“Oh, dear!” she whispered. “I hope he didn’t hear me talking about him. That’s Mr. Offord.”
A slender man in brown, with a light brown hat—Leighton perhaps.
I hadn’t seen anything of him except his back, nor he anything except mine. I watched him as he climbed the stairs. If he had heard the manager mention his name he would use the turn at the head of the stairs to sneak a look at me.
He did. I kept my face stolid, but I knew him. He was “Penny” Quayle, a con man who had been active in the East four or five years before. His face was as expressionless as mine. But he knew me.
A door on the second floor shut. I left the manager and started for the stairs.
“I think I’ll go up and talk to him,” I told her.
Coming silently to the door of apartment 202, I listened. Not a sound. This was no time for hesitation. I pressed the bell-button.
As close together as the tapping of three keys under the fingers of an expert typist, but a thousand times more vicious, came three pistol shots. And waist-high in the door of apartment 202 were three bullet holes.
The three bullets would have been in my fat carcass if I hadn’t learned years ago to stand to one side of strange doors when making uninvited calls.
Inside the apartment sounded a man’s voice, sharp, commanding.
“Cut it, kid! For God’s sake, not that!”
A woman’s voice, shrill, bitter, spiteful screaming blasphemies.
Two more bullets came through the door.