After sending a telegram to the agency’s Los Angeles branch, I hunted up the man from whom Sherry had rented the bungalow.
He could tell me nothing about his tenants except that he was disappointed in their not staying even a full two weeks. Sherry had returned the keys with a brief note saying he had been called away unexpectedly.
I pocketed the note. Handwriting specimens are always convenient to have. Then I borrowed the keys to the bungalow and went back to it.
I didn’t find anything of value there, except a lot of fingerprints that might possibly come in handy later. There was nothing there to tell me where my men had gone.
I returned to Kavalov’s.
The sheriff had finished running the staff through the mill.
“Can’t get a thing out of them,” he said. “Nobody heard anything and nobody saw anything, from bedtime last night, till the valet opened the door to call him at eight o’clock this morning, and saw him dead like that. You know any more than that?”
“No. They tell you about Sherry?”
“Oh, yes. That’s our meat, I guess, huh?”
“Yeah. He’s supposed to have cleared out yesterday afternoon, with his black man, for Los Angeles. We ought to be able to find the work in that. What does the doctor say?”
“Says he was killed between three and four this morning, with a heavyish knife—one clean slash from left to right, like a left-handed man would do it.”