Paul Cain - Seven Slayers

The train was just coming out of the tunnel to the elevated tracks and the rosy glow of midtown Manhattan was reflected by the gray wind-driven clouds. The wind slashed like an icy knife and green-hat mechanically turned up his collar, shivered violently.

Following him, the man in the brown coat pulled the door shade down — both window shades were drawn — and closed the door tightly. He jerked his hand from his pocket. There was a momentary flash of something bright and glittering as he swung his hand up and down in a short arch against the other’s skull. The hat went whirling away into the wind and darkness and the man sank to his knees, toppled forward to crush his face against the floor.

The man in the brown coat knelt beside him and went through his pockets swiftly, carefully. In the inside pocket of his suitcoat he found a thick packet of currency, slipped it into his own inside pocket.

A new sound, the faint stutter of an incoming train on the adjoining track, grew above the roar of the wind. The man glanced ahead, around the corner of the car, seemed for a moment to be calculating the distance away of the approaching headlight, then stooped again, swiftly.

Hurriedly he stripped off the man’s overcoat, then his own. He struggled into the former — a rather tight-fitting tweed Chesterfield — and somehow forced the other man’s arms and shoulders into his own big dark-brown camel’s hair; then he finished transferring the contents of his own inside pockets — several letters, a monogrammed cigarette case and other odds and ends — to the inside pockets of the unconscious man.

The stutter of the approaching train grew to a hoarse scream. He boosted the limp body onto his shoulder, stood up, and when the blinding headlight of the train on the adjoining track was about twenty-five or thirty feet away, he dumped his burden over the side-rail of the observation platform down onto the track in front of the onrushing locomotive.

Then he turned swiftly and went back through the observation car. As he reached the third car forward the train slowed and he heard a far-off voice shout:

“Hundred an’ Twenty-fifth Street.”

When the train stopped and a porter opened the doors of the vestibule between the third and fourth car, the man, now in a tight-fitting tweed Chesterfield, swung off and sauntered down the stairs that led from the station to the street.

As he crossed the street towards a cab he heard the conductor’s thin far off wail above the wind: “All aboard...”

He climbed into the cab, snapped: “Three thirty-two West Ninetieth — and make it fast.”

Green lit a match and examined the mailboxes carefully. The second one on the left rewarded him with a dingy label upon which:

had been typewritten in bright-blue ink.

He rang the bell under the label and after a minute the lock of the outside door buzzed; he went in and climbed two flights of narrow stairs to Apartment B5. The door was ajar; he knocked and a man’s high-pitched voice called:

“Come in.”

Green went into a very large and bare studio, dimly lighted by two floor-lamps in opposite corners and a small but very bright desk lamp on a wide central table.

The high-pitched voice: “Well, Mister Green — this is an unexpected pleasure.”

Green took off his hat and went to the wide table. He bowed slightly.

“Might you, by any chance,” he inquired blandly, “have been out this evening — since, say eleven o’clock?”

John Sallust was a thin, consumptive-looking Englishman with a high bulging forehead, stringy mouse-colored hair, and cold gray eyes, so light in color that they appeared almost white. He sat straddling a chair, his chin resting on his clasped hands on the back of the chair.

“I not only might have,” he said evenly — “I was. I only got home about a quarter of an hour ago.”

Green glanced at the square heavy watch on the inside of his left wrist; it was fifty-two minutes after one.

Sallust turned his head. “This is Paula, my sister. This is Nick Green. You’ve probably heard me speak of him.”

She was half sitting, half lying on a low couch against one of the long walls of the room, a very dark, very diminutive girl with porcelain-white skin, a deep-red mouth and large oddly opaque eyes.

She nodded and Green bowed again slightly.

“We went to a theater.” She sat up slowly. “We went to a theater and John brought me home afterwards — it must have been about ten-thirty — and then he went for a walk.”

Green smiled. “That’s simply dandy. Now, if you two can jump into your hats and coats and the three of us can get out of here in about one minute flat” — he raised one snowy eyebrow and grinned at Sallust — “you won’t have to take another of those very unpleasant trips to jail.”

Paula leapt to her feet, almost screamed: “Jail!”

Sallust’s thin face twisted to a wry smile. “You choose a rather bizarre time to joke, Mister Green,” he said softly.

Green was looking at his watch. “Maybe in two minutes,” he whispered as if to himself.

Paula crossed to him swiftly.

“What are you talking about?” she gulped. “What is it?”

“I haven’t time to tell you about it, now. Take my word for it that the Law will be here in a split-jiffy to arrest your brother for the murder of Bruce Maccunn and a half-dozen or so innocent bystanders. Let’s go first and talk about it afterwards...”

Sallust did not move. His eyes moved swiftly to his sister once, then back to Green.

He muttered: “No.”

Green stared at him blankly. “No? No what?”

Sallust shook his head a little. “I returned three days ago,” he said gently, “from the better part of five years in prison, I was as I believe you call it, framed. I was accused by lies, tried by lies, convicted by lies...”

He cleared his throat and straightened in the chair, gazed very intently at Green.

“I know you very slightly, Mister Green. I have been led to believe at one time or another that you are in some way sympathetic to our cause, but I have just returned from a painful five-year lesson in misplaced trust. I do not know what you are talking about, now, but I know that I have done no wrong and I shall stay exactly where I am.”

It was entirely silent for a moment and then Paula’s voice rang softly, tremulously: “Perhaps you’re making a mistake, John. Mister Green is—” She stopped.

Green put his hand up and rubbed the heel of it slowly down the left side of his face. His eyes were fixed more or less vacantly on a small turkey-red cigarette box on the table. Very suddenly he went forward and as Sallust sprang to his feet, Green’s arm moved in a long looping arc, his knuckles smacked sharply against Sallust’s chin; Sallust crumpled and fell to his knees, clutched blindly at the chair, went limp.

Paula was too surprised to scream, or move; she stood with her hands to her mouth, her great eyes fixed on Green in startled amazement.

Green mumbled, “Sorry,” shortly, stooped and swept Sallust’s slight figure up into his arms and moved towards the door. “Come on,” he grunted over his shoulder, “and make it snappy.”

She followed in stunned silence; at the door he turned and jerked his head at her coat and she took it up from a chair and put it on like a somnambulist motivated and moved by something unknown, something irresistible.

The bleak Greenwich Village street was deserted; Green carried Sallust across the glistening sidewalk and put him in the car, hurried around to climb in behind the wheel. Paula stood hesitantly on the sidewalk; the cold air had brought back her momentarily dimmed senses and she reflected that it was not too late to scream, reflected further, after glancing up and down the street, that it was more or less useless. She got into the car and closed the door, put her arm around Sallust and waited.