hunted up a couple of boys who eat, sleep, and breathe horse racing. They told me that Clane was well known in racing circles as the owner of a small string of near-horses that ran as irregularly as the stewards would permit.
At the Marquis hotel I got hold of the house detective, who is a helpful chap so long as his hand is kept greased. He verified my information about Clane’s status in the sporting world, and told me that Clane had stayed at the hotel for several days at a time, off and on, within the past couple years.
He tried to trace Clane’s telephone calls for me but—as usual when you want them—the records were jumbled. I arranged to have the girls on the switchboard listen in on any talking he did during the next few days.
Ned Root was waiting for me when I got down to the office the next morning. He had worked on Grover’s accounts all night, and had found enough to give me a start. Within the past year—that was as far back as Ned had gone—Grover had drawn out of his bank-accounts nearly fifty thousand dollars that couldn’t be accounted for; nearly fifty thousand exclusive of the ten thousand he had drawn the day of the murder. Ned gave me the amounts and the dates:
- May 6, 1922, $15,000
- June 10, 5,000
- August 1, 5,000
- October 10, 10,000
- January 3, 1923, 12,500
Forty-seven thousand, five hundred dollars! Somebody was getting fat off him!
The local managers of the telegraph companies raised the usual howl about respecting their patrons’ privacy, but I got an order from the Prosecuting Attorney and put a clerk at work on the files of each office.