"You didn't issue the policy?"
"Heck, no. I saw him a few times and pretended to give it consideration only because he was a friend of Lee's. I wanted to keep Slimjim's good will, and that meant I had to go easy with Perley."
At Headquarters, they found Zehnder alone in his office. He barked an order into his desk phone.
"I'm having your Mocking Bird sent up here," he said. "If you want to talk to him in private before you go, Mack, you can do that in his cell when we send him back. Okay?"
McCracken nodded. "Sure. It won't matter, if he's innocent. And if he's guilty, I don't want it."
Zehnder chuckled. "Then I'm afraid you're out twelve bucks."
"Any news on the ring?" Bell asked.
The captain shook his head, but before he could add to the negation, the door opened.
A fat little man, whose head was as devoid of hair as a banister knob, came in.
A uniformed turnkey was behind him, but stepped back into the hall and closed the door from the outside when the captain signalled to him.
"Mack," said Zehnder, "this is Perley Essington. Your client, maybe. You said you already know him, Bell?"
McCracken put out his hand and shook the pudgy, moist one of the little bird imitator.
"Tell me about it, Mr. Essington," he said. "All I know now is what I read in the paper."
The little man beamed at him. "I saw the paper," he said. "It's right as far as it goes. I wasn't home when Jim Lee came there at midnight."
"How do you know he came at midnight, then?" asked Zehnder.
Tim McCracken frowned at the captain. "Tut, tut, Cap. It says so in the paper. Don't you read the Blade? Or haven't you got three cents?" He turned back to the vaudevillian. "Where were you at midnight, Mr. Essington?"
"Call me Perley, Mr. McCracken," the actor said. "Why, at midnight, I was just walking. After the show I went for a walk in the park. It was a warm night, and I didn't get home until about two o'clock. I didn't know Jim was coming around last night."
"See anyone you knew while you were out?" McCracken asked.
"Nope." Essington shook his head. "And you'll ask next if I stopped in anywhere. I didn't. I sat on a park bench for awhile and listened to a nightingale. I had a sort of conversation with him. Like this."
He pursed his lips, and suddenly the little room was filled with a sweet, lilting melody. The clear notes throbbed to silence. McCracken saw that Jerold Bell, who was standing behind Perley's chair, was grinning at him.
McCracken cleared his throat. "Say, that's good, Perley. You that good on other birds?"
"Better," said the little man complacently. "On some, even the birds can't tell the difference. On the stage, I'm a wow. And I have a line of patter with the whistling that knocks them out of their seats and rolls them in the aisles. Just last week, the manager was telling me that I was the greatest--"
"That's fine," interrupted McCracken. "But let's get back to Slimjim Lee. How well did you know him?"
The look that had been in Perley's eyes while he talked of the stage faded to awareness of the present.
"Very well," he told them. "I guess he was just about my best friend, and vice versa. Yes, I know most people think--thought--it was funny, because Jim and I are--were--so completely different. But I guess that was why we liked each other."
"You saw him often?"
"He came to see me two-three times a week. Generally after the evening show.
We'd play chess or whistle until nearly morning."
"Whistle? Late at night?"
"Sure. He liked whistling. But he couldn't very well, and I was teaching him how. He just couldn't get the knack of it."
"But didn't the other roomers--"
"Not in a place like that, Mack," Jerry Bell cut in. "They're all slightly nuts. It's liberty hall. Last time I was there, there were acrobats jumping off the banister at four o'clock in the morning. Slimjim took me there after a game."
Zehnder nodded. "Yeah, I've been there," he said, "and I'd believe anything.
We picked up a guy there a month ago."
"Cap," McCracken asked, "could that have any connection with this case, maybe?"
"No. Simple theft case, and the guy's up now, doing three years. He was a stranger to the rest of the mob there, anyway."
McCracken glanced at Perley for confirmation, and got it.
"None of us knew him well," the whistler said. "He wasn't an artist like the rest of us. He painted pictures."
McCracken closed his eyes for a second, then opened them and asked the bird imitator:
"What do you know about Jim Lee's affairs? I've heard he was broke, or nearly so. If you're a. friend of his, you ought to know about that."
"I do, Mr. McCracken. He was hard up, that is, for him. He ran a lot of bookie places, you know, or rather he backed them. Then the syndicate--the Garvey-Cantoni group that runs the numbers game--moved in and took them over.
He didn't fight them about it. He wasn't a gangster and he didn't want to start a war.
And that's what it would have been if he'd tried to buck them."
Zehnder cut in.
"Perley's right about that. We're working on that syndicate, and we close a place now and then, but we haven't got much on them yet. They're bad boys, though."
"Then why," McCracken wanted to know, "suspect Perley when you've got some really tough mugs that might have a motive?"
"But they haven't," said Perley. "Jim Lee wasn't fighting them. Of course, they could have killed him for his ring, but--" He shrugged.
"What about that crochet needle Lee was killed with, Perley?" McCracken asked. "Was it one of yours? The captain says crocheting is your hobby."
For the first time, the little man seemed on the defensive as he answered.
"The police seem to think it's funny that I should like to crochet," he complained. "That's silly. Why, lots of men do. And it's good for the nerves, and it gave me something to do when Jim and I played chess. He took so long between moves."
"Was it one of your needles?" McCracken demanded.
"It could have been." Perley shrugged again. "I have lots of them."
"It was exactly like others in his room," said Zehnder.
Jerold Bell was getting restless.
"The devil with crocheting needles," he said. "I just dropped in here to see if there was any news on the ring. I think I'll go on around to Vermont Street and help the boys there look for it. Coming, McCracken?"
"In a minute, Jerry." He turned to Zehnder. "Listen, Cap, the main thing I want to know, is why you're holding Mr. Essington? Thus far there isn't any evidence against him, except that he hasn't an alibi he can prove."
Zehnder grinned. "It ain't that he can't prove he wasn't there. It's that we can prove he was, see? He says he didn't get home before two. But two people there heard him in his room, between half past eleven and half past twelve."
"You mean they heard someone in his room?"
"Nope. Him. Like always when he's in his room alone, they said, he was whistling to himself. Bird calls and stuff. Even a dog imitation."
Perley Essington whirled indignantly. "Dog imitations!" His voice was shrill with indignation. "Why, I--"
"How do you know it wasn't Slimjim Lee they heard, waiting for Perley?"
McCracken asked Zehnder. "If he was learning how to whistle -- ?"
Again Perley, still indignant, interrupted.
"Mr. McCracken, that isn't possible," he said. "Nobody would mistake Jim Lee's whistling for mine. They couldn't. He was just learning, and he just whistled straight, whistled, not bird calls."
His voice rose now:
"No, nor anybody else whistling, either. Nor a phonograph record, or anything like that. One young whippersnapper of a policeman suggested that. There isn't another artist in the coun-try who could possibly have been mistaken for me by the people who room there and who know my work."