Dancer asks scornfully, “And then I suppose I knock him off and stir up all this fuss before I get the dough? What kind of a stumblebum does that make me out to be?”
Nick. “I’ll let you know in a little while. Take the witness, Lieutenant Abrams.”
Abrams. “I’ll tell you what kind of a stumblebum you are. You’re the kind that left fingerprints all over Phil Byrnes’ joint when you killed him.”
Caspar comes forward between Dancer and Abrams, saying “Lieutenant Abrams, I cannot allow—”
Dancer takes him by the back of the neck and pushes him out of the way, snarling “Shut up! Everything you say is used against me.” Then to Abrams, “Yeah, I was at Phil’s place last night and when I left he was on the floor with a split lip and a goog and a couple of dents in him here and there, but he was just as alive as you are, if that means anything.”
Abrams. “You mean you went up there when you had the switch pulled in your place?”
Dancer. “Yeah.”
Abrams. “What for?”
Dancer looks thoughtful for a moment, then says, “Okay, I don’t know what I’m letting myself in for, but I’m not going to let you hang any murder rap on me. This Robert was a sucker and Polly and I were taking him. Maybe it was some kind of check razzle-dazzle like he (jerking a thumb at Nick) said maybe it wasn’t. Even if it had been, what would be the sense of killing him? Nobody’d have believed him if he’d said he hadn’t forged his wife’s name. Maybe we even talked him into doing it; anyways, he’s cooled before we get anything. This guy,” jerking his thumb again at Nick, “says Phil followed Robert and Polly down the street. Knowing Phil, I figured he tried to stick Robert up that night and had had to kill him. I don’t like having a punk gum things up for me that way, so why shouldn’t I go over and push him around a little to learn him manners. But I didn’t kill him.”
Abrams asks, “Did you ever wear a wig?”
Dancer seems completely surprised. Then he says, “No, but you ought to see my collection of hoopskirts.”
Abrams asks Lum Kee, “Did you?”
Lum Kee says, “No,” pulling a lock of his hair. “Good hair — see?”
Abrams groans and says to Nick, “I hate comedians.” Then he asks Polly, “Did you?”
Polly. “No.”
Abrams. “Have you thought of anything that might have something to do with this layout?” indicating the window from which ladder is hanging, and earphones.
Polly. “No. But maybe this was all just a gag. Nobody came down and hit me on the head with that pipe and Robert wasn’t killed in my place.”
Nick asks her, “You know why that was, don’t you?”
Polly. “No.”
Francis says to detective standing beside him, “What a swell gal she’d be to take out — all she can say is ‘No.’ ”
Nick. “I’ll tell you. This mysterious Anderson, probably in a red wig, phony glasses, and gloves to keep from leaving fingerprints, was sitting up here at his listening post waiting for a good chance to come down and polish off Robert, and hearing most of the things that were said down there between you and Phil and you and Dancer and you and Robert, until he knew more about all of you than any of you did. But for one reason or another, he put off the killing until he learned that you and Robert were going away the next day. It was that night or never with him, but he got a bad break. Pedro came up and wanted to put a new rug down. That would have exposed the listening post and spoiled everything; so when he tries to talk Pedro out of it—”
Asta, who has been playing with David over by the open window, now lifts his leg against the chair.
Nora yells, “Asta!” Then complains, “Now I’ll have to take you out just when I was so interested. Couldn’t you wait until I get back, Nicky?”
David. “I’ll take him out for you.”
Nick to Abrams. “Murderers get funnier every year, don’t they?”
Abrams. “Huh?”
Nick. “Just when you get ready to arrest them, they want to take dogs out walking!”
Everybody looks at Nick in surprise.
Nick. “David is Anderson. He didn’t recognize Pedro any more than Robert or I did, but in spite of the disguise Pedro finally recognized him, just as Polly told us he’d recognized Robert. I suppose David gave him some hocus-pocus story, but Pedro, knowing Robert was spending a lot of time in the apartment just below this, probably knowing that Robert married Selma and knowing that David had been engaged to her when Pedro was working for Nora, and knowing Nora married a detective, thought he’d better change the lock and keep David out until he could come over and ask Nora’s and my advice. He was foolish enough to tell David what he was going to do and David followed him over and shot him in the vestibule.”
David turns to Nora, who is standing beside him by the window, and asks, “Nora, is he fooling?”
Nora says nothing. She is too busy listening to Nick, as are the others.
Nick. “Sure. And you were fooling when you said you hadn’t seen him since he worked for Nora and pretended you remembered him as a man with a long gray mustache. He’s got one now all right, but if you’ll look at that picture downstairs, you’ll see that it was neither very long nor very gray then. And what was Phil doing on your fire escape except to try to shake you down because we know he’d followed you and Polly that night? We know the boy liked to shake people down; but you weren’t alone that night, so he beat it and made a date with you for the next night and got himself killed.”
David protests, “But—”
Nick, paying no attention to him, continues “—and what do you suppose Pedro was trying to say when he died? That he’d been killed by Miss Selma’s young man, which would be a servant’s language for your status back when he worked for Nora.”
Selma says, “But Nick, why should David have killed him? He’d given him the bonds and Robert was going away.”
Nick. “He didn’t want Robert to go away — he wanted to kill him. That’s why he had to do it that night; otherwise he’d have had to hunt all over the world for him. Promising to pay him, with Polly knowing it, would make it look as though he had no reason for killing him. He intended killing him that night he met him, but Polly was along, so he couldn’t. But he followed him and shot him when he came out of the house.”
Selma. “I can’t believe—”
David grabs Nora and forces her backward out of the window so that only her legs are inside and she is held there only by his arms. His face has become insane, his voice, high-pitched and hysterical. He screams, “I’m not going to the gallows! Either you give me your word that I go out of here with a five-minute start, or Nora goes out of the window with me.”
The policemen’s guns are in their hands, but everyone is afraid to move except Lum Kee, who, standing by the corridor door, softly slips out, and Selma, who starts toward David, crying “David!”
David snarls, “Keep away, you idiot!”
Nick, talking to gain time, trying not to show how frightened he is, says to Selma, “See, he’s not in love with you. He was, but when you turned him down for Robert, he probably came to hate you almost as much as he did Robert. But playing the faithful lover let him hang around until he could get a crack at Robert. That’s why when he saw you hop around the corner with a gun in your hand right after he’d shot Robert from the car, he circled the block and came back in time to frame you while he pretended he was covering you up. He had probably meant to frame Phil or Dancer — which he did after he’d had to kill Phil while you were in jail.”