The Seven File

Sixteen

By six o’clock Monday night the film which had been shot in Thirty-first Street was delivered to the Bradleys’ by two agents wearing the uniforms of a rug-cleaning service. The film, along with screen and projector, was inside a neatly wrapped carpet.

Crowley set up the screen in the long dining room, after closing the doors and drawing the blinds on the windows. He seated Ellie and Dick Bradley to the right of the projector, Oliphant Bradley and Mrs. Jarrod to the left, and now they stared up at him, their faces pale anxious blurs in the semidarkness.

They were watching him with a mixture of fear and hope, he realized: they hoped for miracles, but feared he was going to play a conjurer’s trick on them. And he felt the same way himself...

Crowley snapped a switch and a beam of blue-white light illuminated the square screen at the end of the room. “Before we start I want to point out a few things,” he said. “This will be a long session. Don’t be discouraged if we seem to be getting nowhere. Keep watching. Now, about what to watch for: first of all, faces you’ve seen before, people who may have worked for you, or with you at some time in the past. Secretaries, chauffeurs, maids, gardeners, butlers, handymen. Anyone you might have had contact with at clubs, parking lots, garages, shops, restaurants.” Crowley ticked off categories on his fingers. “Caddies, locker room attendants, bartenders, waiters, elevator operators, maintenance men, shoeshine boys — speak up if you see anyone you’ve known before. Mrs. Jarrod, I want you to watch particularly for anyone you’ve ever seen around this house — delivery boys, window-washers, plumbers, painters, part-time maids, part-time catering help, that sort of thing. Do you all understand?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Oliphant Bradley said sharply.

“The next point is a little more difficult,” Crowley said. “I want you to be alert for anything that strikes you as odd or unusual... no matter how trivial or inconsequential it may seem. For years you’ve been soaking up unconscious impressions of this street. You know how it looks normally, you know the feel of it. If anything strikes you as off key — I want to know about it. I can’t give you an example. I wouldn’t if I could. I don’t want you looking for peculiarities. And I don’t want to suggest what you should look for. It won’t work that way. Something may jar your unconscious picture of this street. That’s what I want to know about. I’m putting this badly, I think. But do you have an idea of what I mean?” He glanced from face to face and they all nodded solemnly — like children in a classroom, he thought.

“All right, let’s go,” he said, flicking a switch.

The film began to run...

For the first half-hour there was hardly a stir in the room; their mood was expectant and tense as the life of the street moved before their eyes. Cars, trucks and cabs rolled by and people of every kind and type filled the screen; delivery boys, postmen, pedestrians of all ages, smartly dressed girls, an occasional soldier, a few drunks, a construction worker in a metal helmet biting into a long Italian sandwich — the group could have been duplicated on a thousand of the city’s streets. Crowley stopped the camera several times to study specific faces, freezing the flowing scene into a grotesque and unnatural immobility. Oliphant Bradley stood up once and said, “Wait! Look there!” in high, excited voice, but when Crowley stopped the scene the old man sat down shaking his head slowly. “No, it’s not the same chap. It was someone who’d worked for my father, I thought. But that could hardly be, eh?” He asked the question in a confused voice.

When the rain began the people thinned out, and there followed seemingly interminable stretches of building fronts and wet sidewalks.

“This doesn’t seen to be getting us anywhere,” Dick Bradley said, taking out his cigarettes. “Smoke, Ellie?”

“No, please keep watching.”

The atmosphere in the room had changed; hope was dying. There would be no miracles; only a conjurer’s trick... Crowley sensed this in the flurries of talk, the restless shiftings of positions.

Finally it was over and the screen gleamed white and blank at the end of the room. Crowley turned off the projector and snapped on the overhead lights. “The footage we’ve just seen was shot from a house on this side of the street. The film from the church steeple is next. But first: did you notice anything unusual?”

“Two more hours of film,” Oliphant Bradley said wearily, “I — it seems a waste of time.”

“Did you see anything odd or curious?” Crowley said, watching them alertly. He had seen something near the end of the film. “Anything at all?” he said, and his voice was sharper now, prodding their memories.

Ellie was sitting forward on the edge of the chair, a faint frown shadowing her smooth forehead. “I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “It’s probably silly. I know it can’t mean—”

“What was it?” Crowley said quickly. “Come on.”

“The little man,” Ellie said, watching him with a frown. “That seemed strange, didn’t it? I mean, about the cab.”

“Exactly,” Crowley said, slapping the table.

“What’s all this?” Dick Bradley said, staring at his wife.

“We’ll take another look,” Crowley said. He ran the film back for a few minutes, then snapped off the overhead lights. “Now watch...”

They saw the front of a brownstone, the rain slanting against its brick façade and darkening the old-fashioned wooden doorway. A few seconds later the door opened and a small neatly dressed man started cautiously down the stone steps, one hand clinging to the iron railing. He was obviously repelled by the weather; his distaste was evident as he picked his way down to the sidewalk.

“Who’s that chap?” Oliphant Bradley said.

No one answered him. The little man waved his umbrella to catch the eye of a cab driver who had stopped before him to let out a fare. Later, when the passenger had hurried past him, the little man stepped carefully down from the curb and approached the open door of the cab. Then he hesitated, staring up and down the street. Finally he raised his eyes and looked full into the camera; they could see his small, commonplace face, the mirrorlike flash of his glasses, the mark of caution in his hunched shoulders and slowly turning body.

The driver spoke to him apparently, and he took another step toward the cab. But again he hesitated, and finally he shook his head quickly and walked toward Third Avenue.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Oliphant Bradley said.

“Keep watching!” Crowley said.

A few minutes later a cab came down the street and they were able to see the passenger clearly; he was sitting forward and peering out the window. “It’s the same man,” Dick Bradley said, in a surprised voice.

Crowley turned on the lights and switched off the machine. “It struck you as odd, eh?”

“Well, yes — but there’s probably a simple explanation for it.”

“Of course,” his father said. “The man hailed a cab and decided not to take it after all. I daresay every one of us has done the same thing on occasion. You remember another appointment, you’ve forgotten something — it’s a commonplace sort of thing.”

“This is a bit different,” Crowley said. “Our friend turned down a cab in the rain, and then walked a block and got another cab going in the same direction — that doesn’t strike me as normal. There may be an explanation for it. Frankly, I’d be surprised if there weren’t. But it’s odd enough to interest me.” He glanced at Ellie. “Have you ever seen this chap before?”

“No — I don’t think so.”

Crowley rubbed a hand along his jaw. A man had turned down a cab under curious circumstances — that’s what it amounted to. Ostensibly at least. A freakish bit of behavior, nothing more. But the man had come out of a building directly opposite the Bradleys’. That put another twist to it.

“Just wait here,” he said. “I’m going to back this hunch of mine a little but further.”

Crowley stepped into the study and opened the suitcase he had brought in with him Sunday night. He picked up his binoculars and then walked through the darkened living room to the windows. Stooping a bit, he sighted through the slats of the Venetian blinds, focusing his glasses on the all brownstone that faced the Bradleys’. In spite of the evening’s dusky gloom, the powerful lenses pulled the building right up to his eyes.

He saw nothing significant until he lowered the glasses to the first floor windows — and then a sudden shock of excitement ran through him. Someone was standing behind those curtained windows, looking out toward the Bradleys’ house. He couldn’t tell whether the shadowy outline was that of a man or woman, but he knew which way the person was facing; he could see the tiny orange glow of a cigarette, flaring and fading rhythmically through the curtains.

Crowley backed slowly away from the windows, keeping his glasses trained on the watching figure across the street. He knew he couldn’t be seen, but he was taking no chances; this was fitting together too neatly for coincidence.

Halfway across the room he realized that Ellie and Dick Bradley had joined him. “What is it?” Ellie whispered. “What do you see?”

Crowley brought the binoculars down and let out his breath slowly. She was staring at him, and in the faint light he saw the fear in her eyes, and the deep weary lines in her face. “Someone is watching this house from across the street,” he said. “It may mean nothing. But we’ll find out, don’t worry. I’ll call the Inspector. Then we’ll look at the rest of the film.”

As he turned toward the study she put a hand on his arm. “Has he — has he told you anything about your child?”

“No, not yet. Say a prayer, okay?”

“Yes — okay.”

At FBI headquarters in downtown New York, Roth and Inspector West were watching a copy of the film that had been shot in Thirty-first Street that afternoon. Alerted by Crowley’s call, they were studying a certain section of it with new and sharper interest.

Roth was in shirt-sleeves, perspiring in the small, close projection room. Without his jacket he looked even more formidable; the damp fabric of his shirt was molded to the heavy muscles of his arms and shoulders. “Crowley’s got a good pair of eyes,” he said, frowning at the screen. “Or maybe I’m getting old.”

“We both missed it,” the Inspector said. “Thank God Crowley didn’t.”

“What do you make of it?” Roth said, when the operator switched off the machine.

“A man being cautious, that’s all. But why should he be cautious? That’s what interests me. Let’s go upstairs.”

They left the projection room and took an elevator to West’s office on the seventh floor. Roth lit a cigarette as they sat down in front of the big cardboard map of Thirty-first Street. Around them typewriters and teletypes clattered, and half a dozen agents were studying reports or talking on telephones. The FBI’s nets were being cast in ever-widening circles. Business associates of Ellie and Dick Bradley, Mrs. Jarrod’s friends and relatives, the service record of Bill Delancey. the army lieutenant who had dated Kate Reilly, clerks and delivery men in the shops and stores patronized by the Bradleys — all of these people were being brought under a close, discreet surveillance.

But so far the nets had come up empty...

The Inspector was studying the map of Thirty-first Street. He put his finger on the building that faced the Bradleys’.

“Who lives in that front room, Jerry?”

Roth picked up a file card in his seemingly clumsy fingers. “Howard Creasy, age fifty-five. He worked last as a locker room attendant at the Manhattan Athletic Club. No police record. We got this information from a personal loan company.”

“How long has he lived there?”

“We don’t know exactly. But he was living there when he got the loan and that was six months ago.”

“The loan was paid off?”

“Yes. He settled in cash. Three hundred dollars. That was four months ago. He left the club then, and hasn’t worked since.”

“What I want to know is this: are Howard Creasy and the little chap who turned down the cab — are they the same person?”

Roth looked at him and nodded. “I’ll find out.”

West turned to the agent who was covering the line to Washington. “Anything come in while I was downstairs?” It was an unnecessary question, he knew; if there was anything the agent wouldn’t have to be asked for it. But West’s patience was short; the waiting had worn his nerves down to a fine edge.

“Nothing, sir,” the agent said.

Nothing, West thought. And this was Monday night. The baby had been gone since Friday night. Seventy-two hours. And they had nothing yet. Washington had been working all day on the print Crowley had found in the Bradleys’ study. So far, no luck. And no leads had developed from the Bradleys’ friends and business associates, nothing from the tradespeople in the neighborhood. Blanks everywhere, he thought. But in spite of this, he was developing a feeling about the case — a bad one. They couldn’t hope that the kidnapers would bring the baby back home. Because that wasn’t the kidnapers’ plan...

In Washington, fifteen fingerprint examiners had been working ten hours on the print Crowley had lifted from the Bradleys’ study. They had a frame of reference in which to work — their hypothesis being that the print belonged to a man whose nickname was Duke. Photographic enlargements had been made of the latent print, and from the criminal file jackets had been pulled on every individual nicknamed “Duke”; there were 1603 such individuals, and each of their cards had to be checked against the print found in Bradley’s study. There was some elimination; the latent print was a loop category, and so it wasn’t necessary to examine minutely all the whorls and arches. The job was, nevertheless, immense, and there were no short cuts. Fingerprints are counted and coded in sets of ten fingers — and such a set can be traced in a matter of minutes. But tracing a single print to its mate would mean examining each of the one hundred and twenty million prints in the bureau’s files — a job as difficult as tracing a leaf back to the twig it had blown from during a storm.

There was the chance that an identification could be made on the first card — but it might as easily be the last. Examiners worked steadily through the afternoon and evening, turning down card after card after failing to match them with the photographic enlargements which were propped up before their desks. Occasionally they stopped to rest their eyes, or take a quick drag on a cigarette, and then they resumed the patient, dogged search.

Finally a slender man with graying hair stood quickly and walked down the aisle to the supervisor who was in charge of the detail. “Here it is,” he said quietly. “Age thirty-one at time of last arrest. Served four years in Joliet for armed robbery and assault. Edward John Farrel, nicknamed ‘Duke.’ ”

The supervisor looked at the dark, bold front face and profile shots of Duke Farrel. Then he nodded and said, “I’ll call Inspector West. Get this card over to him by wire photo. I hope this does it...”