I went up against Creda Dexter again, spending an entire afternoon in her apartment, banging away with question after question, all directed toward her former love affairs. Who had she thrown over for Gantvoort and his million and a half? And the answer was always nobody—an answer that I didn’t choose to believe.
We had Creda Dexter shadowed night and day—and it carried us ahead not an inch. Perhaps she suspected that she was being watched. Anyway, she seldom left her apartment, and then on only the most innocent of errands. We had her apartment watched whether she was in it or not. Nobody visited it. We tapped her telephone—and all our listening-in netted us nothing. We had her mail covered—and she didn’t receive a single letter, not even an advertisement.
Meanwhile, we had learned where the three clippings found in the wallet had come from—from the Personal columns of a New York, a Chicago, and a Portland newspaper. The one in the Portland paper had appeared two days before the murder, the Chicago one four days before, and the New York one five days before. All three of those papers would have been on the San Francisco newsstands the day of the murder—ready to be purchased and cut out by anyone who was looking for material to confuse detectives with.
The agency’s Paris correspondent had found no less than six Emil Bonfilses—all bloomers so far as our job was concerned—and had a line on three more.
But O’Gar and I weren’t worrying over Emil Bonfils any more—that angle was dead and buried. We were plugging away at our new task—the finding of Gantvoort’s rival.
Thus the days passed, and thus the matter stood when Madden Dexter was due to arrive home from New York.
Our New York branch had kept an eye on him until he left that city, and had advised us of his departure, so I knew what train he was coming on. I wanted to put a few questions to him before his sister saw him. He could tell me what I wanted to know, and he might be willing to if I could get to him before his sister had an opportunity to shut him up.
If I had known him by sight I could have picked him up when he left his train at Oakland, but I didn’t know him; and I didn’t want to carry Charles Gantvoort or anyone else along with me to pick him out for me.
So I went up to Sacramento that morning, and boarded his train there. I put my card in an envelope and gave it to a messenger boy in the station. Then I followed the boy through the train, while he called out:
“Mr. Dexter! Mr. Dexter!”
In the last car—the observation-club car—a slender, dark-haired man in well-made tweeds turned from watching the station platform through a window and held out his hand to the boy.
I studied him while he nervously tore open the envelope and read my card. His chin trembled slightly just now, emphasizing the weakness of a face that couldn’t have been strong at its best. Between twenty-five and thirty, I placed him; with his hair parted in the middle and slicked down; large, too-expressive brown eyes; small well-shaped nose; neat brown mustache; very red, soft lips—that type.
I dropped into the vacant chair beside him when he looked up from the card.
“You are Mr. Dexter?”
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose it’s about Mr. Gantvoort’s death that you want to see me?”
“Uh-huh. I wanted to ask you a few questions, and since I happened to be in Sacramento, I thought that by riding back on the train with you I could ask them without taking up too much of your time.”
“If there’s anything I can tell you,” he assured me, “I’ll be only too glad to do it. But I told the New York detectives all I knew, and they didn’t seem to find it of much value.”
“Well, the situation has changed some since you left New York.” I watched his face closely as I spoke. “What we thought of no value then may be just what we want now.”
I paused while he moistened his lips and avoided my eyes. He may not know anything, I thought, but he’s certainly jumpy. I let him wait a few minutes while I pretended deep thoughtfulness. If I played him right, I was confident I could turn him inside out. He didn’t seem to be made of very tough material.
We were sitting with our heads close together, so that the four or five other passengers in the car wouldn’t overhear our talk; and that position was in my favor. One of the things that every detective knows is that it’s often easy to get information—even a confession—out of a feeble nature simply by putting your face close to his and talking in a loud tone. I couldn’t talk loud here, but the closeness of our faces was by itself an advantage.
“Of the men with whom your sister was acquainted,” I came out with it at last, “who, outside of Mr. Gantvoort, was the most attentive?”
He swallowed audibly, looked out of the window, fleetingly at me, and then out of the window again.
“Really, I couldn’t say.”
“All right. Let’s get at it this way. Suppose we check off one by one all the men who were interested in her and in whom she was interested.”
He continued to stare out of the window.
“Who’s first?” I pressed him.
His gaze flickered around to meet mine for a second, with a sort of timid desperation in his eyes.
“I know it sounds foolish, but I, her brother, couldn’t give you the name of even one man in whom Creda was interested before she met Gantvoort. She never, so far as I know, had the slightest feeling for any man before she met him. Of course it is possible that there may have been someone that I didn’t know anything about, but—”
It did sound foolish,
