“That was the last you saw of them?”
“No, sir. That is, it was the last I saw of Sis. I stayed there in the field. But after a while I got to thinking maybe they were not coming back to the Blue Plume. I figured I’d better cross the road where I could look into the Broken Lantern. So I got through the fence and sneaked across the highway—”
Larry Deronda’s legs seemed to get weak suddenly. He dropped into a chair.
“Well?” Oakes prompted.
“I... I was across the road, Mr. Oakes, almost directly in front of the Broken Lantern, and I ran right into the body of a man lying by the side of the road. There was a little light, and I leaned over and saw that it was Lanyon. Well, I felt like yelling at the top of my voice, I was so glad to see that rat dead. But, at that, I was pretty scared.”
“And so you went into the Broken Lantern and called up the police?” Oakes suggested.
“No, sir. Not me. I was kneeling there, staring down at Lanyon, when I heard something. I looked up, and saw somebody had come out of the Broken Lantern. First thing I knew, the fellow was almost up to me, looking at me. Well, I just beat it. My old rattletrap was a couple of hundred feet up the highway, and I hopped in and rambled on.”
“And now the cops are after you.”
“Yes, sir. I kept under cover the rest of the night. Just scared. And just before I came up here I phoned home to see if Sis got home all right. And mother told me the cops were after me.”
Oakes’s little eyes were gleaming with interest. Then he suddenly glared at the young man.
“You ought to go to jail,” he reproved him, gruffly. “In fact, you got to go to jail. We can’t have this — a suspected murderer running around loose.”
“What do you want me to do?” asked Larry Deronda, disappointedly.
“Get right down to headquarters and give yourself up,” said Oakes sternly. “Ask for Inspector Mallory; tell him I said to give you the best cell in the place.”
The young man got up. His legs were still shaky. He fumbled with his cap.
“Then you’ll do something for me?”
“I ain’t saying what I’ll do. I’m pretty busy. You just beat it, right now.”
And Oakes began to shuffle a pile of papers on his desk. Larry Deronda looked at him in embarrassed silence. Then he turned and stumbled out of the office.
Oakes continued to fuss with his papers for a few moments. Presently he leaned back, with a heavy sigh, and reached for his hat.
“Mamie,” he barked.
“Yes, sir.”
“When that fellow Markum calls up, tell him I’m too busy to attend to him to-day.”
“Yes, sir.”
Oakes pushed his hat over his shiny pate, and heaved himself wearily out of his chair.
“And, Mamie,” he added, ferociously. “If Markum don’t like it, tell him he can go get some one else to do his dirty work.”
II
When Hugo Oakes got off the bus in front of the Broken Lantern, two men were standing in the road, near a telephone pole, talking. Oakes approached them.
“Headquarters men?”
Their reception was not very warm. Oakes’s appearance was scarcely impressive, and the interruption obviously irritated them. One of them, however, spoke to him.
“No. The bulls are gone now.”
“H’m. Too bad. I’d like to get a line on this killing business. I’m Oakes — Hugo Oakes.”
The other man at once became friendly. His teeth, which were wedded to a cigar, showed in a smile; a golden smile. It was evident that he had heard of Hugo Oakes.
“Well, well, Mr. Oakes. Maybe we can help you. I’m Collman, proprietor of the Blue Plume. And this is Mr. Bouchet — Jim Bouchet. Jim runs the Broken Lantern here.”
Mr. Jim Bouchet, of the Broken Lantern, was a large man whose none too agreeable face had been rendered still further ineligible as a thing of beauty by a flattened nose and a couple of ears that had been whacked out of shape in some physical encounter.
Oakes shook hands with them.
“Glad you two gents are on good terms,” he remarked. “Hardly expected to find you two chatting like this. Competitors, ain’t you?”
“Sure,” growled Bouchet, of the Broken Lantern. “But we don’t mind that.”
“Open for business, are you?” Oakes asked:
“No,” said Collman. “Neither of us opens until six in the evening. And keep open until four in the morning. But this murder has kept us around here. Ain’t it, Jim?”
Bouchet nodded.
“Where did they find Lanyon?” Oakes inquired.
Bouchet stuck his foot forward, and indicated a spot in the road with the end of his shoe.
“Right there.”
The spot indicated was just on the edge of the road. It was about forty feet from the front of the Broken Lantern. There was a vacant space between the road house and the road, used, doubtless, for the parking of cars.
“This Lanyon come out here often?”
“Quite a bit, lately,” said Bouchet. “Came out to see the girl, Myrtle Deronda. She worked in my place. He’d come out about the time she got off, around two in the morning, and take her over to the Blue Plume, across the highway.”
“Sure,” agreed Collman, of the Blue Plume. “They’d come over to my place and eat and talk. I guess,” he added, with a grin, “they liked my stuff better than Jim’s.”
“Looks like somebody figured out in advance how to bump Lanyon off,” Oakes suggested.
“Maybe,” said. Bouchet, dubiously. “But my guess is that Myrtle’s brother, young Deronda, did it. Anyhow, I came out last night and found him standing over the body. He ran away. I understand the bulls are on his trail. He’s a crazy kid, anyway, and he was pretty sore at Lanyon.”
“How long were you out in front of your place, Mr. Bouchet, before you saw the kid with the body?”
Bouchet looked at Oakes rather belligerently.
“I dunno. About fifteen or twenty minutes, I guess.”
“Lanyon was shot, was he?”
“Yep. Shot just once. A clean shot through the heart. No one heard the shot, so I guess the killer used a silencer. The bulls ain’t found the gun — Deronda could easy have ditched it before now.”
Oakes thought a moment.
“I thought I’d like to talk to the waiter that delivered the messages to the girl and to Lanyon. Figured maybe somebody arranged to have them messages delivered so that Lanyon would come out where the killer could get him.”
Collman turned to Bouchet with a wide smile.
“Mr. Oakes is way off there, ain’t he, Jim?”
Bouchet scowled.
“He sure is. Nothing to that, Mr. Oakes. Why, I phoned over to the Blue Plume myself, a message for Myrtle. You see, the other waitress I had working for me was supposed to work until four o’clock, but she got sick. So I wanted Myrtle to finish the night out in her place.”
“The other girl? Ain’t you got more than two girls working for you?”
“No. Only two. All the rest are men waiters.”
“Well,” Oakes commented, “that would account for the message to Myrtle, but how about the message the waiter gave to Lanyon a few minutes later — the message that made Lanyon get up and follow Myrtle across this way to the Broken Lantern?”
“Nothing to that, either,” said Bouchet. “Myrtle just agreed to work until four o’clock, then she phoned over to the Blue Plume to ask Lanyon to come back over here to the Broken Lantern.”
Oakes pushed his slouch hat back over his head, and scratched his pate.
“You gents are sure good to me,” he thanked them genially. “Giving me all this information. By the way, Mr. Bouchet, you say you discovered young Deronda standing over the body. Now, how come you were out of your place of business just then?”