“Fleming Hotel,” he said.
The cab made good time. The police car clung doggedly. Ken Corning sat back on the cushions and apparently was lost in thought. His right eye was swelling rapidly, and the soreness in the side of his face was increasing.
The cab swung in to the curb in front of the hotel. Corning paid the driver. The uniformed doorman made something of a ceremony out of opening the door of the cab.
Corning walked into the hotel.
He paused at the desk. One of the plain-clothes officers was walking in the lobby as Corning leaned over and asked the clerk: “Who’s in 528?”
The clerk stared at him a moment, then consulted a card.
“Mr. Carl Grant, of Detroit,” he said.
“That’s the party,” said Corning. “I’d forgotten the name. Will you give him a ring and tell him that Mr. Ken Corning, the lawyer, is on his way up? Tell him it’ll only take a minute.”
And he walked towards the elevators.
As the door of the cage clanged shut, he saw the plain-clothes officer who had followed him in, pausing to confer with the clerk at the desk.
Ken Corning left the elevator on the fifth floor, walked along the corridor, knocked on the door of 528.
The door opened.
A portly figure in a silk dressing gown stared at him belligerently.
“I don’t know you!” he said.
Ken Corning heard the door of the elevator clang open and shut, heard steps in the hall.
He raised his voice.
“Okey, Amos, get dressed and we’ll go and get it over with.”
The man stared at him with bulging eyes.
“Say,” he began, “I never...”
He didn’t finish. Ken Corning heard the banging of heavy steps behind him, caught the glimpse of a heavy body rushing forward. Then he was pushed to one side as though he had been a floating cork in the path of a battleship. Reaching hands darted forward, came down on the shoulder of the man in the doorway.
“Mr. Amos Dangerfield,” boomed the voice, “I arrest you in the name of the law for the murder of Walter Copley, and I warn you that anything you may say will be used against you.”
The man sputtered.
“But I’m not Dangerfield. I don’t know anything about the case except what I read in the paper! I’m Carl Grant of Detroit...”
The officer pushed his way into the room.
“May I have a word with this man?” asked Ken Corning, making as if to push his way past the door.
The officer grinned.
“At the jail,” he said, and kicked the door shut in Ken Corning’s face.
Corning whirled, moving with the swift rapidity of a hunted animal. He stepped to the adjoining room, twisted the knob of the door, and walked into the room.
He slammed the door and twisted the bolt.
“All right, Dangerfield,” he said. “They haven’t got pictures and descriptions out yet They shadowed me here, but the officers were going blind. I ditched them on to the party next door. The car’s waiting down the street. Stick around until we see them drive away.”
Corning walked over to the window, drew up a chair and looked down on the street. He could see the top of the parked police car, pushed against the curb in front of the space reserved for taxicabs.
Amos Dangerfield was a fleshy man much given to excitement. His voice was shrill and quavering. He came and stood by Ken Corning and asked innumerable questions.
Ken Corning didn’t raise his eyes from the street, nor did he answer the questions. He waited a few seconds, then interrupted the flow of language.
“Never mind all that. Get ready to leave and keep quiet. I’ve got to get you in to headquarters before they grab you. Otherwise they’d make a point of your flight. They spotted the ad in the personal column, and figured I was going to meet you somewhere, so they put a tail on me... Tell me, do you know a heavy-set man in the early forties with a scar down the right side of his face? Guy with black hair and gray eyes?”
“No,” said Dangerfield, slowly.
“All right then,” Ken Corning told him. “Shut up! I want to think, and the racket bothers me.”
He sat and watched. Five minutes became ten. Then he saw the plain-clothes officer escort a man across the strip of sidewalk to the waiting automobile.
The pair stood at the door of the car.
“Okey,” said Corning. “They’ll probably split and leave a shadow here. On our way. Make it snappy!”
He led the way out into the corridor, down the back stairs.
Amos Dangerfield wheezed and sputtered his way down the five flights of stairs. The descent took all his wind, and he made no comments, asked no questions.
Ken Corning found a stairway to the baggage-room, went to it, tipped the porter, walked out the side entrance to the alley, went down the alley, caught a cab.
Amos Dangerfield tugged at the cab and lifted his bulk into the vehicle.
“Police headquarters,” said Ken Corning.
Mrs. Markle stood in the doorway of her boarding house. Her ample form was covered with a dress of silk which gave her a stiffly starched, dressed-up appearance. Her eyes surveyed Ken Corning without the hostility they had shown earlier in the day, but with a certain curiosity.
“He’s gone,” she said.
“When will he be back?” asked Corning.
“He won’t be back. He’s gone. Got a job, took a plane somewhere.”
“How about his mail? He must have left you with a forwarding address.”
She rotated her head in a decided negative.
“No, he didn’t. And, if you ask me, there was something fishy about the whole business. He left in less than an hour after you did. When you called on him he didn’t have any more job than a tramp, and he owed me for two months’ room and board. I wouldn’t have let him get that deep into me, only he’d been a steady boarder for more than a year, and he’d always paid up regular when he had it.
“But after you left, the man that went up there left, and then another man came, a fish-faced little brat that was all smiles and smirks. He went up and talked with Briggs for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then Briggs came down all in a flutter, yelling for transfer men, and acting as though he was running to put out a fire.
“He paid me everything he owed me that was in arrears, and paid me for a week in advance. I saw his wallet when he took it out. It was just bursting with money. He said he had a job offered him, and he’d got to take a plane to get there. He didn’t say where the job was. I asked him about his mail, and he said to forget it, that if any mail came it’d be a bill probably.
“He never used to be like that. Always was a quiet, self-respecting, respectable chap. Now he’s rushing around scattering money to the winds and taking aeroplanes. I don’t like it. I’m as glad he’s gone.”
Ken Corning’s face remained impassive.
“Thank you, very much, Mrs. Markle,” he said.
“Can I let you know if I hear from him — where he is?”
He raised his hat politely.
“No,” he said. “Thank you, but you won’t hear.”
And he turned down the steps.
He drove back to his office. Helen Vail stared at him and broke into laughter.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The eye,” she said. “What a beautiful shiner!”
He grinned.
She indicated the paper which lay on the desk in front of her.
“Like to see yourself as others see you? Here’s a photo of you on the receiving end of the wallop, It must have been a beaut!”
He touched his sore cheek bone.
“It was,” he told her,
She said, “Well, the Star is giving you some swell publicity. I bet the D. A. is gritting his teeth. Notice that they don’t say you tried to bust into the room, but that the guards of the D. A.’s office assaulted you when you made inquiries about the witness.”