Ken Corning frowned, paced the floor thoughtfully.
“Her apartment’s on the second floor?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve become friendly with her?”
“Yes. And I know Esther Ogier, the girl who shares the apartment with her. Esther wasn’t there at the time. She’s ushering in a picture show and doesn’t get off until after eleven every night.”
Ken Corning absently took a cigarette from his pocket, tapped it on the edge of the polished silver case, lit it, exhaled a stream of smoke.
“It doesn’t check,” he said.
The girl stared at him. Abruptly, he whirled on her.
“You think she’s telling the truth, don’t you? You think Pyle did it. Isn’t that right?”
“I don’t know what I think,” she told him. “You told me to find out certain things. I found them out. I’ve never talked with Pyle. I don’t know his side of the story. But I do know that there’s lots of witnesses. There are a half dozen different people whose attention was attracted by the shot and who saw Pyle running.”
Corning shrugged his shoulders.
The telephone rang. Helen Vail lifted the receiver, said: “Hello” in a low voice. After a moment she nodded, held the instrument out to Ken Corning.
“It’s the jailer speaking,” she said. “He said Pyle has something important to tell you.”
Ken Corning scooped the receiver up in a single motion, held the transmitter to his lips. “All right,” he said, “this is Corning speaking.”
Pyle’s voice was low-pitched, cautious.
“You remember the thing you was asking me about — if it was mine?” he asked.
“Something heavy?” Corning inquired.
“That’s it.”
“All right. What about it?”
“I just happened to think how fingerprints might have got on it.”
“Okey. Be careful what you say. Spill it.”
“Well, I had an argument with a certain person. I had to take something away from him, something he was threatening me with. I gave it back to him, later, when I’d emptied it.”
“Same general description?” asked Corning.
“Yeah, the same thing — ‘Woodsman,’ you know. Ain’t many around yet.”
“Okey. Who was it?”
“His name’s Pete. They call him Pete the Polack. It was a while ago and I haven’t seen him since. But you can locate him through the shooting galleries. He ran a gallery for a time out at the concessions in Cedar Street Park.”
Ken Corning thought for a few seconds while the telephone line made buzzing noises.
“Know anything more?” he asked.
“Nothing that’ll help. I thought you’d want to know about this.”
“I do,” Ken Corning told him, and hung up the receiver.
He swung back in the swivel-chair, clasped hands behind his head, and fixed his eyes on Helen Vail, although by their expression he seemed to be looking through and beyond her.
“Just had a glimmer of light,” he began slowly. “There were two things that seemed to tie Pyle to the shooting. First, the sound of the shot, which Pyle himself admits was close to him; second, his fingerprints on the .22 ‘Woodsman’ which was found behind the billboard Pyle passed and which the ballistic experts say fired the fatal shot.
“Pyle has just explained, reasonably, if true, how his prints might have been on that gun, and he has given me the name of a man who should be an expert shot with that particular calibre.
“Now, supposing another man than Pyle shot Glover — and we can eliminate the two other men in the group, for they could not have placed the gun where it was found—”
Ken Corning was speaking more rapidly; there was a gleam of growing excitement in his eyes.
“Supposing another man did the shooting — where could he have been? He must have been in the close vicinity of that billboard and — remember, Pyle said that everything was quiet until, unexpectedly, just at that place on the street, one of the men made a remark that started the fight.
“All right. A building close to the billboard, with windows overlooking the scene of the shooting and the cross street around the comer, is that building where the ready-to-order witness, Mary Bagley, has a room.”
“And her room,” interjected Helen Vail softly, “is on the corner and has a window on either street.”
“Exactly,” snapped Ken Corning. “And I’m starting right from there.” The swivel-chair made a sharp thump as he leaned abruptly forward.
“Another thing — I’ve examined the gun that did the killing, the ‘Woodsman’ .22, one of the most accurate of the smaller calibres in the hands of an expert — say a man familiar with shooting galleries. The muzzle of that gun has marks such as a friction coupling of a silencer could have made.”
He stood up abruptly. His eyes were bright and hard. He reached for his hat.
“But,” said Helen Vail, “how about the sound of the shot — right close to Pyle?”
“I think,” Ken Corning said, “you and I have solved that.”
“I!” said Helen Vail incredulously.
Ken Corning smiled down at her. He clamped his hat on his head. “Going out,” he told her “Don’t look for me back until you see me.”
“Anything Johnson can do instead?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. It’s got to be handled with gloves. I want to do it myself. I want to coax a couple of people into my hands right. What’s the name of the apartment house where this Bagley girl hangs out?”
“The Catalina. That’s the name above the door.”
He nodded, strode to the door of the outer office.
“Keep in touch with things,” he said. “Better have someone come in here to stick around the telephone nights. I don’t know when I’ll be back, and I want it so I can call in at any time and get service. Maybe that redhead that we had before can help out.”
She smiled at him, a smile that was almost maternal, despite the fact that she was ten years his junior.
“And have her get things all twisted the way she did before! No, thanks! I’ll have them bring in a cot, and my meals, and I’ll stick around here on a twenty-four-hour shift until the case is over.”
He started to say something, changed his mind, grinned at her and closed the door as he went out. He went at once to the Catalina Apartments.
“I want something in a corner apartment,” he told the tired eyed woman who acted as manager.
She looked at him appraisingly.
“The corner,” he went on, “that’s on the northeast.”
She shook her head slowly.
“I don’t think there’s a thing.”
“No vacancies?”
“None that I can rent. Three of them are vacant, but the rent’s paid until the first of the month. The tenants moved out some days ago rather suddenly. One of them took some of the personal belongings he had there. The others just moved, and I haven’t seen them.”
“Rather strange?” asked Corning disinterestedly. There was a sudden bright gleam in his eyes.
The tired eyes surveyed him with weary caution.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m paid to rent apartments: not to speculate on the affairs of the tenants.”
Ken Corning turned on his heel, walked out of the apartment house, taxied to the want-ad department of a morning newspaper and made arrangements for a quarter column ad. Then he went out to Cedar Street Park.
A thin chap with high cheekbones, thin lips and bright eyes was running the shooting gallery concession. Ken Corning paid a quarter for a gun full of shells, knocked down moving ducks, shot three times at a ball which spurted up on a jet of water, and, when he had the attention of the proprietor, said: “I want to pull a publicity stunt.”
“Yeah?” asked the proprietor, the voice toneless, the eyes sharp with interest.