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“Any money on him?”

O’Gar fed himself two spoons of chowder and nodded.

“Six hundred smacks, a coupla diamonds, and a watch. Nothing touched.”

“What was he doing on Pine Street at that time in the morning?”

“Damned if I know, brother. Chances are he was going home, but we can’t find out where he’d been. Don’t even know what direction he was walking in when he was knocked over. He was lying across the sidewalk with his feet to the curb; but that don’t mean nothing — he could of turned around three or four times after he was hit.”

“All apartment buildings in that block, aren’t there?”

“Uh-huh. There’s an alley or two running off from the south side; but Kelly says he could see the mouths of both alleys when the shot was fired — before he turned th
e corner — and nobody got away through them.”

“Reckon somebody who lives in that block did the shooting?” I asked.

O’Gar tilted his bowl, scooped up the last drops of the chowder, put them in his mouth, and grunted.

“Maybe. But we got nothing to show that Gilmore knew anybody in that block.”

“Many people gather around afterward?”

“A few. There’s always people on the street to come running if anything happens. But Kelly says there wasn’t anybody that looked wrong — just the ordinary night crowd. The boys gave the neighbourhood a combing, but didn’t turn up anything.”

“Any cars around?”

“Kelly says there wasn’t, that he didn’t see any, and couldn’t of missed seeing it if there’d been one.”

“What do you think?” I asked.

He got to his feet, glaring at me.

“I don’t think,” he said disagreeably; “I’m a police detective.”

I knew by that that somebody had been panning him for not finding the murderer.

“I have a line on a woman,” I told him. “Want to come along and talk to her with me?”

“I want to,” he growled, “but I can’t. I got to be in court this afternoon.”

In the vestibule of the Garford Apartments, I pressed the button tagged Miss Cara Kenbrook several times before the door clicked open. Then I mounted a flight of stairs and walked down a hall to her door. It was opened presently by a tall girl of twenty-three or—four in a black and white crepe dress.

“Miss Cara Kenbrook?”

“Yes.”

I gave her a card — one of those that tell the truth about me.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions; may I come in?”

“Do.”

Languidly she stepped aside for me to enter, closed the door behind me, and led me back into a living room that was littered with newspapers, cigarettes in all stages of consumption from unlighted freshness to cold ash, and miscellaneous articles of feminine clothing. She made room for me on a chair by dumping off a pair of pink silk stockings and a hat, and herself sat on some magazines that occupied another chair.

“I’m interested in Bernard Gilmore’s death,” I said, watching her face.

It wasn’t a beautiful face, although it should have been. Everything was there — perfect features; smooth, white skin; big, almost enormous, brown eyes — but the eyes were dead-dull, and the face was as empty of expression as a china doorknob, and what I said didn’t change it.

“Bernard Gilmore,” she said without interest. “Oh, yes.”

“You and he were pretty close friends, weren’t you?” I asked, puzzled by her blankness.

“We had been — yes.”

“What do you mean by had been?”

She pushed back a lock of her short-cut brown hair with a lazy hand.

“I gave him the air last week,” she said casually, as if speaking of something that had happened years ago.

“When was the last time you saw him?”