“I’ll lock it,” said Hollander.
“It does seem kind of foolish, doesn’t it?”
Hollander smiled grimly. “Most foolish.”
He stood up and joined her at the door. She went outside. He closed the door and locked it. He stared almost blankly for an instant at the two policemen. They had drawn their chairs back a little within the bathroom doorway. Hansen was impassively studying the ceiling above his head. Cassidy, leaning forward a little, was looking with solemn eyes at the outline of Endicott’s still figure beneath the bedclothes.
Hollander stretched cramped muscles and then went back to his armchair beside the bed. He sat down and was all but completely obscured from the two guards by its high back. With imperceptible movements he drew a thin steel blade from beneath the cuff of his left coat sleeve and held it in such a fashion that it was masked in the palm of his right hand, the hilt extending up a little beneath the shirt cuff. He leaned forward and stared down upon Endicott’s quiet face. Not quiet, exactly, for the lids were twitching—opening—and Endicott’s eyes, bright and unseeing from fever, stared up. …
XVI
2:13 a.m.—Time Versus Death
O’Brian stirred a bit restlessly in his chair by the hall door and yawned; then he looked at his watch. It was almost a quarter past two. He began to enumerate the various things he would give for a good cup of strong black coffee, and his shirt headed the list. Or, if not coffee, some excitement to keep him awake.
The telephone jangled.
He stood up abruptly and went to the instrument. It would be, he imagined, Lieutenant Valcour calling again to find out if everything was all right. Well, everything was.
O’Brian lifted the receiver and said, “Hello!”
No one answered him, and there wasn’t any sound from the other end of the line, unless you could call a sort of thumping noise and a faint tinkle that might have been breaking glass a sound.
“Hello!” O’Brian said again.
The line wasn’t dead, because there wasn’t that peculiar burring one hears when the connection is broken. The receiver of the phone at the other end was certainly off the hook. O’Brian singled out one of the patron saints of Ireland and wanted to know, most emphatically, just what sort of fun and foustie was being made of him.
“Hello!” He tried it again.
There was a click. The burring sound started. The line was dead. Whoever had been calling from the other end had hung up.
O’Brian very thoughtfully did likewise.
Then he began to wonder what he ought to do. It didn’t take him very long to decide, especially as the thumping noise and tinkle of breaking glass grew louder in retrospect the more he thought about them. He didn’t have to go as far as Denmark; something was certainly rotten right here in New York.
He dialled the operator, identified himself as a member of the police force, and stated that he wanted the call he had just received instantly traced.
“Oneminuteplease,” requested a voice with a macadamized smile.
The minute stretched into two—ten—but eventually he was informed that the call had come from the apartment of a Mr. Thomas Hollander, whose phone number and address were thereupon given.
O’Brian jotted them down. He then dialled the telephone number of Hollander who was, as he very well knew, right upstairs. Several persistent diallings failed to awaken any response.
The complexion of the work afoot grew dirtier. O’Brian felt certain that it was connected with the terrain activities of Lieutenant Valcour. If it had just been some occupant of Hollander’s apartment who had wanted to call Hollander up about something, there would have been an answer.
And there wouldn’t have been that thumping noise, and the tinkle of breaking glass.
It seemed a matter that required investigation at once. O’Brian telephoned his precinct station and reported the occurrence and his beliefs about it to the sergeant in charge. He was assured that a raiding squad would be dispatched within a matter of minutes to the address he had given.
One was.
They found Lieutenant Valcour helplessly bound, very dazed, very weak, lying on the floor beneath a table when the men crashed the door to Hollander’s apartment and broke in. Cold water—a glass of whiskey from a convenient decanter—and intelligence and strength began to return. Lieutenant Valcour pushed away the hands that were supporting him and, going to the telephone, called the Endicotts’.
“O’Brian?”
“Yes, Lieutenant—you all right, sir?”
“Yes, yes—pay attention to every word I say and follow my instructions to a letter. Endicott’s life depends upon it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go upstairs to Dr. Worth and wake him. Tell him I believe that Hollander is armed with a knife and that he is probably just waiting for a chance to use it when he won’t be observed by the nurse or Cassidy and Hansen. Hollander is Endicott’s enemy, not friend. Tell Dr. Worth to go down and knock on Endicott’s door. Tell him to go right inside when it opens. Now get this.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell him to ask the nurse how the patient is—to act natural about it. Tell him to start to go out and then, as a second thought, tell him to beckon to Hollander as if he wanted to tell Hollander something. Hollander will get up and go to him. Tell him to whisper to Hollander that there’s something he wants to tell him privately, if Hollander will step outside for a minute into the corridor. You be in the corridor. When Hollander comes out, jump him. Put the cuffs on him and keep him quiet until I get there. I’ll be right on up. O. K.?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lieutenant Valcour rang off. He turned to the sergeant in charge of the detail.
“Leave one man here, Sergeant,” he said. “The rest of you men can go back to the station after you’ve dropped me at the
