“Not in real life, though. There’s a number on them, of course, but that seldom helps. And yet, I’ve got a hunch that that pistol will tell its own story, and my fingers itch to get a hold of it!”
“When do you expect it?”
“I’ve sent young Scanlon after it. He’s a live wire, and he’ll get back soon’s anybody could. See here, this is the way I dope it out. If a woman did the shooting, she’d be more’n likely to throw away a pistol,—or to drop it unintentional like, in her nervousness, but a man—nixy!”
I had foreseen this. And the statement was, in a way, true. A man, having committed murder, does not drop his pistol,—unless, and I divulged this thought to Martin, unless he wants to throw suspicion on someone else.
“Nothin’ doin’,” was his curt response. “Nobody on that floor possible to suspect, ’ceptin’ it’s Rodman,—and small chance of him.”
“Rodman!” I cried; “why, he got on the elevator at the seventh floor, just after the shooting.”
“He did!” the Chief straightened up; “how do you know?”
“Saw him. I was going down,—in Minny’s elevator, you know,—to look for Jenny——”
“When was this?”
“About ten minutes after the shooting—and of course I got on at the twelfth floor, and there were no other passengers at first, so I talked to Minny. But at the seventh Rodman got on, and so we stopped talking.”