If Death Ever Slept

I looked at him. He meant business, though what business I couldn’t say. Add his opinion of women to his opinion of other detectives, and you get his opinion of female detectives. Circumstances had compelled him to use Dol Bonner a year or so back, but now he was asking for it, and even inviting her to breakfast. Fritz would be on needles.

“I have her home number,” I told him, “and I’ll try, but she may already be gone for the long week end. If so, is it urgent enough to dig her out?”

“Yes. I want her. Now for you. You will go early in the morning to Jamaica race track and-”

“No racing at Jamaica now. It’s closed.”

“What about Belmont?”

“Open. Big day tomorrow.”

“Then we’ll see. You will act on this hypothesis: that Roger Foote took Jarrell’s gun and hid it in his room or elsewhere on the premises. Thursday afternoon he shot Eber with it. Since he intended to say he had spent the day at Jamaica, he went there so as to be seen, and he hid the gun somewhere there. To speculate as to why he hid it instead of disposing of it is pointless; we know he did hide it because it was used again on Sunday. Either he hid it at Jamaica or, having made an appearance there, he went to Belmont and hid it there. In either case, on Sunday he went and retrieved it, returned to New York, met Brigham by appointment, and killed him. Acting on that hypothesis, your job is to learn where he left the gun from Thursday to Sunday, and you may start either at Jamaica or at Belmont. It’s barely possible you’ll even find the gun. He may have thought he might have further use for it and went back and hid it again in the same place after killing Brigham. He didn’t get home Sunday until seven o’clock.”

I said-not an objection, just a fact-“Of course he had all of New York City too.”

“I know, but that’s hopeless. He had to go to Jamaica on Thursday and to Belmont on Sunday, to be seen, and since we know he was there we’ll look there. We know little or nothing of his movements in New York City; we know of no place particularly available to him where he could hide a gun and count on getting it again. First explore the possibilities at Jamaica and Belmont.”

I explored them for four straight days, equipped with five hundred bucks in small bills from cash reserve and eight pictures of Roger Foote, procured early Thursday morning from the files at the Gazette. I went to Jamaica first because Belmont would have such a mob on the holiday that I would merely have got trampled.