VII
Ten minutes later three uniformed policemen arrived. All three knew Tennant, and they treated him with respect. Tennant reeled of the story he and the girl had cooked up, with a few changes to take care of the shot that had been fired from the nickeled gun and our roughhouse. She nodded her head vigorously whenever a policeman looked at her. Tennant turned both guns over to the white-haired sergeant in charge.
I didn’t argue, didn’t deny anything, but told the sergeant:
“I’m working with Detective-Sergeant O’Gar on a job. I want to talk to him over the phone and then I want you to take all three of us down to the detective bureau.”
Tennant objected to that, of course; not because he expected to gain anything, but on the off-chance that he might. The white-haired sergeant looked from one of us to the other in puzzlement. Me, with my skinned face and split lip; Tennant, with a red lump under one eye where my first wallop had landed; and the girl, with most of the clothes above the waistline ripped off and a bruised cheek.
“It has a queer look, this thing,” the sergeant decided aloud; “and I shouldn’t wonder but what the detective bureau was the place for the lot of you.”
One of the patrolmen went into the hall with me, and I got O’Gar on the phone at his home. It was nearly ten o’clock by now, and he was preparing for bed.
“Cleaning up the Gilmore murder,” I told him. “Meet me at the Hall. Will you get hold of Kelly, the patrolman who found Gilmore, and bring him down there? I want him to look at some people.”
“I will that,” O’Gar promised, and I hung up.
The “wagon” in which the three policemen had answered Cara Kenbrook’s cal carried us down to the Hall of Justice, where we all went into the captain of detectives’ office. McTighe, a lieutenant, was on duty.
I knew McTighe, and we were on pretty good terms; but I wasn’t an influence in local politics, and Tennant was. I don’t mean that McTighe would have knowingly helped Tennant frame me; but with me stacked up against the assistant city engineer, I knew who would get the benefit of any doubt there might be.
My head was thumping and roaring just now, with knots all over it where the girl had beaned me. I sat down, kept quiet, and nursed my head while Tennant and Cara Kenbrook, with a lot of details that they had not wasted on the uniformed men, told their tale and showed their injuries.
Tennant was talking—describing the terrible scene that had met his eyes when, drawn by the girl’s screams, he had rushed into her apartment—when O’Gar came into the office. He recognized Tennant with a lifted eyebrow, and came over to sit beside me.
“What the hell is all this?” he muttered.
“A lovely mess,” I whispered back. “Listen—in that nickel gun on the desk there’s an empty shell. Get it for me.”
He scratched his head doubtfully, listened to the next few words of Tennant’s yarn, glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, and then went over to the desk and picked up the revolver.
McTighe looked at him—a sharp, questioning look.
“Something on the Gilmore killing,” the detective-sergeant said, breaking the gun.
The lieutenant started to speak, changed his mind, and O’Gar brought the shell over and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said, putting it in my pocket. “Now listen to my friend there. It’s a good act, if you like it.”
Tennant was winding up his history.
“… Naturally a man who tried a thing like that on an unprotected woman would be yellow; so it wasn’t very hard to handle him after I got his gun away from him. I hit him a couple of times, and he quit—begging me to stop, getting down on his knees. Then we called the police.”
McTighe looked at me with eyes that were cold and hard. Tennant had made a believer of him, and not only of him—the police-sergeant and his two men were glowering at me. I suspected that even O’Gar—with whom I had been through a dozen storms—would have been half-convinced if the engineer hadn’t added the neat touches about my kneeling.
“Well, what have you got to say?” McTighe challenged me in a tone which suggested that it didn’t make much difference what I said.
“I’ve got nothing to say about this dream,” I said shortly. “I’m interested in the Gilmore murder—not in this stuff.” I turned to O’Gar.
“Is the patrolman here?”
The detective-sergeant went to the door, and called: “Oh, Kelly!”
Kelly came in—a big, straight-standing man, with iron-gray hair and an intelligent fat face.
“You found Gilmore’s body?” I asked.
“I did.”
I pointed at Cara Kenbrook. “Ever see her before?”
His gray eyes studied her carefully.
“Not that I remember,” he answered.
“Did she come up the street while you were looking at Gilmore, and go into the house he was lying in front of?”
“She did not.”
I took out the empty shell O’Gar had got for me, and chucked it down on the desk in front of the patrolman.
“Kelly,” I asked, “why did you kill Gilmore?”
Kelly’s right hand went under his coattail at his hip.
I jumped for him.
Somebody grabbed me by the neck. Somebody else piled on my back. McTighe aimed a big fist at my face, but it missed. My legs had been suddenly kicked from under me, and I went down hard with men all over me.
When I was yanked to my feet again, big Kelly stood straight up by the desk, weighing his service revolver in his hand. His clear eyes met mine, and he laid the weapon on the desk. Then he unfastened his shield and put it with the gun.
“It was an accident,” he said simply.
By this time the birds who had been manhandling me woke up to the fact that maybe they were missing part of the play—that maybe I wasn’t a maniac. Hands dropped of me; and presently everybody was listening to Kelly.
He told his story with unhurried evenness, his eyes never wavering or clouding. A deliberate man, though unlucky.
“I was walkin’ my beat that night, an’ as I turned the corner of Jones into Pine I saw a man jump back from the steps of a buildin’ into the vestibule. A burglar, I thought, an’ cat-footed it down there. It was a dark vestibule, an’ deep, an’ I saw somethin’ that looked like a man in it, but I wasn’t sure.
“ ‘Come out o’ there!’ I called, but there was no answer. I took my gun in my hand an’ started up the steps. I saw him move just then, comin’ out. An’ then my foot slipped. It was worn smooth, the bottom step, an’ my foot slipped. I fell forward, the gun went of, an’ the bullet hit him. He had come out a ways by then, an’ when the bullet hit him he toppled over frontwise, tumblin’ down the steps onto the sidewalk.
“When I looked at him I saw it was Gilmore. I knew him to say ‘howdy’ to, an’ he knew me—which is why he must o’ ducked out of sight when he saw me comin’ around the corner. He didn’t want me to see him comin’ out of a buildin’ where I knew Mr. Tennant lived, I suppose, thinkin’ I’d put two an’ two together, an’ maybe talk.
“I don’t say that I did the right thing by lyin’, but it didn’t hurt anybody. It was an accident; but he was a man with a lot of friends up in high places, an’—accident or no—I stood a good chance of bein’ broke, an’ maybe sent over for a while. So I told my story the way you people know it. I couldn’t say I’d seen anything suspicious without maybe puttin’ the blame on some innocent party, an’ I didn’t want that. I’d made up my mind that if anybody was arrested for the murder, an’ things looked bad for them, I’d come out an’ say I’d done it. Home, you’ll find a confession all written out—written out in case somethin’ happened to me—so nobody else’d ever be blamed.
“That’s why I had to say I’d never seen the lady here. I did see her—saw her go into the buildin’ that night—the buildin’ Gilmore had come out of. But I couldn’t say so without makin’ it look bad for her; so I lied. I could have thought up a better story if I’d had more time, I don’t doubt; but I had to think quick. Anyways, I’m glad it’s all over.”