The woman got to her feet, clutched at the edge of the desk for support. “I can make it,” she said, smiling wanly. “Did... did the newspapermen follow me?”
“Some tabloid guy,” said Ken Corning.
“Did he get a picture?”
“He did, but he can’t use it. His camera’s smashed.”
The troubled eyes were filled with gratitude.
“The only thing for you to do now is to get under cover and stay there,” said Corning. “Those babies are wise and they’ve been following you. Anyhow, they knew you were coming here, or knew it when you got here. Don’t tell anyone what you told me. I’ll bust into this fight as counsel that was hired by you. I’m going to try and work out some way of handling the situation.”
The woman said: “The things I’ve told you have got to come out. When they do I can’t face the world. I’m finished.”
Ken Corning jutted his jaw at her.
“Shut up and get out of here,” he said. “You talk like a damned fool. Get her out, Helen.”
Helen Vail had moved with crisp efficiency while they were talking. She had on her hat and coat.
“I’ll try the back way,” she said. “I think we can make it. I’ll telephone when I get located.”
“Stay with her,” said Corning, “every minute of the time, night and day. Don’t let her out of your sight. Here’s some money for expenses.”
He tossed her two of the fifty-dollar bills.
“But—” the woman started to protest.
Helen Vail’s voice broke in, cool, efficient, determined.
“Can the chatter,” she said, “and get started. Can’t you see Mr. Corning has work to do?”
She pulled the woman out into the hall, let the door close. Ken Corning called, just as the door was closing: “Call me at the Antlers Hotel, ask for Mr. Mogart.”
Helen’s voice drifted through the open transom.
“Okey,” she said.
Ken Corning grabbed a copy of the Penal Code, a volume on evidence, some blank forms which dealt with writs of habeas corpus, caught up his hat and lunged for the door.
He didn’t bother with the elevator, but took the stairs two at a time. Nor did he go out of the lobby of the office building to the street, but went, instead, through a back door which gave upon a storeroom, a musty corridor, and a barred door which opened on an alley. Ken Corning unbarred the door and emerged into the fresh air of the warm morning.
He took a taxicab to the depot, caught another there and went to the Antlers Hotel, where he secured a room under the name of E. C. Mogart of Kansas City.
The telephone rang while he was arranging his books on the dresser. He answered it and heard Helen Vail’s voice.
“We’re at the Gladstone,” she said. “We got a break getting away from the office. The guy you threw out was yammering at a cop in front of the place, and it was attracting a crowd. I picked this joint because it’s close to the Antlers. What do I do next?”
“Just sit tight,” he told her. “What name are you registered under?”
“Bess and Edna Seaton,” she said. “The room’s five-thirty-six.”
“Which is Bess and which Edna?” asked Corning.
“Be your age!” she said, and hung up.
Ken Corning grinned, lit a cigarette and started pacing the floor.
He walked the floor like a caged animal, smoking cigarette after cigarette, the smoke whipping back over his shoulder, his eyes squinted in thought.
There was a knock at his door. He opened it. Helen Vail grinned at him, “I came to tell you,” she said, “that I’m going to be Bess. We tossed up for it.”
“Anybody see you come up here?” he asked.
“No.”
“Come on in.”
She came in. He closed the door and locked it.
“How much do you know?” he asked.
“All of it,” she said. “You didn’t think she’d have someone to get weepy with without spilling all of the information, did you?”
Ken fell to pacing the floor again.
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“It’s a mess,” she agreed.
“How’d it happen?” he wanted to know.
She shrugged her shoulders. “She’d known Ladue before she got married — and she knew him afterwards.”
“Wasn’t she happy, Helen?”
“No.”
“Why is she willing to ruin herself to save her husband, then?”
“Because that’s her sense of loyalty. If she loved anybody, it was Ladue. I guess her husband’s like all the rest of them. He didn’t treat her with any particular consideration, and he was playing around with a blonde — a manicurist in a barber shop.”
“Which shop?” he asked.
“Kelly’s, down on Seventh Street.”
“The wife knew about it?”
“Sure.”
“Did she say anything to him about it?”
“Yes. They had it out.”
“And then he accused her of being intimate with Ladue, I suppose, and she admitted that, and then he went out and shot Ladue.”
Helen Vail shook her head.
“No. She didn’t think that he knew anything about her and Ladue. If he did, he didn’t mention it, and he should have mentioned it. They had some little scene. She didn’t object to the blonde as long as he didn’t flaunt her in the faces of their social set. But it had been getting pretty raw, and she wanted him to tame down.”
“What’d he tell her?” asked Corning.
“What do husbands always tell their wives when the wives are in the right?” she asked.
Ken Corning shrugged his shoulders. “Never having been a husband, I’ll pass. What’d he tell her?”
Helen Vail grinned. “Told her to go to hell,” she said.
Ken Corning said: “And then he went out and shot Ladue, eh?”
“That seems to be about the size of it.”
Ken Corning shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense, Helen. I wonder if maybe it wasn’t some sort of a frame-up.”
She sat on the edge of the bed, shrugged her shoulders, and said: “I’d take a cigarette if anybody’d offer me one.”
He passed her the package. “Matches in the glass smoking stand,” he told her. She pouted. “Don’t I rate service?”
“No,” he said, and started pacing the floor again. “I’m busy.”
She lit the cigarette, and Ken Corning paused abruptly in his walking of the floor, strode to the telephone, scooped the receiver to his ear and gave a number to the operator.
“Who’re you calling?” asked Helen Vail.
“District Attorney’s office,” he said.
“Hello,” he said into the instrument when a feminine voice came over the wire, “who’s handling the George Colton case?”
“Two or three,” said the girl in the District Attorney’s office. “Don Graves is going to sit in on the trial. Probably the D. A. himself will handle the prosecution.”
“Let me talk with Graves,” said Corning.
“Who is it?”
“Kenneth Corning, the lawyer.”
“Oh, yeah. Just a minute.”
There was a click of a connection, then Don Graves’ voice came over the wire. It was a rasping, cold voice, bloodlessly efficient.
“Corning, eh?” he said. “Are you retained in the Colton case?”
“Yes.”
“That’s funny. Old Burnham of Burnham, Peabody & Burnham, has been employed by Colton.”
“I’m retained by an intimate friend,” said Ken.
“The wife, eh?” said Graves.
“I didn’t say that,” said Corning.
“I know,” said Graves, “I said that. You didn’t deny it.”
“That’s not the point,” said Corning. “I want to talk with Colton.”