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

She caught his arm.

УI think so,Ф she said quietly. УI think perhaps weТd better.Ф

УOkay,Ф the conductor said. He was thinking to himself, with a very grim sort of satisfaction, that heТd let Willie Calhoun take care of this thing; and that she might learn a little sense and manners, and not to bother people who only wanted to mind their own business, when Willie Calhoun got through with her.

УOkay, lady.Ф He bawled: УMillvale CenterФ into the coach behind her, swung up the floor partition, swung back the outside door and stepped down to the platform. Snow whirled around him; he looked back at her once and then stepped through into the ticket office.

From there, and in this manner, a message went off from Train Number 52 at about twenty minutes past four. It was relayed through to Manhattan Depot almost immediately; and it was handed on there, in a small upstairs office, to a Lieutenant William Patrick Calhoun, who was acting head of the terminal police from four every afternoon until twelve midnight.

Lieutenant Calhoun glanced at the official but unilluminating demand that Train Number 52, on arrival, have a member of the railroad police waiting for it; and then, because the information had caught him at an exceptionally busy moment, just as he was about to start on his first evening inspection of the station area, he adjusted his gray hat irritably and buttoned up his unobtrusive gray overcoat. He was known as Tough Willie in some quarters. He looked it now with his chest out and his jaw up, when he tossed the flimsy sheet back to his desk man over the top of the telephone switchboard; and he acted it on the concourse balcony, just outside his office, where he stuck his hands into his hip pockets around under the overcoat, and eyed moodily what could be seen of Manhattan Depot from this vantage point.

Just under him, on the other side of a low railing, lay an enormous rectangular chamber that was almost four hundred feet long, and better than a hundred and twenty wide. Far above him, at the east and west ends of the concourse, were twin sets of arched windows pressing back the early darkness of that February day; and over and between these, sweeping from north to south in one great flying arch, was a complicated network, shadowy from below, of threadlike steel beams.

Everything down there on the concourse was brilliantly illuminated; and everything at this time, and on this Friday evening Ч the first of a long holiday week end Ч was just about what Lieutenant Calhoun had expected it to be. He received a familiar impression of glass, marble, glitter, polish and people; of noise, luggage, confusion and redcaps; and of a four-sided golden clock, the heart and mainspring of Manhattan Depot, rising with detached serenity from inside the besieged circular fortress of the information booth.

Impatient lines had been forming up all afternoon at the ticket windows across from Calhoun, on one of the long sides of the rectangle; and the first thing he noted, after checking the big clock over the information booth, and then his wrist watch, was that these lines were being augmented constantly now, and from half a dozen different approaches. Some of the newcomers poured in from an escalator and two archways on CalhounТs left; still others from two more archways, a wide marble stairs and an upper street entrance far to CalhounТs right; but perhaps most of all from a tremendous ramp, broadening out at the base, that cut the long row of ticket windows opposite him into equal halves, and led down past them from the main waiting room.

Calhoun paused just long enough to examine all those details stolidly and yet carefully; and, afterward, he walked around his side of the balcony and down the west stairs to the floor of the concourse. First, in the way of routine supervision, he checked the signal lights under the big clock which flashed on and off, on and off, when a railroad policeman was wanted anywhere in Manhattan Depot; then he inspected the ticket windows, the main ramp, and the vicinity of the incoming and outgoing baggage rooms, to see that all his patrolmen had posted themselves at their designated stations; and then he inched and angled his way up the ramp, past heavy incoming traffic, to the main waiting room.

He moved around very casually through the benches and aisles up there, a burly young man with impressive shoulders, a heavy fighterТs jaw and a curt, competent and unshakable manner; and on the other side of a newsstand he gazed blankly, but without showing the least recognition, at a railroad patrolman who was carrying on some lighthearted conversation with a pretty girl at the Travelers Aid booth. The patrolman noticed him presently; and then the patrolman flushed, straightened at once and resumed his proper position over in front of the street doors.

Calhoun went around him, not pausing, but sending over a few low and effective remarks in that direction. An inside stairway in one corner led him down into the overheated tile and bustle of the menТs washroom; and from there, when everything appeared to him much as usual, he continued down another ramp onto the lower or commutersТ level.

His daily task, at this time, was to inspect both station levels, and all arcades and passages, for known pickpockets or baggage thieves; to observe conditions in the waiting rooms, the washrooms, around the track gates, and near the information booth; to make such prompt physical intervention as might be required by any suspicious person, place or thing; and to satisfy himself, during the busiest hour of the day in Manhattan Depot, that everything was quite in order.

To do this, he had personally to inspect every station area, and every station business establishment. There were a good many of these last Ч barbershops, newsstands, telegraph offices, phone booths, restaurants and cocktail lounges; and of course, buried cosily in long interior passages, attractive bookstores and candy stores, florists, luggage shops and soda fountains. But still he was done with all of these about five oТclock; and then, swaggering a little, but altogether unconsciously, in that rather heavy-shouldered walk of his, he entered another marble chamber over in the northwest corner of the station.

Here the arrival time and track number of all incoming trains were marked up on a huge blackboard; and here, after inquiring again about Train Number 52, to make sure of it, Calhoun used an ornate marble doorway with the word Taxicabs inscribed over the arch. Beyond this was a long, narrow platform, where it was much colder than in the announcerТs room, and much windier. Cab after cab raced down a narrow vehicular tunnel on CalhounТs right, popping suddenly around the street turn with their hoods and fenders snow-covered, and their windshield wipers clicking from side to side in impatient sweeps. Redcaps and passengers jostled each other for first chance at the cab doors; many different kinds of traffic noise and human commotion bounced back over Lieutenant Calhoun from dirty brick walls, from a low ceiling; and out in the center of the tunnel, where he stood straddle-legged as if braced on a concrete safety island, an undersized man wearing a starterТs cap was attempting, with savage downward gestures of both arms, to guide the incoming traffic up to and then past the terminal platform.

Out here it was even more overcrowded than the main concourse, in proportion to size, and so Calhoun moved along very slowly, gray eyes everywhere Ч at the piles of luggage, principally, at the people who were hovering around them, at cabbies and redcaps, and at excited female passengers who would dash out into the road in order to wave at some taxi, and leave a hundred- or a hundred-and-fifty-dollar suitcase absolutely unguarded in back of them on the platform.

Calhoun tightened his lips at these females, because it was always CalhounТs habit, during his first hour or two on duty, to become irritated at a good many station incidents, and a good many station people; but at the same time Calhoun also watched their suitcases for them. At the lower end of the platform he exchanged a few words with another of his patrolmen; and finally, at just ten minutes past five, re-entered the main concourse of Manhattan Depot by another passage. This time he crossed it diagonally from south to north, and left it by a track gate opposite the information booth. Beyond the gate, it was much darker, quieter and emptier than in any other part of the depot. At Platform 24, from which the advance Buckeye Express had just departed for Buffalo and the Midwest, the lights had been left on; but all the others, even where trains had been made up for later this evening, looked shadowy and deserted. A few voices rang and echoed in a curious disembodied fashion under the subterranean train shed. Sacks of mail were piled up, apparently at random, where a row of chutes had dumped them from the beehive of the Manhattan Depot post office; and the illumination there enabled Calhoun to make out an intricate complexity of tracks gleaming and narrowing away from him into a black underworld.

A baggageman riding in from one of the platforms floated sedately past on an empty electric truck, after which Calhoun settled himself behind the proper track bumper for the arrival of Train Number 52. In the shadows now he seemed to acquire more bulk than he actually possessed, perhaps because of his solid, chunky build, his broad shoulders and his impressively powerful arms and legs. He was thirty years old, but in appearance and manner one of those rugged and self-confident individuals who give the impression more of competent adult maturity than of any particular age. His hair was black; his jaw the prominent bulldog type; his gray eyes deeply socketed, like a prize fighterТs, around a stub nose; and his complexion Ч it often shamed him Ч almost childishly clear, soft and delicate. He walked usually jaw out, chest forward, with a noticeable rock or swagger, as if he had to do that in order to balance the shoulders properly; and he dressed always, as now, in a neat, clean and inconspicuous masculine manner. The idea most people got of him, and at first glance, was one of dogged stubbornness, watchful pugnacity and rocklike physical strength and endurance.

At twenty minutes past five, when there came a slight vibration underneath him, he removed a cigarette from his mouth with a dainty gesture, dropped it from between two fingers, stepped on it, put his hands on his hips and faced the passenger platform. He remained in that position while an electric engine glided around a signal arrangement out on the track, drawing behind it day coaches that rolled in with increasing slowness under the overhead platform lights, which had gone on a moment ago. Then Train Number 52 slowed, slowed Ч finally stopped; and car after car jerked laboriously back along the rails, and afterward settled themselves as if heaving a deep sigh.

Two people hurried down to the track bumper from the first day coach. What Calhoun saw then, beside Conductor Goggins, was a young lady wearing a small hat and a dark fur coat who was obviously distressed and upset about something; and what Frances saw was a short but solidly set young man with a square chin, sharp and quick gray eyes, and one of the toughest and most cynical facial expressions she had ever seen. He did not change the expression in any way for her; he did not tip the hat, smile courteously or remove the hands from his hips.

The conductor muttered to him in an undertone; and the tough-looking young man, scrutinizing her all the time in the most forthright manner, listened without a word. Then suddenly, with a very abrupt kind of nod to the conductor, he took Frances by the left arm, turned her and started her up toward the track gate.

УNow I suppose you wouldnТt want those fellows to see you,Ф he growled in the most unexcited basso profundo, being logical enough about it. УOkay, then. LetТs get outside. LetТs take a look at them where they wonТt notice us. Now come on, come on, lady; speak up. WhatТs all this business about a gun?Ф

Frances tried to explain to him.

УI imagine you think IТm a fool,Ф she said, desperate there because in the familiar environs of Manhattan Depot she was beginning to have serious doubts on that matter herself. УThat IТm Ч Ф

УWhatТs the story about the gun?Ф Calhoun demanded Ч curtly, crisply. УThatТs the thing, lady. ThatТs what matters. WhatТs all this about?Ф