The Girl Who Kept Knocking Them Dead. Hampton Stone
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ones on the washstand,” he said, “they’re the doozies, Mr. Gibson. Both hands, left and right, and all ten fingers. It’s like they’d been done for the file, perfect and complete. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve never picked up another set like them.”
We went up to the apartment with him and he took us into the bathroom and showed us the exact position on the washstand where he had been able to bring out these phenomenal prints. The four fingers of each hand had turned up on the sides and the thumbs had turned up on top. Gibby smiled grimly.
“No wonder they’re so good,” he said. “She had her whole weight behind them.”
The cop shrugged. “Craziest one I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Don’t forget this was after wiping the place clean.”
“I’m not forgetting,” Gibby said.
We were moving out of the bathroom when the bell rang. The cop knew all about the bells. He had been working in there most of the afternoon and there had been plenty of coming and going, what with all the police and the Medical Examiner’s men.
“That’s the downstairs bell,” he said. “One of our fellows coming back that’ll be.”
He put his finger on a button that would release the lock on the downstairs door. He held it there for a few moments.
“Expect any of your men back here now?” Gibby asked.
“We’ll be keeping a man on here tonight anyhow—” the cop began.
“Just in case some of her friends should turn up,” Gibby said, finishing it for him. “Someone has turned up. It can be one of our boys. It could be someone for her. Let’s not assume anything.”
The cop flushed. He was a specialist and evidently a bit rusty on the general run of police routine, but he was still a cop. He made an apologetic gesture. Nobody said anything. We were waiting. In the quiet I could hear Nora McGuire’s record player next door. It was coming through pleasantly as just the most discreet murmur of music. The sudden, sharp shrilling of the upstairs doorbell made me jump a bit.
Gibby moved to the door and opened it. A young man with thin hair stood on the doormat. He was all big grin and dancing eyes. He saw us and the grin faded and some of the gaiety went out of his eyes. He went into a flutter of apologetic gestures.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I must have the wrong apartment.”
“Come in,” Gibby said. “You have the right apartment.”
I thought he was just riding a hunch. In fact, it did strike me that this could very possibly belong to Nora McGuire next door. He looked the type who might join her for a high old time with Frédéric Chopin on the gramophone.
Then he came in and the light fell full on his face. Just for verification, I took a quick glance at the picture on the bedside table. He was looking some years older and he wasn’t in uniform, but there was no mistaking him. Even without the combat infantry medal or the Pfc. stripe, this was Milty, the only man in the life of the late Sydney Bell on whom we had anything more than Nora McGuire’s vague descriptions.
At that moment he stuck his hand out and introduced himself. “I’m Milt Bannerman,” he said. “You know, Ellie’s brother.”
Since nobody had taken his hand he now used it to gesture toward his picture where it still sat on the table.
“Yes,” Gibby said. “We recognized you from the picture.”
“Both the girls out?” Milty asked. “Serves me right, I suppose, for trying to surprise them. They weren’t expecting me till tonight. I found I could get an earlier train.”
“You were expecting to find your sister here with Miss Bell?” Gibby asked.
For just a split second Milt Bannerman looked confused. Then he laughed.
“Of course,” he said. “You know her as Sydney Bell. That’s Ellie. That’s my sister.”
He made that gesture toward the table again but this time it was at the dead girl’s picture.
“Then what other girl were you expecting to find here with her?” Gibby asked.
Milty started to speak. The beginning of a syllable did come past his lips, something that sounded like “Jo—” but he bit off sharply and with a wary eye on the three of us he started edging toward the door. The cop wasn’t so much the fingerprint lab specialist that he didn’t quietly move with Bannerman, putting himself in the doorway behind him.
“Hey, what is this?” Bannerman asked. “Who are you anyway and where are the girls?”
Gibby introduced himself and while he was at it, he also introduced me and the officer who stood in the doorway.
Bannerman’s wary look took on a sharper edge. His eyes narrowed and there was that almost imperceptible change all over him under the decent blue suit. Muscles were settling themselves. Mentally he was pinning the combat infantryman’s badge back on his chest.
“You’ll have some sort of identification,” he said. “I don’t just have to take your word for it.”
Gibby showed him his identification. I brought mine out and the officer stood with his in his hand. It couldn’t have been more different from the previous time we had shown them. If Gibby had been questioning the readiness of those characters out in the street to take us on our own say-so, he could have no complaint of Milton Bannerman’s thoroughness.
He didn’t just look at our credentials. He made a study of them. He examined all three in turn and he was so long over each that he could have been memorizing them unless he was a very slow study. I didn’t think he was memorizing them. I thought he was playing for time.
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