Picelli sat down, said dully: “Got Solly. Green got away. There was ice...”
“There was ice,” the man at the window repeated slowly. “All right, there was ice. How long were they together?”
“Green came up to Solly — Solly was in his cab. They went into the bar and I called you. Two or three minutes after I came out of the booth, they came out. I went up to them on the sidewalk...”
“And there was ice.”
The man at the window stiffened suddenly, shaded his eyes from the dim light in the room. He peered intently through the slit for perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, then stood up and picked up his suit-coat and put it on.
“Come on, Joe. We’re going places,” he said.
He took a big blue automatic out of the pocket of the tweed Chesterfield and stuck it against his stomach, under the belt, pulled the points of his vest down over it.
The two men went together out of the room and down two flights of stairs, out of the rooming house and across the street to Three Thirty-one.
The elevator boy stared wide-eyed at the man who had been sitting at the window.
“Jeeze, Mister Costain,” he stuttered. “I thought — Miss Neilan has been going crazy — calling up the newspapers every few minutes...”