“He’s not a policeman,” Leon put in. “He’s an Army officer, Miss Leeds.”
“What’s the difference?” she demanded. “Army or police, it’s all the same.” She was regarding me sternly. “Do you understand me, young man? You tell the mayor I want this stopped. I own this house and I own nine houses on this block and I pay my taxes, and I don’t intend to be annoyed. My mother wrote the mayor and she wrote the papers a thousand times what they ought to do. They ought to keep the hawks out of the city. I want to ask you what is being done about that. Well?”
I should have smiled at her, but she just wasn’t anything to smile at. So I looked her in the eye and said, “Miss Leeds, you want facts. Okay, here’s three facts. One. This is the first I ever heard of hawks. Two. This is the first I ever heard of your mother. Three. I came here to see Ann Amory, and Leon tells me she’s up on the roof.” I stood up. “If I see any hawks up there, I’ll catch ’em alive and wring their necks. And I’ll tell the mayor what you said.”
I walked out to the hall and along that to the next flight of stairs.
Chapter 5
The hall above and the one above that were each lit by a single unshaded bulb in a wall socket, but when I opened the door at the stairs to the roof, and passed through and closed it behind me, I was in darkness. I felt my way up with my feet on the wooden treads, found a latch at the top and opened a door, and was on the roof. Blinking at flakes of snow the wind was tossing around, and seeing nothing anywhere that might have been called Ann Amory, I headed for what looked like a penthouse to my left. Light was showing at the edges of a shaded window, and when I got to the door I could make out a sign painted on it:
RACING PIGEON LOFT
ROY DOUGLAS
KEEP OUT!
Since it said keep out, naturally my impulse was to go on in, but I restrained it and knocked. A man’s voice came asking who it was, and I called that it was company for Miss Amory, and the door swung open.