Clear and Present Danger

By Baynard Kendrick

A blind PI’s latest case involves two impostors, one uranium mine, and murder in this mystery by the author of Reservations for Death.

Following the loss of his sight in World War I, ex–intelligence officer Capt. Duncan Maclain honed his other senses and became one of the most successful and well-known private investigators in New York City . . .

 The man following Captain Maclain home from the Marshall Chess Club is only the beginning of the detective’s troubles. Later that day, Maclain has an appointment with Pat Ashley and Henry Wilkins, the two operators of New York state’s only uranium mine, but the wintery weather causes a car crash that sends Ashley to an early grave and Wilkins to the emergency room. Hoping to speak with Wilkins the moment he comes to, Maclain rushes to his bedside, but a clever assassin prevents Wilkins from ever uttering another word.

The next morning, the FBI takes Maclain across town for a rude awakening: the two dead men were not Ashley and Wilkins—and Maclain needs to stay away from this case. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done, considering who’s waiting for him back home . . . 

Baynard Kendrick was the first American to enlist in the Canadian Army during World War I. While in London, he met a blind English soldier whose observational skills inspired the character of Capt. Duncan Maclain. Kendrick was also a founding member of the Mystery Writers of America and winner of the organization’s Grand Master Award

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Feb 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781504065566

Baynard Kendrick

Baynard Kendrick (1894–1977) was one of the founders of the Mystery Writers of America, later named a Grand Master by the organization. After returning from military service in World War I, Kendrick wrote for pulp magazines such as Black Mask and Dime Detective Magazine under various pseudonyms before creating the Duncan Maclain character for which he is now known. The blind detective appeared in twelve novels, several short stories, and three films. 

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Chapter I

The morning of that Monday in early December—the tenth—was bitter cold. The sky grew overcast about noon. The thermometer pushed itself up a trifle from out of the basement. For a couple of hours we had a desultory snow.

Moving in from somewhere out of the west, like young Lochinvar, came a low-pressure area. It started to rain, only the rain got mixed with ice before it landed on New York City. Around six o’clock, to add to the general mess, a stiff north wind began to blow.

Taxis slapped their chains defiantly and stirred up a filthy concoction of ice fudge in the streets. Busses slithered into the curbs while their drivers cursed the unhappy fate that forced them to take on passengers by opening a door.

When I stepped out of the Marshall Chess Club, on West Tenth Street about five, the build-up for a really repulsive evening was well on its way. I’d been playing chess with a kid named Tony Blickstein, a junior member who was a student at C.C.N.Y. From the sound of his voice I judged he couldn’t be over eighteen or nineteen. From the quality of his chess game he was old enough to have studied under Philidor, who died in 1795.

We’d split three games. I’d won a giuoco piano, and by that time he’d gotten over his nervousness at playing chess with a blind man and having to call his moves. He beat me a Ruy Lopez. The third game he tried an Alekhine’s Defense and we sweated it out to a draw. A rock crusher of a player before he was twenty! Someday you may read about him going to Russia on the American team. Tony Blickstein! I hope not, though. The only future in being a Chess Master is passing the time.

When we were finished we had a cup of tea. He telephoned for a cab for me but the report was not hopeful. They’d send one if they could—but there was a storm.

Gee, Captain Maclain, Tony said, stirring tea. I think it’s wonderful—your being able to play chess, when you’re—that is—

Blind, Tony. I grinned at him. It doesn’t affect the brain like syphilis, and it’s not quite as bad as leprosy, although there are those who will disagree.

I didn’t mean that, sir. Not that way, really.

I know you didn’t, Tony. I was talking out of turn.

He stirred his tea some more and took a gulp. I chuckled inside over what I knew was coming. I resented it from some people, but from a boy as nice as Tony Blickstein, it warmed and flattered me.

Some of the fellows who play chess around here said you were a detective. Is that true, sir?

I’m a licensed private investigator—what the writers like to call a private eye. I’m in business with my partner, Spud Savage. I’m afraid he does more than I do today.

But they said you could shoot.

At sound. Quite accurately. Of course, there’s a drawback. Somebody has to make a move so I’ll know where they are, or shoot a gun at me.

Did you ever kill a man, Captain?

Perhaps in a battle. I was blinded in World War I, Tony, while I was attached to the British Army at Messines. Since then I guess I’ve been lucky. I’ve been shot, knifed, blackjacked, and threatened with a bomb—but the law, thank God, has done most of the necessary killing for me.

But you’ve captured lots of crooks by yourself, haven’t you, Captain?

With the aid of my police dog, Dreist.

Then you never have killed a man yourself, shot him dead, I mean, like they do on TV.

I stood up and forced a laugh, but I wasn’t feeling very funny inside. All I can tell you, Tony, is that if I ever shot a man deliberately and killed him, it wasn’t anyone I could see. That cab should be here if it’s coming. I think I’ll go outside and wait.

Can I help you, sir?

No, Tony, I think I can make it okay. I stretched out my hand and he shook it. Thanks, Tony, for playing with me. You play a great game—but don’t let it throw youl

Thank you, sir. Gee!

My coat and hat and cane were in their regular places on the clothes rack in the hall. I got them and went downstairs to stand out on Tenth Street where the sleet could beat against my face.

Weather! After forty years of blindness how it occupied your life; listening at your window for the rain outside, or the wind. What suit shall I wear today? Is it cloudy or clear? Is it hot or cold? Shall we take that drive to the country or stay home? Better check that Braille thermometer mounted outside on the window sill. Going on a plane trip? Better check the Braille barometer and see if it’s going up or down. Heavy coat, light coat, or raincoat? Ordinary shoes, or galoshes? Ask your wife, or your friend, or the bellboy. Or call the weather bureau direct.

Every day for forty years you’ve had to know—yet you always forget that low-pressure areas make you low, and that high-pressure areas fill you with good cheer.

A cab rolled up and discharged a fare. It certainly wasn’t the one I’d ordered, but I snared it by making like a blind man—tapping loudly toward it with my cane. The driver even climbed out and almost lifted me in. He was a good piano mover.

Seventy-second and Riverside, I gave him the number after I got untangled from my cane. You can take the West Side Highway uptown.

It’ll cost more.

It’s worth more. I closed the partition and shut him up in his sound booth. He was about to launch on the regular Quiz for the Blind program and I didn’t want to hear the show.

The warmth of the taxi was comfortable and soothing. We turned down Fifth Avenue to Ninth Street and headed over to the West Side Highway. I fell into a reverie about present-day kids. Had gangsters and wars and blood-and-thunder diets of reading and looking inoculated them all with an interest in killing?

Did you ever kill a man, Captain? Tony had asked with real hopefulness. Had my answer disappointed him? I was afraid so. What price a detective who couldn’t kill!

Had I ever wanted to kill anyone? I didn’t think so, not even in the heat of a battle. I let myself wander back to a bright Saturday morning in 1919. Maybe I wanted to kill Spud that day, or was it myself?

For six months I’d been a recluse in my room in a West Side hotel trying to learn some Braille with fingers that felt like horses’ hooves. I was poking at the dots in a book on criminology when Spud barged in.

What’s the tome?

"Psychology of the Habitual Criminal. Spud, there’s nobody as blind as the crook who sets himself up against organized society and the law."

He was silent for quite a while before he said, Have you ever thought of trying to prove that statement instead of sitting here and turning into a bum?

Spud, I’m blind, I protested helplessly.

So is Helen Keller. She’s deaf, too, and graduated from Radcliffe with an A.B. when she was twenty-four. You have the keenest ears in the world to help you, so listen to what I’m about to say: This is it, Dunc! Out of the dugout and over the top. Keep on living like a mole and I’m through.

You might present me with a tin cup and an accordion.

A kick on the tail would be more in order, except your behind has grown too calloused to feel it. I’m opening a private-investigation agency. I want you to head it. Run it your way as a partner.

What the devil could I do in an agency?

Furnish the brains and criminology. I can provide the leg-work and muscle. You’re young. You’re tall. You’re even handsome with those shoulders and that jet black hair. You haven’t got a scar on you. You’re even a lousy gentleman, and any woman living would go for you in a big way. Every time I look at your eyes I think you can see. We’ll get you a dog—

A dog, Spud! I’d rather die.

You’ll have plenty of chance if you take this on with me. The Germans already have a program in effect—training dogs to guide the war-blinded. Police dogs, too. We’ll get you two dogs. One that can defend you against a knife or a gun, and one to lead you where you want to go. We’ll spend the necessary hours until you become the best living shot at sound. You can practice with the New York Police Loft Squad when I don’t have the time. My God, Dunc, even if you do nothing but weep in your beer, think of the publicity.

Spud always knew how to needle me. We went to lunch and to see a show: Three Faces East. By carefully following the hero’s voice, I was able to spoil the climax for Spud, and probably everyone else around, by announcing in the middle what the end would be. That little job of voice identification killed a hopeless blind man and brought to life the blind detective, Captain Duncan Maclain.

So, in nearly forty years, I’d learned to listen to sounds. Incredible! Take it right now: the particular woosh that the traffic was making told me that we were on the West Side Highway. We had just negotiated a left and right turn, so I knew we were above the crook at Twenty-third Street, probably passing the B. & O.R.R. pier below on our left and the low-pressure area had depressed me to a point that I was certain a bogey was riding our tail!

It was a car, or a taxi, with a loose link in its skid chain. Every time the rear wheel turned, the piece of chain hit the fender—clip, clip, clip, clip. A common noise in New York traffic in the winter. If I hadn’t been in some sort of a mood—stewing about teen-agers killing and docks and blindness—I never would have noticed it. As it was, it finally began to annoy me. Then I began to wonder. If the car in back wasn’t tailing us, why didn’t he pass us by?

We were driving fairly slow, for a hacker, that is, and the traffic on the West Side Highway was thin. I began to study the matter more closely. It was something to do and turned my mind away from a lot of foolish retrospect about Duncan Maclain.

The car had fallen in behind us around Fourteenth Street, a short distance before we ran up the ramp to the elevated highway. So much for my subconscious figuring.

I wasn’t on any case for the moment, and neither was Spud. Actually I was limping slightly from a year-old bullet wound in my groin and had tentatively announced, six months before to Spud and Sybella, my decision to retire.

How foolish can you get from a dose of rain and snow? I opened the window between me and the cabbie and asked, Is that a taxi slapping that chain in back of us, or a private car?

He slowed down some. So did the other car. Buick, near as I can figure. Guess those things bother a blind man. Right, chum? Want me to stop and make him go by?

Skip it. I closed the window and settled back again. There are rare moments when I can stand being called Mac, or Bud. I’ve even been known to stomach Junior without releasing Dreist on the speaker. Chum just strikes me numb and dumb.

When I got out under the canopy of my apartment house on Seventy-second Street, I gave Mike, the doorman, a five spot and asked him to pay off my bosom friend with a two-bits tip while I waited in the vestibule. It was a cheap-skate tip for a two-dollar fare, but chum is a nasty word.

Mike hadn’t even returned my change when the car with the slapping chain went past the door.

The elevator shot me up to the twenty-fourth floor, but I was in it long enough for the boy to inform me that my wife, Sybella, who owns the Richelieu Novelty and Decorating Company, on Madison at Fifty-fourth, wasn’t yet home. Spud and I own the apartment house, with the kindly aid of three banks and a mortgage and loan company. The boy has only worked for us for four years, not long enough to convince him that I won’t spend the evening groping around to find Sybella unless I’m informed that she isn’t home.

I thanked him kindly, changed cars on the twenty-fourth, and took the automatic elevator up to our penthouse on the twenty-sixth floor. Someday I’m going to oil that boy’s neck so that it won’t creak. He shakes his head dubiously every time I leave his elevator and walk across the hall.

Rena, Spud’s wife and my secretary for years, let me in, and took my coat, hat and cane.

Anything cooking, Rena?

A Henry Wilkins called. Wants to see you or Spud tonight before nine.

About what?

He wouldn’t say. Matter of vital importance. That’s all. He’s driving to Pittsburgh via the Pennsylvania Turnpike with a friend, Pat Ashley. They’re leaving Cold Spring, New York, about seven and want to stop in on the way.

Cold Spring?

It’s sixty miles up, so far as the map shows. A small town on this side of the Hudson.

"This Henry Wilkins—look him up, will you, Renal He clicks somewhere. See if he’s in Current Biography. If you find him make an Audograph record for me. Where’s Spud?"

In your office.

I found him stretched out on the red leather divan. He switched off the Hi-Fi when I came in. I’d managed in that short space to pull a couple of cards marked Ashley, P.; and Wilkins, H., out of that dark morass of details that I like to call my brain. For no apparent reason a couple of little black gremlins were clipped to the cards to hook themselves up with the loose piece of skid chain.

Rena tell you about the call? Cigarette smoke reached me as Spud sat up on the divan.

Yes. I sat down in my desk chair. Schnucke rubbed against my knee in greeting, then tried to lie on my feet. She gets away with it occasionally in winter, but it’s still too warm.

This Wilkins, Spud? Henry Wilkins. Isn’t he the lucky guy who made the only profitable uranium strike in New York State? About a year ago?

Lucky, or maybe persistent, like you. He’s the one. Found the stuff on Nat Helme’s private estate a few miles north of Peekskill.

And Pat Ashley. He’s the geologist who’s a partner, isn’t he?

The same, Dunc. Wilkins called him in as a consultant. Helme financed the preliminary work for them, if I remember correctly. They’re—

My telephone rang—not the private number, but a call put through from the desk in the front office downstairs.

Captain Maclain? This is Tony—Tony Blickstein. At the chess club, sir.

Oh sure, Tony. What did I leave? I started automatically checking my pockets. Cigarettes, lighter, wallet. Dark glasses, maybe. No. All there.

It isn’t that, sir. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered you. It’s probably nothing, but I got to wondering about the man.

My mind went back to the last chess game. What man, Tony? Bishop, knight, or pawn?

No, sir. The man who came in with you. The one who was sitting at the next table kibitzing our game. He isn’t a member, so I thought he came in with you.

Nobody came in with me, Tony. Tell me more.

Yes, sir. It got to worrying me. He’d been sitting there all afternoon. When you left he’d either gone to the toilet or to telephone. He came rushing back in and said, ‘Where is he? Maclain?’ I said you’d gone. He dashed downstairs without stopping to put his coat on. I got to stewing about it and decided I’d better phone.

You’re a smart boy, Tony, and I appreciate it. Can you describe this man?

Yes, sir. About five foot six. Sandy—

Just a second, Tony. I switched my Audograph on to record the call. Now, give me that description again.

About five foot six. Sandy gray hair, rather thin—his hair, I mean, sir. He was stocky, thick-set. Looked very strong. He wore thick horn-rimmed glasses. His nose was wide and rather flat. Eyes dark blue. Pepper-and-salt suit. White shirt. Dark blue tie. Dark tan shoes, and he had rubbers on. His hat was dark gray. His overcoat was tan. He might be Jewish, sir, or a foreigner. He said, ‘Vhere iss he?’ instead of ‘where.’

Just one question, Tony. Did you collect all that in one look at this man?

Oh no, sir. I’d had my eye on him all the time we were playing chess. Was I right in calling you, Captain Maclain?

Absolutely, Tony. If I find out any more about it, I’ll certainly let you know. Also, your divided attention probably accounts for me winning that first game, but, like chess, don’t let the fact that you’re a good detective throw you, Tony. It’s a lousy career!

I passed it on to Spud, plus the Buick that might or might not have been on my tail. It meant nothing to either of us. Or did it? In the parlance of the Madison Avenue boys, I tossed the idea out on the floor and began to walk around it.

Spud, what did Wilkins want to see us about?

"Me, not you. Rena told him you had practically retired."

"What did he want to see you about?"

I don’t know. I have had a lot of contact with G-2, CIA, and the FBI.

I’m not asking for a reference. If there’s anything in this business of Goggle Eyes in the Buick—somebody’s damned interested in making sure that Wilkins doesn’t talk to me or you. My guess is that another one is watching this apartment house, too. Have you been out today?

In this weather? Hell, no.

The storm grew worse as the evening wore on, and my mood grew blacker. By eleven o’clock, when Wilkins had neither arrived nor telephoned, everything boiled up inside me and my cork really blew. I left the bridge table, where I’d made Sybella, Spud, and Rena thoroughly miserable for three unhappy rubbers and went to fix myself a Scotch highball at the built-in bar.

Sybella said, I think we all need one, Duncan. So I mixed three more, took them to the card table, and sat down at my desk to drink alone and nurse my woe. Ice and rain, driven by a howling wind, were smashing against the diamond-paned terrace doors.

I know storms give you the jitters, Dunc, but tonight you’ve been acting like a psycho. Ice clinked as Spud took a large swallow. Wilkins and Ashley are two hours late. Telephone lines may be down. It’s a miracle if they ever get here in this storm.

Why are they driving to Pittsburgh in such weather? I broke out. Why not a train or plane? Who was checking me in the chess club today—trailing me in his car?

They must have been carrying something with them, Rena suggested. Something too heavy—

Exactly. I drank and set my glass down. Uranium, I’d say. That isn’t hard to figure when they’re operating the only uranium mine in New York State. I not only don’t like any part of it, but I think for the first time since I lost my eyes, I’m afraid.

You may not like it, Duncan, Sybella said, but you most certainly aren’t afraid.

Let’s face it, darling. Uranium means atoms. Atoms can’t be heard, or tasted, or felt, and they’re one thing that no human eye or microscope will ever see. I’m suddenly placed on a level with every sighted person living. My blindness, which I’ve worked so hard to make an asset, has become a liability. I pressed my fingers hard against my sightless eyes. Yes, Sybella, I’m afraid to have to fight a death that no one in the world can see!

Ten minutes later I had the Hawthorne barracks of the New York State Police on the phone. I listened, and hung up slowly.

They skidded off the parkway and smashed up their car, I said in a voice that sounded unnatural to me. Ashley’s dead. Henry Wilkins is in Emergency Hospital, in White Plains. He’s unconscious, but there’s a slim chance he’ll live. I buzzed the house phone, got Cappo, and told him to get out the Cadillac.

Where are you going? Sybella asked, finally.

White Plains—to sit beside Henry Wilkins until he talks, or dies.

You’re not afraid, Spud said. You’re crazy. I thought you’d retired. Why not let me?

You’d never get in, Spud. I may, because I can’t see. As to retiring—if we’re up against what I think we are, nobody in this country can retire until it’s settled, and that includes me.

Chapter II

The Cadillac eased up onto the West Side Highway and headed north toward the Henry Hudson Parkway. Cappo sat silent beside me, intent on his