“Who drove the stuff out to Thornburgh’s?”
“M-m-my b-boy. Want to t-talk to him?”
The boy was a juvenile edition of the old man, but without the stutter. He had never seen Thornburgh on any of his visits, but his business had taken him only as far as the kitchen. He hadn’t noticed anything peculiar about the place.
“Who’s the night man at the garage?” I asked him.
“Billy Luce. I think you can catch him there now. I saw him go in a few minutes ago.”
We crossed the road and found Luce.
“Night before last — the night of the fire down the road — was there a man here talking to you when you first saw it?”
He turned his eyes upward in that vacant stare which people use to aid their memory.
“Yes, I remember now! He was going to town, and I told him that if he took the county road instead of the state road he’d see the fire on his way in.”
“What kind of looking man was he?”
“Middle-aged — a big man, but sort of slouchy. I think he had on a brown suit, baggy and wrinkled.”
“Medium complexion?”
“Yes.”
“Smile when he talked?”
“Yes, a pleasant sort of fellow.”
“Brown hair?”
“Yeah, but have a heart!” Luce laughed. “I didn’t put him under a magnifying glass.”
From Tavender we drove over to Wayton. Luce’s description had fit Henderson all right, but while we were at it, we thought we might as well check up to make sure that he had been coming from Wayton.
We spent exactly twenty-five minutes in Wayton; ten of them finding Hammersmith, the grocer with whom Henderson had said he dined and played pool; five minutes finding the proprietor of the pool room; and ten verifying Henderson’s story...
“What do you think of it now, Mac?” I asked, as we rolled back toward Sacramento.
Mac’s too lazy to express an opinion, or even form one, unless he’s driven to it; but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth listening to, if you can get them.
“There ain’t a hell of a lot to think,” he said cheerfully. “Henderson is out of it, if he ever was in it. There’s nothing to show that anybody but the Coonses and Thornburgh were there when the fire started — but there may have been a regiment there. Them Coonses ain’t too honest-looking, maybe, but they ain’t killers, or I miss my guess. But the fact remains that they’re the only bet we got so far. Maybe we ought to try to get a line on them.”
“All right,” I agreed. “Soon as we get back to town, I’ll get a wire off to our Seattle office asking them to interview Mrs. Comerford, and see what she can tell about them. Then I’m going to catch a train for San Francisco and see Thornburgh’s niece in the morning.”
Next morning, at the address McClump had given me — a rather elaborate apartment building on California Street — I had to wait three-quarters of an hour for Mrs. Evelyn Trowbridge to dress. If I had been younger, or a social caller, I suppose I’d have felt amply rewarded when she finally came in — a tall, slender woman of less than thirty; in some sort of clinging black affair; with a lot of black hair over a very white face, strikingly set off by a small red mouth and big hazel eyes.
But I was a busy, middle-aged detective, who was fuming over having his time wasted; and I was a lot more interested in finding the bird who struck the match than I was in feminine beauty. However, I smothered my grouch, apologized for disturbing her at such an early hour, and got down to business.
“I want you to tell me all you know about your uncle — his family, friends, enemies, business connections — everything.”
I had scribbled on the back of the card I had sent into her what my business was.
“He hadn’t any family,” she said; “unless I might be it. He was my mother’s brother, and I am the only one of that family now living.”
“Where was he born?”
“Here in San Francisco. I don’t know the date, but he was about fifty years old, I think — three years older than my mother.”
“What was his business?”
“He went to sea when he was a boy, and, so far as I know, always followed it until a few months ago.”
“Captain?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I wouldn’t see or hear from him for several years, and he never talked about what he was doing; though he would mention some of the places he had visited — Rio de Janeiro, Madagascar, Tobago, Christiania. Then, about three months ago — some time in May — he came here and told me that he was through with wandering; that he was going to take a house in some quiet place where he could work undisturbed on an invention in which he was interested.
“He lived at the Francisco Hotel while he was in San Francisco. After a couple of weeks he suddenly disappeared. And then, about a month ago, I received a telegram from him, asking me to come to see him at his house near Sacramento. I went up the very next day, and I thought that he was acting queerly — he seemed very excited over something. He gave me a will that he had just drawn up and some life-insurance policies in which I was beneficiary.
“Immediately after that he insisted that I return home, and hinted rather plainly that he did not wish me to either visit him again or write until I heard from him. I thought all that rather peculiar, as he had always seemed fond of me. I never saw him again.”
“What was this invention he was working on?”
“I really don’t know. I asked him once, but he became so excited — even suspicious — that I changed the subject, and never mentioned it again.”
“Are you sure that he really did follow the sea all those years?”
“No, I am not. I just took it for granted; but he may have been doing something altogether different.”
“Was he ever married?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Know any of his friends or enemies?”
“No, none.”
“Remember anybody’s name that he ever mentioned?”
“No.”
“I don’t want you to think this next question insulting, though I admit it is. Where were you the night of the fire?”
“At home; I had some friends here to dinner, and they stayed until about midnight. Mr. and Mrs. Walker Kellogg, Mrs. John Dupree, and a Mr. Killmer, who is a lawyer. I can give you their addresses, if you want to question them.”
From Mrs. Trowbridge’s apartment I went to the Francisco Hotel. Thornburgh had been registered there from May tenth to June thirteenth, and hadn’t attracted much attention. He had been a tall, broad-shouldered, erect man of about fifty, with rather long brown hair brushed straight back; a short, pointed brown beard, and a healthy, ruddy complexion — grave, quiet, punctilious in dress and manner; his hours had been regular and he had had no visitors that any of the hotel employees remembered.
At the Seamen’s Bank — upon which Thornburgh’s check, in payment of the house, had been drawn — I was told that he had opened an account there on May fifteenth, having been introduced by W. W. Jeffers & Sons, local stockbrokers. A balance of a little more than four hundred dollars remained to his credit. The cancelled checks on hand were all to the order of various life-insurance companies; and for amounts that, if they represented premiums, testified to rather large policies. I jotted down the names of the life-insurance companies, and then went to the offices of W. W. Jeffers & Sons.
Thornburgh had come in, I was told, on the tenth of May with $15,000 worth of bonds that he had wanted sold. During one of his conversations with Jeffers he had asked the broker to recommend a bank, and Jeffers had given him a letter of introduction to the Seamen’s Bank.
That was all Jeffers knew about him. He gave me the numbers of the bonds, but tracing bonds isn’t always the easiest thing in the world.