'Right,' I said. 'Of course a bank is choosy about handing out information about its customers, but I am speaking for Miss Denovo. Her mother had an account here for nine years. Naturally, when you saw what was in that box you wondered where it came from. We think a lot of it came from your bank.'
He gawked at me. A banker shouldn't gawk, but he did. He opened his mouth, shut it, and opened it again to say, 'I'll ask you to explain that statement, Mr. Goodwin.'
'I'm going to. Every month for twenty-two years Mrs. Elinor Denovo cashed a bank check for a thousand dollars. She always asked for and got it in hundred-dollar bills. That's where the contents of that box came from. She never spent a dollar of it. From your expression I suppose you're thinking this may be leading to something ugly, blackmail for instance, but it isn't. It's perfectly clean. The point is, we have assumed that Mrs. Denovo cashed the checks here, probably a hundred of them in nine years, and her daughter wants to know the name of the bank that drew them. She would also like to know if they were payable to Elinor Denovo, or to cash or bearer.'
His eyes went to Amy and he thought he was going to ask her something, but returned to me. His face had cleared some, but he was still a banker and always would be. He spoke. 'As you said, Mr. Goodwin, banks are choosy about giving out information regarding their customers. They should be.'
'Sure. I wasn't crabbing.'
'But since it's for Miss Denovo, and it's about her mother, I'm not going to, uh, hem and haw. I don't have to consult my staff to answer your questions. As a man of
wide experience, you probably know that it is considered proper and desirable for a bank official to keep informed about the-well, call it habits, of the customers. I have known about those checks cashed by Mrs. Denovo for several years. One each and every month. They were drawn by the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company, the main office on Broad Street, payable to bearer.' He looked at Amy and back at me. 'As a matter of fact, I tell you frankly that I'm obliged to you. Any banker, if someone walked in with a quarter of a million dollars in currency, would be… well, curious. He should be. You understand that. So I'm glad you told me… well, I'm obliged to you. And to you, Miss Denovo.' He actually grinned- a real, frank grin. 'A bank you can bank on. But that's all I can tell you about those checks because it's all I know.'
'It's all we wanted.'
'Good.' He rose. 'I'll see how they're getting on.' He went. When the door was shut Amy started to say something, but I shook my head at her. There were probably ten thousand rooms in the five boroughs that were bugged. The office of the top guy at a branch bank might be one of them, and if so that was no place to discuss any part of a secret that the client had kept the lid on for most of her life, or even give a hint. So to pass the time, since it wouldn't be sociable just to sit and stare back at Amy, I got up and went to take a look at the titles of books on shelves at the wall, and when
I would have said that the odds were at least a million to one against one of the officers or directors of the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company being someone we had a good line to, and when I saw that name, Avery Ballou, the second one on the alphabetical list of the Board of Directors, I said, 'I'll be damned,' so loud that Amy twisted around.
'What's the matter?' she asked.
I told her nothing was the matter, just the contrary; we had just got a break I would explain later.
The rest of the errand at the bank was merely routine. At eleven o'clock Amy and I were sitting at a table in a
drugstore on Madison Avenue, her with coffee and me with a glass of milk. The twelve letters had been dropped into a mailbox at the corner and the empty box was beside me on a chair. I had told her why I had shushed her at the bank, and about the break, of course not mentioning Ballou's name, and had offered to bet her a Snif that we would spot her father within three days, but she said she wouldn't bet against what she wanted. At 11:10 I said I had to make a phone call, went to the booth, dialed the number I knew best, and after eight rings got what I expected.
'Yes?'
He knows darned well that's no way to answer a phone, but try to change him.
'Me,' I said. 'In a drugstore with the client, having refreshments. The letters have been mailed, with enclosures, and she is taking the box home as a souvenir of her mother or father, I don't know which. Three items. First, what I started to tell you this morning when you bellowed at me. Cramer may phone, so you ought to know that I rang Stebbins Saturday afternoon. I told him that you and I were discussing crime the other day and the hit-and-run that killed a woman named Elinor Denovo came up, and I wondered if they had got a lead. He told Cramer, and of course Cramer thinks that the simplest question from you or me means that we've got something hot. I told him that we only knew what we read in the papers. If he phones, you-'
'Pfui. What else?'
'Second, you said Friday evening that my next stop after the bank would be Raymond Thorne. Any change?'
'No.'
'Third, the bank was pie. The checks were drawn by the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company, the third largest bank in town, payable to bearer, and I took a look at it in the
'Indeed.' A five-second pause. 'Satisfactory.'
'All of that. The kind of break you read about. Shall I take him first instead of Thorne?'
