Bill looked at Ordway. “You were going to do it tonight, weren’t you?”
“No,” Shuler squealed. “No! We did take your wife; we thought you’d be gone a long time.”
“All right, Aiken,” Ordway said. “You’re a pretty smart guy. But we didn’t murder anybody. Helen died of natural causes, and we didn’t know that Dresser was dead until we heard it on the radio a few minutes ago.”
“That’s partly what confused me,” Bill said, “not knowing for awhile that I was fighting two fires.
“But we know who killed Dresser — don’t we, Blanche? I knew you killed him when I came to your room the second time, but I had to look after Mary first. So I brought you along — knowing you’d stall, hoping for a break — to keep you from getting away. But the break won’t come. This is the end of the line.”
He took a deep, heavy breath. “You killed for money, didn’t you, Blanche? You’ve never worked for a thin dime; your hands tipped me to that. You thought you’d keep me from getting suspicious by saying you had a record, acting contrite, but if that were so, your hands would be rough, hardened.”
Very slowly, Blanche eased down in a chair.
“When Dresser escaped from Ordway’s smooth prison, he knew Ordway had men on his trail, Blanche. He couldn’t get to the police, needed help. He posed as a tramp, thought he had found someone to believe in him and help him when he met you. He gave you enough solid facts to blackmail every cent of the Dresser money out of Ordway and Shuler as fast as they laid hands on it. But to use the facts, you had to keep Dresser from going to the police and blasting Shuler and Ordway out of their present position. So you killed him.
“In me you recognized a danger and a perfect fall guy. You hired Jim Carson, set your frame, planted a motive by putting a scrap of paper in Dresser’s dead hand with ‘Mary Aiken is’ written on it.”
“Bill,” Mary breathed, “you’re wonderful! But how did you know?”
“Well, Shuler and Ordway wouldn’t want Dresser dead. They’d steer clear of every sort of investigation. If they’d got close enough to him to kill him, they’d have simply taken him back to Ordway’s asylum. Too, Blanche said she knew nothing about Dresser, posing as Jordan; yet she also said that people thought he was crazy. That made sense, when I saw her hands.”
“And proof?” Blanche asked hoarsely.
“Three wonderful slate witnesses right here — Shuler, Ordway, and the butler. But most important, Jim Carson’ll sing.”
The butler said, “Bless you, sir! They’ve threatened me...”
“I know,” Bill said. “It’s been a nightmare. Now...” He felt a soft hand on his arm — Mary’s. He choked, tried to swallow, and couldn’t.
He remembered those dirty breakfast dishes at home, the dishes that had given him the tip-off that Mary was missing. He’d have to call Hagan, get him to take this crowd off his hands.
But first, Bill guessed he should make a pretty little speech to his wife. He started to, but what he said was, “Sweetheart, if I ever nag because of dirty dishes, throw a skillet at me, will you...?”