A man with broad shoulders and a bull neck stepped out of a room, looked at Hargrave.
“Hello, Jack.”
“Hello, Phil. Are you working on this case?”
“Yeah. They asked me to take it over.”
Hargrave nodded. His manner showed something of a chill of formality.
“I’m working on it,” he said.
The bull-necked one grinned.
“You was,” he stated. “I am.”
Hargrave turned to Sidney Zoom.
“Mr. Zoom, meet Mr. Brazer.”
The bull-necked one did not offer to shake hands. Sidney Zoom bowed. The bow was uncordial. Brazer didn’t bother to bow.
“Whatcha want?” he asked.
“We’re taking a look around,” said Hargrave. “This way, Zoom.”
Sidney Zoom placed his dog in a convenient corner of the hallway. Brazer, the bull-necked individual, glowered at the dog.
“He can’t stay here!”
Sidney Zoom’s smile was close clipped in its cool insolence.
“I wouldn’t advise you to try to put him out,” he remarked, and followed Hargrave up a flight of stairs, around a turn, through a short corridor and into a room.
“This,” said Hargrave, “is the murder room.”
It was a room which peculiarly adapted itself to scenes of violence and death. A gable formed an “A” at one end. A big window showed black and bleak. The furniture was old-fashioned, rickety.
Hargrave talked, and the words rattled like bullets.
“Goldfinch was a millionaire, many times over. Bought diamonds. He was a miser with diamonds just as some folks are misers with money. Every gem dealer in the country knew Goldfinch. He’d buy any sort of gems, smuggled or not. One thing he drew the line at. He wouldn’t buy stolen gems, wouldn’t deal with any one who might be even suspected of handling hot stuff.
“His housekeeper, Sally Barker, knew him better than any one. She told friends she thought he’d provided for her in his will. She wished he’d hurry up and die. The woman’s one of those half cracked babies. She’s got a friend who’s class, Myrtle Crane. Myrtle’s been visiting pawnshops some lately.
“Goldfinch is found, stabbed with a knife. No diamonds are found. We’ve searched the house from cellar to garret. Goldfinch was killed about four o’clock, not discovered for an hour or so. The housekeeper skipped out when she discovered the body. That is, she claims that was what startled her. We have our own ideas.
“Anyhow, the body was discovered by the butler and general utility man. He telephoned us. We made a round up, found the housekeeper gone, threw out a dragnet and picked her up as she was taking a train out of the city. We put a watch on the pawnshops, and they picked up her friend, Myrtle Crane, trying to hock some diamonds that were taken from the Goldfinch collection.
“She says the housekeeper told her she was afraid they’d try to pin the murder on her, so she was going to skip out, that the housekeeper asked Myrtle to hock the stones and send her the money.
“That’s the lay. We’ve searched everywhere. No diamonds. No motive for the death except gain. Goldfinch was a funny crab. No one knew him. Had a manager to handle all his property affairs, chap by the name of Jed Slacker. He’ll be in, maybe. He’s been running around back and forth, all worked up. Seems he and Goldfinch had gone into some sort of a partnership deal on some stocks. Slacker put his own money up. Came out to get Goldfinch to check out his half and found him dead.
“Slacker’s a lawyer. Says that under the law he can’t testify to the transaction because death having sealed Goldfinch’s lips the law won’t let him testify.
“Guess he’s right, at that. That means Goldfinch’s estate gets the benefit of Slacker’s money, and maybe Goldfinch didn’t leave a will. We haven’t found one.”
Sidney Zoom grunted.
“Do you think the housekeeper did the stabbing?” he asked Hargrave.
The detective lowered his voice.
“No, I don’t. That’s why I’m getting switched off the case. It looks like an easy case to pin it on the woman and have the girl as an accomplice. It’ll make a quick solution. That’s what some of the department heads want — quick solutions and newspaper publicity. Understand that’s confidential.”
Sidney Zoom nodded again.
“Taken any finger-prints?” he asked.
“Yes. You can see where I’ve brought out some latents and photographed them. The identification department is working on them. Haven’t got the finger-prints of all the people in the place yet, though. We have the housekeeper and the dead man. We’ll get the others later. The department has trouble some times getting folks to pose for their finger-prints. We don’t do it unless they’re pretty willing or else suspected of crime.”
Sidney Zoom puckered his forehead in a frown.
“The prints of the butler, the dead man and the housekeeper would naturally be all over the place,” he said.
“Sure,” agreed the young detective. “What we’d be looking for, maybe, would be a strange finger-print that would tally with the prints of some fellow who might have pulled a diamond job.
“It’s hard to identify from a latent, but where we’ve got the prints to check with we can check pretty fast. Maybe the inside end was just an accomplice. Maybe there’s somebody higher up. We’ll get the prints and check them against half a dozen big diamond men who are known to be in the city.”
Zoom nodded thoughtfully. His eyes regarded an irregular dark stain upon the floor.
“What sort of a knife?” he asked.
“Big butcher knife. Came from the kitchen.”
“Finger-prints on the knife?”
“Not a print.”
Chapter IV
The Dodger
There came a nervous knock at the door of the death chamber. Almost at once the knob turned and a pasty-faced man thrust himself through the doorway.
He was fleshy in a flabby, unhealthy corpulency. Yet he moved with the nervous, jerking swiftness of a lighter man. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face haggard.
Hargrave looked up.
“Shake hands with Mr. Zoom, Mr. Slacker. Jed Slacker, Mr. Zoom. He’s the manager I told you about.”
The fleshy man thrust out a right hand with the explosive force of a man striking a blow. He spoke and the words came rushing out so fast that each word seemed to be treading on the heels of its predecessor.
“Howdy-do-Mister-Zoom-howdy-do-pleas’d-t’meetcha. Listen, Hargrave, there’s gotta be a will here, simply gotta be. I can’t sleep. My God, my money, all of it. I’ve looked up the law. I’m stuck. Checked out my own money. Goldfinch would have made it good in a minute. Came out here, find he’s been murdered. Worst of it is that he was murdered after I’d put up the money. If he’d only been croaked an hour sooner I could have recovered. Furnished to the estate instead of to the dead man. See the point? But there’s a will, and I know he’ll remember me in the will. And—”
Hargrave interrupted:
“If you can think of any new place to search you’re welcome. If there’s a will there’s likely to be diamonds in the same place.”
The fleshy man fell to pacing the floor, quick jerky steps that made the flabby fat of his paunchy frame jiggle with the very violence of the motion. His hands were clasped behind his back, his head thrust forward. He seemed oblivious of every one in the room.
From time to time as he strode his feet passed over the irregular dark stain on the floor which marked the place where the life blood of a murdered man had oozed into the boards. But the fat man gave it no heed. He was utterly engrossed in his own problem.