Angry at this good advice, coming from the man he was questioning, and embarrassed because it was really good advice, Prescott began, a little sulkily, to take the names and addresses of many of them, and inform them they were free to leave. He detained any he thought might be useful to him, and among them he held Barry and Dean Monroe.
This matter took some time, especially as Prescott was twice interrupted by telephone.
Mrs Lindsay and Louis had retired to their rooms, and Phyllis, at the helm of the situation, proved herself a staunch and capable upholder of the dignity of the Lindsay family.
“Send away all you can, please, Mr Prescott,” she requested. “Mr Pollard is right; I have my hands full. I will give the doorman, who is from the caterer’s, instructions to explain the situation and admit none of the evening guests. But, I daresay some intimate friends will insist on coming in. Shall I allow it?”
“Better not, Miss Lindsay. You see, there’s no use giving the thing more publicity than you have to. The reporters will come, of course. Will you see them?”
“Oh, goodness, no! Let some of the men do that. Mr Pollard, won’t you?”
“I’d prefer Mr Monroe should,” interrupted Prescott, and winced under Pollard’s smile.
“Oh, Manning,” said Dean Monroe, “why do you act like that! You make people suspect you, whether they want to or not.”
“Suspect all you like, Dean,” came the quiet reply; “if I’m innocent, suspicion can’t hurt me. If I’m guilty, I ought to be suspected.”
“You did say you intended to kill Gleason,” Monroe repeated, staring at Pollard. “It’s queer he should be killed right afterward.”
“Mighty queer,” agreed Pollard. “But are you sure he was murdered?”
“Yes,” said Prescott. “Inspector Gale told me over the telephone just now, that further investigation proves it is a murder case. I think, Mr Pollard, I’ll ask you to go with me right now to your hotel. I want to check up your story.”
“But I haven’t told you any story,” said Pollard.
“Well, then,” Prescott shrugged impatiently, “I’ll check up the story you didn’t tell! Come along. Anybody got a car I can borrow?”
Nobody had, as the guests had all expected to remain the whole evening. So Prescott called a taxicab, and soon the two started for Pollard’s hotel.
“You’re a queer guy,” the detective said, the semi-darkness in the cab giving him greater freedom of speech.
“As how?” asked Pollard, quietly.
“Well, first, saying you proposed to kill a man.”
“I’m not unique. I’ve often heard people say, ‘I’d like to kill him!’ or ‘I wish he was dead!’”
“Yes, but they don’t mean it.”
“How do you know I meant it?”
“I don’t, for sure, but I’m going to find out. If you haven’t got an air-tight alibi – it’s going to be trouble for yours!”
“I haven’t any alibi. Guilty people prepare alibis.”
“That’s all right. You’re cute enough to fix an alibi that don’t look to be fixed! But I’ll see through it. Here we are. Come along.”
“A little less dictating, please, Mr Prescott. Remember, I’m not under arrest.”
“Not yet – but soon!” was the retort as the two men entered the small, but exclusive, hotel where Manning Pollard made his home.
The doorman bowed, pleasantly, but not obsequiously, and Prescott went straight to the desk.
“I want to learn,” he said, straightforwardly, “all you can tell me of the movements of Mr Pollard tonight between six and seven o’clock.”
The clerk at the desk smiled at Pollard and gazed inquiringly at the other.
“Better tell him, Simpson,” said Pollard; “he’s a detective, and he’s a right to ask. I’m under a cloud – I think I may call it that – and he’s going to – well, clear me.”
Pollard’s smile flashed out, and the desk clerk, in his turn, smiled at the investigator.
“Go ahead, sir,” he agreed, “what do you want to know?”
“What time did Mr Pollard come in this afternoon?”
“What time, Henry?” the clerk asked the doorman.
“’Bout quarter past six,” was the reply. “I come on at six, and I’d been here a bit before Mr Pollard came along.”
“What did he do?” went on Prescott, a little less certain of his convictions.
“Went up in the elevator.”
“Same elevator boy on now?”
“Yes, sir. The car’s up. Be down in a minute.”
It was; and the elevator boy related that he had taken Mr Pollard up as soon as he came into the hotel.
“Went right to his room, did he?”
“Yes, sir.” The woolly-headed one rolled his eyes in enjoyment of his sudden importance. “I knows he did, kase I watched after him.”
“Why did you look after him?”
“No reason, p’tikler. Only kase he’s such a fine gentleman. I most allus looks at him march down the hall. He marches like a – a platoon.”
“He does? And he marched straight to his room?”
“Yessuh.”
“When did you bring him down again?”
“’Bout an hour later, all dressed up in his glad raggses. Just like he is now.”
“Just so. Now, during that hour do you know that Mr Pollard didn’t leave his room? Didn’t go down stairs again?”
“Not in my car, he didn’t. And he always uses my car.”
“Ask the other boy.” Prescott gave this order shortly. The scene was getting on his nerves. Pollard, quiet, calm, but superior. The clerk, ready to enjoy the detective’s discomfiture, if he failed to prove the point he was evidently trying hard to make. Black Bob, the elevator boy, his white teeth all in evidence, and his admiration for Pollard equally plain to be seen. And even the telephone girl, smirking from her switchboard nearby.
All of these were in sympathy with Pollard, and Prescott felt himself a rank outsider. But he persevered.
Joe, the other elevator boy, declared he had not carried Mr Pollard up or down that evening, and the clerk said there were but two cars.
“Go on, Mr Prescott,” Pollard adjured him. “I have prepared no air-tight alibi.”
“Did any one here see Mr Pollard in his room,” the detective asked in desperation, and to his surprise a bellhop piped out, “I did.”
“You did!” and Prescott turned to him. “How did you happen to do so?”
“He rang, and I went up there, and he gave me a letter to mail for him. It was a wide letter, too wide to go in the chute.”
“Did you mail it?”
“I put it with the stuff for the postman to take. He hasn’t been round yet.”
“Get the letter.”
The bellhop did so,