“That’ll be almost an endless job,” Quinlan protested.
“Oh, it won’t take us over two or three hours.”
“Two or three hours!” Quinlan stormed. “Here you have a red-hot murder case on your hands, with the district attorney bringing in a consulting criminologist, the cards all stacked against you, the Gazette just fairly itching to lift your political scalp, and you talk about looking through the personal columns for two or three hours. Good heavens, man, if it’s that important why don’t you hire some girl to run through them instead of wasting your time?”
“Take it easy, George. Take it easy!” the sheriff drawled. “You know the County doesn’t give us the money to hire a girl. It expects us to—”
“Bill, there’s something I want to tell you.”
“Sure, sure,” the sheriff said soothingly, “but let’s chase down this name first. I seem to remember it, somebody outside — sort of a Red Cross business. No, that ain’t it, either. It’s a nurse. That’s it! Say, George, ring up the hospital. Ask them if they know anything about a nurse by the name of Dow.”
Quinlan reluctantly called the hospital and after a few moments relayed the information to the sheriff. “They don’t know of anyone.”
“Well, now,” the sheriff said, “that’s too bad. I had a pretty strong hunch that name of Dow was connected with a nurse. Well, I guess we’ve got to dig through these columns of personal mention. Don’t see what else there is to be done.”
“We could—”
Abruptly the door opened. A delegation came trooping into the office, Rush Medford in the lead, Martin Walworth, the criminologist, following behind, then John Farnham, his face a mask of austere self-righteousness, with Bertram Glasco bringing up the rear.
“Sheriff,” the district attorney said, “I want you to meet Martin Walworth,” and then he added reproachfully, “We’ve been trying to get in touch with you all afternoon.”
“I was out of town,” the sheriff said to the district attorney, and put out his hand to the criminologist. “How de do, how are you?”
Walworth’s handshake was perfunctory.
The district attorney, in the voice of a lawyer making a prepared speech, said, “Sheriff, this murder at the Higbee place is an important case. This County can’t afford to let the murderer get away by slipshod methods. At the behest of influential citizens my office has, therefore, called in Martin Walworth, the famous consulting criminologist.”
The sheriff said, “Fine. Who’s he consulting with?”
Medford flushed. “That’s his title. He’s a consulting criminologist.”
“Then he doesn’t consult with anyone?”
“He solves crimes. He advises police officers how to catch criminals.”
“That’s fine, Rush. I’m always willing to take advice from anyone — or is he supposed to give me advice?”
“He’s supposed to solve the crime,” Medford said.
“You mean he isn’t going to give advice? He’s going to just go ahead and solve it all by himself?”
“He’s working with me,” Medford said.
“To solve the case,” Walworth announced calmly, “and I think I am well on the way to solving it.”
“Yes?” the sheriff asked, and then added quite casually, “Sit down, boys.”
“I take it,” Walworth said, disregarding the invitation, “no attempt was ever made to trace that cigarette case which you found.”
“What do you mean, to trace it?”
“To find out who owns it.”
“Well, now, I don’t know just how you’d go about —”
“Exactly,” Walworth interrupted. “However, a moment’s thought should have convinced you that the distinctive part of that case was the engraving. It was obviously done by some jeweler who had sold the case. It took only a few minutes to call the local jewelers and find that none of them had done it. Then I got in touch with the Los Angeles police and asked them to cover the better-class jewelry stores and ask the engravers there. It took less than two hours for that to yield results.”
“Well, now,” the sheriff said, his tone indicating his pleased surprise. “What did you find out?”
“The case was sold by Weed, Sisson and Company to a young woman who paid cash for it. She’s about nineteen years of age, rather tall, slender, dark hair, very dark eyes, and has an unusual speaking voice, a clear flute-like quality that is definitely noticeable. She weighs about a hundred and fifteen, and wears a pale pink tourmaline ring on the finger of her left hand.”
Quinlan cleared his throat.
“Anything else?” the sheriff asked quickly.
“And we’ve located the car that left that track, the one that drove out of the Higbee place after you had gone away and left the place without any guard and without making a search to see if an automobile was parked anywhere in the field.”
“Now wait a minute, son,” the sheriff said. “You mean the car that drove in and then turned around and drove out?”
“I mean the car that drove out,” Walworth said. “At least that’s all we know. You saw the tracks going out, and that’s all you could and did see. If there were tracks going in, the tracks made by the car going out obliterated them.”
“Well, now,” the sheriff said with something of a drawl, “we can talk about that later. I saw tracks going in and out. But you said you’d located the car.”
“Well, we’ve located the license number of the car, and we’ve wired to find out the owner of the car. The report will come in here.”
“Well, well, you might as well sit down, boys,” the sheriff said.
They hesitated a moment; then to the tune of scraping chairs they seated themselves into an inquisitorial half circle.
“How did you locate the car?” Quinlan asked, and his voice sounded dry and husky.
“The Gazette hadn’t been on the street more than twenty minutes,” Lyons announced triumphantly, “until a service-station man rang up. He had sold gas to a car and happened to notice that there was a gouge in the right front tire. He spoke to the young woman who was driving it, a brunette about nineteen with a very sweet clear voice. She said she didn’t want to do anything about it, but the owner of the service station thought he might write her a follow-up, and see if he couldn’t get a repair job out of it, so he jotted down her license number. It—”
The telephone rang sharply.
Walworth said, “That will be the call, I guess,” and reached for the phone.
Bill Eldon’s shoulder managed to get in the way. “I’m taking my phone calls,” he said, and scooped up the telephone. “Sheriff’s office,” he announced.
But the voice of Central said, “I have a person-to-person call for Mr. Martin Walworth. Is he there?”
So the sheriff surrendered the telephone with what grace he could and watched the criminologist’s face as he heard the metallic sounds which emanated from the receiver.
“You’re certain?” Walworth asked into the telephone, then snapped, “Spell it.”
After that he hung up and turned to face the others.
“You folks know a Beryl M. Quinlan of 1792 Walnut Drive?” he asked, his eyes, hard and accusing, boring into those of George Quinlan.
It was impossible to miss the collective gasp which emanated from the others.
Martin Walworth continued to stare at George Quinlan. “Is she a relative of yours?”