“I know them when I see ’em.” The bartender smoothed his hair down closer over his ear.
“They were here, weren’t they?”
“Yeah.”
“That fire must have broken up your dance.” Stan swished the ice around in his glass. “Miss Gilbert told me she left when she heard the siren — she and Mr. Carnes. That was about two o’clock, wasn’t it?”
The bartender put his other elbow on the bar. “Yeah.” He narrowed his disagreeable eyes. “I keep a time sheet on each of our customers, mister. Now take you: I’ll report you to the police as soon as you leave.”
“Why?”
“Well, I had a run-in with the cops not so long ago because I didn’t know when some guy they were after left here. Since then I’ve kept tabs for ’em.”
Stan picked up his glass of whiskey and held it up to the light. His face was pained. “Swell!” he said. “You tell the police about me, and I’ll tell them about you. We’ll have a party!”
“Spill it, wise guy!” said the bartender tensely. “And it had better be good.”
“I’m wiser than you think,” said Stan. “Particularly about Scotch. They padlock places in this State that sell people diluted colored shine with a fancy label on it when they order Scotch whiskey.” He stood up and tossed the balance of his drink behind the bar. “Did Carnes and that girl leave here together last night, and what time?”
“You smelled like a dick to me when you come in!” the bartender said disgustedly. “I’ll tell you this then: Don’t ask me no more questions, because I don’t know. Carnes wasn’t here till no two o’clock last night. He left before that, but I don’t know when.”
Stan left the bar and went to a pay telephone in the other room. He called Chief Blunt: “Yes, Blunt, it’s important. I wouldn’t ask you to do it if it wasn’t! Okey, I’ll wait here and call you back.”
A few minutes later, the Palatka fire siren sounded again. It moaned on and on, but strangely enough was not followed by a bell tap announcing the station. Palatka, jittery from its recent series of blazes, waited tensely. All business ceased, and still the bell tap failed to come. The siren died away, leaving the telephone exchange deluged with anxious calls. Stan finally got through to Chief Blunt from East Palatka.
“O.K., Chief. Thanks! You’re what?” Stan laughed. “That’s your problem. I’ll be at your office in ten minutes.”
He found the officer red and perspiring. “Damn you, Stan!” the Chief greeted him. “The whole town’s been calling fire headquarters and here. I told them I was just testing, and I’m expecting a lynching party any minute. They said it was a hell of a time to be just testing.”
“Watch your blood pressure!” Stan grinned. “It’s better to test mid-afternoon than night. And I found out what I wanted to know.”
“What?” asked Blunt.
“If that siren could be heard at River Inn, two and a half miles away.”
“And you heard it?”
Stan nodded. “Not distinctly, but I heard it. Over the noise of the mills, the auto horns and everything. It could be heard much plainer at night — say, at two in the morning.”
“Proving what?” asked Blunt.
Stan walked to the window, clasped his hands behind him, and stood looking out at a garage across the way. “Lois Gilbert told me last night she heard that siren while she was over at the River Inn dancing with Carnes. She said they’d come right over here.” He turned abruptly and faced the Chief. “Do you think that girl would lie to cover up Jupiter Carnes? He might be in on a deal with the owners of these factories.”
“Naw! And I don’t think she’d carry anyone on anything if she thought it was wrong.” The Chief sat erratically drumming his fingers on the desk top.
“I know why Trimmer was killed,” said Stan.
Blunt stilled his drumming fingers. “What?”
Stan was slow in continuing, and when he spoke his voice was brittle with anger. “Wallace Trimmer was a decent fellow, Chief, and he got the rottenest break I’ve met in years: He was shot by mistake.”
“My Gawd, Stan!”
“There’s no motive for his murder. I’ve checked every possible angle. The real reason’s so obvious that we’ve all overlooked it. He was hit with a bullet intended for someone else.”
Chief Blunt wiped his broad forehead. “You know who that bullet was meant for?”
“I hope to know before ten tonight. I understand that Cox is due back on the eight-twenty train.”
“Cox!” The Chief sat up straight in his chair. “Now what the hell? You mean Cox fired that shot at someone else?”
Stan shook his head. “I don’t mean any such thing, but I did learn something about Phil today — he spent five years in the pen.”
“That settles it!” Blunt declared. “I’ll pick him up when he gets in town.”
Again Stan shook his head. “You’d better wait, Chief. You can help much more by telling me everything you can about Jupiter Carnes.”
“Now I know you’re nuts!” The Chief leaned back in his chair. “There’s not a nicer fellow in the town.”
“Tell me about him,” Stan insisted. “Wallace Trimmer was a nice fellow, too, and he’s dead. Has Carnes ever been North?”
“He spent a couple of years up there,” Blunt admitted reluctantly. “Learning the insurance business in Hartford and New York. There was talk that he played around a bit, but he was young and had money. His father died three years ago and left him the business he has now. He spends plenty, but he makes a lot and that doesn’t set well with some of the stuffed shirts around town. You’re on the wrong trail, Stan, if you’re tracking Jupe Carnes.”
“I’ve traveled a lot of wrong trails before,” said Stan. “What about the girl?”
“Lois? She came to Palatka a month or so after Jupe took over the business and went to work for him. I’ve heard that Jupe knew her in New York and had her come to Palatka. I think it’s a story put out by a lot of disappointed women.”
“You can do one more thing right now,” said Stan. “Call Carnes and get me a list of the mills which have increased their insurance during the last few days.”
“I’m afraid they all have, excepting the big ones. They always carry plenty. The small ones generally try to get by and lock the stable door after the mule has run away. You’ll find this epidemic of fires has scared them plenty. I’ll call though.”
He talked for a while on the phone, and hung up looking thoughtful. “There’s an old cuss named Jeb Randolph that you may want to talk to,” he told Stan. “He has a box factory on the river on that cove back of the big mill.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“God made him naturally cantankerous,” said Blunt, “and he’s added forty thousand dollars insurance onto that junk pile of his within the last six days.”
Turning off River Street into a sawdust-filled corduroy road which ran through a low lying swamp to Randolph’s box factory, Stan pulled to one side of the narrow road to allow passage for an oncoming car. It went bouncing by at a dangerous speed, and Stan recognized Mr. Charles Wentworth’s red sedan. He sat for a moment looking through the back window of the coupe at the disappearing car. Then, abandoning the proposed interview with Jeb Randolph entirely, he maneuvered the Buick around on the tricky road and headed back for the hotel.
He made two telephone calls before dinner. The first, to the secretary of the Mill Owners Protective Association in Jacksonville, brought him the information that Jeb Randolph’s box factory had been losing money for some time, and that twenty thousand dollars would probably be liberal insurance on the entire affair. The second call was to Lois Gilbert. “I want to see Phil Cox when he gets back at about eight forty-five,” Stan told her. “I may be a bit late for our trip across the river.”