This night was much like the previous one except that he had less hopes of seeing Mrs. Chappell in the morning. Nobody said so, but all of us expected another letter in the morning asking for still another five thousand dollars.
Another special-delivery letter did come, but it read:
We warned you to keep the police out of it and you disobeyed. Take your police to apt. 313 at 895 Post St. and you will find the corpse we promised you if you disobeyed.
Callahan cursed and jumped for the telephone.
I put an arm around Chappell as he swayed, but he shook himself together and turned fiercely on me.
“You’ve killed her!” he cried.
“Hell with that,” Muir barked. “Let’s get going.”
Muir, Chappell, and I went out to Chappell’s car, which had stood two nights in front of the house. Callahan ran out to join us as we were moving away.
The Post Street address was only a ten-minute ride from Chappell’s house the way we did it. It took a couple of more minutes to find the manager of the apartment house and to take her keys away from her. Then we went up and entered apartment 313.
A tall slender woman with curly red hair lay dead on the living-room floor. There was no question of her being dead: she had been dead long