“Who was her last customer, so far as you know?”
“Lately I’ve seen her around town quite often with a chap named Thaler—he runs a couple of gambling houses here. They call him Whisper. You’ve probably heard of him.”
At eight-thirty I left young Albury and set out for the Miner’s Hotel in Forest Street. Half a block from the hotel I met Bill Quint.
“Hello!” I hailed him. “I was on my way down to see you.”
He stopped in front of me, looked me up and down, growled:
“So you’re a gumshoe.”
“That’s the bunk,” I complained. “I come all the way down here to rope you, and you’re smarted up.”
“What do you want to know now?” he asked.
“About Donald Willsson. You knew him, didn’t you?”
“I knew him.”
“Very well?”
“No.”
“What did you think of him?”
He pursed his gray lips, by forcing breath between them made a noise like a rag tearing, and said:
“A lousy liberal.”
“You know Dinah Brand?” I asked.
“I know her.” His neck was shorter and thicker than it had been.