These two reports read and practically memorized, I left the agency and went down to Ogburn & Whitacre’s suite in the Packard Building. A stenographer ushered me into a tastefully furnished office, where Ogburn sat at a desk signing mail. He offered me a chair. I introduced myself to him: a medium-sized man of perhaps thirty-five, with sleek brown hair and the cleft chin that is associated in my mind with orators, lawyers, and salesmen.
“Oh, yes!” he said, pushing aside the mail, his mobile, intelligent face lighting up. “Has Mr. Teal found anything?”
“ Mr. Teal was shot and killed last night.”
He looked at me blankly for a moment out of wide brown eyes, and then repeated: “Killed?”
“Yes,” I replied, and told him what little I knew about it.
“You don’t think—” he began when I had finished, and then stopped. “You don’t think Herb would have done that?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t think Herb would commit murder! He’s been jumpy the last few days, and I was beginning to think he suspected I had discovered his thefts, but I don’t believe he would have gone that far, even if he knew Mr. Teal was following him. I honestly don’t!”
“Suppose,” I suggested, “that sometime yesterday Teal found where he had put the stolen money, and then Whitacre learned that Teal knew it. Don’t you think that under those circumstances Whitacre might have killed him?”
“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “but I’d hate to think so. In a moment of panic Herb might—but I really don’t think he would.”