Ken Corning pulled his overcoat up around his neck.
“I’ll be seeing you boys later,” he said, and pushed his way out into the windy night.
It was two hours later when Ken Corning arrived at the jail with a writ of habeas corpus and a fifteen thousand dollar bail bond, issued by a company that knew him and accepted his guarantee. Ella Ambrose was delivered into his custody.
She climbed into the car, sat at his side, and said to him: “Did you get me out?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Did they dismiss the charge?”
“No, I had to get a writ of habeas corpus and get you out on bail.”
“Thanks,” she remarked, after a moment.
“I want you to go to my office and make a statement,” he told her.
“Sure,” she told him, with ready loquaciousness. “But I’ve got to get back and find out about my boy. Maybe he came back and went to bed, or maybe he stayed over at his friend’s house.”
“All right,” Corning told her. “I’ll take you home first if you want.”
“I wish you would.”
He pushed the car into speed.
“Then you can come back to the office with me, and give me a statement,” he said.
“Yes,” she remarked in a colorless tone of mechanical acquiescence.
“About this Cadillac car,” said Corning. “Do you suppose...”
“Of course,” she said, “I couldn’t be sure it was a Cadillac.”
“Could you see what the men were carrying?”
“No, I couldn’t really swear that they carried anything. I saw a car stop, and then the men got out.”
“But you’re certain they carried something over and put it in Sam Driver’s automobile, is that right?”
“No, I’m not certain of it, I think they did.”
“What makes you think they did? Didn’t you see them?”
“No, I can’t swear that I saw them. That is, I saw them moving around, and then, after I read about the case in the papers, I got to thinking that that’s what they might have done.”
“Two men?” asked Corning.
“Yes, there were two men.”
“In evening clothes?”
“Well, they probably had on evening clothes. I can’t be certain about that.”
“I see,” Corning told her, and lapsed into silence. He drove her to her house, held the door open for her.
“You’re going to wait for me to go back and make a statement?” she asked.
“No,” he said gravely, “I don’t think I’ll need a statement.”
“Thanks a lot,” she said, “for what you did in getting me out.”
“Not at all,” he told her.
When she had vanished into the shadows about the cheap houses, which clustered together in the lot like freight cars in a railroad yard, Corning savagely snapped his car into gear, and drove furiously, until he came to an all-night drug-store where there was a telephone.
He put through two calls.
The first was to his office, telling Helen Vail to get a taxicab and go home. The second was to the office of the company that had written the bail bond at his request.
“On that Ella Ambrose bail on habeas corpus,” he told the bonding company, “I’ve lost interest in the case. I wish you’d pick up the defendant and get a release of the bail bond.”
The voice at the other end of the line chuckled.
“Sorry, old man,” it said, “but there’s been a note come through, that the case is to be dismissed and the complaint withdrawn.”
“I see,” said Ken Corning, and hung up the receiver.
Joe Vare, private detective, sat in Ken Corning’s office, and looked across at the lawyer.
“I don’t get you,” he said.
“It’s simple,” Corning told him, “Go to the Cadillac agency, get the list of new car deliveries, check the people carefully, find out if one of them might be the sort to have had some connection either with Sam Driver or with Harry Green.”
Vare twisted a half-smoked cigar thoughtfully, rolling it with his thumb and forefinger.
“Driver and Green were bums?” he said.
“You might call them that.”
“Think they’d have friends who drove new Cadillacs?”
Corning leaned forward.
“Get this, Vare,” he said. “This is a murder case, and the Cadillac car is a lead. In a murder case I run down all leads, no matter how shaky they look.” Vare got to his feet and grinned at the attorney.
“Okey,” he said. “I’m on my way.”
As the detective left the office, Helen Vail slipped through the door, closed it behind her, and said softly: “There’s a Mrs. Brown out there, who wants to see you about the Driver case.”
“All right,” said Corning, “let’s take a look at her.”
Helen Vail held the door open and nodded. A woman of approximately thirty or thirty-one years of age, modishly attired, came into the office, and regarded the attorney from wide, brown eyes. She wore a brown, tight-fitting hat, brown dress, brown shoes and stockings. Her clothes gave the appearance of well-tailored wealth.
“Sit down,” said Corning, as Helen Vail gently closed the door.
The woman dropped into a chair.
“What can I do for you, Mrs. Brown?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I think I can do something for you.”
He raised his eyebrows.
She opened her purse and took out a roll of currency, which she held in her gloved fingers.
“I’m going to be frank with you,” she said.
“Yes,” said Corning, “go ahead.”
“You’re representing a man by the name of Sam Driver, who is accused of murder?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want Mr. Driver to know that I came to you.”
“Does he know you, Mrs. Brown?”
“Yes,” she said. “You see, I used to know Sam Driver in the old days — that was a long time ago. Our roads separated. We went different ways. He went his way and I went mine. He went down and I went up.”
“All right,” he said. “Go on.”
“The District Attorney hasn’t got much of a case against Driver. It’s largely circumstantial evidence. You’ve beaten the prosecution once or twice in some spectacular cases. They’re afraid of you. If you’ll have Driver think up some good story about a fight and a killing in self-defense, the District Attorney will let Driver plead guilty to manslaughter. But if the man stands trial, he’s going to be railroaded.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know. I know there are powerful influences at work against him, that’s all.”
“Where do you get your information?” asked Corning, watching her closely.
“About what?”
“About the District Attorney’s office, for instance, and the powerful influences.”
She shook her head, and the brown eyes softened into a twinkle as she regarded him.
“You have your professional secrets,” she said. “I have mine. I’m just telling you.”
“Well, then,” he said, “tell me some more.”
She looked down at the tips of her gloved fingers, suddenly raised her eyes, and, with an expression of utter candor on her face, said: “If he doesn’t plead guilty, they’re going to give him the death penalty.”
“Why?” he asked.
“For lots of reasons. There’s politics mixed up in it, and you know what politics are in York City.”
“Yes,” he told her, “I know. But why should politics be mixed up in the killing of a hobo?”
“That’s something else again,” she replied. “You’re frightfully inquisitive for a lawyer.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do?”
“Take this money. Use it as an additional fee. I don’t suppose you got much from Sam Driver. Go ahead and work out a good story with him. It’s got to be a good story with a self-defense angle to it — something that the District Attorney’s office can give to the newspapers to keep the people from making a very strong protest when they accept a plea of manslaughter.”