I went over there. It was a last desperate chance and time was running out. When those two photographers woke up and read the morning paper they’d be almost certain to remember the address they’d given me. After that I’d have only as long as it took Frank Sellers to throw out a dragnet.
The Rippling Avenue address turned out to be a nondescript apartment house, and the cards showed Lowry had an apartment on the second floor.
I rang the bell.
It was quite a while before anything happened. Then a man’s voice called from the head of the stairs, “Who is it?”
“Message for you,” I called up.
The electric door catch buzzed the door open. I went on in and walked up the stairs.
The man who was standing at the head of the stairs was a well-put-together, broad-shouldered individual, somewhere around twenty-eight or twenty-nine. He looked thoroughly capable of taking care of himself under any circumstances. He had the thick neck which usually indicates a wrestler or fighter. His dark hair was tousled in uncombed disarray. He was wearing trousers, slippers and the upper part of a pair of pyjamas. His nose had been broken, and in healing had given his face a flattish, Mongolian appearance, but there was lazy good nature in his grin. “What’s the idea?” he asked.
I closed the door behind me and said, “I’m sorry if I got you up.”
“Oh, it’s all right. I usually get up around this time anyway. What’s the idea of all the commotion? Who’s the message from?”
“The message,” I said, “is from me.”