“Lieutenant, I’ve got something and thought maybe I’d better tell you before we went any farther,” he announced. “I started in on the Wallace woman with my inquiries about Montana, because Eva Wallace worked for Talbot, and Talbot was Boyerson’s pal. And she spilled right away that both men had once been in Great Falls, Montana, for a year off and on. As far as she can judge, it was five or six years ago.”
“Good work, Pierce!” cried Ransom, his face brightening. “We are getting somewhere. Go on with your work. I think you’ve hit the right spot, but go over the others anyhow.”
“Right.” Pierce left the office.
Chapter XLIX
On the Floor
Big Jim Pensbury jimmied open a window in Boyerson’s living room, hanging precariously on a fancy little balcony while he worked, and let his bulk soundlessly into a luxuriously furnished apartment, lighted by one solitary lamp.
Moving without the slightest noise, Big Jim saw to it first that he had the place entirely to himself. The chief was right, of course. Boyerson was with Mrs. Delaney.
The instructions he had received to tear up the Boyerson apartment delighted Jim. It made his task easier.
A half hour later, however, he was feeling decidedly down-in-the-mouth. After a minute search of the entire place, from kitchen to bathroom, the only thing of any suspicious or interesting nature which he had unearthed was Boyerson’s bank book, or rather, one of them. Examining this carefully, Big Jim decided that, since a scare was to be thrown into the lawyer, he might as well take the book with him instead of copying its contents.
Placing it in his pocket he looked about at the living room with a grin. It would throw a shock into Boyerson all right when he entered it! The disappearance of the bank book might add to the shock.
Opening the door, Big Jim left the apartment by way of the stairs which wound down behind the elevators.
At the garage which ran along the rear of the huge apartment house he sought the man in charge with no attempt at secrecy.
“Police business,” he announced, displaying his badge. “Which is the garage where Mr. Boyerson keeps his car?”
“This one, sir,” said the man, walking along the row of doors. “One of Mr. Boyerson’s cars is out. He took it himself.”
Jim nodded. “Got two, has he?”
“Yes, sir. Roadster and sedan.”
“Which is out?”
“The roadster.”
“All right, let me into the garage. I want to examine that sedan.”
Looking very uneasy, the man opened the garage door and Jim walked up to the sedan, a handsome, expensive car. The doors were unlocked, and bidding the curious and anxious garage man to hold his flash light inside the car, Jim took out the rugs and proceeded to examine the floor thoroughly.
As he worked, he wondered how the chief was going to get out of this tangle if Boyerson was an innocent man. He was a clever lawyer. He could make a squawk. But in Big Jim’s mind Boyerson was not an innocent man. And suddenly, on the floor of the car, he discovered what, in his opinion, closed the case definitely. Instructing the garage man to hold the flash light closer, he proceeded gleefully to work scraping up the damning evidence. Wait until he showed this to Ransom!
Chapter L
The Broadcast
At quarter to eight that evening, Dorothy Wilde was dismissed from the hospital, a bandage fastened about her head, and rage in her heart.
What was the use of a girl getting mixed up in such a notorious case as this and being interviewed and all, if she couldn’t make something out of it? Both Bacon and Delaney had failed her.
Even the interview she had given the reporters who had stopped her as she was descending the hospital steps did not soothe her disappointment. She had hoped to get her hands on some real cash.
And then she heard the raucous cries of the newsboys, shouting the late editions.
“Read about de mystery girl! Extry! Jane Shannon talks to the police! Extry! Jane Shannon says she knows de killer in de witch moiders!”
Jane Shannon! The little widow that lived across the street. She was able to talk! The case was, then, finished.
Buying a paper, Dorothy held it in shaking hands while she waited for a bus to take her back to the Wallace house. The announcement about Jane was run in as a bulletin — four sentences. But they were set in huge black letters.
“Jane Shannon has recovered and will talk to police and give details of the witch crimes. She says she knows the killer. The mystery of the salt cross will be explained, police believe.”
She had thought that that girl was going to die. Dorothy sat motionless in the bus as it bore her uptown to the Wallace house. Nobody knew her. Every one around her, reading the extra, talking about the cases, ignored her as she sat back in her corner, her close little hat drawn down about the bandage under her hair. Even when she slipped out at Camac Avenue they did not notice her. All heads were craned to get a good look at the notorious Wallace house.
The next night she would be able to go back to her place in the Bolton Avenue Theater. Life would go on. And if she had been smart she would have got some sort of a haul out of this murder!
Closing the front door of the Wallace house carefully behind her, Dorothy Wilde stopped short, staring with a touch of horror into the apartment the papers had called the murder room. Albert Bacon was reclining in an easy chair near the table lamp, reading, and the radio was playing softly. Bacon was a cold-blooded one, he was.
“Hullo!” said Dorothy with a sneer as she entered the room. “I should think you’d find a pleasanter place than this to sit.”
“Oh, so you’re back, my pretty little liar!” remarked Bacon, glancing up from his book.
“Yes,” said Dorothy, with a yawn, throwing off her hat and coat. “You didn’t kill me, after all, with that wallop. Honest, Bert Bacon, where were you going when you knocked me out?”
Bacon lifted his brows.
“Say, they oughtn’t to have let you out when you’re running a temperature,” he said soothingly.
“Oh, yeah?” Miss Wilde sauntered to a chair and sat down, spreading the evening paper on her knee. “Well, it won’t be long now! Not long. Have you seen the Daily Messenger?”
“No.”
“Well, you ought to read it. Jane Shannon is going to talk to the cops. She says she knows the name of the killer an’ all. She’s got well.”
“What!”
Bacon dropped his book and bent forward. There was an unpleasant look in his eyes.
“Yeah. Is that a shock? It ought not to be to an innocent man. Here, read it, big boy, and weep. If you are what I think you are, you better beat it.”
Bacon seized the paper and read the extra, while Dorothy watched his paling face. She grew honestly interested in the man while she sat there looking at him. Did the recovery of Jane Shannon really throw a scare into him?
“This is newspaper talk,” said Bacon presently, throwing the paper back at her with contempt. “That girl could never talk yet with the kind of wound she had.”
“Anybody would think you don’t want her to talk,” observed Dorothy mildly. “What is it to you?”
“Nothing.”
“You look as though it’s nothing to you, getting as white as chalk, with your eyes bulging with fright. You ought to see yourself. I’ll get you yet, Bert Bacon, for trying to get me mixed up in this case and for handing me that wallop.”
“I tell you, I never hit you in my life,” snarled Bacon. “And I never knew the Shannon woman. She can die or she can get well. It’s nothing to me. But she can’t get well with the shot she had in her.”