"Walsh, Thomas - Nightmare In Manhattan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Walsh Thomas)

Upstairs Lieutenant Nolan remained at the concourse window, back presented to Donnelly, hands jammed into his hip pockets under his overcoat. Donnelly still looked at him from under heavy eyelids; but presently Donnelly sat back in the swivel chair and closed the eyelids and pressed his lips together. No one had made even the least inoffensive remark for the last few minutes. Now and again Captain Rousseau shifted the phone slightly, to rest himself.

The detective sergeant in back of Donnelly, who was trying to count the slats in the Venetian blinds at the top of the concourse window, was unable to decide whether there were sixteen or seventeen of them. He always became confused halfway down. He started over again. He was sure of nine when Captain Rousseau moved one palm toward Donnelly, patting it at the air in a gesture that called for absolute stillness, and said in almost an ordinary tone, but not quite:

УAll right, Willie, DonnellyТs here. What is it?Ф

Donnelly opened his eyes. Not another muscle in his face moved.


It was, at seven-thirty, just about what Calhoun should have expected it to be. A messenger boy in a gray uniform pushed his way over to the information booth from the main ramp, reached it on the side opposite to Calhoun and the father, and began to page in a shrill and penetrating voice a Mr. Murchison Ч a Mr. Henry L. Murchison.

One of DonnellyТs men, covering that area, heard and saw the messenger boy before Calhoun did. He moved around at once in front of Calhoun, and blew his nose in the direction of the messenger boy. Calhoun looked that way. Then, under the pretext of securing more timetables from a drawer in OТMaraТs desk, Calhoun put his head inside the freight atlas and spoke a hurried sentence or two into the mouthpiece.

Upstairs Captain Rousseau nodded violently at the detective sergeant in back of Donnelly; and the detective sergeant, with at last something to do, ducked out at once to the antechamber and the telephone switchboard. There he was connected by CalhounТs desk man with the announcement booth from which all public information was broadcast in Manhattan Depot. Following this, and within seconds of the time when the messenger boy began to page Mr. Murchison downstairs, every one of DonnellyТs men inside the terminal got the news that now contact was either being made or attempted.

What the loud-speaker announcement said, innocently enough, was that Mr. Nolan from the stationmasterТs office was wanted at Track 41; but then Track 41 was only a dead track over in the extreme northwest corner of the station, and on CalhounТs suggestion it had been decided that any declaration in regard to it would replace, as a less noticeable alert signal, the flashing of the beacon lights under the big clock.

Things began to happen immediately. Those of DonnellyТs men in the neighborhood of the information booth pushed up towards it; and others, farther back, headed quickly but unobtrusively for the stairs, the escalator, the passages and the ramp Ч every possible exit from the main concourse. They waited at those positions. They waited for more directions, which would be given to them as soon as the actual details of the contact were made known Ч and again, of course, through a call for Mr. Nolan of the stationmasterТs office, who should be wanted in another part of the depot any minute now.

Upstairs, too, the men on the east side of the balcony readied themselves to block off the escalator, if word came; and the ones on the north shaped up, although not in formation, around the stairway and the street entrance on that side, near Frances Kennedy.

Everything went off without any visible excitement. There was no commotion, no concerted and obvious rush to any one point; but by the time Mr. Murchison signed for and received a note from the messenger boy all of DonnellyТs men were exactly where they had been ordered to be.

The father read his telegram; then, remembering DonnellyТs instructions in this event, he crumpled it up and appeared to shove it into his overcoat pocket. But a stout, hurrying individual with a large suitcase, who squeezed past now with the suitcase concealing Mr. MurchisonТs right hand for a few seconds, accepted the note instantly and deftly. This man continued ahead to the information booth, where Calhoun waited for him with both hands on top of the counter.

That position, perhaps a little too posed and rigid, enabled Calhoun to palm the note without appearing to move so much as a finger. They had all been ordered to be extremely careful here, because it was possible that if neither of the two men they wanted was present at this moment, someone connected with them Ч perhaps the woman, who could not be identified in here by anybody Ч was keeping the information booth under very sharp and careful scrutiny.

Calhoun, therefore, raised a finger to the stout man and then bent under the counter as if to locate a timetable for him. He read the note quickly in that position, pocketed it, came up with the first timetable he touched and again went over to OТMaraТs telephone. It was still under the freight atlas, and so Calhoun could still speak into it without bringing it into sight.

УThey want him downstairs,Ф Calhoun said thickly, pawing around as if to locate something in one of the desk drawers. УAt a phone booth behind the newsstand Ч it has an out-of-order sign on it. If he goes down there alone, they say theyТll have something waiting for him. Now look. I can beat him down there Ч me and OТMara. Should we?Ф

He bent way over the desk in order to bring his right ear almost against the phone. There was indistinct conversation upstairs; then Donnelly came on.

УGo ahead,Ф Donnelly said, curt and unexcited as ever Ч a bit breathless, though, Уbut donТt start anything, either of you, unless you canТt help it. Just cover that passage, Calhoun. IТm on my way.Ф

The most direct route available to the father was by means of a ramp cutting down and under the southeast corner of the depot; but for Calhoun and OТMara there was a narrow iron stairs coiling around the immense base of the four-sided golden clock to the commutersТ information booth on the lower level.

They used it. They separated outside the commutersТ booth after a hurried sentence or two, Calhoun heading for the south end of the passage in which the phone booths were located, and OТMara cutting across the lower concourse toward the north. When Calhoun got there a good many people were moving through into the concourse or else standing around near the row of phone booths; but not one of them resembled in any striking physical detail either Big Red or the second Rothman brother.

Calhoun, still wearing the railroad coat, stopped opposite the third booth in the passage. He became conscious now that his heart had begun to bounce rapidly against his chest, and that he could not seem to do anything effective about it. He pretended to tie his shoelace. Then George OТMara came along from the north end of the passage, opened a newspaper he had snatched somewhere and settled himself against the wall eight or ten yards away from Calhoun.

The father appeared.


Upstairs a second announcement had been made by this time, declaring that Mr. Nolan of the stationmasterТs office was now wanted immediately on the lower level. The announcement was heard, and acted upon, in many different areas of the terminal. Various positions had been assigned by Calhoun and Captain Rousseau earlier in the afternoon in case it would be found necessary to screen off any one particular part of the depot; and now, in the Saturday-night rush at Manhattan Depot, the arrangements demanded here went off like clockwork.

On the west balcony, near Frances, the middle-aged man and his partner had abandoned all pretense of occupying themselves by the street entrance. They now took up new positions on either side of the concourse stairway, and were joined there by other men from the balcony, and then by Donnelly and Nolan, who came around hurriedly from Captain RousseauТs office.

Donnelly muttered a few words to them, but in so guarded a tone that Frances was able to catch nothing of it. They all left her there, and there was no opportunity for Frances to ask questions of anyone. Donnelly appeared and disappeared in practically the same moment; the rest followed him; and after that, if Frances knew something of the arrangements which had been made, or were being made at this moment, she was unable to see any outward indications of them.