Page:The Benson Murder Case (1926).pdf/229

 "When was the last time you caught either one of them listening?" he asked.

The girl quickly became serious.

"The very last day Mr. Alvin Benson was alive I saw the Major standing by the door. Mr. Benson had a caller—a lady—and the Major seemed very much interested. It was in the afternoon. Mr. Benson went home early that day—only about half an hour after the lady had gone. She called at the office again later, but he wasn't there of course, and I told her he had already gone home."

"Do you know who the lady was?" Vance asked her.

"No, I don't," she said. "She didn't give her name."

Vance asked a few other questions, after which we rode up town in the subway with Miss Hoffman, taking leave of her at Twenty-third Street.

Markham was silent and preoccupied during the trip. Nor did Vance make any comment until we were comfortably relaxed in the easy chairs of the Stuyvesant Club's lounge-room. Then, lighting a cigarette lazily, he said:

"You grasp the subtle mental processes leading up to my prophecy about Miss Hoffman's second coming—eh, what, Markham? Y' see, I knew friend Alvin had not paid that forged check without security, and I also knew that the tiff must have been about the security, for Pfyfe was not really worrying about being jailed by his alter ego. I rather suspect Pfyfe was trying to get the security back before paying off the note, and was told there was 'nothing doing'. . . . Moreover, Little Goldylocks