Shadow of the Rope
by Robert H. Rohde
It Was an Open and Shut Murder Case Until Officer Hawley Recalled He Was Once a Kid
I
Fully fifty people must have witnessed the prelude to the tragedy, for the light in that second floor window of No. 31 was brighter than showed in any other along the row, and the half-strangled and terror-shaken scream had come from somewhere close behind it.
“Bradley! For God’s sake! Don’t, Bradley, don’t!”
Then those two figures, sharp-etched in black on the yellow of the drawn shade; after that the wilder cry, the crash of the gun and the muffled echoing thump of a heavy body on a hard floor.
Up the block, on one of the crowded boardinghouse stoops, some one had been strumming a ukelele. The playing stopped abruptly. A breathless silence settled on the breathless summer night.
On the steps of No. 38, diagonally across from the house of the brightly lighted window, two men who had been looking at a girl sitting between them leaped to their feet and stared at each other.
“That’s murder!” snapped Detective Sergeant William Brill. “A job for me!”
A flush came into the cheeks of the younger man who had been bidding against him for the girl’s attention. It was just like Brill to point that distinction for Mary Corcoran’s benefit; he never passed a chance to rub it in. He was a first-grade man, drawing top pay in the Detective Bureau, close to a lieutenancy. And Jim Hawley was a mere patrolman, a pavement-pounder, a wearer of the “harness” — one of the rankers that Brill liked to call “you guys with your brains in your feet.”
Hawley felt the flush, but he forced a grin.
“There it is for you, Bill,” he said. “Go get it. I’ll be behind you.”
Brill threw a hurried word to the girclass="underline"
“Excuse, kiddo! Business before pleasure!”
It wasn’t exactly necessary, so far as Hawley could see, that he should have drawn his gun there, before her. But he did, and flourished with a clatter down the steps. Jim Hawley, off duty and in civilian clothes, lingered a second.
“Listen, Mary,” he whispered urgently. “Get in the house, will you? There may be — a gunplay. Leave it to us.” He caught himself and swallowed hard. “I mean,” he amended, “to Bill.”
He was halfway across the street when he eased his pistol in the service holster under the tail of his shiny serge coat, and Brill, ahead of him, was racing up the stoop of No. 31 two steps at a time.
Hawley stayed on the sidewalk below, an all-gone feeling at the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t afraid of anything that might happen; hadn’t even thought of that. But to him there was something symbolic in Brill’s swift ascent.
It wasn’t only the closed and curtained door above that Brill was making for: it was his lieutenancy. Not discounting the nerve that he really had, good breaks had taken him up where he was. Now, first on the job at a killing, close enough by to collar the murderer red-handed, he was getting the breaks again. Give him this hot grab here, with a lieutenant’s rank and a lieutenant’s pay coming to reward it, and the race for Mary was over. Hawley couldn’t see it any other way. He’d have to drop out; let that be the proof of his love for her; leave her for Bill.
Looking up, he saw Brill’s big hand at the bell — saw it come away as the front door, with a soft glow behind its curtains, was snatched open. A broad figure blocked the light. From the sidewalk, Hawley got an impression of wild eyes in a round, red, bewildered face.
The red-faced man started back at sight of Brill’s pistol and his flashed badge.
“A cop?” he croaked. “It — it’s Hammett! He’s shot!” He drew a deep breath wheezily. “I’m Easier,” he explained, as if that guaranteed him. “Easier of the City Contracting Company.”
“I get you,” said Brill, but he still barred the way.
To Hawley the name meant something too. Both names did. He could remember them coupled, years back, on building jobs all over town. There was a time when a man couldn’t walk a dozen blocks without seeing their signs — “Hammett & Easier, General Contractors.” After that, for awhile, the signs put it: “City Contracting Company, Successors to Hammett & Easier.” John Easier, if he was that Easier, was a sure enough big shot.
But Bill Brill wasn’t handling the red-faced man with gloves.
“Where were you goin’ in such a hurry?” he demanded, stretching out a detaining arm.
“To find a policeman.”
“Yeah?” said Brill. “Well, you’ve got one.” Briskly he patted Easier’s hips and his coat pockets. “No cannon on you, hey? No; there wouldn’t be.”
The red face grew redder.
“W-what d’ you mean? Say! You don’t think—”
“Never mind what I think,” grunted Brill. “You get back in the house while I have a look. Upstairs, is he? And who is he, did you say?”
“Hammett. Oscar Hammett, that used to be my partner. Yes — upstairs. In front.”
Brill gave the stout man a push, straight-armed, that sent him back to the door through which he had just come.
“Come along, Hawley!” he called; and over Hawley’s shoulder he cast a withering glance at the crowd of excited stoop-sitters marshaled behind him. “Come in, and close the door on them rubber-necks.”
When the door was shut and the three of them stood under the hall light, Brill dropped his pistol out of sight.
“Now, Easier!” he barked. “I know who you are, all right; but that don’t get you nothing — not now. If you didn’t do it, who did? Tell me that! And where is he?”
Wrath and a dawning fright had started perspiration in a beady deluge down the contractor’s cheeks.
“I don’t know,” he protested. “I didn’t see anybody. Didn’t think there was anybody in the house but Hammett and me. But somebody got him. I guess you heard.”
“I heard,” Brill agreed grimly. “I wasn’t more than a mile away, see? And you’re the only one I’ve seen comin’ out. Shake a foot now! Upstairs! Lead me to it!”
The impact of his staccato command carried Easier up a step or two. He stopped there and turned.
“You’re making a mistake, officer,” he said. “Being hard-boiled like this — with me. You’ll find it out.”
Then he began to climb again, Brill at his heels, Hawley trailing. At the front of the second floor hall the door of a lighted room stood open. Easier hung back and made way for Brill to pass him.
“In there,” he said with a shudder, and pointed.
Brill walked into the room, but Hawley halted at the threshold. One glance at the figure prone and rigid on the rug was sufficiently convincing. It had the posture and the immobility of death.
“He’s done,” Hawley said. “We’d better get busy, Bill, hadn’t we? — and see where our man got to?”
Brill’s sidelong eyes mocked the suggestion, and so did the exaggerated seriousness with which he considered it.
“You’re a fast thinker, Hawley,” he grinned. “If they knew their pineapples they’d had you in the Detective Bureau long ago. Sure they would. They’d ’a’ slung out some of us dumbbells to make a place for you.” He cast a quick glance about the room, marking an upset chair and a reading lamp overturned at the end of a table, and came back into the hall. “All right,” he gibed. “It’s a smart idea. You hang onto Mr. Easier here, Hawley, and I’ll check up.”