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ANNIHILATION
ANNIHILATION
BY
ISABEL OSTRANDER
[Illustration: Decoration]
NEW YORK
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
1924
Copyright, 1924, by
ROBERT M. MCBRIDE & CO.
_Printed in the
United States of America_
Published, 1924
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I IN THE RAIN 1
II NUMBER FOUR 16
III THE NOSE OF DENNIS RIORDAN 28
IV THE INSPECTOR BRINGS NEWS 40
V CHING LEE’S ERRAND 55
VI DEADLOCK 70
VII GERTIE 84
VIII GATES OF MYSTERY 99
IX IN THIN AIR 112
X THE MAN IN THE SHADOWS 123
XI THE CLOSED HOUSE 134
XII THE BREATH OF DEATH 145
XIII “THE HORROR DEEPENS!” 161
XIV THE BLUE BALLOON 174
XV MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS 188
XVI A QUESTION ANSWERED 202
XVII FOREWARNED 216
XVIII CHECKMATE! 229
XIX DENNIS SUPPLIES A SIMILE 244
XX MAX 256
XXI THE BLACK PYRE 270
XXII ANNIHILATION 280
XXIII THE ADVICE OF EX-ROUNDSMAN MCCARTY 299
ANNIHILATION
CHAPTER I
IN THE RAIN
A seven-fifty derby, new only that afternoon and destined already to be
reblocked! Ex-roundsman Timothy McCarty, whose complete transition to
civilian attire was still so recent as to be a source of satisfaction
to himself and of despair to his tailor and haberdasher, shrugged his
broad shoulders and trudged sturdily along in the teeming downpour. A
walk he had come out for, to clear his head of all that psycho-junk
he’d been reading, and a walk he would have, but he could think of
a place the devil could take this rain to, where it would be better
appreciated!
Rain dripped down upon a sodden wisp of tobacco which hung dejectedly
from beneath his mustache, and muddy streams spurted up almost to
his knees with every step. It was a mean district, a neighborhood of
broken, narrow sidewalks, dilapidated tenements and squalid wooden
shacks, which became more squalid as McCarty neared the river, although
here great warehouses loomed against the lesser darkness of the night
sky. It was barely nine o’clock but there was scarcely a light in the
streets, except where irregularly spaced street lamps emitted a blurred
glimmer which emphasized rather than dispelled the murky gloom, yet
McCarty strode on with the unconcern of one treading a once-familiar
precinct.
He was not the only pedestrian abroad in the late September storm.
Under the glow of a lamp he presently descried a dark figure proceeding
also in the direction of the waterfront, and insensibly he quickened
his own steps. Some peculiarity in the latter’s gait had aroused that
suspicion, more than mere curiosity, that had served him so well in the
old days on the Force.
The man was lurching along at an unsteady pace, now breaking into
a shambling trot for a few steps, now pulling up short, only to
dive forward once more, reeling through the driving sheets of rain.
McCarty followed closely. He had almost overtaken the man when a tall,
bluecoated figure stepped suddenly from the shelter of a doorway and
barred his progress.
“None of that, my lad! For what are you following that feller there—?
Glory be, it’s Mac!”
“True for you, Terry!” McCarty responded, as their hands met in a
mighty grip. “A fine, conscientious bull you are, I’ll say that for
you, pinching the old has-been that got you on the Force, just because
he’s taking a bit of a stroll on a grand night like this!”
Officer Terrence Keenan grinned sheepishly in the darkness.
“It’s a grand night, all right; for ducks!” he amended. “You’re no
has-been, Mac, from what the boys tell me of the different cases you’ve
taken a hand in on the quiet since you resigned from the Department,
but you needn’t give me the laugh for looking you over just now! You
know this neighborhood as well as me, and when I see a guy trailing a
prosperous looking drunk towards the riverfront and the wharves it’s up
to me—”
“‘Drunk,’ is it?” McCarty demanded in fine scorn. Then he checked
himself and added with a sweeping gesture toward the greenish glow
from twin lights across the street: “I was minded to take a stroll
through my own old beat and drop in at the house over there for a word
or two with you and the Lieutenant at the desk, when I saw the guy
ahead—but where is he? He couldn’t have got in one of the warehouses at
this time of the evening and there’s nothing else between here and the
corner—?”
“Aw, let him go!” Officer Keenan interrupted good-naturedly. “Honest,
Mac, I ain’t got the heart to run them in these days, when the stuff is
so hard to get, and all—!”
But McCarty was not listening. Forgotten alike were the bedraggled
derby and the affluent private life of which it had so lately been sign
and symbol; he was back on his old beat with something doing, and he
grabbed his brother officer by the arm.
“What’s that there beyond the lamp-post, half in and half out of the
gutter? It’s him, Terry, he’s down!—Come on!”
Terry needed no second bidding now. Together they ran, splashing
through puddles and over the loose, tilting fragments of pavement to
where the man lay. He had pitched forward, his face hanging over the
curb’s edge, down into the swirling gutter. The back of his head showed
a bald spot gleaming in the misty rays from the lamp.
“There’s some heft to him!” Terry grunted. “Now I’ll have to run him in
for safe-keeping. What’s that he’s jabbering, Mac?”
Between them they had turned the prostrate man, who was breathing
stertorously and muttering to himself in broken gasps. The young
policeman’s flashlight revealed a heavy, smooth-shaven face, distorted
and pasty gray beneath the rivulets of muddy water that coursed down
it, with small, close-set eyes darting about in a wild, distended gaze.
McCarty bent lower in an effort to distinguish the hoarse accents. His
companion commented disgustedly:
“He’s worse than I thought he was! Look at the rolling eyes of him!
It’ll be Bellevue, I’m thinking—”
“Hush!” McCarty commanded, as he lifted the man’s head higher on his
knee. His breathing had become a series of heaving gasps now. Suddenly,
with a rumbling snort, they ceased altogether, the flabby jaw sagging
as the lids drooped.
“Not Bellevue, Terry; the morgue, more likely.” McCarty spoke solemnly.
“He’s gone.”
“Croaked!” Terry started up. “It sure looks like it! I’ll run across to
the house and tip off the lieut. and put in the ambulance call. You’ll
wait here?”
Without pausing for a reply he turned and splashed heavily across the
street to the station house. McCarty looked down at the figure still
propped against his knee. In the feeble light of the street lamp it
appeared to be muffled to the neck in a loose, dark ulster of some thin
material. The body was portly though not actually stout; the upturned
face, washed clean of the mud from the gutter, was a grayish blur, its
hideous distortion of feature relaxed, leaving it a mere flaccid mass.
Some involuntary movement of the supporting knee caused the head to
slump forward on the dead man’s breast and once more that small, round
bald spot gleamed whitely from the scant, dark hair surrounding it.
“Mike Taggart—he’s lieutenant now, as you may know,—says it’ll be all
right to bring the body over there without waiting out on such a night
for the ambulance.” Terry had waded back through the reeking mire.
“He’d be glad of a word with you, too, Mac, so will you give me a hand
with the old boy here? It’s only a step.”
With a slight shrug and a smile that was lost upon his companion
McCarty assumed his share of their limp burden. Together they bore it
across the street to the station house. He blinked in the sudden glare
of light, as the sodden figure was deposited on the floor, and then
turned to greet the homely, spruce young giant who had come forward
from behind the desk.
“So it’s Lieutenant Taggart now, that was a rookie when I left the
Force!” he exclaimed with a laugh. “I’d thought to drop in on you one
of these days but not as part of the escort for our friend here!”
He motioned over his shoulder toward the body and the lieutenant shook
hands with obvious respect before advancing to examine it.
“Glad to see you, McCarty, though you do come in strange company!” He
smiled and then turned to Officer Keenan who had knelt and was running
his hands over the inanimate form in a practiced manner. “Humph! Looks
like a pretty prosperous sort of a bird to be hanging around the
waterfront on a night like this, don’t he? What do you find on him,
Terry? I don’t believe I ever saw that face in this precinct before.”
As the policeman turned over to his superior the contents of the dead
man’s pockets, McCarty stood gazing thoughtfully down upon him. He
was apparently in the late forties and in life the beefy, extremely
close-shaven face might have been florid; the nose was short but highly
arched and the lids which had opened now revealed the small, pale
eyes set in a dull stare. His raincoat, of excellent texture, had been
opened to admit of Terry’s search, and disclosed a dark brown sack
suit and tie of the same grade of conservative excellence as the outer
garment, but the low brown shoes that covered the large, rather flat
feet were as incongruously inferior as they were blatantly new. The
man’s hands were outstretched limply, palms upward, with the thick
though well-kept fingers curling slightly, and McCarty’s keen eyes
narrowed a little as they rested on them. Then he turned.
“Lieutenant, I think I saw his hat go sailing off down the gutter as we
carried him across. Shall I get it while you and my friend Terry, here,
go over his effects?”
“Wish you would, McCarty.” The lieutenant glanced up absently from
the desk where he and Keenan were sorting out a collection of small
articles. “You must take a flash at these when you come back.”
McCarty nodded and departed upon his self-elected errand, appropriating
the flashlight which the policeman had laid on a chair. He proceeded
to the opposite side of the street and measuring off with his eye the
distance from the lamp-post to where the fallen man’s head had rested
over the curb, he followed the racing gutter for several yards down
past the further warehouse to where the turbid flow was separated by a
pile of refuse. There, impaled on a barrel stave, he found the sodden,
shapeless brown mass that had once been a soft felt hat, and retrieving
it, he carefully examined the inner side of the crown with the aid of
the flashlight. The gilt lettering denoting the maker on the sweatband
was so soaked as to be illegible but two initials showed plainly in the
tiny, gleaming ray:—‘B. P.’
With his trophy McCarty returned to the station house to find Keenan
and his superior with their heads together over a key-ring.
“There’s the hat, or what’s left of it.” He deposited the drenched
article beside the body on the floor as he spoke. “Terry, here, was
watching the guy pass him and he says he was hooched up for fair, so
likely there’ll be nothing further come of this after his folks haul
him away from the morgue, but if I’m wanted to swear that ’twas bootleg
lightning and not the regular kind hit him, Inspector Druet or any
of the old crowd at headquarters will know where to find me. I’ll be
getting on home, for I’m soaked to the skin—”
“Take a look at these first, McCarty,” the lieutenant invited. “Hooch
or no hooch, I’m going to find out what this bird was doing in my
precinct! If that jewelry’s phoney it don’t go with the rest of his
outfit and if it’s real, what was he doing down this way with it on?
Don’t make any crack about his relying on us to protect him, for you
walked your beat here yourself in the old days and the district hasn’t
changed much! What do you make of it?”
McCarty turned over the articles presented for his inspection with a
carelessly critical air.
“Handkerchief, kid gloves, Wareham gold-filled watch, pigskin cigar
case with two broken cigars in it, sixty—seventy dollars and eighty
cents in change,” McCarty enumerated rapidly. “Nothing here marked and
no letters nor papers, eh? That scarf pin and those cuff buttons, fakes
or not, are what they call cat’s-eyes, I’m thinking. Is that all except
the key-ring?”
“It is, but if this bird purposely intended to leave everything off
that would give him away to whoever he was going to meet, he slipped
up! Look at here!” Lieutenant Taggart spoke with an air of triumph as
he separated the keys of all shapes and sizes on the ring to disclose a
small, thin, much-worn disk of some dull metal, one side of which bore
the single numeral ‘4,’ and the reverse three letters in old English
script:—‘N. Q. M.’
McCarty’s stubby mustache moved slightly as his lips tightened, but he
shook his head.
“What is it?” he asked. “I’d say it looked like one of those
identification tags in case he lost his keys, but if ‘N. Q. M.’ are his
initials, what is the ‘4’?”
The young lieutenant regarded him almost pityingly.
“It was not meant for an identification tag exactly, McCarty; at least,
not for any stranger that might happen to pick up these keys, but it’ll
tell me more than just who this bird is and where he lived before I’m
through!”
“I hope so, lad!” But McCarty still shook his head. “Happen, though,
when the body is claimed you’ll find he was Neil Quinn Malone, walking
delegate for Stevedores’ Union Number Four, and down here late for a
date because of meeting up with some bootlegger’s first cousins!”
“There’s the ambulance!” Terry spoke suddenly as a bell clanged up the
street. His honest face had reddened and his tone was a mixture of
forbearance and chagrin.
“Well, I’ll take the air, boys,—and the rain!” McCarty sternly
repressed the twinkle in his eyes. “I’m chilled to the marrow of me,
which does no good to the touch of rheumatism I’ve had lately, and I
need no young sawbones in a white coat to tell me that guy is dead,
even though there’s never a mark on him! Good luck to the two of you!”
He made his way out into the storm, bending his head before the pelting
downpour and chuckling as he turned the coat collar up about his
throat. The good lads back there would think that a few years of soft
living had done for old Mac, and he was through!
Yet he was not chuckling when he turned into a dingy little lunchroom
a few blocks away and in the look which he bent upon his coffee cup
there was more of uneasy indecision than its steaming but doubtful
contents warranted. He _was_ through, though not in the way Terry and
Taggart might be thinking. Never again would he intrude on a case that
belonged to the department he had quitted! The methods had changed too
much since his day when a plainclothes bull went out and got his man
or was hauled up on the carpet to explain why not; it was bad enough
when Headquarters began to be cluttered up with all that scientific
crime detecting junk from the foreign police centers, but now they
were opening up a school to teach this black art called “criminal
psycho-analysis” to a bunch of fine lads in the detective bureau who
needed nothing but the quick minds and strong arms that the Lord had
given them already! It was his own secret and shamefaced perusal of
such books on this subject as he had been able to gather, that had
driven him forth with a case of mental blind staggers earlier that very
evening. Well, let them psycho-analyze that man who carried the queer
tag on his key-ring! And yet—!
It was a rare case! McCarty’s eyes glistened and his nostrils fairly
quivered with the old eagerness as he considered its possibilities. His
coffee finished, he took the nearest subway that led to the rooms over
the antique shop where he maintained a solitary bachelor establishment.
He had expected to find it empty as usual but to his surprise he noted
that a low light glowed from behind the shades of his two front
windows and on opening the entrance door with his latchkey he was
greeted by a particularly malodorous stench of tobacco wafted down the
narrow stairway. There wasn’t another pipe in the world that smelt
quite like that one, and as he bounded upward he called:
“Denny! If I hadn’t thought you were on duty at the engine house—!”
No reply came to him, however. He rounded the stairs’ head and then
paused in amazement on the threshold of his shabby, comfortable
living-room. Dennis Riordan, engine driver from the nearest fire house
and his particular crony since they had landed from the Old Country,
was totally oblivious to his presence. He sprawled in the low Morris
chair with a book in his hands, and his long legs writhed while his
lantern-jawed face was contorted in the agony of mental concentration.
“Denny! Snap out of it!” his unheeded host commanded. “What in the name
of all that’s—!”
Denny “snapped.” He dropped the book and sat up with a jerk, his eyes
blinking.
“So you’re back,” he remarked dazedly. “’Tis small wonder I’ve seen
little of you these days since you’ve taken to literature! Newspapers
have been your limit up till now but here I use the latchkey you gave
me, thinking to get in out of the rain whilst I’m waiting for you, and
I find these books. Man, they’re fair wonderful!—But what do they mean?”
“I don’t know yet and I misdoubt the guys who wrote them do!” McCarty’s
tone was almost savage as he deposited his dripping hat tenderly on the
corner of the mantel and peeled off the sodden topcoat. “Which one had
you there?”
“‘The Diagnostics of Penology.’” Denny picked up the volume once more
and read the title laboriously. “I thought a ‘diagnostic’ was an
unbeliever and you’d taken to religion in your declining years, but
’tis all about the different kinds of criminals. I never knew there was
but one—a crook!”
“No more did I.” McCarty lighted a cigar reflectively. “There must be
something in it, though, for that’s the stuff the commissioner is going
to get through the heads of the boys at headquarters in this new school
of his.”
“Is it, now!” Dennis’ tone held a touch of awe. “Do you mean that all
they’ll have to do when a crime’s committed will be to sit down and
figure out whether the lad who pulled it off was a lunatic, maybe, or
’twas born in him, or a matter of habit or the only time he’d try it,
or else that he’d been brought up to it? And what would the crook be
doing meanwhile? He’d still have to be caught.”
“It would all help, even though we don’t get the hang of it, or the
commissioner would not be trying it on the boys,” declared McCarty
loyally. “Some of them that have not yet been promoted to headquarters
would not be hurt by anything that would teach them to use their heads
now and then, I’m thinking!”
There was that in his voice which made his companion straighten in his
chair, the mild gray eyes sparkling with eager interest.
“Who’s been blundering now?” he demanded. “I ought to have known you
would not be trailing around in the storm till near ten o’clock for the
sake of your health! What is it, Mac? For the love of God, are you on
another case?”
“I am not!” responded McCarty with dignity. “I’m a real estate owner,
as well you know, with no connection with the police department any
more, and if an exhausted man in mortal terror or agony drops dead in
his tracks and they ship him to the morgue as an acute alcoholic it’s
nothing to me!”
Dennis emptied the contents of his pipe into the tray and rose.
“Where do we start from?” he asked excitedly. “Thanks be, I’ve the next
twenty-four hours off duty! Do we have a talk with his folks first or
what?”
“First and last, we mind our own business this time!” McCarty waved
toward the chair. “Sit down again and light up, Denny, and I’ll give
you the dope on it, though there’s little enough according to Terry
Keenan and Mike Taggart—”
“Terry Keenan and Mike—!” Dennis obeyed tensely. “That’ll be down in
the old precinct, then, along the waterfront! Who was the guy and what
was he running from when he dropped?”
McCarty gave an account of the evening’s occurrence, concisely yet
omitting no significant detail. When he had finished, his visitor sat
silent for a moment, turning the story over in his none too quick mind.
Then he remarked:
“I don’t get it at all, Mac. A prosperous, middle-aged, respectable
looking fellow by what you say, with never a scrap of paper on him
to show who he was, only that bit of a metal tag! He must have been
running from somebody! Did you look behind you?”
“I did not, and neither did he.” McCarty paused. “Mind you that, Denny!
I didn’t say he was trying to get away from anybody. The way he was
running and stopping and then reeling along once more showed that if
he was not half-crazed with pain, ’twas only will power kept him going
as far as he got. When Terry and I turned him over, the gray look of
his face came from more than his slowing heart. It was horror that
stared out of his eyes! He was conscious, too, though the end came in
less than a minute, and muttering with his last breath.”
“Do you think he might have been going some place down among the
wharves at that hour, and running till his heart burst to get there on
time?” Dennis’ pipe had gone out in his excitement and he laid it on
the tray with a tremulous hand. “Was it blackmail? Did he think whoever
was waiting would kill him if he didn’t show up? Mac, what manner of
man was he? Fine quality clothes and cheap shoes, elegant jewelry and
a gold-filled watch that could be bought on the installment plan! The
cigar case was real pigskin, you tell me, but—what kind of cigars was
in it?”
“Denny, you’ve rung the bell again, even though you don’t know it!”
McCarty gazed for a moment in affectionate but unflattering surprise
at his old friend. “The cigars were Coronas, and there’s no better
nor more costly made! For all the clothes were of grand quality, they
didn’t fit him; they’d been carefully altered but they’d been made in
the beginning for a taller and thinner man—and they’d had good wear.
Only the cheap shoes were new, and though the links and pin were as
rich-looking as any swell would sport they were fakes, even if I
wouldn’t give Taggart the satisfaction of telling him so! He’d too
close a shave, remember, and his hands showed no signs of hard work;
don’t you make anything at all out of it?”
“He could wear the clothes, though not the shoes, of another man—smoke
his cigars, copy his jewelry, keep his own hands soft—? No, there’s no
sense to it, whatever!” Dennis shook his head slowly. “You’ve something
up your sleeve, but what makes you figure so much on the close shave of
him? Why was that number ‘four’ on the other side of the tag with his
initials on the key-ring? Did you look to see if the same letters was
in his hat?”
“It had dropped down into the gutter when he fell.” McCarty had
refrained for the time being from mentioning his errand after the
missing headgear. “Did I say that ‘N. Q. M.’ were the dead man’s
initials? I fitted a made-up name to them in joke when Taggart was so
sure about it, but it might be an address as well. You’ve known this
town as long and as well as me, Denny; did you ever hear of the New
Queen’s Mall?”
“That I do,” said Denny. “You mean that one block running through from
the Park to the next avenue, with gates shutting it in at both ends, as
though the families living in the houses on the two sides of the street
was too good to mix with the rest of the world? It’s right in the
heart of the millionaires’ part of town, with the swellest society all
around, and ’twas named after some grand place in London, wasn’t it?”
McCarty nodded.
“The Queen’s Mall. The Burminsters came from there and they owned most
of the property on both sides of this block here. The great corner
mansion on the north side nearest the Park is where they live, and
they moved heaven and earth to close in the street with gates, the
families in the other houses liking the idea fine. The newspapers
put up a holler about the street being a public thoroughfare and the
whole business being contrary to democracy, but that little bunch of
millionaires had their way. That was long before ever you and me came
to this country, Denny, but the inspector told me about it, and it’s
brought up even now when there’s occasion for it at some election time
or other—”
“Number Four, New Queen’s Mall!” Dennis interrupted witheringly as he
emptied and pocketed his cold pipe and rose with a glance at the clock.
“’Tis twenty minutes to eleven, and you sit there giving me a history
of New York! What are we waiting for?”