“I’ll have to borrow it, but I’ll get it back to you as soon as I have my copies made.”
“No! No!” he protested against having his ladylove’s face given to a lot of gumshoes. “That would be terrible!”
I finally got it, but it cost me more words than I like to waste on an incidental.
“I want to borrow a couple of her letters, or something in her writing, too,” I said.
“For what?”
“To have photostatic copies made. Handwriting specimens come in handy—give you something to go over hotel registers with. Then, even if going under fictitious names, people now and then write notes and make memorandums.”
We had another battle, out of which I came with three envelopes and two meaningless sheets of paper, all bearing the girl’s angular writing.
“She have much money?” I asked, when the disputed photograph and handwriting specimens were safely tucked away in my pocket.
“I don’t know. It’s not the sort of thing that one would pry into. She wasn’t poor; that is, she didn’t have to practice any petty economies; but I haven’t the faintest idea either as to the amount of her income or its source. She had an account at the Golden Gate Trust Company, but naturally I don’t know anything about its size.”
“Many friends here?”
“That’s another thing I don’t know. I think she knew a few people here, but I don’t know who they were. You see, when we were together we