Indianapolis Times, Volume 40, Number 246, Indianapolis, Marion County, 4 March 1929 — Page 11

MARCH 4,1929.

SHE BLAGK PIGEONd © 1929 By NEA Service, Inc. Q/ ANNE AUSTIN

THIS HAS HAPPENED RUTH LESTER, secretary, finds the bodv of her employer. "HANDSOME HAftRY" BORDEN. Monday morning sprawled beneath the alrshaft window of his private office. He was shot some time between one and four o'clock Saturday afternoon. McMann. detective sergeant, conducting the investigation in the victim's office, quizzes MRS. BORDEN, the dead man's estranged wife and mother of his two children, who admits coming to the office Saturday afternoon for her alimony check but who insists she left Borden alive. Ruth is the next suspect questioned. Ruth realizes McMann is drawing the net around her fiance. JACK HAYWARD, whose office is Just across the narrow alrshaft from Borden’s. He tells McMann he returned to the seventh floor Saturday afternoon to get his And Ruth's matinee tickets. Suspicion is further thrown on Jack bv the testimony of the elevator boys, MICKY MORAN and OTTO PFLUGER. and by BILL COWAN, a friend, who tells of having heard Jack threaten Borden's life Saturday morning when he saw him struggling with Ruth in the opposite office. McMann sends detectives for CLEO GILMAN. Borden’s discarded mistress, and MINNIE CASSIDY and LETTY MILLER, seventh floor scrubwomen. Meanwhile RITA DUBOIS, night club dancer, admits her call on Borden Saturday afternoon but insists she left him alive. ASHE. Borden's manservant, tells McMann of a woman with a beautiful contralto voice whom Borden refused to talk to on the telephone BENNY SMITH. Borden’s office boy, is brought in. He admits returning to the office Saturday afternoon to get Ruth’s gun for target practice and of finding it already gone. He says Borden ordered him out. Minnie Cassidy accompanies Ruth to the scene of the investigation. NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY l CHAPTER XIX "pOOR dearie!” Minnie Cassidy, 1 the cleaning woman murmured commisseratingly, as she and Ruth started together down the hall toward the Borden offices. ‘‘They do say the fool cops are sayin’ your man did it, but as me and Letty was tellin’ each other not five minutes ago, Mrs. Hayward is not the boy as would hurt a fly—so kind-hearted and open-handed he is. Just you pray the Blessed Mother, miss, and—oh, Lordy! What’s that?” “Flashlights,” Ruth informed her, behind hands which she had flung up to cover her face. “Me picture in the papers?” Minnie cried, as delighted as a child. "And me with this old calico moth-er-hubbard on!” “Let’s run!” Ruth begged, dragging at Minnie's gnarled old hand. Patrolman Biggers, still on guard outside the Borden offices, grinned sympathetically as he swung open the door for them. “Mr. McMann is in Mr. Borden’s mrivate office, Minnie. I’ll take you In—oh!” she broke off, with a startled exclamation, then ran to her own desk, where Benny Smith was sitting, his head bowed on his outflung arms, terrible sobs shaking his thin body. “What’s the matter, Benny? Benny, dear, what is the matter?” she implored, stroking his sandy hair. “The big stiff! The big old bully!” Benny sobbed. “I’ll punch his nose through his face, I will.” The door to the private office opened, and McMann’s curt voice interrupted any confidence that Benny might have been about to make. “Come in. Miss Lester! Is this Minnie Cassidy?” “Missus Minnie Cassidy!” the cleaning woman corrected the detective with surprising spirit. “And ye're Tommy McMann. Me husband—God rest his soul!—was a rookie along with ye, Tommy McMann. Many's the poker game he’s won your good money off ye and brought it home to Minnie Cassidy.” b b M’MANN chuckled and thrust out a big hand which Minnie Cassidy seized and shook warmly. “So you're Tim Cassidy's widow, Minnie. Poor Tim! As grand a ‘bigfoot’ as ever walked a beat! Come in. Minnie. Miss Lester will stand by and see that I don’t use any third-degree methods on you.”

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“Good!” Harry Blaine replied as simply, touching her loosely clasped hands for an instant. “I've missed my friend, and I'm glad she's back, even if she is so changed that I scarcely recognized her. When are you going to be well enough to help me on that play of mine, Crystal?” He was horribly afraid that she might flutter and bridle a bit at that, but the clear, grave hazel eyes met his steadily. “Whenever you like. Harry. I’m not ill any longer. I want to begin to live again, I think.” Unconsciously, Crystal, in discarding her artificial self and revealing the real girl underneath, had become ' oat she had .once so ardently desired to be—attractive to men. The j fact that she was unconscious of j her poignant new appeal increased its effectiveness a thousandfold. That. Harry Blaine, who had always liked her in spite of everything. was not the only man in the room who felt the p ill of anew magnet was soon very' evident—to all but Crystal. The reporter reluctantly gave up his seat beside her. but took one where he could watch her, his heart quite shamelessly in his eyes, while , first one man and then another dropped out of the informal dancing and claimed her attention. "Whew! I'm tired!” Tony gasped, dropping to the couch beside Harry Blaine and stretching out her long brown-leather-trousered legs. "You ought to be home in bed alter that long flight," Harry told her, his eves still fixed upon Crystal. “I know it!" Tony sighed. “Lord! I'd like to sleep a week ! Sut I had to help make whooppee for Crys. Isn't she a knockout, Harry? “If Tony Tarver’s any prophet, my girl friend is going to have more dates than there are nights in tlie week—if site wants them.” Harry Blaine shot a fleet but searching gl#nee into the blue eyes of the girl at his side, to see if there was a shadow of jealousy in them. For it was now Dick Talbot who sat beside Crystal, having ousted George Pruitt, who had previously dispossessed the courtly and distinguished older man. Alan Beardsley. But in Tony's clear eyes there iras nothing but fondness, and pride

“As if ye could!” Minnie wagged her head at him derisively. “I'm on to ye cops, I am! Hot air and bluff, the lot of ye . . . Now what did ye want to know, Tommy McMann? ... So ye’re a detective sergeant now! My Tim would-a been your captain if the gangsters hadn’t got him.” “I'm sure of it, Minnie!” McMann answered heartily, with a humorous lift of his bushy eyebrows toward Ruth, who had slipped into a chair beside the one he had drawn up for Minnie Cassidy. “You cleaned these offices on Saturday, Minnie?” “That I did! And not a slipshod job like most of the girls get by with on a Saturday,” Minnie answered emphatically “Emptied the wastebaskets, wiped off the desks and window sills and chairs with me oiled rag ■” “That's fine, Minnie!” McMann grinned. “You left us a fine surface for fingerprints. But to go back a little. Was Mr. Borden In this office when you came to clean, and at what time did you come in here?” “That he was, and looking like he'd live to be a hundred!” Minnie answered. “It was near the death of me, and yes, bf Letty, too,‘when Mr. Coughlan, the superintendent of the building, told us the poor gentleman had been murdered.” “What time was it when you cleaned these offices, if you remember, Minnie?” McMann was plainly trying to be patient with his former colleague's widow. “Half-past one it was when I finished in 713, Mr. Green’s office'’ across the hall. They’ve got a Dig fancy clock in the front office, and I noticed the time by it. Then I come straight over here, and let myself in with my pass key—” “The door was locked?” “That it was, and I thought Mr. Borden was gone. I knew Miss Ruth had left, for me and Letty seen her and her young man—and a nicer man ain’t in the land of the living than Mr. Hayward, Tommy McMann!—seen them at the elevator, we did.” v “When?” “Just before I went in to Mr. Green’s office—musta been fifteen or twenty minutes past one,” Minnie answered readily. “So I thought nobody wasn’t in here and I come in. There wasn't no light on in Mr. Borden’s private office—not that he needs it, what with two windows on the street and one on the airshaft. “Anyways, there wasn't no light, so I opened the door without knockin’ and then I seen Mr. Borden asettin’ at his desk, and I started to back out, saying, ‘Excuse me, sir, I didn’t know ye was still here,* and he said, ‘Come on in. I’m going to be here till two. You won’t bother me.’ ” “Pleasant, was he?” McMann demanded. “Didn’t look worried or angry?” “He spoke sort of short, but Lordy, I’m used to that,” Minnie confessed resignedly. ‘I went on about me work, and was can-yin’ out his wastebasket when Benny, his office boy, came in.” tt B "npELL me exactly what passed between Benny and his boss,” McMann directed. “Now, Tommy McMann, ye're ndt going to make me help ye scare that poor kid to death!” Minnie assured the detective spiritedly. “I didn't pay no attention to what passed between ’em none of my business. “I took out Mr. Borden's wastebasket, emptied it into Miss Ruth’s wastebasket, and then took hers out

in Crystal's unsought triumphs. “Poor Dick!” Tony whispered a bit later to Harry Blaine. “His S. A. doesn’t seem to be hitting on all six tonight. Crys has turned him down. “I knew he'd ask her for a date, as soon as he realized she didn’t give a darn whether he did or not. Heigh-ho!” she yawned, stretching her arms high above her head and letting them fall wearily. “Life’s funny, isn't it. Harry? That being only too true, I’d better toddle off to bed. I have a hunch there’s dynamite in this room tonight, and I’m too tired to run fast when the explosion comes.” “Explosion?” Harry' Blaine echoed. “Dynamite?” Tony Tarver made a face at him, which ended in a yawn. Her face looked alarmingly pale. “And I never dreamed you were blind, poor dear!” she was murmuring in a fatigued tone. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that Cherry Jonson is seething like a minat’.re volcano.” “Cherry-?” Harry- repeated, astonished. “She's seemed rather unobtrusive this evening.” Tony chuckled, then yawned again widely. “Thait’s exactly why she’s seething—because no one has noticed her particularly this evening. Crys has the spotlight, and I don’t think Charry is going to be able to bear it many more minutes. “She's just waiting to come to a boil, of whatever it is that volcanoes do. and so ‘Fair Fljer Flutters Home,’ ’’ she grinned, and with mock groans of agony drew in her long legs and hoisted herself from the comfortable couch. “Let me see you home,” Harry Blaine suggested, springing to his feet in time to throw a steadying arm about her shoulders, as she stood swaying dizzily before the couch. "Good heavens, child! You are exhausted.” Tony's head dropped to his shoulder, and her slim body sagged wearily against the boy's. “Don't mind if I seem to be hugging you.” she muttered" in a queer, faraway voice, as her right arm crooked about Iris neck. “Not going to faint—just a little dizzy.” (To Be Continued)

I into the hall and dumped the papers into the big sack I’d drug up to the door from Mr. Green's office. When the sack's full, the porter takes it down to the basement—” “All right, Minnie,” McMann interrupted. “Benny says you overheard Borden telling him to ‘get t’ell out of here.’ Is that right?” “I didn't pay no attention, I tell ye!” Minnie repeated stubbornly. “The boy left while I was here that’s all* I’ll swear to, Tommy McMann ! ” “O. K. Minnie,” McMann chuckled. “I don't blame you for being sorry for the kid after hearing Borden bawl him out and fire him.” “Did he fire the boy now?” Minnie asked, with bland innocence, so that the trap, if such it was, which McMann had laid for her, failed to spring. McMann did not answer, but opened up anew line with'his next question. “You say you wiped off the window sills, Minnie? And closed the windows, I suppose, as your duty requires you to do?” “Sure I wiped off the window sills, inside and out, and the window frames, too. I ain't a slacker, even if I am gettin’ old and rheumatic. But I didn't shut the windows. The two front ones, looking out on the street, was already closed, or the draft would have lilowed the poor man away. “That with the window open on the airshaft, like it was. I did pull it down to wipe it clean, but Mr. Gorden told me to push it up again. He said he’d shut it when he left at two.” The last vestige of hope Ruth had unreasoningly nourished that the window had not been closed until after Borden had been killed died then. Os course she had known all along that it was foolish to entertain that hope, in view of the incontrovertible evidence of the pigeon’s footprints in blood both inside and outside the airshaft window. But weak though it was, it had been hope, and the girl stared with unconcealed misery at the garrulous old woman, who had slain it. “You pushed up the window after you had wiped it clean, I suppose?” McMajjjk asked, and Ruth knew he had in mind the fact that Ferber, the fingerprint expert, had found no prints at all upon the window frame. “Os course I did!” Minnie retorted. ' <■ “Do you wear rubber gloves while cleaning?”McMann suggested. & B ft MINNIE cackled her derision. “What does an old woman like me care about her hands? Not that some of the girls ain’t finicky—scared furniture polish and yellow soap will rough up their precious hands, but not Minnie Cassidy!’’and she spread her pitiful old hands on her lap, regarding them with curious satisfaction, even the hand with the mutilated forefinger, whose stubby print was now a part of Ferber’s sinister collection. “That’s the'spirit, Minnie!” McMann grinned. “Now-, did anything else happen when you were cleaning in here Saturday afternoon? Any visitors or telephone calls?” “Well, there was a phone call while Mr. Borden—peace to his soul, poor man!—was out—” “Out? He left the office while you were here?” McMann demanded. “That he did,” Minnie answered, unperturbed. “Stepped down the hall to the lavatory. He asked me to stay till he got back, as he didn’t have a key and didn’t want the door left unlocked. “He’d scarcely closed the door behind him before the telephone rung, and I answered it, so’s I could tell the party he’d be right back. Which I did. and the lady said she’d hold the line—” ‘‘So it was a woman calling, was it?” McMann interrupted sharply. “Did you ask her name?” “Now, Tommy McMann, I'm surprised at ye!” Minnie reproved him severely. “As if it was any of my business! I jist said it was Mr. Borden's office, and ‘No, ma’am, he ain’t in right now, but he’s jist stepped down the hall and will be back in a minute,’ and she said, 'Then I’ll hold the wire, thank you,’ as sweet and ladylike as you please ” “Wait!” Ruth cried, leaning toward Minnie excitedly. “What kind of voice did she have, Minnie? Oh, please try to remember! Was it—?” “Just a minute, Miss Lester!” the detective reproved her sternly. “No leading the witness, if you pledse. Describe the woman’s voice, if you can, Minnie. Anything at all unusual about it?” Minnie Cassidy reached out and patted Ruth's hand, as if to console her for McMann's sharpness. “As sweet- a voice as ever I heard, Tommy McMann! Put me in mind of a singer I heard one time on my daughter’s radio—an alto singer, she was—” “The woman with the contralto voice!” Ruth cried triumphantly. “Alto or contralto, it was a pretty voice, and fair did me good to hear it,” Minnie asserted cheerfully. “And did Borden talk with her when he returned?” McMann demanded. “No, that he didn’t! He done the same as you've, done—asked me what kind of voice the lady had, and I told him same as I’ve told ye, and he said, sharp and real madlike, ‘Hang up the receiver!’ and I was gonno do like he told me, though it went against the grain I can tell you. when he said, 'Wait a minute! Tell her to call me again in fifteen or twenty minutes. I can't talk to her now. I'm expecting my wife any minute,’ he says, ‘but don't tell her that,” he says real quick.” “And what'"—McMann leaned forward. betraying almost as much suspense as Ruth—“exactly what did the lady answer?” Minnie Cassidy folded her hands on Jier prominent stomach, regarding the man whom she dared call “Tommy” McMann with shrewdly humorous old eyes, enjoying the sensation she knew she was about to make. . • . (To Be Continued) The woman with the contralto voice again. Does she hold the solution to Borden's i lurder?

_ THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

OUR BOARDING HOUSE

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THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE *

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BISNT aN ’LOOK I os^sjr/

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SKETCHES BY BESSEY. SYNOPSIS BY BRAUCHER

PAGE 11

—By Williams

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By Blosser

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By Small

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