Deadline at Dawn полностью

“That’s the least important part of it. That’s easy enough to figure out. This check must have been in the cash-box in the first place. The hole I made in the wall is up over the bottom of the tub in a straight line. When I pulled the cash-box out and opened it, the check must have slipped out and volplaned down into the tub without my noticing it. Then the slant of the shower-curtain hid it from me until just now. But that isn’t the thing. Don’t you see what it could mean?”

“I think I do. There’s a pretty good chance of Holmes being our jittery cigar-chewer, don’t you think?”

“I’m betting on it. Here’s something to kill someone for — twelve-fifty — oh... oh!”

“Then maybe this Holmes came around here tonight to see him, either to make good on it then and there, or to ask him not to prosecute until he’d raised enough money to make good on it in the near future. And because Graves wasn’t able to find the check when he went to look for it, Holmes thought he was trying to put something over on him. They got into an argument about it, and Holmes shot him.”

“Then, in a way, I’m still responsible for his death—”

“Forget that. Holmes didn’t have to kill him, even if he did think he was holding out the check on him. Holmes,” she said thoughtfully, backing the crook of one finger to her mouth. “I’ve heard or seen that name before, somewhere, tonight. Wait a minute, weren’t there some cards in his wallet? I think it was on one of them.”

She went out into the other room and knelt down there on the floor again. She took up the wallet, shuffled through the two or three cards that had been in it the first time. She looked up at him, nodded. “Sure, I told you. Holmes was his broker. Here it is right here.”

He came over and joined her, check still in hand. “That’s funny. I don’t know much about those things, but don’t clients usually give checks to their brokers, and not the other way around? And a bad one at that.”

“There could be a reason for that. Maybe Holmes misappropriated some securities that he was holding, or handling for Graves and then Graves demanded an accounting sooner than he’d expected, so he tried to gain time by foisting a worthless check on him. When that bounced back and Graves threatened to have him arrested—”

“Any address on that?”

“No, just the brokerage firm-name, down in one corner.”

“Well, I can get to him.” He took a hitch in his belt. “I’m going,” he said determinedly. “Come on, you can go down to the bus terminal awhile, and wait for me there—” Then, as he saw she didn’t make any immediate move, “You agree with me that it was Holmes now, don’t you?”

“No,” she said to his surprise. “No, I don’t. In fact, if anything, I still think it was that conga-line dame.”

He flourished the check at her. “But why, when we’ve just turned this up?”

“Several little things, that you won’t take any stock in. First of all, if Holmes did kill him, it was to cover up this check. Right? Then he never would have left here without it. Once he’d gone as far as to kill him over it, he would have looked for it until he’d found it. Because he’d know that it would point straight at him when it was found. Just as it is doing at this minute.”

“Suppose he did look for it and wasn’t able to find it?”

“You found it,” was all she replied to that. “And then another thing that makes me think it was the woman who was here at the end — I know this one you’re going to laugh at, but — Graves had his coat on when he died.”

“Aw, Bricky—” he started to protest.

“I knew you wouldn’t take it seriously, but the impression I get of him, I don’t know why, is that he was the type man wouldn’t have received a woman with his coat off, not even a blackmailer. And it was pretty late by then and he’d been in it all evening. I think if it was Holmes who’d been here at the end we’d have found him lying just in his vest, or maybe even just in his shirt-sleeves. But that’s just the meaning it has to me, I don’t ask anyone else to try to get that out of it. It’s more of a hunch than anything else. Anyway, to me it still spells the woman.”

After a moment he laughed cheerlessly. “First we didn’t have anything. Now we’ve got too much again.”

“What I said before still holds good. More so now than then, even because the time has been clipped that much shorter. One of them is still the wrong one, one of them the right one. But we can only afford to pick the right one the first time out. We can’t go after either one of them together. Because even those fifty-fifty odds are too high for us to take. If they paid off wrong, that would let the other one go by default. Suppose Holmes is the wrong one after all? Then by the time we’ve found that out, there’s no more slack left to go out after the woman.”

“But it’s him and no one else. Everything here is trying to tell you that with all its might.”