“A red bead, or a synthetic ruby, pierced for stringing on a necklace,” he said, “and I think there’s another one a little farther on. Let’s see.”
The officer obediently elevated the flash. Once mote there was a dull gleam of angry red from the darkness.
“From the direction he was travelin’,” said the officer.
Zoom picked up the second bead, stalked back to the corpse.
“Look in his hands,” he ordered.
The officer pried open the left hand. It was empty. He pulled back the fingers of the right hand. Half a dozen red beads glittered in the reflection of the flash light, glowing red and angry, their color suggestive of drops of congealed blood.
Sidney Zoom scowled thoughtfully.
“Is that a bit of white thread there?” he asked.
The policeman bent forward.
“It is that. What do you make of it?”
Zoom stared in unwinking thought at the small cluster of red gems. “They may be genuine rubies. I doubt it. They look like synthetic rubies. Notice that they graduate slightly in size. Evidently they were strung on a necklace. There’s a chance, just a chance, that the necklace was worn by the one who fired the fatal shot, that the man clutched at this person, caught the necklace in his hand and ripped out a section of it.
“Then, when that person fled from the shooting, there were more of the rabies that dropped... but I doubt it.”
The officer lurched to his feet, letting the body slump back upon the wet pavement.
“It’s gettin’ too many for me,” he said. “I don’t want to leave the body, even if I do know you’re all right. You go in that apartment house and get a telephone, notify headquarters.”
Zoom nodded.
“Stay there, Rip,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
The dog slowly waved his tail in a single swing of dignified acquiescence, to show that he understood. Zoom crossed the street to an apartment house.
The outer door was locked, the lobby dark.
Zoom’s forefinger pressed against the call button below the apartment marked “Manager” until he had received a response. When a fat woman with sleep swollen eyes came protestingly to the door, Zoom explained the situation, was given a telephone, called headquarters and reported the finding of the body.
Then he returned to the officer. The dog was crouched down upon the wet pavement, his head resting upon his paws. He thumped his tail upon the pavement by way of greeting, remained otherwise immobile. The officer was going through the papers in the pocket.
“Seems to be a man named Harry Raine,” he observed. “There’s a bunch of letters and papers here. Looks like he tried to carry all his correspondence in his pocket. The address is here, too. It’s out West Adams Street, 5685. And here’s some legal papers, looks like he’d been in a lawsuit of some kind.
“The papers have been carried around for some time. You can see where pencil marks have rubbed off on ’em and polished up until they’re slick.”
Zoom nodded. He was studying the face of the dead man.
“Ain’t you interested in these papers?” asked the officer.
Zoom’s expression was one of dreamy abstraction.
“I’m more interested in the possible character of this dead man,” he observed. “He looks to me like an old crank, a man who never smiled, who had no compassion, no kindness. Look at those hands! See the gnarled grasping fingers... Do you believe in palmistry, officer?”
The policeman grunted scornfully.
“Baloney,” he said.
Zoom said nothing for a matter of seconds.
“It’s strange,” he remarked, “how character impresses itself upon every portion of a person’s body. Hands, feet, ears, shape of the nose, the mouth, the expression of the eyes... everything is shaped by that intangible something we call a soul.”
The officer, squatted on the wet pavement by the side of the corpse, lurched to his feet.
“You’re talkin’ stuff that don’t make sense,” he growled. “This here is a murder case, and the law has got to catch the person that did the murder. What’s the character of the dead man got to do with the thing?”
Sidney Zoom’s reply consisted of one word.
“Everything,” he said, and then reached for the papers which had been in the pocket of the corpse.
The officer grunted his disbelief.
“Murders,” he observed, “are everyday affairs. Handle ’em as routine an’ you get somewhere. Identify the dead guy, see who wanted him bumped, round up the evidence and maybe give a little third degree at headquarters, an’ you’re ready for the next case.”
Sidney Zoom said nothing. In the distance could be heard the wailing of sirens.
“There are powder marks on the back of the head,” said Sidney Zoom, after the siren had wailed for the second time. “Let me see your flash light.”
The officer handed him the flash light. Zoom circled the gutter with its rays, steadied his hand abruptly, pointed.
“There it is.”
“There what is?”
“The empty shell. See it, there in the gutter? He was shot with an automatic. The ejector flipped the shell out into the street, the running water from that last burst of rain washed it down into the gutter.”
The officer bent himself with an effort, picked up the shell.
“You’re right. A forty-five automatic.”
The siren wailed again. Lights glittered from the wet street, and the first of the police cars swung into the cross street, then hissed through the water to the curb.
Another machine, followed close behind. Then there sounded the clanging gong of an ambulance. Thereafter, events moved swiftly.
Chapter III
The Girl in Apartment 342
Detective Sergeant Gromley was in charge of the homicide detail, and he heard the officer’s report, checked the facts from Sidney Zoom, and started the men gathering up the various dews.
They started tracing the trail of the blood-red beads, found that they led to an apartment house some fifty yards away. They were spaced almost at even intervals, and they glistened in the rays of the searching spotlights.
The district was largely given over to apartment houses, and the wailing sirens had brought watchers to the windows. The cloud rifts drifted into wider spaces and tranquil stars shone down upon the concrete canon of the sleeping street.
Officers started checking details, trying to find if any one had heard the shot, if any one had noted the time, if there had been any sound of running feet.
Sergeant Gromley scanned the apartment house where the trail of red beads ended and uttered an exclamation of triumph as he pointed to the row of mail boxes in the vestibule, each faced with a printed name cut from a visiting card.
“Notice the apartment 342,” he said. “The name’s been torn out of there within the last half hour or so. See, there’s a wet smear on the cardboard backing, and... it’s a little smear of blood. See it?”
He turned toward the lobby where a man in a bath robe was peering curiously.
“Where’s the manager?”
“I own the place. My wife and I run it.”
“Who’s the tenant in apartment 342?”
The man scowled, ran his fingers through his tousled hair.
“I ain’t sure. I think it’s a woman. Rainey or some such name. That’s it, Raine, Eva Raine, Ain’t her name on the mail box?”
The officer laughed. “Come on,” he said to the little cluster of broad shouldered assistants who had knotted around him in a compact group. “Let’s go.”
They went, crowding into the elevator. Sidney Zoom took the stairs, his dog at his heels.