Hickey nodded, unimpressed. "Uh-huh. I knowed that all along," he replied. "But seein' as yeh didn't want it talked about…." And, apparently heedless of Maitland's startled and suspicious stare: "If yeh're goin' to see yer fren', yeh better get a wiggle on. He won't last long."
"Who? Bannerman? What the deuce do you mean?"
"He's the feller I plugged in the elevator, that's all. Put a hole through his lungs. They took him into an office on the twenty-first floor, right opp'site the shaft."
"But what in Heaven's name has he to do with this ghastly mess?"
Hickey turned a shrewd eye upon Maitland. "I guess he can tell yeh better'n me."
With a smothered exclamation, Maitland hurried away, still incredulous and impressed with a belief, firmer with every minute, that the wounded man had been wrongly identified.
He found him as Hickey had said he would, sobbing out his life, supine upon the couch of an office which the janitor had opened to afford him a place to die in. Maitland had to force a way through a crowded doorway, where the night-watchman was holding forth in aggrieved incoherence on the cruel treatment he had suffered at the hands of the lawbreakers. A phrase came to Maitland's ears as he shouldered through the group.
"….grabbed me an' trun me outer the cage, inter the hall, an' then the shootin' begins, an' I jumps down-stairs t' the sixteent' floor…."
Bannerman opened dull eyes as Maitland entered, and smiled faintly.
"Ah-h, Maitland," he gasped; "thought you'd … come."