The operatives who had been searching the city for Bonfils had all come in empty-handed. They had found and investigated eleven persons named Bonfils in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Alameda. Their investigations had definitely cleared all eleven. None of these Bonfilses knew an Emil Bonfils. Combing the hotels had yielded nothing.
O’Gar and I went to dinner together—a quiet, grouchy sort of meal during which we didn’t speak six words apiece—and then came back to the agency to find that another wire had come in from New York.
Madden Dexter arrived McAlpin Hotel this morning with Power of Attorney to sell Gantvoort interest in B.F. and F. Iron Corporation. Denies knowledge of Emil Bonfils or of murder. Expects to finish business and leave for San Francisco tomorrow.
I let the sheet of paper upon which I had decoded the telegram slide out of my fingers, and we sat listlessly facing each other across my desk, looking vacantly each at the other, listening to the clatter of charwomen’s buckets in the corridor.
“It’s a funny one,” O’Gar said softly to himself at last.
I nodded. It was.
“We got nine clues,” he spoke again presently, “and none of them have got us a damned thing.
“Number one: the dead man called up you people and told you that he had been threatened and shot at by an Emil Bonfils that he’d had a run-in with in Paris a long time ago.
“Number two: the typewriter he was killed with and that the letter and list were written on. We’re still trying to trace it, but with no breaks so far. What the hell kind of a weapon was that, anyway? It looks like this