efforts. "All right then, I'll go on. You had a good prospect
of getting out of town before daylight, but you chucked your chance when
you came back to the Clarenden a little while ago. But at that I was
expecting you; in fact, I don't mind telling you that I was standing
behind some curtains not fifteen feet from that check room when you
showed up. I could have grabbed you then, of course, but just between
you and me I didn't want to run the risk of having to split the credit
fifty-fifty with any bull, in harness or out of it, that might come
butting in. The neighbourhood was lousy with cops and plain-clothes men
hunting for whoever it was that bumped off Sonntag; they're still there,
I guess, hunting without knowing who it is they're looking for, and
without having a very good description of you, either. I was the only
fellow that had the right dope, and that came about more by accident
than anything else. So I took a chance, myself. I let you get away and
then I trailed you--in a taxi.

"All the time you was on that street car I was riding along right behind
you, and I came up these steps here not ten feet behind you. I wanted
you all for myself and I've got you all by myself."

"You don't hate yourself, exactly, do you?" said Trencher. "Well,
without admitting anything--because there's nothing to admit--I'd like
to know, if you don't mind, how you dope it out that I had anything to
do with Sonntag's being killed--that is if you're not lying about him
being killed?"

"I don't mind," said Murtha blithely. "It makes quite a tale, but I can
boil it down. I wasn't on duty to-night--by rights this was a night off
for me. I had a date at the Clarenden at eleven-thirty to eat a bite
with a brother-in-law of mine and a couple of friends of his--a fellow
named Simons and a fellow named Parker, from Stamford.

"I judge it's Parker's benny and dicer you're wearing now.

"Well, anyhow, on my way to the Clarenden about an hour or so ago I butt
right into the middle of all the hell that's being raised over this
shooting in Thirty-ninth Street. One of the precinct plain-clothes men
that's working on the case tells me a tall guy in a brown derby hat and
a short yellow overcoat is supposed to have pulled off the job. That
didn't mean anything to me, and even if it had I wouldn't have figured
you out as having been mixed up in it. Anyway, it's no lookout of mine.
So I goes into the Clarenden and has a rarebit and a bottle of beer