Gramps moved so that for a moment he stood between the couple and Nita Moline. The woman promptly pushed Gramps to one side so she could get a good view. The man also looked at Miss Moline, his face heavy, unintelligent, and without emotion.
“Well?” Duryea asked, irritated.
The man slowly nodded his head. At the same time, the woman began nodding with such vigor that her coarse, stringy bobbed hair swished back and forth.
Duryea, suddenly realizing the trick Gramps was playing on him, jumped to his feet. “All right,” he said irritably to Gramps, “that’s enough. Get out! Get these people out of here.”
“Yes, sir,” Gramps said, and to the couple he had brought in, “That’s all the district attorney wants. You may go now.”
Duryea’s irritation didn’t decrease as he realized that Gramps had counted on being abruptly ordered from the office, and was capitalizing on the situation.
Scowling blackly, Duryea watched them leave the office, motioned to Miss Stevens to close the door, and then, still irritated, turned back to Miss Moline.
The haughty shell had dropped from her. Her lips were quivering as she fought a losing battle to hold her self-control, then suddenly, with a wild, half-hysterical sob, she flung her head down on her arms.
“I’m sorry,” Duryea apologized.
“Oh, I shouldn’t have done it! I might have known that someone somewhere would have seen me. I was afraid of it when you brought that other couple in. As soon as you did that, I knew what you were after. I—”
Duryea rapidly readjusted his mental perspective. “I think,” he said, in a voice of kindly dignity, “that you’d better tell me the whole truth now, Miss Moline.”
She said, “I... when did these people see me?”
Duryea said, “Before I say anything else, Miss Moline, I’m going to give you an opportunity to make a complete statement.”
Duryea stepped to the door of his office, said to Miss Stevens, “Will you bring your book, Miss Stevens? I want you to take down a statement.”
When his secretary had settled herself with her notebook in front of her, Duryea nodded to Miss Moline. “Very well,” he said quietly, “go ahead.”
Miss Moline, avoiding his eyes, said, “I didn’t tell you the whole truth.”
“About the time you first came to the yacht?”
“Yes.”
“Suppose now, Miss Moline, you tell me just exactly what did happen?”
“I was up here Saturday afternoon.”
“Saturday afternoon!” Duryea exclaimed, and then, realizing suddenly the necessity of keeping surprise from his voice, said, “Just go right ahead, Miss Moline.”
“Do you want me to tell you the whole thing?”
“Yes.”
“Well, as I told you, Addison wanted me to come on this cruise. I gathered it was an important affair, that he had something to discuss. I couldn’t get away on Saturday, just as I’ve told you. I had an appointment with my hairdresser and...”
“Yes, you’ve explained that. Go ahead and tell me the rest of it.”
“About one on Saturday Addison telephoned me.”
“Where were you?”
“At my hairdresser’s.”
“And where was Mr. Stearne?”
“At Santa Delbarra. At the yacht club, I believe.”
“What did he want?”
“He asked me how soon I could get away from the hair-dresser’s. I told him that it would be around two. He asked me to have the hairdresser hurry things up as much as possible. He said he wanted me to find out where Pearl Right was, and if she wasn’t home, to check up and find where Warren Hilbers was, and then get in touch with him and let him know.”
“He told you where to get in touch with him?”
“Yes. He said I could call him at the Santa Delbarra Yacht Club, and they’d send a messenger out to the yacht.”
“And what did you do?”
“I had the hairdresser hurry through with my appointment and went to Pearl Right’s. She wasn’t home. The maid seemed rather evasive about it.”
“You knew Warren Hilbers?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Stearne wanted you to find out if Mrs. Right was with her brother?”
“Yes.”
“And where her brother was?”
“That’s right.”
“What did you do?”
“I found Pearl wasn’t at home. I called some friends over at Catalina and found out Warren and Pearl had been over there ever since early in the morning — oh, around nine or ten o’clock.”
“Then what?”
“That yachting crowd quite frequently go over in yachts and then rent a cottage. Sometimes one yachting party will have one by itself. Sometimes two or three will get together and rent a cottage between them — a place where they can make headquarters when they’re on shore, get baths and so forth. I found out that Warren and Pearl had been seen zipping around the island, and then, later on, Warren had been seen in the boat all by himself, without anyone with him. So I thought he must have rented a cottage and Pearl was there. I asked my friends what cottage Warren usually rented, and they said one owned by a Mrs. Raleigh.”
“Did you try to call Mrs. Right at that cottage?”
“Not then. That was later — late Sunday afternoon.”
“Warren Hilbers is a yachting enthusiast?”
“Yes. He doesn’t care for cruisers. He goes in for speedboats — anything under thirty-five miles an hour he considers slow. — I think his sister likes it, too. She put up the money for his last speedboat.”
“And that was all Mr. Stearne wanted to know? Just where they were?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say why?”
“No. I thought that perhaps it was because he wanted to be certain — well, I don’t know.”
“Certain of what?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Go ahead,” Duryea said. “What did you do after you’d located them?”
“I tried to get Addison on the telephone. The yacht club said he was out, and they didn’t know just when he’d be back. Well, I knew it wasn’t going to take very long to run up to Santa Delbarra if I stepped on it, and I wanted to talk with Addison.”
“What about?”
“I wanted to find out whether there was going to be any trouble between Pearl and Arthur, because if there was, I didn’t want to be mixed up in it.”
“So you drove to Santa Delbarra?”
“Yes.”
“Now what time did you get here?”
She said, “That I don’t know, Mr. Duryea. It was right around four o’clock, perhaps a few minutes before, perhaps a few minutes afterwards.”
“Did you go aboard the yacht?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I was standing on the wharf when a person from one of the other yachts came out to untie a dinghy. I asked him if he’d drop me off at the Gypsy Queen, and he said he’d be glad to. So I jumped in, and he rowed me by the Gypsy Queen, and I went aboard.”
“And you saw both Right and Addison Stearne?”
“No. I saw Addison.”
“You didn’t see Right?”
“No.”
“Just how did that happen?” Duryea asked.
“As I got aboard the yacht, Addison was just coming out of the cabin.”
“Which cabin, the upper one or...”
“That’s right, the upper one, the pilot house.”
“What happened?”
“He seemed very much surprised when he saw me, and I think he was irritated. He motioned with his fingers on his lips for silence, and led me over toward the bow. He said, ‘I told you to telephone. I didn’t want you to come up.’ ”
“And what did you say?”
“I told him that I wanted to know where I stood and what it was all about. He said for me not to worry, to come up early Sunday morning, and everything would be all right.”