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

“You’re murdering the Captain and an innocent girl,” Cameron declared metallically, and hung up the phone.

He swung around in the chair to look straight down the long dark tube of Patrolman Heeney’s Police Positive. The officer’s round moon face hung like a crimson pie over the sight as he lumbered through the office door.

“Put up your hands,” he commanded thunderously.

“Don’t shoot,” said Cameron pleadingly. “If you miss me, the bullet will hit the desk and there’s a baby in the drawer.”

“Git up,” ordered Heeney, “and tell me how you got in here.”

“Skeleton key,” said Cameron. “How did you?”

“With a passkey,” the policeman explained, slightly confused. “What are you doing with a baby in that drawer?”

“It’s my little boy,” said Cameron. “I brought him in under my coat—I thought his mother was here.”

The officer’s guileless blue eyes narrowed disapprovingly.

“You’re a crook,” he said with dawning comprehension. “I’ve seen your face someplace before.”

“It’s posted from coast to coast,” Cameron told him. “Do you ever go into the post office?”

“Yes,” said Heeney, “to mail letters. What else would I be going in there for?”

“I think you’re impersonating an officer,” Cameron said. “Sit down in that chair.”

“Is it you that’s givin’ orders,” Heeney demanded, “or is it me?”

“It’s me,” said Cameron. “What do you mean by breaking into my apartment? I’m Duncan Maclain.”

“He’s blind,” said Heeney.

“So’m I,” said Cameron. “Only you can’t tell it without my glasses on. Sit down in that chair!”

The policeman felt that his head was whirling giddily. “I know you now. Why aren’t you in jail? You’re a murderer.”

“I am not,” Cameron denied. “The fellow that accused me of killing him appeared in court and they set me free. Sit down in that chair. You have a gun, and I’m very busy.”

The power of suggestion became too much for the overwrought officer, and he sat down gingerly on the edge of the red leather chair.

“Now lean back,” said Cameron. “You can keep me covered with your gun; but there’s something I want to show you before we go.”

“Don’t try anything,” Heeney advised.

“Look.” Cameron held both his hands out in front of him and wiggled them. “All I want to do is push a button and get the time. If the time doesn’t come, you can shoot me.”

He pressed the button marked “Time Connection” on the desk at his side.

Beside Officer Heeney, from a loud-speaker in the wall, a woman’s voice said, “When you hear the signal, the time will be exactly three twenty-three.”

Heeney fidgeted uncomfortably, but kept his eyes on Cameron. “ ’Tis quite a trick,” he mumbled, “but you’ll not be after trickin’ me!”

“Now listen,” said Cameron. “You know that Duncan Maclain’s blind. He’s a private detective, and he has to have means of protecting himself. Did you ever hear of an electric eye?”

“Yes,” said Heeney. “And what’s that to do with me?”

“Nothing,” said Cameron, “except it’s going to keep you sitting in that chair. When I pushed that time-connection button, I turned another one on.”

The officer tensed.

“Don’t move,” Cameron warned. “There’s a gun set in the upholstery in the back of that chair. If you try to get up you’ll break the ray of an electric eye which goes from arm to arm. In other words, officer, you’ll be shot in the back.”

“I’ll get you first,” said Heeney.

“You’d better keep your hands down, too,” Cameron told him. “You’ll shoot yourself in the back if you try to raise your gun.”

He got up and picked his soft felt hat from off the desk.

“If you don’t believe me, you can try it,” he said, “and the blood won’t be on me. Clever chap, that Duncan Maclain.”

He started toward the door. “I wouldn’t try to wipe the sweat off my forehead either,” he warned Heeney commiseratingly. “I’ll write a letter to the Commissioner about you. I’m tired of having you fellows stop me at every street corner to try to put me back in jail. Hasta la vista—or, as the Swedes say, au revoir.”

He walked from the room and closed the door, descended rapidly down a service stairway to the basement, and let himself out into an alley by way of the delivery entrance. At the corner of Seventy-second and Broadway, he located an all-night restaurant with a phone booth where he dialed Spring 7-3100, and finally got Inspector Davis on the phone.

“This is the Shadow,” he told Davis. “I just wanted to let you know that one of your minions named Heeney wants to see you up in Duncan Maclain’s office without delay.”

“What’s he doing up there?” the Inspector sputtered furiously.

“He’s sitting in a chair,” said Cameron, “and he thinks he’s being kept there by the Seeing Eye.”

Five minutes later, he was smashing every speed limit on his way back to Hartford in the convertible coupé.

CHAPTER XXIII

1

DUNCAN MACLAIN manipulated his hands vigorously together in an attempt to restore circulation. Spasmodic cramps had seized his shoulder muscles and were traveling downward. He could feel small excruciating knots bunching up along each arm. He spread his elbows outward, twisting and writhing to get his manacled wrists up farther behind him. There was one position where the tightly locked handcuffs seemed looser, where the hampered blood could flow in his veins a little more freely.

The air about him was damp, penetratingly cold. Its smell, with an overlying trace of metal and oil, was reminiscent of fungus and mush-rooms. The Captain breathed it cautiously, keeping his lips tightly closed against the nauseating taste of adhesive tape which gagged him formidably.

Time had drifted by in a dark overpowering wave. He judged it better than most people. Years of sightlessness had instilled in his mind a faultless chronometer which ticked off pulse and heartbeats, dividing them into seconds, minutes, and hours with an almost fatalistic regularity.

His feet and legs were tightly bound. He lay face down, disdaining muscular struggle against obvious impossibility. Limp and inert as though anesthetized, he husbanded his strength, waiting for a moment when someone would