Detwiller said, almost reluctantly, as though he felt it was taking an unfair advantage: “I was.”
“Corroboration?” snapped Lindsey.
They all O.K.’d it. “Yeah.”... “That’s right, he was.”
“Then you’re out of it,” Lindsey told him. The band-leader looked apologetically at the others, as though he would have been glad to take the rap if he could have.
“Who was next?”
“Armstrong,” said Kershaw, and the girl nodded.
“I was starting to fall asleep already,” she said, “but I remember the sound of his slamming the door roused me for a minute. I looked up and Kersh and Thatcher and — Frankie — were still here with me.”
“And after him?” He looked at Kershaw. No answer. He looked at Frankie. The latter’s eyes dropped and he stared down at the floor. He looked at the girl finally. “I can’t help you out on that one,” she said almost defiantly. “I was sound asleep by then. That time the door didn’t wake me.”
“I was pretty binged,” Kershaw drawled unwillingly, kneading the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t care to get a pal in Dutch by saying something I ain’t one hundred percent sure of. It seems to me Bligh and Thatcher and Billie were still in here, though. I kind of remember saying ‘Good-night’ three times. That’s the only way I can tell.”
“Don’t be so damn noble on my working-time,” Lindsey squelched him. He turned back to Frankie again. “How about it? You want to use the out your pal here is giving you?”
He looked up and met his sister’s gaze. She stared at him hard without saying a word. “No,” he groaned. “I guess what I told you in the beginning still goes. I was pretty high and hazy, but I remember being alone in here with Thatcher at the very end. Billie, too, of course, but she was asleep.” Then his voice rose, he shook his manacled hands pleadingly toward the dick. “But I know I didn’t do anything like that! I wasn’t in any condition even to figure out that I could snare him by means of the loop in that light cord. It was all I could do to find the stairs and get up them—”
“I’m sorry, Bligh,” said Lindsey, “but the opportunity jibes, too. There’s my two out of three. I’m going to have to hold you. The rest of you can go.”
Chapter Three
Kill Crazy
As they filed out one by one giving him sympathetic looks, Dusty went to him and rested his hand encouragingly in his bowed shoulder for a minute. “Buck up, kid,” he murmured, “we’re with you. We’ll get you out of this. You’ll be back laying it in the groove with us in no time!” Then, all business again, he hurried out, remarking: “I gotta get down to the Mad House[1] in a hurry and see if the Warden[2] can find me someone to take his place. That means a rehearsal too, to break him in—”
The door closed and Lindsey saw that the girl was still sitting there on the piano bench, hadn’t gone with them. “Wouldn’t grasping that wire, pulling it, even though it was heavily insulated, have left burns or marks on the palms of whoever did it? Frankie’s hands are smooth and white.”
“So are everyone else’s. I took a look at them all. That don’t amount to a row of pins anyway. It would have been easy enough to slip on a pair of gloves or even twist a folded handkerchief around them.”
“I want to talk to my brother alone for a few minutes, won’t you let me do that, please?”
He motioned the other two dicks toward the door, and went out after them.
As soon as the door had closed, Billie went over beside Frankie. He was holding his head dejectedly with both hands, even though they were linked. “I’m scared, Sis,” he moaned. “I got a feeling I’ll never be able to get out of this! And I didn’t do it. You gotta believe me!”
“I know you didn’t do it. But that’s why you’ve got to answer me. You’ve got to tell me why you acted so funny this morning, when I caught you behind the bathroom door, hiding up there. You knew about it then, already, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he whispered fearfully. “I came down here again after I left the first time. I was full of weed, but my idea was vaguely to wake you up so we could go back to our own flat together. It must have just happened. I thought I saw a shadow duck behind those empty ashcans, at the end of the passage out there. And then when I opened the door, the light was out in here. He was already up there. I didn’t see him, but I stumbled around and went into him face-first. I could feel his legs hanging limp before me. You know how the weed’ll give you the horrors over anything like that. I got ’em bad. I forgot about you being in here. I forgot about calling for help. I only wanted out. I beat it upstairs and hid in that bathtub. That’s all it was, sis, just bad kicks from the weed. But I can’t tell them that. If I tell them, they’ll be surer than ever I did do it. I can’t prove I didn’t, not even to you, but somehow I know it wasn’t me. You see, I wouldn’t have been so scared if I had done it. The mere fact that I was so scared shows I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t turn on any shower. My hair was that wet from my own cold sweat coming out all over me. What am I going to do?”
“You’re pretty badly sewed up,” she admitted worriedly. “And with every move you’ve made, you’ve only made it look worse for yourself. The way you bolted for that door, when he first said murder, and then fainted dead away in the cop’s arms out there.”
“Nerves,” he said. “You don’t know what that weed does to you the day after. And then, knowing that I was the last one down here, and that I’d had that fight with him over you last night when he gave me the black eye—”
The door opened and Lindsey came in again. “Time enough?” he asked the girl. He motioned his assistants. “Take him with you, boys.”
Frankie stumbled to his feet, pale and terrified, as though he were going to be executed instantly. “Pull yourself together, Frankie,” the girl urged. “The truth’ll come out, it’s got to. It looks bad now, but remember it’s always darkest before the dawn.”
Then as the door closed, she turned back to the dick again. “And now it’s you that I’d like to talk to.”
“Shoot,” he consented, eyeing her curiously.
“I know my brother never did that.”
“I do too,” was the unexpected answer.
It took her a half-minute to get her breath back. “What? Well then, why did you have him taken in for it?”
“There are a couple of good reasons. Officially we’ve got a swell circumstantial case against him that I can’t ignore at this stage of the game. I’d be remiss in my duty if I didn’t have him booked for murder, after what’s been brought out. Secondly, it’ll be a good deal easier to catch whoever did do it, if he thinks he’s fooled us, thinks we aren’t still on the look-out for him. He’ll be off his guard this way.”
“How come you’re giving Frankie the benefit of the doubt?”
“Simply my knowledge of human nature. He acted so damned, flagrantly guilty, that he couldn’t be anything but innocent. That may sound paradoxical but it’s true nevertheless. If he’d been guilty, no matter how frightened he was, he’d at least have tried to cover himself up. He didn’t even try. He’s a nervous wreck, his control all shot. That made him do and say the very things he wanted to avoid most. Now was there anything more you wanted to speak to me about?”
“Yes,” she said. “It may be disloyal to Dusty and the boys, it may wash us up as an organization, attach a jinx to us, but I can’t help it. My brother’s life is at stake. Mr. Lindsey, this thing’s happened twice before.”
“What?” His jaw dropped. Then he clamped it decisively shut again. “Let’s hear about it,” he said.