knew he was expecting me to name the winner of tomorrow’s races, but I had other things on my mind.
I went up the stone stairs. On the landing I ran into redheaded Sergeant MacGraw.
“Well, well, the Boy Wonder again,” he said sneeringly. “What’s biting you this time?”
I looked into the hard little eyes and didn’t like what I saw in them. This was a guy who would enjoy inflicting pain; one of those tough coppers who would volunteer when there was a softening job to be done, and how he would love it.
“Nothing’s biting me,” I said. “But if I stick around you long enough something may.”
“Smart—huh?” He grinned, showing small yellow teeth. “Keep your nose clean, Wonder Boy. We’re watching you.”
“Just so long as you don’t shoot me through the head,” I returned, pushed past him and went on down the corridor to Mifflin’s office.
I paused before I rapped and looked over my shoulder. MacGraw was still standing at the head of the stairs, staring at me. There was a startled expression on his face, and his loose-lipped mouth hung open. As our eyes met, he turned away and went down the stairs.
Mifflin looked up as I entered his office and frowned.
“You again. For Pete’s sake don’t keep coming to see me. Brandon doesn’t like it.”
I pulled up a straight-back chair and sat down.
“Remind me to cry when I have time. I’m on official business. If Brandon doesn’t like it he can go jump in the ocean.”
“What business?” Mifflin asked, pushing back his desk chair and resting his big hairy hands on the desk.
“One of the nurses attending Miss Crosby has vanished,” I said. “Brandon should be interested because this nurse is employed by Salzer.”
“Vanished ?” Mifflin repeated, his voice off-key. “What do you mean—vanished?”
I told him how I had called on Nurse Gurney, how the front-door bell had rung, how she had gone to answer it and hadn’t returned. I gave him the details about the fat woman in the empty apartment opposite, the plum stone on the escape and how simple it would have been for a strong man to have carried Nurse Gurney down the escape to the waiting car.
“Well, that’s a damned funny thing,” Mifflin said, and ran his fingers through his shock of black hair. “About a couple of years ago another of Salzer’s nurses disappeared. She was never found.”
“Did you ever look for her?”
“All right, Vic, you needn’t be that way,” he said angrily. “Of course we looked for her, but we didn’t find her. Salzer said he thought she had run away to get married. Her father wasn’t struck on her boy friend or something like that.”
“Salzer hasn’t reported Nurse Gurney is missing?”
He shook his head.
“He’d scarcely have had time, would he? Besides, she might have remembered something and gone out to get it. There must be any number of reasons why she left the apartment.”
“Without shoes and stockings and in the middle of a conversation? Don’t kid yourself. This is kidnapping, and you know it.”
“I’ll go over there and talk to the janitor. You better keep out of this. I’ll tell Brandon the janitor reported it.”
I shrugged.
“Just so long as something’s done. This other case interests me. Who was the nurse?”
Mifflin hesitated, then got up and went over to one of his many filing cabinets.
“Her name was Anona Freedlander,” he said, pawed through a number of files, selected one and brought it to his desk. “We haven’t a lot of information. Her father’s George Freedlander. He lives at 257 California Street, San Francisco. She disappeared on 15th May of last year. Salzer reported to Brandon. Freedlander came to see us, and it was his idea she had run off with this boy friend, a guy named Jack Brett. Brett was in the Navy. A couple of weeks before Anona disappeared he deserted. Brandon said we needn’t look too hard; we didn’t.”
“Did you ever find Brett?”
“No.”
“I wonder how hard you are going to look for Nurse Gurney.”
“Well, we’ll have to be convinced she has been kidnapped. Brandon won’t act on your say-so. It’ll depend on Salzer.”
“This damned city seems to be run by Salzer.”
“Aw, now, Vic, you don’t mean that.”
I got to my feet.
“Find her, Tim, or I’ll start something. I liked that girl.”
“Just take it easy. If she has disappeared we’ll find her. You’re sure that horse Crab Apple’s okay? I don’t want to lose five bucks.”
“Never mind Crab Apple. You concentrate on Nurse Gurney,” I said and stamped out of the room.
I drove back to Orchid Buildings. Paula was waiting for me in my office.
“We go ahead,” I said, and sat down behind my desk. “I’ve seen Willet, and he’ll finance an investigation, but he wants to keep his firm well in the background.”
“Plucky of him,” Paula said scornfully. “You take all the risks, I suppose?”
“He seemed to expect to pay a little extra,” I said, and grinned. I told her about my visit to Headquarters. “This guy Salzer seems in the habit of making his nurses vanish. You note the date? May 15th: the day Janet died. No one’s going to convince me her disappearance doesn’t somehow tie up with Janet’s death.”
Paula studied me.
“You think Janet was murdered, don’t you?”
I lit a cigarette and put the match carefully in the ashtray before replying.
“I think it’s possible. The motive’s there: all that money. She certainly didn’t die of heart failure. Arsenic poisoning, among other poisons, produces heart failure. An old goat like Bewley might easily have been deceived.”
“But you don’t know! “Paula said. “Surely you don’t think Maureen murdered her sister?”
“The incentive is pretty strong. Besides collecting a fortune of two million dollars there’s also the little insurance item. I don’t say she did it, but that kind of money is a big temptation, especially if you are in the hands of a blackmailer. And another thing, I’m not entirely satisfied that Crosby himself wasn’t murdered. If there had been nothing wrong about the shooting why didn’t Salzer call in someone like Bewley to sign the death certificate? Why sign it himself? He had to square Lessways, the coroner, and probably Brandon. It was either suicide or murder. I’m willing to bet it wasn’t an accident. And as Willet pointed out, if a man owns a revolver he isn’t likely to shoot himself with a shot-gun: so that leaves murder.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions,” Paula said sharply. “That’s your big failing, Vic. You’re always making wild guesses.”
I winked at her.
“But how I do enjoy myself.”
III
As a form of relaxation I do jig-saw puzzles. Paula gets them for me from a legless hero she goes along and talks to on her afternoon off. This guy spends all his time cutting jig-saws from railway posters Paula gets for him. They make terrific puzzles and one takes me about a month to do. Then I pass it on to a hospital and get another off Paula’s pal.
From long experience in doing these puzzles I have found the apparently small and unimportant-looking piece is very often the key to the whole picture, and I’m always on the look-out for such a piece. In the same way, when I’m on a job I’m always on the look-out for some insignificant trifle that appears to have no bearing on the case, but very often has.
