pad and drew the bill toward me. While I was copying the number I studied the stain intently. I was beginning to have an idea about that, and I was pretty sure he did too. I tried to memorize the exact form of it.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“If another one comes in with very close to the same number, call us immediately. If you know the person passing it, give us his name and address. If he’s a stranger, try to get the license number of his car and a good description of him. Unobtrusively, of course.”
“Any others beside the twenties to watch for?”
“No. That’s all,” he said. “Except . . .” He opened the briefcase again and came out with about a dozen photographs which he handed across to me. “Have you ever seen any of these men?”
There were no names on them, but I didn’t need a tag to recognize the seventh one I turned up. It was Bill Haig.
Three
There was no doubt of it; I had seen his picture in the papers several times, and it was even displayed in the post-office on a “wanted” notice right now unless it had been taken down in the last week.
I leaned back in the chair and shook my head after I had looked at all the mug shots. “I’ve never seen any of them around here,” I said. “But doesn’t it strike you as odd that hot money would show up in a sporting goods shop. Doesn’t fit, somehow.”
The brown eyes and the lean, alert face were thoughtful. “You never know,” he said. “And, of course, the chances are it was through several hands before it got here.”
“In other words, the person passing it wouldn’t know there was anything wrong with it?”
“That’s right. You didn’t, did you?”
“I suppose you’re not allowed to say what it’s all about?” I said.
He shook his head with a faint smile. “I’m afraid not. Not at the moment, anyway.”
He asked if he could check the register for any more of it. There was none, of course. We shook hands and he drove off. I watched him go up the street, feeling the other one burning a hole in my wallet. I didn’t do anything, though, until Otis came out. That was inevitable.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s plenty hot.”
“You can say that again. You couldn’t have raised more stink if you’d tried to deposit a live bomb.”
“Could be a kidnap pay-off,” I said. “Or bank robbery. Something like that.”
He turned to go back to the shop. “Well, we sure got a high class of trade around here. You think I ought to start wearing a carnation to work?”
As soon as he was inside the shop and at work I crossed to the office. I sat down and took the one out of my wallet, reaching for the pad I’d written the number on. They checked! They were not only close; they were consecutive. One ended in—23, the other in—24.
I turned it, studying the stain along the bottom and feeling intense excitement. As nearly as I could tell, it was exactly the same as that on the other, same place, same shape. Those bills had been stacked, probably in their original binder, when this substance—whatever it was—got on them.
I moistened a finger and rubbed it along the stain. A minute amount of the reddish-brown came off.
Dried blood? That was dramatic, but improbable. Blood would be darker, and it would scrape off. This was a stain. No, my first guess was as good as any. How had he put it? The mark wasn’t significant, but another one might have it.
It could be rust, plain iron oxide picked up by contact with rusting metal. If it weren’t significant, that probably meant it hadn’t been there when it had left legitimate hands. So perhaps —just perhaps—it had been stored for some time in a metal container in a place that was slightly damp.
I lit a cigarette and leaned back in the chair. None of it made any sense at all. The thought of its having anything to do with Haig was laughable—but there was the fact his picture had been among those mug shots. It was a fascinating puzzle any way you looked at it. And it was made even more fascinating by the fact that Haig, at the time he had disappeared off the face of the earth, was carrying with him a hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars.
I needed an excuse, and ten