Sidney Zoom raised his eyebrows.
“But there was nothing in here, and I haven’t any felonious intent.”
The heavy-set man rumbled his answer.
“That’s got nothing to do with it. Technically, you’re guilty. You broke and entered.”
Zoom pursed his lips, thinking over the man’s words.
“You’re an officer?” he asked.
“Yes. Frink, head of the county attorney’s investigation squad. Now you tell me what you’re doing here.”
Sidney Zoom spoke rapidly.
“I was figuring on renting an office here.”
“What’s your business?”
“I haven’t any. But I was contemplating opening up an office as a private investigator.”
Frink scowled, moved purposefully forward.
“All right. Now we’ll get down to brass tacks. You ain’t going to open up any office here. You ain’t going to do any private investigating here. You ain’t even going to stay here. You’re going right back to that nice little boat of yours and cast off the mooring lines and get out of here and stay out of here.”
Sidney Zoom stared about him in a bewildered manner.
“Why... why, I never was talked to like that in my life. Why can’t I stay here?” The head of the investigators was now sure of his ground. He moved forward in a bullying manner.
“Because you’re a confounded nuisance. That’s why. You busted in on Sam Gilvert an hour or so ago and insulted him by having your dog go over and smell him. You were prowling around the streets last night... and somebody broke into the county attorney’s office and tried to steal some papers. It was a woman. I cornered her, and somebody smashed me with a club and knocked me out. I don’t know who it was.”
Sidney Zoom raised his eyebrows.
“But what’s that got to do with me? Why should I leave town? You don’t suspect that I hit you with a club, do you?”
The eye of George Frink which was not discolored hardened into an icy stare.
“If I did think that you did it,” he growled, “I’d...”
He didn’t finish his threat.
His eyes slithered away from Sidney Zoom’s, came to rest on the finger-print, colored with the yellow stain.
“What you doing here?” he asked.
“Just looking out of the window,” said Sidney Zoom.
And, as though to give some atmosphere of truth to his statement, he turned, and peered through the dusty, cobwebby glass of the window.
The main street showed below him, across the street, some forty yards up, were the entrances to the county attorney’s office, the windows of the room in which Strome had been killed.
As Sidney Zoom watched, a compact group of men, carrying brief cases, emerged from the entrance to the office building. Carl Purcell, the new county attorney, and his assistants were about to go to the courthouse to carry on the trial of James Crandall, charged with the crime of murder in the first degree.
Frink’s voice was sneering.
“Yeah, you was lookin’ out of the window all right! And I suppose you smeared that yellow chrome over that finger-print to help you see out! What’s a finger-print on a window down in this building got to do with the murder of Frank Strome?”
Sidney Zoom suddenly became confidential.
“If I should tell you, would you keep it a secret? And if it sounds plausible, could I continue to remain here and carry on my investigations?”
Frink poised the gun in his hand, stole a glance at the police dog.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll listen to anything you’ve got to say, but I won’t make any promises.”
Sidney Zoom spoke rapidly, and in a low tone.
“Very well. The account of the shooting, as we have it, is impossible. No one heard the sound of the fatal shot. That’s out of the question. The theory of the prosecution is that the noise made by the exploding bomb of the publicity car on the unemployment drive drowned out the noise of the shot.
“That’s foolish. People who were in the next office would have heard that shot as being distinct from the explosion of the bomb. Moreover, there wasn’t any exploded shell found in the office of the murdered man. Now the gun that was found in there was an automatic. The automatic mechanism would have ejected the empty shell as soon as the weapon was fired. Yet that shell wasn’t found. Of course, the murderer might have crawled around on the floor, picking up the empty shell, but there was no reason for him to do so.
“On the other hand, had that murderer been intent upon removing evidence, he would have undoubtedly taken the automatic from the room with him. If Crandall killed that man, it would have been utterly incredible that he would have gone to the bother of taking the shell from the room, yet leaving the weapon which Could have been traced to him.”
Sidney Zoom regarded the investigator questioningly.
“What’s your theory?” asked Frink.
Zoom lowered his tone, as though giving a sacred confidence.
“That the murderer didn’t kill Strome in his office at all. That the murderer came down here, opened this window and waited. That the stage was set in Strome’s office. That the publicity car came by here, setting off bombs. That the murderer rested an automatic on the sill of the window, and fired through the open window of Strome’s office, killing Strome.”
Frink scowled meditatively.
“Why this office?”
“Because the door was locked. The murderer had to lie in wait with a drawn gun. Naturally, he wouldn’t want to be observed by some person who might chance to come up in the building. So he took pains to see that the door behind him was closed and locked. Then it would have been only natural for him to have locked the door behind him when he left.”
Frink walked to the window, stared.
“Then this would be the finger-print of the murderer?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think the window in Strome’s office was open?”
“Because the papers were scattered all over the floor. It has been the theory of the prosecution that the murderer, making a hasty search for some paper, threw the papers on the desk all over the floor. More natural, the window had been left open, a sudden wind blew the papers over the floor, and the window was subsequently closed before the arrival of the police.”
“Then the window would have been closed... Good Heavens, man! Do you know what your charges imply? They mean that Carl Purcell must have been an accessory!”
Chapter VIII
The Finger-print on the Window
Sidney Zoom nodded, casually.
“Of course. That’s self-evident, even if we can’t prove who it was that did the actual killing. You’ll remember that Strome mentioned the threatening letter he had received was the second threat he had received from Crandall. Yet, when they came to search for the first threat, it couldn’t be found. What undoubtedly happened was that Purcell, seeing the original threat wasn’t dated, simply took it from the files, put it in an envelope, and remailed it to the county attorney.
“The same thing’s true of the gun. It was purchased before Crandall was sent to prison. He’d hardly have had that gun with him all the time he was in prison. It’s natural to suppose, therefore, that the gun had been taken from him by the authorities at the time of his first arrest. Since his crime wasn’t one of violence, the gun naturally wasn’t introduced in evidence. The authorities probably even forgot that they had such a gun. But Purcell could have taken it, secreted it, and planted it for evidence.