“I remember you, Mr. Paradine.” Her tension relaxed, and she trembled, swayed toward him, clutched his shoulders for support. “You re kind,” she said, “to talk nonsense while I — please help me. No, you’ve got to go away! You can’t mix into this.”
“I thought I’d hang around a while. Where’s your dad, Molly? He wasn’t at his bar.”
“He’s dead,” the girl said thinly, on the verge of hysterics. “He’s been murdered. You can’t mix into this. The police want me. Two days they’ve been looking for me. They think I killed Dutch Tiemann. They arrested me, and Tiemann’s gangsters snatched me away from them. I got away from them too. They’re both after me now. You can’t come into this. I want you to go. They’re hunting me.”
Paradine looked over her head at the gaping basement door, then down at a little glimpse of red hair under her hat. She was a tall girl, beautifully made. She didn’t want him to go. That was only courage finding speech. He said:
“I know that. I know how Tiemann died. I was talking with Captain Shapiro only two days ago.”
“You can’t mix into this,” whispered Molly Hanifin. “My father’s dead. He’s dead.”
Paradine glanced over his shoulder. A square figure in blue was strolling up the block on the other side. Paradine shoved the girl gently through the basement doorway; closed the door silently behind them.
“Where is he, Molly?”
Her hand guided him down a musty hall to the rear of the basement. The total darkness and the silence were heavy things.
“What is this place, Molly?”
“It’s empty,” she whispered. “It’s one of the houses my father owned. Condemned. Fire laws or something. They’re going to tear it down.” She stopped at the end of the hall. Her voice was no longer a whisper, but had the growing sharpness of anguish:
“Mr. Paradine — this room here. Put out your hand — you’ll find the door. Have you got matches? I can’t go in. I can’t. I’ll wait for you here. Oh, don’t go. Don’t leave me. Please help me. I can’t go in.”
“Don’t get hysterical, Molly.”
“I won’t. I won’t.” There was returning sanity in her voice. Paradine struck a match and, holding it high, stepped into the room.
Ed Hanifin had been a big man, big in many ways. Newspapermen thought so when he was in the ring; they thought so after he sprained his back and couldn’t fight any more, because he never whined about it. They thought he was pretty big when he started Hanifin’s Bar and Grill and made it a place after their own hearts until Prohibition put the lid on it. Even then Hanifin stayed big: he was no bootlegger; his place became just a hash-joint; he made it a good hash-joint and let it go at that. And when the great drouth ended, Ed Hanifin came into a belated second blooming, and the new generation of scribblers loved him as the older one had done.
He was big now, in death.
He sat propped against a corner of the bare room, and his large gray eyes staring nowhere had so much peace and dignity, it was as though they asked you not to mind the hideous hole in his chest through which his blood had spilled. Ed Hanifin was a gentleman, and when someone had shot him through the heart he had died like one, accepting the inevitable, while his great body refused to be either pathetic or grotesque.
There was nothing in that small square room except death. No furniture; no signs of occupation; the single window was boarded up. Paradine returned to the hall, and his second match showed him Molly’s face, wet-cheeked, quiet.
“Who did that?” he asked. “You know.”
“If I knew — whoever did it would die. I’d live long enough to see to that.”
“You two were hiding out here?”
“I was. He never ran away from anything. He brought me here and stayed here to take care of me. I had to go out, to get food for us. I was less conspicuous than he was, with his white hair and a head taller than anybody else. He stayed under cover just so as not to give me away.
“Maybe three hours ago I got back with some food. We’d fixed up a room upstairs. I went up there; didn’t find him, so I waited for him. He went out too, after dark, two or three times. He wanted to do — something, for me. Never mind what. I waited for him a long time. I got frightened. Finally I began to look, here in the house. I found him. Then I ran out front. If I knew who’d done it—”
“It won’t bring Ed back to have the State burn you for murder.”
“They will anyhow,” she said, “for Tiemann’s murder. They found my hand-bag up at his place, in Tiemann’s hand,” said Molly Hanifin.
“The cops didn’t give that to the papers,” said Paradine. “They didn’t tell about the mob snatching you away, either, though it should have been front page. I suppose the cops are sensitive about such things. That’s the impression I got, talking with Captain Shapiro.”
“Why don’t you go?” said Molly. “I’m wanted for murder. You can’t mix into it. You’ve been kind. You helped me; kept me from going to pieces entirely. God knows, you’ve done enough. I want you to go.”
Paradine said, “Did you kill Tiemann?”
“No.”
There was a banging at the iron grille door. Paradine said, “You’ve got to get out of here. Where’re the stairs?”
A hard official voice barked:
“Open up there! Don’t stall, Hanifin. Police. Open up!”
“Here!” Molly choked, tugged at Paradine’s hand. They ran up the creaking flight to the pitch darkness of the first floor. The basement door rattled violently.
“Open up, Ed Hanifin! We know all about it. The back’s covered; you can’t lam out of it. Want us to break it down? Get sense, Hanifin.”
“They want him too?” muttered Paradine, as they ran up, flight after flight.
“No, no! They’re after me. They must’ve been tipped off that he was with me.”
The basement door slammed inward.
On the roof the wind flung snow in their faces. Molly had guided Paradine this far, but on the roof she stared around her, lost and confused. There was an unbroken stretch of six four-story houses, and then a ten-foot drop to the roof of a three-story building near the corner. Paradine let down his six-foot bulk over the edge, dropped the remaining four feet and held up his arms.
Molly jumped. Paradine caught her, eased her down, and ran to the front of the roof, staring over into the street. He saw the friendly red eye of his roadster at the curb below.
Molly said, “Fire-escape?”
“No good. Trap us in the back yard.” Paradine strode to a square of skylight. “This’ll be somebody’s skylight bedroom, I think,” said Paradine, and drew up his foot. “I love other people’s bedrooms,” and his heel crashed down, splintering the frosted glass with shattering noise and powdery upheaval of snow. Paradine flung himself down at once, thrusting his arm through the break; he found the fastening and jerked the skylight up on snarling hinges. He swung over into black uncertainty, hung on the edge of the frame a moment and then let himself go with knees relaxed, landing on the floor without losing his balance.
Someone squawked. There was the padding of bare feet, and a harsh overhead light flared on. Paradine looked into the empty face of a gayly pajamaed young man.
“Son, you’ll just have to ignore this.”
The young man said, “But, wha—”
“All clear, Molly! Let yourself down.”
Paradine caught her waist, breaking the force of the drop. The young man in pajamas was waving one fist, digging with the other at his eyes; Paradine put four fingers on his chest and shoved. The young man sat down.