I was glad to see him. This squat, bullet-headed sergeant is as good a man as the department has, and he and I have always been lucky when we tied up together.
“I found three bodies in there before I quit looking,” I told him as I led him indoors. “Maybe a regular detective like you—with a badge and everything—can find more.”
“You didn’t do bad—for a lad,” he said.
My wooziness had passed. I was eager to get to work. These people lying dead around the house were merely counters in a game again—or almost. I remembered the feel of Mrs. Ashcraft’s slim hand in mine, but I stuck that memory in the back of my mind. You hear now and then of detectives who have not become callous, who have not lost what you might call the human touch. I always feel sorry for them, and wonder why they don’t chuck their jobs and find another line of work that wouldn’t be so hard on their emotions. A sleuth who doesn’t grow a tough shell is in for a gay life—day in and day out poking his nose into one kind of woe or another.
I showed the Filipino to O’Gar first, and then the two women. We didn’t find any more. Detail work occupied all of us—O’Gar, the eight men under him, and me—for the next few hours. The house had to be gone over from roof to cellar. The neighbors had to be grilled. The employment agencies through which the servants had been hired had to be examined. Relatives and friends of the Filipino and the maid had to be traced and questioned. Newsboys, mail carriers, grocers’ delivery men, laundrymen, had to be found, questioned and, when necessary, investigated.
When the bulk of the reports were in, O’Gar and I sneaked away from the others—especially away from the newspaper men, who were all over the place by now—and locked ourselves in the library.