Odor of Violets, Baynard Kendrick [best short novels .txt] 📗

Seventy-second Street and Riverside Drive the wind had full sway. Stinging snow beat in through the two-inch crack, tearing smartingly at his face and hands. He shivered under the blast and closed the door. The wind moaned defeat and further wet the dripping diamond panes with a defiant splash of mingled rain and snow.

A thermostat heat regulator was on the wall at the end of the bookcase filled with Braille. The Captain brushed the heavy volumes lightly in passing, located the small arrow at the base of the thermometer, and turned the heating lower. He selected a volume from the bookcase,—Van Loon’s Ships and How They Sailed the Seven Seas,—sat down at the desk, and began finger reading.

Smoking and reading failed to quiet a feeling of restlessness. He was glad to be interrupted by the buzz of his private phone.

There were two telephones on his desk. One was a unit of the regular apartment-house system connecting with the lobby switchboard twenty-six floors below; the other was smaller and operated by push buttons. It formed a link of seven phones in his apartment which gave communication from room to room. The Captain ignored both phones on the desk and turned to his left-hand top drawer. He opened it and took out a regular French type of dial phone. Not more than a dozen people knew the number. He mentally reviewed the short list before he lifted the receiver from its cradle and said, “Hello!”

“Has your man arrived?” The crisp voice of Spud Savage, the Captain’s partner and closest friend, crackled over the wire.

“He’s late,” said Maclain. “I’ll spend the night in town, Spud. He’ll certainly be here soon.”

“That’s what I wanted to know.” There were a few seconds of silence at the other end. “Look, Dunc. I’ll be in within an hour and a half to spend the night there with you.”

“Has it occurred to you that we’re guests at a Long Island house party for Christmas?” Maclain asked brightly. No one but Spud Savage and his wife Rena, who had been Maclain’s secretary for years, could have detected the underlying annoyance in the Captain’s tone.

“Yes, it’s occurred to me,” Spud mimicked. “And it’s occurred to Rena, too. She’s worried about Schnucke. Schnucke’s sensitive. We don’t like to have her staying in a closed-up apartment alone.”

“Kindly go to hell, both of you,” suggested Maclain. “I’m certainly able to take care of myself for a night in my own home. You’re insane if you try to come in town through this storm.”

“I’ll be there within two hours,” said Spud. “Anybody who’s been associated with you for twenty years is bound to be slightly fey.”

“Perhaps you’ve affected me!” The Captain hung up the phone. The conversation with his partner left him with a comfortable feeling of well-being. Samuel Savage, whom Maclain called “Spud,” was the only person who could be solicitous about the Captain’s blindness in an open and aboveboard way. They had served together in the army. During the trying period when the Captain was driving himself to a point of collapse to perfect the senses of hearing, touch, and smell, Spud Savage had scarcely left his side for a day.

Watching Maclain’s naturally keen faculties sharpen under rigorous dicipline, Spud had conceived a wild idea. Duncan Maclain was a wealthy man and inordinately proud. Slowly, and with infinite tact, Spud convinced Maclain that he could utilize the foundation of intelligence work mastered in the army. Together they would open a private detective agency. Captain Duncan Maclain would become unique. Blind, he would become the master of them all, greater than any detective who could see.

It was Spud who had engaged Rena as Maclain’s secretary, and, as Rena put it, “married her so she would stay.” It was Spud who had taught the Captain to shoot at sound—a patient matter of six years’ practice, for two long hours each day. It was Spud who had arranged for Schnucke and Maclain’s training at the Seeing-Eye school. Happily, with the advent of Schnucke, Maclain found he was free.

The fear of blindness was lifted, and held him enthralled no more. He was no longer a burden on Spud and Rena. Schnucke’s warm body was ever close to his side. She was only a German shepherd dog skillfully trained, but she was life to Duncan Maclain, for her deep dark eyes had sight. Sight was all that he needed to be as good as a man could be.

Schnucke stood up and rubbed her back gently against the Captain’s knee. The musical triple chime of an electric tocsin announced a visitor in the anteroom of the penthouse office. Maclain touched a button under his desk and clicked a latch which opened the office door.

The visitor paused on the threshold. “Captain Maclain?”

“I’m dreadfully sorry,” said Maclain. “You’ll find the light switch to your left just inside the door. I was reading with my fingers and for the moment I forgot it was dark in this room.”

The man in the doorway laughed softly. “It is black.” The light switch clicked. “I’ll admit I expected to walk into a lighted office. The darkness rather startled me.”

Maclain listened to the rich, cultured tones and said, “Take the chair in front of my desk, if you don’t mind.” When the man was seated, the Captain continued, “You keep yourself in good trim. Your step is light and quick for such a big man. You must weigh better than two hundred, and you’re taller than six foot two.”

“I’ve been told you were blind, Captain. Frankly, I was skeptical that you could ever be of help in the city’s defense plans. You’re already proving my stupidity to me!”

“Thanks,” said Maclain a trifle drily. “After many years I’m able to estimate the approximate height of strangers by the number of steps they take to my desk from the door. My blindness necessarily makes me a bit of a mountebank. I let you enter a darkened room to stop you at the door. It makes counting your