“No, dear. Just studying you.”
“When?”
“Before I hooked you, silly. Don’t you know that a hunter always studies the habits of the game he intends to stalk.”
Gramps started to chuckle. “Heh heh heh. Betcha he thought he was sweepin’ ya right off your feet. Didn’t know he was just grabbin’ the bait an’ havin’ the hook sunk in him right up to the gills.”
Duryea sighed. “As though my job didn’t have enough disillusionment.”
The maid came to the door. “Dinner is served,” she said.
Gramps gulped down the last of his cocktail. “You listen to me, son. Don’t let that Harpler girl pull any wool over your eyes. When I’m cold sober, an’ think of her lookin’ at me with that little one-sided smile o’ hers, an’ those steady slate-gray eyes meetin’ mine, as though she didn’t have a thing to conceal, I say to myself, ‘Well, now, you may have to watch this Moline woman, but this here Harpler girl is all wool — virgin wool at that.’ An’ then I get a little bit swacked an’ get to thinkin’ over what she says an’ I’m tellin’ ya she don’t click. Decidin’ somebody was tryin’ to impose on her, so she takes a run out to sea. Afraid some man is gonna make a pass at her, so she locks him in his stateroom. She ain’t kiddin’ me none, Frank Duryea.”
The district attorney put down his empty cocktail glass, conscious of the fact that Milred’s eyes were on him, studying him thoughtfully.
“There may be something she’s concealing in connection with her private affairs,” Duryea said.
Milred said, “Yes, Gramps, we’re going to Catalina tomorrow — definitely. He isn’t to be trusted running around loose, not when he begins to get these complexes.”
They were halfway through dinner when the telephone rang, and the maid announced that Sheriff Lassen was on the line with some important information for Duryea. The district attorney went to the telephone and returned after a few minutes to face the expectant, eager eyes of Gramps Wiggins.
“I’m sorry, Gramps. It’s no go.”
“What?”
“Your theory.”
“What about it?”
“Those glasses have been in the water for some time.”
“What makes you think so?”
“The sheriff got in touch with the oculist who supplied both men with glasses. There’s not a chance on earth that that pair of spectacles had anything to do with either of them.”
“Why not?”
“The prescription is all wrong. The man who owned those spectacles had a left eye which required an enormous correction. The right eye was nearly normal. It’s an unusual combination. The sheriff feels certain they were dropped from some other yacht.”
“Well, what other yacht has been there in the last week?”
“Two or three. The sheriff’s checking up on them just to make sure.”
Gramps grinned. “Well,” he said, “it was a good theory while it lasted.”
“It was, for a fact,” Duryea admitted. “Your theories are all to the good. That diagram you drew of the way the boat swung around with the tide and the position in which the gun was found still indicates something. And the way you handled that third degree of Nita Moline was a masterpiece.”
“That Moline girl again,” Gramps said. “We keep comin’ back to her.”
“What about the place where the gun was found?” Milred asked. “I seem to be losing out.”
Duryea said, “I don’t know whether it’s the effect of the cocktail or the fact that the more I think of it, the more I realize how thoroughly logical and clever it was, but Gramps has darned near demonstrated that the gun was dumped over the side of the yacht sometime after the murder was committed. Now the question is, by whom?”
“Nita Moline?” Milred asked.
“It’s almost a certainty,” Duryea said.
Gramps Wiggins’ knife and fork clattered against the plate. “By gum,” he said. “I’ve got a theory!”
“No, no,” Duryea begged laughingly. “Not another one. Not until after dinner.”
“Yes, sir,” Gramps said. “I got me a damn good theory.”
“Well, what is it?”
“That Harpler girl. When Ted Shale saw her, she was standin’ on the deck o’ the yacht. Shale says she had on a bathin’ suit, an’ there was drops of water glistenin’ on her arms an’ legs. She coulda swum over to that other yacht just as well as not. An’ don’t forget one thing, son. The skiff that belonged to the Gypsy Queen was tied up at the float. That means someone had to leave that yacht sometime after the murders were committed. Now, if it had been a murder an’ suicide, somebody knew about it an’ was on the boat, an’ took the skiff an’ went ashore.”
“The Moline girl,” Milred remarked.
“No, it couldn’t have been her, because she found the skiff tied up at the float. It has to be one o’ two things. Either someone was aboard the yacht an’ rowed ashore, or someone in a bathin’ suit went over to the yacht, found evidences of a murder an’ suicide, ditched the evidence, for reasons best known to himself, an’ then took the skiff ashore so as to make it look like a murder. A girl in a bathin’ suit could have done that. A girl who wasn’t wearin’ a bathin’ suit couldn’t. Don’t go lettin’ this Harpler woman pull a lot o’ wool over your eyes, son. You’re young an’ impressionable, an’ you’re fallin’ for her.”
There was an unmistakable earnestness about Gramps’ plea.
Milred, watching him thoughtfully, turned to Frank Duryea. Under the scrutiny of her eyes, Duryea felt himself flush. The knowledge that he was flushing, added to his embarrassment and his color.
Milred said, without taking her eyes from her husband’s face, “Gramps, before you go, you leave the recipe for that cocktail right here. Mamma is going to need that in her business.”
Chapter 23
Mrs. Gibbs looked up from the newspaper and transfixed her husband with steady scrutiny.
“See by the paper that girl friend of yours was fibbing.”
“What girl friend?”
“You know well enough who I mean.”
“That Moline girl?”
“That’s the one. Looks as though she’s in bad now. She was the last person to see those two men alive.”
“So far as they know now.”
“Well, he was intending to mail a letter shortly before five o’clock, and he never got to the post office with it. You know what that means. He was dead before she was outside the city limits.”
“Oh, don’t keep picking on the girl. I tell you they haven’t anything on her.”
“That’s just like a man, sticking up for her. Trying to tell me that she was nothing to you, that you were so tired you just went to sleep and let her drive. You didn’t pay any attention to her, oh, no. And that picture of her in the paper, why, that was all right, too. ‘Don’t think anything about it, honey. It’s just the way all the women have their pictures taken now. The photographers insist on it.’ ”
Gibbs went on eating his supper in dogged silence.
“What happened — what really and truly happened? When you found her up in Santa Delbarra and brought her back — did you really leave at three o’clock in the morning?”
“I don’t know just what time it was.”
“You found her around midnight. Isn’t that what you said?”
“I guess so.”
“But you didn’t get in here until seven-thirty in the morning.”
“I stopped and had breakfast.”
“Oh, so you had breakfast with her?”
“Of course. I rang her lawyer, and while we were waiting for him to come to his office, we stopped in for a cup of coffee.”
“Stopped in where?”
“At an all-night restaurant.”