Ellery pricked up his ears when Pepper said, as the door closed behind Cheney and Hagstrom: “Seems to me, Chief, he’s getting away with murder.”
Sampson said quietly: “And what does that massive brain of yours think we have on him, Pepper?”
“Well, he ran away, didn’t he?”
“How true! But are you going to be able to convince a jury that a man is a criminal merely because he runs away?”
“It’s been done,” said Pepper stubbornly.
“Tommyrot,” snapped the Inspector. “Not a shred of evidence, and well you ought to know it, Pepper. He’ll keep. If there’s anything fishy about that young man, we’ll find it . . . . Thomas, what’s on your mind? You seem bursting with news.”
In truth, Sergeant Velie had been turning from one to another, opening his mouth and closing it again as he failed to find a crevice in the conversation. Now he drew a Brobdingnagian breath and said: “I’ve got two of “em outside!”
“Two of whom?”
“The dame Grimshaw scrapped with in Barney Schick’s dive, and her husband.”
“No!” The Inspector drew himself up sharply. “That’s good news Thomas. How’d you find her?”
“Traced her through Grimshaw’s record,” rumbled Velie. “She’s a certain Lily Morrison―ran around with Grimshaw in the old days. Got married while Grimshaw was in stir.”
“Get Barney Schick.”
“Got him waiting, too.”
“Great. Bring “em all in.”
Velie tramped out and the Inspector settled back expectantly in his swivel-chair. The sergeant returned in a moment with the redfaced speakeasy proprietor, whom the Inspector commanded to silence as Velie at once departed by another door. Velie returned shortly with a man and a woman.
They came in hesitantly. The woman was a veritable Briinnehilde, large and blonde and Amazonian. The man was a fitting mate―a grizzled giant in his forties with an Irish nose and hard black eyes.
Velie said: “Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah Odell, Inspector.”
The Inspector indicated chairs, and they sat down stiffly.
The old man began to fuss with some papers on his desk―a purely mechanistic exhibition performed for its effect. They were properly impressed, and their eyes ceased twitching about the office and concentrated on the old man’s thin hands.
“Now, Mrs. Odell,” began the Inspector, “please don’t be frightened; this is just a formality. D”ye know Albert Grimshaw?”
Their eyes touched, and hers drew away. “Why―you mean the man that was found choked to death in that coffin?” she asked. She possessed a throaty voice at the base of which something constantly churned. Ellery felt his own throat ache.
“Yes. Know him?”
“I―No, I don’t. Only through the newspapers.”
“I see.” The Inspector turned to Barney Schick, sitting motionless across the room. “Barney, do you recognize this lady?”
The Odells shifted quickly, and the woman gasped. Her husband’s hairy hand clamped on her arm, and she turned about with a pale effort at composure.
“I sure do,” said Schick. His face was wet with perspiration.
“Where did you see her last?”
“In my place on Forty-fifth Street. Week ago―near two weeks ago. A Wednesday night.”
“Under what circumstances?”
“Huh? Oh. With the guy that was croaked―Grimshaw.”
“Mrs. Odell was quarrelling with the dead man?”
“Yep,” Schick guffawed. “On”y he wasn’t dead then, Inspector―not by a long shot.”
“Cut the comedy, Barney. You’re sure this is the woman you saw with Grimshaw?”
“Nothin” else but.”
The Inspector turned to Mrs. Odell. “And you say you never saw Albert Grimshaw, didn’t know him?”
Her full over-ripe lips began to quiver. Odell leaned forward, scowling. “If my wife says no,” he growled, “it’s no―get me?”
The Inspector considered that. “Hmm,” he murmured. There’s something in that . . . Barney, my boy, have you ever seen this fighting Mick here?” He flung his thumb at the Irish giant.
“Nope. Can’t say I have.”
“All right, Barney. Go back to your customers.” Schick creaked to his feet and went out. “Mrs. Odell, what was your maiden name?”
The lip-quivering redoubled. “Morrison.”
“Lily Morrison?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you been married to Odell?”
“Two and a half years.”
“So.” The old man again consulted a fictitious dossier. “Now listen to me, Mrs. Lily Morrison Odell. I have before me a clear record. Five years ago one Albert Grimshaw was arrested and sent to Sing Sing. At the time he was arrested there is no record of your connexion with him―true. But several years before that you were living with him at . . . What was the address, Sergeant Velie?”
“One-o-four-five Tenth Avenue,” said Velie.
Odell had leaped to his feet, his face surcharged with purple. “Livin” with him, was she?” he snarled. “There ain’t a skunk breathin” can say that about my wife and get away with it! Put up your mitts, you old wind-bag! I’ll knock―”
He was crouching forward, huge fists flailing the air. Then his head jerked backward with a viciousness that almost snapped his vertebrae; it had moved in that direction under the iron urging of Sergeant Velie’s fingers, now clamped in the man’s collar. Velie shook Odell twice, as a baby shakes a rattle, and Odell, mouth open, found himself slammed back in his chair.
“Be good, you mug,” said Velie gently. “Don’t you know you’re threatening an officer?” He did not release his grip on Odell’s collar; the man sat choking.
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be good, Thomas,” remarked the Inspector, as if nothing untoward had occurred. “Now, Mrs. Odell, as I was saying―”
The woman, who had watched the manhandling of her leviathan husband with horror-struck eyes, gulped. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never knew a man named Grimshaw. I never saw―”
“A lot of “nevers”, Mrs. Odell. Why did Grimshaw look you up as soon as he got out of prison two weeks ago?”
“Don’t answer,” gurgled the giant.
“I won’t. I won’t.”
The Inspector turned his sharp eyes on the man. “Do you realize that I can arrest you on a charge of refusing assistance to the police in a murder investigation?”
“Go ahead and try it,” muttered Odell. “I’ve got influence, I have. You’ll never get away with it. I know Olli-vant at the Hall . . . “
“Hear that, Mr. District Attorney? He knows Ollivant at the Hall,” said the Inspector with a sigh. “This man suggests bringing undue influence to bear . . . Odell, what’s your racket?”
“Got no racket.”
“Oh! You make an honest living. What’s your business?”
“I’m a plumbing contractor.”
“That explains your pull . . . Where do you live, Irish?”
“Brooklyn―Flatbush section.”
“Anything on this bird, Thomas?”
Sergeant Velie released Odell’s collar. “Clean record, Chief,” he said regretfully.
“How about the woman?”
“Seems to have gone straight.”
“There!” flared Mrs. Odell triumphantly.
“Oh, so you admit you had something to go straight about?”
Her eyes, large as a cow’s, opened wider; but she stubbornly kept silent.
“I suggest,” drawled Ellery from the depths of his chair, ‘that the omniscient Mr. Bell be summoned.”
The Inspector nodded to Velie, who went out and reappeared almost at once with the night-clerk. “Take a look at this man, Bell,” said the Inspector.
Bell’s adam’s-apple joggled prominently. He pointed a trembling finger at the suspicious, glowering face of Jeremiah Odell. “That’s the man! That’s the man!” he cried.