the street up to the traffic officer. He waited until the patrolman blew his whistle and lifted his white gloved hand for traffic change.
Piers stood equal in height if not in breadth to the officer. Assignment in Africa had worn him thin. He asked with the right careless curiosity, “Hear about the accident up the street last night?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t on duty.” He continued manipulating traffic as he spoke. “Did you witness it?”
“Not exactly. Not till it was over.” Piers spoke with clear conscience and candid eyes. “Had my back to it. Who was the fellow?”
“Don’t know. If you were there last night you ought to report in to the Precinct. It’s the Eighteenth, up on Fifty-fourth street. Captain Devlin is trying to round up all the witnesses.”
“He must have been someone important,” Piers said carelessly. “But I didn’t see anything in the papers.”
The policeman held traffic for two women and a little girl with dyed yellow curls and white tassels topping her boots. One of the women examined Piers. When they reached the curb, the cop blew his whistle. “Wasn’t that. Only some of the witnesses say the guy was being chased. Some of them say he was pushed.”
“Sorry I can’t help out. I was just too late.” Piers moved on, lounging across to the east side of Broadway.
The officer didn’t look after him. Doubtless took him for one of the unemployed actors who emerged at the late morning hour. The officer hadn’t been suspicious.
There was risk in it but he wanted to visit the precinct where the accident had been reported. Wisely he had changed to protective coloring today. The sand-brown gabardine, the panama, wouldn’t fit a description of a dark suit and hat. No spectator could have described his face; it was any face, thin, tanned, no distinguishing marks.
He walked on uptown. It was worth the chance for the possibility of finding out the fellow’s name. A lost article. A briefcase. Lost in the excitement over the accident. A good enough excuse. He strode north the nine blocks, turned west on 54th, to the severe gray stone of number 306. He didn’t hesitate at the door; he pushed in.
The sergeant at the desk was big and red. A tuft of saffron gray hair grew over each ear. He sucked his pen and exhaled, “What’s yours?”
Piers stated without preamble, “I lost my briefcase last night. By any chance has it been turned in here?”
The sergeant had a list of questions, routine for lost and found.
Piers avoided name and address, describing, “Alligator, brown. Papers in it.”
“What kind of papers?”
He smiled, deciding to hold his imagination to a guise which would fit. “Plays. Manuscript plays, that is.”
The sergeant’s nose didn’t consider that of much importance.
“It was a good briefcase,” Piers insisted. “Good alligator.” A good alligator is a dead alligator. He continued answering the queries. “It was somewhere in the Paramount block. I think it must have been knocked from my hand when the accident occurred.”
When he spoke the word “accident” the watery blue eyes with the yellowed pupils, the disinterested eyes, suddenly became crisp as china.
“You mean the accident—you mean the guy that jumped in front of a taxi?”
“Fell or jumped or was pushed,” Piers said. He said it blithely, as if he’d taken part in a sidewalk session after its occurrence.
“You want to see Captain Devlin,” the sergeant nodded. He got to his feet as if they pained him and he padded to an inner door.
Piers let his voice follow eagerly. “Does he know about my briefcase?” He lighted a cigarette after the officer disappeared. This was better than he had expected, a first-hand talk with the captain. He wasn’t apprehensive; he couldn’t be connected with the accident; he had not come here to speak of it but to inquire for lost property. He was curious as to whether the police had discovered the dead man to be important or whether this was normal