Jack, letting cigarette-smoke come out with his words, said: “I think I’ve got something, though I don’t know how you’re going to like it.”
Ned Beaumont looked thoughtfully at the sleek young man and smoothed the left side of his mustache with a forefinger. “If it’s what I hired you to get I’ll like it well enough.” His voice was matter-of-fact as Jack’s. “Sit down and tell me about it.”
Jack sat down carefully, crossed his legs, put his hat on the floor, and looked from his cigarette to Ned Beaumont. He said: “It looks like those things were written by Madvig’s daughter.”
Ned Beaumont’s eyes widened a little, but only for a moment. His face lost some of its color and his breathing became irregular. There was no change in his voice. “What makes it look like that?”
From an inner pocket Jack brought two sheets of paper similar in size and make, folded alike. He gave them to Ned Beaumont who, when he had unfolded them, saw that on each were three typewritten questions, the same three questions on each sheet.
“One of them’s the one you gave me yesterday,” Jack said. “Could you tell which?”
Ned Beaumont shook his head slowly from side to side.
“There’s no difference,” Jack said. “I wrote the other one on Charter Street where Taylor Henry had a room that Madvig’s daughter used to come to–with a Corona typewriter that was there and on paper that was there. So far as anybody seems to know there were only two keys to the place. He had one and she had one. She’s been back there at least a couple of times since he was killed.”
Ned Beaumont, scowling now at the sheets of paper in his hands, nodded without looking up.
Jack lit a fresh cigarette from the one he had been smoking, rose and went to the table to mash the old cigarette in the ash-tray there, and returned to his seat. There was nothing in his face or manner to show that he had any interest in Ned Beaumont’s reaction to their discovery.
After another minute of silence Ned Beaumont raised his head a little and asked: “How’d you get this?”
Jack put his cigarette in a corner of his mouth where it wagged with his words. “The Observer tip on the place this morning gave me the lead. That’s where the police got theirs too, but they got there first. I got a pretty good break, though: the copper left in charge was a friend of mine–Fred Hurley–and for a ten-spot he let me do all the poking around I wanted.”
Ned Beaumont rattled the papers in his hand. “Do the police know this?” he asked.
Jack shrugged. “I didn’t tell them. I pumped Hurley, but he didn’t know anything–just put there to watch things till they decide what they’re going to do. Maybe they know, maybe they don’t.” He shook cigarette-ash on the floor. “I could find out.”
“Never mind that. What else did you turn up?”
“I didn’t look for anything else.”
Ned Beaumont, after a quick glance at the dark young man’s inscrutable face, looked down at the sheets of paper again. “What kind of dump is it?”
“Thirteen twenty-four. They had a room and bath under the name of French. The woman that runs the place claims she didn’t know who they really were till the police came today. Maybe she didn’t. It’s the kind of joint where not much is asked. She says they used to be there a lot, mostly in the afternoons, and that the girl’s been back a couple of times in the last week or so that she knows of, though she could pop in and out without being seen easily enough.”
“Sure it’s her?”
Jack made a noncommittal gesture with one hand. “The description’s right.” He paused, then added carelessly as he exhaled smoke: “She’s the only one the woman saw since he was killed.”
Ned Beaumont raised his head again. His eyes were hard. “Taylor had others coming there?” he asked.
Jack made the noncommittal gesture once more. “The woman wouldn’t say so. She said she didn’t know, but from the way she said it I’d say it was a safe bet she was lying.”