“Mine’s clear.”
“All right, let’s go talk with her... Now remember, Paul, any of this business about the estate is entirely extracurricular. At this time, we aren’t going to bring that up. We’ll look the situation over. So far I’m retained only for one specific purpose.”
“And what is that?” Drake asked.
Mason grinned. “Just to keep her from being a fall guy for something she didn’t do. Okay, Paul, here we go.”
They advanced to the door of 907.
Mason pressed his finger against the mother-of-pearl button, and chimes sounded on the inside of the apartment.
There was complete silence from the interior.
Mason said, “She certainly should be here.” He pressed the button again, listened to the chimes, then knocked on the door.
Drake said, “I can hear something inside, Perry, a dragging sound.”
Mason pressed his ear to the door.
“Sounds like something being moved across the floor,” he said, and banged peremptorily on the door.
From inside the apartment something fell with a thud that jarred the floor, then a woman screamed and the scream was interrupted as though someone had pressed a hand across her lips.
Mason flung himself against the door. The latch clicked, and the door opened a scant three inches to the end of a brass chain safety lock.
From the interior of the apartment a door banged shut.
“Let’s go,” Mason said, and slammed his shoulder against the door.
Wood creaked in protest, the chain snapped taut but the door still held.
“Come on,” Mason shouted, at Drake, “all together — both of us now. Let’s GO!”
The two men hit the door simultaneously. The screws pulled from the safety lock, and the door slammed wide open, banged against a doorstop, then shivered on its hinges.
Mason and Drake stood for a split second in the doorway looking at the scene of confusion which met their eyes.
The apartment consisted of a living-room, a bedroom, bath and kitchen. The door to the bedroom stood open so that it was possible to see the drawers which had been pulled from the bureau, the chest of drawers, and the contents dumped helter-skelter over the floor.
In the living-room a man lay sprawled on his back, motionless, in a grotesque sprawl, his mouth sagged open.
Sounds came from behind the closed door which evidently led to the kitchen.
Mason pushed past Paul Drake, ran to hurl himself against the kitchen door.
The door gave an inch or two, then closed itself as Mason backed away for another lunge at the door.
“Come on, Paul,” the lawyer shouted, “get this door open!”
Both men flung their weight against the door. Again the door opened an inch or two and again closed.
“Somebody’s braced against the door on the other side,” Drake said. “Watch out! They may start shooting through the panels.”
“Never mind,” Mason said, “there’s a woman in danger on the other side of that door. Smash it down.”
Drake grabbed him and pulled him to one side. “Don’t be a fool, Perry. I’ve seen too many of these things. We’ve trapped a killer in the kitchen. Telephone for the police. Use your head, and above all don’t stand in front of those panels. When the killer knows he’s trapped, there’ll be a fusillade of bullets coming through there.”
Mason stood contemplating the door, said, “All right, Paul. Telephone the police. I’ll take a look at this man and see how long he’s been dead.”
The lawyer moved a step or two, then suddenly and unexpectedly hurled himself again at the kitchen door.
Once more the door yielded slightly, then pushed back shut.
Mason said, “Wait a minute, Paul. There’s no one holding this door shut. It’s a chair or something propped against it and cushioned on some rubber so it— Come on, give me a hand here.”
“Just a minute,” Drake said. “I’ve got the police.”
The detective gave the address and number of the apartment, announced a dead man was on the floor, that the murderer or murderers were in the kitchen; that evidently they had the young woman who rented the apartment held as a hostage.
Drake hung up the phone.
Mason picked up a chair, swung it around in a circle and crashed it against the panels of the kitchen door.
The door panels splintered. Mason kicked some of the splinters away with his heel, looked inside the kitchen and said, “A big kitchen table against the door and mattresses jammed between the wall and the table.”
“They’re in the kitchen, I tell you,” Drake said. “Get away — the police will be here within a matter of seconds.”
Mason swung the chair again, crashed another panel in the door, ripped out the panel with his bare hands, looked through the wrecked door into the kitchen, then suddenly turned and sprinted for the corridor.
“What’s the matter?” Drake asked.
“There’s a back door,” Mason said. “It’s open.”
The lawyer reached the corridor, rounded a turn, went down an L in the corridor, came to an open door and entered the kitchen. Drake was a few steps behind him.
“Well,” Drake said, “we certainly fell for that one. It felt just as though someone was holding that door. You can see what happened. They took two mattresses, put one between the table and the door, the other between the table and the electric stove. It would give just an inch or two but not enough to get the door open. It felt as if someone was holding it from the inside.”
Drake ran back to the telephone, again called police, said, “Get your dispatcher to alert the cars coming in on that murder and kidnapping charge that at least one man and a woman — the woman probably being a hostage — have just made their escape from the apartment house. They may have reached the street but they can’t have gone far. The radio car should be on the alert.”
Drake hung up the phone, then went over to where Mason was kneeling by the motionless figure on the floor.
“This guy’s still alive,” the lawyer said.
Drake felt for the man’s pulse. “Faint and thready,” he said, “but it’s there. Guess we’d better phone for an ambulance. Oh-oh, look here.”
The detective indicated a small red stain on the front of the man’s shirt.
He opened the shirt, pulled down the undershirt and disclosed a small puncture in the skin.
“What the deuce?” Drake asked.
“The hole made by a twenty-two calibre bullet,” Mason said. “Let’s be careful not to touch anything, Paul. Get on that phone and tell police that this man is still alive. Let’s see if we can get an ambulance to rush him to the hospital.”
Again Drake went to the phone and put through the call. Then the lawyer and the detective stood for a few moments in the doorway.
“Where did those mattresses come from?” Drake asked.
“Apparently off the twin beds in the bedroom,” Mason said. “They were taken to the kitchen. Evidently the idea was they would barricade themselves and shoot it out, and then they found they could close off the kitchen door and give themselves a chance to slip out into the corridor and down the stairs.”
“You think there were two?”
“There were two mattresses,” Mason said. “Evidently from the way the bedclothes are arranged, someone simply took hold of the ends of the mattresses and dragged them across the room. There probably wasn’t time to make two trips, so there must have been at least two people or perhaps three people, because one of them must have been holding the girl — and that accounts for the scream we heard which was stifled.”
“They had to work fast from the time we first rang the chimes,” Drake said. “Of course we could hear the sound of people moving. It must have been—”
“It was probably all of fifteen seconds,” Mason said. “A lot could have been done in fifteen seconds. If that girl had only screamed earlier, we’d have been smashing our way in instead of standing there at the door like a couple of nitwits.”