Prisoner's Base

They hadn't found a hackie who had taken a fare, between midnight and 1:45, to the address on East Eightieth or the immediate neighborhood, or from there after two o'clock. They were still looking, but the chances were slim. There was a subway station only three blocks away.

The name of the night man was William Fisler. My appraisal had been sound; he was a dope. At first he had maintained that from 12:30 to 1:45, the period during which the murderer must have got in and up to the apartment, he had been right on the job every minute, on guard near the front entrance, except for a couple of elevator trips with known tenants; but when he realized that if he stuck to that he was allowing the murderer, for entry to the building and the stairs, only the times of the brief elevator trips, he did a full flop and practically stated that he had been so busy downstairs with sandwiches and coffee that he had hardly seen the front entrance at all. His position was approximately the same for the period from 1:58 to 2:23, during which the murderer must have descended the stairs and made his exit to the sidewalk, and on away. He did admit that around a quarter to two he had been out on the sidewalk with the door to the building standing open, because he had to; Sarah's statement to me on the phone that that had been the situation when she and Parker arrived in a taxi had been corroborated by Parker.

Parker's alibi was airtight. Sarah had told me that he had not entered the building with her; the night man verified it; and the taxi driver, who of course had been found, and who had taken Parker on home, had testified likewise.

The murder itself presented no problem. Having got himself in, the murderer had selected the bronze tiger and the Venetian blind cord as the proper tools, and concealed himself in the closet. If his plan had been to attack her at once when she entered, he had been forced to abandon it by the fact that the night man was there, letting her in. She had gone at once to the phone in the living room to call me, and of course that was no place for an act of violence, by a phone with the line open. When he heard her steps coming to the foyer, either he didn't know she had left the line open, or he couldn't resist so near a target, or he was afraid she was going outside; anyway, he struck. That done, he left, took the stairs down, and either found the main hall deserted and went out that way, or continued down to the basement and departed by the service alley.