his chair, leaning back, lowering his thin hands out of sight below the table's edge.
"So you found out about that?" She crossed left leg over right and looked down. Her eyes focused on the run in her stocking. I'm going to stop wearing 'em! I paid five bucks for these socks yesterday. Now look at the damned things! Every day—runs! runs! runs!"
"It's no secret," I said. "I mean the check, not the runs. Noonan's got it."
She looked at Rolff, who stopped watching me long enough to nod once.
"If you talked my language," she drawled, looking at me through narrowed lashes, "maybe I could give you some help."
"Maybe I could talk it if I knew what it was."
"Money," she explained. "The more the better. I like it."
I got proverbial:
"Money saved is money earned. I can save you trouble and dough."
"I can save my own. What I need is more."
"Giving it to lawyers isn't saving it."
"That doesn't mean anything to me," she said.
"The police haven't told or asked you anything about the check?"
She shook her head no.
"I thought not," I said. "Noonan's figuring on hanging the rap on you as well as Whisper."
"Don't scare me," she lisped, "I'm only a child."
"Noonan knows that Thaler knew Willsson brought the check here, that Thaler, came while he was here but didn't get in, that Thaler was hanging around the neighborhood when Willsson was shot, and that Thaler and a woman were seen bending over the dead man."
The girl picked a pencil up from the table and thoughtfully scratched her cheek with it. It made little black lines over the rouge. Rolff's eyes had suddenly lost their weariness. They were bright, feverish, fixed on mine. He leaned forward, but kept his hands out of sight below the table.
"Those things," he said softly, "concern Thaler, not Miss Brand."
"Thaler and Miss Brand are not strangers," I pointed out. "Willsson brought a five thousand dollar check here and was killed leaving. That way, Miss Brand might have had trouble cashing it—if Willsson hadn't been thoughtful enough to have it certified."
"Say!" the girl objected, "if I'd been going to kill him I'd have done it in here where nobody could have seen it! Or waited till he got out of sight of the house! What kind of dumb onion do you take me for?"
"I'm not altogether satisfied you killed him," I assured her. "I'm just telling you that the fat chief means to hang it on you."
"What are you trying to do?"
"Learn who killed him—not who might have or could have—who did."
"I could give you some help," she said, "but there'd have to be something in it for me."
"Safety," I reminded her, but she shook her head.
"I mean it would have to get me something in a financial way," she went into details. "It'd be worth something to you, and you ought to pay, even if not a lot."
"Can't be done." I grinned at her. "Forget your bank roll for one and go in for charity. Pretend I'm Bill Quint."
Dan Rolff started up from his chair, his lips white as the rest of his face, his eyes burning. He sat down again when the girl laughed, a lazy, good-natured laugh.
"He thinks I didn't make any profit out of Bill, Dan!" She leaned forward and put a hand on my knee. "Listen, old timer. Suppose you knew far enough ahead that a company's employees were going to strike, and when, and then far enough ahead when they were going to call the strike off. Could you take that information and some capital to the stock market and do your-
