American fiction -- 20th century; Detective and mystery stories
"Say, young lady," says he, "I’m not goin’ to bandy words with you. Have
it any way you like. _I_ was here, _I_ seen it, I seen the corpse lyin’
all bunched up, I seen the crowd, I seen the amberlanch, and I seen Mr.
Harland’s clerk come down and identify the body—but maybe I don’t know.
Take it or leave it—any way you choose."
The people snickered and looked at the girl, who got red and walked off
muttering. The janitor went back to picking at a piece of ice as big as
a half dollar, watching out for the next one to come along.
I hadn’t phoned to Iola this time and it being an unusual occasion I
decided to go up. There were men in the entrance hall talking together
in groups and from every group I could hear the name of Harland coming
in low tones. In the elevator when the other passengers had got out, the
boy looked at me and said:
"Tough what happened here last night, ain’t it?"
I agreed with him and as we shot up with the floors flashing between the
iron grills, _he_ had _his_ little say about it. One of the things that
seemed to trouble him most was that he hadn’t been there, as the express
elevator which he ran was broken early in the afternoon and he’d gone
home before the event.
The corridor of the seventeenth floor was a bare, clean place, all
shining stone, not a bit of wood about it but the doors. At one end was
a window looking out on the Broadway side and near it the stairs went
down, concrete with a metal balustrade. I’d asked for Miss Whitehall’s
office and as I got out of the car the boy had said, "First door to your
left, Azalea Woods Estates." There were two doors on each side, the
upper halves ground glass with gold lettering. Those to the right had
"The Hudson Electrical Company" on them and those to the left "Azalea
Woods Estates" with under that "Anthony Ford, Manager."
As I walked toward the first of these I could see out of the window the
great back of the Massasoit Building, tan color against the bright blue
of the sky. Pausing before I rang the bell, I leaned against the window
ledge and spied down. The street looked like a small, narrow gully,
dotted with tiny black figures, and the houses that fronted on it,
extending back to the Massasoit, no bigger than match boxes.
I pressed the bell and as I waited turned and looked down the corridor,
stretching away in its shiny scoured cleanness between the shut doors of
offices. Just beyond the elevator shafts there was a branch hall and
along the polished floor I could see the white, glassy reflection of
another window. That was on the side street, one of those I had looked
up at, and as I was thinking that, the door opened slowly and Iola
peered out, with her eyes big and scared and a sandwich in her hand.
"Good gracious, Molly!" she cried. "I’m so glad to see you. Come in."
I hesitated, almost whispering:
"Will Miss Whitehall mind?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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