We left Hotchkiss in charge and went down-stairs. It was McKnight who first saw Johnson, leaning against a park railing across the street, and called him over. We told him in a few words what we had found, and he grinned at me cheerfully.
“After while, in a few weeks or months, Mr. Blakeley,” he said, “when you get tired of monkeying around with the blood-stain and finger-print specialist up-stairs, you come to me. I’ve had that fellow you want under surveillance for ten days!”
CHAPTER XXX.
FINER DETAILS
At ten minutes before two the following day, Monday, I arrived at my office. I had spent the morning putting my affairs in shape, and in a trip to the stable. The afternoon would see me either a free man or a prisoner for an indefinite length of time, and, in spite of Johnson’s promise to produce Sullivan, I was more prepared for the latter than the former.
Blobs was watching for me outside the door, and it was clear that he was in a state of excitement bordering on delirium. He did nothing, however, save to tip me a wink that meant “As man to man, I’m for you.” I was too much engrossed either to reprove him or return the courtesy, but I heard him follow me down the hall to the small room where we keep outgrown lawbooks, typewriter supplies and, incidentally, our wraps. I was wondering vaguely if I would ever hang my hat on its nail again, when the door closed behind me. It shut firmly, without any particular amount of sound, and I was left in the dark. I groped my way to it, irritably, to find it locked on the outside. I shook it frantically, and was rewarded by a sibilant whisper through the keyhole.
“Keep quiet,” Blobs was saying huskily. “You’re in deadly peril. The police are waiting in your office, three of ’em. I’m goin’ to lock the whole bunch in and throw the key out of the window.”
“Come back here, you imp of Satan!” I called furiously, but I could hear him speeding down the corridor, and the slam of the outer office door by which he always announced his presence. And so I stood there in that ridiculous cupboard, hot with the heat of a steaming September day, musty with the smell of old leather bindings, littered with broken overshoes and handleless umbrellas. I was apoplectic with rage one minute, and choked with laughter the next. It seemed an hour before Blobs came back.
He came without haste, strutting with new dignity, and paused outside my prison door.
“Well, I guess that will hold them for a while,” he remarked comfortably, and proceeded to turn the key. “I’ve got ’em fastened up like sardines in a can!” he explained, working with the lock. “Gee whiz! you’d ought to hear ’em!” When he got his breath after the shaking I gave him, he began to splutter. “How’d I know?” he demanded sulkily. “You nearly broke your neck gettin’ away the other time. And I haven’t got the old key. It’s lost.”
“Where’s it lost?” I demanded, with another gesture toward his coat collar.