Walsh, Thomas - Nightmare In Manhattan

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MANHATTAN

NIGHTMARE

by THOMAS WALSH

Walsh, Thomas - Nightmare In Manhattan

Boston

Little, Brown and Company

TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS

THEREOF IN ANY FORM

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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Walsh, Thomas - Nightmare In Manhattan

NIGHTMARE

MANHATTAN

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Walsh, Thomas - Nightmare In Manhattan

PART ONE

Tony muechison had lunch with her. He was a shy but well-behaved little

boy, six years old, who studied Frances during the meal with cautious

interest; and what she remembered of him afterward was a round face, an

earnest manner, a blue and white checkered shirt, just like a cowboy’s,

and one of those enormous Uncle Sam pencils. Later on, when he heard

the typing begin again just as he was going off to school for the afternoon

session, he appeared in his father’s study to observe soberly, but with

obvious fascination, the soft clicking and flashing of the typewriter keys as

Frances manipulated them.

He came no closer to her than the hall doorway, and then looked away

very solemnly, without the least smile when Frances detected him in that

position. He stayed there, as if altogether unconcerned with her, for

several minutes, and finally he came in a step, still watching her fingers.

He came in another step when Frances pretended not to see him. He

came in two steps.

“I could do that,” he said, almost his first words to her.

She thought he could too, Frances said; it really wasn’t awfully difficult.

But could he make soldiers?

“Soldiers?” Tony Murchison said. Again she was observed solemnly. “On

that?”

Then she tapped out, with what must have seemed magical quickness, a

diagonal column of guardsmen, all with muskets, and all at right shoulder

arms.

“Oh,” Tony Murchison said.

He buttoned up the blue overcoat slowly and competently, inspecting the

guardsmen first, and then her. He said nothing; he remained solemn as

ever; but when he came back to the study several minutes later she

understood that she had made a conquest for herself, because he was

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Walsh, Thomas - Nightmare In Manhattan

carrying with him a new picture book, one that had a magnificent black

and yellow tiger as frontispiece.

He wanted to know, putting it with impressive earnestness, if Frances

supposed that a tiger like that could kill an elephant. A boy had said so,

Frances was informed, but of course there were boys who said anything

at all, weren’t there?

“Indeed there are,” Frances said warmly. “And I wouldn’t believe them.

You don’t have to, you know.”

“Oh, I don’t,” Tony Murchison said. “Not always. Do you want to know

something? I’m in the first grade. I go to school. Did my daddy tell you

about that?”

Frances was suitably impressed about school, and Tony Murchison was

apparently impressed by her. At ten minutes to one, after a short but

friendly conversation, he tucked the guardsmen into his pocket next to the

Uncle Sam pencil, and prepared to go off to that very important first grade

of his at St. Hilary’s Day School. Then, from the study doorway, he

confessed something which pleased Frances inordinately.

“I like you,” he said, nodding at her very seriously. “You’re nice — and I

think you’re pretty, too. Where do you live?”

She did not see him again. He went off to school wearing the blue

overcoat, red mittens and a blue school cap, and Frances had finished

with her work twenty minutes or so before he was due home from St.

Hilary’s. She had come up to North Rhinehill that morning to type at home

for Mr. Murchison a long and important memorandum on Coronet Oil; and

she left the house hurriedly now, with the completed report, in an attempt

to catch the 2:55 down from the North Rhinehill railroad station.

It was a gray February afternoon, bad for driving, with thick flurries of

snow evident now and again in a bitter wind; and once Charles, the elderly

Murchison chauffeur, was almost maneuvered into an accident on the

ridge road leading down past St. Hilary’s Day School to the village.

They had just passed the big gray buildings there, where Charles was to

pick up Tony Murchison on the ride home, when a gun-metal sedan raced

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Walsh, Thomas - Nightmare In Manhattan

up back of them out of nowhere, swerved to the right or else skidded, and

forced Charles into deeper snow at the edge of the road.

There were three men crowded together into the front seat of the sedan,

but the one nearest her was the only one Frances saw at all clearly. He

examined the Murchison car very quickly, with cold-looking and

unpleasant blue eyes, and then he spoke to his driver. They sheered off at

once.

That was the first time Frances saw him. She saw him again about an

hour afterward at Chester Falls, which was two stations on along the line.

The same gun-metal sedan skidded in recklessly there to the upper end of

the passenger platform, and two men jumped out of it, ran diagonally

across the platform, and swung themselves up onto the steps of the last

coach — Frances’s coach — just as the 2:55, which had been forty

minutes late at North Rhinehill, was pulling out in a hurried attempt to

make up for some of its lost time.

The blue-eyed man — very big and powerful-looking on his feet, Frances

noticed, with a wide, harsh mouth, flat jaws and red hair — opened the

coach door a moment afterward from the vestibule side; and then the

other man squeezed in past him and against Frances, who was sitting in

the first seat on the aisle. This man, who appeared to be extremely

nervous and upset, had his hand under his overcoat, as if holding onto

something; and it was only when the train lurched him against Frances

that the overcoat swung open an inch or two, and she saw what he was

holding under it — a gun. She saw it for no more than a second or so;

then the smaller man was by her, into the car; and the big redheaded one,

who did not appear to know the other at all now, had taken the first seat

that offered, just across from Frances.

She began watching him covertly, uneasiness in her. It seemed odd that if

they had wanted to catch the 2:55 they had not caught it at North

Rhinehill, instead of racing down all the way to Chester Falls on icy and

dangerous February roads. Perhaps they had done something up in North

Rhinehill, Frances found herself thinking rather slowly and unwillingly; that

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Walsh, Thomas - Nightmare In Manhattan

could be why they had split up on the train as if they did not know each

other, and why the smaller one was carrying a gun. They would have no

desire to be noticed, remembered and described afterward; so they had

driven to Chester Falls, and two of them had got on the train, and the third

one, the driver…

The big man with the unpleasant blue eyes must have felt her watching

him. He turned suddenly, with a kind of savage and alert quickness, and

Frances looked away from him. She felt her heart beginning to pump

rapidly, and she was foolishly relieved, even in that day coach filled with

passengers, when he did not appear to recognize her from the Murchison

car.

The big man looked at her for a moment or two, with the flat jaws squared,

the wide mouth set; then he turned back to his window. They slowed for

Ballerton. And Frances got up, her heart still beating quickly, and went out

into the vestibule and ahead into the next car.

Of course, she told herself, she wasn’t going to do anything about those

men, and about their gun. She had just wanted to get away from the big

fellow, and from the other one with the gun. They were not her business,

after all. No. She was very logical about it, and very cool now that the big

fellow was not watching her with those unnaturally pale blue eyes. She sat

down. And then the conductor came along and demanded her ticket, and

began to fuss with her because she had not brought the seat check along

from the rear coach.

She must have been more upset than she thought, because she began to

fuss with him also. She said, in what was probably an excited and

breathless manner, that instead of raising a commotion about things like

seat checks he ought to watch what was going on in his train. Because —

The conductor, who probably had his own worries in looking after Train

Number 52 in weather like this, put his hands on his hips and stared down

at her.

“Like what things?” the conductor said.

So she told him about the gun, and about the men, but perhaps she was

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Walsh, Thomas - Nightmare In Manhattan

not too convincing in her exposition. The conductor made one brusque

movement.

“Sure,” he said. “A lot of people see a lot of things happen on trains, or

from trains — or imagine they do. You know what you want to do here,

lady? Forget it. Just forget it. Do me that favor, will you?”

There was an elderly man sitting next to Frances, and he and the

conductor exchanged knowing glances in a superior masculine manner

that absolutely infuriated her. She said some things; the conductor said

some things; and then she followed him out to the vestibule and argued

with him there almost all the way from Ballerton to Millvale Center.

“Now look,” the conductor said, putting his lips together for a moment.

“Don’t keep yapping at me. I’m warning you, understand? Or you’ll get into

something you don’t like. The only thing I do in stuff like this, I wire ahead

and have a cop waiting for you at Manhattan Depot. That’s all. That’s the

way I’m told to handle this stuff. Do you want that or don’t you?”

Frances, who did not want it, hesitated and bit her lip. She had a suspicion

what a policeman at Manhattan Depot would mean: questions for her,

perhaps surliness, perhaps serious trouble if the gun was found, or even if

it was not found.

“Well,” she said, “I don’t know that I — ”

The conductor grinned there at just the wrong moment.

She caught his arm.

“I think so,” she said quietly. “I think perhaps we’d better.”

“Okay,” the conductor said. He was thinking to himself, with a very grim

sort of satisfaction, that he’d 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.

“Okay, lady.” He bawled: “Millvale Center” 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

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Walsh, Thomas - Nightmare In Manhattan

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 — the first of a long

holiday week end — 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

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