The three men walked wordlessly across the outer office, pushed open the door, and went out into the corridor. The door swung shut, and a latch clicked mechanically.
Helen Vail left her position on the desk, where she had remained during the interview, and crossed to Ken Corning. She put her hand on his arm and stared up at him with wide frightened eyes.
“What is it, chief?” she asked.
“A frame-up,” he told her. “A dirty frame-up!”
“But what?”
Ken Corning walked back to the desk, sat down in the swivel-chair, stared at the bills, then looked moodily at her.
“Samuel Grosbeck,” he said, “had something like fifteen hundred dollars on him in one-hundred-dollar bills when he was murdered. He’d received the bills from his bank. They were new bills, and the bank happens to have the number sequence.”
“But why should they plant them on me?” asked Helen Vail.
“Because you’re working for me, and because I’m defending Fred Parkett.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s simple,” he told her. “Grosbeck and a chap named Stanwood were sitting in a car parked near the curb. A hold-up man who limped, carried a cane, wore an overcoat and a cap, told them to throw up their hands. Stanwood put up his hands. Grosbeck didn’t, or was slow about it, and got the contents of an automatic emptied into his vest. He died right then.
“The hold-up man went through his clothes and took a wallet; also a brown manila envelope. We don’t know what was in the manila envelope. There was fifteen hundred dollars in cash in the wallet. The hold-up man ran as fast as he could with his game leg, and turned at the corner. Stanwood found Grosbeck was dead, managed to get to a telephone, and notified the police. The police broadcast the call over the shortwave radio to all cars, and Dick Carr, the detective, was the first on the spot. He cruised around and picked up Fred Parkett.
“Parkett wore an overcoat, a cap, carried a cane, and limped. He’s a crook with a criminal record a yard long. He didn’t have a gun; he didn’t have any money on him, and he claimed he hadn’t been near the car in which Grosbeck was killed. He was picked up within six blocks of the place, however, and Stanwood identified him as being the murderer. Two other fellows, Arthur Longwell and Jim Monteith, positively identified him as the man they saw running within a block of the scene of the murder.
“I’m defending Parkett. It looks as though he might beat the case if we can break down the identification. The District Attorney knows I’m planning a big fight. He doesn’t know just what kind of fight it is.”
Helen Vail nodded her head impatiently.
“Of course,” she said, “I know all about that. But...”
She broke off, gasped and stared at Ken Corning with eyes that were dark with alarm
“Do you mean that the District Attorney’s office is going to claim that Parkett paid you a retainer in money that he had taken from the murdered man, and that you gave me a cut out of it?”
“Exactly,” he told her.
“Then the bills were planted earlier in the evening.”
He nodded.
“But,” she said, “where would they get the bills to plant? The man who planted them must have been the murderer.”
“He must have known the murderer,” Corning told her. “It looks like a frame-up and a tip-off. Somebody who was anxious to have Parkett convicted planted the evidence and then tipped off the police that they’d find it.”
“And that’s the reason the purse snatcher tried to grab my purse?”
“Yes. You can see how they worked it,” Corning said. “The purse snatcher planted the money in your purse earlier in the evening. Then he made a grab at the purse, and did it so clumsily that he was caught and knocked down. The plainclothesman may, or may not, have been a plant. He wanted to look into your purse. You looked in and saw the two one-hundred-dollar bills. They figured you wouldn’t say anything about them, but would come to me. They tipped off Malone to come up here and look in your purse.”
“Why did he pull that stuff about a search warrant?” she asked.
“I walked into that,” he told her. “The fact that I wouldn’t let them search the office without a warrant suggests that I had something to conceal. It’s simply one more thing to explain.”
“What are you going to do?”
He stared down at the two one-hundred-dollar bills on the blotter.
“Did you hear the name of the purse snatcher who was arrested?” he asked.
“Yes. It was Oscar Lane.”
“All right,” he told her. “I’ll take care of that. Leave the money here. Now here’s something I want you to do. This murder was committed on December ninth, at 10:15 p.m. I think Stanwood is on the square. He identifies Parkett simply because Parkett wore an overcoat and a cap, had a limp, and carried a cane. I don’t think he ever saw the face of the man who fired the shot; not clearly, anyway. But he’s been over it so many times with the detectives and the District Attorney’s staff that he thinks he remembers the man’s face.”
“How about these two men, Longwell and Monteith, who identify Parkett so positively?” she asked.
“I’m coming to those two,” he said. “I think they’re professional witnesses.”
“How do you mean?”
“I think they were planted. I don’t think they were within a mile of the place at that time.”
“You mean the police planted them?”
“I mean,” he said, “that somebody planted them. They are simply in the case to convict Parkett. I don’t know why, or who’s back of them, but I do know this: they’ve got girl friends. I’ve had detectives look that up. There’s a girl named Mabel Fosdick, and one named Edith Laverne.
“They live in the same apartment house, the Monadnock, and they work in the same office — the Streeter Finance Corporation. I want you to go to the Monadnock Apartments, take an apartment there, and get acquainted with those two girls. You’ll have to work fast. I want you to find out if they were out with Longwell and Monteith on the night of December ninth. There’s a chance that they were together as a foursome, or a chance that one of the men may have been with one of the women.”
“And thus case comes up tomorrow?” she asked.
He looked at the clock and grinned. “Today,” he told her.
“Aren’t you going to get some sleep?” she inquired solicitously.
He shook his head and motioned towards the door. He was drawing a fresh cup of coffee from the percolator as she stood in the doorway, raised her hand in a mock military salute, and vanished.
It was late in the afternoon when Ken Corning came in from court, carrying his brief case and two books under his arm.
“I haven’t heard anything,” she said, “about the money.”
“You won’t,” Corning told her. “They’ll save that for the last.”
“Then they’ll call you as a witness?” she inquired.
He shook his head, smiling. “No,” he told her, “they’ll let the story leak out to the newspapers.”
“I thought the jurors weren’t supposed to read the newspapers.”
He looked at her and grinned, but said nothing. After a moment, he set the brief case and law books on her desk, and lowered his voice.
“Get anything on the two women?” he asked.
“I’ve moved out there and talked with one of them a little while this morning, just casually. How much time have I got, chief?”
“The case will last about a week.”
“How does it look?”
“Bad,” he told her. “And yet I think Parkett’s innocent. His story sounds like it. Usually a guilty man tries to conceal something, This man doesn’t. He says that he was walking along the sidewalk when the officers picked him up. That he’d been moving right along. He admits that he was on the prowl, but he says he didn’t have a rod with him.”