The Philadelphia Murder Story by Leslie Ford Page A

grimier than my gloves. Then he glanced at the plate-glass door in front of us. The detective standing there looked at it too. The whole side of the thick glass was covered with blurred fingerprints where people had gone out all day.
    “Did Captain Malone have this fingerprinted?” Colonel Primrose asked.
    The detective shook his head. “Waste of time. What would you get but a lot of blobs?”
    Mr. Trayser went outside with us.
    “It may be a waste of time,” Colonel Primrose said, “but I’d be glad if you’d have those doors propped open and left for me. Graphite has a way of sticking. The handle of that knife was covered with it. And it’s like blood—there are spots where you don’t think of looking.”
    If it didn’t come so close to that had-I-but-known sort of thing that’s so irritating, I would say that at that moment Colonel Primrose had the gift of the prophetic tongue.

8
    There was no question, of course, of “had I but known” about why I’d been taken on the educational tour of the ninth floor of the Curtis Building. Nor why Colonel Primrose hadn’t stopped on the sixth floor on the way down, instead of sending a message by Mr. Trayser. He wanted to see the Whitneys before anyone else did.
    And it was his anxiety not to waste time about it, I suppose, that made him start down the steps without seeing the little man across the street. He was not easy to see. He was as drab and colorless as the barren earth of Independence Square behind him. Conscious as I’d become of his existence in the last twenty-four hours, I wouldn’t have noticed him if it hadn’t been for the policeman who was keeping the street clear. He had stopped and was looking over our side, and the policeman took two or three steps across the car tracks. “Move on, there. I’ve told you twice now. Move on.”
    That was when I saw it was Albert Toplady, and by then he was moving on. He was going quickly, but I thought unsteadily, and it occurred to me that he must have known what had happened.
    The policeman came back. “You wonder what they expect to see,” he said. “That guy’s been hanging around the last hour or more.”
    “It might be a good idea to find out why,” Colonel Primrose said placidly.
    We went along, leaving the policeman looking a little startled. I glanced at Colonel Primrose. I couldn’t tell whether he’d recognized Mr. Toplady or not. It didn’t occur to me, until we got to the corner, that having none of the background I had on Mr. Toplady and his letter which he had given me to deliver to Myron Kane, and the mess that somebody taking it from Abigail Whitney’s room had caused, he had no reason to be concerned over the little man’s presence there, even if he’d recognized him as the bookkeeper who hadn’t showed at the bank that morning. He hadn’t seen Myron Kane turn a sick gray-green at the mention of Albert Toplady’s name or heard him at the foot of the stairs outside Abigail Whitney’s room, broken-voiced and shaken, saying he’d be ruined if the letter wasn’t found. Nor had he heard Judge Whitney at Travis Elliot’s house, talking about irreparable harm.
    Perhaps, I thought, the policeman should have stopped him, and at that point I think I would have said something myself, if I’d had a chance. But there weren’t any cabs in sight and there was a streetcar on the corner. A lot of other people were getting into it, and by the time we’d got to the door, Mr. Toplady had disappeared, going along the square as fast as he could in the direction of the water front.
    It seemed ridiculous anyway. Unless Albert Toplady was a consummate actor, which seemed unlikely, I could have sworn he had no wish or intention to ruin Myron Kane by writing him a letter. The breathless awe with which he’d spoken of his being at Mrs. Whitney’s, the way he’d called him the great foreign correspondent, were too earnestly sincere to mask any attempt to injure him. And at that point I got such an