He repeated what he’d said twice already. “I have a check that belongs to you.” He let that stand by itself, for the other to nibble at.
The voice felt its way carefully. “I don’t understand. If you say I don’t know you, how could you have?” The voice picked up speed. “I’m afraid you must be mistaken.”
“I’m holding it right here in my hand, Mr. Holmes.”
The voice faltered, ran down again. “Who’s it made out to?”
“Just a second.” Quinn took a moment or two off, for artistic effect, as if peering at it closely. “Stephen Graves,” he said, with that slightly stilted intonation that accompanies reading aloud, in contradistinction to impromptu speech. He was playing it this way consciously; the effect he wanted to convey, at this stage, was of innocent, haphazard possession, rather than dangerous knowledge. There was still too much distance between them.
There was a catch in the voice; as though it had knotted up suddenly in its owner’s throat. It said nothing, but the sounds it made trying to free itself carried over the wire.
Boy is he guilty, Quinn kept thinking. Boy is he guilty. If he gives himself away like this out of sight, can you imagine—?
The knot had been effaced; the voice spoke suddenly. “Nonsense, there’s no check of mine made out to any such person. Look, my friend, I don’t know what’s up your sleeve, but I advise you not to—”
Quinn kept his tone even, colorless. “If you’ll compare it with your stub you’ll see I’m telling the truth. The number in the right-hand corner is 20. It’s the twentieth check in that particular book. It’s drawn on the Case National Bank. It’s dated August the twenty-fourth. It’s to the amount of twelve thous—”
He sounded as if he was falling apart there at the other end. Something knocked hollowly, as if the instrument had slipped out of his hand and he’d had to retrieve it.
I’ve got him, Quinn revelled. Oh, this time I surely have.
He could wait. The thing to do from this point on was to improvise as he went along, fit his responses to the circumstances as they presented themselves.
“And how’d you — how’d you come to get hold of such a check?”
“I found it,” Quinn said matter-of-factly.
“Would you — would you mind telling me where?”
It was doing things to him. He’d breathe just once, quickly. And then he’d forget to breathe the next two or three times he should have in-between. Then he’d breathe again just once, quickly. Quinn could hear the whole process as plainly as if he were holding a stethoscope to his ear instead of a telephone.
“I found it on the seat of a taxi. It looked like somebody who was in it before me opened their wallet in the dark and it slipped out.” Let him think it was Graves.
“Who was with you when you found it?”
“No one. Just me by myself.”
The voice tried to use skepticism as a sort of probe, to draw out the admission it believed to be there, lurking just below the surface. “Now don’t tell me that. There are always two heads in anything like this. Come on, who was with you?”
“No one, I tell you. Didn’t you ever hear of anyone happening to be by himself sometimes? Well, I was.”
The voice had wanted to hear that. The voice liked it that way. He could tell.
“Who’d you show it to afterwards? Who’d you speak to between the time you found it and now?”
“No one.”
“Who’s with you now?”
“No one.”
“What put the idea into your head of calling me up at four-thirty in the morning about it?”
“I thought maybe you’d like to have it back,” Quinn said disarmingly.
The voice considered that. Not that it was kidding him any, but it tried to give the impression of deliberating, weighing the matter. As though there could be more than one answer to his suggestion. “Let me ask you something first. Suppose — this is just theoretical — suppose I say I don’t want it back, that it’s of no value to me, then what do you do with it? Throw it away?”
“No,” Quinn said evenly. “Then I’ll probably keep it and look up the payee; Stephen Graves. See if I can locate him.”
That got him if nothing else had until now. And plenty else had until now. Quinn could almost hear his heart turn over and do tailspins; all the way up through his throat and across the wire.
There was a break; somebody else got between them. The operator said: “Your five minutes is up. Deposit another nickel, please.” Meaning Quinn.
He glanced down at the one he’d been holding in readiness in his palm. In case the conversation hadn’t taken the successful turn it had.
He held it out a minute, to try out something.
The voice cried out wildly, “Wait a minute! Don’t cut us off, whatever you do!”
Quinn dropped in the nickel. There was a click and then they went on as before.
Me afraid of losing him? Quinn thought. He’s the one afraid of losing me.
The voice had had a bad fright. It decided not to do quite so much feinting. “Well, all right, I... I would like to see this check you’re holding,” it capitulated. “It’s of no possible value to anyone. There was a mistake, and—”
Quinn gave him the axe on that. “It was returned by the bank,” he said flatly.
