Red Harvest - Chapter 4

Here’s where we last left off.

Chapter IV: Hurricane Street

My destination was a gray frame cottage. When I rang the bell the door was opened by a thin man with a tired face that had no color in it except a red spot the size of a half-dollar high on each cheek. This, I thought, is the lunger Dan Rolff.

“I’d like to see Miss Brand,” I told him.

“What name shall I tell her?” His voice was a sick man’s and an educated man’s.

“It wouldn’t mean anything to her. I want to see her about Willsson’s death.”

He looked at me with level tired dark eyes and said:

“Yes?”

“I’m from the San Francisco office of the Continental Detective Agency. We’re interested in the murder.”

“That’s nice of you,” he said ironically. “Come in.”

I went in, into a ground floor room where a young woman sat at a table that had a lot of papers on it. Some of the papers were financial service bulletins, stock and bond market forecasts. One was a racing chart.

The room was disorderly, cluttered up. There were too many pieces of furniture in it, and none of them seemed to be in its proper place.

“Dinah,” the lunger introduced me, “this gentleman has come from San Francisco on behalf of the Continental Detective Agency to inquire into Mr. Donald Willsson’s demise.”

The young woman got up, kicked a couple of newspapers out of her way, and came to me with one hand out.

She was an inch or two taller than I, which made her about five feet eight. She had a broad-shouldered, full-breasted, round-hipped body and big muscular legs. The hand she gave me was soft, warm, strong. Her face was the face of a girl of twenty-five already showing signs of wear. Little lines crossed the corners of her big ripe mouth. Fainter lines were beginning to make nets around her thick-lashed eyes. They were large eyes, blue and a bit bloodshot.