Cotton was the only member of the party who showed any enthusiasm. His face, from hat-brim to dimpled chin, was the face of a master of ceremonies who is about to spring what he is sure will be a delightful surprise. Vernon regarded him skeptically, Feeney disgustedly, Rolly indifferently, and I-who didn't know what we were there for-no doubt curiously.
It developed that we were there to search the house. We did it, or at least Cotton did it while the rest of us pretended to help him. It was a small house. There was only one room on the ground-floor besides the kitchen, and only one-an unfinished bedroom-above. A grocer's bill and a tax-receipt in a table-drawer told me whose house it was-Harvey Whidden's. He was the big-boned deliberate man who had seen the stranger in the Chrysler with Gabrielle Collinson.
We finished the ground-floor with a blank score, and went upstairs. There, after ten minutes of poking around, we found something. Rolly pulled it out from between bed-slats and mattress. It was a small flat bundle wrapped in a white linen towel.
Cotton dropped the mattress, which he had been holding up for the deputy to look under, and joined us as we crowded around Rolly's package. Vernon took it from the deputy sheriff and unrolled it on the bed. Inside the towel were a package of hair-pins, a lace-edged white handkerchief, a silver hair-brush and comb engraved G. D. L., and a pair of black kid gloves, small and feminine.
I was more surprised than anyone else could have been.
"G. D. L.," I said, to be saying something, "could be Gabrielle Something Leggett-Mrs. Collinson's name before she was married."
Cotton said triumphantly: "You're durned right it could."
A heavy voice said from the doorway:
"Have you got a search-warrant? What the hell are you doing here if you haven't? It's burglary, and you know it."
Harvey Whidden was there. His big body, in a yellow slicker, filled the doorway. His heavy-featured face was dark and angry.
Vernon began: "Whidden, I-"
The marshal screamed, "It's him!" and pulled a gun from under his coat.
I pushed his arm as he fired at the man in the doorway. The bullet hit the wall.
Whidden's face was now more astonished than angry. He jumped back through the doorway and ran downstairs. Cotton, upset by my push, straightened himself up, cursed me, and ran out after Whidden. Vernon, Feeney, and Rolly stood staring after them.
I said: "This is good clean sport, but it makes no sense to me. What's it all about?"
Nobody told me. I said: "This comb and brush were on Mrs. Collinson's table when we searched the house, Rolly."
The deputy sheriff nodded uncertainly, still staring at the door. No noise came through it now. I asked:
"Would there be any special reason for Cotton framing Whidden?"
The sheriff said: "They ain't good friends." (I had noticed that.) "What do you think, Vern?"
The district attorney took his gaze from the door, rolled the things in their towel again, and stuffed the bundle in his pocket. "Come on," he snapped, and strode downstairs.
The front door was open. We saw nothing, heard nothing, of Cotton and Whidden. A Ford-Whidden's-stood at the front gate soaking up rain. We got into it. Vernon took the wheel, and drove to the house in the cove. We hammered at its door until it was opened by an old man in gray underwear, put there as caretaker by the sheriff.
The old man told us that Cotton had been there at eight o'clock that night, just, he said, to look around again. He, the caretaker, didn't know no reason why the marshal had to be watched, so he hadn't bothered him, letting him do what he wanted, and, so far as he knew, the marshal hadn't taken any of the Collinsons' property, though of course he might of.
Vernon and Feeney gave the old man hell, and we went back to Quesada.
Rolly was with me on the back seat. I asked him:
"Who is this Whidden? Why should Cotton pick on him?"
"Well, for one thing. Harve's got kind of a bad name, from being mixed up in the rum-running that used to go on here, and from being in trouble now and then."
"Yeah? And for another thing?"
The deputy sheriff frowned, hesitating, hunting for words; and before he had found them we were stopping in front of a vine-covered cottage on a dark street corner. The district attorney led the way to its front porch and rang the bell.
After a little while a woman's voice sounded overhead:
"Who's there?"
We had to retreat to the steps to see her-Mrs. Cotton at a second-story window.
"Dick got home yet?" Vernon asked.
"No, Mr. Vernon, he hasn't. I was getting worried. Wait a minute; I'll come down."
"Don't bother," he said. "We won't wait. I'll see him in the morning.'
"No. Wait," she said urgently and vanished from the window.
A moment later she opened the front door. Her blue eyes were dark and excited. She had on a rose bathrobe.
"You needn't have bothered," the district attorney said. "There was nothing special. We got separated from him a little while ago, and just wanted to know if he'd got back yet. He's all right."
"Was-?" Her hands worked folds of her bathrobe over her thin breasts, "Was he after-after Harvey-Harvey Whidden?"
Vernon didn't look at her when he said, "Yes;" and he said it without showing his teeth. Feeney and Rolly looked as uncomfortable as Vernon.
Mrs. Cotton's face turned pink. Her lower lip trembled, blurring her words.
"Don't believe him, Mr. Vernon. Don't believe a word he tells you. Harve didn't have anything to do with those Collinsons, with neither one of them. Don't let Dick tell you he did. He didn't."
Vernon looked at his feet and didn't say anything. Rolly and Feeney were looking intently out through the open door-we were standing just inside it-at the rain. Nobody seemed to have any intention of speaking.
I asked, "No?" putting more doubt in my voice than I actually felt.
"No, he didn't," she cried, turning her face to me. "He couldn't. He couldn't have had anything to do with it." The pink went out of her face, leaving it white and desperate. "He-he was here that night-all night-from before seven until daylight."
"Where was your husband?"
"Up in the city, at his mother's."
"What's her address?"
She gave it to me, a Noe Street number.
"Did anybody-?"
"Aw, come on," the sheriff protested, still staring at the rain. "Ain't that enough?"
Mrs. Cotton turned from me to the district attorney again, taking hold of one of his arms.
"Don't tell it on me, please, Mr. Vernon," she begged. "I don't know what I'd do if it came out. But I had to tell you. I couldn't let him put it on Harve. Please, you won't tell anybody else?"
The district attorney swore that under no circumstances would he, or any of us, repeat what she had told us to anybody; and the sheriff and his deputy agreed with vigorous red-faced nods.
But when we were in the Ford again, away from her, they forgot their embarrassment and became manhunters again. Within ten minutes they had decided that Cotton, instead of going to San Francisco to his mother's Friday night, had remained in Quesada, had killed Collinson, had gone to the city to phone Fitzstephan and mail the letter, and then had returned to Quesada in time to kidnap Mrs. Collinson; planning from the first to plant the evidence against Whidden, with whom he had long been on bad terms, having always suspected what everybody else knew-that Whidden was Mrs. Cotton's lover.
The sheriff-he whose chivalry had kept me from more thoroughly questioning the woman a few minutes ago-now laughed his belly up and down.
"That's rich," he gurgled. "Him out framing Harve, and Harve getting himself a alibi in _his_ bed. Dick's face ought to be a picture for Puck when we spring that on him. Let's find him tonight."
"Better wait," I advised. "It won't hurt to check up his San Francisco trip before we put it to him. All we've got on him so far is that he tried to frame Whidden. If he's the murderer and kidnapper he seems to have gone to a lot of unnecessary foolishness."