“Yes, you seem to have a champion in Lamont, Baker.”
Blondy was blinking. Blondy was looking as if he didn’t quite get what it was all about. Blondy looked, all at once, as if it had just come to him what the trouble was.
“You... you mean Baa-Baa’s been murdered, Inspector Frayne?” he asked hoarsely.
“With a kitchen knife,” said Frayne.
“That... that’s awful, isn’t it?” breathed the night clerk, after a moment or two.
“Better than the chair, perhaps,” said Frayne. “Some one’s going to get the chair for this, remember. That’s why you’re here. You’ve got to clear yourself. You—”
“Clear myself?”
“You had a key to her apartment, didn’t you?”
“No, sir. I have not, sir. I did not have... Well, I mean I haven’t had one in — oh, in two months, Inspector Frayne. I swear to God I haven’t, sir,” he ended with a sobbing gulp.
“You might have had an impression made, when you did have one,” Frayne reminded him.
A whistle came, at that. It came from Vince.
“I’m... I’m not a murderer, sir,” Blondy Baker was saying, his voice quavering.
“Take it easy; take it easy,” suggested Frayne. Then he asked, briskly:
“When did you last see Baa-Baa?”
“See her?”
“See her. Speak to her,” said Frayne.
“I... oh, I haven’t spoken to her for a month or more, except when I’d see her at some club on my night off. I... you see, we didn’t play around for very long together, me and Baa-Baa. She just took a fancy to me for a few days — a pretty strong one, if I do say it myself — and I guess she wasn’t hard for me to fall for. She... well, she dropped me as quick as she took up with me,” he ended, flushing and hanging his head as if ashamed to admit his inability to hold the affections of the little girl who had wanted to be somebody’s Baa-Baa lamb.
Very suddenly, however, Blondy Baker jerked up his head. His eyes were very wide, and understanding had come to his entire face. He spoke in a rush.
“Oh — o-o-oh, now I see why yon suspect me,” he cried. “Somebody saw me come here this morning. Somebody—”
“You were here this morning?” asked Frayne quietly.
“Well, I was here at the door, I mean. I rang the bell but Baa-Baa didn’t open. I rattled the knob, too, and knocked on the door. I wanted to see her badly.”
“What time was that, Baker?”
“I leave the job at seven, sir. I brushed up and walked right over, so I guess” — he thought for a moment — “oh, I guess it was before half past seven, anyway.”
“Why did you want to see her?” pressed the manhunter.
The night clerk of the Piccadilly Circle did some more flushing. Then he spoke out.
“Well, she was always a damn good fellow, inspector, and I was in a hole — I mean I still am in a hole, God knows,” he laughed bitterly. “I been playing the ponies, and they’ve been taking me for all I’ve got. I owe everybody, and I don’t know where to turn. I got to get some jack by to-night, and I thought of Baa-Baa. I heard she’d grabbed ten grand, and I thought she might maybe let me have just three hundred. Just three hundred would—”
He paused and licked at his lips, and his eyes, naturally pale, became strangely darker:
“There’s one in the fifth to-day at Saratoga, that if I had three centuries on his nose... God, it would put me all in the clear, inspector,” he ended feverishly.
A knock came on the door, then.
“Come in,” called Frayne.
It was Grady, the coroner.
“Where’s the body, Frayne?” he asked his friend.
“Second bedroom down the hall. Bring me a report right away, will you, old man?”
Frayne followed Grady out of the room. He did not stop in the death chamber. Grady would get everything that he wanted there, he knew. Instead, the manhunter examined the other rooms.
He went to the unoccupied bedroom. To the dining room. To the bathroom. To the kitchen. He didn’t spend much time in any of these rooms, for it was said that Frayne, in a single glance, could take in more details than the average man would absorb in minutes of close scrutiny.
The kitchen seemed to interest him. At least, he stood there in the center of the room, frowning, his cold blue eyes going to triangular slits.
Suddenly he walked over to the dumb-waiter. He peered down the shaft, his body stiffening. He began to pull on the ropes, presently. All at once he stopped.
Then he leaped back and called out sharply.
“Don!”
“Sir?” replied Haggerty, coming like a flash.
“Cut out those dumb-waiter ropes. There’s our evidence!”
Frayne, instantly, was back in the living room. He was standing over Lamont.
“Take off those gloves, you rat,” he snarled.
“I like to keep my gloves on, Frayne,” said Lamont, his voice and his eyes defiant.
“And I want ’em off, damn you,” snapped the manhunter. “Peel them off, Lamont.”
Slowly, his eyes on Frayne’s, the race track tout obeyed. He had to. He knew they would have been torn off, otherwise.
“I thought so,” Frayne exulted, as he saw the bruises and blood blisters on the palms of Lamont’s hands.
“Whaddaya mean, you thought so?” said Lamont, his voice ugly. “Hell, can’t a guy go rowin’ an’ get blisters on his hands?”
“Sure he can,” agreed Frayne, “but they’re not rowing blisters.”
He turned, then, and beckoned to the finger-print expert.
“Got your magnifying glass with you, Denham?”
“Yes, inspector.”
“Examine Lamont’s hands. Examine those bruises and blisters. Examine them for particles of hemp.”
“You can’t hang nothin’ on me, Frayne,” Vince Lamont was now snarling. “I got my alibi. I got—”
“Take him, Don,” said Frayne, as Haggerty came to the doormat and stood ready for orders.
Lamont started to bound from his chair, but Haggerty was across the room like a leaping panther, the race track tout’s wrists gripped between his fingers.
Denham was a painstaking workman, and he was an exceedingly efficient workman. It took him three or four minutes — maybe five — to study those blistered hands.
When he straightened up and faced his superior his face had a contented look.
“Seven particles, sir,” he said. “Five on the right hand, two on the left. There may be more, on closer examination. I’m certain about the seven, though.”
“Good,” said Frayne.
“Say, I heard a lot about somethin’ bein’ Greek to a guy,” smiled Lamont, trying to bluster, “and now I know what it means. Put it in plain American, will you?”
“Glad to oblige,” said Frayne. “You’re arrested for the murder of Baa-Baa Jackson!”
Vince Lamont looked at his hands. Looked about the room.
Suddenly hope blazed up in his face and he cried out loudly:
“How in hell can you hang that on me when Baa-Baa was alive when Bethenia come in at nine-somethin’ o’clock? She spoke to her, didn’t she? And wasn’t I drinkin’ over at Jerry Spino’s all mornin’?”
Frayne didn’t answer. Frayne, instead, called out:
“Finished, Grady?”
“Right, Frayne, coming.”
“What’s the report?” asked the manhunter, when the coroner showed up in the doorway.
“She was killed somewhere in the vicinity of four o’clock this morning, Frayne.”
“I knew the maid was wrong when she said Baa-Baa called through the door at nine o’clock,” Frayne said. “The body had already stiffened when I got here. The answer to that is — somebody was imitating her voice.”