2:13 a. m.—Time _versus_ Death
O’Brian stirred a bit restlessly in his chair by the hall door and
yawned; then he looked at his watch. It was almost a quarter past two.
He began to enumerate the various things he would give for a good cup
of strong black coffee, and his shirt headed the list. Or, if not
coffee, some excitement to keep him awake.
The telephone jangled.
He stood up abruptly and went to the instrument. It would be, he
imagined, Lieutenant Valcour calling again to find out if everything
was all right. Well, everything was.
O’Brian lifted the receiver and said, “Hello!”
No one answered him, and there wasn’t any sound from the other end of
the line, unless you could call a sort of thumping noise and a faint
tinkle that might have been breaking glass a sound.
“Hello!” O’Brian said again.
The line wasn’t dead, because there wasn’t that peculiar burring one
hears when the connection is broken. The receiver of the ’phone at the
other end was certainly off the hook. O’Brian singled out one of the
patron saints of Ireland and wanted to know, most emphatically, just
what sort of fun and foustie was being made of him.
“Hello!” He tried it again.
There was a click. The burring sound started. The line was dead.
Whoever had been calling from the other end had hung up.
O’Brian very thoughtfully did likewise.
Then he began to wonder what he ought to do. It didn’t take him very
long to decide, especially as the thumping noise and tinkle of
breaking glass grew louder in retrospect the more he thought about
them. He didn’t have to go as far as Denmark; something was certainly
rotten right here in New York.
He dialled the operator, identified himself as a member of the police
force, and stated that he wanted the call he had just received
instantly traced.
“Oneminuteplease,” requested a voice with a macadamized smile.
The minute stretched into two—ten—but eventually he was informed that
the call had come from the apartment of a Mr. Thomas Hollander, whose
’phone number and address were thereupon given.
O’Brian jotted them down. He then dialled the telephone number of
Hollander who was, as he very well knew, right upstairs. Several
persistent diallings failed to awaken any response.
The complexion of the work afoot grew dirtier. O’Brian felt certain
that it was connected with the terrain activities of Lieutenant
Valcour. If it had just been some occupant of Hollander’s apartment
who had wanted to call Hollander up about something, there would have
been an answer.
And there wouldn’t have been that thumping noise, and the tinkle of
breaking glass.
It seemed a matter that required investigation at once. O’Brian
telephoned his precinct station and reported the occurrence and his
beliefs about it to the sergeant in charge. He was assured that a
raiding squad would be dispatched within a matter of minutes to the
address he had given.
One was.
They found Lieutenant Valcour helplessly bound, very dazed, very weak,
lying on the floor beneath a table when the men crashed the door to
Hollander’s apartment and broke in. Cold water—a glass of whiskey from
a convenient decanter—and intelligence and strength began to return.
Lieutenant Valcour pushed away the hands that were supporting him and,
going to the telephone, called the Endicotts’.
“O’Brian?”
“Yes, Lieutenant—you all right, sir?”
“Yes, yes—pay attention to every word I say and follow my instructions
to a letter. Endicott’s life depends upon it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go upstairs to Dr. Worth and wake him. Tell him I believe that
Hollander is armed with a knife and that he is probably just waiting
for a chance to use it when he won’t be observed by the nurse or
Cassidy and Hansen. Hollander is Endicott’s enemy, not friend. Tell
Dr. Worth to go down and knock on Endicott’s door. Tell him to go
right inside when it opens. Now get this.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell him to ask the nurse how the patient is—to act natural about it.
Tell him to start to go out and then, as a second thought, tell him to
beckon to Hollander as if he wanted to tell Hollander something.
Hollander will get up and go to him. Tell him to whisper to Hollander
that there’s something he wants to tell him privately, if Hollander
will step outside for a minute into the corridor. You be in the
corridor. When Hollander comes out, jump him. Put the cuffs on him and
keep him quiet until I get there. I’ll be right on up. O. K.?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lieutenant Valcour rang off. He turned to the sergeant in charge of
the detail.
“Leave one man here, Sergeant,” he said. “The rest of you men can go
back to the station after you’ve dropped me at the Endicotts’.”
“Anything you want the man who’s left here to do, Lieutenant?”
“Not unless a dark-haired youngster comes back, which he won’t. But if
he should, just have him kept for me, please, on ice.”
Down on the street, Lieutenant Valcour jumped in beside the driver of
the department car and said, “Step on it, Clancy. It’s only eleven
blocks up and three west.”
The car shot forward, swept to the right at the corner, and lunged up
Lexington Avenue. There was little traffic, and what little there was
was so scattered that nothing impeded its way.
“Something going to break on that Endicott business, Lieutenant?”
“Either going to, or has.”
“A homicide, ain’t it?”
“Possibly—by now.”
Nurse Murrow smoothed the last wrinkles from her uniform while waiting
for Dr. Worth to open the door. It paid to look one’s best. Always, at
any time at all. One never could tell.
“Oh, Doctor. I’m sorry to get you up again so soon, but Mr. Endicott
shows symptoms of coming to.”
Dr. Worth, who was no longer the eager-eyed practitioner he once had
been, did his best to shake off the puffy chains of sleep.
“I’ll come right down, Miss Murrow.”
“I’ll wait, Doctor.”
“Just want to dash some cold water on my face.”
“No hurry, Doctor.”
He vanished into the room again. Ah, dreamed Miss Murrow, _what_ a
man! And he’d never been snappy with her, either. So many were snappy.
Someone was coming up the stairs—quickly—two at a time—a policeman——
“Where’s the doctor, miss?” said O’Brian, a little winded.
“He’s coming right out, Officer.”
“I gotta see him at once.”
O’Brian brushed her aside and opened the door. Dr. Worth met him,
astonished and glistening, on the threshold.
“Say, lissen, Doctor, the lieutenant just called up, and he
said . . .”
O’Brian thereupon repeated all that the lieutenant had said.
“But, my dear man, this is the most extraordinary thing I have ever
heard in my life!” Dr. Worth’s slightly damp eyebrows indulged in a
series of gyrations.
“Sure there ain’t no time for astonishments, Doctor,” said O’Brian.
“Let’s go—easy and quietlike, now. We’re not to put this bird
wise. . . .”
With O’Brian leading, they started down the stairs.
“Hello, Herb,” Hollander said softly.
Endicott’s voice was so weak that it scarcely carried to Hollander’s
ears. “Who is it?” he said. “What . . .” the voice dribbled off.
“It’s your friend, Herb.”
Sullen, petulant lines clung suddenly to Endicott’s mouth, making the
thickish lips look almost viciously weak. He made a curious noise that
might have been intended for a laugh.
“Have no friend.” The voice was the ghost of dead whispers.
“What happened to you, Herb?”
“Happened?” Endicott’s eyes made a strong effort to get through the
fogs shrouding them. “Something did happen—I want the police—I’ll
teach that rotten—that——”
There wasn’t any sound for a while.
“You’ll teach whom, Herb?”
Endicott was staring very fixedly up at Hollander now. And Hollander’s
right hand, the fingers of which were unnaturally rigid, was gently
moving to that spot on the spread which would lie above Endicott’s
heart.
“Who is it you’re going to teach, Herb?” Hollander said again.
The mists were clearing, and Endicott could see things almost plainly.
He fixed Hollander’s face into definite focus. “God damn you,” he
said, “for a——”
“Now, now, Herb, that isn’t nice, and you don’t know what you’re
saying.”
Hollander’s right hand had found the spot. It hung above it,
motionless, very rigid, and the fingers very stiff.
“I’m going to call a policeman and——”
Endicott’s voice was so weak as to be almost inaudible. His lips
seemed as motionless as the rest of his body, which was completely
inert.
“No, you’re not, Herb,” whispered Hollander. “And you’re not going to
tell, either.”
Endicott got tired of looking up at Hollander. His eyes travelled
fretfully along Hollander’s right arm.
“Neither you nor all the devils in hell,” he whispered faintly, “can
stop me from telling.”
And then he saw the knife.
“Can’t I, Herb?”
It was the slenderest knife Endicott had ever seen. He wondered where
on earth Hollander had got it. No hilt—or perhaps the hilt was cupped
in Hollander’s hand. A stiletto, that’s what it was, and its point was
pressing through the white spread at a point that lay just above his
heart. Why, if the pressure kept on, it would go right into his
heart. . . .
_Crack_ . . .
_Crack_ . . . _crack crack_ . . . _crack_ . . . _crack_ . . .
A bullet from Cassidy’s gun shattered Hollander’s right wrist.
Hansen’s shot caught him in the right shoulder. Two bullets out of the
fusillade that followed lodged, one in his right hip, and the other
one farther down in the leg. Both officers, in spite of Nurse Murrow’s
orders, had moved into the room and were crouched on the floor where
they would still be concealed from Endicott’s line of vision, but
where they could better and more closely observe what had been the
faintly suspicious movements on the part of Hollander.
They were within four or five feet of him and still crouched below him
as blood stained the white spread in a sickish smear when Hollander
dragged his mangled wrist across it to the floor.