The Million-Dollar Suitcase

Two hours sleep, bath, breakfast, and I started on my early morning run for the county seat. Nobody else was going my way; but even at that hour, the road was full of autos, bug...

I looked at my watch; quarter of ten; a little ahead of my appointment. I ordered a telephone extension brought to this corner table I had reserved at Tait's and got in touch wi...

Again I saw that glow from the Gilbert garage, hanging on the fog; a luminosity of the fog; saw it disappear as the mist deepened and shrouded it. But Worth was answering me, an...

On the blank silence that followed my last words, there in the big, dignified room with its Circassian walnut and sound-softening rugs, Dykeman, the oldest director, squalled ou...

After we were in the machine, my head was so full of the matter in hand that Worth had driven some little distance before I realized that the young people were debating across m...

Morning dawned on the good ship Jerry Boyne not so dismasted and rudderless as you might have thought. I'd carried that 1920 diary to my room and, before I slept, read the whole...

My experience as a detective has convinced me that the evident is usually true; that in a great majority of cases crime leaves a straight trail, and ambiguities are more often d...

I had watched them coming back to me at our old table, with its telephone extension, the girl with eyes for no one but Worth, who helped her out of her wrap now with a preoccupi...

The neighbor to the south of the St. Dunstan was the Gold Nugget Hotel, a five story brick building and not at all pretentious as a hostelry. I knew the place mildly, and my pol...

Midnight in the sheriff's office at San Jose. And I had to telephone Barbara. She'd be waiting up for my message. The minute I heard her voice on the wire, I plunged in:

It was a thankful if not a joyous Jerry Boyne who crossed the front pergola of the Vandeman bungalow that evening in the wake of Worth Gilbert, bound for an informal dinner. The...

When I returned with a key and the information that the way to the roof ran through the janitor's tool-room at the far end of the hall, I found my young people already out there...

In the squabble and snatch of argument, given dignity only because it concerned the recovery of near a million dollars, we seemed to have lost Worth Gilbert entirely. He kept hi...

I stood at the door and watched until I saw first Chung's head come into the light on the kitchen porch, then Jim Edwards's black poll follow it. I waited until both had gone in...

The ballroom of the country club at Santa Ysobel is big and finely proportioned. I don't know if anything of the sort could have registered with me at the moment, but I remember...

Upon our few moments of strained waiting, Vandeman breezed in, full of apologies for his shirtsleeves. I remember noticing the monogram worked on the left silken arm, the fit an...

In the dingy office of the city prison, with its sand boxes and barrel stove, its hacked old desks, dusty books and papers, I watched Bronson Vandeman, and wondered to see how t...

I had all set for next morning: my roadster at Capehart's for repair, old Bill tipped off that I didn't want any one but Eddie Hughes to work on it; and to add to my satisfactio...

Of all unexpected things. I went down to Santa Ysobel with Worth Gilbert. It happened this way: Cummings, one of those individuals on whose tombstone may truthfully be put, "Bor...

Instead of driving up to San Francisco with Worth and Barbara, the next morning, I was headed south at a high rate of speed. Sitting in the Pullman smoker, going over what had h...

I must admit that when Worth and Barbara walked up and found me talking to Ina Vandeman, I felt caught dead to rights. The girl gave me one long, steady look. I was afraid of Ba...

My coming had thrown dinner late; we were barely through with the meal and back once more in the living room when the latch of the French window rattled, the window itself was p...

At the Palace Hotel Sunday morning where I went to pick up Worth before we should call for little Miss Wallace, he met me in high spirits and with an enthusiasm that demanded im...

But it was considerably more than a minute before Worth followed us to the house. We walked slowly, talking; when I looked back from the kitchen porch, Worth had already come ou...

Disgrace was in the air; the country club had seen its vice president in handcuffs. There was a great gathering up of petticoats and raising of moral umbrellas to keep clear of...

The Sheriff had gone with his prisoner; Cummings left; and then there came to me, in the street there before the lock-up, riding with Jim Edwards in his roadster, a Worth Gilber...

Wednesday evening I pulled into a different Santa Ysobel: lanterns strung across between the buildings, bunting and branches of bloom everywhere, streets alive with people milli...

We found Whipple with Dykeman. I had always liked the president of the Van Ness Avenue Bank well enough; one of the large, smooth, amiable sort, not built to withstand stress of...

"Look what's after you, man," Skeet warned me from her lofty perch as I went out through the big room in quest of Ina Vandeman. "Better you stay here. I gif you a yob. Lots safe...

"Oh, but I could--I did," earnestly. "Of course it was a large funeral; it seemed to me I saw everybody I'd ever known. At a time like that, nothing would be said openly, but th...

The country club, when I walked up its lawn, was noisy with the hammering and jawing of its decoration committee. Out in the glass belvedere, like superior goods on display, tak...

Looking about me, I had guessed that pretty much every man in the room believed that it was Worth Gilbert with whom I had been talking over the phone. Dykeman's trailers would b...