He said, “Don’t worry. Lam. I’m going to tell them the bare facts, that I happened to be looking through ‘the desk because I was interested in it as a piece of furniture. I intended to make the landlady an offer for it. I tilted it up in order to see the bottom, and realized there was something heavy in it. I shook it out, and the gun and these papers came out. Naturally, I don’t want to appear in front of the public as a snoop who was going around reading correspondence that was really no concern of mine.”
I said, “But you do want to get in touch with the police, is that it?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
I said, “Then the police will know as much about it as you do.”
“Well, why not?”
I said, “I don’t know anything about why you want Roberta Fenn or who wants her, but I suppose there’s a reason.”
He said, “Businessmen don’t pay out good money to find people just to ask them to subscribe to a magazine.”
I said, “Perhaps you don’t realize what I’m leading up to.”
“Go ahead. Lead up to it.”
“Let’s suppose a businessman wants to find Roberta. He undoubtedly wants her to do something, or wants her to tell him something, or wants to find out something. Here’s a thirty-eight caliber gun and some old newspaper clippings. You take those to the police, and you’ll never find Roberta Fenn and get a chance to talk with her. That thing will be headlined all over the country. Right now the police think Roberta may have been a second victim, or they think she may have been frightened away. There’s some speculation as to whether she might be the one who shot Nostrander, but she’s not what you’d really call hot. Once you take this to the police, the police will reopen that old murder case. Then the California authorities will go crazy looking for her. You’ll have both Louisiana and California police on her trail. You’ll have her picture published in every newspaper in the country. You’ll have posters made, and distributed in every post office, and mailed to every police officer in the land. Roberta will read all that stuff. She’ll duck for cover. What sort of chance do you think we have of finding her ahead of the police of two states?”