Chapter Twenty-One
Dr. Hartwell took the oath and sat down in the witness chair. His manner was nervous, his eyes restless.
“You go ahead and examine him,” Phil Duncan said to Moraine. “He’s your witness.”
Moraine nodded, turned to face the dentist.
“You were the husband of Ann Hartwell?” he asked.
“She was my wife, yes, sir.”
“She was missing for a period of ten days or two weeks?”
“That’s right.”
“You had your suspicions about that disappearance, didn’t you?” Moraine asked.
“I didn’t think she was kidnapped, if that’s what you mean.”
“You thought she was staying with some man?”
Hartwell cleared his throat, lowered his eyes, and said in a muffled tone of voice, “She’s dead now. I won’t say anything against her.”
“But you got a gun and started out to find and kill the man in the case, didn’t you?”
“No, sir.”
“You came to my office, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you had a gun?”
“Yes, sir, but I didn’t have it to kill anyone with.”
“What did you have it for?”
The witness was silent for several seconds. Then he said, “You took the gun away from me, took the shells out and dumped them in the wastebasket.”
“Exactly,” Moraine said. “And later on, at about ten forty-eight or ten forty-nine of the night of the murder, when I opened the door of my office, to step out in the corridor, you attacked me and tried to shoot me, didn’t you?”
“I stuck a gun at you but the gun wasn’t loaded,” Dr. Hartwell said. “That isn’t a crime — that is, it isn’t an assault with a deadly weapon. I didn’t try to club the gun, I tried to shoot you with an empty gun. You can’t hurt a man with an empty gun if you don’t club him with it.”
“Rather a technical distinction, isn’t it, Doctor?”
“It may be technical, but it’s right.”
“So you really weren’t guilty of any crime when you waylaid me there in the corridor?”
“I don’t think so, and my lawyer doesn’t think so.”
“That’s fine,” Moraine said, “but it did give you rather a perfect alibi, didn’t it, Doctor? What I’m getting at is that it established without any question where you were at ten forty-nine, or two minutes after the passenger train thundered past Pete Dixon’s residence.”
“You mean it showed that I couldn’t have murdered Dixon?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Dr. Hartwell said, after a moment’s consideration, “I hadn’t thought of it in that light, but it does give me an alibi.”
“Yes,” Moraine said. “Now how long had you been there in the corridor waiting for me to leave my office?”
“For some little time.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know just how long, but Mr. Duncan, the district attorney, came into your office. I was there just a little bit before Mr. Duncan entered the building, and I waited for an opportunity to talk with you.”
“You mean an opportunity to kill me?”
“An opportunity to stick an empty gun in your ribs, if you want to express it that way,” Dr. Hartwell said.
“Exactly,” Moraine agreed.
“And you were there when Barney Morden came in, weren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“Now then, the police were looking for you, weren’t they?”
“I believe so.”
“And, just before Phil Duncan entered my office,” Moraine said, “there was an officer sitting in a car in front of the building, watching everyone who came in. How did it happen that you got past him?”
“He didn’t see me, I guess,” Dr. Hartwell said, fidgeting uneasily.
“But,” Moraine went on, ‘“by the time Barney Morden had arrived, this officer had left. The assumption is that he left shortly after the district attorney came to my office. Now, if you had entered the office building a few minutes before Barney Morden entered it, the officer wouldn’t have been on duty, and you wouldn’t have been seen, so don’t you think you are mistaken as to just when you entered the building, Doctor?”
“No.”
Moraine smiled easily.
“Well, let’s look at it this way, Doctor. You came to town for the express purpose of finding where your wife had been. At first you thought she had been with me, but, during the day, you got in contact with other people and received a different idea.
“Now, Doctor, didn’t you discover that Tom Wickes intended to take your wife to Pete Dixon’s place at around ten o’clock the night the murder was committed; didn’t you go out there and wait in the shadows near Dixon’s house? When your wife showed up, didn’t you club her to death, and then go up the stairs and shoot Dixon? Didn’t you then go back downstairs, pick up your wife’s body, put it on the running board of your automobile, and drive to the railroad crossing, where you dumped off the body?
“Let’s figure it this way, Doctor: When you went to the Dixon house you were insane with jealous rage. You wanted to kill your wife, and you wanted to kill Dixon. You didn’t care what happened after that. But, after you had fired the shots which killed Dixon and realized you hadn’t alarmed the household, you saw an opportunity to frame an alibi, so you heated the blade of your pocket knife in the flame of the candle. As a dentist, you had frequently been called upon to cut wax with a hot knife. It was an easy matter for you, therefore, to cut an inch or two from the bottom of the candle. At the time, you just intended to cut off enough to make it appear the murder was committed a half hour or so later than was really the case. Then coincidence helped you, in that it happened you cut off just enough candle to make it appear the shots might have been fired when the ten forty-seven train was going by. Isn’t that so, Doctor?”
“No!” Dr. Hartwell said, his forehead glistening with perspiration.
The documents on the table were forgotten as the Grand Jurors leaned forward, tense, alert, expectant. Phil Duncan, who had seated himself in one of the chairs reserved for attaches of the district attorney’s office, hugged his knees, and his straining fingers showed white under the unconscious pressure he exerted in his excitement.
Moraine went on doggedly, “I think you did, Doctor. You are the only one who had a motive for murdering Peter Dixon who wouldn’t have appreciated the value of the political documents contained in that suitcase. The murderer had sufficient time to cut off a portion from the base of the candle, to smash the window and put a sliver of glass under Dixon’s body, and yet he didn’t touch those documents which had such deep political significance. Therefore, the murderer must have been either ignorant of their importance or indifference to them, or both. If anyone except you had committed that murder, desire to possess those documents would have been the motive which prompted the act. You alone had another motive.
“You dumped the shells from your gun, appeared at my office, and made a play which you knew would get you arrested, and furnish you with an alibi. The murder of your wife shows that it was a crime of brutal savagery. It wasn’t premeditated. The murder of. Dixon shows that after he had been shot, and fallen to the floor, his murderer knelt and shot him once more through his head, showing that the desire was to make very certain that Dixon was dead. It was a crime of savagery, a crime of vengeance, a crime of jealous rage. But, after the murders had been committed, your cunning asserted itself, and you wanted to escape paying the price.
“I think, Doctor, that if we examine the knife blade which you were carrying in your pocket, we will find some traces of orange wax from the candle. It would be easy to cut through the base of the candle with a hot knife blade, but if the candle wax cooled on the blade it would be very difficult to remove it; moreover, you must have put the piece of candle which you cut from the base of the candle in your pocket, and I think a trained investigator will find where some of the orange wax rubbed off on your coat pocket.”