“If you talked my language,” she drawled, looking narrow-eyed at me, “I might be able to give you some help.”
“Maybe if I knew what it was.”
“Money,” she explained, “the more the better. I like it.”
I became proverbial:
“Money saved is money earned. I can save you money and grief.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me,” she said, “though it sounds like it’s meant to.”
“The police haven’t asked you anything about the check?”
She shook her head, no.
I said:
“Noonan’s figuring on hanging the rap on you as well as on Whisper.”
“Don’t scare me,” she lisped. “I’m only a child.”
“Noonan knows that Thaler knew about the check. He knows that Thaler came here while Willsson was here, but didn’t get in. He knows that Thaler was hanging around the neighborhood when Willsson was shot. He knows that Thaler and a woman were seen bending over the dead man.”
The girl picked up a pencil from the table and thoughtfully scratched her cheek with it. The pencil made little curly black lines over the rouge.
Rolff’s eyes had lost their weariness. They were bright, feverish, fixed on mine. He leaned forward, but kept his hands out of sight below the table.
“Those things,” he said, “concern Thaler, not Miss Brand.”
“Thaler and Miss Brand aren’t strangers,” I said. “Willsson brought a five-thousand-dollar check here, and was killed leaving. That way, Miss Brand might have had trouble cashing it–if Willsson hadn’t been thoughtful enough to get it certified.”
“My God!” the girl protested, “if I’d been going to kill him I’d have done it in here where nobody could have seen it, or waited until he got out of sight of the house. What kind of a dumb onion do you take me for?”
“I’m not sure you killed him,” I said. “I’m just sure that the fat chief means to hang it on you.”
“What are you trying to do?” she asked.
“Learn who killed him. Not who could have or might have, but who did.”
“I could give you some help,” she said, “but there’d have to be something in it for me.”
“Safety,” I reminded her, but she shook her head.
“I mean it would have to get me something in a financial way. It’d be worth something to you, and you ought to pay something, even if not a fortune.”
“Can’t be done.” I grinned at her. “Forget the bank roll and go in for charity. Pretend I’m Bill Quint.”
Dan Rolff started up from his chair, lips white as the rest of his face. He sat down again when the girl laughed–a lazy, good-natured laugh.
“He thinks I didn’t make any profit out of Bill, Dan.” She leaned over and put a hand on my knee. “Suppose you knew far enough ahead that a company’s employes were going to strike, and when, and then far enough ahead when they were going to call the strike off. Could you take that info and some capital to the stock market and do yourself some good playing with the company’s stock? You bet you could!” she wound up triumphantly. “So don’t go around thinking that Bill didn’t pay his way.”
“You’ve been spoiled,” I said.
“What in the name of God’s the use of being so tight?” she demanded. “It’s not like it had to come out of your pocket. You’ve got an expense account, haven’t you?”
I didn’t say anything. She frowned at me, at the run in her stocking, and at Rolff. Then she said to him:
“Maybe he’d loosen up if he had a drink.”
The thin man got up and went out of the room.
She pouted at me, prodded my shin with her toe, and said:
“It’s not so much the money. It’s the principle of the thing. If a girl’s got something that’s worth something to somebody, she’s a boob if she doesn’t collect.”
I grinned.
“Why don’t you be a good guy?” she begged.
Dan Rolff came in with a siphon, a bottle of gin, some lemons, and a bowl of cracked ice. We had a drink apiece. The lunger went away. The girl and I wrangled over the money question while we had more drinks. I kept trying to keep the conversation on Thaler and Willsson. She kept switching it to the money she deserved. It went on that way until the gin bottle was empty. My watch said one-fifteen.