Corning shook his head.
“Go get that information,” he said, “and let me know as soon as you can. That’s what I’m after right now.”
Vare nodded and left the office.
Ken Corning got up from behind his desk and started pacing the floor. He paced back and forth for almost twenty minutes, and then the telephone rang. Vare’s voice came to him over the wire:
“Got all the dope on that case, Corning,” he said. “The convict’s name was Richard Post. He’s got a long criminal record, most of it for petty stuff. He was paroled from the pen on a charge of forgery, and two weeks after his parole, pulled this hold-up in the mountain cabin.”
“Have the police got out dodgers for him on this Bixel murder?” asked Corning.
“Oh, sure,” said Vare. “I’ve got one of them here in the office.”
“Gives fingerprints and everything?”
“Yes. Gives his criminal record and a photograph — front and side.”
“Thanks,” said Corning, “I think that’s all,” and hung up.
He put through a call to Millwright, the handwriting expert.
“Millwright,” he said, “the police have got a dodger out on a convict named Richard Post. He’s wanted for murder. The dodger has got his fingerprints, taken from the jail records; also front and side photographs. I wish you’d hunt up that dodger and check it with the fingerprints of this man, Harry Green, who was murdered.”
“I can do that for you in just about five minutes,” Millwright said. “I’ve got the fingerprints from the morgue records, and we keep a file of the police dodgers.”
“Okey,” said Corning, “I’ll hold the phone.”
He held the receiver to his ear, lit a cigarette, and had smoked less than one-third of it, when Millwright’s excited voice came to his ears.
“Got it!” he said. “And it’s a good hunch.”
“The same man?” asked Corning.
“The same man. There can’t be any doubt about it; the fingerprints check. The man that was murdered is the man the police have been looking for, under the name of Richard Post. He’s the one who murdered George Bixel in a hold-up in a mountain cabin.”
“All right,” said Corning, “that’s all I wanted to know.”
“What do you want me to do with the information?” asked Millwright. “Pass it on to the police? They’ll be interested to know that the Bixel murder case is cleared up.”
Corning chuckled.
“The reason that I got you to work on this thing,” he said, “instead of a man who had any police affiliations, is because I wanted to control the information, once I’d secured it.”
“What do you want me to do with it?” asked Millwright.
“Lock it up tight in a safe and then forget it’s there,” Ken Corning said slowly. “When I want to use it, I’ll ask you about it. Until then, sew it up in a sack.”
Millwright’s voice was dubious.
“That,” he said, “is plain dynamite. It’s going to get out sooner or later.”
“All right,” Corning said, “let’s make it later. Forget that you know a thing about it.”
He hung up the receiver, and grinned triumphantly.
Corning threaded his way through the narrow alleys where the little houses were crowded close together. He found the one where he had called on Mrs. Ambrose, and after searching in vain for a bell button, resorted to his knuckles.
There was no answer.
He pounded again. After a minute or two, the door of an adjoining shack opened, and a hatchet-faced woman, with sharp black eyes, stared at him.
“Are you in charge of these houses?” he asked*
“Yes, what do you want?”
“Is this the house occupied by Mrs. Ella Ambrose?”
“She’s gone.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know. She packed up all of a sudden, and got out inside of an hour. I thought maybe somebody was dead or something. She wouldn’t tell any of us anything. But she paid her rent when she left.”
“Is that unusual?” asked Corning.
“It was with her,” she said. “She was away behind with her rent, She paid it all up.”
Corning stood, thinking, for a moment, then said:
“I’d like to rent this house.”
“All right,” she said, “it’s for rent if you’ve got the money. It’s cash in advance, and no wild parties. This is a respectable place, tenanted by people that are trying to get along.”
Corning pulled out his wallet. “I’ll pay a month’s rent in advance.”
“You’ll pay two months’ rent in advance,” she said, “I’ve had enough trouble with these houses.”
Corning paid the small sum demanded as rent, pocketed the receipt, received the keys to the place, and returned to open the door.
The place was furnished as he had seen it last. All that had been taken were the personal belongings of Mrs. Ambrose. The rooms still held that peculiar musty smell of stale cooking. There was the same rickety furniture with its faded upholstery, trying bravely to put up a bold front.
Corning prowled about for fifteen or twenty minutes, then locked the door, pocketed the key, returned to his car, and went to his office.
Helen Vail stared at him curiously.
“You’re going to put on a one-act skit,” he told her.
“What about?”
“You remember the Mrs. Ella Ambrose that we got out on habeas corpus?”
“Sure I do.”
“All right. She’s moved away.”
“Suddenly?”
“Yes.”
“I take it Santa Claus came down the chimney and gave her a big wad of coin and she moved away without leaving an address.”
“That’s exactly what happened,” said Corning. “And it just occurred to me that the person who played Santa Claus for her doesn’t know her personally.”
He tossed the key to the little shack on the desk, and said: “Get some of the oldest clothes you can find. Get your hair all snarled up and let your face go to seed. Take a little grease paint and make lines around your eyes.”
She grinned.
“Then,” he said, “go down to the place on Hampshire Street, where there’s a bunch of shacks clustered together in the back part of the block. It’s way out in the sticks. I’ll give you the address. It’s on a rent receipt somewhere.” He fished around in his pocket until he found the rent receipt, and tossed it over to her.
“Then what do I do?” she asked.
“Then,” he said, “you pretend that you’re Mrs. Ella Ambrose, and put on an act. I’ve got to write it out. Bring your book, and I’ll dictate the things I want you to say. The first thing we’ve got to do, however, is to make a decoy note.”
“What do you mean?”
“Write,” he said, “in an angular, feminine handwriting a note addressed to Harrison Burman. It will read as follows:
“ ‘I got to thinking things over, and I don’t know where I stand. I know well enough who’s back of the whole business. I’m going to talk with you before I go away and stay away. After I started away, I got to thinking things over. I’ve got a boy, and it ain’t fair to him, so I figured I’d come back. You’ve got to come down to my place and talk with me personally. I’ll be expecting you this evening. When you do that, I’ll be satisfied, but I ain’t going to do no wrong with a boy to bring up. Yours respectfully. Mrs. Ella Ambrose.’ ”
“Think he’ll fall for that?” asked Helen Vail, looking at her shorthand notes with puckered eyes.
“I don’t know,” said Corning, “If he doesn’t fall for that one, I’ll think up another one. But I think this will do the work. Write it without any punctuation and don’t use many capitals. Make it look illiterate — like the sort of letters we get from cranks.”
Helen Vail set to work.