The Player on the Other Side (14 page)

15

Attack Resumed

He had written:

… place yourself at the seventh pillar counting from the downtown end of the station, keeping the pillar between yourself and the downtown entrance.

Be there promptly at 5:20 P.M.

At 5:30 begin to watch carefully the crowds coming into the station.

At approximately 5:42 you will see her enter the station. She will probably stop between the fourth and fifth pillars, facing the express tracks. She will doubtless remove a newspaper from under her arm, refold it, and begin to read: if so, so much the better. If not, you will have to be a little more careful.

When you are sure she will not observe you, stroll to her location and stand near her and behind her.

At 5:49 the uptown express is due into the station. As this train comes in, while it is still traveling at speed, and at the last possible second, you will push her from the platform into its path.

Do not attempt to run. You will find a great press of people toward the spot. Work your way backward until the crowd thins out. There will be a local train waiting with its doors open. Step inside and sit down, and remain there quietly until the train moves off. If by any chance there is no train, wait for one.

You may ignore the presence of guards or police. This is my plan and I shall protect you.

I am with you wherever you go, whatever you do. I know where you are at all times; and I know what you say, and what you see, and what you think. I know, for example, that you know who I am and that you will not bring yourself to speak my name.

Be sure, as always, to dispose of this as you have my other letters.

I know I need no longer advise you as to your conduct during the interesting days and nights ahead. This formula will guard the rightness of all you do, and will protect you against your enemies and mine: Be yourself, be obedient to me, trust in me.

For I possess all powers, My Dear Walt, and I am everywhere.

Y

16

Further Development

It was, Ellery was to reflect later, in the deepest sense kaleidoscopic. ‘Miss York's been
killed!
' — mere syllables, shaped disturbances of the atmosphere; but in their precise time and place they imparted a rhythmic shifting and reassembling of people and events that was sheerly ever changing and ever beautiful. Bit met bit slowly, perfectly, mingling, passing, permuting, the final pattern unrealized until the very end. And yet each shifting bit was detached and distinct, in its own substance unchanging and unchanged — and had been so (and this was the tantalizing worst of it) from the beginning, seeable and knowable by the discerning eye.

But there had been no discerning eye …

‘Miss York's been
killed!
'

The motion starting the kaleidoscope on its course, imparted by the four words in Tom Archer's gulp-and-gasp, was at first explosive. It was the instant flight of Ann Drew, bounding across the street, leaping to and through the door of the southeast castle, flying past the housekeeper and up the stairs, to rock Myra York in her soft-not soft young arms and weep at last.

It was Ellery, turning at a sudden hail from the street, wondering with some lesser part of his mind how the car had got there without his hearing it; running to it, exchanging a word with its driver, then calling to young Tom, who, after delivering his fulminating message, had stood drawn and shaken: ‘Mr. Archer! Go home, please, and wait for the police!' — his voice an uncharacteristic whiplash.

It was Percival York, paying off a taxi at his door, flanked suddenly by two tall men in topcoats, one of whom said, ‘Get inside, please Mr. York,' with an iron politeness whose urgency communicated itself to Percival's feet.

It was Inspector Queen, in the Queen apartment, banging down the telephone and to his own surprise uttering a word which, when he had heard it from the lips of a raided madam, had shocked even him; then running out clutching hat and coat to meet the squad car he could already hear wailing toward him.

And it was Walt, forty minutes later, blinking at the tall form of the patrolman who opened the door when Walt touched Emily York's bell.

‘Who are you?'

‘Walt,' said Walt. ‘Miss Emily sent me for these.' He extended a package. Inspector Queen charged out, looking wild. ‘Package for Emily York,' said the officer with unvoiced meaning.

‘It's the handyman. What is that, Walt?'

‘Miss Emily sent me uptown for it.'

The Inspector took the package, opened it. ‘Map pins?'

‘A special kind I get her on East Eighty-seventh Street.'

‘You just got back from getting these?'

Walt nodded.

‘Do you know what's happened to Miss Emily?'

‘No,' said Walt.

‘She was killed by a subway train.' When the handyman simply stood there, expressionless, the Inspector decided to interpret it as shock, and some of the harshness went out of his voice. ‘I'll keep these,' he said. ‘You go to your room now and wait for someone to come question you.' He looked again at the man. ‘You understand that?'

‘Yes,' said Walt.

‘Go with him,' the Inspector said to the officer. ‘Then come back here.'

The old man stood glumly in the lighted doorway, watching the comings and goings of police cars, marked and unmarked. Soon — damn it all, there, now! — the press. And tomorrow Joe Dokes and his missus, shuffling through York Square and gawking at the four York castles. Why did people do it? Why this herd curiosity about a street, a house, windows, doors? He was a public servant, the Inspector mused, but there were times when he would enjoy loading all rubbernecks onto barges and towing them out to sea to be served, with ceremony, to sharks.

And speaking of sharks. Sure, the press made approving noises about Hero Cop Slays Maniac. But the noises they made over some human fault in a police officer were Niagara's roar by contrast. Oh well, it wasn't a beef he articulated much any more; it was rather a daily low bitter-tasting rumble at the back of his throat. Once you learned that to the press only the noise mattered, you could almost take it.

But you didn't have to like it, and that tall figure hurrying across the park with the seeming-to-lounge distance-eating stride, that would be one of them. By God, just this once he'd blast. Get the newshounds off his tail right at the start and keep 'em off till this confounded thing began to make sense … Sure enough the fellow was coming straight for Emily York's … sure enough, thought the Inspector as he filled his lungs, he was going to let this one have it! But it said, ‘Dad?'

The old man let out the lungful, tipped his head down and sidewise, and glanced at his son. The son stopped at the foot of Emily York's steps. ‘Seems I was wrong,' Ellery said.

‘Don't start your breast-beating,' snapped the Inspector. ‘Come on in,' and he went back into Emily York's bleak foyer, leaving the door open for the penitent.

‘You know something?' Ellery muttered when he was inside. ‘Six families and nine homicidal lunatics could live in this place and hide eighty-seven kid printing sets, and who'd know?' For, along the hallway leading back to the kitchen, every door but one was shut, every transom dark. ‘Poor Emily.'

‘Poor anybody's murder,' said his father. ‘And especially this one, because it hurts more people more badly than even what that subway train did to Emily York.'

‘You're still thinking of Miss Sullivan.'

‘All right, so I'm still thinking of Miss Sullivan!' Inspector Queen snarled. ‘Yes, and of all the hundreds of deadbeats who'd've had a catch of breath and maybe a new start, too! And now won't get either.'

They fell silent.

Finally Ellery said, ‘You do call it murder? Positively?'

‘I do, and I will. Even when my nose is rubbed in the fact that we don't stand a monkey's chance of proving it.' The Inspector shrugged. ‘Well, at least it clears
her
.'

‘Does it?'

The old man stared. ‘What do you mean does it? Emily's dead, remember?'

‘She still might have murdered
Robert
. So
her
murder might be an answer of sorts after all.'

‘You're not serious!'

‘And you're so right,' Ellery said gloomily. ‘I'm not. About the only fact that stands out is that Emily's death diverts her hunk of the millions from that drawing-board village to the York estate — and to whoever survives. What do you have there, Dad?'

‘Where? Oh, this. Map pins.' The old man opened the box. ‘Made in West Germany. Sold by a specialty shop in Yorkville.' He squinted at the sales slip. ‘Bought by Walt. He just got back from there, didn't even know Emily York was dead. When I told him, he was speechless. But with Walt you never know. From all the expression on his face, I might have told him the time.'

‘Dad,' said Ellery. ‘Just how dumb is Walt?'

‘How dumb is a robot? Ask me something answerable.'

They were walking up the hall now, and Ellery said, ‘Where are we going?'

‘Emily's room. Once a maid's room. Just off the kitchen.'

The Inspector paused outside the one open doorway. Ellery went past him into the room and looked around.

There was an aged roll-top desk with a chair as hard-seated and straight-backed as its late owner. The most prominent thing in the crowded little room was a free-standing clothespress of Georgian vintage, a monstrous piece with immense overhanging gingerbread eaves and a coat of dusty yellow calcimine. What passed for a bed was a narrow slab of three-fourth-inch plywood standing on six gas-pipe legs with crutch ferrules for feet, its mattress a lumpy affair covered in duck and no more than three inches thick. Except for another, smaller chair, that was all.

‘Brother,' said Ellery with a shiver.

‘Well, all she did was sleep here,' grunted the Inspector, ‘and do her paperwork.'

‘She slept here and worked here and at the settlement house. Where in God's name did she
live
?'

‘This was what she called living.'

‘All this self-denial for a dream that never came true.' Ellery popped a cigarette between his lips savagely. ‘But about Walt,' he mumbled as he lit it. ‘Where is he now, Dad?'

‘I sent him to his room with a man to make sure he gets there. Forget Walt, Ellery. He couldn't be behind a thing as carefully planned as this.' The Inspector tossed the package of map pins onto the alleged bed.

They both turned at a curious patois of noises. A policeman appeared from the front hall.

‘Inspector Queen, he insists —'

‘First things first,' the Inspector said. ‘What about the handyman?'

‘The dummy? I got him tucked in okay. But then on the way back —'

The officer was overridden, and from the sound of it and his growl of protest, thrust aside; for there appeared in the doorway the livid specter that was Percival York, eyewhites saffron with rage, tall forehead scored with it. ‘There you are, Queen! I
demand
to know the meaning of this. Arrested on my own
doorstep
. Get
no
answers to questions. Someone said my cousin Emily's been killed.
I will not be persecuted!
Your job is to
protect
me. I could be in danger. I could be
next
!' The two plainclothesmen were in the foyer, waiting.

The Inspector spoke very, very quietly, and Ellery experienced the almost sphincteral reaction of attentive awe which this special quietness had brought about in him from childhood.

Softly, then, the Inspector asked, ‘
Have
you been arrested, Mr. York?'

Nothing could be funny in the presence of that voice; otherwise Percival York's response would have been ludicrous. It began with one syllable of blustering shout; and with each succeeding one it diminished in volume dwindling down the emotional scale from fury to anger to irritation to perplexity to caution to finally frightened silence. ‘Well,' he shouted; then, ‘What the hell do you call it when, I, I, I …' Then he swallowed, and stood sweating.

The old man looked him up and down. ‘Where have you been during the last hour or so, Mr. York?'

‘Out,' said York sullenly, but under that frosty lens his defiance was childish and feeble. The Inspector certainly did not acknowledge it; he waited as if the man had merely coughed. Percival York then said, ‘I was with somebody.'

‘Who?'

In a repellent combination of wheedle-and-wink, Percival York said, ‘Now, now, old boy, we wouldn't involve the name of a lady, would we?'

‘All right, Mr. York,' the soft voice said, ‘that means we can get right on down to Centre Street. If I have to check the alibis of eleven million people to break this case, I'm prepared to do it. But I'm starting at the top, Mr. York, and that means I'll spend ten weeks or ten years, if necessary, on you.'

‘Now see here —'

‘Now
you
see here!' and the too-quiet voice at last crackled like heavy glass yielding to heat shock. ‘Your cousin Emily York is dead. You are one of two people who stand to gain the most by it. It's as simple as that. You'd better have one brass-bound beaut of an alibi, Mr. York! Are you ready to answer questions?'

Percival York was pale. ‘But I didn't —'

‘I'm not asking you that,' snarled the old man. ‘I asked you who you were with.'

‘Whom,' murmured Ellery, and bit his tongue.

‘Well …' Percival York stood stripped — of anger, arrogance, petulance, all pretense. What was left was ugliest self-concern. ‘All right.'

‘Thank you,' said Inspector Queen. ‘No, not now.' He turned to the policeman. ‘You take Mr. York home. He's to stay there till we come for his statement. And he's going to think his alibi over until it's just exactly right — aren't you, Mr. York?'