The search was on her like a fever; the policeman claimed each new find; she quarreled and sought bitterly on.
The cellar produced nothing. The furnace room had little to search; the storage-room junk was just junk.
It was after six o’clock when, dusty, disheveled, and cross, she gave up. The parts of the house Mrs. Garr had lived in were a rubbish-strewn wreck. And my only satisfaction, as I looked on, was in thinking of the moment when Lieutenant Strom would have to eat, as he had promised, the uncovered money.
Of what I had wanted to find, of one clue that would point to why Mrs. Garr had died, and how, there wasn’t a trace. Not one thing to link Mrs. Garr to her past life. I hadn’t seen anything anyone would possibly commit murder to get—certainly the trifling sums of money would hardly be cause for murder. Hold it, though. What Mrs. Halloran had found, added to what Lieutenant Strom had found, made over a thousand dollars. Would that be enough to be tempting?
Tired of watching Mrs. Halloran mess around with the contents of the storage room, I lit the heater for a bath and went upstairs to my own apartment. From the floor just inside my door I picked up an envelope. The notice inside instructed me to be present at an inquest into the death of Harriet Luella Garr, to be held Monday afternoon, two thirty o’clock.
An inquest! Of course there’d be an inquest. There, at least, I should find out if Mrs. Garr had been murdered or not.
I bathed, dressed, went out to eat, came home again, thinking solidly all the while. The more I thought on it, the more certain I was that the Hallorans must be at the bottom of the mystery. It was a certainty that struck snags, swung aside, and swam easily on.
The Hallorans were the only ones that really benefited by the death. They were the greedy kind; they couldn’t wait to get their hands on money if they knew there was any to be had.
The Hallorans were frightfully stupid.
Yes, but it was a stupid crime, wasn’t it? A sneak thief, caught. He’d struck at her, choked her. Then rushed out, locking the door behind him. Run, trembling and afraid, home to his seven dear little children.
But the cats! The dog! The kitchen door opened, they’d have run out, too. And would Mr. Halloran, that sniveling little coward, have dared to run about in that house, in which he ran such risks of being seen, dared to run about catching those animals one by one, thrusting them back into the kitchen? Had he still been in the house when I came home that Friday night, lurking somewhere, hiding in the bathroom, perhaps? Had he stayed there until late, then sneaked down, gone to the back of the house to see the results of his work in the basement kitchen if he could, attacked me when I’d heard him?
If so, wouldn’t someone have seen him in the house?
Mr. Buffingham!
Mr. Buffingham had been on his way downstairs when one of the cats was still loose in the house; I had talked to him. If anyone had seen Mr. Halloran lurking, he would be the one.
Rapidly I considered. Mr. Buffingham hadn’t been about while I had been in Mr. Kistler’s rooms the night before, I was sure; his room had been quiet.
The fat lump had been replaced by the lantern-jawed policeman of the night before. For the second time I approached him with news of a call.
“I’d like to run up and see if Mr. Buffingham’s in. That all right?”
“Have your own way!” He waved a cordial hand. “Remember I’m here if you turn up anything on him.”
Thus encouraged, I went up to knock at Mr. Buffingham’s door.
There was a stir in the room, then silence. I knocked again. The door opened slowly; as it did so a subdued whir sounded in the room somewhere. I looked my surprise up at Mr. Buffingham’s usual dark, intent gaze.
“Why, what’s that?”
“Burglar alarm,” he replied laconically, without smiling. As a burglar alarm, it was effective; I sensed before I saw Mr. Grant’s door open and his head appear momentarily around the edge of it.
Well, Mr. Buffingham wasn’t having anyone search his room! Then I thought of my own doors and laughed with sympathy.
“Good idea! You should see the way I barricade my own doors!”
“That so?”
Potatoes and hamburgers were frying in a pan on the gas plate standing on the table against his left wall; a coffeepot covered the second flame.
“I don’t want to keep you from your dinner,” I said hastily. “I just wanted to ask you a question. That night, that Friday night, you know, I came in around ten, and one of the cats ran under the bookcase. Then you came downstairs. You didn’t happen to have seen a strange man around the house about that time, did you?”
He stared at me in silence awhile.
“No, I didn’t.”
“I’ve identified that prowler I saw in the house once—it was Mr. Halloran. The husband of Mrs. Garr’s niece. I thought he might have come around again that Friday.”
“I know Halloran—seen him around.”
“But not that Friday?”
“Ain’t seen him for months. Used to be around a lot.”
“You didn’t hear anything strange? Going down cellar, for instance? After all, that cat must have been put back in the cellar sometime between ten o’clock, when I saw her, and two o’clock, when the house was searched. She wasn’t around then.”
“How would I know? I don’t spend all my time listening around—I got my own business to tend to. And if I had seen anything I’d of said so to the police, wouldn’t I?”
“Yes, of course,” I
