Kessler was the first reporter on the scene; he scurried about from one to another after information. Green strolled over to join two men who were standing a little way down the street in earnest conversation. One of them was Doyle, a plainclothesman whom he knew slightly, and the other was a wild-eyed Italian who was explaining with extravagant gestures that if he hadn’t lingered in the corner lunchroom for a second cup of coffee he, too, would have been blown to bits. He, it appeared, was Giuseppe Picelli, Tony’s Number Three Barber, and he’d been on his way back to the shop when the explosion occurred.
Green jerked his head towards the heap of wreckage. “How many have they found?”
“Don’t know.” Doyle chewed his unlighted cigar noisily. “Most of ’em are in pieces — little pieces. We’ve identified Tony an’ one of his barbers, but there’s a lot of pieces left over. This guy” — he nodded at Picelli — “says Bruce Maccunn was there — came in jus’ before he left.”
Picelli bobbed his head up and down, jabbered excitedly: “Sure, Mister Maccunn came in as I went out — an’ there was another fellow — I don’t know him... An’ Tony an’ Angelo an’ Giorgio...”
“That all?” Green Was blowing hard in his bare hands to warm them.
“That’s all were there when I left — but Gino an’ Mister Costain were coming over. Tony was expecting them...”
Green and Doyle looked at each other.
Doyle grunted: “If Lew Costain got there for the blow-off it makes my job about eight hundred percent harder. I don’t guess there are more than eight hundred people in New York that’d like to see him in little pieces.”
Kessler galloped over. He was a little green around the mouth and eyes.
“Mac g-got it!” he stuttered. “They just dug him out — or wh — what’s left of him...”
Doyle tried to light his cigar in the screaming wind. “Why did Gino Maschio an’ Costain get it,” he growled. “Maybe there’s not enough left of them to find out, but if Picelli here knows his potatoes they were in the shop or on their way to the shop — an’ if they were on their way they would’ve showed up by now.”
Kessler gurgled: “Where’s a telephone?”
“There’s one in the lunchroom around the corner on Second Avenue.” Picelli waved his arm dramatically.
A police car, its siren moaning shrilly, pulled up and a half dozen assorted detectives piled out.
Kessler grabbed Green’s arm, shouted, “Come on, Nick — I gotta telephone an’ I wanna talk to you.” They hurried towards Second Avenue.
Green grinned down at the tugging, puffing reporter.
“You look like a crazed bloodhound,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’ve got another one of those red-hot Kessler theories.”
“Theory my eye! I’ve got the whole business — the whole bloody shebang!”
“Uh-huh.” Green’s grunt was elaborately incredulous.
Kessler snorted. “Listen, John Sallust was released from Atlanta three days ago!”
“So what?”
Kessler’s mouth made an amazed O. “So what! So Bruce Maccunn was the man who rode Sallust — in the paper — an’ finally stuck him for the Arbor Day Parade bombing nearly five years ago. So Sallust swore by the beards of Marx and Lenin he’d get Maccunn. So, after a half-dozen appeals and new trials and whatnot he finally got a commutation and what does he do but make good and plant a pineapple under the man who put him behind the bars!”
They turned the corner.
Green murmured softly: “Blondie, my child — you’re just as dippy as a bedbug — an especially dippy bedbug.”
Kessler stopped suddenly, stood with his arms expressively outstretched and said:
“For the love of God — do you mean to tell me you don’t get it? Maccunn, more than anyone else, or all the rest of ’em put together, hung that rap on Sallust. The Government wanted to drop the case on insufficient evidence, but Maccunn hated radicals like poison an’ wouldn’t let ’em. His editorials yelled about corruption and anarchy and it finally worked. What’s more natural than Sallust wanting to wipe Maccunn as soon as he got out?”
Green shook his head slowly. “Nothing’s more natural,” he admitted. “Only I happen to know Sallust a little and he’s much too bright a guy to do anything like this three days after he’s sprung — or any other time.”
Kessler’s mouth flattened to a thin, sarcastic line.
“I followed his case very closely,” Green went on, “and he was railroaded if anybody ever was. He’s really a swell guy who has his own ideas about the way the country should be run. I’ll bet he never saw a bomb in his life.”
“Nuts.” Kessler half turned. “It all fits like a glove. He’s an anarchist an’ those boys say it with dynamite. He couldn’t blow up the whole paper — that was too big an order — and Maccunn never lit long enough at his home for that to be practical, but he went to Tony Maschio’s every Friday night between twelve-thirty and one-thirty. It’s open and shut.”
Green smiled sadly, shook his head, murmured: “Mostly shut.”
“That’s my story an’ I’ll stick to it.” Kessler turned and went into the lunchroom.
Green walked slowly back towards his car, whispered into the wind:
“An especially dippy bedbug.”
The hands of the big clock over the information desk pointed to one forty-one. The great concourse of Grand Central Station was speckled with the usual scattered crowd.
On the wide balcony above the west side of the concourse, the man in the dark-brown camel’s-hair coat who had forgotten his suitcase in front of Tony Maschio’s walked slowly back and forth. The collar of his coat was turned up and his hands were thrust deep in his pockets; his large dark eyes were fixed on Gate Twenty-seven, which led to the one-forty-five Boston train, and his head turned slowly as he walked back and forth.
He was a powerfully built man of uncertain age and as much of his face as could be seen above the heavy coat collar was unnaturally flushed.
Suddenly he stopped pacing and leaned forward against the marble balustrade. He had caught sight of a man of about his own build and coloring — moving swiftly across the concourse. The man’s most striking features were the grace with which he moved and his bright yellowish-green velour hat. He flashed a ticket in front of the conductor and disappeared through Gate Twenty-seven.
The man in the dark-brown coat hurried down the great stairway, across to one of the ticket windows. When he turned away he held a little piece of pasteboard and he strode with it through Gate Twenty-seven. He walked the length of the train to the first coach back of the baggage car and swung aboard.
He found the man he was looking for in the smoking car of the third Pullman back. There was no one else in the smoking room; the porter was making up a berth at the other end of the car.
The man in the dark-brown coat held the curtain aside with one arm and leaned against the side of the narrow doorway.
He said: “Hello.”
The other swarthy man was sitting next to the window, reading a paper. He put the paper down and looked up and his color changed slowly, curiously, until his face was almost as yellow and as green as his jauntily cocked hat. He did not speak.
From outside, the conductor’s voice came in to them: “All aboard...”
The man in the dark-brown coat smiled a little; he whispered:
“Let’s walk back and look at the lights.”
The train began to move, slowly.
The other man’s empty eyes were on one of the big pockets of the brown coat where something besides the big man’s hand bulged the material. He did not move, seemed incapable of moving.
The man in the brown coat repeated: “Let’s walk back...” Then he crossed swiftly and grabbed the other’s coat-collar with his free hand and jerked him to his feet, shoved him to the door and out into the narrow corridor; they went towards the rear of the train.