“I wouldn’t say that,” the district attorney said slowly and significantly.
Terry sat back in his chair, regarding the official with the polite interest of one who has nothing further to offer save courteous attention.
Parker Dixon spread his hands in a gesture of dismissal. “That is all,” he said. “I had hoped you would be willing to give us more co-operation.”
Clane got to his feet. “I take it that where information is concerned you act on the assumption it’s more blessed to receive than to give.”
This time the smile of District Attorney Dixon’s lips was reflected in his eyes, as the sparkle of sunlight on Arctic waters is reflected from the side of an iceberg.
“It is,” he agreed, “the motto of the office. We had hardly hoped to find in you so apt a pupil, Mr. Clane.”
Terry suddenly grinned, the cautious formality of his manner seemed to drop from him, as a cloak slipping to the floor. “Well,” he said, “if the catechism is ended, let me suggest that you add that bit about the Russian girl to your report. Have you ever tried to concentrate upon an abstract philosophy, when a wanton little devil with a figure so supple it seemed as though her bones would melt under your touch... No, no, don’t bother to answer. I can see by your eyes that you haven’t.”
And Terry Clane, managing to make his exit something of a gesture, stepped into the corridor leaving behind him a somewhat baffled and very exasperated district attorney.
2
Terry Clane paused on the sidewalk in front of the building in which the district attorney had his office, ostensibly to light a cigarette.
Standing there, with the flame of the match held in his cupped hands, he took a deep breath, brought the problem of Mandra’s murder to the forefront of his mind, and then, using the methods of concentration he had learned in the Orient, brought his thought to a focal point of white-hot concentration upon that one subject.
The noise of traffic in the street faded in his ears from a roar to a dull muffled sound, then became inaudible. The hurrying forms of pedestrians, the steady stream of motor cars dimmed from his vision, until his eyes saw only the flame of the match and became oblivious of all else.
During the space of time which it took the match to burn to his fingers, Terry Clane concentrated.
Jacob Mandra had been murdered. The district attorney suspected Alma Renton of being somehow implicated in that murder. The crime had been perpetrated with a Chinese sleeve gun, a noiseless weapon. The time of the murder, according to Dixon’s statement, had been fixed at about three o’clock in the morning. The investigation of Clane had been instituted at four-thirty. The crime, then, must have been discovered almost immediately after it had been committed, and the district attorney’s office had promptly concentrated its attention upon Clane. And, since much of the information in the hands of the district attorney could only have been received by cablegram from the consular office in Hong Kong, the investigation must have been vigorously conducted.
Terry had left Alma Renton at some time about one-thirty in the morning. She had then been at her apartment. So far as he knew, she had intended to retire immediately after his departure. If her bed had not been slept in, she must have left her apartment soon after one-thirty, certainly before three o’clock in the morning, the time Mandra had been murdered. The district attorney had very evidently made a determined attempt to question her before questioning Clane. That he had been unable to do so, had been due entirely to his inability to find her. It was, therefore, reasonable to suppose that all her customary haunts had been searched, and searched in vain. Alma’s disappearance was, then, no casual matter. It had been deliberately achieved.
And the district attorney had pressed a button on his desk. Somewhere, that button had actuated a buzzer or bell, two longs and two shorts. Very definitely it was a signal to someone to do something. Yet no one had entered the office in response to that signal. Clane surmised, therefore, that the district attorney had used this means to arrange for some operative to shadow him.
Clane did not make the mistake of looking back over his shoulder, nor did he hesitate unduly. In that brief interval, while he was holding flame to his cigarette, his mind sifted the salient facts from the confusion of minor developments with smooth efficiency.
It was, therefore, not strange that the detectives who followed him, both insisted in their later reports that Terry Clane had not in the least suspected he was being shadowed.
His manner had been that of a citizen going openly about his business, without suspicion — and without guilt. He had paused to light a cigarette. The match had evidently gone out, since he had stood for a second or two holding it in his cupped hands, then had taken another match from his pocket, lit the cigarette, purchased a newspaper, called a taxicab, and been driven directly to his apartment house. Not once had he so much as turned his head to look back. He had left the taxicab standing with the motor running, from which the detectives surmised he had intended to resume his travels.
Five minutes later, an aged Chinese, whom the detectives subsequently ascertained to be Yat T’oy, Clane’s servant, had appeared with a suit of clothes over his arm. He had delivered these clothes to the cab driver, whereupon the detectives had investigated and discovered that Clane, when he had stepped from the cab, had given the driver a bill and told him to wait for a suit of clothes to be delivered to his tailor.
Clane had telephoned Yat Toy from the lobby to bring down the clothes. He, himself, had passed through the lobby to the alley at the back of the apartment house, where his own car had been parked. He had entered his automobile and driven away. It had all been done simply, naturally, and apparently without any ulterior motive.
Such incidents frequently confuse the best of shadows. The district attorney, studying the reports, noted particularly that Clane had not once turned round to look back. Not entirely without some inner misgivings, he absolved Clane of any attempt to shake the shadows from his trail. He was all the more reluctant to announce his decision to his associates, because the memory of his attempt to surprise information from Terry Clane remained in his mind as a coldly dissatisfying morsel. It was not often that the district attorney encountered a witness so bafflingly formal, so completely poised, so thoroughly unsatisfactory.
Clane, in the meantime, drove his car out Bush Street to Gough, turned right on Gough and stopped his car in front of an apartment house. He took the elevator to the top floor, pressed the button of a studio marked “Vera Matthews.”
Though he could hear sounds of surreptitious motion from behind the door, his ring remained unanswered.
Clane tapped on the panels, and heard a faint noise such as might have been made by cautious feet tip-toeing over a carpeted floor.
“It’s Terry, Alma,” he called gently.
The bolt shot back, disclosing an unlined, delicately featured face, carefully groomed hair as lustrously blonde as dried wheat stalks reflecting the sunlight, and startled grey eyes. “How did you know I was here?” Alma Renton asked, flinging the door open, then closing it behind him after he entered.
He didn’t answer her question at once, but, placing his forefinger under her chin, tilted it up so that he could look into her eyes.
“Worrying too hard,” he announced, “which is twice as bad as working too hard.”
She laughed nervously and pushed him away. “Stop it, Terry,” she said. “You make me feel as though you were stripping the clothes from my mind. How did you know I was here?”
“Simple,” he told her, smiling.
“No, it wasn’t simple. No one on earth knew I was here.”