A sergeant knocked at the chief’s door and entered.
“A New York telegram for Mr. O’Hara, relayed from Nantucket,” he said. “Here you are, Mr. O’Hara.”
Dan tore it open with thick fingers, ran his eye over the contents and grinned wryly.
“Either I’m a sucker or they’re smarter than I gave ’em credit for,” he said. “It’s from New York police headquarters. ‘Man named R. J. Conlin put up Friday night at the Hotel Pennsylvania,’ he read. ‘Signature card has been shown to Miss Duncan, Conlin’s secretary, who says it looks like his writing. He was unaccompanied.’ ”
“Heigh ho,” said Flynn. “Dan, you better go back to Nantucket and find somebody else that has disappeared.”
O’Hara looked stubborn.
“No,” he said. “It all fits too nice. He’s got a house in New York and a regular hotel where he always stays and where he is known. I forgot to ask his wife which it is because it didn’t seem important at the time. Instead he goes to one of the largest hotels in the world, where everything runs almost by machinery. No clerk or bellboy will remember what he looks like. Conlin is a common name so the hotel people wouldn’t take interest in him because he was a big banker. And it would be a swell hide-out if he had a jane with him, but he was alone. So I just don’t believe it.”
“Unless you can prove different it means that Conlin will be assumed to have been alive twenty-four hours after the killing in ’Sconset. And his disappearance, if he has disappeared, begins when he left the Pennsylvania.”
“You’re so damn right I’d like to sock you,” said O’Hara, grinning. “I’m going up to the New Bedford Hotel and then I’ll hop a train for New York.”
“You say yourself you can’t check up anything at the Hotel Pennsylvania.”
“I’m going to try and then I’m going to go into one of them newspaper morgues over there and find out everything that was published about R. J. Conlin.”
“Meantime whoever stole that body is roaming round Nantucket Island.”
“Can’t help it. Either that’s the body of R. J. Conlin or—”
“Yeah?”
“Or there was a Smith, and R. J. Conlin killed him and laid out this swell alibi for himself.”
The chief laughed heartily. “Never can tell by appearances,” he declared. “Why, Dan, you got a great imagination. You ought to be one of these detective fiction writers.”
“Them? They ain’t got no imagination,” replied O’Hara, unperturbed. “See you sometime, chief. Dig me up this Mrs. Conlin of the New Bedford Hotel while I’m gone, will you?”
“We’ll try to trace her. I forgot to tell you that the pair checked out of the hotel at eight Friday morning and went off in a sedan. Nobody noticed the license number.”
“Much obliged. So long, chief.”
Chapter XIII
O’Hara Learns Things
Conlin and Company was a firm of investment brokers on lower Broadway. It had been a conservative house which had come successfully through the panic and preserved an appearance of prosperity through the three years of sagging security markets. It still occupied large and ornate offices, and only one familiar with the appearance of these offices in boom days would realize that there were only one third as many employees about the place.
On Monday morning after the Thursday night when R. J. Conlin left his home in ’Sconset there was a conference in the directors’ room of Conlin and Company, was presided over by William H. Good, junior partner, and attended by two young men who were, in theory, partners, though their interest in the profits were negligible. There was present the first auditor and a high official of the Stock Exchange.
“I wired Conlin on Thursday that the Republic of Paragonia had repudiated its bonds,” stated Mr. Good, “and that we would go under unless he could find a way to prevent it. He failed to put in an appearance on Friday. On Saturday, as you know, the papers carried the story of his disappearance, which they elaborated on Sunday.
“In times like these a scandal is fatal. I knew by the demands from clients up to closing time Saturday that we would be swamped by this morning. I am afraid that Conlin, who handled our Paragonian interests exclusively, was aware of the situation a week ago and laid his plans. I regret, gentlemen, to state that this firm appears to be insolvent and we shall have to make an assignment.
“I have been connected with the firm for twenty years. I am losing my personal fortune in the crash.” He stopped because his voice had broken, and he blew his nose in order to cover his emotion with a display of white linen handkerchief.
“How much did Conlin steal?” asked one of the very junior partners angrily.
“So far as I am able to discover his accounts are in good shape,” replied the auditor. “Our error was in underwriting the issue of Paragonian bonds. We might have scratched through their repudiation had the head of the firm been on the job, but his disappearance alarmed all our clients. There is no doubt that Conlin and Co. must go into a receiver’s hands.”
“You can bet he feathered his own nest,” said the second very junior partner.
“It is possible that our chief has met with foul play,” protested the acting head of the firm.
“Boloney,” commented the first very junior partner.
“He either flew the coop or committed suicide,” declared his colleague.
“In any event, sir,” stated Mr. Good to the official of the Stock Exchange, “I am filing a voluntary petition in bankruptcy.”
The Stock Exchange man nodded sympathetically. “We might have helped you out as we have helped out so many good houses in this trying period,” he said, “but the scandal of Conlin’s disappearance makes it impossible. He has a wife in Nantucket, but he turned up in New Bedford with a woman whom he registered as his wife. He slipped into New York and went to the Pennsylvania Hotel without communicating with this office, though he knew the seriousness of the situation. We can’t do anything for Conlin and Company, Mr. Good.”
“I didn’t suppose you could,” answered Mr. Good with a sigh. “That is all, gentlemen.”
The meeting broke up just as a solidly built, granite-faced, slovenly dressed man entered the outer office and asked for one of the partners.
“Please state your business,” said the smart information clerk superciliously.
The visitor produced a slightly greasy card which stated that its bearer was Daniel O’Hara of the Massachusetts State Police.
“In connection with the disappearance of Mr. Conlin,” he added.
“I’ll find out if Mr. Good will see you,” she replied.
A moment later she conducted Dan O’Hara into a perfectly appointed office where a gray-haired man with a clean shaven, pink face and faultless attire was seated.
“What can I do for you, Mr. O’Hara?” asked the junior partner of Conlin and Company politely but without much interest.
“I’d like to get a line on Mr. Conlin, sir,” replied the detective. “I’m trying to find out if he had any enemies that might have put him on the spot.”
“You think he has been killed?”
“Well, I’ve got kind of a hunch that he has, sir.”
“I disagree with you. In my opinion his disappearance is voluntary. This firm has gone into a receiver’s hands, Mr. O’Hara.”
“Oh, ho! He swiped the assets, eh?”
“I have no reason to suppose so, but knowing our financial condition, I think he lacked courage to face the music.”
Dan scratched his head in perplexity. Having accepted the general impression that Conlin was a man of great wealth, it had not occurred to him that the banker’s disappearance might be due to money trouble.