“You see, Bacon told me all about it, Boyerson. But nobody else heard it. I was there alone with him right after the shot. You got Rose Raddock because Gail Delaney, the woman you loved, told you about the note in the pocket of that dressing gown, the note Bacon himself wrote on Ed Hopeton’s paper. On my typewriter, I bet. But Ransom was too clever to catch Hope-ton in his net, even if the gun in the dead man’s hand was his. Ransom is a smart bird, Mr. Boyerson.”
“You must be mad!” roared Boyerson furiously. “How dare you come in here and tell me this rot? I don’t know Bacon. I was never in the Wallace house. I’ll call the police and have you arrested!”
Dorothy giggled nervously.
“Say, that would be a good one. Go ahead and call. I can see you. Fork out a thousand dollars and as far as I am concerned, Bert Bacon died with his mouth shut. But you only got until Ransom sees Jane Shannon.”
In the darkness, Big Jim grinned. The girl was good.
“Get out of here,” snapped Boyerson. “You little gold digger! Get out of my apartment at once.”
“Oh, sure, I’ll go,” said Dorothy, turning to the door. “But I’ll stop off at headquarters.”
There followed a terrible moment for Big Jim. While Dorothy Wilde walked down that long corridor to the door, each step she took seemed to fall on his twitching nerves. Could it be that Boyerson was not their man? But everything pointed to the lawyer.
The girl had almost reached the door. And then Boyerson sprang forward.
“Come back here, you!” he snarled.
And with a vast breath quickly smothered, Big Jim knew they had won.
Dorothy had turned. Insolently, with one hand on her hip, she walked toward the lawyer.
“Well?” she asked.
“How can I be sure you’ll keep your mouth shut?” grated Boyerson as he stepped to an inlaid desk which stood near one of the hiding places of the police.
“I don’t know,” said Dorothy. “I’ll just swear I will. What would I get out of it if I talked after you paid me? Nobody else would pay me anything. The cops wouldn’t.”
Boyerson was making out a check, and, as he signed his name to it he signed his death warrant. The weird, mysterious witch murders were at an end! Mysterious still to Big Jim, but he cared little for the explanation of them. He had his man. Ransom could take care of the rest.
Chapter LIV
A Woman in Montana
Dorothy Wilde took the check from Boyerson’s hand and scanned it through her heavily made-up lashes.
“Suppose you stop payment on this, big boy?” she wanted to know.
“Don’t worry,” said Boyerson. “I dare say you’ve lied to me, but I can’t take a chance on you. You know too much.”
“Well, you better get a move on,” said Dorothy as she placed the check in her beaded bag and turned to the door. “That lieutenant gets up early.”
Boyerson thrust his hands into his pockets as Dorothy turned away. Big Jim, fearing that the man might, after all, shoot the girl, sprang from his hiding place and thrust both arms through Boyerson’s from the rear, taking him utterly by surprise. The other two men stepped out of their corners.
A sharp ring came at the door. Dorothy opened it to Ransom and Sergeant Pierce.
As he passed the girl, Ransom gave her a pat on the shoulder.
“Good kid,” he approved. “It worked, did it?”
“Worked!” cried Dorothy delightedly. “He’s your man, all right, lieutenant. I certainly had him going with Bacon’s confession and all the dope you had told me.”
When Ransom reached Big Jim’s side, Boyerson had been forced into a chair and handcuffs snapped on his wrists.
“Boyerson,” asked Ransom, standing before the cornered man, “why did you do it?”
Richard Boyerson was a brilliant man. He had played a wild game and had lost. He knew when he was beaten. He wasted no time in useless denials. He even smiled sardonically into Ransom’s eyes.
“A woman, first, out in Montana,” he said with a shrug. “Women have always been the ruin of me. This girl to-night — she was your tool? It was a trap?”
Ransom nodded. “A trap, Boyerson. Bacon is dead all right, but he didn’t talk.”
“You’re honest with me,” said Boyerson. “Thanks. I have no chance now, however. I’m lawyer enough to know that. And when Jane speaks—”
Ransom said nothing. Of no use now to tell this man that Jane Shannon lay cold and dead and speechless.
“It was a woman in Montana where I first met Talbot,” said Boyerson presently. “Years ago I met Talbot out there, but this happened more recently. We had gone back there together on a business trip. About five years ago it was. There were two men whom this woman seemed to prefer to me. I knew that if they were out of the way I would have a chance. She had almost told me so. I was mad about her and ready to do anything to win her.
“I killed one of these men with aconitine which I had taken from his own amateur laboratory, and I killed him on a night when I knew my second rival was going to his home to see him. After he died, I waited there for the other man, and when he came I shot him, fired a shot into the first chap’s head, and placed the gun in the first chap’s hand.
“I hoped the cops might think it suicide and murder, and I involved a young fool who had been hanging around Ida for weeks, for it was his gun. I had not figured in any way in the case, and I needed to use this kid. It was strange that he had the same name as the girl who testified to-day for young Delaney — Darien. That upset me a bit, Ransom.”
“She was his sister,” said Ransom softly.
“Ah!” For a moment amazement seemed to keep Boyerson silent. “Well, life is strange,” he went on. “Not much use going wrong. It traps you sooner or later. You see, out west I was not Boyerson. Years before, I practiced law under my own name, that of Gray Patricks. When Talbot and I went back I went as Patricks. Of course Lucius knew all this. I had a rather shady past out there and he started to worry me about it after the crimes, after that Darien boy went to jail. But I had him fixed. I knew too much about him in the old days for him to get smart with me.”
“Then you never saw Darien’s sister in Montana?” asked Ransom.
“No. I was out of there the moment those chaps died. I was not even served with a subpoena. I worked it cleverly and I kept away.”
“And afterward? When you came east?”
“I had learned then how easy it was to commit crime,” mused the lawyer. “I wanted big money. I saw how I could intimidate Talbot. I got the idea of getting stuff on other men and working them. And then the witchcraft murders broke in Pennsylvania. I read up a lot on them. I saw in my work how you can twist some people around by fear — superstitious fear. I used the cross of salt, the old voodoo warning of trouble. And people kept quiet about it.
“I suppose they laughed at it until they began to know that some anonymous person meant business, and then the less they said the better. I got all sorts of stuff on wealthy men I went about with. Crooked card tricks, affairs with women, rotten politics, graft. I used it all and they paid me well. Some of them ended their lives when they got tired paying. I sat pretty then, too, for they were obvious suicides.
“And then Talbot jumped out of his office window. He did it because he knew too much and his conscience drove him mad, and because I had forced him to make a will leaving all his money to Bill Delaney, the husband of the woman I meant to marry. I intended to get rid of Bill. I had plenty on him and I had been demanding sums of money from him for some time. Of course, neither he nor any of the other men knew who I was.”
“But Bacon and Jane Shannon came into it,” reminded Ransom.