Almost before Neal was aware of it the train had slipped into the station, the brass bell on the boiler clanging, the driving wheels slurring to a halt. He waved to the engineer as the cab passed. Below the station at the Pearl Street crossing Mike Levangie, the lank-mustached, one-legged gate-tender, hobbled out of his shack and cranked down the double gate, then clumped over the tracks and lowered the single one.
Several passengers got off, a man and a woman got on, the stationmaster came out to check a bundle of Boston newspapers. Neal and Stevens walked to the baggage car where the freight clerk was waiting for them. Neal did not know his name—he was a new fellow—but he was a Mason. “Cold morning,” he remarked as he shoved an iron box across the floor. It contained some thirty thousand dollars in bills and coin. After Neal had signed the receipt book the clerk handed him the box’s key in a sealed envelope.
Neal and Stevens carried the box across the platform to the wagon and pushed it under the seat. Then Neal climbed up beside the driver. The driver flicked the reins and the horse started forward. Stevens, who had climbed over the tailboard, remained standing. Just as the wagon began to move, the locomotive backed up suddenly with a clank of couplings. Its piston rods reversed, a jet of steam shot from the cylinders, and the train started off in the direction of Weymouth, Hingham, and the South Shore.
The shadow of the wagon moved diagonally across Railroad Avenue toward the Hampton House, a mansard-roofed structure, four stories high, that had been built in the seventies for a trunk factory. It now housed the Slater & Morrill offices as well as the cutting rooms of the upper factory—Slater & Morrill’s lower factory was some distance away on Pearl Street. On the ground floor of the Hampton House, to the left of the center entrance, was the express company’s office. The gilt sign over its door, unchanged from an earlier day, read New York & Boston Despatch Express Co.
Its clapboarding flaked and blistered, the gray building lay full in the slanting sunlight that burnished its windows. A narrow grass border divided the avenue from an indented strip of pavement in front of the porticoed Slater & Morrill entrance. Six or seven cars were parked along the outside of the border. Neal recognized them. It was still possible to know all the cars in town at sight. “A lot of autos here this morning,” he remarked to the driver. There was one auto parked by the granite curb near the central entrance that Neal had never seen before: a touring car, dark and shiny as if it had just been polished. The top was up, the rear side curtains were fastened in place, and the motor was running. Neal’s driver had to turn out sharply to avoid scraping its fender. A man slumped down in the driver’s seat did not turn or look at them. He wore a felt hat, and his shoulders were hunched so that all Neal could see was the back of his neck, and his right hand on the steering wheel. Then, standing in the doorway under the portico, Neal noticed a second man, thin and fair-haired, with a pale sunken face. He had on a brown coat like an old army overcoat and he wore a gray hat pulled over his forehead. Neal did not like his looks.
The driver backed the wagon into the space in front of the express office, and Neal and Stevens carried the box inside. After the outside chill the office was warmly pleasant, smelling of floor oil and cigars. Neal took the key from the envelope and opened the box. Inside were the payrolls for the two companies, each in a brown canvas bag stamped National Shawmut Bank. He took out the Slater & Morrill bag and put the box containing the Walker and Kneeland money in the safe. Then he closed the safe door, pressed down the nickel-plated handle, and spun the dial.
With the bag tucked under his arm Neal motioned to Stevens and they started out the door toward the building’s center entrance. Neal now noticed another strange car. This one was parked across the avenue, facing south. He could not tell what kind it was. It was streaked with mud. He heard its driver call out “All right!” to the man in the first car. The pale man was still standing under the portico leaning against the door post. His hands were thrust into his overcoat pockets, and he held his head low, but as Neal and Stevens passed he stared up at them, moving his eyes without lifting his head. Neal felt for the reassurance of the Colt in his pocket. The man did not move. He had blue bulging eyes, the whites muddied, and his skin was yellowish, sickly, as if he were tubercular.
There was something queer about him, about his being there, Neal felt as he trudged up to the second floor. “Some funny-looking people round here today,” he told the girl at the desk. Margaret Mahoney, the paymistress, was at her desk by the water cooler. Neal had known Margaret Mahoney for years. The payroll bag was heavy for her so he walked across the office and put it in the safe himself. She gave him the receipt for it, and he and Stevens started downstairs.
From the top of the landing Neal could see the pale man still standing in the doorway but when he was about halfway down the man took his hands out of his pockets, walked over to the touring car, opened the rear door, and got in. Neal kept his hand on his Colt. By the time he reached the doorway the car had started up and swung round the corner of Holbrook Avenue. The mud-streaked car had already disappeared.