“Imprisoned, you mean. Well, I am ready.”
Nick, accompanied by Officer Brown, took Redway to the nearest police justice, where a commitment was sworn out, and Redway was lodged in the Tombs.
Before he left the Borden Building, however, Nick questioned the janitor again about the person who went down the stairs shortly after five o’clock.
“Are you positive it was Mr. Redway?”
“Sure as I live I am.”
“No mistaking some one else for him?”
“How could I? There’s no one else wears such a sky-blue suit, such a straw hat with a black band or has such a long blonde mustache.”
When Nick heard this answer, calling up Redway’s peculiar dress and appearance, he couldn’t doubt the janitor’s word. Then he got the address of the elevator boy, and turned the case over to the coroner with this personal request:
“Postpone your inquest from day to day, until I have had a little more time to look into this affair.”
Redway once safely in the Tombs, Nick went straight to the home of the elevator boy. He found the lad at supper, and knew the news of the tragedy in the Borden Building could not yet have reached him.[{37}]