Free The Golden Horseshoe and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett

an account here in the name of Jeanne Delano,” I said. “I’d like to know as much as possible about it: to whom she drew checks, and to what amounts; but especially all you can tell me about where her money came from.”
    He stabbed one of the pearl buttons on his desk with a pink finger, and a lad with polished yellow hair oozed silently into the room. The cashier scribbled with a pencil on a piece of paper and gave it to the noiseless youth, who disappeared. Presently he was back, laying a handful of papers on the cashier’s desk.
    Clement looked through the papers and then up at me.
    â€œMiss Delano was introduced here by Mr. Burke Pangburn on the sixth of last month, and opened an account with eight hundred and fifty dollars in cash. She made the following deposits after that: four hundred dollars on the tenth; two hundred and fifty on the twenty-first; three hundred on the twenty-sixth; two hundred on the thirtieth; and twenty thousand dollars on the second of this month. All of these deposits except the last were made with cash. The last one was a check—which I have here.”
    He handed it to me: a Golden Gate Trust Company check.
    Pay to the order of Jeanne Delano, twenty thousand dollars .
    (Signed) BURKE PANGBURN.
    It was dated the second of the month.
    â€œBurke Pangburn!” I exclaimed, a little stupidly. “Was it usual for him to draw checks to that amount?”
    â€œI think not. But we shall see.”
    He stabbed the pearl button again, ran his pencil across another slip of paper, and the youth with the polished yellow hair made a noiseless entrance, exit, entrance, and exit.
    The cashier looked through the fresh batch of papers that had been brought to him.
    â€œOn the first of the month, Mr. Pangburn deposited twenty thousand dollars—a check against Mr. Axford’s account here.”
    â€œNow how about Miss Delano’s withdrawals?” I asked.
    He picked up the papers that had to do with her account again.
    â€œHer statement and canceled checks for last month haven’t been delivered to her yet. Everything is here. A check for eighty-five dollars to the order of H. K. Clute on the fifteenth of last month; one ‘to cash’ for three hundred dollars on the twentieth, and another of the same kind for one hundred dollars on the twenty-fifth. Both of these checks were apparently cashed here by her. On the third of this month she closed out her account, with a check to her own order for twenty-one thousand, five hundred and fifteen dollars.”
    â€œAnd that check?”
    â€œWas cashed here by her.”
    I lighted a cigarette, and let these figures drift around in my head. None of them—except those that were fixed to Pangburn’s and Axford’s signatures—seemed to be of any value to me. The Clute check—the only one the girl had drawn in anyone else’s favor—had almost certainly been for rent.
    â€œThis is the way of it,” I summed up aloud. “On the first of the month, Pangburn deposited Axford’s check for twenty thousand dollars. The next day he gave a check to that amount to Miss Delano, which she deposited. On the following day she closed her account, taking between twenty-one and twenty-two thousand dollars in currency.”
    â€œExactly,” the cashier said.
    VI
    Before going up to the Glenton Apartments to find out why Pangburn hadn’t come clean with me about the twenty thousand dollars, I dropped in at the agency, to see if any word had come from Baltimore. One of the clerks had just finished decoding a telegram.
    It read:
    Baggage arrived Mt. Royal Station on eighth. Taken away same day. Unable to trace. 215 North Stricker Street is Baltimore Orphan Asylum. Girl not known there. Continuing our efforts to find her.
    The Old Man came in from luncheon as I was leaving. I went back into his office with him for a couple of minutes.
    â€œDid you see Pangburn?” he