Выбрать главу

The flow stopped. The voice knew. He couldn’t tell how, he hadn’t made a sound, but suddenly it knew.

“It isn’t—?”

The voice was dying. Not physically maybe, but it was shrivelling up.

“I’m sorry to get in the way. I wanted to — I was calling Arthur Holmes.”

The voice was dead now. The dead voice said, “He’s in Canada, fishing. He left Tuesday a week ago. You can reach him at—”

“Tuesday a week ago? Never mind.”

“Please get off the line. I’m expecting a call.”

He got off the line.

The next was the name-street.

The operator said finally, “They don’t answer.”

“Keep trying.”

She went ahead.

It stopped finally. He thought she’d quit. It took him a minute to catch on. She hadn’t quit, it was that it had been picked up; it was open at the other end, and yet there wasn’t a sound to show that it was. Otherwise, if she’d quit, his nickel would have come back. Somebody listening without speaking? Somebody a little afraid?

So it had begun auspiciously, if by this indication alone.

Neither end spoke. He waited to see. Somebody had to give in. He gave in first.

“Hello,” he said softly.

A throat cleared itself at the other end. “Yes?” a voice said reticently.

It was beginning good, it was beginning like the real thing. He was afraid to hope yet, he’d already been disappointed so many times before this.

The voice was a man’s. It was very low, and very wary. Even in its “yes” it was watchful.

“Is this Mr. Arthur Holmes?”

He had to hold him fast first; make sure it was he, and then hold him there. Then once he’d done that— So he had to go easy himself to start with.

“Who is this?”

He hadn’t admitted that he was Holmes; Quinn tried to get around that by taking it for granted that he was.

“Well, Mr. Holmes, you don’t know me—”

The voice didn’t fall for it. “Who is this that wants to speak to Mr. Holmes?”

He tried it again. “The name is not known to you, Mr. Holmes.”

Again the voice side-stepped. “I didn’t say that this was Holmes. I asked what your name was. Unless you tell me who you are first, I can’t tell you whether you can reach him or not. It’s quite likely that you can’t, particularly at such an hour. Now don’t take up any more of my time unless you tell me who you are and what you want of Mr. Holmes.”

That “what you want” was what he’d been waiting for. It gave him an opening-wedge.

“Very well,” he said with deceptive submissiveness, “I’ll tell you both things. The name is Quinn; that of a stranger. It’s not known to Mr. Holmes. What I want is to— I want to return a check that belongs to Mr. Holmes.”

“What?” the voice said quickly. “What was that?”

“I say, I have a check that belongs to Mr. Holmes. But I have to know if I have the right Mr. Holmes. Is this the residence of the Arthur Holmes that’s connected with the brokerage firm of Weatherby and Dodd?”

“Yes,” the voice said quickly, “yes, this is.”

“Well, now will you let me talk to him?”

The voice hesitated only briefly. The voice took the plunge. “You are,” it said quietly.

He’d won the first round. He had him hooked. He didn’t have to worry about losing him from now on. All he had to do, now, was bring him in closer.

He repeated what he’d said twice already. “I have a check that belongs to you.” He let that stand by itself, for the other to nibble at.

The voice felt its way carefully. “I don’t understand. If you say I don’t know you, how could you have?” The voice picked up speed. “I’m afraid you must be mistaken.”

“I’m holding it right here in my hand, Mr. Holmes.”

The voice faltered, ran down again. “Who’s it made out to?”

“Just a second.” Quinn took a moment or two off, for artistic effect, as if peering at it closely. “Stephen Graves,” he said, with that slightly stilted intonation that accompanies reading aloud, in contradistinction to impromptu speech. He was playing it this way consciously; the effect he wanted to convey, at this stage, was of innocent, haphazard possession, rather than dangerous knowledge. There was still too much distance between them.

There was a catch in the voice; as though it had knotted up suddenly in its owner’s throat. It said nothing, but the sounds it made trying to free itself carried over the wire.

Boy is he guilty, Quinn kept thinking. Boy is he guilty. If he gives himself away like this out of sight, can you imagine—?

The knot had been effaced; the voice spoke suddenly. “Nonsense, there’s no check of mine made out to any such person. Look, my friend, I don’t know what’s up your sleeve, but I advise you not to—”

Quinn kept his tone even, colorless. “If you’ll compare it with your stub you’ll see I’m telling the truth. The number in the right-hand corner is 20. It’s the twentieth check in that particular book. It’s drawn on the Case National Bank. It’s dated August the twenty-fourth. It’s to the amount of twelve thous—”

He sounded as if he was falling apart there at the other end. Something knocked hollowly, as if the instrument had slipped out of his hand and he’d had to retrieve it.

I’ve got him, Quinn revelled. Oh, this time I surely have.

He could wait. The thing to do from this point on was to improvise as he went along, fit his responses to the circumstances as they presented themselves.

“And how’d you — how’d you come to get hold of such a check?”

“I found it,” Quinn said matter-of-factly.

“Would you — would you mind telling me where?”

It was doing things to him. He’d breathe just once, quickly. And then he’d forget to breathe the next two or three times he should have in-between. Then he’d breathe again just once, quickly. Quinn could hear the whole process as plainly as if he were holding a stethoscope to his ear instead of a telephone.

“I found it on the seat of a taxi. It looked like somebody who was in it before me opened their wallet in the dark and it slipped out.” Let him think it was Graves.

“Who was with you when you found it?”

“No one. Just me by myself.”

The voice tried to use skepticism as a sort of probe, to draw out the admission it believed to be there, lurking just below the surface. “Now don’t tell me that. There are always two heads in anything like this. Come on, who was with you?”

“No one, I tell you. Didn’t you ever hear of anyone happening to be by himself sometimes? Well, I was.”

The voice had wanted to hear that. The voice liked it that way. He could tell.

“Who’d you show it to afterwards? Who’d you speak to between the time you found it and now?”

“No one.”

“Who’s with you now?”

“No one.”

“What put the idea into your head of calling me up at four-thirty in the morning about it?”

“I thought maybe you’d like to have it back,” Quinn said disarmingly.

The voice considered that. Not that it was kidding him any, but it tried to give the impression of deliberating, weighing the matter. As though there could be more than one answer to his suggestion. “Let me ask you something first. Suppose — this is just theoretical — suppose I say I don’t want it back, that it’s of no value to me, then what do you do with it? Throw it away?”