Back uptown went Dan, to One Hundred and Sixteenth Street and Eighth Avenue, one of the busiest spots in Harlem, where he found a drugstore on the southwest corner. He failed to get any satisfactory information. The two clerks and the boy at the soda fountain declared that they had been on duty all evening on Saturday, April 3, but they had no recollection of seeing anyone who resembled the photograph of William Mount. The man at the newsstand outside said that he had an indistinct memory of such a man, but that he couldn’t tell just when he had seen him.
“It’s been two weeks, so I suppose I shouldn’t expect anything,” thought Dan as he turned away.
As he boarded a downtown train he was telling himself that Mr. Leg had stated the case mildly when he said that it was a little bit unnecessary to make a trip down to the office so late at night. It was worse than that, it was absurd.
Not for worlds would Dan have disclosed to anyone the extent of its absurdity by confessing the nature of his errand; he was himself trying to scoff at the wild idea that had entered his head that morning, and he felt that he was doubly a fool to entertain it as a possibility. Nevertheless, he was so completely possessed by it that he felt he couldn’t sleep till he had sought the slight corroboration chance had offered him.
“But even if it’s the same it won’t really prove anything,” he muttered, gazing out of the window down at the never-ending row of lighted shops as the elevated train rumbled along through the night.
At the office building he was admitted and passed into the night elevator by the watchman on showing Mr. Leg’s card. He carried a key to the office, since he was always the first to arrive in the morning. A queer sense of strangeness and loneliness came over him as he switched on the electricity and saw his desk and Miss Venner’s, all the familiar objects, revealed by its cold rays.
What a difference artificial light, with the night outside, makes in a room which we have previously seen illumined only by the soft, natural light of day!
Dan passed into the inner room, went straight to Mr. Leg’s desk, turned on the electric reading globe, and cast his eye over the accumulation of books and papers. There were publishers’ announcements, social invitations, personal letters, and other things. Almost at once, with an exclamation of satisfaction, he pounced on a typewritten sheet of paper with a name written at the bottom.
He spread this out on the desk, pulled from his pocket the slip he had found in Mr. Yoakum’s bag of trash bearing the words “Bonneau et Mouet — Sec,” and, sitting down in Mr. Leg’s chair, began to examine with minute attention first the name on the letter, then the words on the slip. He did this for a full half-hour, with his brows wrinkled in concentration and the glow of discovery in his eyes.
“Of course,” he muttered finally aloud, as he put the typewritten sheet back where he had found it, “I may not be a handwriting expert, but those were written by the same man as sure as my name’s Dan Culp. He’s mixed up in it somehow.”
He placed the slip back in his pocket, and going to a case devoted to law volumes and similar works at one side of the room, took out a large blue book and carried it to the desk. He opened it at the front, ran his finger down the list of illustrations, stopped about the middle, and turned over the pages till he came to the one he wanted. It showed a full-page reproduction of a photograph of a man. He looked at it a moment, then carefully tore it out of the book, folded it, and placed it in his pocket.
There was a scared look on the youth’s face as he turned out the lights and turned to leave the office. As the lock of the door clicked behind him there came faintly the sound of Trinity’s midnight chimes.
Chapter V
The Police Commissioner
Despite the fact that he didn’t get to bed till nearly two o’clock, having consumed half an hour explaining his late arrival to his mother and accepting her good-natured banter on his coming career as a great detective, Dan arrived at the office at half-past eight the following morning. He sat at his desk reading till nine, when Miss Venner appeared.
“Well, did you find the murderer?” she inquired sweetly, as he drew out her chair for her.
“Maybe,” Dan replied in a tone so professionally cryptic that she burst into a peal of laughter.
“All right,” continued Dan calmly, “wait and see.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” remarked Miss Venner as she sat down and took her embroidery from the drawer. “If you win Mr. Leg’s case for him — for, of course, he can’t do it — I’ll give you this scarf I’m working on.”
The splendid vanity of this proposal appeared not to occur to Dan. “No; do you mean it?” he exclaimed.
Miss Venner’s reply was lost in the sound of the door opening to admit Mr. Leg. Greetings were exchanged. Dan sought his own desk.
A few minutes later, called into the other room by his employer, he proceeded to give him an account of his activities of the day before. He told him all that he had learned at the apartment house, from the janitor and tenants, and of his failure to find anyone at the drugstore who remembered seeing Mount. But there was one thing he did not mention: the slip of paper he had in his pocket; nor did he inform the lawyer that one of his books had been disfigured by having a photograph torn from it.
“And now I suppose you’re ready for my report,” observed Mr. Leg with an amused smile when Dan had finished.
“If you please, sir.”
“Well, to begin with, I had a hard time to find out anything.” The lawyer took a sheet of paper covered with writing from his pocket. “First I went to the office of Police Commissioner Hammel, who is a personal friend of mine, to get his authority, but he was out of town and wasn’t expected back until this afternoon.
“I was afraid you’d call me down if I put it off, so I went to Inspector Brown, and he referred me to another inspector, Lobert, who is in charge of the case. Naturally, I suppose, they regard it as their business to convict Mount, but Lobert certainly didn’t want to tell me anything. I got most of my information from a record of the testimony at the coroner’s inquest and before the Grand Jury, of which I secured a copy.
“The police arrived at the scene of the murder at twenty-five minutes to twelve. Their story of what happened after they got there is the same as Mount’s. They say that the body of the victim was still quite warm; it wasn’t examined by a doctor until the next morning at nine o’clock, and then all he could say was that she had died between eight o’clock and midnight.
“They took nothing from the flat except the knife, and nothing from Mount’s person of any significance. The knife was an ordinary steel paper knife with an ivory hilt, presumably the property of Mrs. Mount, or Alice Reeves, under which name the murdered woman was living there. The police didn’t examine the hilt for fingerprints, as it was found in Mount’s hand. Besides the wound in the breast, the body showed no marks of violence. Neither Mount nor his wife has any criminal record.”
The lawyer handed the sheet of paper to Dan as he finished.
“So,” observed the youth, “the knife doesn’t tell us anything. I was hoping—”
“Well?” the other prodded him as he stopped.
“Nothing, sir. That is, nothing that is worth telling. But that doesn’t matter; we’ve only begun. Of course, we can’t expect any real help from the police; all they want is to convict somebody. Are you going to see Mount this morning, sir?”
“I suppose so.” Mr. Leg frowned. “The Tombs is an extremely unpleasant place to visit, Dan. Extremely. But, of course, if it’s necessary—”