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moment.
"Who all's here, Regan?" he asked.
"This LaVarre dame, for one. She's asleep. Want me to go wake her up for you?"
There was a faint note of hopefulness in the voice of the policeman.
McCracken shook his head. "Who else?"
"The landlady. And this Carson guy, the comic. He's one of the two that heard
Essington in his room. He's in Number Two. Essington's is Number Six, right
across the hall from the parlor where they found the stiff. It's unlocked."
"How's the LaVarre woman fixed for alibis?" McCracken asked.
Regan grinned. "Triple-barreled. She was out with three guys all at once. I
heard the Homicide gang questioning her. Sure you don't want me to wake her up
for you?"
"Keep your mind on your work, Regan. I suppose somebody's in back, on guard
there?"
"Sure. Kaplan. You know him, don't you?"
McCracken went down along the dark hallway to the parlor. Bell was looking
around painstakingly. McCracken's gaze went about the room quickly, noted the
position of the body that had been marked in chalk on the floor before the
sofa that stood diagonally across one corner of the room. There were half a
dozen flash bulbs in the wastepaper basket in the corner.
"He must have been sitting there," said Bell, pointing to the sofa. "If he was
stabbed and fell off, that'd put him in about the position those chalk marks
show.
The killer could have been hid-den right behind that sofa when he came in and
sat down. Then he stood up, reached over his shoulder and stabbed him."
McCracken nodded. "That's about it. And if it is, that means he was killed
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early, almost as soon as he got here. Say, a crocheting needle isn't so long,
is it?
Must have been fitted into some sort of a handle, like an ice pick. Well, we
can find about that later. You don't think you'll find the ring in here, do
you?"
Bell shrugged. "Probably not. Probably never find it, but I've got to turn in
a report to the company. I want to be able to tell 'em I went over things with
a fine-tooth comb."
McCracken crossed over and looked out the window.
"Whoever hid behind that sofa could have come and gone this way," he mused.
"And come and gone by the alley. There's a cellar door right outside. You can
come in this way easy."
Bell nodded. "There's fingerprint powder on the sill there. The Homicide boys
thought of that, too. But what about Perley? He's too screwy on his story to
figure out of it. Why'd he lie about not having been here until two o'clock?"
McCracken grunted. "That's the only thing against him, really. I want to talk
to one of the persons who heard him, or say they did."
He walked out into the hall, down two doors, and knocked. After a minute, a
tall man in a worn bathrobe came to the door and said, "Yeah?" He had the sad,
bored air most comedians have when they aren't working at the trade.
"Carson?" McCracken asked.
"That's me, yeah."
"You like this Perley Essington? Was he a friend of yours?"
"Huh? Sure, he's a swell little guy. A bit nuts, maybe. But he's good on the
boards."
"As good as he thinks he is?"
"Well, maybe not that good," Carson said. "Maybe none of us are. It's an
occupational disease. What do you want?"
"I want to hear your side of what happened last night." The tall man put a
hand to his head. "Oh, Lord! Again?" He started to close the door. "Four cops,
and three reporters, and --"
McCracken caught the door and held it. "Then once more won't hurt you," he
said. "Besides, I'm on Perley's side. I'm working for him, trying to punch
some holes in the case against him."
"Why didn't you say so? Come on in." He walked back to the dresser to get the
bottle standing on it. "Have a drink?"
"Two fingers. The main thing is are you sure it was Perley you heard?"
"Yes and no. I wouldn't swear it was him, but if it wasn't, it was somebody
pretty good. There aren't many that can come close to him on that warble
stuff. I've heard lots of imitators. Straight whistling, yes, but not on the
imitations."
"What time did you hear it first, and what time last?"
Carson lifted a glass and clinked it against the one he'd handed McCracken.
When he'd downed the glass' contents, he said:
"I got home about ten-thirty, maybe eleven. I had a good mys-tery story I
wanted to finish, and I was reading." He rubbed his chin. "It was sometime
between then and midnight that it started. And kept up maybe half an hour, off
and on. And it was in Perley's room. I went past the door when I went to the
bathroom once about twelve, so I'm sure of that."
"Did you look in the parlor then?" McCracken asked.
"No. I think the door was closed. But I didn't have any reason to look in, so
I
didn't."
"You're not sure about the time. Couldn't it have been two o'clock, maybe, if
you'd lost track of time while you were reading?"
"No. I went to bed at twelve-thirty, see? I did look at my clock then, and my
watch too, to set it. I could be wrong by it being earlier, but not later."
"And the other fellow who heard it?"
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"Name's Bill Johnson. Yes, he's sure, too, that it was somewhere around
midnight."
McCracken sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. He tried another tack.
"Birds outside, maybe?" he asked.
"No, too loud," Carson said. "And I never heard birds sing that much or that
loud around here before. Anyway, it'd have to be a flock of different kinds of
them.
And--let's see--robins don't sing at night, do they? Robin's about the only
bird call
I'm sure of, and I heard that."
"How good was Slimjim Lee? Perley was teaching him, he says."
Carson shook his head firmly. "No, but definitely. I've heard him, and he
could carry a tune, but that's about all. And he wasn't sure where he'd carry
it. No, pal, this stuff was good. If it wasn't Perley, then he's got a rival."
"How about the radio?"
"I thought of that, afterwards," Carson said. "But it couldn't have been. The
place was as quiet as a morgue, around then, and I'd have heard the announcer
shooting his mouth off between imitations. Anyway, no bird imitator could stay
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