The girl took out a thin, flat First National Bank check book. The last used stub was marked $5,000. Nothing else. No name. No explanation.
“He went out with this check,” I said, “and was gone twenty minutes? Long enough to get to the bank and back?”
“It wouldn’t have taken him more than five minutes to get there.”
“Didn’t anything else happen before he wrote out the check? Think. Any messages? Letters? Phone calls?”
“Let’s see.” She shut her eyes again. “He was dictating some mail and– Oh, how stupid of me! He did have a phone call. He said: ‘Yes, I can be there at ten, but I shall have to hurry away.’ Then again he said: ‘Very well, at ten.’ That was all he said except, ‘Yes, yes,’ several times.”
“Talking to a man or a woman?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Think. There’d be a difference in his voice.”
She thought and said:
“Then it was a woman.”
“Which of you–you or he–left first in the evening?”
“I did. He– I told you my father is Mr. Elihu’s secretary. He and Mr. Donald had an engagement for the early part of the evening–something about the paper’s finances. Father came in a little after five. They were going to dinner together, I think.”
That was all the Lewis girl could give me. She knew nothing that would explain Willsson’s presence in the eleven-hundred block of Hurricane Street, she said. She admitted knowing nothing about Mrs. Willsson.
We frisked the dead man’s desk, and dug up nothing in any way informative. I went up against the girls at the switchboard, and learned nothing. I put in an hour’s work on messengers, city editors, and the like, and my pumping brought up nothing. The dead man, as his secretary said, had been a good hand at keeping his affairs to himself.
III. Dinah Brand
At the First National Bank I got hold of an assistant cashier named Albury, a nice-looking blond youngster of twenty-five or so.
“I certified the check for Willsson,” he said after I had explained what I was up to. “It was drawn to the order of Dinah Brand–$5,ooo.”
“Know who she is?”
“Oh, yes! I know her.”
“Mind telling me what you know about her?”
“Not at all. I’d be glad to, but I’m already eight minutes overdue at a meeting with–”
“Can you have dinner with me this evening and give it to me then?”
“That’ll be fine,” he said.
“Seven o’clock at the Great Western?”
“Righto.”
“I’ll run along and let you get to your meeting, but tell me, has she an account here?”
“Yes, and she deposited the check this morning. The police have it.”
“Yeah? And where does she live?”
“1232 Hurricane Street.”
I said: “Well, well!” and, “See you tonight,” and went away.
My next stop was in the office of the chief of police, in the City Hall.
Noonan, the chief, was a fat man with twinkling greenish eyes set in a round jovial face. When I told him what I was doing in his city he seemed glad of it. He gave me a hand-shake, a cigar and a chair.
“Now,” he said when we were settled, “tell me who turned the trick.”
“The secret’s safe with me.”
“You and me both,” he said cheerfully through smoke. “But what do you guess?”
“I’m no good at guessing, especially when I haven’t got the facts.”
“‘Twon’t take long to give you all the facts there is,” he said. “Willsson got a five-grand check in Dinah Brand’s name certified yesterday just before bank closing. Last night he was killed by slugs from a.32 less than a block from her house. People that heard the shooting saw a man and a woman bending over the remains. Bright and early this morning the said Dinah Brand deposits the said check in the said bank. Well?”
“Who is this Dinah Brand?”
The chief dumped the ash off his cigar in the center of his desk, flourished the cigar in his fat hand, and said:
“A soiled dove, as the fellow says, a de luxe hustler, a big-league gold-digger.”
“Gone up against her yet?”
“No. There’s a couple of slants to be taken care of first. We’re keeping an eye on her and waiting. This I’ve told you is under the hat.”