Deadline at Dawn полностью

“There’s motive enough here for Holmes to have shot him,” she agreed. “Plenty, and to spare. But we’re not even sure that he was up here tonight. The check and all that, it’s just, what do they call that stuff?”

“Circumstantial,” he supplied grudgingly.

She nodded. “It’s circumstantial with her too. It’s circumstantial all the way around. He got a note from a woman in a night-club, saying she was coming up here. And a woman was here. But that doesn’t mean it was one and the same woman. It might have been two entirely different women. A man named Holmes gave him a check that bounced. And a man was up here tonight arguing with him and chewing on a cigar. But they also might have been two entirely different men.”

“Now you’ve split them in four.”

“There’s still just two, one for you and one for me. I’ll still take her, and you take him. And back here by quarter to six, like we said before.”

The lights went out and the dead man disappeared in the dark. They went downstairs.

They parted this time without a kiss. The pledge of constancy had been given once, it didn’t have to be renewed.

“I’ll be seeing you, Quinn,” was all she murmured, standing beside him in the shrouded doorway.

She waited for a few moments, in order not to interfere with his going. When she came out into the open in turn, he was gone from sight. As gone as though she’d never seen him. Or rather, as gone as though she would never see him again.

Only the city was there, lazily licking its chops.

It should have been easier this time than the last, but he had his doubts it was going to be. He had a name and an occupation this time — two names, first and last, and an occupation — and all he had to do was match them up with a present location. The time before all he’d had was a broken button and a characteristic — left-handedness — and he hadn’t even been sure of that. When he thought of the courage he’d had expecting to get anywhere last time — well, no wonder it had ended up in smoke. But then when he thought of how much less time he had this time, it almost seemed to make it equally futile.

There were three of them in the telephone book. He tackled it that way first. But that didn’t mean anything. That was only the one borough, Manhattan. That left out Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island. That left out the hinterland, all the way up to Croton, maybe beyond, God knows where. That left out the depths of Long Island, all the way out to Port Washington. And being a broker — he didn’t know much about them, but he thought of them as mostly living outside in the suburban belt, he didn’t know why.

One of the three was on Nineteenth, one was on Sixtieth, one was on a name-street that he’d never heard of before. He took them in their order in the book.

The operator rang and rang, and he wouldn’t let her quit. No one answers a phone quickly, at such a Godforsaken hour of the night.

Finally there was a wrench and a woman’s voice got on. It sounded all fuzzy from sleep. This was Nineteenth.

“Wa-a-al?” it said crossly.

“I want to talk to Holmes, to Arthur Holmes.”

“Oh, ye do?” the voice said with asperity. “Well, you’re just a little bit too late. You missed him by about twenty minutes.”

She was going to slam up, he could tell by the tenor of her answer. Slam up good and hard.

“Can you tell me where I can reach him?” He almost tripped over his own tongue getting it out fast enough to beat her to it.

“He’s over at the station-house. You can get him there. What do you want to be ringing me here for?”

He’d given himself up. He’d gone there of his own accord— Maybe the thing was over already. Maybe all this had been unnecessary; maybe they’d been torturing themselves half the livelong night for noth—

But he had to know. How was he to know? Maybe even this woman didn’t know. She didn’t sound like— She sounded like some kind of a maid or housekeeper around the premises.

“He’s... he’s a broker, isn’t he? A stockbroker — you know, market—”

“Hoh! Him?” Fifteen years of suppressed discontent were in it. A lifetime of smouldering rancor packed into one syllable. The receiver even at his end should have softened with the searing heat of it and slowly melted into a gummy stalactite. “He’d like to be. He’s the desk sergeant at the Tenth Precinct-house, around on Twentieth Street, and that’s all he’ll ever be, that’s all he’s got sense enough to be, and you can tell him I said so, too! And while you’re at it, tell him to quit shooting off his fat lying mouth so, in every beer-joint he puts his foot in, all to mooch a few dirty drinks. One time he’s the Governor’s private bodyguard, another time he’s with the secret service, now he’s a broker. I’m getting sick of all kinds of drunken bums calling me up at all hours of the night—”

He hung up with a vicious poke at the apparatus.