Silent Are the Dead (12 page)

“There was a dame around,” Manahan said.

Logan picked up the butt. “She could've been here any time.”

“Len says there's a woman's prints on the desk. Looked like somebody's been searching it.”

Casey sighed but did not realize it until Logan looked at him. “What's your trouble?”

“I'm tired,” Casey said, and when Logan continued to Manahan, he realized he was again in the same spot he had been with Lyda Hoyt the night before.

Ever since Logan had arrived he had been thinking about the girl whose picture he took. One reason he turned in more exclusive pictures than any other camera in town was because the police knew he played ball and trusted him because of this. They didn't have to worry about him. They knew he was out to get pictures and not to solve cases. When he had information he passed it along for what it was worth.

This co-operation paid dividends, and yet there were drawbacks; times when he would rather not have had any information whatsoever. It was like this now. He wanted to help Logan and yet he was deliberately withholding vital information. He had done this with Lyda Hoyt's picture last night, and now he found himself doing the same thing again. The reason was clear, but he didn't like to be in the middle this way. Experience had shown him that innocent people became involved in murders and that once involved it was not always easy to extricate themselves without a lot of unpleasant publicity.

Logan was a cop. It was his job to pry into every bit of information that came his way. If he knew about Lyda Hoyt he'd have to question her; perhaps the D.A. would. It was the same with this girl. She knew something and Casey wanted to find out what it was. To tell Logan, to show the picture, would mean that the police would run her down. Some of the newspapers might get it. If she was a material witness, that was one thing, and she'd have to take the publicity that followed. But if she wasn't, if she was just some friend of Austin's—

Casey made up his mind. Right or wrong he knew what he was going to do. Something about that girl impressed him. He liked her looks, the way she held herself. She wasn't any tramp. He'd find out about her first. Then, if he had to, he'd go to Logan. Logan would steam all over again, but in the end it would be all right so long as the information helped the case.

“Okay, Flash.” Logan was rising and moving toward the door. “We'll pick up Garrison but—well, watch yourself until we do.”

When Casey got back to the
Express
, he found Wade and O'Hearn talking about Austin and he sat down and gave them a brief account of what had happened.

Casey ducked most of the questions they asked, pleading ignorance and telling them nothing about his own theory as to the motive behind the murder. He wanted to develop the picture of the girl he had surprised in Austin's apartment, but he did not want an audience and he was glad when an assignment came for O'Hearn. To get rid of Wade, he gave him the second film holder he had exposed in the apartment, keeping the one with the picture of the girl.

Wade disappeared in the darkroom corridor and Casey went over to Austin's desk. He sat down, his brow creased and his stare remote. Finally he tried the desk drawers and found them locked; then something—stubbornness, an unwillingness to give up his search while any hope remained—drove him out of the studio and down the hall to the engraving-room where he borrowed a screwdriver.

For a moment as he sat down at Austin's desk again, he hesitated. He told himself this was a crazy idea, but he couldn't convince himself. There was still a chance that Austin had returned to the studio last night and left the film holder Casey had entrusted to him in the desk. He wedged the screwdriver in between the lock and the frame of the desk and began to pry at the drawer. Seconds later he had it open.

He glanced through it, looking for a film holder but finding only papers and bills and a few prints that were of no importance. He tried another drawer, released now by the forcing of the lock. He found some notebooks and stationery. In the deep drawer on the right, he found a steel box and took it out. It was perhaps a foot long, six inches wide, and three inches deep, and fashioned of heavy, enameled steel. Putting it aside until he had searched the remaining drawers, he came back to it, turning it over in his hand and thinking hard.

This was the sort of thing a person would keep his private papers in—insurance policies, bonds, stock certificates—if he had any.
He'd never put that film holder in there
, Casey thought.
Why should he?

At that he experimented with the screwdriver for a few seconds, not trying very hard, feeling pretty guilty about what he was doing. It was with some relief that he decided the steel was too tough to be forced by a screwdriver, and he had put the box back in the lower drawer when the telephone jangled on his desk. He crossed to it, answered it.

“Yes. This is Casey.… What? Yes … yes, sure. That's great. I'll be right over.”

He slammed the telephone down, said, “Hah!” softly, and the worry unfolded temporarily from his brow. He looked round for his coat, grabbed it, and clamped on his hat; then he strode down the darkroom corridor, thrust his head around the corner, and yelled through the blackness of the developing cubicles. “Tom. Just got a call from the hospital. Finell's come around. He wants to see me.”

“Hey, wait!” Wade called.

“Wait, hell!” Casey said. “Put those prints on my desk. I'll probably be back in a half-hour.”

Chapter Twelve:
PICTURES, GOOD AND BAD

F
INELL WAS PROPPED UP
on a pillow, his face strangely pale under the carroty mop of his hair that jutted out from the two-inch bandage on his head. His grin was quick and broad when Casey stamped into the room and stopped beside the bed.

“Hyuh, boy.”

“Hy, Flash.”

“How's the head?”

“Okay. I think I could get up if they'd let me.”

“You're crazy.” Casey pulled up a chair and sat down, fanning out his coat. “Can you smoke?”

Finell said he could and Casey lit a cigarette for him.

“What happened? Who slugged you?”

“I don't know, Flash.” Finell's grin fled. “I was just coming in—”

“Didn't you see the guy?”

“Yes, but—”

“Okay,” Casey said. “You tell it.”

“It was about twelve-fifteen, I think. Blaine sent me out on a fire and a fireman got hurt and I stuck around, that's why I was so late. I came in and saw somebody bending over your desk.”

“Oh.”

Finell glanced at him, hesitated, then went on. “For just a second I thought it was you and then I knew it wasn't because he wasn't big enough. I may have said something. I'm not sure.” Finell spread his hands. “That's all. The guy turned and then, wham! Out went the lights.”

“In your head?”

“Yeah. There must have been another one. I didn't see him.”

“The guy at the desk didn't hit you?”

“No. I was looking at him when it happened.”

Casey got up, walked over to the door, came back and sat down. “We found you in the printing-room about fifteen or twenty minutes later, I guess. They must have dragged you in there out of the way. What did the guy look like? The one at the desk?”

Finell glanced out the window. “I only got a glimpse of him when the ceiling fell on me but I think he was thin, about medium height. I think he had a dark hat on.” Finell looked distressed. “I can't seem to remember anything else.”

“Did he have a funny-looking nose?”

Finell snapped his fingers. “Yes. Yes, sure he did.”

“Like what?”

“Kinda flat at the bottom and”—he paused and put his finger to the bridge of his nose—“up here it looked like a piece had been hammered out of it.”

“You'll do,” Casey said. “You got the eye, boy.” And then the soberness was on him again and he said, “I think we got him—and his pal, too.”

Finell wanted details but Casey didn't want to tire him unnecessarily and merely said the police had picked them up. He didn't know what they were doing in the studio. A couple of prowlers probably, he said, but all the time things were adding up in his mind and he knew that the gunmen tied in with the rest of his theory. They had stolen his plate case, brought it back when the picture they wanted was missing. Finell had walked in on them while they were forcing open his desk. They'd found the picture of Lyda and taken it.

“Did you see Perry Austin last night?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Casey sat up. “When?”

“Oh—about nine-thirty. He was there about a half-hour or so.”

Casey digested this. He took a breath. He asked the next question quietly, as though he was afraid of it. “Did he say anything about a film holder of mine?”

Finell grinned. “Sure.”

Casey waited, holding his breath.

“He gave it to me,” Finell said.

“What?”

Finell looked startled. “He told me I was to hang on to it. He told me I shouldn't leave it around.”

Casey swallowed. He tried to keep his voice steady and not get Finell all upset. “What'd you do with it?”

“Put it in my pocket.”

“What pocket?”

“Of my topcoat. That one.” He nodded toward the gray raglan hanging on the rack in the corner. “He told me not to leave it—the film holder, I mean—so when I went out—”

Casey got up, overturning the chair. He went over to the topcoat and slid his hands along the pockets; then something snapped inside his chest and all the tension went out along with his breath and he had the film holder, looking at it curiously for a moment as though he still did not believe it. He came back and sat down, grinning a little now with relief, wondering how he was going to explain things to Finell.

Finell was watching him closely. He looked worried. “What's wrong, Flash? Did I pull a boner?”

“Anything else you could have done with it would have been a boner,” Casey said. “What you did was perfect.” He felt the cigarette burn his fingers and put it in an ash tray. He was still a little incredulous as he looked down at the film holder; he tucked it in his pocket.

“Look,” he said. “I got a lot of gabbing to do. You all right? If you don't feel so hot I'll come back.”

“No.” Finell's gaze was bright with interest. “I'm swell, Flash. Go ahead.”

So Casey told him, taking his time, keeping his voice level, going back to the murder of Stanford Endicott and explaining what had happened. In the end he also told him what was on the film holder.

“It's under your hat,” he said. “And maybe I shouldn't tell you at all. But you got slugged because of that picture and I guess you have a right to know.”

Finell listened, his gaze intent, his lips parted until Casey started to tell him about Perry Austin and what had happened that morning; then, gradually, the paleness crept back into his face and his jaw began to sag. “Oh,” he said finally. “Jeeze, poor Perry. When those two hoods couldn't find the film they went after him, knowing, somehow, that he'd been up to Endicott's with you. They're the ones, aren't they? Those two?”

Casey said he didn't know. “We won't know, either, until an autopsy shows when Austin died. If it wasn't them it was the guy that hired them.” He leaned back, watching Finell, giving him a chance to get used to the idea and steady down.

“Tell me about last night,” he said presently. “Just what happened from the time Perry came in until you got slugged?”

“Well, like I said, he came in and gave me the film holder and told me to be sure I gave it to you. Then he said he had some copying to do and not to bother him.”

“Copying?” Casey frowned, knowing what Finell meant and thinking about the apparatus on the table at one end of the corridor next to the printing-room. It was simply a camera and an easel so set up that any print or document could be readily photographed and reproduced again on another negative. The camera could be moved back and forth horizontally and the subject to be copied was pinned to the easel or stuck there with rubber cement. Casey scratched his head. “What was he copying? You know?”

Finell said he didn't.

“Did he develop the negatives he took?”

“I think so. He developed something, anyway.”

“He didn't print anything? Then what did he do with the negatives?”

“I don't know, Flash.” Finell grinned sheepishly. “I wasn't paying any attention. I was reading the
Racing Form.
Along about ten I went out to the can and kidded around with Murphy and when I got back to the studio, Austin was just coming out.”

Casey swallowed his disappointment and said, “Okay. Then what?”

“I sat around till I got the call from Blaine to cover the fire.”

“And you took the holder with you,” Casey said, realizing that Finell must have left shortly before he arrived.

“Well, sure. It was early. I didn't expect to be gone more'n an hour, and Austin said not to leave it around, and then that fireman got hurt. I phoned in and Blaine said to stick with it. That's why I didn't get back until late.”

Casey got up, shaking his head. “That's the breaks for you,” he grumbled. “If you'd left twenty minutes later I'd've seen you. If the fireman hadn't got hurt I'd've seen you.” He pushed the chair out of the way, snorting disgustedly. “And all the time you had the lousy holder in your pocket. Hell, I even took the coat off you and used it for a pillow. I told Wade to bring it out here so you'd have it. Well—” He put a grin on and looked down at Finell. “You did all right,” he said.

Casey took his time with the four pieces of cut film he unloaded from the two holders in the darkroom cubicle. Two of those pieces of film didn't matter—one was of Endicott and one was of Austin—but the other two—