Sanmore shook his head. “We might be able to find out.”
“You’re certain that’s what this list is?” I asked.
“Positive.”
“Would it be too much to ask just what makes you certain?”
He said, “Well, in the first place, notice the numbers. There aren’t any of them higher than ninety-seven. We have ninety-seven numbers on our terminal card index. Whenever a train comes in, a switch list is made up, and numbers are put on the cars for different destinations.
“For instance, here’s Number One, and underneath it are three lines. That means there are three cars in a row for T N O Manifest. Then here’s two lines under Number Eleven. That means two cars in a row for Indio. Then there are two lines under the figure four, which means two successive cars for the El Paso Manifest.
“Now then, loosen up and tell me what brings you two goofs in here at this hour of the night to ask questions about railroading.”
Gabby said awkwardly, “Just got curious, that was all. Jay thought it might be a code.”
Sanmore kept looking at Gabby.
Gabby reached for the strip of paper.
Sanmore started to hand it to him, then idly turned it over.
Gabby grabbed for it.
Sanmore jerked his hand back and read the message on the back: “ ‘Puzzle No. 2 a little after midnight,’ ” I saw his eyebrows get level.
Gabby didn’t say anything.
Sanmore slid down off the corner of the desk. “Come on, you birds.”
He led the way down the stairs, out through a door, and up along the tracks bearing off to the left.
“This is a bit tricky,” Sanmore said, as the tracks began to converge. “Watch your step along here.” Abruptly he reached out, grabbed our arms. “Hold it!”
I couldn’t see what had stopped us, when all at once a great bulk loomed out of the night. It was so close and seemed so ominously massive I wanted to jump back, but Sanmore’s grip held me. And I realized then that another big shape was moving along just behind me.
“Putting cars over the hump,” Sanmore explained.
As the car passed I could hear the sound of its wheels rumbling over the steel rails. But its approach had been as quiet as though I had been in the jungle and some huge elephant had come padding softly up behind me.
“All right,” Sanmore said, and we went forward again.
“This is dangerous,” Sanmore said. “You get one of those big boxcars rolling along by gravity and it’s like a fifty-ton steel ball moving slowly down an incline. You can’t stop ’em; you can’t turn ’em. They don’t have any whistle or any bell. They don’t make very much noise against the background of noise from the yards, particularly when they’re coming toward you... Okay; here we are, boys. Here’s one of the puzzle switches.”
A man sat at a complicated switch mechanism, a slip of narrow paper in his hands similar to the one I had found in Muriel Comley’s purse. A seemingly endless stream of cars was rolling down the tracks that fed into the intricate mechanism of the switch — a remorselessly steady procession which called for carefully coordinated thought and action.
Sanmore said, “He’s too busy to talk now. Let’s go find the hump foreman.”
We started moving up the tracks. I paused as I saw a line of men seated by a stretch of track. In front of them was a string of holes and in many of these holes there were billets of hickory, substantial clubs some two feet or more in length, identical, as nearly as I could tell, with the club we had seen on the floor by the murdered man.
Sanmore answered my unspoken question. “These are the men who ride the cars down,” he said. “The hump is back up here. We put the cars over the hump. The pinmen uncouple the cars in units according to the numbers on them. Then one of these boys — notice that chap on the end now.”
Two cars came rumbling down the track. A man swung lazily up out of a chair, picked up one of the hickory clubs, stood for a moment by the track gauging the speed of the oncoming cars, then swung casually up the iron ladder, climbed to the brake wheel, inserted his billet to give leverage on the wheel, tightened it enough to get the feel of the brakes, and then clung to the car, peering out into the darkness.
The car moved onward, seeming neither to gather speed nor to slow down as it moved. The man at the puzzle switch flipped a little lever. The car rattled across switch frogs, turned to the left, and melted away into the darkness.
A stocky competent man, who looked hard and seemed to have a deep scorn for anything that wasn’t as hard and as tough as he was, came walking down the track.
Sanmore said, “Cuttering, couple of friends of mine looking the ground over... Whose figures are these?”
The man took one look at the long list of figures on the slip of paper; he looked at Sanmore, then he looked at Gabby, and finally at me.
"They’re my figures,” he said in a voice that had an edge of truculence. “What about it?”
Silently Sanmore turned over the slip and showed Cuttering the writing on the back.
“Not my writing,” Cuttering said.
“Know whose it is?"
“No.”
"Any idea what this message means?”
“No. Look here; there’s a half a dozen of these old lists lying along the tracks. We throw ’em away after a cut has gone over the hump and through the switches. Anyone who wanted to write a message to someone and wanted a piece of paper to write it on could pick up one of these slips.”
There was an uneasy silence for half a minute.
“What’s so important about this?” Cuttering asked sharply.
“It may be evidence.”
“Of what?”
I met the steady hostility of his eyes. “I don’t know.”
I reached for the strip of paper. “You’ll have to make a copy of it,” I said. “This one is evidence.”
Wordlessly, while we watched, Cuttering copied off the string of numbers with the lines underneath them. Then, just before he reached the end, he frowned and said, “Wait a minute. We put this through yesterday night about eleven fifteen.”
Sanmore didn’t waste any more time. His voice was packed with the authority of a man giving an order. “Get me everything you have on that, Bob.” Then he turned to Gabby. “We’ll check those cars through the Jumbo Book, Gabby, if you think it’s that important.”
Gabby said simply, “I think it’s that important. We’re at the Palm Court. You can phone us there.”
Gabby said to the cab driver, “Go a little slow in the next block, will you? I want to take a look on the side street.”
The driver obligingly slowed. “This the place you want?” he called back.
“Next street,” Gabby said, swinging around to look at the Redderstone Apartments.
Then Gabby and I exchanged puzzled looks. The apartments were dark. The street in front showed no activity. There was no unusual congestion of vehicles parked at the curb.
“Okay?” the driver asked as he crawled past the next side street.
“Okay,” I said.
We went on to the Palm Court, paid off the cab driver, stood for a moment on the sidewalk. Neither of us wanted to go in.
“What do you make of it?” Gabby asked in a low voice.
I said, “We’ve got to tip off the police.”
“We’ll be in bad if we do it now.”
“We’ve got to do it, Gabby.”
“You don’t think the police have been notified, cleaned up the place, and gone?”
I didn’t even bother to answer.
“Okay,” Gabby said. “Let’s go.”
We went into the lobby, nodded to the clerk on duty, and I walked over to the telephone booth. Gabby stood by the door until I motioned him away so I could close the door tightly.
I dialed police headquarters and said, “This is the Redderstone Apartments. Did you get a call about some trouble up here — about an hour and a half ago?”