Ken Corning frowned, paced the floor thoughtfully.
“Her apartment’s on the second floor?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve become friendly with her?”
“Yes. And I know Esther Ogier, the girl who shares the apartment with her. Esther wasn’t there at the time. She’s ushering in a picture show and doesn’t get off until after eleven every night.”
Ken Corning absently took a cigarette from his pocket, tapped it on the edge of the polished silver case, lit it, exhaled a stream of smoke.
“It doesn’t check,” he said.
The girl stared at him. Abruptly, he whirled on her.
“You think she’s telling the truth, don’t you? You think Pyle did it. Isn’t that right?”
“I don’t know what I think,” she told him. “You told me to find out certain things. I found them out. I’ve never talked with Pyle. I don’t know his side of the story. But I do know that there’s lots of witnesses. There are a half dozen different people whose attention was attracted by the shot and who saw Pyle running.”
Corning shrugged his shoulders.
The telephone rang. Helen Vail lifted the receiver, said: “Hello” in a low voice. After a moment she nodded, held the instrument out to Ken Corning.
“It’s the jailer speaking,” she said. “He said Pyle has something important to tell you.”
Ken Corning scooped the receiver up in a single motion, held the transmitter to his lips. “All right,” he said, “this is Corning speaking.”
Pyle’s voice was low-pitched, cautious.
“You remember the thing you was asking me about—if it was mine?” he asked.
“Something heavy?” Corning inquired.
“That’s it.”
“All right. What about it?”
“I just happened to think how fingerprints might have got on it.”
“Okey. Be careful what you say. Spill it.”
“Well, I had an argument with a certain person. I had to take something away from him, something he was threatening me with. I gave it back to him, later, when I’d emptied it.”
“Same general description?” asked Corning.
“Yeah, the same thing—‘Woodsman,’ you know. Ain’t many around yet.”
“Okey. Who was it?”
“His name’s Pete. They call him Pete the Polack. It was a while ago and I haven’t seen him since. But you can locate him through the shooting galleries. He ran a gallery for a time out at the concessions in Cedar Street Park.”
Ken Corning thought for a few seconds while the telephone line made buzzing noises.
“Know anything more?” he asked.
“Nothing that’ll help. I thought you’d want to know about this.”
“I do,” Ken Corning told him, and hung up the receiver.
He swung back in the swivel-chair, clasped hands behind his head, and fixed his eyes on Helen Vail, although by their expression he seemed to be looking through and beyond her.
“Just had a glimmer of light,” he began slowly. “There were two things that seemed to tie Pyle to the shooting. First, the sound of the shot, which Pyle himself admits was close to him; second, his fingerprints on the .22 ‘Woodsman’ which was found behind the billboard Pyle passed and which the ballistic experts say fired the fatal shot.
“Pyle has just explained, reasonably, if true, how his prints might have been on that gun, and he has given me the name of a man who should be an expert shot with that particular calibre.
“Now, supposing another man than Pyle shot Glover—and we can eliminate the two other men in the group, for they could not have placed the gun where it was found—”
Ken Corning was speaking more rapidly; there was a gleam of growing excitement in his eyes.
“Supposing another man did the shooting—where could he have been? He must have been in the close vicinity of that billboard and—remember, Pyle said that everything was quiet until, unexpectedly, just at that place on the street, one of the men made a remark that started the fight.
“All right. A building close to the billboard, with windows overlooking the scene of the shooting and the cross street around the comer, is that building where the ready-to-order witness, Mary Bagley, has a room.”
“And her room,” interjected Helen Vail softly, “is on the corner and has a window on either street.”
“Exactly,” snapped Ken Corning. “And I’m starting right from there.” The swivel-chair made a sharp thump as he leaned abruptly forward.
“Another thing—I’ve examined the gun that did the killing, the ‘Woodsman’ .22, one of the most accurate of the smaller calibres in the hands of an expert—say a man familiar with shooting galleries. The muzzle of that gun has marks such as a friction coupling of a silencer could have made.”
He stood up abruptly. His eyes were bright and hard. He reached for his hat.
“But,” said Helen Vail, “how about the sound of the shot—right close to Pyle?”
“I think,” Ken Corning said, “you and I have solved that.”
“I!” said Helen Vail incredulously.
Ken Corning smiled down at her. He clamped his hat on his head. “Going out,” he told her “Don’t look for me back until you see me.”
“Anything Johnson can do instead?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. It’s got to be handled with gloves. I want to do it myself. I want to coax a couple of people into my hands right. What’s the name of the apartment house where this Bagley girl hangs out?”
“The Catalina. That’s the name above the door.”
He nodded, strode to the door of the outer office.
‘Keep in touch with things,” he said. “Better have someone come in here to stick around the telephone nights. I don’t know when I’ll be back, and I want it so I can call in at any time and get service. Maybe that redhead that we had before can help out.”
She smiled at him, a smile that was almost maternal, despite the fact that she was ten years his junior.
“And have her get things all twisted the way she did before! No, thanks! I’ll have them bring in a cot, and my meals, and I’ll stick around here on a twenty-four-hour shift until the case is over.”
He started to say something, changed his mind, grinned at her and closed the door as he went out. He went at once to the Catalina Apartments.
“I want something in a corner apartment,” he told the tired eyed woman who acted as manager.
She looked at him appraisingly.
“The corner,” he went on, “that’s on the northeast.”
She shook her head slowly.
“I don’t think there’s a thing.”
“No vacancies?”
“None that I can rent. Three of them are vacant, but the rent’s paid until the first of the month. The tenants moved out some days ago rather suddenly. One of them took some of the personal belongings he had there. The others just moved, and I haven’t seen them.”
“Rather strange?” asked Corning disinterestedly. There was a sudden bright gleam in his eyes.
The tired eyes surveyed him with weary caution.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m paid to rent apartments: not to speculate on the affairs of the tenants.”
Ken Corning turned on his heel, walked out of the apartment house, taxied to the want-ad department of a morning newspaper and made arrangements for a quarter column ad. Then he went out to Cedar Street Park.
A thin chap with high cheekbones, thin lips and bright eyes was running the shooting gallery concession. Ken Corning paid a quarter for a gun full of shells, knocked down moving ducks, shot three times at a ball which spurted up on a jet of water, and, when he had the attention of the proprietor, said: “I want to pull a publicity stunt.”
“Yeah?” asked the proprietor, the voice toneless, the eyes sharp with interest.
“Yeah… . Fill her up again.”
The man tilted a tube of cartridges into the magazine of the
repeater.
“Ever hear of a guy named Pete the Polack?” asked Corning.
The man’s hand jiggled. Shells spilled to the floor. He cursed in a high-pitched whine, stooped to the floor.
“No,” he said, when he had straightened.
“Used to run a concession out here,” said Corning, carelessly. “I thought he’d be glad to help me. I know some friends of his.”
The man slipped the loose shells into the gun, kept his eyes away from Corning’s.
“Used to be a heavy guy with a mustache out here. He sold out to me. I think they called him Pete, but I ain’t sure. He’s been gone for a while now. I never did get to know much about him. He ain’t ever been back since I bought in.”
He slid the tube into place, cocked the gun and handed it to Ken Corning.
“What sort of a publicity stunt was you figuring on?” he asked.
“Going to put up a prize for the best blonde working-girl shot in the city. She’s got to shoot at a regulation target. Gets one hundred dollars and a loving cup. The shots are free if she makes over a certain score, otherwise she pays. She should get about half price.”
“Profits all gone now,” the man said. “Things ain’t gone down in this game, costs are still high… . Where do I come in on the free shots—the ones that go over a certain score?”
“You’ll pay that in return for your publicity,” Ken Corning said, knocking down a moving duck. “I’m going to give the thing a lot of space in the newspapers. It’ll bring a lot of people in here, spectators.”
“To see the shooting?” asked the gallery man skeptically.
Ken Corning held the trigger back against the trigger guard, worked the pump of the gun with swift motions of the forearm.
“No,” he said, as the hammer clicked on an empty chamber, “to see the blondes.”
The proprietor of the gallery looked at the vacant spaces in the places where the imitation clay pipes had been.
“You ain’t bad with a rifle yourself, brother.”
“Not so good. A little out of training,” Corning told him. “A month or so would get me back so I could do something worth while. How about it?”
“What’s the publicity?” asked the man back of the counter. “I’m going to start a selling campaign on a hair-bleaching process that makes silky blondes out of brunettes and restores natural color to hair and all that sort of stuff.”
“So that’s why you want ’em blondes,” said the man. “What’s the rest of it.”
“And the winner of the big prize,” Ken Corning told him, “is going to be the sales manager of my company. She’s going to get a lot of free publicity first. The best blonde shot in the city.”
“Sounds goofy to me,” the man said.
“All publicity schemes are goofy,” Corning assured him; “the idea is to think up something new, so you can get the advertising. All of the logical things have been thought of already. The new things you think of are goofy.”
The man back of the counter said nothing, but continued to look at Corning.
Corning took a dollar from his pocket, and slid it across the counter.
“Now listen,” he said, “I don’t want any misunderstanding about this. I’m going to have a bunch of blonde working-girls come in here to shoot. I’m going to have a crowd around the place. The shoot is going to be advertised as between the hours of seven o’clock and eleven o’clock tomorrow night, first come, first served. At eleven o’clock the girls who have had the two highest scores are going to shoot off the finals—and the one who’s going to win that final shoot is going to be my sales manager, do you understand?”
“Just how do you mean?”
“Just what I say—she’s going to win.”
“Suppose the other girl should be a better shot?”
“She probably will. My sales manager can’t hit a flock of barn doors.”
The bright eyes watched Corning with feverish concentration. “How the hell is she going to win if she can’t shoot?”
“Because,” said Corning, “she isn’t going to be shooting at the target at all. She’s going to be shooting at the backstop, but the target she’s shooting at is going to be one that’s been prepared in advance. You’re going to pretend to put a plain target on the carrying wire that takes the target back, but it isn’t going to be a plain target. It’s going to be one that’s had six shots put right through the black bull’s-eye in the center of the target. Each contestant is going to fire six shots. Naturally, my girl’s going to win. She’s going to have the highest score.”
“A frame-up, eh?” said the man.
“Of course it’s a frame-up,” Corning told him impatiently.
“I’ve got to get some coin out of it, then,” the man told him.
“How much coin?” Corning asked.
“Fifty bucks, and the shots have got to be paid for at full price.”
“You’d be getting rich,” Corning protested.
“The hell I would,” the man said. “In the first place, you ain’t going to have over a dozen girls to compete—not if they have to pay for their own shots if they don’t make better than a certain record. There ain’t a dozen women in the city who know how to handle guns. You should know that yourself. Watch a woman come to a shooting gallery. She never does it unless there’s some man who drags her in, then, most of the time, she shoots with her eyes closed.”
“All right,” Corning told him, wearily, “have it your own way. I can’t be bothered with a lot of details.”
Corning opened a bill fold and took out five ten-dollar bills.
“My name’s Steve Richey,” he said.
The man on the other side of the counter extended his left hand for the money, placed his thin, feverish right hand inside of Corning’s palm.
“My name’s Ted Fuller.”
“The shoot,” said Corning, “starts tomorrow night at seven o’clock and lasts until eleven. There’ll probably be a crowd. My girl is going to show up for her qualifying shoot just a little before anyone else gets here. We’ll fake the qualifying target, and it’s up to you to see that she wins.”
“Don’t worry,” Fuller said, pushing the money into his pocket, “she’ll win. It may look kind of raw, but she’ll win.”
“I don’t give a damn how raw it looks,” Corning told him. “I want the publicity.”
Corning found a rooming-house which suited his purpose, at 329 Maple Avenue. He registered under the name of Stephen Richey, then he rang up his office and heard Helen Vail’s voice over the telephone.
“Listen,” he told her, “you had a blonde friend who used to come into the office once in a while. I’ve forgotten her name. She was the kind that would photograph well. I think her name was Marian, but I’m not sure.”
“That’s right,” Helen Vail told him, “Marian Sharpe. She’s a good scout.”
“All right,” Corning told her, “I want her. I want her to go to a rooming-house at 329 Maple Avenue, and ask for Stephen Richey. That’s the name I’m registered under. I’ll be waiting for her. Think you can get her?”
“Sure; she’s out of a job and needs money.”
“Okey,” Corning told her. “Now here’s another one. You’ll notice that all of the newspapers are carrying an ad in the ‘Help Wanted—Female Department’ announcing a competition to determine the best shot among blonde working-girls in the city. I want you to see that Mary Bagley has her attention called to that ad.”
“Want me to suggest that she try for the prize?” Helen Vail asked.
“That’s exactly what I don’t want,” he told her. “I simply want you to see that her attention is called to the ad. Then, if she decides she’s going to try to win the prize, I want to know it. But I don’t want you to bring any pressure to bear on her. Think you can do that all right?”
“Sure. I can find that out all right.”
“Okey. Now if she decides to go into the competition, let me know’ here at this rooming-house. The telep
hone number is Plaza 6-7931. You can simply ask for Mr. Richey and they’ll put me on the line. I’ve already got the girl spotted so that I won’t need you to point her out.”
“You want to know right away?” asked Helen Vail.
“Just as soon as you can find out.”
“Okey, I’ll call you back.”
Corning had dinner, read the evening newspapers, and was sitting in silent concentration, staring at the curling smoke from his cigarette, when there was a knock at the door. He opened it, and encountered the laughing blue eyes of a twenty-five-year-old blonde, who said, all in one breath: “I didn’t delay any, but came right over just as soon as Helen told me that you had a job for me.”
“Come in,” Corning told her.
She walked into the room, sat down on the chair which he placed for her, and watched him with eyes that were no longer smiling, but were keenly attentive.
“What is it you want?” she asked.
“Can you shoot a gun?” Corning inquired.
“Just a little bit. I could probably kill a husband if I had to, but I couldn’t hit any smaller game.”
Corning reached for his hat.
“All right,” he said, “you’re going out and learn.”
He took her to several shooting galleries, giving her instructions in the holding of the rifle. Then he took her to Ted Fuller’s shooting gallery.
“This,” he said, “is Marian Sharpe, the woman who’s going to win the contest tomorrow night.”
Ted Fuller’s bright eyes surveyed the young woman in swift appraisal.
“Let’s see you shoot,” he said.
“Nix on that noise,” Corning told him. “She can hit the backstop and that’s all that counts.”
“It’s going to look like a fake,” Fuller said. “A good shot can tell by the way a person holds a gun whether they’re holding on a target or not. Then, the paper target always makes a little jump away from the back-stop when a bullet hits it… .”
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