Vance gazed into space.
“Well, well,” he murmured. “So old Pop Cleaver was also entangled with our subtle and sanguine Dolores. She certainly couldn’t have loved him for his beaux yeux.”
“I thought, sir,” went on Heath, “that, seeing as how Cleaver is always in and out of the Stuyvesant Club, you might ask him some questions about Odell. He ought to know something.”
“Glad to, Sergeant.” Markham made a note on his pad. “I’ll try to get in touch with him to-night. . . . Any one else on your list?”
“There’s a fellow named Mannix—Louis Mannix—who met Odell when she was in the ‘Follies’; but she chucked him over a year ago, and they haven’t been seen together since. He’s got another girl now. He’s the head of the firm of Mannix and Levine, fur importers, and is one of your night-club rounders—a heavy spender. But I don’t see much use of barking up that tree—his affair with Odell went cold too long ago.”
“Yes,” agreed Markham; “I think we can eliminate him.”
“I say, if you keep up this elimination much longer,” observed Vance, “you won’t have anything left but the lady’s corpse.”
“And then, there’s the man who took her out last night,” pursued Heath. “Nobody seems to know his name—he must’ve been one of those discreet, careful old boys. I thought at first he might have been Cleaver, but the descriptions don’t tally. . . . And by the way, sir, here’s a funny thing: when he left Odell last night he took the taxi down to the Stuyvesant Club, and got out there.”
Markham nodded. “I know all about that, Sergeant. And I know who the man was; and it wasn’t Cleaver.”
Vance was chuckling.