Fitzgerald answered for the secretary.
“His alibi is O.K. Jerry. Hilliard sent him over to the Delton Hotel to see Nick White about a show Hilliard was thinking of backing. I checked on that and Nick verified Furman’s story. He was in Nick’s suite from eight o’clock until a quarter of nine. We know Hilliard was alive until 8:32 at least.”
Tracy nodded. Nick White s word could be trusted. He was a fine old Irishman, a veteran producer and a friend of both Tracy and Fitzgerald.
Tracy got shakily to his feet and went over to the tall cabinet in the corner. Mounting a chair, he fished carefully behind the books and papers atop the cabinet with a handkerchief-wrapped hand.
Fitz gave a quick yelp of excitement as he saw the gun.
“I managed to toss it up there just before Lord tackled me.” Tracy said. “That’s what he came back for.”
Fitz took the gun with almost cringing care.
“English make, eh? A Webley. Two chambers fired. All right, Hanley, give it the works.”
Hanley was the finger-print man. He took the weapon over to Hilliard’s desk.
While he was busy, Sergeant Kilian came in. Kilian was Fitz’s right-hand man. He had a hoarse, friendly voice, a cobblestone head and a mouth like a mailbox slit.
“What did you find out upstairs?” Fitzgerald snapped.
“Not a thing,” Kilian said cheerfully. “Hilliard’s wife flew the coop all right. So did the butler. Nothing upstairs to explain why.”
Tracy gave Walter Furman a slow stare. “Were they both in the house when Hilliard sent you over to see Nick White?”
“Yes. Both of them came into the study to talk to Hilliard. Marcom — that’s the butler — had some tradesmen’s bills that had to be okayed. Mrs. Hilliard usually listened with her husband to the Tracy broadcast. But tonight she said she had a sick headache. She went up to her room to lie down just before I left the house.”
Over at the dead man’s desk the finger-print man suddenly ceased his monotonous whistling of a popular tune.
“Good news, Fitz,” he said.
“What you got?”
“Two middle fingers of the right hand. Thumb blurred, but who cares? Maybe—”
He stopped talking as a woman’s scream echoed with startling abruptness from the front hallway of the house.
Sergeant Kilian, who was nearest to the door, bounced forward with a swiftly drawn gun in his beefy hand. He peered into the hall, gaped a moment, then holstered his weapon.
“All right, Halligan. Bring her in here.”
Halligan was the cop who had been left on duty inside the front entry. He clumped stolidly into the room, his hand tightly gripping the arm of a dark-haired and exceedingly pretty woman.
“I caught her sneaking in the front door,” Halligan said. “She had a key. She closed the door quietly and started to tiptoe down the hall toward the stairs. When I grabbed her she started to fight, till she saw my uniform, then she cooled down.”
Tracy said dryly: “Better let go of her, officer. This is Mrs. Hilliard.”
Betty Hilliard stood alone, very stiff and straight, seemingly aware of nothing except the murdered body of her husband. Her dark hair and eyes emphasized the pallor of her skin. She was like marble until she turned and saw Alice staring steadily at her. Then her face flooded with crimson.
“How did this happen, Alice?” she asked with an obvious effort at control.
“I wouldn’t know, Betty.”
“You could guess though, perhaps?”
There was pent-up hatred between these two women. Alice’s jaw tightened at the sneer in Betty’s voice. She turned swiftly toward Inspector Fitzgerald.
“You might as well know, Inspector, that it wasn’t Bert Lord who tried to steal that gun. It was not his voice.”
Fitzgerald didn’t answer that. He walked across to Hilliard’s desk and examined the two finger-prints that the headquarters expert had brought out on the butt of the Webley revolver.
“I’d like to get a quick check on these prints from London. Can you make a classification index for me right away?”
“Yeah.” He took out of his bag a classification sheet printed in squared columns. Slowly he began to record with digits and letters the indices of the specimen print.
“How long were you away from home, Mrs. Hilliard?” Fitz asked the dead man’s wife.
“Quite a while. I left shortly after Mr. Furman departed.”
“Where did you go?”
Betty Hilliard took a long time replying. “I left to attend to some personal business which I have no intention of discussing with you or anyone else.”
“Was your husband alive when you left?”
“Yes. He was in this room waiting to hear the Tracy program. I left with his permission.”
Alice Hilliard’s faint laughter had a sting in it, but the other woman ignored the implication.
“O.K. on that index synopsis,” the finger-print man said.
Fitzgerald went to the phone and called the exchange manager. He identified himself and explained what he wanted. It didn’t take long to put through the trans-Atlantic call. Fitzgerald talked briefly to Scotland Yard and then handed the phone to the finger-print man. It was not a very good connection. Hanley had to talk loudly and repeat his jargon of figures and letters over and over.
Fitz and Kilian, who knew what it was all about, listened eagerly. But Tracy only pretended interest. His ear was cocked in an entirely different direction. Alice had drifted closer to Betty Hilliard. Her lips moved in a swift undertone.
“You’re not kidding me. Who was the boy friend — Ken Dunlap?”
“It certainly wasn’t Bert Lord! If you try to drag me into a scandal—”
“All I’m after is the truth. If those gun-prints belong to Bert, I want him to pay the penalty. But if he’s innocent, I’ll know who’s guilty. And if you think I won’t produce those letters of yours—”
Alice saw Tracy and her murmur stopped.
The fingerprint man was still yowling into the telephone. “Yeah. All right. ’By.” He pronged the receiver with an oath of relief.
“If they’ve got a match in the London files, there ought to be an answer in about an hour. I told him I’d take it at the bureau in Headquarters. Drop in when you’re finished. I’ll check our own files while I’m waiting.”
“I’d like to borrow your ink pad and a couple of specimen sheets,” Fitz said.
He didn’t explain what he wanted them for and the print man didn’t ask. But Tracy knew. He was grimly glad he had sent Butch to keep a watchful eye on the penthouse of Bert Lord. The challenging talk between Alice and Betty Hilliard hadn’t changed Tracy’s mind about the identity of the man with whom he had battled in the dark for possession of the murder gun. He felt sure that was Lord.
The only thing that still puzzled him was the continued absence of the butler. Where in hell was the elusive Marcom?
Unexpectedly Marcom answered that question himself. There was a timid knock at the rear door of the study and when Sergeant Kilian sprang forward and threw open the door, Marcom was gaping with astonishment at the threshold.
His amazement changed to terror as Kilian grabbed and yanked him into the room. He cringed at sight of Hilliard’s sprawled body. Tracy, watching him narrowly, saw his eyes veer for a swift instant. They flicked toward Betty Hilliard and then went blank and expressionless.
“Where the hell did you come from?” Kilian growled. “Sneak in the back door?”
“I didn’t sneak through any door, sir. I came in the back way, using my regular household key. I heard voices here in the study and—”
“Was Hilliard alive when you went out? And how long ago was that?”
“About an hour, sir. I didn’t speak to Mr. Hilliard about going out.”