“Because Sidney didn’t leave any wife, children, brothers or sisters.”
“Any more of Proctor’s heirs besides the two who got bumped?” Jim Grood inquired.
“Two. One is named Phyllis Proctor. She lives in the Brentwood Apartments in San Francisco. Then there another chap named Harry Cutting. He’s an older man, somewhere in the late forties. He was in business in Cleveland. The business failed and Cutting went through bankruptcy. The creditors claimed a fraud had been practised, but they were never able to prove anything. Cutting vanished. No one knows what became of him.”
“He may be dead,” Grood suggested.
“Perhaps,” Bowman agreed, “but let’s figure this thing from a business viewpoint. If those two murders were committed because someone wanted two of the Proctor heirs out of the way, the murderer must have been some person who would profit by the death. That person probably isn’t Phyllis Proctor, since she would have shared equally with the two who were killed. Harry Cutting, on the other hand, wouldn’t have shared in the estate at all while any of the other three were alive.”
“But look here,” Grood objected. “Suppose Cutting is back of this thing. When he comes to claim his inheritance, lawyers are going to start chasing down the records to find out what happened to the other heirs. If it turns out that three of them got bumped off within a few weeks of each other, and all under similar circumstances, it’s going to put Cutting’s neck in a noose.”
Bowman nodded. “That,” he said, “is true, except that you must remember there’s no similarity whatever in the circumstances except for the typewritten notes. Within a few weeks the typewritten note left by Arthur Brecton will have been forgotten. Remember, his death looked like a suicide, rather than a murder.”
“Then how about Phyllis?”
“If Phyllis should die, it will doubtless be by some entirely different means. She may die in an automobile accident, or something of that sort.”
“But how about a typewritten note in her case?”
“There may not be any,” Bowman said. “Phyllis Proctor is going under her right name. She’s living in San Francisco and working as a stenographer — that is, she had been working up until a few weeks ago. Apparently she’s out of a job at present. If she should die, there would be no difficulty whatever establishing her identity. The other two were, for various reasons, using assumed names.”
Grood nodded slowly.
“Moreover,” Bowman said, “the murderer undoubtedly intends to dispose of the other heirs and then sit tight until he’s either discovered by professional searchers, or feels that the time is ripe to make a disclosure. The estate’s on ice.”
“Then Phyllis is the next on the list of victims?”
“If my theory is correct,” Bowman said.
“Could we go to San Francisco and just stick around to protect her?” Grood asked dubiously.
“That might make complications,” Jax Bowman pointed out, “which we would do well to avoid!”
“How about simply finding Harry Cutting and beating him to the punch?”
“That’s even more difficult. In the first place Cutting probably is working through some clever crook. He may be keeping in the background where he can have an alibi for each one of the murders. He’ll be under cover in any event.”
Jim Grood doubled his right hand, squeezed it with his left hand until he cracked the knuckles, one by one, a habit which he had when he was thinking.
“Well,” he said, “what’s the dope? We can’t sit back here and fool around.”
Bowman nodded. “How’d you like to be an impostor?” he asked.
“A what?”
“An impostor.”
“What would I do?”
“You would, for the moment, become Sidney Proctor.”
“You mean the guy who was killed up the Amazon?”
“That’s right.”
“What would that do?”
“It would put the murderers on the spot. With Sidney Proctor alive, Harry Cutting would stand no chance whatever of inheriting, so he’d be desperate enough to try and kill Sidney Proctor.”
“You mean I’m to pose as Sidney Proctor and this guy will try to bump me?”
Bowman nodded.
Big Jim Grood shifted his left knuckles through the palm of his right hand, cracked them slowly, one by one, and grinned. “Aw, hell,” he said, “you’re so goo-o-o-o-d to me.”
Bowman chuckled.
“How are we going to arrange it so I don’t get arrested for being an impostor before we smoke cutting out into the open?”
“I think I can arrange it,” Bowman said. “It happens that I have a friend who is returning from a cruise to the South Sea Islands in a yacht. You might be aboard that yacht when it docks.”
“Do I swim?” Grood asked.
“Not while there are hydroplanes we can charter,” Bowman said.
Big Jim sighed. “Listen,” he said, “can’t you be Sidney Proctor instead of me?”
“Not very well,” Bowman said, frowning. “I’m too well known. Remember the newspapers will be publishing pictures of the lost explorer who has returned to life. What’s the matter, Jim, you aren’t getting cold feet, are you?”
Big Jim Grood lurched from the chair to his feet.
“Cold feet,” he said belligerently. “Say, what the hell are you talking about? Do you think I’m getting yellow because I’m going to bait a death trap?”
“Well, then, what is the matter?” Bowman demanded.
Grood grinned sheepishly, looked for the moment like a schoolboy trying to keep from making a confession. “Aw, I hate to tell you, chief,” he said.
There was anxiety in Bowman’s voice. “What is it, Jim?”
Big Jim Grood sighed. “It’s that damned yacht business,” he said. “I always get seasick.”
Big Jim Grood made one last attempt to change Bowman’s mind as he watched the engines of a big amphibian warming up.
Banks of fog were just breaking up and the sunlight was gleaming through, sparkling upon the waters of the bay. To the west was the Golden Gate of San Francisco, beyond which lay the broad expanse of the Pacific. The towers of the new bridge construction thrust themselves up from the bay like giant red fingers clutching at the dispersing fog.
“There’s two things I don’t like to travel in,” Big Jim Grood grumbled. “One of them’s an airplane and the other’s a boat.”
“You’ll like this yacht,” Bowman said: “it’s a beauty.”
Big Jim Grood frowned at the placid waters of the bay, looked over at the big amphibian and spat contemptuously.
“Suppose you can’t locate this yacht?” he asked.
“Nothing to it,” Bowman said. “I’ve been in touch with them by radio. They know we’re coming. They’re laying off the Farallons in a position that’s been accurately checked and radioed. We can fly right to them.”
Grood continued his grumbling protest. “Now listen, chief, it’s the wrong way to go about this. This ain’t the kind of a mystery where we don’t know who’s back of it. This is a cinch. All we’ve got to do is to tip off Phyllis Proctor, locate Harry Cutting and start checking up on this aviator I’ve been telling you about.”
“You mean the ex-convict?” Bowman asked.
“Yeah — this Howard Ashe. You can gamble a hundred to one that he’s mixed up in the thing. Two months ago he was just an ex-con hanging around on the fringes, looking for a chance to break in. Thirty days ago he shows up with his pockets full of dough and buys an airplane. Hell, there’s nothing to it. We can bust this case wide open by using the good old police methods.”
Bowman shook his head decisively. “I’m not a policeman,” he said; “I’m an adventurer.”