“Is there any reason,” I asked point-blank, “for supposing that Newhall’s murder was anything more than a Mexican bandit outburst? Is it likely that he was killed purposely, and not resisting capture?”
Lawyers don’t like to be questioned. This one sputtered and made faces at me and let his eyes stick out still further and, of course, didn’t give me an answer.
“How? How?” he snapped disagreeably. “Exthplain your meaning, thir!”
He glared at me and then at the desk, pushing papers around with excited hands, as if he were hunting for a police whistle. I told my story—told him about Tom-Tom Carey.
Ellert sputtered some more, demanded, “What the devil do you mean?” and made a complete jumble of the papers on his desk.
“I don’t mean anything,” I growled back. “I’m just telling you what was said.”
“Yeth! Yeth! I know!” He stopped glaring at me and his voice was less peevish. “But there ith abtholutely no reathon for thuthpecting anything of the thort. None at all, thir, none at all!”
“Maybe you’re right.” I turned to the door. “But I’ll poke into it a little anyway.”
“Wait! Wait!” He scrambled out of his chair and ran around the desk to me. “I think you are mithtaken, but if you are going to invethtigate it I would like to know what you dithcover. Perhapth you’d better charge me with your regular fee for whatever ith done, and keep me informed of your progreth. Thatithfactory?”
I said it was, came back to his desk and began to question him. There was, as the lawyer had said, nothing in Newhall’s affairs to stir us up. The dead man was several times a millionaire, with most of his money in mines. He had inherited nearly half his money. There was no shady practice, no claim-jumping, no trickery in his past, no enemies. He was a widower with one daughter. She had everything she wanted while he lived, and she and her father had been very fond of one another. He had gone to Mexico with a party of mining men from New York who expected to sell him some property there. They had been attacked by bandits, had driven them off, but Newhall and a geologist named Parker had been killed during the fight.
Back in the office, I wrote a telegram to our Los Angeles branch, asking that an operative be sent to Nogales to pry into Newhall’s killing and Tom-Tom Carey’s affairs. The clerk to whom I gave it to be coded and sent told me the Old Man wanted to see me. I went into his office and was introduced to a short, roly-poly man named Hook.
“Mr. Hook,” the Old Man said, “is the proprietor of a restaurant in Sausalito. Last Monday he employed a waitress named Nelly Riley. She told him she had come from Los Angeles. Her description, as Mr. Hook gives it, is quite similar to the description you and Counihan have given of Nancy Regan. Isn’t it?” he asked the fat man.
“Absolutely. It’s exactly what I read in the papers. She’s five feet five inches tall, about, and medium in size, and she’s got blue eyes and brown hair, and she’s around twenty-one or two, and she’s got looks, and the thing that counts most is she’s high-hat as the devil—she don’t think nothin’s good enough for her. Why, when I tried to be a little sociable she told me to keep my ‘dirty paws’ to myself. And then I found out she didn’t know hardly nothing about Los Angeles, though she claimed to have lived there two or three years. I bet you she’s the girl, all right,” and he went on talking about how much reward money he ought to get.
“Are you going back there now?” I asked him.
“Pretty soon. I got to stop and see about some dishes. Then I’m going back.”
“This girl will be working?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll send a man over with you—one who knows Nancy Regan.”
I called Jack Counihan in from the operatives’ room and introduced him to Hook. They arranged to meet in half an hour at the ferry and Hook waddled out.
“This Nelly Riley won’t be Nancy Regan,” I said. “But we can’t afford to pass up even a hundred to one chance.”
I told Jack and the Old Man about Tom-Tom Carey and my visit to Ellert’s office. The Old Man listened with his usual polite attentiveness. Young Counihan—only four months in the man-hunting business—listened with wide eyes.
“You’d better run along now and meet Hook,” I said when I had finished, leaving the Old Man’s office with Jack. “And if she should be Nancy Regan—grab her and hang on.” We were out of the Old Man’s hearing, so I added, “And for God’s sake don’t let your youthful gallantry lead you to a poke in the jaw this time. Pretend you’re grown up.”
The boy blushed, said, “Go to hell!” adjusted his necktie, and set off to meet Hook.
I had some reports to write. After I had finished them I put my feet on my desk, made cavities in a package of Fatimas, and thought about Tom-Tom Carey until six o’clock. Then I went down to the States for my abalone chowder and minute steak and home to change clothes before going out Sea Cliff way to sit in a poker game.
The telephone interrupted my dressing. Jack Counihan was on the other end.
“I’m in Sausalito. The girl wasn’t Nancy, but I’ve got hold of something else. I’m not sure how to handle it. Can you come over?”
“Is it important enough to cut a poker game for?”
“Yes, it’s—I think it’s big.” He was excited. “I wish you would come over. I really think it’s a lead.”
“Where are you?”
“At the ferry there. Not the Golden Gate, the other.”
“All right. I’ll catch the first boat.”
III
An hour later I walked off the boat in Sausalito. Jack Counihan pushed through the crowd and began talking:
“Coming down here
