DeWitt pressed his lips together, folded his puny arms across his chest, and stared at the wall.

  “Well,” said the Inspector argumentatively, “maybe you’ll tell us how the appointment was made. Any record of it - letter, witness to a conversation?”

  “The appointment was made over the telephone this morning.”

  “You mean Wednesday morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your party called you?”

  “Yes, at my office in Wall Street. My operators keep no record of incoming calls.”

  “You knew the person who called you?”

  DeWitt remained silent.

  “And you say,” pursued Thumm, “that the only reason you attempted to sneak off the boat was because you were tired of waiting and decided to go back to West Englewood?”

  “I suppose,” muttered DeWitt, “that I can’t expect you to believe that.” The veins on Thumm’s neck swelled. “Damned right you can’t!”

  He grasped Bruno’s arm roughly and marched him to a corner. The two men conferred in heated whispers.

  Mr. Drury Lane sighed and closed his eyes.

  BBB

  At this moment Lieutenant Peabody returned from the waiting-room with six people in tow. Detectives hurried into the station-master’s office carrying cheap black handbags, five in number.

  Thumm said quickly to Peabody: “Well, what’s doing?”

  “Here are some bags like the ones you asked me to look for. And,” grinned Peabody, “their anxious owners.”

  “Anything on the Mohawk itself?”

  “No sign of a bag, Chief. And the police boat boys haven’t had any luck on the river so far, either.”

  Thumm went to the door and roared: “Hicks! Guiness! Come on up here!” The ferryman and the motorman ran upstairs and into the room, looking frightened.

  “Hicks, take a look at these bags. Any one of ’em Wood’s?”

  Hicks surveyed the luggage on the floor critically. “We-ell, might all be, I reckon. Can’t say exactly.”

  “What do you say, Guiness?”

  “It’s hard to tell. They’re all pretty much the same, Inspector.”

  “All right. Beat it.” The two men left. Thumm squatted on his hard hams and opened one of the bags; Mrs. Martha Wilson, the old scrubwoman, uttered an outraged little gasp and began to sniffle. Thumm pulled out a bundle of soiled working-clothes, a lunch-box and a paper-backed novel. Disgusted, he tackled the next bag. Henry Nixon, the salesman, began an angry protest; Thumm silenced him with a devastating look and ripped open the bag. It contained several cardboard, wood-topped trays covered with cheap jewelry and trinkets, and a pad of order blanks with the man’s name imprinted. Thumm threw the bag aside and went to the next one. It revealed a pair of dirty old trousers and some tools. Thumm looked up and saw Sam Adams, the pilot of the Mohawk, regarding him anxiously. “Yours?”

  “Yes, sir.” The Inspector opened the other two bags: one, belonging to a huge Negro dock- worker, Elias Jones, contained a change of clothing and a lunch-box; the second, three baby-diapers, a half-filled nursing-bottle, a cheap book, a packet of safety-pins, and a little blanket. They belonged to a young couple, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Corcoran; the man held a sleepy, surly infant in his arms.

  Thumm growled and the baby, after one fascinated stare, squirmed in its father’s arms, buried its tiny head on his shoulder and began to howl. Its shrill screeching filled the office; one of the detectives tittered. Thumm grinned impatiently and released the six passengers with their luggage. Drury Lane observed with amusement that someone had hurriedly thrown a few empty sacks over the dead man.

  The Inspector sent word by one of his men to release Motorman Guiness, the street-car inspector, and Peter Hicks, ferryman.

  A policeman came in and rumbled something to Lieutenant Peabody. Peabody groaned. “A lot of nothing on the river, Chief.”

  “Well, I guess Wood’s bag was thrown overboard and sank. Probably never will be found,” muttered Thumm.

  Sergeant Duffy clumped upstairs, puffing. A sheaf of scribbled papers was clutched in his red fist. “Names and addresses of all those people downstairs, Inspector.”

  Bruno hurried over and scanned the list of the ferry-occupants over Thumm’s shoulder. Both he and Thumm seemed to be looking for something. They went from sheet to sheet, searching. Then they exchanged congratulatory glances, and the District Attorney’s lips set hard.

  “Mr. DeWitt,” he snapped, “you might be interested to learn that of all the people who were in the street-car when Longstreet was done in, only you were present on the ferry tonight!”

  DeWitt blinked, looked blankly into Bruno’s face, and then, with a little shiver, lowered his head.

  “What you say, Mr. Bruno,” came Drury Lane’s cool voice in the silence, “may be true, but I daresay you will never be able to prove it.”

  “How? what?” stormed Thumm. Bruno frowned.

  “My dear Inspector,” murmured Lane, “surely you must have noticed that a number of passengers left the Mohawk as you and I approached to board it after the hue-and-cry had been raised. Have you accounted for these?”

  Thumm blew out his upper lip. “Well, we can hunt for ’em, can’t we,” he blustered, “and check up that way?”

  Drury Lane smiled. “Will you ever be so positive, Inspector, as to be able to make out a legal case? How will you ever know that you have found all of them?”

  Bruno whispered to Thumm; again DeWitt peered at Drury Lane with pitiful gratitude. Thumm shook his heavy frame, barked an order to Sergeant Duffy, and the sergeant left.

  Thumm crooked his finger at DeWitt. “Come downstairs with me.”

  The broker rose in silence and preceded the Inspector out of the door.

  Three minutes later they returned. DeWitt maintained his silence and Thumm seemed disgruntled. “Nothing doing,” he whispered to Bruno. “Not one of the passengers remembers DeWitt’s movements long enough to pin anything on him. One man seemed to remember him all by himself in a corner for a minute, but DeWitt says he kept himself pretty much out of sight anyway because of this phony appointment of his. Hell and damnation!”

  “But that’s a point in our favor, Thumm,” said Bruno. “He has no alibi for the period in which Wood’s body was being thrown off the top deck.”

  “I’d a damned sight rather some passenger testified he saw DeWitt coming down those stairs. What’ll we do with him?”

  Bruno shook his head. “Let’s go easy tonight. He’s not small pumpkins and we want to be dead sure before we take action. Put a couple of men on him. Though at that he can’t very well skip out”

  “You’re the boss.” The Inspector strode over to DeWitt, glared down into his eyes. “That’s all for tonight, DeWitt. Go on home. But keep in touch with the D.A.”

  Without a word John DeWitt rose, smoothed his coat mechanically, adjusted his felt hat on his gray head, looked around, sighed, and trudged out of the station-master’s office. Thumm signaled at once with a splayed forefinger, and two detectives hurried after the broker.

  Bruno put on his topcoat. The office buzzed with the conversation of smoking men. Thumm straddled the dead man, bent over and lifted the sacking away from the smashed skull. “You damned fool,” he muttered, “you might at least have named this guy X who killed Longstreet in that crazy letter of yours…

  Bruno walked across the room and put his hand on Thumm’s bulging biceps. “Come on, there, Thumm, you’ll go screwy. Was that upper deck photographed?”

  “The boys are doing it now. Well, Duffy?” as the sergeant panted into the room.

  Duffy shook his ponderous head. “Not a sign of those escaped passengers, Chief. Couldn’t even find out how many there were.”

  Nobody said anything for a long moment.

  “Well, blast this whole lousy easel” yelled Thumm into the humming silence. He whirled on himself like a furious dog chasing his own tail. “I’m going over to Wood’s rooming-house with some of the boys, Bruno. Going home?”

  “I may as well. I hope Schilling doesn’t miss up on that post mortem. I’ll go back with Lane.” He turned around, putting on his hat and looking for the place where Lane had been sitting.

  Astonishment spread all over his face.

  Mr. Drury Lane had disappeared.

  Scene 4

  INSPECTOR THUMM’S OFFICE

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1O, 10!15 A.M.

  A large man squirmed on a chair in Inspector Thumm’s office at Police Headquarters. He toyed with a magazine, pared his nails, chewed a cigar to shreds, looked out of the window at the monotonous murky sky - and jumped to his feet as the door opened.

  Inspector Thumm’s ugly face was as dark as the weather outside. He stalked in, hurled his hat and coat on a clothes-tree, and plumped into the swivel-chair behind his desk, grumbling to himself. He ignored the large man shuffling before him.

  The Inspector opened his mail, snapped orders into an inter-office communicator, dictated two letters to a male secretary, and only then deigned to turn the battery of his hard eyes on the uneasy man before him.

  “Well, Mosher, what have you to say for yourself? Before the day is over you may be pounding a beat again.”

  Mosher stammered: “I - I can explain the whole thing, Chief. I was - I was…

  “Talk fast, Mosher. You’re talking for your job.”

  The large man gulped. “I was on DeWitt’s tail all day yesterday, like you told me to. I hung around the Exchange Club downtown all evening, saw DeWitt come out at 10:10 and pile into a cab, telling the cabby to drive to the ferries. I got another cab and stayed on his tail. When we swung into Forty-Second at Eighth, my cab-driver got into a jam. We scraped wheels with another buggy and there was a hell of a fuss. I jumped out and got another cab and we beat it like a streak down Forty-Second, but DeWitt’s cab was lost in traffic. I knew he was heading for the ferries, so we kept on down Forty-Second and got to the terminal just as a boat pulled out. Had to wait a couple of minutes for the next boat. When we got to Weehawken, I beat it for the West Shore waiting-room, couldn’t spot DeWitt, got a time-table, and noticed that a West Englewood local had just pulled out. There wasn’t another till after midnight. What the hell could I figure? I thought sure DeWitt made that West Englewood train. So I hopped a bus and drove all the way out to West Englewood…

  “Tough break,” conceded Inspector Thumm. His bellicosity had fled. “Go on, Mosher.”

  The detective drew a long breath of relief. “At that, I beat the local in.

  So I waited around till the train pulled in, and damned if DeWitt was on it. I didn’t know what to do - thought maybe I missed him after all, or that he’d shaken me off when I was tied up in the collision. So I called headquarters to report to you, and King downstairs said you were out on a case, told me to stick where I was and see what happened. So I went out to DeWitt’s house and hung around outside. DeWitt didn’t get home till ‘way after midnight- must have been 3 A.M. or so. Rode up in a cab. And then Greenberg and O’Hallam showed up, on his tail, and they told me about the murder on the ferry, and the rest of it.”

  “All right, all right. Beat it, and take over from Greenberg and O’Hallam.” A few moments after Mosher hurried away, District Attorney Bruno strolled into Thumm’s office. His face was set in worried lines.

  He sank into a hard chair. “Well, what happened last night?”

  “Rennells of Hudson County got there just after you left the terminal. We went out to that rooming-house with his men. Not a lead, Bruno. Ordinary sort of dump. Found some more samples of his handwriting. Did you see Frick about checking the fist on the anonymous letter with Wood’s handwriting?”

  “I saw him this morning. Frick says there’s no question that the anonymous letter was written by the same hand that wrote the others. That makes it Wood beyond any doubt.”

  “Well, the samples I found in Wood’s room were the same, too, as far as I could tell. Here they are - you might give ’em to Frick just for an additional check-up. That ought to please Lane - the old coot!”

  Thumm tossed a long envelope across the desk. Bruno tucked it into his wallet.

  “We found,” continued Thumm, “a bottle of ink and some note-paper.”

  “Relatively unimportant now that the handwritings jibe,” said the District Attorney wearily. “I’ve had the samples of ink and paper checked anyway, and they’re all the same.”

  “Good enough.” Thumm’s paw riffled through a bundle of papers on his desk. “Some additional reports this morning. For instance, there’s one on Mike Collins. Operative gave him the works, told him we knew of his secret visits to DeWitt after Saturday. Collins was nasty as usual, but he admitted visiting DeWitt. Even admitted that he went after the old boy for a settlement on the dough he lost through Longstreet’s stock tip. DeWitt, he said, turned him down cold - for which I can’t blame the old boy.”

  “Feeling differently this morning about DeWitt?” sighed Bruno.

  “What gave you that idea!” snarled Thumm. “Here’s another. One of the boys has found that DeWitt used Charley Wood’s car twice since Saturday. That was Mosher - he was detailed on DeWitt last night, damn his eyes, but lost the trail when his cab smacked into somebody.”

  “Interesting. And too bad, in a way. If this man Mosher had been able to keep an eye on DeWitt all evening, things might have been different. He might actually have seen the killing.”

  “Well, right now I’m more interested in that report on DeWitt’s having used Wood’s car twice since Saturday,” growled Thumm. “Has it occurred to you how Wood might have found out who killed Longstreet? He certainly didn’t know it the night of the murder, or he would have said something. Bruno, this two-trip report is important!”

  “You mean,” said Bruno thoughtfully, “that Wood might have overheard something… Say! Did Mosher find out if DeWitt was with anybody on these trips?”

  “No such luck. He was alone.”

  “Then he might have dropped something that Wood found. Thumm, this will bear looking into.” Bruno’s face fell. “If only he’d not been so scared when he wrote that note… Well, no use crying over spilt milk. Anything else?”

  “That’s all I’ve got. Anything new on Longstreet’s office correspondence?”

  “No, but I’ve managed to discover something interesting,” replied the District Attorney. “Do you know, Thumm, there’s no trace of a Longstreet will!”

  “But I thought Cherry Browne said-”

  “Looks like some of Longstreet’s particularly smooth brand of oil. We’ve searched his office, his home, those pretty apartments he kept up, his safe- deposit box, his Club lockers, all the rest of it. There’s simply no testamentary document. Longstreet’s lawyer, that shyster Negri, says Longstreet never made a will through him. And there you are.”

  “Just rooking Lady Cherry, hey? Like the rest of ’em. Didn’t he have any relatives?”

  “No trace of kin. Thumm, old boy, the disposition of Longstreet’s virtually non-existent estate will be one fine mess.” Bruno grimaced. “He left no property, just a parcel of debts. His only asset was his share on the DeWitt & Longstreet brokerage business. Of course, if DeWitt will buy out Longstreet’s share, we’ll have something tangible…

  “Come in, Doc.”

  Dr. Schilling, cloth cap perched on his dome - which everyone suspected was bald but no one had ever proved - marched into Inspector Thumm’s office. His eyes were red-rimmed and abstracted behind their round lenses, and he was jabbing at his teeth with an unsanitary ivory pick.

  “Morning, gentlemen. Would you say Dr. Schilling has been up all night? Nein, you would not.” He sighed himself into one of Thumm’s hard chairs. “I didn’t get out to that fancy Hudson County morgue until past four.”

  “Got that autopsy report?”

  Dr. Schilling extracted a long piece of paper from his breast pocket, slapped it on the desk before Thumm, rested his head on the back of the chair, and was instantly asleep. His cherubic face relaxed into chubby folds of fat; his mouth popped open, toothpick still dangling; and without preliminary he began to snore.

  Thumm and Bruno rapidly read the neatly written report. “Nothing here/’ mumbled Thumm. “The usual boloney. Hey, Doc!” he roared, and Schilling’s round little eyes struggled open. “This isn’t a flophouse. Go home if you want to snooze. I’ll try to keep the murders down for about twenty-four hours.” Schilling groaned to his feet. “Ja, do that,” he said, and tottered toward the door. He stopped short; the door had opened in his face and he found Mr. Drury Lane smiling down at him. Dr. Schilling gawped, cackled an apology, and stood aside. Lane stepped into the room and the Medical Examiner went out, yawning mightily.

  Thumm and Bruno rose. Bruno smiled sourly. “Come in, Mr. Lane, come in. I thought you had dematerialized last night. Where under heaven did you disappear to?”

  Lane folded himself into a chair, nursing his blackthorn stick between his knees. “You must expect drama from an actor, Mr. Bruno. The first principle of effective stage procedure is the dramatic exit. Unfortunately, there was nothing sinister in my vanishment. I had seen what was necessary and there was then nothing to do but return to the sanctuary of The Hamlet… Ah, Inspector! And how do you feel this gray morning?”

  “So-so,” said Thumm without enthusiasm. “Up early yourself for an old trouper, aren’t you? I thought hams - excuse me, Mr. Lane - I thought actors slept until ’way past noon.”

  “Unkind, Inspector.” Drury Lane’s fresh clear eyes twinkled. “I am a member of the most active profession since grail-chasing went out of fashion. I was out of bed at six-thirty this morning, swam my customary two miles before breakfast, appeased my always clamorous appetite, examined a new wig Quacey made yesterday and of which he is justly proud, conferred with my director Kropotkin and my scenic designer Fritz Hof, enjoyed my voluminous mail, delved into a fascinating research on the year 1586-7 in connection with Shakespeare - and here it is ten-thirty. A fair beginning, Inspector, to an ordinary day?”