The Tragedy of Z (23 page)

“Park! Callahan! Come up here,” barked Warden Magnus.

The two men, reluctantly, advanced and mounted the steps. Their faces were pale and streaked with dust; both of them were highly nervous, and one—Park—was so frightened that his lower lip bubbled and blubbered like a scolded child's.

“What happened?”

Park licked a fleck of spittle from his lips; but it was Callahan who muttered: “He got us off guard, Warden. You know how it is. We never had a louse try to escape on the road-gang in our eight years here. We were sittin' on rocks, watchin' 'em work. Dow was down the road a piece, actin' water-boy. All of a sudden he drops the pail and runs like hell into the woods. Park and me—we yell to the rest to lay down in the road, and we beat it after him. I fire three shots, but I guess I——”

The warden held up his hand, and Callahan stopped. “Daly,” said Magnus quietly to one of the keepers below, “did you examine the road there, as I told you?”

“Yes, Warden.”

“What did you find?”

“I found two flattened bullets in a tree twenty feet from the place where Dow dived into the woods.”

“On the same side of the road?”

“On the other side of the road, Warden.”

“So,” said Magnus, in the same quiet voice. “Park. Callahan. How much did you get for letting Dow make his getaway?”

Calahan mumbled: “Why, Warden, we never—” But Park's knees wobbled, and he cried: “I told you, Callahan! You got me into this, damn you! I told you we couldn't get away with——”

“You accepted a bribe, eh?” snapped Magnus.

Park hid his face in his hands. “Yes, Warden.”

I thought Mr. Lane looked extremely disturbed at this; his eyes flickered, and he sank back thoughtfully.

“Who paid the bribe?”

“Some heel in Leeds,” muttered Park; Callahan's face was murderous. “Don't know his name. A go-between for somebody.”

Mr. Lane made a peculiar sound deep in his throat and leaned forward to whisper into the warden's ear. Magnus nodded. “How was Dow notified of the arrangements?”

“I don't know, Warden, honest to God I don't! It was all fixed. We didn't go near him, in stir, Warden. All we were told was that he was bein' taken care of.”

“How much did you get?”

“Five hundred apiece. I'm—I didn't mean to, Warden! Only my wife's got to have an operation, and my kid's got——”

“That's all,” said Magnus curtly, and jerked his head. The two keepers were marched away toward the prison.

“Magnus,” said Father Muir nervously, “don't be harsh, don't press the charge. Just dismiss them from service. I know Park's wife, and she's really ill. And Callahan is all right, too. But they've both got families, and you know how little the pay is——”

Magnus sighed. “I know, padre, I know. But I can't set a precedent; my hands are tied. It would shatter the morale of the other keepers, and you know what it would do to the men.” He made a queer little gesture. “Funny,” he muttered. “That business of how Dow was tipped off when to break. Unless Park lied.… For a long time I've suspected a leak somewhere in the prison. But the method—it's clever.…”

The old gentleman regarded the red ball of the sun sadly. “I think I can help you there, Warden,” he murmured. “It's clever, as you say, but after all it's very simple.”

“Eh?” Warden Magnus blinked. “What's that?”

Mr. Lane shrugged. “I've suspected a loose end for some time, Warden, purely as a result of observation of a certain curious phenomenon. I've never said anything about it because the explanation, strangely enough, involves my old friend Father Muir.”

The priest's old mouth sagged open. Warden Magnus sprang to his feet with a threatening scowl and cried: “Nonsense! I don't believe it! Why, the padre's the most——”

“I know, I know,” said Mr. Lane mildly. “Sit down, Warden, and calm yourself. As for you, Father, don't be alarmed. I'm not going to accuse you of anything heinous. Permit me to explain. On numerous occasions since I've been stopping with our friend I've observed something queer, Warden—a circumstance innocent enough in itself, but it fits so nicely with your prison leakage, as it were, that I'm compelled to draw the conclusion that … Father, do you recall any unusual incidents which have occurred recently during your visits to town?”

The priest's faded eyes filled with thought; they stared earnestly from behind his thick lenses. Then he shook his head. “Really—No, I can't think of any.” And then he smiled apologetically. “Unless you mean my bumping into people. You know, I'm very near-sighted, Mr. Lane, and I'm afraid a trifle absent-minded.…”

The old gentleman smiled. “Precisely. You are near-sighted, absent-minded, and on your visits to Leeds you bump into people on the streets. Mark that, Warden; I've suspected it for some time, although I didn't know the exact
modus operandi.
What happens, Father, when you collide with—ah—innocent pedestrians?”

Father Muir was bewildered. “What do you mean? People are always kind and respect my cloth, I suppose, for sometimes my umbrella falls to the sidewalk, or my hat or breviary——”

“Ha! Your breviary? Just as I thought. And what do these kind, respectful people do with your hat, umbrella, or breviary?”

“Why, they pick them up and hand them back to me.”

Mr. Lane chuckled. “So you see, Warden, how really elementary the problem was. These kind people pick up your breviary, Father, and, keeping it,
return a different one,
a breviary which looks the same but is not! And in that substituted breviary, I fear, are the messages which you yourself carry into the prison, or in the breviary your kind pedestrians appropriate is a message from the prison to the outside world!”

“But how did you figure this out?” muttered the warden.

“Nothing magical,” smiled the old gentleman. “I have observed on several occasions that while the good father leaves this house or the prison with a slightly worn breviary, he often returns carrying a shiny, obviously brand-new one. His breviary never seems to age, but rises out of his own ashes like the immortal phoenix. The deduction was, of course, inevitable.”

Warden Magnus sprang to his feet again and patrolled the porch with long strides. “Of course! That's damned clever. Come, come, padre, don't look so shocked. It's not your fault. Who do you think is manipulating this racket, eh?”

“I—I haven't the faintest idea,” faltered the priest.

“Tabb, of course!” He turned to us. “Tabb's the only possibility. You see, Father Muir, besides being chaplain, is also in charge of the prison library—the usual thing in large prisons. He has an assistant, a prisoner named Tabb—one of our trusties, to be sure; but a criminal is a criminal, and Tabb must be using the padre as a tool. Go-between between inmates and outsiders, charging so much per letter or note sent or received. Oh, it's plain enough now! Thanks a thousand times, Mr. Lane; I'll have that scoundrel on the carpet in five minutes.”

And, eyes shining, the warden hurried off toward the prison.

The long fingers swept blue-black over the hills, and darkness began to fall. With dusk, most of the prison searchers returned, their brilliant searchlights churning up the road; but they were empty-handed. Dow was still at liberty.

There was nothing for us to do except return to the Clay's, or wait; and we chose to wait. Father telephoned Elihu Clay not to worry about us; we both felt that we could not leave the vicinity of Algonquin without knowing the result of the manhunt. And so in the deepening evening we sat huddled together, without speaking; and once I thought I heard the baying of hounds.…

The problem of the iniquitous Tabb troubled us very little—with the exception of Father Muir, who was disconsolate and refused to believe evil of such a “fine young man, so interested in our books and the advancement of reading among the men,” as he characterized the assistant librarian. Later, at about ten o'clock—we had not eaten since midday, but none of us was hungry—the priest, restless, unable to contain himself longer, apologized and trotted up the road toward the prison. And when he returned he was in a state of great distress. He wrung his hands and refused to be consoled, and his face began to take on what I feared would turn out a permanent expression of astonishment, as if he could not believe in his gentle heart that all his rosy bubbles of faith in his fellowmen had in reality been cruelly prickled.

“I've just seen Magnus,” he panted, sinking into a chair. “It's true, it's true! Tabb—I cannot understand, really, really, what's come over my poor boys!—Tabb has confessed.”

“He's been using you, eh?” asked father gently.

“Yes, oh yes! It's dreadful. I saw him for a moment; he's been deprived of his position and privileges, and Magnus has—oh, quite properly, no doubt, but it seems hard—sent him back to the Grade C class. He could scarcely look me in the eye. How could he have been so——”

“How many messages,” murmured Mr. Lane, “has he handled for Aaron Dow? Did he say?”

Father Muir winced. “Yes. Dow sent only one message—weeks ago, to Senator Fawcett. But Tabb didn't know its contents. There were one or two incoming messages, too. You see, he's been working—amazing!—this lucrative sideline for years. He just sees that a message is taken out of a new breviary when I—I bring it in. It's sewn into the lining … or puts a message into my old one when I'm due to go out. He says he never knows what the message contains. Oh, dear …”

So we all sat and waited for what we feared would happen. Would they find the escaped prisoner? It did not seem likely that he could indefinitely evade the clutches of the keepers.

“There's—there's talk among the guards,” said Father Muir tremulously, “of getting the dogs out.”

“I thought I heard them—baying,” I whispered. And we all fell silent. The minutes wore on. From the prison came the shouts of men, and geysers of light flung crazily skyward. All evening cars had rushed in and out of the prison yard, some bound for the road through the woods, some roaring past Father Muir's. Once we actually saw a man in dark clothes straining at a multiple leash which held a pack of lolling, terrible dogs.

From a little past ten, when the priest came back, until midnight, we sat motionless on the porch; and it seemed to me that behind his mask Mr. Drury Lane was struggling with some conviction which he could not grasp clearly. He said nothing at all, but brooded at the dark sky with half-closed eyes, his fingers loosely intertwined before him. We seemed not to exist for him. Was it that once before when Aaron Dow had left Algonquin Prison a man had died? Was that what he was trying to grasp? I thought I might say something.…

The break came promptly at midnight, as if prearranged by the gods of chance. An automobile thundered up the hill from the direction of Leeds, and snorted to a stop outside our gate. We all stood up at once, involuntarily, craning into the darkness.

A man leaped from the tonneau of the car and dashed up the path to the porch.

“Inspector Thumm? Mr. Lane?” he cried.

It was District Attorney John Hume, disheveled, in a state of panting excitement.

“Well?” croaked father.

Hume sat down suddenly on the lowest step. “I have news for you. For you all.… You still think Dow is innocent, eh?” he added, as if in afterthought.

Drury Lane advanced a short pace, jerkily, and stopped. In the dim starlight I saw his lips move soundlessly. Then he said in a low, harsh voice: “You don't mean that——”

“I mean,” mumbled Hume, and his voice was weary and bitter and resentful, as if he considered what had happened a personal affront, “I mean that your friend Aaron Dow escaped from Algonquin Prison this afternoon; and that tonight—just a few minutes ago—Dr. Ira Fawcett was found murdered!”

16. THE Z

And now that it had happened I saw that from the beginning it had been inevitable. I had been thinking all around it, and yet had not penetrated to the naked heart of it. As for the old gentleman, the case had worked out badly for him. He had never forgiven himself for having committed the blunder of testing Aaron Dow in the Leeds county jail without unprejudiced witnesses; and now, as we sat in his car, piloted by Dromio and following Hume's thunderbolt hurtling down the hill in the dark, he buried his nose in his chest and contemplated the bitter fact that he should have foreseen, and averted, the murder of Dr. Fawcett.

“I tell you,” he said tonelessly, “I should never have come up here at all. Fawcett's death was foreordained by the facts. I've been the blindest fool.…”

He said nothing more, and we could find no words to comfort him. I was miserable, and father sat in densest fog. Father Muir was not with us; this last blow had proved too much for him, and we had left him in his sitting room staring with haunted eyes at his Bible.

And so once more we rolled into that black driveway and saw the mansion ablaze with lights and troopers and policemen milling about, and walked over a threshold which seemed fated to be the stepping-stone of murdered men and murderers.

With little change we might have been back at that first scene, months ago. There was burly Chief Kenyon, surrounded by his dour detectives; there was the room on the ground floor; there was the dead man.…

But Dr. Ira Fawcett had not been murdered in the Senator's study. We found his body, contorted in death, lying on the rug of his medical examining room, a few feet from the desk at which I had seen him only the night before studying that innocent little slab of wood which might have been the middle section of a miniature chest. His sleek black vandyke jutted starkly from his bluish chin; he was sprawled on his back and his eyes were open, staring glassily at the ceiling. Except for the rigid disorder of his limbs he might have been a mummified Egyptian Pharaoh lying there contemplating eternity.