Free Murder Has Its Points by Frances and Richard Lockridge

didn’t doubt it. So?
    â€œAmbrose Light,” Frank said and Bill Weigand, not unnaturally, said, “What?”
    â€œSure,” Frank said. “Great little jokers his parents were, some Mr. and Mrs. Light. Turn a psychiatrist loose on Brozy and you’d probably come up with something. But—”
    Ambrose Light, called Brozy, was a professional hotel thief, making a modest but fairly consistent living by visiting the rooms of hotel guests, preferably in the absence of the guests. A little here and a little there, it turned out to be Brozy, who owned a useful collection of general keys, and a few other instruments of value in his profession.
    Brozy had been following his trade the previous evening in the Hotel King Arthur, the location being purely coincidental but the time a matter of selection. Brozy preferred, naturally, to make his little visits when guests would be most likely to be elsewhere, at this hour at dinner. Brozy liked the quiet hour.
    This hour had suddenly, and to him inexplicably, ceased to be quiet at a little after eight the previous evening. Brozy had been trying out a key when, clearly in that very street, all hell broke loose. All hell, to Brozy, was most quickly identified with police sirens.
    Brozy found a hall window and looked down from it, and had never seen so many cops spilling out of cruise cars. Nothing like that had ever happend to Brozy before. Hotel detectives, yes. Now and then an unfair guest who pretended to be out while actually being in but the whole lousy force—
    â€œJeeze,” Brozy said, simply, explaining to Detective Foley in the West Fifty-fourth Street Station House, after he had regained the consciousness lost when he had tried to make a run for it, and had run into a fist. “What I thought was what the hell? On account of, I hadn’t touched off no alarm.”
    As he had looked down, he had seen several cops disappear under the marquee of the King Arthur. That had been enough for Brozy, and he had begun an ascent, by fire stairway. He had been on the third floor when he heard the racket, and the King Arthur was twelve stories high. It was quite a climb for Brozy, whose trade seldom required violent exercise. He went up a final ladder to the roof and made himself inconspicuous in the lee of a parapet.
    This had been a mistake, and he freely admitted as much to Detective Foley. If he had got himself into a room and hid out there, under a bed if necessary, he might have got away with it. “I was a nut,” Brozy admitted frankly. “How’d I know who you were looking for? Jeeze, Sergeant, I never shot nobody.”
    â€œNo record of violence,” Frank told Bill Weigand. “Just a small-time regular who’s been in and out for years. About as likely to kill somebody as—” He paused to consider. “A maiden aunt.” He considered again. “Less than some I’ve met,” he added. “Which doesn’t prove anything, of course.”
    â€œLight heard nothing? Saw nothing?”
    â€œHe says not, and I guess he didn’t. Matter of fact, I’ve never seen such an astonished little man. You can’t blame him, actually. Oh, we got the wrong man, Bill. Which doesn’t prove there wasn’t a right man we didn’t get, does it?”
    Bill agreed it didn’t.
    â€œStill a sniper for my money,” Frank said.
    Bill Weigand said, “Right.”
    â€œOnly,” Frank said, “the old man says for you to get cracking, on your side of the street.”
    Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley, commanding detectives, Borough of Manhattan, had spoken. Bill was mildly surprised he had not heard O’Malley, who after all was only some thirty-four blocks away. He would hear. He would also have to tell O’Malley that the Norths were in it, and listen and say, when opportunity presented, “Yes, chief. Again. I know, chief—”
    Sufficient unto the