'He came here back during the strike--Quint is his name.'
'So he was on her list?'
'That's supposed to be the reason he stayed here after the strike was over.'
'So he's still on her list?'
'No. She told me she was afraid of him. He had threatened to kill her.'
'She seems to have had everybody on her string at one time or another,' I said.
'Everybody she wanted,' he said, and he said it seriously.
'Donald Willsson was the latest?' I asked.
'I don't know,' he said. 'I had never heard anything about them, had never seen anything. The chief of police had us try to find any checks he may have issued to her before yesterday, but we found nothing. Nobody could remember ever having seen any.'
'Who was her last customer, so far as you know?'
'Lately I've seen her around town quite often with a chap named Thaler--he runs a couple of gambling houses here. They call him Whisper. You've probably heard of him.'
At eight-thirty I left young Albury and set out for the Miner's Hotel in Forest Street. Half a block from the hotel I met Bill Quint.
'Hello!' I hailed him. 'I was on my way down to see you.'
He stopped in front of me, looked me up and down, growled:
'So you're a gum-shoe.'
'That's the bunk,' I complained. 'I come all the way down here to rope you, and you're smarted up.'
'What do you want to know now?' he asked.
'About Donald Willsson. You knew him, didn't you?'
'I knew him.'
'Very well?'
'No.'
'What did you think of him?'
He pursed his gray lips, by forcing breath between them made a noise like a rag tearing, and said:
'A lousy liberal.'
'You know Dinah Brand?' I asked.
'I know her.' His neck was shorter and thicker than it had been.
'Think she killed Willsson?'
'Sure. It's a kick in the pants.'
'Then you didn't?'
'Hell, yes,' he said, 'the pair of us together. Got any more questions?'
'Yeah, but I'll save my breath. You'd only lie to me.'
I walked back to Broadway, found a taxi, and told the driver to take me to 1232 Hurricane Street.
IV. Hurricane Street
My destination was a gray frame cottage. When I rang the bell the door was opened by a thin man with a tired face that had no color in it except a red spot the size of a half-dollar high on each cheek. This, I thought, is the lunger Dan Rolff.
'I'd like to see Miss Brand,' I told him.
'What name shall I tell her?' His voice was a sick man's and an educated man's.
'It wouldn't mean anything to her. I want to see her about Willsson's death.'
He looked at me with level tired dark eyes and said:
'Yes?'
'I'm from the San Francisco office of the Continental Detective Agency. We're interested in the murder.'
'That's nice of you,' he said ironically. 'Come in.'
I went in, into a ground-floor room where a young woman sat at a table that had a lot of papers on it. Some of the papers were financial service bulletins, stock and bond market forecasts. One was a racing chart.
The room was disorderly, cluttered up. There were too many pieces of furniture in it, and none of them seemed to be in its proper place.
'Dinah,' the lunger introduced me, 'this gentleman has come from San Francisco on behalf of the Continental Detective Agency to inquire into Mr. Donald Willsson's demise.'
The young woman got up, kicked a couple of newspapers out of her way, and came to me with one hand out.
