If he had followed Anne there and seen her meet the Simmons woman, what was easier than to trace the agent to her office? And Martha Simmons had been scared that day when he visited her. Why? Suppose she had told Collier the facts, and was now afraid for Anne as well as her program? She had been badly frightened when he talked to her. He realized that now.
Margery, of course, was waiting for him when he got home. All he wanted was a hot shower for his aching muscles and to get to bed, but she took one look at him, opened her mouth to yelp, thought better of it, and dashed to her bathroom. When—a half hour later and he was smelling strongly of iodine and witch hazel—she stood beside his bed and waited, he abandoned the idea of a taxi accident.
"All right," he said. "I guess you're entitled to it. I had quite a scrap with Collier."
"So I suppose. I hope you killed him."
"I did my feeble best. He'll wake up sooner or later, and he won't feel too good."
He did not go to the office Thursday morning. As a matter of fact he did not go anywhere. He lay in bed with a piece of expensive sirloin steak on his eye, and took a considerable amount of aspirin. But after a lunch he had difficulty in eating, and in spite of Margery's protests, he got up and dressed, trying not to see his face while he shaved.
To his fury his dinner jacket and the piece of wire were missing, and he shouted with rage.
"Where's my coat?" he bellowed down the stairs.
"It's gone to the tailor's," Margery's voice came back. "What did you expect?"
"Where's the piece of wire I had in the pocket?"
"Oh, that? I threw it out. Was it worth anything?"
He did not say. He was practically beyond speech, and his temper was not improved by the necessity of searching the big cans in the areaway. A group of small boys watched him attentively from above while he dug, evincing extreme interest.
"Do that for a dime, mister," one offered. "What you looking for?"
The face he turned up to them was so horrifying that they disappeared. The wire of course was at the very bottom of the can, but finally he found it. He rolled it up in a pocket and stopped a passing cab.
"Know where Police Headquarters is?" he said. "On Centre Street?"
The cabby gave him a long look.
"What's the use of scaring them to death down there?" he said. "Better stop at a drugstore and get an eye patch."
He did so, and it was in this semidisguise that at Centre Street he asked for a detective on Homicide he had known vaguely in the Marine Corps. His name was Close, and Forsythe found him in a small bare office with only a desk and a couple of chairs in it. Close got up as he entered.
"Afternoon," he said. "Anything I can do for you?" Then he stared. "Good God, it's Forsythe, isn't it? What the hell happened to you? Lose an eye?"
"That's what I came to talk about," Forsythe said, and sat down rather carefully. "The eye doesn't matter. I've still got it. I've been in a fight, that's all. But I've a story to tell, if you have the time."
Close eyed him.
"I'm Homicide," he said. "Is this murder you're going to talk about?"
"As near as can be. It's about a man who intends to kill his wife, if that interests you."
"Not exactly my pigeon," Close said, and took the cigarette he was offered. "I wait until the job's done as a rule. How do you know he wants to kill her? Banged her up some, eh? Why don't you go to your precinct fellows? That's their stuff."
For an answer Forsythe hauled the strip of wire out of his pocket and laid it on the desk. Close picked it up and examined it.
"That was fastened across the top of a pretty steep flight of stairs last night," Forsythe said. "He'd gone out, the husband, but he knew she was going to mail some letters as soon as he left. She fell over it and almost broke her neck."
"I see," Close said thoughtfully. "Just why does he want her out of the way?"
"Because she's worth a good bit of money, and she doesn't want him to have it. It was to go in trust for her son, and I was about to draw a will to that effect when this happened."
Close was definitely interested now. He sat back smoking while Forsythe told the story. His interest increased when he learned about the radio program.
"I know it," he said. "Any time I get some hours off to sleep my wife's listening to the damn thing. So the girl who writes it is the one you're talking about!"
"Yes, although she uses a pen name. Her husband is Wilfred Collier. He sells secondhand cars, I believe."
"Collier, eh?" He picked up the telephone and asked for the Automobile Squad room. "Look," he said, and when someone answered, "put Joe Ellis on, will you, if he's there."
Ellis was there, and Close settled back in his chair.
"Remember Fred Collier, Joe?" he said. "Well, what have you got on him lately? Yeah, I know he's slippery. But what's new, if anything?"
When he hung up he grinned at Forsythe.
"Nothing new," he said. "Collier's been skating on thin ice for years. They're pretty sure he's mixed up with the stolen car racket. You know, get the car, use a paint sprayer, put some license tags on it and get it out of town. They know a lot about him, but they can't prove anything. Bad actor, too. Beat up one of his drivers and almost killed him. They'd have had him then, but the guy wouldn't talk."
But it was when Forsythe told him the amount at stake in the Gotham Trust that he really sat up and took notice.
"Great Scott," he said. "Is that the way they pay for that stuff? While I go out and risk my neck for a pittance, if that? It makes you wonder."
Nevertheless, he promised to keep an eye on the situation. Maybe the Automobile Squad could pick up Collier and hold him for a while. He suggested, too, that Forsythe get Anne to Connecticut as soon as she could get about, and Forsythe felt distinctly better as he left. Better only mentally, that is. For he had been having a sharp pain in his side since he hit the table the night before, and to his horror it turned out to be a broken rib.
Saturday morning, strapped with adhesives, he dressed and went down to breakfast. There had been no word from Anne, but the day before he had talked to Hellinger, who said that she was all right and that Collier had disappeared the morning after the trouble and not come back.
As Margery always breakfasted in bed, he was alone in the basement dining room, except for Thomas Carlyle, who apparently had a hangover and ignored his breakfast. Over his crisp bacon and eggs, and with a coffee cup in his hand, he glanced at the headlines in the paper. So far as he could see, the world was in a mess and getting messier, so he turned it over and looked idly down the page. Then he stiffened.
Anne Collier had shot and killed her husband the night before, and had tried to kill herself.
FOUR
He read it twice before it really registered. The story was short. According to the paper, a man named Jamison in the apartment above had heard Fred Collier shouting at his wife, and a moment later had heard two shots. Jamison, however, had been badly crippled by a fall a day or so before, and it was thus some time before he managed to get down the stairs and notify the superintendent, Michael Hellinger.
It was Hellinger who discovered the tragedy. A doctor, called immediately, said that Collier had been shot in the back of the head and died immediately. The attempt at suicide on the part of the wife, however, had failed. She had been taken to a hospital, where she was under police guard. She was still unconscious and had made no statement.
Forsythe