“I’ve read every word the papers have printed about this affair,” he went on, still in that guileless, confidential tone. “I can’t conceive why the body wasn’t found before.”
“Reason enough!” the officer asserted with warmth. “There’s no path down there, nothing but a steep slope of shale and bushes between the wall and the railroad tracks, and no one’s ever along there but a track walker now and then. There’s a dump and two docks near, but the road leads down from under the Drive at the viaduct. If it hadn’t been for them boys playing around, the body mightn’t have been found till Christmas, and no blame to the Department!”
Every nerve in Storm’s body shook with the tension, and he could feel the sweat starting from his pores; but they had left that spot behind and every slow, swinging step took them further from it. He had no intention of permitting the policeman to note the street near which he lived; a few blocks further on and he would take leave of him and cut across the Drive. A few blocks—but he must play up, he must not drop his rôle for an instant.
“I don’t think that automobile that the papers make so much of had anything to do with it, do you, Officer?” he asked in a loquacious tone, adding: “A friend of mine has a friend at Headquarters who told him that two men were seen walking together on the Drive here only a little before the time when the murder was supposed to have been committed, and one of them——”
“Say!” the other interrupted disgustedly. “Some guy at Headquarters must have a mighty big mouth! You’re the second that’s been after me about that!”
“After you!” Storm repeated.
“Sure. I’m the one seen them,” the policeman retorted. “And what of it? I’ve had no orders since I’ve been on the Force to interfere with two respectable-appearing gentlemen walking along cold sober and peaceable, and minding their own business, just as you come to be out here to-night yourself, sir! They’d no more to do with the murder than you had! Of course, when the body was found I had to report them, but that would have been the end of it if some guy down there hadn’t been shooting his mouth off!”
“But if you are the officer who passed them,” Storm insisted, “my friend says he was told that your description of one of them fitted the dead man——”
“As it would fit any big, well-built fellow you met in the dark!” the policeman snorted contemptuously. “Besides, as far as I made out from a passing look at him he was wearing a cap of some kind. There was none found anywhere near the dead man, and his own hat was hid away in that bag down at the Grand Central Station. If that boob at Headquarters——”
“But the other man who was with him——?” Storm steadied his voice carefully. “Did you get a good look at him, Officer? What was he like?”