“Never!” she blazed.
Trask’s voice, sounding flat and toneless, said, “Don’t be a damned fool, Shirley. He’s framed it all. Can’t you see?”
The butler turned hopefully toward Selby.
“Don’t try it, my man,” Selby said.
He appreciated, however, what a formidable antagonist the man would be, realized suddenly that those broad shoulders, the thin waist and lean muscular hips meant something. The man was evidently a bodyguard in the pink of condition.
It was Shirley Arden who pushed Jarvis back.
“No,” she said, “there’s no necessity for any more violence. Mr. Selby is going to leave.”
She came toward him, stared up at him.
“To think,” she said scornfully, “that you’d resort to a trick like this. Ben warned me not to trust you. He said you’d deliberately planned to let the news leak out to the papers; that you were trying to put pressure on me until I’d break. I wouldn’t believe him. And now... this... this despicable trick.
“I respected you. Yes, if you want to know it, I admired you. Admired you so damned much I couldn’t be normal when I was with you. Ben told me I was losing my head like a little school girl.
“You were so poised, so certain of yourself, so absolutely straightforward and wholeheartedly sincere that you seemed like pure gold against the fourteen-carat brass I’d been associating with in Hollywood. And now you turn out to be just as rotten and just as lousy as the rest of them. Get out!”
“Now, listen,” Selby said, “I’m...”
The butler stepped forward. “You heard what she told you,” he said ominously. “Get out!”
Shirley Arden turned on her heel.
“He’ll get out, Jarvis,” she said wearily. “You won’t have to put him out — but see that he leaves.”
“Miss Arden, please,” Selby said, stepping forward, “you can’t...”
The big butler tensed his muscles. “Going someplace,” he said ominously, “besides out?”
Shirley Arden, without once looking back over her shoulder, left the room. Ben Trask scrambled to his feet.
“Watch him, Jarvis,” Trask warned, “he’s dynamite. What the hell did you tackle me for?”
“She said to,” the butler remarked, coolly, never taking his eyes off Selby.
“She’s gone nuts over him,” Trask said.
“Get out,” the butler remarked to Selby.
Selby knew when he was faced with hopeless odds.
“Miss Arden,” he said, “is going to be questioned. If she gives me an audience now, that questioning will take place here. If she doesn’t, it will take place before the grand jury in Madison City. You gentlemen pay your money and take your choice.”
“It’s already paid,” the butler said. “Get out!”
Selby started toward the front of the house. Trask came limping behind him.
“Don’t think you’re so much,” Trask said sneeringly. “You may be a big toad in a small puddle, but you’ve got a fight on your hands now. You’ll get no more co-operation out of us. And remember another thing. There’s a hell of a lot of money invested in Shirley Arden. That money buys advertising in the big metropolitan newspapers. They’re going to print our side of this thing, not yours.”
The butler said evenly, “Shut up, Trask, you’re making a damned fool of yourself.”
He handed Selby his hat and gloves; his manner became haughtily deferential as he said, “Shall I help you on with your coat, sir?”
“Yes,” Selby told him.
Selby permitted the man to adjust the coat about his neck. He leisurely drew on his gloves, nodded and said, “The door, Jarvis.”
“Oh, certainly,” the butler remarked sarcastically, holding open the door, bowing slightly from the waist.
Selby marched across the spacious porch, down the front steps which led to the sloping walk.
“And don’t think you can get away with...” Ben Trask’s voice was interrupted by the slamming of the door.
Chapter XV
Selby found that he couldn’t get the developed negatives from the miniature camera until the next morning at nine o’clock. He went to a hotel, telephoned Rex Brandon and said, “I’ve uncovered a lead down here, Rex, which puts an entirely new angle on the case. George Cushing is mixed in it some way, I don’t know just how much.
“Cushing knew that the five thousand dollars came from Shirley Arden. He’s the one who warned her to change her perfume after he knew I was going to try and identify the bills from the scent which was on them.”
“You mean the money actually did come from the actress?” Rex Brandon asked.
“Yes,” Selby said wearily.
“I thought you were certain it didn’t.”
“Well, it did.”
“You mean she lied to you?”
“That’s what it amounts to.”
“You aren’t going to take that sitting down, are you?”
“I am not.”
“What else did she say?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, make her say something.”
“Unfortunately,” Selby said, “that’s something which is easier said than done. As was pointed out to me in a conversation a short time ago, we’re fighting some very powerful interests.
“In the first place, Shirley Arden’s name means a lot to the motion picture industry, and the motion picture industry is financed by banks controlled by men who have a lot of political influence.
“I’m absolutely without authority down here. The only way we can get Shirley Arden where she has to answer questions is to have her subpoenaed before the grand jury.”
“You’re going to do that?”
“Yes. Get a subpoena issued and get it served.”
“Will she try to avoid service?”
“Sure. Moreover, they’ll throw every legal obstacle in our way that they can. Get Bob Kentley, my deputy, to be sure that subpoena is legally air-tight.”
“How about the publicity angle?”
“I’m afraid,” Selby said, “the publicity angle is something that’s entirely beyond our control. The fat’s in the fire now. The worst of it is they think that I was responsible for it. Miss Arden thinks I was trying to get some advertisement.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone — I suppose it was Bittner — took a flashlight photograph of me dining tête-à-tête with Shirley Arden in her home.”
“That sort of puts you on a spot,” the sheriff sympathized.
“Are you telling me?” Selby asked bitterly. “Anyway, it’s absolutely ruined any possibility of co-operation at this end.”
“How about Cushing? What’ll we do with him?”
“Put the screws down on him.”
“He’ll resent it, you know.”
“He isn’t going to resent what we’ll do to him half as much as I resent what he’s done to us.”
“He’s been one of our staunchest supporters.”
“I don’t give a damn what he’s been. Get hold of him and give him the works. I’m going to get those pictures in the camera developed and then I’ll be up in the morning. In the meantime I’m going out to a show and forget that murder case.”
“Better try a burlesque, son,” the sheriff advised. “You sound sort of disillusioned. You weren’t falling for that actress, were you?”
“Go to the devil,” Selby said. “... Say, Rex...”
“What?”
“Give Sylvia Martin the breaks on that dishing end of the story. She’s the one who originally smelled a rat there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Talk with her. Get her ideas. They may not be so bad. I thought they were haywire when she first spilled them. Now I think she’s on the right track.”