Slippery Fingers
“You are already familiar, of course, with the particulars of my father’s—ah—death?”
“The papers are full of it, and have been for three days,” I said, “and I’ve read them; but I’ll have to have the whole story firsthand.”
“There isn’t very much to tell.”
This Frederick Grover was a short, slender man of something under thirty years, and dressed like a picture out of Vanity Fair. His almost girlish features and voice did nothing to make him more impressive, but I began to forget these things after a few minutes. He wasn’t a sap. I knew that downtown, where he was rapidly building up a large and lively business in stocks and bonds without calling for too much help from his father’s millions, he was considered a shrewd article; and I wasn’t surprised later when Benny Forman, who ought to know, told me that Frederick Grover was the best poker player west of Chicago. He was a cool, well-balanced, quick-thinking little man.
“Father has lived here alone with the servants since mother’s death, two years ago,” he went on. “I am married, you know, and live in town. Last Saturday evening he dismissed Barton—Barton was his butler-valet, and had been with father for quite a few years—at a little after nine, saying that he did not want to be disturbed during the evening.
“Father was here in the library at the time, looking through some papers. The servants’ rooms are in the rear, and none of the servants seem to have heard anything during the night.
“At seven-thirty the following morning—Sunday—Barton found father lying on the floor, just to the right of where you are sitting, dead, stabbed in the throat with the brass paper-knife that was always kept on the table here. The front door was ajar.
“The police found bloody fingerprints on the knife, the table, and the front door; but so far they have not found the man who left the prints, which is why I am employing your agency. The physician who came with the police placed the time of father’s death at between eleven o’clock and midnight.
“Later, on Monday, we learned that father had drawn $10,000 in hundred-dollar bills from the bank Saturday morning. No trace of the money has been found. My fingerprints, as well as the servants’, were compared with the ones found by the police, but there was no similarity. I think that is all.”
“Do you know of any enemies your father had?”
He shook his head.
“I know of none, though he may have had them. You see, I really didn’t know my father very well. He was a very reticent man and, until his retirement, about five years ago, he spent most of his time in South America, where most of his mining interests were. He may have had dozens of enemies, though Barton—who probably knew more about him than anyone—seems to know of no one who hated father enough to kill him.”
“How about relatives?”
“I was his heir and only child, if that is what you are getting at. So far as I know he had no other living relatives.”
“I’ll talk to the servants,” I said.
The maid and the cook could tell me nothing, and I learned very little more from Barton. He had been with Henry Grover since 1912, had been with him in Yunnan, Peru, Mexico, and Central America, but apparently he knew little or nothing of his master’s business or acquaintances.
He said that Grover had not seemed excited or worried on the night of the murder, and that nearly every night Grover dismissed him at about the same time, with orders that he be not disturbed; so no importance was to be attached to that part of it. He knew of no one with whom Grover had communicated during the day, and he had not seen the money Grover had drawn from the bank.
I made a quick inspection of the house and grounds, not expecting to find anything; and I didn’t. Half the jobs that come to a private detective are like this one: three or four days—and often as many weeks—have passed since the crime was committed. The police work on the job until they are stumped; then the injured party calls in a private sleuth, dumps him down on a trail that is old and cold and badly trampled, and expects—Oh, well! I picked out this way of making a living, so …
I looked through Grover’s papers—he had a safe and a desk full of them—but didn’t find anything to get excited about. They were mostly columns of figures.
“I’m going to send an accountant out here to go over your father’s books,” I told Frederick Grover. “Give him everything he asks for, and fix it up with the bank so they’ll help him.”
I caught a streetcar and went back to town, called at Ned Root’s office, and headed him out toward Grover’s. Ned is a human adding machine with educated eyes, ears, and nose. He can spot a kink in a set of books farther than I can see the covers.
“Keep digging until you find something, Ned, and you can charge Grover whatever you like. Give me something to work on—quick!”
The murder had all the earmarks of one that had grown out of blackmail, though there was—there always is—a chance that it might have been something else. But it didn’t
