“This is the place,” said the boy, and started beating lightly with his knuckles on a door.
“Who is it?” asked thin, tired tones from the interior.
“It’s me, Mom.”
“Did he come with you?”
“Yeah. Open up.”
A bolt rasped back on the inside of the door, then, as the door swung open, an oblong of dim light from an oil lamp silhouetted the broad hips and shoulders of a heavy-set woman who hulked in the doorway.
“Come in,” said the woman.
Ken Corning stepped into the dark room. The woman pushed the door shut.
“I couldn’t understand,” said Corning, cautiously, “why you didn’t come to the office,”
The woman placed a linger to her lips, looked over at the boy. “Frank,” she said, “you run over and see if Jimmy won’t let you stay with him for a while.”
The boy turned the knob, held the door against the wind, slipped out into the night.
Ken Corning stared at the woman. She was in the early fifties. Adversity had stamped its mark upon her, and her face had set in lines of whining defiance, as though she had learned to cope with the world by aggressively protesting her rights with shrill-voiced insistence. Her features were heavy, the eyes small and sharp. The lower jaw was full and determined, but the upper part of the mouth seemed pinched, with a high, narrow roof.
“You’re defending Sam Driver?” she said.
Ken Corning nodded.
“Why didn’t you come to the office?”
“Because they got the place watched.”
“Who has?”
“I d’know. Maybe the police.”
“Why have they got the place watched?”
“I spoke out of turn,” she said.
“To whom?” Corning inquired.
“The cop on the beat. I told him that I didn’t think Sam Driver was guilty, and that I knew some stuff that would give him a break. The cop told me I’d better keep out of things that didn’t concern me. Right after that, men started to stand around in front of the house. They waited in automobiles, and poked around, as though they had business, but they didn’t fool me any. They were dicks, watching me.”
“All right,” said Ken Corning, “what do you know?”
She leered at him shrewdly.
“There’s got to be something in it for me,” she told him.
Slowly, Ken Corning shook his head.
“All the money that Sam Driver has,” he said, “is held by the law, on the theory that it belonged to Harry Green, the man he’s charged with killing. If I can get him acquitted, naturally he gets that money back. I’m going to take most of it for my fee. There’ll be some left for him and some for expenses. If he wants to make you a present after the case is over, that’s up to him.”
She twisted her fingers together and looked at Corning with avaricious eyes that took in every detail of his tailor-made clothes.
“Seems like it’s going to be pretty soft for you, if you get him off. Seems like I’d oughta have some cash.”
“No,” said Corning, “they’d ask you about that when you got on the witness stand. If you told them I’d given you a single nickel, they’d make it appear I’d bought your evidence.”
“I wouldn’t have to tell them,” she suggested.
“You won’t get anywhere with that line. And it doesn’t listen well. If you know anything, go ahead and tell me.”
She twisted her fingers for a moment, then suddenly broke into speech.
“All right,” she said. “I know Sam Driver, and I know his sister-in-law well. They’ve got a place here on Hampshire Street. The man’s got a job, and they’ve got a radio ’n everything.”
“Yes,” said Corning. “What of it?”
“Well, Driver used to come and visit them. Sometimes he’d bring Harry Green with him. More often he’d come alone. He drove a flivver, and kept it parked out in front of the place when he was inside. I got so I knowed the flivver.
“The night of the murder, I knew that Driver was inside, at his sister-in-law’s, hoisting a few. I was going uptown, and I saw a man walking up and down the sidewalk, and I figured I’d wait until he got out of the way, before I came out into view.
“I seen a new model Cadillac car come down and stop side of Driver’s flivver. Guys got out that had on evening clothes. You could see the white of them in the light that came from the street lamp. There were two of them. I saw them pull something from the Cadillac and put it in the flivver. It was something heavy.”
“Could you see definitely what it was?” asked Corning slowly.
“No. But it was heavy.”
“How do you know the car was a Cadillac?”
“It was a Cadillac,” she said, doggedly enough, “a new model Cadillac. I keep up on automobiles because my boy talks about them all the time. He knows every new car that comes out.”
Ken Corning looked at her searchingly.
“You don’t look like the type of woman who would be interested in a Cadillac automobile.”
“I knew that new model Cadillac.”
“All right. Then what happened?”
“Then,” she said, “they went around to the headlights on Driver’s automobile and started doing something to them with a monkey wrench or something. I thought they were car thieves that was stealing the headlights, but they were dressed too good for that.”
“Go on,” Corning told her.
“That’s about all. I got to thinking things over, and I thought you’d ought to know.”
“Got the license number on the Cadillac car?” he asked.
She shook her head rapidly.
“No,” she said, “I...”
There was the sound of peremptory knuckles banging on the door.
“Open up!” said a gruff voice. “This is the law.”
She looked in swift consternation at Ken Corning.
“You double-crossed me,” she said.
Corning shook his head. He was on his feet, standing over in a comer of the room, shifting his eyes from the face of the woman to the door.
The door quivered, then banged open, shivering in the wind. Three men pushed their way into the room. The last man shoved the door closed, and the oil light flickered and danced in the wind.
“Well,” said Corning, “what’s the trouble?”
The man who had been the first into the room looked at Corning.
“Nothing that concerns you, buddy,” he said. “It’s something that concerns the woman. She’s been selling hooch.”
“I have not!” said the woman.
The detective grinned.
“Got a warrant?” asked Ken Corning.
The man’s voice was scornful. “Of course I have,” he said.
“But I haven’t been selling any booze. I haven’t got any booze. I don’t know anything about...”
“Look around, boys,” said the man who was in charge.
“I think,” said Ken Corning, “that I’ll have to take a look at that warrant.”
“Sure,” said the officer, with elaborate sarcasm. “Go right ahead and look at it all you want to. Read it and weep.”
He took a folded paper from his pocket, passed it to Ken Corning with exaggerated courtesy.
Corning looked at the search warrant, which was duly issued and in regular form. One of the men had gone to the closet, and was bending over, sending the beam of a flashlight to the dark interior. Suddenly he called: “Okey, chief, here it is.”
The woman started to cry.
“I didn’t mean anything,” she said. “Just some stuff that I kept there to take when I wasn’t feeling good. I never sold any and I never gave any away. I’m a poor widow woman, with a little boy to support, and...”
The man in charge grinned at Ken Corning, then turned his eyes to the woman, and interrupted her wailing excuses.
“Get your coat on, sister,” he said. “We’ve got a car waiting outside.”