“Yes — yes, of course.”
The milkman glanced up at her, surprised by the edge in her voice. She didn’t look cross, he thought. Nerves probably. Getting to that age. Everything either fine or hopeless. No middle ground. When he went down to his truck he turned to give her a big wave and a smile, but she had already closed the door. Tomorrow she’ll probably be perky as ever, he thought.
The FBI agent and Mr. Bradley were still at the table when she entered the dining room. They had been up all night, the FBI agent asking questions, prowling through the house, talking on the radio that he had installed in the study.
Dick Bradley glanced up at her, and said, “Could we have more coffee, please?”
“Yes, Mr. Bradley.” Mrs. Jarrod’s manner was crisp and impersonal; they needed service from her, she knew, not sniffles and tears.
Crowley ran a hand through his thick black hair, and lit a cigarette. “Let’s see, where were we? Princeton, I think. No trouble there?”
“No.” Bradley tried to smile, then sighed and shook his head. “Just with math.”
Crowley had been going over his past with him for the last hour or so, on the chance that he might recall someone who disliked him, someone he had wronged or embarrassed — intentionally or otherwise. But so far they had uncovered nothing more significant than a scuffle in the cloakroom of his dancing school. Bradley’s past stretched quietly behind him, pleasant, well-cared-for terrain; all the bumps had apparently been smoothed over by his father. School, camps, trips to Italy and France — it had all been arranged thoughtfully and pleasantly. Then the Navy — flying a desk in Washington — and finally the partnership in the old man’s brokerage firm.
There had been no trouble about his marriage. Crowley got the impression that Bradley. Senior, had been unenthusiastic about it, but hadn’t stood in his son’s way.
“How about your business friends?”
Bradley shook his head and fumbled for a cigarette. He was exhausted and on edge; his face was white and there was a desperate expression in his eyes. “We’re getting nowhere,” he said in an uneven voice. “I–I don’t have enemies. I don’t have enough guts. I never got into fights, I never played around with other men’s wives. I–I never did anything. I’m Dickey Bradley, model young man. The good loser, the guy who comes in second, wearing a smile and carrying the winner’s coat. Nobody hates me.” He rubbed his forehead wearily, seemingly spent by the bitterness of his outburst. “Not this much anyway.”
“Let’s take a break,” Crowley said. He wished there was some way he could ease Bradley’s fears. But he had no hope to offer yet, and he couldn’t lie to him. “I’ve got to report to the Inspector,” he said, rising. “Just relax for a while.”
In the study between the living room and dining room Crowley had installed an ultra-high frequency receiver and transmitter which put him in round-the-clock communication with FBI headquarters on lower Broadway. He had arrived at the Bradleys’ the night before, entering through the trapdoor in the roof of their building and since then had been in hourly contact with Inspector West. He had dictated the original ransom demand to West, and West had relayed it to Washington where its peculiarities of construction and spelling would be checked for similarities with every note in the vast extortion files. Crowley had learned nothing significant about the baby’s nurse, Kate Reilly: Dick Bradley and his father, Oliphant Bradley, both were convinced that she wasn’t involved in the kidnaping. She was loyal, intelligent, devoted to the child — they repeated all this several times, but they couldn’t offer any explanation of why she had packed up and left. He hadn’t met Mrs. Bradley yet; she had taken a sedative and was asleep when he arrived. Now, at eight-thirty in the morning, she was still in bed.
So far Crowley had followed routine. The ransom money was under lock and key in the guest-room closet, and he had checked every door and window to make certain that no one had forced his way into the house. None of the locks had been tampered with... There was a faint smell of ether in the nursery, but no signs of struggle.
He had fingerprinted the nursery, but had found only prints of the nurse and child — establishing the identity of the nurse’s by checking them against prints taken from her room. He had questioned Mrs. Jarrod about the people who had access to the house: the delivery boys, garbage collectors, peddlers, milkmen, door-to-door salesmen, the tradespeople who came and went in the ordinary business of the day. She knew them all. and was careful about whom she let in; and she was certain there had been no strange face about in the past few months. Crowley had asked Bradley and his father about servants they had discharged in the past, of employees they had let go for one reason or another, of individuals or firms they might have hurt in business competition. Then he had begun the long interview with young Bradley about his friends, his clubs and associations, his wife and her friends and family, searching his past for enemies — which was just as fruitless as searching a penthouse garden for big game.
Crowley had done the routine things, he had followed the book — and had made no progress. That was all he could tell West. He had covered the logical areas thoroughly, but without results. Crowley was beginning to feel the tension building up in him; in ten hours he hadn’t picked up a lead. He knew there were a hundred men standing by on the outside; he knew that West had the vast resources of Washington at his fingertips; he knew that anything needed could be produced in minutes — but none of that was any good unless he could find a lead here...
When he finished his report, West said, “Have you talked to Mrs. Bradley yet?”
“No, she’s still asleep.”
“Try to talk to her as soon as possible. We want more on that nurse. Either she’s in it or not. Get a line on her boy friends, her family, where she worked before she came with the Bradleys. Find out if she went to church, and where; if she belonged to any clubs or groups.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Crowley — Roth had a call from your wife. Your daughter — well, there’s no change.”
“I see.” Crowley looked at the mike he was holding, and let out his breath slowly. “Thanks, sir. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve talked to Mrs. Bradley.”
“I’ll be here.”
When Crowley walked back into the dining room Oliphant Bradley was sitting at the breakfast table. He nodded at him and said, “You were talking to headquarters, I gather. Any news there?”
“Nothing definite,” Crowley said,
“These crimes fall into patterns, don’t they? The same types go in for the same kind of activities, I mean.”
“That’s generally true, sir.”
Oliphant Bradley put his coffee cup down, and said, “Well, it seems to me you might have some information by now. If you picked up everyone ever connected with an extortion case and sweated them properly — you might have something.” In spite of his worry over the child the old man’s mood was executive and aggressive; his son had agreed that he had done right in calling the FBI; and that had taken a load off his mind. All of his vigorous confidence in himself had returned, and the tensions of the past night had charged him with an artificial energy. “Another thing, I understand that the ransom note is still here in the house. Shouldn’t that be in your laboratory in Washington? Fingerprints, chemical analysis — isn’t that your specialty?”
“Dad, they know their business,” his son said.