It and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

take him to the Phelps Building”—the offices of Rathbone & Zumwalt were in that building—“and didn’t give me a jit over my fare!”
    At the Golden Gate Trust Company I had to plead and talk a lot, but they finally gave me what I wanted—Rathbone had drawn out his account, a little less than $5,000, on the twenty-fifth of the month, the Saturday before he left town.
    From the trust company I went down to the Ferry Building baggage-rooms and cigared myself into a look at the records for the twenty-eighth. Only one lot of three bags had been checked to New York that day.
    I telegraphed the numbers and Rathbone’s description to the Agency’s New York office, instructing them to find the bags and, through them, find him.
    Up in the Pullman Company’s offices I was told that car “8” was a through car, and that they could let me know within a couple hours whether Rathbone had occupied his berth all the way to New York.
    On my way up to the 1100 block of Bush Street I left one of Rathbone’s photographs with a photographer, with a rush order for a dozen copies.
    I found Eva Duthie’s apartment after about five minutes of searching vestibule directories, and got her out of bed. She was an undersized blonde girl of somewhere between nineteen and twenty-nine, depending upon whether you judged by her eyes or by the rest of her face.
    â€œI haven’t seen or heard from Mr. Rathbone for nearly a month,” she said. “I called him up at his hotel the other night—had a party I wanted to ring him in on—but they told me that he was out of town and wouldn’t be back for a week or two.”
    Then, in answer to another question:
    â€œYes, we were pretty good friends, but not especially thick. You know what I mean: we had a lot of fun together but neither of us meant anything to the other outside of that. Dan is a good sport—and so am I.”
    Mrs. Earnshaw wasn’t so frank. But she had a husband, and that makes a difference. She was a tall, slender woman, as dark as a gypsy, with a haughty air and a nervous trick of chewing her lower lip.
    We sat in a stiffly furnished room and she stalled me for about fifteen minutes, until I came out flat-footed with her.
    â€œIt’s like this, Mrs. Earnshaw,” I told her. “Mr. Rathbone has disappeared, and we are going to find him. You’re not helping me and you’re not helping yourself. I came here to get what you know about him.
    â€œI could have gone around asking a lot of questions among your friends; and if you don’t tell me what I want to know that’s what I’ll have to do. And, while I’ll be as careful as possible, still there’s bound to be some curiosity aroused, some wild guesses, and some talk. I’m giving you a chance to avoid all that. It’s up to you.”
    â€œYou are assuming,” she said coldly, “that I have something to hide.”
    â€œI’m not assuming anything. I’m hunting for information about Daniel Rathbone.”
    She bit her lip on that for a while, and then the story came out bit by bit, with a lot in it that wasn’t any too true, but straight enough in the long run. Stripped of the stuff that wouldn’t hold water, it went like this:
    She and Rathbone had planned to run away together. She had left San Francisco on the twenty-sixth, going directly to New Orleans. He was to leave the next day, apparently for New York, but he was to change trains somewhere in the Middle West and meet her in New Orleans. From there they were to go by boat to Central America.
    She pretended ignorance of his designs upon the bonds. Maybe she hadn’t known. Anyhow, she had carried out her part of the plan, but Rathbone had failed to show up in New Orleans. She hadn’t shown much care in covering her trail and private detectives employed by her husband had soon found her. Her husband had arrived in New Orleans and,