 |
| "The Shortline," an electric train route ran from Oakland to San Francisco during the 20s and 30s. Mentions of the line appear in Dashiell Hammett's fiction. |
Editor’s Note:
From the public domain: Crime Stories & Other Writings, 1923. Arson Plus is
the first Continental Op story. The
Continental Op is a fictional character created by Hammett. Op is a private
investigator employed as an operative of the Continental Detective Agency's San
Francisco office. His name is never mentioned in any of Hammett’s stories.
ARSON PLUS
By Dashiell
Hammett
Jim Tarr picked up the cigar I rolled
across his desk, looked
at the band,
bit off an end, and reached for a match.
“Fifteen
cents straight,” he said. “You must want me to
break a
couple of laws for you this time.”
I had been
doing business with this fat sheriff of Sacramento
County for
four or five years—ever since I came to the
Continental
Detective Agency’s San Francisco office—and I
had never
known him to miss an opening for a sour crack; but
it didn’t
mean anything.
 |
| Hammett with the shortline train in background |
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)
was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, a
screenplay writer, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he
created are Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles. His final novel was written in 1934. He eventually died of TB and is his military
service in both World Wars enabled him to be buried in Arlington National
Cemetery.
“Wrong
both times,” I told him. “I get two of them for a
quarter; and
I’m here to do you a favor instead of asking for
one. The
company that insured Thornburgh’s house thinks
somebody
touched it off.”
“That’s
right enough, according to the fire department.
They tell me
the lower part of the house was soaked with
gasoline,
but God knows how they could tell—there wasn’t a
stick left
standing. I’ve got McClump working on it, but he
hasn’t found
anything to get excited about yet.”
“What’s the
layout? All I know is that there was a fire.”
Tarr leaned
back in his chair, turned his red face to the ceiling,
and
bellowed:“Hey, Mac!”
The pearl
push-buttons on his desk are ornaments as far as
he is
concerned. Deputy sheriffs McHale, McClump and
Macklin came
to the door together—MacNab apparently
wasn’t
within hearing.
“What’s the
idea?” the sheriff demanded of McClump.
“Are you
carrying a bodyguard around with you?”
The two
other deputies, thus informed as to who “Mac”
referred to
this time, went back to their cribbage game.
“We got a
city slicker here to catch our firebug for us,”
Tarr told
his deputy. “But we got to tell him what it’s all
about
first.”
McClump and
I had worked together on an express robbery,
several
months before. He’s a rangy, tow-headed youngster
of
twenty-five or six, with all the nerve in the world—and
most of the
laziness.
“Ain’t the
Lord good to us?” He had himself draped across a chair by now—always his first
objective when he comes into a room.
“Well,
here’s how she stands: This fellow Thornburgh’s
house was a
couple miles out of town, on the old county
road—an old
frame house. About midnight, night before last,
Jeff
Pringle—the nearest neighbor, a half-mile or so to the
east—saw a
glare in the sky from over that way, and phoned
in the
alarm; but by the time the fire wagons got there, there
wasn’t
enough of the house left to bother about. Pringle was
the first of
the neighbors to get to the house, and the roof
had already
fell in then.
“Nobody saw
anything suspicious—no strangers hanging
around or
nothing. Thornburgh’s help just managed to save
themselves,
and that was all. They don’t know much about
what
happened—too scared, I reckon. But they did see
Thornburgh
at his window just before the fire got him. A fellow
here in
town—name of Handerson—saw that part of it
too. He was
driving home from Wayton, and got to the house
just before
the roof caved in.
“The fire
department people say they found signs of gasoline.
The Coonses,
Thornburgh’s help, say they didn’t have
no gas on
the place. So there you are.”
“Thornburgh
have any relatives?”
“Yeah. A
niece in San Francisco—a Mrs. Evelyn Trowbridge.
She was up
yesterday, but there wasn’t nothing she could do,
and she
couldn’t tell us nothing much, so she went back home.”
“Where are
the servants now?”
“Here in
town. Staying at a hotel on I Street. I told ’em to
stick around
for a few days.”
“Thornburgh
own the house?”
“Uh-huh.
Bought it from Newning & Weed a couple
months ago.”
“You got
anything to do this morning?”
“Nothing but
this.”
“Good! Let’s
get out and dig around.”
We found the
Coonses in their room at the hotel on I
Street. Mr.
Coons was a small-boned, plump man with the
smooth,
meaningless face, and the suavity of the typical male
house-servant.
His wife was
a tall, stringy woman, perhaps five years older
than her
husband—say, 40—with a mouth and chin that
seemed
shaped for gossiping. But he did all the talking, while
she nodded
her agreement to every second or third word.
“We went to
work for Mr. Thornburgh on the fifteenth of
June, I
think,” he said, in reply to my first question. “We
came to
Sacramento, around the first of the month, and put
in
applications at the Allis Employment Bureau. A couple of
weeks later
they sent us out to see Mr. Thornburgh, and he
took us on.”
“Where were
you before you came here?”
“In Seattle,
sir, with a Mrs. Comerford; but the climate
there didn’t
agree with my wife—she has bronchial trouble—
so we
decided to come to California. We most likely would
have stayed
in Seattle, though, if Mrs. Comerford hadn’t
given up her
house.”
“What do you
know about Thornburgh?”
“Very
little, sir. He wasn’t a talkative gentleman. He hadn’t
any business
that I know of. I think he was a retired seafaring
man. He
never said he was, but he had that manner and look.
He never
went out or had anybody in to see him, except his
niece once,
and he didn’t write or get any mail. He had a
room next to
his bedroom fixed up as a sort of workshop. He
spent most
of his time in there. I always thought he was
working on
some kind of invention, but he kept the door
locked, and
wouldn’t let us go near it.”
“Haven’t you
any idea at all what it was?”
“No, sir. We
never heard any hammering or noises from it,
and never
smelt anything either. And none of his clothes were
ever the
least bit soiled, even when they were ready to go out
to the
laundry. They would have been if he had been working
on anything
like machinery.”
“Was he an
old man?”
“He couldn’t
have been over 50, sir. He was very erect,
and his hair
and beard were thick, with no grey hairs.”
“Ever have
any trouble with him?”
“Oh, no,
sir! He was, if I may say it, a very peculiar gentleman
in a way;
and he didn’t care about anything except having
his meals
fixed right, having his clothes taken care of—he was
very
particular about them—and not being disturbed. Except
early in the
morning and at night, we’d hardly see him all
day.”
“Now about
the fire. Tell us the whole thing—everything
you
remember.”
“Well, sir,
I and my wife had gone to bed about ten
o’clock, our
regular time, and had gone to sleep. Our room
was on the
second floor, in the rear. Some time later—I never
did exactly
know what time it was—I woke up, coughing.
The room was
all full of smoke, and my wife was sort of strangling.
I jumped up,
and dragged her down the back stairs and
out the back
door, not thinking of anything but getting her
out of
there.
“When I had
her safe in the yard, I thought of Mr.
Thornburgh,
and tried to get back in the house; but the
whole first
floor was just flames. I ran around front then, to
see if he
had got out, but didn’t see anything of him. The
whole yard
was as light as day by then. Then I heard him
scream—a
horrible scream, sir—I can hear it yet! And I
looked up at
his window—that was the front second-story
room—and saw
him there, trying to get out the window. But
all the
woodwork was burning, and he screamed again and fell
back, and right
after that the roof over his room fell in.
“There
wasn’t a ladder or anything that I could have put
up to the
window for him—there wasn’t anything I could
have done.
“In the
meantime, a gentleman had left his automobile in
the road,
and come up to where I was standing; but there
wasn’t
anything we could do—the house was burning everywhere
and falling
in here and there. So we went back to
where I had
left my wife, and carried her farther away from
the fire,
and brought her to—she had fainted. And that’s all I
know about
it, sir.”
“Hear any
noises earlier that night? Or see anybody hanging
around?”
“No, sir.”
“Have any
gasoline around the place?”
“No, sir.
Mr. Thornburgh didn’t have a car.”
“No gasoline
for cleaning?”
“No, sir, none at all, unless Mr. Thornburgh
had it in his
workshop.
When his clothes needed cleaning, I took them to
town, and
all his laundry was taken by the grocer’s man,
when he
brought our provisions.”
“Don’t know
anything that might have some bearing on
the fire?”
“No, sir. I
was surprised when I heard that somebody had
set the
house afire. I could hardly believe it. I don’t know
why anybody
should want to do that.”
“What do you
think of them?” I asked McClump, as we left
the hotel.
“They might
pad the bills, or even go South with some of
the silver,
but they don’t figure as killers in my mind.”
That was my
opinion, too; but they were the only persons
known to
have been there when the fire started except the
man who had
died. We went around to the Allis Employment
Bureau and
talked to the manager.
He told us
that the Coonses had come into his office on
June second,
looking for work; and had given Mrs. Edward
Comerford,
45 Woodmansee Terrace, Seattle, Washington, as
reference.
In reply to a letter—he always checked up the references
of
servants—Mrs. Comerford had written that the
Coonses had
been in her employ for a number of years, and
had been
“extremely satisfactory in every respect.”
On June 13,
Thornburgh had telephoned the bureau, asking
that a man
and his wife be sent out to keep house for him;
and Allis
had sent two couples that he had listed. Neither had
been
employed by Thornburgh, though Allis considered
them more
desirable than the Coonses, who were finally hired
by
Thornburgh.
All that
would certainly seem to indicate that the Coonses
hadn’t
deliberately maneuvered themselves into the place, unless
they were
the luckiest people in the world—and a detective
can’t afford
to believe in luck or coincidence, unless he
has
unquestionable proof of it.
At the
office of the real estate agents, through whom
Thornburgh
had bought the house—Newning & Weed—we
were told
that Thornburgh had come in on June 11 and had said that he had been told that
the house was for sale, had looked it over, and wanted to know the price. The
deal had been closed the next morning, and he had paid for the house with a
check for $4,500 on the Seamen’s Bank
of San
Francisco. The house was already furnished.
After
luncheon, McClump and I called on Howard Handerson—the
man who had
seen the fire while driving home from Wayton. He had an office in the Empire
Building, with his name and the title “Northern California Agent, InstantSheen Cleanser
Company,” on the door. He was a big, careless-looking man of 45 or so, with the
professionally jovial smile that belongs to the salesman.
He had been
in Wayton on business the day of the fire, he
said, and
had stayed there until rather late, going to dinner
and
afterward playing pool with a grocer named Hammersmith—one
of his
customers. He had left Wayton in his
machine, at
about 10:30 pm, and set out for Sacramento.
At Tavender
he had stopped at the garage for oil and gas and to have one of his tires filled
with air. Just as he was about to leave the garage, the garage-man had called
his attention to a red glare in the sky, and had told
him that it
was probably from a fire somewhere along the old
county road
that paralleled the State road into Sacramento; so
Handerson
had taken the county road, and had arrived at the
burning
house just in time to see Thornburgh try to fight his
way through
the flames that enveloped him.
It was too
late to make any attempt to put out the fire, and
the man
upstairs was beyond saving by then—undoubtedly
dead even
before the roof collapsed; so Handerson had
helped Coons
revive his wife, and stayed there watching the
fire until
it had burned itself out. He had seen no one on that
county road
while driving to the fire.
“What do you
know about Handerson?” I asked McClump, when we were on the street.
“Came here,
from somewhere in the East, I think, early in
the summer
to open that Cleanser agency. Lives at the
Garden
Hotel. Where do we go next?”
“We get a
machine, and take a look at what’s left of the
Thornburgh
house.” An enterprising incendiary couldn’t have found a lovelier spot in which
to turn himself loose, if he looked the whole county
over.
Tree-topped hills hid it from the rest of the world, on
three sides;
while away from the fourth, an uninhabited plain
rolled down
to the river. The county road that passed the
front gate
was shunned by automobiles, so McClump said, in
favor of the
State Highway to the north.
Where the
house had been, was now a mound of blackened
ruins. We
poked around in the ashes for a few minutes—not
that we
expected to find anything, but because it’s the nature
of man to
poke around in ruins.
A garage in
the rear, whose interior gave no evidence of recent
occupation,
had a badly scorched roof and front, but was
otherwise
undamaged. A shed behind it, sheltering an ax, a
shovel, and
various odds and ends of gardening tools, had escaped
the fire
altogether. The lawn in front of the house, and
the garden
behind the shed—about an acre in all—had been
pretty
thoroughly cut and trampled by wagon wheels, and the
feet of the
firemen and the spectators.
Having
ruined our shoe-shines, McClump and I got back
in our
machine and swung off in a circle around the place,
calling at
all the houses within a mile radius, and getting little
besides
jolts for our trouble.
The nearest
house was that of Pringle, the man who had
turned in
the alarm; but he not only knew nothing about the
dead man,
but said he had never seen him. In fact, only one
of the
neighbors had ever seen him: a Mrs. Jabine, who lived
about a mile
to the south.
She had
taken care of the key to the house while it was vacant;
and a day or
two before he bought it, Thornburgh had
come to her
house, inquiring about the vacant one. She had
gone over
there with him and showed him through it, and he
had told her
that he intended buying it, if the price, of which
neither of
them knew anything, wasn’t too high.
He had been
alone, except for the chauffeur of the hired
car in which
he had come from Sacramento, and, save that he
had no
family, he had told her nothing about himself.
Hearing that
he had moved in, she went over to call on
him several
days later—“just a neighborly visit”—but had
been told by
Mrs. Coons that he was not at home. Most of
the
neighbors had talked to the Coonses, and had got the impression
that
Thornburgh did not care for visitors, so they
had let him
alone. The Coonses were described as “pleasant
enough to
talk to when you meet them,” but reflecting their
employer’s
desire not to make friends.
McClump
summarized what the afternoon had taught us as
we pointed
our machine toward Tavender: “Any of these
folks could
have touched off the place, but we got nothing to
show that
any of ’em even knew Thornburgh, let alone had a
bone to pick
with him.”
Tavender
turned out to be a crossroads settlement of a general
store and
post office, a garage, a church, and six dwellings,
about two
miles from Thornburgh’s place. McClump knew
the
storekeeper and postmaster, a scrawny little man named
Philo, who
stuttered moistly.
“I n-n-never
s-saw Th-thornburgh,” he said, “and I n-nnever
had any
m-mail for him. C-coons”—it sounded like one
of these
things butterflies come out of—“used to c-come in
once a week
t-to order groceries—they d-didn’t have a
phone. He
used to walk in, and I’d s-send the stuff over in
my c-c-car.
Th-then I’d s-see him once in a while, waiting
f-for the
stage to S-s-sacramento.”
“Who drove
the stuff out to Thornburgh’s?”
“M-m-my
b-boy. Want to t-talk to him?”
The boy was
a juvenile edition of the old man, but without
the stutter.
He had never seen Thornburgh on any of his
visits, but
his business had taken him only as far as the
kitchen. He
hadn’t noticed anything peculiar about the
place.
“Who’s the
night man at the garage?” I asked him, after we
had listened
to the little he had to tell.
“Billy Luce.
I think you can catch him there now. I saw him
go in a few
minutes ago.”
We crossed
the road and found Luce.
“Night
before last—the night of the fire down the road—
was there a
man here talking to you when you first saw it?”
He turned
his eyes upward in that vacant stare which people
use to aid
their memory.
“Yes, I
remember now! He was going to town, and I told
him that if
he took the county road instead of the State Road
he’d see the
fire on his way in.”
“What kind
of looking man was he?”
“Middle-aged—a big man, but sort of slouchy. I
think he
had on a
brown suit, baggy and wrinkled.”
“Medium
complexion?”
“Yes.”
“Smile when
he talked?”
“Yes, a
pleasant sort of fellow.”
“Curly brown
hair?”
“Have a
heart!” Luce laughed. “I didn’t put him under a
magnifying
glass.”
From
Tavender, we drove over to Wayton. Luce’s description
had fit
Handerson all right; but while we were at it, we
thought we
might as well check up to make sure that he had
been coming
from Wayton.
We spent
exactly 25 minutes in Wayton; ten of them finding Hammersmith, the grocer with
whom Handerson had said he dined and played pool; five minutes finding the
proprietor of the pool-room; and ten verifying Handerson’s story.
“What do you
think of it now, Mac?” I asked, as we rolled
back toward
Sacramento. Mac’s too lazy to express an opinion, or even form one, unless he’s
driven to it; but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth
listening
to, if you can get them.
“There ain’t
a hell of a lot to think,” he said cheerfully.
“Handerson
is out of it, if he ever was in it. There’s nothing
to show that
anybody but the Coonses and Thornburgh were
there when
the fire started—but there may have been a regiment
there. Them
Coonses ain’t too honest looking, maybe,
but they
ain’t killers, or I miss my guess. But the fact remains
that they’re
the only bet we got so far. Maybe we ought to try
to get a
line on them.”
“All right,”
I agreed. “I’ll get a wire off to our Seattle office asking
them to
interview Mrs. Comerford, and see what she can tell about
them as soon
as we get back in town. Then I’m going to catch a
train for
San Francisco, and see Thornburgh’s niece in the morning.”
Next morning, at the address McClump
had given me—a
rather
elaborate apartment building on California Street—I
had to wait 45
minutes for Mrs. Evelyn Trowbridge to dress.
If I had
been younger, or a social caller, I suppose I’d have felt amply rewarded when
she finally came in—a tall, slender woman of less than 30; in some sort of clinging
black affair; with a lot of black hair over a very white face, strikingly set
off by a small red mouth and big hazel eyes
that looked
black until you got close to them.
But I was a
busy, middle-aged detective, who was fuming
over having
his time wasted; and I was a lot more interested
in finding
the bird who struck the match than I was in feminine
beauty.
However, I smothered my grouch, apologized
for
disturbing her at such an early hour, and got down to
business. “I
want you to tell me all you know about your uncle—his
family,
friends, enemies, business connections, everything.”
I had
scribbled on the back of the card I had sent into her
what my
business was.
“He hadn’t
any family,” she said; “unless I might be it. He
was my
mother’s brother, and I am the only one of that family
now living.”
“Where was
he born?”
“Here in San
Francisco. I don’t know the date, but he was
about 50
years old, I think—three years older than my
mother.”
“What was
his business?”
“He went to
sea when he was a boy, and, so far as I know,
always
followed it until a few months ago.”
“Captain?”
“I don’t
know. Sometimes I wouldn’t see or hear from
him for
several years, and he never talked about what he was
doing;
though he would mention some of the places he had
visited—Rio
de Janeiro, Madagascar, Tobago, Christiania.
Then, about
three months ago—some time in May—he
came here
and told me that he was through with wandering;
that he was
going to take a house in some quiet place where
he could
work undisturbed on an invention in which he was
interested.
“He lived at
the Francisco Hotel while he was in San
Francisco.
After a couple of weeks, he suddenly disappeared.
And then,
about a month ago, I received a telegram from
him, asking me
to come to see him at his house near
Sacramento.
I went up the very next day, and I thought that he
was acting
very queerly—he seemed very excited over something.
He gave me a
will that he had just drawn up and some
life
insurance policies in which I was beneficiary.
“Immediately
after that he insisted that I return home, and
hinted
rather plainly that he did not wish me to either visit
him again or
write until I heard from him. I thought all that
rather
peculiar, as he had always seemed fond of me. I never
saw him
again.”
“What was
this invention he was working on?”
“I really
don’t know. I asked him once, but he became so
excited—even
suspicious—that I changed the subject, and
never
mentioned it again.”
“Are you
sure that he really did follow the sea all those
years?”
“No, I am
not. I just took it for granted; but he may have
been doing
something altogether different.”
“Was he ever
married?”
“Not that I
know of.”
“Know any of
his friends or enemies?”
“No, none.”
“Remember
anybody’s name that he ever mentioned?”
“No.”
“I don’t
want you to think this next question insulting,
though I
admit it is. But it has to be asked. Where were you
the night of
the fire?”
“At home; I
had some friends here to dinner, and they
stayed until
about midnight. Mr. and Mrs. Walker Kellogg,
Mrs. John
Dupree, and a Mr. Killmer, who is a lawyer. I can
give you
their addresses, or you can get them from the phone
book, if you
want to question them.”
From Mrs.
Trowbridge’s apartment I went to the Francisco
Hotel.
Thornburgh had been registered there from May 10 thru June 13, and hadn’t
attracted much attention. He had been a
tall, broad-shouldered, erect man of about 50, with rather long brown hair
brushed straight back;
a short,
pointed brown beard, and healthy, ruddy complexion—grave,
quiet,
punctilious in dress and manner; his hours had been regular and he had had no
visitors that any of the hotel employees remembered.
At the Seamen’s Bank—upon which
Thornburgh’s check,
in payment
of the house, had been drawn—I was told that he
had opened
an account there on May 15, having been
introduced
by W. W. Jeffers & Sons, local stock brokers. A
balance of a
little more than $400 remained tohis credit. The cancelled checks on hand were
all to the orderof various life insurance companies; and for amounts that, if they
represented premiums, testified to rather large policies. I jotted down the
names of the life insurance companies, and
then went to
the offices of W. W. Jeffers & Sons.
Thornburgh
had come in, I was told, on May 10 with $4,000 worth of Liberty bonds that he
wanted sold. During one of his conversations with Jeffers, he had asked
thebroker to recommend a bank, and Jeffers had given him a letter of
introduction to the Seamen’s Bank. That was all Jeffers knew about him. He gave
me the numbers
of the
bonds, but tracing Liberty bonds isn’t the easiest
thing in the
world.
The reply to
my Seattle telegram was waiting for me at the
Agency when
I arrived:
MRS. EDWARD
COMERFORD RENTED APARTMENT AT ADDRESS
YOU GIVE ON
MAY TWENTY-FIVE GAVE IT UP JUNE SIX TRUNKS
TO SAN
FRANCISCO SAME DAY CHECK NUMBERS GN FOUR FIVE
TWO FIVE
EIGHT SEVEN AND EIGHT AND NINE.
Tracing
baggage is no trick at all, if you have the dates and
check
numbers to start with—as many a bird who is wearing
somewhat similar
numbers on his chest and back, because he
overlooked
that detail when making his getaway, can tell
you—and 25
minutes in a baggage-room at the Ferry
and half an
hour in the office of a transfer company gave me
my answer.
The trunks
had been delivered to Mrs. Evelyn Trowbridge’s
apartment!
I got Jim
Tarr on the phone and told him about it.
“Good
shooting!” he said, forgetting for once to indulge
his wit.
“We’ll grab the Coonses here and Mrs. Trowbridge
there, and
that’s the end of another mystery.”
“Wait a
minute!” I cautioned him. “It’s not all straightened
out yet!
There’s still a few kinks in the plot.”
“It’s straight enough for me. I’m satisfied.”
“You’re the
boss, but I think you’re being a little hasty. I’m
going up and
talk with the niece again. Give me a little time
before you
phone the police here to make the pinch. I’ll hold
her until
they get there.”
Evelyn
Trowbridge let me in this time, instead of the maid
who had
opened the door for me in the morning, and she led
me to the
same room in which we had had our first talk. I let
her pick out
a seat, and then I selected one that was closer to
either door
than hers was.
On the way
up I had planned a lot of innocent-sounding
questions
that would get her all snarled up; but after taking a
good look at
this woman sitting in front of me, leaning comfortably
back in her
chair, coolly waiting for me to speak my
piece, I
discarded the trick stuff and came out cold-turkey.
“Ever use
the name Mrs. Edward Comerford?”
“Oh, yes.”
As casual as a nod on the street.
“When?”
“Often. You
see, I happen to have been married not so
long ago to
Mr. Edward Comerford. So it’s not really strange
that I
should have used the name.”
“Use it in
Seattle recently?”
“I would
suggest,” she said sweetly, “that if you are leading
up to the
references I gave Coons and his wife, you might
save time by
coming right to it?”
“That’s fair
enough,” I said. “Let’s do that.”
There wasn’t
a half-tone, a shading, in voice, manner, or
expression
to indicate that she was talking about anything half
so serious
or important to her as a possibility of being charged
with murder.
She might have been talking about the weather,
or a book
that hadn’t interested her particularly.
“During the
time that Mr. Comerford and I were married,
we lived in
Seattle, where he still lives. After the divorce, I left
Seattle and
resumed my maiden name. And the Coonses were
in our
employ, as you might learn if you care to look it up.
You’ll find
my husband—or former husband—at the Chelsea
apartments,
I think.
“Last
summer, or late spring, I decided to return to Seattle.
The truth of
it is—I suppose all my personal affairs will be aired
anyhow—that
I thought perhaps Edward and I might patch up
our
differences; so I went back and took an apartment on
Woodmansee
Terrace. As I was known in Seattle as Mrs. Edward
Comerford,
and as I thought my using his name might influence
him a
little, perhaps, I used it while I was there.
“Also I
telephoned the Coonses to make tentative arrangements
in case
Edward and I should open our house again; but
Coons told
me that they were going to California, and so I
gladly gave
them an excellent recommendation when, some
days later,
I received a letter of inquiry from an employment
bureau in
Sacramento. After I had been in Seattle for about
two weeks, I
changed my mind about the reconciliation—
Edward’s
interest, I learned, was all centered elsewhere; so I
returned to
San Francisco.”
“Very nice!
But—”
“If you will
permit me to finish,” she interrupted. “When I
went to see
my uncle in response to his telegram, I was surprised
to find the
Coonses in his house. Knowing my uncle’s
peculiarities,
and finding them now increased, and remembering
his extreme
secretiveness about his mysterious invention,
I cautioned
the Coonses not to tell him that they had been in
my employ.
“He
certainly would have discharged them, and just as certainly
would have
quarreled with me—he would have thought
that I was
having him spied upon. Then, when Coons telephoned
me after the
fire, I knew that to admit that the
Coonses had
been formerly in my employ, would, in view of
the fact
that I was my uncle’s heir, cast suspicion on all three
of us. So we
foolishly agreed to say nothing about it and carry
on the
deception.”
That didn’t
sound all wrong, but it didn’t sound all right.
I wished
Tarr had taken it easier and let us get a better line on
these
people, before having them thrown in the coop.
“The
coincidence of the Coonses stumbling into my uncle’s
house is, I
fancy, too much for your detecting instincts,”
she went on,
as I didn’t say anything. “Am I to consider myself
under
arrest?”
I’m
beginning to like this girl; she’s a nice, cool piece of
work.
“Not yet,” I
told her. “But I’m afraid it’s going to happen
pretty
soon.”
She smiled a
little mocking smile at that, and another when
the
door-bell rang. It was O’Hara from
police headquarters. We turned the
apartment
upside down and inside out, but didn’t find anything
of
importance except the will she had told me about, dated July 8, and her uncle’s
life insurance policies. They were all dated between May 15 and June 10, and added
up to a little more than $200,000.
I spent an
hour grilling the maid after O’Hara had taken
Evelyn
Trowbridge away, but she didn’t know any more than
I did.
However, between her, the janitor, the manager of the
apartments,
and the names Mrs. Trowbridge had given me, I
learned that
she had really been entertaining friends on the
night of the
fire—until after 11 pm, anyway—and that
was late
enough.
Half an hour
later I was riding the Short Line back to
Sacramento.
I was getting to be one of the line’s best customers,
and my
anatomy was on bouncing terms with every
bump in the
road; and the bumps, as “Rubberhead” Davis
used to say
about the flies and mosquitoes in Alberta in summer,
“is freely
plentiful.”
Between
bumps I tried to fit the pieces of this Thornburgh
puzzle
together. The niece and the Coonses fit in somewhere,
but not just
where we had them. We had been working on
the job sort
of lop-sided, but it was the best we could do with
it. In the
beginning we had turned to the Coonses and Evelyn
Trowbridge
because there was no other direction to go; and
now we had
something on them—but a good lawyer could
make hash of
our case against them.
The Coonses
were in the county jail when I got to Sacramento. After some questioning they
had admitted theirconnection with the niece, and had come through with stories that
matched hers in every detail.
Tarr,
McClump, and I sat around the sheriff’s desk and argued.
“Those yarns are pipe-dreams,” the sheriff
said. “We got all
three of ’em
cold, and there’s nothing else to it. They’re as
good as
convicted of murder!”
McClump
grinned derisively at his superior, and then
turned to
me.
“Go on! You tell him about the holes in his
little case. He
ain’t your
boss, and can’t take it out on you later for being
smarter than
he is!”
Tarr glared
from one of us to the other.
“Spill it,
you wise guys!” he ordered.
“Our dope
is,” I told him, figuring that McClump’s view
of it was
the same as mine, “that there’s nothing to show that
even
Thornburgh knew he was going to buy that house before
June 10, and
that the Coonses were in town looking for work on the second. And besides, it
was only by luck that they got the jobs. The employment office sent two couples
out there ahead of them.”
“We’ll take
a chance on letting the jury figure that out.”
“Yes? You’ll
also take a chance on them figuring out that
Thornburgh,
who seems to have been a nut all right, might
have touched
off the place himself! We’ve got something on
these
people, Jim, but not enough to go into court with
them! How
are you going to prove that when the Coonses
were planted
in Thornburgh’s house—if you can even prove
they
were—they and the Trowbridge woman knew he was
going to
load up with insurance policies?”
The sheriff
spat disgustedly.
“You guys
are the limit! You run around in circles, digging
up the dope
on these people until you get enough to hang
’em, and
then you run around hunting for outs! What the
hell’s the
matter with you now?”
I answered
him from half-way to the door—the pieces were
beginning to
fit together under my skull.
“Going to
run some more circles! Come on, Mac!” McClump and I held a conference on the
fly, and then I got a machine from the nearest garage and headed for Tavender.
We made time going out, and got there
before the general
store had closed for the night. The stuttering Philo
separated
himself from the two men with whom he had been
talking politics,
and followed me to the rear of the
store.
“Do you keep
an itemized list of the laundry you handle?”
“N-n-no;
just the amounts.”
“Let’s look
at Thornburgh’s.”
He produced
a begrimed and rumpled account book and
we picked
out the weekly items I wanted: $2.60, $3.10, $2.25,
and so on.
“Got the
last batch of laundry here?”
“Y-yes,” he
said. “It j-just c-c-came out from the city t-today.”
I tore open
the bundle—some sheets, pillow-cases, tablecloths,
towels,
napkins; some feminine clothing; some shirts,
collars,
underwear, sox that were unmistakably Coons’s. I
thanked
Philo while running back to my machine.
Back in
Sacramento again, McClump was waiting for me at
the garage
where I had hired the car.
“Registered
at the hotel on June 15, rented the office
on the
sixteenth. I think he’s in the hotel now,” he greeted me.
We hurried
around the block to the Garden Hotel.
“Mr.
Handerson went out a minute or two ago,” the night
clerk told
us. “He seemed to be in a hurry.”
“Know where
he keeps his car?”
“In the
hotel garage around the corner.”
We were
within two pavements of the garage, when
Handerson’s
automobile shot out and turned up the street.
“Oh, Mr.
Handerson!” I cried, trying to keep my voice
level and
smooth.
He stepped
on the gas and streaked away from us.
“Want him?”
McClump asked; and, at my nod, stopped a
passing
roadster by the simple expedient of stepping in front
of it. We
climbed aboard, McClump flashed his badge at the bewildered
driver, and
pointed out Handerson’s dwindling taillight.
After he had
persuaded himself that he wasn’t being
boarded by a
couple of bandits, the commandeered driver did
his best,
and we picked up Handerson’s tail-light after two or
three
turnings, and closed in on him—though his machine
was going at
a good clip.
By the time
we reached the outskirts of the city, we had
crawled up
to within safe shooting distance, and I sent a bullet
over the
fleeing man’s head. Thus encouraged, he managed
to get a
little more speed out of his car; but we were
definitely
overhauling him now.
Just at the
wrong minute Handerson decided to look over
his shoulder
at us—an unevenness in the road twisted his
wheels—his
machine swayed—skidded—went over on its side.
Almost
immediately, from the heart of the tangle, came a flash
and a bullet
moaned past my ear. Another. And then, while I
was still
hunting for something to shoot at in the pile of junk
we were
drawing down upon, McClump’s ancient and battered
revolver
roared in my other ear.
Handerson
was dead when we got to him—McClump’s bullet had taken him over one eye.
McClump
spoke to me over the body. “I ain’t an inquisitive sort of fellow, but I hope
you don’t mind telling me why I shot this guy?”
“Because he
was Thornburgh.”
He didn’t
say anything for about five minutes. Then: “I reckon that’s right. How’d you
guess it?”
We were
sitting beside the wreckage now, waiting for the
police that
we had sent our commandeered chauffeur to
phone for.
“He had to
be,” I said, “when you think it all over. Funny
we didn’t
hit on it before! All that stuff we were told about
Thornburgh
had a fishy sound. Whiskers and an unknown
profession,
immaculate and working on a mysterious invention,
very
secretive and born in San Francisco—where the fire
wiped out
all the old records—just the sort of fake that could
be cooked up
easily.
“Then nobody
but the Coonses, Evelyn Trowbridge and
Handerson
ever saw him except between the tenth of May
and the
middle of June, when he bought the house. The
Coonses and
the Trowbridge woman were tied up together in
this affair
somehow, we knew—so that left only Handerson to
consider.
You had told me he came to Sacramento sometime
early this
summer—and the dates you got tonight show that
he didn’t
come until after Thornburgh had bought his house.
All right!
Now compare Handerson with the descriptions we
got of
Thornburgh.
“Both are about
the same size and age, and with the same
color hair.
The differences are all things that can be manufactured—clothes, a little
sunburn, and a month’s growth of
beard, along
with a little acting, would do the trick. Tonight, I went out to Tavender and took
a look at the last batch of
laundry, and
there wasn’t any that didn’t fit the Coonses—
and none of
the bills all the way back were large enough for
Thornburgh
to have been as careful about his clothes as we
were told he
was.”
“It must be
great to be a detective!” McClump grinned as
the police
ambulance came up and began disgorging policemen.
“I reckon
somebody must have tipped Handerson off
that I was
asking about him this evening.” And then, regretfully:
“So we ain’t
going to hang them folks for murder after
all.”
“No, but we
oughtn’t have any trouble convicting them of
arson plus
conspiracy to defraud, and anything else that the
Prosecuting
Attorney can think up.”
The End.
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