Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

“Yes. Most let it slide or are blind until too late. I gave the report to Waite. He didn’t call in for several days but I thought nothing of it since you fellows sometimes go weeks without reporting. Yesterday his corpse was picked up in the harbor — the medical examiner says it’s been in the water three or four days anyway. Probably it sank, snagged and then washed out. That’s all I know; the only link is Evans, the bank teller.”

“Let’s hope,” murmured Devrite, “for his mother’s sake that she didn’t come to the police too late. If Robert Evans had any part in Waite’s murder—”

Hallihan shrugged. “He burns,” he said tersely.

Devrite left with Evans’s business and home addresses in his trained memory. He never carried papers that might embarrass him.

It was a bright morning; the pavement was warm under his soft shoes. In the Wall Street bank he picked out Robert Evans in a cage marked with his name. Evans was 24, slight of body. Devrite kept away, but could see dark circles of dissipation under Evans’s eyes.

Later he glimpsed the mother, a pretty woman of fifty — he was down the hall on the second floor of the Washington Heights apartment when Robert came home that evening. “Hello, son,” the mother cried, throwing her arms about him.

It would, thought Devrite, be a terrible thing if she had fingered her only son as a murderer — perhaps Evans was too darkly entangled for saving. Devrite hoped to help her. It was imperative that swift action be taken, however; once hooked a young man might slide with breath-taking speed to the bottom. His wish to aid Mrs. Evans was a further reason for solving the killing of Waite.

Through the door he heard a few thin words: “I’ve got to dress in a hurry,” said Robert. And shortly after he appeared clad in a tuxedo, and his mother said wistfully, “I’ll wait up for you.”

Devrite followed Evans. It was 7:45 and evening was falling on Broadway as he “put” Robert into a cabaret on the Great White Way. Devrite took a small side table set a step above the dance floor surrounded by tables and on which a buxom girl in scant clothing was singing a song. The agent had a full view of Robert Evans at a table for four with another man and two pretty women. The swing music of the band sent the couples dancing on the polished floor.

So far it was harmless enough. A young man sowed his oats or they cropped out later at inconvenient points. The girls were chorus variety, not inherently depraved; the pleasure in such a hot spot consisted of spending money and believing oneself a jaded youth-about-town.

Devrite, cigarette trailing smoke between his long fingers, observed the second man. He was tall and broad at the shoulders; high cheekbones and depth of eye-socket gave him a distinguished foreign look. And when Devrite caught some of his words the tall man spoke with a German accent. Through a burst of other sounds he heard one of the girls cry: “Oh, Count von Hult, you’re so funny!”

“Count” von Hult — he wondered if the rangy man was really a noble. Von Hult was elegant in full dress with white tie and boiled shirt, patent leather slippers gleaming with the sheen of his carefully plastered black hair.

It was a tiresome wait. Devrite’s ears buzzed with talk and vibrations of swing music; he ordered drink after drink to justify holding his table. It was 11 P.M. when the party left but instead of breaking up they repaired to a smaller nightclub.

Close to 1 A.M. they dropped the girls at a cheap hotel. In a following taxi Devrite trailed them up Fifth Avenue to the 80’s. There were many private homes left here and von Hult and Evans stopped at one. Devrite shrank back in the seat as the count stared at the passing cab. He let his driver go on around the corner, dismissed the taxi and strolled back — the cab von Hult and Evans had come in was gone and so were the two men.

Devrite walked slowly toward Madison. There was a high grille gate at the far side of the house into which his quarry had gone. Cars hummed on the avenues and a passing man’s feet clacked in the side street. Devrite paused just an instant to try the gate but it was locked so he kept on, turned left on Madison and found a delivery entry. He could work through the rear courts — some of the houses retained vestiges of yards.

Coming to the graystone by this back route he could look along a narrow alley with the house to the right and the high blank stone wall of an apartment on the left and see the front gate.

Devrite was now suspicious. He thought it strange that a man of von Hult’s evident wealth should associate with a poorly paid young bank teller.

He wondered if Waite had discovered von Hult — or did Robert Evans have other companions. This might be a blind trail but his interest in “Count” von Hult justified fuller investigation. The house windows were barred — usual here. He passed along the narrow cement walk; there was the dark recess of a side door and he paused to crane up at a dim-lit window—