“Yes, sir, I do,” she instantly answered. “It was not a busy night and I was handling three positions. The call came from the east office. We do not talk to the party direct on an outside call, and east supervisor came on the line several times to instruct me to try and raise the number. That is how I recall it so distinctly.”
“I may tell you that that is the telephone number of the office of Mr. Monteagle, who was murdered,” said Lanagan. “I don’t suppose you ever got a line on whom his telephone calls might be from as a general thing, did you?”
“No, sir,” she answered primly. “I pay no attention to whom is on a line.”
“Thank you,” said Lanagan. “I think you can be trusted not to say anything about our visit or questions?”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
We got a card of introduction from Lamb to Adams, manager of east office, and hurried there.
“Wasn’t that rather an indiscreet thing to do, tell her Monteagle’s number?” I suggested. Lanagan laughed and slapped me on the back. It was evident he was in high feather with himself. I was trundling along, absolutely in the dark.
“My dear Norrie, when you meet a girl like that take her into your confidence. Did you get that ‘to whom’? She smelt a rat and would have looked the number up and blown the glad tidings all over the office that a couple of detectives or newspaper men had been interviewing her on the murder. Recollect, too, that the telephone from the reporters’ room at police headquarters comes in on this exchange. It’s just possible that some of those gay young blades on night police have affiliations with some of these gay young blondes. I have got many a story through ’phone girls—and have occasionally lost a story through the same medium. Get me? As it stands, she is all puffed up with her own importance and pat with us. There are times when you have got to take a chance at spilling your hand. This was one of them.” I subsided, humbled.
Not to occupy too much space with the merely routine details of working out the clue, we met Adams, another substantial chap. The chief operator recalled distinctly the number, more particularly because the woman calling it had been nervous and irritable. The call came, she said, from the public booth at Shumate’s pharmacy. It was only a couple of blocks away, and we went there.
It was a large establishment with half a dozen clerks. We worked down the list. The fourth man had been on duty Monday night and recalled a young woman who had entered the booth repeatedly on that evening. She lived some place in the vicinity, he said, and usually got off the Sutter Street car shortly after 5.30 o’clock. The car stopped directly in front of the door, and if we would wait he would point her out to us if she came that way this evening.