Джон Данн - Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 44, No. 5, September 28, 1929

The inspector stared at him.

“What do you mean, it didn’t last long?”

“That’s more fact. I saw the whole of it!”

Easier’s jaw dropped; Gregory’s went up at a sharp angle. Their voices were one:

“Saw it?”

Sergeant Brill folded his arms and impressively cleared his throat.

“I saw it, Hawley saw it, and so did all these people sitting around here. I guess I could dig you up even more if I had to. You ought to know Panton Street, inspector. Along this block they’re boarding houses, mostly. And you know how boarding house crowds’ll go for the stoops on a hot night.

“I and Hawley were paying a call ourselves. We’ve got a sort of mutual friend — a lady friend, see? — that lives at No. 38. We were on her stoop. Just chinnin’ along, you know. And then, all of a sudden, somebody starts yellin’. The noise came from over here, in No. 31.”

Gregory challenged that brusquely.

“Aren’t you guessing, sergeant?”

Brill shook his head.

“Not a bit of it. It was Hammett yellin’. And he hollered out Easier’s name. That is, his first name. He was beggin’ ‘Bradley’ not to kill him.”

He glanced along the line of his witnesses for confirmation, and got it in a series of nods. Gregory’s gray face tautened, and his eyes went to Easier’s. For the first time they expressed a doubt.

Brill allowed a pause to let one sensation sink in before proceeding to the next. Then he resumed:

“There was a bright light upstairs, and the room it was in was where the hollerin’ seemed to come from. The shade was down, but—”

“Then you couldn’t actually see anything?” Gregory wanted to know, still covertly watching Easier.

Brill grinned.

“If you mean faces, no,” said he. “But figures — yes! They were between the lamp and the window. They were as clear on the shade, almost, as I see you now against the light.”

Gregory’s sharp chin went up again.

“They?”

“That’s what I said — and that’s the clincher, inspector! There were two men in that room. And they were scufflin’. I leave that to anybody.”

He solicited further corroboratory nods, and was not disappointed. A thin-haired man spoke up:

“That’s the truth, inspector. I testify to it — and I was on the force once myself. There were two men upstairs in No. 31. Their shadows were on the shade. I just caught a flash of them, fighting; saw one take a clip at the other. After that they got out of the line of the light, but it wasn’t another second before the shot was fired.”

“It’s right,” some one else assented breathlessly. “Just what I saw!”

Gregory took a cigar from his pocket and for a little ruminatively chewed its end. His shrewd eyes studied Brill’s parked witnesses, and nowhere along the line of them could he discover dissent. He walked to Easier and dropped a hand on his thick shoulder.

“Brad,” he said gently, “It doesn’t look so good. I know that Hammett has had it in for you all these years. If he got you here to trim you, if you had to let him have it to protect yourself, I want you to tell me.”

The color had drained from Easier’s face, leaving it with a pasty and blotchy pallor.

“They’re all — crazy,” he said unsteadily. “Trying to pin it on me! I don’t know any more than I told you. There wasn’t anybody but Hammett in that room when I got up there. Maybe there had been somebody. Maybe it’s fact what they say about seeing two shadows on the shade. But I can’t say anything about that.”

Gregory stood away from him, searched his ashy face.

“It’s not so good,” he repeated. “Look here, Brad! You and I have been friends for a good many years. The best I could ever do for you wouldn’t be too good. You know it. You’ve helped me when I needed help, and I’m not forgetting it.

“But there can be times, Brad, when a man’s best doesn’t mean much. Times when he hasn’t any choice. This is one of them. All I can advise you to do is come clean. And that’s a friend’s advice, remember. There’s been a killing here, and I’ve got a policeman’s duty ahead of me. No matter how it hurts, there’s no getting away from it.”

Easier dropped into a chair, and threw out his hands.

“I’m through,” he said. “What’s the use of going all over it again? You’re as cuckoo, Gregory, as any of the rest of ’em. I don’t know what it’s all about. I didn’t see anybody but Hammett in this house since I got here. I didn’t see anybody coming in or anybody leaving, front or back. I didn’t shoot Hammett. Didn’t raise a hand to him. When he was shot, I was sitting right in this same chair where I’m sitting now. If the back of the house is all locked, maybe nobody skipped that way. If a lot of people were watching the front and say that nobody went out — well, maybe nobody did. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself. I’m licked!”

Gregory sighed and shrugged, and turned to Brill.

“I suppose, sergeant,” he said stiffly, “that I ought to congratulate you on another piece of good work. Mr. Easier seems to be your prisoner. It’s time, I think, to warn him that anything he says in regard to this matter may be used against him.”

Avoiding Easier’s startled eyes, he passed a thin hand wearily over his forehead.

“Now, Brill,” he said, “we’ll have a look upstairs. And you come along, too, Hawley!”

At the door of the lighted room with the drawn shade, Gregory stopped to ask a curt question:

“Everything’s been left the way it was?”

“Exactly,” said Brill.

The spectacled medical examiner, who had followed them upstairs, answered with a nod.

“Naturally,” he said. “I opened the man’s coat. That was all.”

Gregory gnawed the dry cigar while his eyes roved.

“Looks as if Hammett put up a fight,” he observed. “See that lamp?”

Jim Hawley was looking at it.

“Strong, isn’t it?” he asked. “It’s a wonder the filament didn’t break when it went over. I never saw one of those high-power lamps that’d stand a lot of jar.”

Gregory, without comment, walked into the room and picked up the revolver that lay beyond Hammett’s sprawled feet. He held it close to the upset reading lamp. From the crowd on the sidewalk a strident voice came up as he bent to examine it:

“Look! The cops are up there now!”

The inspector saw the shadow of his head on the shade, magnified to giant proportions.

“That’s how it was, eh?” he murmured. He moved back out of the light stream, and turned the gun over. “Not a sign of a finger-print,” he said. “The revolver won’t tell us anything — unless we can trace it.”

Sergeant Brill patted a complacent yawn.

“Do we need to have it tell us anything, inspector?” he queried. “Did you ever see so many witnesses to a murder in your life? Or a case so open-and-shut?”

Gregory said nothing. He put down the gun carefully upon the exact spot where it had lain and picked up the pencil with which he had marked its proper place. A glint of white under Hammett’s body caught his eye then. He stooped, and gingerly plucked at the edge of it. A moment afterward he was by the lamp again, examining a rumpled silk handkerchief.

“Now, that’s sort of funny,” he reflected, aloud.

Hawley saw what he meant by that. The handkerchief was knotted at either end. He looked hard at it, and then harder still at the reading lamp, on its side at the near end of the mission table.

“No!” he said suddenly. “It isn’t?”

Gregory straightened and stared at him.

“What’s that?” he demanded. “What are you saying, Hawley?”