“I’ve thought of all that,” Selby said. “The murderer could hardly have come in through the transom, couldn’t have come in through the door of three twenty-one, and he couldn’t have come in through the door of three twenty-three — that is, what I really mean is, he couldn’t have gone out that way. He could have gotten in the room by a dozen different methods. He could have been hiding in the room, he could have walked in through the door of three twenty-one, he could have gone in through three twenty-three. After all, you know, we don’t know that the door wasn’t barricaded after the man had died. From what Herbert Perry says, someone must have been in the room some two or three hours after death took place.
“But when that man went out, he had only one way to go, and that was through the door of three nineteen. If he’d gone out through three twenty-three he couldn’t have bolted the door from the inside. If he’d gone out through the door of three twenty-one he couldn’t have barricaded the door with a chair. There was no chance he could have gone out through the window. Therefore, three nineteen represents the only way he could have gone out.”
“And he couldn’t have gone out that way,” she said, “unless he’d known the room was vacant and had a passkey, and had previously left the communicating door unlocked.”
“That’s probably right.”
“Well,” she said, “it’s up to you, but personally I’d be inclined to look for an inside job around the hotel somewhere, and I think Cushing is tied up too deeply with this motion picture actress to be above suspicion. It’s a cinch she was the one furnished him the five thousand dollars.”
“You might,” Selby told her, “do a little work along that line, Sylvia. I wouldn’t want to get hard-boiled with Cushing unless I had something to work on, because, after all, we haven’t the faintest semblance of a motive. We...”
“How about robbery?”
“No, I’ve considered that. If it had been robbery, it would have been an easy matter for Cushing to have taken the envelope with the five thousand dollars out of the safe and substituted another one. He could have made a passable forgery of the signature. Since it wasn’t Brower’s signature in any event, there wouldn’t have been much opportunity to detect the forgery.”
She started for the door, turned to grin at him and said, “On my way. I’ll let you know if anything turns up.”
“The devil of it is,” he told her, “this isn’t like one of those detective stories, which you can solve by merely pointing the finger of suspicion at the guilty person. This is a real life, flesh and blood murder case, where we’ve got to produce actual evidence which can stand up in a court of justice. I’ve got to find that murderer and then prove he’s guilty, beyond all reasonable doubt.”
“And, if you don’t do it?” she asked.
“Wait until you see The Blade tonight,” he said gloomily. “I have an idea Sam Roper is going to make a statement.”
She laughed and said, “Afraid you can’t take it, Doug?”
“No,” he told her. “That’s not what’s worrying me. I know damn well I can take it. What’s worrying me is whether I can dish it out.”
She grinned, said, “Go to it, big boy,” and closed the door behind her as she left his private office.
Ten seconds later the telephone rang.
To Selby’s surprise it was Shirley Arden herself at the other end of the wire.
“I think,” he told her, “there are some things we need to have cleared up.”
She hesitated a moment, then said, “I’d be only too glad to talk with you. It’s going to be very difficult for me to come up to Madison City, and you know the position I’m in after the nasty insinuations the newspapers have made. If I showed up there now they’d have me virtually accused of murder. Couldn’t you come down here?”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“Where?”
“You know where my house is in Beverly Hills?”
“Yes,” he told her, his voice still savagely official, “I once went on a rubberneck tour. Had an old maid aunt out from the East. She wanted to see where all of the stars lived. Yours is the place that sets up on a hill, with the fountain in the front yard and the stone lions in front of the porch, isn’t it?”
“That’s the one. Could you be there tonight at eight?”
“Yes.”
“We can have a quiet little dinner — just we two. Don’t say anything about it. In other words, don’t let anyone know you’re coming to see me.”
“Do you know what I want to see you about?” he asked.
“Haven’t the least idea,” she told him cheerfully, “but I’ll be glad to see you under more favorable circumstances than the last visit.”
“The circumstances,” he announced, “won’t be more favorable.”
Her laugh was a throaty ripple, as she said, “My, you’re so grim you frighten me. Tonight, then, at eight. Good-by.” She put the receiver on the hook.
Selby grabbed for his hat and started for Dr. Perry’s Dog and Cat Hospital.
Dr. Perry looked up as Selby came in. In his fifties, a man of quiet determination, he was busy at work. He had a police dog slung in canvas in a long bathtub. The dog’s head had drooped forward, his tongue lolled from his mouth, and his eyes were glazed.
Dr. Perry’s sleeves were rolled up, his smock was stained and splashed. In his right hand he held a long, flexible rubber tube connected with a glass tank. He slightly compressed the end of the tube and washed out the sides of the bathtub.
“That’s all that can be done,” he said. “I’ve got him thoroughly cleaned out and given him a heart stimulant. Now we’ll just have to keep him quiet and see what happens.”
He lifted the big dog as tenderly as though it had been a child, carried it to a warm, dry kennel on which a thick paper mattress had been spread. He made the dog as comfortable as possible, closed the kennel and said, “Now we’ll go clean up the mess.”
Harry Perkins blew his nose explosively. “Think he’ll live?” he asked.
“I can tell you more in a couple of hours. He’s had an awful shock. You should have got him here sooner.”
“I got him here just as quickly as I could. Do you know what kind of poison it was?”
“No, it was plenty powerful, whatever it was. It doesn’t act like anything I’ve encountered before, but we’ve done everything possible.”
“This is the district attorney,” Perkins said.
Dr. Perry nodded to Selby and said, “Glad to meet you.”
Perkins said, “Doug, I don’t care how much it costs, I want this thing run to the ground. I want to find the man who poisoned that dog. Rogue has the nicest disposition of any dog in the world. He’s friendly with everyone. Of course, he’s a good watchdog. That’s to be expected. If anyone tried to get in my place and touch anything, Rogue would tear him to pieces, but he knows where the property line is just as well as though he’d had it surveyed. He’s particularly friendly to children. There isn’t a kid in the block but what knows him and loves him.”
The veterinary fitted the hose over one of the faucets in the bathtub, cleaned out the bathtub, washed off his hands and arms, took off the stained smock and said, “Well, let’s go out to your place and take a look around. I want to see whether it’s general poison which has been put around through the vicinity, or something which was tossed into your yard where your dog would get it.”
“But why should anyone toss anything in to Rogue in particular?”
The veterinarian shrugged his shoulders. “Primarily because he’s a big dog,” he said. “That means when he scratches up lawns, he digs deep into the grass. It’s not often people deliberately poison any particular dog unless he’s a big dog, or unless it’s a little dog who’s vicious. Small, friendly dogs are mostly poisoned from a general campaign. Big dogs are the ones who get singled out for special attention.”