Corpse on the Grill

“No kidding! Just ask me. Anything at all,” the prisoner sneered. “Be glad to oblige.”

“Okay. About that phone call to Pete Donnelly. I know you killed your cashier. I suppose it was because he was wise, or getting wise, to your financial finagling. You must have killed him before the apparatus got to the blaze, because you’d have to have time enough to get back to your rooms from Fifty-first Street and change out of street clothes into pajamas. Then you came down into the street, looking all worried and upset and I don’t wonder, with that evening’s work behind you.”

“You’d have to go on the witness stand and testify that I talked, in your presence, to Pete after the fire was over. And that I was with you all the time from that moment till we found poor Donnelly’s body.”

Pedley shook his head. “All I could swear to is that you called a number and talked to somebody. It might have been a Chinaman at a Chopsuey joint for all I heard. It wasn’t the cashier.”

Biddonay beat his head against the iron riser. “Listen to the lunatic! He don’t even believe his own ears.”

“Yeah. I do. When I hear something. I didn’t hear the guy on the other end of your wire, then. And I can’t prove that you dialed a different number the second time you called Donnelly. But I know you did.”

The restaurant man began to sob great gusty sobs that shook his tubby figure like jelly. “Couple of hours ago, you weren’t talking this way. You put the pinch on that rat-faced Yalb. And now—”

“Now I think just the same about Yalb as I thought then. Suzie’s brother is scared, dumb and rattled. He got sore at you for throwing off on his sister, and cut you for it. We’ll get him for that; he’ll probably still be serving time when you’re waiting for the reprieve that won’t come. But Yalb isn’t a wholesale butcher, like you.”

“Why me? Why not Krass? Why not?” the fat man shrieked. He was pouring cold sweat.

“Krass wouldn’t have used that bowling ball case to carry the Greek’s head out of the cafe, for one thing. It would have been too much of a giveaway. By the way, what’d you do to scare Herb off?”

Biddonay shook his head, without answering.

“You’d want him to take it on the lam because you’d need somebody to act as fall guy, and Krass had to get the chair if you were to come out ahead on the money end.”

The fat man broke down and blubbered piteously, pawing the air with his free hand as if he was trying to beat off a wasp.

The Marshal started for the stairs. “Say, there’s always a little silver in the lining...”

The proprietor of the Ice-taurant looked up, soddenly. He was drenched with tears and perspiration.

“You won’t have to worry about that new wardrobe, Biddonay. You wouldn’t want to spend a lot of dough on a suit they’re going to rip up the legs and arms in a few weeks.”