“So I grabbed her hand and we ran away from the window and dashed for the side door. We played hide and seek around there for a while until the people walked around the other side of the house, then we ran out and jumped in her car and drove away.”
“You saw those people?”
“Yes, after we’d got out of the house. It was Sam Beckett and John Farnham. They didn’t see us. Farnham was evidently selling the place to Beckett. Anyway, I let Elizabeth drive me back to San Rodolpho, and I waited until evening and then telephoned Beryl. I didn’t want to tell Beryl that I was in San Rodolpho, so I told her I was just leaving Fort Bixling — and well, that’s all there was to it. I stuck around there, took the night bus, and came up here.
“Now, Elizabeth must have uncovered some clue to. something she didn’t want me to know about. After she took me back to San Rodolpho she must have turned around and driven right back up here. She told me she had a bad headache and was going up to her room and go to bed. And by that time I was thinking of Beryl. Elizabeth had been all right to kill a little time with when I was down where I couldn’t see Beryl, but once I could get up here I was kicking myself for the time I’d wasted out of my furlough. When a soldier’s in a strange town and is lonely, he’ll do anything just, to talk with some friendly girl.
“Well, that was it. I’d promised her I’d go up to the Higbee place with her and look it over, and I went, and that’s all there was to it as far as I know.”
“And you left your cigarette case there?” Beryl asked.
“Yes.”
“But you had one the next morning when you—”
Roy said, “I felt miserable about that. You see, Beryl, you sent me the cigarette case for Christmas, but I already had one cigarette case, so I used it for a spare. Then after I lost your — well, I intended to go back to the Higbee place and pick up the one with the engraving on it, but the one I showed you this morning was the spare. It was silver, about the same type as the one you gave me except for the engraving, and I held it so you couldn’t see that the engraving wasn’t on it. I was afraid that I couldn’t explain to you about Elizabeth without you getting sore.”
“You mustn’t feel that way, Roy — ever.”
“I know,” he said, “now. But I wasn’t sure.”
A car drew up outside. The sound of excited voices mingled with hurried steps. A perfunctory knock on the door was followed by a turning of the knob and the influx of an excited group.
“There they are!” Lyons proclaimed dramatically.
District Attorney Rush Medford demanded angrily, “What’s the idea?”
“Idea of what?” the sheriff drawled innocently.
“Spiriting these people away.”
The sheriff’s eyebrows went up. “We didn’t spirit them anywhere. We’re questioning them.”
“I’m putting this young man under arrest for the murder of Elizabeth Dow.”
“Got any evidence?” the sheriff asked.
“All the evidence in the world. That is, we will have as soon as we check some fingerprints. Beryl Quinlan thought she was wiping all the fingerprints off that cigarette case and she did — off the outside. But what everyone overlooked was the fact that at some time when the case had been empty and the owner was filling it with fresh cigarettes, he left his fingerprints on the inside, back of the cigarettes.
“Mr. Walworth very shrewdly deduced he’d find fingerprints there and carefully removed the cigarettes, then dusted the interior of the case, and we got some very fine latents. In my official capacity as district attorney of this County, Sheriff, I order you to take this man into custody.”
“Suit yourself, but I’m not going to be the one to swear out the complaint,” Bill Eldon drawled.
“I will swear out the complaint,” Martin Walworth said, but then added hastily, “in the event it appears that this young man’s fingerprints check with the latents I found on the inside of the cigarette case.”
“We’ll determine that in short order,” the district attorney said.
They drove to the courthouse. Walworth made prints of Roy Jasper’s fingertips. There was no concealing his anxiety as Walworth focused a magnifying glass on the latent prints and then compared them with the prints he had taken from Jasper’s fingers.
Suddenly his face broke into a smile. He nodded triumphantly to the district attorney. “I think congratulations are in order,” he said. “We have the right man!” He snapped the cigarette case shut with something of a flourish.
The night had turned clear and calm. Wintry stars blazed down with steady splendor. The pulsing throb of the motor on Sam Beckett’s tractor punctuated the cold silence. The tractor headlights cast twin rows of illumination down the field which surrounded the old Higbee place.
The murder of Elizabeth Dow had been a dramatic chapter in Sam Beckett’s farming operations. But, murder or no murder, the plowing had to be done, and Sam Beckett on the tractor was slowly rolling the soil into furrows which streamed out behind the tractor-driven plow.
Sheriff Eldon parked the County car at the gate and said to George Quinlan, “Looks as though we’re going to have to walk, George. We can’t drive this car through that freshly plowed ground.”
Together the two men trudged along the plowed furrows, sinking to their ankles in the soft soil. They reached the strip of hard ground where the plows had not yet bitten into the soil, and walked more rapidly along the old abandoned roadway to where the Higbee house loomed as a massive shadow against the stars.
“Think there’s something we’ve overlooked?” Quinlan asked anxiously.
“Gosh, yes,” the sheriff admitted, “lots and lots of things we’ve overlooked. The human mind just ain’t thorough enough to look for all the things it should see, or even to see the things that are yelling for attention. But that message now. Higbee said, ‘The joke is behind the joker.’ Now that must mean something.”
“But what?” Quinlan asked.
“Well, now,” the sheriff said, “the old-time kings used to have ’em — the little fellows with bells that danced around and made jokes.”
“Well?”
“I noticed that one of the pictures there was of a court scene with people talking, and this here court jester or joker with his cap and bells was out in the front part of the picture doing a little dance. Now you know that just might be what old Higbee had reference to.”
“Could be,” Quinlan agreed without enthusiasm. “By gosh, Bill, I hope you’re right.”
The sheriff said, “We gotta be right, George. They’ve got us in a vise and they’re beginning to screw it pretty tight.”
They entered the house, and the sheriff, using his flashlight, led the way into the big front room where a rat, perched defiantly on the back of what had once been an overstuffed chair, regarded them with glittering, malevolent eyes. The beam of the sheriff’s flashlight fastened on the picture titled Court Scene in the Middle Ages.
There were the monarchs, the court beauties resplendent with dresses cut low in front, billowing out behind. There were statesmen gathered in a serious little group, and in the foreground was the court jester waving his fool’s scepter, dancing and grinning, the bells on his cap jiggled into wild motion by his gyrations.
Quinlan approached the picture and tilted it out from the wall. His face, illuminated by reflections from the beam of the sheriff’s spotlight, showed bitter disappointment.
“Wait a minute,” the sheriff told him reassuringly. “You can’t expect a man as smart as Higbee to have just pushed something up behind a picture where an accidental jar would have knocked it to the floor. When he said behind the joker, he really meant what he said. It must be behind the joker.”