“Wait a minute,” he said. “We’re playing this absolutely on the up-and-up. Wait until you’ve heard them all.”
The men repeated the formula in order. Moraine studied their voices. When it came his turn, he tried to simulate the bored weariness of men who were utterly indifferent to what they were doing, who were only following instructions because they dared not disobey.
“Sixth Avenue and Maplehurst, and drive like hell,” he said, mouthing the words rapidly but with no particular expression.
The man behind him took up the message.
When the last man had spoken the piece, there was silence. “Okay,” Barney Morden’s voice said. “Do you know any of those men?”
The voice of a man on the other side of the white gauze, sounding excited, said, “Sure I know him. It’s that fourth one from the end — the fellow with the red necktie. He ain’t talking like he talked when he got in the cab, but that’s him, and that’s his voice.”
Abruptly, a door snapped open. “All right, boys,” a man said, “file out.”
The men filed out, with that same shuffling gait. When Sam Moraine went through the door, the man took his arm.
“This way,” he said.
He led Moraine back down the corridor. The door opened. Barney Morden and Carl Thorne stepped through.
“This way,” Morden said.
Moraine followed them back to the room in which he had waited.
“You heard what the cab driver said,” Barney Morden remarked.
Moraine yawned.
“Was it the cab driver?” he asked. “Or was it just one of your men planted in there to throw a scare into me?”
Morden’s face flushed.
“You see,” Moraine remarked, “I’ve played so much poker with you, Barney, that I always like to see your cards before I let you take in a jack pot.”
Barney Morden sucked in his breath in a quick inhalation. His fist clenched. He remained tense for a minute, then said, “I’m giving you a chance, Sam. I’m playing fair with you. That bird was the cab driver. You’re the man that picked up that cruising cab and told him to go to Sixth and Maplehurst and drive like hell. Now, why did you go out there?”
Sam Moraine looked all around the room, let his face show disappointment. “There doesn’t seem to be a telephone here,” he remarked. “I wanted to call a lawyer.”
Morden lost patience. He leaned forward, let his eyes bore into Sam Moraine’s.
“I’ll tell you why you went out there,” he said. “You went out there because your secretary, Natalie Rice, had telephoned you and told you to come out just as fast as you could get out there. You got out and found that she’d shot Pete Dixon. When you got to playing around with the Hartwell woman, she tipped her mitt that she’d been out at Dixon’s. You sent Natalie Rice out to investigate. You were going, yourself, when Phil Duncan came to your office. You were afraid to go then, for fear you’d tip your hand, and the girl volunteered to go. She had your .38 revolver, and Dixon got rough with her. She shot him twice and made a squawk for help to you over the telephone. You rushed out.”
Barney Morden ceased talking. He was breathing heavily, as though he had been running. There was no sound in the room save that heavy breathing and the ticking of the clock.
Moraine yawned.
Morden’s face flushed.
“Let me try it, Barney,” Carl Thorne said.
Thorne hitched his chair around so he was facing Moraine. His voice was calm and suave.
“Now, listen, Moraine,” he said, “there’s no hard feelings between us. This is murder, and it’s got to be cleaned up. But there are lots of ways you can get the breaks. You’re friendly with Phil Duncan; I’m friendly with Phil Duncan. Barney Morden, here, is friendly with you — that is, he wants to be friendly if you’d only give him a chance. Now, no one knows exactly what happened in that room except Natalie Rice and Pete Dixon. Pete Dixon is dead. If you’d play ball with us, Natalie Rice could tell her story and there wouldn’t be anyone to contradict it. Dixon was a mean customer. He probably got rough with her. He started pawing her over. Maybe he tried to choke her or something and she shot in self-defense. Do you get me?”
Moraine shifted his eyes to meet those of Carl Thorne. His expression was that of one who is patiently waiting.
“Now, then,” Thorne said, “when you got out there, you went up to the room to see what the evidence was going to be like. You didn’t know what to do. The girl was hysterical. She didn’t know what to do. You wanted to look things over before you reached any decision. You went up there and found a bunch of documents lying around. They may have been all collected together in a pile — perhaps they were in a bag or something. Those documents had a lot of stuff in them that Dixon was intending to take before the grand jury. They were going to call him to-day as a surprise witness. He was getting stuff together. It was stuff he’d been collecting for months with a whole flock of detectives. Some of it was stuff that he’d stolen from me. He’d bribed Ann Hartwell to sell me out. He had her notebooks there and probably transcriptions of what those notebooks contained. He had a lot of other stuff. Some of it didn’t look so good.
“Now, then, Moraine, we want that stuff and we’re going to get it.
“You’re a smart man. You saw that Natalie Rice was in a spot, but you knew that if she controlled those documents, she could hold the whip hand.
“Now I’ll tell you what well do. If you’ll kick through with those documents, we’ll forget that Natalie Rice was out there, and we’ll forget that you went out there. We’ll put the hush-hush on this cab driver and let the newspaper boys play around with the unsolved mystery. If anything should happen and they put the finger on you, the district attorney will listen to Natalie Rice’s story and give it his official okay — whatever that story may be.”
“You’re speaking for Phil Duncan?” Moraine asked.
Thorne flushed, and said, “I’m speaking for the district attorney — whoever he may be — now or in the future.”
Moraine, glancing at the clock, said, “Could I use the telephone for a minute?”
“Who do you want to telephone to?”
“My lawyer,” Moraine said.
Thorne’s face purpled. He jumped to his feet and raised his voice in anger and excitement.
“You’re trying to protect that Rice woman,” he said, “and back of her there’s someone else. Don’t think we’re a bunch of damn fools and don’t think we’ve been asleep at the switch. You’re trying to protect her father, Alton G. Rice, who got out of jail and at the present time is hiding somewhere. He went to Natalie Rice’s apartment, and you went to that apartment and took him out with you, and, at the time you took him out, you were carrying a heavy suitcase. Now laugh that one off!”
Moraine yawned, patted his mouth with his four fingers and said, “Don’t shout, Thorne. I can hear you perfectly.”
Thorne turned to Barney Morden.
“Lock this son-of-a-bitch up,” he said, “and go get the Rice woman and give her the works.”
Barney Morden nodded, scraped back his chair, got to his feet.
“You’ve got one last chance, Sam,” he said.
Moraine started to chuckle.
“What’s the joke?” Barney Morden inquired savagely.
“I was just thinking,” Moraine said, “that if your story was correct and you held me here while you went out and searched my apartment, my automobile, and all the places you thought those papers might be, and didn’t find them so you could destroy them, and the foreman of the grand jury should find out I was held as a suspect and bring me before the grand jury, what an interesting situation would develop if those papers should appear before the grand jury and before you had a chance to destroy them.”