“Oh, we’ll have to call the police. This is murder, Marvitch.” He looked Marvitch in the eyes and Marvitch understood: this was a special kind of killing, not the sort you did and dumped in an alley or left for the buzzards out the other side of Hoover Dam, in the desert. This old lady had to be all legally accounted for, examined, and investigated. “Yes, sir,” Marvitch answered. “But when, Mr. Stolz?”

Stolz’s eyes were bitter. “We’ve got to find that damned money first.”

“I should think so,” Marvitch agreed.

Stolz appeared to think it over. He said, “I know the house better than you do. You don’t know your way around at all.”

“Money’s money, Mr. Stolz. I’d recognize it anywhere.”

Stolz smiled slightly.

“Not only that,” Marvitch went on, “I’ve had things hidden from me before, and I never had much trouble finding them.”

“There’s no one to question, unfortunately.”

“I don’t mean like that. I mean cold turkey, looking for it. I had me a girl in Chicago once; I gave her a diamond brooch, and then afterwards she decided she liked another dealer better than me and she gave me the gate. I wanted the pin back. I couldn’t touch her; her new friend had connections. So I hunted in her place and I——”

Stolz held up his hand. “We haven’t much time.”

Marvitch demanded, “You know where she had that diamond pin hidden?”

Stolz sighed. “No. Where?”

“In a box of very personal apparel, if you get what I mean.”

Stolz nodded. “That was unfair, wasn’t it?”

“Didn’t fool me a minute.”

“Go downstairs,” Stolz said briskly, “and start looking. Not in my room. Everywhere else. Including the garage, the old car she kept jacked up out there.”

Marvitch was glad that Mr. Stolz had allowed him to conclude his little yarn about the diamond pin. He rushed downstairs and began to turn over again the things Eddie and Skip had once tonight overturned.

Nearly an hour’s work got them nothing. They concluded that the money had been taken by the thieves. Much disturbed now, uneasy and angry, Stolz called for the help of the police.