seen a gas station a few hundred yards back on the side road. It was closed, but it looked like one of those places where the proprietor combines his home and his business. He thought he could wake up the proprietor. He asked Pat to walk back with him. She said it was cold, the road was rough and she was wearing high heels. Pat’s a rugged girl who’s not afraid of the dark. She said she’d sit there in the car while her boy friend went back for a can of gas. Said she could keep the heater on. He didn’t argue too much. The road was deserted. One car came toward him while he was walking back to the gas station. He stood and watched it until it made a turn in the road, past the place where his own car with Pat in it was parked. He had some trouble waking the gas-station people and took a little abuse, but finally got a can of gas and went back up the road. The front door of his sedan was standing open. Pat wasn’t inside. She wasn’t anywhere. Walters threw in the can of gas and drove back to the station. He called the Westchester police from there, which was proper, then he called his own people. Headquarters was to send men up to work with the county boys. Walters didn’t know about Linton’s murder, of course. He couldn’t have. They’re going to bring him to the house to tell him. He’s probably there by now.”
Dab poured himself more Bourbon. “This is fantastic, Lieutenant,” he said.
“Yeah, honey boy,” replied Romano. “Murder and kidnapping and things like that are always fantastic. But they happen. One thing, the cops, especially the fingerprint men, think they’ve read those little cards that Linton arranged without any trouble. They’re pretty sure they know who killed him. But they want you to take a look at them before they’re disarranged.”
“They think they know the murderer? Who, Lieutenant? Who?”
“Linton’s foster son. Abner Ellison.”
Dab’s mouth fell open. His eyes stared. An expression of complete amazement that any actor might have envied was written on his face. The expression faded. Now there was nothing in the old man’s face but the blank, shocked look of death itself.
Inside his head there was an insistent sound like a whispering My son! My son! said the whispering voice. The little boy with the great, wide eyes that held so much of fear and hurt. The little boy I tried to comfort. The little hoy who became the only son I ever had. Abner. Little Ab. The human being I love most in the world. They’re telling me my little boy is vile, a murderer.
Dab shook his head, fought to regain control of himself. He said, “With all due respect, Lieutenant, are you quite insane? Ab? Impossible! Phil was a father to Ab from the time he was eight years old. He brought him up, housed him, fed him, educated him. They were devoted to each other. What possible motive could Ab have had for killing Philip Linton?”
Romano said, “Take it easy, baby doll. Who knows what grudge Ellison might have had sticking in his craw? For one thing, Ellison’s father copped a Murder Two plea more than twenty years ago and went away to Dannemora. He died there while Abner was being a hero in the Battle of the Bulge. Linton’s evidence helped send the elder Ellison up. That’s the reason Phil took pity on the motherless child and adopted him. Another thing, you and I and everybody who knew Phil Linton and his family realize that Abner Ellison’s been in love with Pat ever since she was a little girl in pigtails.”
“Yes,” said Dab. “I’ve always hoped she’d marry him. I’m very fond of Ab. And I love Pat as if she were my daughter.”
“But she wasn’t going to marry him,” said Romano. “She was going to marry Walters. More motive.”
“For killing Philip Linton?”
Romano nodded. “The police have reason to believe Phil Linton knew something very bad indeed about Abner Ellison. He moved out of Phil’s house a couple of months ago, remember, took a room in a hotel. Maybe Phil influenced his grand-daughter’s decision.”
“Have the police questioned Ab?”
“The police can’t find Ab,” replied Romano.” They haven’t yet, anyway. He’s not at his hotel. But when we started checking his license-plate number, a bright young cop remembered something that happened during the afternoon. About five o’clock Abner Ellison called to say his car had been stolen. The police got a lot of phone calls in the last few hours.”
Dab said, “Do you mean to imply that you suspect a man of murder because he reported a stolen car?”
“No,” said Romano. “I don’t mean that at all, honey boy. But look at it this way. If your car happens to be seen at the scene of a murder or kidnapping, it would be mighty convenient to have it on record that the car’d been stolen from you quite some time before.”
Dab gave Romano a look so witheringly contemptuous that it was worthy of Cyrano at his most arrogant. “There is not a shred of real evidence against Ab,” he said. “I’ve never heard such moonshine. I’m surprised that competent police officers would put any credence whatsoever in any of it.”
“Let’s be getting up to the Linton place,” replied Romano, “and you’ll see the evidence. The real evidence, I mean. We’ve got what amounts to a deathbed statement. Like the fortuneteller says, it’s all in the cards.”
4
FOR THE MOST PART Dab and Romano were silent as the Departmental car carried them uptown. But as they sped along the West Side Highway, Dab said, “Lieutenant, I’ve been thinking about the timetable. The same man couldn’t have done the murder and the kidnapping could he?”
“It’s possible, just possible,” replied Romano. “The murderer might have had as long as forty-five minutes to reach the hamburger stand where Walters’ gas was siphoned. A fast driver, with any luck, could have made it in twenty-five or thirty. But how on earth would the man know he’d find Walters and Pat at a certain roadside stand at that exact moment? Answer is he couldn’t have, not possibly. Whoever snatched Pat had been following Walters’ car all evening. That seems certain. Theory is the murderer had confederates who pulled the snatch while he was taking care of the kill. We’ve got reason to believe Abner Ellison knew plenty of muggs who wouldn’t shy at a snatch.”
“That’s a lot of damned nonsense,” said Dab shortly. After that there was no more conversation.
It was after three when they reached Linton’s little house. In sharp contrast to the grim, dark bulk of the castle across the street, the small dwelling blazed with lights. The mortal remains of Philip Linton had been carried out in a basket some time before. The body reposed now at that great clearing house of violent death on East Twenty-ninth Street—the City Mortuary. Dark stains on the carpet and chalk marks showed where the body had been found. The house was still filled with police officers, some in plain clothes, some in uniform. Most were there on official business. Some had been friends of the murdered man and had come when they heard the news. Among them was a huge, red-faced old man with hamlike hands, Detective-Inspector Sansone, long past retirement age. He had once walked a beat with Linton. Dab recognized Sansone and Captain Haas, the Identification Bureau’s fingerprint expert since Linton’s retirement, and a Homicide aide of Romano’s named Grierson. He had played poker with these men in this same house.
Every man in the room looked grim. A cop had been killed. Murder is mostly routine business to hard-bitten veterans of the force. But when a cop-killer is on the loose, it’s a very different matter.
And Phil Linton had been a great cop. One of the best the Department had ever known.
Dab saw young Allan Walters standing miserably in a corner. The old actor’s heart
