The Dark Tunnel

CHAPTER V

THE STEAM HEAT WAS on and the apartment was stuffy. I took off my suitcoat and threw it on the chesterfield and went out to the kitchen. With boiling water and lemon juice and rum I made myself a large toddy to take the rasp out of the buzzing in my head. As I drank the toddy, the buzzing sank to a murmur like water lapping with low sounds by the shore. But my brain was not yet the complete blank I wanted it to be.

I ran the water in the tub and took off my clothes and had a hot bath. Half-floating in the hot green water, I contemplated my navel like a yogi trying to forget the world. Pale navel I loved beside the Shalimar. For a few minutes I almost dozed. The telephone put an end to that.

I wrapped a towel around me and left a trail of water across my livingroom carpet and caught the telephone on the fourth ring. “Hello.”

The answer was very low but I recognized Alec’s voice. “Listen, Bob. I think I’ve found what I was looking for in Schneider’s office. Now get this–”

“Where are you?”

“M E Dic office. Don’t ask questions. I think there’s somebody in the building. Get this.” He spelt it. “T A I L L O U R. Write it down.”

I put down the receiver, took a pencil and an envelope out of the breast pocket of the coat on the chesterfield, and wrote it down. Taillour. When I went back to the phone, the free signal was buzzing. I hung up and the buzzing went on in my head.

I called the university number and asked for the Middle English Dictionary office.

The operator said, “There will be nobody there at this time of night, but I’ll ring it if you wish.”

She rang four times and nobody answered.

I gave myself a few swipes with the towel and put on my clothes again. On the way out I passed the telephone stand by the living room door and saw the envelope on which I had written Alec’s word. I picked it up and looked at it. Taillour. There were two clicks in my brain like a billiard carom. ‘Taillour’ was a Middle English spelling of tailor. The German word for tailor is Schneider.

So what? It was a roundabout way of telling me what I already knew, that Alec had something on Schneider.

Two smudged words on the envelope caught my eye. It was postmarked Kirkland Lake, Ontario. What the hell? I had had no letters from Kirkland Lake. Then I noticed that the envelope had not been opened: it must have been one of the letters I had picked up in the English office when I went there to get the flashlight.

I looked at the address:

The black script shimmied under my eyes like highly trained fleas. It was Ruth Esch’s handwriting. I looked at the postmark again. September 20. To-day was September 22. Or was it the twenty-third? I looked at the clock on the mantel. No, not midnight yet.

I ripped open the envelope and saw the signature “Ruth” and started to read. It was a long letter but I read it standing up. I forgot to sit down.

The letter said:

When I finished the letter I stood and thought for a minute without moving, if the kind of circles my mind was moving in can be called thinking. Peter Schneider had been with Ruth in Canada, perhaps for a couple of weeks. Even then he was a fast worker. I had not been overwhelmed by his charm, but then he was my rival. If I was a competitor at all, and I didn’t feel like one. She must have been very willing, to be corrupted so quickly. I remembered what Dr. Schneider had called her, and had a sudden vision of two white German bodies grappling in darkness. I felt sick with a moral sickness I had felt once before: when I was four or five I walked into a little wood and found a small snake trying to swallow a large toad.

My mind veered away from this and went on travelling in circles. A day or two before, Kirkland Lake had been in the news. Twenty or so German prisoners had escaped from a Canadian prison camp near there. Most of them had been caught again, a few had been killed resisting capture. What was the errand which Ruth had been afraid to mention in her letter and of which Peter had approved? Had the two of them gone to Northern Ontario to help German prisoners to get away?

But even in a state of emotional bewilderment I saw that this logic was a bit hysterical. The sincerity and pathos of her letter flooded back into my mind and confused me more. I couldn’t believe that letter was an exercise in literary deceit. Perhaps she knew even less than I did about Peter Schneider, perhaps he had fooled her completely. Then I remembered that she was an actress. Perhaps she had fooled me. My feelings ran hot and cold, and the snake and the toad grappled amorously in the underbrush, eating each other behind the bedroom door.

The toll of the tower bell made me start and look at the clock on the mantel. It was midnight, and I had been on my way to McKinley Hall to find Alec. I cursed myself for a dawdler and went out the door, stuffing the letter in my pocket.

I lived on the north side of the campus, ten minutes from McKinley Hall, which is on the south side. I covered the distance in five minutes by trotting and cutting across the dark campus, and approached the building from the rear.

There was one light on in its block-long length. It seemed to be on the fourth floor. Of course, the Middle English Dictionary office. Alec must be up there again. I looked for a light on the fifth floor immediately above the Dictionary office, but the fifth-floor windows were all dark. No light in Alec’s office second from the end.

The walk that ran along behind the building was unusually dark. The flood-light on the corner must have burned out, I thought, and I looked up as I passed it.

As I raised my eyes, a light flashed on in the second window from the end on the fifth floor, Alec’s office, and a man leaped at me from the lighted window. He howled like a dog and stretched out his arms as he leaped outward and I cowered against the wall in terror, quivering like a beaten animal. No human being could make that leap to the bare pavement.

The howling man dived headfirst to the sidewalk in front of me and I heard his skull break with a sound like an egg dropped on the floor. One leg thrashed in a convulsion and the body crumpled and lay still. Blood spattered and glistened darkly on the dim pavement, and I moved sideways along the wall to avoid it.

Then I remembered the flashlight still in my pocket. I turned it on the upturned face. There was no face. Dark blood was flowing from the head like oil in steady, wormlike streams. I felt the pulse. No pulse. I straightened the twisted body and the ruined head moved limply sideways like a pumpkin on a string.

I knew by the hair and the clothes that it was Alec. I said to myself, I’m going to kill Schneider, and I heard the words said aloud by someone. I must have said them because there was nobody else there.

My mind began to function again after the shock, and a sudden thought jerked me upright and accelerated my heartbeat ready for action: whoever had pushed Alec out of the window must still be in the building. Before I could move I heard the faint sound of a woman’s shout from somewhere high up in the building, and then something that sounded like a door being shaken violently in its frame.

I looked up at the lighted window from which Alec had fallen and saw that it was half-open. Again the woman’s shout came keen and distressed out of the dark building, and then there was the crash and tinkle of broken glass. Somebody was breaking into Alec’s office. My heart pumped faster but I stood where I was and watched the window.

I heard the woman’s shout again, louder and more anguished now. She was calling, “Alec!”

The woman’s head appeared at the window dark against the light. I couldn’t be sure but it looked like Helen Madden. She leaned far out and looked down at me and the dead man with the flashlight beam on his face. She screamed. Her scream ended in a tearing sigh like the last vomit of despair, and her head and shoulders fell out of the light and left the window empty.

I let myself into the building and ran up the west stairs, turning on the lights at the ends of the corridors as I went. So far as I could see the corridors were empty. I waited too long, I thought, I’ve given the Schneiders time to get away.

When I reached the fifth floor, I could see from the head of the stairs that Alec’s door was open, throwing a cone of light across the hall. When I reached the door, I saw that one corner of the ground-glass pane in it was broken. I stood in the doorway breathing heavily, and looked into the room.

The green-hooded lamp above the desk was on, and it cast a greenish light over the woman who was sprawled on the floor beneath the window. I went to her and saw that it was Helen. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was quick and light. It looked as if she had simply fainted. I straightened her out on her back, pulled her skirt down over the bare gooseflesh of her thighs, and let her lie. As long as she stayed unconscious I didn’t have to tell her.

When I stood up, I noticed that the receiver of the telephone dangled on its cord from the shelf below the lamp, hanging almost to the floor. It was swinging slightly, making little clicks against the corner of the desk. Just as I reached for it, I remembered fingerprints and got down on my knees to put my ear against it where it hung. I could hear nothing, not even the dial tone. Then I heard voices, very faint as if from a long way off, like voices on a record-player when the tube has blown out. I could not understand what they were saying. The rustling voices ceased and I stood up again.

The only sign of a possible struggle besides the dangling receiver was the broken glass in the door. But I had heard the crash. Helen must have broken it to get into the office after Alec fell. Perhaps she heard him fall, perhaps she had even seen the Schneiders running away. Or was it Peter Schneider alone?

I stepped around the woman on the floor to look at the window. The lower half was open, a single steel-framed pane about four-feet square that opened at the bottom and swung outward from the top. The top corners of the pane slid down oiled grooves in the upright sashes at the sides when the bottom was pushed out, so that when the window was wide open, it formed a horizontal plane midway in the four-foot square, supported by steel arms. The window was only partly open now. The outswung pane formed an angle of about thirty degrees with the vertical sashes where it met them at the top, leaving room for Alec to have crawled out at the side and jumped from the concrete sill.

But the window was not wide open, as it would have had to be if Alec had been pushed. He had not been dead or unconscious when he fell: he had yelled and thrown up his arms. Had the Schneiders partly closed the window after pushing him out? I had seen nor heard nothing. And why had they turned on the light?

I remembered the light in the window on the fourth floor beneath Alec’s office, and a sudden doubt took hold of me. Had Alec been pushed from the Dictionary office? I had been taken by surprise in the dark, and with my glasses broken, I could be mistaken about the window.

I ran down the stairs to the fourth floor. The door of the Dictionary office was open and the light was on. All the windows were closed and fastened. The door to the inner room where the files were kept was open and I glanced in. It was dark and there was no sound. I turned out the light in the outer room and went back to Helen.

Her breast was rising and falling more slowly and regularly. I put my ear to it and heard her heart beating strongly. I wet my handkerchief at the drinking-fountain in the hall and wiped her face with it. Her eyelids fluttered and she began to stir.

Then, for the first time, I thought of the police. To avoid touching Alec’s phone, I went down the hall to my own office to call them. The Lieutenant at the desk said he’d come right over himself, and I told him to bring a doctor for Helen.

I went downstairs to let the police into the building. When I opened one of the glass doors at the front, the police car was drawing up to the curb. Two men in dark uniforms got out and came up the walk and mounted the steps. They walked quickly but laboriously, as if every building were a tomb.

“My name is Branch,” I said as they came up between the pillars. “I just called you.”

“I’m Lieutenant Cross,” said the wider of the two policemen. Their backs were to the light from the street and I couldn’t see their faces. “This is Officer Sale.”

“Did you call a doctor for the girl?”

“Yeah, this is probably him now.” Cross jerked his head at a car that had just turned the corner. “Go and get him, will you, Sale?”

Sale went to the car that had stopped at the curb and came back with a middle-aged man in a camel’s-hair coat and a dither.

“Dr. Rasmussen,” Cross said to me. “I guess you better look at the body first, doctor, just to make sure.”

“Very well, Lieutenant. Where is it?”

I took them through the building and out one of the back doors.

“You said the dead man’s name is Judd,” Cross said. “Is that the Judd on the War Board?”

“Yes.”

I could see the body on the sidewalk, lying as still as if it had always been lying there.

“There he is,” I said.

The policemen turned their flashlights on the dead man.

“Jesus,” Cross said, “he certainly is mashed up.”

The doctor squatted down by the body, drawing his light coat up around his hips so its hem wouldn’t draggle in the blood on the sidewalk. He stood up shaking his head:

“He was dead the minute he hit the sidewalk. Did he jump from the roof?”

“Fifth floor,” I said. “But he didn’t jump.”

“From that window there?” Cross said, pointing at the lighted window of Alec’s office.

“Yes. That’s where the girl is.”

“Oh, yes, the girl,” Rasmussen said. “I’d better get up there. Nothing I can do here.”

I unlocked the door, which had relocked itself, and the doctor followed me in.

“Second from the end on the fifth floor,” I said. “The light’s on and you can’t miss it. I think she just fainted, and she may be conscious now.”

“Right,” he said, and started up the stairs. I went out to the sidewalk where Cross and Sale were still standing.

“What happened to the light on the corner of the building?” Sale asked. In the light of the lieutenant’s torch I could see that he was a tall man of thirty or so with a sallow skin and a broken nose.

“What light?” said Cross.

“This is the way I go home and there’s always a light here. On the corner.” Sale turned his flashlight on the corner of the building. The light was there all right, and the bulb was in place.

“We’ll look at that later,” Cross said. “Maybe it just blew out.”

He turned to me. “You got any idea how this happened, Mr. Branch? You said he didn’t jump.”

“I saw him fall from that window. I think he was pushed. I know he didn’t commit suicide.”

“How do you know?”

“I knew him. He wasn’t the kind of a man who would kill himself, and he had no reason.”

“That you knew of?”

“He had no reason. I talked to him on the telephone half an hour before this happened.”

“Oh, you did? You say you saw him fall. Where were you when he fell?”

“Walking on this sidewalk. About where you’re standing.”

“You say you think he was pushed. Did you see somebody push him?”

“No. I didn’t see anybody. I simply know that Judd was not capable of committing suicide.”

“The damnedest people do,” Cross said. “What did he say on the telephone?”

“He wanted me to come over here.”

“Did he say why?”

“No.” I wanted a more receptive audience before I brought the Schneiders in, and I had to have a talk with the president of the university.

“Where does the girl come in?”

“I don’t know, you’ll have to ask her. She was Alec’s fiancée. She must have been in the building and heard him cry out when he fell. She broke into his office and looked out of the window and saw him down here on the sidewalk and fainted.”

“Jesus,” Sale said. “Tough on her.”

“You’re not accusing her of pushing him?” Cross said.

“Of course not,” I snapped. “They were going to be married. This thing is going to ruin her life.”

“Looks like suicide to me, Lieutenant,” said the man with the broken nose.

“I don’t know,” Cross said. “I’m going to call the Detective-Sergeant. Can I phone around here, Mr. Branch?”

“There’s a phone in my office on the fifth floor.”

“Same floor as the room he jumped from, eh? I want to look at that room.”

We entered the building and climbed the stairs to the fifth floor.

Dr. Rasmussen met us at the head of the stairs. “Miss Madden has regained consciousness,” he said. “I put her on the settee in the Ladies’ Room down the hall.”

“I want to ask her some questions,” Cross said.

“Not just now, Lieutenant. She’s had a shock and you’d better let her rest for a while. You can question her later, perhaps.”

“Yeah, how much later?”

“I’d say give her an hour anyway. If she wasn’t a good strong girl, I’d send her to the hospital for the night. But she’s got a stiff upper lip.”

“Did you tell her, doctor?” I said.

“She knew. I confirmed what she knew.” After a pause Rasmussen said, “Well, I can trust you gentlemen to see that she gets home safely. I might as well toddle home for a snooze. I think I’ll have a delivery before morning.”

“O.K., doctor, good night,” Cross said. Rasmussen picked up his bag and waved his hand and went downstairs.

“Is that Judd’s office?” Cross asked as we passed the open door.

“Yes.”

“Hey, Lieutenant,” said Sale, “the glass in the door is broken.”

“I think Miss Madden broke it. I heard the crash after Judd fell.”

“I get it,” Cross said. “You might as well stay here and look around, Sale. I’ll be right back.”

I took Cross to my office and he called the Detective-Sergeant. When he had finished, I picked up the receiver.

“Going to make a call?” Cross looked as if he felt he should be suspicious of me but couldn’t quite make the grade. His broad, weather-reddened face was set in unimpressive creases of earnestness and his blue eyes were puzzled.

“I’m going to call President Galloway,” I said. “He’s got to know about this.”

“I guess that’s right,” Cross agreed. “Stick around, though, will you? The detective’ll probably want to ask you some more questions.”

“I’ll stay in the building.”

Cross went out the door and I dialed President Galloway’s number. He lived in the presidential mansion, which was a university building on the opposite side of the campus from McKinley Hall.

While the phone rang, I looked at my watch. It was just after 12:30. How long ago had Alec died? It was midnight when I left my apartment. It must have taken me about five minutes to get here. Perhaps six. Alec had been dead about twenty-five minutes. In another twenty-five minutes, I hoped to have his murderer. But first I had to talk to Galloway.

On the fourth ring, a maid answered the phone. “President Galloway’s residence.”

“This is Robert Branch, professor of English. May I speak to the President?”

“It’s very late. Could I have him call you in the morning, or take a message?”

“Tell him it’s important university business. If he’s in bed, you’ll have to wake him up.”

“One moment, please.”

I waited a number of moments. Then I heard the President’s voice say, “Galloway speaking,” with the exaggerated briskness of a man still half asleep.

“Robert Branch speaking. Alec Judd has been killed.”

“Judd killed! Good heavens. How did it happen?”

“He jumped, or was pushed, from the window of his office in McKinley Hall. I think he was pushed and I think I know who pushed him.”

“You do?”

I decided to hold it till he came over. “I’d prefer not to tell you over the phone. Can you come here now, sir?”

“Of course, Robert, of course. Where are you?”

“In my office in McKinley Hall. I can’t leave here because the police want to question me. Fifth floor.”

“You’ve called the police?”

“I called them as soon as it happened. I saw Alec fall.”

“It must have been a terrible shock. You were close friends, weren’t you? You called the local police, of course?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll be right over,” Galloway said, and hung up.

I replaced the receiver and leaned back in my swivel-chair and looked at the telephone. I thought of the receiver dangling from the shelf beside Alec’s window. Had he been phoning when he was attacked? If so, whom had he been phoning?

My mind jumped like a shot deer. He was phoning me! The line was cut off while I was writing ‘taillour’ on the envelope. I stiffened up and the chair tilted me forward.

Then I relaxed again and blew air out of my lungs. The deer had been missed by a mile after all. It couldn’t have been much after 11:30 when he phoned me. Besides, he said that he was phoning from the Dictionary office on the fourth floor. What was he doing in the Dictionary office?

A sharp-nosed man in plain clothes with a beady eye and a clipped black moustache put his head in at the door. “I’m Haggerty,” he said, “Detective-Sergeant Haggerty. Are you Professor Branch?”

“Yes. I believe you want to ask me some questions.”

“Can you wait a few minutes? I want to examine this office down the line first.”

“O.K., Sergeant,” I said, and he took his nose away with him.

I went on sitting in my chair. There was no sign of Galloway yet. The dangling receiver still bothered me. Suddenly it occurred to me that I could do something.

I dialed ‘O’ and the night operator answered, “University operator speaking.”

“This is Professor Branch of the English Department. I’m investigating a certain matter for the President and I wonder if you can give me some information.”

“What about? It depends on what it is,” she said in the cagey way switchboard operators have.

“Is the line to Professor Judd’s office still open?”

“Yes, it is. I turned my key a few minutes ago and there was nobody on the line. I asked if the line was being used and a policeman came to the phone and told me to leave it open.”

“How long had the line been open? I mean, when was the call put in?”

“The original call from Professor Judd’s office? I don’t know, maybe an hour ago. I don’t remember exactly.”

“Did you hear anything that was said over the line?”

“Say, who is that talking? Are you really Professor Branch?” The false culture flaked off the surface of her voice like old fingernail polish. There is nothing like fear for a job to remove culture from a voice.

“Do you want me to quote some poetry to prove it?”

“No kidding, you’re not trying to put me on the spot, are you?”

“Of course not. I’m Branch and I don’t know or care who you are. Did you hear anything?”

“I’m not allowed to listen to conversation,” she said more calmly. “But when a line has been open for quite a while, we’re allowed to switch in and make sure it’s busy, that’s all.”

“Was Judd’s line busy?”

“Well, it was open for about twenty minutes or so, so I turned the key and somebody was talking all right and I switched out again.”

“About when was this?”

“I switched in about midnight, I think. No, it was just after midnight. The tower clock had just struck.”

“How long after midnight?”

“Two or three minutes, maybe. I don’t know.”

“You didn’t hear anything that was said?”

“We’re not supposed to listen and I couldn’t tell you anyway, Dr. Branch. It wasn’t anything, anyway. It sounded like a gag.”

“It was no gag. Can’t you tell me anything?”

She said: “Sorry I have to go now. The policeman in the office wants to talk to me.”

She clicked off.