“That’s a problem,” Selby remarked. “Hang it, I never saw a case which looked so beautifully simple on the face of it. But everything we touch goes haywire. His wife says he never had five thousand dollars or five hundred dollars. If he had as much as fifty dollars ahead, he thought he was rich. They lived on starvation wages, and the church was behind in the salary most of the time. They were paid in produce, promises and abuse.”
“I think the actress paid it,” Brandon insisted.
Selby laughed. “Don’t be silly. In the first place, why would she have paid it? In the second place, if she had, she isn’t the kind to have lied to me about it.”
“We can’t be too sure,” the sheriff said slowly. “People do funny things. There may have been blackmail mixed up in it.”
“Not with Larrabie,” Selby said. “He’s too absolutely genuine. He was busy making the world a better place to live in.”
“Maybe he was,” Brandon agreed, “but I’m not so sure about Brower.”
“I’m not so certain about him either,” Selby admitted.
“Somehow, I think Brower’s our man,” Brandon said slowly. “He may have something on his mind besides the murder, but I think Brower either did it or knows who did it.”
“It’s funny he’d keep silent.”
“He won’t say a word, and his wife rushed right out and hired Roper to defend him.”
“What did Roper do?”
“Demanded to see his client. Told him to keep still and not say anything, to answer no questions whatever. And then he demanded we put a charge against him or turn him loose. He claims he’s going to get a writ of habeas corpus!”
“Let him get it,” Selby said, “and in the meantime we’ll trace every move Brower made from the time he left Millbank until he showed up here.”
The sheriff nodded. “The Los Angeles sheriff’s office is going to co-operate. They never got much co-operation out of the old gang here and they’re tickled to death to work with us. By tomorrow I’ll know everything about Brower, whether he wants to talk or not.”
He pulled the cloth tobacco sack from his pocket, opened a cigarette paper and sprinkled flakes of tobacco into the paper.
“Well,” he said as he rolled the cigarette, “I wonder what The Blade will have to say about it tonight.”
“Probably plenty,” Selby admitted, then went on to say, “You can gamble on this: Brower and Larrabie hatched up some sort of scheme. Larrabie came here as a part of that scheme.”
“Well, if Larrabie got the money and that was all there was to it, why didn’t he go down to Los Angeles and join Brower or telephone for Brower to meet him back in Millbank? He had no business staying on here, if that’s all he came for.”
Selby nodded slowly.
“If you were a stranger in town, Doug, and wanted to get five thousand dollars, how would you go about it?” the sheriff asked.
Selby laughed as the sheriff, shaking the cigarette into a perfect cylinder, peered steadily at him.
“I’d hold up a bank or something.”
“Or perhaps indulge in a little blackmail.”
“You’d have a sweet time getting five thousand bucks in blackmail out of anyone in this town,” the district attorney said. “And even then, there wouldn’t be any excuse for sticking around afterwards.”
“And in five one-thousand-dollar bills,” the sheriff remarked significantly, starting for the door. He turned as he opened the door to say, “I keep thinking about that actress angle. Those bills look like outside money to me.”
“Forget it,” Selby insisted. “I had a good heart-to-heart talk with her.”
“Yeah,” the sheriff remarked through a crack in the door, “you might have had a better perspective on the case, if you’d talked over the telephone.”
He slammed the door as Selby jumped to his feet.
Selby was still scowling savagely when Amorette Standish tiptoed into the room and said, “Sylvia Martin’s out there. She wants to see you.”
“Show her in,” Selby said, looking at his watch.
Amorette Standish held the door open and said, “Come in.”
Sylvia bustled into the office with quick, businesslike efficiency, a folded newspaper under her arm.
“How’s it coming?” she asked. “And what’s this about Brower?”
“Brower tried to claim the money at the hotel,” Selby said.
“What money?”
“Five thousand dollars that was left in an envelope by Larrabie.”
“You mean Larrabie had five thousand dollars?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t tell me about this.”
“I was keeping it a secret. I didn’t know about it myself until some time after viewing the body. Cushing had the envelope in his safe. Of course, he didn’t consider it as being very important.”
“Where did Larrabie get the five thousand dollars?”
“That,” he told her, “is what we’re trying to find out.”
“And why did he take Brower’s name?”
Selby shrugged his shoulders and said shortly, “You guess for a while, I’m tired.”
Sylvia sat down on the edge of his desk and said, “Listen, Doug, how about that actress?”
“Oh, well,” Doug said, “I may as well tell you the whole truth. I guess you were right after all. The Blade will publish the story, if you don’t, and it’s better for you to publish it the way it is than to let people read about it the way it wasn’t.”
He began at the beginning and told her the entire story of his meeting with Shirley Arden.
When he had finished, she said, “And there was the odor of perfume on that money?”
“Yes.”
“What sort of perfume?”
“I can’t tell you,” he said, “but I’d know it, if I smelled it again. It was rather a peculiar perfume, a delicate blend of scents.”
“That would mean the money came from a woman.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“And the only woman you know of that this man contacted was the actress.”
“I don’t suppose,” Selby said wearily, “it would do me any good to tell you that this actress isn’t the sort who would lie. She told me the truth.”
“Did you,” Sylvia asked, watching him with narrowed eyes, “take the precaution to find out what sort of perfume she was using?”
Selby nodded wearily and said, “I regret to say that I did.”
“Why the regrets, Doug?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It was cheap. It was doubting her word, somehow.”
“And the perfumes weren’t the same?”
There was an intent something in Sylvia’s voice, like a cross-examiner getting ready to spring a trap.
Selby’s voice contained a note of triumph, “I can assure you,” he said, “that they were most certainly not the same.”
Sylvia whipped from under her arm the newspaper she was carrying. She jerked it open, spread it out on the desk and said, “I don’t suppose you bother to read the motion picture gossip in the Los Angeles’ daily periodicals.”
“Good Lord, no,” Selby exclaimed. “Why should I?”
Sylvia ran her finger down a syndicated column dealing with the daily doings of the motion picture stars.
“Here it is,” she said. “Read it.”
Selby bent forward and read:
“It’s a well-known fact that people get tired of living in one house, of being surrounded by one environment. Stars feel this just the same as others. Perhaps the best illustration of that is the case of Shirley Arden’s perfume.
“Miss Arden’s personality has never been associated with that impulsive temperament which has characterized most stars who have won the hearts of the picture goers through the portrayal of romantic parts. Yet, upon occasion, Miss Arden can be as impulsively original in her reactions as even the most temperamental actress on the lot.