“If I do this, I shall want two things,” he said.
“Name them.”
“I shall want to go to the State’s prison and pick out a good burglar. I shall pick one who is eligible for parole. I’ll want him to be paroled in my charge. In addition to that I shall want a tube of radium from the State hospital. With those two things I’ll undertake the job.”
The Governor regarded him with closely knitted brows.
“You seem to want peculiar things, and you don’t seem to hesitate any in thinking what they are.”
“Those are my terms,” Clint said.
“Oh, take ’em!” exclaimed the Governor, irritably. “My secretary will fix you up with the necessary papers. I’ll sign ’em. Hang it, I’m almost beginning to believe you started that talk about circumstantial evidence just to make me feel uneasy about this case.”
Clint Kale reached for his gloves, drew them on with an air of quiet finality.
“I did,” he smiled.
“You did! I wondered. What was the big idea?”
“I doubt if the woman’s guilty. There are too many facts, and they’re too conclusive. Circumstantial evidence is really mighty poor evidence. The facts don’t lie, but our interpretation of those facts may be wrong. Ever since the beginning of time man has misinterpreted facts. He thought the thunder was the voice of a god. He thought the sun rose in the morning and set at night. The facts were there. Man simply didn’t have enough knowledge to interpret them correctly.
“Now in this present case there are two facts that the jury considered as pointing to the guilt of Jane Thurmond which I consider point to her innocence.”
“Those facts?” rasped the Governor.
“Will be explained later. They’re as evident to you as they are to me. There’s one thing I want understood, though. I’ve got to use my own methods here. You can’t control those.”
“How do you mean, Clint?”
“Well, I’m going into a backwater of life and civilization. I’ve got to use weapons that those people aren’t familiar with. They’ll all team against me right at the jump. I’ll be like that city lawyer that went in there and got massacred in front of a local jury.
“Therefore I’ve got to hit ’em with something they’re not accustomed to. I’ve got to use weapons they don’t understand.”
“Such as?” asked the Governor.
“Such as humor, for one thing, and applied physics and psychology for another. You see, this Jane Thurmond had only lived in the town for eight years. They all regarded her as being a rank outsider.”
The Governor shrugged his shoulder.
“Don’t do anything that’ll connect you with me in any way. Keep this entirely confidential.”
Clint nodded.
“That,” he observed as he edged toward the door, “was one of the wisest remarks you’ve made in a long time. If those chaps put me in the insane asylum, pardon me out.”
And he was gone.
Chapter II
The Scientific Detective
The bewildered secretary fixed Clint Kale up with the necessary documents which entitled him to one quarter-inch tube of radium, valued at some five thousand dollars. Also with a letter to the prison board which enabled Clint to check over the records of some half dozen eligible burglars of unquestioned skill.
“I want,” he told the warden, at length, “a man who never smiles. I want a man who looks like an undertaker on duty with indigestion and a toothache. I want a man who can open anything except his mouth.”
The warden nodded.
“You want Boston Blackie,” he said, and pressed a button.
Boston Blackie arrived. He was short, solidly built. His head was covered with a shock of black hair. His ebony eyes glared out from beneath shaggy black brows. His face was covered with black stubble. His mouth was twisted to one side until it seemed to grow entirely out of one cheek.
In his bearing was the surly defiance of one who has found all the resources of existence pitted against him in the battle of life. Permanent pessimism was stamped upon his features.
“Blackie,” said the warden, not unkindly, “this is Mr. Clint Kale, at one time a professor of psychology, a friend of the Governor. He wants a man to do certain things and I have recommended you.”
Boston Blackie favored Clint Kale with a dour appraisal.
“My experiments,” said Kale, “will require that the subject come with me as a servant. The duties will be light. There will be fresh air, sunshine, good food, pleasant work.”
“Ugh huh,” moaned Blackie, “you ain’t lookin’ for me.”
“Why not?”
“No luck ever came my way. It’s all a mistake.”
“On the contrary, I think you’ll do. You will be paroled to my charge, and will, of course, be under my supervision.”
“You mean you’re takin’ me?”
“Yes.”
“It won’t do no good. You’ll get run over by an automobile, or get shot or somethin’. I’ll be back here inside of a week.”
The warden turned to a clerk.
“Arrange to have this prisoner paroled to the custody of Mr. Clint Kale.”
Boston Blackie studied Kale gloomily. His face did not change expression as he heard the words which secured him his liberty.
“We’re drivin’ away from here?” he asked.
“In my car,” Kale assured him.
“Drive careful,” husked Boston Blackie.
The town of Middlevale seethed with hissing whispers of gossip.
A detective had arrived, was staying at the Palace Hotel. The detective was investigating something, some said one thing, some another. Some said he was an income tax detective, come to check over Ezra Hickory’s return for the preceding year. Some said he was working on a new angle of the Sam Pixley murder.
Clint Kale registered at ten thirty in the morning.
By noon he was known by sight to every man, woman and child who was able to walk past the lobby of the hotel.
At twelve thirty a motor truck drew up to the hotel and Kale went out to greet the driver. After a hurried conference the porter was summoned, two loafers were pressed into willing service, and great packages began to slide to the sidewalk, where Clint Kale himself supervised unpacking them.
It took three and one half minutes for the news to reach from one end of Main Street to the other, another two minutes for the crowd to gather.
They goggled open-mouthed at the assortment of machinery.
Clint Kale had secured this machinery by the simple expedient of calling upon certain manufacturers of laboratory and dental equipment, picking up the obsolete models they had traded in on newer equipment. Then he had done the same thing with the manufacturers of dictating machines, had also called at the salvage department of the railroad companies, picking up shipments of various paraphernalia which had been damaged in shipping, refused by the consignee and salvaged by the railroad.
There were obsolete dictating machines in which the motive power was furnished by a tread. There were dental drills which had long ago given up their last vestige of nickel plate. There were X-ray machines whose weak bulbs gave forth weird lighting effects and sputtered hissing sounds of static throughout the surrounding atmosphere. There were obsolete radio sets incapable of tuning in any single station, now that the air was crowded with programs. There were cameras on tripods, old studio cameras, obsolete equipment of all kind.
And, last to be unloaded, was a casket.
Under the direction of Clint Kale, Boston Blackie opened this casket upon the sidewalk. Within was another casket, slightly smaller. That casket was locked.
Clint Kale unlocked that casket, opened it. Boston Blackie disclosed another casket, opened that. Within was a box. There were three padlocks on the box, each requiring a different key.