account juggling for a while. She could’ve had any number of reasons, they need not’ve been sensible ones. She could’ve -“
Guild smiled politely. “Let’s see what the place’ll tell us.”
On a table in the living-room they found a flat brass key that unlocked the corridor door. Nothing else they found anywhere except in the bathroom seemed to interest them. In the bathroom, on a table, they found an obviously new razor holding a blade freshly spotted with rust, an open tube of shaving-cream from which very little had been squeezed, a new shaving-brush that had been used and not rinsed, and a pair of scissors. Hanging over the edge of the tub beside the table was a face-towel on which smears of lather had dried.
Guild blew cigarette smoke at these things and said: “Looks like our thin man came here to get rid of his whiskers.”
Boyer, frowning in perplexity, asked: “But how would he know?”
“Maybe he got it out of her before he killed her and let himself in with the key on the table – hers.” Guild pointed his cigarette at the scissors. “They make it look like him and not – well – Fremont for instance. He’d need them for the whiskers, and the things are new, as if he’d bought them on his way here.” He bent over to examine the table, the inside of the tub, the floor. “Though I don’t see any hairs.”
“What does it mean, then – his coming here?” the district attorney asked anxiously.
The dark man smiled a little. “Something or other, maybe,” he said. He straightened up from his examination of the floor. “He could’ve been careful not to drop any of his whiskers when he hacked them off, though God knows why he’d try.” He looked thoughtfully at the shaving-tools on the table. “We ought to do some more talking to her boyfriend.”
Downstairs they found the manager waiting in the lobby for them. She stood in front of them using a bright smile to invite speech.
Guild said: “Thanks a lot. How far ahead is her rent paid?”
“Up to the fifteenth of the month it’s paid.”
“Then it won’t cost you anything to let nobody in there till then. Don’t, and if you go in don’t touch anything. There’ll be some policemen up. Sure you didn’t see a man in there early last night?”
“Yes, sir, I’m sure I didn’t see anybody go in there or come out of there, though the Lord knows they could if they had a key without me -“
“How many keys did she have?”
“I only gave her one, but she could’ve had them made, all she wanted to, and likely enough did if she was – What’d she do, mister?”
“I don’t know. She get much mail?”
“Well, not so very much and most of that looked like ads and things.”
“Remember where any of it was from?”
The woman’s face coloured. “That I don’t. I don’t look at my people’s mail like that. I was always one to mind my own business as long as they paid their rent and don’t make so much noise that other people -“
“That’s right,” Guild said. “Thanks a lot.” He gave her one of his cards. “I’ll probably be back, but if anything happens – anything that looks like it might have anything to do with her – will you call me up? If I’m not there leave the message.”
“Yes, sir, I certainly will,” she promised. “Is there -?”
“Thanks a lot,” Guild said once more, and he and the district attorney went out.
They were sitting in the district attorney’s automobile when Boyer asked: “What do you suppose Wynant left the key there for, if it was hers and he used it?”
“Why not? He only went there to shave and maybe frisk the place. He wouldn’t take a chance oh going there again and leaving it there was easier than throwing it away.”
Boyer nodded dubiously and put the automobile in motion. Guild directed him to the vicinity of the Golden Gate Trust Company, where they parked the automobile. After a few minutes’ wait they were shown into the white-haired cashier’s office.
He rose from his chair as they entered. Neither his smile nor his bantering “You are shadowing me” concealed his uneasy curiosity.
Guild said: “Mr. Bliss, this is Mr. Boyer, district attorney of Whitfield County.”
Boyer and Bliss shook hands. The cashier motioned his visitors into chairs.
Guild said: “Our Laura Porter is the Columbia Forrest that was murdered up at Hell Bend yesterday.”
Bliss’s face reddened. There was something akin to indignation in the voice with which he said: “That’s preposterous, Guild.”
The dark man’s smile was small with malice. “You mean as soon as anybody becomes one of your depositors they’re sure of a long and happy life?”
The cashier smiled then. “No, but -“ He stopped smiling. “Did she have any part in the Seaman’s National swindle?”
“She did,” Guild replied, and added, still with smiling malice, “unless you’re sure none of your clients could possibly touch anybody else’s nickels.”
The cashier, paying no attention to the latter part of Guild’s speech, squirmed in his chair and looked uneasily at the door.
The dark man said: “We’d like to get a transcript of her account and I want to send a handwriting man down for a look at her checks, but we’re in a hurry now. We’d like to know when she opened her account, what references she gave, and how much she’s got in it.”
Bliss pressed one of the burtons on his desk, but before anyone came into the room he rose with a muttered, “Excuse me,” and went out.
Guild smiled after him. “He’ll be ten pounds lighter before he learns whether he’s been gypped or not and twenty if he finds he has.”
When the cashier returned he shut the door, leaned back against it, and spoke as if he had rehearsed the words. “Miss Porter’s account shows a balance of thirty-eight dollars and fifty cents. She drew out twelve thousand dollars in cash yesterday morning.”
“Herself?”
“Yes.”
Guild addressed Boyer: “We’ll show the teller her photo on the way out just to be doubly sure.” He turned to the cashier again: “And about the date she opened it and the references she gave?”
The white-haired man consulted a card in his hand. “She opened her account on November the eighth, last year,” he said. “The references she gave were Francis X. Kearny, proprietor of the Manchu Restaurant on Grant Avenue, and Walter Irving Wynant.”
Seven
“The Manchu’s only five or six blocks from here,” Guild told Boyer as they left the Golden Gate Trust Company. “We might as well stop in now and see what we can get out of Francis Xavier Kearny.”
“Do you know him?”
“Uh-uh, except by rep. He’s in solid with the police here and is supposed to be plenty tough.”
The district attorney nodded. He chewed his lips in frowning silence until they reached his automobile. Then he said: “What we’ve learned today seems to tie him, her, the Fremonts, and Wynant all up together.”
“Yes,” Guild agreed, “it seems to.”
“Or do you suppose she could have given Wynant’s name because she knew, being his secretary, she could catch the bank’s letter of inquiry and answer it without his knowing anything about it?”
“That sounds reasonable enough,” the dark man said, “but there’s Wynant’s visit to the Manchu yesterday.”
The district attorney’s frown deepened. “What do you suppose Wynant was up to – if he was in it with them?”
“I don’t know. I know somebody’s got the twelve thousand she drew out yesterday. I know I want six of it for the Seaman’s National. Turn left at the next corner.”
They went into the Manchu Restaurant together. A smiling Chinese waiter told them Mr. Kearny was not in, was not expected until nine o’clock that night. They could not learn where he might be found before nine o’clock.
