“How about O’Toole, who’s watching Nichols?” asked Flynn.
“Leave him stay on that assignment. I need you here. Stick now! Watch everybody who talks over these three phones. Arrest anybody who receives or sends a call to the prison. There’s plenty of Central Office men handy for a pinch. Fosdick will back them up!”
Drew rushed for the subway. He realized that he had wasted valuable time by not taking the complete set of fingerprint photos on his first inspection of the booths. It was a detail he had overlooked. But then, he could afford to make mistakes. The men or man he was after, dared not make any. This was a thing he had often recalled in dealing with super-criminals.
Fosdick’s rooms at Detective Headquarters, on Center Street, were luckily deserted as he rushed down through the hallway. The Commissioner widened his eyes as Drew handed over the camera, with a request that the films be developed and prints made within twenty minutes.
“Can’t be done that soon,” said the detective. “Give us fifty minutes.”
“I’ll make it twenty-five!” shot Drew. “I got lots to tell you, but it’ll keep. Get those prints and we’ll land our man. The last two films have perfect samples of finger-work. Our man slipped there! He signed his own death warrant!”
The Commissioner pressed a button. To the young man who came, he explained the necessity of rushing the developing and printing of the films. He turned as the messenger hurried out with the camera.
“What about that bullet?” he asked.
“Just as I said, Commissioner. It was fired from a smooth-bore pistol or gun. What do you think?”
“Oh, maybe not! Sometimes there isn’t much rifling on an old revolver. Those little twenty-two affairs are made out of cast-iron.”