Deadline at Dawn

Chapter 12

Going over to the third and final place in a cab, Quinn thought he understood what was behind all this complicated maneuvering. Holmes didn’t want to walk into a trap. Therefore, to avoid one, he’d first of all moved Quinn out of the place he’d originally been in to a second place. He’d scrutinized him there unseen. But there still being no absolute surety that Quinn was alone, even though he seemed to be, he’d shifted the rendezvous to still a third place. This gave him the opportunity of being the first one on the grounds, and thereby being sure that the surroundings were sterile. To plant accomplices Quinn would have had to do it in full sight of the prospective prey.

He made it in about seven or eight minutes, no more. This Owen’s had a good deal of the look of one of the old-time speak-easies of two decades before. It was the ground-floor of a brownstone house, and you went in by the basement. It had a neon sign to blazon it, but it was past the legal closing time by now, and that was out. Most of the people were out of it too. But he jumped down and went in anyway.

There was a man sitting there in a booth by himself, facing the front. His hair was frosting around the edges, but still dark on the crown of his head. He had on rimless spectacles, and they gave him rather a sedate look. Much too sedate to be sitting by himself at a bistro around five in the morning. He looked more the type to be at home nodding over a paper under a lamp, and with the deadline set for eleven. He had on a light-gray suit, and a light-gray hat hung from a wall-hook over his table. His hand was curved around a highball, and a second one, ownerless, stood on the opposite side of the table.

As Quinn came in he unobtrusively pointed one finger upward, then dropped his hand back to the table again.

Quinn went over and stood looking down at him. He sat looking up.

There was a curious moment of abeyance, of staring without speech, rendered grotesque by their nearness to one another.

The man at the table spoke first.

“You’re Quinn, I guess.”

“I’m Quinn, and you’re Holmes.”

“How much is your taxi bill?”

“Sixty cents.”

“Here’s the money.” He let the coins flow out of a hole at the end of his hand, as thought the change were something fluid.

Quinn came back in again in a moment. He hadn’t moved, still sat there like that. Quinn stopped again where he’d been before, by the edge of the table.

Holmes gestured sketchily toward the plank-seat across from him. “Sit down.”

Quinn sat tentatively, considerably to the outside of it, away from the wall.

Again they looked at one another, the young fellow in his early twenties, the man in his late forties or perhaps even fifties. Holmes was older, more experienced. It showed itself almost at once. He was more in command of the situation; even this situation, which should have been to his disadvantage. Not even virtue, being on the right side, can make up for lack of experience.

“There’s a drink for you,” he said. “I had to order ahead, so I’d be allowed to stay in here. It’s past closing time.”

Quinn thought, but without putting much stock into it: Be funny if he’d slipped something into this. That was 1910 stuff, though. He didn’t take it seriously.

Holmes almost seemed to have read his thoughts. “Take mine instead, then,” he said. “I haven’t put it to my mouth yet.” He drew the other glass away from in front of Quinn, tilted it to his lips, drank deeply.

“Whenever you say,” he said ironically.

Quinn looked around him surreptitiously, thinking: This is no place to browbeat it out of him. I can’t do much with him here. I shouldn’t have let him pick the background.

Again Holmes seemed to read his mind. “Do you want to come out to the car instead?”

“I didn’t know you had one. Why didn’t you pick me up with it in the first place, instead of letting me do all this chasing back and forth?”

“I wanted to get a line on you first. I didn’t know what I was up against.”

You still don’t, thought Quinn bitterly.

Holmes drained his drink to the bottom, stood up, took down the light-gray hat and fitted it on his head with as much painstaking care and precision of adjustment as though he were leaving a business luncheon at high noon instead of an extorted rendezvous around crack of dawn. He looked a degree less sedate with his hat on, but only a degree; he was still every inch the dignified, austere, pontifical business-man. He started for the entrance, the invisible reins of the situation tight in his hand.

Quinn rose and took a step or two in his wake, leaving his drink untouched. Then he glanced back at it. I might need that for what’s coming, he thought, I feel sort of saggy inside. He dropped back to the table a moment, drank it down in two or three long gulps, and then went out after Holmes. In no time he already felt better, more able to handle the situation that he was about to plunge into.

The car was a few doors down. Holmes was already standing waiting beside it, to show him.

“I didn’t mean to rush you,” he said urbanely, and motioned him in.

Quinn let him sidle it into motion. Then he said tersely, “Where y’heading?”

“Just coast around a little, I thought. We can’t sit talking in it at the curb at this hour, we’ll get a cop down on us, sticking his nose into the car.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Quinn chopped out.

Holmes said suavely, “I don’t know. Do you?”

“I was asking you,” Quinn said.

Holmes smiled at the asphalt surfacing out ahead of their oncoming bumper, as though he had discovered something amusing about it. There wasn’t anything; it was like all other asphalt surfacing.

The car dawdled westward; it had to, Fifty-first was a westbound street. Neither of them said anything. Quinn thought: I’ll let him begin; why should I make it any easier for him? He has to begin sooner or later. The play is with him; I’m carrying around his ticket of imprisonment and execution on me — supposedly. Whatever Holmes thought he kept locked up inside his head; it didn’t come through to his face.

He wheeled them around northward into Sixth. They went up that, then at random they turned east again through one of the even-numbered streets. It was impromptu, Quinn could tell that by the abrupt swing he gave the wheel at the last moment. They went straight through over to about First Avenue, and then went north some more. Finally he seemed to come to a decision. He turned off at a street that became a ramp, dipping under the East River Drive, and ended up against the water’s edge with no bulkhead of any sort to protect it, in a sort of landing stage or apron just above the heaving gemmed blackness of the river.

He stopped only after their front tires were already tight against the low stone curbing that rimmed it.

Quinn held his peace. He thought, Two can play at your game.

Holmes shut off the engine and killed the front lights.

All the filigree coruscation went out of the water, but it was still there. They could smell it at every breath, and sometimes hear it. It made a little chuckling sound every now and then, like a very small infant.

“You’re pretty close to the edge, aren’t you?” Quinn remarked.

“The wheels’re blocked. You’re not nervous, are you?”

“I’m not nervous,” Quinn said flatly. “Should I be?”

Holmes turned his head slightly aside.

“What’re you looking at your watch for?”

“I was trying to figure how long ago you met me at Owen’s.”

“Twenty minutes,” Quinn said, “and this should have been all over with by now.”

“It’s going to be. Have you got the check? How much do you want for it?”

Something’s wrong, thought Quinn. I’m not handling myself right. I’m in the wrong situation. I wonder how he came to get the upper hand, at what point along the way?

He pinched the bridge of his nose tight for a minute.

Holmes was hunched forward, making a papery noise with his hands down close against the dashboard lights. “Here’s two hundred dollars,” he said, “now give me the check.”

Quinn didn’t answer.

Holmes turned around and looked at him. “Two hundred and fifty.”

Quinn didn’t answer.

“How much do you want?”

Quinn spoke slow and quiet. This was his inning now. “What makes you think I want money for it?”

Holmes just looked at him.

“Here’s what I want for it: I want a written confession that you killed Stephen Graves tonight. If you don’t give me that, then I’m going to take you and the check, both, to the police.”

Holmes’ lower jaw kept trying to adhere to his upper, and falling away loose again. “No, wait—” he said two or three times over. “No, wait—”

“You weren’t up there tonight, Mr. Holmes?”

The lower jaw suddenly clamped tight and didn’t fall away any more; so tight that not a word came through.

“He’s dead up there. And you’re the man that did it. You don’t really think I found that check skating around town loose in a taxi, do you? Where d’you suppose I found it? Where I found Stephen Graves’ body lying sprawled out!”

“You’re lying. You’re trying to take me for something that you couldn’t possibly know.”

“I was up there.”

“You were up there? You’re lying.”

“You and he were sitting face-to-face in those two leather-covered chairs, in that second-floor room, that study, at the back. He had a drink, but he didn’t offer you one. He had a cigar, but he didn’t offer you one. You chewed one of your own to pieces. I’ll even tell you what kind it was. Corona. I’ll even tell you what you had on. You had on a brown suit. You put on a gray one to come out and meet me now, the second time, but you had on a brown one then. You’re missing a half-button from the left sleeve. Never mind jerking your hand back; let it ride, let it grab at the cuff of this one. I know anyway, without that. Now am I lying? Now do you believe I was up there? Now do you believe I saw him dead — and know that you killed him?”

Holmes didn’t answer. Again his head turned aside.

“Never mind looking at your watch. Your watch can’t save you.”

Holmes put it away. He spoke at last. “Yes, my watch can. You’re just a kid, aren’t you? Gee, I almost feel sorry for you, son. I didn’t know you were as young as you are, over the phone.”

Quinn blinked.

“You’re having a lot of trouble with your eyes, aren’t you? Lights on the dashboard’ve got rings around them, haven’t they? Like big soap-bubbles. That’s it.”

“That’s what?”

“See, you talked too much. You’ve talked yourself into the grave. If you had just kept your mouth closed, I really would have believed you found that check in a taxi. You would have gone to sleep here in the car. And you would have awakened in a couple of hours beside the river here, without the check. But otherwise unharmed. Maybe with a ten-dollar bill in your pocket to sugarcoat the experience. Head weighs too much, doesn’t it? Too heavy for your neck. Keeps toppling over, as if it were made of solid rock.”

Quinn suddenly pushed at it and held it back.

Holmes smiled a little, patronizingly. “If you’d stuck to your own highball-glass, this wouldn’t have happened to you, you would have been all right. You were suspicious, but not suspicious enough. You took the wrong glass. Mine. I’m a chess-player. You’re evidently not. Chess is figuring out your opponent’s move before he makes it.”

He stopped and watched him some more. “Tie too tight? That’s right, pull the knot down. Bust open the neck of your shirt too. That’s right. Doesn’t help much, though, does it? Can’t keep it from happening. You’re going to sleep. Here in the car. You’re going into the river. Without a mark on you. I’ll take the check off you before you do, don’t worry. I’ll find it, it’s on you. You wouldn’t have come to the pay-off without having it on you somewhere. It’s stuck in your shoe, probably. That’s about where your type of youngster would think was a clever hiding-place for it.”

Quinn ripped himself off the seat as though he were pulling out stitches binding him to it, clawed for the door-catch in a sort of toppling, forward fall. Holmes kept him up off the floor by slipping an arm around under his stomach and drew him back onto the seat again, like a topheavy sack.

“What’s the good trying to get down? Even if you did get out, you probably couldn’t stand up any more anyway. You’d only fall down on the ground outside.”

One of Quinn’s legs flexed a couple of times, trying to gain altitude.

Holmes rotated the little lever, brought the window down on that side. “Trying to kick out the glass? You haven’t the strength of a kick left in you—” He turned suddenly and caught at Quinn’s flailing hand. “What’s that you’ve got? A table-knife? What can you do with that? Look how easy I can twist it away from you. You’re all rotten with sleep.”

He flung it out forward through the side-opening. “Did you hear it splash? That’s water in front of us, that even black line you see. Right over the hub-cap.”

He held one arm propped against the side of the car, with an attitude of patient waiting, holding Quinn passively walled-in behind it. Something like a futile sob sounded blurredly deep down in the latter’s throat.

“Now you can’t move at all, can you? That’s right, make a lazy pass with your hand, like you were brushing away gnats. That’s about all you’re still able to do. In a minute you won’t be able to do that, even. There go your eyes. Down... down... down—”

I found out one thing, anyway, Quinn thought foggily. I was on the right track. But I found out too late—

“You won’t get away with it, mister,” he mumbled drowsily, as his head went down for the last time. “Bricky knows. There are two of us, not just one—”