“I started to give an alarm, but I didn’t know what to do. There’s no telephone here in this room, you see, and I’d have had to go downstairs and alarm the house in order to get the telephone. By the time I could have notified the police it’d have been too late. And I didn’t want to put my head out of the window and start yelling. One reads so much about gangsters shooting, these days.”
Corning nodded. His eyes were slitted in concentration.
“I know,” he said. “Go on.”
Briggs said: “Well, it was done so smoothly and so rapidly that I couldn’t do a thing. Even while I was sitting there, debating what I was going to do, it was all over. They got the car to the curb. A man jumped m, just one man. He started the car and drove away. The other three got in the other car that was parked at the curb, and followed. I figured Mr. Dangerfield had just lost a car, but I also figured it was insured, and that perhaps he’d just as soon have the insurance as the car, so I decided to forget it.
“I didn’t go back to bed. I sat there in a chair by the window. About one-forty, I heard a noise. Two cars drove up and stopped at the curb. Then one of the cars was rolled up the driveway, just the way it had been rolled down. It looked like Dangerfield’s car. They had switched off the lights and the motor, and they pushed the car up into the garage and closed the door.”
Ken Corning spoke very slowly, sat very still in his chair.
“Did you,” he asked, “see any of the men so that you could recognize them if you saw them again, or give a description?”
“I saw the one who drove Dangerfield’s car. He crossed in front of the headlights of the other car, once. I had a glimpse.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was a heavy-set man with a white hat. That is, it looked white in the glare of the headlights. It was probably just a light color. He had on a tweed suit and brown shoes. I caught a glimpse of the face, but looking down on it, it was hard to tell very much about it. I saw that there was a scar along one cheek. That was about all I could see.”
Ken Corning said: “And you’ve told no one about this?”
“No.”
“You’d better write it out. Make just a brief statement in your own words. Sign that statement and give it to me. I’ll promise you that I won’t call you as a witness unless I have to. It may be I can get the case dismissed without having to go to a trial.”
Briggs moved towards the desk with alacrity.
“If you could only do that,” he said, “it’d sure be a load off my mind. I didn’t know what to do. When I read of the murder in the paper, and the fact that the police claimed Dangerfield’s machine had done the job... Well, I’ve been in a stew ever since daylight.”
He sat down at the desk and started to write.
Ken Corning lit a cigarette. He sat, thoughtfully smoking.
A knock sounded at the door, a heavy, imperious knock.
Corning looked at Briggs. Briggs got up from the desk, strode to the door, opened it. A man pushed his way into the room, without greeting, glowered about him.
“Which one of you guys is Briggs, the guy that lives here?”
“I am,” said Briggs.
“Then this other guy is the lawyer, eh?”
Ken Corning got to his feet, pinched out the cigarette.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Harry Smoot, of the Detective Bureau. I’m here looking around. I heard you was out here. Your name’s Corning, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” said Ken Corning.
Smoot walked over to a chair and sat down.
“You ain’t told this lawyer anything, have you?” he asked of Briggs.
Briggs seemed a little nettled.
“When you interrupted me,” he said, “I was in the middle of a statement concerning what I had seen and heard.”
“Oh, ho,” said the detective, “you know something then.”
“Yes,” said Briggs. “I had just finished telling Mr. Corning about it.”
Smoot’s heavy face settled into a portentous frown.
“Listen, guy, when there’s been a murder committed, and you know something about it, the thing for you to do is to get in touch with the police, not go running around telling lawyers all you know, Do you get that?”
Briggs said: “I guess I have a right to talk with whom I wish, haven’t I?”
Ken Corning strolled nonchalantly over to the desk, Briggs had covered two pages of stationery with his statement. It was, of course, as yet unsigned. Corning slipped the papers into his pocket while Smoot glowered at Briggs.
“I’m just telling you,” said the detective, “for your own good. You don’t want to get in no trouble, do you? Well, the thing to do is to get in touch with the police when you know anything. Now what is it you know?”
Briggs said: “I know that Dangerfield wasn’t driving his car last night, that other men took out that car, and that they returned it. I know that their conduct was suspicious when they took the car out and also when they returned it. I believe this whole crime was framed on Amos Dangerfield.”
The detective’s face was dark.
“Now listen, guy, you’re goin’ too far and too fast. You can’t know all this stuff without being mixed up in the thing some way. And what you know ain’t right, See? We got the deadwood on this case. What you’ve done is to listen to this lawyer until he’s got you all balled up about what you did see.”
Ken Corning said: “Don’t let this man browbeat you, Briggs.”
Smoot whirled on Corning.
“I’ve half a mind to run you in,” he said, “tampering with witnesses.”
Ken Corning said in low, ominous tones: “Have you a warrant for me?”
“Not yet,” said the detective. “That ain’t saying I ain’t going to have one.”
“All right,” Corning told him grimly, “when you do get one, you can serve it. Until you do get it, your talk don’t mean a damned thing, except that if you keep on looking for trouble you’re going to find it.”
“Yeah? Well, guy, I’m going to report what I’ve found out here, your tampering with a state’s witness.”
Corning suddenly pushed forward.
“All right. Go ahead and report. Now get out of my way!”
The detective stood on one side.
“How about that statement?” he asked Briggs. “You didn’t sign anything, did you?”
“No. I hadn’t finished it, so I didn’t sign it.”
“Where is it?”
Corning, at the door, turned.
“I’ve got it in my pocket,” he said. “It’s my statement, made for me at my request.”
Smoot strode towards him ominously.
“You can’t get away with that,” he said. “Give it up!”
Ken Corning planted his feet wide apart.
“That statement,” he said, slowly, “is in my inside coat pocket. It’s going to stay there. Do you think otherwise? If you do, just try to get it.”
His eyes blazed into those of the detective.
For fifteen seconds they stood there, the big detective sullen and enraged, Corning flashing fire from his eyes, standing his ground, cool and deadly.
“You’ll hear from this!” said Smoot.
“Bah!” said Ken. “Go hand your line to some kid who’s afraid of you!”
He turned on his heel and walked down the stairs.
Helen Vail took the sheets of paper.
“Put them in a lock box somewhere,” Corning told her. “Don’t trust to the safe in the office.”
“You think it’ll bust the case?” she asked, looking down at the scrawled writing on the paper.
“Can’t tell. It’ll give the District Attorney something to worry about. I want to get hold of Dangerfield now and have him surrender. Then I can get a date set down for the preliminary hearing and have a subpena issued for this witness.”