"'Good Lord!' I says, winking at him. 'That dame sure upset me. I want to go back two floors.'"
"When he let me out I hustled over to the stairway, went down to the ground floor, and when Marsh had his eyes turned away for a minute, I beat it out and up Michigan."
"Now, Morgan, here's where I was clever. That girl was good for a half-hour and so was Marsh, if he was following her; as I was pretty sure he was. Now you or I haven't seen all of the inside of Marsh's apartment, have we? And yet we suspect this guy, and want to get something on him if we can."
Morgan nodded, and began to smile as he gathered what Tierney was about to tell him.
"Well, Morgan, I figured that a half-hour would give me all the time I needed, so I ran over to the elevated and went back to Lawrence Avenue. I slipped up the alleyway, back of the house, and climbed the rear stairs to Marsh's flat. After thumping on the door several times I made sure no one was home, especially as the shades in the kitchen and the pantry were pulled down. So I pulled out my bunch of keys and had the luck to find one that opened the lock. I closed the door softly, and tiptoed through the kitchen and the dining room. Would you believe it, Morgan—THERE WASN'T A STICK OF FURNITURE IN THOSE ROOMS!"
"You mean the place was empty?" asked Morgan.
"Up to the entrance to the hallway it was absolutely bare, Morgan. The living room is furnished, and so is the bedroom; and there were a few toilet articles in the bathroom. He has a pair of heavy drapes across the doorway to the dining room, so that anyone coming in would never guess the back part wasn't furnished. I looked things over pretty carefully in the few minutes I had, and I didn't find a single article that belonged to a woman. I tell you, Morgan, that fellow's living there alone and only got half the flat furnished! Take it from me, he's got something on. That flat's just a blind. If it was me, I'd lock him up tonight."
"Well, it's coming pretty soon, Tierney," acceded Morgan. "What you've found out today will help a lot."
There was a few minutes pause as the two men smoked their pipes, and Morgan analyzed the facts which Tierney had given him. Suddenly he leaned over and picked up the telephone from the tabouret.
"What's doing?" exclaimed Tierney.