“That’s why I made the play for Hambleton’s grand,” he said. “I’ve been shatting on my uppers for a couple of months, and when that letter came yesterday I just had to raise dough somehow to get her away. She wouldn’t have stood for tapping her father though, so I tried to swing it without her knowing.”
“When did you see her last?”
“Day before yesterday, the day she mailed that letter. Only I saw her in the afternoon—she was here—and she wrote it that night.”
“Babe suspect what you were up to?”
“We didn’t think he did. I don’t know. He was jealous as hell all the time, whether he had any reason to be or not.”
“How much reason did he have?”
Wales looked me straight in the eye and said:
“Sue was a good kid.”
I said: “Well, she’s been murdered.”
He didn’t say anything.
Day was darkening into evening. I went to the door and pressed the light button. I didn’t lose sight of Holy Joe Wales while I was doing it.
As I took my finger away from the button, something clicked at the window. The click was loud and sharp.
I looked at the window.
A man crouched there on the fire-escape, looking in through glass and lace curtain. He was a thick-featured dark man whose size identified him