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 I the northern extremity of the concourse, he spoke again. 1
“What does he want, this Millar?”
Alec Rush shrugged his thick, limber shoulders and said nothing.