“No.”
“What’s your name?”
“Henry Lampson.”
“All right. Write it. I’m staking you to a room.”
The man wrote his name on the register. The broad-hipped landlady regarded him with shrewd eyes, then looked at Ken Corning.
“Something at twelve a week,” she suggested.
Ken Corning peeled off two fives and two ones from a roll of bills which he took from his pocket.
The landlady took down a key from a hook and labored slowly down the corridor. The men followed. She opened a door with something of a flourish. Ken Corning pushed Lampson into the room, followed him, and closed the door.
“All right,” he said, “what happened? When did it happen?”
The man looked around the room, turned to regard the closed door. His eyes slithered over Corning.
“About half an hour before I saw you in the crowd and heard you say you were hired for this guy Pyle. That’s right, is it? You’re the guy’s lawyer, eh?”
“Yes.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Nothing unless you tell the truth.”
“Then?”
“That depends on what the truth is.”
Lampson thought that over for a few minutes, then said: “Well, there were three or four guys walking down the street — the dead man, the man that got pinched, and a couple of others. They were ahead of me. There was some sort of an argument. I didn’t pay too much attention to what it was. Then I saw there was a fight, or it looked like it would have been a fight.
“You say you’re representing the guy that got the pinch, and that his name is Pyle?”
“That’s right,” Corning said.
“Who’s the dead man?”
“A chap named Frank Glover. He draws quite a bit of water in some sections of the underworld. Go on. Tell me what happened. I’m interested in that fight business.”
“Well, it wasn’t really a fight. The two guys were holding your man. The one that was killed was sore, but he was keeping his hands in sight, and not making any passes with his fists. Your man, the one that you’re actin’ as lawyer for, was talkin’ plenty. He was sore, too, and he was telling the whole cockeyed world about it. The two were holding him. He was trying to do something, either to reach a gun, or to swing his fists. There was a lot of argument.”
The man paused.
“All right,” Corning told him. “I’m listening.”
“Well, everything happened sort of quick like, then. Somehow or other this guy, that’s your client, got loose from the two guys. He sort of crouched, swung to one side, and then I heard a gun go ‘bang,’ Your man started to run, and the other guy went down to the sidewalk. Right through the heart, I heard it was, and with lead that mushroomed.”
“Go on,” Corning told him, as Lampson hesitated. “He started to run, and then what happened?”
“It was a police radio car that swung around the corner. Seems like it had been somewhere in the neighborhood, and somebody telephoned an alarm in to the police. Anyway, that’s the way I heard it from the guy on the car. The police car saw the man running, and they nabbed him.”
“How long was that after the shooting?”
“It couldn’t have been very long. The man had run about a block. It takes a guy a little while to run a block, not long.”
“And the two men who were with the murdered man. What did they do?”
“They seemed to huddle there for a minute, then they went down on their knees beside the stiff. They were pulling open his shirt, taking off his vest, and doing that sort of thing. They didn’t raise a yell, and they didn’t try to get the man that was running. They told the cops they didn’t have guns, and they wasn’t running after any murderers.”
Ken Corning paced the floor of the shabby room. The eager eyes of the narrow-shouldered man followed him.
“The dead man had a gun,” Corning snapped suddenly. “The police found it on him. Isn’t that right?”
“Sure that’s right. I seen it.”
“Why didn’t the two guys take that gun and stop Pyle?”
“I don’t know. Nobody asked them that question.”
“And they found Pyle’s gun?”
“Yeah. Pyle claimed lie didn’t do any shooting, that he didn’t have a gun and all that sort of stuff, but a broad from the apartment house on the corner saw him throw something back of a signboard. The cops started prowling around and found a gun. I heard one of them say that it was the gun that killed the dead man. I don’t know, only what the cops said.”
Ken Corning turned to stare steadily at the other.
“How did it happen they didn’t hold you as a witness?”
“Because I didn’t speak my little piece. I pretended I was just a guy who had come up after the shooting.”
“Why didn’t you tell them?”
The man fidgeted slightly.
“Because, brother, I don’t want the bulls prying around into my record, where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing.”
He opened his coat. There was a leather case suspended under his arm. He snapped back a flap, pulled out steel tools which he dropped to the table. They gave forth dull, clinking noises as one of them dropped on top of the other.
Ken Corning regarded the pile with puckered eyes.
“Burglar tools, eh?”
“Sure.”
“Why did you come clean with me?”
“Because you’re a mouthpiece. I may need a good mouthpiece. I got a rod, too. See the point? I got a record. I ain’t clean on my last rap, broke parole if you want to know. I knew the bulls would take me to headquarters for questioning if I told my little story. So I kept mum. Then you came up and started talking, and I knew you could fix it so I got a little piece of jack, maybe, and didn’t get a police frame.”
Ken Corning picked up the burglar tools.
“Where’s the rod?” he asked.
The man who had given his name as Lampson pulled back the bottom of his coat, tugged a gun from his right hip pocket. It was a .22 Colt automatic.
“That’s it, brother,” he said. “You’re taking charge of it from now on.”
Ken Corning sniffed of the end of the barrel. He pulled back the mechanism until he could eject the loaded shell, thrust a thumb nail into the opening, holding it in such a position that it reflected light into the interior of the barrel. He studied the riflings with a thoughtful eye, sniffed of the end of the barrel again.
“Gee, you ain’t trying to pin it on me,” said the man, the whining tone of his voice once more in evidence.
Ken Corning raised his eyes, regarded the man over the top of the end sight on the barrel.
“What sort of gun was used in the killing?” he asked.
“Gee, boss, how should I know? The cops found the gun a good half block from where I was standin’, and...”
“Never mind that,” Corning told him, interrupting the whining flow of words. “You know all right. You were there, where you could hear everything. What sort of gun was it?”
Lampson’s eyes sought the floor. His face twitched nervously.
“Honest to gawd, boss...”
“What sort of gun?” bellowed Corning.
The answer was so weak as to be almost inaudible.
“A .22 automatic, boss; what they call a Colt ‘Woodsman.’ That’s why I’m going to need a mouthpiece, bad.”
Corning paced the floor of his office. Every few seconds he snapped his left arm around in front of his face and stared at the dial of his wrist-watch, then went on pacing.
A key made a metallic noise in the lock of the outer door. The bolt clicked back. Helen Vail, Ken Corning’s secretary, stood straight and slim on the threshold, her eyes filled with anxiety.
“Got here just as quick as I could, chief,” she said. “I didn’t get the telephone message until I got back from the picture show. What is it?”