Carter shook his head sympathetically, and glanced at me. I arose and picked up the telephone. Without lifting the receiver, I walked as far as the cord would allow me toward the other room. At the connecting door I was brought to a halt. I could stand on the threshold of the other room but could not enter it without releasing the telephone.
Durkin was watching me anxiously.
“It looks like you’re in the clear, Mr. Durkin,” I said. “Providing, of course...”
“You can check my story with the telephone operator,” he offered.
“We’ll do that, of course,” I nodded. “One thing more. Was the hall door of Trumbull’s room unlocked?”
Durkin hesitated. “Well — I don’t know whether it was or not. It easily could have been, though. We were both expecting the bellboy to come up after our baggage.”
“It was unlocked when I got here, Chet,” the sheriff added.
Durkin readily agreed to fingerprinting, although, to tell the truth, I could see little point in it. Obviously, he and Trumbull had been in and out of each other’s rooms throughout the week they had been stopping at the hotel. Moreover, no matter how angry he might have become with Trumbull, he couldn’t have killed him while he was talking over the telephone.
Leaving him with the admonition to remain in town until the affair was cleared up, Sheriff Carter, Todd, and I went back into the other room. There, I saw something that had evaded me on my first inspection.
The reading lamp with which the murder had been committed did not belong on the writing desk or radio as I had first supposed. There was no outlet for it on that side of the room, the side on which Trumbull had been murdered. The only outlet for it was on the reading-stand near the connecting door.
Todd and Carter were quick to seize on this fact.
“Whoever did it,” Todd pointed out, “had to pick the lamp up over here, walk across the room, get behind Trumbull, and then hit him over the head.”
“And Trumbull was too smart a man to sit there and wait for it to happen,” mused Carter. “He’d have put up a fight or hollered or tried to get away. Probably all three.”
“Maybe he was asleep.”
“He’d just got up; barely finished dressing. And he was listening to the radio.” The sheriff shook his head. “No. Trumbull must have seen what was happening, but for some reason he wasn’t alarmed by it.”
“Which poses quite a problem,” I said. “If it was someone he knew — Durkin or practically any of his former associates — he would have been alarmed. On the other hand, if it wasn’t anyone he knew — well, he’d certainly never let a stranger pull anything like that.”
Carter slapped his thigh suddenly. “One of the hotel employees! One of them could have found an excuse to move the lamp, and Trumbull wouldn’t have thought anything of it!”
“Let’s go!” I said.
Todd was left to guard the room and supervise the removal of the body. Carter and I caught the elevator for the basement.
I should say here that the management of the hotel in general and Mr. J. E. Parker, resident manager, in particular, gave us the utmost cooperation throughout our work on the case. At the sheriff's request, Mr. Parker had detained the night employees of the Parker-Kern until they could be questioned, and they were now waiting for us in one of the locker rooms.
Miss Nina Fair, of 3457 Burk Street, was the night operator. She confirmed Durkin’s statement that both he and Trumbull had had 5:30 calls.
“The keys are right together on the board, and I rang them both at the same time,” she declared. “Mr. Durkin answered first, then Mr. Trumbull.”
“You’re positive it was Mr. Trumbull?”
“Why... who else could it have been?”
Sheriff Carter hesitated. “Well,” he drawled, at last, “it could have been Durkin. Their rooms connect. I’m not saying that it was him, and all this is in strict confidence. But—”
“I know Mr. Trumbull’s voice.” The girl was positive. “Anyway, Mr. Trumbull and Mr. Durkin were both on the wire at the same time.”
“But you said Mr. Durkin answered his phone first.”
“I don’t mean when I first called them,” said Miss Fair. “It was a couple of minutes afterward. Right after Mr. Trumbull hung up some lady called him from outside. I connected her right away, but she hung up as soon as he answered, and Mr. Trumbull accused me of cutting them off. While I was trying to explain, Mr. Durkin picked up his receiver and put in a call to New York.”
There could be no doubting that kind of testimony.
“Do you know who the lady was who called Mr. Trumbull?”
“No, I don’t.”
“What time was it when Durkin started talking to New York?”
“It was 6:02 when I finally got his party for him. He talked until 6:10.”
“Do you know what the conversation was about?”
“I know he was talking to his lawyer, and it was about suing Mr. Trumbull.” The girl colored slightly. “I don’t listen in on calls, of course; I just cut in a few times to see if he was still talking. You see, the signal lights don’t always work as they should on these long-distance calls, and I was worried about Mr. Trumbull’s phone being knocked over. So—”
“So you wanted to tell Mr. Durkin about it as soon as he was through,” Carter concluded, soothingly.
“Yes, sir.”
“One more question,” I said. “After Trumbull’s phone was knocked over, did you hear any sounds of scuffling or anything of that kind in his room?”
Miss Fair shook her head. “No — just the radio and—” Her voice trailed off thoughtfully.
“And what?”
“I heard the door open and close. The hall door.”
Sheriff Carter pounced on this. “How do you know it was the hall door? Why couldn’t it have been the connecting door?”
“Because on cutting into Mr. Durkin’s wire I would have heard the radio going in Mr. Trumbull’s room if the connecting door had been open. I had the cords up on both rooms and I switched from one to the other in just a fraction of a second. I couldn’t listen in on both rooms at the same time but it was so quick that it might just as well have been.”
The room clerk, Frank E. Corbert, who lived at the hotel, was not able to add greatly to our store of information. He had remained behind the desk all night and knew nothing of the crime until Durkin called him. According to Corbert, there had been a number of people going to and fro through the lobby during the last hour of his shift, from 5:30 to 6:30. Many of the guests of the Parker-Kern liked to get in a round of golf, some swimming or horseback riding before the day became too warm. Corbert would not pretend to remember who they were. He did declare that no one had checked out of the hotel.
Harry Knox, of the Cuyamaca Rooms, 119 East 4th Street, was the night elevator operator. A smiling middle-aged man, he had been crippled since birth and could not walk without assistance. He had left his car only once during his shift — for his relief. He “supposed” that he had taken several people to and from Trumbull’s floor between 5:30 and 6:30. He named two of them, but subsequent investigation proved them entirely blameless in the affair.
The remaining night employees, with the exception of those who worked in the coffee-shop and whose duties confined them there, were the lobby porter and the two bellboys. The porter, as practically every other employee could testify, had been occupied in the lobby all night, and had been too busy to be interested in the pleasure-hunting guests.