“I’m from the New York Globe,” I said solemnly. This brought him to a full stop. He was about to walk off. Then he changed his mind.
“How come you were inside there if you’re on the Globe? They haven’t let any reporters in since the old bastard was blown up.”
I explained to him.
“Oh, I know about you,” he said. “You’re one of the suspects. The Senator’s public relations man.”
I said that I had been the latter, that I doubted if I was the former.
“Well, anyway, the big arrest is going to take place soon.” He sounded very confident.
“Is that so?”
“So we were tipped off … sometime in the next twenty-four hours Winters is going to arrest the murderer. That’s why I’m hanging around … deathwatch.”
“Did they tell you who he was going to arrest?” (I would rather say “whom” but my countrymen dislike such fine points of grammar.)
“Damned if I know. Pomeroy, I suppose. Say, I wonder if you could do me a favor. You see.…” I took care of him and his favor in a few well-chosen words. Then I caught a taxicab and rode down to the Senate Office Building.
This was my second visit to the Senator’s office; it was very unlike the first. Large wooden crates filled with excelsior were placed everywhere on the floor. Two gray little women were busy packing them with the contents of the filing cabinets. I asked for Mr. Hollister and was shown into the Senator’s old office. He was seated at the desk studying some documents. When I entered he looked up so suddenly that his glasses fell off.
“Ah,” he sounded relieved. He retrieved his glasses and waved me to a chair beside his own. “A sad business,” he said, patting the papers on the desk. “The effects,” he added. There was a long pause. “You wanted to see me?” he said at last.
I nodded. I was playing the game with great care. “I thought I’d drop by and see you while I was downtown … to say good-by, in a way.”
“Good-by?” The owl-eyes grew round.
“Yes, I expect I’ll be going back to New York tomorrow … and since there’ll probably be quite a bit of commotion tonight we might not have a chance to talk before then.”
“I’m afraid.…”
“They are going to make the arrest tonight.” I looked at him directly. His face did not change expression but his hands suddenly stopped their patting of the papers; he made two fists; the knuckles whitened. I watched everything.
“I assume you know whom they will arrest?”
“Don’t you?”
“I do not.”
“Pomeroy.” I wondered whether or not I had ruined the game; it was hard to tell.
He smiled suddenly, his cheeks rosy and dimpled. “Do they have all the evidence they need?”
“It would seem so.”
“I hope they do because they will be terribly embarrassed if they’re not able to make it stick. I’m a lawyer, you know, and a very thorough one, if I say so myself. I would never go into court without ultimate proof, no sirree, I wouldn’t. I hope that Lieutenant is not being rash.”
“You don’t think Pomeroy did it, do you?”
“I didn’t say that.” He spoke too quickly; then, more slowly, “I mean, it would be unfortunate if they were unprepared; the murderer might get away entirely, if that was the case.”
“And you wouldn’t like to see that?”
“Would you?” He was very bland. “You forget, Mr. Sargeant, that it is not pleasant for any of us to be suspected of murder. Even you are suspected, in theory at least. I am, certainly, and all the family is, too. None of us like it. We would all like to see the case done with, but if it isn’t taken care of properly then we are worse off than before. Frankly, something like this can do us all great harm, Mr. Sargeant.”
“I’m sure of that.” I sat back in my chair and looked at the bare patch on the wall over the mantelpiece where the cartoon had been. Then I fired my last salvo: “Where are those papers you took from the study the other night? The night you shoved me downstairs?”
Hollister gasped faintly; he adjusted his glasses as though steadying them after an earthquake. “Papers?”
“Yes, the ones you were looking for. I assume you found them.”
“I think your attempt at humor is not very successful, Mr. Sargeant.” His composure was beginning to return and my shock-treatment had, to all intents and purposes, failed. I looked at him coolly, however, and waited. “I did not take the papers,” he said, smiling. “I admit that I should have liked to but someone else got them.”
“You are sure of that?”
Hollister chuckled but his eyes were round and hard despite his smiling mouth. “Perfectly sure.” At that moment the telephone rang; he picked it up and talked to some newspaperman, very sharply, I thought, for someone in public life; but then his public life was over, at least as far as the Senate was concerned. “Wolves!” he groaned, hanging up.
“Closing in for the kill.”
“Closing in for what?”
“The arrest … tonight, I am told.”
Hollister shook his head gloomily. “Poor man. I can’t think why he did it; but then he has a most vindictive nature, and a terrible temper. He depended a great deal on the Senator’s backing in Washington. It was probably too much for him to bear, being turned down like that.”
“I have a hunch that there will be a good deal of singing, though, as the gangsters say.” I was beginning to talk out of the side of my mouth, the way private eyes are meant to talk. I caught myself in time: this was, as far as I could recall, the first time in my life I had used the word “singing” in its underworld sense.
Mr. Hollister looked properly bewildered. “I mean,” I said, “that in the course of the trial a lot of very dirty linen is going to be displayed. I mean, Mr. Hollister, that all your political dealings with the Senator will become known.” This was wild; I forged ahead in the dark. “The papers you wanted and which you say someone else got will be very embarrassing for all concerned.” I was proud of my emphatic vagueness; also of the effect I was making.
“What are you trying to tell me, Sargeant?” The soft-soap political manner was succeeded by an unsuspected brusqueness. He was near the end of the line.
“That Pomeroy is going to tear you to pieces.”
Hollister half-rose in his chair; before he could speak, the telephone rang again. He picked it up impatiently; then his manner changed. He was suddenly mild. “Yes, yes. I certainly will. Anything you say. Yes. Midnight? Fine. Yes.…” His voice trailed off into a series of “yeses” accompanied by little smiles, lost on his caller. When he hung up, he changed moods again. “I’m sorry, Mr. Sargeant, but I have a great deal of work to do, packing up the Senator’s papers and all. I don’t know if you’ve heard the news but Governor Ledbetter has just appointed himself to succeed to the Senator’s unfilled term and we’re expecting him tomorrow. Good afternoon.”
3
The Chevy Chase Club is a large old-fashioned building outside Washington, in Maryland. There is a swimming pool, a fine golf course, lawns, big trees, a lovely vista complete with fireflies in the early evening, in season; but we were not in season and my information as to the fireflies and so on was provided by Ellen as we taxied from Washington to the Club. She waxed nostalgic, relating episodes from her youth: in the pool, on the courts, on the course, even on the grass among the trees, though the presence of the innocent Langdon spared us a number of unsavory details.
We had had no trouble getting away that evening, to my surprise. Mrs. Rhodes was properly hoodwinked and the Lieutenant, when we called him to ask permission to go off for the evening, gave it easily. The arrest was going to be made after all, I decided. I wondered if I should leave the dance early so that I could be on hand for the big event. Langdon and Ellen would doubtless be so absorbed in one another that my early departure would not be noticed.