The fat man backed toward the door. “I ain’t got orders to shoot,” he said, “but I sure will if you press me.” He backed out into the semidarkness of the hallway and then the outer door slammed.
Granquist ran across the room, stopped a moment in the doorway, turned her head toward Kells. She said, “I’ll get the bag,” and she spoke so rapidly, so breathlessly, that the words were all run together into one word. She went into the darkness.
Kells turned to Fenner. “Give her a hand.”
He bent over the young man, took a small automatic out of his raincoat pocket and handed it to Fenner. “Hurry up — I’ve got to telephone — I’ll be right down.”
Fenner took the automatic dazedly. He looked at the man on the floor and at Kells, and then he came suddenly to life. “It’s in the court,” he said excitedly. “I can get out there from the third floor.”
“Maybe the bag was a stall. Don’t let her get out of your sight.” Kells sat down at the telephone.
Fenner hurried out of the room.
Kells waited until he heard the outer door slam, then got up and went to Dillon. He knelt and drew a long yellow envelope from Dillon’s inside breast pocket. It was heavily sealed. He tore off the end and looked inside. Then, smiling blankly, he tucked it into his pocket.
He went to the broken window, raised it carefully and leaned out over the wet darkness of the court for a moment. He went into the kitchen and stood on the stove, looked through the high ventilating window across the narrow air-shaft to the window of an adjoining apartment. Then he went into the bedroom and got his hat and Granquist’s coat and went out of the apartment, across the corridor to the elevator.
On the way down, he spoke to the elevator boy: “It is still raining?”