“I’m for calling in the press,” Sellers said. “I’d book him on suspicion of murder.”
Hobart thought it over for a moment, then said, “I don’t like it, but if it’ll help you personally, we can stand the gaff.”
I said to Inspector Hobart, “There should have been some clues there in the room where Downer was murdered.”
Sellers grinned. “Listen to him now. He’s telling you how to investigate a homicide.”
The Inspector motioned Sellers with his hand to keep quiet. “What sort of clues, Lam?” he asked.
I said, “The guy was stabbed in the back.”
“That’s right.”
“Fell forward on his face.”
“Right.”
I said, “If somebody was putting a lot of pressure on Downer, he’d hardly have turned his back on them.”
“Maybe he didn’t know the other person was in the room,” Sellers said.
“Maybe,” I agreed.
Inspector Hobart was interested. “Keep talking,” he said. “What do you think happened?”
I said, “Downer had just finished opening the trunk when he was killed.”
“Why was he opening the trunk when he knew it wasn’t his trunk?” Inspector Hobart asked.
“That,” I said, “is what I’m telling you. How do you know he didn’t switch trunks? Why did he get killed as soon as it became apparent someone had switched trunks?”
“You got the answer to that question?” Hobart asked.
“I may have,” I said.
“You’re in San Francisco now,” he said. “The extent to which you come out of this, if you do come out of it without losing a lot of hide, will be measured by the extent to which you co-operate with the San Francisco police.”
“That,” I said, “depends on what you mean by co-operation.”
“When we co-operate up here we do a reasonably good job,” Hobart said.
“Watch him,” Sellers warned. “He’s a smart little bastard and he’ll out-trade you if you give him a chance.”
I said, “Let’s concede that Standley Downer had a trunk made. He had a secret compartment in it. He wanted to use that secret compartment for storing fifty nice new one-thousand-dollar bills. Now then, where did he intend to get those bills?”
“Go on, wise guy,” Sellers said. “You’re telling the story. We’ve got lots of time. Tell us, where did he expect to get the fifty one-thousand-dollar bills?”
“He expected to highjack them,” I said.
“From whom?”
“From Baxley’s partner.”
“Baxley’s partner!” Sellers exclaimed. “What are you talking about? Standley Downer was Baxley’s partner.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Everything points to it. The fact that Baxley got in a panic and called Hazel Downer and... when he knew we were following him...”
Sergeant Sellers’ voice, which had started out full of confidence, began to lose some of its assurance and finally trailed away into silence.
“Exactly,” I said. “You’ve made the one mistake an investigator should never make. You’ve started out with an assumption and then you’ve tried to twist the evidence to support that assumption.”
“All right,” Sellers said. “What do you think?”
“I think,” I said, “that Baxley was smarter than you thought he was.”
“Go ahead.”
“Baxley and his partner both knew that Downer was a dangerous man, that he was on to what they were doing. When Baxley found out you were following him he deliberately led you to Hazel Downer. She was the red herring he wanted to draw across your trail so you wouldn’t get wise to his real partner.”
“All right, Pint Size” Sellers said, trying to appear jaunty, “I am tuning in on your broadcast so you may as well go ahead with the commercial. Who was the partner?”
“I don’t know.”
Sellers’ face began to get red. “You mean you’ve taken me all around the rosebush in order to tell me that you don’t know where you’re going?”
I shook my head. “I know who I think he is.”
“Who?”
“Dover C. Inman, the proprietor of the Full Dinner Pail. I was laying a foundation to go to work on him when you muscled in and gummed up my play.”
“What does the Full Dinner Pail got to do with it?” he asked.
I said, “You had all the knowledge in your possession right from the start. You just didn’t use your head. You made the mistake of being decoyed by a red herring and...”
“Never mind playing that same old tune,” Sellers said. “I’ve heard it so much I’m sick of it. Never mind my mistakes, smart guy. What makes you think Inman is the one that had the money?”
“Because,” I said, “Baxley went there and got some sandwiches and had them out in a paper bag. Then he sat and ate the sandwiches and put the paper bag in the trash box. Why did he do that?”
“Because he found out we were watching him.”
I shook my head and said, “After you and your partner followed him out of the drive-in, he found out you were watching him. Everything he did up to that point was prearranged.”
“Then why did he put sandwiches in a bag, and then eat them?”
“Because he had to have a bag so he could put his partner’s fifty grand into the trash box where the partner could get it. He made the switch right under your nose and you were too dumb to get it. Then when you nabbed him, he said you’d taken the whole hundred thousand because he had to give his partner time to get the money and hide it in a safe place.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Sellers asked, but there was just a trace of panic in his voice.
I said, “Look at it this way. If Baxley had ordered those sandwiches to take out, he’d have taken ’em out unless he saw you and became panic-stricken. If he saw you and became panic-stricken, he wouldn’t have eaten the sandwiches. He’d have mushed them up a bit and put them in the bag and thrown them away. But he sat there and ate the sandwiches, cool as a cucumber. Then he threw the paper sack in the trash container, wiped his hands on a napkin, got in his car and started to drive away. Then he spotted you and then was when he decided to drag Downer in as a decoy.
“Put yourself in Baxley’s place. Suppose you were dialing a number and you looked back and saw some officers watching you. Remember, you’re an old hand at the game. You’re a two-time loser. Would you drop the receiver, dash out and jump in a car and try to outrun a squad car from a standing start?
“You’d have done nothing of the sort. You’d have turned back to the telephone and, when someone at the Downer place answered, said, ‘Hold everything. I think some cops are on my tail. You’d better take it on the lam.’ Then you’d put in another dime and dial another number, pretend to talk for a while, hang up, stretch, yawn, and walk leisurely out of the telephone booth.
“You were either going to pick him up or you weren’t. If you were going to pick him up, there was nothing he could do about it. All of that panic stuff was an act he was putting on so that you wouldn’t go back to the one place where he didn’t want you to go — that trash box at the Full Dinner Pail.
“Everything points to the Full Dinner Pail in this thing. That’s where the job was pulled. That’s where the truck drivers of that armored car stopped all the time for a coffee break.
“Of course, I’m not sure it was Inman, the proprietor, who was in on it. It could have been one of the girls, but for my money, it was somebody there at the Full Dinner Pail and that fifty grand was put in the bag that had contained the hamburger sandwiches when Baxley dropped the bag into the container.”
Sellers looked at Inspector Hobart.