The detective crossed to the door through which she had entered the room, found that it opened into a library, where a telephone stood in a corner. On the other side of the room a clock indicated 3:35. The detective went to the telephone and called Ralph Millar’s office, asked for Millar, and told him:
“This is Rush. I’m at the Landows’. Come up right away.”
“But I can’t, Rush. Can’t you understand my -“
“Can’t hell!” croaked Alec Rush. “Get here quick!”
The young woman with dead eyes, still playing with the hem of her handkerchief, did not look up when the ugly man returned to the room. Neither of them spoke. Alec Rush, standing with his back to a window, twice took out his watch to glare savagely at it.
The faint tingling of the doorbell came from below. The detective went across to the hall door and down the front stairs, moving with heavy swiftness. Ralph Millar, his face a field in which fear and embarrassment fought, stood in the vestibule, stammering something unintelligible to the maid who had opened the door. Alec Rush put the girl brusquely aside, brought Millar in, guided him upstairs.
“She says she killed Jerome,” he muttered into his client’s ear as they mounted.
Ralph Millar’s face went dreadfully white, but there was no surprise in it.
“You knew she killed him?” Alec Rush growled.
Millar tried twice to speak and made no sound. They were on the second-floor landing before the words came.
“I saw her on the street that night, going toward his flat!”
Alec Rush snorted viciously and turned the younger man toward the room where Sara Landow sat.
“Landow’s out,” he whispered hurriedly. “I’m going out. Stay with her. She’s shot to, hell – likely to do anything if she’s left alone. If Landow gets back before I do, tell him to wait for me.”
Before Millar could voice the confusion in his face they were across the sill and into the room. Sara Landow raised her head. Her body was lifted from the chair as if by an invisible power. She came up tall and erect on her feet. Millar stood just inside the door. They looked eye into eye, posed each as if in the grip of a force pushing them together, another holding them apart.
Alec Rush hurried clumsily and silently down to the street.
In Mount Royal Avenue, Alec Rush saw the blue roadster at once. It was standing empty before the apartment building in which Madeline Boudin lived. The detective drove past it and turned his coupe in to the curb three blocks below. He had barely come to rest there when Landow ran out of the apartment building, jumped into his car, and drove off. He drove to a Charles Street hotel. Behind him went the detective.
In the hotel, Landow walked straight to the writing-room. For half an hour he sat there, bending over a desk, covering sheet after sheet of paper with rapidly written words, while the detective sat behind a newspaper in a secluded angle of the lobby, watching the writing-room exit. Landow came out of the room stuffing a thick envelope in his pocket, left the hotel, got into his machine, and drove to the office of a messenger service company in St. Paul Street.
He remained in this office for five minutes. When he came out he ignored his roadster at the curb, walking instead to Calvert Street, where he boarded a northbound street car. Alec Rush’s coupe rolled along behind the car. At Union Station, Landow left the street car and went to the ticket-window. He had just asked for a one-way ticket to Philadelphia when Alec Rush tapped him on the shoulder.
Hubert Landow turned slowly, the money for his ticket still in his hand. Recognition brought no expression to his handsome face.
“Yes,” he said coolly, “what is it?”
Alec Rush nodded his ugly head at the ticket-window, at the money in Landow’s hand.
“This is nothing for you to be doing,” he growled.
“Here you are,” the ticket-seller said through his grille. Neither of the men in front paid any attention to him. A large woman in pink, red, and violet, jostling Landow, stepped on his foot and pushed past him to the window. Landow stepped back, the detective following.
“You shouldn’t have left Sara alone,” said Landow. “She’s -“
“She’s not alone. I got somebody to stay with her.”
“Not -?”
“Not the police, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Landow began to pace slowly down the long concourse, the detective keeping step with him. The blond man stopped and looked sharply into the other’s face.
“Is it that fellow Millar who’s with her?” he demanded.
“Yeah.”
“Is he the man you’re working for, Rush?”
“Yeah.”
Landow resumed his walking. When they had reached the northern extremity of the concourse, he spoke again.
“What does he want, this Millar?”
Alec Rush shrugged his thick, limber shoulders and said nothing.
“Well, what do you want?” the young man asked with some heat, facing the detective squarely now.
“I don’t want you going out of town.”
Landow pondered that, scowling.
“Suppose I insist on going,” he asked, “how will you stop me?”
“Accomplice after the fact in Jerome’s murder would be a charge I could hold you on.”
Silence again, until broken by Landow.
“Look here, Rush. You’re working for Millar. He’s out at my house. I’ve just sent a letter out to Sara by messenger. Give them time to read it, and then phone Millar there. Ask him if he wants me held or not.”
Alec Rush shook his head decidedly.
“No good,” he rasped. “Millar’s too rattle-brained for me to take his word for anything like that over the phone. We’ll go back there and have a talk all around.”
Now it was Landow who balked.
“No,” he snapped. “I won’t!” He looked with cool calculation at the detective’s ugly face. “Can I buy you, Rush?”
“No, Landow. Don’t let my looks and my record kid you.”
“I thought not.” Landow looked at the roof and at his feet, and he blew his breath out sharply. “We can’t talk here. Let’s find a quiet place.”
“The heap’s outside,” Alec Rush said, “and we can sit in that.”
Seated in Alec Rush’s coupe, Hubert Landow lighted a cigarette, the detective one of his black cigars.
“That Polly Bangs you were talking about, Rush,” the blond man said without preamble, “is my wife. My name is Henry Bangs. You won’t find my fingerprints anywhere. When Polly was picked up in Milwaukee a couple of years ago and sent over, I came east and fell in with Madeline Boudin. We made a good team. She had brains in chunks, and if I’ve got somebody to do my thinking for me, I’m a pretty good worker myself.”
He smiled at the detective, pointing at his own face with his cigarette. While Alec Rush watched, a tide of crimson surged into the blond man’s face until it was as rosy as a blushing school-girl’s. He laughed again and the blush began to fade.
“That’s my best trick,” he went on. “Easy if you have the gift and keep in practice: fill your lungs, try to force the air out while keeping it shut off at the larynx. It’s a gold mine for a grifter! You’d be surprised how people will trust me after I’ve turned on a blush or two for ‘em. So Madeline and I were in the money. She had brains, nerve, and a good front. I have everything but brains. We turned a couple of tricks – one con and one blackmail – and then she ran into Jerome Falsoner. We were going to give him the squeeze at first. But when Madeline found out that Sara was his heiress, that she was in debt, and that she and her uncle were on the outs, we ditched that racket and cooked a juicier one. Madeline found somebody to introduce me to Sara. I made myself agreeable, playing the boob – the shy but worshipful young man.
“Madeline had brains, as I’ve said. She used ‘em all this time. I hung around Sara, sending her candy, books, flowers, taking her to shows and dinner. The books and shows were part of Madeline’s work. Two of the books mentioned the fact that a husband can’t be made to testify against his wife in court, nor wife against husband. One
