“I mean,” said Keats, plucking shreds of tobacco from his lips―”damn it, they pack cigarets looser all the time! ― I mean we haven’t got a crumb.”
“A crumb of what?”
“Of information.”
“You haven’t found out anything?” Ellery was incredulous.
“Nothing before 1927, which is the year Hill and Priam went into business in Los Angeles. There’s nothing that indicates they lived here before that year; in fact, there’s reason to believe they didn’t, that they came here that year from somewhere else. But from where? No data. We’ve tried everything from tax records to the Central Bureau fingerprint files. I’m pretty well convinced they had no criminal record, but that’s only a guess. They certainly had no record in the State of California.
“They came here in 27,” said Keats bitterly, “started a wholesale jewelry business as partners, and made a fortune before the crash of ‘29. They weren’t committed to the market and they rode out the depression by smart manipulation and original merchandising methods. Today the firm of Hill & Priam is rated one of the big outfits in its line. They’re said to own one of the largest stocks of precious stones in the United States. And that’s a lot of help, isn’t it?”
“But you don’t come into the wholesale jewelry business from outer space,” protested Ellery. “Isn’t there a record somewhere of previous connections in the industry? At least of one of them?”
“The N.J.A. records don’t show anything before 1927.”
“Well, have you tried this? Certainly Hill, at least, had to go abroad once in a while in connection with the firm’s foreign offices ― Laurel told me they have branches in Amsterdam and South Africa. That means a passport, a birth certificate―”
“That was my ace in the hole.” Keats snapped a fresh cigaret to his lips. “But it turns out that Hill & Priam don’t own those branches, although they do own the one in New York. They’re simply working arrangements with established firms abroad. They have large investments in those firms, but all their business dealings have been, and still are, negotiated by and through agents. There’s no evidence that either Hill or Priam stepped off American soil in twenty-three years, or at least during the twenty-three years we have a record of them.”