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

fellow clad in an expensive salt-and-pepper business suit more reminiscent of Bond Street than Fifth Avenue. His cheeks were red from the cold outside and recent shaving. His graying hair brought to Maclain’s keen nostrils an inkling of the barber’s chair. The roundness of his chin and face and the crinkled corners of his eyes gave Spud the impression that the Colonel was always stopping on the verge of a smile. Oddly at variance with his other characteristics, Colonel Gray’s grip and voice were steel.

He sat in the chair in front of Maclain’s desk and kept leaning over to make a point by gazing intently into the Captain’s eyes. Each time he did so, it seemed to disconcert him to find that Maclain couldn’t see. He’d turn away and make his point a second time by gazing toward Spud on the divan and speaking more forcefully.

“I need good men,” he declared suddenly, breaking up the amenities. “I presume Mr. Savage is a good man, Captain Maclain, or he wouldn’t be associated with you.”

“Last night he told me I was beautiful but dumb.” Spud blew a smoke ring up from the divan and watched it admiringly.

“Dumb?” Again Colonel Gray almost broke into a smile.

“Slightly exaggerated,” said Maclain. “—Spud has a tendency. I was figuratively speaking, that’s all—pointing out to him that the American public doesn’t believe in spies.”

“Well, I do!” The Colonel took a straight-stemmed pipe from the pocket of his coat, put tobacco in it, and tamped it down with a well-manicured thumb. For a time he sat sucking on it moodily.

Spud said, “There are matches on the desk, Colonel.”

“I seldom smoke,” the Colonel remarked, staring at Maclain, “but I like to feel a pipe in my mouth. It gives me something to chew. Somebody killed one of my men last night, Captain Maclain. That’s the main thing that brought me here to you.”

The Captain leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands on top of his head. It was always a sign of interest in Duncan Maclain when his fingers were still.

“I wonder,” he remarked, “if you’d have any objection to my taking this conversation down?”

The Colonel looked hastily around the office and said, “Down where?”

“On a record,” Maclain told him. “I have Detecto-Dictographs set behind some panels in the wall. I find it very helpful, since I can’t make notes, to be able to go back later and hear what people had to say.”

“Well, if you can get any help out of what I’m going to tell you, go ahead!” the Colonel said placidly. “Although I’m not particularly fond of having machines eavesdrop on me.”

He swung around suddenly on Spud. “I wouldn’t be saying anything if I thought it would get beyond you two!”

Spud grinned. “Go ahead—Dunc’s blind, and I’m deaf and dumb.”

“And sometimes,” said Colonel Gray, “I think I’m all three.”

He turned back to Maclain. “Do you happen to remember what this fellow who brought my Braille instructions said to you?”

“Certainly,” said Maclain. “I can do even more; I can play the entire conversation back to you.”

He reached down and took a record from a bottom drawer, slipped it onto the Ediphone, and a moment later the sound of the conversation was filling the room. “I have a hookup with the Capehart,” Maclain explained.

The Colonel sat nursing his fireless pipe until the record was through. “Well, thank God for one thing!” he remarked as Maclain clicked off the machine. “He didn’t get much out of you. Look, Captain, the police have told me about your visit to Gerente’s last night. I’m going to be frank, dangerously so, with you and your partner too. I’m pretty good at defense strategy, but I don’t hold myself out to be much of a criminologist. I’m forced to leave that unpleasant phase of my work up to the police, the F. B. I., and men who have made a study of it such as your partner and you.”

The Captain leaned back still farther in his chair. “We’ll do everything we can.”

Spud said, “That goes for me, too.”

“I’m in a peculiar position,” said Colonel Gray. “Gerente was killed, and I want to know why, but I can’t tell everything I know to the police. Nor can I tell everything I know to you.”

He put his pipe away and tried to move his chair.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to leave it where it is,” said Spud with a grin. “It’s screwed down to the floor.”

“What the—” the Colonel began.

“When I walk around the room,” said Captain Maclain, “I want to know where the furniture is.”

“I was speaking about Gerente,” said Colonel Gray. “First, let me say this. To find out the key points which could sabotage this city, there are a hundred people in the United States who would have killed Gerente in the handiest way.”

“That sounds like a man-sized undertaking to me,” said Spud.

“What?” said Colonel Gray.

“To sabotage New York City.”

“That’s just the trouble,” the Colonel told him bitterly. “It’s just about man-sized. That’s what’s keeping me on hot eggs every day. Half a dozen power stations and four main water tunnels that could be valved down in two hours control the life of this town. One single electrical station in the northern part of the state can be thrown in, and that’s all we have in case of emergency. There’s a method of cutting off the sewage disposal, too. You’d be surprised, Mr. Savage, to know how many men it would take to accomplish such a project. Perhaps I’d better say how few.”

“While you’re at it, Colonel,” Maclain suggested quietly, “why not tell him just what such sabotage would do?”

“Do! Why—” The Colonel seemed to be feeling around for some strong enough expletive. He finished by saying, “It would raise hell. That’s what it would do. Do you gentlemen play chess?”

“Dunc does,” said Spud. “He calls out his moves and I push around the pieces so he can checkmate me.”

“All right,” Colonel Gray continued. “New York City’s like a Queen. She’s so strong