The Luminous Face

All of these were in sympathy with Pollard, and Prescott felt himself a rank outsider. But he persevered.

Joe, the other elevator boy, declared he had not carried Mr Pollard up or down that evening, and the clerk said there were but two cars.

“Go on, Mr Prescott,” Pollard adjured him. “I have prepared no air-tight alibi.”

“Did any one here see Mr Pollard in his room,” the detective asked in desperation, and to his surprise a bellhop piped out, “I did.”

“You did!” and Prescott turned to him. “How did you happen to do so?”

“He rang, and I went up there, and he gave me a letter to mail for him. It was a wide letter, too wide to go in the chute.”

“Did you mail it?”

“I put it with the stuff for the postman to take. He hasn’t been round yet.”

“Get the letter.”

The bellhop did so, while the others looked on.

It was a large, square envelope addressed to a business firm downtown.

“Your writing, Mr Pollard?” said Prescott, not knowing, in fact, just what to say.

“Yes,” said Pollard, glancing at it. “Open it, if you want to. It’s not private business.”

“No; I don’t want to. It looks very much as if you were in your room during the hour between six and seven.”

“It does have that appearance,” said Pollard, “but I make no claims.”

“He telephoned twice,” vouchsafed the girl at the switchboard.

“He did!” Prescott wheeled on her.

“Once not very long after he came in – maybe fifteen or twenty minutes after.”

“To whom?”

“To a Cleaning Establishment. I remember, because I couldn’t get them – the shop was closed. And then, he telephoned again for a taxi, when he was ready to go out.”

“At what time?”

“About half-past seven – or maybe a little earlier.”

“Earlier,” said the doorman, who had drawn near again. “Not more’n twenty past. I put him in the taxi myself. And it wasn’t as late as half past.”

“Where did he drive to?”

“I don’t know. He ’most always gives the driver a slip of paper with the numbers on it – ’specially if he’s going to more than one address. He did this tonight.”

“Where’s that taxi man?” asked Prescott, feeling his last prop being pulled from under him.

“He’s outside now,” said the doorman. “He’s waiting for a man upstairs.”

“Call him in.”

The taxi driver looked at Pollard, nodded respectfully, and replied to Prescott’s queries by saying that Mr Pollard did give him a memorandum of the places he wanted to go to, and that they were, first, the Hotel Astor, where he went in for a moment, and came back with some theater tickets which he was putting in his pocket.

“How do you know he had theater tickets?”

“Well, he had a little pink envelope, and he often does get tickets there. Next, he stopped at Bard’s, the Florist’s, and brought out a small square box with him, and next I took him up to a house on Park Avenue, and he stayed there, and I came back.”

“All right, Mr Pollard, my duty is done.” The detective looked a respectful apology. “But I had to find out all this. And remember you did make a surprising statement.”

“Surprising to you, perhaps. But my friends, who know my eccentricities, weren’t surprised at it.”

“No? Well, if it’s your habit to threaten to kill people you don’t like – ”

“I’d rather you didn’t call it a threat. To my mind, a threat is spoken to the intended victim.”

“I don’t know,” Prescott gazed thoughtfully at the speaker. “Can’t you threaten – ”

“But I didn’t threaten. I merely said I should kill Gleason some day. It’s too late, now, to make good my promise, and you’ve satisfied yourself – or, haven’t you? – that I didn’t do it?”

“Yes, I’m satisfied. You couldn’t be here at home and in a taxicab doing errands, between six-fifteen and seven-forty-five, and have any chance to get away long enough to get yourself down to Washington Square and do up that murder business, too.”

“It does look that way,” Pollard agreed. “You’ve checked me up pretty thoroughly. Now do you want me any further? For, though I’m as good-natured and patient as the average man, I have something else to do with my time when you’re through with me.”

“Of course, of course. But, I say, Mr Pollard, can you give me a hint which way to look?”

“Sorry, but I can’t.”

The two had drawn aside from the hotel desk, and were by themselves in an alcove of the lobby. Prescott, eagerly trying to learn something further from his vindicated suspect – Pollard, calm and polite, but quite evidently wishing to get away about his business.

“You don’t suspect anybody?”

“No; you see I knew Mr Gleason but slightly. I didn’t like him, but I assure you I didn’t kill him. And I don’t know who did.”

CHAPTER V – Mrs Mansfield’s Story

“Distrust the obvious, Prescott,” said Belknap, didactically. “It is the astute detective’s weak point that he cannot see beyond the apparent – the evident – the obvious.”

“Oh, yes,” Prescott sniffed; “distrust the obvious is as hackneyed a phrase as Cherchez la femme! and about as useful in our every day work. You make a noise like a Detective Story.”

“And they’re the Big Noise, nowadays,” Belknap returned, unruffled.

“All the same,” and Prescott spoke doggedly, “when a guy says he’s going to kill somebody, and that somebody is found croaked a few hours later, seems to me – ”

“Seems to me, your guy is the last person in the world to suspect. It’s the obvious – ”