“Purcell isn’t a gunman. Therefore, he forgot that he should have planted an empty shell to make the murder appear convincing.”
Frink whistled.
“Man alive, but you go after big game when you start. What possible motive would Purcell have had to kill Strome?”
Sidney Zoom smiled.
“The motive of greed and of gain. Charges were about to be placed against Sam Gilvert, the banker. The file in that case disappeared. Purcell was a deputy. Now he is the county attorney. He inherited the office, so to speak.”
Frink shook his head.
“No. Your motive isn’t strong enough to get you anywhere. You insinuate that Gilvert paid Purcell to sneak the papers out of the file, that Purcell got that money, and that he was afraid of discovery, so he wanted to cover up that theft. Then you insinuate that he wanted to get the job of his superior officer, and so he murdered him. That’s far-fetched. It isn’t a strong enough motive.”
“There’s logic in that,” Zoom said. “Yet we know that the crime couldn’t have been committed the way Purcell claims. We know that, if it wasn’t committed in that manner, then Purcell must be trying to conceal the manner in which it actually was committed.
“But we can let Purcell go for the minute. We’re on the trail of the real killer down here. I think this fingerprint will give us sufficient evidence. Somewhere around here, in the litter of rubbish around the room, may be the empty shell from the gun that really killed Strome.
“That must have been an automatic of the same calibre as the one in the office, the one that was found there. The distance isn’t over thirty yards or so in a direct line. A good shot could have hit a mark the size of a man’s body at that distance. In fact, he could have even picked the exact spot on the body that he intended to hit.”
The chief investigator for the county attorney’s office put the automatic he held back in its shoulder holster.
“Guy,” he said, “you win. We’ll find out more as we go along, but you sure have got the case doped out so it sounds reasonable to me. I’m going to cooperate with you and give you all the assistance I can.
“But this is a small county. We’re messing around with some pretty big men when we start after Purcell and Sam Gilvert. We’ve got to be absolutely certain that we’re going to make a case before we even breathe a word about it.”
“Naturally,” Zoom observed, “we will not go running into court and shooting off our faces. We’ll collect the evidence. In time, if we can, to save Crandall from conviction, we’ll announce that evidence. If we haven’t built up a case, we’ll let him be convicted, and then get a pardon from the governor.”
Frink drummed upon the back of the chair with the fingers of his right hand. His eyes narrowed to slits.
“Listen,” he said, “we’ve got to get those finger-prints photographed. That’s the first thing. Then we’ll have to pull the whole window out and take it down to the vault where we can keep it for the jury to look at.”
Sidney Zoom nodded.
“You got a camera?” asked Frink, “one that’ll take finger-prints?”
Zoom shook his head ruefully.
“I’m sorry. I certainly should have had one, but I was careless and neglected to include it with my filings when I came down here.”
“Okay,” said Frink, “it doesn’t make any difference. You go and get mine. I’ll stay here and watch the prints so I can testify afterwards that nothing happened to ’em, see? My office is on the lower floor of the courthouse. You’ll find a blond kid at the desk. She’ll give you the camera. Tell her that I sent you, and that I said to keep quiet about it afterwards. I don’t want a whole lot of talk around town about this thing before we crack it.”
Zoom allowed himself to be dominated by the positive personality of the other. “Come, Rip,” he said to the dog, and left the room.
But he did not descend the stairs. Instead, he waited in the corridor, motioning the dog to silence. For a good ten seconds he stood so, and then he returned to the door, gently turned the knob, and pushed the door open.
Frink was standing by the window, his face grave with concern. His right hand was extended. He was staring at the whorls of the fingertips with a magnifying glass. Then, from time to time, he would check these with the finger-print on the glass.
Sidney Zoom betrayed his presence by a low laugh. It was a mirthless laugh of hollow mockery, and there was challenge in it.
Frink whirled.
It took him one swift instant to take in the situation. Then his hand flicked to the holster where he kept his weapon.
Sidney Zoom spoke casually.
“Take him, Rip.”
The dog had waited patiently for that moment. Twice when he would have defended his master against this man, he had been restrained by a command. Now the dog went across the room, belly to the floor, like a tawny streak. And then he was in the air.
Frink fired, once, and he might as well have taken a snapshot at a streak of lightning. The dog’s teeth closed on the wrist of the gun arm. The dog’s weight hurled itself in that peculiar twisting motion which is taught to police dogs, as a part of their training, on the continent. Frink screamed with pain. The gun thudded to the floor.
Sidney Zoom rushed in and grabbed the left arm.
“All right, Rip,” he said.
The dog dropped to the floor. Sidney Zoom’s right hand snatched the handcuffs from the investigator’s hip pocket. With a swift dexterity, he flipped the handcuff over the left wrist.
“The other hand,” he rasped.
The investigator flung his weight against Sidney Zoom in a lunging attack, halted as a deep-throated, ominous growl came from the dog on the floor.
“You can either give me that wrist, or the dog will get it for me,” said Sidney Zoom.
The investigator’s face was sallow. Perspiration beaded his forehead. He extended his wrist, with the prints of the dog’s fangs still imbedded in the skin, through which red drops welled slowly.
Sidney Zoom clicked the handcuff.
“Of course,” he said, “you were too shrewd in such matters to leave finger-prints. But I thought I could raise a sufficient doubt in your own mind to get you to betray yourself.”
The handcuffed man muttered an exclamation.
“Slick, eh? All right, try and convict me. Try and get the evidence that’ll show that I did anything. You can’t prove a damned thing. A jury will acquit me within ten seconds of the time the case is put up to them.”
Sidney Zoom’s tone was ominous.
“Man-made law,” he said, “is a thing of makeshifts, of injustices, of technicalities that make a mockery of justice. But there is a higher court. Laugh if you wish, but the time will come when you will realize that the way of the oppressor is hard. You have sought to blame murder upon the innocent. And I tell you that there is a price you will have to pay — a frightful price.”
Frink laughed, yet the laugh was nervous. There had been something solemnly prophetic in the voice of Sidney Zoom, a something that was as the tolling of a bell.
“Bah!” he said, “you talk like some ranting reformer...”
Sidney Zoom took handkerchiefs from the man’s pocket and thrust them into his mouth, fashioned an effective gag. He took some fine, strong cord from his own pocket, and trussed Frink’s legs. Then he motioned to the dog, and left the room, leaving behind him a man who could move neither hand nor foot, who could not even speak.
Chapter IX
A Confession
He descended the stairs, went at once to a telephone, got Gilvert’s bank on the wire, and demanded that Sam Gilvert be put on the telephone. He told the clerk who answered that he was the assistant of Bill Dunbar, the lawyer who was defending James Crandall, and he told the banker the same thing, when he had that individual on the wire.