Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

We compared notes again Sunday. Fredericks was biting his nails to the quick, figuratively speaking, at the lack of initiative the two parties were showing. “Only forty-eight hours left!” he mourned.

“I’m not even sure Casey actually did get a gun,” I said, rubbing it in. “I think he just said it for a bluff, to scare the bartender off. He must know he engineered Friday night’s visit. He saw the two fellows there in the place before he left. And whether he has or not, he’s keeping it for defensive purposes only, I could tell by the way he spoke.”

“Which is no consolation to you, is it Fredericks?” Trainor jeered. It didn’t, to judge by the disgusted look on his face, seem to be.

Sunday night Casey took no chances. He brought a bottle up to his room with him and stayed in close to his mutilated treasure, keeping an eye on it. I could see a dim light burning in his window from where I watched, pacing back and forth between corners on the opposite side of the street. I didn’t knock off until 4 A.M., when the lights went out in the Lucky Shamrock and I saw the bartender come out, lock up, and go home. He was alone, and he steered clear of Casey’s Hat, so I figured the latter’s gun-talk had had a salutary effect. Everything was peaceful and under control; Sunday seemed to be everyone’s night of rest, the way it should be. The lull before the storm, maybe. I went home grumbling to myself about not being cut out for a night-watchman.

Monday night was the last full night left. If anything was going to happen, it was then or never. That being the case, I was on the job early. Casey’s electrical repair shop closed up at about 10:30. He stopped off for something to eat, and then went straight up to his room again — without any bottle this time. Probably still had some left in last night’s. I girded myself up for a long vigil.

At eleven a messenger boy showed up and went in the building. It struck me as odd for a moment that anyone living in a dump like that should be on the receiving-end of a telegram, but I didn’t think twice about it. The lad came out again, and almost immediately the gaslight went out behind Casey’s window. A moment later he showed up at the street door himself, bound for somewhere. The message had unmistakably been for him just now. I saw him stop under a streetlight and read it over a second time, as though it puzzled him. Then he went on his way.

I had no choice but to tail him, and after the number of times he’d seen me in the Shamrock, it was no easy matter. I had to stay completely out of sight and yet not lose him. Luckily he didn’t ride to his destination, but went on foot. He walked a vast distance down Broadway to a certain well-lighted corner, then abruptly stopped there and went no further, as though expecting to meet someone.

I shrank back behind a protruding showcase just in time and watched him narrowly along the edge of it without sticking my nose too far out. He took the telegram out, read it for the third time, looked up at the nearest street sign as though to verify the location and nodded to himself. Fifteen, twenty minutes went by. He began to get more and more impatient, turning his head this way and that, shifting his feet. I could see him getting sorer by the minute. Finally he blew up altogether, balled the message up, slung it viciously away from him, stuck his hands in his pockets, and started back the way he’d come.

“Good work, boy,” I commended, “I’ve been dying to get a look at that myself!” I turned around and studied necktie patterns in the case until he’d gone by, then went over, picked it up, and smoothed it out.

JOHN CASEY

— 99TH street.

ON RECEIPT OF THIS GO TO NORTHEAST CORNER BROADWAY AND — STREET YOU WILL RECEIVE VALUABLE INFORMATION ABOUT OTHER HALF BILL.

A FRIEND.

“A stall!” I thought. “And the fool fell for it — went out and left the bill unguarded in his room! I bet it’s gone by now!”

That tricky barman must have engineered it, of course. But after all, what did I care whether he’d lost it or not? If the stunt had worked, at least it had worked without the aid of murder, so Trainor’s money was safe, and Dreyer was safe too — those were the only two angles I was interested in.

A belated suspicion of what was up must have dawned on Casey himself on his way back. He walked so fast that I never quite caught up with him after he left that corner. But I knew where he was headed, so it didn’t trouble me.

The light was shining silverly in his room when I turned down 99th Street again. For just one moment more the street clung to its slumbering serenity, then it came to life right before my eyes. The thing itself must have been over already, must have happened just before I turned the corner. Whole rows of windows lighted up suddenly in Casey’s building, heads were stuck out. A patrol car was already shrieking up the nearest avenue. It rocketed around the corner, dove at the building entrance as though it were going to crash its way through into the hallway. Just before it got there a figure came tearing out, saw it, swerved, and bolted up the other way. Some woman or other helpfully brayed down from one of the open windows, “Stop that man! Stop him! He just shot somebody!”

The figure threw something from it as it ran, and there was a metallic impact from an ashcan. A cop took a jump off the prowl car running-board, fired warningly into the air, yelled something. The second shot wasn’t into the air. The figure went on scampering, leaned over too far, finally slumped down flat and rolled over on its back. It was Casey.

An ambulance showed up with wailing siren and screeched to a stop. Casey was shoved into it with a busted kneecap. But the other figure that was carried out to it under a sheet didn’t have a move left in it. I tried to edge it, tilt the sheet, and get a look, and I was nearly knocked down for my pains.

“He’s dead — wanner make something of it?” I was told.

I backed out.

Well, if he was, that was all that mattered. I’d done my best, but Trainor’s thousand had gone up the flue and he was behind the eight ball now. At least nothing had happened to that poor cuss with the wife and baby.

“How’d it happen?” I asked one of the neighbors, standing next to me.

“He came home and caught somebody in his room. I passed two suspicious-looking characters on the stairs meself when I came home earlier. The other one must’ve got away over the roof.”

I’d figured that that slimy bartender had been at the bottom of it all along. This proved it. It must have been the same two hoods as the first time.

I was the first one to get to 22 the next night. I had the check and Fredericks’ cash with me, to turn over to him. I got there about ten to twelve, and wondered how Trainor was going to take it. He came in alone about five minutes later. I could tell by his face he didn’t know yet, thought he was coming into two thousand bucks. I decided not to tell him until Fredericks had showed up; spare him the ax until the last minute.

“Well,” he said, “Mr. Wise Guy is going to be twice as sick at having to eat crow.”

The barman had a good memory. He parked the three Collinses ordered the week before in a row on the bar before us.

“Whaddye mean, twice as sick?” I asked.

“Oh, he got a cramp or something last night, went home to bed about eleven and left me holding down the sidewalk there in front of Dreyer’s.”

The minute-hand of the clock hit twelve. I said, “I’m going to call his club, find out what’s holding him up.”

Trainor said maliciously, “Ask him if he’s afraid to face the music.”

I was at the phone a long time. When I came back he could read on my face that I had bad news for him. I took out the check and the twenty hundreds and laid them on the bar. “Well,” I said, “it looks like he won the bet after all. He did cause someone to be murdered by someone else, like he said he could.”