“How far away were you last night from the door of the alleyway between the two apartment houses?”
The man paused to visualize the scene.
“Forty or fifty feet, say.”
“And between you and the alleyway were the iron fence and some tree branches.”
“Yes, sir. The view was more or less cut off, if that’s what you mean.”
“Would it have been possible for any one, coming from the direction of the Dillard house, to have gone out and returned by that door without your noticing him?”
“It mighta been done,” the detective admitted; “provided, of course, the guy didn’t want me to see him. It was foggy and dark last night, and there’s always a lot of traffic noises from the Drive that woulda drowned out his movements if he was being extra cautious.”
When the Sergeant had sent Guilfoyle back to the Bureau to await orders, Vance gave voice to his perplexity.
“It’s a dashed complicated situation. Drukker called on the Dillards at eight o’clock, and at ten o’clock he was shoved over the wall in the park. As you observed, the note that Quinan just showed us was postmarked 11 p. m.—which means that it was probably typed before the crime. The Bishop therefore had planned his comedy in advance and prepared the note for the press. The audacity of it is amazin’. But there’s one assumption we can tie to—namely, that the murderer was some one who knew of Drukker’s exact whereabouts and proposed movements between eight and ten.”
“I take it,” said Markham, “your theory is that the murderer went and returned by the apartment-house alley.”