“Oscar Hammett was in the front room on the second floor, stretched out, with a bullet in his head. I gave one look at him and started to find a cop. If ever I saw a dead man, it was Hammett.”
Inspector Gregory was looking past him. A youngish man with black-rimmed spectacles, who had driven up a moment after the arrival of the police car, had poked his head in at the door.
“Killed instantly, inspector,” he said. “The gun wasn’t more than a few inches from his head. That’s about all I can tell you now.”
The inspector stared speculatively at Brill, although his question was directed at Easier.
“You’ve heard the medical examiner, Brad,” he said. “And your guess was right, you see. And then you came straight downstairs, did you, and went to look for a policeman?”
“That’s it.”
Brill, boldly holding the inspector’s eyes, made himself heard once more.
“Funny,” he remarked, “that Easier thought he had to go out to get a cop.”
“What do you mean by that?” snapped Gregory.
“That it looked more to me like he was try in’ for a fast get-away. D’you see, inspector, there was a telephone in the hall!”
Then Jim Hawley spoke. He had been listening in that stolid silence with which ordinary patrolmen, plain harness bulls with their brains in their feet, should properly attend conversations between dignitaries of the detective bureau. He hadn’t meant to butt in — but, suddenly, involuntarily, there he was doing it.
“And there was something else in the hall,” said he.
Gregory’s eyes swung to him; so did Brill’s.
“He’s just a cop,” Brill explained, scowling, “that happened to be with me. A uniformed man, off duty. I brought him over in case I’d need him.”
Swiftly the inspector sized up the accidental patrolman.
“That looks,” he decided, “as if it might be a head that you’ve got on your shoulder, officer. What else was there in the hall?”
“Mr. Easier’s hat,” said Jim. “It’s still there, on the rack. That is, I guess the brown one’s his. It’s got the initials ‘B.E.’ in it. And he was starting out without it. It didn’t seem to me that he could have meant to go far.”
The contractor flashed him a grateful glance.
“That’s right, Tom! Maybe if I said I didn’t see the phone, or think of it, that might be hard for some people to believe. But it ought to mean something that I didn’t bother about my hat, either. Yes; that brown felt is mine.”
Gregory’s relief was manifest.
“What’s your name, officer?” he asked. “Hawley? O.K., Hawley. It is a head!”
Brill regarded Hawley without kindness.
“Hat or no hat, inspector,” he said, “Easier’s in this mess with both feet. You’ve got to look at the simple facts. There was only Hammett and Easier here. That’s a cinch. The whole back of the place is buttoned up on the inside, and that tells the story from that end. The same goes for the roof. The bolt is shot under the scuttle. As for the front — I and Hawley can tell you that nobody came out after the shooting but Easier. And if our word ain’t good enough, there’s dozens of others can tell you the same.”
Gregory made a gesture of impatience.
“You’re careful, Brill,” he said. “I’ll agree that conditions are probably as you say they are. But why are you so set on making murder out of it? Haven’t you ever stopped to think that Hammett could have killed himself?” Gregory caught the medical examiner’s eye. “What do you say, Dr. Young?” he asked. “Couldn’t it have been suicide?”
The physician nodded.
“I certainly wouldn’t say it couldn’t have been, inspector. The bullet was fired close up, as I’ve told you already. It entered the forehead, on the right side. It’s probably not my province to remark that there are indications of a struggle up above.”
Gregory stiffened.
“I haven’t been upstairs yet myself,” he said. “What—”
Brill eagerly anticipated the question.
“A lamp and a chair upset, and a rug kicked up,” he volunteered. “And that was more than I expected. It didn’t last long.”
The inspector stared at him.
“What do you mean, it didn’t last long?”
“That’s more fact. I saw the whole of it!”
Easier’s jaw dropped; Gregory’s went up at a sharp angle. Their voices were one:
“Saw it?”
Sergeant Brill folded his arms and impressively cleared his throat.
“I saw it, Hawley saw it, and so did all these people sitting around here. I guess I could dig you up even more if I had to. You ought to know Panton Street, inspector. Along this block they’re boarding houses, mostly. And you know how boarding house crowds’ll go for the stoops on a hot night.
“I and Hawley were paying a call ourselves. We’ve got a sort of mutual friend — a lady friend, see? — that lives at No. 38. We were on her stoop. Just chinnin’ along, you know. And then, all of a sudden, somebody starts yellin’. The noise came from over here, in No. 31.”
Gregory challenged that brusquely.
“Aren’t you guessing, sergeant?”
Brill shook his head.
“Not a bit of it. It was Hammett yellin’. And he hollered out Easier’s name. That is, his first name. He was beggin’ ‘Bradley’ not to kill him.”
He glanced along the line of his witnesses for confirmation, and got it in a series of nods. Gregory’s gray face tautened, and his eyes went to Easier’s. For the first time they expressed a doubt.
III
Brill allowed a pause to let one sensation sink in before proceeding to the next. Then he resumed:
“There was a bright light upstairs, and the room it was in was where the hollerin’ seemed to come from. The shade was down, but—”
“Then you couldn’t actually see anything?” Gregory wanted to know, still covertly watching Easier.
Brill grinned.
“If you mean faces, no,” said he. “But figures — yes! They were between the lamp and the window. They were as clear on the shade, almost, as I see you now against the light.”
Gregory’s sharp chin went up again.
“They?”
“That’s what I said — and that’s the clincher, inspector! There were two men in that room. And they were scufflin’. I leave that to anybody.”
He solicited further corroboratory nods, and was not disappointed. A thin-haired man spoke up:
“That’s the truth, inspector. I testify to it — and I was on the force once myself. There were two men upstairs in No. 31. Their shadows were on the shade. I just caught a flash of them, fighting; saw one take a clip at the other. After that they got out of the line of the light, but it wasn’t another second before the shot was fired.”
“It’s right,” some one else assented breathlessly. “Just what I saw!”
Gregory took a cigar from his pocket and for a little ruminatively chewed its end. His shrewd eyes studied Brill’s parked witnesses, and nowhere along the line of them could he discover dissent. He walked to Easier and dropped a hand on his thick shoulder.
“Brad,” he said gently, “It doesn’t look so good. I know that Hammett has had it in for you all these years. If he got you here to trim you, if you had to let him have it to protect yourself, I want you to tell me.”
The color had drained from Easier’s face, leaving it with a pasty and blotchy pallor.
“They’re all — crazy,” he said unsteadily. “Trying to pin it on me! I don’t know any more than I told you. There wasn’t anybody but Hammett in that room when I got up there. Maybe there had been somebody. Maybe it’s fact what they say about seeing two shadows on the shade. But I can’t say anything about that.”