“It is possible that he committed suicide,” added Good.
Dan shook his head. “He has either been murdered or he is still alive,” he replied. “If he left Nantucket Island at all he came to New York and was at the Pennsylvania on Friday night.”
“But we know he left Nantucket. The Saturday papers traced him to the Hotel Pennsylvania.”
“There was a name on a register,” replied Dan. He dug an envelope from his pocket and produced a tracing.
“Is this his signature?” he demanded.
Good looked at the slip of tissue. “It seems to be,” he replied. “It is a little more legibly written than his usual signature, but I supposed he wanted them to get his name right in case of phone calls.”
Dan looked disappointed. “Just the same I’d like to find out about him.”
“I can refer you to the volume entitled ‘Men Who Have Made New York,’ ” replied Good. “You may go into our library and read the article about Mr. Conlin.”
Dan grinned. “That won’t help me much. I want to find out who he done dirt to that might have scragged him.”
Good stiffened. “Mr. Conlin was a just, fair man who never injured anybody,” he replied haughtily.
“That’s what the preacher would say at the funeral services. I want the low down.”
“Well,” replied Good. “I am not feeling very well, sir, and this conversation affects me disagreeably. I’ll refer you to his secretary, Miss June Duncan, who knows more about his private affairs than I.”
A moment later Dan was in the presence of a reasonably good looking young woman who wore glasses and a prim expression. His efforts to become confidential with her were received glacially. Evidently she respected her employer highly and proposed to divulge no secrets. He learned that Mr. Conlin was a man of impeccable life who belonged to all the best clubs and who was most happily married.
“What was his wife’s name before she was married?” he inquired.
“I’m sorry. I never heard it. I have only been with Mr. Conlin two years.”
Shaking the dust, figuratively speaking, of Conlin and Company from his shoes, Dan took a taxi to the editorial rooms of a sensational afternoon newspaper. His card admitted him at once to the presence of the city editor, a nervous, bespectacled, old young man who gazed at him hopefully.
“What can we do for the Massachusetts State Police?” he demanded.
“I’d like to look through your obituary envelope about this R. J. Conlin,” he said.
“Ah!” exclaimed the city editor. “The absconding broker!”
“I ain’t heard he absconded. He disappeared from Nantucket Island and his wife suspected foul play. I come over to get a line on him.”
“Didn’t you read our paper on Sunday? He vamoosed with a blonde. I’d be much obliged if you would give me the name and picture of the blonde, Mr. O’Hara.”
Dan chuckled. “I could use that blonde myself. How about a look-see at the envelope, eh?”
“I’ll send for it and you can look it over right here. And if you find anything we have overlooked — did you read our story yesterday?”
“I’m a Republican and I don’t very often read Democratic papers,” stated O’Hara.
The city editor sent a boy for a Sunday paper, opened it and showed Dan a story on the third page which was headed by a picture of Conlin and of Mrs. Conlin. As the shaky condition of Conlin and Co. was not known to the newspapers on Saturday when the story was concocted out of an item from the police headquarters reporter, it was cautiously written and only intimated that, while Mrs. Conlin, in Nantucket, was broadcasting her fear of foul play, the gay broker was traveling with another woman.
“What’s this Mrs. Conlin’s maiden name?” asked the detective.
“Stella Crane,” replied the city editor. “A widow when she married him, I believe.”
“Got an envelope on her?”
“No. We don’t bother much about the wives of business men.”
“Well, this lady was on the stage before she was married. She told me she was in one of those Ziegfeld Follies.”
“Wow!” exclaimed the city editor. “I’ll slay that rewrite man.”
“What’s eating you?”
The city editor laughed. “We can usually get a swell story on an ex-Follies girl. Of course Crane wasn’t her stage name; that was the name of her first husband. Hey, Jones, run into the dramatic editor’s room and drag him out, will you? Stick around, Mister Detective, you’re a positive inspiration.”
In a few minutes there appeared a bald-headed man with nose glasses which were connected to his right ear by a broad band of black ribbon.
“Take a look at this gal,” requested the city editor, “and tell me who she used to be.”
The dramatic editor looked at the newspaper picture and grinned. “What’s the matter with your own eyes?” he demanded. “That’s Stella Starr who was mixed up in a breach of promise suit against somebody big ten years ago. You’re a hell of a city editor.”
“You see, her name when she married Conlin was Crane. That’s why we didn’t identify her.”
“Crane. Now what does that remind me of! Good Lord, she married James Crane of Chicago. He was murdered by some fellow who got all heated up because he gave Stella a black eye — a big football star did it and Stella went on the witness stand and wept an acquittal out of the jury.”
“Wow!” repeated the city editor. “Dickson, you’re my darling! I remember, and the big football star was… was—”
“Guy by the name of Jack Billings,” supplied Dan O’Hara.
The city editor emitted a howl like a wolf who was very hungry. The outcry did not attract the slightest attention in the busy city room, whose occupants seemed to be accustomed to outbursts of temperament by the city editor.
The dramatic editor turned to the detective and grinned sardonically.
“Trouble with this rag,” he said, “is that they take ignorant reporters and make them city editors and they fire them before they’ve been on the job long enough to learn anything. An old-time city editor could have told the history of that vampire by one look at her picture. Can I be of further service?”
“Sure,” replied the city editor unaggrieved. “Go through your files and dig out all the photos you’ve got of her. The less clothes she has on the more our readers will enjoy seeing her. Much obliged, O’Hara.”
“Don’t mention it,” answered Dan. “Now, how would you be having this murder case filed away?”
“Under the name of the defendant,” said the editor. “I’ll dig it right out. Jones, see what they have in the morgue files concerning John or Jack Billings.”
A very fat envelope was produced in a couple of minutes and Olsen dragged out the contents and strewed them over his desk, making funny little moans which, with him, indicated the acme of mental enjoyment.
“Boy, what a follow-up on the Conlin story!” he declared. “And no other rag in town has an idea that this broker’s wife was the woman in the Billings murder case. Oh, me, oh, my, I can’t understand why it didn’t break when Conlin married her. I guess the old boy covered everything up neatly. There was only a paragraph about his marriage in his envelope, and not a word about who the dame was.”
As soon as the city editor had run his eye over a clipping, Dan took it and read it slowly and methodically.
By the time Dan had gone through the clippings, the city editor had finished dictating a long and lurid story to two rewrite men and was poring over five or six gorgeous pictures of Stella Starr as she had been in her early twenties, sent in by the dramatic editor.
Unlike Olsen, Dan had read every word of the clippings in the envelope and it had taken him an hour and a half. What perplexed him was that the name of R. J. Conlin did not occur once in the mass of material dealing with the Billings case.