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

hall. “If I don’t hear something about my daughter by tomorrow, Captain, I’m going to report her kidnaping officially to the police and the F. B. I.”

“If I don’t know where she is by tomorrow, I advise you to do so,” the Captain told him, speaking very softly, “but whether you know it or not, you’re already in touch with the F. B. I.”

CHAPTER XXI

1

CAPPO PUSHED the swift Packard to the limit of safety on the trip to New York, utilizing every trick of a splendid driver’s skill. Once he thought that a sedan with New Hampshire plates was clinging too close to him on the Merritt Parkway. Losing inquisitive sedans was a joyous game to Cappo. The Packard flashed right on an exit to New Canaan, twisted around two more turns at nauseating speed, and stopped on a bridge above the highway.

Cappo’s dark face was wrinkled with lines of amusement as he watched the New Hampshire car pass below him, hesitate, and finally take the New Canaan turn. The Packard streaked off the bridge, made two more turns, and was doing better than eighty when it rolled back onto the Parkway. Cappo ran five miles passing everything until a glimpse of a State Police car slowed him down to a legal fifty. At seven-thirty, two hours and forty-five minutes from Hartford, he placed Maclain’s recorded message safely in Spud’s hands.

It was characteristic of Duncan Maclain’s partner, Spud Savage, to think that an hour’s delay in carrying out the Captain’s suggestions was an hour’s wasted time. He took the wax cylinder into the Captain’s office, put it on the transmitter, and flicked the switch connecting the Capehart with the Ediphone.

Maclain’s short, clear-cut message filled the room.

There was a battling light, almost feline, in Spud’s unusual yellow eyes when he called Cappo in from the hall.

“When the Captain gave you this, Cappo, did he say why he didn’t phone?”

“Nossah, Mr. Savage. He’s acting mighty careful like.” Cappo related what had happened at The Crags. His eyes widened to show the whites in a frightening expanse as he told of the murdered girl.

“Hell’s fire!” Spud snapped out when the Negro concluded. “He probably suspects that someone’s tapped the phone. I’m going to take a look at the Tanner Building right now. Come on, Cappo.”

He slid his arms into a heavy overcoat and said a trifle morosely, “I wish now that Rena was here. She might handle a cosmetic job better than I can. Is there a gun in the car?”

“A twenty-five automatic, but ’tain’t much bigger than so.” Cappo measured the size by extending thumb and forefinger.

“That’s big enough. I probably won’t need it.”

“Ain’t no telling, Mr. Savage,” said Cappo.

Spud located the venomous little Colt once he was in the car. He slid out the clip, tested the loading, and replaced the clip again. Duncan Maclain was a man given to expressive understatement. Spud didn’t even want to look at a building unarmed if the Captain termed that building “dangerous as hell!”

Yet the atmosphere of New York City was deceptively lulling. As the Packard crossed the junction of Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue at Seventy-second Street, Spud looked out of the window at the orderly crowd of people and indulged in a sheepish grin. The traffic officer, an old-timer on Seventy-second Street, recognized Maclain’s car and waved them through the converging traffic stream. Reflecting on his mission, Spud was hard put to waive a feeling of participating in an opéra bouffe where he had the part of a clown to play.

New York City was part of the United States; the United States, its institutions, traditions, and all they stood for formed a deity to Spud. The deity was mounted on a concrete base of integrity, set apart from other countries of the world and their futile bickerings. To him, as to most Americans, its ramparts were unassailable, its defenses ineluctable, tried and true. He could understand the internal seething and boiling of politics and crime, but the belief that outsiders might strike against his country was a shade beyond his comprehension. That he willingly, without thought or question, would start on a quest which he considered a trifle childish was a high tribute to his confidence in Duncan Maclain.

East Fifty-seventh Street was comparatively deserted when Spud rapped on the window and Cappo pulled into the curb. The Tanner Building was across the street, less than half a block away. The neighborhood was devoted largely to art and antique dealers. Most of the shops showed darkened windows on the street-level floor. Farther east, beyond the elevated, the lighted canopy of the Sutton Theater cut a yellow box of white, making the block where the Packard was parked seemingly dark.

“You wait here, and keep your motor running,” Spud told Cappo. “The building’s probably closed, but I may be able to get in the lobby and see what names are on the directory. You say the Captain mentioned something about being kidnaped, Cappo, when he asked you to throw that letter away?”

“It sounded that way to me, Mr. Savage, but he jokes an almighty lot.”

“I don’t think he was joking then,” Spud remarked a bit irritably. “The darn fool’s up to something which he knows I wouldn’t approve of. Otherwise he’d have sent me more information. As it is, he’s keeping things to himself and telling me nothing except what he wants me to know.”

“Yessah, that’s certainly a way with the Captain,” agreed Cappo.

Spud took a cigarette from his pocket and put it back again. A man in the uniform of a Protective Agency was coming down the street trying the shops from door to door. Spud sat back in the limousine until the watchman went by with no more than a cursory glance at the car. He got out when the man was several doors beyond, turned up his coat collar, and lowered his head against the sharp wind sweeping down Fifty-seventh Street from the East River. The traffic light turned red, and Spud cut