Lieutenant Martin Kirk shoved the pile of mimeographed pages aside.
Three hours spent in going through the complete transcript of the
Cordell trial and nothing to show for it but stiff muscles and an aching
head.
Give it up, a small voice in the back of his mind urged. You haven't got
a leg to stand on as far as getting any action out of the authorities.
Troy and his gang put the fear of God in that purple-eyed dame and
shipped her out of the State. You lose, brother--and so does that poor
devil up in Death's Row.
He drummed his fingers over and over on the arm of his chair and
listened to the every-day sounds of a normal day at the Homicide Bureau.
A new day, a new set of problems, and why knock yourself out over
something that doesn't concern you? Thing to do was go down to the
corner tavern and have a couple of fast ones and watch an old movie on
television. Yes sir, that's exactly what he'd do!
He went back to the mimeographed pages.
For the fourth time he read through Cordell's testimony of what had
happened that October afternoon. And it was there that he came across
the first possible break in the stone wall.
Once more Martin Kirk went over the few lines, although by this time he
could have come close to reciting them from memory. It was an excerpt
from Arthur Kahler Troy's cross-examination of the defendant after
Cordell's counsel, in a last desperate effort to swing the tide of a
losing battle, had placed him on the stand.
Q: (by Troy): Now, Mr. Cordell, I direct your attention to the
point in your testimony at which first entered Professor Gilmore's
outer office. At what time was this?
A: At about 5:45 p.m.
Q: Who was in the office at that time?
A: Alma Dakin, the Professor's secretary. And a couple of
students--although they were at the other end of the room and I
didn't pay much attention to them.
Q: But you did pay attention, as you call it, to Miss Dakin?
A: Well, I spoke to her, if that's what you mean.
Q: That's exactly what I mean, Mr. Cordell. And what was it you
said to her?
A: Something about it was too late in the day to be working so
hard.
Q: That was all?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Remember, Mr. Cordell, you're under oath. Now I ask you again:
Was that all you said to her at that time?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: It isn't possible you've forgotten some additional remark? Think
carefully, please.
A: No, sir. That's all I said. I swear it.
Q: Very well. Now how well do you know Miss Dakin?
A: Just to speak to.
Q: Have you ever seen her outside Professor Gilmore's office?
A: No, sir.
Q: Ever ask her for a date?
A: No, sir.
Q: Did you ever have an argument with her? A discussion of any kind
that may have become a bit heated?
A: No, sir.
Q: Then to your knowledge she'd have no reason to dislike you?
A: No, sir.
Q: Very good. Now, Mr. Cordell, I want to read to you an excerpt
from the testimony given by Miss Dakin in this court. "Mr. Cordell
was looking very angry when he came in. He came up to me and bent
down over the desk and said so low I could hardly hear him: 'Hi,
Alma. You think the Prof's through making love to my wife?'" I now
ask you, Paul Cordell, isn't that what you said to Alma Dakin? Not
that she was working too hard, or whatever it was you claimed to
have said.
A: No, sir. I didn't say anything like she said I did. I wouldn't
insult my wife by saying such a thing to a third--
Q: Just answer the questions, Mr. Cordell. Then you contend that
Miss Dakin deliberately lied in her testimony.
A: She was mistaken.
Q: Oh, come now! Miss Dakin is an intelligent girl; she couldn't
misunderstand or twist your words to that extent. Now could she?
A: Then she lied. I never said anything like that.
Q: What reason would she have for lying, Mr. Cordell? By your own
statement she hardly knew you, always greeted you pleasantly on the
times you came to the office, never got into any arguments with
you, and never saw you outside the office. She had worked for
Professor Gilmore for five or six months, has excellent references,
and is well liked by her friends. Yet you're asking us to believe
that she coldly and deliberately lied to get you into trouble. Is
that true?
A: All I know is she lied.
* * * * *
The break was there all right, Kirk thought grimly. For if Cordell was
innocent, then he had told the truth during the trial. And if he had
told the truth about his remark to Alma Dakin, then, automatically, Alma
Dakin's testimony was untrue.
Kirk ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of bafflement. What
possible reason could Gilmore's secretary have for going out of her way
to lie about Cordell's remark? Was it because she was so certain he had
killed her employer that she wanted to make sure he would be punished?
Or was it because she wanted to shield the real killer? Maybe she was a
friend of Naia North's and had known the blonde girl was in Gilmore's
laboratory all along. She might even have deliberately steered everyone
out of her office after Cordell discovered the bodies, making it
possible for Naia to slip out unseen.
It was a slender lead, but the only one large enough to get even a
fingernail grip on. He drew the phone over in front of him and began a
series of calls designated to give him more information about Alma
Dakin.
A call to the University took him through a couple of secretaries before
he reached the right person. Her name was Miss Slife, personnel director
of all non-teaching employees. Miss Dakin? Why, of course! A lovely girl
and very dependable. She had come to the University in search of a
position only a day or two before Miss Collins, Professor Gilmore's
previous secretary, had resigned. Since Miss Dakin's references showed
that she had worked for a short time as secretary to Dr. Karney, one of
the co-discoverers of the atom bomb (according to Miss Slife), she had
been engaged to take Miss Collins' place. Professor Gilmore, poor man,
had been very pleased with the change and everybody was happy: Miss
Collins at inheriting a vary large sum of money from a relative she'd
never even heard of, Miss Dakin at being able to get such a nice
position, and _dear_ Professor Gilmore at finding such a satisfactory
replacement.
When Miss Slife had run down, Kirk said, "This Dr. Karney. Why did Miss
Dakin leave him?"
The woman at the other end of the wire seemed astonished by Kirk's
ignorance. "Why, I assumed _everybody_ knew about Dr. Karney. He died of
a heart attack about eight months ago."
"_What!_"
"Goodness, there's no need to shout, Mr. Kirk. He was connected with
Clement University, out in California, and suffered a stroke of some
kind while at work."
Kirk thanked her dazedly and broke the connection. This, he told
himself, is too much a coincidence to _be_ a coincidence! Two prominent
nuclear scientists dying suddenly within seven months of each other at
opposite ends of the country--and both of them with the same secretary
at the time of their deaths!
A sudden thought sent him leafing rapidly through the trial transcript
to the place where Paul Cordell had told of the disjointed phrases he
claimed to have heard before he pushed into Professor Gilmore's
laboratory. The words he sought seemed to stand out in letters of
fire: "... three in the past five months...."
* * * * *
Again he caught up the telephone receiver, aware that his heart was
pounding with excitement, and dialed a number.... "_Bulletin?_ Hello;
let me talk to Jerry Furness.... Jerry, this is Martin Kirk at Homicide.
Look, do something for me. I want to find out how many top nuclear
fission boys have died in the past four or five months.... No, no;
nothing like that. Some of the boys down here were having an argument
about.... Sure; I'll hold on."
He propped the receiver between his ear and shoulder and groped for a
cigar. In the office beyond the partition of his cubbyhole a woman was
sobbing. Chenowich went past his open door whistling a radio commercial.
The receiver against his ear began to vibrate. "Yeah, Jerry.... Four of
'em, hey? Let's have their names." He picked up a pencil and took down
the information. "_Uh-hunh!_ Three heart attacks and one murder.
Check.... You mean _all_ of them? Tough life, I guess.... Yeah, sure.
Anytime. So long."
He replaced the receiver with slow care and leaned back to study the
list of names. Not counting the last name--Gilmore's--three
world-renowned men in the field of nuclear physics had dropped dead from
heart failure within the designated span of months.
Coincidence? Maybe. But he was in no mood for coincidences. If the
deaths of these four scientists was the result of some sinister plan,
who was responsible? Some foreign power, concerned about this country's
growing mastery of nuclear fission? Was it his duty to notify the FBI of
his findings and let them take over from here?
He shook his head. Too early for anything like that. He needed more
evidence--evidence not to be explained away as coincidence.
Once more Lieutenant Martin Kirk went back to analyzing the broken
phrases Cordell had picked up while eavesdropping that October
afternoon. _Twelve times zero_ made no sense at all ... unless it could
be the combination of a safe...? Hardly possible; no combination he'd
ever heard of would read that way. The next one, then ... _chained to
two hundred thousand years_.... Another blank; could mean anything or
nothing. Next: _A: ... sounded like the Professor said something like
his colleges had no idea and he'd see they were warned right away._
Kirk bit thoughtfully down on a corner of his lip. Gilmore didn't own
any colleges and how do you go about warning one? Maybe the word was
_college_, meaning the one where he had his laboratory. But actually it
wasn't a college at all; it was a university. Not much difference to the
man in the street, but to the Professor.... Wait a minute! Not
_colleges_! _Colleagues!_ It was his colleagues Gilmore had promised to
warn. And the word meant men and women in the same line of work as the
Professor--nuclear physics. Things, Kirk told himself with elation, were
looking up!
The business about "three in the past five months" was next, but he felt
sure of what that had meant. But the last of the quotations went nowhere
at all.
"Something about _taking in washing_--" Under less tragic circumstances,
a nonsense line. But Cordell hadn't actually heard the words clearly
enough to quote them with authority. That could mean he had heard words
that sounded _like_ "taking in washing."
Taking, baking, making, slaking, raking--the list seemed endless.
"Washing" could have been the first two syllables of Washington--and
Washington would be the place where the Atomic Energy Commission hung
out.
Still too hazy. He leaned back and put his feet up and attacked the
three mysterious words from every conceivable angle. No dice.
* * * * *
Sight of the ambling figure of Patrolman Chenowich passing the office
door caught his eye, reminding him that two heads were often better than
one. "Hey, Frank."
Chenowich came in. "Yeah, Lieutenant. Somethin' doin'?"
"I'm trying to figure out a little problem," Kirk explained carelessly.
"Let's say you hear a guy talking in the next room. You can't really
make out the words he's saying, but right in the middle of his mumbling
you hear what sounds like 'taking in washing.' Now you know that can't
be right, so you try to think out what he actually _did_ say...."
It was obvious Chenowich had fallen off on the first curve, so
completely off that Kirk didn't bother finishing what was much too
involved to begin with. The patrolman was staring at him in monstrous
perplexity.
"Jeez, Lieutenant. I don't get it. 'Less the guy's goin' to open up one
of these here laundries. That way he'd be takin' in washin'. But I don't
know what else--"
Kirk's feet hit the floor with a solid thump and he grabbed Chenowich's
wrist with fingers that bit in like steel. "Say that again!" he shouted.
"Say it just that way!"
The patrolman recoiled in alarm. "What's got into you, Lieutenant? Say
_what_?"
"Taking in washing!"
"Takin' in washin'? What for?"
Kirk's grin threatened to split his face, "The same words," he said,
"but you say them different. Only your way's the right way! Thanks, pal.
Now get out of here!"
Chenowich went. His mouth was still open and his expression still
troubled, but he went.
The last of the killer's cryptic remarks was now clear. For Kirk
realized that "takin'" rhymed with words you'd never associate with
"taking." "Bacon", for instance--or "Dakin"! Alma Dakin, former
secretary to two widely separated, and now dead, nuclear scientists. Her
name had been mentioned by the slayer of Professor Gilmore only seconds
before she had clubbed the savant to death.
But now that "taking" had come out "Dakin"--what did the rest of the
phrase mean? _Dakin in washing_ made no sense. What sounded like
_washing_? Washing; washing ... _watching_? It was close; in fact
nothing he could think of came closer.
All right. _Dakin in watching_; no. _Dakin is watching_--that made
sense. But Alma Dakin hadn't been watching anything at the time of the
killing; she, according to Cordell, was at her desk in the outer office.
That would leave _Dakin was watching_ as the right combination. Watching
for the right opportunity for murder!
What did it mean? Well, assuming from her past record that Alma Dakin
was mixed up in the deaths of two prominent men of science, it argued
that she and Naia North were accomplices in a scheme to rid America of
her nuclear fission experts. The nice smooth story of killing Gilmore
because of unrequited love was probably as much a lie as the personal
information Naia North had given Arthur Kahler Troy.
The North girl had confessed to murdering Gilmore and Juanita Cordell.
As a confessed killer she must be taken into custody and booked on
suspicion of homicide. Taking her was Martin Kirk's job--and it seemed
he had a contact that would lead him to her. Namely Alma Dakin.
Lieutenant Kirk grabbed his hat and went out the door.