William McGivern - The Seven File

“Let’s take a break,” Crowley said. He wished there was some way he could ease Bradley’s fears. But he had no hope to offer yet, and he couldn’t lie to him. “I’ve got to report to the Inspector,” he said, rising. “Just relax for a while.”

In the study between the living room and dining room Crowley had installed an ultra-high frequency receiver and transmitter which put him in round-the-clock communication with FBI headquarters on lower Broadway. He had arrived at the Bradleys’ the night before, entering through the trapdoor in the roof of their building and since then had been in hourly contact with Inspector West. He had dictated the original ransom demand to West, and West had relayed it to Washington where its peculiarities of construction and spelling would be checked for similarities with every note in the vast extortion files. Crowley had learned nothing significant about the baby’s nurse, Kate Reilly: Dick Bradley and his father, Oliphant Bradley, both were convinced that she wasn’t involved in the kidnaping. She was loyal, intelligent, devoted to the child — they repeated all this several times, but they couldn’t offer any explanation of why she had packed up and left. He hadn’t met Mrs. Bradley yet; she had taken a sedative and was asleep when he arrived. Now, at eight-thirty in the morning, she was still in bed.

So far Crowley had followed routine. The ransom money was under lock and key in the guest-room closet, and he had checked every door and window to make certain that no one had forced his way into the house. None of the locks had been tampered with... There was a faint smell of ether in the nursery, but no signs of struggle.

He had fingerprinted the nursery, but had found only prints of the nurse and child — establishing the identity of the nurse’s by checking them against prints taken from her room. He had questioned Mrs. Jarrod about the people who had access to the house: the delivery boys, garbage collectors, peddlers, milkmen, door-to-door salesmen, the tradespeople who came and went in the ordinary business of the day. She knew them all. and was careful about whom she let in; and she was certain there had been no strange face about in the past few months. Crowley had asked Bradley and his father about servants they had discharged in the past, of employees they had let go for one reason or another, of individuals or firms they might have hurt in business competition. Then he had begun the long interview with young Bradley about his friends, his clubs and associations, his wife and her friends and family, searching his past for enemies — which was just as fruitless as searching a penthouse garden for big game.

Crowley had done the routine things, he had followed the book — and had made no progress. That was all he could tell West. He had covered the logical areas thoroughly, but without results. Crowley was beginning to feel the tension building up in him; in ten hours he hadn’t picked up a lead. He knew there were a hundred men standing by on the outside; he knew that West had the vast resources of Washington at his fingertips; he knew that anything needed could be produced in minutes — but none of that was any good unless he could find a lead here...

When he finished his report, West said, “Have you talked to Mrs. Bradley yet?”

“No, she’s still asleep.”

“Try to talk to her as soon as possible. We want more on that nurse. Either she’s in it or not. Get a line on her boy friends, her family, where she worked before she came with the Bradleys. Find out if she went to church, and where; if she belonged to any clubs or groups.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Crowley — Roth had a call from your wife. Your daughter — well, there’s no change.”

“I see.” Crowley looked at the mike he was holding, and let out his breath slowly. “Thanks, sir. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve talked to Mrs. Bradley.”

“I’ll be here.”

When Crowley walked back into the dining room Oliphant Bradley was sitting at the breakfast table. He nodded at him and said, “You were talking to headquarters, I gather. Any news there?”

“Nothing definite,” Crowley said,

“These crimes fall into patterns, don’t they? The same types go in for the same kind of activities, I mean.”

“That’s generally true, sir.”

Oliphant Bradley put his coffee cup down, and said, “Well, it seems to me you might have some information by now. If you picked up everyone ever connected with an extortion case and sweated them properly — you might have something.” In spite of his worry over the child the old man’s mood was executive and aggressive; his son had agreed that he had done right in calling the FBI; and that had taken a load off his mind. All of his vigorous confidence in himself had returned, and the tensions of the past night had charged him with an artificial energy. “Another thing, I understand that the ransom note is still here in the house. Shouldn’t that be in your laboratory in Washington? Fingerprints, chemical analysis — isn’t that your specialty?”

“Dad, they know their business,” his son said.

“Yes, of course they do. I’m not implying they don’t,” the old man said impatiently. “But they’re open to suggestions, I hope. I always was, and still am — from any clerk in our organization.”

“Sir, we’re after the baby, not the kidnappers,” Crowley said quietly. “If we made wholesale arrests we might get a lead — but your granddaughter would become a death sentence to the men who kidnaped her, to anyone connected with the crime in any way at all. We’d put her on the spot, but good. About the kidnap note; supposing we sent it to Washington for analysis. And supposing the kidnapers sent a messenger here and asked for the note? That’s happened in cases like this. What would you say? That you’d lost it? That you threw it out with the garbage?” Crowley shook his head. “It wouldn’t wash. The kidnapers, if they weren’t fools, would know you’d called in the police. They’d know they couldn’t dare bargain with you any longer for the baby.”

“I see, I didn’t think—” The old man rubbed his jaw.

Crowley said, “The hardest thing in the world is to wait, to do nothing. That’s our job right now.”

Young Bradley stood up from the table abruptly and walked into the living room. His father said, “You’ll excuse me?” to Crowley, and joined his son who was standing at the window, staring into the street. Crowley picked up the three cups and saucers from the table and carried them into the kitchen. “Where do you want these?” he said to Mrs. Jarrod.

She didn’t answer him immediately: she was frowning faintly, counting on her fingers. Finally she looked at him and said. “What?”

He nodded at the cups he was holding. “Where do you want these?”

“Oh, anywhere at all. Right on the sink is fine.” Her voice was edged with impatience. “You asked me if there had been any strangers around in the last few weeks.”

“Yes?” Crowley felt the sudden stroke of his heart. “You remember something?”

“I’ll tell you what is was. Three weeks ago Thursday there was a man here to look at the telephones. I wasn’t here, it was my day off. But Kitty told me about it the next day, just talking casually. She didn’t think it was anything unusual, mind you.” Mrs. Jarrod seemed determined to be an exact and unemotional witness. “She just mentioned it over a cup of tea, as you would say.”

“You’re sure of the date?”

“I just counted it back. It was three weeks last Thursday. I know because I’d been at my sister’s in Roslyn for the day.”

“Please try to tell me exactly what Kitty said. Don’t leave out anything, no matter how trivial it might sound.”