Robert Durane was going out.
The two guards flanked him on either side. A uniformed police officer stood at the door of the elevator. There was another one in the lobby. At the doorway of the hotel a police car was parked at the curb, four officers strung out between the car and the hotel entrance.
The preparations would have indicated that a shipment of gold was being moved from a bank.
A little crowd collected. The crowd became more congested. The police started detouring the people out into the street, keeping them moving.
The door of the hotel swung open.
Robert Durane stepped out into the light of day. Cameras clicked as newshawks snapped pictures. The D. A.’s office had yielded to the pressure of the disgruntled ones who had been scooped by the Star.
Bob Durane looked worried. His head moved about, nervously. Plainly the crowd worried him. His eyes were cold and hard, but shifty. The scar on his cheek glowed lividly. The cheek seemed pale.
He looked towards the police car.
Two men sat in a roadster that had been parked at the curb just behind the police car. The top of the roadster was down, but the men had been apparently engrossed in their own affairs, and had attracted but little attention.
One of the men put on a cap.
It was the familiar cap of a taxicab operator. Now that the cap was on, it was apparent that his coat was also labeled with the insignia of the cab company.
Bob Durane moved across the stretch of sidewalk.
The motor in the roadster was purring steadily.
The man in the uniform of a taxi driver jumped to the seat of the roadster. He extended a long arm with a rigid, pointing finger. His voice sounded high above the noises of the street.
“That’s him! That’s the guy that drove the car!”
People stared. Bob Durane stopped abruptly. Two policemen pushed towards the roadster.
Ken Corning, seated in the driver’s seat of the roadster, yelled: “Sit down and hang on!”
The spectators saw, then, that the roadster was one of those cars with a small wheelbase which can be handled swiftly in traffic. They also saw that it had been skilfully parked with the front wheels warped so that the car could make a fast getaway.
The motor roared into sudden life. The rear wheels spun for half a revolution, and then the car shot out from the curb. One of the officers blew his whistle.
Bob Durane turned back towards the hotel, then hesitated.
The police car lurched forward. One of the officers yelled something. Bob Durane was pushed forward. The door of the police machine opened, Bob Durane was shot inside, One of the officers jumped in after him. The door slammed. Another officer caught the running-board of the police car. The siren screamed as the car roared into motion.
Metal crashed into crumpled wreckage. The crash was slight, but it was followed with a grinding noise. A light roadster, urn painted, with rusty fenders and battered body, had swung in so that the front wheels of the police car had smashed into it.
Traffic was blocked.
The car with the cab driver gained the comer and turned with swaying springs.
The woman who had been driving the roadster climbed out, her face ghastly white, eyes wide. She screamed hysterically.
A frantic police officer tugged at her car. The driver of the police car threw his gears into reverse.
“What the hell you trying to do?” he bellowed.
Helen Vail, her face made pale with white powder, stared at him with feverishly bright eyes.
“You started the siren!” she said. “That means get over to the curb. I tried to get over and you smashed into me!”
The officer swore some more. The police car banged forward. More metal rasped and crumpled. The car was free. “All clear!” yelled the officer. The police car roared into motion. A crowd collected about the battered roadster.
“Oh, dear,” said Helen Vail. “I must telephone!”
Officers pushed forward. The crowd opened to let Helen Vail slip through. The crowd closed in behind her, around the battered car. Officers started taking charge.
“Where’s the woman that was driving?” asked one.
“She went to telephone,” said someone in the crowd.
The officers waited.
Helen Vail did not return.
After a while they moved the roadster. The police car that did the moving threw a tow rope on the machine and dragged it to the police garage.
Exactly fifty-nine minutes later, newsboys cried through the streets. The Star was running an “extra.” “Read about it!” yelled the newsboys. “State’s star witness identified as driver of the murder car by taxi driver!”
Ken Corning sat in his office and grinned at Helen Vail.
“Good work, kid,” he said.
She sighed.
“About one more narrow squeak like that and I’ll be in the bug house.”
“I told you,” he said, “just to sort of get in the way and give me a chance to get to the corner. I didn’t want you to try and stall the thing up for a week.”
She grinned.
“That’s just my way of doing things,” she said. “I do ’em up brown. I figured that I could lock a bumper with them and make it take long enough for them to get loose to give you all the time you wanted. Did you have it?”
“Yes. I never even heard their car from the time I rounded the comer. It was a cinch.”
“What happened?” she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“It hasn’t happened yet, unless...”
He broke off as the telephone rang. He scooped the receiver to his ear. He said: “Hello,” and the receiver started in making metallic squawks.
Ken Corning listened. As he listened, a grin spread over his face.
“Okey,” he said, “thanks for the buggy ride... Hell’s bells, you reporters want to know everything... Well, son, that’s a little secret. You can state from me that the witness doesn’t want the notoriety, and he’s just a little afraid something might happen to him. When he goes for a ride he wants to be sitting at the wheel. Yeah... G’bye.”
He hung up the receiver, turned to Helen Vail.
“Nixon, of the Star,” he said. “Just called me to tell me that the case against Dangerfield had blown up. The star witness for the prosecution, Bob Durane, skipped out. They can’t find him anywhere. He gave his bodyguard the slip, and has utterly vanished. The D. A. announces that, under the circumstances, he won’t go farther with the case until additional evidence is uncovered.”
“What evidence?” she asked.
“Nixon wants me to produce my mystery witness and insists on an indictment for Durane.”
She looked at him fixedly.
“You going to do it?”
He grinned.
“Do I look crazy? It ain’t any crime to have a guy stand up in a roadster and yelclass="underline" ‘That’s him!’ but when he walks in front of a grand jury and takes an oath and says the same thing, it’s likely to be something pretty serious.”
She said: “Is that why...?”
He nodded.
“That’s why I didn’t dare to let them catch up with us. I said I was going to pull a fast one, and I had to do it fast. It was a close call — but we made it.”
She said: “Will they ever try Durane for the murder?”
He grinned at her.
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “That’s one position the District Attorney could never afford to get trapped in.”
“Was that fellow really a taxi driver?” she asked him.
He lit a cigarette.
“You’re getting worse than the reporters,” he said.
Making the Breaks
The desk was piled high with law books. On a space which had been cleared in one corner was an electric coffee percolator bubbling steadily. An electric clock on a bookcase showed the time as two o’clock in the morning.