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  “In the meantime the office force had rushed into the room. Seeing it dark, they snapped the switch. That turned the lights in the room off. They were on already. Perkins had counted on that. He then screwed in the fuse plug. That left the lights ready to come on when someone punched the switch again.”

  Sergeant Home slowed the car almost to a crawl. His forehead was washboarded with thoughtful concentration.

  “That’s a wild alibi to make,” he said. “Even a jury wouldn’t believe that, but—”

  He paused, and his voice trailed off into silence. The car continued to crawl along at a snail’s pace.

  “But,” said Corning, “for some reason or other you think it may be so, eh?”

  Sergeant Home spoke after the manner of one who is merely thinking out loud. “The tip on this unwritten law angle came from Perkins,” he said. “He’s the one that gave us all the dates and stuff.”

  Ken Corning said, slowly: “You’ve got that?”

  “We’ve got Perkins’ word for it,” said Home. “The dead man can’t talk, and we can’t find his wife—Colton’s wife.”

  Ken Corning said: “Well, how’d you like to prove the facts as I’ve given them to you? How’d you like to nail this case on Perkins with absolute proof?”

  Sergeant Home shook his head. “Don’t be foolish, Corning. It can’t be done.”

  Corning countered with a question.

  “You’re on the square, Home, but your department’s honeycombed to such an extent that Perkins would know any important development that broke, wouldn’t he?”

  Home frowned. “He would if it ever got to the department, and wasn’t kept entirely under my own dome.”

  “Okey,” said Corning, “this thing is going to be handled so it won’t be kept under your own dome. But Perkins will never smell it for what it is. It’s bait for a trap. Can we get a shorthand reporter who’s a good one?”

  “I guess so,” said Home, staring meditatively and unseeingly at the road which was flowing past them at a slow pace as the car purred steadily along the deserted thoroughfare.

  “Let’s go, then,” Corning told him, his face grim and purposeful.

  Ken Corning called his office from the public pay station. Helen Vail’s voice answered. She sounded sleepy.

  “Been waiting long?” asked Corning.

  “So so. Thought you were going to come up and give me some dictation, Ken.”

  “I am. You wait right there until I get there. But I won’t be there for a little while. There’s been a matter come up that’s most important.”

  He paused, wondering if she would give him a lead.

  “You mean on that Colton murder case?” she asked eagerly.

  “Yes,” he said, lowering his voice as though thereby making the confidence more safe. “You see there’s a key witness in that case who’s really been overlooked by the police. She’s Althea Kent, the secretary for Ladue. The murderer knows of her, but thinks he’s got her under his thumb.

  “I just talked with her, and I’m going to meet her again later on. She’s gone out now, but she’ll be back. She says she won’t make any statement for publication in advance, but she will give me the facts in the form of an affidavit. I can call her as a surprise witness, and when I put her on the stand, she’s going to tell the whole truth.”

  “Gee,” said Helen Vail, “that’ll be swell, Kenneth. You bust that murder case wide open, and the newspapers will give you all the publicity you can handle.”

  Ken Corning said: “Okey. Don’t say anything to anyone. Wait there and be ready to go out and take that affidavit when I call you. Have your notarial seal ready. G’bye.”

  “G’bye,” she said, and the receiver clicked in his ear.

  Ken Corning hung up. Home said: “Good work. Your line’s tapped. That conversation’ll be at headquarters inside of five minutes, all typed out. Let’s go.”

  They went, went in a police car, four of them; a shorthand reporter who was bored, a technical man who was anxious, Home who was grim, and Ken Corning who was jubilant.

  They went to the apartment house where Althea Kent had her apartment, the place where Ken Corning had called on her earlier in the evening. They filed into an adjoining apartment which had been secured through the police influence of Sergeant Home, and equipped in record time under the supervision of the technical expert.

  There was a table, a drop light with a green shade, giving to the surface of the table a white glare of illumination. The shorthand reporter sat down at the table. The technical expert busied himself with a last minute inspection of certain matters of wires and the arrangement of a disc-like contrivance.

  A telephone rang.

  Sergeant Home answered it, listened for a moment, said: “All right!” and hung up.

  He turned to the tense group about the table, their faces showing drawn and white under the glare of the incandescent, “She’s coming in,” he said.

  After a few moments the disc-like contrivance gave forth little humming noises. The technical expert cocked his head to one side.

  “She’s telephoning from the other room,” he said.

  Another period of tense silence, then the telephone again. Once more Sergeant Home lifted the receiver, listened, said: “All right,” and hung up.

  “Perkins,” he said, “is on his way. He was waiting.”

  The reporter tested his fountain pen, spread his elbows, gave his notebook a final adjustment. There was the faint sound of knocking, then the voice of Althea Kent, sounding metallic and flat, but perfectly distinct:

  “You! What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t to come near me!”

  A man’s deep voice growled a surly answer,

  “You know damned well what I’m doing here, you two-timing little—!”

  “Say, are you cuckoo? What’re you talking about?”

  “You know. You saw that lawyer this evening, didn’t you?”

  “Sure I saw him. What about it? I thought he was another of those tabloid boys that wanted a leg picture for the front page. I got good legs, and I’m proud of them. He turned out to be a lawyer, so I played clam on him and showed him the door.”

  Perkins laughed, and the laugh was not pleasant.

  “Played clam, eh? Like hell you did! You came to an understanding with him you’d spill the works when you got on the stand.”

  The girl’s voice was shrill and hysterical.

  “My—!” she screamed, “you’re crazy. Take your hands off of me!”

  Then the deep voice, sounding vague and indistinct.

  “You damned little—I’ll tear your tongue out by the roots if I thought you’d try that stuff. And you have. I’ve got the deadwood on you. He telephoned his office and spilled the beans. We had the wire tapped!”

  There was the sound of confused noises coming through the disc. The shorthand reporter laid down his pen, looked expectantly at Sergeant Home. Home said: “Okey, boys,” and barged towards the door.

  They sent their shoulders against the door of the adjoining apartment. The door smashed inwards, shivering on its hinges, the lock torn loose from the wood. Perkins was choking the woman with one hand, beating her with his fist, cursing.

  He was going about it with a grim intentness of purpose which made him temporarily oblivious of the sound of that crashing door. Then he looked up and saw them. His hand flashed towards his hip pocket. Sergeant Home stepped forward. His great broad shoulders swung in the perfect timing of a golf professional making a drive. His right shoulder sank a bit at the last, as his hand shot out in a wicked blow.

  Perkins went back.

  The light shone for a moment on his heels as the feet flung up from the floor. Then he hit with a jar that shivered the pictures on the wall and set glassware clattering.

  The girl staggered to a chair. Her clothing was torn from her shoulders. Her lips were bleeding. One eye was closed. Hair was about her face in wild confusion, and there were livid marks on her throat.
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br />   “The dirty— —” she said. “Accuses me of squealing, does he? All right, damn him! If that’s the way he feels about it I will get a load off my chest. I’ll give this burg a blow-off it’ll remember for a while.”

  Sergeant Home turned to the shorthand reporter.

  “Get this, Bill,” he said.

  Corning left headquarters at one o’clock in the morning.

  His hat was on the back of his head, his hands were thrust deep in his side pockets. He was smoking a cigarette, and the corners of his mouth were twisted in a faint smile.

  He called a cab, gave it the address of his rooms, yawned his way up the stairs, and flung himself into a chair. He looked at the clock, yawned, started to undress.

  Suddenly his eyes widened. He stared at the clock again, blinked, reached for his shoes and trousers.

  “Damn!” he said.

  He had his clothes on and a cab at the door within five minutes. He gave the driver the address of his office. “And make time,” he added. At the office he went up the stairs and let himself in with his key. The outer office was dark, but there was a ribbon of light coming from the underside of the door to the private office.

  He pushed the door open.

  Helen Vail was lying in his swivel-chair, tilted back, her feet up on the desk, legs crossed. Her eyes were closed and her mouth open. She was gently snoring. On the desk beside her was an ash tray with the ends of a score of cigarettes in it. The little flask of whiskey which he had taken from a drawer when he had tried to revive Mrs. Colton from her faint was on the desk beside her. It was empty.

  Ken Corning stood in the doorway, took in the sight, and chuckled. Then he said: “Stand by for a time signal. When you hear the gong it will be precisely fourteen minutes past two o’clock in the morning!”

  And then he made a deep, bonging noise in imitation of a gong.

  Helen Vail stared at him, took her feet down from the desk, rubbed her eyes, and made little tasting noises with her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

  “I presume,” she said, “you think you’re being funny. My—it is two o’clock, and after!”

  He grinned at her.

  “Gee, I’m sorry, kid. I busted that Colton case wide open, and we’re going to have notoriety of sorts. The ring has crawled in a hole and pulled the hole in after it. And, incidentally, they’re laying for me. If they ever get me now—Good-night!”

  The girl got to her feet, straightened her skirts, then ran careful fingers up the seams of her stockings. “In other words,” she said, her head down, eyes inspecting her hose, “you clean forgot that I was waiting up here, in accordance with your iron-clad instructions!”

  He said: “Aw, Helen, have a heart! I …”

  She sighed and said: “Well, I had a hunch I should have done exactly what you told me until that telephone call came in, and then I had a hunch to go home. I should have followed that hunch!”

  He smiled, a little wistfully, and said: “You talk as though good jobs grew on bushes. You can’t go home now, anyway. You’ve got to go find Mrs. Colton and break the news to her. She’ll be wild with suspense.”

  Helen shook her head.

  “Not that baby,” she said. “I got the bell hop to stake us to a quart of liquor before I changed my clothes and came up here. She’ll be bye-bye.”

  Ken Corning sighed. “You sure do take liberties with my clients and my expense money. We’ve got to wake her up and tell her, anyway. She’ll be glad to know George Colton was framed all the way through. But it’s hell from my standpoint. Colton doesn’t even know I was representing him!”

  And he grinned.

  “Meaning you won’t get any more fee?”

  “Meaning I won’t get any more fee,” he told her.

  “Cheer up. You’ll get the fee for handling her divorce. She’s all washed up. She had been two or three years ago, but Colton wouldn’t let her break away. He’s one of those obstinate men who want to dominate everybody.”

  Ken Corning shook his head and said: “No. I won’t handle her divorce. There’s been too much talk already. Perkins had a lot of dope and the tabloids will be hounding her again as soon as Perkins gets off the front page. She’s got to go to Reno, and she’s got to take the first train out.”

  Helen reached for a red-backed legal directory.

  “Oh, well,” she said, “we can at least look up some good attorney in Reno to send her to. Then we’ll get a cut on the fee.” And she started thumbing over the pages, while, from the street outside, the calls of the early newsboys informed belated stragglers of the sensation which had broken in the Colton-Ladue case.

  The Top Comes Off, Black Mask, December 1932

  Close Call

  KEN CORNING STOOD IN HIS OFFICE, feet planted well apart, eyes very cold. They surveyed the officer in coal-black appraisal, steady, hard, hostile, and with obvious annoyance.

  “I tell you,” he said, “that I don’t know where Mr. Dangerfield is.”

  “He’s your client,” said the officer.

  “That doesn’t mean I’m his keeper, does it?”

  The detective, who had been standing back of the officer, thrust his way forward.

  “Just so there won’t be any misunderstanding about this, I want to state that we hold a warrant for the arrest of Amos Dangerfield. He’s charged with the murder of Walter Copley. Apparently he’s in hiding, and, apparently, he consulted you before he went into hiding.”

  Ken Corning said: “All right. Now that you’ve got that off your chest, I still don’t know where he is.”

  The detective sneered.

  “And I presume you mean to imply that, if you did know, you wouldn’t tell us. Is that right?”

  There was a knock at the door of the office.

  “Come in,” said Ken Corning.

  The door opened. Helen Vail, his stenographer, thrust her hatted head through the opening.

  “I was a little late,” she said. “I heard voices, and wondered if you wanted anything.”

  Corning smiled affably at the officer and the detective. “Yes,” he said, “I want you to come in here and be a witness. These gentlemen are trying to trap me into being an accessory after the fact. I wish you’d take a notebook and take notes of the conversation. And don’t bother about taking your things off.”

  Helen Vail sized up the situation with alert, intelligent eyes. She reached out through the opening in the door, snatched a notebook from her desk which was by the door, grabbed a pencil, dropped down into a chair, crossed her knees, opened the book on her knee, and said: “Go right ahead. I’m ready.”

  Ken Corning said: “Your question was, I believe, whether or not I would tell you where Mr. Dangerfield was, if I knew. Permit me to remind you again that, as I don’t know, the question is beside the point.”

  The detective said: “All right. Now you’ve got that off your chest, you’ll admit that we told you we had a warrant for his arrest?”

  “Certainly,” said Corning.

  “You’re a lawyer. You’d oughta know that it’s a crime to shield anyone accused of murder.”

  Ken Corning smiled.

  “This man came to you, charged with murder, and you advised him to skip out,” charged the detective.

  “I most certainly did nothing of the sort,” replied Corning. He was smiling now, a smile of cold scorn.

  “You knew he was charged with murder.”

  “I did not.”

  “You knew he was going to be.”

  “I am not a mind reader, nor am I a prophet.”

  “You know it’s a crime for a lawyer to listen to a man confess to murder, and then advise him to skip out before a warrant can be issued.”

  “Perhaps. How about if a man tells you he’s innocent of a murder, but thinks he may be charged with it?”

  “Is that what Dangerfield told you?” asked the detective. Corning’s voice was edged with scorn.

  “Since you’re quoting law,” he said, “you might lo
ok up some more law and find that whatever a client tells his attorney is a confidential and privileged communication.”

  The officer said to the detective: “We ain’t getting anywhere, Bill.”

  The detective nodded.

  “Listen, guy,” he said, “you’re new to York City. You’ll find out that you can’t be so damned high and mighty and make it stick. This place ain’t healthy for smart alecks like you.”

  Corning strode forward towards him. His eyes were cold, scornful and very hard.

  “I’ve heard all from you that I want to hear. Get out. My secretary has taken down your threat. It will be available if anything should happen to me.”

  The detective laughed, a mirthless cackle of sound.

  “Okey,” he said to the officer, “let’s go. Maybe when we come back we’ll have a warrant for this guy.”

  Ken Corning stood in the center of the floor and watched them leave the office. When the door had clicked shut, Helen Vail dropped her notebook on the chair, thrust the pencil in her hair and took off her coat.

  “What a sweet morning I picked to be late,” she said.

  Ken Corning grinned at her.

  “It’s okey, Helen. They didn’t get anywhere. Just trying to run a cheap bluff.”

  “How long you been here, Chief?” she asked.

  “Since two o’clock this morning.”

  “Since two o’clock! Good grief! Why didn’t you call me?”

  “No use. Nothing for you to do.”

  “Something broke?”

  “I’ll say. It’ll be announced in the papers in an hour or two. The police suppressed the news until it was too late for the regular morning papers. They’ll probably run an extra.”

  “What was it?” she asked.

  “Walter Copley, editor of The News, was murdered.”

  She whistled.

  “What’s our connection with it?” she asked.

  “We’re retained by Amos Dangerfield. The police claim that it was his car that did the killing.”