintendent’s office was locked. Hurlihan used a key chained to his belt, pushed open a heavy steel door, let Koski into a long, narrow room at the end of the shed. From its window Koski could see out over the well-deck of the freighter. Light streamed up out of the hold, silhouetting men of the forward hatch gang — black gnomes against a yellow inferno. One of the explosive drums swung up over the side, hovered, spun slowly as it descended. The Harbor Squad man heard Hurlihan expel his breath in a long sigh.

The superintendent turned to a jumbo chart of the North Atlantic which covered one wall from floor to ceiling; the chart was covered with transparent plastic, which bore the greasy markings of colored crayons. Inch-long miniatures of steamships were sprinkled along the route north past Nova Scotia and Iceland; they bore markings: Santa Inez, Santa Felice, Santa Rosario...

On the long bare table in front of the chart were other miniatures, mounted on small, painted metal disks. One was labeled Santa Pobrico. Hurlihan picked it up, touched it to the cellophane. It clung to the chart just outside Ambrose Lightship off New York Harbor. “Sheet of zinc underneath the chart; it’s electrically magnetized so these widgets stick where we put them. Unless a torpedo knocks them off.” He touched the miniature of the Pobrico. “If you don’t stymie me, this is where she’ll be by nine o’clock tomorrow night.”

Koski nudged the ship-cymbol gently along on the chart a couple of inches. “What’re the red marks for, f’r instance?”

“Where we lost a ship.”

“What about the blue crosses?”

“Attacks.”

Koski saw a blue X a little below and to the right of Cape Hatteras. Beside it was printed in green ink: Santa Mercede.

“This the last one you lost, Hurlihan?”

“Yeah. One of my pals went down with that — the first officer. He wasn’t as lucky as Merrill.”

Koski didn’t act as if it was news. “The old man’s son been on any other Ovett ships that have been torpedoed... besides the Mercede?”

“Search me. If I knew what alias he used, I could find out from the log-files.” The superintendent couldn’t keep his attention away from the window; he was listening to the detective with a mixture of impatience and anxiety. “But you couldn’t suspect a man who actually sailed on board a ship that was sunk, anyway.”

“Couldn’t I?” Koski’s jaw jutted. “The sort of slug who’d tip off a sub-commander about a ship’s sailing might be able to fix it so he wouldn’t be among those missing after she went down.” He tapped Hurlihan on the chest with rigid fingers. “We’ve had it straight from the feed-box that young Ovett’s planning to ship out of the harbor today. If he goes out on your T.N. Tanker, you’ll have a hell of a lot of explaining to do, mister. Better make good and damned sure he doesn’t!”

XIII

A cold wind whined across the Hudson; at the bulkhead between Piers Eight and Nine, the Vigilant was drenched with fine chill spray that snaked down the windows of the pilot-house in rivulets like mineral oil.

Mulcahey was asleep on his feet, chocked off between the wheel and the shelf for flares and binoculars. Koski jerked at the siren cord hanging down from the cabin-top; a hoarse blast shuddered through the night. The Sergeant grabbed for his gun before he got his eyes open.

“Steady as she goes, Irish.”

“Was that you, blasting?”

“You must have heard the echo of your own snores.”

The Sergeant rubbed the sleep out of his face, looked at the clock on the instrument panel. “Has that thing stopped? Or is it quarter to four?”

“If you had a refreshing rest, chum—” Koski turned on the ignition key. “Let us then be up and doing.”

“Hark to the man. Have you no respect for your own constitution? The human system needs a little shuteye at regular intervals. Or are you an exemption to the rule?”

“How would we get anywhere on this job if we stuck to the eight-hour tours, Irish? I understand these untersee-boot men put in sixteen hours at a clip.”

“ ‘Tis an inhuman system any way you look at it. And none of the Mulcaheys are iron men. Personally, I am more apt to be on my toes if I am able to accumulate a little slumber instead of being shuffled around from pillow to post by day and by night.”

“When we get to the Basin you can work in some blanket drill. Was there anything you forgot to remember on the short-wave, this time?”

“Nothing but dimout warnings plus an alarm from a couple of lugs who broke into a ration board office and snuk off with an armful of gas coupons.” The Sergeant relapsed into moody silence.

When the patrol-boat touched the float at the Battery, Koski clambered out stiffly. “You’re on your own, Rip Van Winkle. I’ll be prowling.”

Mulcahey stretched out in the cockpit, a life jacket under his head, a slicker over him. “I wouldn’t want you to think I was laying down on the job...”

“ ’Sall right, Joe. If I need you, I’ll buzz one of the boys to come over from the Pier and set off a depth charge.” He wandered across the park, up Greenwich Avenue to an all-night lunchroom.

There were a dozen men eating at the counter, a few more gathered around a pin-ball machine in one corner. A short-order cook was dipping a wire basket of french-fried potatoes out of a kettle of fat. Over his head was a yard-high poster in vivid blues and greens; a haggard sailor clinging to a wave-washed lift-raft on a stormy sea. ANOTHER VICTIM OF SABOTALK, the white cut-out letters announced. At the bottom in giant block lettering:

THE WALLS HAVE EARS

Koski forked his legs over a hard stool, said: “Scramble two, bacon, butter toast and a cup of old black joe.” He wasn’t hungry, but that rib might quiet down if he filled his stomach a little.

Snatches of talk came through the clatter of dishes, the ringing of the cash register, the scuffling of feet.

“...so the way they work it now, the decoy sub uses its blinker to signal the letter P, which means ‘Show your Lights,’ an’, of course, if she shows her lights they get a good target an’ blammo! There’s another good ship gone. So they’s strict orders for nobody to show lights at all...”

Koski fiddled with his water glass, the salt-and-pepper shakers, tried to make some order out of the confusion of the last few hours. He wasn’t so sure, now, that the body had been hacked to pieces to hide its identity; the dismemberment might have been simply so the murderer could carry his victim out of the Bar-Nothing hotel without attracting attention. It couldn’t all have gone in the suitcase — unless the killer had made two trips, leaving part of the corpse in the room while he disposed of the rest. But that would have meant running the heavy risk of having Dora come in the room during his absence, and raising an alarm.

More likely the man with the bandaged face had some other container in which to remove the limbs, and the head; perhaps a sailor’s sea-bag which could have been carried into the hotel in the suitcase when he first went in. The point that puzzled Koski was why the murderer had bothered to lug the valise all the way over to South Street, on the Manhattan shore, instead of merely dumping the remains in the water at Erie Basin or the Gowanus. Every minute he’d have that incriminating suitcase in his possession, his danger would increase. There was no way to gauge how long he had held on to it after leaving Dommy’s place; it might have taken him a good part of the night to cut it up, pack it away, remove his traces in Room Five. He hadn’t managed to dispose of the torso until six the next morning if the Gurlid kid was to be believed.

“...makes seven trips over an’ back without so much as sighting a pig-boat. The night she gets in this last time there’s a blitz and she goes down at her dock with half the crew on hospital list...”

Koski dug into the bacon and eggs. Another item that rankled in the ‘back of his mind was the way Barbara Ovett had received the news of the butchery. She hadn’t been surprised, not even shocked at the brutality of the crime. Assuming that she had been on more or less intimate terms with the victim, that offhand manner of hers gave Koski an unpleasant sensation along his spine. Both Hurlihan and Cardiff had been jolted by the news of the mutilation. But Mrs. Merrill Ovett hadn’t batted an eye.

“...some Berlin professor, yeah. Trying to goose up morale, the stupe. Tells the German women it ain’t no harm if their soldiers lose an arm or a couple legs. Be just as good men as ever. After the war, little Adolf will fix it so’s there are special jobs for all them minus a limb. Even the ones who lose both hands will find what he calls useful employment. How can people fall for crap like that!”

Koski stoked his corncob and wondered about that wire from Sinbad. The message-to-Garcia might have meant nothing more than Ellen Wyatt had explained; — on the other hand, this was a queer time for anyone connected with the merchant marine to be sending cryptic references about messages to anybody.

One conclusion from the telegram was obvious: — if Merrill Ovett was shipping out of the country, — and Berger had predicted he might, — then time was running out fast, if Koski was going to do anything about it. BEFORE I TAKE OFF TOMORROW. Tomorrow was today now. But there wouldn’t be more than four or five freighters clearing from the harbor in any one day; it shouldn’t be too difficult for the Coast Guard to send men aboard those ships and check on the crews. Koski would take care of that.

He paid his check, made his way across-town in the gray shadows of false dawn. Porters scrubbed at plate-glass windows, trucks began to rumble through the streets; there was a clean, washed smell in the air.

South Street was awake. Peddlers trudged toward Brooklyn Bridge, shoving hand-trucks piled high with haddock, mackerel, cod. A couple of men set up iron frames and Danger warnings on either side of a manhole. Smoke eddied lazily from the stovepipes of the moored barges.

Herbie Gurlid saw him coming. “The cop, pa! The Lieutenant!” He stood at attention, saluted.

The bargeman emerged, lather on his chin, an old-fashioned razor in his hand. “Top of the morning.”

“Same.” Koski halted on the stringpiece of the pier. “Hear anything more on that suitcase?”

Gurlid flicked soap off the blade. “No. Nor I ain’t anxious to hear nothing more about it, either. I thought the Missus was never going to get them kids to sleep last night.” He massaged his chin, gloomily. “That stuff about Dot’s seeing the man who chucked the bag in the water, I come to the conclusion that’s a lot of bushwah.”

“Why?”

“Them officers from the police station was over here for a couple hours, asking around if anybody’d seen a guy with a suitcase on the dock. Nobody had. So I guess it was a lot of bushwah. If you cops can’t find anyone who saw this mysterious mugg, it’s prob’ly just something Dot made up.”

“She saw him all right. I’ve been talking to someone else who saw him, too. You keep your eyes open for him.”

“How the hell can I be on the lookout for him!” The bargeman scowled. “I’ll be away the day long trying to make a dollar. And my wife and kids here without no protection from a madman like that.”

“Don’t run a fever.” Koski glanced at the two men puttering around the manhole; one or the other would be on the job until the man with the bandaged head was found. “Your family’ll be looked after. There are a hell of a lot of people interested in getting hold of this particular gent.”

XIV

The executive Director of the Ovett Shipping Corporation was hunched over a flat-top in his corner office on the nineteenth floor. He scowled at a notice of increased maritime insurance rates in Barron’s Weekly, threw the paper down, gazed out his Whitehall Street windows at the panorama of the Upper Bay, — Staten Island and the Narrows in the mid-distance, the smoky outline of the Highlands blue-gray against the horizon. His office door burst open.

“Blast you to eternity, Rolf.” Lawford Ovett’s voice was the harsh monotone of the aging deaf. “Why’n’t you tell me that crazy son of mine was back in town!”

Berger made a soothing gesture. “I didn’t know it, myself, until last night, after you were asleep. I meant to call you, later. Didn’t expect you to come in today. How you feel this morning?”

“Like the wrath of God.” Ovett slammed the door; the glass rattled in the panel. “Groggy as if I’d been on an opium jag. I took that dope to give me a good night’s rest. So at half past eight the maid waked me up. I’ve been walking around in a trance for the last hour.”

Berger snorted. “Didn’t the doctor tell the maid to let you sleep it off?”

“Of course he did. But she didn’t know what else to do. Merrill was calling.”

“Merrill?” The Director’s eyes narrowed; he fumbled distractedly in his vest for a cigar. “Where is he? In town?”

“In Brooklyn somewhere. A saloon, by the noise. I could hardly make out what he was saying, I was so woozy. Still am. Lord.” Ovett pressed fingertips to his temples, slumped in a chair beneath the heavy gilt frame of a portrait. Against a background of blue and white sails, the painter had fixed in oils a weathered sea-captain; glacial eyes stared boldly from a face wind-polished to the russet of old spars; a bifurcated beard hung down from either side of his chin like dripping icicles.

“What’d he have to say for himself?”

“Nothing.” Ovett sucked at his upper plate, gloomily. “Pup couldn’t spare time for anything more than ‘Hello... don’t worry about me... good-by.’ ”

“ ‘Good-by’?” Berger snapped his lighter absently, let it burn without bringing it near his panetela. “ ‘Good-by’! He’s signed on for another voyage?” He fanned the flame before the cigar, blew out a cone of smoke, sighing.

“He has.” Ovett made a clicking sound with his dental equipment. “If I knew what ship, I’d damned well make sure he didn’t sail.” He leaned forward, pointed a bony forefinger. “There’s something almighty queer about his turning up like this. He said he was going in a convoy. To Russia, he expected. I didn’t look for him to be back for another month.”

“I thought there was a possibility of it.” Berger let smoke curl out of the corner of his mouth, squinted one eye. “I hesitated to tell you...”

“By the Lord Harry!” Ovett’s eyes burned yellowly in gaunt sockets. “Am I always the last one to know his doings?”

“I thought it would make you uneasy, Lawford.”

“Don’t you think I’m uneasy enough wondering every minute of the day where he is, whether his ship’s been sunk under him!”

“That’s why I didn’t let you know. I wasn’t sure he was alive. You see, his ship was sunk.”

Ovett cupped a hand to his right ear. “What? What ship?”

“The Mercede.” Berger made a ceremony of tapping the ash off his cigar. “The Navy Department didn’t release the list of survivors until day before yesterday. Merrill’s name wasn’t on it. But I knew he’d sailed on her, so—”

Ovett came to his feet; he raised thin arms over his head, shook his fists at the ceiling. “By all that’s holy! All of you act around here as if I were dead and buried. I give strict instructions the boy isn’t to be permitted on any ship that flies our house-flag. Now I find out you’ve countermanded my orders.”

“Your instructions were passed on to all our masters. But not all of them know Merrill by sight; I can’t personally go over every crew with a fine-toothed comb. He signed on under an assumed name. I didn’t learn about it until after the Mercede was four days out of the assembly port. Then it was too late.” Berger drummed on the desk with a letter opener. “Soon as we had word she’d been torpedoed, I did my best to learn if he’d been among the rescued. But you can’t get any damned cooperation from the Navy in a case like that. It wasn’t until day before yesterday I had a wire from our first mate in Charleston, saying Merrill was safe.”

“Why didn’t you tell me then?”

Berger let the letter opener clatter to the desk. “His name wasn’t on the Navy’s list of survivors, I tell you. I was afraid there might have been a mistake in the wire. Besides, I expected Merrill to let you know, himself.” A buzzer purred at his side; he picked up a hand-set, listened, murmured “Not in. Later.” hung up. “That is, Lawford, if he wanted you to know he’d gone contrary to your wishes about sailing in one of our ships.”

Ovett pinched with thumb and forefinger at the corners of his eyes. “But the Mercede wasn’t bound for Russia in the first place. Why did he have to lie...”

“She was scheduled for Murmansk. At the last minute the masterminds in Washington decided she’d have to carry her cargo of machinery to Rio instead, in order to be able to pick up bauxite in Paramaribo on the return.”

The old man put his hands flat on the glass top of the desk, leaned over until his face was close to Berger’s. “He got away with it that time. He was lucky. One fine day he’s not going to be so lucky.”

“Merrill’s not the only man taking chances in this war.”

“He’s the only son I have. I don’t propose to lose him if I can prevent it. You’ve got to help me stop him from shipping out again.”

“I don’t know what ship he’s signed on,” Berger spat out a loose bit of tobacco. “I don’t know how to find out.”

The office door opened quietly; Koski said “Morning.”

Ovett swiveled around. “Who the devil—”

Berger broke in, swiftly. “This is a private conference, sir.”

Koski shut the door softly behind him. “Don’t mind me. You’re probably talking about the same thing I came to see you about. Keep punching.”

“You’re mistaken, sir.” Berger was incensed. “Mister Ovett and I were discussing a business matter. I told the girl I’d see you later.” He put an arm around Ovett’s shoulder, steered the older man toward the door. “If you’ll excuse us — I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Koski didn’t budge. “Don’t bother with the runaround. Mister Ovett ought to know we’re scouring the harbor for his son.”

“What?” Ovett put one hand back of his ear again. “You’re doing what?”

“Doing just what you want, Lawford.” Berger shrugged, wagged his head in annoyance. “Trying to keep Merrill from sailing. Lieutenant Koski’s from the police.”

The detective leaned back against the door. “The Coast Guard is checking every ship that clears the port. But Mister Berger mentioned last night something about your son’s sailing under an assumed name. That’s why I’m here. To find out what name.”

Berger said: “I don’t know.”

Ovett fingered tremulous lips, his voice was shrill: “Why are you hunting for my son?”

Koski waited, inspected the sea-captain’s portrait.

“Don’t excite yourself, Lawford.” The Director searched for words. “The authorities have no proof Merrill’s done anything. That engineer on your yacht, what’s his name...?”

“Gjersten,” Koski put in. He discovered that by holding his hand up over the sea-captain’s beard, the portrait was a very fair replica of the life study Ellen Wyatt had made of the lookout.

“Gjersten’s been found dead,” Berger went on. “Merrill was on the yacht about the time the engineer must have been killed. The police are putting two and two together and getting six, as usual.”

Koski examined a gold-leafed strip at the bottom of the picture frame, read Victor Stanley Ovett and beneath, in smaller letters, Founder of the Line.

Ovett’s shoulders drooped, his eyes were dull coals under the shaggy brows. He slumped into the chair.

The Director went to him. “Lieutenant Koski came to your apartment last night; I told him then there was a mistake, — Merrill wasn’t the sort to run away if he’d done anything to be ashamed of. He was trying to tell you the same thing on the phone, Lawford. Not to worry, things will come out all right.”

“On the phone?” Koski asked. “When did he phone?”

“This morning,” Ovett mumbled. “To say... good-by.” His head began to jerk from side to side, spasmodically; his fingers twitched; his lips worked pathetically.

Berger got around back of him, put his hands under the old man’s armpits. “Help me with him, Lieutenant. Has to lie down when he gets one of these attacks.”

They lifted him, walked him between them into the adjoining office, stretched him out on a brown leather sofa.

“Be all right... few minutes.” Ovett shuddered, his head rolled loosely. “Call... Doctor.”

Koski stood by the window while Berger used the phone. The morning sun came out from behind a cloud, slanting a dusty shaft across the model of a full-rigged ship on a stand beside the window, glittering on silvered wire and glass spools on the sill outside. Below, he could see the headquarters of the Marine Division at Pier A; the stubby black hull of the Vigilant beside the slate gray of a Navy launch; the arc of the Battery, the ferry terminals. Beyond, the Hudson was a brooch of sparkling brilliants against lapis lazuli. A gray two-stacked minesweeper moved slowly down past the smoke of the factory chimneys on the Jersey shore; gulls dived in the riffles of the wake. Those same gulls might have been foraging at Governors Island not many hours ago; might still be discovering bits of carrion elsewhere in the harbor...

“Doctor’ll be here in ten minutes.” Berger motioned to the Harbor Squad man. “Just take it easy, Lawford. I’ll leave the door open.” He went back to his own office, muttering: “I warned you this might happen.”

“Yair. Had to do it. Best way to do it is the surgeon’s way. Quick and clean. Hurts more at the beginning. Less later.” Koski followed him. “Where was young Ovett when he phoned?”

“Lawford didn’t know. Saloon in Brooklyn, Merrill told him.”

“That narrows it down. Anyone around here besides his father who was close to Merrill?”

“Hurlihan used to see a good deal of both Merrill... and his wife,” Berger mused. “That was before Clem had delusions of grandeur; thought he could take the company out of the hands of men who have authority because they know how to use it.”

“Hurlihan’s fiddling around with a reorganization, isn’t he? Planning to put himself in your place?”

“My place! By George, I’ll put that trickster in his place and rub his nose in it.” Berger raised his voice. “Don’t talk about replacing me; I’ve been doing my best to quit for three long years. If it hadn’t been for Lawford’s ill health and that rattlebrained son of his, I’d be raising blooded stock over in the Jersey hills today instead of watching stock being manipulated by men who never sailed over as much salt water in their lives as I’ve rung out of my pant leg!”

His face was apple-shiny with perspiration. “I am the operating head of the company only. But — I operate it. They’d better not interfere with me. I’m not one of that stock-juggling crowd. I own ten shares. I want no more. Or any bilge from underlings who talk one way in the front office and use another tone of voice when they’re making undercover deals with union organizers.”

“Meaning Hurlihan?”

“I don’t mince my words. Clem Hurlihan and that underhanded Joslin.”

“Joslin? Which Joslin’s that?”

“I don’t know his name...”

“He the union man you mentioned?”

“Yes. Calls himself an organizer for the International Longshoremen’s Association. He’s a disorganizer, a filthy rotten bolshevik who’s raised more hell with our loading costs—” He glared, apoplectically. “And Lawford’s boy has to associate with that kind of riffraff. By the Lord I wish he’d been with his father and me at the Council Sunday. He’d have heard a thing or two about union organizers who wangle their way into the confidence of shipowners’ sons, — and then go behind the owner’s back to make a shady deal with some crooked superintendent.”

“Hurlihan and this Joslin been getting chummy?”

“What else would you call putting their heads together over breakfast?”

“Where was this?”

“In the coffee room of the Sulgrave Hotel.”

“When?”

“Sunday morning. A member of the Council saw them, wanted to know why Hurlihan was on such close terms with the worst agitator on the water front.” Berger smacked his right fist into his left palm, stood stiffly erect. “I couldn’t tell him. I don’t keep tabs on our men outside of business hours. It may not be of interest to you to know that these two have been conning Merrill along, but all the time working against his interests—”

“Yair. It’s of interest. Mind?” Koski reached for the phone. To the operator on the PBX he said: “Get me Whitehall 4-1760... hello, Johnny... Koski here... I want the low on a guy named Joslin... initial would likely be T... T for Tim... organizer for ILA... yair.... address, description, the works... and shoot it fast.”

O’Malley said: “Okeydoke, Lieutenant. Message here for you.”

“Come ahead.”

“They picked up that Claire Purdo in Brooklyn...”

“Where at?”

“She’s in durance vile at the Eighty-second precinct. Awaitin’ your kind attention.”

“Won’t keep her waiting long. Tell Mulcahey to cast off. I’ll make a pier-head jump.”

XV

Claire Purdo was thin and nervous; there was a little ring of cigarette stubs on the ash-tray beside her chair in the matron’s room by the time Koski got there. She dabbed at the pit of her palms with a fragment of handkerchief; her forehead, under the brim of the cocky little red hat, was damp with apprehension as the Lieutenant came in and sat on the edge of the matron’s cot.

“If you’re going to send me to the Island,” she burst out, “why don’t you do it, instead of keeping me in here as if I’d committed some crime!”

Koski said: “We’re after something more important than a soliciting conviction, sister.” He sized up the cheap suit, a little too large for her slender figure; the imitation fox scarf around her scrawny neck. According to the detention record, she was twenty-eight, but her features were those of the frightened adolescent. “Where’d you spend the night, if it isn’t too personal?”

“With a friend.”

“I asked where. Not how.”

“In Bay Ridge.”

“Skip the stall.” He held out his hand, palm up. “I’m no vice sniffer. I want the low. I want it quick. Unless you don’t mind getting mixed up in a homicide tangle, you’ll give out, fast.”

“Homicide!”

“Over at Big Dommy’s. Sunday night.” She lit a cigarette; her hands were shaky. “I don’t know anything—”

“Maybe you think you don’t. Just answer my questions. I’ll find out whether you do or not. Now, about last night?”

“I was at my cousin Amy’s. Rannet Street. Number Eighty-seven Rannet.”

“Keep pedaling...” He made a note of the address.

“Amy’s husband’s in the Army. She’s working over at the Flexileather plant, on a cutter. They make these Sam Browne belts for the officers and she can’t afford to stay away from the shop. But her baby’s got bronchitis or something the matter with his chest, so—”

“You sat up with the kid?”

“Yes.” Tears came into her eyes. “Now you’ll go and ask her and tell her what... how I make my living...”

“Cut the sobs.” Koski was gruff. “You don’t see any tattle-tale gray on me, do you? Now about Sunday. You picked up a sailor somewhere along in the afternoon?”

She waited, wide-eyed.

“Don’t go into the silences, sister. Was that the first time you’d seen this guy?”

“No. The second.”

“What’d he look like?”

She’d only taken a couple of puffs on her cigarette, but she stubbed it out. “He’s a squarehead, I guess. A Swede or something like that. He has black eyes.”

“Know his name?”

“Ansel something. He works on a yacht, he told me.”

“He used to.”

“Oh!” Claire seemed to be sick. “Was he the one...?”

“There was another man up there in Room Five.”

“No.” She squeezed her palms together, wretchedly. “No one else.”

“Yair. Another guy. Big guy. Bandage around his face. You must have seen him.”

“I didn’t. Honest, I didn’t.”

“Friend of Ansel’s, maybe.”

“There wasn’t anyone. Not that I saw.”

“Get it right, babe. This is serious. There’s a hot rocking chair at the end of the road for somebody. You could file yourself in the cooler for a good, long spell if you’re dumbing up on me.”

“I’m not. I didn’t see anyone.” She sniffled, miserably.

“What time’d you leave Ansel?”

“I guess I was there maybe half an hour.” She licked a finger, moistened a thread on her nylon. “He told me he’d be there later, but he wasn’t.”

“Wanted to play a return engagement?”

“No.” She pulled the scarf around her shoulders, shivered. “He gave me something... to pawn. I told him I knew a place that was open Sunday nights sometimes. But I... I thought it over and decided maybe he didn’t have any right to give it to me and maybe I’d get in trouble if the clock happened to be stolen. So I took it back to Dommy’s. But Ansel wasn’t there.”

“He might have been there. What kind of a clock was this?”

“Oh, it’s beautiful. It must have cost a lot of money. It’s gold and there are little enameled animals on it. A lion, a bull, a fish of some kind... that’s why I was afraid to hock it, — because it didn’t seem like the sort of thing Ansel would have... have had in his family. He told me his grandfather left it to him and he’d never wanted to sell it but now he needed money.” She smiled, sadly. “I kind of thought maybe he was lying about it.”

“You were kind of right. So you took the ticker back to Dommy’s. But Ansel didn’t show? That it?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you go up to Room Five to see if he was still there?”

“I did. But there was someone else in the room.”

“Now you’re clicking. What did this other gent look like?”

She seemed distressed. “I didn’t hardly see him at all. He only opened the door an inch or so, — and the room was dark inside.”

Koski stood up, cursing silently. Another false alarm. This girl wouldn’t be able to identify Bandage Face, unless...

“Think you’d be able to recognize his voice, if you heard it again?”

“I... I don’t know. Maybe.” Claire shrank back. “Did he... kill Ansel?”

“Chances are he’s the murderer, yair. What’d you do with this trinket your sailor-friend left you?”

“It’s in my room. Wrapped in the towel. Just the way he gave it to me. I’m so sorry for Ansel...”

He caught her arm. “Let’s hit the grit. I’d like a gander at this timepiece.”

Out at the main desk he told the sergeant to cross her off the detention list; if the prosecution needed her as a material witness, he’d know where to find her.

Treanor Place was noisy with push-cart peddlers, children playing in the gutters; the tenements were decorated with blankets and sheets hung out of the windows for airing.

She went up the stairs ahead of him. “You’re not going to take me in for receiving stolen property, are you? Because I didn’t know it was stolen, for sure...”

“Unlax, babe. We got other things to keep us humping.”

She put the key in the lock. “I haven’t had a chance to red’ up the room,” she opened the door, “on account of Amy called me—”

The bark of a gun punctuated her sentence. She screamed, toppled forward into the room. The door slammed in Koski’s face as he lunged for the knob. The pistol roared again, inside the room. A splinter of wood hinged out from the paneling next the jamb. The Harbor Squad man flung himself to one side, tugging out his service-special.

He stepped out, kicked at the knob. The door crashed back on its hinges. Claire Purdo lay on her face with one hand clawing feebly at the dingy matting on the floor. He bent down. There was a hole in her throat he could have put his thumb in. She couldn’t live.

There was no one else in the room. At the left, a window was open. Outside, the rusty railing of a fire escape.

Koski got to it, looked down. Two floors below a gray-haired woman looked up, shouted: “There he is!”

The Lieutenant piled through the window, onto the grating, sprinted up. There wasn’t anyone on the roof. He ran to the coping, blew on his whistle. He watched the front door of the tenement, — but no one came out except a woman wheeling a baby carriage. Koski wouldn’t have dared to shoot down into that crowded alley, anyway. He gave the three blasts on his whistle again, heard an answering shrill. A bluecoat pounded along from the avenue. Koski waved, pointed down to the tenement entrance. Then he went back down the fire escape.

The prostitute had managed to squirm over on her side. The matting beside her head was a blotch of scarlet. The bullet had torn through her throat and out at the back, of her neck. The fur scarf was sodden.

There wasn’t a prayer of saving her. If she lived long enough to make an in extremis statement, it would be more than Koski expected.

He knelt down. “Who was it, kid? Who shot you?”

Her fingers tried to press against the wound under her jaw. She made a desperate effort to speak.

All Koski heard was the death rattle.

XVI

Mulcahey slushed down the fore-deck in his bare feet, coveralls rolled up to the knees. He waved his mop as Koski called across the Gowanus wharf. “Shove off, Sarge. On our way.”

“You look like you lost your best friend, Steve. Or is it the rib which is floating too free?”

“I lost a good witness.” Koski let himself down carefully to the cockpit, set a bundle on the transom locker. “Claire Purdo got a one-way ticket about ten minutes ago.”

“Who punched it for her?”

“Same party who’s responsible for most of the manslaughter. Person or persons unknown. I’m as guilty as anybody, Irish.”

The Sergeant raced the motor, cast off. “In what way, now?” The Vigilant rumbled out into the canal.

“I was taking her to her room for this,” Koski unwrapped the bundle. “I let her go in first. When she unlocked the door, someone hiding inside put a bullet through her throat.”

“This Bandage Face, was it?”

“No see, Irish.” Koski held the clock up with its towel wrapping protecting the prints. “The killer got away up the fire escape. I should have searched her room before she went in. I must be slipping.”

“You still have a ways to go,” Mulcahey held the wheel with one hand, dried his feet on an old shirt with the other, “before you are down to average. Did the poor kid recognize who bumped her?”

“I wish to God I knew. But she didn’t make any in extremis statement; she took the slug in the throat; died in a couple of minutes.”

“Rest her soul. How did the scut get inside her room?”

“Picked the lock, unless he had a key.”

“He seems to be handy at odd jobs. What in the name of Bulova is that monstrosity?”

“Astrological clock.” Koski weighed the clock on his palm. “Runs by electricity. Supposed to tell you the star influences of the moment. Gjersten gave it to the Purdo babe to hock. He probably stole it from that hotcha on the yacht.”

Mulcahey made a notation in the police-boat log. “We are rolling at exactly,” he eyed the clock, “half past scorpion. Speed, ten knots. Weather, but lousy. Destination...?”

“Drop the timepiece off at the Basin. Then run up to the Fourteenth Street docks.”

“Ah, now, me lad! You will not be telling me off for some chore which will cut into my accustomed period of relaxation! Because at eight this eve I have an arrangement to bask in the wiles of a certain toothsome frill. And you put a dent in my favorite recreation last night, making me labor over-hours.”

“Recreate after we get this cleaned up. You know your way around the longshoremen’s hiring hall, up at Fourteenth?”

“ ’Tis my old parish, sure.”

“Kayo. Hop over there. Collar on to a mugg by the name of Tim Joslin. If he’s in. Works for the union. Age about thirty-five. Five ten. Weighs around hundred and eighty. Thin, sandy hair. Watch your footwork. If I gauge him right, he’d be a mean hand with a cargo hook.”

“Would he be the lad with his jaw in a sling?”

“How do I know!” Koski gritted his teeth as he straightened up. “His name was on Dommy’s hotel register. He knows Merrill Ovett. He sees a lot of guys who go down to the sea in ships. Maybe he knows a thing or two about sailing dates. I’d crave to hold converse with him.”

“If he’s there, I’ll have him for you. Hot or cold.”

“Wait until I check off at the Basin. Maybe I’ll have him first; if the boys at the precinct have located his hangout.”

He put one foot up on the gunwale, gazed through the gray screen of rain at the downtown skyline. Up to about the tenth story, all the massive buildings on Manhattan’s tip were visible; above that they were veiled in smoky cloud. There was, he reflected sardonically, a certain parallel between this hazy view across the bay and what he knew about the killer he was hunting.

Part of it was plain enough; the murderer was cold-blooded enough to dissect a man he’d just slaughtered; ruthless enough to blast the life out of a poor prostitute who at best could only have been a witness against him. And quite possibly he was treacherous enough to be an agent for the funneling of ship-information to the slinking pig-boats that lurked off the twenty-fathom line...

When they touched at the headquarters pier, Koski hustled through the dark tunnel under the building, stepped into his office. Johnny O’Malley was hammering out a report on the Remington.

“Run this over to Ident, Johnny.” He laid the clock on his desk. “What’d you get on Joslin?”

“Guy is a shifter, Lieutenant. Now you see him, now you don’t. Dozen addresses in a year. Present habitat, Nineteen Swamp Street. Kind of guy everybody knows... and either hates or goes for in a big way. A positive personality, according to hearsay.”

“Old Pathé O’Malley. Sees all, knows all. Anything come in on young Ovett?”

“Miscues, is all. He doesn’t show up at the South Street sail-loft. But he’s reported picked up in Union City while applying for a job as a ferry gateman. Slight mistake. It was two other guys from Buffalo. Then he’s positively identified as a passenger on an airliner from LaGuardia Field to Washington. Turns out the gent is an attaché of the Brazilian consulate.”

“We better run something besides rumors to ground, I’m telling you. Time is fugiting too damned fast.”

He hurried back to the patrol-boat; Mulcahey was gassing up at the Department pump. “Shoot me up to Washington Market, Sarge. I might get my hands on that hunk of beef we’re looking for. He has a domicile on Swamp Street.”

The Vigilant avoided a car-float, shaved the ends of the piers, northward, to keep out of the strength of the tide. Mulcahey grazed her up against the market dock just long enough for Koski to step off. The police-boat had disappeared behind the curtain of rain before Koski reached the pier shed.

He strode east through the warehouse district. The smells of onions, spices, coffee were as tangible as the steam from the tugs bustling about on the river.

There didn’t seem to be any Number Nineteen. Seventeen was the Haven Pool Parlor; Twenty-three was a secondhand machinery salesroom, deserted. There was nothing in between. A narrow flight of stairs climbed steeply beside the poolroom door. He tried the stairs.

On the floor above the Haven were four doors with scabrous paint, an iron sink and faucet. No names, no numbers. Two of the doors were unlocked; he peered into rooms gray with dust lighted by windows crusted with gray grime. At one of the other doors he listened, heard nothing but the click of balls and an argumentative voice from the poolroom below. When he put his ear to the last door, the knob began to turn slowly and noiselessly. He put his palm along the jamb, threw his weight against it, suddenly.

The man Koski had seen at Ellen Wyatt’s studio stumbled back into the room, nearly upsetting a table piled high with books, papers, a portable typewriter, a bottle of milk.

“Well, well.” Koski moved in. “So you’re the lad who didn’t know anything about Merrill Ovett.” He couldn’t see any closet; there wasn’t much clothing around. A canvas cot was neatly made up with sheets and pillowslip; along the floor next to the table was stacked a long row of volumes. An accordion in a battered leather case occupied a broken-down washstand.

Joslin stepped to the cot, reached under it, came up with a sawed-off billiard cue. He swung the leaded end, casually. “If you’re fixing to strong-arm me around, somebody’s going to get hurt, gumshoe.”

Koski went toward him, stiff-legged; stood with feet planted wide apart, fists on hips. He looked at the books on the table. “The word goes around you’re tough stuff. Don’t tell me you’re a brow, too.” He picked up three volumes: Theory of the Leisure Class, by Veblen; Collected Poems, by Masefield; Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens.

Koski fingered the flyleaf of the autobiography. Merrill S. Ovett was written in a broad staccato hand. Portland, June, 1934. “Where’d you get this, Joslin?”

“What’s it to you? I borrowed it. You can’t frame me on that.”

“I’m not in the picture business, hard guy. When’d you get it from Ovett?”

“I don’t recall. Long time ago. Three, four years.”

“How long’s it been since you’ve seen him?”

“Any time you blues want dope from me, get yourselves a subpoena. I’ll talk to the District Attorney, maybe. Not to a lot of finks.”

Koski put the books down. “You’ll talk to me. Here. Or at headquarters. Suit yourself. But don’t get snotty with me because some pratt from a private agency has shoved you around.”

Joslin gave a sardonic “Ha!” He jabbed a stubby forefinger at the scar on his chin. “See that? A uniform cop did that to me. A dumb ox of a strike-breaking cop. I was in the hospital a week. You think I’m going to throw my arms around you just because you took a civil service exam! That’s for laughs.”

Koski pushed his hat back from his forehead, hooked his thumbs under his lapels. “How much you weigh?”

Joslin scowled. “Hundred and eighty-five pounds. Why?”

“Nothing much. Only you’re the cockiest hundred eighty-five pounds I ever met. I’ll cut it right off the rare end. You may be covering up for Ovett—”

“You won’t get me to admit he needs covering.”

“The big-hearted pal act. All right. Leave Ovett out of it, time being. There are a few little coincidences that tie you in with these murders.”

“Murders.” The organizer’s eyes narrowed. “You told Ellen one man had been killed.”

“That was so. Then. Today a girl got shot to death. Either by the same crut. Or someone working with him.” Koski took a step closer. “In addition to which, there’s a good chance the slob we’re after has been pipelining out dope on ship clearances... to enemy submarines—”

Joslin gritted: “You—!” The billiard, cue swung up.

Koski crowded up against him; clutched the other’s right biceps, broke the force of the swing. He jammed his forearm up under Joslin’s chin, shoved the man’s head back. The cue thudded on the Lieutenant’s shoulder. He grapevined one leg behind the organizer, leaned on him. Joslin went backward, off balance. Koski bored in, got a wristlock on the arm holding the cue. He levered down, heard the weapon clatter to the floor. He pushed Joslin back against the wall, held him there, kicked the cue behind him, turned to one side, bent down, picked it up.

“How you want it, hardboiled? Either loosen up. Or grab your hat and hang on. Because you’re going over the jumps.”

Joslin edged over to the table. “You might bang me around some. But you’re not going to get away with saying I’m working against the merchant marine.”

“If you’re not, why don’t you give out, help me get the snake who is?”

The organizer reached for the milk bottle. Koski lifted the cue, warningly. But all the other did was to thumb out the cardboard cap, put the bottle to his lips, drink. It took him ten seconds, it gave him time to think. He set the bottle down, recapped it, wiped his lips on a paper napkin that had been tucked under the bottle. Then he pulled a kitchen chair out from the table, swung it around, sat down and leaned his arms on the back. “I can’t buck you on that. How am I supposed to be involved?”

“Where were you Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening?”

“In the afternoon I was speaking to a rank-and-file meeting of the union. At the hiring hall. In the evening I was giving a concert,” he waved toward the accordion, “to the essie-eyes. Seamen’s Church Institute. Maybe I murdered a few pieces, but that’s all.”

“Plenty of people saw you? Both those places?”

“Plenty.”

“Then who the hell signed your name to a register in a scummy dive over in the Jungle?”

“Somebody else—”

“Lured a man up to the room or followed him up there? Killed him?”

“—Not me.”

“Cut his body up? Packed it in a suitcase? Heaved it in the drink?”

Joslin’s ears began to get red. “I’d like to lay my hands on the fellow who signed my name to that.”

“You don’t know anything about any of that.” Koski didn’t make it a question. “All right. Let’s tune in a different station. That was Sunday. This is Tuesday. Where were you about an hour ago?”

“Right here.”

“All by yourself?”

“All by myself. This girl you spoke of, — she was shot an hour ago?”

“Over in Brooklyn. Treanor Place. Know that section?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Maybe young Ovett has.” Koski walked around the room, scrutinized a Gropper cartoon pinned to the wall, a National Geographic map of the Western, Ocean in colors, unfolded over the foot of the cot. “When’d you see him last?”

Joslin rummaged around the table for a stick of gum, concentrated on unwrapping it, before he answered. “Sunday noon. Just before I went over to the union meeting.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

“Say where he was going after he left here?”

“I suppose he was going home.”

“Skip the suppositions. Didn’t expect to see him again before he shipped out?”

“No.”

“Hadn’t figured on his wiring your girl he’d see her today?”

“Listen. You can’t work up any antagonism on that score. Merrill’s been a friend of Ellen’s longer than I have. He introduced me to her.”

“On pretty good terms with young Ovett, weren’t you? Isn’t usual for a union man to be pally with a shipowner’s son.”

“Merrill is a union man as well as a shipowner’s son. That’s why I like him. Any individual who can snap out of his environment enough to see the other fellow’s viewpoint has a lot to him. Merrill does that; he even goes so far as to make trips on one of his father’s vessels, — against the old man’s orders, — to see for himself how the men are being treated.”

“Under an assumed name, hah?”

“He couldn’t get aboard any other way. They’d toss him off on his ear; Hurlihan practically jumped out of his socket when I told him he couldn’t deny the conditions on Ovett ships any longer since an Ovett was getting a firsthand look at them himself, — and would do something about it.”

“Oh! Hurlihan knew?”

“Sure. I told him, when it was too late for him to do anything except rave about it.”

“Sunday morning, maybe?”

Joslin scowled. “No. I saw Hurlihan Sunday. But it was about a different matter.”

“Was, eh? What name’d Merrill sign under, this last voyage?”

“Now you’ve got me. What difference does it make?”

“Might make a lot.” Koski stacked the volumes, again. “Maybe he used T. Joslin.”

The organizer smiled frostily. “That wouldn’t be any passport with Hurlihan. What the hell’s this got to do with the submarines, anyway?”

“Ovett line seems to have been singled out for attention by the U-boys. Merrill Ovett was sunk in one of them. Knows a lot about Ovett sailings. Ovett yacht has a short-wave sending set that could broadcast dope, if anyone could get to it who was so minded. Yacht had the inside track on Cee-Gee activities, being an auxiliary and all.”

“That doesn’t spatter any mud on me.”

“You work around the docks. You could find out when ships clear, — or somebody might pump you and find out. Your name was on the register for the room where the murder was committed. You talked to Ovett Sunday; that’s the day he disappeared.” Koski threw the billiard cue on the cot. “Let’s go over to the hiring hall, find somebody who can corroborate your oratory.”

Joslin put on his cap without comment, led the way downstairs.

They went along West Street. Under the pillars of the express highway, trucks ground their gears and made obscene bombilations. Along the sidewalks, in doorways of saloons, mission halls, pawnbrokers, flop-houses, — men greeted the organizer; seamen, stevedores, truck drivers, winch-men, gunners, stokers. Men, Koski knew, who loaded the fighting ships that had no armor and made ten knots in a heavy sea, men who sailed them across in spite of mines, bombers, periscopes in the dusk...

Joslin might have been reading his mind. “Lot of these boys have been over and back a dozen times.”

“Yair. Wonder what they’d do to a guy if they found out he was setting them up for the subs to shoot at?”

The organizer only grunted.

Koski made one more attempt. “Understand young Ovett is a bug about radio. You up on that short-wave stuff, too?”

Joslin didn’t look at him. “I don’t know an amplifier from an aerial. If you’re intending to get me to say Merrill does, go spit into the wind. I don’t know any good reason why he shouldn’t, — but don’t try to trap me into giving his answers for him.”

At the door to the hiring hall, Mulcahey was waiting. Beside him was Frankie Salderon.

The Sergeant beamed fondly at his prisoner. “Look what wriggles out from under a rock, skipper. The lad who was up in the deckhouse while you were on the yacht.” He patted the Filipino on the shoulder. “Says he aims to get himself another berth. I figure maybe we could make one up for him over at the hoose-gow. No?”

XVII

Koski said: “Frisko?” Mulcahey produced a red tobacco tin, opened it, shook out half a dozen cigarettes made of light brown paper.

The Lieutenant took one, put it to this nose. “This stuff’ll make you see around corners, Frankie. Also, — ” he ran deft fingers along the back of the Filipino’s coat at the shoulder blades, “sometimes it gives you ideas.” The steward wore no collar scabbard.

“The little roach was getting ready to take a scram, Steve. When he saw me.”

“Whither away?” Koski asked.

“I have a right to go where I please.” Frankie’s black eyes smoldered hate. “I came here to get another job. You can’t stop me.”

Koski put the tin in his pocket. “Maybe we can find something to keep you busy.” He gripped the Filipino’s arm. “Sarge, how’s for changing partners, hah?”

Mulcahey looked at Joslin. “Is he ready to go into his dance?”

“Yair. Waltz Comrade Joslin into the hall, for a checkup. Tells me he was addressing a union crowd here, Sunday afternoon. Then rhumba along with him to the Seamen’s Institute. Find out if he was playing sweet music to the throng, Sunday night, he says.”

“And if so be it, coach?”

“Kiss the boy good-by.” He pulled at the steward’s arm. “You and I will mosey over to the hoosegow, son.”

“You haven’t any reason to arrest me.” Frankie dragged back. “Just because I want to change my job. Leggo!”

Mulcahey cuffed him lightly alongside the ear. “Get along, little dogie.”

“Leave him alone.” Joslin’s face darkened; he caught the Sergeant’s shoulder. “Arrest him if you want to. But don’t muscle a union man around while I’m standing by!”

“Hark to the hard guy, will you.” Mulcahey clubbed a huge fist, swung a half-hearted punch. The organizer mistook the Irishman’s intent, countered with a savage jab that landed flush on Mulcahey’s mouth, rocking him back on his heels, toppling him over a hydrant.

Joslin whirled, darted across the street between a fruit truck and a moving van. Koski dived toward him, but at that moment the Filipino wriggled out of his coat, sprinted away in the opposite direction. The Lieutenant went after Frankie, caught him halfway up the block. “By rights I ought to put the twisters on you, slippery. Try one more break, I’ll fix you so you’ll wake up smelling ether. Climb into your coat.”

Mulcahey was out in the middle of the street, with his gun drawn, “See where the bugger went, Steve?”

“With the wind, Irish. Best thing’s to shoot in an alarm for him. He can’t keep out of sight of eighteen thousand cops for long.”

“I was not looking for any such demonstration on his part.” The Sergeant felt of his front teeth. “Next time I will take good care to beat him to the punch.”

“Beat him to setting up an alibi, — all I ask. After you stick in the alarm, check here at the hall and at the Essie-eyes.”

“He’ll not put anything over on me again. Depend on that.”

“Okay. Tell the Telegraph Bureau his address is Nineteen Swamp.”

“I got it.”

“If you still feel like chewing, pick me up at the Tavern, after you run the boat down to the Basin.” Koski propelled the Filipino toward Fourteenth Street, signaled a cab.

When they were rolling toward Centre Street, Koski growled: “What makes, Frankie? Nice lady give you the bounce?”

“I quit. I have a right to quit.”

“Sure. But all same kind of sudden.” The Filipino made no reply.

“Should think you’d like it better on the yacht now. With Ansel gone. You didn’t buddy up with Ansel? Did you?”

“I didn’t like him. But I didn’t kill him.” Frankie struggled, indignantly.

“Quiet down. Does Captain Cardiff know you’re running out on him?”

The steward looked bored. “He sent me ashore to get supplies. I sent the supplies back. I don’t intend to go back. I’ll have no difficulty in finding a place.”

“We’ll find a place for you, all right. Where’d you push the pots and pans before you went to work on the Seavett?”

“On the Polaris.” Frankie straightened his narrow, black tie, resentfully. “Mister Fross’s ketch. For the past five years.”

“Oh, yair. Friend of Hurlihan’s, isn’t he?”

“He is Mrs. Ovett’s lawyer.”

“Fross recommend you for the job?”

“He lays the Polaris up for the winter, I was free to accept other employment.”

The detective mulled it over. “Did Ansel work for Fross, too? Before he went with Mrs. Ovett?”

“Yes.”

Koski said nothing more until the cab pulled up back of headquarters. “Out and in, Frankie.”

“You can’t arrest me without letting me telephone to my lawyer. The law says so.” The Filipino nursed a patch of surgeon’s tape on the back of his hand.

“You’re not being arrested. Just detained. For investigation.”

The steward balled his fists. “I want to call my lawyer.”

“Who is he? This Fross?”

“He would take my part. Yes.”

“All right. I was going to call the gent, anyway. Don’t work yourself into a lather. We’ll give you a nice, quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Until you hear from him.”

He marched the Filipino to the booking desk, gave him into custody, signed the complaint blank. On the line: NATURE OF CHARGE, he told the desk-sergeant to write: possession of narcotics.

“Print him, Charley. Ask Identification to check the whorls with the negatives from that house of ill-fame in Brooklyn. With anything they might have been able to dust out of the Purdo’s kid’s room on Treanor Place. And anything else they’ve got lying around on this suitcase job.”

“You wouldn’t like ’em to use the comparison microscope down at the Federal Bureau, would you, Lieutenant?” The desk-officer made notations on a pad.

“They’ll do that in due course, Charley, I’ll be over at the Tavern, if the Inspector wants me.”

He used the phone book, found Henry Sutlee Fross listed at 40 Wall Street. But he didn’t find him in. The man on the switchboard said Mister Fross was in court, wouldn’t be back until mid-afternoon.

It was beginning to pour when Koski crossed the thirty feet from the white stone building to the Headquarters Tavern on Centre Market Place, — a cold, steady downfall that brought shiny black coats and dripping hats to the racks beside the café door.

Koski found a table near the window across the street from the Hole, where the patrol wagons drove up to empty their hauls. He ordered bean soup, pot roast, home-fried, red cabbage, raisin pie and coffee, — continued to gaze at the purple handwriting on the menu long after the waiter had taken his departure.

He stripped a loose end of cotton from the folded napkin beside his water tumbler. A loose end, he reflected grimly; too many of them, entirely. The Seavett was full of them. Why hadn’t anyone seen Merrill Ovett on the trip across the river from Rodd’s to the Wall Street dock? Why hadn’t Barbara Ovett been more concerned about her husband’s unexpected return, his sudden vanishing? What had been bothering Cardiff when he watched Koski go into Mrs. Ovett’s stateroom? Was there any significance in Frankie’s quick-leave?

There were other bits of unfinished business that rankled in the Lieutenant’s mind. At the Bar-Nothing Ranch, for instance. How had the man with the bandaged face known his victim and the Purdo girl would be there? What knowledge was Big Dommy holding out? What had Claire Purdo known that made it necessary for her to be rubbed out?

There weren’t so many doubtful angles to the Whitehall Street phase of the case, but they might be the most important of all. The son who rebelled at his father’s pattern of life, his shipping out under an assumed name, the high number of sinkings of Ovett vessels, the short-wave apparatus—

He got to his feet, wandered down between the tables. Uniformed men nodded to — him, plainclothesmen swung genial punches as he passed so he had to curve his body out of range in order to protect his ribs. A couple of cameramen inquired if he had any more meat in the refrigerator.

A graying inspector with a napkin tucked up under his chin called out: “I’ve had a councilman Cahill on my neck all morning. Says he’s going to go all the way up to the top if you don’t lay off Dominick.”

“Some day that Greek’ll short-circuit himself good.”

“I told Cahill we had no control over you; you were unpredictable, erratic and we’d be glad when you put in for a pension. But we had to stand for your vagaries because you knew the secret vice of one of the mayor’s cousins.” He gnawed on a lamb-bone. “Cahill will probably start sucking around you, now; get you to use your inside to boost him into a soft spot at City Hall. These two-bit wirepullers!” He mopped his mouth, grinning. “Was Dominick in that thing?”

“All the returns aren’t in yet, Eddie. I’d say Dommy wouldn’t be elected. Thanks.”

He stopped at the cigar counter long enough to read the list of Departmental Transfers pasted on a cardboard; edged into one of the phone booths. It took five cents and five minutes to learn that the Sixth Detective Division was blank on the subject of visitors to Ellen Wyatt’s sail-loft and that the SINBAD message had been telephoned in to the Fulton Street Western Union from a coin-phone.

He got back to the table as Mulcahey came in, shaking himself. “A wild guess chase, entirely, skipper. Joslin was in the midst of admiring friends all day the Sabbath. Unless half the waterfront is committing mass perjury. Still, I will feel better when we have him in tow, again. What are you munching on?”

“Pot roast. Stop spraying the tablecloth. You’re worse than a Saint Bernard after a bath.”

The Sergeant examined the list of dishes. “Eels today. Juicy fried eels, praise be. And a beaker of bock, garsong.” He felt of his lip, wincing. “Say, coach...”

“Say away...”

“Did you happen to gander at the Joslin scar? Would it be farfetched to figure a guy who wanted to commit a felony would wish to hide a marker like that? With a bandage, mayhap?”

“Some such idea did occur to me.”

“It would carry weight with a jury, in my opinion.”

“Why for? You could cover up a hell of a lot of things with a bandage like that. A mustache, for instance. A beard. Or the shape of a face.”

The waiter brought a tray. “Phone for you, Lieutenant.”

“Thanks, Mac.” He laid down his fork, went into the booth. “Koski, here.”

“Nixon. Hate to spoil your repast, but I knew you’d want to know.”

“Bomb away.”

“Eustape Mirando, junkie, license 2714, recovered a portion of a human body from the east bank of the Gowanus Canal about three-quarters of an hour ago.”

“Every little bit, added to what we’ve got.”

“What we’ve got is an arm.”

“Which arm?”

“Left.”

“Just the very thing I wanted, Inspector. How did you know! Tattoo mark on the bicep?”

“Not even a vaccination mark. The upper part of the member was what the Medexam office calls severely lacerated. In other words, all chewed up to hell and gone. Done with a knife, I’d say.”

“Runs to form.” Koski considered. “How about the hand. Any prints?”

“We can get prints from a billiard ball. The skin’s shriveled, of course. But we’ll pump a little embalming fluid in the arteries and bring the lines out a little. If there’s enough left of the arteries.”

“Um! About the prints. When you get them, check around with the others, hah?”

Nixon made a derisive noise. “We’ve got a checking job that would panic a blonde at a night-club cloakroom. I’ve got three of my best boys glued to the eyepieces, classifying Agaroppoulous, Purdo, Johnson,—”

“Who’s he?”

“She. Dora Johnson. Colored maid at Agarappoulous’ den of iniquity, — Johnson, Hurlihan, the shots from Room Five at the Bar-Nothing, from the Purdo place, the Wyatt studio, Merrill Ovett’s apartment and God knows what.”

“Add one minor item. A Filipino by the name of Frankie Salderon. Frankie’s in a pew at the Tombs. Much oblige.”

He went back to the table. “How’re the eels, Sarge?”

“A dish for the duke, no less.” He lifted his glass.

“Attaboy.” Koski drained his coffee, standing. “They found an arm. In the Gowanus. Seems to go with the rest of the jig-saw. Whoever tossed it into the canal made sure we wouldn’t see any tattooing on it, though. It was a busy day with the knife.”

“What did the dirty ripper do? Row around the harbor to scatter the pieces far and wide?”

“Tide might carry a leg out of the Gowanus to Governors, caught it just right. Arm was probably dumped in with it. One drifted; the other stuck in the mud. We might have to dredge a bit. For the rest of him.”

The Sergeant wiped foam off his lips. “I knew I should not of put them grappling irons away in mothballs. Shall we be up and doing?”

“Another little errand for you, first.”

“Would it be a trip to the yacht to see Lady Itchy-britches, perchance?” The Sergeant tapped the rim of his glass. “A couple of these under my belt and I feel like a new woman.”

“Doesn’t concern the female of the species. Hop over to Pier Nine. Ask that super, Hurlihan, if he’s seen or heard from Merrill Ovett. What he was doing Sunday morning, around noon. Bigwig Berger, at the Line offices, claims Joslin was with Hurlihan at the Sulgrave Hotel. But Joslin says he was with Merrill Ovett. Maybe all three of them got together. Like to know about that.”

A City News legman strolled past, chewing on a toothpick. “They’ll be fitting you birds out with depth charges, now, won’t they, Lieutenant?”

“Yair? Why?”

“Didn’t you hear? Flash just came through. One of those new super-subs was sighted only a few miles off Fire Island Light, just after dark last night. By those survivors the Algonquin brought in.”

“Ah! Somebody probably saw some wreckage moving in a tide-rip, — thought they’d spotted the grampa of all periscopes. Don’t get the public gidgety over a report like that.” He dismissed it with an offhand gesture and the newshawk moved on.

But there was nothing offhand about the urgency with which Koski put his call through to Coast Guard Intelligence...

XVIII

Henry Sutlee Fross marched briskly down the marbled corridor of the thirty-eighth floor, past an arched door with the unobtrusive inscription:

Fross, Graves, Burlingham,

Scott and Associates

He used a pass-key, opened a door bearing no lettering nor any number. The furnishings of the room were somewhat unusual for an office building. In a blue-tiled fireplace embers glowed cheerfully; the pungent tang of hickory was evident. A chaise longue was arranged at one side of the tile hearth, a chair in cinnamon-colored chintz on the other. Carafes and bottles on a midget bar glistened under the soft light of a lime-shaded table lamp. The paintings on the walls were cubist still lifes; the frames wide and unpainted.

Fross took off his rubbers, placed them neatly on the floor of the tiny lavatory, scrubbed his hands vigorously with a silver nail-brush, craned his neck up to a heavy, circular mirror. What he saw through his pince-nez was a round moon-face with chastely pink cheeks, a clipped military mustache above small, thick lips. He brushed his hair back from its mathematically centered part, went out into the private cubicle, still brushing.

A cherry-wood box was murmuring: “...gentleman has been waiting fifteen minutes, sir... says it’s urgent and he knows you’re in...”

Fross tapped a switch. “Don’t be obscure, Herman. What gentleman?” The switch clicked once more.

“...Morrie Schlauff, sir... says you will want to see him...”

“He hopes.” Fross curled up the corners of his lips, unsmiling. “Two minutes. In the office. I’ll be out to anyone else.”

“How’re you today, Mister Fross?” The man who came in was thin and alert; there was practically no chin under his sleazy mustache; his front teeth protruded like those of a rodent. “You’re harder to get to than the box-office man at a hit show.” He carried a folded newspaper in his right hand, slapped it against his thigh, as he spoke.

“I’ve been at court. What’s so urgent?”

“Dough.” Morrie Schlauff sat down, crossed his legs. “The purse is starving for dough.”

“You’ve already received your... ah... retainer. We agreed on that.”

“Past tense.” Schlauff waggled the toe of a worn, brown oxford. “This is present. I’m upping the price. I want three hundred dollars an’ I got to have it now.”

Fross put on a patient expression. “I’ll have to get hold of the client.”

“Do we have to go over that same routine again? I told you I know who the client is. You’re the client. So go ahead. Tell yourself to come across with three hundred more. On account.”

“You’re in error, Morrie.” The lawyer made his eyes smile. “I’m acting for a client.”

“I know who you’re acting for. Do I get the money?”

Fross chuckled. “I presume you’ve earned it?”

“You presume right.” Schlauff held the newspaper in his lap, smoothing the fold.

There was a pause. Fross laughed outright. “I’m waiting to see if it’s worth an advance, Morrie.”

“You’ll grow roots in that chair, then, Mister Fross. I got something and it’s red hot. But it cost me to get it. There might be more where that came from and that’ll cost, too.” He waved the newspaper. “If you don’t want it, I know where I can peddle it.”

The lawyer tilted his head to one side, shook it once. “You’re a very difficult person to deal with.” He slid open the top right-hand drawer of the desk, leaned over it and said: “Herman.”

“...yes, Mister Fross?”

“Three hundred dollars. In fives and tens. Debit to the Schlauff entry. Have it ready there.” He closed the drawer. “If I’d known at the beginning—”

“You’d still have hired me. Or someone like me. You couldn’t have gone to one of the big agencies. So why bellyache now! Maybe if I’d known what I was getting into I wouldn’t have taken the business, myself.”

“Difficulties?”

“I never run into such a flock of plainclothes cops in my life. All kinds, — city police, Uncle Sams, private guards. They been in my hair.”

Fross registered mild surprise. “Why all the commotion?”

“A mere matter of homicide, is all.”

The lawyer’s face showed no emotion. “Mrs. Ovett?”

“Uh, uh. Man. That suitcase thing. It’s in all the papers.” He giggled. “I should be telling you. You probly know more about it than I do.”

“I know nothing about it.”

“Here.” Schlauff unfolded an afternoon edition, tossed it on the desk. “Second colyum. Halfway down.”

The lawyer read it swiftly “This doesn’t tell me anything. Who was he? Who killed him? How does it concern the subject of our investigation?”

The fox-faced man held up a finger. “Ansel Gjersten, late engineer aboard the good ship Seavett.” His second digit went up. “Nobody knows. Least, the cops or the G-boys don’t seem to be sure. They’re running around in circles, masterminding.” A third finger joined the first two. “My private, off-the-stand opinion is, a certain M.O. gave him the bump. On account of Mrs. O.”

Fross put his tongue between his lips as if he was trying something on his taste buds. “Rather complicates the situation.”

“Not as long as I’m the only one who knows it. You wanted something on M.O. I cased the Wyatt end, north and south. There might be something to it, but it would be tough to establish. M.O.’s been out of town most of the time. He has a residence up on Riverside. The Wyatt girl hasn’t ever been there, or to his yacht or anywhere else with him except spaghetti joints around the waterfront. So that wouldn’t amount to much if you were figuring to use it as a lever for... whatever you want it for.”

Fross smiled pleasantly. “For a client.”

“So whatever you say. But this murder angle is something. Providing they don’t catch up with him and give him a fifteen-thousand volt hot-foot. You will have something on him which ought to make him hold up his paws and bark for a biscuit.”

“I believe penalties are provided for the compounding of a felony, my agile-minded friend. Withholding information concerning a murder would distinctly come under that classification, would it not?”

“You’re damn tooting it would.” Morrie giggled again, stroked his mustache. “That’s what I get paid for. Withholding the information that lets you put over this, — uh, — coercion... for your client.”

The lawyer examined his fingernails, took out a file, began to rasp them energetically. “As a member of the bar and an officer of the court, I couldn’t condone any such suggestion, Morrie. But,” he raised his eyes quizzically, “I doubt if you have your facts in hand.”

“I got enough. I trail M.O. from the bus station when he gets in from Charleston. I’m on his rear bumper over to a place on Swamp Street where he has a heart-to-heart with a man name of Joslin. He’s sitting in one end of a subway car over to Brooklyn, and I’m on the platform at the other end. I’m right behind him out to a shipyard over there, Rodd’s, they call it. I even crash the gate past the guard by saying I’m for the Seavett, too. I don’t see him after he goes on board the yacht. But I hear him and some other man, likely this Gjersten, talking through a porthole. I can’t get close enough to catch much of the conversation because there is an old boy fussing around with ropes on the deck. But I hear M.O. say something about Big Dommy’s place. He is supposed to meet someone there, maybe this other man he is talking to. So when the motors begin to buzz and some Porto Rican or maybe a Filipino comes out on the dock, I beat it.”

“Interesting,” Fross smiled a reproof, “but not conclusive.”

“Wait’ll I finish. It takes me a while to locate this Big Dommy’s, which is a dump over behind the Erie Basin and I mean a dump. I spend some jingle at the bar and don’t see M.O. But while I’m standing there guzzling, in comes a skinny blonde with henna hair and a kind of lonesome look to her. She goes around the barroom and asks everyone if they have seen Ansel around. This Ansel must be known in those parts because they don’t say they don’t know him, just that they haven’t seen him.” Morrie retrieved the newspaper, crackled it significantly. “Ansel is the party of the first part in this suitcase story.”

“I read it. What is the point?”

“The point is this. I stick around quite a while and this girl who everybody calls Claire goes upstairs to the stopover rooms and comes down a few times, but all along she is whining about Ansel not having met her like he promised. According to her, he was there in the afternoon and didn’t pay off but told her he would see her later. By and by she goes away and in comes a flint-face from the city force; I can spot one of those badge-carriers like a sore thumb. He ruffles up the proprietor’s feathers some and they go upstairs together. I am just deciding M.O. is not going to show and am about to run along when down comes the city sleuth with Big Dommy in tow. They are looking for someone and who do you think it is?”

“M.O.?”

“No. At least, not right then. The city cop is inquiring about Claire. The girl who was with Ansel in the afternoon.”

The lawyer laced and unlaced his fingers, abstractedly. “What has all this to do with our little investigation, Morrie?”

“Quite a good deal, quite a lot. I don’t hang around while the badge does his business but later on I go back and the place is swarming with buttons. I buy a drink where it will do the most good and I use my ears and after a while I get the layout. The room upstairs where Ansel and the girl went earlier in the day, that was where the murder was committed. The corpse couldn’t be identified completely, being in sections as it were, but the police are convinced it is Ansel.”

Fross let annoyance sharpen his tone. “All very absorbing, Morrie. But it leaves a little to be desired. You haven’t placed M.O. at the crime.”

“I heard him say he was going there. I heard him say it to the man who got killed. The buttons have flyers out for M.O. They sent his description out on the teletype and on the radio. It might not be enough for the prosecutor’s office but it ought to go a long way to help you. I don’t know just what it is you’re after. But I got a four-star hunch there’s more to it than just some stock deal.”

A green glass button on the inner edge of Fross’s desk glowed like a lighted emerald, went out. He opened the drawer.

“...a gentleman to see yon, Mister Fross...”

“Mister Fross has gone out, Herman. He will be back in an hour.” Fross started to close the drawer but the box inside spoke again, hurriedly.

“...the gentleman is from the police, sir... his name is Koski... Lieutenant Koski... and he says he must see Mister Fross immed — HERE — STOP — YOU CAN’T—” the voice changed abruptly. “...Do you come out, Fross? Or do I come in after you?”

Schlauff got to his feet fast. “Psst!... Let me out through that trick exit of yours. That’s the city badge I was telling you about. I don’t want him to find me—”

Fross slammed the drawer. “You imbecile! He heard you! That switch was open—”

The door opened softly.

Koski walked in.

XIX

The man from the Harbor Squad eyed Schlauff with satisfaction. “Well, well. The face is familiar. But I don’t seem to recall the name.”

“Name is Schlauff. Morris Schlauff. Of Schlauff International Investigators, Incorporated.”

“I meant to pass around a pat on the back for that handwriting on the wall. But you got away too fast.” Koski measured him up and down. It would be hard for Schlauff to masquerade as a sailor, even with a bandage hiding his foxlike, protruding teeth. “How you do get around.”

“Professional duties.” Morrie smirked.

“I’ve had every cop in Brooklyn on the qui vive for you. Where do you fit in this picture?”

Fross said smoothly: “One of my clients has been employing Mister Schlauff on a divorce investigation.”

“That’s right. Nothing to do — with my being over at Dommy’s place.” Morrie smoothed the newspaper with the flat of his hand.

“Do I look like Charlie McCarthy?” Koski roamed around the room. “I’m not enough of a dummy to take that. You were trailing Gjersten or young Ovett. Or both. Else you wouldn’t have recognized the Purdo girl.” He talked to Schlauff; watched Fross.

“I just happened to be there,” Morrie protested, “when someone mentioned her name. That’s absolutely the fact.”

“You’re working for Fross, hah? Well,” Koski faced the lawyer, “who are you working for?”

“I am bound to respect the confidence of my client,” Fross smiled frankly, “but I don’t believe she’d have any objection to your being informed. Mrs. Barbara Ovett.”

“What’s the blueprint? She afraid her husband is going to divorce her? She after evidence against him so court proceedings against her would be a standoff?”

“You are very keen.” Fross’s eyebrows went up in obvious admiration. “That is the way it lines up, exactly.”

“Might be the way you’d like me to believe it lines up. But don’t tell me Schlauff was in that Brooklyn dive after an adultery affidavit!” Koski was sardonic. “A judge would rule that out so fast it would make your ears ring. Nobody’d know that better than you. Maybe you were trying to get the goods on young Ovett. But there’ll be some other reason. Whatsit?”

The lawyer seemed amused. “As far as this office is concerned, the matter is quite routine. Mrs. Ovett wished to undertake an investigation which is possibly a little distasteful, but entirely legitimate. I simply acted as intermediary in assigning the investigation to Mister Schlauff. I can’t speak for him, naturally. I don’t know what he may have uncovered—”

“Wa-a-ait a minute.” Schlauff sat up straight, rolling the newspaper up into a tight cylinder. “Nobody ever accused me of being a middleman; I don’t intend to start now with the police on one side and a law firm on the other. This isn’t my picnic; the best I’ll get out of it is a few crumbs.”

Fross’s eyes glinted behind the pince-nez; he cut in rapidly before Koski could speak: “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t tell the authorities any fact of which you have definite knowledge, Morrie.”

Koski held up his hand. “How’s for skipping all the hipper-dipper? I’m tired of listening to you bounce yourselves back and forth. You’re not testifying before a Grand Jury panel. There’s no court stenographer around.” He shoved his hat up so the brim was at a forty-five degree angle, put a foot on the rung of Schlauff’s chair, leaned over, crossed his forearms on the upraised knee. “You trailed Merrill Ovett over to the Bar-Nothing. You saw him with Ansel Gjersten. Maybe you saw a man with a bandage around his face.”

“No sir, Lieutenant. Only one I saw was this Purdo babe. I heard her asking about Gjersten. That’s all I know, positively.”

Koski made an ejaculation of disgust. “You were back at Dommy’s after I left. You cuddled up to one of the precinct boys; he remembered it when I put out the net for you. So you know a man was killed up in one of the rooms. That we’re hunting the murderer. You must have shadowed Merrill to the yacht at Rodd’s. So you probably know Gjersten and Ovett had an argument.”

Schlauff did his best to grin, but his eyes shifted to Fross. The grin froze.

Koski moved so his body was between Schlauff and the lawyer; spoke as if Fross were nonexistent:

“You’re one of the those boys who carry your heart around in your wallet, Schlauff. All right. How much’d your license cost you?”

“You should ask. You get paid for carrying your badge. Mine cost me two hundred counters. And a little greasing of the wheels, besides.”

“Going to throw away an investment like that?”

“You don’t need to intimidate me, Lieutenant.” Schlauff leaned well back in his chair to get as far away from Koski’s eyes as possible. “I realize I got a living to make. So maybe it’s not the best living in the world; — I couldn’t even buy coffee and cakes if my ticket was revoked; — I appreciate it, believe me.”

“That makes better. Now... where is Ovett?”

“If I should be struck dead this second, I swear I couldn’t tell you, Lieutenant. The last time I saw him was going on to the yacht at Rodd’s.”

Fross said smoothly. “That’s correct, Lieutenant.”

“Maybe. Far as it goes.” Koski wheeled on him. “You people are going to get yourselves in a jam, here. There’s more than one murder involved. A girl got dropped over in Brooklyn today, — because she might have known something. You gents know something, — more than you’re letting out. You beat us to the gun on Ovett. You were trailing him before we were. And you’re keeping pretty close tabs on his wife.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Two of your former employees were working on the Seavett; she hired them on your recommendation.”

“Correct.”

“They wouldn’t be much use watching Merrill, because generally he wasn’t on the yacht long enough to change his shirt. But if they’d been paid off to report on Mrs. Ovett’s doings, they’d have been able to put you hep to a lot of stuff. Give you the whip hand over her.”

“Nobody has control over Barbara Ovett.” The lawyer chose his words carefully. “A sex hangover from some promiscuous ancestor has made her emotionally unstable and mentally unreliable.”

“Why you acting for her on this divorce tangle, — against young Ovett, then? At the same time you’re corporation counsel for his father?” Koski circled the room, restlessly.

“The interests may seem to differ. Actually they are identical. My loyalty is to the Line which fees me; I act in its behalf to prevent the dispersal of its securities into hands which might impair their value.”

“Whose hands?”

“A person who knows nothing whatever about ships or the shipping business. And who may be inclined, accordingly, to adopt policies which would wreck the company.” The lawyer nodded at Schlauff. “Morrie will corroborate me. Miss Ellen Wyatt.”

“How’s she get in the mixup?”

“No reason why I shouldn’t tell you. It’s a matter of public record. Merrill’s aware his activities subject him to great risk, but he didn’t make a will to dispose of the minority stock his grandfather left him. He gave it outright to establish Blue Water Babies, a foundation. Stated purpose, to provide for the care of children left fatherless by the fortunes of submarine warfare.”

“Has my vote. If it’s as stated. Show me somebody who’s against it.”

“No one is, naturally. That’s the point. It’s too good an idea to ruin. But the Foundation won’t be able to carry out its program if the stock which endows it loses money. Which it will do if the Line is run by the governors Merrill has appointed for the Foundation.”

“Who’ll the governors be?” Koski watched a puzzled frown deepen on Schlauff’s face.

“Besides Miss Wyatt, Merrill himself and a union radical named Joslin. None of them has ever had the slightest experience in conducting a business. Miss Wyatt’s to be chairman; she’ll appoint successors if either of the other should... be incapacitated.”

“How’ll this setup affect the Ovett Lines, if Merrill only owns a minority interest?”

“The boy will inherit his father’s stock, which will undoubtedly be given to the Foundation, too — if Merrill has his way. Miss Wyatt will then control a definite majority of the voting shares. You see?”

“I get a glimmer.” The Lieutenant stared bleakly. “You think the old man won’t live much longer. You hired Schlauff to get the goods on Merrill so you could stop his transferring the shares to the Foundation. Or maybe Schlauff dug up some dirt about Mrs. Ovett and one of the yacht-hands and tipped Merrill off, hoping the boy would pull some rough work and put himself out of the picture.”

The investigator came up out of his chair. “Hey, now! Don’t put me on the spot. I never talked to M.O. in my life; I’ve told you all I know.”

“Hell you have.” Koski gripped Schlauff’s arm. “You know more. What you might know is this. The murderer we’re after may be supplying the background for this flurry of sub sinkings off the coast. You’re not holding out on the Police Department. You’re criscrossing the old gentleman with the beard and the beaver hat. You’re helping to gang up on the guys who sleep with their pants on and one ear cocked for the call to put on life-belts.” Fross slapped his desk smartly, for emphasis. “That puts quite a different light on it. Quite a different aspect. Neither Morrie or I would hesitate to give you any information we might possess... or may possess in the future... if it comes to a patriotic consideration.”

Schlauff chimed in: “You’re damn tooting. Just give me a chance to heil... ptth... right in der Fuehrer’s face.”

Fross removed his pince-nez, tapped his thick lips with the rim of one lens. “Do I understand you? Merrill is the traitorous individual you mention?”

“You understand I want Ovett. I want him damn quick.”

The lawyer sat up very straight. “I might possibly be able to suggest a train of thought in that direction.”

“You’ve got a clear track.” Koski wheeled about.

“He may have gone to sea, again. You knew he’s been getting firsthand experience as a sailor, I presume.”

“Yair.”

“Under a nom de guerre.”

“Now you’re touching the spot. What name?”

“I regret my inability to advise you on that point.”

“Ever hear him mention any name he might have used on other trips?”

“I am sorry.” The lawyer nipped at a speck of dust on his coat sleeve. “I can’t help you.”

“Say.” Schlauff slapped the newspaper against the calf of his leg. “I don’t know the tag M.O. used for shipping purposes. But I might know where to find out...”

“It’s like pulling back teeth,” Koski growled. “Spit it out.”

Schlauff rose, tossing his newspaper in the chair. “There’s something in that report on the Wyatt girl, Mister Fross.” He kept facing Koski and the lawyer, backed toward the door of the sanctum. “She used to call him some whacky name,” he put his hand on the knob almost reluctantly. “I heard her use it once in a booth. I’ll show you...” He slid out of sight. The door closed softly after him.

Fross laughed, skeptically. “Sinbad. It’s ridiculous; Merrill wouldn’t attempt anything as juvenile—” his voice dwindled away as Koski got to the inner door, flung it open.

The Harbor Squad man hissed a mono-sibilant, strode through the cozy-nook, opened the private door to the hall, looked out. There was no one in the corridor. He dived toward the red bulb marking the stairs, jerked open the door, listened. No sound of running feet; nothing but distant traffic noises.

He cursed under his breath. Trying to run down a sharpshooter like Schlauff in a building as big as this might take half a day; time Koski couldn’t spare now. He stalked back into the office, muttering: “Singlehanded Schlauff. Needs his teeth fixed up. First thing he knows somebody’ll straighten them for him. With a spade—” He cut it short. Both offices were empty. Koski moved swiftly through the corridor to the reception room. “Where’s Fross?”

The bespectacled old man at the switchboard regarded him owlishly. “I couldn’t say, sir.”

“He go out just now?”

“I didn’t see him, sir.”

“You wouldn’t.” Koski went back into Fross’s office, rummaged around, found nothing that interested him. In the private cubicle he had better luck. In a handkerchief on the shelf under the portable bar was a nickel-plated hammerless.

The Lieutenant stuck a pencil in the barrel, held it up so he could sniff at the muzzle without touching it. It was a thirty-two and it had been cleaned since it was last fired.

He wrapped it in the handkerchief again, put it in his pocket, went out to the elevator by the private door.

XX

Fingers of fog crept across Battery Park, strangling the lambent blue at the subway kiosk, shrouding a newspaper stand in golden haze. A tug groaned dismally; a St. George ferry hooted back. There was no dusk, only an enveloping grayness which grew steadily darker. Koski opened the door marked Harbor Precinct, stood with hands on his hips. He sniffed, grumbled:

“Haven’t you guys heard?”

Mulcahey took his feet off the teletypewriter desk. “What’s of new?”

“You can live three weeks without food, three days without water. But only three minutes without air.” He stalked to the window, jerked the steel sash up. The dim light above the landing stage fifty feet away outlined the Vigilant in soft focus.

“We had that open, coach.” The Sergeant objected. “It is an invitation to double pneumonia. The mist comes rolling in like we’re in that cave under Niagara Falls.”

“You’ll stand in a damp hallway for an hour, saying good night to a dame. Get you inside a warm office, right away you’re sensitive to moisture.” Koski slumped into his straight-backed chair, shuffled through the departmental circulars on his desk. The teletype clattered; a short-wave receiver muttered monotonously in one corner.

“What do them convoy navigators do, dense weather this way, skipper? They are not allowed to tootle their klaxons.”

“Follow the wake of the ship ahead. Ship tows a buoy with a hook sticking up on top, cuts the waves, makes a ripple of white water.” Koski tossed aside a notification of an Anchor Association meeting. “If it gets too thick to see that, they run blind, Irish. And trust to luck. Same like us on this case.”

Mulcahey tilted his head back, winked laboriously at O’Malley. “My sense of tuition informs me that something has gone sour. What marches?”

“Time.” Koski stuck his hands in his trouser pockets, stretched his legs out stiffly. “And still not Merrill Ovett.”

“The next three hours will march none too quick for me. At one bell in the next watch I will be nestling alongside the most seductive suzy the human arm ever encircled.”

“You’ll be nestling in the Gowanus. With a set of body drags.”

“Ah, now, Steve. I give this damsel my iron-clad guarantee...”

Koski rubbed his eyes wearily. “There’s no such word as femme in your lexicon, Irish. Until we pack this in the Finished file.” He took out the handkerchief with the revolver, unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen, found a manila tag, tied it to the trigger-guard. “To Identification. With love and kisses. Ask them to shoot to Ballistics.”

Mulcahey hefted it. “Would this be the barker that bit the Purdo babe?”

“If so, one Henry Fross suffers from carelessness. He doesn’t impress me as careless. Still, I’d like an expert verdict. If it isn’t asking too much...?”

“I will hustle it thither on the instant.” The Sergeant turned, pivoted around again, “Say, — it nearly slipped my mind—”

“What slipped what...?”

“Homicide traces the suitcase.”

“Where?”

“A drugstore. Off Times Square. It is the first time I realize the drugstores are in the luggage business.”

“Hell. Some of them carry farm machinery. Any clerk remember the purchaser?”

“That’s the way they traced it. By asking around about a buyer with a turban on the south end of his head. Further than that, the identification remains nil and void. But there is one funny thing...”

“Make me laugh.”

“This buyer carries a roll of something when he comes into the store. There is a paper around it so the clerk cannot be sure but he thinks it is oilcloth. It smells like oilcloth. There are very few things in this world which smell like oilcloth, thanks be.”

“Yair.” Koski nodded, slowly. “To put under the body while he was sawing it up. When did he make the buy?”

“About two-thirty or three Sunday afternoon. That’s the top of the news... from here.” Mulcahey went out.

Koski pulled a sheet off a pile of blank forms; under the heading DETECTIVE’S DAILY ACTIVITY REPORT — FORM DD62, he wrote the date: 3/20/42. He looked at the paper.

Where would he begin: — with the Seavett, Ansel Gjersten, Merrill Ovett, Captain Cardiff, Frankie the Filip, Barbara? What to say about the Bar-Nothing, Big Dommy, Dora, Schlauff, Claire Purdo, the man in the cotton mask? How ought he to cover Ellen Wyatt, and Tim Joslin? Or the angles at the Ovett Line; Clem Hurlihan, Rolf Berger, Lawford Ovett? And friend Fross?

After a while he put the cap back on his fountain pen, laid DD62 at one side of his desk, went into the bunk-room, tossed his coat on the cot with his shield number on it. He opened his locker, dug out a razor and shaving cream, filled a tumbler with water, busied himself with lather, staring out the window at the mouth of the river. The fog had thinned momentarily under the night breeze. The soft blurs of light had sharpened to brighter pinpoints of red, white, yellow...

Koski read them as if they had been neon advertisements on Broadway, before the dimout. Those three vertical whites moving almost imperceptibly away from the Battery would be a tug with coal barges coming up from the stake-boat off Black Tom. That cluster of faint yellow dots across the river, — the Coast Guard patrol cutter at the main channel. The luminous red and green, close to the water, — an oil barge from Bayonne for Spuyten Duyvil. And riding sluggishly in the thinner vapor high above the water, two clear, white sparks, — one above the other; that might be a freighter bound out for Quarantine, the net at the Narrows, the assembly port and... God knows where. Her convoy number would be showing by daylight; her name would be painted out. But under the clay-gray war paint Koski thought it likely she would have on her stern the letters S-A-N-T-A P-O-B-R-I–C-O.

He wondered if the little metal replica was on the wall chart in Hurlihan’s office; how long it would remain there...

The phone brrrd. Koski said: “Yair. Here. Go”

“Philbrick, Ballistics, Lieutenant... Homicide says you want the dope on that slug from the Treanor Place shooting... It weighed seventy-two grams... came from a thirty-two caliber Harrington and Richardson automatic... manufactured in Worcester, Mass., some time subsequent to 1935... weapon you’re after will be rifled with a six-groove left-twist spiral. Pitch, ten and a half inches... groove depth, ten-thousandths of an inch... groove width, forty-two thousandths... smokeless powder used in the cartridge... the shells will show an ejector mark which has been isolated... the barrel was comparatively clean when the gun was fired.”

“H&R 32 auto. Okay.”

“You have anything you want us to test against that, Lieutenant?”

“You have one I don’t need tested. An S&W I just sent over. Ticketed Henry Fross. Skipola. Thanks.”

He had scraped one side of his face when the phone went into action again. This time it was Nixon.

“I have a rare specimen for your collection.”

“From the stiff?”

“B-yutifui prints. Nearly good as new.”

“What does it get us?” Koski began on the other side of his face.

“Same as a couple we picked off the bedstead in Room Five at Dominick’s.”

“Shows what science can do. When given a chance.” Koski rinsed the razor. “The one place we know for sure he had been. That the crop?”

“Give us time, pardner.”

“That’s what I’ve got nothing but. Find something, for Pete’s sake. How about that stuff from the Joslin garret?”

“We found a million. Take us a week to classify. He must hold seances or something.”

“Yair. Nothing from the Purdo flat?”

“Zero. Killer must have worn gloves.”

“I’ll fit him out with wristbands if you’ll only give a little. Much oblige. For what?” He hung up.

Mulcahey stuck his head in from the muster room.

“When you get done with your toilette, sire...”

“Something?”

“A rum-dum to see you. He is stumbling all around, stewed to the scuppers. I done my best to shoo him off but he does not shoo.”

“What’s he look like?” Koski washed off the remains of the lather.

“A refugee from a Walt Disney, no kidding.”

“Pluto? Or Mickey?”

“That Reynard the Fox, in the one about—”

“Fox!” Koski dried his face, hurriedly. “Thin? Mustache? Thirty-five to forty?”

“I am glad nobody runs him in for cluttering up the hallowed precinct, if you are acquainted with him.”

Koski dived out the door, went down on the run.

Morrie Schlauff shambled along the wall by the door, trying to brace himself with futile pawings. He weaved unsteadily as Koski reached him.

“Shails... unner... name...” he muttered thickly. “Shails...” he swayed...

“Seldom have I met up with a handsomer snootful.” Mulcahey clumped to the foot of the stairs.

“Save it, Irish!” Koski put his arm around the investigator’s shoulders. “Say it again, Schlauff.”

“Shails... Breeco...” The man grimaced, struggled to balance himself, toppled against the wall. His hat slid askew over his eyes, fell to the floor. The hair on the left side of his crown was matted as if he had rubbed oil in it.

“Amby, Irish! Double quick!” Koski held Schlauff erect.

“Hurt he is? Me bawling him out for being stinko!”

“Skull fracture, for Pete’s sake! Snap into it!” The Harbor Squad man put his face close to Schlauff’s. “One more try. What name’d Ovett use?”

Schlauff’s eyes — rolled. His lower jaw went slack. He made a final tremendous effort, “...going... shink.” His lips worked convulsively... “shink... breeco...” His tongue lolled, his knees sagged. He was a limp weight in Koski’s arms when Mulcahey rushed back.

“Here in three minutes. Holy Mother! ’S he gone?”

“Just out. Might go. Might not. Pull his legs out straight. Have to hold him sitting up.”

“What was he mumbling in his beard?”

“Name of the ship our man got away on, Irish.”

“Got away!”

“Just went down harbor. Ten minutes ago. The Santa Pobrico. Of the Ovett Line. Sounded as if he was trying to say the Pobrico’s going to be sunk.” He scowled at the wound on Schlauff’s head. “I ought to be sore at the dumb cluck. He thought he’d put over a swiftie, collect himself an easy dollar. Walked into one hell of a beating. Had guts enough to make it over here, when he found out what he was up against.” The wail of a siren rose and fell. “I wish I knew just what the guy was trying to get to me. He couldn’t have had it far wrong. Or he wouldn’t have been taken, like that.”

O’Malley yelled from the detective office: “Hey, they got Joslin.”

Koski barked: “Who did?”

“One the Oak Street boys.” O’Malley hurried out. “He tails the Wyatt dame. To the Lighthouse, over by Fulton Market. An’ who does she have a rendezvous with but Hardrock Joslin! How you like!”

“I like it. Is Oak Street still there?”

“Standing by. Waiting for orders.”

“Tell him to keep standing. I’m on my way.”

The long, gray car rolled up.

“Sarge, you ride in the amby. Stick with Schlauff until I get a steno-guy over to the hospital. I want to know if he says anything more before he goes under. Don’t muff it, now.”

“If it comes my way, I will catch it.”

Koski let the interne take his burden, hopped in a squad car, was speeding across Battery Park before the ambulance door shut.

XXI

The light in the Lighthouse was bad. At the side of each table a small, round pool of yellow dripped from a miniature beacon onto the red-checked tablecloth. This electrical economy made it unnecessary for the proprietor to be too scrupulous about the spotlessness of the table linen; besides, the customers who came to the waterfront café considered its broiled butterfish and sautéed sole all that was required in the way of interior decoration.

In addition to this protective lack of illumination, the man at the corner table by the door marked WASHROOM sat so his face was in the deepest shadow. Also he managed to sit back against the wall so he was partially shielded by the girl opposite him; he was virtually invisible to anyone at the front of the café. Only when the fragrance of clam broth or french-fried squid, sweeping in from the kitchen behind him, gave notice of the curtained street-door’s opening, did he lean forward sufficiently to peer around this table companion.

“Hope I didn’t keep you waiting long, Tim.”

“Not very long, Ellen.”

“That delicatessen boy only delivered your message ten minutes ago.”

“I’d have come around to the studio only all day ‘I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me...’ ” He passed her a nearly illegible menu. “Haven’t eaten, have you?”

“Haven’t felt like eating, Tim.”

“Better order, anyway. Look more natural.” An elderly waiter in a soiled dickey shambled up to their table. “No use letting it get you down.”

“How can I help it? With Merrill in trouble?”

“He’ll be out of trouble in a few hours.” Joslin crumbled a hard roll.

“He’s running away?”

“Done gawn already. The fried flounder isn’t so bad in here.”

She nodded to the waiter. “I’ll have that. Boiled potatoes.”

“Same here, Bill.”

Ellen reached across the table, put her hand on the organizer’s sleeve. “You don’t believe he did it, do you?”

“I don’t believe one way or the other.” Joslin buttered the crust. “Until I hear what he has to say.”

“Haven’t you heard from him?”

“How could I? I haven’t dared to go near my room.”

“You weren’t followed here?”

“Don’t think so. But maybe you were.” He moved slightly to observe a middle-aged man who had just come out of a phone booth near the cashier’s desk at the door and gone back to his table. Joslin pantomimed with his fork. “That’s one of those burrs sticking to us, now, I think.”

“Which one?”

“Middle-aged bird, second table from the door. He’s been taking great pains not to look our way.”

“I’m sorry. If I’ve put you in a corner, Tim.”

“Think nothing of it. There’s a way to make sure about him.” He stood up. “Watch this.” He ambled toward the door.

The middle-aged man took out his watch, muttered beneath his breath as if unaware of the lateness of the hour. He wiped his lips quickly, laid the napkin down, reached into his trousers pocket.

Joslin swerved, stepped to the cashier’s desk. “Pack of Luckies.” He slipped a coin on the glass without noticing the man at the second table. When the organizer turned to go back to his table, he turned the other way. He ripped open the corner of the pack, tapped out a cigarette, offered one to Ellen.

“Thank you, Tim.” She bent her head sideways to the match he held out. “He started to pay his check. But he’s changed his mind. He’s fished out some money. Going into the phone booth.”

“That’s one of them, all right.” He dug into the flounder. “I’ll cross him up, anyway. I know this restaurant. That’s why I asked you to come here. There’s a little bolt-hole I can use in an emergency.”

“But why were they watching me?”

“They expect him to get in touch with you. Let ’em expect. I won’t dodge any cops tomorrow. By that time his ship will be well out. Merrill told me on Sunday he was going right out again — probably on the Pobrico. But I couldn’t give him any advice, then. That was before I knew about... this other thing. I wouldn’t know what to say to him now, anyhow.” He crunched on the roll. “I couldn’t know how it feels to find another man... and your wife. Even if you don’t have any illusions about your wife...”

Ellen was puzzled. “I don’t want to know how he managed to get on board or what name he used this time. Then I won’t have to pretend I don’t know, if the police ask me. But I should think they’d have been patrolling at the piers for him.”

“They were there in bunches. Some of the gang told me every time they turned around there’d be another stranger giving them the up and down. They had leaflets with his picture and description.”

“Why didn’t they recognize him?”

“Same reason you wouldn’t have, Ellen. You never saw a man change so much in so short a time.”

“Those days in the lifeboat?”

“Sure. No food the last five days, except one chocolate bar. Four swallows of water every twenty-four hours. Lifeboats are stocked with plenty but the sub shelled the one he was in. The Nazi idea of good, clean fun. Didn’t hit the boat, but a splinter stove in one provision locker. Salt water did the rest. Merrill lost about forty pounds. Makes a hell of a difference in his appearance. His face is so thin...”

“But even so, Tim—”

“That’s not all.” Joslin took out an old envelope, filled with newspaper clippings. He picked one out, unfolded it to its three-column width, passed it across the table. “The Mercede wasn’t one of the banana boats like most of the line. She was a tanker; they used her on the Venezuelan run; what they call a clean tanker — only carried gasoline.”

Ellen studied the clipping. There was a head line:

PRESIDENT LAUDS WINNER OF NEW MARINE MEDAL

Below was a photograph of a dark-haired youth bending over to have a sixteen-pointed star attached to his uniform. The captain said Eric Haveline was a quartermaster on the Santa Mercede, aged twenty-five, a resident of Easton, Maryland, and bashful.

“It’s tough being on one of those oil cans when they get hit,” Joslin went on. “If the torpedo doesn’t tear you apart or stun you so you don’t get on deck in time, you may get a chance to burn to death when those five million gallons start to burn and spread out over a mile of water.”

She read:

For heroism above and beyond his call of duty during enemy attack when he released and launched a life raft from a sinking and burning ship and maneuvered it through a pool of burning oil to clear water by swimming under water, coming up only to breathe—

Joslin watched the man at the second table, uneasily. “That quartermaster was burned pretty bad while he was swimming back to the ship for four others. Merrill had his hair singed to the roots.”

Ellen’s “Yes?” was barely audible.

Haveline related to the President how the submarine had surfaced close to his lifeboat. Its commander, after inquiring in excellent English, whether Captain Ovett or any of the ship’s officers had been rescued and receiving a denial, proceded to withdraw and at a half-mile distance sent several shells crashing close to the survivors’ heads before submerging.

“When Merrill’s hair grew out again, it was white.” Joslin laid sixty cents quietly under the edge of his plate, watchful of the middle-aged man. “When you add to the white hair and loss of weight the fact that he looks ten years older than he did before this last trip, you can see why the eagle-eyes didn’t recognize him.”

“Tim!” Ellen touched the clipping with a fingertip. “This says the submarine commander asked for Captain Ovett!”

“Yeah.” He avoided her gaze.

“But there isn’t any Captain Ovett.”

“No. Might have been the Nazi’s idea there was — the Mercede being an Ovett ship.”

“You don’t believe that. There was something more to it than that. You’re keeping something from me.”

“No. Honestly.” He squirmed in his chair. “That thing bothered Merrill, too. He naturally wondered if anyone on the sub really did know there was an Ovett aboard the Mercede. It was the reason he wanted to see his father so badly; he called the old man’s house from the poolroom under my place. But Lawford Ovett had just left for a meeting of the Shipowners Council with that bucko mate of his, Berger. So I guess Merrill went over to the yacht first, intending to see his father later. Then this other thing happened...” He jumped to his feet, dived for the washroom door.

Ellen heard Koski’s voice from the kitchen door: “Hold everything, hardboiled.”

The door to the washroom slammed behind Joslin. Before the union man could turn the key in the lock, Koski hurled his weight against the center panel, forced the door open. Ellen heard shoes scuffing on a tile floor, muttered oaths. Then Joslin came out with the Lieutenant behind him. The organizer’s red hair was mussed up. His leather jacket hiked up in front where Koski gripped it, in back.

“As you were.” The Harbor Squad man pushed Joslin into his chair. “I haven’t time to keep shagging after you. Squat and stay put. Unless you want to eat your next meal in cuffs.”

He drew up a third chair, sat down.

XXII

Ellen slipped the clipping into her coat pocket. “Aren’t you tired of following us around, Lieutenant?”

He tossed his hat toward a hook, ringed it. “Yair. I’m tired. Of getting the runaround from a couple of cubs who don’t seem to know from apples.”

Joslin drank some water. “We told you we didn’t know what it was all about.”

“You did. I want what you do know.” The waiter wandered in, observed Koski uneasily.

The man from the Harbor Precinct picked up the menu. “I might grab off a quickie, Bill. Crab sandwich, hot. Coffee, black. Vite!”

“Sure, boss.” The waiter shuffled away. Up front, the middle-aged man paid his check, departed.

Koski leaned back in his chair. The pain in his side hadn’t lessened. His headache had returned, with sound effects. “We had a tip young Ovett was going out on the Santa Pobrico.”

Joslin traced a pattern on the tablecloth with his fork; it looked to Koski like the silhouette of a submarine. He went on: “Coast Guard made a search at the pier just before the steamer sailed.”

Ellen folded and refolded an empty paper match container.

“Went over her from truck to keelson,” Koski moved back to let the waiter put a plate before him. “Tip was slightly cockeyed. Merrill Ovett wasn’t aboard.”

“I thought he was,” Joslin admitted. “He told me he might ship out on her.”

“Tim would have told you,” Ellen reached across the table, covered the organizer’s hand with her own, “except we were afraid—”

“—of the wrong thing, yair. You were afraid we’d catch him. You should have been afraid of the kind of guy who’d murder a man, cleave him into hunks and toss him in a tideway. Who’d shoot down a girl because she might have been a witness against him. Who’d batter a private op within an inch of his life because the dumb dope stuck his nose in the wrong place. Guy behind that sort of mayhem’s nobody to play ring-around-the-rosie with.”

“I didn’t know about those others.” Joslin stopped doodling.

The color drained out of Ellen’s face. “You haven’t anything to connect Merrill with... these crimes.”

“No? The girl came from a disorderly house three blocks from where his yacht was lying. The private investigator had trailed him over there.”

“Not like Merrill,” Joslin said, tightly. “He has a lousy temper. But he’d never shoot a woman.”

“That’s the sort of brutality you’d expect from a Nazi,” Ellen cried. “It would revolt Merrill as much as it does us.” She took out the clipping. “You can’t really believe a man who’d go through hell and high water like this,” she handed it to Koski, “would bludgeon anyone just because he was being followed.”

Koski scanned the clipping as he ate. “Queer.” He read on. “About this sub commander knowing he was on the Mercede.”

“Just a stab in the dark.” There was no conviction in Joslin’s tone.

“Think so? Mention it to you?”

“Yes. Said none of the others in his lifeboat knew who he was. So he kept quiet. But it kind of... worried him.”

“Yair.” The Lieutenant drank his coffee. “Lost a lot of weight in the lifeboat, didn’t he?”

“They all did.” Joslin chewed on his lower lip, scowling. “Merrill looked bad. That’s why I thought...”

Koski set his cup down with a clatter. “You been thinking about it long enough. I’ve been thinking the same thing.” He laid a bill on the table, stood up, reached for his hat. “You going to come across with that alias he used? Or do I get it the hard way—”

“M. Stanley,” Joslin said. “That’s what he told me.”

“His grandfather’s middle name,” Ellen nodded, solemnly. “I hope you’re wrong... about what you’ve been thinking.”

Koski motioned toward the door. “The coop’s outside. You better come along. Both of you.”

They made a silent procession out to the street; there was no conversation in the car on the way to the Basin.

A burly shape in oilskins and sou’wester was huddled over the Vigilant’s transom, tinkering with a loose exhaust pipe. The Sergeant waved a strip of asbestos packing:

“Come on in. The water’s fine. It’s dripping down my back faster than it can run out my shoes.”

“Pity the sailors on a night like this.”

“And pity a poor lug misfortunate enough to be doing repair work on a rust-pot like this when by all rights I should be conducting an intimate affair in a bood-war. Hello... passengers, no less?” He grinned a greeting to the girl, let the grin flatten against his teeth as he recognized Joslin. “If it isn’t the tough turkey. Come aboard, my fine-feathered friend and we will take up where we left off.”

Koski snapped: “Forgetsis, Sarge. Get your mind on the race. We’re rolling down to Rio.”

Mulcahey groaned. “The Gowanus, God forbid?”

“No. Caulk instead of talk. We’re overdue at the Pobrico.”

“In two shakes she will be as good as new. Almost.”

“Have her ready to r’ar, Joe. I’m going inside to get off a message.”

They foamed out into the bay. Joslin crouched on the transom seat at the stern, with an arm around Ellen. Spray burst over the foredeck, showered the cockpit. Koski tossed a tarpaulin back to the two huddled aft. “No law against bundling.” He joined Mulcahey in the pilot-house.

“Any word from the detention ward, Irish?”

“As good as could be expected, coach. Schlauff pulled through the operation. He is on the critical list and will not be able to appreciate the nurses for a couple of days at the very least.” The dark bulk of the Statue of Liberty loomed up on the starboard quarter.

“What about the stenographer?”

“He sticks at the bedside; he is in the operating room; goes into a dead faint when proceedings begin. They resuscitate him and pick up his notebook. But there is practically nothing in it because Schlauff did not utter a peel all the time he is in his deliriums. Except to mumble something which is beside the point.”

“Let’s have it.”

The Sergeant delved in his slicker pocket, pulled out a fragment of damp teletype newsprint. On it were erratic capitals:

M AYBE I HAVE TAKE A XX FEW D”RTY DOLLARS SBUT I WOUDINGT WORK WITXH THAT PA CK OF WOLVXES—

XXIII

“I have to take it on the typewriter,” Mulcahey apologized, “whilst the officer reads it to me over the telephone. Excuse it, please.” He squinted off to starboard where a deeper blotch of black to the southwest indicated Staten Island.

“How any periscope could be of use on a night like this, I fail to comprehend, skipper. I am doing well to keep off the Bay Ridge shore without the aid of a telescope.”

“You can spot the quarantine anchorage with your naked eye.” Koski leveled a finger a couple of points off the starboard bow. “But the pig-boats don’t depend on vision. Radio locators and sound detectors are their dish in dirty weather.”

“Speakin’ of which, I’m hoping we don’t have to go out past the lightship after your wolf. Them two cuddlers back there will be half drowned.”

Koski touched the aluminum pot over the alcohol flame. The coffee was hot enough; he poured steaming liquid into thick white cups. “First aid to the lovelorn.” He made his way back to the cockpit. “Mug up,” he called above the thunder of the exhaust. “If you’re not frozen stiff.”

Ellen said: “I need that” and “Thanks.”

Joslin muttered: “How about the net at the Narrows?”

“They’ll have it open for us.” Koski ducked a slap of spray that bobbled athwartship, moved forward as the loudspeaker began to croak.

“...St. George base calling Vigilant... come in, Vigilant...”

Mulcahey clicked the “talk” lever:

“Vigilant, here... go ahead, St. George...”

“Position one eight determined... Auxiliary at buoy fifteen main channel... acknowledge...”

Koski put his mouth to the transmitter. “Vigilant should reach buoy fifteen in about... say ten minutes...”

“Finished... Wynant... St. George...”

A lance of light from the shore threw sudden illumination on a red and white striped buoy a hundred yards ahead; was extinguished before the men in the Vigilant’s pilot-house could get more than a brief, photographic impression of the nettug inshore and the control vessel just beyond the net.

The Sergeant throttled down; nosed the patrol-boat past the ominous line of jagged spikes barely showing above the water. “I would sooner go on the rocks with a full gale behind me than try to run over that guard in one of them speed-boat hulls. ’T would rip the bottom out like it was cardboard.”

“The Japanazis can do enough damage offshore without coming in this close, Irish. Check off your channel markers, now.”

They got up to speed again, roared through the night. There was a chop in the lower bay; by the time they made out the gray hull of a converted yawl at Buoy Fifteen, the Vigilant was plunging and bucking in toppling waves.

The yawl slid down Ambrose Channel; the Sergeant cut his speed to remain astern. “I trust our first-cabin passengers do not suffer from the mal de mer, coach.”

“They’ll take some tougher things than a cross-sea before the night’s over.”

Against the tapering tower of the West Bank beacon, they made out a clipper-bowed hull. Koski shone his pocket flashlight on the police flag. The yawl turned back toward the Narrows; the Mohawk glided gracefully out toward sea, with the Vigilant astern.

It was a mile farther before Koski realized they were already catching up to the convoy. The Coast Guard cutter had angled out of the main ship channel. A spot of white ahead became the foam of a propeller wash; the sound of the police-boat’s exhaust echoed back from the high, iron wall of the tanker looming up beside them.

The Santa Pobrico was the second vessel they overtook; her wheel was turning over just enough to give her steerage-way.

The Mohawk disappeared to port behind the dark bulk of the freighter. Koski reached for the megaphone on the binocular shelf. “Give me all the leeway you can, Irish. I’ll be no monkey on a stick, with this rib the way it is.” He clambered up on the forward deck.

He didn’t need the megaphone. A rope ladder was already swaying down.

Mulcahey maneuvered as close as he dared. The patrol-boat lifted high on the crest of the ground-swell, its deck level with the bottom of the ladder. Koski sprang. The wave surged inshore. The Vigilant dropped away beneath him, down into the trough, left him dangling six feet out from the hull as the freighter rolled.

She came back. The Lieutenant thudded against the wet iron of the plate, wondered how much of a shock it took to set off a cargo of T.N.T. He began to climb. His side was an agony of torture before hands reached over the rail, hauled him up. Two men with gold braid on their caps steadied Koski at the ladder head.

“Piper, first officer,” one of them put out his hand.

“Koski, Lieutenant.” The man from the Harbor Precinct wiped his palms.

“Coast Guard says you have additional information about the man they searched for, this afternoon.”

“Just learned he signed on under the name of Stanley. M. Stanley. Let’s see your roster.”

Piper led him to the bridge; unlocked a drawer; produced a board with a typewritten sheet clipped to it. His finger ran down the list of names. “Here you are. Black gang. M. Stanley, oiler, second class.”

“On watch now?”

“All hands are on duty until we take departure from the lightship. Want to see him?”

“Yair.”

“Hope it doesn’t take long. Convoy escort can’t wait for laggards. Bad business to be left behind, where we’re going.”

“Might be worse to keep on. With this bird aboard.”

They want aft to the poop deck where the four-inch gun pointed threateningly from behind its concrete emplacement; down steep companionways, through a narrow hatch. Piper climbed down the iron ladder to the engine-room grating, waited while Koski descended.

An elderly man with grizzled hair was making some adjustment on the valves of the big reciprocating engine; he glanced up from the rhythmic slide of the crank arm, nodded.

“Stanley around?”

The man jerked his head over toward one shoulder. Koski turned. Bent over a circulating pump were muscular shoulders in a sleeveless undershirt. The man’s face was hidden, but on the left arm Koski saw a white patch of adhesive. He started for the oiler, was still ten feet away when the man pivoted around. Black eyes, set in a white face like raisins in a blob of dough, darted suspiciously from Piper to the Lieutenant; the oiler backed against an asbestos-covered pipe, picked up a wrench.

“Steady as she goes, Gjersten.” Koski halted.

The man looked quickly over his shoulder, as if he expected someone else to be there. “Who you talking to?”

“Drop the wrench!” Koski took out his gun.

“My name’s Stanley!”

“Save your breath! You’re Ansel Gjersten! Show’s over! Trip’s off! Didn’t end the way you expected, did it?”

Gjersten laughed, uncertainly. The wrench swung up at his side in what might have been a casual movement...

“Don’t start anything!” Koski warned. “You’ll go ashore feet first!”

The wrench came down swiftly, smashed against a valve fixture. Steam jetted out fiercely into the engine-room, hissing like a locomotive.

“Why don’t you shoot!” Gjersten flung himself to one side. “Shoot! Blow the damn ship out of the water, why don’t you!” The oiler fumbled at his belt. “I’ll do it for you—”

Koski gasped in air too hot to breathe, dropped to his knees, shielded his face with his arm. The engine-room clouded with vapor. Piper cried a warning, sprinted for a control valve.

Gjersten lay on one elbow, dragged an automatic from the waist-band of his pants. He took time to aim...

Koski dived, clubbing his service special. Flame spat in his face. A hot wire streaked across the side of his neck. He smashed at the black eyes with every ounce of strength he could put behind it, felt the bone of the man’s skull crack...

The roaring of the steam deafened him. For an instant he wasn’t sure whether the cargo had let go. Then the roaring blast from the steam pipe stopped hissing, became merely a hoarse, hot breath.

He rolled off Gjersten. The man was dead.

Piper came running back. Men poured down the iron ladder. There was a quarter hour of confusion, in the engine-room, on deck, in the executive cabin, — before Koski convinced the Pobrico’s command that he had a right to take the body ashore. It was another fifteen minutes until the Vigilant got underneath the swaying ladder again and let Koski step off to the foredeck.

“Hold her, Irish. Another one coming.”

“Holy Mother.” Mulcahey craned his neck up at the body being lowered in a sling. “You had to knock him out?”

“Permanently.” Koski slashed the hoist-rope.

A canvas sea-bag came down like a descending pendulum over the pilot-house; Mulcahey leaned out, grabbed it, hauled it in, line and all. “If anyone was to scoot up and ask me,” the Sergeant swung off toward the Narrows, “I would say a dead wolf is the best kind there is.”

“He won’t be biting, any more.” Koski dragged his burden aft. The police-boat lurched away from the freighter.

Joslin called: “Need any help?”

“Yair. Drag it down to the cockpit.”

“It was Gjersten,” Ellen cried. “That other... in the morgue... that’s Merrill.”

“Yair. Must be.”

“Means this skunk,” Joslin piled the tarpaulin over on top of the body, “murdered Merrill”

“To get his papers,” Mulcahey agreed.

“He got the papers, all right.” Koski wet his handkerchief in sea-water, laid it across his neck where the bullet had raised a welt. “But he didn’t kill Ovett. This,” he touched the corpse with his toe, “isn’t Bandage Face.”

XXIV

Aboard the Seavett, in Barbara’s cabin, Hurlihan made the sheet of paper rattle in his fingers. “Certainly I came all the way out here so you’d sign another proxy. That fat-headed cop took the other one; wouldn’t give it back.”

She leaned forward on the vanity bench, puckering up her lips, wiping a tiny smudge of carmine from one corner of her mouth with the tip of her little finger. She could see his reflection in the dressing-table mirror, but her eyes were attentive to her own features. “I’m frightfully sorry, Clem. But I’ve changed my mind about the proxy.”

He caught her shoulder roughly, pulled her around, half facing him. “It’s a little late in the day, for that.”

“Circumstances do alter cases, darling.”

“Only one kind that would change your point of view,” he said coarsely. “Who is it this time? Fross? I thought it was queer he was so insistent about coming to the yacht with me, tonight.”

“Don’t be absurd. You know Henry couldn’t have any appeal for me...” She exchanged lipstick for eyebrow pencil. “It’s just that with the police searching for Merrill, it might be better to see what turns up.”

The superintendent refolded the paper angrily, jammed it back in his pocket. “I don’t have to consult the oracles to guess your proxy’ll turn up at the special stockholders’ meeting, — in Hank’s name. But it’s my own damn fault. I knew better than to trust you.”

“Don’t be ugly, darling.” She let her hand rest lightly on his arm. “I’m not siding with anyone else. It’s just that Henry advised me sometime ago to be cautious until we know what’s going to happen to Merrill. Now, if the police should catch him, it might make all the difference in the world.”

He shook her hand off. “There’s always been the chance his ship would be torpedoed and he’d be drowned or burned to death. That never stopped you from going behind his back. If he were dead you wouldn’t be worried about a divorce and you could always hold up the Foundation by court action long enough to get some sort of settlement for yourself. That isn’t what bothers you now. You’re afraid to do anything Merrill might not like because then he might show up and let you take the blame he’s been shouldering on your account.”

“Why are you being nasty?” She was plaintive.

“Because you put me in a bad light with the police. That Lieutenant ran roughshod over me last night, as it was. I told him I spent the week-end on board because you were giving me the proxy. Now if I don’t vote it, he’ll want to know what happens. It’ll look queer. I tell you straight, Barbara, — if they try to pin anything on me, I’m not going to be the goat for you. Not in a homicide case.”

She laughed deep in her throat. “You know I didn’t murder Ansel.”

“Cardiff thinks you did. Your Filipino thought so, or he wouldn’t have quit you. Or maybe he beat it because he helped you dispose of the body.”

“Cle-e-e-em!!”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if you’d been fooling around with Ansel, — and that squarehead would have been a bad person to two-time. Not like some of the others...”

“It hurts me to have you feel that way, darling. But I can’t blame you too much...” she pulled open a dressing-table drawer, drew out a sheet of note paper with a scorpion embossed in gilt in one corner. It was covered with lavender scrawls. “It’s so easy to draw the wrong conclusion when you only have part of the facts. I made the same mistake when I only took Merrill’s particular planet into account—”

“Don’t start on that...”

“...when I should have considered the influence of all the planets, the sun, moon, — horizon and meridian—”

“Oh, for the Lord’s sake.”

The motors rumbled suddenly; the hull began to pulsate. “Cardiff’s getting ready to pull out, Barbara. I’m ducking—”

“Wait, Clem. I can show you. I know who committed the murder—”

Knuckles rapped at the door. Hurlihan. opened it.

Fross stood there, scowling. “Hurry up on deck. Rolf Berger just came aboard. With blood in his eye.”

Ting-tang! Ting-tang! Ting-tang! The ship’s clock chimed hurriedly as if it feared being late for an appointment.

On deck, Cardiff gave orders:

“Northeast by north. Nothing to port. That’ll be the bell off Execution Rock.”

“Tide’s sweeping us right along even at quarter-speed, Cap’n.”

“Ought to make the shoal about eleven-thirty, if we don’t pile up somewhere.”

“What they really mean by dead reckoning, yes, sir.”

Off Sands Point, off Rye Beach, off Great Captains Island, ships blew worried blasts on steam whistles; off Scotland Lightship at the mouth of the harbor, they whispered — held their breath...

In the Seavett’s saloon, the Executive Director stood straddle-legged in front of the fireplace. The cannel coal glowed cherry-red at his back but its cheerfulness was not reflected on the faces of Barbara or Clem Hurlihan or Henry Sutlee Fross.

“Lawford’s not going to die tonight.” Berger clasped his hands behind his back, thrust his chin forward truculently, “or I wouldn’t be here. But worry about Merrill has nearly done for him, this time. He collapsed; after I found him, and rushed him to the hospital, the doctors said it was a paralytic stroke, — and you know what that means. He won’t be able to take any active part in the business from now on. He knows it. He dictated a memorandum giving me power of attorney and managed to sign it with the last of his strength. I didn’t want it. I don’t want it now. Merrill ought to take charge, now. But the boy isn’t here. And so Lawford asked me to do one tiling for him.” He glanced at his brief case, lying against the bulkhead.

“We’re well aware,” Fross crossed one leg over the other, inspected the snugness of his sock, “of your influence over Mister Ovett in matters of business.”

“You are.” Berger let his voice drop on the verb. “Well, what he asked me to do isn’t a matter of business.” He glared icily at the three of them in turn. “Lawford asks me to act in loco parentis. To look after Merrill. I gave him my word and by the Lord I mean to do it. I’ll take his father’s place in shielding him from the consequences of his own hotheadedness... or the cold-bloodedness of others.”

Hurlihan wriggled his shoulders in discomfort. “I never believed he killed Gjersten. Maybe he knows who did and had his own reason for shielding that person. But I’m for Merrill. Always have been.”

“Pah!” Berger hawked, turned and spat into the coals. “You’re for yourself. And always have been. You and Fross saw that Merrill’d absorbed a lot of half-baked idealism about the obligations of inheritance, — a man should never spend any money he hasn’t earned himself, — that sort of slush. You knew he was friendly with this professional radical. So you made a deal with Joslin. Got him to use his influence with Merrill, induced him to assign his stock to this so-called Foundation. So you, in turn, could control the company through Joslin. Then all you’d have to do was find a way to bring pressure on Merrill.”

Barbara pouted, prettily. “You’re not being quite fair, Mister Berger.”

The Executive Director gestured brusquely. “I don’t intend to be fair. None of you would win any prizes for square dealing; the only way I know how to light fire is with fire. Merrill’s in trouble. I may not be able to save him from that. But I’m not going to stand around and watch you deceive him and trick him and hoodwink him when he can’t protect himself. When he gets back or when he can defend himself, I’ll step out. Until then, you’re out.”

“What the hell!” Hurlihan jumped up.

Fross took off his pince-nez quickly. “I don’t quite understand.”

“You understand, all right. Until Merrill can get his hand on the helm, I’m running the Line. You are no longer our legal counsel, Mister Fross. You are no longer our superintendent, Gem Hurlihan. And you,” he bowed stiffly to Barbara, “remain aboard this yacht only as long as you remain a decent wife.”

“Mister Berger!”

“Merrill may not approve of my actions,” Berger added. “For that reason alone, you two,” he scowled fiercely at Fross and Hurlihan, “will continue to draw your salaries until he decides what to do about you. In the meantime,” he punctuated his statement with bobbing head, “I’m going to have a superintendent who won’t connive behind Merrill’s back. And a lawyer who’ll spend less time trying to put something over on the Line, its president or his son, — and more time to defending Merrill against this charge of murder, — or to finding out who did commit the crime.” He clutched the lapels of this coat, shook them once to indicate he had said his say. “If that’s going to mean trouble for any of you, you’ve had fair warning!”

XXV

The mist had shut down again, a thick gauze that screened everything more than fifty feet from the pilot-house windows.

“The line the yacht’s patrolling runs from Stratford Light over to the reef, Sarge. We ought to be able to hit her.”

“We’ll be lucky if we hit nothing else in this murk. Why they call it pea-soup fog I do not know. Pea soup is at least warm!” Mulcahey stuck his head out of the port window to peer anxiously in search of the buoy off Execution Rock. “Are you positive we’re after the genuine culprit, now? I would hate to be looking for the wrong needle in a haystack as big as Long Island Sound.”

“Yair.” Koski glanced back at Ellen and Joslin, leaning against the cockpit gunwale. “I feel bad about smashing Gjersten’s skull, though.”

“For why, the scut?”

“He’d have pointed the finger at his partner, before the FBI boys got through with him. But maybe, — ” he felt gingerly of his neck, “maybe he could do that just as well, the way he is...”

The Vigilant hit something. The shock jarred both men off their feet; — the patrol-boat shuddered and plunged on into the circling haze. They looked aft but could see nothing.

Mulcahey wiped his forehead. “One more like that and I will be ready to draw my pension.”

“Didn’t you ever hear about Farragut, Irish? Damn the driftwood...”

“I am giving her as near full speed as I can without having heart failure. It strikes me a funeral pace would be more appropriate, anyhow.” The Sergeant groaned as a trawler materialized out of the fog, rushed past with a swirling wake. “I do not see why it could not have been this Gjersten who did the dirty job on young Ovett.”

“The colored housekeeper at Dommy’s saw two men in Room Five, Joe. One was Gjersten. Other was our friend with a bandage around his chops. It couldn’t have been young Ovett. He was dead then. Bandage Face was seen the next morning in the South Street dock.”

“True for you, Steve. He was.”

“Then Dommy’s housekeeper heard Bandage Face singing while he was sawing up Merrill’s body. The clerk at the drugstore saw him buy the suitcase. On the other hand, Ansel wasn’t at the Bar-Nothing the night of the murder, because Claire Purdo was looking for him and couldn’t find him, according to Schlauff. She might have gone up to Five looking for Ansel, heard Bandage Face singing, knocked on the door.”

“But if this Man-in-the-White-Mask had popped his head out to see who it was, he probably wouldn’t have had the bandage on at the time, skipper.”

“Maybe not, Irish. If he didn’t, that may have been a reason why he sent Ansel to rub her out. Or it could have been Ansel killed her on his own account.”

A horn blew with terrifying closeness; the sound seemed to come from every point of the compass at once. Mulcahey threw out the clutch. The Vigilant rocked violently on the afterwash of some unseen vessel. “I would sooner be piloting a plane blindfolded, so help me.” He got the boat under way again. “How did they identify young Ovett, now?”

“Collar bone broken in two places. He had it broken by a boom that jibed over on a sloop, few summers ago. Then the Wyatt girl had the measurements that wouldn’t be affected by loss of weight, — length of leg, size of foot, — the works.”

“A sin and a shame they had to see him like that. But this yacht captain, now. He was supposed to have seen young Ovett jump off the yacht.”

“He saw Gjersten, in Merrill’s suit.”

“They were not the same size, were they, skipper? The suit would have fitted this Gjersten a trifle late?”

“Yair. But it fitted Merrill the same way, he’d lost so much weight.”

“No one can blame you for misjudgment, there,” Mulcahey sighed, dismally. “They’re takin’ it chin up, aren’t they?”

“You sort of get hardened to the possibility of a guy’s demising when he’s in the merchant marine. It always was a possibility, but now—”

Mulcahey swerved the patrol-boat toward a bell moaning in its sleep; a red can-buoy bobbed its cylindrical body up and down in a tide-race; told him he was on the course.

“I cannot figure it, at all. The man could not have sent that Sinbad telegram, bein’ dead an’ lyin’ in the morgue.”

“Wasn’t any difficulty for the murderer, Sarge. Young Ovett probably had a letter from her,” he nodded his head toward the cockpit, “in his pocket. Addressed to ‘dearest Sinbad.’ It likely said something about looking forward to seeing him when he got to town. All the killer had to know was that the Ellen who signed it was Ellen Wyatt and where she lived.”

“It threw us well off the track, for a while.”

“Sure. It sounded on the level because it was worded so whacky. Just the sort of wire young Ovett might send. But hell. I should have reasoned the killer would know the sort of expressions Ovett used, anyway. And that the boy’d been expecting to go through with a convoy.”

“Why would the dirty murderer have mentioned the lad’s intending to call on her the next day?”

“To give Gjersten time to escape on the Pobrico. He’d probably have dived overboard somewhere off Ambrose, swum to one of the bell buoys. He could have signaled the sub with one of those Coston flares we found in his sea-bag, been picked up by the pig-boat.”

“That’s the way he’d have tipped them off to the convoy’s position. And another good ship gone wrong!”

“Maybe more than one.”

“There is no doubt whatever about this identification of Gjersten?”

“Not any, Joe. We pulled the tape off his arm. There’s tattooing under it. That four-bladed propeller Cardiff described. There probably was a swastika covered up by that propeller. The four blades would just about blot out one of those hooked crosses. And the numbers that Nazi naval ratings so often have tattooed on them for identification.”

Mulcahey looked hard at him. “If ever I am inclined to homicide, I would pick another man to be after me. That’s the truth. Submarines hunting in packs? Was that what Schlauff meant by wolves?”

“Part of it. Not all of it. The rest of it’s aboard the Seavett. That might be her; — that little loom, couple points to the north. Let her out to the last gap, Irish. We want to finish fast.”

XXVI

“Yair.” Koski leaned against the jamb of the door to the saloon to ease his rib. “The man who got hacked up was Merrill.”

“You must be mistaken!” Barbara’s mouth was pulled down desolately at the corners; her eyes were feverishly brilliant.

“We were mistaken. Long enough.” Koski looked them over: — Berger belligerent before the fireplace, Hurlihan slumping dejectedly in one of the red leather chairs. Fross sitting bolt upright in the other, adjusting his pince-nez. At one end of the transom seat, Barbara with her legs curled under her; at the other, Ellen and Joslin sitting stiffly side by side. “Plenty of reasons for making that kind of mistake...

“Captain Cardiff reported Gjersten as missing. You told me nobody would see Gjersten again, Mrs. Ovett. That Filipino we’ve got down in the Tombs referred to Ansel as dead. Place where the body was dismembered was the sort of dive Gjersten would be likely to visit. He did go there. He was seen. He didn’t take his clothes with him off the yacht. He didn’t draw the pay due him. He was heard arguing with young Ovett. Nobody heard him at all after that. Nobody reported seeing him after this yacht took you over to the Wall Street landing, Hurlihan. All circumstantial, sure. But it sidetracked us. It was calculated to throw us off the track, part of it.”

Hurlihan scrunched lower in his chair; his black curls were matted with sweat. “You told me yourself the body... what you had found of it... corresponded to Gjersten’s description.”

“It did. And it didn’t check with Merrill’s losing so much weight in that lifeboat. He’d lost about forty pounds. Threw our Identification Bureau off on their comparative height tables, too. We had pretty accurate measurements of Merrill.” He didn’t glance at Ellen. “Sections of the body that came out of the water didn’t slow any close comparison to those measurements. They were pretty close to what we knew about Gjersten.”

“The dead man might not be Ansel.” Barbara hung her head in what was intended to be a woe-begone manner. “But you’re just making another mistake if you claim it’s Merrill. Because Merrill wasn’t in Brooklyn. -He jumped off the yacht at Wall Street. Captain Cardiff saw him.”

Koski shook his head with a minimum of movement. “Cardiff made that error. Unassisted. He thought he saw Merrill. But he didn’t get a real look at him. Didn’t notice him until the Seavett was five or six feet out from the float. All he saw then was a man in a blue serge suit, sprawling on the float after jumping. It was night. It was foggy. And the suit was Merrill’s. But the man inside it must have been Ansel Gjersten.”

“It isn’t plausible,” Barbara insisted. “Nobody saw Ansel on board after we left Rodd’s Yard.”

“Nobody would have seen him, Mrs. Ovett. If he’d been in Merrill’s stateroom, changing into Merrill’s clothes.”

“Right after Clem left at Wall Street, Merrill jumped ashore.” Barbara sighed with impatience. “Otherwise, he’d have been aboard next morning.”

Koski said: “He left while you were still at the dock in Brooklyn. Right after Gjersten came back to the yacht. Chances are Gjersten gave him some decoy message to get him to go to this disreputable house. Gjersten might have told him some pal of his was in trouble there. Probably this union lad, here. The murder room was taken in Joslin’s name. It would have had to be some frameup like that to get Merrill into that Red Hook rat-hole. One thing sure, he wasn’t aboard this tub; he wasn’t seen aboard it after you left Rodd’s. You told me he was sulking in his tent, Mrs. Ovett. You were way off. He probably thought he was rushing to rescue a friend.”

Berger cleared his throat, gruffly. “I can’t contradict you on what happened here on the boat or in Brooklyn. What sets wrong in my craw is that Merrill was alive this morning. His father talked to him on the phone.”

“Thought he did.” Koski nodded. “Be natural to expect a man to recognize his son’s voice. But there were what the parole people call mitigating circumstances.”

“Lawford didn’t mention any to me, sir.”

“First place, the old man is half deaf.”

“Not so deaf anyone could fool him, pretending to be Merrill.”

“Yair. When you take second place into account. Second place was, he’d had a shot of dope the night before. It hadn’t worn off by the time he got to your office, — an hour or so after the call.”

“That’s so.” Berger stared at Clem. “That is so.”

“Then you told me Mister Ovett thought the call came from a saloon. Only way he’d have known that would have been because of the racket. Good place for Gjersten to talk from if he was pretending to be Merrill. Another reason for being sure the call was phony, — the guy at the other end of the line didn’t talk long. Not long enough to arouse the old man’s suspicions. Damn queer way to talk to your own father when you’d just been rescued. After twelve days in a lifeboat. Merrill would have had more than that to say. Joslin told me Merrill tried to phone his father Sunday afternoon. Not just to say three sentences.” He shifted his position; the pain in his side was suddenly sharper. “Idea was the same as a wire he was supposed to have sent. Make everybody look for Merrill, — instead of Gjersten.”

Clem chewed on his lower lip, dubiously. “I had a different idea about the murder, but say you’re right. It still doesn’t prove Ansel was the murderer.” He leaned back to keep Barbara within his range of vision. “It might have been someone else, — who paid Ansel to do away with the... uh... remains, to make that phone call. Somebody who hoped, with Merrill out of the way—”

“—to get control of the Line,” Berger broke in sharply. “Yes... indeed!”

“No.” Koski’s voice was dull with fatigue. “Nothing to do with all this security hocus-pocus. If the idea’d been to get hold of Merrill’s shares, or his estate, or his inheritance, — the body wouldn’t have been cut up to conceal its identity. Other way ’round. Body would have to be identified before there’d be any sense to the crime. Purpose of the mutilation was to hide the dead man’s identity long enough to let Gjersten get out of the country. Aboard the Santa Pobrico. Killer might have stood to profit by Merrill’s death. But not by having it known.”

“There is a discrepancy.” Foss smoothed his mustache. “You say Gjersten sailed on the Pobrico?”

“As an oiler, yair.”

“Then it couldn’t have been Gjersten who assaulted Morrie Schlauff. Because the officers who came around to my office sometime after... after you left... I presume they were acting on your instructions?—”

“Go on. Presume.”

“—told me Morrie must have been attacked at just about the time the Pobrico was pulling away from her pier.”

“Yair.”

Koski waited until the Penfield Reef siren ceased its periodic groan. “Gjersten didn’t slug Schlauff. Schlauff was after information about Merrill. Doped it out that it ought to be worth something to know the whereabouts of a rich man’s son, accused of murder. Had no idea what he was going up against. Accidentally went right to the head man behind this business. He asked the wrong question, guessed the right answer. So maybe the key man tried to buy him off. Maybe he just decided to knock him off. Gjersten wasn’t mixed up in that.”

Barbara asked: “Why are you hunting for him, then? Why don’t you go after this... this head man you talk about?”

“Oh, Gjersten was a killer.” Koski felt the Seavett heel to starboard, knew the yacht must be turning on the inshore leg of the patrol. “He was in on Merrill’s murder. Worked with the boss-guy. Helped put over the message about Joslin. They knew Merrill was a friend of Joslin. Would probably have gone to his aid if word came this union lad was in dutch. So Gjersten let the other man use his room at the dive. But he was probably afraid he’d be identified by the girl he’d taken to the same room in the afternoon. So today, when he learned from the papers the body had been discovered, he must have found where she lived, got in her room up the fire-escape, shot her when she came in. Gjersten was deadly, but he didn’t have the knowledge to do the big job the head man was doing.”

“Knowledge?” Fross took off his glasses, put them on again, and coughed delicately.

“Special kind of information. Information that would be useful to enemy subs off our coast.”

The quietness of the saloon was deepened by the dismal bellow of the siren on the reef. Koski went on:

“Man would have to know about ships. Ship sailings. Ship routes. Might know more about Ovett ships than any others. Have to be familiar with radio. Shortwave. Sending and receiving. Either have one himself or have access to it.” Koski wasn’t watching Barbara, but he could hear her breathing, — like a runner at the finish of a sprint. “He’d have to be able to dress like a seaman. Act like one. Know his way around the waterfront, or how to find his way around without being noticed. He was smart enough to tie a bandage around his chin. So everyone noticed the bandage. Nobody noticed him.”

Ellen stood up, rigidly. “He doesn’t have a swastika mark on his arm, like Gjersten. He has it branded into his heart.”

Joslin came up off the seat, too. “He’s worse than a Nazi. Because he doesn’t wear the lousy label where it can be seen. He’s the dirtiest dog on earth. A Quisling.”

They both looked at Berger.

XXVII

Berger squinted at her, gaped at her as if she were demented. His apple-red cheeks purpled. Veins traced dark threads on his forehead.

“Me!” he bellowed, — raised his arm to strike Joslin.

Koski stepped in, swiftly, got between them.

He was too close to use punches. There was only room for quick jabs, keeping Berger off balance.

“Yair! You!—”

A push.

“You answer the requirements—”

A shove, crowding Berger’s legs against the transom seat.

“—you found Merrill’s union cards on him. After you killed him—”

A prod in the stomach.

“—that gave you the idea of getting Ansel out of the country by switching identities—”

Another push.

“—you had a short-wave in your office. Or close to it—”

A blow, ramming Berger back on the padded seat.

“—I saw the glass insulator spools outside your window-sill this morning. And that office of yours has practically an airplane view of ships leaving the harbor.”

A hoarse groan from the Seavett’s fog horn made the saloon hideous with vibration. Joslin wrestled Fross into a corner on the chance he might interfere. Barbara tugged excitedly at Hurlihan: “Taurus! The bull! If I’d only been certain about Ansel’s birth hour... I’d never have made such a mistake, Clem!”

The Executive Director struggled to stand up. “Before you... get yourself... in any deeper, Lieutenant... better consider... who you’re... defaming.”

“I know who I’m talking to. Same guy Schlauff talked to. He catch you at the earphones when he walked into your office without knocking, tonight?—

He toppled the spy back against the cushions.

“—you slug him from behind?—

A straightarm to the chest.

“—after you went down in the elevator with him?—

An open hand wallop on the shoulder.

“—maybe you thought he was dead. After you cracked his skull!”

Berger held up his elbows to ward off Koski’s attack.

The Harbor Squad man cuffed him hard on the head. “Schlauff wasn’t dead. But he couldn’t have gotten up and walked. Not further than across Battery Park from the lobby of your office building to the Pier—

He hooked rapid-fire lefts to the side of the spy’s jaw; short, stinging blows that didn’t travel more than a few inches.

“—not with a fracture like that. This morning, in your office, I thought how nice it was for you to be right close at hand. In case we wanted you. We want you now.”

“Give me... chance to... disprove your... filthy lies.” Berger raged in cold fury.

“You’ll have your chance. Way we do things over here. You’d get a quick curtain if you’d pulled this in Himmlerland. Here you’ll have time to polish up that nonexistent alibi—”

The maniac howl of the siren on Penfield Reef punctuated Koski’s scorn.

“Who’s your Shipowners’ Council — other than you and Lawford Ovett? Only person who could prove you weren’t in Brooklyn Sunday afternoon is an old man who’s in the hospital now. You made a hell of a fuss about my not annoying this lifelong friend of yours, but still you didn’t mind roaring at me like a mad bull there in his bedroom last night. Gave me to cogitate at the time, that did... Now, the old boy’s in such shape he won’t be able to be a witness against you.” Koski held him by the throat.

“Witnesses!” Berger choked. “You talk... of witnesses... when you... have none...”

“Yair, yair. We got a few. Clerk at the drugstore where you bought the suitcase. Youngster at the pier where you dumped the suitcase in the river. Colored maid at the Bar-Nothing. And Ansel. You won’t be glad to know it — but we’ve got little Ansel.”

“Don’t even... know Gjersten... to speak to!”

“You spoke to him. On the phone at Rodd’s. Told him Merrill suspected how the sub commander knew ‘Captain Ovett’ was aboard the Mercede. Merrill probably came direct to you. Or phoned you at your club soon’s he hit town. You saw the fat was in the fire. You had to put him out of the way. Or your slimy game was up—

He shook the spy until the white hair flopped down over his eyes.

“You figured out how to decoy Merrill to Dommy’s place. You got over there, waited for him... and I don’t have to figure out how you spent your time that night!”

Berger screeched: “Fross! Hurlihan! Take him... off me... Take—”

Joslin snatched up the poker from the set by the grate. “Who wants it first! You’ll get it, if you cut in!”

None of the others moved.

Koski flattened his lips against his teeth. “You’re the sort of scum who always wants someone else to do your dirty work. Can’t stand to be told what you have to do. Not even by your own government. In wartime. Don’t mind bullying your hired hands. But have apoplexy when they tell you what they consider fair treatment. Want a country run your way or to hell with it. Well...” he put his face close to Berger’s. “You’re not going to run it your way. You’re not going to send it to hell. Not with all the brown-shirted, black-hearted bums behind you...”

Berger struggled desperately: “You’ve no proof! But I have. You can’t prevent me... common decency... my brief case.” He lunged in a frenzy toward the brief case he had set against the bulkhead.

Koski struck him in the face. The Executive Director fell back on the seat.

The Lieutenant picked up the brief case. “Don’t care for the tilings you do with luggage. What’s in this you want so bad?” He unbuckled the leather strap.

“Letter,” Berger spat out savagely. “From the... Navy Department. Read it... Then you’ll understand—”

The detective snapped the catch, opened the case.

Poong!!

There was a flash like a thousand photobulbs at once. A burst of dense smoke. No detonation. No concussion. But an instananeous sensation of terrific heat — numbing in its fierce intensity. It galvanized Koski into reflex action. He flung the case toward the companionway. A dazzling streak of molten metal like the tip of an acetylene torch showed through the trailing fumes.

The streak of incandescence flowed through the engine-room bulkhead as if it had been paper, left a blazing gap in the paneled pine. Through the aperture, for a split second, vivid blue sheeted out.

There was no time for anything except a frantic groping up the companion way to the deck-house. Berger got to the steps first, tore up on deck. Barbara got in Koski’s way long enough to balk him; then the Harbor Squad man waited until the others had all gone ahead of him.

On deck, the whistle went into frenzy with Cardiff hanging to the cord. The Vigilant came thundering up on the starboard quarter. Flame breathed up the companionway. Something said, “Huff” in a tremendous voice that seemed to ring in Koski’s ears for ten endless seconds. The transom and after deck of the yacht opened up like a wet cardboard box.

While he herded the others over into the Vigilant’s cockpit, Koski scanned the water. He could hear Berger swimming. In the fog there was no possibility of seeing him.

“Come on, Steve!” Mulcahey yelled. “I got them all aboard here. Except the one that jumped. Come on!”

“Hold it, Irish.”

The yacht’s deck tilted sharply to port. The bow canted up. A long tongue of orange leaked out over the water. The fog was suddenly luminous — white steam in the brilliant glare of a giant headlight. There was a curious rushing sound in the air. For a hundred feet around the burning yacht, the sea blossomed out in a quivering carpet of orange and yellow. The gas from the tanks had spread.

Twenty yards astern of the sinking Seavett a white spot rose above the surface. A hand shot up into the air, clutched flame.

Berger screeched once, went under.

The hand showed again for an instant. The head didn’t.

Koski pointed. “Jam her full reverse, Joe! Watch it! Don’t slash us with the wheel. I’m going for him!”

He jumped in, feet first, the way a waterman does when debris floats on the surface.

XXVIII

“What was it, Steve?”

“Thermite. Stuff they use for incendiaries. Had it fixed to go off when the brief case was opened.” Koski glanced at the soggy heap beside the Vigilant’s engine housing. “There was no bandage around Rolf Berger’s face now, but there would be one as soon as the police-boat could reach the Coast Guard control boat. The white hair was burned off one side of the man’s head, his coat had been ripped by the boathook when Mulcahey dragged him up over the gunwale.

“I am cruising along beside the yacht wondering if all goes according to plan,” Mulcahey peered off toward the violet haze where the water still blazed, “and I see this flash about twice as bright as the loom of Greens Ledge light. Then boom and you all come shooting out on deck like in one of them old shifting pictures in which everything is speeded up double.”

“It happened like that, Irish.” Koski pressed his lips together and caught his breath at the jagged agony in his side. “One second there we are, building brother Berger up to a terrific letdown. Next second, where are we!” He squdged water out of his shoes.

“Four hundred gallons of super-test, so the Cap’n says. Went up in one minute. And down in five. She sank while I was draggin’ you both aboard.”

“Lucky you were there to hold my hand...”

“Not bad for a foggy night, coach.” Mulcahey cut the motor switch, stuck his head out into the fog, listening for the howl of the Penfield siren. When he heard it he held his hand over the compass card, pointing toward the reef. He started the motor, swung the Vigilant on a course directly opposite. “Personally, I will feel better when this reptile is out from underfoot.”

“I thought you were going to say underground.”

“Okay. I say it. At that he reminds me of the only other guy I ever knew who would rather work for Hitler than his own country.”

“I heard that one. Gravedigger up at the cemetery, hah?”

“So you know all the answers. Be so kindly as to tell me some.”

“Hell of a lot of them I don’t know.”

“What I have been attempting to elucidate on my own with no success is, how did the short-wave crystal happen to get in that suitcase with the mangled remains?”

“That comes under what the defense attorney will call the realm of pure conjecture, Joe. You want my conjecture?”

“So who has a better one?”

“Oke. Mine is, when Merrill got to Room Five, he expected to meet Joslin. Guy he did meet was Ratzi here. Probably was a set-to. At a guess, on or near the bed. Say the crystal was in Berger’s pocket. It fell out during the fracas. He didn’t notice it. Later, when he needed the sheet for a little shroud-work, he probably crumpled it up without noticing the crystal, jammed it over the body in the suitcase.”

“There seems to be a slight loophole, Steven.”

“Such as—”

“If the crystal was Berger’s, how could Ansel have been using the short-wave set on the yacht, tell me that?”

“Sure. They’d both have crystals. So they could plug ’em in or pull ’em out of the set in Berger’s office or on the Seavett as opportunity might knock. Be too dangerous for them to always send from the same place.”

“I vote guilty on the first ballot. Only one other query. Why did Berger dump part of the remains into the Gowanus and lug the torso clear over to the East River?”

“Wanted to keep us from dredging up the whole of it — if any part should come to the surface. Less we’d find, harder it would be to identify. He got away with that. The part that would have helped us we haven’t found. Might not.” He sneaked a brief glance sternward at Joslin, apart from the others, holding Ellen in his arms. “I hope we never do.”

“What interests me more is, will we be finding any more of Berger’s partners in treachery?”

“Consult the star-student back there. I can’t read the lines in Berger’s palm. Be up to the feds, from here in, anyway. And Navy Intelligence. They’ll likely find out Gjersten was only one of the hands on the Nazi payroll. A pipe-line like this,” he touched Berger with his shoe, “generally has other outlets.”

“How did you persuade the bird to sing? I told him we had Ansel. But I guess I forgot to mention Gjersten was cold meat.”

“You forgot! Yeah! You remembered to save him from burning to death, though.”

Koski saw the violet glow pale down to a thin gauzelike haze, die out. The fog shut down; the police-boat moved slowly on through a film of mist.

“I won’t do that a second time, Irish. You can call your odds on that. Next time there’s any burning he’s on his own.”

Content

Stewart Sterling
Down Among the Dead Men

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