Maybe the police had broadcast my description. I paid him off and got out, high-tailed it in the other direction, and ducked into an alley, and in less than two minutes the corner where I’d got out was surrounded with police cars. I guess I lost my head completely then. They almost got me twice in the next hour, and the last time was near the railroad yards. I lost them in the dark and the rain. Then I saw a freight pulling out. I ran and got aboard and climbed down into a gondola.”

She shook her head. “That’s probably the most fantastic story I ever heard.”

”Right,” I said. “So I ought to give myself up and try it on them for laughs?”

“There wasn’t any knife involved in the fight? And you didn’t see one?”

“No,” I said.

“And he was on his knees, still alive, when you went out?”

“That’s right. He might have had just a shade the worst of the fight, but he wasn’t badly hurt, any more than I was. He was a pretty tough boy.”

“Did you close the door when you went out?”

“I suppose so. I was pretty groggy, but it would be the natural thing to do.”

She nodded. “You say the manager was gone, presumably to call the police, but there were other people in the corridor?”

“That’s right. There was a woman about half out of the doorway of the next apartment. She’d probably already called the police. At least, according to the radio news I heard, it was somebody next door. I don’t know what her name was, but I knew her by sight, and I suppose she knew me. She ducked back when she saw me come out of Stedman’s door. And then I met another tenant on the stairs—”’

She gestured with the cigarette. “That’s not what  I mean. Apparently there’s no question of identification. But when -you came out, this woman couldn’t have seen into his living room? And verified that he was still alive?’

“Not a chance,” I said. “She was in her own doorway, on the same side of the corridor.”

“And how long do you suppose it was from the time you left and the police got there and found him dead?

“I don’t know.” I said. “Somewhere between three and five minutes, probably. I walked down a flight of stairs and out the front of the building, and I was about a block away when the cruiser pulled up at the entrance. They had to find out which apartment, and then force the door—”

“How do you know they had to force it?”

“That’s what the radio said.”

She nodded. “Then you must have closed it, and it was self-locking.”

”Probably. Unless he closed it, or somebody else went in or out after I did.”

“No,” she said. “That woman wouldn’t have given up her ring-side seat. She’d have stayed right there watching the hall until the police arrived.