Silent Are the Dead (7 page)

“Get on the phone,” he said. “Get a doctor up here.”

And even as he spoke he knew that this thing that had happened to Finell was tied up with him—with his stolen plate case, and jimmied desk, and the picture he had kept because he thought he was being so smart.

Chapter Seven:
A
COUPLE OF HOODS

T
HEY WATCHED THE DOCTOR
examine Finell—Casey and Wade and Blaine and the two ambulance men who stood in the doorway. Wade was hunched over in a chair, his elbows on his knees, his round face still pale and miserable. Blaine paced the floor in tight little circles, his hands behind his back and his thin, angular features tight and hard. Casey stood over the doctor, legs spread, fists thrust deep in his coat pocket. No one said anything; no one had said anything in the past three or four minutes.

“I think he'll be all right, but we never know about head injuries until we get some X-rays. Probably only a concussion—you say he had his hat on and that may have saved him from a fracture—but I can't be sure.”

“How long will he be our?” Casey said.

“I can't tell that either. Five minutes, five hours, a day.” He shrugged and put on his coat, nodding to the ambulance men who came forward and lifted Finell gently to the stretcher.

“We'll go with him,” Casey said. He looked at Wade. “You take my car and I'll go along in the ambulance.”

He started for his coat and Blaine took his arm. “Why would anyone slug him?”

Casey looked down into the narrowed gray eyes. “He must have walked in on somebody who didn't belong here.”

Blaine watched the stretcher being carried out. He told the doctor to see that Finell had the best of every-thing, but he still held to Casey's arm. “Let Wade ride the ambulance,” he said. “You can go along in a few minutes.”

Casey thought it over and nodded to Wade. “Okay. Take his coat with you. I'll be out.”

Blaine waited until they were alone. “What would anybody want to slug him for?” he asked again.

Casey thought he knew but he couldn't tell Blaine the whole story and there was another possibility. He asked about it. “What was his assignment? When did he leave here?”

“I called him about ten-forty. A fire in the South End.”

Casey went to Finell's plate case—they had found it in the printing-room—and opened it. There were two film holders exposed, indicating Finell had taken four pictures. That they were here proved that Casey's alter native was wrong; Finell had not been slugged because of them.

“Somebody broke into my desk tonight,” he said, and showed Blaine the damaged lock. “I think Finell walked in on the guy—or guys—that did it. Somebody put the slug on him and dragged him into the other room.”

“What was in your desk?”

“Lots of things.”

“You know what I mean.”

Casey was in no mood to argue, nor did he feel he could tell the truth about the picture of Lyda Hoyt, even to Blaine. He could not help feeling that he was indirectly responsible for what happened to Finell, and this thought served only to heighten his resentment.

“Somebody swiped my plate case tonight,” he said and went on to explain what had happened, how he had found the case here when he came back for the second time.

“What pictures were in the case?” Blaine asked.

“The ones I took at Endicott's,”

“And what else?”

Casey stifled an angry outburst and deliberately waited until he could speak reasonably. “If I knew all the answers I wouldn't be horsing around here arguing with you,” he said finally.

“You didn't tell me about the plate case before.”

“Because you're the guy who hates alibis. You want pictures from me.”

“And so far I haven't got any.”

“You will,” Casey said. “When Austin shows up.”

Blaine stepped back. He wasn't satisfied, not by a long way was he satisfied. His mouth was thin and sardonic and his gray eyes were speculative and intent.

“All right,” he said, and picked up Finell's film holder. “Develop those for me before you go, will you?”

When Casey had sent Finell's prints up to Blaine he came back to the studio and for the first time in an hour or more began to think about Perry Austin and that film holder he was apparently carrying around with him. Where the hell was he? And why hadn't he left the film holder here as he was told?

There was no answer to these questions, but thinking of them raised another. Could there be any connection between the theft of the plate case and that picture he had taken of the man he had followed from Endicott's apartment? In any case the thing to do was find Austin and see what was on the film.

He looked at his watch. It was too late to go down to the Club Berkely; the place would be closed. Nevertheless he picked up the telephone and asked the operator to get the number. Someone might be there. Someone was.

“Yes?” An accented voice came to him. “Dominic speaking.”

Casey identified himself. “Is Bernie Dixon there?” No, Bernie Dixon had just left. “Well, look. You know Perry Austin, don't you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What time did he leave?”

Dominic didn't know. Yes, he remembered seeing Mr. Austin earlier in the evening but there had been a big crowd and he had been very busy and—

“Yes, sure,” Casey said. “Okay, Dominic.” He hung up, scowled at the instrument, glanced at his wrist watch again. That was the hell of this town. The bars closed down too early and you never knew where to look for anyone at this hour except home. Still, there was one place that might be open at this hour—and it was the kind of place that Dixon patronized.

He picked up the telephone again and called Dixon's apartment. When the houseboy finally answered and said Dixon had not returned, Casey called the hospital. After some delay he got Wade.

“How is he?”

“Pretty good, so they tell me.”

“Conscious?”

“No. But no fracture. His condition's good and they say he's going to be okay.”

“Swell,” Casey said. “When he comes around maybe he can tell us who slugged him. Stick around awhile, will you?”

“But I thought you—”

“I was, but I can't,” Casey said. “I got to look for Perry Austin. I'll call you back.”

The Avenue was deserted now and the traffic lights along its tree-lined length had been turned off. There was a block or so of sedate and modern apartments, an occasional one thereafter, but for the most part there were only ancient houses of brick and stone that looked stiff and unpromising in the shadows. Some were empty, some had the windows boarded up or shuttered, almost all were dark.

The house Casey sought was in the middle of the block but the management preferred to have its patrons leave their cars distributed over a wide area rather than have them bunched near the entrance, so Casey pulled the convertible to a stop, just beyond the intersection and walked the rest of the way.

He stepped into a small entryway and at the same time the door at the opposite end opened and shut and a trim, smooth-faced youth was there to meet him.

“Your card, please?”

“I lost it,” Casey said, unbuttoning his coat.

The youth's eyes flickered and the lids came down. He had an olive skin and patent-leather hair and a bulge under the left arm of his dinner jacket.

“Sorry.” He leaned back against the door. “You have to have a card, mister.”

“Ring Nick.”

The fellow shook his head and his lips moved in what might have been a smile. Casey moved up a step and grinned and reached for the push button in the wall. The fellow made a grab for his arm and Casey swiveled and pinned him against the door and pressed the button.

He stepped back, still grinning. The youth had his hand behind him now and his hair was mussed. His eyes had sparks in them.

“If you got a sap in that pocket you'd better leave it there,” Casey said, and then a square metal peephole slid back and a hooked nose and close-set eyes looked out.

“Okay,” a voice said and the door opened.

Casey went in. Another man in a dinner jacket was waiting, an older fellow with a bony face and bags under his eyes.

“He hasn't got a card,” the youth said.

“Hello, Nick.” Casey shrugged out of his coat, handed it and his hat to the statuesque blonde that was coming toward him from the room opposite the stairs.

“Why don't you carry your card?” Nick said.

“I never had one,” Casey said. “What's the beef? You know me.”

“Tony doesn't.” Nick looked at the hard-eyed youth.

“Tony does now,” Casey said. “Don't you, Tony?”

The youth cursed him with his lips, making no sound. Nick walked with Casey to the stairs.

“Feeling lucky tonight?”

“No,” said Casey. “Thirsty.”

He glanced into the deserted living-room with the floor lamp for a decoy, climbed silently on the stair carpet. A squarish, softly lighted room opened off the second-floor landing and Casey went into a luxuriously furnished lounge with a bar at one side and a lot of mirrors and oversized prints scattered about. There were two men at the bar; three women and two other men standing near one corner, glasses in their hands. The men were in evening clothes, the women in dinner gowns. They wasted only a glance at Casey and went on talking.

One of the men at the bar came toward him. “Hello, Flash,” he said. “Get yourself a drink. How you going?”

“On the beam,” Casey said. “Bernie, Dixon around?”

“Telephoning, I think. Yes— There he is now.” Casey saw Dixon come out of the telephone booth and waited until he came up.

“Looking for me, Casey?” he asked.

“How'd you know?”

“Dominic called and told me. How about a drink?”

Casey said all right and they went to the bar, leaving the third man behind—Alec Thomas, his name was. He ran the place.

The bartender took their orders and Dixon said nothing more until his drink was placed before him.

“Luck,” he said, and drank. “Anything important?”

“No.” Casey turned and put his back to the bar. “I was looking for Perry Austin. He was going to your place to get some pictures.”

“He did.”

Casey sipped his drink. “How was the contest?”

“Great. Only they had me on the air from twelve to twelve-thirty introducing people and making speeches. You should've dropped in.”

Casey studied Dixon carefully over his glass. He was a lithe, wiry man of 35 or so, with thinning brown hair, which he wore parted in the middle and plastered back, and small, deep-set eyes that were as opaque and fathomless as well water. The dinner jacket he wore must have cost a $150 and looked it. His collar and tie were immaculate, he wore a platinum wrist watch, and on his little finger was a platinum ring set with a star sapphire. His trousers had lots of pleats and a fine gold chain was looped from his pocket. The only thing wrong was the aggregate effect—he was too smooth, too immaculate, too studied.

“I wish I could have,” Casey said. “Only I got hooked up in that Endicott murder.”

Nothing moved in Dixon's face. He was examining his highball glass, turning it as he did so. “I heard about it. What happened?”

“He was stretched out on the floor when I got there.”

“When you got there?”

“Me and Austin.”

“Oh.” It was just a word with no inflection. He was still inspecting his glass. “He was a nice guy, Stan. It's a hard one to figure.”

Casey waited, watching covertly. Dixon took some more of his drink. “Has the law got any angles yet?”

“They think maybe he was killed before he could talk.”

“About what? That bond rap?”

“Um-hum. They think he wasn't the only one in it and maybe knew too much. They think maybe the guy that did it beat it down the back stairs and got away in a small sedan.”

“That's a good start,” Dixon said. He' said other things too, but Casey replied automatically because he was thinking about Dixon and not what he said. What his racket had been in New York, Casey did not know. In fact no one had paid much attention to him until he started the Club Berkely four or five years ago. Now everything was changed. The Berkely was
the
place—and apparently it had netted Bernie Dixon a fortune. People made a fuss over him these days, and fought for ringside tables and the publicity attendant upon their getting them. He catered to personalities of all kinds.

Yet there had never been any unpleasant publicity connected with the establishment. Nothing rowdy was tolerated and what few fights occurred there were of the one-punch variety peculiar to the breed of nightclub cavaliers. Casey remembered all these things and more. He remembered what Logan had said about Dixon and Mrs. Endicott, that Dixon had been a client of Endicott. And all of a sudden Casey was wondering whether this was the man he had seen behind the wheel of the little sedan when he had taken that picture.

He realized Dixon had become silent and said, “When did Austin leave?”

“I didn't see him. He was there earlier. Around ten-thirty, I know, because he took some pictures. After that I was too busy to notice. We had five girls in the finals. They all had to do a turn—you know, sing or dance or something.”

“Was he there when you got there?”

“I think he was.”

“And when was that?”

“About ten o'clock.”

“Oh. You got there at ten.”

“Yes.”

Casey hadn't realized he, was staring until he caught the inflection of that word; now he saw that the man was watching him, his little eyes half-hidden, his smile tight and mirthless. He put down his glass. He looked up at Casey with those prying, fathomless eyes and his voice was clipped but measured.

“Yes, I got there about ten, Casey.” He turned away, stopped to say, “Why don't you stop in some time? I'll see that you get a good table.”