“A compliment from you, Rance?”
Ransom lifted his lantern to search the drifting boat, its oars having been secured by Callahan, who now held his head over the side and noisily retched.
Ransom looked into a stranger’s eyes, wide and questioning, a man named Trelaine, whose head alone lay at the rear of the boat where he’d been enticed by a killer apparently capable of talking another man into abandoning his boat and a beautiful woman for the privilege of helping out.
“What next, Rance?” asked Griffin.
Ransom failed to answer, still lost in Trelaine’s accusing gaze; a gaze that asked why hadn’t the collective “they”
stopped this madman before he could do this horror?
Griffin spoke. “Callahan, get into the boat with the head and—”
“Me, sir?”
“—and row it into the dock, Callahan. Inspector Ransom can use the exercise it’ll take to get himself ashore.”
This reference to Ransom’s weight caused only cautious laughter as other search boats had gathered in close for a look at the severed head.
Callahan, tall, angular and fair-skinned blanched whiter, but he shakily made his way into the boat, where the head lay staring up at him. Given its proximity, it lay between his legs where he sat the oars. He could count on its rocking side to side, touching his ankles.
Around him, he heard the nervous twittering and mutterings of others, but Ransom looked him in the eye and said,
“Callahan, use your coat.”
Callahan nodded and quickly removed his coat and blot-ted out the staring head. Earlier, Ransom had judged the dead man from his clothes as upper crust. He wore Marshall Field shoes, and his clothes appeared tailored, but the inspector had been surprised on reading the lapel: mont-CITY FOR RANSOM
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gomery ward. No sign of Carson, Pirie, Scott buttons on the man.
“Griff, did you send for Philo?”
“Sent our biggest lads to fetch him, yes.”
“He’s likely talked them into a drink.”
“Damn, they’ll be all night.”
“I’m confident they’ll have ’im back and waiting for us at the dock.”
“We’ll have to row him out to the tunnel entrance.”
“I can manage that.”
“Thanks, Griff, and for earlier . . . for walking my lady friend to a cab.”
“Do you know the address she gave the cabbie, Alastair?”
“I do.”
“And?”
“She’s Dr. Tewes’s sister.”
“Really?”
“Yes, keeps house for Tewes, perhaps a bit of nursing . . .
looks after his daughter.”
“
Ransom bristled but also thought of his having measured Tewes. “Old-fashioned foot-to-heel police work. Which reminds me: Did you send those measurements off?”
“Telegraphed. Marvelous invention. Phoned New York, too, just to ask around about Tewes. Didn’t he say he spent some time there? But nothing’s come of it, not so far anyway.”
Back now through the tunnel, where they bobbed beneath the concrete and fieldstone overpass each eyeing the bloody print marking the killer’s escape. Then they were back with Trelaine’s parts. His remains were laid out near Chesley Mandor’s.
Philo showed up, a brawny cop on each side of him. He’d not brought his usual equipment, carrying instead a hefty handheld camera like a small accordion, no doubt his latest acquisition.
220
ROBERT W. WALKER
“Hello, my friend,” Ransom’s weary voice reached Philo.
“We’ve sad work aplenty for you.”
“As I heard, but look here, Alastair.” He held up his new camera. “Isn’t she lovely? It’s the latest, a Kombi Night-Hawk detective camera, created for just such work as we engage in, you see?”
“Well and good, so long as you get the cuts, Philo. One’s gonna require a boat ride and a bit of balancing, so I’m glad you brought the smaller camera.”
“It possesses all the latest improvements known to modern photography, man.”
“I’ll take your word for it. It’s a beauty.”
“Morocco leather, my friend, and further, it’s fitted with the new rapid rectilinear lens.”
“Let’s just get started, Philo.”
“It’s fitted with a new regulation timer and instantaneous shutter, Alastair, with bulb attachment and—”
Philo, who’d followed Ransom to the corpse, suddenly fell silent, staring, shaking. On seeing the woman’s charred remains, he gasped and dropped his camera, and went to his knees.
The victim has a familiar face, Alastair guessed from Philo’s contrition, and now apologetic words spewed from the photographer, his hands clasped in the universal gesture of prayer, his body wracked with sobbing. “Chesley!
Please forgive . . . ahhhh-haaa.”
“My God,” said Nathan Kohler now on scene.
Ransom whispered in Philo’s ear, a hand on him, trying to get him away and composed, “Tell me she was not one of your models, Philo.”
Philo shook off Ransom’s touch; he refused help, refused getting up from his kneeling position over the charred body and still lovely face, his hands extended, hovering over the torso and garroted head.
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Reporters on scene snapped pictures. Others jotted notes, trying to transcribe Philo Keane’s litany of apologies. Ransom knew from experience that a man displaying such vulnerability—beaten and broken in spirit— soon learned how few friends he actually had in this life. Ransom smelled sharks in the water. “Get Philo outta here, Griff,” Alastair barked.
“But the photograph of the handprint?”
“Get one of the reporters, anyone. Just get Philo away.”
Philo stumbled to his feet, dizzy with death and drink, shouting, “It’s Trelaine’s doing! That scrawny prick is the garroter! All the while pretending to love her!”
“
“A vile, greedy little man! Joseph Trelaine. I’ll swear out a warrant here, now, Ransom! They must’ve quarreled.
He . . . he must’ve thought after killing her to make it look the work of this Phantom. Dear Ches rejected the prig for me after all, and it . . . I got her killed. No doubt of it!”
