After Wolfe had picked up the timetables, at six o’clock Wednesday, he had read them in twenty minutes, and then had gone over them for more than an hour, until dinner time. Back in the office after dinner, he had asked a few dozen assorted questions. What did I know about Mr. and Mrs. Herman Dietz? Practically nothing. Had Trella Jarrell’s hour in the park from two o’clock to three on Sunday been checked? No, and probably it never would be. If I wanted to leave a revolver in Central Park where I was reasonably certain it wouldn’t be discovered for three days, but where I could get it when I wanted it, where would I hide it? I made three suggestions, none of them any good, and said I’d have to think it over. Who was Clarinda Day? She was a woman who ran an establishment on 48th Street just off Fifth Avenue where women could get almost anything done that occurred to them-to their hair, their faces, their necks, their busts, their waists, their hips, their legs, their knees, their calves, their ankles-and where they could sweat, freeze, rest, or exercise forty-two different ways. Her customers ran all the way from stenographers to multi-millionairesses.
Did Nora Kent have keys to all the files in Jarrell’s library and the combination to the safes? Don’t know. Had a thorough search been made of the Jarrell duplex? Yes; a regiment of experts, with Jarrell’s permission, had spent all day Tuesday at it. Including the library? Yes, with Jarrell present. Who had told me so? Purley Stebbins. Where was the Metropolitan Athletic Club? Central Park South, 59th Street. How long would it take to get from where the steamship
Etc.
At ten-thirty Wolfe leaned back and said, “Instructions.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Before you go to bed get Saul, Fred, and Orrie, and ask them to be here at eleven in the morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tomorrow is a holiday. I don’t suppose Miss Bonner will be at her office. If possible, get her tonight and ask her to breakfast with me at eight.”
I looked at him. He meant business, though what business I couldn’t say. Add his opinion of women to his opinion of other detectives, and you get his opinion of female detectives. Circumstances had compelled him to use Dol Bonner a year or so back, but now he was asking for it, and even inviting her to breakfast. Fritz would be on needles.
“I have her home number,” I told him, “and I’ll try, but she may already be gone for the long week end. If so, is it urgent enough to dig her out?”
“Yes. I want her. Now for you. You will go early in the morning to Jamaica race track and-”
“No racing at Jamaica now. It’s closed.”
“What about Belmont?”
“Open. Big day tomorrow.”
“Then we’ll see. You will act on this hypothesis: that Roger Foote took Jarrell’s gun and hid it in his room or elsewhere on the premises. Thursday afternoon he shot Eber with it. Since he intended to say he had spent the day at Jamaica, he went there so as to be seen, and he hid the gun somewhere there. To speculate as to why he hid it instead of disposing of it is pointless; we know he did hide it because it was used again on Sunday. Either he hid it at Jamaica or, having made an appearance there, he went to Belmont and hid it there. In either case, on Sunday he went and retrieved it, returned to New York, met Brigham by appointment, and killed him. Acting on that hypothesis, your job is to learn where he left the gun from Thursday to Sunday, and you may start either at Jamaica or at Belmont. It’s barely possible you’ll even find the gun. He may have thought he might have further use for it and went back and hid it again in the same place after killing Brigham. He didn’t get home Sunday until seven o’clock.”
I said-not an objection, just a fact-“Of course he had all of New York City too.”
“I know, but that’s hopeless. He had to go to Jamaica on Thursday and to Belmont on Sunday, to be seen, and since we know he was there we’ll look there. We know little or nothing of his movements in New York City; we know of no place particularly available to him where he could hide a gun and count on getting it again. First explore the possibilities at Jamaica and Belmont.”
I explored them for four straight days, equipped with five hundred bucks in small bills from cash reserve and eight pictures of Roger Foote, procured early Thursday morning from the files at the
Meanwhile, throughout the four days, Wolfe presumably had the gang busy working on other hypotheses-including Dol Bonner-though he never told me who was after what, except that I gathered Saul Panzer was on Otis Jarrell himself. That was a compliment to the former client, since Saul’s rate was sixty bucks a day and expenses and he was worth at least five times that. Fred Durkin was good but no Saul Panzer. Orrie Cather, whom you have seen at my desk, was yes and no. On some tricks he was unbeatable, but on others not so hot. As for Dol Bonner, I didn’t know much about her firsthand, but the word around was that if you had to have a female dick she was it. She had her own office and a staff-with one of which, Sally Colt, I was acquainted.
By Sunday night I knew enough about Jamaica and Belmont, especially Belmont, to write a book, with enough left over for ten magazine articles. I knew four owners, nine trainers, seventeen stable boys, five jockeys, thirteen touts, twenty-eight miscellaneous characters, one lamb, three dogs, and six cats, to speak to. I had aroused the suspicions of two track dicks and become close friends with one. I had seen two hundred and forty- seven girls it would have been fun to talk to but was too busy. I had seen about the same number of spots where a gun could be hid, but could find no one who had seen Roger Foote near any of them. None of them held a gun at the time I called, nor could I detect any trace of oil or other evidence that a gun had been there. One of them, a hole in a tree the other side of the backstretch, was so ideal that I was tempted to hide my own gun in it. Another good place would have been the bottom of a rack outside Gallant Man’s stall, but there were too many eagle eyes around. Peach Fuzz wasn’t there.
Sunday night I told Wolfe there was nothing left to explore unless he wanted me to start looking in horses’ mouths, and he said he would have new instructions in the morning.
But he never gave them to me, for a little after ten on Monday a call came inviting me to visit the DA’s office, and, after buzzing Wolfe in the plant rooms to tell him where to find me, I went. After thirty minutes
