A plump maid with bold green eyes and a loose, full-lipped mouth led me up two flights of steps and into an elaborately furnished boudoir, where a woman in black sat at a window. She was a thin woman of a little more than thirty, this murdered man’s widow, and her face was white and haggard.
“You are from the Continental Detective Agency?” she asked before I was two steps inside the room.
“Yes.”
“I want you to find my husband’s murderer.” Her voice was shrill, and her dark eyes had wild lights in them. “The police have done nothing. Four days, and they have done nothing. They say it was a robber, but they haven’t found him. They haven’t found anything!”
“But, Mrs. Gilmore,” I began, not exactly tickled to death with this explosion, “you must—”
“I know! I know!” she broke in. “But they have done nothing, I tell you—nothing. I don’t believe they’ve made the slightest effort. I don’t believe they want to find h‑him!”
“Him?” I asked, because she had started to say her . “You think it was a man?”
She bit her lip and looked away from me, out of the window to where San Francisco Bay, the distance making toys of its boats, was blue under the early afternoon sun.
“I don’t know,” she said hesitantly; “it might have—”