Blind Allies

By Baynard Kendrick

A blind detective may be walking into a trap—but he’s not the one who should be scared—in this mystery by the author of You Die Today!

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 . . .

A party in celebration of Maclain’s seventh wedding anniversary is in full swing at his Manhattan penthouse when a wealthy potential client stops by. The president and treasurer of Markham Oil, Claude Markham offers Maclain a hefty sum to help him collect some papers from a safe in his father’s office. The numbers on the combination dial are in braille, and Markham’s late mother was the only person who could read them.

The sightless sleuth can sense something is off about this mysterious tycoon, but his curiosity won’t let him say no. Even though Markham may not be who he says he is, Maclain accepts the job. With his trusty two German Shepherds at his side, Captain Maclain heads to the Markham mansion—and that’s when the real fun begins . . .

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: 9781504065559

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. 

Book preview

Chapter One

I

Capt. Duncan Maclain was holding a cocktail party in joint celebration of two events—thirty-five years of blindness and seven years of successful marriage—when Rena Savage, his secretary, made her way through the crowd milling around on the lower floor of his air-conditioned penthouse and touched him on the arm.

Rena Savage, wife of the captain’s partner and closest friend, Spud, was as much a part of Maclain’s success in the field of private investigation as his two dogs, Schnucke and Dreist, or Spud Savage, himself. Much more! Spud would say readily if anyone asked him. A statement that would be heartily confirmed by Maclain’s charming and talented wife, Sybella.

Through years of association with Spud and Rena, the captain had reached a point where either of them could convey a dozen different meanings to him without uttering a word. Spud could pass on a hint of danger in the tiniest cough or clearing of his throat, or indicate to the captain a necessity for speed by the manner in which he rose from his chair.

Rena, time and again, had given the captain a startlingly accurate picture of some unexpected visitor by merely humming a bar from some popular song that the captain instantly connected up with a certain singer whose appearance had been described to him in detail. A bar or two from Some Enchanted Evening and Maclain knew he was facing a man who resembled Ezio Pinza. You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun and the captain’s mind had quickly drawn a picture of a woman resembling Ethel Merman.

Rena wasn’t humming when she touched his arm, but she conveyed enough urgency through her fingers to cause the captain to excuse himself to a garrulous dowager interested in Seeing-Eye dogs. Striding confidently under Rena’s guidance, he let her conduct him to the private elevator that went up one more flight to his waiting room, office, and private quarters on the twenty-sixth floor.

Your necktie’s very nice, but it’s crooked. Rena let the elevator door slide closed, but made no move to push the button that would take them upstairs. Instead, she reached up casually and adjusted the captain’s dark maroon tie. Congratulations!

I appreciate the congratulations. Maclain fixed her with his sightless eyes—so perfect that most people thought he must be able to see. But why did you have to take me into a closet to fix my tie? It might get us talked about on my wedding anniversary. I don’t mind saying I love you right out loud where all the guests can hear. Sybella knows it, too.

Rena’s dark gray eyes lighted with affection. You’ve had too many Martinis, Duncan. They make you amorous. I’m not congratulating you on your anniversary. I’ve already done that.

What gives, then? The captain’s tall sinewy figure straightened and he ran a hand in a puzzled gesture through his crisp dark hair. I thought from the grip you had on my arm that Sergeant Archer had slipped the party and broken into my office bar.

There’s a man here to see you. He’s upstairs in the waiting room.

"Now, honestly, Renal How the hell did he get in? I’m seeing no one without an appointment—and I’m not being dragged away from a party of my own even if it was old J.P." Madams mobile face darkened as he reached for the button that opened the door.

Rena was quicker. She pushed the button marked up. I let him in, Duncan, and please don’t blow your top at me. He’s really big time—almost as important as old J.P. That was my congratulations.

Who is he?

Amos Markham’s son. Claude Markham.

Markham Oil? The captain whistled softly. I don’t believe it.

What Duncan?

That he’d come to consult me.

Why not? Rena said heatedly. You’re certainly better than any man in the business. You’re never one to run yourself down.

It doesn’t make sense, Rena, believe me. The elevator stopped. The captain put his finger on the button that prevented the opening of the door. The Markhams have all the money in the world. They’re second only to Standard. Old Amos is retired, but Claude’s president and treasurer. If there was anything they needed from a private detective, they’d be tied up lock, stock and oil barrel with Burns or Pinkerton. On top of that, Claude Markham wouldn’t come here personally even if he wanted to hire a blind man. He’d send for me.

Maybe it was out of courtesy to your blindness that he came here, Rena suggested.

Well, if he thinks I can’t even find his office, what the devil is he hiring me for? What does he look like, Rena?

I haven’t seen him. He talked to me on the phone. I left word with the desk downstairs to show him up when he came.

Get Spud to take a look at him through the one-way mirror from your office to mine. I think he’s hiring me for just one reason—because I can’t see him. The captain let the door slide open. That idea rather interests me.

Duncan Maclain had taken the penthouse of the twenty-six story building at Seventy-second Street and Riverside Drive back in the twenties when the building was new.

A U.S. Army Intelligence officer, blinded while attached to the British at Messines in 1917, he had spent ten fruitless years bemoaning his fate and living quite uselessly on an adequate income of his own. It was Spud Savage who had finally persuaded him to get a Seeing-Eye dog and start his career as a criminologist, a career that shortly developed into a full-time consulting investigator.

You think you’re better than any crook with eyes, and most other sighted people, Spud had told him sarcastically. Why don’t you prove it? At least, nobody will ever be able to call you a private eye’ or a keyhole peeper.’"

Who’s going to hire a blind detective?

Nobody, probably, Spud admitted. So I’ll add my brilliance to your stubbornness and we can five nicely on your income and take cases at first from needy characters who haven’t money to pay a fee.

It sounds crazy.

You’re going crazy anyhow, Spud pointed out. Mope around looking at the back of your eyes much longer and think about your unfortunate condition, and instead of a private office you’ll be living in a private world in a padded cell.

Once he had been persuaded, the novelty of asking professional aid from a blind man had brought a few clients. Then Maclain had solved a really tough problem connected with the bombing of an assistant D.A. The papers had found him and his Seeing-Eye dog, Schnucke, good copy, and his vicious protective police dog, Dreist, even better copy. After that the captain’s brilliance and persistence, buoyed up by help and encouragement from Spud and Rena, had pushed him steadily forward in the field.

His blindness always caused people to underrate him, a fact that made him a more capable investigator and a more dangerous antagonist as the years went by. The average person simply couldn’t conceive of the thousands of discouraging hours Maclain had spent perfecting, by arduous practice, his senses of hearing, touch, taste and smell.

Half a dozen rather experienced killers had ended their careers with slugs from Maclain’s automatic because they didn’t believe a man could shoot at sound, even though he practiced at it two hours every day.

The captain, over a period of time, had adapted his penthouse apartment to his blindness and his career. It was shared by Spud and Rena, and staffed by his colored cook and housekeeper, Sarah Marsh, and his giant chauffeur, Cappo, Sarah’s husband. He had remodeled it slightly after his marriage when Sybella moved in.

Five years before the Markham family came into his life, Maclain had received notice that the apartment house was to be demolished to make way for a more modern building, a piece of news that greatly disturbed him.

Familiarity with a place means comfort to a blind person, and the captain knew every inch of New York’s upper West Side and every inch of his apartment. He loved the broad terrace, overlooking the river and the West Side Highway, where Dreist, his police dog, was housed in a heated kennel. His office was his life. He could put his hands instantly on any of the hundreds of Braille volumes that lined its shelves, or locate without search any one of his collection of records. He could move about swiftly without faltering because the deep leather furniture was firmly fixed to the floor.

When he heard he was going to have to move he took immediate steps to prevent it. He had never paid much attention to money and it greatly increased his confidence to find that in an emergency he could say that he and his wife were substantially well-to-do.

A syndicate was formed with Maclain as the heaviest investor. The building was bought, completely modernized, and then sold as co-op apartments.

He was thinking of that when he shook hands with his visitor in the reception room and ushered him into his office. "It is my office, he was thinking. I own it instead of renting it." Another crisis in a life of darkness had been seen safely through.

Another corner of his capacious mind had closed itself off from the party on the floor below and from the mental chain that ran back through his whole career to flash a light of warning. The flash had come when they entered the office together and Maclain had casually laid his fingers in the crook of his visitor’s arm.

The man had pulled away abruptly. Perhaps the powerful Markhams were repelled by the blind. Perhaps they weren’t accustomed to offering anyone a Markham arm.

The captain strode swiftly the length of the room and took his place behind the broad flat-topped desk in the corner. He counted Markham’s footsteps as he followed and listened attentively to the creak of the leather in the red chair facing the desk.

Markham’s footsteps said he was tall. The slight creak of the red leather chair and his handclasp, plus the captain’s one swift touch of his arm announced he wasn’t very heavy. A hundred and fifty to a hundred and sixty, Maclain estimated swiftly, almost emaciated for a man over six feet tall.

He was wearing a rumpled seersucker suit—thirty-five dollars tops. It wasn’t new, and the captain’s nose said it needed cleaning. Well, multimillionaires had a right to be eccentric. That might have been why he jerked away with such discourteous haste. Still he hadn’t been quite fast enough to prevent the captain’s finger from touching the tiny sewed patch on the inner side of the left arm—the same keen finger that had felt the frayed cuff when they shook hands in the small anteroom.

I thought I’d heard you were blind, Markham blurted out with the same abruptness he’d used in releasing his arm.

Was there disappointment in his tone? Or anger? Maclain picked a cigarette from the cloisonné box on his desk, flashed his lighter and shoved the box across to his visitor.

Lots of people have heard I’m blind, Mr. Markham. As a matter of fact, I am—although I see a lot of things that might better be hidden. What gave you the impression that I wasn’t?

You don’t look it. Markham took a cigarette and lit it. Do you know of my family?

If you’re Amos Markham’s son, who doesn’t?

‘Well, I am. I thought perhaps you knew the fact that my mother was blind for several years before she died."

The captain sat silent, letting the little red warning light flash off and on in his brain.

Markham said, She never bothered to turn on lights when she came in a room.

She probably never smoked either, said Duncan Maclain. It’s a courtesy to visitors—in the modern school.

He touched a button on his desk, a direct connection with the New York time bureau. When you hear the signal the time will be exactly six forty-five, a metallic voice intoned from a loud-speaker built into the paneled wall.

Markham said, I thought you fellows used watches marked with Braille.

I also use something to check mine with. The captain touched his wrist watch. I have a dinner appointment with my wife in thirty minutes.

I wont take that long if you’ll answer a question. Can you read Braille?

The captain pointed to the shelves of books lining one wall. All those are in Braille.

My father’s house where we live is at Fifty-fourth near Fifth Avenue, Markham said shortly. "My father is in Oklahoma. There’s a safe behind a panel in his office. I have the combination. My father phoned me an hour ago to get some papers from that safe and telephone him the information at 3:00

A.M.

If you’ll agree to come with me and open that safe, I’ll pick you up here at two o’clock and have you back in an hour. This is a personal matter, and my father doesn’t want it known by any of the family but me. We’re willing to pay a thousand dollars.

That’s a lot of money, said Maclain.

There’s more involved, Markham told him.

It’s very interesting. The captain’s agile fingers drummed on the desk. Am I supposed to feel the numbers cut into the combination, or to feel the drop of the tumblers like Jimmy Valentine?

Neither, Markham said. There are numbers on it I can’t see or I’d open it myself. The safe was my mother’s, who died more than a year ago. She was blind. The numbers on the dial are raised in Braille.

I think I can use a thousand dollars, said Duncan Maclain.

II

What did he look like? the captain asked.

Spud paused long enough from pouring four bells of Martell’s to say, Boris Karloff with galloping consumption. He passed the brandy to Sybella, Rena and Maclain and stretched out in his favorite position on the red leather settee with his brandy bell balanced on his hard flat stomach.

Sybella went to the desk and kissed the captain. She was a calm, stately woman in her forties, with neat ankles, fine regular features and a humorous mouth that could set itself firmly on occasion. Her wealth of brown hair was done with skill and good taste. Sybella had been highly successful with an antique shop of her own on Madison Avenue and her inborn sense of harmony in lines and color was reflected strongly in her personal appearance.

She had known many blind people before the captain met her and all of them liked her. Maclain’s love for her grew out of the fact that she was never possessive with him, respected his profession and his mentality and was never surprised that he could do almost anything on his own.

Their marriage had done much to restore the captain’s self-confidence at a time when he was feeling very low. He needed the leavening influence of love and affection that only a wife could provide, yet he had a fear of saddling any woman with his blindness. That sense of fear had never been present with Sybella. She loved him for what he was, not in spite of or because of any infirmity. That love had avoided a serious danger for the captain—the danger that he might become obsessed with his acuteness and turn into a cold, unfeeling thinking-machine.

I’ll forgive you for ducking out on the party, she told him, but that anniversary dinner in the cafeteria was a little hard to take. We’d have done better to let Sarah cook it here at home.

Blame the cadaverous Claude. The captain reached out, encircled her slender waist and drew her close for a warmer caress. Rena’s been trying to reach someone at Amos Markham’s home ever since he left here. Tomorrow night we’ll eat at Twenty One. The captain touched his glass to Sybella’s and added, Thank you for a lovely marriage even if it wasn’t a lovely evening. He drained his glass in a single gulp. Sybella finished hers, smoothed his hair lightly and left the desk to find a chair.

You might blame me for letting him in, Rena said, sipping her brandy. I’m afraid I let the name impress me. Well, a thousand dollars. Duncan, are you really going to see this through?

On the settee, Spud seized his balanced glass and swung his feet to the floor. These festivities, coupled with family necking, have dulled my normally keen brain. There was a glitter in his strange, vivid, yellowish eyes. "That pale and ghastly character isn’t any more Claude Markham than I am. Claude Markham is a polo player—Meadowbrook, and all that sort of thing, urging the gentlemen on to the last pucka-chukker. He’s a squash and tennis champ—racquets and tally-ho. Big muscles, barrel chest. That wraith I peered at through the peep-mirror, Dune,