Free Voyage into Violence by Frances and Richard Lockridge Page A

circling lines, which conveyed precisely nothing.
    â€œIt looks,” Captain Cunningham said, “as if Marsh weren’t so retired as he said.” He studied the signature. “Pity,” he said, “that people never learn to write their names.”
    It was. Bill agreed to that. It was a great pity. He leafed the notebook, slowly at first, then more quickly. He handed it to Captain Cunningham, who looked, too, at several pages; who shook his head over them.
    It might be—it might well be—that here, on these pages, was all they needed to know. J. Orville Marsh, private investigator—who still, it might be assumed, was investigating when he died—had kept notes. He had cannily kept them in shorthand.
    It was doubly unfortunate that the shorthand method was not one of those commonly in use. A detective has a smattering of much knowledge. Bill Weigand had, of shorthand, enough to tell him this.
    It is difficult to empty the pockets of a heavy man who lies, fully clothed and fully dead, in a cramped space. It can be managed; two men can manage it, but it is not easy, particularly when the man lies in blood. Weigand and Captain Peter Cunningham did it. Neither enjoyed it, but they got it done. Afterward they washed their hands. Then they looked at what they had.
    They had keys, in a case. They had two clean handkerchiefs, one from the breast pocket of a dinner jacket which had been white, and was no longer white. They had a half-empty package of Camels, and a Zippo lighter and a dollar and thirty-seven cents in small change. They had a Cyma automatic wrist watch on a leather strap, and a pair of glasses in a leather case. Weigand held the glasses up to the light and moved them back and forth. He decided Marsh had been far-sighted, and needed corrective lenses when he read. They had a folder of American Express checks—four hundred and fifty dollars, in denominations of fifty, one torn out on the perforation. And they had J. Orville Marsh’s billfold, initialed “J.O.M.” in gold leaf.
    The billfold contained two hundred and thirteen dollars in bills. It contained an identification card, showing that Marsh had been duly licensed as a private investigator by the New York Police Department. It contained a pistol permit, allowing Marsh the possession of a .38 police positive, of recorded serial number. It contained a permit to operate a motor vehicle and passenger vehicle registration for a 1954 Chevrolet sedan. An insurance service card showed that the car was insured with Aetna. A credit card proved that Marsh had, at least in 1952, been authorized to charge what he liked at the Buckminster Hotel in West Forty-third Street. For good measure, Marsh had joined the Diners’ Club.
    And in the billfold there was a check for five hundred dollars, made out to J. Orville Marsh, drawn on a Worcester, Massachusetts, bank—and signed with the same indecipherable twist of circling lines which was at the bottom of the letter which confirmed a “verbal” agreement.
    And at that, Bill Weigand swore softly, in helplessness and exasperation. Some hundreds of miles away, across much water and parts of three states, there were people—any number of people, from operators of bookkeeping machines to bank presidents—who could glance at this meaningless scrawl and say, “of course, Mr. Smith. Or Mr. Brown. Or Mr. Ezekial Jerome Winterbottom, the Third.” And then a policeman, tactfully, could ask Mr. Smith-Brown-Winterbottom what he had agreed on “verbally” with J. Orville Marsh, and afterward confirmed both by letter and by check. And that would be that, for what it might be worth.
    It might have nothing to do with the death of Mr. Marsh, upon whom somebody had fallen with a sword. (Perhaps, Bill thought, more or less literally.) It might have everything to do. The exasperating thing was that they had no means of finding out. If the Carib Queen were equipped for