“Sure.”
“All right. Do that right away. Call the Delaney house first and find out from Shafter whether or not Boyerson is still there. Do that skillfully. I don’t want him to bolt yet. See that your men are armed and ready for any emergency. We’ve got to make a play to-night or it will be too late. And just come with us, Mrs. Wallace and Hopeton. We are not taking any chances with you two until this case is cleared up. Get busy on this, Jim. Time is precious. When Boyerson enters his apartment, he must not know you are there.”
“Okay!”
In Ransom’s private office, whither she had driven in a car with a raging Mrs. Wallace and a sullen Hopeton, Dorothy Wilde regarded the lieutenant with curious eyes.
“What you got up your sleeve?” she asked.
“If you want to make a couple of hundred dollars, you will help us out on this,” smiled Ransom. “You will be taking a chance. It will be dangerous if we are right. Want to try it?”
“I want some cash,” said Dorothy frankly. “What do you want me to do?”
“Go to Boyerson’s swell apartment as though you sneaked there after Bacon shot himself, and tell Boyerson all about the suicide and the radio and the evening paper. But tell him, too, that while you were alone with Bacon and before he shot, he told you all about the witch killings and who the man is.
“Tell him you want cash and that unless he pays you to keep quiet, you will tell the police what Bacon told you. Tell him Jane Shannon won’t be questioned until morning and he will have a chance to leave town. Ask him a thousand dollars or even more. Any amount at all.”
“And get myself bumped off!” said Dorothy, wide-eyed. “For goodness’ sake, what do you take me for?”
“You said you had nerve,” reminded Ransom, turning to his desk. “All right. You may go.”
“Not so fast. Who is going to act my hero stuff while I am holding up this swell lawyer?”
“Big Jim and a couple of my men. They will be hidden close by. I don’t think Boyerson will want to leave your body in his apartment after he leaves town anyhow. He doesn’t think we have much on him.”
“You’re cheerful,” sneered Dorothy. “Why can’t you wait until this Shannon girl sees you?”
“I am offering you a chance to get out of the case with a little cash to hasten matters,” said Ransom impatiently. “Do you take it or leave it?”
“If you tell me where this bird lives and what I am to do, I’ll take it,” said Dorothy finally, “provided I see the money first. Maybe it will have to be used to bury me.”
Ransom grinned as he walked to the safe in a corner of his office.
“I hardly think so,” he said. “I would not ask you to do this if I thought Boyerson would kill you. By his attitude toward you and your offer he will condemn himself. Lead him on. Get him into the case as deeply as you can. You are a clever girl. Here is your two hundred. If you work this well, I’ll add another fifty.”
Dorothy Wilde took the money in a dazed fashion, counting it, folding it, and placing it in her gaudy beaded bag. Then she lifted her suspicious gaze to the young lieutenant’s impassive face.
“Say, did this Shannon girl die?” she asked quietly.
“All you have to know at present is what I am about to tell you. And we have to work fast. Boyerson may return at any moment from the Delaney house. Now, you listen carefully to instructions.”
Chapter LIII
The Test
Behind a thick silken curtain in Boyerson’s living room, Big Jim Pensbury chafed at the enforced inaction. His gun was in his hand, and he hoped that he could use it. A picture of the Raddock girl as he entered her bedroom floated before his eyes, and the thought of Jane Shannon filled him with rage.
Across the room, cleverly concealed, two other detectives also waited, in grim silence.
Two clocks ticked somewhere and one of them chimed richly every fifteen minutes. The air was warm.
After what seemed like years to Jim, there was the sound of a key in the lock, and the door at the end of the long, handsomely furnished corridor which led back to the living room was opened, and the waiting men heard Boyerson’s voice and then Dorothy Wilde’s. The girl had evidently waited for him outside.
The two came along the corridor and Boyerson turned on several lamps in the living room, threw off his coat and hat, and turned to the girl.
“Now, what can I do for you?” asked the lawyer.
“Don’t try to be high hat,” said Dorothy, leaning back against the wall with her hands in the pockets of her swagger little coat. “Bacon shot himself to-night.”
There was a tense silence, during which Jim knew that Boyerson had experienced a dreadful shock. But when he spoke his voice was still suave and pleasant.
“Bacon?” he asked. “I don’t know who you mean. You are, I think you told me, Miss Wilde, one of the inmates of the Wallace house where Delaney was murdered.”
“Yeah, and don’t call me an inmate,” said Dorothy. “It sounds like I’m crazy. I guess you know Bacon, Bert Bacon. Anyhow, he said you did. He said it before he died.”
“Suppose you tell me what you are getting at,” said Boyerson in a level, dangerous voice. “Sit down.”
“No, thanks,” said Dorothy. “I haven’t got time and neither have you. You see, Bacon has spilled the beans. He shot himself, and then he told on you. I’ll tell you how it was. They released me from the hospital after I got that wallop on my head when I followed Bacon out of the Wallace house. When I got home there was Bert sitting in the room where Delaney was murdered, reading a book. He sure had his nerve. So I went in and started to razz him about handing me that slam, and then I showed him the evening paper where it said Jane Shannon was going to talk to the police tomorrow, that she knew who had killed Delaney and was getting well. That threw a terrible scare into Bert. But he bluffed it.
“He said it was newspaper talk and that the girl couldn’t live with the kind of shot she had in her. And just then the radio broke loose with that evening news broadcast, and the fellow announced that Jane Shannon was about to talk and tell what she knew. Well, I’ll never forget that. Bert just went wild. First thing I knew he had brought out a gun from one of his pockets and I thought he was going to shoot me with it. But he didn’t. He shot himself. Was I a wreck? I’ll tell the world.”
Dorothy shivered with the memory of that awful moment, but went boldly on, to Jim’s everlasting admiration.
“And then Bacon began to talk to me. He told me everything, Mr. Boyerson, before he died. And if you will hand me over a thousand dollars I’ll keep quiet until you get out of town. But it will have to be now, for Jane Shannon will talk to Ransom in the morning.”
“Why, what do you mean?”
Boyerson spoke with a cold, contained sort of rage that was more alarming than a burst of temper. He thrust his head forward and stared at the girl in so menacing a fashion that Big Jim’s hands tightened on the gun that was pointed at Boyerson’s heart.
“Say, you know what I mean!” Dorothy managed to laugh tauntingly. “Want me to say it? Bacon told me you killed Delaney. He said you were mixed up in that killing out in Great Falls, Montana, and that when you started in on your getting money from rich men here, Talbot, who knew about that Montana killing, threatened you. Then you scared him with threats, because he had been out there with you. You could throw the blame on him, for you were a slick lawyer with plenty of pull.
“And you drove Talbot crazy as, one by one, these men killed themselves, driven to it by you. He took the only way out. He told you so when he jumped. He couldn’t stand it any longer. And he was fond of Bill Delaney, and Bill was in your power.