I examined the room. So far as I could tell, nothing had been changed in it. I went back to the kitchen and found no recognizable changes there.
The spring lock on the back door was fastened, and had no marks to show it had been monkeyed with. I went to the front door and failed to find any marks on it. I went through the house from top to bottom, and learned nothing. The windows were all right. Tile girl's jewelry, on her dressing table (except the two diamond rings on her hands), and four hundred odd dollars in her handbag, on a bedroom chair, were undisturbed.
In the dining room again, I knelt beside the dead girl and used my handkerchief to wipe the ice pick handle clean of any prints my fingers had left on it. I did the same to glasses, bottles, doors, light buttons, and the pieces of furniture I had touched, or was likely to have touched.
Then I washed my hands, examined my clothes for blood, made sure I was leaving none of my property behind, and went to the front door. I opened it, wiped the inner knob, closed it behind me, wiped the outer knob, and went away.
From a drug store in upper Broadway I telephoned Dick Foley and asked him to come over to my hotel. He arrived a few minutes after I got there.
'Dinah Brand was killed in her house last night or early this morning,' I told him. 'Stabbed with an ice pick. The police don't know it yet. I've told you enough about her for you to know that there are any number of people who might have had reason for killing her. There are three I want looked up first--Whisper, Dan Rolff and Bill Quint, the radical fellow. You've got their descriptions. Rolff is in the hospital with a dented skull. I don't know which hospital. Try the City first. Get hold of Mickey Linehan--he's still camped on Pete the Finn's trail--and have him let Pete rest while he gives you a hand on this. Find out where those three birds were last night. And time means something.'
The little Canadian op had been watching me curiously while I talked. Now he started to say something, changed his mind, grunted, 'Righto,' and departed.
I went out to look for Reno Starkey. After an hour of searching I located him, by telephone, in a Ronney Street rooming house.
'By yourself?' he asked when I had said I wanted to see him.
'Yeah.'
He said I could come out, and told me how to get there. I took a taxi. It was a dingy two-story house near the edge of town.
A couple of men loitered in front of a grocer's on the corner above. Another pair sat on the low wooden steps of the house down at the next corner. None of the four was conspicuously refined in appearance.
When I rang the bell two men opened the door. They weren't so mild looking either.
I was taken upstairs to a front room where Reno, collarless and in shirt-sleeves and vest, sat tilted back in a chair with his feet on the window sill.
He nodded his sallow horse face and said:
'Pull a chair over.'
The men who had brought me up went away, closing the door. I sat down and said:
'I want an alibi. Dinah Brand was killed last night after I left her. There's no chance of my being copped for it, but with Noonan dead I don't know how I'm hitched up with the department. I don't want to give them any openings to even try to hang anything on me. If I've got to I can prove where I was last night, but you can save me a lot of trouble if you will.'
Reno looked at me with dull eyes and asked:
'Why pick on me?'
'You phoned me there last night. You're the only person who knows I was there the first part of the night. I'd have to fix it with you even if I got the alibi somewhere else, wouldn't I?'
He asked:
'You didn't croak her, did you?'
I said, 'No,' casually.
He stared out the window a little while before he spoke. He asked:
'What made you think I'd give you the lift? Do I owe you anything for what you done to me at Willsson's last night?'
I said:
'I didn't hurt you any. The news was half-out anyhow. Whisper knew enough to guess the rest. I only gave you a show-down. What do you care? You can take care of yourself.'
'I aim to try,' lie agreed. 'All right. You was at the Tanner House in Tanner. That's a little burg twenty-thirty miles up the hill. You went up there after you left Willsson's and stayed till morning. A guy named Ricker that hangs around Murry's with a hire heap drove you up and back. You ought to know what you was doing up there. Give me your sig and I'll have it put on the register.'
'Thanks,' I said as I unscrewed my fountain pen.
'Don't say them. I'm doing this because I need all the friends I can get. When the time comes that you sit in with me and Whisper and Pete, I don't expect the sour end of it.'
'You won't get it,' I promised. 'Who's going to be chief of police?'
'McGraw's acting chief. He'll likely cinch it.'
'How'll he play?'
