“Finally, she thought in desperation, Higbee said to her, talking apparently with great effort, ‘Remember, I said you’d have to do something,’ and she nodded, and just then Carlotta came and stood by the bed, and Higbee frowned and said with the effort that talking costs a man who has had a stroke, ‘The joke is behind the joker,’ and that was all.
“Carlotta kept asking, ‘What was that? What about a joker?’ But he closed his eyes and pretended he couldn’t hear her. But the nurse felt certain that it was a message for her, but she never was able to figure it out. Higbee died the next day, and there was, of course, no further necessity for a nurse. Well, Elizabeth kept thinking over what her mother had told her, and after her mother’s death she began to wonder if it hadn’t been related to something in the house, so she started pumping me about the Higbee place, and I told her all I knew. Elizabeth wanted me to go with her and see if we couldn’t find something in the house, but of course, she swore me to absolute secrecy.
“Well, it was an adventure, and I was there in San Rodolpho on official business. I got off once to come up and see Beryl, but the rest of the time they held me there so I couldn’t go anywhere. Then I went back to Fort Bixling, and then I got this furlough and... well, I’d promised Elizabeth that I’d get in touch with her the first chance I had. So I did, and she insisted that I mustn’t call anyone, or let anyone know about what we were going to do. She said she’d drive me up in her car, and that after I’d helped her locate what she wanted I could get in touch with my friends up here. I think she was just a little bit hurt that I was so eager to... Well, you know.”
Beryl nodded.
“So when I left Camp Bixling yesterday morning, I took the bus up to San Rodolpho. I’d telephoned her that I was coming. She met me in the cafeteria. We talked for a while, and then we went over and had some lunch put up, got in her car and drove up to the old Higbee place. It certainly was a mess. I found that a passkey I’d picked up in a hardware store would work the lock on the side door, and we went in and prowled all around the place.”
“Find anything?” the sheriff asked.
Roy said, “At the time, I didn’t think that we had, but now-well, now I don’t know.”
The sheriff raised his eyebrows, asking a silent question.
“You see,” Roy said, “we had made pretty much of a search around the place, and were sitting down eating lunch, in fact we’d finished lunch and I’d had a cigarette, and I think she had, when all of a sudden we heard a car drive up. Well, you know, there’d been so much trouble among the heirs, and, after all, we’d really broken into the place — I’d used a passkey — so we jumped up and ran to the window. It was all covered with cobwebs, but I could vaguely see a car and people coming to the house. So I grabbed her hand and we ran away from the window and dashed for the side door. We played hide and seek around there for a while until the people walked around the other side of the house, then we ran out and jumped in her car and drove away.”
“You saw those people?”
“Yes, after we’d got out of the house. It was Sam Beckett and John Farnham. They didn’t see us. Farnham was evidently selling the place to Beckett. Anyway, I let Elizabeth drive me back to San Rodolpho, and I waited until evening and then telephoned Beryl. I didn’t want to tell Beryl that I was in San Rodolpho so I told her I was just leaving Fort Bixling, and... well, that’s all there was to it. I stuck around there, took the night bus and came up here. Now, Elizabeth must have uncovered some clue to something she didn’t want me to know about. After she took me back to San Rodolpho she must have turned right around and driven right back up here. She told me she had a bad headache and was going up to her room and go to bed. And by that time — I was thinking of Beryl. Elizabeth had been all right to kill a little time with when I was down where I couldn’t see Beryl, but once I could get up here I was kicking myself for the time I’d wasted out of my furlough. When a soldier’s in a strange town and is lonely, he’ll do anything just to talk with some friendly girl. Well, that was it. I’d promised her I’d go up to the Higbee place with her and look it over, and I went, and that’s all there was to it as far as I know.”
“And you left your cigarette case there?” Beryl asked.
“Yes.”
“But you had one the next morning when you showed up that...”
Roy said, “I felt miserable about that. You see, Beryl, you sent me the cigarette case for Christmas, but I already had one cigarette case, so I used it for a spare. Then after I lost your... well, I intended to go back to the Higbee place and pick up the one with the engraving on it, but the one that I showed you this morning was the spare. It was silver, about the same type as the one you gave me except for the engraving, and I held it so you couldn’t see that the engraving wasn’t on it. I was afraid that I couldn’t explain to you about Elizabeth without you getting sore.”
“You mustn’t feel that way, Roy — ever.”
“I know,” he said, “now. But I wasn’t sure. I...”
A car drew up outside. The sound of excited voices mingled with hurried steps. A perfunctory knock on the door was followed by a turning of the knob and the influx of an excited group.
“There they are!” Lyons proclaimed dramatically.
District Attorney Rush Medford demanded angrily, “What’s the idea?”
“Idea of what?” the sheriff drawled innocently.
“Spiriting these people away.”
The sheriff’s eyebrows went up. “We didn’t spirit them anywhere. We’re questioning them.”
“I’m putting this young man under arrest for the murder of Elizabeth Dow.”
“Got any evidence?” the sheriff asked.
“All the evidence in the world. That is, we will have as soon as we check some fingerprints. Beryl Quinlan thought she was wiping all the fingerprints off that cigarette case and she did — off the outside. But what everyone overlooked was the fact that at some time when the case had been empty and the owner was filling it with fresh cigarettes, he had left his fingerprints on the inside, back of the cigarettes.
“Mr. Walworth very shrewdly deduced he’d find fingerprints there and carefully removed the cigarettes, then dusted the interior of the case, and we got some very fine latents. In my official capacity as district attorney of this county, Sheriff, I order you to take this man into custody.”
“Suit yourself, but I’m not going to be the one to swear out the complaint,” Bill Eldon drawled.
“I will swear out the complaint,” Martin Walworth said, but then added hastily, “in the event it appears that this young man’s fingerprints check with the latents I found on the inside of the cigarette case.”
“We’ll determine that in short order,” the district attorney said.
They drove to the courthouse. Walworth made prints of Roy Jasper’s fingertips. There was no concealing his anxiety as he focused a magnifying glass on the latent prints and then compared them with the prints he had taken from Jasper’s fingers.
Suddenly his face broke into a smile. He nodded triumphantly to the district attorney. “I think congratulations are in order,” he said. “We have the right man!” He snapped the cigarette case shut with something of a flourish.
11
The night had turned clear and calm. Wintry stars blazed down with steady splendor. The pulsing throb of the motor on Sam Beckett’s tractor punctuated the cold silence. The tractor headlights cast twin rows of illumination down the field which surrounded the old Higbee place.