I examined the room. So far as I could tell, nothing had been changed in it. I went back to the kitchen and found no recognizable changes there.
The spring lock on the back door was fastened, and had no marks to show it had been monkeyed with. I went to the front door and failed to find any marks on it. I went through the house from top to bottom, and learned nothing. The windows were all right. The girl’s jewelry, on her dressing table (except the two diamond rings on her hands), and four hundred odd dollars in her handbag, on a bedroom chair, were undisturbed.
In the dining room again, I knelt beside the dead girl and used my handkerchief to wipe the ice pick handle clean of any prints my fingers had left on it. I did the same to glasses, bottles, doors, light buttons, and the pieces of furniture I had touched, or was likely to have touched.
Then I washed my hands, examined my clothes for blood, made sure I was leaving none of my property behind, and went to the front door. I opened it, wiped the inner knob, closed it behind me, wiped the outer knob, and went away.
From a drug store in upper Broadway I telephoned Dick Foley and asked him to come over to my hotel. He arrived a few minutes after I got there.
“Dinah Brand was killed in her house last night or early this morning,” I told him. “Stabbed with an ice pick. The police don’t know it yet. I’ve told you enough about her for you to know that there are any number of people who might have had reason for killing her. There are three I want looked up first—Whisper, Dan Rolff and Bill Quint, the radical fellow. You’ve got their descriptions. Rolff is in the hospital with a dented skull. I don’t know which hospital. Try the City first. Get hold of Mickey Linehan—he’s still camped on Pete the Finn’s trail—and have him let Pete rest while he gives you a hand on this. Find out where those three birds were last night. And time means something.”