Home frowned. “He would if it ever got to the department, and wasn’t kept entirely under my own dome.”
“Okey,” said Corning, “this thing is going to be handled so it won’t be kept under your own dome. But Perkins will never smell it for what it is. It’s bait for a trap. Can we get a shorthand reporter who’s a good one?”
“I guess so,” said Home, staring meditatively and unseeingly at the road which was flowing past them at a slow pace as the car purred steadily along the deserted thoroughfare.
“Let’s go, then,” Corning told him, his face grim and purposeful.
Ken Corning called his office from the public pay station. Helen Vail’s voice answered. She sounded sleepy.
“Been waiting long?” asked Corning.
“So so. Thought you were going to come up and give me some dictation, Ken.”
“I am. You wait right there until I get there. But I won’t be there for a little while. There’s been a matter come up that’s most important.”
He paused, wondering if she would give him a lead.
“You mean on that Colton murder case?” she asked eagerly.
“Yes,” he said, lowering his voice as though thereby making the confidence more safe. “You see there’s a key witness in that case who’s really been overlooked by the police. She’s Althea Kent, the secretary for Ladue. The murderer knows of her, but thinks he’s got her under his thumb.
“I just talked with her, and I’m going to meet her again later on. She’s gone out now, but she’ll be back. She says she won’t make any statement for publication in advance, but she will give me the facts in the form of an affidavit. I can call her as a surprise witness, and when I put her on the stand, she’s going to tell the whole truth.”
“Gee,” said Helen Vail, “that’ll be swell, Kenneth. You bust that murder case wide open, and the newspapers will give you all the publicity you can handle.”
Ken Corning said: “Okey. Don’t say anything to anyone. Wait there and be ready to go out and take that affidavit when I call you. Have your notarial seal ready. G’bye.”
“G’bye,” she said, and the receiver clicked in his ear.
Ken Corning hung up. Home said: “Good work. Your line’s tapped. That conversation’ll be at headquarters inside of five minutes, all typed out. Let’s go.”
They went, went in a police car, four of them; a shorthand reporter who was bored, a technical man who was anxious, Home who was grim, and Ken Corning who was jubilant.
They went to the apartment house where Althea Kent had her apartment, the place where Ken Corning had called on her earlier in the evening. They filed into an adjoining apartment which had been secured through the police influence of Sergeant Home, and equipped in record time under the supervision of the technical expert.
There was a table, a drop light with a green shade, giving to the surface of the table a white glare of illumination. The shorthand reporter sat down at the table. The technical expert busied himself with a last minute inspection of certain matters of wires and the arrangement of a disc-like contrivance.
A telephone rang.
Sergeant Home answered it, listened for a moment, said: “All right!” and hung up.
He turned to the tense group about the table, their faces showing drawn and white under the glare of the incandescent.
“She’s coming in,” he said.
After a few moments the disc-like contrivance gave forth little humming noises. The technical expert cocked his head to one side.
“She’s telephoning from the other room,” he said.
Another period of tense silence, then the telephone again. Once more Sergeant Home lifted the receiver, listened, said: “All right,” and hung up.
“Perkins,” he said, “is on his way. He was waiting.”
The reporter tested his fountain pen, spread his elbows, gave his notebook a final adjustment. There was the faint sound of knocking, then the voice of Althea Kent, sounding metallic and flat, but perfectly distinct:
“You! What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t to come near me!”
A man’s deep voice growled a surly answer,
“You know damned well what I’m doing here, you two-timing little—!”
“Say, are you cuckoo? What’re you talking about?”
“You know. You saw that lawyer this evening, didn’t you?”
“Sure I saw him. What about it? I thought he was another of those tabloid boys that wanted a leg picture for the front page. I got good legs, and I’m proud of them. He turned out to be a lawyer, so I played clam on him and showed him the door.”
Perkins laughed, and the laugh was not pleasant.
“Played clam, eh? Like hell you did! You came to an understanding with him you’d spill the works when you got on the stand.”
The girl’s voice was shrill and hysterical.
“My—!” she screamed, “you’re crazy. Take your hands off of me!”
Then the deep voice, sounding vague and indistinct.
“You damned little — I’ll tear your tongue out by the roots if I thought you’d try that stuff. And you have. I’ve got the deadwood on you. He telephoned his office and spilled the beans. We had the wire tapped!”
There was the sound of confused noises coming through the disc. The shorthand reporter laid down his pen, looked expectantly at Sergeant Home. Home said: “Okey, boys,” and barged towards the door.
They sent their shoulders against the door of the adjoining apartment. The door smashed inwards, shivering on its hinges, the lock torn loose from the wood. Perkins was choking the woman with one hand, beating her with his fist, cursing.
He was going about it with a grim intentness of purpose which made him temporarily oblivious of the sound of that crashing door. Then he looked up and saw them. His hand flashed towards his hip pocket. Sergeant Home stepped forward. His great broad shoulders swung in the perfect timing of a golf professional making a drive. His right shoulder sank a bit at the last, as his hand shot out in a wicked blow.
Perkins went back.
The light shone for a moment on his heels as the feet flung up from the floor. Then he hit with a jar that shivered the pictures on the wall and set glassware clattering.
The girl staggered to a chair. Her clothing was torn from her shoulders. Her lips were bleeding. One eye was closed. Hair was about her face in wild confusion, and there were livid marks on her throat.
“The dirty—” she said. “Accuses me of squealing, does he? All right, damn him! If that’s the way he feels about it I will get a load off my chest. I’ll give this burg a blow-off it’ll remember for a while.”
Sergeant Home turned to the shorthand reporter.
“Get this, Bill,” he said.
Corning left headquarters at one o’clock in the morning.
His hat was on the back of his head, his hands were thrust deep in his side pockets. He was smoking a cigarette, and the corners of his mouth were twisted in a faint smile.
He called a cab, gave it the address of his rooms, yawned his way up the stairs, and flung himself into a chair. He looked at the clock, yawned, started to undress.
Suddenly his eyes widened. He stared at the clock again, blinked, reached for his shoes and trousers.
“Damn!” he said.
He had his clothes on and a cab at the door within five minutes. He gave the driver the address of his office. “And make time,” he added. At the office he went up the stairs and let himself in with his key. The outer office was dark, but there was a ribbon of light coming from the underside of the door to the private office.
He pushed the door open.
Helen Vail was lying in his swivel-chair, tilted back, her feet up on the desk, legs crossed. Her eyes were closed and her mouth open. She was gently snoring. On the desk beside her was an ash tray with the ends of a score of cigarettes in it. The little flask of whiskey which he had taken from a drawer when he had tried to revive Mrs. Colton from her faint was on the desk beside her. It was empty.