I wanted. The rest of his pockets couldn’t be got at without moving him, and I didn’t care to do that.
Five minutes later I was back in the hotel, going in through a side door, to avoid Dick and Mickey in the lobby, and walking up to the mezzanine to take an elevator.
In my room I sat down and examined my loot.
I took the book first, a small imitation-leather memoranda book of the sort that sells for not much money in any stationery store. It held some fragmentary notes that meant nothing to me, and thirty-some names and addresses that meant as little, with one exception:
Helen Albury
1229A Hurricane St.
That was interesting because, first, a young man named Robert Albury was in prison, having confessed that he shot and killed Donald Willsson in a fit of jealousy aroused by Willsson’s supposed success with Dinah Brand; and, second, Dinah Brand had lived, and had been murdered, at 1232 Hurricane Street, across the street from 1229A.
I did not find my name in the book.
I put the book aside and began unfolding and reading the papers I had taken with it. Here too I had to wade through a lot that didn’t mean anything to find something that did.
This find was a group of four letters held together by a rubber band.
The letters were in slitted envelopes that had postmarks dated a week apart, on the average. The latest was a little more than six months old. The letters were addressed to Dinah Brand. The first—that is, the