Joe liked the early mornings in Manhattan. From the dawn hours coffee shops and diners were ready to perk up his appetite with the smells of coffee, bacon, and fried eggs. In front of countless shops men in dark blue aprons were hosing down the wide sidewalks and sweeping up the litter of the previous day. Joe imagined the sound of millions of pairs of scuffling shoes as workers converged on midtown Manhattan each morning. The gray facades of office blocks were slashed diagonally by knife-sharp shadows cast by other buildings. On every block it seemed that a modern tower would thrust out of the shadowy stone canyons like a plant seeking sunlight and its windows would be dazzling with the reflection of the morning light.
Across the street from the boys' hotel a man in a wide brown cap sold newspapers and magazines at a newsstand. The boys glanced at the headlines.
"The latest news from the war in Spain!" cried the man in a voice louder than conversational but without much hope of distracting the throng of hurrying pedestrians on the sidewalk. Joe smiled to think how fast the New Yorkers walked. They always seemed to be in a hurry about something. It would take him years of living here to get used to the pace. "Nationalist offensive stalls!" He added, "Yankees win 7-2 over Washington Senators." He nodded at the brothers. "How about it boys, got to keep up on public affairs."
The brothers smiled politely and walked on. "Those Yankees are going to be a great team this year," said Joe. "I bet they can win a hundred games."
"You'd rather think about baseball than the war."
"You bet! Who wouldn't cheer for Joe DiMaggio? He's something special. I think he's the best home-run hitter in the American League."
"The Germans and Italians have tens of thousands of regular troops in Spain. What chance do volunteers like the Abraham Lincoln Brigade have? Nobody but communists and anarchists are willing to support the legitimate government in Spain," said Frank grimly.
"Yeah, I know. All the governments that should be taking a stand are washing their hands of it. You don't need to lecture me."
"The worst part is the Germans are treating this as a warm-up for the real war, the one that'll spread over Europe like a wildfire."
"You're such a pessimist, brother." Joe threw up his hands in exasperation. "You think there's a fiery disaster around every corner."
Later that morning, in a nondescript brick warehouse building not far from the university's West Bronx campus, Joe Hardy stood in front of the desk of a harried clerk. On the desk were piles of paper, some of them bundled together with string. There was a carousel of rubber stamps and stamp pads in various colors. On a sheet of wax paper was a half-eaten sandwich, accompanied by a half-drunk cardboard cup of coffee.
"What is it now?"
"It's not there." Joe stood with a cardboard box at his feet. Inside were the archived records of university engineering students. The warehouse on this floor was filled with tall metal shelves reaching upwards into dim, shadowy heights. The shelves were stacked with cardboard boxes looking just like Joe's except for the text on the labels.
"I'm not responsible for the contents of the boxes, fella. The clients fill the boxes and send them to us."
"Could there be a mistake?"
Joe was prepared for an unpleasant response but the clerk said, "I know. Somebody came in looking for the same thing as you a coupla weeks ago. Gimme a moment, will ya?" He slid open a drawer and pulled out a large book. "Yeah, here it is. He wanted the same box. He probably left with the file you were looking for."
"Who signed his authorization?"
The clerk shook his head. "He didn't need one. He was an employee of the university. His name was, let me see, Martin Lombard."
"Thank you."
The brothers had wondered what they could do that the police had overlooked. The only avenue that looked promising was to find out more about Otto Heinze. Frank had gone to the New York Public Library that morning in the hope that he could find some newspaper or magazine article mentioning Heinze and Joe had obtained an authorization from Prof. Coville to look up Heinze's old student records.
With their expenses covered by the university, the brothers felt free to use the Checkered Cab Co. to get around town. Joe stepped out of a taxi and slammed the canary yellow door behind him. The brothers met on the broad stone steps of the library by one of the couchant lions. Behind the library in the recently completed park they could have bought something to eat at a hotdog stand. Instead they chose to walk east on 42nd Street looking for a lunchroom or a café.
The brothers were caught in the fast-flowing torrent of urban humanity, like a silt-laden river flooding its plain. In these days the crowd dressed in dull browns and grays. Few chose to dress ostentatiously or gaudily, remembering the harshest days of the Great Depression just behind them. Joe felt a sense of pride and delight at pausing with a stream of pedestrians six abreast at an intersection. It was good to be part of the great American metropolis, even if only for a short time. They passed under the bridges that carried Park Avenue traffic to the second level of Grand Central Station. Down the street, soaring into the sky was the Chrysler Building, its famous silvery spire a celebration of the motorcar in the modern decorative style of architecture.
"I didn't get anywhere," admitted Frank, as they sat at a booth awaiting their orders, "except to confirm what we've been told about Heinze. I found a couple of references to him in technical journals. Nothing that makes you jump out of your seat. And I suppose he hasn't done anything spectacular enough to get into a newspaper story."
"Except disappear. I guess any of his important work would be secret and wouldn't be published anyway." Joe sipped on the straw of his tall glass of soda.
Joe told his brother about the missing file. "Obviously, there's something Lombard doesn't want people to know. We weren't on the case two weeks ago, so it's not necessarily us."
"All the same, I don't trust Lombard to come clean now, if we confront him with it. If he gives us the file he's had time to go through it and remove anything he wanted to conceal."
"I thought of digging through copies of the student newspaper printed during the time Heinze was here. It's a long shot."
"But it's an independent source of information Lombard hasn't messed around with."
The afternoon found the brothers back at the university campus. In the bright sunlight they could appreciate the unifying effect of the yellow brick used for all its newer buildings. From the crest of land on which the campus was built they had a view west to the Harlem River.
The brothers left the spring day behind and settled into the dark, cramped offices of the Voice, the student newspaper. As it published once a week, the brothers had a large number of old issues to flip through. Fortunately, they consisted of only twelve pages each.
"I think I've found something," Joe finally announced.
There was a short article. It read: "Scholarship student questioned on behavior. This newspaper has learned that trustees of the Thomas K. Longmann Foundation, grantors of over thirty thousand dollars in various scholarships to deserving students, have become concerned about the behavior of one of their recipients, Mr. Otto Heinze of this university's College of Engineering. They are considering ending support for Mr. Heinze on the grounds that his off-campus behavior is not in keeping with the high moral standards of the Foundation's founder, Mr. Longmann. Mr. Longmann is the noted nineteenth-century industrialist forever associated with his promotion of the steam-powered meat grinder, essential for production of quality luncheon meat products. Details of Mr. Heinze's alleged inappropriate behavior were not available. It is expected that a meeting of the scholarship committee will be held to hear arguments and make a decision. The Foundation, when contacted, refused to comment publicly. The College of Engineering has also declined to make any comment."
"That sort of thing would be in his student record," said Frank, "a dispute over his scholarship. The college must have made a presentation at the meeting." Although they checked the succeeding issues of the Voice carefully, they found no more mention of the matter.