He had been prepared to look flattered for a moment; he let the look slip off again.
“In other words,” she went ahead, “it rang the bell somewhere or other, deep inside him, when he got it. It wasn’t just a bluff, out of thin air.”
She was starting to get herself together, as if ready to go out again. “All that’s neither here nor there. The main thing is, we’ve got her now. I’m almost sure we’ve got her. And I’m going out and find her.”
“But we still don’t know her name, what she looks like, where she hangs out.”
“We can’t expect life-sized photographs to be handed us in this. I think we’re doing pretty good as it is, starting in from scratch the way we did. At least she’s become a live person now, she’s real, instead of being just a will-o’-the-wisp like she was until now. Just a whiff of perfume in a room, that’s already gone. We know that she was at the Perroquet around midnight; she must have been seen there. His girl told you something about her. What was it, now? A tall redhead, a light-green dress. Number Three on the conga-line. They can’t all have been tall redheads in light-green dresses down there tonight.” She flung her hands encouragingly wide, to impress it on him. “Look at all we’ve got!”
“The place’ll be closing by now.”
“The people that count, the people that can really help, they’ll still be around. Waiters, checkroom girl, washroom attendant, all like that. I’ll trace her from there if I have to go over the hairbrushes in the dressing-room one by one for stray red hairs—”
“I’m going with you.” He went over to the bedroom-doorway, put out the light in there. Then he went toward the bath. “Just a minute,” he said, “I want to get a drink of water in here, before we go.”
She went on out to the stairs without waiting. She thought he’d be right after her. Then because he wasn’t, she stopped and waited, two or three steps down from the top. Then because he still didn’t come, she turned and went back again the two or three steps, and into the lighted room once more.
She could see him standing there motionless just past the bath-entrance. She knew even before she went in and joined him, that he’d found something, that he’d seen something, by the intent, arrested way he was holding himself.
“What is it?”
“I called you and you didn’t hear me. This was lying in the tub. That shower-curtain must have hidden it from us until now. When I was getting a drink, my elbow grazed the curtain and it fell further back than it was. And this was there, on the dry bottom of the tub.”
It was light blue and he was holding it taut between both hands.
“A check,” she said. “Someone’s personal check. Let me see—”
It was made out to Stephen Graves, for twelve thousand five hundred dollars and no cents. It was endorsed by Stephen Graves. It was signed by Arthur Holmes. It was stamped, in damning letters diagonally across the face of it: Returned — No Funds.
They exchanged a puzzled look across it, she now holding one end, he the other. “How’d a thing like this get into the bottom of a bathtub?” she marvelled.
“That’s the least important part of it. That’s easy enough to figure out. This check must have been in the cash-box in the first place. The hole I made in the wall is up over the bottom of the tub in a straight line. When I pulled the cash-box out and opened it, the check must have slipped out and volplaned down into the tub without my noticing it. Then the slant of the shower-curtain hid it from me until just now. But that isn’t the thing. Don’t you see what it could mean?”
“I think I do. There’s a pretty good chance of Holmes being our jittery cigar-chewer, don’t you think?”
“I’m betting on it. Here’s something to kill someone for — twelve-fifty — oh... oh!”
“Then maybe this Holmes came around here tonight to see him, either to make good on it then and there, or to ask him not to prosecute until he’d raised enough money to make good on it in the near future. And because Graves wasn’t able to find the check when he went to look for it, Holmes thought he was trying to put something over on him. They got into an argument about it, and Holmes shot him.”
“Then, in a way, I’m still responsible for his death—”
“Forget that. Holmes didn’t have to kill him, even if he did think he was holding out the check on him. Holmes,” she said thoughtfully, backing the crook of one finger to her mouth. “I’ve heard or seen that name before, somewhere, tonight. Wait a minute, weren’t there some cards in his wallet? I think it was on one of them.”
She went out into the other room and knelt down there on the floor again. She took up the wallet, shuffled through the two or three cards that had been in it the first time. She looked up at him, nodded. “Sure, I told you. Holmes was his broker. Here it is right here.”
He came over and joined her, check still in hand. “That’s funny. I don’t know much about those things, but don’t clients usually give checks to their brokers, and not the other way around? And a bad one at that.”
“There could be a reason for that. Maybe Holmes misappropriated some securities that he was holding, or handling for Graves and then Graves demanded an accounting sooner than he’d expected, so he tried to gain time by foisting a worthless check on him. When that bounced back and Graves threatened to have him arrested—”
“Any address on that?”
“No, just the brokerage firm-name, down in one corner.”
“Well, I can get to him.” He took a hitch in his belt. “I’m going,” he said determinedly. “Come on, you can go down to the bus terminal awhile, and wait for me there—” Then, as he saw she didn’t make any immediate move, “You agree with me that it was Holmes now, don’t you?”
“No,” she said to his surprise. “No, I don’t. In fact, if anything, I still think it was that conga-line dame.”
He flourished the check at her. “But why, when we’ve just turned this up?”
“Several little things, that you won’t take any stock in. First of all, if Holmes did kill him, it was to cover up this check. Right? Then he never would have left here without it. Once he’d gone as far as to kill him over it, he would have looked for it until he’d found it. Because he’d know that it would point straight at him when it was found. Just as it is doing at this minute.”
“Suppose he did look for it and wasn’t able to find it?”
“You found it,” was all she replied to that. “And then another thing that makes me think it was the woman who was here at the end — I know this one you’re going to laugh at, but — Graves had his coat on when he died.”