“Yes, sir,” he said and went downstairs, the others following him.
I closed Kavalov’s door and went across to the library, where I phoned the sheriff’s office in the county seat. I talked to a deputy named Hilden. When I had told him my story he said the sheriff would be at the house within half an hour.
I went to my room and dressed. By the time I had finished, the valet came up to tell me that everybody was assembled in the front room — everybody except the Ringgos and Mrs. Ringgo’s maid.
I was examining Kavalov’s bedroom when the sheriff arrived. He was a white-haired man with mild blue eyes and a mild voice that came out indistinctly under a white mustache. He had brought three deputies, a doctor and a coroner with him.
“Ringgo and the valet can tell you more than I can,” I said when we had shaken hands all around. “I’ll be back as soon as I can make it. I’m going to Sherry’s. Ringgo will tell you where he fits in.”
In the garage I selected a muddy Chevrolet and drove to the bungalow. Its doors and windows were tight, and my knocking brought no answer.
I went back along the cobbled walk to the car, and rode down into Farewell. There I had no trouble learning that Sherry and Marcus had taken the two-ten train for Los Angeles the afternoon before, with three trunks and half a dozen bags that the village expressman had checked for them.
After sending a telegram to the Agency’s Los Angeles branch, I hunted up the man from whom Sherry had rented the bungalow.
He could tell me nothing about his tenants except that he was disappointed in their not staying even a full two weeks. Sherry had returned the keys with a brief note saying he had been called away unexpectedly.
I pocketed the note. Handwriting specimens are always convenient to have. Then I borrowed the keys to the bungalow and went back to it.
I didn’t find anything of value there, except a lot of fingerprints that might possibly come in handy later. There was nothing there to tell me where my men had gone.
I returned to Kavalov’s.
The sheriff had finished running the staff through the mill.
“Can’t get a thing out of them,” he said. “Nobody heard anything and nobody saw anything, from bedtime last night, till the valet opened the door to call him at eight o’clock this morning, and saw him dead like that. You know any more than that?”
“No. They tell you about Sherry?”
“Oh, yes. That’s our meat, I guess, huh?”
“Yeah. He’s supposed to have cleared out yesterday afternoon, with his black man, for Los Angeles. We ought to be able to find the work in that. What does the doctor say?”
“Says he was killed between three and four this morning, with a heavyish knife — one clean slash from left to right, like a left-handed man would do it.”
“Maybe one clean cut,” I agreed, “but not exactly a slash. Slower than that. A slash, if it curved, ought to curve up, away from the slasher, in the middle, and down towards him at the ends — just the opposite of what this does.”
“Oh, all right. Is this Sherry a southpaw?”
“I don’t know,” I wondered if Marcus was. “Find the knife?”
“Nary hide nor hair of it. And what’s more, we didn’t find anything else, inside or out. Funny a fellow as scared as Kavalov was, from all accounts, didn’t keep himself locked up tighter. His windows were open. Anybody could of got in them with a ladder. His door wasn’t locked.”
“There could be half a dozen reasons for that. He—”
One of the deputies, a big-shouldered blond man, came to the door and said:
“We found the knife.”
The sheriff and I followed the deputy out of the house, around to the side on which Kavalov’s room was situated. The knife’s blade was buried in the ground, among some shrubs that bordered a path leading down to the farm hands’ quarters.
The knife’s wooden handle — painted red — slanted a little toward the house. A little blood was smeared on the blade, but the soft earth had cleaned off most. There was no blood on the painted handle, and nothing like a fingerprint.
There were no footprints in the soft ground near the knife. Apparently it had been tossed into the shrubbery.
“I guess that’s all there is here for us,” the sheriff said. “There’s nothing much to show that anybody here had anything to do with it, or didn’t. Now we’ll look after this here Captain Sherry.
I went down to the village with him. At the post office we learned that Sherry had left a forwarding address: General Delivery, St. Louis, Mo. The postmaster said Sherry had received no mail during his stay in Farewell.
We went to the telegraph office, and were told that Sherry had neither received nor sent any telegrams. I sent one to the Agency’s St. Louis branch.
The rest of our poking around in the village brought us nothing — except we learned that most of the idlers in Farewell had seen Sherry and Marcus board the southbound two-ten train.
Before we returned to the Kavalov house a telegram came from the Los Angeles branch for me:
Sherry’s trunks and bags in baggage room here not yet called for are keeping them under surveillance.
When we got back to the house I met Ringgo in the hall, and asked him:
“Is Sherry left-handed?”
He thought, and then shook his head. “I can’t remember,” he said. “He might be. I’ll ask Miriam. Perhaps she’ll know — women remember things like that.”
When he came downstairs again he was nodding:
“He’s very nearly ambidextrous, but uses his left hand more than his right. Why?”
“The doctor thinks it was done with a left hand. How is Mrs. Ringgo now?”
“I think the worst of the shock is over, thanks.”
VII
Sherry’s baggage remained uncalled for in the Los Angeles passenger station all day Saturday. Late that afternoon the sheriff made public the news that Sherry and the black were wanted for murder, and that night the sheriff and I took a train south.
Sunday morning, with a couple of men from the Los Angeles police department, we opened the baggage. We didn’t find anything except legitimate clothing and personal belongings that told us nothing.
That trip paid no dividends.
I returned to San Francisco and had bales of circulars printed and distributed.
Two weeks went by, two weeks in which the circulars brought us nothing but the usual lot of false alarms.
Then the Spokane police picked up Sherry and Marcus in a Stevens Street rooming house.
Some unknown person had phoned the police that one Fred Williams living there had a mysterious black visitor nearly every day, and that their actions were very suspicious. The Spokane police had copies of our circular. They hardly needed the H. S. monograms on Fred Williams’ cuff links and handkerchiefs to assure them that he was our man.
After a couple of hours of being grilled, Sherry admitted his identity, but denied having murdered Kavalov.
Two of the sheriff’s men went north and brought the prisoners down to the county seat.
Sherry had shaved off his mustache. There was nothing in his face or voice to show that he was the least bit worried.
“I knew there was nothing more to wait for after my dream,” he drawled, “so I went away. Then, when I heard the dream had come true, I knew you johnnies would be hot after me — as if one can help his dreams — and I — ah — sought seclusion.”
He solemnly repeated his orange-tree-voice story to the sheriff and district attorney. The newspapers liked it.
He refused to map his route for us, to tell us how he had spent his time.
“No, no,” he said. “Sorry, but I shouldn’t do it. It may be I shall have to do it again some time, and it wouldn’t do to reveal my methods.”