“Well, he tried his best,” Brandon said, grinning. “At least he tried to move me.”
“No, he didn’t, Rex. He tried to bluff us out of arresting her but after that he didn’t do a thing. He quit cold and went tearing on down the highway toward Los Angeles. Ordinarily he’d have followed along, yapping at our heels, demanding that we take her before the nearest and most accessible magistrate, get bail fixed, and...”
“Okay,” Brandon said, “I get it. What do we do, Doug?”
“We get to Los Angeles just as fast as we can,” Selby said.
Daphne Arcola interposed hotly, “I have some rights! You can’t drag me around all over the country wherever you happen to want...”
“Better quit talking and find something to hang hold of, sister,” Brandon told her. “As things stand right now, you’re about to have the ride of your life.”
25
Selby looked at his watch, made a mental calculation. “We can’t make it, Rex. We’ll have to telephone.”
Brandon slowed the car. “Okay, what do we do?”
Selby said, “The next public phone we see rush through a call to Bert Hardwick at the Los Angeles sheriff’s office. Tell him to pick up Barton Mosher. Tell him not to make any charge unless he has to, but, in case he has to, to charge him with the murder of Rose Furman. And just to make a good job, charge him with the murder of Carl Remerton.”
Brandon glanced sidelong at Selby to see whether the district attorney meant what he said, or was merely putting on an act for the benefit of Daphne Arcola. Then, spying the sign of a pay phone ahead, he abruptly braked the car.
While Brandon was phoning, Selby settled himself in the cushions of the car, filled his pipe.
Daphne Arcola said, “You don’t have to be so tough. Perhaps if you’d act a little more human you might find there was more percentage in it.”
Selby turned toward her, started to say something, then suddenly reached for the siren button as he saw Sylvia Martin’s light press car rocketing along, trying to make speed.
At the sound of the siren she risked a sidelong glance, then threw on brakes, brought the car to a weaving stop.
“Well, well, the press,” Daphne Arcola said, as Sylvia Martin parked the car and came racing back. “I presume this is entirely accidental.”
Sylvia ran up to the county car. “Oh, Doug, I’m so glad to see you I could kiss you. Old A. B. C. headed for Los Angeles and he took...” She suddenly broke off as she saw Daphne Arcola.
“Hop in, Sylvia,” Selby invited. “Get in the back seat. Your car should be all right there.”
She opened the door on the rear, jumped in.
“I thought we lacked something,” Daphne said sarcastically. “Now we’re all fixed, friendly press, everything!”
Brandon returned to the car, grinning. “I got Hardwick himself, Doug. You know what’ll happen. He’ll really go to town.”
“That’s fine,” Selby said. “It was a break getting Hardwick personally. Now we can relax. Old A. B. C. will walk right into the trap.”
“Better tell me a few things,” Brandon said, then catching sight of Sylvia Martin, “Why, hello, Sylvia. How did you get here — fly?”
“Darn near,” she said.
“Good to see you. Wish you’d arrived sooner. Go on, Doug, just what did happen?”
Daphne Arcola missed the sidelong glance the sheriff gave the district attorney.
“We can deduce what happened now, Rex,” Selby said. “Carl Remerton went to Windrift, Montana. He was a liberal spender. I wouldn’t doubt if perhaps old A. B. Carr has a finger in the pie in Mosher’s gambling outfit up there, and I presume you, Daphne, were a professional come-on.”
“Save your breath,” she said acidly. “Don’t waste it asking me questions.”
“That’s what must have happened,” Selby said. “Daphne took Carl Remerton in tow. She saw that he had plenty of action and that he kept going to Barton Mosher’s place. Mosher saw that he lost plenty. Then Remerton became suspicious and they had to get rid of him.”
Selby stole a swift glance at Daphne Arcola.
“Or,” he went on, “something happened and they decided to give him knockout drops and that finished his heart.
“In the meantime, his sister hired a detective to find out what had happened. That really bothered Mosher. The fat was in the fire.
“Now notice a peculiar coincidence. One of those things that isn’t entirely a coincidence because with a man who has as much practice as old A. B. Carr there are undoubtedly cases which dovetail, and dates which coincide time after time. But Carl Remerton met his death on July twenty-ninth. Daphne Arcola was mixed up in that death, and so was Barton Mosher. They appealed to Carr when Rose Furman got on the job. Then Moana Lennox came to Carr and wanted a man freed on a hit-and-run charge. He was really innocent and Moana knew it but couldn’t testify. The date was the twenty-ninth of July. Obviously, if Carr could give Daphne Arcola an alibi by showing that she was in California on the evening of the twenty-ninth, she could hardly have been administering knockout drops to Carl Remerton on that same date in Windrift, Montana.
“Now, you can piece together all of the things that Carr did. He convinced Moana that, as her benefactor, he’d get someone to take her place as an alibi witness. If he had offered to do this for nothing, it would have made her feel that there was something phony about the deal, and that Carr had an ax to grind. So Carr got her to part with something of value. All that she had was the antique jewelry. It wasn’t anything that Carr would ordinarily have bothered with. Carr didn’t even plan to dispose of it. He simply intended to keep it so as to make his activities appear regular so far as Moana was concerned.”
“Go on, Doug,” Brandon said. “You’re doing fine.”
“Well, there you have the entire story,” Selby went on. “You’ll remember, Rex, that when we first started figuring the thing we felt that Carr wanted to get an alibi for someone or something. Then it looked as though we were wrong and he was giving someone an alibi. But Carr was up to his old tricks.”
“And you think Carr killed Rose Furman?”
Selby said, “Carr doesn’t resort to murder. He isn’t that crude, but I wouldn’t put it at all past Carr to have suggested to Mosher that as long as Rose Furman was on the job he was bound to end up behind the eight ball sooner or later.”
“And where does that leave this girl?” Brandon asked, motioning his head toward Daphne Arcola.
“Probably,” Selby said, “she’s the one who put the knockout drops in the drink, or whatever it was. We’ll have to get an order exhuming the body and have a delicate chemical analysis made. But my best guess is Carl Remerton was murdered, either deliberately, or killed accidentally, in the process of seeing that he was kept quiet when he found out that he’d been trimmed and started to make a complaint.
“I’m not so certain that we can definitely prove our case against Mosher, but we certainly have the goods on this girl — or will have after we go into the question of Remerton’s death — and people of Mosher’s type are always rats. They’ll grab at straws. That’s what Carr was so intent upon doing. He was going to save his own skin while he still had a chance. He was going to get in touch with Mosher and... well, it’s a two to one bet, Rex, that they were going to fix things up so that Mosher turned state’s evidence and got off scot-free, and this girl got the works. That’s Mosher’s type.”
Selby stole a sidelong glance at Daphne Arcola’s profile, then went on. “And it’s a dirty shame in a way, because girls like Daphne get by on their beauty and youth. You know what happens after a woman has served a term in prison, even if it’s only a five-year term. She comes out looking like an old hag. There’s nothing left for her except jobs of floor scrubbing and they’re lucky to get those. Inside of another five years they have the figure of a sack of potatoes and...”