Stenn leaned against the wall and whistled tonelessly. In the back of the house he heard the man bawling for Della. She came in a few moments, the man following her. “What’s she done?” the man asked, his tone eager.
“She’s just a witness to something. I want to talk to her alone.”
“This is my house and I listen to anything in it I want to,” the man said sullenly.
Stenn looked at the girl. Her heavy black hair was worn in an outmoded pageboy, the front bangs falling to the thick unplucked eyebrows. It gave her young face a pointed, vulpine look. She wore a black sweater and slacks. The sweater was a turtle-neck, and the slacks were closely tailored. Stenn guessed her at about nineteen.
“Go on back to that crummy program you were listening to,” she said in a hoarse gamin’s voice.
“Watch your mouth!” the man bellowed.
The girl shrugged. “Come on, Mr. Police. We’ll go on up to my room if he wants to act that way.”
The man gave them an evil grin. “See if I care how many guys you take up to that room, you tramp.”
The girl was halfway up the steep stairs, looking back over her shoulder.
“We’ll talk right here,” Stenn said. She paused, turned, started back down. Stenn turned to the man. “Go on into the back of the house and shut any doors you come to. Give me an argument and I’ll have you booked on the first thing I can think up and we both know it won’t be the first time.”
The man licked his lips. He tried to smile confidently. He turned and left the hallway.
“All talk, he is,” Della Clove said. She sat on the second stair from the bottom, her fingers locked around one knee. “I suppose this is about that girl and the train today. Is she dead?”
“She is.”
“I thought she would be, with both legs gone that way. I’m going to have nightmares tonight, believe me.”
“You went around and took a look at her?”
“Sure. I never saw anything like that before. Raoul says we must seek all experience.”
“Who is Raoul?”
“My director. We’re in rehearsal right now. The Theater of the Dance.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, you haven’t heard of it yet, but you will. It’s all volunteer work. We give plays in pure pantomine. We dance out the parts. It’s a new art form.”
“Then you were coming back from rehearsal?”
“We worked all afternoon. I was exhausted.”
“Did you notice that girl before she took the dive?”
“Yes. I always study everyone around me. Raoul says that observation is something a true actress must have. I always select the most attractive person nearby and study them. But blondes often look just a little anemic, don’t you think? She was nervous. Very nervous. She kept fiddling with the strap on that alligator shoulder bag. She kept looking down the track and tapping her foot.”
“Then you were looking when she jumped?”
“I had learned everything I could from her. I had turned around to find someone else to study when she screamed. I turned in time to see her fall. I made a grab for her... like this.” The girl made an exaggerated reaching motion, then shrank back as though in an extremity of fear. She sank to the step, fingering her dark hair back off the pale forehead. “Just like that.”
“Maybe you should have grabbed a little quicker. Where was she in relation to you, Della?”
“Three or four feet in front of me and a little to my right.”
“Was there a little fat man standing beside you?”
She frowned. “The world is full of little fat men. I wouldn’t know.”
“In your opinion, could she have been pushed?”
“I really don’t know. It’s possible, of course. The normal thing to do when a train backs in like that is to look at it. I suppose it would be a perfect time to push anyone.”
“You’ve got a point there.”
“And there was quite a crowd, you know. I often stay in until later to avoid that very thing.”
“You do this dancing or acting or whatever it is for free, eh?”
“Is that any of your business?”
“You mentioned it, Della. I was just wondering how you lived.”
She lifted her chin. “If it is of interest to you, I have my own money, from my father, my real father. I have to live with my mother until I am twenty-one. I’ll be twenty-one in two more months. And then, believe me, I’ll never look at this crummy town again. In the meanwhile I have a small income from the lawyers.”
She came up onto her feet with a dancer’s grace. Her eyes were snapping black under the heavy eyebrows. It was a dancer’s body, long-waisted, flat across the belly, with a thigh-muscle swell under the tailored slacks.
“Is that all you have to know?” she asked loftily.
“For now.”
“Could you make an appointment the next time?”
“I could, but I don’t think I will. That is, if there is a next time.”
He smiled as he walked away from the house. That one was a handful, for anybody. He phoned a cab from a drugstore that was just closing, rode back to the station and read a magazine until his train came through at a quarter after eleven.
Three days later, at the request of white-haired, lean Lieutenant Sharahan, Sergeant Paul Stenn reported to him.
“How about this Jane Doe?” Sharahan asked in his mild voice. “You got anything on her yet?”
“Nothing. No tumble to the picture in the paper. No answers on the tape. Drew a blank in the San Francisco underwear shop. No dry-cleaning marks. Nothing at the hotels. I coordinated with Missing Persons and they’ve sent about fifteen people over to take a look at her. No dice. I sent her prints to Central Bureau Files. Got the answer this morning. Nothing on her. The dental work is pretty average. She had good teeth. Three small fillings. Not enough to go on.”
“A big bundle of nothing,” Sharahan breathed softly.
“I checked on the ways she could have come into town. I took the picture around. The desk guy at Intercity thought maybe. He dug out the manifest and the only one we couldn’t check off was a Miss Betty Brown of Seattle. She got on the flight at Chicago. Could be, and then again maybe not. The Seattle report ought to be here day after tomorrow. That smells to me as though it would fade out on us. They give those Reno matches away all over the country. All we know is she probably was in San Francisco some time within the past year and that she definitely was in Mexico. Her suit was made there, the experts say, and she had to be there for the fittings. It looks to me like she was traveling without identification for a purpose.”
“How do you mean? Because she was going to knock herself off?”
“It doesn’t smell that way. More like it wasn’t healthy for her to spread the right dope around. I’ve got a hunch she might have been wanted. But only a hunch.”
Sharahan sighed again. “Okay. Drop it. No sense wasting any more time on it.”
Stenn cleared his throat. “If it’s okay with you, Wally, I’d just as soon work on it a little longer.”
“Why?” For the first time Sharahan’s voice was sharp.
“Call it a hunch. Call it anything. Give me a couple more days. I’ll work it in between the regular stuff.”
“Suit yourself,” the lieutenant said. “Suit yourself, Paul.”
That night Stenn went to a movie. The images raced across the surface of his eyes, leaving no impression on the brain. He sat utterly still in the seat and, starting from the beginning, he went over every detail of the case, the inventory, the way the dead girl had looked, the faint crispness of the blonde hair under his fingers. There was only one vague area in the entire case.
From the lobby he phoned headquarters and asked to have Kevan and Matchic pick him up in front. Within two minutes they cut out of traffic and pulled up beside the curb.