“Tell me, for instance, why in the name of the Seven Suns, didn’t some of you sleuths go off on the theory that whoever committed that crime got into the office earlier in the evening and remained concealed in the closet until Monteagle came in? It would have been the easiest thing in the world to have decoyed Monteagle to his office even if it wasn’t known that he was working nights to make up for the lunches and bachelor dinners and afternoon teas that he’s been going to on account of his coming marriage.
“And as for whoever committed the murder getting out, you have been on the scene of too many murders not to know the hysteria that comes over a bunch of yaps like that. It’s a safe bet they all ran for a regular policeman, and that whoever was in that room—provided he was still there, or she—when the crime was discovered could have walked out of that building with a fair way as wide as Market Street.”
“Murray ran for a policeman,” I admitted, “and some of the janitors with him.”
“That’s what special cops usually do,” was Lanagan’s comment. “And it’s a safe bet that those square-head janitors all ran with him. They didn’t stay around those corridors alone after that crime was discovered until a regular copper came along. I’ve seen the thing happen and so has every police reporter in the business.”
Lanagan paused, pushed back a half-drained suisses and called for a sweet soda—his curious habit when breaking off a “lapse.”
“Whoever killed Monteagle,” he continued, “was in that room when he entered—always assuming, of course, that it was not Stromberg.
“Now I have something additional, through the King and his invaluable sources of information on men and affairs. It is this: Monteagle is known to certain portions of the night life. He was a two-faced society blatherskite, with a broad streak of primal vulgarity, who drank tea in swagger drawing-rooms with his fiancée and her friends in the afternoon and champagne with an entirely different social set after midnight. You know the kind. Was rather keen about women in an underhanded, quiet way. It is not difficult for a man of his means to do a lot of things behind the unassailable French restaurant walls and get by with it.
“You recall the knife was drawn neatly across both cheeks. I see you indulged in a theory that he possibly was the victim of some blackmail brotherhood. You even hinted at the Mafia. I am surprised at you. You ought to let that exaggerated institution rest for a while. I have a little theory of my own on that knifing business, which, I think, we will now work upon. ’Phone Sampson when you get a chance that it pleases Lanagan to go to work for his sweat-shop wages again.”
We parted company with Monahan after he had promised Lanagan to drift through his particular world—or that portion of it which was then up—and endeavour to learn something of the identity of any of Monteagle’s affiliations under the rose.
We headed for the Sutton Building, and in the lobby found Murray, just coming on duty.