The Tragedy of Z (9 page)

“Now, Patty!”

I made for Jeremy who, I felt sure, was more malleable Clay. That he was well aware of the woman's identity and her iniquitous authority in Leeds I was certain; the poor boy was uneasy, and he made feeble attempts to change the subject.

“Well,” he said finally, avoiding my eyes, “she's what the tabs like to call a ‘vice queen.'”

“So!” I snapped. “Of all the antiquated, silly notions! Father treats me like a young lily freshly out of convent. Madame Kaiser, eh? Heavens! Why are all these men so afraid of her?”

“Well … Kenyon.” He shrugged. “He's just a cog in the machine. I suppose he's on her payroll, gets a salary for protecting her establishments.”

“And she had a hold on Rufus Cotton, too, hasn't she?”

He flushed brick-red. “Now, Pat—How the devil should I know?”

“Oh, you're impossible.” I bit my lip savagely. “That woman! Hideous. I see it all now. She and this precious Senator Fawcett. I suppose that awful creature worked hand in hand with him, too?”

“Well, that's the gossip,” said Jeremy lamely. “Come on, now, Pat; let's get out of here. This is no place for you.”

“This is no place for your grandmother!” I cried. “And you call yourself a man. All these—these things in pants. Civic pride. Hell and damnation—that's what! No. Jeremy, I'm sticking—and heaven help that old harridan if ever I get my claws into her!”

And then, out of a clear sky, the important thing happened. Until this moment, after hours of investigation, there had been not a breath of suspicion directed against the poor creature who now was to become the focal point of the Fawcett murder. Looking back on it now, I wonder what would have happened had the letter not been found. In the final analysis, I suppose, a failure to turn it up would not have made an appreciable difference. The man's connection with Senator Fawcett would inevitably have been unearthed, and what followed would probably have been merely deferred. And yet, had he had time to get away.…

A detective burst into the room, waving a sheet of creased and much-handled paper over his head. “Hey, Mr. Hume!” he shouted. “Hot stuff! I found that letter that came with the piece of wooden chest upstairs in the Senator's bedroom safe!”

Hume took the paper like a drowning man snatching at a life-preserver. We crowded around. Even Kenyon's sluggish blood—the man was a living proof of the, theory of evolution; I could see his Cambrian ancestors wallowing in the slime of the ocean bed!—seemed stirred by the find, and his red jowls flapped as he sucked in his breath.

The room became still.

Hume read slowly:

D
EAR
S
ENATOR
F
AWCETT
:

Does my little sawed-off toy remind you of anything? You did not recognize me that day in the prison carpenter shop, but I recognize you, damn your soul. What a break for little Aaron.

Listen, mug. I expect to get my release soon. The day I get out I will phone you. And that night, you
——,
you will hand me fifty juicy grand right in your own diggins, Senator. How you have come up in the world, you
——.
Or else I will hand the bulls of this town a story that
…

But you know. Shell out, or little Aaron squawks. No tricks.

A
ARON
D
OW

And as I stared at the crude penciled message, each letter painfully block-lettered—the dirty, thumbprinted, misspelled, and foully worded letter of a cheap, desperate man—I shivered, and suddenly a cold black shadow fell over that room, and I knew that it was the shadow of the prison on the hill.

Hume's mouth tightened into an implacable line, and a frigid smile lifted his nostrils.

“Now that,” he said slowly, as he tucked the paper into his wallet, “that's what I call getting somewhere. All the rest of this—this—” He stopped for lack of words. I began to feel afraid. If anything should happen.…

Go easy, Hume,” said father in a quiet tone.

“Trust me, Inspector.”

The district attorney went to the telephone. “Operator. Get me Warden Magnus at Algonquin Prison.… Warden? District Attorney Hume. Sorry to pull you out of bed at this time of night. I suppose you've heard the news? … Well, Senator Fawcett was murdered late this evening.… Yes, yes. No—Now listen, Warden. Does the name Aaron Dow mean anything to you?”

We waited in thick silence, and Hume pressed the mouthpiece to his breast, staring quietly at the fireplace without seeing it.

None of us moved for five full minutes.

Then, quickly, the district attorney's eyes sharpened. He listened, nodded, said: “We'll be right over, Warden Magnus,” and put the telephone back on the desk.

“Well?” said Kenyon hoarsely.

Hume smiled. “Magnus looked the man up. A prisoner named Aaron Dow, who had been employed in the carpentry shop, was released this afternoon!”

6. ENTER AARON DOW

Until this instant I had merely been conscious of a vague shadow somewhere above our heads, remote as a dream. Facts had rattled in my head, and their noise blurred my vision to the impending catastrophe. But now, with the suddenness of a knife-thrust from behind, my eyes cleared and I saw it all. Aaron Dow … The name itself meant nothing to me; it might have been John Smith or Knut Sorensen. I had never heard the name nor seen the man. And yet—call it psychic, or a sixth sense, or a subconscious conclusion from half-assimilated data—I knew as surely as if I possessed the power of divination that this creature, this ex-convict, this probably twisted victim of society, was due to be a far more horrible victim of the shadow which now loomed immense, real, living over all of us.

I have little recollection of small events. My brain was sick with incompletely visualized thoughts, and my heart was beating painfully against my breast. I felt helpless, and although father was beside me, a solid comforting force, I found myself dimly wishing for that grand old gentleman we had left staring wistfully after us at The Hamlet.

I know that District Attorney Hume and Rufus Cotton had another whispered conference; and that Kenyon suddenly came to life and strode about issuing orders in his disagreeable voice, as if the mere prospect of coming to grips with a defenseless wretch out of prison had vitalized him. I recall the constant telephone messages, the shouted commands, and realized with a shiver that the hounds, figuratively speaking—and perhaps literally, for all I knew!—were already on the trail of this amorphous Aaron Dow, who had been released from Algonquin Prison only to be scrabbled after a few hours later.…

I remember Jeremy Clay's powerful arm helping me into his car outside, and the enjoyment with which I inhaled the keen night-air. The district attorney sat beside Jeremy, and father and I behind. The car rushed on, and my head spun, and father was silent, while Hume exultantly contemplated the dark road ahead and Jeremy with tight lips sat at the wheel. The ride up that steep hill was a dream; everything connected with the journey was evanescent and misty.

And then, pouncing upon us out of the blackness of the landscape like a carnivorous monster in a nightmare … Algonquin Prison.

I had never believed it possible for inanimate things of stone and steel to emanate an aura of living malevolence. As a child I had shuddered over creepy stories of dark ghostly mansions, abandoned castles, and spirit-haunted churches. But in all the years of my travels, visiting the ruins of Europe, I had never encountered a mere man-made structure which possessed the power of kindling terror.… And now, as Jeremy honked his echoing klaxon before the gigantic steel gates, I suddenly knew what it meant to feel afraid of a building. Most of the prison was in deep blackness; the moon had long since disappeared, and there was a whining wind. And no human sound from behind those towering walls; here, so close to the prison, no lights were visible either. I crouched in my seat, felt for father's hand; he gripped it quickly—the old unimaginative darling!—and muttered: “What is it, Patty?” It was his honest growl that brought me back to reality; the demons fled, and I shook the mood off with an effort.

The gates suddenly crashed open, and Jeremy drove the car forward. In the blinding headlights stood several men, formidable creatures in dark uniforms and square-visored caps, gripping rifles.

“District Attorney Hume!” roared Jeremy.

“Turn them lights off, you!” snapped a coarse voice. Jeremy obeyed, and a powerful beam of light flashed on our faces, one after the other. The keepers stared at us with impersonal eyes, neither suspicious nor friendly.

“It's all right, men,” said Hume hurriedly. “I'm Hume, and these are friends of mine.”

“Warden Magnus is expectin' you, Mr. Hume,” said the same voice in a warmer tone. “But these other people—they gotta wait outside.”

“I'll vouch for them.'.' He muttered to Jeremy: “I think perhaps you and Miss Thumm had better park outside and wait for us, Clay.”

He got out of the car. Jeremy looked undecided, but the stone-faced men with the rifles evidently daunted him, for he nodded and slumped back in his seat. Father lumbered to the concrete, and I with him. Neither he nor the district attorney noticed me, I am sure, as they walked through the knot of keepers into the prison yard; and as for the keepers, they said nothing, apparently taking my presence for granted. It was not until several moments later that Hume turned to find me meekly following, and then he shrugged and strode on.

We were in a large open space—how large I could not tell in the darkness; our feet clanged hollowly on the flags. A few steps, and we passed through a massive steel door, opened quickly from within by a blue-clad keeper—and found ourselves in what was apparently the Administration Building. It was empty, silent, lifeless. Even the walls here leered and muttered to me soundless tales of horror, and these were the walls not of cells but of offices. I wondered what shrieking phantasmagoria inhabited the terrible structures all about us.

I stumbled behind father and Hume up a flight of stone steps, far in the bowels of the building. And there we stood before an unpretentious door marked, quite like a business office:
Warden Magnus.

Hume rapped, and a sharp-eyed man in civilian clothes—they were in disarray; he had evidently been roused out of his bed—opened the door. The man, a clerk or secretary of some kind—another creature of the prison, I thought; there was no smile, no warmth, no milk in the fellow—grunted and led the way through a large reception room and outer office to another door. He opened this door for us and stood stolidly by, eyeing me with cold disfavor as I passed him.

It flashed upon me, irrelevantly, that all the windows we has seen in our short journey to this room were barred with steel.

The man who rose to greet us in the neat and quiet room might have been a banker. He was dressed in sober gray, and although his necktie had been hastily knotted he was otherwise meticulous in appearance. He had the stern, grave, worn features of one who has been face to face with human wretchedness for long years, and the watchful eyes of a man who lives in the midst of constant dangers. His hair was gray and thinning, and his clothing hung a trifle loosely.

“Hello, Warden,” said the district attorney in a low voice. “Sorry to have routed you out of bed this early in the morning. But murder isn't a respector of persons, I'm afraid. Ha, ha! … Come in, Inspector; and you, too, Miss Thumm.”

Warden Magnus smiled briefly and indicated chairs. “I hadn't expected such a deputation,” he said in a mild voice.

“Well, Miss Thumm—by the way, meet Warden Magnus, Miss Thumm; and Inspector Thumm, Warden Magnus—Miss Thumm is something of a detective, Warden; and of course Inspector Thumm is an old hand at this game.”

“Yes,” said the warden. “However, no harm done.” His face grew thoughtful. “So Senator Fawcett got his. Strange how a man's fate overtakes him, eh, Hume?”

“It was coming to him, all right,” said Hume quietly.

We sat down, and father said suddenly: “By God, I've got it now! Weren't you connected with police work about fifteen years ago, Warden? Somewhere upstate here?”

Magnus stared, then smiled. “I remember now.… Yes, in Buffalo. So you're the great Thumm? Well, Inspector, I'm mighty glad to see you here. I thought you'd retired? …”

They talked on, and on. I rested the back of my aching head against the chair and closed my eyes. Algonquin Prison.… In this huge silent place about me more than a thousand—two thousand—men slept, or tried to sleep, in narrow cells which barely provided stretching space for their bruised bodies. Other men, in uniform, paced the corridors. Outside above the roofs there was sky and night-air, and not far off rustling woods. In The Hamlet a sick old man was sleeping. Beyond the steel gates sulked Jeremy Clay. In the Leeds morgue, stretched on a slab, lay the mutilated body of a man who for a little had wielded power.… Why were they waiting? I wondered. Why didn't they talk about this Aaron Dow?

I opened my eyes at the sound of a grating hinge. The sharp-eyed clerk stood in the doorway. “Father Muir's come over, Warden.”

“Send him in.”

A moment later the door closed upon a rubicund little man with silvery hair, thick-lensed glasses, myriad wrinkles, and the kindest, gentlest face I have ever seen. Its expression of worry and pain could not overshadow its innate nobility; this ancient cleric was the kind of person to whom one is instinctively drawn, and I could understand how such a saintly man might draw out of their hard shells even the most brutal convicts.

He drew his rusty black cassock about him and blinked in the light with his near-sighted eyes, clutching in his right hand a shiny little breviary, evidently in bewilderment at the presence of strangers in the warden's office at this unholy hour.

“Come in, padre, come in,” said Warden Magnus gently. “I want you to meet some people.” He introduced us.