At eight-thirty-five Mungan got up and made an elaborate show of discovering me:
“You still here?”
“I’m waiting for a friend – a lawyer from down south. He said he’d be here by nine o’clock.”
“What for? To help you to pick my brains?”
“I don’t know why you’re browned off, Mungan. This is a big case, bigger than you realize. It’s going to take more than one of us to handle it.”
“What makes it so big?”
“The people involved, the money, and the names. At this end we have the Red Horse gang, or what’s left of it; at the other end, one of the richest and oldest families in California. It’s their lawyer I’m expecting, a man named Sable.”
“So what? I get down on my knees? I give everybody an even shake, treat ‘em all alike.”
“Mr. Sable may be able to identify those bones of yours.”
Mungan couldn’t repress his interest. “He the one you talked to on the phone?”
“He’s the one.”
“You’re working on this case for him?”
“He hired me. And he may be bringing some medical data that will help us identify the remains.”
Mungan went back to his paperwork. After a few minutes, he said casually:
“If you’re working for a lawyer, it lets you off the hook. It gives you the same rights of privacy a lawyer has. You probably wouldn’t know that, but I’ve made quite a study of the law.”
“It’s news to me,” I lied.
He said magnanimously: “People in general, even law officers, they don’t know all the fine points of the law.”
His pride and his integrity were satisfied. He called the county courthouse and asked them to get a rundown on Nelson from Sacramento.
Gordon Sable walked in at five minutes to nine. He had on a brown topcoat and a brown Homburg, and a pair of yellow pigskin driving gloves. The lids of his gray eyes were slightly inflamed. His mouth was drawn down at the corners, and lines of weariness ran from them to the wings of his nose.
“You made a quick trip,” I said.
“Too quick to suit me. I didn’t get away until nearly three o’clock.”
He looked around the small office as if he doubted that the trip had been worth making. Mungan rose expectantly.
“Mr. Sable, Deputy Mungan.”
The two men shook hands, each of them appraising the other.
“Glad to meet you,” Mungan said. “Mr. Archer tells me you’ve got some medical information about this – these remains we turned up last spring.”
“That may be.” Sable glanced sideways at me. “How much more detail did you go into?”
“Just that, and the fact that the family is important. We’re not going to be able to keep them anonymous from here on in.”
“I realize that,” he snapped. “But let’s get the identification established first, if we can. Before I left, I talked to the doctor who set the broken arm. He did have X-ray pictures taken, but unfortunately they don’t survive. He has his written record, however, and he gave me the – ah – specifications of the fracture.” Sable produced a folded piece of paper from an inner pocket. “It was a clean break in the right humerus, two inches above the joint. The boy sustained it falling off a horse.”
Mungan said: “It figures.”
Sable turned to him. “May we see the exhibit in question?”
Mungan went into the back room.
“Where’s the boy?” Sable said in an undertone.
“At a friend’s house, playing chess. I’ll take you to him when we finish here.”
“Tony was a chess-player. Do you really think he’s Tony’s son?”
“I don’t know. I’m waiting to have my mind made up for me.”
“By the evidence of the bones?”
“Partly. I’ve got hold of another piece of evidence that fits in. Brown has been identified from one of Tony Galton’s pictures.”
“You didn’t tell me that before.”
“I didn’t know it before.”
“Who’s your witness?”
“A woman named Matheson in Redwood City. She’s Culligan’s ex-wife and Galton’s ex-nurse. I’ve made a commitment to keep her name out of the police case.”
“Is that wise?” Sable’s voice was sharp and unpleasant.
“Wise or not, it’s the way it is.”
We were close to quarreling. Mungan came back into the room and cut it short. The bones rattled in his evidence box. He hoisted it onto the counter and raised the lid. Sable looked down at John Brown’s leavings. His face was grave.
Mungan picked out the arm bone and laid it on the counter. He went to his desk and came back with a steel foot-rule. The break was exactly two inches from the end.
Sable was breathing quickly. He spoke in repressed excitement: “It looks very much as if we’ve found Tony Galton. Why is the skull missing? What was done to him?”
Mungan told him what he knew. On the way to the Dineen house I told Sable the rest of it.
“I have to congratulate you, Archer. You certainly get results.”
“They fell into my lap. It’s one of the things that made me suspicious. Too many coincidences came together – the Culligan murder, the Brown-Galton murder, the Brown-Galton boy turning up, if that’s who he is. I can’t help feeling that the whole business may have been planned to come out this way. There are mobsters involved, remember. Those boys look a long way ahead sometimes, and they’re willing to wait for their payoff.”
“Payoff?”
“The Galton money. I think the Culligan killing was a gang killing. I think it was no accident that Culligan came to work for you three months ago. Your house was a perfect hide-out for him, and a place where he could watch developments in the Galton family.”
“For what possible purpose?”
“My thinking hasn’t got that far,” I said. “But I’m reasonably certain that Culligan didn’t go there on his own.”
“Who sent him?”
“That’s the question.” After a pause, I said: “How is Mrs. Sable, by the way?”
“Not good. I had to put her in a nursing home. I couldn’t leave her by herself at home.”
“I suppose it’s the Culligan killing that got her down?”
“The doctors seem to think it’s what triggered her breakdown. But she’s had emotional trouble before.”
“What sort of emotional trouble?”
“I’d just as soon not go into it,” he said bleakly.
Chapter 15
DR. DINEEN came to the door in an ancient smoking-jacket made of red velvet which reminded me of the plush in old railway coaches. His wrinkled face was set in a frown of concentration. He looked at me impatiently:
“What is it?”
“I think we’ve identified your skeleton.”
“Really? How?”
“Through the mended break in the arm bone. Dr. Dineen, this is Mr. Sable. Mr. Sable’s an attorney representing the dead man’s family.”
“Who were his family?”
Sable answered: “His true name was Anthony Galton. His mother is Mrs. Henry Galton of Santa Teresa.”
“You don’t say. I used to see her name on the society pages. She cut quite a swathe at one time.”
“I suppose she did,” Sable said. “She’s an old woman now.”
“We all grow older, don’t we? But come in, gentlemen.”
He stood back to let us enter. I turned to him in the hallway.
“Is John Brown with you?”
“He is, yes. I believe he was trying to locate you earlier in the evening. At the moment he’s in my office studying the chessboard. Much good may it do him. I propose to beat him in six more moves.”
“Can you give us a minute, Doctor, by ourselves?”
“If it’s important, and I gather it is.”
He steered us into a dining-room furnished in beautiful old mahogany. Light from a yellowing crystal chandelier fell on the dark wood and on the sterling tea set which stood in geometrical order on the tall buffet. The room recalled the feeling I’d had that morning, that the doctor’s house was an enclave of the solid past.