I left her and Fausta eyeing each other with mutual hostility while I had a talk with the senior partner in his private office.
Alfred Mohl was a dried up specimen of about seventy, and about as conservative as you might expect an investment broker to be. To put it mildly, he was not enthusiastic about discussing the business affairs of a client, even though the client’s deceased condition made it unlikely the company would draw further business from him. Only after I had convinced him I was working in cooperation with the Homicide Department, and we had reason to suspect Willard Knight’s speculations somehow tied in with his murder, did he reluctantly unload.
“We have been handling transactions for Mr. Knight about three years,” he finally told me. “Mostly of the speculative type. He was not an... ah... conservative investor.”
I asked, “Didn’t you think it strange that a rival investment broker would buy stock through you when he easily could have done so through his own firm?”
“I sometimes wondered about it,” Mohl admitted. “But it is not part of a broker’s duty to question a client’s motive for giving him business.”
“It never occurred to you Knight might be speculating with money not belonging to him?”
Alfred Mohl looked shocked. “Certainly not!”
“Well, it seems he was. Could you tell me just what his investments were, and how he made out on each one?”
He pressed a button on his desk, and when the large bosomed blonde came in, asked her to bring him the file on Willard Knight. When she brought it to him, he pored over it about ten minutes while I silently smoked a cigar. Occasionally he made a note on a slip of paper.
“Here is the entire story,” he said finally, closing the file folder and handing me the paper on which he had been making notes.
Neatly divided into four columns was a list of a dozen stock transactions, the first column consisting of the names of stocks, the second the number of shares purchased, the third the purchase price, and the last the selling date and price.
A quick glance showed that in ten of the transactions Knight had made a profit, the smallest profit being two hundred dollars and the largest three thousand. But the other two transactions explained the cheapness of Willard Knight’s home.
Between the two he had taken a loss of thirty-five thousand.
In my head I added up his wins, subtracted from his two large losses and came out with a debit balance of approximately twenty thousand. The last transaction was the only one of the lot which showed neither profit nor loss. In the three weeks Knight had held shares, the market price had not changed a decimal.
It was the largest transaction on the list... thirty-five thousand shares of Ilco Utilities at two dollars a share. And Ilco Utilities was one of the companies in which Walter Lancaster had also been a large stockholder.
I thanked Mr. Mohl for his cooperation, collected Fausta and departed.
I said, “Let’s go interrupt Isobel Jones’s nap.”
Fausta raised one eyebrow. “Isobel? I did not know you and the lady were on a first name basis.”
“I’m an informal guy,” I growled. “I call all my mistresses by their first names, Miss Moreni.”
WE DID not succeed in interrupting Isobel’s nap, because she wasn’t asleep when we arrived. Attired in a scanty sun suit, she was seated on the front porch sipping a highball, the color of which led me to believe it was the usual mixture of Scotch and bourbon. Fausta eyed the narrow halter and brief shorts of our hostess dubiously, unsuccessfully searched for boniness in Isobel’s soft shoulders, or the faint indication of wrinkles in her smooth throat, then greeted her with a sisterly smile in which there was only the barest suggestion of sororicide.
Fausta seated herself in a canvas chair similar to the one Isobel occupied, and I sat in the green porch swing.
I said, “I know you were answering questions all night, Mrs. Jones. But would it upset you to answer one or two more?”
“Why no. But I told Inspector Day everything I knew about poor Willard. I couldn’t sleep, you see, so I took a little walk and dropped in at the Sheridan merely because it was handy...”
“I heard that story,” I interrupted. “Let’s work on a different one. Let’s go back to the night Walter Lancaster was murdered.”
She looked surprised. “Mr. Lancaster? But obviously Willard had nothing to do with that. You don’t think I did, do you?”
“No. You know you rather amaze me, Isobel. You don’t seem in the least grief stricken over Knight.”
“Of course I feel terrible about it,” Isobel said in a tone lacking the slightest evidence of grief. “But after all I didn’t know Willard very well. He was my husband’s partner and all, but we didn’t move in the same social group, and actually he was more of a friend of my husband than of me.”
I shook my head at her wonderingly. “Isobel, you’re one of the best actresses I ever encountered. In the face of all the evidence, do you really expect to convince either me or the cops you weren’t carrying on an affair with Knight?”
She straightened her back indignantly. “Why, Manny Moon! To say a thing like that in my own house! Or on the porch of my house anyway. When I tell my husband...”
“The cops already told him,” I said. “He doesn’t believe them, and after witnessing your convincing performance, I understand why. But I’m not your husband, and personally I don’t care how many lovers you have. I also have no intention of spoiling your husband’s beautiful faith in you. All I want is verification of some things I’ve already figured out, and only oral verification. You don’t have to sign anything, and if you object to a witness, Fausta can go inside while we talk.”
Isobel said primly, “There is nothing I have to say that I can’t say in front of a witness.”
“All right,” I said resignedly. “Let’s start with the morning after Lancaster’s death. Knight’s wife says that when Willard saw the morning paper, at first he acted elated, then upset, and when she questioned him, he refused to tell what it was in the news that affected him, but he did remark it was a mixed blessing. Obviously what he saw was the news of Lancaster’s death.”
Isobel looked politely interested but offered no comment.
“What elated him,” I went on, “was the realization that Lancaster had not had time before he died to make public certain irregularities he had uncovered in a firm both Knight and Lancaster held large interests in.”
Isobel said, “I know nothing of Mr. Knight’s business affairs. As a matter of fact, I don’t even know anything about my husband’s.”
“Then I’ll bring you up to date. Knight had misappropriated seventy thousand dollars of the company’s money in order to speculate and stood to lose it if Lancaster made his announcement. Lancaster’s sudden death gave him time to dispose of the stock and return the money to the company account.” I examined her for a trace of surprise, found none and asked, “Doesn’t it even worry you that Knight nearly bankrupted your husband?”
“Harlan told me about it over the phone,” she said serenely. “Since Willard managed to return everything before he died I can’t see any cause for worry.”