Midnight by Octavus Roy Cohen (classic book list TXT) 📖

as they pulled up. He told his story briefly and concisely. Leverage inspected the young man closely, made note of his license number and the number of his taxi-cab. Then he turned to his companion, who had stood by, a silent and interested observer.

"S'pose you talk to him a bit, Carroll."

"I'm David Carroll," introduced the other man. "I'm connected with the police department. There's a few things you tell which are rather peculiar. Any objections to discussing them?"

In spite of himself, Spike felt a genial warming toward this boyish-faced man. He had heard of Carroll, and rather feared his prowess; but now that he was face to face with him, he found himself liking the chap. Not only that, but he was conscious of a sense of protection, as if Carroll were there for no other purpose than to take care of him, to see that he received a square deal.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Carroll, I'll be glad to tell you anything I know."

"You have said, Walters, that the passenger you picked up at the Union
Station was a woman."

"Yes, sir, it was a woman."

"Are you sure?"

"Why, yes, sir. I couldn't very well be mistaken. You see—o-o-oh!
You're thinking maybe it was a man in woman's clothes? Is that it, sir?"

Carroll smiled.

"What do you think?"

"That's impossible, sir. It was a woman—I'd swear to that."

"Pretty positive, eh?"

"Absolutely, sir. Besides, take the matter of the overcoat the—the—body has on. Even if what you think was so, sir—that it was a woman dressed up like a man—and if he had gotten rid of the women's clothes, where would he have gotten the clothes to put on?"

"H-m! Sounds logical. How about the suit-case you said this woman had?"

"Yonder it is—right on the front beside me, where it has been all the time."

"And you tell us that between the time you left the Union Station and the time you got here a man got into the taxicab, was killed by the woman, the woman got out, and you heard nothing?"

"Yes, sir," said Spike simply. "Just that, sir."

"Rather hard to believe, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir. That's why I called the police." Chief Leverage was shivering under the impact of the winter blasts.

"S'pose we take a look at the bird, David," he suggested, nodding toward the taxi. "That might tell us something."

Carroll nodded. The men entered the taxi, and Leverage flashed a pocket-torch in the face of the dead man. Then he uttered an exclamation of surprise not unmixed with horror.

"Good Lord!"

"You know him?" questioned Carroll easily.

"Know him? I'll say I do. Why, man, that's Roland Warren!"

"Warren! Roland Warren! Not the clubman?"

"The very same one, Carroll, an' none other. Well, I'm a sonovagun! Sa-a-ay, something surely has been started here." He swung around on the taxi-driver. "You, Walters!"

"Yes, sir?"

"You are sure the suit-case is still in front?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well"—to Carroll—"that makes it easier. It's the woman's suit-case, and if we can't find out who she is from that, we're pretty bum, eh?"

"Looks so, Erie. You're satisfied"—this to Walters—"that that is her suit-case?"

"Absolutely. It hasn't been off the front since she handed it to me at the station."

Carroll swung the suit-case to the inside of the cab. It opened readily. Leverage kept his light trained on it as Carroll dug swiftly through the contents. Finally the eyes of the two men met. Carroll's expression was one of frank amazement; Leverage's reflected sheer unbelief.

"It can't be, Carroll!"

"Yet—it is!"

"Sufferin' wildcats!" breathed Leverage. "The suit-case ain't the woman's at all! It's Warren's!"

CHAPTER III "FIND THE WOMAN"

The thing was incomprehensible, yet true. Not a single article of feminine apparel was contained in the suit-case. Not only that, but every garment therein which bore an identification mark was the property of Roland Warren, the man whose body leered at them from the floor of the taxicab.

The two detectives again inspected the suit-case. An extra suit had been neatly folded. The pockets bore the label of a leading tailor, and the name "Roland R. Warren." The tailor-made shirts and underwear bore the maker's name and Warren's initials. The handkerchiefs were Warren's. Even those articles which were without name or initials contained the same laundry-mark as those which they knew belonged to the dead man.

Carroll's face showed keen interest. This newest development had rather startled him, and made an almost irresistible appeal to his love for the bizarre in crime. The very fact that the circumstances smacked of the impossible intrigued him. He narrowed his eyes and gazed again upon the form of the dead man. Finally he nudged Leverage and designated three initials on the end of the suit-case.

"R.R.W.—Roland R. Warren!" Leverage grunted. "It's his, all right,
Carroll. But just the same there ain't no such animal."

Carroll turned to the dazed Walters.

"Understand what we've just discovered, son?" he inquired mildly.

Spike's teeth were chattering with cold.

"I don't hardly understand none of it, sir. 'Cording to what I make out, that suit-case belongs to the body and not to the woman."

"Right! Now what I want to know is how that could be."

Spike shook his head dazedly.

"Lordy, Mr. Carroll, I couldn't be knowing that."

"You're sure the woman got into your cab alone?"

"Absolutely, sir. She came through the waiting-room alone, carrying that very same suit-case—"

"You're positive it was that suit-case?"

"Yes, sir—that is, as positive as I can be. You see I was on the lookout for a fare, but wasn't expecting one, on account of the fact that this here train was an accommodation, and folks that usually come in on it take street-cars and not a taxi. Well, the minute I seen a good-lookin', well-dressed woman comin' out the door, I sort of noticed. It surprised me first off, because I asked myself what she was doing on that train."

"You thought it was peculiar?"

"Not peculiar, exactly; but sort of—of—interesting."

"I see. Go ahead!"

"Well, she was carrying that suit-case, and she seemed in a sort of a hurry. She walked straight out of the door and toward the curb, and—"

"Did she appear to be expecting some one?"

"No, sir. I noticed that particularly. Sort of thought a fine lady like her would have some one to meet her, which is how I happened to notice that she didn't seem to expect nobody. She come right to the curb and called me. I was parked along the curb on the right side of Atlantic Avenue—headin' north, that is—and I rolled up. She handed me the suit-case and told me to drive her to No. 981 East End Avenue. I stuck the suit-case right where you got it from just now; and while I ain't sayin' nothin' about what happened back yonder in the cab, Mr. Carroll, I'll bet anything in the world that that there suit-case is the same one she carried through the waitin'-room and handed to me."

"H-m! Peculiar. You drove straight out here, Walters?"

"Straight as a bee-line, sir. Frozen stiff, I was, drivin' right into the wind eastward along East End Avenue, and I had to raise the windshield a bit because there was ice on it and I couldn't see nothin'—an' my headlights ain't any too strong."

"You didn't stop anywhere?"

"No, sir. Wait a minute—I did!"

"Where?"

"At the R.L. and T. railroad crossing, sir. I didn't see nor hear no train there, and almost run into it. It was a freight, and travelin' kinder slow. I seen the lights of the caboose and stopped the car right close to the track. I wasn't stopped more'n fifteen or twenty seconds, and just as soon as the train got by, I went on."

"But you did stand still for a few seconds?"

"Yes, sir."

"If any one had got into or out of the cab right there, would you have heard them?"

"I don't know that I would. I was frozen stiff, like I told you, sir; and I wasn't thinking of nothin' like that. Besides, the train was makin' a noise; an' me not havin' my thoughts on nothin' but how cold I was, an' how far I had to drive, I mos' prob'ly wouldn't have noticed—although I might have."

"Looks to me," chimed in Leverage, "as if that's where the shift must have taken place; though it beats me—"

Carroll lighted a cigarette. Of the three men, he was the only one who seemed impervious to the cold. Leverage and the taxi-driver were both shivering as if with the ague. Carroll, an enormous overcoat snuggled about his neck, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his boyish face set with interest, seemed perfectly comfortable. As a matter of fact, the unique circumstances surrounding the murder had so interested him that he had quite forgotten the weather.

"Obviously," he said to Leverage, "it's up to us to find out whether the people at this house here expected a visitor."

"You said it, David; but I haven't any doubt it was a plant, a fake address."

"I think so, too."

"Wait here." The chief started for the dark little house. "I'll ask 'em."

Three minutes later Leverage was back.

"Said nothing doing," he imparted laconically. "No one expected—no one away who would be coming back—and then wanted to know who in thunder I was. They almost dropped dead when I told 'em. No question about it, that address was a stall. This dame had something up her sleeve, and took care to see that your taxi man was given a long drive so she'd have plenty of time to croak Warren."

"Then you think she met him by arrangement, chief?"

"Looks so to me. Only thing is, where did he get in?"

"That's what is going to interest us for some time to come, I'm afraid. And now suppose we go back to town? I'll drive my car; I'll keep behind you and Walters, here. You ride together in his cab."

Walters clambered to his seat, and succeeded, after much effort, in starting his frozen motor. Leverage bulked beside him on the suit-case of the dead man. The taxi swung cityward, and immediately behind trailed Carroll in his cozy coupe.

As Carroll drove mechanically through the night, he gave himself over to a siege of intensive thought. The case seemed fraught with unusual interest. Already it had developed an overplus of extraordinary circumstances, and Carroll had a decided premonition that the road of investigation ahead promised many surprises.

There was every reason why it should. The social prominence of the dead man, the mysterious disappearance of the handsomely dressed woman—all the facts of the case pointed to an involved trail.

If it were true that the woman had entered the taxicab alone, that the man had come in later, and that the murder had been committed by the woman in the cab before reaching the railroad crossing, the thing must undoubtedly have been prearranged to the smallest fractional detail. That being the premise, it was only a logical conclusion that persons other than the woman and the dead man were involved.

Interesting—decidedly so! But there was nothing to work on. Even the suit-case clue had vanished into thin air, so far as its value to the police was concerned.

That suit-case bothered Carroll. He believed Spike's story, and was convinced that the suit-case which they had examined out on East End Avenue was the one which the woman had carried from the train to the taxicab. There again the trail of the dead man and the vanished woman crossed; else why was she carrying his suit-case?

The journey was over before he knew it. The yellow taxi turned down the alley upon which headquarters backed, and jerked to a halt before the ominous brown-stone building. Carroll parked his car at the rear, assigned some one to stand guard over the body, and the three men, Leverage carrying the suit-case, ascended the steps to the main room and thence to the chief's private office.

The warmth of the place was welcome to all of them, and in the comforting glow of a small grate fire, which nobly assisted the struggling furnace in its task of heating the spacious structure, Spike Walters seemed to lose much of the nervousness which he had exhibited since the discovery of the body. Carroll warmed his hands at the blaze, and then addressed Leverage.

"How about this case, chief?"

"How about it?"

"You want me to butt in on it?"

"Want you? Holy sufferin' oysters!