The lift stopped at the top floor. From there the police inspector and the hotelier took the stairs to the roof.
“This door should be barred on the inside,” said Weiss with some asperity, as they stepped out into starlight.
“Somebody has unbarred it,” said Martineau calmly. “I suppose one could get off this roof without going back into the hotel?”
“There are four fire escapes.”
“Show me,” said the policeman.
Devery and Ducklin arrived, a little leg-weary. They followed the other two men around the roof.
Two of the fire escapes gave access to the hotel yard. The third was in a side street, and quite near to the front of the hotel. The fourth was near the back, and it zigzagged down into the narrow alley between Little Sefton Street and Lacy Street.
“I guess he made his departure by this route,” said Martineau, leaning over the parapet and looking down. “He could have used any of them, but this is the likeliest.”
Far below, there was a very faint, brief glow of fire. Some uniformed policeman, detailed to watch that way of escape, was holding a forbidden cigarette in his cupped hand. A fugitive on the roof would have seen it. It was very bad police work; a man having a smoke in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
Martineau was not stirred by the facile indignation of the superior officer. He was not even slightly annoyed. His mood was one of extraordinary calm.
“I wish I had some used light bulbs, good big ones,” he said, and the others laughed.
He stood up straight, and looked out over the starlit city. He was above it looking down, because Granchester, after the fashion of English provincial cities, did not have many buildings taller than eight stories. The light of street lamps reflected on darkened windows sent faint illumination skyward, so that there was a glow even where lights could not be seen. Distantly, steam from some huge condensers shone eerily white, while in another direction the red glare of a steelworks could be seen. Even at this late hour fumes from many, many chimneys drifted upward, and the stars had smoke in their eyes.
Away down below there was the sudden hoarse bray of an adolescent male excited to mirth. It sounded like the veritable voice of ignorance. A creature of the abyss?
Martineau quoted: “‘Hell is a city much like London-a populous and a smoky city.’ Much like Granchester too, if you ask me. Who wrote that?”
There was no immediate answer, then Weiss said: “Do you really want to know?”
“No, Mr. Weiss, not really. I’m just trying to impress these two dumb coppers. Shelley, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” said Weiss, in a tone which suggested that any puns or limericks about Shelley would not be appreciated.
Martineau looked over the parapet again. From the height the alley seemed to be very narrow. It almost looked as if a fugitive could jump, across and downward, from the fire escape to the roof of the four-story building across the alley. Yes, he decided, an active man could do it, but there was no point in it.
“It looks as if our man got clean away,” he said. “Up the fire escape, through the first window he could open, down the service stairs and into the cellar: then up to the roof via the service lift, down the fire escape, and away. Perfectly simple. He’s quite a boy, is our Don. Quite a boy.”
His words were a true reflection of his mood. Four times in a few days he had crossed the trail of Starling, without ever getting near him, and he was beginning to be philosophical about it. His intuitive feeling, that he would have a chance to arrest the man, might be nothing more than a strong wish. Every policeman in the city might feel the same. It was a large city, and a very big world. He could not count upon being the man among thousands who would find another. It was better to be easy about it. “If I set eyes on him, he’s mine,” was the attitude. “If I don’t, well, good luck to the man who gets him.”
It was to be expected, now, that Starling would try to get away from Granchester. If he did the obvious thing-which could also be the double bluff-he would head for Liverpool and the docks. The Liverpool police were expecting him. They were looking out for him.
But if he stayed in Granchester even a day longer… The police were methodically blocking the rat holes. They would find him.
Martineau casually shone his torch on the lower roofs, then turned away. “We can’t be sure he’s gone,” he said to Weiss. “In the morning there’ll have to be a thorough search of the hotel. I’m afraid we can’t do it tonight, with all your guests asleep in bed.”
“I should say not!” said Weiss.
“Tonight, though, we’ll search as far as we can without disturbing anybody. All unoccupied rooms and service rooms.”
The Swiss nodded. He did not like having the police in his place, but he was a reasonable man.
20
Sustained by coffee made by the night porter, the C.I.D. men stayed on duty at the Royal Lancaster throughout the night. When the hotel had been searched except for the bedrooms, Martineau arranged with the obliging manager to spread a network of plainclothesmen and hotel employees in the morning. The men would be stationed at strategic points looking along corridors, so that Starling could not move about if he were still in the hotel. And as the suites and bedrooms became unoccupied at the breakfast hour, they would be searched by floor valets and police. So long as there was a slight possibility that Starling might be in the hotel, the search had to be made, though Martineau himself summed up the general opinion by saying that it was like looking for a needle in the wrong haystack.
At Police Headquarters, Superintendent Clay was also up and doing, directing a wider search than Martineau’s. Within the city boundaries there were check points, foot patrols, motor patrols, and roving detectives following information and hunches. Outside the city, in Borough and County areas, a second, wider cordon was in operation. In places further distant, country policemen and city detectives had Starling’s likeness and description stuck in their pocket books and imprinted on their memories.
It was an army searching for one man, in a land where the habits and ideals of the people make the prolonged survival of a hunted criminal almost an impossibility, and where geographical obstacles preventing his escape are enormous. He might evade capture for a few days, or even a few weeks, but eventually…
Superintendent Clay was soberly confident that Don Starling would be captured
PART IV
1
At ten o’clock in the morning, with the breakfast dishes washed, the beds made, and the old man safely out of the way in the shop, Silver Steele blithely climbed the stairs to the top floor, to make a preliminary assault upon the dust and dirt which lay upon her grandfather’s huge collection of Victorian “antiques.”
She carried a vacuum cleaner and a cardboard case containing a flexible pipe and extension brushes because, first of all, she had to remove the thick dust which lay upon everything.
She put down her tools and looked around. Sunlight was streaming dustily through the windows of the big, square warehouse room. On two sides she could see blue sky and a vista of roofs, on the third side there was the back view of some big shops in Lacy Street, and on the fourth side, across the alley, were the third-floor windows of the Royal Lancaster Hotel. She blushed warmly as she imagined what the people in the hotel rooms would think about the dusty windows of her grandfather’s top floor.
She worked for a few minutes, moving along with the humming cleaner, then she stopped. She had a feeling that someone was watching her. Her glance went to the hotel windows opposite. She thought that one of the chambermaids might be wanting to wave to her.