Her story rang true enough, but just to play safe, I put out a few feelers in the neighborhood, and what I learned seemed to verify what she had told me. I gathered that a few of the neighbors had made guesses that weren’t a million miles away from the facts.
I got the Pullman Company on the telephone and was told that lower 4, car 8, leaving for New York on the twenty-eighth, hadn’t been occupied at all.
Zumwalt was dressing for dinner when I went up to his room at the hotel where he was staying.
I told him all that I had learned that day, and what I thought of it.
“Everything makes sense up until Rathbone left the Golden Gate Trust Company vault on the twenty-seventh, and after that nothing does! He had planned to grab the bonds and elope with this Mrs. Earnshaw, and he had already drawn out of the bank all his own money. That’s all orderly. But why should he have gone back to the office? Why should he have stayed in town that night? What was the important business that held him? Why should he have ditched Mrs. Earnshaw? Why didn’t he use his reservations at least part of the way across the country, as he had planned? False trail, maybe, but a rotten one! There’s nothing to do, Mr. Zumwalt, but to call in the police and the newspapers, and see what publicity and a nation-wide search will do for us.”
“But that means jail for Dan, with no chance to quietly straighten the matter up!” he protested.
“It does! But it can’t be helped. And remember, you’ve got to protect yourself. You’re his partner, and, while not criminally responsible, you are financially responsible for his actions. You’ve got to put yourself in the clear!”
He nodded reluctant agreement and I grabbed the telephone.
For two hours I was busy giving all the dope we had to the police, and as much as we wanted published to the newspapers, who luckily had photographs of Rathbone, taken a year before when he had been named as co-respondent in a divorce suit.
I sent off three telegrams. One to New York, asking that Rathbone’s baggage be opened as soon as the necessary authority could be secured. (If he hadn’t gone to New York the baggage should be waiting at the station.) One to Chicago, asking that Rathbone’s brother be interviewed and then shadowed for a few days. And one to New Orleans, to have the city searched for him. Then I headed for home and bed.
News was scarce, and the papers the next day had Rathbone spread out all over the front pages, with photographs and descriptions and wild guesses and wilder clews that had materialized somehow within the short space between the time the newspapers got the story and the time they went to press.
I spent the morning preparing circulars and plans for having the country covered; and arranging to have steamship records searched.
Just before noon a telegram came from New York, itemizing the things found in Rathbone’s baggage. The contents of the two large bags didn’t mean anything. They might have been packed for use or for a stall. But the things in the Gladstone bag, which had been found unlocked, were puzzling.
Here’s the list:
Two suits silk pajamas, 4 silk shirts, 8 linen collars, 4 suits underwear, 6 neckties, 6 pairs sox, 18 handkerchiefs, 1 pair military brushes, 1 comb, 1 safety razor, 1 tube shaving cream, 1 shaving brush, 1 tooth brush, 1 tube tooth paste, 1 can talcum powder, 1 bottle hair tonic, 1 cigar case holding 12 cigars, 1.32 Colt’s revolver, 1 map of Honduras, 1 Spanish English dictionary, 2 books postage stamps, 1 pint Scotch whiskey, and 1 manicure set.
Zumwalt, his bookkeeper, and his stenographer were watching two men from headquarters search Rathbone’s office when I arrived there. After I showed them the telegram the detectives went back to their examination.
“What’s the significance of that list?” Zumwalt asked.
“It shows that there’s no sense to this thing the way it now stands,” I said. “That Gladstone bag was packed to be carried. Checking it was all wrong — it wasn’t even locked. And nobody ever checks Gladstone bags filled with toilet articles — so checking it for a stall would have been the bunk! Maybe he checked it as an afterthought — to get rid of it when he found he wasn’t going to need it. But what could have made it unnecessary to him? Don’t forget that it’s apparently the same bag that he carried into the Golden Gate Trust Company vault when he went for the bonds. Damned if I can dope it!”
“Here’s something else for you to dope,” one of the city detectives said, getting up from his examination of the desk and holding out a sheet of paper. “I found it behind one of the drawers, where it had slipped down.”
It was a letter, written with blue ink in a firm, angular and unmistakably feminine hand on heavy white note paper.
Dear Dannyboy:
If it isn’t too late I’ve changed my mind about going. If you can wait another day, until Tuesday, I’ll go. Call me up as soon as you get this, and if you still want me I’ll pick you up in the roadster at the Shattuck Avenue station Tuesday afternoon.
More than ever yours,
It was dated the twenty-sixth — the Sunday before Rathbone had disappeared.
“That’s the thing that made him lay over another day, and made him change his plans,” one of the police detectives said. “I guess we better run over to Berkeley and see what we can find at the Shattuck Avenue station.”
“Mr. Zumwalt,” I said, when he and I were alone in his office, “how about this stenog of yours?”
He bounced up from his chair and his face turned red.
“What about her?”
“Is she— How friendly was she with Rathbone?”
“Miss Narbett,” he said heavily, deliberately, as if to be sure that I caught every syllable, “is to be married to me as soon as my wife gets her divorce. That is why I canceled the order to sell my house. Now would you mind telling me just why you asked?”
“Just a random guess!” I lied, trying to soothe him. “I don’t want to overlook any bets. But now that’s out of the way.”
“It is,” he was still talking deliberately, “and it seems to me that most of your guesses have been random ones. If you will have your office send me a bill for your services to date, I think I can dispense with your help.”
“Just as you say. But you’ll have to pay for a full day today; so, if you don’t mind, I’ll keep on working at it until night.”
“Very well! But I am busy, and you needn’t bother about coming in with any reports.”
“All right,” I said, and bowed myself out of the office, but not out of the job.
That letter from “Boots” had not been in the desk when I searched it. I had taken every drawer out and even tilted the desk to look under it. The letter was a plant!
And then again: maybe Zumwalt had given me the air because he was dissatisfied with the work I had done and peeved at my question about the girl — and maybe not.
Suppose (I thought, walking up Market Street, bumping shoulders and stepping on people’s feet) the two partners were in this thing together. One of them would have to be the goat, and that part had fallen to Rathbone. Zumwalt’s manner and actions since his partner’s disappearance fit that theory well enough.
Employing a private detective before calling in the police was a good play. In the first place it gave him the appearance of innocence. Then the private sleuth would tell him everything he learned, every step he took, giving Zumwalt an opportunity to correct any mistakes or oversights in the partners’ plans before the police came into it; and if the private detective got on dangerous ground he could be called off.
And suppose Rathbone was found in some city where he was unknown — and that would be where he’d go. Zumwalt would volunteer to go forward to identify him. He would look at him and say, “No, that’s not him,” Rathbone would be turned loose, and that would be the end of that trail.