I ran around the right-angled turn. The door of four-nineteen was open. An oblong of light was streaming out into the hallway. I looked at my watch — eleven-sixteen. The elevator boy would have gone off duty, leaving the elevator on automatic.
I pressed the call button, and, as soon as I heard the cage start upward, went into four-nineteen on tiptoe.
Ringold’s body was huddled in front of the step that led up to the bathroom. His head was doubled back under his shoulders. His arms were twisted out at a goofy angle. One knee was just inside the door to the bathroom. The left arm was pressing up against the connecting door to four-twenty-one.
I dipped my fingers into the right-hand coat pocket and felt the perforated edges of a folded oblong of paper. I didn’t take time to look at it. I jerked it out, stuck it in my pocket, turned, and ran for the corridor. The light switch was near the door. I switched the lights out and stood for a moment in the doorway, looking up and down the corridor. The only person in sight was a woman about fifty-five or sixty with her hair done up in curlers who was hugging a red robe around her, and standing in the open doorway of a room down at the end of the corridor.
“Did you hear someone shoot?” I called to her.
“Yes,” she said.
I jerked my thumb toward four-twenty-one. “I think it came from four-twenty-one. I’ll go and see.”
She continued to stand in the doorway. I walked over abreast of the elevator, called out, “He’s got a ‘Don’t Disturb’ sign over the door. I guess I’d better go down to the office.”
The elevator was waiting. I opened it, rode down to the second floor, got out, and waited.
It seemed as much as a minute before I heard the elevator taken back down to the first floor, and then saw it go rattling back up. The indicator showed that it had stopped at the fourth. I walked down the stairs and out into the lobby. The clerk wasn’t behind the desk. The blond girl at the cigar counter was reading a movie magazine. Her jaws were moving slowly with the rhythmic chewing of gum. She glanced up, then back to her magazine.