“That’s it, all right.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again!”
He laughed. “Sure you will.”
“How can I? Thinking of that, that something down there, waiting for me to sleep so he could come and kill me in the dark!”
“It won’t happen again,” the lieutenant gave reassurance. “I’ll post a man down there every night until we get this cleared up. And I’m having a locksmith in to put good new locks on all three of your doors. That satisfy you?”
“I’ll never feel safe again! When I think how I trusted those chairs under my doorknobs . . .”
Lieutenant Strom winked at the other two men.
“The only advice I can give you is, get married. Nothing’s as safe as a husband.” He laughed and turned his attention back to the door.
“What a saw that took! Who’s an old jailbird in this house?”
“No one that I know of. But of course you know Buffingham’s son—”
“I’ve got that in mind.”
Another thought had crossed my mind. “Would it be all right if you told me how much the Buffingham boy’s bail is set for?”
“You can’t get bail if you’re a murderer.”
“Any amount goes toward paying a lawyer, though. In a spot like that they’d have to pay cash in advance, I suppose. I wonder, do lawyers ever get a man out on the chance he can rob another bank afterward, and pay them?”
“We aren’t getting anywhere talking.” The lieutenant was impatient. “I’ve found out how this friend of yours got out and in, that’s something. Right after we’ve had lunch, Mrs. Dacres, I’m going to begin getting those people together, and you listen to what they told me.”
They went out to eat; I had orange juice, a half hour’s rest, and dressed. The Hallorans must have been ordered to put in an appearance, because I heard Mrs. Halloran’s voice in the front of the house while I was dressing.
Lieutenant Strom, returning, set up an impromptu court in my living room: he in my armchair with the gateleg table before him, I on the couch as both audience and jury.
The Hallorans were called. Nine of them trooped in. Mr. and Mrs. Halloran first, completely detached from their following. Seven children; I counted them. Six sly, snickering children as wild as rabbits, and one girl of perhaps eleven, the oldest, small, pinched, overworked, efficient, who pushed and slapped them into what semblance of order there was.
Mrs. Halloran did the answering to the lieutenant’s questions.
“Sure, I know where we was Monday night. We was celebrating, that’s where we was. Celebrating our money we come into. I’d like to know who’s got a better right—”
“No one’s questioning your rights. Will you repeat where you went, and when, please.”
“Right home we went from that inquest and got all our dear little chillern.” She waved a vague hand at the pack. “So then we went on down to El Lago restaurant like I said yesterday, my, that’s a swell restaurant, and we all ordered exactly what we had a mind to, too, on account we got an advance from our lawyers.” She preened herself importantly, not loath, I could see, to tell the tale of the evening’s pleasures. So they had “got an advance from our lawyers”! I could see Mrs. Garr’s house evaporating, dirty bricks and all.
“So then we ate. My, that El Lago certainly has got swell food. After that, the next place we went to was the Red Bubble.”
A nightclub! Those children! I gasped and, taking the comment for admiration, Mrs. Halloran went blithely on.
“The best, I always say, is what chillern should get acquainted with. Some of the chillern never saw it before. My, they thought it was swell. We had tables right up to the dance floor, and me and Halloran danced; a couple of the kids went to sleep but we woke ’em up because we had met a couple and we were going on. We went to a beer parlor on Main Street, and then we went and had some hamburgers in a White House, and then we went to another beer parlor on Hampstead Street, and we all got in with a party of folks there, and my, we sure had a swell time.”
“Was Mr. Halloran in the party all along?” I asked.
She tossed a coquettish head back at Mr. Halloran, who hovered on her outskirts. “Sure he was with us all the time. You don’t think he’d run out on me, I hope.”
Mr. Halloran replied to this sally with a silly grin. I could well imagine he wouldn’t—not as long as she was an heiress. There was admiration as well as amazement in my look at the small hellions now. Whatever else they weren’t, you had to say they could take it.
“Yeah.” The lieutenant put a period to Mrs. Halloran. “And what’s worse, we’ve checked it all along the line, and it works. They got home at sunup. At three a.m. they were reported far too far gone to do any delicate chloroforming. I can’t see anything more in them, can you?”
The Hallorans appeared impervious to objective insult.
“No.” I hated to give them up as suspects, but surely an alibi such as this could be checked thoroughly for holes. With those children, anyone present would have kept them under observation.
“That’s all now.” So Lieutenant Strom said to the Hallorans. They pushed and clattered out; we heard them in various stages of vociferation all through the house the rest of the afternoon. It was the first time the family had visited, en masse, their new possession. I rather wondered that they hadn’t moved in. But it was less than a week, after all, since Mrs. Garr’s death had become known. Less than a week! How much had happened in that time! How much must still happen!
If the Hallorans did move in . . . I shuddered. I’d have to move out. But not before this mystery was cleared up. No one was going to nine-tenths murder me
