Honest Money and Other Short Novels

The Top Comes Off

Lawyer Ken Corning was reading a printed pamphlet which contained the advance decisions of the supreme court when his office door opened and Helen Vail, his secretary and only helper, came slipping into the room.

Corning looked up and frowned. Helen Vail’s eyes were big.

“She’s a beauty, Ken!”

“Who is?” he asked.

“The jane that’s outside.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know. She won’t give it.”

Ken Corning’s frown deepened. “Listen, kid,” he said, “this is a law office, and we’ve got to run it like one. I’m just getting started here, but that isn’t any reason we’re going to let anybody ritz us. Go back and get her name.”

Helen Vail stood with her back against the door, slim, straight and pretty. Her lips were pressed together. Her eyes showed concern.

“Listen, Ken, that’s why I came in. I tried to get her name. I told her if I didn’t get it she couldn’t see you. She said that she couldn’t see you then, and got up to go. I called her back and told her I’d see what I could do. She’s pretty, and she’s been crying.”

“How old?” asked Corning.

“Her face says twenty-five, her hands say thirty. You know, the backs of her hands.”

“Yes,” said Corning, “I know. What else?”

“She’s got trim ankles, a sport outfit that cost money, and there was a diamond ring on her engagement finger, but it’s gone. You can see where she’d been wearing it.”

“Maybe it was a wedding ring,” said Corning.

“No. She’s still got the wedding ring. She’d been wearing two. The diamond’s gone.”

Ken Corning put down the advance decision. “Okey,” he said, “shoot her in. But don’t leave that outer office no matter what happens. This may be a frame. After the way I dented the political ring that runs this burg, you can figure they’ll frame me if they get half a chance.”

Helen Vail nodded. Her eyes brightened.

“I’m glad you’re going to see her,” she said. “I like her, and I was afraid you were going to get obstinate and turn her away.”

Ken Corning grinned.

“Be your age, kid! Do you think I’d turn away a good-looking woman who’s been crying and who has just hocked a diamond ring? I’d be crazy. Send her in and I’ll find out how much she got for the ring.”

Helen Vail opened the door and said: “You may come in. Mr. Corning will see you now.”

Ken Corning heard swift, nervous steps. Then Helen Vail stood to one side, and he found himself looking into a pair of steady dark eyes, an oval face with skin that might have given inspiration to an artist painting an ad for a facial cream.

Her teeth showed as the lips twisted into a mechanical smile, but the eyes did not smile. There was no sign which Corning could observe which indicated that the woman had been weeping; but Ken Corning knew women well enough to know that Helen Vail would have been right about it.

He indicated a chair. “Sit down,” he said.

She sat down.

“You’re Ken Corning, and I’ve heard about you,” she observed.

He smiled.

“You’ve got a good ear for news, then. I haven’t been here very long, and I haven’t had very much business.”

She nodded, a quick little jerk of the head that seemed swiftly decisive, exactly the sort of a gesture of crisp affirmation which one would have expected from her.

“You handled that Parks case. I don’t suppose it was big business exactly, but you ran up against Boss Dwight, and you won out.”

Corning said: “Who told you Carl Dwight was interested in that case?”

She answered promptly and in a voice which held more than a trace of mockery. “A little bird,” she said.

Ken shrugged his shoulders. His face became a cold mask. “All right,” he said. “What did you want to see me about?” Her voice lost its mockery, her manner its assurance.

“About George Colton,” she said.

Ken Corning stared at her, then gestured towards the folded morning newspaper which lay on the desk. “You mean the man...”

“Yes,” she said. “I mean the man who’s smeared all over the front page of the newspaper, the one who’s accused of murdering Harry Ladue.”

Ken Corning stiffened. His eyes became wary and watchful.

“What about him? What do you want me to do?”

“Defend him.”

“Perhaps he’d prefer to pick his own lawyer,” said Corning. “Are you authorized to act for him?”

Slowly, she shook her head.

“Then you can’t retain me to act as his attorney.”

“Could I retain you to act as my attorney, to... to do anything that you could for him?”

Ken Corning fastened his eyes upon hers. Then he said: “That would depend upon several things.”

“What?” she asked.

“The size of the retainer, for one thing.”

She opened her purse, took out thirteen fifty-dollar bills. The bills were crisp and new. She laid them down on the desk. As she laid them down, one at a time, her lips moved soundlessly, counting, When the last bill had been placed there she looked up at Ken Corning.

“That,” she said, “is the retainer.”

Ken Corning said: “It must have been a big diamond.”

She gasped, stared at him, then clenched her left hand and dropped it below the desk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

Ken Corning made no move to reach towards the money. He let it lie there on the desk, cool, crisp and green.

“The next thing I’d want to know,” he said, “is who you are.”

She seemed to have been prepared for that question. She smiled at him. “I,” she said, “am a mysterious figure who wouldn’t appear in the case at all. You could enter me on your books as Madam X. From the moment I walked out of this office you’d lose sight of me. You couldn’t call me on the telephone, you couldn’t reach me, no matter what the emergency. You could do just one thing, go ahead and see that George — Mr. Colton, got whatever breaks you could give him.”

“And not let him know that you had retained me?”

“You could use your own judgment about letting him know that someone had retained you, but you wouldn’t even describe me, or let him know that it had been a woman who called on you.”

Ken Corning said, slowly: “Let’s pass that for a minute. This is a sensational murder case. The newspapers are hinting at a something that’s in the background and may develop at any minute. You want me to keep your identity secret because you’d be pilloried by the press if they could drag in a ‘beautiful woman’ angle. But there’s something specific you want me to do. What is it?”

She said: “I want you to drag his wife into it.”

Ken Corning raised his brows, said nothing.

She started to speak, rapidly: “He’ll have another lawyer who will be handling the case for him. I don’t know who that lawyer will be. But it’ll be somebody who will do just as George... Mr. Colton says. It’ll be somebody who will go before a jury with that story about someone else firing the shots from another room, and all that stuff that Mr. Colton told the newspapers.

“That’s all hooey. He shot Harry Ladue because Ladue had been too friendly with his wife. The unwritten law is the defense he should make, and he’d be acquitted on it. But if he sticks with this yarn about some mysterious person standing in the darkness of another room, or in the corridor and firing the shots, he’ll get the death penalty!”

Ken Corning’s eyes narrowed.

“Have you any scintilla of evidence of what you’re talking about?” he asked.

She nodded, reached in her purse, took out a sheet of stationery that bore the printed head of a cheap hotel. The stationery was covered with fine writing, in a feminine hand.

“Here,” she said, “is a list of the places where Ladue stayed with George Colton’s wife, and the names that they registered under. I want you to promise me that you’ll drag them into the case, rip the facts wide open.”

Corning said: “Through the newspapers?”

“I don’t care,” she said, “how you do it, just so it’s done. I don’t want Colton to think he’s shielding the name of a woman and go to his death because of it.”

Corning said: “So he’s shielding the woman, eh? That’s the reason he’s pulling this line about someone standing in the corridor and doing the shooting as he walked into the office.”

“Of course,” she answered.

Corning took the sheet of paper and looked at the dates, names of hotels and names of persons.

“The handwriting would all be by Ladue,” he said. “How could you prove who the woman was?”

“Get photographs of his wife, silly, and chase around through the bellboys. You can work up the case with that evidence. Just get the thing started and it’ll work up itself. There’s only one promise I want from you, and I want it made on all that you hold sacred. That is that I don’t want you ever to tell a soul that I called on you. You’ve got to swear that.”

“You mean,” he asked, “that a woman called on me?”

“No. I mean that you’ll never disclose my real identity.”

“But I don’t know it. You just mentioned that I’d never find it out.”

“I’ve changed my mind about that. I... I think you’ll find out who I am. You’ve got to promise.”

He pursed his lips. Tears came to her eyes. She reached into her purse and took out a small handkerchief. As Corning followed the motion of her hands he saw that the handkerchief was soggy, saw, also, the glint of blued steel in the purse.

He spoke calmly.

“Is the gun new?” he asked.

She gave a little gasp and clutched at the purse. Ken Corning reached over, clamped his hand on her wrist, raised his eyes to hers, and said: “So you’re Mrs. George Colton, eh?”

Had he struck her with his fist she would not have turned whiter. She stared at him with eyes that were dark with terror. “How... how did you know?”

He kept holding her wrist.

“And I’ll take the gun, so that you won’t get into any trouble with it,” said Ken.

She let go her hold on the entire purse, and, as Ken freed her wrist, leaned forward and put her hands to her face. “It’s horrible,” she said. “He’s trying to save my name. He doesn’t love me. But he’d take a death sentence rather than let the newspapers bandy my name about. I can’t let him do it. I’ve got to force him to make the facts public, and then—”

She paused.

“And then?” asked Ken Corning.

She motioned towards the purse which held the gun.

“Then—” she said, and pitched forward to the floor.

Helen Vail sopped a wet towel on the woman’s forehead and said: “What happened, Ken?”

He shook his head. “She kind of wobbled. Before I could catch her she’d gone into a nose dive. Her pulse is all weak and stringy. Guess she hasn’t had much sleep. She seems to have been on a terrific strain. Where’s that whiskey? Fine. Now hold her head while I see if we can get a little more down her.”

He poured whiskey past the white lips. The woman’s eyelids fluttered and she stared at them with fixed eyes that seemed glassy and unseeing, Like the eyes of a cat that is just recovering from a fit.

“Feel better?” asked Ken Corning.

She didn’t answer the question.

A knock sounded at the door of the private office. Ken Corning looked meaningly at Helen Vail. “Go out and see who it is. If it’s anybody that*s snooping around, hand ’em a stall.”

Helen Vail went to the door, opened it, tried to block the entrance with her slender body. A man pushed her to one side. Ken Corning saw the glitter of light from the windows reflected from the lense of a camera. He saw a long arm hold up something above Helen Vail’s head. Then there was a “poom” and the white glare of a flashlight exploded.

Ken Corning went forward, low to the ground like a football player charging the line. He went past Helen Vail like a charging bull. A man with a camera and a flashlight was running across the outer office. Ken Corning caught him at the door.

The man whirled as Ken’s hands sought the camera. He made a swift pass at Ken. Corning dodged the blow, brought his foot sharply down on the man’s instep, jerked at the camera. It came loose in his hand. Ken whirled it around his head, banged it down on the floor. He crossed his left, and, as the man staggered, got hold of his coat collar with one hand, jerked the door open with the other.

The man struck an ineffectual blow. Ken Corning leaned his weight against the struggling victim, pushed him down the hall, sped him on his way with the toe of a well-directed boot.

The man sprinted to the stairs, then whirled.

“You can’t get away with that!” he yelled. “I’ll have you in jail before night for assault and battery. My paper’s got some prestige and you can’t pull a stunt like that. I’ll show you who’s who in this man’s town.”

He was still talking as Ken snapped the door shut.

He walked into his reception-room, kicked the camera to fragments, jerked open the door of his private office, and said to Helen Vail: “Get her out of here, and keep her under cover!” Helen Vail stared at him.

“Who is she?” she whispered.

“Don’t ask me, and don’t ask her,” rasped Ken Corning. “Get her out of here. Take her down a floor and into the ladies’ restroom. Keep her under cover until you can sneak her out. If she can make it, better make a try for a hotel right now.”

The woman got to her feet, clutched at the edge of the desk for support. “I can make it,” she said, smiling wanly. “Did... did the newspapermen follow me?”

“Some tabloid guy,” said Ken Corning.

“Did he get a picture?”

“He did, but he can’t use it. His camera’s smashed.”

The troubled eyes were filled with gratitude.

“The only thing for you to do now is to get under cover and stay there,” said Corning. “Those babies are wise and they’ve been following you. Anyhow, they knew you were coming here, or knew it when you got here. Don’t tell anyone what you told me. I’ll bust into this fight as counsel that was hired by you. I’m going to try and work out some way of handling the situation.”

The woman said: “The things I’ve told you have got to come out. When they do I can’t face the world. I’m finished.”

Ken Corning jutted his jaw at her.

“Shut up and get out of here,” he said. “You talk like a damned fool. Get her out, Helen.”

Helen Vail had moved with crisp efficiency while they were talking. She had on her hat and coat.

“I’ll try the back way,” she said. “I think we can make it. I’ll telephone when I get located.”

“Stay with her,” said Corning, “every minute of the time, night and day. Don’t let her out of your sight. Here’s some money for expenses.”

He tossed her two of the fifty-dollar bills.

“But—” the woman started to protest.

Helen Vail’s voice broke in, cool, efficient, determined.

“Can the chatter,” she said, “and get started. Can’t you see Mr. Corning has work to do?”

She pulled the woman out into the hall, let the door close. Ken Corning called, just as the door was closing: “Call me at the Antlers Hotel, ask for Mr. Mogart.”

Helen’s voice drifted through the open transom.

“Okey,” she said.

Ken Corning grabbed a copy of the Penal Code, a volume on evidence, some blank forms which dealt with writs of habeas corpus, caught up his hat and lunged for the door.

He didn’t bother with the elevator, but took the stairs two at a time. Nor did he go out of the lobby of the office building to the street, but went, instead, through a back door which gave upon a storeroom, a musty corridor, and a barred door which opened on an alley. Ken Corning unbarred the door and emerged into the fresh air of the warm morning.

He took a taxicab to the depot, caught another there and went to the Antlers Hotel, where he secured a room under the name of E. C. Mogart of Kansas City.

The telephone rang while he was arranging his books on the dresser. He answered it and heard Helen Vail’s voice.

“We’re at the Gladstone,” she said. “We got a break getting away from the office. The guy you threw out was yammering at a cop in front of the place, and it was attracting a crowd. I picked this joint because it’s close to the Antlers. What do I do next?”

“Just sit tight,” he told her. “What name are you registered under?”

“Bess and Edna Seaton,” she said. “The room’s five-thirty-six.”

“Which is Bess and which Edna?” asked Corning.

“Be your age!” she said, and hung up.

Ken Corning grinned, lit a cigarette and started pacing the floor.

He walked the floor like a caged animal, smoking cigarette after cigarette, the smoke whipping back over his shoulder, his eyes squinted in thought.

There was a knock at his door. He opened it. Helen Vail grinned at him, “I came to tell you,” she said, “that I’m going to be Bess. We tossed up for it.”

“Anybody see you come up here?” he asked.

“No.”

“Come on in.”

She came in. He closed the door and locked it.

“How much do you know?” he asked.

“All of it,” she said. “You didn’t think she’d have someone to get weepy with without spilling all of the information, did you?”

Ken fell to pacing the floor again.

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“It’s a mess,” she agreed.

“How’d it happen?” he wanted to know.

She shrugged her shoulders. “She’d known Ladue before she got married — and she knew him afterwards.”

“Wasn’t she happy, Helen?”

“No.”

“Why is she willing to ruin herself to save her husband, then?”

“Because that’s her sense of loyalty. If she loved anybody, it was Ladue. I guess her husband’s like all the rest of them. He didn’t treat her with any particular consideration, and he was playing around with a blonde — a manicurist in a barber shop.”

“Which shop?” he asked.

“Kelly’s, down on Seventh Street.”

“The wife knew about it?”

“Sure.”

“Did she say anything to him about it?”

“Yes. They had it out.”

“And then he accused her of being intimate with Ladue, I suppose, and she admitted that, and then he went out and shot Ladue.”

Helen Vail shook her head.

“No. She didn’t think that he knew anything about her and Ladue. If he did, he didn’t mention it, and he should have mentioned it. They had some little scene. She didn’t object to the blonde as long as he didn’t flaunt her in the faces of their social set. But it had been getting pretty raw, and she wanted him to tame down.”

“What’d he tell her?” asked Corning.

“What do husbands always tell their wives when the wives are in the right?” she asked.

Ken Corning shrugged his shoulders. “Never having been a husband, I’ll pass. What’d he tell her?”

Helen Vail grinned. “Told her to go to hell,” she said.

Ken Corning said: “And then he went out and shot Ladue, eh?”

“That seems to be about the size of it.”

Ken Corning shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense, Helen. I wonder if maybe it wasn’t some sort of a frame-up.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, shrugged her shoulders, and said: “I’d take a cigarette if anybody’d offer me one.”

He passed her the package. “Matches in the glass smoking stand,” he told her. She pouted. “Don’t I rate service?”

“No,” he said, and started pacing the floor again. “I’m busy.”

She lit the cigarette, and Ken Corning paused abruptly in his walking of the floor, strode to the telephone, scooped the receiver to his ear and gave a number to the operator.

“Who’re you calling?” asked Helen Vail.

“District Attorney’s office,” he said.

“Hello,” he said into the instrument when a feminine voice came over the wire, “who’s handling the George Colton case?”

“Two or three,” said the girl in the District Attorney’s office. “Don Graves is going to sit in on the trial. Probably the D. A. himself will handle the prosecution.”

“Let me talk with Graves,” said Corning.

“Who is it?”

“Kenneth Corning, the lawyer.”

“Oh, yeah. Just a minute.”

There was a click of a connection, then Don Graves’ voice came over the wire. It was a rasping, cold voice, bloodlessly efficient.

“Corning, eh?” he said. “Are you retained in the Colton case?”

“Yes.”

“That’s funny. Old Burnham of Burnham, Peabody & Burnham, has been employed by Colton.”

“I’m retained by an intimate friend,” said Ken.

“The wife, eh?” said Graves.

“I didn’t say that,” said Corning.

“I know,” said Graves, “I said that. You didn’t deny it.”

“That’s not the point,” said Corning. “I want to talk with Colton.”

“Yeah? Maybe he don’t want to talk with you.”

“Maybe,” said Corning. “And then again, maybe he does. You going to pass me in to see him, or have I got to get rusty about it?”

“If he asks us to pass you in, we’ll see that you get a pass as his lawyer,” said Graves.

“But, if I can’t see him,” said Corning, “how the hell can I get him to make the request of you?”

“That,” said Graves, chuckling, “is one of the problems that you’ve got in connection with the case. It’s your hard luck. It ain’t mine.”

“Okey,” said Ken. “As attorney for someone who is acting on his behalf I can file a writ of habeas corpus application and that’ll bring him into court. I’ll talk with him there if I can’t talk with him any other way.”

Graves spoke in icy tones.

“Going to get nasty, eh?”

“If I have to, yes.”

“Okey,” said Graves. “In that event you might be interested to learn that there’s a warrant out for your arrest. Assault and battery on the person of one Edward Fosdick, reporter for the Daily Despatch I believe I can add a count of malicious mischief in the breaking of one camera, too. Show up in court any time you want to, Corning, and the warrant will be served on you then.”

Corning gripped the receiver.

“How long has that warrant been issued?” he asked.

Don Graves chuckled.

“It’s on my desk for an okey on the complaint now,” he said. “I wasn’t certain that I was going to okey a warrant on it; but I’m doing it now, The more I think of it, the more it seems like an aggravated case. I wouldn’t doubt if you got a jail sentence.”

Ken Corning said: “Let me talk to the D.A. He won’t stand for all these shyster tactics that you use, Graves, and you know it.”

Graves said: “The D.A.’s busy. He won’t talk over the phone. You know that as well as I do. Why don’t you come to the office and make a squawk.”

“Yeah,” said Corning, “and have you get that warrant served on me, and me thrown in the can before I got a chance to see the D.A. I wasn’t born yesterday. You can just try and find me to serve that warrant, and you can just try to find out who my client is, and where.”

Graves said: “We know who she is. That don’t interest us any more. But there’s another angle to this case that we want to investigate. We’re interested in knowing where she is. And we’re going to find out. You can’t prepare to take part in this case and keep under cover at the same time.”

“The hell I can’t,” said Ken Corning, and slammed the receiver on the hook.

Helen Vail said, blowing cigarette smoke out with the words: “You shouldn’t lose your temper and cuss when you’re talking with Don Graves, Ken. He’s the kind that’s always trying to make people lose their tempers.”

Ken stared at her with his eyes cold as twin chunks of ice reflecting the glint of the Northern Lights.

“Before I get done with that bald-headed crook I’ll show him something. He’s hand in glove with Carl Dwight and the other crooked politicians that are running this town. The D. A., himself, wouldn’t stand for the stuff they pull, if he knew about it. He just leaves things in the hands of his deputies, and they’re a hot bunch of crooks! They’re giving that reporter a warrant just because they know that Mrs. Colton came to my office, and they think I’m hiding her.”

Helen Vail grinned.

“Well you are, aren’t you?”

He nodded grimly, reached for his hat.

“You bet I am,” he said, “and I’m going to keep on hiding her! That outfit up there is run by the newspapers. The reporters come in and yell for a fresh angle on the murder mystery, and the D.A.’s office has to dig it up for them. The more spectacular the better. Well, there’s just one way to beat that game. I’m going to get one jump ahead of them, and keep there.”

She watched him with speculative eyes.

“Be back?” she asked.

“Some time,” he said. “You stick around the Gladstone. Thought I told you not to leave that woman alone for a minute.”

She grinned. “That was because she was figuring on bumping herself off. She’s over it now She’s going to cooperate. It’s a wise steno that knows when it’s safe to disobey orders.”

He frowned down at her.

“You’re a wise little rat,” he said. “Some day that independence of yours is going to get you fired.”

She grinned at him, and he slammed the door.

“Lock it when you go out and turn the key in at the desk,” he called, and then went striding down the corridor. She could hear the pound of his heels on the carpet, all the way from the door of the room to the elevator shaft.

Nell Blake was plain, thirty-two and a man-hater. She did her hair back from her forehead in firm lines of rigid precision. She wore spectacles and made no attempt to disguise the fact. She scorned the use of cosmetics, and sat very erect. She was by far the most competent stenographer Harry Ladue had ever hired.

She sat at the lunch table and stared across at Ken Corning.

“So you followed me here to talk about the murder?” she asked.

Ken Corning nodded grimly.

“I don’t know you, and I don’t know anything about the murder,” said Nell Blake in firm, precise tones. “I don’t want to be annoyed, and unless you leave me I shall call an officer.”

Ken Corning grinned at her.

“Listen,” he said, “sooner or later you’re going on the witness stand, maybe more than once. I’m going to be the attorney for the defense, and I’m going to cross-examine you. If you’re willing to be fair with me, I won’t hurt you much with a cross-examination. But you try to ritz me now, and I’ll rip you wide open.”

She blinked her eyes from behind the spectacles.

“Oh,” she said, in a slightly altered voice, “you’re the lawyer, are you? I thought you were another reporter, trying to force a sex angle into the case.”

“I’m not. I’m trying to keep it out, if you want to know.”

The mouth was a firm, thin line. The eyes behind the spectacles were cool and calculating.

“Precisely what,” she asked, “was it that you wished to know? I have exactly one hour for lunch, and I don’t propose to waste it listening to some man talk in circles. If you want to interview me, get to the point and keep there.”

He leaned across the table.

“You were in the office at the time of the shooting?”

“Yes.”

“Who else?”

“Adella Parks, the other stenographer; and Miss Althea Kent, his private secretary.”

“All right. Now you and Miss Parks had desks on one side of the outer office, and Althea Kent had hers in a corner near the door to the private office. That right?”

“Yes.”

“According to the newspaper accounts, George Colton came to call on Ladue. He gave his name to Miss Kent. She telephoned in to Ladue, and Ladue said to show him in. It was about nine o’clock at night. The office was working full blast trying to get out some letters in connection with a real estate campaign.

“Colton walked into the inside office and was heard to say: ‘Hello, Harry,’ then the door closed and there was silence for a few seconds, then the sound of two shots. When the door was opened, the inner office was in darkness, Ladue was lying on the floor, dead, and Colton was yelling that Ladue was shot.

“There was a gun on the floor. It was subsequently identified as having been Colton’s gun. He admits that it was his, but swears that he didn’t bring it with him. He says he was talking with Ladue when the lights went out and someone shot.”

Corning quit speaking.

“Well?” asked Nell Blake, in a coolly superior tone of voice.

“I want to know if those facts are correct,” said Corning.

“They are.”

“Can you add to them?”

She hesitated, sipped her coffee, looked up at him and said: “No.”

He kept his eyes on hers.

“Had there been someone else in the office that evening?”

“Which office?”

“The entrance office. Had anyone else gone in to see Ladue?”

“No.”

“How about the other office? Had anyone else gone in there? There’s a door that opens out to the corridor. It’s used as an exit from the private office, but a person could have come in there.”

“Not unless Ladue had let them in.”

“Well, did he let anyone come in?”

She sipped her coffee again.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Ken Corning drummed with his fingers on the edge of the table. His eyes dwelt upon the girl’s face in calm appraisal. “You were all three in the outer office?”

“At the time of the shooting. Yes.”

“Exactly who was in the private office at the time of the shooting, beside Ladue and Colton?” rasped Corning.

She said: “Why, I didn’t know that anybody was. If anybody had been it’s almost certain that Mr. Colton would have known it, isn’t it?”

Ken Corning stared at her. She lowered her eyes and sipped the coffee again.

Corning said: “The newspapers say the lights were turned off at the switch. Why would Colton have turned off the lights?”

She set down the coffee cup and let her eyes stare into his.

“If,” she said, “you’re Mr. Colton’s attorney, don’t you think that would be a good question to ask him?”

Ken Corning pushed aside a sugar bowl and salt cellar so that he could lean his elbows on the table. He thrust his weight forward on those elbows, his forearms crossed, the lingers gripping the bend of the elbow.

“All right,” he said, “if you feel that way about it, I want to know what there was about that inner office that you’re concealing!”

She reached for the coffee cup again, then raised her eyes to his. They were cool, impersonal.

“Am I concealing something?” she asked.

He nodded grimly.

“Yes,” he said. “Your answers ring true enough whenever I ask you about the outer office. But every time I mention that inner office you start reaching for that coffee cup. Now tell me what there is about that inner office that you’re not sure about.”

She locked her eyes with his, felt the full impact of those coldly questioning eyes of his, and lowered her own.

“Come on,” said Ken Corning. “There’s a human life at stake, you know.”

She spoke more slowly now, and in a lower tone. She seemed less sure of herself.

“We have an extension telephone system,” she said. “Miss Kent handles the incoming calls and puts through those that should go to Mr. Ladue, and weeds out the others. She stepped out of the office for a moment, and a call came in. I stepped over to her desk to put it through.

“It was a man by the name of Perkins. He’d been at the office before. I recognized his voice and, in addition to that, he gave me his name. I think he was a detective. He asked for Mr. Ladue and I put the call through. I should have hung up then, but I wanted to make certain that I’d handled it all right, because Mr. Ladue was very particular about his calls, so I waited on the line.

“I heard Mr. Perkins call Mr. Ladue by his first name. He said, as nearly as I can remember: ‘I’ve got some important information for you, Harry. I want to come right up.’ And Mr. Ladue said for him to come along; that the time limit was about up.

“That was all I heard. I went back to my desk. Miss Kent came in, but Mr. Perkins didn’t come in. At least he didn’t come to the outer office. After a while Mr, Ladue rang for Miss Kent to come in and bring her book. She stepped into the office, and I thought there was just a bit of surprise in her manner as she opened the door to the inner office. It was just the way she would have acted if she’d expected to find Mr. Ladue alone, and had found someone else in there with him.”

“That all?” asked Ken.

“That’s all.”

“I can’t very well go before a jury with that as a defense,” he told her.

She replied testily: “I didn’t say you could. You’re the lawyer, I’m not. You asked me for the facts, and I gave them to you. Incidentally, if you should mention that I told you this, as though I thought it was at all significant, I’d be out of a job — to say the least,”

He looked at her with thought-squinted eyes.

“It’s a corporation of some sort, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It handles real estate.”

“And Ladue was the head of it?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t he handle the purchase for the city of a big tract? Wasn’t there something about his getting options and selling them to the city?”

Her voice became utterly cold.

“If you wish to discuss the business affairs of my employers, you will have to ask your questions elsewhere. I am merely telling you what I know about the murder.”

Ken Corning said: “Can you describe this man, Perkins?”

“Yes,” she said. “He was at the office a few times. He’s about forty-five with very broad shoulders and a short neck. He carries his head pretty well forward, and has a pair of shrewd gray eyes that seem to twinkle at times. He usually wears a tweed suit...”

“I know him,” said Corning. “His name’s Charles C. Perkins. He works as a detective. I think he’s on the force.”

“I never did know,” said Nell Blake, “exactly what he did. And now, if you’ll pardon me, I’ll be leaving.”

“One question more. Have you asked Althea Kent about any of this?”

“Certainly not. You know what she told the newspaper reporters. I’m certainly not fool enough to go to her and insinuate that she was concealing any facts.”

Ken Corning reached for the lunch check by Nell Blake’s plate.

“Permit me,” he said

She drew herself up with dignity, taking the check and folding it in her fingers.

“I am perfectly capable of paying my own way,” she said, coolly, turned on her heel and walked away.

Ken Corning got the Gladstone on the telephone and asked for Miss Seaton in room five-thirty-six. After a few moments he heard Helen Vail’s voice over the telephone.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“In a speak down on Madison,” he said. “Know anything?”

“Lots,” she told him. “I got to thinking about the mail, and wondering if there might not be something important in it. I wanted to get it. So I went down to a public telephone booth and called the assistant janitor of the building.”

Ken Corning said: “You mean the one with the patent leather hair that’s got such a case on you?”

She giggled.

“Well,” he rasped, “go on What was in the mail?”

She giggled again, and said: “A circular from a house that wanted to save you money on socks and neckties, and another circular advertising a privately printed book that was being sold to doctors and lawyers — and anybody else that had the price.”

“That all?”

“That was all.”

“Well, what the devil? What’s so important?”

“It was what the assistant janitor told me,” she said. “He said the wire had been tapped. They’re fixed to listen in on your phone calls. He found it out by accident. He came into the office when they were working. They want... you know who... and they figure you’re in touch with her. They’re waiting for her to try and call up, or for you to call the office.”

Ken Corning rasped out a curse.

“Naughty, naughty,” she chided. “They’ll take the phone out if you talk that way. Central might be listening in, and she’s got tender ears.”

Ken Corning said: “Okey. Never mind the comedy. You stick around there until I call you again. And don’t disobey orders again. I’ll tie a can to you one of these days for taking liberties with instructions.”

“You’ve got to admit,” she said, “that it always works out for the best.”

He slammed the receiver back on its hook, left the telephone booth and had two rye whiskies, one right after the other, His eyes were cold and hard, and the black pupils seemed like bits of coal against lumps of ice.

The apartment house corridor was redolent with the odors of cooking. There were odors of fresh meals which seeped through the cracks of doors and transoms, and there were the stale odors of long dead meals that clung tenaciously to wall paper and carpet to give a musty smell of human occupancy.

Apartment 13 B was near the end of the corridor. Ken Corning raised his hand and knocked.

After a moment there was the rustle of motion from the interior of the apartment. The door opened and afternoon sunlight streamed through the window and into the corridor.

Althea Kent was the exact antithesis of Nell Blake.

Her figure was distinctively feminine. Her complexion was well cared for. Her eyes held a deliberately provocative expression. The lips were full and shapely. There was a vague something about her, as elusive as the perfume of a flower and yet as persistently suggestive, which spoke of a knowledge of her attractiveness to men.

“What do you want?” she asked,

Ken Corning said: “I want to ask you a few questions.”

“Come in,” she invited.

As the outer door closed behind him, she asked: “Are you a reporter?”

“No. I’m investigating it from another angle. I want to find out one or two things that don’t check up. The theory has been that Colton switched off the light and killed Ladue in the dark. Can you give me any reason why he should have done that?”

She shook her head. “Colton killed him. You’ll have to ask him for his reasons,” she said.

Corning nodded.

“The office was dark when you rushed in there?”

“Yes, except for the light that came from the outer office.”

“The switch is near the entrance to the private office?”

“Yes.”

“You turned it on when you went in?”

“Shortly afterwards.”

“All right. Now think. Did the lights go on when you turned the switch on?”

“No,” she said. “Not when I tried to turn it on the first time. I was excited. I didn’t punch the button clear in, I guess. I remember snapping at it, and I heard a click, but the lights didn’t go on. A little while later I tried it again and that time I snapped the switch on all right and the lights went on.”

Ken Corning heaved a big sigh.

“Okey,” he said. “Now tell me about Perkins. He was in the office when you went in there the first time, wasn’t he?”

At his question she stiffened. She seemed to be holding her breath. When she spoke her voice had lost its cooing note of affectation, and her eyes were cold and hard.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Perkins,” said Ken Corning, without hesitation. “He was in the office when you looked m there to take some dictation a little while before Colton came. Was he there when Colton arrived?”

She said, in a cold monotone: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And who are you? You haven’t told me that yet.”

“My name,” he said, “is Corning. I’m a lawyer.”

“Representing Colton, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

She got to her feet.

“I’ve told all I know of the case to the authorities and to the newspapers. I haven’t time to discuss it any more. I’m going out this evening and I want to get dressed. I’ll have to ask you to excuse me.”

She walked to the door. Gone was the suggestion of intimacy about her maimer. She held the folds of the silken gown tightly about her. Her head was up, the eyes cold and distant. She turned the knob of the door and held it open.

“Did you know when Perkins went into the inner office?” asked Ken Corning.

Wordlessly, she held open the door.

“Can you tell me what the nature of the business was between Ladue and Perkins?”

She continued to stand at the door, holding it open, silent, distant, hostile. Ken Corning whirled on her.

“All right, young lady. I gave you the opportunity to save yourself a lot of trouble. This is a murder case. There’s a life at stake, and if you think you can pull a line like that and make it stick you’re sure going to be surprised.”

She said two words, cold, crisp words.

“Get out!”

Ken Corning went into the corridor. The door slammed behind him. He heard the rasp of the key and the click of the lock.

He stood in the corridor, jaw protruding, eyes narrowed, lips clamped in a firm, straight line. Then he walked swiftly and purposefully towards the elevator.

The police had finished with the office of Harry Ladue.

The man who made maps and diagrams had taken measurements. The police photographer had taken various and sundry photographs of the arrangement of the offices, the sprawled body, the exact location of the various articles of furniture at the time the crime had been committed.

The corporation of which Ladue had been the guiding head had appointed a man to fill the vacancy caused by death. There had been some attempt to make the business carry on. The new man had familiarized himself with the important matters which were pending; and now the offices were closed for the night.

Out on the streets there was still a little afterglow of light from the sky. In the building all was dark, except that night lights glowed in the corridors. Through the windows on the front of the offices came the colored lights of electric signs, one second glowing a deep red, then shifting to green, then vanishing.

Ken Corning moved down the corridor like some sinister shadow.

He was fighting the political powers that controlled the city. Already there was a warrant out for his arrest — a warrant that would never have been issued save for the fact that he was on the wrong side of the political fence.

If he slipped up he could count upon no mercy. The powers that were in the saddle would have railroaded him to the penitentiary without an instant’s hesitation. The underworld which was dependent for its very existence upon a complacent toleration on the part of those political powers had already once tried to take Ken for a ride.

And Ken Corning was carrying on.

He prowled about the corridor, looking for the fuse box which controlled the lights in the various offices. He found the box, a little recessed receptacle built into the wall, covered with a metal door which swung out on hinges.

Ken Corning tried the door of the office marked Ladue Investment Corporation — Entrance. The door was locked. He slipped a ring of keys from his pocket and tried them patiently, one after the other. On the third try he found a skeleton key which would operate the lock.

He went in and switched all the lights on in both offices. Then he went to the fuse box and experimented with the round fuses which were screwed into their places.

He found one which controlled a segment of the wiring.

He unscrewed it, and the lights went off in the private office. He screwed it in, and the lights went on. He smiled grimly, closed the door of the box and again entered the offices.

The desk of the secretary was in a corner by the door which led to the private office. That desk was locked, but the lock was of a pattern which yielded readily. Ken Corning went through the desk. He found a shorthand notebook. It was filled with pothooks and dashes which meant nothing to him. He found another one. There was a pencil thrust in between the leaves of this book. There was also a handkerchief between the same pages.

Ken Corning opened the book.

At the place where the handkerchief and pencil had been was the division point between that part of the book which had been filled with shorthand, and the blank pages. Ken Corning thrust this notebook into his pocket. He closed the desk, switched out the lights in the offices and departed as quietly as he had come.

When he left the building, he removed the gloves which had been on his hands. He went at once to a telephone, called the Gladstone Hotel and was relieved to hear Helen Vail’s voice over the wire.

“How’s everything?” he asked.

“Fine as silk.”

“Anybody spot you?”

“Nope.”

“Can you slip over to the Antlers right away?”

“Give me ten minutes,” she said. “I’m dressed formal.”

“Dressed! I didn’t know you took any clothes with you! You weren’t foolish enough to go after a suitcase, were you?”

She giggled.

“You gave me expense money. I figured I’d be conspicuous if I didn’t dress. You should see the gown. It’s a darb, and cheap, too! It only cost—”

He groaned.

“Ten minutes then,” he said, and hung up.

He caught a cab. Went to his room in the Antlers, and Helen Vail pushed open the door within three minutes of the time he had finished washing his hands.

She wore a low cut gown which accentuated the curves of her figure. Her eyes were laughing, radiant. She drifted over to him, whirled so that he could see the back, and wiggled her shoulders.

“Isn’t it a darb? It only...”

“If you think that’s a legitimate expense, you’re crazy,” he told her. “Snap out of it. This is a murder case, not a picnic.”

She grinned.

“Murder case for you, picnic for me,” she said. “I didn’t have a darned thing to do all day except sprawl around and kick my toes at the ceiling.”

Then, at the look on his face, she came close to him, put an arm on his shoulder.

“Don’t be sore, Ken. I was kidding you about the gown. Mrs. Colton bought it for me. She has a charge account. She couldn’t just sit around staring at the blank walls of a hotel room. She had to go down to dinner. You’re a lawyer. You don’t know women. She’d have brooded over things and had hysterics if I’d left her in that room.”

He pushed the girl away, held her at arm’s length, stared into her eyes with his own eyes hot with wrath.

“You little fool, do you mean to tell me that you went to a department store, or wherever it was, and used Mrs. Colton’s charge account with her written okey?”

She nodded.

“Why, they’ll trace you from that. That’ll give them the link they want. They’re dragging the city for that woman. Someone’s leaked. They’re moving heaven and earth to drag her over to the D. A.’s office to question her on this Ladue business. Look at the evening papers!”

And he slammed an evening paper down on the bed so that the big headlines could be read as they streamed across the page.

“Sex Slant in Slaying!” read the headlines. Down below in smaller type were other headlines: “Slayer’s Spouse Seeks Lawyer! D. A. Awaits Wife as Witness!”

She came close to him again.

“I’m sorry, Ken. But I’m not a fool. I fixed things so they’d never be able to trail me, and I engaged a private dining-room in the hotel, and I had a girl friend I could trust come in, and we had a nice little dinner, and Mrs. Colton’s all pepped up again, and ready to see it through. She was getting weepy and had the suicide complex again this afternoon.”

He patted her shoulder.

“I guess it’s all right. It’d have been hell if your foot had slipped and they’d picked you up.”

She grinned at him.

“But my foot didn’t slip,” she pointed out. “And, anyhow, all life’s like that. It’s fine if your foot don’t slip. But there’s always that chance of slipping, and that’s what makes it so much fun.”

She smiled up into his face. He pulled her suddenly towards him.

“Oh-oh!” she said, “You’ll get powder on your coat if you do that!”

And, laughingly, she freed herself.

Ken Corning sighed, lit a cigarette, pulled the notebook out of his pocket.

“That your system of shorthand?” he asked.

She lost her bantering manner and instantly became serious. She sat down on the bed, crossed her knees, put the notebook out on her lap, started studying the notes.

“I can read it,” she said. “It’s my system. She didn’t write it any too legibly. Guess she could read her notes after they were cold. It’d take me a little while to get the sense of it. I can get words here and there.”

“Okey,” he said. “I’m guessing that nobody dictated to her today. Take that last bunch of shorthand that’s there, and see if you can make it out.”

The girl ran through the pages, found the last one, started frowning as she deciphered the words. Her lips moved soundlessly at first, and then made audible words.

“... ‘party of the second part, receipt of which is hereby acknowledged’... then there’s something I can’t make out... ‘hereby bargains and sells, remises and forever quitclaims to the said party of the first part, all and singular, the lands, tenements and hereditaments.’... There’s a lot of description. You don’t want that, do you? It’s surveyor’s description. So many chains from a certain point, and then boundaries in feet and tenths of feet.”

Ken Corning’s eyes were narrowed to slits.

“Quitclaim deed, eh? Who’s the party of the first part?”

She glanced back along the page.

“Some corporation. The Home Builders Realty Corporation.”

Ken Corning’s face showed keen disappointment. Helen Vail let her eyes travel down the shorthand notes. “That seems to be all that it is,” she said, “a regular quitclaim.”

Ken Corning said: “Why would they make a quitclaim if they had title to the property? You’d think they’d either have assigned a contract or else given a grant deed. Maybe it was a flaw in the title... Wait a minute, Helen. Go back of that. What’s the thing in the book that’s just before that quitclaim?”

The girl thumbed back the page, let her eyes wander down the page. Suddenly she caught her breath in a quick gasp.

“Listen to this: ‘Whereas the said undersigned, the said Charles C. Perkins, utilized the said confidential information to fraudulently and feloniously procure a transfer of title to The Home Builders Realty Corporation, a dummy corporation, organized, owned and controlled by the said Charles C. Perkins...”

Ken Corning made a dive, grabbed the notebook from her hand.

“That’s enough. Get out of that damned dress. Get it off!”

She stared at him with wide eyes.

“Says which?” she asked.

He waved his hand towards the door.

“Get started. Back to your hotel. Get out of that bunch of glad rags.”

He pushed her towards the door. “Get into your office clothes. When I give you a ring, you go to the office, open up the door and turn on the lights. If anyone asks you questions tell them I telephoned you to come to the office to take some dictation. Tell them you don’t know where I telephoned from. And don’t let on that you know the wire is tapped. I’ll probably telephone you and start talking a bunch of stuff over the telephone. You follow my lead.”

She nodded. He opened the door, pushed her into the corridor.

“And listen,” he told her, “that’s one bunch of instructions you’re not to take liberties with. You disobey those, and I’ll break your neck. Understand!”

She smiled at him, but her face showed a serious look as though she appreciated the gravity of the situation.

“Think I’m a fool?” she asked. “I know when I can cut corners, and when I can’t. What’ll I tell the jane over there?” And she jerked her thumb in the general direction of The Gladstone.

“Tell her nothing!” snapped Ken Corning. “She’ll have to wait until we see how things turn out before she gets any information.”

Helen Vail turned with a swish of the evening gown, a glimpse of shapely ankles.

“And that’s an instruction I’ll take liberties with,” she called over her bare shoulder as she flounced the wrap off her arm, spread it. She grinned back at him as she covered her shoulders, and then tripped towards the elevator.

Ken Corning slammed the door shut, locked it, went to the telephone, called police headquarters. “Sergeant Home,” he said, when the operator at headquarters answered.

Five seconds later he heard the deep bass voice of Sergeant Home, calmly reassuring, steady as a rock.

Ken Corning said:

“I’m a criminal. That is, there’s a warrant out for my arrest. It’s a frame-up. I know you to be a square shooter. I want to surrender. But I want to do it on one condition. That is that you come after me alone and in person, that you promise you’ll give me a chance to talk without interruption until I’ve stated my case.”

Sergeant Home said: “I don’t make promises to crooks. Who is this, and what’s the warrant for?”

“This is Ken Corning,” Ken told him. “I’m a lawyer. The warrant’s on a charge of assault and battery for beating up a damned nosey reporter who busted into my private...”

“Yeah,” said the deep bass voice, “I know all about that. It ain’t so serious. If you hadn’t tried to conceal witnesses you might not have had any bail to put up. Why should I come after you personally?”

“Because I’ve got something that’s so hot I don’t dare to let it leak out around headquarters.”

Home said: “Where’ll I find you, Corning?”

Corning said: “I trust you enough to tell you where I am and let you come to me, but I don’t trust the gang up there, and I’m not sure the line’s clear. So you go to the corner of Seventh and Hattman Streets and stand there alone. Have a car parked at the curb with the motor running. I’ll get to you.”

“Right away?” asked Home

“Right away,” said Corning, and hung up.

Ken Corning took a taxicab.

“Go to the comer of Seventh and Hattman, park near the curb and keep your motor running,” he told the driver. “I’ll be down out of sight until I see the coast’s clear.”

The driver said: “Listen, Buddy, I’m married and got a kid, so don’t put me in no hot spots.”

“If that’s the case, you’ll need the extra dollar tip all the more,” said Corning, “and you won’t be in any hot spots.”

The cab lurched into motion. Ken Corning sat back on the seat until the cab was within two blocks of the place, then he dropped down on the floor of the cab. When it had pulled in to the curb he spoke to the driver.

“Okey,” he said. “Tell me if you see a police car parked, with the motor running?”

“Yeah. There’s one just ahead.”

Ken Corning pushed up a cautious head. Sergeant Home was standing on the sidewalk. He was alone. “Okey,” said Ken. “Drive up alongside it. Here’s the meter and a buck extra. When I open the door, you drive away.”

The driver crept the cab forward. Corning got to the running-board of the police car. The cab lurched away. Corning slid over in the seat of the police car and pressed the horn button. Sergeant Home gave a swift start at the sound of the horn, and his eyes snapped to focus on Corning.

He walked over to the car, went around it, opened the door and climbed in behind the wheel.

“Hell,” he grunted. “How’d you get in here?”

“Little secret,” Corning told him. “Drive slowly. I’m spilling information. I’ve got to make a sale with you.”

“On that murder case?” asked Home, slipping in the gears with the careful clumsiness which characterizes a big man when he is doing something which requires some deftness of touch.

“On the murder case.”

“Shucks. There ain’t a thing to that. Colton’s a fool. It was a fight over his wife. If he’d spill the truth he could probably make out a case of self-defense. He wouldn’t even have to use anything else.”

Ken Corning said: “Nix on that stuff. Listen here. You know what’s going on in this city as well as I do. There’s a little ring that’s sold out to the underworld, only it ain’t so little. The mayor’s a figurehead in some things. There’s a power back of him that has interests in various places, and those interests are protected. See?”

Home grunted.

“What’s that got to do with murder?”

“Just this. Ladue was on the square. He made some money buying property and selling it to the city, but he made it by legitimate business guessing, and by using his head. Some of the other crowd tried to horn in. They used a dummy, a detective by the name of Perkins.

“Ladue found out about it and made Perkins disgorge. Otherwise he was going to blow the lid off the whole affair. Last night was the last minute he’d given Perkins. There was to be a blow-off if Perkins didn’t disgorge. All right. What did Perkins do? He framed it so Colton would be coming to the office while he was there. He sneaked in the side entrance. He and Ladue had been good friends. They called each other by their first names. Probably Ladue was deeply sympathetic with Perkins, the individual. It was the system that he was fighting.

“So he slipped Perkins in to his private office. Colton came, The girl announced him. Perkins said he’d duck out and come back when Colton had gone, Colton wasn’t the sort Ladue could keep waiting.

“So Perkins stepped out in the corridor. He went to the fuse box and unscrewed the fuse which gave light to Ladue’s office, the private office. Then he opened the corridor door. There was light enough for him to see what he was doing. It came from the little window over Ladue’s desk. He fired twice. He’s a dead shot. He tossed in the gun and went back to the fuse box. It was Colton’s gun.

“In the meantime the office force had rushed into the room. Seeing it dark, they snapped the switch. That turned the lights in the room off. They were on already. Perkins had counted on that. He then screwed in the fuse plug. That left the lights ready to come on when someone punched the switch again.”

Sergeant Home slowed the car almost to a crawl. His forehead was washboarded with thoughtful concentration.

“That’s a wild alibi to make,” he said. “Even a jury wouldn’t believe that, but—”

He paused, and his voice trailed off into silence. The car continued to crawl along at a snail’s pace.

“But,” said Corning, “for some reason or other you think it may be so, eh?”

Sergeant Home spoke after the manner of one who is merely thinking out loud. “The tip on this unwritten law angle came from Perkins,” he said. “He’s the one that gave us all the dates and stuff.”

Ken Corning said, slowly: “You’ve got that?”

“We’ve got Perkins’ word for it,” said Home. “The dead man can’t talk, and we can’t find his wife — Colton’s wife.”

Ken Corning said: “Well, how’d you like to prove the facts as I’ve given them to you? How’d you like to nail this case on Perkins with absolute proof?”

Sergeant Home shook his head. “Don’t be foolish, Corning. It can’t be done.”

Corning countered with a question.

“You’re on the square, Home, but your department’s honeycombed to such an extent that Perkins would know any important development that broke, wouldn’t he?”

Home frowned. “He would if it ever got to the department, and wasn’t kept entirely under my own dome.”

“Okey,” said Corning, “this thing is going to be handled so it won’t be kept under your own dome. But Perkins will never smell it for what it is. It’s bait for a trap. Can we get a shorthand reporter who’s a good one?”

“I guess so,” said Home, staring meditatively and unseeingly at the road which was flowing past them at a slow pace as the car purred steadily along the deserted thoroughfare.

“Let’s go, then,” Corning told him, his face grim and purposeful.

Ken Corning called his office from the public pay station. Helen Vail’s voice answered. She sounded sleepy.

“Been waiting long?” asked Corning.

“So so. Thought you were going to come up and give me some dictation, Ken.”

“I am. You wait right there until I get there. But I won’t be there for a little while. There’s been a matter come up that’s most important.”

He paused, wondering if she would give him a lead.

“You mean on that Colton murder case?” she asked eagerly.

“Yes,” he said, lowering his voice as though thereby making the confidence more safe. “You see there’s a key witness in that case who’s really been overlooked by the police. She’s Althea Kent, the secretary for Ladue. The murderer knows of her, but thinks he’s got her under his thumb.

“I just talked with her, and I’m going to meet her again later on. She’s gone out now, but she’ll be back. She says she won’t make any statement for publication in advance, but she will give me the facts in the form of an affidavit. I can call her as a surprise witness, and when I put her on the stand, she’s going to tell the whole truth.”

“Gee,” said Helen Vail, “that’ll be swell, Kenneth. You bust that murder case wide open, and the newspapers will give you all the publicity you can handle.”

Ken Corning said: “Okey. Don’t say anything to anyone. Wait there and be ready to go out and take that affidavit when I call you. Have your notarial seal ready. G’bye.”

“G’bye,” she said, and the receiver clicked in his ear.

Ken Corning hung up. Home said: “Good work. Your line’s tapped. That conversation’ll be at headquarters inside of five minutes, all typed out. Let’s go.”

They went, went in a police car, four of them; a shorthand reporter who was bored, a technical man who was anxious, Home who was grim, and Ken Corning who was jubilant.

They went to the apartment house where Althea Kent had her apartment, the place where Ken Corning had called on her earlier in the evening. They filed into an adjoining apartment which had been secured through the police influence of Sergeant Home, and equipped in record time under the supervision of the technical expert.

There was a table, a drop light with a green shade, giving to the surface of the table a white glare of illumination. The shorthand reporter sat down at the table. The technical expert busied himself with a last minute inspection of certain matters of wires and the arrangement of a disc-like contrivance.

A telephone rang.

Sergeant Home answered it, listened for a moment, said: “All right!” and hung up.

He turned to the tense group about the table, their faces showing drawn and white under the glare of the incandescent.

“She’s coming in,” he said.

After a few moments the disc-like contrivance gave forth little humming noises. The technical expert cocked his head to one side.

“She’s telephoning from the other room,” he said.

Another period of tense silence, then the telephone again. Once more Sergeant Home lifted the receiver, listened, said: “All right,” and hung up.

“Perkins,” he said, “is on his way. He was waiting.”

The reporter tested his fountain pen, spread his elbows, gave his notebook a final adjustment. There was the faint sound of knocking, then the voice of Althea Kent, sounding metallic and flat, but perfectly distinct:

“You! What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t to come near me!”

A man’s deep voice growled a surly answer,

“You know damned well what I’m doing here, you two-timing little—!”

“Say, are you cuckoo? What’re you talking about?”

“You know. You saw that lawyer this evening, didn’t you?”

“Sure I saw him. What about it? I thought he was another of those tabloid boys that wanted a leg picture for the front page. I got good legs, and I’m proud of them. He turned out to be a lawyer, so I played clam on him and showed him the door.”

Perkins laughed, and the laugh was not pleasant.

“Played clam, eh? Like hell you did! You came to an understanding with him you’d spill the works when you got on the stand.”

The girl’s voice was shrill and hysterical.

“My—!” she screamed, “you’re crazy. Take your hands off of me!”

Then the deep voice, sounding vague and indistinct.

“You damned little — I’ll tear your tongue out by the roots if I thought you’d try that stuff. And you have. I’ve got the deadwood on you. He telephoned his office and spilled the beans. We had the wire tapped!”

There was the sound of confused noises coming through the disc. The shorthand reporter laid down his pen, looked expectantly at Sergeant Home. Home said: “Okey, boys,” and barged towards the door.

They sent their shoulders against the door of the adjoining apartment. The door smashed inwards, shivering on its hinges, the lock torn loose from the wood. Perkins was choking the woman with one hand, beating her with his fist, cursing.

He was going about it with a grim intentness of purpose which made him temporarily oblivious of the sound of that crashing door. Then he looked up and saw them. His hand flashed towards his hip pocket. Sergeant Home stepped forward. His great broad shoulders swung in the perfect timing of a golf professional making a drive. His right shoulder sank a bit at the last, as his hand shot out in a wicked blow.

Perkins went back.

The light shone for a moment on his heels as the feet flung up from the floor. Then he hit with a jar that shivered the pictures on the wall and set glassware clattering.

The girl staggered to a chair. Her clothing was torn from her shoulders. Her lips were bleeding. One eye was closed. Hair was about her face in wild confusion, and there were livid marks on her throat.

“The dirty—” she said. “Accuses me of squealing, does he? All right, damn him! If that’s the way he feels about it I will get a load off my chest. I’ll give this burg a blow-off it’ll remember for a while.”

Sergeant Home turned to the shorthand reporter.

“Get this, Bill,” he said.

Corning left headquarters at one o’clock in the morning.

His hat was on the back of his head, his hands were thrust deep in his side pockets. He was smoking a cigarette, and the corners of his mouth were twisted in a faint smile.

He called a cab, gave it the address of his rooms, yawned his way up the stairs, and flung himself into a chair. He looked at the clock, yawned, started to undress.

Suddenly his eyes widened. He stared at the clock again, blinked, reached for his shoes and trousers.

“Damn!” he said.

He had his clothes on and a cab at the door within five minutes. He gave the driver the address of his office. “And make time,” he added. At the office he went up the stairs and let himself in with his key. The outer office was dark, but there was a ribbon of light coming from the underside of the door to the private office.

He pushed the door open.

Helen Vail was lying in his swivel-chair, tilted back, her feet up on the desk, legs crossed. Her eyes were closed and her mouth open. She was gently snoring. On the desk beside her was an ash tray with the ends of a score of cigarettes in it. The little flask of whiskey which he had taken from a drawer when he had tried to revive Mrs. Colton from her faint was on the desk beside her. It was empty.

Ken Corning stood in the doorway, took in the sight, and chuckled. Then he said: “Stand by for a time signal. When you hear the gong it will be precisely fourteen minutes past two o’clock in the morning!”

And then he made a deep, bonging noise in imitation of a gong.

Helen Vail stared at him, took her feet down from the desk, rubbed her eyes, and made little tasting noises with her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

“I presume,” she said, “you think you’re being funny. My — it is two o’clock, and after!”

He grinned at her.

“Gee, I’m sorry, kid. I busted that Colton case wide open, and we’re going to have notoriety of sorts. The ring has crawled in a hole and pulled the hole in after it. And, incidentally, they’re laying for me. If they ever get me now — Good-night!”

The girl got to her feet, straightened her skirts, then ran careful fingers up the seams of her stockings. “In other words,” she said, her head down, eyes inspecting her hose, “you clean forgot that I was waiting up here, in accordance with your iron-clad instructions!”

He said: “Aw, Helen, have a heart! I...”

She sighed and said: “Well, I had a hunch I should have done exactly what you told me until that telephone call came in, and then I had a hunch to go home. I should have followed that hunch!”

He smiled, a little wistfully, and said: “You talk as though good jobs grew on bushes. You can’t go home now, anyway. You’ve got to go find Mrs. Colton and break the news to her. She’ll be wild with suspense.”

Helen shook her head.

“Not that baby,” she said. “I got the bell hop to stake us to a quart of liquor before I changed my clothes and came up here. She’ll be bye-bye.”

Ken Corning sighed. “You sure do take liberties with my clients and my expense money. We’ve got to wake her up and tell her, anyway. She’ll be glad to know George Colton was framed all the way through. But it’s hell from my standpoint. Colton doesn’t even know I was representing him!”

And he grinned.

“Meaning you won’t get any more fee?”

“Meaning I won’t get any more fee,” he told her.

“Cheer up. You’ll get the fee for handling her divorce. She’s all washed up. She had been two or three years ago, but Colton wouldn’t let her break away. He’s one of those obstinate men who want to dominate everybody.”

Ken Corning shook his head and said: “No. I won’t handle her divorce. There’s been too much talk already. Perkins had a lot of dope and the tabloids will be hounding her again as soon as Perkins gets off the front page. She’s got to go to Reno, and she’s got to take the first train out.”

Helen reached for a red-backed legal directory.

“Oh, well,” she said, “we can at least look up some good attorney in Reno to send her to. Then we’ll get a cut on the fee.”

And she started thumbing over the pages, while, from the street outside, the calls of the early newsboys informed belated stragglers of the sensation which had broken in the Colton-Ladue case.